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Pneuma 35 (2013) 48-60
Subject to Spirit: The Promise of Pentecostal Feminist
Pneumatology and Its Witness to Systematics
Janice Rees
Charles Sturt University c/- PTC, Private Mail Bag Suva, Fiji Islands
Abstract
The emergence of feminist Pentecostal Theology poses a sharp challenge to both systematic theol- ogy and gender studies. The experiences of Pentecostal women, often in non-Western contexts, confront common assumptions regarding women’s ritual experience and the emergence of sub- jectivity. This paper will argue for an integration of insights from feminist Pentecostalism into the discipline of systematic theology. I explore the emergence of subjectivity in Pentecostal women in relation to the Holy Spirit and argue that a Pentecostal and feminist approach to pneumatol- ogy brings the critical elements together. This produces a clearer vision of the intimate relation between the doctrine of God and an embodied community of women (and men), thereby creating room within the systematic discipline to explore the boundaries of subjectivity itself.
Keywords
systematics, feminist theology, Pentecostalism
The Subject is Dead
“The subject is dead,” declares Eileen Schlee in the title of a recent paper.1 The assertion is not all that surprising. In a landscape of post-structuralism, post- modernism, and, for many, post-feminism, to harbor romantic notions about the emancipated subject is naive at best. Of course, the dismantling of the subject has hardly occurred due to a lack of interest in subjectivity. Australian cultural theorist Nick Mansfield observes in his anthology of subjectivity: “rather than being triumphant because of the huge emphasis it now enjoys, the
1 Eileen Schlee, “The Subject Is Dead, Long Live the Female Subject,” Feminist Issues 13, no. 2 (Fall 1993).
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.1163/15700747-12341269
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self is at risk; selfhood is seen to be in a state of perpetual crisis.”2 This may be demonstrated by the many and varied interpretations and critiques of classic psychoanalysis. From Lacan and De Beauvoir to the enormous influence of Irigaray, we have been challenged to make claims concerning language’s sym- bolic order and the reconceptualizing of subjectivity through the semiotic. What’s more — and perhaps due largely to Foucault — there is a sense that any discussion of subjectivity must take into account the complex web of fac- tors informing, shaping, and infusing the embodied subject, as well as the fun- damental role that power plays in personal formation.3 Thus, whether entering the discussion of subjectivity from the perspective of gender theory or from that of feminist theology, one immediately encounters a host of competing notions of the self. It is no wonder that the subject seems to be dead. For femi- nists, however, there is hesitancy simply to move on from the subject. Mary McClintock Fulkerson notes that “we must not lose the subject. . . . We must change the subject.”4 For Schlee, the importance of piecing together female subjectivity is grounded in its “history as a non-thing.” So when she states that “the subject is dead,” she also adds, “long live the feminine subject.”5 But in what direction will future research on subjectivity turn? With subjec- tivity “at risk in the West,”6 perhaps fresh paths may be discovered beyond complicated models of subjectivity, grounded instead in the experience of emerging subjects. In this connection, scholars have recently begun to explore the rich potential of feminist Pentecostal theology. This new voice in feminist studies poses challenges to gender studies and theology alike, with conclusions drawn from the experiences of Pentecostal women in non-Western contexts. Sarojini Nadar asks us to consider the experience of Christian women who are outside the WCC membership. Here she discovers that in some instances Pentecostal women have emancipatory resources that mainline groups do not
2 Nick Mansfield, Subjectivity: Theories of the Self from Freud to Haraway (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 2.
3 Though, as Mansfield argues, the ideal of the autonomous self-forming subject is almost ubiquitously dismissed and blamed on the classic scapegoat of the twentieth century: “the Enlightenment.” See Mansfield, Subjectivity, 13-24. Sarah Coakley, along with others, argues that this is an unfair reading and instead traces the development of the self throughout the Middle Ages. See Sarah Coakley, Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy and Gender, Challenges in Contemporary Theology (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), 71-88.
4 Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Changing the Subject: Women’s Discourses and Feminist Theol- ogy (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2001), 11.
5 Schlee, “The Subject Is Dead,” 1.
6 Mansfield, Subjectivity, 2.
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have.7 Lene Sjørup argues for the primacy of Pentecostalism in establishing subjectivity in the lives of poor Chilean women. Furthermore, she argues that it is precisely this subjectivity of Pentecostal women (experienced from the inside out) that has the power to change wider social conditions.8 Elsewhere, a joint research project links the embodied experience of ritual within Pentecos- tal communities in Salvador to the style of relation to self, others, and the wider social environment. Here women often become “important reference points in the neighbourhood, religious specialists who are frequently sought for guid- ance and healing.”9 In each of these instances, some kind of personal subjectiv- ity has occurred within the tradition and practice of Pentecostal communities. Evidently, the Pentecostal tradition has provided resources that many women would otherwise fail to have. Feminist literature is now beginning to report on these communities and to consider the broader theoretical implications. This trend has coincided with a renewed awareness of the exigency of pneu- matology in the construction of Christian systematic theology. In recent decades this has been evident in the work of scholars such as John Zizioulas, Wolfhart Pannenberg, and Robert Jenson. Such theological projects have tended however, to ignore the challenging questions of gender as well as the theological resources of Pentecostal Theology.
Drawing on the work of Andrea Hollingsworth, this article will explore the potential of feminist Pentecostalism to inform future research in the area of subjectivity and to provide resources for a theological retrieval of gender within systematic theology. From the perspective of an “outsider,”10 I will argue that through an experience of the Holy Spirit — and the ensuing developing pneumatology — feminist Pentecostals are able to provide a means by which
7 Sarojini Nadar, “On Being the Pentecostal Church,” Ecumenical Review 56, no. 3 (2004): 366. 8 Lene Sjørup, “Pentecostals: The Power of the Powerless,” Dialog: A Journal of Theology 41, no. 1 (2002): 25.
9 Miriam C. M. Rabelo, Sueli Ribeiro Mota, and Cláudio Roberto Almeida, “Cultivating the Senses and Giving in to the Sacred: Notes on Body and Experience among Pentecostal Women in Salvador, Brazil,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 24, no. 1 (2009).
10 This paper is written from the perspective of one who researches in the area of systematic theology and gender. I have very little experience with the practices of Pentecostalism and so admittedly write as an outsider. Undoubtedly, this in itself raises important questions about position, power, and the right to speak about or for another community. I can only hope that my attempt to engage with Pentecostal Theology in this paper is seen as a desire to enter into a dialogue with a much ignored tradition within academia (much like my own tradition: The Salvation Army). What’s more, this engagement on my part is a further provocation for the powerful, white men of systematic theology to consider the issues and insights of the worldwide Christian church, which include not only the various ignored traditions but, more specifically, issues of gender, race, and class.
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subjectivity may be engaged and, in turn, moved by the Spirit into the rela- tional act of the Godhead. In bringing this into discussion with Kevin Vanhoozer I will demonstrate how such Pentecostal Theology may illuminate typical sys- tematic theology, and through the writing of Rowan Williams I will further consider the telos of subjectivity.
Andrea Hollingsworth and the “Divine Voice”
In a 2009 Pneuma article entitled “Spirit and Voice,” Andrea Hollingsworth contends that despite the uncommon pairing, both feminism and Pentecostal- ism can forge a constructive collaboration around the shared values of “trans- formation, embodiment, and empowerment.”11 In noting the centrality of Spirit baptism, charismata, and witness, Hollingsworth shows that these manifesta- tions are often ecstatic, vocal, and communal.12 She adds:
[Due] to the centrality of the charisms of the Spirit in Pentecostalism and the wide- spread belief that they are given to men and women alike, ecstasy in the Spirit and expressiveness in worship are generally encouraged among Pentecostal women. In addition, women frequently act as ministers, healers, teachers, prophets, and preach- ers in their congregations. In light of the recent explosion of Pentecostal spirituality among women and men in the two-thirds world and the centrality of the Holy Spirit in Pentecostal faith, feminist theology’s overall hesitancy to integrate ecstatic experiences of the Spirit with Spirit doctrine is definitely worth noting.13
Hollingsworth argues for the incorporation of Sarah Coakley’s recent work on pneumatology in developing a feminist and Pentecostal approach to theology. By giving primacy to the place of prayer as a source for theology,14 Coakley suc- ceeds in “linking the Holy Spirit, Charismatic spirituality (especially vocal gifts of the Spirit), and women’s empowerment.”15 For Hollingsworth, the manner in which Coakley appeals to divine empowerment through contemplation — as the manifestation of the Holy Spirit — provides a direct parallel with the charisms more typically related with Pentecostalism, such as glossolalia and
11 Andrea Hollingsworth, “Spirit and Voice: Toward a Feminist Pentecostal Pneumatology,” Pentecostal Theology 29, no. 2 (2007): 190.
12 Ibid., 192.
13 Ibid., 193.
14 For a good example of Sarah Coakley’s work on prayer see Coakley, Powers and Submissions, 40-54.
15 Hollingsworth, “Spirit and Voice,” 195.
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prophecy.16 Through this approach, Hollingsworth believes, an increased sense of subjectivity emerges in women, providing the ability to “give voice” in both the public and private spheres. In order to test these claims, Hollingsworth turns to Latina Pentecostal communities and, more specifically, to the experi- ence of women experiencing the Holy Spirit within these communities. While she notes that there are many reasons to be sceptical about the benefits of Pentecostalism to Latin American communities, including the exploitation of faith for commercial gain and the profound entrenchment of patriarchal ideol- ogy, Hollingsworth points to the “substantial and growing body of sociological literature [that] points to the positive effects of Pentecostalism on the lives of Latin American women.”17 She cites field studies that show how conversion to Pentecostalism was more likely to see husbands give up their machismo, lead- ing to far greater equality within the home.18 Citing Elizabeth Brusco, Holling- sworth suggests that this in turn leads to an “increased sense of autonomy in wives.”19 Beyond the home, Pentecostal traditions have in many cases seen far greater numbers of women in leadership and ordained ministry than have their Protestant counterparts.20 Hollingsworth’s argument is that it is embod- ied experiences of the Holy Spirit that have led to the empowerment of women within this tradition. She quotes Lene Sjǿrup whose research showed that Chil- ean Pentecostal women felt empowered to effect social change through Spirit ecstasy. Sjǿrup notes, “Pentecostalism led to a new theology, where the believer became the subject of her own life.”21 Further, Hollingsworth observes how such experiences are often manifest in a vocal and public manner. R. Andrew Chestnut’s research in Brazil found that women tend to experience these vocal gifts more often. Glossolalia is “speech for those whose tongue is tied by society,
16 There are certainly a range of other experiences in Pentecostal communities that bespeak empowerment. The relationship between physical encounter (e.g., the laying on of hands for gifts of healing) and subjectivity could also be explored through a similar lens. This paper is primarily relating Hollingsworth work to the systematic fields and for this reason will mainly consider the evocative language that Hollingsworth describes.
17 Hollingsworth, “Spirit and Voice,” 189-99.
18 Lene Sjǿrup appeals to this “feminine ethos” (Brusco’s term) to argue that in the case of Pentecostal conversion there are clear expectations placed upon men to take greater responsibility within the home. The ensuing behavior is thus interpreted in a manner more typically associated with the feminine. See Sjørup, “Pentecostals: The Power of the Powerless,” 25. Rabelo, Mota, and Almeida argue that this same feminine ethos contributes to altering the power balance between spouses.
19 Hollingsworth, “Spirit and Voice,” 199.
20 Ibid., 210 and 202.
21 Cited in ibid., 202.
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particularly for poor women of color.”22 With the addition of public prophecy, testimony, and hymnal participation, women in these communities are given space and opportunity to raise their voice and speak as a subject — perhaps for the first time. As Hollingsworth adds,
Whether through glossolalia, preaching, prophesying, singing, or testifying, they are using their voices to articulate themselves powerfully and publicly, lead other con- gregants, develop an increased sense of agency/subjectivity, and find ways to cope with the suffering in their lives.23
Hollingsworth thus seeks to propose a constructive feminist Pentecostal pneu- matology. She does this by suggesting that the Holy Spirit is the genesis of all voice, the voice that empowers or gives voice; the “condition and goal of all creaturely vocative efforts.”24 She draws from the Scripture of the Old and New Testaments and from the Christian tradition to demonstrate the prominence of the Spirit’s role in giving voice, particularly the voice of life, justice, and empowerment. She also argues for the importance of utilizing as a category voice — which is relational and dynamic — instead of word. What’s more, the dialectical nature of speaking and silence engages a Spirit who is not located “in one or the other interlocutor, but, rather, is mediated in and through the interlocutory process itself.”25 Thus by speaking of the Holy Spirit as “divine voice,” Hollingsworth hopes to develop a pneumatology that encapsulates women’s experience and “uphold[s] the feminist ideals of mutuality, plurality, embodiment as well as Pentecostal transformation, community, and ecstasy.”26
Perhaps surprisingly, I think this approach can be developed further through a critical engagement with the rhetorical pneumatology of Kevin Vanhoozer. In papers published from the 2008 Wheaton conference, Vanhoozer argues that discourse between the Father, Son, and Spirit reveals God’s being as con- versation.27 The key moments of dialogue within the triune economy repre- sent the communicative face of perichoresis. “This conversational analogy depicts God’s being as essentially communicative and the three persons as a
22 R. Andrew Chestnut, Born Again in Brazil: The Pentecostal Boom and the Pathogens of Poverty (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1997).
23 Hollingsworth, “Spirit and Voice,” 204.
24 Ibid., 205.
25 Ibid., 207.
26 Ibid., 209.
27 Daniel J. Treier and David Lauber, Trinitarian Theology for the Church (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009).
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dialogue between communicative agents.”28 Vanhoozer wants to build on this with a rhetorical analogy to focus on the distinct roles of the three persons in a unified communicative action. His proposal is that divine communication “is a unified action with three dimensions,” so that Scripture is understood “not as divinely appropriated human discourse, but as human discourse that from start to finish is caught up in the field of divine communicative action.”29 He states: “The triune God ultimately deploys scripture as a means of expand- ing the inner-trinitarian conversation and hence the circle of his friendly conversation.”30 Similarly, Hollingsworth suggests that “giving voice and giving ear may be thought of as trinitarian practices, the creator voice graciously opening us up to participating in the relationality of the eternally welcoming, evocative conversation of the triune persons.”31
In Vanhoozer’s proposal, the persons of the Trinity designate the speaker’s moral character (the ethos of God the Father), the utterance of the message (the logos or Word), and the effect upon the listener (the pathos of the Spirit).32 By placing the “success” of divine speech in the hands of the Spirit, Vanhoozer points toward a conception in which the oppressive structures of origin and procession are dismantled, while placing power in the hands of precisely that which undermines gender binaries: the third. Notably, this model stands up to the challenge of Sarah Coakley, who not only argues for a destabilization of gender but also charges contemporary theology to justify hypostatization of the spirit.33
What remains for systematic pneumatology is to take seriously the cry for emancipation found in feminist studies, as well as an evaluation of subjectivity and how this relates to the Spirit of the Triune God. Nicola Slee argues that there is in fact a direct correlation between the neglect of a fully worked-out pneumatology and the “repression and marginalisation of women themselves in Christian Tradition.”34 Given the growing fieldwork results from feminist
28 Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “Theological Reflections on the Claim That God Speaks (Part 2),” in Trinitarian Theology for the Church, ed. Daniel J. Treier and David Lauber (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009), 58.
29 Ibid., 59.
30 Ibid., 67.
31 Hollingsworth, “Spirit and Voice,” 208.
32 Vanhoozer, “Theological Reflections on the Claim That God Speaks (Part 2),” 54.
33 Sarah Coakley, “Why Three? Some Further Reflections on the Origins on the Doctrine of the Trinity,” in The Making and Remaking of Christian Doctrine: Essays in Honour of Maurice Wiles, ed. Sarah Coakley and David A. Pailin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 29-56.
34 Nicola Slee, “The Holy Spirit and Spirituality,” in The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Theology, ed. Susan Frank Parsons (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 172.
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Pentecostal communities, one may easily substantiate this claim. Admittedly, Vanhoozer himself typifies a systematic approach in which pneumatology is presented in entirely theoretical frameworks, bearing little discernible conse- quence for embodied subjectivity. In his model, however, it is the masculine Logos who speaks, while the Spirit is the one who ensures that the listener actually hears and is affected.35 Hollingsworth also notes the role of the Spirit in bringing wisdom to the silent, but she argues that there is a dialectical role to be played here. We are called both to listen and to speak. It is through both these actions that subjectivity emerges. Vanhoozer and Hollingsworth have different approaches in their conception of “Divine voice,” but I think they pro- vide an interesting convergence between a more typical systematic approach and an intentionally feminist and Pentecostal approach. In the final part of this paper, I will suggest some ways in which Hollingsworth’s work may speak to Vanhoozer’s model, and I will draw some conclusions about the way a feminist Pentecostal pneumatology provides resources for both systematic studies and feminist theology.
The Promise of Pentecostal Feminist Pneumatology and Its Witness to Systematics
From a feminist perspective, there are several instructive facets of Hollings- worth’s model. First, she has placed her model entirely within the embodied community. While Vanhoozer speaks of the divine community, there is little suggestion of effects upon the world beyond the solitary listener of the Word. While Vanhoozer makes reference to the church, these comments point only vaguely to the communication of “salvation” and an eschatological hope.36 Indeed, the same charge could be laid against Sarah Coakley, who nearly always appeals to the kind of spiritual practices that occur in isolation. Although Coakley hints at inner empowerment, the actual encounter with the Spirit in no way manifests the kind of public identity that we find in Hollingsworth’s model. Coakley and Vanhoozer both argue for the efficacy of the Spirit, and Coakley suggests that this will affect the community. Yet, it is only in the Pen- tecostal approach that we seem to find a concrete example of public empower- ment. The frequent examples of such public identity provided from casework
35 Vanhoozer does note, however, that “the Spirit makes public an inner-trinitarian con- versation.” See Vanhoozer, “Theological Reflections on the Claim That God Speaks (Part 2),” 57. 36 Ibid., 57-58.
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in non-Western (Pentecostal) contexts draws attention to the tendency to overlook such communities in academic theorizing.
Second, in Hollingsworth we find that the work of the Holy Spirit is given social / political context and direction. While Vanhoozer’s “pathos” speaks of a work of rational transformation, Hollingsworth argues that the Spirit speaks life, justice, and empowerment.37 She notes:
The Spirit’s strengthening power was especially important for Hildegard as a woman. Her context was a crushing, patriarchal society that often suppressed female voices from any kind of public area. But for Hildegard, the intense experiences of the Holy Spirit in mystical and ecstatic prayer was the source of the courage that enabled her to fulfil her prophetic call, even in a context that had conditioned her to view herself with some disdain simply because she was a female.38
Notably, Nicola Slee also argues that matters of justice, empowerment, and relational connectedness are each hallmarks of feminist spiritualty.39 Yet, here is a demonstrative and explicit leap toward a systematic framework. Conse- quently I would argue that pneumatology necessarily (and inherently) encom- passes both the call for emancipation (in all its facets) and the empowerment that communities seek for such transformation. That is, even if such concerns may well be the hallmark of feminist studies in spirituality, they are indeed the fruit of the Spirit and are therefore integral to systematic pneumatological con- structions (if they are to be truly systematic).
Third, in the dialectic interplay described by Hollingsworth there is a response to the issue of difference — an issue of great concern to feminists. She writes: “Since it is mediated through a vast variety of human voices, the Spirit’s voice is astonishingly polyvocal.”40 Though this may be seen in light of ecumenism and the diversity of language, there is also the subtext of gender essentialism. The divine voice does not denote gender, and is bound neither to the role of speaker or to that of listener. To consider applying methods of phenomenology or hermeneutics alongside the notion of divine voice and the
37 Hollingsworth, “Spirit and Voice,” 205-6. In contrast Vanhoozer states: the “pathos effect is the Spirit’s persuading the reader to embrace the point of view expressed in the Logos.” See Vanhoozer, “Theological Reflections on the Claim That God Speaks (Part 2),” 63.
38 Hollingsworth, “Spirit and Voice,” 206.
39 Slee, “The Holy Spirit and Spirituality,” 179-82. As Slee notes further, a far greater emphasis is given to feminist spirituality in research, as opposed to feminist pneumatology; thus we are reminded once again of the significance of Hollingsworth’s contribution. See “The Holy Spirit and Spirituality,” 172.
40 Hollingsworth, “Spirit and Voice,” 208.
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subject’s voice highlights the fragmented. Difference is not only welcome, but necessitated in this method. For example, such an approach could easily be applied to Mary McClintock Fulkerson’s call for radical textualization. Cer- tainly it is worth noting that both models rely on vocal categories to denote the divine and also the interaction of humanity with God. Pertinent questions remain regarding those for whom normative vocal categories are unavailable. I would argue, however, that when properly understood, voice, speaking, and hearing are categories far more nuanced than examples of human-to-human vocal conversation. Indeed, constructing a model around the pneumatological raises the divine/human interaction beyond the bounds of the empirical. Thus the encounter of God speaks beyond words and may be heard even outside the rational.
Fourth, we find in Hollingsworth’s emphasis on voice, and in the wider cor- pus of Pentecostal pneumatology, an opportunity to reconsider the boundaries of language within the practice of glossolalia. While tongues speech is often identified in Pentecostal circles as a sign of fully entering the tradition, it is also a spiritual act that challenges Western notions of God, religious experience, and epistemology.41 A common argument in more conservative Christianity is that God does not cause irrationality or confusion (with appeals to Paul’s letter to the Corinthians). This seemingly unsophisticated practice of Pentecostal Christians is deemed irrational, hysterical, or simply manufactured. By con- trast, James K. A. Smith has written a wonderful essay on tongues-speech that suggests that we might speak of glossolalia as resistance discourse. In spite of the fact that philosophy has given little attention to this “strange, quite extraor- dinary” language, Smith argues that the apparent limits of tongues-speech when applied to philosophy are precisely what make it most interesting and precisely the reason we may consider it an act of linguistic resistance.42 Tongues-speech resists the categories of philosophical analysis for language, and thus “one might say that such a prayer is a kind of sacramental practice of emptying, recognising the failure of even language to even measure up to such an exchange. Glossolalic prayer is a means of making oneself both receptive to and a conduit of the Spirit’s work.”43 Smith, however, wants to draw from social and ethical philosophy also to demonstrate the resistive nature of glossolalia.
41 Rabelo, Mota, and Almeida, “Cultivating the Senses and Giving in to the Sacred: Notes on Body and Experience among Pentecostal Women in Salvador, Brazil,” 2.
42 James K. A. Smith, “Tongues as a Resistant Discourse: A Philosophical Persepctive,” in Speaking in Tongues: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives, ed. Mark Cartledge (Carlise, UK: Paternoster, 2002), 81.
43 Ibid., 84.
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Using speech-act theory to describe glossolalia as an act of performance, Smith argues:
As an action, one of the things that speaking in tongues does is to effect a kind of social resistance to the powers-that-be. Or perhaps we should say that tongues-speech is the language of faith communities which are marginalised by the powers-that-be, and such speech is indicative of a kind of eschatological resistance to the powers. We might say that the proletariat speaks in tongues.44
Smith applies this case of resistance to the capitalist market (and suggestively points to the decrease in glossolalia within American Assemblies of God con- gregations when they climb “the ladder of social class”).45 I suggest the case could also be made here for the role of glossolalia in women’s subjectivity. The accusations of patriarchy made against language itself — particularly by Irigaray — have been felt profoundly by all strains of feminism. When appeals are made to the word, or acts of speech, the critique of language lurks in the shadows, ready to dismantle every constructive theological effort. Yet glossola- lia does something with language that defies the rules and transgresses the boundaries. Certainly this is an apt way to describe the work of the Spirit: God without boundaries, God who defies all our rules and rationale.
Finally, in drawing subjectivity and the doctrine of the Holy Spirit together, something must be said of the eschatological. As the Spirit calls us and empow- ers us, likewise the Spirit leads us into the ends of ourselves. The emerging subject is drawn into the ultimate reality of the eschaton. Here we may find a creative tension through which subjectivity itself may be transgressed. The possibility of relationship between the human person and the triune God is, in this sense, the possibility of a different existence. Ontological categories of personhood are surely transformed for those “in” the Spirit. Often when spiri- tuality is discussed there are at least implicit suggestions of self-surrender and abandonment. Certainly feminists have good reason to fear this. Nevertheless we might turn here to the writing of Rowan Williams for an account of subjec- tivity in via, as we might say. Unlike other theologians that discuss spirituality and subjectivity, Williams consistently defends the necessity of the subject before God.46 For instance, when writing on Augustine’s doctrine of the
44 Ibid., 107.
45 Ibid., 110.
46 Rowan Williams, “Sapientia and the Trinity: Reflections on De Trinitate,” in Collectanea Augustiniana: Mélanges T J Van Bavel, ed. Bernard Bruning et al. (Leuven, Belgium: Leuven Uni- versity Press, 1990), 321.
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Trinity, Williams contends that we must be at home in our created “selves” in order to grow in the image of God. Williams wants to affirm personal subjectiv- ity as part of God’s creative act. Subjectivity itself is, however, a part of the divine invitation, a call to the other. He writes:
To redefine the problem in terms of sheer identity is to say that peace, unity, reconcili- ation, even love, are really masks of the absence of difference: all identity must be reduced to the eternal sameness of divine act. But the trinitarian pattern tells us that the divine act is not an eternal sameness at all, but relational act; so that the challenge for creatures is not the abolition of difference and the cancellation of the subject, but the subject’s growth into precisely the recognition of and enactment of the self ’s reality in the other that is in the heart of the theological vision.47
Williams is pointing toward a conception of the Godhead that itself trans- gresses the boundaries of subjectivity. Many theologians of the current age passionately argue for the subjectivity of God, as opposed to objectifying the Trinity. This, however, may be proven a false dichotomy, for Williams wants to argue a third way. Elsewhere, when speaking of the divine persons he notes: “the whole language of self is unhelpful here, I suspect, though I realise I have been using it. We are at a loss to find useful ways of talking about life character- ised by activity that is more like intelligent activity that any other, yet is neither the life of a single subject, not the history of several individual subjects.”48 Instead, Williams uses John of the Cross to describe the life of the Godhead as the going out from self-identity into the other, a divine speaking that brings forth an ever-wider pattern of discourse.49 The Trinity is thus seen as relational act where progress is not only acceptable, but is in some sense at the core. At the core, the divine discourse is not a unilateral address, but an invitation that enables participation. Further, as subjects are welcomed into the divine con- versation of the eschaton, personhood is blurred. Just as glossolalia defies con- temporary rules of speech, the ongoing triune conversation defies our understanding of speech acts. If there is a subjectivity of the triune persons akin to anthropological definitions, then these same persons are transgressing “each other” in love and desire and breaking the bounds of subjectivity. The divine life is a pattern of “gift and reception so radical that we have not finally
47 Rowan Williams, “The Deflections of Desire: Negative Theology in Trinitarian Disclosure,” in Silence and the Word: Negative Theology and Incarnation, ed. Oliver Davies and Denys Turner (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 131.
48 Rowan Williams, “What Does Love Know? St Thomas on the Trinity,” New Blackfriars 82, no. 964 ( June 2001).
49 Williams, “The Deflections of Desire,” 118.
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suitable categories. . . . [We are faced] with a plain lack of adequate categories for speaking about something like subjectivity that cannot be accounted for in the terms of our standard discourse of sameness and otherness, subjects and object.”50 Nevertheless, it is only in light of this doctrine — that is, a doctrine of the Trinity — that we can understand the role of the Spirit who brings us into the life of the Godhead and the reflexivity of divine discourse. In this way, we, too, as created subjects are altered; we transgress the boundaries of subjec- tivity by sharing in divine discourse. We are “taken into the movement of the Spirit.”51
Conclusion
I have been arguing that within feminist Pentecostal pneumatology we find resources to ignite ongoing research in feminist theology as it argues for wom- en’s subjectivity. The work of Andrea Hollingsworth provides a clear example of ways in which various experiences of the Holy Spirit in non-Western Pente- costal communities have been demonstrated to bring about women’s subjec- tivity. By placing Hollingsworth’s constructive pneumatology alongside the more “classically” systematic work of Kevin J. Vanhoozer, the challenge of feminist theology is brought to the forefront of the systematic task. A feminist and Pentecostal approach such as Hollingsworth’s creates serious possibilities for systematic theology to respond to the serious questions of gender and sub- jectivity. Furthermore, in Rowan Williams we have a picture of subjectivity itself being recast through an eschatological lens. The created subject must not be lost; it is affirmed and necessary. Its emergence is indeed the work of the Spirit. Each subject, however, is invited into the deflective, transgressive dis- course of the Godhead. It is within the divine life that we discover that subjec- tivity is not autonomous or self-contained; the self ’s autonomy is lovingly transgressed as it is opened to participate in the divine discourse. Paradoxi- cally, this transgression of subjectivity is only possible for those who are at home in their created selves. Only by becoming truer to our created selves do we become subject to Spirit.
50 Ibid., 122. 51 Ibid., 119.
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