Redeeming Beauty? Christa and the Displacement of Women’s Bodies in Theological Aesthetic Discourses

The Beauty of the Cross: Historical Trajectories and Contemporary Trends

The turn to aesthetics within the discipline of theology in the Christian West at the end of the twentieth century was largely prompted by a desire to extend theology beyond theory, with the work of Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar leading the way. Disillusioned by the ‘aridity’ of the manualist tradition that dominated Catholic theology for much of the twentieth century, von Balthasar calls for a return to beauty: ‘… in a world which is perhaps not wholly without beauty, but which can no longer see it or reckon with it: in such a world the good also loses its attractiveness, the self-evidence of why it must be carried out’ (Von Balthasar, 1982: 19). The witness of divine revelation is lost on the one who can no longer read the language of beauty. Theological aesthetics, for von Balthasar, is about the self-disclosure of God in the historical form in which divine glory is revealed and received (for a summary, see Steck, 2001: 14-27). Consequently, seeing the form of divine beauty cannot be separated from the concrete events of salvation history – the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Ultimately, for von Balthasar, divine beauty culminates in Christ’s kenotic love on the cross. As such, the perception of divine revelation, which is beautiful, is not so much a matter of finding or discovering the truth of existence as it is that of an apocalyptic unveiling. Namely, Christ’s kenosis radically reorients Christian perception toward participation in divine Truth and Goodness. This has implications for the moral and spiritual development of the believer, as it is through contemplation of the beauty of the cross that one is drawn into a deeper relationship with God and the human community.

Von Balthasar was far from being the first to proclaim the cross’s beauty. Historically, Christian thinkers have interpreted divine beauty in light of the cross through the trajectories of spiritual and moral beauty. Attending to the spiritual and moral dimensions of aesthetics not only aided patristic and medieval writers in distinguishing divine beauty from created (or material) beauties, but it also created a forum for broadening the notion of the beautiful itself. In this framework, beauty is a moral beauty associated with the spiritual life, as a form of likeness to God. This construction aided patristic writers in distinguishing the beauty of the cross (as a form of Christian virtue) from the ugliness of the crucifixion. As Richard Viladesau explains, ‘[p]hysically [the crucifixion] was ugly; spiritually – in its meaning, self-sacrifice for others – it was beautiful’(Viladesau, 2006:12). Augustine’s interpretation of beauty highlights the origins of this trajectory in relation to the cross.

The question of the beauty of the cross appears in Augustine’s meditation on Psalm 45(44 in the Latin Vulgate):

Wherefore then He had no form nor comeliness? Because Christ crucified is both to the Jews a stumbling-block; and to the Greeks foolishness. But wherefore had He comeliness even upon the Cross? Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. To us, however, now that we are believers, let the Bridegroom, wheresoever He is, appear beautiful (Augustine in Parker translation, 1848: 229-30).

Augustine goes on to describe Christ as ‘everywhere beautiful: beautiful in the hands of his parents, beautiful in his miracles, beautiful in his flagellation, beautiful giving up his spirit, beautiful carrying the cross, beautiful on the cross, beautiful in heaven’ (Augustine quoted in Viladesau, 2006: 11). Yet, all of this is qualified as a righteous beauty. It is Christ’s perfect righteousness that allows the believer to interpret the whole of his/her life as beautiful. Similar to Hans Urs von Balthasar, Augustine contends that Christ’s suffering and death on the cross is a revelation of love. This revelation of love elicits in the believer a confession of sin as well as praise (doxology). As such, Christ’s beauty cannot be perceived apart from the believer’s own moral and spiritual purification (see Harrison, 1992: 232). Namely, Augustine contends that by imitating Christ in faith and love, we, too, become beautiful and participate in the beauty of God. In this context, Christ’s beauty is the source of all human beauty and redeems by transforming humanity. As we form our lives according to the law of charity, we delight in God and come to reflect (take the form of) divine beauty itself.

Attending to the spiritual and moral dimensions of aesthetics not only gave early Christians writers a way of interpreting the paradox of the cross, but it also provided a way of marking out the distinction between divine beauty and secular beauties, a motif that dominates a great deal of theological aesthetic discourse today. While the tenor and context varies, the beauty of the cross continues to act as a guide-post in distinguishing divine beauty from secular forms of aesthetics, thereby informing Christian praxis. In these constructions, not only is the perception of divine beauty a gift from God, but God becomes the standard by which to measure the beautiful itself. Consonant with the theological methodology of Karl Barth, revelation sets the criteria and form for the perception of beauty. As such, the primary issues at stake are the preservation of divine truth in the face of ‘secularity,’ as well as the sources and methods of theology in the modern world. Perhaps the writings of Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, provide the clearest expression of this formulation in the Roman Catholic tradition.

Benedict XVI (2005) returns to Augustine’s narration on Psalm 45 in his essay, ‘Wounded by the Arrow of the Beautiful: the Cross and the New “Esthetic” of Faith.’

This essay illuminates the way in which the cross functions hermeneutically within theology in order to respond to concerns of secularity. The cross encompasses intellectual beauty as the beauty of Christian truth. In the cross:

[T]he experience of the beautiful has received a new depth and a new realism. The One who is beauty itself let himself be struck in the face, spat upon, crowned with thorns – the Shroud of Turin can help us realize this in a moving way. Yet, precisely in this Face that is so disfigured, there appears the genuine, the ultimate beauty: the beauty of love that goes “to the very end” and thus proves to be mightier than falsehood and violence. Whoever has perceived this beauty knows that truth after all, and not falsehood, is the ultimate authority of the world (Ratzinger, 2005: 39).

As such, the paradox of the cross becomes a way of responding to the challenges of modern aestheticism and violence, both of which are associated with a false beauty as they fail to put the believer in contact with Christian reality. Not only does the beauty of the cross free us ‘from the prison-house of believing the lie which would make the denial of beauty’s ultimacy the last word’ in the face of the horrors of history, but it also frees us from an aesthetics of hedonistic passion (Ratzinger, 2005: 39). A harmonious concept of beauty fails to ‘do justice to the seriousness with which God, truth, and beauty are questioned’ in the modern world (Ratzinger, 2005: 39). In a word, the beauty of the cross is the criterion for distinguishing true gnosis from false gnosis. Moreover, as Benedict XVI (2005:41) contends, failure to make this distinction has serious moral consequences, as false beauty not only suppresses in the Christian believer a desire for God, ‘a willingness to sacrifice’ and do good for the other, but it also incites the will-to-power.

Theological constructions of beauty ‘from above,’ like the ones discussed in this section, are rarely developed in conversation with the concrete context and knowledge of particular communities and, as a consequence, bypass the role of androcentrism, white supremacy, and colonialism in shaping the tradition’s interpretation of divine revelation. Absent from these discourses is a critical discussion of the ugliness of evil and its social causes (but see De Gruchy, 2001; Goizueta, 2009). Suffering enters into the picture primarily in view of the sufferings of Christ without accounting for 1) the patriarchal ways in which the cross has been used to sanctify violence in Christendom and 2) the theo-ethical meanings the victims and survivors of this violence give to the cross. In the context of sexual violence, defining true beauty as a wounded love ‘that goes to the very end’ not only glorifies suffering, but it presents us with a model for human praxis in which suffering is named as attractive and desirable. It lifts up as most beautiful a sacrificial love in which bodily wounds are an unintended, but necessary, result. In a feminist perspective, this model is highly dangerous, as it holds the potential to reinforce practices of self-deprecation and self-abnegation, re-inscribing the very notions of aestheticism that it seeks to critique upon the bodies of those who are most vulnerable. Summarily, the desire to safeguard Christian doctrine from the dangers of aestheticism has rendered living truths about human bodies invisible.

Edwina Sandys’ Christa

Womanist and feminist theologies (see, for example Cannon, 1996; Gebara, 2002) have given attention to the inclusion of aesthetic sources as a way of expanding the historical memory of the community, engaging the moral wisdom and experiences of those on the margins, and re-imagining religious symbols. One such symbol is the female crucified Christ. Since the 1970s, a number of female representations of Christ crucified have arisen within contemporary art. Christa was created by Edwina Sandys in 1974 for the United Nations Decade for Women: Equality, Development and Peace (Clague, 2005: 83). The statue, cast in bronze and approximately four feet in length, displays the battered body of a naked crucified woman. A crown of thorns adorns her head, and the positioning of her arms and legs mirror those of more traditional images of the crucified Jesus (picture in Clague, 2005: 86). The statue did not gain much attention until 1984, when it was unveiled at the Holy Thursday services of the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. At the time of its unveiling, as reported by The New York Times, the statue touched deep emotional and theological feelings. Those in support argued that a ‘woman on the cross emphasizes the teaching that God acted through Jesus to save all humanity, regardless of race, ethnic background, or sex’(Briggs, 1984: 7). Detractors saw the statue as a ‘travesty against historical and doctrinal truth’ (Briggs, 1984: 7). Sandys’ Christa generated a storm of controversy and was removed from the cathedral eleven days later. Questions about the appropriateness of visual representation of the figure of Jesus Christ are highly contested. As Julie Clague (2005: 100) has argued, artistic depictions of the female body crucified are particularly controversial because they upset theological orthodoxies concerning gender symbolism. At the heart of this debate is the interpretation of the incarnation of Christ.

Sandys’ Christa raises a new set of questions for theological aesthetics and, in doing so, brings to light aspects of the conversation that have been overlooked. In a discipline whose concerns have centered on the dangers of idolatry (i.e., the idolatry of the graven image and the idolatry of subjectivity), Christa raises the question of gender idolatry for theological aesthetics. In light of conversations that emphasize the objectivity of revelation in order to safeguard divine glory from the ills of subjectivity and secularity, Christa calls attention to the ways in which both Christianity and the larger society have muted the subjectivity of women by objectifying their bodies. Perhaps, most important, is the way in which Christa’s broken body gives voice to ways in which the bodies of women have been abandoned and alienated from the Body of Christ. As one woman wrote after viewing the sculpture:

When many of us see the Christa we see all the women we have known and loved, and the women we have not known and yet love, shamed and cursed, tortured, raped, made the object of lust, and in sadomasochistic pornography hung on crosses; we see teenaged girls afraid to grow breasts, afraid to be beautiful, or refusing to be beautiful, refusing to be fully who they are because they do not want to become statistics among those millions and millions who throughout history have been crucified (as quoted in Hunter, 1985: 30).

The broken and battered body of Christa, naked upon the cross, has the ‘power to bring women’s experiences of violent abuse out of silence and into speech’ (Brooks Thistlethewaite, 1991: 93). In light of abstract conversations about the cross’s beauty, the sculpture – as an aesthetic and theological source, foregrounds the long history of violence against women in a way that is difficult to ignore. Christa visually calls into question the ways in which the female body has been eroticized, suffering and self-sacrificial love valorized, and the maleness of Christ idolatrized within Christendom.

Gender Idolatry and the Pathos of God

Concerns surrounding the appropriateness of imagery for the divine are far from being a new issue in Christian theology. As early as the fourth century, debates ensued over the power images. As John de Gruchy illustrates, such controversies were often deeply embedded in and fueled by the politics of empire. For example, after Constantine’s military victory ‘under the sign of the cross,’ the bishops of Rome, backed by the emperor, ordered the destruction of the cultic status of ancient Rome (De Gruchy, 2001: 20-21). Lurking in the background, one finds competing claims to power and authority. In other words, claims of idolatry usually have more to do with the politics of representation than the actual image in question. The critical question revolves around who has the authority to name God and on what grounds. As discussed earlier, contemporary theological aesthetic discourses, especially those wedded to the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar, name the turn to the subject as the source of idolatry in theology. In these discourses, the central issue at stake is whether theology, in its methods and sources, understands beauty as subject to the Word of God. Yet, as feminist theologians have argued, the Word of God, as interpreted by the classical theological tradition, is not a neutral word. Androcentric bias and kyriarchical world-views are deeply embedded in our traditions and texts (see Schüssler Fiorenza, 1994). At stake, is the material and spiritual well-being of women, which has been (and continues to be) eclipsed by the idolatrous and oppressive use of patriarchal metaphors for God and redemption.

While Christian tradition has maintained that gender cannot be assigned to the divine being as God is beyond all categories of human knowing, ‘scripture, Christian theology, and Christian art have created images of God that are predominantly masculine’(Polinska, 2004: 40). These images have been used to justify the exclusion of women from positions of leadership in the public-ecclesial realm. This is nowhere more evident than in the Roman Catholic tradition’s assimilation of christological doctrines and symbols wherein the maleness of historical person of Jesus of Nazareth is interpreted as intrinsic to christic function and identity (Johnson, 1993: 119).

Christa’s female form plays a critical role in shattering gender idolatry within christological imagery. As Clague (2005: 98) explains, Christa creates an experience of frisson in the viewer. The sculpture’s gender symbolism subverts expectations while simultaneously invoking a strong ‘identification with the image of the crucified Christ,’ calling the viewer to reflect upon the significance of Jesus’ crucified humanity in a new way (Clague, 2005: 99). This holds particular significance given the long identification of the naked female body with non-godliness in western Christianity. As Margaret Miles (1989: 125, 139-41) illustrates, this trend has been visually replicated in Christian art wherein the female naked body signifies wickedness and decadence through depictions of moral corruption and sin. At the center of this history, lie patriarchal interpretations of the biblical accounts of creation and the Fall that emphasize woman’s secondary status and her leadership in disobedience, resulting in a curse on humanity.

Christa, as a subversive feminist aesthetic and theological representation, plays a critical role in visually contesting the ways in which the female body has been precluded from divine representation. As Elizabeth Johnson explains, female images and symbols for God are critical in ‘empowering women in their struggle to make their own humanity as imago Dei historically tangible, and thereby to secure a foothold for the glory of God in history’ (Johnson, 1992: 15). Not only does the literal and exclusive use of patriarchal images for God justify the dominance of men by identifying patterns of ‘patriarchal headship’ as God-like, but it also diminishes the dignity of women psychologically and socially by setting up an ‘unconscious dynamic that alienates women from their own goodness and power’ (Johnson, 1992: 38). When male imagery for God is used exclusively and literally, women have to abstract themselves from their ‘concrete, bodily, identity as women’ in order to see themselves as imago Dei and imago Christi (Johnson, 1992: 38). Indeed, a number of women attest to the healing power of Christa in this regard.

The failure to image women in bodily form as imago Christi and imago Dei has neglected to train the eyes of women and men to perceive the iconic power of female bodies in their fullness, further compounding the myth of feminine evil. Christa, as a female symbol of the divine, plays a critical role in shattering this form of gender idolatry. In ‘uttering female symbols into speech about divine mystery’ (Johnson, 1992: 45), we open up the possibility of recovering the dignity of women and rediscovering the beauty of the divine mystery. This is not to suggest that female imagery for God should replace or complement male imagery for divine. Rather, imaging God as SHE in our prayer, religious practice, and theology opens up new possibilities for thinking about God that may not have been apparent to us before. One of the more contentious places that this plays out is the doctrine of atonement.

Through its doctrine of atonement, the classical Christian tradition has maintained the apatheia of God while painting a picture of Jesus as a Divine Victim. Suffering is considered to be incompatible with the divine nature because it is a ‘passive state requiring that one be acted upon by an outside force’ (Johnson, 1992: 247). Since God is pure act, to suggest that God suffers would compromise the integrity (changelessness) of the divine being. Yet, if God cannot suffer, then how does one interpret dogmatic claims about the one person and two natures of Christ? Attempts to bridge the chasm between divine immutability and the cross have identified divine omnipotence with kenosis. God’s power is found in the weakness of the cross. Such a dialectical construction allows one to maintain divine omnipotence while simultaneously affirming God’s pathos. Yet, as Johnson illustrates, this kind of thinking about divine suffering and the cross creates a number of problems for feminist theologies. First, and foremost, is the issue of divine apatheia in the face of human suffering. Not only is the idea of a God who ‘is simply a spectator’ in the face of human suffering ‘morally intolerable,’ but the basic premise that divine perfection resides in self-containment undergirds the feminist value of relationality and connectedness (Johnson, 1992: 249). ‘In the patriarchal system the nonrelational human male exercising unilateral power sits at the pinnacle of perfection’ (Johnson, 1992: 252). This is an interpretation of freedom and perfection based upon androcentric experience. But what if we were to look at a different set of experiences in articulating the meaning of perfection and freedom? Perhaps, as Johnson suggests, perfection resides in the vulnerability of mutual relations.

For Johnson, mutuality extends beyond reciprocal relations to include an ‘indwelling’ of friends. Love in the context of mutual relations involves more than willing the good of another. Love is an affective and embodied relationality that includes ‘openness to the ones loved, a vulnerability to their experience, a solidarity with their well-being, so that one rejoices with their joys and grieves with their sorrows’ (Johnson, 1992: 266). This means that divine love, as expressed in God’s relationship with creation, involves suffering insofar as it is a consequence of God’s care for others. Love involves a vulnerability to pain, especially when those we love deeply are suffering. In the face of the suffering that destroys human dignity, God weeps. On the cross, God suffers in solidarity with all those who are persecuted, forsaken, and abused. SHE WHO IS keeps vigil while her lamentation awakens protest (Johnson, 1992: 260-61). Divine compassion, as a companion to pain, works to transform suffering through communion. That is, knowing that we are not abandoned in times of profound pain and suffering makes a difference (Johnson, 1992: 267).

The symbol of the suffering God also has the potential to re-order the human ideal toward solidarity with the oppressed and to strengthen human responsibility in the face of suffering. In the face of human degradation and destruction, it says that to be aligned with God is to be engaged in a praxis of compassionate solidarity. Ultimately, for Johnson, the cross symbolizes God’s participation in the pain (pathos) of the world. In transposing the pornographic image of a naked woman and the crucified God, Christa visually connects theologies of the cross and women’s suffering. Christa signifies that ‘the suffering body of Christ includes the raped and denigrated bodies of women’ (Johnson, 1992: 264). Moreover, in naming the brokenness of women’s bodily experience within the context of the cross, the sculpture contends that doctrinal presuppositions about redemption should not be divorced from women’s bodily experiences of suffering and salvation.

This is not to deny that making meaning out of suffering and the cross is a dangerous business. Rather, it is to suggest that the broken body of Christa on the cross reclaims the dereliction of the cry on the cross for Feminist Theology. It is out of this cry that space is created for a theological discussion of unspeakable events of meaningless human suffering. The cry on the cross places the desolate, abused, starved bodies of women within the Passion narrative. Christa lifts up the bodies of the forsaken and creates a space for their participation in the redemption of the world. Further, it allows abused and broken women to visually identify themselves as Godlike, as ‘embodied beings who reflect God and who are accepted unconditionally in their particular bodies’ (Polinska, 2001: 56). In this way, Christa heals as she refutes the shame associated with victims and survivors of sexual and physical abuse.

Beauty for Ashes?

The question, then, stands of what significance is the cross of Christa for feminist theological aesthetics? Why not get rid of the cross all together when speaking of the redemptive power of beauty? A number of feminist and womanist theologians (Carlson Brown and Parker, 1989; Williams, 1993a) have criticized models of atonement theology that lift up Christ’s suffering and death as the locus of redemption on the grounds that these models render death and innocent suffering as acceptable – and even praise-worthy – behavior. At issue is the equation of Christian discipleship with the virtues of self-sacrifice and suffering obedience without attending to the particularities of social context. In view of this history, Delores Williams rightly asks, given the high value Christianity has placed on redemptive suffering, should images of the cross and the crucifix ‘maintain their status as major sacred emblems of our faith’(Williams, 1993b: 25)? While Williams’ concern needs to be taken seriously, I believe that de-emphasizing the cross runs the risk of minimizing the reality of suffering that continues to exist within Christian communities today. The symbol of the cross stands as a powerful reminder that profound suffering (its causes and effects) remains within the Body of Christ. The cross is an important symbol in naming brokenness within the Christian community. That is, the challenge of the cross resides not only with the ways in which its theology has been appropriated to legitimate violence, but it also rests with the ways in which academic and ministerial communities have consistently excluded the voices of those on the margins in naming sin and grace.

Throughout the history of Christian thought, sin, woundedness, and grace have been defined by the dominant elite. Today, this pattern continues as the contributions of womanist, feminist, liberation, and queer theologies are still not taken seriously by the academy and the church. Those in positions of leadership dismiss their relevance through the labels of ‘ideology’ and ‘heresy.’ More subtle is a failure to read and teach these materials. Women and men on the margins of the community are speaking, but they often find few who are interested in listening. Therefore, the meaning of the cross must include the power of naming. In the words of Cynthia Crysdale,‘[t]hose who are the crucified must have the power to discover for themselves the nature of their victimization and their healing. Those who are the crucifiers must discover the myths by which they have been enabled to live deceitfully’ (Crysdale, 2001: 71). There is a power in bearing witness to the cross. The cross, as a symbol of our brokenness, helps us to name the ways in which we have been sinned against. It also helps us to name our own participation in sinful structures that have muted the voices of those around the world.

As Christian communities, we are still not very good at reckoning with suffering. The tendency to project and suppress suffering [ugliness] continues to exist at individual, communal, and national levels. We exist in a culture that commodifies bodies – our own and the bodies of others. In the Christian West, we regularly engage in practices that deny the value of our own physicality (see, for example Isherwood, 2008). When we treat the human body and the body of the earth as a commodity, violence becomes much more palatable and, even, justifiable. This problem can also be found within the walls of the sanctuary. We must ask: is the Body of Christ a place where all are welcome – not only in theory, but in practice? To acknowledge that racism, sexism, and heterosexism exist within our theology, ministry, and ecclesial structures is to acknowledge our own complicity in perpetuating sinful structures – in bearing ashes. The link between beauty and the cross is a powerful reminder that all God-speech must attend to the past and present day realities of human brokenness, including the patriarchal ways in which Christian tradition has been co-opted in order to sanctify violence and abuse. To borrow a phrase from Alejandro García Rivera (1999: 142), theologies of beauty must learn to walk more deeply in ‘the garden of good and evil,’ signifying the way in which beauty/ugliness, goodness/evil, and truth/falsity intermingle in life experience. To be clear, this model is only viable if it makes the crosses of women visible. As Brazilian feminist theologian Ivone Gebara explains, Christianity in its interpretation of the symbol of the cross has fixated on one specific form of suffering – martyrdom as ‘public suffering in the name of a group’ (Gebara, 2002: 111). The exclusive stress on martyrdom has occluded other forms of suffering. The cross can only be a liberative symbol if it ‘disclose[s] the sufferings of women so as to denounce, in the manner of prophets, the violence practiced against them’ (Gebara, 2002: 116). As such, the symbol of the cross as a symbol of the suffering God must be one that attends to a plurivocity of experiences with the aim of seeking justice for all. To paraphrase Gebara (2002: 120), to speak of the cross is always to speak of crosses.

Redeeming Beauty: Toward a Feminist Theological Aesthetics

Christian theologies must find new ways of speaking about beauty that take suffering bodies seriously. This conversation cannot happen only at the level of intellectual abstraction because life, in its fullness and in its pain, is both physical and spiritual. As womanist scholar Emilie Townes argues, conversations about human flourishing and human suffering must be rooted in ‘concrete existence (lived life)’ (Townes, 1995: 48). Theology must be developed in conversation with the concrete context and knowledge of particular communities. Similarly, theological aesthetics cannot be divorced from the lives of women around the globe. Theological aesthetics, in its attentiveness to the transformative power of beauty, must be done from the ground up in an effort to work toward the full flourishing of all creation. The question Christa continues to raise for theological aesthetics is whether the bodies of women can serve as symbols of salvation and symbols of divine beauty. Toward that end, the concluding section of this article will identify three critical markers for the development of a theological aesthetics in a feminist perspective.