Chinese Theological Review 13
Imago Dei and Yin-Yang Philosophy: A Theological Reflection on the Relationship between Man and Woman
Wang Jianguo
Of the many issues Chinese Christians face in witnessing to the gospel in China, I would like to mention two. First, the use of the Chinese language in interpreting the Gospel in order to make it understandable for Chinese people. This means we must find a way in which Christianity is no longer regarded as an imported and alienated religion, but as one which is compatible with the ethos of Chinese culture. Second, to enable the gospel to contribute to the renewal of Chinese culture and to become part of that culture. Chinese culture has been in decline since the beginning of this century; a rash of political movements, especially the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), almost destroyed it. In recent years, the reconstruction of' Chinese culture has become a prominent subject in the academic arena. If Christianity cannot contribute to, or become involved in, the reconstruction of the culture, it will be an alienated element of the new culture and will eventually be rejected once more.
With these two issues in mind, this paper attempts to use yin-yang theory, a traditional Chinese philosophical concept, to understand the Imago Dei. The Imago Dei is then used as an Imago Christi to reflect upon how the yin-yang philosophy has been distorted historically in dealing with the relationship between man and woman. Obviously, I cannot deal with such a large topic in this short paper and will thus focus on the relationship between male and female.
1. Basic understanding of the yin-yang philosophy
The Chinese term yang originally meant "sun," or what pertains to sun and light; yin meant the absence of the sun, i.e. shadow or darkness. It is believed that the yin-yang theory was present in the hot'tu (river map) from which the Yi jing (Book of Change) is thought to be derived. (1)
Yin-yang philosophy has dominated Chinese cosmological speculation down to recent times. In this Chinese worldview, yin and yang, two great and opposing forces, are believed to fill the universe-world harmony depends upon their interplay. Yin is associated with femininity, passivity, coldness, darkness, wetness, softness, earth and the moon; yang is connected to masculinity, activity, heat, brightness, dryness, hardness, heaven and the sun. The Chinese do not judge one of these forces better or worse than the other; the interaction between them is simply the way that the universe operates.
This cosmology views human beings as part of, not the center of, the world. In other words, anthropology is a subsidiary of cosmology. The human being is a microcosm of the cosmos. It is therefore not sufficient to understand humanity merely by studying oneself. According to Chinese tradition, heaven represents the father; the earth represents the mother; humankind are their children. (2) Obviously we cannot entirely understand anthropology without an understanding of cosmology. The study of humankind must be put in relationship with the cosmos. Human beings are not isolated beings but beings in relationship with the universe.
The two forces which fill the universe, yin and yang, are represented in society by man and woman respectively. Moreover, each contains the two elements within itself as well; in modern language, masculine and feminine, anima and animus.
What then is the relationship between the yin and the yang? Put simply, it is non-dualistic, relational and complementary. (3) First, yin and yang are non-dualistic; opposite in character but not antithetical because each includes the other. Yin is yin, not yang; yang is not yin. But yin is included in yang and yang in yin. This can be seen in the symbol of the Tai ji (the Great Ultimate), which expresses the inclusivity of yin and yang. Yin, or the dark, has a light dot within it and yang, or the light, has a dark dot. Yin and yang are different but not mutually antagonistic. Rather, they embrace each other. Secondly, yin and yang are relational. Both are essentially active forces of change. Yang cannot act independently of yin nor yin independently of yang. Yin cannot exist by itself; it exists only in relationship with yang. The yin-yang relationship stresses relationship over existence. In other words, individual being is in relationship with the other. Yin exists because of yang and vice versa. Neither exists by itself. Yin and yang are always together; they form a basic communal unit, always in relationship. Thirdly, yin and yang are complementary; they are opposite but also fulfill each other. The yin-yang relationship is not one of conflicting dualism, but of complementary "dualism." Yin and yang are mutually complementary for the sake of the whole. Yin does not fight its opposite and win by eliminating it, because the opposite is essentially part of the self. To eliminate the opposite would be to eliminate oneself. Yin is incomplete; it must be completed by yang. This, too, is indicated in the Tai ji, in which yin and yang flow into each other and together make up the whole.
The fact that anthropology is part of cosmology helps us to understand the relationship between God and humans. The non-dualistic, relational and complementary relationship between yin and yang helps us to understand the relationship between man and woman. This leads to my next point.
2. The Imago Dei in light of the yin-yang relationship
From a Christian perspective, the relationship between man and woman can be understood only in relationship with God. In order to understand this relationship, we need to go back to the creation story in Genesis, where God said, "Let us make humankind in his image; in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them" (Gen. 1: 26-27). To be sure, the concept of the image of God here is foundational in understanding the relationship between God and humans, man and woman. Although there are a variety of interpretations for the phrase "the image of God," these may generally be divided into two categories: substantial and relational. (4) In this paper I prefer to interpret the "image of God" as human life in relationship with God and with other creatures, including, of course, the relationship between male and female.
According to the priestly creation narrative in Genesis, "God created humankind in his image" is followed by "male and female he created them" (Gen. 1: 27). It is clear that human beings created by God are in relationship with God their creator and with their fellow human beings, male or female. To be human is to be in such a relationship. This relationality mirrors the very being of God who lives eternally in community.
God is a triune God. God said, "Let us make humankind in our image." The terms "us" and "our" state a communal unit and reveal that "God Himself" exists in relationship and not in isolation. (5) "God is not by him/herself alone: there is communion and loving koinoma in the Godhead. God eternally lives as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In God's own eternal being there is movement, life, personal relationship and the giving and receiving of love." (6) The triune God, three persons in one and one in three persons, reveals to us that the Trinitarian persons in the Godhead are not self-isolated subjects. "In God, 'persons' are relational realities and defined by inter-subjectivity, shared consciousness, faithful relationship and the mutual giving and receiving of love." (7) The three persons of the Trinity depend on each other, having their distinctive identity only in relationship with each other. They live in loving community.
Turning to the yin-yang symbol, we may say that in the Godhead, the Great Ultimate, yin and yang are in perfect balance. God its Father-Son as yang and the Holy Spirit as yin (Sophia, feminine) (8) are in the unity of difference and the difference of the united. As yin and yang embrace each other, so do the three persons of the trinity. Yin is not only yin but also yang; yang is not only yang but yin as well. Yin is always yin and yang, just as yang is yang and yin, for they are inclusive of each other. As yin and yang are in a complementary relationality, the Godhead is in the perfect and deepest loving relationship. The Father would not be the Father without the Son and the Holy Spirit and vice versa for each of the others. God is the one who in utter freedom from all eternity expresses Godself in love in the sense that God gives God's very self always in the begetting of the Son. As the perfect expression of the Father's self as outpouring love, the Son proclaims and witnesses this love in that he surrenders himself to this love and acknowledges his true "self' as the glorification of the loving Father. The relationship of the Father as Begetter and the Son as Begotten is mutual surrender, "being for the other." (9) By the same token, the Holy Spirit is in the deepest willingness to be the "humblest person in the Godhead. She is very frequently quite unrecognized because she works 'anonymously' among us and in the world." (10) The Spirit is anonymous because of her essential yin character. God as Holy Spirit "anonymously" nourishes the Father-Son's love in the world. She is patient even to the point of suffering in order to allow us the freedom of our conscious response. In the Godhead, she surrenders herself to Father and Son, "being for the other" as well.
God is a triune God, who lives in the deepest loving community. This community-based image of God has been bestowed on man and woman, who are created by God. Hence, man and woman are capable of, and obligated to, living in community. As anthropology is part of cosmology in Chinese tradition, the Christian understanding of the relationship between male and female is always in the light of the triune God, because our humanness and creatureliness mirror the image of God. "That is, human beings are created for life in the relationship that mirrors or corresponds to God's own life in relationship." (11)
Based on this confession, we come to know that the relationship between male and female should be understood ill terms of that in the Godhead, that is, interdependence, inclusivity and complementarity to one another.
In the image of God, first of all, it is revealed to us that human beings are created as male or female. (12) As yin is different from yang, so male is different from female. But just as yin and yang do, male and female co-exist. Barth points out "humanity, the characteristic and essential mode of man's being, is in its root fellow-humanity. Humanity which is not fellow-humanity is inhumanity." (13) Understanding of humanity is not simply an understanding of masculine nature, because just as yin and yang do, male and female interact, interplay and interweave, not only in the social sense but also in the psychological sense.
Yin and yang co-exist. Yin is not yang and yang is not yin. They are opposite in existence, but not antagonistic in essence because both male and female are created by God, who lives in the perfect balance of yin and yang. It is obvious that yin and yang are equally important in the Great Ultimate, as in the Godhead. Yin is neither inferior nor superior to yang. Yang is neither inferior nor superior to yin. It is true that the Bible does say that woman is created as helper to man, but that does not mean woman is inferior to man, because the Bible also views God as the divine helper of people. (14) God creates male and female equally. Each of them possesses an inalienable dignity.
However, equality does not mean sameness. We should not diminish sexual differentiation. Yang is yang and yin, not just yin; yin is yin and yang and not just yang. Denying sexual difference reduces the richness of our human experience and impoverishes our lives spiritually. God creates human beings as male or female, so that humans may have a deeper and richer understanding of God and themselves.
Yet when we talk about sexual differentiation, we have to recognize that there is not an impassable chasm between male and female in terms of understanding each other. Yin is yin and not yang, but yin is in yang; yang is yang and not yin, but yang is in yin. Carl Jung seemed to be aware of this inclusive principle when he pointed out that there is the "anima," the psychological woman, in man, just as there is the "animus," the psychological man, in woman. Man has woman-generating elements and woman has man-generating elements. (15) This psychological study helps us to understand that male and female embrace each other, as do yin and yang. This embracing of male and female mirrors the embracing of the three persons of the trinity. This is the image of God in which human beings are created as male and female.
The second aspect of the relationship between male and female in the light of the Imago Dei is that human beings are created as man and woman. This means that to be human is to be-in-relation, and to be-with. Yin (woman) exists because of yang (man), and yang (man) exists because of yin (woman). "Woman came from man, so man comes through woman" (I Cor. 11:12). Neither yin nor yang exists by itself. Yin and yang are always together. Their existence is based on their relationship. As discussed above, yin and yang are not two independent entities; they are not only two but also one at the same time. Here one's relation to another is also one's relation to the whole. Man and woman co-exist in relation to each other and in their co-existence each of them experiences and becomes himself and herself. Without manhood, womanhood does not exist; womanhood would mean nothing without manhood. Womanhood and manhood form humanhood, as yin and yang constitute the Great Ultimate. No individual man or woman knows completely and with assurance what it is to be of the other sex; to know what it is to be of one's own sex is always in relation to the other.
As yin and yang are interdependent, male and female have to accept this given relationship of interdependence, because in it each discovers what it is to be man or woman. Perry Yoder notes that the description "bone of my bone" and "flesh of my flesh" (Gen. 2: 23) binds man and woman together in both might (bone) and frailty (flesh). This description-together with v. 24, in which man leaves father and mother and cleaves to his wife - emphasizes the interdependence of male and female. (16) In yin-yang symbols, yin and yang interact so that yin becomes yin without excluding yang, and yang becomes yang without excluding yin. In interaction, they find their own roles in the whole. Likewise, woman is dependent on man, as man is dependent on woman (1 Cor. 11:17). In this interdependence, they find who they are. This interdependence is also demonstrated in the three persons of the Trinity.
The yin-yang philosophy helps the Chinese not only to understand the necessity of mutuality and interdependence, but also of complementarity in the relationship between male and female. As discussed above, yin and yang are opposites, but also fulfill each other. The two are not in conflict; rather they complement each other. Yin is complete in yang and yang in yin, because the symbol of completeness or wholeness is the harmony of yin and yang - the Great Ultimate. Likewise, man and woman fulfill each other. In and through the opposite, each moves toward completeness or wholeness. This is the goal for which we are created in the image of God. God is not a static being, but a loving process of mutual self-surrendering love of the three persons in the Godhead. (17) In the yin-yang symbol, the Great Ultimate is the unchangeable change. That is, yin-yang is inclusive of both the changing and the unchanging simultaneously. Change always operates in the bipolar relationship of yin and yang. As the unchangeable change, God is both being and becoming, because God, like the Tai ji, which means movement in stillness and stillness in movement, is both yin (rest, being, responsiveness) and yang (movement, becoming, creativity). (18)
The relationship between man and woman is not a static state but open to the future. God is in a loving process, as is the relationship of man and woman, because what manhood and womanhood really are is a mystery, constituted not only by the mystery of otherness, but also by the openness of man and woman to the future. Sachs asserts that "the mystery of the sexually other human is a symbol of the absolute mystery of God's otherness and of our relatedness to and transcendence towards God as our final personal wholeness and fulfillness." (19) As yin and yang fulfill and complement each other, man and woman are on the way of finding and realizing their completeness and wholeness in engaging in God's loving process of becoming. This is the harmony toward which yin and yang move, a harmony that Paul describes as "the fullness of time," "all things in Him" (Eph. 1:10). Just as humanity is not a static state, but a process towards God, the relationship of man and woman is not a rigid state either, but a process in which the newness of that relationship can be found in engaging in the process of God's being and becoming. In the present, man and woman complete each other in a fulfillment of life not yet realized.
3. The yin-yang philosophy in light of the Imago Dei
From the discussion above, we may say that the yin-yang philosophy, primarily set down in the Yi Jing, may help the Chinese to understand the Imago Dei in dealing with the relationship between man and woman, a relationship that is inclusive, interdependent and complementary. This ought to be the case. However, life is not yet what it ought to be. The Chinese have failed to put the yin-yang theory into action correctly in dealing with the relationship of male to female.
From the culture, it can be demonstrated that historically in China, the yin-yang theory was developed into a socio-philosophy in which cosmology was pulled down into sociopolitical ideology. This ideology legalized feudal patriarchy: the husband represented heaven (qian) and the wife represented earth (kun); man was yang and woman was yin; yang was superior to yin and yin inferior to yang. This philosophy of the gender relationship dominated in China for two thousand years. Although today few Chinese still hold to this philosophy in their understanding of the gender relationship, the impact of its rhetoric still haunts the Chinese psyche. Man takes superiority over woman for granted; many women are willing to accept the role that views woman as subsidiary, as housekeepers. This gender relationship needs to be changed. The Gospel is the best transforming power to accomplish this. In what follows, I will sketch the contours of this socio-philosophy and then reflect on how the concept of the Imago Dei can inspire Chinese in the construction of a new culture.
There are few indications of the yin-yang idea in the early works of Confucianism. It was Dong Zhongshu of the Han dynasty (202 BCE - 220 CE), a Confucian philosopher, who first formally introduced the yin-yang theory into Confucian philosophy. He contended that the way of heaven honors yang and debases yin. In human affairs, man is venerated and woman is debased; the husband is yang and the wife is yin. Yin is dependent on yang. A husband may be poor, but he is still yang. A woman may be noble, but she is still inferior. Regardless of any imbalance that may exist between the two, Dong felt that yin is dispensable as long as yang thrives. He did not see yin and yang as compensating each other. Rather, he made a connection between natural calamities and yin, asserting that such occurrences are caused by the inferior (yin) rebelling against the superior (yang). (20) In the view of such a philosophy, woman is associated with yin and tends to be regarded as a symbol of evil and destruction.
In the Song dynasty (960-1279), many scholars viewed yin as representing evil. Cai Xiang, for example, asserted that earthquake, eclipse, hurricane, dimness in daytime and conflagration were all related to yin-yang. "All these occurred because yang did not win over yin. Yang represents rulership and yin represents subjects, barbarians and woman." (21) The most outstanding neo-Confucian scholar, Zhu Xi (1130-1200), also held a negative view of yin (woman). "Goodness and evil may be used to describe yin-yang, and may also be used to describe man and woman." "Between heaven and earth there is no reason for the co-existence (of yin and yang). Either yin wins out over yang or yang wins out over yin." (22)
This description makes it clear that classical yin-yang theory was completely distorted. More interestingly, when Western missionaries came to China bringing the idea of equality between man and woman during the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, the more conservative Chinese scholars attacked the idea using the "heavenly way" of yin and yang. For example, Shen Dongsheng criticized the Western custom of suppressing the yang element by advocating equality between men and women: "Heaven is superior and earth inferior. Ever since heaven and earth were separated, the status of male and female elements was set ... Now the Western custom supports yin and suppresses yang." (23) Obviously, instead of liberating woman from hierarchical bondage, the yin-yang theory became the shackle on woman's liberty.
More sadly, in the history of China, suppressed by the male-dominated culture, few women dared to address their equality with men, let alone their complementarity.
True, since the Chinese Communist Party came to power, the lordship of man over woman was abolished officially. Mao said, "women hold up half the sky." During the Maoist period, women were encouraged to compete with men, to do whatever men could do, even to dressing in men's clothing and wearing their hair short like men's. Instead of being thus liberated, women were actually totally masculinized. Since the so-called liberation of women wits merely an imitation of male behavior, women were in fact still enslaved to men's experience. The relationship between woman and man was again distorted. True womanhood was still being repressed. In the yin-yang symbol, yin still has not found its distinctiveness in relation to yang and to the whole.
It is no longer fashionable for women to dress in men's clothing or to have their hair cut like men. But man's lordship over woman is still hidden in the people's mentality. Looking at the historical distortion of yin-yang philosophy in dealing with man and woman, we come to realize that in a world of finitude and sin, the vocation of man and woman to live in right relationship still remains a destiny we hope for and work toward. The Christian understanding of the concept of Imago Dei as an Imago Christi may renew or regenerate the Chinese concept of yin-yang as a means to deepen and broaden their understanding of the gender relationship.
Today Christian theology tends to interpret the
Imago Dei as an
Imago Christi. It asserts that the understanding of the
Imago Dei in Christian theology cannot be confined to an exegesis of the first chapter of Genesis because Jesus Christ is the fullest expression of the
Imago Dei. Jesus Christ is the "image of God" (2 Cor. 1:15). (24) From a Christian perspective, the
Imago Dei as an
Imago Christi convinces that the life, ministry and death of Jesus of Nazareth reveal what it means to image God.
God is a loving community. God hopes that human beings live in a loving community too. Without love, there is no community. The only way for a community to be established is love, the divine love that is revealed in Jesus Christ and characterized by self-giving. The classical yin-yang theory may help us to understand the relationship of man and woman, but it cannot generate love, because yin and yang are only symbols of the cosmic forces. Yin and yang are apathetic per se. They do not have passion for the world. When this yin-yang theory was used as a socio-philosophy which legitimized the patriarchal structure of society, it was not only unable to generate love, but also served as an instrument suppressing the growth of loving relationships between men and women. Why does classical yin-yang theory fall into a rigid socio-philosophy, which repressed women and distorted gender relationships? Of many reasons, one is striking: there is no personal loving power that can reveal to people what true love is, and empower them to live out that love. In a Christian understanding, that personal loving power is the God who reveals Him/Herself in Jesus Christ.
God is not an uncompassionate force of the cosmos. God is the triune God who lives in loving community. This character of God is manifest in Jesus Christ. God loves the world so that God as the Son came to the world and identified with people. Not only did the Son identify with people, but was also located among us and suffered with and for us on the cross. The Son embodied the divine love that is the foundation for building community. Due to the fact that there is no place for a loving God in the yin-yang theory, a God who defines love as well as showing it on the cross, people tend to define love in the yin- yang theory in terms of the will-to-power. The weak merely follow the definition set by the power-holder. Male may enslave female in the name of "love." In this way, the gender relationship was distorted.
Indeed, it is undeniable that the Christian message has served as an instrument for silencing woman's voice and rights in the West as well. But it is also the Christian message that enlightens women and men to pursue true womanhood and manhood. (25) When the Christian message or the concept of God is rigidified and idolized, that loving God is still the resource that inspires people to move beyond that "message" and that "God." This is because Christians know that the God who created male and female cannot be boxed in by human philosophy, ideology or category, and because the God revealed in Jesus Christ who died on the cross shows that God's love is for all human beings, not just males. It is crystal clear that this is not the case in yin-yang theory. The yin-yang symbol does not have such a passion and consciousness of criticism.
God is the triune God who lives in eternal loving community. Hence, male and female need to image God in establishing a loving community in which they embrace each other, trust each other equally and complete each other. (26) From a Christian perspective, this loving community is epitomized in God's household. (27) Jesus says that whoever does the will of God is his mother, sister and brother (Mk. 3:45; Mt. 5:45). Jesus is telling us that sisterhood or brotherhood is not the result of inclination or nature, but rather of being children of God. Those who are "brothers" and "sisters" are precisely those who do God's will. (28) In God's household, God as the Son became our brother. He exemplified Himself as a servant washing the feet of others. Instead of the will-to-power, self-giving power in God's household became the bedrock of brotherhood and sisterhood. God's love is self-giving love. This love is always relational, mutual and reciprocal. Without the sister, brotherhood means nothing, and vice versa. Brotherhood is always manifest in relation to sisterhood. In this relationship, God's household can be established. In yin-yang as socio-philosophy, woman became a symbol of evil. The relationship between man and woman was not based on self-giving love, but on male self-centered love. Without a God who cares, loves and suffers for us, men exalt themselves to be semi-god(s) to justify their domination over women. Instead of the will of God, man's will became the will woman had to accept.
In God's household, the sinful domination of men over women is overcome. Women are restored to full dignity. In his ministry, Christ acted contrary to his culture, displaying full acceptance of woman's humanity. Moreover, women became part of Jesus' ministry. They helped Jesus and supported Jesus in many ways (e.g., Lk. 8:3). They became friends of Jesus (e.g., Jn. 15:14). Their distinctiveness as females was not eliminated; rather they played a distinctive role in Jesus' ministry (e.g., Jn. 12:1 ff). God creates human beings as male and female. In God's family, God does not want females to be masculinized or males to be feminized. God wants each to find their "self" in relationship with others.
As mentioned above, due to the fact that we live in a world of finitude and sin, we have not altogether discovered what it means to be man and woman. We are on the way to finding "self." Jesus Christ has not finished his ministry. He is on the way to finishing it. This is why he will come again. He is on the way to Parousia. As his brothers and sisters, we are on the way to finding our sisterhood and brotherhood as well. In this sense, men and women need to complete each other in engaging the process towards the coming of the Parousia. God is being as well as Becoming, and so is Jesus Christ. As children of God, we are man or woman as well as becoming "man" and "woman."
In short, male and female image God most profoundly when their relationship reflects the equality, mutuality, love and complementarity that are essential to the Trinitarian God.
Indeed, this paper is not actually about the yin-yang theory and the Imago Dei. It is about the relationship of man and woman in light of yin-yang philosophy and the Imago Dei. It aims to find a way in which the Christian message may be more easily understood, as well as to make a contribution to the renewal of Chinese Culture. I have no clear idea how this may be done, but there are two aspects of it which I hold constantly in consideration: allowing Chinese to understand the Gospel in language familiar to them; and allowing the transforming power of the Gospel to penetrate into the culture. This has informed my discussion of the male-female relationship here.
Edited translation.
1 The Yi jing is an ancient Chinese document which represents the primordial ethos and thinking of the Chinese. It is to Chinese philosophy what Plato is to Western philosophy. Cf. Fung Yu-Ian, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (New York: The Free Press, 1948), 139-9 and also Jung Young Lee, The Theology of Change (Markyknoll: Orbis Books, 1979), 1-9.
2 The Chinese philosopher Chang Tai (1020-1077), writes in his Western Inscription, "Ch'ien (qian) [the first of the 64 hexagrams in the Yi jing which symbolizes heaven] is called the father, and K'un (kun) [second of the hexagrams which symbolizes earth] the mother. We, these tiny beings, are commingled in the midst of them. I, therefore, am the substance that lies within the confines of Heaven and Earth, and my nature is that of the (two) commanders, Heaven and Earth." Cf. Fung Yu-Ian, History of Chinese Philosophy, vol. 2 (Princeton University Press, 1959), 493.
3 Cf. Jung Young Lee, The Trinity in Asian Perspective (Nashville: Ahingdon Press, 1996), 21-49.
4 All interpretations of the Image of God may be thus categorized. Substantialist asserts that the image and likeness means capacity, reason, quality of a physical resemblance to God, original excellence of freedom, power of dominion over the earth, etc.,.. . Relational argues that the image of God means relationship, which is the essence of human nature and vocation. Cf. Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding (Eerdmans, 1991), 120-122; Douglass 1. Hall, Imaging God (New York: Friendship Press, 1986), 89-107. Although I take the "relational approach" in this paper, I do not deny the substantialist approach altogether. This is because of the situation in which I live and the heritage of the Confucian tradition, in which anthropology is founded upon the assumption of the difference between animals and humans, who have si duan (four fonts or beginnings, or four feelings), such as the font of love or commiseration, or righteousness or shame, of proper behavior or modesty and of wisdom, a sense of right and wrong. Cf. Fang Yu-Ian, Short History, pp. 68-70; Paul V. Martinson, "Imagining the Human through Culture, Religions, Christ," Word and World, vol. X, no. 4 (Fall, 1990), 330-338 and Tu Wei ming, "Confucianism" in Our Religions, ed. Arvind Sharma (San Francisco: Harper, 1993), 158.
5 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/4, 117.
6 Mighore, 68.
7 Ibid., 68.
8 "Sec Jung Young Lee, "Holy Spirit as Yin," in The Theology of Change, 50, 110.
9 " Hans Urs Von Balthasar. See A New Handbook of Christian Theologians, eds. Donald W. Musser & Joseph L. Price (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996).
10 Norman Pittenger, God in Process (London: SCM Press, 1967) 40. See also Jung Young Lee, The Theology of Change, 110.
11 Mighore, 122.
12 It is interesting that being created in the "image of God" is related to being created "male and female." John R. Sachs says, "God has no gender." See his book, The Christian Vision of Humanity (The Liturgical Press, 1991), 18. His speculation seems flat. When we talk about God's gender there are several possibilities at least: God is both male and female, neither male nor female, and either male or female. In Gen. I : 27, it seems that God is not only the negation of all gender, but also the affirmation of all gender. In the symbolic language of yin-yang, we may say God is both male and female. See Jung Young Lee, "God as male and female," in The Theology of Change, 50.
13 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 111/4, 117.
14 Cf. Exodus 18: 4, Deut. 33:29; Psalms 33:20, 70:5, 115:9, 10, 11 . See Stephen B. Clark, Man and Woman in Christ: An Examination of the Roles of Men and Women in Light of Scripture and the Social Sciences (Servant Books, 1980), 30.
15 See Carl C. Jung, The Integration of Personality (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Turbner & Co., 1940), 19. See also Jung Young Lee, The Trinity in Asian Perspective, 28.
16 Perry Yoder, "Woman's Place in the Creation Accounts," in Study Guide on Woman, ed., Herta Funk (Newton, KN: Faith and Life Press, 1975), 10-14.
17 See Migliore 71.
18 Jung Young Lee points out that in a very generalized way there are three characteristic forms of theological thinking: (1) the theology of the absolute: that the concept of unchanging being characterizes the Ultimate, or God; (2) the theology of process in which becoming is ultimate and God is the process of becoming: and (3) the theology of Change that encompasses both "being" and -becoming- as the ultimate character of reality. See his book The Theology of Change, 19-20.
19 Sachs, The Christian Vision of Humanity, 20.
20 Cf. Pao Chia-lin, "Yin-yang Thought and the Status of Women," in Confucian-Christian Encounters in Historical and Contemporary Perspective, ed. Peter K.H. Lee (The Edwin Mellen Press, 1991), 314-338.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Migliore, 122-123.
25 Mary Steward Van Leeuwen, ed., After Eden (W. Ecrdmans, 1993), 28ff.
26 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1.31,ii and iii. Aquinas asserts that love is a reciprocal in heaesio and ecstasis the background for which is Pseudo- Dionysius' account of divine love as ecstasy, being-in-the-other. Aquinas stresses that this is the love to which the believer must he assimilated.
27 Here, God's household does not mean simply the church. It is more than the church. Whoever does the will of God is of this family. This is a spiritual family. It may exist outside the church as well.
28 E.S. Gerstenberger and W. Schrage, Woman and Man (Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1980), 151 ff.
