Person, kenosis and Abuse: Hans Urs von Balthasar and Feminist theologies in conversation

Paper presented to the Boston Theological Society 13 April 2000 by Aristotle Papanikolaou, Holy Cross GOST

The Christian notion of kenosis, or 'self-emptying' has an ambiguous history. In a more positive sense, it has referred to the unconditional love of God for creation manifested in the descent of the Son of the Father for the sake of salvation. This kenosis of God, expressed for Christians in its extreme form in the suffering of the Son on the Cross, became itself the paradigm for human salvation. Kenosis, understood as obedience, humility and self-sacrifice, constituted the precondition for human participation in the saving event of Christ. As such, this definition of kenosis, especially the notion of kenosis as self-sacrificial love, emerged as an ethical imperative within the Christian tradition.

Kenosis as obedience, humility, and self-sacrifice has a negative history as well. As feminists over the past century, and especially the last half-century have made clear, this understanding of kenosis has been used throughout the history of Christianity to maintain women in situations of oppression. Rather than offering a liberating salvation, the experience of kenosis, feminists would contend, has depersonalized women. For the sake of obedience to God's command, or self-sacrifice to one's family, women have been advised for centuries "to go back" to their husbands, often at the price of their own lives. Less tragic uses of kenosis have denied women full dignity with men by relegating them to socially constructed gender-specific roles. Women have every reason to be suspicious of an ethic of kenosis.

Notwithstanding its "effective history," I will attempt to assess the retrievability of kenosis for a Christian theological anthropology. Such an assessment will be done, in part, through a conversation with feminist theologies. One might think that since Elizabeth Cady Stanton's well-known retort to a reporter to "put it down in capital letters: SELF-DEVELOPMENT IS A HIGHER DUTY THAN SELF-SACRIFICE,"¹ feminists have closed the book on any talk of kenosis. And indeed, many feminists since Stanton have argued that because of its history, understandings of kenosis are inadequate for interpreting women's experience and cannot contribute to women's flourishing. Other feminist theologians are not so willing to give up on a central concept within the Christian tradition and argue that a retrieval of lost interpretations of kenosis are essential to advancing Christian feminist interests.

This debate in feminist theology will be engaged by looking at a particular exchange between two British theologians, Daphne Hampson and Sarah Coakley. Hampson rejects kenosis, while Coakley sees a retrieval of certain notions of kenosis as vital for Christian feminism. I will then attempt to expand on Coakley's understanding of kenosis as "power-in-vulnerability," through an analysis of the trinitarian theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. Balthasar develops a theological anthropology of kenotic personhood that is rooted in the doctrine of the Trinity. Kenosis for Balthasar is not self-sacrifice, but the movements of self-giving toward the other in order to receive the other that are constitutive of divine and human personhood. Personhood, for Balthasar, is not a quality possessed, but a unique and irreducible identity received in relations of love and freedom that can only be labeled as kenotic. I will then return to the feminist discussion by relating Balthasar's understanding of kenosis to situations of abuse. Though both men and women experience abuse, feminists have done most to bring such an experience of suffering into theological discourse. I will argue that far from being meaningless in situations of abuse, Balthasar's understanding of kenotic personhood is the most adequate way to account for the healing of abused victims. The final section will argue that feminists interests in otherness, specificity, diversity, uniqueness, relationality and embodiment require a notion of kenosis as self-giving and receptivity.

Hampson-Coakley  The Debate

For Daphne Hampson, kenosis only has meaning within the context of three basic paradigms: powerfulness, powerlessness, and empowerment. The first two establish a dichotomy that has defined the Judaeo-Christian tradition. The latter is the feminist model, which "is not present in the tradition in any significant way."² It is this latter model that overcomes the patriarchal dichotomy between powerfulness and powerlessness and allows women to establish a centered self through relations that are open and mutually empowering.

The first pole of the dichotomy, powerfulness, is attributed to God based on male understandings of power. Within this paradigm, God is the all-powerful, transcendent othervis-à-vis his³ small, weak, fragile, and seemingly insignificant creation. The human person or anthropos is in a relation of heternomous dependence on this God whose absolute greatness, goodness and freedom is contrasted with the smallness, sinfulness and bondage of created existence.⁴ Hampson joins other feminists⁵ who attempt to deconstruct and dismantle what they see as the predominantly Christian understanding of God as the transcendent other who is "separate, different and alone."⁶ Instead of the God who is 'out there' dominating, Hampson seeks a paradigm or a model of God who is "in the web" of created existence "enabling us to become what we have it in us to be."⁷ Two concerns emerge from Hampson's portrayal of the Christian God. First, it is clear that Hampson, along with Sallie McFague and other feminists, in portraying the Christian God as the distant other, are isolating one strand of the Christian tradition. McFague herself is admittedly contending against classical theism,⁸ and it would seem that the Nominalist tradition is also lurking in the background. The second concern is Hampson's implicit claim that her attempt at a panentheistic conception of God "in the Web" is 'post-Christian.' Such a claim seems to ignore those who would interpret the Christian tradition as a story about divine-human communion.⁹ Moreover, something more than "in the Web" would be needed to conceptualize how it is that God is in creation without reducing the one to the other.¹⁰

The other side of Hampson's dichotomy is powerlessness, the "abnegation of powerfulness,"₁₁ and it is here that one locates Hampson's critique of kenosis. Powerlessness or kenosis, for Hampson, is both a christological and anthropological category. Christologically, it refers to the divine divesting of power and coming as a "humble man."¹² This kenotic divestment of power is extended through the life of the God-man who has come not to be served but to serve (Mt. 20:28), even unto death on a cross (Phil. 2:8). Anthropologically, this kenotic divestment of power or self-abnegation becomes an ethical imperative expressed in the command to love one's neighbor (Mt. 22:39). Sin becomes equated with self-sufficiency, isolation and pride understood as self-centeredness. The Christic life is one in which one assumes a humble stance before the all-powerful God.

The dichotomy between powerfulness and powerlessness and the divine-human relation implicit in this paradigm is, according to Hampson, an essentially male construct that speaks only to male experience: "It is as though men have known only too well their problem, and so have postulated a counter-model."₁₃ Useful as it may be for men, it is "inappropriate for women." Echoing other feminists, Hampson argues that given women's oppressed state in human history, notions of self-sacrifice, self-abnegation and service to others may only undercut women's struggle for full humanity and further justify oppressive structures. Agape is the love that has no regard for the self. The call for kenosis as a breaking of the self so that God may be present has no meaning for women who are denied a self within patriarchal and oppressive structures. The ethical demand for women is not the negation of power, but the acquisition of power toward the equalization of power, and toward an autonomous and centered selfhood.¹⁴ In the end, kenosis "may well be a model which men need to appropriate and which may helpfully be built into the male understanding of God. But…for women, the theme of self-emptying and self-abnegation is far from helpful as a paradigm."¹⁵

What is helpful for women's flourishing is a paradigm of empowerment that goes beyond the male constructed dichotomy of powerfulness and powerlessness. Empowerment implies a relational notion of the self realized not through dominance or "self-definition vis-à-vis the proximate other,"¹⁶ but through the mutual realization of subjectivity, of "coming 'to' oneself" in relations that are open.¹⁷ Through relations of mutual empowerment the self becomes "centred." Being centered means being autonomous and rejecting heteronomous dependence (apparently even on God).¹⁸ Christianity, in Hampson's estimation, "by definition is not a religion which can allow for full human autonomy" insofar as it calls for the human to be centered on what is other than oneself, i.e., God and revelation.¹⁹ It would seem that "centredness" or autonomy are preconditions for relations of "friendship," which by definition are open, and in which humans become "fully that which they have it in them to become."²⁰ Elsewhere, Hampson implies that centeredness and openness stand in a mutually conditioning relationship: "I think one must live in easy intercourse with others: both centred and open. (Indeed, as I suggest in my essay, able to be open because one has a centredness, and acquiring that centredness precisely through relation with others.)"²¹ There is no space for kenosis as powerlessness in the context of empowerment, where self-loss is rejected in favor of self-realization. As a result, women "seemingly reject it [kenosis] with unanimity."²²

Sarah Coakley's retrieval of kenosis would seem to refute Hampson's claim that all feminist theologians reject with unanimity kenosis as a category for interpreting women's experience. In "Kenosis and Subversion: On the Repression of 'Vulnerability' in Christian Feminist Writing," Coakley responds specifically to Hampson's rejection of kenosis and offers "a defence of some version of kenosis as not only compatible with feminism, but vital to a distinctively Christian manifestation of it."²³ Her criticism can be summarized in two points: first, she argues that Hampson has too narrowly defined kenosis christologically as the divestment of divine power, and anthropologically as self-sacrifice and powerlessness. She also takes issue with her claim that kenosis as powerlessness emerged as a "compensatory exercise of masculinist guilt."²⁴ Such a restricted definition too easily forgets the rich, complex and various meanings given to the term throughout the history of Christian reflection on the person of Christ. Coakley herself argues for an interpretation, one of four possible interpretations of Philippians 2:5-11 given by biblical scholars, a version of which one can locate in the seventeenth century Giessen School of Lutheran theologians, in which christological kenosis is applied to the human nature of Christ. This particular understanding of kenosis in Christ seems to avert Hampson's critique of kenosis as powerlessness, since the point of applying kenosis to the human nature of Christ is to unite "human 'vulnerability' with authentic divine power…and uniting them such that the human was wholly translucent to the divine."²⁵ This christological kenosis is not a powerlessness in opposition to powerfulness, but a non-grasping at worldly forms of power in order to make oneself available to the true empowerment that comes through the presence of divine power. It is not a sign of weakness, but a strength made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9).

One can almost anticipate Hampson's response that Coakley's interpretation of kenosis still implies a divestment of power, which itself is an acutely male problem and an inappropriate model for women. Moreover, notions of 'vulnerability' are heteronomous and stand in opposition to the 'autonomy' that is constitutive of a "centred" self. Such a response leads to Coakley's second critique of Hampson, namely, her rejection of all forms of 'vulnerability' as antithetical to an authentic "centred" self.²⁶ Coakley poses the following questions to Hampson: "is the 'abandonment' of certain forms of control or power seen here in Christ's human realm to be regarded as of imitative spiritual significance only to men? Is Hampson objecting to 'self-emptying', 'vulnerability', or surrendering of 'control' featuring in any form in her vision of women's spiritual flourishing?"²⁷ Rejecting notions of vulnerability that are exploitative, Coakley argues that there is a particular form of human vulnerability which is not an occasion for oppression but the type of empowerment that Hampson affirms, what Coakley calls "power-in-vulnerability."

Such "'power-in-vulnerability'" is most evident, according to Coakley, in the practice of silent prayer, which involves a silent waiting on God. Such an act of prayer is inherently kenotic, in that it involves 'self-emptying,' or 'making space' in order to receive the presence of God.²⁸ Such a making space in prayer results in a true empowerment, which is a finding of one's true self in God. One should notice that Coakley explicitly rejects Hampson's understanding ofkenosis as a self-negation, self-sacrifice, or service to others in favor of spatial metaphors. She also does not necessarily disagree with Hampson that empowerment is the most appropriate paradigm for woman's flourishing, but would argue that true empowerment involves vulnerability. For Coakley, kenosis as "'power-in-vulnerability'" through silent, contemplative prayer entails a self-emptying that is not a negation of self, "but the place of the self's transformation or expansion into God."²⁹

If one were to grant Coakley this form of vulnerability in the context of prayer that makes space for God, for the transformation of self through divine power,³⁰ the question still arises whether such a notion of kenosis or 'power-in-vulnerability' has meaning in the context of human-human relationships and the formation of community. In the types of communities that Hampson affirms, those that are constituted through mutually conditioning relations in which persons are both centered and open, can an account of such communities be given in terms of kenosis? How is the notion of kenosis helpful to the struggle for social justice and the fight against systemically entrenched oppression and inequality? How can one possibly speak of kenosis in situations of abuse? To these and other questions, we turn to Hans Urs von Balthasar's understanding of kenosis as an occasion, not so much for critique, as much as for amplification of Coakley's penetrating analysis.

Von Balthasar's understanding of person as kenosis

The difference between Coakley and Balthasar in terms of the content of kenosis is negligible. Both theologians see kenosis as a fundamental stance before God in which vulnerability means opening a space for God's love to be present as a self-constituting empowerment. The difference lies in the way they understand the notion of kenosis. Coakley's interpretation is christological, offering an analysis of the various meanings of kenosis that emerged throughout the history of Christian debates over the relation between the divine and the human in the person of Christ. As noted earlier, she herself favors the strand within the tradition that applies kenosis to Christ's human nature, rather than the emptying of divine attributes. This notion of kenosis can be developed, as she does, in a way that is compatible with feminist concerns, and avoids the incoherencies of conceptualizations of a God emptying divine attributes, i.e., becoming what God is not.

Balthasar is also critical of christological understandings of kenosis, but his concern is not so much with internal consistency as it is with maintaining a conception of the God-world relation in which God is both immanent and transcendent. For Balthasar, christology is fundamentally a doctrine about God's relation to the world. Those who emphasize an emptying of the divine attributes tend toward a theopaschism in which sin and suffering become constitutive of God's being.³¹ Balthasar is equally critical of attributing kenosis to the human nature of Christ, as it implies that in the Incarnation nothing real took place in God. The divine remains "inaccessible to all becoming or change, or to even any real relationship with the world."³² God remains the unapproachable, transcendent Other.

The way beyond the impasse for Balthasar is to "relate the event of the kenosis of the Son of God to what one can, by analogy, designate as the eternal 'event' of the divine processions."³³ The theological meaning of kenosis is more properly trinitarian. Attempts to understand kenosis simply in terms of christology renders a christomonistic meaning. The focus on christology also attempts to address the question of how the divine becomes human. For Balthasar, such a question forgets the Christian affirmation that it was the Son of the Father who became human. If kenosis emerged as a category to account for the union of the divine and the human in Christ, the Son of the Father, then the properly theological meaning of kenosis resides in the doctrine of the Trinity. For Balthasar, the christological always refers to the trinitarian God.

The Trinity is, according to Balthasar, an event of kenotic love.³⁴ The Father is the 'source' of this trinitarian existence, forever giving the divine essence as self-gift to the Son. As the unbegotten, or the unoriginate source, the Father is "the greatest mystery." For Balthasar, it is difficult "to express the abyss-like depths of the Father's self-giving," a self-giving which constitutes the Father as a "super-Kenosis."³⁵ Elsewhere he adds that the Father "is this movement of self-giving that holds nothing back."³⁶ This movement is one of kenotic "self-destitution which constitutes the person of the Father, and at the same time, those of the Son and the Spirit."³⁷

The Trinity as a kenotic event of love does not, however, refer simply to the kenosis of the Father. There would be no Father within the Trinity unless the kenotic self-giving itself were reciprocal. If anything, the doctrine of the Trinity is an affirmation of the absolute freedom of God, both in relation to creation and within God's immanent existence. The Father freely gives all that the Father has to the Son who, in receiving the self-gift of the Father, freely returns all that is offered back to the Father in an eternal act of thanksgiving. The Spirit exists as the "holy intimacy between Father and Son,"³⁸ whose own self-giving constitutes the unity between the mutual self-giving of the Father and the Son.³⁹ The divine persons are constituted in and through movements of kenotic self-giving and receiving. Kenosis refers to this double movement within the life of God that constitutes the reciprocal relations between the persons of the trinity. Each of the persons of the trinity is constituted through the free self-giving of the one toward the other. kenosis in this sense refers to the ekstatic movement of the one toward the other, the self-destitution in favor of the other. This self-destitution, however, is at one and the same time within the triune life a making-space for the reception of the 'other.'⁴⁰ Although speaking of human existence when saying "we exist only to the extent we receive," Graham Ward's statement clearly reflects what Balthasar intends of divine existence: divine personhood is a received existence.⁴¹ In the reception of the 'other' the divine persons 'receive' their own divine personhood. Put another way, the Father is not Father without kenotic movement toward the Son, which is kenotically received and offered back to the Father. In the kenotic movement of self-giving and reception the divine persons are constituted as unique and irreducible, as 'Other.' This otherness of the divine persons implies a 'distance', diastasis or 'hiatus' between them. This diastasis is implied in the trinitarian difference between the persons. In this sense, the trinity is, as Ward puts it, "a community constituted by difference which desire the other."⁴² He adds that for Balthasar, "there cannot be true kenosis without hiatus."⁴³ Though this may be true, the reverse is also true that there can be no true 'distance' without kenosis, a distance which is required for there to be a true desire for the 'other.' What is implied within the trinitarian relations is that kenosis and diastasis, and correlatively, kenosis and 'otherness' are simultaneous events.

To sum up, Balthasar's trinitarian theology claims that being itself is a gifted event, even the being of the divine persons themselves. God's being is an event of communion of persons. This communion is freely constituted in relations that are kenotic, i.e., mutually self-giving and receptive. Each of the divine persons is an ekstatic movement toward the other, and openness for the other. The persons are infinitely distant from each other, each being infinitely unique and 'not-Other' to the 'Other.' This distance is not a separation, but is itself constituted by the infinite nearness of the persons united in a love freely given.⁴⁵ It would not be an overstatement to say that for Balthasar, God's being is an eternally free, self-constituting, event. The question is whether divine personhood as kenosis has any relevance for human personhood?

For Balthasar, divine personhood has direct relevance for human personhood insofar as the Trinity as an event of self-giving love is known only through the incarnate Christ, and it is this Christ who Christians proclaim to offer salvation. As Balthasar himself states, "It is only on the basis of Jesus Christ's own behavior and attitude that we can distinguish such a plurality in God."⁴⁶ He adds, "We know about the Father, Son and Spirit as divine 'Persons' only through the figure and disposition of Jesus Christ."⁴⁷ For Balthasar the one who is begotten of the Father is sent into the world with a mission: "the sending (missio) has its roots in a primordial proceeding (processio)." As God-man, the tropos tes hyparxeos, or the mode of being of the Son takes the form from eternal thanksgiving to humble obedience.⁴⁹ The mission of the Son is to make known the Father, and in this knowing of the Father, to render present the Father's love for creation. This obedience to the Father to make known the Father is the mission of the Son, and this mission is constitutive of the 'person' of Jesus Christ. As Balthasar himself puts it, Jesus Christ "is the Person, in an absolute sense, because in him self-consciousness (of the conscious subject) coincides with the mission he has received from God."⁵⁰

Jesus Christ is the link between divine and human personhood. Insofar as the Father is known through the Son, the Son is the image of the Father, and as such, the image of God's trinitarian life. As the God-man, Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of theimago dei, and as such, exists not simply as the model, but the condition for the possibility of human personhood. Insofar as Jesus Christ as God-man is the image of God's trinitarian existence, human personhood as imago dei must be an imitatione Christi. In other words, human personhood is constituted through an imitation of Jesus Christ's obedience to the Father. Humans become 'persons' in and through an obedient response to God's call or mission. As Balthasar argues "It is when God addresses a conscious subject, tells him who he is and what he means to the eternal God of truth and shows him the purpose of his existence--that is, imparts a distinctive and divinely authorized mission--that we can say of a conscious subject that he is a 'person.'"⁵¹ But this mission is nothing more than an extension of the universal mission of Christ which is to express the self-giving love of the Father.⁵² One becomes a true human person, for Balthasar, when one is able to relate to the Father in the way the incarnate Son relates to the Father, and that relation takes the form of obedient response to the Father's call to a unique, personal mission.⁵³ This obedient response images trinitarian personhood in so far as it is a kenotic act, a self-surrender of all that one has and a making available to receive the love of God. It is also ekstatic in that it is a free movement toward the ultimate other, who is God, and a transcending of human limits through participation in the infinite freedom of God.⁵⁴ It is a "being-as-communion,"⁵⁵ which constitutes the human person as a unique, irreducible, unrepeatable being.

It would be a mistake to think that for Balthasar a trinitarian theological anthropology is strictly from above. It is more than simply the assertion that if God is a trinity of persons, then humans must reflect this divine personhood. A theological anthropology is not dependent solely on the doctrine of God, so that once the doctrine of is determined the theological anthropology is then deduced. It is important to remember that for Balthasar trinitarian theology is at its core a doctrine of salvation. The trinitarian God is known through the salvation that God gives to creation in the person of Jesus Christ. Reflection on God is at the same time a reflection on the salvation that God offers. Who the God of Jesus Christ is is related to the type of salvation one believes is offered in Christ. Implicit in the type of salvation that one believes is offered is an assessment of the human condition. Reflection on the God of Jesus Christ is concurrently a reflection on salvation and the limitations of the human condition.⁵⁶

Influencing and shaping Balthasar's own trinitarian theological anthropology of person is a profound description of the human situation. For Balthasar, the fundamental human problem is that of finitude, and the clearest manifestation of this problem of finitude is human freedom. In self-consciousness, according to Balthasar, in addition to being aware of oneself, one is aware of what is beyond oneself, that one participates in something greater than oneself, of the "incommunicability (or uniqueness) and the equally total communicability of being."⁵⁷ But in becoming aware of oneself, one also becomes conscious that there exist "unlimited number of others" who "possess being." It is in this self-consciousness that one detects the structure of finite freedom and its two pillars.⁵⁸ There is a freedom in the very act of self-consciousness or self-possession which in understanding the presence of its own existence affirms this existence. Self-consciousness is both an act of self-understanding and self-affirmation, an act of the intellect and the will. But in this experience of self-possession and of innumerable others who possess being, there is also the experience of freedom as autonomous motion, "a fundamental freedom that enables us to affirm the value of things and reject their defects, to become involved with them or turn away from them."⁵⁹ The experience of freedom, however, immediately makes present the reality of this freedom's limits, its own finitude and a fundamental paradox of human existence. If we, for Balthasar, "have an irrefutable awareness of our freedom, we are equally aware that our freedom is not unlimited, or more precisely that, while we are free, we are always only moving toward freedom."⁶⁰ Finite freedom ultimately points to infinite freedom, which it recognizes as the source of its gifted freedom. If, however, finite freedom is to transcend its own limitation, then it must participate in what is other than itself, in infinite freedom. But it can only do so if infinite freedom itself takes a particular form which is ultimately revealed in the form of Christ. Such infinite freedom is the infinitely free event of self-giving love of the trinitarian God who is able to include what is other within itself without change to God's being. In Christ, finite freedom participates in the infinitely free loving relation between the Father and Son, and it is in this relationship that it finds its true fulfillment.

There are two other aspects to Balthasar's theological anthropology which, I would argue, influence his trinitarian theology. The first is the well known I-Thou relation which von Balthasar affirms as constitutive for self-consciousness. For Balthasar, self-consciousness is an inherently inter-subjective experience.⁶¹ The other aspect of Balthasar's theological anthropology is the reality of death. The reality of death is the great leveler. Finite freedoms movement toward the other, toward the infinite comes face-to-face with death.⁶²

Balthasar's trinitarian theological anthropology is intelligible only in light of these positive and negative aspects of his description of the human situation. In the positive sense, human existence is movement toward self-transcendence, toward the other, toward infinite freedom. It is also inherently inter-subjective, in that one's unique identity is constituted in, ideally, the loving relation with the 'other.' In the negative sense, finite existence is inherently limited and tends towards its own absence, which is death. Balthasar's trinitarian theological anthropology addresses both these aspects of human existence.

Both aspects require us to return to Balthasar's notion of diastasis, or distance. In his trinitarian theology, diastasis refers to the infinite distance between the persons of the trinity for the sake of trinitarian difference. Such distance is the precondition for the nearness, or the loving communion between the persons of the trinity, and is itself constituted in the kenotic movements of self-giving and receiving. For Balthasar, such a diastasis within God's very life is a precondition for creation of the finite 'other,' i.e., for creation itself. As Balthasar himself puts it, "the infinite distance between the world and God is grounded in the other, prototypical distance between God and God."³⁶ Ward amplifies that "the condition for the possibility of this hiatus between creator and creation, and this kenosis, is a hiatus and kenosis within the trinitarian community."⁶⁴ It is important to remember that 'otherness' and 'distance' in Balthasar do not mean separation. 'Otherness' is constituted in and through 'distance' which is the precondition for real communion. It is only in communion that the 'other' is constituted. Hence, creation as the 'other' is a product of and intended for the loving communion with God. The 'otherness' of creation for Balthasar is not creation in itself, but the unique presence of created beings constituted in loving communion with God. Such a communion can only exist through distance insofar as 'distance' or "hiatus fosters desire by opening the space for creativity, the stage for action, the yearning for unity."⁶⁵ This yearning or desire is evident in finite freedoms movement toward the other and in the I-thou relationship. This yearning has its precondition in the 'otherness' within God's life both in terms of its creation and in terms of its fulfillment.

The fulfillment of human longing for a unique identity and for infinite freedom itself depends on the resolution of the negative aspect of human existence, the inherent limit of finite freedom--death. The 'distance' between the creator and creation is a precondition either for pure presence through communion, or absence through increased separation and death. For Balthasar, the overcoming of this negative 'distance' for the sake of 'distance'-as-communion requires a 'kenotic' descent of God in creation, but such that does not destroy the freedom of created existence. For communion to be communion, it must be based on freedom. The precondition for such a kenotic descent is the kenosis within God's life. How so? According to Balthasar, the kenotic descent of the Son in the God-man occurs for the sake overcoming all that separates creation from God. This ultimately includes death. The death of Jesus Christ is the highest point of obedience of the Son to the Father, and moment of extreme distance-as-separation. The Son is not simply not-Father, but not-God. In this sense, the Son's existence, as well as that of the personal identity of the Father, is at risk. Such 'risk' reveals the nature of God's kenotic love for creation. It is also the point of true trinitarian revelation, insofar as the Resurrection reveals that even such an extreme distance between the Father and Son can never result in a separation.⁶⁶ The infinite distance between the Father and the Son in the kenotic event of love is always an infinite nearness that is able to contain and overcome within itself the 'separation' caused by sinful humanity. As Balthasar himself says, "God as 'gulf' (Eckhart: Un-Grund) of absolute Love contains in advance, eternally, all the modalities of love, compassion, and even of a 'separation' motivated by love and founded on the infinite distinction between the hypostases-modalities which may manifest themselves in the course of a history of salvation involving sinful humankind."⁶⁷ He adds that "all the contingent 'abasements' of God in the economy of salvation are forever included and outstripped in the eternal event of Love."⁶⁸ The kenosis of God in creation is already contained in the kenotic love of the trinity insofar as this kenotic love contains all the "modalities of love."⁶⁹ Such a kenotic love is powerful enough to overcome even that which is its opposite, and does so without destroying the freedom of the created 'other.'

To sum up, for Balthasar, the positive and negative aspects of human existence suggest a particular conception of God. The fulfillment of human longing for infinite freedom and for a unique existence in relation to the 'other,' and the overcoming of the separation caused by sinful humanity, whose extreme form is death, require a conceptualization of God whose being is an event of kenotic love. As O'Hanlon states: If God were simply one he would become ensnared in the world-process through the incarnation and cross. But because God is triune, both poles of difference between Father and Son can accommodate all created differences including that extreme distance shown on the cross which becomes a revelation of the closest togetherness of Father and Son. In this way the ever greater trinitarian love of God is the presupposition of the cross.⁷⁰

This does not mean that the notion of a trinitarian God can be deduced from human experience. The conception of a trinitarian God is a distinct interpretation of the salvation offered in Jesus Christ. What it does suggest, however, is that if death is not to overcome the desire (eros) for communion and 'otherness', then a conception of God is needed that goes beyond monism, or traditional interpretations of classical theistic categories.⁷¹ The person of Christ reveals that God's form, way of existing is trinitarian, in which the existence of the divine persons is received inkenotic relations of mutual self-giving. In God's life 'distance' does not mean division, but the space for difference constituted in love and freedom. In this divine event of kenotic love space exists for the kenotic movements of the created 'other' longing for uniqueness and permanence through a reception of God's love. In Balthasar's trinitarian theological anthropology, personhood is not defined in terms of a quality possessed, but as a gifted event. One is person only in kenotic relations of freedom as love. It is only through such a notion of person as kenosis that feminists concerns for specificity, otherness, difference, uniqueness and community can be affirmed. But before illustrating this last point, the question must be raised whether the notion of kenosis can make any sense in situations of abuse.

Kenotic Personhood and the Reality of Abuse

Notions of self or personhood in terms of self-emptying and receptivity are, however, still problematic, especially if one considers the tragic reality of abuse. Coakley's understanding of kenosis within the context of silent prayer may also serve to make it less appealing to those concerned with empowerment for abused victims. In her article "Seduced by Faith: Sexual Traumas and Their Embodied Effects," Jennifer Manlowe argues that the notion of healing through prayer reflects a "paternalistic discourse that…keeps women stuck in cycles of shame, passivity, isolation, and the self-blaming belief that their only real problems are their addictions and their 'stubborn wills.'" It is beyond the scope of this paper to debate the role of prayer in healing,⁷² but I would like to explore whether, even absent prayer, the notion of kenosis as self-emptying and receptivity has meaning in situations of abuse. In so far as the violence that occurs to abused victims results in their becoming, to borrow a term coined in Latin American liberation theologies, a "nonperson," then the process of empowerment, of personalization, of regaining a sense of self and identity, is to move from nonperson to person. What I wish to suggest is that kenosis is able to adequately describe such a movement, that the healing toward personhood involves a kenosis. One can better understand the process of healing by first understanding the evil that is involved in situations of abuse.

In her article, "Evil, Sin, and Violation of the Vulnerable," Mary Potter Engel asserts that the notions of evil and sin as traditionally understood within the Christian tradition, if they are to be applicable to situations of abuse, need "to be reworked from the perspective of the liberation of the vulnerable from the sexual and domestic abuse."⁷³ In the case of victimization, if we are to apply the category of sin, it must be understood primarily as evil which happens to the victim and not that for which they are responsible. The traditional understanding of sin in terms of choice or decision and which assumes the freedom of the will, though not to be abandoned, is inapplicable to victims of abuse who, because of persistent dehumanization do not possess the "freedom or range of options within a situation to be able to commit sin."⁷⁴ Sin traditionally understood in terms of pride, anger, lack of trust in God or concupiscence are inadequate to the situation of the abused victim.

For victims of abuse, the personal, voluntaristic notion of sin must be replaced with a relational understanding. Engel echoes the claims of other feminist theologians that sin is primarily a distortion of relations.⁷⁵ She reconceptualizes sin as, in part, a betrayal of trust and a lack of consent to vulnerability. She claims that dependence is an unavoidable aspect of human existence. Humans exist together primarily not in an external system of rules but in dynamic relationships of trust, fidelity, and mutual obligation that are better described as covenants. This is true in all relationships. . . In such relationships we entrust our selves-bodies, hearts, minds and spirits-to the other; we deliberately and unavoidably make ourselves vulnerable to the other.⁷⁶

With regard to betrayal of trust, Engel understands sin "as the destruction of this necessary life-affirming trust in others…damaged capacity to trust."⁷⁷ In terms of sin as "lack of consent to vulnerability," Engel notes that there are healthy and pathological dependencies and forms of vulnerability.⁷⁸ The abuse leads to a "distorted relationship to weakness, vulnerability, and dependence."⁷⁹ It turns vulnerability into weakness, and results in a destroyed capacity for vulnerability on the part of the abused victim even toward those trusted loved ones, i.e., family members, friends, etc.⁸⁰ A victim either avoids dependency or vulnerability or is immersed in pathological forms.

The results of abuse, in part, are isolation, withdrawal, disassociation and fear of relations. As Engel herself says, "the natural result of years of living in constant terror and under the threat of severe harm is not trust but fear."⁸¹ Both Manlowe and Engel affirm that the healing process, the empowerment, the personalization, the coming to self of the abused victim necessarily involves others, a set of relations. Its goal, at least in part, is to reverse the effects of sin, as Engel's describes them, which affect the abused victim. According to Manlowe, "no survivor can empower herself without help from others. Sexual trauma profoundly affects the survivor's human relationships, which can become infused with suspicion and vulnerable to disruption…Yet in order to move past destructive patterns, the survivor will need to reach out to others." This reaching out to others is not toward another pathological dependency, but for "support in finding her own voice, her own language."⁸² One only recovers one's self, one's autonomy, or put another way, one only re-receives one's personhood through particular types of relationships.

If healing results through a set of relations in which there is, to use spatial metaphors, space for care, self-love, trust and vulnerability, then such relations are necessarily kenotic. But in a situation where the self itself is dissipated, what is emptied? What could possibly be given? What an abused victim is emptying is fear, fear of the other created by the abuse. In emptying this fear, the abused victim is, to borrow from Coakley, making space for the presence of the other in order to be empowered. The ability to love and to be loved in each case requires a kenosis. In the kenotic movement toward the other, the abused victim is moving from self-enclosure created through fear toward the other, in order to receive the care, trust, friendship, love of the other, the sources of empowerment. Insofar as fear and desire cannot coexist, the emptying of fear frees the abused victim to desire the other, to be in an ekstatic movement toward the other. Those who associate kenosis with agape, and define the latter as self-sacrificial love too narrowly define its meaning. In the situation of abuse, kenosis is the liberation of eros. It liberates eros from fear in order to desire, for an ekstatic movement toward and not a withdrawal from, the other.

In the process of healing the abused victim is also moving toward personhood as a gifted event. In the same way that depersonalization, 'nonpersonhood,' happens in and through a set of relations, albeit violent, destructive and oppressive, personalization, the coming to personhood, being a person happens in relations of love and freedom. It is only in such relations, which presuppose the kenotic, and hence, ekstatic movement toward the other that the abused victim is rendered a unique, free and unrepeatable being, a person. In relations of love and freedom, the precondition for which is a kenosis, a self-emptying in order to receive the other, the effects of nonpersonhood are reversed. Even though fear itself is not emptied in God's trinitarian life, the analogy still holds between the uncreated and the created insofar as existence itself results from movements of self-destitution and receiving. All this suggests that personhood is not an inherent quality, but a gifted reality, a gifted event. We cannot claim personhood, we are gifted personhood.⁸³ It is a gift which is truly an "excess" that is not only unable to be contained in thought, but which results in an overflow of additional gifts of personhood.

Kenosis and the Relational Self

The differences between Balthasar and certain feminist theologians over the adequacy of kenosis for interpreting women's experience and for constructions of a relational understanding of the self should not obscure their points of commonality. Though perhaps for different reasons, Balthasar and feminists theologians in general reject Enlightenment notions of self in terms individuality, autonomy, independence and self-sufficiency. They argue for relational understandings of the self, a self that is constituted in and through community and communion. Such notions of the self reject oppositions of the 'one' to the 'other', but affirm rather a notion of the 'one', of identity that includes the 'other'. Moreover, this relational notion of self allows for an understanding of the self in terms of "difference, specificity, embodiment, solidarity, anticipation, and transformation."⁸⁴ Both also seem to contend against forms of 'bad' monotheism, which form the basis for false notions of the self, and structures of oppression. Though feminist theologies continue to debate the adequacy of trinitarian theology for women's experience,⁸⁵ Balthasar and feminist theologians in general share an agenda to move theological discourse on God away from what Rebecca Chopp calls the "monotheistic ordering"⁸⁶ of reality, in which God is opposed to the world/subject, toward a relational understanding of reality, in which the world exists within God's life. The major challenge for both Balthasar and feminist theologies is a conceptualization of this relational understanding of God and created existence. The major point of contention is over the use of kenosis in this conceptualization.

Hampson's position by now should be well known. The notion of kenosis is inimical to a relational understanding of the self and to woman's flourishing. But Hampson's position is itself ridden with internal inconsistencies. The first concerns her affirmation for both an autonomous self and a relational self. In "On Power and Gender," rejecting all forms of dependency, she argues for an understanding of a "centred" self. She is simultaneously advancing a relational notion of self, with emphasis on the model of friendship. Relations of friendship, however, are not the condition for the possibility of autonomy. The reverse is the case, in that one must first be 'centred' or 'autonomous,' before one can enter into a friendship. As Hampson herself states, "A person who has come 'to' her or himself can partake in a friendship in which, in a relation of mutuality, each becomes more fully that which they have it in them to become."⁸⁷ A similar line of reasoning is seen in "Autonomy and Heteronomy," where she argues that "Indeed, it may well be that it is not until persons come into their own, come 'to' themselves, that they are able so to respond to others."⁸⁸ Even though Hampson admits that autonomy "need not imply conceiving of oneself as an isolated atom in competition with others,"⁸⁹ the fact that she prioritizes 'centredness' and 'autonomy' as preconditions for relations seems to undercut her concern to construct a relational notion of the self. A self who enters relations is not the same as a relational notion of the self. Hampson herself is aware of the tension when she argues, "In think one must live in easy intercourse with others: both centred and open. (Indeed, as I suggest in my essay, able so to be open because one has a centredness, and acquiring that centredness precisely through the relation with others.)"⁹⁰ A careful reading of the essay she is referring to, "Autonomy and Heteronomy," will reveal, as I have suggested, that she is in fact not saying that 'centredness' and 'openness' are mutually conditioning. If the conversations in Swallowing a Fishbone? have led her toward this position, then she is not far from Balthasar's (and Coakley's) own theology, though she still lacks the conceptuality for expressing how 'autonomy' and 'openness' exist in a mutually conditioning relation.

This brings us to the problem of Hampson's unequivocal rejection of kenosis. If Hampson herself is attempting to construct a self in relations that are described in terms of friendship, openness, mutual empowerment of persons, the destruction of the male ideology of pride and humility, the question must be raised: how are these relations not kenotic? Hampson does not see them as such, because she too narrowly defines kenosis in terms of agape understood as self-sacrifice. Notwithstanding the fact that self-sacrifice does occur within such relations, relations of friendship and openness need not be constituted by self-sacrifice. But if, as Engel, tells us that "all relationships, whether between spouses, lovers, friends, parent and child, professional and client, or teacher and student," exist as "dynamic relationships of trust, fidelity, and mutual obligation that better described as covenants,"⁹¹ then such relations are necessarily kenotic in the way it is defined in Balthasar's theology. In each of these types of relations, moments, in varying degrees, of self-giving/destitution/emptying and receptivity are present, especially if the only way to characterize such relations are with the categories of trust, vulnerability and risk. Kenosis is not primarily self-sacrifice, but a state of being which liberates eros, the desire to be in relation with the other. It is a precondition for relations of love and freedom, the only context in which the self is truly given. In the end, only Balthasar's notion of kenosis can advance Hampson's attempts to construct a relational self that is 'centred' and 'open.'

Not all feminist theologians do in fact reject kenosis "with unanimity," as Hampson suggests. Other than Hampson, each of the feminist theologians cited in this article allows for the possibility that kenosis may be retrievable for advancing feminist concerns for a relational understanding of existence and of the self. Though there may still exist considerable difference on the interpretation and the application of kenosis, and though there are elements in Balthasar's theology which may be interpreted as antithetical to feminist concerns, I hope this paper suggests, at the very least, that a fruitful and constructive conversation between Balthasar and feminist theologies is worth pursuing for the sake of similar ends.

1. Cited in Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), 129.
2. "On Power and Gender," Modern Theology 4:3 (1988): 234.
3. The non-inclusive language is intentional on my part, since this is primarily a male conception of God according to Hampson.
4. "On Power and Gender," 235; for Hampson's critique of heteronomy, see "On Autonomy and Heteronomy," in Swallowing a Fishbone?: Feminist Theologians Debate Christianity, ed. Daphne Hampson (London: SPCK, 1996), 1-17.
5. See especially Sallie McFague, Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987) and Body of God: An Ecological Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993); also Catherine Keller's interpretation of "Classical Christianity" in "Scoop up the Water and the Moon Is in Your Hands: On Feminist Theology and Dynamic Self-Emptying," in The Emptying God: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation, eds. John B. Cobb, Jr. and Christopher Ives (New York: Orbis Books, 1990), 102-115.
6. "On Power and Gender," 235.
7. Ibid., 248. Hampson never really defines what that "to be" is.
8. It should be noted that there are those adherents of classical theism, particularly within the Thomistic tradition, that would not recognize Hampson's and McFague's portrayal of this God. See in particular Wayne J. Hankey, God in Himself: Aquinas' doctrine of God as expounded in the Summa Theologiae (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
9. As we shall see below with the trinitarian theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar.
10. See Catherine Keller who argues within the context of a Christian-Buddhist dialogue that "one must find a way to evoke a genuine dialectic between world and deity, based on a relationship rather than an act of mere identification. This implies attributing personality to the sacred" (109). It requires, however, more than simply attributing personality to God. As I will show below, implicit in trinitarian theology, especially in Balthasar's, is the claim that divine-human communion requires a reconceptualizing of God as an event of communion.
11. "On Power and Gender," 238.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., 239.
14. Ibid., 239-40.
15. Hampson, Theology and Feminism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell): 155; cited in Sarah Coakley's "Kenosis and Subversion: On the Repression of 'Vulnerability' in Christian Feminist Writing," in Swallowing a Fishbone.
16. I owe this phrase to Arthur J. Droge in a book co-authored with James D Tabor entitled A Noble Death: Suicide & Martyrdom among Christians and Jews in Antiquity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992); see especially 137.
17. "Power and Gender," 244-46.
18. "On Autonomy and Heteronomy," 2.
19. Ibid.
20. "Power and Gender," 246; see also "On Autonomy and Heteronomy," 2: "Our goal must be that persons are centred in themselves and open to one another. Indeed, it may well be that it is not until persons come into their own, come 'to' themselves, that they are able so to respond to others."
21. "Response," in Swallowing a Fishbone, 122. This inconsistency in Hampson's thought is significant and I shall return to it below.
22. "On Power and Gender," 239.
23. In Swallowing a Fishbone, 83.
24. Ibid., 91.
25. Ibid., 95.
26. In her response to Coakley's paper, Hampson herself claims to have "no problem with 'vulnerability' per se." She adds, that "sheer vulnerability however, untransformed, is likely to lead in effect to the exploitation of others." It is unclear, however, what she means by a transformed vulnerability. If she means a relational space in which vulnerability is not exploited but an occasion, precondition even, for further empowerment, then she is not far from Coakley's or Balthasar's position. See "Response," in Swallowing a Fishbone, 123-4.
27. "Kenosis and Subversion," 95.
28. Ibid., 108.
29. Ibid. Coakley addresses criticisms that her focus on prayer appeals only to an elite who have the leisure to engage in such a prayer by arguing that abusive human power manifests itself across divisions of class, gender and race. Her point is that equally across these divisions one "invites" non-abusive divine power for the transformation of self through prayer.
30. It is doubtful Hampson would concede even this much, for whom any form of dependence, even on God is heteronomy. See "On Autonomy and Heteronomy," 2. For Coakley, when speaking of God one cannot avoid speaking of dependence. The question is what kind of dependence: "For Daphne, it seems, any sort of 'dependence on God, and any kind of sexual metaphor used to evoke this dependence, can be nothing but 'heteronomy'. Whereas for me, the right sort of dependence on God is not only empowering but freeing. For God is not a rapist, but the source of my very being; God is closer than kissing (I am happy to put it thus, metaphorically); indeed God, being God, is closer to me even than I am to myself" ("Afterword,"Swallowing a Fishbone, 170).
31. Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter, trans. Aidan Nichols, O.P. (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1990), 25.
32. Ibid., vii.
33. Ibid., viii.
34. "It is from that supra-temporal yet ever actual event that, as Christians we must approach the mystery of the divine 'essence'" (Ibid.)
35. Ibid.
36. Theo-Drama IV: The Action, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 320. For an excellent analysis of Balthasar's understanding of kenosis see Graham Ward, "Kenosis: Death, Discourse and Resurrection," in Lucy Gardner, et. al., Balthasar at the End of Modernity (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1999), 15-68.
37. Mysterium Paschale, viii.
38. Theo-Drama III: The Dramatis Personae: The Person in Christ, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), 506.
39. Ibid., 511. See also, Theo-Drama IV, 324ff.
40. For the notion of 'reception' in Balthasar, see Gerald F. O'Hanlon, S.J., The Immutability of God in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
41. "Kenosis: Death, Discourse and Resurrection," 24.
42. Ibid., 45.
43. Ibid., 44.
44. Theo-Drama II: Dramatis Personae: Man in God, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), 194. For an insightful and helpful analysis of the relation between Balthasar's understanding of analogia entis and his trinitarian theology, especially the notions of kenosis, distance, and otherness, see Angela Franz Franks, "Trinitarian Analogia Entis in Hans Urs von Balthasar," The Thomist 62:4 (1998): 533-559.
45. "Trinity is the mystery of infinite nearness and infinite distance" (John J. O'Donnell, Hans Urs von Balthasar [Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1992], 108).
46. Theo-Drama III, 508.
47. Ibid.
48. Theo-Drama II, 154.
49. For Balthasar's interpretation of Maximus the Confessor's concept oftropos tes hyparxeos and its importance for his theology, see the excellent study of Mark A. McIntosh, Christology from Within: Spirituality and the Incarnation in Hans Urs von Balthasar (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996), esp. 39-44.
50. Theo-Drama III, 509. In Theo-Drama II, Balthasar argues that in Jesus Christ person and mission are identical, adding that "the subject in whom person and mission are identical can only be divine" (156)
51. Theo-Drama III, 207; see also Balthasar's "On the concept of person," Communio 13 (Spring, 1986): 18-26.
52. Ibid.
53. Speaking about Balthasar's understanding of mission, Ward writes that the human person "is dialogical, created to love, and therefore always coming into an identity, that is, a form (Gestalt), as the mission continues and unfolds. There is no room in Balthasar's exaltation of obedience and abandonment for the egoism of modernity" ("Kenosis: Death, Discourse and Resurrection," 50).
54. For an analysis of the relation between mission and person as ekstasis in Balthasar, see McIntosh, Christology from Within: Spirituality and the Incarnation in Hans Urs von Balthasar, esp. 51-54 and 71-74.
55. I borrow here the title from the book of the Eastern Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas to make the point that much of what is said about divine-human personhood in Balthasar can be discerned in contemporary Orthodox theologians such as Zizioulas, Vladimir Lossky and Christos Yannaras. A critical comparison of Balthasar and these theologians on this point would be fruitful, especially for those with ecumenical interests.
56. It is too easily forgotten that the doctrine of the Trinity as is presently known in the Christian tradition emerged when Athanasius of Alexandria unequivocally affirmed the divinity of Christ against Arian objections. Athanasius, however, affirmed the divinity of Christ not simply on the basis of scriptural exegesis, but on the basis of the principle that if salvation is offered in the resurrected Christ, and if this salvation consists in overcoming the limitations of finitude caused through sin, i.e., death, then only in communion with the uncreated can creation be given incorruptible, immortal existence. Thus, we see that in Athanasius the trinitarian God is linked to an understanding of salvation in terms of divine-human communion and a description of the limitations of the human situation. Insofar as the fundamental question in the Christian tradition up to Athanasius was the identity of Christ, efforts to judge the 'trinitarian' theologies of the 1st three centuries in terms of effectiveness in expressing coherently a God who is three and one are anachronistic and miss the point of trinitarian theology. On Athanasius, see De Incarnatione, 3-11, and 54.11-12 where Athanasius offers his famous axiom: "for he became human so that we might become god" (my translation). See also Peter Widdicombe's recent article, "Athanasius and the Making of the Doctrine of the Trinity," Pro Ecclesia, 4.4 (1999): 456-78.
57. Theo-Drama II, 209.
58. For a good discussion of the relation between finite and infinite freedom in Balthasar, see O'Donnell, esp. 65ff.
59. Ibid., 211.
60. Ibid., 207.
61. See The Von Balthasar Reader, eds. Medard Kehl, S.J. and Werner Löser, S.J., trans. Robert J. Daley, S.J. and Fred Lawrence (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 64-66; also 92-102.
62. Ibid., 77-92.
63. Theo-Drama II, 266. "This primal kenosis [Ur-Kenose] makes possible all other kenotic movements of God into the world; they are simply its consequences" (Theo-Drama III, 308; cited in Ward, 40).
64. "Kenosis: Death, Resurrection and Discourse," 44.
65. Ibid.
66. "There is only one way to approach the trinitarian life in God: on the basis of what is manifest in God's kenosis in the theology of the covenant-and hence in the theology of the Cross-we must feel our way back into the mystery of the absolute" (Theo-Drama III, 301; cited in Ward, 40).
67. Mysterium Paschale, viii.
68. Ibid.
69. On this point, see O'Hanlon, 20ff.
70. The Immutability of God in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, 26.
71. Athanasius himself understood this when against Arius's contention that the affirmation of divinity to Christ contradicts God's simplicity, the notion of what it means for God to be God, Athanasius simply replied that conceiving God's essence relationally does not destroy God's simplicity. For Athanasius, no change is implied in God, since the Father is always Father, and the Son always Son. What is important to note is the reason driving Athanasius to affirm this position, which is divine-human communion for the sake of human salvation. If it is a question of choosing between a conception of God that is logically coherent and the logically incoherent notion of a trinitarian God (though Athanasius did himself think that his position was perfectly logical, albeit not as the Greeks might define it), then the latter is affirmed since the former, Arius's God, does not allow for real divine-human communion, and hence, in Athanasius's mind, no real salvation. Balthasar seems to be following Athanasius's revolutionary insight in affirming that salvation consists in divine-human communion, and that only in the life of a trinitarian God is such a communion possible. See Contra Arianos, 1.11, 16, 39-47; see also above, n. 56.
72. "Seduced by Faith: Sexual Traumas and Their Embodied Effects," in Violence Against Women and Children: A Christian Theological Sourcebook, eds. Carol J. Adams and Marie M. Fortune (New York: Continuum, ): 336. This is not to suggest that prayer cannot be a source of healing for the victim. Christians, however, should heed the warning that simplistic responses to victims of abuse "to pray" may do more harm than good, especially if the violence has diminished the victim's capacity to pray. This simplistic approach is in no way suggested by Coakley's position. For Christian understandings of healing, prayer may be a source, or a goal, i.e., to move the person toward an empowering relationship with God. In this sense, Coakley's notion of kenosis-as-empowerment in prayer is applicable. I would argue that even absent prayer, kenosis is a necessary moment in the healing process.
73. In Lift Every Voice: Constructing Christian Theologies from the Underside, Revised and Expanded Edition, eds. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite and Mary Potter Engel (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1998): 159-71; 154. For an additional perspective on how traditionally understood Christian categories serve to harm rather than help the abused victim, see Sheila A. Redmond, "Christian 'Virtues' and Recovery from Child Sexual Abuse," Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse: A Feminist Critique, eds. Joanne Carlson Brown and Carole R. Bohn (New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1989): 70-88.
74. Ibid., 162.
75. Ibid., 161; See also, Sallie McFague, Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age, 51; also her, The Body of God: An Ecological Theology, 110; and Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983): 161. For an Eastern Orthodox understanding of sin as distortion of relations, see Christos Yannaras, The Freedom of Morality, trans. Elizabeth Briere (New York: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1984), esp. 29-48.
76. Ibid., 165.
77. Ibid., 166.
78. My interpretation of Engel differs from that of Coakley's, who reads Engel as seeing vulnerability as "an opportunity for masculinist abuse." Certain forms of vulnerability are opportunities for such abuse in certain contexts, but Engel does argue for healthy forms of dependence and vulnerability as inherent to right relations. Sin destroys the capacity for these forms of dependence and vulnerability. For Coakley, see "On Kenosis and Subversion," p. 183, n. 65.
79. Ibid., 167.
80. For more on how abuse affects victims' already existing relations and capacity for trusting relations, see Wendy Maltz and Beverly Holman,Incest and Sexuality: A Guide to Understanding and Healing (Lexington, Massachusetts: Lexington Books, 1987): 61-68, 81-136. See also Manlowe, 336.
81. "Evil, Sin and Violation of the Vulnerable," 165. Engel herself notes that disassociation should not be condemned or seen as sinful, since for many abused victims it is a survival tactic. She would agree that the goal for abused victims is not survival but to flourish.
82. Manlowe, 336.
83. In conversation on this point, it was asked of me whether a newborn baby abandoned in the fields is then still a person. The answer is yes and no. No in the sense that such an abandonment renders this baby a nonperson, and to deny this is not to take seriously the reality of dehumanization. The only hope for a baby to still be person is the fact that s/he is always loved by God. Humans in this sense are not inherently persons, as if they can claim such a dignity for themselves or as part of their essence, but always in relation to the eternal love of God.
84. Rebecca S. Chopp, The Power to Speak: Feminism, Language, God (New York: Crossroads, 1991): 7. The idea of a relational notion of subjectivity is present in the previously cited works of Coakley, Engel, Hampson, McFague, Manlowe, and Ruether. See also, Elaine Graham, Making the Difference: Gender, Personhood and Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996).
85. For a rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity, see Hampson, "On Power and Gender," 246. For a feminist retrieval of the doctrine of the Trinity for relational understandings of subjectivity, see Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (San Francisco: Harper SanFrancisco, 1992).
86. The Power to Speak, esp. 107-115.
87. "On Power and Gender," 246. As noted earlier, it is unclear in Hampson what that "it" that we have in us to become actually is. If it is 'centering' or 'autonomy', this seems to be gained prior to any relations.
88. "Autonomy and Heteronomy," 2.
89. Ibid., 1.
90. "Response," 122.
91. "Evil, Sin, and Violation of the Vulnerable," 165.

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