The Metaphor of Gender

"Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed." Luke 1:48 "Trying to suppress sexual difference is to invite a genocide more radical than any destruction that has ever existed in History." Luce Irigaray Gendered identity--always a sore spot in church history--looks set to become a major thorn in the cultural flesh. Mary has played more than one part in that history, often in constricting ways. Is something missing here? Where are the generations who call her blessed? Where are those who celebrate the interactions of divinity and humanity, female and male, in the announcement of a pregnant woman--with God in utero? This book follows The Wizard's Illusion, revisiting the Land of Oz. Traveling companions range from Elizabeth A. Johnson to Paul Ricoeur and C. S. Lewis; from Augustine and Karl Barth to Grace M. Jantzen and Catherine Keller. The quest is the imago Dei with its interweaving motifs, in which there is room for the other, in which gender is a metaphor for something far greater. Identity, meaning . . . or postmodern ambiguity? Vive la difference or vive la differance? That is the question for our generation.