e male to be destructive, the "nature" of the Christian tradition to damage people, to eliminate women from history, to demonize the feminine. This absolutizing of negative experience, even though--it must be acknowledged--it is largely dominant, creates prejudice and weakens ethical claims. Such a "frenzy of the negative" (Hegel) leads to a paralysis of all ideas and thus too of any attempts at change. Anyone who studies the history of women in the Christian tradition will come upon a great deal which goes against the claim of Christian faith. And yet, anyone who therefore gives up the baptismal formula in Gal.3.28, that in Christ there is neither man nor woman, confirms the history of contradiction, rather than offering a critical challenge to it (3-4).
To this end, Heine explains that her purpose has
no other alternative than to attack prejudices, no matter on which side they appear and are brought into play; this is the only possible way of getting out of the vicious circle of each side blaming the other, and also of being able to live with those aspects of reality which seem strange and threatening, so that they can lose their threatening character and be felt as an enrichment (4-5).
While it might be possible to demonstrate that Christian traditions and praxis, as they are observed today, are a misogynistic evolution, Heine would disagree. "There is no doubt that a history of Christian hostility to women can be written, but so too can a history of Christian friendliness towards women" (5). Heine's principal concern is for "exactness . . . in the historical and systematic-theological sense; exactness in discerning methods and making a critical estimation of what they can and what they cannot do in any particular situation" (6).
Heine sees significant problems with feminists who propose replacing "Father God" with "Mother God" because of "the destructive experience of their own father" which has caused ...