Abstract

This essay uses the motif of ‘the woman as answer’ in Barth and von Balthasar to explore aspects of their accounts of sexual difference in relation to ontological and trinitarian difference. In both cases the motif is shown to be problematic for reasons which become apparent in christology. Barth's characterisation of woman as the ‘sufficient answer’ to the prior ‘question’ posed by man indicates a tendency towards the elision of difference in his anthropology, which is reflected in the nonsexuality of Christ ‐ the ‘true Man’ Ð and in aspects of his trinitarian theology. Von Balthasar's ‘double answer’ of woman to man moves beyond viewing sexual difference as the locus of man's self‐completion, but the overdetermination of ‘woman’ in his mariology undermines this. The pneumatology of von Balthasar's ‘Spiritus Creator’ suggests possibilities for the development of a christologically‐focused anthropology which maintains difference