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by Elizabeth Johnson, C.S.J. The Catholic University
of America.
Published in Theological Studies,vol.45, no.3, 1984,
pp.441-465.
THE
HOLINESS and utter transcendence of God over all of creation has always been an
absolutely central affirmation of the Judeo-Christian tradition. God as
God—source, redeemer, and goal of all—is illimitable mystery who,
while immanently present, cannot be measured or controlled. The doctrine of
divine incomprehensibility is a corollary of this divine transcendence. In
essence, God’s unlikeness to the corporal and spiritual finite world is
total; hence we simply cannot understand God. No human concept, word, or image,
all of which originate in experience of created reality, can circumscribe the
divine reality, nor can any human construct express with any measure of
adequacy the mystery of God, who is ineffable. This situation is due not to
some reluctance on the part of God to self-reveal in a full way, nor to the
sinful condition of the human race making reception of such a revelation
impossible, nor even to our contemporary mentality of skepticism in religious
matters. Rather, it is proper to God as God to transcend all direct similarity
to creatures, and thus never to be known comprehensively or essentially as God.
In Augustine’s unforgettable echo of the insight of earlier Greek
theologians, if we have comprehended, then what we have comprehended is not
God. This sense of an unfathomable depth of mystery, of a vastness of
God’s glory too great for the human mind to grasp, undergirds the
religious significance of speech about God; such speech never definitively
possesses its subject but leads us ever more profoundly into attitudes of awe
and adoration.(1)
It
would be a serious mistake to think that God’s self-revelation through
powerful acts and inspired words in the Jewish tradition and through the
history and destiny of Jesus Christ which give rise to the Christian tradition
removes the ultimate unknowability of God. In the history of these traditions,
revelation has in fact given rise to the “dangerous situation” in
which the need to preach and interpret has resulted in words becoming too clear
and ideas too distinct, almost as if they were direct transcripts of divine
reality.(2) At times we have forgotten whom we are dealing with, and have
created the impression that the unknown God is now available for inspection,
caught within our narratives or metaphysical concepts. Revelation, however,
cannot and does not dissolve the mystery of God; in its light we see ever more
clearly the incomprehensibility of God as free and liberating love, love which
chooses us without our deserving it, bears and removes our bondage, gathers us
in. Even and especially in revelation God remains the wholly other,
conceptually inapprehensible, and so God.
The
contemporary challenge of atheism and the purification of the doctrine of God
which meeting it entails has led theology in some measure to a new
reappropriation of the insight of the best of the theological tradition that it
is impossible to understand God. Now another challenge, from the perspective of
believing women, holds the promise of deepening yet further this truth of the
incomprehensibility of God, as well as promoting the human dignity of
women—the two not being separable from one another.
The
problem with the understanding of God which women theologians, out of personal
experience of its debilitating effects, have identified is that it envisions
God exclusively through analogy with the male human being, and does so with a
pervasiveness and tenacity which at least raises the question of the success of
the first commandment in eliciting obedience. Imagery for the divine throughout
the Judeo-Christian tradition is taken predominantly from the roles and
relations of men, God being named as lord, king, father, son. Likewise, male
self-definition has shaped the metaphysical concept of God which developed from
the encounter of biblical with Greek philosophical traditions. The latter had
equated male reality with spirit, with mind and reason, and, most importantly,
with act, reserving for female reality a contrasting intrinsic connection with
matter, with body and instinct, and with potency. God as absolute being or pure
act necessarily excluded all potency, passivity, and prime matter, and thus
could be thought only in analogy with the human spiritually masculine to the
exclusion of analogy with the feminine passive material principle. This
assumption and its attendant androcentric presuppositions permeate the
classical Christian philosophical doctrine of God as well as the specifically
Christian doctrine of the Trinity.(3) In a strikingly honest discussion of the
issue, John B. Cobb summarizes: “Historically, whatever God’s true
nature and identity may be, God has been experienced, conceived, and spoken of
as masculine,” and this is a statement as applicable to metaphysical
thinking about God as it is to religious images.(4)
The
critique brought by women theologians against the exclusive centrality of the
male image and idea of God is not only that in stereotyping and then banning
female reality as suitable reference points for God, androcentric thought has
denigrated the human dignity of women. The critique also bears directly on the
religious significance and ultimate truth of androcentric thought about God.
The charge, quite simply, is that of idolatry.(5) Normative conceptualization
of God in analogy with male reality alone is the equivalent of the graven
image, a finite representation being taken for and worshiped as the whole. What
is violated is both the creature’s limitation and the unknowable
transcendence of the true God. It is true that sophisticated thinkers will
immediately deny that any maleness in image or concept of God is meant to be
taken literally. Yet the association of God with maleness lingers on implicitly
even in highly abstract discussions, as evidenced in statements such as
“God is not male; He is Spirit.” Such an association is also presumed
to be normative, a point demonstrated empirically by the dismay often
registered when and if God is referred to with feminine images or pronouns. If
it is not meant that God is male when masculine imagery is used, why the
objection when female images are used? But in fact an intrinsic connection
between God and maleness is usually intended, however implicitly. In spite of
the affirmation of divine transcendence, the predominant developments of the
Judeo-Christian tradition have lifted up the male way of being human to
functional equivalence with the divine. More solid than stone, more resistant
to iconoclasm than bronze, seems to be the male substratum of the idea of God
cast in theological language and engraved in public and private prayer. Thus
the critique: “It is idolatrous to make males more ‘like God’
than females. It is blasphemous to use the image and name of the Holy to
justify patriarchal domination.... The image of God as predominantly male is
fundamentally idolatrous” (as would be the image of God as exclusively
female).(6)
Those
who do not abandon the tradition because of its pervasive androcentrism but
wrestle with it for its own deeper liberating truth propose by contrast an
understanding of the unknown God derived from analogy with both male and female
reality. The biblical creation narrative which presents both male and female
created in the image of God (Gen 1:26-27), and the early Christian baptismal
hymn which sees that in the world re-created by God’s redeeming love there
is no more division by race, class, or sex but all are one in Christ Jesus (Gal
3:28), are taken as clues that male and female are identical in their capacity
to be images of God. Hence God, who is beyond all imaging, is well presented by
analogy with both, and not well conceived on the pattern of merely one. The
very incomprehensibility of God demands a proliferation of images and a variety
of names, each of which acts as a corrective against the tendency of any one to
become reified and literal. Female images and concepts of God disclose the
relative character of male images and bracingly restrict their claim to
ultimacy. Use of “God-She” immediately indicates the inherent
inadequacy of “God-He.” The understanding that God lies beyond
whatever is thought or said is realized in the use of diverse images which
balance or negate each other and thus point profoundly to the mystery of the
present God who remains unknown.
In my
judgment, what is at stake in this issue is simultaneously the freeing of both
women and men from constricting reality models and social roles, and the very
viability of the Judeo-Christian tradition for present and coming generations.
The challenge to male monotheism and/or male Trinitarian thought arising from
new recognition of women’s equality and human dignity is one of the
strongest in the course of the Judeo-Christian tradition, presaging a real
Copernican revolution. As Wolfhart Pannenberg has elucidated the dynamics of
the history of religions, religions die when their lights fail, when they lose
the power to interpret the full range of present experience in the light of
their idea of God.(7) If God is worshiped as the all-determining reality, the
power over all, then the truth of God is tested by the extent to which the idea
of God takes account of currently accessible aspects of reality and by the
ability of the idea of God to integrate the complexity of present experience
into itself. If the idea of God does not keep pace with developing reality, the
power of experience pulls people on and the god dies, fading from memory. Is
the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition so true as to be able to take account
of, illumine, and integrate the currently accessible experience of women? This
is an absolutely critical question.
On
the strength of the assumption that the incomprehensible mystery of God and the
image of God male and female mutually support each other, this study intends to
re-examine and correlate the tradition regarding both. Such an exploration
serves to highlight one of the sources for the renewal of the idea of God
within the tradition itself, and makes room for understanding female
conceptualizations of God as not only legitimate but also necessary.
Subsequently, with that assumption at least on the way to being established,
three contemporary approaches to the renewal of the idea of God relative to
women are examined, two of which, while possibly helpful for a time, are judged
to be ultimately deficient. In the end we are left with a task yet to be done,
the conceptualization of a God than which nothing greater can be conceived, a
God worthy of the worship of all.
Incomprehensibility and female Imaging of God
Biblical
The
Scriptures contain no systematic development of the theme of God’s
unknowability but disclose awareness of this through repeated stress on
God’s holiness, transcendent otherness, and freedom of action in history.
At the head of the list of commandments, God’s otherness comes to
expression in the ban on the making and adoring of images (Exod 20:2-5):
I
am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house
of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for
yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above,
or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you
shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous
God . . .(8)
In
view of the fact that despite the ban images of God at least in a verbal sense
abound throughout the Scriptures, the intent of these commands would seem to be
that of preventing both polytheism and magic, while insuring that any image
used of the holy and free God remains cognizant of its own limitation.(9) There
is but one God, comparable to no other individual or corporate created reality.
Abundant references throughout the Torah and the prophetic and wisdom
traditions spell out the implications of this insight. The holy name YHWH,
signifying divine presence but not essence, is unfathomable (Exod 3:14). Even
in the making of the covenant no one sees God’s form (Deut 4:12, 15-16).
God is a hidden God, impossible to compare with anything or anyone else (Isa
40:18, 25; 45:15). God the Holy One is God and not man (sic, Num 23:19;
Hos 11:9). God is great, beyond what we can ever fathom (Job 36:26). The idea
of divine incomprehensibility is not watered down with the advent of God in
Jesus Christ. Rather, the mystery of the covenanting God remains the horizon
within which early Christian believers interpret the life, death, and
resurrection of Jesus Christ. The God who raised Jesus from the dead cannot be
captured in silver, gold, stone, or any representation of human imagination
(Acts 17:29). God dwells in unapproachable light, and no human being has ever
seen or can see the divine reality (1 Tim 6:16). God’s knowledge is deep;
the divine judgments are unsearchable; divine ways are inscrutable (Rom
11:33-36). Indeed, there is a sense in which the mysteriousness of God is
brought to a more intense pitch in the awareness of saving love in Jesus
Christ: “the mystery of divine incomprehensibility burns more brightly
here than anywhere....”(10) Thus, while the Scriptures are the inspired
literary precipitate of communities involved in knowing the one true
God, biblical tradition itself bears witness to the strong and consistent
belief that God cannot be exhaustively known but even in revelation remains the
mystery surrounding our lives.
It is
here that the biblical teaching of divine incomprehensibility intersects in a
significant way with the question about God arising today from moments
experience. One of the clearest signs of the unknowability of God in the
Scriptures is the plethora of images, metaphors, and names for the Holy One.
This very multiplicity signifies that the mystery surrounding our lives cannot
be grasped by any one image or even in all taken together. What is significant
for our purposes here is the fact that female as well as male images are used.
Reflecting the patriarchal cultures in which the scriptural books were formed,
the predominant biblical metaphors for God are taken from male experience, with
God being depicted as father, warrior, jealous husband, king. At the same time
there is an intriguing openness to the use of female images. The Scriptures
depict God as mother, with all that this entails: pregnant with a child in her
womb, crying out in labor, giving birth, nursing, carrying and cradling her
child, comforting and having womb love (tender mercy and compassion) for her
child. Given the frequency with which mention of God’s merciful compassion
occurs throughout Scripture and the liturgy, and given the root of this word in
the Hebrew word for womb (rhm), such female imagery is far from peripheral in
the tradition, although until recently unnoticed.(l1) God is further envisioned
in roles taken from other female experience such as midwife, nurse, seamstress,
mistress of a household, and owner of money who searches for a lost coin that
is very important to her, rejoicing with neighbors when it is found (the latter
being imagery of God the Redeemer used by Jesus as depicted in Lk 15:8-10).
Less immediately anthropocentric, God’s presence and creative agency in
the world is unhesitatingly depicted in words of feminine gender such as spirit
(feminine in Hebrew, neuter in Greek) and wisdom (feminine in both). In the
development of the latter, Jewish wisdom theology depicts female Sophia as a
personification of the gracious goodness of the one God: she offers life, rest,
knowledge, and salvation to those who accept her; she leads, preaches,
corrects, sends prophets; she is called holy, all-powerful, intelligent,
unique; she makes all things new (cf. Wis 7:22-30; 8; 9:1-2; Prov 1:2033; 3:19;
8:1-31). In later Christian reflection Jesus’ ministry is associated with
the work of Sophia. A prophet sent by Sophia-God, he is depicted in the wisdom
likeness of the mother hen gathering her brood under her wing, if only they
would (Lk 11:49). Early Wisdom Christology moves even to identify Jesus with
the female wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24-25), a Christology which forms the
underlying pattern taken over by the later Logos Christology.(l2)
On
the one hand, the Scriptures testify to the freedom and transcendence of God
beyond the adequacy of any human expression; on the other hand, both masculine
and feminine images (as well as metaphors taken from the natural world) are
freely used to speak of this God. The two points are mutually related and
reinforce each other. I venture to say that at certain key points there is even
direct correlation, with authors the strongest on one also freest with the
other. In the climactic scene of the book of Job, e.g., God speaks out of the
whirlwind in an epiphany of transcendence which silences the challenging
question of Job’s suffering. In the midst of recounting inapprehensible
creative acts, God asks (Job 38:28-29):
Has
the rain a father,
or who has begotten the drops of dew?
From whose
womb did the ice come forth,
and who has given birth to the hoarfrost of
heaven?
God
father and mother, begetter and birth-giver, is the incomprehensibly powerful
creator of all. Similarly, the author of Second Isaiah is unequaled for
affirmations of God’s transcendent mystery at the same time that female
images are repeatedly used. God speaks as a woman, having compassion on the
child of her womb or going into labor to bring the people forth: “Now I
will cry out like a woman in travail, I will gasp and pant” (Isa 42:14).
Continuing this tradition, the latter part of the book of Isaiah contains one
of the most explicit references to God in female imagery in the Hebrew
Scriptures: “As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you”
(66:13). The God who is comparable to no likeness can be imaged as birth-giving
woman and loving mother as well as victorious warrior and compassionate father.
Using the full range of images enables the mysterious goodness of God’s
ways with us to be realized ever more profoundly.
Early Christian
When
in the early Christian centuries the biblical tradition encountered the Greek
philosophical tradition, a congeniality was discovered on precisely this
point.(13) The philosophical idea of God’s inaccessibility to human
conceptualization was rooted in the idea that the one ultimate origin of all
things must be totally different from the everyday world of multiplicity and
change. Finite and transitory structures cannot be traced back exactly to their
distant origin, and thus the incomprehensibility of the one source of all is
assured. This affirmation of the radical otherness of the world-ground in
philosophical thought was attractive to early Christian theologians trying to
understand theologically the scriptural theme that God is unknown but present
in the world and in history, and the two understandings became wedded in their
thought. While some, such as Justin, continued to appeal to the religious
perspective, holding that God is nameless because unbegotten (there being no
one prior to God to do the naming),(14) more usual was the approach taken by
Clement of Alexandria and Irenaeus, who worked with the philosophical idea of
divine simplicity to arrive at the understanding that God is thus unknowability
by any category. God is beyond place and time and description, and the divine
essence cannot be adequately designated by any name.
The
danger here was that of giving the impression that revelation cleared up the
provisional ignorance of the pro-Christian world, rather than remembering that
God is essentially incomprehensible. Some theologians of this period can
be read as having given in to this temptation; e.g., Tertullian’s insight
that one comprehends God precisely in knowing God as incomprehensible did not
flow into his understanding of revelation, which was seen as providing a
positive complement to divine mystery.(l5) However, in the struggle over the
Eunomian thesis of the absolute intelligibility of the divine essence, later
theologians took up clearly the theme of God’s incomprehensibility and,
while allowing a certain relatively limited knowledge of God on the part of
creatures, saw ever more clearly that God’s unlikeness to the world is
total, so that we know best when we confess that we do not know (which in
itself is a religious kind of knowing).
This
consciousness is paradigmatically expressed throughout the influential work of
Augustine.(16) All speaking of God must be born out of silence and ignorance
and return there, for God is ineffable. We give God many names, but ultimately
God is nameless, no name being able to express the divine nature. Since created
perfections are a reflection of God, it is possible to predicate them of God;
but none are said worthily of God. God is more truly than can be conceived, and
is conceived more truly than can be expressed in speech. In the end, it is
easier to say what God is not than what God is: if we have understood, then
what we have understood is not God.
By
the beginning of the sixth century these insights had been explicitly
formulated into the principle of the threefold way of arriving at knowledge of
God: the way of affirmation, negation, and eminence or transcendence.(l7) One
attributes a characteristic activity or perfection to God, critically negates
it, and then transcends the negation, so that an unspeakably rich and vivifying
reality is intuited while God remains incomprehensible. Every concept and
symbol, even the idea that God “is,” must go through this purifying
double negation for its own legitimacy. What we receive from ancient Christian
theology is a tradition of gnosticism of affirmation coupled with an
agnosticism of definition essential to the truth of God. In the end, we are
united to God as to an unknown, savoring God only through love.(18)
Probably even less known than biblical female imagery for God is such imagery
used by theologians of the early Christian centuries. Granted that the
classical doctrine of God developed there is basically androcentric in image
and concept, nonetheless such references are not infrequent and serve,
explicitly in some cases, to reinforce realization of the incomprehensibility
of God.(l9) God’s loving activity in the eternal generation of the Son is
likened to that of a mother, while the motive of the Incarnation is seen as
God’s maternal love (Clement of Alexandria). With reference to the human
nature of Christ or to the Eucharist, both more accessible to us than the
transcendent God, it is said that in giving them to us the Father nurses us
with milk from the breasts of His goodness or that we are nourished with milk
from the breast of the Word (Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus). Explicit
critique is leveled at those foolish enough to think that God is male simply
because of the use of the name “Father” (Gregory of Nazianzus). God
is both father and mother (Augustine), as is Christ in loving care for us
(Augustine, Jerome, John Chrysostom). Christ, furthermore, is female wisdom
incarnate (Hilary of Poitiers), the woman searching for the lost coin (Cyril of
Alexandria), and mother wisdom under whose wings we flee for protection
(Augustine). This use of female imagery works in tandem with the theme of
divine incomprehensibility, with those who emphasize the latter having more
room in their thought for the former. As the biblical translator and theologian
Jerome noted from the perspective of his own discipline, the fact that the word
for “Spirit” is feminine in Hebrew, neuter in Greek, and masculine in
Latin indicates that God transcends all categories of sexuality and is indeed
Spirit.
Medieval
The
tradition of divine incomprehensibility began to find its way into Church
doctrine when, to protect the otherness of God against 12th century attempts to
limn the divine essence in close similarity with the finite, the Fourth Lateran
Council in 1215 said of the perfection of Creator and creature: “each
perfection of course in one’s own way, because between them no similarity
can be found so great but that the dissimilarity is even greater.”(20) The
intent of this formula was not to allow a certain zone of similarity to exist
before dissimilarity would begin, but to emphasize that wherever likeness of
God and creature begins, an even greater unlikeness is always present.
Against this background a breakthrough in systematic thought occurred when the
scholastics of the 13th century worked out the theory whereby human speech
about God is understood to be neither univocal nor equivocal in meaning, but
analogical. This position, whose paradigmatic although far from clear
expression is found in Thomas Aquinas, is characterized by a powerful apophatic
element, a theological agnosticism more pervasive than has usually been
acknowledged:(21) “Now we cannot know what God is, but only what God is
not; we must therefore consider the ways in which God does not exist, rather
than the ways in which God does.”(22) Thus does Aquinas preface his mature
discussion of the divine nature and of how God is known and named by us. No
created mind can comprehend the essence of God, i.e., understand perfectly so
that nothing is hidden from view. This is explained by means of an epistemology
which requires that for knowledge of anything, some sort of mental image or
species be formed of what is known, an image which is always necessarily
definite and finite. There can be no such image of the infinite; God is
positively misrepresented if any one image is thought to be adequate. Only in
the union of heaven, when God’s own self takes the place of such an image,
will we be able to “see” God, and even then our created minds will
not comprehend infinite actual being. God, then, is outside of all classes and
categories, and beyond the possibility of being imagined or conceived.
How,
then, can we speak of God at all? On the basis of the relationship of creation
by means of which God is cause of the world, it can be admitted that creatures
participate in being and in some way resemble God (although in no way does God
resemble creatures). Thus it is possible to speak positively of God, creator of
all, through terms drawn from our knowledge of creaturely perfections. But
since such perfections exist in God in a way that infinitely transcends their
finite embodiment, such terms must go through the purification of the
analogical movement of mind if they are to be considered in any way validly
true. Words predicated of God are affirmed, then negated in their creaturely
connotations, and finally affirmed of God in a supereminent way transcending
all our cognitive capabilities. The “knowing” of God in this
analogical process is accomplished not in a concept but in a judgment which
affirms God as unconceptualizable but within the perspective opened up by the
intelligible contents of a concept.(23) God is darkly surmised, while remaining
in essence conceptually inapprehensible.
Aquinas differentiates between various types of words of human mintage that are
used of God.(24) Metaphoric ones involve some form of concrete bodiliness as
part of what they mean (God is a rock, a lion). Relational terms name God on
the basis of divine relationship to creatures (God is our Savior). Substantial
terms predicate a perfection which is proper to God’s own essence (God is
good, living, wise). These words are all used by us to name God, but they
cannot, either singly or taken all together, name what God is in se. In
every case the same simultaneous movement of affirmation, negation, and
letting-go in a transcending affirmation is required in order for the word to
be true: “All affirmations we can make about God are not such that our
minds may rest in them, nor of such sort that we may suppose God does not
transcend them.”(25) Even assertions central to religious belief, such as
“God exists,” or is real, or is person, or three persons, must be
understood analogically if they are to avoid the danger of ascribing existence,
reality, or personality to God in the same sense in which they are ascribed to
creatures. Nor does the situation brought about by God’s revelation change
this limitation of the power of the human mind. Revelation gives certain key
images of God not attainable through natural reason, as well as the gift of a
stronger intellectual light with which to understand divine works. But it never
breaks open the divine nature for our conceptualization. Even in faith we
remain united to God as to an unknown. With references to Chrysostom,
Augustine, John Damascene, and Pseudo Dionysius, Aquinas systematically carries
forward the tradition of divine incomprehensibility from the early Christian
centuries: “The perfection of all our knowledge about God is said [by
Dionysius] to be a knowing of the unknown, for then supremely is our mind found
to know God when it most perfectly knows that the being of God transcends
everything whatever that can be apprehended in this life.”(26) Ultimately,
the highest human knowledge about God is to know that one knows nothing about
God.(27)
The
medieval period is rather poor in the use of female imagery for God. It is
found mainly in the tradition of the motherhood of God, reflected in rare
occasional utterances by a theologian such as Anselm and in works of mystics
such as Dame Julian of Norwich.(28) While Aquinas does note that the Scriptures
attribute to God the Father what in our material world belongs to both mother
and father, namely, the begetting of the Son, he is powerfully prevented by his
anthropological presuppositions intertwined with Aristotelian biology from
attributing maternity to God. There is no place in his system for speaking of
God as mother, for God is pure act, whereas in the process of begetting, the
mother represents the principle that receives passively.(29)
However, beyond the outdated anthropology, the understanding stemming from this
period that all language about God is analogical assumes a strongly critical
function when the androcentricity of the subsequent centuries is faced with the
question of naming God arising from women’s experience today. Now it
becomes clear that it has not yet been sufficiently articulated that the
critical negation of analogy should be stringently applied to male pronouns,
images, and conceptualizations of God no less than to other predications of
God. It has not yet been suffciently appreciated that the designation
“He” is subject to all the limitations found in any other positive
naming of God, and in the end does not really tell us anything about God.
Introduction of female expressions makes acutely clear that analogy still has a
job to do in purifying God-talk of its direct (even if unintentional) masculine
liberalism and in opening room for a development of the doctrine of God in the
direction of greater appreciation of the divine mystery.As even a too-brief
survey of the Judeo-Christian tradition makes abundantly clear, human words and
concepts with their inevitable relation to the finite are not capable of
comprehending God, who by very nature is illimitable and unobjectifiable. Clear
signs of this unknowability of God include the proliferation of images,
metaphors, and names predicated of God in the Scriptures, the apophatic
theology of the early Christian centuries, and the medieval doctrine of
analogy. Absolutizing any particular expression as adequate to divine reality
is tantamount to a diminishment of God. The experience of women today is
raising this question as never before. Made in the image and likeness of God,
women participate in and represent in a creaturely way something of the
perfection of divine being. Conversely, God can be expressed, however
inadequately, in female as well as male imagery, as the Judeo-Christian
tradition attests. Doing so has the immediate effect of bringing to
consciousness the partiality of predominant male imagery and thus of deepening
our sense of God’s transcendence.
At
the present time three approaches to the renewal of the idea of God in the
direction of greater inclusivity can be identified. One seeks to give
“feminine” qualities to God still understood predominantly as a male
person. Another purports to uncover a “feminine dimension” in God,
often finding this realized in the person of the Holy Spirit. A third seeks
equivalent imaging of God according to the fulness of humanity both male and
female. A brief presentation of each can provide the basis for critical
assessment of their theological usefulness.
Three Approaches to Revision
Feminine Traits
A
first step taken toward the revision of the patriarchal God image is the
introduction of gentle, nurturing traits traditionally associated with the
mothering role of women. The symbol of God as Father particularly benefits from
this move. Too often this predominant symbol has been interpreted through
association with traits associated with ruling men in a male-oriented society:
aggressiveness, competitiveness, desire for absolute power and control, and
demand for obedience. This certainly is not the Abba to whom Jesus
prayed, and widespread rejection of such a symbol from Marx, Nietzsche, and
Freud onward has created a crisis for Christian consciousness. But it is also
possible to see God the Father displaying feminine, maternal features which
temper “His” overwhelmingness. William Visser ‘t Hooft, e.g.,
argues that while the fatherhood of God is and must remain the predominant
Christian symbol, it is not a closed or exclusive symbol but is open to its own
correction, enrichment, and completion from other symbols, such as mother.(30)
Thus gentleness and compassion, unconditional love, reverence and care for the
weak, sensitivity to our every need, and desire not to dominate but to be
intimate companion and friend are predicated of the Father God and make
“Him” more attractive.(31) A clue to the use of this approach is
almost invariably the use of the word “traits”: the Bible allows us
to speak of maternal traits in God (Visser ’t Hooft); we have forgotten
it, but the God of revelation has feminine traits such as tenderness (Cougar);
to transform our overmasculinized culture, we need to relate to the feminine
traits of God (O’Hanlon); God is not simply male but has matriarchal
traits (Küng).(32) God remains Father, but in a way tempered by the ideal
feminine, so that we do not have to be afraid or rebellious against a crushing
paternalism.
While
this approach is appearing in the work of a fair number of male theologians
trying to address the problem, and while it has the advantage of moving counter
to the misogynism which has so afflicted Christian anthropology and the
doctrine of God, women theologians are virtually unanimous in calling attention
to its deficiencies and in precluding it as a long-range option.(33) The
reasons for this are several. Even with the introduction of presumably feminine
features, the androcentric pattern remains: God is still envisioned as a
masculine God, only now possessing feminine characteristics. This is clearly
seen in statements such as: God is not exclusively masculine but the
“feminine-maternal element must also be recognized in Him.”(34) God
remains “Him,” but imaged as a more wholistic male person who has
integrated His feminine side. The patriarchy of God in this symbol is now
benevolent, but it is nonetheless still patriarchy. And while the image of God
as male as well as real male persons made in “His” image benefit and
grow from the opening of nurturing and compassionate qualities in themselves,
there is no equivalent attribution to a female symbol or to real female persons
of corresponding presumably male qualities of rationality, power, the authority
of leadership, etc. Men gain their feminine side, but not women their masculine
side (if such categories are even valid). The feminine is there for the
enhancement of the male, but not vice versa. Real women are then seen as
capable of representing only the feminine element of what is still the
male-cantered symbol of God, the fulness of which can thereby be represented
only by a male person. The female can never appear as icon of God in all divine
fulness equivalent to the male. Inequality is not redressed but subtly
furthered, as the androcentric structure of anthropology and the image of God
remains in place and is made more appealing through the subordinate inclusion
of feminine traits.
A
critical issue underlying both this approach and the one to be considered next
is that of the legitimacy of the rigid stereotyping involved in designating
certain human characteristics as predominantly masculine or feminine. With what
right are compassionate love, reverence, and nurturing predicated as
primordially feminine characteristics, rather than human ones? Why are
strength, sovereignty, and rationality exclusive to the masculine? Could it not
be, as Ruether formulates the fundamental question, that the very concept of
the “feminine” is a creation out of patriarchy, an ideal projected
onto women by men and vigorously defended because it functions so well to keep
men in positions of power and women out of public roles?(35) Masculine and
feminine are among the most culturally stereotyped words in the language. This
is not to say that there are no differences between women and men, but it is to
question the justification of the present division and distribution of human
virtues and attributes. Such stereotyping serves the true humanity of neither
women nor men and results in a dualism in anthropology almost impossible to
overcome. It does not, then, serve well for the re-envisionment of God in a
more inclusive direction.
A
Feminine Dimension of the Divine
Rather than merely attribute stereotypical feminine qualities to a male imaged
God, a second approach seeks a more ontological footing for the existence of
the feminine in God. Most frequently that inroad is found in the doctrine of
the Holy Spirit, who in classical Trinitarian theology is coequal in nature
with the Father and the Son. Biblically, the Spirit is of feminine character,
as is seen not only by the feminine gender of the Hebrew ruah, but by
the use of the female imagery of the mother bird hovering or brooding to bring
forth life, imagery associated with the Spirit of God in creation (Gen 1:2) and
at the baptism of Jesus (Lk 3:22) among other places. Semitic and Syrian early
Christians continued to construe the Spirit as feminine, attributing to the
Spirit the motherly character which certain parts of the Hebrew Scriptures had
already found in God.(36) The Holy Spirit is the maternal aspect of God, who
brings about the incarnation of Christ, new members of the Body of Christ in
the waters of baptism, and the body of Christ through the epiclesis of the
Eucharist. The custom of thinking of the Holy Spirit as feminine waned in the
West along with the habit of thinking very extensively about the Holy Spirit at
all. As Heribert Mühlen observes, when most of us say “God,” the
Holy Spirit never comes immediately to mind; rather, the Spirit seems like an
edifying appendage to the doctrine of God.(37) Even Thomas Aquinas had
difficulty with this, saying that the Holy Spirit suffers from a poverty of
terminology, so that the relation of Spirit to Father and Son must remain in
some way unnamed.(38) It is pointed out today that one source of Aquinas’
problem was the metaphysical concepts of person and being with which he was
operating. Being of patriarchal origin and predicating less than full
personhood of women, they could not bring the personality of the Holy Spirit,
which is feminine, fully to expression.(39)
Theologians such as Congar in his trilogy on the Holy Spirit and Moltmann in
his works on the Trinity are now trying to retrieve the full Trinitarian
tradition while overcoming its inherent patriarchy by emphasizing the Holy
Spirit as the feminine principle of the Godhead. Congar argues that a
pretrinitarian monotheism and/or a Christomonism, with its forgetfulness of the
Holy Spirit, always leads to patriarchy and male domination; rediscovering the
Holy Spirit as maternal gift and love performs the double task of rebalancing
the doctrine of God and promoting the value of women.(40) Moltmann connects
monotheism with patriarchy, and pantheism with matriarchy, arguing that only
panentheism with a corresponding Trinitarianism (including the feminine Holy
Spirit) can lead to true community of women and men without privilege or
subjection.(41)
There
is a sense in which this approach can be helpful, especially for those whose
thought tends to begin within the dogmatic or liturgical traditions. Indeed,
when the full range of the theology of the Spirit is brought to bear, the
effect can be quite powerful. The Spirit is equal to Father and Son. She goes
forth so that the hidden Pantocrator can be made known:
In
the divine ecomony it is not the feminine person who remains hidden and at
home. She is God in the world, moving, stirring up, revealing, interceding. It
is she who calls out, sanctifies, and animates the church. Hers is the water of
the one baptism. The debt of sin is wiped away by her. She is the life-giver
who raises men [sic] from the dead with the life of the coming age. Jesus
himself left the earth so that she, the intercessor, might come.(42)
This
amounts to a revaluation of the feminine both in God and in humanity.
But
it is not enough. The Spirit may be the feminine aspect of the divine, but the
endemic difficulty of Spirit theology insures that she remains rather unclear
and invisible. A deeper theology of the Holy Spirit, notes Walter Kasper in
another connection, stands before the diffculty that unlike the Father and Son,
the Holy Spirit is “faceless.”(430 While the Son has appeared in
human form and while we can at least make an image of the Father, the Spirit is
not graphic and remains the most mysterious of the three divine persons. For
all practical purposes, we end up with two males and an amorphous third.
Furthermore, the overarching framework of this approach remains androcentric,
with the male principle still dominant and sovereign. The Spirit even as God
remains the “third” person, easily subordinated to the other two,
since she proceeds from them and is sent by them to mediate their presence and
bring to completion what they have initiated. The extent to which this can go
can be seen in Franz Mayr’s attempt to understand the Holy Spirit as
mother on the analogy of family relationships: if we liberate motherhood from a
naturalistic concept and see it in its existential-social reality, then we can
indeed see how the mother comes from the father and son, that is, how she
receives her existential stamp and identity from them within the family.(44)
While intending to rehabilitate the feminine, Mayr has again accomplished its
subordination in unequal relationships.
The
problem of stereotyping discussed before also plagues this approach. More often
than not, those who use it associate the feminine with unconscious dreams and
fantasies (Bachiega), or with nature, instinct, and bodiliness (Schrey), or
with prime matter (Mayr), all of which is then said to be both endemic to God
and experienceable as divine through the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.(45) The
equation is set up: male is to female as transcendence is to immanence, with
the feminine Spirit made the bearer of the experience of God’s inferiority
to us. This stereotyping appears even in the creative attempt of process
theologian John B. Cobb to come to terms with the charge of male idolatry in
worship and thought. While acknowledging that “currently the received
polarity of feminine and masculine is under consideration,”(46) he goes on
to identify the Logos, the masculine aspect of God, with order, novelty,
demand, agency, transformation; and the kingdom, or the feminine aspect of God
equivalent to the Holy Spirit, with receptivity, empathy, suffering,
preservation. The lines are drawn: the Logos provides ever-new initial aims and
lures us always forward, while the feminine aspect of God responds tenderly to
our failures and successes, assures us that whatever happens we are loved, and
achieves in her whole life a harmonious wholeness of all that is. Besides the
very real question of whether nature or culture shapes this description of
roles, their effect on the perception of the being and function of real women
is deleterious and restrictive. Nurturing and tenderness simply do not exhaust
the capacities of women, nor do bodiliness and instinct define women’s
nature, nor is creative transformative agency beyond the scope of women’s
power. Ruether’s question returns again in force, as to whether the very
concept of the “feminine” which supposedly defines the essence of
real women is not a patriarchal creation, useful insofar as it relegates women
to the realm of the private and the role of succoring the male. Understanding
the Holy Spirit as the bearer of the feminine is no final solution. Even at its
best, it does not exhaust the possibilities for discovering the fulness of God
or humanity.
The Image of God Male and Female
While
both the “traits” and the “dimension” approach are
inadequate for the reinterpretation of the doctrine of God in the light of
women’s dignity and freedom, since in both an androcentric focus remains
dominant, a third approach images God equivalently as male and female. This
approach shares with the other two the fundamental assumption that language
about God as personal has a special appropriateness. Behaviorism
notwithstanding, human persons are the most mysterious and attractive reality
that we experience, and the highest order of being on this earth according to
the metaphysical tradition. God is not a person as anyone else we know, but the
language of person evokes in a unique way the mysteriousness,
nonmanipulability, and freedom of action associated with God.
Predicating personality of God, however, immediately involves us in the
question of gender, for all the persons we know are either male or female. God
is properly understood as neither male nor female. But insofar as God created
both male and female in the divine image and is therefore the source of the
perfection of both, God can be represented equally well by images of either.
Both are needed for a less inadequate imaging of God, in whose image the human
race is created. This “clue”(47) for speaking of God in the image of
male and female has the advantage of making clear at the outset that women
enjoy the dignity of being made in God’s image and are therefore capable
as women of representing God. Simultaneously, it relativizes undue emphasis on
any one image, since pressing the fulness of imagery shows the partiality of
images of one sex alone. The incomprehensible mystery of God is brought to
light and deepened in our consciousness through the imaging of God male and
female, beyond any person we know.(48)
It
has already been noted how the biblical, early Christian theological, and
mystical traditions, though drawing a predominance of God imagery from male
reality, also use female images of God without embarrassment or explanation.
These images and personifications are not considered feminine aspects or
features of the divine, to be interpreted in dualistic tension with masculine
dimensions or traits, but representations of the fulness of God in creating and
redeeming. Since it brings us into a world of thought different from our
customary one, reference to ancient religions that worshiped gods and goddesses
may be helpful in clarifying this thrust of the third approach (although in no
way is it being suggested that monotheism be compromised). In those religions,
as evidenced in their psalms and prayers, the gods and goddesses were not
stereotyped according to the later idea of masculine and feminine, but each
could represent the fulness of divine attributes and activity. In them
“gender division is not yet the primary metaphor for imaging the
dialectics of human existence,”(49) nor is the idea of “gender
complementarity” present in the ancient myths. Rather, male and female are
equivalent images of the divine. A goddess such as Ishtar, e.g., is addressed
as the expression of divine power and sovereignty in female form, a deity who
performs the divine works of dividing heaven from earth, setting captives free,
waging war, establishing peace, administering justice, exercising judgment, and
enlightening human beings with the truth—as well as presiding over birth,
healing the sick, and nurturing the little ones.(50) When a god (e.g., Horus)
is addressed, he has similar functions. Both male and female are powerful in
the private and public spheres.
The
point for our interest is that the goddess is not the expression of the
feminine dimension of the divine, but the expression of the fulness of divine
power and care shown in a female image. A case can be made for a similar
implicit understanding present in the Christian Gospels in the parallel
parables of the shepherd looking for the sheep and the woman searching for the
lost coin (Lk 15:4-7, 8-10). In both stories God vigorously seeks what is lost
and rejoices when it is found. Neither story discloses anything about God that
the other hides. Using traditional men’s and women’s work, both
parables orient us to God’s redeeming action in images that are
equivalently male and female. The woman and the coin image, while not portrayed
in Christian art as frequently as the shepherd, is essentially as legitimate a
reference to God as is the latter. Conversely, God imaged this way cannot be
used to validate role stereotyping, wherein the major redeeming work in the
world is done by men to the exclusion of women.
The
understanding of the power of equivalent images for God is applicable as well
to the specifcally Christian doctrine of the Trinity. While this doctrine took
shape under the hegemony of a patriarchal understanding of God and humanity,
exclusively male imaging is not essential for understanding the
inner-Trinitarian relations or the missions ad extra. Starting with Paul
Tillich, a number of theologians have combed the tradition for elements usable
in re-envisioning not only the Holy Spirit but all three “persons” in
God in nonmasculine ways.(51) The unoriginate creator and continuing source of
life can be named Mother as well as Father; neither image is sufficient but
either is appropriate. As Moltmann struggles to express it, God is both
“motherly Father” and “fatherly Mother.”(52) Using both
renders the unoriginate Creator God more intelligible in a culture which no
longer sees the sole active principle in human generation as male, and more
believable in a time which begins to recognize how the Father God symbol has
been used to reinforce patriarchy and male dominance to the distortion of both
male and female humanity. The first person generates the second,
self-expressing the fulness of divine life in the eternal Word. The Father-Son
imagery traditionally used to express this relation within God can be shifted
to Mother-Daughter without proportionally changing the relation. Furthermore,
an understanding of how the Hebraic female Sophia theology shaped and
penetrated the Logos doctrine brings to light the fluidity of gender symbolism
already present in expressions of the second person. The undoubted human
maleness of Jesus, without whom there would be no Christian doctrine of the
Trinity, is not an obstacle to this reenvisionment unless it is interpreted
naively as revelatory of the maleness of God. Wisdom Christologies attest to
Jesus Christ as child of Sophia-God, sent to gather the lost and broken under
her merciful wings, and even as Sophia herself. In a paradoxical way, the union
of female divine Wisdom and male humanity in Jesus can appear as a most
intimate marriage of all being. Identifying the Wisdom elements in Christology
leads in fact to a healthy blend of male and female imagery that empowers
everyone and works to signify the self-expression of the one redeeming God who
is neither male nor female.
As
for the bond of mutual love between the first and second persons, the Holy
Spirit is quite susceptible to female imaging, as has already been shown. The
point is, all “three persons” of the Trinity transcend categories of
male and female; yet all can be spoken of in human metaphors drawn from either.
The cautions to be sounded in using female imagery of the triune God are the
same as for using male imagery: not to lose sight of the unity of God,
forgetting that the language of “three” is analogical and not meant
in a mathematical sense; not to utilize restrictive stereotypes; not to forget
the radical limitations of any imagery of God, female ones to be sure, but also
Father and Son, Word or Wisdom, or memory, understanding, and will.
Beyond particular images for each of the divine persons, the Trinity in a
formal way gives a model of relationship marked by total equality and
reciprocity rather than dominance and subordination. All that the first person
is is communicated to the second; all that the second person receives is
returned to the first; and the life of mutuality which they share is the third
person, powerful Spirit of love. All uniquely give, all uniquely receive, all
hold together a shared life. Creator, Word, and Spirit are simply mutually one.
This is the ideal of human interrelationship, made more effective by the use of
images taken from both genders.
Was
John Paul I a heretic when he addressed God as our Father and Mother? After a
review of the biblical and theological tradition, one thinker answered
“no” to that question.(53) While the Pope’s use of both genders
was “daring,” God goes beyond all images and can be named in concepts
taken from male or female reality. The third approach examined here proceeds
with the insight that only if God is so named, only if the full reality of
woman as well as man enters into the conceptualization of God, can the
idolatrous fixation on one image be broken and the truth of the mystery of God,
in tandem with the liberation of human beings in all of our mystery, emerge for
our time.
Conclusion
It is
beyond dispute that we have no completely adequate name for God. Nevertheless,
at first hearing, inclusive naming of God in the image of male and female may
seem strange. Exclusively male naming of God has predominated in the tradition
and is deeply rooted, so that the shift of usage being envisioned here is
indeed “seismic” in quality.(54) Given the new situation in which we
find ourselves, however, this issue is ignored at peril of losing the relevance
and, even more, the long-range credibility of the faith. There is a
psychological inevitability of at least a degree of anthropomorphism in our
idea of God. Even the sharpest, most selfcritical mind can avoid only with
difficulty (and then not always) the inclination to invest God with qualities
of human personal reality with which one is well acquainted, among which gender
is essential. God, however, is utterly transcendent, neither male nor female,
yet creator of both in the divine image. Focusing on one to the exclusion of
the other and clinging to that image has the religious effect of making God
less God, at once restrictively expressed and too well known.
Since
the concept of God defines and orients a whole way of life and understanding,
sustaining a moral universe, the exclusive masculinity presumed in the
traditional doctrine of God has also had profound consequences beyond the idea
of God.(55) It has led to a distortion in Christian anthropology whereby men
have theorized that the fulness of the divine image resides only or primarily
in themselves, while women are derivatively or secondarily made in the image
and likeness of God and thus subordinate. It has correspondingly sustained and
legitimated institutional structures and personal interrelationships which are
patriarchal in form, in which men alone by virtue of their maleness as
representative of God may serve in positions of leadership and authority.
Insofar as the systematic denigration of the human dignity of any one group of
persons by any other group is considered to be morally reprehensible, in this
inherited male-oriented concept of God intrinsically linked with such theory
and practice there is at the very least a profound ambiguity.(56)
Image-breaking is a part of religious traditions, because focusing on a fixed
image not only compromises the transcendence of God, but petrifies and
stultifies human beings into the likeness of the image worshiped, inhibiting
growth by preventing further searching for knowledge of God. Calling into
question the exclusively male idea of God does not spell the end of male
imagery used for God; what has been destroyed as an idol can return as an icon,
evoking the presence of God. Using female imagery for God does not introduce a
distraction from belief in the one God of the Judeo-Christian tradition; the
use of startling metaphors opens up the possibility of new religious experience
of the one Holy Mystery. The proposal to name God in the image of male and
female holds the promise of renewing the tradition in line with one of its own
best insights into the mystery of God, at the same time that it allies itself
with emerging understanding of the human dignity of women. Our speech about God
becomes more truly analogical at the same time that we slip the bonds of the
stereotyping and subordination of persons. To paraphrase a Rahnerian axiom used
with great beneficial effect in Christology,(57) the truth of the mystery of
God and the liberation of human beings grow in direct and not inverse
proportion.
Notes
1.
See developments of the theme of divine incomprehensibility in Victor White,
God the Unknown (New York: Harper, 1956); Charles Bent, Interpreting
the Doctrine of God(New York: Paulist, 1968); Gordon Kaufman, God the
Problem (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1972), esp. «God as
Symbol» 82-115.
2.
Hans Urs van Balthasar, “The Unknown God," The von Balthasar Reader,
ed. M. Kehl and W. Löser (New York: Crossroad, 1982) 184. Balthasar
queries where one can find a work of dogmatics which gives the
incomprehensibility of God significant expression; theological textbooks have
forgotten it; even Barth does not hold on to it to the end. Research for this
study has convinced me that he is right; material on incomprehensibility is not
plentiful. For the relation of God’s incomprehensibility to revelation,
see also William Hill, Knowing the Unknown God (New York: Philosophical
Library, 1971) ii; Leo Scheffczyk, "God," Sacramentum mundi 2 (New York:
Herder & Herder, 1968) 382-87.
3.
See development of this thesis with focus on Augustine and Aquinas by Franz
Mayr, “Patriarchalisches Gottesverständnis?” Theologische
Quartalschrift 152 (1972) 224-55, and “Trinitätatheologie und
theologische Anthropologie,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche
68 (1971) 427-77; also Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Misogynism and
Virginal Feminism,” Religion and Sexism, ed. R. Ruether (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1974) 150-83.
4.
John B. Cobb, “God and Feminism,” Talking about God, ed. J. B.
Cobb and David Tracy (New York: Seabury, 1983) 79.
5.
For expatiations on the charge of idolatry, from which the following section
draws, see Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist
Theology (Boston: Beacon, 1983) 22-27; also her “The Female Nature of
God,” God as Father? (Concilium 143; New York: Seabury, 1981) 66;
Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father (Boston: Beacon, 1973); Elisabeth
Schüssler Fiorenza, “Feminist Spirituality, Christian Identity, and
Catholic vision,” Womanspirit Rising, ed. C. Christ and J. Plaskow
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979) 139; Rita Gross, “Female God
Language in a Jewish Context,” ibid. 169-70; Anne Carr, “Is a
Christian Feminist Theology Possible?” TS 43 (1982) 296; Gail
Ramshaw Schmidt, “De divinis nominibus: The Gender of God," Worship
56 (1982) 117-31.
6.
Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk 23.
7.
Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Toward a Theology of the History of Religions,”
Basic Questions in Theology 2 (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971) 65-118;
also his “Anthropology and the
Question of God,” The Idea of God and Human Freedom (Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1973) 94-98; and his Theology and the Phüosophy of Science
(Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976) 301-26.
8.
All biblical quotations are from the Revised Standard Version (New York: Oxford
University, 1965).
9.
Gerhard van Rad, Old Testament Theology 1 (New York: Harper & Row,
1962) 203-19; Christian Link, “Das Bilderverbot als Kriterium
theologischen Redens van Gott,” Zeitschriftfür Theologie und
Kirche 74 (1977) 58-85.
10.
Balthasar, “Unknown God” 186. See treatment of the same theme in John
Courtney Murray, The Problem of God (New Haven: Yale University, 1964)
5-16.
11.
Recent research has been surfacing these overlooked scriptural and
extrabiblical female images of God; see esp. Phyllis Trible, God and the
Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978); Leonard Swidler,
Biblical Affirmations of Women (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1979);
Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, The Divine Feminine: Biblical Imagery of God as
Female (New York: Crossroad, 1983); Elaine Pagels, “What Became of God
the Mother?” Womanspirit Rising 107-119. The national
Anglican/Roman Catholic Dialogue in the U.S. has significantly incorporated
some of this imagery in its report “Images of God: Reflections on
Christian Anthropology,” Origins 13 (1984) 505-12.
12.
For NT Wisdom Christology, see James Dunn, Christology in the Making
(Philadelphia: Westminster, 1980) 163-212; R. Wilken, ed., Aspects of
Wisdom in Judaism and Early Christianity (Notre Dame: University of Notre
Dame, 1975); M. J. Suggs, Wisdom, Christology and Law in Matthew’s
Gospel (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1975). For the relation
between the Sophia-God of Jesus and the discipleship of women, see Elisabeth
Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological
Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983) 92-97. For
study of the transition from the feminine Sophia to the masculine Logos in
Philo and the NT, see Joan Chamberlain Engelsman, The Feminine Dimension of
the Divine (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1979) 74-120. Engelsman’s
thesis that the feminine was subordinated in this move is disputed by Patricia
Wilson Kastner, Faith, Feminism and the Christ (Philadelphia: Fortress,
1983) 92-97. The latter contends that the sophiology behind and within Logos
Christology introduces female elements into the portrayal of God active in the
world through Christ and overcomes sexism by combining characteristics usually
attributed to male and female into the single notion of creativity.
13.Cf. X. Le Bachelet, “Dieu IV: Sa nature d’après les
Pères,” DTC 4/1 (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1939) 1023-1151.
For specific contribution of the East, see Seely Beggiani, Early Syriac
Theology (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1983) 1-11.
14.
Justin, “The Second Apology,” The Ante-Nicene Fathers 1 (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1981) 190.
15.
Critique by Wolfhart Pannenberg, “The Appropriation of the Philosophical
Concept of God as a Dogmatic Problem of Early Christian Theology,”
Basic Questions in Theology 2, 156.
16.
Cf Stanislaus Grabowski, The All-Present God: A Study in St. Augustine
(St. Louis: Herder, 1953); Michael Schmaus, Dogma 2: God and
Creation (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1969) 24-27.
17.
Cf. Hilary Armstrong, “Negative Theology,” Downside Reuiew 95
(1977) 176-89.
18. A
H. P. Owen, The Christian Knowledge of God (London: Athlone, 1969) 8-9.
19.
Karl Elisabeth Borresen, “L’Usage patristique de métaphores
féminines dans le discours sur Dieu,” Revue théologique
de Louvain 13 (1982) 205-20, from which the following examples are taken.
Much work remains to be done in this area.
20.
DS (32nd ed.) no. 806.
21.
Scheffczyk, “God” 382, skips from Augustine to Nicholas of Cusa in
his description of apophatic theology, omitting Aquinas altogether. By conrast,
see Karl Rahner, “An Investigation of the Incomprehensibility of God in
St. Thomas Aquinas,” Theological Investigations 16 (New York:
Seabury, 1979) 244-54.
22.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae 1 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964) Preface
to q. 3. See esp. qq. 12 and 13, on the knowing and naming of God.
23.
This is a disputed point among Thomistic interpreters; the present position
reflects the position of Hill, Knowing the Unknown God 111-44. See also
David Burrell, Analogy and Philosophical Language (New Haven: Yale
University, 1975); Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Analogy and Doxology,”
Basic Questions in Theology 1, 211-38; David Tracy, The Analogical
Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York:
Crossroad, 1981) chaps. 5, 9, 10, for other interpretations.
24.
Otto Pesch, The God Question in Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972) 9.
25.
Thomas Aquinas, De divinis nominibus 1, 2.
26
Thomas Aquinas, In Boeth. de trio. 1, 2, ad 1.
27.
Thomas Aquinas, De potentia 7, 5, ad 14.
28.
Anselm: But you too, good Jesus, are you not also a mother? Is not he a mother
who like a hen gathers his chicks beneath his wings? Truly, Lord, you are a
mother too. . .,” in Prayer to St. Paul, quoted in Julian of
Norwich, Showings, ed. E. Colledge and J. Walsh (New York: Paulist,
1978) 87.
29.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles 4, 11, 19. Yves Congar in Je
crois en L’Esprit saint (Paris: Cerf, 1980) comments in the third
volume (206) that this is an argument that modern science has put to
rest.
30.
W.A. Visser ’t Hooft, The Fatherhood of God in an Age of Emancipation
(Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982) 133.
31.
List of characteristics of the feminine offered by Daniel O’Hanlon,
“The Future of Theism,” Catholic Theological Society of America
Proceedings 38 (1983) 8.
32.
Visser ’t Hooft, Fatherhead of God 133; Congar, Je crois 3,
207; O’Hanlon, “Future of Theism” 7-8; Hans Küng, Does
God Exist? (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980) 673.
33.
E.g., Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk 69, 128-32; Schmidt, «De
divinis nominibus» 125; Børresen, “L’Usage
patristique” 219.
34.
Küng, Does God Exist? 673.
35.
Ruether, “The Female Nature of God” 65. Contemporary use of the
concept of the feminine is usually related to the categories codified by Carl
Jung; cf. Naomi Goldenberg, “A Feminist Critique of Jung,” Signs,
Winter 1976, 443-49, and her unpublished dissertation at Yale University,
1976, Important Directions for a Feminist Critique of Religion in the Worhs
of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.
36.
Cf Robert Murray, “The Holy Spirit as Mother,” Symbols of Church
and Kingdom (London: Cambridge University, 1975) 312-20; P. A. De Boer,
Fatherhood and Motherhood in Israelite and Judean Piety (Leiden: Brill,
1974).
37.
Heribert Mühlen, “The Person of the Holy Spirit,” The Holy
Spirit and Power, ed. Kilian McDonnell (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday,
1975)12.
38.
Aquinas, Summa theologiae 1, q. 37, a. 1.
39.
Mayr, “Trinitätatheologie” 471.
40.
Congar, Je crois 3, 215-17.
41.
Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom (San Francisco: Harper
& Row, 1981) 57, 164-65.
42.
Jay G. Williams, “Yahweh, Women and the Trinity,” Theology Today
32 (1975) 240.
43.
Walter Kasper, Der Gott Jesu Christi (Mainz: Grünewald, 1982) 246,
273-74. Kasper does not deal with the Holy Spirit as feminine or any other
aspect of our question in this book.
44.
Mayr, “Trinitätstheologie” 474. This is reminiscent of Basil of
Caesarea, who at one point held that the Holy Spirit was equal in nature but
not in rank or dignity with the Father and the Son (Contra Eunomium 3, 2
[PG 29, 657c]). While he later changed his position, the whole incident is
illustrative of the tendency to subordination connected with the Holy Spirit.
45.
Mario Bachiega, Dio Padre o Dea Madre? (Florence, 1976) 125; H. H.
Schrey, “Ist Gott ein Mann?” Theologische Rundschau 44 (1979)
233; Mayr, “Trinitätstheologie” 469.
46.
John B. Cobb, “The Trinity and Sexist Language,” Christ in a
Pluralistic Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975) 264. George Tavard sets
up the same polarity in Woman in Christian Tradition (Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame, 1973) 195-99, but then questions it on the basis of
the difficulties it presents.
47.
Phyllis Trible’s expression, used throughout God and the Rhetoric of
Sexuality.
48.
Herbert Richardson recounts the following personal recollection. As a child he
was taught to say as a bedtime prayer “Father-Mother God, loving me, guard
me while I sleep, guide my little feet up to thee.” It was thereby borne
in upon his young mind that if God is both Father and Mother, God is different
from any one thing he experienced around him ( Women and Religion, ed.
E. Clark and H. Richardson [New York: Harper & Itow, 1977] 164-65).
49.
Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk 52.
50.
In Frederick Grant, Hellenistic Religions: The Age of Syncretism (New
York: Liberal Arts, 1953) 131-33.
51.
See Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago,
1963) 293-94; Margaret Farley, “Sources of Inequality in Christian
Thought,” Journal of Religion56 (1976) 173-74, and “New
Patterns of Relationship,” TS 36 (1975) 640-42; Lefty Russell,
Human Liberation in a Feminist Perspective (Philadelphia: Westminster,
1974) 100-103; Wilson Kastner, “Faith” 92-97, 133-34; Moltmann,
The Trinity and the Kingdom 57, 164-65.
52.
Moltmann, ibid. 164. Jesus’ use of Abba for God does not bind
Christians to exclusive use of the word “Father” for God, insofar as
Jesus envisioned God in other ways as well (cf. the parables); insofar as the
English word “Father” is questionable as an accurate tranelation of
Abba (cf. Schmidt, “De divinis nominibus” 122, and H. Paul
Santmire, “Retranslating ‘Our Father’: The Urgency and the
Possibility,” Dialog 16 [1977] 102, 104); and insofar as it is
debatable whether fatherhood or the feminine basileia (reign of God) is
the key image co-ordinating all others in Jesus’ speech (Philip Harner,
Understanding the Lord’s Prayer [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975] vs.
Robert Hammerton-Kelly, God the Father: Theology and Patriarchy in the
Teaching of Jesus [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979]).
53.
Hans Dietachy, “God is Father and Mother,” Theology Digest 30
(1982) 132-33, from Reformatio 30 (1981) 425-32.
54.
Daniel Maguire, “The Feminization of God and Ethics,” Annual of
the Society of Christian Ethics 1982, 3; also Cobb, Talking about God
79-80.
55.
Functions of the concept of God are discussed in Kaufman, God the Problem
89-113, 169; Farley, “Sources of Inequality” 164-68; Kari
Elisabeth Børresen, “The Imago Dei: Two Historical Contexts,”
Mid-Stream 21 (1982) 359-63; Juan Luis Segundo, Our Idea of God
(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1974) 7-10.
56.
Kaufman, in God the Problem 112, n. 31, deals with the relation of the
image of God to militarism; his insights apply equally well to sexism.
57.
Rahner’s original principle, expressed in a variety of synonymous ways,
holds that nearness to God and genuine human autonomy grow in direct and not in
inverse proportion; cf. “Jesus Christ,” Sacramentum mundi 3
(New York: Herder & Herder, 1968) 206.
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