A theological case for God-She
Johnson, Elizabeth A.
A THEOLOGICAL CASE ELIZABETH A. JOHNSON FOR GOD-SHE EXPANDING THE TREASURY OF...
...likely promote among its adherents aggressive group behavBut our speech about God is less inadequate the more we in- ior...
...Theologically the capaci- hermeneutics and be used by a community struggling to be a ty of women and men to be images of Christ is identical...
...in this argument...
...Words about God, therefore, the church...
...God...
...With implicit stress on solitariness, superiority, less, with no proper name...
...Their issue, in a culture awash with Greek philosophical ism with its limits on their self-worth and self-identity, women notions, was whether Jesus Christ was truly divine or simply are affirming their own identity, not as nonpersons or half pera creature subordinate to God the Father...
...of the living God and to the dignity of women made in her image...
...These to the conversion experience of vast numbers of include God's hiddenness or incomprehensibiliwomen in our day and the theological insight that ty...
...A woman searching for erfully, and necessarily from women's encounter with divine her lost coin, a shepherd looking for his lost sheep, a bakerpresence in the depths of their own blessed selves...
...Speech that was originally pluriform, subtle, and subversive the one body of Christ and transformed into icons of Christ gets pressed into an exclusive, literal, and patriarchal mold...
...Barnum is long to his final rest...
...It is a mistake akin to heresy does not do justice to Jesus' own language nor to his underto locate the imago Christi in sexual similarity to the human standing of God...
...Such an argubirth as persons, as Thou's, in reciprocal relation with the Eternal ment sets its sights too narrowly...
...Saying this, the human spir- final step in the case for female symbols of it passes from light into darkness and thence into brighter dark- God comes when we consider the existenness, intuiting an unspeakably rich and vivifying reality while tial and practical effects of God language on God, nonetheless, remains hidden...
...For Christian theoloages and abstract concepts...
...good in the limited way creatures are good...
...The symabout the hidden God, and absolutizing particular expressions...
...mystery...
...Jesus' language about God, Thou...
...The persistent use of the term "God" clouds over the personal or transpersonal character of divine mystery...
...like a midwife she works deftly with those in pain to bring about In sum, exclusive use of male God language is both religiously the new creation (Ps...
...The lives of all the baptized are so transformed a text, a culture, and a tradition shaped by sexism, they cannot into Christ's image (2 Cor...
...God as Woman Wisdom creating, ordering, and understood is not God...
...Writing of Wisdom Augustine noted, results in a community bent out of shape by the relations of pa- "But she was sent in one way that she might be with human 12: 29 January 1993 Commonweal beings [as Spirit...
...and "subliminal enticement" in ads...
...It the Spirit, God's moving presence and activity in the world, occasions an experience of God as beneficent toward the fe- often presented in female metaphors...
...In a special place is the symbol of worth is a new event in the religious history of humankind...
...History Begins who cannot become at Sumer, Samuel Noah Kramer's great 1956 book, declares...
...Aquinas deuberant, life-giving dignity and power of women, applied ana- fended the use of extra-biblical language on grounds of hiskoyoS Theology...The Word of God for the World...
...God is good in an excellent way as source of all good...
...Demonstrating a profound respect for the lematic practice...
...Mason" for lawyers and Mr...
...This imagery helps it inwe can make about God are not such that our minds may rest terpret and understand life, experience, the world...
...the triune mystery opens to encompass the whole broken world, Not only does the use of this female symbol remove the male awakening in those who are willing the experience of her comemphasis in Christology that so quickly turns to androcentrism, passion and freedom...
...Diverse images of God, including ing manner of life and the paradox of his dying and rising through female ones, are not only plausible...
...Struggling to reject sexGod...
...Furthermore, the spe- f the experience of God in our day is summoning up cific male images used reflect a patriarchal arrangement of the female symbols...
...the highest good, the profoundest truth, the most appealing beauThis being so, we must use many words to speak of God...
...and God's isolated, privileged male who is set off from and above others...
...ended history of faith seeking understanding that is not yet fin- Say what...
...Women are metaphors for divine mystery, in addition to the good and lovequally created in the image and likeness of God, redeemed by ing things that fathers do...
...Finally, it suggests an understanding of ficulty does not lie in the fact that male metaphors are used...
...Great images of the with a feminist hermeneutic, such images provide a treasure divine, Martin Buber observed, come into being not simply as trove of new yet ancient ways to speak about God...
...January 28, 1993 Previous recipients of the Marianist Award: John Tracy Ellis (1986) Sidney Callahan (1990) Rosemary Haughton (1987) John T. Noonan Jr...
...They are, furthermore, not only ing our language about God to "father" alone is readily apparimago Dei but also imago Christi, reborn through baptism into ent...
...an It...
...since it is by no TRULY DISHONEST means profane, for it does not lead us astray from the sense of AND JOE SIX-PACK KNOWS IT Scripture...
...1991) Timothy O'Meara (1988) Louis Dupre (1992) Walter J. Ong, S.J...
...It hampers not only the sense of personal presence but also the insights that might occur were female symbols of God allowed to guide our thought...
...Human beings simply cannot understand God...
...The present ferment about imag- awards for the best radio and television commering, naming, and conceptualizing God in female symbols is a cials for that year: they're called the "Clio"Awards...
...In this essay I would like to make a theological ous debate over the right way to speak about case for such language and argue that its development is of the the divine mystery...
...Women's woman kneading dough, a traveling businessman, the wind that reality forms part of the treasury of created excellences that can blows where it wills, the birth experience that delivers persons be used to refer to God...
...and spirit is total...
...Writing...
...George Orwell observed that all art is propbility of conveying what is most holy, loving, merciful, just, aganda, though all propaganda is not necessarily art...
...In a religious sense, it is the women's movement in civil society and the church has spot- experience of conversion of heart and mind...
...by John Shea...
...God is moving back to the God is expanding, even to the point of addressing divine myscenter of attention, accompanied by vigor- tery as "she...
...In God...
...God knitting, baking, washing up, searching for Augustine says, "If you have understood, then what you have her money...
...We've got myths like "Perry mystery toward which we make limited but necessary gestures...
...None of these alone, or rior and extols the way he smashes his enemies to bits would even all taken together, exhausts the reality of divine mystery...
...The eternal friendship that is she herself might be a human being [as incarnate in Christ...
...While limited by its androcentric anthropology, this tradition nevertheless conIr he first step in the case for God-She has attended tains salutary insights that further our case...
...evidence is strong that writing itself developed as the most rudimentary sort of advertising...
...lighted the exclusion of women from public discourse and decision making, and their resulting absence from the formation of cultural and theological symbols...
...Finally, he exhorted his readers to value these new expressions: "Nor is such a kind of novelty to be shunned...
...51:7...
...First, it reduces the divine mys- you birth" (Deut...
...a host of other historical characteristics are revalued as good In our day interest in how to address and speak about God rather than deficient or evil...
...Using a physical metaphor, Paul rec- turally justifiable...
...Her book She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (Crossroad) is reviewed on page 17 in this issue...
...22:9-10...
...This situation is not entirely new...
...Furthermore, it fails to examine the deleterimale Jesus...
...17:8), and bears up the are not part of their privileged group...
...This theological case gains factors that open the door to inclusive speech...
...God-She can breathe new life into & Brackman, and sue for damages...
...They power and glory...
...When the Sumerians and their Mesopotamian pals began to depend on big intercity tradethat is, when they became recognizably like us-they took to shipping their goods in large clay caskets...
...bol of God functions...
...Smith Goes to Washington for pol s; But the living God and the vitality of the faith community re- but has anybody ever told a story about a (giggle and snort) quire that a more inclusive way of speaking about and to di- noble adman...
...scriptions of the divine nature and attributes have betrayed a To wit: the Spirit is virtually forgotten in the West, being facesimilar bias...
...ous effect that relying almost exclusively on the father symbol It consists rather in embodying Jesus' compassionate, liberat- has had in Christian history...
...Advertising, at least since the Industrial Revolution, ished...
...Furthermore, if our speech about God were limited sonal love...
...One remedy used by a number of contemporary scholars and liturgists is to speak about and address God simply as "God...
...its symbols to articulate its sense of life...
...Since it is women whose bodies bear, nourish, and deliver new persons Such symbols are but modest starting points for a into life and who, as society is traditionally structured, most more inclusive God-talk...
...of their Creator...
...When Scripture is read male and an ally of women's flourishing...
...While theology has consistently acknowledged that God is Spirit, and thus beyond gender identification, the church's daily vocabulary for preaching, worship, catechesis, and evangelization broadcasts a different message: God is male, or at least more like a man than a woman, and "he" is more fittingly addressed as male than as female...
...a projection of the imagination but as an awakening from the For some literal-minded believers, however, the Christian deep abyss of human existence in real encounter with divine community is not free to expand its language about God...
...I would argue, to the contrary, that women, created in the image and likeness of God, bear excellences that reflect the being "I'm a patriarch-1'm supposed to patronize you...
...The question engaged sons or "deficient males," but as genuine human persons...
...In doing so it challenges the literal-mindedness that This being so, the fact that the Christian community ordi- clings to exclusively male images, thus making us mindful of narily speaks about God in the image of a ruling man is a prob- the mystery of God...
...This language, in turn, molds the community's corporate Since God created the world by giving it a share in being, every identity and behavior as well as the individual self-undercreated perfection points to the One who is the source of it all...
...the classical model and the hierarchic patterns of relationship We can also speak about God as the Origin without an ori- that attend it...
...The into maturity of suppressed selves...
...In prayer and study they are rediscovering female imagery for God long hidden in Scripture and tradition...
...And the and wise...
...What is at stake in this question is not only the truth about God but the identity and mission of the Christian faith community itself...
...Using female imagery of God has many advantages...
...rebirth, moreover, brings in its wake a positive judgment about "Even the baker," wrote Gregory, "does not cease from dis- women's ways of being in the world...
...community characterized by relationships of mutuality and recMen as well as women are created in the image of God and iprocity rather than by the sacralized dominance of one group may serve as points of reference to God...
...For reformist feminist theology, which includes humanity of women, it calls into question their marginalizaa remarkable spectrum of diverse theological opinion, the dif- tion within patriarchy...
...The community of the discipleship of equals...
...This exclusion has had a decided effect on how we do-and do not-speak about God...
...This through the power of the Spirit...
...Numerous biblical texts offer potent female images of the No human concept, word, or image can ever circumscribe the living God: God as a woman in labor, giving birth, midwifing, divine reality...
...has been generally regarded as one of the more venal, ephemerNo language will ever adequately encompass the unquenchable al, and sleazebag professions...
...Rather than remove divine mystery, the love of God Introducing female symbols has the effect of purifying Godpoured out in Jesus Christ deepens it, moving it far beyond any talk of its direct, even if unintentional, masculine literalism...
...the play of analogy in speech about God...
...tery to a single, reified metaphor of a ruling male...
...gin, the Mother Creator of all that is seen and unseen...
...and if there are negative effects from olent, monarch...
...This not only theologians or bishops but just about everybody...
...All are positive language for God...
...and that a given culture's advertising is in fact its From The God Who Fell .~rom Heaven, © 193...
...The problem, how- over another...
...Female a flowing white beard calling into life a single younger man in symbols act as a corrective not only for sexist distortions of "his" own image...
...God is not She, but the tradition itself is better served by doing so...
...forgives offenses have the power to turn a faith community toThere is always the danger of forgetting the nature of speech ward care for one's neighbor and mutual forgiveness...
...if Scripture and tradition are open to world, casting God into the mold of an omnipotent, even if benev- this development...
...strength from a second step, consulting the basic resources of In essence, God's unlikeness to the finite world of matter Scripture...
...standing of its members...
...Scripture does not use the term "person" to refer to God, some or as Wisdom's self-reference, her personal Word, and her over- had objected that we should not use the term either...
...In a three- from the lives of women to our storehouse of the names of God...
...Christ, graced by the Spirit, called to mission in this world, and In the light of Jesus' own usage, the difficulty with restrictdestined for life in glory...
...Other women from identifying themselves as imago Dei, the image images deepen our understanding of the Spirit's work: like a of God, which profoundly affects their personal and religious woman she knits new life together in the womb (Ps...
...ever, is that these male images are used almost exclusively, which results in their being taken rather literally...
...religious language and symbols that bear the ancient responsi- Well, maybe not...
...Modeling the triune symbol on relations but it evokes Sophia's gracious goodness, her life-giving cre- of women's loving and speaking of it in Wisdom metaphors ativity, and her passion for justice, all key elements in under- offers a promising antidote to the exclusive male imagery of standing the person, ministry, death, and Resurrection of Jesus...
...In the late fourth century The starting point for this case is a discerning attention to Saint Gregory of Nyssa recorded how his contemporaries, high women's experience of themselves and of God, today occurand low, seriously engaged the question of how to speak about ring around the world in a new way...
...Developing these We can also speak of the Trinitarian mystery itself in female symbols today is a theologically central task for the whole church images...
...This means that images and concepts are taken standing of analogy...
...Once rei- Incorporating female patterns of speech puts all of these nofied, a symbol no longer points beyond itself to ultimate truth...
...As the history of theoften carry out the responsibility of raising children into ma- ology shows, there is no "timeless" speech about turity, language about God's maternity is easily assimilated...
...A THEOLOGICAL CASE ELIZABETH A. JOHNSON FOR GOD-SHE EXPANDING THE TREASURY OF METAPHOR remarkable thing is happening in contem- for God out of women's embodied experience...
...like a washerwoman she scrubs idolatrous and socially oppressive...
...Given the ingrained negative asis alive and well again thanks to a sizable company of bakers, sessment of women's humanity under patriarchy, women's exnamely, women who throughout history have borne responsi- perience of themselves in this way is a powerful event, the coming bility for lighting the cooking fires and feeding the world...
...On the other hand, images of a beneficent, loving God who clude a variety of created excellences as starting points...
...They must first pass through the fire of feminist male or female, christa or christus...
...Granted...
...It depicts the threefold character God since the perfections the word signifies, namely, being, of the one God hidden in the fullness of her power, eternally intelligence, etc., are in fact frequently attributed to God in uttering the distinct word of herself, and pouring forth her per- Scripture...
...The figure of Wisdom provides one of the with the experience of God, growth or diminishment in one con- earliest interpretive frameworks for Christology, Jesus even being ditioning the other, women's awakening to their own human called the Wisdom of God...
...This applies even to the language of 10: 29 January 1993 Commonweal revelation...
...tions back in play...
...Since even these symbols are embedded within whole Christ...
...That may have been true once...
...and the consesees this experience revealing new symbols and quent need for a plurality of ways to address God...
...1989) t am The University of Dayton Commonweal 29 January 1993: 11 triarchy...
...The mystery of mutually related, radically equal "per- In the Summa Theologiae Thomas Aquinas dealt with the sons" in a community of diversity can be named as unoriginate legitimacy of such historical development...
...We can also speak about Jesus-Sophia, Wisdom made flesh Given the lodestar quality of a community's image of God, it in a particular history...
...Images with the capacity to evoke the divine argue that Jesus himself spoke to and about God as father ('abba) are given in encounters that, at the same time, bring persons to and that he taught his disciples to do likewise...
...The assumption behind most Origin and Destiny of this stuff, after all, is that the vast majority of the nonacaof every concrescing actuality demic public doesn't know it's getting its chain pulled: that Joe whose Primordial Nature Six-Pack and his wife Marge are too benighted to get it that cannot change Lexus and Coca-Cola and Adidas are all creating metaphors and whose Consequent Nature that identify the consumption of their product with sex, power, cannot sit still, and joy, metaphors that translate elemental human needs into Unknowable Mystery artificially targeted wants...
...This lan- Aquinas argued, "person" can be used with confidence about guage is analogical and indirect...
...So what the priests-who were 0 also quartermasters-did was devise some simple, universal(that is the vocative ly-agreed-upon signs they could punch into the top of a casket of a cosmic disclosure) before the clay hardened: "Wheat," "Grapes," "Ox-Jerky," and Thou like that...
...Aquinas's arguments provide a useful framework for evaluating new patterns of speaking about God in female symbols...
...contemporary manifestation of the fact that, as in every epoch Clio is the classical muse of history, or, more propbefore us, we as a faith community are involved in an open- erly, of historiography...
...not using inclusive language and positive effects from This exclusivity and patriarchy are apparent in concrete im- so doing, how shall we proceed...
...Every fragment of beauty, goodness, and truth in the human A religion, for example, that speaks about its God as a warand natural world reflects the Creator...
...Far from being silly, superficial, or faddish, language far from being exclusive, is diverse and colorful, as can be seen about holy mystery in female symbol emerges gracefully, pow- in the imaginative parables he created...
...The way a in them, nor of such sort that we may suppose God does not faith community speaks about God indicates what it considers transcend them...
...fold movement of the mind they are affirmed, negated, and re- Not only is the theological tradition open to the use of Godaffirmed in a transcending movement: God is good...
...larval poetry, the clearest indication of the way it manipulates Reprinted by permission of The Thomas More Press...
...But, flowing Energy, moving in an encircling embrace...
...You're also a person...
...If you are considering study for ministry contact: Office of Vocations and Admissions, Princeton Theological Seminary, CN 821, Princeton, NJ 08542-0803 Telephone 1-800-622-6767 PR1NCEION THEOLOGICAL A seminary of the Presbyterian Church (USA) Commonweal 29 January 1993: 13 torical need: "The urgency of confuting heretics made it nec- MEDIA essary to find new words to express the ancient faith about God...
...highest religious significance...
...Now the problem is John S hea that once you seal a lot of clay caskets, you're apt to forget A Theologian at Prayer what's in any given one (ever put an important letter where you were sure it wouldn't get lost...
...ty...
...A faith community's imagery of point rather than enclose...
...Nor can any human construct express with any nursing, and carrying a child...
...As of her cubs...
...She shelters those in difficulty under inance of this one group over those who by sex, race, or class the protective shadow of her wings (Ps...
...We speak about the vivifying Spirit, forevInstead it becomes an idol, eclipsing the mystery of God...
...19:4...
...Actually, Clio is born as a label...
...Historically in the West, metaphysical de- God-talk in general, but for Trinitarian symbols in particular...
...Exosomatic Memory...
...Bingo...
...and she has been sent in another way that logically to the divine persons...
...Used inclusively, these symbols create a greater sense of the Speech about God, therefore, can never be literal but is al- mystery of God who is beyond all telling...
...uation of the faith community that uses them...
...It effectively points to the personal character of holy in effect, but expresses a community's bedrock convictions...
...to the very terms of Scripture, we could speak about God only What is modeled in these and other such symbols is the ex- in the original languages of Hebrew and Greek...
...the Christ is distorted through asand omnipotent power, they present the divine mystery as an similation to the framework of male dominance...
...Shouldn't the goddess contact, say MacKenzie vine mystery be developed...
...Recall Michelangelo's Sistine gy, speaking about God involves reflection on the one triune Chapel painting of God as an elderly, Caucasian gentleman with God made known in creation, incarnation, and grace...
...maternal relation to the world is eclipsed through concentraThe exclusive use of patriarchal images and concepts of God tion on the paternal metaphor: "You forgot the God who gave has a two-fold negative effect...
...they are necessary, and scripthe power of the Spirit...
...Being conformed to Christ is not a sex-specific gift...
...1:2...
...philosophical notion of incomprehensibility...
...It does damage to the truth away at bloody stains till the people be like new (Ps...
...identity...
...139:13...
...er drawing near and passing by...
...32:18...
...Commonweal 29 January 1993: 9 Insofar as the experience of self is profoundly intertwined saving the world...
...ognizes how this same Spirit shapes individuals into members Retrieving biblical female symbols of God requires another of the body of Christ who, together with their head, form the critical move...
...Female bodiliness, pascussing this, for if you ask the price of bread he will tell you sion, modes of thought, love of connectedness, friendship, and that the Father is greater and the Son subject to him...
...Since women are theomorphic and christomorphic, their humanity offers excellent metaphors for speaking about divine Ir urning to Catholic classical theology is a third step mystery, who remains always ever greater...
...but who knows us, not, I think, in the memory of any living soul...
...Being in whom So, just for the hell of it, let's forget for the nonce all the all beings participate, two-bit moralism sociologists and other popular culture-slumAbsolute Future ming academics who like to natter about the "hidden persuaders" who masters every present...
...In a serious way it papers over an assumption that needs explicit scrutiny, namely, that women's reality is fundamentally inadequate to represent God...
...It is neither abstract in content nor neutra THE UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON announces the presentation of the 1993 MARIANIST AWARD to MONIKA K. HELLWIG for her contribution to American Catholic scholarship...
...and add a wealth of created excellence from the created world and said about God indirectly...
...He noted that since Mother, her beloved Child, and the Spirit of their mutual love...
...ing, or maybe even the divine daughter ("In the beginning was the label...
...God as an angry mother bear robbed measure of adequacy the mystery of God who is ineffable...
...Not for nothing did Joyce make Leopold Bloom in Ulysses an advertising canvasser, 14: 29 January 1993 Commonweal...
...into new life, an employer offending workers by his generosChristian feminism expresses this by claiming the fullness ity: Jesus used these and many other human and cosmic of Christian identity for women as well as men...
...In light of the longevity and pervasiveness of sexism in culture Every spring, the nation's big advertising firms get and religion, it is imperative to find more adequate ways of ex- together and have a ceremony where they hand out pressing the ancient good news...
...The historical form of Christ may be Habakkuk...
...She is the giver of life who Second, images and concepts of God modeled exclusively on pervades the cosmos like a mother bird hovering over the priruling men (fathers, lords, kings) support and justify the dom- mordial chaos (Gen...
...Otherwise they will recognition of women's human dignity as imago Dei, imago remain supplementary, subordinate, and stereotyped symbols Christi, justifies the use of female symbols when speaking about within a traditionally dualistic male-female framework...
...Let's assume that Clio-history-is the muse of advertisplease help me get tenure...
...In particular they prevent enslaved on her great wings toward freedom (Ex...
...As Aquinas noted, "All affirmations God is its lodestar...
...Things are more Transcendent Third complicated: P.T...
...Today, women and men in a variety of settings are questioning our exclusive reliance on male metaphors for God...
...restore our underways analogical...
...Rather, symbols of God are cultural conher, as once literally in our own mother, we live and move and structs, entwined with the changing cultural sithave our being, as some of our poets now say (see Acts 17:28...
...Language about porary theology...
...in every duo...
...This has produced some positive results but is, in the end, unsatisfactory...
...Feminist artists, poets, composers, and theologians are fashioning new images and idioms ELIZABETH A. JOHNSON, C.S.J., teaches systematic theology at Fordham University...
...3:18) that traditionally they have be merely lifted and plunked down whole like the prophet been called other Christs...
Vol. 120 • January 1993 • No. 2
