“God is spirit,” announces Jesus by the well (John 4:24). This is one of only two definitional propositions about God in scripture. The other is “God is love.”

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This is a blog post in accordance and solidarity with Rachel Held Evens and her challenge for men to push back against John Pipers “masculine Christianity.” I am more than glad to participate.

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The above quote comes from philosophical theologian Catherine Keller. I think the point she makes about God’s nature is beyond important and should give us pause. In fact those two definitional propositions about God found in scripture are the only reasons I am not fully committed to apophatic theology. However, if we are going venture out and affirm that God is more than just Spirit and Love, I propose that we need to go a whole lot further, not stopping with our preconceived, inherited notions of the Divine.

Most folks know that the Bible is filled with images of God, or metaphors for the sacred. The biblical commandment to make no graven images of God obviously did not mean avoiding word-images. But it does mean that no one of these should be “carved in stone”–that is, made absolute.

However, it is so sad that in Christianity’s past, male images of God have no doubt been made absolute. God as “king,” “father,” and “lord” are common word images for the Christian God. Given the patriarchal society of Biblical times it is no small wonder that feminine imagery for God made it into scripture at all (wonder how that happened 😉 )

But it did, quite a bit of it–I’ll just touch on a few of my favorites:

• Perhaps one of my favorite little biblical insights is that the Hebrew word for spirit (ruach) is a feminine word. Many scholars conclude from this that the feminine ‘Person’ conjoined with the Father and Son must be the Mother.
• Maybe the most fully developed female Biblical image for God is found in the wisdom literature of ancient Israel. In the book of Proverbs–and also in two books of the Apocrypha–“the wisdom of God” is often personified as a woman. Scholars now commonly refer to this personification as “Sophia,” the Greek word for wisdom.
• This Wisdom/Sophia imagery continues in the New Testament. In the synoptic gospels, Jesus and John the Baptizer are called “children” of Sophia/Wisdom (Like 7:35 = Matt. 11:19); and Wisdom/Sophia send prophets in Luke 11:49.

To conclude, I would like to quote Marcus Borg (one of Piper’s favorites I bet!):

The realization that the Bible has female images for God (as well as non-gendered metaphors) matters for more than one reason.

• Male images for God are often associated with power, authority, and judgment. when used exclusively, they most often create an image of a punitive God. God must be appeased or else.
• Male images for God most often go with patriarchy–with male primacy and domination in society and the family.
• Male images of God most often have to do with domination over nature. Nature is often imaged as female (“mother earth”) and domination over women extends to a rapacious use of nature.

Like it or not, Borg’s points are poignant. Since any honest, thoughtful person would admit that it is nearly impossible to avoid being idolatrous when it comes to the Divine (we all do it, thus the pure necessity for apophatic/deconstructive theology), my advice to patriarchal thinkers like Piper and Driscol is to simply finish their half-cocked (pardon the pun), idolatrous paintings of God. As we can see, there is no room in the Bible for a purely “masculine Christianity” and certainly no room for it in the world.

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Painting above by jean-luc-moerman

Tags:John Pipermasculine christianityRachel Held Evenssacred feminine