Neutering God

In our Cutting Edge Theology class we are reading Marcus Borg's "Reading the Bible Again for the First Time". The book goes through the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. He covers the Hebrew Bible in small chunks: Creation, Pentateuch, Prophets, and Wisdom. This is similar to the divisions in the Torah in the Jewish tradition. In the section of the Prophets he discusses Job, Ecclestiastes, and Proverbs. The first chapters of Proverbs are devoted to Sophia, the female personification of Wisdom, and Borg mentions that he prefers the feminine personifications over the gender neutral Wisdom being.

It was brought up during discussion that it was kind of a double standard to accept a purely feminine image of Wisdom while working so hard to avoid a masculine God. It does seem strange to prefer one to the other, and if it wasn't Marcus Borg talking, I might be able to justify this by pointing out that there is some imagery of Wisdom being a 'Bride of Christ' in some poetry, and there are images of God using Wisdom as a tool to create the universe, so Wisdom is just something that was used by a male God and a female Wisdom doesn't threaten a patriarchal system. I don't think Borg would see it this way. In fact his reasons for using a gender neutral God are based out of a sensitivity to a complaint that a male God denies women involvement in the Church.

This is an oversimplification, of course. My background as a white middle class male does limit my perception a bit on this issue. The church I saw while growing up in the 70's had a male rector, of course. There was a woman attached to our parish as a perpetual deacon, but I didn't see much limiting women at the time. I saw the women of the church running things like church school, which was more important to me at the time because I was an enrolled student. I don't recall many male teachers, except for a few married couple teams that taught. My own mother was my teacher in sixth grade at the church and she eventually took over the post of church school coordinator for the parish. To my knowledge no man has held that post in that church. In the 80's the only time a gender barrier was made apparent was in the acolyte guild. At that time only teen age boys could be acolytes. The discussion came up during my five year stint in the guild to allow the girls to join us. I think this conversation was spurred by the first woman installed as a Bishop in the Episcopal church that stirred the conversation. Most of us were receptive to the idea and I think the rector was open to it as well. There were a few of the senior acolytes who rejected the idea, but after they left I remember the door being opened to my female classmates.

So really I didn't see women as being blocked out of important roles in the church. Admittedly they couldn't be priests, a political rule I that was unfathomable to me at the time, but they held other roles that I felt were just as important. Perhaps I didn't feel that the priests were closer to God than the rest of us. I do remember one family leaving the church because their daughter could not be an acolyte. I remember thinking that it was a silly reason to leave, and now I think it was part of a larger issue. Now I think the thing to do in those situations is to petition for change in the church.

All of this explains where I come from on this issue. I didn't see participation on the "important side of the rail" as exclusively male, I saw women in roles of equal power in the church. Of course when you are a young child every adult could be seen as having more power in the church as you, which could make them all equal.

It has been explained to me that the complaint isn't just a male God that shuts the door to women, but when the institution of the church actively tells women that they cannot participate in the life of the church, or that they can participate as long as they do what the men tell them, then the door is closed. The Episcopal church has been making strides in opening doors and letting women answer their calls as priests and bishops over the past twenty years and I believe that women will have full equality in the next few decades. Some might see this as a flood of women taking over the church, others might feel that this is a slow trickle. Being a moderate I'm not sure if I could agree with either side right now.

Is gender neutralizing God the right thing to do? I don't know if the Church needs to reflect the hypersensitivity of the PC movement to such a degree. We can't really see God in toto. God is too big, but images of God certainly help. Like I point out in God in a Box, the more images we have for God, the closer we get to building a relationship with Him. (Yes, I use a male pronoun for God. It's easiest for me to refer to God as Him in everday context.) I think creating a gender neutral God pushes our idea of God into more abstract terms, and we need to see God in more concrete terms. God is our father, but also our mother. I see "mother nature" images as a reflection of God that is just as real as the "father figure" who carved the mountains and formed us out of dust.

In our parish we use more gender inclusive language, mostly allowing for more female images of God. On Sunday's where Psalm 23 is used several times, the Bobby McFerrin Mother-oriented Psalm 23 is used as well as others. The Eucharistic prayers that mention "Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" now mentions "Sarah, Rebekah, Leah, and Rachel." We are working on pairing father images with mother images. There are dual parent images in some versions of the Lord's Prayer and we incorporate those as much as possible. I don't know if any of the ones we use at times is an "official" version of the prayer that can be used in the Eucharist. If they aren't I suspect the political body of the Church will allow them equal status.

I agree that any image we have of God limits God in a way. Unfortunately we cannot create an image of the totality of God, so we have to move in the other direction and create multiple images of God to have a good relationship to him. I also know that as human beings we prioritize things in our lives, and I am no exception. I accept many images of God but the male God is my main image. This comes from years of calling God "Father" exclusively, so it is habitual. When I talk to God I imagine a male God, but when I pray I use words of fatherhood and motherhood. (My prayers become formal, even my personal prayers.) I refer to God in passing as a male figure and I realize that some might take that to mean that I see a male God, which is not the case.

So what do we do about Sophia? I side with Borg in that I am very comfortable with a female personification of Wisdom. I like to see myself as a philosopher and that means literally "lover of wisdom." I have a sense of brotherly love and love towards father figures, but it is a different kind of love I feel for my mother, wife, and the women I consider to be my sisters even though they are not blood relations. Here we face the sad fact that the English language has one word for "love." The way I love wisdom as a philosopher, with the personification of Wisdom, is closer in style to the love I have for the women in my life. It is a different kind of relationship that I build. Brotherly love and love for Father figures is different. This style of love is different. I'll have to explore this later.

The other connection to the female personification of wisdom is in the pantheons of other cultures throughout history. The most common goddess of wisdom is Athena, and I can't think of any male 'gods of wisdom' at this point. I suspect that Wisdom is more commonly female in mythology, in a similar way that the earth is a mother figure and the sky is a male figure virtually across the board in mythologies all through history. It is possible to build a Sophia image that is co-creator with God in the formation of the universe. This isn't a bad image for me because I believe that human beings are in some ways co-creators of the universe.

To summarize, I think that male and female images of God are necessary to our understanding of God. Think of it as an exercize in statistics. The more images we have of God the greater possibility we have of noticing God in our daily mundane live. We have a greater chance of seeing the spirit work through us and those around us if we look for it in more places. I can call Sophia a female image of God that represents wisdom without much difficulty, except that it makes Sophia the only personification of God I have with a name. Most of the "names of God" I think about are all titles and job descriptions, really. Perhaps in giving Sophia a name it separates her from God and makes her a separate entity. I also just realized that while most names for women we have are derived from men's names, I can't think of a male name equivalent for Sophia. There may be one but I don't see one at the moment.

To summarize the summary, I have a lot more thinking to do on this one. This writing has opened up four doors of exploration that I will have to open.