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NAMING GOD IN ORTHODOX TRADITION:
Neither Male nor Female
EMMANUEL
CLAPSIS
Abstract:
While the Rhodes consultation unreservedly recommended that the Church study ways of
reviving the ministry of deaconess, and while it is true that women continue to
be active in the life of the Church, a disheartening question still persists:
Why the Orthodox churches have not yet studied or taken any concrete steps to
reinstated the ministry of deaconess in faithfulness to its tradition and in
conjunction with the pastoral challenges in the modern world?
The
writer has chosen to focus on the nature and the meaning of theological
language in Orthodox tradition. In order to respond to the critique of Feminist
theologians about the use of exclusive masculine language in naming God, he
proceeds to study carefully the nature, the function, and the significance of
religious language and names in patristic literature. He considers important
for the churches in light of the feminist critique and proposals to rethink to
nature of ‘God-talk.’
Gleaning from the
Patristic tradition the Greek Fathers’ apophatic reflections on naming the
divine, analyzing God’s many names in
the biblical and ecclesiastical literature, and without neglecting the feminine
images of God, he came to the conclusion
that no human concept, word, or image
can circumscribe the divine reality since they all have their origins in human
language. Nor can any human concept express with any measure of adequacy the
mystery of God, who is ineffable. 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.
INTRODUCTION
In
1985, the Orthodox Churches, with the support of the World Council of Churches,
convened in Rhodes, Greece a Pan-Orthodox consultation on "The Place of the Woman in the Orthodox Church and
the Question of the Ordination of Women,"[1]
The consultation unreservedly recommended that the Church study ways of reviving
the ministry of deaconess and provide ample space to the women to offer to the
Church their particular gifts. Thirty years later, we still have another
consultation discussing once again the need to restore the ministry of the
deaconess. While it is true that women continue to be active in the life of the
Church, a disheartening question still persists: Why the Orthodox churches have
not yet studied or taken any concrete steps to reinstated the ministry of
deaconess in faithfulness to its tradition and in conjunction with the pastoral
challenges in the modern world? Personally, I wholeheartedly embrace and
advocate the theological and historical arguments in support of reviving this
particular ministry of the women not only as a token of historical faithfulness
but also a strong sign of inclusivity. This however, does not mean that we do
not recognize the need to study the parameters of this revival with great
sensitivity to the Church’s unity. Currently, there is a need to study how to
reinstate this particular ordained ministry in light of the pastoral challenges
of the Church; the need to recognize the particular gifts that the Holy Spirit
has bestowed upon the women; and the need to uphold the Church’s catholicity
without putting her unity at risk.
In the present
paper, I have chosen to discuss the nature and the meaning of theological
language in Orthodox tradition. Christian Feminist theologian have noted that
God is traditionally conceived as masculine, addressed in masculine pronouns,
and described in masculine images. They are upset by this and blame the male
dominated Church hierarchies and the chauvinist attitudes of the Church’s
leading theologians down the centuries. Feminist theologians conceive as their
task as a “new naming of self and world and, consequently, of the whole
Christian tradition.” They passionately raise the question of language and how
it has been used in Christian tradition. They strongly criticize the image of
God as Father which, in their opinion, has been both absolutized by some and,
in recent times, found meaningless by others.[2]
Feminist
theologians have raised our awareness that the names, images and attributes by
which Christians until very recently have referred to God can be “humanly
oppressive and religious idolatrous”[3]. Language about God decisively influences the
very understanding of what it means to be a human person since human being
created in God’s image. They argue that the God language can be oppressive for
women because its images, metaphors and concepts by which it refers to God have
been drawn almost exclusively from the world of the ruling men. Such exclusive
speech about God, in their view, serves in manifold ways to support an
imaginative and structural world that excludes or subordinates women. It undermines
the human dignity of women as equally created in the image of God. It is
idolatrous because of its exclusive use of male language as the only fitting
language to refer to God and absolutizes a single set of images, metaphors and
concepts and thus it obscures the divine mystery and damages the very truth God
being. From a positive perspective, Feminist theologians insist that by using
female images to refer to God they do not only undermine the metaphysical
supremacy and support of Patriarchy but also they create the conditions for the
formation of community characterized by relationships of mutuality and
reciprocity, of love and justice.
The
voices of the Feminist theologians will not be silenced. On the contrary they
become stronger inviting the churches to move beyond patriarchal language,
structures and practices that perpetuate the oppression and marginalization of
women. The use of inclusive language has become a divisive issue within the
churches and in their relationships to each other. It is a contributing factor
to the disunity of God’s churches.
Furthermore the challenge that the Feminist theologians pose to the
churches from a positive perspective can be seen as an opportunity to reflect
on the renewal of theological language in light of new global cultural
realities and in continuity with the living tradition of the Church.
How
do the Orthodox Churches respond to the critique of Feminist theologians about
the use of exclusive masculine language in naming God? There are typically two responses: the first
is an outright rejection of the feminist project for more inclusive theological
language by rejecting the substitution of God the Father with a Female Goddess.
The second is an appeal to the Apophatic theology that leads inevitably to the affirmation
that God is beyond gender and sexuality.
For example, the Orthodox participants from the United States in the
study of the Faith and Order Commission on “The Community of Women and Men in
the Church” in their responses to questions about language and imagery of God
stated: “We would never think of questioning that God was the Father, and could
never conceive of God as Mother. Christ named God the Father; if we believe
Christ, we cannot compromise.”[4]
Yet, the Orthodox from France have stated: “The true meeting with God takes
place beyond all images and all words, in the silence that is not
speechlessness. This ‘apophaticism’ permeating Orthodox belief avoids the trap
of a unilaterally masculine image of God. Orthodox iconography never represents
God the Father. The divine paternity would not be represented by sexual image.
The Heavenly Father should not be imagined as a bearded patriarch.”[5]
The Godhead, according to Kallistos Ware, in possess neither maleness nor
femininity. He recognizes that “although our human sexual characteristics as
male and female reflect, at the highest and truest, an aspect of divine life,
yet there is in God no such thing as sexuality. When therefore, we speak of God
as Father, we are speaking not literally but in symbols.”[6]
Based on this assumption, it could be argued that it is also possible to refer
to God in feminine symbolic terms since female characteristics “reflect at the
highest and truest, an aspect of divine life.” He recognizes that Aphrahat, one
of the early Syriac Fathers speak of the believer’s love for “God his Father
and the Holy Spirit his Mother,” while in the medieval West we find the Lady
Julian of Norwhich affirming: “God rejoices that he is our Father, and God
rejoices that he is our Mother.” He
considers these references to God as Mother to be exceptions in Christian
tradition and concludes that “Almost always the symbolism used of God by the
Bible and the Church’s worship has been male symbolism.” He concludes with a
short reflection on the “revealed and given” nature as well as the function of
symbols in the Orthodox Church, which in his view, justify the prohibition
feminine symbolic language in referring to God.
We cannot prove by arguments why this
should be so, yet it remains a fact of our Christian experience that God has
set his seal upon certain symbols and not others. The symbols are not chosen by
us but revealed and given. A symbol
can be verified, lived, prayed – but not “proved” logically. These “given”
symbols, however, while not capable of proof, are yet far from being arbitrary.
Like the symbols in myth, literature, and art, our religious symbols reach deep
into the hidden roots of being and cannot be altered without momentous
consequences. If, for example, we were to start saying “Our Mother who art in
heaven”, instead of “Our Father”, we should not merely be adjusting an
incidental piece of imagery, but replacing Christianity with new kind of
religion. A Mother Goddess is not the Lord of Christian Church.[7]
Such
challenges compel us to study carefully the nature, the function, and the
significance of religious language and names in patristic literature, hoping
that this study will help us respond creatively to this important issue.[8]
Regardless of whether we disagree or agree with such statement, it is important
for the churches in light of the feminist critique and proposals to rethink to
nature of ‘God-talk.’
NAMING THE
DIVINE
Naming
God was an issue of reflection by the Fathers of the Church. They believed that
human wisdom, apart from divine revelation and without the guidance of the Holy
Spirit is incapable of understanding and therefore of naming the divine Being.
St. Gregory of Nazianzus in his Second Theological Oration recognizes the
problem of religious knowledge and language.[9]
Responding to the Eunomian claim that
the nature of God can be defined, he states:
To Know God is difficult, to speak of
him impossible, as one of the Greek theologians taught – quite cleverly it
seems to me: for in saying it is difficult, he appears to have comprehended him
and yet escapes examination because of his inexpressibility: but in my opinion
to speak of God is impossible and know him even more impossible. For what is
known some word can perhaps make plain, if not adequately at least obscurely to
anyone who has not completely lost his hearing or is mentally slow. But it is
altogether impossible and impracticable mentally to encompass so great a
subject, not merely for the indolent with lowly inclinations but even for those
who aim high and love God - indeed for
created nature in that this darkness and this thick fleshiness gets in the way
of perceiving the Truth…(Orat. 28.4). It is not just the peace of God which
passes understanding and knowledge … but his very nature which is beyond our
grasp and comprehension. (Orat.28.5).
Asserting
both the indescribability and the incomprehensibility of God, Gregory
summarizes his position as follows:
The Christian understanding of God,
influenced by Judaism and Hellenistic philosophy, asserted the otherness of God
through the use of apophatic language that primarily informs not what God is,
but what God is not compared with created realities. Such language was and
continues to be an important corrective to the highly anthropomorphic language
that one finds in Scripture and Tradition, heightening the sense of God’s
mystery. Apophatic language denies the possibility of religious language and
knowledge. This denial is partly philosophical: there is no logic common to
ordinary language and language used for the divine. But is also partly
religious: a God worthy of worship is beyond comparison with anything
derivative from Him.[10]
In
the Second Theological Oration of St. Gregory, we can find many of the
apophatic terms by which Christian theological tradition defines what God is
not in its refutation of crude anthropomorphism. God is referred as incorporeal (ἀσώματον) and therefor infinite
(ἄπειρον), unlimited (ἀόριστον), without shape (ἀσχημάτιστον), untouchable (ἀναφής) and invisible (ἀόρατον);
he is unbegotten (ἀγέννητον) without beginning (ἄναρχον), unchangeable ( ἀναλλοίωτον),
imperishable ( ἄφθαρτον); he is the One who is “incomposite and incomparable by
nature”. But none of these negative terms, Gregory argues, tell us what he is
in his Being. These negative references to God that Gregory uses have their
origin back to the early apologists of the Church who had adopted the criticism
of anthropomorphism produced by earlier Greek philosophy and the refined
philosophical notion of God to whom worship should be offered.[11]
Despite
the affirmation of God’s indescribability and incomprehensibility, the Fathers
of the Church found religious language to describe what they suggested to be
indescribable. St. Gregory of Nazianzus provides us with a clue by which we can
understand this possibility. He asserts:
The divine cannot be named...For no one
has ever breathed the whole air, nor has any mind located or language contained
the Being of God completely. But sketching his inward self from his outward
characteristics, we may assemble an inadequate, weak and partial picture. And
the one who makes the best theologian is not the one who knows the whole truth,
for the chain (of the flesh) is incapable or receiving the whole truth, but the
one who creates the best picture, who assembles more of Truth’s image or
shadow, or whatever we should call it.[12]
It is
possible to speak about God based on limited knowledge of Him through His
revelation and the incarnate Logos. The
Logos of God was not simply identified with the incarnate person Jesus Christ,
but with revelation in the word of scripture and in the works of creation.
Thus, scripture and tradition supplied possible names of God, all of which
could be regarded as revealed by the Logos; and further attributes could be
adopted from philosophy, since the best of philosophy was plagiarized from
Moses and so was likewise derived from the revealing activity of the Logos.[13]
This consequently makes the scriptural names of God foundational for the way
that Christians have named the divine.
What does the Scripture tell us about the Deity? Dionysious the Areopagite states:
Many scripture writers will tell you
that the divinity is not only invisible and incomprehensible, but also
‘unsearchable and inscrutable,’ since there is no trace for anyone who would
reach through into the hidden depths of this infinity. And yet, on the other hand, the Good is not
absolutely incommunicable to everything.
By itself it generously reveals a firm, transcendent beam, granting
enlightenments proportionate to each being, and thereby draws sacred minds
upward to its permitted contemplation, to participation and to the state of
becoming like it.[14]
This,
according to St. Gregory of Nyssa, reflects the economy of the Holy Spirit who
“has delivered to us divine mysteries and teaches the realities that are beyond
discourse by means of those that are accessible...we are raised in an analogous
way, through each one of the things said on the subject of God, towards a
higher conception of him.”[15]
The way that the authors of Scripture named God signifies their life of
communion with God in their particular historical situation, and their
illumination by God’s grace that makes their human words about God the vehicle
of God’s self-revelation. St. Gregory of Nazianzus suggests that attaining
knowledge of God is not a matter for philosophers, but for those who have
purified themselves:
Not to everyone, my friends, does it
belong to philosophize about God...but (only) on certain occasions, and before
certain persons, and within certain limits. Not to all men, because it is
permitted only to those who have been examined and are past masters in
meditation, and who have been previously purified in soul and body, or at the
very least are being purified. For the impure to touch the pure is not safe,
just as it is unsafe to fix weak eyes upon the sun’s rays. And what is the
permitted occasion? It is when we are free from all external defilement or
disturbance, and when that which rules within us is not confused with vexations
or erring images.[16]
Thus,
we must seriously consider in our theological endeavors the Scriptural and
Patristic witness of God’s relation with the world. We recognize in them a life
of communion with God and therefore they become foundational for understanding
and explicating the Christian faith. Recognizing, also, the fact that the
language of Christian tradition is historically conditioned in its expression
but not in its message, we must ask ourselves whether it is possible to express
an understanding of God in a different language other than the language of the
Scripture and of the Fathers and continue to be in communion with the
uninterrupted Christian tradition. If this is permissible then we must struggle
to develop criteria by which we expand the language that we use to refer to God
under the condition that such language does not reduce God to triviality but it
leads the people to a new understanding and appreciation of God’s presence in
the World.
GOD’S
MANY NAMES
St.
Gregory of Nyssa understands language to be a human creation. The existence of different languages is a
clear indication that God allowed men the freedom to invent and develop
linguistic expressions.[17] This means that no human language is
God-given, not even Hebrew. [18]
In reference to religious languages and the naming of God, St. Gregory
recognizes the historicity of such language and asserts that the names of God
are the work of human thought and conception. Such a view presupposes and is
grounded upon the unreserved affirmation of God’s transcendence. The recognition of the human limitations in
understanding and naming God leads him to accept that people have the right to
use multiple words to name as much as it is possible their experiential
understanding of God’s active presence in their world. He states:
We allow ourselves the use of many
diverse appellations in regards to him, adapting them to our point of view. For
whereas no one suitable word has been found to express the divine nature, we address God by many names,
each by some distinctive touch
adding something fresh to our notion of
him – thus reaching by a variety of nomenclature to gain some glimmerings for
the comprehension of what we seek.[19]
In
Christian tradition, the faithful refer to God with many names that reflect
their limited understanding and experience of God’s manifold graces and love
toward the world.[20]
“While
the divine nature is simple …and cannot be viewed under any form of complex
formation, the human mind …in its inability to behold clearly the object of its
search, feels after the unutterable Being in diverse and many-sided ways, and
never chases the mystery in the light of one idea alone”[21]
and “because in such cases there is no appropriate term to be found to mark the
subject adequately, we are compelled by many and differing names…to divulge our
surmises as they arise within us with regard to the deity.”[22]
The
names that God has assumed in Christian tradition are not arbitrary, but they
signify God’s relationship to the world as this has been experienced and
understood by those anointed by the Holy Spirit. “We do not signify things said
of God before having conceived them and we conceive them according to what His
energies teach us about Him.”[23]
An etymological investigation of the divine names can at best give us
information on the thoughts by which people were led when they gave names to
God. Thus, the anthropomorphic images by
which people name God’s relationship with the world cannot be taken literally.
They are figures of speech that do not fully correspond to or describe the divine reality: “For we have
given names according to our own comprehension from our own attributes to those
of God.”[24]
The names themselves are expressive of the experience of God’s active presence
in the world. They do not embody in their expression the essence of God.
For God is not an expression, neither
hath He His essence in voice or utterance. But God is of Himself what also He
is believed to be, but He is named, by those who call upon Him, not what He is
essentially, but He receives His appellations from what are believed to be His
operations in regard to our life.[25]
The
totalities of the many names by which we address God provide by their own
specificity some glimmerings of God’s glory. Thus, despite the fact that the nature
of God cannot be apprehended by human sense or reason, it is possible for the
human mind aided by God’s self-revelation to know God,” to catch some faint
glimpse of what it seeks to know.”[26]
We name God as we experience His love in this world. God’s names primarily
reveal the human understanding of his presence in the world. Yet, the naming of
God is not arbitrary, it it grounded in the prior existence and activity of
God: “we do not say that the nature of things was a human invention but only
their names.”[27]
The narrative of God’s revelation as it is found in Scripture and revealed
through Creation guarantees that the names of God are more than a figment of
imagination.
The
theological language of the Fathers does not provide us with theoretical definitions
of the being of God, in the sense of knowing the unknown through the known.
Rather, their language is doxological in its basic structure. It expresses
adoration of God on the basis of His works. In the adoring glorification of
God, the worshiper focuses his or her attention entirely upon God and that
affects the use of language. In being used to praise God words lose their
ordinary sense. In the act of adoration,
human words are transferred to the sublime infinity of God and thus they are
set in contrast to their ordinary meaning. For example, when we speak about
God’s righteousness in doxological statements, we release this word from the
manipulation of our thoughts and we become receptive to a new understanding of
“righteousness” based on the reality of God.[28]
In the same manner and condition, the image of God as Father does not confine
the being of God within the limits of this human image but iconoclastically
bursts that image and compels us to learn anew from Him the truth about His
fatherhood. It is a sacred duty to make use of God names privative of the
things abhorrent to God’s Nature.
St.
Gregory of Nyssa advocates that reflections on the nature of God should
struggle to work out an orthodox formula of thought, whereby a worthy
conception of God may be ensured. In the process of fulfillment of this task,
we must always remember that Orthodoxy is not a thing of sounds and syllables,
but of the mind, and therefore particular notions, ideas. Consequently, names
can be substituted or expressed by different words that convey to us the same
significance. For example, it is
possible to substitute the name of God as the First Cause who is without cause
by other names, - such as Ungenerate, Eternal Subsistence, The Cause of all,
The Principle of all, The First Cause or The One alone without cause, - that
signify in like manner and force the same notion.[29]
All
the human images and names by which we describe our understanding of God,
according to Gregory of Nyssa, are metaphorical in nature. He Asserts that all
the names by which we refer to deity are metaphors that express our
understandings of God’s benevolent relation with His creation, Gregory states
that if someone were to reject the ordinary and natural sense of the word
“Son,” by which we learn that He is of the same essence as Him that begat Him,
then he must transfer the name to some more divine interpretation.[30]
Whether this has been done or it is simply an oratorical refutation of Eunomius
ideas about the origins of language should not concern us at this time, but it
is worth noting that Gregory does not exclude such possibility.
In
reference to the name of God as Father, Gregory indicates that by calling God
the Father we name not what the unknown God is but how He relates to His
incarnate Logos, Jesus Christ.[31]
Furthermore, the title ‘Father’ indicates the personal character of the first
person of the Trinity who must be always related to the second person of the
Trinity, His Logos. From a Christological perspective, the fatherhood of God,
and the sonship of His incarnate Logos indicate that the Son, Jesus Christ is
of the same nature as His Father. For this reason St. Gregory believes that
Jesus Christ passes over all those names by which the Deity is indicated in the
historical books, in the Prophets and in the Law. Jesus Christ delivers to us,
as part of our profession of faith, the title of ‘Father’ as better suited to
indicate the truth, being a title which, as has been said, by its relative
sense connotes the Son.[32]
Yet Gregory of Nyssa would agree with Gregory of Nazianzus who believed that
God is beyond gender since He transcends the order of human generation which is
corporeal and includes gender:
For it does not follow that because the
Son is the Son in some higher relation (inasmuch as we could not in any other
way than this point out that He is of God and consubstantial), it would also be
necessary to think that all the names of this lower world and of our kindred
should be transferred to the Godhead. Or maybe you would consider our God to be
male, according to the same argument, because He is called God the Father, and
that deity is feminine, from the gender of the word, and Spirit neuter, because
it has nothing to do with generation; but if you would be silly enough to say,
with the old myths and fables, that God begot the Son by a marriage with His
own will, we should be introduced to the hermaphrodite god of Marcion and
Valentinus, who imagined these newfangled Aeons.[33]
Gregory
of Nazianzus has struggled to name God with different images and concepts other
than the classic name of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But, as he
confesses, all these attempts have failed to find new images or illustration in
order to describe the Trinitarian nature of God. In particular, he, states:
I have very carefully considered this
matter in my own mind, and have looked at it in every point of view, in order
to find some illustration of this most important subject, but I have been
unable to discover anything on earth with which to compare the nature of Godhead...For
even if I did happen upon some tiny likeness, it escaped me for the most part,
and left me down below with my example... Finally, then, it seems best to me to
let the images and the shadows go, as being deceitful and very far short of the
truth; and clinging myself to the more reverent conception, and resting upon
few words using the guidance of the Holy Spirit, keeping to the end as my
genuine comrade and companion the enlightenment which I have receive from him,
and passing through this world to persuade all others also to the best of my
powers to worship Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the one Godhead and power. To Him belongs all glory and honor and might
forever and ever.[34]
The
fact that He could not find new images in order to describe the Godhead does
not void the legitimacy of his efforts to find such images and names. The
doctrinal activity of the first three centuries of the history of the Christian
church had already brought into prominence several scriptural and
non-scriptural images to illustrate the relation of the Son to the Father. The
most important image is of course that of the Father and Son and Logos. The
next most important Scriptural images beside Father and Son and Logos were icon
(image or reflection) taken from 2 Corinthians 4:4 (Christ who is the icon of
God’) and Colossians 1:15 (‘He is the image of the invisible God’); ἀπαύγασμα
(brightness, ray or reflection) taken from Hebrews 1:3; and character
(impression or stamp) also taken from Hebrews 1:3. To these, however, Justin,
Tertullian, and others have added at least three other images, the image of the
stream descending from its source and that of the branch coming from the trunk
or from the root and that of fire being lit from fire. Tertullian indeed had
elaborated these into a kind of analogy for the Trinity of Persons, using the
image of source-streaming-river, and of sun-sunbeam-point of light to
illustrate his doctrine of the Trinity. Gregory of Nyssa, himself, provides the
following Trinitarian analogies: 1) Two of three different disciplines in the
mind of a single man, e.g. medicine, philosophy, and similar arts; 2) the smell
of myrrh mingling with the air in a room so that they seem identical but are in
fact distinct; 3) the light of the sun, the air and the wind mingling with each
other but still remaining separate;[35]
4) the analogy of two lamps being lit from a third[36];
and if we attribute to him the 38th in the collection of Basil’s Letters, we
can add the image of the colors of the rainbow melting together yet distinct as
an analogy for unity and distinction in the Trinity.
The
Cappadocians were generally uneasy with all images designed to illustrate the
relations of the Persons of the Trinity to each other, whether those images are
scriptural, traditional, or modern. They are much more aware than their
predecessors of the weakness of virtually all images in that they imply a lapse
of time or some sort of interval between the persons and for these reasons
repeatedly they emphasized the inadequacy of all images to describe the Deity.
Basil of Caesarea was vividly aware of the limitations of language about God: “
All theological utterance,” he wrote in one of his letters, “is less than the
thought of him who speaks it, and less than the intention of him who is conducting
the discussion, because language is somehow inadequate to represent our
thoughts.”[37]
Elsewhere he reminds his readers that the divine writers only speak of God in
metaphors and symbolic language, and in images which are often contradictory
when taken literally,[38]
and that if we believe only in that which can be fully expressed in words the
Christian faith and the Christian hope have vanished.[39]
From
what we have studied, it is evident that the Cappadocians had a non-doctrinal
and flexible attitude to formulae, since they were aware of the inadequacy and
limitations of language in expressing propositions about God. They were more
concerned with the doctrine expressed by the language than the language itself.
St. Gregory in the following passage typifies this kind of flexibility:
Since then it is orthodox to believe
that he who is the cause of everything does not himself have any underlying
cause, once this has been firmly fixed in the mind, what further controversy
about words does there remain for sensible men, because every word by which
such a concept is expressed comes to the same thing? Whether you say he is
beginning and origin of everything or declare that he is unoriginate or that he
exists ingenerately or subsists from eternity or is the cause of everything or
alone has no cause, all these expressions are virtually equivalent to each
other as far as the force of the things signified goes and the words have the
same value, and it is futile to dispute subtly about one kind of vocal
utterance or another, as is orthodoxy consisted in syllables and sounds and not
in meaning.[40]
FEMININE
IMAGES OF GOD
Is it
possible to describe or refer to God’s relationship to the world through
feminine images and names? From what we have discussed in this paper the Fathers
of the Church have built their theological reflection on the nature of God from
the unreserved position of his total incomprehensibility and
indescribability. And, then, based on
God’s revelation, His manifold graces and, guided by the Holy Spirit, they
proceed to reach a relative understanding of his energies that lead them to
doxology. Those who had an immediate experience of God’s love in their lives
summarized and codified their perception in names. Since the experience of
God’s presence in history varies according to circumstances and times, God has
been named with many names that reflect his manifold graces. This was necessary
to communicate to the faith event to others. Yet, it is important to remember
that whether we speak about God, in theology, or to God, in praise and prayer,
the tools at our disposal are unequal to the task. All the images, concepts and statements are
inescapably human, finite, and creaturely.
Therefore our attempt to express in human language something of the
inexpressible mystery of God’s transcendence is humble and limited in its
capacities. The Scriptural names of God are authoritative and indispensable for
Christians because the Church has recognized that these names reflect the life
of communion that the scriptural authors had with God through the guidance and
inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
In
Christian tradition many names have been used which are not necessarily
scriptural to refer to God’s actions or ways of relating to the world. [41]
Clement urges Christians to probe more deeply into the mysteries of divine love
where they will discover the intriguing fact that God is at once Father,
Mother, and Lover:
In his unspeakable greatness lies his
fatherhood. In his fellowship with our experience is his motherhood. The Father
takes a woman’s nature in his love. It is in token of this that he begot the
Son from his own being. The fruit born from love was love.[42]
When the Fathers thought of God, it was his
overflowing goodness and mercy and love, which they felt bound to celebrate.
This is what is known through his acts and activities, even as he remains in
himself a transcendent and mysterious being. They communicate this overflowing
love by blowing up the highest ideals of human love. St. John Chrysostom in the
Homily on Ps 41 provides a beautiful illustration of the overflowing love of
God:
God speaks of the love of birds for
their young, the love of the fathers for their children, the tenderness of
mothers, not because he only loves like a mother loves a child, but because we
have no greater proofs of love than these examples.[43]
St
Gregory of Palamas in his mystical understanding of God’s salvific work in
Jesus Christ writes:
Christ has become our brother by union
to our flesh and our blood...he has also become our father through the holy
baptism which makes us like him, and he nurses us from his own breast as a
mother, filled with tenderness...[44]
St.
John of Kronstandt reflecting upon the beauty of nature as an expression of
God’s love writes:
In how many ways does not God rejoices
us, His creatures, even by flowers? Like a tender mother, in His eternal power
and wisdom, He every summer creates for us, out of nothing, these most
beautiful plants.[45]
In these references the fathers use feminine
images and refer to God as mother. To say “God is mother” is not to identify
God with mother, but to understand God in light of some of the characteristics
associated with mothering and simultaneously to affirm that God in some
significant and essential manner is not a mother. The image of God as Mother
may be seen as a partial, but perhaps illuminating way of speaking of certain
aspects of God’s relationship to the world.
In a similar manner to call God “Father” means that the unknown God becomes
known and relates to us as Father of Jesus Christ and, by adoption, as our Father.
Any effort to take the concept of his ‘fatherhood’ literally and define it from
the ordinary understanding of fatherhood leads to Arianism and idolatry.
Against Arianism the Fathers of the Church, especially St. Athanasius and the
Cappadocians, developed their theology of language which is primarily apophatic
and doxological expressing the ecclesial experience of God’s presence in the
world and more specifically in the lives of the Saints and of His Church. While
the Fathers prefer to refer to God with scriptural language, especially the way
that Jesus refers to Him, they are open to other non-scriptural and
philosophical names to the extent that these names refer to, represent and
express scriptural truths about God. If God has many names that do not
comprehensively or essentially describe His nature, but instead refer to His
personal way of being and to His manifold graces toward creation, are there any
feminine qualities or attributes that justify calling God “mother” that do not abandon
the names that He assumed and has been called in the formative Christian
tradition? From this study I have concluded
that no human concept, word, or image can circumscribe the divine reality since
they all have their origins in human language. Nor can any human concept express
with any measure of adequacy the mystery of God, who is ineffable. 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 lit
[1] Istanbul, Turkey: The Ecumenical Patriarchate, 1988.
[2]
Sallie McFague, Metaphorical Theology -
Models of God in Religious Language, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982,
p.145.
[3]
Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is - The
Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York: Crossroad,
1995), p. 18.
[4]
Melanie A. May, 'Conversations on Language and Imagery of God - Occasioned by
the Community of Women and Men in the Church Study,' Union Seminary Quarterly Review 40(1985) 15
[5] Ibid.
[6]
Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way
(Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995), pp. 33.
[7] Ibid,
p. 34
[8]
Stylianos G. Papadopoulos, Θεολογία και
Γλώσσα, Katerini: Parousia,1977;
Konstantinos Papapetros, Ἡ Οὐσία
της Θεoλογίας, Athens,1970, pp. 43-64; Georgios Martzelos, Η Ουσία και οἱ Ἐνέργειες τοῦ Θεοῦ κατά τον
Μέγαν Βασίλειον, Thessaloniki,1984.
[9]
Frances M. Young, “The God of the Greeks and the Nature of Religious Language,”
in Early Christian Literature and the
Classical Intellectual Tradition in honorem R. M. Grant, edited by William.
R. Schoedel and Robert. L. Wilken, Paris: Éditions Beauchesne, 1979, pp. 45-74
[10] Greg. Naz., Second Theological Oration, 28.7.
[11] As a
result of adopting these two intellectual traditions, Christians were driven
into a defensive position in respect to the anthropomorphisms of the Old
Testament. Origen confronts this problem in his exegesis of the scripture where
he found necessary to allegorize not only God’s hands and face, but also his
wrath and repentance – for emotions and change are alike foreign to the nature
of God as Origen conceived him. He also faces the criticism and ridicule of the
pagan Celsus for whom the biblical narratives made an identification of the
Christian God with the Supreme Being incredible (Contra Celsum 4.13, 71,72).
[12] Second Theological Oration 30.17
[13] Strom. 2. 5. 20 ff; 4.14. 89ff.
[14]
Ibid Book I, 1:2
[15] PG 45.761.
[16] The First Theological Oration 27.
[17] Contra Eunomium 2. 200ff; 246-250; 284;
406
[18] Ibid.
2. 260-61
[19] Ibid.
2. 145
[20] Ibid
10,1. (PG 45.852) : "But, as I am
so taught by the inspired Scripture, I boldly affirm that He who is above every
name has for us many names, receiving
them in accordance with the variety of His gracious dealings with us, being
called the Light when He disperses the gloom of ignorance, and the Life when He
grants the boon on immortality, and the way when He guides us from error to the
truth,...and a physician and resurrection, and all the like, with reference to
us, imparting Himself under various aspects by virtue of His benefits to
us-ward."
[22] Contra Eunomium, 2. 577
[23] Ibid p. 269
[24] Theol Orations 5,22
[25]
Ibid p.265 (PG 45. 960).
[26] Ibid
[27]
Contra Eunomium 2.283; cf 2. 171; God is not a concept of mind.
[28]
Edmund Schlink, The Coming Christ and the
Coming Church, Philadelphia,1968, pp. 16-84.
[29] Ibid.
7,4 (PG 45. 760-761)
[30] Ibid
[31] Ibid.
2,3 (PG 45. 473)
[32] Ibid 2,2 (PG 45. 468-469).
[33] The Fifth Theological Oration 31
[34] Ibid.
33
[36] Adversus Maced. PG 45.1307
[37] Basil Letters, VII. 44
[38] Nicene Post-Nicene Fathers II, Michigan
,1954, vol. 5, 1.14 (PG 45. 300-301).
[39] Ibid.
2.24
[40] PG
45.956
[41]
Recent research has been surfacing the overlooked Scriptural and extrabiblical
female images of God; see esp. Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, Philadelphia, 1978; Virginia
Ramey Mollenkoff, The Divine Feminine:
Biblical Imagery of God as Female, New York, 1983. For patristic references
on the same subject see: Kari Elisabeth Borressen, "L' Usage patristique
de metaphores feminines dans le discours sur Dieu," Revue Theologique de Louvain, 13 (1982) 205-220; Scot Douglass, Theology of the gap: Cappadocian language theory and the Trinitarian
controversy, New York: Peter Lang, 2005.
[42] Quis Dives Salvetur? translated in R. B.
Tollinton, Clement of Alexandria: A Study in Christian Liberalism, London
,1914, pp. 319-320.
[44] Jean Meyndorff, Introduction
a l' etude de Greoire Palama, Paris, 1959, pp.247-48.
[45] My Life In Christ, Jordanville, New York,
1976, p.27.
