Black Theology
An International Journal
ISSN: 1476-9948 (Print) 1743-1670 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/yblt20
Gender-Bender God: Masculine or Feminine?
Mukti Barton
To cite this article: Mukti Barton (2009) Gender-Bender God: Masculine or Feminine?, Black
Theology, 7:2, 142-166, DOI: 10.1558/blth.v7i2.142
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1558/blth.v7i2.142
Published online: 21 Apr 2015.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 103
View related articles
Citing articles: 1 View citing articles
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=yblt20
[BT 7.2 (2009) 142–166]
doi: 10.1558/blth.v7i2.142
ISSN (print)
ISSN (online)
1476–9948
1743–1670
GENDER-BENDER GOD: MASCULINE OR FEMININE?
Mukti Barton
The Queen’s Foundation
Somerset Road
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2QH
bartonm@queens.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
The image of God that many have received from the traditional Euro-American
Christianity is one of a white old man. Such an image constructed through art
or in our heads can affect the way we view ourselves and the way we treat people whom we imagine are not made in God’s image. Although the depiction
of God as a white old man could raise the issues of colour, age and gender, the
scope of this article is restricted to the question of gender and divinity. The
inherited masculine image is challenged and many neglected biblical feminine
images of the divine including Chokmah (divine Wisdom) and Ruach (divine
Spirit) are brought out. The central argument is that the transcendent God is
a gender-bender God, both masculine and feminine and neither.
Keywords: divine-spirit, feminist theology, gender, God, wisdom, womanist
theology.
Tell me what your God look like, Celie.
He big and old and tall and graybearded and white. He wear white robes and
go barefooted.
Blue eyes? she ast.
Sort of bluish-gray. Cool. Big though. White lashes, I say.
… that’s the one that’s in the white folk’s white bible.1
This is a conversation between Celie and Shug in Alice Walker’s Color Purple.
Like Shug and Celie, when people pray, many see this White old man, who was
given to the world through the “white folk’s white bible.” I have seen a copy of
1. Alice Walker, The Color Purple, excerpt, in Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Neille Y.
McKay, eds, The Norton Anthology: African American Literature (New York and London: W. W.
Norton and Co., 1997), 2407.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009, Unit 6, The Village, 101 Amies Street, London SW11 2JW.
Barton Gender-Bender God
143
the King James Version of the Bible in which biblical characters including God
are depicted as White Europeans.2
I was extremely surprised when in England for the first time I saw, on the
front cover of a theological book, a picture of God as a bearded old White man.
Ever since, besides theological books this man has been appearing everywhere—
in films, television and newspapers. This is because for centuries European
Christian art has depicted God as such. European Christians are blasé about
this image, but I cannot possibly be, because I, an Indian Christian, was born
and brought up in India. European missionaries took their Europeanized
Christian art to India, but somehow in my protestant upbringing I never came
across this image of God. Perhaps the missionaries could not criticize Hindu
idolatry and at the same time introduce this idolatrous image to Indian Christians. Somehow or other my childhood protected me from this blasphemy and
today I cannot possibly be blasé about it.
When I was young I knew that we were different from the Hindus, because
we do not make graven images of God. Now, reflecting on the Hindu gods and
goddesses that I saw everywhere, I tend to think that the image of an invisible
God is in fact better expressed by using varied metaphors. The Hindus have
many icons. Some of them are male and others are female; some are black and
others are a paler colour. Moreover, in Hinduism human beings, let alone a
White old man, do not have the monopoly of God’s image. Hindus see the
image of God in animals as well as in non-sentient objects. Since in the ancient
religions such as Hinduism, God is perceived everywhere and in everything,
many things become objects of worship. The more recent Judaeo-ChristianMuslim religions found the worshipping of the universal God through a particular being or an object a dangerous phenomenon. So these religions forbade
creating an image and taught people to understand God as Spirit without a
form. What European Christianity has done by depicting God as a White old
man is not simply idolatrous, it is more dangerous than what the ancient religions have done by offering varied images. The image of God that we construct
through art or in our heads influences our behaviour towards people whom we
imagine are not made in God’s image.
Shug in Color Purple detects a connection between the White god and the
mistreatment of people of colour: “How come the bible just like everything
else they [White folks] make, all about them doing one thing and another, and
all the coloured folks doing is gitting cursed?” Shug’s empirical evidence makes
her realize that this White god is no good for a Black woman and she says,
“When I found out I thought God was white and a man, I lost interest. You mad
cause he don’t seem to listen to your prayers. Humph! Do the mayor listen to
2. See Mukti Barton, Rejection, Resistance and Resurrection: Speaking Out on Racism in the
Church (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2005), 91–97.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009.
144
Black Theology: An International Journal
anything colored say?”3 Shug has to go deep inside her to find the God she can
trust.
This article is the result of my own personal reflections on the God to
whom I pray and of my study of the Bible. Its scope is restricted to the question
of gender and divinity. I cannot here follow up Shug’s perceptions of the effect
on black women of the depiction of God as white and male, partly for reason of
space, but also because this is a biblical study and the Bible was written before
the origin of the colour-based oppression of fellow human beings.4 However,
there is much in scripture to prompt thought about God and gender and I write
this article from a gender perspective.
Throughout the article I will show how the Bible encourages anthropomorphism (the attribution of human characteristics or behaviour to God) only
to turn it on its head. This the Bible does to help us grasp something of God,
and at the same time to stretch and transform our worldly understandings. In
the Hebrew Bible we find both masculine and feminine terms for God. At other
times no gender is implied. Human beings are biologically male and female, but
not God, because the divine does not have a body. The application of masculine
and feminine gender to the divine is simply metaphorical and grammatical. God
is spirit who is both male and female and neither. Jesus said: “God is Spirit, and
those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth” (Jn 4:24).5 Spirit is
formless, yet we need some pictures in our minds to be able to love God, and the
Bible creates a variety of magnificent pictures with words. We restrict ourselves
to seeing God only in masculine terms at our own peril. Much of present-day
Christianity has got stuck on anthropomorphism and the Bible is calling us to
stretch our imagination and to be transformed.
God Elohim, El Shaddai and Yahweh
First of all, we must remember that although in English we use just one term
God, the Bible has many names for God, for example Elohim, El Shaddai and
Yahweh. If we imagine this God to be a masculine God, we have strayed from
the Bible. My research makes me believe that the biblical God is a genderbender God who refuses to be put in the restricted masculine garb. The etymology of God’s names is quite revealing. About Elohim Jann Aldredge Clanton
writes, “Elohim, which is plural in form, seems to be derived from an ancient
Semitic female god, Eloha and a male god, El. This mingling of feminine and
3. Alice Walker, The Color Purple, excerpt, in The Norton Anthology, 2407–2408.
4. See Mukti Barton, “I am Black and Beautiful,” Black Theology: An International Journal
2, no. 2 (2004): 167–87.
5. Unless otherwise stated, all biblical references are to the New Revised Standard
Version with Apocrypha (NRSV).
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009.
Barton Gender-Bender God
145
masculine forms of God indicates both inclusiveness and transcendence of all
sexuality.”6 The first chapter of Genesis confirms the plurality of Elohim: “Then
God (Elohim) said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our
likeness; … So God (Elohim) created humankind in his image, in the image of
God he created them; male and female he created them’” (Gen. 1:26–27).7
Both genders are present in humankind as well as in Elohim, and singular
and plural numbers are used for both humankind and Elohim. God is one and
humankind is one in the sense that they are united. Regarding another name of
God, El Shaddai, Aldredge Clanton claims: El Shaddai, usually translated “God
almighty,” can also mean “God of the breasts,” or “the Breasted God.”8 Jacob
tells his sons that the tribes of Joseph will receive blessings, “By the God (El) of
your father, who will help you, by the Almighty (Shaddai) who will bless you
with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lies beneath, blessings
of the breasts (shad) and of the womb (rechem)” (Gen. 49:25).
This verse suggests God as mother giving the blessings of the breasts and the
womb.9 The Hebrew term for womb here is rechem. Etymologically womb,
mercy and compassion have the same root Hebrew term. Literally mercy and
compassion can mean womb-love. The Bible keeps referring to God’s womblove for people. Here is one of many verses, “then the Lord (Yahweh) your God
(Elohim) will restore your fortunes and have compassion (racham, womb-love)
on you, gathering you again from all the peoples among whom the Lord
(Yahweh) your God (Elohim) has scattered you” (Deut. 30:3).
The most frequently used term for God in the Church of England liturgy
seems to be “almighty God.” Is it a simple translation of El Shaddai? If so, it is
too simplistic, since the traditional rendering “God almighty” is debated among
biblical scholars. Once a Jewish Rabbi told me that God almighty hardly occurs
in the Hebrew Bible. The Complete Jewish Bible has one reference and Hebrew
Names Version of World English Bible three references to the term almighty. Yet in
many other translations almighty is mentioned hundreds of times. It all depends
on how the translators want to view God.
Besides El Shaddai and Elohim another commonly used name of God is Yahweh. In the Hebrew Bible the name is written with four consonants YHWH.
YHWH is similar to the Hindu OM, which is simply a sound to invoke the
6. Jann Aldredge Clanton, In Whose Image? God and Gender (London: SCM Press,
1990), 22.
7. Throughout the article I have consulted Ken Hamel, Online Bible Software (New
Jersey: Oakhurst, 1996); Zondervan Interactive, The NIV Study Bible Complete Library CD
ROM (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1989–98) and Crosswalk.com to find the original
Hebrew and Greek terms which I have put within brackets.
8. Clanton, In Whose Image?, 27.
9. See Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (London: SCM Press, 1992), 61.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009.
146
Black Theology: An International Journal
Supreme Being. YHWH was written without any vowels, because this was the
name of the transcendent God and no one was supposed to pronounce this
name. In the transliterated form vowels have been added to make pronouncing
possible. Out of the names of God this mysterious name Yahweh is the most
used name in the Hebrew Bible. “The name occurs over 6,700 times and is the
usual designation of God, more frequently than all other designations combined.”10
When Moses was commanded by God to bring the Israelite slaves out of
Egypt, he asked God to give him the divine name so that he could tell the
Israelites who had sent him. A name of God was important in this context since
Egypt and other nations had their own named gods. When the nations fought
with each other they believed that their national gods were fighting cosmic
battles against their enemies. Yahweh was revealed to Moses not as a national
god, but as the God of the oppressed. Yahweh does not favour any particular
nation against the other, but sides with the oppressed slaves and fights Pharaoh.
Moreover, the God of the oppressed is the only God who exists, “I am who I
am” (Exod. 3:14). This makes all the other powerful national gods pale into
insignificance. “As for the gods of Egypt, they are not deemed worthy of mention.”11 According to a website Elohim and El Shaddai are masculine nouns.12
Yahweh is not a noun. Scholars do not agree whether it is a verb or a noun. Some
believe that “I am who I am” circumvents the limitations implicit in a gender
pronoun through the use of the first person. For us it is important to remember
that in the original Bible the grammatical gender for Yahweh, the most common
biblical name, is unclear. Since we are very used to seeing God (Elohim, El Sahaddai and Yahweh) as masculine, I will present some of the maternal images of this
God. From the biblical treasure I have chosen three images: God as mother, a
mother hen and a mother eagle.
God as Mother
St Paul says, “In him [God] we live and move and have our being, … and we
are his [God’s] offspring” (Acts 17:28). As human offspring when do we ever
live and move and have our being in our parent? When we are in our mother’s
womb. God’s water we are in, God’s breath we are breathing and God’s food we
are eating to stay alive. We are surrounded by God. We cannot put God neatly
up in heaven. The Psalmist says,
Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I
ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I
10. R. E. Brown, J. A. Fitzmyer, and R. E. Murphy, eds, The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1990), 1286.
11. John Bright, A History of Israel (London: SCM Press, 1972), 153.
12. See God in the KJV Old Testament Hebrew Lexicon, at www.Crosswalk.com
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009.
Barton Gender-Bender God
147
take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even
there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast (Ps.
139:7–10) .
This is not a frightening, but a pleasurable experience and the Psalmist says,
“Such knowledge is too wonderful for me” (Ps. 139:6). Being in God is a warm,
safe and resting place to be. We come from God and are created in God’s image
but the divine image in us needs to be recreated. Yahweh longs for us to be born
again anew. Like a mother in labour, Yahweh cries out: “For a long time I have
held my peace, I have kept still and restrained myself; now I will cry out like a
woman in labour, I will gasp and pant” (Isa. 42:14). Those of us who are mothers
know how it is to gasp and pant in labour and this is how Yahweh gasps and
pants until we are born again.
After we are born anew we need to stay on Yahweh’s lap. Psalm 131 gives a
wonderful picture of Yahweh as our mother and we as the weaned children of
Yahweh:
My heart is not proud, O Lord (Yahweh), my eyes are not haughty; I do not
concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have
stilled and quietened my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a
weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, put your hope in the Lord
(Yahweh) both now and for evermore (Ps. 131).
We are weaned children of Yahweh and are happy to sit close to Yahweh’s
bosom, contented. Yahweh says, “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or
show no compassion (racham, womb-love) for the child of her womb? Even
these may forget, yet I will not forget you” (Isa. 49:15). Yahweh continues, “As a
mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you” (Isa. 66:13).
God as Mother Hen
The biblical God continues to be a gender-bender God, who is both male and
female and neither. God says:
Have I not entreated you as a father his sons or a mother her daughters or a
nurse her children, so that you should be my people and I should be your
God, and that you should be my children and I should be your father? I gathered you as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. But now, what shall I
do to you? (2 Esdras 1:28–29).13
God here is both mother and father and like a mother hen gathers her children under her wings. It is not the cock but the hen which has her chicks under
her wings. When I was young we had hens. Often I used to watch them with
13. 2 Esdras is one of the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical books to be found only in the
versions of the Bible that include these books. Throughout I have quoted from some of these
books.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009.
148
Black Theology: An International Journal
their chicks. Most of the time the chicks remained close to the mother. If ever a
bird of prey came near, the mother hen would give a signal and all the chicks
would run to her. She would then spread her wings to shelter her chicks.
Hidden under the wings the chicks were completely safe. Sometimes some of
them would peep their little heads out to see what was going on. Soon the disappointed bird of prey was gone and it was safe again for the chicks to come out.
However, once in a while, I saw a chick too far away from the mother when the
danger signal was given. Those stray chicks did try to run to the mother, but
because they were too far away they lost their lives. Like the God of the
Hebrew Bible Jesus also applied mother-hen language to himself: “Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, … How often have I desired to gather your children together as a
hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Matt.
23:37).
When Ruth, a foreigner, came to live in Bethlehem, Boaz said to Ruth, “may
you have a full reward from the Lord (Yahweh), the God (Elohim) of Israel,
under whose wings you have come for refuge!” (Ruth 2:12). Many times the
Psalmist cried out, “hide me in the shadow of your wings” (Ps. 17:8b). “In the
shadow of your wings I will take refuge, until the destroying storms pass by”
(Ps. 57:1). When we read about the shadow of God’s wings in many verses in
the Bible such as Psalm 46:7; 61:4; 63:7 and 91:4 we need to remember it is the
mother bird, not the father bird, which shelters her chicks under her wings.
When we refuse to sit under God’s wings there is destruction and death. Under
the wings of God the whole of humanity is completely safe and is in absolute
peace.
God as Mother Eagle
Now we come to the third image of God to hold in our mind’s eye: Yahweh as
mother eagle. Yahweh who saved the Israelite slaves from the oppression of the
powerful Egyptians, says: “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how
I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself” (Exod. 19:4). Moses
reminded the Israelites about the nature of Yahweh, “As an eagle stirs up its
nest, and hovers over its young; as it spreads its wings, takes them up, and bears
them aloft on its pinions, the Lord alone guided him; no foreign god was with
him” (Deut. 32:11–12).
Yahweh behaves like a mother eagle. Eagles often nest high up in the cliffs to
have their eaglets. When it is time for the young to leave the nest, the mother
eagle stirs up the nest and makes the nest uncomfortable by removing the comfortable nesting materials. Then she hovers over her young and encourages
them to leave the nest. If the eaglets are afraid to leave the nest, she pushes them
off the cliff, forcing them to fly. But she always stays close enough since the
wings of the young are still weak. After flying for a little while, the eaglets begin
to fall. The mother then swoops under her young and spreads her wings to
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009.
Barton Gender-Bender God
149
bear them on her pinions. She continues this process until the eaglets learn to
fly on their own. Through this powerful image of Yahweh as a mother eagle, we
can understand that our relationship with Yahweh is a parent-child relationship.
Like a mother she gives birth to us and nurtures us, but does not encourage
dependency. She encourages us to grow and mature to become more like her.14
I have just discussed some of the feminine metaphors applied to God (Elohim,
El Shaddai, Yahweh) in the Hebrew Bible. This search for feminine images of
God is by no means exhaustive and we can safely conclude that in the Hebrew
Bible the characteristics of God are not totally masculine.
God our Abba
So did Jesus introduce a male deity to us by calling God father? My argument is
that coming as he did from a Hebrew background he could not have done so. It
is we Christians who are guilty of turning the transcendent God into a masculine idol. The following verses illustrate that God is neither male nor female: “I
am God, not a human being, the Holy One among you” (Hos. 11:9b, The Complete Jewish Bible). “God is not a human being, that he should lie, or a mortal,
that he should change his mind” (Num. 23:19a). “Since you saw no form when
the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire, take care and watch yourselves
closely, so that you do not act corruptly by making an idol for yourselves, in the
form of any figure—the likeness of male or female” (Deut. 4:15–16).
God our father is no more than a metaphor. In the following verses, we find
two metaphors, God my father and God my rock: “He shall cry to me, ‘You are
my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation!’” (Ps. 89:26); “he is my rock,
and there is no unrighteousness in him” (Ps. 92:15). In these verses God is
neither a rock, nor a father in the earthly sense, but has some qualities of both a
rock and a father. Since we live in a patriarchal/male-dominated world, all we
seem to think of is God’s masculinity. But the metaphor of God as our father
might be saying something quite different, for example about our intimacy
with God and with fellow human beings as brothers and sisters. Interestingly
the Hebrews were very hesitant to call God father and in the Hebrew Bible this
metaphor is used only fifteen times.15 So why was Jesus, a Hebrew, calling
God, father? Actually Abba rather than father was the term that Jesus used. Like
the Hindu OM, Abba is also a sound. This is one of the first sounds a baby
makes and in Aramaic this sound becomes the term meaning father. Jesus was
not a Greek-speaking, but an Aramaic-speaking person and the original Aramaic
term Abba is left untranslated three times in the New Testament (Mk 14:36;
14. See Clanton, In Whose Image?, 23–24; and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, The Divine
Feminine: The Biblical Imagery of God as Female (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 86.
15. “Fatherhood of God,” in Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, at www.
Crosswalk.com
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009.
150
Black Theology: An International Journal
Rom. 8:15–16; and Gal. 4:6). This is like the tip of an iceberg, giving us a glimpse
of the nearly lost meaning of the term Abba. According to a Bible commentary,
the rarity of this designation for God is striking. There is no evidence in preChristian Jewish literature that Jews addressed God as “Abba.” … the Greekspeaking Gentile churches in Galatia and Rome continued to address God as
Abba. They used this foreign title for God because Jesus had used it and
taught his followers to do so.16
Jesus used this intimate term to illustrate that God the father is not a distant
patriarchal father, but Abba, a motherly father. Many would say, maybe God is a
motherly father, but he still is father. Others would ask, why did Jesus choose
terms such as father and Kingdom of God, when they can be so easily co-opted
by the systems of domination to sacralize worldly kingdoms and patriarchy?
When I reflect on such questions, I think that Jesus did it quite deliberately.
Jesus here is following the same principle that Yahweh followed in the context
of the oppression of the Israelite slaves in Egypt. Yahweh is not at the top of the
hierarchy as the supreme God above other Egyptian gods. If Yahweh is the only
God, all national Egyptian gods pale into insignificance. Likewise when the
worldly kingdom of the Roman regime was seen as the ultimate symbol of
power on earth, Jesus’ declaration, “the Kingdom of God is upon you,” was a
rebellious statement. This means, when the Kingdom of God is the only one
that reigns, the disciples of Jesus have nothing to fear from the cruel Roman or
any other earthly regimes. This declaration of Jesus made the Roman regime
lose its psychological hold on Jesus’ followers.
In the same way, if God is Abba, all patriarchal rules end. We need to understand God in the context of Jesus’ saying, “And call no one your father on earth,
for you have one Father—the one in heaven” (Matt. 23:9). Elisabeth Schüssler
Fiorenza remarks,
The saying of Jesus uses the “father” name of God not as a legitimization for
existing patriarchal power structures in society or church but as a critical
subversion of all structures of domination … Neither the “brothers” nor the
“sisters” in the Christian community can claim the “authority of the father”
because that would involve claiming authority and power reserved to God
alone.17
Since there is only one Abba, God, in Jesus’ community the earthly father is
left out of the list of relations in his saying, “For whoever does the will of my
father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matt. 12:50; see also
16. “Fatherhood of God,” at www.Crosswalk.com
17. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of
Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1984), 151.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009.
Barton Gender-Bender God
151
Mk 3:31–35 and Lk. 8:19–21).18 In human families there are father, mother,
brother and sister. In Jesus’ community the head of the hierarchy is replaced by
Abba, so there is no one left to lord it over the mother, brother and sister. The
coming of Jesus ends all domination systems including patriarchy. Jesus’ command is crystal clear:
You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great
ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes
to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first
among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served
but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many (Matt. 20:25–28; see also
Mk 10:42–45 and Lk. 22:25–26).
Jesus is not the Gentile Roman emperor who is lording over the subjugated
Jewish people. Jesus cannot possibly be the paragon of macho masculinity,
because that is what he is standing against. With Jesus all domination systems
end and God’s upside-down Kingdom is established. Precisely in order to turn
worldly fatherhood and kingdom on their heads, Jesus deliberately retains the
terms father and kingdom intact.
The Bible is paradoxical, rather than dualistic. At first sight good and evil do
not appear polar opposites, but strikingly similar. Satan looks like light, and so
does the angel (see Lk. 10:18 and 2 Cor. 11:14). In Jesus’ parable the wheat and
the weed look so similar that they are left to grow together (see Matt. 13:24–
30). The patriarchal father and God the father look so similar that it is very easy
to think of God as a masculine being. However, just when we think that we are
biblically sound in our attempt to establish God’s masculinity on the basis of
God’s fatherhood, we verge on idolatry.
So if Jesus is not establishing God’s masculinity by calling God Abba, what
kind of God is he showing to us? Jesus spoke about God on many occasions.
Here I will look at three parables in Luke 15. Jesus uses male and female images
to describe God’s love for the lost and the least. The first image is one of a
shepherd who has lost one of his hundred sheep. He leaves all ninety-nine and
searches for the lost sheep until he finds it. When he finds it, he takes it on his
shoulder, comes home and calls his friends to rejoice with him for the lost sheep
that has been found. Jesus says likewise when one sinner repents God rejoices
in heaven. If God were solely like a man, Jesus would not have needed a female
image to tell the second parable. This parable is about a woman who has lost
her coin. She lights a lamp, sweeps the house until she finds her lost coin. She
rejoices with her friends the way God rejoices in the company of angels over
one sinner who repents.
18. See Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 119. See
also Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 331.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009.
152
Black Theology: An International Journal
Following one male and one female image, the third is of a desperate father
whose son is lost. Like the first two, the third parable too is to illustrate something of the characteristics of God. In this parable of the prodigal son, Jesus is
talking about a father, apparently a man, but a closer look reveals that the father
here is behaving like a mother. It often helps to understand the Bible better
when we know the culture of the biblical time. Jesus was an Aramaic speaking
man, and Dr George Lamsa, a translator of the Lamsa Bible, is able to throw
more light on this passage because of his proximity to Aramaic language and
culture. According to Lamsa, in this culture the first-born son is the favourite
son of the father, because he is the heir and the successor. When he succeeds
his father, he will have authority over the household. For this reason the father
creates a closer bond with the first-born. In this context both the mother and
the younger son have less power in the family and they create a closer bond. It is
usually the mother who takes sides with the younger one. In this eastern culture
Leaving a father’s house and going away is a common practice … It is the only
way the younger son has of changing his father’s attitude toward him. Once
the son leaves, the father begins to think about him. He may worry about him.
He may send servants to search for him. If he returns he is expected to have
done something to make his father proud. Then the father receives him.19
The prodigal son, instead of doing things to make his father proud, does
everything to bring shame on him. He squanders the share of his property that
he took from his father. After squandering all his money, in his desperation he
takes a job in a foreign country tending pigs, an abominable thing for a Jewish
person. When he cannot bear his hunger any more he decides to go back home.
His father sees him from a distance. My question is, what has the father been
doing so he can see the son from a distance?
Another story in the biblical book, Tobit,20 makes me believe that this father
has been behaving like a mother. In many ways the story in Tobit is very different from the parable of the prodigal son, but what I am struck by is the similarity between Tobias’ mother’s behaviour and that of the prodigal son’s father.
Tobias, the son of Anna and Tobit, went on a journey. Tobias’ mother began to
pine for her son more than his father. All the time Tobias was away his mother
rushed out every day and watched the road her son had taken. At sunset she
would go in, mourn and weep all night long.
As usual Anna was out on the day Tobias came back. She “sat looking
intently down the road by which her son would come. When she caught sight
of him coming … Anna ran up to her son and threw her arms around him”
19. Dr. George Lamsa, referred to in Carol Parrish, “When Father is Our Mother.”
Available from http://www.sanctasophia.org/articles/whenfather.html (accessed September
19, 2006).
20. See the book of Tobit in the NRSV.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009.
Barton Gender-Bender God
153
(see Tobit 11:5–9). About the prodigal son’s father the Bible says, “But while
he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran
and put his arms around him and kissed him” (Lk. 15:20). Tobias’ mother’s
love was unreasonable. Tobit tried to reason with her: “‘Do not grieve for him,
my dear; he will soon be here.’ She answered him, ‘Be quiet yourself! Stop
trying to deceive me! My child has perished’” (Tobit 10:6b–7a). The prodigal
son’s father’s love is also unreasonable. He does not abide by any cultural or
religious traditions. He accepts back the son who has caused terrible shame to
his father and even makes himself religiously impure by embracing the son
who has been keeping pigs. Anna’s sense of joy was heightened to see her son
alive when she feared the worst, his death (Tobit 10:7a). The father in the
parable also rejoices extravagantly, saying, “for this son of mine was dead and is
alive again; he was lost and is found!” (Lk. 15:24). In both these stories there was
great rejoicing and celebration at the son’s homecoming. Here the similarity
between the two narratives ends.
The older son in the parable of the prodigal son represents reason-based
religion. He is absolutely right to remind the father that the younger one has
broken all the rules. The father, however, is happy to behave like a foolish father
and pleads with the older son as his mother might have done. The father is
more keen to abide by compassion (womb-love!) than rules and regulations.
Rabbi Rami Shapiro distinguishes between two kinds of religions:
The texts that come from narrow mind (as opposed to those that come from
spacious mind and are filtered through narrow mind) are fear based, and serve
to enforce the power of the few over the many. The teachings that come from
the spacious mind are rooted in love and compassion, and serve to establish
justice irrespective of rank.21
All Jesus’ teachings came from the spacious mind, portraying God as the
loving and compassionate one who establishes justice for people in the lowest
ranks.
Divine Wisdom Chokmah, Sophia, Jesus
As I continue to search for images of God in the Hebrew Bible, I stumble on
Chokmah, the Wisdom of God and Ruach, the Spirit of God. Chokmah and Ruach
are not separate entities but they are the very essence of God. For example,
when I speak of my body, my mind and my soul, I don’t stand outside my body,
mind and soul. These are the very things that make me me. In the same way
Elohim, Chokmah and Ruach together are God. Is the Christian idea of Trinity
21. Rabbi Rami Shapiro, The Divine Feminine: In Biblical Wisdom Literature, Selections
Annotated & Explained (Vermont: Skylight Paths Publishing, 2005), xviii.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009.
154
Black Theology: An International Journal
implicit in these three entities? It is intriguing that the feminine gender is used
for both Ruach and Chokmah who were there from the beginning when Elohim
created the earth. I will come back to Ruach a little later; now I will focus on
Chokmah. Let us hear her speak:
I (Wisdom, Chokmah) was there when he [Yahweh] established the heavens,
when he drew the horizon on the oceans. I was there when he set the clouds
above, when he established the deep fountains of the earth. I was there when
he set the limits of the seas, so they would not spread beyond their boundaries. And when he marked off the earth’s foundations, I was the architect at
his side. I was his constant delight, rejoicing always in his presence. And how
happy I was with what he created—his wide world and all the human family!
(New Living Translation: Prov. 8:27–31).
About wisdom the Bible says,
With you [God] is wisdom (Chokmah), she who knows your works and was
present when you made the world; she understands what is pleasing in your
sight and what is right according to your commandments (Wisdom of Solomon 9:9).22
In Hebrew the term for divine Wisdom is Chokmah, but in the biblical books
written in Greek, divine Wisdom is Sophia. St Paul understands Jesus to be
Sophia incarnate when he writes:
but we proclaim Christ crucified, … Christ the power of God and the wisdom
(Sophia) of God. … God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise;
God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is
low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things
that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source
of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom (Sophia) from God,
and righteousness and sanctification and redemption … (1 Cor. 1:23–30).
I have noted above that God’s Kingdom and God’s fatherhood turn the
world’s domination system upside down. Here divine Wisdom turns everything
upside down in similar fashion. In the world the powerful lord it over the
powerless, while in God’s standard the powerful serve the powerless. Sophia,
divine Wisdom, chooses what is foolish in the world. In the world the academics,
the intellectuals, who usually belong to the upper class, are seen as wise. God’s
Sophia chooses “what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to
reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of
God.” By reversing the world order Sophia brings about justice for the poor and
the oppressed of the world. Jesus saw himself as a child of Sophia when he said:
“the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Here is a glutton and
22. For wisdom’s existence at creation see also Proverbs 3:19 and Wisdom of Solomon
6:22.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009.
Barton Gender-Bender God
155
a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’. Nevertheless, wisdom
(Sophia) is vindicated by all her children” (Lk. 7:34–35).
Jesus used to be criticized by the elite of his time for having table fellowship
with the poor and the outcasts. Such criticisms did not make Jesus change his
ways since he believed that as the child of Sophia he was doing the right thing.
Schüssler Fiorenza posits,
Some of the earliest traditions of the Jesus movement understood the mission
of Jesus as that of a prophet of Sophia sent to proclaim that the Sophia-God of
Jesus is the God of the poor, the outcasts, and all those suffering injustice. It is
likely that these early Jesus traditions interpreted the Galilean mission of Jesus
as that of Divine Sophia because Jesus of Nazareth understood himself as
messenger and child of Sophia.23
If Jesus is the child of Sophia, or God’s Wisdom incarnate, Jesus was with God
at creation, in the form of divine Wisdom (Chokmah). More gender bending is
going on here. Both Chokmah and Sophia are feminine in gender, yet Jesus was
born as a man. In the above-mentioned verse Jesus’ maleness does not make St
Paul hesitate to proclaim that Jesus is the female Sophia incarnate. By using the
term Sophia Paul remains closer to the Hebrew understanding of Wisdom as
feminine in gender. I think it is extraordinary that Paul wrote “Jesus, … became
for us Sophia from God” (1 Cor. 1:30) in the Greco-Roman religious cultural
context, where there would have been many images of the goddess Sophia
around. In India wisdom/word/learning is also a goddess whose name is
Saraswati. I can see clearly how shocking it would be for Indian Christians if
anyone suggested that “Jesus … became for us Saraswati from God,” and therefore understand how Paul’s saying would have been for the first Christians. No
wonder instead of choosing the Greek feminine term Sophia, St John uses the
Greek masculine term logos to convey the sense of the Hebrew Chokmah, the
Wisdom of God:
In the beginning was the Word (logos), and the Word (logos) was with God,
and the Word (logos) was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things
came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into
being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of
all people (Jn 1:1–4).
God is essentially Spirit and when the world was created Elohim, Chokmah
and Ruach were present in Spirit. What we see throughout the Bible is fluidity,
ambiguity and paradox regarding the image of God. We might have got used to
using solely masculine terms to think of God, but biblical people and the first
Christians were quite comfortable with various images of God. The New
23. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Jesus: Miriam’s Child, Sophia’s Prophet. Critical Issues in
Feminist Christology (London: SCM Press, 1995), 140.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009.
156
Black Theology: An International Journal
Testament had no difficulty perceiving Jesus as both Sophia and a child of
Sophia. The first Christians’ vision did not get stuck on the maleness of Jesus.
They did not find it problematic that Ruach and Chokmah, two divine feminine
images, rested on Jesus. In Jesus Isaiah’s prophecy was fulfilled: “The spirit
(Ruach) of the Lord (Yahweh) shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom (Chokmah)
and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and
the fear of the Lord” (Isa. 11:2).
If we think that the different entities of God are completely separated from
each other and in our imagination place them in linear and hierarchical order,
we are very far from the biblical truth. In the Bible they dwell mutually in each
other. I am beginning to see that unless we know Wisdom (Chokmah) we misunderstand Jesus. So let us see Chokmah and Jesus side by side.
“I am” Sayings
Divine Wisdom (Chokmah) says: “Before time—I am. Before beginnings—I
am … I am older than mountains. Elder to the hills, the valleys, and the fields.
Before even the first lumps of clay emerged—I am” (Prov. 8.22–26).24
Jesus says: “Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am” (Jn 8:58).
The Image of the Invisible God
About the divine Wisdom (Chokmah) the Bible says: “For she is a reflection of
eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his
goodness” (Wis. Sol. 7:26).
Jesus says: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9).
About Jesus St Paul says: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn
of all creation” (Col. 1:15).
These verses show that both the divine Wisdom and Jesus are God’s image.
In South Asia as well as in England I have led quite a lot of Bible study sessions,
during which many people have insisted that God is masculine. The above two
New Testament verses are their proof-texts. The logic goes like this: Jesus
reflects the image of God and Jesus was a man. This proves that God is masculine. When we get acquainted with Chokmah, who although feminine in gender,
is also a spotless image of God, our anthropomorphism begins to be shaken.
Wisdom Calls
“Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice. At the
busiest corner she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks” (Prov.
1:20–21). “Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice?
24. Shapiro, The Divine Feminine, 3. Here I have used Shapiro’s own translation, because
the “I am” saying is clear in it.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009.
Barton Gender-Bender God
157
On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand; beside the
gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries out” (Prov.
8:1–3).
Jesus like Wisdom was always calling people and teaching, on the Mount of
Olive, in the temple courts, by the Sea of Galilee, everywhere from Galilee to
Jerusalem.
From One End of the Earth to the Other
About the divine Wisdom (Chokmah) the Bible says: “She [wisdom] reaches
mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and she orders all things well”
(Wis. Sol. 8:1).
Jesus the wisdom incarnate retorted:
The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with this generation and
condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to listen to the
wisdom of Solomon, and see, something greater than Solomon is here! (Matt.
12:42; see also Lk. 11:31).
Jesus promised his disciples: “But you will receive power when the Holy
Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all
Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8; see also Acts 13:47).
All these verses are about Wisdom spreading from one end of the earth to the
other. The divine Wisdom reaches mightily; the queen of the South (the queen
of Sheba) comes, and Jesus’ disciples are sent to bear witness to the divine
Wisdom from one end of the earth to the other. Now that the divine Wisdom
has spread all over the world, on the day of judgement people will see “ ‘the Son
of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out
the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth
to the ends of heaven” (Mk 13:26–27). God’s elect are all who live by divine
Wisdom.
The Way, and the Truth, and the Life
“She [wisdom] is the way to everlasting life, true wealth and honour. Her way is
pleasant, and all her paths are peace. She is a Tree of life to those who embrace
her, and those who unite with her find happiness” (Prov. 3:14–18).25
Likewise “Jesus is the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to Abba
except through Jesus, the Wisdom incarnate” (Jn 14:6).
Read with a spacious mind, the verse in John does not sound exclusive. Jesus
is wisdom’s open invitation to all to everlasting life. “In every generation she
25. Shapiro, The Divine Feminine, 13. Shapiro’s own translation makes the similarity
between wisdom’s and Jesus’ ways more striking.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009.
158
Black Theology: An International Journal
[Wisdom] passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God and prophets”
(Wis. Sol. 7:27b).
Following the path of Wisdom, “kings reign, and rulers decree what is just;
…rulers rule, and nobles, all who govern rightly” (Prov. 8:15–16).
The divine Wisdom is near all human beings, because it is in human hearts
and conscience, “the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your
heart for you to observe” (Deut. 30:14).
St Paul believes, “They [the Gentiles] show that what the law requires is
written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness”
(Rom. 2:15).
Seek and You Will Find
Divine Wisdom is easy to find. She says, “I love those who love me, and those
who seek me diligently find me” (Prov. 8:17).
Jesus says,
Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door
will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who
searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened (Matt.
7:7–8).
Wisdom is radiant and unfading, and she is easily discerned by those who love
her, and is found by those who seek her. She hastens to make herself known
to those who desire her. One who rises early to seek her will have no
difficulty, for she will be found sitting at the gate (Wis. Sol. 6:12–14).
While Wisdom sits at the gate, Jesus Says, “Listen! I am standing at the door,
knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat
with you, and you with me” (Rev. 3:20).
Feeding
She [Wisdom] has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine, she has
also set her table. She has sent out her servant-girls, she calls from the highest
places in the town, “You that are simple, turn in here!” To those without
sense she says, “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.
Lay aside immaturity, and live and walk in the way of insight” (Prov. 9:2–6).
Like Wisdom Jesus gives food. He always invited people, particularly the poor,
prostitutes, sinners and tax collectors, to have table fellowship with him. In
Jesus’ parable when the king invited people to a banquet, many made excuses
and did not come. The king sent his slaves to the streets and invited all who
would come (see Matt. 22:1–10). Similarly, Wisdom sent her servant-girls to
invite people.
Wisdom and Jesus do not only offer food, they become food. Wisdom goes
on to say, “Come to me, you who desire me, and eat your fill of my fruits. For
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009.
Barton Gender-Bender God
159
the memory of me is sweeter than honey, and the possession of me is sweeter
than the honeycomb” (Sir. 24:19–20).
About wisdom the Proverbs say, “My child, eat honey, for it is good, and the
drippings of the honeycomb are sweet to your taste. Know that wisdom
(Chokmah) is such to your soul” (Prov. 24:13–14).
Jesus gave bread saying, “Take and eat; this is my body” and wine from a cup
saying, “Drink from it, all of you” (Matt. 26:26–27). When we eat and drink the
body and the blood of Christ we have eternal life. Schüssler Fiorenza writes,
In De Vita Contemplavita Philo, who lived in the first century C.E. in Alexandria (ca. 25 B.C.E.–ca. 40 C.E.), describes an ascetic group of women and
men who weekly gather around the table of Divine Wisdom to feast on her
teaching as a kind of heavenly food.26
Both Chokmah and Jesus offer wisdom as heavenly food to be eaten, so that
divine Wisdom might find her dwelling place in human hearts.
No Dwelling Place
“Wisdom went forth to make her dwelling among the children of humanity,
but she found no dwelling place. Therefore Wisdom returned to her place and
took her seat among the angels” (1 Enoch 42:1–2).27
Parallels are found in Jesus’ saying, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air
have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Matt. 8:20; see
also Lk. 9:58) and in John’s writing, “He [Jesus] came to what was his own,
and his own people did not accept him” (Jn 1:11).
Although Wisdom and Jesus invite people to dwell in them, they themselves
find no dwelling place, because human beings reject divine Wisdom. Rejected
wisdom and Jesus have gone to sit on God’s throne.
On the Throne
Solomon prays, “give me the wisdom that sits by your throne” (Wis. Sol. 9:4).
“Wisdom sits on God’s throne and makes all things new” (see Wis. Sol.
7:27).
“Christ is now sitting on the throne making all things new” (see Rev. 21:5).
Evil does not Prevail over the Light
About the divine Wisdom (Chokmah) the Bible says: “Compared with the light
she is found to be superior, for it is succeeded by the night, but against wisdom
evil does not prevail” (Wis. Sol. 7:29b–30).
26. Schüssler Fiorenza, Jesus: Miriam’s Child, 135.
27. Schüssler Fiorenza, Jesus: Miriam’s Child, 147.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009.
160
Black Theology: An International Journal
John recognizes Jesus as the light and proclaims: “The light shines in the
darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (Jn 1:5).
Although the evil of the world does not like the light and rejects it, the evil
cannot prevail. Even sitting on God’s throne Wisdom and Jesus continue to
renew the creation by sending the Holy Spirit to the earth.
Ruach, Pneuma, Holy Spirit
I have already cited biblical texts that confirm that at creation Chokmah was
present with Yahweh. The following verse includes Ruach, the Spirit of God,
who was with Elohim at creation: “In the beginning God (Elohim) created the
heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was
over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God (Ruach) was hovering over
the waters” (Gen. 1:1–2 NIV).28
It has been mentioned above that like Chokmah, Ruach also has feminine
gender. Here in Genesis 1 Ruach hovers over the water. The same term hover
(rachaph) is used in Deut. 32:11–12 which has the image of Yahweh as mother
eagle. We have seen above that the mother eagle hovers over her young. Virginia
Ramey Mollenkott observes:
The similar use of rachaph in Genesis and Deuteronomy makes it more probable that the very first image in the Bible is of God as mother eagle fluttering over the
waters as she gives birth to the universe.
In Egyptian hieroglyphics, the letter A is represented by the eagle, standing for
the Origin of all things and the warmth of life.29
Here again the biblical God is a gender-bender God. In Deuteronomy mother
eagle’s imagery is applied to Yahweh, while in Genesis the same image is implicit
in the activity of the Spirit (Ruach). I agree with Mollenkott when she writes,
As much as I sympathize with [the] …attempts to prove that the Holy Spirit
is the feminine component of the Holy Trinity (the Father, the Mother, and
the Son), I reiterate my belief that we are wiser to stick to the Bible’s own
usage, which is to associate feminine as well as masculine and neuter imagery
with all three persons of the Godhead.30
Sadly in English we use “he,” a male pronoun, for all three persons of the
Trinity. Marianne Katoppo, an Asian woman theologian, challenges the use of a
masculine pronoun for the Holy Spirit and writes: “The Third Person started
out in Hebrew as the feminine Ruach, but was then effectively neutered by the
Greek translators of the Septuagint, then made masculine by Latin. Therefore,
28. Here the New International Version is used because of its translation of the term
rachaph as hover.
29. Mollenkott, The Divine Feminine, 89–90; italics in the original.
30. Mollenkott, The Divine Feminine, 91; italics in the original.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009.
Barton Gender-Bender God
161
we are now blessed with an all-male Trinity.”31 The Greco-Roman translations
have slowly moved away from the original Hebrew feminine term Ruach to
Greek neuter Pneuma and then to the Latin masculine term Spiritus.
Rachel Mathew, another Asian woman theologian, claims, “What the Spirit
does is to transform the ordinary and enable them to do the extraordinary.”32
The Spirit of God hovered over the earth at the first creation, and in the new
creation she came upon Mary. This experience transformed the ordinary Galilean woman Mary and she was able to agree to the extraordinary task of giving
birth to Jesus. Marianne Katoppo is absolutely right to claim that when the
Trinity becomes all-male, Mary is seen as “ ‘daughter of the Father, mother of
Jesus, spouse of the Holy Spirit.’ A perfect example of the way some men would
like to see women: always as daughter/mother/spouse, never as a human being
in her own right.”33 I know that some Christians think of Mary as God’s spouse
in a crude way. During my teaching in theology classes often some students ask,
“If we give feminine attributes to the Holy Spirit where did the seed come
from for the birth of Jesus Christ?” This made me realize how very dangerous
it has been for Christians to use solely masculine terms for the Trinity. Many,
in their heads, have created a pagan god, who like human beings, engages in
sexual activity. In my class, students have a chance to speak about the pagan
images of God they nurture in their imagination and to have them challenged
with the help of the Bible.
The feminine imagery of the Holy Spirit (Ruach) keeps us firmly grounded
in the awareness that the Spirit does not need to be a masculine being for Jesus
to be born from the womb of Mary. Jesus, born of Mary and the Holy Spirit,
heralded a new creation available to the world. In the Bible men are known by
the names of their fathers, for example Abraham was the father of Isaac, and
Isaac the father of Jacob and so on. Although it is the mother who plays a much
bigger role in bringing a child into the world, the mother’s name is usually
wiped away from human history. At the birth of Jesus Christ the Holy Spirit
turned the worldly standard upside down. Matthew in Jesus’ genealogy could
not simply write “Joseph the father of Jesus” and was compelled to write,
“Jacob, the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born”
(Matt. 1:16). The Qur’an, written many years after the Bible, refers to Jesus
31. Marianne Katappo, “The Concept of God and the Spirit from the Feminist
Perspective,” in Feminist Theology from the Third World: A Reader, ed. Ursula King (London:
SPCK, 1994), 245. The term Septuagint, 70 in Latin, comes from the belief that seventy
scholars from the third century first translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek.
32. Rachel Mathew, “Pneumatology and Women,” in Towards a Theology of Humanhood:
Women’s Perspectives, ed. Aruna Gnanadason (Delhi: ISPCK, 1986), 68.
33. Katappo, “The Concept of God and the Spirit,” 248.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009.
162
Black Theology: An International Journal
more openly as the son of Mary. In the Qur’an Jesus is named Isa ibn Maryam,
Jesus, the son of Mary, or Christ, the son of Mary, or Jesus Christ the son of
Mary.34 Jesus received his divinity from the Holy Spirit, but his humanity came
solely from a woman; no man was involved in the birth of Jesus. Leelamma
Athyal writes:
Thus with the help of the Holy Spirit, Mary could bring forth Jesus who was
“human” through and through … Jesus was not any less human for his
having been a descendent of a woman alone, and his full humanity was what a
woman could contribute! … If women lack anything that is essentially human,
Jesus cannot be regarded as a real human being … One cannot at the same
time both accept that Christ was really human and say that women are an
inferior kind of being. Thus the biblical story of the New Creation brings
into focus both the work of the Holy Spirit and the worth of womanhood. It
was a woman who played the most important role in the divine act of creating
the new humanity in Christ.35
It is striking how much honour the Holy Spirit gave to a woman, Mary.
At his baptism, the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus, led him to the wilderness and helped him to resist the worldly kingdom and accept the Kingdom of
God. Instead of choosing prosperity, worldly power and security Jesus chose
poverty, vulnerability and insecurity for himself and for his followers. Soon
after defeating the devil Jesus’ mission is clear:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good
news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and
recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year
of the Lord’s favour (Lk. 4:18–19).
It is worth noting here that the pronoun “he,” twice used in the above verse,
is absent from the original. “He” is an aid in translation. It has been mentioned
before that Pneuma, Spirit, in Greek is not masculine, but neuter. At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry the Holy Spirit comes upon Jesus reminding him that
Yahweh, “I am who I am,” does not change. Yahweh, the God of the oppressed,
said to the oppressive Egyptian regime, “Let my people go” (Exod. 5:1). The
same God’s Spirit comes upon Jesus who immediately recognizes that his mission is to let the oppressed go. Recognising the activities of the Holy Spirit, a
Black theologian, Major J. Jones, says with deep conviction, “The Holy Spirit
just never lets a person be, but is forever tracking us down, refusing to leave us
34. A. Yusuf Ali, trans., The Holy Qur’an, Text Translation and Commentary (London:
Islamic Foundation, 1975), Sura 2.87 and 253; Sura 3.45; Sura 4.157 & 171; Sura 5. 19, 49, 75,
78, 113, 115, 117.
35. Leelamma Athyal, “Pneumatology and Women,” in Prasanna Kumari, ed., A Reader
in Feminist Theology (Madras: Gurukul, 1993), 90–91.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009.
Barton Gender-Bender God
163
alone snug in our unfreedom, content with the lot of a well-kept slave.”36
Knowing well the liberating nature of the Holy Spirit, James Cone writes,
the Spirit is God’s guarantee that the little ones are never—no, not ever—left
alone in their struggle for freedom. It is God’s way of being with people and
enabling them to shout for joy, even when they have no empirical evidence in
their lives to warrant happiness.37
Jesus’ mission was to remain faithful to this Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is the life-giving force which creates and recreates the creation. After giving birth to the first creation and then to Jesus Christ, she was
involved in a significant way in the birth of the church. Leelamma Athyal is
right in saying:
The author of the Book of Acts tells us that it was the hovering of the Holy
Spirit upon a small timid community of believers that brought the church
into existence in a real sense … in writing the Book of Acts Luke was giving
an account of the “Acts of the Holy Spirit” rather than “Acts of the
Apostles.”38
At the birth of the church the Holy Spirit comes as tongues of fire. The Galilean disciples begin to speak in many languages and all the strangers present
hear their own language spoken. To Peter this is the fulfilling of prophet Joel’s
prophecy:
Then afterwards I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your
daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young
men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will
pour out my spirit (Joel 2:28–29, cited in Acts 2:17–18).
The Spirit falls not on a monolithic group, but on “all” people. Moreover,
“all” here is not a term to gloss over the diversity. The gender, age, class and
ethnic diversity are all spelt out: men and women, young and old including the
slaves, will prophesy. In the prophet Joel’s time the inclusion of the word
“slave” would have meant the powerless poor, the strangers and the Gentiles.
The Holy Spirit comes bearing gifts. Paul says,
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; … To each is given the
manifestation of the Spirit for the common good … All these are activated by
one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit
chooses (1 Cor. 12:4, 7, 11).
36. Major J. Jones, The Color of God: The Concept of God in Afro-American Thought (Macon,
GA: Mercer University Press, 1987), 105.
37. James Cone cited in Jones, The Color of God, 103–104.
38. Athyal, “Pneumatology and Women,” 91.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009.
164
Black Theology: An International Journal
Leelamma Athyal posits that since everything is a gift from the Holy Spirit,
nobody “could be regarded as unimportant.”39 According to Paul, “the fruit of
the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness,
gentleness, and self-control” (Gal. 5:22–23). Interestingly, in patriarchal societies these qualities are often seen as feminine qualities, expected of women
and not so much of men. But the Holy Spirit gives these gifts to both men and
women.
The Holy Spirit who gave birth to the church continues to give birth to the
whole creation. Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom
of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is
flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit” (Jn 3:5–6). In the ancient church
tradition, the font is seen as the womb and the tomb. In our natural birth we
come out of the mother’s womb to be born. For our new birth we are put in the
baptismal font, the womb, and are born again. The font is also the tomb. We
are buried in it and rise again. It seems that St Paul is also implying the maternal image of the Holy Spirit when he writes,
We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until
now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of
the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our
bodies (Rom. 8:22–23).
We have seen above that God as mother suffers birth pangs; here Paul shows
that the whole creation and we ourselves groan in labour pains to be reborn.
Our Indian Christian saint, Sadhu Sundar Singh, used an analogy to illustrate
how we are reborn. Through his window day after day the Sadhu observed a
bird’s nest on a tree. The mother bird was sitting on her eggs patiently and continuously. In the eggs there was a liquid, and the liquid was being transformed
into the image of the mother. Sadhu Sundar Singh concludes, likewise, the
Holy Spirit changes our will until it becomes one with the will of God.40
I began this article with Celie’s and Shug’s rejection of the image of God
given by the church. They had to go deep into their own hearts to find the
invisible God who dwells in all things. In my own search the Bible has been
immensely helpful. Here I have explored only a few images of God from this
huge biblical treasure chest. Shug rejected the masculine pronoun ‘he’ for God.
When I began to know the broadness of the biblical God I had to stop using the
pronoun “he” too. In my private and public prayers as much as possible I avoid
addressing God as father. There are two reasons for it. Firstly, because we have
39. Athyal, ‘Pneumatology and Women’, 92–93.
40. A. J. Appasamy, Sundar Singh: A Biography (Madras: Christian Literature Society,
1966), 145–46.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009.
Barton Gender-Bender God
165
deviated so much from the original meaning of Abba, that the use of this term
today only reinforces our misconceptions. Secondly, when the Bible has given
us many different names ofor God, why do we impoverish our souls by sticking to one name? Celie and Shug began to love the God they found. I am also
growing rather fond of this gender-bender God of the Bible.
This article shows that we have often failed to read the Bible properly, but
the Bible is reading us now. We have tried to put God in a box, but divine Wisdom is broadening our horizon. We have ignored and dishonoured the feminine
in God and in ourselves and have helped to create a domineering and a bloodthirsty macho culture. Today divine Wisdom is manifesting herself to us. She
has come to dwell among us and is offering to make all things new. We have a
choice to say yes or no to divine Wisdom’s call.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ali, A. Y., trans. The Holy Qur’an, Text Translation and Commentary. London: Islamic Foundation, 1975.
Appasamy, A. J. Sundar Singh: A Biography. Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1966.
Athyal, L. “Pneumatology and Women.” In Prasanna Kumari, ed., A Reader in Feminist
Theology, 80–94. Madras: Gurukul, 1993.
Barton, M. “I am Black and Beautiful.” Black Theology: An International Journal 2, no. 2 (2004):
167–87. doi:10.1558/blth.2.2.167.36028
—Rejection, Resistance and Resurrection: Speaking Out on Racism in the Church. London: Darton,
Longman and Todd, 2005.
Bright, J, A History of Israel. London: SCM Press, 1972.
Brown, R. E., J. A. Fitzmyer and R. E. Murphy, eds. The New Jerome Biblical Commentary.
London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1990.
Clanton, J. A. In Whose Image? God and Gender. London: SCM Press, 1990.
Gates, H. L. Jr, and N. Y. McKay, eds. The Norton Anthology: African American Literature. New
York and London: W. W. Norton and Co., 1997.
Hamel, K. Online Bible Software. New Jersey: Oakhurst, 1996.
Jones, Major J. The Color of God: The Concept of God in Afro-American Thought. Macon, GA:
Mercer University Press, 1987.
Katappo, M. “The Concept of God and the Spirit from the Feminist Perspective.” In Ursula
King, ed., Feminist Theology from the Third World: A Reader, 244–50. London: SPCK,
1994.
Mathew, R. “Pneumatology and Women.” In Aruna Gnanadason, ed., Towards a Theology of
Humanhood: Women’s Perspectives, 62–68. Delhi: ISPCK, 1986.
Mollenkott, V. R. The Divine Feminine: The Biblical Imagery of God as Female. New York:
Crossroad, 1983.
Parrish, C. “When Father is Our Mother.” http://www.sanctasophia.org/articles/whenfather.
html (accessed September 19, 2006).
Schüssler Fiorenza, E. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian
Origins. New York: Crossroad, 1984.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009.
166
Black Theology: An International Journal
—Jesus: Miriam’s Child, Sophia’s Prophet. Critical Issues in Feminist Christology. London: SCM
Press, 1995.
Shapiro, Rabbi R. The Divine Feminine: In Biblical Wisdom Literature, Selections Annotated &
Explained. Vermont: Skylight Paths Publishing, 2005.
Trible, P. God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality. London: SCM Press, 1992.
Wink, W. Engaging the Power. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992.
Zondervan Interactive. The NIV Study Bible Complete Library CD ROM. Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan, 1989–98.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009.