Speaking the Christian God: The Holy Trinity and the Challenge of Feminism

by Alvin F. Kimel (Editor)

A collection of essays written by a wide diversity of scholars-including Thomas F. Torrance, Geoffrey Wainwright, Elizabeth Achtemeier, Colin Gunton, and Robert W. Jenson-that discuss and critically analyze the crucial theological issues at stake in the feminist theological agenda. The first volume of its kind to offer an orthodox, critical response to the proposals of contemporary feminist theology.

Genres: Theology

347 pages, Paperback

First published August 19, 1992

Reviews

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS EXEGETICALLY AND THEOLOGICALLY REJECTING FEMINIST IDEAS

Editor Alvin Kimel Jr. wrote in the Introduction to this 1992 book, “Fads in theology come and go… and rarely do they impact the parochial discourse directly and formatively. Not so, however, with the new feminist theology. Not only does the new thinking present a powerful critique of traditional theology and faith---as well as offering an attractive and, for many, compelling religious substitute in the name of Christ---but also it embodies this critique in very practical directives that alter the church’s speech and prayer: the triune name is suppressed, prayer to the Father is asserted to be exclusive of women believers and therefore discountenanced, the appropriation of feminine images of God in worship and meditation is encouraged, and the use of the masculine pronoun for the deity is proscribed. This is one theological revolution that seeks to alter permanently the face and constitution of Christian faith…

“Despite the radicality of the feminist reconstructions of the doctrine of God … most theologians have simply either ignored the feminist arguments or accepted them with various degrees of enthusiasm and assent. This book seeks to remedy this situation, at least partially. These essays attempt to do two things: first, to substantively and critically engage specific feminist thinkers, particularly … in the areas of the doctrine of God and God-talk; and second, to offer constructive discussion and analysis of the crucial and often very complex theological issues… If being a feminist means being convinced of the absolute equality and dignity of man and woman as created in the image of God, then each contributor to this volume is a feminist. But in current debate, theological feminism has… entered into a … revision of orthodox belief, which, it is claimed, is fatally shaped by male sexism and used by the church for the exploitation and subjugation of women. God, Trinity, Christ---all must be rethought and reconceptualized in service to contemporary liberation… It is at this level that the theologians of this book enter into the fray… The present contributors represent a wide range of ecclesiastical traditions---Anglican, Reformed, Lutheran, Catholic, Orthodox, Methodist, evangelical…”

Elizabeth Achtemeier observes, “The feminist claim is that all language about God is analogical and metaphorical, and that therefore it can be changed at will to overcome the church’s patriarchalism and to foster women’s liberation. Principally… the feminists seek to eliminate all masculine terminology used of God… by using neuter or female images for the deity exclusively. In speaking of God and Christ, some simply use ‘she’ and ‘her.’ For the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, others substitute ‘Creator,’ ‘Liberator,’ and ‘Comforter,’ and they avoid… terms such as Father, King and Master… Others apply feminine usage only to the Holy Spirit or avoid the problem altogether by using impersonal terms for God such as Wisdom… Holy One… or neuter terms like Liberator, Maker, Defender… and Nurturer.” (Pg. 3-4)

Roland M. Frye quotes Mary Daly’s “feminist rallying cry… 'Since God is male, the male is God.’ … ‘Since God is male’ begins with an assumption that the mainstream of biblical religion has consistently denied. References to God as Father do not indicate male sexuality… The pervasive biblical references to God as Father do not teach that ‘God is male.’ Neither do they teach that ‘the male is God.’ … Daly’s slogan … evidences the disparity between understandings of God in much feminist theology and in historic Christianity.” (Pg. 19-21)

Later, he adds, “Metaphors… [go] beyond the ordinary meanings so as to establish … a fuller representation … of their subjects. God as Father is not equivalent to any biological father; he is ‘our Father who is in heaven’… While teaching us to address God as ‘our Father,’ Jesus also taught us not to confuse any earthly father with the heavenly Father when he said in Matthew 23:9, ‘Call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven.’ … Whatever the biblical occasions on which God is compared to a mother, God is never CALLED Mother or ADDRESSED in prayer as Mother in either Testament.” (Pg. 41-42)

Garrett Green states, “God is not male, yet the appropriate language in which to describe, address, and worship him is nevertheless masculine. Such masculinity is one grammatical aspect of the paradigmatic biblical narrative through which he has disclosed himself to Israel and the church. Read in context, however, this masculinity turns out to be ‘kenotic,’ an aspect of the divine self-emptying by which God divests himself of all majesty, dominion, and power in order to overcome the powers (masculine and otherwise) of this world.” (Pg. 64)

Janet Martin Soskice critiques the “‘Jesus, the Good Feminist’ argument, where Jesus is styled as inheriting a religion with a dreaded ‘father God’ and transforming it through a personal regard for women… The real point, however, is that religions are not patriarchal simply by virtue of styling their deities as ‘fathers’ but rather by underwriting social patterns that privilege men over women. This could be the case in a religion that used no personal stylizations of God of any form.” (Pg. 91)

Robert W. Jenson states, “The deepest origin of and continuing reason for the Christian address of God as ‘Father’ and the ‘Father/Son’ pairing within the triune name is the instruction Jesus gave his disciples when they asked their master how to pray… Jesus called upon God as ‘Father.’ … ‘father’ is an individuating term of address. It would be quite meaningless even to ask whether ‘father’ in this context could be a metaphor or other trope.” (Pg. 103)

Gerhard O. Forde suggests, “merely shifting to ‘motherhood’ or like abstractions is not likely to fare any better. If fatherhood bespeaks male dominance and control, motherhood can likewise promote female devices for dominance and control. Shuffling names, attributes, and virtues about does not get at the real problem posed by our attempts to bring God to speech…Our speech about God is at best only half-true. But it is not neutral half-truth. For half-truths about God … become monstrous lies when they claim to hold out solutions to our problem. They are not the solution but the problem.” (Pg. 112-113)

Thomas F. Torrance asserts, “We may know who God is only because God reveals himself though himself, in a triadic movement of self-communication whereby he announces himself to us and names himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is… a revelation of what he really is in his own eternal nature apart from us. God IS Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The trinitarian content and the trinitarian structure of God’s self-revelation are one… there is no other way for us to conceive of the one being of God in accordance with his divine nature except as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” (Pg. 121) Later, he adds, “the concepts of fatherhood and sonship do not derive from any analogy or inherent likeness between the creature and the Creator.” (Pg. 129) He continues, “Thus ‘Father,’ ‘Son,’ and ‘Holy Spirit’ are essential to the informational content of revelation and are not just metaphorical ways of speaking of God derived from Jewish culture, for they are rooted in and determined by what God is inherently in himself.” (Pg. 140)

J.A. DiNoia observes, “We have no basis for naming the persons of the Trinity by their proper names except their own ‘usage.’ Insofar as we become intimates of the Trinity by grace, we can learn to use these names as well… we have no grounds to prefer other terms to these personal names for the Trinity… The exclusive warrant for their aptness lies in Christ’s revelation of the inner-trinitarian life. This consideration supports a decisive case against the substitution of the name ‘Mother’ for ‘Father’ when speaking of the first person of the Trinity.” (Pg. 185)

Alvin Kimel Jr. points out, “Each believer, by the mandate of the risen Christ, is baptized into this name, initiated into a concrete, verbally determined relationship with the triune God of the Scriptures. From this point on, we meet and experience the deity from within the trinitarian narrative proclaimed in the community of faith. We are the people of the Trinity, shaped and formed by the threefold appellation of our God.” (Pg. 192-193)

Geoffrey Wainwright notes, “Joachim Jeremias has highlighted the significance of Jesus’ address of God as ‘Abba.’ … it is a striking characteristic of Jesus that he should address his prayers by this intimate term which expresses both affection and respect when used by a child to address its father.” (Pg. 217)

David A. Scott argues, “the feminist teaching that any human can ‘god’ God or that the earth incarnates God destroys the uniqueness of Jesus Christ… As example of paradigm, Jesus Christ incarnates not God but a principle: the principle of creation’s deity or the principle of humanity’s potential for ‘godding.’ Thus Christ is reduced to a manifestation or expression of a God/creation unity that is real apart from and independent of the person of Jesus.” (Pg. 253)

This book will strongly appeal to Christians seeking a ‘theological’ critique of feminist ideas.

[Cameron Coombe · Rating 3 out of 5]

An incredibly interesting and learned defence of the traditional Christian doctrine of the Trinity, with some big names like Robert Jenson, Thomas Torrance, and Colin Gunton. What basically emerges is the conviction that the trinitarian name, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is wholly unique and unsubstitutable. It is not a metaphor, but nor does it denote sexuality within the Godhead. The book's chief shortcoming, as in other traditionalist responses to feminist revision, is that it takes little if anything constructive from the feminist challenge. God is not sexual, the language of fatherhood and sonship must remain, etc., but what can be said positively of feminine language used of God in Scripture and tradition, other than that it shouldn't be read in the ways that feminist theologians have proposed?

As might be expected, the book also generally suffers from a conventional understanding of gender (I think one contributor highlights this), where masculine and feminine generally map onto men and woman, respectively, and these are two poles in a binary. Transphobia also emerges in some of the contributors' condemnation of "hemaphrodite" or "androgynous" images of God in the feminist theological imagination. Terms like these are used critically and taken as self-evidently bad, at the very least when applied to God.