The Gender of God in the Bible, the Early Church and Today's Churches

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Honour thy father and mother ... in thought this may require a psyche experience ... beyond the emotional bounds ... frantically unbelievable?
 
For now, I'll set aside the many more feminine images of God in the OT and change the focus to Jesus. Does Jesus encourage us to shift back and forth between male and female images of God? The answer is yes as evidenced by a unique distinctive of the parable tradition, sexually parallel stories, one of which features a man and the other of which features a woman. For example, in 2 parables about hidden growth (Luke 13:18-20), one features a man illegally sowing mustard seed in his garden and the other features a woman illegally mixing yeast within 3 meaures of flour. The meaning of both signifcantly overlaps, but a man represents God in the first and a woman represents God in the second. Or consider the 2 sexually parallel stories about seeking the lost in Luke 15:1-10. In the first a male shepherd searches for a lost sheep; in the second a woman searches for a lost coin. Again, God is represented by a man in the first parable and by a woman in the second. Similar sexually parallel parables of Jesus can be found in the Gospel of Thomas. Such parallel gender images for God are unprecedented in Jewish and Greco-Roman literature in late antiquity and express a unique sensitivity to women's need for feminine ultimate symbols of power.

Beyond this, Jesus likens Himself to a mother hen cradling her chicks under her wings (Luke 13:34-45) and views Himself as the mouthpiece of Lady Wisdom (Aramaic: Hochmah; Greek: Sophia--Luke 11:49). This self-understanding leads to the earliest reference to "the Trinity" in Theophilus of Antioch, who substitutes Lady Wisdom for the Holy Spirit.
 
This whole thread seems to be literalist and antagonistic.

"God" itself is a loaded word, a noun rather than a verb, that is exclusionary.

"God", if you insist on using the word and insist on gendering the concept, can only mean the inclusion of ALL genders and all gender choices. If you can't stand in companionship with a macho male, an extroverted cross-dresser, a feminist activist, a gay guy, a lesbian … then you are probably heading up a side-road that's taking you a long way away from understanding god and humanity. God and humanity have so vastly much more to embrace than getting it off. A person, every person, is unique in thousands of ways and, if your "god" can be severed or is separable from any one of them your connecting with nonexistence.
 
Mike, you miss the point: anyone like you can impose their own biased agenda onto Scripture. What I do on this thread is lay out the case against an exclusively patriarchal God in the Bible and the early church. My case then is objective; yours is subjective.
 
The Gospels we usually see are an edited selection of more than 50 such documents: they are the formulations of oral communities recorded after 60 and more years of banter by people fearing for their own survival and the survival of their faith. The gendered "god" is a product of linguistic convention, cultural bias and biased translation. So I don't agree that I'm expressing a bias. It you're a literalist, you have made your own (unnecessary) bed of fallacies.
 
MikePaterson said:
The Gospels we usually see are an edited selection of more than 50 such documents: they are the formulations of oral communities recorded after 60 and more years of banter by people fearing for their own survival and the survival of their faith.

You do realize that I have a Harvard doctorate in New Testament and Judaism and was a Theology professor for many years. So spare me your patronizing tripe. And you apparently know very little about the process of canonization. One of the criteria was to select Gospels that stem from the apostolic age for a plausible connection with eyewitness testimony. Our 4 are the only Gospels that can confidently be traced to the first century. In any case, your comment about Gospels overlooks the fact that most of the relevant biblical texts that feminize God are from the OT, which, I point out, are not Gospels.

Mike: The gendered "god" is a product of linguistic convention, cultural bias and biased translation. So I don't agree that I'm expressing a bias. It you're a literalist, you have made your own (unnecessary) bed of fallacies.
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As if your gratuitous perspective is not presupposition- burdened! I am a trained historian and this thread, if you're read it carefully, demonstrates how naive progressive claims of a uniformly male patriarchal god betray a uneducated lack of study. Responsible historical research is necessarily "literalist" in your sense because it seeks to discover original intent. You can simple-mindedly label that intent culturally biased or divinely inspired, but either way bias is expressed. If you invoke biblical revelation at all for your theology then you bear the burden of demonstrating why your imposition of corrective assumptions lacks bias and is credible rather then cringe-worthy. Oh, and your screed overlooks the connection I make between the gender of God and the power and rights of women in some forms of ancient Judaism and Christianity.

I
 
Mystic said:
As if your gratuitous perspective is not presupposition- burdened! I am a trained historian and this thread, if you're read it carefully, demonstrates how naive progressive claims of a uniformly male patriarchal god betray a uneducated lack of study. Responsible historical research is necessarily "literalist" in your sense because it seeks to discover original intent. You can simple-mindedly label that intent culturally biased or divinely inspired, but either way bias is expressed. If you invoke biblical revelation at all for your theology then you bear the burden of demonstrating why your imposition of corrective assumptions lacks bias and is credible rather then cringe-worthy. Oh, and your screed overlooks the connection I make between the gender of God and the power and rights of women in some forms of ancient Judaism and Christianity.

I
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Well, Mike, sarcasm is the best ploy to mask academic incompetence. I mean, check out Pavros Maros's responses in the Soul thread. His pride forces him to deny the validity of Greek dictionaries grammars, and, word studies, and the consensus of commentaries and Bible translations.
 
I have a PhD from Glasgow University. My supervisor was Ted Cowan, a prominent Scottish historian who taught me that context is all; documents are not necessarily more reliable than oral history and more easily misrepresent actual events. Motives are core to written sources. In the case of Scripture, what's received in all in translation and from mostly unknown sources. We know something of the cultural context and it's one in which women and slaves were relegated to social and political inferiority. This does not mean that either was completely without power or that their situation is comparable to contemporary sexism which almost certainly has more to do with contemporary male opportunism. We hear of "rape culture" ands sexual predation in our universities, our military, our workplaces and our police forces; pornography widely passes without comment and advertisers and entertainment mock women (and children) for their vulnerability. We have a "pop culture" that manifests Gian Gomeshis on the one hand and '50 Shades of Grey' on the other. This in inherited from sources close to hand, including the mores of colonialism and contemporary capitalism… and you talk about Christianity: I think you may be mixing categories, cultures and language. As for "god" … I stand by my earlier comment. But in the contexts you have set, I defer to your scholarship. I wasn't being sarcastic. I was disengaging.
 
Mike, you are entitled to your gratuitous presuppositional matrix. Just don't pretend that it is objectively grounded. But you seem poorly informed about the astounding leadership roles of women in the NT and early church and the role Paul plays in promoting their unique status. So I guess I should outline some of that evidence after I more fully lay out the amazing extent that empowering feminine imagery of the divine finds common expression, despite the prevailing oppressive patriarchal culture. For me, that shicking counter-cultural thrust signifies the work of the Holy Spirit in challenging such values. Thanks for disengaging.
 
There are striking parallels between descriptions of the Egyptian goddess Isis and personified Wisdom in the OT and other ancient Jewish Wisdom literature and between Isis and early Catholic descriptions of Mary, Mother of God. In OT Wisdom literature, Lady Wisdom address Israel as if She were a separate divinity; yet, She would rather be considered a feminine symbol for aspects of Yahweh.

On the Marian parallels, see, for example:

http://jessicajewettonline.com/did-isis-become-the-virgin-mary

How can such a feminization of the divine within a patriarchal religious culture be explained? One of the most intriguing explanations comes form the concept of the Anima within Jungian psychology. The Anima is the inner feminine in men and serves as a guide and mediator of the divine and spiritual experience. For example, one quite universal characteristic of shamanism is the shaman's practice of dressing in drag before experiencing paranormal guidance. The Jungian explanation is that male shaman's need to get in touch with their inner feminine to experience revelations. By the same token, Jungians demonstrate that in many dreams a feminine figure representing the Anima is the key to profound dream insight and spiritual experience.

By the same token, the OT personification of Lady Wisdom satisfies the male need to express the Anima without repudiating monotheism. In a strict patriarchy like emerging early Catholicism, men's inner feminine was stifled. So unconsciously dressing up Mary, Mother of God, in goddess imagery and venerating and praying to her seems an apt way of circumventing the strict patriarchal monotheism of the early Christian centuries. A similar inner dynamic operates with a woman's Animus or inner masculine, but women were rarely empowered to shape theology in the ancient Middle "East.
 
Mystic, I have stayed off this thread because I wanted to read to the end.

I scrolled over all your pages . If I wanted a lecture , I would go somewhere

else. If I wanted to see folk being chastised, there are also other places to go.

But to see you attack MikePaterson, in such a manner, really irks me.

You, Mystic , are losing friends by the minute. Reminds me of the last Ordained

minister , I shared ministry with - a bully. Is that what you are?
 
Crazyheart, do I seem like someone who comes here to make friends? The thread seems like a lecture because few have taken the trouble to engage. That's not my fault. Indeed, the lack of critical engagement on this and other threads bores me stiff and may be a reason to depart from the site again, as I have done before. The thread was necessitated by Bette's extended rude intrusions on my Hymn thread. As for Mike, his posts were patronizing and distorted the historical nature of the thread. His comments deserve the response he received. Snide and nasty posts are approved here when posters conform to the Ghetto consensus. Jesus implies that those who speak the prophetic truth will be disdainfully received. So I wear your nasty comments as a badge of honor. "How terrible for you when everyone says good things about you! Their people treated the false prophets the same way long ago (Luke 6:46)."
 
Mystic - has it occurred to you that lack of response to your lectures might indicate lack of interest on the part of the majority of the people on this site, and perhaps it might not be the best fit for you?
 
Mystic said:
Crazyheart, do I seem like someone who comes here to make friends? The thread seems like a lecture because few have taken the trouble to engage. That's not my fault. Indeed, the lack of critical engagement on this and other threads bores me stiff and may be a reason to depart from the site again, as I have done before. The thread was necessitated by Bette's extended rude intrusions on my Hymn thread. As for Mike, his posts were patronizing and distorted the historical nature of the thread. His comments deserve the response he received. Snide and nasty posts are approved here when posters conform to the Ghetto consensus. Jesus implies that those who speak the prophetic truth will be disdainfully received. So I wear your nasty comments as a badge of honor. "How terrible for you when everyone says good things about you! Their people treated the false prophets the same way long ago (Luke 6:46)."
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So why do you come here Mystic? Moreover, since you find it boring, why do you stay?
 
Oh, I think he should stay. It's perhaps his only chance to learn some Christian behaviour, his own life lessons apparently having done nothing but feed his Ego. (*snickering at the thought she should be commenting on anyone's ego*)

Mystic, I think you're a little confused about the nature of relationship. While the grammatical convention may be to "make friends" - as if you could force anyone to be your friend (or as if you could choose to believe in someone else's vision of the Divine), the only way one makes a friend is to be a friend. Like to a neighbour. Like Jesus said, right?
 
So, back to the topic of the the thread, and perhaps skipping over the history lessons for now, has anyone ever been to a service that used ONLY feminine images for Godde? Mendalla?
 
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