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Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age

By Sallie McFague

Philadelphia, Fortress, 1987. 224 Pp. $10.95.

Sallie McFague points us in the direction in which new constructive work in theology must move in coming decades: toward a much more ecologically sensitive interest and emphasis, and toward the employment of new images and models in our thinking about God. Her understanding of all theology as metaphorical enables her to free herself (and us) from slavish bondage to the patriarchal and monarchical models of the past. This puts her in a position to develop systematically metaphors neglected or rejected by mainstream Western religious traditions-the notions of the world as God's body, and of God conceived as mother, lover, and friend. Through these moves, she succeeds in providing a wholly new and thoroughly refreshing ecological theological vision. Though McFague modestly denies that she is doing systematic theology in any grand sense, she has in fact produced a new systematic theology. Indeed, she provides a new way of thinking about systematic theology (she calls it "metaphorical theology") together with a radical reorientation of basic Christian themes based on her analysis of the new theological models she proposes. Moreover, she has done all of this compactly and economically. It is an exciting and illuminating book.

When I first learned that McFague was proposing a conception of God based on metaphors of mother, lover, and friend, I was quite skeptical. It seemed to me that the use of such images must inevitably lead to serious sentimental excesses, and that it could not help us address the really "hard" issues with which theologians today must come to terms. But I was completely wrong in these judgments. McFague's examination of these models shows that they bear within them the potential for reorienting our theological tradition from its fixation on personalistic individualism-in its conception both of God and of humans-to an understanding of human existence more grounded upon and interdependent with the physical and biological orders of nature, and to a conception of God as thoroughly involved with all natural processes. Her analysis shows that many of the difficulties that modern theology has faced are dependent not so much on the personalistic character of the root metaphors of the tradition, as I bad been inclined to believe; they are, rather, largely a function of the patriarchal and monarchical character of those metaphors. The vision of the human (and God) as essentially dominating will, as powerful individual ego, as the great "I AM" is the root of many of our theological problems.

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Theologians have not been sufficiently aware how much their thinking has been governed by these unquestioned notions. McFague's method of metaphorical analysis enables her to show what a difference it makes if we conceive God as, for example, "mother" and "lover" rather than "father" and "king." And we are enabled to see how much our thinking has been in the grip of metaphors that (however significant and appropriate they may have been in the historical situations in which they arose) have now become not only misleading but dangerously destructive. Her work clears the ground for a thorough-going examination of the models that have shaped Western religious thinking, and for deliberate, self-conscious moves toward new root metaphors that will enable more effective struggle with the deepest problems of our "ecological, nuclear age."

The notion of the world as "God's body" is, of course, very ancient, and in modern times it has been appropriated by Whiteheadian theologians. For the most part, this language has not been particularly persuasive or illuminating. It has always seemed to involve an exceedingly anthropomorphic way of conceiving both God and the world that built upon and accentuated the unfortunate ancient dualism between mind and body. When one tried to think out metaphysically what all this might mean, our already difficult theological problems in conceiving God and God's relation to the world only worsened. McFague's approach, however, opens up the questions in a new way. By reminding us that all language about God is metaphorical, and thus both does and does not assert what it seems to assert, she effectively loosens the tight conceptual grip that theological language usually has upon us. The question now becomes: do new metaphors illuminate matters that the accepted metaphors of the tradition left in the dark? To examine this question properly, we need to set the various metaphorical alternatives side-by-side and see what each enables us to do.

This is exactly what McFague does in her book. Much traditional thinking has been based on the metaphor of the world as God's "kingdom." What are the strengths and weaknesses of that metaphor in comparison with the metaphor of the world as God's "body"? As she puts it:

a metaphor or model is not a description. We are trying to think in an as-if fashion about the God-world relationship, because we have no other way of thinking about it. No metaphor fits in all ways, and some are more nonsense than sense. The king-realm kind of thinking about the God-world relationship sounds like sense because we are used to it, but reflection shows that in our world it is nonsense... The metaphor of the world as God's body has the opposite problem to the metaphor of the world as the king's realm: if the latter puts too great a distance between God and the world, the former verges on too great a proximity. Since both metaphors are inadequate, we have to ask which one is better in our time, and to qualify it with other metaphors and models. Is it better to accept an imaginative picture of God as the distant ruler controlling his realm through external and benevolent power or one of God so intimately related to the world that the world can be imagined as God's body... Is it better in terms of our and the world's preservation and

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fulfillment" Is it better in terms of coherence, comprehensibility, and illumination? Is it better in terms of expressing the Christian understanding of the relationship between God and the world! All these criteria are relevant.

McFague goes on to argue that the intimate relation of God and world suggested by the "body" metaphor is much more appropriate to our modern ecological understanding of the mutual interdependence of all things. It

encourages holistic attitudes of responsibility for and care of the vulnerable and oppressed [in contrast to the monarchical model which] encourages attitudes of militarism, dualism, and escapism [and] condones control through violence and oppression [as well as] having nothing to say about the nonhuman world. Both are pictures: which distortion is more true to the world in which we live and to the good news of Christianity?

McFague examines the charge of pantheism leveled against the "body" model. She discusses a way the problem of evil can be interpreted in relationship to this metaphor, points out how this metaphor encourages us to think of God's relation to the world as "caring," and suggests what this implies for our relationship to the world.

McFague reminds us that "negative theology" has always emphasized that we really are in deep ignorance about who or what God is and how God is related to the world. All of our claims are, thus, in fact our "fictions" -our own "fashionings" or "formings." It is, therefore, incumbent upon us to select with care the metaphors we use and to see that they perform as effectively as possible the functions we intend for them. This is Just as true if we continue to work with the patriarchal and monarchical metaphors of the tradition -with their unfortunate implications for our exceedingly fragile modern world-as when we take up new metaphors and attempt to construct our conception of God in ways more fitted to addressing the actual problems we today face. In this light, there is much to be said for the way the metaphor of the world as God's body can help to reorient our theological thinking.

The same is to be said for the metaphors of "mother," "lover," and "friend." McFague suggests that our deepest and most powerful images are not in fact those based on social and political order, but instead those referring us to the basic conditions of life itself:

the beginning and continuation of life, imagery of sex, breath, food, blood and water... This language continues to be powerful because images arising from the most basic level of' physical existence-the level of our tenuous hold on existence and what is needed to keep it going-are images of life and death.

With these considerations in mind, McFague undertakes to show how metaphors like "mother" and "lover" point us toward the deepest resources of our being and well-being, and can thus provide the basis for a meaningful and powerful theological picture. The principal danger of these images, one might expect, is their highly emotional suggestiveness of a personalized, individualistic relationship of the soul to God. But

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McFague does not allow them to be developed in that pietistic direction. She has already argued that the world should be understood as an organic whole, God's body. We humans are related to God, therefore, not one-to-one, as individual ego to individual ego, but as constituent parts belonging to this organic whole. "The Gospel of John gives the clue: for God so loved the world. It is not individuals who are loved by God as mother, lover, and friend but the world."

If the lover is God and the beloved the world rather than individuals, then the individualistic, dualistic, and other-worldly aspects dissolve. For now God as lover is seen to love not spirits individually in a world apart from the one we know, but all creatures, body and spirit, here and now. And we in turn do not love God one by one in vertical relationships of beloved to lover, but as we love the world, God's body-as we find it attractive and precious, valuable for its own sake-we are in this loving of the world loving God. With our model of the world as God's body, we avoid the dualism, individualism, and otherworldliness of the tradition's use of the lover model.

Much could be said about the transformation of sensibility and consciousness implied in the way McFague explores and unpacks her several models, but we must turn in conclusion to a few questions concerning her very suggestive proposals. Let us grant for the moment McFague's central contentions (1) that theology is (and always has been) an attempt to develop a picture of the world and the human on the basis of certain root metaphors or images that provide structured patterns in terms of which the whole of reality, and the human place within that whole, can be conceived; and (2) that we should now select the metaphors we will use for this purpose much more self-consciously and critically than was done in the past, with a view to the major problems human beings face in the modern world. Does our recognition that it is always metaphors we are working with, and that therefore we never possess proper descriptions or definitions with tight boundaries, mean that we are free to juxtapose just any metaphors we choose side-by-side with each other as we construct a picture of the whole? Are we free to introduce into our theological constructing virtually any metaphors we find useful, regardless of how they relate to or cohere with each other? It is clear that a "metaphorical theology" will be much less tightly bound by formal demands for logical coherence than a theology that understands itself to be dealing with carefully defined concepts, but what are the limits here?

I raise this issue not only because of its formal methodological importance, but also because it points to a problem in the book. There is a profound tension between the metaphor that provides the fundamental pattern for the overall theological vision that McFague is setting out-the metaphor of the world as God's body-and the three metaphors in terms of which the concept of God itself is elaborated, " mother," "lover," "friend." McFague is aware of this problem and attempts briefly to dissolve it, but it continues to be troubling. The models of "mother lover," and "friend" all gain their force and meaning by depicting a situation in which two persons are envisioned as

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distinct from and over against each other, even though they stand in very significant positive relation to one other. Are we supposed to think of God, now, as the mother of her own body? What could that mean? And haven't we notably transformed the meanings of "lover" and "friend" when we think of God's love and friendship as directed essentially toward her own body rather than toward a genuine personal counterpart? I am in full sympathy with McFague's desire to tone down the tendencies of all these metaphors toward an individualistic pietism, but the remedy she has proposed generates such tensions with the other three metaphors as to make her overall picture incoherent. Only through a skillful juggling act can one keep all four of these metaphorical balls in the air at once; and it is not entirely clear that they hang together well enough to provide a coherent theological picture. Perhaps that kind of coherence is not required-or even appropriate-in a self-conscious " metaphorical theology." Or is it? The answer to this question is not clear; nor is a way to proceed to one.

My second question is related to the first. Are metaphors like mother," "lover," and "friend" in fact complex enough to provide the principal basis for a contemporary conception of God? Certainly, they have the strengths of great immediacy and evocative power, and this is indispensable if they are to be the defining constituents of the central focus for worship, faith, and love in our contemporary highly pluralistic world. I doubt, however, that metaphors or models based primarily on the human person are adequate any longer to serve as the principal foundation for our conception of God. In our world, personal being is understood to be not the source or ground of the highly complex evolutionary, historical, and social processes of which we are aware, but rather their product. We, therefore, no longer have a way of thinking of personal reality-more specifically, of a person-as grounding the whole of reality (as the traditional theistic world-picture suggests when it posits God as "the creator"). On the contrary, it is the complex whole of reality that grounds and has brought into being all persons, according to modern ways of thinking. Is the image of mother or lover-any more than the images of father or lord-of a sort that can provide an adequate basis for a contemporary understanding of God? Is any image sufficiently complex to perform this function? Or, is it only when we move to the order of concepts that we are able to hold before the mind the sort of complexity with which we are here concerned?

If we are to think of God-the creator or ground of all other reality, or the all-inclusive organic whole within which all other reality emerges and is sustained-it may be that concepts like "evolutionary process" or "life" or "creativity" or "universe" must be given centrality, instead of powerfully evocative personal images of the sort that McFague (along with our ancient traditions) has suggested. In my opinion, a conception of God adequate to contemporary ecological, nuclear sensibility can be most adequately completed only with a conceptual metaphor that is capable of taking up into itself the great complexity of reality as we

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know it today-the intricacy of physical patterns of energies, ecological interdependencies and the evolutionary development of life, the self-reflexiveness and intentionality of human consciousness and creativity. An image like "mother," "lover," or "friend" is simply not equal to this task. More promising, perhaps, would be the concept "trinity," upon which McFague briefly touches at the end of her book. But that concept will have to be developed much more fully than she has done here, if we are to see whether it is really adequate to this purpose.

Models of God is an important new work in theology-important for the sketch of a new way to do theology that it provides; important for the new material theology, appropriate to an ecological, nuclear age, that is developed; important for the issues that it raises for the theological community to engage in coming years. We are all in Sallie McFague's debt.

GORDON D. KAUFMAN

Harvard Divinity School
Cambridge, Massachusetts