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She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse
By Elizabeth A. Johnson
New York, Crossroad, 1992. 316 pp. $24.95.

The main problem this book presents is finding a place to shelve it. Elizabeth A. Johnson, associate professor of theology at Fordham University, offers readers a volume that would sit well with patristic texts, Aquinas' Summa, biblical, liturgical, and feminist works, liberation and political theology, or between the two Karls-Barth and Rahner. Wherever the book finds itself, it should be kept close at hand, for it will be reached for again and again.

Johnson begins with the insight that "the symbol of God functions."

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The fact that the symbol God operates in faith communities, orienting their praxis, is the reason the theological task of naming God is so important. When God is spoken of in exclusively male terms, the symbol of God functions to advocate the sexist subordination of women in the faith community. On the other hand, as feminine symbols emerge from the naming community and find acceptance, they not only say something about who God is but also serve as signs of God's grace, calling forth communities based on mutuality and equality.

Johnson's stated purpose is to speak about God "within the contours of Christian faith" in order to promote the flourishing of human beings and the earth. She draws on three sources-feminist theology, Scripture, and the classical tradition-approaching the latter two in the spirit of Vatican II toward other religions, "affirming that whatever is true and holy in them reflects a ray of divine light." She seeks the most important intentions behind Scripture and classical theology in order to render them more faithfully than their own androcentric history has done. She corrects tradition with tradition, using the hermeneutical key of God's desire for human flourishing, with the footnote that women are humans, too. Her faithful and critical reading results in the recognition that feminists and the Christian tradition share many of the same values and insights.

Johnson then turns to the task of finding adequate language for naming the unutterable mystery who is God. To correct androcentric idolatry, Johnson goes in search of feminine names for God in Scripture, finding "spirit," "wisdom," and "mother." "The most developed personification of God's presence and activity in the Hebrew Scriptures," she argues, is the female symbol Wisdom (the Greek "sophia"). The deeds of Sophia and of the biblical God are the same, which suggests that Sophia is an alternative and equivalent name for divine mystery. Johnson then turns to the Christian tradition of Sophia, demonstrating with ample citations that what the Jewish faith said of Sophia, Christian Scripture says of Jesus, and that Jesus could in fact be interpreted as "Sophia's child."

When Johnson moves to discussion of the Trinity, the name Sophia operates like the word "God" in the traditional rendering-the one Sophia in three persons: Spirit-Sophia, Jesus-Sophia, and Mother-Sophia, in that order. Beginning with the Trinity, then moving to the one essence of God, Johnson reverses the usual order of discussion and the usual order of the persons of the Trinity to emphasize their equality. Thus she corrects the traditional neglect of the Spirit, highlights God's interaction with the world, and emphasizes the historical nature of our words for God.

Johnson concludes by discussing what traditional theologians would call the "essence of God" and asserts, in Rahner's words, that "the economic trinity is the immanent trinity, not vice-versa." God does not lie to us in our experience of who God is and thus, the relational

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Trinity symbolizes the very essence of God: "Relatedness rather than the solitary ego is at the heart of all reality." Johnson also emphasizes the distinctiveness of the persons of the Trinity. Thus classical and feminist insights about difference coalesce, and a wholistic doctrine of the person emerges "that safeguards difference while preserving connection."

Johnson's emphasis on the relational character of the divine does not preclude reference to God in the singular. When she speaks of God in this sense, she uses the name "She Who Is" (a play on words, derived from the Septuagint's unwarranted translation of the tetragrammaton as "He Who Is"). This name provides a female metaphor for God who is being-the one living, relational God.

The last chapter addresses the question of theodicy and the relationship of God to suffering. Here, Johnson demonstrates that when God is spoken of in personal categories rather than in philosophical abstractions, and when personal categories are based on women's rather than men's experience, suffering and power do not have to be seen as opposites. Rather, the suffering God empowers resistance and "facilitates the praxis of hope."

This is not a women's-only book, to be relegated to the "women's shelf" of theological discourse. It is an insightful, innovative, epiphanic book of theology, filled with Wisdom that calls to those who have eyes to see.

Darla J. Field
Drew University
Madison, NJ