234 - Yahweh, Women, and the Trinity

Yahweh, Women, and the Trinity
By Jay G. Williams

"Might it not be possible just at this moment when the fortunes of the church seem to be at low ebb, that we may be entering a new age, an age in which the Holy Spirit will become far more central to the faith, an age when the third person of the Trinity will reveal to us more fully who she is?"

The often-restated thesis which prompted this theological perambulation may be summed up in the following way: "The question of women in the priesthood is not a merely pragmatic one. Since the origin of the Christian priesthood, the priest has stood before the people 'as Christ,' and Christ has stood before the world 'as God,' and God has appeared to both Jew and Christian 'as male.' Hence a woman, though quite as capable intellectually and personally and just as 'worthy' of salvation as a man, is inappropriate symbolically as a priest. She cannot stand for God."

One might argue, of course, that the masculinity of our Judeo-Christian God is merely metaphorical, but it must be added both quickly and firmly that since all theology, indeed all language, is metaphorical this argument is hardly a way out of the difficulty. We must ask: "Why this metaphor rather than some other? Why not Mother and Daughter rather than Father and Son?"

In the wake of the women's liberation movement, and in response to generally changing attitudes toward those supposedly masculine qualities of reason, aggressive power, and judgment, it has become fashionable to "discover" in Scripture those several passages where God's masculinity is qualified by the attribution of more "feminine" characteristics, and where the dominance of the human male over his female counterpart is also mitigated. Surely it would be inappropriate to reject this enterprise totally. The male is described as leaving his father and mother and cleaving to his wife (Gen. 2:24) rather than, as one would expect in a patriarchal society, vice versa.

Jay G. Williams is Chairman of the Department of Religion at Hamilton College, Clinton, N.Y. He is the author of Ten Words of Freedom: An Introduction to the Faith of Israel (1971) and Understanding the Old Testament (1973) He is also the author of an article, "Exegesis-Eisegesis," which appeared in THEOLOGY TODAY (Oct., 1973).

235 - Yahweh, Women, and the Trinity

Eve is, in a sense, the more significant member of the primordial couple, if only because of her initiative and daring. Sarah is as important to the chosen race as Abraham.

Nevertheless none of these observations (which could be multiplied several fold) disproves the basic thesis that the rise of Yahwism entailed a diminution of the importance of the feminine in the Godhead, if not in human society. On a human level the decreasing significance of womanhood among the people of ancient Israel is symbolized by the transition from Sarah to Asenath and Tamar. Sarah's womb is absolutely essential for the birth of the child of the promise. Otherwise, why not Ishmael rather than Isaac? Rebecca, too, is instrumental not only in bearing the chosen one but in assuring that Jacob will triumph over his twin brother. Rachel, however, though deeply loved, has lost that essential matriarchal importance, for Leah, Bildah, and Zilpah also bear "chosen" offspring. Asenath, her successor, is but a faceless, Egyptian vehicle whereby Ephraim and Manassah are born. Tamar may be judged virtuous in her quest for an heir but is also a harbinger of the age to come. Tamar plays the harlot to get a legitimate heir for her dead husband. In later years, Israel will be seen as playing the harlot for far less moral reasons.

I

On a divine level the great warfare which continues almost unabated throughout the Old Testament is between Yahweh, the God of masculine power, wisdom, and judgment-the God of what Erich Neumann ¹ would call consciousness-and the goddesses of the indigenous population, Asherah and Anat. Yahweh assumes easily the titles and many of the characteristics of both El and Ba'al but can brook no allegiance to their powerful consorts. The Asherah, those wooden poles symbolizing the great Mother Goddess, must be torn down. The making of pesel and temunah, graven images often depicting female deities, must be destroyed. The holy prostitution sacred to Anat must be rooted out. Yahweh, the lord and king, brings forth autonomously, without any apparent need for a divine womb.

The advent of Yahweh in Palestine, then, involves at the outset a divorce of the masculine and the feminine. Asherah and Anat he repudiates, condemns, and drives out. They are the enemy; any alliance with them brings judgment and disaster. In their place, Yahweh marries Israel herself! Thus, the feminine counterpart of Yahweh is preserved but only in a very a-symmetrical way. How is it possible for a human wife, bereft of divine power and insight, to marry the Lord of Heaven and Earth? This is no mere question, as Soren Kierkegaard would have it, of a king marrying a serving girl. After all, even the

¹ Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness, trans. R.F.C. Hull (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), pp. 340ff.

236 - Yahweh, Women, and the Trinity

lowest scullery maid may get the hang of, and taste for, being queen if given but half a chance. She is just as human-and perhaps just as capable of ruling-as the king himself.

For a woman to marry God, however, is quite another matter. Will she not, like Semele, be burned to a cinder by her husband's glory? And even if this is not so, just what in the evening, after the dishes have been washed, will these two partners talk about? Or is a wife only to approach her husband beseechingly, on her knees? In order for the marriage to work with any dimension of mutuality would not Israel have to be divinized (and hence lose her humanity) or Yahweh be humanized (and hence lose his divinity)? Is either alternative really possible or, after all is said and done, even attractive? Should not God remain God and man, man?

It is not surprising then that during the long course of Israel's history the people yearned for the Lord's divine wives to return and thus called repeatedly on Asherah and Anat, while Yahweh, still repelled by the divine consorts, became increasingly alienated from his earthly wife. How could it have been otherwise? Was not the destruction of 587/6 implicit in the covenant between God and man from the start?

This is not to say, however, that the advent of the masculine Yahweh was either an anomaly or a tragic mistake. As Erich Neumann has so brilliantly argued, the development of human consciousness on both personal and historical levels demands a revolt against the Great Mother and a turning toward the masculine hero.² With Yahweh, humanity entered an era in which the strongly masculine virtues-what the Chinese might call the powers of Yang-have tended to prevail. For the sake of the development of human consciousness and the liberation of the human male, Yahweh had to drive out the goddesses and assert his own independence as a masculine deity.

Although there have been vicissitudes in the dominance of masculinity over femininity, vicissitudes which render nugatory any absolute generalizations, it is not too much to say that the last 2500 years have constituted an era in which masculinity has waxed increasingly if not completely triumphant. In a sense, women have contributed directly to our esoteric culture largely in so far as they have been able to take upon themselves the characteristics of men.

A pendulum swing carried to its ultimate conclusion, however, inevitably involves a reversal. After hundreds of years of male dominance the tide at last seems to be running the other way. Ironically, yet predictably (for pendulums are always ironic) it has been the masculine spirit itself which has brought the reversal. On the one hand, science and technology have produced a situation in which physical strength may be amusing (witness the "Game of the Week") but unessential, even in that bastion of masculinity, the army. On the other, technology has freed women from many of the burdens of the household and from the necessity of unwanted pregnancy. Old mores

² Ibid., pp. 152-169.

236 - Yahweh, Women, and the Trinity

once framed by the necessity for physical strength and the inevitability of childbirth, now appear as male chauvinism, as nasty anachronisms, annoying to women and embarrassing to men.

This means, of course, that the traditional symbolism of Scripture, of an Almighty God married to a-very dependent and frequently unfaithful wife, seems highly inappropriate and vexing. If the pattern of Christian marriage is seen as Christ married to his church, then clearly the image of the male is one of strength, triumph, and perfection while that of the female is one of dependence, obsequiousness, and sin. The husband may be expected to love his wife, but from a position of superiority vis à vis her weakness. How could a modern woman-or man for that matter-take such an image seriously as reflecting the ideal marriage of today? It is simply very difficult to believe that male domination and female submission is a way of life written in the heavens when it is no longer clearly in evidence on earth.

If it is not so written, however, all those faiths which draw upon the Bible for inspiration seem to be in serious trouble. The masculinity of God is no mere frosting on the biblical cake; it is a metaphor which takes us to the very heart of the biblical message. Without it, a considerable portion of our theological language and understanding is destroyed; yet with it the Judeo-Christian tradition seems doomed to become an anachronism in a sexually anti-chauvinistic age.

Lest I be accused of simply reducing theology to a sociological projection, let me add one further observation to this indictment. Although in a sense the liberation of women has brought this question to the foreground, the essential problem would be with us no matter what the sexual mores of society. A God who is only Father and not also Mother is clearly finite, one-sided, incomplete. If one wishes to pray to the Father and Son alone, then Mother and Daughter either must be thought of as subhuman and hence unessential for the species (a peculiar idea at best) or must be considered the Enemy, the Power of Darkness, against which Yahweh struggles. Neither option seems particularly acceptable in any age.

Hence the basic thesis of this essay is that Christianity must radically overhaul much of its symbolism if it is to survive in the modern, post-patriarchal age. This leads, however, to a further question: "How can the church slough off its centuries of patriarchal tradition to make room for the feminine in the Godhead? Will not the new wine simply burst the old wine skins? Must we not conclude despairingly that the death of male chauvinism entails the death of the Judeo-Christian God as well?"

II

Before the theological male chauvinism of Judaism and Christianity is consigned to the flames of historical destruction, however, it may be useful to explore the question more positively. At the very least we ought to remind ourselves that our age is not the first to confront this problem. Indeed, with the triumph of masculine Yahwism among the

238 - Yahweh, Women, and the Trinity

Jews came, almost immediately, attempts to right the imbalance by reintroducing a feminine principle into theology .³ One thinks particularly of postexilic literature like the book of Proverbs and the Wisdom of Jesus ben Sirach which present the feminine figure of Hokmah (wisdom). Pictured as a beautiful woman who calls men from the follies of the world, Wisdom is said to have been with God "from the beginning." She it was who, according to Jesus ben Sirach, was enthroned in the pillar of cloud (Ecclesiasticus 24:7) and who, in effect, is made evident in the Torah (24:23ff). Coming from the Most High like breath, she is, for all intents and purposes, identified with the Spirit.

Although Proverbs (but not Ecclesiasticus) was included in Scripture, Rabbinic Judaism tended to down play this personification of wisdom, if only because it ran the risk of sounding like polytheism. At the same time, the idea of the Presence of God in the world as a "Person" (the Shekinah) did not die but continued to be developed and debated throughout the Talmudic period.

It was the Kabbalists, however, whose imagination was gripped by the idea of the Shekinah as the bride of God and who explored in depth the idea of a feminine side of the Godhead. Most striking is their notion, made clearly evident in the Zohar, that the proclamation of the oneness of God is the affirmation of the conjugal unity of the King and Matronita, of the Lord and his Shekinah. Worship was conceived kabbalistically as participation in the Shekinah as she rises in love to her husband. ⁴

To be sure, within orthodox Rabbinic Judaism, ideas of a feminine person in the Godhead often met with strong resistance. Still, quite clearly the notion was far more prevalent and influential than many modern Rabbis would admit. Popular Judaism until the nineteenth century, at least, was permeated with Kabbalism and the Shekinah was among the most popular of those ideas circulating in the esoteric literature. Certainly it is to the undying credit of the Kabbalists that they kept the problem and several provisional solutions to it from being totally forgotten. Modern theologians, both Jewish and Christian, have much to learn from the mysteries of Kabbala, especially today.

Christian theology, though it inherited much from both the Old Testament and post-biblical Judaism, developed ancient notions in a strikingly new way. Christians preserved the Jewish metaphor of the Fatherhood of God but set it in a new context. In a most daring fashion, Christian theologians professed knowledge not only of God but of the dynamic relations which pertain within the Godhead. God was proclaimed to be Father, yet more than Father. He is also Son and Holy Spirit. Could we not liken their work to that of the modern

³ Raphael Patai, The Hebrew Goddess, (New York: Ktav Publishing House: 1967), pp. 138-140.
⁴ Gershorn G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), pp. 225ff.

239 - Yahweh, Women, and the Trinity

depth psychologist who has discovered within the unity of the self various "persons" beside the conscious ego, persons which, in unity with that ego, constitute the self ?

Unfortunately, the work of the trinitarians was only partially completed during the Nicene period. Nearly all their attention was devoted to the relation between Father and Son; almost nothing was said about the Holy Spirit. In fact, the original Nicene Creed of 325 A.D. declared only that "We believe in the Holy Spirit." It is true that the later Creed of Constantinople (381)-which is today popularly called the Nicene Creed-added a number of significant phrases:

"The Lord, the giver of life who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets."

But many of the key terms such as ­ºÀ¿Áµ½Ì¼µ½¿½ (proceedeth) and ¾É¿À¿¹Ì½ (life maker) were left undefined and unclarified. Later theologians, regarding the Creed as sacrosanct, did little to expand upon these ideas but only declared the procession of the Spirit as a "mystery." Hence, the church's golden opportunity to right the "hormonal imbalance" in the Godhead was missed. Instead, the church concentrated upon the Virgin Mary as the bearer of divine femininity, declaring her "God-bearer" (¸µ¿Ä¿º¿) in the so-called Symbol of Chalcedon and hence elevating her to a position just below the Godhead. Unfortunately, her relation to the Holy Spirit was not fully clarified but only alluded to.

In the original Nicene Creed of 325 nothing was said about the Virgin at all. In the Creed of Constantinople, however, the following words were added:

š±¯ à ±ÁºÉ¸­½Ä± ­º À½­Å¼±Ä¿ ¬³¯¿Å º±¯ œ±Á¯± Ä® À±Á¸­½¿Å

"and enfleshed from the Holy Spirit and Mary, the Virgin." It should be noted that this phrase does not necessarily imply that the Holy Spirit was the "father" of Jesus. Indeed to assume so would be to confuse the functions of the first and third persons of the Trinity. Rather it would seem to mean that Jesus, the God-man, was born of both Holy Spirit and Mary at once, that the Holy Spirit was and is his divine mother.

Although Mary and the Holy Spirit were seldom if ever officially identified, Mary, in fact, took over the Holy Spirit's role as intercessor (Paraclete) and became the symbol for the true, holy, and virgin church. In a word, while the doctrine of the Holy Spirit remained undeveloped, the Virgin became a concrete way of thinking of the Spirit comparable to Jesus as the concrete "bearer" of the Son. Not that the Holy Spirit became incarnate in Mary; the Holy Spirit is not enfleshed as the Son is, for the Spirit tabernacles, rests upon, but does not necessarily remain permanently anywhere. Still, in her role as God-bearer, in so far as the Holy Spirit over-shadowed her, Mary does embody the work of the Spirit.

240 - Yahweh, Women, and the Trinity

My basic point, then, is simple but revolutionary: the essential and eternal relation within the one God (¾½± ¸µ¿Í) can be thought of as familial. The Father begets the Son, the Spirit bears the Son, and the Son is brought forth eternally. Each is equally šÅÁ¹¿(Lord); each is to be worshipped and glorified; each is fully, wholly, and completely ¾½± ¸µ¿Í.

A number of objections might be raised, however, against this view. First, it is impossible to identify the Holy Spirit as feminine because the third person of the Trinity is occasionally referred to as "he" in Scripture. This use of the male pronoun, however, seems to be a fortuitous result of translating Hebrew ideas into Greek. If À½µ°¼± is neuter and À±Á¬º»·Ä¿s is masculine, Shekinah is clearly feminine in gender. Moreover, those aspects of life directly related to the Holy Spirit in the Creeds-Mary, the Virgin; the holy church; the waters of baptism; the bearing of life-all have at least covert feminine connotations.

Second, does not a familial view of the Trinity introduce a sexual element which is degrading to God? How is it possible to think of God in such terms? In truth, however, the sexual element is already in the Creed. God is described as a Father who begets, a thoroughly sexual word, and as an only begotten Son. The absence of direct reference to the feminine does not eliminate sexuality but it does make the sexual imagery involved seem very peculiar.

Third, isn't this reading into the mind of the early church something quite foreign to it? Is there one shred of evidence that any New Testament writers or early Church Fathers thought of the Holy Spirit as feminine? Probably not. Certainly I do not wish to argue that this is what the Scripture really means. Rather I am suggesting that a new and vital way to read old runes has emerged in our time. Might it not be possible, just at this moment when the fortunes of the church seem to be at low ebb, that we may be entering a new age, an age in which the Holy Spirit will become far more central to the faith, an age when the third person of the Trinity will reveal to us much more fully who she is?

In any event, if this vision of the Godhead is accepted, then the first, negative argument of this essay falls to the ground. God is as fully feminine as masculine. The Spirit may proceed from the Father but is in no way subservient to him. She is the life of the Godhead; it is she who goes out (proceeds) so that the hidden Pantocrater is made known. In the divine economy, it is not the feminine Person who remains hidden and at home. She is God in the world; moving, stirring up, revealing, interceding. It is she who calls out, sanctifies, and animates the church. Hers is the water of the one baptism. The debt of sin is wiped away by her. She is the life-giver who raises men from the dead with the life of the coming age. Jesus himself left the earth so that she, the intercessor, might come.

241 - Yahweh, Women, and the Trinity

III

According to this understanding, then, God is well-represented by a woman as a priestly minister. One might say, in fact, that women as intercessors are absolutely essential if the trinitarian faith is to be symbolized adequately. Does not the retention of an all-male or virtually all-male priesthood in some denominations imply a clinging to the partial understanding of God represented in the Old Testament?

There will be those, of course, who will argue that even if this view of God is accepted, women, in fact, make less than adequate priests because of their decided propensity to marry, bear children, and keep house. "Just when you get them trained," goes the complaint, "they up and get married."

In response, however, I would suggest that the pragmatic argument binges upon a very masculine conception of what the priesthood ought to be. For centuries, the office has been shaped by men. Obviously women will not fit easily into its roles but will have to work out their own style of priestly ministration. Perhaps, for openers, we must reconsider the notion that the priesthood is a full-time "job," a way to make a living if you will, rather than a calling to serve sacramentally. Surely the essential sacramental work of the priest can be appropriately performed by women. Is it not fitting for a woman to wash infants with the waters of life and bring them into the household of faith? Is it not usual for a woman to spread a banquet for the family, to teach, to counsel, to forgive, to intercede?

What the church must certainly not demand is that women "become men" in order to carry out their vows of ordination. The Holy Spirit, despite her association with the Virgin, is not particularly well represented by celibate priestesses who have given up the possibility of roles as wives and mothers to serve God alone. Is not the Holy Spirit both wife and mother? Ought not a priestess go out (proceed) from husband and children to minister to the world?

In this respect, the implications of the idea of the Spirit as feminine are as important for churches already ordaining women as for those which do not. In effect, those churches which do ordain have all too often implied, "Yes, we will ordain you, but you must become as man to serve. Remain celibate; put away desires for a family; don't expect a maternity leave." Should the church not say instead, "We ordain you; be a woman!" If Protestants believe in a married clergy, why should women be put in a special category?

In the new age we enter, women will be called to be women and men, men, but both roles will be redefined. Identifying the Holy Spirit as feminine may entail revolutionary implications about God, but it also leads to an equally radical reappraisal of what we believe to be feminine. The Holy Spirit is no sweet, sentimental, and slightly diffident Person who prefers to remain in the shadow of her ruling husband. The Holy Spirit is active, vibrant, and, at times, even violent.

242 - Yahweh, Women, and the Trinity

She spoke through Amos and Jeremiah; she drove Jesus into the wilderness. To conceive of woman in the image of the Spirit is to revise considerably what we believe womanhood to be. It is, indeed, powerful new wine in old wineskins.

What began as an attempt to answer a symbolic question, then, ends in a call for both theological and social revolution. Or better, it ends with an acknowledgment of the revolution which is already under way and which is pointed in an inevitable direction. The forces of "Holdfast" and "Stay Put" may attempt to slow down the reversal of the pendulum swing, but they will fail. The Age of the Holy Spirit and the New Woman is at hand. Let us rejoice and be glad in it!