She Who Is

I should say a little more about She Who Is. I don't want to leave the impression that I think that the book is a politically correct screed. The book rather is a piece of constructive Trinitarian theology, in conversation with the tradition, contemporary ecumenical voices (Elizabeth Johnson is a Roman Catholic), and feminist theory.

I'm going by memory here (the book is in my carrel), but what I come away with is her persuasive argument for panentheism--the idea that God contains the world, but is more than the world.

Johnson finds pantheism--the idea that the world is God--wanting because relationship presupposes two parties, and with pantheism, there's no way the world can relate to God. Also, as a feminist, Johnson finds deplorable the fact that so many women have had their identities completely submerged into another. Pantheism, she thinks, is the evisceration of personal identity writ large.

She also finds wanting classical theism's absolute distinction between God and the world. It's a philosophical problem: how does the infinite relate to the finite? A border defines both sides. As soon as you draw a line and say "The world ends here; God begins there," God is no longer infinite, for you've demarcated a starting-point for God.

Johnson finds the solution to this conundrum in a Kabbalistic concept whereby God, in an act of self-limitation, creates a space within God's being for a creation to develop. Such a scheme maintains classical theism's asymmetrical relationship between God and the world, but allows for God to really relate to and be affected by the world, yet in a way that does not appear to compromise God's sovereignty.

Now "sovereignty" is a Reformed word that brings along traditional masculine metaphors like "King" and "Lord" trailing in its wake. But a space within God for the world to develop--well, that sounds like a womb to me! And it does to Johnson as well. Mother is the preferred metaphor in Johnson's panentheistic scheme, although friend is one she's congenial to as well.

I find this pretty compelling. But I feel compelled to ask, "Is it scriptural?" Take a deep breath before you answer that question. The superabundance of "Father" language in the New Testament doesn't negate the concept. After all, does not the scripture say, "In Him we live and move and have our being?" See, sounds like we're in God's womb, doesn't it; masculine pronoun notwithstanding.

Biblically, pantheism is a non-starter. First commandment; prophetic hysteria about idolatry, and all that. But do the scriptures' plethora of masculine, monarchical metaphors rule out panentheism, or have the scriptures been held hostage for too long by a Greek concept of a God who is the unmoved mover, incapable of change?