In recent decades there has been a desire to develop more female imagery for God. It’s understandable. We usually refer to God in male terms yet God is not confined to a gender. But I take issue with the way many try to go about it.
Some want to say that the Holy Spirit is female. They base this on the Greek word for spirit being feminine. There are a lot of problems with this. At best this is a very weak argument to make. You’re stretching if you’re taking the noun gender of an ancient language and trying to expand it into a description of God’s femaleness. And of course you run into a hard wall in John’s gospel where Jesus specifically refers to the Holy Spirit as “he”.
But despite that, people press on with all sorts of theology that goes nowhere at best, and creates a garbled mess at worst. I say a garbled mess because this is what I see happening: People will call the Holy Spirit female, then interpret that into the description of the Trinity laid out in the Nicene and Apostles’ creeds. Then they use that credal description as a lens to interpret the Bible.
Perhaps you didn’t follow that logic, and that’s okay. The point is you get a weak garbled mess. Anytime you use the creeds to interpret the Bible you’re going to get a mess. It’s one way logic. Scripture can point to an understanding of the Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But once you’ve gotten a definition of the Trinity you cannot then reverse the process and use the Trinity as a tool to interpret scripture. When you add in that: you’re using a current day understanding of gender, imposing in on a pre-industrial age understanding of gender, and then using that to back-interpret your way into an understanding of the femaleness of God as described in the Bible… you just end up with a complete and total mess!
I suggest the opposite approach. I say let the masculine understanding of the Trinity stand unchallenged. Just leave it be. Instead go directly to the Bible to and let it speak in its own original terms about what we might be called God’s feminine qualities. Do that and you get not only a very strong argument; you’ll also get a vast and powerful useful theology.
The ancient Hebrews considered wisdom to be a female quality, and it was a quality created by God. Proverbs 8 and 9 are the mostly fully developed description of Wisdom. Wisdom is personified as a woman, and is sometimes called “Woman Wisdom.”
In Proverbs 8:22 Woman Wisdom says that the Lord created her at the beginning of his works, the first of God’s acts long ago. The verses continue to describe how Woman Wisdom was present and watching as the universe took its shape: stars, planets, the Earth, the features of the earth, and the living things upon it. Wisdom says she rejoiced in the inhabited world and delighted in the human race.
Does this mean that God literally created a being called “Wisdom”? No, I wouldn’t go that far. That gets you into a mess pretty fast. But you can say that the structure and orderliness of creation is interwoven with wisdom, and wisdom is feminine. This makes sense with the gender roles of the time.
We must remember that not too many centuries ago it took incredible amounts of human strength to survive. The strong survived. The weak died. Humanity was in a constant struggle against nature to even exist. Disease, wild animals, natural disasters, scarcity of resources, the complete lack of medical care, and more made survival constantly difficult. Men, the physically stronger of the sexes, were the providers and protectors. Women, the birth givers, were usually entrusted with child rearing and safety. Women had to be highly conscientious as they shouldered the responsibility of managing the family’s limited resources. Thus, wisdom was understood in a feminine light.
Femininity in this light is not week. It is not silly. It is a powerful guiding principle for life and prosperity. I say that if you want feminine imagery for God, build it from here. Don’t associate masculinity with toughness and femininity with weakness. If you do that then you must develop a feminine understanding of God so that God has a soft side. That’s just a mess. Masculinity has both toughness and tenderness. Femininity also has both toughness and tenderness. I don’t think anyone who reads about Woman Wisdom in Proverbs would call her weak. She’s a solid and strong dynamic; and one that you mess with at your own peril!
In Proverbs 8 Woman Wisdom calls for prudence, intelligence, and nobility. She claims strength for herself. She calls for honesty, honor, and discretion. She attacks pride, arrogance, perverted speech, and evil.
She says that by her ways there is justice and rightness. She says that by her ways nations are stable and prosperous. Without her all things fall apart. They descend into chaos and evil.
The idea of Woman Wisdom is not limited to just Proverbs 8 and 9. It’s not like you only find a bit of feminine understanding of God there. It spreads throughout the Old Testament and in the New Testament as well. It shows up in other parts of Proverbs. Job 28 seems to pull in ideas of Woman Wisdom. And there are a number of references in what we Protestants call the Apocrypha – those books of the Old Testament recognized as scripture to the Roman Catholic Church but generally not in Protestant Churches. The reason for that isn’t the point here. The point is that Woman Wisdom is frequently woven into ancient Hebrew thought.
And speaking of the references to these other books not in Protestant Bibles, we’ll use them to take the next step in feminine understandings of God. You’re surely familiar with these words of Jesus in Matthew 11:28, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
There Jesus is quoting from a book called Sirach 51:23. There Woman Wisdom says, “Draw near to me, you who are uneducated, and lodge in the house of instruction. Why do you say you are lacking in these things, and why do you endure such great thirst? I opened my mouth and said, Acquire wisdom for yourselves without money. Put your neck under her yoke, and let your souls receive instruction…”
Jesus teaches that within himself are the dynamics and presence of Woman Wisdom. While Jesus is undeniably male, some biblical scholars point out that Jesus embraces the fullness of both masculine and feminine qualities.
And speaking of combining ancient feminine understanding, God’s creative work, and Jesus’ own embrace, we also have the opening line of John’s gospel. It’s almost certainly influenced by the idea of Woman Wisdom: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Wod was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
The language there is clearly masculine. But as I said before I read it, the idea of Woman Wisdom is almost certainly woven through that.
So, if you want feminine qualities for God, there are plenty of them. They are strong. They are capable. They are important. They are an inseparable mix in the creation of the world and of the order of human society. For those who long for more feminine concepts of God I say that you do not have to invent them. They are already there. They are even highly sophisticated. You just have to get out of their way and let them speak on their own terms. True Wisdom is the knowledge and fear of God. Wisdom will lead you to fullness of life.
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