Sorry to leave everyone hanging. I haven't posted more about the origins of femininity being in the person of God, because I haven’t quite been able to articulate in a theologically sound form, what it is that I have come to be convinced of. I’ll take a chance.Even though God is described as a relational God, a helper, lifegiver, artist, muse, giver of rest, source of mystery and reason for modesty, and a whole myriad of other more feminine traits, I don’t think that woman are supposed to look to God as the whole of what we pattern our femininity after. I came to this conclusion after searching for the type of sweeping feminine imagery in Scripture that you could create an archetype, or model after. An archetype is a picture in the mind of God. It is what Plato called a ‘form’. A form of a thing is its’ essence, it’s the ‘flower-ness’ of all flowers that allows you to recognize them as flowers even though they may all be different shapes and heights, and colors.
If anyone has any thoughts on this, please post. My thoughts on this are not set in stone.
To Be Continued...
2 comments:
I think you are right about women finding their pattern in other biblical archetypes, and this is why:
The Bible itself sets masculinity and feminity up this way. God is described as a Groom, and King, a Shepherd. The people of God are described as a Bride, a Queen or Princess, and the sheep of his pasture. The Bible describes the world in the duality of Creator and Created, Bridegroom and Church. In order to maintain that analogy (and all personification of God is essentially analogy--you can only describe the Creator in terms of the created to a point)God is consistently if not exclusively portrayed in masculine terms.
However, this doesn't mean that femininity is not derived from God as well as masculinity--its just that the imagery of the Bible lends itself more to men finding a role model in Christ.
Through backwards reasoning, we can infer that since the Church is modeled on femininity, femininity should at least include the feminine characteristics of the Church in the Bible. Does that make sense?
The same is true of other female archetypes: we can find example of good women (Proverbs 31, Wisdom) and bad ones (the Harlot, Babylon), and the trick is to make sure that as we explore the femininity that God wove inside of each one of us, we are developing godly tendencies rather than weaknesses. (For example, we can choose to nurture gentleness and modesty rather than nurturing the fallen tendency to seduce and beguile.)
Studying femininity isn't an end in and of itself--we are all reading this blog for different motives. If we are only studying it to discover how awesome we are, then we are doing it for the wrong reasons. If we are studying it to become empowered, then we've missed the point of the cross. But, if we are studying it to understand the heart of God and to fall deeper into his arms, then we are on the right track.
I don't think that sounds heretical, because God is not the sum total of man + woman. He is so much more than masculine or feminine. Though our gender and sexuality are founded in God, that does not mean that anything God "is" women "should strive to be." If you did that, you'd end up like Thomas Aquinas, assuming that man can become God.
Rather, woman-ness is found in the very archetypes that God himself gives us to "seek after."
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