It took me a while to really embrace this concept of the Church being a feminine archetype for two main reasons. The first objection that came to my mind was, that if it actually mattered that women had an example to look to in Scripture, and if that example was such a sweeping form throughout Scripture, then why hadn’t I heard of anyone exhorting women to learn from the Church’s story? This objection was motivated by the more weighty consideration, that the whole theory sounded slightly — ok— very, heretical. Aren’t we supposed to only look to God as our primary example? In a moral and spiritual sense, yes. But just as men pattern their masculinity after the images of king, or shepherd, women can look to the archetypes in scripture that are consistently feminine. One reason why this idea may sound foreign is because no one is going to say that God reveals Himself more as a model for men than for women, unless they can give women an alternative inspiration. (This circles back to the first concern, but softens the second.)
Throughout Scripture, not only are women’s roles compared to the church, but the church is unfailingly referred to as feminine. And so with G. H. Hardy’s encouragement that: “It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority; by definition, there are already enough people to do that,” let us leave the majority opinion and press on to discover this wonderful character in Scripture of εκκλησία—Christ’s bride the Church.
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