Comments on “Well chosen Words” and “She Who Is”
by
Viola Larson
The new 2005 ‘Well Chosen Words” article posted by the Presbyterian Women’s
Area and seemingly endorsed by both the National Ministries Division as well
as Advocacy Committee for Women’s Concerns suggest that using only a small
number of names for God, that is, Father, Creator, Lord, and Almighty, is
putting ‘God in a Box.” The article includes a statement by Elizabeth A
Johnson from her book, _She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist
Theological Discourse_. In that statement Johnson among other things writes,
‘In that speech [about God] the symbol of God functions as the primary
symbol of the whole religious system, the ultimate point of reference for
understanding experience, life, and the world.” If the authors of ‘Well
Chosen Words” are endorsing the concepts in the book, _She Who is_, they
are lifting up a religious system that will surely change their own and many
other women’s spiritual experiences as well as their devotion to the
biblical God. Johnson twists the biblical text while reformulating the basic
tenets of Christianity. She has created a different religion based mainly on
a rather Hegelian idea of the Spirit working in history and revealed by
history and human experience. Johnson introduces a rather pagan
understanding of an entity named Sophia who is the deity working in history.
Added to this is an insistence that Jesus is not the _unique_ Christ.
Beginning from human experience and in particular women’s experience, and
suggesting that it is men’s ego and ‘a nave physicalism that collapse the
totality of Christ into the bodily form of Jesus,” Johnson goes on to
reinterpret Christ (71, 72). Stating rightly that the Church is in Christ
and is referred to as the body of Christ, Johnson makes a flying leap
stating that, ‘the whole Christ is a corporate personality, a relational
reality, redeemed humanity that finds its way by the light of the historical
narrative of Jesus’ compassionate, liberating love: Christ exists only
pneumatologically (72).” This kind of understanding of Christ as some kind
of spiritual entity or spirit separate from Jesus is possible within
Johnson’s theology since she begins her theology from the Spirit rather than
the Trinity and she holds to a Panentheistic view of God which sees humanity
within the being of God, that is, humanity as a part of God although God is
more than humanity.
Johnson, preparing to image God as female, understands spirit to be one way
the transcendent God is pictured exerting power or movement in the world.
She connects the word spirit with the female noting the various ways the
Spirit works in Scripture such as creating life and ‘grieving over
destruction (83).” She further states that ‘One such constellation of
images for spirit centers around the symbol of the bird and her wings, long
a symbol of female deity in ancient Near Eastern religions (83).” Then,
Johnson, setting up her reason for naming the spirit Sophia reviews the
various biblical texts that speak of Sophia. She admits that the biblical
pictures are simply the personification of wisdom. Johnson also reviews the
extra-biblical literature such as the Book of Sirach and the Wisdom of
Solomon. She looks at the ways the texts portray a high view of wisdom.
Johnson, rather than understanding wisdom as an attribute of God sees Sophia
as ‘Israel’s God in female imagery (91).” Further Johnson attempts to
explain how the personification of Sophia came to be a part of Hebrew texts
and scriptures. She suggests that:
Scholarly opinion is virtually unanimous in pointing to the formative
influence of an extrabiblical figure of a female deity. In the course of
this century diverse candidates have been endorsed, including the
Canaanite love goddess, Astarte, the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar, the
Egypt goddess Maat, the Semitic mother goddess at Yahweh’s side in
Jewish worship at Elephantine, and the Hellenized form of the goddess
Isis. (92)
Johnson believes that scholarly opinion points to the Hellenized form of the
goddess Isis and writes that this goddess was a temptation to the Jewish
people. She writes;
. . . Personified Wisdom was the answer of Orthodox Judaism to this
threat [Of the temptation to worship Isis]. There is little doubt among
scholars that Jewish authors both at home and abroad transferred
characteristics of the mighty Isis to the figure of Sophia in a creative
effort to counteract the religious and social attractiveness of this
most popular deity. (92, 93)
Johnson does not wait for the personification of wisdom to become a reality
in the person of Jesus Christ, ‘who became to us wisdom from God, and
righteousness and sanctification, and redemption (1 Cor. 1:30).” Instead,
she pictures the movement of God as Spirit-Sophia. For Johnson,
Spirit-Sophia ‘is not one being among other beings, not even a discrete
Supreme Being, but mystery which transcends and enfolds all that is (124).”
And, as stated above, Johnson believes it is history that mediates the
movement of God. That is, one knows God or the movement of God through human
experience as well as the history of the experience of the world. As Johnson
puts it: ‘The complexities of the experiences of Spirit therefore, are
cogiven in and through the world’s history: negative, positive, and
ambiguous; orderly and chaotic; solitary and communal; successful and
disastrous; personal and political; dark and luminous; ordinary and
extraordinary; cosmic, social, and individual (124).” To put it more
clearly Johnson states that both ‘the natural world” and ‘personal and
interpersonal experience” are mediators of either the absence or presence
of spirit. (125) Because, Johnson begins with the Spirit and attempts to
explain God as well as the incarnation from her theology of Spirit she
develops a heretical theology. In her theology, history absorbs God and
throws back its own fallen shadow over the being of God.
The life, person and redemptive work of Jesus Christ are lost in Johnson’s
theology. Not only does Johnson reject the atonement and misconstrues the
bodily resurrection of Jesus, she sees him as simply an anointed human, not
God. (158, 159; 163) As stated earlier his right to be understood as the
unique Christ is removed. According to Johnson, ‘the biblical symbol Christ,
the one anointed in the Spirit, cannot be restricted to the historical
person Jesus nor to certain select members of the community but signifies
all those who by drinking of the Spirit participate in the community of
disciples.” (162) For Johnson, in the end, it is the whole cosmos that will
become Christed. As Johnson puts it, ‘Biblical cosmic Christology expands
the notion of Christ still further (Col 1:15-20), seeing that the universe
itself is destined to be christomorphic in a reconciled new heaven and new
earth.” (162)1 And further, for Johnson the Spirit Sophia not only moves in
Jesus but enters into other peoples developing other religions with other
ways of manifesting the movement of Spirit in history. Johnson writes:
Sophia, however, is people loving; her light shines everywhere, and
those whom she makes to be friends of God and prophets are found
throughout the wide world. Jesus-Sophia personally incarnates her
gracious care in one particular history, for the benefit of all, while
she lays down a multiplicity of paths in diverse cultures by which all
people may seek, and seeking find her. (166)
Johnson also lays out this understanding of Sophia Spirit indwelling and
producing many religions when writing of history as the manifestation of
Spirit. Quoting Irenaeus out of context, she writes of the ‘experience of
finding wholeness and meaning” coming ‘to expression in diverse cultures
and ages,” and suggests that this brings about the many differing world
religions. Johnson states of Spirit, ‘In ways known only to herself, she
orients human beings toward ultimate mystery and the fullness of coming
blessing through movements of their conscience and rays of goodness and
truth found in their diverse religious communities.” (139) Johnson’s,
‘expansive images of God” will certainly reshape, not only Reformed faith,
but all views of the biblical faith handed down by the fathers and mothers
of the one true Church.
The authors’ of ‘Well Chosen Words” who quote from Johnson’s book have also
included quotes of ‘Expansive Images of God in the Creeds.” All of those
quotes, which are mostly the attributes of Jesus Christ or God the Father,
contradict the words of Johnson. But not only that, in a sense they also
contradict the authors’ of ‘Well Chosen Word” statement that using mainly
the words Father, Creator, Lord and Almighty is putting God in a box. This
is because that particular statement is a simplification of a complex issue
and also mixes functional attributes with personal names and titles. God
names and reveals himself in his own revelation, and his revelation is found
neither in history, human experience or nature. God reveals himself in the
word of God and in the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the
final revelation. (Heb. 1:1-2; Mark 9:7; Eph 1:5-10) We know from scripture
that God is Father because he is the Father of Jesus Christ, and he is our
Father because we, as those redeemed through the death of Christ, have been
united in Christ and have become children of the Father. In the same manner,
‘Jesus is Lord”, the first creed of the church, is not a metaphor; he is
Lord! That is, he is the God of our life, the one who is, as the Theological
Declaration of Barman implies, the only Lord we are allowed to have anything
to do with. ‘We reject the false doctrine, as though there were areas of our
life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ, but to other Lordsareas
in which we would not need justification and sanctification through him.”
(Confessions, 257, 8.15) That God is Creator and almighty, is without
question, biblical and those are proper ways of addressing God when
referring to his power and creativity. But like all of the other beautiful
biblical metaphors, functions, attributes and analogies of God, those
references to God, for the Christian, are not the same as ‘Father, Son and
Holy Spirit.” In the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit rests our
redemption, justification and sanctification. The Father loves us and sent
his Son, the Son loves us and died for us, the Spirit loves us, abides with
us and glorifies Jesus Christ.
________________________
1 Here Johnson refers to, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, ‘Wisdom Mythology
and the Christological Hymns of the New Testament, in _Aspects of Wisdom_
(see chap. 5, n.45) 17-41.