This conflict came to a head last spring after a conference in Minneapolis in November of 1993, sponsored by a number of Protestant denominations, which gathered together to celebrate the decade of solidarity with women of the World Council of Churches. Women leaders from the churches of Asia, Africa and Latin America, as well as women of diverse cultural groups in the United States, gathered at the conference. The theme of the conference was the exploration of new creative imagery for worship and for theology. Although the conference drew on many images for God, the one that drew the most fire was the prayer to Sophia, or Divine Wisdom, which was used throughout the conference. Critics assailed this term as a pagan Goddess.

Over 2,000 people, mostly women, attended the conference, and almost all of them reported it as a very positive experience. The vehemence of this attack on the image of God as Wisdom surprised them, since it is a term found in both the Hebrew Scripture and the New Testament. Hebrew Scripture employs several female images for God: God as birthing mother, God as Ruah, or Spirit, a feminine term in Hebrew, and God as Sophia or Wisdom. The images for God as Wisdom are particularly elaborated in the Wisdom literature, such as Proverbs and the Wisdom of Solomon, although the New Testament also speaks of Jesus as manifesting God's Wisdom.

Now, what are the roots of this conflict in the churches? Why do some Christians feel themselves nourished and affirmed by feminine imagery, such as Wisdom, while others are outraged at such a term? My own sense is that the roots of this conflict are fear. Behind the fear lies a certain model of male dominant power in the universe that ratifies systems of male dominant power in society. To use feminine imagery for God is to undermine this model of dominant male power.

Now, others evaluate this crisis in exactly the opposite way. They see this model of dominant male power, ratified by the exclusively male language for God, as the problem that needs to be overcome. In their view, there are two interrelated problems with speaking about God only as Lord, Father and All-Mighty. There is both the use of male-only language, but also a certain model of power embedded in a particular kind of male language.

When male-only language is used for God, and any feminine imagery rejected as inappropriate for God, it suggests that in some sense God is literally a male, and that only males image God and represent God. Women are a lesser form of humanity who cannot exercise authority or be independent persons, but they exist only under male authority. Women represent the body, the emotions, the creaturely realm, but they cannot represent God. The relationship of male and female then should be analogous to the relation of God to creatures.

Secondly, a particular kind of power, language, power imagery, are used for God that image divine power as like that of a monarchical ruler, or a military general who crushes all who oppose him. The model of power assumed here is one of competitive power: the all-powerful over those who are powerless; the all-good over those who are worthless; domination over subjugation. Such a concept of divine power sacralizes the same kind of totalitarian power in human hands as "god-like."

Now, those who ask for inclusive language are asking for changes in this concept of God. First they wish to have images for God that include women and men as human equals. If women are fully human, if women are made in God's image, then we need to be able to use images for God drawn from female as well as male activity, mothering as well as fathering. Secondly, they question concept of dominating power as good and worthy of God's way of being. If God is one who redeems us from violence and injustice, then we cannot use concepts of power for God drawn from violent and unjust human relations. We need to think of divine power as like the kind of power that we find healing, nurturing and transforming, bringing us into loving mutual relationship. The Biblical imagery for God as Wisdom is very much an understanding of God as that kind of loving, healing and transforming power.

Now, this dispute arouses deep passions because God-language is always heavy-laden language. To speak of God is our ultimate sanction for what is right and good, and this also means that God-language becomes dangerous when it is used to sanctify what is evil, unjust and dehumanizing. When we speak of God, we need to find the words that heal, rather than the words that harm.

Orley Herron: Rosemary, one of my classmates at my undergraduate school, now a wonderful pastor, Dr. Gil Bowen, said, "We have really lost our ability to take risks in the '90's." Now, here the two of us sit. You are a seminary professor and I am a university president. We know from our backgrounds how to deal with sensitive and controversial subjects. We can't avoid them. We play a role that we must lead people, not just be led by them. The program that we are doing right now, "30 Good Minutes," is a program of inspiration and one that we want to help people see the glory of God and be uplifted to God. What do you say with this very delicate subject, the re-imaging of God? What do you say to people who say, "Look, the cities are being torn apart by violence; child abuse still attacks one out of five families; poverty is just increasing and here we are talking the female images of God." What does that say about the church to a society that is so desperately in need?

Rosemary Ruether: Well, I think there are several ways you can approach that. Obviously, God language is not all I talk about, but it is a very important part of what I talk about as a theologian, and I think part of the reason that certain kinds of imagery of God are in question is the problem of whether certain kinds of imagery really encourage violence. In other words, if we think of God as angry, as a warrior, as revengeful and so on, whether this doesn't encourage a certain kind of behavior on the part of human beings, which is part of our problem rather than part of our solution.

Herron: In your message, you talked about healing rather than harming the church by this topic. You also talked about biblical roots of these words and these images. Could you just review a little of that with us and what really are the basic biblical roots, particularly when it comes to the New Testament and when Jesus said, "When you pray, you pray Our Father who art in heaven." Help us again with that.

Ruether:  Well, I think that actually the language of the church for God became very narrow in the nineteenth century. When you go back to Hebrew scripture and New Testament and even the hymnic tradition of the church, you find a much richer plurality of language, and that is because people understood that all of our human words for God are images. They are metaphors. There is no literal word that encompasses God. In fact, this is what the Hebrew tradition said was idolatry, that when we think that our one word for God is really God. So, there is a much more tentative sense that all of our language for God is very partial, but also that we need to have a rich variety of words that point us to the variety of our experiences, and so you find a lot of different images for God, and this includes feminine imagery.

You find that very richly, as I mentioned, in the Wisdom tradition, which talks about God's wisdom in feminine imagery. Very much God is like the housewife of the cosmos, the one who sets her table and calls everyone to the feast, so it draws from women's, you might say, housekeeping worlds, but the housekeeping of the world. Jesus used feminine imagery, too. He even spoke of himself as like a mother hen wanting to gather the chicks under his wings and so on. Even the language of the Our Father for God is a very special kind of word because it is not Father, you know, as a dominating power role, but it is much more like "Dada." The word is actually "Abba" and it is the child's word for Father, so it has this sense of intimacy and nurturing and not sort of the distant power imagery that we sometimes think of as father. I think that is very important for fathers. You know it is not just simply a question of how women are included. It is also a question of how we think of fathers as well.

Herron:  The scripture teaches us that we are made in God's image, so if we are made in God's image, both male and female, there must have been a lot of characteristics of maleness and femaleness of God that transcends all of that. How do you react to the macho male who says, "Wait a minute, it is in a God that he is and I am because he is?" How do you help the backlash that I know you have received, and others have received, in presenting this topic at the seven hundred speeches you have given and the conventions you have attended? How do we bring healing and comfort and understanding?

Ruether:  Well, again, I think part of it is helping people to see this plurality and the way in which both Hebrew scripture and New Testament often will pair male and female images. Talk about God as like the Shepherd going out seeking the lost sheep and like a woman sweeping her floor to find the lost coin. You find that also in Hebrew scripture. It talks about God as like someone in battle but one who is suffering, struggling and battered and like a woman giving birth. So, there was the sense of needing to draw on both male and female experience. I think somehow we have lost that, and we've lost that partly because we have lost the sense that our words are partial. In other words, we have had a tendency to substitute a scientific notion for religious language and think that these words are literal rather than these words are metaphors that point us to a much bigger mystery.

Herron: One of my Christian friends at the University where I serve said that we are trying so hard to be politically, educationally, legally and even theologically correct. Are we pushing it too hard with this topic?

Ruether:  Well, it is a question of what it means to be correct. Theology is about trying, shall we say, not to be correct, because in a sense one never has the final word about God, but it is constantly in every generation trying to be adequate. And in order to be adequate, one needs to answer the questions of our time and one of those questions is how women are fully included in the church as leaders. Now, this is a very new issue. You have to remember that women were excluded from leadership for around 1,900 years and only very recently have women come into their own in theological education and in ministry. So this is a new question and it then poses the issue about the adequacy of our language for God, because we recognize that we have to really affirm both men and women as fully human and I do say men as well as women as fully human.

Herron:  Rosemary, how do you incorporate your viewpoint into your praying?

Ruether:  Well, I guess I have actually always had a sense of God as something like an encompassing matrix and each of us often have, you might sort of say, secret images for God that may not be the official ones but are the words that nurture us personally, and my sense of that has always been something very encompassing around and under and upholding which I think is a different kind of image from God as sort of ruling over.

Herron: Do you think in our generation there is going to be a wider acceptance of the viewpoints you have just presented?

Ruether:  Well, I think it's a new question. You are going to have to remember that this question has only been posed for ten or fifteen years out of two thousand, so I think we need to at least open ourself to the question.

Herron: I have no problem with it. I am made in God's image as I said a moment ago and I think he wants a fuller image. A lot of people take a narrow viewpoint and I don't believe that is in God's fullness for all of us.