The tensions of logic in this verse are evident — if God is ‘he’, how can woman be in God’s image? As a school girl I was not deeply troubled by this contradiction. Equipped with the knowledge that the earliest religions for which we have evidence perceived the divine as female, and that the Hebrew word for the Holy Spirit was feminine, I was happy to accept that it was “all a bit of a mystery”. Once at university the implications of this contradiction seemed more problematic. I was exploring my Christian faith more fully, decided to be confirmed, and wanted something less of a fudge. Moreover, as I learnt of the central role of Christian exegesis in sustaining the patriarchal systems of our culture, I became increasingly uneasy about my notions of a male/masculine God. A God on the side of the oppressor was alien to my understanding of the liberating Christ, yet by virtue of his gender that was where he seemed to be.

Two potential responses were offered to me. Firstly, to draw out the ‘feminine’ characteristics attributable to God — his creative, nurturing role: the image of a hen gathering her chicks beneath her wings is a popular one in this context (2 Esdras 1:30, Mt 23:27, Lk 13:34). My initial revulsion to such an approach lay in the inappropriate attribution of certain ‘qualities’ to men and women, as masculine and feminine. These days men are usually the losers by such a process, left with an identity rooted in the language of oppression and violence, very much at odds with my personal experience of real men. Furthermore, in this approach, God is a super-male, absorbing some ‘feminine/female’ qualities, but still male. The second response is to declare that God is neither male nor female. To quote A McGrath’s Christian Theology: An Introduction, “Neither male nor female sexuality is to be attributable to God. For sexuality is an attribute of the created order, which cannot be assumed to correspond directly to any such polarity in the creator God.” (p. 240). Which is where we become embroiled in semantics — male and female are words to describe creatures with certain sexual functions, and as such are inappropriate to describe God. Yet men and women are more than simply male and female; our differences are not all obviously attributable to our sexuality, and occasionally a man or woman finds that they exist in the body associated with the opposite gender. Denying sexual characteristics to God does not solve the issue for me — being a woman is so integral to my personhood that a) I cannot see how we might relate to a genderless God as the ‘persons’ of the Trinity, and b) I cannot comprehend a sense in which we might be made in the image of a genderless God.

Intellectually the only logical response was to accept that there is ‘man’ and ‘woman’ in God. But in practice I still responded to the presence of God as ‘he’, and I was afraid that my instinct to look beyond a he-God was a) in contravention of scripture and centuries of Christian tradition, and b) inspired by a human-centred agenda (the cause of women’s equality on earth and my own problems in relating to a male God) rather than an obviously God- centred agenda. As I later discovered, it is only when God is revealed as God/ess that the need for that revelation becomes clear; and as for my being in contravention of tradition — that was my ignorance: expressions of the female/feminine/woman in all three persons of the Trinity are articulated throughout the history of Christianity (and just occasionally scripture too). My decision to use both male/masculine and female/feminine words for God was a result of my reasoned response to scripture and my experience of life at that time, and was, I believed, the conclusion of the matter for me. In fact, I had opened a door through which my relationship with God/ess was to be immeasurably deepened.

There is not space to give a fully detailed account here, nor do I recall quite the order in which things happened, but it began with the Holy Spirit. As God within me, it felt particularly natural to respond to the Spirit as she. I used this language in a poem for a Week of Prayer for Christian Unity service, and was surprised to be told that this is a tradition within Carmelite spirituality. Pursuing this theme I discovered that in some of the earliest Christian writings, the apocryphal gospels, the Holy Spirit is not only called mother, but even woman. That early Christians should articulate their awareness of ‘woman’ in the Divine is not surprising — in the history of Judaism there had been a number of occasions on which groups of Jews, perhaps responding to an inner (God-given?) sense that there must be ‘woman’ as well as ‘man’ within God, had adopted a goddess as Yahweh’s bride. This adoption of a second deity is of course in contravention of the first commandment, and the notion of ‘woman’ in the divine was only legitimately resolved in the response to Wisdom, “For she is the breath of the power of God and pure emanation of his almighty glory; Therefore nothing defiled can enter into her, For she is the reflection of the everlasting light, and a spotless mirror of the activity of God and a likeness of his goodness.” (Wis of Sol 7:25–26)

This is language which could apply not only to the Holy Spirit, but also to Jesus Christ.

I had long been aware of the medieval tradition of Jesus as Mother, most famously expressed by Julian of Norwich, but also by men such as St Anselm and St Bernard. But this had hitherto been head knowledge of theories, rather than heart knowledge of experience. Having imaged the ‘woman’ in the Holy Spirit, I gradually began to find in prayer that my sense of the presence of Christ was sometimes distinctly womanish too. Preparing Night Prayer last spring I found some verses in Proverbs which helped to make sense of this for me (please excuse the editing for the sake of space, and do read it in its entirety): “Does not wisdom call … ? My fruit is better than gold … I walk in the way of righteousness, along the paths of justice, … Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth … When He established the heavens, I was there, … when He marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside Him, like a master worker; and I was daily His delight … Wisdom has built her house … She has sent out her servant girls, she calls from the highest places in the town, ‘You that are simple, turn in here!’ To those without sense she says, ‘Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.’” (Proverbs 8–9). The similarities with Christ are striking. Moreover, there is Paul’s confirmation of this similarity of experience: “We proclaim Christ crucified … Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:23– 24). Or of course John’s opening words in which Christ, as the Word of God, is seen to be with God in the beginning, participating in Creation. I sensed that although Jesus was a man for the space of the Incarnation, Christ who was and is and is to come, is not bound by gender in this way — Christ in God is man and woman.

It was not, however, until late summer that I found myself in the Zouche chapel of the Minster, flooded with sunlight, truly responding to the first person of the Trinity, so often the most distant part of our understanding of God, with a whispered “Mother?” On New Year's Eve, as we recalled the year past, and the friends who talked of God as “she” with whom I had spend the previous New Year on Skye, this September moment seemed to have been a rebirth (one I suspect/hope of many rebirths in God), opening me to new experiences of God and Womanhood.

Having encountered the woman in God/ess, my first revelation was the depth to which God/ess understands me. I had not realised before that it was my gendered image of God that limited my understanding of this — just as we always suspect that men do not truly understand women, so a male God cannot truly understand (experience with) us either. Now I can relax in her presence, as a child on her lap or a sister in her arms, and know that I am fully known. Not that I always perceive God/ess as ‘she’ by any means, for this would be as limiting a relationship as that experienced before. But recognising the woman in God/ess has set me free to rejoice fully in my own womanhood — a journey I am just beginning.

I know that when I referred to God/ess as ‘she’ in a Christis article last year, there was a suggestion that this should be altered by the editors because it was “scripturally unsound”, so I feel some trepidation at offering my experience of God/ess for public consumption. It is not intended to be a reasoned and persuasive argument, but an expression of faith. Can I really maintain this in the face of the overpoweringly male construction of God over the past 2000 years, and before? For many reasons, most of which are only just dawning upon me, I must say yes. Let me begin with God’s words according to Isaiah 42: “For a long time I have kept silent … But now like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant. I will lay waste the mountains and hills … I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth … But those who trust in idols, who say to images, ‘you are our gods’ will be turned back in utter shame.” It is scarcely surprising that such patriarchal cultures as Judaism and Christianity should envision the almighty, all powerful God in almost exclusively ‘male’ terms, but here the creator God/ess offers another image of him/herself. Feminist theologians such as RR Reuther argue that to take only one image of God/ess, that of the man excluding the woman, is as much idolatry as any other exclusive image of God/ess — is this what God/ess is hinting at through Isaiah’s words? Certainly Jesus repeatedly challenged the patriarchal culture in which he was incarnated and told the parable of the woman who lost one of her ten coins as an allegory of God/ess rejoicing over souls found (Luke 15:8–10). If one believes that every word of the Bible was dictated by God, then instances such as these cannot suffice as indicators of the woman in God/ess. Personally I believe that the Bible is made up of words written by those close to and inspired by God/ess, responding to their experience of God/ess within their own cultural contexts, hence an inevitably patriarchal bias. Why does God/ess allow this patriarchal bias? I was told a story which I only remembered coherently after I had recognised God/ess: In the beginning S/he created man and woman in the image of God/ess. At the fall we became disconcerted by our physical differences, distrustful of the ‘other’; Adam made a bid for superiority over that which had become strange to him, that which he no longer recognised as the image of God/ess from whom he had been divided, by blaming Eve. She colluded by her silence in the first of many fragmentations of the human race. And so first woman, later people of different races or religions, or philosophical outlook or physical ability could be designated as inferior, as people to be subjugated. Sometimes they were made to wear badges to denote their lower status; sometimes the marks of subjugation were less visible, female genital mutilation for instance. Today few could perceive slavery or Hitler’s final solution as part of God’s intended created order, but a culture of valuing some human beings above others persists, not only in Rwanda or Bosnia, but in York University too. I believe that with the healing of that first relationship — of man and woman in God/ess — begins the healing of the world.

In my enthusiasm I do not wish to claim a superior appreciation of God/ess — I know my understanding is limited in ways that others are not — instead I want to share one liberating vision. For the time being I am still very much on the threshold of a glorious adventure. Some of my most important earthly guides so far on this part of the quest have been Alice Walker, Rosemary Radford Reuther, Julian of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen and especially my friends (men and women).

Joanna Chamberlayne