God and the Feminist

            Ours is a postdiluvian era.  The deluge that we have come through, and in whose aftermath we now live, is feminism, in all its various waves.  Gone are the days when the Jetsons would have an episode mocking Jane’s desire to learn how to drive, along with the very idea of “lady drivers” (what Precambrian stratum did that sort of thinking belong to, anyway?).  Now, we are more likely to see television shows where the women are equal partners with the men (in numbers and in power), if not the leaders of their respective groups.  Such is indeed an example of positive progress, and the sort of spiritual development that constitutes genuine progress, and not just an increase of our power over nature that so often is called by that name.

            Still, the waves of feminism keep coming, and some feminists, it appears, will not be happy until they remake all things after their own image.  This is particularly obvious when a female character who generally seems to be in no way a theist makes a point of speaking of God, and in doing so, referring to God explicitly as “she.”  But what the feminist may see as a point scored in some sort of theo-political gender war is really only a sign that this modern feminist understands the actual intellectual content of theology not at all.

            She who chooses to refer to God as “she” does so because she has already made the mistake of seeing God as the instrument, and herself as the agent.  “God,” for her, is not a word pointing towards a transcendent reality compared to which all human individuals are mere phantoms.  God, for the feminist, is not the potter before whom she must prostrate herself and present herself as an instrument, as clay to be molded.  Rather, she sees God as a source of power for herself and her own projects.  Hence, before she has even spoken of God, she has falsified her idea of God, replacing the truth with an idol, a mere ideal. 

            In a sense, it is not possible to refer to the True God as “she,” for He is that Actus Purus—that “pure act”—before whom all Creation is cast in the role of receiver; receiver of being, of existence, of grace, and of love.  Those who call a god “she” do not love that god or desire her love, they only wish to identify with her so that they can use her.  But casting females as tools to be used and exploited is precisely what feminism has so often condemned under the name of “patriarchy.”  Why should such exploitation be acceptable, just because the exploiter is female, and the exploited is—really—only an idea?

            God—as God—is neither male nor female, but the relationship of God to mankind is analogous to the relationship between husband and wife, with God playing the giving, masculine role, and mankind playing the receptive, feminine role.  The proper reading of all this is not to grant power to men because they, like God, are male, and so may identify with Him and His power; the proper reading is to remind us all—man and woman alike—of our proper, receptive, feminine role before Him.  He is the potter, and we are the clay; He is the Bridegroom, while we are the bride.  God uses us to work His will; He does not provide us power to work our own.  It was not the True God, but the one St. Paul called “the god of this world” who said, of “the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them…‘all these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me’” (Matthew 4.8-9).