Models of God

3
od and the World
Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time,

most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he
appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one
untimely born, he appeared also to me. (1 Cor. 15:6—8)
The appearance stories are a fourth distinctive feature of the

paradigmatic story of Jesus of Nazareth. Some scholars now claim
that the “appearance” of Jesus, the awareness of his continuing pres-
ence and empowerment, is what “really happened” in the resurrec-
tion: “. . . lo, 1am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matt.
28:20b).' That is to say, a critical aspect of Jesus’ story as paradig-
matic of God's relationship with the world is that it continues. The
permanency of the way of the cross, the way of self-sacrificial, be-
friending love inviting all to fulfillment, is the permanency not just
of an example but of an empowerment. The resurrection is a way of
speaking about an awareness that the presence of God in Jesus is a
permanent presence in our present. The appearance stories capture
this awareness better than do the empty-tomb narratives with the
associated interpretation of the bodily resurrection of Jesus and his
ascension to glory. The empty-tomb narratives have been elaborated
to suggest that personal, bodily translation into another world to
join the Savior is the way divine presence becomes permanent to us
and that until that time of full presence we live in the between-time,
sustained by symbolic moments of the presence of God in the sacra-
ments and the preaching of the Word. But on such a view, most times
and most places are empty of God: God is not, on this reading, a
permanent presence in our present—not “omnipresent,” present in
59
McFague, Sallie.
McFague, Sallie. Models
Models of
of God:
God: Theology
Theology for an Ecological,
for an Ecological, Nuclear
Nuclear Age.
Age.
E-book, Philadelphia:
E-book, Philadelphia: Fortress
Fortress Press,
Press, 1987,
1987, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.30647.
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60 Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age
all places at all times, but partially, fitfully, selectively present. The
appearance stories suggest, however, as Paul’s narration implies,
that God in Christ will be present even to the last and the least.
Whatever the resurrection is, if interpreted in light of the appear-
ance narratives, it is inclusive; it takes place in every present; it is the
presence of God to us, not our translation into God's presence.
Like other aspects of the paradigmatic story of Jesus, the resur-
rection has been interpreted in many different ways. The interpre-
tation suggested here is in keeping with an understanding of the
Christian gospel as a destabilizing, inclusive, nonhierarchical vi-
sion of fulfillment for all of creation. It asks, How should one
understand the presence of God to the world in order to empower
that vision? In some way, the surprising invitation to the oppressed,
to the last and the least, expressed in the parables, the table fellow-
ship, and the cross needs to be imaginatively perceived as perma-
nently present in every present and every space: it needs to be
grasped, in the most profound sense, as a worldly reality. It is
obvious that the traditional view of the resurrection does not fulfill
these criteria, for in that view some, not all, are included; salvation
occurs principally in the past (Jesus’ resurrection) and the future
(the resurrection of elected individuals), not in the present, every
present—and such redemption is otherworldly, not worldly.
But what if we were to understand the resurrection and ascension
not as the bodily translation of some individuals to another world—
a mythology no longer credible to us—but as the promise of God to
be permanently present, “bodily” present to us, in all places and
times of our world?? In what ways would we think of the relationship
between God and the world were we to experiment with the
metaphor of the universe as God's “body,” God’s palpable presence
in all space and time? If what is needed in our ecological, nuclear age
is an imaginative vision of the relationship between God and the
world that underscores their interdependence and mutuality, em-
powering a sensibility of care and responsibility toward all life, how
would it help to see the world as the body of God?
In making this suggestion, we must always keep in mind its
metaphorical character: we are not slipping back into the search for
unmediated divine presence (which the deconstructionists have
criticized so thoroughly). There is no way behind this metaphor or
McFague, Sallie.
Models of
of God:
God: Theology
Nuclear Age.
Age.
Fortress Press,
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God and the World 61
any other construal of the God-world relationship; at most, a

metaphor fits with some interpretation of the Christian gospel and
is illuminating and fruitful when lived in for a while. Hence, to
imagine the world as God's body is to do precisely that: to imagine
it that way. It is not to say that the world is God’s body or that God
is present to us in the world. Those things we do not know; all that
resurrection faith can do is imagine the most significant ways to
speak of God’s presence in one’s own time. And the metaphor of
the world as God's body presents itself as a promising candidate.
This image, radical as it may seem (in light of the dominant
metaphor of a king to his realm) for imagining the relationship
between God and the world, is a very old one with roots in Sto-
icism and elliptically in the Hebrew Scriptures. The notion has
tantalized many, including Tertullian and Irenaeus, and though it
received little assistance from either Platonism or Aristotelianism
because of their denigration of matter and body (and hence did not
enter the mainstream of either Augustinian or Thomistic theology),
it surfaced powerfully in Hegel as well as in twentieth-century
process theologies.’ The mystical tradition within Christianity has
carried the notion implicitly, even though the metaphor of body
may not appear: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God’
(Gerard Manley Hopkins); “There is communion with God, and a
communion with the earth, and a communion with God through
earth’ (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin).*
We are asking whether one way to remythologize the gospel for
our time might not be through the metaphor of the world as God’s
“body” rather than as the king’s “realm.” If we experiment with this
metaphor, it becomes obvious that royalist, triumphalist images for
God—God as king, lord, ruler, patriarch—will be inappropriate.
Other metaphors, suggesting mutuality, interdependence, caring,
and responsiveness, will be needed. I will suggest God as mother
(father), lover, and friend. If the world is imagined as self-expressive
of God, if it is a “sacrament”—the outward and visible presence or
body—of God, if it is not an alien other over against God but
expressive of God's very being, then, how would God respond to it
and how should we? Would not the metaphors of parents, lovers,
and friends be suggestive, with their implications of creation, nur-
ture, passionate concern, attraction, respect, support, cooperation,
McFague, Sallie.
Models of
of God:
God: Theology
Nuclear Age.
Age.
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mutuality? If the entire universe is expressive of God's very be-

ing—the “incarnation,” if you will—do we not have the beginnings
of an imaginative picture of the relationship between God and the
world peculiarly appropriate as a context for interpreting the salvi-
fic love of God for our time?
It is this picture we will be investigating in as much detail as
possible in these pages. The issue is how to remythologize the Chris-
tian’s cry of affirmation “Christ is risen!’—the promise of God's
saving presence always—for our space and time. We will first look at
the tradition’s monarchical mythology for imaging God's relation-
ship to the world. The classical picture, an imaginatively powerful
one, employs royalist, triumphalist metaphors, depicting God as
king, lord, and patriarch who rules the world and human beings,
usually with benevolence. Is this understanding of God’s presence
in and to the world, and hence, by implication, our presence in and
to the world, one that is appropriate and helpful for a holistic, nu-
clear time? I believe it is not and will suggest below that we consider
the world as God’s body. In what ways is this metaphor an appropri-
ate context for interpreting the destabilizing, nonhierarchical, inclu-
sive vision of fulfilment for all of creation? How would we feel and
act differently in a world that we perceived as the body of God?
Finally, if we accept the imaginative picture of the world as
God’s body, it is obvious that the triumphalist, imperialistic
metaphors of God will no longer be appropriate. I have suggested
the metaphors of God as parent, lover, and friend of the earth that
is expressive of God’s very self. We will in subsequent chapters be
investigating these metaphors in detail, but some general issues
concerning these images need to be considered first.
For instance, the question arises whether any personal met-
aphors should be employed for imaging God’s presence. Are not
more abstract, impersonal, or naturalistic metaphors better for
encouraging an ecological sensibility? In the final section of this
chapter we will consider the viability of metaphors of personal
presence such as mother (and father), lover, and friend. Are these
metaphors too intimate, too personal, and indeed, perhaps too
individualistic? What defense can be given for imaging God on
analogy with human beings and in metaphors expressive of our
most important relationships?
McFague, Sallie.
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of God:
God: Theology
Nuclear Age.
Age.
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As we begin this exercise of the deconstruction and reconstruc-

tion of metaphors in which we imagine the saving power of God in
our contemporary world, it is necessary to remind ourselves of the
nature of our project. We will not be defining or describing the
world or universe as God's body nor God’s relationship to it as that
of mother, lover, or friend. Rather, we will be using descriptions
that properly apply elsewhere and letting them try their chance at
the difficult task of expressing some significant aspects of the God-
world relationship in our time. That they will miss the mark or be
nonsense some of the time will come as no surprise. A heuristic
theology plays with ideas in order to find out, searches for likely
accounts rather than definitions. The object of this kind of theology
is to suggest metaphors that create a shock of recognition. Does
“the world as God’s body” or “God as lover” have both marks of a
good metaphor, both the shock and the recognition? Do these
metaphors both disorient and reorient? Do they evoke a response of
hearing something new and something interesting? Are they both
disclosive and illuminating, both a revelation and in some sense
true? I wish at all costs to avoid the “tyranny of the absolutizing
imagination,” which would insist that our newly suggested
metaphors are the only or the permanent ones for expressing God's
saving love. No such claims will be made; instead, a case will be
presented to show that the metaphors are appropriate, illuminat-
ing, and better than some alternatives.
The Monarchical Model

The monarchical model of God as King was developed systematically,
both in Jewish thought (God as Lord and King of the Universe), in
medieval Christian thought (with its emphasis on divine omnipo-
tence), and in the Reformation (especially in Calvin's insistence on
God's sovereignty). In the portrayal of God’s relation to the world, the
dominant western historical model has been that of the absolute mon-
arch ruling over his kingdom.°
This imaginative picture is so prevalent in mainstream Christian-
ity that it is often not recognized as a picture. Nor is it immediately
perceived as oppressive. More often it is accepted as the natural
understanding of the relationship of God and the world—and one
we like. Think for a moment of the sense of triumph, joy, and power
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God: Theology
Nuclear Age.
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that surges through us when we join in singing the “Hallelujah

Chorus’ from Handel’s Messiah. Probably we do not think about
the implications of the images we sing, but we know they make us
feel good about our God and about ourselves as his subjects: “King
of Kings and Lord of Lords,’ “for the Lord God omnipotent
reigneth.” Our God is really God, the almighty Lord and King of
the universe whom none can defeat, and by implication we also are
undefeatable.
It is a powerful imaginative picture and a very dangerous one. As
we have already noted, it has resulted in what Gordon Kaufman
calls a pattern of “asymmetrical dualism” between God and the
world, in which God and the world are only distantly related and
all power, either as domination or benevolence, is on God’s side.° It
supports conceiving of God as a being existing somewhere apart
from the world and ruling it externally either directly through di-
vine intervention or indirectly through controlling the wills of his
subjects. It creates feelings of awe in the hearts of loyal subjects
and thus supports the “godness” of God, but these feelings are
balanced by others of abject fear and humiliation: in this picture,
God can be God only if we are nothing. The understanding of
salvation that accompanies this view is sacrificial, substitutionary
atonement, and in Anselm’s classic rendition of it the sovereign
imagery predominates. Since even a wink of the eye by a vassal
against the Liege Lord of the universe would be irredeemable sin,
we as abject subjects must rely totally on our sovereign God who
“became man’ in order to undergo a sacrificial death, substituting
his great worth for our worthlessness. Again, we feel the power of
this picture: because we are totally unable to help ourselves, we
will be totally cared for. We not only are forgiven for our sins and
reconciled to our King as once again his loyal subjects but we can
also look forward to a time when we shall join him in his heavenly
kingdom.
This picture, while simplistic and anachronistic, continues in
spite of its limitations, because of its psychological power: it makes
us feel good about God and about ourselves. It inspires strong
emotions of awe, gratitude, and trust toward God and, in ourselves,
engenders a satisfying swing from abject guilt to joyous relief. Its
very power is part of its danger, and any picture that seeks to
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Models of
of God:
God: Theology
Nuclear Age.
Age.
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replace it must reckon with its attraction. Many have criticized the
monarchical model, and it has been severely rejected by a wide
range of contemporary theologians.’ My criticism of it here focuses
on its inability to serve as the imaginative framework for an under-
standing of the gospel as a destabilizing, inclusive, nonhierarchical
vision of fulfillment for all of creation. In that respect, it has three
major flaws: in the monarchical model, God is distant from the
world, relates only to the human world, and controls that world
through domination and benevolence.
The relationship of a king to his subjects is necessarily a distant
one: royalty is “untouchable.” It is the distance, the difference, the
otherness of God that is underscored with this imagery. God as
king is in his kingdom—which is not of this earth—-and we remain
in another place, far from his dwelling. In this picture God is
worldless and the world is Godless: the world is empty of God's
presence, for it is too lowly to be the royal abode. Time and space
are not filled with God: the eons of human and geological time
stretch as a yawning void back into the recesses, empty of the
divine presence; the places loved and noted on our earth, as well as
the unfathomable space of the universe, are not the house of God.
Whatever one does for the world is not finally important in this
model, for its ruler does not inhabit it as his primary residence, and
his subjects are well advised not to become too involved in it either.
The king’s power extends over the entire universe, of course, but
his being does not: he relates to it externally, he is not part of it but
essentially different from it and apart from it.
Although these comments may at first seem to be a caricature
rather than a fair description of the classical Western monarchical
model, they are the direct implications of its imagery. If metaphors
matter, then one must take them seriously at the level at which they
function, that is, at the level of the imaginative picture of God and
the world they project. If one uses triumphalist, royal metaphors
for God, certain things follow, and one of the most important is a
view of God as distant from and basically uninvolved with the
world. God’s distance from and lack of intrinsic involvement with
the world are emphasized when God’s real kingdom is an other-
worldly one: Christ is raised from the dead to join the sovereign
Father—as we shall be also—in the true kingdom. The world is not
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of God:
God: Theology
Nuclear Age.
Age.
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self-expressive of God: God’s being, satisfaction, and future are not

connected with our world. Not only, then, is the world Godless but
God as king and lord is worldless, in all but an external sense. To be
sure, kings want their subjects to be loyal and their realms peace-
ful, but that does not mean internal, intrinsic involvement. Kings do
not have to, and usually do not, love their subjects or realms; at
most, one hopes they will be benevolent.
But such benevolence extends only to human subjects; in the
monarchical model there is no concern for the cosmos, for the non-
human world. Here is our second objection to the model. It is sim-
ply blank in terms of what lies outside the human sphere. As a
political model focused on governing human beings, it leaves out
nine-tenths of reality. One could say at this point that, as with all
models, it has limitations and needs to be balanced by other mod-
els. Such a comment does not address the seriousness of the monar-
chical model’s limitations in regard to nonhuman reality, for as the
dominant Western model it has not allowed competing or alterna-
tive models to arise. The tendency, rather, has been to draw other
models into its orbit, as is evident with the model of God as father.
This model could have gone in the direction of parent (and that is
clearly its New Testament course), with its associations of nurture,
care, guidance, concern, and self-sacrifice, but under the powerful
influence of the monarchical model, the parent became the patri-
arch, and patriarchs act more like kings than like fathers: they rule
their children and they demand obedience.
The hegemony of the monarchical model means that its blank-
ness concerning what lies outside the human sphere is a major
problem. If we seek a model that will express the inclusive, non-
hierarchical vision of the gospel, this is not it. The model’s an-
thropocentrism (the other side of its lack of concern for the natural
world) can be seen, for instance, in classical Protestantism’s em-
phasis on the the Word of God. The monarchical model and an
aural tradition fit together naturally, for kings give orders and sub-
jects obey, but the model has no place for creatures who cannot
hear and obey. An interpretation of Christianity that focuses on
hearing the Word, on listening to the Word as preached and on the
Scriptures in which the Word is written, is a tradition limited to
human beings, for they alone are linguistic. God is present in words
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and to those who can hear, and if Francis of Assisi preached to the
birds, few have followed his example. An aural tradition is an-
thropocentric: we are the only ones who can “hear the Word of the
Lord.” A visual tradition, however, is more inclusive: if God can be
present not only in what one hears but also in what one sees, then
potentially anything and everything in the world can be a symbol
of the divine. One does not preach to the birds, but a bird can be
a metaphor to express God’s intimate presence in the world:
“. . , the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods with warm breast
and with ah! bright wings.”®
A visual tradition has a place for birds and for much else; if one
allows in the other senses of smell, taste, and touch, then, as
Augustine puts it in book 10 of the Confessions, one loves “light and
melody and fragrance and food and embrace” when one loves one’s
God. In other words, one has let the whole world in: not just words
are expressive of God’s saving presence but everything can be.?
The world can be seen as the “body” of God. It is not, then, just a
book, the Scriptures, that is special as the medium of divine pres-
ence, but the world is also God’s dwelling place. If an inclusive
vision of the gospel must include the world, it is evident that the
monarchical model, which not only cannot include the world but is
totally anthropocentric and excludes alternative models, is sadly
lacking.
This anthropocentric model is also dualistic and hierarchical. Not
all dualisms are hierarchical; for instance, in the Chinese under-
standing of yin and yang, a balance is sought and neither is consid-
ered superior to the other, for too much of one or the other is
undesirable. But a dualism of king and subjects is intrinsically hi-
erarchical and encourages hierarchical, dualistic thinking of the
sort that has fueled many kinds of oppression, including (in addi-
tion to that of the nonhuman by the human) those arising from the
cleavages of male/female, white/colored, rich/poor, Christian/
non-Christian, and mind/body. The monarchical model encour-
ages a way of thinking that is pervasive and pernicious, in a time
when exactly the opposite is needed as a basic pattern. The hierar-
chical, dualistic pattern is so widespread in Western thought that it
is usually not perceived to be a pattern but is felt to be simply the
way things are. It appears natural to many that males, whites, the
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God: Theology
Nuclear Age.
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rich, Christians, and the mind are superior, and to suggest that
human beings, under the influence of powerful, dominant models
such as the monarchical one, have constructed these dualistic hier-
archies is to these people not believable. Or to put it with more
subtlety, though tolerance is a contemporary civil virtue and not
many would say openly that these dualisms are natural, deep down
they believe they are.
We come, then, to the third criticism of the monarchical model: in
this model God not only is distant from the world and relates only
to the human world, but he also controls that world through a
combination of domination and benevolence. This is the logical
implication of hierarchical dualism: God’s action is on the world,
not in it, and it is a kind of action that inhibits human growth and
responsibility. (Such action represents the kind of power that op-
presses—and indeed enslaves—others; but enough has been said
already in these pages and by others on that aspect of the model,
which is its most obvious fault.) What is of equal importance is the
less obvious point that the monarchical model implies the wrong
kind of divine activity in relation to the world, a kind that encour-
ages passivity on the part of human beings.
It is simplistic to blame the Judeo-Christian tradition for the eco-
logical crisis, as some have done, on the grounds that Genesis in-
structs human beings to have “dominion” over nature; nonetheless,
the imagery of sovereignty supports attitudes of control and use
toward the nonhuman world.’ Although the might of the natural
world when unleashed is fearsome, as is evident in earthquakes,
tornadoes, and volcanic eruptions, the power balance has shifted
from nature to us, and an essential aspect of the new sensibility is
to recognize and accept this. Nature can and does destroy many,
but it is not in a position to destroy all, as we can. Extinction of
species by nature is in a different dimension from extinction by
design, which only we can bring about. This chilling thought adds a
new importance to the images we use to characterize our relation-
ship to others and to the nonhuman world. If we are capable of
extinguishing ourselves and most if not all other life, metaphors
that support attitudes of distance from, and domination of, other
human beings and nonhuman life must be recognized as danger-
ous. No matter how ancient a metaphorical tradition may be and
McFague, Sallie.
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God: Theology
Nuclear Age.
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regardless of its credentials in Scripture, liturgy, and creedal state-

ments, it still must be discarded if it threatens the continuation of
life itself. What possible case can be made for metaphors of the
God-world relationship which encourage attitudes on the part of
human beings destructive of themselves as well as of the cosmos
which supports all life? If the heart of the Christian gospel is the
salvific power of God, triumphalist metaphors cannot express that
reality in our time, whatever their appropriateness may have been
in the past.
And this is so even if God’s power is seen as benevolence rather
than domination. For if God’s rule is understood benevolently, it
will be assumed that all is well—that the world will be cared for
with no help from us. The king as dominating sovereign encour-
ages attitudes of militarism and destruction; the king as benevolent
patriarch encourages attitudes of passivity and escape from re-
sponsibility.'! In the triumphalist, royal model the victory has al-
ready been won on the cross and in the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
and nothing is required of us. We can rest comfortably in the assur-
ance that our mighty Lord will deal with all present and future evil
as he has always dealt with evil. Such a view of God’s benevolence
undercuts human effort of any sort.
The monarchical model is dangerous in our time: it encourages a
sense of distance from the world; it attends only to the human
dimension of the world; and it supports attitudes of either domina-
tion of the world or passivity toward it. As an alternative model, I
suggest considering the world as God’s body. Questions abound
with this piece of “nonsense.” It is a shocking idea; is it also an
illuminating one? What does it mean from God’s side and what
from our side? Is it pantheistic? Is God or are we reduced to the
world? With this metaphor how would one speak of God knowing
and acting in the world as well as loving it? What about evil? About
sin? What of our freedom, individuality, and behavior in such a
world?
The World as God’s Body

We are letting the metaphor of the world as God’s body try its
chance.'? We are experimenting with a bit of nonsense to see if it
can make a claim to truth. What if, we are asking, the ‘resurrection
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of the body” were not seen as the resurrection of particular bodies

that ascend, beginning with Jesus of Nazareth, into another world,
but as God’s promise to be with us always in God’s body, our
world? What if God’s promise of permanent presence to all space
and time were imagined as a worldly reality, a palpable, bodily
presence? What if, then, we did not have to go somewhere special
(church) or somewhere else (another world) to be in the presence of
God but could feel ourselves in that presence at all times and in all
places? What if we imagined God’s presence as in us and in all
others, including the last and the least?
As we begin this experiment we must once again recall that a
metaphor or model is not a description. We are trying to think in an
as-if fashion about the God-world relationship, because we have no
other way of thinking about it. No metaphor fits in all ways, and
some are more nonsense than sense. The king-realm kind of think-
ing about the God-world relationship sounds like sense because we
are used to it, but reflection shows that in our world it is nonsense.
For a metaphor to be acceptable, it need not, cannot, apply in all
ways; if it did, it would be a description. One has to realize how not
to apply a metaphor (to say God is the Father does not mean that
God has a beard!) and also where it fails or treads on shaky ground.
The metaphor of the world as God’s body has the opposite problem
to the metaphor of the world as the king’s realm: if the latter puts
too great a distance between God and the world, the former verges
on too great a proximity. Since both metaphors are inadequate, we
have to ask which one is better in our time, and to qualify it with
other metaphors and models. Is it better to accept an imaginative
picture of God as the distant ruler controlling his realm through
external and benevolent power or one of God so intimately related
to the world that the world can be imagined as God's body? There
are, of course, different understandings of “better.” Is it better in
terms of our and the world’s preservation and fulfillment? Is it
better in terms of coherence, comprehensibility, and illumination?
Is it better in terms of expressing the Christian understanding of
the relationship between God and the world?.All these criteria are
relevant, for a metaphor that is all or mostly nonsense has tried its
chance and failed.
Therefore, a heuristic, metaphorical theology, though hospitable
McFague, Sallie.
Models of
of God:
God: Theology
Nuclear Age.
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initially to nonsense is constrained as well to search for sense.

Christians should, given their tradition, be inclined to find sense
in “body” language, not only because of the resurrection of the
body but also because of the bread and wine of the eucharist as the
body and blood of Christ, and the church as the body with Christ
as its head. Christians have a surprisingly “bodily” tradition;
nonetheless, there is a difference between the traditional uses of
“body” and seeing the world as God’s body: when the world is
viewed as God's body, that body includes more than just Christians
and more than just human beings. It is possible to speculate that if
Christianity had begun in a culture less dualistic and antiphysical
than that of the first-century Mediterranean world, it might have
been willing, given the more holistic anthropology and theology of
its Hebraic roots, to extend its body metaphor to God."? At any rate,
in view of the contemporary holistic understanding of personhood,
in which embodiment is the sine qua non, the thought of an embod-
ied personal deity is not more incredible than that of a disembodied
one; in fact, it is less so. In a dualistic culture where mind and body,
spirit and flesh, are separable, a disembodied, personal God is
more credible, but not in ours. This is only to suggest that the idea
of God’s embodiment—the idea as such, quite apart from particu-
lars—should not be seen as nonsense; it is less nonsense than the
idea of a disembodied personal God.
A more central issue is whether the metaphor of the world as
God's body is pantheistic or, to put it another way, reduces God to
the world. The metaphor does come far closer to pantheism than
the king-realm model, which verges on deism, but it does not to-
tally identify God with the world any more than we totally identify
ourselves with our bodies. Other animals may be said to be bodies
that have spirits; we may be said to be spirits that possess bodies."*
This is not to introduce a new dualism but only to recognize that
although our bodies are expressions of us both unconsciously and
consciously, we can reflect about them and distance ourselves from
them. The very fact that we can speak about our bodies is evidence
that we are not totally one with them. On this model, God is not
reduced to the world if the world is God’s body. Without the use of
personal agential metaphors, however, including among others
God as mother, lover, and friend, the metaphor of the world as
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Models of
of God:
God: Theology
Nuclear Age.
Age.
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Press, 1987,
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God’s body would be pantheistic, for the body would be all there
were. Nonetheless, the model is monist and perhaps most precisely
designated as panentheistic; that is, it is a view of the God-world
relationship in which all things have their origins in God and noth-
ing exists outside God, though this does not mean that God is
reduced to these things.’° There is, as it were, a limit on our side,
not on God's: the world does not exist outside or apart from God.
Christian theism, which has always claimed that there is but one
reality and it is God’s—that there is no competing (evil) reality—is
necessarily monist, though the monarchical imaginative picture
that has accompanied it is implicitly if not blatantly dualistic. It sets
God over against competing, presumably ontological, powers, and
over against the world as an alien other to be controlled.
Nevertheless, though God is not reduced to the world, the
metaphor of the world as God’s body puts God “at risk.’ If we
follow out the implications of the metaphor, we see that God be-
comes dependent through being bodily, in a way that a totally
invisible, distant God would never be. Just as we care about our
bodies, are made vulnerable by them, and must attend to their
well-being, God will be liable to bodily contingencies. The world
as God’s body may be poorly cared for, ravaged, and as we are
becoming well aware, essentially destroyed, in spite of God’s own
loving attention to it, because of one creature, ourselves, who can
choose or not choose to join with God in conscious care of the
world. Presumably, were this body blown up, another could be
formed; hence, God need not be seen to be as dependent on us or
on any particular body as we are on our own bodies. But in the
metaphor of the universe as the self-expression of God—God’s
incarnation—the notions of vulnerability, shared responsibility,
and risk are inevitable. This is a markedly different basic under-
standing of the God-world relationship than in the monarch-realm
metaphor, for it emphasizes God’s willingness to suffer for and
with the world, even to the point of personal risk. The world as
God's body, then, may be seen as a way to remythologize the
inclusive, suffering love of the cross of Jesus of Nazareth. In both
instances, God is at risk in human hands: just as once upon a time
in a bygone mythology, human beings killed their God in the
body of a man, so now we once again have that power, but, in a
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of God:
God: Theology
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mythology more appropriate to our time, we would kill our God in

the body of the world. Could we actually do this? To believe in the
resurrection means we could not. God is not in our power to
destroy, but the incarnate God is the God at risk: we have been
given central responsibility to care for God’s body, our world.
If God, though at risk and dependent on others, is not reduced to
the world in the metaphor of the world as God’s body, what more
can we say about the meaning of this model from God's side? How
does God know the world, act in it, and love it? How does one
speak of evil in this metaphor? In the monarchical model, God
knows the world externally, acts on it either by direct intervention
or indirectly through human subjects, and loves it benevolently, in
a charitable way. God’s knowledge, action, and love are markedly
different in the metaphor of the world as God’s body. God knows
the world immediately just as we know our bodies immediately.
God could be said to be in touch with all parts of the world through
interior understanding. Moreover, this knowledge is empathetic,
intimate, sympathetic knowledge, closer to feeling than to rational-
ity.'© It is knowledge “by acquaintance’; it is not “information
about.” Just as we are internally related to our bodies, so God is
internally related to all that is—the most radically relational Thou.
God relates sympathetically to the world, just as we relate sympa-
thetically to our bodies. This implies, of course, an immediacy and
concern in God’s knowledge of the world impossible in the king-
realm model.
Moreover, it implies that the action of God in the world is simi-
larly interior and caring. If the entire universe, all that is and has
been, is God’s body, then God acts in and through the incredibly
complex physical and historical-cultural evolutionary process that
began eons ago.’” This does not mean that God is reduced to the
evolutionary process, for God remains as the agent, the self, whose
intentions are expressed in the universe. Nevertheless, the manner
in which these intentions are expressed is internal and, by implica-
tion, providential—that is, reflective of a “caring” relationship. God
does not, as in the royal model, intervene in the natural or historical
process in deus-ex-machina fashion nor feel merely charitable to-
ward the world. The suggestion, however, that God cares about the
world as one cares about one’s body, that is, with a high degree of
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sympathetic concern, does not imply that all is well or the future is
assured, for with the body metaphor, God is at risk. It does suggest,
however, that to trust in a God whose body is the world is to trust
in a God who cares profoundly for the world.
Furthermore, the model of the world as God's body suggests that
God loves bodies: in loving the world, God loves a body. Such a
notion is a sharp challenge to the long antibody, antiphysical, anti-
matter tradition within Christianity. This tradition has repressed
healthy sexuality, oppressed women as sexual tempters, and de-
fined Christian redemption in spiritualistic ways, thus denying that
basic social and economic needs of embodied beings are relevant to
salvation. To say that God loves bodies is to redress the balance
toward a more holistic understanding of fulfillment. It is to say that
bodies are worth loving, sexually and otherwise, that passionate
love as well as attention to the needs of bodily existence is a part of
fulfillment. It is to say further that the basic necessities of bodily
existence—adequate food and shelter, for example—are central as-
pects of God’s love for all bodily creatures and therefore should be
central concerns of us, God’s co-workers. In a holistic sensibility
there can be no spirit/body split: if neither we nor God is disem-
bodied, the denigration of the body, the physical, and matter
should end. Such a split makes no sense in our world: spirit and
body or matter are on a continuum, for matter is not inanimate
substance but throbs of energy, essentially in continuity with spirit.
To love bodies, then, is to love not what is opposed to spirit but
what is at one with it—which the model of the world as God’s body
fully expresses.
The immanence of God in the world implied in our metaphor
raises the question of God’s involvement with evil. Is God responsi-
ble for evil, both natural and humanly willed evil? The pictures of
the king and his realm and of God and the world as God's body
obviously suggest very different replies to these enormously diffi-
cult and complex questions. In the monarchical construct, God is
implicitly in contest with evil powers, either as victorious king who
crushes them or as sacrificial servant who (momentarily) assumes a
worldly mien in order to free his subjects from evil’s control. The
implication of ontological dualism, of opposing good and evil pow-
ers, is the price paid for separating God from evil, and it is a high
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price indeed, for it suggests that the place of evil is the world (and
ourselves) and that to escape evil’s clutches, we need to free
ourselves from “the world, the flesh, and the devil.” In this con-
struct, God is not responsible for evil, but neither does God identify
with the suffering caused by evil.
That identification does occur in the metaphor of the world as
God's body. The evil in the world, all kinds of evil, occurs in and to
God as well as to us and the rest of creation. Evil is not a power
over against God; in a sense, it is God’s “responsibility,” part of
God's being, if you will. A monist position cannot avoid this con-
clusion.!® In a physical, biological, historicocultural evolutionary
process as complex as the universe, much that is evil from various
perspectives will occur, and if one sees this process as God's self-
expression, then God is involved in evil. But the other side of this is
that God is also involved, profoundly, palpably, personally in-
volved, in suffering, in the suffering caused by evil. The evil occurs
in and to God’s body: the pain that those parts of creation affected
by evil feel God also feels and feels bodily. All pain to all creatures
is felt immediately and bodily by God: one does not suffer alone. In
this sense, God's suffering on the cross was not for a mere few
hours, as in the old mythology, but it is present and permanent. As
the body of the world, God is forever “nailed to the cross,” for as
this body suffers, so God suffers.
Is this to suggest that God is helpless in relation to evil or that
God knows no joy? No, for the way of the cross, the way of inclu-
sive, radical love, is a kind of power, though a very different kind
from kingly might. It does imply, however, that unlike God the
king, the God who suffers with the world cannot wipe out evil: evil
is not only part of the process but its power depends also on us,
God’s partners in the way of inclusive, radical love. And what holds
for suffering can be said of joy as well. Wherever in the universe
there is new life, ecstasy, tranquillity, and fulfillment, God experi-
ences these pleasures and rejoices with each creature in its joy.
When we turn to our side of this picture of the world as God’s
body, we have to ask whether we are reduced to being mere parts
of the body? What is our freedom? How is sin understood here?
How would we behave in this model? The model did not fit God’s
side in every way, and it does not fit ours in every way either. It
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seems especially problematic at the point of our individuality and

freedom. At least in the king-realm model, human beings appear to
have some freedom since they are controlled only externally, not
internally. The problem emerges because of the nature of bodies: if
we are parts of God’s body—if the model is totally organic—are we
not then totally immersed, along with all other creatures, in the
evolutionary process, with no transcendence or freedom? It ap-
pears, however, at least to us, that we are a special part: We think of
ourselves as the imago dei, as not only possessing bodies but being
agents. We view ourselves as embodied spirits in the larger body of
the world which influences us and which we influence. That is, we
are the part modeled on the model: self:body::God:world. We are
agents and God possesses a body: both sides of the model pertain
to both God and ourselves. This implies that we are not mere sub-
merged parts of the body of God but relate to God as to another
Thou. The presence of God to us in and through God’s body is the
experience of encounter, not of submersion. For the saving love of
God to be present to human beings it would have to be so in a way
different from how it is present to other aspects of the body of the
world—in a way in keeping with the peculiar kind of creatures we
are, namely, creatures with a special kind of freedom, able to par-
ticipate self-consciously (as well as be influenced unconsciously) in
the evolutionary process. This gives us a special status and a special
responsibility: we are the ones like God; we are selves that possess
bodies, and that is our glory. It is also our responsibility, for we
alone can choose to become partners with God in the care of the
world; we alone can—like God—mother, love, and befriend the
world, the body that God has made available to us as both the
divine presence and our home.
Our special status and responsibility, however, are not limited to
consciousness of our own personal bodies or even of the human
world but extend to all embodied reality, for we are that part of the
cosmos where the cosmos itself comes to consciousness. If we be-
come extinct, then the cosmos will lose its human, although pre-
sumably not its divine, consciousness. As Jonathan Schell remarks,
*In extinction a darkness falls over the world not because the lights
have gone out but because the eyes that behold the light have been
closed.”'? The tragedy of human annihilation by war, even if some
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plants and some other animals survived, would be that there were
no one to be conscious of embodied reality: the cosmos would have
lost its consciousness.
It is obvious, then, what sin is in this metaphor of the world as
God's body: it is refusal to be part of the body, the special part we
are as imago dei. In contrast to the king-realm model, where sin is
against God, here it is against the world. To sin is not to refuse
loyalty to the Liege Lord but to refuse to take responsibility for
nurturing, loving, and befriending the body and all its parts. Sin is
the refusal to realize one’s radical interdependence with all that
lives: it is the desire to set oneself apart from all others as not
needing them or being needed by them. Sin is the refusal to be the
eyes, the consciousness, of the cosmos.
What this experiment with the world as God's body comes to,
finally, is an awareness, both chilling and breathtaking, that we as
worldly, bodily beings are in God's presence. It is the basis for a
revived sacramentalism, that is, a perception of the divine as visi-
ble, as present, palpably present in our world. But it is a kind of
sacramentalism that is painfully conscious of the world’s vulnera-
bility, its preciousness, its uniqueness. The beauty of the world and
its ability to sustain the vast multitude of species it supports is not
there for the taking. The world is a body that must be carefully
tended, that must be nurtured, protected, guided, loved, and be-
friended both as valuable in itself-—for like us, it is an expression of
God—and as necessary to the continuation of life. We meet the
world as a Thou, as the body of God where God is present to us
always in all times and in all places. In the metaphor of the world as
the body of God, the resurrection becomes a worldly, present,
inclusive reality, for this body is offered to all: “This is my body.”
As is true of all bodies, however, this body, in its beauty and
preciousness, is vulnerable and at risk: it will delight the eye only if
we care for it; it will nourish us only if we nurture it. Needless to
say, then, were this metaphor to enter our consciousness as thor-
oughly as the royal, triumphalist one has entered, it would result in
a different way of being in the world. There would be no way that
we could any longer see God as worldless or the world as Godless.
Nor could we expect God to take care of everything, either through
domination or through benevolence.
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We see through pictures. We do not see directly: the pictures of a

king and his realm and of the world as God’s body are ways of
speaking, ways of imagining the God-world relationship. The one
pictures a vast distance between God and the world; the other
imagines them as intrinsically related. At the close of day, one asks
which distortion (assuming that all pictures are false in some re-
spects) is better, by asking what attitudes each encourages. This is
not the first question to ask, but it may well be the last. The monar-
chical model encourages attitudes of militarism, dualism, and es-
capism; it condones control through violence and oppression; it has
nothing to say about the nonhuman world. The model of the world
as God's body encourages holistic attitudes of responsibility for
and care of the vulnerable and oppressed; it is nonhierarchical and
acts through persuasion and attraction; it has a great deal to say
about the body and nature. Both are pictures: which distortion is
more true to the world in which we live and to the good news of
Christianity?
It may be, of course, that neither picture is appropriate to our
time and to Christianity; if so, others should be proposed. Our
profound need for a powerful, attractive imaginative picture of the
way God is related to our world demands that we not only decon-
struct but reconstruct our metaphors, letting the ones that seem
promising try their chance. It is in this spirit that we continue our
heuristic, metaphorical theology, turning now to the specific mod-
els of God as mother, lover, and friend of the world.
God as Mother, Lover, Friend

Our task is to suggest an imaginative picture of the relationship
between God and the world that will express the saving presence
of God in our present. That saving presence we have interpreted
as a destabilizing, inclusive, nonhierarchical vision of fulfillment
for all of creation. If what is sought is a likely account of the
relationship between God and world, is there value in looking at
the cosmos as God's bodily presence in all times and places? If we
accept that picture, will the metaphors of mother, lover, and
friend, be suitable ones for God’s relationship to the world? Before
developing that imaginative picture in detail (chaps. 4-6), we
need to deal with some preliminary issues regarding personal
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metaphors. Throughout our discussion so far we have assumed

divine personal agency. The analogy of self:body::God:world
rests on this assumption, but we must now ask about its viability.
Two questions are central in any discussion of personal meta-
phors for understanding the God-world relation: Why use any
personal metaphors? Why use these particular ones? Not all reli-
gious traditions use personal metaphors, or at least they do not use
them to the degree the Judeo-Christian tradition does. Some mys-
tical religions, as well as those intimately involved in nature's cy-
cles, are far less personalistic in their imagery. If our task is to
suggest imagery that will overcome the distance between God and
the world while underscoring the immanence of God in the world,
is it not counterproductive to continue using personal metaphors?
This is a very serious question and is not a concern solely in our
present ecological, nuclear crisis. To many people for a long time,
the notion of a personal God has seemed incredible, for it appears
to support the notion of a being existing somewhere whose only
way to act on the world is to intervene in its affairs. It is not
possible to trace here the modern history of this issue, but the
remote God of the deists was certainly a first step away from an
interventionist, personal God, and both Schleiermacher’s turn to
the self as the place where the presence of God is felt and Hegel's
near-identification of God and the world are part of the history.
These patterns were picked up by Bultmann’s refusal to talk of
God and divine activity except as implications of human states and
by Tillich’s wariness about personal images of God and his prefer-
ence for “Being-itself” as the primary designation. One can see the
direction that the issue of a personal God has taken during the past
two centuries, by bringing to mind the embarrassment that such a
“primitive” concept of God appears to present, as well as the gen-
uine bewilderment it causes when we try to conceive the activity of
such a God in a world that is understood as an evolutionary, causal
nexus permitting no interference by outside agents. Is not a per-
sonal God both an anachronism from the childhood of humanity,
best now discarded, and an impossibility in a time when agency,
whether divine or human, is understood to take place in a highly
complex ecological, evolutionary matrix of multiple agents, a ma-
trix characterized by chance and necessity? Would it not be better,
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as Gordon Kaufman suggests, to conceive of God in terms of the

multifarious physical, biological, and historicocultural conditions
that have made human existence possible, rather than in quasi-
personal terms? Kaufman finds that the political, personal images
of the tradition undergird militaristic and passive attitudes,
whereas the familial images are too individualistic to function ef-
fectively in our evolutionary, ecological world. At most, Kaufman
says, one can speak of the “hidden creativity” or “unpredictable
grace” that works in and through the incredibly complex physical,
biological, and historicocultural matrix that has resulted in our
present situation. I agree thoroughly with much of what Kaufman
says and especially with his comment that “devotion to a God
conceived in terms other than these [the physical, biological, his-
toricocultural matrix] will not be devotion to God, that is, to that
reality which has (to the best of our understanding) in fact created
us.”2° We must understand God and the activity of God in the
world in a fashion that is not just commensurate with an ecologi-
cal, evolutionary sensibility but intrinsic to it. I disagree with
Kaufman’s position, however, in that I do not believe that the re-
duction of the personal God to hidden creativity or unpredictable
grace is desirable or necessary.”!
It is not desirable because, as I suggested earlier, any imaginative
picture attempting to unseat the triumphalist, royal model must be
at least as attractive as it is. It must be an understanding of the
God-world relationship that will move people to live by it and work
for it; it must come from a place deep within human experience. It is
no accident that much of the tradition’s most powerful imagery
does come from this place. It is imagery reflecting the beginning
and continuation of life, imagery of sex, breath, food, blood, and
water, as in the second birth, the breath of the Holy Spirit, bread
and wine, the blood of the cross, the resurrection of the body, and
the water of baptism. This language continues to be powerful be-
cause images arising from the most basic level of physical exis-
tence—the level of our tenuous hold on existence and what is
needed to keep it going—are images of life and death. 1 am not
suggesting that there are some sacred, permanent metaphors that
can replace the royalist, triumphalist model; but there may be a
place to look for metaphors that goes even deeper than the political
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arena, from which most long-term models of the God-world rela-

tionship in the West have come. In the political arena the concern is
with how we govern our lives; a deeper question is how we live at
all and how well we live. Metaphors of mothers, lovers, friends,
and bodies come from this level, as does the classic model of father
understood as parent. If the imagery of mothers, lovers, friends,
and bodies proved credible for picturing the God-world relation, it
would certainly also be attractive, for it is unmatched in power: it
holds within it the power not of mere kings but of life and death.
But although it may not be desirable to do away with personal
imagery for God, it may still be necessary. How can personal
metaphors be credible in our time? Do they not presuppose an
external, interventionist understanding of the relationship between
God and the world? Many apparently do not think so, for besides a
movement during the last two centuries away from the model of
personal agency for God there has been a countervailing move-
ment toward it. Hence, another way to see the theological history of
the past two centuries is as a movement toward taking the human
self and the relationship between the self and the body, as a, if not
the, prime model for imaging God and God's relationship to the
world. It is not just mystics like Teilhard de Chardin or process
theologians like Charles Hartshorne who press this case but a sur-
prising range of theologians from a variety of perspectives.?? Much
of the reason for this shift lies in the current understanding of
persons not as substantial individuals, separated from one another
and from the world, who enter into relationships of their own
choice, but as beings-in-relationship of the most radical and thor-
oughgoing nature. The model, as outlined in chapter 1, is not of a
machine with separate parts relating externally but of an organ
with all aspects intrinsically and internally related. The human
person is the most complex organ known to us, and it exists as an
embodied whole within an incredibly rich organic complex of mu-
tually interrelated and interdependent parts, aspects, and dimen-
sions. To be a person, therefore, is not to be a being related
externally to other individual beings but to be part of—and to the
best of our knowledge, the most sophisticated, complex, and uni-
fied part of—an organic whole that embraces all that is. If, then, we
speak of God in personal metaphors, we will not be speaking of a
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being that is related externally to the world, as, for instance, a king
to his realm, but we will be conceiving God on the model of the
most complex part of the whole that is the universe—that is, on the
model of ourselves. There are several points to make in support of
the personal model for the God-world relationship: it is the one we
know best; it is the richest; and the kind of activity of God in the
world it suggests is both credible in our time and needed by it.
It is perhaps simplistic to put weight on the fact that the personal
model is the one we know best, but cases against the model often
overlook that fact. It is the only metaphor we know from the inside:
there is nothing we can say about God with the help of any other
model that has the same credibility to us, because there is no other
aspect of the universe that we know in the same way, with the
privilege of the insider. The tradition says we are the imago dei, and
that inevitably means we imagine God in our image. Presumably, if
dolphins or apes have inklings of a higher reality, they imagine it
after the model they know best—themselves. That is said not in jest
but to bring home why personal metaphors, those modeled on
human beings as we understand them today, are suitable for us.
Another way to make this point is to consider the alternative to a
personal model. Nonpersonal metaphors would be either meta-
phors from nature (other animals or natural phenomena such as the
sun, water, sky, and mountains) or concepts from one or another
philosophical tradition (such as “Being-itself,” “substance,” and
“ground of Being”), which at some level are also, of course, meta-
phorical. We are limited in the ways we can model the God-world
relationship, and although we should certainly include a wide
range of metaphors from many sources, to exclude the one we know
best or to make it secondary to ones we know less well seems
foolish.
It would also be unwise for another reason: it is the richest model
available to us. This is not anthropocentric hubris but simply a
recognition that since we are the most complex, unified creature we
know, with what to us are mysterious and fathomless depths, we
are the best model. Given the nature of heuristic, metaphorical
theology, that is not to say that God is a person or that personal
language describes or defines God. It is to say, rather, that to speak
of God with the aid of or through the screen of such language is
McFague, Sallie.
Models of
of God:
God: Theology
Nuclear Age.
Age.
Fortress Press,
Press, 1987,
Downloaded on
behalf of
of The
The Chinese
Chinese University
Hong Kong
Kong
better than some other ways of speaking. It is, for instance, more
interesting, illuminating, and richer to speak of God as a friend
than as a rock, though “A mighty fortress is our God” has a place in
talk about God. Its place, however, is a limited one, and the rock
metaphor does not begin to suggest the potential for elaboration
that the metaphor of a friend does. To speak of God's saving pres-
ence in our present only with the help of images about rocks and
wind, or with any other natural metaphors, is to overlook the
richest source we have—ourselves.
Finally, the strongest argument for personal metaphors in our
time is that the current understanding of personal agency allows
personal metaphors to reflect a view of God’s activity in the world
as radically relational, immanental, interdependent, and noninter-
ventionist. Current theological attention to the issue of divine
activity in the world is considerable and varied, but there is wide-
spread agreement that the understanding of the self, both in rela-
tion to its own body (as embodied self) and in relation to others (as
profoundly embedded in and constituted by those others), is a
helpful and illuminating model.”? The evolutionary, organic com-
plex is widely considered the context in which to interpret personal
agency—with the agent as part of an intricate causal network that
both influences it and is influenced by it—and this allows for an
understanding of personal presence credible within the new sensi-
bility. Moreover, it is the model for God's activity in the world that
we need today, for to imagine God as the personal presence in the
universe who epitomizes personhood, that is, who has intrinsic rela-
tions with all else that exists, is to possess a highly suggestive model
for God’s saving presence. If, on the model current today, a person
is defined in terms of relationships, then, as Schubert Ogden says,
God as “the Thou with the greatest conceivable degree of real relat-
edness to others—namely, relatedness to all others—is for that
very reason the most truly absolute Thou any mind can conceive.”
If personhood is defined in terms of intrinsic relations with others,
then to think of God as personal in no sense implies a being sepa-
rate from other beings who relates externally and distantly to them,
in the way that the king-realm personal model suggests. On the
contrary, it suggests, I believe, that God is present in and to the
world as the kind of other, the kind of Thou, much closer to a
McFague, Sallie.
Models of
of God:
God: Theology
Nuclear Age.
Age.
Fortress Press,
Press, 1987,
Downloaded on
behalf of
of The
The Chinese
Chinese University
Hong Kong
Kong
mother, lover, or friend than to a king or lord. The intrinsic, interde-

pendent relationships we know most about are also the most inti-
mate, interpersonal ones: they are the ones that begin, support, and
nurture life.
This defense of the personal model for understanding the God-
world relationship has brought us finally, then, to the issue of the
particular metaphors of mother, lover, and friend. If one accepts
the personal model, one must ask which personal models are most
appropriate for expressing the saving power and presence of God
in our time. Although most personal metaphors in the Judeo-
Christian tradition have come from the political arena, an under-
standing of the gospel as a destabilizing, inclusive, nonhierarchical
vision of fulfillment for all of creation should look elsewhere. It
should look to that level of human experience concerned with the
beginnings, continuation, and support of life, the level not of how
we govern our lives but of how we live at all and the quality of that
life. In an understanding of the gospel for a holistic, nuclear age,
when the continuation and the quality of life must be seen as cen-
tral, we need to return to the most basic realities of existence and to
the most basic relationships, for metaphors in which to express that
understanding. The symbols of sex, food, water, breath, and blood
(all that makes it possible for embodied life to begin and continue)
and the relationships of mothers (and fathers), lovers, and friends
(those most basic of all relationships, which more than any others
contain potential for expressing the most profound fulfillment)—it
is from such sources that metaphors for God's saving presence in
our time should be drawn.
In particular I would make a case for experimenting in our time
with mother, lover, and friend as three models that have been
strangely neglected in the Judeo-Christian tradition. All three mod-
els represent basic human relationships; indeed, one could say that
the three, along with the model of father, represent the most basic
human relationships.?> Hence, if one is going to employ a personal
model for God, it makes sense to consider these three seriously. And
they have been considered seriously in most religious traditions, for
the simple reason that when people are attempting to express the
inexpressible, they use what is nearest and dearest to them: they
invoke the most important human relationships. One basic human
McFague, Sallie.
Models of
of God:
God: Theology
Nuclear Age.
Age.
Fortress Press,
Press, 1987,
Downloaded on
behalf of
of The
The Chinese
Chinese University
Hong Kong
Kong
relationship, that of father, has received massive attention in our

tradition; the others have been, at best, neglected and, at worst, re-
pressed. There are traces of them in Scripture and the tradition, but
they have never become, or been allowed to become, major models.
Yet I hope that it has become evident that, given the kind of
understanding of the gospel appropriate for a holistic, nuclear age,
they may well be the most illuminating personal metaphors avail-
able. In different ways all three models suggest forms of fundamen-
tal intimacy, mutuality, and relatedness that could be a rich
resource for expressing how in our time life can be supported and
fulfilled rather than destroyed. They are all immanental models,
in contrast to the radically transcendent models for God in the
Western tradition. As we have seen, part of the difficulty with the
dominant model of God is its transcendence, a transcendence un-
dergirded by triumphalist, sovereign, patriarchal imagery that con-
tributes to a sense of distance between God and the world. The
relatedness of all life, and hence the responsibility of human beings
for the fate of the earth, is supported by models of God as mother,
lover, and friend of the world.
Moreover, these metaphors project a different view of power, of
how to bring about change, than the royal model. It is not the power
of control through either domination or benevolence but the power
of response and responsibility—the power of love in its various
forms (agape, eros, and philia) that operates by persuasion, care,
attention, passion, and mutuality. The way of being in the world
which these metaphors suggest is close to the way of the cross, the
way of radical identification with all which the model of servant
once expressed. It is a way of being with others totally different
from the way of kings and lords.
A final question remains before we close out the case for per-
sonal models and especially for the ones chosen. Are they perhaps
too intimate and too individualistic? We have already touched on
the issue of intimacy: the more intimate, in the sense of the closer to
the most basic realities of human existence, the better. An ascetic
strain, however, has kept Christianity from acknowledging the
physical and often sexual basis of many of its most powerful sym-
bols, and its wariness in dealing with maternal and erotic language
for God arises from this same puritanism. Part of the task of a
McFague, Sallie.
Models of
of God:
God: Theology
Nuclear Age.
Age.
Fortress Press,
Press, 1987,
Downloaded on
behalf of
of The
The Chinese
Chinese University
Hong Kong
Kong
heuristic theology is to consider what has not been considered,

especially if the possibilities for illuminating certain aspects of the
God-world relationship are great, as I believe they are in the
metaphors of mother and lover. (The model of friend is less prob-
lematic in this regard, but as we will see, there have been other
reasons for its neglect.)
The charge that these metaphors may be individualistic just at a
time when radically relational, inclusive metaphors are needed is a
serious one. It would be unanswerable if the metaphors had to be
interpreted as suggesting a one-to-one relationship between God
and individual human beings. Admittedly, in a context where
God’s saving power is understood as directed to specific individu-
als (who are also perceived as independent entities), speaking of
God as mother, lover, and friend only accentuates the already par-
ticularistic understanding of salvation. But a radically inclusive
view of the gospel means that the basic relationship between God
and all others cannot be one-to-one; or rather, that it is one-to-one
only as it is inclusive of all. The Gospel of John gives the clue: for
God so loved the world. It is not individuals who are loved by God
as mother, lover, and friend but the world. This means that we do
not have to interpret these personal metaphors as suggesting a
one-to-one relationship between God and individual human be-
ings: we can use the metaphors that have the greatest power and
meaning to us in a universal way, and in fact, only as we apply
them universally can they also pertain individually. As mother to
the world, God mothers each and all: the divine maternal love can
be particular only because it is universal. If we understand God’s
saving presence as directed to the fulfillment of all of creation—
with each of us part of that whole—we participate in God’s love
not as individuals but as members of an organic whole, God's body.
Therefore, metaphors that could indeed be individualistic become
radically socialized when applied to the world. Moreover, they
have the potential for becoming politicized as well, for as the imago
dei, we are called to mother, love, and befriend the world, both
other human beings and the earth. Whether or not we are in our
own personal lives mothers or fathers, or have a lover or even a
friend, is not important: these most basic of loves lie deeply within
us all. The model of God as mother, lover, and friend of the world
McFague, Sallie.
Models of
of God:
God: Theology
Nuclear Age.
Age.
Fortress Press,
Press, 1987,
Downloaded on
behalf of
of The
The Chinese
Chinese University
Hong Kong
Kong
presents us with an ethic of response and responsibility toward

other human beings and other forms of life, in which our deep
parental, erotic, and companionable instincts can be socialized and
politicized.
In summary, the personal models for the God-world relationship
have been defended as the ones we know best, as the richest, and as
credible and needed in our time. The particular metaphors of
mother, lover, and friend, which come from the deepest level of life
and are concerned with its fulfillment, have been suggested as
illuminating possibilities for expressing an inclusive, nonhierarchi-
cal understanding of the gospel. It has been claimed that the object
of this gospel is not individuals but the world, and it has been
proposed that the world—the cosmos or universe—be seen as
God's body.
We have attempted to imagine the resurrection promise of divine
presence—’“Lo, I am with you always’—as a worldly reality, as the
presence of God in the body of our world. In this, we have imaged
God as both caring deeply for that world and calling us to care as
well. This imaginative picture is radically different from that of a
risen, ascended king in relationship with his realm but remarkably
appropriate to an understanding of the story of Jesus of Nazareth as
a surprising invitation to the last and the least, expressed in his
parables, table fellowship, and cross. That destabilizing, inclusive,
nonhierarchical vision of fulfillment can be perceived as continu-
ing when we conceive of the world as God’s body to which God is
present as mother, lover, and friend of the last and the least in all of
creation.
McFague, Sallie.
Models of
of God:
God: Theology
Nuclear Age.
Age.
Fortress Press,
Press, 1987,
Downloaded on
behalf of
of The
The Chinese
Chinese University
Hong Kong
Kong
BLANK PAGE
McFague,
McFague, Sallie.
Sallie. Models
Models of
of God:
God: Theology for an
Ecological, Nuclear Age.
Nuclear Age.
Fortress Press,
Press, 1987,
Downloaded on
behalf of
of The
The Chinese
Chinese University
University ofof Hong
Hong Kong

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3

od and the World

Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time,

The appearance stories are a fourth distinctive feature of the

any other construal of the God-world relationship; at most, a

mutuality? If the entire universe is expressive of God's very be-

As we begin this exercise of the deconstruction and reconstruc-

The Monarchical Model

that surges through us when we join in singing the “Hallelujah

self-expressive of God: God’s being, satisfaction, and future are not

regardless of its credentials in Scripture, liturgy, and creedal state-

The World as God’s Body

of the body” were not seen as the resurrection of particular bodies

initially to nonsense is constrained as well to search for sense.

mythology more appropriate to our time, we would kill our God in

seems especially problematic at the point of our individuality and

We see through pictures. We do not see directly: the pictures of a

God as Mother, Lover, Friend

metaphors. Throughout our discussion so far we have assumed

as Gordon Kaufman suggests, to conceive of God in terms of the

arena, from which most long-term models of the God-world rela-

mother, lover, or friend than to a king or lord. The intrinsic, interde-

relationship, that of father, has received massive attention in our

heuristic theology is to consider what has not been considered,

presents us with an ethic of response and responsibility toward

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