Sexuality and God

John P Munro

In the Church of Scotland thirty years ago there were no women elders or ministers, though then, as now, about two-thirds of the membership of the church were women. Now, approximately a quarter of elders are women, and the percentage is rising. In 1985 16 per cent of Church of Scotland elders were women; in 1990, 24 per cent. Of 1,312 ministers, 125 are women (101 two years ago).

How have we arrived at this place? Over the three decades several reports to the General Assembly have marked the milestones for women's admission to the eldership, in 1964, and to the ministry of word and sacrament, in 1968. The last report to be referred to here is one that took the debate concerning the relationship and roles of women and men into the arena of God's own being and relationship to humanity, the report to the 1984 General Assembly on the 'Motherhood of God'.

The reports in themselves do not reveal the pains and joys, the struggles and resistances of those involved. The struggle to be part of the sort of community of women and men which images the community of God continues. Even now there is resistance from, for instance, those in the Church of Scotland who argue that the legislation thirty years ago admitting women to the eldership was 'permissive' only and not binding, so that a particular kirk session can consist entirely of men. In reviewing the reports, and posing some questions arising from them, I hope to make the debates of one Reformed church relevant to others. Underlying the debates about the ordination of women, or about the language we can use to address God, there is a basic issue of how we relate as women and men, as embodied sexual beings. Is our sexuality an aspect of ourselves which we must ignore when we discuss our relationship to God, or can our sexuality image our encounter with God?

A cautionary tale before we begin. In the 1980s, I taught theology at St Paul's College, Limuru, Kenya. In my first week in the classroom, a Kenyan student asked me for my view on polygamy. Should the church baptize the wives and children of a polygamous man who converted to Christianity, and, more contentiously, should baptism be offered to an additional wife whom he married after his conversion? It will not surprise the reader to know that the subject of polygamy was not covered in my divinity training in Scotland, but it certainly was a 'hot' issue in Kenya. My point is that the particular issues which confront us in regard to the community of women and men in the church vary from place to place. Nevertheless, the fundamental question of how we may faithfully reflect the image of God in our relationships is one which faces us all.

'The place of women in the church'

That was the title of a report to the Church of Scotland General Assembly in 1964, arguing the cases for and against the admission of women to the ministry of word and sacrament. The report was commissioned by the General Assembly of the previous year, when Miss Mary Lusk (now Mrs Mary Levison), a deaconess of the Church of Scotland, petitioned the Assembly to be ordained as a minister of word and sacrament. The Church of Scotland had no legislation specifically barring women from the ministry, but had four centuries of established practice. From a 1990s perspective, the title of the report seems strange, particularly as the church in the west is composed largely of women. If instead, the report had been about 'The Place of Men in the Church', the strangeness is highlighted. Surely the church is women and men together? The title, however, should not put us off from what could have been, but was not, a radical argument for the sharing of women and men in ministry, based on, amongst others, the following theological premises:

1) 'In creation, God's eternal purpose for man (sic) is revealed, and in redemption it is brought to fulfilment... In the creation, what it means to be a creature, and especially man is revealed. Redemption does not discard the pattern there revealed, but completes the structure proposed by it. It is within the pattern and structure of creation and redemption that the ministry of men and women is to be understood and ordered aright.'

2) 'The basic unit of humanity is not the individual human being, male or female, but man-and-woman as one... Of course an individual is either a man or a woman; it is not man without woman, nor is it woman without man, that is made in the image of God, but man-and-woman. This relationship, as established at the creation and endorsed by dominical words as valid also in redemption, is the basis of the Christian doctrine of marriage as also of the doctrine of the ministry of men and women in the Church.'¹

On that basis the 1964 report acknowledged that the general (i.e., not the ordained) ministry of men was diminished by the absence of women. 'As man without woman cannot represent the complete man, so man without woman cannot render a complete ministry.'² Beyond that point of principle, the report laid out divergent views, all too familiar in the debate over women's ordination in the last three decades, as to whether the traditional practice of excluding women from the ordained ministry was due to theological reasons applicable at all times in all places, or whether there were sociological factors affecting practice in the early church which are no longer relevant today.

The 1964 report recommended to the General Assembly that women should be admitted to the eldership of the Church of Scotland, but was unable to come to a unanimous recommendation regarding women being admitted to the ordained ministry. The General Assembly of 1966 took the step of admitting women to the eldership, but it was only after two more years and a second report from the church's Panel on Doctrine that women were admitted to the ordained ministry.

In that second report,³ the writers laid out the same divergent views, drawing more on the biblical texts than in the first report. In the course of their argument they contested the radical statement in the first report in which the image of God is 'not reflected by the individual man or woman', but is found relationally as 'man-and-woman'. The 1967 report declared in regard to the image of God, 'It has never been in dispute among Christians that every individual man and every individual woman is made in the image of God. St Paul accepts this, but interprets Genesis 1 and 2 together as meaning that man is created in the image of God while in the case of woman the image of God is received from God but through man. St Paul sees in this the basis in creation of man's relation of headship to the woman. Each is created in the image of God; but the image of God in man, as St Paul seems to understand it, includes man's whole relationship to woman, both as partner and mother. The image of God in woman includes her whole relationship to man. Therefore although each individual is in the image of God, in Christ's fellowship woman is as essential to man as man is to woman. If woman was made out of man, it is through woman that man now comes to be; and God is the source of all (1 Cor 11. 11-12).'⁴

'Man-and-woman' and complementarity

It seems to me that these two reports represent a fundamental divergence on the question of what it is to be human-the 'basic unit of humanity' as the 1964 report puts it, in strangely impersonal language. Is it the individual who represents God's image in humanity or is it people in relation? The second report tries to say yes to both. In the process it leaves the impression that in woman the image of God is a derivative of man's, stemming from the generation of Eve from Adam's side. However it is put, saying that the man is in a relation of headship to the woman, we cannot avoid a denial of mutuality. The radical stance of the first report is that man-and-woman form the image of God together.

Nevertheless, the idea in the 1964 report that the 'basic unit of humanity' is 'man-and-woman' could be, and was, used to defend an exclusively male ministry. Mary Levison herself, reflecting on the report nearly thirty years later, describes it as a 'highly eccentric piece of theology'.⁵ In her speech to the Assembly in 1964 when the report was debated, she commented on this 'special doctrine of man which speaks of a mythical animal, a non-existent entity called 'man-and-woman as one' and maintains (so far as I can understand it) that while the first limb of this being, viz. man, can exercise the ministry on his own, the second, viz. woman, cannot.'⁶

The doctrine was used to support the argument that men and women have different, but complementary roles. But does the idea of complementarity between woman and man necessarily imply a dynamic of dependency (as opposed to inter-dependency) and of authority by man over woman? Daphne Hampson argues that it always does, 'for that which "complements" is always in some sense inferior to that which it complements', and for that reason and others rejects complementarity as a model for the coexistence of women and men.⁷

I believe that the idea of man-and-woman as the 'basic unit of humanity' can be interpreted in ways which express the need of man and woman for the other while avoiding the language of dependency and domination. One way to do that is to ask the question of how human gender and the expression of sexuality may reflect the image of God.

The image of God

If we take Genesis 1.27 at face value, 'God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them', the sexuality of human beings is positively affirmed as part of God's creative intention, in a way which is ignored or contradicted by most of the subsequent tradition. Indeed the text almost seems to allow that our sexual differentiation and complementarity in some way reflects God's being, a point made by Elizabeth Templeton in a searching essay, Sexuality in the '90s: Thinking Theologically. She continues, 'But what does this mean if God is sexless or a-sexual, "without parts or passions" as in Judeaeo-Christian tradition "he" classically and ironically is? For sexuality is very much bound up with parts and passions, with physiology, biology, psychology. If sexuality belongs exclusively to the realm of creation, how do we link our ultimate self-identification in relation to God? And if we cannot so link it-if we say, in effect, that our sexuality has no bearing on our existence in "redemption" -are we not very deeply split about the core of our faith-identity and the core of our human selves?'⁸ I will return to Elizabeth Templeton's essay but, as we are observing how the Church of Scotland has wrestled with the issue of the community of women and men in the church, we must first refer to an extraordinary chapter of events.

'The motherhood of God'

In 1982, at the Annual Meeting of the Church of Scotland Woman's Guild, the National President of the Guild, Mrs Anne Hepburn, offered a prayer in which God was addressed not only as Father but also as 'God our Mother', and 'Dear Mother God'. At the General Assembly of 1982 reference was made to this prayer, and the Assembly decided to commission a report on the Motherhood of God. Seven women and four men formed the study group, which had as its secretary and principal writer the late Rev. Dr Alan Lewis. The report was presented to the 1984 General Assembly. It was not debated. On a motion from the floor, the Assembly decided not to discuss the report at all, but to move to next business. What was in the report that the majority of commissioners could not bear even to hear an introductory speech?

The report acknowledged that any language about God, and of address to God, who by definition transcends human experience, is unequal to the task. Yet by God's own grace we are not reduced to silence. 'Because we believe that there is some resemblance, a relationship, a correspondence, between human and divine reality, we draw pictures, tell stories, adopt analogies, construct doctrines, confident that while these are only finite expressions of the infinite, they are not wholly inappropriate or misleading.'⁹

The report, standing firmly within the Reformed tradition, affirmed that language about God must be in accord with Scripture, and with the Word made flesh. Thus the report leaves no doubt in the mind that the term, 'Father' to address God is normative, 'because we have been commanded and permitted to use it. God is our Father not because we have analysed and found illuminating the experience of parenthood or childhood, but because he is the Father of Jesus, who graciously allows his kin to share in that unique Father-Son relationship.'¹⁰ To use the term 'Father' of God is to use an analogy which 'turns back upon us, judging and showing up the limitations of human fatherhood... We must hear what the incarnate and written Word reveals to us of the Father.'¹¹

In hearing that word, the writers exposed what they described as two 'false images and caricatures of God the Father': 1) that God has a gender, and 2) that God as Father implies that God has the characteristic of domination. The New Testament, 'by having Jesus address God with the novel and scandalous familiarity of Abba, and by affirming him as the incarnate and crucified Son, declares that God is essentially personal, and moreover that he unites himself to his creatures in the closest of personal relationships, that of parent to offspring... For the New Testament, it is specifically as Father that God invites familiarity and intimacy (Gal 4.6), cherishes and preserves 'little ones' (Mt 18.14) and endures the passionate grief of sonlessness (Rom 8.32).'¹²

The report was alert to the argument that the use of the term 'father' and of the pronoun 'he' inevitably carries a male connotation, yet for the reasons given above, did not feel free to depart from the term. Not did the writers find any support in the Bible for calling God 'Mother'. What they did-and what provoked their rejection by the General Assembly-was to explore the possibility that God may be conceived of, and even addressed, as a Motherly Father. That exploration took place through an examination of the passages, admittedly a minority, in the Old and New Testaments, where feminine and maternal images are employed with reference to the activity and being of God.

The report referred to the text already used above, Genesis 1.27, 'perhaps the key text for the whole of our study.' The connection of our sexuality with our being made in God's image is noted. 'In itself this text is less significant for what it says about women, or men, or even about God, than for what it says about humanity-that we are created by God as persons who are sexually differentiated into men and women, yet are equally created in sexes neither of which can be without, or be superior to, the other. Togetherness and equality in our sexual differences seem to be characteristics of our humanity in God's image. And it is important to note that this text occurs in the Priestly creation story, and thus is distinct from and should not be made dependent upon the second Yahwist account, in which Adam precedes Eve and provides the material out of which she is made. In the simplicity, equilibrium and conjunction of 'male and female' at Gen 1.27, all suggestions of the priority of one sex and the derivativeness of the other are excluded.'¹³

The passage on Genesis 1.27 concludes, 'It needs saying that whatever it means for human beings to be in the image of God, that mysterious and unspeakable honour is not one whit less enjoyed, or in any way differently, by women compared to men. We must say of every woman, with no more and no less astonishment and boldness than of a man, that she is "like"; God, and that her humanity images and resembles the very Creator of all things.'¹⁴

With considerable courage, the report follows the argument to the conclusion that 'we are made, both male and female, in God's image, and God comforts us both like a father and ' Where the writers stop is before the point reached by Elizabeth Templeton in the essay referred to above: that Genesis 1.27 allows for the possibility that our sexual differentiation and complementarity in some way reflects God's being. While acknowledging that there is some scriptural support for approaching God as motherly father, the writers say, 'This surely does not indicate a divine sexuality or even a bi-sexuality. Is the Creator not really trans-sexual, or a-sexual, the Lord and Maker of all precisely because he transcends all creatureliness, including the forms and means of creaturely generation?'¹⁵ 'God our Father stands quite outside our sexual differentiation as male and female'.¹⁶

The report wants to affirm that women and men 'are created equally and together in a mysterious resemblance to God, and that the disharmonies and inequalities which sin intrudes upon the sexes have been overcome in Christ.'¹⁷ Yet in drawing back from the conclusion that our sexuality in some way images the being of God, it leaves us with the safer nurturing, protecting, comforting, life-bearing aspects of being a mother and father. And the splitting of our sexuality from our humanity, so heavily maintained by the Christian church, is perpetuated. In human experience, sexuality is a basic dimension. But what about our sexuality in relation to God? When we consider our relation to God, do we need to bracket off our sexuality, or is God's being such that God 'resonates' to our sexuality?

Human sexuality and the image of God

What could it mean to say that our sexuality in some way images the being of God? There is a justifiable fear against ascribing sexuality to God, if that means we have in mind a male or a female deity, or even a deity expressing both male and female character, as with the Hindu god Shiva.

One clue to understanding sexuality theologically lies in the relational character of the description of the image of God in the 1964 report referred to above, in which the 'basic unit' of humanity is identified not as individual man or woman, but as 'man-and-woman'. Of course, our sexuality can be used to support narcissism just as much as other aspects of ourselves, and even more than most. It can be used to objectify other persons, and be a vehicle for the expression of sadism and masochism. All that is clear: sexual encounter can be distinctly impersonal activity. Yet if our being female-and-male is the way we are made in the image of God, our sexuality must also be capable of expressing our personal identity, 'opening up for us aspects of what freedom and communion are about, and can thus image, however partially, encounter with the personhood of God.'¹⁸ Elizabeth Templeton identifies four aspects of sexual interaction which suggest how our distinctiveness, our particularity, our irreplaceability as persons to God and to one another may be bound up precisely with our sexual embodiedness:

1) Sexuality, at its best, is a paradigm of ecstasy, of being taken out of oneself, of being able to let go, of joy;
2) Sexuality can involve facing the otherness of the other, and of oneself in relation to the other;
3) Sexuality, 'when not reduced to genital sensation, is a mode of intense and total vulnerability, where one is quite exposed. For instance, possessiveness, manipulation, greed, boredom, generosity, anger, relaxation, self-preoccupation, zest, imagination, tiredness, etc., become palpable and transparent.';
4) Sexuality 'is a focus of truthfulness about our involvement in the birth-death continuum with which we are bound up in the realm of biological process. Here, where we are most preciously flesh to one another, we are most aware of our fragility.'¹⁹

Questions

At this point, I can do no more than set an agenda, and ask questions, gathering up the points that have been made:

1. If sexuality belongs exclusively to the realm of creation, how do we link our ultimate --identification in relation to God? And if we cannot so link it-if we say, in effect, that our sexuality has no bearing on our existence in 'redemption'-are we not very deeply split about the core of our faith-identity and the core of our human selves?

2. If it is true, on the other hand, that sexual relationships which show the four characteristics of ecstasy, of recognition of otherness, of vulnerability and of transparent truthfulness, in these ways image the encounter with God, do we have a means of revising Christian attitudes towards sexual expression? For example, sexual relationships between two men, or between two women, can manifest just as much ecstasy, recognition of otherness, vulnerability and transparent truthfulness, as a relationship between a man and a woman. If human beings express the image of God, not when they are separate individuals but when they are in relation to one another, why should this be restricted to relationships of women and men? As with the question of women's ordination, opinion in the church on this issue is divided. For some, the statement in Genesis 1:27, 'So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them', is sufficient to answer the question, particularly when combined with texts rejecting homosexuality. For others the concept of being-in-relation is one which does not exclude same-sex relationships, but values the different ways in which we can embody ecstasy, respect the bodily otherness of someone, be transparently truthful and vulnerable.

3. Can the community-of-women-and-men who form the body of Christ rejoice in their embodied sexuality, and contribute to the reversal of centuries of Christian repression of the body?

4. What is anticipated in the resurrection of Christ, if not a transfiguration in which embodiedness is opened up to participate in God, in a way which transcends the binding of the body to death? If our embodied sexuality means anything at all eschatologically, the four characteristics of ecstasy, respect for otherness, transparent truthfulness and vulnerability, which for humans in our present condition are expressed so fleetingly, with such fragility, and with such scope for hurt, would become such expressions of freedom that it would be impossible for flesh not to fulfil them.

5. If woman-and-man reflects the image of God, the nature of God is affirmed as a divine community of persons, a community in which difference does not imply division, a community in which each of the persons finds coherence and identity only in relation to the others.

Rev. Dr John P. Munro of the Church of Scotland is executive secretary for Asia and the Caribbean in the Board of World Mission, and served for seven years on the Group on the Community of Women and Men.

Notes