In Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (Fortress, 1987), Sallie McFague advances the brilliant thesis that our reified metaphors for God have become models that dictate our understanding of God’s interaction with the world. While I find her meta-project in some ways reaching, I think her chastisement of the standardized conceptions of God is informative. Our models of God do in fact provide parameters for our imagination – we could never see God as a caring “mother” if he is always portrayed as an authoritative King. Following McFague’s lead I would like to remind us all of a model of God extracted straight from the holy writ itself: the suffering and dying God.
Historically speaking,
orthodox theologians have relegated the death of Jesus to his humanity. In
their reasoning this follows de facto
from the nature of divinity (i.e. the source of all being cannot possibly succumb
to death). However, in drawing this conclusion, I think theology has foregone
some massively relevant implications of the cross. Jürgen Moltmann rightly
avers:
“When the crucified Jesus is called the ‘image of
the invisible God’, the meaning is that this
is God, and God is like this. God
is not greater than he is in this humiliation. God is not more glorious than he
is in this self-surrender. God is not more powerful than he is in this
helplessness. God is not more divine than he is in this humanity. The nucleus
of everything that Christian theology says about ‘God’ is to be found in this Christ
event.”[1]
Indeed,
there seems to be something cosmic going on at the cross. This extremely human
event also somehow gives place to a divine proclamation. God in his absolute
pleasure found it most compelling to reveal himself to the world as the Deity
who would suffer and die for his creation.
This is not the warrior king riding in on a white horse to save the day.
This is the tortured, maligned, rejected friend of sinners who was mercilessly
condemned and murdered. Really? God thought this was the best way to reveal
himself? Why in the world was this the best way?
For
some answers to these questions I find Julian of Norwich a helpful aid. After
having a dynamic vision of the Christ's passion, she says:
“For Jesus has great joy in all the deeds which he
has done for our salvation, and therefore we are his…We are his bliss, we are
his reward, we are his honour, we are his crown.”[2]
And
furthermore:
“What I am describing now is so great a joy to
Jesus that he counts as nothing his labour and his bitter sufferings and his
cruel and shameful death.”[3]
So,
what God loves the world? A God who chooses to reveal himself as associated
with the lowly and the marginalized. A God who chooses to reveal his essential
character of humility and compassion by submitting to a cruel, undeserved
death. Groups of theologians like to talk about “paradigmatic stories” from
Scripture – well, how about this as a paradigm of God’s heart toward the world?
I don’t think that we can get lost in a false understanding of God as an
advocate of the white, bourgeois, middle-class when we see him manifested
through the event of a broken man on a cross. Certainly not! No, God is humble.
God is compassionate. God is joyously about redeeming his creation in the most
responsible way possible. That is a ‘metaphor’ of God that I wouldn’t mind
seeing reified into a model of God’s heart for the world.
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