Israel's Social Criticism and Yahweh's Sexuality

The character and sexuality of Yahweh the God of Israel is a confused issue in which much is at stake. This paper suggests at least three matters are confused in the current discussion: (1) the clash between Israelite and Canaanite religions and cultures; (2) the contemporary clash between evolutionary (Wellhausen) and kerygmatic (Wright) interpretations of Scripture, and (3) the confusion between an insistence upon the asexuality of Yahweh and the defense of Yahweh's masculinity. These three items have been linked together in a program of “faith against environment” which is problematic in interpretation and often one of these issues is being discussed under the guise of another. A way out of this confusion of polemical situation is suggested by consideraton of three factors: (1) The delineation of a saving God who is culture disrupting and a blessing God who is culture embracing in the faith of Israel, especially in the work of Westermann and Miller, but also in that of Harrelson and Cross. (2) The sociological analyses of Mendenhall and Gottwald which show that every presentation of God carries with it a social vision and decisive implications for social organization. This analysis suggests there are important social questions both in the scriptural and current discussions of God language. (3) The tension that exists between the dominant covenantal paradigm of Israel's faith and the various images which are used in the service of that paradigm. Two conclusions are drawn from the argument: 1. Biblical faith is quite uninterested in questions of God's sexuality, masculine or feminine, or even in God's asexuality but is singularly and passionately concerned with God's covenanting and the implication of covenanting for human history. In its singular concern, it is free to use various images to articulate that paradigm of covenanting. While every language is transformed by the paradigm it articulates, every image also retains something of its own primal power. 2. Scholarship concerned with radical social criticism informed by covenant (e.g., Mendenhall, Gottwald) needs to be more attentive to the freedom of images and the awareness that the various images in their great variety do indeed turn the central paradigm in various directions. Conversely, scholarship concerned with the meaning of language and metaphor (Wilder; TeSelle) needs to be more attentive to the faith which transforms every metaphor and every language in the service of the central paradigm.

Blessing · Criticism · Epistemology · Faith · Human sexuality · Interpretation (philosophy) · Political science · Sociology · Theology · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Gender Studies · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Philosophy · Religion, Theology, History, Judaism, Christianity

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