She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse [Paperback]

Elizabeth Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1993

As perhaps the best book of feminist theology to date, She Who is is at once thoroughly orthodox, grounded in classical Christian thought, liberating contemporary, and rooted in Women's experience. Library Journal

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

As perhaps the best book of feminist theology to date, She Who Is is at once thoroughly orthodox, grounded in classical Christian thought, liberatingly contemporary, and rooted in women's experience. Johnson reviews the history of Christian language about God and explains the need for feminist language about God, thereby providing background for nontheologians. She then develops an inclusive and creative Christian spiritual doctrine. Highly recommended for all collections serving educated lay readers, theologians, and clergy.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Readers will find this incisive survey to be the finest yet written in the area of feminist theological discourse. -- Choice

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Crossroad (October 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0824513762
• ISBN-13: 978-0824513764
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #477,108 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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74 of 85 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thank you She Who Is, May 28, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (Paperback)

I was first introduced to this classic when I began researching my undergraduate thesis on women's oppression in Christianity. I was then, and still am, thoroughly impressed with Johnson's work. Her scholarship is impecable, reasoning very solid, and takes a well-rounded approach. This work is founded in tradition, yet manages to break from the aspects of tradition which are oppressive. Her philosophical background is also quite solid. You can't get any better than Elizabeth Johnson. She is masterful at weaving theological discourse and spirituality together. This is not a theological head-trip! The relevance of her work not only applies to theologians, it applies to laypersons as well. The sections on Sophia are particularly moving. Johnson also manages to address the issue of exclusive God-language in a subtle manner, which a reader would be hardpressed to take offense to, and presents new inclusive ways of speaking about God founded in biblical scholarship, All in all, this is a fantastic work of theology with elements of spirituality. I can't recommend it enough!

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Helpful and challenging, while ultimately disappointing..., January 13, 2011

By 

Chad Oberholtzer (Boalsburg, PA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (Hardcover)

Johnson makes a compelling case that much of historical Christian language, theology and praxis establishes an inherent superiority for men and an inherent inferiority for women that is simply antithetical to our universal human nature as persons created equally in the image of God. She wants to eradicate the differentiation that has long existed between the genders' respective abilities to connect with God. She suggests that our typical and careless anthropomorphism of God allows the biblical masculine language to create a false sense that God is literally male, when a true understanding of God allows God's mysterious, unknowable nature to far exceed any sense of gender (or any other tangible description that we might use). Instead, she suggests that we use both masculine and feminine language to name God, knowing full well that neither is a literal depiction of God's gender but rather a symbolic way to communicate some hints of God's true nature.

There were many aspects of Johnson's book that were intriguing and challenging to me. First and foremost, I was thankful for her gracious spirit and her complete disinterest in axe-grinding. I appreciated her commitment to meaningfully engage with Scripture, especially the Gospel accounts, rather than simply avoiding all of the inconvenient passages of Scripture that did not support her position. I was grateful that she refused to abandon or completely denigrate church tradition, instead trying to acknowledge aspects of church history that were more sympathetic to women and even trying to explain and clarify the eras and individuals throughout history who diminished the value of women. Her commitment to engaging the creeds and church fathers, rather than simply discarding them as misogynist icons of historical ignorance, was commendable and made her case significantly more compelling to me.

She has completely convinced me (or at least reinforced and reinspired me) about her main point, that men and women are equally created in the image of God, equally worthy (or unworthy, as I might clarify) of salvation, equal participants in the mystery of redemption, and equally able to function as representatives of Jesus here on earth. And I appreciate how she explained our historic collective failure to carefully speak and think about God in ways that would not accidentally or intentionally disenfranchise women.

Having acknowledged some significant convictions and points of resonance with the book, I remain uncomfortable with several of Johnson's assertions and am unwilling to go where she might want me to go. It seemed as if the entire premise of her argument originates as a response to the reality of the disenfranchisement, oppression, and abuse of women that she rightly identifies throughout Christian history. But as far as I'm concerned, this reactionary starting point is an unstable way to begin an idea because the conclusion has already been reached. She naturally concludes that since women are often oppressed, and Christian doctrine has sometimes been the cause of this oppression, then anything that might even hint of some sort of appropriate leadership or submissive role between the genders must inherently be a mistake, a misinterpretation of God's will for humanity. But it seems to me that this easily leads to the classic mistake of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Just because women have been short-changed by the misapplication of Scripture as an excuse for men to dominate them, this does not mean that we must find a way to suggest that men and women are exactly the same in reference to God.

She asserts that complementarianism is equivalent to patriarchal dominance, but she did not really make this case. Instead, she just assumes it. I would suggest that we are certainly equal in value to God, but there may actually be something inherently different in the way that God looks at men from how God looks at women, based strictly on our created nature as gendered beings. But Johnsons seems to so vehemently oppose this mere possibility as to preclude it from the beginning, meanwhile scrambling to find any and all evidence to suggest otherwise. That's just not a compelling way to make a case, especially when the case you're trying to make flies in the face of the entirety of Christian tradition and interpretive history of the Scriptures. And she can only land where she does by ignoring several significant passages written by the Apostle Paul that do seem to suggest a clear differentiation between men and women in relation to each other. I'm not merely suggesting that I disagree with her, but I think she was a bit sloppy in failing to engage in this point more honestly and comprehensively, instead choosing to start with the answer seemingly in mind.

I also thought that she settled into a significant logical inconsistency. Johnson argues vehemently and repeatedly that all of humanity has been created equally in the image of God and all have equal opportunity to fully participate in the redemption that God intends for us. Yet, there were several points when she implies or even states that God's restorative plan is especially and uniquely intended for the oppressed and downtrodden, specifically pointing to the poor and disenfranchised, even more specifically women. But she can't have it both ways. If God's love and restorative plan is equally intended for all people, who are all equally created in the image of God, then this must mean that privileged rich white guys are no less worthy of God's love than are poor women. Again, I found her discussion of this idea to be unsatisfying and sloppy.

I also struggled with her separation of Jesus of Nazareth from Christ of the Godhead, which seemed bizarre and over-exaggerated to me. Of course, her theology depends upon the maleness of Jesus' (which she willingly acknowledges) having absolutely no impact on the identify of Christ the Messiah, so I can understand her inclination in this direction. But she took this point so far as to imply that Jesus and the Christ were virtually unrelated, that Jesus was merely a shell into which Christ's incarnation was facilitated. This seems like quite a stretch to me, and again inconsistent with the Scriptures and interpretive history.

Finally, I was disappointed by the extent of her pluralism, related to other religious expressions outside of Christianity. She implied on numerous occasions that humanity's understanding of God is not necessarily distinct from one religion to another. She especially seems to equate Christianity and Judaism as virtually the same thing, thereby further devaluing Jesus Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Though I understand her respect for other faith traditions, her willingness to lump them all together as merely different ways for Mother God to connect with humanity felt rather inconsistent with the gospel message as I know it.

I'm glad that I read this book. It challenged my assumptions and forced me to seriously reconsider some theological constructs that have seemed fairly obvious to me. Several of her positions were incomplete or unsatisfying to me, and I'm certainly not on board with all of her conclusions. But I'm happy to recommend this book to anyone who might be willing to consider that we have not served God or God's people well by the language and images that we so often use to describe God.

39 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting for both, men and women, lay-people and clerics., March 26, 2004

By 

Roland M. Poirier (Bures sur Yvette France) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (Paperback)

An excellent book that one should take enough time to read slowly and thoroughly.
Elizabeth Johnson starts by looking for an appropriate word in order to refer to the Divine. It is common practice to say that God is Spirit. An interesting thing about this is that the word "Spirit" has gradually shifted from being feminine in Hebrew, to neutral in greek and ultimately masculine in latin. This is not much of a surprise in a male-dominated world. In itself this does not necessarily indicate an improvement in the adequacy of our concept of God. But if we consider this particular history of the word, it may suggest that in order to improve our image of God, we need at least to integrate all three aspects: the feminine, the neutral and the masculine.
This will help us take into consideration the fact that God transcends all categories. It will help us deepen our perception of God as mystery.
The important for all those who try to link with the Absolute is to know that God is, more than to know exactly what she, it, or he, is.
Another interesting fact that the author points out in the same perspective, is that the Spirit as such, has never been given a proper name.
Spirit is considered more often than not as an impersonal power, like a blowing wind or a breath in motion.
The title of the book is a clear indication that the author approaches the mystery of God from a feminine point of view.
This is done in a constructive way, without being too aggressive. Even when she suggests that Christ's ability to be savior does not reside in his maleness, but in his huge and steadfast capability to love.
More challenging are her comments on the suggestion made by a number of authors, that the Spirit was, at least for some time, hypostatically united to Mary.
To my view, this offers a good way of understanding the Christian creed when it claims that Christ was conceived from the Spirit and born from Mary.
Altogether, this book is a good incentive for women, but also a real challenge for men.
As a follow-up I would recommend the reading of her more recent book "Truly our sister". Quite logically, after dealing in the present book, with the feminine in God she focuses in the new one, on Mary as a major symbol of the feminine in humankind who also enjoyed a unique relationship to the feminine in God.