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The Kindness of God: Metaphor, Gender, and Religious Language
Fathers, sons, brothers, kings. Does the predominantly masculine symbolism of the Biblical writings exclude women or overlook the riches of their spiritual life? If Christ is 'the second Adam' and the one on whom all Christian life must be patterned, then what about Eve? This book from a leading scholar of religious language and feminism opens up the Bible's imagery for sex, gender, and kinship and does so by discussing its place in the central teachings of Christian the doctrine of God and spirituality, Imago Dei and anthropology, Creation, Christology and the Cross, the Trinity, and eschatology.
203 pages, Hardcover
First published February 3, 2007
12 people are currently reading
231 people want to read
About the author
Janet Martin Soskice
21 books14 followersJanet Martin Soskice is a Canadian-born English Roman Catholic theologian and philosopher. Soskice was educated at Somerville College, Oxford. She is professor of philosophical theology and a fellow of Jesus College at the University of Cambridge. Her theological and philosophical work has dealt with the role of women in Christianity, religious language, and the relationship between science and religion.
Her book The Sisters of Sinai details the history of the discovery of the Syriac Sinaiticus by Agnes and Margaret Smith.
Author can be found in both of these locations:
Janet Martin Soskice
Janet Soskice
Her book The Sisters of Sinai details the history of the discovery of the Syriac Sinaiticus by Agnes and Margaret Smith.
Author can be found in both of these locations:
Janet Martin Soskice
Janet Soskice
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 2, 2023
Is this the best book i read in 2022? It is the best theology book for sure. Soskice has written a delightful and rich theology about the kindness of God. The erudition of her scholarship is top notch, yet accessible and deeply moving at points. When we dig into good theology we discover a God who is better than we could ever imagine. A God who wants us to be fully human and loves us in our particularities. How is that not good news?
Soskice approaches this subject with the keen critical eye of a feminist, looking to explain how it is that we can relate to a God who is seen and lifted up as masculine and thus making masculinity as the primary expression of godliness. This gets the reader into deep weeds of theory right away but they are the right kind of weeds to battle with. Toxic masculinity being projected on God is a big issue and needs to be addressed, even if many folks hide or benefit from it...or both! This book can help to hack a couple of those weeds down.
I really enjoyed the chapter comparing Julian of Norwich's and Augustine's perspectives on the trinity. Thank God for Julian, she is a huge gift to the church and her beautiful vision of the Trinity as deeply connected to the doctrine of the imago dei is a theological move desperately needed today. She affirmed the physicality of humanity in her work. Augustine does a similar theological move but focuses on the mental faculties. Julian instead of falling into this binary of body and mind/soul insists that the body is not the obstacle to the spiritual life but the means. She continues in this creative vein by how she views atonement in relation to humanity's kinship with Christ. Brilliant stuff.
Soskice approaches this subject with the keen critical eye of a feminist, looking to explain how it is that we can relate to a God who is seen and lifted up as masculine and thus making masculinity as the primary expression of godliness. This gets the reader into deep weeds of theory right away but they are the right kind of weeds to battle with. Toxic masculinity being projected on God is a big issue and needs to be addressed, even if many folks hide or benefit from it...or both! This book can help to hack a couple of those weeds down.
I really enjoyed the chapter comparing Julian of Norwich's and Augustine's perspectives on the trinity. Thank God for Julian, she is a huge gift to the church and her beautiful vision of the Trinity as deeply connected to the doctrine of the imago dei is a theological move desperately needed today. She affirmed the physicality of humanity in her work. Augustine does a similar theological move but focuses on the mental faculties. Julian instead of falling into this binary of body and mind/soul insists that the body is not the obstacle to the spiritual life but the means. She continues in this creative vein by how she views atonement in relation to humanity's kinship with Christ. Brilliant stuff.
June 3, 2022
I'm kicking myself for starting this years ago and only finishing it now. The chapters get better and better, and the interactions with Buber and Julian of Norwich produce two of the finest contemporary doctrine essays I've yet to read. The conclusion, "Being Lovely", is wonderful. I can't wait to see what happens when my seminary students read this alongside Irenaeus.
November 17, 2021
A thought-provoking collection of essays by Soskice. Especially enjoyed her essay on Blood and Defilement.
June 5, 2025
stunning
Currently reading
June 7, 2022Between moving house, spending more time on my YouTube channel, et cetera, I have not got to read as many books as the last few years. The quality of this one more than compensates for that lack of quantity.
Soskice's work speaks to the real, embodied, messiness of Grace and its power to break apart our crude little categories, our self-obsession, and our idols.
There is much beauty and power in this deceptively radical book. Hers is a truly humanistic work that rightly states the role of language and the organic, even personal, nature of our relationships: With God, other humans, and the creation.
She notes how the Bible uses terms like brother, sister, cousin, friend. It has a real down-to-earth quality. It is often far removed from the neat abstractions of navel gazing of much modern philosophy or faux-theology.
Her points are not aggressively polemical but subtle, well developed, and argued cogently in each chapter. The Kindness of God demonstrates a balance of careful scholarship and moving imagery: analogy, metaphor, and more. By combining her nuanced points with such clear imagery, her words stay with you.
For Soskice, 'Spirituality' is real life. It is not some superfluous add-on: Mind, body, soul, and Spirit. By calling upon great saints like Simone Weil, she conveys that:
"The body, no less than the soul, is the place where God acts.
For Simone Weil, the body is the means by which we encounter that ‘necessity’ which is the ordering of the world... Once we have allowed our physical natures into the picture of the spiritual life as a good, indeed a necessity, the vexations of ordinary daily life appear in a different light, but we need to be able to read them.
Weil has some good analogies: when we hold a newspaper upside down, we see only strange printed shapes; but when we right it, we no longer see printed forms, but words..."
In a refreshing change from much mechanic secularism and cold church pietism alike, Soskice writes with a clear tenderness:
"...of life’s experiences, none is so ‘un-selving’ as attending to a baby whose demands are immediate, inconvenient, irrational, sometimes inexplicable, and wholly just.
There is no ‘arguing’ with a baby.
We need to add the spiritual discipline of attention (prosoche¯) to self-mastery (enkrateia).
It is by being at the disposal of another that we are characteristically drawn out of ourselves (ecstasis) and come to understand ourselves fully as selves.
Central to this are our physical bodies, with all their affective and passible characteristics."
This fine book communicates an orthodox view of Christ and His mysterious life. This attention to detail, and the vital role of transcendence, is most refreshing:
"Christians believe that in Jesus of Nazareth the Word became flesh, but not, as Karl Barth ceaselessly pointed out, that the God who is mystery becomes un-mysterious in Jesus Christ. If we do not see Jesus Christ as mystery, we see not God incarnate, but a great man."
Soskice's work speaks to the real, embodied, messiness of Grace and its power to break apart our crude little categories, our self-obsession, and our idols.
There is much beauty and power in this deceptively radical book. Hers is a truly humanistic work that rightly states the role of language and the organic, even personal, nature of our relationships: With God, other humans, and the creation.
She notes how the Bible uses terms like brother, sister, cousin, friend. It has a real down-to-earth quality. It is often far removed from the neat abstractions of navel gazing of much modern philosophy or faux-theology.
Her points are not aggressively polemical but subtle, well developed, and argued cogently in each chapter. The Kindness of God demonstrates a balance of careful scholarship and moving imagery: analogy, metaphor, and more. By combining her nuanced points with such clear imagery, her words stay with you.
For Soskice, 'Spirituality' is real life. It is not some superfluous add-on: Mind, body, soul, and Spirit. By calling upon great saints like Simone Weil, she conveys that:
"The body, no less than the soul, is the place where God acts.
For Simone Weil, the body is the means by which we encounter that ‘necessity’ which is the ordering of the world... Once we have allowed our physical natures into the picture of the spiritual life as a good, indeed a necessity, the vexations of ordinary daily life appear in a different light, but we need to be able to read them.
Weil has some good analogies: when we hold a newspaper upside down, we see only strange printed shapes; but when we right it, we no longer see printed forms, but words..."
In a refreshing change from much mechanic secularism and cold church pietism alike, Soskice writes with a clear tenderness:
"...of life’s experiences, none is so ‘un-selving’ as attending to a baby whose demands are immediate, inconvenient, irrational, sometimes inexplicable, and wholly just.
There is no ‘arguing’ with a baby.
We need to add the spiritual discipline of attention (prosoche¯) to self-mastery (enkrateia).
It is by being at the disposal of another that we are characteristically drawn out of ourselves (ecstasis) and come to understand ourselves fully as selves.
Central to this are our physical bodies, with all their affective and passible characteristics."
This fine book communicates an orthodox view of Christ and His mysterious life. This attention to detail, and the vital role of transcendence, is most refreshing:
"Christians believe that in Jesus of Nazareth the Word became flesh, but not, as Karl Barth ceaselessly pointed out, that the God who is mystery becomes un-mysterious in Jesus Christ. If we do not see Jesus Christ as mystery, we see not God incarnate, but a great man."
October 10, 2024
Thoughtful and well-written. The chapter comparing St. Augustine's De Trinitate with Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love is worth the price of the book.
Want to read
November 16, 2015Per Lauren Winner, for more on metaphor in the spiritual life:
Twenty-three years after her first book, 'Metaphor and Religious Language' (which still defines academic conversation about the topic), Soskice collected a dazzling set of essays on God and metaphor, all of which touch on her proposal that the Bible's central metaphors for our relationship with God are familial. "It is on the face of it preposterous that we, creatures, should be the kin of God," she writes. "Yet there is a sense in which both Old and New Testaments point to nothing less."
Twenty-three years after her first book, 'Metaphor and Religious Language' (which still defines academic conversation about the topic), Soskice collected a dazzling set of essays on God and metaphor, all of which touch on her proposal that the Bible's central metaphors for our relationship with God are familial. "It is on the face of it preposterous that we, creatures, should be the kin of God," she writes. "Yet there is a sense in which both Old and New Testaments point to nothing less."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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October 15, 2013rec'd by paul steinke (and used in class by chelle stearns)
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews