Abstract

VENTER, P P  and  VIVIERS, H. The Creator God as feminine? A body-critical analysis of selected creation texts in the Old Testament. Verbum Eccles. (Online) [online]. 2008, vol.29, n.1, pp.250-268. ISSN 2074-7705.

God constructs represent the ideal symbolic "body" of a community, a regulating ideology that moulds and refines the values and norms of that community. In this study it is shown that values wherein femininity is incorporated, specifically with regards to the construction of a god character, lead to a more just attitude towards Earth. Values that lead to the construction of a god character as exclusively male, or the metaphorization of a god as one-sidedly masculine, lead to an attitude of disregard and destructiveness towards Earth. The findings of a body critical analysis of four well known and authoritative Biblical cosmological texts in this regard confirmed that mutual incorporation of male as well as female values should constitute the god symbols of a society. A society that shares the conviction of eco-justice will deconstruct traditional polarizing gender categories and gender hierarchies and replace them with the notion of gender complementarity, and consequently establish a relationship of empathic absorption, mutual incorporation and reciprocal constitution between the subjects human and earth.

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