In Defence of God & the Sacredness of Nature

Dr. Carol Christ, preeminent author on women's spirituality and thealogy, and director of the Ariadne Institute for the Study of Myth and Ritual, maintains that the God of the Bible is irreconcilable with the Goddess.  She insists that Biblical theology denies the divinity and sacredness of nature and of the human body because of God's transcendence.  She claims there has been too much "baggage" heaped upon us to continue to value or practice monotheism, and that only through the Goddess can we learn to find the divine in nature and our intimate connection to it.

While Dr. Christ, as an undergraduate Religious Studies major and graduate student of Theology, has thoroughly studied the Hebrew Bible, her harsh criticism of the monotheistic religions grounded in the Bible are founded almost entirely upon the "theologians' words," i.e., that which is taught and learned outside of (or, frequently, in place of) a personal reading of the Bible (2).  Christ apparently assumes that most Christians and Jews have never sought knowledge about their faith or arrived at their own conclusions about God and the world by looking into the Bible.  She may be right, at least in regards to previous generations.  But, rather than reinventing anew a (supposedly) ancient, (supposedly) egalitarian, (supposedly) nature-revering Goddess religion which completely devalues the current beliefs and practices of millions worldwide, it may be more beneficial to empower individuals with intelligence and trust, and invite them to take the Bible into their own hands.  They may begin to see for themselves that the God of the Bible is not as transcendent as Dr. Christ claims, that nature is divine and sacred, that humanity has a deep connection to it, and that the only baggage we carry around is that which we choose to carry around: our unwillingness to see, to think, and to decide for ourselves.       

Dr. Christ notes, "We have been taught that God ... transcends the earth and the body, and that he is the light shining in the chaotic darkness of the natural world.  Yet [in] the [religion of the] Goddess ... the earth, the body, and nature are in her image; and the darkness as well as the light are metaphors of her power" (89).  We may have been taught this, but the dichotomy is not necessarily in the Bible.  "In the beginning ... the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters" (Gen. 1:1-2).  This implies that darkness, wind, and water (which still exist in nature today) were already there with God, and were perhaps the elements he existed in and worked from.  This combination of elements are much like the makeup of the womb in pregnancy - a child grows there in darkness, is supported by amniotic fluid, and most likely hears the breath moving in her mother's lungs.  "The worship of Mother Earth," says Dr. Christ, "has been universal.  She is the night from which arise all living things" (96).  From night, too, arose the creation of God and any craftsman or artisan will tell you it's nigh impossible to transcend what they create.  Creation is inherently self-expressive. 

As God brings forth light, the sky, the seas, the earth, the plants and trees with their seeds, the sun, the moon, the stars, the fishes, the birds, and the earth-dwelling animals, he sees that it "was good" (Gen., 1:1-21).  If it is "good," then it cannot be "bad."  Dr. Christ wishes us to know that Goddess religion affirms "all beings are interdependent in the web of life" (113) and that "the variety of beings within nature is far greater than most of us can imagine.  Each being plays a vital role within the Gaia body" (120).  That God brought forth beings to dwell in the waters, and in the sky, and on the earth seems to back this affirmation up.  Furthermore, he "blessed them, saying, 'Be fruitful and multiply" (Gen. 1:22), which implies interdependence - all living beings need to eat that which is not their own kind and in order to be fruitful there needs to be cooperation between the sexes (or the chemical processes and the cells in creature which reproduce asexually).  God, too, likes variety, and that which is "good" and "blessed" cannot be "bad" and "cursed."

Finally, God makes humankind, both male and female, in his image (Gen. 1:27).  Image can be either physical or temperamental (and perhaps both).  If we latch onto the physical, then we can assume that either God has a human-shaped body (in general) or a hermaphroditic body (specifically).  That God is written about in the Bible both in the singular and in the plural does not matter here.  God-the-individual or God-the-plural can be thought of as either human-shaped or of mixed gender (both males and females, or all hermaphrodites).  Furthermore, physical imagery may also imply the power to procreate (another way of saying "genesis," "to bring forth," or to "let" be).  If we adhere to the temperamental, however, we allow that humanity possesses the capability of God, specifically, the power to create in general and to find nature "good."  This, it seems, is what God intended: "God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply' ... and it was so.  God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good" (Gen. 1:28-31).  Dr. Christ echoes this divine power in her vision of the Goddess and women: "The primary religious symbol, the Goddess, celebrated women's roles not only as birth givers, but also as transformers of seed to grain to bread, of clay to pot, of wool or flax to thread to cloth" (59).  Humanity, like God, transforms one thing into another and creates in its own image.

There is, of course, a second creation story.  In this version, a human being (not necessarily gendered either way, according to the Hebrew word used, but who we typically call Adam) is created "from the dust of the ground" before the plants and animals (Gen. 2:5-7).  Humanity is then enlivened with the "breath of life" which comes directly from God (Gen. 2:7), establishing that divine breath (and therefore divinity) resides within humanity.  Again, God is not transcendent and is an essential part of the body, his creation.

Next, the plants are made to grow from the ground, and the human being is told s/he may freely eat (implying s/he will depend upon the trees and plants for food) [Gen. 2:9-16].  God then forms animals and birds out of the ground, originally intended to be the human's "helper" and "partner," each of which is given a name by the human (Gen. 2:18-20).  In this scenario, humanity is intimately related to all plants and creature (except perhaps fish, which aren't mentioned) due to their shared origin, the ground.

Humanity, therefore, has the honor and responsibility of naming the plethora of creatures.  There is an "I-Thou" relationship in this, an idea much lauded by Dr. Christ who, in speaking about Martin Buber's writings on his "I-Thou" relationship with a tree, says, "Though they [theologians like Buber] do not all use the name of the Goddess, the ideas and images ... provide a lens through which I [an adherent of Goddess religion] understand nature and our place in it" (114).  This "I-Thou" relationship and intimate connection extends to the second human (also not gendered either way, according to the Hebrew word used, but who we typically call Eve) who is created from the first human's rib (Gen. 2:21-22).  They are ultimately made of the same stuff, the ground, and, since they were previously one entity, they have the same relationship to the plants and the creatures, as well as each other.

Of course, it needs to be noted that after Adam and Eve eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Bible does indicate that God tells Adam, "Cursed is the ground because of you" (Gen. 3:17).  Footnotes to this passage tell us that this is an "explanation of why people ... have to struggle to eke out an existence from the ground" (not 3.17-19) and it does not take much thought to agree that the earth is often difficult to work with - we must contend with acidic soils, clay soils, sand, rock, floods, droughts, volcanoes, earthquakes, and pests, not to mention the change of seasons which compete with our agricultural pursuits.  That it was ever different is a product of the "good ol' days" mentality, seemingly as much a part of human nature as anything else.  Even in Goddess religion, humans must contend with these things.  Dr. Christ says, "It is important not to romanticize the past.  We could not return to the past even if we wanted to" (152), further noting, "we are finite, and our perspectives will always be incomplete.  We live in a world that includes death and disease, earthquakes and floods, among the conditions of life" (158).  This is, ultimately, what the Bible seems to be pointing out to us in Genesis 3.  Life is tough despite its divine origins, despite the sacredness and diversity in nature, and despite the proximity of God in our very breaths.  Yet, we continue to "be fruitful and multiply," the surest sign that all of creation is still "good," still "blessed."

Dr. Carol Christ maintains that the God of the Bible is irreconcilable with the Goddess.  While this may have been (and continue to be) the teachings of the theologians (both for God and for Goddess), an intelligent and thoughtful reading of the Bible will not deny the divinity and sacredness of nature and the human body.  Individuals who believe and practice in the monotheistic traditions of Judaism and Christianity do not have to accept the "baggage" heaped upon them by the church fathers or those, such as Dr. Christ, who reinforce the negative teachings through reiteration and inability to see beyond them.  Rather than reinvention God in the Goddess' image, rather than devaluing the current beliefs and practices of millions worldwide, we can take the Bible into our own hands and begin to see that God and Goddess may not have a difference of opinion at all.

Works Cited

Christ, Carol P.  Rebirth of the Goddess: Finding Meaning in Feminist Spirituality.  New York: Routledge, 1997.

The New Oxford Annotated Bible.  Ed. Bruce M. Metzger and Roland E. Murphy.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.