God as Mother, Jesus as Mestizo

God as Mother The image of god as the loving father and the

maleness of Jesus has both been cited as a reason why women are excluded from priesthood.

Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, called God;

Our Father, Our Mother

One of them appears in the feminist fantasy Herland, written in 1915 by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

God as Mother
Male explorers discover an all-female society.
A world of mothers and children in which divinity is conceived as a Loving Power with maternal concern for humankind.

There was no formal worship but temple mothers offered love and wisdom to help people through lifes challenges.

 A Jew in Galilee.( Border between Judean Jews and Greeks)

Jesus as Mestizo

The residents were to Jewish to be accepted by the Greeks and the Greeks were to pagan to be accepted by the Jews. Jesus is depicted as blond , blue eyed which resembles rich and powerful in the world. Jesus was a Mestizo , he appeared to be half-breed Those who share his maleness but not his power may feel excluded the way women do.

*Mestizois the original Spanish term for an individual who has mixed white/European (Spanish, Portuguese, French) and Native American descent.
*Pagan- is a person who believes that everything has a soul or spirit.

 Jesus lived between two cultures who never quite fitt into either.Those who feel marginal can find much to identify with Jesus.

The mestizo affirms both the identities received while offering something new to both.( being an inside-outsider and outside insider to two worlds at the same time) Jesus offered a new alternative to both and through them to everyone else.( all the previous traditions are assumed and transcended) So the Mestizos find their own mission. Create.

God as Eternal Thou , Ground of Being , God- ing : A verb

SOREN KIERKEGAARD

 Existentialism began in the mid-nineteenth century with Soren Kierkegaard , who shifted the focus of philosophy from essence (in this case, what human nature is like) to existence. He used words like dread , anxiety , and despair to characterize the human condition. One of his books, Fear and Trembling , was built around the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac at Gods request admirable , if impossible to understand using reason and logic .

 He finds any worthwhile answers to the big questions about God and human existence through objective analysis and reasoning. In the face of objective uncertainty , a person must passionately and trustingly jump into the unknowable and choose faith : Without risk there is no faith. If God is not knowable in an objective sense , then the questions produced by overly specific images of God disappear.

God as Eternal Thou.. Gods specific attributes may be unknowable , but we can be sure that God is a Thou rather than I.
It is also possible to become an I only through experience of a Thou and this same kind of personal relationship is the basis for the divine-human encounter that occurs in faith. I become authentic person and have an authentic encounter with God , not through objective knowing but through subjective experiencing.

Ground of Being
If God is the Ground of Being , for instance, God is a both a person and not a person. This means that our encounter with the God who is a person includes the encounter with the God who is the ground of everything personal and as such not a person.

God - ing : A verb It more satisfying to speak of God as a verb - as a process rather than a being.
No pronoun is appropriate here because all designate objects. Because God is not an object , it seems the least confusing. Using God ing to describe this process helps us see that God -ing is a mutually interactive verb, one which entails an interdependency between two subjects , each being the object for other .

GOD AS PERSUADER : PROCESS THOUGHT

In all philosophic theory, there is an ultimate which is actual in terms of its accidents. God is it primordial, nontemporal accident (embodiment). God & nature are co-eternal and there has always been a world arena in which God could act creatively. not before all creation but with all creation. God is the organ of noveltythe lure for feelingApart from the invention of God, there could be nothing new in the world.

 Creatures are necessary partners with God in an ongoing process of creating novelty and beauty : Neither God nor the World reaches static completionEither of them, God and the World, is the instrument of novelty for the other. God does have an eternal nature, also has a consequent nature. The everlasting nature of God in a sense is non-temporal and in another sense in temporal. God and the World are relationally intertwined and sharing the unfolding of time. Thusthere is a reaction of the world on GodThe wisdom of Gods subjective aim absorbs every actually for what it can beits sufferings, its sorrow, its failures, its triumphs, it immediacies of joyThe imageis that of a tender care that nothing be lost. Affecting and being affected by the world, yet not standing outside of time, the God of process thought is not omniscient, at least not in a traditional sense of that word. (pg 199 textbook)

Describe Whiteheads model of divine power as the power to persuade. Preserve the crucial element of human freedom. The God of process thought honors and expands human freedom, inviting us to make the best choices, but enable and willing to coerce (force) us. Sees the traditional theological doctrine that God cannot be affected by anything transformed in process thought into God as the one who is perfectly affected by everything that takes place.

The God of process philosophy is not merely an observer or even feeler of the worlds processes but also an active participant in them. We experience God-given ideals, including moral ideals, constantly even ifdimly Persuasive invitation can be accepted or declined by human creatures, Gods necessary partners in the ongoing process of creation.

The End