Why Feminizing the Trinity Won't Work
A Metaphysical
Perspective
The Rev.
Cynthia Bourgeault, Ph.D.
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In recent years
it has become increasingly fashionable in liberal
theological circles to envision the third person
of the Trinity as feminine. For many reasons both
linguistic and archetypal this designation seems
to fit. It can be argued that the Holy Spirit
is really identical with Sophia, the wisdom of
God, personified as female in the Old Testament;
that the "spirit" words in our Biblical
tradition tend to be feminine; and that in its
intuitive, indwelling perceptivity, the Spirit
embodies a "feminine" way of knowing
and being which counterbalances the more "masculine"
knowing and being of the Logos, or "Word
made flesh" in the male personhood of Jesus
Christ(1).
Certainly, from a practical
standpoint, this gender corrective yields tremendous
gains. If, as seems sadly true, the Church's exclusively
male representation of the inner life of God laid
the theological groundwork for an exclusively
male political hierarchy which has systematically
devalued the place of both the feminine and women
in Christianity, then an authentic female representation
among the persons of the Trinity would seem a
graceful way to redress the grievance and correct
the imbalances that have distorted so many areas
of the Church's life.
But while, as a woman, I wish
it could be done so simply, I am more and more
convinced that it can't. It is "doing the
right thing for the wrong reason." For in
this case, the extremely shortsighted metaphysical
thinking it introduces is likely to do a lot more
damage than the short-range good accomplished.
However laudable the attempt to secure a feminine
presence in the Trinity, the present strategy
leads to a serious confusion of metaphysical systems
whose long-range effect will be to leave Christianity
adrift in a post-Jungian archetypal sea, its own
intuitive genius fatally blunted, and divine revelation
itself compromised.
Some of the more astute feminist
theologians such as Elizabeth Johnson have already
sensed the trap in this short-range corrective
and argued the need for a more comprehensive revisioning.
In her influential She Who Is, Johnson demonstrates
how the attempt to reclaim the third person of
the Trinity as "the feminine dimension of
God" represents a double-danger, diminishing
the full range of womanhood by a gender stereotyping
which associates the feminine only with those
qualities of nurturance, tenderness, and receptivity,
while diminishing the fullness of divinity by
"ontologizing sex in God," extending
human divisions to the godhead itself(2). Her solution,
based on a recognition of the symbolic nature
of language, is to offer a comprehensive set of
equivalent metaphors, allowing one to depict all
three persons of the Trinity in feminine imagery.
But while her proposal is headed in the right
direction, it still remains largely a surface
rearrangement, which re-visions the persons while
leaving the concept of divine personhood itself
intact. It is thus a solution at the theological
level. But the real source of the conundrum—and
hence, the leverage needed to resolve it—
lies at the metaphysical level.
Metaphysical Corrective
To describe the metaphysical
error on which this feminizing of the Trinity
rests is not so easy, however, for Christians
themselves are not used to thinking of their beloved
Trinity in terms of metaphysical process. They
have been drilled to think that the Trinity is
about "persons"––whose names
are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and who live
in an eternal, self-generating, and self-sustaining
community. While the complex interrelationship
among these divine persons may escape all but
the trained theologian, the fact that these persons
actually exist—and that they are the three
unique manifestations of the unseen fullness of
God—comprises the theological cornerstone
of Christian theology and experience. I have startled
several people by suggesting that the Trinity
might actually be seen as the Christian equivalent
of the East's symbol of yin/yang. In which case
the Trinity is primarily about how God is and
moves even beyond the manifestation of persons.
About how God changes from one form into another
within the domain of manifestation and interpenetrates
the mutability of creation with the wholeness
of divine being. The idea that the Trinity might
be about process rather than persons seems to
be a radical notion.
It is this idea I need to start
with: that the Trinity is primarily about process.
It encapsulates a paradigm of change and transformation
based on an ancient metaphysical principlee known
as the Law of Three. The persons are not incidental
to the Trinity, certainly, but they are derivative
to the extent that they unfold and manifest according
to this more foundational principle which shows
itself to be (intuitively, at least) at the heart
of Christian metaphysical self-understanding.
So, we need to begin our inquiry by considering
this system in its own right.
Binary Systems and Ternary Systems
Most of the world's ancient metaphysical
paradigms are binary systems. That is to say,
they function on the principle of paired opposites.
Yin/yang is an obvious example. In binary systems
the universe is experienced as created and sustained
through the symmetrical interplay of the great
polarities: male and female, light and darkness,
conscious and unconscious, yin and yang, prakriti
and purusha.
The categories masculine and
feminine also belong to a binary system; in fact
they are perhaps the primordial binary system
within creation. Life sustains and expresses itself
in the tension of opposite, and a slackening of
this tension through an imbalance of the parts
leads to a collapse of the whole system.
A ternary system envisions a
distinctly different mix. In place of paired opposites,
the interplay of the two bipolarities calls forth
a third, which is the "mediating" or
"reconciling" principle between them.
In contrast to a binary system, which finds stability
in the balance of opposites, the ternary system
stipulates a third force which emerges as the
necessary mediation of these opposites, and which
in turn (and this is the really crucial point)
generate a synthesis at a whole new level. It
is a dialectic whose resolution simultaneously
creates a new realm of possibility(3).
Let's consider a few simple examples. A seed,
as Jesus said, "unless it falls into the
ground and dies, remains a single seed."
If this seed does fall into the ground, it enters
a sacred transformative process. Seed (the first,
or "affirming," force) meets ground
(the second, "denying" or receptive).
But even in this encounter, nothing will happen
until rain/sun, the third, or "reconciling,"
force enters the equation. Then among the three
they generate grain, which is the actualization
of the possibility latent in the seed—and
a whole new "field" of possibility.
Or take the analogy of sailing.
A sailboat, as nearly everyone knows, is driven
through the water by the interplay of the wind
on its sails (first force) and the resistance
of the sea against its keel (second force). The
result is that the boat is "shot" forward
through the water, much like a watermelon seed.
But as any sailor knows, this schoolbook analogy
is not complete. A sailboat, left to its own devices,
will not shoot forward through the water; it will
round up into the wind and come to a stop. For
forward movement to occur, a third force must
enter the equation, the heading, or destination,
by which the helmsperson determines the proper
set of the sail and positioning of the keel. Only
if these three are engaged can the desired result
emerge, which is the course made good, the actual
distance traveled.
Later in this paper I will have
more to say about the relative strengths and weaknesses
of binary and ternary paradigms on precisely that
issue, forward motion. In terms of the main question
under consideration, however, the point is that
a binary and ternary system cannot be mix-and-matched
because they stem from fundamentally different
metaphors for process. It is like playing three-against-two
in a Brahms sonata; the beats do not line up.
In a ternary system the categories masculine and
feminine do not strictly compute, for the ternary
system is not about paired opposites but about
threefold process.
Is the Trinity a Ternary System?
From a historical standpoint,
the doctrine of the Trinity appears to have emerged
almost ad hoc from a series of defense positions
hammered out during the fourth century in response
to the successive waves of Arian challenges to
the divinity of Christ(4). But when viewed phenomenologically,
the Trinity is a prime example of what is sometimes
called in sacred tradition a legominism: a densely
encoded symbol (image, sacred gesture, or liturgical
formula) which, when read by an illumined heart,
conveys objective metaphysical knowledge(5). In
this case, the Trinity, viewed as the first manifestation
of the unknowable, super-essential divine unity,
provides the template by which all further manifestation
will be made known, both as eternal principle
and as temporal process(6). With the Law of Three
as its hermeneutical key, the Trinity reveals
the knowledge of how God, the hidden, unmanifest,
inaccessible light, becomes accessible light,
manifesting and creating love; and how love in
turn becomes the driveshaft of all creation, bringing
all things to their fullness not by escaping createdness,
but by consummating it.
To demonstrate that this is so,
intentionally and anterior to the persons, can
be done, but not without wading into metaphysical
seas that few save Jacob Boehme have been able
to negotiate. In a subsequent paper I will attempt
to unpackage more fully Boehme's brilliant but
intricate metaphysics as he follows the journey
by which the divine Unity "brings itself
forth" (7) into form and diversity—insights
which, to my mind still hold the key to unscrambling
the present Trinitarian conundrum. For now let
me simply set the stage by suggesting that the
core theological triad—"Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit"—rests on for an even
more foundational metaphysical triad—
Unmanifest (Hidden)/ Manifesting/Manifested
The Mystery of the Trinity begins
deep within the stillness of God, where all is
at rest in the hidden ground, and love does not
exist as an outward energy. Here, in the eternal,
unfathomable depths, all must be envisioned as
a unitive equilibrium: a being so still that it
is indistinguishable from non-being.
And yet within this unmanifest
is also a manifesting principle. The prologue
to the gospel of John calls it the Word: that
which breaks the symmetry of stillness and gives
rise, deep within the Godhead, to that outward
impetus toward self-communication and manifestation.
The interplay of these two forces
calls forth the miracle of the third, or reconciling:
the manifested. Something is flung outward—an
outward and visible expression of what the inner
and hidden heart looks like. The ousia of God
(as the Cappodocian Fathers termed God's innermost
being), passing through the prism of manifestingness,
emerges as the energia of God, God's holy outwardness—not
as a distant reflection of the original essence,
but the essence itself, made expressive in a new
dimension. The hidden ground of love becomes the
cornerstone of the visible universe. And following
this same principle still further in its descent
into time, this hidden ground of love (which could
be described metaphorically as Father), manifesting
in principle (as Spirit), gives rise to "the
Word-become-flesh" who dwelled among us full
of grace and truth (as Son)…8
"…and we beheld his glory." As
dictated in a ternary metaphysic, the dialectic
results in making the hidden essence fully manifest
in a new dimension, in even more concentrated
and intense form, like light gathered in a magnifying
glass. This mystical culmination of the Law of
Three is the seat of early Christianity's intuitively
accurate identification of Christ as the ultimate
"holy reconciling"—"in whom
all things hold together."
Without diving too far into these
sacred mysteries at this point, I would merely
hope to convey some sense of the expansiveness
inherent in a ternary system. While Christianity
has yet to fully tap the explosive transformative
power locked up in those covalent bonds of the
Trinity, the potential has not gone entirely unnoticed.
As Olivier Clement astutely comments in The Roots
of Christian Mysticism:
A solitary God could not be "love
without limits. " A God who made himself
twofold, according to a pattern common in mythology,
would make himself the root of an evil multiplicity
to which he could only put a stop by reabsorbing
it into himself. The Three-in-One denotes the
perfection of Unity—of "super-unity,"
according to Dionysius the Areopagite— fulfilling
itself in communion and becoming the source and
foundation of all communion. It suggests the perpetual
surmounting of contradiction...9
Twofoldness leads to cyclic recurrence.
All progression, or forward motion through time,
operates under the Law of Three, its very asymmetry
creating the necessary forward impetus. There
is no progression apart from the Law of Three,
and no Law of Three apart from progression. This
deceptively simple point is actually at the heart
of Christian metaphysics, if we only knew how
to tap it better.
The Quarternity
The quarternity was first suggested
as an "improvement" to the Trinity by
C.G. Jung, who noted that the square form (or
more specifically, the mandala, or square combined
with the circle) has a greater stability and archetypal
completeness than the triangle. He suggested that
the "missing feminine" in the Christian
Trinity could be found by extending the form into
a quaternity, adding the feminine as the bottom,
or earth pole. Jung's insight has furnished both
the agenda and to a large extent the strategy
for contemporary efforts toward a more androgynous
revisioning of the Godhead.10
In a very important recent contribution
to this field, Fr. Bruno Barnhart in Second Simplicity
enthusiastically embraces Jung's fourfold schematic
while at the same time introducing a significant
variation: he locates the feminine at the third
(rather than fourth) pole.11 In this position
it coincides with the traditional placement of
the Holy Spirit in Trinitarian thought, emerging
in this new overlay as "the immanent and
unitive Spirit .... the divine Feminine..."the
inner wisdom and power that moves the history
of humankind toward its consummation." 12
Here Barnhart bridges the worlds between feminine
and Jungian thought, bringing powerful new theological
support to a feminine designation of the Holy
Spirit.
But while the initial attraction
of the principle of quarternity is strong representing,
in Barnhart's words, "the wedding of the
masculine principle of structure and polarity
with the feminine principle of wholeness, simplicity,
and unity," 13 in terms of the metaphysical
system laid out so far, the flaw should be apparent.
For the quarternity is in fact merely a double
binary and hence operates under the earlier mythological
law of paired opposites, in this case doubled
pairs. While it does bring a "mandalic"
completion to the Trinity, it has also switched
tracks metaphysically and hence leads to a muddying
of the waters and a weakening of the dynamic asymmetrical
driveshaft of the ternary system's whole self-
understanding, While binary systems seek completion
in a "reabsorption into the whole,"
as Clement observes, ternary systems seek completion
in the drive into a new dimentsion. To find the
"missing fourth" according to the Law
of Three, we must seek for it at a whole new level.
The fourth is not a final and stable completion,
but the "new arising" which emerges
inevitably from the dynamic interplay of the three.
Letting the Trinity Flow
Hence, to my mind, at least,
the price paid for feminine participation in the
Trinity (at least by the present strategies) is
far too high. The result is to collapse a dynamic
metaphysic of change and transformation which
we have not yet begun to fathom into a staid principle
of symmetry, or balanced opposites, which can
sustain at a given level but lacks the ability
to drive into the new.
The real source of the present
theological dilemma concerning the attempt to
feminize the Trinity or "correcting"
the Trinity as a quarternity lies at the metaphysical
level—and it is the very problem that the
Trinity, but its own inner hermeneutic seeks to
avoid: the conflation of eternal principle and
temporal process. The difficult seam of Jesus
as human being and as divine hypostasis has bedeviled
theologians for centuries and remains at the core
of the present conundrum, where a "male"
eternal principle seems to demand a counterbalancing
"female" one. In the same way The Holy
Spirit, when the distinction between eternal and
temporal realms is lost, emerges as a conflation
of eternal Wisdom with the energetic presence
of the risen Christ, a tension of opposites which
even Barnhart cannot satisfactorily reconcile.14
But the solution is not to abandon
the ternary principle, but to apply it, by permitting
the Trinity to flow again. As a metaphysical principle,
the Trinity is by nature kinetic, over-spilling
itself into new expressions of its tremendous
creative energy. In our dogmatic insistence upon
only ONE triad of this eternal manifesting principle
(Father/Son/Holy Spirit), we have bottled up its
energy and conflated its unfolding manifestations.
But the solution is not to find "more inclusive-language-expressions"
of this one triad, but to become much more fluid
in our use of the Law of Three, realizing that
Father/Son/Holy Spirit takes its place among many
triads of God's expressiveness in a ternary metaphysical
system—each revealing a different facet
of the divine wholeness:
Unmanifest/ Manifesting/ Manifested
Hidden Ground of love/ Wisdom/ Word
God/Word/Word-made-flesh
Mother-Sophia/Jesus-Sophia/ Spirit-Sophia 15
Father/ Son/ Holy Spirit
Affirming/ resisting / reconciling… (etc)
The great secret of the Trinity,
viewed as metaphysical principle, lies in its
knowledge of "the impressure of nothingness
into something," in Boehme's words: 16 how
eternal principle comes to manifest in time and
form. Time—i.e., sequential process—
is an essential ingredient, and it is in time
that we will find the missing feminine. From the
above list we can see as well how the ternary
is a principle that cuts across the paired opposites
and engages both the masculine and feminine at
shifting points, according to the particular triad
(the feminine will not always automatically be
the "resisting" or receptive force,
but can be resisting affirming or reconciling;
the stations are fluid.) 17 In this flexibility
there is liberation not only from the lack of
feminine participation but from the gender stereotyping
so prevalent in contemporary psychological models.
Once again, the real roots of
the conundrum lie in Christianity's age-old confusion
of metaphyiscs and theology.18 If the feminist
dilemma is to be satisfactorily resolved, the
real task before us is to have the courage to
let go of the Trinity as Christianity's theological
ace of clubs (using it only to prove that a human
being was fully God), and to approach it instead
in its cosmically subtle role as an ordering and
revealing principle, of which Christ is its culminating
expression. In misusing the metaphysical principle
as a doctrinal prop, we have missed the inherent
energy for transformation. If we could bring a
new expansiveness to our search, we might discover
that the Trinity has treasures we have not yet
begun to unlock. But also, to abandon it or adulterate
the legominism out of a well-intentioned but ill-reasoned
attempt to strengthen the "feminine"
dimension of Christianity is to make a wrong and
very dangerous turn.
The Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault, Ph.D. is Director
of the Contemplative Society, Salt Spring Island,
British Columbia, and a part-time faculty member
at Vancouver School of Theology.
