Women, Earth, and Creative Spirit by Elizabeth Johnson - Essay Example

Ms. Johnson states that under this model women are situated somewhere between “poodles and men,” (p. 29). So according to this pattern, men, like kings, can do what they like with both nature and women, which are subjects of the man. Ms. Johnson disputes this model.

Ms. Johnson calls her theology panatheism. It’s a belief that all things are in God, as opposed to pantheism, which sees God in all things. Yet she does admit that traditional Christian theology does view God as above and apart from the world. Likewise, she does not accept the biblical Genesis story as the basis for her understanding of the world but accepts a “cosmic history” that includes a long, slow-pace creation over billions of years, and the evolutionary creation of man as opposed to God’s act. She does mention belief in the Trinity, however, and she apparently accepts Jesus as God incarnate, although this is not clearly defined. But it is in this Creative Spirit that she most closely believes. She does seem to admit that a Creative Spirit is within the world, yet the activity she sees is not the one that we traditionally associate as the God that man can commune with, but rather she states that the “…Spirit fills the world and is in all things. Since the Spirit is also transcendent over the world, divine in dwelling circles round to embrace the whole world, which thereby dwells within the sphere of the divine,” (p.42). Ms. Johnson’s cosmological belief then is not in a personal God, but in a real God who is separate from his creation. Ms. Johnson’s Creative Spirit may be real too, but implies only a belief in God who is part of that creation, a Creative Spirit that has been creating since the very beginning, but is in no sense an entity of itself.

Ms. Johnson suggests that if the earth itself dies as a place for life, then the Creative Spirit will also be lost. She also states that man has the power and must unite in ecofeminism to stave off this disaster. The author may be absolutely correct that we do need to cooperate and save the entire earth to save our existence on this earth, but where is the hope beyond this? Is there any reward besides this continuation that the Creative Spirit can give to us? Is there really a God in Ms. Johnson’s theological view or does the end of one individual’s life mean the end of that very individual? This is the most serious flaw in Ms. Johnson’s theology. Faith in God is supposed to lead to the hope of eternal life for the believer but she offers no hope beyond the continuation of life in this material world. One wants something more than just a communion of all things if one is to believe in the Creative Spirit. The only hope she offers is a hope to the earth itself that it (and perhaps mankind) will survive. There is no belief in the power of God to correct these patterns if He wants them corrected. Even though there is strong biblical evidence that the kingship model is the correct model, the question is “what is the future of the individual if we accept Ms. Johnson’s kinship model?”

The kinship model by itself is devoid of this hope but it can only be a true model when there is some room left for the individual and for the personal hope and desire to continue beyond this world and this life. What is troubling about Ms. Johnson’s entire book, however, is that she seems to create a theology without any connection with the Bible. Granted, she does quote liberally from the Psalms and the Wisdom literature, but nevertheless, her book strikes the reader as great ecofeminism theory but very poor theology. Despite her seeming to believe in the incarnation and in the Trinity, Ms. Johnson does not develop these ideas and seems to simply throw them into her model so that they will be related to Christianity.