The Kindness of God: Metaphor, Gender, and Religious Language

Fathers, sons, brothers, kings. Does the predominantly masculine symbolism of the Biblical writings exclude women or overlook the riches of their spiritual life? If Christ is 'the second Adam' and the one on whom all Christian life must be patterned, then what about Eve? This book from a leading scholar of religious language and feminism opens up the Bible's imagery for sex, gender, and kinship and does so by discussing its place in the central teachings of Christian theology: the doctrine of God and spirituality, Imago Dei and anthropology, Creation, Christology and the Cross, the Trinity, and eschatology.

Janet Martin Soskice is Reader in Philosophical Theology, University of Cambridge.

Love and attention: incarnateness — Imago Dei — Creation and relation — Calling God 'Father' — Blood and defilement: Christology — Trinity and the 'feminine other' — The kindness of God: trinity and the image of God in Julian of Norwich and Augustine — Friendship: love thy neighbor — Being lovely: eschatological anthropology.