"I am God, and not Man" (Hos 11:9). The Prophetic Vision of the Perfect Love of God, "the Father with the Mother's Heart"

Piotr Kot

Abstract

Since the 1960s, in the circles of the so called feminist theology, there has been a strong call for a departure from the androcentric image of God in the exegesis of biblical texts. It initialized a differentiation, very radical at times, into fatherly and motherly features of God. This dualistic approach is evident especially in the aspect of God’s love to the human. However, a thorough analysis of the prophetic texts by Hosea and Isaiah, in which we find the metaphor of God’s motherly love, also leads to a significant observation that these authors never fragment God’s qualities, but present them as complementary: God loves the human with a love that is fatherly and motherly at the same time. God is a perfect being. The Scripture is a testimony of God who is Fullness (see: Col 1:19; 2:9; Eph 1:23; 3:19) and as such he gives himself to the human. Exposed to the effect of the loving God, the human receives a love that in the material world is associated with either male or female features, but which – in itself – is simply divine.

Keywords:

God's love, feminist theology, fatherhood, motherhood