Introduction–
Gender Fluidity and God
Christianity has been diverse from the beginning. The ways early Christians wrestled with their story has varied from the outlandish and bizarre to the insightful and the stirring.
Christian thinkers have also always held a variety of topics on the issues of their day and ours.
The Odes of Solomon, a 2nd-century Christian hymn, contains much stirring language. Much in particular has been written about the first five verses of Ode 19, which describes what could perhaps be a gender fluid interpretation of God:
1 A cup of milk was offered to me,
and I drank it with the sweet taste of the Lord’s sweetness.
2 The son is the cup,
and he who was milked is the Father,
and she who milked him is the holy spirit,
3 because his breasts were full.
And because it was unfitting that his milk should be released in vain,
4 the holy spirit opened her womb
and mixed the milk of the Father’s two breasts.
5 And she gave the mixture to the age,
without their knowing,
and those who receive it in its fullness are of (God’s) right hand.
What is going on here? how are we to understand this passage?
Milk as Metaphor, God Beyond Male
Consider I Corinthians 3:
And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people but rather as fleshly, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, for you are still fleshly. For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not fleshly and behaving according to human inclinations? For when one says, “I belong to Paul,” and another, “I belong to Apollos,” are you not all too human?
Faced with a church trying to divide itself into factions rather than unify, Paul– perhaps espousing a Gnostic perspective– argued that differences are okay. Not everyone is going to agree. And that is alright. After all, we are all human.
Paul explores milk as a metaphor for what he was offering– the nourishment for infants, that one may grow into more mature thinkers.
And yet, the early Christian patriarch Clement had a bit of a different perspective on the topic. For Clement, God seems to have both male and female aspects, and indeed can be understood metaphorically to lactate:
The nutriment is the milk of the Father, by which alone we infants are nourished. The Word Himself, then, the beloved One, and our nourisher, hath shed His own blood for us, to save humanity; and by Him, we, believing on God, flee to the Word, "the care-soothing breast" of the Father.
With milk, then, the Lord's nutriment, we are nursed directly we are born; and as soon as we are regenerated, we are honoured by receiving the good news of the hope of rest, even the Jerusalem above, in which it is written that milk and honey fall in showers, receiving through what is material the pledge of the sacred food.
What does Clement think about Paul's reference in I Corinthians 13? That we should read it differently– that milk vs. meat is not an issue of immaturity vs. maturity, but rather of ignorance vs. knowledge. What is provided is milk to the ignorant (who need nutrition as infants), but meat– blood, the eucharist, Christ– to the wise.
"For my blood," says the Lord, "is true drink." In saying, therefore, "I have given you milk to drink," has he not indicated the knowledge of the truth, the perfect gladness in the Word, who is the milk? And what follows next, "not meat, for ye were not able," may indicate the clear revelation in the future world, like food, face to face.
In other words: the son (Christ) is the vessel for the milk– the Word– which comes from the Father.
Wait a second– doesn't that sound like the Ode of Solomon passage we were looking at?
2 ...The son is the cup,
and he who was milked is the Father...
Conclusion & Insights
Some expressions of Christianity today take an authoritarian bend on the understanding of God. God is male. God is like John Wayne. God is neither female nor feminine, and thinking of God that way would be to reduce him.
Other expressions of Christianity (or of religion/spirituality more broadly), for perfectly understandable reasons for which empathy is appropriate, swing hard against that. One must see God as not-at-all masculine but as a divine Mother.
And yet, right back in the roots of Christianity, we see fluidity around understandings of God and gender. At its core, Christianity has always been diverse. There have always been those as seeing God strictly as binary male. And yet, as we've explored today, different perspectives have always existed.
As we wrestle with conversations around gender and identity today, we would be wise to reflect on the diverse perspectives of early Christians.
Take care to reduce neither Christianity nor early Christians to something monolithic. Topics on gender and identity are complex, and our perspectives today as varied– just as they were by people millennia ago. As we reflect on these texts, may we too experience the nourishing milk from the Father in our own lives and minds.