Read in the context of individual and collective trauma, I shall make a case for the interpretative potential of this metaphor in times when people literally and figuratively have felt, and still may be feeling, like motherless (or fatherless) and especially in this season of Valentine, even husband-less, wife-less, fiancé or fiancée-less, friend-less.
“Dumped: Divine Adoption as Response to the Trauma of Rejection” by Lady Apostle Diana Adu
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This month, we will explore the rhetorical and theological significance of the metaphor of divine adoption in the Hebrew Bible and its tokolocigal soteriology imported in the Letter to the Hebrews. In Eze. 16:1-14, Ps 22:10–11 and Ps 71:6–9 God is not only presented as Mother (Dea Mater), Midwife (Dea Obstetrix) but in a context in which many mothers all too often died in childbirth, the newborn is cast upon God who steps in as the adoptive mother (Dea Nutrix or Omenet). This idea of divine adoption is further found in Psalm 68:5 when God is described as the “Father of orphans . . . [who] gives the desolate a home to live in”. And in Psalm 27:9–10, God is praised by the psalmist as “God of my salvation!” saying that “if my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will take me up”. In a context in which fathers and mothers either have died or have forsaken their children, God is thus portrayed as the adoptive parent who, as evident in the creative reinterpretation of Ps 68:5 becomes “Mother to the motherless, and father to the fatherless”. I argue that when it is important to keep in mind the complexities associated with this metaphor, which includes not only the multiple layers of trauma associated with the origin and reception of this metaphor but also the trauma associated with the adoptive process and the ongoing relationship between parent and adopted child that may be fraught with ambiguity.
Furthermore, I argue for a re-reading of the lament in Psalm 22:1-5, 9-11 as Christian Scripture. This reading of the Old Testament as Christian Scripture redresses an imbalance in Christian theology, which tends to highlight difficulties in Jesus’ cry of dereliction but obscures its lament. This lament is central to the cross as solidarity with the experience of human suffering as betrayal by God and as an invitation for humanity to cry out for God’s response, found ultimately in the cross. In particular, the essay offers a new, feminist, birth-sensitive interpretation of Psalm 22:9-11 and a new, feminist translation of Psalm 22:10b, accenting God’s motherhood in the passage.
Please join us and God richly bless you! Lady Apostle Diana Adu
4/02/2024
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