**3. Assessing the Metaphor**

The world as God's body metaphor provokes a number of difficult questions about divine power, the relationship between members of the Trinity, and the dynamics of the God–human relationship. For instance, can humans harm God? Is the first person of the Trinity capable of being harmed? Yet, readers must recall the importance of the word "metaphor" here, before they either raise their hands in despair or abandon McFague entirely because her beliefs seem too radical. Recall that McFague holds that language is imperfect and that God is so vast and beyond linguistic comprehension. I agree with that assertion. Therefore, neither McFague nor I intend for any one metaphor to be a comprehensive representation of the divine, but rather a partial and imperfect reflection that, at best, reveals something of true value that might otherwise go unsaid about the divine–human relationship. The particular metaphor of the world as God's body, then, was never intended to replace or supersede all other representations or beliefs about God, but rather it was meant to supplement those representations that align with the root-metaphor with a vision that adds something new and previously unexpressed.

What is gained theologically by such a metaphor? First, the metaphor of the world as God's body allows McFague to argue that bodies of all kinds matter to God and that any act of violence, injustice, or ecological destruction done to the earth is an act against God. McFague's intention here is not only to draw attention to the theological significance of the harm done to the earth's body, but also to draw attention to the harm done to other objectified bodies, including human ones. In other words, McFague recognizes that while "a panentheistic model does not reduce God to the world ... God is in the young woman killed in the accident and in the baby with birth defects as well as in those who suffer the loss or diminishment of their loved ones" (ibid., p. 176).

To that end, in suggesting that the world is God's body, McFague not only argues that bodies matter, but that any act of violence, injustice, or ecological destruction done to the earth becomes an act against God, and that such harms echo others inflicted upon humans beings whose bodies have been constructed as vulnerable in ways that cause them to become disenfranchised and neglected by those with power in society (ibid., pp. 16–22, 165). Ethical and pastoral implications for ecological theology, and the care of bodies, thus evidence themselves through this metaphor (ibid., p. 186). Insofar as one conceives ecological destruction as a form of sexual violation, then, it becomes possible to argue that McFague's metaphor represents the possibility of divine solidarity with human victims of sexual violations, while simultaneously condemning both the enactment of human and ecological sexual harm on the grounds that both violate the creation in which God embeds. It, therefore, gives a theological warrant for both naming and condemning the sexual violation of the earth, as well as the sexual violation of human bodies.

Second, theologians including Cone, Williams, and Moltmann have convincingly argued that there is value in understanding Jesus' life and death as illuminating the

presence of divine solidarity with humans. From an intersectional feminist perspective, solidarity is likewise important, because it calls us to acknowledge the subjectivity of another, such that a relationship between parties is possible. Divine–human solidarity matters, therefore, because it helps humans see that they are not alone in their suffering and that their personhood matters to God. What McFague's metaphor of the world as God's body adds is an additional dimension to divine solidarity, such that solidarity is not just shared with humans, but also shared with the earth. While solidarity alone is not a sufficient telos for the theological project of salvation because it is limited in its ability to actively defeat the given sin or evil at hand, it nonetheless responds to the reality that suffering alone renders a victim more vulnerable and isolated than suffering in a community does.

Relatedly, other theologians have done important work in parsing out how it is possible for Jesus to simultaneously be capable of experiencing embodied vulnerability, while not compromising the divine essence.<sup>8</sup> These conceptions allow for the recognition that Jesus' embodied vulnerability has value, while nonetheless asserting that it is possible for Jesus to have suffered and died on the cross without the simultaneous destruction of the divine essence. Perhaps, then, it is possible to make a similar argumen<sup>t</sup> for the first person of the Trinity; to assert that it is possible for the Creator to experience suffering in a way that reconceptualizes and heightens the gravity of the earth's suffering, while also not sacrificing a divine essence that remains inviolable.

Finally, expanding on how and where God engages in solidarity with all of creation has important gendered implications for the environmental crisis as a form of sexual harm, when one considers it in conjunction with the common metaphor that English speakers use to speak of the earth in feminine terms, as "Mother Nature" or "Mother Earth". Ecofeminist philosophers, such as Carol Adams, sugges<sup>t</sup> that the likening of the earth to a woman's body becomes a convenient way to essentialize the earth as an entity that needs to be subdued and controlled, just as women's bodies need to be subdued and controlled (Adams 1990). This gendered metaphorical language itself emerges from the assumption that women's bodies create life, just as the earth creates life, but it also relates to the assumptions about the extent to which either is essentially nurturing, life-giving, and, because of each capacity, mysterious at best, and inferior at worst, to the independent rationality associated with the male mind, as constructed by Enlightenment thought. Language, in other words, frames how we understand the world around such, such that to gender the earth in ways that mirror the subjugation common in women's lives enables the continued subjugation of each, while simultaneously perpetuating patriarchal ways of knowing (Saidero 2017; Gudmarsdottir 2010).

Now, while this language embeds flawed assumptions about gender essentialism and pastoral implications for women whose reproductive organs cannot effect the creation of new life, it also allows theologians to frame the climate crisis in terms of gender-based violence and to query whether the crisis is only a violation of the earth or a violation of women's bodies more generally.<sup>9</sup>

Such a conceptualization also allows theologians to differently frame the earth's response to human actions. At the risk of anthropomorphizing, it allows us to see climate change in terms of sexual violations that can be conceptualized through the lens of trauma.<sup>10</sup> This trauma-informed lens can inform how humans not only see the climate crisis, but also how they respond to it.
