The Supreme Breasted One: Furthering Divine Imagery and Cancelling Sex Debts 

Breasts have enjoyed a long association with divine being and activity. In a few places, the Hebrew bible depicts God as a breastfeeding mother, emphasising God’s loving devotion to humankind (Isaiah 49:15) and God’s body as our place of origin (Numbers 11:12-13). Clement of Alexandria comfortably mixed imagery when he pined for the ‘milk’ from the breast of the Father, as did St. John Chrysostom, when he wrote, “Just as a woman nurtures her offspring with her own blood and milk, so also Christ continuously nurtures with His own blood those whom He has begotten.”[1] Jesus himself uses language which evokes maternal nourishment and satisfaction, offering himself as the quencher of thirst (John 7:37) and the bread of life (John 6:25-59), and explicit links between the eucharistic invocation, ‘this is my body, broken for you,’ and the events of birth and breastfeeding have been widely explored in feminist and womanist theology.[2] In Aotearoa New Zealand, I have seen more church communities and individuals begin to use ‘Mother God’ as a divine address in liturgy and prayer.

From this brief survey alone, it is notable that explorations of the God with Breasts have been largely dominated by maternal imagery. This imagery, though rich in theological potential, is not without its difficulties and limitations. Viewing God as a Mother inevitably has implications for how we frame the nature of God’s authority. It might be that in some contexts, ‘Mother God’ problematically sustains an image of God as one who cannot be argued with. This is a point which Marcella Althaus-Reid highlights, when she discerningly comments that only ever offering up a ‘Mother God’ to talk back to a ‘Father God’ will not allow us to overcome the “colonial metaphors of God that are parental in their authority.”[3] Here Althaus-Reid is conscious of how the language of “Mother Church” has historically legitimised Christian institutions ruling over and acting on behalf of the “minors” in their communities.[4] Hwa-Young Chong also points out that the image of Mother God necessitates human dependency upon God and cuts off the possibility of humankind partnering with God. She writes, “To view God as a nursing mother is deeply loving and comforting. But the limitation is that it images the receivers of milk as babies … the mother-baby relationship ends up lacking the sense of partnership between God and humanity.”[5]

Exclusive attention to God as Mother may additionally have the effect of positioning motherhood as a boundaried stage of the feminine symbolic. This is problematic for several reasons. Firstly, it risks suggesting that women’s experiences have no value for theological reflection unless they are connected to motherhood and reproduction. This is liable to create a site of women’s displacement, in which those who “cannot recognise” themselves in or feel held by the imagery of the maternal are alienated from their religious communities.[6] Secondly, privileging a Mother God who successfully feeds her children situates a breast which is productive and healthy at the forefront. Breasted experience is of course more diverse than this, and thus theology must heed Chong’s challenge to not just include female bodies which are “productive, healthy, unharmed, and … young” in Christian discourse.[7] Finally, it must be acknowledged that the persistence of patriarchy, complementarianism, gender essentialism, and purity culture thoroughly complexifies the ability of the maternal divine to be satisfying for women. These ideological centres define and affirm female sexuality as having to do with reproduction, and therefore Althaus-Reid questions how Mother God can be a sufficient offering when she is so “tainted with … biological images of destiny”?[8] In historically sanctioning these views of female personhood, theology participates in accruing what Althaus-Reid calls a “sex debt.”[9] The sex debt is the result of women’s ontology being offered a “lack of meaning” by dominant ideologies.[10] A classic example is how men are commonly seen as the producers of society, knowledge, and wealth, while a woman’s job is to reproduce, or to be romantically coupled with a man and have his children. Althaus-Reid is concerned that God the Mother remains “consistent with a sexual economic imperative” in which women are expected to be the nurturers of men and children for society to function.[11] For these reasons, acknowledging God as a breasted God need not and must not be limited to maternal images, though these can be rich with meaning.

To develop a fuller sense of the feminine God, theology will need to push beyond the single story of the maternal and get creative. In this article, I suggest that just as breasts can “disrupt the border between motherhood and sexuality,” breasts are also able to disrupt the border between the God we have accepted and the one we have not.[12] Conducting such discussion may be ‘indecent’ and unpalatable to some, but draws critical attention to the work which theology still has to undertake “before women come of age in Christianity.”[13] In what remains of this paper, I discuss a possible non-maternal image of breasted divinity. This is not done to contest the prevalence of the maternal but to continue furthering the project of integrating women’s experiences and perspectives into our theological imagination. Theologising in this way serves as a reminder that “the divine is not a stable being … but a ‘wild being’” who is endlessly able to be approached.[14] The image I propose here draws on the physical concept of nipple hardening, as well as Carter Heyward’s theology of yearning, to suggest that God is like a breast which is ‘aroused to action.’ Following this discussion, I offer an original art piece that represents both the creative endeavour I attempt to undertake here, and the future directions in which I would like to see theology press.

The God that is Aroused to Action

Nipple erections are cross culturally associated with female sexuality and arousal, but nipples also harden in response to cold temperatures or heightened emotional states. In the same way that strong emotional experiences such as ecstasy, anger, intimidation, or anxiety can trigger the body’s autonomic nervous system, producing goosebumps, so too can these emotions cause nipples to reflexively harden. Researchers therefore suggest that nipple erections function as a form of non-verbal communication, in which the body gives a “true indication” of its “emotional state.”[15] Emotions correspond with desire, and our desire indicates what we are yearning for. The breast which is sexually stimulated or ‘feeling’ cold, manifests its yearning for touch or for warmth by becoming erect, physically signalling the circumstances with which it is engaged. This could perhaps be seen as an illustration for the way in which God yearns and is aroused to action by that yearning.

All human desires have their origin in God, and thus our desires can orient us towards “knowing God.”[16] For example, Carter Heyward argues that the human experience of loneliness indicates a yearning to be in right relationship with others. At its core, this is a yearning for “justice … compassion, solidarity and friendship” that is shared by God.[17] As those who bear God’s image, we carry this divine yearning within us, and for Heyward, we can understand this yearning as the very essence of God; “not only is God ‘in’ the depths of our longing … God is the depths.”[18] Yearning is a hunger for that which is not yet, and while there are those who would meet this hunger with a frantic search for “answers and certainties,” Heyward cautions against this.[19] She points out that “questions, mystery, and ambiguities … thrive at the heart of God,” and instead invites her readers to let their spiritual hunger lead them to experience the “unmet hunger of God.”[20] This is a call to action; not to the action of devising neat theological assurances, but to the erotic action of staying passionately engaged with the other in our yearning.[21]

Yearning can be seen all through God’s story. In Heyward’s theology, Jesus is both the product and embodiment of God’s yearning to be in relationship with the created world, demonstrating in his life and death God’s erotic love in action – “the love that yearns, that hungers, that admits incompleteness, that reaches out for fulfilment.”[22] Heyward reframes Jesus’s “Passion” as being about how he lived “passionately … really present, deeply rooted in God, able to be there with and for others … able to be in the questions.”[23] In the breast with erect nipples, I see an image of this incarnational God who was and continues to be aroused by yearning to action. This God is a breasted God who engages with erotic energy, remaining ever present to yearning, willing to touch and be touched, to move and be moved, to love and be loved. The erect breast also gives shape to Heyward’s challenge to the Christian community. We too must be aroused to ‘come out’ for the work of justice-love making, for “to be faithful is to be spiritually hungry” – to have never had enough of the work until the day when the work is finished.[24]

Art Piece and Closing Thoughts

In August 2023, artist Sarah-Elaine Fritch shared a painting inspired by her stretch marks.[25] In the accompanying video posted to her Instagram, Fritch speaks about how the long road to accepting these marks began by learning to see the patterns of her body reflected in nature. As a visual tribute to these connections, Fritch made a linocut stamp of her stretch marks and used this to create a beautifully textured painting of a meadow. In the spirit of her project, my partner and I enjoyed an intimate painting night where we used my nipples to stamp a colourful background onto a small canvas, onto which I later stitched a personal icon for God.

Playing on my mind throughout this process were two reflections. First, the contentious etymological history of the Hebrew name for God, El Shaddai. Though most English Bibles invariably translate El Shaddai as ‘Almighty God,’ David Biale considers the fertility blessings in Genesis 17:1-27, 28:3, 35:9-12, 48:3-4, and 49:25 as contextual clues that the divine name ‘El Shaddai’ might have carried alternative associations for early authors.[26] While there is general consensus amongst scholars that the Hebrew word šaday (shaddai) is a “derivative of the Akkadian shadu, meaning mountain,” William F. Albright went on to suggest that shadu originally meant breast, and came to mean mountain later on.[27] For Biale, this opens up the possibility that the El Shaddai who is evoked throughout Genesis was understood by authors as a fertility God: “the God with Breasts.”[28] My second reflection in creating this painting was its completely antithetical use of my breasts according to the purity culture I grew up in. As I considered how widely I would share this piece, what boldness I would need to do so, ‘exposing,’ ‘vulgar,’ and ‘embarrassing’ were all words that crossed my mind.

My painting, titled ‘El Shaddai,’ visually locates breasts as a site of revelation about God. It is a vulnerable but joyful offering, which overflows from my own conviction to “listen to the body’s … speech.”[29] The piece considers and extends Biale’s reading of the Genesis text, pushing for space within the divine beyond the limits of the maternal. In the overt positioning of the breast, this piece also dares in both form and method to push back against the narrative of purity culture. The layered colours of the resulting artwork linger on the cacophony of stories which women and their breasts have to tell, stories which, I have argued in this paper, are essential resources for theology to widely call on in working towards the “cancellation of the sex debt.”[30] It is with creativity and deep curiosity that I encourage theology to move forward, in pursuit of a day when “God-Woman inspires the best in us, that is our solidarity, love, political struggle and religious visions.”[31] May we all be aroused to this action.

---

Footnotes

[1] Clement of Alexandria, ‘The Instructor, Book I’, in Ante-Nicene Fathers. Volume 7: Lactantius, Venantius, Asterius, Victorinus, Dionysius, Apostolic Teaching and Constitutions, 2 Clement, Early Liturgies, ed. Arthur Cleveland Coxe et al. (Christian Literature Publishing, 1886), 218. St. John Chrysostom, Baptismal Instructions, trans. Paul W. Harkins, Ancient Christian Writers: The Works of the Fathers in Translation, ed. Johannes Quasten and Walter J. Burghardt S.J. (Newman Press, 1963), 62.

[2] See for example Christy Angelle Bauman, Theology of the Womb: Knowing God Through the Body of a Woman (Cascade Books, 2019); Karen O’Donnell, Broken Bodies: The Eucharist, Mary, and the Body in Trauma Theology (SCM Press, 2019).

[3] Marcella Althaus-Reid, ‘Re-Writing God by Cancelling the Sex Debt in Theology: A Response to Clare Herbert’s “Who Is God for You?”’, Feminist Theology 8, no. 23 (2000): 32.

[4] Althaus-Reid, ‘Re-Writing God by Cancelling the Sex Debt in Theology’, 32.

[5] Hwa-Young Chong, In Search of God’s Power in Broken Bodies: A Theology of Maum, New Approaches to Religion and Power (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 13. Italics added.

[6] Lisa Isherwood, ‘Indecent Theology: What F–Ing Difference Does It Make?’, Feminist Theology 11, no. 2 (2003): 143–44.

[7] Chong, In Search of God’s Power in Broken Bodies, 16.

[8] Althaus-Reid, ‘Re-Writing God by Cancelling the Sex Debt in Theology’, 33.

[9] Althaus-Reid, ‘Re-Writing God by Cancelling the Sex Debt in Theology’, 33.

[10] Althaus-Reid, ‘Re-Writing God by Cancelling the Sex Debt in Theology’, 33.

[11] Althaus-Reid, ‘Re-Writing God by Cancelling the Sex Debt in Theology’, 33.

[12] Iris Young, Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 190, cited in Janet Lee, ‘Never Innocent: Breasted Experiences in Women’s Bodily Narratives of Puberty’, Feminism and Psychology 7, no. 4 (1997): 453.

[13] Althaus-Reid, ‘Re-Writing God by Cancelling the Sex Debt in Theology’, 34. Marcella Althaus-Reid, Indecent Theology: Theological Perversions in Sex, Gender and Politics (Routledge, 2010).

[14] Lisa Isherwood and Elizabeth Stuart, Introducing Body Theology, Introductions in Feminist Theology 2 (Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 144.

[15] Marissa A. Harrison et al., ‘Self-Reports of Nipple Erections in Emotional and Somatic Contexts’, The Psychological Record 63, no. 3 (2013): 496.

[16] Thia Cooper, A Christian Guide to Liberating Desire, Sex, Partnership, Work, and Reproduction (Palgrave Pivot, 2018), 23.

[17] Carter Heyward, Saving Jesus from Those Who Are Right: Rethinking What It Means to Be Christian (Fortress Press, 1999), 21.

[18] Heyward, Saving Jesus from Those Who Are Right, 22. Italics original.

[19] Heyward, Saving Jesus from Those Who Are Right, 22.

[20] Heyward, Saving Jesus from Those Who Are Right, 22.

[21] Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic,” in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Crossing Press, 1984), 53–59.

[22] James Nelson, ‘On Doing Body Theology’, Theology and Sexuality 1995, no. 2 (1995): 48.

[23] Heyward, Saving Jesus from Those Who Are Right, 115.

[24] Heyward, Saving Jesus from Those Who Are Right, 22, 115.

[25] Sarah-Elaine Fritch, ‘It Took so Long to Finally Share This!’, Instagram, 21 August 2023, https://www.instagram.com/p/CwL2cqVOy5R/?hl=en.

[26] David Biale, ‘The God with Breasts: El Shaddai in the Bible’, History of Religions 21, no. 3 (1982): 247–48.

[27] Biale, ‘The God with Breasts’, 240.

[28] Biale, ‘The God with Breasts’, 249.

[29] Nelson, ‘On Doing Body Theology’, 46.

[30] Althaus-Reid, ‘Re-Writing God by Cancelling the Sex Debt in Theology’, 35.

[31] Althaus-Reid, ‘Re-Writing God by Cancelling the Sex Debt in Theology’, 34.

---

© Jess Hall, 2026. This article is a part of a series in collaboration with the FTN (Feminist Theology Network). FTN social media: https://www.instagram.com/feministtheologynetwork/ and @feministtheology.bsky.social

This work is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

Cover Image: “El Shaddai” © Jess Toni Hall, 2025.