"Moreover, men need the image of God-as-woman more than women do. The most striking image of the womanliness of God in recent years was presented in Bob Fosse's film All That Jazz, a story of Fosse's brush with death during a massive heart attack. The death experience, however, turned out to be an interlude of grace. Death itself seemed to be very much like a woman — a tender, sensuous lover who sees through the phoniness of Joe Gideon (the fictional Fosse) and loves him anyway. Indeed, Angelique (Jessica Lange) is summation of all the women in Gideon's life. She gently wipes the sweat from his hands as he is dying, as would his wife, threatens to absorb him with a passionate kiss at the very end as have his mistresses, and playfully mocks him as does his daughter (indeed in the final sequence the identification between Angelique and his daughter is heavily emphasized — the daughter's tears make Angelique sad).
"Demanding, sexy, a bit sinister, inescapable, tender, and passionately loving — that's what the angel of death is like, Fosse tells us. The angel may also be God. Fosse is not sure, yet twice in the movie he brackets scenes with Ms. Lange in references to God; and at the end he gives us a choice: either life ends with a lifeless corpse being zipped up in a plastic bag or in the consummation of a love affair with a beautiful spouse.
"According to All That Jazz, then, death is a beautiful woman, and the beautiful woman may be God. Fosse doesn't insist. Like any good poet he merely suggests . . . Yet what if he's right?
"It seemed to me as I reflected on the film that in principle we men ought to have more invested in the image of God as someone like Jessica Lange than women might. God, we are told, is love. Our relationship with God is a love relationship. Normally, the most powerful love experiences we have are cross-sexual relationships. It is hard to fit these experiences into an imagery of God which is predominately male.
"The usual reaction (even with college students, I find) to a comparison of human love with divine love is to insist that it is utterly different form sexual attraction ('not at all physical,' my students tell me). Thus, to use scholastic terms, the word 'love' is predicated equivocally on intimacy with humans and intimacy with God.
"I do not believe, however, that such an equivocal predication will stand the tests either of good spirituality or of good exegesis — or good Catholic tradition. If love with God isn't really like human love at all, then it can hardly be very appealing, since human love is the most powerful emotion of which we are capable. Moreover, the sexual imagery of the Scriptures is washed away if the usage is equivocal.
"Thus we must conclude that the use of 'love' is analogous. God does passionately desire us in a way similar to how an attractive member of the opposite sex might desire us. And we desire God in a way similar to the way we might desire an appealing member of the opposite sex.
"Of any analogy one must inquire how the two uses differ. There can be only one answer: divine love is more passionate than human love. God's desire for us is greater than that of any human spouse; and God's appeal is more powerful than that of any human bedmate. God is different from Jessica Lange mainly in that God is more attractive, more demanding, more tender, more passionate, more gentle.
"It would follow that men who have a womanly image of God will find it easier to think of God as a lover, will pray more often and more intensely, and will be more deeply committed to the social concerns that should come from intense religious devotion. Moreover, precisely because they are involved in a love relationship with a womanly God, they should have better relationships with human women. Finally, it seems not unlikely that their womanly image of God will be affected by their relationships with their mothers and by strong, womanly images of Mary."