Very bright button, a.k.a. ‘Yentil’ a.k.a. ‘our Kate’ said:
‘Who first said ‘In Christ our Hen?’
Dick said:
‘‘Christ our Hen’ - as we know - refers to Christ weeping over the fate of Jerusalem wishing he could cluck his children to himself like a Mother Hen and prevent the slide towards destruction.
Funnily enough one person who later made use of this image was St Anselm – the man who invented the first model of Penal Substitution (in which God’s honour is infinitely offended by our sin – because God and His hour infinite and we are not – rather than his abstract justice being infinitely offended as Calvin later taught). He had a rather confused view of the Trinity as if God was the furious, brutal and unforgiving ‘Pop’, with Christ as the ‘Mom’ Hen whose feathered skirts we could hide under from Pop’s raging. Anselm also wrote some very disturbing poetry in which Jesus is both male and female and the two aspects are in conflict. He was Archbishop of Canterbury to a brutal Norman king who oppressed his Saxon people and took infinite offence at any murmurings from them retaliating with terrible, draconian punishments.
Of course in Mother Julian Jesus is spoken of as both male and female in a symbolic way – but the two aspects are at peace and in gentle harmony because God is not ‘wroth’ with us in Julian’s reckoning. As far as I know she does not speak of ‘Christ as our Hen’.
But Erasmus does speak of the ‘Christ Hen’– he did not know Julian but he was well versed in Origen. In an exchange between he and Luther, Luther declares– ‘‘you and your peace loving Gospel – you don’t care about truth’’. But Erasmus protests in reply in ‘Complaint of Peace’- ‘’What happens to truth when men are embroiled in wars of religion…How can you say ‘Our Father’ if you plunge steel into the guts of your brother? Christ compared himself to a Hen: Christians behave like Hawks. Christ was a shepherd of sheep; Christians tear like wolves’’.
I cannot remember where, but I’ve also seen an early Quaker speak of ‘Christ our Hen’ too. The Quaker intellectuals – William Penn, Robert Barclay, and Isaac Pennington – used Erasmus to support their beliefs and practices just as the earlier Anglicans had done. And from the above quotation we can see why. Luther is fixated upon correct definitions of justification by faith alone and is prepared to go to war and kill over these. But for Erasmus the Way of Christ (which he also sometimes termed ‘The Philosophy of Christ’ – by which he meant a practical wisdom) is about living with faithful love rather than holding accurate definitions – and this is exactly what the Quakers argued and it also informs the idea of the middle way in Anglicanism.
In Christ our Hen’
Very bright button, a.k.a. ‘Yentil’ a.k.a. ‘our Kate’ said:
‘Ah, so the phrase is indirectly Quaker (very Quaker, but indirectly Quaker). That explains why I couldn’t find anything about its Quaker roots except for an article written by a certain Richard Whittington
Of course I’ve always loved the term. When I attended a Quaker Meeting, and a ‘Public Friend’ spoke about the saying, she emphasized that it pointed to a feminine nature of Christ. I think that is very true and wise, but I think there is more to the saying, pointing to a deeper truth. Christ is not just ‘motherly’, but he expects the same loving , nurturing, and caring attitude from his followers.
Speaking of hens, I must be going, because I’m supposed to make some chicken salad for supper tonight
In Christ our Hen’