It seems to me quite natural that men, many of whom are separated from the intimacy of caring, should create gods and seek security and love in worship. But what ethical need have women for God? I do not mean to suggest that women can brush aside an actually existing God but, if there is such a God, the human role in Its maintenance must be trivial. We can only contemplate the universe in awe and wonder, study it conscientiously, and live in it conservatively. Women, it seems to me, can accept the God of Spinoza and Einstein. What I mean to suggest is that women have no need of a conceptualized God, one wrought in the image of man. All the love and goodness commanded by such a God can be generated from the love and goodness found in the warmest and best human relations.
Nel Noddings, Caring, University of California Press (Berkeley: 1984) p. 97.
This argument, however, doesn't appear to work even on Noddings's own account of caring. First, a caring relationship involves two people: the one-caring and the cared-for; and even if a caring relationship required "maintenance" of the one cared-for, this argument presents no reason why women have to be the one-caring, rather than the cared-for, in that relationship. All that is required for that is receptivity or responsiveness to the caring of another; and there is nothing about Noddings's account that suggests that this cannot also be a fulfillment of a need. In any case, such responsiveness and receptivity is a common feature of the spiritual life of women, as, indeed, the spiritual life of men.
Moreover, Noddings's account of caring doesn't involve a maintenance requirement. All that is required is (1) engrossment, i.e., focused, perceptive attention to the other; and (2) motivational displacement, i.e., taking on the motivations of the other as part of your own motivations. These are entirely possible where there need be no maintenance; as with two close but independent friends. And does it really need be said that there are plenty of cases, from the Virgin Mary, to Mothers of the Church like Monica (Augustine's mother) or Macrina (the sister of Basil and Gregory of Nyssa), to later women like Julian of Norwich, or Catherine of Siena, or Teresa of Avila, where you can find women whose relationship with God fits this rather basic account of caring.
So, again, it seems that on Noddings's own account of caring her argument doesn't work.
