Can we address God as ‘She’?
A little storm brewed up over the weekend on the question of whether we can accost God every bit 'she' and use female images to depict God. Information technology arose from some comments fabricated at the Faith Fence on the difference that women bishops might make. (I call up it rather unhelpful that this fence was an inter-religion panel which included Hindu, Islamic and Pagan representatives, considering it suggests that the Church building of England'southward decision on women bishops was part of a pan-religious feminism rather than arising from reflection on Christian theology and Scripture.)
The reporting of the issues followed some predictable lines. This is, it seems, the get-go of an irresistible trend:
Support is growing within the Church of England to rewrite its official liturgy to refer to God equally female post-obit the selection of the beginning women bishops.
And like all trends it is secretly being trialled in various places—at that place is a have-over by stealth:
"The reality is that in many churches up and downward the country something more than the almost default male person language about God is already being used…Quietly clergy are just talking nigh God every bit 'she' every now and and then."
And in the Mail there was the usual rent-a-reaction from Anne Widdicombe
God conspicuously isn't a She as a She can't exist a father. This is plain silly, unbiblical and ridiculous. I think it's the work of a few lunatics.
Amidst all the media sensationalising, some important points were missed. The get-go is that this debate is inappreciably new; there was a Grove booklet on inclusive linguistic communication back in the 1980s. As Kate Bottley puts is rather arrestingly:
For many of us with a theological persuasion the contend about gender-specific pronouns for the Divine is as dated as a fondue set and flares, but apparently to some normal people this is not the instance.
Secondly, in that location are two separate (though related) issues involved here. One is the language we use about people (where the first 'inclusive language' debates happened); the other is nearly the language we utilise about God. Both of these suffer from a trouble that we have in English (and in many languages) which is the lack of a UGASP—an UnGender Assigned Singular Pronoun. In other words, information technology is very difficult to refer to an individual without specifying his or her (there, you lot see?) sex. (Strictly speaking, 'sex' refers to whether someone is a man or a woman; gender is socially constructed and relates to roles and expectations. But it is odd to talk about 'sexual practice' all the time, so these debates are unremarkably, wrongly, described in terms of 'gender')
This is manifested in the struggle of some recent Bible translations. For example, the NRSV, committed to gender-inclusive language utilize for humanity, rather clumsily translated Matt iv.4 equally 'One does not live by bread alone', which fabricated use of the closest English has to a UGASP, but in doing so made Jesus sound like the Queen on a picnic. On Facebook, the lack of a UGASP is manifested in my existence told that I need to send a message to John considering 'they' have a birthday, even if there is only i of them.
The third issue is once more rather helpfully highlighted by Kate in her Guardian piece:
God equally feminine is nix new. Scripture and Christian tradition oft describes God using female imagery. God as mother hen protectively gathering her chicks nether her wings. God as a adult female making bread, moulding and shaping united states. God every bit a nursing mother, feeding and connected to her child….
[Simply] God is non a woman. And God is not a man. God is God.
The about prominent images in Scripture of God are the male images, only the female person images are not absent. (There is quite a good list of them here; the main references are Hosea 11.3–4 and 13.viii, Isaiah 42.xiv, 49.fifteen and 66.13, Deut 32.11-12 and xviii. Perhaps the most hit ones in the NT are of the kingdom of God beingness like a women kneading dough (Lk. thirteen:xx-21), God being like a woman who has lost a coin (Luke fifteen.8–10) and Jesus likening himself to a mother hen (Matt 23.37, Luke 13.34). Nearly hit of all every bit a female person image in ministry is Paul's description of himself as a women in labour (Gal 4.19).
Underlying this is a very articulate claim: God does not accept a gender. Although the gendered identity of humanity has its origins in our creation in the paradigm of God, Gen 1 is very clear that neither gender on its own is the paradigm of God:
So God created human beings in his own image, in the paradigm of God he created them; male and female person he created them. (Gen 1.27)
In a culture and context where gods where male or female, and where for the most part the male gods conquered and controlled the female, this is a striking argument. If nosotros think that the male more truly represents the 'epitome and likeness' of God than the female, we are contradicting a central claim of the biblical revelation about God.
Does that hateful, so, that we should use the feminine singular pronoun for God, prioritise female person imagery, and change male-gendered metaphors for God ('male parent') into the equivalent female person-gendered metaphors ('mother')? In short: no, yes and no.
On pronouns, I would concur that talking of God equally 'he' runs the danger of making people recollect God is male, and to avert using this pronoun would exist a good thing. The problem here is that (similar the NRSV'southward clumsy majestic UGASP), at that place is a danger that we describe attention to the effect if we refer to 'Godself', which simply isn't English language. I call up the trouble gets worse, not ameliorate, if nosotros apply 'she' for God. At least 'he' has the virtue of making the claim to be the universal pronoun (though this is disputed); 'she' has no such historic claim, and so suggests that God does accept a gender, and that that gender is up for debate.
On using feminine biblical imagery, yes of course we should. It is there, and information technology is important.
On changing biblical metaphors, at that place is rather a lot at stake. Kate Bottley somehow manages to make reference to kangaroo testicles, just does and then to make exactly the right bespeak:
Celebrities challenged to eat the $.25 of a kangaroo that wouldn't make your average tin can of amend-priced canis familiaris food oftentimes declare: "It tastes only like chicken!" Of course it doesn't. Chicken tastes like chicken and kangaroo $.25 taste like kangaroo $.25. But the contestant has no other way to describe it, given that most of us never have, and probably never will, taste the part of the kangaroo they are dining on. Nosotros cannot describe the indescribable and for me that's what it'southward like when we try to utilize human language to describe God.
God is not a woman. And God is not a homo. God is God. Only we tin only depict God in the terms we can easily comprehend, comparing God to something nosotros know amend.
She is referring hither to our utilise of metaphors. Metaphors are the way by which we transport pregnant from an arena of life that we know into an arena of life which we don't yet know. (In Greece, themetaphores is literally the removal lorry.) In fact, it is arguable that metaphor isthe way in which language is extended to express new pregnant; but call up of 'aggrandizement' in economic science, genes as 'packets of information' in biology, or how you are now 'surfing the cyberspace' or fifty-fifty 'visiting' my website.
One of the crucial things most metaphors is that they relocate meaning from one place to another identify—so to empathize the metaphor properly we need to sympathise both places that the metaphor connects. When Jesus calls God 'Father', he is not but using a generic, patriarchal parental term. He is making employ of it in a particular context, and (equally Tom Wright points out inThe Lord and his Prayer), role of that is nigh the son sharing in the begetter'due south business, which in this instance is the kingdom of God. Information technology is no coincidence that after calling God 'Male parent', nosotros immediate pray 'May your kingdom come'. The same is true with language of sonship; men and women in Christ are all 'sons' in the sense that we all stand up to inherit the kingdom, since in the first century it was sons who inherited. (This is a nice case of how gendered metaphors can even deconstruct their gendered expression.)
But there is something more central most the metaphors in Scripture, and this is where I would office visitor with Kate'due south approach. At ane level I would agree that 'our language is inadequate'—and yet information technology is through our linguistic communication that God has chosen to limited the truth about who God is. So it might not be platonic, only God has said it is enough. Yet it is only plenty if we recognise its limits. The use of metaphor to describe God is a distinctive feature of Christian theology, since metaphor constantly says to us that this linguistic communication can communicate—simply don't think that by doing so, y'all accept mastered God.
I was recently at a conference which focussed on the Greek first century context of the New Testament, and the first paper exploring the language of revelation in the Greek One-time Testament (the Septuagint), in Philo the Jewish philosopher, and in Greek religious texts. What was hit was the departure in language used virtually God'south cocky-revelation. In the other traditions, the gods could be 'seen' by people—but in the OT at that place was a distinctive restriction of expressed, where God 'manifested' himself. When we come across God's revelation of himself, there is genuine advice and connection, merely God never becomes the object of our experience in the way that the world around the states does.
There is a parallel here betwixt the God'southward revelation of himself in Scripture and God'south revelation of himself in Jesus (which Peter Enns has written virtually inInspiration and Incarnation). Human frailty might exist inadequate to express the truth near God, but in both cases this is what God has chosen to reveal himself. If nosotros think the linguistic communication of God as 'father' is inadequate and needs to be replaced, and so we are suggesting that Jesus was not merely located in first century Jewish culture, but likewise trapped in its inadequacies.
Christianity uses metaphors because it makes the unique merits that God is both beyond man comprehension and yet somehow makes himself comprehendible. Using specific, historically conditioned metaphors is a central part of that, and we tinker with them at our peril.
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