Discussion

Prompt

Until very recently,  the Christian faith has used almost exclusively male attributes to describe God.  A number of religous scholars have suggested that all description of the divine is founded on root metaphors, since as human beings we are limited to finite language.  This has led many to explore how female attributes and descriptions might serve to give insight into religious beliefs and practices.  Discuss what you see as the strengths and limits of the proposal to employ female metaphors to describe God.  Again post one 250-300 word statement and respond in 100-200 words to two other posts. Be careful to address positions and not the character of students posting responses that differ with your own.

My Post:  God is Not Feminine

It is a very horrible thing to refer to God as a woman.
The first reason is that God himself describes himself with masculine language. Should we describe God as feminine, we reject God's own words about himself and substitute our own idea of him. We can only understand God as how he has already revealed himself in the scriptures of the Christian Bible. If we reject that revelation, we exchange knowledge of the true God for an image made by our own minds.
However, when God describes himself with masculine language, he does so purposefully. When he created man as male and female, God crafted them so that their relationship in marriage would illustrate qualities about Christ. In the marriage relationship, the man is leader and protector of his wife, and the woman responds to her husband's leadership. Often God describes Christ as being husband to his church, where the Christian church (as a collective whole) is his bride. In our earthly marriages, God shows us a relationship that is completely unique and different from all other human relationships. From the experiences inside our own marriages, we start from the picture we have before our eyes as we look to understanding the depth and power of the love of Christ for his beloved church. (To see this illustration in Biblical texts, see Ezekiel 16, Ephesians 5:22-33, and Revelations 21:9-10. Note that there are far more texts in the Bible than just these.)
Would we describe God as being female, we would ascribe feminine qualities to him. We would claim that God was someone who needed protection, someone who lacked the male's strength in compassion, and someone who was made to support someone else. He is none of these. God has all power in the universe, needing no protection. He is perfect in compassion, caring for those in need. And he is the most worthy, the one whom we support.
God uses masculine language to describe himself because he designed human masculinity to echo the love of Christ as a husband. If we assume feminine language to describe God, we do more than reject his revelation to us; we proclaim God a liar, as if we know him better than he does himself.

Post by Laeci Turk

I believe that the use of female metaphors to describe God would be initially jarring and off-putting to some, but would ultimately make God more accessible to all and would further the acceptance of women in the Christian church.
The Christian Bible was written in a time period of patriarchy where males were clearly in the dominant role. To use female metaphors to describe God would not further the Christian faith, because no one at that time could accept a female in a position of power. Contextually, in such a hostile environment against women it is telling that there are any feminine metaphors to describe God at all. In Genesis God is a loving creator, typically a female role (and in Isaiah 42:14 God is actually depicted as a woman giving birth.) God is depicted as a mother hen sheltering her chicks under her wings (Ruth 2:12, Matthew 23:37, several times in Psalms) and even a mother bear (Hosea 13:8). In Isaiah God is depicted as a human mother (Isaiah 49:15, 66:13.)
Ultimately, God is described in the Bible in finite language, when in fact God is infinite. God is neither male nor female because God is not human. God is God, but as humans that is incomprehensible, so he is described in metaphor to help us understand, and in ways that specifically people at the time could understand (in other words, patriarchal language.) I fear that our inability to think of God in terms other than masculine (despite these terms appearing in the Bible) is rooted in patriarchy – women are inferior and we don’t want God to be inferior – but I hope it is due to tradition instead. Regardless, if we only see God in traditional male gender roles we are only seeing part of who he really is.

My comment to Laeci

Laeci--
Don't you see something broken in what you're saying?  It's like you're taking these illustrations and binding God by them, taking created things and saying that we can only understand God by them.
When Jesus speaks, in Matthew 23:37-39, he says this:
“How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!  See, your house is left desolate.  For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.' ”
You're not supposed to say, “God is a female chicken.”  You're supposed to hear God weeping over his own people.  You're supposed to see the image of the hen, but afterward look straight at God.  And by the holy spirit you see him as he is, compassionate and heartbroken over his own people.  He is fully compassionate and fully loving without setting aside himself or describing himself as feminine.  Jesus himself speaks and describes himself with this illustration of a mother hen, but he speaks as a man.  He doesn't try to make himself feminine.
Just as much, I can't see God as being bound by the patriarchal society of his people.  He was in control of his society.  If he didn't want the patriarchy, he didn't have to make it that way.  When God speaks about himself as masculine, his people understood that their men were appointed as leaders by God to be leaders in the pattern of God.
God is bigger than anyone will ever be able to fully grasp, but we still understand him by the revelation he has given to us.  Hebrews 1:2-3 - “but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.  He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.”  Jesus Christ is the full revelation of the majesty of God the father.  By the holy spirit we see God clearly, without metaphor as he really is.
From how you speak, you sound as if you've been hurt by men.  I want to apologize for the hurt you've felt.  God made men to protect women, and it sounds like the men in your life have not lived up to that.  I'm sorry.  God made men to be protectors and leaders, but women are not inferior because they need to be protected or led.
--Kevin