Hi everyone,

I’m reading a book which tackles (among many other things) a feminist view of Christianity eg: that women should leave the Christian Church because God is Male, the Saviour is Male and all the Theologians and Thinkers of the Church are male.  One response from the writer is; modelling God on a human father is not to say he is male.  He argues that this accommodation in human thinking is not a literal representation of God.  He says that where feminists point out a male theologian who thinks that God is male (as a reason for women to leave the oppressive environment of Christianity), what the feminist is actually criticising is the individual theologians’ interpretation of scripture.

Don’t Christians believe God is the Father, God is the Son and God is the Holy Spirit or is this just my interpretation of His Word???

I’m really keen for your wisdom on this subject.

Sharon

If it is a mistake to call God ‘Father’, then Jesus was the first person to make such a mistake when he taught his disciples to pray ‘Our Father...’

It seems to me that one of the problems is that we think that calling God ‘Father’ is saying something about him being a man. But it’s actually the other way ‘round. A right understanding of what it means to be a man comes about because we know that God is a Father. Hope that makes sense!

and all the Theologians and Thinkers of the Church are male.

What about Stasi Eldridge? Oh wait…

Don’t Christians believe God is the Father, God is the Son and God is the Holy Spirit or is this just my interpretation of His Word???

I’m really keen for your wisdom on this subject.

Whether God is ontologically male I can’t answer. But I do know that the wonderful and deep metaphors of God being the bridegroom of Israel and the Church wouldn’t work if God wasn’t male. If God isn’t now the husband preparing a home for his wife, we can have no hope for heaven.

Sharon I wonder if discussing whether God is female or male is a bit like discussing what God was doing with himself before he created the universe?  This discussion is meaningless because God created time when he created the universe, similarly God created male and female “in His image” when he created the universe, so it is meaningless to attempt to assign gender to the uncreated Creator.

Quoting Gordon

A right understanding of what it means to be a man comes about because we know that God is a Father.

Can you elucidate on that point Gordon?

How does us knowing that God is “a Father” give us a right understanding of what it means to be a man?

Quoting Danni

But I do know that the wonderful and deep metaphors of God being the bridegroom of Israel and the Church wouldn’t work if God wasn’t male.

Dannii do you know what a metaphor is?

Yes…

Dannii I beg to differ.  If you really did understand metaphor then you’d know a metaphor does not rely on literal truth to make it “work” that’s the essence of metaphor.

The metaphor of God as the bridegroom does not rely on God being literally male any more than it does on the church or Israel being literally female. Most Christians would accept that the metaphor of God as a rock works but nobody would suggest that God is igneous, sedimentary or metamorphic.

It seems to me that God is neither male not female. Our language has limited how we refer to Him. God has the characteristics of both sexes.

ISA 66:13 As a mother comforts her child,
so will I comfort you;
and you will be comforted over Jerusalem.”

MT 22:37
I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings,

Those quotations show the female side of God. I am sure you can think of lots that show the male side of God.

I think somewhere there in the bible, a man is designated the role of leading the family.

For God to be a woman, would fly in the face of biblical logic.

But woman is equal to man. But she has different roles to do. One of them, is not to lead men.

Can anyone help a lazy Christian; and point to particular biblical passages to support this allegation?

Male and female are concepts that apply to humans, animals and plants but strictly speaking not to God I believe. God made Adam male - and he was somehow not complete : he needed a woman (as she needed him). However God is complete in himself.

I am happy to refer to God generally in male terms (eg he is my father) - yet I am also happy to accept to that he uses female terms to refer to himself as well as Ely mentioned above. God uses these male and female terms to explain himself to us in terms we can easily understand.

Following on from Ely and Derek’s helpful posts there is a Hymn that contains the following verse which I find helpful

Our God is not a woman
Our God is not a man
Our God is both and neither
Our God is I who am

the both and neither I take metaphorically to be referring to gender rather than to man/woman per se.

Dannii I beg to differ.  If you really did understand metaphor then you’d know a metaphor does not rely on literal truth to make it “work” that’s the essence of metaphor.

The metaphor of God as the bridegroom does not rely on God being literally male any more than it does on the church or Israel being literally female. Most Christians would accept that the metaphor of God as a rock works but nobody would suggest that God is igneous, sedimentary or metamorphic.

I don’t disagree. My point was more that for as much as we can understand God, which is through our relationship with him, in that relationship he must take the male role. Now if we could know and understand God through any other way I’m not sure speaking of him as having any gender would be appropriate. But we can’t, so it is.

I think the gender of God as per the Bible is just an accident of history. God “spoke” to moses"I am what I am” and that’s good enough for me . You can’t stop believers wanting to get closer to God . Artists draw painting, always an old bearded man. So long as you don’t worship the pictures or other personifications of God, it’s OK I suppose.
What else could the Bible scribes use to refer to God?  In that time and place the male was head of the house, main provider and protector. So man had a convient similarity.  Head of the house though is not head of the Universe.
Many societies before and after Christ had overt female leadership, reported to be due to the miracle of birth posessed by women. But at Christ’s time and place men ruled the roost, at least overtly. Moreover they were the scribes of the Bible.

From the Bible, it’s obvious that God has both male and female “traits” - not surprising, given that we are all created in his image.

However, on the question of how we should address God, through Jesus God has told us to call him “Father” (sorry, not terribly trinitarian). It would only seem polite to address him as he’s asked to be addressed. There may be deeper theological reasons than that, but as God is far wiser than me, I’ll trust his instructions on this one.

God made man first. God came in the form of man. God’s most celebrated characteristic as the Almighty (Pantocrator) is obviously masculine. I think that justifies talking about God as “He”, “Him”, “His”, “Father” etc.

Whilst I take the point that He does have what in *our society* considered to be feminine characteristics too, He never reveals Himself in any stretch of the imagination something that can be really ‘Female’.

But everyone pointed the obvious, that God just is. I suppose for there to be something identified as male, we must have female- for there is no point classing someone (gender/sex/race/...) or something, when there is nothing comparable to it.

Quoting Danii
My point was more that for as much as we can understand God, which is through our relationship with him, in that relationship he must take the male role. Now if we could know and understand God through any other way I’m not sure speaking of him as having any gender would be appropriate. But we can’t, so it is

Because our language is inadequate, I am quite comfortable with calling God Father and using masculine pronouns as a number of other people in this thread have pointed out, but we are veering into great heresy by assigning created gender “roles” to Him.

OUr relationship with GOd is a unique relationship and can not be encapsulated by one metaphor, if it could why did God put so many different images of Himself in the bible, some are inanimate such as a rock, others are masculine and a few are femnine.  It is to have a very incomplete picture of God to insist that we must relate to him in a gendered way and I think that to make the statement that our salvation or what you call our “hope for heaven” relies on Jesus being the bridegroom is quite simply entirely false.

Quoting Antony
God made man first .. suppose for there to be something identified as male, we must have female- for there is no point classing someone (gender/sex/race/...) or something, when there is nothing comparable to it/

Antony, are women created in the image of God?

Also as a slight aside, what is the signficance of man being created before woman, the animals were created before man, so it would seem if there was some sort of a hierachy in creation order then women would be higher than men, if there was a consistent logic.