Theology Matters A Publication of Presbyterians for Faith, Family and Ministry Vol 12 No 3 • May/Jun 2006 The Trinity paper to this year’s General Assembly raised the issue again of whether it is appropriate to use inclusive God-language rather than Father, Son and Holy Spirit when addressing God. These articles will be helpful to you in that on-going discussion of whether we can use other names for God including female names. Exchanging God for “No Gods”: A Discussion of Female Language for God By Elizabeth Achtemeier Reprinted by permission from Speaking the Christian God, edited by Alvin F. Kimel, Jr., Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., copyright 1992. All rights reserved. This was also printed in Theology Matters in Jan/Feb, 1995. No aspect of the feminist movement has affected the clergy fathers over laity, males over females, husbands church’s life more basically than has that movement’s over wives and children, man over the created world.”3 attempts to change the language used in speaking to or Such a hierarchical worldview must be abolished, say the about God. Beginning with the introduction of the first feminists, and one way to do that is by changing our volume of the National Council of Churches’ An Inclusive language. Language Lectionary1 in 1983, inclusive language has steadily made its way into the Scriptures, prayers, liturgies, There can be no doubt that in many respects the women hymns, and publications of the mainline churches, largely have a just cause. They have suffered discrimination in the through the instrumentality of those churches’ church for centuries. They have been denied leadership denominational headquarters and often to the dismay of roles and respect for their learning and persons. They have the laity in the pews. even been labeled by fundamentalist Southern Baptists as the source of sin in the world. They have been denied The argument of the feminists is that women have been ordination by the Roman Catholic Church because they do oppressed in the church since the second century and that not biologically “resemble Christ.” That discrimination the language of the church has fostered that oppression. continues today, with the Bible misused as its instrument. For example, by the use of generic terms such as man and mankind, males have come to be seen as the definition of There also can be no doubt that such discrimination is a what it means to be human. And by the use of masculine corruption and fundamental denial of the Christian gospel. titles and pronouns for God, maleness has been The Scriptures clearly proclaim that both female and male absolutized and males thereby given the right to rule over are made in the image of God (Gen. 1:27), that females. “Since God is male,” Mary Daly says, “the male is God.”2 Therefore, claims Anne E. Carr, “God as father Table of Contents rules over the world, holy fathers rule over the church, Exchanging God for “No Gods” ………………. p.1 Elizabeth Achtemeier, now deceased, was adjunct The God Who Likes His Name………………… p.8 professor of Bible and Homiletics at Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, VA. Presbyterians for Faith, Family and Ministry Page 1 husband and wife are to join flesh in a marital union of while Rita Gross uses God-She.9 Others apply feminine mutual helpfulness (Gen. 2:18), that the ancient enmity usage only to the Holy Spirit or avoid the problem between the sexes and the subordination of women are a altogether by using impersonal terms for God such as result of human sin (Gen. 3), that such sinful enmity and Wisdom, Glory, Holy One, Rock. Fire, and First and Last, subordination have been overcome by the death and or neuter terms like Liberator, Maker, Defender, Friend, resurrection of Jesus Christ (Gal. 3:28), and that all and Nurturer. Jesus is described as a male only in his women and men alike are called to equal discipleship in earthly life, while he becomes Liberator, Redeemer, and the service of their risen Lord. The Scriptures further show Savior in his representation of the new humanity.10 that our Lord consistently treated women as equals and that the New Testament churches could have women as Those who employ such changes in the biblical usage try their leaders. Thus, when one encounters those few to justify them by pointing to female imagery for God in instances in the New Testament in which women are made the Bible or by claiming that the Catholic cult of Mary subject to the rule of men, as in 1 Corinthians 14, two of furnishes a tradition of female language and imagery in the Pastoral Letters, and the household codes, one must speaking of the divine. “If we do not mean that God is apply the Reformation’s principle of letting the Scriptures male when we use masculine pronouns and imagery,” asks interpret the Scripture. If that is done, it becomes clear that Rita Gross, “then why should there be any objections to the subordination of women was historically limited to using female imagery and pronouns as well?” She specific situations within some of the early house continues, “Female God language compels us to overcome churches, and that the gospel of Jesus Christ is a ringing the idolatrous equation of God with androcentric notions proclamation of freedom under God, for both females and of humanity in a way that no other linguistic device can.”11 males. For the church to claim or act otherwise is a denial of its gospel. Many things need to be said in reply. First, it is universally recognized by biblical scholars that the God of the Bible It therefore seems only fair for the feminists in the church has no sexuality. Sexuality is a structure of creation (cf. to ask that the church’s language about human beings be Gen. 1-2), confined within the limits of the creation (cf. changed to include them, so that males no longer define Matt. 22:30), and the God of the Bible is consistently humanity. The new 1990 edition of the Revised Standard pictured as totally other than all creation. This is what the Version of the Bible has acceded to that request, and in it, Bible means when it says that God is “holy”—he is “set generic English terms have been changed to reflect the apart,” totally other than anything he has made. “I am God meaning of the original texts. For example, John 12:32 and not man, the Holy One in your midst,” he says in now reads, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will Hosea (11:9); “The Egyptians are men, and not God; and draw all people [rather than ‘men’] to myself.” their horses are flesh, and not spirit” is Isaiah’s word (31:3). “To whom then will you liken God, or what There is, however, a great difference between feminism as likeness compare with him?” asks the Second Isaiah fairness and feminism as ideology, as Richard John (40:18). Thus, by insisting on female language for God, Neuhaus has cogently pointed out,4 and it is in relation to the feminists simply continue to emphasize the nonbiblical language about God that the feminists are most radically view that God does indeed have sexuality. In fact, some of ideological. By attempting to change the biblical language them have misused the biblical concept of the imago dei to used of the deity, the feminists have in reality exchanged say that God must be female as well as male, since both the true God for those deities which are “no gods,” as sexes are made in God’s image (Gen. 1:27). That is a total Jeremiah would put it (2:11). distortion of the biblical understanding of God, who is without sexual characteristics. The feminist claim is that all language about God is analogical and metaphorical, and that therefore it can be Second, as Roland Frye has amply demonstrated,12 the changed at will to overcome the church’s patriarchalism few instances of feminine imagery for God in the Bible all and to foster women’s liberation. Principally, therefore, take the form of a simile and not of a metaphor, and that the feminists seek to eliminate all masculine terminology distinction is crucial. A simile compares one aspect of used of God, either by supplementing it with feminine something to another. For example, in Isaiah 42:14, God terminology or by using neuter or female images for the will “cry out like a woman in travail,” but only his crying deity exclusively. out is being referred to; he is not being identified as a whole with the figure of a woman in childbirth. In In speaking of God and Christ, some simply use “she” and metaphors, on the other hand, identity between the subject “her.”5 For the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the thing compared to it is assumed. God is Father, or others substitute Creator, Liberator, and Comforter,6 and Jesus is the Good Shepherd, or God is King. Thus the they avoid the excessive use of terms such as Father, metaphor “carries a word or phrase far beyond its ordinary King, and Master by often substituting Yahweh or God or lexical meaning so as to provide a fuller and more direct Abba.7 In An Inclusive Language Lectionary, the Bible’s understanding of the subject.”13 Language is stretched to use of Father is changed to Father (and Mother), Lord to its limit, beyond ordinary usage, to provide new Sovereign, King to Ruler or Monarch, Son of Man to understanding.