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Names for God
Mother’s Day makes me think about God’s maternal side. Christianity was born and came to maturity in a highly patriarchal part of human history. This subjective view conceived God as masculine, e.g. God as Father or King, and conformed to the social constructs of the time. Yet the Bible itself doesn’t refer to God exclusively in masculine metaphors.
There are, albeit few, feminine metaphors used to describe God in the Bible.
“A metaphor is a figure of speech that is odd, literally off-the-mark, and yet
surprisingly more truthful than we thought words could be. Metaphor is multi-layered.
It takes time (to take root). Not all will see the same thing in metaphor, nor at the
same speed. To talk about God we need many metaphors, for no comparisons
available to human speech are (fully) accurate enough …”
Gail Ramshaw, How Shall We Refer to God in Sunday Worship, Open Questions in Worship, Augsburg Fortress 1996.
Mother’s Day is an appropriate occasion to remind ourselves of the biblical maternal images for God to help us see further truths about God. People described God in feminine terms, not
because God is actually a woman, but because feminine or maternal traits say something true about God and about their experience with God. Just as do the masculine and paternal images for God. We must not confuse these metaphors with God’s reality.
Of all the prophets, Isaiah seems to be the fondest in painting God as an actual human mother as these three verses attest: “But now, like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant.” (Isa. 42:14). “As a mother comforts her child, so will I [God] comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem.” (Isa. 66:13) “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I [God] will not forget you!” (Isa. 49:15)
These verses and the metaphors they employ are some of the church’s favorite verses on the assurance of forgiveness in a worship service. They are compassionate and faithful portrayals of God that remind the congregation that God is beyond gender; the gender pronouns are simply metaphors to help us understand God - who is always beyond our full understanding. Language about God should help us to understand and describe our encounter of God, not confuse the reality of God by the limitation of our language.
There are many Christians who are uneasy with using feminine images for God. But using
female metaphors for God is not a radical innovation as the biblical passages above show. It is also part of early Christian history. In the second century Clement of Alexandria mixed his
metaphors in his description of Christians nursing at the breast of God the Father. In medieval times, the mystic Meister Eckhart described God’s activity as God eternally giving birth lying on a maternity bed.
It is true, however, that despite these maternal images, the Bible never uses the feminine
gender for God and never called God “mother”. In an ancient patriarchal culture, it’s not
surprising the Hebrews used masculine pronouns for God. But I don’t think it was to suggest
that God has a masculine gender. Perhaps the ancient Hebrews never called God “Mother” was that “they reacted against the allurement of the Mother Goddess cult which was prevalent among neighboring peoples in the day. Unlike modern-day innovations, the ancient Mother Goddess cult was not about empowering or glorifying women but rather about the divinity of Nature. Mother Earth worshiped as Mother Goddess.
The Old Testament’s refusal to call God “mother” wasn’t a misogynist act but an attempt to
emphasize God’s transcendence over nature. Neither was calling God “father” a glorification of human males. Rather, the Hebrew Bible consistently merged the images and metaphors of the fatherly God with motherly compassion and love.
Mothering thus, is a heavenly trait! Happy Mother’s Day to each of you.
Shalom.
Pr. Mark
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