The Nature of God Flashcards
How do original languages of the Bible speak of God?
They refer to God by the masculine personal pronoun ‘he’.
What is God likened to and why?
A human father because he provides for, disciplines and loves his children.
What does God exist as?
A form that defies male and female categories.
What is Jesus spoken as in the Bible?
‘The Son of God’ and ‘The Son of Man’.
What does God’s fatherhood convey?
- God as Creator of the World
2. The relationship between God and Jesus
Isaiah 66:13
God is described as a comforting mother
John 4:24
‘God is Spirit’
Who is Sallie McFague?
An American theologian born in 1933 who writes from an ecofeminist perspective.
What book did Sallie McFague write in 1982?
Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language
What’s the issue with metaphors?
- We end up worshipping the metaphor rather than God.
2. Metaphors become outdated with time
What does the metaphor of God as woman show?
The image of ‘mother’ highlights certain characteristics of God (such as love for the world).
God as Mother
- Corresponds to the traditional title ‘Father’
- The Doctrine of Creation
- The ethical element of justice
- Agape love (the type of love God has for the world)
God as Lover
- Corresponds to the traditional title ‘Son’
- The Doctrine of Salvation
- The ethical element of healing
- Eros love (the way in which God’s love works in the world)
God as Friend
- Corresponds to the traditional title ‘Holy Spirit’
- The Doctrine of eschatology
- The ethical element of companionship
- Philia love (the way in which humans should interact with the world)
What has God’s masculine language led to?
Abuse of the natural world
The domination of women by men
Panentheism
To harm nature is to harm God
Why is it important that God should be imagined in female, not feminine terms?
‘The first refers to gender while the second refers to qualities conventionally associated with women’
Issues with McFagues suggestion?
Jesus refers to God as ‘Father’, if we can’t trust him on this fundamental point, how can we trust him at all?
Impassability
Having no human feelings
Immutability
Unchangeable
Who is Jurgen Moltmann?
A German theologian born in 1926 who argued that God suffers with humanity
What’s the name of Jurgen’s 1972 book?
The Crucified God
What does Moltmann’s book attempt to do?
Answer Jesus’ cry from the cross, ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’
How does Moltmann use the story of a Jewish boy hanged by the Nazis?
God hung with the boy because God suffers with those who suffer.
What does Christian identification with Christ mean?
Solidarity with the poor, oppressed and alien
What did the Cross represent in the Middle Ages?
God was recognised in the suffering Christ. It shows God as suffering with the oppressed
What does the cross of Jesus mean for God himself?
Moltmann argues that the Crucified Jesus is God
Protest Atheism
Atheism based on the fact that the problem of evil and suffering destroys belief in a benevolent God
Docetism
The heresy that Jesus did not suffer on the cross because his body was not human
What could the cross be seen as?
The start of the divine process whereby the death of the Son and the grief of the Father led to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit
The validity of referring to God as ‘mother’
- It conveys God’s character and purpose for humankind
- Why are all characteristics of God seen as belonging to the male gender? (e.g. Abba)
- Father-Son bond between Jesus and God
- The Bible contains several female images of God
- The concept of God as mother has caused controversy for some
The theological implications of a suffering God
- It could be agued that impassibility is as much an attribute of God as his omniscience
- If God can suffer then he loses his transcendence and can’t therefore free humankind for sin and death
- The Old Testament often refers to God responding to event with anger or compassion
- Some argue that whilst God is able to feel emotion and pain, this doesn’t affect his impassibility
- God’s divine sympathy means that he must be emotionally involved with his creation
