Unit 1 Theme 2

Question 1

Arguments for God as Male.

Answer 1

• Bible uses male nouns and pronouns to describe God: ‘he’, ‘father’, ‘king’, ‘Lord’.
• Holy Spirit is also referred to as ‘he’. Christians believe that Jesus was the ‘Son of God’ and existed prior to the incarnation. - has contributed to the view God is Male.
• Judaism - Many prayers of thanksgiving begin ‘Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe’
• Tradition of Christian worship is permeated with male imagery in relation to God.

Question 2

Arguments against God as male.

Answer 2

• Bible contains feminine imagery for God: Isaiah 66:13 describes God offering comfort as a mother to a child.
• The personification of God’s wisdom in the book of proverbs is a feminine noun - Sophia.
• Jesus taught ‘God is spirit’ (John 4:24) and Paul said that God is ‘neither male nor female’ (Galatians 3:28).
• Genesis implies that ‘God’ includes both genders (or is beyond gender), since to create a being in God’s image required that both male and female be created.

Question 3

Is God male?

Answer 3

Original languages of the Bible consistently speak of God as the ‘Father’. God is likened to a human father. He provides for his children, disciplines and loves them. - this doesn’t mean that he is male however - a metaphor - God exists in a form that defies male and female. - just the language that is used.

Question 4

Sallie McFague.

Answer 4

• An American feminist Christian theologian, best known for her analysis of how metaphor lies at the heart of how we may speak about God.
• She believes that Christianity has been dominated by images of God that are triumphalist, monarchical and patriarchal.
• This has bred passivity in relation to social and ecological injustice in the world. When one looks at the Christian tradition, there are images of God as mother, lover and friend present, but these are often neglected and/or repressed. - Yet these metaphors are related in powerful ways to Christian notions of love (Agape, Eros and Philea) and these metaphors illuminate the possibility of understanding God in an inclusive and non-hierarchical way.

Question 5

Key quotes from Sallie Mcfague

Answer 5

• ‘Kings do not have to, and usually do not, love their subjects or realms; at most, one hopes they will be benevolent’
• ‘All of us, female or male, have the womb as our first home, all of us are born from bodies of ur mothers, all of us are fed by our mothers. What better imagery could there be for expressing the most basic reality of existence: that we live and move and have our being in God?’