Archive: Why Masculine Terms?

by Elizabeth Achtemeier

More pressing for the feminists is the question of why God reveals himself only in masculine terms. Elaine Pagels is quite correct when she states that “the absence of feminine symbolism of God marks Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in striking contrast to the world’s other religious traditions.” But why could a personal God not have revealed himself in feminine metaphors instead? God is never called “Mother” in the Bible and is never addressed or thought of as a female deity.

The feminist argument is that the names for God in the Bible have been determined by the patriarchal cultures out of which the Bible arose, but that argument founders on the revelation in Jesus Christ, as we have seen. No, the Bible’s language for God is masculine, a unique revelation of God in the world.

The basic reason for that designation of God is that the God of the Bible will not let himself be identified with his creation, and therefore human beings are to worship not the creation but the Creator (cf. Rom.1:25). It is precisely the introduction of female language for God that opens the door to such identification of God with the world. If God is portrayed in feminine language, the figures of carrying in the womb, of giving birth, and of suckling immediately come into play. We can never rightly understand ourselves and our place in the universe, the Bible tells us, until we realize that we are not gods and goddesses. Rather, we are creatures, wondrously and lovingly made by a sovereign Creator.

The God of the Judeo-Christian biblical faith is a holy God, the almighty Creator and Lord, totally other than everything and everyone he has made. We therefore cannot know and worship him unless he reveals himself to us. But with a love surpassing human understanding, he has revealed himself to us as the Holy One of Israel, who delivered her out of the house of bondage, and as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In that revelation, now mediated for us through the Scriptures, he has offered to adopt us as his beloved children (cf. John 1:12; Gal.4:4-7), to allow us to call him Father, Abba (cf. Rom.8:14-17), and to know him as his Son Jesus Christ knows him.

Elizabeth Achtemeier is Adjunct Professor of Bible and Homiletics at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. This is excerpted from, “Exchanging God for ‘No Gods’: A Discussion of Female Language for God,” in Speaking the Christian God (Eerdmans 1992), edited by Alvin F. Kimel, Jr.

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