The Gender of God : A Theological Analysis

In the modern world, the subject of the gender of God has become a serious question. No longer can the faithful pastor appeal to the masculine terms identifying God as Father and Son as proof that God is masculine. Indeed, God is spirit (John 4:24) and, therefore, transcends human sexual distinctions. The various masculine personal pronouns (i.e., he, him, his) do not necessarily prove that God is masculine, for God is masculine only if the antecedents are masculine.

Unless we understand what is being said in the theological community around us, we will be ill prepared to handle the question when and if it camps at our door. The question being asked today is this: Can God be conceived of in feminine as well as masculine terms? What is being asked is something that strikes at the very core of the Christian faith. For it raises anew questions about the nature of God and the Incarnation--doctrines which the early Church thought to be of such crucial importance that it formulated Nicene Theology and Chalcedonian Christology in order to protect itself from error.

C. S. Lewis believes that, when God is thought of in feminine as well as masculine terms, this amounts to heresy. He says: "Suppose . . . that we might just as well pray to "Our Mother which art in heaven" as to "Our Father." Suppose . . . that the Incarnation might just as well have taken a female as a male form, and the Second Person of the Trinity be as well called the Daughter as the Son. Suppose, finally, that the mystical marriage were reversed, that the church were the Bridegroom and Christ the Bride. . . ."

"Now it is surely the case that if all these supposals were ever carried into effect we should be embarked on a different religion." (1)

Paul Jewett, the foremost spokesman for the feminist position, disagrees. He argues that theologians have ignored the feminine imagery about God which abounds in the Bible. He has developed a theology of God in which he conceives of God in masculine and feminine terms. This is not to say that he conceives of God as literally male and female. For he affirms that God "transcends sexual distinctions."(2) He means that God is to be likened to both a father and a mother. Jewett advances this argument in the context of the ongoing debate concerning the ordination of women. And for him, the interest in developing the theology of God as masculine and feminine is to counter what he understands to be the pervasive notion that the ministerial office has been denied to women for the reason that God himself is masculine.(3)

The very fact that Jesus was male argues for God's exclusive masculinity. In order to avoid heresy, it is necessary to uphold the consubstantiality of Jesus with the Godhead. This being the case, the true deity must be analogically masculine and not feminine. Indeed, Scripture itself speaks of Jesus in consubstantial terms. Our Lord, for example, said, "I and the Father are one [hen]," (John 10:30), a clear reference to the unity of essence of the incarnate logos and the Godhead. Perhaps even more interesting is his statement to Philip: "He who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). These words imply consubstantiality. Certainly it would have been difficult for Philip to look at Jesus and conceive of the Father in anything but masculine terms! Most convincing also, is the assertion in Hebrews 1:3, that "the Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation [charakter] of his being" (NIV).

Jewett, of course, claims that the maleness of Jesus is not revelatory of God's masculinity. For him, Jesus' maleness was merely an historical accident: he could have been a female in a different culture. But Jewett ought to reconsider his argument. Not only is his Christology intrinsically heretical, but he ignores the fact that God himself chose the very culture and time in which his Son was to become incarnate.19 This latter point needs to be emphasized over against Jewett, for, since God chose the very culture that Jewett thinks determined Christ's maleness, then, when all is said and done, our Lord's maleness was divinely ordained from the beginning. If God were not exclusively masculine, he certainly should have chosen a different, more neutral culture for the Incarnation to take place, for example, Greek culture where androgyny would not have been offensive at all! This is the very least we should expect from a God who does not deceive and who cannot lie (Titus 1:2).

Reference : (1) C. S. Lewis, "Priestesses in the Church?" in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed, Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans , 1970; reprinted, 1982), p. 237.

(2) Paul K. Jewett, The Ordination of Women: An Essay on the Office of Christian Ministry (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1980), p. 43.

(3) Jewett, Ordination, p. 29.