On July 13, 2018, Nickelodeon actress turned pop singer, Ariana Grande, released a hit single track titled “God Is a Woman”. Now, her song is by no means a statement of theology, her point is more about the God-like power of feminine sexuality. But in an era of overdetermined pop narratives, this intertwining of sexuality and spirituality speaks to the larger socio-cultural and even political issues of our time, concerning gender, identity, sexual liberation, freedom, empowerment and so on
On July 13, 2018, Nickelodeon actress turned pop singer, Ariana Grande, released a hit single track titled “God Is a Woman”. Now, her song is by no means a statement of theology, her point is more about the God-like power of feminine sexuality. But in an era of overdetermined pop narratives, this intertwining of sexuality and spirituality speaks to the larger socio-cultural and even political issues of our time, concerning gender, identity, sexual liberation, freedom, empowerment and so on.
And I say all of that, not to downplay the significance of this question, Why do Christians refer to God as ‘male’? Simply, I think it’s important to recognise that, until very recently, despite the odd suggestion here and there, referring to God in the masculine has not been a very contentious issue.
Of course, Ariana Grande is not the only one getting our attention here. In 2015 a group of female bishops within the Church of England campaigned for more “expansive language and imagery about God” that would encompass feminine pronouns. And we’ve seen instances of such views in even the arts, with the 2007 book and 2017 film, “The Shack”, wherein God is depicted as a female. In 2016 the NY Times ran an opinion piece titled “Is God Transgender?” where New Work Rabbi Mark Sameth contends that the Hebrew Bible offers a highly elastic view of gender which might suggests in God Himself, we have cues of gender fluidity. Or more recently, US artist Harmonia Rosales painted a version of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, reimagining both God and the first man as black women. Her reason, in her own words, was, quote, “I made it a black woman because there are so many images as white male figures in power.”
So, in our day and age of gender equality, why do some Christians persist in referring to God as ‘male’?
In response, I want to sketch three panels of thought that lend towards an answer.
God Has No Gender
There’s an important distinction to be made right up front between the divine nature of God, His inner Triune life from all eternity, if you will, and the way in which you and I, non-divine, human mortal creatures, know or understand that divine nature.
The Bible, God’s own revealed word, tells us: “God is spirit” John 4:24. “Male” and “female” are biological words, and bios is constitutes created reality which God necessarily transcends if He is to be understood as the Creator, the creator of male and female and all such physical marks of chromosomes, genitals, hormones, and the like notwithstanding – Genesis 1:27.
Now, we’ll get to the incarnation of God as a male Jewish human being named Jesus, shortly, but sufficed to say here, the gender of Jesus is something that belongs to his human nature, which mustn’t be confused with his divine nature. Jesus’ masculinity is no more evidence of God’s gender than Jesus’ humanity is evidence of God’s mortality.
So, God is neither male nor female nor anything in between. His divine nature utterly transcends gender, but that is not the same as God being ‘transgender’, as that would presuppose gender or biological categories for Him to overcome or cross over. To be God is to utterly transcend all senses of creatureliness and physical or biological classifications of space, time and other such limitations, such that to insist a cis- or trans-gender upon God is a theological confusion; a confusion that is, according to the Apostle Paul, a form of idolatry. As he writes in Romans 1:25 to worship and serve created things, like gendered god, is to exchange the truth about God for a lie.
But with all of that said, it is certainly the case that the Bible – again, God’s own revealed word to us – consistently refers to God in the masculine. So, on the one hand, we say the divine nature of God is genderless, because He’s not a created thing – but on the other hand, the Bible refers to God in the masculine. Why?
The Hebrew Language is Gendered
Today, the idea of gender binary language is a contended one, which is why we have an ever-growing list of pronouns for how individuals wish to be identified. But when it comes to, say, the English language more specifically, there are generally three ways to ascribe gender to nouns:
- Masculine (him) as in ‘husband’,
- Feminine (her) as in ‘wife’, and
- neuter (it) as in ‘child’.
These are the three options we have in English. But not all languages are like English. Hebrew, for example, which is the language of the Old Testament where we are first introduced to the Jude-Christian God, always ascribes gender to a noun. The neuter ‘it’ is not an option, so there has to be a choice between ‘him’ or ‘her’. And I suspect if the feminine was chosen instead of the masculine, this question would still arise, but reversed: Why do Christians refer to God as ‘female’?
Now, depending on how you view the Bible – either the Hebrew authors selected the masculine pronouns, or God Himself inspired the authors to refer to Him in the masculine, as 2 Timothy 3:16 would have us to believe.
In other words, while God has no gender, He reveals Himself to us in such a way that we can understand Him, namely in gendered language, which is to say, He accommodates to the constraints of human language.
This might be a little confusing, but, well theology can be complex subject. Speaking of the relationship between how we know ourselves and how we know God, John Calvin puts it like this:
“Without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God… our feeling of ignorance, vanity, want, weakness, in short, depravity and corruption, reminds us, (see Calvin on John 4: 10,) that in the Lord, and none but He, dwell the true light of wisdom, solid virtue, exuberant goodness. We are accordingly urged by our own evil things to consider the good things of God… On the other hand, it is evident that man never attains to a true self-knowledge until he have previously contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation to look into himself.”
Summing up the section, he writes:
“… though the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves are bound together by a mutual tie, due arrangement requires that we treat of the former in the first place, and then descend to the latter.”
In other words, from our place as creatures contemplating the Creator, there is a mutual interaction in our knowledge of God as Divine (i.e., without Gender) and our knowledge of ourselves as human beings (ie, as gendered creatures).
After all, Genesis 1 tells us that humans are made in God’s image, not the other way around, so it follows that human knowledge of God begins with human categories of thought.
By the way, gender is not the only way we see this in Scripture. All sorts of analogies are used: God has eyes, wings, cattle on a thousand hills; even the adjectives which apply to God, such as loving, good, wrathful, patient, just, and so on. These are all ways to help us, human beings, begin to make sense of our commonality with God, but none of them should be taken in exactly the same sense in which we understand them as human beings. The imperfect, finite love I have for my son, for example, may be said to be something ‘like’ or analogous to God’s love of me in sending Jesus (John 3:16, John 17:24), but it is categorically not the same as God’s infinite love. God’s love is the perfection of my love towards my son; the fatherhood of God is the perfection of my being a father to my son. God is how I know what true love is, what true fathering consists of.
So, first, God has no gender. But second, the Hebrew language is gendered and so we can now, at least I hope, understand or appreciate that the God’s introduction to us in the Old Testament in the masculine reflects a limitation of language.
But appreciating all of that, the question still stands: Why do Christians refer to God as ‘male’? We, at least here in Australia, don’t speak ancient Hebrew, and we live in the 21st century acknowledging male and female equality, so shouldn’t we consider, in the least, neutral terminology, lest we cause offense?
This leads to a third and final consideration
We Cannot Improve Upon God’s Self-Revelation
With everything we have considered, it remains that God chose to reveal Himself in the masculine. We can reject that, of course, but at that point the issue is not so much ‘Why Christians refer to God as a male’ it is rather the nature and authority of the Bible as it informs us about who God is. We either take Him at His word, or we do not.
Incidentally, if we do not – if we think it is inappropriate for God to self-identify as a male, then I think we need to be ready to answer the charge that we may be guilty of the complaint we are making, by forcing the neuter onto God denying Him the right for to self-identify in human language as a ‘He’. That to me, seems a contradiction.
What is more, it seems to read in a competing sense of male and female equality that the Bible, itself, rejects. Human history is replete with inequality between the sexes to be sure, and so there have been many welcomed social reforms – and hopefully many more to come. But when we read the Scriptures, we read that, from the very beginning, the sexes are equal image bearers of God. That means that masculinity and femininity complement one another; together, males and females constituting ‘human beings’ reflect what it is to be ‘made in the image of God.’
And we see this complementarity right throughout the Scriptures.
On the one hand God is consistently referenced by masculine pronouns, such as:
- ‘Father’ instead of ‘Mother’
- ‘Son of God’ and ‘Son of Man’ instead of ‘Daughter of God’ and ‘Daughter of Woman’
- ‘King’ instead of ‘Queen’,
- ‘Priest’ instead of ‘Priestess’,
- ‘Husband’ and ‘Bridegroom’ of the Church instead of ‘Wife’ and ‘Bride,’ and so on.
But on the other, He is also depicted with distinctively feminine imagery:
- Throughout Isaiah, God is likened to a “woman in labor” (42:14), a woman nursing her child (49:15)
- In Hosea He is likened to a mother bear protecting her cubs (13:8),
- Numbers 11:12, Deuteronomy 32:18 God uses pregnant language,
- Deuteronomy 32:11, God is likened to an eagle feathering her nest.
- Matthew 23:37, Jesus likens Himself to a mother hen gathering her chicks
And we could go on with citing Scriptures… Interestingly, while it’s not mentioned in the Bible specifically, the word “shekinah” which refers to the dwelling or settling of the divine presence of God throughout rabbinic literature, happens to be a feminine Hebrew word, commonly associated with the concept of the Holy Spirit in Judaism.
The point is: God has chosen to reveal Himself in masculine pronouns, but the various masculine and feminine descriptions of God in Scripture makes clear what we said from the outset, namely that God transcends the creaturely, biological categories of gender. Indeed, the two modalities of feminine and masculine come together ultimately, in the metaphor of marriage where the two become one in God. The Christian life is like a marriage relation with a male and a distinct female equal together as one flesh. This is what the apostle Paul means when he writes, Galatians 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus…” He’s not eliminating distinctives, but inequalities.
So, we cannot improve upon God’s self-revelation by fixing the pronouns to our contemporary sensibilities which are, themselves, the product of a broken non-Biblical view of masculinity and femininity.
But, look… I get it, I truly do understand that for some, masculine language can be difficult… those who have been abuse by males, say a Father, can find the idea of God as a male ‘Father’ figure uncomfortable… And yet, Scripture, if it is to be God’s word and not our own, needs to stand as it is without importation of our real broken experiences and broken views of masculinity. Indeed, the very acknowledgement of hurt at the hand of a Father is realisation that masculinity in that parental context is not the way it ‘should’ be. God is the paradigm for who a Father is to be… and that offers the person who has had bad experiences with their biological fathers a hope in that, even the fatherless can say they have a daddy.
And, at this point, let me come back to a passing comment I made earlier about the incarnation of Jesus.
The Bible tells us in various places that God is known throughout creation and, more specifically, in His word, the Bible. And in these contexts, He accommodates Himself, whether that be to the beauty of a sunset, or the Hebrew words in the Old Testament.
But above all else, God has revealed Himself in the person of Jesus Christ. And that, too, is an accommodation – not to the constraints of language – but to the constraints of human flesh and blood. And Hebrews chapter 2 tells us why: “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery…” (Hebrews 2:14-15)
So, coming as a person with a purpose to redeem humanity from the curse of death to live everlasting, Jesus had to be gendered – I mean, there is something deeply impersonal about neuter pronouns. You know, if we’re chatting and I said to you in reference to my wife ‘look over there at it’ there’s something inherently depersonalising about that. To refer to my wife as a ‘she’ or ‘her’ is to ascribe to her something MORE than femininity… it’s to ascribe personality, and all of the value, dignity and worth that comes with it.
So, the fact that the incarnation is not non-binary is a good thing for humanity. Jesus is a God-man not a God-woman, and yet as a man He radically challenges the patriarchal stereotypes of brawny, controlling, domineering, authoritative masculinity we know today.
“The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Matt. 20:28). This Jesus subverts our assumptions of what it is to be male by being the King of the universe enthroned on a cross and wearing a crown of thorns. This is a deeply personal, loving revelation of God that no ‘it’ could ever display.
The Bible tells us that all men and women are made equal in God’s likeness… But God chose to reveal Himself to humanity uniquely as a man in Jesus which does not imply inequality between the sexes any more than Israel implies inequality between the nations… nevertheless, the distinction of Jesus as a man is not insignificant… By becoming human and uniting us to Himself, God didn’t just save our sins… He relates to us now as a husband to a wife… He fulfills gender and reveals its true meaning such that the categories of “man” and “woman” end up, in the final analysis, being all about Him… And that takes us right back to the beginning, where we see human beings created “male” and “female” in the image and likeness of God.
You see? As a man, Jesus not only reveals what it is to be God in the image of a human being, He not only redeems what it is to be a human being made in the image and likeness of God, He furthermore relates to us like a husband to a wife in a marriage covenant, the most intimate and personal and secure kind of relationship known to humanity.
So, I cannot see how the degenderfication of language is a helpful step… because it rejects the very way God has chosen to reveal, redeem and relate to us in Jesus Christ.
To Sum Up…
Why do Christians refer to God as ‘male’? We’ve considered that God has no gender, yet the Hebrew language is gendered and therefore, at the end of the day, if God’s word is God’s word, and He has chosen to reveal Himself in masculine terms, then we need to leave it to stand as it is, because we cannot improve upon God’s self-revelation which serves as the very loving, secure covenantal basis of our relationship to Him.
