After years of trying to have children, my wife and I finally found the longing of our hearts answered when we adopted our sons in 1994 and '98. Andrew and Elliot are not only the answers to our prayers, they are our sons, and we are their parents. So Mechelle and I are sensitive about using proper, appropriate terminology for the boys' birth parents. We've felt the sting of hearing careless terms like "his natural mother," or "his real father." Words carry meaning, and often with that meaning there is also emotional baggage.
I am sympathetic, therefore, with many of the underlying concerns of those who want to change our language for God. They rightly point out that many people have understandable difficulty thinking of God as Father, because of an abusive or negligent parent in their childhood. Others have argued that many women have had horrible experiences with men who have raped, abused, or oppressed them in some way. And it is shamefully true that human society (and the church!) through the centuries has had a history of denigrating women, and holding them down in discrimination and oppression. In light of this, many women have difficulty relating to a God designated by masculine names and pronouns.
On top of this, the church of Christ has historically been male-dominated, patriarchal, and systematically exclusive to women when it came to leadership positions and ordained ministry. Added to that was the absolutely inane argument that only a man can represent a male Jesus. As Scottish theologian James Torrance has written, "It took the church over eighteen hundred years to get rid of slavery, to recognize... that in Christ there is neither slave nor free. It is apparently taking two thousand years to recognize that in Christ there is neither male nor female and to give women their full equality with men."[1]
All of this has been based on a wrong-headed notion of the incarnation. We have been painfully slow to grasp the truth that the Son of God, in becoming human, did not sanctify maleness, but rather our common humanity, male and female. Further, we have forgotten the teaching of the creation narrative—when God created humanity in His image, "male and female He created them" (Gen. 1:27). We've largely ignored the fact that for the image of God in humanity to find its full expression, it must be expressed in both men and women, not men alone.
Regrettably, our theological chickens are coming home to roost, and we are now experiencing the considerable backlash of centuries of this shallow, faulty thinking on creation and the incarnation. In today's theological arena it has become quite fashionable to move away from traditional language for God, and use instead genderless variations to designate deity—all for the admitted purpose of not appearing sexist, chauvinist, or patriarchal. In some circles, age-old hymns and liturgies have been altered (some would say ruined), and preachers' vocabularies have undergone careful gender-purging. The trend has manifested itself most prominently in two ways, on which I like to offer a few comments.
The first manifestation is seen in those we might (with tongue firmly in cheek) call the Tee-totalers, those who completely abstain from the use of pronouns for God. Of course, the reason for this is that masculine or feminine pronouns ("he," "she") would imply gender, and seem sexist or patriarchal. And you obviously can't use "it" to speak for God, even though "it" is admirably free from and connotations of gender and, by extension, sexism. The result is that the Tee-totalers must resort to all manner of grammatical gymnastics when they speak about God, such as: "When God wants to reveal Godself to God's people, God speaks by God's Word and God's Spirit."
That would prompt any fifth grade English teacher to banish them to Sentence Structure Hell. Quite apart from being laughable, this garbled Godtalk is just plain hard to understand. But my biggest beef with the Tee-totalers is that in their efforts to avoid appearing sexist, they have de-personalized the God who is infinitely personal. Do that, and what you're left with is a nebulous, out-there god, rather than the God who is closer than the air around us, and has made Himself known in Jesus. In short, you exchange Emmanuel, "God with us," for an impersonal type of "the Force" from Star Wars. That is an unacceptable trade-off, just to keep from appearing sexist. And it is also a departure from Christianity.
The second manifestation of this movement away from traditional language for God is the substitution of "Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer (or Sanctifier)," for Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Once again, the concern motivating this change is that we not give any hint of sexism in our talk about God. While I have some appreciation for the concern, I have serious problems with the swap.
This practice jettisons the familial imagery so carefully woven in to the Christian revelation of God. That image of family is deliberately used to convey something of the intimacy existing within the Trinity between the Father and the Son in the bond of the Spirit. Further, it throws out as sexist Jesus' favorite and most used titles for Himself ("Son") and His Father ("Father," or probably even "Abba".[2])
To speak of the Trinity as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer is to not only lose much of the interpersonal communion that takes place within God, but also comes dangerously close to the ancient heresy of Sabellianism (a.k.a. "modalism"), which said there were not three Persons, but only one, in varying roles. I am concerned that Creator/Redeemer/Sustainer is almost like a multi-faceted job description, with its use of nouns all derived from verbs. The resulting emphasis is not so much on the Persons, as in Father/Son/Spirit, but on what they do—the roles and activities performed. Again, the overall effect is a de-personalized view of God. (I also find it interesting that we rightly refrain from using the term "Holy Ghost" to refer to the Holy Spirit, because it is incorrect, and leads to misunderstanding about the Person of the Spirit. Yet at the same time, many are willing to glibly change the Spirit's name to "Sustainer," and sacrifice all that we sought to protect from error in our dismissal of "Holy Ghost.")
In choosing the name "Father" with which to reveal Himself to us, God has not left Himself unknown, but has commandeered human language to show His character. "Father," then, when used by God to reveal Himself, is more than just a metaphor depicting reality, it is a name. The idea of God naming Himself appears throughout the Old and New Testaments. In and through Jesus Christ, God makes His name known as Father. It is the name that Jesus used to address Him, and the name Jesus instructed us to use as well. Why? Because this name is not merely a label, a designation to signify one among others, like Kim or Jerry. This name also has semantic content. It carries meaning and information. Above all, this is the name God has chosen to draw us to Himself in relationship, prayer, and worship.
But to understand the meaning of Father as the name by which God has revealed Himself, we cannot interpret it in normal human terms. Here those arguing that it would be sexist would be right, for we would be importing human categories of not only gender, but age as well. We must instead allow Father to be interpreted by the revelation of Christ Himself. In Christ, we see that the terms "Father" and "Son" cannot be interpreted biologically. In fact, they are in Christ evacuated of all male and patriarchal connotations. Moreover, they are filled with new content; content that is most clearly understood in the light of His intimacy with His Father and of His obedient sacrifice and self-giving on the cross.
Our repentance needs to be in our thinking, not our language. We need to strive for ourselves and others to have a clearer concept of God. The woman at the well (Jn. 4) certainly did not have a heartwarming backlog of experiences with men; it's obvious that most of her contact with males had been negative. However, in His conversation with her, Jesus does not squeamishly back away from calling God "Father," and using masculine pronouns in talking about Him. Yet in His own person, and through His words, Jesus redefined the woman's whole notion of the God Who Really Is. We do not need to relinquish biblical language for God (and thereby sacrifice theological meaning and clarity), we need to change the way we view God.
I sometimes wonder if the real issue is not a theological one at all. To be sure, what is at stake is of great theological importance, but I think the engine that is really running the train may be fashion. No one wants to seem insensitive, patriarchal, or sexist. At the same time, contemporary society is awash in a sea of political correctness, and a hypersensitivity which sees most everyone as a victim of one "ism" or another. The result is that many Christian leaders and theologians have surrendered important biblical concepts to the whims of political correctness, and the scepter of implicit censorship which it wields.
It is my belief (or at least, my fervent hope) that this trend will ultimately pass. I just don't think people can listen much longer with a straight face to the Tee-totalers who have gutted their message of all masculine references and pronouns. And I think that sooner or later those who are afraid to call God "Father" will realize that no other word so aptly conveys the character of God. If I am right, ten to twenty years from now, leaders who've used all this contrived language for God will look back on it the way I look at a photo of myself wearing a leisure suit in 1973. What seemed so "with-it" then seems so silly now. May the Lord turn us from this acquiescence to pop culture, and bring us to our senses. There is much more at stake here than the approving nod from modern society.
[1] James B. Torrance, Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace, p. 105 (appendix). Many of my ideas presented in this paper are indebted to the concise, insightful treatment found in Professor Torrance's book. There are, however, a number of other helpful books written to give some perspective to this issue, and offer a much needed corrective; among them Vernard Eller's The Language of Canaan and the Grammar of Feminism, and Speaking the Christian God, edited by Alvin Kimmel.
[2] Though Greek was the written language of the first century Jewish world, Aramaic was the spoken tongue. "Abba" is an Aramaic word that was a tender term of endearment from a child to his father. It would best be translated, "daddy," or "poppa." Significantly, New Testament scholars feel that behind the gospel recordings of Jesus' use of "father" (Gk. patros) was always the Aramaic "abba."
