Alison Emry Widrick

Inclusion is a dangerous game. It is really easy to seek to include some group at the expense of another. I think this is particularly dangerous as to how we understand and interact with God. We have to be careful in how we talk about God so we as finite humans and as Christians are able to understand the One we worship.

I will not deny terms that are normally considered female are sometimes used to describe parts of God’s nature, but more times than not, male language is used instead. Jesus tells us to call God our Father (as opposed to Mother, or Parent, or maybe Pleterion) because there are characteristics of a father that apparently are well-suited for use in describing something about God’s nature. If you believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God, then if nothing else you have to admit there is some reason God chose to refer to Himself using primarily male language.

While our picture book representations of God are, naturally, mainly from the collective heads of the people who were trying to figure out how to depict God, we as humans have to have some referent for our words. All words are composed of a form (the word we say) and a referent (the thing we are referring to by the word).  This is how the human mind deals with information, organizing it into how we understand the world.  We need language to be in terms we can understand.

In our linguistic world are “male” and “female.” No widespread neutered terms exist. Some cultures do have more than two social genders, and there are people of ambiguous gender, but no one is inherently genderless. It is important to note that, anthropologically speaking, gender has little to do with biological sex and everything to do with the prescribed roles a person is expected to play along some culturally-defined category. While these gender roles frequently divide along the lines of biological sex, they do not have to, and what is considered normal for one gender in one culture may be considered normal for a different gender in another culture. Therefore gender norms are socially constructed, and none are really inherently better than any other. Even so, everyone is fitted into some category. They have to be, so we have a way to talk about people in relation to others. To create an image, albeit mental, of something outside of gender would be beyond what is easily relatable to us for us to understand. We need some way to speak about God, so we are reduced to fitting Him into a gender category. English has only two options for this category: male or female.

Because God uses so much male language to refer to Himself, a male picture of God is to be expected. This creates a mental image much easier to relate to than some vague neuter inherently impossible for us to relate to because we have no words by which to understand it. To neuter God would be to call Him an “it,” which has serious connotations in English, reducing God to the status of a castrated animal or inanimate object. We in English lack the language to talk about a personal entity without putting that entity into some gendered category.

So instead of being mad about the use of male language used to talk about God, it seems much more useful to think about what it means to attribute personal attributes to God, regardless of the perceived gender the words used. How do male terms enhance our understanding of who God is? How do the female terms do the same? The fact God uses male terminology to refer to Himself does not, in and of itself, mean He is inherently male. Though I and many others would affirm God is male for various reasons, most of the terms people argue about do not necessarily require God be male, but instead that male attributes can be ascribed to Him. Likewise, female terminology also applies female attributes to God regardless of the gender or non-gender you believe God is.

All language ever does is refer listeners to some idea by making reference to some object or idea in the understood world the listener already knows. To fail to do this is to fail to communicate, and both the speaker and the listener end up frustrated at best and confused at worst. We as humans understand the world through our language. Therefore God, who gave us language in the first place, chose to let us know Himself through our language. He then needed to use terms we can understand so we can relate to Him. He chose to do so through primarily male language.  Who are we to try to neuter Him?