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 Posted: Wed Jun 07, 2006 6:03 pm Post subject: Why God is Father and Not Mother |
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Editor's Note: It was recently reported that two (RC) Australian priests have been baptizing hundreds of children incorrectly, using feminist-inspired language in the baptismal formula:
"Two days ago, Archbishop John Bathersby of Brisbane (RC) stated that children baptized at the South Brisbane church using non-traditional words — ‘creator, liberator and sustainer’ instead of "Father, Son and Holy Spirit" — would have to be re-baptized."
One of the priests, Fr. Kennedy, has stated: "It’s fundamentalism to argue that the actual words are all-important. That's the trouble with the Church; under the present Pope you’re not allowed to have different opinions."
But what Fr. Kennedy doesn’t seem to understand is that words are important and that the use of certain words in the Church, especially in the ministry of the sacraments, is not about "opinion," but rich theological and doctrinal truths.
In the following essay, "Father, Son, and Spirit–So What’s In A Name?" (excerpted from The Politics of Prayer: Feminist Language and the Worship of God, edited by Helen Hull Hitchcock), Deborah Belonick demonstrates that referring to God as "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" is not rooted in hatred of women or narrowmindedness, but in the very nature of the Triune God.
Father, Son, and Spirit–So What’s In A Name?
by Deborah Belonick
The last few years have seen vast changes in many churches in liturgical rites and educational instruction in regard to proper language for God. The United Church of Christ, to give just one example, has published "Inclusive Language Guidelines" urging members to "avoid the use of masculine role names for God, such as ‘Lord, King, Father, Master, and Son"’, and instead to "use nonexclusive role names, such as ‘God, Creator, Sustainer, Mother/ Father’. Or use non-sex-specific words relating to the qualities of God, such as ‘Spirit, Holy One, Eternal One, Rock"’. Feminist theologians chide those using the traditional terms as being sexist, ignorant of feminine images for God in Scripture, or unaware of the "oppressive patriarchal structure" which "invented" these terms for God.
A study of history proves that questioning language for God is not a new pursuit. We must not think that we in the twentieth century are the only ones who ever wrestled with the traditional doxology for God: "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit". The ways that the issue has been raised, and the ways Christians in the past have responded to it, have much to teach us today as we seek to respond to accusations by feminist theologians that patriarchalism and human imagination are responsible for the traditional trinitarian terms for God.
Specifically, Christians of the fourth century have much to teach us. The fourth century was the period of the all-consuming questions: Who and what is Jesus Christ? His humanity, divinity person, and nature were the topics of great debates, which examined his relationship to humanity, as well as to the other members of the Trinity. During these fourth-century debates, the traditional doxology for God–"Father, Son, and Holy Spirit"–was also challenged and debated.
A study of the Christian controversies of the fourth century leads to two important conclusions. First, the terms "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" have a precise theological meaning which is not communicated by any other terms for God. Second, the traditional doxology did not emerge as a reflection of patriarchal culture.
IS "CREATOR" ENOUGH?
On the first point, two fourth-century theologians who were embroiled in controversies over the proper terms for God, Athanasius and Gregory of Nyssa, are especially worthwhile for our study.
Athanasius was defending the traditional trinitarian names against the Arians, a group which preferred to call the First Person of the Trinity "Creator" rather than "Father". Arians claimed that Jesus Christ was not the Son of God but merely a superior creature; therefore, "Father" was a fleshly, foolish, improper term for God. In reply to the Arians, Athanasius tried to explain the importance of the biblical divine names, "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit".
Using a term such as "Creator", said Athanasius, makes God dependent on creatures for his existence. If creation did not exist, he asked, would this Creator-God cease to be? If creation had never existed, what would be the proper term for God?
In addition, Athanasius argued, the word "Creator" could be used to describe any of the members of the Trinity. It would be wrong to refer to the Father alone as Creator because the Bible states:
"In the beginning God created the heavens and earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters" (Gen 1:1-2).
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made" (Jn 1:1-3).
According to Scripture, the Trinity acts in concert. They all create; they all save (Jn 5:21; Acts 2:24; Rom 1:4); they all sanctify (Eph 5:26; 1 Th 5:23).
Athanasius argued that the names of God had to describe more than God’s action toward creation. There are, as it were, two different sets of names which may be used for God, explained Athanasius. One set (Creator, Savior, Sanctifier) refers to God’s deeds or acts, that is, to his will and counsel. The other set (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) refers to God’s own essence and being. Athanasius insisted that these two sets should be formally and consistently distinguished.
In Athanasius’ view, we should use the terms "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" when speaking about the existence of God as three persons in a community of love, when speaking about the relationships among members of the Trinity without regard to their acts toward creation. God’s "being", Athanasius reasoned, has priority over God’s action and will: "God is much more than just ‘Creator’. When we call God ‘Father’, we mean something higher than his relation to creatures" (Against the Arians).
THREE DISTINCT PERSONS
Gregory of Nyssa faced similar problems when dealing with a sect known as the Eunomians, who believed that Christ was unlike God the Father by nature and instead was a "created energy". For this reason, Eunomians refused to call God "Father". In response, Gregory sought to explain the character of the Holy Trinity, and the Church’s insistence on the traditional terms, "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit".
First, said Gregory there was no more adequate theologian than the Lord himself, who without compulsion or mistake designated the Godhead "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" (See Mt 28:19).
Further, Gregory said, these names are not indications that God is a male or a man; for God transcends human gender. Rather, these names imply relationships among the Persons of the Trinity and distinguish them as separate Persons who exist in a community of love. The names lead us to contemplate the correct relationships among the three Persons; they are clues to the inner life of the Trinity.
Gregory wrote: "While there are many other names by which the Deity is indicated in the historical books of the Bible, in the prophets, and in the law, our master Christ passes by all these and commits to us these titles as better able to bring us to the faith about the Self-Existent, declaring that it suffices for us to cling to the titles ‘Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’ in order to attain to the apprehension of him who is absolutely Existent" (Against Eunomius, Book 2).
Gregory states that it is with the terms "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" that men can enter into the depths of God’s life, somewhat equipped to understand the inner relationships and Persons of the Trinity.
DIVINE FATHERHOOD
Of particular interest in our own day is Gregory’s explanation of the term "Father", which is under scrutiny by feminist theologians as a harmful metaphor that resulted from a patriarchal church structure and culture.
The name "Father", said Gregory, leads us to contemplate (1) a Being who is the source and cause of all and (2) the fact that this Being has a relationship with another person–one can only be "Father" if there is a child involved. Thus, the human term "Father" leads one naturally to think of another member of the Trinity, to contemplate more than is suggested by a term such as "Creator" or "Maker". By calling God "Father", Gregory notes, one understands that there exists with God a Child from all eternity, a second Person who rules with him, is equal and eternal with him.
"Father" also connotes the initiator of a generation, the one who begets life rather than conceiving it. and bringing it to fruition in birth. This is the mode of existence, the way of origin and being, of the First Person of the Trinity. He acts in trinitarian life in a mode of existence akin to that of a father in the earthly realm. Before time, within the mystery of the Holy Trinity, God generated another Person, the Son, as human fathers generate seed.
Nowhere does Gregory, suggest that this "Father" is a male creature: "It is clear that this metaphor contains a deeper meaning than the obvious one", he notes. The deeper meaning, is found in a passage of Paul to the Ephesians:
"For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family (patria, fatherhood) in heaven and on earth receives its true name" (Eph 3:14-15). This passage implies that God is the one, true, divine Father, whose generative function human fathers imitate in a creaturely imperfect way. When God generates a Child, the generation is eternal and transcends time and space, unlike human fathers, who imitate this generative function but arc bound in time space, and creaturely "passions," as Gregory notes (Against Eunomius, Book 4).
All the patristic writers insist that God is not male, but God possesses a generative characteristic, for which the best analogy in the human realm is that of a human father generating seed. Hence, the word "Father" for God is the human word most adequate to describe the First Person of the Holy Trinity, who possesses this unique characteristic.
The divine Father is as different from earthly fathers as the divine is from the human. Nevertheless, it is fatherhood and not motherhood which describes his mode of life, his relationship to the Second Person of the Trinity, and even his personal characteristics. The First Person of the Trinity does not just act like a father (though he sometimes acts like a mother!). Rather, he possesses divine fatherhood in a perfect way. That God’s fatherhood transcends and is the perfection of human fatherhood is part of the meaning of Jesus’ statement in Matthew 23:9: "And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven."
Clement of Alexandria, another fourth-century Christian teacher, expressed this idea most aptly: "God is himself love, and because of his love, he pursued us. [In the eternal generation of the Son] the ineffable nature of God is father; in his sympathy with us he is mother" (How Will the Rich Be Saved?).
SON OF THE FATHER
In his explanation of the term "Son", which is also a term often considered non-inclusive in our era, Gregory of Nyssa reiterates that this also is a precise theological term leading one to the inner relationships of the Godhead. It has primacy over other scriptural terms. He says:
"While the names which Scripture applies to the Only-begotten are many, we assert that none of the other names is closely connected with reference to him that begot him, for we do not employ the name ‘Rock’ or ‘Resurrection’ or Shepherd’ or ‘Light’ or any of the rest, as we do the name ‘Son of the Father’, with a reference to the God of all. It is possible to make a twofold division of the signification of the divine names, as it were, by a scientific rule: for to one class belongs the indication of his lofty and unspeakable glory; the other class indicates the variety of providential dispensation" (Answer to Eunomius’ Second Book).
All sorts of epithets for God are available to man through revelation–goodness, love, mother, fire. But none of these is exchangeable or comparable to the revelation of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These are the terms by which man enters trinitarian life to discover the unique Persons of the Trinity and their distinguishable marks.
The traditional trinitarian terms arc precise theological terms, not easily exchangeable for any others. They lead us to the Persons of the Trinity, as well as defining relationships between them. To be unbegotten, begotten, and in procession are characteristics of the Persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Paternity, generation, and procession are the unique marks of the respective Persons.
"MALE" THEOLOGY?
What about the feminist allegation that the traditional doxology is the product of a patriarchal structure, of a "male" theology? Did the patristic writers harbor animosity toward women or femininity? Did they use masculine terms for God, the source of all life, because they mistakenly thought that human fathers are the sole source of human life? Indeed, the opposite appears to be true.
First, some women did have opportunities to express their understanding of the Godhead. Macrina, elder sister of two of the greatest theologians of the fourth century) Basil the Great and the aforementioned Gregory of Nyssa, was referred to by her brothers as the "teacher". It was she who raised them in the Faith and instructed them in the theology of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. She defended these titles as revelations recorded in Scripture (A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. second series, eds. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Vol. 5: Gregory of Nyssa: Dogmatic Treatises, etc, [Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1892], pp. I6).
Likewise, Nina, the evangelizer of the Georgians, converted that nation by her teaching of Jesus Christ and of the Holy Trinity-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. She did so by her own will; she was not commissioned by the bishops (Lives and Legends of Georgian Saints, by David Marshall Long [Crestwood, N.Y.: SVS Press, 1956], pp. 13-39)
PRAISE FOR WOMEN
Second, the most accurate way to describe the Church Fathers’ attitude toward women would not be animosity but ambivalence. One can indeed find passages in their writings deriding women for their weak wills and for leading the human race into sin (John Chrysostom writes that "the woman taught once and ruined all"). But one also finds Passages extolling women for being of great character and teaching the gospel better than men. Gregory of Nazianzen, in writing of his parents, explains that his father’s virtue was "the result of his wife’s prayers and guidance, and it was from her that he learned his ideal of a good shepherd’s life.... They [his parents] have been rightly assigned, each to either sex; he is the ornament of men, she of women, and not only the ornament but the pattern of virtue" (Funeral Oration on His Sister Gorgonia).
Jerome says his reader may laugh at him for so often "dwelling on the praises of mere women. . ., [but] we judge of people’s virtue not by their sex but by their character and hold those to be of the highest glory who have renounced both rank and wealth" (Letter 127, To Principia).
It must also be noted that ‘in several instances the Church was much fairer toward women than the surrounding culture. Gregory of Nazianzen exemplified this by upbraiding the men of his flock in regard to a civil law which meted out strict punishment for wives committing adultery but disregarded husbands committing the same crime: "[Let me discuss] chastity, in respect of which I see that the majority of men are ill-disposed and that their laws are unequal and irregular. For what was the reason why they restrained the woman but indulged the man, and why a woman who practices evil against her husband’s bed is an adultress (and the legal penalties for this are very severe), but if a husband commits fornication against his wife, he has not account to give? I do not accept this legislation; I do not approve this custom. Those who made the law were men, and therefore the legislation is hard on women" (On the Words of the Gospel).
Fourth, it appears that it was not unknown to the leaders of the fourth-century Church that mothers as well as fathers contributed as sources to the making of a child. John Chrysostom wrote:
"A man leaving them that begat him, and from whom he was born , is knit to his wife. And then the one flesh is, father and mother, and the child from the substance of the two commingled. For indeed, by the commingling of their seeds the child is produced" (Homily 20, On Ephesians 5:31).
Yet, even with this knowledge of mothers and fathers both acting as "sources" in the life process, the Church insisted on using the exclusive term "Father" for God.
THE SPIRIT AND THE FEMININE
Perhaps even more interesting, patristic writers never excluded the ideas that women were made in the image of God or that human femininity had some relationship to God. In many texts, there appears the idea that women, with their femininity, are closely associated with the Person of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s mode of life. In the patristic period, the Fathers compared the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father with the "procession" of Eve from Adam.
Later, in the seventh century, Anastasius of Sinai wrote: "Eve, who proceeded from Adam, signifies the proceeding Person of the Holy Spirit. This is why God did not breathe in her the breath of life; she was already the type of the breathing and life of the Holy Spirit" (On the Image and Likeness). Especially in Syriac hymnody, the association between human femininity and the mode of existence of the Holy Spirit was stressed. Therefore, the "masculine" terms used in the trinitarian names are not the result of disdain for the feminine.
With this evidence, it is clear that the patristic writers were interested in preserving the scriptural terms of "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" as revelations from God rather than reflections of patriarchal culture. This is evident from their frequent appeals to Scripture for the bases of their arguments.
PRECISE THEOLOGICAL TERMS
In view of this historical background, it appears the arguments supporting "non-exclusive" language changes for God arc untenable–incompatible with Scripture, apostolic teachings, and Christian experience. Against the historical backdrop of Church life, the terms "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" appear not as exchangeable metaphors, human imaginings, or pillars of a patriarchal culture, but rather as precise terms revealed by Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit and preserved in the canon of Scripture.
The challenge to Christians today compares to the challenge to Christians in the fourth century; to preserve these names as gifts from God which give us clues to his inner life, for us as adopted children through his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
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