God Language
Meredith Sprunger
Spiritual Fellowship Journal
Fall 1993
The term most generally used to designate Ultimate Reality on our world is "God."The name used for God varies with experience and culture. The First Source and Center of all things and beings is not revealed by name but by nature. The name given this Ultimate Reality is of little spiritual importance. The significant thing is that we should know this Spiritual Presence through personal experience and strive to replicate this reality in our lives.
Any name which human beings give to God must, to some degree, be understood metaphorically, for finite knowledge and language cannot encompass the infinite. These metaphorical expressions, nonetheless, contain truth, and generally are authentic finite (obviously partial and limited) descriptions of Reality. They may facilitate or distort the conceptualization of truth, but we should ever remember that the essence of personal revelation is an encounter with God in a personal relationship. Language is not the master, but the servant of revelation. God language may become "worn", but a loving relationship with the most real person in the universe can only get better.
Language is Rooted in Experience
The names we give to God are derived from our knowledge and experience of God. The central attributes associated with the nature of God in Western Culture are: spirit, infinity, perfection, limitlessness, personality, justice, righteousness, mercy, truth, beauty, goodness, and love. The most basic attribute associated with Gods relationship with human beings is love. H. Richard Niebuhr in The Meaning of Revelation says that our axioms in relation to God are "certainties about fundamental, indestructible relations between persons." The highest objective of God language, therefore, is to select terms which connote divine love in personal relationships.
God as a person is most effectively described and understood through our knowledge and experience of personal relationships. Our earliest and most influential experience of love comes from the persons who nurtured us during the formative years -- usually family members. For most of us, therefore, the most touching and meaningful metaphors for God are parental/family appellations. They are the best metaphors to express our personal relationships with God.
Certainly those whose predominate experience with fathers, mothers, or family has been negative should feel free to use names for God other than those that have parental/family connotations. Many of us have resented the patriarchal evils of our culture and patriarchal or matriarchal domination in our families. But we still conceptualize and idealize the role of wise and loving parents and good families. We should strive to eradicate autocratic patriarchy from our culture and arbitrary patriarchy and matriarchy from our families. It would be a great mistake, however, to allow these distortions of parenting to eliminate parental/family metaphors for God.
The Problem of Gender
A further complication in determining God language is the problem of gender in human experience. Men and women are different but complementary types of human beings. They probably will never completely understand each other, but can work effectively together in common projects. The masculine values tend to dominate primitive civilizations and situations requiring the control of chaotic or critical conditions. The feminine values predominate in higher culture civilizations and social situations requiring nurturance, understanding, and peaceful relationships. Women and men are different but equal human beings in the eyes of God. This equality is only beginning to be recognized in our social, economic, and political structures of civilization. Among the many changes needed in our culture, developing a nonbiased gender language is important.
The activities of Deity, as we understand them, sometime appear to be feminine-like and at other times masculine-like. It should, therefore, be natural for us to use both masculine and feminine metaphors in our reference to God. It should be clear to all with even a modest degree of spiritual maturity that gender references to God do not refer to human sexuality or other aspects of human finitude. It is at this point that we have widespread disagreement in our society.
Theologians like Mary Daly (Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation) assert that reference to God as "Our Father" originates "in human imagination" and "castrates women." Ruth Duck (Gender and the Name of God) observes that gender connotations are so ambiguous that parental metaphors for God should not be used. On the other hand, W. A. Visser't Hooft (The Fatherhood of God in an Age of Emancipation) declares, "We cannot eliminate fatherhood from the gospel without destroying its very meaning."
Underlying the entire gender problem is the issue of power. Recognizing the equality of women and men is only a beginning step in correcting the imbalance of power in our society. Living in the heritage of a patriarchal civilization, men still wield the major sources of overt power. The feminist movement is systematically challenging this disparity of influence. Not until we no longer experience the arbitrary male dominance of power will the struggle to control God language abate.
The Place of Revelation
Those who accept Jesus of Nazareth as Lord believe he had a unique and
authentic knowledge of God. The central purpose of Jesus' bestowal mission
was to bring a more complete revelation of God to humankind. Jesus chose
the term "Father" to describe God's nature and relationship to
each individual. Scholars differ in their interpretation of Jesus' use
of abba (daddy) and pater (father) in referring to God. The exact meaning
of "abba" in Jesus' day, and the use of "father" in
the Judaism of the first century A. D. are matters of scholarly debate.
In the context of Jesus' teaching about God, however, there is little doubt that the Heavenly Father he referred to was a loving, understanding, and compassionate God, not a distant, harsh, or authoritarian Deity. There are 170 references in the four gospels in which Jesus refers to God as "Father." Clearly, he thought parental metaphors best described God's relationship to human beings.
Why didn't Jesus speak of the Motherhood of God? First of all, we must remember that he lived in a patriarchal society that would hardly have understood or tolerated such a reference to God. Judaism had a long struggle with the fertility and mother goddess cults of the Levant. Jesus used concepts which would communicate with the people of his day. Nevertheless, he treated women and men as equals and spiritually emancipated women from the patriarchal culture of his day. And Jesus did use Mother imagery in referring to divine ministrations: "O Jerusalem...How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!" (Lk. 13:34).
The Spiritual Need for Motherhood Concepts
There has been a recurring expression of the need for the motherhood concept of God in history. The Gnostics spoke of the Motherhood of God. Mary, the mother of Jesus, has been looked upon as an intercessor. St. Anselm of Canterbury, Julian of Norwich, Jrgen Moltmann, and others have referred to God as Mother. Students of The Urantia Book will recognize that other aspects of the First Source and Universe Center appear to be mother-like in nature. The original I AM of existence which is the source of the Seven Absolutes of Infinity might be referred to as our Ontological Mother. The Holy Spirit is designated as the spiritual circuit of the Universe Mother Spirit and angelic personalities are referred to with feminine pronouns. It is time for our religious culture to inculcate and familiarize our society with concepts recognizing the mother-like aspects of God: the Motherhood of God, the Parenthood of God, and the Family of God should become natural expressions in our God language.
In Brief
In summary, we observe that the names we use for God are determined by our knowledge, experience, and culture. There seems to be a consensus that parental and family appellations for God best describe the experience and preference of the majority of people in our culture. It is unfortunate that some traditionalists and some feminists attempt to coerce others to use the God language they prefer. Both sides find theological and religious reasons for their preferences. It is much better to allow each person the spiritual freedom to select their own analogical and metaphorical expressions for God that coincide with their experience. Indeed, we should encourage creative spiritual imagination to enrich our God language.
A service of
The Urantia Book Fellowship