Natalie Brand enters into this most fundamental current debate
A provocative discussion regarding the gender language used for God hit the national newspapers a few weeks ago.
Since attending the Westminster Faith Debate ‘Women Bishops: what difference does it make?’ (held in Piccadilly on 26 May), members of the egalitarian group WATCH (Women And The CHurch) have been calling for increased use of feminine language and imagery in Anglican liturgy.
In her response to the question of whether the arrival of women bishops will in fact impact sexism within the CofE, WATCH’s Hilary Cotton said, ‘Only if God is she as often as she is he – because this is such a formative aspect of our church life and a real bastion of sexism.’ Such a statement has understandably made many conservative Evangelicals nervous. Living as we do in a time when traditional views of gender and sexuality are subject to constant inquisition – we can’t help but ask: ‘What next?’ Yet it is important that, as conservative evangelicals and complementarians (I use the word ‘and’ because they are not the same), we respond with humble orthodoxy – both critically and self-critically.
It is perhaps the brevity of time between January’s consecration of the first female bishop and this sudden storming of our newspapers that has really taken me by surprise: a swift and somewhat effortless move from Libby Lane’s reception in York Minster to the hasty challenge of traditional gender language for God. This is not just a matter of semantics, but of theology.
Does God have a gender?
Here many of us frown and say: ‘But God doesn’t have a gender, does he?’ John 4.24 clearly tells us that ‘God is spirit’. And a spirit is a spirit – ‘it’ has no body or gender. Of course these egalitarians agree. They are not advocating what is called ‘goddess theology’, wherein the ‘Divine’ is absolutely feminine (although a few quirky ones might).
The Revd Kate Bottley, a speaker at the Westminster debate, wrote for the Guardian: ‘God is not a woman. And God is not a man. God is God. But we can only describe God in the terms we can easily comprehend.’ But there is more at stake here than merely comprehending God appropriately within a given culture. Bottley and the other speakers and campaigners are careless in their passionate call for gender inclusive language. They fail to even acknowledge the Triunity of God – casually referencing ‘God’ as if they were Unitarians; not recognising any Trinitarian implications to their discussion. This is a startling reality, since many of these women are leading churches. There is a gospel urgency, demonstrated here, for us all to recentralise the biblical doctrine of the Trinity.
The Trinity
The call for God to be ‘she as often as she is he’ is questionable in the light of the biblical revelation of the Triunity of God. Now is not the time for a comprehensive look at the doctrine of the Trinity but in response to this debate this very foundation of the Christian faith must be centre stage: forming our theology, our spiritual expressions and our entire worldview.
When the second person of the Trinity took on humanity in the incarnation, this member of the Godhead took on male flesh. At the baptism of Jesus a voice from heaven is heard, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased’ (Matthew 3.17). In the Gospel accounts the Lord Jesus consistently reveals his Father to his disciples and hearers: ‘It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, “He is our God”’ (John 8.54). Can God be ‘she’ as often as he is ‘he’ when God has revealed himself as ‘Father’ through the incarnation of his male Son? Should not our use of gender pronouns reflect biblical revelation and our Trinitarian theology? There is a need for all our spiritual expressions to be checked by God’s Word. We don’t call the Bible ‘the Canon’ for nothing. We rest upon it as a ‘standard’ to guide us in these things, otherwise our theology and expressions will run amok.
Motherhood imagery
This said, there are times we should celebrate the feminine attributes of God ‘without sniggering or stropping’. Indeed, conservative Evangelicals who know their theology can do so comfortably without theologically hyperventilating. The motherhood of God, seen in Yahweh’s care of Israel, is a beautiful thing and a strong theme in the Old Testament. It is time to hear sermons on Isaiah 66.12,13 (among others). Oh how the fussing young mums in the congregation would find it particularly powerful and relevant to their hearts and minds! If we are Christians who hold to the complementari-an worldview, then we know God created both male and female in ‘his image’ and therefore there are manifold qualities belonging to God that he uniquely bestowed on women.
Practical challenges to us
There is a lot to challenge us in what was articulated at the Westminster debate, particularly in underlining the reality that in contemporary Christendom no church has got it right.
The Most Revd Dr Katharine Jefferts Schori, a keynote speaker at the event, said that the presence of women bishops could offer a ‘witness to the otherness of God … white, male, English-speaking bishops with degrees from Oxford or Cambridge are only one sort. They cannot image the fullness of God.’ In the UK especially, our evangelical leaders are generally still monolithic. The leadership of our churches, whether Anglican or not, should represent a holy cross-section of our church family; manual labourers who fulfil Titus 1 should also be set apart for eldership, not just white, middle-class solicitors and engineers. Jefferts Schori quite rightly says that ‘when leadership begins to represent the variety of human existence, all the baptised people of God can begin to image their own ministry, rather than deferring ‘ministry’ to only one sort of human being.’
Conservative evangelical churches have work to do in order to catch up practically with their complementarian beliefs. In pastoral care and the use of women in church life, male church leaders should think strategically to ensure that women are being utilised to the max. One practical measure is frequently to welcome a female member or the women’s worker (if you are lucky enough to have one) to the elders’ meetings so that the life and concerns of over half the church are represented. If we are complementarians then we know God created men and women differently – should we then continue to tolerate the ‘default male’ assumption of traditionalism?
Wave the complementarian flag
Earlier I said that conservative evangelicals and complementarians are not the same. We can only be ‘complementarian’ if we know why we are complementarian. It is the same with all our confessions of faith; in order to name ourselves ‘Trinitarian’ we have to understand something of the doctrine we are confessing.
We saw that WATCH’s Hilary Cotton described the use of the default male to be ‘a formative aspect of our church life and a real bastion of sexism.’ I question this. Is using ‘he’ for God a real bastion of sexism? I think the fact that Christian women are being domestically abused at home by their confessing husbands is more of an immediate issue. And that some of their church leaders have responded to them pastorally by telling them to ‘go home and submit.’ The bastion of our sexism is that we are NOT complementarian, as we confess to be, and are stuck with sinful ideas and habits imbibed from our tradition-alism. It is time for us to take a firm hold of the complementarian flag, learning the genius of what God designed in his creation of male and female. Once we have all personally and prayerfully understood this better, we can respond more effectively to what contemporary society throws at us.
