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The gender of the God of The Bible is sometimes brought up in conversations for some reason or other. In today’s climate, the questioner may have underlying concerns related to feminism or gender identity. As a younger apologist, I had concerns about God being gendered at all. After all my philosophizing with the Kalam Cosmological and Modal Ontological Arguments, God shouldn’t be a male or a female. I wondered if perhaps this hinted at maybe The Bible being man made. After all, it isn’t like people to make gods like themselves. ^[1]My reasoning back then was the the gods of the nations were mere figments of the pagan imagination. Later on in my education, I came to the conclusion that the gods of the nations are real spiritual … Continue reading. Of course, given the abundance of evidence for God’s existence from such arguments as the Contingency, Kalam, Fine-Tuning, Moral, and Ontological Arguments, and given the evidence for the death and resurrection of Jesus (especially from a Maximal Data Approach, which I have a whole series on), I knew that Christianity was true, and The Bible was God given. I decided I would bracket my question on my Heavenly Father (not Mother or genderless parent) and maintain a faith that sought understanding.

The topics to follow will be; (1) That I do believe God in His divine nature is objectively genderless, and why that must metaphysically be so. I will explain the concept of “Divine Accommodation” and how that plays into why and otherwise genderless being chose to portray themself as gendered, and why He specifically chose male descriptors. (2) That at least in a couple of places, God Almighty chose to be portrayed as feminine. This discussion will primarily be in the book of Proverbs where God goes by the name “Woman Wisdom”. But The Lord does use some maternal metaphors of himself (even in the incarnation in which Jesus, as a human, is indubitably a man)! (3) The doctrine of the Image Of God, and what it means for both men and women to be God’s images. Especially together.

Divine Accommodation And The Patriarchy

Speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus said “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). To say that “God is Spirit” is to say that God is not a physical being. Although stupidly contested today, for the vast majority of human history, gender has been defined as being biologically rooted. I am a man because I have a penis and testicles, as well as XY Chromosomes. If I had a vagina, and XX chromosomes, I would be a woman. God, being a transcendent incorporeal being, doesn’t have either of those. God doesn’t have genitals or chromosomes. If He did, He’d be a biological creature, and wouldn’t be the transcendent Creator of all things (Genesis 1, John 1:1-3, Revelation 4:11). Nevertheless, in The Bible, God is called the adoptive Father of Christians (Matthew 6:25-34, John 1:12, Romans 8:15, Ephesians 3:14-15, Hebrews 12:3-11), and not our Heavenly Mother. God is Israel’s Husband (e.g Isaiah 54:5, the book of Hosea, Ezekiel 16), not Israel’s wife. God is the King of Kings (1 Timothy 6:15, Revelation 17:14, Revelation 19:16), not the Queen of Queens. And in the incarnation, the second person of The Trinity chose to be born as a human man, not a human woman (John 1:14, Philippians 2:5-8).

So why is God so consistently portrayed in male terms if, as I have already pointed out, He actually is neither male nor female? I think the answer is quite simple; God’s choosing to depict Himself as a “Himself” is an act of divine accommodation. Theopedia correctly defines Divine Accomodation as follows; “Divine accommodation means that God has accommodated various truths about himself and the world in such a way that they can be comprehended by the human mind. Accommodation is both a corollary of divine revelation (how God reveals himself) and hermeneutics (how we interpret the Bible).” ^[2]Theopedia, Interpretation Of The Bible, “Divine Accomodation” — https://www.theopedia.com/divine-accommodation. Long time readers of this blog will probably remember me talking about this in regards to the “Dome Cosmology” found in the pages of scripture. ^[3]See, for example, my articles “Objections To Concordism NOT Answered” and “Objections To Concordism STILL Not Answered: A Response To Alexander Young”. And although long time readers will no I am generally not a fan of him and the “ism” named after him, the idea of divine accommodation is usually associated with the theology of the Protestant Reformer John Calvin and he has some good things to say about this. For example, he wrote “Indeed, that they dared abuse certain testimonies of Scripture was due to base ignorance; just as the error itself sprang from execrable madness. The Anthropomorphites, also, who imagined a corporeal God from the fact that Scripture often ascribes to him a mouth, ears, eyes, hands, and feet, are easily refuted. For who even of slight intelligence does not understand that, as nurses commonly do with infants, God is wont in a measure to “lisp” in speaking to us? Thus such forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity. To do this he must descend far beneath his loftiness.” ^[4]John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 1.13.1. Biblical scholar Kenton Sparks wrote “Accommodation is God’s adoption in inscripturation of the human audience’s finite and fallen perspective. Its underlying conceptual assumption is that in many cases God does not correct our mistaken human viewpoints but merely assumes them in order to communicate with us.” ^[5]Kenton Sparks, God’s Word in Human Words, 230–31.

So whether it be in telling us how He creates and runs the world while assuming “Dome Cosmology” ^[6]See Ben Stanhope “The Solid Sky Dome Of Biblical Cosmology and The Ancient Near East”, June 19th 2018, — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8Jz4tvlhZM or in various anthropomorphisms, God accommodates His true theological messages to our finite human understanding. Paleo-Hebrew just simply had no pronouns for genderless personal beings. Moreover, genderless personal beings were (and still are) foreign to our everyday experience. So rather refer to Himself as an “it”, God (2 Timothy 3:16) and the human authors of scripture (2 Peter 1:21) opted for one of the only two options available. God could be a “He” or a “She”, but an “it” would be irreverent and inaccurate. Persons aren’t “its”.

But that raises the next question; why male? Did God just randomly choose between the two because He had to pick one? Maybe, but I think it’s more likely that God chose to be personified as male because in the Ancient Near East, there was a general patriarchal attitude. In the Ancient Near East, there were goddesses among the gods, but they were never the top dog, so to speak. Many were consorts or lower ranking in the pagan divine councils, but none of them were on top. ^[7]For a brief survey of Ancient Near Eastern deities, see John. H. Walton, “Ancient Near Eastern Thought and The Old Testament”, Baker Academic, 2018. They were still worshipped (they were divine after all), but they were always lesser than their male god peers. In light of this, let’s imagine if Yahweh had revealed Himself to humanity as a female deity. He already had a hard enough time fighting for Israel’s loyalty over pagan gods, especially Baal. Can you imagine how much worse it would have been if the choice for Israel would have been exclusive loyalty to a female deity over the male Baal? God in His wisdom probably saw fit do otherwise.

And this would also be why, in the incarnation, Jesus was born as a boy. If you’ve listened to any Christian Apologist give a Minimal Facts Argument for the historicity of Jesus’ death and resurrection, one of the arguments we bring in for the historicity of Jesus’ empty tomb is that all four gospels report that it was discovered by women, and the gospel authors wouldn’t have made that up due to women generally being considered unreliable eyewitnesses, and we quote from sources like Josephus and the Talmud to demonstrate this point. ^[8]For example, in my articles “The Minimal Facts Case For Jesus’ Resurrection – PART 1” and “The Women At Jesus’ Empty Tomb Revisited“ So with that in mind, imagine Jessica Christ running around trying to preach about her Mother’s Kingdom to a bunch of Jewish men who would dismiss everything they say. You know, even more than they did (John 1:11).

God’s Feminine Side – Lady Wisdom

Although God is predominantly depicted as male in The Old Testament (and is actually and literally male in Jesus’ human nature), there are some exceptions. There is one occasion where Yahweh is represented by a female character, and there are maternal images God uses in the mouths of His prophets to demonstrate His love and care. Perhaps the most interesting example is in the book of Proverbs, which I’m currently doing a deep study on. In Proverbs 1:20-33, we are introduced to a literary character; a woman whose name is Wisdom. “Out in the open wisdom calls aloud,
she raises her voice in the public square; on top of the wall she cries out, at the city gate she makes her speech: ‘How long will you who are simple love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge? Repent at my rebuke! Then I will pour out my thoughts to you, I will make known to you my teachings. But since you refuse to listen when I call and no one pays attention when I stretch out my hand, since you disregard all my advice and do not accept my rebuke, I in turn will laugh when disaster strikes you; I will mock when calamity overtakes you—when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, when distress and trouble overwhelm you. ‘Then they will call to me but I will not answer; they will look for me but will not find me, since they hated knowledge and did not choose to fear the LORD. Since they would not accept my advice and spurned my rebuke, they will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes. For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them; but whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm.'” (NIV)

This literary character has been dubbed by many scholars as Woman Wisdom or Lady Wisdom. And for the longest time, a mere literary character is all I took her to be. She is the personification of wisdom. She has a rival named Folly who will vie for the young man’s affections later on (see Proverbs 9:13-18). In his commentary on the book of Proverbs, Old Testament scholar Tremper Longman III writes “In the first place, Woman Wisdom represents God’s wisdom. While there are debates concerning the source of the inspiration of this personification (for instance, a foreign goddess like Maʿat or Isis), most people agree that in its present context the figure represents Yahweh’s wisdom. The key to the relationship between a divine figure and Woman Wisdom is the location of her house on the highest point of the city. In Israel, as throughout the ancient Near East, the only building allowed on the high place was the temple. On this basis, however, I would take the image further than most and suggest that Woman Wisdom represents not only Yahweh’s wisdom but Yahweh himself.” ^[9]Tremper Longman III, Baker Commentary on the Old Testament: Proverbs (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 58–59.

If you pay attention to what Woman Wisdom says in her exhortations to the passerby, doesn’t she even sound a lot like Yahweh? She talks just like Him! As Kathleen Nielson writes “The opening (v 22) addresses three categories of people along the path of foolishness: the ‘simple’ (the naïve or immature, as we saw in the prologue); the ‘scoffers’ (fools that stand out, ‘delighting’ in their scoffing); and ‘fools’ in general, who (as in v 7) ‘hate knowledge.’ Wisdom doesn’t start out by simply condemning them; she mixes condemnation with a yearning for their foolishness to end, repeating those words,’How long?’

Wisdom’s opening here reminds me of God’s words calling to Israel through his prophet Jeremiah:

‘O Jerusalem, wash your heart from evil,
that you may be saved.
How long shall your wicked thoughts
lodge within you?’ (Jeremiah 4:14, emphasis mine; see also Numbers 14:11, 27; Hosea 8:5)

Wisdom’s next words offer a promise that rings out even more strikingly: if these people will ‘turn’ to her when she rebukes them, then, she says: ‘I will pour out my spirit to you; / I will make my words known to you’ (Proverbs 1:23). Many point out the resonance between this verse and the similarly worded promise in Joel 2:28–9 (see also Isaiah 32:15). The New Testament picks up these promises—most notably in Acts 2:17, as the apostle Peter quotes the prophet Joel to explain the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.” ^[10]Kathleen Nielson, Proverbs for You, ed. Carl Laferton, God’s Word for You (The Good Book Company, 2020), 36–37.

Kathleen Nielson also writes “We’ve heard her address ‘the children of man.’ And now she is calling people with one qualification: that they love her. ‘I love those who love me,’ she says, ‘and those who seek me diligently find me’ (8:17). We should stop and meditate on this verse. It contains reverberations of God’s words to his people, for example in Deuteronomy 4:29: ‘You will seek the LORD your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul.’ In the Scriptures we hear the voice of God calling his people—ultimately his people from all the nations—and promising that when we answer his call and seek him, by his grace, he will be found by us (Jeremiah 29:13–14). More than that, he loves us. These benefits are personal.” ^[11]Kathleen Nielson, Proverbs for You, ed. Carl Laferton, God’s Word for You (The Good Book Company, 2020), 70.

It seems then that the author of Proverbs is intending two things; first, that Woman Wisdom is the attribute of wisdom personified as is traditionally thought. I am not disputing that this literary character is just that; a literary character depicting the attribute of wisdom. However, she is more than that; she is a literary figure depicting Yahweh Himself. But then, what about Woman Folly? As Tremper Longman III writes “She [Folly] too has a place on the highest point of the city (9:14). Does this mean she too represents a deity? By the logic of the preceding argument, the answer must be yes. However, by virtue of her description as ignorant, she is best understood as a metaphor for all the false gods and goddesses that provided such a tremendous illicit attraction to Israelites. In a word, she represents the idols, perhaps no one specific idol, but any false god that lured the hearts of the Israelites. Among the ones that we know pulled the hearts of the Israelites are Marduk, Asherah, Anat, Ishtar, and perhaps most notoriously Baal. Thus, in the same way that personification gives wisdom a theological dimension, so also folly is more than simply a mistaken way to act or speak. They represent diametrically opposed relationships with the divine and alternative worldviews.” ^[12]Tremper Longman III, Baker Commentary on the Old Testament: Proverbs (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 59.

And so, on at least this occasion, Yahweh the genderless Maximally Great Being who normally talks about Himself in male terms, breahed out a book where he is depicted as a woman. Proverbs 1:7 says that “The Fear of The Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” so this association of God with Woman Wisdom makes good sense. But it gets so much more interesting than that, for I have come to the conclusion that Proverbs 8 presents us with a Two Person GodHead! Those who have seen my video “The Angel Of The Lord and A Two Person Godhead In The Old Testament” will be aware of this theme that runs throughout the Old Testament. There is this figure called The Angel Of The Lord who the text identifies as Yahweh, but Yahweh is also in the scene and the disembodied Yahweh is also Yahweh, land yet the biblical authors make a distinction in their identities. ^[13]Aside from my video, the late Dr. Michael S. Heiser talks about this in his book “The Unseen Realm: Recovering The Supernatural Worldview Of The Bible”, and Douglas Van Dorn and Matt … Continue reading

Proverbs 8:22-31 says “The LORD brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old; I was formed long ages ago, at the very beginning, when the world came to be. When there were no watery depths, I was given birth, when there were no springs overflowing with water; before the mountains were settled in place, before the hills, I was given birth, before he made the world or its fields or any of the dust of the earth. I was there when he set the heavens in place, when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep, when he established the clouds above and fixed securely the fountains of the deep, when he gave the sea its boundary so the waters would not overstep his command, and when he marked out the foundations of the earth. Then I was constantly at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind.” (NIV)

Proverbs 8:1 identifies that the one speaking of being with The Lord during creation is Wisdom. Wisdom is doing the talking here. And yet in verse 22-31 she is distinct from The Lord, not The Lord himself as previously argued. She was with The Lord since the beginning, before the universe was created. And it is precisely by her that The Lord created the universe. She is the agent of creation. As Proverbs 3:19 says “By wisdom the LORD laid the earth’s foundations, by understanding he set the heavens in place;” (NIV) A person who is God Himself, and yet was “with” God as a distinct person during the creation of the universe. Now, where have I heard that before? Oh yeah!

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” – John 1:1-3 (NIV)

In Proverbs, we have a “Two Powers In Heaven” doctrine espoused. I am of the opinion that Proverbs 8 was at the forefront of the apostle John’s mind when he penned the prologue to his gospel, asserting readers from the beginning that Jesus, The Word, was “with God” and “Was God”, distinct from God the Father but sharing his divine essence. God The Son is the agent through whom God The Father created all things. “The Word” which is in our English Bibles is “Logos” which means “Word” or “Logic” or “Reason”. These are very closely related subjects. Now, a lot of Christians are understandably uncomfortable in tracing John’s “Logos Christology” to Proverbs 8. Why? Well, it’s because of how some translations render 8:22. The NIV says “The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old;” This makes it sound like Woman Wisdom (and the Logos by extension) were the first thing God created, and then Wisdom/Logos created all other things. In fact, Arian heretical sects like the Jehovah’s Witnesses use Proverbs 8 as a proof text that Jesus isn’t God. And that consequently, their view that the Logos in John 1 is “a” God is justified. I previously interacted with The Watchtower on this passage in my blog post “Why You Should Believe In The Trinity: Responding To The WatchTower (Part 3)” However, my views on Proverbs 8 have evolved slightly since then. In that article, I basically dismissed the JWs by saying that Wisdom is merely a literary personification of wisdom and that we wouldn’t think anything Christological was going on if we weren’t reading the passage in light of John 1. In light of the evidence above that Wisdom is identified with Yahweh, I no longer agree with myself in that one paragraph.

Nevertheless, although I’ve come around to linking Proverbs 8 and John 1, I still don’t see this as a problem for a high Christology. Why? Well, let’s forget about Jesus for a second and just focus on The Old Testament and its doctrine of God. If Wisdom were literally a creation of God’s, what would that imply? That God was a mindless entity and somehow, through sheer luck, he created His attribute of wisdom which he needed to create everything else!? Was there ever a time when God was without His wisdom!? That seems to undermine the Omniscience of God! Even an Old Testament Jew would render his garments at such a suggestion. So, Christological debates aside, to suggest that the wisdom of God is a creation of God is theologically problematic. Even a Jehovah’s Witness should resist such a conclusion! In the course of my study on the book of Proverbs, I did a word study on the word translated “brought forth”. The Hebrew word is kanah. ^[14]See the Bible Hub page on Proverbs 8:22 for the Hebrew. –> https://biblehub.com/proverbs/8-22.htm I found out that in the vast majority of cases, it means to simply “possess” something, in the sense of owning something or of acquiring something (e.g Genesis 14:19, 14;22, 39:1, 49:19). On one occasion, it meant to “begat” as in Eve’s begetting of her first son Cain (Genesis 4:1). ^[15]See The Bible Hub page here for more examples –> https://biblehub.com/hebrew/strongs_7069.htm If Qanani is translated either as “possessed” or “begat”, then there is no longer a problem. In this case, I think the NIV presents a bad translation and prefer the ESV when it says “The LORD possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old.” It would be to say that God simply possessed wisdom at the beginning of creation; both the attribute as well as the person the Woman represents (cf. John 1:1). And of course, God possessed His wisdom “at the beginning of his work”. There’s nothing theologically problematic about that. God was wise at the beginning of the world. Of course, He was!

On Proverbs 8:22 and the controversy of identifying Jesus with Woman Wisdom in Proverbs 8 the Pulpit Commentary on Bible Hub says the following;

“22. – The Lord possessed me. Great controversy has arisen about the word rendered ‘possessed.’ The verb used is קָנָה (kanah), which means properly ‘to erect, set upright,’ also ‘to found, form’ (Genesis 14:19, 22), then ‘to acquire’ (Proverbs 1:5; Proverbs 4:5, 7, etc.) or ‘to possess’ (Proverbs 15:32; Proverbs 19:8). The Vulgate, Aquila, Theodotion, Symmachus, Venetian, give ‘possessed;’ Septuagint, ἔκτισε, ‘made,’ and so Syriac. The Arians took the word in the sense of ‘created’ (which, though supported by the LXX., it seems never to have had), and deduced there from the Son’s inferiority to the Father – that he was made, not begotten from all eternity. Ben Sira more than once employs the verb κτίζω in speaking of Wisdom’s origin; e.g. Ecclus. 1:4, 9 Ecclus. 24:8. Opposing the heresy of the Arians, the Fathers generally adopted the rendering ἐκτήσατο, possedit, ‘possessed;’ and even those who received the translation ἔκτισε, explained it not of creating, but of appointing, thus: The Father set Wisdom over all created things, or made Wisdom to be the efficient cause of his creatures (Revelation 3:14). May we not say that the writer was guided to use a word which would express relation in a twofold sense? Wisdom is regarded either as the mind of God expressed in operation, or the Second Person of the Holy Trinity; and the verb thus signifies that God possesses in himself this essential Wisdom, and intimates likewise that Wisdom by eternal generation is a Divine Personality. St. John (John 1:1), before saying that the Word was God, affirms that “the Word was with God (ὁ Λόγος η΅ν πρὸς τὸν Θεόν).” ^[16]Pulpit Commentary from Bible Hub — https://biblehub.com/commentaries/pulpit/proverbs/8.htm

Now, I said it would be no more problematic if kanah were translated as “begat” as in Genesis 4:1. Why? Well, John 3:16 tells us that Jesus is God’s “only begotten” (monogenes) Son! The early church understood the “begetting” of the Son from The Father in the sense of eternal procession.

The eternal generation of the Son is defined as “an eternal personal act of the Father, wherein, by necessity of nature, not by choice of will, He generates the person (not the essence) of the Son, by communicating to Him the whole indivisible substance of the Godhead, without division, alienation, or change, so that the Son is the express image of His Father’s person, and eternally continues, not from the Father, but in the Father, and the Father in the Son.” ^[17]A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, p. 182.

As The Nicene Creed puts it “I believe…in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.”

So either way, a high Christology is not in danger. Of course, one might be tempted to think these dots would not be connected by The New Testament writers. Well, hopefully, I’ve already shown that at least John the apostle was when he penned the opening of his gospel. Although not calling Jesus “Wisdom”, he does essentially call him “Logic” or “Order” (“The Word” is how most English translations render it) and certainly that is a very close corollary to Wisdom. My pastor likes to say “Wisdom is knowledge applied”, and Tremper Longmann calls wisdom “Emotional Intelligence”. But are there any other connection points here? There are. For the sake of time, I’ll mention just a couple more.

In his book “The Fear Of The Lord Is Wisdom: A Theological Introduction To Wisdom In Israel”, Tremper Longman III points to a passage in the Gospel of Matthew, which depicts Jesus as claiming this relationship with Woman Wisdom. In response to the Jewish leaders who complained about his rather celebratory lifestyle, he reminded them that they were also critical of John the Baptist, who led an ascetic life:

“For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.” – Matthew 11:18–19

Longman notes “‘But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.’ The Greek is clear; Jesus is not speaking about wisdom in the abstract or as a concept. He is connecting himself and his actions with those of Woman Wisdom.” ^[18]Tremper Longman III, The Fear of the Lord Is Wisdom: A Theological Introduction to Wisdom in Israel (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A division of Baker Publishing Group, 2017), 246.

Finally, in 1 Corinthians 1:24, the apostle Paul calls Jesus “the power of God and the Wisdom of God”. Indeed, in Colossians 1:15-20, Paul wrote “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” ^[19]Lest one think that here, “firstborn” means Jesus is a created being through whom everyone else is made, as Jehovah’s Witnesses like to argue, let me explain why that interpretation … Continue reading

God’s Feminine Side – Nurturing Breasts And Other Motherhood Metaphors

In Isaiah 49:15, Yahweh says to Israel through the Prophet Isaiah, “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you” (ESV).

Rebecca McLaughin comments on this passage, saying “God’s love for us is no Hallmark sentiment. This image is not primarily a celebration of our newborn cuteness: ‘God could never reject such lovable little creatures as us!’ Rather, this verse reveals God’s hard-won, self-giving, dogged commitment to our good, a refusal to let us go—however frustrating we become, an insistence on seeing his image in us—and a painful provision for our most desperate need.'” ^[20]Rebecca McLaughlin, “How Breastfeeding Changed My View Of God”, The Gospel Coalition, May 24th 2018 — https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/breastfeeding-changed-view-god/ McLaughin goes on to point out that motherhood metaphors for God punctuate the Old Testament. “You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you, and you forgot the God who gave you birth” (Deuteronomy 32:18, ESV). “I will cry out like a woman in labor; I will gasp and pant” (Isaiah 42:14, ESV). “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you” (Isaiah 66:13, ESV). ^[21]ibid.

How This Relates To The Doctrine Of The Image Of God

In Genesis 1:26-27, we read “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (NIV)

In other articles, I have written on the image of God as it pertains to our understanding of subjects such as naturism and of Genesis 1 as a Temple Inauguration motif. ^[22]For example, see my article “The Case For Christian Naturism” and “Genesis 1: Functional Origins, Temple Inauguration, and Anti-Pagan Polemics” just to cite a couple of … Continue reading. But in this article, I’d like to ask how men and women both “image” God in their own unique genders? ^[23]To “image God” can be a verb, as Michael Heiser points out in “The Unseen Realm” on pages 42-43. After all, The Bible explicitly says that both men and women are made as God’s images. Well, as I’ve reflected on the doctrine of imago dei over the summer, I’ve come to some beautiful conclusions. Other than the gender neutral ways we reflect God (e.g creating art, building structures, thinking deeply), there are some ways our genders do image God, such that the image of God can be thought of to be not “a” specific man or “a” specific woman, though we are each, individually made in God’s image, but corporately as a binary gendered race, we fully represent Him.

In the last section, we noticed how God’s provision for Israel (and by principle-extension, us) is likened to a mother breastfeeding her child. Every time a woman breast feeds her child, she is reflecting God’s love and tender kindness toward us. This perverse world wants us to a view a woman’s breasts as a sexual turn on, but God’s word (and world!) presents us with the truth. Breasts are objects of maternal love. Before formula was invented, breast milk was the only way a human infant could receive his or her nourishment. And beautifully, God so designed the human form that not only can a mother feed her child out of her own physical being, but one of the breasts is directly over her heart. To feed at your mother’s breast is to be right at the heart of your mother. And if you’ve experienced the love of a mother, I would hope that would move you. Moreover, our mother’s are the ones who birthed us. In Deuteronomy 32:18, God said that He birthed Israel. Moreover, Jesus said that in order to enter the Kingdom of God, we must be “Born Again” (John 3:3) and that the agent of this rebirthing ^[24]I’m trying not to start belting out the Skillet song of that name. “Rebirthing now!” is The Holy Spirit (John 3:5-6). The Holy Spirit birthed us the second time, but who birthed us the first time? Our mothers. When you give birth to a child, you are reflecting God’s regenerating activity in the world of unregenerate sinners. Moreover, in the act of procreation, we are, in a sense, co-creators of God of humans. Not forgetting that it is specifically God who “knits us together in our mothers womb” (Psalm 139:13-14), when a man and a woman have sex that results in pregnancy, we are participants in creation of God’s greatest creation; His images. We images get to help make more images! Eve recognized this in Genesis 4. In that passage, we read “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, ‘I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.'” (Genesis 4:1, ESV). Women, there is a unique way in which you reflect your Creator. These are beautiful physical echoes of beautiful spiritual realities. As Pope John Paul II stated, “The body, in fact, and it alone is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world, the mystery hidden since time immemorial in God.” ^[25]20. Theology of The Body, Pope John Paul II, February 20, 1980. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the command to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28) is immediately after the statement that men and women are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27).

Well, what about men? Are there ways we reflect our Creator in ways that women can’t? None that come to mind; and although there are ways women image in God uniquely, these are accommodated for in men through other routes. For example, while I could never feed my offspring directly from my own body, I could still provide for them in numerous ways. In the case of food, going to the grocery store and cooking after buying groceries with money I’ve worked all, or doing it the old fashioned way and go hunting. And there many things other than food men can provide for their children, but I bring these up because food, water, and clothing are the bare necessities and these are mentioned in Jesus’ Sermon On The Mount. In Matthew 6:23-33, Jesus said “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (NIV)

In parenthood, both the father and mother image God, and this is seen in the previous sections of this essay where God expresses Himself in both paternal and maternal terms. Recently, I told God “You are both the perfect Father and the perfect Mother.” Gender roles can be a controversial thing, but whatever your views, you should be able to see reflections of God. Even stereotypically, God is strong and a fighter like a Father, yet gentle and carassing as any mother. He provides through hard work (e.g Matthew 6) yet also feeds us directly from his power (e.g mana from Heaven). Things stereotypically assosiated with masculinity and feminity, at least the good things, God has or does.

Finally, how we image together. In Genesis 2:24 we read “For this reason a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two become one flesh.” Some have said that this is an echo of the unity and diversity within the Godhead. For example, Pastor David Hatton wrote “The sexual, one-flesh relationship in marriage is meant to be a bodily ‘image’ of the loving mystery of unity within the Trinity, and as that Trinity of Love produces creation and life, so the ‘likeness’ of the Godhead in wedded sexual love is meant to procreate new human life.” ^[26]Hatton, David L.. “Who Said You Were Naked?”: Reflections on Body Acceptance (p. 245). David L. Hatton. Kindle Edition.

One might object at this point that these “imaging” actions are not things done exclusively by humans. After all, lions hunt to provide for their young. All female primates have nurturing breasts. And with the exception of earthworms and other a-sexual organisms like sponges, many animals become “one flesh” in a sexual union that leads to new life. This is true. However, it was also true that bread and wine have been around for a long time. 5,000 years ago, some pagan could have randomly decided to eat a piece of unleavened bread and drink a chalice of wine. Yet that does not remove the “holy” from holy communion, or its symbolizing of Yahweh freeing Israel from their bondage in Egypt (Matthew 26:26-28, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26). As I have argued in prior articles, the image of God is a status we are given. Some mundane thing can be made to represent something most holy just because God said so (as the bread and wine represent the broken body and shed blood of Christ as our substitutionary atonement). That God designated this group of naked primates and said “This is a self-portrait of Me” makes what would be otherwise mundane animal activities suddenly spring to life with new spiritual significance. Sex is no longer a primal animal drive our lower hominid ancestors had, but an expression of erotic love, one flesh, yet two persons which results in a third. Breasts are no longer merely a primate anatomical feature, but become an echo of God’s love. ^[27]You Young Earth Creationists and anti-evolution Old Earthers will have to forgive me for letting my Theistic Evolutionist slip show so much in this section.

There is so much more that could be said here, but to prevent this article from being longer than it has to be, I will leave it at this.

A Word Of Caution

A word of caution must be given here, though. It has become fashionable for Progressive Christians to call God by feminine terms. “Mother God”, “Her”, “She”, etc. And it has become a weird cultural phenomenon where people think gender is something that is up to them. If I feel like a woman, I must be a woman, and you had better use my preferred pronouns or else you’re a bigot. Some Progressives have used the data I’ve presented here to argue for fluid gender. Indeed, I can recall seeing TikToks of people saying that God essentially chose His gender, so we can too. That is a big mistake. As I said in the section on divine accommodation, God is genderless and He accommodated our binary experience because this is just one of several ways that God is so unlike us. You might as well say that we can choose to express ourselves as three distinct persons because God does, or that we can speak things into existence because God does. And sadly, some heretics have. God has chosen primarily to express Himself in masculine terms. Therefore, we would be remiss to not address God as “Our Father”, “Lord”, “King” and to use their feminine counterparts instead. I consider myself fairly conservative, and I wish to remain biblical. Feminine depictions of God (e.g Proverbs 1, 8) are the exceptions, not the rule. Therefore we should follow likewise and address God by His “preferred pronouns” if we are to remain biblical. Not that I’ve ever been able to accuse a Progressive Christian about caring about biblically faithful theology, but I digress. And above all, let’s stop with this abject foolishness of thinking that a man can be a woman and not vice versa on the basis of what we feel. If our feelings do not align with physical reality (as in the case of those who suffer from gender dysphoria), then we need to “tell our feelings where they get off” as C.S Lewis once said in another context.

Conclusion

The Gender Of God turned out to be a more fascinating topic than I ever thought it was. God is genderless, and yet, in divine accommodation, has gendered Himself, primarily as male, though occasionally as female. The ultimate gendering of God was in the incarnation, when “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14, cf. Philippians 2:5-8). Jesus of Nazareth was a man in His human nature. Lady Wisdom became Lord Jesus. And when it comes to how we as men and women represent (lit. image) God to the rest of creation, we can be assured that the most masculine and the most feminine of us can do that fully well. Imaging, in the verbal sense, has only one hindrance; sin. Sin, not gender, is what diminishes our ability to reflect the Creator. That is why for us Christians, God is working on us, conforming us to the image of His son (Romans 8:29).