LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1998, Page 362

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362

THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS

the Rock that “degot” Israel. The Hebrew word here is yalad (“47, in the
Qal), which is usually used for a mother giving birth, although it can at
times be used for a father begetting.* The verb at the end of Deut. 32:18 is,
however, a clear maternal image. The verb rendered “give birth” is chul
(°1) and signifies a woman writhing in labor pains. God is said to have
given birth to Israel with the writhing that comes with labor pains.

However, is this use of the mother image sufficient to claim that God
is mother of Israel as well as father of Israel? Consideration of the lan-
guage and context of Deuteronomy 32 taken as a whole would seem to
exclude that viewpoint. The passage of Deut. 32:18 is contextualized by the
explicit language of God as the creator and father of Israel in Deut. 32:6: “Is
not he your father, who created you, who made you and established you?”
Here the text has not only the explicit word for “father,” but also the per-
sonal pronoun “he” (#37). This personal pronoun is repeated in Deut.
32:39: “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me.” Even
the verb “give birth” in Deut. 32:18b is in the form of a masculine participle,
modifying the word “God” (98). Thus, the mothering image in Deut. 32:18
functions as a simile, even as does the image of Paul giving birth in Gal.
4:19: “My little children, with whom I am again in travail until Christ be
formed in yout” 7

The language of the Old and New Testaments simply does not allow
the view that God is a mother in parallel and coordinate fashion with his
being a father. To be sure, feminine and maternal images are used of God
to describe his tenderness and his love. But these do not denote God's per-
sonal reality. 1t remains a significant fact that nowhere in Scripture is God
addressed as “mother,” nor is he ever referred to directly (i.e., apart from
a simile) by the noun “mother.”

C. Theological Implications

If one wishes to translate accurately the words of the Scriptures, the
language of both the Old Testament and the New Testament is clear
enough concerning the terminology about God. God and his Spirit are
consistently referred to in masculine terminology. A faithful translation
will reflect the actual state of affairs in the language used by the biblical

* The RSV rendering above takes the verb in the paternal sense, and in view of vv. 46
this is very likely the correct way to take it. See Num. 12:11 and Ps. 2:7 for examples of the
Qal of 77 being used of Moses and of God respectively, perhaps in the paternal sense. Phy!-
hs Trible refers to Prov. 23:22, 25, where “7 is used in'the maternal and in the paternal sens-
¢s within the same pericope. The Hiphil form of 77: is, however, the more common form
for the paternal meaning (a father “begets,” that is, causes a child to be born by the mother).

© Indeed, in her discussion of Deut. 32:18 Phyllis Trible refers to Isa, 42:14 as a passage
where the birth pangs appear again. But Isa, 42:14 is clearly in the form of a simile, like a
woman in travail.

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the Scriptures call “grace” and “love,” the sheer goodness which wills to
give favor and life apart from any “merit or worthiness” in the recipient.
Salvation likewise comes from without, from “heaven”: “In this the love of
God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the
world ....” (1 John 4:9). Here again the election of Israel in the person of
Abraham is important. Out of his freedom and grace God chooses to focus
and to direct his love upon Abraham and upon his descendants: God
adopts Abraham and his descendants and makes them his own. It is this
prevenient, free, and merciful making of a people that we term “grace.”

In those religions where the deity has been regarded as a “mother,”
this biblical transcendence has been lost. When the deity is a “mother,” she
gives birth to the world out of her womb, so that nature and its processes
and cycles are believed to be extensions of the divine. In such a world, all
things are direct extensions of the divine and therefore nothing is more
divine than any other thing. Life and death are but different expressions of
deity, good and evil lose their distinction and thus their significance, and
human beings are no more important than are animals and plants. But as
Matthew Berke notes, at the very center of biblical monotheism is the
denial of a divinized nature.” Furthermore, to enmesh God in the natural
cycles of birth and rebirth renders the world a place without direction and
purpose. In such a world the eschatological dimensions of the Christian
faith are destroyed and with them the biblical notion of hope. However,
because God created the world by will and command through his Word,
the world is vested with a direction and a purpose, and human beings are
invited to act in freedom in a way true to that purpose, that is, to live
according to hope.

© Note the language of grace and mercy used by Luther in his explanation of the First
Article of the Creed: “Alt this he does out of his pure, fatherly, and divine goodness and
mercy, without any merit or worthiness on my part” (SC II 2; Tappert, 345). The craatio ex
nikile (“creavon out of nothing“) lies at the basis of such language

“ Berke, in “God and Gender in Judaism,” writes: “In Judaism, nature and humanity
emerge not as part of an undifferentiated birth of the universe, but through discrete acts of
¢reabon in which all things are appointed a place in the huerarchy of the world. Good and
evil night and wrong, are known not by reference to nature's processes, impulses, and vital-
ities, but through the words and commandments of a transcendent God” (35). Berke is
speaking of Judaism, but he is referring to an understanding arising from the biblical account
of creation.

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authors. Obviously that implies as well that a translator will faithfully
reflect the use of feminine simile when that is used to describe God.
However, biblical language does not simply reflect a verbal reality, a
mere linguistic expression unrelated to any substantive reality. As we
have noted in section 1, B above on revelation, the language of the Bible
renders faithfully that history of Israel and of Christ in which and through
which God redeems the world and is bringing it to its proper consumma-
tion. God involves himself with this history so that the “Iam He, YHWH,
the God of Israel” is personally identified with those who are the types of
the Messiah in the biblical narrative, culminating in Jesus: Abraham,
Melchizedek, Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon, Zerubbabel, et. al. The
unity of the reality of God’s personhood, of the historical narrative of the
Old and New Testaments, and of the Language of the Scriptures is essential
if that history and that Word are to be the revelation of him who is God.
Further theological implications, however, are involved in the ques-
tion concerning the rendering of God in masculine or feminine terms. In
religious language which identified God as a mother, so typical of pagan
mythology, the world tended to be identified with the goddess and there-
fore was perceived as itself divine. Joseph Campbell, the well-known
expert on mythology, noticed this well-documented phenomenon:
“(WIJhen you have a Goddess as the creator, it’s her own body that is the
universe.” * Similarly, Rabbi Paula Reimers contrasts the “inherent pan-
theism of goddess religion, rooted in the birth metaphor’ with biblical
monotheism, which is “rooted in the creation metaphor of Genesis.” * The
biblical creation metaphor expresses God’s transcendence and distinct oth-
emness in relation to the world. God relates to the world, not through the
identity of body (pantheism), but through his Word, which expresses the
divine will. Rather than the world being divine, in the biblical perspective
the world and all creatures are utterly contingent, creaturely, and mortal.
In the biblical account of creation, God—like a father—generates outside
of himself. God summons the world forth by his will and command,
through his Word (Gen. 1:1; Ps. 33:9; John 1:3; Heb. 11:3), and makes the
world and all that is in it distinct others. Because God is not identical with
the things which he has made, he is free to love the world by virtue of his
own good will. That God creates the world is, therefore, the basis for what

™ Joseph Campbell, The Pow: «of Myth (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 167,

™ See the discussion in Matthew Berke, “God and Gender in Judaism,” First Things
Qune/Juty 1996), 35. Elizabeth Achtemeier states: “It is not that the prophets could not imag-
ine God as female; they were surrounded by peoples who so imagined their deities! It is
rather that the prophets, as well as the Deuteronomists and Priestly writers and Jesus and
Paul, would not use such language, because they knew and had ample evidence from the reli-
gions surrounding them that female language for the deity results in basic distortion of the
nature of God and of his relation to his creation” ("Female Language for God,” The
Hermeneutical Quest, 109).

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II}. LANGUAGE ABOUT CHRIST

Given the evident fact that in his historical existence Jesus was a man,
there is little disagreement with the proposition that masculine language
should be used of him when reference is made to his own particular indi-
viduality. Disagreement does exist, however, regarding whether mascu-
line language should be used to translate certain titles and designations of
Jesus and whether masculine language should be used when reference is
made to him as the bearer of common human nature.

One common attempt at “inclusive” language is to translate the title
“Son” or “Son of God” as “Child” or “Child of God.” For example, the
confession of Peter, usually translatc 4 “You are the Christ, the Son of the
living God,” has been rendered by one inclusive language translation “You
are the Christ, the Child of the living God” (Matt. 16:16).© Other examples
follow:

Matt. 3:17:

This is my beloved Son, with whom | am well pleased.

This is my beloved Child, with whom I am well pleased. (Lectionary, 54)
John 1:14:

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth;
we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth;
we have beheld the Word's glory, glory as of the only Child from .. . the
Father. . .. (Lectionary, 35, 48)

John 3:16-17:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever
believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the
Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might be
saved through him.

For God so loved the world that God gave God’s only Child, that whoever
believes in that Child should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent
that Child into the world, not to condemn the world, but that through that
Child the world might be saved. (Lectionary, 88)

2 All examples come from An Inclusive-Language Lectionary: Readings for Year A, rev.
ed. (Atlanta: John Knox Press; New York: The Pilgrim Press; Philadelphia: The Westmin-
ster Press, 1986).

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