More and more lately, I’ve heard people refuse to use pronouns for God. Some even object to gendered God-language like “Our Father,” or “Lord.” Others go even further—they replace male pronouns with female pronouns.
The argument that people often make is that God is not a created being, and does not have a gender. Using male pronouns and other distinctly “male” words—like Lord or Father—reflects not God’s nature, but our own patriarchal mindset. By refusing to use pronouns for God, or by using female pronouns, people argue that they can combat the patriarchal recasting of God, while emphasizing certain qualities (like His tenderness) that can be overlooked when male pronouns are used.
To an extent, people are right. God does not have a gender. That said, there are several compelling reasons to use male language for God.
1. We have pronouns for a reason.
Pronouns are clean. They’re efficient. Without pronouns, language is incredibly clunky and awkward. To talk about how God reveals God’s self to show us God’s love might be politically correct, but it’s also a poor usage of the English language.
2. Specifically male pronouns for God are a convenient and widely agreed upon linguistic convention… with Biblical roots.
Blame it on the patriarchy if you’d like, but almost everyone knows what I’m referring to when I talk about Him. Talking about Her, however, would likely be confusing. That’s because male pronouns for God, better or worse, are part of our language and culture. Plus, the Bible uses male language (although there are attempts to translate the Bible using only gender-neutral language).
3. It’s just distracting.
Using female pronouns for God isn’t just confusing, it’s distracting, and talking about Mother God is probably the fastest way to derail almost any group prayer, by triggering either laughter or confusion.
4. When God reveals Himself, He does so as Father and Son (and Holy Spirit).
In our P.C. culture, the best way to figure out a person’s pronouns is to ask, or at least wait for them to tell you. In the Christian Bible, when God reveals Himself, He does so as Father and Son, not Mother and Daughter.
One objection to this argument is that the Son (the second person of the Trinity) had to come as “Son” and not “Daughter” because of Israel’s patriarchal norms, and not because of any deeper spiritual reality. In other words, if Jesus was a woman, nobody would have taken him seriously. And sure, I sympathize with this argument a little… but not much. See, initially people didn’t take Jesus seriously, even though he was male. But then he started performing miracles, walking on water, and raising people from the dead, and he eventually got people’s attention. You’re telling me that, if God had wanted to become incarnate in a female body, there’s no way He could have somehow gotten people’s attention or earned some respect? After all, the ancient world was full of religions that took female goddesses seriously. Besides, that argument only accounts for one person of the Trinity. Jesus frequently referred to the first person of the Trinity as Father. After Jesus had earned respect, he could have talked about God as Mother, but he preferred to use the term Abba, or Dad.
Now that’s not to say that God does have a gender (although it’s worth noting that Jesus is definitely male), but it does mean that the gendered language we use for God might not be inconsequential. In fact there might even be some spiritual significance for—
5. There’s real spiritual significance associated with using male language to describe God.
Ok, ok, so I will admit that, at various points in the Bible, there are feminine images of God. That’s true. But when those images come up, they always reveal some deeper, spiritual meaning. The same is true for using primarily male language for God.
Here’s one nugget of spiritual wisdom that can be drawn from male “God language.” When we speak of God with male pronouns, it signals a complementarity with the ancient understanding of the soul as feminine. The idea here is that the “male” instills the feminine soul with divine life. In other words, the soul is like a womb for God’s grace. It’s a little weird… but it’s also beautiful.
6. While gendered “God language” fails, so does all God language.
Often, people argue that we can’t use male pronouns for God, because God doesn’t have a gender. To describe God as “He” is to anthropomorphize God, or turn Him into a being with human characteristics. Instead of using inherently flawed language, people argue, we should give up on pronouns and other gendered terms altogether.
This argument makes some sense… except that all attempts to describe God are inherently flawed. For example, when we say that God is good, we have to acknowledge that our understanding of “goodness” is radically shaped by our own human limitations (the maximum degree to which we can understand goodness is the maximum extent to which a human being can be good). It would be, for example, like an ant calling a human being “strong.” The ant isn’t wrong, per se, but the ant cannot begin to fathom how strong human beings are, and we cannot fathom how good God is. When it comes to God, all language, not just gendered language, fails.
Confronted with this confusing dilemma, we might be tempted to give up altogether on trying to say anything about God. But theologians and philosophers have argued that we can speak about God analogously. Now the whole concept of analogous language is more complicated than we have time for today. Essentially, it should suffice to say that all language about God is, somehow, inadequate. Gendered language might also be inadequate, but that doesn’t mean we should stop using it, any more than we should stop saying that God is good.
7. What’s the motive?
More often than not, it seems like people advocate for gender-neutral or feminine God language for political and ideological reasons, and less because they have a legitimate theological argument. Admittedly, it would be fallacious to argue that the conclusion (gender neutral or female pronouns for God) is wrong simply because the means of arriving at that conclusion (via ideological or political agenda) are flawed. However, wouldn’t it be worse to conform God to our political agenda, than to conform Him to widely agreed upon linguistic constructs?