Why is God "Father" and not "Mother"?

Zoxsasi

Hello,

The Church of England is looking at changing God to "Mother" not "Father" in Heaven.

I know that Christ took the form of Man; but the 1st Person of the Holy Trinity is the Father. Why is it not "Mother" ? If I'm not mistaken, God even referred to Himself as a "mother". Even Christ said "... like a 'mother' gathers her hens...".

Here's an article that gives the viewpoint of the CoE.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32960507

Thanks for any answers you can provide.

cyril

One of our Fathers, St Gregory of Narek, uses the language of motherhood quite poetically.

Dr Roberta Ervine even states that "The image of God as Mother would later be taken for granted by Vanakan Vardapet (1181 -1251) who, in his unpublished Harts'munk' ew Pataskhanik’ [Questions and Answers]...takes students to task for finding the application of feminine imagery to God strange or offensive."


It is very interesting how St Gregory uses feminine language yet this usage does not lessen God's fatherly role. Here's what Dr Roberta says about St Gregory's mention of God as Mother:

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Over and above the predictable identification of the Church as Mother Sion, and her font as the womb from which all Christians are born, there is from the outset of the Commentary a recurrent image of God as Mother. This does not diminish God's fatherly role, but rather adds another dimension to it. In speaking of the sub-title to the Song of Songs, Gregory says that 'we beseech our Parent to kiss us with maternal love'; this is immediately followed by a reference to the father's kiss of the returning prodigal son. Satan, who was created by God, as was humanity, is spoken of as our 'mother's son' (1.6), and in the commentary on 3:4 heaven is our 'mother's house'.

These two images— of God as Mother and Church as Mother— do indeed overlap. In 7.1 3 , 'the mother is the holy Catholic Church and the Holy Spirit, . . . and Christ'. But the image of God as Mother is very clearly spelled out. Commenting on 8:5, Gregory speaks of Christ as having come from 'the Mother of All, who is his begetter by nature and ours through grace'. He goes on to say of Solomon that:

"He uses the word travail; travail is indicative of a mother; therefore it is Christ's Father and ours that he referred to as mother. The Father, however, was in travail through His messages in the Law and the Prophets, and gave birth to His children through water and the spirit (Jn 3:5), as brothers of Christ. So our Mother is One—the Father Begetter, the omnipotent God."

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Source: Roberta R. Ervine, Introduction, "The Blessings of Blessings: Gregory of Narek's Commentary on the Song of Songs", Translated by Roberta Ervine, Cistercian Publications 2007, Page 63

Khepra

St. Epiphanius refers to Wisdom in the feminine form in his Fraction on Wisdom. He then says wisdom is our Lord Jesus Christ.

minasoliman

We need to balance out a few things.  First off, St. Grigor I don't think his intention was to change the Trinitarian formula that Christ gave us.  We do acknowledge God as "father" and "mother" in relation to us, but it is most important to maintain the fact that He is Father, and therefore, the "mother" has to be the Church who bears us through her womb, the font of baptism.  

With that in mind, I like what the late Indian Orthodox Metropolitan Paulose Mar Gregorious once said in his autobiography on the belief of God.  I will summarize his views.  He said he does not believe God has a gender.  God is not a "he" or a "she".  However, it is even worse to call God an "it".  Based on the weakness of human language, he maintains the Church's revelations that God is a "He" because we have a personal relationship with Him.  

We as the body of Christ, the Church, collectively is a "she" to God.  In this sense, the genders that we see today outline for us an iconic relationship between Christ and the Church, the divine "He" who gives Himself and sacrifices Himself fully to the created "She", who in turn lives a life of free submission to the One True Bridegroom of our souls.  In reality, both created males and females are equal and "submit to each other" (Eph. 5:21), but in living the iconic relationship of God, we also confess that wives submit to husbands (Eph. 5:22), not blindly to any man, but in the one who can sacrifice himself to her, as Christ did to the Church.  And men must take up the vocation to suffer and to live lives of sacrifice as God has.  C.S. Lewis once said that it is true there are men who are terrible in being Church leaders, but it is not because the Church does not choose women, but because the men are not "true men", failing in fulfilling the iconic role God ordained for them.

Is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, do they all fulfill roles of motherhood for us?  Absolutely!  The strong and successful single parents in the world fulfill both roles for the children as father and mother all in one person, regardless of the gender.

At the same time, the revelation of truth also shows us that Christ taught us to address God as "Father", and thus, we need to obey this divine relationship we have with our Father, and try to attain His fatherhood while at the same time collectively be submissive to His divinity, since we are all created, not uncreated.  This is the mystery behind maintaining primarily the idea that God is a "He", inasmuch as we can weakly express "Him" who is beyond gender or pronoun.

Remnkemi

Wow. Even though I didn't read "Gregory of Narek's Commentary on the Song of Songs, it seems this Roberta Ervine is distorting the words of Gregory.  Did this Roberta Ervine even give a reference to the location of St Gregory's work that contains "feminine language"?

"But the image of God as Mother is very clearly spelled out. Commenting on 8:5, Gregory speaks of Christ as having come from 'the Mother of All, who is his begetter by nature and ours through grace'. "

Ummm. The Mother here is clearly St Mary, not God. God didn't beget our nature, nor the humanity of Christ through grace. Nor did Christ receive humanity through grace. This stinks of Arianism and Nestorianism (or whatever other heresy confuses the divine and human natures).

"He uses the word travail; travail is indicative of a mother;"

What? Travail means "painful or laborious effort". Trying to justify this Roberta Ervine's logic is a travail to me. I must be female. Travail doesn't exclusively mean female/woman labor. 

"therefore it is Christ's Father and ours that he referred to as mother. The Father, however, was in travail through His messages in the Law and the Prophets, and gave birth to His children through water and the spirit (Jn 3:5), as brothers of Christ. So our Mother is One—the Father Begetter, the omnipotent God."

The climactic conclusion of women gender babel. God the Father is a mother? Then why didn't Jesus Christ call God His mother? What stupidity!

cyril

Here's the book in question
http://www.amazon.com/The-Blessing-Blessings-Commentary-Cistercian/dp/0879072156

Dr Roberta Ervine's contributions to modern day translations of the fathers is quite spectacular.

cyril

Abouna Adian has blogged on this topic recently https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2015/06/04/should-we-call-god-mother-may-we-must-we/