okay we're going to look at theme 2a in the christianity section of course uh this theme is entitled the nature of god there's two parts to it and the first part is to consider is god male and in particular we are looking at the work of the theologian and eco-feminist sally mcfaigue so let's start with a general introduction and let's look at this concept if you read the original languages of the bible so the old testament written in hebrew the new testament written in greek you get this concept of god as a father a male term when we have the personal pronoun throughout the bible god is referred to as he so there's little doubt that the writers of the bible who lived in a male-dominated society reflect reflected that view in their writings god is portrayed as male in the bible so we get quotes such as god said let us make man in our image image in genesis the lord works out everything for his own ends in proverbs our father in heaven hallowed be your name in matthew's gospel father he said everything is possible for you that's jesus praying to god in mark's gospel or paul with this particularly sexist quote i do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man she must be silent for adam was formed first then eve so that's looking at that patriarchy that male dominated society so we know that god's referred to father let's look at the other aspect of the trinity let's look at jesus he's referred to as the son of god he was clearly a man during his life on earth however christians believed that before he was incarnate he was with god and was god so therefore re-emphasizing that male aspect so we get this quote from john's gospel right at the beginning in the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was god so clearly male the word became flesh made his dwelling among us so making it clear that jesus was god god is male and so it follows logically on and the holy spirit even though it's not directly referred to as masculine in the new testament in the greek language the pronouns that are generally used to refer to the holy spirit uh generally take the masculine form so it is hinted at although not directly said that the holy spirit is more male than female in terms of how the language comes across in the bible now nevertheless there are a small number of passages within the bible that portray god in female terms and they are small compared to the amount that portray him in male terms so you could use this one from isaiah as a mother comforts her child so i will comfort you or you could have this one jerusalem jerusalem you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you how often have i longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings and you are not willing there's matthew's gospel and this verse from the psalms i'm like a weaned child with its mother like a weaned child i am content so you do have some feminine imagery for god like a mother hen like a mother comforting a child so there is that but as we can see it's much more male dominated however despite that it's also made really clear that god is neither male nor female jesus himself said god's spirit john 4 24. so it's also clear despite what paul says in one timothy that god values both men and women alike so here we have paul again there's neither jew nor gentile neither slave nor free nor is there male and female for all one in christ jesus a little contradictory there paul compared to what you said in one timothy who am i to judge so it's clear that gen god is neither male male nor female that men and women are equal however the language that is used to describe god in the bible is so male dominated that perhaps we have got a skewed view of what god is really like and that is what sally macphaigh sees she believes that to be the case there she is on the right hand side so let's think about language about god you've got a transcendent being that lives at an epistemic distance from us when i mean epistemic distance a distance in knowledge we are unable to fully understand god and we are using language to describe the indescribable so we are always going to fall short so as i've said here language about god by definition is very different you know a very different being from us you know you can't describe god we can't say very much about him as we know how to speak of things that we know from our own experience so basically all we can do when referring to god is use analogy so say god is very similar to something or really like something else we do know but only up to a point so god's living and they really literally does have life but not as we know it or you use metaphor use a comparison a figure of speech to highlight some attribute or or aspect that both show in some way god's a rock you know not literally not in all respects but solid etc now macphaig argues that we need to use the metaphor of god as mother to replace the metaphor of god as father and she does this for a specific reason she argues god's ultimately unknowable by us and that all language we use to describe something that is unknowable is provisional and what she means by this is that the language is not defining it's not giving us any truths about god okay so she would argue that god can't be defined as father he only has some aspects of fatherliness so using other metaphors reminds us that no single metaphor could be the truth about god we can only have images not definitions now what she's saying there is the constant use of the male metaphors and male language have skewed that image of god she admits we can't define what god is like but we can get an image of what god may be like in our minds and that is through metaphor and the male metaphors have given a incorrect image it has over emphasized one aspect of god the maleness at the cost of the femaleness so she would argue that the use of father in scripture is culture dependent it's very much rooted in the culture of the writers of the books of the bible the bible writers are using metaphors as it expresses their experience of god in their day and age but they were writing an ancient ancient patriarchal culture that subjugated women and she says well that was 2 000 odd years ago you know for some of the old testament books 4 000 odd years ago slightly under actually that writing is totally dependent on the culture that was in now in the year 2020 when i'm doing this powerpoint culture has changed women are equal to men they are no longer seen as the weaker sex they are no longer subjugated in vast quantity in vast areas of the world although it's not perfect yet we'll be the first to admit so craig is saying why don't we express our experience of god in the way that the writers would today so we aren't culturally dependent so we think about writing about for today's society and her argument is that the use of god as mother is would go some way to correcting some of that imbalance so but for macphaig there's some real problems with the male god language for want of a better word she would argue that it promotes a patriarchal culture and if it's promoting a patriarchal culture you're subjugating women but of course today we're all equal no one's superior she would also say it's dominating quite often and certainly throughout the old testament you get this view of got as a king or a father and traditionally kings and fathers issue orders they expect obedience fear or submission we don't live like this anymore look fake would argue she would argue that the male dominated view of god is personal and intervening so kings and fathers act to rescue our save us help us but the modern scientific world for macphaig rejects this kind of divine intervention just doesn't happen she would also argue that it leads to passivity kings hand out benefits or punishments to their subjects who only need to wait on their pleasure but today macphaig argues we know we're the ones who are responsible for our world we have the power even to destroy nature so nuclear power over consumption etc remember she's an eco-feminist so not only is she concerned with equal rights for women but also for caring for the planet i'll do a little bit more of that in a slide in a minute so she would also say that this view of male dominated metaphor etc is distance you know this idea of a king father royalty is untouchable fathers are out there somewhere doing things and it's rule obedience centered you know the king's fathers lay down the law they expect obedience justice is punishing those who rebel against that law but she would say it's better to see god-like living as showing care and fairness for the well-being of all as opposed to just laying down the law and blindly obeying it and she'd finally say it's anthropocentric so kings and father metaphors are focused on human society but for her that's a real issue because that excludes that metaphor excludes the rest of creation and as i said here remember she's an eco-feminist somebody's interested in both the environment and women's rights and uh lastly it's just oppressive based on law fear justice rather than care relationship and mutual responsibility so she wants change so really important remember that fake is not saying that god is a mother or even female but she's saying that the image of god the earth mother highlights characteristics of god such as love for the world and these are better characteristics than the ones that are conjured up by the male view so she develops a metaphor as the world as being god's body and this is linked to her eco-feminist view and she develops that metaphor further for god's relationship with the world and she corresponds that to the three parts of the trinity father son and holy spirit three ethical elements and three different different definitions of love and we're using the greek definitions here so these are summed up in this table so i've got for you here so for the father son and holy spirit mcveigh uses the metaphor mother lover and friend and she's saying the ethical element highlighted by the mother is justice by the lover is healing and by the friend is companionship and the word for love that's linked to the mother it's agape that's selfless love the type that god has for the world eros which is more the desire the way in which the god's love works in the world and philos companionship the way in which humans should interact with the world so have a close look at that you need to know that for the exam so really make sure you understand those three key concepts that mcfade is putting forward so mcfag believes that masculine language regarding god's unilateral sovereign rule as a king has led to an abuse of the natural world and the domination of women by men eco-feminism so she says that if god's called mother it follows the world is no longer ruled over by god it becomes more of a part of god's body or womb so to harm nature is to harm god because the world is part of god now this is pantheism the belief that the universe is a visible part of god not all christians are happy with this so the maternal images of god birthing comforting and caring for mcfag highlined humanity's reliance on god and this is kim mcfake stresses the importance of seeing god in female and not feminine terms because the female is specifically referring to gender whereas feminine refers to qualities that are traditionally associated with women their stereotypes the idea of i know being caring loving compassionate they're not just female they're not just feminine qualities they're also masculine qualities but they have been traditionally ascribed to the feminine female is much more about things that only a female can do give birth etc okay feed the young suckle the young want the young to flourish those sort of things so please when you are referring to mcfake's views and stress that she wants the female and not the feminine because we don't want stereotypes which is what she's fighting against so here's her argument for the metaphor as goddess mother she says right if you use mother instead of father it's intimate you get this idea of god nurturing just as a mother nurtures sharing their life their physical life with us fulfilling needs drawing us into union with them that is a better view of the divine for macphaig it's related to us if creation is bodied forth if the world emerges from god as god's body this better shows our dependence and relatedness to god because god then knows creation from the inside almost as part of herself as opposed to the sort of transcendent out there above it all god she would argue this metaphor is more focused on fulfillment of all than on obedience she would argue that mothers care more about growth flourishing fulfillment of their offspring so that side of god is emphasized more with the mother metaphor it's inclusive a mother cares for all that she gives birth to as her own it's all creation not just humans made in his image now if you think about that first genesis chapter one when god makes man in his own image and tells man to rule let's think about the um environment for a moment we've got this idea that man rules and therefore could do what he wants with the environment for but fake this idea that all creation not just humans are made in the image of god means that the environment must be respected remember eco-feminist so she would say it reflects better that we're in god's image that follows on from the previous point god's both male and female not just motherhood but other aspects the femaleness of a female nest must be in god all other aspects now there have been some responses to the fake as not everyone agrees with her and the first type of response is related to the idea of her argument for metaphor and language and so some christians might argue when you look at that description of god in the bible it's not language it's revelation it's god speaking directly so you've got the fundamental christians if you go you know ken ham in answers in genesis every single word of this book is one hundred percent the word of god there are no errors so they would argue that macphaig's argument assumes that language about god is a human invention well it isn't it comes from divine inspiration and therefore you've got no right to change it so let's think about that jesus related to himself to god as his father he taught his disciples to pray our father to see themselves as children of the father jesus was counter culture and a lot of things you know he had women disciples yet with sinners but despite that counter culturalism he didn't think god really was a father if he didn't think god was really a father what he might say why did he make such a point of it there you go mcveigh secondly they say the bible only ever speaks of god as father even though in religious cultures of the ancient near east it was common to think of god in forms of goddesses so greek goddesses roman goddesses syrian goddesses as israel we read about this in the old testament was often tempted to do this and prophets spoke against it so in keeping to god as father actually israel was going against near eastern culture so israel itself the whole testament is counter-cultural which combats that view of mcfakes and when thinking about those verses that do emphasize the motherly aspect or female side of god they would argue that the bible never suggests that it's female mother imagery about god actually makes god a mother so although the aspects report important and belong to god as father the bible never suggests god could be seen as female so for instance if we look at numbers 11 12 the bible has moses asking if he if god gave birth to his people so there's a mother image but this doesn't question his gender identity he's still very much seen as male and the father the second view that you can argue back it with fagon is creation is better explained with god as father remember she thinks that christ is better explained with god as bother this idea of god birthing the universe now this little tricky so let's make sure we get our heads around it so this argument against macphaig is that creation is something distinct from god yet expressive of him and cared for by him god is over and above it so he's transcendent so goddess father shows god as transcendent above and beyond creation and imminent at the same time acting within it god as mother only suggests god is in continuity with creation christians part of him so actually all you have there is the imminent side of god and by viewing god as mother and god birthing the birthing the universe out of him and it being a part of him actually you've lost that transcendence so the father metaphor for people argue against mcfag on the creation being better explained by a father god they would say it's better at showing god as the origin and the source of everything because we use the analogy fathers initiate procreation which is then separate from them so the man for want of a crude word leaves a deposit and then walks away if necessary the mother receives the life lurch it nurtures it and gives birth for it the ban is not required after the insemination so there's a better analogy for god creating the universe and then leaving it and being transcendent above it and acting every now and again within it as he chooses like her father thirdly they would argue that god as father better reveals god's identity who god really is so um the father metaphor they would say shows us that god's both omnipotent and benevolent whereas the mother god suggests imminence continuity of creation and loses as i said previously that sense of power transcendence and mystery the father aspect shows that god has full patriarchal authority of which earthly fatherhood's only a pale reflection so you may have dominating distant earthly fathers but that doesn't mean the analogy is wrong as father god cares for us individually with a personal love there's nothing wrong with that and then of course we come back to the aspect of the trinity the trinity defines god as father jesus is the son so the father son metaphor better keeps the sense of how jesus is distinct from the father yet the father's the source in his human nature jesus sees god as his father although he has no earthly father so the analogy works better and then also to change the metaphor of god as father some people would argue is to change who god is now there's no god apart from god the father yet he does have female qualities so it's been so entrenched that changing the metaphor would change worship of god and the key beliefs of what christians believe in not sure that's a strong argument but nevertheless it could be used so goddess father analogy or metaphor this is the final slide this sums it all up and i think perhaps the final argument perhaps you could argue the most conclusive one against mcfade so if you take god as father many scholars think you can argue from the point the view of both analogy and metaphor so in analogy god really is a father he's got the fullness of patriarchal authority and care beyond that you know beyond what we can even know epistemic distance etc and metaphor works because god's literally not like human fathers you need a corresponding female other to impregnate in order to give life he's not literally men of such a way but he shares some features of human fatherhood so analogy and metaphor work if you go with god as mother they would argue that actually you can't use analogy and this is why so let's run with metaphor first so we go with a metaphor god shares motherhood aspects such as care inclusive love nurturing of all creation etc just as mcfadden points out however god's not a human mother in all respects because mothers don't begin life they receive and nurture it and what god creates is distinct from himself while from others the child's part of their body while in the womb so creation is not part of the same stuff as god is so they reject pantheism but for those very reasons and we use analogy here god cannot literally be mother because of the points above because god literally does not begin life and creation is not literally part of god so therefore only metaphor works which weakens fake's point of view so you've got the arguments for and against mcphaig which you can use in your evaluation and you've got the key views of mcfag i hope you found that useful