No, you can't call God mother!

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JimmyG88 said:
Your relationship with God is personal to you. I use gendered pronouns although I know that the nature of God is beyond my comprehension
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If our relationship with God is personal to each of us, then what would be wrong if some of us prefer to call God “She”?
 
Thorolfr said:
If our relationship with God is personal to each of us, then what would be wrong if some of us prefer to call God “She”?
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Why are you trying to change God’s gender? Do you have some kind of feminist agenda?
 
Jesus calls Him father. Jesus told us to call Him father. The Gospels call Him father. Jesus is the Son. Contradicting the teachings of Jesus against the foundational principals Christianity.

What is the purpose of changing the gender used to refer to The Father and The Son?
 
Thorolfr said:
If our relationship with God is personal to each of us, then what would be wrong if some of us prefer to call God “She”?
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It makes no difference to me which words you use. The nature of God is undefinable and not comprehensible to the human mind. Whichever words we choose are fine by me personally. Only God the Son was incarnated male
 
Darryl_Revok said:
What physical aspects of a man does God have that we are supposed to visualize?
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Maybe we should see what Jesus tells us to see.“John 14: [6] Jesus saith to him: I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me. [7] If you had known me, you would without doubt have known my Father also: and from henceforth you shall know him, and you have seen him. [8] Philip saith to him: Lord, shew us the Father, and it is enough for us. [9] Jesus saith to him: Have I been so long a time with you; and have you not known me? Philip, he that seeth me seeth the Father also. How sayest thou, shew us the Father? [10] Do you not believe, that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I speak to you, I speak not of myself. But the Father who abideth in me, he doth the works.”
I’d say it’s pretty clear that Jesus said if we look at Him, then we are also looking at the Father. Jesus is a man (aka: masculine) and that’s the way we should see God the Father. Jesus is the true face of God.
 
To put it quite simply, Jesus referred to God as the Father. Some will say “Jesus called God Father because calling Him mother would be unpopular among the Jews.” These people seem to forget that Jesus said things that caused scandal because it was against cultural norm, like when He introduced the Eucharist and told everyone to eat His flesh and drink his blood otherwise they would have no life in them.

Obviously, Jesus didn’t stop them and say it was only a symbol. He didn’t care that it would be unpopular. Same would go with calling God, His Father.
 
The Church has a view about what we should call God. However the Church also says teaches that God has no gender as we can comprehend it. As we know there are three divine persons in one God. This in itself is incomprehensible and a matter of faith. One of the persons of the Trinity was incarnated as a man. No one has seen God the Father and we are taught that God the Holy Spirit is the manifestation of the love between Father and Son. But what ever words we choose to visualise God it is certain that we mere human beings cannot begin to understand the nature of the infinite. No matter what words we use the nature of God is not defined by our limited understanding
 
cadet17 said:
Obviously, Jesus didn’t stop them and say it was only a symbol. He didn’t care that it would be unpopular. Same would go with calling God, His Father.
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If God is “the father”, and referred to in male terms, does that mean he has the (to use a term that’s thrown around a lot) “procreative capability” of a human male ?
 
I think you will find that this isn’t an Anglican initiative but just a small group of people trying to make a point (rather badly)
 
JimmyG88 said:
I think you will find that this isn’t an Anglican initiative but just a small group of people trying to make a point (rather badly)
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There are Anglicans. And then there are Anglicans.

Motley, they be.
 
GKC said:
There are Anglicans. And then there are Anglicans.

Motley, they be.
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We have been very lucky to get former Anglican priests into the Catholic Church. My experience is that they are deeply religious men who celebrate mass with deep reverence. The fact that they are married is new to us but not unwelcome or at all a distraction
 
JimmyG88 said:
We have been very lucky to get former Anglican priests into the Catholic Church. My experience is that they are deeply religious men who celebrate mass with deep reverence. The fact that they are married is new to us but not unwelcome or at all a distraction
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Glad you appreciate them. They were among our best.
 
The OCs of Utrecht have been laying hand on females for a few years now. It was the occasion of the PNCC breaking communion with them.

Anglicans range from something beyond very very liberal, to at least very conservative. To use those terms.
 
Thorolfr said:
If our relationship with God is personal to each of us, then what would be wrong if some of us prefer to call God “She”?
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You may find William Craig’s explanation apt as shown below.

Question from a reader.

*There are many relationships in the world, for example son, daughter, mother, father, sister, brother, friend, mate, colleague. But why did God choose to reveal himself as God the Father, God the Son? Why didn’t He wish to be the mother, or the friend or any other relation with the second person of trinity?

I believe that any one of these kinds of relationships would still give rise to the same question - why mother and son or daughter and why not other…? I would like to know various reasons for Jesus was to come as the son of the father.
*
Craig’s Response:
*Your question presupposes that God is a Trinity, Sangeetha, so we’ll start with that assumption. Theologians often distinguish between the ontological Trinity and the economic Trinity. The ontological Trinity concerns God as He is intrinsically, unrelated to creatures. The economic Trinity concerns God in relation to us, particularly the roles played by each person in the plan of salvation. In asking “why did God choose to reveal himself as God the Father, God the Son? Why didn’t He wish to be the mother, or the friend or any other relation with the second person of trinity?,” you seem to divorce the economic Trinity from the ontological Trinity, as though God could reveal Himself to be something incompatible with the way He really is.

According to the classical doctrine of the Trinity promulgated at the Council of Nicaea, God the Father eternally begets God the Son. This relation is sometimes called filiation, so that there is an intrinsic filial relationship between the first and second persons of the Trinity. So it is impossible for those persons to be related as mere friends, mates, colleagues, or siblings. The only question would be why the genders are not feminine rather than masculine: why not God the Mother or God the daughter? Given that the persons of the Trinity do not literally have a gender (since they are incorporeal), why are they revealed as masculine? The Bible says that men and women alike are created in the image of God, so any non-physical properties of masculinity and femininity which there might be must be alike comprised by God’s nature. Since God is neither male nor female, why does He reveal Himself as Father and Son?

In the Old Testament there are passages in which God presents Himself as a mother tenderly caring for her children. But Jesus thought of God as his Heavenly Father and revealed Him as such. In using the metaphor of God the Father, Jesus expresses two attributes of God which would not be so aptly captured by the metaphor of God as a Mother. The metaphor of God as a Heavenly Father captures both the parental love that God has for us and the authority that a father, as the head of the Jewish family, exercises. No other image could express so beautifully this combination of qualities in God.

As for the second person of the Trinity, it seems obvious that Jesus as a man should be called the Son of God. It would be inept for the second person of the Trinity to be revealed in Jesus of Nazareth as God the Daughter! If the second person of the Trinity had chosen to become incarnate as a woman, such a title would have been apt. But it is dubious, to say the least, that such a decision on God’s part would be the most effective way to express His nature or to reach the world.

If we do not embrace the classical relationships within the ontological Trinity, then it is more difficult to exclude that God should reveal Himself as three friends, for example. But we mustn’t forget that Jesus’ being begotten by God the Father is presented in the New Testament with respect to his human nature. The classical doctrine presents the second person of the Trinity as begotten with respect to his divine nature. Jesus’ being begotten of God through his virginal conception by Mary warrants his being called God’s Son. As the angel explains to Mary: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God” (Luke 1. 35). Again, Jesus’ being masculine precludes his being called the Daughter of God. And once again, in virtue of the Son’s incarnation and virginal conception, the first person of the Trinity, for the same reasons mentioned above, is appropriately called his Heavenly Father. That precludes the economic Trinity’s being composed of mere friends or siblings.

So whether we think of Jesus as begotten in his divine nature or simply in his human nature, I think we can see why God should reveal Himself to us as God the Father and God the Son (not to mention God the Holy Spirit!).*

reasonablefaith.org/why-god-the-father-and-god-the-son
 
(name removed by moderator), I hope you still subscribe to this thread 😃

I saw your comments on another thread I believe you have unsubscribed from. I just wanted you to know that I completely got where you were coming from and feel that we both probably have a similar view in life.

Just wanted to let you know, I would have PM’d but it wouldn’t let me 🙂
 
If we were made in God’s image, then God must be, at a minimum, male and female all at once. Should we not, then, be using “It” as the English pronoun?
 
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