IS God a woman?

This was Karen Stephen's question in her jokey but provocative article in last Monday's Bolton Evening News. I enjoyed her humorous approach, but what is the answer to the question? Is God a he or a she, or even an it?

Some of the very earliest Christian thinkers were very clear that God is neither a he nor a she nor an it. God is much bigger than all our imagining. God is beyond all these human ways of talking. To pin God down into being one or the other is to make God less than God.

This did not stop them using the title "He" for God. We have to speak of God in human language, we have to call God something. The traditional title for God was He, so they were happy to stick with it, even though they knew it could be misleading.

Down the ages, some of the people who have had the deepest experiences of God have experienced God as both mother as well as father. Over 600 years ago Julian of Norwich talked of God in this way. She wrote: "My kind Mother, my gracious Mother, my dear worthy Mother, have mercy on me."

There are also a number of images in the Bible where God is talked of in motherly terms. In one place, God is compared to a mother hen who gathers her chicks under her wings. One of the greatest archbishops of Canterbury, writing 900 years ago, started a prayer, "Christ, my Mother, you gather your chickens under your wings, when I despair of myself console me."

So there is plenty of evidence in the Christian tradition for thinking of God in both

motherly as well as fatherly terms.

Some people find this hard to take because Jesus only referred to God as Father. The prayer he taught his disciples begins, "Our Father". But I think that it is wrong to jump to the conclusion from this that Jesus thought God was male.

It is clear from Jesus' teaching that his main concern was to show that God is rather like a caring parent who, no matter how far their child strays away, is always willing to welcome them back into the warmth of their arms.

It is the caring, nurturing, protecting, and loving side of God that Jesus stresses. He stands in contrast to the religious teachers of his day who stressed only the demanding and judgmental side of God.

When Jesus teaches us to call God "Father", he wants us to understand his loving and caring side. His picture of God is of someone we can trust absolutely, just like a mother hen who cares for her offspring.

I have strong feelings against those who insist that God must be male and Father. I also have strong feelings against some modern feminist theologians who say God can only be Mother.

God is beyond all our language and yet closer to us even than any earthly mother or father could ever be.

Michael Williams

Vicar of Bolton Parish Church