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[Omits]

Why is God referred to as our father, and not our mother?

Obviously a spirit is neither male nor female, but why do we callGod "Him" rather than "Her"?

[jimwalton]

As you said, God isn't male. He is spirit, not corporeal (John 4.24), so he has no body and therefore no gender. Secondly, God is spoken of in the Bible using both masculine (warrior) and feminine (mother hen) metaphors. But there are reasons God is referred to with a masculine pronoun rather than a neuter or feminine one.

1. Using the neuter would make it seem like God was a force or an "it," not a person. Totally the wrong idea.

Hebrew and Greek are both gendered languages in which nouns, even inanimate ones, have a gender. It's inaccurate to assume that all gendered nouns or pronouns imply a gendered object. For instance, the Hebrew and Greek words for "wisdom" are feminine, but in neither case can we conclude they are trying to say something specific or exclusive about women. There is no connection between gendered language and gender identity. Ben Witherington says, "Our cultural biases have led to the overly sexualized reading of the God language of the Bible."

2. So we want to use a masculine or feminine noun because those speak of God as personal. It speaks of relationship that anyone anywhere in any time of history will understand.

3. "Father," in many cultures of the world, speaks of authority. It's fitting since God is sovereign.

4. "Father" avoids the sexual connotations of the female in the ancient world. In many cultures, "God" was a sexual being, image, and concept, and this perspective was to be avoided at all costs. The male imagery avoids the problem that men have as they look at women as sexual objects. We should not look at God sexually. For men and women, in the ancient world, it was better to have God as a "guy." We need to go with whatever communicates best. "Him" are "he" are just labels of revelation, not a reality of theology.

That the biblical God is never addressed as "Mother" is unique compared with the cultures surrounding the biblical authors. Simon Chan writes,

"Most ancient Near Eastern societies had a goddess as the main cult figure or at least to complement a male god—Asherah in Canaan, Isis in Egypt, Tiamat in Babylon. If patriarchy is responsible for cultures portraying God as male, then we would expect goddess worship to reflect a matriarchal society—one in which women are given superior status or at least equal to men. But this is not the case. Even today, many societies devoted to goddess worship remain oppressive toward women. Devotion to the goddess Kali in Hinduism, for instance, has never resulted in better treatment of women, even among Kali devotees."

Also, God as male and creator is necessary because of all the ancient mythologies portraying god as female and giving birth to the universe and to the world. Creation came about by sex, and the earth was extension of the deity mother's body. Calling God Mother undermines the Christian doctrine of creation by implying that God and the world are made of the same stuff and virtually indistinguishable. We need Father to get the right doctrine of creation.

5. "Father" enables the birth of Jesus in a non-sexual framework. The plan from eternity past was that the Redeemer would come from the seed of a woman. Well, you can't have the imagery or the theology of a woman impregnating a woman. Since Jesus is the only begotten Son of the Father, you really can't have Him as the only begotten Son of the Mother, and Mary. It doesn't work on so many levels.
Despite criticism, this perspective does not exclude women, because, as I said, God's masculine image doesn't convey exclusively masculine qualities (Isa. 54.5-7 [deep compassion]; 49.13). What God's masculine qualities exclude is the idea of a distant and impersonal being.

6. If God's Messiah had been a woman, in the culture of first-century Palestine, he would have had no platform to do his work. Frankly, the Jews, Romans, and Greeks were sexist, and Jesus as a woman would have hit a dead end really fast, or wouldn't even have gotten off the starting blocks.

7. The reason Jesus did not call God "Mother" is not just because God is never prayed to or directly addressed that way in the Bible, but also because Jesus had an actual human mother. He did not wish to dishonor her by using language appropriate only of his relationship with her, of the one he called Abba (God the Father).

In John 3.16 we read that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God. This is meant to convey the notion that while the rest of us, by God’s grace, may become the adopted children of God (see Jn. 1.12-13), the relationship between Jesus and the Father is a unique one of direct kinship. Jesus and the Father are one, such that those who have seen the Son have seen the Father, according to the gospel. It's not meant to be sexist, but to show a different kind of kinship.

So it's not sexist at all that God is referring to as male. There are important theological concepts behind the usage, but that has nothing to do with his (nonexistent) gender or anything sexist, exclusive, or demeaning.

[Assured]

> Why do we call God “Him” rather than “Her”?

“The Bible never titles God as our Mother. But the question is worth looking at more carefully because in dozens of places the Bible uses feminine language for God.

In his book Our Father in Heaven: Christian Faith and Inclusive Language for God, John Cooper published the conclusions from his study of these passages. One of his major discoveries was that while feminine metaphors for God’s activity are indeed used on occasion to illustrate the tender nurturing character of God, none of these references include feminine titles for God. Cooper explains,

Linguistically, all the clear and plausible instances of feminine reference to God are imagery or figures of speech: similes, analogies, metaphors, and personification. . . . There are no cases in which feminine terms are used as names, titles, or invocations of God, and thus there are no feminine pronouns for God. There are no instances where God is directly identified by a feminine term, even a metaphorical predicate noun. In other words, God is never directly said to be a mother, mistress, or female bird in the way he is said to be a father, king, judge, or shepherd. (89)

That explains why in Scripture we find many masculine titles for God: Lord, Father, King, Judge, Savior, Ruler, Warrior, Shepherd, Husband, and even a handful of metaphorical masculine titles like Rock, Fortress, and Shield. While feminine titles for God — Queen, Lady, Mother, and Daughter — are never used.

Masculine titles for God are not the evidence of “religious conditioning,” but the product of God’s self-disclosure. God has chosen to reveal himself with masculine titles, and we receive those titles by faith because, in the words of theologian Bruce Waltke, “It is inexcusable hubris and idolatry on the part of mortals to change the images by which the eternal God chooses to represent himself” (Old Testament Theology, 244).

God the Father is spirit. He makes man and woman in his own image, though he himself is not male or female. He prefers to manifest his own nature to us through masculine titles, and sometimes in feminine metaphors.”