Theological Language
Something of great concern to the task of theology is how we can even begin to speak about God, let alone communicate anything about him. It has been noted that something as simple as the aroma of coffee is not able to be adequately described, that is, hearing a detailed description of the smell of coffee falls far short of actually smelling it for oneself. If something as simple as coffee is greater than our language to describe fully, what hope do we have that we can even begin to speak about God in anything approaching an adequate way?
One thing that helps us to get our minds around the reason that we attempt to speak of God is because we do not expect words to be able to directly communicate divine revelation. In its most strict form, revelation is nothing other than the second Person of the Trinity, who became flesh and lived among us. The real location of revelation is in the very person of Jesus Christ. Words have indeed been used to describe this person and to try to communicate the gospel to later generations in the form of the Bible but, even though we call the scriptures the Word of God and revelation, we do not mean it in the same sense as we call Christ the Word of God and revelation. This similarity of language has tempted people to say that the Bible can be thought of as Jesus in book form. I think it would be far better to think of the Bible as John the Baptist in book form; many books from many authors, all of whom, in one way or another are pointing us beyond themselves to the reality of Christ that lies beyond them. Their primary focus is not to be revelation as such, but to direct our attention to revelation in the truest sense (that is, the reality of God as revealed through Christ).
In this case, we must think about our words about God, whether in a confession of faith, in a systematic theology like this, in preaching, or even in ordinary Christian conversation, as being inadequate in themselves but referring beyond themselves to God. John Calvin had a particularly useful way to think about this. He described the scripture as being like spectacles. The point of reading the Bible is not to know a bunch of words, but to know God. Our desire is not to allow the text as such to impress itself upon our minds, but to, in a sense, pass through the text and commune with God. There are some things we must keep in mind when we speak of God.
Priority of Being Over Language
When we assert that the language we use is not the end in itself, but rather primarily the means by which we think and speak about realities (in this case, God), we acknowledge that the words we use are not as important as the reality we are speaking of. Athanasius had a particularly helpful way of articulating this idea. He said that when we speak of God, “Terms do not disparage His nature; rather that Nature draws to Itself those terms and changes them. For terms are not prior to essences, but essences are first, and terms second.” What he means is that our words, when we speak of God, are radically redefined and reinterpreted in light of who God actually is.
After our discussion about the attributes of God, this should come as no surprise. After all, every time we looked at a particular word to describe God, we realized that, when we use that word to speak of God, we did not mean the same thing as we do when we use it to speak of human beings or our daily experience. Instead, we find that, in light of who God actually is, our words can take on a rather different meaning. This means that we can use words that have baggage associated with them because we do not intend to use them in exactly the same way as they are used in other situations. For example, the English word “god” comes from a German word that originally referred to a pagan being. And yet, in spite of that linguistic baggage, when Christians say “God,” they are not meaning it in this way at all. They are using the term as radically reinterpreted by the gospel, particularly in light of Christ.
The words we use are not as important as the reality we intend. This does not, however, mean that all terms are equally valid and that we need not use any discernment when selecting our terms. In reality, we need to take our selection of terms very seriously, because our goal is to be as clear and as unambiguous as possible, even if we realize that our words will be transformed in spite of that careful selection. Some words lend themselves more easily to transformation than others, but all are transformed.
Use of Non-Biblical Language
Throughout the whole theological enterprise, key terms are used to help express the ideas that lie at the core of Christian faith in as clear a way as possible. However, the question might be raised, “What business do we have using non-Biblical words at all?” This question is raised in every generation within any branch of the church that prioritizes the Biblical witness as the sole source and norm of Christian faith. And yet, those same branches (more or less) all affirm the classic Creeds of the church, which are made up of non-Biblical language (In fact, even the churches that reject the creeds simply on the basis of them being non-Biblical will say that they still agree with their content).
Let us consider a few problems of a refusal to use non-Biblical language and then consider some of the legitimate advantages of using them. The first problem of such a refusal is that it degenerates into absurdity. The idea that we should not use any words but those that are in the Bible has been put forward as pastoral advice in the form, “You should not read anything but the Bible.” This sounds fine at first; but if the concern is that you do not want anything to superimpose an interpretation on the Bible, it stands to reason that we ought not hear anything but the Bible being read aloud. And if this is the case, what becomes of preaching? Preaching becomes forbidden unless it is made up of nothing more than a string of Biblical quotations. What is interesting is that, even using nothing but words that appear in the Bible, it is very possible to put forward some very non-Biblical ideas.
The next main reason why the absolute rejection of non-Biblical language is problematic is that the Bible was not written in English (or most of the other languages that are spoken within the Christian world). If we should only use the words of the Bible, we should only be using Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic. After all, every translation is an interpretation, either more or less, and we cannot escape that we are at the mercy and integrity of the Bible translators unless we are quite learned in the original languages (which the overwhelming majority of Christians are not).
A third objection to this concern to use only Biblical words comes from the Bible itself. On the one hand, we see that, when the devil tempts Jesus in the wilderness, he does so by quoting scripture, various passages from the Old Testament. This alone should be evidence that even memorizing and quoting scripture is not a foolproof way to assure orthodoxy. On the other hand, we see Paul taking up the phrases of the non-Christian world and using them for distinctively Christian purposes. The real concern is not where the words came from, but what they mean and how they are being used.
A more positive reason why we must not reject all non-Biblical language is because the Bible is ambiguous on many topics. The area in which this has historically come to a climax is regarding the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. It is clear that the idea that God is a Trinity, “one being, three persons,” is not found among the words of the Bible, and yet, centuries of Christian history has affirmed that it is a true reflection of what is actually present in the Biblical witness, if implicitly. The argument for the use of non-Biblical language to speak of the Trinity has often been fought on the grounds of clarity. For example, someone who wanted to deny the divinity of Christ could say that Jesus is the son of God, but only in the same way that we become the children of God, that is, by being adopted into God’s family. Saying that Christ is “of one being with the Father,” rules this heretical interpretation out of bounds, while not adding anything to the Biblical witness.
We must always remember that it is the reality that we are speaking of (in this case, God) that is what matters. Our words need to be chosen in order to speak of it. The use of Biblical words is permitted only if we allow God to challenge the meanings that we think they have and be reinterpreted in light of who God actually is. The same is true for non-Biblical words. They also must be reinterpreted if they are to be put to Christian use. The point is that it is the faithfulness of our words that is important, not the words themselves.
Gender Language for God
Within recent decades, a debate has raged about the use of gender language in relation to God. Most particularly, this debate has had to do with whether it is appropriate to retain use of Father and Son language for God. The concern is that, by insisting on calling God “Father,” the church has hardened the patriarchal and sexist tendencies latent in Western culture so that such tendencies have acquired a holy stamp of approval. When this is combined with the fact that all the authors of the Bible (so far as we can tell) were men, the great bishop-theologians have been men and many denominations refuse to ordain women and deny leadership positions to them simply on gender grounds, it can be argued that the church has indeed been patriarchal and sexist. It is significant that the first generation of Feminist theologians were nearly all Roman Catholic. The Catholic Church has claimed that priests must be male because only a male priest can adequately image a male Christ and only a male Christ can adequately image a male God.
Though it cannot be denied that there have been examples of patriarchalism and sexism within the history of the church, it is by no means universal, nor does it go back to the roots of the faith. Using Father and Son language to refer to God is not meant to say that God the Father is kind of like human fathers or that God the Son is kind of like human sons. In fact, the opposite is the case. Jesus tells his followers to call no man father because our Father is in heaven.
In light of the previous section about how words function both in the Bible and in subsequent church history, it should be clear that there is nothing intrinsic in the idea of earthly human fatherhood that makes the word “father” more accurate to describe God than “mother” or any of a number of other alternatives. The word “father” is taken up by God and radically redefined to have its full and final meaning in God alone. This means that, far from being a tool for patriarchalism and sexism (which has been done all too often), the Fatherhood of God should be the strongest critique of those tendencies. After all, if the word “father” is defined by God and not by human fathers, it stands in judgment of all the evil that our fathers have ever done, intentionally or unintentionally, to us or to others. In fact, it is because God has declared to us, “This is what fatherhood actually looks like,” that we can judge human fathers to be in the wrong when they behave in evil ways. If God the Father is not a patriarchal jerk, patriarchalism can find little support for itself from the example of God.
There seems to be something of an arbitrary character of the use of Father and Son language rather than Mother/Daughter or the gender neutral Parent/Child. The argument put forward here is that gender simply doesn’t enter into the concern at all. In the early church, some of the greatest minds around laughed at the possibility that God might literally be male or female and that our language bound him to be one or the other. We are bound to call God “father,” not because God is more like human fathers than human mothers, nor because there is anything in the word that can make it function as an analogy, but simply because this is the language taken up by the Bible and even by Jesus himself.
It is absolutely true that the argument here is claiming that, aside from actual Biblical usage, there is no reason why God couldn’t be called “mother.” In fact, there are a multitude of passages throughout both the Old and New Testaments that use female imagery to describe God. If there is no necessity in the nature of God to be called Father, why do we need to do it? Finally, this question is the same as “Why the Jews?” After all, if God didn’t have to chose Israel and could have chosen another nation, why do we need to pay attention to the Jewish way of thinking? The answer to that question is because God has revealed himself in this way. Since God has actually set the Jews aside and revealed himself in that historical and cultural way, we are not free to overturn it because of our own reasons (perhaps, as history has shown, because we do not like the Jews). It is because of this, that God has actually taken up the names “father” and “son,” and not others that we retain them. To invent our own terms other than the ones actually taken up would be idolatry.
This way of reasoning works better for the term “father” than for “son.” After all, God is spirit and we can see how a spiritual being might be genderless. However, when God became incarnate, he did so as a man. Some have said that this ties God to men in a way he is not tied to women. Others have said that this makes Jesus fundamentally unrelatable to women. Others still have argued that, since God became a man, it means that men are better than women. The first response that must be made is that, if God were to become a human being, he had to become either a man or a woman. One might say that it was a 50% chance that God could have become a woman. It might also be argued that God had to accommodate himself to our weakness and, as a female Christ would never have had a hearing in that patriarchal and sexist time, a male Christ was necessary. By way of a little speculation (which means that this claim is even more tentative than others), we might make the following argument from our observations of the person and work of Christ. We have seen that, in Christ, God entered into humanity at its very worst. Instead of saying that Jesus being male means that men are better than women, might it mean that men are worse than women and more in need of redemption? It is certainly another way to think of it.
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