Biblical Views: How the Mother God Got Spayed

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Is God gendered as a male in the Bible? What about Jesus’ words in John 4:23–24 where he says that “God is spirit”? In the same passage, however, Jesus calls God “Father.” Does he do so in reference to an actual masculinity of God? Is this a manifestation of male domination and patriarchy? Ben Witherington doesn’t think so.a According to him, Jesus calls God “Father” and not “Mother” only because he did not have a human father, while he did have a human mother. Witherington thinks that, at least in the New Testament, God is not perceived to be […]

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Footnotes

See Ben Witherington III, Biblical Views: “Spirited Discourse About God Language in the New Testament,” BAR 38:03.

Endnotes

April D. DeConick, Holy Misogyny (New York: Continuum, 2011), p. 81.

DeConick, Holy Misogyny, pp. 116–117.

DeConick, Holy Misogyny, pp. 111–128.

Tertullian, On the Veiling of Virgins 3–16.

DeConick, Holy Misogyny, pp. 4–12.

DeConick, Holy Misogyny, pp. 11–12.

“Even so did my mother, the Holy Spirit, take me by one of my hairs and carry me away on the great mountain Tabor” (Origen, Commentary on John 2.12.87, on John 1:3). Cf. Apocryphon of James 5.20: “Make yourselves like the son of the Holy Spirit.”

101.3: “For my [birth] mother [gave death], while my true [mother] gave me life.”

Gospel of Philip 56.7, 63.21–25.