Week 4: What are God's pronouns?
Opening our hearts
This week began with some powerful exercises that helped open our hearts and minds to new ways of experiencing and knowing God, introducing some key themes. We began by reflecting on a 15th c. Orthodox icon by Andrei Rublev. In the Orthodox tradition, this icon would be used for meditation and prayer. We were invited to notice the unexpected ways the Trinity was represented in Rublev's artwork: the figures of the Trinity are androgynous, and sit in a way that emphasizes their equality. The front of the table is open, inviting us in.
Next we checked in on last week's homework reflecting on your identity as an image-bearer of God. When God calls you by name, what do you imagine God calls you? Our group shared the tender and personal names they heard God calling them.
Then Brittany led us in a powerful guided meditation in the style of Internal Family Systems (IFS). This entailed identifying the various places within our selves that embody different emotions, agenda, and priorities. It was a helpful reflection that allowed us to recognize the varied emotions that many of us bring to the table when discussing gender identity, including anxiety, sadness or even irritation and anger. Brittany encouraged us to notice and accept all the different parts that this topic brings up with curiosity and gratitude, realizing that these varied parts are all trying to help us. It was a helpful reminder that we can do hard things, and an affirmation of the courage and empathy that each member of this group brings to our work.
What's my name again?
In ch. 6 of his book, Hartke explores a powerful aspect of trans and nonbinary identity: names: "Names are incredibly powerful things… our first name identities us as an individual, and our last name identifies us as part of a community. For transgender people, names can take on an additional sense of meaning. They become another way in which we express our gender."
Renaming can be an important part of transgender experience. It builds on a long tradition we see in the Bible as well, when individuals are often renamed to mark a significant transition or change in identity or purpose. In Num. 13 Moses changes the name of Hoshea son of Nun to Joshua. In Matt. 16:15-18 Jesus changes Simon's name to Peter, the Rock. In the book of Acts, we see an apostle change his name from the Hebrew, Saul, to the Greek, Paul, as his ministry extends beyond the Jewish community.
A particularly significant name change happens in Gen. 32:24-30, where Jacob wrestles throughout the night with an unknown being, leading to this exchange:
Jacob answered, “I will not let you go until you bless me.”
“What is your name?” the other asked. “Jacob,” he answered.
The other said, “Your name will no longer be called ‘Jacob,’ or ‘Heel-Grabber,’ but ‘Israel’—’Overcomer of God’—because you have wrestled with both God and mortals, and you have prevailed.” - Gen. 32:24- 30, the Inclusive Bible
Hartke writes: "This imagery— this wrestling with God and humans—is incredibly familiar to transgender Christians who have spent a portion of their life grappling with their faith and their gender. Sometimes we have to fight to have our gender recognized, and sometimes we fight to be seen as Christians, and sometimes it feels as if we're just holding on to God with both hands and refusing to let go until God gives us something. That hunger and thirst for righteousness, for justice, for blessing, and for grace can leave us ecstatic when we finally receive it, but it can also leave us limping."
Renaming can be hard for friends, family and especially parents. Yet using birth names for transgender persons feels invalidating and hostile. It can be dangerous if it outs someone in an unsafe way or place. But using a person's chosen name is a way to show respect and support. It demonstrates that you believe them to be who they say they are.
If you've been using someone's birth name or pronouns for some time, it's inevitable you'll make mistakes. It's important not to make a big fuss when that happens, so as not to draw undue attention to the person or to the mistake. Instead, simply apologize, make the correction, and move on. Some tips from the entire group for changing our long-established habits:
• Practice, practice, practice. Spend time with a friend or loved one every day to practice talking about someone you know with a new name or pronouns, Just share a sentence or two using their proper name and pronouns. Repeat this practice throughout the day when you make a mistake.
• When you meet someone with a new name, make it a point to greet them by name immediately to reinforce the chosen name.
• Imagine a tiny mouse in the person's pocket to naturally refer to "they". Another friend invites us to imagine they are a swarm of buzzing bees.
• Put your own pronouns on your email and zoom profile. When you meet someone new, share your pronouns along with your name. This helps normalize the practice so that it's easier and safer for trans and non-binary friends to share theirs.
• Feel free to ask new acquaintances their pronouns. Include their pronouns next to their name when you add them to your phone contacts so you'll have a regular reminder.
• You might print out pictures with names and pronouns to review daily. If you pray, this can be a reminder to pray for your friend.
Hartke writes, "using a trans person’s chosen name shows them that you care for and support them, and studies have shown that having a chosen name used at home, at school, at work, or with friends reduced suicidal thoughts in trans youth by 29%."
Looking at Scripture: the image of God
We spent the rest of our time returning to last week's discussion of the creation story in Genesis 1. This week we zeroed in on two verses in particular:
Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, to be like us. Let them be stewards of the fish in the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle, the wild animals, and everything that crawls on the ground.” Humankind was created as God’s reflection: in the divine image God created them; female and male, God made them. - Gen. 1:26-27, The Inclusive Bible
There are several things that stand out as notable in this short passage. First of all, we notice again that both men and women are in the image of God. Interestingly, the Bible itself never defines what that image entails—what exactly is it about humanity that comprises the "image of God"? Throughout the years, theologians have suggested several theories:
1. Some physical characteristic (the Bible speaks of the eye of God, the hand of God)
2. Some nonphysical characteristic, such as our intellect, moral reasoning or creativity
3. Some aspect of caretaking, dominion, and responsibility for God's creation, because the text says we are to be stewards.
4. As we learned last week, complementarians believe we exhibit the image of God through our gender, because "male and female" is emphasized in the text. They believe men and women have separate and unique divinely appointed roles, and you need both men and women together to be the image of God.
5. 20th c. theologian Karl Barth built on the same idea of "man and women" being significant to the image of God, but broadened it to simply suggest community of any gender. Being in the image of God means that we were created for authentic, vulnerable relationships. We need community.
Because they believe gender is essential to the image of God, complementarians will generally deny that trans and non-binary identities can fully represent the image of God. Author Tara Soughers responds, "the writers of the first creation story (in Gen. 1) were expressing their belief that both men and women image God, a radical idea in a time when women were often seen as inferior, derivative, or even property. Their insistence upon naming the two genders seems to have been an attempt to expand those who were seen as being made in God's image, not narrow it."
It's helpful to recognize the Gen. 1 creation story is not the only creation story in the Bible. There are several others, including one in Gen. 2:
So from the soil YHWH formed all the various wild beasts and all the birds of the air, and brought them to the earth creature to be named. Whatever the earth creature called each one, that became its name. The earth creature gave names to all the cattle, all the birds of the air, and all the wild animals. But none of them proved to be a fitting companion, so YHWH made the earth creature fall into a deep sleep, and while it slept, God divided the earth creature in two, then closed up the flesh from its side. YHWH then fashioned the two halves into male and female, and presented them to one another. When the male realized what had happened, he exclaimed, “This time, this is the one! Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh! Now, she will be Woman, and I will be Man, because we are of one flesh!” - Gen. 2:19-23, The Inclusive Bible
Here it's interesting to note that in Gen. 1, gender is a part of the creation of humanity from very beginning. But in Gen. 2, it is an afterthought. One human is created (this translation uses "earth creature" as a more literal translation of the original Hebrew) without mention of gender. The second human is a companion, not because they are female, but because they are another. In fact, Gen. 2 emphasizes not their difference, but rather their sameness:
Gen. 2:23: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh."
What are God's pronouns?
When you pray, how do you usually address God? Father, Savior, Spirit, Lord?
The discussion of the image of God leads naturally into a discussion of the nature of God's own self. Indeed, one of the gifts that non-binary and transgender Christians bring to our community is the way they encourage us to think more broadly about God.
We are often trained to picture God as male. That's because many of the images for God in the Bible are masculine, especially the image of Father and Son, as well as king. But we have other images as well, including feminine images like a mother hen and a midwife
Turning again to Gen. 1:26-27, we already noticed that in vs. 27 the image of God is both male and female. We can think about looking into a mirror—the image presented never contains something not present in the real. If we are not wearing a hat when we look in the mirror, our reflection is not going to have a hat. So since an image can't be more than the original, we can conclude that God must be both—or more than—male and female.
This concept is not as new as it might seem—even for evangelicals. Both mystics and theologians have been emphasizing the "divine feminine" for centuries. One reason for this is that the Hebrew word for the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, ruach, is feminine. The word for wisdom, Sophia, is also feminine, and often used in the Old Testament to represent the Spirit of God (e.g. Prov. 8).
We often find it challenging to describe God because God is transcendent—"wholly other." We are limited by our language. But language is fluid. It changes. Now that we have a singular "they/them" pronoun it's easier to talk about God. And so you might notice that surprisingly, that's the pronoun God uses in the Genesis 1 account-- first person plural—we/our. That's because the Hebrew word for God used here, Elohim, is plural.
How does our understanding of God as Trinity influence this?
For most Christians, the way we imagine and think about God is wrapped up in our understanding of the doctrine of Trinity– the belief that God exists as 3-in-1: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It's part of our most ancient creeds (the Nicene and Apostle's Creeds) and is a foundational belief of most Christian churches. As a Presbyterian pastor, I am a Trinitarian, and hold to that understanding of God. However, exploring how we got the doctrine helps us to use this tool differently, and can open space to begin to imagine God differently. So a little history on the development of this doctrine:
The word "trinity" is not found in the Bible, nor is the doctrine as we understand it today ever fully spelled out. Which means the earliest Christians—including the disciples—were not Trinitarians. They believed in God, and Jesus as Savior, but didn't have a fully developed Trinitarian theology. Rather, the doctrine of the Trinity developed over about 300 years of intense debate, especially around Jesus' nature. The process became very political and very dogmatic. Dissent was violently opposed. (One of my non-Trinitarian friends likes to point out that St. Nicholas, our historical antecedent of Santa Claus, punched the non-Trinitarian Arius at the council of Nicea over this matter). Wars were fought. People died. Eventually, the Roman emperor Constantine settled it as a political matter.
And yet, the desire to understand God was and is important. Theology matters. It changes things. And I believe God wants to be known. The care and effort they took to understand God's nature and being was important and worthy, but their violent means and dogmatic stance were not.
The language the early church finally arrived at to describe the Trinity—Father, Son and Spirit—emphasized relationship. The early church fathers used a metaphor that was easily relatable. It is a helpful metaphor to understand a deep and complex mystery.
And yet, Father, Son and Spirit IS a metaphor. There are many other metaphors for God in the Bible. Its important to remember that and the limitations of metaphor. Some of the feminine metaphors for God in the Bible include:
• Birthing: Deut. 32:18; Is. 46:3-4; John 16:21; Rom. 8:22; and Job 38:8, 29.
• Nursing mother: Num. 11:12; Ps. 131:2-2; John 7:38; 1 Pet. 2:2-3; and Is. 49:15.
• Mother bird: Deut. 32:11-12; Ps. 17:8; and Luke 13:34.
• Woman with a lost coin: Luke 15:8-9.
• Midwife: Psalm 22:9-11 and Psalm 71:6.
Even after the Trinitarian image was established as doctrine, there were intense debates about the interrelationships within the metaphor. The Eastern and Western church split over this. The three terms of Father, Son and Spirit implied a hierarchy within the Trinity. As women were given a voice in the church, concerns about the gendered nature of the metaphor were raised.
Traditional theologians tend to argue against feminine images and pronouns for God by saying God is not gendered. But that begs the question: if God is not gendered then why do we need to use gendered terms to describe the Trinity?
The early Christians struggled to understand how the three persons of the Trinity interrelated. They understood this is immensely important to how we live as Christians—how we imitate Christ. Southers writes: "They were trying to craft a new understanding of God, a more complex God… The compromises they made in their language were carefully crafted… However, language, no matter how carefully crafted, is always imprecise, particularly about subjects such as God and relationships within the Godhead."
Thinking about God in new ways—using different language and metaphors and pronouns for God—can feel jarring at first. It can be uncomfortable. But it can also open something up for us. They can help us to experience God in new ways.
Soughers advocates returning to a multitude of names for God. She particularly likes the names suggested by theologian Linn Marie Tonstad, "The Spirit is the Power of God, the Son is the Glory of God, and the Father is the Name of God, which is love."
Similarly, an ancient non-gendered way to describe God is the lover, the beloved, and the love between them. Other theologians use a more traditional, but still non-gendered rubric that I like and have used: Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer.
When it comes to divine pronouns, I will share the practice I'm trying to lean into and be consistent in. But I stress, this comes not from Jesus, but is just one way to go that I personally have arrived at:
When speaking of God the creator or the entire Trinity: I use they/them
For Jesus the Redeemer: I use he/him (because Jesus presented as male)
For the Holy Spirit: I use she/her (because the biblical words for the Spirit are feminine)
This is not dogma, but something we can explore and experiment with. For your homework this week, I'm going to ask you to do that!
Southers reminds us of how our picture and language about God can shape the way we think about trans and nonbinary inclusion: "If God is non-binary, it is hardly surprising that those made in God's image and likeness do not fall neatly into the binary categories that we use to make sense of our world. Here lies the basis for a theology for trans allies: the simple acknowledgement, present throughout Christian history, that God is three or one, but never two, challenges all of the binaries that human beings are so fond of creating… If we approach describing God with humility, perhaps we ought to approach describing those made in the image and likeness of God with humility as well."
Homework assignment/ look ahead at next week
This week's homework assignment (set by me this time, so I'll take the heat!) may be challenging for some. Please see it as an experiment—something to try without pressure or judgment. Experiment with praying or thinking about God differently. Choose a different image for God—either a feminine one or a nongendered one—to address God. You might try mother, grandmother, friend, or ally. Journal some thoughts about God using "she" or "they", or rewrite some Scripture passages using diverse pronouns or images for God. Give yourself permission to be a bit playful and imaginative with it. Then, as Brittany suggested, observe your response with gentle curiosity. Journal your reaction, remembering there are no wrong answers! Just notice how it feels, and any new insights you may or may not experience of God.
Optional: read Hartke ch. 7-9. Bonus: listen to my sermon on the Ethiopian eunuch on the Haven website ("crossing boundaries" under videos at havensgv.org.)
Mother God,
Our words and images can never be enough to explain the mystery of your love. You are gentle like a mother bird and strong like a woman in labor. You come alongside us as a midwife, bringing new life. You tenderly care for us like a nursing mom. Like a woman searching for a lost coin, you never stop pursuing us. Let these amazing truths sink into our hearts today, unfolding for us new awareness and deepening our love for you. Amen.