Is it biblical to call God 'God the mother'?
Whether God may be addressed as "God the mother" is really a question about who gets to name God. The writers in this collection are agreed on one thing: God is not known by what we think fitting, but by the names He Himself has taken and the revelation He Himself has given.
Man cannot decide what God ought to be
Every attempt to describe God starts somewhere — either with His own word, or with our own minds. One writer, examining how far God can be known by man at all, draws the line firmly:
J. N. DarbyAll these considerations show that the mind of man, and especially of sinful man, is incapable of estimating what God ought to be, and what the revelation which He would give of Himself should be.
Left to itself, the human imagination reproduces its own likeness and calls it God:
James BoydBut God cannot be brought under any influence whatever. And yet man's thought of God does not rise higher than himself: "You thought that I was one like yourself" (Ps. 50:21).
The names God has taken
Scripture does not leave God nameless, waiting for us to supply the word. It records a set of names, each given at a particular point, each one God's own choice:
J. N. DarbyOf these relationships... there are three, Almighty, Jehovah, and Father — the last never revealed until Christ the Son came. Elohim was revealed to Abraham as Almighty. He was to trust in Him in that character... To Israel, He was revealed as Jehovah, and He was to be known and trusted as such; to us, as Father, and especially as Holy Father, in which name He keeps us, and we who have believed in the Son know and trust Him.
Note what governs the list: God says which name He is taking, and when. The name for Christians is Father — the name Jesus used in teaching His followers to pray, and the name He carried to them after His resurrection.
"Father" is not a word borrowed from human family life
A common argument runs that "Father" is simply the picture our culture supplied, so another picture could serve as well. One writer meets that argument directly, and reverses it:
James BoydIt will not do to say that Father and Son are only names taken in connection with the revelation, for the revelation is of that which exists... But such an argument is founded on the knowledge that we possess from creature relationships, and not from the revelation given to us of God... We do not know divine relationships by knowing them as found in this fallen world. We know them by divine revelation, though the Spirit of God may use the earthly to help us understand the heavenly; but we must not think that they are alike in every particular.
The relationship of Father and Son is the reality; human fatherhood is the faint copy. And this name came from one source only — the Son who made the Father known.
God is Spirit, not male or female
The objection sometimes raised is that calling God "Father" makes Him male. Scripture's own answer removes the whole category:
Samuel Ridout"God is spirit" (John 4:24); "No one has ever seen God" (John 1:18). These and other scriptures declare the spirituality of God as contrasted with man His creature, or the universe His creation.
The mother's comfort in Isaiah
Scripture does compare God's care to a mother's — and it does so as a comparison, inside a long passage about comfort:
F. A. HughesChapter 40 begins with the precious thought of God's affections set on the comfort of His people, a theme recurring some eleven or twelve times in the following chapters until we reach Isaiah 66:13, where we read those beautiful words — "As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you; and you shall be comforted."
The tenderness is real, and writers freely dwell on it: "Are not perfect power and perfect tenderness united in our God? His hand is as tender as it is mighty" (The Bible Treasury). But a simile describing how God comforts is not a name by which He calls Himself.
Where a divine "mother" does appear in Scripture
The Bible does contain a female deity — worshipped, and condemned:
Arno Clemens GaebeleinThey had provoked Him by making cakes to the queen of heaven. They had fallen in with the worship of a female idol, so common among the idolatrous nations that surrounded them... If the Lord was provoked to anger because the women of Israel brought cakes to this queen of heaven, how much more is He provoked to anger with...
Summary
- Revelation, not invention. Our minds cannot judge what God ought to be; we know Him only where He has spoken.
- Names He took. Almighty to Abraham, Jehovah to Israel, Father to those who believe in the Son — each name chosen and given by God.
- Reality, not metaphor. Father and Son name something that exists in God, not a picture borrowed from human family life.
- Spirit, not gender. "God is spirit" — the Father's name never made Him male, so no correction is needed.
- Comfort like a mother's, worship to the Father. Scripture likens His comfort to a mother's and condemns the worship of a "queen of heaven" — a simile of His care is one thing; a name for His worship is another.