Is there a mother god?
Scripture never names a mother alongside God the Father, and the question of a "God the Mother" runs straight into the Bible's most basic claim: there is one God, and no other was ever formed beside Him. Yet the Bible does use motherly pictures for God's care, and it does name a "mother" for believers — so the answer needs both halves.
One God, and no second
The oneness of God is not a side issue in Scripture. Commentators trace it as the message Israel was given to carry to every nation.
Hamilton SmithThat there is only one God had been fully declared before Christ came. The unity of God is the great foundation truth of the Old Testament. It was the great testimony to Israel, as we read, "Hear O Israel: the LORD our God is One LORD" (Deuteronomy 6:4)... "You are my witnesses, says the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that you may know and believe Me, and understand that I am He: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after Me. I, even I, am the LORD; and beside Me there is no Saviour" (Isaiah 43:9-11).
God is Spirit — no body, no sex
A mother god assumes God has a female form. But Jesus' words to the woman at the well rule out a physical form of any kind.
William J Hocking"God is a spirit." He is the Being who is spirit in essence... It refers to His being, to the Person. He has no bodily shape. He is not limited as we are, and He is an omnipresent spirit, so though in heaven, He is here, and we being spirit are in His presence.
Gods with a sex are gods men invented
Writing on Paul's speech at Athens, Kelly traces how humanity slid from the true God to deities shaped after ourselves — including the giving of gender to them.
William KellyHe forgot the traditional knowledge which all had at first, weary of glorifying Him, and unthankful for His mercies. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into nature worship, and next into deified humanity, if we may so call the chief object of their adoration, given a sex and other human qualities.
The name the Son came to reveal was "Father"
If God had another name to disclose, the Son would have disclosed it. What He made known instead was the Father.
An Outline of Sound WordsThe Son stands in a relationship with the Father that the Father only could know, even as in the Person of the Son there is a holy mystery beyond the knowledge of any but the Father. But the Son had come to make the Father known, and in this revelation is the substance of the truth of Christianity. How often the name of Father was on the lips of the Son.
Motherly tenderness — as a comparison, not a title
God does borrow a mother's love to describe His own, and He does it to say His love outlasts hers. Writing on Isaiah 49, Vine draws out the point.
H J VineZion thought she was forsaken altogether. A woman may, unnaturally, forget the child of her womb; but Jehovah does not forget His own people. He comforts Zion; He consoles her, and rapidly increases her children.
Jesus used the same kind of picture of Himself over Jerusalem — a hen sheltering her brood — without it becoming a name or a nature.
Where a goddess is worshipped, judgment follows
Israel did adopt a female deity, and Jeremiah records God's response. Commentators trace the same worship into later forms.
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 around them, like the Phoenicians, the Assyrians, the Egyptians and the Babylonians. The Babylonian Venus, Ishtar, was called by them the queen of heaven... The Phoenicians worshipped this "queen of heaven" under the name of Ashtoreth or Astarte.
The same concern is raised about Mary being lifted "to the position of a female God" and crowned queen of heaven (Henry Allan Ironside).
The mother Scripture does name
There is a mother in the New Testament — but she is a city, not a deity, and believers are her children by grace.
A J PollockMeanwhile there is the Jerusalem which is above, the mother of all those who come under the blessing of God in this dispensation. Our blessing comes down from above. It is all of grace. It links the believer with the place from which it comes. It gives character to those it blesses, as a mother gives character to her children.
Summary
- One. Before God there was no God formed, and there will be none after Him — a second divine person of any sex is excluded at the foundation.
- Spirit. God has no bodily shape, so male and female categories do not apply to His being at all.
- Father. The Son came to reveal a name, and that name was Father; no other was given.
- Comparison. Mother-language in Scripture is a picture of God's comfort that outlasts a mother's — never a title He takes.
- Counterfeit. The female deity Scripture actually records is the "queen of heaven," and God's word to it was judgment; the only mother believers are given is the Jerusalem above.