Redeeming The Feminine SoulSýnishorn

Gender as Twin Reflections of God

The qualities of masculinity and femininity are found not just in man and woman, but also in God. In creation, for example, we see an awesome display of masculinity as God speaks the entire universe into existence. Yet in passages such as Isaiah 66:13, God displays feminine characteristics, too, saying, “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you.”

God is never referred to in Scripture as mother, but only as Father. Similarly Jesus is never called the daughter of man, but only the Son of man. He likewise is called our bridegroom, and we are the bride. This masculine imagery for God and feminine imagery for us are appropriate because God, our creator and savior, always initiates, leaving us only to respond. As Elliot writes, “All creation responds to His initiating. It is the only thing creation can do.”* Or, echoing the same sentiments, Lewis writes in That Hideous Strength, “What is above and beyond all things is so masculine that we are all feminine in relation to it.”**

So gender, like sex and marriage, is highly symbolic and helps us understand the nature of God and how we relate to Him.

Dr. Wayne Martindale, C. S. Lewis scholar and professor emeritus of English at Wheaton College, writes explicitly about this gendered symbolism:

Did this problem of knowing God and how human beings would refer to Him and think of Him escape God in the creation of gender? Or did He create a system which would adequately allow for us to conceptualize and talk about Him, and did He give us a divine revelation of the imagery we should use? Is it not more credible, given the supreme importance of knowing God rightly, that He should, in fact, create gender for the purpose of revelation?***

So gender is not in any way arbitrary or bound by culture. It is an enduring reflection of our unchanging God, and it is something that we, as masculine and feminine bearers of the divine image, have a responsibility to properly embody and express.

* Elliot, Mark of a Man, 55.

** C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength: A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups (New York: Scribner, 1996), 316.

*** Wayne Martindale, “C. S. Lewis on Gender Language in the Bible: A Caution,” Touchstone 4, no. 1 (1990): 5–8, accessed January 7, 2017.