02 Religious Concepts And Religious Life - A God As Male And Suffering

Question 1

What do original languages of the bible speak of God as? (Male)

Answer 1

The father.

Question 2

What is Jesus in relation to God?

Answer 2

His son

Question 3

What is the Holy Spirit traditionally referred to as?

Answer 3

He

Question 4

Explain the Holy Spirit as a male.

Answer 4

The bible consistently refers to the Holy Spirit in masculine terms. This does not mean that the Holy Spirit is male though. As the name implies, God is a spirit.

Question 5

Explain the son of God as male?

Answer 5

Jesus is spoken of as “son of God”. During his life on earth, he was clearly a man.
However, Christians believe that before he ever became incarnate he was “with God and was God” (John 1:1) and therefore was neither male nor female.

Question 6

Explain God as the father as male.

Answer 6

God is likened to a human father. He provides for his children, disiplines them and loves them. This does not however mean that he is male, any more than referring to ‘mother earth’ means that the earth is female. God exists in a form that defies male and female categories.

Question 7

In the New Testament, what two distinct ideas does God’s fatherhood convey?

Answer 7

1. God as the creator of the world.
2. The relationship between God and Jesus. Jesus called God father and taught his disciples to do the same.

Question 8

What does the title ‘father’ suggest?

Answer 8

Two different characteristics of God.

Question 9

What are the 2 different characteristics that the title ‘father’ for God suggests?

Answer 9

-his lordship over creation
-loving kindness

Question 10

What is the quote from psalm 103 about God being fatherly?

Answer 10

“As a father has compassion for his children, so the lord has compassion for those who fear him”

Question 11

What is God described as in Isiah 66:13?

Answer 11

A comforting mother

Question 12

Quote Isaiah 66:13.

Answer 12

“As a mother comforts her child, so will i comfort you; and you will comforted over Jerusalem”

Question 13

In Matthew 23:37 what type of illustration does Jesus use of himself?

Answer 13

Motherly

Question 14

In Luke 15:8-10 what is God compared to?

Answer 14

A woman searching for a lost coin.

Question 15

What gender has the bible made clear that God is?

Answer 15

Neither male nor female.

Question 16

What did Jesus himself say in John 4:24?

Answer 16

‘God is spirit’.

Question 17

Why can God identify with the needs of all people, male and female.

Answer 17

Because he created them in his own image (genesis)

Question 18

What did Paul write in his epistle to the galatians about Gods gender?

Answer 18

“There is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus”

Question 19

Who is Sallie McFague?

Answer 19

An American theologian who sees the earth as God’s body

Question 20

What point of view does Sallie McFague write from?

Answer 20

An eco feminist point of view.

Question 21

What does Sallie McFague say about all language about God in her book?

Answer 21

It is metaphorical.

Question 22

What are names and title for God according to Sallie McFague?

Answer 22

They are simple ways we think about God. They say very little about God’s true nature.

Question 23

What are metaphors about God (father) often turned into according to Sallie McFague? Explain.

Answer 23

Idols. We end up worshipping the metaphors instead of God.

Question 24

What did Sallie McFague want to provide new metaphors for?

Answer 24

Understanding God in ways that are meaningful today.

Question 25

What does Sallie McFague want the new metaphor for God to be?

Answer 25

Mother

Question 26

When Sallie McFague uses the metaphor as God as a mother, is she saying that God is a mother or even female?

Answer 26

No, but that the image of a mother highlights certain characteristics of God.

Question 27

What are Sallie McFague’s 3 metaphors for God?

Answer 27

-mother -lover -friend

Question 28

Explain Sallie McFague’ metaphor of ‘mother’.

Answer 28

Corresponding to the traditional title ‘father’; the doctrine of creation; the element of justice; and agape love, the type of love that God has for the world.

Question 29

Explain Sallie McFague’ metaphor of ‘lover’.

Answer 29

Corresponding to the traditional title ‘son’; the doctrine of salvation; the ethical element of healing; and Eros, the way in which God’s love works in the world.

Question 30

Explain Sallie McFague’s metaphors of ‘friend’.

Answer 30

Corresponds to the traditional title ‘spirit’, the doctrine of eschatology; the ethical element of companionship; and philia, the way which humans should interact with the world.

Question 31

What is pantheism?

Answer 31

The doctrine that the universe is part of God, but that God transcends or has some existence separate from the universe.

Question 32

According to McFague, what has masculine language conveying God’s ultilateral, sovereign rule led to?

Answer 32

the abuse of the natural world and denomination of women by men.

Question 33

According to Sallie McFague, if God is called ‘mother’, what follows?

Answer 33

It follows that the world is no longer ruled by God, but is a part of God’s body or womb. So harm to nature is harm to God.

Question 34

What does Sallie McFague believe maternal images highlight?

Answer 34

Humanities resilience on God.

Question 35

Why is it important that God should be imagined in feminine not female terms?

Answer 35

Because the second refers to gender while the first refers to qualities associated with woman.

Question 36

Which of God’s qualities are feminine?

Answer 36

-tender -nurturing -healing

Question 37

Which of God’s qualities are masculine?

Answer 37

-creates -redeems -establishes peace -administers justice.

Question 38

Why did some theologians reject McFagues concept as God as a mother?

Answer 38

It is unbiblical. Jesus asserted that God was father. If he was wrong on this fundamental point, how can we trust him with anything? In specific relation to Jesus, the terms ‘father’ and ‘mother’ are not interchangeable terms, because clearly Jesus’ mother was Mary.

Question 39

What has traditional Christian theology always supported?

Answer 39

Impassibility

Question 40

What does impassibility mean?

Answer 40

‘Unable to suffer’ but can also be extended to mean that God is ‘incapable of emotion of any kind’.

Question 41

What is the attribute of God’s impassibility closely related to?

Answer 41

His immutability or ‘unchanging nature’.

Question 42

In the Old Testiment and Philisophically, what is the nature of God?

Answer 42

-omniscient -omipotent -omnibonevolent -transcended all that existed.

Question 43

What did God become incarnate in?

Answer 43

Jesus.

Question 44

How can God feel emotion and pain through Jesus?

Answer 44

Because Jesus is God in human form.

Question 45

When did God feel the most pain through Jesus?

Answer 45

In his passion and cross.

Question 46

Does God feeling pain through Jesus effect the impassibility of his divine nature?

Answer 46

No. However, it has always been in God’s plan to overcome suffering with the resurrection.

Question 47

Why have several theologians over the last century challenged the view that God suffers through Jesus?

Answer 47

After 2 world wars, the Jewish holocaust and continuing conflicts and genocides, Christians cannot have faith in a God who is immune to suffering, they argue that God is passible, that he does not undergo emotional change or can suffer.

Question 48

Who is the scholar in reference to God suffering?

Answer 48

Jürgen Maltmann.

Question 49

Who is Jürgen Moltmann?

Answer 49

A German theologian who argued that God suffers with humanity.

Question 50

What does Jürgen Moltmann attempt to reply to?

Answer 50

Jesus’ cry from the cross, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Question 51

Why did Moltmann say that Jesus’ crucifixion was not only very significant for humankind but also God?

Answer 51

Because in the cross of Christ, God experienced death.

Question 52

What is Christian hope based on?

Answer 52

The resurrection.

Question 53

When can the resurrection be a realistic and liberating hope?

Answer 53

When the negative part of it is also felt.

Question 54

What is the identity of Christians?

Answer 54

“An act of identification with the crucified Christ.”

Question 55

What story does Moltmann use to show that God suffers with those who suffers?

Answer 55

A Jewish boy hanged by the nazi in Auschwitz ,God, he says, hung by him on the gallows, for God suffers with those who suffers.

Question 56

What should Christians have through Christ’s suffering?

Answer 56

Solidarity with the poor, the oppressed and the alien and the capable of using agape love to that which is different, alien, ugly.

Question 57

When Jesus cried on the cross “my god, my god, why have you forsaken me?”, what did God also feel?

Answer 57

The abandonment that Jesus also felt on the cross.

Question 58

What is protest antheism?

Answer 58

Antheism based on how the problem of evil and suffering destroys belief in an omnibonevolent God.

Question 59

Why does Moltmann state that protest antheism is resolved in the cross?

Answer 59

God himself protested against suffering in the death of his Godforsaken son.

Question 60

What is docetism?

Answer 60

The idea that it was only the human nature of Jesus that suffered, whilst his divine nature was not affected.

Question 61

Why was Moltmann’s theology criticised as Docetism?

Answer 61

Moltmann believed that both were impacted.

Question 62

What is the cross seen as?

Answer 62

The start.of the divine process whereby the death of the son and the grief of the father led to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Question 63

What is the key quote from Moltmann in relation to God suffering?

Answer 63

“In the cross, father and son are most deeply separated in the forsackenness and at the same time are most inwardly one in their surrender.”