I agree completely with the conclusions that Elizabeth Achtemeier reaches in her article “Why God Is Not Mother” [Aug. 16], but not with the route she travels to get there. She argues that “if the creation has issued forth from the body of the deity [as some feminist theologians argue], it shares in the deity’s substance.… Therefore everything is divine.”
Non sequitur! Arguing this way, Achtemeier is going to “prove” the very thing she wants to disprove. Not knowing about the biological union of sperm with ovum, our ancient forebears thought a mother merely provided the incubator in which the father’s seed was gestated. Hence, in Jesus’ geneology in Matthew 1, it is only the fathers who do the begetting. Achtemeier’s specious line of reasoning would point to the concept of God as Father [rather than Mother] as promoting a view in which God is identified with his creation.
We had best leave the reason why God is Father instead of Mother in the sovereign mind of God who so chose to reveal himself, rather than try to conceive of humanly devised reasons why he did so.
Rev. Burrell Pennings
Zeeland, Mich.
One point seldom mentioned when discussing this issue is the Bible’s description of the church. The same writers who described God in masculine terms, described the church in a feminine term, that is, the bride of Christ. It is interesting how these so-called sexist writers chose to identify themselves (and every Christian man) with a clearly feminine term.
Craig A. Clark
Minneapolis, Minn.
Hinn’s “medicine”
Thank you for keeping the Christian public informed on Benny Hinn [News, Aug. 16]. Benny is so crass that he claimed in Philadelphia (a meeting I attended and taped in Feb. 1993) that if you bought and ...
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