Renaming God

Perhaps one of the most challenging issues for me in my seminary career involves the way that we call upon (name) God and represent God with analogies. Many of my colleagues (and some of the staff) thought that we should reconsider how we talk to and about God.

Everything from Father, Son and Holy Spirit; to Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer; to Source, Wellspring, and Living Water (courtesy of D. Cunningham); and so on, have been utilized to both name and describe analogously both who God is and what God does.

Feminists often cite the oppression of patriarchy as the reason to make the move to gender neutral or feminine pronouns for God, while other groups cite inclusiveness (perhaps the image of "Father" is a bad one because someone has had a bad experience with an earthly father) to make similar moves.

Here's the question: Is such a move necessary?

This topic has come up again recently, and somewhat heatedly in the blogosphere and in personal conversations, because of a Christian fiction entitled The Shack (you can click here to read a short and longer version of a review by Tim Challies---or you can click here to get a different take on the book by Greg Boyd).

In this story, the main character (Mack) encounters God in the same shack where his little girl had been murdered after an abduction. In this fictional work, God the Father is presented as an African American woman, God the Son is presented as a 30-something male carpenter, and God the Holy Spirit is presented as a humorous (Greg uses the words 'etherial' and 'hilarious' to describe her) Asian woman.

As I was going through my daily blogs today, I noticed that Tim had posted a quote from Bruce Waltke’s Old Testament Theology. Here is part of what Tim quoted (to read the entire post called Quote - Inexcusable Hubris, click here ---it is a short one!):

"We cannot change God’s names, titles, or metaphors without committing idolatry, for we will have reimagined him in a way other than the metaphors and the incarnation by which he revealed himself. His representations and incarnation are inseparable from his being."

What do you all think?

Please leave your comments about the following questions:

Should we (and can we) change the names, titles, and metaphors that we have for God? Why or why not?

In a few days I will post some more snippets of comments and my own continuing thoughts on the matter.