554. 1) Is it right to address God as “she”? 2) The Orthodox approach to Environmentalism

 

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What follows here are two papers I prepared almost thirty years ago, for what purpose I can’t remember. A member of our Saint Nicholas congregation found copies and thought they might be of use. Indeed they are, inasmuch as I was out of town much of this past week, and this saves me from repeating something you may have seen before.

I read through them to be sure I still agree with myself. I do.

1) Is it right to address God as “she”? 

Oh, you already know the answer to that.  I’m going to explain why not.

June 16, 199

I’ve noticed how often in the media God is no longer called “He”. In one recent newspaper article the writer made a passing reference to God as “He” and then apologized for it! A recent “Newsweek” article described how in some Protestant churches and (I hear) even unofficially some Roman Catholic worship, God is being addressed as “mother” or as “father/mother”. The Episcopalian Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City displays a female figure on the Cross titled “Christa”.

• Note from 2025: Remember, this was in 1996. I don’t know the situation today.

The argument for this is actually quite logical. God is not actually a male. He is by “nature” (so to speak) neither male nor female. He is above and beyond those categories. “God created man * in His own image; in the image of God He created him *; male and female He created them.” Genesis 1:17

• humanity, mankind – it’s very hard to get “man” out, isn’t it?

The contention is that it is only “male chauvinism” that keeps us from addressing God as “she”, indeed as “mother”. That makes sense superficially. For God is in many ways like a nurturing mother: “O Jerusalem…  how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.”   Matthew 23:37

But no. Calling God “she” or “mother” comes from a misunderstanding of how we came to call Him “He” and “Father” in the first place. Do we call God “Father” because long ago people looked at human fathers and concluded, “God must be like that”, and so they began to think of Him as a father? In other words, did people make God in our own image? That would be idolatry, of course.

But that wasn’t how it happened. And it is not hard to see why not.

Look out into the universe on a starry night and consider the incomprehensible immensity of it all, how God’s power moves from beyond the farthest galaxy, and within the smallest atom – the infinite God. All seeing, all powerful, all knowing, from Whom alone all things come to be, to Whom all things shall return, Who “dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see”. 1 Timothy 6:16  Would you be moved to say, “Hi, Daddy”?

Compare that to the fellow whom you call “dad”?

That was not how people began to address God as “Father”. Rather it was a matter of revelation, which began with the Old Testament Jews who always addressed Him as “He”.

But how often in the Old Testament is God called “Father”? Only a few times that I can find * – Deuteronomy 1:31, Psalm 103:13-14. In Isaiah 63:16 He is addressed as Father: “You are our Father, though Abraham does not know us, and Israel does not acknowledge us, You, O Lord, are our Father…” I think that’s it. (If you know more, please comment below.)

• Note from 2025. Remember, that was in the pre-computer age, 1996, when I could not push a few keys and the answer would spring forth.

How different it is in the New Testament, where God is called Father over 260 times. And why was that?  Because Jesus of Nazareth first taught us that God is our Father.

Again and again, He spoke of “the Father”, His Father”\, who by the grace of Baptism and adoption becomes our Father. We pray “Our Father who art in heaven” because Jesus told us to. Christians did not decide for themselves what God is like. We did not try to figure Him out, because we can’t. We are not capable. We know Him only by revelation.

Saint Paul says in the letter to the Romans that the pagans, that is those who have not yet received the revelation of God, should be able to grasp God’s existence, and to discern the essentials of the moral law (do not kill, do not steal and so on), but that’s about it . Whether God is bad or good or indifferent, “he” or “she”, “father” or “mother”… how could mortals figure that out by themselves? They could only speculate, guess.

Indeed the ancient pagans had both male and female deities, gods and goddesses, both nice and nasty.

We can speculate about why this is the Christian “set-up”. Some say it’s because God plays a male role in relation to creation. But there’s no point elaborating on that: our generation doesn’t understand male and female roles. (And I’m not saying I do, either.) All we know for sure is what Christ taught us, and we follow His lead and do what He said.

The point is that when Christians call God “Father”, it is not sexism. It is not wicked males putting down females – because this is not man-made (human-made) religion. This is the revelation of God through Jesus Christ. And if it is wrong, then the only logical conclusion is that our Lord Jesus Christ was wrong, too.

II . The Orthodox Approach to Environmentalism

June 23, 1996

Some of you may not want to look to the right.

Last Wednesday, as I was walking and thinking about this talk, a large spider fell out of somewhere and landed on my arm. I do not like large spiders.

I panicked. I knocked it off and squashed it quick. And then I thought: There in a nutshell is the problem of environmentalism!

It ‘s dangerous to set up “straw men”, but it appears to me that today there are two very wrong popular secular views about the environment.

By secular, I mean they do not take God into account.

1  One view is that nature is good and that mankind is simply part of nature, and therefore our job is to fit in with the natural world as it is .

This leads to something almost like nature worship. In fact some “new age” * folks today are actually worshipping and saying prayers to Geia, Mother Earth, Nature. What’s wrong with this view is that nature is not only good; nature is also evil. Nature is often the enemy that needs to be conquered.

• Note from 2025: You younger readers may need to look up “new age”.

We no sooner start to appreciate the beauty of certain animals than they decide to eat us. The nature channels on television seem to be fascinated with the violence in nature, as repeatedly they show lions eating antelopes and the like.

In nature, might usually makes right . Is that what mankind is to conform to? Are we to allow mosquitoes to bite us and tigers to eat us and ants to take over the kitchen?

2  The other erroneous secular view is that man is a free agent, with no responsibility to nature or to anyone, and therefore it is alright to use and exploit nature as we choose, for our own ends, with no thought for what we’re destroying. This view was once common in America. We killed off millions of animals just for the sport of it: My great aunt who was a nature enthusiast wrote a sad story about the passenger pigeons which once literally filled the skies of the Great Plains and were shot to extinction. Bison were rescued just in time.

Once we created such envirormental disasters as the dust bowl. In the 1930s my father went on a business trip to Donora, Pennsylvania, where the chemical smoke was so thick he had trouble breathing. Judging by the conditions left by former Communist countries, they also believed that mankind has no responsibility to or for nature.

The Orthodox Christian view is quite different from either of these.

It begins neither with nature nor with mankind but with God. We do not need to be Biblical literalists to understand and accept the early chapters of Genesis. If we believe in Almighty God, I believe the rest follows.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, including mankind. Neither nature nor mankind stands on its own. God created all things and called them good, but Genesis tells us that quickly evil entered in. The Orthodox view is that both man and nature have fallen from goodness.

Is it God’s will that beasts and birds prey on us and on each other?

No. Isaiah foresaw a time when predatory nature shall end, when mankind and all nature shall be at peace: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, The leopard shall lie down with the young goat, The calf and the young lion and the fatling together; And a little child shall lead them. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord As the waters cover the sea.” Isaiah 11:8-9

Nor is it God’s will that mankind exploit nature, because both nature and man belong to God. In Genesis God gives us instead a special responsibility for nature. “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Genesis 1:26  He allows Adam to name the animals, and in that way to have a personal interest in them, and commands us to “fill the earth, and subdue it.” Genesis 1:28

We are neither to conform to nature, nor to destroy it, but rather to subdue it, redeem it, protect it, be God’s agents in restoring the natural order to goodness and health again.

So the Orthodox environmental ideal is not the unfettered wilderness nor is it nature in ruins as we pollute the earth and waste its resources. The Orthodox ideal is mankind and nature living in harmony, with mankind working for the good of the natural order.

One more point: Jesus rose from the dead bodily. At His Ascension Christ took matter – a body – into heaven. “All creation groans, longing for redemption.” Romans 8:22 Orthodoxy understands that the natural order, physical matter, is to be saved and brought into the Kingdom of God. Yes: Christ promised that we are to eat and drink with Him in His Kingdom.

 

 

Two examples showing in symbol how we participate in the redemption of nature:

(1) The blessings which are performed by the Church: blessings of water, oil, bread, wine, autos, houses, places of business, animals, plants, a multitude of things – and, of course of people. I know one Orthodox church that has an annual blessing of motorcycles and motorcyclists. By these blessings, we lift the world  up into the Kingdom of God. This is the beginning of the process of the redemption of nature, of the environment. And what this means is that we have to treat all these things as holy. Surely all water contains holy water now, after all these millions and millions of blessings of large Orthodox Baptismal fonts over the centuries. Bless your house or your place of work and it becomes a holy place, like the church.

(2) The natural world is being saved through our treatment of animals. Surely you have noticed what happens when we treat an animal right, with love and care and discipline – how it begins to respond and reciprocate?

The following is my private opinion – shared by C.S. Lewis, for what it’s worth, though I know of no teaching about this in the fathers. Do I believe pet dogs and cats and horses can be saved? Yes, I do – through us. As we have dominion over animals, their lives become ordered, and as we love them, I believe they begin to love. In this way, I think our love can lift them up into the Kingdom. If I get to Heaven, I hope (only hope) that my dear little dog Vashti will come running to me, tail wagging.

Ancient myths have men and beasts conversing. There is definitely communication even now. I know some dogs understand many words, and I’m sure Vashti wanted so much to talk to me: I could see it in her eyes. Who knows what God might have in mind for the Kingdom? Again I stress, this is definitely only my speculation.

We do know that many of the saints, ancient and modern, have had a remarkable way with animals: were accompanied by wild animals, were fed by them, could command them and they would obey. Do you know the stories of Saint Paisios of Athos (20th century) who could summon the birds, who had snakes literally hanging around. (A pilgrim on the way to see old Paisios killed a snake. When he arrived Paisios cried “Why have you killed my friend?”) Read the book, Animals and Man: A State of Blessedness by Joanne Stefanatos,  which contains many interesting stories.

So does all this tell us what to do with the spotted owl?  * which envirormental laws should be passed?

• 2025 note: That was in 1996, an era which seems almost archaic today. Now our ordinary song birds are vanishing in great numbers, and long-standing protections of the waters and the land and the air are being removed or ignored.

No.These are the working principles of Orthodox environmentalism.

I still don’t like big spiders. I probably never will. And spiders have no business crawling 0n my arm. But the moral is this: Priest, don’t squash that spider so easily. That was God’s spider, not yours. There have been saints whose first reaction would have been to think not about the arm but about the spider.

Saint Isaac of Syria wrote of the “merciful heart” that “burns with love for the whole creation, for men, for the birds, for the beasts, even for the demons, for all creatures”.

That is Orthodox environmentalism.

Next Week: As long as we’re talking about societal issues: Guns

Week after Next: Saint Simeon the New Theologian