Penultimate draft. Please cite final version published in Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion (2nd ed.)(M. L. Peterson & R. VanArragon, Eds.). Wiley Blackwell. (2019) Reply to Rea Kathryn Pogin One thing that is tricky about this conversation, even though Rea and I are in broad agreement, is that it is not always clear in the debates regarding divine gender where, exactly, metaphor ends and metaphysics begins. John Piper, as Rea notes, is committed to the view that God has been revealed “pervasively as King, not Queen, and as Father not Mother.”1 Piper adheres to the view that while there are motherly metaphors in the Christian scriptures for God, it is impermissible to use feminine forms of address for God like “Mother” or “She.” But Piper also holds that God is “infinitely above such creaturely distinctions” as being male or female. 2 This naturally poses a question: if God is infinitely above maleness or femaleness, why is God not likewise infinitely above differences between masculinity and femininity, or between “He” and “She”? As Rea uses the terms, ‘male’ and ‘female’ refer to sex, while ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ refer to gender – but, at least for Piper, sex and gender amount to the same thing.3 Piper concedes that Christian scriptures use feminine metaphors to refer to God, and this concession suggests that the revelation of God as masculine is meant, on his view, to carry at least a little bit of metaphysical weight. Why think the pronouns used in scripture to refer to God should be privileged over the metaphors, if the pronouns are themselves merely metaphorical? It suggests, 1 Piper, John. “The Frank and Manly Mr. Ryle” — The Value of a Masculine Ministry. Address presented at Desiring God 2012 Conference for Pastors. Accessed January 5, 2018. https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/the-frank-and-manly-mr-ryle-the-value-of-a-masculine-ministry 2 Piper, John. “God Is Not Male.” Desiring God, 10 Mar. 2014, www.desiringgod.org/interviews/god-is- not-male. 3 This is a feature of his complementarianism— the view that masculine and feminine roles have been ordained by God for men and women, in such a way that they serve as complements to the other, both biologically and spiritually. Cf. Piper, John. “God Created Man Male and Female What Does It Mean to Be Complementarian?” Desiring God, 24 Nov. 2012, www.desiringgod.org/messages/god-created-man- male-and-female. Penultimate draft. Please cite final version published in Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion (2nd ed.)(M. L. Peterson & R. VanArragon, Eds.). Wiley Blackwell. (2019) then, there is something important about God’s nature that is communicated to us in characterizing God in masculine terms. And yet, even by Piper’s own lights (as well as Cooper’s) it seems God’s nature is beyond such distinctions. If we grant Rea’s assumption—that all persons, men and women alike, are equally created in the image of God—it seems incoherent that God should only be appropriately referred to by masculine terms. The traditionalist might hold, as does Cooper, that metaphysically speaking, God is beyond gender. However, if God may be only appropriately referred to as “He” and not “She,” then there is at least one way in which men are more like God than women are. And what would it mean for men and women to share equally in the image of God if their likeness can be hierarchically ordered? Earlier I argued that the language we use to refer to God shapes the epistemic resources we have to understand the world more broadly, and repeated association of masculinity and divinity practically communicates something not only about God but also about men and women. Rea makes a similar point when he notes that internalizing the notion that the highest forms of love and leadership are best represented by a gender other than one’s own would be damaging to women. If you were not persuaded by our arguments that the language we use has a genuine impact on the world, sharing pronouns may seem like a trivial difference, but it is still a difference nonetheless. This brings us back to the boundary between metaphysics and metaphor: I agree with Rea that the most natural defense of the traditionalist view would be to say that masculine characterizations of God communicate important truths about God’s nature, while feminine characterizations interfere with our understanding. Rea argues, persuasively, that if God has any strongly gendered attributes, then God is equally masculine and feminine. Consequently, masculine and feminine characterizations of God are equally accurate as to divine metaphysics in Penultimate draft. Please cite final version published in Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion (2nd ed.)(M. L. Peterson & R. VanArragon, Eds.). Wiley Blackwell. (2019) that they either both characterize God or neither does. The traditionalist, though, might concede all this yet maintain that God has (what I will call) weakly gendered attributes. Briefly, recall that for Rea a strongly gendered term is a term that only applies in its literal sense to members of a particular gender, while a strongly gendered attribute is the sort of attribute a strongly gendered term picks out. Suppose, though, that God has no strongly gendered attributes at all. We might still use strongly gendered terms to metaphorically point to divine attributes that are distinct from strongly gendered attributes but which strongly gendered terms may nonetheless help us to recognize. This is what I mean by weakly gendered attributes. An attribute might be weakly gendered, say, because there is no creaturely equivalent, and so no literal linguistic term within our ken. The traditionalist might also believe that God has weakly gendered attributes that will typically, or under the best circumstances, be shared by men and not women, but which it is possible for both men and women to have. Suppose, then, that women tend to share less attributes—or maybe lesser attributes—in common with God than do men. This might justify exclusively masculine characterizations of God, without necessarily being highly misleading. Of course, this appears to be inconsistent with men and women equally bearing the image of God. However, one might think that while both men and women are created in the image of God, they are not equally so. Piper doesn’t argue this way. He explicitly denies it.4 Nonetheless, it strikes me as implicit in much of what he says. Consider what Piper says regarding the distinctive value of a “masculine ministry” in his address “The Frank and Manly Mr. Ryle.” Piper holds that ministry must be done with a view towards holiness and that sanctification is a battle. The life of a Christian is the life of a soldier; “[h]e that 4 Piper, John. “Sexual Complementarity: Session 1.” Desiring God, 9 Nov. 2007, www.desiringgod.org/messages/sexual-complementarity-session-1. Penultimate draft. Please cite final version published in Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion (2nd ed.)(M. L. Peterson & R. VanArragon, Eds.). Wiley Blackwell. (2019) would understand the nature of true holiness must know that the Christian is ‘a man of war.’” For Piper, at least in theory, it’s not that women are incapable of leadership, conviction, or courage, but rather that to exhibit these characteristics is properly the place of men (I say “in theory” because if the Christian is a man of war it follows the Christian is not a woman): Behind the increasing liberalism, ritualism, and worldliness that he saw in the church, Ryle saw a failure of doctrinal nerve — an unmanly failure . . . The point of calling this failure of doctrinal nerve an unmanly failure is not that women can't grasp and hold fast to the great doctrines of the faith. They can and should. The point is that when the foundations of the church are crumbling, the men should not stand still and wait for women to seize the tools and brick and mortar. And women should expect their men to be at the forefront of rebuilding the ruins.5 The role of men for Piper, then, is to “proscribe and protect,” for women, to submit and be protected.6 One of these roles appears much more God-like than the other. If men and women have these roles on account of their gendered natures, then one gender appears much more God- like than the other. Rea’s argument proceeds from the assumption that men and women are created equally in the image of God, and many—if not all—traditionalists affirm this. My question is, do they really mean it? 5 Piper, John. “The Frank and Manly Mr. Ryle” — The Value of a Masculine Ministry. Address presented at Desiring God 2012 Conference for Pastors. Accessed January 5, 2018. https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/the-frank-and-manly-mr-ryle-the-value-of-a-masculine-ministry 6 Mathis, David, and John Piper. “More on the Masculine Feel of Christianity.” Desiring God, www.desiringgod.org/articles/more-on-the-masculine-feel-of-christianity.