Women have always played a vital role in God's Plan. Consider Hannah, mother of the great prophet Samuel. Or the widow who fed the prophet Elijah. Shall we forget Mary, mother of Jesus or the women who ministered to Jesus during His earthly ministry? Wasn't Miriam thought of as a prophetess in her own right? Esther? What of Dorcas who ministered to the needs of others by making coats for them… The list could stretch on and on. Godly women should be held in high esteem as daughters of God, and sisters and co-laborers in the Gospel.
From this brief analysis we can conclude that it is not necessary to think of God primarily as having masculine characteristics of domination and lordship, a practice that has served to legitimatize aggression and domination in androgen cultures. It is also possible to think of God as having characteristics frequently thought of as feminine. God extends divine help to those in need through the chosen instruments. The example of the steadfast love and sacrifice of God in the Old and New Testaments points to possibilities of a world where the fullness of these characteristics could be displayed by both men and women.
od language should
not be confused with the reality of God. It should struggle to
disclose that reality through careful investigation and
interpretation. It should discover the differences of what is
ordinarily acceptable to a Christian community and what is
theologically possible. All translation is a form of interpretation. The best translations straddle languages, conveying the meaning, rhythm, and style of the original while achieving integrity and beauty in their own right. Translation demands, necessarily, innumerable subjective decisions: How should "Adam be translated? "Man" is a perfectly correct rendering of the Hebrew, so is "humankind." Strictly literal translations from Hebrew to English are virtually impossible due to differences in grammar; Hebrew nouns have gender, which requires changes in verb forms. Also Hebrew and English deal with tenses differently. One problem that presents itself in translating the New Testament from Hebrew and Aramaic into English is that of the gender of the Ruach haKodesh (Holy Spirit). English is very different from Hebrew and Aramaic. To begin with, English has three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter (i.e. he, she and it). Hebrew and Aramaic have no neuter gender. In Hebrew and Aramaic, everything is either a "he" or a "she" and nothing is an "it". Also, gender plays a much more important role in Hebrew and in Aramaic than in English. In English, gender is usually only an issue when dealing with pronouns. But in Hebrew and Aramaic, nouns and verbs are also maculine or feminine. And while there are no true adjectives in Hebrew (nouns are also used as adjectives), noun modifiers must agree in gender with the noun. Now, the Hebrew word RUACH (Aramaic RUCHA) is gramatically feminine as is the phrase Ruach haKodesh. This is matched by the rôle of the Ruach haKodesh as "comforter" (Jn.14-16) and the identifier of the "comforter" with YHWH acting as a "mother" (Is.66:13).