| Summary: | The purpose of this essay is to examine how Christians can and should speak about God if they take feminist criticism seriously. This purpose concerns two problems: the first starts with the proposition that God is essentially different from humans and things and at the fact that the language that we use to describe and speak about God is a human language. God is infinite, incorporeal, and timeless, while the human language normally is used to apply to finite, corporeal, and temporal things. How – if ever – can this language apply to God? To examine this problem further, I present four different theories of religious language. The second problem is actualized by feminists who criticize the standard within the Christian tradition to characterize God in predominantly masculine terms. Feminists have criticised religious language for being oppressive in several ways, and particularly to establish and maintain hierarchical structures in which women are subordinated men. In this essay I present and discuss feminist criticism of religious language and then distinguish four different strategies for feminists. I further examine three of these strategies, represented by Sallie McFague, Gail Ramshaw and Janet Soskice, dealing with the problem of religious language within the Christian tradition. In all three of these feminist strategies metaphors are found to be of great importance. Finally, I promote Soskice metaphor theory combined with an apophatic theory of language. Soskice stresses the importance of anthropomorphous metaphors and offer the possibility of using both male and female images when speaking about God. This strategy positively handles the proposition of God as essentially different but makes it possible for believers to refer to God (through metaphors). This is also the preferable strategy in line with feminist criticism.
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