Can a Feminist Say the Nicene Creed?

I was invited to participate in a diocesan clergy study day focused on the Nicene Creed in the Divinity Faculty, Cambridge University. As a panel member, I gave a short paper thinking about the Nicene Creed from a feminist perspective. You can read the paper below:

Can a Feminist say the Creed?

When David Fergusson asked if I would join this panel, he suggested saying something about the use of a 4th century text today. Whilst I, and other theologians I suspect, usually treat the Creed as something partitioned off from other texts from the early church when it comes to academic study, I found myself wondering what a feminist critical reading of the Creed would look like? I confess that I regularly struggle with the filioque clause and with the masculine language for the Holy Spirit and as I reflected further, I recognised the discomfort that these familiar words cast over me when I paid attention to them. So my input into this panel is centred around the question: can a feminist say the Creed?

Throughout the traditions of our church, numerous theologians have made fresh statements about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Yet, predominantly only one strand of that tradition has been taught, the strand that elucidates a patriarchal perspective. The Nicene Creed (in fact all three of the regularly used Creeds – Apostles and Athanasian included – as well as the alternative Declarations of Faith provided for in Common Worship in the Church of England[1]) use exclusively masculine language for God. Yet, throughout the scriptures and the Christian tradition, there have always been a wide range of images and metaphors deployed to attempt to say something of God. In contexts away from looking specifically at the creeds, feminist, queer, and post-colonial theologians have thoroughly critiqued exclusively masculine and dominating language for God as being the product of patriarchy rather than divine, and only offering one way of thinking and talking about God.

I’m going to briefly examine the ways in which the Creed characterises each person of the Trinity with regard to gender and gendered language before offering an answer, of sorts, to my central question – can a feminist say the Creed?

I start with two key theological convictions that give shape to my argument. The first is that God is not a biological being and is therefore not biologically sexed at all. Alongside this, God is beyond gender and does not therefore perform gender as humans do. Secondly, that it is Jesus’ humanness that is redemptive, not his maleness. With those convictions in mind, let’s consider the Nicene Creed through a feminist lens.

I believe in God, the Father

The Creed starts by addressing God as a Father. Jesus, of course, taught the disciples to pray using the intimate language of abba and that is clearly an important image of God but it does not stand alone. Jesus’ own language for God is much more varied than just abba. Elizabeth Johnson, in her wonderful book She Who Is, notes:

Jesus’ language about God is not monolithic but is diverse and colourful, as can be seen in the imaginate parables he spun out. A woman searching for her lost money, a shepherd looking for his lost sheep, a baker woman kneading dough…the birth experience that delivers persons into new life.[2]

And of course in the biblical text, as well as the Christian tradition, much more varied language and imagery is used to speak of the first person of the Trinity. Why then does the Creed use only one image at the exclusion of others? It has been argued that this language is meant to convey relationship between parent and child rather than an exclusivity in gender. But if that is the case then would ‘mother’ not have been and equally positive and useful image? The aversion to the word ‘mother’ for God is bound up in ancient understandings of biology in which the mother is just the receptacle awaiting impregnation – just the oven for the fully formed bun. A God who is ‘pure act’ could not possibly be thought of in such a passive way! Of course, our contemporary understanding of biology indicates that this is nonsense, and yet still mother language is an exception, still somehow seen as less proper. The Nicene Creed, written in the context of patriarchal dominance and misguided biology, reflects these views. For the writers of the creed, ‘mother’ is the theologically inferior parent.

I believe in Jesus Christ

You’ll be relieved to hear that I am not going to dispute the fact that Jesus was a man. However, the Incarnation stresses Jesus humanity, not his maleness. As generations of feminist theologians have argued in response to the question of whether a male saviour can save women, women are not outside the redemptive act of Jesus because it is his incarnation as human that is significant, not his maleness.[3] Yet in the Nicene Creed we say “and was made ‘man’”.

Jesus describes himself in feminine maternal imagery as a mother hen scooping up her chicks (Mt 23.37). Famously, mystic Julian of Norwich speaks of Jesus our mother.[4] Again, she is not suggesting that Jesus is female, but rather that Jesus is capable of embodying what are perceived as stereotypically feminine characteristics. This language is not limited to Julian alone. Medieval historian Caroline Walker Bynum surveys this tradition very well in her book Jesus as Mother.[5]

Do we want to suggest that the second person of the Trinity is male though? In the same way that the first person of the Trinity is without body, beyond gender, and encompassing all gender, so are the other members of the Trinity. The pre-Incarnate Word is without body and is neither male nor female. I don’t think our Creed reflects this. Nor does it reflect the significance not of maleness, but of humanness.

I believe in the Holy Spirit The Lord, the Giver of Life

As I noted at the beginning of this paper, I dislike some of the language of the creed around the Spirit. Not because I have any problems with the Holy Spirit but because I very much dislike the language of Lordship and the association of birth with such domination in the line “The Lord the giver of life”. To name the Holy Spirit as ‘Lord’ is, as I understand it, meant to convey that She is equal to the two persons of the trinity that have already been discussed. However, one cannot simply switch the title ‘Lord’ to its female counterpart ‘Lady’ because that immediately has a different set of connotations. Other language is required.

To name the Holy Spirit as the ‘giver of life’ is consistent with Johannine theology wherein the Holy Spirit is the agent of our second birth. We are born from the womb of the Spirit, as Nicodemus discovers. She is also the agent of our first birth as She hovers over the waters in Creation. We can make much of the etymology of the various Hebrew and Greek words for spirit – in Hebrew ruach is feminine, in Greek pneuma is neuter but gifts of the Spirit are always feminine. I think etymology will only take us so far. However, to describe the Holy Spirit as one who is a giver of life, through the waters of creation and the waters of baptism, is a distinctly feminine image. An image we might surmise was threatening to an overwhelmingly patriarchal society. Psychologists and anthropologists, alongside philosophers and theologians, concur that patriarchy ‘arose as a compensation for men’s physiological inability to give birth”.[6] To achieve a position of power, the male was moved to dominate the woman’s sexuality and reproductive capacity in a way that the female became the private property of the male, thus giving rise to the patriarchal system.[7] I always refer to the Holy Spirit as She although I am mindful that the paucity of our Trinitarian theology means we run the risk of making this feminine member of the Trinity merely a servant to the already established masculine relationship between father and son.

Can a feminist say the creed?

My answer to this original question is, yes I suppose so for the sake of Church unity. But on a deeper level, the exclusively masculine language for God in such a key document is troublesome, not just for feminists, or for women, but for everyone. It is language of its time, language that upholds patriarchal forms of domination, and, I argue, language that is not helpful on its own today. All this is to say that it is not a problem to use some masculine language to describe God. Such language is as equally bad as any other in capturing something of the Divine. The problem lies when we only use masculine language as in all our declarations of faith. It matters because it has implicit and often subconscious shaping effects on how we understand our selves and the world around us. Those in leadership within churches might assume that your congregants understand that God is not really male or not really a man, but I wonder how true such an assumption is?

No imagery or metaphor does a good job at capturing the complexity of God. Alongside a greater multiplicity of imagery being available to us for use in our churches and our worship, we also need to cultivate a greater sense of the apophatic. I fear that the Nicene Creed does neither of these things, but rather is bound up in patriarchal power dynamics and dominations. I end by offering a gently reworked creed for our reflection.

We believe in One God, the mother, the unlimited, maker of heaven and earth, of all this is, seen and unseen.

We believe in the Word, the only Child of God, eternally begotten of the Mother,

God from God, Light from Light, true God from True God,

Begotten, not made, of one being with the Mother; Through the Word all things were made.

For us and for our salvation the Word came down from heaven, was incarnated from the Holy Spirit and Mary and was made human.

For our sake Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again, in accordance with the scriptures;

The Word ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Mother.

The Word will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and God’s rule will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, She who gives life,

She proceeds from God and the Word and with God and the Word she is worshipped and glorified, She has spoken through the prophets.

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

[1] Common Worship, “E Creeds and Authorized Affirmations of Faith,” The Church of England, accessed June 23, 2025, https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-texts-and-resources/common-worship/common-material/new-patterns-28.

[2] Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2017), 80.

[3] Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983).

[4] Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, trans. Clifton Wolters (London: Penguin Books, 1966).

[5] Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (University of California Press, 1984).

[6] Karen Bloomquist, Our Naming of God: Problems and Prospects of God-Talk (Fortress Press, 1989), 52.

[7] Elizabeth Geitz, Gender and the Nicene Creed (Church Publishing, Inc., 2004), 71.