Evangelical feminists, otherwise known as egalitarians, have generally favoured retaining traditional masculine trinitarian language. Scripture is God's inspired Word and the vast majority of egalitarians have sought to defend masculine God-language against the criticism of many of their feminist colleagues. In the process, however, they deny that such masculine God-language has any implications either 1) of superiority of what is masculine over feminine, or 2) that the eternal relations of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit indicate any kind of eternal functional hierarchy within the Trinity.
Let it be said clearly that non-egalitarian, complementarian evangelicals agree wholly with the first of these denials. Because God created the man and the woman fully as his image (Genesis 1.26-27), it is clear that no use of masculine language for God is meant to signal some supposed greater value, dignity, or worth of men over women.
Concerning the second denial, however, complementarians and egalitarians differ greatly. Egalitarians see clearly that if an eternal relationship of authority and obedience is grounded in the eternal immanent inner-trinitarian relations of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then this gives at least prima facie justification to the notion of creational human relations in which authority and submission inhere.
