Maternal and paternal dimensions in the image of god: a comparative study

Abstract

The present study attempts to investigate the semantic relationship between parental images and the image of God. In doing so, it seeks to find out to what extent professional orientation and sex influence the structure of the maternal, paternal and divine images, as well as the symbolic function of parental images. The hypotheses tested were: l) There is no significant difference in the attribution of the maternal dimension and the paternal dimension to the concept of God. 2) There is no significant difference in the concept of God, described in terms of maternal and paternal dimensions, between Masterslevel students, Liberal Arts students and Science students. 3) There is no significant difference in the concept of God, described in terms of maternal and paternal dimensions between the sexes. The sample consisted of 351 university students, representing three different populations, Master-level students, Liberal Arts students, and Science students. Each group consisted of males and females. The instrument consists of a list of 34 items, 17 which were generally attributed to the mother, and 17 attributed to the father. These 34 qualities were first of all associated to the parental images and then to the divine image, by means of a seven point scale. Three factor analyses were performed, one for each image, and Tucker's coefficient of congruence was used to measure the degree of similarity between the factors resulting from these three different factor analyses. The semantic distance between the images was then calculated for each subject by means of the generalized distance formula set forth by Osgood. These were calculated at three different levels: first, in the EI (all items); secondly, in the PIm (maternal items) and finally in the Pip (paternal items). By means of analyses of variance, the influence of professional orientation and sex were studied.