 Feminist philosophy of religion has yet to explore fully the question of how a male God is problematic for men’s conceptions of self, according to Eilberg-Schwartz. It has also left unthought the difference between God as male and God as Father. Strict focus on the ways in which a masculine image of God undermines female experience tends to conflate human and divine masculinities into one undifferentiated symbol. Eilberg-Schwartz differentiates between images of male deities and images of father deities, contending that the maleness of God may have different implications than the fatherliness of God. Fatherly images of God can and should be used, he argues, “but only if equally powerful female images are also celebrated” (1994: 239). Repudiating the incorporeal, distant God that helped to generate the hierarchical associations of masculinity and femininity, he favors an image of “a tender loving Father who faces and embraces the child”, in the apparent expectation that a loving and embodied God may support a different kind of masculinity, one more capable of intimacy and tenderness (1994: 240).