Jesus our Mother: is the motherhood of God a borrowed devotion, a gendered claim, or a doctrine of the Trinity?

Julian of Norwich, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Julian of Norwich answers

It is a doctrine of the Trinity, and I would have you see it set there before you ask whether it is tender or borrowed. I saw that the high Might of the Trinity is our Father, the deep Wisdom of the Trinity is our Mother, and the great Love of the Trinity is our Lord; and all this we have in Nature and in the making of our Substance.¹ So the motherhood is no pretty garment laid over a Father who is otherwise something else.

It is an account of how we are made, how we are restored, and how we are fulfilled, and these are three: Nature, Mercy, Grace.² Nor is it a claim that one name corrects another. As verily as God is our Father, so verily God is our Mother, and He showed it in those sweet words, I it am: the Might and Goodness of the Fatherhood, the Wisdom of the Motherhood, the Light and Grace that is all blessed Love, the Trinity, the Unity.³

And the work is divided as the persons are: our Father willeth, our Mother worketh, our good Lord the Holy Ghost confirmeth.⁴ I speak of the Second Person as our Mother in three ways. In Nature, because our Substance is made in Him, and we are grounded and rooted there. In Mercy, because He took our Sense-part, and so oneth us to our Substance by His Passion, His Death and Uprising.⁵

And in working, which spreads by the same Grace in length and breadth and height and deepness without end; and all is one Love.⁶ As for the homely proofs, I give them as I was given them, and they are the strength of it. Our mothers bear us to pain and to dying; our Very Mother Jesus, who is All-Love, bears us to joy and to endless living, and He suffered the sharpest throes that ever were or shall be, and said, If I might suffer more, I would suffer more.⁷

A mother may lay her child tenderly to her breast, but our tender Mother Jesus may homely lead us into His blessed breast by His sweet open side, and show us there part of the Godhead and the joys of Heaven.⁸ And as the child grows she changes her working but not her love, and she suffers it to be beaten in the breaking down of vices, that it may receive virtues and graces.⁹

If you ask whether the word was used before me, I do not say it was not; I tell you what I was shown, and what I was shown is no borrowing of a sweet word. That the word Mother is so sweet and so close in nature that it may not truly be said of any but Him, and of her who is very mother of Him and of all.⁸ It is He who does the mothering in every creature by whom it is done.⁸ That is why I cannot hold it a figure of speech only.

The position in brief

As verily as God is our Father, so verily God is our Mother. The Trinity is our Father in might and making, our Mother in wisdom, our Lord in goodness; the second Person is our Mother in nature, for our substance is made in him, in mercy, for he took our sensuality, and in grace, for he works in us. He bore us to bliss by dying, feeds us with himself in the sacrament, and lets the child fall that it may learn, and never lets it perish. The Mother's service is nearest, readiest and surest, and none but he could do it to the full.¹⁰¹¹

Sources

the high Might of the Trinity is our Father, and the deep Wisdom of the Trinity is our Mother, and the great Love of the Trinity is our Lord: and all this have we in Nature and in the making of our Substance.
Revelations of Divine Love, the Long Text
the first is Nature, the second is Mercy, and the third is Grace.
Revelations of Divine Love, the Long Text
As verily as God is our Father, so verily God is our Mother; and that shewed He in all, and especially in these sweet words where He saith: I it am.
Revelations of Divine Love, the Long Text
Our Father [willeth], our Mother worketh, our good Lord the Holy Ghost confirmeth
Revelations of Divine Love, the Long Text
the Second Person of the Trinity is our Mother in Nature, in making of our Substance: in whom we are grounded and rooted. And He is our Mother in Mercy, in taking of our Sense-part.
Revelations of Divine Love, the Long Text
the third is Motherhood of working,--and therein is a forthspreading by the same Grace, of length and breadth and height and of deepness without end. And all is one Love.
Revelations of Divine Love, the Long Text
what is this but that our Very Mother, Jesus, He--All-Love--beareth us to joy and to endless living?
Revelations of Divine Love, the Long Text
The Mother may lay the child tenderly to her breast, but our tender Mother, Jesus, He may homely lead us into His blessed breast, by His sweet open side
Revelations of Divine Love, the Long Text
And as it waxeth in age, she changeth her working, but not her love. And when it is waxen of more age, she suffereth that it be beaten in breaking down of vices
Revelations of Divine Love, the Long Text
And in our good Lord, the Holy Ghost, we have our rewarding and our meed-giving for our living and our travail, and endless overpassing of all that we desire, in His marvellous courtesy, of His high plenteous grace.
Revelations of Divine Love, the Long Text
Thus He sustaineth us within Himself in love; and travailed, unto the full time that He would suffer the sharpest throes and the most grievous pains that ever were or ever shall be; and died at the last.
Revelations of Divine Love, the Long Text

Where the argument is made

Long Text 52 on God who rejoices to be our Father, our Mother and our Spouse
54 and 57-59 on the Trinity as Father, Mother and Lord and the second Person as our Mother in nature, mercy and grace, with "As verily as God is our Father, so verily God is our Mother"
60 on the Mother's service and the Passion as birth and the sacrament as the Mother's feeding
61-63 on the child that falls and runs to its mother
the Short Text has no trace of it

How the argument was received

The teaching most quoted by modern theology and the one most often taken out of the Trinity she set it in.