Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site cbscc.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!ihnp4!cbosgd!cbscc!pmd From: pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc) Newsgroups: net.religion,net.women Subject: Re: the gender of God Message-ID: <3432@cbscc.UUCP> Date: Tue, 14-Aug-84 11:05:30 EDT Article-I.D.: cbscc.3432 Posted: Tue Aug 14 11:05:30 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 15-Aug-84 02:01:57 EDT References: <633@ihnp4.UUCP> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus Lines: 64 When religous belief involves a personal relationship with one's God thinking in terms of gender is very hard to avoid. Belief in a God who is a personality (as opposed to, say, some pantheistic concept of God) almost forces one to think in terms of a gender for that person. Where Christian belief is concerned (and, perhaps, Judaism as well) the fact that God is called "he" is irrelevant to the question of his gender, but still very significant as a mark of personality. In the begining of Genesis we read: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." Genesis 1:27 (RSV) Genesis 2 gives the man, Adam, as being created first. The question that arises in my mind is, "Can we really call Adam 'male' when there was yet no female'?" This seems to be the same problem we have had in thinking of God as male. God is "He", but he is not male. So when God created Adam, did he create a man, or did he create Man. I think the latter. His creation of Eve was not so much a separate act, but he took what was to be Woman out of Man (symbolized by the "rib"). I think that's what "woman" means, in the Hebrew (i.e. "taken out of man"). I don't think the use of the male pronoun in describing God is sexist at all. Problems come when men start thinkng they are built more after the image of God because God is a "he". But God did not make men in his image, he made Man in his image ... and he made "them" male and female. The problem I have with the current trend toward calling God "he" and/or "she", "father and mother" or "parent". Is that it seems to tear God apart as a person. We are used to thinking of male and female as two *separate* persons, but God just isn't that way. Even words like "parent" and "person" tend to depersonalize God. I think it bends our concept of God more toward pantheism for the sake of our own unwillingness to accept the fact that the words "man" and "he" can be used in the generic sense, in no way giving more actual significance to male humans. (You can probably tell from all this that I am not a strict trinitarian. I think thinking of the Godhead as three persons is fine if it helps, but it is hardly more than a mental device. It's not monotheistic enough for me.) So if some of us Christians call God "he" and some "she", how can we maintian the important understanding that we serve one, and the same, God? On the other hand, if we call God "it" or "parent" or "person", how do we then keep our view of God from degenerating into an impersonal, pantheistic, nobody? Let's change the limited ways we think about God (Him) instead of the words we use. When we remove the necesity of abstract thinking, in this case by changing our language, we end up with something in our language that is further removed from what it actually is. It differs on much more significant points than the question of whether or not we should think of God as male or female. Are we sure that what what we are trying to do is not to fashion God in our own image? -- Paul Dubuc {cbosgd,ihnp4}!cbscc!pmd The true light that enlightens every one was coming into the world... (John 1:9)