Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site pyuxn.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!pyuxn!rlr From: rlr@pyuxn.UUCP (Rich Rosen) Newsgroups: net.religion,net.women Subject: Re: the gender of God Message-ID: <983@pyuxn.UUCP> Date: Wed, 15-Aug-84 09:43:54 EDT Article-I.D.: pyuxn.983 Posted: Wed Aug 15 09:43:54 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 16-Aug-84 02:27:00 EDT References: <633@ihnp4.UUCP> <3432@cbscc.UUCP> Organization: Bell Communications Research, Piscataway N.J. Lines: 30 > 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 thought god was "depersonalized". Is it (if it exists) a person? Then why make it out to be so? This may be just the anthropocentric view based on an individual need to feel closer to a deity, but that doesn't change what the deity would be. Just because one wants to think of god as a person doesn't make god into a person, nor does it give something that's supposed to be beyond our comprehension a gender, an age, or a hairstyle (e.g., old man with a beard). > I think it bends our concept of God more toward pantheism ... Isn't imposing human characteristics on a deity bending the reality of god? Is "our concept of god" more important (and unflinching) than what that god really might be? > 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. Are we sure that > what what we are trying to do is not to fashion God in our own image? I would have thought that the reverse would be true, that fashioning a deity in our own image is what's been going on for thousands of years. -- "Now, Benson, I'm going to have to turn you into a dog for a while." "Ohhhh, thank you, Master!!" Rich Rosen pyuxn!rlr