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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
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Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories , Columbus
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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)