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From: saquigley@watmath.UUCP (Sophie Quigley)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.women
Subject: Re: the gender of God
Message-ID: <8661@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 15-Aug-84 09:52:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: watmath.8661
Posted: Wed Aug 15 09:52:40 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 16-Aug-84 00:36:12 EDT
References: <633@ihnp4.UUCP>, <3432@cbscc.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 30


From Paul Dubuc

>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.
>
>.....
>
>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?

Even though you've explained this twice, I really don't understand why the
choice of the words "parent" or "person" would depersonalise God.  Unlike
"father" which has very loaded connotations, the word "parent" is very 
liberating in that one can think about an idealised parental relationship
between the individuals concerned (in this case God and me) without relating
it to the actual father-child relationship as we know it.  "parent" encompasses
both the "mother-child" and "father-child" relationships in one word, and is
a fusion of the two separate "father" and "mother" entity which I would hope
God as a parent would be.  I find it very nice.

But maybe the point is not to find it very nice, at least one gets that
impression listening to fundamental christians sometimes.........

Sophie Quigley
...!{clyde,ihnp4,decvax}!watmath!saquigley