Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site pucc-h Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!CS-Mordred!Pucc-H:aeq From: aeq@pucc-h (Jeff Sargent) Newsgroups: net.religion,net.women Subject: Re: the gender of God Message-ID: <955@pucc-h> Date: Fri, 17-Aug-84 22:48:56 EDT Article-I.D.: pucc-h.955 Posted: Fri Aug 17 22:48:56 1984 Date-Received: Sun, 19-Aug-84 02:28:05 EDT References: <633@ihnp4.UUCP> <3432@cbscc.UUCP>, <983@pyuxn.UUCP> Organization: Tucumcari Divinity School Lines: 48 From Rich Rosen: > 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). There seems to be a contradiction implied in the above. Rich obviously is trying to imply that God is not personal. Yet he says God is supposed to be beyond our comprehension. But if God is not personal, then He (pronoun of convenience) would be less than personal; for the lack of personality means lack of things such as rational intelligence, love, and and a conscious will, attributes which God most certainly has. God appears as a person in visions and in the Incarnation so that we can understand as much of Him as we are able; but Paul has said (approximate quote) "Now we see a dim reflection in a mirror; but then face to face" -- i.e. we can understand just a very little of God now. But that very little is infinitely better than none at all. > Isn't imposing human characteristics on a deity bending the reality of god? Well...He did it Himself, in Jesus. Can God bend His own reality? > Is "our concept of god" more important (and unflinching) than what that god > really might be? No. In fact my concept of God has changed considerably in the years I've known Him, just as one's concept of any friend can change over the years. Certainly what He is is the most important (and unchanging); but again, we only have a glimpse of what that unchanging reality is. > I would have thought that...fashioning a deity > in our own image is what's been going on for thousands of years. Lots of people do this; I have myself, in times past, projected a lot of my own self-condemning feelings onto God (sufficiently that people told me I had an "Old Testament God", though I think this is not entirely fair to the O.T. picture of God). But as one gets to know God more closely, one comes more and more to know the falseness in one's picture of God and one's relationship to Him. He invites us to know Him, and only we can prevent that from happening, for He has given us that power. -- -- Jeff Sargent {decvax|harpo|ihnp4|inuxc|seismo|ucbvax}!pur-ee!pucc-h:aeq "We can build a beautiful city, yes we can, yes we can...."