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 Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 10:13 pm
Although in the bible God is often referred to as a He or Him how are we sure that is his actual gender?
Consider
Males are often perceived as the more powerful leader types
However women are culturally considered as the bearers of life
Also, the writers of the bible (or the church) could have chosen god to be a male to give men more power in the religion.
Why would God even have a gender in the first place? He isn't an animal or even a human. Also God can't mate with others because "he" is the only one of his kind (whole monotheistic thing) and gender only exist for procreation, which god doesn't need to do.
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Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 2:41 pm
First of Christianity is not a religion it is a relationship with God.
And second of all God has no gender.
He is what he is and nothing more he never changes.
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Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 1:44 pm
In the Bible it says: "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." (John 4:24) and "God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should repent. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfil it?" (Numbers 23:19)
In the John passage the word pneuma (spirit, or breath) is neuter, neither male nor female. (Though the equivalent word in Hebrew is feminine, interestingly). God is not defined as a male spirit or a female spirit but described as an it, a genderless being. The Numbers passage is about something else, obviously, but is a reminder that Yahweh is not to be thought of as male, anymore than human.
It all depends on your definition of maleness. Whether you think it is our genitalia that makes us male or female (God has no genitals, being a spirit, and therefore cannot be male nor female) or whether there is more (and the question is is it a socially constructed definition?) to maleness than genitalia.
I think that Yahweh is described in masculine terms, as a "he" and "father" simply because a) you have to choose a gender and b) society when the Bible was written decreed that the concepts of strength, warriorhood, chastisement, leader of a people, were masculine, not feminine.
I also think it is permissable to describe God as "mother" to de-emphasise the patriarchal attitudes of the word "Father" as used by Christians in ages past, after all Yahweh is described with feminine attributes (and even as El Shaddai, the God of many breasts in some translations) and ruach and wisdom/sophia are female.
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