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God = He ?
- Thread starter Rex
- Start date
No. I find it inevitable.
Besides, the only other alternatives are She and It. The Biblical God is always described in masculine terms, and It is supposed to refer to inanimate objects.
I suppose there's always the singular 'Their', but that one tickles too many grammar cops.
Besides, the only other alternatives are She and It. The Biblical God is always described in masculine terms, and It is supposed to refer to inanimate objects.
I suppose there's always the singular 'Their', but that one tickles too many grammar cops.
The religions that do this are generally ones where men were the ones with power. In those societies, "authority" implied "male".
IMO, gods are anthromorphisms of things that matter to people. They're devices to help people relate to aspects of the world around them. Bestowing human qualities on them is the whole point.
Sultan Of Swing
Well-Known Member
God is a Father to us.
He is beyond such notions as gender, and yet in order that we best understand God in the means we can, He is a Father and we reference Him as such.
And if God created the world, perhaps we may find many ordinary "human" qualities are in fact divine qualities or images.
Technically, an omnipotent god would be both male and female, since such a god could meet any test for "male" or "female" you could come up with.
- can God carry an offspring to term and birth it? If God can do anything, then yes.
- can God impregnate a female? If God can do anything, then yes.
- can God reproduce by mitosis? If God can do anything, then yes.
- etc., etc.
In many traditions, the "creator" or "life-giver" is depicted as a mother. Why do you think father is more appropriate than mother? Do you think that people might be missing out on appreciating aspects of God's nature by not referring to God as "mother", either instead of or as well as "father"?
My short answer: Male Default in literature during the time when these books were written.
It was male political leaders who were also more imperialist and spread their empire/culture through the world where these stories could be perpetuated. Males were also the ones in charge mostly in commerce, in the household, and in education.
It was inevitable. Hence, if males were the one dominant gender to assume these positions of power and influence, when they pontificated about their place in the Kosmos, the odds were that the deity or deities, the savior-god, the apostles, and any other character that moved the narrative or posed a challenge to a moral dilemma were men.
They were more relatable. They could sell it better, so to speak.
These days, old habits die hard. People will hold on to the Flat Earth myth, creationism, and a geocentric model, because that's the power that a mytho-poetic narrative has on us as a species and civilization.
Only when intended to portray God as a literal and autonomous entity capable of our creation and destruction. Yeah...that's when I think it's uncool to attribute human qualities to such a deity. It becomes all too easy to switch the roles and project our own fantasies onto this God, and manipulate others into following our own fantasies of greed and power.
But when the deity has no human qualities, or when the deity has human qualities but is not an all powerful separate being that must be deferred to, I can groove with that. Welcome to the Mysteries, where the arts and the occult peek into myth and the tangible world around us with the discipline of Zen meditation. Where God is Us. And where God is not Us. And what is that bridge in between?
IMO, that's when it is really good.
b.finton
In the Unity of Faith
Yod/He/Waw/He is a Unity that can be characterized as the Giver/Y of Life/H and the Nourisher/Sustainer/W of Life/H. From YH arise Sons; and out of WH emerge daughters, as potential for offspring/creation are understood in the two appearances of the letter He in The Name.
These understandings are derived from the original script in which The Name first appeared. The Oral Tradition, which is preserved within the traditions of modern Hebrew, provides the tools for further understanding of the dynamics of HaShem.
b.
These understandings are derived from the original script in which The Name first appeared. The Oral Tradition, which is preserved within the traditions of modern Hebrew, provides the tools for further understanding of the dynamics of HaShem.
b.
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Sultan Of Swing
Well-Known Member
I think Father is more appropriate because that is precisely how God has revealed it to us.
There are maternal metaphors:
Matthew 23:37 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!
But otherwise, Father is simply the best description of God's relationship to His children, for that is how He has chosen to reveal Himself.
I think it comes down to a number of reasons: patriarchal societies, cultural identities, and even language.
Hebrew is not a gender-neutral language like English; everything is either male or female, and while many references to God are made in the masculine, they also exist in the feminine.
I find the idea of God as "avinu malkeinu", Our Father our King, to be a comfort. I also find Shekinah, a feminine word describing God's presence, to be equally comforting.
Avi1001
reform Jew humanist liberal feminist entrepreneur
Our Father our King is highly chauvinistic....I resent it...!!!
DawudTalut
Peace be upon you.
Peace be on you.
The word 'He' for God is used as concept of power and authority in religion.
In Islam, God has no gender.
[112:5] ‘And there is none like unto Him.’
Quran uses 'hu' and 'huwa' as pronoun for Allah, it is commonly translated as He, but it can be translated as 'it'.
Quran also use 'We' for One God for power or for God with system to show majesty.
+ Gender of God - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Levite
Higher and Higher
Well, I can't speak for other religious traditions, of course, but in Jewish text and writing, God has traditionally been largely referred to using the male pronoun because Hebrew is a grammatically gendered language that lacks a gender neutral; therefore anything that is theoretically gender neutral is arbitrarily referred to using the male linguistic gender. That's just the way the language is constructed.
There actually are aspects of God that are sometimes referred to in the feminine, though. We often speak about the shechinah, the immanent presence of God, and the word shechinah is feminine grammatically, and is always referred to in the feminine, using feminine pronouns and so forth. There are one or two more esoteric, Kabbalistic aspects that use the feminine as well. But it does remain true that the general, mainstream God-language is grammatically gendered male, and that is so for the linguistic reasons I mentioned above.
But no one in mainstream Jewish thought would argue that this actually reflects God having a gender. Judaism is quite firm about the idea that God has no physicality-- no body of any kind-- and therefore by definition cannot have a literal gender, the way that human beings or animals have genders. It's just a combination of the quirks of Hebrew linguistic construction and the following tendency to use anthropomorphic images which are phrased in the grammatic male gender.
outhouse
Atheistically
Not when we look at his evolution in mythology.
First we have to admit to ourselves the concept changes with societies changing needs.
And if god was just god, that would be a modern concept or view.
God has always been male as he was created from a family of deities in Canaanite mythology that evolved in Israelite mythology long before the monotheism concept took hold.
Even further evolution of the concept long past monotheism, has father and son.
Ouroboros
Coincidentia oppositorum
Because he's a big d...
The answer is really that the religious tradition we have in the west grew out of a patriarchal society where the male was considered superior to the female. The female was to be controlled and subdued, while the male qualities were the "divine." That's why in other cultures with other backgrounds and histories we can see "she" instead of "he" because of the understanding that life comes also comes from the mother. In reality, life comes from both.