Trying To Further My Understanding..

[anders]

In many languages where nouns are either masculine or feminine, like for the sake of argument the Semitic ones, the default or "unmarked" gender is the masculine. This is a grammatical feature only, and has no bearings at all on society's views on gender. Admittedly, some three gender languages have unnecessarily stuck to the masculine for the deity, perhaps to facilitate translations.

Some religions have understood this problem, and teach, like Sikhism, that God (or the corresponding refernce) is "our father and mother", but then, following language rules, go on using a grammatically masculine pronoun.

 

[Willamena]

I’ve been attempting to further my understanding of a few religions, so I’ll begin with Christianity.

My question would be this:

How does one know God is a “Him?”. It refers in the bible as Him and or He then further on in the book it also refers to God as the Holy Spirit. Can someone explain.

I had a few others, but I’ll begin with this. I thank you for the time in reading this and helping me further my understanding of this religion.

Blessed Be.

I thought the reason is that in languages other than English all nouns are referred to by a gender. I'm not sure how the gender is determined.

Edit: nevermind; anders said as much above.

 

[Nein]

I appreciate the explination and opinions that you all have posted. Although I am not Christian i am intrested in all religions and understanding points of views. So i appreciate this greatly.

Thank you

Blessed be

 

[pstevenson]

"You experience what you believe, unless you believe you won't, in which case you don't, which means you did." - Harry palmer from the workbook "ReSurfacing"

 

[Rolling_Stone]

If you want to know God, look beyond the concepts. I suggest reading The God We Never Knew by Marcus J. Borg.

 

[BruceDLimber]

Hi!

God has no gender.

"He/Him" is simply a linguistic convention. And various languages other than English don't share this peculiarity, and so needn't even address this question.

Peace,

Bruce

 

[wmam]

I appreciate the explination and opinions that you all have posted. Although I am not Christian i am intrested in all religions and understanding points of views. So i appreciate this greatly.

Thank you

Blessed be

So I will assume that you would like to see how the culture, in which I practice, view the question of your "OP".

First off, we view "god" as a title rather than a name. We also do not use "god" in referring to the Most High. In our studies we have found that others to refer to their deity’s, which were once men and became super-human used the title "god". We do not refer to the Most High as such because we know that our, one and only, was never a man and is not super-human. Actually, we rather use the Hebrew rendering of the title in question which is Elohim. Now in speaking of such we know by our studies that Elohim can mean many different things. We know that it can mean a judge or a king or simply one of power, but, it can also represent a messenger, or dispatch, of the Most High. We call these in Hebrew "Malakim" or to the unlearned we say "Angels". We know from our studies that Elohim, in this sense, is spirit and that all malakim are holy (set-apart) spirits. As the old saying "There are gods many." Well we prefer "There are elohim many." We use the capital "E" as well as the "e" when discussing the various entity’s as those that read in the english versions of the scriptures the "God’s" and the "god’s". When we call on the Most High we call on YAH our Elohim. To obtain further understanding of our practice I invite you to study this article.

http://nccicharlotte.com/namedivine.htm

 

[Lindsey-Loo]

I’ve been attempting to further my understanding of a few religions, so I’ll begin with Christianity.

My question would be this:

How does one know God is a “Him?”. It refers in the bible as Him and or He then further on in the book it also refers to God as the Holy Spirit. Can someone explain.

I had a few others, but I’ll begin with this. I thank you for the time in reading this and helping me further my understanding of this religion.

Blessed Be.

It's just what you said. The Bible, which is His inspired word, refers to God as a Him and a He, so that's what I tend to believe.

 

[Katzpur]

How does one know God is a “Him?”.

Maybe it's because He is our "Father in Heaven." If He were our "Mother in Heaven," God would probably be referred to by "Her."

It refers in the bible as Him and or He then further on in the book it also refers to God as the Holy Spirit.

God is not the same individual as the Holy Spirit. Christians believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost).

Blessed Be.

You too!