When the first allegedly nonsexist Bible published in Britain was launched, a press release said that "the revisers have systematically changed expressions such as any man to anyone, but have kept the masculine, especially for God, on the grounds that this is faithful to the original." This comment draws attention to the way in which our mental imagery associated with God is, by cultural convention, masculine, at least within the Judeo-Christian world view.
The belief that the universe is created by a male God has an impact on how we see the creativity of men and women. No wonder there are few female pronouns in religious discourse. After all, we say God made man in HIS own image! Or was it men who created God in a masculine image?
The belief that the universe is created by a male God has an impact on how we see the creativity of men and women. No wonder there are few female pronouns in religious discourse. After all, we say God made man in HIS own image! Or was it men who created God in a masculine image?
2 comments:
Equating God telling Moses that He made us in His image to God's gender is just incomplete thinking for the most part. I don't get it, either. If it were true, wouldn't women be men, too?
Just thinking about it for a moment now, I would guess that we say "He" because God made women as men's "help mates" (gen 2.18). It's supposed to reflect humanity's relation to God at first and gets more defined in Eph. and Col. as marriage being an example of Christ and His church.
Saying "He," "His," etc. has theological implications. Hopefully people are on top of it enough to know that if God wasn't flesh before Jesus, He didn't have a gender. But Jesus was a guy with a Y.
The God of the bible is undoubtedly male. I am curious about why it might be supposed otherwise. God is, at times, described with "famale characteristics" but He is never refered to with a female pronoun. I don't subscribe to the idea that "he/him/himself" can be gender neutral.
The point of the post, however, was the first part of the second paragraph.
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