Posted on 02/09/2012 10:27:16 AM PST by SeekAndFind
“The only way to the FATHER is through ME”
LLS
God was considered masculine long before Christianity.
Except when He was a goddess...
Why lessen God by considering male or female?
> Kyle Roberts is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology
Systematic Theology is one of the most consistent threats to Living Faith. Faith is not an intellectual exercise, nor an academic pursuit.
Look, what was Jesus? Male or female?
Is the Holy Spirit referred to as He or She? Forget that the word for spirit is feminine in the Hebrew and neuter in the Greek. Is the pronoun for the Holy Spirit masculine or feminine?
Does not Jesus Himself refer to God the Father?
Who was formed first, Adam or Eve?
This “theologian” should meditate on the words of “Jesus Loves Me”. There’s more accurate theology in that children’s hymn than anything written in the article.
Probably more like...’has the bible really “given Christianity a masculine feel”? Or has Christianity given the bible a masculine feel?’
We should think of God as He has revealed Himself through the Scriptures. In critical ways, this self-revelation is masculine, as Father and Son. However, He has also, at times, chosen to use maternal imagery for Himself, so He clearly has qualities that we consider “feminine.”
The fact that human beings were created in the image and likeness of God, male and female He created them, tells us that both maleness and femaleness are necessary for humans fully to exemplify the image of God. However, God is not bound by our limited conceptions of “male,” “female,” or even “person.”
God is so powerful beyound our comprehension that God is more than likely beyond gender.
It would be like a bacteria trying to figure out what version of windows a computer is running.
God’s Gender is Pure Love, I will stick with that answer for now.
Yes...one of the maternal references:
Mat 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!
Since they are “one”, I have no problem with Jesus referring to himself as a mother hen.
Interesting too, Scripture refers to the nature of the Father and Son more than the nature of the HS...
“She” IS somewhat mysterious after all - just the way daddy ‘warned’ me :)
I like your comment. God tells us that he is the only one and there is no other like him.
This "Theologian" has confused the WORD of YHVH andshalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
the heresy created at Nicea by the Roman Pontiff Constantine.
It has been the norm since at least the Cappadocian Fathers for Christians to insist that God transcends all binary distinctions, even the distinction between being and non-being, and surely the distinction between male and female or masculine and feminine.
On the other hand, there is a reason, I think why, for our sakes, God has chosen to “gender” His self-revelation, and it has nothing to do with traditional gender roles or “social construction” of anything: those who conceive of the deity as female, are invariably drawn to thinking of creation as birth-giving, thereby effacing the radical distinction between the Uncreated and the created.
Such questions attempt to bring God down to our level. God is great. He is above all. He made His son to be like us so to save us from ourselves. How can we say God has our traits?
And, frankly, it doesn’t matter one whit. God is God. We are unable to understand all that He is. So be it.
Should we think of God as male or female?
No.
Just think of God——always.
Jesus’s choosing to use a simile that references motherhood, or God’s inspiring a prophet or psalmist with a female image, doesn’t affect the basic identity of Father and Son, particularly with Jesus’s having an unquestionably male human body. It just reminds us that certain qualities of God are associated with motherhood, which I find inspiring, as a mother myself.
I thought “The_Reader_David’s” comment, above, was very perceptive.
It would seem that an Entity able to create ex nihilo would have little need for a procreative role. Just saying
“But is God actually gendered as male ...”
What a deceptive and stupid thing to say at this turn in the article. We’re talking about masculine, not male; gender, not sex.
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