God and Gender

I think this may be an issue with the English language rather than "some who claim to be Christians". Actually, in Hebrew and Aramaic, the Holy Spirit is feminine. In Greek, neutral.

I had an acquaintance from Eastern Europe a while back and she kept saying "she" when talking about the Holy Spirit. We did ask, and she kept apologising - but explained that in her langauge the Holy Spirit was female, she was just translating in her head. In her Bible, the Spirit was "she". In Genesis for example you can translate it as "the Spirit of God she was hovering over the face of the waters"

Now that isn't to say that the Holy Spirit is female. We mustn't confuse God's chosen language of revelation (Father, Son, etc) with gender. God is spirit, and men and women are created in God's image.

So, for me, it comes down to respect. If I tell you my name, Don, and you decide you don't like that name because of another Don who mistreated you, would it be legitimate for you to decide to call me something else? That would be disrespectful. In the same way, God revealed himself as Father, and Jesus the Son - so "Mother" is disrespectful. Jesus is, well, Jesus. I have less of an issue with someone using "she" for the Spirit though where that's a language issue.

Justified112 said:

Why do some who claim to be Christians insist on referring to God as a female even though the Bible clearly uses male pronouns in reference to both the Father and the Holy Spirit?

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Proverbs 8, and because Eve was also made in the image and likeness of God.

Though I refer to God as a He, (as it is written "I am He" ) I understand there is a definite mimicry of how Wisdom referred to as feminine was "taken out" or "brought forth" of God and how the rib was removed from Adam.

duplicate.

My guess would be two reasons: how God is described in the Bible, but also an attempt at equality.

Many times in the Bible God is described as a father or husband with respect to His relationship with Israel. So God is often given a masculine identity in the Bible. At the same time, however, He is occasionally compared to something female in some metaphors: a mother hen, a mother bear or lioness defending her cubs, etc.

I think that recently, feminists in various denominations decided that it would be more fitting to describe God as "she" or the bizarre "Godself" I've been hearing (I understand that Karl Barth started it) in an attempt to emphasize that God does not have a "gender" or "sex" in biological terms as a being who is all. We can't really grasp that, but because the Bible is meant to be written in terms we do have some understanding of, we call God a He.

That being said, I think it's ridiculous to call God "She" or "Godself". Due to the metaphors in the Bbile, it's not entirely out of nowhere to suggest that God has any female characteristics--women are made in the image of God, too. God also transcends gender in His own way (that people cannot emulate no matter how much they may want to) because He is so far beyond us. But that doesn't mean that we should call Him female or some "neutral" term when He has not revealed Himself to us as either of those things explicitly.

I think feminists took this idea of a non-masculine (or not always masculine) God and ran with it because they thought it would help make women and men more equal in the church. The problem is that the feminist view that women are still not equal enough in the church or society isn't shared by everyone, not even all women. To try and bring God down to our level is not the same thing as Him going down to our level. We shouldn't try to define God in terms just because of social issues or past examples of injustice. God will administer justice to all men who mistreated women whether or not those women think of Him as male, as Scripture would generally indicate, or call Him female out of some sort of feminist ideology.

Personally, I believe "he" is most appropriate in English but I'm not going to get bent out of shape about it.

DW1980 said:

I think this may be an issue with the English language rather than "some who claim to be Christians". Actually, in Hebrew and Aramaic, the Holy Spirit is feminine. In Greek, neutral.

I had an acquaintance from Eastern Europe a while back and she kept saying "she" when talking about the Holy Spirit. We did ask, and she kept apologising - but explained that in her langauge the Holy Spirit was female, she was just translating in her head. In her Bible, the Spirit was "she". In Genesis for example you can translate it as "the Spirit of God she was hovering over the face of the waters"

Now that isn't to say that the Holy Spirit is female. We mustn't confuse God's chosen language of revelation (Father, Son, etc) with gender. God is spirit, and men and women are created in God's image.

So, for me, it comes down to respect. If I tell you my name, Don, and you decide you don't like that name because of another Don who mistreated you, would it be legitimate for you to decide to call me something else? That would be disrespectful. In the same way, God revealed himself as Father, and Jesus the Son - so "Mother" is disrespectful. Jesus is, well, Jesus. I have less of an issue with someone using "she" for the Spirit though where that's a language issue.

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The plain reading of the bible has the Holy Spirit brooding over the waters in Genesis 1 and Jesus saying that He would have liked to gather the inhabitants of Jerusalem as a hen would gather her chics but they would have none of it. Wisdom is feminine in Proverbs and written as so, while Jesus has been made the wisdom of the church. So it’s not off base in defining the image of God as male and female. Not just in the Aramaic but also in English read of the bible. Too much is overlooked to accommodate what one wants to hear and see.

All langauge about God is ultimately going to be inadequate in some ultimate sense. That is the basic assumptions underlying the medieval consensus my own religious tradition is based on- Luther was operating from the Pseudodionysian tradition, in contradistinction to the popular Aristotilianism of his day (as evidenced by Pr. Jordan Cooper in his work, Christification) That is why we have a sacramental approach, we realize God is beyond our comprehension, so God has to condescend to our understanding. But that doesn't preclude the reality that God is still incomprehensible and unknowable in essence.

Justified112 said:

Masculine and feminine for grammatical purposes does not mean "male" or "female."

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This. Only English-speakers make the argument "the Holy Spirit is a she because ruach is feminine". Often, the grammatical gender of a word will coincide with the actual gender: for example, in Norwegian, "woman", "girl", "cow" and "hen" are grammatically feminine, and they are also actually female. But "bed", "goat", "sun", "rutabaga" and "book" are also grammatically feminine. Same goes for German, Spanish, Latin and other gendered languages - all nouns have a grammatical gender, either with or without bearing on the actual gender (or lack thereof) of the actual noun.

The long and short of it is that whilst God does not have a gender, through revelation he has shown us that his "preferred pronouns" are he, him, his. So unless he instructs us otherwise, we should keep it that way.