God: Male or Female?

In today's society where everyone creates God in his or her own image and likeness, the real deep thinkers in the world, that would be the religion writers in scholarly magazines like Newsweek and Time (I'm being facetious), inevitably bring up the profound philosophical question (I'm still being facetious): Is God male or female?

This question, truly pondered for minutes at a time by tremendous scholars, like the religion writers of Newsweek and Time, is perhaps among the most arrogant, selfishly based, if not incredibly vapid questions of the modern age. The reason is because the question presumes that God is made in the image and likeness of humans--which are differentiated in two varieties: male and female. These bright shining lights of theological genious apparently have never stopped to think that if God is a differentiated being like a male or female, then humans are God. If humans are God, then God does not exist because the created cannot create the Creator. We do it all the time--which says something of our own incredible stupidity for a race so intelligent. One of the many paradoxes of Man, I guess.

What is forgotten when we insist on isolating God into a differentiated human being is that when we speak of God, human words cannot adequately explain his Being. The baby-boomers are an amazing testament to how public education dumbed down America. So, for all these guys and especially its gals, my beloved peers, we need to talk about language here and its use in Sacred Scripture. Hopefully, I can make some sense out of this for any of you who thinks God has a gender.

When, in the English language, we use masculine-based words to describe God, it is not because he is "male" or even "masculine" in the human sense of the English word. For if God was only male, he could not have created femaleness. For someone to make something, one has to know in intimate detail what one is making. With what perfection must one know something One is creating? (Strictly speaking, only God can create. The verb "to create", in its true meaning, means bringing into being something from nothing--not even pre-existing ideas or the products of thought. For even a work of art comes from some thought that has been pre-conceived from ideas learned or taught. Even abstract art is merely the product of the artist's nurturing, and the material the artist uses is a pre-created product. Even abstract forms have pre-existent patterns somewhere in the universe either at micro or macroscopic levels.) In the English language, the use of masculine specific language when applied to God has been relatively only recently considered "sexist", and so, a strong push, which has even infected to some degree, the Catholic Church (at least in America where this kind of hyper-sensitive silliness reigns supreme among hyper-hysterical females and intellectually dishonest males who seem to have the need to control every aspect of everyone else's lives) to eliminate the language of "male" when referring to God is still running amok in some circles.

Nowhere in the 73 books that make up the Catholic bible (there are only 66 books in Protestant version--this version "corrected" by Pope Martin Luther I, 1,524 years after Christ, and only 1,131 years after the Catholic Church approved the recognized list or "canon" of Scripture) is the word "male" or "man" used in reference to God, EXCEPT as where it pertains to Jesus the Christ who had to come to earth as someone, and God the "Father" chose a man so as to, in part, parallel the creation of "Adam" who is theologically credited with the Fall of Man(kind), even though it was female Eve who let the Serpent talk her into eating the fruit first. (The study of this is rich with theological depth and too long to go into here. The bottom line is that since God created Adam before Eve, Adam is given responsibility for her. Furthermore, Adam lets Eve talk him into eating the fruit. Catholic teaching ponders that if Adam had not taken the fruit, and had chastised Eve for her actions instead, there would would not have been a need for the Messiah--yet, anyway.) The word, "Father" as it refers to God, though a masculine term, can only be used by analogy. The English word for "father", ultimately derives from the meaning of the semitic term used for God as "Abba" or "Daddy"--the word a young child would use toward its father, and not the other way around. That is, the very notion of a "father" comes from the biblical idea of who God is in his fatherly sense. Furthermore, when the Messiah comes along to reveal for all of humankind who God is, he reveals this first person of the Holy Trinity as "Father" in all that that word means, not in its human sense, but in its derived sense. Jesus allows himself the limited nature of human language, and uses the word that best describes who he knows his Father to be, and chooses the word, "Father." "Mother" didn't cut it. Why? Because though a mother's authority in a semitic family setting, that is, Jesus' audience, is profound, it was not absolute. In the ideal family, the mother influences the father's decision making, but the father is still charged by God himself with making the final decision. Like Adam, it is the male head of the family who is ultimately going to be held accountable first and foremost for one's family. That is not to absolve the mother. Remember the hardships brought on Eve as a result of her sin (see Genesis 4). (Whether or not the story of Adam and Eve is literal or not--and who is to say it isn't, were you there?--is not at issue here. The point is that God's Word--i.e., the collection of 73 writings we call the Bible--is God's self-revelation to us through the imperfect instrument of the human author.

Strictly speaking all language that refers to God can only be used by analogy. The Uncreated precedes his Creation. No language can adequately express his profundity. Yet, God's revealed Word, that is, as expressed in Sacred Scriptures, comes to us in time. Specifically, in precise moments in history that prescind from the political correctness of language as used today. He could have chosen to inspire human authors of today's ilk, but he did not. We have to ask his purpose in doing so. And the answer has to include the use of language as it was understood by his historical audience. Authentic bible scholars and translators, who are truly seeking God, and not pushing political agendas or allowing themselves to be bound by the fleeting zeitgeist of political correctness, will be inspired by the Holy Spirit to continue to authentically translate the biblical texts in such a way as to preserve their integrity. So, we cannot take a words like "Father" or "Son" when they refer to the Godhead, and plaster them haphazardly into our American lexicon and expect to make sense of God. When we do, we start taking offense for inane reasons at the language used to describe God by the biblical authors. Words like "Him", "He"," Father" are not to be confused with "maleness" or "masculinity" when referring to God. Rather, our understanding and use of the words Him, He, His and Father, are mere shadows as to the fullness of what these words convey when applied to the Divine Nature. Perhaps the best analogy for this can described in terms of Plato's "forms", where for everything that exists on earth, the perfection of what that thing is exists in some other plane. The words we use here are mere shadows of what is meant when expressed by the Holy Spirit through the inspired authors of the Scriptures. These authors are bound by the limited nature of words which can never express the reality of God. So, if our father has miserably failed to live up to the ideal of what a "father" is supposed to be in the eyes of God who personifies Father in its ideal, what has that to do with the English language? Therefore, to try to apply language to God that he himself did not reveal to us is theologically short-sighted and a failure of scholarly thought.

So, then, why not use feminine epithets or gender-neutral language? Why does the language have to be masculine? Because, like it or not, that is the reality of the theological language of the bible. That is the language God inspired the human instrument to use in his self-revelation to humankind. This does not, therefore make God masculine or "male" in the human sense of the word. Rather, all that is feminine in Sacred Scripture comes from that which is masculine. This does not make the masculine superior. Masculinity by itself does not complete humanity. However, the mystery of humankind as expressed in the story of Adam and Eve is that somehow, in human creation, God makes man (as sex) first and female is drawn from him. Adam by himself does not complete the human complementarity. The Genesis scripture does not say Adam was lonely or even wanted a companion, it rather states that, "the Lord God said, 'It is not good for man to be alone.'" (Gen 2:18). Only when he draws woman from man, is "man" complete. This is expressed linguistically when it is written, "God created man in his image, in the divine image he created him (singular), male and female he created them (plural)". (Gen 1:27)

Neither feminine titles or gender-neutral language can describe God as well as the language that the Holy Spirit inspired the biblical authors to use. Yes, there are limited occasions when God is spoken of in feminine terms--in fact, I think it is like, once, in the psalms. However, rather than using a feminine epithet, it his deep love of us that is described in maternal language. This is perfectly adequate because every human being who knew his or her mother understands the language of the love of a mother. Furthermore, God could not have created Woman if he did not intimately know every detail of the feminine and its psychological and spiritual make-up.

This brings us back to the above discussion on the timing of God's inspiration and the moment in history in which he sends his Son, Jesus, the Messiah. God sent his "Son" Jesus in time, that is, a specific moment in history. Jesus' mission is to reveal the profound depth of the Love of God, his Father, for his creation (cf Jn 1:18; 10,29-30). To do this, God sends his "Word-made-flesh", that is, his Son, Jesus, to reveal the Father and to die for the salvation of Man (in the sense of humankind). God could have chosen anytime to do this. He could have chosen 21st century America. He didn't. He chose the times when and the culture where male patriarchy reigned supreme. He did this for a reason. We can only presume that his timing is what it was, in order to best reveal his own divine nature to us. The same is true with the writings of the bible. He didn't inspire present day authors to write the 73 books of the bible. Those 73 books are spread out over the course of 2000 years (No other religious book is like that--all other religious texts are written by one author in a fixed moment of history. I point this out because the implications of the relative consistency of the 73 texts are not much short of miraculous).

Does this make God some sort of androgynous being, some sort of she-male hybrid? To think in these terms is juvenile at best and sophomoric at worst. God is completely other, yet is our very creator and knows us individually in every initimate detail--better than our DNA defines us (inasmuch as he designed that, too!). The desire of feminists in our country to express God in female terms stems from a profound failure in their personal family lives, which they then want to project upon all families, and so they desire to control every aspect of everyone else's lives, the liturgy all others attend, the language all others use. Ultimately, this controlling desire simply boils down to psychological brokenness manifested in the childish selfishness that they never grew out of as kids. Welcome to our age.

So, where is the feminine found in God? Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, is the perfection of human womanhood. Her role comes secondary to Christ, like Eve's comes secondary to Adam's. Yet, her role is essential to humankind's salvation. Without her cooperation with the Divine, there is no salvation, because if she had made excuses to God, she would have denied humanity its savior. God chose Mary, in her womanly role as receiver (Lk 1:28, Jn 19:26,27), as initiator of love in action(Lk 1:39ff), as intercessor and counselor (Jn 2:5). Her "political" role as "Queen" and "Mother" is clearly seen in Rev 12:1ff, and in Psalm 45. She is also the archetype of the Church, which is referred to in feminine terms, because she "receives" the favors, graces, gifts, love, salvation and all else from God, specifically, from Jesus, who is the Bridegroom of the Church (Rev 21). The Church is the "bride" who is to prepare to meet her Bridegroom at the end of time. In this collective sense, even men are in a feminine role. Christ is the ultimate male. God the Father is the ultimate in what it means to be Father, even as Mary is the ultimate woman. Yet, she is to moon as God is to Sun. Her light only exists as the reflection of the outside source who is God. This is true of ALL mankind, men and women. Thus, the language of male and female in its every aspect in the bible is distinguished by a necessary complementarity of roles, necessarily to which, the female role is subjugated, but in no way less important than the role of man.

In the end, human language simply cannot grasp the reality of God, even as that which is finite can never encapsulate the infinite. If you feel you have to call God "she", feel free to do so if that makes you happy, but don't foist it on the rest of us, try to convice the rest of us with the wounded logic of human psychological baggage, or try to control theological orthodoxy with faulty opinion, and lastly, know that your reality of God is less than what God himself has enabled you to understand.