He or She

[John_Higgins]

No reason not to think of the Holy Spirit as a She. Why not?

Christ was clearly a He. “Abba” nails the First Person of the Trinity as male.

John

 

[Lazerlike42]

God is masculine in the Scriptures and in Christian practice for a very important reason.

Masculinity and femininity are not qualities that derive from men and women, they are eternal, abstract realities. Our modern culture doesn’t understand this at all. When we think of “masculine,” we think of something that is like a man, and when we think of a “feminine” thing, we think of something that is like a woman. The reality is the very opposite, however: men are called men because they are like the masculine, and women are women because they are like the feminine.

Masculinity is the quality of emminance/transcendance. It is the quality of going/being above and beyond. Femininity is the quality of imminence - of coming down to the level of, or of being with, something. Men are masculine because when it comes to the one area that most differentiates men and women - sexuality - men transcend and are emminant. To procreate, men come down from outside and enter into the female. The seed of the man comes from without, and when conception has occured, the man steps back - away from and outside of - the conceieved child. The woman, in her sexuality, is imminent. It is the transcendent male that entered her, the seed comes from beyond her, and most of all, the conceived child stays right with her; they are together - she is imminent to the child. Traditionally, this also followed through into the rearing of the child, where the male stepped back and was more distant and seperate from children growing up. leaving the mother to care for the child and to be with (imminent to) the child.

The ancients knew this, and understood what it meant. This is one reason that most languages in the world developed with masculine and feminine nouns. It was deep truth of the very nature of existence. The ancients understood the concepts of imminence and emminence and how fundamental to reality they are, and so these ideas permeated their religions. Thus, the religions that worshipped idols - gods that were imminent and in the world - had priestesses rather than priests. The priestly duty of sacrifice was not a transcendental duty, but an imminent one. It was a duty of reaching to the god next to you rather than reaching outside of the world to the God that was beyond, and so women were assigned this task. The Jews, on the other hand, had a transcendental God. Their God was outside of the world, and so males were made to offer sacrifice, because offering sacrifice to YHWH was by definition an act of reaching outside of the world - a transcendental act.

This is why God is “He” and “Him” rather than ‘She’ or ‘Her.’ We know God has no gender, and nobody ever claimed (so far as I know) that He did. Rather, people understood that God was transcendant, and so He was masculine in definition. We call God “He” all the while recognizing that He is not actually male because we know He is a transcendant God, and so to refer to Him with a pronoun requires the use of the masculine.

 

[Traditional_Ang]

Offensive? How so?

In some languages, such as Ukrainian and Slavonic, the word “Trinity” is feminine and takes a feminine pronoun.

This convention sometimes persists even when English translations are prepared, leading to such quotes as “These are the Biblical events at which the Holy Trinity made Her presence known.”

This quote can in fact be found on the following Ukrainian Orthodox website (in English):

unicorne.org/Orthodoxy/articles/alex_roman/iconcorner.htm

I do not find this offensive; after all, the language is the language.

Zirconia

Zirconia:

In the Hebrew Language, God is Masculine, and Jesus was very specific that we were to call God, “Father”, as we had become sons and daughters by Adoption. At the same time, Jesus refers to himself repetitively as the Bridegroom and the Church as the Bride.

In addition, and this is difficult for Protestants to understand, the Priest stands in the place of Christ and offers the “Unbloody Sacrifice of the Mass” to God the Father during the Divine Liturgy, during which heaven and earth are united, and we are united with Christ on Calvery (that’s what the words our Lord said when he instituted the Eucharist mean).

Our problem now is that a lot of “Liberals” who reject the teaching of the Church on a whole host of issues don’t believe this & see “Ordination to the Priesthood” as a “Human Rights Issue” and not as an office instituted of Christ for the buiding of the Body of Christ.

Many of these people have replaced the image of God the Father with God as Mother, and some of them have even denied the Divinity and the Resurrection of Christ, in order to realize their “dream”. Some have even gone so far as to “ordain Woman Priests” in defiance of direct orders of the Pope and other members of the Catholic hierarchy. Many of those who refer to God as “She” or “Mother” or Goddess" in the Catholic church support this.

As one who’s seen what this has done to the Anglican Communion, I can only agree with those Catholics who say they are upset as this misuse of the English Language by those whose agenda quite probably includes violating a Scriptural injuction and trying to change 2,000 years of Church Tradition.

I hope I put this in a way you could understand, and this helped you to understand what your Catholic brothers and sisters were talking about.

Your Brother in Christ, Michael

 

[Zirconia]

Zirconia:

In the Hebrew Language, God is Masculine, and Jesus was very specific that we were to call God, “Father”, as we had become sons and daughters by Adoption. At the same time, Jesus refers to himself repetitively as the Bridegroom and the Church as the Bride.

In addition, and this is difficult for Protestants to understand, the Priest stands in the place of Christ and offers the “Unbloody Sacrifice of the Mass” to God the Father during the Divine Liturgy, during which heaven and earth are united, and we are united with Christ on Calvery (that’s what the words our Lord said when he instituted the Eucharist mean).

Our problem now is that a lot of “Liberals” who reject the teaching of the Church on a whole host of issues don’t believe this & see “Ordination to the Priesthood” as a “Human Rights Issue” and not as an office instituted of Christ for the buiding of the Body of Christ.

Many of these people have replaced the image of God the Father with God as Mother, and some of them have even denied the Divinity and the Resurrection of Christ, in order to realize their “dream”. Some have even gone so far as to “ordain Woman Priests” in defiance of direct orders of the Pope and other members of the Catholic hierarchy. Many of those who refer to God as “She” or “Mother” or Goddess" in the Catholic church support this.

As one who’s seen what this has done to the Anglican Communion, I can only agree with those Catholics who say they are upset as this misuse of the English Language by those whose agenda quite probably includes violating a Scriptural injuction and trying to change 2,000 years of Church Tradition.

I hope I put this in a way you could understand, and this helped you to understand what your Catholic brothers and sisters were talking about.

Your Brother in Christ, Michael

Just to clarify, I was not trying to attack anyone, just to point out something I found interesting. And to state that I did not find such references, at least in those cases, offensive. Which was one of the questions asked in the OP.

I might feel differently about “Goddess” and the like, but I have not encountered such references in my Protestant church, so I can’t say to what extent such terminology would bother me. It does sound somewhat pagan.

But I do wonder how, if God resembles men so much more than women (as has been repeatedly stressed here), how both can be made in His image. And whether He understands women in the same way as men, since He did incarnate as male and not female.

I have wondered about this for some time now, and would be curious to hear the Catholic response.

Zirconia

 

[Tweety]

If i remember correctly in Mass the priest says one of these 4 things before we pray the Our Father.

“Let us pray with confidence to the Father in the words our Saviour gave us”

“Jesus taught us to call God our Father, and so we have the courage to say…”

“Let us ask our Father to forgive our sins and to bring us to to forgive those who sin against us.”

“Let us pray for the coming of the kingdom as Jesus taught us”

That sums it up good enough for me!

I’ll go with God being referred to as a he thank you!

 

[cor]

Zirconia:

In the Hebrew Language, God is Masculine, and Jesus was very specific that we were to call God, “Father”, as we had become sons and daughters by Adoption.

But God’s Spirit (ruah) has a feminine gender (grammatically) in Hebrew.

Pope John Paul I refered to God as Mother:

"And Premier Begin recalls that the Jewish people once passed difficult moments and addressed the Lord complaining and saying: “You have forsaken us, you have forgotten us!” “No!” —He replied through Isaiah the Prophet—“Can a mother forget her own child? But even if it should happen, God will never forget his people”.

“Also we who are here have the same sentiments; we are the objects of undying love on the part of God. We know: he has always his eyes open on us, even when it seems to be dark. He is our father: even more he is our mother. He does not want to hurt us, He wants only to do good to us, to all of us. If children are ill, they have additional claim to be loved by their mother. And we too, if by chance we are sick with badness, on the wrong track, have yet another claim to be loved by the Lord.”

ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP1PRAYR.HTM

Julian of Norwich also referred to God as Mother (anyone know if she is a Blessed? Scott Hahn refers to her that way “Blessed Julian…”):

vatican.va/spirit/documents/spirit_20010807_giuliana-norwich_en.html

Apparently Catherine of Siena spoke of the Holy Spirit as mother:

“The Holy Spirit becomes [for people who abandon themselves to Providence] a mother who feeds them from the breast of divine charity.”

salvationhistory.com/library/tradition/theology/appendix%20and%20notes.pdf

In the above link, you can also read Scott Hahn’s thoughts.

As for me, I think if we have a God as our Heavenly Father it would be strange to think we are without a divine Heavenly Mother and also strange to think that the Heavenly Father would be alone without a feminine companion. Since Jesus refers to his God as Father, he must be masculine in some sense of the word or after some manner of speaking – otherwise Jesus’ use of the word “Father” would be arbitrary. But maybe some persons – namely divine persons – are beyond romantic relationships and romance and spiritual sexuality has not a cosmic significance but is a mere detail of some finite creatures.

Some philosophers use “she” in reference to God. When I was a tradition-minded Catholic it bothered me a little bit, but now I’m accepting of it.

 

[Ahimsa]

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” – Luke 13:34

If Jesus likened Himself to a mother-hen, who am I to argue?

Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me. – 2 Corinthians 12: 8-9

If God is found most powerfully in the weak and the oppressed, then I would think that given the choice between male and female, God would find in the female the one who has been the most oppressed and whose weakness has been taken advantage of the most.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

But God’s Spirit (ruah) has a feminine gender (grammatically) in Hebrew.

Pope John Paul I refered to God as Mother:

"And Premier Begin recalls that the Jewish people once passed difficult moments and addressed the Lord complaining and saying: “You have forsaken us, you have forgotten us!” “No!” —He replied through Isaiah the Prophet—“Can a mother forget her own child? But even if it should happen, God will never forget his people”.

“Also we who are here have the same sentiments; we are the objects of undying love on the part of God. We know: he has always his eyes open on us, even when it seems to be dark. He is our father: even more he is our mother. He does not want to hurt us, He wants only to do good to us, to all of us. If children are ill, they have additional claim to be loved by their mother. And we too, if by chance we are sick with badness, on the wrong track, have yet another claim to be loved by the Lord.”

ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP1PRAYR.HTM

Julian of Norwich also referred to God as Mother (anyone know if she is a Blessed? Scott Hahn refers to her that way “Blessed Julian…”):

vatican.va/spirit/documents/spirit_20010807_giuliana-norwich_en.html

Apparently Catherine of Siena spoke of the Holy Spirit as mother:

“The Holy Spirit becomes [for people who abandon themselves to Providence] a mother who feeds them from the breast of divine charity.”

salvationhistory.com/library/tradition/theology/appendix%20and%20notes.pdf

In the above link, you can also read Scott Hahn’s thoughts.

As for me, I think if we have a God as our Heavenly Father it would be strange to think we are without a divine Heavenly Mother and also strange to think that the Heavenly Father would be alone without a feminine companion. Since Jesus refers to his God as Father, he must be masculine in some sense of the word or after some manner of speaking – otherwise Jesus’ use of the word “Father” would be arbitrary. But maybe some persons – namely divine persons – are beyond romantic relationships and romance and spiritual sexuality has not a cosmic significance but is a mere detail of some finite creatures.

Some philosophers use “she” in reference to God. When I was a tradition-minded Catholic it bothered me a little bit, but now I’m accepting of it.

Here they’re not using in the gender sense, as feminist do, but rather in the theological sense, just as Jesus referred to God as Father, not in the gender sense, but in the theological. God is provider of all things as a father, but also nurtures and protects us as a mother. Neither case is gender in literal sense, but in the effect.

I was amazed talking with some women, who told me that they could not handle the title, “Father,” when speaking about God, because their own fathers were so abusive, it caused problems for them. I asked, but don’t you have any concept of what a good father is? They said, the have the definition, but can’t relate to it.
At that point, I’m just not able to understand. My father was also abusive, but that doesn’t change my understanding of what a good father is, especially God the Father.

Jim

 

[cheeto1]

God is masculine in the Scriptures and in Christian practice for a very important reason.

Masculinity and femininity are not qualities that derive from men and women, they are eternal, abstract realities. Our modern culture doesn’t understand this at all. When we think of “masculine,” we think of something that is like a man, and when we think of a “feminine” thing, we think of something that is like a woman. The reality is the very opposite, however: men are called men because they are like the masculine, and women are women because they are like the feminine.

Masculinity is the quality of emminance/transcendance. It is the quality of going/being above and beyond. Femininity is the quality of imminence - of coming down to the level of, or of being with, something. Men are masculine because when it comes to the one area that most differentiates men and women - sexuality - men transcend and are emminant. To procreate, men come down from outside and enter into the female. The seed of the man comes from without, and when conception has occured, the man steps back - away from and outside of - the conceieved child. The woman, in her sexuality, is imminent. It is the transcendent male that entered her, the seed comes from beyond her, and most of all, the conceived child stays right with her; they are together - she is imminent to the child. Traditionally, this also followed through into the rearing of the child, where the male stepped back and was more distant and seperate from children growing up. leaving the mother to care for the child and to be with (imminent to) the child.

The ancients knew this, and understood what it meant. This is one reason that most languages in the world developed with masculine and feminine nouns. It was deep truth of the very nature of existence. The ancients understood the concepts of imminence and emminence and how fundamental to reality they are, and so these ideas permeated their religions. Thus, the religions that worshipped idols - gods that were imminent and in the world - had priestesses rather than priests. The priestly duty of sacrifice was not a transcendental duty, but an imminent one. It was a duty of reaching to the god next to you rather than reaching outside of the world to the God that was beyond, and so women were assigned this task. The Jews, on the other hand, had a transcendental God. Their God was outside of the world, and so males were made to offer sacrifice, because offering sacrifice to YHWH was by definition an act of reaching outside of the world - a transcendental act.

This is why God is “He” and “Him” rather than ‘She’ or ‘Her.’ We know God has no gender, and nobody ever claimed (so far as I know) that He did. Rather, people understood that God was transcendant, and so He was masculine in definition. We call God “He” all the while recognizing that He is not actually male because we know He is a transcendant God, and so to refer to Him with a pronoun requires the use of the masculine.

This is the one I agree with. Also I think God makes a very
poor mother, He lets His children get away with murder! He
never even steps in till it’s “too late”. Why didn’t He step in
ahead of time before His holy ones made so many mistakes?
Any mom would have seen it coming and headed it off at the
pass, like “no Abraham, not the maid, your wife!” or “no Moses,
only strike the rock once!”, or “Judas, you give back all that money you stole, and don’t even Think of betraying Jesus, it’s
the biggest mistake you’ll ever make!” He’s much more like a father as in “wait till your father comes home”. But when He
comes home, it will be too late for many.

 

[cheeto1]

hmm, no one’s saying anything.
Remember - Jesus gave us a mother, the Holy Catholic Church,
“the bride of Christ”. and for that human comfort - Mary, the
queen of all saints.
Just leave it to God to know we need a mother. He does love us!

 

[Ahimsa]

This is the one I agree with. Also I think God makes a very
poor mother, He lets His children get away with murder! He
never even steps in till it’s “too late”. Why didn’t He step in
ahead of time before His holy ones made so many mistakes?
Any mom would have seen it coming and headed it off at the
pass, like “no Abraham, not the maid, your wife!” or “no Moses,
only strike the rock once!”, or “Judas, you give back all that money you stole, and don’t even Think of betraying Jesus, it’s
the biggest mistake you’ll ever make!” He’s much more like a father as in “wait till your father comes home”. But when He
comes home, it will be too late for many.

Sounds like an argument for God being both Father and Mother, bad-cop and good-cop. You need a carrot, and a stick.

 

[Contarini]

It is offensive to me because I believe in the trinity. For a while there, I went to a Christian Science church, where they refered to God always as our Father- Mother God. I guess not a He or She thing, but its about the same.

Calling God “she” as well as “he” does not deny the Trinity. Excluding “gendered” language from the Trinity is clearly wrong. God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and we cannot change that language. But that’s not the same thing as the use of pronouns for God when speaking of the Divine Essence in general. They are two different issues.

Edwin

 

[Lazerlike42]

Here they’re not using in the gender sense, as feminist do, but rather in the theological sense, just as Jesus referred to God as Father, not in the gender sense, but in the theological. God is provider of all things as a father, but also nurtures and protects us as a mother. Neither case is gender in literal sense, but in the effect.

I was amazed talking with some women, who told me that they could not handle the title, “Father,” when speaking about God, because their own fathers were so abusive, it caused problems for them. I asked, but don’t you have any concept of what a good father is? They said, the have the definition, but can’t relate to it.
At that point, I’m just not able to understand. My father was also abusive, but that doesn’t change my understanding of what a good father is, especially God the Father.

Jim

This I can’t relate to, but I can understand. You are very lucky. We get our images of God, in the first place, from our own parents, and to varying degrees from others that have authority over us. There is a growing thought in pscychology, backed up by some research, that those persons who have had either no father or bad/abusive/neglectful fathers are far more likely to be atheists than those not in this position. St. Paul teaches us that all earthly fatherhood draws itself from God’s Fatherhood; all earthly fatherhood is an image of God’s Fatherhood. So, if a person sees the image and its abusive, they will very naturally, unconsciously, see the reality in a very similar way. You’re very fortunate to not have had this problem. I have a friend in a similar situation to you.

 

[CCCatholic17]

I believe the Holy Spirit is female. How else could I explain Trinitarian love? God the Father=male, Holy Spirit=female, Jesus=male…the love infused by God the Father and Holy Spirit created Jesus, much like the modern day family (husband+wife).

Why is that wrong or offensive?

Blessings,
Heather

 

[Lazerlike42]

I believe the Holy Spirit is female. How else could I explain Trinitarian love? God the Father=male, Holy Spirit=female, Jesus=male…the love infused by God the Father and Holy Spirit created Jesus, much like the modern day family (husband+wife).

Why is that wrong or offensive?

Blessings,
Heather

That’s not so much offensive as it is very off theologically.

The Son is not a creation of the Father and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is third in terms of generation. In other words, the Father generates the Son, and then the Holy Spirit is generated. Now this doesn’t happen chronologically, like, one after the other. They are all eternally existing. When we talk about these things we are talking about logical order - which thing happens first in the logical order of things.

The way the Trinitiy works is basically like this. You have God, and He exists. Now God knows Himself, just like you and I know ourselves, but God is perfect, so when He knows Himself, He knows Himself perfectly. Part of perfection is actually existing. A hot dog in your mind, no matter how it may match what a hot dog ought to be exactly, isn’t perfect, because it lacks one thing: existence. When God knows Himself, the knowing of Himself is perfect, and so it exists. This is the Son. Now God Loves the Son, and He Loves the Son perfectly, so that Love is a real person: the Holy Spirit.

Think about the Creed. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, not the Son from the Father and Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit can’t exist without the Son first, because the Holy Spirit is the Love that the Father gives the Son, so without the Son there isn’t anything for the Father to Love.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

I believe the Holy Spirit is female. How else could I explain Trinitarian love? God the Father=male, Holy Spirit=female, Jesus=male…the love infused by God the Father and Holy Spirit created Jesus, much like the modern day family (husband+wife).

Why is that wrong or offensive?

Blessings,
Heather

Not offensive per se, but you’re creating God, in your image.

Jim

 

[Verisimilitude]

Is it offensive to you? It kind of is to me to call God “She”, am I wrong?

It does not offend me, but I don’t do it. Whether or not it would offend G-d, I don’t know.

 

[heavenly]

Jesus revealed himself as male ( in a male biological body) even though God has no gender. Okay. I don’t think that your devaluating “feminists” is psychologically healthy for you.Anyone who devaluates that much begins to sound like someone living in a totalitarian state. Keep an open mind, in case the genderless god reveals more to come. Or else there may end up-spearte churches for males and females, one for males to worship themselves and one for females who can’t hack worshipping males!
I’m looking for more information about Jesus in a male body. Did he act stereotypically “masculine” in any way during his life? If you think so, what "male behaviors do you think he acted out? It seems like his message was what we would now consider sterotypically feminine. And definitely inclusive in “his” behavior.

 

[Greg27]

The Priest at my parish said that during his seminary training the question came up as to whether God should be called mother as well as Father. The teacher at the time replied ‘Whatever we call God, Mother or Father, God is far more than what these words could express.’) The same sentiment can be found in Clement of Alexandria, who argued whether we call God infinite, powerful, perfect Being, God’s nature is far above whatever name we can apply to him.

Whatever term we use to describe God, God in himself is a mystery. Because God has revealed himself as the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and these are the most accurate names we have to describe the Godhead and its operations, this cannot change. But, if we are describing God’s love and mercy towards us, then I think we can describe God as both motherlike and fatherlike in love and care, by analogy, though if we are talking about the Trinity itself it has to be in terms of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

 

[Eddy]

I don’t have a problem with the masculine terms of the Trinity (though as others have said, the Holy Spirit has, in some times and some traditions been referred to as she).

However, using feminine imagery of God is utterly biblical. We’ve already had ‘does a Mother forget her baby or a woman the child in her womb?’. Then Psalm 131 ‘I have stilled and quietened my soul, like a child at its mother’s breast’. We have Jesus comparing the kingdom of God to a woman who took yeast and mixed it into flour, or a woman who lost a coin and rejoiced in finding it (a feminine version of the lost sheep), and saying that he himself longed to gather Jerusalem as a mother hen gathers its chicks.

If the psalmists and Jesus didn’t have any issue using feminine imagery for God, why do we?