Mysticism and the geneder of God

[Meemai]

The connection with God is ussualy depicted as bride and bridegroom. I do not like these terms. I find it hard sometimes to see myself loving Jesus while I am a male myself as well.

Also God is ussually depicted as a male word in my language and I think in every language. Do any other guys struggle with this?

It’s a serious question as I have been reading a lot of theology and mysticism. I find it very hard to direct my love to Jesus I think it would be easier if Jesus where a woman. It’s also woman mystics that ussually found the bride-bridegroom theology.

 

[seagal]

The connection with God is ussualy depicted as bride and bridegroom. I do not like these terms. I find it hard sometimes to see myself loving Jesus while I am a male myself as well.

Also God is ussually depicted as a male word in my language and I think in every language. Do any other guys struggle with this?

It’s a serious question as I have been reading a lot of theology and mysticism. I find it very hard to direct my love to Jesus I think it would be easier if Jesus where a woman. It’s also woman mystics that ussually found the bride-bridegroom theology.

Just to clarify, Jesus is understood to be the bridegroom of the Church, not of individual people (except of course for nuns, who are brides of Christ). If it helps you can think of him as your brother.

God, being pure spirit, has no gender. But Jesus referred to his Father in heaven and so we follow his example. Personally I have no issue with this but I understand lots of people have problems with the “genderification” of God.

 

[jschwartz]

God is understood in both masculine and feminine terms. The Scriptures compare God to a Mother in many places. You can say God is androgynous.

 

[Della]

It may also help to remember that we are all called to both male and female roles at different points in our lives. As a woman I am also a “priest, prophet, and king.” If I were overly sensitive to the gender issue I’d want to change that to “priestess, prophetess, and queen” but then I’d spoil the whole typology of the teaching.

In many ways all of us are the receivers of God’s grace, thus putting us in the female role. But we are also distributors of God’s graces, putting us in the masculine role. However, God is always the giver–he needs nothing from us. So, he is best defined as the male giver–the seed of life, while we are more properly the bringers forth of that life, hence the female. C. S. Lewis goes into this in some depth. You may find his reasoning helpful.

 

[jschwartz]

Hildegarde and Julian of Norwich, two female mystical saints of the Medieval church, wrote of Mother Jesus.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

Just to clarify, Jesus is understood to be the bridegroom of the Church, not of individual people (except of course for nuns, who are brides of Christ). If it helps you can think of him as your brother.

.

You need to read St John of the Cross.

He refers to Jesus as the beloved, the bridegroom and the soul as the loved spouse.

He’s talking about the individual’s relationship with Jesus.

Jim

 

[seagal]

You need to read St John of the Cross.

He refers to Jesus as the beloved, the bridegroom and the soul as the loved spouse.

He’s talking about the individual’s relationship with Jesus.

Jim

Well that’s his spirituality, which isn’t something we necessarily have to adopt, especially if someone finds it problematic.

 

[littlestsouls2]

Mystics use analogies or metaphors all the time, and Our Lord often addresses them in similar terms. Our relationship with God cannot be reduced to these analogies; to love God is something so great that any analogy pales in comparison. The main idea, I suppose, is that charity unites us so intimately to God that He is in us, and we are in Him. God’s love and grace is the seed of all spiritual fecundity.

Jesus is also our Saviour and Brother. Personally, I like to think of Jesus as my Saviour; mystical language helps me to understand the sense in which God sanctifies me and works in and through me.

"Come, My friend, take everything which a friend can give to his friend. Come, My sister, possess the eternal inheritance which I acquired for you by My Precious Blood. Come, My spouse, enjoy My Divinity.”

• Jesus to St. Mechtilde

 

[Robert_Sock]

Humans have a bicameral brain, one half masculine and the other feminine. The Kabbalah teaches the God too has multiple attributes, some feminine and the others masculine.

 

[thistle]

Humans have a bicameral brain, one half masculine and the other feminine. The Kabbalah teaches the God too has multiple attributes, some feminine and the others masculine.

God has no gender. God is pure spirit.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

Well that’s his spirituality, which isn’t something we necessarily have to adopt, especially if someone finds it problematic.

Well, he was declared a Doctor of the Church, so I wouldn’t blow him off so easily.

Also, the Song of Songs in the Old Testament, is what St John used to describe the relationship of the soul with the beloved, God.

Its something you’ll have to pray about in order to understand.

Jim

 

[Della]

God has no gender. God is pure spirit.

:yup: So for those who have difficulty with the bridegroom/bride analogy, it might be best for them to focus on the reality that God is Spirit rather than struggling with the male/female typology, which is quite helpful to some, but certainly not for everyone.

A way a man may find it easier to relate to God as Father as to meditate on being a son of God, rather than on God as bridegroom.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

The gender reference of God has nothing to do with sexual gender, but spiritual on a deeper level.

God the Father is the perfect Father who created all and provides for all.

God the Mother, is the perfect Mother who nurtures the soul with love, compassion and mercy.

You are not required to think of God in gender specific terms.

Let God reveal Himself to you as He is, not as you create Him to be.

We are made in His image, not He in ours.

Jim

 

[Meemai]

The gender reference of God has nothing to do with sexual gender, but spiritual on a deeper level.

God the Father is the perfect Father who created all and provides for all.

God the Mother, is the perfect Mother who nurtures the soul with love, compassion and mercy.

You are not required to think of God in gender specific terms.

Let God reveal Himself to you as He is, not as you create Him to be.

We are made in His image, not He in ours.

Jim

Thanks for all your posts, as you indeed did get what I was getting at. Yes I was of course speaking forward on the words of the female saints but also saint John of the Cross.

The languages focus a lot on God as Him and He, and such and so on. It is not too troubling for me at times. On other hand the anology does not work for me…So I was thinking of Thomas Merton:

I have not rushed to reply to your letter—first, because I have been a little busy, and second, because it is most difficult to write anything that really makes sense about this most mysterious reality in the mystery of God—Hagia Sophia [Holy Wisdom].
The first thing to be said, of course, is that Hagia Sophia is God Himself. God is not only a Father but a Mother. He is both at the same time, and it is the “feminine aspect” or “feminine principle” in the divinity that is the Hagia Sophia.

In its most primitive aspect, Hagia Sophia is the dark, nameless Ousia [Being] of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the incomprehensible, “primordial” darkness which is infinite light. The Three Divine Persons, each at the same time, are Sophia and manifest her.

Hence, Sophia is the feminine, dark, yielding, tender counterpart of the power, justice, creative dynamism of the Father.

Now the Blessed Virgin is the one created being who in herself realizes perfectly all that is hidden in Sophia. She is a kind of personal manifestation of Sophia. She crowns the Second Person of the Trinity with His human nature (with what is weak, able to suffer, able to be defeated) and sends Him forth with His mission of inexpressible mercy, to die for man on the Cross, and this death, followed by the Resurrection, is the greatest expression of the “manifold wisdom of God” which unites us all in the mystery of Christ—the Church. Finally, it is the Church herself, properly understood as the great manifestation of the mercy of God, who is the revelation of Sophia in the sight of the angels.

Maybe I need to take his view of God as Sophia?

 

[Della]

Thanks for all your posts, as you indeed did get what I was getting at. Yes I was of course speaking forward on the words of the female saints but also saint John of the Cross.

The languages focus a lot on God as Him and He, and such and so on. It is not too troubling for me at times. On other hand the anology does not work for me…So I was thinking of Thomas Merton:

Maybe I need to take his view of God as Sophia?

Whatever aids your faith–go for it.