Why is God refered to as He?

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holy_wood

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The Christian God is partly defined as three divine persons who make up the triune Godhead correct.

Then should not we refer to God as “They” instead of He and only use “He” in appealing to one particular person in the Godhead?

The only reason that I see that we don’t is that we are afraid of being accused of polytheism.
 
Um. . .three divine persons in ONE God.

It’s a mystery.

St. Patrick used the shamrock to explain it. . .three leaves on one stem. . .one shamrock. Of course it’s a limited analogy but the principle is there.

God is not ‘they’. . .God is HE who happens to be, as that HE, Father, Son and Spirit.

The persons of the Father and Spirit are spirit only–the second person --the Son–by virtue of the hypostatic union is both spirit and flesh–a specifically male gender flesh–.

Still, God is God–one God, not ‘three Gods’.
 
Tantum_ergo said:
Um. . .three divine persons in ONE God.

It’s a mystery.

St. Patrick used the shamrock to explain it. . .three leaves on one stem. . .one shamrock. Of course it’s a limited analogy but the principle is there.

God is not ‘they’. . .God is HE who happens to be, as that HE, Father, Son and Spirit.

The persons of the Father and Spirit are spirit only–the second person --the Son–by virtue of the hypostatic union is both spirit and flesh–a specifically male gender flesh–.

Still, God is God–one God, not ‘three Gods’.
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I know we worship one God but the Godhead is made up of three divine persons.

1 person = “He”.

More than 1 = “They”.

The Angels are spirit but we refer to hem as “they”.

Every time God speaks in the scriptures is each person of the trinity speaking at that time as “I” or is one particular individual (i.e. the Father or Son or Holy Ghost) speaking individually?

There will may be one but does each person of the trinity share the same mind?
 
God is one. He has but one divine mind and one divine will, one divine essence. Father, Son, and Spirit each possess the one divine nature. The three persons are not three distinct entities, only distinct persons. Since God is but one entity, he can be referred to in the singular: he is one being, but 3 persons.
 
Technically the real word isn’t “person” (from a Latin or Greek, I forget which, word for “mask,” hence a character in a play–re-borrowed later as “persona”). It’s “hypostasis”.
 
JimG said:
God is one. He has but one divine mind and one divine will, one divine essence. Father, Son, and Spirit each possess the one divine nature. The three persons are not three distinct entities, only distinct persons. Since God is but one entity, he can be referred to in the singular: he is one being, but 3 persons.
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Ok that answer was quite succinct
 
I personally find it difficult to imagine God as being one sex or the other. God is infinite and complete, right? Not this or that. I think the terminolgy is used to make people comfortable, to give them an image they can relate to. True, Jesus did come as a man but I think that was simply because women were virtually ignored at that time. Mary was his mother - being born requires a mom, so he had to have a “father”. Yes, this followed the tradition of God being male in the OT, but as I said at the beginning, I don’t take this to literally mean that God is a man.
 
Swan said:
I personally find it difficult to imagine God as being one sex or the other. God is infinite and complete, right? Not this or that. I think the terminolgy is used to make people comfortable, to give them an image they can relate to. True, Jesus did come as a man but I think that was simply because women were virtually ignored at that time. Mary was his mother - being born requires a mom, so he had to have a “father”. Yes, this followed the tradition of God being male in the OT, but as I said at the beginning, I don’t take this to literally mean that God is a man.
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No, because “man” and “male” are synonyms, not interchangeable. A man is a male human.

God is referred to as male because…switching philosophical gears without a clutch…Yin and Yang are immutable, but they’re determined by a given relationship. A man, for instance, is Yin to the state and Yang to his children. More importantly, he’s Yang to his wife. She, likewise, is Yin to her husband but Yang to her children.

God is not Yin before anything in creation, he is supreme Yang (active), and we in the Indo-European and Semitic languages mark Yang things with “masculine” pronouns, while Yin we mark with feminine.
 
If I may…this came up in my Bible Study class.

We use the male pronoun because it fits with the way that God interacts with humanity. The relationship is analogous to the marital act.

God *penetrates *humanity, especially in the Incarnation but the metaphor works for the individual soul, and plants His seed of love within us. We have to be *receptive *to that love, and allow it to grow within us to bring forth fruit.

That’s why we refer to the Church as the “Bride of Christ”
 
from - God has no daughters

…Yet Christians are also begotten in a sense that surpasses all metaphor and is almost impossible for reason to fathom. The Son, by pouring forth the Holy Spirit, creates others sons. He conforms both men and women to his own image as Son, thereby making them all God’s sons (not daughters). God has no only begotten daughter, for reasons we shall see; he therefore has no daughters begotten of the Spirit, only sons. There is only one pattern for both men and women to be conformed to, that of the Son. In the Son, Christians become deiform, apotheosized, and achieve an intimacy and union with the Godhead that is beyond the categories of natural reason, which seeks to reduce this relationship to that of a metaphor. Obviously we are not yet what we shall be; that remains to be revealed. Therefore in our immaturity we are the children of God, growing into the image of the Son, so that we may become his sons. Explaining the phrases in the Scripture should be an opportunity for delineating an extraordinarily important and neglected or misunderstood part of the Christian message. Instead “inclusive language” blurs over an important point by conforming it to feminist usage, which is not theologically applicable in this instance, whatever justification it might have in other texts.
 
holy_wood said:
The Christian God is partly defined as three divine persons who make up the triune Godhead correct.

Then should not we refer to God as “They” instead of He and only use “He” in appealing to one particular person in the Godhead?

The only reason that I see that we don’t is that we are afraid of being accused of polytheism.
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When you figure this one out, how 'bout let all of Christianity know.
 
Swan said:
I personally find it difficult to imagine God as being one sex or the other. God is infinite and complete, right? Not this or that. I think the terminolgy is used to make people comfortable, to give them an image they can relate to. True, Jesus did come as a man but I think that was simply because women were virtually ignored at that time. Mary was his mother - being born requires a mom, so he had to have a “father”. Yes, this followed the tradition of God being male in the OT, but as I said at the beginning, I don’t take this to literally mean that God is a man.
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I suspect there is great truth in your statements. We are but what we are living in the reality that exists for us. We can but explain the world both natural and supernatural in those terms. There is no way that truly explains the trinity, and indeed Augustine has told us as much, and suggested that we define less of what God is that what God is not. Most seem to be in agreement that God is ungendered spirit, and thus He is inappropriate. Yet what else are we to use. We define Jesus in terms that we are familiar with as you suggest. It would certainly have been unthinkable for women to be apostles in that time. While there are a few instances of women doing important things in the OT, they are seldom portrayed as true leaders of any type. Such was simply not the norm of those times. Good post.
 
Engineer1 said:
If I may…this came up in my Bible Study class.

We use the male pronoun because it fits with the way that God interacts with humanity. The relationship is analogous to the marital act.

God *penetrates *humanity, especially in the Incarnation but the metaphor works for the individual soul, and plants His seed of love within us. We have to be *receptive *to that love, and allow it to grow within us to bring forth fruit.

That’s why we refer to the Church as the “Bride of Christ”
Click to expand...
But the OT is also chock full of references of God by analogy to women. That he cares for us as a women with a newborn. There are tons of that. So I disagree that that God’s relationship is analogous to a male caring for his family. It is just as analogous to a women taking care of hers.
 
buffalo said:
from - God has no daughters

…Yet Christians are also begotten in a sense that surpasses all metaphor and is almost impossible for reason to fathom. The Son, by pouring forth the Holy Spirit, creates others sons. He conforms both men and women to his own image as Son, thereby making them all God’s sons (not daughters). God has no only begotten daughter, for reasons we shall see; he therefore has no daughters begotten of the Spirit, only sons. There is only one pattern for both men and women to be conformed to, that of the Son. In the Son, Christians become deiform, apotheosized, and achieve an intimacy and union with the Godhead that is beyond the categories of natural reason, which seeks to reduce this relationship to that of a metaphor. Obviously we are not yet what we shall be; that remains to be revealed. Therefore in our immaturity we are the children of God, growing into the image of the Son, so that we may become his sons. Explaining the phrases in the Scripture should be an opportunity for delineating an extraordinarily important and neglected or misunderstood part of the Christian message. Instead “inclusive language” blurs over an important point by conforming it to feminist usage, which is not theologically applicable in this instance, whatever justification it might have in other texts.
Click to expand...
I dont agree at all. I am not a son in the making if you will. Growing in the image of Christ has nothing to do with being a son, it has do with a frame of mind and a way of living and believing. The fact that Christ assumed the male form is nothing but pure coincidence. His maleness is of no import. He had to be one or the other. As many would conclude it was the wise choice given the culture.
 
holy_wood said:
The Christian God is partly defined as three divine persons who make up the triune Godhead correct.

Then should not we refer to God as “They” instead of He and only use “He” in appealing to one particular person in the Godhead?

The only reason that I see that we don’t is that we are afraid of being accused of polytheism.
Click to expand...
It is one God though. God is one. Often when we speak of God we are refering to God the Father. If I am to say God loves me, often times I have God the Father in mind.
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Hastrman:
Technically the real word isn’t “person” (from a Latin or Greek, I forget which, word for “mask,” hence a character in a play–re-borrowed later as “persona”). It’s “hypostasis”.
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The ancient latin word persona meant a mask as you say. The Greek fathers though chose to use the word hypostasis which means essence basically. They used ousia to refer to the oneness of God and hypastasis to refer to the three distinct persons. Both these words mean ‘essence’. Hypostasis though gradually became identified with the person and indicated a correspondence with others. The idea of the hypostasis, or person, was meant to indicate communion.
 
SpiritMeadow said:
I dont agree at all. I am not a son in the making if you will. Growing in the image of Christ has nothing to do with being a son, it has do with a frame of mind and a way of living and believing. The fact that Christ assumed the male form is nothing but pure coincidence. His maleness is of no import. He had to be one or the other. As many would conclude it was the wise choice given the culture.
Click to expand...
I agree, SpiritMeadow. The Syriac tradition had a form of monastics which were called ‘the sons of the covenant(bnay qyama)’ and ‘the daughters of the covenant(bnath qyama).’
 
holy_wood said:
The Christian God is partly defined as three divine persons who make up the triune Godhead correct.

Then should not we refer to God as “They” instead of He and only use “He” in appealing to one particular person in the Godhead?

The only reason that I see that we don’t is that we are afraid of being accused of polytheism.
Click to expand...
The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are one and the same God, with one and the same intellect, and one and the same will. The only distinction there is between the Father and the Son is that the Son is Son, while the Father is Father–in other words, in relation to each other, since a son is son in relation to his father, and the father is father in relation to his son. Similarly the Spirit is distinct from the other two persons only in his relationship to them.

When we aren’t considering these mutual relationships, and thus not considering the distinction of persons, we use singular pronouns to refer to God. We could use “it”, as we sometimes do when we speak about God as the “supreme being” or “first cause”. But when we use the term “God”, we understand that divine nature as including intellect and will, and therefore we use the personal pronoun “he”

Another approach to understand what is going on: consider a Jew who had not had the Gospel preached to him; believing the Scripture, he says “there is no other God besides him” (Cf. Isa 45:21). This statement is true, and it remains true, as truth always remains truth. It is an incomplete truth, but still true. Therefore also if the Jew comes to believe in the Gospel, he can still say “there is no other God besides him” and express that same truth–only now he can also say that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are this one God, besides whom there is no other God.

“Jesus loves cheerful hearts; He loves a soul that is always smiling.” (St. Therese)

www.goodcatholicbooks.org
 
Support from Psychology for theFatherhood of God

Abstract: The psychological significance of the
fatherhood of God helps to maintain the complementary
understanding of the sexes.

By Paul C. Vitz
It is widely recognized today that the Christian concept of God as Father is under
attack. Specifically, various religious writers, primarily feminists, have proposed that God
should be called Mother, or possibly the androgynous Father/Mother or Mother/Father. In
some instances the term God as Parent has been proposed. This paper will, however,
explore the psychological case for the orthodox understanding of God as Father. Obviously, this
is a sensitive subject today–but where angels fear to tread, psychologists rush in.

more…
 
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