Why is He a he?

[JGravel]

Please forgive the infant stage of my spiritual journey. As I read all these posts I feel like I’m a 12 year old in a college level Theology class.
Most questions that I ask here are a result from the questions asked to me by people I know, that think it’s a bad idea for me to become religous.
I will refer alot to my brother in law (an athiest) who tries to stump me all the time.
So, why is God a He? God is God and not a gender so why do we say He loves us?

 

[Friar_David_O.Carm]

JGravel:

Please forgive the infant stage of my spiritual journey. As I read all these posts I feel like I’m a 12 year old in a college level Theology class.
Most questions that I ask here are a result from the questions asked to me by people I know, that think it’s a bad idea for me to become religous.
I will refer alot to my brother in law (an athiest) who tries to stump me all the time.
So, why is God a He? God is God and not a gender so why do we say He loves us?

Becuase God chose to reveal Himself to us as the Father.

He also chose to come to us in the Incarnation as a male named Jesus. Who further chose to identify himself as the Son.

 

[VociMike]

I have heard it said that it is because God pursues us, and we choose to respond or not. He is the agressor, the initiator.

 

[1ke]

JGravel:

Please forgive the infant stage of my spiritual journey. As I read all these posts I feel like I’m a 12 year old in a college level Theology class.
Most questions that I ask here are a result from the questions asked to me by people I know, that think it’s a bad idea for me to become religous.
I will refer alot to my brother in law (an athiest) who tries to stump me all the time.
So, why is God a He? God is God and not a gender so why do we say He loves us?

May I suggest the book Theology For Beginners by Frank Sheed? It’s excellent. Small but packed full of deep thinking.

 

[montanaman]

Please forgive the infant stage of my spiritual journey. As I read all these posts I feel like I’m a 12 year old in a college level Theology class.

I’m a 32-year-old cradle Catholic.
I studied theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville for a year.
I’ve been involved in Catholic-Protestant debates my whole life.
Between this and another forum, I’ve posted nearly 10,000 times.

I have no idea what I’m doing.

 

[MrS]

montanaman:

I’m a 32-year-old cradle Catholic.
I studied theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville for a year.
I’ve been involved in Catholic-Protestant debates my whole life.
Between this and another forum, I’ve posted nearly 10,000 times.

I have no idea what I’m doing.

but you do it so well… keep on keepin on

 

[JGravel]

1ke:

May I suggest the book Theology For Beginners by Frank Sheed? It’s excellent. Small but packed full of deep thinking.

Awesome! Thanks! I will go get it today.

 

[JGravel]

montanaman:

I’m a 32-year-old cradle Catholic.
I studied theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville for a year.
I’ve been involved in Catholic-Protestant debates my whole life.
Between this and another forum, I’ve posted nearly 10,000 times.

I have no idea what I’m doing.

LOL!

That…Is…Funny!!

 

[Lazerlike42]

A guy I know:

The reason for calling God Father is twofold. 1. Beause Jesus reveals God and He called Him Father. That’s the short and sweet version. 2. The more detailed version: God is present to the world in transcendence and immanence. Transcendence is a reference to His superiority over the world, His standing over and above His creation.
Immanence refers to God’s closeness to creation, His being a part of it. Now God is both transcendent and immanent with His creation but clearly His transcendence is greater. You wouldn’t want to emphasize His immanence because that would basically lead to paganism. We emphasize God’s transcendence because He is much, much greater than His creation and in fact cannot be compared to it. When we look at masculine and feminine we note that the masculine transcends his creation. The Father gives his seed and then stands back over and above and separate from his creation, i.e., the child. The feminine stands with her creation, she is immanent with the child. The child grows in her. Therefore when you emphasize transcendence you must refer to the masculine. This is why God must be called Father. Note how pagan religions always have priestesses. Its not a coincidence that those who emphasize God’s immanence always end up in paganism with priestesses.

Also, listen to parts 2a, b, and c here (or the whole thing, the rest of it is good, too).

 

[Liberian]

JGravel,

The husband-wife relationship is seen in Christian doctrine as a foreshadowing–a “type,” if you will–of the relationship between Christ and the Church in Heaven. In that image the husband takes the part of Christ and the wife takes the part of the Church. Hence God is He and the Church is She.

• Liberian

 

[jordan]

JGravel:

So, why is God a He? God is God and not a gender so why do we say He loves us?

No need to put my own words to it. The Catechism of the Catholic Church provides the following:

239 By calling God “Father”, the language of faith indicates two main things: that God is the first origin of everything and transcendent authority; and that he is at the same time goodness and loving care for all his children. God’s parental tenderness can also be expressed by the image of motherhood, which emphasizes God’s immanence, the intimacy between Creator and creature. the language of faith thus draws on the human experience of parents, who are in a way the first representatives of God for man. But this experience also tells us that human parents are fallible and can disfigure the face of fatherhood and motherhood. We ought therefore to recall that God transcends the human distinction between the sexes. He is neither man nor woman: he is God. He also transcends human fatherhood and motherhood, although he is their origin and standard: no one is father as God is Father.

240 Jesus revealed that God is Father in an unheard-of sense: he is Father not only in being Creator; he is eternally Father by his relationship to his only Son who, reciprocally, is Son only in relation to his Father: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

More here: vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P17.HTM

God bless,
jb