Getting back to topic, and away from free’s usual complete lack of tact, I tend to believe that God transcends gender. He is referred to as male because in a male dominated society, to do otherwise would lessen his impact on potential believers.

Remember, historically speaking, most gods and goddesses were either hyper feminine or hyper masculine depending on their perceived gender. The God of the Hebrews was a scrapper, smiting enemies and ordering His people to drive their enemies before them. This was a God who’s concern was the survival of His people and their culture/religion. War, survival, power, these were all masculine characteristics. To a primarily pastoral (in the literal sense that they were shepherds) culture, these are masculine attributes. It is not until the Incarnation that we discover that God’s name is also Love, a distinctly feminine attribute (from a polytheistic standpoint, at least).

However, if you are a Christian (like myself), you admit no other Creator and therefor no other God. As creator, he must understand, contain, and embody both the masculine and the feminine in order to model them within his Creation. Without such knowledge, the male/female duality would be impossible, since Creation cannot be outside the knowledge/ability of it’s omnipotent Creator.

As a result, if one is to argue that God is perfect, one must admit that he is, in a sense, both masculine and feminine. In short, He must transcend gender altogether.

It is a linguistic holdover that we refer to Him as a male, as well as a cultural holdover from ancient times. We still view him (rightly so) as our protector and guardian, concepts which are still considered as primarily masculine in nature.

However, He is the ONLY monotheistic deity to be considered to have any feminine traits. The god of Islam may have many names, but Love is not among them, and Hinduism’s Brahman is very carefully parsed into many different deities and aspects. The God of Christianity, though often described as triune, has only one aspect with a definable sex, and that is His human incarnation in the form of Jesus Christ. Again, why He chose to appear male I can only guess at, but I would guess it has something to do with which sex was dominant in the culture and time he chose to incarnate. As I stated before, the whole must transcend such human concepts or else could not be considered truly omnipotent (and thus not God but merely god). As a result, I tend to think that quibbling over the sex of the Almighty is a little on the ridiculous side.

Anyhow, those are my two cents. And the thing about the celibate priesthood is crap. THAT came about because the heirs of the papacy and higher clergy were dividing up Church property in inheritance fights. It was a purely fiscal decision, couched in religious language to lend it legitimacy.

Oh, and any man who tries to use Christianity as a reason to mistreat or subjugate his wife REALLY needs to go back and read scripture. And when he’s done, he should read proverbs to get a good idea of what “women’s work” really consists of.

Militant Bibliophile on April 15, 2008 at 11:55 PM

BTW, any capitalization errors are accidental. If I was referring to God, just assume the definite article should have been capitalized.

(I can feel my High School English teacher twitching as I write this)

Militant Bibliophile on April 16, 2008 at 12:00 AM