If God exists, 'He' isn't male

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https://www.parlia.com/o/if-god-exists-he-isnt-male

7 comments

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JoiFoote15y ago

Whilst the bible frequently uses male pronouns ‘He’ and ‘Him’ to refer to God, God is believed to transcend human conceptions of sex and thus is neither male nor female.

In the words of Anselm God is the ‘greatest conceivable being.’ The greatest thing you can imagine, God is greater than that. What this signposts is that God is beyond human characteristics. To say that God is male or any gender comes with it, an assumption that God is like us. That God possesses human characteristics when in fact he does not.
Back to the fact the Bible often uses male pronouns. On the face of it, it might seem plausible to assume God is male or any sex classification at all. However, as explained quite well here. ‘It’s hard to mention god without giving him a gender.’ To avoid using pronouns makes for awkward talking when it comes to God. If we look at the passages of the bible, if they avoided using pronouns, we could imagine how it could make for some clunky and awkward reading.
So yes, whilst I agree that If God exists, he isn’t male, but that is because he has no gender.

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based_person5y ago

Counterpoint: the christian doctrine of the bible asserts that man (that is, Adam, who is supposedly the first human to be created), was created in the image of God himself.
Eve (supposedly the first woman) was not created until Adam noticed the male-female dichotomy in other species.
There's more than just pronoun usage suggesting "God" would be "male"; at least in the christian doctrine.

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Nsoper195y ago

Jesus is God. Jesus is a man. Ergo God is male.

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Jonathanese5y ago

To be concise, gender/sex is absolutely only relevant to a physical, sexually-reproducing entity. A nonphysical deity would not be such a being.

Furthermore, the idea of a single god who is referred to as "he" originates specifically from early monotheistic religions created in cultures that would only ever accept authority from a male. So it is a very specific case created by a very specific case.

Polytheistic beliefs and lore are loaded with male and female authority figures.

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Nsoper195y ago

Not in many religions. In Judeo-Christian theology, gender transcends the physical. The physical is then merely an outworking of the gender and not cause so to speak.
In that framework it makes total sense to say that God is male.

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lemonqvartz5y ago

A god does not have a gender, for that is a human concept. Humans created the concept of gender.

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Mixed

3000beesinacoat2y ago

There are many gods, but one True God and his wife are male and female. Satan is a God, of course. The original creator. He is the beginning and she, Jehovah, is the word. In the beginning was Jehovah, and she was with Satan, and she was a God, but gave up her power to be able to look after and nurture the earth. He wanted progress, she wanted to settle. And the word became heavily misunderstood

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