The God Squad: Praise God because he/she/it is good
Q: Why is God always referred to as "He", seemingly in all religions and spiritual discussion, rather than the much more appropriate "it"? Thank you. – (From J in Halifax, Pa.)
A: Thanks, dear J, for your gender-sensitive question about a God who has no gender.
We must begin by understanding that Hebrew (the language of the Bible) has no way to express a neutral gender. Every Hebrew word is either masculine or feminine, even when it is referring to something like a table (feminine) or a day (masculine) which clearly have no gender. So, there is no way to speak of God as it.
Of course, we could refer to God as she rather than he and there are biblical verses that refer to God in clearly feminine terms like Isaiah 66:13, “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.” The Jewish mystical tradition of kabbalah does attempt a more daring gender reconciliation. They teach that at the time of Creation God divided Godself into two parts. The male part was called “The Holy One Blessed be He” and that was the transcendent part of God that does not touch the world. The female part of God was called the Shechinah or “the indwelling part of God”. The Shechinah is the feminine part of God and that is the part that dwells near us and in us.
Christianity deals with the problem of referring to a genderless God by focusing on the male part that became Jesus and the female part that became Mary.
We have to say a word about Jesus who represents the closest any organized religion has come to describing God as a human male. Of course, Jesus was not a human. Jesus was God assuming human form in order to die in atonement for human sin. But it is not so easy. If Jesus is not human at all then Jesus could not suffer and be crucified, but if Jesus was a man and could suffer then he was not God.
The Christian solution is to affirm both God as masculine and God as feminine even if they seem contradictory. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Book 239, states that God is not a man or a woman and that God transcends the divisions of gender.
Hinduism solves the problem by describing many different gods, some masculine and others feminine. However, the ultimate transcendent Hindu god, Brahman, is without gender.
Islam teaches that Allah is beyond all gender and Arabic, like Hebrew, is also a gendered language. The Qu’ran 36:36 teaches “Transcendent is He who created all the pairs.”
Buddhism does not believe in a creator God, but the Buddha was an enlightened man.
...continued
(c) 2023 THE GOD SQUAD DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
