Gods Gender

[tony mattar]

Does God have a gender ? If Jesus Christ was True God and True Man would that mean therefore that God is a Male ?

[DavidObeid]

The human nature that God assumed was male, but that does not mean that God in His godhead is male.

It is wrong to place any limit on what God is. This is a hard concept to understand (because we can only think in terms of boundaries), but God is without any boundaries of limitations. That means He is without the boundary of maleness (or femaleness). It does not mean that He is both - it means that He is above and beyond them.

When we call God "Father" we don't mean it is because He is a male like our dad. We call our dads "father" because they (are meant to) represent what God is to us.

[Matthew]

Gender, or sexuality more exactly, is in God virtually as are all limited perfections such as treeness or the ability to walk. This simply means he has the power of creating them. Only perfections that in themselves contain no limit such as goodness and beauty can be properly ascribed to God.

[jzeitouni]

I know someone who refuses to say the words He or His in a prayer or passage etc... she replaces that with the word God. I would think that is wrong of her to do. So is it wrong??

[DavidObeid]

It is wrong. Nobody has the right to tamper with even a single word in the official liturgical texts.

[jzeitouni]

Just as i thought. But besides the fact that she is tampering with official liturgical texts, words like He and His are applicable to God even though God is not bound within a gender??

[DavidObeid]

We use the personal pronoun "He" to show that God is in fact personal.

The "He" isn't a reference to God's maleness, but His personal nature.

[jzeitouni]

Ok that makes perfect sense. Thanks heaps Dave :)

[New Jack Swinger]

Gender, or sexuality more exactly, is in God virtually as are all limited perfections such as treeness or the ability to walk. This simply means he has the power of creating them. Only perfections that in themselves contain no limit such as goodness and beauty can be properly ascribed to God.

Good explanation :)

[Michael Sandrussi]

We call God 'He', or 'Father' because of the nature of masculinity and femininity. In creation and regeneration, it is the male that gives and the female that receives and fertilizes.

God gives creation and all that is receives. The earth is known as 'mother earth' purely because it receives and then provides, just like any other mother.

does this mean that god is then male? no it doesn't, but He is given masculine qualities (or is masculine).

It is easy to explain this concept with an example. In arabic, the word for table is feminine tawilat but that does not mean that the table can have babies.