Gender neutral God

Well this is amusing…

No one has ever seen God,” wrote the apostle John. Which is strange, because we all know what God looks like. God is white; God is getting on a bit; and God is male.

Oh, now why is that, eh? Could it be something to do with Genesis 1.27. You know, that God creating Man in his own image. First Adam then Eve. So we have a clue do we not? Or is it all bunkum after all?

So the words of the archbishop of Canterbury on the matter of God’s gender will no doubt be startling to some and outrageous to others. Speaking this week at St Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square, London, the Most Rev Justin Welby said: “God is not male or female. God is not definable.” A gender-fluid God? What will Christianity’s more reactionary outriders make of that?

They will probably – rightly – come to the conclusion that they have an SJW arsehole for an archbishop. I mean, I’m no theologian, but I’ve been aware of Genesis since childhood and that God made man in his own image thing tends to stick.

The fact it is so hard to think of God as anything but male shows how deeply embedded in the popular imagination this particular fallacy has become. It is an internalised heresy, and the archbishop is quite right to draw it to our attention

Nope. The Christian holy book tells us that God made man in his own image. If you believe in it, then that’s the word, so it’s pretty clear. There is no heresy here. Yes, of course, it was written at a time when men were very much in charge, set the rules and, er, wrote the scriptures. But if you believe in it, then you have to be consistent – man is made in God’s image.

Welby’s belief on this matter is entirely in keeping with orthodox Anglicanism, which states that God is “without body, parts or passions,” and with the Roman Catholic catechism, which proclaims: “He is neither man nor woman: he is God.” But this is not just a matter of bad theology, for its implications spread far beyond the church.

Well, yes, God is a supernatural being so that sort of makes sense. However, go back to the scriptures. These people relate to the scriptures – although, of course, the Catholic Church was not above editing out bits it didn’t like when the Aramaic was translated into Latin. So the word of God thing can be taken with a pinch of salt. It is very much the word of man – in particular, Hieronymus.

The idea that God is male is evidence of two things. One is the power of the old, white men who have made God in their own image, to their immense benefit.

Well, actually, there is a point here. Religion has been a powerful tool of control for centuries and, yes, old men who wielded the power tended to be at the top of the tree – whether state of Church, both working in cahoots with each other and the poor saps were kept in check by this unholy alliance. So, I can concede that point in general. However, the Anglican Church is on the wane so it’s all a bit passé now.

It is vanity in excelsis, psychological projection at its most revealing. The message is that men are the default humans, and their power on Earth is a mirror of that wielded by the Divine. It positions the female as subordinate. It simultaneously reflects and reinforces the subjugation of women. It has done untold harm.

Over past centuries that was perfectly true – again, go back to Genesis. However it is the past. No one takes much notice these days. Unless you are an SJW with an axe to grind.

This damaging misconception also exposes a deep flaw in our thinking. It shows the danger of our placing undue faith in words.

Speak for yourself. I do like it when the Guardian uses “we” or “our” when they mean “me” or “I”. My thinking is just fine. As for words, well, they are our means of expression and the Bible was written in a mixture of Aramaic and Greek before being translated into Latin and then subsequently into English. Anyone who has ever learned to speak a foreign language will realise that some words and idioms do not translate literally. That this document has been translated up to three times and heavily edited in the 4th Century means that the words have to be taken pretty liberally and not too literally. So, no, I have never placed undue faith in the words. Again, speak for yourself and no one else.

Yes, Jesus frequently used masculine language when talking of God, but its metaphorical nature is too often overlooked. “God is not a father in exactly the same way as a human being is a father,” said Welby this week. “All human language about God is inadequate and to some degree metaphorical.”

Sigh… Until political correctness poisoned our language, male pronouns were accepted as meaning female where the gender was not otherwise known or the speaker was talking in generalities. It worked perfectly well until the left started twisting our language.

This may sound to some like a postmodern cop-out but it has been a central understanding of the church since its early days.

The postmodernism is the mangling of language and a reinterpretation of ancient texts with modern eyes.

Then there are the flaws in individual languages. English, for example, lacks a commonly accepted pronoun that denotes personhood but not gender, so “he” and “himself” are still used widely when discussing God; some do their best to work around this with the linguistically clunky but theologically sturdy “Godself”. And arguably most problematic of all is the word “word”, which carries various meanings.

Idiot! Yes, English does have commonly accepted pronouns to denote personhood – it’s the moronic political correctness that is the problem here, not the language.

But the persistent, pernicious notion of the male God is one that plainly needs challenging, not least because depictions of God as female still feel oddly subversive (even when Alanis Morissette is involved). So let’s bung a few “she”s in among the “he”s, but not take either of them too literally. After all, history shows us that when we make our abstract language concrete, we build walls around God.

Sigh… How about just going back to the original text? What I won’t be taking literally is linguistic bilge written by Peter Omerod in the Guardian.