God Has No Gender

At some level most of us know that God has no gender, because we know that for God to have gender would mean that God was an individualized being, it would imply the need for a Mrs. God and it would imply that God was a participant in a primal act of procreation rather than the sole initiator of the act of creation. We know that God has no gender because theologians and the church have at many levels been speaking of God as Being rather than as a being since the time of Thomas Aquinas.(Circa 1274)

And though the biblical narrative is wrought with male pronouns and in spite of the fact that Jesus gives us the concept of God as father there are biblical glimpses of God without Gender. The Book of Genesis, the first book of the bible, opens with two creation stories.

Unlike many other Holy Books the authors of the book of Genesis and most other books that make up the bible do not tell us how they know what they know. They make no claims of tablets delivered from God nor word for word transmission, they claim the inspiration that inspires all faithful people. I share the belief of most, that the book of Genesis is many oral traditions collected into written traditions that are rewritten several times before they arrive in their present form. Which by the way is written in Hebrew and therefore requires another step of translation and interpretation before it arrives in my English version. Not in spite of, but because of the origins of these words in the hands of many generations of believers who found them to be true and inspiring I too find the scripture to be a place where God is revealed.

In the 27th verse of the first chapter of Genesis (Genesis 1:27) we are told, "So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." The nature of the English and Hebrew and most languages makes it almost impossible to form this concept without pronouns, and the nature of God requires that the pronouns be the personal pronouns that carry the concept of gender with them. However, if we can see beyond the constructs of grammar we find that the image of God contains both the female and male natures of humanity.

I do not claim in this or any of the following examples a proof of God without gender only a glimpse and here our glimpse reveals a God who is both male and female.

Beginning in Chapter twelve of Genesis we encounter the story of Abram and Sarai whom God later renames Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 17:5 and 17:15). Over the course of his life Abraham has numerous encounters with God. God promises to be with Abraham, God promises to shield Abraham, God promises Abraham a place to dwell and God promises Abraham and Sarah that in their old age they will conceive a child. Again God is occasionally referred to by a male pronoun but never is God described. There is no image of God, male or female. In one discussion a participant asked, wouldn't Abraham just know God was male. No more than we would just know that God was male or female would Abraham know. We know what we have been told by those generation before us who have led us into faith.

I want to look at one more primal revelation. This comes from the second book of the Bible, Exodus. Exodus introduces us to the story of Moses who God inspires to be the liberator of the people of Israel. Leading them out of slavery in Egypt into the desert and eventually to the land God promised to Abraham. Moses encounters God as a voice speaking from a fire within a bush that is not consumed by the fire. (Exodus 3) Again God has no image of male or femaleness here. When asked by Moses 'What is your name" God says "I am who I am." (Exodus 3:14) This is a much studied and discussed phrase and yet I think quite simply it says, I am being beyond name or identity. I am beyond the finite categories of name or image or gender. I am God greater than you can imagine, describe or name.

Again I site these stories and others like them as simply the openness of the scriptures to glimpses of God without gender.

Before I go on to ask how we praise a genderless God let me appeal briefly to reason and logic. And let me be the first to say that some find my reason and logic simplistic and some even find it unreasonable and illogical.

I want to ask from where would God draw God's gender? As I understand and I believe most people would agree that my maleness comes from chromosomes and from environment. I am emphatically certain God has no chromosomes and thus no male nor  female appearance. Environmental impact on God is harder to get at. Let me, in jest, say we know nothing about God's upbringing or God's parents.

As a next step we could analyze God's behavior through the actions revealed to us in scripture and assign them male and female values. The problem with this is that many male and female roles vary according to culture, society or generation. And I believe even if we could agree on a list of intrinsically male behaviors and intrinsically female behaviors in the end I believe we would find an equal number of God's actions in each column.

I know at this point if you agree with me you think this discussion is going on ridiculously long and if you disagree with me you think it is just ridiculous. But please indulge me further. I feel a need to honestly address one final point.

Some have told me that 'It is by God's act of self revelation that we know the he-ness of God." We/they got it wrong. Wanting to express the personalness of God and working with the limits of our language and conceptualizations we named the One who was reaching out to us after the dominant male voice of society. And at certain times we did this in direct and at times violent opposition to the power and authority of those societies who knew God as a feminine being.

One more problem is that Jesus brings us into a close and intimate relationship with God by teaching us to call God, Father. My New Testament Professor, Dr. Reginald Fuller, always told us that the understanding that Jesus wants to convey when he uses the term Abba which we translate father would be much better conveyed in English by the term Papa. I believe Jesus is revealing to us that God is relational and that God is intimate. Jesus is not revealing gender.

I know that I do not want to know God as "it." I do not want to loose the relational nor intimate natures of God that Jesus reveals to me. And I know that I must struggle within the forms and limits of my language to express and communicate with others my relationship with God. So how do we praise a genderless God?

1. We open ourselves to the dialogue as individuals on our spiritual journey and corporately as leaders in communities of worship guiding the lives of others. I am only one small voice in this dialogue there are many others and each approaches the question and the solution in a different way. As in much of life we cannot yet know where this will lead us but we can forge on.

2. We can spend more time talking to God than talking about God. About a year ago while using a book called The One Year Book of Hymns for daily meditations I became aware how many of our hymns are about God not to God. The same is true of the way we phrase our prayers. They are often structured to deliver as much message to those around us as they are to address God. Hymns and prayers addressed to God do not need pronouns.

3. We can dare to think of God in new ways. We can explore using feminine images and language to address God. The first time I used the words Mother, Queen and Lady in worship I realized how male their counterparts are; Father, King and Lord. The second effect was to broaden my understanding of God. I believe we can never know the fullness of God but that the journey of faith is a journey of ever expanding our understanding of how big God is.

4. Within Scripture and in worship we can draw on our biblical resources to expand how we speak of God. We can replace the preference, in the English translations, for LORD and God with the richness of its underlying Greek or Hebrew. Thus we would speak of Yahweh, El Shaddai (God of the mountains), El Elyon (Exalted one) El Olam (God the Everlasting one), El Roi (God who sees me), El Berith (God of the covenant), Elohim and Eloah, all these are ways the Hebrew scriptures speak of the one true God. Where appropriate we can follow the teachings of Jesus and use the intimate Abba instead of the more formal pater. We could follow the norm of the Greek language in referring to the Holy Spirit as she. If we did this we would know that the One God is known and named even in our own tradition in many ways.

5. We should be open and respectful of one another on the common journey faith.

6. We should not be afraid.

Even if you find my interpretation of Scripture to be weak, my reason to be illogical and my solutions to be undoable, please believe me when I tell you, God, in whose image we are made, male and female, has no Gender.