I have long been troubled by the gendering of God. The problem, as I see it, is not simply the typical attribution of male gender to God (‘Our Father, who art in heaven …’) but any gender at all. If God is eternal, pre-dating all creation as we know it, then it makes no sense to describe God with language that we usually use to describe people, animals and other organisms. The use of gendered language to describe God is both inaccurate and limiting.
The problem extends beyond gender. The Bible is full of things we can’t understand in terms of human experience: resurrection, virgin birth, miraculous healing. But these things are child’s play compared to the idea of an eternal Creator of everything: an infinite, all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving Almighty. If we believe that this is the reality of God, then surely we have to accept that this is a reality beyond our understanding and thus beyond our language (or vice-versa if Kantian epistemology is your thing)? As the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu put it: ‘The Tao that can be told of is not the eternal Tao’. (Tao is often translated as ‘the Way’, akin to the word ‘Logos’ in John’s Gospel).
We’re told in the Book of Exodus that when Moses asked God their name (I know it sounds odd, but I’m trying to avoid gendered language), God replied: ‘I AM WHO I AM’. That answer may be frustratingly circular and may seem uninformative, but I don’t think our language or understanding are capable of doing any better.
Duncan McCall
