God and gender
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The issue of God's gender affects many religions worldwide, and is a part of some feminist theology.
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[edit] God and gender in the world's major religions
Monotheists hold a belief in one God as a fundamental religious principle.
- In Sikhism, Judaism and Islam, God is believed to be sexless (or gender neutral), but has been traditionally referred to using male grammatical gender pronouns.
- In Christianity, God is generally believed to be a Trinity, consisting of three persons in one God. The three persons of the Trinity are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God the Father has traditionally been described with male imagery, and God the Son is believed literally to have become incarnate as a human male. God the Holy Spirit has been referred to using male, female or neutral grammatical gender depending on the language (the Hebrew word רוח ruaḥ is grammatically feminine, the Greek word πνευμα pneuma is grammatically neuter, and the Latin word spiritus is grammatically masculine). But Christianity does not regard the omnipotent God as being male, God the Father is genderless, and is only given the name, "Father" because Jesus wanted to emphasis the special relationship that his followers share with God through him. In reality only one out of the holy trinity is masculine, Jesus Christ who was born male, although his actual incarnation was to stress his "humanity" and not that he was male.
- In Hinduism, the form of God is varied, and can take a wide range of gender roles. Many who follow Advaita believe ultimately in an impersonal spirit, Brahman.
- Polytheistic and henotheistic religions, including pagan religions and various ethnic religions, believe the spiritual world is encompassed by multiple gods, though they may be one spirit or be born from one parent god.
Modern feminism has influenced some adherents of monotheistic religions to use the feminine grammatical gender to refer to God, either in protest at the tradition of using the male grammatical gender to refer to a being which transcends sex, or to assert that God is female. Others may use alternating or ambiguous grammatical gender, either to avoid causing offence, or to indicate that they believe God transcends gender.
[edit] Sikhism
In Sikhism, God is referred to as a gender neutral entity and the original language of the Sikh Scriptures allows the possibility of referring to God in gender neutral form.
The SGGS refers to God as Mother and Father:
- "You are my Father, and You are my Mother... You are my Protector everywhere; why should I feel any fear or anxiety? ||1||" Page 103 and again "You are our mother and father; we are Your children." Page 268.
In some places, God is referred to as Mother, Father or Husband:
- "O my wandering mind, you are like a camel - how will you meet the Lord, your Mother?" page 234
- "O Father, I do not know - How can I know Your Way?" page 51
- "You are the Husband Lord, and I am the soul-bride. ||3||" page 484.
[edit] Hinduism
In Hinduism there are diverse approaches to the understanding of God - Brahman - which is reflected in the gender by which God is addressed or described.
While most Hindus focus upon God in the neutral form, there are prominent Hindu traditions that alleviate God in the female conception, even as the source of the male form of God.[citation needed]
[edit] The Hebrew Bible
In Genesis 1:26, God states:
- "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness....And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."
Some theologists interpret this passage as anthropomorphic - attributing human characteristics to God. Others believe it to be theomorphic - humans are seen as having Godly characteristics.
The Hebrew Bible often refers to God as a father. In one case, God is compared to the bridegroom and his people to the bride.
- For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee: and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee. (Isaiah 62:5)
The Biblical Hebrew word for spirit is ruah, meaning wind, breath, inspiration; the noun is grammatically feminine.
[edit] Judaism
Most Orthodox Jews and many Conservative Jews hold that it is wrong to use English female pronouns for God. Some argue that this is not because God is of the male gender, but because doing so among English speakers tends to draw attention to God as having gender.[citation needed] The Hebrew Bible usually uses names of God that are grammatically masculine.
The feminine characteristics of God are emphasised by some Reconstructionist Jews and Reform Jews.[citation needed] Classical Hebrew names for God such as HaQadosh Baruch Hu ("The Holy One, praised be He") may be rewritten in both Hebrew and English as HaQ'dosha B'rucha He ("The Holy One, praised be She"). Others believe that this rewriting of Hebrew names asserts that grammatical gender implies sexual gender.
Some Reform and Reconstructionist rabbis have experimented with incorporating explicit anthropomorphic characteristics into their prayers. Reform Rabbi Rebecca Alpert (Reform Judaism, Winter 1991) writes about a feminist siddur (Jewish prayerbook) she used:
- The experience of praying with Siddur Nashim ... transformed my relationship with God. For the first time, I understood what it meant to be made in God's image. To think of God as a woman like myself, to see Her as both powerful and nurturing, to see Her imaged with a woman's body, with womb, with breasts - this was an experience of ultimate significance. Was this the relationship that men have had with God for all these millennia? How wonderful to gain access to those feelings and perceptions.
Within Judaism, this statement is controversial. Many traditional rabbinic commentators, such as Maimonides, view any such beliefs as avodah zarah - idolatry.
Secondary male sexual characteristics are attributed to God in some piyuttim (religious poems). These include a description of the beard of God Shir Hakavod, "The Hymn of Glory", and similar poetic imagery in the midrash Song of the Seas Rabbah. Traditional meforshim (rabbinic commentators) hold that these descriptions are metaphorical.
[edit] Christianity
In Christianity, one part of the Trinity, the Son, is believed to have become incarnate as a human male.
Female terms for the Holy Spirit were used in some early Christian communities. In the oldest surviving Christian hymnal, "Odes of Solomon", the word for "Holy Spirit" is grammatically female. Passages in the Nag Hammadi library scrolls from second-century Gnosticism refer to the Holy Spirit as female. The Greek pronoun (αὐτός) translated "Him" in John 14, speaking of the Holy Spirit, refers to self in all persons: him, her, it. Otherwise the New Testament refers to the Spirit (πνεῦμα) with grammatical neuter. "Him" in John 14 is a pronoun without gender.
God the Father is usually pictured as a male in traditional Christian artwork. In Western Christianity, the Holy Spirit is usually referred to using male pronouns and, in languages with grammatical noun gender, the masculine grammatical gender.
| If God is male, then the male is God. The divine patriarch castrates women as long as he is allowed to live on the popular imagination. | ||
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—Mary Daly |
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Some Christians today speak of the Holy Spirit, especially in the role of Comforter and Reconciler, with a feminine pronoun. Others claim that assigning the Holy Spirit a gendered role is an endorsement of social stereotypes.
Several passages in the Jewish scriptures used by Christians refer to the divine Wisdom as an anthropomorphised female (e.g., Proverbs 8-9, Sirach 24, Wisdom 6:22-11:1, Baruch 3:9-4:4).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that God is not male, but that his role in our world makes the term "Father" more appropriate than "Mother", although both terms remain informative:
- In no way is God in man's image. He is neither man nor woman. God is pure spirit in which there is no place for the differences between the sexes. (CCC 239)
Many liberal and feminist Christians will sometimes refer to God as "Mother" and use feminine pronouns to refer to God. They may not think of God as a female, but rather as having both masculine and feminine aspects.
[edit] Mormonism
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormon, teaches that both God the Father and Jesus have distinct, perfect, immortal male bodies. Mormons consider the empty tomb proof that God the Son has a body, transformed by the resurrection to power, glory and immortality. They teach that the Son, though glorified, was able to show his body to humans, eat with them, drink with them, and allow them to touch him as a witness that he had taken his body up, a body with which he later ascended to heaven, a body that he has never again laid aside.
The Holy Spirit has a spirit body, not a physical body, and is also considered to be male.
Mormons also believe in a distinct Heavenly Mother who has a perfect, glorified and celestial female body. The official doctrine of the Church is that prayers should be directed to the Father in the name of the Son by the power of the Spirit. The Heavenly Mother is not worshipped.
See Godhead (Mormonism); Mormonism and Christianity.
[edit] Islam
In the Qur'an, God is most often referred to with the neuter pronoun "Hu", which is usually translated as "He". Other references include I, We, and the neutral pronoun "ma" which translates as "that which" as in the phrase "the heavens and that which created them" (surah Shams (91), verse 5). Islam maintains that God has no gender. [citation needed]
There is controversy as to whether, in Arabic, singular and plural forms in the masculine and feminine genders leads to ambiguity. It is argued that, because "God is One", the masculine gender has to be used to prevent this ambiguity. [citation needed]
[edit] Translating the names of God into English
There are a number of ways that one can translate the names of God into English from Hebrew. The Tetragrammaton is composed of the Hebrew letters Yod-Heh-Waw-Heh. (If your web-browser supports a Hebrew font it is written thus: יהוה.)
In English the tetragrammaton is usually written as YHWH or YHVH. The original meaning of this form is connected with the "I AM" of Exodus 3:14 (and it probably contains a Hebrew masculine verb prefix). This word is usually rendered into English by translating Hebrew Adonai (instead of attempting to directly translate YHWH), in accordance with ancient Jewish practices.
The Hebrew word "Adonai" literally means "my lords" (with pseudo-plural), and is usually translated as "Lord" or "LORD" (in small capitals). A gender-neutral translation of this is "Sovereign". The Hebrew names "Elohim", "El", "Shaddai",and "Yah" are usually translated as "God". "Elyon" translates as "Most High".
There are a number of compound names for God. "YHVH Tzevaot" is translated as "Lord of Hosts"; a gender-neutral translation is "Sovereign of Hosts". YHVH Elohe tzevaot would be "Lord God of Hosts". Among non-Orthodox Jews, there is a growing tendency to avoid translation-created gender problems, and to simultaneously reclaim the vocabulary of Hebrew itself, by not translating these names in English prayers.
An example of a traditional translation is: "The earth belongs to the Lord, and all it contains; the world and its inhabitants." (Psalm 24)
An alternative translation is: "The earth belongs to Adonai, and all it contains; the world and its inhabitants."
Shekhinah is Hebrew for the imminent presence of God; this name of God appears in some traditional Jewish prayers. Within Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) the Shekhinah represents the feminine aspect of God's essence; other terms represent the male aspect of God.
See also Names of God
[edit] Third person pronouns
Many prayers use one or more of the names for God many times within the same paragraph. The first time it appears a proper name is used, while further instances use a third person pronoun (he, she or it). English speakers usually use masculine or feminine third person pronouns to refer to people, and the third person pronoun - "it" - to refer to non-people. Traditionally, in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim writing, the third-person pronoun "He" has been used to refer to God in English translations. In non-religious contexts, English speakers have generally used the word "he" as a substitute for a gender-neutral third person pronoun.
In English, it is improper to speak of a person with the neuter pronoun "it". All Christians that believe in the Trinity by definition believe in the three persons that are one god. For many, referring to God as “It” is heretical.
The idea of God being an "It" rather than a "he" or "she" does have some support in Jewish, Christian and Islamic medieval thought, much of which was based on Neo-Aristotelian philosophy. Some medieval philosophers of all three of these religions took great pains to make clear that God was in no way like a person, and that all apparently physical descriptions of God were only poetic metaphors.
In the Chinese language, translators of the Christian Bible have created a new Chinese character to act as a gender-neutral pronoun: 祂 (Pinyin: tā). Tā, in essence, is the universal pronoun for all objects and persons. However, gender (as well as personhood) can be distinguished in writing. The normal pronoun for "He", 他, not only implies gender, but the radical 亻(rén) also implies that God is human. The radical in 祂, 礻 (shì), is associated with divinity.
[edit] Mankind and humankind
Translations of the Bible and prayerbooks traditionally have used words such as: man, men, his, mankind, brotherhood, etc. In their historical usage these words in most places have always meant human, human beings, his and hers, humankind, peoplehood',' etc. Women are frequently left out of both the linguistic and social structures of many cultures. Some believe that the usage of these words when speaking of all people, and not men only, contributes to this condition, which they perceive as an injustice.
The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of the Christian Bible tries to correct this by changing words like "man" to "person", and "brothers" to "brothers and sisters", in all cases where the text is not referring to specific individuals but to people in general, or to a group of people that is most likely composed of both men and women. In keeping with this approach, the NRSV does not change the traditional male pronouns that refer to God.
A recent translation known as Today's New International Version (TNIV - sometimes referred to derisively as "The Neutered International Version") attempts to avoid sexist language by using "they" as the pronoun for a single person of unknown gender, a practice that has been common in spoken English for over six hundred years but is often avoided in formal writing. Critics of this translation dislike the usage of "singular they" both because conservative prescriptive grammarians sometimes consider it improper grammar, and because it sometimes may obscure the meaning of verses where it is significant that the pronoun is singular.
However, the continued usage of words such as Father, men, mankind, brotherhood, etc., has been increasingly called into question by some readers who believe these words destroy the Bible's original prose style. Conversely, traditionalists believe the use of gender-neutral terms itself is an aberration from the original books. Moreover, in such works as the Letters of St. Paul, when masculine terms are used, they might very well have been originally intended to refer to males exclusively, as it was common to segregate houses of worship sexually; this practice continues among Orthodox Jews to this day, and it is perfectly conceivable that the Apostle was addressing the males in these communities.
[edit] New translations
Most modern-day readers of English Bible translations are not familiar with Hebrew; they read the translations literally, through the view of modern feminist thought, and thus sometimes read the text as if it were describing a male God. Many readers feel removed from the text, as they either do not want to worship a male God, or they also want to worship a female God as well as a male God.
While this problem does not exist if one prays in the original Hebrew (or Arabic, Aramaic, etc.), many prayer-book editors in the non-Orthodox denominations of Judaism, and in liberal denominations of Christianity, have become sensitive to this issue. Several solutions have been proposed:
- Keeping the standard translation, which uses the term "He", and using commentary to explain the issue more fully. This is the approach used by Orthodox Judaism and most branches of Christianity.
- Translating God as "It". For theological reasons, this has been rejected by all branches of Judaism and of Christianity. But, see above for a discussion of why it could be considered legitimate.
- Translating God as both "He" and "She". A few experimental prayerbooks by Reconstructionist Jewish feminists have tried alternating "he" and "she" within the same prayerbook, and sometimes even within the same prayer. This approach has failed to win widespread approval; critics object to it for many reasons, one of which is that this gives the appearance of dualism or goddess worship. Some liberal Protestant Christian denominations use this approach on occasion.
- Rewriting all prayers in the second person, only using the term "You". A few experimental prayerbooks by Reconstructionist Jewish feminists have tried this, but this approach has failed to win widespread approval. Interestingly, Contemporary Christian Music often addresses God in this manner, although probably for different theological reasons (that is, to emphasize a personal relationship with the Divine).
- Gender-neutral translation involves rewriting prayers to remove all third-person pronouns. Sometimes this involves changing sentence and paragraph structure. This approach has been adopted by the editors of all new Reform and Reconstructionist Jewish prayerbooks. Some liberal Protestant Christians also have rewritten prayerbooks in this way. Conservative Judaism has rejected this approach because there are many cases where no such changes are possible without totally rewriting the sentence, thereby moving the English far from the Hebrew structure. (Gender-neutral translation can also be accomplished by replacing third-person singular pronouns with third-person plural pronouns, repeating "God" each time to avoid "he". Some Christian translations of Scripture, including the New Jerusalem Bible, use this technique when referring to humans, but naturally this technique is not used in the case of God.)
- Gender-sensitive translation. This approach is a modified form of the above. In this approach, one rewrites most sentences to remove third-person pronouns, but occasionally the pronoun "he" is allowed in order to preserve readability and the original sentence structure. This is the approach taken by Conservative Judaism. Most inclusive-language Christian translations take this approach.
- Some Christian groups have created a new pronoun: God (subject or object), God's (possessive), Godself (reflexive). While the Catholic Church officially frowns on this, a significant number of American Catholic parishes alter the Mass responses by repeating "God" each time to avoid the third-person singular male pronoun. The use of the reflexive Godself is more rare.
(It should be noted that some critics object to this terminology. Particularly for those who believe feminist interpretation is misogynist (see above), terms such as “gender-neutral” and “gender-sensitive” can be offensive. Critics charge that these terms imply traditional interpretations are not sensitive to women. Nevertheless, in the lack of acceptable alternatives these phrases are used in this article.)
Over the last twenty years many Jewish prayerbooks have been rewritten to be gender-neutral (Reform, Reconstructionist Judaism) or gender-sensitive (Conservative). Examples are shown in the following translations of Psalm 24. The following is a traditional translation excerpted from Siddur Sim Shalom, a Conservative siddur. (Ed. Jules Harlow)
- A Psalm of David.
- The earth belongs to the Lord, and all it contains; the world and its inhabitants.
- He founded it upon the seas, and set it firm upon flowing waters.
- Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may rise in His sanctuary?
- One who has a clean hand and a pure heart, who has not used God's name in false oaths, who has not sworn deceitfully.
- he shall receive a blessing from the God of his deliverance.
A modern translation of Psalm 24 now appears in the revised editions of Siddur Sim Shalom.
- A Psalm of David.
- The earth and its grandeur belong to Adonai; the world and its inhabitants.
- God founded it upon the seas, and set it firm upon flowing waters.
- Who may ascend the mountain of Adonai? Who may rise in God's sanctuary?
- One who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not used God's name in false oaths, who has not sworn deceitfully.
- shall receive a blessing from Adonai, a just reward from the God of deliverance.
[edit] See also
- Feminism
- God
- God (male deity)
- Goddess
- The Hebrew Goddess
- Goddess movement
- Sky father
- Hindu views on God and gender
[edit] External links
[edit] Bibliography
- Elliot N. Dorff Male and Female God Created Them: Equality with Distinction, University Papers, University of Judaism, Los Angeles, 1984, pp. 13-23.
- Paula Reimers Feminism, Judaism, and God the Mother, Fall 1993, Conservative Judaism
- Jules Harlow Feminist Linguistics and Jewish Liturgy Conservative Judaism Vol.XLIX(2) Winter 1997, p.3-25.
- Matthew Berke God and Gender in Judaism in First Things, June 1996
- Bible Translation and the Gender of God, S. T. Kimbrough, Jr. Theology Today, Vol.46, No. 2, July 1989
- The Incomprehensibility of God and the Image of God Male and Female, Elizabeth Johnson, Theological Studies, Vol.45, no.3, 1984, pp.441-465.
