From: cctr114@cantua.canterbury.ac.nz (Bill Rea)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: God the Father
Date: 16 Dec 92 07:39:36 GMT
Organization: University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.

Christopher Mussack (mussack@innerdoor.austin.ibm.com) wrote:
> The truth of an aphorism often lies in how it contradicts
> a common misconception.
> 
> Louie Crew (no relation to Motley? Oh, spelled different) 
> often refers to God as "She". I think this is a tremendous
> insight since we usually refer to God as "He". 

For many Christians there are serious problems refering to God as
a ``she''. A very important one is our Biblical tradition.
Let me quote from a text book, Watlke and O'Connor's
``An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax'', pages 108 and 109

``The grammatical forms for God are masculine and the representations of
God are mostly masculine. Although God does use a comparison to a 
woman in childbirth (Isa 42:14) nonetheless there is a strong scholarly
consensus that God is regarded as non-sexual. "If sex must be applied
to Israel's diety, it would be monosex, and this is either an incompleteness
or a contradiction in terms". This consensus finds explicit support in
Deut 4:15-16
  You saw no form of any kind on the day YHWH spoke to you at Horeb ... so
  that you do not ... make for yourselves an idol, an image in any shape,
  whether formed like a man or a woman.
One fact providing inferential support is the use of both sexes of a 
sacrificial victim as offerings to God. In the ancient Near East it was
customary to sacrifice male animals to (male) gods and females to godesses.
In Israel's cultus both males and females were sacrificed to God (cf Lev
3:1, 4:23,28). One cannot change or remove the masculine figurative 
representations of God without distorting the text of the Bible''

I must point out that a ``strong scholarly consensus'' is not an
unanimous position. There are a few that would disagree. 
As Waltke and O'Connor point out, changing references in the Bible to God 
from he to she is a distortion of the existing text. I beleive that we are 
merely the custodians of the text and not its owners. We do not have a right to
change an English Biblical reference to God from he to she on any grounds other
than incorrect translation practices in the past. I cannot speak for the
Greek scholars, but the places where God could be legitimately refered to
as a she in the Old Testament are very few indeed. Many liberals seem to
like refering to God as she, but I see this as a departure from our
Biblical roots, ultimately if you change the imagery you change the
religion. Feminists claim that refering to God as he is offensive to women,
but given the big gender imbalance in the Church today, a lot of women
must like it. In my very limited experience of the matter, refering to God
as she accentuates the gender imbalance by driving away men, not by
attracting more women. Only tendy liberal men like it, and they are
rather few and far between in this country.

                                                                     ___
Bill Rea                                                            (o o)
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