Is it sexist to describe God as male?

Hi Udo

Is the fact that we refer to God as male an indication that the writers of the Bible were sexist?

Smithy

 

Hi Smithy

In thinking about the divine nature one realises that the concept of gender does not apply. God’s nature does not find expression in physicality as if God belongs to a kind of biological species which might be male, female, hermaphroditic or even epicene (asexual).  Therefore God cannot be referred to as male and we don’t find such reference in the Bible either.

What we do find is that in the Trinitarian concept of God, God is revealed in masculine terms as God the Father as well as the Son of God (but it is still the case that Jesus’ divine nature is genderless – it is his human nature that is male). Even the Holy Spirit is addressed with the pronoun ‘He’. This doesn’t have to do with sexist tendencies, but rather with revealing specific positive qualities of God’s nature that is associated with masculinity (although there are also plenty of references in the Bible to qualities that God has that are normally associated with femininity).

To help explore this idea further, I will firstly refer to the following two very insightful articles:

Then there are a few shorter articles that might be useful to varying degrees:

I hope this is helpful. Please feel free to respond.

Kind regards

Udo

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