The God Pronoun

In the summer of 2015, I began a study of the Psalms, reading a psalm and posting my thoughts on a blog called, "A Summer in the Psalms." During that study, I routinely faced the question, "What pronoun should I use for God?"

This was not a simple question.  In current US culture, the question carries a lot of baggage. Some see the use of pronouns as a litmus test for one's beliefs about the role of women, feminism, and one's support for women in general.  Others see, in the use of various pronouns, a statement about "conservative tradition" versus "progressive liberalism."  

If I use a male pronoun ("he", "him") for God, I am presumably supporting a patriarchal religious view that is inherently sexist.  If I use a female pronoun ("she", "her") for God, I am promoting a Mother Earth/Gaia view of creation and abandoning orthodox Christianity altogether.  And if I use a neuter pronoun ("it"), I am suggesting that God is an impersonal force, presumably similar to the divine Force of the Star Wars universe.

Let me seek to ignore all this baggage and seriously address, as an evangelical Christian, the gender of God. In the Jewish and Christian scriptures, God is clearly neither male nor female.  Gender is a creation of God's, built into the human race as a part of God's creation of human beings.  Genesis 1:27 makes this clear:

So God created mankind in his own image,

    in the image of God he created them;

    male and female he created them.

Note that this translation, from Hebrew into English, translates the Hebrew male pronoun into an English one ("he", "his".)  But the Hebrew writer of this passage is faced with the same problem I have, since this passage clearly state that male and female are both created in God's image and so both men and women reflect attributes of God. 

There are other places where one might be tempted to view God as female.  The mother bird metaphor is common in Scripture for God.  It appears in Psalm 17 and other psalms. Boaz uses the metaphor in Ruth 2:12 in his first meeting with Ruth.  Psalm 123 has a different metaphor:

As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master,

as the eyes of a female slave look to the hand of her mistress,

so our eyes look to the Lord our God,

till she shows us her mercy.

Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy on us,

for we have endured no end of contempt.

In the New Testament, in Luke 13:34, Jesus calls himself a mother hen, desiring to gather Israel under her wing,   (A parallel passage occurs in Matthew 23:37.) Again in the New Testament, as Paul elaborates on the unity of the church, as he invites Gentiles too to follow Jesus, and says (Galatians 3:28):

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Of course, Jesus, himself, was male. After all, he was circumcised (Luke 2:21)! 😳

For most of us, this question is merely an academic one, risking considerable cultural smoke, emotion without dialogue. But for those who have had an abusive father, I understand that there may be a desire to find some other way to address God other than "Father."

I have no desire to start a fight, especially in our divisive culture. There is NO good pronoun for God. God is neither male nor female.  But the neuter "it", at least in English, carries an obvious implication that God is impersonal (since most neuter objects, in English, are indeed impersonal.)  As I read the Psalms, which emphasize the personal aspect of God, I can't see referring to God as "It".

God is God. God is not like any human being are animal. God is holy! God is different!

Still, throughout the Old Testament, the most common pronoun for God masculine. Some will claim that that pronoun is merely an artifact of the clearly patriarchal culture of the ancient Near East. In my own writings I've chosen to use "He" -- note the capital H -- following the tradition of most of the Old Testament writings, but capitalizing the first letter to emphasize that this is quite different from a mere masculine "he".

I posted my thoughts (and questions) on this back in 2015. It did not go well. Let me see if raising this question about "the God pronoun" goes over better in 2024? After all, surely our culture is not as divisive as it was nine years ago???

(Haha!)

Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.)