Yesterday I visited both Texas Southern University and Rice University here in Houston. The rain was awful-- I almost had to swim from my car to the Wesley House at TSU, and I got absolutely drenched. This was why I chose to spend the afternoon at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston before going to Rice. But today I finally leave Houston and head to San Antonio, which I'm very excited to see. I've heard wonderful things about the culture there, and I'm meeting up with an old friend.

At Rice, our discussion about women in the church actually wound its way around to the issue of inclusive language and God. I've talked about inclusive language before in the blog-- check out the post from February 10. A new question came up last night, though, that I thought was interesting: does God actually have a gender? Where in the Bible does it say that God is genderless?

Theologically, I think many people would agree that God doesn't have a specific gender or sex, even if the Bible doesn't state it explicitly. At Rice, we talked about how God is complete within God's self. Biologically, men and women need one another to propagate the species. Yet God needed no one in the act of creation-- all creation springs from God alone. Why would God need to have a sex?

Moreover, humans-- both male and female-- are a reflection of God. Genesis 1:26 says, "Then God said, 'Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness...." Verse 27 goes on to say, "So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." If both men and women are created in the image of God, it would logically follow that God has characteristics of both male and female.

If you see God as an exclusively male God, you can point to the overwhelming number of passages in the Bible that refer to God in specifically masculine terms. Even Jesus, in Mark 14:36, refers to God as "Abba, Father" (Abba is Aramaic for Father), and Jesus came to earth as a man. True-- God does have masculine characteristics. But Jesus also uses feminine images of God in Luke 13:34, the "hen gathering her chicks" passage, and Luke 15:8-9, the parable of the woman with the lost coin. Several Old Testament passages also parallel God with women. Can we just ignore these references in our understanding of God?

So does God have a specific gender? It is fascinating to hear how some people historically have answered this question. The 13th-14th century Catholic mystic, Julian of Norwich, wrote in Revelations of Divine Love:

"A mother can give her child milk to suck, but our precious mother, Jesus, can feed us with himself. He does so most courteously and most tenderly, with the Blessed Sacrament, which is the precious food of true life" (http://www.gloriana.nu/mother.htm).

She argued that different elements of the Trinity have different gender characteristics-- God the Father is, well, the father, Jesus is the mother, and the Holy Spirit is grace. I don't know that I would necessarily hold with that theologically, but it is an innovative take on the question nonetheless.

So basically, God's lack of gender is what we talked about at Rice. Because if God does not have a gender, then God isn't limited by our understanding of gender characteristics. God is loving and strong, tender and protective, a provider for our needs on all levels. Throughout history, gods have been limited in this way-- look at the Greek pantheon on Mount Olympus. Believing in one supreme deity means we believe that all the best of the human condition is created in the divine image. To say God is one gender limits and reduces our God.

"Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you." --Isaiah 49:15

Kelsey