k2aggie07 said:

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Your question is incomplete.

God the Father is incorporeal, exists outside of all creation, is uncreated. So, He is neither male or female. We can't really say much about Him, because we aren't told much about Him.

But God the Son, Jesus Christ, the deity, does have a sex in as much as when He was incarnated He took flesh as a man.

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So why does it matter if you use male or female pronouns to refer to God?

In a vacuum, it doesn't. God the Father is not male or female.

But when we talk about things, we need to make sure that what we say reflects the proper way to think, and words have both proper meanings and social connotations. Most people (perhaps all people?) can't think in abstract terms about things. So when we import words to describe God, even absolute terms like Good and Truth, we have to remember we're creating posits or constructs that are not themselves correct. Our words underdefine truth by definition.

With that in mind, perhaps a better question to ask is -- why have we traditionally spoken of God in the masculine? Why have we traditionally spoken of the Church in the feminine?

And the truth is that Christianity teaches unequivocally that Jesus Christ is God. So, as far as God is either male or female in a binary way, He is male. (I have to temper this by saying that the Fathers are clear that his male-ness is an attribute of the Incarnation of Christ, and not the Godhead.)

None of this is new - you can read a very exhaustive treatment of the subject of the nature of Christ's incarnation vs nature of God in St Ambrose De Fide Book III -- here. "But the word man connotes sex, and sex is attributed to human nature, but never to the Godhead."

The Fathers also frequently used female metaphor and imagery of both God the Father and Christ Jesus, such as Christ being begotten from the "womb" of the Father. Both St Clement and St John Chrysostom speak of Christ as both mother and father to us. The term "spiritual milk" is frequently used to compare the tenderness and love of a mother nursing an infant to Christ's care and devotion to His people. But these are never ascribed to the Godhead as anything other than icons which represent spiritual realities.

In this day and age I would be more inclined to question the reasons and motives for referring to God in female pronouns than whether it "matters," if that follows?

Caaaaareful.

k2aggie07 said:

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Caaaaareful.

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? I admit my response was rather hurried and maybe not well thought out, where am I possibly going off the tracks?

Because Christ Jesus was a man, yes. But He was before He was born (cf John 8:58), and we can't properly say that He was a Man before then. Before He was born, He subsisted in the form of God (cf Philipians 2:6) -- something no one has or will see (cf John 1:18).

God is both transcendent and immanent. This is at odds, of course, so we always should take care how we speak of His immanence to ensure we don't rob Him of His transcendence. God is nothing we can describe, nothing we can say about Him in His Essence is true in any way, because it's inconceivable. Its impious to speak lightly of God to say He has gender or a body etc.

Yes I see your point. My post was more about why would a believer choose to refer to God in the feminine when God chose to refer to himself in the masculine.

Quote:

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"[marriage]... is a "gift of God in creation" in which a man and a woman may know the grace of God and, in this way, be united "as Christ is united with his bride, the Church". It is "a way of life made holy by God" and blessed by Christ's attendance at just such a union at Cana, in Galilee. And one of its three sacramental purposes is "the increase of mankind", put more bluntly in the Book of Common Prayer as "the procreation of children", reflected in the conjugality of the two sexes that enter into marriage.

That is just what it is. We may, as a society and as a Church, want to change it into something else, and we are at liberty to do so....

A measure of the paucity of the debate so far is that supporters of gay marriage have been allowed to pretend that all we're doing at a church wedding is celebrating the commitment of two people who love each other. That's not true. Yes, love is the fuel that drives the engine of marriage, but marriage itself is doing and representing other spiritual and societal things..."

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I always find this logic odd because you open the door to the opposition that doesn't need to be opened. Genesis 2 has it simple enough. (that there were 2 distinct genders created and they were meant to be together). Full stop.

Sorry: i was confusing...i meant referencing procreation as a necessary function of marriage.