Why God is “He”, Not “She”

Modernists want to collapse the male-female binary within creation. Collapse those and you collapse the family. Collapse the family and you collapse society. Collapse society and you can erase the memory of God from culture.

Editor’s Note: False religions sometimes claim that God is “both masculine and feminine”. This is even the case among certain modernist groups that claim to be Christian. In this article, Fr. Johannes explains why Orthodox Christians only use masculine pronouns in reference to God. He explains why it is important to call God, “Our Father”.

To reference God with the masculine pronoun (He, Him) affirms that His (God’s) manner of creating differs from how new life is brought into being within His creation. Within the creation new life is brought into the world through a birth. But God did not create the world through any birthing process.

God spoke the world into existence. Speaking the world into existence creates ontological separation between the Creator and His creation. God and creation are not the same. In a manner of speaking this distinction is the primordial binary.

Put another way, if we call God “She”, we imply that God’s manner of creation is similar to a woman giving birth. Deep symbolic confusion results. We begin to think that God and the creation are one. The ontological distance collapses. There is no real difference between God and creation. The binary disappears.

This is a return to pagan ideas of God. Paganism could not perceive of the gods existing outside of creation (the gods were personifications of natural energies projected into the heavens). As a result, the gods were seen as giving birth to creation in some manner or another. The creation came out of the stuff and substance of the gods just as a baby is the stuff and substance of its mother.

Moreover, if the creation is born from the gods in the way that a child is born from its mother, then the gods exist within time and space just as the creation does. Genesis however sees it differently. If God spoke the world into existence, then time and space itself are created. God stands outside of space and time. He stands completely outside of created existence.

When the Episcopalians and others adopt these neo-pagan beliefs the consequences are immediate often in areas of human sexuality. They elevate the unnatural sexual behaviors such as sodomy as God given and good. The unnatural is seen as natural and an activism grows where the traditional ordering of creation is attacked as subversive to the new social order they seek to impose.

This is dangerous. Sodomy is a revolt against nature, and a revolt against nature is also a revolt against God. Homosexual activism wars against the essential binary within creation — the male-female distinction — and seeks to abolish it. Man is debased and the passions define solely who man is and what he was created to become (see Romans 1).

Referring to God as “she” then is broadside against the primordial binary — God and His creation are wholly distinct — and seeks to collapse it. It is driven by the same deconstructive* energy that seeks to collapse the male-female binary within the creation. Collapse those and you collapse the family. Collapse the family and you collapse society. Collapse society and you can erase the memory of God from culture.

Pervert language and you pervert thinking. Pervert thinking and you will see the world in the color of the perversion. All this is marketed under the rubric of fairness when it is in fact a deep revolt.

The god they serve is no longer the God of Abraham. They want to erase all memory of Him. This is apostasy of the first order. They are in deep revolt.

* The Evil One can only destroy. He cannot create.

Fr. Johannes (Hans) Jacobse, a native of Holland, is priest at St. Peter Orthodox Church in Bonita Springs, Florida. He is also a cultural critic and independent scholar. He edits the website Orthodoxy Today, discussing social and moral issues from an Orthodox Christian perspective. The success of Orthodoxy Today led to the founding of the American Orthodox Institute, a research and educational organization that engages the cultural issues of the day within the Orthodox Christian moral tradition. He is also editor of the website Another City along with Dr. Seraphim Bruce Foltz.

Fr. Hans is an expert and recognized authority on the impact of ideology and narrative on culture. His editorials and essays have been published by the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Duluth News Tribune, International Herald Tribune, Hellenic Voice, Breakpoint, Front Page Magazine, Institute for Religion and Democracy, Acton Institute, Discovery Institute, Town Hall, and more.

Originally Published at: Russian Faith

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