Saturday, October 10, 2020

"Male And Female He Created Them"

Yahweh is plainly referred to with male language throughout the Old and New Testaments, but even complemetarian delusions about the nature of gender do not lead to the conclusion that God is specifically male.  In fact, if true, they would lead to a conclusion that would likely unsettle or offend practically any sincere complementarian.  The Genesis creation account describes God as creating men and women in his own image, meaning that, if God had created masculinity and femininity, both would have come from him.

Even if masculinity and femininity were not purely social constructs, it would not follow that God is "masculine" because words like "he" and "him" are used in the Bible to refer to him.  It would rather be the case that God, having created both men and women, is the source of the positive characteristics associated with both genders.  If God had somehow created men and women with their own respective psychological and moral traits, meaning gender would encompass more than just the body, it would still be erroneous to call him male!

Of course, the Bible does not teach gender stereotypes and often contradicts stereotypes of men and women in positive and negative ways.  More importantly, logic itself reveals that gender is a physical thing completely unrelated to psychological characteristics and that nothing other than social conditioning, non sequitur fallacies, and various assumptions is responsible for gender stereotypes.  Complementarian ideology in all of its forms is asinine and antithetical to reason, experience, and the Bible, but complementarians often fail to even see what truly does follow from their ideas.

God, a strictly nonphysical being (John 4:24), has no gender because gender has no immaterial component.  The very notion of the uncaused cause being male or female is an impossibility, as matter did not exist until God created it.  Moreover, psychological characteristics are individualistic factors, having no connection with physical gender, and thus God can also be neither "masculine" nor "feminine."  All the same, if masculinity and femininity did exist, they would originate from God, and neither one would necessarily reflect more of his character than the other.

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