Is God male or female?

Is God male or female?

Beyond sex segregation in Christianity

Is God male or female? I have been trying to answer that question reading the Scriptures to test out the folowing idea: seeing God's glory is the same as seeing through God's eye, who looks at the heart of people and things, dismissing their outward appearance (1Sam 16: 7; At 15: 8-9).

I study the Scriptures on a daily basis, at breakfast mostly. Bread and Bible, so to speak. One morning, while I was thinking about God’s gender over my favourite cup of proper Italian coffee, all of a sudden, I came to realize that thing about God's eye, that is, those who see God see through God’s eye. Meister Eckhart testifies to it thus:

“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowledge and one love”(Meister Eckhart, Qui Audit Me Non Confundetur, Sermon 57, translation adapted from The Complete mystical works of Meister Eckhart, M. O’C Walshe (ed.), Crossroads Publishing, USA 2009, p. 298)[1].

Divine vision, seeing with God’s eye, transcends sex separation and looks at the heart.

The key to understanding spiritual vision is a single word: ‘mother’.

Acquiring God’s gaze implies recognizing one’s own womb of mercy, no matter our gender and biological sex.

Seeing thorough God’s eye involves discovering a place within from where we make room for other people and accommodate things, fulfilling Jesus’ teachings on spiritual motherhood:

«Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother» (Mt 12, 49-50).

People believing in Christ do not see through a magician’s eye. Their spiritual eye is the inner eye of a human being who is mother of Christ:

“If a human being is to be fruitful, they must need be a woman. ‘Woman’ is the noblest title one can bestow on the soul – far nobler than ‘virgin’. For a human to receive God within them is good, and in receiving they are virgin. But for God to be fruitful in them is better, for only the fruitfulness of the gift is the thanks given for that gift, and the spirit is woman in giving thanks, whose fecundity gives birth to Jesus in God’s paternal heart” (Eckhart, Intravit Iesus in Quoddam Castellum, Sermon 8, translation adapted from M. O’C Walshe (ed.), op. cit., p. 78).

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Christians are first and foremost mothers of Christ

Whoever believes in Chirst is – or better: should be – mother, that is, a woman with “a crown of twelve stars on her head” (Rv 12: 1). In their spiritual journey, they should be giving birth to a son, who will then be “caught up to God and to his throne” (Rv 12: 5).

In Saint Paul’s words, any Christians independently of their gender should become a woman who has “an authority on her head” (1Cor 11: 10).

The authority on the head of women is not to be conceived as a material veil that has to be forced on a woman’s head or body as a piece of required clothing (reading according to the flesh). Rather, it is best conceived as a spiritual crown, a heavenly veil of pure light coming upon the faithful from on high. This light is meant to overshadow and envelop us with salvation, leading our souls to magnify the power of the Most High, no matter our gender and biological sex:    

“My soul shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels” (Is 61, 10).

From the point of view of spiritual motherhood, veils and other types of covering used as articles of traditional clothing by women and men practicing the Bible are royal symbols; in particular, they represent a spiritual fact: no matter your gender or faith, if you believe in the Bible, you are asked to give birth to Christ, the Messiah, the anointed by God. To this effect,

“Jesus said to some of the scribes: «How can they say that the Messiah is David’s son?  For David himself says in the book of Psalms: ‘The LORD said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool’. David thus calls him Lord; so how can he be his son?»” (Lc 20: 41-44).

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Good. We are done. I hope my research idea will bring people studying the Bible round to the fact that God – and hence Christ – is not a male because “God transcends the human distinction between the sexes. He is neither man nor woman: he is God” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 239). Jesus himself declares: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14, 9). A vision we might also found in Saint Paul: “in the Lord, neither woman is separate from man nor man is separate from woman” (1Cor 11: 11). Man is son and husband, while woman is mother and wife, and the two have been one glorious body since “before the world existed” (Jn 17, 5).

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NOTES

[1] Free download available at https://german.yale.edu/sites/default/files/meister-eckhart-maurice-o-c-walshe-bernard-mcginn-the-complete-mystical-works-of-meister-eckhart-the-crossroad-publishing-company-2009.pdf

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