Is God a he or she? Both? Neither? Here’s the pronoun I pick.

In an online comment about last week’s column, a reader asked: “Why is God usually assigned a Gender? Must God have a gender? I do not think so.”

Initially, I took this to be asking why I refer to God as “he” as opposed to “she.”

I used to get that question regularly, along with a related question: why have Christian texts often used male nouns and pronouns exclusively when referring to humans-in-general?

In fact, I wrote a column on all that in 2007. Then, I made two arguments.

First, contemporary Bible translations, prayer books and hymns should be gender inclusive when they’re referring to humans.

When ancient writers used male nouns and pronouns to address, say, a church in Galatia or Corinth, they were following the linguistic customs of their day. Those male references were meant to include men and women alike.

There’s no reason not to change such references today to fit the custom of our own times, which is to make them more explicitly inclusive. “Dear brothers” can easily and accurately be recast as, “Dear brothers and sisters.”

Second, for me, references to God ought to remain male (for reasons I’ll get to shortly).

But as I re-read last week’s question, it occurred to me that perhaps it included a nuance I hadn’t initially noticed.

It may have been that the writer was responding to contemporary arguments that cast doubt on traditional concepts of human gender. In this view, as I understand it, not all people are strictly male or female; gender includes gradations and fluctuations.

Perhaps the writer was asking why, given current thought, we should assign any gender at all when talking about God.

Whatever the writer’s intent, the question was intriguing.

Here are my thoughts, for what they’re worth. They’re not proscriptive for everybody. They’re merely mine.

You should refer to God however you please. It won’t offend me.

The relationship between God and gender is mysterious. We’re told God is a spirit, invisible and yet present everywhere.

As far as we know, a spirit isn’t subject to any gender — God transcends such labels. God isn’t a man or a woman or a they or any other such label mortals could devise. Human vocabulary is inadequate to describe God.

Perhaps for that reason, or else to avoid sexist language, or for both reasons, some contemporary Christian writers, including Richard Rohr, who I cited in my column last week and admire, avoid virtually all references to the Almighty’s gender.

For instance, instead of using longstanding pronouns for God such as “himself,” Rohr uses various forms of the word “God.” Rather than say “God defines himself as love incarnate,” Rohr would say, “God defines Godself as love incarnate.”

I, however, keep on calling God “he”—I assign God a gender. My solution isn’t an oracle from the Almighty. But it works best for me, for several reasons:

▪ As a writer, as a prissy curmudgeon with two degrees in English (God help me!), I find constructions such as, “God says about Godself that God is love,” clunky and grating and precious. I’m also grated by references to God as “it” or “they.”

Arguably, “they” might be a fine term for the Godhead. God is, we claim, a trinity. But I don’t like the sound of it. I can’t even explain why.

▪ A God who transcends gender nevertheless created us, his offspring, to be gendered. Paradoxically, then, gender is a part of how we relate to God. Gender, ours and metaphorically God’s, contributes to our understanding of the divine.

And across 2,000 years of Christian tradition, God has been referred to exclusively as “he,” that is, as primarily male in the aspects of his nature he’s revealed to humans.

Lots of people argue—in a good faith which I understand and accept—that this is due to sexism on the part of the men who’ve long dominated the church.

I disagree. Or at least I don’t fully agree.

For one thing, pagan cultures in biblical times—the Greeks and Romans, for example—worshiped female deities alongside male deities, and yet those cultures were far more discriminatory against actual, real-life women than, say, the early Christians were, who radically (for their times) declared women as men’s equals in God’s eyes.

By choosing to frame God as male, then, our spiritual ancestors were going against the religious grain. They were making a conscious choice. There was something about their revelation of God that led them to think of God specifically as masculine.

▪ Finally, Jesus himself regarded the Godhead to be a father rather than a mother, as metaphorically male rather than female.

Whenever possible, I try to avoid contradicting Jesus. I’m convinced he knew more about everything than I do.

We should always be inclusive in all matters. I don’t want to offend women by calling God “he.” I don’t want to offend transgender people, non-binary people or anyone else. I try (unsuccessfully) to avoid offending anybody, for that matter.

But referring to God as “he” remains my preferred practice. You do as you see fit.

Paul Prather is a contributing columnist. He can be reached at pratpd@yahoo.com