gennawing males

Kevin L. Barney klbarney at yahoo.com
Thu Dec 2 17:32:01 EST 1999


Why are we so certain that gender was irrelevant to Clement?  Are we basing 
this on later Christian theology (or current political correctness)?  It 
seems to me that there are two problems here.  First, since the meaning of 
GENNAW varies depending on whether the subject is a man or a woman, we have 
to ask what gender, if any, Clement perceived God to be.  Since in the NT 
God is called "father", and even later is called the gennetor to Christ's 
gennema, I don't see how we can just assume that Clement thought of God as 
genderless (unless of course there is something in his writings to suggest 
that).  If Clement thought of God in male terms, then we come to the second 
problem of choosing a good English word to represent GENNAW (fathered, 
begat, begotten, sired, generated, procreated or whatever).

Am I missing something here?

Kevin L. Barney
Hoffman Estates, Illinois
klbarney at yahoo.com



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