No one would be gladder than feminist theologians, who have been waging a battle within and without the church against its conservative patriarchal leadership which still goes by "Our father, which art in heaven" to deny women ordination. They see it as an improvement on his predecessor's 1978 remark that God was "the father, but also the mother."

Etymologists consider God, a word common to all Teutonic languages, as having been derived from an Aryan root, gheu -- to invoke; it is in no way connected withgood. As for God's gender, it was presumed to have been settled a long time ago in Christendom -- masculine. Consider the major myths of Judaism and Christianity and the dominant myths of a pre-Christian society. Consider Western classics in whatever art form and early Western institutions. It is at once clear that the phantasm of patriarchy, that pyramid of male power, permeates the entire culture.

Since the normative sources of Christianity appear to have been authored by men, conveyed by men and canonised by men, it is no surprise that women have only a secondary role to play, if they have not been relegated to the background. As regards any doubts about God's gender, Jesus nips it in the bud when He says, "Everything is entrusted to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son but the Father, and no one knows the Father but the Son."

Thus male-bias is manifest in most Biblical stories as is illustrated by the creation legend. By any reckoning save the physical, Eve emerges the stronger personality; sheargues with the Serpent before she agrees to defy God unlike Adam, who needs just a gentle persuasion from his companion.

Yet the irony is that Eve is considered the "original" sinner. In defiance of all conventional notions of justice, she receives a harsher punishment. While Adam has only to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow (in any case, the woman puts in greater labour than the man), Eve has to endure a peculiarly female punishment. "I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you" (Gen 3:16). No theological hair-splitting can obfuscate the distinct impression that this verse imparts -- it is the man who commands.

A noticeable aspect of the Old Testament stories is that festivals which were associated with pre-Christian deities and goddesses are suddenly metamorphosed to acquire a certain masculinity. The Hebrew patriarch Moses giving his commandments from the mount is the ultimatesymbol of patriarchy. Over the two millenniums, all the deities that represented the great goddesses -- the independent, often dangerous virgins and the lusty, powerful mothers -- were reduced to one Virgin Mother, whose most celebrated utterance is, "Let it be done to me according to thy will" (Luke 1: 38).

All this despite the ancient mythology that the world began with a woman; it is the memory of her which inspires later creative thought. Consider the Enuma Elish, the ancient Babylonic epic of creation. In the poem, the hero Marduk kills the monster Tiamat and forms the world from her body. The heavens, the stars, the seas, in fact, everything originates from her.

Neither does a swallow make a summer, nor does a pontifical utterance reposition the church on God's gender. But where does all this leave the earnest who sees God, not as a noun but as a verb -- undefinable but ever-creative?