Do people call God “it”? In reply to Christopher Howse’s question (8 November), I would suggest that if we don’t then perhaps we should. The Greek Fathers of the Early Church considered the assignment of gender to God as crass anthropomorphism; as “ignorantly describing the transcendent first cause in terms of the qualities of created things”. “It” is neither he, nor worse still, she. In referring to God they happily used the Greek neuter “it”, which unfortunately in English sounds rather disrespectful but is adequately non-anthropomorphic. By “transcendent first cause” they meant “It” is not a linear causality in time and space but is, as the author of The Cloud of Unknowing put it, “That which brou