A. God's "gender" has been a hot topic for approximately the last two decades, owing in large part to the impact of the women's liberation movement and the sexual revolution. Books with titles like When God was a Woman, The Feminine Face of God, Womanspirit Rising, and Beyond God the Father are leaping off bookstore shelves.

In the first installment of this series on The Bible and Science we noted that many significant breakthroughs in science and technology have been made by professing Christians. For some, success brought them conflict with religious leaders and secular scientists. Vindication came late for Copernicus and Galileo. The inventor of the MRI, Dr. Raymond Damadian, was denied a Noble Prize in Medicine because of his fundamentalist religious beliefs.

Most English Bible translations today use a Greek text published in 1975 and compiled from manuscripts available at the time. But Tyndale House, an academic institution in Cambridge whose latest edition is published on Wednesday, says several original ancient fragments have been found since then and their work includes this new evidence.

In their 2015 meeting in Wales, AOOIC members discussed the "procession" of the Holy Spirit, and agreed on the omission of the Filioque clause -- a line appended to the Nicene Creed by the Latin Western tradition causing a schism between the Oriental Orthodox Churches and the western Churches that was inherited by the Anglican tradition. The clause says that the Holy Spirit proceeds "from the Son" (Jesus) as well as the Father.