Diocese of Episcopal Church proposes making God Gender-Neutral

[Brendan]

Considering that this is the Episcopal Church, it’s kind of expected.

Actually, it is not. I kinda’ presumed that they are big advocates of using a person’s gender pronoun of choice.

The Bible is full of examples where Christ indicated the preferred pronoun of choice for Himself, His Father, and the Holy Spirit.

So even if the person is genderless, shouldn’t they advocate for using the pronouns the persons themselves use to describe themselves?

 

[Sy_Noe]

Actually, it is not. I kinda’ presumed that they are big advocates of using a person’s gender pronoun of choice.

The Bible is full of examples where Christ indicated the preferred pronoun of choice for Himself, His Father, and the Holy Spirit.

So even if the person is genderless, shouldn’t they advocate for using the pronouns the persons themselves use to describe themselves?

Examples though penned by human male writers with a finite and limited human understanding of an infinite being during very much male-dominated times. Inspired does not necessarily have to equate to inerrant. One can be inspired and guided but not over-ridden. The bottom line if we are truthful with ourselves, is we simply can not believe or think we know with 100% certainty without some degree of faith. I know I wasn’t there.

 

[GKMotley]

Thus, no particular reason to think that Christ referred to his… Father as…Father, one concludes. Absent faith.

 

[Sy_Noe]

It even takes faith to believe in God and then in the NT story in the first place. And then in whatever humans and their interpretations you place faith in.

 

[twf]

Ah yes… I once walked into Christ Cathedral in downtown Vancouver, just out of curiosity. The sight of women in priestly vestments was too unnerving…I immediately left. For such a “progressive” city, its interesting how conservative the Catholic archdiocese is…

 

[thephilosopher6]

How did it come to this… Just how…

 

[LoyalViews]

For all intents and purposes, for a church which once included three polities, low, broad, and high, is now mixing broad church liberalism with either High Church liturgy, or broad church liberalism, with Low Church evangelicalism. While the Low Church has always been significantly ‘reformed’ in liturgy and theology, they never were ones to condone women ‘priests’ nor same sex ‘marriage’. But the Anglican Church is paying this, it is costing them a great loss. There are more leaving than joining, more people questioning the authenticity of the Christianity on offer, and many laymen believe that the Anglican Church in Canada and the Episcopal Church in the USA has completely departed from the Catholic creeds, which each and every Anglican is bound to believe in (LET ALONE the clergy).

Their great contribution to liturgical style and hymnody has died. Their faithfulness to orthodoxy has died. This has led many to join the Ordinariate or the parallel (and rightly founded, imho) continuing Churches.

 

[Luke6_37]

I have no problem referring to the first person of the Trinity as “Father”, but it would be idolatry to think God the Father is a man or male. To do that is to create God in man’s image, rather than the other way around. God the Father is pure spirit and has no gender.

Therefore, the Biblical meaning of the title “Father”, as it pertains to the first person of the Trinity, cannot mean male. In using that word, Jesus is emphasizing that: 1) God is a loving parent and 2) God is the source of life. No other word in Biblical times would have properly conveyed these two meanings, so “Father” was the only logical word for Jesus to use at that time. However, it does not work so well today, because we now understand that mother and father are both loving parents and have an equal role in the creation of new life. So today, Jesus might perhaps use the word parent.

It should be noted that our English translations of Hebrew & Koine Greek (the original languages of the Bible) need to deal with the differences in how the these languages use pronouns. I am no expert in Biblical languages, but I do know that the word for the Holy Spirit in Hebrew is Ruach, which is feminine and in Greek it is Pneuma, which is neutral. So what pronoun should we use in English when referring to the Holy Spirit?

Personally, I think the real lesson in all this is that if the Father is not offended at being referred to by the wrong pronoun, nobody should. I also think that when referring to God in their entirety, we can legitimately use the pronoun “they” without being ungrammatical, because they are three people after all.

 

[Sy_Noe]

How did it come to this… Just how…

How did what come to this? If you mean the topic, perhaps some people of finite minds are understanding an infinite God in a different way.

 

[Sy_Noe]

I have no problem referring to the first person of the Trinity as “Father”, but it would be idolatry to think God the Father is a man or male. To do that is to create God in man’s image, rather than the other way around. God the Father is pure spirit and has no gender.

Therefore, the Biblical meaning of the title “Father”, as it pertains to the first person of the Trinity, cannot mean male. In using that word, Jesus is emphasizing that: 1) God is a loving parent and 2) God is the source of life. No other word in Biblical times would have properly conveyed these two meanings, so “Father” was the only logical word for Jesus to use at that time. However, it does not work so well today, because we now understand that mother and father are both loving parents and have an equal role in the creation of new life. So today, Jesus might perhaps use the word parent.

It should be noted that our English translations of Hebrew & Koine Greek (the original languages of the Bible) need to deal with the differences in how the these languages use pronouns. I am no expert in Biblical languages, but I do know that the word for the Holy Spirit in Hebrew is Ruach, which is feminine and in Greek it is Pneuma, which is neutral. So what pronoun should we use in English when referring to the Holy Spirit?

Personally, I think the real lesson in all this is that if the Father is not offended at being referred to by the wrong pronoun, nobody should. I also think that when referring to God in their entirety, we can legitimately use the pronoun “they” without being ungrammatical, because they are three people after all.

Neither do I. I frequently have done so. But I find your post good food for thought.

 

[Athanasius_Mary]

The even more unfortunate thing is that, because of how the Episcopal church approaches theology, this diocese can’t be excommunicated for such unabashed heresy. The “via media” approach has been taken to the extreme, to the point where Tradition and even Scripture are optional sources of doctrine.

And to think that TEC almost had full communion with the Orthodox Church a century ago.

 

[GKMotley]

And then one may place faith in this part of the narrative, and not that, As one seems to find it compelling. Pick this, discard that, adjust the other. As one’s understanding finds suitable.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

frankly all this consternation directed at the Diocese of Washington strikes me as a great deal of fuss over very little. God, being infinite, must be much, much more than either male or female, far beyond what our minds can begin to comprehend. Since God is great beyond what our poor human minds can imagine, why do we get bent out of shape over what pronoun we use to try to describe that infinity?

I agree with you 1000%, but the Episcopal Church getting bent out of shape trying NOT to refer to God by male pronouns is just as bad as people getting bent out of shape in the other direction.

When a public body is worshipping, we need to all call God by one unified thing in order to have prayers like the Our Father. We use the words we use because they’re what Jesus used in Scripture. That should be the end of it. If somebody wants to go off privately and pray to God as their unlimited gender-neutral parent, God would accept that prayer if they were sincere, but that’s way different from trying to re-write Scripture with gender-neutral references.

 

[GKMotley]

The point is not “male”, biologically. It is “masculine”. C. S. Lewis touches on it, toward the end of THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH.

 

[commenter]

The point is not “male”, biologically. It is “masculine”. C. S. Lewis touches on it, toward the end of THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH.

Maybe, but more specifically at the end of Perelandra (difference between Mars and Venus).

 

[GKMotley]

Yep. Or, in “Priestesses in the Church”.

 

[commenter]

Examples though penned by human male writers with a finite and limited human understanding of an infinite being during very much male-dominated times. Inspired does not necessarily have to equate to inerrant. One can be inspired and guided but not over-ridden. The bottom line if we are truthful with ourselves, is we simply can not believe or think we know with 100% certainty without some degree of faith. I know I wasn’t there.

Your last sentence is the only one I find particularly relevant. The reality is we, in 2018, know very little about the social psychology and “cultural influences” of biblical times in general. It does not matter how many academic degrees one has in Theology, parts of the story are permanently missing - the part of the culture or rather 100 ancient cultures that did not get written down.

Furthermore, we don’t know much this particular writer, with his unique upbringing, was influenced by the “culture”, compared with that other writer, in a different city, with different experiences. Ironically people who would hesitate to describe what cultural milieu “caused” Hemingway to write with this slant, or what national, educational, or psychological conditioning “limited” Steinbeck in his depiction of characters, then throw all humility and caution aside and make sweeping assumptions about cultures and writers we know far less than 20th century USA.

 

[ConstantLearner]

Well, God doesn’t have a gender, but he revealed himself to us as a man, more for the mission he came to accomplish than anything else, I suppose. I think of God, the Father, and God, the Holy Spirit, as gender neutral, but I will go on referring to God as “he” because of Jesus and because one needs to use a pronoun for reference.

Every time we get into heated political discussions here, we lose members to the Episcopal Church! We need to be more polite even in our disagreement.

 

[ConstantLearner]

It does not matter how many academic degrees one has in Theology, parts of the story are permanently missing - the part of the culture or rather 100 ancient cultures that did not get written down.

We don’t know if they’re “permanently” missing or not, unless you’re speaking of times before man could read and write, and I didn’t take the above that way. Who know what will be found in the desert some day? It’s vast, and it could be millions of years before something is revealed, if anything is there to be found.

 

[ConstantLearner]

I see that you embrace heresy as your religion, very sad. I hope you come back to the one true faith.

It’s barbs like yours that are causing us to lose members. Please, let’s ALL be polite and “love one another as [Jesus] loved [us].” When I returned to the US from Europe, I was shocked at how much membership was down at Catholic churches and how few priests we have. I, personally, know several Catholic priests who now serve in the Anglican-Episcopalian Church, and they didn’t leave Catholicism to marry.