Lilywolf,
Sometimes debates get heated, and I feel like I need to take a step back.
I want you to understand that I wasn't trying to attack you or disparage you.
If I did, then I apologize.
I WAS intending to attack a few of your propositions, but I was NOT trying to attack you personally.
If I did, or if it seemed like I did, then I apologize.
Sometimes when people get into a debate, they begin to "miss" each other... as if they're both shooting at different targets.
That may be what we began to do.
So let me briefly explain why I went at the things I did.
1. When we see scriptures that seem odd to our modern sensibilities, and which don't quite agree with modern feminist culture, we probably shouldn't assume those scriptures are in error.
I understand that feminism has, at least in the past, accomplished some important things.
But please consider that our modern feminist culture is becoming so toxic toward men that young men are actually being psychologically attacked and destroyed.... systematically. So we needn't assume that all the trappings and ethics of modern feminism are necessarily all good.
Because all of us are fallen and corrupted, because the world is fallen and corrupted, because our cultures are corrupted... we need to be very careful about critiquing scripture based solely on our modern ethics or modern sensibilities. We just need to be extremely careful of this.
We may very well, all of us, have views that are simply distorted, or skewed.
The only solution is to subject our sensibilities to scripture, instead of the other way around.
This would seem, logically, to be a problem we all have, inherently.
No one gets a pass here; we're all fallen people in a fallen world.
2. The scripture, for whatever reason, is replete with references to the entire Godhead in masculine terms.
This is just what we find in scripture... it's just there.
God is always referred to in the masculine:
- Jesus was born as a man, and is always called the Son, or some other masculine term, even in reference to his preincarnation.
- Jesus called God his Father, and always referred to the Father as "he."
- Jesus always referred to the Holy Spirit as "he."
Jesus referred to all persons of the Godhead in the masculine, and throughout scripture God is always referred to in the masculine.
3. God is spirit, just as you quoted from scripture... but surely, being God, he should be able to present, or emphasize his divine nature, however he chooses.
God is spirit.
But God is also sovereign, and all powerful.
So if, for some reason, he wanted to be referred to in the masculine... would he not have the right to do so?
Certainly my masculine attributes are corrupted at best,
but God is perfect, and anything that comes from him is perfect.
If God wants to emphasize something in the masculine, for some reason, we needn't associate that with the fallen kind of masculinity you see in his creatures.
Perhaps God emphasizes his masculinity so men will be constantly convicted, by being forced to compare their fallen masculinity to God's great holiness.
Perhaps God emphasizes his masculinity because men need this extra role modeling far more than women do.
Perhaps God emphasizes his masculinity because men need this role modeling so that women can have better men!
There could be so many reasons.
There could be so many reasons, and none of these reasons disparage women in any way.
There is no reason to think that if the scripture emphasizes the masculine traits of God's character, that this in any way lessens, or disparages women. God may sincerely put extra emphasis into relating to men just in order to convict us, because perhaps we NEED more convicting.
There is probably a vast multitude of reasons this occurs, a multitude of answers.
But if we don't look for those answers... we'll never find them.
God Bless
Max
...
Sometimes debates get heated, and I feel like I need to take a step back.
I want you to understand that I wasn't trying to attack you or disparage you.
If I did, then I apologize.
I WAS intending to attack a few of your propositions, but I was NOT trying to attack you personally.
If I did, or if it seemed like I did, then I apologize.
Sometimes when people get into a debate, they begin to "miss" each other... as if they're both shooting at different targets.
That may be what we began to do.
So let me briefly explain why I went at the things I did.
1. When we see scriptures that seem odd to our modern sensibilities, and which don't quite agree with modern feminist culture, we probably shouldn't assume those scriptures are in error.
I understand that feminism has, at least in the past, accomplished some important things.
But please consider that our modern feminist culture is becoming so toxic toward men that young men are actually being psychologically attacked and destroyed.... systematically. So we needn't assume that all the trappings and ethics of modern feminism are necessarily all good.
Because all of us are fallen and corrupted, because the world is fallen and corrupted, because our cultures are corrupted... we need to be very careful about critiquing scripture based solely on our modern ethics or modern sensibilities. We just need to be extremely careful of this.
We may very well, all of us, have views that are simply distorted, or skewed.
The only solution is to subject our sensibilities to scripture, instead of the other way around.
This would seem, logically, to be a problem we all have, inherently.
No one gets a pass here; we're all fallen people in a fallen world.
2. The scripture, for whatever reason, is replete with references to the entire Godhead in masculine terms.
This is just what we find in scripture... it's just there.
God is always referred to in the masculine:
- Jesus was born as a man, and is always called the Son, or some other masculine term, even in reference to his preincarnation.
- Jesus called God his Father, and always referred to the Father as "he."
- Jesus always referred to the Holy Spirit as "he."
Jesus referred to all persons of the Godhead in the masculine, and throughout scripture God is always referred to in the masculine.
3. God is spirit, just as you quoted from scripture... but surely, being God, he should be able to present, or emphasize his divine nature, however he chooses.
God is spirit.
But God is also sovereign, and all powerful.
So if, for some reason, he wanted to be referred to in the masculine... would he not have the right to do so?
Certainly my masculine attributes are corrupted at best,
but God is perfect, and anything that comes from him is perfect.
If God wants to emphasize something in the masculine, for some reason, we needn't associate that with the fallen kind of masculinity you see in his creatures.
Perhaps God emphasizes his masculinity so men will be constantly convicted, by being forced to compare their fallen masculinity to God's great holiness.
Perhaps God emphasizes his masculinity because men need this extra role modeling far more than women do.
Perhaps God emphasizes his masculinity because men need this role modeling so that women can have better men!
There could be so many reasons.
There could be so many reasons, and none of these reasons disparage women in any way.
There is no reason to think that if the scripture emphasizes the masculine traits of God's character, that this in any way lessens, or disparages women. God may sincerely put extra emphasis into relating to men just in order to convict us, because perhaps we NEED more convicting.
There is probably a vast multitude of reasons this occurs, a multitude of answers.
But if we don't look for those answers... we'll never find them.
God Bless
Max
...
I think the issue in the matter of the thread question itself may spark ire in some. And maybe that's the answer in itself.
For my part and faith walk, I go by what the scripture says in matters of God's identity as a spirit, a holy spirit. The one and only and there is no other besides God.
Male pronouns or gender identifiers that then are applied in other scriptures that use male pronouns are in my view the input of a male oriented, male controlled series of councils over the decades that culminated in arriving at what was determined worthy of being called a , under those council's authority, a closed canon.
Which is to say, by Human judgment, the last that the holy spirit creator of all will ever speak to humanity.
That is another thread. And one that is just as incendiary as this one's topic.
You said that the idea God is not gender oriented is ad hoc,circular, and presumptuous. Though your list wasn't in that order.
I would concur to the contrary. That the ad hoc, circular, presumptuousness arrives when mortals that first accept the scriptural assurance there is such a thing as God, then think to accept that those scriptures are correct when identifying that higher omniscient omnipotent power as having a gender like those prone to needing saving because of the sin nature they inherited being created as humans in the gender forms accorded by that holy spirits creation of them.
We're told when a person dies their flesh returns to the dust from whence it sprang. The Adam, Adamu, of the earth, returns to the origin of itself, the dust God made alive with his breath that then gave that form a living soul.
And that living soul then returns to that God that created it.
Are we to concede then that that flesh, the Adam, the Adamu, was of the dust of the ground the omni-genesis holy spirit creator made first, then God created the gender of that Adamu by will and in his image and likeness. Does that mean God has a gender then? Being he created a male human first? If so, then there can be no conflict for those faithful who recognize holy spirit creator did then create female from the mid-point, the protective bony shroud that is the rib cage that protects all vital organs for life and living. And thus, is just as qualified then , those scriptures, to use the feminine pronoun to describe creator.
But that didn't happen. Because as much as some, not implicating yourself, would like to ignore the facts of man's part as creator of the closed canon Bible, it remains a fact none the less that political atmosphere, and cultural norms of the times and during the time of its compilation did in fact play a part in the translation and communication of its authority.
And that at those times encircled the patriarchal vernacular. And that is why the inspired words of a holy spirit that told us we, who are male and female, must worship therefore in spirit, was identified in words as male.
Ad hoc, circular, presumptuous? Yes. Attaching a gender to a spirit that created them male and female in the beginning, is that occurrence when thinking that creator was male, by gender identification, before the commencement of creation. When, in that holy spirits infinite wisdom it created its image an likeness so that only one gender would be able to be creator on earth. And that sir was the creatress female of our species.
If we wish to insist made in the image and likeness of, in Genesis, sustains exclusively the male pronoun identifier of holy spirit God, we err in ignoring that spirits realization, wisdom, that the female was necessary to come into being so that the male would not live alone. al-one.
And that is why any Christian is able to identify in this relationship with holy spirit the feminine if they see fit. I.E. Creatress, holy spirit creatress, Goddess.
See, if gender pronoun is not a man made invention of the creator that made them both male and female, then a feminine identifier cannot be offensive to the one from whence the two did come into being.
God
doesn't
have
genitals
Holy Spirit is. Gender pronoun is a construct that is that of the image and likeness of the gender ego that imagines a Father in Heaven. When on Earth no Father alive ever gave birth, creation, into life any one that exists.