The thought occurs to me …
The sort of people who go around calling God “she” are also the sort of people who insist that we all must agree to call someone who clearly is a “he,” “she,” if that’s how he “self-identifies.”
Apparently, as these folk see it, God is not allowed to “self-identify” as “he.”
Thursday, April 8, 2010
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7 comments:
You know, I never thought of that. Interesting.
I only just thought of it, yesterday.
I'd mentioned that I don't care for the tradition (or "habit" as I'd call it, since as a tradition it is as deep as Victorian-era sentimentality in the guise of piety) of capitalizing the pronoun when referring to the persons of the Godhead.
Someone else mentioned preferring to see to as giving honor or respect to God, and mentioned strongly disliking references to God as “she.”
And that sparked this observation about foolish moderns imagining they can dictate to God.
Strong pet-peeve of mine is the pseudo-Hindu/new-age/pantheist/nondualist types blithely using the word god, but when you press them on precisely what they mean by that, they'll glaze over as if in a spiritual reverie, then say that everything, the universe, is god.
So you ask, then why don't you just say 'the universe'? Because when you say 'God,' in America at least, people will take it to mean either the God of the Bible or Jesus Christ or both (deities they scoff at, or dismiss as 'teachers').
Ask them to be precise and everything falls apart.
O(h), I agree.
For more than 1500 years, the English word 'God,' when unqualified, has referred only to the Biblical understanding of The Creator, of ‘God’ as the transcendent Person who is “outside” “the universe” and “before” time, and who brought/brings into being all that comes into being. For “spiritual” types to use the term ‘God,’ when they mean something different from what that term has signified for as long as there has been an English language, is less than honest.
But the feminist "re-imaginers" of God are pretending to be speaking from within the Judeo-Christian Biblical tradition.
It's very amusing isn't it, how so many feel they have a right to dictate things to God, what he must identify himself as, who he must accept into his kingdom, what he really meant to say, what he really should stand for etc.
It's almost as if some of us think that his kingdom is some sort of democracy where we get to vote whatever in or out every now and then.
I find the most interesting things when I go poking around amongst the blog-links you include! Feser has a really nice post about this whole God-as-a-he business.
Thanks for sharing your explorations, Cathy. I'd quite missed that piece.
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