Renaming God - Part II

I was surprised that fewer people commented on the post "Renaming God" than the post about worship and the Fourth of July.

None the less, I really loved these two quotes:

"All metaphors regarding God outside the canonical heritage of the church--however useful they may be or seem--must remain secondary to scriptural understanding of God's self-revelation to humanity." ---Stresspenguin

"I believe as pastors we need to be very cognizant and empathetic towards people's images of God that have been shaped by their experiences, but I also believe we can present to these and others a loving, redemptive God as Father." ---Anonymous

I may have been a little harsh (and maybe not), but here is what I wrote in the unedited version of my credo (it got cut in order to get below the 9,000 word count maximum):

"Finally, I am obligated to say a word about language; specifically language referring to God. As has already been seen, there is no reluctance on my part in using the pronoun ‘him’ for God. I want to be clear that this is not a decision that was arrived at flippantly or haphazardly. I desire nothing more than to stand in solidarity with all of my brothers and sisters in Christ. I have witnessed the oppression that those who are different from me have experienced and I have heard the cries of lament that have come from communities of women that have for far too long been marginalized or discounted all together. I am all for a hermeneutic of retrieval that seeks to rediscover these voices that have been drowned out by the monotonous intellectual gluttony and self-serving power mongering that has sadly plagued Western theology throughout its history, but I do not believe that this includes using the gender neuter or feminine forms of pronouns for God to accomplish this. On this point I stand in the trenches with Clark Pinnock; although it must be noted that I have appropriated Pinnock’s argument and applied it not just to the Holy Spirit, but to all persons of the Trinity. I believe that masculine, feminine and neutral forms of address for God are all problematic. The masculine forms suggest perpetuating injustice and oppression towards women, the neutered forms reduce the personhood of the members of the Trinity to nothing more than things, and the feminine forms may take away from the masculine and gender neutral nuances and may endanger a strictly feminine view of a member of the Trinity or the Trinity as a whole. As Pinnock concluded, to change to a neutered or feminine pronoun appears to cause more problems than it would solve.[1] In consideration of all of this, I have opted for the continued use of the masculine pronoun in referring to all persons of the Holy Trinity."

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[1] Clark H. Pinnock, Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 15-17.

Obviously, I am on the side of orthodoxy and tradition...that is to say, maintaining the language and ways that God has revealed himself to us in history. This is not, however, a license to perpetuate or induce oppression (patriarchy or otherwise). It seems to me that the Scriptures are quite clear about what characterizes terms such as Father and Son; and often these characterizations run contrary to our earthly experience or understanding. So as Penny mentioned, we must present these in their entirety---gracefully and lovingly. Only then can we be truly and radically altered by their message and meaning for our faith and our lives.