Saturday, April 06, 2019

God and gender

"Progressive Christians" object to using masculine pronouns for God. They resort to awkward neologisms like "Godself". The justification is that God isn't male. God is a discarnate spirit. 

Ironically, this debate has been overtaken by transgenderism. "Progressive Christians" champion the cause of transgenderism, yet that detaches gender from biology, so if they wish to be consistent, they must reverse their position on masculine pronouns for God.

But bracketing their intellectual schizophrenia, what about the original argument? Things that are biologically sexless can still be gendered. Take a Jane Austen novel (or Virginia Wolf novel, or short stories by Eudora Welty). The novel is not a female body. It doesn't have female chromosomes, hormones, or sexual anatomy. A Jane Austen novel is an inanimate object. 

And yet a Jane Austen novel is unmistakably feminine. Her novels are exemplifications of a feminine outlook. They reflect a feminine viewpoint.

The converse is true with respect to the Iliad or The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Even if these writings were anonymous, and we knew nothing about the authors over and above the writing itself, we can tell that a Jane Austen novel is written by a woman while the Iliad or The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is written by a man. In works like these, the reader sees the world through the eyes of a man or woman, even though the book itself has no biological sex. 

So gender is more abstract than sexual biology. Sexual biology and psychology are concrete exemplifications of those abstract properties. 

3 comments:

  1. You may want to check this out. Some guys are fighting back.

    See also: https://twitter.com/TitaniaMcGrath

    ReplyDelete
  2. // Ironically, this debate has been overtaken by transgenderism. "Progressive Christians" champion the cause of transgenderism, yet that detaches gender from biology, so if they wish to be consistent, they must reverse their position on masculine pronouns for God.//

    I'm not sure what you're saying here, but if your saying that Progressive Christians need to refer to God by His preferred gender, since they believe gender is not necessarily tied to ontology, then THAT'S IRONICALLY BRILLIANT!!!

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  3. Given the current climate, this misgendering of God, going against His explicit preferences regarding gender and pronouns, constitutes a hate crime. For the sake of consistency this brazen misgendering needs to be punished and the hateful bigots responsible brought to book.

    ReplyDelete