Today our friends in the Presbyterians moved to "receive" a paper allowing new spinoffs of how to express "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost" saying, "One reason is that language limited to the Father and Son 'has been used to support the idea that God is male and that men are superior to women'" View Here.
Here are some of the alternative ways that they have proposed a rephrase:
Mother, Child and Womb
Rock, Redeemer, Friend
Lover, Beloved, Love
Creator, Savior, Sanctifier
King of Glory, Prince of Peace, Spirit of Love
My personal favorite is the top one...it definitely doesn't make a vast turning of the tables or promote any sort of feminist agenda. Now the thing about this that Christians should have their ears perked to the most is, obviously, the Bible. What does the Bible say about these three? Well you could always turn to Jesus blatant use of Father in John 17,
"Father the hour has come..." (Vs1)
"Now, Father, glorify me..." (Vs5)
"Holy Father, keep them..." (Vs11)
"even as you, Father, are in me..." (Vs21)
"Father, I desire that they also..." (Vs24)
"O righteous Father, although the world..." (Vs25)
Strangely enough note male sonship language is used in the same passage,
"glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you" (Vs1)
Now this is strange that they would blatantly change a 2000 year tradition of not only people calling Jesus, Son, and calling God, Father but Jesus calling God "Father" and God calling Jesus "Son". Especially if it was indeed Jesus the Son of God who was Infinite Eternal Almighty Creator God and who in this passage and many, many, others seems to find it fitting to use the title Father and his own title Son. If Jesus called God, "Father" and even told us to pray, "Our Father..." to God why would some feminists in a fairly respectful denomination find the need to change his name. I would say that it is also interesting to note that the Greek word, "MAY - ter" is never once used of God but the word "PAH - ter" is used some 300 times and yes the Greek does matter but that is Textual Criticism not Trinity Name Change.
What a strange world this is we live in. Indeed, when approaching anyone you don't ever decide, "This person's gender is a threat to me so I will decide that He is really a She." If you walked up to president Bush and said, "Mrs. Bush how good to see you" and he saw that you were quite bent on making sure you thought he was a woman you would probably never meet him again or recieve a very happy anything from anyone. In fact, people would likely call you quite crazy. So lets start calling things what they are instead of changing their names to suit our purposes.
That said, we must pray for the church in America. The day has arrived and the hour is far passed when people started deciding to change a person's name, indeed the creator of the universes name, just because His gender is a threat to them. We must act in love, and it is not loving to let people walk around thinking it is OK or in any way permissable to call God "Mother" and Jesus "Womb". Stand for truth brothers. Stand for truth sisters. Stand for truth church.
27 October 2006
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