Who or What Is Godself?
I’d been intending to blog on this topic soon, pointing out Gerald McDermott’s excellent appendix on “God and the Masculine Pronoun,” appearing most recently in God’s Rivals: Why Has God Allowed Different Religions? (IVP Academic, 2007; as well in his Can Evangelicals Learn from World Religions? [IVP Academic, 2000]). Yesterday I received the January 2008 edition of First Things, and browsing the “While We’re At It” section, I noticed that Richard John Neuhaus has given two paragraphs to McDermott’s essay. So this blog now points you to McDermott and Neuhaus on McDermott.
This is a topic that is both theological and editorial, or theologico-editorial! As editors we occasionally encounter “Godself” being used in manuscripts, and sometimes by folks we think should know better. When I find it, my impulse is to strike it out, plug in “he” and move on. It’s burdensome to explain why, though my editorself feels compelled to do so. But I should just let McDermott do the explaining for me. Here’s just a taste of “why”:
“But when it is suggested that the masculine pronoun for God be excised because of women’s oppression by men, the cure proves worse than the disease. Avoidance of the masculine pronoun for God often forces us to use ungainly expressions like “Godself,” which is not only awkward but also theologically problematic because it undermines the notion that God is a person.” McDermott goes on to speak of the importance of maintaining the personhood of God when discussing religions that deny it.
Then, McDermott digs deeper:
It suggests that we can know the divine essence behind the biblical Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But Scripture tells us that we know the Father truly only through the Son (Mt 11:27; 1 Jn 2:23), and the creeds inform us that God is known first not as some amorphous essence but as Father. In other words, we don’t know anything about any god but the God who has revealed himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We don’t know a supposed divine essence behind the Father and Son without the name Father and Son. All we know is that God has given us his name as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And when God alone is invoked by Scripture, that God is the “Father.” Hence “Father” and “Son” are not simply metaphorical but literal names—indeed proper names—of the deity.
There’s more than this, including some helpful consideration of how we should understand the metaphors of our confession not atomistically but within the story in which they are given to us. It is the atomistic approach that misconstrues “Father” as oppressive to women.
But read it for yourself, as well as Neuhaus’s comments on page 62 of the latest First Things.
Posted by Dan Reid
at December 14, 2007 4:27 PM
Comments are closed for this entry.