Resistance against God as He

In the Dutch newspaper ‘Trouw’ (12-02-21), there was an article under the headline ‘resistance against God as He persists’. Some quotes…

The Bible Society is being asked not to refer to God with ‘He’, capitalized, in the new translation. That would be a ‘slap in the face’ for women.
(…)
In an open letter, the Ecumenical Women’s Synod and the Dutch branch of a European network of female religion researchers ask the Bible Society to reconsider the choice for the capital letter in the new version of the Bible translation, the NBV21. The most recent translation of the Bible dates from 2004. In that translation, the traditional ‘He’ from previous translations was changed to ‘he’.

That should remain so, both networks of theologians and academics believe. Because with the return to the capital letter for God, the NBV21, in their opinion, strengthens the patriarchal image of God.
(…)
They also find it disappointing in this context that the new translation continues to write ‘LORD’, as was the case in the 2004 version. They would also prefer fewer or no capital letters there.

More generally, they have difficulty with a masculine image of God. They refer to the feminist theologian Mary Daly. She wrote in 1973: ‘If God is masculine, then the masculine is God’. ‘That insight has not lost any validity’, according to the Dutch theological networks.

GOD is masculine

The difficulty these theologians express is the difficulty they have with the Bible itself. Because it is unmistakable that the pronouns for GOD in both Hebrew and Greek are masculine. GOD is addressed as He and Him. Certainly, without distinction between capital letters and lowercase letters for the simple reason that everything is written in capital letters. But GOD is by definition referred to in the masculine. Also, the word for ‘GOD’ (elohiem, theos) is masculine. It is not ‘goddess’. But it also appears from other terms with which He is addressed. Think of the frequent Lord or Father.

a slap in the face

Anyone who translates Scripture and thus wants to do justice to the original cannot avoid rendering these masculine designations. What the above-mentioned theologians propose, therefore, has nothing to do with translation. It is manipulating the Bible text and adapting it to the prevailing zeitgeist. It is a slap in the face of the Author of Scripture.

much more than biology

GOD may not be masculine. Professor of ecclesiastical law Rik Torfs argued this as follows:

Sexuality cannot be attributed to God. God is not human; God is greater than we can imagine. I do not immediately consider sex to be a characteristic of God.

Let us examine this reasoning more closely. GOD is indeed not human and far exceeds our creaturely categories. That is true. But it is not true that we humans attribute sexuality to GOD. Scripture itself does that. What we must also not forget is that male and female are certainly not the same as masculine and feminine. Male and female is a biological difference; masculine and feminine goes much higher and is also much broader. It refers respectively to the giving and receiving within a relationship. The ruling (>lord!) or leading and the subordinate.

Thus, in the Hebrew Bible, ‘earth’ (adamah) is feminine. GOD (elohiem, masculine) took man from the earth (Gen.2:7). As from ‘mother earth’. The earth receives light and water from above. It also receives and carries seed to bear fruit (Gen.1:11). That receiving and fruit-bearing is typically feminine.

grammatical gender

We also see this phenomenon reflected in many languages where grammatical gender plays a significant role. In most European languages, the sun is masculine and the moon feminine. The logic behind this is that the sun is masculine (ruling, leading) because it gives light, the moon receives light. Traditionally, the moon has been regarded as a feminine emblem, partly because it undergoes the same monthly cycle. Incidentally, the grammatical gender distinction is flexible and relative, since the moon, in relation to the earth, is actually masculine—because it gives light to the earth. Could that be the reason why the moon is masculine in German (Mond)?

Associative

What matters to me is that masculinity and femininity are not primarily a matter of biology. Not only linguists know this; in technology, too, one often speaks of male and female components. A plug, for example, is male, and the socket is female, and so on. The association is simple, intuitive, and requires no explanation.

Creator & Creation

Why is GOD masculine? Primarily because He is the Creator! Indeed, ‘Creator’ is a masculine term. He is the first—the origin from which creation proceeds. Just as man came first, and then (and from him) the woman (1 Cor. 11:8; 1 Tim. 2:13). But then again, the aforementioned theologians likely do not believe that either.

The word for ‘creation’ is feminine. Creation is also compared to a pregnant woman (Rom. 8:22), for the Creator has conceived new life in her. She is ‘expecting,’ and we await the ‘deliverance’—again, a gynecological term.

The original fatherhood

The difference between masculine and feminine can be traced back to the difference between Creator and creation. We may be inclined to think that a concept like ‘fatherhood’ is a metaphor we project onto God. As in: we know earthly fathers, and to clarify who GOD is for us, we therefore call Him Father. As if GOD’s fatherhood is named after our human experience of fatherhood. But according to the Bible, it is exactly the other way around! Paul speaks of…

… the Father, from whom every fatherhood in the heavens and on earth is named…
-Ephesians 3:15 (CLNT)

Read carefully what is stated here. The fatherhood of GOD is the original, and the fatherhood we know on earth is named after it. Biological fatherhood is an expression and copy of GOD as Creator-Father. He is the patri-arch, the primal-Father. He who cares for and guarantees all his creation.

You can’t see it in the dark…

In Romans 1, Paul argues that where GOD as Creator is no longer known and honored, people will also no longer see the difference between masculine and feminine (Rom.1:26-28). Both concepts are linked, like a wagon to a locomotive. Where the view of GOD the Creator disappears, it becomes dark in the foolish heart of man (Rom.1:19-21). Then you can no longer see the differences. Where the Creator has been reasoned away (evolutionism!), the true, spiritual, and typological meaning of the difference between male and female is lost.

The ideology of feminism, the gay movement, transgenderism, LGBT, etc., are all fruits of the same tree. With feminist theology as the low point. That is indeed (as the headline in ‘Trouw’ rightly says) nothing other than resistance against GOD and the denial of Him.

Delen: