The Ordination of Women

[peter_speckhard]

Peter writes:
God the Father begets, which is a uniquely masculine activity.

I respond:
  

"Born of the Virgin Mary" is a miracle. "Born of the Virgin Joseph" is an absurdity.

[Donald_Kirchner]

Don, male-ness-masculinity in the Godhead.  Must this not contain physicality?  Beyond Jesus, into the Godhead?  Mine are not school-kid comments, friend.  They are the extension of moving male physicality into the Godhead - the "deep penetrating structures of the universe," so to speak.  Totemic.  You are creating God in your own image if you place masculine physicality into the essence of the Godhead.  If not physicality, then what do you mean?  I would take it then you mean what is called metaphor - this is how we speak of God - as Father. 

Ask it another way, maybe - is it important that the terms used as metaphors for God are primarily masculine?  That's a valid question. 

That the essence or ontology of the Godhead is masculine, that's the kind of thinking that resulted in the killing of physically imperfect children through the centuries - if the image of God is connected to physicality and one is physically dramatically imperfect, they are a) cursed b) not able to be connected to God, whose image is not righteousness but also physical perfection.  Get rid of them.  "He became sin who knew no sin, that in him we might become the righteousness of God."  Not great physical specimens.  What troubles me is that you would give credence to this badly flawed theological argumentation because of your pre-set which is against cultural feminism.
The answer you have chosen is cultural masculinism. 

Dave Benke

President Benke,

I simply do not understand why you do this.

I thought I was very clear about Rottmann's presentation. I wrote:

"I posted it because I found it intriguing. Certainly Pr. Rottmann called it an exploratory essay, throwing things out there for discussion."

I said neither "aye" nor "nay" to his assertions but, rather, suggested that he was pushing the envelope. Yet you now ascribe all of his argument to me and even tell me that I take a position which I have taken because of some "pre-set."

All I did was ask you to verify what you said. I asked:

"On the other hand...

'...the metaphor of God as Father...

That's it? Metaphor?"

And your answer, after the ridicule and ascribing to me a position that results in killing imperfect children, is...

a false dichotomy.  Metaphor or physicality.  You reject the latter, so we must conclude that you hold that God as Father is only metaphor, for you give us no other choice.

FWIW, I'll go with Pr. Speckhard's comments, for I believe that God as Father being a metaphor only is serious error.

[Charles_Austin]

Just seems to me that after Eden any "begetting" going on was not solely a masculine activity, except perhaps for some of those organisms that are able to be transexual or reproduce in other non-binary non-gender ways.

[Dave Benke]

Peter, of Mary - "what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit," Matt. 1:20.  Don, "So God created man in his image, in the image of God He created him, male and female he created them."  Genesis 1:27. 

Don, you posted the article.  I don't find it intriguing at all. 

Dave Benke

[ptmccain]

Genesis 1:27 is not the only text we have on the subject of the Creator's ordering of his creation, as St. Paul makes clear in His epistles.

And therein is a point that some do not wish to account for, or worse yet, choose simply to ignore.

[revjagow]

FWIW, backtracking on this thread, I thought that Marie wrote that Christ's authority did not stem from His maleness (according to His human nature) but according to His divinity (sitting at the right hand of God).  Obviously, Christ is both at the same time, but different attributes of Christ are communicated according to His two natures.  If He were not human, then He could not have died.  If He were not divine, He could not reign at God's right hand.  There is a proper way to divide Christ's nature as we come to understand this mystery, and, obviously, if we slip too far in emphasizing one over the other, then we tiptoe over the line to heresy. 

[Incidentially, didn't Christweild some "male" authority with His family by moving them all to Capernaum.  It' seems He is in charge of His mother and sister's well being]

I'm just posting this out of a concern for fairness.  I have been following the meaty dialog here and would like to see it kept at the high level it was at.  Also, pondering the two natures of Christ is related to the mysteries of the incarnation we are all pondering now, yes?

Many blessings in your final Christmas preparations!

[Donald_Kirchner]

Don, you posted the article.  I don't find it intriguing at all.  

Dave Benke

President Benke,

Given that you believe that God as Father is only metaphor I can understand that. Maybe you're related to this guy too.

http://interact.stltoday.com/blogzone/civil-religion/god/2010/01/god-the-father-the-perfect-metaphor/  

The irony, however, is that you think that God as male is "cultural masculinism" which has led to killing imperfect children, when the killing of imperfect children is the result of quite the opposite cultural trait and view.

I believe in God the Father Almighty who created me...and I have been baptized in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Much more than mere metaphor.

Don Kirchner

[peter_speckhard]

Peter, of Mary - "what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit," Matt. 1:20. 

Not following you. Note the passive. Mary conceived, which is a different thing than begetting. Begetting is a masculine function, conceiving is a feminine function. They are not interchangeable activities, nor are the words merely masculine and feminine forms of the same thing, like actress and actor. You have never conceived a child, nor has your wife ever begotten one, not because it is a biological impossibility but because it is a logical contradiction. That's why I wrote that "Born of the Virgin Mary" is a miracle, because the biologically impossible happened. "Born of the Virgin Joseph" is an absurdity, a logical contradiction, like a God making a rock so big that God can't lift it.

[Matt Staneck]

Scripture is ripe with metaphors.  And I don't think metaphor's are taken in a "just" or "only" fashion as though they were symbolism only, or allegorical, and/or not real. 

Jesus is the Lamb of God.  This is a metaphor.  He is really the lamb of God who takes the way the sin of the world, but he is fully, 100% human.  So Jesus in that sense is not a lamb (to the current thread point) in a physical manner.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd.  As we are the sheep, (another metaphor that is both true yet we're not physically sheep) Jesus is our shepherd.  Is Jesus really a shepherd? Yes.  Is he a shepherd like those keeping watch by night? No.  He was a carpenter.  Metaphors.

I could go on but it would belabor a point and probably annoy a few people.  So God is Father?  Yes.  God the Father is male as in human male with the physicality of one?  No.  God is Spirit.

Metaphors are a beautiful thing and they carry the entirety of Holy Scripture.  This does not mean they are simple allegories or not true, quite the opposite.  We have metaphors because God is wholly other and has elected to communicate to us in these means. 

Theology is the art of distinction.

M. Staneck

[Donald_Kirchner]

Words mean things. So let us make some distinctions.

A metaphor is figurative speech, "in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them." And yes, metaphors can be beautiful things.

So let us take one of those beautiful metaphors- Christ the Lamb. But the Son is not a metaphor only.

President Benke has suggested that God as Father is metaphor only.  I find this to be serious error.

[Brian Stoffregen]

Peter writes:
God the Father begets, which is a uniquely masculine activity.

I respond:
  

"Born of the Virgin Mary" is a miracle. "Born of the Virgin Joseph" is an absurdity.

Not quite. γεννάω is used of both males and females in the procreation act. It is usually translated differently if it is about the male role ("beget") or the female role ("give birth"). Do we not imply that that the regenerated have been "born from above" or "born from God"? There are also OT passages where God is pictured as giving birth to Israel.

[Scott6]

I would say that the Father is the proper name of the first person of the Trinity.  It is not a metaphor but rather, again, a name indicating whom is being referenced.

God the Father is beyond any human conceptions of fatherhood.  So what it means for the first person to be named "Father" can only be understood analogically, which is to say, among other things, that the Father is not male in the same way humans are male.  Perhaps this is where the language of "metaphor" is better used.

[Brian Stoffregen]

President Benke has suggested that God as Father is metaphor only.  I find this to be serious error.

What about the images of God as mother? Are they metaphors or something else?


Numbers 11:12-13 —
Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth? Why do you tell me to carry them in my arms, as a nurse carries an infant, to the land you promised on oath to their ancestors? Where can I get meat for all these people? They keep wailing to me, 'Give us meat to eat!'

Deuteronomy 32:18 —
You deserted the Rock, who bore you;
   you forgot the God who gave you birth.

Job 38:28-30 —
Does the rain have a father?
   Who fathers the drops of dew?
From whose womb comes the ice?
   Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens
when the waters become hard as stone,

It seems that it is biblical to talk about God having a womb. Do we mean that literally or metaphorically?

If God is male, then can we talk about God having the male genitalia. If we do, are we speaking literally or metaphorically? If metaphorically, then it seems that the image of God as male/Father must be a metaphor.

[Dave Benke]

Thanks, Scott - well put in all six of the sentences you wrote.  All reinforce the way the Greek fathers worked this through lo those many centuries ago.  

Dave Benke

[BrotherBoris]

President Benke has suggested that God as Father is metaphor only.  I find this to be serious error.

What about the images of God as mother? Are they metaphors or something else?


Numbers 11:12-13 —
Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth? Why do you tell me to carry them in my arms, as a nurse carries an infant, to the land you promised on oath to their ancestors? Where can I get meat for all these people? They keep wailing to me, 'Give us meat to eat!'

Deuteronomy 32:18 —
You deserted the Rock, who bore you;
   you forgot the God who gave you birth.

Job 38:28-30 —
Does the rain have a father?
   Who fathers the drops of dew?
From whose womb comes the ice?
   Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens
when the waters become hard as stone,

It seems that it is biblical to talk about God having a womb. Do we mean that literally or metaphorically?

If God is male, then can we talk about God having the male genitalia. If we do, are we speaking literally or metaphorically? If metaphorically, then it seems that the image of God as male/Father must be a metaphor.

[/b]



God DOES have male genitalia. That's why God was circumcised on the eight day after His birth.  I realize this is (pardon the pun) rather a 'foreskin in the face' to feminist theology and "HerChurch" theology, but not so long ago the Lutheran Church used to sing:

O blessed day when first was poured
The blood of our redeeming Lord!
O blessed day when Christ began
His saving work for sinful man!
     The Lutheran Hymnal (1941), number 115 verse 1.

Boris