Post by Admin on Mar 26, 2016 15:29:50 GMT
The below thread post is just one post of a discussion which has been occurring within the Deanic Conversations Yahoo e'group recently. There have been other exellent posts by other writers with points of view which differ from my own. My reasons for posting this here at this time are first I think it is a a good post about an important issue and two I want to really get some discussions occuring within this forum. Anyway please read, enjoy and respond if moved to do so.
Glenn
Father Kevin I have been thinking about the issue of metaphors, analogies, and similes since reading your response to my post. I think that perhaps my post was not as clear as it could have been. Let me clarify few things first. My opposition to what I called metaphoric theology was not based on a belief that metaphors do not exist in the Bible. I am well aware that they do. My opposition was more to the idea the words that we apply to God are simply humanly constructed ideas which humans have applied to God which have no relationship to who God really is. That is my perception of what I believe that Sally Mcfague'sthealogy says. Evidently other more Evangelical theologians feel the same. Now perhaps I am wrong, I have not been reading a lot of Christian theology over recent years, but I think that idea that most of the words we use to apply to God are purely human constructs is common now.
Now before getting to the biblical language itself I want to respond to a couple of your other statements. You said in all of yours years of ministry you never heard God being referred to a male. Well I have never heard that it was doctrine that God is a male either. Certainly I doubt that many Christians think that God is a biological male. However I have certainly heard Christians, my Mother being one before she died, argue that God is certainly a Father and has a masculine nature the reason being that this is how the Bible describes "him." I also remember a Pentecostal preacher stating many times that the Holy Spirit is a "perfect gentleman." I do not need to go into the context of his statements. So my position is no I am not aware of much explicit theology which defines as an article of faith that God is masculine in nature. It is simply the implicit assumptions of most traditional Christians that he is.
Now to the biblical words. God is certainly described in the Old Testament as a king and certainly as having many aspects of a king. He is of course also viewed at times in the Bible as a father, a man of war from a song of Moses, a judge, etc. I also understand very clearly that God is not literally a King, a father in exactly the same way that a biological man can be a father or a king. God is not a biological being. I guess therefore it can be argued that the idea that God is a father or king or Dea is a mother is metaphorical. What I would ask however is what is the meaning of these metaphors, what are their origins, what is the knowledge that they convey?
Are the metaphors of religious scriptures merely a human constructed poetic images which humans sometimes apply to an unknown God or can it be argued that metaphors to a degree reveal of the nature of the supreme being to which they apply? Thus while God may not be a king in the purely human sense because "he" is not a biological human, God can be a king in a divine sense because many of the most important aspects of kingship relate to God. A human king executes the laws and promotes justice, Kings provide the chief leadership functions in a society, They hold the greatest power in the land and hold the place of greatest honor and glory. Because of all of these attributes human beings owe their full allegiance to righteous kings. Of course in reality very few kings ever came close to having all of these characteristics. But these were the ideal quality of a medieval king or even of an ancient Israelite king. And clearly these qualities were also seen by the Biblical writers as being properly those of Yahweh. Thus Yahweh was a divine king as opposed of course to being merely a human king. So was the application of kingship to Yahweh merely a metaphor that really does not say anything beyond human thoughts and projections or did this metaphor say something very meaningful about the reality of Yahweh? I would say the later.
And I would say that many other of the words which the Bible applies to Yahweh are equally as meaningful including those which apply a masculine gender role to God. Now of course it can be properly argued that none of the biblical terms can be said in any way to characterize or define the totality of God. Is God only a king? Of course not? Is God only love? Well from my own experience of human love I would say that God is more than love or any of other of her aspects. Can God be of the feminine gender as well of masculine gender? Well obviously I think so. And certainly many traditions have seen the highest level of the divine as being feminine. And I do not think that all of these traditions are only human attempts of conceptualize the Divine. If I thought that was all that these "metaphors" are then I do not see how I would have any basis of hope in Thea at all.
I guess that the bottom line for me is that I have to believe that my worship of a personal God the Queen has a real basis in her reality. If for me as a Deanic her Queen-ship or role or as Lady is only the result of a linguistic grammar circumstance or are words that can be simply interchanged by impersonal nouns, pronouns or even masculine terms because well of course God is not really these things then I must be a fool in deed. That is why the question is so important to me. Now I will tell you something. I do not believe that the Biblical God is an entirety different God from Dea. I see the Biblical qualities of justice, mercy, power, love, righteousness as being divine qualities and sometimes as human qualities. They are not gender based at all as you have already stated. They are every bit those of Dea as they are of Yahweh. Therefore Dea is present in the Bible as Sophia but in general she is hidden. If the Godhead is envisioned as great stone of beauty and power the God of the Bible at his best is the masculine half which could be seen by the people of Israel. Thus Yahweh can be seen as really God. But the feminine half was also there but generally hidden and only revealed irregularly and partially. Of course in other cultures such as ancient Egypt within goddesses such as Isis she was revealed much more fully. Anyway these are some of my beliefs. Again thank you for your thoughts.
Glenn
Father Kevin I have been thinking about the issue of metaphors, analogies, and similes since reading your response to my post. I think that perhaps my post was not as clear as it could have been. Let me clarify few things first. My opposition to what I called metaphoric theology was not based on a belief that metaphors do not exist in the Bible. I am well aware that they do. My opposition was more to the idea the words that we apply to God are simply humanly constructed ideas which humans have applied to God which have no relationship to who God really is. That is my perception of what I believe that Sally Mcfague'sthealogy says. Evidently other more Evangelical theologians feel the same. Now perhaps I am wrong, I have not been reading a lot of Christian theology over recent years, but I think that idea that most of the words we use to apply to God are purely human constructs is common now.
Now before getting to the biblical language itself I want to respond to a couple of your other statements. You said in all of yours years of ministry you never heard God being referred to a male. Well I have never heard that it was doctrine that God is a male either. Certainly I doubt that many Christians think that God is a biological male. However I have certainly heard Christians, my Mother being one before she died, argue that God is certainly a Father and has a masculine nature the reason being that this is how the Bible describes "him." I also remember a Pentecostal preacher stating many times that the Holy Spirit is a "perfect gentleman." I do not need to go into the context of his statements. So my position is no I am not aware of much explicit theology which defines as an article of faith that God is masculine in nature. It is simply the implicit assumptions of most traditional Christians that he is.
Now to the biblical words. God is certainly described in the Old Testament as a king and certainly as having many aspects of a king. He is of course also viewed at times in the Bible as a father, a man of war from a song of Moses, a judge, etc. I also understand very clearly that God is not literally a King, a father in exactly the same way that a biological man can be a father or a king. God is not a biological being. I guess therefore it can be argued that the idea that God is a father or king or Dea is a mother is metaphorical. What I would ask however is what is the meaning of these metaphors, what are their origins, what is the knowledge that they convey?
Are the metaphors of religious scriptures merely a human constructed poetic images which humans sometimes apply to an unknown God or can it be argued that metaphors to a degree reveal of the nature of the supreme being to which they apply? Thus while God may not be a king in the purely human sense because "he" is not a biological human, God can be a king in a divine sense because many of the most important aspects of kingship relate to God. A human king executes the laws and promotes justice, Kings provide the chief leadership functions in a society, They hold the greatest power in the land and hold the place of greatest honor and glory. Because of all of these attributes human beings owe their full allegiance to righteous kings. Of course in reality very few kings ever came close to having all of these characteristics. But these were the ideal quality of a medieval king or even of an ancient Israelite king. And clearly these qualities were also seen by the Biblical writers as being properly those of Yahweh. Thus Yahweh was a divine king as opposed of course to being merely a human king. So was the application of kingship to Yahweh merely a metaphor that really does not say anything beyond human thoughts and projections or did this metaphor say something very meaningful about the reality of Yahweh? I would say the later.
And I would say that many other of the words which the Bible applies to Yahweh are equally as meaningful including those which apply a masculine gender role to God. Now of course it can be properly argued that none of the biblical terms can be said in any way to characterize or define the totality of God. Is God only a king? Of course not? Is God only love? Well from my own experience of human love I would say that God is more than love or any of other of her aspects. Can God be of the feminine gender as well of masculine gender? Well obviously I think so. And certainly many traditions have seen the highest level of the divine as being feminine. And I do not think that all of these traditions are only human attempts of conceptualize the Divine. If I thought that was all that these "metaphors" are then I do not see how I would have any basis of hope in Thea at all.
I guess that the bottom line for me is that I have to believe that my worship of a personal God the Queen has a real basis in her reality. If for me as a Deanic her Queen-ship or role or as Lady is only the result of a linguistic grammar circumstance or are words that can be simply interchanged by impersonal nouns, pronouns or even masculine terms because well of course God is not really these things then I must be a fool in deed. That is why the question is so important to me. Now I will tell you something. I do not believe that the Biblical God is an entirety different God from Dea. I see the Biblical qualities of justice, mercy, power, love, righteousness as being divine qualities and sometimes as human qualities. They are not gender based at all as you have already stated. They are every bit those of Dea as they are of Yahweh. Therefore Dea is present in the Bible as Sophia but in general she is hidden. If the Godhead is envisioned as great stone of beauty and power the God of the Bible at his best is the masculine half which could be seen by the people of Israel. Thus Yahweh can be seen as really God. But the feminine half was also there but generally hidden and only revealed irregularly and partially. Of course in other cultures such as ancient Egypt within goddesses such as Isis she was revealed much more fully. Anyway these are some of my beliefs. Again thank you for your thoughts.
