Tea at Trianon: The Problem with a ‘Gender-neutral’ God

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, February 25, 2023

The Problem with a ‘Gender-neutral’ God

"This is Antichrist, who denieth the Father, and the Son." (1 John 2:22) From The Catholic Herald:

The Church of England Bishops, we are told, are going to debate whether God should be gender neutral, and thus not referred to as “He” or “father”. Among items on the agenda within the debate is the proposal to remove the word “father” from the Lord’s Prayer, for example.

How much do these CofE bishops have to scrape away before they finally see what is true? How deep into manure must they descend before the “gender-neutral” caregivers house doesn’t look so bad after all? How long will it take for them to realise that there are some things that simply are not up for debate? Even Descartes got there in the end.

They appear to be trying to find language that they believe more accurately describes the mystery that is God, and which will, at the same time, appease all those who don’t identify as “he”. But this fails to understand why we use the language that we do. It’s not so that we can accurately describe who God is, but so that we can understand and describe who God is to us. It’s a relational description and the “He-ness” matters.

God is not “He” to us because of the oppressive patriarchy. His masculinity does not need to be rooted out and eradicated by grievance archaeologists. God’s “he-ness” is not something decided upon and rubber-stamped at a synod, like the horse designed by a committee. It is something revealed. Something as deliberate, distinctive and all-pervasive in scripture as the “He-ness” of God is no mere accident. (Read more.)