Tuesday 28 November 2017

"God is beyond human gender determination"

According to the head of the largest Swedish Christian church, God is beyond human gender determination which is the very reason why the Church of Sweden is urging its clergy to use gender-neutral language when referring to him or her. The Evangelical Lutheran church also asks its clergy to refrain from using terms like "Lord" (via). Not everybody appreciates these suggestions, a "mountain of criticism" followed since a move toward gender-neutral language would undermine the doctrine of the Trinity which refers to God as "the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit" (via).



"Theoleogically, for instance, we know that God is beyond our gender determinations, God is not human."
Archbishop Antje Jackelén





Related posting:
- He, She, God, and the Church of England: LINK



photographs of nuns having fun via

6 comments:

  1. Spinoza was ex-communicated by the Jews in Amsterdam for making much the same statement. He set out to prove mathematically the existence of god, which he successfully did, however neither the anthropomorphic version of it, nor the immortality of the soul came out so unscathed. I have always been curious about the pagan belief that the supreme being is male. Not because, as Archbishop Antje Jackelén states, "Theoleogically we know that God is beyond our gender determinations, God is not human", because his deduction in no way follows from his assertion: Giraffes are not human either, but that does not place them "beyond our gender determinations", what places the concept of an immortal being beyond gender determination is its immortality, which not only renders it unnecessary for it to reproduce, but makes the entire reason for sexual reproduction: mutation that allows living beings to adapt to a changing environment, unnecessary. An immortal need never mutate, because it is, ya know, immortal. So there is no need for gender at all. Therefore its having genitalia, which is what determines the sex of all beings, are not only unnecessary but ludicrous. It is the paucity of the human imagination that insists on sexualizing the deity that imposes the duality of he/she on immortals, such as angels and devils as well, but infinite beings have no need to recombine their DNA, which is what sex does, as they are already perfect. But religions aren't about Truth, they are about Faith: they must conform to what the paying public, which is at its heart, idolatrous, wants to believe, and they want god, as Spinoza's excommunication demonstrated, to be anthropomorphous, no matter how absurd or impossible that assertion may be.

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