God’s Preferred Pronoun

Telling the truth about things always makes you liable to get into trouble with certain people. The famous Greek myth of Cassandra, like so much of the world of myth, presents the eternal paradox that the more genuine a prophet is, the more they will tend to be cursed to have no one believe them. In one story, the god Apollo, who had given to Cassandra the gift of prophecy in exchange for her love, which she later withheld, cursed her by spitting in her mouth. The bitterness of such an action is similar to the experiences of the prophets Ezekiel and John, who were urged to eat the scroll of God’s decrees, which were sweet to the taste, but turned the stomach. Just like Cassandra in myth, many of the prophets were considered madmen. This slander also was applied to Our Lord, whom alternatively called a glutton, a drunkard, or even possessed by devils. And while Cassandra was said to be condemned to helplessly watch the destruction of her own city of Troy, the immense tenderness and pity in the heart of Our Lord can be found in his famous words to the city of Jerusalem, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who have been sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling!” (Matthew 23:37)

Prophets seem to proliferate, by God’s gracious gift, in times and in places which are most deranged. This, like most of God’s decrees, should both sober us as much as it consoles. And today, it seems, when even our very language has become degraded, almost anyone, it seems, can take up the mantle of prophecy in defense of God’s created order, which in today’s world is under unprecedented attack. There are many people, especially in the journalistic world with little knowledge of history, who love to use the word “unprecedented” when what they really mean is “unrecalled”, but in this particular time, the adjective is appropriate. The flat out denial of some of the most foundational data of biology is absolutely confounding, far in excess of what even the most outlandish of Ovid’s mythologies could conjure up. We are subjected to the spectacle that being able to insist on calling a biological male a “he” is considered an intolerable hatred which should be punished with ostracism, ridicule, and even physical violence if necessary. On the other hand, in the face of such intolerance, we are being taught more aggressively by our corporate and educational masters that we ‘must’ be willing to call anyone by whatever pronoun they so choose, no matter what the facts of their biological sex may be. In other words, we too must be willing to make acts of faith. For with transgenderism, all things are possible.

I find this shift by cultural liberals toward the total relativization of language regarding pronouns particularly risible, because it is exactly those theological liberals who have for decades insisted that we discard ‘gendered language’ in regard to the Godhead. Part of their argument is, admittedly, sound; God in his essence has no gender, because he is spirit. Certain modes of expression in the Old and New Testaments are a manifestation of the culture and language from which they emerged. God also at times in the prophets has described himself in ‘feminine’ terms, especially in speaking in the tender language of motherhood. Yet none of these can negate the fact that in the Scriptures, God does have a preferred pronoun, and it is he/him. In that same vein, the Church has a preferred pronoun, and that is she/her. As Benedict XVI famously noted, the cultures and languages which are found in the Old and New Testament are, in a very real way, an essential part of the Gospel message. Theological liberals were very fond of efforts to “dehellenize” the Scriptures, usually because such influences from Greek culture were said to be interpolations on the authentic, Jewish prophetic tradition. What is so supremely ironic about this attempt is that it is the philosophical power of classical Hellenism that helped the Patristic commentators, who are far more sophisticated than their critics give them credit for, understand the Scriptures in a rigorous and consistent way. The philosophical legacy of Hellenism helped immensely in understanding the anthropomorphisms of the Old Testament, and so helped us to arrive at more coherent conclusions regarding the meaning of the texts.

Many philosophers, theologians and religious psychologists have observed that it seems to be a peculiar feature of monotheistic religions, even non-Abrahamic ones, that their deities should use the masculine pronoun in their revelations to humanity. For instance, even Ahura Mazda in Zoroastrianism, or Amun-Ra as the “henotheistic” chief God of ancient Egypt, are depicted as masculine. There are many theories as to why this is so. Some believe it is because a deity which chooses to use gendered masculine language to communicate with humanity must do so because paternity in human biology is more akin to divine transcendence and immanence than maternity. For example, when a woman has a child, that child very much shares in the mother’s body, while being distinct from it. With paternity, the Father truly does give life to the child, but the act of conception does not imply some sort of sharing of nature. In this, ‘creative paternalism’ (to utilize a neologism) denotes true deism or theism, rather than pantheism or some sort of creation through emanation, as is the case in a Gnostic demiurge or some sort of cosmic ‘oversoul’. More examples could be furnished to illustrate this, but suffice it to say that God’s use of gendered language is not an ornament of his revelation, but is a feature of the same.

No matter what God’s purpose in utilizing gendered language in his regard may be, the fact remains that this cannot be explained away or replaced, if we are taking the data of Divine Revelation seriously. As a matter of fact, by neutering God, we may be truly missing out on something which he wishes to reveal about ourselves, because we are made in his image. Every time the nature of God is obscured, humanity forgets itself. What is so sadly ironic about today’s insistence that we honor everyone’s self-identification and pronoun use is that many decided not to honor God’s, and as a result, we have become more blind in regard to self-evident, empirical realities like biological sex. God is the founder of all nature, and although transgenderists may point out hermaphroditism and asexual reproduction in nature, the fact remains that that is not our nature, and if by some genetic abnormality such a thing does occur, such an exception does not negate the rule.

Theological and philosophical modernism is almost always a prelude to its adoption by the general culture. With transgenderism, the triumph of nominalism continues apace, and I fear we have not seen the conclusion of this grotesque and horrifying danse macabre. But nowadays, if I hear one more time “May the Lord accept the sacrifice of your hands…for our good and the good of God’s holy Church”, I wonder if the adamant refusal to use God’s preferred pronoun would be a theological hate crime? Is it one more instance of our society’s confirmed theophobia? Poor theophobes: instead of fearing God according to his criteria, they loathe him according to theirs. Is it any marvel that in only fifty years, we have gone from abolishing God, to abolishing man? The primary difference between the theologically orthodox and the theologically progressive is that the former view God and his self-revelation as something authoritative to which we must conform our lives, minds and conduct. The latter views revelation as secondary to the faulty wisdom of fallen men and women, and so we try to conform his words to our own depravity. It never works.