Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: nlt@romeo.cs.duke.edu (N. L. Tinkham) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: inclusive language text Message-ID: Date: 17 Jun 89 04:48:15 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Duke University CS Dept.; Durham, NC Lines: 55 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Chuck Hedrick writes: > First, let me say that there's one important issue on which I don't > have an answer. That is whether traditional language actually creates > barriers for women, outside a few extremists. That's not a question I > am equipped to answer. Perhaps others will be able to. I can't answer for all women, of course, but I can give some of my own thoughts. I have, not surprisingly, mixed feelings about traditional vs. inclusive language. The traditional *roles* assigned to people according to gender do create barriers for women, and I am happy to see Christianity at last beginning to remove some of these barriers. At the same time, I share Mr. Hedrick's concerns for aesthetics, doctrinal correctness, and faithful presentation of an artist's work as originally created. In some cases, language can be made inclusive very easily. The translation of the Nicene Creed in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer comes to mind: the earlier translation says that Jesus was incarnate "for us men and for our salvation", while the newer translation has "for us and for our salvation". Omitting the word "men" does make the rendering slightly less literal (the Greek has "anthropous"), but the meaning is still clear enough; it is, in fact, clearer than the older phrase in asserting that *all* humans are included. In other cases, inclusive language is awkward, as in the anthem Chuck mentioned (avoiding all use of pronouns) and the names for the Persons of the Trinity. Christianity does have a collection of masculine metaphors for God -- "Father", "King", "Bridegroom", for example; that is part of our inheritance. These do not necessarily have to become exclusive, as long as it is kept carefully in mind that they are metaphors, a few of many possible images for God: God is in some ways like a father or husband or king, but God is not male any more than he literally wears a gold crown. Occasionally, the "male" picture seems to be taken too seriously (as, for instance, in Jason Gabler's article), and at those times some feminine metaphors, or an increased use of gender-independent images, provide a welcome reminder that women too are in the image of God. Renaming the Persons of the Trinity is probably as hard as trying to translate the creeds into non-Platonic language, in that "Father" and "Son" have become technical terms for the first and second Persons. I suspect that these titles are too integral a part of the wording of Christian theology to be changed; as has been pointed out, the commonly-used alternative, "Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer" suggests modalism, and it may be difficult to find a wording that does not contain some heresy. Probably the best we can do on this is to leave the traditional wording of the threefold Name in place, much as we leave in place the creeds' now-puzzling language of "substance" and "essence", and supplement with explanations and other images. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'They are "the opposite sex" (though why Nancy Tinkham "opposite" I do not know; what is the nlt@cs.duke.edu the "neighbouring sex"?)' -D. L. Sayers {decvax,rutgers}!mcnc!duke!nlt