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From: hedrick@topaz.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Gender in religion
Message-ID: <8176@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Sat, 3-Jan-87 05:36:15 EST
Article-I.D.: topaz.8176
Posted: Sat Jan  3 05:36:15 1987
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[I'm moving this from talk.religion.misc to mod.religion.christian
because discussions about the details of Trinitarian doctrine seem
a bit abstruse for a general group.  --clh]

I agree with Chris Redmond completely about degendering language used
in Christian worship.  The real problem is people who do a global
replace of "men" --> "persons".  If these things are carefully done by
people with reasonable judgement, there is no problem.  

However I am still not convinced that we have a good solution for the
Trinity.  Like Chris, I have noticed "Creator, Redeemer, and
Sustainer" being used a lot for this.  However I don't think that is a
solution.  Maybe it's just me, but it makes me cringe.  First, somehow
that set of words makes me think more of Brahma, Vichnu, and Shiva
than of the Christian Trinity.  But more seriously, I think this
language will tend to lead to an incorrect view of the Trinity.
Father, Son and Spirit point to the inherent nature of the Persons,
and their relationship to each other.  Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer
point to various actions with respect to the universe and its
creatures.  The problem is that it isn't really orthodox to
characterize the Persons of the Trinity by what they do.  Of course we
tend to think of the Father as creating, the Son as redeeming, and the
Spirit as sustaining.  But properly speaking, all three of these
actions are actions of the entire Trinity, and are carried out by all
of the Persons.  The three Persons are distinguished, not by
specialized roles with respect to the creation, but by their
relationship to each other.  I have no problem with using creator,
redeemer and sustainer to characterize God, and even now and then to
characterize the Trinity.  But if that language replaced the
traditional language, I think it would tend to lead to a modalist view
of the Trinity.