MetaCatholic

I heard again today someone referring to the possibility of speaking about the Holy Spirit as feminine. Now at one level I have no problems with referring to our Creator as the one who mothers us, or to God’s good self by the pronoun “she”, although I think that our traditional Christian readings of scripture mean that this will of necessity always be contextual, occasional, and supplementary to the more common use of masculine pronouns.

My objection is that if we speak of the Spirit as feminine, whether primarily or exclusively, we are beginning to gender God’s being, and the implication is that Father and Son are masculine. The mediaeval tradition, by contrast, in tending to refer to Jesus as our Mother, epitomised by Julian of Norwich and St Anselm, is far more constructive, both because it treats the Godhead as incorporating qualities we might otherwise assign to different genders, and because it underlines the metaphorical nature of our language about God. It is, arguably, also more of a piece with the feminine personification of Wisdom in the OT being identified with the creative Word who is the second person of the Trinity.

Feminine pronouns may rightly be used of God when exploring some of the feminine metaphors for God in Scripture, and they are a useful corrective to those who mistakenly take God to be masculine rather than beyond gender. But assigning them primarily or exclusively to the Holy Spirit will do the opposite, and entrench gender in people’s conceptions of God.

I have sometimes found myself regretting that (a) the tradition of referring to priests as “Father” was not widespread in the Anglican Church, and (b) that we didn’t start using this as a form of address for women ordained to the priesthood. I hope, when we start ordaining women as bishops, that the liturgies of ordination will continue to address the bishop as “Reverend Father in God”. I can’t think of a more powerful way to raise awareness of metaphor and stimulate a deeper appreciation of the ungendered Fatherhood of God.

Stephen makes an interesting proposal in favour of the LXX as having a good claim to be preferred over the MT as the Christian Old Testament. John Hobbins picks up on this and offers some reasons for disagreeing. John doesn’t go for a straightforward argument in favour of the MT. Instead he argues for a wide-ranging use of text traditions.

He points out that Hebrews 8:8-12 cites the LXX of Jeremiah authoritatively, and then goes on to claim that Romans 9:3-4 by its mention of irrevocable covenants refers to the MT of the same passage. I haven’t read the monograph which he cites as proving this point, but I must say that it’s quite a leap of faith (but not exegetically impossible) to see Jeremiah standing behind this Pauline assertion at all, far less a particular text type. The overall weight of the New Testament does, I think, suggest that insofar as there is a privileged text type, the Greek is it.

Grant his case for a moment, though, and it seems we have two different authoritative versions of a text. Again, the overall weight of the New Testament does seem (irrespective of this, to my mind, dubious example) to point to a general lack of concern with precise wording and textual variations, some of which were almost certainly known to those of its authors who were bilingual. John’s conclusion is this:

I also think a return to the older pre-Reformation and pre-Tridentine tradition is in order, in which the outer limits of the canon and the precise contents of the text of the component books were up for grabs. Why not return to allowing on principle (extra-confessionally, to coin a term) for a degree of fluidity on these matters, even if we choose, because we are Protestants, to exegete the MT, or, because we are Orthodox, the LXX, however defined?

Why privilege one text-form over another except on a provisional basis, according to a concept of canon that does not make the inclusion or exclusion of books like Ben Sira, Wisdom, and 1-2 Maccabees a matter of status confessionis? Why not contend that ultimately, a global interpretation of scripture ought to be viable across the entire range of the forms scripture has historically taken?

This in turn firmly locates scripture as a tradition, a range of books that I have elsewhere referred to as a fuzzy-edged Bible. (Irrelevant note: typing that phrase into Google returns this blog as the first hit!) Scripture is writing in transmission and translation, which means we are not simply arguing about Hebrew and Greek texts of the OT and Apocrypha, but the transmission history of the NT in variant manuscripts. Authority is dynamic and relational, and not archaeological.

The heady combination of a Renaissance humanist “return to the sources” with the invention of printing made possible a Protestant conception of Scripture that could never have been held in quite the same way before. But the NT’s use of the OT, and the increasing sense in textual criticism that it is constructing a textual history rather than recovering an original text point to a view of Scripture as more dynamic than that: a view more like earlier Christian understandings. The fuzzy-edged Bible is both a scriptural desideratum, and a realistic description of the historical evidence as we have it.

I took the plunge to upgrade to Wordpress 2.3.1 today, and it seems to have gone smoothly. I’m not sure if I will use the new tag support, but don’t be surprised to see me try them out for a while (when I remember).

I’ve also added a simple captcha to the comments, since spam seems to have been going mad recently. I hope it wont discourage you from commenting, and if it doesn’t have any significant impact on the spam, then I’ll get rid of it again.

I also thought I’d take the opportunity of this change to go for a makeover at the same time. Oh well, at least I don’t change themes as much as Jim. (Or, indeed, titles.) The photo in the header shows the coastline of the Sea of Galilee, looking from Tiberias. The road to Migdal (which may or may not be the biblical Magdala) is to the left of the photo.

I’m also considering a couple of new blogs, both of which will be more occasional than this one. If you have the patience to comment about their potential usefulness or viability, I’d appreciate it.

• The first is that I find a lot of people producing newsletters, and in churches service booklets, who are really struggling with basic design questions, and with how to use their software. Given the number of questions I answer for friends, colleagues and acquaintances, I’m seriously considering putting a mix of tips and tutorials up. This would be very much along the line of one amateur helping another, but at least an amateur whose picked up quite a bit of useful info along the way.
• Sometime after Easter I’ll be needing to replace my computer. I think it’s at least possible that I’ll consider a Mac this time round. I always take ages to make my buying decisions about this sort of thing. I’m considering whether to blog my thought-processes, and, if I do end up with a Mac, the whole switching experience.

I could do both of those things here, since the posts wouldn’t be that frequent (I think) but I’m wondering if there are advantages in spinning them off into separate blogs. Any advice?