God's Pronouns
Breakpoint
Colson Center
4.8 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 30 November 2021
⏱️ 1 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A few weeks ago, I talked about a claim that we should call God "they" since "He" isn't inclusive enough. A tweet by the Religious News Service recently doubled down on this idea, asserting that Christian churches "lack consensus" about God's pronouns. Lacks consensus? That's a strange statement. That only makes sense if 99.99% of all Christian churches, in all times and places throughout history, don't count as a consensus.
If you go around the world and ask Christians from all cultures and all denominations, you'll encounter a lot of different ideas about a lot of other things. Roman Catholics disagree with Presbyterians about church structure, and Anglicans argue with Baptists about baptism. Not only that, but you'll find a delightful degree of diversity when it comes to the way they sing God's praises.
But, for all the glorious variety of Christ's Church down through the ages, pretty much the only place you'll get "God is they" theology is in the culturally narrow confines of the wealthy West. For all the disputes Christians have had, the core of the Gospel teaching, including God's pronouns, has remained unchanged since the Apostles.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Let's define consensus. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with a point. A few weeks |
| 0:04.4 | ago, I talked about a new claim that we should call God they, since he is not an inclusive |
| 0:08.7 | enough pronoun. Well, recently, a tweet by the religious news service doubled down on the idea |
| 0:13.0 | and asserted that Christian churches lack consensus about God's pronouns. Lack consensus, |
| 0:18.1 | only if 99.9% of all Christians throughout history isn't a consensus. Look, if you go |
| 0:22.9 | around the world, ask Christians from all cultures, all denominations, you'll get a lot of different |
| 0:26.3 | ideas about a lot of different things. Roman Catholics disagree with Presbyterians about church |
| 0:30.3 | structure. Anglicans disagree with Baptist, about baptism. Not only that, you'll find all kinds |
| 0:35.0 | of diversity when it comes to the way we're supposed to praise God and do church. |
| 0:39.0 | But for all of this variety, pretty much the only place you'll get God is they theology is in the culturally narrow confines of the wealthy West. |
| 0:48.1 | Among churches that have already given up on who God is and what God did in history, not to mention what he said in Scripture. |
| 0:55.2 | For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. |
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