London, GB | Formerly of New York, Buenos Aires, Fife, and the Western Cape. | Saoránach d’Éirinn.

The He/She/It Whatnot

Seraphic Spouse held a poll on what pronouns people prefer using when referring to God: 1) He/Him/Himself, 2) he/him/himself, or 3) avoiding male pronouns. The unsurprising results were 89% for the traditional He/Him/Himself, 9% for the New York Times option of he/him/himself, and just over 1% for the radical choice of avoiding male pronouns altogether.

“Some readers may be wondering why this matters so much,” saith Lady Seraphic. “The answer is that people do care about these things, and I don’t want any reader of the book to feel alienated. I want everyone who might read such a book to feel embraced. And just as a now-elderly generation of Catholic women felt alienated by masculine language for God, younger generation of Catholics want to conserve the great respect for God now lacking in secular society.”

Over at Epigone’s Eloquence, meanwhile, Turgonian watched a biased BBC documentary (those three words go together so often!) on Gnosticism and was inspired to write ‘Why God is a He’, looking to the Monologion of St. Anselm for the answer.

“St. Anselm has previously established that God is Spirit, not a body, and that it is therefore nonsensical to say that He is a man or a woman. He has also shown that it is reasonable to believe that God exists as Father and Son (the Holy Spirit will come later in the book). But, he asks, why Father and Son, rather than Mother and Daughter? Why not call them by feminine names?” Read on to find out.

Published at 2:05 pm on Wednesday 7 October 2009. Categories: Church Tags: , .
Comments

Did I really say “alientated”? How about “alientainted”, for those who catch colds from Martiants. Or “alientatted” for those who get cheap trophies from Mercury. And then there’s “alientarted” for those who wear those risque outfits from Venus.

— Seraphic Spouse 7 Oct 2009 4:38 pm

Duly corrected!

— Andrew Cusack 7 Oct 2009 5:29 pm

It’s a fair cop. I’ve just fixed it myself.

— Seraphic Spouse 8 Oct 2009 11:56 am
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