Conversations on Christ: The Two Natures and Inclusive Language

The 800 pound gorilla in the room is the entire issue of gender relations. I will ignore him (or her)...mostly.  For today we are discussing the language of Gospel proclamation.

But since "inclusive language" embraces both the nature of language, and the nature of humanity, and since these two converge in the Person of Jesus who is the Word (language) made flesh (human), I have to begin with a nod to the gorilla before turning to language and the incarnation.

And so, three points: 1) humanity is essentially binary; 2) gender is God's language — not man's invention; and 3) God's incarnation interprets both — not the other way around.

Humanity is essentially binary

This simply means, "male and female created He them." (Gn 1:27). Maleness and femaleness go to the essence of our being — body, mind and spirit. Strictly speaking, male and female are two modes of human being — ways of being human.

A female is, in her sexuality, completely and fully human and so is every male. And every human is either a male person or a female person. There is no asexual humanity. To be inclusive of all humanity is to embrace both sexes without denying their distinctiveness.

God is the author of language — not man.

God begat the eternal Word and created by Him (Gn 1; Jn 1; Ps 33). God gave language to Adam and Eve (Gn 2:19-20). God also multiplied languages at Babel (Gn 11) and sanctified them at Pentecost (Ac 2). And not only has He authored all human language, He uses it to reveal Himself.

Yahweh spoke the Hebrew language to Moses — complete with all the masculine and feminine nouns, pronouns and pronominal suffixes. In Hebrew He "called their name ADAM" (Gn 5:1). Both sexes are included in this term "man". Just as both sexes are included when Christ calls us His bride.

Such modes of speech are not cultural accidents of Hebrew or Greek — much less English. Rather, all the gender inflections found in the Holy Scriptures are God's own way of speaking. And to the extent that we ignore His mode of speaking, we also ignore His self-revelation. Conversely, to understand WHY God speaks like this, is to understand Him. And the place to begin this understanding is in the Person of Jesus Christ.

The incarnation of God's Son as a male is the base line.

If either the masculinity of Sonship or the sexuality of maleness bothers us, something is terribly wrong. Our problem is that we are offended by the very "thatness" of God's salvation.

Attempts to mute the gender language or treat His sexuality as interchangeable, only highlight the problem. As long as the details of the incarnation are approached as something to be overcome, we won't get it. For the fullness of the Gospel is located precisely in these concrete facts, namely that:

• Jesus' divine nature is the eternal Son of the Father — masculine, albeit not male.
• Jesus' human nature is pure male — conceived and born of pure female.

Only by receiving this Jesus and understanding everything in Him, will our offense give way to delight.

Conclusions:

Therefore, as the Church seeks to understand these mysteries, we need to hear God's words spoken. The gender language of the Bible should be heard in Church and not muted in any way. And we should listen reverently without imposing our cultural biases of chauvinism or feminism. Instead of attenuating God's gender-freighted language in our zeal to be inclusive, we should attend to it to learn how God's own choice of language reveals the truest inclusivity.

Cultural biases centered on power and exclusion, tempt us to minimize these incarnational facts. But to do so scuttles our only hope of redeeming our culture with the reality of God in Christ. The mystery of the incarnation is the only sure starting point to address both gender and sexuality.

If our understanding of gender clashes with these linguistic realities, it is our modern anglo-centric understanding of gender which is suspect—not the words employed by God. Since it is divinely wrought, you can be certain that beyond the offense and confusion, there is a Gospel-charged, beautiful reality just waiting to be discovered in all these gender distinctions.

God designed both language and humanity with Jesus fully in view—not the other way around. Both humanity and language were structured by God in order to be His own vehicles of self-revelation.

The very nature of most languages (romantic and semitic languages to be sure) makes the expunging of these distinctions virtually impossible. English alone — with it's loss of most gender inflections — makes gender neutrality remotely feasible. We ought to take care that our anglo-centrism not cause us to reinterpret the Bible in ways which not only mute the actual text of the original but also are impossible for our fellow Christians world-wide.

Our own language (English) has lost most inflections, including gender. Our anglo-centric worldview makes it very hard even to know what we have lost in the translation. And it is no accident that inclusive language debates are largely limited to English translations! This ought to give us pause to consider what we have already lost before deliberately losing still more.