I have a hard time taking stuff like this seriously. No doubt they think they’re striking a blow for women’s rights or status or both.
But I will say this: isn’t God related to us more like an ideal human father, than like an ideal human mother? For one thing, we have a physical, bodily bond with our mothers. And isn’t it odd to address the now very much grown up Jesus as “Child”? And the Holy Spirit is a womb? What next, the Church a placenta? The Bible an umbilical cord? OK, I’ll stop.
Seriously, though, this is an innovation of practice, not of theory. The issue of what the doctrine means is untouched by these new suggested titles. If one was a modalist, for example, before this, and one adopted the suggested changes of practice (speaking, imagining), one’s trinitarian theology would be essentially unchanged. The only change is that people in certain circles would consider you very sensitive and “with it”. And people in other, more conservative, circles would be… unimpressed.
Presumably, God, or the Father, is addressed as “Mother” because God or the Father is in some way like a good human mother. But is that news to anyone?
You’re right – the new terms may imply or at least, suggest, a slight difference in function – i.e. precisely how the Persons relate to one another, or to us. And it isn’t obvious that this isn’t more misleading than accurate (I suspect that with the Mother/Child/Womb, it is). Of course, they probably don’t care, so long as it (supposedly) advances a certain agenda for human society.
But it seems to me that the metaphysical core of the doctrine – however we think that should be understood – is untouched by these new practices.
Count me among the unimpressed, unenthused, but not too surprised. I’m curious as to why you see this as only an innovation of practice. If the titles have meanings, if those meaning entail certain types of relations, then I don’t see how the meaning of the doctrine remains untouched by these new suggested titles.
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