LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1998, Page 358

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358

THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS

Biblical Revelation and
Inclusive Language

I. INTRODUCTION

A. Basis of Concern

Issues concerning the equality and inclusivity of women and men
within society and church have raised a number of serious and contro-
verted questions.' One of these is the matter of language. Common and
traditional manners of speaking have been called into question as gender
specific and, therefore, as excluding the other gender. Words once com-
monly regarded as “generic” and inclusive of both genders (e.g., man,
mankind, chairman, policeman, etc.) are regarded by some as specific to the
male gender and exclusive of the female gender. In much common par-
lance, therefore, language which is regarded as neutral and inclusive has
been substituted. We speak now of chairperson and of humankind, Other
examples may be readily taken from our common speech.

Although criticisms have been voiced about such changes in our lan-
guage, by and large these changes have received broad acceptance within
our society. It is commonly agreed that language evolves with societal and
cultural change. Generally such change is readily integrated into our daily
discourse and does not raise significant issues of belief and meaning.

"This study on Biblical Revelation and Inclusive Language has been prepared in response
toa request of the 1989 convention of The Lutheran Church—Missoun Synod that its Com-
mussion on Theology and Church Relations “study the theological implications of utilizing
inclusive Versus exclusive language in our teaching, worship, and pnnted matenals” (1949
Reselution 2-12 “To Address Inclusive and Exclusive Language,” 1989 Proceedings, 107). In
carrying out this assignment the Commission noted the Synod’s 1995 request “Tu Prepare a
Comprehensive Study of the Senptural Relationship of Man and Woman” (Res, 3-10), in
which the Synod asked the Commission in its studies to make “use of other persons who are
competent in the area of theology, including women.” In view of this request, and because
the study of inclusive language includes questions foundational for the topic of the rela-
tonship ef man and woman, the Commission decided to create an ongoing panel of six
“reactors” (5 women and 1 man} to react to its drafts on inclusive language and to other
aspects of the comprehensive study called for by the Synod.

5

ply thoughts and ideas abstracted from this language, is the revelation
which governs the church's use of language about God; about Jesus, the
Savior; and about those who receive in faith the Spirit of God, through
whom the Scriptures themselves were inspired. Accordingly, the church
must resist demands to change the words of Scripture or to replace them
with words derived from common human experience, cultural predilec-
tions, or the ideas of philosophers and lawgivers.’

The claim is sometimes made that the language of Scripture is merely
the function of a patriarchal culture and that we are free—perhaps even
required—to name God and to speak about him in the light of our own cul-
tural egalitarianism. Such a claim, however, carries with it the cost of giv-
ing up the specificities of biblical revelation. Israel did not choose on its
own to speak of God in the way of the Bible. Rather, God has revealed
himself in the specific and particular events and words of the Scriptures.
If the church is to speak meaningfully of a God who speaks and acts, and
who in those words and deeds reveals himself, it is crucial that the church
resist the temptation to think of the language of the Bible as merely an
expression of cultural bias. The church must affirm that the language of
the Bible is precisely the language by which, and alone by which, God
wishes to be known and is known. The language of the Scriptures, there-
fore, is the foundational and determinative language which the church is to
use to speak about God and the things of God.

? 4 helpful discussion of revelation as the communication of God yet through human
thought and speech is given by Thomas F. Torrance, “A Realist Interpretation of God's
Self-Revelation.” chapter 3in Reality and Exangelical Thevlogy (Philadelphia: Westminster
Press, 1982), 84-120. Note, for example, the following: “By revelation 1s meant, then, not
some vague, inarticulate awareness of God propcted out of the human consciousness, but an
intelligible. arnoulate revealing of God by God whom we are enabled to apprehend through
the creative power of his Word addressed to us, yet a revealing of God by God which is actu-
alized within the conditions of our creaturely existence and therefore within the medium of
our human thought and speech” (85)

However, the demand is now frequently made also to render the Holy
Scriptures in “inclusive” language through the removal of “gender specific”
language and the substitution of “gender neutral” phraseology. This rais-
es a different set of difficulties, for the Scriptures are not merely the ren-
dering of a culturally based understanding of God. They are to be regard-
ed as revelation whose author is finally God himself. Moreover, not only
the concepts of Scripture but the very words of Scripture have been given
to the biblical authors to write (1 Cor. 29-13; 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:19-21; Jer.
30:2). While the church will certainly wish to accommodate modem sen-
sibilities and translate anew where the language of the Scriptures allows,
the church is not free to alter the language of revelation. In considering
inclusive language in the translation of the Bible, therefore, we must be
guided by a close faithfulness to the actual! text of Scripture, through
which—and only through which—the written revelation of God has come
to us.

B. Revelation

Although God is known through the things he has made and through
his continuing providential work (natural revelation), Christian faith is
based upon special revelation. Natural revelation is given to all and to all
equally. It is given in creation and in the life and life circumstances which
God gives to each human being. Therefore, Paul can speak of the “eternal
power and deity” of God which has been revealed since the creation of the
world (see Rom. 1:18-23). On the other hand, special revelation is specific
and particular. It is historical and is given through human speech and
through human act. Special revelation is given through the various theo-
phanies in which God speaks (Exodus 3-4; 19-20), and it is given through
the speaking of the inspired prophets to whom the “word of the Lord”
came (see Jer. 1:4, 9 as typical). Moreover, special revelation is given in the
election of a particular people through whose history God makes known
his will and begins to effect his final, salvific purposes. The special revela-
tion which the church apprehends is therefore constituted in the history of
Israel in the particular rendering of that history given in the books of the
Old Testament. Finally, God's special revelation is given in that particular
history of Jesus of Nazareth in which God's speech and God's act become
one. Jesus is, in the specificity and particularity of his person, the revela-
tion of God’s Word. He is the Word of God (John 1:1 f.). The revelation of
Jesus as the Word of God through whom God fulfills his purpose for
humankind’s eternal destiny is rendered for us through the written testi-
mony of the evangelical and apostolic writings of the New Testament. The
language of revelation, therefore, is exclusively biblical, in that through the
prophetic and apostolic writings we receive and possess the normative
conceptual and linguistic data of revelation. This language, and not sim-

II. LANGUAGE ABOUT GOD

A. Personal Identity of God

1. God transcends biological and gender categories. Despite the fact
that biblical language is thoroughly gender specific and that God is person-
ally referred to through masculine names, titles, and pronouns (see below),
the Bible contains explicit affirmation that God transcends all biological and
gender categories. Sexual nature was characteristic of the pagan gods and
goddesses in the environment of ancient Israel. But Israel steadfastly and
uncompromisingly rejected any such understanding of God. God may be
Father’ to his son, Israel, or he may be “Husband” to his bride, Israel, but
God is not a male deity nor biologically masculine. “I am God and not
man” (Hos. 11:9; see Num. 23:19; 1 Sam. 15:39). Typical of Israel’s under-
standing is the prohibition by Moses of any kind of idolatry whereby God is
portrayed as a creature, including a male creature or a female creature:

Since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb

out of the midst of the fire, beware lest you act cormuptly by making a

graven image for yourselves, in the form of any figure, the likeness of male

ot female (Deut. 4:15-16; see Isa. 40:18-20).

The biblical affirmation that God is “beyond” all sexual distinctions
has been consistently repeated by the church, and nowhere more so than
during the anti-Arian debates when God’s eternal and natural fatherhood
and sonship were being asserted. Typical were statements such as these
by Gregory of Nyssa and Hilary of Poitiers: “The distinction of male and
female does not exist in the Divine and blessed nature” (Gregory of Nyssa,
On the Making of Man, 22:4); > “That which is Divine and eternal must be
one without distinction of sex” (Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity, 1:4).4 This
understanding is clearly articulated also by Arnobius (3rd century):

No thoughtless person may raise a false accusation against us, as
though we believed God whom we worship to be male,-—for this reason,
that is, that when we speak of Him we use a masculine word,—let him
understand that it is not sex which is expressed, but His name and its
meaning according to custom, and the way in which we are in the habit of
using words. For the Deity is not male, but His name is of the masculine
gender (Against the Heathen, 3.8).5

3 Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, (Christian Literature
Publishing Company, 1893; repr. Peabody, MS: Hendrickson Publishers, inc. 1995), 5:412.

4‘ Tbid., HAL.
5 Thad, 6466,