Talarico recants past statements, says he was 'intentionally provocative' by calling God 'non-binary'

Delvianna · Tuesday at 12:55 PM

ViaCrucis said:
No, He literally received a body in the Incarnation. A human body.

God, in His Divine Essence, doesn't have a body. To say that He does is, as I said, the heresy of Audianism.

Well, if you want to ignore what words mean, guess that's on you.

God bless.

Vambram · Tuesday at 5:41 PM

John 14:1-11

Multiple times, Jesus Christ referred to God the Father. This is merely just one passage of Scripture that does so. There are many more. GOD the FATHER is male.

ViaCrucis · Wednesday at 5:41 AM

Vambram said:
John 14:1-11

Multiple times, Jesus Christ referred to God the Father. This is merely just one passage of Scripture that does so. There are many more. GOD the FATHER is male.

So is it your position that God the Father has testes and a penis? I'm not being crude--I'm asking seriously. Is that what you believe?

I suspect that isn't what you believe, as that would be an absolutely insane thing for a self-proclaimed Christian to believe.

So perhaps you could explain what it would even mean for God the Father to be male. And since you, I'm sure, reject the idea of gender being different than biological sex, do so in a way where you don't accidentally defend "transgenderism" as I'm sure you'd call it.

Thank you, I'll be awaiting your reply.

Vambram · Wednesday at 12:21 PM

ViaCrucis said:
So is it your position that God the Father has testes and a penis? I'm not being crude--I'm asking seriously. Is that what you believe?

I suspect that isn't what you believe, as that would be an absolutely insane thing for a self-proclaimed Christian to believe.

So perhaps you could explain what it would even mean for God the Father to be male. And since you, I'm sure, reject the idea of gender being different than biological sex, do so in a way where you don't accidentally defend "transgenderism" as I'm sure you'd call it.

Thank you, I'll be awaiting your reply.

The Lord God does NOT have a physical body. I'm sure that you know that. However, He IS male. Otherwise, Jesus would have prayed to the Heavenly mother instead of the Heavenly Father. Why does this appear to be a radical doctrine to you?

Delvianna · Wednesday at 12:29 PM

Vambram said:
The Lord God does NOT have a physical body. I'm sure that you know that. However, He IS male. Otherwise, Jesus would have prayed to the Heavenly mother instead of the Heavenly Father. Why does this appear to be a radical doctrine to you?

Because some people would rather just accept what theyre told based on doctrinal traditions of their denomination and are afraid to consider alternatives than what they are told. So anything outside what they are told, is "radical".

ViaCrucis · Wednesday at 10:42 PM

Vambram said:
The Lord God does NOT have a physical body. I'm sure that you know that. However, He IS male. Otherwise, Jesus would have prayed to the Heavenly mother instead of the Heavenly Father. Why does this appear to be a radical doctrine to you?

I'm certainly glad you don't think God, in His Divine Essence, has a body (physical or otherwise). But then that does require you to explain what you mean by "male". Do you associate maleness with something other than biological sex? And if so, how do you reconcile that with the fact that many people who may be of one biological sex don't associate with it as their gender (and, ergo, identify as non-binary or transition from their assigned gender to another). I'm not trying to turn the debate that direction, I'm just not sure how you can hold these two things together without serious cognitive dissonance here.

But if you prefer not to answer all of that, please explain in what way God is "male". How can the Divine Essence have gender?

Why would God be "mother" if God has no gender? Explain your reasoning.

My problem isn't that this is a "radical doctrine", my problem is that it's a false doctrine. I reject that God is male for the same reason that I reject Arianism.

ViaCrucis · Wednesday at 10:44 PM

Delvianna said:
Because some people would rather just accept what theyre told based on doctrinal traditions of their denomination and are afraid to consider alternatives than what they are told. So anything outside what they are told, is "radical".

You clearly know my own personal faith story better than I do.

With my sarcasm out of the way.

I grew up in a very conservative Evangelical tradition. My family's church, until I was eight years old, was a non-denominational church, my education was, until I was 12, a school attached to an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church. When I was eight, my family switched to the local Foursquare (International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, a Pentecostal denomination). I attended the Foursquare Church with my family until my mother passed and my father moved due to work, when I was 18 years old.

I began to take an interest in more serious biblical, theological, and historical study when I was about 17. This eventually led me to exposure to a larger spectrum of Christian views from across many denominations and traditions. And I began to have some of the ideas I grew up believing without question challenged, and I sought answers by more intensively reading the Bible, and working with both Hebrew and Greek interlinear texts and lexicons to help me better understand the original language of the texts. I took a strong interest in Patristics, the historic Creeds, and being concerned with not just coming up with whatever I wanted based on my personal opinion about what Scripture taught, but how it was read and understood historically.

Over a number of years this led me to many conversations with many Christians in many contexts and from many different backgrounds. But ultimately I found myself in the Lutheran tradition primarily because of the way Lutherans preached the Gospel in a radically Christ-centered and Grace-centered way that answered deep spiritual questions in my soul, both ones I was conscious of and many I wasn't conscious of.

I have continued in that process of questioning, searching, learning, and seeking to be informed and faithful to Jesus--even when and where it has meant butting heads with others. In my early years, I lost friends because of this. I faced ostracization. And even as some of those people who condemned me for questioning some ideas, all the while I remained devoutly Christian, have turned away and abandoned their Christian faith.

My singular drive, over the 25 years since this journey began, has been to be faithful to Jesus Christ.

So, with all due respect, you don't know me, or what I've been through.

Michie · Wednesday at 11:21 PM

Vambram · Thursday at 12:07 AM

ViaCrucis said:
I'm certainly glad you don't think God, in His Divine Essence, has a body (physical or otherwise). But then that does require you to explain what you mean by "male". Do you associate maleness with something other than biological sex? And if so, how do you reconcile that with the fact that many people who may be of one biological sex don't associate with it as their gender (and, ergo, identify as non-binary or transition from their assigned gender to another). I'm not trying to turn the debate that direction, I'm just not sure how you can hold these two things together without serious cognitive dissonance here.

But if you prefer not to answer all of that, please explain in what way God is "male". How can the Divine Essence have gender?

Why would God be "mother" if God has no gender? Explain your reasoning.

My problem isn't that this is a "radical doctrine", my problem is that it's a false doctrine. I reject that God is male for the same reason that I reject Arianism.

By rejecting that The Lord God is male, I believe that you are badly misinterpreting the hundreds and hundreds of verses in the Bible where the Lord God Himself and where Jesus Christ very specifically use the male pronoun and/or the noun "Father" when referring to the God the Father. I stand very firmly with what the Bible says.

Delvianna · Thursday at 8:13 AM

ViaCrucis said:
You clearly know my own personal faith story better than I do.

With my sarcasm out of the way.

I grew up in a very conservative Evangelical tradition. My family's church, until I was eight years old, was a non-denominational church, my education was, until I was 12, a school attached to an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church. When I was eight, my family switched to the local Foursquare (International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, a Pentecostal denomination). I attended the Foursquare Church with my family until my mother passed and my father moved due to work, when I was 18 years old.

I began to take an interest in more serious biblical, theological, and historical study when I was about 17. This eventually led me to exposure to a larger spectrum of Christian views from across many denominations and traditions. And I began to have some of the ideas I grew up believing without question challenged, and I sought answers by more intensively reading the Bible, and working with both Hebrew and Greek interlinear texts and lexicons to help me better understand the original language of the texts. I took a strong interest in Patristics, the historic Creeds, and being concerned with not just coming up with whatever I wanted based on my personal opinion about what Scripture taught, but how it was read and understood historically.

Over a number of years this led me to many conversations with many Christians in many contexts and from many different backgrounds. But ultimately I found myself in the Lutheran tradition primarily because of the way Lutherans preached the Gospel in a radically Christ-centered and Grace-centered way that answered deep spiritual questions in my soul, both ones I was conscious of and many I wasn't conscious of.

I have continued in that process of questioning, searching, learning, and seeking to be informed and faithful to Jesus--even when and where it has meant butting heads with others. In my early years, I lost friends because of this. I faced ostracization. And even as some of those people who condemned me for questioning some ideas, all the while I remained devoutly Christian, have turned away and abandoned their Christian faith.

My singular drive, over the 25 years since this journey began, has been to be faithful to Jesus Christ.

So, with all due respect, you don't know me, or what I've been through.

My response still stands based on what you've said thus far in this post. Your history doesn't matter and your "working with both Hebrew and Greek interlinear texts and lexicons to help me better understand the original language of the texts" doesn't matter when your current actions on refusal to accept what the "flesh" word actually means, makes this rant invalid.

ViaCrucis · Thursday at 1:46 PM

Delvianna said:
My response still stands based on what you've said thus far in this post. Your history doesn't matter and your "working with both Hebrew and Greek interlinear texts and lexicons to help me better understand the original language of the texts" doesn't matter when your current actions on refusal to accept what the "flesh" word actually means, makes this rant invalid.

Glad to know that I haven't wasted my time arguing here. Have a good day.

ViaCrucis · Saturday at 9:09 PM

Vambram said:
By rejecting that The Lord God is male, I believe that you are badly misinterpreting the hundreds and hundreds of verses in the Bible where the Lord God Himself and where Jesus Christ very specifically use the male pronoun and/or the noun "Father" when referring to the God the Father. I stand very firmly with what the Bible says.

Lots of languages contain something called grammatical gender. We don't, in these cases, actually claim that an inanimate object is male or female because grammatical gender is used in a language. In the Bible masculine language is used of God, quite frequently; does that mean that the Eternal and Almighty Maker of all things is a male? No.

Additionally, Scripture regularly applies anthropomorphic language to God. When Scripture speaks of God's "mouth" or "arms" or "hands" or being "seated" we do not presume that God literally has a physical mouth, or body parts, or that He literally sits down on a giant chair in the sky. We understand that this is anthropomorphic language never intended to be literal.

You'll notice that I, very consistently, use masculine pronouns when referring to God.

So far I've seen one person claim God actually does have a body (which is heretical): only the Son has a body, because the Son became human.

What nobody has bothered to even come close to answering for me is how God, in His Divine Essence, can be male--and what that actually means.

Perhaps what needs to be done here is for someone to define what "male" means. Can someone define what a male is? Preferably without talking about chromosomes, gametes, or gonads.

Vambram · Saturday at 9:11 PM

God, in His Divine Essence, is male because He Himself and also the Lord Jesus Christ refers to God as male. It really is that plain, and simple and easy to understand.

ViaCrucis · Saturday at 9:12 PM

Vambram said:
God, in His Divine Essence, is male because He Himself and also the Lord Jesus Christ refers to God as male. It really is that plain, and simple and easy to understand.

So when Jesus says that He longed, like a mother hen taking her chicks under her wings, longed to take Jerusalem under Him, that He's a female chicken?

Michie · Saturday at 9:23 PM

ViaCrucis said:
So when Jesus says that He longed, like a mother hen taking her chicks under her wings, longed to take Jerusalem under Him, that He's a female chicken?

You are joking… right? Lol!

Delvianna · Saturday at 9:25 PM

ViaCrucis said:
So when Jesus says that He longed, like a mother hen taking her chicks under her wings, longed to take Jerusalem under Him, that He's a female chicken?

Michie · Saturday at 9:27 PM

And they say Fundamentalists are too literal? Can’t see the nuance of Scripture? Lol!

Delvianna · Saturday at 9:42 PM

Michie said:
And they say Fundamentalists are too literal? Can’t see the nuance of Scripture? Lol!

I don't know what it is... but it's like, black and white with some people. Either everything is an analogy/metaphor/symbolism or it's literal. There's no mix... Which is just absolutely insane to me. People in general don't think like that when we speak to others, so I don't know why people do that when reading scripture.

ViaCrucis · Saturday at 9:53 PM

Michie said:
You are joking… right? Lol!

Someone here is insisting that God is, literally, male. Because masculine language is applied to the Godhead.

Now, historically, the Church has always understood that God is beyond gender--you're Catholic, you should know that--but here we have someone insisting that God is literally male.

So why shouldn't it also be literal that Jesus is literally a female chicken? What's the hermeneutical principle in play here? I have no idea.

I'm apparently the only person here defending classical Christian Theism, and I'm actually being ridiculed for it. Nothing that I'm saying thus far is outside the ordinary teaching and belief of the Church catholic.

I'm actually a bit confused why you aren't taking my side. I would assume that you would want to defend historic Christian orthodoxy.

Is the political situation such that it's more important to "own the libs" than confess the faith?

Delvianna · Saturday at 10:02 PM

ViaCrucis said:
Someone here is insisting that God is, literally, male. Because masculine language is applied to the Godhead.

Now, historically, the Church has always understood that God is beyond gender--you're Catholic, you should know that--but here we have someone insisting that God is literally male.

So why shouldn't it also be literal that Jesus is literally a female chicken? What's the hermeneutical principle in play here? I have no idea.

I'm apparently the only person here defending classical Christian Theism, and I'm actually being ridiculed for it. Nothing that I'm saying thus far is outside the ordinary teaching and belief of the Church catholic.

I'm actually a bit confused why you aren't taking my side. I would assume that you would want to defend historic Christian orthodoxy.

Is the political situation such that it's more important to "own the libs" than confess the faith?

Since we're supposed to be hyper-literal, I can't "own" any libs because slavery was abolished over 100 years ago.

Talarico recants past statements, says he was 'intentionally provocative' by calling God 'non-binary'

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