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

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?

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I did a simple web search on the question of whether God has a gender. Almost all Christian web sites are conservative. They all seem to say that God is male. Like you, I had thought this was a heresy. But it seems to have taken over at least conservative Christianity.

I'm still unclear what that would mean. I HOPE it doesn't mean that men are more directly in God's image than women, though I know some Christians have felt that way in the past.

Michie said:

God identifies as male in the written word. Why not respect His pronouns? Although it’s agreed that God transcends gender limits and God is pure spirit, as He is the Creator knows how each gender operates and feels. He does choose to identify as a Father, Groom, etc. It’s all throughout Scripture. Just because God the Creator knows how we are created implicitly does not mean we are allowed to add confusion to the order into which He created things.

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Amen.

Michie said:

God identifies as male in the written word. Why not respect His pronouns? Although it’s agreed that God transcends gender limits and God is pure spirit, as He is the Creator knows how each gender operates and feels. He does choose to identify as a Father, Groom, etc. It’s all throughout Scripture. Just because God the Creator knows how we are created implicitly does not mean we are allowed to add confusion to the order into which He created things.

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God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. If we accept that Jesus Christ is God Incarnate and that the Trinity is God, then we have gender right there. I really don't want to sound crass or sacrilegious, but being that Mary is how God the Son came among us, that could be a factor as well. I don't see how we can escape that. Note that this isn't in the Mormon sense about God the Father, but maybe a nod to God the Son and how He came to be with us.

How many times in the Old Testament and the New Testament is the Lord God referred to by using male nouns and male pronouns?

From Google Gemini:

Because the Bible was written over a period of 1,500 years by dozens of authors across multiple original languages, there is no single, universally agreed-upon "exact" number. However, scholars and data analysts who have done complete word counts of the biblical text place the number of masculine nouns and pronouns used for God into the thousands.
An exhaustive count across the entire text easily yields well over 3,000 to 5,000 distinct masculine references, depending on how strictly you define the search parameters.
Here is a breakdown of how those numbers shake out in the original languages and the text.

1. The Old Testament (Hebrew and Aramaic)​

Ancient Hebrew is a gendered language—it does not possess a neuter (gender-neutral) pronoun like "it." Every noun, verb, and pronoun must be grammatically masculine or feminine.

• The Pronouns: Every single third-person singular pronoun used to refer directly to God in the Old Testament is hu (הוּא), which is the grammatically masculine "He." There are hundreds of these occurrences.
• The Verbs: In Hebrew, verbs are also gendered. Throughout the Old Testament, verbs attached to God always take the masculine form. For example, the very first sentence of Genesis says B'reshit bara Elohim ("In the beginning God created"). The verb bara (created) is strictly the third-person masculine singular form ("He created"). This pattern occurs thousands of times (e.g., "And the Lord said", "He heard", "He remembered").
• The Nouns and Titles: God is consistently identified by masculine titles. The title "Father" (Ab) is used for God about 15 times, while terms like "King" (Melek), "Husband" (Ba'al), and "Master/Lord" (Adonai) appear hundreds of times.

2. The New Testament (Koine Greek)​

Unlike Hebrew, Koine Greek does have neuter pronouns and nouns. Yet, the New Testament writers overwhelmingly and intentionally selected masculine grammar when referring to God.

• The Nouns: The primary word for God in the New Testament is Theos (θεός), which is a grammatically masculine noun. It appears over 1,300 times in the New Testament. Because pronouns must agree with the nouns they replace, the pronouns tracking back to Theos are masculine.
• The Pronouns: The masculine pronouns autos (he/him/his) and ekeinos (that one/he) are used hundreds of times for God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.
  

  Grammatical Nuance: Even when discussing the Holy Spirit—where the Greek word for spirit (pneuma) is grammatically neuter—the New Testament writers would sometimes intentionally use the masculine pronoun ekeinos ("He") to emphasize the Spirit's personhood (such as in John 16:13).

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• The Title of Father: The absolute dominant masculine identifier in the New Testament is "Father" (Pater). Jesus personally refers to God as Father over 100 times in the Gospels alone, and the Epistles use it dozens more times to establish the relationship between God and believers.

The Theological Context​

While the text uses masculine grammar thousands of times, Christian theology and the biblical text itself note that God is a spiritual being who transcends human biological sex.
Passages like Numbers 23:19 state that "God is not a man," and Genesis 1:27 highlights that both male and female are made in the image of God. The Bible also occasionally uses maternal or feminine imagery metaphorically (such as God comforting Israel like a nursing mother in Isaiah 66:13, or Jesus comparing his care to a mother hen in Matthew 23:37).
However, when it comes to direct addresses, titles, grammatical structures, and pronouns, the original biblical texts are consistently and overwhelmingly masculine.
Should We Use Masculine Pronouns for God?
This short video offers a concise theological and linguistic overview of why the Bible employs masculine pronouns for God and explains the historical context behind the original Hebrew and Greek structures.

hedrick said:

I did a simple web search on the question of whether God has a gender. Almost all Christian web sites are conservative. They all seem to say that God is male. Like you, I had thought this was a heresy. But it seems to have taken over at least conservative Christianity.

I'm still unclear what that would mean. I HOPE it doesn't mean that men are more directly in God's image than women, though I know some Christians have felt that way in the past.

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Historically, the Church has always taught that God transcends gender.

Even growing up in conservative Evangelical spaces, nobody ever tried to teach that God was male; but that God--being God--is beyond gender.

So I have no idea what's going on. The things I've been saying in this thread are normative, historic, orthodox Christian teaching. My assumption, therefore, is that this is an example of people trying to force their politics onto God.

I even provided, earlier in this thread, substantive statements from well-respected theologians, including St. Augustine and St. John of Damascus. Apparently the great Doctors of the Church are now too woke for modern American Christians. But it does lend credence to my theory that American Christianity is in the process of becoming apostate. I figure it's just a matter of time that MAGA Christians do away with the Bible, with the Cross, and with Jesus. That is currently implicit, but it seems like it will probably become explicit in time. I don't want to be a pessimist--but what else am I supposed to do with all the evidence?

Delvianna said:

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

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To the dismay of a lot of Trump supporters. Though, to be technical, slavery wasn't abolished in the US, it was mostly abolished. Technically slavery is still legal in the case of incarceration--as per the Constitution itself. But prison reform isn't the topic of this thread.

ViaCrucis said:

Historically, the Church has always taught that God transcends gender.

Even growing up in conservative Evangelical spaces, nobody ever tried to teach that God was male; but that God--being God--is beyond gender.

So I have no idea what's going on. The things I've been saying in this thread are normative, historic, orthodox Christian teaching. My assumption, therefore, is that this is an example of people trying to force their politics onto God.

I even provided, earlier in this thread, substantive statements from well-respected theologians, including St. Augustine and St. John of Damascus. Apparently the great Doctors of the Church are now too woke for modern American Christians. But it does lend credence to my theory that American Christianity is in the process of becoming apostate. I figure it's just a matter of time that MAGA Christians do away with the Bible, with the Cross, and with Jesus. That is currently implicit, but it seems like it will probably become explicit in time. I don't want to be a pessimist--but what else am I supposed to do with all the evidence?

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There are literally thousands of examples in the Bible where male nouns, male pronouns, and male verbs are used in reference to the Lord God. I grew up in Baptist churches and went to Baptist colleges. If you want to believe that God is not male, then you are disagreeing with the Bible.
Also, knowing that God is male has absolutely nothing at all to do with MAGA. The comments you made about MAGA doing away with the Bible, the Cross, and Jesus Christ are nothing more than flaming, goading and false insults.

ViaCrucis said:

To the dismay of a lot of Trump supporters. Though, to be technical, slavery wasn't abolished in the US, it was mostly abolished. Technically slavery is still legal in the case of incarceration--as per the Constitution itself. But prison reform isn't the topic of this thread.

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Wrong on all counts.

1. Supporters of slavery were Democrats, not Republicans.

2. Prisoners in the US are paid for labor and work is treated as a privilege, due to a means of making money. During unrest, prisons have revoked working privileges as punishment (separate from lock-downs). No work during lock-downs is a given. The fun thing is that, per a prison guard I knew who went with the outside work details, I've worked in outside conditions that were deemed as too harsh for prisoners. Nothing quite like working out in weather, then after work hearing said guard say they didn't go out that day because the weather was too bad.

3. No, it's not the topic of this thread.

Vambram said:

There are literally thousands of examples in the Bible where male nouns, male pronouns, and male verbs are used in reference to the Lord God. I grew up in Baptist churches and went to Baptist colleges. If you want to believe that God is not male, then you are disagreeing with the Bible.
Also, knowing that God is male has absolutely nothing at all to do with MAGA. The comments you made about MAGA doing away with the Bible, the Cross, and Jesus Christ are nothing more than flaming, goading and false insults.

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It's most instructive to know what the other side believes. Be that as it may, let's break this down as simply as we can get: Jesus Christ is God the Son.