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Mar. 21st, 2003 11:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sophiaserpentiaJust posted this in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
jesusliberation, but wanted to post it here for posterity.
There seems to be an unending debate in progressive and liberal religious circles over whether to use male, female, or non-gendered names when refering to God.
In a conversation going on in another forum, it was suggested that we should follow the example Jesus set, which was to use masculine terms of familiarity like "Daddy."
In my opinion, what was most distinctive about the way Jesus spoke about God was that it was designed to shock its listeners out of complacency regarding their conceptions and visualizations of God. Addressing God with the familiar term "Daddy" was, in its day, a far break from the various formal names of God used by Jewish mystics of that day (many of which have been enshrined in the Kabbalah).
If so, then we defy the point Jesus tried to make if we stick too closely to his way of addressing God. I personally prefer to replace "Father" with "Root of All," but I wonder what other terms or addresses we might use.
jesusliberation, but wanted to post it here for posterity.There seems to be an unending debate in progressive and liberal religious circles over whether to use male, female, or non-gendered names when refering to God.
In a conversation going on in another forum, it was suggested that we should follow the example Jesus set, which was to use masculine terms of familiarity like "Daddy."
In my opinion, what was most distinctive about the way Jesus spoke about God was that it was designed to shock its listeners out of complacency regarding their conceptions and visualizations of God. Addressing God with the familiar term "Daddy" was, in its day, a far break from the various formal names of God used by Jewish mystics of that day (many of which have been enshrined in the Kabbalah).
If so, then we defy the point Jesus tried to make if we stick too closely to his way of addressing God. I personally prefer to replace "Father" with "Root of All," but I wonder what other terms or addresses we might use.
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Re: Names of God
Date: 2003-03-24 06:16 am (UTC)Yes, I suppose "Dad" might be a little better than "Daddy." It must surely have seemed somewhat informal and perhaps silly to people accustomed to hearing God referred to using names like "Lord of Hosts" and "King of this world" and the like.
OM-Abba: I like that.
But God has many names and each name is a way of access
and there can be and must be finally perhaps one particular
name for each person to discover as well as those which
are for all.
That is an excellent point. The author of the Gospel of Truth wrote that when one obtains acquaintance it is like hearing your true and secret name spoken for the first time. It would not surprise me in the least if hearing one's own secret name corresponded with learning a new name of God...