Inclusive

This is a loaded word as ambiguously dangerous as a loaded gun. Recently a pastoral message published in Ðýnamis, the newsletter of my community Aghía Triás in Portland, as well as numerous homilies preached in our midst, have directly or indirectly promoted the “inclusive,” particularly inclusive language and clerical order in the Church. If this were happening in an environment where the world system was dead set against it, I might suspect the Holy Spirit of trying to dawn on us a forgotten or repressed essential truth. What we find instead is that the world culturally engulfing us is askew with insistence on ungendering itself and everything in its path, and though ungendering is its stated aim, the result of its programme is something quite different, the inversion of reality. Unfortunately, this inversion is not of the kind that the Word of God describes when it says, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also… asserting that there is another king, one Jesus!” (Acts 17:6-7)

Inclusive language is increasingly used in biblical and liturgical translation to eliminate the exclusive preponderance of masculine pronouns and common plurals that appear as masculine. There’s a far more serious issue at stake here than whether God is masculine or feminine, a theological one, which is being battered to pieces and left for dead. That issue is the mystery of gender.

Very deep inroads have been made by unassailable feminism in the world culture and now also in the mind of the Church, twisting and altering language to empty it of unwanted meanings. Why unwanted? Because they originate in the language used by the Word of God, which is now being criticized as the product of a patriarchal age. In other words, the Bible is slanted because men wrote it, and men want to be in control. Supposedly, that’s why even God is referred to in masculine terms.

When I address a man or woman in Christ, I address them as brother or sister. When I address a mixed group, I address them as brothers or brethren, never as brothers and sisters, which is the politically correct way of talking. Why don’t I conform? Because I speak the language that I find in the Word of God, where brothers includes sisters.

The current trend in Orthodoxy is to talk about the church fathers as our fathers and mothers instead of just our fathers. This is evident when you hear a priest end a service saying the prayer, “Through the prayers of our holy fathers and mothers, Lord Jesus Christ, our God, have mercy on us and save us.” The service book does not read this way. It has only, “Through the prayers of our holy fathers, Lord Jesus…” Why do some priests and deacons change the service book texts? Are they ashamed of our holy faith? Whom are they trying to appease? Fathers includes mothers, just as brothers includes sisters.

Back to the mystery of gender.

In the book of Genesis, “God said, ‘Let us make man in our own image… and let them be masters…’ God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:26-27 JB) That’s in the first account of the creation. In the second account occurs a more detailed description. “Yahweh God fashioned man of dust from the soil. Then He breathed into his nostrils a breath of life, and thus man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7) Then, later “It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helpmate.” (Genesis 2:18)

Where did the helpmate come from? Was it made from the soil as was the man? No, but it was somehow taken out of the man. “So Yahweh God made the man fall into a deep sleep. And while he slept, He took one of his ribs and enclosed it in flesh. Yahweh God built the rib He had taken from the man into a woman, and brought her to the man.” (Genesis 2:21-22)

The two are parallel accounts of the mystery of gender in the human species. Man, the masculine, is created in the ordinary way. But hidden within himself is the woman, who is brought into being, extracted from the man, by God’s act. Man, when first created, included woman. That is what is revealed in the first creation account. Man is created, he is created in the image of God, and then “male and female” are differentiated. But it is in the man that the woman first exists, hidden until God’s act reveals her presence. (I prefer the Orthodox icon representation of this act to the version by mystic painter William Blake, shown above.)

This is a mystery.
Man includes woman, without confusion, consubstantially.
There never was a time when man existed without woman.

Does the language sound vaguely familiar? It should, because man is made in the image of God. And of God we know, He is One, though in Him are included three divine Persons, without confusion, consubtantially. There never was a time when the Father existed and the Son and the Holy Spirit didn’t, though the Father is the principal source of both. In like manner is man the principal source of woman.

Later, holy apostle Paul used the same analogy with respect to Jesus Christ the divine Bridegroom and the Church the divine Bride, and also in respect to human marriage. All of the apostolic teachings about the relationship between man and woman, in marriage as well as in the Church, are based on this same analogy:
Adam includes Eve.
Man includes woman.
Christ includes the Church.
Hence, brothers includes sisters, fathers includes mothers.

Adam was put to sleep and Eve was extracted from his side.
Christ was nailed to the cross
and the Church was extracted from His side.
Again, mystery.
And mystery, that point in kairós (acceptable time)
where God enters our world and decisively acts.

This is the real meaning of inclusive, that through God’s act, man includes woman. There’s no justification to correct the Bible or the mind of the Church.

In so seemingly insignificant a detail as God’s choice of gendered words, one of the key mysteries of existence is revealed. And just as a minute alteration to any of the physical constants (i.e., gravity, magnetism, etc.) would render the structure of the natural world “formless and void,” so does the mindless change of any of God’s words diminish our knowledge of the truth.