-Chandogya Upanishad, 6.
"'Do you see God, or feel Vwi?' The last word was a pronoun; Gwydiona employed an extra gender, the universal."
-"The Night Face," III, p. 576.
"'Maybe God likes a joke now and then. But if so, Vwi has a pawky sense of humor.'" (VII, p. 602)
(I had to cross-check with a passage in an earlier instalment of the Technic History but there Dominic Flandry's sense of humour is said to be odd, not pawky.)
Gwydiona "Vwi" corresponds to the Upanishadic "THAT": a pronoun that can be applied to the ultimate reality whether that reality is regarded as personal or impersonal. As such, I can get with it. THOU ART THAT.
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
That bit from Chapter III of THE NIGHT FACE strikes me as odd. We already use "He," "Him," "His," in a gender neutral sense when referring to God. Then I recollected how the Gwydiona had developed a very different culture from that of the fallen Empire (and its successors).
What you quoted from Chapter VII reminded me of this extract from the very last paragraph of OPERATION CHAOS: "Looking back, I often can't believe it happened, that this was done by a red-haired witch, a bobtailed werewolf, and a snooty black tomcat. Then I remember it's the Adversary who is humorless. I'm sure God likes to laugh."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I used to think that God was not male but was masculine, thus that gender was distinct from sex. CS Lewis' "eldila" (angels) had no sex but seven genders. Now I don't think that that idea makes sense.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree, the word "gender" makes no sense unless referring to something either male or female.
I did read somewhere of why the Catholic Church refuses, for good theological reasons, to abandon "He," "His," and "Him' for God. And the Second Person of the Trinity became Incarnate as male, Christ.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
CS Lewis said that God is masculine (= active) in relation to all of us.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
That makes me wish I could remember more about that article on why orthodox Christianity uses male pronouns for God.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Christianity is in the patriarchal Biblical tradition as against any alternative matriarchal tradition.
Paul.
Paul:
That brings up the whole transexual stuff (nonsense in my opinion).
The trans advocates seem to believe that a female 'soul' can be born in a male body or vice versa.
They seem to have taken women wear skirts rather that pants & turned it into you like to wear skirts, so you must be a women rather than a man, regardless of your anatomy. Rather than just taken such things to be personal preference irrelevant to the sex/gender of the person.
Kaor, Paul!
As for how God is to be most properly referred to, it's a matter of divine revelation that He chose the masculine forms. What theologians do is to ponder why that matters.
Jim: I agree, the transgender lunacy is sheer bull twaddle! And can only be pathetic, absurd, disgusting, appalling, etc., as particular cases of this nonsense indicates.
Ad astra! Sean
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