Crazy Anglicans
Posted: Sat Jul 08, 2023 12:05 pm
The famous/infamous Jesus Seminar, they of the many colored balls, found unanimously that "our Father" were the only words of the prayer that were uttered by Jesus. They divided on the authenticity of every other word, mostly in the "he never said it" direction. (I bought the book).
For the purposes of the spurious question posed in the Guardian, with the exception of some KJV zealot types (?), I'm sure that Christians do not believe that God believes males bear his image more fully and accurately than females. Early believers may have thought so. Some people (both male and female) believe similar things whether they are Hindu, Catholic, atheist or Jain. It seems a bit universal.
In these enlightened times uhuh we know that God's "image" is not gender but moral, is not physical but mental and that Paul expressed correctly: So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise (Gal 3:26-28).
Taken out of Koine Greek and Hebrew culture, we lose a bit of his intent here. It is the word "heirs". His culture (and I think we can include him too) wrestled with "seed" and "heirs" as meaning "male heirs". That was the line that carried the promise and so on, not to mention property rights and etc. (Yes, I know women could own things but let's not discuss the entire 'redeemer' idea). It was important to Paul that all people who accepted Jesus as Christ understood that they were all equally heirs of the gift of God, all were of the seed and thus inheritors, with no ethnic, status or gender disqualification or gradation.
God loves all mankind equally and unconditionally. But salvation IS conditional. Seems to me that the history of Christianity (and religion in general) balances or wobbles on the pivot of which condition/s obtain/s.