Our Father in Heaven: Christian Faith and Inclusive Language for God

Rating:
Summary: Inclusive Language for God?
Review: John Cooper provides a thorough sustained argument that effectively addresses the major arguments in favor of inclusive language for God. He strikes an excellent balance between arguing all the topics necessary to make his case as well as the amount of depth. Best of all, he does so without being judgmental, nasty or arrogant.

For someone like me that has a hard time adjusting to inclusive language for humans on esthetic grounds, I have never been comfortable with changing our traditional christian ways of naming God. On the other hand, impressed by the "negative way" of knowing God as represented in Eastern Orthodoxy, I have long wondered if adopting the dinstinction between essence and energies of God and the consequent epistemological implications of that distinction entails losing the value of all language to reveal God or saves it? In a post Christian post Kantian world Kant's phenomenol and noumenal distinction has collapsed. Does the distinction between God as he is and God as he is revealed likewise collapse leaving no valuable place for propositional revelation? Mr. Cooper answers these questions, but I would like to have seen more detail concerning the nature of religious language. Perhaps he will write just such a book. If so, I will be getting in line to read it.