It may or may not be true that any worship of any god is translated by some mysterious grace into into worship of one god who actually exists, and who happens to be the only god. That is believed by some students of religion. It is not, however, believed by very many practioners of the mainline monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) or of the non-monotheistic ones (Hinduism, Buddhism and their cognates). Certainly the Jews and Christians of the first century did not believe it. They believed that pagans worshipped idols, or even demons. . . .
. . . [W]e meet the currently vexed question of the gender of language about 'God', or gods. Here again we meet a puzzle. Nobody insists that a Muslim theologian should refer to the god he or she discusses as 'she'; this is just as well, otherwise Muslims would not be able to write much theology. The same would be true, I think for all Jews until very recently, and certainly for the great majority of Jews in the present. Nobody insists that someone writing about Hindu deities shoould make them all indiscriminately androgynous: some are clearly masculine, others equally clearly feminine. Nor would the pagan gods and goddesses of the ancient world have been pleased if their devotees had got their genders muddled. In a work of history I think it is appropriate to refer to the god of the Jews, the gods of the Greco-Roman world, and the god of the early church, in ways which those groups would themselves have recognized as appropriate.
--The New Testament and the People of God, pp. xiv-xv, xvi
Posted by Clifton at June 22, 2003 11:58 AM | TrackBack