Citizen God

[poliphilo]

This is prompted by something qos was saying.

Religious language is always conservative. We live in a age of democracies but we're still using monarchist language about God.

Why, when I don't want to be ruled by a King in real life, should I want to acknowledge one in my spiritual life?

I don't like Kings (or Queens or Princes.) If I got an invitation to Buckingham Palace I would (politely) decline. I'm a Republican in the European sense of the word. Ah ca ira, ca ira, ca ira and all that. I think Prince Charles is a national embarrassment.

But if I go to Church (which I don't, but if I did) it's all "crown him with many crowns, the lamb upon the throne."

No thanks.

Where are the rights of Man in all this? Why is Heaven still stuck in the feudal middle Ages?

"He hath put down the mighty from their seat". Does he exclude only himself from the levelling process?

The myth of the incarnation suggests otherwise. God becomes Jesus, becomes an ordinary Joe, becomes a citizen.

Citizen God- why not?

My God is immanent- a sister, a brother, a comrade- or I don't want to know.

Comments

[cataptromancer.livejournal.com]

Except the problem is that a lot of that absolutist monarchical stuff is still in the earlier versions. Jerome's vulgate uses 'rex regum,' king of kings, all over the place. And I don't know hebrew -- or much about hebrew -- but it does seem like the language of power and domination is also there in the hebrew bible. So I don't think it's as much about the KJV as it is about the nature of the text itself.

I thought the revised standard version was the one most people used, including evangelicals, or are you counting that as the KJV?

[cataptromancer.livejournal.com]

And of course, by 'earlier versions' I mean the 'earlier translations' and 'source texts.'

[solar-diablo.livejournal.com]

Except the problem is that a lot of that absolutist monarchical stuff is still in the earlier versions. Jerome's vulgate uses 'rex regum,' king of kings, all over the place.
Right, but I was speaking specifically to mainstream American Protestantism. This is speculation on my part, but I imagine that "John and Jane Christian" aren't even aware of earlier translations than KJV - it's why some of them think that Jews in those days spoke the King's English, so to speak.

It will, of course, depend on the denomination. There are some fundamentalist groups who do not accept any translation other than KJV. And while I hesitate to call Mormons "Christian" (in the Nicene Creed sense of the word) I know that they also prepfer the KJV to any other translation.

[cataptromancer.livejournal.com]

I think I've heard that George W supposedly once said "If English was good enough for Jesus, then it's good enough for me"...but of course that quotation may be, uh, apocryphal.

I wonder how intense the royal language is in the koine greek, which I've never learned.