The Archbishop of York has a much bigger problem than the Lord's Prayer and the fatherhood of God: The Trinity's pronouns are he/him

Lord’s Prayer opening may be ‘problematic’, says archbishop :

 

“I know the word ‘father’ is problematic for those whose experience of earthly fathers has been destructive and abusive, and for all of us who have laboured rather too much from an oppressively patriarchal grip on life,” he said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That the Father is a man, the Son is a man, and the Holy Ghost is a man is shot through the Scriptures. They'll have to chuck the whole thing in the Thames.

 

 

See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand. 

-- Deuteronomy 32:39

Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I the LORD, the first, and with the last; I am he. 

-- Isaiah 41:4

Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.  I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour.  ... Yea, before the day was I am he; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand: I will work, and who shall let it? ... I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.

-- Isaiah 43:10f.,13,25 

And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you. 

-- Isaiah 46:4

Hearken unto me, O Jacob and Israel, my called; I am he; I am the first, I also am the last.  

-- Isaiah 48:12

I, even I, am he that comforteth you: who art thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die, and of the son of man which shall be made as grass; 

-- Isaiah 51:12

Therefore my people shall know my name: therefore they shall know in that day that I am he that doth speak: behold, it is I.  

-- Isaiah 52:6

The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he. 

-- John 4:25f.

But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:  

-- John 15:26

Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man!  

-- John 19:5

For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; 

-- I Timothy 2:5

The Synoptic accounts put Mary at the burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathaea, but John makes it seem like she didn't get the memo about the spices

And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre. -- Matthew 27:61 In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. -- Matthew 28:1 (Matthew says nothing about the spices one way or the other)

And Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses beheld where he was laid. -- Mark 15:47 And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him. -- Mark 16:1

And the women also, which came with him from Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid. And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the sabbath day according to the commandment. -- Luke 23:55f. Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them.  -- Luke 24:1

Then took they [Joseph and Nicodemus] the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury. -- John 19:40 The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre.  -- John 20:1 (John has Mary present at least at the cross)

So either Mary came on the first day of the week just to see (Matthew 28:1 and John 20:1), in which case John's account invalidates Mark and Luke, or she came to anoint the body (Mark 16:1 and Luke 24:1), invalidating John.

The tradition is unsettled on this basic point to say the very least, without mentioning other uncertain details.

Joseph of Arimathaea improbably carried away Jesus' body and rolled his great tombstone all by himself

And he bought fine linen, and took him down, and wrapped him in the linen, and laid him in a sepulchre which was hewn out of a rock, and rolled a stone unto the door of the sepulchre. -- Mark 15:46 And they said among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre? And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away: for it was very great. -- Mark 16:3f.

And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, And laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed. -- Matthew 27:59f. And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. -- Matthew 28:2

And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre. -- Luke 24:2

John solves the improbability by introducing a helper for Joseph:

And after this Joseph of Arimathaea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus: and Pilate gave him leave. He came therefore, and took the body of Jesus. And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight. Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury. Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus therefore because of the Jews' preparation day; for the sepulchre was nigh at hand. -- John 19:38ff. The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre. -- John 20:1

But it never occurred to John how improbable it is to have Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead yet still need helpers first to remove Lazarus' tombstone:

Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days. ... Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. ...  -- John 11:38f., 41.

Pope Francis decrees universal feast for Mary, "Mother of the Church", about which St. Paul knew NOTHING

You will search in vain in the New Testament for the sure basis for this Roman Catholic obsession with Mary the mother of Jesus.

Had St. Paul, for example, the slightest knowledge of this notion of contemporary Marianism, one might have expected him to have alluded to it in the straightforward way the Mary mystics do, especially whenever he discussed the related topics of virginity, fatherhood and motherhood, and the church.

It never happens.

Paul esteems virginity, for example, at considerable length in 1 Corinthians 7 (while acquiescing to marriage), however not on the grounds of Mary's supposed perpetual virginity, which he does not know. To Paul virginity was preferable not because of the example of Mary but only because of the pressures of the eschatological moment.

What's more, in Paul's theological imagination the father of us all is Abraham, and for two reasons: because of circumcision to which Abraham submitted as the first Jew; but also because of Abraham's faith in respect of Isaac, the child of the promise, through which same faith the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ now incorporates the Gentiles who similarly believe into the people of God, of whom the Jews were the first. Paul makes these arguments about the "father" at considerable length in Galatians and Romans, but there is hardly a word about the "mother". 

The only time it occurs to Paul to speak of spiritual motherhood at all, it is not to Mary to whom he refers, but to the source of faith, the heavenly Jerusalem:

 

But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.

 

-- Galatians 4:26

Paul's countless opportunities in his works to introduce the mundane conceptions of Marianism characteristically are passed by, doubtlessly because they never occurred to him and he probably did not know them, even from others in the church. Whatever proto-Marianism one might think to find in the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke is for this reason self-evidently quite late compared with the date of the Pauline corpus.    

The basis for contemporary Marianism is sheer casuistry, which notably raises its ugly head in the story here:

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has decreed that Latin-rite Catholics around the world will mark the feast of "the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church" on the Monday after Pentecost each year.

The Gospel reading for the feast, which technically is called a "memorial," is John 19:25-31, which recounts how from the cross Jesus entrusted Mary to his disciples as their mother and entrusted his disciples to Mary as her children. ...

Francis approved the decree after "having attentively considered how greatly the promotion of this devotion might encourage the growth of the maternal sense of the church in the pastors, religious and faithful, as well as a growth of genuine Marian piety," the decree said. /end

Of course John 19 says no such thing about "his disciples", only about the disciple whom Jesus loved,  "who from that hour took her into his own home" because Jesus in his final words on the cross had said to Mary "behold thy son" and to the disciple "behold thy mother", and promptly died.

Jesus had abandoned his mother and sisters and brothers to fend for themselves when he had embarked upon his itinerant career of preaching a similar repentance. Presumably as the carpenter's son and the carpenter, which are both attested in the evidence, Jesus had been apprentice to his father and took over as the breadwinner when Joseph was no longer in the picture. When this ne'er-do-well of a first born son left it all behind it had to hurt, for all sorts of reasons, but not the least of which was pecuniary.

In this light John's account of the final arrangements for Mary from the cross are pathetic in the extreme, Jesus' concession to his mother and friend that it hadn't turned out quite as he had expected.

If anyone had lacked the maternal sense, it had been Mary's own infamous son . . . by design. 

Woman, behold thy son! Disciple, behold thy mother!

Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.

-- John 19:25ff

Luke's Jesus predicts it, but Luke never says that Pontius Pilate scourged Jesus or that Jesus was scourged

And they shall scourge him, and put him to death: and the third day he shall rise again.

-- Luke 18:33

Then released he Barabbas unto them: and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.

-- Matthew 27:26

And so Pilate, willing to content the people, released Barabbas unto them, and delivered Jesus, when he had scourged him, to be crucified.

-- Mark 15:15

Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him.

-- John 19:1