Many are following the controversy sparked by the appearance of the Today's New International Version of the Bible, published in 2002 by Zondervan. Touchstone has consistently opposed all translations that make use of "gender-neutral" or "gender-accurate" terms, believing that every Bible systematically employing what is called "inclusive language," whether for God or man, is unorthodox and unacceptable.

On this page we will compile the recent Touchstone editorials on such Bibles, as well as some essays that support them and our response to those essays, and past Touchstone articles that shed light on the subject. New articles will be added as they become available.

Editorials and Essays Prompted by the TNIV

April 2002 Editorial
"Heretical Bibles" by S. M. Hutchens

"'Blessed is the man,' ('ashrei ha'ish) of the First Psalm, for example, points not only to incorporation of the woman in the man as her head, but does so precisely because it is a Christological adumbration of the blessed Man whose sex as the Son of God and Paschal Lamb is by no means insignificant, and into whose decisively male incarnation and headship all who are saved must enter."

June 2002 Letters
Responses to "Heretical Bibles" from Robert K. Hering,
Douglas J. Moo, and Alan G. Padgett

"We share with Jesus his full humanity, not his full manliness."

June 2002 Editorial
"Unmanning the Bible" by S. M. Hutchens

"The Christian teaching, as dark and blighted as it is to the egalitarians, is that the maleness of particular men, not 'humanness,' is the essence and sign of the inclusivity in which they claim to delight. There exists no generic quality of humanness apart from the particularity of Adam and Christ as the comprehensive men any more than there exists a generic Godness apart from the particularity of the Father as the Source of the Son and Spirit. God did not become human except in that he was 'made man,' which means not simply made human, but made human only and in so far as he was made a particular male, and so able to comprehend all men (including female men) in his person as the 'firstborn of all creation.'"

December 2002 Editorial
"Years of the Locust" by S. M. Hutchens

"The battle against the Bible is now being fought with great vehemence by progressive Evangelicals, many of whom are in charge of the movement’s most influential institutions, who, while continuing to advertise and gather funds for their mission to bring Christ to the world, are in the process of changing the "Christ" they are bringing from the Son of God the Father to the Child of the God Who is Beyond Gender Categories, an operation that begins with removal of the theological significance of gender categories for language about human beings made in his image."

January/February 2003 Features
"Is God Masculine?" by Alan Padgett

"With respect to God, yes, he is usually depicted as a male in Scripture. It does not follow from this that God is in fact masculine, since the naming of God reflects the language and culture in which the name (like any name) originated. We know this is true without much reflection for names like 'Elohim' or 'Yahweh,' but we forget it is just as true for 'Abba, Father.' Furthermore, you neglect the feminine images for God in the Bible!"

"Children of a Better God: A Reply to 'Is God Masculine'"
by S. M. Hutchens

"The Scriptures do indeed teach that no man has at any time seen God—not that his essence is beyond our language to name 'with precision,' but that it is beyond our language to name at all. But they also teach that the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father has made him known to us. No orthodox Christian may answer the correct assertion that God is beyond human categories with the counter-assertion that he is known metaphorically. This not only begs the question by re-positing that of the ontological relation involved in the metaphor, but it is simply the wrong answer, the right one being that the unknowable God is known truly in Christ, whom we have seen, whom we have heard, into whom we have been baptized, whose flesh we have touched, and whose blood we have drunk. The One in whom all the fullness of God dwells bodily is in us and we are in him, and he has taught us to call God Father."

Other Touchstone articles on Inclusive Language

October 2001 Feature
"Jesus, Son of Humankind?" by Paul Mankowski, S.J.

"Most telling of all, inclusivists usually give voice to their own commitment to bring about inclusive language, apparently unaware of the damage it does to their own case. If the fait of inclusive language were already accompli, this would be pointless, since there is no need to exhort one’s fellows to continue to speak as they speak. Nor is it easy to understand why so much effort should be expended to bring us where, as they claim, we have already arrived."

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