Charge the people before God to stop disputing about words. This serves no useful purpose since it harms those who listen. You can understand why St. Paul would say that. Theological disputes certainly have served to disrupt the unity of the Church over the centuries. In fact, the World Council of Churches, the largest ecumenical gathering, had as a motto at one point “service unites, doctrine divides.” However, there is another sense in which words do matter. During the first centuries of the Church there were knock down drag out fights over calling Jesus “the Son of God.” Those who disputed the validity of those words would have irreparably harmed the Church if they had prevailed. It is because Jesus, born of Mary as a human child, was at the same time the Son of God, that every human being has an infinite, an eternal dignity as a child of God. As the patristic motto put it: God became man so that man could become God. So words matter. In our age when there are disputes over feminist language or using the proper pronouns we must not let those disputes lead to harm but instead use them as invitations to love as Jesus taught us in the great commandment.
JUNE62024
By Church Staff
