Is God a Man?

 This nonsense popped up on social media today.  

Matt is a priest in the ACNA diocese of C4SO and I firmly believe that he's a heretic.  Not just because of this but based on other things that he's said as well.  

My fundamental problem with this is that this sort of thing isn't really about Gender as much as it is about the authority of scripture. What is God's preferred Pronouns?  That's a pretty straightforward question with an even more straightforward answer. God has told us to call Him Father and that is also how he has set up created order.  

But Matt's friends think that the only reason that we call God that is because the Bible was written in the context of a patriarchal society and that's where the trouble begins.  Is the Bible the word of God or is the word of man experiencing God in a patriarchal society? 

If you're an Anglican in the Anglican Church of North America then that answer is pretty clear.  The Bible is the infallible word of God and not the words of men experiencing God.  So then when the Bible calls God Father, God is calling Himself Father.  To question that is to question the very heart of biblical authority.  

The Bible wasn't  written the way it was because the writers lived in patriarchal societies.  The societies were patriarchal because that's how God set them up.  That's the argument that St. Paul makes in 1 Timotht 2:12 and 13 and 1 corinthians 11. This then is why egalitarianism, if not heresy outright, leads to heresy when taken to its logical conclusions.  

The reason Tebbe wants to question God's preferred pronouns is ultimately because he wants to question all of scripture. And the questioning of God's word goes back a long time.  "Did God really say?"  Tebbe's response of course is going to be that he was just asking questions.  But these questions are the questions that got us into this mess in the first place.  Don't be like Eve.