More on Gender and the Image of God

Gerald Hiestand has made two new postings to his iustificare blog (see my previous posting Gender and the Image of God). In Gender and the Image of God: A Summary Thus Far Hiestand summarises the discussion arising from his previous posting concerning male representative language. I think he now realises that this is a more complex issue than he had thought. And then in Gender and the Image of God: Gender and Typology he makes his basic argument that there is a typological link between the doctrine of the Trinity and human gender. Well, I now realise that there is more to this than I had thought, although I have several questions.

At this point Hiestand has not related this issue back to Bible translation, and so has not justified his comment that:

the egalitarian bent of the TNIV has inadvertently obscured an element of Trinitarian thought that is of great worth and beauty.

My own response to this is that TNIV has at least tried carefully to avoid renderings which have any such theological implications, not least because the translators are not in fact generally theologically egalitarian. I hope that Hiestand will come back to this point later, perhaps pointing out some specific places where he considers TNIV to be at fault in this way.