God is not a he, but god is!

God is not a he, but god is!

It has been a rather busy week for the grammarians of god. Yesterday I shared my thoughts on the question of the capitalization of the word god. In reaction to my post some have asked my thoughts on the question of god vs g-d. I’ll address this question briefly before commenting more fully on an article posted today by the BBC on the question of god’s gender.

In certain traditions it is forbidden to say or to write the name of god. Nevertheless, people (religious or otherwise) want to discuss god and have navigated the path between this desire and respect for this tradition by writing g-d in place of god. The tradition of avoiding writing or pronouncing the name of god is indeed an old one. The oldest complete manuscript of the Septuagint (c. 2nd century AD), for example, consistently replaces the name YHWH with kyrios or theos (lord or god, respectively). When I was first introduced to the study of ancient religious texts (far too long ago) it was most common (in instances where an author avoided the name YHWH) to see god’s name replaced by “tetragrammaton” or “the tetragrammaton”, a term which literally means “the four letters” (I’ve always found it amusing to think that the name of god is the original four-letter-word). I appreciate this tradition, but it also seems to imply that writing g-d in place of god is senseless. After all, the common noun god is used in the Septuagint precisely to avoid writing the name of god, suggesting that god is not the name (as if it were a proper noun) of god. I’ve never told a student not to write g-d, nor do I plan to do so in the future, but I do regularly explain the grammar of god, which allows me to make (what I believe to be) some interesting historical and theological points.

(Now, to the main purpose of this post.) Today the BBC posted an article on the gender of god entitled, “Why is God not female” (note that the word god is capitalized in the original). The topic is a worthy one (and certainly a hot topic in religious conversations--as the article itself makes clear), but requires a rather subtle distinction between theology proper and the grammar of theology--and requires a modicum of knowledge of the history of ancient languages (disclaimer: my expertise is not in Hebrew or the semitic languages, but in Latin, and, to a lesser degree, in Greek). Unfortunately, the BBC article does not make the necessary distinction (though it could have easily done so, as it vacillates between grammar and theology proper throughout), preferring to concentrate on theological traditions.

The BBC article correctly points out that there is a long tradition of rejecting the idea that god (the entity) has a gender, as if god has a penis or a vagina. Some traditions do this by simply rejecting a gender of god altogether, others by suggesting that god is both mother and father. (Incidentally, there are other very good reasons--of ancient provenance--for describing god as mother; the creative power of the ‘mother’ is a venerable tradition.) The primary purpose of reminding ourselves that god is genderless is to avoid anthropomorphizing the deity. Indeed, there is a whole tradition of mysticism and negative theology that suggests no words are adequate to describe god, gendered or otherwise, and the best policy is to remain silent (this is a grossly simplified expression of this mystical tradition).

However, there is also a very good reason for referring to god as he (and this has nothing to do with the question of god’s genitalia). The word god in both Greek and Latin is masculine in gender, theos and deus respectively. And the rule in every gendered language is that a pronoun (e.g., he, she, it, they) must agree in gender (as well as number and case) with the noun for which it stands. English is not gendered in the same way as, say, French, so that, when one replaces dieu with il in French, there is no need to ask why an author/speaker did not use elle--the simple answer is that dieu (the word, not the entity to which the word refers) is masculine. Replacing dieu with elle is simply grammatically erroneous. This also explains the quite ancient tradition of referring to the Holy Spirit as she; Hagia Pneuma (Holy Spirit in Greek; I am not certain why the BBC article gives the Latin spiritus here, when the other examples provided are all Greek) is feminine (again, the words, not the entity to which they refer). (There is also a long-standing tradition of associating the Holy Spirit with Wisdom, Sophia, also a feminine noun in Greek.)

That said, I am not at all opposed to referring to god as she, so long as the purpose is to correct an unfortunate anthropomorphism--that is, the practice is theologically sound, even if grammatically incorrect. However, the BBC should perhaps have explained the origin of the traditional use of he by distinguishing between grammar and theology. Separating the theological point from the grammatical would avoid the inevitable rejoinder of the grammarians (and would have been far more instructive).

I get it--You have a grossly uninformed opinion about god!

(The following is an expanded version of my Facebook--comment--post from May 30, 2015).

Dear Salon.com,

Hire a fucking historian of religion (or, if you’ve already done so, prohibit any other members of your staff from writing on purely theological matters). Religion is an important topic, no doubt, and worthy of public discourse. However, there are already enough vacuous, uninformed and ill argued conversations in the Twitter-verse. Wouldn’t you like to contribute to a well reasoned conversation? Wouldn't you like to inform the public rather than spread have-baked theories about the grammar of god?

On Thursday of last week you reposted an article from January entitled, “I get it--you’re an atheist. You should still capitalize God”, by Richard Eskow. The article is grossly uninformed, and factually wrong grammatically, historically and theologically (or philosophically, if you prefer). The context of the conversation is misrepresented from the first. I am sure some atheists write god with a minuscule g to make a point, viz., god does not exist. This is indeed a silly practice inasmuch as orthography and grammar cannot replace a rational argument. Nevertheless, there are good reasons (again, grammatically, historically and theologically) to write god this way, and no good reasons (at least no good grammatical, historical or theological reasons) to write god with a majuscule g.

To begin with the grammatical: in English, the common practice is to capitalize proper nouns and not to capitalize common nouns (there are, of course, exceptions). A common noun is a noun that can be predicated univocally (that is, not analogously, not metaphorically) of many individuals. Take the word human; applied to Bill and Steve, the word means precisely the same thing. Note, human can be applied to a number of individuals analogously as well: a picture of a human is not a human, but its use in describing a picture of Bill is perfectly acceptable. The name Bill, on the other hand, is a proper noun. Its predication of Bill Gates and my goldfish Bill implies no commonality between the two (except that they are both named Bill). Notice further that speaking of my goldfish Bill does not imply that Bill exists (she does not). Hence, if the word god can be applied to more than one entity univocally (and by entity we must include ideas, concepts, mythical characters--naming and defining do not imply existence--pace Saint Anselm) then we are looking at a common noun. Yahweh is a god (perhaps the only god) and Zeus is a god, and in neither case is god used as a proper name or proper noun (as if God were Yahweh’s surname).

Now the historical: I am not aware of precisely when the practice of capitalizing god began, but I am aware of some of the oldest practices in the western tradition. Having earned my PhD in Medieval Studies, I have spent many gruelling hours deciphering, reading and transcribing medieval (and some ancient) manuscripts, mostly in Latin but also in Greek. In my studies I have only seen god (deus and theos) capitalized in two instances: first, when the manuscript is written entirely in majuscule; second, when the word begins a sentence--and even this circumstance is relatively rare since punctuation is a rather late invention. One might be tempted to think that capitalizing god becomes standardized with the popularization of the moveable-type printing press, and perhaps it does. Nevertheless, I myself own an original manuscript from Paris, 1706--lecture notes from a Jesuit course on the sacraments--wherein god is not capitalized (again, except when it follows a full stop). (I recognize that this is merely anecdotal evidence--one swallow does not a Summer make, and all that--but it is consistent with the tradition I’ve described). There is a tradition of capitalizing god, but it does not seem to be particularly old.

Finally, the theological: Historians, philosophers and theologians traditionally distinguish between a number of sub-branches or sub-disciplines of theology. The most important (in my mind) is the distinction between natural and sacred theology, where the latter treats of the god or gods that belong to particular religious cults or sects (in the classical sense), while the former treats of god or gods as a concept (what does it mean to be god or a god, similar to what it means to be human or a human). If god is reduced to God, the entire branch of natural theology is lost. This, I think, would be an unfortunate loss. Thomas Aquinas’ five ways (of proving the existence of god) belong not to the discipline of sacred or Christian theology (indeed, his arguments are borrowed from older traditions, including the very rich Islamic tradition), but to the tradition of natural theology. Plato’s discussions of god (and Aristotle’s following him) belong to natural theology as well. Regardless of one’s religious commitments and convictions, these conversations are of value in themselves. (There is much more to be said under “theological”, but I think a whole book would be necessary to present the whole argument.)

Had Eskow provided a history of the modern capitalization of god, we could have an interesting conversation about evolving conventions. I am not a staunch traditionalist--just because we’ve done it one way for such a long time does not mean that new traditions should not be embraced. Languages are living organisms that change, evolve, even die. But this is not the argument that was presented.

I am sure that there are some who explicitly use god instead of God to make a theological (or, if you prefer, a-theological) point. I’ve heard it argued before that e.e. cummings explicitly wrote his name entirely in minuscule to make a point about literature and its authorities. If this is true, I suspect he has an interesting point. But, in theology and philosophy at least, it is never good practice to let grammar and orthography to make your point for you.