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.