Why would it elicit cringe when it's been recorded as far back as 1375? I could see the doctrinal issues, but linguistically, what's wrong with it?
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Could God be Non-Binary?
- Thread starter Secret Chief
- Start date
Why would it elicit cringe when it's been recorded as far back as 1375? I could see the doctrinal issues, but linguistically, what's wrong with it?
I don't think so. It would be like getting people to see 'you' as exclusively plural again. We need a new word, really.
I would assume God is 'non-binary' in the sense that human gender is kinda irrelevant.
Whether that was how the discussion was framed in your high school, I'm not sure. Seems a weird discussion point for high school on multiple levels.
As I said to ADA, and the meaning of words changes, often to the point where it cannot be changed back. I'm in favour of a new and unambiguous word. The first time this was really tried was in the 19th c. but it never caught on and there were quite a few suggestions.
Well, there's never been a better time than now for neo pronouns. But there doesn't exist any English style guides anymore which don't list they as a third person singular. I could see it happening, but maybe not for some time still more for traditionalism reasons.
If it was in a comparative religion class (assuming the UK has those), I can see its relevance and even potential value for provoking thought and discussion. Otherwise it doesn't make sense to bring up, in my opinion.
According to an 1884 article in the New-York Commercial Advertiser, the pronouns ne, nis, nir and hiser were proposed and briefly used around 1850. These coinages, which would yield such sentences as “Everyone loves nis (or hiser’s) mother,” have yet to be documented, but an 1852 newspaper report which calls for the invention of a new pronoun “of the common gender” demonstrates that the subject was being discussed that early. Justifying the need for such a word, the writer argues that in sentences like “If the reader will only glance at the map of Europe, he will see…” the word reader “refers to either male or female, while the pronoun ‘he’ refers alone to the former.” The writer rejects the coordinate phrase he or she as “inelegant and bungling” and finds singular they “a direct violation of the rules of grammar” (similar arguments against he or she and they are still common today). Instead, the writer pleads for a new pronoun – “Will not some of our grammar makers ‘fish us up’ one?” But he or she also insists that, until a new pronoun comes along, the sentence must be recast as, “The reader who glances at the map of Europe will see…” because, if something can’t be said well, then it “can’t be said at all.”
Napoleon Bonapart Brown argues in The Atlantic (Nov., 1878) that the need for a new pronoun is “so desperate, urgent, imperative that…it should long since have grown on our speech,” allowing us to refer to both genders while sparing us from coordinate he or she, his or her, and him or her.
The gender-neutral pronoun: 150 years later, still an epic fail | OUPblog
To be fair, I could see "they" causing some confusion in specific contexts. Consider this Qur'anic verse (coloring mine):
Qur'an 2:30 said:
Al-Baqarah-30, Surah The Cow Verse-30 / The Noble Quran (Read Quran in English, Listen Quran)
Replace the red "He" with "They" and the context becomes confusing and ambiguous. I think a new third-person singular pronoun that didn't share a meaning with a third-person plural one would be better in this case.
I mean you wouldn't use it there because of what it's in the rest of the translation, which has overlapping contextual uses for the thee thy thou thine. They didn't come until later.
If it were me I'd just put 'Allah' there. As using a name or title in place of a gendered pronoun is a-okay. Much better than trying to keep up the conflicting notion that God is without gender but using exclusively gendered language for said being.
There are translations that write "Allah" there, yes. I assume there might be similar situations elsewhere, though.
In Arabic, this whole debate is also kinda moot: Arabic has no genderless pronoun, and the Qur'an uses "he" to refer to Allah throughout. Using a gender-neutral pronoun would not only require the creation of an Arabic one but also extensively changing the text of the Qur'an. I don't see that ever happening, even though I think a genderless pronoun would be more consistent with the notion of a deity who is "unlike anything else."
Interestingly this actually seems to have been adopted for, among other reasons, older forms of English having homophonic forms for both her and they (heo or hie [both used for her and they]) and hers, theirs (hire/hira).
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber & Business Owner
I like the German word das. It's there, it's easy, it fits.
Secret Chief
Veteran Member
I only got it second hand from a student who is a raging atheist.
Well, the question certainly would provoke the religious communities a raging atheist might be interested in aggravating. Perhaps that's why to me I find the question somewhat uninteresting - being nonbinary isn't threatening to my religion. On the contrary, being non-sexed and non-gendered is viewed as the default state of being considering the overwhelming majority of the universe has neither sex nor gender (and therefore, the same is true of the gods when one's gods encompass that same territory).
Reminds me of Hapi Hapi (Nile god) - Wikipedia
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
If a person wa to their god to be non binary, sure.
Secret Chief
Veteran Member
Well, the student wasn't interested actually, he finds RE* to be completely boring. He was just remarking.
*Religious Education, which falls within the overall subject of Philosophy & Ethics.
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The "handsome gentleman" is also a painting -- an artifact of one human's intellect and conception.
Secret Chief
Veteran Member
Yes, the overall title of the course is Philosophy & Ethics and this includes comparative religion. As another example, a recent discussion in a class that I was in concerned the death penalty and the attitudes of various religions towards it (revenge, punishment, good & evil, retribution, state murder etc etc).