This post is part seven in a series looking at Donald Hook and Alvin Kimel’s 1993 article, “The Pronouns of Deity: A Theolinguistic Critique of Feminist Proposals,” published in Scottish Journal of Theology and currently freely accessible through Alvin Kimel’s academia.edu page.
In this post I address the criticism of the neologism Godself. This was first used in the late seventies as a replacement for himself and later as a replacement for two words, God himself. That is, “God Godself [or: godself] will provide.” Today, that would be written, “Godself will provide”; “God will not allow Godself to be mocked.”
The authors rightly note, “In English the reflexive pronouns are made by adding the suffix –self (pl. –selves) to the determinative possessive forms of the first and second person and to the objective form of the third person.” But this apparently means that “the very shape of the word Godself precludes the word from ever being accepted as a reflexive pronoun. Nouns do not become pronouns” (316). On top of this, self is “a prefix, not a suffix,” with words such as self-promoter or self-denial. But all of this seems to be filler to me, not really constituting a substantial argument. Godself is formed in analogy to himself, etc. Because there are no unique pronouns for God in English, Godself is formed by compounding the noun, God, with a pronoun ending, –self. The authors wrongly criticise the neologism on the basis of how self- functions as a prefix in nouns, overlooking that Godself is intended and used as a pronoun.
After this, the authors forward a more substantial criticism. They concede that language does change, pointing to the transition from n/Negro to b/Black and African-American in the US. But these are nouns, which are an open class in English. New nouns appear everyday, and languages have in-built systems for their incorporation. Pronouns, like prepositions and articles, however, constitute a “closed class” (317). Their role in English is instead structural and they are very resistant to change.
But this shouldn’t mean that English can’t incorporate new pronouns at all. Both they and she entered English sometime in the last 1000 years, each of them functioning to uphold distinctions that were being lost in contemporary pronouns, hi and hie (they), and heo (she). Each of these increasingly approximated pronounciation of the masculine singular he, so speakers adopted the Scandinavian they and their pronunciation of heo eventually adjusted to she to avoid ambiguity (an older theory has that she came from a Scandinavian source too). In addition to “natural” changes, in recent times non-binary and genderdiverse people have had success in some areas with they as a pronoun (formerly only used in the singular when referring to general nouns: “That person needs to come pick up their things,” not: “Taylor needs to come pick up their things”), as well as entirely new pronouns. Since the nineties, the gender-neutral pronoun hen has seen increasing use in Swedish, a West Germanic language like English, appearing in some media and legal texts. Hook and Kimel are right to distinguish between pronouns and nouns, then, but I don’t think this can absolutely rule out the incorporation of new pronouns into English. Indeed, the incorporation of Godself into the OED in 2014 (and as a pronoun, not a noun), tracking its usage, indicates its ongoing appeal. The following n-gram from Google also shows its increased usage since the late seventies when it is first attested (mapped against kenotic and Barthian as controls, after experimenting with words until I found some with similar attestation numbers):
In 1993, Hook and Kimel concluded their criticism of Godself with the following words: “Godself will not be heard—indeed, cannot be heard—as reflexively referring to the antecedent God. Theologians and others can pretend that it functions as a pronoun—and they can keep this up for as long as they have the energy and desire to do so—but Godself will never become a pronoun within the English language nor even within the smaller community of the Christian Church, no matter who attempts by fiat to legislate the practice” (318). Does this remain true today, I wonder? Perhaps it is yet too early to tell.
In the next post I will explore some more of the authors’ criticisms of avoiding masculine pronouns for God, beginning with the claim that this depersonalises God in English usage.
Other posts in this series:
#1 Feminist proposals
#2 Grammatical gender
#3 Gender and pronouns in English
#4 The masculine God in Scripture and English
#5 The gender of the Holy Spirit
#6 Pronoun avoidance and the issue of clarity
‣ #7 Godself
#8 Pronoun avoidance, depersonalisation, and other reformist proposals
Cameron Coombe 