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Should Pronouns referring to God and Jesus be Capitalized?
November 18, 2021
Should Pronouns referring to God and Jesus be Capitalized?
Sunday, November 21, 2021
This is one of those “seeker-sensitive” posts. It seeks to answer a question that everyone is asking. Well, not so much. But it did come up in Sunday school last week.
The first task in writing this post is to distinguish the words “capital” and “capitol.” When in doubt, use “capital,” since “capitol” has a narrow usage: “A capitol is a building in which the legislative body of government meets.” The more common word, “capital,” can refer, confusingly, to the county or state seat of government (but not the building they meet in); and, it can refer to capital letters; oh, and it can refer to money, but we don’t talk about money.
Our Old Testament was written in Hebrew. Hebrew does not use capital letters – it’s all one case. Our New Testament was written in Greek, and our ancient Greek texts, the most exact copies of the originals, were also written in all small case. To make it even tougher, they inserted no punctuation, and no spaces in between words.
Our reading is so much easier today in our English Bibles for several reasons. First, it’s in English. That helps. But also, we have chapters and verses so we can find our way around. But that has been inserted by translators. It was not in the original texts. We have noted that some of the chapter and verse divisions are a little clumsy. But helpful.
Likewise, capital letters have been inserted. According to our customs, the first letter of a sentence is capitalized, as are proper names. This is helpful for our understanding.
But there is a difference in editing philosophy concerning the capitalization of pronouns (He, Him) with reference to the Father, Son, and Spirit. Some translations do. Some don’t.
I prefer the capitalizations. I think it shows respect. God is in a class far above all other personal references in the Bible. The devil is also “supernatural,” but I don’t capitalize “him.” No respect intended. Also, capitalized pronouns help the reader distinguish who is being to referred to, especially in sentences where there are multiple references using pronouns. I “edit” John Owen and usually capitalize the quotes in the bulletin. Maybe he capitalized, and editors removed. But this is not a test of faith. It’s a modern invention, and we can trust our Bibles, capitalized or not.
- “Prayer is a sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of the heart and soul to God, through Christ, with the strength and assistance of the Holy Spirit, for such things as God has promised, or according to the Word, for the good of the church, with submission, in faith, to the will of God.” - John Bunyan
