[B-Greek] John--14-15-16

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Wed May 25 14:00:06 EDT 2005


Diana, your observations are accurate. Arguments about the gender of the Holy
Spirit cannot be grounded with any legitimacy on usage in the Greek New Testament.
While the masculine pronouns are used in conjunction with the noun hO PARAKLHTOS,
they are masculine only because they refer to a noun that has masculine gender
in Greek. But the word for "spirit" is PNEUMA, and that is a neuter noun in Greek
and neuter pronouns and adjectives will be used to; refer to it, NOT because the
Spirit was thought to be neuter, but rather because Greek grammar insists upon 
agreement of adjectives and pronouns--in normal instances--with the gender of
the noun to which they refer. I'm not going to discuss whether or not the Holy
Spirit should be understood as masculine because that is really NOT an appropriate
topic for B-Greek discussion, but one really should be aware that a doctrine of
the masculine gender of the Holy Spirit cannot be justified on grounds of the usage
in the Greek New Testament as such.

On Wednesday, May 25, 2005, at 01:16PM, Diana L Hayes <dihayes at juno.com> wrote:

>Dear the lists,
>   I was wondering if you could help me out on a little dilemma that has
>arisen through studying the Greek text about the Holy Spirit.  Coming
>upon these statements about the Holy Spirit, it surly has been surprising
>that I did not find the masculine pronoun really anywhere to describe
>exactly that the Holy Spirit is a He or as we can say, a
>person---although surely not to say that He is not, because we know that
>the He does have all the characteristics of a person, found from other
>passages in the New Testament-- and even in these.  
>
>All that I find is the quite ambiguous --EI ending of the verbs that can
>mean it or He, (or she).  Also there is the demonstrative pronouns here
>that keep the Spirit's identity quite generic.  It seems as though the
>Spirit is address in the 3rd person most of the time when Jesus talks of
>Him, and well, he would have to be!  It just is making it a little hard.
>
>I have heard, and believe made myself the argument that the Spirit must
>be a person, because in these passages and others in the English
>translation the word He is used for the Holy Spirit---As if this pronoun
>were there and concrete.  That is very well if it can be deduced, or if
>not that is well, but I was wondering if I could know the truth on the
>matter and how the Greek is reading here. Perhaps, and probably some have
>had this same little dilemma.  
>
>Thank you and will be looking forward to your response. 
>
>Sincerely,
>Diana Hayes
>dihayes at juno.com 
>---
>B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
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>
>


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/



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