The Holy Spirit Is A Person

From: Eric Weiss (eweiss@acf.dhhs.gov)
Date: Mon Aug 28 1995 - 05:27:31 EDT


Shortly after I began learning Greek, I decided to check out something I had
often heard, which was that while the Holy Spirit ("to pneuma agiov") was a
neuter noun, Jesus used masculine pronouns to refer to It/Him in John 14-16,
and this was often used as a proof text(s) that the Holy Spirit was a Person,
not a thing or a force.

As I looked at these chapters, I saw that the use of the masculine pronoun
could almost always be explained as a reference to an immediately preceding
mention of "ho parakletos," which is masculine, and that the NASB often
translated the neuter pronoun as "Whom" or "Him" even though its antecedent
was "pneuma," which is neuter. This may reflect the proper belief that the
Holy Spirit is a Person, but it also incorrectly reflects the fact that the
Greek pronoun is neuter, which proper English usually requires to be
translated as "it." [Of course, this gets into the issue of how to
translate, and arguments could be made that while "it" is technically
correct, it's a wrong translation because the Holy Spirit is not an "it" as
English understands the word "it."] Possibly 16:13-14 could be a use of a
masculine pronoun ("ekeinos") with "to pneuma" which occurs in 16:13, but it
could also just be Jesus referring again to "ho parakletos" from 16:7.
                                                                             
Maybe I missed a verse or two, but it seems to me that it is not correct to
say, as some do, that John's use of personal masculine pronouns for the Holy
Spirit, which is a neuter word ("pneuma"), is proof that the Holy Spirit is a
person, because John in fact DOES NOT use masculine pronouns for the Holy
Spirit but just follows proper rules of Greek grammar, i.e., he uses
masculine pronouns for "ho parakletos" and neuter pronouns for "to pneuma."
It is the English translations that choose to translate John's neuter
pronouns as "He" or "Him" or "Whom."

Am I correct in this? I've only had 1 year of Greek, so I may be missing
something here. I'm not denying or questioning the Personhood of the Holy
Spirit, just some preachers' and evangelists' use (misuse) of what John
writes.

Thanks!



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:37:25 EDT