From: Stephen Carlson (scc@reston.icl.com)
Date: Fri Aug 18 1995 - 11:34:44 EDT
Eric Weiss wrote:
[. . .]
> 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.
It is very dangerous to infer much of anything about personhood
from Greek grammatical gender. The rules of Greek grammar
generally require the pronoun to agree in gender with its
antecedent, and Greek grammatical gender is very artificial (but
no more than, say, German, French, or Italian) compared to
English's notions of gender. For example, Matthew uses the
neuter pronoun to refer to the child Jesus:
Mt2:13 ... MELLEI GAR hHRWDHS ZHTEIN TO PAIDION TOU APOLESAI AUTO.
"for Herod was about to search for the child, to destroy him." (NRSV)
AUTO is clearly neuter, required because the Greek word child,
PAIDION, is neuter. English's rules of grammar require a
masculine pronoun, because the English word "child" must be
either maculine or feminine.* Whether to use "he" or "it" in
English in referring to the Holy Spirit is more of a question of
theology then Greek grammar.
Stephen Carlson
* Actually, in American English babies (but not children) are
often grammatically neuter, presumably to avoid getting the
baby's sex wrong.
-- Stephen Carlson : Poetry speaks of aspirations, : ICL, Inc. scc@reston.icl.com : and songs chant the words. : 11490 Commerce Park Dr. (703) 648-3330 : Shujing 2:35 : Reston, VA 22091 USA
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