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God’s Gift of holy spirit—a “He” or an “It” (Endnotes)

1. A pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun so that the noun does not need to be repeated; “he,” “she,” “it,” “that,” “those,” etc. are all pronouns. Close

2. Even more proper English grammar today would be, “[the holy spirit] that is the earnest of our inheritance.” Close

3. Personal pronouns such as “he,” “she,” “who,” and “whom” indicate that a person is being referred to, while relative pronouns such as “it,” “which,” or “that” are not usually or properly used in regard to people. Close

4. An interesting cultural observation is that generally in English, if a landscaper, gardener, or plant lover refers to a special tree or bush in an intimate way, masculine pronouns are used. “Oh my little fern, he isn’t doing so well, but this guy over here, my aloe vera, he is doing great.” Close

5. The Greek word parakletos can mean counselor, helper, comforter, etc., and so the translations differ as to how this word should be translated. Close

6. There has been much scholarly discussion in recent years about the gender of God, and this is not the place for a long discussion about it. Although we believe that God has no actual gender, in Scripture He presents Himself as masculine. He presented himself as a man to Abraham (Gen. 18:1 and 2), and to many others (Exod. 24:10 and Dan. 7:9 are good examples). Close

7. Trinitarians, of course, see things differently. They view “the Holy Spirit” as the third person of the Trinity, so even though pneuma, spirit, is a neuter noun, they use masculine personal pronouns with it. Note the gender of the Greek nouns and pronouns in [brackets] in contrast with the gender that appears in the translation.

John 14:17 (NASB)
“that is the Spirit [neuter] of truth, whom [autos, neuter, not masculine] the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him [autos, neuter, not masculine] or know Him [not in Greek], but you know Him [autos, neuter, not masculine] because He abides [verb with no gender] with you, and will be in you.”

In spite of the neuter noun and pronouns in Greek, almost every English version uses the personal pronoun “whom” and masculine personal pronouns “him” and “he,” as the NASB does. This shows that Trinitarian scholars do not use the gender of the pronoun, but the subject being discussed, to determine how the English should read. This reveals an inconsistency in one of the standard arguments for the existence of the Trinity. Many Trinitarians say that the use of masculine pronouns shows that “the Holy Spirit” is the third person of the Trinity. A case in point is the Greek word parakletos (helper, “comforter,” counselor), which is masculine. It is good Greek grammar to use the masculine pronoun ekeinos to describe the “Helper,” parakletos, which is masculine (John 14:26), but Trinitarians have said that the use of ekeinos is evidence that “the Holy Spirit” is masculine (Cp. A. T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament (Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, MI, reprinted 1960), Vol. 5, p. 252 and 253). However, when neuter pronouns appear in the Greek text, they simply change them to masculine in their translations. One cannot have it both ways. If the gender of the pronoun is evidence for the actual gender of the noun, then the “helper” is masculine, but the “holy spirit” is neuter—certainly not a person. The proper way to think about the pronoun, as we have seen, is that its gender should never be used as “evidence” for the gender of its related noun. Close

8. Although we usually think of angels and demons as masculine, there are both female good spirits (Zech. 5:9) and female evil spirits. The Hebrew word “lilith” (Isa. 34:14) is the name of a female demon. “Lilith” gets translated many ways in the English versions, including “night monster” (ASV, NASB, AMP), “night hag” (RSV), “night spectre” (Rohterham) and by her name, “Lilith” (NAB; Tanakh; The Message). Some translators apparently miss the point that Isaiah is referring to a demon at all, and have “screech owl” (KJV) or “night creature” (NIV). Lilith is “a malevolent supernatural being” (Bromiley, op. cit., Bible Encyclopedia, Vol. 3, p. 536). Unless the context tells us the gender of a demon, using “it” in Luke 11:24 is our best choice because it allows for either male or female gender. Close