Subject: nature of the holy spirit of god |
Bible Note: Greetings Gdh1127! Thanks for the reply! May I respond to your points? If I remember correctly, you mentioned that you have not had training in Greek. Allow me to point out something which may be causing some confusion and something which also points to the personhood of the Holy Spirit. The 'gender' of nouns is more a function of form than anything else. What do I mean by this? Nouns must have a form connected with them, thus some nouns are masculine, some nouns are feminine, while others are neuter. In some cases, the reason for the gender is obvious. For instance, 'man' is masculine, while 'woman' is feminine. :) In other cases, though, the reason is not apparent. 'Spirit' is neuter in form. Thus, grammatically, all of the articles and pronouns which have it as their antecedent must also be neuter in form. However, this does not necessarily mean that the Holy Spirit is not a person. It simply means that the form of the word is neuter. Interestingly, since the form of the word is neuter, grammatical rules require that all of the pronouns that refer to 'spirit' must also be neuter in form. However, in many instances, the pronouns are not neuter, but masculine. Two of the examples you used in your post incorrectly identified the pronoun as neuter when they were in fact masculine in form. The two examples are: John 14:26, and John 16:13-14. In both of these passages, 'ekeinos' is in the masculine form. Why would Scripture break the 'rule' in these cases? I believe it is because the Scripture writers were hesitant to use the neuter form for the Holy Spirit, Whom they certainly viewed as a person and not a thing! p.s. - I wanted to note that my other example (Eph. 1:14) has some textual variants involved, but John 16:13-14 do not. Your Brother in Christ, Tim Moran |