The Pronoun Problem: Paracletos, Pneuma and Ruach

If the Holy Spirit is revealed with a motherly nature, a reader may fairly ask: why does my Bible call the Spirit “He”?

One noun, three chapters

The masculine Greek pronouns usually cited for the Holy Spirit occur in three short chapters of John’s Gospel, and they follow a single noun: paracletos, usually translated Comforter, Helper or Advocate.

But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

— John 14:26

Paracletos happens to be a masculine noun, and Greek grammar requires a masculine pronoun — ekeinos, “that one” — to refer back to it. The word appears only five times in the New Testament: four times in John 14–16 of the Spirit, and once in 1 John 2:1, where it describes Jesus Christ Himself, “an advocate with the Father.” Jesus calls the Spirit “another Comforter” (John 14:16) — another of the same kind as Himself.

Pneuma and ruach

Paracletos is not the main word for the Spirit. Across most of the New Testament the Spirit is pneuma, a neuter noun. That is why the King James Version can say “the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit” (Romans 8:16) and “the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us” (Romans 8:26). Neuter grammar adds nothing to either side of the question.

In the Old Testament the word is ruach — spirit, breath or wind — which is grammatically feminine in most of its uses.

Role, not grammar

How do we know that the first Person of the Trinity is masculine? Because He reveals Himself to us as our Heavenly Father. In the same way, Yona Tree argues, the Spirit’s nature is revealed through Her role: the second Parent within the Trinity and the One who performs the work of birth.

The Comforter’s work is a mother’s work. God Himself chose the comparison: “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you” (Isaiah 66:13). The masculine gender of paracletos does not change that, any more than the feminine gender of ruach would prove it.

The word also means helper, which takes us back to Eden. “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him” (Genesis 2:18). The Hebrew word for helper there, ezer, is one Scripture also uses of God: “My help cometh from the LORD” (Psalm 121:2). Eve, the helper, became “the mother of all living.” The Spirit, the Helper, is in Yona Tree’s reading the Mother of all who are born of the Spirit.

Notes

1. See Sebastian Brock, “The Holy Spirit as Feminine in Early Syriac Literature,” in Janet Martin Soskice, ed., After Eve (1990). Brock traces how Syriac writers increasingly treated the word ruha as masculine when it referred to the Holy Spirit from around the fifth century. ↩