blunder by Doug Kutilek on masculine grammar, supposed constructio ad sensum

[Steven Avery]

Facebook - PureBible - August 16, 2015
A blunder by Doug Kutilek on masculine grammar, supposed constructio ad sensum
https://www.facebook.com/groups/purebible/permalink/847546752003882/
(additions here and formatting improved)

(Note: I have attempted to contact Doug Kutilek to see if this can be corrected.)

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"The Spirit Itself" or, The Greatest Defect in the King James Version
Doug Kutilek
[Reprinted from "As I See It," vol. 2, no. 9, September, 1999]
https://web.archive.org/web/20160819170242/http://www.kjvonly.org/aisi/1999/aisi_2_9_99.htm

By way of comparison, John--a native speaker of Aramaic (a sister language to Hebrew in which the word for "spirit" is also feminine)--occasionally uses the masculine demonstrative pronoun EKEINOS when referring to the Holy Spirit (John 14:25; 15:26; 16:8); once he uses the masculine pronoun AUTON (John16:7). Of course, in each case, John is quoting Jesus, who may have been speaking in Greek, or who may have spoken in Aramaic, which John, under the Holy Spirit's unerring guidance, translated into Greek. John uses masculine pronouns ad sensum, in "violation" of standard Greek practice, to refer to the Holy Spirit, a Divine Person.

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(Ignore the irrelevant and almost surely errant speculation as to the native language of John.) The issue is Greek, and there is no violation, no constructio ad sensum.

The pronoun ekeionos has the antecedent (referent) paracletos (comforter) in all those verses.

John 14:16
And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter,
that he may abide with you for ever;

John 14:26
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 15:26
But when the Comforter is come,
whom I will send unto you from the Father,
even the Spirit of truth,
which proceedeth from the Father,
he shall testify of me:

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John 16:13
Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come,
he will guide you into all truth:
for he shall not speak of himself;
but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak:
and he will shew you things to come.

The masculine is because the grammatical referent is the Comforter.

John 16:7
Nevertheless I tell you the truth;
It is expedient for you that I go away:
for if I go not away,
the Comforter will not come unto you;
but if I depart, I will send him unto you.

While this is well-known today (e.g. the dissertation by Mayes, 1980, the paper by Wallace 2003, that expounds more what was in the earlier book, Greek Grammar, 1996, and even much more history given in the paper by Naselli and Gons (2011) .. this was a common error over the years.

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James White makes this error in a doctrinal discussion on his blog, a check of his book would tell if it there as well. (Also good to check the two editions, it could be in 1995 and not the later update.)

Doug Kutilek should know better by now, and could easily note the correction on the paper.

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[Steven Avery]

Doug Kutilek has a second article,
"'The Spirit itself' Revisited," 2:10

The third article is available.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160819184830/http://www.kjvonly.org/aisi/2008/aisi_11_9_08.htm

the KJV translators were influenced at Romans 8:16 and the other three “it” passages by Socinian doctrine (a denial of the Trinity)

This blunder follows up on similar nonsense in the first post.

How did this practice of calling the Holy Spirit "it" enter the KJV? Emory H. Bancroft, long-time Professor of Doctrine and Systematic Theology at the Baptist Bible Seminary in Johnson City, New York, wrote what has been one of the most widely-used Bible college theology textbooks, CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY: SYSTEMATIC AND BIBLICAL (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1961. Revised edition). It was, for example, one of two standard theology textbooks at Baptist Bible College, Springfield, Missouri during my student days there, as well as for many years both before and after. Bancroft directly addresses the issue of the KJV's reference to the Holy Spirit as "it" and offers some very serious criticisms of the theology of the KJV translators:

"In the Authorized Version, the personal pronoun which refers to the Holy Spirit is translated by the neuter 'it,' as an index of the trend of thought among Christian people of that time. Men prayed of the Spirit as of 'it,' an influence, an energy, proving that the Socinian teaching had chilled the zeal and enthusiasm of the Christian doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit. A striking evidence of the revival of the truth concerning the personality of the Holy Spirit is the reintroduction into the revised version of the masculine pronoun wherever the Spirit is referred to." (pp. 147-148)

If Bancroft is correct, the charge of heresy on the part of at least some of the KJV translators cannot be denied.

The Bancroft reference is secondary, faulty, this goes back to:

The Spirit of God (1900)
George Campbell Morgan
https://books.google.com/books?id=y549AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA27