CARM
Ministry Magazine (2012)
“Another Paraclete”: The Holy Spirit in John 14–17
The author explains how a group of five passages in the apostle John’s Farewell Discourses refer to the Holy Spirit as “Paraclete” or “Spirit of truth.”
https://www.ministrymagazine.org/archive/2012/04/“another-paraclete”:-the-holy-spirit-in-john-14–17
The author explains how a group of five passages in the apostle John’s Farewell Discourses refer to the Holy Spirit as “Paraclete” or “Spirit of truth.”
Since the Reformation, one of the most recurrent arguments for the personality of the Spirit is based on grammar. In Greek,
Spirit (
pneuma) is neuter, and several times in the Paraclete passages this word is accompanied by masculine pronouns, in addition to some neuter pronouns, as it would be expected according to the rules of grammatical agreement.
9 The typical argument can be found in George E. Ladd when John correctly uses neuter pronouns in connection to
pneuma: there is no implication “either for or against the personality of the Holy Spirit. But where pronouns that have
pneuma for their immediate antecedent are found in the masculine, we can only conclude that the personality of the Spirit is meant to be suggested.”
10
The argument, however, is not correct. The question is relatively simple. What is said means that where masculine pronouns are used, the closest noun is
pneuma, thus being its antecedent. But the antecedent of a pronoun must be determined by syntax, not by proximity; and when masculine pronouns are used, the syntactical antecedent is always
parakle-tos, not
pneuma, which stands only in apposition to
parakle-tos.
11 For this reason, sometimes John uses neuter pronouns in the same passages. He does so always when the syntactical antecedent is
pneuma. This means that there is absolutely nothing abnormal or meaningful in John’s use of pronouns in the contexts that refer to the Spirit. Also, the fact that
parakle-tos is masculine does not have any implication regarding the personality (much less the masculinity) of the Spirit. The gender of
parakle-tos, as well as that of
pneuma, is nothing more than a linguistic accident, and no theological conclusion should be derived from it.
12
9 The passages and the respective masculine pronouns are the following:
John 14:26 (
ekeinos); 15:26 (
hos, ekeinos); 16:7, 8 (
autos, ekeinos), 13, 14 (
ekeinos [twice],
heautou). In the same passages, there are four occurrences of neuter pronouns in connection to
pneuma: 14:17 (
ho, auto), 26 (
ho); 15:26 (
ho). The same happens in 7:39 (
ho).
10 George E. Ladd,
A Theology of the New Testament, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993), 331.
11 As Daniel B. Wallace declares, “The use of
ekeinos here [
John 14–16] is frequently regarded by students of the NT to be an affirmation of the personality of the Spirit. Such an approach is based on the assumption that the antecedent of
ekeinos is
pneuma. . . . But this is erroneous. In all these Johannine passages,
pneuma is appositional to a masculine noun. The gender of
ekeinos thus has nothing to do with the natural gender of
pneuma. The antecedent of
ekeinos, in each case, is
parakle-tos, not
pneuma.”
Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 331, 332. For a more detailed treatment including other passages in which
pneuma is supposedly followed by masculine grammatical elements (
Eph. 1:14;
2 Thess. 2:6,
7;
1 John 5:7), see Daniel B. Wallace, “Greek Grammar and the Personality of the Holy Spirit,”
Bulletin for Biblical Research 13, no. 1 (2003): 97–125.
12 Note that in Hebrew the word
spirit (
rûah.) is feminine, while in German, French, and Spanish, e.g., it is masculine.