Does the Holy Spirit prefer ‘He’ or ‘It’? A Biblical Case
Grammatically, the Greek word for Spirit (pneuma) is neuter, so ‘it’ is technically correct. But English translators almost universally render it ‘he’ because the New Testament treats the Spirit as a person — one who speaks, chooses, and grieves — not a force.
I often hear Christians use the neuter pronoun ‘it’ when referring to the Holy Spirit.
It troubles me, being the pedant that I am—although I realise that there are grammatical grounds for doing this.
This post aims to answers questions such as:
- “Is the Holy Spirit a person or a force?”
- “Why do some Bible passages use ‘it’ for the Holy Spirit?”
- “Is paraklētos masculine because the Spirit is male?”
- Does the Holy Spirit prefer ‘He’ or ‘It’? A Biblical Case
Let’s start with some Scripture and explore this question from that starting point.
Acts 13.1-3
1 Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers:
Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul.
2 While they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said,
‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’
3 So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.
Quotation from the Anglicised New International Version.
They were worshipping the Lord—that’s Jesus—but they heard from the Holy Spirit.
Here’s what we can learn.
1. The Holy Spirit has equal authority with God the Father and Jesus the Lord.
A command from the Holy Spirit was equivalent to a command from God the Father or Jesus the Lord.
The Holy Spirit’s words are just as compelling, releasing, true, etc., as any words attributed to Jesus or the Father.
Why? Because the Holy Spirit is co-equal with God the Father and Jesus the Lord. They share one divine essence.
2. The Holy Spirit has a will.
About ten years ago I was on the panel at a meeting of Newfrontiers churches leaders.
We asked the question:
‘How many wills are there in God? How many centres of choice?’
The pastors who had gathered gave us multiple different answers, including: 1, 2, 3, and 4.
You might wonder how anyone could get to any of these answers.
If you do wonder, let me explain.
In some theologies of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit share one will—the will is located in the divine essence. That would be the standard position of Classical Theists. Given that theological position (which I will discuss in a separate blog series I’d like to get around to) you will answer that there is one centre of will in God.
But if you then take into account the hypostatic union of the divine and the human in the one person of the incarnate Jesus, you may answer that there are two centres of willing because you are now counting Jesus’ human will.
In other theologies of God, Father, Son and Spirit each have a separate will—the will is located in the personhood of each one, not in the single divine essence. Given that account of the godhead you may answer either with ‘three centres of will,’ of, if you want to count Jesus’ human will, ‘four centres of willing.’
That’s how the question, ‘How many wills are there in God? How many centres of choice?’ can be answered with 1, 2, 3, or 4.
I have flip-flopped between these views!
But what we can be sure of is this: even if each ‘person’ of the Godhead has their own separate will, you will never find any division between them. There are no separate agendas. There is no difference in style or substance. Their oneness is utterly assured and essential.
The point is: You cannot play one off against another in the Trinity.
We have all been children. We all know that if mum says that ‘no, we won’t be having an ice lolly,’ that is not the end of it, we must run and ask dad.
It’s not that God the Father is moody, nasty, and likes to say ‘no,’ but thankfully we have this great elder brother, Jesus, who’s great at talking God the Father round.
But back to the question of whether the Holy Spirit has a will.
In Acts 13 the Holy Spirit gives an instruction that implies he has a choice about something he wants to happen.
This may, of course, simply be the Spirit communicating what is the one will of the Father.
However, in 1 Corinthians 12.4-6 Paul ascribes initiative to each of the three persons of the Trinity in turn. It reads:
4 There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. 5 There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. 6 There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.
And then, in verse 11, Paul write that the Spirit determines who receives the grace gifts:
11 All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.
Further evidence that the Holy Spirit has a will is the way Luke describes his directive at the Jerusalem council, a couple of years after the events in Acts 13.
Luke records how a circular letter was sent out from Jerusalem to the churches announcing their decision. For this argument it matters not what the decision was, it matters on what authority Luke says the determination was made. He wrote:
‘It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us…’ Acts 15.28a
For something to be evaluated as ‘seeming good’ implies personhood at the least.
Seeming good is a value assessment. Mere power forces do not make value assessments—only persons do that.
When you flick a light switch, the electricity does not assess whether it would be good to flow. Why not? Because electricity is not a person. It makes no decisions at all. It has no opinion about whether it would ‘be good’ to flow or not.
Such assessments are a property of personhood.
Remember, the question I am trying to answer in this post is: Does the Holy Spirit Prefer ‘He’ or ‘It’? A Biblical Case
3. The Holy Spirit makes value judgments that produce emotional responses.
In Ephesians 4.30 Paul wrote:
‘And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God…’
When the Artemis rocket blasted off for the moon recently, the force of gravity was overcome. Did gravity ‘grieve’ that it was overcome? No!
Why not? Because only persons can grieve.
Clearly this thought flies in the face of a typical assertion of Classical Theists that God is impassible. I find any doctrine of strict impassibility impossible to accept since it conflicts with the Scriptural data, as I see it. I will blog about this on another occasion.
Does the Holy Spirit prefer ‘He’ or ‘It’?
4. The Holy Spirit uses personal pronouns about himself.
Acts 13.2 in the Anglicised NIV:
2 While they were worshipping the Lord
and fasting, the Holy Spirit said,
‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’
The Spirit refers to himself as ‘me’ and ‘I’ in Acts 13.2.
From this we can deduce that the Holy Spirit has conscious self-awareness—personhood.
This statement would be an impossibility if the Holy Spirit is an impersonal power force!
Acts 13.2 is another evidence that the Holy Spirit, like the Father and the Son, is a person.
Why do we default to ‘it’ when talking about the Holy Spirit?
Remember that I am trying to answer the question: Does the Holy Spirit prefer ‘He’ or ‘It’?
One reason we default to ‘it’ when referring to the Holy Spirit is that the title “Holy Spirit” does not suggest personhood.
Words like ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ are human analogies.
The words ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ necessarily signify that the Father and the Son are centres of self-awareness with moral values, power of decision and action, and so on.
The title ‘Holy Spirit,’ however, has no human analogy. Maybe those words signify a non-personal power force—shorthand for the power of God? No!
As any linguists know, in some languages such as Koine Greek, nouns have a grammatical gender—masculine, feminine, or neuter.
Interestingly, the OT Hebrew word for Spirit, ‘ruach,’ is a feminine noun. The Greek word for spirit, ‘pneuma,’ is grammatically a neuter noun.
So in the Greek NT, the pronoun ‘it’ is used of the Spirit because that is grammatically correct.
The word for ‘child’ is also neuter grammatically—so the neuter pronoun ‘it’ was used for children as well. We conclude that a neuter noun does not necessarily signify an impersonal object. All it indicates is that it belongs to the neuter grammatical category.
What are Bible translators to do? Do they use ‘it’ as the pronoun for the Holy Spirit?
Yes sometimes they do, but mostly, because nouns in English do not have a grammatical gender—translators change the ‘it’ pronouns to ‘he.’
For example Romans 8:16 reads:
..αὐτὸ τὸ πνεῦμα…
Literally that is:
“the Spirit itself bears witness…”
The King James Bible rendered that literally: ‘the Spirit itself beareth witness…’
Almost all English translations, however, choose to change ‘itself’ to ‘himself.’
What happens when you ask AI models about the Holy Spirit’s pronouns?
Beware what AI models tell you about theology.
Last autumn while on holiday in Croatia I had a long conversation (40-odd pages of A4) with ChatGPT, across several days, on a theological subject. At first the responses were quite accurate but later on ChatGPT made assertions which I knew to be untrue. It claimed that a particular theologian taught X, when I knew they taught not-X, but Y. This is a serious misreading of that scholar’s work and conclusions.
I challenged the AI model, and it immediately accepted its error—but the reason I knew that ChatGPT was in error was because I was widely read on the subject. The AI model itself had made its false assertions without any disclaimers—so I conclude that readers who did not know the subject would be easily led astray.
So beware enquiring about theology from an AI model unless you already know some theology.
As I researched this blog post I asked three AI models about the pronouns used in the NT about the Holy Spirit.
And what do you know, the first AI model made a plain, but I believe false, claim about how pronouns about the Spirit are masculine in chapters 14-17 of John’s Gospel.
ChatGPT wrote:
“Many scholars understand John to be deliberately using a masculine form because he is emphasizing the Holy Spirit as a personal divine agent rather than an impersonal force.”
No scholars were cited in support of this assertion, although I suppose there could be some truth to the claim.
How did I react?
Reader, I so wanted this to be true that I was tempted to accept the assertion. Shame on me.
I switched to the Copilot AI
Copilot more clearly stated that the masculine pronouns we find in those chapters of John are masculine because they are agreeing with the noun paraklētos (which is grammatically masculine anyway). The writer does not use the ‘he’ pronoun to agree with the noun for ‘spirit’ or ‘breath’ which is pneuma.
Copilot then cited numerous scholars. I had one of the works cited and I could not find the text that Copilot cited in support of its assertions.
Next I took the query to the Claude AI
Claude gave the most accurate and nuanced response.
So from this brief excursion I conclude that Anthropic’s Claude may be the best AI with which to have theological conversation.
But please do not believe AI’s on theology. All AI models make such confident claims. They are sycophantic to a fault. Take care.
So should we use ‘he’ or ‘it’ when referring to the Holy Spirit?
The small section of credible evangelical Bible scholars I consulted note that when John uses the masculine pronoun in the key passages, he uses it correctly to agree with the Greek noun ὁ παράκλητος (ho paraklētos).
John never uses the masculine pronoun if he needs a pronoun to agree with the noun for Spirit, i.e. pneuma.
Yes, John uses paraklētos to signify the Holy Spirit so we might deduce that the masculine pronoun is intended for the Holy Spirit. But this really has nothing to do with the ‘gender’ of the Spirit. It is purely grammatical agreement that is in view.
There are other reasons for concluding that the Spirit is a person, and that English translations, not bound by nouns that demand gender agreement, can choose to translate ‘it’ as ‘he,’ because in the English language ‘it’ implies a non-personal object which would be misleading in view of the other data about the Spirit that we find in Scripture.
So, he or it?
Does the Holy Spirit prefer ‘He’ or ‘It’?
Imagine if you heard me talking about my lovely wife, and saying, ‘it was not sure it would come today.’
In English usage, that would be insulting, lacking respect.
So, in the same way, we do not say of the Spirit:
‘It came upon me.’ Rather we say: ‘He came upon me!’
It’s common in our day for people to put in their email signature what their preferred pronoun is. Well, in the Holy Spirit’s LinkedIn profile, it may be that his chosen pronouns are he/him—but I cannot be certain. However, I conclude that for English speakers the pronoun ‘it’ is not appropriate.
The equality of Father, Son and Spirit
Father, Son, and Spirit share the property of being personal—i.e. centres of self-consciousness, self-awareness, with affections, thoughts, plans, etc.
Does this remind you of anyone? Yes. Us human beings.
We have been made in the image of God.
Why have we been made in his image in this way?
Clearly God chose to make human beings this way so we could relate to him—become his friends.
It’s not that God was a Billy No Mates. It’s more like he’s a parent that wants to have children.
So God wants you to know him, and to know him more.
To that end it would be good if we answered the question, “Does the Holy Spirit prefer ‘He’ or ‘It’?” by saying ‘he’ is better because it points to the personhood of the Spirit.
Posts on other topics:
On parables.
On justice.
Acknowledgements:
Stained glass window photo by Jan van der Wolf: https://www.pexels.com/photo/stained-glass-in-a-cathedral-14714893/
Parent and child photo by PNW Production: https://www.pexels.com/photo/dad-and-daughter-eating-ice-cream-8576040/
