autos is Romans 8:16

I am trying to explain grammatically why something is translated a particular way. Can someone help me as to why the Greek word "autos" is translated in most English translations as "himself", which I prefer, versus the neuter form "itself" as the KJV has it. Thanks.

Michael

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Kevin Taylor

Michael, this is simply an attempt at denoting the Holy Spirit in the masculine versus neuter. In the English language most people speak of the Father and Son as "Him" but then there seems to be confusion when it comes to the Holy Spirit Who is just as much a "Him" as the rest of the Trinity.

Speaking of the HS with the pronoun "Him" also avoids heresies that identify Him as an unintelligent force or a finite extension of the Father.

MJ. Smith

Don't know - I believe it is neuter which is usually "it". I suspect "him" is chosen to reflect the "personhood" of the member of the Trinity since we tend to seperate neuter from personhood.

Kevin Taylor

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/249142#Comment_249142

In the Greek, the word Spirit (pneuma) is neuter but in this case we are talking about a Divine Person so the pronoun Him is more fitting to an English audience versus making Him an it.

Allen Browne

Can someone help me as to why the Greek word "autos" is translated in most English translations as "himself", which I prefer, versus the neuter form "itself"

πνεῦμα is neuter, so it would be really odd if the pronoun did not agree. The grammatical agreement is a linguistic issue, so it would be a poor translation to use "it" in English.

Similarly, the Greek word for sheep (πρόβατον) is neuter but it does not imply that sheep lack gender.

On a related note, if Holy Spirit is the name of a person, why do our translations use "the" in front of the name? We don't translate ὁ Ἰησοῦς as "the Jesus".

George Somsel

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/249147#Comment_249147

On a related note, if Holy Spirit is the name of a person, why do our translations use "the" in front of the name? We don't translate ὁ Ἰησοῦς as "the Jesus".

I would imagine that it is translated with the article because with Jesus you can also speak of "the Son" so that ὁ Ἰηοῦς can be understood as the name and "the Son" as his designation within the trinity. With τὸ πνεῦμα it isn't quite so clear that this is a name in the same sense. As you seem to have noticed, names in Greek are generally preceeded by the article whereas in English they are not.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/249152#Comment_249152

On a related note, if Holy Spirit is the name of a person, why do our translations use "the" in front of the name? We don't translate ὁ Ἰησοῦς as "the Jesus".

I would imagine that it is translated with the article because with Jesus you can also speak of "the Son" so that ὁ Ἰηοῦς can be understood as the name and "the Son" as his designation within the trinity. With τὸ πνεῦμα it isn't quite so clear that this is a name in the same sense. As you seem to have noticed, names in Greek are generally preceeded by the article whereas in English they are not.

Also, in English it depends a lot on context. It would be weird to speak about [the] Holy Spirit in the third person using it as a name, however when addressing him in prayer, we would commonly say "O Holy Spirit,..." Similarly, when using either of them in a list of the persons of the Trinity, it is not uncommon to use Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, without the article, even though any one of them could be used with the article within a sentence.

Allen Browne

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/249155#Comment_249155

if Holy Spirit is the name of a person, why do our translations use "the" in front of the name?

I would imagine that it is translated with the article because with Jesus you can also speak of "the Son" so that ὁ Ἰηοῦς can be understood as the name and "the Son" as his designation within the trinity. With τὸ πνεῦμα it isn't quite so clear that this is a name in the same sense. As you seem to have noticed, names in Greek are generally preceeded by the article whereas in English they are not.

... It would be weird to speak about [the] Holy Spirit in the third person using it as a name

Comments appreciated. Agreed, George: "the Son" is a title/office, and "the Spirit" can be also. But is "Holy Spirit" the name of a person, or merely a title/office?

Yes, Rosie, it would seem strange initially to speak who Holy Spirit is and what he does (without the article), but I wonder if doing so would improve our message/communication, and help people to relate to Holy Spirit better?

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/249185#Comment_249185

Agreed, George: "the Son" is a title/office, and "the Spirit" can be also. But is "Holy Spirit" the name of a person, or merely a title/office?

Yes, Rosie, it would seem strange initially to speak who Holy Spirit is and what he does (without the article), but I wonder if doing so would improve our message/communication, and help people to relate to Holy Spirit better?

Intriguing questions. Of course there are tons of "names of God" (e.g., Abba, Almighty, Yahweh, etc.) and "names of Jesus" (esp. Emmanuel, Lamb of God) listed in Scripture, and people are fond of collecting them and making lists of them. But there aren't many "names of the Spirit" -- so perhaps we do need them in order to know how to relate to him better. I am not familiar with any precedent for using "Holy Spirit" as a name when talking about him in the third person (only when praying to him), though that's not to say it wouldn't be helpful to start one.

Here's someone else who thinks like you do about this and gives some interesting early church background: http://newepistles.com/2007/05/15/holy-spirit-is-a-name/

You might also be interested in The Names of the Holy Spirit by Elmer Towns (I'd never heard of it; found it via Google just now).

tom

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/249188#Comment_249188

Just asking the question,

As it has been stated many times in this forum, πνεῦμα is neutral. So why do have to use "he?" Why can't we use "she" as a pronoun to refer to the third person of the trinity?

Robert Pavich

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/249194#Comment_249194

Just asking the question,

As it has been stated many times in this forum, πνεῦμα is neutral. So why do have to use "he?" Why can't we use "she" as a pronoun to refer to the third person of the trinity?

....the sound of a worm can opening... [:D]...creeeeeaaak.....

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/249196#Comment_249196

....the sound of a worm can opening... ...creeeeeaaak.....

Oh boy, are we going fishing?! [;)]

Richard Wardman

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/249199#Comment_249199

....the sound of a worm can opening... ...creeeeeaaak.....

Oh boy, are we going fishing?!

This is taken from Duff's "Elements of NT Greek" (Not yet in Logos, I may add!)

"When we talk of masculine, feminine and neuter, this refers to a grammatical gender, which is a way of classifying nouns. Sometimes it will match what English speakers might think the gender of the nouns should be, but sometimes it will not. In effect, rather than talking of masculine, feminine and neuter nouns, we could just as well talk about class 1, class 2 and class 3 nouns, or even blue, green and yellow nouns. 'Gender' is just a way of grouping together nouns that behave in similar ways."

I don't know if that helps answer the 'worms' question, but it sure helps me!

Robert Pavich

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/249203#Comment_249203

I don't know if that helps answer the 'worms' question, but it sure helps me!

Actually...that helped a lot when I hear it put that way...thanks!

Jack Caviness

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/249203#Comment_249203

When we talk of masculine, feminine and neuter, this refers to a grammatical gender, which is a way of classifying nouns. Sometimes it will match what English speakers might think the gender of the nouns should be, but sometimes it will not.

I once had a Greek professor who would say "ἁμαρτία is feminine because women are bigger sinners than men." This was his way of demonstrating the fallacy of using Greek gender to designate the sex of a person—on an object.

When I was in the Navy, ships were almost always referred to in the feminine "She". We seldom use "It", and never called a ship "He". That adds absolutely nothing to this discussion, but it always seemed interesting to me. [8-|]

Pastor Michael Huffman

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/249208#Comment_249208

When we talk of masculine, feminine and neuter, this refers to a grammatical gender, which is a way of classifying nouns. Sometimes it will match what English speakers might think the gender of the nouns should be, but sometimes it will not.

I once had a Greek professor who would say "ἁμαρτία is feminine because women are bigger sinners than men." This was his way of demonstrating the fallacy of using Greek gender to designate the sex of a person—on an object.

When I was in the Navy, ships were almost always referred to in the feminine "She". We seldom use "It", and never called a ship "He". That adds absolutely nothing to this discussion, but it always seemed interesting to me.

Actually, Jack, that does help clarify somethings in my mind. Thanks and pretty humorous. [:)]

Pastor Michael Huffman

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/249203#Comment_249203

....the sound of a worm can opening... ...creeeeeaaak.....

Oh boy, are we going fishing?!

This is taken from Duff's "Elements of NT Greek" (Not yet in Logos, I may add!)

"When we talk of masculine, feminine and neuter, this refers to a grammatical gender, which is a way of classifying nouns. Sometimes it will match what English speakers might think the gender of the nouns should be, but sometimes it will not. In effect, rather than talking of masculine, feminine and neuter nouns, we could just as well talk about class 1, class 2 and class 3 nouns, or even blue, green and yellow nouns. 'Gender' is just a way of grouping together nouns that behave in similar ways."

I don't know if that helps answer the 'worms' question, but it sure helps me!

Thanks, Richard, GREAT information.

Jerry M

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/249185#Comment_249185

Agreed, George: "the Son" is a title/office, and "the Spirit" can be also. But is "Holy Spirit" the name of a person, or merely a title/office?

In addressing another person there seems to be threefold way to do it.

1. Personal name. This refers to your identity.

2. Title. This refers to relation.

3. Designation. This refers to function.

So you might say the speaker tonight is Dr. Jones. Jones is his name. Doctor is his title. Speaker is how he is designated or how he will function. With the expression the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is His name. Lord it His title. Christ is His designation. i.e. He functions as messiah. In the O.T. hebrew, God is referred to as Adonai, which is His title, as Yahweh, which is His name, and Elohim which is His designation. You never refer to someone by title and designation alone without using their personal name. So we never see Adonai and Elohim together or Christ and Lord together any more than you would say speaker Doctor. So, if one considers this analysis at least approximately correct, it would seem unusual if one of the terms in Holy Spirit were not a reference to a name.

fgh

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/249147#Comment_249147

We don't translate ὁ Ἰησοῦς as "the Jesus".

No, but you do talk of "the Christ" and "the Messiah" (both of which would be impossible in Swedish).

if Holy Spirit is the name of a person, why do our translations use "the" in front of the name?

Presumably because there are plenty of spirits in the Bible -- some holy, some not quite so holy -- but only one of them, The Holy Spirit, is a person in the Holy Trinity. Without the article it might not always be clear what holy spirit one's talking about. And in the long run, it might very well lead people to assume that all holy spirits are just manifestations of the one Holy Spirit; i e that created beings are God. Changing traditional theological language tends to have unfortunate unforeseen consequences.

Yes, Rosie, it would seem strange initially to speak who Holy Spirit is and what he does (without the article), but I wonder if doing so would improve our message/communication, and help people to relate to Holy Spirit better?

To me it would make the Spirit seem like an utterly impersonal "force" with whom one cannot relate at all.

This is taken from Duff's "Elements of NT Greek" (Not yet in Logos, I may add!)

"When we talk of masculine, feminine and neuter, this refers to a grammatical gender, which is a way of classifying nouns. Sometimes it will match what English speakers might think the gender of the nouns should be, but sometimes it will not. In effect, rather than talking of masculine, feminine and neuter nouns, we could just as well talk about class 1, class 2 and class 3 nouns, or even blue, green and yellow nouns. 'Gender' is just a way of grouping together nouns that behave in similar ways."

Yeah, you hear explanations like that all the time, but it's far too simplistic. I've read about experiments where they've let Russians and Spaniards paint very simple concrete nouns that happens to have the opposite gender in their respective languages, and it turns out the pictures are quite different and very heavily influenced by the grammatical gender. What one nationality paints as slender and graceful, the other paints as heavy and robust. People who grow up with a gendered mother tongue aren't less affected by what gender a word happens to have, they're more affected by it than we who only learn such languages as adults.

Here's someone else who thinks like you do about this and gives some interesting early church background: http://newepistles.com/2007/05/15/holy-spirit-is-a-name/

When someone claims that Augustine wrote the Summa Theologica, and completely neglects to take into account the simple little fact that Latin doesn't have a definite article, that kind of makes me less inclined to take the rest of what he says seriously...

George Somsel

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/249228#Comment_249228

When someone claims that Augustine wrote the Summa Theologica, and completely neglects to take into account the simple little fact that Latin doesn't have a definite article, that kind of makes me less inclined to take the rest of what he says seriously...

Sometimes I don't bother to check links, but when you claimed that the Summa Theologica was attributed to Augustine, I had to check that. You are correct, he does state that. I must, however, have missed something since I saw nothing regarding the use or non-use of the article in Latin. Although he might have said something regarding that had he so desired, I don't see that he is under any compunction to do so (Unlike Latin, Greek did have a definite article, but lacked an indefinite article which prompted the author of the Apocalypse to use the adjective "one" to substitute for an indefinite article [Re 8.13 ἤκουσα ἑνὸς ἀετου]. Did I perhaps miss that when I scanned the blog?

fgh

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/249236#Comment_249236

I must, however, have missed something since I saw nothing regarding the use or non-use of the article in Latin.

He makes it sound as if people have made a deliberate choice to leave out the article in certain places but not others, when they've done nothing of the kind. The Latin title of "De Spiritu Sancto" couldn't have had an article. If the Faith of Damasus was written in Latin it can't possibly say exactly that "the proper name for the Holy Spirit is Holy Spirit". And so on. And Basil was writing in Greek, wasn't he? So I would assume he probably did use the article. Presumably in more places than English does.

My guess would be that this guy has no idea about how other languages work, and is simply making all sorts of assumptions and arguments based on what some more or less accurate English translation happens to say.

Plus he's extremely confused and confusing in not separating between talking to The Holy Spirit and talking about The Holy Spirit. How is Edith Stein addressing the Holy Spirit as Holy Spirit an argument for not using "the" about the Spirit? Have you ever heard anyone use "the" or "it" when talking to the Holy Spirit? And no mainstream Christian denies that the Spirit is a person, so that's not a relevant argument either.

Hmm.. I just took the time to check my copy of De Spiritu Sancto (St Vladimir's Press' translation). It somehow seems to have a lot more "the's" than the quotes in the blog do... Why am I not surprised?

fgh

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/249214#Comment_249214

You never refer to someone by title and designation alone without using their personal name.

Says who? That, in fact, is exactly how you addressed, and sometimes referred to, upper and upper middle class people in Sweden some decades ago: "Vill Fru Professorskan ha en kaka till?" ("Does the Mrs Professor want another cookie?" (that's for a woman married to a professor (which is a far higher title in Sweden than it seems to be in the US)) (And, yes, it does sound ridiculous in Swedish as well!))

So we never see Adonai and Elohim together

I guess you've never heard a Jew read from the Hebrew Bible?

or Christ and Lord together

Logos seems to disagree:

any more than you would say speaker Doctor

Mr President? Mr Speaker? Mr Mayor?

George Somsel

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/249296#Comment_249296

So we never see Adonai and Elohim together

I guess you've never heard a Jew read from the Hebrew Bible?

To clarify this: Among Jews the name יהוה is never pronounced. Instead, there is what is known as a perpetual qere (or reading as opposed to ketib or writing) in which the vowels of אֲדֹנַי (Lord) replace whatever originally would have appeared in the name. There are occasions when we find יהוה אלהים, in which case it is read as אדני אלהים "Lord God."

Jerry M

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/249296#Comment_249296

You never refer to someone by title and designation alone without using their personal name.

Says who? That, in fact, is exactly how you addressed, and sometimes referred to, upper and upper middle class people in Sweden some decades ago: "Vill Fru Professorskan ha en kaka till?" ("Does the Mrs Professor want another cookie?" (that's for a woman married to a professor (which is a far higher title in Sweden than it seems to be in the US)) (And, yes, it does sound ridiculous in Swedish as well!))

So we never see Adonai and Elohim together

I guess you've never heard a Jew read from the Hebrew Bible?

or Christ and Lord together

Logos seems to disagree:

any more than you would say speaker Doctor

Mr President? Mr Speaker? Mr Mayor?

I used the expression "seems to be" and at the end "approximate". I assumed we were talking about English usage. In Greek the expression Lord Christ is only used (as far as I know) in an indirect address. Luke 2:11 Rom 16:18 Col 3:24 . The point at any rate was not whether my analysis was technically correct but if in a general sense it could be considered appropriate if one wanted to use the expression Holy Spirit in the sense of a name and leave off the "the". If I led anyone astray, which was the inference, I certainly apologize.

George Somsel

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/249214#Comment_249214

So you might say the speaker tonight is Dr. Jones. Jones is his name. Doctor is his title. Speaker is how he is designated or how he will function. With the expression the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is His name. Lord it His title. Christ is His designation. i.e. He functions as messiah. In the O.T. hebrew, God is referred to as Adonai, which is His title, as Yahweh, which is His name, and Elohim which is His designation. You never refer to someone by title and designation alone without using their personal name. So we never see Adonai and Elohim together or Christ and Lord together any more than you would say speaker Doctor. So, if one considers this analysis at least approximately correct, it would seem unusual if one of the terms in Holy Spirit were not a reference to a name.

Romans 16:18 (NRSV)

¹⁸For such people do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the simple-minded.

fgh

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/249326#Comment_249326

I assumed we were talking about English usage.

That was kind of hard to guess considering that you used the words Adonai and Elohim... [;)]

In Greek the expression Lord Christ is only used ...

If we're talking English usage, shouldn't you be looking at my English search results above rather than your Greek ones? And my final line was also in English. Seems to me you're only using English when it suits you...

So, if one considers this analysis at least approximately correct, it would seem ...

I think what I showed in my earlier post was that your analysis wasn't "approximately correct".

to use the expression Holy Spirit in the sense of a name and leave off the "the"

My opinion on that was expressed in my first post in this thread.