autos is Romans 8:16

Michael Huffman said:

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 said:

Allen Browne said:

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 said:

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 collinge said:

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 said:

Robert Pavich said:

....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!

Allen Browne said:

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).

Allen Browne said:

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.

Allen Browne said:

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.

Richard Wardman said:

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.

Rosie Perera said:

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 said:

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 said:

Jerry M said:

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 said:

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)

¹⁸ For 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.