The May-June 2025 edition of the Sabbath Sentinel put out by the Bible Sabbath Association, which is not a Church of God group (though it has members that are in the COGs, as well as members who are not), has the following:
The Holy Spirit in the New Testament is a Neuter Gender
By Bob Thiel, Ph.D.
Do you know the grammatical facts about the Holy Spirit?
The second chapter of the Book of Acts starts off with:
1 When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. 2 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. (Acts 2:1-4)
Most groups that profess Christ consider that Pentecost marked the formal beginning of the New Testament church. And we read that God’s Holy Spirit was given and was associated with something that looked like fire.
Many languages, including koine Greek–the language that the New Testament was written in–use what is known as grammatical gender.
The koine Greek term for fire is πῦρ (pur), and it is grammatically neuter. Yet, most people who profess Christianity believe that the Holy Spirit is a male personage.
History
Early church history points to Sabbath keepers such as Melito of Sardis of the 2nd century,[1] Lucian of Antioch of the late 3rd and early 4th century,[2] and others throughout history who did not teach the personhood of the Holy Spirit.
In the 19th century, James White did not accept the personhood of the Holy Spirit,[3] nor did the Church of God (Seventh Day).[4] In time, James White’s wife Ellen declared the trinity to be a doctrine and that was adopted by the Seventh-day Adventist Church.[5]
However, Church of God groups, like Church of God (Seventh Day) and the Continuing Church of God (to cite two examples) did not change to adopt the personhood of the Holy Spirit.
Many groups, however, who claim to get their doctrines from the Bible have been affected by mistranslations which suggest a male personhood of the Holy Spirit which scripture does not support.
Mis-Grammared Translations
Although most translations of the New Testament into the English language use the pronoun “he” related to the Holy Spirit as well as the relative pronoun “who,” neither of those pronouns are supported by the Greek text.
The Greek word for ‘spirit’ is pneuma (πνεύμα). It is a neuter gender. It is not masculine nor should it be considered so. The Greek word for “holy” (ἅγιον) as in “πνεῦμα ἅγιον” (e.g. Luke 1:35) is also neuter as Greek adjectives must match the gender of the related noun.
In the Hebrew scriptures, the terms for “Spirit” used, ruwach or ruah, for example in Genesis 1:2, are feminine.
Although many New Testament translators improperly use the pronoun “he” associated with the term spirit, the KJV also sometimes correctly uses the neuter “it” (cf. Romans 8:16, 26 KJV).
“It” is the appropriate pronoun.
Sean Finnegan wrote about why many do not realize that:
Although most … Bibles stay relatively true to the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek in most places, nearly all of them still have significant blind … In what follows I intend to expose one of the smoking guns of text tampering as it relates to the holy spirit. …
After seeing … that seventeen out of the nineteen {translations} use “who” or “whom” to refer back to holy spirit, what would someone conclude?
The most frustrating aspect of this chicanery is that these translations mislead honest-hearted men and women who simply want to read and understand the Scriptures. What is more, most Bible readers implicitly trust the scholars who produce translations in the same way that most people trust doctors or school teachers. …
The NASB team “adhered to the literal philosophy of translation” and required “a word- for-word translation that is accurate and precise,” yet, they literally did not translate the word “ὅ” as “which.”
The NET boasts that its nearly 61,000 translators’ notes enable readers to “look over the translator’s shoulder” and make “transparent the textual basis and the rationale for key renderings (including major interpretive options and alternative translations).” However, when I look at the footnotes on Acts 5.32, I see nothing whatsoever indicating they flat out changed a word to make their translation more palatable. Ironically, Daniel Wallace was one of the primary scholars involved in the NET and his paper on this subject exposes this very issue.
The NIV committee stated that they were committed “to the authority and infallibility of the Bible as God’s Word in written form,” yet they corrected the infallible Scripture in their translation to read “whom” instead of “which.” Isn’t a correction the result of an error? But, if Scripture is infallible, why is the NIV correcting it?
Lastly, the NRSV claims it is “the most accurate and readable translation” and that it “leaves interpretation in the hands of the reader.” Yet, in this verse (and many others like it), it obscures the meaning of the text and does not so much as leave a footnote indicating their decision.
So if the Greek is clear, why do nearly all of these translations get it wrong? [6]
Translators should translate the Greek word ὅ as “which,” instead of “whom.” Whom is a different Greek word (ὅν)—yet repeatedly we see the intentional mistranslations.
Reportedly, Dr. Daniel Wallace did try to get the neuter gender used for the Holy Spirit when he was involved in a Bible translation project, but he was overridden. This is even more appalling when it is realized that Dr. Wallace was the senior New Testament editor of the NET Bible.
Dr. Wallace, himself, wrote:
About half a dozen texts in the NT are used in support of the Spirit’s personality on the grounds of gender shift due to constructio ad sensum (“construction according to sense” or, in this case, according to natural as opposed to grammatical gender). That is to say, these passages seem to refer to the Spirit with the masculine gender in spite of the fact that πνεύμα is neuter, and grammatical concord would normally require that any reference to the Spirit also be in the neuter gender. …
Many theologians treat these passages as a primary proof of the Spirit’s personality. …
John 16:7 [7]can be dismissed … Whatever the reason for the masculine participle in v. 7, it is evident that the grammaticization of the Spirit’s personality is not the only, nor even the most plausible, explanation. Since this text also involves serious exegetical problems (i.e., a variety of reasons as to why the masculine participle is used), it cannot be marshaled as unambiguous syntactical proof of the Spirit’s personality. In sum, none of the gender shift passages clearly helps establish the personality of the Holy Spirit.
There is no text in the NT that clearly or even probably affirms the personality of the Holy Spirit through the route of Greek grammar. …
Evangelical defenses of various doctrines occasionally are poorly founded. We sometimes claim things to be true because we want them to be true, without doing the exhaustive spadework needed to support our conclusions. …
In sum, I have sought to demonstrate in this paper that the grammatical basis for the Holy Spirit’s personality is lacking in the NT, yet this is frequently, if not usually, the first line of defense of that doctrine by many evangelical writers. But if grammar cannot legitimately be used to support the Spirit’s personality, then perhaps we need to reexamine the rest of our basis for this theological commitment. [8]
John 15:26 … The use of ἐκεἲνος {that one} here is frequently regarded by students of the NT to be an affirmation of the personality of the Holy Spirit. …
But this is erroneous. In all these Johannine passages, πνεύμα {spirit} is appositional to a masculine noun. The gender of ἐκεἲνος has nothing to do with the natural gender ending of πνεύμα. …
The view is especially popular among theologians, not infrequently becoming their mainstay for their argument for the personality of the Holy Spirit … [9]
‘Eastern’ Orthodox archpriest, biblical translator and scholar, Dr. Laurent Cleenewerck wrote:
Greek manuscripts do not have any capitalization. Hence, the introduction of capitalized forms is arbitrary … the capitalization of spirit is especially arbitrary …[10]
Dr. Cleenewerck is correct that capitalization of spirit, as in Holy Spirit, is not required by the grammar and should not be considered indicative of personhood.
Dr. Cleenewerck also wrote (bolding below in original text):
The first thing to notice is that both pneuma and ruah also convey the meaning “breath” or “wind,” which explains the subtle nuances of such passages as Genesis 1:2; John 3:8 or James 2:26. On this basis we could say that pneuma and ruah are used as a reference to an unseen causal agent whose effects are visible.
The Greek… pneuma is neuter, which is why it is never spoken of with personal pronouns … an unbiased translation requires the use of the conjunction “that/which” instead of “who/whom.” [11]
Although Dr. Cleenewerck was the editor of EOB: The Eastern/Greek Orthodox New Testament, that particular translation uses “who” in Matthew 10:20 and John 6:63 (to cite two examples), “whom” in John 15:26, and masculine personal pronouns “he” and “him” in John 14:17, related to pneuma as the Holy Spirit. Yes, by applying personal pronouns the EOB has intentionally violated the applicable grammatical rules according to its editor.
The fact is that there should NOT be personal pronouns—especially male ones—in English language translations of scripture associated with the Holy Spirit, though παρακλητος, often translated as “Comforter” is a masculine noun.
Fred Coulter (Christian Biblical Church of God) wrote the following related to “Comforter” and gender (bolding in original text):
John 15:26, KJV: “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.”
The word “which,” referring to “the Spirit of truth,” is correctly translated from the neuter pronoun ο. In John 14:17, the translators of the KJV had incorrectly rendered this neuter pronoun as “whom.” However, in John 15:26, they have correctly rendered the neuter relative pronoun ο as “which.”
The descriptive noun “the Comforter” is correctly translated from the masculine Greek noun ο παρακλητος ho parakleetos. While this masculine noun is used to describe a vital function of the Holy Spirit, it does not designate the Holy Spirit, or “the Spirit of the truth,” as a person. A descriptive noun never changes the gender of the principal noun.[12]
While “comforter” is masculine grammatically, that should not be used to claim that the Holy Spirit is male. Let me add that the translation of the New Testament that Fred Coulter was involved in (called A Faithful Version) does not use personal pronouns for the Holy Spirit.
Holy Spirit Gender and Personhood Not in the Original Text
The grammatical reality is that the Greek noun pneuma in all its various forms, is always and only neuter in gender. Likewise, all pronouns that refer to pneuma are always and only can be neuter in gender. If the Holy Spirit were a masculine person, the nouns and pronouns in the Greek text would have to have been written in the masculine gender, as are all the nouns and pronouns that refer to God the Father and Jesus Christ. Yet, as Dr. Wallace and others have concluded, nowhere in the Greek text of the New Testament is the Holy Spirit ever designated by a noun or pronoun in the masculine gender.
The grammatical gender of the Hebrew word for spirit is feminine and the grammatical gender of the Greek word for spirit is neutral.
The grammatically proper conclusion after reviewing the Hebrew and Greek scriptures is that the Holy Spirit is not a “he.” And if one wants to assign a gender to it, “it,” meaning the neuter gender would make the most sense for Christians.
While there are debates about the nature of the Godhead, the Greek grammar does not use personal pronouns nor personal relative pronouns in relationship to the Holy Spirit.
This is something that many Sabbatarians have known throughout nearly two thousand years of church history. But something that has been obscured by mistranslations.
Dr. Thiel has been interested in the Church of God for over 50 years. He was baptized by a Worldwide Church of God minister in 1977. He writes extensively and is currently the Overseeing Pastor of the Continuing Church of God (www.ccog.org), one of the top four groups (in terms of congregants) whose leaders were once part of the old Worldwide Church of God. Hundreds of thousands know him as “COGwriter” as he actually writes over 1000 news posts and articles per year at www.cogwriter.com.
End Note References
[1] Melito. From the Oration on Our Lord’s Passion, IX.
[2] Newman JH, Cardinal. The Arians of the Fourth Century. Longmans, Green, & Co., New York, 1908, pp. 5, 9, 277, 406
[3] Wiebe E. Who Is the Adventist Jesus? Published by Xulon Press, 2005, p. 167
[4] Coulter R. The Journey: A History of the Church of God (Seventh Day), p. 191
[5] Moon J. “Ellen White and the Trinity”1. ENDTIME ISSUES NEWSLETTER No. 150. June 27, 2006
[6] Finnegan S. The Holy Spirit and Translation Bias: A Smoking Gun of Trinity Mischief. November 5, 2015. https://restitutio.org/2015/11/05/translating-the-holy-spirit/
[7] Note: At least two translations of John 16:7 do NOT make the gender error, using the term “him,” are the Contemporary English Version and the A Faithful Version.
[8] Wallace D. Greek Grammar and the Personality of the Holy Spirit. Bulletin for Biblical Research 13.1 (2003) 97-125
[9] (Wallace D. Greek Grammar. Harper Collins, 1996, pp. 331-332
[10] Cleenewerck L. EOB: The Eastern/Greek Orthodox New Testament, pp. 33
[11] Cleenewerck, p. 34
[12][12][12] Coulter F. A Faithful Version, 2nd edition, Appendix K: Exegesis for the Translation of the Phrase “the Holy Spirit” as Antecedent in John 14, 15 and 16. York Publishing Company, 2011, pp. 1282-1285. Note: Fred Coulter was the primary translator for the New Testament in the AFV.
We earlier put together the following sermonette on our Bible News Prophecy YouTube channel:
14:53
Gender of the Holy Spirit?
Does the Holy Spirit have a personal gender in the scriptures? Both ancient Hebrew (language of the Old Testament) and koine Greek (language of the New Testament) use grammatical gender when it comes to nouns. In the Hebrew scriptures, the terms for “Spirit” are ruwach or ruah–are they masculine, feminine, or neuter? What about the Greek term pneuma for “Spirit” in the New Testament? According to Protestant scholar Dr. Daniel Wallace are personal pronouns ever grammatically appropriate for the Holy Spirit? According to Eastern Orthodox priest Dr. Laurent Cleenwerck is it grammatically appropriate to use “who” or “whom” associated with the Holy Spirit? Do most translations of the New Testament intentionally violate rules of Greek grammar related to the Holy Spirit? Should people intentionally change the word of God to show a meaning that God did not inspire? Was the King James Version correct when referring to the Holy Spirit as ‘it”? Does referring to a “she” as a “he” make it so? Dr. Thiel and Steve Dupuie go over these matters quoting scriptures as well as scholars who have translated the New Testament into the English language.
Here is a link to our video: Gender of the Holy Spirit?
Do not fall for false traditions that say that the Holy Spirit is masculine, because scripturally that is grammatically false.
Some items of possibly related items of interest may include:
Did Early Christians Think the Holy Spirit Was A Separate Person in a Trinity? Or did they have a different view? Here is a link to a related sermon: Truth about the Holy Spirit: What THEY do not want you to know! Here is a link to a sermonette video: Gender of the Holy Spirit?
Did the True Church Ever Teach a Trinity? Most act like this is so, but is it? Here is an old, by somewhat related, article in the Spanish language LA DOCTRINA DE LA TRINIDAD. A related sermon is available: Trinity: Fundamental to Christianity or Something Else? A brief video is also available: Three trinitarian scriptures?
Was Unitarianism the Teaching of the Bible or Early Church? Many, including Jehovah’s Witnesses, claim it was, but was it?
Binitarianism: One God, Two Beings Before the Beginning This is a longer article than the Binitarian View article, and has a little more information on binitarianism, and less about unitarianism. A related sermon is also available: Binitarian view of the Godhead.
Hope of Salvation: How the Continuing Church of God Differs from Protestantism The CCOG is NOT Protestant. This free online book explains how the real Church of God differs from mainstream/traditional Protestants. Several sermons related to the free book are also available: Protestant, Baptist, and CCOG History; The First Protestant, God’s Command, Grace, & Character; The New Testament, Martin Luther, and the Canon; Eucharist, Passover, and Easter; Views of Jews, Lost Tribes, Warfare, & Baptism; Scripture vs. Tradition, Sabbath vs. Sunday; Church Services, Sunday, Heaven, and God’s Plan; Seventh Day Baptists/Adventists/Messianics: Protestant or COG?; Millennial Kingdom of God and God’s Plan of Salvation; Crosses, Trees, Tithes, and Unclean Meats; The Godhead and the Trinity; Fleeing or Rapture?; and Ecumenism, Rome, and CCOG Differences.
Beliefs of the Original Catholic Church: Could a remnant group have continuing apostolic succession? Did the original “catholic church” have doctrines held by the Continuing Church of God? Did Church of God leaders uses the term “catholic church” to ever describe the church they were part of? Here are links to related sermons: Original Catholic Church of God?, Original Catholic Doctrine: Creed, Liturgy, Baptism, Passover, What Type of Catholic was Polycarp of Smyrna?, Tradition, Holy Days, Salvation, Dress, & Celibacy, Early Heresies and Heretics, Doctrines: 3 Days, Abortion, Ecumenism, Meats, Tithes, Crosses, Destiny, and more, Saturday or Sunday?, The Godhead, Apostolic Laying on of Hands Succession, Church in the Wilderness Apostolic Succession List, Holy Mother Church and Heresies, and Lying Wonders and Original Beliefs. Here is a link to that book in the Spanish language: Creencias de la iglesia Católica original.
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