Where in the Bible does it designate the Holy Spirit as a "He" and not an "It"?

Question

Where in the Bible does it designate the Holy Spirit as a "He" and not an "It"? Thanks.

Answer 1

From a study I recently did:

The Holy Spirit is God

Scripture says he is eternal (Hebrews 9:14) omnipresent (Psam 139:7-10) and omniscient (1 Corinthians 2:10-11). In Acts 5:4 he is called God. Sometimes the “voice of God” in the Old Testament is said to have been the “voice of the Holy Spirit” in the New Testament. Compare Exodus 16:7 with Hebrews 3:7-9; and Isaiah 6:8-10 with Hebrews 3:7-9. More could be said on the Spirit’s deity.

The Holy Spirit is a Person

I. The masculine pronoun eikonos (translated as “he” “him”) is used to denote Him even when it has a neuter antecedent such as pneuma .

Commenting on this phenomenon in John 16:13-14 Millard Erickson says “Either John in reporting Jesus’ discourse made a grammatical error at this point (this is unlikely since we do not find any similar error elsewhere in the Gospel), or he deliberately chose to use the masculine to convey to convey to us the fact that Jesus is referring to a person not a thing. A similar reference is Ephesians 1:14, where in a relative clause modifying “Holy Spirit” the preferred textual reading is os “[who] is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory.”

Some passages in John 14-16 in which the NASB refers to the Holy Spirit as “he” or “him:”

"I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.” (John 14:16-17)

"But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. (John 14:26) "When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me, and you will testify also, because you have been with Me from the beginning.” (John 15:26-27)
“But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me; and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.” (John 16:7-15)


II The Holy Spirit has distinctly personal characteristics.
He has his own mind (Romans 8:27). He searches (1 Corinthians 2:10-11). He has a will (1 Corinthians 12:11). He speaks (Acts 13:2, Revelation 2:7). He intercedes for believers (Romans 8:26). He works (Acts 20:28, 1 Corinthians 12:11). He can be grieved (Ephesians 4:30). He can be sinned against (Matthew 12:31-32). He can be lied to (Acts 5:3).
No mere power or influence has a mind and will of its own, speaks, intercedes and works. A power or influence cannot be lied to, sinned against, or grieved. These are all distinct characteristics of a person.
III The Scriptures contain meaningless redundancies if the Holy Spirit is not a person.
Romans 15:13, for example, speaks of the “power of the Holy Spirit.” Were he only a power, the verse would be speaking of the “power of the power.” In Acts 10:38 Jesus is said to have been anointed “With the Holy Spirit and with power.” If the Holy Spirit is not a person the verse is saying Jesus was anointed with power and power.

IV Answers to Objections Regarding the Holy Spirit’s Personhood

1) “Impersonal symbols such as wind, oil, water, and fire are used to speak of the Spirit.”

These symbols do not preclude personality. Impersonal symbols such as door, light, and bread are used to describe Christ and no one debates his personality. Modern readers of the Bible should not have trouble understanding this concept since we still refer to individuals with impersonal metaphors. We call people such things as a rock, diamond in the rough, and a pain in the side. In so doing we have no difficulty maintaining the notion that they are persons.

2) “The word “spirit” is neuter.” This is a convention of Greek grammar not a theological manifesto. Throughout the Old Testament the Holy Spirit is pictured as the ruach of God, indicating that whenever God acts, he acts in cooperation with the person of the Spirit. Israelite understanding of the Spirit of God is relatively easy to discern as we observe the usages of ruach elohim and ruach Yahweh in the Old Testament. As we do this we find that the Israelites understood this Spirit to be the manifest presence of God actively involved in his creation. The basic meaning of ruach as “air in motion” contributes to this understanding. This meaning of ruach can be found in such passages as Gen. 3:8, 8:1; 1 Ki. 19:11; Job 8:2; Ps. 147:18; Prov. 25:14; Eccl. 1:6; Jer. 4:11; Eze. 1:4; and Zech. 2:6. When ruach is used in connection with elohim or Yahweh in the Old Testament the context is typically of something God does (Gen. 1:2; Jud. 3:10, 6:34; 1 Sam. 16:13; 1 Ki. 18:12; 1 Chron. 12:18; Isa. 48:16; Eze. 3:12, 11:24; Zech. 4:6). When the Spirit of God comes upon an Old Testament figure they are generally prompted to speak, build, or fight the Lord’s battles.In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit also gives life, strength, understanding, guidance and power. Pneuma is the Greek equivalent of ruach and is therefore used to denote the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. God has chosen this wind or breath metaphor to portray the Holy Spirit because it best pictures the active nature of his role. The fact that the word is grammatically neuter does not affect the New Testament’s teaching that the Holy Spirit is a person. We should also note in this context that the KJV mistranslation in Romans 8:16, 26 (“itself”) is corrected in subsequent translations.

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As I said in this study, the Greek word for spirit is "pneuma." It is not feminine in gender but is neuter. Any lexicon will confirm this for you. Those who are saying it is feminine obviously do not know Greek. Furthermore, the gender of a Greek noun is not necessarily as significant as one might think. This can be seen in the use of a masculine pronoun with the neuter noun "pneuma."

Answer 2

To my knowledge there is no place in the original scriptures that give the Holy Spirit a gender.

I feel the the need to refute something Thinkenstein said: "Commenting on this phenomenon in John 16:13-14 Millard Erickson says “Either John in reporting Jesus’ discourse made a grammatical error at this point (this is unlikely since we do not find any similar error elsewhere in the Gospel), or he deliberately chose to use the masculine to convey to convey to us the fact that Jesus is referring to a person not a thing."

The word he comes from the Greek word ekeinos meaning "that one (or [neuter] thing)" and the word himself comes from heautou which means "him, her, it, them, also [in conjunction with the personal pronoun of the other persons] my, thy, our, your"

Though the word can be used in a masculine sense, in context with the use of the word ekeinos, it's logical to assume the neuter gender should be applied here as well.

On to my answer: The Holy Spirit is a "He" only if God is a "He" in the same sense that my own spirit or soul is a "he"since I'm one. Here's the reason I say that:

Based on my research, I believe the Holy Spirit is God's soul. It stands to reason that if we have one, He does as well and the scriptures back this up.

In Genesis 1:2 we find the first mention of the Holy Spirit: "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

The word translated here for spirit is the Hebrew rûach meaning "wind; by resemblance breath, figuratively life, by resemblance spirit, but only of a rational being"

This is the same word used in many other verses... actually 378 times in the Old Testament

Gen 7:22 All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.
Here the word rûach is translated as breath. The "breath of life" meaning soul.

In Genesis 2:7, we find: "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."
The word breath in this verse comes from neshâmâh which means "a puff, that is, wind, angry or vital breath" and the word soul is from nephesh meaning "a breathing creature"

In the New Testament, we find the same. For example: Mat 12:31 Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.
Here we have the Greek word pneuma translated as Ghost. The original meaning is "a current of air, that is, breath (blast) or a breeze; by analogy or figuratively a spirit, that is, (human) the rational soul"

I could go on showing hundreds of examples but to keep this answer short, the above will suffice to make my point.

The Spirit of God that moved across the waters in Genesis 1:2 is described as a wind. A puff of that wind was blown into the nostrils of Adam (he was given a soul) in Genesis 2:7 and throughout the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, we find the words soul, ghost, spirit and living all coming from words meaning a wind or breath. The exact same original words are also translated as Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost.

To some this up; The Holy Spirit or Ghost, is His soul just as our spirit (or ghost) is our soul. In almost every case, man's soul and the Holy Sprit are described as a breath (man) or wind (God).

Whether or not you believe in things like astral projection or OBEs in humans, you only have believe in God's power to see that His soul can work indepently from Him.

I personally don't feel that our souls have a gender since gender is a biological term. Our souls, therefore God's Soul, are not physical or biological. Add to that that It's described as a wind and you pretty much have a case for gender neutrality.

I hope you find this anwser informative and useful.

Take care and may God bless.

Answer 3

I love the fact that the first person got a bunch of thumbs down for posting the TRUTH! In both the original greek and hebrew texts, the word for the "spirit" of God is FEMININE! Yeah, go ahead and thumbs-down me too. Do your research. It's only when it gets translated into Latin- and Germanic- based languages that the Holy Spirit becomes a definite Male persona. That idea of keeping God as a male in all of "his" persons even made it's way back into the Greek church, where the Trinity is always depicted as three male figures. But it's a cultural thing, not a textual thing. Be honest.

Peace to you.

Answer 4

The Holy spirit has a gender??

I think it's because in the bible it says(more specifically Gensis) "Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, [b] and over all the creatures that move along the ground."...Genesis 1:26

God was talking to the Holy Spirit, who is what brought the man(Adam) to life...so by saying let US make MAN in OUR image...people just assume they're men.

Answer 5

John 16: 13.

Answer 6

In John 14:16,17 (Jesus speaking) "And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever---the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept Him, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him."
John 14:26 (Jesus speaking)"But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything."

Answer 7

Joh 16:13 - [In Context|Read Chapter|Original Greek]
"But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.

Answer 8

The usage of "He" is merely a grammatical issue.

"He" was the proper way to designate or refer to an entity in the English language whenever specific gender was unknown or was irrelevant in the context of a statement - PRIOR to the present day preferred usage of "he or she", which was begun only for purposes of political correctness.

For example: One used to be able to say something like, "There was only one person's suitcase left, but it's gone now so I guess he picked it up." Today's politically correct version of that same statement would be, "There was only one person's suitcase left, but it's gone now so I guess he or she picked it up."

Personally I think the modern PC way is unnecessary to get a simple point across but oh well....

Answer 9

the Bible doesn't. It calls God a He, to show reverence.... not to say that God has a penis. By all means, God is God, which isnt a He, or a She, or an It...

Answer 10

uh,I think the story of Mary when she was pregnant.The devine conception.Jesus was half devine,half human.Another story.