Gender of the Holy Spirit
Encyclopedia
The gender of the Holy Spirit has been the object of some discussion in recent years, questioning whether the Holy Spirit
should be referred to as "he", "she" or "it".
, the gender of "Holy Spirit
" varies according to the language used. Thus the grammatical gender of the word "spirit" is masculine in Latin
("spiritus") and in Latin-derived languages, as also, for instance, in the German language
("Geist"), while in the Semitic languages
such as Hebrew
("רוח"), Aramaic
and its descendant Syriac
, it is feminine, and in Greek
it is neuter ("πνεῦμα").
When grammatical gender
in a particular language is confused with physical gender, the Holy Spirit is thought of, within that language, as male
, female
or neither.
A chapter in Discovering Biblical Equality entitled "God, Gender and Biblical Metaphor" maintains that viewing God in masculine terms are merely ways in which we speak of God in figurative language, but a language which does not reflect who he really is. The author reiterates that God is spirit and that the Bible presents God through personification and anthropomorphism which reflects only a likeness to God.
When in art a human material form is used to represent the Holy Spirit, that form is usually that of the male human body, without meaning to attribute such physical features to the reality represented. For example, in the rare cases of depiction of the Trinity as three identical persons, the Holy Spirit is represented as male, in line with the depictions of the Father
and the Son
.
There are some Christian groups who teach that the Holy Spirit is feminine, or has feminine aspects. Most are based on the genders of the verbs in the original Bible languages where the Holy Spirit is the subject. In Hebrew the word for spirit (ruach) is feminine. In Greek the word (pneuma) is neuter, and in Aramaic, the language which is generally considered to have been spoken by Jesus, the word is feminine. This is not thought by most linguists to have significance for the sex of the person given that name. There are biblical cases where the pronoun used for the Holy Spirit is masculine, in contradiction of the gender of the word for spirit.
The New Testament refers to the Holy Spirit as masculine in a number of places, where the masculine Greek word "Paraclete" occurs, for "Comforter", most clearly in the Gospel of John
, chapters 14 to 16. These texts were particularly significant when Christians were debating whether the New Testament teaches that the Holy Spirit is a fully divine person, or some kind of "force". All major English Bible translations have retained the masculine pronoun for the Spirit, as in John 16:13. Although it has been noted that in the original Greek, in some parts of John's Gospel and elsewhere, the neuter Greek word for "it" is also used for the Spirit.
The Syriac language, which was in common use around 300AD, is derived from Aramaic. In documents produced in Syriac by the early Miaphysite church (which later became the Syrian Orthodox Church) the feminine gender of the word for spirit gave rise to a theology in which the Holy Spirit was considered feminine.
In 1977 a leader of the Branch Davidian
church, Lois Roden
, began to formally teach that the feminine Holy Spirit is the heavenly pattern of women, citing scholars and researchers from Jewish, Christian, and other sources.
There are some other independent Messianic Judaism
groups with similar teachings, and some scholars associated with mainline denominations, while not necessarily indicative of the denominations themselves, have written works explaining a feminine understanding of the third member of the Godhead.
The Unity Church
's co-founder Charles Fillmore
considered the Holy Spirit a distinctly feminine aspect of God, considering it to be "the love of Jehovah" and "love is always feminine".
In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gender is seen "as an essential characteristic of eternal identity and purpose." The LDS Church believes that before we lived on earth, we existed spiritually, with a spiritual body with defined gender, and that the Holy Spirit had a similar body, but was to become a member of the Godhead. The LDS Church believes that all three members of the Godhead are male.
and the Son
.
This holds also for Andrei Rublev
's icon, known as The Trinity
, which depicts the "three men" who visited Abraham at the oak of Mamre, often pictured as a theophany
of the Trinity
.
In the Catholic Church's practice, the Holy Spirit is referred to in English as "he", and the Holy See
has insisted that the practice be maintained in liturgical texts.
William Mounce argues that in John's gospel
, when Jesus referred to the Holy Spirit as Comforter (masculine in Greek), the grammatically necessary masculine form of the Greek pronoun autos is used, but when Jesus speaks of the Holy Spirit as Spirit, grammatically neuter in Greek, the masculine form of the demonstrative pronoun ekeinos ("that masculine one") is used. This breaking of the grammatical agreement expected by native language readers is an indication of the author's intention to convey the personhood of the Holy Spirit, and also the Spirit's masculinity. Daniel Wallace
, however, disputes the claim that ekeinos is connected with pneuma in John 14:26 and 16:13-14, asserting instead that it belongs to parakletos. Wallace concludes that "it is difficult to find any text in which πνευμα is grammatically referred to with the masculine gender."
the word for Spirit (רוה) (ruach) is feminine, (as is the word "shekhinah
", which is used in the Hebrew Bible
to indicate the presence of God
, سكينة Sakinah in Arabic language
, a word mentioned six times in the Quran).
In the Syriac language
too, the grammatically feminine word ruah means "spirit", and writers in that language, both orthodox and Gnostic, used maternal images when speaking of the Holy Spirit. This imagery is found in the fourth-century theologians Aphrahat
and Ephraim
. It is found in earlier writings of Syriac Christianity such as the Odes of Solomon
and in the early-third-century Gnostic Acts of Thomas
:
While scholars generally agree that grammatical gender is not necessarily correlative to personal gender, Eastern Orthodox theologian Susan Ashbrook Harvey considers the grammatical gender to have been significant for early Syriac Christianity: "It seems clear that for the Syrians, the cue from grammar — ruah as a feminine noun — was not entirely gratuitous. There was real meaning in calling the Spirit 'She.'"
") rather than men ("masculinity
") are sometimes attributed to each of the three Persons of the Trinity, without thereby assigning to the Person a particular gender. The God spoken of in the Old Testament, generally regarded as God the Father, is spoken of also as a mother giving birth to her people in Deuteronomy 32:18. In Luke 13:34 and in the parallel passages of the other Synoptic Gospels
Jesus compares his care for Jerusalem to that of a mother hen for her chickens, and Jesus has been seen as the incarnation of Divine Wisdom (sophia, grammatically feminine in Greek). So too the Holy Spirit has been associated with a feminine attitude on the part of the Divinity and has been spoken of under the images of mother and mistress.
Some recent theologians, while retaining masculine reference to Father and Son, have explored feminine alternatives for the Holy Spirit. Some have related this to perceived maternal functions in Scripture or Christian tradition. These include: Clark H. Pinnock
, Thomas N. Finger, Jürgen Moltmann
, Yves M.J. Congar, John J. O'Donnell, Donald L. Gelpi, and R.P. Nettlehorst,.
for the New Testament. They are skeptical of the neuter Greek word for "spirit" (Greek pneuma), and the masculine Latin word, because the logos ("oracles" or "words") of God were are said to be given unto the Jews . Foremost among these groups, and the most vocal on the subject are the Branch Davidian
Seventh-day Adventists
.
In 1977, one of their leaders, Lois Roden
, began to formally teach that a feminine Holy Spirit is the heavenly pattern of women. In her many studies and talks she cited numerous scholars and researchers from Jewish, Christian, and other sources. They see in the creation of Adam and Eve a literal image and likeness of the invisible Godhead, male and female, who is "clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made."
They take the Oneness of God to mean the "familial" unity which exists between them, which unity is not seen in any other depiction of the Godhead by the various non-Hebrew peoples. Thus, having a Father and Mother in heaven, they see that the Bible shows that those Parents had a Son born unto them before the creation of the world, by Whom all things were created.
's co-founder Charles Fillmore
considered the Holy Spirit a distinctly feminine aspect of God considering it to be "the love of Jehovah" and "love is always feminine"
group headed by Rabbi Moshe Koniuchowsky, holds to the feminine view of the Holy Spirit. Messianic Judaism
is considered by most Christians and Jews to be a form of Christianity.
There are also some other independent Messianic groups with similar teachings. Some examples include Joy In the World; The Torah and Testimony Revealed; Messianic Judaism - The Torah and the Testimony Revealed; and he Union of Nazarene Jewish Congregations/Synagogues , who also count as canonical the Gospel of the Hebrews
which has the unique feature of referring to the Holy Spirit as Jesus' Mother.
Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit is a term introduced in English translations of the Hebrew Bible, but understood differently in the main Abrahamic religions.While the general concept of a "Spirit" that permeates the cosmos has been used in various religions Holy Spirit is a term introduced in English translations of...
should be referred to as "he", "she" or "it".
Grammatical considerations
If by "gender" is meant grammatical genderGrammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
, the gender of "Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit is a term introduced in English translations of the Hebrew Bible, but understood differently in the main Abrahamic religions.While the general concept of a "Spirit" that permeates the cosmos has been used in various religions Holy Spirit is a term introduced in English translations of...
" varies according to the language used. Thus the grammatical gender of the word "spirit" is masculine in Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
("spiritus") and in Latin-derived languages, as also, for instance, in the German language
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
("Geist"), while in the Semitic languages
Semitic languages
The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
such as Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
("רוח"), Aramaic
Aramaic language
Aramaic is a group of languages belonging to the Afroasiatic language phylum. The name of the language is based on the name of Aram, an ancient region in central Syria. Within this family, Aramaic belongs to the Semitic family, and more specifically, is a part of the Northwest Semitic subfamily,...
and its descendant Syriac
Syriac language
Syriac is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent. Having first appeared as a script in the 1st century AD after being spoken as an unwritten language for five centuries, Classical Syriac became a major literary language throughout the Middle East from...
, it is feminine, and in Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
it is neuter ("πνεῦμα").
When grammatical gender
Gender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
in a particular language is confused with physical gender, the Holy Spirit is thought of, within that language, as male
Male
Male refers to the biological sex of an organism, or part of an organism, which produces small mobile gametes, called spermatozoa. Each spermatozoon can fuse with a larger female gamete or ovum, in the process of fertilization...
, female
Female
Female is the sex of an organism, or a part of an organism, which produces non-mobile ova .- Defining characteristics :The ova are defined as the larger gametes in a heterogamous reproduction system, while the smaller, usually motile gamete, the spermatozoon, is produced by the male...
or neither.
Christianity
Jesus declared, “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.” There is no article in the Greek text before the word spirit, and that emphasizes the quality or essence of the word. Furthermore, the word spirit occurs first in the sentence for emphasis. The literal idea would be something like, “Absolutely spirit in His essence is God.”A chapter in Discovering Biblical Equality entitled "God, Gender and Biblical Metaphor" maintains that viewing God in masculine terms are merely ways in which we speak of God in figurative language, but a language which does not reflect who he really is. The author reiterates that God is spirit and that the Bible presents God through personification and anthropomorphism which reflects only a likeness to God.
When in art a human material form is used to represent the Holy Spirit, that form is usually that of the male human body, without meaning to attribute such physical features to the reality represented. For example, in the rare cases of depiction of the Trinity as three identical persons, the Holy Spirit is represented as male, in line with the depictions of the Father
God the Father
God the Father is a gendered title given to God in many monotheistic religions, particularly patriarchal, Abrahamic ones. In Judaism, God is called Father because he is the creator, life-giver, law-giver, and protector...
and the Son
God the Son
God the Son is the second person of the Trinity in Christian theology. The doctrine of the Trinity identifies Jesus of Nazareth as God the Son, united in essence but distinct in person with regard to God the Father and God the Holy Spirit...
.
There are some Christian groups who teach that the Holy Spirit is feminine, or has feminine aspects. Most are based on the genders of the verbs in the original Bible languages where the Holy Spirit is the subject. In Hebrew the word for spirit (ruach) is feminine. In Greek the word (pneuma) is neuter, and in Aramaic, the language which is generally considered to have been spoken by Jesus, the word is feminine. This is not thought by most linguists to have significance for the sex of the person given that name. There are biblical cases where the pronoun used for the Holy Spirit is masculine, in contradiction of the gender of the word for spirit.
The New Testament refers to the Holy Spirit as masculine in a number of places, where the masculine Greek word "Paraclete" occurs, for "Comforter", most clearly in the Gospel of John
Gospel of John
The Gospel According to John , commonly referred to as the Gospel of John or simply John, and often referred to in New Testament scholarship as the Fourth Gospel, is an account of the public ministry of Jesus...
, chapters 14 to 16. These texts were particularly significant when Christians were debating whether the New Testament teaches that the Holy Spirit is a fully divine person, or some kind of "force". All major English Bible translations have retained the masculine pronoun for the Spirit, as in John 16:13. Although it has been noted that in the original Greek, in some parts of John's Gospel and elsewhere, the neuter Greek word for "it" is also used for the Spirit.
The Syriac language, which was in common use around 300AD, is derived from Aramaic. In documents produced in Syriac by the early Miaphysite church (which later became the Syrian Orthodox Church) the feminine gender of the word for spirit gave rise to a theology in which the Holy Spirit was considered feminine.
In 1977 a leader of the Branch Davidian
Branch Davidian
The Branch Davidians are a Protestant sect that originated in 1955 from a schism in the Davidian Seventh Day Adventists , a reform movement that began within the Seventh-day Adventist Church around 1930...
church, Lois Roden
Lois Roden
Lois Irene Scott Roden was a president of the Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventist Church, an apocalyptic Christian sect which her husband, Benjamin Roden founded. The sect began in Texas in 1955 as a succession to the Shepherd's Rod movement led by Victor T...
, began to formally teach that the feminine Holy Spirit is the heavenly pattern of women, citing scholars and researchers from Jewish, Christian, and other sources.
There are some other independent Messianic Judaism
Messianic Judaism
Messianic Judaism is a syncretic religious movement that arose in the 1960s and 70s. It blends evangelical Christian theology with elements of Jewish terminology and ritual....
groups with similar teachings, and some scholars associated with mainline denominations, while not necessarily indicative of the denominations themselves, have written works explaining a feminine understanding of the third member of the Godhead.
The Unity Church
Unity Church
Unity, known informally as Unity Church, is a religious movement within the wider New Thought movement and is best known to many through its Daily Word devotional publication...
's co-founder Charles Fillmore
Charles Fillmore (Unity Church)
Charles Sherlock Fillmore , born in St. Cloud, Minnesota, founded Unity, a church within the New Thought movement, with his wife, Myrtle Page Fillmore, in 1889...
considered the Holy Spirit a distinctly feminine aspect of God, considering it to be "the love of Jehovah" and "love is always feminine".
In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gender is seen "as an essential characteristic of eternal identity and purpose." The LDS Church believes that before we lived on earth, we existed spiritually, with a spiritual body with defined gender, and that the Holy Spirit had a similar body, but was to become a member of the Godhead. The LDS Church believes that all three members of the Godhead are male.
Male attribution
When in art a human material form is used to represent the Holy Spirit, that form is usually that of the male human body, without meaning to attribute such physical features to the reality represented. For example, in the rare cases of depiction of the Trinity as three identical persons, the Holy Spirit is represented as male, in line with the depictions of the FatherGod the Father
God the Father is a gendered title given to God in many monotheistic religions, particularly patriarchal, Abrahamic ones. In Judaism, God is called Father because he is the creator, life-giver, law-giver, and protector...
and the Son
God the Son
God the Son is the second person of the Trinity in Christian theology. The doctrine of the Trinity identifies Jesus of Nazareth as God the Son, united in essence but distinct in person with regard to God the Father and God the Holy Spirit...
.
This holds also for Andrei Rublev
Andrei Rublev
Andrei Rublev is considered to be the greatest medieval Russian painter of Orthodox icons and frescoes.-Biography:...
's icon, known as The Trinity
Trinity (Andrei Rublev)
Trinity is a Holy Trinity Icon, believed to be created by Russian painter Andrei Rublev in the XV century. It is his most famous work, as well regarded as one of the highest achievements of Russian art. Trinity depicts the three angels who visited Abraham at the oak of Mamre Trinity is a Holy...
, which depicts the "three men" who visited Abraham at the oak of Mamre, often pictured as a theophany
Theophany
Theophany, from the Ancient Greek , meaning "appearance of God"), refers to the appearance of a deity to a human or other being, or to a divine disclosure....
of the Trinity
Trinity
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity defines God as three divine persons : the Father, the Son , and the Holy Spirit. The three persons are distinct yet coexist in unity, and are co-equal, co-eternal and consubstantial . Put another way, the three persons of the Trinity are of one being...
.
In the Catholic Church's practice, the Holy Spirit is referred to in English as "he", and the Holy See
Holy See
The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...
has insisted that the practice be maintained in liturgical texts.
William Mounce argues that in John's gospel
Gospel of John
The Gospel According to John , commonly referred to as the Gospel of John or simply John, and often referred to in New Testament scholarship as the Fourth Gospel, is an account of the public ministry of Jesus...
, when Jesus referred to the Holy Spirit as Comforter (masculine in Greek), the grammatically necessary masculine form of the Greek pronoun autos is used, but when Jesus speaks of the Holy Spirit as Spirit, grammatically neuter in Greek, the masculine form of the demonstrative pronoun ekeinos ("that masculine one") is used. This breaking of the grammatical agreement expected by native language readers is an indication of the author's intention to convey the personhood of the Holy Spirit, and also the Spirit's masculinity. Daniel Wallace
Daniel B. Wallace
Daniel Baird Wallace is a professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary where he has been tenured since 1995. He is also the founder of the Center of the Study of NT Manuscripts....
, however, disputes the claim that ekeinos is connected with pneuma in John 14:26 and 16:13-14, asserting instead that it belongs to parakletos. Wallace concludes that "it is difficult to find any text in which πνευμα is grammatically referred to with the masculine gender."
Bible translations
All major English Bible translations have retained the masculine pronoun for the Spirit, as in John 16:13. These texts were particularly significant when Christians were debating whether the New Testament teaches that the Holy Spirit is a fully divine person, or some kind of "force".| Version | Text |
|---|---|
| King James Version (17th century) | Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. |
| New American Standard Bible New American Standard Bible The New American Standard Bible , also informally called New American Standard Version , is an English translation of the Bible.... (1963) |
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. |
| New American Bible New American Bible The New American Bible is a Catholic Bible translation first published in 1970. It had its beginnings in the Confraternity Bible, which began to be translated from the original languages in 1948.... (1970) Roman Catholic |
But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, He will guide you to all truth. He will not speak on his own, but he will speak what he hears, and will declare to you the things that are coming. |
| New Revised Standard Version New Revised Standard Version The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible is an English translation of the Bible released in 1989 in the USA. It is a thorough revision of the Revised Standard Version .There are three editions of the NRSV:... (1989) Gender neutral |
When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will disclose to you the things that are to come. |
Neuter attribution
In Greek the word pneuma is grammatically neuter and so, in that language, the pronoun referring to the Holy Spirit under that name is also grammatically neuter. However, when the Holy Spirit is referred to by the grammatically masculine word Parakletos (Counsellor, Comforter), the pronoun is masculine, as in John 16:7-8.Semitic languages
In HebrewHebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
the word for Spirit (רוה) (ruach) is feminine, (as is the word "shekhinah
Shekhinah
Shekinah is the English spelling of a grammatically feminine Hebrew word that means the dwelling or settling, and is used to denote the dwelling or settling divine presence of God, especially in the Temple in Jerusalem.-Etymology:Shekinah is derived...
", which is used in the Hebrew Bible
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a term used by biblical scholars outside of Judaism to refer to the Tanakh , a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual antecedent of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament...
to indicate the presence of God
Divine presence
Divine presence, presence of God, or simply presence is a concept in religion, spirituality, and theology that deals with the omnipotent ability of a god and/or gods to be "present" with human beings...
, سكينة Sakinah in Arabic language
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, a word mentioned six times in the Quran).
In the Syriac language
Syriac language
Syriac is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent. Having first appeared as a script in the 1st century AD after being spoken as an unwritten language for five centuries, Classical Syriac became a major literary language throughout the Middle East from...
too, the grammatically feminine word ruah means "spirit", and writers in that language, both orthodox and Gnostic, used maternal images when speaking of the Holy Spirit. This imagery is found in the fourth-century theologians Aphrahat
Aphrahat
Aphrahat was a Syriac-Christian author of the 4th century from the Adiabene region of Northern Mesopotamia, which was within the Persian Empire, who composed a series of twenty-three expositions or homilies on points of Christian doctrine and practice...
and Ephraim
Ephrem the Syrian
Ephrem the Syrian was a Syriac and a prolific Syriac-language hymnographer and theologian of the 4th century. He is venerated by Christians throughout the world, and especially in the Syriac Orthodox Church, as a saint.Ephrem wrote a wide variety of hymns, poems, and sermons in verse, as well as...
. It is found in earlier writings of Syriac Christianity such as the Odes of Solomon
Odes of Solomon
The Odes of Solomon is a collection of 42 odes attributed to Solomon. Various scholars have dated the composition of these religious poems to anywhere in the range of the first three centuries AD...
and in the early-third-century Gnostic Acts of Thomas
Acts of Thomas
The early 3rd century text called Acts of Thomas is one of the New Testament apocrypha, portraying Christ as the "Heavenly Redeemer", independent of and beyond creation, who can free souls from the darkness of the world. References to the work by Epiphanius of Salamis show that it was in...
:
Holy Dove that bearest the twin young;
Come, hidden Mother;
Come, thou that art manifest in thy deeds
and dost furnish joy and rest for all that are joined with thee;
Come and partake with us in this Eucharist
Which we celebrate in thy name,
and in the love-feast in which we are gathered together at thy call.
While scholars generally agree that grammatical gender is not necessarily correlative to personal gender, Eastern Orthodox theologian Susan Ashbrook Harvey considers the grammatical gender to have been significant for early Syriac Christianity: "It seems clear that for the Syrians, the cue from grammar — ruah as a feminine noun — was not entirely gratuitous. There was real meaning in calling the Spirit 'She.'"
Feminine imagery
Sentiments and attitudes that certain societies associate with women ("femininityFemininity
Femininity is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with girls and women. Though socially constructed, femininity is made up of both socially defined and biologically created factors...
") rather than men ("masculinity
Masculinity
Masculinity is possessing qualities or characteristics considered typical of or appropriate to a man. The term can be used to describe any human, animal or object that has the quality of being masculine...
") are sometimes attributed to each of the three Persons of the Trinity, without thereby assigning to the Person a particular gender. The God spoken of in the Old Testament, generally regarded as God the Father, is spoken of also as a mother giving birth to her people in Deuteronomy 32:18. In Luke 13:34 and in the parallel passages of the other Synoptic Gospels
Synoptic Gospels
The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are known as the Synoptic Gospels because they include many of the same stories, often in the same sequence, and sometimes exactly the same wording. This degree of parallelism in content, narrative arrangement, language, and sentence structures can only be...
Jesus compares his care for Jerusalem to that of a mother hen for her chickens, and Jesus has been seen as the incarnation of Divine Wisdom (sophia, grammatically feminine in Greek). So too the Holy Spirit has been associated with a feminine attitude on the part of the Divinity and has been spoken of under the images of mother and mistress.
Some recent theologians, while retaining masculine reference to Father and Son, have explored feminine alternatives for the Holy Spirit. Some have related this to perceived maternal functions in Scripture or Christian tradition. These include: Clark H. Pinnock
Clark Pinnock
Clark H. Pinnock was a Christian theologian, apologist and author. He was Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at McMaster Divinity College.-Education and career:...
, Thomas N. Finger, Jürgen Moltmann
Jürgen Moltmann
Jürgen Moltmann is a German Reformed theologian. The 2000 recipient of the Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion.-Moltmann's Youth:...
, Yves M.J. Congar, John J. O'Donnell, Donald L. Gelpi, and R.P. Nettlehorst,.
Branch Davidians
Some small Christian groups regard the gender of the Holy Spirit to be female, based on their understanding that the Hebrew word for Spirit, ruach, is feminine. Their views derive from skepticism toward Greek primacyGreek Primacy
Greek primacy is a scholarly term in general use for the dominance of Hellenism at certain periods of history. In the context of the language of the New Testament, "Greek primacy" is a Wikipedia neologism for the majority view that the New Testament or its sources were originally written in Koine...
for the New Testament. They are skeptical of the neuter Greek word for "spirit" (Greek pneuma), and the masculine Latin word, because the logos ("oracles" or "words") of God were are said to be given unto the Jews . Foremost among these groups, and the most vocal on the subject are the Branch Davidian
Branch Davidian
The Branch Davidians are a Protestant sect that originated in 1955 from a schism in the Davidian Seventh Day Adventists , a reform movement that began within the Seventh-day Adventist Church around 1930...
Seventh-day Adventists
Seventh-day Adventist Church
The Seventh-day Adventist Church is a Protestant Christian denomination distinguished by its observance of Saturday, the original seventh day of the Judeo-Christian week, as the Sabbath, and by its emphasis on the imminent second coming of Jesus Christ...
.
In 1977, one of their leaders, Lois Roden
Lois Roden
Lois Irene Scott Roden was a president of the Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventist Church, an apocalyptic Christian sect which her husband, Benjamin Roden founded. The sect began in Texas in 1955 as a succession to the Shepherd's Rod movement led by Victor T...
, began to formally teach that a feminine Holy Spirit is the heavenly pattern of women. In her many studies and talks she cited numerous scholars and researchers from Jewish, Christian, and other sources. They see in the creation of Adam and Eve a literal image and likeness of the invisible Godhead, male and female, who is "clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made."
They take the Oneness of God to mean the "familial" unity which exists between them, which unity is not seen in any other depiction of the Godhead by the various non-Hebrew peoples. Thus, having a Father and Mother in heaven, they see that the Bible shows that those Parents had a Son born unto them before the creation of the world, by Whom all things were created.
Unity Church
The Unity ChurchUnity Church
Unity, known informally as Unity Church, is a religious movement within the wider New Thought movement and is best known to many through its Daily Word devotional publication...
's co-founder Charles Fillmore
Charles Fillmore (Unity Church)
Charles Sherlock Fillmore , born in St. Cloud, Minnesota, founded Unity, a church within the New Thought movement, with his wife, Myrtle Page Fillmore, in 1889...
considered the Holy Spirit a distinctly feminine aspect of God considering it to be "the love of Jehovah" and "love is always feminine"
Messianic Jews
The B'nai Yashua Synagogues Worldwide, a MessianicMessianic Judaism
Messianic Judaism is a syncretic religious movement that arose in the 1960s and 70s. It blends evangelical Christian theology with elements of Jewish terminology and ritual....
group headed by Rabbi Moshe Koniuchowsky, holds to the feminine view of the Holy Spirit. Messianic Judaism
Messianic Judaism
Messianic Judaism is a syncretic religious movement that arose in the 1960s and 70s. It blends evangelical Christian theology with elements of Jewish terminology and ritual....
is considered by most Christians and Jews to be a form of Christianity.
There are also some other independent Messianic groups with similar teachings. Some examples include Joy In the World; The Torah and Testimony Revealed; Messianic Judaism - The Torah and the Testimony Revealed; and he Union of Nazarene Jewish Congregations/Synagogues , who also count as canonical the Gospel of the Hebrews
Gospel of the Hebrews
The Gospel of the Hebrews , commonly shortened from the Gospel according to the Hebrews or simply called the Hebrew Gospel, is a hypothesised lost gospel preserved in fragments within the writings of the Church Fathers....
which has the unique feature of referring to the Holy Spirit as Jesus' Mother.