I've a heard a friend who did a Theology degree refer, a number of times, to the Holy Spirit as "she". I've read that the Spirit is given a feminine noun in Hebrew, so why does the Jerusalem Bible refer to the Spirit exclusively in the masculine? Likewise the Nicene Creed - "He proceeds from the Father and the Son." What is the Church's teaching about the 'gender' of the Holy Spirit?'Spirit' is feminine in Hebrew (ruah), neuter in Greek (pneuma) and masculine in Latin (spiritus). In some ways the best pronoun would be 'it', at least when translating the Greek New Testament, except that the Church wants to maintain that the Spirit is a person of the Trinity, rather than (as some modern theologians have proposed) some kind of impersonal force. In that respect, one might say that 'she' is no better or worse than 'he', but - for historical reasons, some good and others perhaps not so good - the traditional pronoun associated with all the persons of the Trinity is 'he'. In the case of the Spirit, this would have been perfectly correct in the Latin which was the Church's language, biblical, liturgical and academic, for most of its history. To use 'she' now would be to make a fairly obvious, or even obtrusive, point.
It is important to point out that the Holy Spirit does not in fact have any gender, any more than the Father; the Son is of course masculine in his human nature, but the one divine nature which the second person of the Trinity shares with the other two is neither male nor female.
This quodlibet question was answered by one of our resident Scripture scholars, Fr. Richard Ounsworth O.P.
Why does Jesus use the masculine term "Father" if the first person of the trinity doesn't have Gender?
ReplyDeleteChristianity is a significant alteration of Judaism in the direction of the feminine. Following on the Law of the Lord, we have the Gospel of the Son, where affiliation –the quintessential feminine value—trumps the quintessential male concern, rank. It is a revelation where love is the highest value.
ReplyDeleteIt has seemed to some of our contemporaries a kind of betrayal that this revelation did not immediately issue in an egalitarian ethos, not to say an egalitarian society…as if somehow the testosterone of the recipients of this affiliative Gospel did not understand that it was a valuation of the feminine over the masculine.
In the last forty years, feminism has radically altered the face of the West, with consequences both welcome and detrimental. And much of Western religion, too. In North America, for instance, many communities of Catholic sisters have functionally ceased to be Catholic and have become Feminist. Wherever there might be a conflict between Catholicism and Feminism, Catholicism must cede.
And in the liberal Protestant churches, where feminism is most advanced, what do we see but the practical disappearance of traditional Christianity in favor of the feminist religion of inclusivity, sensitivity and diversity? Unitarianism in drag is the future for all of them and men, real men, anyway, will stay away in larger and larger droves.
Which leads me to think that, given the strong affiliative/feminine energy in Christianity, it can only exist within a strong patriarchal frame, including an all-male priesthood. Despite the meta-sexual nature of the divine, the revealed patriarchal order of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, which seems like a betrayal to the lately enlightened, may in fact be the condition of that tradition's continued existence and the necessary container of its affiliative energies.
As an intensification of the feminine within a fundamentally patriarchal myth, Christianity is a unique jewel in the human patrimony (sic!). Once that framework is dissolved, however, the whole enterprise disappears. Fast.
God as God may in fact be neither male nor female, but the gender of the Christian God as revealed and imaged and spoken of and spoken to, seems to me essential to the integrity of that religion.
Sorry to ramble. I am not (quite!) as mad as I may sound, but the issue presses a button for me :)
You write:
ReplyDeleteTo use 'she' now would be to make a fairly obvious, or even obtrusive, point.
If some people, male as well as female, feel alienated by the routine use of gendered language then I would have though it at least worth while thinking about always using the masculine when the feminine and/or neuter is linguistically legitimate.
"To use 'she' now would be to make a fairly obvious, or even obtrusive, point."
ReplyDeleteLet's start 2,000 years of using only female pronouns for our gender-neutral triune God, and see how long it is until Fr Richard suggests a more appropriate use of gender.
Bernard / Anonymous;
ReplyDeleteAt the risk of putting words into his mouth, I don't think that fr Richard is trying to suggest that the use of masculine forms for the persons of the Trinity is either inherently, or necessarily, correct.
I think the problem, which to some extent was touched on by the other 'Anonymous' comment, is that the upsurge in feminism of the last forty years or so has (for various reasons, some distorted the significance of words to such an extent that words (eg mankind) which were never previously construed as gender-specific - are now seen as inherently implying the masculine.
It is, of course, true that some of the perceptions are at least arguably justifiable; sadly others (like the lunacy of 'femstruate' to eliminate the 'men' from menstruate !) merely demonstrate bigoted ignorance.
The overall result of this changing of perceptions, however, is that any attempt to have an informed debate on the question of a non-gender-specific way of addressing, and referring to, the persons of the Trinity would nowadays be seen by the greater part of the population just as the Church giving way to Feminism - exactly as the previous comment suggests.
Equally, in a world where the fundamentals of theological understanding are less common now than they used to be, there has to be a grave danger that to start referring to the persons of the Trinity as 'It' - which might theologically be perfectly acceptable - would only serve to confuse outsiders about the whole nature of the Trinity, the Godhead, and the two natures of Christ.
Ultimately, the solution seems to be greater catechesis about the nature of the Trinity, and perhaps in particular the Holy Spirit, so that people are clear that there is (our Lord's human nature apart) no inherent gender implication for any of the three persons - and that the problem, if problem there be, is in our human need for human terms in which to describe the Ineffable.
As the first commenter points out, Jesus revealed the Father as Father and the Spirit as Spirit. That 'spirit' has a feminine *grammatical* gender in a given language doesn't really have anything to do with the revelation. That's entirely not the point.
ReplyDeleteBy insisting on a feminine pronoun, you actually start making a statement, one that puts, at best, human concerns over divine concerns, which is a surefire way to miss Jesus' point. At worst, by the way, that insistence welcomes a Trinitarian theology that puts an unnecessary divide between the persons of the Trinity, as if the Father and Son had one gender and the Spirit another.
ruah often takes the fem but also the masc (see Exo 10:13). But to think of the gender in language, (especially in Hebrew) as some link to how Israelites conceived of the gender of concepts is misleading. Thus I agree, "it" is probably a better understanding since linguistically, grammatical gender is not always linked to real gender.
ReplyDelete