Greek Grammar and the Personality of the Holy Spirit
Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2014 5:56 am
W. Hall Harris III considers himself to be a "scholar" of the Greek with over "30 years of experience" teaching NT Greek at the "intermediate level." Like many trinitarian "scholars" he thinks he has grammatical evidence for holy spirit's "personality" through constructio ad sensum in the following verses. See here:
https://bible.org/seriespage/17-exegeti ... ry-john-14
https://www.ibr-bbr.org/files/bbr/BBR_2 ... Spirit.pdf
Wallace then goes on to explain in detail in his article (I suggest a full read) why each of the above purported verses in fact do not show that the holy spirit is a "person" through the route of constructio ad sensum. His conclusion is quite damning. He notes:
https://bible.org/seriespage/17-exegeti ... ry-john-14
Many other trinitarian "scholars" assert the same in their zeal to find such grammatical evidence . Surprisingly enough, Daniel Wallace (himself a trinitarian) does not allow himself to go down this road. Instead he chides this rather sizeable, and powerful contingent of trinitarian Greek "scholarship" for it's abuse of Greek grammar on this score . In his Greek Grammar and the Personality of the Holy Spirit, he makes the following candid observations, to his credit:o} Although neuter pronouns are used to refer to the Spirit in this verse, agreeing with the gender of pneu'ma, later in the Gospel masculine pronouns are used (constructio ad sensum) at 15:26, 16:7, 8, 13, and 14.
https://www.ibr-bbr.org/files/bbr/BBR_2 ... Spirit.pdf
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 sen-sum ("construction according to sense" or, in this case , according to natural as opposed to grammatical gender). That is to say, these pas-sages seem to refer to the Spirit with the masculine gender in spite of the fact that pneuma is neuter, and grammatical concord would nor-mally require that any reference to the Spirit also be in the neuter gender. Such gender shifts are attributed to the fact that the Spirit is a person, and hence the biblical authors naturally speak of him as such, even though this manner of speaking is contrary to normal grammatical convention.... The passages adduced for this grammatical argument are John 14:26; 15:26; 16:7, 13-14; Eph 1:14; 2Thess 2:6-7; and 1 John 5:7. These fall into three different groups: the Upper Room Discourse texts all involve a masculine demonstrative pronoun, Eph 1:14 employs a mas-culine relative pronoun, 2 Thess 2:6-7 and 1 John 5:7 use a masculine participle..
Wallace then goes on to explain in detail in his article (I suggest a full read) why each of the above purported verses in fact do not show that the holy spirit is a "person" through the route of constructio ad sensum. His conclusion is quite damning. He notes:
And he correctly notes that Evangelicals very often engage in wishful thinking when it comes to finding support for their pet doctrines:Penultimate Conclusions
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. The basis for this doctrine must be on other grounds. This does not
mean that in the NT the Spirit is a thing, any more than in the OT the Spirit (xwr—a feminine noun) is a female! Grammatical gender is just that: grammatical. The conventions of language do not necessarily correspond to reality.
This is very commendable and even courageous on Wallace's part, but it still doesn't address the elephant in the room. Since gender shifts due to constructio ad sensum are unremarkable, if the NT authors indeed conceived of the holy spirit as a "person," we may well expect to see natural gender taking precedent over grammatical gender in various passages that speak of it . So why don't we ? That's the million dollar question. The NT's silence in this regard speaks volumes against the claim that the holy spirit is a "person."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. Regarding the personality of the Holy Spirit, the quick leap to exploit Greek grammar in defense may actually work against a carefully nuanced pneumatology. Taking our cue from
christology, we note that several biblical scholars working in that field would argue for progressive development of the understanding of the person and work of Christ. Not all would affirm that the apostolic band embraced the deity of Christ shortly after the resurrection. Some would argue that this understanding took years to develop.