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Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
There seem to be two main schools of thought concerning the Holy Spirit,

Do you subscribe to one or the other description of the Holy Spirit, to neither or to both

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
First of all, he's a he (not an it, sorry). A very personal person, if that makes any sense.

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* Porridge has made an interesting point regarding the femaleness of the Spirit. But to what extent is this kind of personalisation present in Christianity now? That's something for the scholars - it's not part of popular spirituality as I know it.

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Originally posted by Horseman Bree:

IOW, I have been exposed to the more extreme ends of the spectrum, and I would prefer to deal with a via media (both/and).

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Originally posted by Gramps49:
Ultimately, though, God is not a sexual being. God is neither male nor female.

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Originally posted by no prophet:
If we are created in the image of God, God is obviously sexual. I would say God is both male and female and the spirit particularly is both, though also neither, and neither and both at once.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

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Originally posted by no prophet:
If we are created in the image of God, God is obviously sexual. I would say God is both male and female and the spirit particularly is both, though also neither, and neither and both at once.

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This is problematic. God doesn't have a body or any biological existence. Therefore, God can't have biological sex. So it's not clear what it would mean to attribute sex to God.
If you go with the distinction between sex and gender you can claim that God has both genders. But even that is problematic, since it seems to essentialise our cultural constructions of gender. Presumably also those people who identify as neither male-gendered nor female-gendered also find their gender identity in God: this quickly gets complicated if they're all supposed to be actually in God.
You can I think argue that erotic desire is one bodily mode in which the creature imitates the love of God.

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Originally posted by Gramps49:
Lamb Chop, I beg to differ with your identification of the Holy Spirit as a he. ...
Now the New Testament word for Holy Spirit is gender neutral.

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:

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Originally posted by Gramps49:
Lamb Chop, I beg to differ with your identification of the Holy Spirit as a he. ...
Now the New Testament word for Holy Spirit is gender neutral.

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I'm well aware of the Greek and Hebrew genders. Hebrew ruach is feminine while Greek pneuma is neuter. Nevertheless, if you look at the pronouns Jesus uses to refer to the Spirit in John 15-16, you will find he uses the masculine. You might argue that this is simply to stay in agreement with parakletos, but 16:13 is quite distant from that noun, and pneuma tes aletheias (πνεῦμα τῆς ἀληθείας) is what we would expect to govern the pronoun, being right in that very sentence. Yet Jesus uses the masculine. Nowhere can I find him using the neuter--in fact, after looking the text over, I begin to suspect a concerted effort to avoid getting into a position where the conflict would become seriously in-your-face.*

I am making no claims at all for what that might mean, except to say that I prefer to follow suit.

* Yes, yes, I know someone is going to pop up and tell me Jesus was speaking Aramaic, and therefore we should credit the writer (John, or whoever you prefer) with the grammatical arrangements. My reply would drag us into Dead Horse territory, so instead of doing that, I'll just note that my understanding of Scripture is that the Greek is inspired, and even the grammar is of significance.

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Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
There seem to be two main schools of thought concerning the Holy Spirit, one that he/she arrives in a memorable way on the faith journey and subsequently lives within us as a burning flame, guiding us and enlivening our faith; the other that it is like a deep pool of peace and light that is within everyone and accessed in the stillness of meditation or contemplative prayer.

It seems to me by observation that some people who might be happy to accept the latter seem not only to fail to accept the former but to be afraid of talking about it. Someone recently said to me 'Why talk about the Holy Spirit, why not simply talk about God?'

Is there a fear of the lively Holy Spirit, do you think? If so, why is that?

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Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Or do those outside the gender binary not count? That includes, by the way, those intersex people who are biologically neither male nor female, eg have XXY chromosones.

Also, 'they' is perfectly acceptable as a gender-neutral pronoun and people use it to refer to people who are not gender-neutral all the time.

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How about trying to understand what Lamb Chopped **really** wants to say, instead of getting all worked up once again with this sanctimonious gender-correctness twaddle?

I agree with LC in this:

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I do feel uncomfortable, in my own practice, with playing around with pronouns by calling the Spirit "she" or "it." "It" implies a lack of personality, which is totally wrong. "She" doesn't bother me nearly as much, except it often smells a bit like a political statement--rather like a "fuck you" to more traditional speakers--a dare to them to make something of it, wanna fight? And that gets tedious, as well as distracting from whatever the main point really is.

And that's what we're doing here, isn't it? Being tedious. This thread had a really cool wide focus on the Holy Spirit's person and works. But this tangent is shrinking it to a tired old argument about what to call him/her. Meh. I'd like to get back to less trampled discussion areas.

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:


I do feel uncomfortable, in my own practice, with playing around with pronouns by calling the Spirit "she" or "it." "It" implies a lack of personality, which is totally wrong.

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Originally posted by Gramps49:
Lamb Chop, while you are concentrating on John 14-16, you over look Luke 3:22 and the other synoptics which describe the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus in the body form of a dove. The Greek word for dove is περιστέρι, which is feminine, I believe.

You correctly noted that the Hebrew word of the Spirit of God is ruach. We agree it is a feminine word. The Aramaic word for [Holy] Spirit is rucha, which is also feminine. As noted, Jesus spoke Aramaic, meaning he would have used the feminine word for the Holy Spirit.

Paraclete is masculine, true, but some of the definitions of the word almost have a feminine image as well: it can be translated as comforter or helper.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:


I do feel uncomfortable, in my own practice, with playing around with pronouns by calling the Spirit "she" or "it." "It" implies a lack of personality, which is totally wrong.

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What is the Holy Spirit's personality?

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Originally posted by Boogie:
I can't do meditation etc as I'm 100% distractible.

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Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
For those who don't recognise these descriptions of the Holy Spirit, it surprises me. How would you describe the Holy Spirit?

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Originally posted by Truman White:
I reckon the o/p strikes the right tone by speaking about the Spirit experientially. Experiencing the Spirit is like a flame, a pool, or tangible in other ways (like a physical dove - although I don't know of anyone apart from Christ who says they experienced the Spirit like that).

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Originally posted by no prophet:
I didn't say biological sex as in God has sexual relations. But we are created in God's image, thus, God contains sex. And gender. But you are correct that God is gendered and non-gendered. What do you need God to be? That's where God meets us (or is supposed to).

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Originally posted by IngoB:
The problem with both of your descriptions to me is the inherent drama (different kinds of drama in both cases, but still). I wouldn't deny the activity of the Holy Spirit in either mode, of course, but they are both in their way extraordinary. Whereas I would describe the ordinary activity of the Holy Spirit more like an "in place" change of the mind, where everything pretty much remains at it was, but the orientation shifts. For example, we constantly track all we think, say or do against a framework of worldly and bodily concerns, but now there is an additional concern, one that might even become dominant. Now God is also on our mind, not in the foreground, but as a constant backdrop. This goes from the "trivial", like planning in Church attendance (as one would a shopping trip), to the "sophisticated", like feeling spiritual receptiveness in another and following it up (as one would do in romance with a prospective lover). Likewise, we are always moved about by impulses "bubbling up" into our consciousness. Whether it is the needs of the body (food, sex, ...) or more cognitive intuitions (this feels good/bad, perhaps I need to do this, ...). Again, to these impulses the Holy Spirit adds spiritual ones, which can become dominant. For example, a sudden need for a short prayer, or a realisation that one has to work on some spiritual aspect of one's life. In summary, it's the same sort of being and living that one always has had, but the aboutness thereof is being modified. God is moving into the picture, but not as a new "object" to be painted into it, but rather because the paint itself is now containing a certain percentage of God. Whereas the more extraordinary interactions with the Holy Spirit that you describe are a more direct interaction. One could see them as a kind of focus: in the case of "burning flame" intensifying the God aspect in one's mind until it is very dominant, in the case of "contemplation " stripping away the non-God aspects of one's mind until almost only the God aspect is left. I think such focus is good, and indeed to a degree an "inspiration tool", but I don't think that this as such can be maintained in the everyday. One can focus, but one also has to let go. I guess ideally after every focus the everyday one relaxes into is a little bit more permeated by the Holy Spirit, so that over time one saturates into holiness. But I think aiming for a "never-ending Holy Spirit focus" is just a recipe for spiritual failure. Or perhaps I'm just to spiritually weak to pull that off...

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Originally posted by Raptor Eye:

For those who don't recognise these descriptions of the Holy Spirit, it surprises me. How would you describe the Holy Spirit?

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Originally posted by Desert Daughter:

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Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Or do those outside the gender binary not count? That includes, by the way, those intersex people who are biologically neither male nor female, eg have XXY chromosones.

Also, 'they' is perfectly acceptable as a gender-neutral pronoun and people use it to refer to people who are not gender-neutral all the time.

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How about trying to understand what Lamb Chopped **really** wants to say, instead of getting all worked up once again with this sanctimonious gender-correctness twaddle?

I agree with LC in this:

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I do feel uncomfortable, in my own practice, with playing around with pronouns by calling the Spirit "she" or "it." "It" implies a lack of personality, which is totally wrong. "She" doesn't bother me nearly as much, except it often smells a bit like a political statement--rather like a "fuck you" to more traditional speakers--a dare to them to make something of it, wanna fight? And that gets tedious, as well as distracting from whatever the main point really is.

And that's what we're doing here, isn't it? Being tedious. This thread had a really cool wide focus on the Holy Spirit's person and works. But this tangent is shrinking it to a tired old argument about what to call him/her. Meh. I'd like to get back to less trampled discussion areas.

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Indeed.

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Well, intersex refers to sex, not gender, so I don't see how it's being about 'gender-correctness', although naturally gender-variant people are included in those outside the gender-boundary. As for sanctimonious, I don't see how it's sanctimonious to want to include those who are neither male nor female in the Church - unless of course you feel they should be shut out from the Body and never mentioned?

I am well aware of what LC is talking about - I was just clarifying that God reflecting the whole of gender does not just equal God reflecting male and female. I disagree with LC, but I understand perfectly well what they mean.

FWIW I always think of the Holy Spirit in gender-neutral terms, even though I think of the other two Persons of the Trinity as male. Nothing to do with 'gender-correctness', just how I have always thought of them. I'm not sure why exactly, I think because I (habitually, not correctly!) think of the Spirit as a 'force' - not in the sense of not being part of the Trinity, but not like a person with a body and face. Old paintings of God the Father have meant that I think of Him as well as God the Son as humanoid men, usually white Not defending it as correct, just cultural habit I think. Strangely, when reading The Shack, thinking of the Spirit as a humanoid woman was much weirder to me than thinking of the Father like that.

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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]

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Originally posted by Truman White:

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Originally posted by Gramps49:
Lamb Chop, while you are concentrating on John 14-16, you over look Luke 3:22 and the other synoptics which describe the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus in the body form of a dove. The Greek word for dove is περιστέρι, which is feminine, I believe.

You correctly noted that the Hebrew word of the Spirit of God is ruach. We agree it is a feminine word. The Aramaic word for [Holy] Spirit is rucha, which is also feminine. As noted, Jesus spoke Aramaic, meaning he would have used the feminine word for the Holy Spirit.

Paraclete is masculine, true, but some of the definitions of the word almost have a feminine image as well: it can be translated as comforter or helper.

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Greek for "young man" is neaneas (which is feminine). What do you conclude from that - that all Greek blokes before a certain age were bi-sexual? Sorry mate - basing the gender of things on the use of grammar just leads you into complete absurdity.

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Originally posted by chris stiles:
Taking the first paragraph alone, both your descriptions are relatively jejune, neither contradictory nor complete but placed in an arbitrary opposition with each other.

Your second paragraph seems to posit the first position as correct, and the second one as somewhat more timourous.

I can find both positions, either and none, in a wide spectrum of churches from the more openly charismatic to the less so.

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Originally posted by Gramps49:
no profit

When the Bible says we are made in God's image it means before the fall we had some characteristics like God. Theologians fall into three different levels when they try to explain the image of God. Irenaus argued we had the image of God in that we were able to exercise free will and had reason. . Karl Barth and Emil Brunner argue that it is our ability to establish and maintain complex and intricate relationships that make us like God. Gerhard von Rad, J. Maxwell Miller, C. A. Cline and others would argue that we are in the image of God in that we were the visible corporeal representative of the invisible, bodiless God; we were representative rather than representation.

However this was lost at the time of the fall. But it was restored through Christ who is the visible God. (Colossians 1:15) The writer of Colossians goes so far as to say God through Christ restores that image to all believers (Col 3:10)

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Originally posted by rolyn:
Is the HS like the wind ? Jesus likens those 'born of the Spirit' to the blowing of the wind .
Then you've got the rushing of the wind moments before the Disciples receive the Holy Spirit in the form of tongues of fire.

Personally I'd describe the HS feeling as the commonly derided 'izzey whizzy feeling'.
As to whether the Holy Spirit is present during sex ? I can't for the life of me see any reason why not . Just as there's no doubt in my mind that the HS is present on battlefields where soldiers die in agony.
Who can really say where the Holy Spirit is or isn't present . Maybe it is continually present , sometimes we tune in, most times we're turned off .

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Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
Is there a fear of the lively Holy Spirit, do you think? If so, why is that?

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Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
Yes, I like the wind analogy. I too think that God's presence is everywhere. But can we 'tap into' the Holy Spirit as we wish, as if a kind of force rather than a person? Where does God's will come into this?

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Originally posted by Gramps49:

No, I would not say sin has simply marred God's image in us, I would say sin has obliterated God's image in us. It can only be restored though the gracious action of God and God only.

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