The Holy Spirit is really female, and there can be no other way because there's no other
explanation for the universe to happen, and it would have to have some type of concept
of male and female in order to do the marvelous, wonderful thing in its creation.
There are aspects of what you're saying that are true. It is true that God is not limited by
this, by the sexes the way we are. The catechism talks about this. The catechism talks about how,
in His essence, God is neither male nor female.
God does not have sex in his essence. He in fact he includes and it has within
himself the virtues of both sexes. So he has the virtues of masculinity
and the virtues of femininity. Now he's chosen to reveal himself to us,
using for two of the three persons of the Trinity using masculine imagery.
So that's why we read about the father and the son that those are God's own terms for himself.
So we're not at liberty to just completely reconceptualize those.
So it's good that you're still using those when it comes to the Holy Spirit.
The situation is a little more complex and it's more complex than most people realize.
But I want to I want to correct something, which is the idea that God would have to incorporate
a female person in order to be able to conceive of females.
That is not true. God is omniscient. He knows everything. And therefore, he knows
things that he knows things automatically. He doesn't even have to think about them.
He doesn't think. He doesn't have to reason his way through things.
In order to have ideas. He has an infinite number of ideas,
including things that, as far as we know, he chooses not to create. So, for example,
God doesn't have to create a unicorn in order to have the idea of a unicorn and God.
So there doesn't have to be a person of the trinity who is a unicorn for God to be able
to create unicorns if he chose, he already knows the idea. And in the same way, God doesn't have
to have a person of the Trinity who is a woman in order to be able to understand the idea of
women and be able to create women. And the same thing is true of everything else in creation.
So I would I would caution you against the idea of supposing that the persons of the Trinity must
be a certain way in order for God to be able to come up with created realities that are like that.
That's that's actually not the case. God doesn't have to incorporate
something as one of his persons in order to be able to think of the idea
and being able to think of the idea is all he needs in order to be able to create it.
So what about the gender of the Holy Spirit? Well, for a long time, I
just, based on cultural impressions, would think of the Holy Spirit as masculine
and and I didn't see any alternative to that. And I would I would resist when people proposed
that, you know, the Holy Spirit could be understood in non masculine terms.
And eventually, I did a study of scripture, both Old and New Testament. And what I found was more
complex, actually the so in Greek, they have three genders masculine, feminine and neuter. Now these
are grammatical genders. They don't necessarily tell you what the gender of a biological being is.
But in terms of the pronouns that get used in the New Testament, they aren't all masculine.
The Greek, what they do and this is true of of languages like this is the pronouns and
the and in Hebrew as well.
The verb forms will take the gender of whatever noun they're referring to. At
least that's the typical way it works. And so when the authors of the Greek New Testament
refer to the Holy Spirit using the word for spirit in Greek, which is pneumatos or pneuma
they well, pneuma is a neuter word, and so they will
use the pronoun it or the Greek equivalent of it. And so you'll have the Holy Spirit being
described as it in the Greek New Testament. But sometimes they use other words besides the
word for spirit. Sometimes they use the word for counselor or a comforter or paraclete.
Which in Greek is Parakletos and Parakletos is masculine.
And so when they refer to the Holy Spirit as the Parakletos, they use the Greek equivalent of he.
So you have in the Greek New Testament, you have both it and he being used for the Holy Spirit.
Depending on the passage. What about what about the Old Testament
in Hebrew? The word for spirit is ruach, and in Aramaic it's rucha,
and both ruach and rucha are feminine and they take female pronouns in Hebrew and Aramaic
when the Holy Spirit's being referred to either in the Hebrew sections or in the Aramaic.
There's a little bit of Aramaic in the Hebrew in the Old Testament, but also we have the
Aramaic translation of the Old Testament and the New Testament. And we have the targumin
that were the Aramaic translations of the Old Testament they used in the synagogue.
And when the Holy Spirit gets referred to in Aramaic as
as rucha the Spirit, it takes female pronouns. And so whereas with the father and the son,
we have very definite masculine imagery that's used not because God is intrinsically masculine,
but just because this helps us understand certain things about God.
He's like a father. The son is like a son. We don't have a definite consistent gender that's
used grammatically in the revealed materials for the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit gets
alternately described using masculine, feminine or neuter language, depending on the context.