From Holy Ghost to Holy Spirit

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Any ideas out there, or reference docs, on exactly when and how we changed from calling the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity “Holy Spirit” in English rather than “Holy Ghost”?
 
PKinsale said:
Any ideas out there, or reference docs, on exactly when and how we changed from calling the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity “Holy Spirit” in English rather than “Holy Ghost”?
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Not being a linguist, I really don’t know this answer. But I have always had a similar question in reverse. I speak four modern languages, three are Romance languages and I’ve always wondered why the Germanic languages use “ghost” and the Romance languages use “spirit”. I know the English gets is from the German, “geist”. But how did they get it?

The English “spirit” came from the translation from Latin to English. In Latin it is “spiritu”. When I was a theology student in Rome, many many years ago, we began with books in Latin and Greek. By the time I left there were many classes using translations into modern European languages, the most common being Spanish, the term in Spanish is “espiritu” directly from the Latin. Spanish was and probably is the most common language at the Pontifical Universities in Rome, because the the Spanis speaking form the largest language group in the Church. But I never understood the translation from “spiritu” in Latin to “geist” in German and “ghost” in English. English has both words, “ghost” and “spirit”. 🤷

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
PKinsale said:
Any ideas out there, or reference docs, on exactly when and how we changed from calling the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity “Holy Spirit” in English rather than “Holy Ghost”?
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The 1898 Encyclopedia Britannica tells us that “many religious writers now prefer the name Holy Spirit, owing to the associations suggested to certain minds by the word ghost.” As I understand it, the shift was partly to get away from the “phantasm” meaning of “Ghost,” and partly to get closer to the Latin, where the word is Spiritus. (“Ghost” is from a Saxon/German root, rather than the Latin, and preferred by some old-line Protestants for that reason.)
 
MarkThompson said:
The 1898 Encyclopedia Britannica tells us that “many religious writers now prefer the name Holy Spirit, owing to the associations suggested to certain minds by the word ghost.” As I understand it, the shift was partly to get away from the “phantasm” meaning of “Ghost,” and partly to get closer to the Latin, where the word is Spiritus. (“Ghost” is from a Saxon/German root, rather than the Latin, and preferred by some old-line Protestants for that reason.)
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Thank you Mark, I know the old King James Version of the Bible I used many years ago had Holy Ghost, but all of the new versions, both Protestant and Catholic have Holy Spirit.
 
I don’t know the when and how to your question, but I do find this interesting. Of the several wonderful priests who have said the TLM for us, there are two who I would say best qualify for what might be called a trad priest by members of our TLM community. The younger one always said Holy Ghost. The older one is retired now, but very often said Holy Spirit instead of Holy Ghost.
 
MarkThompson said:
The 1898 Encyclopedia Britannica tells us that “many religious writers now prefer the name Holy Spirit, owing to the associations suggested to certain minds by the word ghost.” As I understand it, the shift was partly to get away from the “phantasm” meaning of “Ghost,” and partly to get closer to the Latin, where the word is Spiritus. (“Ghost” is from a Saxon/German root, rather than the Latin, and preferred by some old-line Protestants for that reason.)
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That would make sense, because the word ghost in Portuguese, Italian and Spanish is “fantasma” and in French it’s “fantome”. But the term refers to spooks, usually scary ones too.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
Thanks all. I guess what I’m wondering is whether there was one point in particular where the Church in the US decided to all of sudden expunge Holy Ghost in favor of the other term.
 
PKinsale said:
Thanks all. I guess what I’m wondering is whether there was one point in particular where the Church in the US decided to all of sudden expunge Holy Ghost in favor of the other term.
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No. It is not an American thing. It was just a matter of translation directly from Latin. My guess is that the "ghost’ was a translation from German. It’s not Latin, that’s for sure. How the Germans came up with geist is what I’d like to know.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
The Latin “spiritus” has now come to mean “breathing,” and what we now refer to as “spirit” in the English language is much less of a personal nature. The Polish “W imię Ojca, i Syna, i Ducha Świętego” (pronounced DOO-ha) is probably more along the lines of Ghost. (At least that’s what my mother called them in the spooky movies.:)) I’m with the Holy Ghost crowd; however, if the English world (which loves ambiguity 🙂 ) understands Him better as the Holy Spirit, then who am I to tell them they’re wrong?
 
The problem is that we don’t have an exact equivalent in any modern language. The ancient word used by my anscestors in the Torah was הרוח

However, even in modern Hebrew, that means “wind”.

הרוח Was the word used in the opening chapter of Genesis. It’s also the same word used by Jesus in the NT. "Receive the הרוח

To the ancient Hebrew people it had several meanings:
  • wind
  • breadth of life
  • spirit of God
However, they never understood it to mean as person. That becomes revealed in the NT when Jesus speaks about sending “The One”. That phrase, “The One” was normally used for YHWH. That’s how the Apostles realize that YHWH is three persons that are The One.

No matter which way we cut it, ghost or spirit, it doesn’t seem to capture the essense of the meaning in scripture.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
JReducation said:
No. It is not an American thing. It was just a matter of translation directly from Latin. My guess is that the "ghost’ was a translation from German. It’s not Latin, that’s for sure. How the Germans came up with geist is what I’d like to know.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
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The original Greek word is pneuma, referring to a breath or breathing, like the breath of God in Genesis. Jerome’s translation into Latin was spiritus, a word that likewise refers to breathing, as we can see from its presence as a root of English words like respiration. Early English translations, however, including most famously the KJV, eschewed a Latinate translation for “ghost,” which comes to us from German geist (which we have more directly in words like “poltergeist” and “Zeitgeist”). Geist came from a root gast, Saxon if I recall correctly, which, like spiritus, referred to breath. We see gast in the English words “aghast” and “flabbergast,” which ultimately mean having one’s breath taken away.

So it’s breath all the way down. My personal preference is for “spirit” which is closer to the Latin and does not carry irrelevant, eerie, “ghostly” connotations. On the other hand, “ghost” has a heavier history of usage in English, though that is mostly due to how thoroughly customary English usage was shaped by the Protestants, their penchant for Germanicisms, and the KJV.
 
MarkThompson said:
The original Greek word is pneuma, referring to a breath or breathing, like the breath of God in Genesis. Jerome’s translation into Latin was spiritus, a word that likewise refers to breathing, as we can see from its presence as a root of English words like respiration. Early English translations, however, including most famously the KJV, eschewed a Latinate translation for “ghost,” which comes to us from German geist (which we have more directly in words like “poltergeist” and “Zeitgeist”). Geist came from a root gast, Saxon if I recall correctly, which, like spiritus, referred to breath. We see gast in the English words “aghast” and “flabbergast,” which ultimately mean having one’s breath taken away.

So it’s breath all the way down. My personal preference is for “spirit” which is closer to the Latin and does not carry irrelevant, eerie, “ghostly” connotations. On the other hand, “ghost” has a heavier history of usage in English, though that is mostly due to how thoroughly customary English usage was shaped by the Protestants, their penchant for Germanicisms, and the KJV.
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Thank you. That was helpful.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
In the Anglican Use Catholic parishes they use both the Holy Spirit and also the Holy Ghost.

Even as a former Anglo Catholic they used both. For some reason I prefer Holy Ghost, probably because that is the way I said most prayers, I still use Holy Ghost in private during the Rosary and In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. It just seems to come naturally.

Both mean the same, so I don’t feel there is a problem using either/or.

Yours in the Hearts of Jesus and Mary

Bernadette
 
In my little corner of German settled Wisconsin you can really pick out the Traditional Mass people because you NEVER hear Holy Spirit it is ALWAYS Holy Ghost. If you use Holy Spirit you are part of the Vatican II crowd.

I was born in 1977 and I can tell you growing up that spirits had a more devilish, goulish connotation compared to Ghost. I always thought Holy Ghost seemed more traditional and the Holy Spirit seemed like a perverted use.

Ohh Well. Either is fine with me now, but I still prefer Holy Ghost. Maybe because today Ghost has less of an evil connotation to it compared to spirit.
 
For what it’s worth, I prefer “Holy Ghost” over “Holy Spirit” because “Holy Ghost” rolls off my tongue much better :D!
 
moon1234 said:
If you use Holy Spirit you are part of the Vatican II crowd.
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Seems to be that way. Especially if you espouse the wrongful “spirit” of Vatican II.

That said, I’m with JR on this one. The English language, maybe partly because of its changing nature of shades of meanings and connotations over time, is not really the best suited for addressing any one of the Three Persons of the Deity.
 
Without reading any documents, I can tell you that it probably had a lot to do with the changing of the meaning of “ghost” over the centuries. If you read shakespeare or even go back to old english “Ghost” and “ghostly” mean spiritual. (Gāst in old english if memory serves). One of Shakespeare’s plays refers to a “ghostly father” simply meaning a priest, with “ghostly” meaning “spiritual”. Now, however, “Ghost” has come to be associated with superstition. A Ghost is now a departed soul who sticks around and haunts old houses and jumps out and says “boo!”

Incidentally, the term “Holy Ghost” has lead to some rather serious confusion between the technical metaphysical term “spirit” and “Ghost” as in halloween ghost. I’m glad they changed the term given the above. It has nothing to do with modernism as far as I know.
 
moon1234 said:
If you use Holy Spirit you are part of the Vatican II crowd.
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No, check out the quotation I gave in post #3 from the Encyclopedia Britannica – in 1898. It’s more of a “Vatican I crowd” thing, really. 😉
 
Well, in French it has always been “Esprit Saint” or “le Saint-Esprit”. Never heard of anyone in French saying “le Saint fantôme”. 😃

I suspect it’s a translation and not a Vatican II issue. The Latin doxology before and after VII has always been “Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto”. Still used at our OF abbey that uses Latin.
 
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