Is the Holy Spirit feminine?

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I have often heard about a tradition in the Early Church that considered the Holy Spirit to be feminine in some sense. Mainly due to the fact that in many Semetic languages, such as in various dialects of ancient Aramaic (the language Jesus spoke) the Holy Spirit is grammatically feminine. Both St. Ephrem the Syrian and St. Aphrahat use feminine imagery for the Holy Spirit and St. Aphrahat even calls God “our Father” and the Holy Spirit “our Mother” (St. Aphrahat, Dem. 18.10, A.D. 344). The Holy Spirit was also identified as Lady Wisdom by some of the Early Church Father’s like St. Irenaeus. Given this, is it “orthodox” to consider the Holy Spirit to be a “feminine” person in some sense? Obviously the Holy Spirit is also considered masculine, perhaps he has both masculinity and femininity? Although as we know God doesn’t really have a gender in his essential being.
 
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NO! The Holy Spirit does not have gender.
“Lady Wisdom” has been portrayed as a woman and many have associated this image to the Virgin Mary.
There is also a “Lady Folly” as a contrast between moral virtue and lack of it.
This is located in the “Proverbs” book. Some concepts there could be construed as the Holy Spirit being the “mover” or inspiration of virtue and counsel.
The Holy Spirit has been described as the Love that emanates from the Father to the Son and vice versa. Since it is GOD we are talking about this Love manifests itself as the 3rd person of the Trinity, The Holy Spirit.

Peace!
 
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Absolutely not. Creation, and the Church, and a-personal wisdom are characterized as feminine, but never God “in se.”
 
Gosh, I wish I could remember the word for ascribing human characteristics to God . . .

“Id” something “try”, I think.
 
I’ve heard that in Greek (I think it’s Greek), the word for Holy Spirit is in female form.
 
The Holy Spirit is God. God encompasses all gender and is beyond human conceptions of gender, with the exception of Jesus’ human form being a male.

The Holy Spirit has no human physical body and is neither masculine nor feminine.
 
TwoNames said:
I’ve heard that in Greek (I think it’s Greek), the word for Holy Spirit is in female form.
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This (in any language) does not mean the Holy Spirit has female gender.
Not to mention there are plenty of languages where nouns are not gendered.
 
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YHWH_Christ said:
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You spoke correctly: “God doesn’t really have a gender in his essential being.”
The Catechism states that: “God transcends the human distinction between the sexes.”

Catechism of the Catholic Church
239 By calling God “Father”, the language of faith indicates two main things: that God is the first origin of everything and transcendent authority; and that he is at the same time goodness and loving care for all his children. God’s parental tenderness can also be expressed by the image of motherhood, which emphasizes God’s immanence, the intimacy between Creator and creature. The language of faith thus draws on the human experience of parents, who are in a way the first representatives of God for man. But this experience also tells us that human parents are fallible and can disfigure the face of fatherhood and motherhood. We ought therefore to recall that God transcends the human distinction between the sexes. He is neither man nor woman: he is God. He also transcends human fatherhood and motherhood, although he is their origin and standard: no one is father as God is Father.
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It is true that the word for breath (which is what the word translated as spirit means) is grammatically feminine in Hebrew, but this has no bearing on the sex of the Holy Spirit. In contrast, the Greek word for spirit is grammatically neuter. Again, no bearing on the sex of the Holy Spirit. All it reflects is the grammar of the language being used to describe the person of the Holy Spirit.
 
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YHWH_Christ said:
I have often heard about a tradition in the Early Church that considered the Holy Spirit to be feminine in some sense. Mainly due to the fact that in many Semetic languages, such as in various dialects of ancient Aramaic (the language Jesus spoke) the Holy Spirit is grammatically feminine. Both St. Ephrem the Syrian and St. Aphrahat use feminine imagery for the Holy Spirit and St. Aphrahat even calls God “our Father” and the Holy Spirit “our Mother” (St. Aphrahat, Dem. 18.10, A.D. 344). The Holy Spirit was also identified as Lady Wisdom by some of the Early Church Father’s like St. Irenaeus. Given this, is it “orthodox” to consider the Holy Spirit to be a “feminine” person in some sense? Obviously the Holy Spirit is also considered masculine, perhaps he has both masculinity and femininity? Although as we know God doesn’t really have a gender in his essential being.
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Yes, there’s a long tradition of referring to the 3rd person of the Trinity in the role of a mother or a nurturer, both in ancient tradition and in more contemporary times. I know St Maximilian Kolbe talked about this because he was referenced in one of Scott Hahn’s books on this subject (I want to say it was in “Hail, Holy Queen” but I’m not 100% sure).

The appropriate liturgical pronoun would still be “Him” though.
 
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OY! “Gender” as originally used, is an artifact of Indo-European languages. It is, at most, tangentially related to the biological aspect known as “sex.” Male animals tend to take masculine gender nouns and pronouns. NOTE “Male” and “Masculine” are two different words with different meanings when used technically. Ditto, “Female” and Feminine."

God is not an animal. God, therefore, qua God, has no sex. Jesus, as God-incarnate, in fact has male sex. The HS as a pure spirit does not have sex.

That certain words are assigned gender says absolutely nothing about sex.

“Le livre” in French has masculine gender…but books do not have sex.
“Kniga” in Russian has feminine gender…but books do not have sex in Russian either!

Frankly, these silly arguments and assertions only serve to point out people too often have no idea what they’re talking about.

Did you know that “Elohim” in Hebrew is plural? Yet we are told “God is One” in the schma.

Don’t let extraneous linguistics push any of this. God is one…despite Elohim being plural
The God-head has no sex and uses masculine imagery simply as imagery and tradition.

Jesus was a male.

The Holy Spirit has no sex and uses masculine imagery simply as imagery and tradition.
 
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Of the three persons in the Holy Trinity, only the Son has a physical body. He was a man.

The Father and the Holy Spirit are both spirits (in the latter instance it’s literally in the name), meaning they have no flesh or blood or bodies. It goes without saying that this also means the Father and the Holy Spirit don’t have chromosomes or other identifiers of biological sex. This makes applying human concepts of gender to the Father and the Holy Spirit seem unadvisable.
 
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Pope St John Paul II describes the Holy Spirit as enlivening and animating the Church, our Mother. He refers to the Holy Spirit as masculine in that vein.

“The Holy Spirit dwells in the Church not as a guest who still remains an outsider, but as the soul that transforms the community into “God’s holy temple” (1 Cor 3:17; cf. 6:19; Eph 2:21) and makes it more and more like himself through his specific gift, which is love (cf. Rom 5:5; Gal 5:22). Love — the Second Vatican Council teaches in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church — “governs, gives meaning to and perfects all the means of sanctification” (Lumen gentium, n. 42).”
 
YHWH_Christ said:
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TwoNames:
I’ve heard that in Greek (I think it’s Greek), the word for Holy Spirit is in female form.
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No it’s neuter.
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Grammatically, ‘pneuma’ is neuter.

In Hebrew, though, the word for ‘spirit’ (ruach) is grammatically feminine.

Still doesn’t mean that a spiritual (i.e., non-physical) being has physical gender, though.
 
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