"Through the Prophets"

 Tenth Thursday after Pentecost

Lectionary Texts:

Thursday:

2 Samuel 13:23-39

Ephesians 4:7-16

Friday:

2 Samuel 14:1-33

First, let me mention that on Monday's travelogue of our "center of the world" places and "end of the world" places, I did not mention that Ocracoke Island is an "end of the world" place. Perhaps you already figured that out.

 

Today we take up again our series on things in the Nicene Creed that are not in the Apostles' Creed. Here's the one for today:

 

"He [the Holy Spirit] has spoken through the prophets."

 

The sentence seems simple enough and something all Christians could agree on. No problem there. But there are a couple of problems. 

 

First is what the sentence does not say. Why does it not say, "through the law, the prophets, and the writings?" Or "through the Old Testament," or through "the Old and New Testament," or "through the Holy Scriptures," or "through the Holy Bible." Why only the prophets? 

I have read numerous sources on the Creed. None of them deal with this question. Several imply that the word" prophets" stands for the whole of Christian Scriptures. Maybe that's the right answer. I can't come up with a better one. One thing noteworthy is that what books would be in the NT was not yet finalized. The OT included what we Protestants call the Apocrypha, although there was some question about whether two of these books, 2 Esdras and 2 Baruch, should be included. Another thing to note is that the Apostles' Creed says absolutely nothing about the Bible. In any case we can say that the prophets were inspired by the Holy Spirit. What "inspired" means is another question far too big for me to go into here.

Second is the use of the English masculine pronoun he for the Holy Spirit. Neither the original Greek nor the Latin uses any pronoun here. The verb endings contain the person and number--in this case third singular--but not the gender. In English the gender of almost all nouns that aren't specifically one sex or the other is neuter. That is not the case with virtually all the other Indo-European and Semitic languages. Some like French, Spanish, and Hebrew have only two genders, masculine and feminine. In French for example, your mouth is feminine (la bouche), while your teeth (le dent) are masculine, regardless of whether you are male or female. Greek, Latin, and German, for example, have three genders, masculine, femine, and neuter. Again these genders don't have to do with sex. Only in English is gender specific to sex. 

The gender of the Holy Spirit is feminine in all Semitic languages, such as Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, and Arabic.  In Greek the Holy Spirit is neuter. In Latin the Holy Spirit is masculine.

I have noticed that most Americans when speaking of the Holy Spirit say "it." The pronoun for the Holy Spirit in British English from the 15th through early 20th centuries was "he." Now in the 21st century we English speakers in mainline churches are tending not to use any pronouns for either God or the Holy Spirit. We do need to remember that in other languages gender is not the equivalent of sex.

So what pronoun do you use for the Holy Spirit? I would love to hear your responses. Here are your possible responses: he, she, it, no pronoun, or "I 've never thought about it." I'll give you my response in the next blog. Let me hear from you.

Holy Spirit,

We thank you for your inspiration of the prophets and the other Biblical writers. We thank you for your indwelling of us. Help us better to understand your meaning for us and what you do in us. Amen.

Faithfully,

Christian

P.S. Today we reached one milestone. This is my 400th blog. I would love to hear whether any of you hve read all 400.