If you have recited the creeds in the past, you will recall that the Holy Spirit was always referred to as “he.” Recently, that has changed, and the Holy Spirit is now referred to as “she” at St. Luke’s.

Why is that? The Christian Bible was written in Greek. The word spirit is neither masculine nor feminine in Greek. However, the authors of the Christian Bible were translating what Jesus said because he spoke Aramaic. In Aramaic the word for spirit is feminine.

Christian writings until around the fourth century referred to the Spirit as feminine. For some reason that changed and later writings referred to the Spirit as “he.” One possibility is that St. Jerome, in translating the Greek into Latin, had to choose a gender for the neutral Greek word spirit and chose the masculine.

Thus, current terminology is based on the understanding that Jesus would have spoken of the Spirit as feminine in Aramaic. The University Church Toledo observed, “This association of the feminine with the person of the Spirit may be helpful to us in understanding how both men and women can be said to be ‘created in the image of God.’”

-Jim Mills

Send Jim Mills your questions on worship, Christian theology, or the Bible and he will research them. You can find his email in the ACTS newsletter or by contacting our parish administrator.