Impersonal versus Personal Pronoun

Because the word for “Spirit” varies in linguistic gender from language to language, linguistic gender has no relation to the person being described by the noun or any corresponding pronouns employed to describe the noun. The object to which the pronoun refers determines the understood gender of its pronoun. Because ekeinos in John 14:26 refers to the Holy Spirit—who is the Spirit of God (Job 33:4; Matt 3:16; 12:28; Rom 8:9; 8:14; 15:19; 1 Cor 2:11, 14; 12:3; 1 John 4:2) and the Spirit of Christ (Rom 8:9; 1 Peter 1:11)—the masculine pronoun he is understood because the pronoun refers to a masculine person, the Holy Spirit.

This distinction between personal and impersonal pronoun usage is the most crucial aspect of this matter, one that borders Christian orthodoxy and heresy. The doctrine of the Trinity is essential to biblical revelation, Christianity, and Christian history. That the God who created the universe ex nihilo (“out of nothing”) exists as three divine persons in one divine Being is substantiated directly in divine revelation and confirmed by all branches of Christianity—Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant. To deny the personhood of any member of the Trinity is regarded as non-Christian, for such a denial denies the God revealed in Scripture by Jesus Christ and his apostles and their authorized scriptural delegates (like Mark and Luke, for example, who were not themselves apostles [see Mark 3:14–19]).

Referring to the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, with masculine pronouns, therefore, is not only permissible, it is Christian. Regarding him as less than the person he has revealed himself to be risks not only “misrepresenting God” (cf. 1 Cor 15:15) but also departure from Christianity.