Coptic Orthodox Diocese of the Southern United States
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In terms of gender, why does the Greek Language, and of course the Coptic, being somehow similar to the Greek language, treat God the father and the son both as masculine but the Holy Spirit as neuter gender?

You raised a good question that has a very simple answer, namely, that gender in a language does not necessarily correspond to the real gender of the object. This phenomenon is a sheer linguistic phenomenon. For example take the French language which classifies all objects by gender. A table in French is’La table’ 'elle'(feminine), but in English it is referred to by the neutral gender 'it'. Table is feminine in Arabic. Can you tell me what is so or not so feminine about a table? In Greek, "pneuma" is neuter and means "wind or breath," as well as "spirit." Here, neuter makes sense because wind or breath is neither masculine nor feminine. The best word to use in Greek to refer to the Person who proceeds from the Father is "pneuma," which just happens to be neuter.

To give a few other examples: We use "mia physis" for the "one nature" of Christ, but the phrase is feminine in Greek. It has nothing to do with Christ. "Nature" is simply in the feminine gender in Greek. So, as an adjective, "one" in Greek comes in three forms, all of which are in our liturgy: masculine "eis" (spelled "is" in the liturgy to aid pronunciation), feminine "mia," and neuter "en."

"Theotokos" is masculine, but in speaking of St. Mary the feminine definite article is used! "Army" in Greek is "stratia," which is feminine!
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