I just stumbled across the blog of Peter Kirk, who knows his stuff when it comes to Biblical languages. There’s been a bit of an uptick in the Evangelical blogosphere discussion of gendered language in Scripture and liturgy, and Mr. Kirk offers a wonderful suggestion, sure to make explode the heads of both patriarchists and prescriptivists alike:
Perhaps, if I put my tongue in my cheek a little, the best solution is to call the Holy Spirit “theyâ€. For some this will be understood as a singular “theyâ€. But, to those who might object to the singular “they†or insist that it carries nuances of plurality, I point out the ancient Christian tradition of the sevenfold Spirit, based on Isaiah 11:2 and repeated references in Revelation (1:4, 3:1, 4:5, 5:6) to the seven Spirits of God. So there should be no objection to using an apparently plural pronoun to refer to them.