A person is a “he” if a male figure ( either by physical attributes or as a spiritual attribution such as with God who is spirit.) If we speak of the Father who is spirit as a “he”, the Logos who became flesh as a “he” is logically a “he” as well. Especially given the fact that men were the only people of cultural significance in biblical contexts. The Logos as a female figure would not have been an acceptable thing. Of course the logos is a “he”; feel free to believe he was female if you disagree!
Correct a person is a 'he' if the person is a male figure.
We do speak of the Father as a 'he' because most fathers are male figures.The logos in John 1:1 is not a human being.
To read
logos as the Son, or as Jesus in John 1:1 is reading your doctrine into the scripture.
Our English does not have grammatical gender for most nouns as do French, German, and Spanish, but it uses natural gender for people and some animals. Greek and Hebrew also have have mandatory gender systems for nouns.
In English nouns are generally neutral unless referring to specific gender roles. I have known guys to refer to their cars as 'she' but of course, that doesn't make the car a female figure --- LOL. Wisdom is referred to as 'she' but wisdom isn't a female either.
I know of a lot of women in scripture who had great significance!
Both the Father and the Logos are persons; persons who are “with” each other “in the beginning.”
Doug
In scripture,
logos, being a gendered noun in the Greek, requires a 'he' as the pronoun but it is NOT a person. Words are in one's thoughts and therefore can be considered 'with' that someone.
Let's see: In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, the Father and the word was God. Now do we change the definition of the first God aka Father when we read 'and the word was God' in order to make sure that we don't have the Father becoming flesh as the only Son from the Father? Y'all do have lots of switcheroos when it comes to scripture.
Here are the many definitions for
logos - person is not one of them.
1. speech
1. a word, uttered by a living voice, embodies a conception or idea;
2. what someone has said: a) a word, b) the sayings of God, c) decree, mandate or order, d) of the moral precepts given by God, e) Old Testament prophecy given by the prophets, f) what is declared, a thought, declaration, aphorism, a weighty saying, a dictum, a maxim
3. discourse; a) the act of speaking, speech; b) the faculty of speech, skill and practice in speaking; c) a kind or style of
speaking; e) a continuous speaking discourse - instruction.
4. doctrine, teaching;
5. anything reported in speech; a narration, narrative;
6. matter under discussion, thing spoken of, affair, a matter in dispute, case, suit at law;
7. the thing spoken of or talked about; event, deed
2. its use as respect to the MIND alone;
1. reason, the mental faculty of thinking, meditating, reasoning, calculating; 2. account, i.e. regard, consideration; 3. account, i.e. reckoning, score; 4. account, i.e. answer or explanation in reference to judgment; 5. relation, i.e. with whom as judge we stand in relation; a) reason would; 6. reason cause ground
