PARACLETE păr’ ə klēt (παράκλητος, G4156, advocate). John is the only author in the NT to use the term parákletos (tr. counselor in RSV; comforter in KJV). In 1 John 2:1 he applies it to the exalted Lord; in the gospel he employs it four times (John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7) to denote Jesus’ description of the Holy Spirit who should continue His ministry to the disciples.

The meaning “advocate” is another equivalent for Paraclete (1 John 2:1) In the Hel. lit. which constitutes the linguistic milieu of the NT, the word, as commonly used, had a legal connotation and referred to one who speaks for someone in the presence of another. When John applied it to the exalted Lord, he was using a legal term to picture the role of Christ as one who pleads the sinner’s cause before the Father. This mode fits well with the basic representation of Christ in the NT as exalted at God’s right hand, there to make intercession for the saints (Rom 8:34). Before the Resurrection, Jesus Himself claimed, in reference to the judgment of the world, that He would be the advocate of those who had confessed Him, and the accuser of those who had denied Him, before His Father in heaven (Matt 10:32f., and parallels). Closely related to this strand of revelation is the larger representation of Christ’s high-priestly ministry in the presence of the Father, which the writer of Hebrews referred to as His entering into the holy place not made with hands, there to make intercession for us (Heb 7-9).

Analyzing the meaning of the term “paraclete” as applied to the Spirit is a more difficult task. When Jesus spoke of “another Counselor” (John 14:16), it implies that the term is being used both of Himself and the one who shall take His place. A few interpreters have understood “another” to be redundant (John 14:16): “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another [the] counselor, to be with you for ever.” In recent lit., some have suggested a parallel between John the Baptist’s relationship to Jesus and Jesus’ relationship to the Paraclete. As John heralded the coming of the Messiah, so the Messiah heralded the coming of the Spirit. Such interpretations are forced and only marginally advocated.

Assuming, then, that Jesus is a Paraclete and that, when He departed, He sent “another Paraclete,” i.e., the Spirit, the determination of the sense in which Jesus is Himself a Paraclete would seem to enable one to ascertain the meaning of the term as applied to the Holy Spirit. However, matters are not quite that simple. The chief difficulty in following the analogy of 1 John 2:1 and interpreting Paraclete as “Advocate,” when applied to the Spirit, is that the pronouncements in the gospel of John about the ending, the activity, and the nature of the Spirit seem to move on a different plane. Should, then, another term be sought more in keeping with the description given by Jesus of the Spirit’s ministry? What other term would be preferred? This problem has long plagued translators. The KJV uses “Comforter” (as does Luther); the ASV retains “Comforter,” footnoting “Advocate” or “Helper.” The RSV uses “Counselor”; the NEB, “Advocate”; the NASB, “Helper,” with the margin “Intercessor.” Phillips cuts the Gordian knot with “someone else to stand by you.”

If an effort is made to solve this problem by the history of religions approach, one must choose between two possible sources of John’s usage. There is, on the one hand, the figure of the “celestial Helper” found in Gnosticism (particularly in the Mandean lit.) and, on the other, the tradition of an “advocate” for man before God, found in the OT and late Jewish writings. When one makes a close comparison between the Mandean figure of the Helper, and the Johannine description of the Paraclete, the analogy is not sufficiently great to suggest that the latter concept derived from the former.

If the key to the meaning of “Paraclete” is sought in the OT idea of an advocate who speaks for man before God (although scholars are no doubt nearer a solution), questions still remain. The puzzling fact is that the description of the Paraclete’s work as delineated in John’s gospel does not fit well with the idea of the Advocate. In John He is described as the One who teaches the disciples and brings to their memory what Jesus had said (John 14:26); He bears witness to the risen Christ (John 15:26); He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment to come (John 16:8-11). It would seem, then, that Paraclete, when applied to the Spirit, has less a forensic and more a kerygmatic aspect. Some have sought to reduce the latter to the former by arguing that the Spirit leads the disciples into all the truth in the sense that He defends them, in their striving for the truth in the world, against the condemnation of unbelievers. He becomes their advocate, as they struggle with the world, by bearing an effectual witness in the hearts of their hearers—but this seems strained.

It is true that in Romans 8:26f. Paul writes of the Spirit’s making intercession for us with sighs that cannot be uttered. Jesus promised (Mark 13:11, and parallels) that in the decisive moment, when His disciples were asked to defend themselves, the Spirit would speak for them. When it comes to the meaning of Paraclete in the gospel of John, it can only be said that it has taken on added shades of meaning that make it impossible to tr. it exactly with any word in Eng., except “Paraclete,” if one wants to avoid this strange sounding word, as most translators have wisely chosen to do. (The Douay is the only major VS to read “Paraclete,” along with “parascene of the past” for “preparation of the Passover,” John 19:14, and other linguistic barbarities.) The best he can do is to use a general term like “Helper” or spread out the meaning in a phrase like “One who stands by to help.”

Although the traditional word “Comforter” is not to be altogether excluded from the broader connotation of Paraclete—its illustrious pedigree appears from time to time in the Gr. and Lat. Fathers, and was used by Luther and Wycliffe before the King James—it is not sufficient to establish it as the best term to use. Whereas it is true that Jesus spoke of the Paraclete in a discourse aimed at comforting His disciples (who were saddened by the thought of His leaving them) when He described the Spirit’s ministry, it is not primarily in these terms that He spoke. See Holy Spirit.