The Holy Spirit Is Not A
Person
Ah,
now we come to the shy member of the trinity. According to
trinitarian belief, the holy spirit is the third person of the
trinity. But as we will see, the holy spirit is not a person. The
holy spirit has
to do with God’s mind and power. In Micah 3:8, we see how God’s
spirit is related to his power:
I am filled with power, with the
Spirit of the LORD.
The
spirit
and power are
used interchangeably. Luke says John the baptist will go before the
Messiah “in the spirit and power of Elijah.” Is the spirit of
Elijah a person?
God’s
spirit is mainly related to his power, and has nothing to do with a
third person in the trinity teaching. George Eldon Ladd, a
trinitarian, who was a scholar and professor, admits:
The ruach
Yahweh (Spirit of the
Lord) in the Old Testament is not a separate, distinct entity; it is
God’s power — the personal activity in God’s will achieving a
moral and religious object. God’s ruach
is the source of all that is alive, of all physical life. The Spirit
of God is the active principle that proceeds from God and gives life
to the physical world (Gen. 2: 7). It is also the source of religious
concerns, raising up charismatic leaders, whether judges, prophets,
or kings. The ruach
Yahweh (Spirit of God)
is a term for the historical creative action of the one God which,
though it defies logical analysis, is always God’s action.31
Even the New Catholic
Encyclopedia admits the New Testament:
…texts reveal God's spirit as
something, not someone; this is especially seen in the parallelism
between the spirit and the power of God.32
James Dunn, a British New
Testament scholar, states:
The continuity of thought between
Hebraic and Christian understanding of the Spirit is generally
recognized... There can be little doubt that from the earliest stages
of pre-Christian Judaism “spirit” (ruach)
denoted power
— the awful, mysterious force of the wind (ruach),
of the breath (ruach)
of life, of ecstatic inspiration (induced by divine ruach)...
In particular, “Spirit of God” denotes effective
divine power... In
other words, on this understanding, Spirit
of God is in no sense distinct from God, but is simply the power of
God, God himself acting powerfully in nature and
upon men.33
Following are some passages we
can compare when speaking concerning the spirit of God.
Gen.
1:2 says:
And the earth was without form,
and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the SPIRIT
of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Compare
this to what Jeremiah said in 10:12:
He
hath made the earth by
his power,
he hath established the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out
the heavens by his discretion.
In
Micah 3:8 it says:
But truly I am full of power
by The Spirit of Yahweh, and of judgment, and of might, to declare
unto Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin.
Certainly, Micah did not believe
he was filled and empowered by a separate person in the trinity.
Paul says:
For God did not give us a spirit
of fear, but of power
and of love and of self-control. (2 Tim. 1:7)
When the angel visited Mary he
said:
The angel answered her, “The
Holy Spirit
will come on you, and the power
of the Most High will
overshadow you.
Therefore also the holy one who is born from you will be called the
Son of God. (Luke 1:35)
When
Jesus began his ministry, we read:
And Jesus returned in the power
of the Spirit
to Galilee, and a report about him went out through all the
surrounding country. (Luke 4:14)
In
Acts we read:
But you will receive power
when the Holy Spirit
has come upon you. You will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, in all
Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth. (Acts
1:8)
That God anointed Jesus of
Nazareth with the Holy
Spirit and with power:
who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed by the
devil; for God was with him. (Acts 10:38)
Notice that the holy
spirit and power
of God are used as
synonyms, not as a separate person.
In
Romans 8:11 we read:
But if the Spirit of him that
raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ
from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit
that dwelleth in you.
The parallel to the above
passages can be found in 1 Cor. 6:14:
And God hath both raised up the
Lord, and will also raise up us by His
own power.
In
2 Cor. 13:4 we read:
For though he was crucified
through weakness, yet he liveth by the power
of God. For we also
are weak in him, but we shall live with him by the
power of God toward
you.
In Acts 1:1-5 we read:
The former treatise have I made,
O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, Until the
day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost
had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen: To whom
also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible
proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things
pertaining to the kingdom of God: And, being assembled together with
them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but
wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of
me. For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with
the Holy Ghost not many days hence.
We can find the parallel
passage where Christ made this promise:
And, behold, I send the promise
of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until
ye be endued with power
from on high. (Luke 24:49)
One passage used to try to
prove the holy spirit is God is by appealing to Acts 5:3,4:
But Peter said, “Ananias, why
has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit,..You have not
lied to men, but to God.”
The
above passage is understood to prove the trinity, because of the “lie
to the holy spirit” and then said to have “lied to God.”
Ananias did not lie to two persons of the trinity. This is simply
another example of Semitic parallelism, which is often used in
scripture. Just as the holy
spirit is associated
with God’s power;
therefore, lying to the holy spirit is the same as lying to God.
In
Luke 11:20 we read:
But if I cast out demons by the
finger of God, then
the kingdom of God has come upon you.
In
the above verse, Jesus called the holy spirit the “finger of God”34
just as the bible connects God’s spirit with His power.
There
are no scriptures to demonstrate that the holy spirit is a “third
person” of the trinity or a person at all. What we do see is the
following characteristics of the holy spirit:
-
It
can be quenched (1 Thessalonians 5:19)
-
It
can be poured out (Acts 2:17, Acts 2:33)
-
It
is a gift (Acts 10:45; 1 Timothy 4:14)
-
We
can drink of it (John 7:37-39)
-
And
be baptized with it (Matthew 3:11)
-
We
can partake of it (Hebrews 6:4)
-
We
can be filled with it (Acts 2:4; Ephesians 5:18)
-
It
renews us (Titus 3:5)
-
It
can be stirred up within us (2 Timothy 1:6)
The
holy spirit is also called:
-
“the
holy spirit of promise”
-
“the
guarantee of our inheritance”
-
“the
spirit of wisdom and revelation” (Eph. 1:13-14, Eph. 1:17).
How
could these impersonal characteristics be attributes of a person?
Also,
consider the fact that the holy spirit is time and again represented
by a variety of symbols and manifestations such as:
-
A
dove (Matthew 3:16)
-
Water
(John 4:14; John 7:37-39)
-
Oil
(Psalms 45:7; cp Acts 10:38; Matthew 25:1-10)
-
Wind
(Acts 2:2)
-
Fire
(Acts 2:3)
-
A
down payment (2Cor.
1:22; 2Cor. 5:5; Eph. 1:13-14)
This
is just a small sample how scriptures depict the holy spirit as the
power of God and how lying to the holy spirit is the same as lying to
God.
You
will also notice that I do not capitalize “holy
spirit.” Most bibles
capitalize “holy spirit” and “spirit” when in reference to
God and therefore trinitarians think this enforces the idea that the
“holy spirit” is a person. It is a well-known fact that the
Hebrew and Greek languages did not have upper and lower case letters.
To capitalize holy spirit is purely the interpretation of the
translators who were mostly trinitarians. In contrast, Orthodox Jews
do not use capital letters for “holy spirit,” “spirit of God,”
and “spirit of the LORD,” because they do not believe the trinity
teaching.
The
faulty belief that the holy spirit is a person is because the holy
spirit at times is referred to with personal pronouns as “him” or
“he.” However, the holy spirit is never designated with
personhood in the bible.
The
doctrine of the trinity was accepted and established as part of the
faith for at least a 1,000 years before the King James bible was
published in the early1600s. It would be fair to say that the
translators were influenced by this belief when they sat down to give
us this translation of the bible by choosing personal pronouns rather
than neutral pronouns when referring to the holy spirit in the
English language (example: John 16:13-14; Rom. 8;26). However, they
certainly did know the difference by using proper neuter pronouns
when it came to Rom. 8:16 (“The Spirit itself.”
Notice they did not say, “The Spirit “himself.”).
Another case can be found in Rom. 8:26, “The Spirit itself”
beareth witness…” Notice they did not use “himself” beareth
witness. Other places can be found in Matt. 10:20 (“For it is not
ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which
speaketh in you”). It does not say “who”
speaketh in you” (see also 1 Peter 1:11)
When
personal pronouns are used, it is simply a theological decision from
the translators, and still does not prove an eternal
being that is supposed
to be a third member of the trinity.
Here is another interesting
point to observe. We know that Jesus was conceived by the holy
spirit (Luke 1:35), but yet Jesus always addressed God
as his Father, never the holy spirit. Wouldn’t Jesus, in actuality,
be the Son of the holy spirit? Why did he never address the holy
spirit as his Father or pray to the holy spirit?
Furthermore, there is a
frequent lack of the definite article (“the”) before holy spirit
such as in Matt. 3:11:
I baptize you with water for
repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose
sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with
holy spirit and fire.
Concerning
John the baptist being filled with holy spirit in the womb of his
mother:
He will be filled with
holy spirit. (Luke
1:15)
Concerning Elizabeth:
And Elizabeth was filled with
holy spirit, (Luke
1:41)
Acts 2:4:
And they were all filled with
holy spirit and began
to speak in other tongues as the spirit gave them utterance.
If
we leave out the definite article “the,” it becomes easier to
understand it to be God’s holy spirit rather than “the
holy spirit,” which
makes it sound separate.
The
holy spirit is not a person, much less the third person of the
trinity, nor should the spirit of God be thought of as some form of
electricity. It is not something that exists independently of God the
Father. The holy spirit is never addressed by anyone in the bible, it
does not send greetings, is never prayed to, no one worships the holy
spirit, and it does not have a personal name. The holy
spirit or spirit
of God is a way to
express the operational
presence and power of God.
The bottom line is that the
holy spirit is not a person. The Hebrew scriptures define holy
spirit as the power of God, and in the New Testament the holy spirit
is referred to as the spirit of power, love and a sound mind (2
Timothy 1:7):
For God hath not given us the
spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
Here the holy spirit means the
mind and activity of God operative among believers.