Holy spirit and the word

1. The Holy Spirit’s presence in the life of the reader is essential to his total understanding, appreciation, and implementation of Scripture (1 Corinthians 2:6-16).

Two corollaries must balance this:

A. Scripture is normal, logical communication. It is abnormal only in its revelatory nature, not in the manner it uses human language to communicate actual thoughts. Therefore, it is possible for the man without God’s Spirit (the unbeliever) to mentally grasp the meaning of Scripture, at least in terms of its logical content.

This explains why an unbeliever can write a perceptive biblical commentary. Likewise, Mark Twain, an avid unbeliever, said, “It is not those passages of Scripture I do not understand that bother me, but those that I do understand.”

Still, the man without God’s Spirit cannot understand God’s Word in the fullest sense, for he does not and cannot have a real appreciation of the spiritual implications of biblical truth, especially in relation to himself. He may grasp the thoughts, but he misses the spirit, the life-changing purpose behind the thoughts. In that sense he comprehends the raw concepts, but he does not truly “see.” Hence, the man without the Spirit of God cannot truly understand (fully grasp or appreciate) the things of God.

B. While the Holy Spirit’s presence in the life of the reader is necessary for total biblical understanding, it is not sufficient for it. The Holy Spirit is not a “cure all” for poor interpretation. He does not automatically reverse the consequences of violating hermeneutical principles. 

This means that a person’s spirituality has no necessary bearing on the validity of his interpretation. This is why godly people sometimes differ widely in their interpretations. “If the Holy Spirit is our teacher (1 John 2:27), why don’t we all have the same interpretation?” Apparently, because his illuminating ministry is not normally independent of interpretive principles. He works through the proper treatment of communication, not independently of it.

Suppose two men have different interpretations. One may be considerably more spiritual than the other (in fact, the other may be an unbeliever), but the godly man’s interpretation may be incorrect. He is walking with God, but he fails to obey the basic laws of interpretation; so he is wrong, and the Holy Spirit does not automatically correct him.

If a physicist walks off a building, he will fall to the ground as quickly as an uneducated man. Likewise, if a godly man and biblical scholar violates interpretive principles, he will draw erroneous conclusions, as certainly as the ungodly or untrained. Neither the law of gravity nor the laws of hermeneutics play favorites. And, apparently, the Holy Spirit chooses to suspend the latter laws as infrequently as the former ones.

The bottom line is that the validity of an interpretation should not be judged by the interpreter’s spirituality (or eloquence), but by the interpreter’s fidelity to sound interpretive principles.

2. The Holy Spirit desires to transform and use the mind of the believer in Bible study. He does not desire to discard or bypass it.

As John Stott put it, “Your mind matters.” As explained under the previous principle, God expects a thoughtful, careful human mind to discern and apply the principles of interpretation to Scripture. The concept of responding to biblical truth “with your spirit, not your mind” (e.g., Watchman Nee, Witness Lee, and “The Church”), reflects an unbiblical and dangerous dichotomy. The objectivity of biblical interpretation is easily lost in the experiences and emotions of the interpreter. My mind is not perfect, but it is useable; and as I use it in biblical study, it should be increasingly renewed and sharpened.

3. The Holy Spirit’s ministry is to shed light on “old truth” (already-revealed Scripture), not to reveal “new truth.”

It may be “new truth” to me, and in that sense a “revelation,” but look out! If it is different than what the author intended, if it’s some new message God is bringing to me, then it isn’t biblical study. “The way of the Spirit is the way of the Word.” The Spirit speaks through and in conjunction with the Word. He opens my mind to certain principles, implications, and unique applications of His truth. But the raw material the Holy Spirit uses is the revealed truth itself.

Many people have adopted a view where they are waiting for the Holy Spirit to speak, either verbally, in a vision, or through an “inner light.” They read books by people who confidently say they are speaking on God’s behalf. Emboldened, the reader may eagerly await, create, or fabricate a revelation from God. The desire to hear the Spirit speak is admirable. But the ironic truth is that the Spirit has already spoken. He has spoken in His Word.

If I expect direct revelation to me, who needs a Bible? I can simply ask God to speak, while I fail to study and absorb the vehicle through which He already has spoken. This shortcut or circumvention of direct revelation might be exciting, but it is a lazy man’s approach, and a dangerous one (I have many impulses and thoughts—how can I tell which are from God and which aren’t?).

If I would listen to the voice of the Spirit, I should “put my ear” to the Word of God. Why wait for the Spirit to speak when I have in my hands what He has already spoken?

The distance between me and God’s revelation is the distance between me and my Bible. I should prayerfully ask for the Holy Spirit’s guidance in my biblical study, but not ask Him for new revelation independent of it.

Don’t misunderstand. I believe that the Holy Spirit leads me and illuminates me every day. All I am saying is that I must weigh my subjective sense of what the Spirit is saying against the teachings of the Book which He inspired.

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[This articles is used by permission of Randy Alcorn, Eternal Perspective Ministries, 39085 Pioneer Blvd., Suite 206, Sandy, OR 97055, 503-668-5200, www.epm.org]

Depending on your Christian tradition and your experience in churches, you might have noticed that sometimes the Word of God and the Spirit of God get emphasized differently depending on the denomination, preacher, or theological background. Taken to the extreme, sometimes one or the other is all but neglected.

This is a tragedy. The Spirit of God and the Word of God (the Bible) were never meant to be separated or pitted against one another.

An Unnatural Divide

Here’s a story that might help illustrated the point I am trying to make.

Awhile ago, I came across a very sad headline on the news, you may have seen this also – it said:

“Elderly couple forced to live apart after 62 years of marriage because they can’t get into the same care home.”

The story was about an elderly Canadian couple who, because of different health issues, couldn’t live together in the same care facilities due to a lack of openings. The couple had never been apart in their 62 years together.

The main picture in the article showed the couple, sitting together and weeping during one of their visits with each other that took place every other day.

The picture was taken by the couple’s granddaughter who said, “My grandma can’t even kiss him goodnight now. He calls out for her when he sees her” even though his dementia is worsening. Needless to say, the couple’s family was extremely concerned about the emotional damage the situation is creating for the couple.

The health authorities said they are working hard to get them a place where they can be together and hoped to have the situation resolved in a few weeks.

The photo and story went viral on the Internet due to the obviously incredibly sad circumstances.

The story is heart rending because of the situation. The couple needs adequate care for their health issues but at the same time, at what expense? Is it worth being separated from your spouse of 62 years to get treated for dementia and lymphoma? It is a very hard issue to think through. What is the cost of separating these two faithfully devoted people to meet their physical needs?

Even though this situation might be a bit of a moral dilemma, it is good to know that there are some things in life that obviously go together and should never be separated.

A Big Problem – A Troubling Spirit and Word Divide in Evangelicalism

This is a bit of an oversimplification but you may have noticed these trends yourself.

On one side you may have some Charismatic churches emphasizing the “Spirit” but sometimes neglecting God’s Word and getting into all kinds of strange practices that are nowhere justified in the Bible.

On the far other end you may have some very intellectual churches that heavily emphasize the “Word” but can seem somewhat dry and perceived as lacking spiritual enthusiasm.

And then you have all kinds of churches in between that may emphasize the Spirit and Word in varying degrees.

Have you seen this divide in your own church?

Here are some of my own observations:

• Christians do not have a very good understanding of how God’s Spirit and God’s Word work together.
• Some people split the Spirit and the Word in unhelpful ways when critiquing a church’s worship service or even when critiquing their own spiritual lives.
• This split can be seen in comments that essentially boil down to, “I don’t need more Bible, I need more of the Holy Spirit” or “Our church doesn’t need more Bible teaching, we need more Holy Spirit” or comments similar to those.

Here is what this kind of thinking is missing:

God’s Spirit and God’s Word should never be separated. From Scripture we must see the Holy Spirit’s role in the authorship, transmission, and reception of the Bible and its message.

Maybe you have noticed this but twice in the Gospel of John Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit twice as “The Spirit of Truth” – John 14:15-17, 16:12-15. In the rest of this article, I hope you can see why Jesus calls the Spirit by this title.

The Holy Spirit Wrote the Bible

If we wanted to see the connection between the Holy Spirit and the Bible, I don’t think you could explore a more significant connection than this one.

In my study, I uncovered numerous places where the Bible talks about the Holy Spirit’s central role in the authorship of Scripture.

There are a lot of Scripture references here so to avoid getting bogged down, I am just going to quote the parts about the Spirit speaking rather than entire passages. And I am only going to pick out some representative examples so that this article isn’t longer than it needs to be.

Examples of the Spirit Speaking God’s Word in Scripture

“They made their hearts diamond-hard lest they should hear the law and the words that the Lord of hosts had sent by his Spirit through the former prophets. “

– Zechariah 7:12

The law, which is usually what the Jews called the first five books of the Bible, was sent by the Lord through His Spirit. Zechariah also says the Spirit brought the word through the prophets that came before him. Thus, we see a good portion of the Old Testament ascribed to the Spirit in this verse.

There are also a few times the Psalms are connected with the Spirit. When the Apostles were praying, they noted that the Holy Spirit spoke through the mouth of king David in Psalm 2.

And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, “ ‘Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Anointed’

– Acts 4:24–26

Jesus also said that David spoke by the Holy Spirit in Psalm 110.

He said to them, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, “ ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet” ’?

– Matthew 22:43–44

Those are two examples of the Holy Spirit inspiring David to write those psalms.

Interestingly, there are a few examples of Bible passages that clearly emphasize that it was the Holy Spirit himself speaking through the human author.

In Acts 28:25, when Paul was speaking to the Jews at the end of the book, he says, “The Holy Spirit was right in saying to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet” and then quotes Isaiah 6:9-10 to show the Jews were still hard hearted like their ancestors. Notice how Paul is saying Isaiah is simply the conduit through which the Holy Spirit spoke. Here Paul explicitly emphasizes the Holy Spirit speaking.

This same pattern can be seen in the epistle to the Hebrews where the writer of Hebrews doesn’t even mention the human author and ascribes passages directly to the Holy Spirit. For example,

• Hebrews 3:7 — “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says” – then quotes from Psalm 95 and doesn’t bother mentioning the human author.

Later in the epistle, the writer does the same thing in Hebrews 10:15

• Hebrews 10:15 — “And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us” – and then quotes Jeremiah 31 without mentioning Jeremiah.

In these examples, it’s as if the writer of Hebrews sees Jeremiah and the author of Psalm 95 as unimportant for his purposes. He simply wants his readers to know that the Scripture he is citing comes directly from the Holy Spirit.

There are more examples I could provide but I think that covers a fair amount of the Old Testament from the Law to the Psalms to the Prophets.

Now moving on to the New Testament, we have two mentions of the Spirit’s involvement in the writing of the Gospels from Jesus himself.

Notice these two verses from the chapters in John. Jesus, speaking to his disciples on the night before his death says,

“These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.“

– John 14:25-26

Jesus is promising the apostles here that when he leaves, the Holy Spirit will come and remind them of the words Jesus had spoken. Why? So that they could share them with others and also write them down for us in the Bible.

Fortunately, Jesus does not trust his teaching to the faulty memories of the disciples. He entrusts the transmission of his teaching to the power of the Holy Spirit to ensure it will get written and passed down accurately.

But interestingly, a couple chapters later, Jesus not only promises that the Holy Spirit will remind them of what was said in the past, but that the Spirit will also tell them of the future.

“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.“

– John 16:13

Again, Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of truth. He will guide the apostles into the truth, keeping them from error, and he will declare to them, from God, things that are to come in the future so once again, these things can be written down for us in Scripture.

These last two examples cover the entire Bible, not just certain parts. Consider this from 2 Peter:

“knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.“

– 2 Peter 1:20-21

Peter wants his readers, and us, to know that the Holy Spirit is the source of all Scripture. The Bible is not merely a human book. God’s Spirit guided the entire process of its creation.

Last example:

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.“

– 2 Timothy 3:16-17

Every bit of Scripture comes from God. God breathes it out by the power of His Spirit through the writing of human agents to produce the book we call the Bible.

Hopefully those 10 examples from Scripture help you see the Holy Spirit’s role in creating the Bible.

So what should we do with these truths?

Applying the Truth of the Spirit’s Authorship of the Bible

• First, we should not separate the Holy Spirit from the book He wrote. The Bible and the Holy Spirit should not be put at odds with one another. We shouldn’t see the Bible as merely a source of academic knowledge that is somehow separate from God’s Spirit. It is a spiritual book that speaks to all aspects of our being from our minds to our hearts to our actions. God wants all of what we are to conform to Christ and He uses the Spirit and His Word to do that.

• Second, if the Bible is the Spirit’s book, I don’t think it is correct to say that we need more Spirit and less Bible. I think what we need to do is to pray that the Spirit would use His book in and through us for His purposes. I will get into this more in the next point.

• Third, we should have confidence that the Bible is true since the Spirit is its ultimate author. There is a huge attack on the authority and sufficiency of Scripture in our culture and unfortunately that doubt and skepticism has invaded the church. Christians struggle with having confidence in God’s book, that it really is the trustworthy Word of God as it says it is. I hope we can have a greater confidence in God’s book after we have seen a bit more of the Spirit’s role in writing it.

• Fourth, if we want to hear God and His Spirit speaking to us, we should go first and foremost to the book that He wrote. If we think God is speaking to us outside of the Bible in some way, we should probably go back to the book the Spirit wrote to make sure we are hearing the Spirit’s voice correctly. After all, the Spirit is not going to contradict himself by saying one thing in Scripture and saying something completely contrary to someone privately. The Spirit is the Spirit of truth, not the Spirit of deceit or contradiction.

The Holy Spirit Helps us Understand the Bible and Its Message

The Spirit has not merely written the Bible and left us to ourselves to figure out what it means. The Spirit also plays a role in helping us understand it. Theologians call this ministry of the Spirit “the doctrine of illumination” and it refers to the Spirit’s work in helping us understand God’s Word.

One of the primary texts for this doctrine is found in 1 Cor. 2:10-16.

“these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.”

– 1 Corinthians 2:10–16

Up to this point in 1 Corinthians, Paul has been telling his readers that he has brought them the wisdom of God in the form of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This wisdom is superior to the wisdom of the world that God views as foolishness.

But the problem is that this wisdom from God in fact is seen as foolishness by the world. Why? Why would anyone think God’s wisdom is foolish?

Because they don’t understand it. They see the message of the cross as weak and useless. Their minds cannot comprehend the gospel’s significance and value. A crucified Savior makes no sense to them. Because we are sinners, we don’t like to hear that our sins have consequences and that we need a Savior to avoid God’s judgment upon us.

So how can man come to value the wisdom of God and the glories of the gospel message?

Paul says in 1 Cor. 2:10-16 that the Holy Spirit has been given to believers to overcome this problem and to help them receive the gospel message in faith.

Paul explains the necessity of the Holy Spirit in this process in three ways.

First, Only the Spirit Knows God’s Thoughts

Paul starts by giving the Corinthians some good Trinitarian theology. Paul argues that only the Spirit knows God’s thoughts. All the world’s religious gurus, and all their philosophers, and their worldly wisdom, all those who think they know and understand God, are wrong because they do not have access to the mind of God.

Only the Spirit knows the depths of God. He knows the secrets of the Father and the Son. All that the Father and Son know, the Spirit also knows.

The Spirit knows all the intentions of God before the world began. He knows God’s mysterious working in the world, how He guides the world toward its intended goal, how He sustains the world in ways man will never see.

The Spirit knows all the details of how God is working out his plan of salvation in the world.

The Spirit knows all of God’s intentions for the future, all the events that haven’t happened yet. The Spirit knows all that God has prepared in the future for His elect when they will enjoy God for eternity. Anything the Father and Son knows, the Spirit also knows.

Second, the Spirit Declares the Thoughts of God to Man

Unless God makes His thoughts known to man, there is no way that man has access to those thoughts. Man thinks he knows God and His ways. He makes up religions about God or creates gods of his own. Or man seeks the wisdom of philosophy to try to figure out the meaning of life and the answers to life’s big questions.

God calls this wisdom of the world foolishness. Why? Because man doesn’t have all the information. And even the little information God gives man, man sinfully ignores or twists. At best, man’s philosophy and religions are a mix of lies and truth.

For man to have God’s wisdom, the Spirit of truth must declare the thoughts of God to man. As we have already seen, the Spirit has done this through the Bible, the Word of God.

Third, the Spirit Helps Us Understand the Thoughts of God

The Spirit also helps us understand the thoughts of God and interpret them because natural man – unsaved man who has not been born again by God’s Spirit – cannot understand the things of God (2:14). Natural, unregenerate man thinks the thoughts of God and His wisdom are foolishness.

“The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”

– 1 Corinthians 2:14

Natural man, without God’s Spirit, does not have the faculties to understand the thoughts of God.

But the Christian, who has been made alive spiritually by the regenerating, life-giving power of the Holy Spirit, has been given a new heart and a new mind. Because of the Spirit and His work in us, we can now begin to understand the thoughts of God as revealed in Scripture.

As Paul says in 1 Cor. 2:12

“Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.”

– 1 Corinthians 2:12

We need God’s Spirit working in us to help us understand the thoughts of God as revealed in Scripture.

The Bible is Hard to Understand Without God’s Spirit

I would like to give an illustration of this from my own life. Before, I became a Christian, I had a really hard time understanding the Bible. Maybe you also can relate to this.

I remember in high school, during a time when I was trying to get away from the party scene and reconnect with my faith, I asked for a Bible for Christmas.

I remember trying to read it here and there but I couldn’t understand it. So much of it seemed strange to me. It didn’t seem relevant to my life except for one book – the book of Ecclesiastes. By reading that book, I learned that life is futile without God. And God used the truths of that book to help draw me to salvation a couple years later.

But after I became a Christian, the Bible was opened up to me and I could understand so much of it. I remember my first year in college, right after becoming a Christian, all I wanted to do was read the Bible.

It took me a year and a half but I read through the whole Bible. I was astounded when I finished. I couldn’t believe how real it was, how it showed people in such a realistic sense. I couldn’t believe the wisdom that was found in its pages. The Bible quickly became my passion.

So in just a couple of years, how did I go from only being able to understand just a little slice of the Bible to being able to read and understand massive portions of it?

The answer is the Holy Spirit. At the point of my salvation, the Holy Spirit came into my life and made me born again spiritually. He opened my mind to understand God’s Word and he gave me a love for God’s Word in my heart.

Maybe you’ve had a similar experience as I had, where at one time the Bible was incomprehensible to you, or maybe you didn’t even care about it, or maybe you flat out hated what it said. I love hearing testimonies of how God’s Spirit has worked in people’s lives and how God’s truth has been opened up to them.

Pray for the Spirit’s Help Every Time You Encounter God’s Word

How do we apply this doctrine of illumination, that we need the Spirit to help us understand Scripture? We should pray for His help.

Sermons – if you want to experience the Spirit on Sunday mornings, are you praying beforehand that the Spirit would use the worship and the sermon to minister to your heart?

Small groups – do you pray before you attend Bible studies that the Spirit would work through the word?

Personal Bible readings – pray for the Spirit to show you what he wants you to see when you read

This is a way we can show our dependence on God’s Spirit by acknowledging in our natural state, we cannot understand the things of God. We need the Spirit’s help.

Every time we encounter God’s Word we should see it as a spiritual event. The Holy Spirit wants to open our minds and hearts to the truths in the book He has written so that we can become more like Christ.

Reading or studying the Bible shouldn’t merely be an academic activity for us. It should be a spiritual process in which we get to know God better and a means by which God changes us into His image.

The Holy Spirit shapes our minds, our desires, and our character through the Word of God. Consider what is said about God’s Word in Hebrews 4:12:

“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.“

– Hebrews 4:12

How is a book living and active? It is because the Holy Spirit is living and active and uses the truths in the Word of God to penetrate the depths of our souls.

Think about it – how many times have you heard a sermon, or been to a Bible study, or been reading the Bible on your own, and you felt that the truth you were encountering was written just for you, that it was speaking to you right to the depths of your soul? That’s just one example of the Holy Spirit applying His Word to your heart.

Therefore, whenever we encounter God’s Word, we should yield to the ministry of the Holy Spirit who wants to use that Word to shape us into the image of Christ.

What does yielding to the Spirit look like when we encounter God’s word?

Faith – If God gives you something to believe in the word, do you believe it? We have the choice to respond to God’s truth in faith or unbelief. Yielding to the Spirit means we believe what God tells us in His word.

Obedience – Also, when God gives us a command in Scripture to follow, do you seek to obey it? Think about it for a second. Does the Spirit want you to obey or disobey God’s commands? If we respond to God’s Word with rebellion and stubbornness, that is resisting the Spirit.

Know and Love God – When we encounter God’s Word, do we week to know and love God through it? The Spirit wants us to grow in our relationship with God. God reveals himself through the Bible. It is a primary way we get to know him. The Spirit wants to use the word to help us know Him.

Bottom line – The Spirit doesn’t want to just fill our minds with Bible facts. He wants to make us more like Christ from the inside out but we must cooperate with the process and not resist the Spirit’s work through the word.

The Holy Spirit Helps us Speak and Teach the Bible and Its Message

The Spirit wrote the Bible, helps us understand it, and also helps us communicate it others.

We need to understand that the Bible wasn’t just written for us, it was written for others too. We should have a desire to share God’s truth with other people, whether they are Christians or unbelievers. Thankfully, the Holy Spirit helps us with this task as well.

Examples of the Spirit Empowering People to Speak God’s Words

Jesus – let’s look at an important example near the start of Jesus’ ministry:

And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

– Luke 4:17-21

The Spirit anointed Jesus to proclaim good news to the poor, proclaim liberty to the captives, and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. These were all statements regarding Jesus speaking God’s Word to people. The Spirit empowered Jesus to speak the message He was sent to speak.

Other examples:

Peter

In Acts 2, the Spirit comes at Pentecost and empowers Peter to deliver a sermon about how the Old Testament predicted both the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the suffering and resurrection of Jesus. 3,000 people became Christians after that sermon. This was the same Peter that just a few weeks prior had denied Jesus three times out of fear. What happened? Peter received the Holy Spirit and it changed him.

The Apostles

And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.

– Acts 4:31

The Spirit’s initial empowerment of the Apostles was the ability to speak the Word of God with boldness. The Spirit was empowering evangelism in a very hard situation under the threat of death or imprisonment by the Jewish authorities. God wanted the gospel of Jesus Christ proclaimed and personally empowered the Apostles to do so, just as Jesus promised in Acts 1:8-9.

Paul

“For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit”

– 1 Thessalonians 1:4–6

Not only did Paul preach the gospel to the Thessalonians in the power of the Holy Spirit, but the Thessalonians received the message in the joy of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit was working in both Paul as the speaker and in the Thessalonians as the listeners; in both the transmission and reception of the message.

The Spirit Empowers the Preaching of the Gospel

Does the Spirit still work this way today? Yes He does. He still empowers people to preach the gospel. Therefore:

• We should pray for the Spirit’s help in evangelizing the lost to help us overcome our natural cowardice. I think most Christians have a fear of sharing their faith. The good news is that the Spirit of God has been given to us to help us in our weakness. Thus we should pray for His help to bring us the boldness we need.

• We should pray that the Spirit will open the hearts of those who we speak to so that they will understand and believe. Man cannot believe unless God’s Spirit makes him spiritually alive and opens his heart to receive the Word.

The Spirit is also concerned with the teaching of God’s Word to believers.

The Spirit Empowers Bible Teachers and Preachers in the Church

In 1 Corinthians 12:28, several of the gifts given by the Spirit involving proclaiming and teaching the Word of God:

And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues.

– 1 Corinthians 12:28

Apostles, prophets, and teachers are all empowered by the Spirit to bring God’s Word to God’s people.

I believe it is right to say that the Holy Spirit wants His book, the Bible, taught accurately and skillfully to build up the body of Christ for God’s glory.

What to do With This Truth

We should pray for the Spirit’s help every time we teach God’s Word whether it is:

• to our kids
• to our friends in a private conversation
• or in a more formal teaching setting like Youth Group, Growth Group, preaching, or any other setting.

It is right for us to ask for the Spirit’s help when we are handling His book so that it can have God’s desired effect in us to make us more like Jesus.

Also, please pray for all the teachers in your church – from kid’s church to Sunday school to youth ministries and up to adults – there are a lot of people who teach from week to week and we all need the Spirit’s help to teach His word faithfully.

Conclusion

I hope that we can see the relationship of the Holy Spirit to the Bible in three ways:

1. The Holy Spirit wrote the Bible
2. The Holy Spirit helps us understand the Bible
3. The Holy Spirit helps us speak and teach the Bible

The Holy Spirit is vitally connected to the Bible’s authorship, transmission, and reception. The Bible is a central part of the Holy Spirit’s ministry.

Lastly, consider this exhortation from Ephesians regarding the spiritual warfare we engage in constantly as Christians. Listen for both the Spirit and the Bible in this passage:

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.“

– Ephesians 6:12–18

Notice that the word of God is called the sword of the Spirit. The Spirit uses the word to accomplish God’s work in us and in the world and to help us fight spiritual battles.

Therefore:

• Embrace God’s Word as the Holy Spirit’s book, the sword of the Spirit, and never separate the two in your thinking.

• Do not resist the Spirit’s work through the Word but receive the word with faith, hope, and love.

• Rely on the Spirit as we interact with God’s Word and share it with others.

• Pray for the Spirit’s emboldening power to live and proclaim the gospel as you seek to live out the Great Commission to the ends of the earth.

May God bless the teaching of His Word and apply it to the hearts of His people for their good and for His glory.

Understanding the OT terms “Holy Spirit” and “the Spirit of God (or the LORD)” and the theology associated with them depends on grasping the significance of the fact that, in about 40% of its occurrences, the Hebrew word “spirit” (ruakh) basically means “wind or breath,” not “spirit.” The NT word (pneuma) is also used in this way on occasion. And when these Hebrew and Greek words mean “spirit,” the reference is often to the human “spirit.” Furthermore, certain passages draw out the correspondence between the Spirit of God and the human spirit, and the importance of God’s work through this correspondence (e.g., 1 Cor. 2:10-12). The Spirit of God is the person of God that vivifies the spirit of people to God (Ezek 37; Rom 8:16). The baptism of the Spirit shifts the metaphor from “wind” to “water,” the point being that physical purification by water has a corresponding reality in the purification of the human spirit through the Holy Spirit (Matt 3:11; John 1:32-34; Ezek 36). Similarly, like physical water, one can drink of the Spirit as water that gives life to the human spirit (e.g., John 7:37-39). The Holy Spirit did all of these things for both Old and New Testament believers, so in this sense the Holy Spirit not only indwells NT believers, but also did something similar in the lives of OT believers.

The goal of this essay is to examine the foundations of the biblical teachings about the Holy Spirit in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). Although along the way I will mention most of the important ways the term “spirit” (Hebrew j~Wr, ruakh ) is used in the Hebrew Bible, it is not my intention to provide an exhaustive or even comprehensive review of the uses of the term. There are a number of good surveys of various kinds already available to the reader.¹ Instead of that, I intend to highlight and investigate certain expressions and specific contexts in which the term “spirit” occurs in the Old Testament and their importance for expressions and patterns found in the New Testament, specifically as it relates to our Christian understanding and experience of the Holy Spirit. The focus will be on the Old Testament patterns of expression and some of the most important passages in which they occur, but we will also follow them through into the New Testament to the degree that is possible in this short paper.

“Holy Spirit” in the Old Testament

The term “Holy Spirit” actually occurs only three times in the Hebrew Bible. The expression itself is literally “ your (God’s) Spirit of holiness” (;v=d+q* j^Wr, ruakh qod^eshkha), but the Hebrew language often creates adjectival expressions by means of what is known as the construct genitive relationship between words (i.e., the construction “the…of…”; so the “Spirit of holiness” = “the Holy Spirit”). In these three instances, therefore, the LXX (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) renders this expression with the same combination of Greek words that the New Testament uses for what we translate as “Holy Spirit” in the English versions (i.e., in Greek the noun pneu’ma [pneuma] “Spirit” with [it is usually only followed by the adjective in anarthrous constructions] the adjective a{gion [hagion] “Holy”).

The first occurrence is in Ps 51:11[13], when David prays in penitence to the Lord, “Do not reject me! Do not take your Holy Spirit away from me!”.² The two other occurrences are in Isa 63:10 and 11, where the Lord refers to the Israelites as those who had grieved his Holy Spirit by rebelling against him even though he had so graciously delivered them in the days of old:

But they rebelled and offended his [H]oly Spirit,
so he turned into an enemy
and fought against them.
His people remembered the ancient times.
Where is the one who brought them up out of the sea,
along with the shepherd of his flock?
Where is the one who placed his [H]oly Spirit among them…

Isaiah 63:14 then refers back to the “[H]oly Spirit” in vv. 10–11 as “the Spirit of the Lord” who had given them rest in the days of old. The latter expression and its interchangeable counterpart “the Spirit of God” (compare, for example, 1 Sam 10:6 with 10:10) occur a total of about 94 times in the Hebrew Bible;³ that is, if one includes instances where “the (my, your, his) Spirit” clearly refers to “the Spirit of the Lord/God” in the context.

Of course, in the Jewish tradition the Holy Spirit referred to in the Hebrew Bible is not taken to be the third person of the “Trinity,” so in such passages the Hebrew word is translated “spirit,” not capitalized “Spirit.”⁴ In general, the Jewish view is that “the spirit of God referred to in the Bible alludes to His energy (Isa 40:13; Zech 4:6).”⁵ Accordingly, it is recognized that “the divine origin of the spirit” is implied by the term “his (the Lord’s) spirit of holiness” (ovd+q* j^Wr, ruakh qad^esho), “Yet this does not mean that the holy spirit was regarded as a hypostasis distinct from the divine presence (sh^ekina).”⁶ In other words, according to the Rabbis, although the “spirit of God” is of divine origin, this does not mean that there is a “Holy Spirit” as a divine person. On the contrary, the holy spirit is a mode of the one and only God’s self-expression in word and action.

As Christians we insist that we too believe in only one God (we are monotheists), but articulate this in terms of the tri-unity of the one God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—the Trinity (see, for example, the baptismal formula in Matt 28:19, “baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”). This is as it should be, but that does not mean we have no difficulties with our understanding of the “Trinity.” Specifically with regard to the Holy Spirit, there has been no small debate in two areas that are of special concern in the present essay: (1) the degree of revelation of the person and divinity of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament as compared to the New Testament (compare, for example, the Jewish view outlined briefly above), and (2) the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer in the Old Testament as opposed to the New Testament, regarding the Holy Spirit’s “regenerating” and especially “indwelling” of believers in the Old Testament.⁷

Wind, Breath, and the Spirit of God and People

Any meaningful understanding of the Holy Spirit of God in the Bible will need to begin with an understanding of the term “spirit.” The various ways ruakh (“spirit”) is used in the Hebrew Bible contributes a great deal to our understanding of the revelation of the person and divinity of the Holy “Spirit” in the Old Testament and in the New. To begin with it is important to realize that out of the 378 occurrences of the term “spirit” in the Old Testament it actually means “wind” or “breath,” not “spirit,” about 140 times (the exact number depends on how one reads certain passages). Thus, almost 40% of the time ruakh refers to the literal movement of air in: (1) natural weather (e.g., Gen 3:8; 1 Kgs 18:45; Ps 1:4; Eccl 1:6, 14, etc.; note also the “four winds” for the four compass directions, Jer 49:36), which is, of course, under the control of God and sometimes a means through which he acts in the world (e.g., Gen 8:1; Exod 10:13; Num 11:31), or (2) “air breathing” animate beings, mankind and animal (e.g., Gen 6:17; 7:15), or (3) even metaphorically for God’s “breath” as expressed through the “wind” of nature (e.g., Exod 15:8; cf. 14:21-22, 29).

Wind, Breath, and the Human Spirit

The connection between “wind” and “breath” seems natural to us even today and appears, for example, in our common expression for having the “wind [actually the ‘breath’] knocked out” of a person (through a physical “blow” of some kind). The link between “wind/breath” and “spirit,” however, is not so transparent to us. The linguistic data suggest that in the Bible the link between “wind” and “breath” clearly extends also to “spirit.” In other words, it is easy for us to see the connection between wind and breath simply by reference to the “movement of air” that they have in common, but in the Hebrew Bible both wind and breath are just as closely related to “spirit.” This is apparent from early in the canon, extending all the way through it; it is also extremely important to our understanding of the nature of “spirit” and, therefore, the Holy “Spirit.” The connection to Greek pneuma is there for us in such words as “pneumonia,” and even for English “spirit” we have words like “aspirate” and “aspirator” (cf. also “aspiration,” etc.), but it is not explicit to us on the surface of our language as it is in the Bible.

Compare, for example, Gen 2:7 “the Lord God formed the man from the soil [rp*u*, àafar] of the ground and breathed into his [i.e., the man’s] nostrils the breath (hm^v*n+, n^eshamah) of life…,” with Genesis 7:22b, where all mankind and land animals “in whose nostrils was the breath [n^eshamah] of the spirit [ruakh] of life, died” (nasb) in the flood (except those on the ark of course). The former verse refers only to man and links “breath” (n^eshamah) to “life,” but the latter refers to both man and air-breathing land animals and, above all, links “breath” to “spirit” (ruakh) and then to animate “life.” Moreover, according to Eccl 3:19–21, both animals and people “have the same breath [or ‘spirit,’ ruakh]” (v. 19), and “Who really knows if the spirit [or ‘breath,’ ruakh] of man ascends upward, and the spirit of the animal goes downward to the earth?” (v. 21). By and large, the English versions translate ruakh as “breath” in v. 19, but, for example, net, niv, and nrsv switch to “spirit” in v. 21 while nasb retains “breath.” Whatever one makes of the theology in this passage (i.e., the relationship between people and animals), it is not sound method to shift from one translation to the other in these verses when the same word is being used and the topic has not changed. The point is that we have trouble with this in the English versions precisely because in our language we do not see the natural link between “wind/breath” and “spirit” in the same way and to the same degree as the ancients did when they used the term ruakh.

Hebrew ruakh is often used for elements of the human “spirit” in scripture (ca. 120 times). As such, it refers to vitality of life (e.g., Gen 45:27; Josh 5:1; 1 Kgs 10:5; Isa 38:16), moral and spiritual character (e.g., positive: Isa 26:9; Mal 2:16; and negative: Isa 29:24; Ezek 13:3), capacities of mind and will (e.g., Exod 28:3; Job 20:3 lit. “the spirit of my understanding”; Pss 51:10 [12], 12[14]; 77:6 [4]), and various dispositions or states of the human person and personality (e.g., Num 5:14 “spirit” = feelings, suspicions; Judg 8:3 “spirit” = anger, resentment; Prov 16:18–19 “low of spirit” = humble, but “high spirit” = prideful; 17:22 “a crushed spirit” = discouraged, depressed; Eccl 7:8 “long of spirit” = patient; Prov 14:29 “short of spirit” = quick-tempered; etc.).

Toward the end of Ecclesiastes, at the climax and conclusion of the book, we find the same term used for the immaterial component of a person as opposed to the material in terms that recall Gen 2:7 (cited above): when a person dies “the dust [àafar] returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit [ruakh] returns to God who gave it” (Eccl 12:7; cf. Ps 146:4; Isa 42:5). Similarly, but in a context where we once again see the close connection between “spirit” (ruakh) and “breath” (n^eshamah), Elihu says, “If God were to set his heart on it, and gather in his spirit and his breath, all flesh would perish together and human beings would return to dust” (Job 34:14–15). God is the one “who forms the human spirit within a person” (Zech 12:1), so it naturally returns to him at death.

Breath, Spirit, and the Person of the Spirit of God

On at least one occasion David expressed his trust in God in the midst of life-threatening circumstances by exclaiming, “Into your hands I commit my spirit; redeem me, O Lord, the God of truth” (Ps 31:5[6] [niv]). David was entrusting his spirit to God for deliverance from death. Jesus drew upon this expression at the point of death on the cross, entrusting his spirit to God in death, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit [pneuma]” (Luke 23:46).⁸ Here Jesus, like David before him, was referring at least to his human spirit (if not also the Holy Spirit), so we have the Old Testament concept of the “human spirit” coming into the New Testament even in regard to the Son of God himself. Jesus was as fully human as he was divine. The parallel passages in Matthew and John simply refer to the fact that at this point Jesus “gave up his spirit” (Matt 27:50; John 19:30). Interestingly, Mark 15:37 puts it this way: “And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last” (Greek ejxevpneusen [exepneusen]; note the root pneuma [“spirit”] in this verb).

This shows that, as in the Old Testament, in the New Testament also there is a close connection between “spirit” and “breath” or “breathing.” When the “spirit” of a person departs their physical body dies because it no longer “breathes.” The same idea appears, for example, in Jas 2:26, “For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without deeds is dead.” Even in life one can refer to the combination of “body” (soma, or “flesh” sarx) and the “spirit” (pneuma) as making up the whole person (e.g., 1 Cor 7:34; 2 Cor 7:1; Col 2:5, and the combination of body, flesh [as embodied sin], and spirit in 1 Cor 5:3–5), although other combinations can also be used (see, e.g., “soul and body” in Matt 10:28 and “spirit, soul, and body” in 1 Thess 5:23). Moreover, like in the Old Testament, the “spirit” is the seat of human character as well as capacities and dispositions. For example, it can be treated as the seat of intuition (Mark 2:8), discouragement or internal despair (Mark 8:12), joy (Luke 1:47 // with “soul” in v. 46), intense affection (John 11:33), an internal sense of being in one form or another (2 Tim 1:7, a spirit of fear, as opposed to a spirit of power, love, and self-discipline), and so on. When referring to the human spirit, therefore, ruakh (“spirit”) can refer either to an immaterial element of the human person or personality, or to the whole of the immaterial person.

The point is that there is a great deal of continuity from the Old Testament on into the New Testament in regard to the concept of “spirit” (including “breath” and “wind,” see more on the latter below). For purposes of our discussion here, it is absolutely essential to observe that this continuity extends also to “the Spirit of God.” Perhaps one of the best places to see this is in 1 Cor 2:10b–12:

For the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the things of a man except the man’s spirit [lit. the spirit of the man] within him? So too, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things that are freely given to us by God.

The grammatical structure of the expression “the spirit of man” in v. 11 corresponds to that of “the Spirit of God” later in the same verse.⁹ This correspondence provides one of the most obvious, simple, and helpful ways of approaching the subject of God’s Spirit in the Old Testament in relation to the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. Just as people have a “spirit,” so does God.

We will discuss the activities of the Spirit of God in the next major section of this essay. For now our concern is with the nature and divinity of the God’s Spirit. As noted above, the expression “the Spirit of God/the Lord” and its pronominal equivalents (e.g., “my Spirit”) occur many times in the Hebrew Bible, while “Holy Spirit” occurs only three times. In the New Testament the situation is very different, almost reversed. “The Spirit of God/the Lord” occurs only about 25 times, but “(Holy) Spirit” over 150 times. At least on one level it seems most natural that since “the spirit of man” fits his nature as human, similarly, “the Spirit of God” fits God’s nature as divine.

This may seem simplistic, but the New Testament actually sets the precedent for it in certain passages, one of the most important being 1 Cor 2:11 in its context (cited above), where the very point of the argument depends on seeing the correspondence and relationship between the Spirit of God and the spirit of man. The “spirit” of the man knows the deep things of the man, that is, his thoughts (v. 11a). Similarly, the “Spirit” of God knows the deep things of God (v. 10b), that is, his thoughts (v. 11b). Moreover, the way we come to understand “the things that are freely given to us by God” by his grace through faith in Jesus Christ (v. 12b; cf. vv. 1–9) is by receiving the Spirit of God in our human “spirit” (v. 12–13; cf. v. 10a). Having the Spirit, we are “spiritual” and “have the mind [nou'» (nous)] of Christ” (v. 16b).

Compare also, for example, Rom 8:16, where we again find that “The Spirit [of God; see the context] himself bears witness to our [human] spirit that we are God’s children.”Moreover, in both the Old and the New Testaments God has set his Spirit “in” and “among” his people for guidance and empowerment (see the New Testament passages just cited and compare Gen 41:38; Num 27:18; and note esp. the term “Holy Spirit” in Isa 63:11–12 with “the Spirit of the Lord” in v. 14). This makes it possible for us to “grieve the Holy Spirit” of the Lord/God through various forms of rebellious misbehavior (Isa 63:10; cf. esp. Eph 4:30). As a human person’s spirit can be grieved, so can the Spirit of God who dwells in our human spirit and among us (see more on the matter of “indwelling” later in this essay).

So it seems we can think about our subject in the following way from the point of view of certain passages in scripture. The spirit of a human person is distinguishable from his or her body. The spirit is the person whether embodied or not. If in this sense the spirit of a person is the person, then the Spirit of God is God. If the human spirit separates from the body, the body dies (to be resurrected later), but you still have the person in the form of his or her spirit. The Spirit of God is God, one of the divine persons of the Godhead. Moreover, if and when the Spirit of God occupies the human spirit of a person, that person is made alive to God on the level of her or his spirit. The close relationship between “breath” and “spirit” as translations of the same Hebrew word suggests that if a person has “breath” they are alive physically and if they have the Spirit of God they are alive spiritually. The Spirit of God is the person of God who vivifies the spirit of people to God. The analogy is not perfect, of course. For example, the scriptures are not suggesting by this analogy that God the Father somehow corresponds to our physical body. “God is spirit, and the people who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24). Nevertheless, on certain points at least we can reason back by analogy from a biblical understanding of the human person as a way of approach to a good biblical understanding of the person of God, especially in terms of the “Spirit” of God as a divine person, the Holy Spirit.

Wind, Spirit, and the Nature of the Spirit of God

If one of the explicitly biblical perspectives from which to approach an understanding of the Holy Spirit of God is through comparison and contrast with the human spirit of people, then another is through the nature and effects of “wind.” We have already referred to several passages in the Old Testament where ruakh means “wind.” Conceptually, “wind” is closely related to “breath,” since they both involve the movement of air, and both of them are closely related to “spirit” because if a person stops “breathing” their life “expires” and the person’s body gives up their “spirit.” In turn, “spirit” also sometimes refers to that which constitutes the unique nature of a particular person—their individual personal vitality and personality, character, dispositions, and so forth. In the latter sense, the term also applies to the Spirit of God. I am not suggesting that Hebrew ruakh always means all these things, but that it can potentially mean any of them.

The close connection between “wind” and “spirit” comes to the forefront immediately at the beginning of the Bible. In Gen 1:2b we read that the “the Spirit of God [<h!Oa$ j^Wr, ruakh áelohim] was moving over the surface of the waters” before the beginning of God’s creative words in verse 3 (see “And God said…” through the chapter). Some have treated áelohim here as an adjective (i.e., its superlative use) meaning “mighty” or “terrible” so that the whole expression means “a mighty wind” or “terrible storm.” However, there is no other instance in the Old Testament where ru‚ah£ áelohim or any of its equivalents mean anything other than “the S/spirit of God/the Lord” or “the wind of God/the Lord.” Moreover, the adjectival use of áelohim is foreign to this chapter where the term is used so many times to mean “God,” and, in fact, serves as the primary focus throughout the chapter both conceptually and structurally. See Gen 1:1a, “In the beginning God …,” and recall the repeated formula, “And God said…,” beginning in verse 3 and running through the whole chapter as the common introduction to each creative movement of God.

The nrsv translates “a wind from God swept over…” rather than the niv “the Spirit of God was moving over…,” reflecting both the ancient Near Eastern background in which cosmologies sometimes include wind in the creative process, and some translations and discussions in the history of interpretation of Gen 1:2.¹⁰ The rendering “wind of God” finds support in Gen 8:1b, where God “caused a wind to blow over the earth and the waters receded” after the waters of the flood had covered the earth. The context is similar to Gen 1:2 where waters are also covering the earth and God intends to cause them to recede in the following verses so that the dry ground might appear (later, on the third day of creation). Consider also the watery context in Exod 14:21–22, 29 where the Lord enabled Israel to cross the Reed Sea on dry ground by sending a strong east “wind” (ruakh) to drive the waters back. The poetic account in Exod 15 refers to this wind as a “blast” (ruakh) from the Lord’s nostrils that piled up the waters (v. 8), and then he “blew” again with his “breath” (ruakh) to drown the Egyptian army with the same waters (v. 10). There are also a few instances in which the expression “the ruakh of the Lord” refers his “breath” or “wind” (e.g., Isa 40:7; 59:19). Moreover, the next occurrence of ruakh in the canon after Gen 1:2 is 3:8 in reference to the Lord God “walking in the garden in the cool [lit. ‘to the wind’] of the day.”

However, we also need to take seriously the fact that the vast bulk of occurrences of “the ruakh of the Lord/God” in the Old Testament refer to God’s “Spirit” understood as the person of God that corresponds to the human “spirit” in people (see the reflections on this biblical analogy in the previous section above). Consider, for example, the third occurrence of ruakh in the canon (after Gen 1:2 and 3:8), where the Lord says, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever” (Gen 6:3 [niv]). “Wind” would make no sense as an English rendering for ruakh in this context, and there are many like it. This must be taken into consideration in the translation and interpretation of Gen 1:2. It is especially significant that this is the third and last of the three clauses of verse 2 describing the condition of the earth before God’s repeated pronouncement of creative words beginning immediately in verse 3. Some have argued that since “the Spirit of God” does not appear anywhere else in this chapter, therefore, translating “the wind of God” suits the focus on forces of nature throughout the chapter. However, translating “the Spirit of God” corresponds to the focus on God “speaking” (i.e., “breathing out” his pronouncements) throughout the chapter. In other words, the latter rendering would provide a more natural lead into the “And God said…” sequence of the chapter, beginning immediately after this clause.¹¹

In any case, it seems to me that our problem in handling Gen 1:2 arises in the first place because we tend to think that “wind” and “Spirit” are mutually exclusive. In my opinion, there is no reason that ruakh in Gen 1:2 cannot be a reflection of the power of God present and ready to work through “wind” in this watery environment (cf. Gen 8:1 and Exod 14:21–22 and 15:8–10 cited above) as well as the work of the “Spirit” of God in shaping the creation through pronouncements (Gen 1:3ff), both at the same time (i.e., an instance of double entendre). As I have already explained and illustrated above, there is a very close connection between ruakh as wind/breath (i.e., the movement of air) and ruakh as (human) “spirit” or “Spirit” of God in the Hebrew Bible.

The Old Testament passage in which this stands out most clearly is Ezek 36–37. The well-known vision of the valley of dry bones in Ezek 37:1–14 begins with “the Spirit of the Lord” transporting the prophet to the valley (v. 1).¹² Of course, the dry bones represent the house of Israel as a whole, and the real question is whether or not there was any hope for Israel in the future (v. 11). A valley of dry bones suggests not, but God has something to say about that. As the vision goes, God tells Ezekiel to prophesy that God “will make breath (ruakh) enter” them so that they “will come to life” (v. 5). Ezekiel prophesies as he has been instructed and the bones rattle, come together, and receive from the Lord flesh and life-giving “breath” (ruakh) from “the four winds” (i.e., the four ruakh; vv. 7–10).¹³ Note the link between “breath” and “wind” here. Finally, in the interpretation of this vision in vv. 11–14 God says that he will bring the people of Israel back to the land (i.e., out of their graves, vv. 12–13) in accord with the promise that, “I will put my Spirit (ruakh) in you and you will live” (v. 14). So here the “Spirit” of God is identified with the “breath” and the four “winds” of the vision. The oracle begins with “the Spirit of the Lord” transporting the prophet to the valley of dry bones and ends with the “Spirit” reviving the people (i.e., the dry bones) to bring them back from exile (i.e., the valley of dry bones) into the land of Israel.

This combination of wind, breath, and spirit extends also into the New Testament where its importance for understanding of the Spirit of God is maintained. For example, in his well-known “born again” (or perhaps better, “born from above”) encounter with Nicodemus in John 3,¹⁴ Jesus uses the wind/spirit correspondence to explain the nature of spiritual birth: “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit” (v. 6), and especially, “The wind [pneuma] blows wherever it will, and you hear the sound it makes, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit [pneuma]” (v. 8). We will say more about this passage below. What concerns us presently is the fact that Jesus rebuked Nicodemus for being “Israel’s teacher” and not understanding the significance of the nature of “spirit” and the “Spirit” of God in spiritual birth into the kingdom of God (vv. 9–10). Later in the same Gospel we read that Jesus “breathed on them [i.e., his disciples] and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (John 20:22). It is as if his breathing on them was the means by which he passed the Holy Spirit over to them.

The dependence on the Ezek 37 imagery of wind, breath, and Spirit is hard to miss in John 3 and 20. Similarly, in Acts 2, “the blowing of a violent wind” accompanies the filling of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost (vv. 2–4). Again, in 2 Pet 1:21b, Peter affirms that the Old Testament prophets “carried along by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” when they articulated the word of God we now know as the Old Testament. As many have observed, the verb “carried along” (Greek ferovmenoi [pheromenoi] from the verb fevrw [phero„]) is the same verb as that used for a boat being “driven along” by the wind in Acts 27:15. The main point is this: God’s Spirit is like the wind.

We need to take this biblical analogy seriously in both understanding the nature of God’s Spirit and in welcoming and engaging with his work. Wind is a mysterious and powerful force. We cannot always predict what it is going to do, and it is not under our control. The same is true of God. We cannot always predict what he is going to do, and he is not under our control even if he has told us what he is going to do. He is God. We are not. All this is true also of the Spirit of God. However, although we cannot completely understand and control the Holy Spirit, we can draw upon his power. Using the analogy of a ship driven by the wind (see above), we can “put up the sails” in our lives and thereby take advantage of the blowing of the Spirit in and through our lives. We are empowered by the Holy Spirit as long as we have our sails up.

Putting up the sails begins, above all, with being “born” of the Spirit into the kingdom of God (John 3). It continues through continuing attentiveness to God in our lives on various levels and in all sorts of ways, including, for example, the serious study of the scriptures that the Spirit himself “inspired” (see 2 Tim 3:16, “Every scripture is inspired by God [God-breathed (qeovpneusto», theopneustos)]”; cf. 2 Pet 1:21 cited above), the practice of “unceasing” prayer (1 Thess 5:17), loving involvement with other believers (see, e.g., the fruit of the Spirit in Gal 5:16, 22–24), giving witness in the world to the truth and effectiveness of the gospel (Acts 1:8), and so on. The more we are attentive to God in all the various dimensions of our lives, the more we invite the Holy Spirit to empower us by “putting up our sails,” to the degree these things are true of us, to that degree we live our lives by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Water, Spirit, and Transformation by the Spirit of God

Another whole set of biblical images associated with the Holy Spirit are those that in some way have to do with water. The vision of Ezek 37 is actually an extension of the previous oracle in Ezek 36:22–38, in which the Lord promised to respond to the rebellious defilement of the nation and their profaning of his holy name among the nations. This is his promised response:

I will sprinkle you with pure water and you will be clean from all your impurities; I will purify you from all your idols. I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you; I will take the initiative and you will obey my statutes and carefully observe my laws. Then you will live in the land I gave to your fathers; you will be my people, and I will be your God (Ezek 36:25–28).

Three points in this passage are especially important to our present discussion. First, the Lord promised to “cleanse” the nation from their all their “impurities” and “idols” by sprinkling (actually “splashing”) the people with “pure water.” Second, the Lord promised to change their human spirit by putting within them “a new spirit.” Thus, he will change their “heart” from being hard like stone (non-responsive) to being soft like human flesh and, therefore, responsive to God’s touch. The third point is actually closely related to the second. The Lord promised to put his “spirit within [the midst of]” them and thereby move them to follow the Lord’s covenant law (v. 27). This, of course, is the essence of putting “a new [human] spirit within [the midst of]” them (v. 26).

Water Purification and Baptism with the Spirit

It is important to observe the close pattern of parallels between this passage and what Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3:5–6, “I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.” The combination of water, spirit, and Spirit here recalls the same elements in Ezek 36:25–27 (cited above) and the relationship between them. Water is mentioned first because purification from impurity and infidelity is the necessary environment for revival of the heart and spirit of people by the work of God’s Spirit. Ezekiel was both born as a priest and called to be a prophet (Ezek 1:1–3), and the two offices come together here. In Ezekiel’s day Israel needed both purification by water and vivification by the Spirit. John the Baptist was also both born a priest (Luke 1:5, 57–66) and called to be a prophet (Matt 3:1–4; 11:7–15; note especially the quotations from Isa 40:3 in Matt 3:3 and Mal 3:1 in Matt 11:10, and compare John’s lifestyle with Elijah, Matt 3:4; 11:7–8; and 2 Kgs 1:8).

The connection of John 3 back to John 1 is important here. John the Baptist came to prepare the people for the Messiah, and he did this through water purification, a baptism of repentance (John 1:24–28; cf. Matt 3:2, 8, 11; Mark 1:4–5; Luke 3:3, 8). But the Son of God himself would be the one who would “baptize with the Holy Spirit” (John 1:33b). The Jewish leaders had sent “priests and Levites” (v. 19) to question John about who he was (vv. 19–23) and the purpose of his baptismal water purification practices (v. 25). Of course, this would be natural since priests and Levites were the ones responsible for such purifications in Israel (cf., e.g., Lev 14 with Matt 8:4). John’s ministry continued along this line of “ceremonial washing,” over which disputes sometimes also arose between John’s disciples and other Jews (see, e.g., John 3:25).¹⁵

John the Baptist made the connection between his own ministry and that of Jesus through a theologically creative metaphorical parallel between his own baptism “with water” (John 1:31) and Jesus’ baptism “with the Holy Spirit” (John 1:33). I am aware of no precedent for this analogy (water baptism > Spirit baptism) in the Old Testament or intertestamental literature.¹⁶ John seems to have coined the term as a graphic image that would serve to both compare and contrast his own ministry with that of Christ. People of the day were accustomed to ritual washings with water, but “washing with the Holy Spirit” was another matter. Even if the expression itself derives from John the Baptist, nevertheless, the idea behind it is Ezekiel’s prophecy of the Spirit of God transforming the spirit of people from death to life in the same context as God cleansing his people by washing them with clean water (Ezek 36:25–27 with 37:13–14). This is clear from the correspondences between John 3 and Ezek 36:25–27 outlined and explained above.

The metaphorical image of “baptism with the Holy Spirit” caught on in the New Testament and came to serve as a pivotal theme of continuity from the Gospels into Acts and the Epistles. The metaphor takes the idea of purification of the human body through physically washing with water and extends it to purification of the human spirit through spiritual washing with the Holy Spirit. This constitutes the pivotal shift from the water baptism of John to the Spirit baptism of Jesus that John the Baptist was so concerned to emphasize (see, e.g., Matt 3:11 and John 1:32–34). Similarly, when Jesus himself met with the apostles immediately before his ascension (Acts 1), in anticipation of the day of Pentecost (Acts 2), he once again called their attention to the importance of the link between John’s baptism with water and his own baptism with the Holy Spirit: “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now” (Acts 1:5), and “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the farthest parts of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

Although the term “baptism of the Holy Spirit” is not used in the record of Philip’s ministry in Samaria, nevertheless Acts 8 emphasizes the importance of maintaining a direct connection between baptism “into the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 8:16) and receiving “the Holy Spirit” (Acts 8:15, 17). Peter recalled Jesus’ baptismal teaching in Acts 1:5–8 when he was asked to explain and justify the water and Spirit baptism of the first gentiles (Acts 11:15–16; cf. 10:44–48). Similarly, Paul came to the believers in Ephesus when they had been baptized with John’s “baptism of repentance” (Acts 19:4) but not yet “into the name of the Lord Jesus.” Therefore, they had not received the Holy Spirit (vv. 2, 6). In fact, they had not yet “even heard that there is a Holy Spirit” (v. 2b). The phraseology here recalls John 7:39. Jesus had once again used a water motif to speak of “the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.” John adds further, “For the Spirit had not yet been given [lit. ‘for (the) Spirit was not yet’], because Jesus was not yet glorified.”

Pouring, Drinking, and the “Indwelling” of the Holy Spirit

This brings us to the Holy Spirit’s “indwelling” of believers. Clearly, according to Paul there is no being a Christian without being “baptized by the Holy Spirit.” As he puts it in 1 Cor 12:13, “for in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body. Whether we are Jews or Greeks or slaves or free we were all made to drink of the one Spirit.” In Acts 19 Paul immediately led the Ephesian disciples (v. 1) to faith in Jesus, “baptized” them “into the name of the Lord Jesus,” and laid his hands on them so that “the Holy Spirit came on them” (vv. 4–6). We have already observed that, as a motif, “baptism” in (with, or by) the Holy Spirit is new in the New Testament, but we have also seen that it is based on the combination of divine promises in Ezek 36:25–28. God promised that he himself would purify Israel with clean water (cf. the water baptism of John the Baptist) and, in association with that, put a new (human) spirit in them by putting his Spirit in them to vivify their spirit (see also Ezek 37:14; cf. the Spirit baptism of Jesus).

Paul’s other image of the Spirit in 1 Cor 12:13 calls up another whole set of expressions in the Old Testament that serve as background for the New Testament teaching of the indwelling Holy Spirit. He writes: “we were all made to drink of the one Spirit.” There is a very real difference between using water for purification (i.e., baptism) and drinking it. Likewise, baptism in (with, or by) the Holy Spirit is quite another thing from “drinking” of the Holy Spirit. We have already discussed the person(ality) of the Holy Spirit based on the comparison to the human spirit (he is personal and manifests the divine nature of God). We have also investigated the nature of the Holy Spirit as (life-giving) “breath” and mysterious yet empowering “wind.” Furthermore, we have already begun our discussion of the Holy Spirit as “water” with the remarks above on the Spirit’s baptism that cleanses the human spirit.

On the latter point the connection back to Ezek 36–37 binds cleansing from impurities with vivification of the human spirit by God putting his “Spirit” there (Ezek 36:25–27 and 37:14). This combination of divine activities constitutes the regenerating and renewing of peoples’ hearts and lives about which both the Old and New Testaments speak.¹⁷ In Ezekiel’s terminology it changes the heart from a “heart of stone” to “a heart of flesh” (Ezek 36:26). Jeremiah refers to the same essential thing with a different image when God speaks through him, “I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts and minds” (Jer 31:33). Again, this is what Moses means when he says, “Circumcise then your heart, and stiffen your neck no more (Deut 10:16 [niv]; cf. 30:6, Lev 26:41; Jer 4:4; 6:10 [lit. “ears are uncircumcised”]; 9:25–26; Ezek 44:7). Paul applies this to saving faith in Rom 2:28–29, where he refers to “circumcision is of the heart by the Spirit” (see also Phil 3:3; Col 2:11; and implied elsewhere, e.g., Eph 2:11). There is no “circumcision of the heart” without the work of the Spirit of God in the heart/spirit of the person involved. This is true no matter whether we are talking about the Old Testament or the New.

God has always wanted the same thing from everyone and, according to passages like those cited just above, his resources have always been available and at work to bring this about in the lives of believers whether in Old or New Testament days. The scriptures talk about this in all sorts of different ways and illustrate it through various kinds of metaphors, a few of which are listed above. Therefore, when God spoke through Ezekiel looking forward to a future day when this would take place in Israel, he was not suggesting that this kind of work in the hearts of people had never been seen before in anyone’s life. What he was saying is that there was a day coming when God will restore Israel as a nation, bringing them back from exile to reoccupy the land. This would require a work of the Spirit of God changing their hearts and, historically, it took place when they were restored to the land after the Babylonian exile.

This is not the place to deal with all the historical and spiritual factors that bear on Israel’s restoration from their captivity in Babylon and the work of Holy Spirit in that instance (see, e.g., Hag 2:5 and Zech 4:6). The point is that this kind of work of the Holy Spirit took place before the time of Ezekiel and at the time of the restoration that Ezekiel predicted. It also continued after the restoration into New Testament times when John the Baptist, Jesus, Paul, and others drew upon Ezekiel’s words to explain and illustrate the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of Christians. Consider, for example, all the background concepts Paul draws upon in Titus 3:5–6, where he writes that God “saved us not by works of righteousness that we have done but on the basis of his mercy, through the washing of the new birth and the renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us in full measure through Jesus Christ our Savior” (cf. also Eph 5:26–27). There is no regeneration anywhere or anytime without the pouring out of the Holy Spirit.

Finally, we come to the matter of the outpouring and indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the Old and New Testaments, about which there has been no small amount of disagreement. This is especially the case regarding whether or not the Holy Spirit indwelt Old Testament believers like he does New Testament believers (for the latter see especially Rom 5:5, 8:9; 11, 1 Cor 2:12; 6:19–20; Gal 4:6; 1 John 3:24; 4:13). On the one hand, it seems difficult to suggest that regeneration could take place in the Old Testament without the Holy Spirit indwelling the believer. On the other hand, some passages in the New Testament, especially in the Gospel of John, seem to suggest that indwelling began in the New Testament at Pentecost. For example, as Jesus put it to the apostles in John 14:17, the Holy Spirit “resides with you and will be in you.” There are several difficulties in this verse even on the text-critical level,¹⁸ but as the net reads it there appears to be a suggestion that there will be a shift from the Holy Spirit being “with” them while Jesus was still with them to the Holy Spirit being “in” them after he leaves.

This accords well with the normal understanding of John 7:37–39:

On the last day of the feast, the greatest day, Jesus stood up and shouted out, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. Just as the scripture says, ‘From within him will flow rivers of living water.’” (Now he said this about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were going to receive, for the Spirit had not yet been given [lit. ‘for [the] Spirit was not yet’], because Jesus was not yet glorified.)

The context is the “Feast” of Tabernacles, at which there was traditionally a water-pouring ceremony (cf. Zech 14:8, 16–18).¹⁹ Jesus took the opportunity to pronounce that the one who believes in him will have “streams of living water” flowing “from within him” (cf. Jesus with the woman at the well in John 4:10, 14). John the apostle, in turn, explains that Jesus was referring to the Spirit of God, whom such believers would later receive. The reason they had not yet received the Spirit was because this was to happen only after Jesus had been glorified, which is the point of John 14:17 (cited above), and, in fact, “the Spirit was not yet” (a literal translation).

Now, John could not mean by this explanation that there was no Holy Spirit in existence yet because he had already made much of the Holy Spirit’s presence and work earlier in his Gospel (see especially John 1:32–34 and 3:5–8, and the discussion above), and had even recorded Jesus’ rebuke of Nicodemus for not knowing about these things (John 3:9–10). Even if John was not fully aware of and did not understand the Old Testament background of the Holy Spirit at the time Jesus made this statement, certainly by the time he wrote his Gospel and made the explanatory comment we are considering here, he had experienced the work of the Holy Spirit in his own life (see especially Pentecost) and learned of the Spirit’s activities in Old Testament days. By that time he knew that it is not true that the Holy Spirit “was not yet” in existence in Jesus’ day, so that cannot be the correct interpretation of John 7:39. The same may be true of the similarly-worded remark in Acts 19:2, when the disciples at Ephesus said, “we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit,” although at that time they may have been functioning at the same level of ignorance about the Holy Spirit as Nicodemus was in John 3.

The most natural way to understand the intent of these passages is to say that in the days of Jesus the Holy Spirit was not yet active in the lives of believers in the way that he would be after Jesus was glorified, starting on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2). Some would extend the argument back to the whole Old Testament period as well, although it is difficult to understand how this makes sense in light of Ezek 36:27, “I will put my Spirit within you,” unless one makes it to be entirely eschatological into the future beyond the restoration from the captivity (see the problem with this approach discussed above), or exclusively collective, referring to God putting the Holy Spirit “in the midst of” Israel as a nation, not “within” individuals. It is true that the pronoun “you” is plural in Ezek 36:27, but the same is true of the whole passage, including the references to changing their heart (v. 26) and so on. One can hardly speak of changing the heart a nation without changing the heart of the people who make it up. Moreover, the New Testament writers did not read the passage this way. They allude to it on both communal and individual levels (see, e.g., 2 Cor 3:3–6 and, again, the personal individual remarks of Jesus to Nicodemus which so clearly draw upon Ezek 36).

In reality, there is probably a combination of things going on here. First, there is the Jewish tradition about the cessation of the time of prophecy with the last of the Old Testament prophets.²⁰ There is evidence for this tradition of “the quenched Spirit” in intertestamental and rabbinic literature, as well as Josephus, perhaps based on Old Testament passages such as Ps 74:9, Zech 13:2–3, and Mal 3:1, 4:5–6. This suggests that, at least in part, the point of the passages about the lack of the indwelling work of the Spirit in the days of Jesus arises from the fact of the cessation of prophetic activity since the Old Testament prophets. This does not necessarily mean that there was a complete lack of prophetic activity (see, e.g., Luke 1:67 and 2:25–32), but perhaps the time from the last Old Testament prophets to the time of Jesus was like the time of Eli’s decline: “Word from the Lord was rare in those days; revelatory visions were infrequent” (1 Sam 3:1; contrast vv. 19–21).

The second point is related to the first. The fact of the matter is that, from Pentecost forward, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is closely tied to his prophetic work. Peter explained the activities of the Spirit at Pentecost by citing Joel 2:28–32a (3:1–5a in Hebrew). Peter’s quotation of the first two verses reads this way (Acts 2:17–18):

“And in the last days it will be,” God says, “that I will pour out my Spirit on all people,
and your sons and your daughters will prophesy,
and your young men will see visions,
and your old men will dream dreams.
Even on my slaves, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.”

“Pouring out” of the Spirit (like water) is associated, therefore, with the prophetic activity of the Old Testament. In Ezek 39:29, the last verse of the section that includes Ezek 36–37, God uses the same expression to refer to his commitment to transform and restore Israel: “I will not hide my face from them any longer, when I pour out my spirit on the house of Israel, declares the Sovereign Lord.” There are other expressions used for the same thing, but they all associated this kind of Spirit-activity with the institution of prophecy. Consider especially Num 11:29b, where Moses says, “Oh that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!”(cf. also 1 Sam 10:10–13 and many other places).

The point of Joel 2 as well as Peter’s quotation of it in Acts 2 is that there will be a difference in the last days (i.e., the days since Pentecost). Namely, Moses would have his wish come true. The Lord did “put his Spirit on” all his people, and they all became prophets. The same has been true of all born-again (from above) Christians since that day until now. We have all received the Holy Spirit into our lives by whom we have been cleansed (i.e., baptism of the Holy Spirit, 1 Cor 12:13a) and of whom we drink as he wells up within us (1 Cor 12:13b). All believers are called to be prophets and, therefore, proclaimers of the gospel. This is indeed new in the New Testament. Jesus even hinted at this early in his ministry: “Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil things about you falsely on account of me. Rejoice and be glad because your reward is great in heaven, for they persecuted the prophets before you in the same way”(Matt 5:11–12).

That brings me to a third point. The coming of the Holy Spirit into our lives today brings with it the accomplished work of Christ in his life, death, burial, and resurrection. This also is new compared to Old Testament believers. The indwelling of the Spirit is, of course, metaphorical. If we cut open our bodies we will not find the Holy Spirit visible there. He inhabits our human spirit, which is immaterial by nature, just as God is (John 4:24). This means that what he brings with him into our lives is the full force of “the things freely given to us by God” in Christ Jesus (1 Cor 2:12). Yes, there is “indwelling” in the Old Testament, but not in this way and to this degree of the fullness of God’s salvation plan accomplished. The Holy Spirit now can bring all this to bear upon us, and that is his very purpose as Paul observes in 1 Cor 2:12.

Summary and Conclusion

There are some things that are completely new about the work of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament compared to the Old Testament. The Holy Spirit as the agent of Jesus’ conception through Mary springs to mind immediately. But much of what is there in the New Testament already has its roots sunk deep into the soil of the Old Testament. What I have written here is something of a phenomenology of the Holy Spirit based in the Old Testament. It is true that the term “Holy Spirit” only occurs three times in the Old Testament, but “the Spirit of God” occurs many times and we see the latter pattern in other terminology as well, for example, “the Spirit of Christ.”

Our understanding of the person(ality) of the Holy Spirit finds its base in the comparison to the human spirit (he is personal and manifests the divine nature of God). The nature and power of the Holy Spirit is based in the fact that he is (life-giving) “breath” and mysterious yet empowering “wind.” Like water, he is also the one who cleanses our hearts (baptism of the Holy Spirit) and constantly provides water for us to drink as we carry out our prophetic ministry in the Church and in the world. Some of this is new in some ways in the New Testament, but the foundations for them are laid in the Old Testament. The implications of all these images are not always clear in the Old Testament, and sometimes not even in the New Testament in certain places, but they are there nevertheless.

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1 . The following are good places to begin: Leon J. Wood, The Holy Spirit in the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1976); Lloyd Neve, The Spirit of God in the Old Testament (Tokyo: Seibunsha, 1972); Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, “ The Spirit of God in the Old Testament,” in Biblical and Theological Studies, ed. Samuel G. Craig (Philadelphia: The Presbyterian and Reformed Pub. Co., 1952); and for special clarity see especially M. V. Van Pelt, W. C. Kaiser, Jr., and D. I. Block, “j~Wr, ru‚ah,” in New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, ed. Willem A. VanGemeren (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997) 3.1073-1078 and the literature cited there.

2 . We will discuss this important verse further below.

3 . The statistics used in this article are taken from Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1906) 924-926 and Abraham Even-Shoshan, A New Concordance of the Bible (Jerusalem: Kiryat Sefer Pub. Hs., 1989) 1063-1066.

4 . Consider, e.g., the renderings of Psalm 51:13 “Your holy spirit” and Isa 63:10-11 “His holy spirit” in the Tanakh translation of the Jewish Publication Society (1985). Similarly, in Num 11:29b, Moses’ remark is handled this way: “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord put His spirit upon them!”

Likewise, in his The JPS Torah Commentary: Numbers (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1990) 87, Jacob Milgrom renders 11:17, “I will draw upon the spirit that is upon you,” and on p. 90 Moses’ statement in v. 29 is translated, “… that the Lord put His spirit upon them!” (See also Milgrom’s excursus on ecstatic prophecy and the spirit on pp. 380-383.) However, it should be noted that this translation issue is not limited to exclusively Jewish translations since, for example, the New Revised Standard Version (nrsv) renders these passages with “holy spirit” (Psalm 51:11 and Isa 63:10, 11) and “his spirit” (Num 11:29).

5 . Israel Abrahams, “God in the Bible,” Encyclopedia Judaica vol. 7, ed. by Cecil Roth (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1971) 643.

6 . F. W. Horn, “Holy Spirit,” translated by Dietlinde M. Elliott in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992) 3.264. Although scarred by some non-conservative presuppositions and relatively light treatment of the Old Testament, this article is a very fine concise and well-documented discussion of the evidence regarding the Holy Spirit/holy spirit in the intertestamental and rabbinic sources as well as the New Testament.

7 . See, e.g., Warfield, “The Spirit of God in the Old Testament,” 149-156; Gary Fredricks, “Rethinking the Role of the Holy Spirit in the Lives of Old Testament Believers,” Trinity Journal 9 NS (1988) 81-84; Van Pelt, Kaiser, and Block, “j~Wr, ru‚ah,” 1076-1077; and Wood, The Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, 16-22 and 64-77.

8 . See Peter C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50, The Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 19 (Waco: Word, 1983) 262-263 for a brief but very helpful explanation of the relationship between the intent of this verse in Psalm 31 and Jesus’ quotation from it on the cross.

9 . For those readers who know Greek, the grammar of the expressions for “the spirit of the man” and “the Spirit of God” in v. 11 are exactly the same. They are toV pneu’ma tou’ ajnqrwvpou’ (to pneuma tou anthro„pou) and toV pneu’ma tou’ qeou’ (to pneuma tou theou), respectively.

10 . From ancient times until today there has been an ongoing dispute among translators and scholars over the proper interpretation of ruakh áelohim in this verse. See the helpful review of the debate in Claus Westermann, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary, trans. John J. Scullion S. J. (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984) 106-108. He translates “God’s wind was moving to and fro . . .” (76). For a helpful discussion favoring “the Spirit of God” see Edward J. Young, “The Interpretation of Genesis 1:2,” Westminster Theological Journal 23 (1960-61) 174-178. See James K. Hoffmeier, “Some Thoughts on Genesis 1 & 2 and Egyptian Cosmology,” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Studies 15 (1983) 44 and the literature cited there favoring “the wind of God.” For mediating somewhere between the two positions see Kenneth A Matthews, Genesis 1-11:26, New American Commentary, vol. 1A (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1996) 134-136.

11 . See, e.g., Gordon Wenham, Genesis 1-15, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 1 (Waco: Word, 1987) 2, 16-17, where he translates “the Wind of God hovered” (note the capital W) and takes it to be “a concrete and vivid image of the Spirit of God.” As I see it, the main point is that even if “wind of God” were to be the best English rendering in Gen 1:2 (which is still very much in doubt), the expression still indicates that God was actively present in the primeval unformed and unfilled, deep and dark, watery abyss into which God spoke his creative words beginning in Gen 1:3.

12 . See the especially helpful treatment of Ezek 37:1-14 in Michael V. Fox, “The Rhetoric of Ezekiel’s Vision of the Valley of the Bones,” Hebrew Union College Annual 51 (1980) 1-15.

13 . The close connection here between the four “winds” and the “breath” that gives life to the dry bones causes one to wonder if there is not a similar link between the “windstorm (hr`u*s= j^Wr, ruakh s^eàarah) coming out of the north” in Ezek 1:4, “the spirit” of the living creatures in 1:12, and “the spirit of the living beings” (probably better rendered ‘the spirit of life’) that animated the wheels in 1:20. See the discussion in Daniel I. Block, “The Prophet of the Spirit: The Use of RWH in the book of Ezekiel,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 32 (1989) 36-37 and idem, The Book of Ezekiel: Chapters 1-24, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997) 101.

14 . See the remarks on this issue in D. A. Carson, The Gospel according to John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 188-189.

15 . For the relationship between water baptism, purification, repentance, and making disciples see Richard E. Averbeck, “The Focus of Baptism in the New Testament,” Grace Theological Journal 2 (1981) 265-301.

16 . See Gordon D. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994) 910-915 for brief remarks on the Holy Spirit in the intertestamental period.

17 . For the following discussion I have found certain articles to be especially helpful: Geoffrey W. Grogan, “The Experience of Salvation in the Old and New Testaments,” Vox Evangelica 5 (1967) 12-17; John Goldingay, “Was the Holy Spirit Active in Old Testament Times? What was New about the Christian Experience of God?” Ex Auditu 12 (1996) 14-28; Block, “The Prophet of the Spirit,” 40-41; and Fredricks, “Rethinking the Role of the Holy Spirit in the Lives of Old Testament Believers,” 81-104.

18 . Carson, The Gospel according to John, 500-501 and 509-510.

19 . See the extensive discussion of the background and interpretation of this passage in Carson, The Gospel according to John, 321-329.

20 . For a good summary of this matter see Fee, God’s Empowering Presence, 914-915 and the literature cited there.

This article is about the Christian view of the Holy Spirit. For the Holy Spirit in other religions, see Holy Spirit.

For the majority of Christian denominations, the Holy Spirit, or Holy Ghost, is believed to be the third person of the Trinity,^[1] a Triune God manifested as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, each person itself being God.^[2][3][4] Nontrinitarian Christians, who reject the doctrine of the Trinity, differ significantly from mainstream Christianity in their beliefs about the Holy Spirit. In Christian theology, pneumatology is the study of the Holy Spirit. Due to Christianity’s historical relationship with Judaism, theologians often identify the Holy Spirit with the concept of the Ruach Hakodesh in Jewish scripture, on the theory that Jesus was expanding upon these Jewish concepts. Similar names, and ideas, include the Ruach Elohim (Spirit of God), Ruach YHWH (Spirit of Yahweh), and the Ruach Hakodesh (Holy Spirit).^[5][6] In the New Testament it is identified with the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Truth, the Paraclete and the Holy Spirit.^[7][8][9]

The New Testament details a close relationship between the Holy Spirit and Jesus during his earthly life and ministry.^[10] The Gospels of Matthew and Luke and the Nicene Creed state that Jesus was «conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary».^[11] The Holy Spirit descended on Jesus like a dove during his baptism, and in his Farewell Discourse after the Last Supper Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit to his disciples after his departure.^[12][13]

The Holy Spirit is referred to as «the Lord, the Giver of Life» in the Nicene Creed, which summarises several key beliefs held by many Christian denominations. The participation of the Holy Spirit in the tripartite nature of conversion is apparent in Jesus’ final post-resurrection instruction to his disciples at the end of the Gospel of Matthew,^[14] «Make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.»^[15] Since the first century, Christians have also called upon God with the trinitarian formula «Father, Son and Holy Spirit» in prayer, absolution and benediction.^[16][17] In the book of the Acts of the Apostles the arrival of the Holy Spirit happens fifty days after the resurrection of the Christ, and is celebrated in Christendom with the feast of Pentecost.^[18]

Etymology and usage[edit]

The Koine Greek word pneûma (πνεῦμα, pneuma) is found around 385 times in the New Testament, with some scholars differing by three to nine occurrences.^[19] Pneuma appears 105 times in the four canonical gospels, 69 times in the Acts of the Apostles, 161 times in the Pauline epistles, and 50 times elsewhere.^[19] These usages vary: in 133 cases it refers to «spirit» and in 153 cases to «spiritual». Around 93 times, the reference is to the Holy Spirit,^[19] sometimes under the name pneuma and sometimes explicitly as the pneûma tò Hagion (Πνεῦμα τὸ Ἅγιον). (In a few cases it is also simply used generically to mean wind or life.^[19]) It was generally translated into the Vulgate as Spiritus and Spiritus Sanctus.

The English terms «Holy Ghost» and «Holy Spirit» are complete synonyms: one derives from the Old English gast and the other from the Latin loanword spiritus. Like pneuma, they both refer to the breath, to its animating power, and to the soul. The Old English term is shared by all other Germanic languages (compare, e.g., the German Geist) and it is older; the King James Bible typically uses «Holy Ghost». Beginning in the 20th century, translations overwhelmingly prefer «Holy Spirit», partly because the general English term «ghost» has increasingly come to refer only to the spirit of a dead person.^[20][21][22]

Names[edit]

Hebrew Bible[edit]

Source:^[5]

• וְר֣וּחַ קָדְשׁ֑וֹ (rûaḥ qādəšô) – His Holy Spirit (Isaiah 63:10)^[23]
• וְר֣וּחַ קָ֝דְשְׁךָ֗ (rûaḥ qādəšəkā) – Your Holy Spirit (Psalm 51:11)^[24]
• וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים (rûaḥ ĕlōhîm) – Spirit of God (Genesis 1:2)^[25]
• נִשְׁמַת־ר֨וּחַ חַיִּ֜ים (nišəmat-rûaḥ ḥayîm) – The Breath of the Spirit of Life (Genesis 7:22)^[26]
• ר֣וּחַ יְהוָ֑ה (rûaḥ YHWH) – Spirit of YHWH (Isaiah 11:2)^[27]
• ר֧וּחַ חָכְמָ֣ה וּבִינָ֗ה (rûaḥ ḥākəmâ ûbînâ) – Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding (Isaiah 11:2)^[27]
• ר֤וּחַ עֵצָה֙ וּגְבוּרָ֔ה (rûaḥ ʿēṣâ ûgəbûra) – Spirit of Counsel and Might (Isaiah 11:2)^[27]
• ר֥וּחַ דַּ֖עַת וְיִרְאַ֥ת יְהוָֽה (rûaḥ daʿat wəyīrəʾat YHWH) – Spirit of Knowledge^[28] and Fear of YHWH (Isaiah 11:2)^[27]

New Testament[edit]

• πνεύματος ἁγίου (Pneumatos Hagiou) – Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:18)^[29]
• πνεύματι θεοῦ (Pneumati Theou) – Spirit of God (Matthew 12:28)^[30]
• ὁ παράκλητος (Ho Paraclētos) – The Comforter, cf. Paraclete John 14:26 (John 16:7)^[31]
• πνεῦμα τῆς ἀληθείας (Pneuma tēs Alētheias) – Spirit of Truth (John 16:13)^[32]
• Πνεῦμα Χριστοῦ (Pneuma Christou) – Spirit of Christ (1 Peter 1:11)^[33]

Depending on context:

• πνεῦμα (Pneuma) – Spirit (John 3:8)^[34]
• Πνεύματος (Pneumatos) – Spirit (John 3:8)

Biblical portrayal[edit]

Old Testament[edit]

What the Hebrew Bible calls «Spirit of God» and «Spirit of Elohim» is called in the Talmud and Midrash «Holy Spirit» (ruacḥ ha-kodesh). Although the expression «Holy Spirit» occurs in Ps. 51:11 and in Isa. 63:10–11, it had not yet acquired quite the same meaning which was attached to it in rabbinical literature: in the latter it is equivalent to the expression «Spirit of the Lord». In Gen.1:2 God’s spirit hovered over the form of lifeless matter, thereby making the Creation possible.^[35][36] Although the ruach ha-kodesh may be named instead of God, it was conceived of as being something distinct; and, like everything earthly that comes from heaven, the ruach ha-kodesh is composed of light and fire.^[36] The most characteristic sign of the presence of the ruach ha-kodesh is the gift of prophecy. The use of the word «ruach» (Hebrew: «breath», or «wind») in the phrase ruach ha-kodesh seems to suggest that Judaic authorities believed the Holy Spirit was a kind of communication medium like the wind. The spirit talks sometimes with a masculine and sometimes with a feminine voice; the word ruacḥ is both masculine and feminine.^[36]

New Testament[edit]

The term Holy Spirit appears at least 90 times in the New Testament.^[7] The sacredness of the Holy Spirit to Christians is affirmed in all three Synoptic Gospels,^[37] which proclaim that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the unforgivable sin.^[38] The participation of the Holy Spirit in the Trinity is suggested in Jesus’ final post-Resurrection instruction to his disciples at the end of the Gospel of Matthew (28:19):^[39] «Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit».^[15]

Synoptic Gospels[edit]

The Holy Spirit is mentioned by all three authors of the synoptic Gospels. Most of the references are by the author of the Gospel of Luke; this emphasis is continued by the same author in the Book of Acts.

The Holy Spirit does not simply appear for the first time at Pentecost after the resurrection of Jesus, but is present in Luke (in chapters 1 and 2) prior to the birth of Jesus.^[7] In Luke 1:15, John the Baptist was said to be «filled with the Holy Spirit» prior to his birth,^[40] and the Holy Spirit came upon the Virgin Mary in Luke 1:35.^[41][7] Later, in Luke 3:16,^[42] John the Baptist stated that Jesus baptized not with water but with the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus during his baptism in the Jordan River.^[7] In Luke 11:13,^[43] Jesus provided assurances that God the Father would «give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him».^[7]

Mark 13:11 specifically refers to the power of the Holy Spirit to act and speak through the disciples of Jesus in time of need: «Be not anxious beforehand what ye shall speak: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye; for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Spirit.»^[44] Matthew 10:20^[45] refers to the same act of speaking through the disciples, but uses the term «Spirit of your Father».^[46]

Acts of the Apostles[edit]

The Acts of the Apostles has sometimes been called the «Book of the Holy Spirit» or the «Acts of the Holy Spirit».^[47][48] Of the seventy or so occurrences of the word Pneuma in Acts, fifty-five refer to the Holy Spirit.^[48]

From the start, in Acts 1:2,^[49] the reader is reminded that the ministry of Jesus, while he was on earth, was carried out through the power of the Holy Spirit and that the «acts of the apostles» continue the acts of Jesus and are also facilitated by the Holy Spirit.^[48] Acts presents the Holy Spirit as the «life principle» of the early Church and provides five separate and dramatic instances of its outpouring on believers in Acts 2:1–4,^[50] 4:28–31,^[51] 8:15–17,^[52] 10:44,^[53] and 19:6.^[54][47]

References to the Holy Spirit appear throughout Acts, for example Acts 1:5 and 8^[55] stating towards the beginning, «For John indeed baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized in the Holy Spirit. …Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you», referring to the fulfillment of the prophecy of John the Baptist in Luke 3:16,^[42] «he shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit».^[56]

Johannine literature[edit]

Three separate terms, namely Holy Spirit, Spirit of Truth and Paraclete are used in the Johannine writings.^[9] The «Spirit of Truth» is used in John 14:17,^[57] 15:26,^[58] and 16:13.^[59][7] The First Epistle of John then contrasts this with the «spirit of error» in 1 John 4:6.^[60][7] 1 John 4:1–6 provides the separation between spirits «that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God» and those who in error refuse it – an indication of their being evil spirits.^[61]

In John 14:26,^[62] Jesus states: «But the Comforter, [even] the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things». The identity of the «Comforter» has been the subject of debate among theologians, who have proposed multiple theories on the matter.^[63]

Pauline epistles[edit]

The Holy Spirit plays a key role in the Pauline epistles; and the Apostle Paul’s pneumatology is closely connected to his theology and Christology, to the point of being almost inseparable from them.^[8]

The First Epistle to the Thessalonians, which was likely the first of Paul’s letters, introduces a characterization of the Holy Spirit in 1 Thessalonians 1:6^[64] and 1 Thessalonians 4:8^[65] which is found throughout his epistles.^[66] In 1 Thessalonians 1:6 Paul refers to the imitation of Christ (and himself) and states: «And ye became imitators of us, and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Spirit», whose source is identified in 1 Thessalonians 4:8 as «God, who giveth his Holy Spirit unto you».^[66][67][68]

These two themes of receiving the Spirit «like Christ» and God being the source of the Spirit persist in Pauline letters as the characterization of the relationship of Christians with God.^[66] For Paul the imitation of Christ involves readiness to be shaped by the Holy Spirit, as in Romans 8:4 and 8:11: «But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall give life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwelleth in you.»^[69][67]

The First Epistle to the Thessalonians also refers to the power of the Holy Spirit in 1 Thessalonians 1:5,^[70] a theme also found in other Pauline letters.^[71]

In the Apocrypha[edit]

The view of the Holy Spirit as responsible for Mary’s pregnancy, found in the Synoptic Gospels,^[72] is different from that found in the apocryphal Gospel of the Hebrews, adopted as canonical by the 4th century Nazarenes, in which Jesus speaks of the Holy Spirit as his mother and thus as female.^[73] Some thought femininity incompatible with the idea that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit; according to the apocryphal Gospel of Philip, for example,

Some say, «Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit.» They are in error. They do not know what they are saying. When did a woman ever conceive by a woman?^[74]

Jesus and the Holy Spirit[edit]

The New Testament details a close relationship between the Holy Spirit and Jesus during his earthly life and ministry.^[10] The Apostles’ Creed echoes the statements in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, stating that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.^[11]

Specific New Testament references to the interaction of Jesus and the Holy Spirit during his earthly life, and the enabling power of the Holy Spirit during his ministry include:^[10][11][75]

• «Spirit without measure» having been given to Jesus in John 3:34, referring to the word spoken by Jesus (Rhema) being the words of God.^[76]

• Baptism of Jesus, with the Holy Spirit descending on him as a dove in Matthew 3:13–17,^[77] Mark 1:9–11^[78] and Luke 3:21–23.^[79]
• Temptation of Jesus, in Matthew 4:1 the Holy Spirit led Jesus to the desert to be tempted.^[80]
• The Spirit casting out demons in Exorcising the blind and mute man miracle.^[81]
• Rejoice the Spirit in Luke 10:21 where seventy disciples are sent out by Jesus.^[82]
• Acts 1:2 states that until his death and resurrection, Jesus «had given commandment through the Holy Spirit unto the apostles».^[49]
• Referring to the sacrifice of Jesus to be crucified out of obedience to the father, Hebrews 9:14 states that Jesus «through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God».^[83]

In his Farewell Discourse to his disciples, Jesus promised that he would «send the Holy Spirit» to them after his departure, in John 15:26 stating: «whom I will send unto you from the Father, [even] the Spirit of truth … shall bear witness of me».^[58][12][13]

Mainstream doctrines[edit]

The theology of spirits is called pneumatology. The Holy Spirit is referred to as the Lord and Giver of Life in the Nicene creed.^[84] He is the Creator Spirit, present before the creation of the universe and through his power everything was made in Jesus Christ, by God the Father.^[84] Christian hymns such as «Veni Creator Spiritus» («Come, Creator Spirit») reflect this belief.^[84]

In early Christianity, the concept of salvation was closely related to the invocation of the «Father, Son and Holy Spirit»,^[16][17] and since the first century, Christians have called upon God with the name «Father, Son and Holy Spirit» in prayer, baptism, communion, exorcism, hymn-singing, preaching, confession, absolution and benediction.^[16][17] This is reflected in the saying: «Before there was a ‘doctrine’ of the Trinity, Christian prayer invoked the Holy Trinity».^[16]

For the majority of Christian denominations, the Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Holy Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and is Almighty God.^[2][3][85] As such he is personal and also fully God, co-equal and co-eternal with God the Father and Son of God.^[2][3][85] He is different from the Father and the Son in that he proceeds from the Father (and, according to Roman Catholics, Old Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans, and other Protestants, from the Father and the Son) as described in the Nicene Creed.^[3] The Triune God is thus manifested as three Persons (Greek hypostases),^[86] in One Divine Being (Greek: Ousia),^[4] called the Godhead (from Old English: Godhood), the Divine Essence of God.^[87]

In the New Testament, by the power of the Holy Spirit Jesus was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary, while maintaining her virginity.^[88] The Holy Spirit descended over Jesus in a corporeal way, as a dove, at the time of his baptism, and a voice from Heaven was heard: «This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.»^[89][90] He is the Sanctifier, the Helper,^[91] Comforter,^[92] the Giver of graces, he who leads persons to the Father and the Son.^[84]

The Holy Spirit is credited with inspiring believers and allowing for them to interpret all the sacred scripture, and leads prophets both in Old Testament and New Testament.^[93] Christians receive the Fruits of the Holy Spirit by means of his mercy and grace.^[94]

God the Holy Spirit[edit]

The Christian doctrine of the Trinity includes the concept of God the Holy Spirit, along with God the Son and God the Father.^[95][96] Theologian Vladimir Lossky has argued that while, in the act of the Incarnation, God the Son became manifest as the Son of God, the same did not take place for God the Holy Spirit which remained unrevealed.^{[97][failed verification]} Yet, as in 1 Corinthians 6:19,^[98] God the Spirit continues to dwell in the faithful.^[96]

In a similar way, the Latin treatise De Trinitate (On the Trinity) of Augustine of Hippo affirms: «For as the Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, which no one doubts to be said in respect to substance, yet we do not say that the very Supreme Trinity itself is three Gods, but one God. …But position, and condition, and places, and times, are not said to be in God properly, but metaphorically and through similitudes. …And as respects action (or making), perhaps it may be said most truly of God alone, for God alone makes and Himself is not made. Nor is He liable to passions as far as belongs to that substance whereby He is God. …So the Father is omnipotent, the Son omnipotent, and the Holy Spirit is omnipotent; yet not three omnipotents, but one omnipotent. …Whatever, therefore, is spoken of God in respect to Himself, is both spoken singly of each Person, that is, of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and together of the Trinity itself, not plurally but in the singular.»^[99]

In Christian theology the Holy Spirit is believed to perform specific divine functions in the life of the Christian or the church. The action of the Holy Spirit is seen as an essential part of the bringing of the person to the Christian faith.^[100] The new believer is «born again of the Spirit».^[101] The Holy Spirit enables Christian life by dwelling in the individual believers and enables them to live a righteous and faithful life.^[100] The Holy Spirit also acts as comforter or Paraclete, one who intercedes, or supports or acts as an advocate, particularly in times of trial. And he acts to convince the unredeemed person both of the sinfulness of their actions and of their moral standing as sinners before God.^[102] Another faculty of the Holy Spirit is the inspiration and interpretation of scripture. The Holy Spirit both inspires the writing of the scriptures and interprets them to the Christian and the church.^[103]

Procession of the Holy Spirit[edit]

In John 15:26, Jesus says of the Holy Spirit: «But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.»^[104] In 325, the First Council of Nicaea, being the first ecumenical council, ended its Creed with the words «and in the Holy Spirit». In 381, the First Council of Constantinople, being the second ecumenical council, expanded the Creed and stated that Holy Spirit «proceeds from the Father» (ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον). This phrase was based on John 15:26 (ὃ παρὰ τοῦ πατρὸς ἐκπορεύεται). In 451, the Council of Chalcedon, being the fourth ecumenical council, affirmed the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.^[105] During the same time, the question of procession of the Holy Spirit was addressed by various Christian theologians, expressing diverse views and using different terminology, thus initiating the debate that became focused on the Filioque clause.

In 589, the Third Council of Toledo in its third canon officially accepted the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son (a Patre et Filio procedere).^[106] During the next few centuries, two distinctive schools of thought were gradually shaped, Eastern and Western. Eastern theologians were teaching that Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father only (notion referred as monoprocessionism),^[107] while Western theologians were teaching that Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (notion referred as filioquism).^[108] Debates and controversies between two sides became a significant point of difference within Christian pneumatology, inclusive of their historical role in setting the stage for the Great Schism of 1054.

Fruit and Gifts of the Spirit[edit]

The fruit of the Holy Spirit^[109] consists of «permanent dispositions»^[109] (in this similar to the permanent character of the sacraments), virtuous characteristics engendered in the Christian by the action of the Holy Spirit.^[110] Galatians 5:22–23 names nine aspects and states:^[110]

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control; against such there is no law.^[111]

In the Epistle to the Galatians these nine characteristics are in contrast to the «works of the flesh» and highlight the positive manifestations of the work of the Holy Spirit in believers.^[110]

The «gifts of the Holy Spirit»^[109] are distinct from the Fruit of the Spirit, and consist of specific abilities granted to the individual Christian.^[100] They are frequently known by the Greek word for gift, charisma, in English charism, from which the term charismatic derives. There is no generally agreed upon exhaustive list of the gifts, and various Christian denominations use different lists, often drawing upon 1 Corinthians,^[112] Romans 12^[113] and Ephesians 4.^[114][115] Pentecostal denominations and the charismatic movement teach that the absence of the supernatural gifts was due to the neglect of the Holy Spirit and his work by the major denominations.^[115] Believers in the relevance of the supernatural gifts sometimes speak of a Baptism with the Holy Spirit or Filling with the Holy Spirit which the Christian needs to experience in order to receive those gifts.^[116] However, many Christian denominations hold that the Baptism with the Holy Spirit is identical with conversion, and that all Christians are by definition baptized in the Holy Spirit.

The «seven gifts of the Holy Spirit»^[109] are poured out on a believer at baptism, and are traditionally derived from Isaiah 11:1–2,^[117] although the New Testament does not refer to Isaiah 11:1–2 regarding these gifts.^[115][118] These 7 gifts are: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude (strength), knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord.^[115][118] This is the view of the Catholic Church^[109][118] and many other mainstream Christian groups.^[115]

Denominational variations[edit]

Christian denominations have doctrinal variations in their beliefs regarding the Holy Spirit. A well-known example is the Filioque controversy regarding the Holy Spirit – one of the key differences between the teachings of the main Western Churches and various Eastern Christian denominations (Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Church of the East).^[119][120]

The Filioque debate centers around whether the Nicene Creed should state that the Spirit «proceeds from the Father» and then have a stop, as the creed was initially adopted in Greek (and followed thereafter by the Eastern Church), or should say «from the Father and the Son» as was later adopted in Latin and followed by the Western Church, filioque being «and from the Son» in Latin.^[121]

Towards the end of the 20th century, discussions took place about the removal of Filioque in the Nicene Creed from Anglican prayer books along the lines of the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox approach, but these still have not reached a state of final implementation.^[122]

The majority of mainstream Protestantism hold similar views on the theology of the Holy Spirit as the Roman Catholic Church, but there are significant differences in belief between Pentecostalism and the rest of Protestantism.^[2][123] Pentecostalism has a focus on «Baptism with the Spirit», relying on Acts 1:5 which refers to «now you will baptize with the Holy Spirit».^[124] The more recent Charismatic movements have a focus on the «gifts of the Spirit» (such as healing, prophecy, etc.) and rely on 1 Corinthians 12 as a scriptural basis, but often differ from Pentecostal movements.^[125]

Non-trinitarian views about the Holy Spirit differ significantly from mainstream Christian doctrine.

Catholicism[edit]

The Holy Spirit has been a topic in at least two papal encyclicals:

• Divinum illud munus – Pope Leo XIII (1897)
• Dominum et vivificantem – Pope John Paul II (1986)

The topic of the Holy Spirit is discussed extensively in the Catechism of the Catholic Church as «I believe in the Holy Spirit» in paragraphs 683 through 747.

Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christadelphians[edit]

Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christadelphians view the Holy Spirit not as an actual person separate from God the Father, but as God’s eternal «energy» or «active force», that he uses to accomplish his will in creation and redemption.^[126][127]

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints[edit]

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) believe that the Holy Ghost is the third member of the Godhead. He is a personage of spirit, without a body of flesh and bones.^[128] He is often referred to as the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Lord, or the Comforter.^[129] Latter-day Saints believe in a kind of social trinitarianism and subordinationism, meaning that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are understood as being unified in will and purpose, but not in substance.^[130] The Holy Ghost is believed to be subordinate to the Father and the Son and operates under their direction. The Holy Ghost, like all intelligent beings, is believed to be fundamentally eternal, uncreated, and self-existent.^[131]

The LDS Church teaches that the influence of the Holy Ghost can be received before baptism, but the gift, or constant companionship, of the Holy Ghost—which comes by the laying-on of hands by a properly ordained priesthood holder with a line of authority traced back to Christ through Peter—is obtained only after baptism when a person is confirmed.^[132] Joseph Smith, the founder of the church, taught, «You might as well baptize a bag of sand as a man,» he said, «if not done in view of the remission of sins and getting of the Holy Ghost. Baptism by water is but half a baptism, and is good for nothing without the other half — that is, the baptism of the Holy Ghost».^[133]

Symbolism and art[edit]

Symbolism[edit]

The Holy Spirit is frequently referred to by metaphor and symbol, both doctrinally and biblically. Theologically speaking these symbols are a key to understanding of the Holy Spirit and his actions, and are not mere artistic representations.^[85][134]

• Water – signifies the Holy Spirit’s action in Baptism, such that in the manner that «by one Spirit [believers] were all baptized», so they are «made to drink of one Spirit».^[135] Thus the Spirit is also personally the living water welling up from Christ crucified^[136] as its source and welling up in Christians to eternal life.^[134][137] The Catechism of the Catholic Church, item 1137, considers the Water of Life reference in the Book of Revelation^[138] «one of most beautiful symbols of the Holy Spirit».^[139]
• Anointing – The symbolism of blessing with oil also signifies the Holy Spirit, to the point of becoming a synonym for the Holy Spirit. The coming of the Spirit is referred to as his «anointing».^[140] In some denominations anointing is practiced in Confirmation; («chrismation» in the Eastern Churches). Its full force can be grasped only in relation to the primary anointing accomplished by the Holy Spirit, that of Jesus. The title «Christ» (in Hebrew, messiah) means the one «anointed» by God’s Spirit.^[134][137]
• Fire – symbolizes the transforming energy of the Holy Spirit’s actions. In the form of tongues «as of fire», the Holy Spirit rested on the disciples on the morning of Pentecost.^[134][137]
• Cloud and light – The Spirit comes upon the Virgin Mary and «overshadows» her, so that she might conceive and give birth to Jesus. On the mountain of transfiguration, the Spirit in the «cloud came and overshadowed» Jesus, Moses and Elijah, Peter, James and John, and «a voice came out of the cloud, saying, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!'»^[137][141]
• The dove – When Christ comes up from the water of his baptism, the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, comes down upon him and remains with him.^{[134][137][142]}
• Wind – The Spirit is likened to the «wind that blows where it will,»^[143] and described as «a sound from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind.»^[144][134]

Art, literature and architecture[edit]

Art

The Holy Spirit has been represented in Christian art both in the Eastern and Western Churches using a variety of depictions.^{[145][146][147]} The depictions have ranged from nearly identical figures that represent the three persons of the Holy Trinity, to a dove, to a flame.

The Holy Spirit is often depicted as a dove, based on the account of the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus like a dove when he was baptized in the Jordan.^[148] In many paintings of the Annunciation, the Holy Spirit is shown in the form of a dove, coming down towards Mary on beams of light, as the Archangel Gabriel announces Jesus Christ’s coming to Mary. A dove may also be seen at the ear of Gregory the Great – as recorded by his secretary – or other church father authors, dictating their works to them. The dove also parallels the one that brought the olive branch to Noah after the deluge, as a symbol of peace.^[148]

The book of Acts describes the Holy Spirit descending on the apostles at Pentecost in the form of a wind and tongues of fire resting over the apostles’ heads. Based on the imagery in that account, the Holy Spirit is sometimes symbolized by a flame of fire.^[149]

Ancient Celtic Christians depicted the Holy Spirit as a goose called Ah Geadh-Glas, which means wild goose.^[150] A goose was chosen rather than the traditional dove because geese were perceived as more free than their dove counterparts.^[151][152]

Literature

The Holy Spirit has traditionally been a subject matter of strictly theological works focused on proving the central doctrines concerning the Holy Spirit, often as a response to arguments from religious groups who deny these foundational Biblical truths. In recent years, however, the Holy Spirit has made an entrance into the world of (Christian) literature through books such as The Shack published in 2007.

Visual arts[edit]

• 

  Representation as both dove and flames, Ravensburg, Germany, 1867

• 

  Ray of light representation in Russian icon of the Pentecost, 15th century

• 

Holy Spirit cathedrals[edit]

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• 

• 

See also[edit]

• Cult of the Holy Spirit
• Gender of the Holy Spirit
• Holy Spirit in Islam
• Holy Spirit in Judaism
• Intercession of the Spirit
• Miracle
• Seven Spirits of God
• Chaplet in Honour of the Holy Spirit

References[edit]

Sources[edit]

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Jacobs, Joseph; Blau, Ludwig (1901–1906). «HOLY SPIRIT». In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
• Martínez-Díez, Gonzalo; Rodriguez, Felix (1992). Colección canónica hispana. Vol. 5. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. ISBN 9788400072629.
• Meyendorff, John (1989). Imperial unity and Christian divisions: The Church 450–680 A.D. The Church in history. Vol. 2. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. ISBN 9780881410563.
• Wilhite, David E. (2009). «The Baptists «And the Son»: The Filioque Clause in Noncreedal Theology». Journal of Ecumenical Studies. 44 (2): 285–302.
• Phillips, Andrew (1995). Orthodox Christianity and the English Tradition. Frithgarth, UK: Anglo-Saxon Books. ISBN 9781898281009.

Further reading[edit]

• Beeley, Christopher; Weedman, Mark, eds. (2018). The Bible and Early Trinitarian Theology. ISBN 9780813229966.
• Burgess, Stanley M. (1989). The Holy Spirit: Eastern Christian Traditions. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers. ISBN 9780913573815.
• Charles Williams, The descent of the Dove: a short history of the Holy Spirit in the church (1950) Faber, London
• Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti (2002). Pneumatology: The Holy Spirit in Ecumenical, International, and Contextual Perspective. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. ISBN 9780801024481.
• Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti, ed. (2010). Holy Spirit and Salvation: The Sources of Christian Theology. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 9780664231361.
• Swete, Henry Barclay (1912). The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church: a Study of Christian Teaching in the Age of the Fathers. ISBN 0342946455.

External links[edit]

• Catechism of the Catholic Church: CHAPTER THREE. I BELIEVE IN THE HOLY SPIRIT (nos. 683–686); ARTICLE 8. «I BELIEVE IN THE HOLY SPIRIT» (nos. 687–747)