The
Holy Spirit
Edwin Palmer*
Contents:
I. The Holy
Spirit Is a Person
II. The Holy Spirit Is a Divine Person
III. The Holy Spirit Is a Divine Person
Distinct from the Father and the Son
IV. The Holy Spirit Proceeds from the Father
and the Son
I. The Holy Spirit Is a Person
One of the distinguishing marks of a Christian is his belief in the
Holy Spirit as a Person. From the early days of the church to
present-day Modernism, there have been those who have denied the
personality of the Spirit in one form or another. Many so-called
Christian preachers and theologians refer to the Spirit as an "it,"
and
not as a "he." They consider him to be an impersonal influence or
power
or energy, and not the third Person of the Trinity. Such a view would
rob us of some of the great blessings of our salvation. Furthermore, it
is not Biblical.
In several ways the Bible reveals to us that the Spirit is a Person.
First of all, it attributes to him a mind, will, and emotions, which
are exclusively characteristics of a person. Impersonal objects do not
have these qualities, but the Spirit of God does. Paul presupposes that
the Spirit has a mind when he writes that "the Spirit searches all
things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the
thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way
no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God" (I Cor.
2:10, 11). Here Paul ascribes to the Holy Spirit knowledge, which an
influence or a power does not have, but a person does. The Bible also
pictures the Spirit as possessing the personal quality of a will. We
read that when Paul, Silas, and Timothy wanted to go to Bithynia, "the
Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to" (Acts 16:7). And in I
Corinthians 12:11 Paul tells us that the Spirit gives many gifts to
Christians, "just as he determines." As far as emotions are concerned,
Ephesians 4:30 assumes that the Spirit can have grief, for it commands
us, "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God."
A second way in which the Bible reveals that the Spirit is a Person is
by placing him in juxtaposition with other persons. For instance, we
know that the Father and Son are Persons, and so when Jesus speaks of
baptizing disciples "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of
the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 28:19), he indicates thereby that the Holy
Spirit is a Person, too, just as the Father and the Son are. James, in
authorizing certain instructions to the early church, wrote, "It seemed
good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything
beyond the following requirements" (Acts 15:28). He very clearly
considers the Holy Spirit a Person capable of the same thoughts and
ideas as he and the apostles had.
Furthermore, it would be a meaningless redundancy to say that Jesus
returned from the wilderness "in the power of the Spirit" (Luke 4:14)
if the Spirit were simply an impersonal power. Read the phrase again,
substituting the word power for Spirit.
How thankful we must be that the Spirit is a Person! For it is just
because he is a Person that he can convict us of sin and thereby lead
us to God, dwell within us and give us power over sin, inspire the
Bible and illuminate our minds so that we can understand it, guide us
so that we know what the will of God is for us, lead us in prayer, and
call ministers, elders, and deacons as office-bearers of the church.
Just because the Holy Spirit is a Person we may also react unfavorably
toward him. We may resist, grieve, despise, and blaspheme him. This is
displeasing to him, and it will surely work harm for ourselves. May we
never deny the personality of the Spirit, but believe in him and
experience the blessings that can come to us because of this fact.
II. The Holy Spirit Is a Divine Person
Some have believed that the Holy Spirit is a Person, but they have
considered him to be a created personality, and not God himself. They
have realized that the Spirit is not an impersonal "it," but they have
considered him to be inferior to the Father. The Bible, however,
attributes to the Holy Spirit not only personal characteristics, but
also divine qualities. These divine attributes mark the Holy Spirit as
being God.
According to the Scriptures, the Spirit of God is omnipotent, for he
has his role in creation (Gen. 1:2), in providence (Ps. 104:30), in the
supernatural conception of Jesus (Luke 1:35), in regeneration, and in
the equipping of each Christian with spiritual gifts.
He is also omniscient, as Isaiah intimates when he asks: "Who has
directed the Spirit of the LORD, or being his counselor has taught him?
With whom did he take counsel, and who instructed him and taught him in
the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way
of understanding?" (40:13, 14). Paul would have us believe the same
thing when he writes that "the Spirit searches all things, even the
deep things of God" (I Cor. 2:10).
Furthermore, the Holy Spirit may be characterized as being omnipresent.
The psalmist eloquently asks: "Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or
where shall I flee from your presence?" (Ps. 139:7). He says that he
can never escape the Spirit's presence, not even if he ascends to
heaven, or descends to Sheol, or flees to the seas, or hides in the
blackness of the night. The Spirit is everywhere. In the New Testament
we read that the Spirit dwells in believers, and the great number of
Christians does not hinder him from being present in each one.
Hebrews 9:14 tells us that Christ "through the eternal Spirit offered
himself unblemished to God" thus ascribing to the Holy Spirit the
divine quality of eternity.
Another proof of the deity of the Spirit is to be found, in the fact
that both the Old and New Testaments at times interchange the phrase
"the Spirit said" and the phrase "the LORD said."
Lastly, the mere coupling of the name of the Holy Spirit with the names
of the Father and the Son, as in the great commission (Matt. 28:19) or
in the apostolic benediction (II Cor. 13:14), shows that the Spirit is
put on the same level as, the other two Persons and, therefore, is
considered to be divine. It would be most incongruous to couple the
name of a created being with that of the Godhead in such tightly knit
expressions.
The fact of the deity of the Holy Spirit is important for us. If he
were not God, he could not perform his beautiful work in creation, nor
his authoritative work in inspiration, nor his illuminating work in
men's minds. Neither could he have overcome our depravity to
regenerate, indwell, and sanctify us. We may well be grateful that he
is not a finite being but a divine Person.
III. The Holy Spirit Is a Divine Person
Distinct from the Father and the Son
In the history of the church there have been those who have believed in
the personality of the Holy Spirit and in his deity, but who have so
stressed the unity of the Trinity that they have denied that there were
three distinct Persons in the Godhead. There were those in the third'
century who pictured God as appearing in creation as the Father, later
on in history as the Son, and finally making his appearance as the Holy
Spirit. According to their views there were not simultaneously three
Persons in the Godhead. But the one Godhead was called the Father at
one time, the Son at another, and the Spirit at a third time. Or the
Father first changed into the Son, and later into the Holy Spirit.
These theories, too, are a departure from the revelation of Scripture.
Certain Biblical texts are clear in pointing out that there are three
distinct Persons and not merely different manifestations of the same
God. When Jesus was baptized, for example, the voice of the Father
sounded from heaven, saying, "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I
am well-pleased." At the same time, the Spirit descended on Jesus in
the form of a dove. The simultaneous appearance of these three Persons
makes it impossible to interpret the Godhead simply as a unity. The
same may be said of Jesus' statement, "I will ask the Father, and he
will give you another Counselor" (John 14:16). Similarly, Acts 2:33
draws a clear distinction among three Persons of the Godhead: "Exalted
to the right hand of God, he [i.e., Christ] has received from the
Father the promised Holy Spirit."
It is a definite blessing to have a God that is not just one Person but
three. It makes a rich Trinity. For not only is there a Father who
loves us and cares for us, but also a Christ who obtained our salvation
and intercedes for us and a Holy Spirit who dwells within us and
applies salvation to our lives.
IV. The Holy Spirit Proceeds from the Father
and the Son
There is among the three Persons of the Trinity a definite relationship
and order. Because the three Persons are equally God, it must not be
thought that they are all the same. Each one has distinctive properties
and relationships to the others. Between the first and the second
Persons, for example, there is the relationship of Father and Son. From
all eternity the Father begat the Son. The Holy Spirit did not beget
the Son, only the Father did.
In a similar fashion, there is an unchangeable relationship between the
Holy Spirit and the other Persons of the Godhead: the Holy Spirit
eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son. It is difficult to
describe what is meant by the procession of the Spirit of God; we can
do little more than repeat the words of Scripture, since the Scriptures
do not explain this term. But it is remarkable that the Bible does not
say that the Holy Spirit was begotten by the Father, as was Christ, nor
that he was begotten by Christ. If that were true, then, as the Church
Fathers intimated, the Spirit would have been either a brother to
Christ or a grandson to the Father. But the Bible carefully avoids the
term begotten in relation to the Holy Spirit. As the Athanasian Creed
correctly puts it, he was "neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but
proceeding." This word proceed is used by Jesus in John 15:26, where
he
says, "When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the
Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will
testify about me."
The name of the Spirit also gives another hint as to this
intra-trinitarian relationship. For as the name Father shows his
relationship to the Son, and the name Son describes his relationship to
the Father, so also the name Spirit points to the relationship of the
Spirit to the other two Persons: it is one in which he is spirated or
breathed, for that is the very meaning of the name Spirit.
It must be remembered, however, that although the Spirit proceeds from
or is spirated by the Father and the Son, he is still full God. His
procession does not mean that he is inferior to the Father or the Son,
any more than the generation of the Son means that he is not on an
equality with the Father. The secret lies in the fact that the Spirit
was eternally spirated, just as the Son was eternally begotten. There
never was a time when the Spirit was not being spirated. He was
eternally coexistent with the Father and the Son. To say that he
proceeded from or was breathed out by the Father and the Son does not
imply that he is less God, but it only indicates the relation that he
eternally sustains to the other two Persons of the Trinity.
It should also be noted that the Spirit proceeds from both the Father
and the Son, and not only from the Father. That he proceeds from the
Father is obvious from John 15:26, but it is not so clear that he also
proceeds from the Son. Yet this may be deduced from those passages that
tell us that Jesus sends out the Spirit into the world and breathes him
onto the disciples (John 15:16; 16:7; 20:22). For the temporal
spiration implies an eternal spiration. It reflects a certain authority
that the Son has even in the intra-trinitarian relationships. Moreover,
the Spirit is not only called the "Spirit of the Father," but also the
"Spirit of the Son" (Gal. 4:6), the "Spirit of Christ" (Rom. 8:9),
and
the "Spirit of Jesus Christ" (Phil. 1:19).
This relationship of the Spirit to the other two Persons explains why
the Holy Spirit is considered the third Person of the Trinity and not
the first or second. The Father is first because he begets the Son. The
Son is the second Person because he is begotten. The Holy Spirit is
third because he proceeds from both the Father and the Son.
It is remarkable that this same order of the Trinity is revealed in
history, so that it is not until after the first two Persons have
appeared in the foreground in succession that the Holy Spirit comes
into prominence. From the time of creation to the time of Christ, it
was the Father who was more prominent in the world. He was the one who
received the chief glory in creation and with whom Israel in the Old
Testament dealt chiefly. When Christ came, the Father did not appear as
conspicuously, the Holy Spirit had not yet appeared in his fullness,
and Christ played a more prominent role. After the incarnation,
however, Christ ascended into heaven, and the third Person of the
Trinity appeared on the scene more than the others. Thus because the
three Persons have a definite order in the Trinity, that order reveals
itself in history, so that each Person appears in history in the same
order as he is found in the Trinity itself.
It may also be observed that it was exactly because the Holy Spirit is
breathed out by the Father and the Son in the Trinity that it was the
Holy Spirit, and not the Father or the Son, who was breathed out on the
church at Pentecost. This corresponds to the fact that because the
second Person of the Trinity is a Son in the Trinity, he should be the
incarnate Son on earth. Similarly, because the first Person of the
Trinity is the Father in the Trinity, he is also the Father of
believers.
These then are some of the aspects of the relationship of the Holy
Spirit to the other two Persons of the Trinity. Although we do not
understand very much about this relationship, we should not ignore what
the Spirit has revealed but, on the contrary, should rejoice that he
has guided his church into a definition of himself and his relationship
to the other two Persons, however limited the definition may be. For
all of his revelation has a purpose and is not to be disregarded.
As far as the practical results of the doctrine of the spiration of the
Spirit of God are concerned, they have been far-reaching. In the year
1054 Christendom was split into the Roman Catholic Church and the
Eastern Orthodox Church. Although there were many underlying factors, a
stone of stumbling was that the Eastern Christians believed that the
Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, whereas the Western
churches confessed with the Council of Toledo (589) that the Spirit
proceeds from the Father "and the Son" (filioque; that is, and from
the
son, the term that symbolized the difference). As a result of these
differences, the East separated from the West and today the Eastern
church has a membership of over 160 million. Thus this doctrine does
have enormous practical effects, and if it had not been formulated by
the Church Fathers fifteen hundred years ago, it could be a burning
issue today, affecting our church lives. Therefore, we must be grateful
for the knowledge that the Holy Spirit has given us on this matter.
Moreover, as Abraham Kuyper has incisively pointed out, a denial of the
filioque leads to an unhealthy mysticism. It tends to isolate the work
of the Holy Spirit in our lives from the work of Jesus. Redemption by
Christ is put in the background, while the sanctifying work of the
Spirit is brought to the fore. The emphasis is more and more on the
work of the Spirit in our lives, which tends to lead to an independence
from Christ, the church, and the Bible. Sanctification can loom larger
than justification, the subjective communion with the Spirit larger
than the objective church life, and illumination by the Spirit larger
than the Word. Kuyper believes that this has actually been the case to
some extent in the Eastern church, as a result of the denial that the
Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as from the Father.
Thus we see that the lengthy theological deliberations that take place
at church councils and synods do at times have a great influence. Their
decisions seep down from the top to the rank and file, even though the
debates do run the risk of being charged with quibbling. We must be
grateful for the precious revelation that the Holy Spirit has given of
his place in the Trinity, but we should not be satisfied with mere
intellectual knowledge. Rather, building upon that, we must strive to
know experientially the Spirit and his workings.
Author:
Edwin Palmer was a reformed theologian and pastor. He was
participated in the translation of the New International Version
Bible,
serving as Executive Secretary.