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by
Doug Ward |
The Ligonier Ministries' State of Theology 2020 Survey posed a
series of questions to a sample of 3002 Americans, including 235 who identified
themselves as evangelicals attending church at least once a week. Not
surprisingly, 98% of the 235 evangelicals strongly agreed with the statement,
"There is one true God in three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and
God the Holy Spirit." However, 33% of them also agreed or strongly agreed
with the statement, "The Holy Spirit is a force but is not a personal
being."
Some
of the confusion evident in these responses may be due to the variety of ways
in which the Bible refers to the Holy Spirit. For example, the Spirit is
"the power of the Most High" (Lk 1:35) and
can be "poured out" (Isa 32:15; Ac 2:33; 10:45; Tit 3:5-6) and
sometimes "quenched" (1 Th 5:19). This kind of language could
describe a force that is not a personal being. On the other hand, the Spirit
"intercedes for us," has a "mind," and can be
"grieved" (Isa 63:10; Ro 8:26-27; Eph 4:30), qualities associated
with personal beings.
Biblical
language about the Holy Spirit does not by itself tell us what the Spirit is,
because this language can be figurative. For instance, 1 John 5:6-12 names
three witnesses that Jesus is the Son of God, through whom God gives us eternal
life: The Spirit, the water of Jesus' baptism, and the blood that Jesus shed in
his death. We normally think of a "witness" as a personal being, but
water and blood are not personal beings. Determining who or what the Spirit is
requires a deeper study.
Such
a study was undertaken by early Christians. Jesus, on the night before his
crucifixion, had told his disciples that they would come to know the Helper
that he was sending them (Jn 14:15-17). Through the Spirit they received a
sense of God's presence; gifts of healing, miracles, and inspired speech; and
empowerment to live holy lives. Moreover, the Spirit opened the Scriptures to
them, bearing witness to Jesus (Jn 15:26) and guiding them to additional truth
(Jn 16:13). That truth included a greater understanding of the Spirit.
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Divine
Conversations |
As early Christians searched the Hebrew Scriptures, they located
several passages in which God the Father and the Messiah are mentioned
together, often interacting in some way. The most famous is Psalm 110:1, where
David writes, "The Lord says to my Lord: `Sit at my right hand, until I
make your enemies your footstool.' " Jesus himself had identified "my
Lord" in this verse as the Messiah and used Psalm 110 to argue that the
Messiah would be much more than a human descendant of David (Mt 22:41-46; Mk
12:35-37; Lk 20:41-44). His disciples quoted the verse to show that Jesus had
ascended after his resurrection to the right hand of the Father (Ac 2:34-35;
Heb 1:13; 10:12-13).
A
second key passage of this type is in Psalm 45, a psalm praising a Davidic king
and queen at a royal wedding. In verses 6-7, the psalmist's attention turns to
the Messiah, the ultimate Davidic king: "Your throne, O God, is forever
and ever. The scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of uprightness; you have
loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore God, your God, has anointed
you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions." The author of
Hebrews identified the one being addressed here as Jesus, and he quoted these
verses as proof that Jesus is God and King, anointed by the Father to rule
forever (Heb 1:8-9).
The
second century church father Justin Martyr (ca. 100-165 AD) used these two
passages as evidence that there are two divine "Lords" in the Hebrew
Scriptures (Dialogue with Trypho, chapter 56). He added to this list
Genesis 18-19, where Abraham hosts three "men" (18:3) who turn out to
be two angels and a third figure identified as "the Lord"
(18:22-19:1). A distinction is made between this Lord and the Lord in heaven in
Genesis 19:24: "Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire
from the Lord out of heaven."
Justin
also pointed to Psalm 24:7-10 as a passage involving multiple divine figures.
For Justin, these verses picture the risen Christ (the "King of
Glory") ascending to heaven. When he arrives at the gates of heaven, the
angels guarding the gates are told to open them so that the King could come in
and be seated at the Father's right hand (chapter 36).
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Look
Who's Talking |
Church fathers Irenaeus of Lyons (ca. 135-200 AD) and Tertullian of
Carthage (ca. 160-225 AD) followed Justin in citing scriptures with "two
Lords" as evidence of the preexistence and deity of the Son and the
distinct roles of the Father and Son. Tertullian also mentioned Isaiah 53:1-2,
where both the Father and the Son (as Suffering Servant) are in view: "Who
has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord
been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant ...."
Such
passages raised an important question for the Church fathers: Who is the
speaker in these verses? They reasoned that the speaker must be someone distinct
from the Father and Son who has detailed firsthand knowledge of their
activities. Noting Paul's statement that "no one knows the thoughts of God
except the Spirit of God" (1 Co 2:11), they reasoned that the speaker must
be the Holy Spirit. They viewed these passages as examples of the Spirit
searching "the depths of God" (1 Co 2:10) and bearing witness about
Jesus (Jn 15:26). They concluded that the Spirit, the source of this
information, spoke these words to the human authors as a divine personal being
rather than merely serving as the signal (an impersonal force) conveying the
revelation from another divine speaker.
There
is much more to the story of how Christians came to understand that the Holy
Spirit is a personal being and not merely an impersonal force.1
That story led, by the late fourth century AD, to the doctrine of the Trinity
that is universally affirmed (though not always well understood) by Christians.
It turns out that each chapter in the story, like the ones covered here, was
based on careful and prayerful study of the Scriptures of Israel.
1For
further discussion, see Kyle R. Hughes, How the Spirit Became God: The
Mosaic of Early Pneumatology, Cascade Books, 2020.
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