|
SUBJECT: Holy Spirit -- Trinity
QUESTION: The Bible seems to show the Holy Spirit
having personality. Doesn’t this show the Holy Spirit to be
a person or being?
ANSWER:
No, it does not.
THE HOLY SPIRIT HAS PERSONALITY, IS IT A PERSON?
We are told by those who teach that the Holy Spirit of God
is a PERSON with a body and shape as of a man (although
they have yet to find one single verse in the Bible that
talks about the mouth, ears, head, hands, feet etc. of this
so called third person of the Godhead) that the
proof for such a belief is in the fact that the Holy Spirit
is given a personality by the New Testament. One writer
has listed many scriptures to show the personality of the
Spirit. We should indeed be willing to read them as they are
a part of the inspired word of God.
"As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Spirit
said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I
have called them " (Acts 13:2).
"Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near and join yourself
to this chariot" (Acts 8:29).
"While Peter thought on the vision, the Spirit said unto
him, Behold three men seek you....." (Acts 10: 19).
".......and were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the
word in Asia. After they were come to Mysia, they determined
to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit suffered them not" (Acts
16:6,7).
This man continues to list other verses that he says show
the personality of the Spirit and so make him a PERSON.
He testifies of Christ and glorifies Him (John 15:26;
16:14).
He has power of His own (Rom.15:13).
He searches all things (Rom.11:33,34, with 1 Cor.2:10,11).
He works according to His will (1 Cor.12:11).
He dwells with real Christians (John 14:17).
He spoke in and by the prophets (Acts 1:16; 1 Peter 1:11,12:
2 Peter 1:21).
He strives with sinners (Gen.6:3).
He reproves and guides (John 16:8,13).
He comforts (Acts 9:31) and helps our infirmities
(Rom.8:26).
He teaches (John 14:26; 1 Cor.12:3).
He sanctifies (Rom.15:16; 1 Cor.6:11).
Some of the favorite scriptures used by those who teach the
Holy Spirit must be a person because human like qualities
are given it are these:
"And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God......" (Eph.4:30).
Ahhh, see the Spirit can be grieved, so it must be a PERSON,
many will insist.
"You stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you do
always resist the Holy Spirit, as your fathers did so do you
" (Acts 7:51)..
"Then Peter said unto her, How is it that you have agreed
together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord....... " (Acts
5:9).
The Spirit can be resisted and tempted and so, claim our
Trinitarians, he must be a PERSON!
DOES GIVING HUMAN LIKE QUALITIES TO SOMETHING AUTOMATICALLY
PROVE THAT THAT SOMETHING IS A PERSON ?
Stop and think now. Have you ever called your CAR, your
BOAT, your AIRPLANE by the word "she" ? Have you ever given
your boat a NAME of a person and ever said something like
this about it: "You have to be very careful when starting
Molly, she is fussy about not having too much gas." Now,
neither you or any of your friends actually believe or teach
that your boat Molly is a human woman - a PERSON !
It has been customary for mankind to give PERSONAL QUALITIES
to inanimate objects for centuries. Even God Himself
inspired Moses (who wrote
the first five books of the Bible) to record that
He
(God) uses this type of language. This is found in the
account of Cain killing Abel.
"And Cain talked with Abel his brother.......when they were
in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and
slew him. And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel your
brother? And he said, I do not know....... And He (God)
said, What have you done? The VOICE of your brother’s BLOOD
CRIES unto me from the ground" (Gen.4:8-10).
Notice how God Himself said Abel's BLOOD (an
inanimate object) cried out with a voice to Him
from the ground!
The Lord used PERSONAL QUALITIES for Abel's blood. But does
anyone believe that Abel's blood was a separate PERSON with
arms, hands, legs, head and body APART from Abel? I think
not!
In the time of David this common terminology of attributing
human qualities to things that were not persons was still in
use, as we see from Psalm 98: 8, "Let the FLOODS clap their
hands : Let the HILLS be joyful together."
Do floods of water have HANDS? Can hills be JOYFUL as
humans can be joyful? Of course not!
Now see how Solomon was inspired by God to talk about
WISDOM.
"Wisdom CRIES outside. SHE (wisdom
is a woman?) utters her VOICE in the
streets.......Because I have called, and you refused, I have
STRETCHED OUT MY HAND, and no man regarded" (Prov.1:20,24).
Here we see verses about wisdom having as it were BODILY
PARTS and said to be a WOMAN. That's more like a PERSON to
me than any of the scriptures that are used try and prove
the Holy Spirit is a person. If only those Trinitarians
could find such verses about the Spirit then maybe I'd take
their teaching a little more serious.
We are told more about this person, this woman called
wisdom, "Does not wisdom CRY? and UNDERSTANDING put forth
her VOICE?" Now we have another person, another woman,
'understanding' must be a person because she has a voice,
"She stands in the top of the high places...." she must have
legs then. ".......Hear.......the opening of my LIPS shall
be right things. For my MOUTH shall speak truth....... I
wisdom dwell with prudence......." We have a house full of
gals here, wisdom, understanding, and now prudence. "The
Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way....... When He
prepared the heavens I was there......Then I was by
Him.....and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before
Him......." (Prov.8:1,2,6,12,22,27,30).
It would seem that the Lord not only had the woman 'wisdom'
with Him in heaven, but a few other women as well -
'understanding' and 'prudence.' Maybe the practice of
Polygamy on earth was borrowed from heaven. Well as Paul
said, I speak as a fool so some may come to the truth. Of
course wisdom and the other two women are not REAL PERSONS,
but qualities and attributes that come from the Lord (see
Prov.2:6).
YET THE LORD GIVES WISDOM THE PERSONALITY OF A WOMAN.
GIVING SOMETHING A PERSONALITY DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY MAKE
IT A
PERSON !
This use in language, of applying personality to inanimate
things, was not confined just to the Old Testament period.
We see the great apostle Paul using this idiom and figure of
speech, in the book of Romans, when explaining what sin did
to him after a full knowledge of the commandments came to
his attention:
"But SIN, finding opportunity in the commandment (to
express itself) got a hold on me and aroused and
stimulated all kinds of forbidden desires.......For SIN,
seizing the opportunity and getting a hold on me (by
taking its incentive)
from the commandment, beguiled and entrapped and cheated me,
and using it
(as a weapon)
killed me" (Rom.7:8,11
Amplified Bible, emphasis mine).
Here, Paul gives personality to SIN - talks about sin as if
it was a PERSON. He says sin got a hold of him, took the
commandments of God as a weapon in its hands and using this
weapon as a knife or sword, killed Paul.
Now no one believes that SIN is a PERSON, yet Paul speaks of
sin as if it was indeed a person!
Giving inanimate things qualities of personality is known
commonly as PERSONIFICATION.
Take a few minutes and look that word up in your dictionary.
I can show you verses in the Bible that plainly reveal God
the Father and God the Son have a body, head, face, arms,
hands, feet, etc. THEY are PERSONS. Unless you can show the
same for the Holy Spirit, I submit you have no basis in fact
for believing that the Spirit of God is a person.
GIVING PERSONALITY TO THE HOLY SPIRIT ONLY PROVES THE USE OF
PERSONIFICATION IN THE BIBLE. NOTHING MORE AND NOTHING
LESS!
THE HOLY SPIRIT, IS IT A MAN OR A WOMAN?
For centuries now (from
about the 4th century. A. D.) nearly all
Christendom has accepted and taught that the Holy Spirit is
a PERSON, a masculine person, that is a MALE. The basic
proof for
this teaching has been, as one man says, "Language has no
meaning if the Spirit is not a Person, seeing that Jesus
repeatedly employed the masculine pronoun when speaking of
him. Thirteen times over, in John 16 for example, He refers
to the Spirit as HE, HIM, HIMSELF" (Dr.
Herbert Lockyer, ALL THE DOCTRINES OF THE BIBLE, page 76).
It is true, that in the Greek NT the masculine pronoun is
used. But did Jesus actually say these words in Greek? It
was probably in the common tongue of the people that Jesus
spoke to His disciples and the multitudes, and that tongue
was ARAMAIC not Greek. I bring this to the attention of the
reader for a very
important reason. There has risen in recent years a group of
Christians who claim that the Holy Spirit is FEMALE, a
WOMAN! They too use the basic language GENDER as a proof of
their belief. And their proof is not without some validity
if language gender is the criteria to use to support the
teaching that the
Spirit is a PERSON.
In the Hebrew OT the word for Spirit is nearly always in the
feminine gender, these individuals correctly point out to
us. They also tell us, as does the Eastern Catholic Church
(see the Holy Bible by Lamsa)
that the NT was originally written in ARAMAIC and later
translated into Greek (their
arguments are really
founded on very thin ice)
and so again the word for Spirit would be in the feminine
gender.
The Greek itself is very interesting, for though the word
Comforter is masculine gender in John 16, the word Spirit
throughout the NT is in the neuter gender.
Now, if we use language gender to try to prove our point
that the Holy Spirit is a PERSON, it would truly leave us in
a quandary and contradiction. Is the Spirit a WOMAN, a MAN
or NEUTER? The truth is, the writers of the Bible never
intended us to use language gender to prove whether the Holy
Spirit was a man or a woman.
A lesson in Greek grammar will explain:
In the Greek language, like some others (Spanish,
Italian, French, etc.) every noun has what is
called gender; that is, it is either masculine, feminine or
neuter. Grammatically, all pronouns in Greek must agree in
gender with the word they refer to, or in other words, with
the term that the pronoun replaces. The Greek word
PARAKLETOS (comforter)
has masculine gender, hence the translators use of the
personal pronoun "he." For the pronouns EKEINOS and AUTOS
"it" would have been a far better rendering into the English
language, as in John 1:32 and 6:63; Romans 8:16.
Let us further explain from the gender of the Spanish
language. EL VASO is the Spanish for "the glass." The
article "EL" and the "O" ending of the word VASO give the
word "glass" a MASCULINE gender. But by no means could a
glass be considered a MALE PERSON in the human sense. LA
MESA in Spanish means "the table." It is feminine in
gender. Yet it would be silly to consider a table as a
FEMALE PERSON.
The gender of a word has nothing whatever to do with whether
the thing designated is REALLY masculine or feminine in the
human sense. Gender in language is nothing more than a
convenient grammatical tool.
---END--- |