Is the Holy Spirit a Person or an Impersonal Force?

Insight on the Scriptures states the teaching in one sentence: the holy spirit is not a person but God’s active force. The sentences to read next are the ones in which that force speaks, is lied to, and is grieved.

The question

Is the Holy Spirit a person, to be named with the Father and the Son, or an impersonal power God sends out? Jehovah’s Witnesses answer that the spirit is Jehovah’s active force. Christians confess that the Spirit is God, a person, not a third god and not a current.

What Jehovah’s Witnesses teach

Insight on the Scriptures, in the section “God’s Active Force; Holy Spirit,” says (1):

The Scriptures themselves unite to show that God’s holy spirit is not a person but is God’s active force by which he accomplishes his purpose and executes his will.

The same article takes the personal language seriously and treats it as a figure of speech:

Personification does not prove personality. It is true that Jesus spoke of the holy spirit as a “helper” and spoke of such helper as ‘teaching,’ ‘bearing witness,’ ‘giving evidence,’ ‘guiding,’ ‘speaking,’ ‘hearing,’ and ‘receiving.’ In so doing, the original Greek shows Jesus at times applying the masculine personal pronoun to that “helper” (paraclete). (Compare Joh 14:16, 17, 26; 15:26; 16:7-15.) However, it is not unusual in the Scriptures for something that is not actually a person to be personalized or personified.

The apostle Paul personalized sin and death and also undeserved kindness as “kings.”

That is the strongest form of the view. Personal verbs, on this account, are a figure of speech, the way wisdom and sin are personified. The same entry says: “when the Greek pneuʹma is used, John employs a neuter pronoun to refer to the holy spirit, pneuʹma itself being neuter.” It says a “name” can mean “something other than a personal name,” and it compares the baptismal wording with “in the name of the law.” It says: “Persons are urged to become “filled with spirit” instead of with wine.” None of that, on this account, makes the spirit a person beside the Father and the Son. The entry also says:

Not until the fourth century C.E. did the teaching that the holy spirit was a person and part of the “Godhead” become official church dogma.

The New World Translation follows the same judgment in places by choosing “which” and “it.” John 14:17 (4) says “the spirit of the truth, which the world cannot receive, because it neither sees it nor knows it.”

The texts

The translation still keeps verbs that persons do.

Acts 5:3–4 (10), in the New World Translation (2): “An·a·niʹas, why has Satan emboldened you to lie to the holy spirit and secretly hold back some of the price of the field?” and “You have lied, not to men, but to God.” Peter calls the deceit a lie to the holy spirit and a lie to God.

Acts 13:2 (10), in the New World Translation (3): As they were ministering to Jehovah and fasting, the holy spirit said: “Set aside for me Barʹna·bas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” The speaker says “for me” and “I have called.”

John 14:26 (11), in the New World Translation (5): “But the helper, the holy spirit, which the Father will send in my name, that one will teach you all things and bring back to your minds all the things I told you.” John 16:13–14 (11), in the New World Translation (6): “when that one comes, the spirit of the truth, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak of his own initiative, but what he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things to come. That one will glorify me, because he will receive from what is mine and will declare it to you.”

Isaiah 63:10 (13), in the New World Translation (7): “But they rebelled and grieved his holy spirit.” Ephesians 4:30 (14), in the New World Translation (8): “Also, do not be grieving God’s holy spirit, with which you have been sealed for a day of releasing by ransom.” 2 Samuel 23:2, in the New World Translation (9): “The spirit of Jehovah spoke through me; His word was on my tongue.”

Matthew 28:19 (12) sends the disciples to baptize “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

A Christian response

The Holy Spirit is a person. The Spirit is God, not a force God aims, and not a third god beside the Father and the Son. The Trinity is the confession that holds those sentences together. This page stays with the spirit texts Witnesses and Christians both have in front of them.

Insight is right that the Bible personifies things that are not persons. Wisdom calls out in Proverbs. Paul writes as if sin reigns. A figure of speech is not a person. The question is whether the spirit texts behave like those figures or like the way Scripture speaks of God.

Peter does not say Ananias lied to a metaphor. He says Ananias lied to the holy spirit, and he says that lie was not to men but to God. The two lines explain each other. Lying to the Spirit is lying to God. Wisdom is never told that in Acts. Sin is never the one a disciple is accused of defrauding as God.

In Antioch the spirit speaks in the first person, sets two men apart “for me,” and says “I have called them.” That is not the way a current is quoted. It is the way a speaker is quoted. John’s Gospel, in the New World Translation, can say “which” and “it” in John 14:17 and, a few sentences later, “that one” and “he will not speak of his own initiative, but what he hears he will speak.” The translation’s “which” is a choice. The “he” and the hearing and the speaking are still in the sentence.

Grief is the same kind of line. Israel grieved his holy spirit. Paul tells the church not to grieve God’s holy spirit. A person is grieved. A force is resisted, blocked, or spent. The Old Testament verb is kept in the Society’s rendering, not softened into “resisted his power.”

Matthew 28:19 puts the spirit inside one name with the Father and the Son. Father and Son are persons. The spirit is not added as the brand name of a tool after two persons. Baptism is into that one name. Insight compares “in the name of the law.” The comparison would be stronger if the law were baptized into alongside the Father and the Son. It is not.

The fourth-century date is a date of a council’s wording, not the birthday of the texts. Acts 5, Acts 13, John 14–16, and Matthew 28:19 were in the churches’ hands long before that council. The council was answering people who already denied what those texts say.

Common follow-ups

The Greek word for spirit is neuter, so the spirit is a thing. Grammatical gender is not personal identity. The Greek word for child is neuter, and children are persons. In the same Upper Room discourse the New World Translation uses “he” for the helper. Neuter pneuma does not decide the question the verbs raise.

The spirit is poured out and people are filled with it. Scripture also says God is love, and that people are filled with joy. A personal God can be spoken of as given, sent, and poured out, because the gift of his presence is described in the language of water and oil. Those metaphors do not erase “I have called them.”

Stephen saw two persons, not three. Acts 7:55 says he saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at God’s right hand. The spirit is not missing from the paragraph. The sentence opens, “he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up.” The spirit is the one by whom Stephen sees, not a third figure standing in the vision beside the Father and the Son. That is what a person who shares the one God’s life can do without becoming a second object in the sky.

Keep reading

• The Trinity
• John 1 and the Word
• Is Jesus the Creator or a creature?