The understanding of this subject does not start with the individual person of the Holy Spirit but lies with understanding the whole concept of the personhood of God. Until we can understand personhood and how this is related to the essence of a triune God we will never understand the mystery of the person of the Holy Spirit. James Boice states “A person is defined as one who has knowledge, feelings and a will, and is just what is stated of the Spirit.”[1] Another way of saying this is personhood is the essence of one’s emotion, intellect and will. It is Dr. Boice’s position that these attributes could be contributed to the Holy Spirit through the understanding of John 14: 16-18 which states “I will leave you another Counselor.”[2] Wayne Grudem expands these thoughts by expounding on the difference between a being and a person.

       

     Scripture is abundantly clear that there is one and only one God. The three different persons of the Trinity are one not only in purpose and in agreement on what they think, but they are one in essence, one in their essential nature. In other words, God is only one being. There are not three Gods. There is only one God.[3]

 

The key to understanding the personhood of God is found in understanding what the single essence of God is in relationship to His personhood. Just what does it mean for God to be one being? To answer this question the debate must not come from traditions or past understanding of certain sectors or the church, but must come from the authority of Scripture and understood from proper hermeneutical principles. It is Milton Terry’s view that words are not always understood by their etymology, as he states:

 

        When Christianity introduced a new life and religion into the world, its sacred books were all written by Jews or Jewish proselytes, who used the later Hebraic or Hellenistic Greek. These writers found it necessary again to use the language for the setting forth of ideas and truth which had never before been clothed in any human language. New significations thus become attached to old words, and new forms of speech were coined to express the concepts of the Gospel. Accordingly, the New Testament language and diction have, necessarily, peculiarities of their own.[4]

 

If a word study were performed with this understanding in mind and taking the term “spirit” in the context in which it was used, the following would be discovered.

Spirit Defined

The word spirit as used in both the Old and New Testaments is not always used in a consistent manner. This observation is demonstrated by Charles Ryrie as he states:

 

        The approxsimately 100 references to the Spirit of God in the Old Testament give evidence of His working during that period. All, however, do not see these references as indication the third Person of the Trinity. P.K. Jewett for example, believes that in the Old Testament the Holy Spirit is never used to indicate “a Person distinct from the Father and the Son,” but rather “the divine nature viewed as vital energy” (Holy Spirit, “The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible” [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1975], 3:184). While it is true that the Old Testament does not reveal the doctrine of the Trinity, still it seems to convey the idea that the Spirit is a Person, not simply vital energy (Ps. 104:30).[5]

 

It is these differences of opinion and by word study that we will focus on and explore the possible understanding of the word spirit.

 

There are those who believe soul and spirit are interchangeable, but it becomes very clear that if you attribute attributes to these words through a biblical word study a very distinct picture formulates and begins to define the differences between these two words and by defining the differences we begin to understand the true nature, character, and function of this phenomenon we call spirit. In a word study on soul and spirit conducted by this author in October of 1982 and submitted to Cedarville University as an “Independent Study on Soul and Spirit” the following was discovered. To aid in this discussion a visual picture is given to help in understanding the concepts of soul and spirit as it pertains to God and man. The soul is that part of a person that reasons, remembers, has a will, displays emotion, and reacts to the five senses of the body. The soul is where personhood lies, both in God and man. The spirit of man reflects the attributes of Satan through attitudes and is the controlling factor of man’s personality. The spirit of God reflects the attributes of God such as communications, power, omnipresent, and all other attributes that are not contributed to the soul. God the Father mentions his soul six times in the Old Testament: Leviticus 26:11, Psalms 11:5 and Jeremiah 5:9, 5:29, 6:8, 9:9, each time dealing with emotion. In the New Testament Christ speaks twice of his soul, once in Matthew 26:38 and again in John 12:27. Both deal with emotion. There is no mention of a soul for the Holy Spirit it is by the deffinition of personhood that we assume soul ship. Emery H. Bancroft expresses it this way:

   

     Three things at least are combined in personality – intelligence, emotion, and volition. These essential parts of personality are limited in human beings, but it is not unthinkable that they may have and illimitable existence and yet be included in personality. It is not unthinkable that man, within a circumscribed area, is a picture of the divine; but that yet, by so much as he is circumscribed and limited, he is not himself divine. In this sense man was made in the image of God; but that of which he is the image is like him, yet unlike him. It is unlike him in the fact that all that is found in man of essential majesty and grandeur in a limited degree is to be found in God Himself unlimited and illimitable. The Holy Spirit, then, is a person possessed of will, intelligence, and emotion in an infinite degree.[6]

 

Throughout the Scriptures you will not find the term spirit used in a consistent manner, leaving the definition up to its contextual use in every case. After concluding this word study the term “spirit” could be placed in five defining categories:

• The Holy Spirit
• The spirit of God
• The spirit of the Lord
• The spirit of attitude
• Evil spirits

In the Old Testament the word “spirit” (Nephesh) is referred to as the spirit of attitude (Psalms 51:10-12), the Holy Spirit (Isaiah 63:10, 11), the spirit of the Lord (I Kings 18:12), the spirit of God (Genesis 1:2), and evil spirits (I Samuel 19:9).

 

In the New Testament the word “spirit” (Pneuma) could be places in the following defining categories:

• Spirit of God
• Spirit of man
• Holy Spirit
• Spirit of Christ
• Spirit of attitude
• Evil spirit
• Spirit of God as man possesses it

Hebrews 4:12 illustrates to us that the Scriptures distinguishes the difference between soul and spirit. I Corinthians 2:10-12 illustrates the difference between the Holy Spirit and the spirit of man and in Luke 24:39 Jesus distinguishes the difference between being in human form and being in spirit form. Mark 2:8 speaks of Jesus own spirit not to be confused with the Holy Spirit. Matthew 10:28 speak about the nature of our spirit, leaving us with the impression that the spirit of man is our old nature. The Scriptures are full of references of unclean spirits or evil spirits and finally the reference to spirit in I Timothy 4:12 could not be found in the Greek text. If you look at every reference to soul and spirit in both the New and Old Testaments there seems to be a pattern to their usage.