William Craig on the Holy Spirit
The following excerpt is taken from Dr. William Lane Craig’s essay, “Tri-Personal Monotheism”, in One God, Three Persons, Four Views: A Biblical, Theological, and Philosophical Dialogue on the Doctrine of the Trinity, edited by Chad A. McIntosh, and published by Cascade Books, Eugene, OR 2024, pp. 47-51. All emphasis will be mine.
The Holy Spirit
David Brown has observed that while debate over the Son has focused on his deity rather than his personal distinctness, in the case of the Holy Spirit “the divinity has never been in doubt; what has been challenged is his separate identity.”42 Although the biblical words rūach and pneuma are frequently used in various impersonal senses, they are also employed in a personal sense to designate intellectual substances, that is, immaterial personal agents or spirits, including human spirits, unembodied finite spirits, and preeminently the divine Spirit.43 The expression “the Holy Spirit” is a designation uniquely used of the biblical God, employed hypostatically to refer to the divine Spirit as a personal agent.
In the Gospels the canonical Jesus—whatever one thinks about the historical Jesus44—was anointed and inspired throughout his ministry by the Holy Spirit. Luke is especially emphatic on the role of the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ life and ministry.
In the angel’s annunciation to Mary of her virginal conception all three of the traditional Trinitarian persons are mentioned (1:32–35). At Jesus’ baptism the Holy Spirit comes upon him to anoint him for his messianic ministry. Again we find all three of the Trinitarian persons involved in this pivotal event (3:22).
When Jesus publicly announces his ministry in the synagogue at Nazareth, he quotes, as fulfilled, Isaiah’s prophetic words: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor” (4:18; cf. Isa 61:1). Here once more we find all three Trinitarian persons mentioned.
In the book of Acts, Luke presents an explosion of activity inspired by the Holy Spirit. Following the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the remainder of Acts describes the apostles’ Spirit-inspired ministry.
In story after story we see that the Holy Spirit is God himself and therefore manifestly personal. Not only did he speak via the OT prophets (1:16; 28:25), but he speaks to and directs the apostles (8:29; 10:19; 11:12). Especially interesting is Acts 13:2: “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them’.” The Holy Spirit here not only speaks but uses first-person indexicals, ruling out any interpretation of the Holy Spirit as an impersonal power.
The Holy Spirit is described as having appointed the apostles to their ministry (20:28) and as guiding them in their ministry travels (13:4), deeming certain actions to be good (15:28) but forbidding other actions to them (16:6–7).
The Holy Spirit testifies not only to the apostles (20:23) but also through them to others (5:32), who are sometimes said to resist the Holy Spirit (6:10; 7:51). The story of Ananias and Saphira’s deception is especially interesting. To Ananias Peter says, “Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?” (5:3) and to Saphira “How is it that you have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord?” (5:9), implying the Spirit’s personhood. Peter expressly says, “You have not lied to men but to God” (5:4), thereby implying his full divinity.
In John’s Gospel we have a great deal of teaching by the canonical Jesus concerning the person and work of the Holy Spirit. All three of the traditional Trinitarian persons feature prominently in these teachings. Jesus promises that since he is departing, “I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth” (14:16–17; cf. 16:4–7). This Counselor is to be sent by the “Father during the impending period of Jesus’ absence and is therefore distinct from both.
The notion of a Counselor or Advocate or Comforter (paraklētos) is inherently personal. That implication is underlined by Jesus’ use of the adjective allos rather than heteros with respect to the Paraclete, indicating another counselor of the same nature, someone like Jesus.
His personhood becomes evident in Jesus’ description of his ministry: “The Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (14:26).
Jesus expands on the teaching ministry of the promised Holy Spirit: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come” (16:13–14). Here the Holy Spirit conveys not only remembrance of the past but foreknowledge of the future, a uniquely divine prerogative (Isa 41:21–24).
Moreover, “when he comes, he will convince the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment” (16:8), inherently personal activities. The Holy Spirit “will bear witness to me” (15:26) and “will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (16:14). We glimpse here the economic subordination of the Spirit to the Son, as of the Son to the Father.
In the Pauline correspondence, as well as the rest of the NT, the Holy Spirit is similarly presented as a divine person. Paul says that “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Rom 8:14; cf. Gal 4:6). Such a dyadic relation of bearing testimony is necessarily an interpersonal relation.
In a striking passage Paul writes, “The Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For what person knows a man’s thoughts except the spirit of the man which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Cor 2:10–11). Clearly this statement entails that the Holy Spirit is both personal and fully divine.
In fact, this statement might at first blush seem to imply that just as one’s own spirit is not personally distinct from oneself, so God’s Spirit is not personally distinct from God (the Father). But in Romans 8, in describing the intercessory ministry of the Holy Spirit on our behalf, Paul clearly differentiates the two:
“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Rom 8:26–27).
Here it is the Holy Spirit who acts as an intercessor between us and God the Father. It is the Father who knows the mind of the Spirit, rather than, as in 1 Corinthians, the Spirit who knows the mind of the Father. The Spirit takes our often misguided prayers and translates them into requests in accordance with God’s will, and God the Father, knowing the Spirit’s mind, answers our prayers appropriately. It is hard to avoid the implication, not only of the deity and personhood of the Holy Spirit, but of a diversity of persons within God.
It seems indisputable, then, that in the NT the Holy Spirit is taken to be both personal and divine, as divine as the Father and the Son. The only remaining question, then, is the one posed by Brown: is the Holy Spirit a distinct person from the Father and the Son? In places the lines of distinction between the persons can seem blurry. That raises the possibility that the Holy Spirit is personally identical with the Father or the Son. The second of these possibilities may be easily ruled out. As we have seen, the Holy Spirit is presented as standing in for Christ during his absence from this universe until the time of his parousia. In the economy of God’s salvific plan the Holy Spirit continues and extends Jesus’ ministry begun during his earthly lifetime and can therefore be denominated “the Spirit of Christ.” That role helps to explain the blurriness of the lines of personal distinction between Christ and the Holy Spirit. For example, Paul writes,
“But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Any one who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you. (Rom 8:9–11)
Notice how Paul moves from speaking of “the Spirit” to “the Spirit of God” to “the Spirit of Christ” to simply “Christ.” The Holy Spirit becomes so closely aligned with Christ that he can be spoken of simply as “Christ,” even though he is expressly said to be “the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead.” So while Paul believes that we Christians are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, he can also say, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20).
So could the Holy Spirit be, more plausibly, God the Father? This possibility is ruled out by the triadic formulae that pervade the NT, delineating exactly three divine persons.45
We may mention just a few of the more famous passages. For example, Matthew 28:19 includes a baptismal formula that names all three persons instead of just Jesus: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (eis to onoma tou patros kai tou hiou kai tou hagiou pneumatos).” There can be no doubt that in the thinking of Matthew’s community there are three persons listed here, as underlined by the repetition of the article, not merely two persons. By the same token it is unthinkable that there might have been a fourth person whom Matthew failed to mention.
Another well-known triadic formula is Paul’s doxology in 2 Corinthians 13:14: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” These are the three divine persons, and the only three divine persons, mentioned by Paul in his letters. If two of them were actually the same person, it would be gratuitous and highly misleading to mention three.
Elsewhere Paul mentions the same three persons. To the Thessalonians he wrote, “We are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God chose you from the beginning to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth” (2 Thess 2:13). To the Corinthians he wrote, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in every one” (1 Cor 12:4–6). Again, “It is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has commissioned us; he has put his seal upon us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee” (2 Cor 1:21–22). To the Romans he wrote, “I appeal to you, brethren, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf” (Rom 15:30). To the Galatians he wrote, “Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Gal 4:6).
Other well-known triadic formulae in the NT include, for example, Ephesians 2:18: “through him [Christ] we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.” Peter writes to those who are “chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 1:2). Jude exhorts his readers to “pray in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God; wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life” (Jude 20–21).
We have seen that in the Gospels the triadic pattern manifests itself at key moments in Jesus’ life, such as his virginal conception, his baptism, his temptation in the desert, and his announcement at Nazareth. The Gospel of John, more than any other NT book, stresses the fact that Jesus is God and that the Holy Spirit is a divine person whose functions are distinct from those of the Father and Son.
Given that we have independent scriptural warrant for the deity and personhood of the Holy Spirit as well as of the Son, these pervasive triadic formulae exclude any realistic possibility that the Holy Spirit and the Father are in fact the same person listed twice. This is underscored by the different properties and roles attributed to each. The Father, in particular, cannot be the Spirit of Christ, any more than the Father can be sent by the Father.
42. Brown, Divine Trinity, xvi.
43. See the thorough treatment by Kleinknecht et al., “πνευμα, πνευματικοϛ,” 332–451, esp. 338, 359.
44. For a historical case see Dunn, Jesus and the Spirit. Dunn argues that Jesus was a charismatic: “it is certain that Jesus believed himself to be empowered by the Spirit and thought of himself as God’s son. . . . If we spell out Jesus’ own religious experience, his experience of God, solely in terms of sonship, we misunderstand Jesus almost totally. Jesus’ experience was also of God as Spirit” (63, 89).
45. For a fuller discussion see Wainwright, Trinity in the New Testament, chapter 13.
Further Reading
William Craig & the Deity of Christ
Craig & the Deity of Christ Pt. 2