Eryl Davies,
a Reformed Protestant and critic of the Church, wrote the following about the
Holy Spirit in in Latter-day Saint theology:
Mormons regard the Holy Spirit in impersonal terms,
frequently referring to him as ‘it’ . . .
(Eryl Davies, Truth Under Attack:
Cults and Contemporary Religions [Durham: Evangelical Press, 1990], 106)
Davies, to “prove”
that the Holy Spirit is a person, according to the Bible, quotes John 15:26 (cf.
14:26, 16:8, 13).
Firstly, it
should be noted that Latter-day Saints do believe that the Holy Spirit is a person and often refer to the Spirit as “him.”
While “it” is sometimes used of the Spirit, such comes from the KJV and other
translations, such as:
Likewise the Spirit
also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we
ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession
for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. (Rom 8:26)
That the Holy Spirit is a person in LDS theology can be seen in the
entry for Holy Spirit in
the Encyclopedia of Mormonism:
The Holy Spirit is a
term often used to refer to the Holy Ghost. In such cases the Holy Spirit is a
personage. Ghost is an Old English word meaning spirit. The scriptures use this
term to designate the third member of the Godhead (Alma 11:44) and to speak of
the Spirit's power to testify (Alma 7:16), to grant knowledge (Alma 5:46;
D&C 76:116), to persuade (Mosiah 3:19), to indicate remission of sins
(D&C 55:1), and to sanctify (Alma 5:54).
The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that the Holy Ghost is a spirit man, a
spirit son of God the Father . . . Joseph Smith also stated that an
"everlasting covenant was made between three personages before the
organization of this earth, and relates to their dispensation of things to men
on the earth; these personages are called God the first, the Creator; God the
second, the Redeemer; and God the third, the witness or Testator" (T[eachings of the]P[rophet]J[oseph]S[mith],
p. 190).
In the Book of Mormon, that the Spirit is a person is explicitly taught
in 1 Nephi 11. In vv. 1-11, for example, we read:
For it came to pass
after I had desired to know the things that my father had seen, and believing
that the Lord was able to make them known unto me, as I sat pondering in mine
heart I was caught away in the Spirit of the Lord, yea, into an exceedingly
high mountain, which I never had before seen, and upon which I never had before
set my foot. And the Spirit said unto me: Behold, what desirest thou? And I
said: I desire to behold the things which my father saw. And the Spirit said
unto me: Believest thou that thy father saw the tree of which he hath spoken?
And I said: Yea, thou knowest that I believe all the words of my father. And
when I had spoken these words, the Spirit cried with a loud voice, saying:
Hosanna to the Lord, the most high God; for he is God over all the earth, yea,
even above all. And blessed art thou, Nephi, because thou believest in the Son
of the most high God; wherefore, thou shalt behold the things which thou hast
desired. And behold this thing shall be given unto thee for a sign, that after
thou hast beheld the tree which bore the fruit which thy father tasted, thou
shalt also behold a man descending out of heaven, and him shall ye witness; and
after ye have witnessed him ye shall bear record that it is the Son of God. And
it came to pass that the Spirit said unto me: Look! And I looked and beheld a
tree; and it was like unto the tree which my father had seen; and the beauty
thereof was far beyond, yea, exceeding of all beauty; and the whiteness thereof
did exceed the whiteness of the driven snow. And it came to pass after I had
seen the tree, I said unto the Spirit: I behold thou hast shown unto me the
tree which is precious above all. And he said unto me: What desirest thou? And
I said unto him: To know the interpretation thereof-- for I spake unto him as a
man speaketh; for I beheld that he was in the form of a man; yet nevertheless,
I knew that it was the Spirit of the Lord; and he spake unto me as a man
speaketh with another.
The rest of the chapter contains further texts explicitly presenting the
Spirit as a person.
Another potent text is that of Alma 5:50-52:
Yea, thus saith the
Spirit: Repent, all ye ends of the earth, for the kingdom of heaven is soon at
hand; yea, the Son of God cometh in his glory, in his might, majesty, power,
and dominion. Yea, my beloved brethren, I say unto you, that the Spirit saith:
Behold the glory of the King of all the earth; and also the King of heaven
shall very soon shine forth among all the children of men. And also the Spirit
saith unto me, yea, crieth unto me with a mighty voice, saying: Go forth and
say unto this people-- Repent, for except ye repent ye can in nowise inherit
the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, the Spirit saith: Behold, the
ax is laid at the root of the tree; therefore every tree that bringeth not
forth good fruit shall be hewn down and cast into the fire, yea, a fire which
cannot be consumed, even an unquenchable fire. Behold, and remember, the Holy
One hath spoken it.
(Of course, I am sure that some will appeal to Lecture on Faith no. 5. Firstly, this was written before D&C 130:22, and was more than likely authored, not by Joseph Smith, but Sidney Rigdon, as shown by Noel B. Reynolds here. For more on the Lectures on Faith, see the resources here).
Notwithstanding, John 15:26 and other like-texts where the masculine pronoun
“he” is used of the Spirit (πνευμα) is not
meaningful biblical evidence that Holy Spirit is a person. Daniel Wallace, a
leading Greek grammarian and defender of Trinitarian orthodoxy, critiquing
fellow Trinitarians who endorsed the view that the personality of the Spirit is
grammaticized in John 14:26 and 15:6, wrote:
. . . . . . πνευμα is appositional to a masculine noun, rather than the subject of the
verb. The gender of εκεινος thus has nothing to do with the natural gender of
πνευμα. The antecedent of εκεινος, in each case, is παρακλητος, not πνευμα . .
. it should be evident that the masculine demonstrative pronoun, εκεινος,
stands in relation to ο παραλκητος, not to το πνευμα. In 14:26, the noun
clause--"the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name"--is in
apposition to ο παραλκητος. How do we know that το πνευμα is the appositive
rather than ο παραλκητος? Because it follows ο παραλκητος. Appositives function
routinely as a clarifying capacity and thus naturally follow the substantive
they are clarifying. The appositional clause here can therefore be regarded as
parenthetical: "The Counselor (the Holy Spirit whom [ο] the Father will
send in my name) will teach you all things . . ." Furthermore,
appositional clauses can normally be removed from a sentence without destroying
the structure of the sentence. In this case, the verse makes good sense as follows: "The Counselor will teach
you all things and will remind you all that I told you." The rules of
concord actually expect εκεινος
rather than εκεινο, since the true antecedent is παρακλητος. This, this verse
should be omitted from the roster of philological proofs of the Spirit's
personality.
In 15:26, the situation is similar: the
appositional clause headed by το πνευμα is parenthetical: "Whenever the
Counselor comes (the Spirit of truth who is coming from the Father), he will
testify concerning me." This appositional clause could be removed without
affecting the structure of the sentence: "Whenever the Counselor comes he
(εκεινος) will testify concerning me." Although Morris argues that πνευμα
is the antecedent of εκεινος, based on proximity, this is hardly an adequate
basis, both because ο παρακλητος agrees in gender with εκεινος and because
πνευμα is appositional rather than being the subject of the sentence. As Mayes
argues, "That a referent which is not in concord, but a few words nearer
in the text, should be chosen over a noun which agrees strictly and gives just
as good sense is nearly indefensible. Pronominal referents by no means have to
be the nearest noun . . . It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that theology
has unduly influenced (perhaps unconsciously) the grammatical analysis of this
verse (as well as the others involved)." If we applied the proximity
principle in John 6:71, the result would be that Jesus, not Judas, was the
Lord's betrayer (ουτος γαρ εμελλεν παραδιδοναι αυτον, εις εκ των δωδεκα
["for he was about to betray him,
one of the twelve"])! Further, the reason for the masculine pleonastic pronoun is that it is resumptive, and as such
it is intended to reach back to the masculine
noun, παραλκητος. Indeed, one of the major uses of icci.voc in John is to refer
back past the immediately preceding word, phrase, or clause to the true
antecedent. (Daniel B. Wallace, "Greek
Grammar and the Personality of the Holy Spirit," Bulletin for Biblical Research 13.1 [2003]:97-125, here, pp. 105,
106-8)
Wallace’s concluding statements are enlightening:
There is no text in the NT that clearly or even probably affirms the personality of the Holy Spirit through the route of Greek grammar. The basis for this doctrine must be on other grounds. This does not mean that in the NT the Spirit is a thing, any more than in the OT the Spirit ( רוּחַ —a feminine noun) is a female! Grammatical gender is just that: grammatical. The conventions of language do not necessarily correspond to reality . . . One implication of these considerations is this: There is often a tacit assumption by scholars that the Spirit's distinct personality was fully recognized in the early apostolic period. Too often, such a viewpoint is subconsciously filtered through Chalcedonian lenses. This certainly raises some questions that can be addressed here only in part: We are not arguing that the distinct personality and deity of the Spirit are foreign to the NT, but rather that there is progressive revelation within the NT, just as there is between the Testaments . . . In sum, I have sought to demonstrate in this paper that the grammatical basis for the Holy Spirit's personality is lacking in the NT, yet this is frequently, if not usually, the first line of defense of that doctrine by many evangelical writers. But if grammar cannot legitimately be used to support the Spirit's personality, then perhaps we need to reexamine the rest of our basis for this theological commitment. I am not denying the doctrine of the Trinity, of course, but I am arguing that we need to ground our beliefs on a more solid foundation. (Ibid., 122, 125)
Why is this so significant? We are told by Protestants that Sola and Tota Scriptura has to be embraced; if not, the so-called theological walls break down and all sorts of heresies will be embraced as true (they [rightfully] appeal to the Marian Dogmas within Catholicism as the consequence of accepting a false teaching authority). However, we are also told that the personality of the Holy Spirit, which is an integral part of the doctrine of the Trinity, is an essential belief one must hold to—if not, one is a heretic. However, using the framework of Sola and Tota Scriptura, as Wallace shows, there is no good biblical proof of the personality of the Spirit. Where does this leave the Trinitarian who holds to the doctrine of Sola Scriptura? They must reject the personality of the Spirit, and therefore, embrace a form of bi-theism, with the Spirit being the operational presence of the Father and/or the Son, not a third person or they must hold to the claim that the biblical authors were very, very sloppy, not enunciating clearly an essential doctrine for salvation (which would also be a rejection of the so-called perspicuity or clearness of the Bible), or alternatively, go down the route Wallace has in the past, and that the earliest New Testament authors did not believe the Spirit to be a person—Wallace appealed to 1 Cor 8;4-6 in an interview with former Jehovah’s Witnesses (accessible here) as proof Paul did not hold to the personality of the Spirit. Unitarian apologist, Jaco Van Zyl, hit the head on the nail when he wrote:
Wallace admits here what very few Trinitarians are willing to say, especially Dr James White (who argues for a fully developed Trinity doctrine as early as 36 C.E.), namely that Paul and the other NT writers of his time “did not understand the Trinity.” To him 1 Corinthians 8:6 gives an indication of a “primitive binitarian viewpoint.” These admissions are certainly not free from rather serious implications which will be discussed below . . .For Wallace to admit that NT writers did not understand the Trinity implies that later Fourth- and Fifth-Century Christians discerned and believed what “inspired” bible writers failed to believe. This argument is therefore no different from the claims made by the very ones Wallace and others are trying to help since the Jehovah’s Witnesses also proclaim that Jesus and the apostles didn’t know that Jesus would return in 1914 C.E., or that the first Christians did not know that the “great multitude” of Revelation 7:9 would be a second class of Christians gathered since 1935 with a different hope than the literal 144 000 anointed class of Revelation 14, etc.; there is absolutely no difference in argumentation. At least it can be safely said, considering Wallace’s admission, that the first Christians did not believe in the Trinity formulated in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries – that who and what God was to them was different from who God was to these first Christians. The implications of this admission are rather significant.
Ultimately, this route makes the apostle Paul and other early New Testament authors and believers heretics by the standards of modern Trinitarians, and are condemned under the same anathema the Judaizers were condemned with (Gal 1:6-9). Wallace and others are in an unenviable position.
This is not to deny that there are texts that can be used to support the personality of the Holy Spirit,
such as Acts 13:1-2, but they are no as explicit as many Trinitarians believe them to be, and such is very problematic to those who claim that one can only believe, at least to the position of a core doctrine/dogma, if it can only be found
explicitly, not merely
implicitly, in the biblical texts.
Fortunately, as Latter-day Saints reject the false doctrine of Sola Scriptura (in all its variations) (see
Not By Scripture Alone: A Latter-day Saint Refutation of Sola Scriptura), accepting, to the level of a defined doctrine if you will, the Holy Spirit as a
person, is not problematic at all.
