Daniel Wallace, a leading Greek grammarian and a
Reformed Protestant, has an insightful article entitled, "Greek Grammar
and the Personality of the Holy Spirit,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 13/1
(2003), pp. 97-125 (online here).
What is interesting is that, notwithstanding Wallace’s
Trinitarianism, he admits that the grammar of the New Testament does not
prove the personality of the Holy Spirit, although this is the most common
approach to proving the personality of the Spirit. I would recommend the entire
article (even though it is a bit technical if one does not know biblical
Greek), but some of 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.
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.
Fortunately, Latter-day Saints, not being bound under
the false doctrines of Sola and Tota Scriptura, embrace other authorities,
including D&C 130:22 which teaches the personality of the Holy Spirit.
Unlike Trinitarians who are Protestants, and as a result, do not privilege, for
instance, the Council of Constantinople (AD 381) as Catholicism does that
teaches the personality of the Holy Spirit, Latter-day Saints can consistently
affirm a belief on the Holy Spirit as a third person of the Godhead. This
should give our Evangelical critics some pause, as they are clearly in a
theological dilemma.
