The Holy Spirit

Another Advocate

The Old Testament word for spirit, ruach (רוּחַ), and the New Testament's pneuma (πνεῦμα) can both also mean wind or breath, and Scripture pictures the Spirit as wind, breath and fire. Yet the Spirit is not an impersonal force but a person, as Jesus' promise on the night before his death shows:

And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to be with you forever —

John 14:16

The word paraklētos (παράκλητος) means one called alongside to help, to plead a case and to comfort. Chrysostom saw two truths in the verse: "The word another, shows the distinct personality of the Spirit: the word Paraclete, His consubstantiality" Chrysostom. The Spirit "will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have told you" (John 14:26), and above all he points away from himself: "He will glorify Me" (John 16:14).

The Spirit is God. When Ananias lied to the Holy Spirit, Peter told him, "You have not lied to men, but to God!" (Acts 5:4), and Jesus commanded baptism "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19): one name, not three. The Spirit was hovering over the waters at creation (Genesis 1:2); today he gives new birth (regeneration), makes his home in believers (indwelling), opens the Scriptures to them (illumination), and gives the church its gifts and its fruit.

The church's confession

In the fourth century some who accepted the deity of the Son still taught that the Spirit was a creature. Basil the Great answered that since we are baptised into the name of the Father, the Son and the Spirit together, we must believe in all three together and glorify them together Basil, On the Holy Spirit. The Council of Constantinople in 381 enlarged the Nicene Creed with a confession of the Spirit. The text below is the form the Western churches have confessed:

And we believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.

The Nicene Creed

Where the traditions differ

The creed of 381 said that the Spirit proceeds ‘from the Father’; the words ‘and the Son’ were added later in the West, and the Orthodox churches do not accept the addition. That question belongs to the entry Filioque.

Among evangelicals, baptism in the Spirit is understood in more than one way. Reformed churches and many other evangelicals read "in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body" (1 Corinthians 12:13) as meaning that every believer receives Spirit baptism at conversion. Classical Pentecostal churches teach a baptism in the Spirit for power that follows conversion, with speaking in tongues as its initial evidence Assemblies of God, Statement of Fundamental Truths, and charismatic churches understand the experience more broadly (see the gifts of the Spirit). The Wesleyan and holiness traditions have spoken of a second work of grace after conversion, entire sanctification (Christian perfection). All confess the Spirit as the Lord who glorifies Christ and makes the church holy. See the lesson Who the Holy Spirit is and Who is the Holy Spirit?