FILE: DOG18.WMV Q We also said that God is truly known for the Holy Spirit. Why do Christians say that the Holy Spirit is a person? DR. ROLAND ZIEGLER: To talk about the Holy Spirit as a person is a little bit more difficult than saying that the Father is a person or Jesus is a person. Well, when we call godfather, we don't have a problem with saying he's a person. Of course. We talk to Him. He talks to us. He is a Father to us. When we look at Jesus, we see Him as a man walking in Israel. Of course He is a person like we are persons. No difficulty with that. But if you look at the Holy Spirit, well, is He a person? The problem is, so to speak, that the Holy Spirit doesn't have a face. We see the Father's face on us. We see Christ's face. The face of a man. But what about the spirit? The spirit doesn't have this kind of face. If we look at the epiphanies, which are rather rare of the Holy Spirit as they are described in scripture, well, we see in Jesus' baptism the spirit appearing in the form of a dove. We see on Pentecost the spirit coming down in the likeness of flames. A dove, flames, that doesn't seem to be very person-like. That's rather thing like. That's the problem we have when we talk about the spirit as a person. From the epiphanies, it seems as if the spirit is rather a thing than a person. On the other hand, when we look at what the holy scripture says about the spirit, about what He does, then we see that we don't do justice to this witness of Holy Spirit when we talk about the spirit as a mere force. When we look at how spirit can be used or understood in reference to the Holy Spirit, we can distinguish three ways. First, we can say, well, this is just an analogy to man like we talk of man as a spirit, so God has a spirit. The spirit of God is, therefore, another way of talking about that God is a person. It is, so to speak, a part of God or an aspect of God. Another way to talk about the spirit would be that it is some kind of force. To talk about the spirit being poured out seems to suggest that spirit is poured out on the apostles on Pentecost. He is poured out in our hearts. So he's a kind of force that enables us to do things and gives us strength. A third way is to say that the spirit is a person -- that the spirit is hypothetically different from the Father and the Son. The third answer is, of course, the answer that was accepted by Christianity after debates ending in the definition of the council of Constantinople in 381 where the third article of the creed was enlarged. Before Constantinople, the creed only said, "And in the Holy Spirit." Period. Then between Nicea and Constantinople the 16 question came up, well, what about Him? Is He truly a person? Is He also true God? And the discussion ended in the affirm by saying, yes, He is the true God. He is the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life. What, if you look at the Biblical witness, therefore, speaks in favor of such an understanding that God, the Holy Spirit, is a person? Well, first if we say that the Holy Spirit is a spirit like the spirit of -- in the Father like the spirit in man, we have to see that the spirit can also be called the spirit of Christ. Also a view if the spirit is a part of God speaks against Jesus' statement in John 4 where he said that "God is spirit." God is not like being composed of body and soul but He is pure spirit that bespeaks His being. So when the Holy Spirit, therefore, is talked about, then that can't be the same as when we talk about man's spirit. Again it's the understanding that the Holy Spirit is a kind of a force, a kind of an energy that is handed out by God to enable man to do whatever He wants him to do, speaks that holy scripture. Also talks about the Holy Spirit as somebody who acts, who does things that only a person can do. Therefore, only the third way of speaking about the spirit, that the spirit is a person, can do justice to the Biblical witness. Because it can also include the more, if you want to call it, impersonal features of the spirit. Whereas an impersonal view of the spirit cannot include the personal features of the spirit. When we look, again, at what the spirit is, we have to consult what He does. The spirit will teach you at the time what you should say. That's what Jesus says to His disciples in Luke 12. The spirit will teach you. Now, a force can enable you to learn something or enable you to say something, but a force cannot teach you. That's something only persons can do. In the last discourse of Jesus with His disciples in John's gospel, we have several references to the Paraclete or the councilor or the comforter as the word is sometimes translated. Jesus says there about the spirit, first He calls Him the councilor. "And I will ask the Father and He will give you another councilor to be with you forever," He says, "But the councilor, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you." Another passage in the same context: "But when the councilor comes whom I will send to you from the Father, the spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, He will testify about me." And in the last passage, more attributes are ascribed to this councilor. "He will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment. He will guide you into all truth, for He will not speak on His own. He will speak only what He hears and He will tell you what is yet to come." 17 What we see from these different passages about the counselor is that the counselor will teach. He will remind the disciples of everything Jesus has said. He will testify about Christ. He will convict the world of guilt. He will guide in all truth because He will not speak on His own. All that shows us that here the councilor, the Paraclete, has personal features. Only a person can teach, speak, remind, convict. And therefore the conclusion from that is when we see that witness, we have to say the spirit is not merely a force. St. Paul writes in the 8th chapter of his letter to the Romans, "In the same way the spirit helps us in our weakness, we do not know what we ought to pray for, but the spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express." The spirit intercedes for us. He prays for us when we can't do that. So we see that there is this opposition of spirit to the Father. The spirit is really distinct from the Father. That's also the reason why we can't say that, oh, to put it really simply, the spirit of the Father is like I have a spirit, I have a mind. In Acts 5 we find the story of Ananias and Sapphira. Ananias and Sapphira, they sell a field but then give only a part of the money to the common budget of the first congregation, but lie about that and say they gave all money. And then Peter tells Ananias that he has lied to the Holy Spirit. You cannot lie to a force. You cannot lie to electricity. You only can lie to a person. Also then when Ananias then is struck dead and his wife Sapphira comes, he says to Sapphira, you have not lied to me but to God. So you have a parallelism between you have lied to the Holy Spirit and you have lied to God. So in conclusion, the Holy Spirit is distinct from the Father and the Son. He is not simply a force, but He is God acting. He is a person. The Holy Spirit is rather hidden in a way because of the work that the Holy Spirit does. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to remind the apostles of the words of Jesus so that they write it down which leads to the inspiration of scripture. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to bring people to faith in Christ. The Holy Spirit, so to speak, has not brought attention to Himself, but He draws people to Christ. That's why of the three persons of the trinity, He seems to be the most evasive or vague. But it is neither. It's just that in the work of God, again, He -- His work is to draw people to Christ. To create faith. Why is it important that the Holy Spirit is true God? It is important because it shows that our salvation is totally and wholly accomplished by God. It is not some kind of force or created power that gives us faith. It is God Himself who acts in us. So, to confess God as the Holy Spirit is part of the 18 confession that God has done everything to our salvation and that all of our salvation depends on the word of God and on Him only. (End of DOG18.WMV.)