Why Believe the Holy Spirit Is a Person?

A week ago I had two friendly Jehovah’s Witnesses over for what turned out to be a two-hour conversation. You can read more about that experience here. One of the topics that my Witness guests kept coming back to was the Holy Spirit. Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe that the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Godhead. Instead, they believe that the Holy Spirit is an impersonal active force.

In our conversation, they were adamant about talking about the Holy Spirit. They repeatedly told me that the Holy Spirit is never referred to as a distinct person. This led me to ask a question, what attributes would distinguish a person from an impersonal force? Or, to ask the question a different way, does the Holy Spirit have the attributes of personhood?

There are three primary characteristics of personhood: will, mind, and emotions. It should be obvious that a force, like gravity or electromagnetism, cannot possess these properties. However, the New Testament demonstrates that the Holy Spirit has a will, a mind, and emotions. For simplicity, I walked through one example of each with my guests.

The Holy Spirit has a will. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12:11 that the Holy Spirit distributes spiritual gifts as He wills. Paul writes, “All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as He wills.” It is clear from the context that it is the Holy Spirit who makes the decision about what gift each respective Christian receives. An impersonal force does not have the ability to make decisions. This is an attribute of persons, not impersonal forces.

The Holy Spirit has a mind. In Romans 8, Paul describes how the Holy Spirit intercedes (or prays) for believers. He says, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And He who searches hearts 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). In verse 27, we are told that God the Father knows the mind of the Spirit. An impersonal force does not have a mind and, therefore, could not intercede for believers. This passage only makes sense if the Holy Spirit is a person.

The Holy Spirit has emotions. Probably the most conclusive passage on this point is Ephesians 4:30. Paul states, “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” How does one grieve an impersonal force? Grief is an emotion that is experienced by a person, not a force. Yet, Paul tells us explicitly that we cause the Holy Spirit to grieve when we commit sins.

After going through these three clear passages, I had one question. If the Holy Spirit has a will that decides (1 Cor. 12:11), a mind that thinks (Rom. 8:27), and emotions that feel (Eph. 4:30), how can anyone rationally claim the Holy Spirit is an impersonal force?

What happened next is very telling. Rather than deal with the argument that I presented, my Witness guests offered three challenges by way of response. In my next post, I will walk through their three responses that I received to this argument and how I responded.

If you want to learn more about witnessing to Jehovah’s Witnesses, read my Solid Ground article titled “Ready for the Knock on Your Door.” You may also want to watch this video on the same subject.

Comments

[Sam Harper]

The response I always get when I bring up the attributes of personhood and show that the Holy Spirit has them is that these are all personifications. Then they go on with their arguments for why they think the Holy Spirit is NOT a person.

[scbrownlhrm]

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/defenders-2-podcast/transcript/s7-1

"....Here, Jesus speaks of the Holy Spirit as a Counselor who is going to come and help to teach the disciples. It is very interesting that John actually violates Greek grammar in order to emphasis the personhood of the Holy Spirit. How does he do that? The word “spirit” in Greek is neuter – to pneuma. That doesn’t mean that the Holy Spirit is neutral, that he is not a person, any more than in German if you said das mädchen, “the girl”, means that girls are neuter. It is just that in Greek it has a neuter pronoun for the word “spirit.” But John uses the masculine pronoun for referring back to the Holy Spirit. Instead of saying “when the Spirit comes, it will guide you in all truth” he says “He will guide you.” He uses the masculine pronoun even though it has a neuter antecedent – which is actually violating grammar – in order to emphasis that we are talking here about a person who is going to be in us and with us and guiding us...."

[bartul]

I'm interested in yout explanation of Numbers 11:17,25 where it says that Jehovah will take 'of the spirit' or 'some of the spirit' from Moses ant put it upon the 70 elders.
Do you see it as an example where the 70 pieces of the Holy Spirit will become 70 individuals that are actually one individual - something like the trinity but this time not of 3 pieces but 70!?Of course, in that case you'll have to use the Bible tobackup such a presedant...
Or maybe you just choose to ignore it? - which you have all the right to do so

[scbrownlhrm]

Well..... Per the quote the Comforter is in / amid all of the members of Christ's Body. "He/God" comforts, leads, etc. But no one states that such is, say if a billion folks, a billion Gods. The definition of distinctions void of division (Triune) is meaning, and all meaning flows from God *downward*, from the Necessary into Contingency. Hence our number *can't* define His number.

[OddintheTruth]

Hey TIm,

You say this, "There are three primary characteristics of personhood: will, mind, and emotions". I don't disagree with you, but this is typically the approach of some form of Social Trinitarianism.

The typical approach is that in the Godhead the will belongs to the divine nature, not the three persons. So each person does not have their own will. What are your thoughts on this?