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Three Common Objections to the Personhood of the Holy Spirit

In my last post, I outlined a straightforward and concise argument for why Christians believe the Holy Spirit is a person. Namely, I demonstrated from Scripture that the Holy Spirit has a will, a mind, and emotions. Since these are the attributes of persons, not impersonal forces, it is better to understand the Holy Spirit as a person.

Let’s now turn to the three objections that were offered to me in response to my case.

The Holy Spirit language is a personification. My Witness guests did not attempt to deal with the specific texts that I presented; rather, they dismissed these verses as personifications. A personification is when personal qualities are attributed to something impersonal. They admitted that some passages appear to portray the Holy Spirit as a person, but said this is merely a literary device.

There are many problems with this response. First, it is a blanket assertion that ignores the specific context of the personhood passages. This response does not even attempt to honestly exegete each passage.

Second, it assumes what needs to be proved. When a Jehovah’s Witness comes to a straightforward personhood passage (e.g. 1 Cor. 12:11; Rom. 8:27; and Eph. 4:30), they assert that it must be a personification. But how do they know it’s a personification? Because they have already assumed the Holy Spirit is an impersonal force. This is reasoning in a circle. Jehovah’s Witnesses need to show that the Holy Spirit is an impersonal force before they can even begin talking about supposed personifications. But this is exactly what they cannot do.

Third, there are many instances that cannot be explained away by a personification. For example, what does it mean to grieve (Eph. 4:30), or to blaspheme (Matt. 12:32), or to lie to (Acts 5:3), a personified impersonal force? In addition, the Holy Spirit speaks to individuals at historical events. For example, in a meeting at the church at Antioch, the Holy Spirit says, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them” (Acts 13:2). This is the Holy Spirit using person pronouns of Himself. It appears the Spirit thought Himself to be a person, not a personification.

The Holy Spirit lacks a name. My Witness guests were adamant that if the Holy Spirit is a person, then He would have a name. They stated, “Since no name is mentioned, the Holy Spirit is not a person.”

This is a deeply fallacious argument. Just because the Holy Spirit is not given a personal name in the New Testament, that does not mean He isn’t a person. Spiritual beings are not usually named in the Bible, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t persons. For example, at the beginning of Jesus’ earthly ministry, Jesus heals a man with an unclean spirit (Luke 4:31-36). Notice that this demon is both unnamed and a person. Furthermore, spirits are routinely identified by a particular characteristic. This was an unclean spirit.

In the same way, the Holy Spirit is identified by His chief characteristic: holiness. If the Holy Spirit can’t be a person because we don’t know His personal name, then all the angels and demons in the Bible who are unnamed can’t be persons either.

The Holy Spirit fills people. My Witness guests offered one last argument. If people are filled with the Holy Spirit, then the Holy Spirit cannot be a person. “How can one person be filled with another person?” they asked. “It makes more sense to be filled with an impersonal force.”

Again, this argument is demonstrably false. As already discussed, undisputed spiritual persons, like unclean spirits, have the ability to enter into human persons. This doesn’t disqualify them as persons, so why would it disqualify the Holy Spirit?

Moreover, our personal God is said to fill things. If God’s presence can fill the temple (2 Chron. 5:14), or fill the whole earth (Num. 14:21), then why is it so hard to believe that the Holy Spirit could fill believers? In fact, Paul calls our bodies the “the temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 6:19).

These responses were very instructive. Rather than address explicit texts raised against their view, the Jehovah’s Witnesses I spoke to relied on circular reasoning and demonstrably false argumentation. The Watchtower position that the Holy Spirit is an impersonal force simply cannot be supported by the testimony of Scripture.

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.

Challenge Response: There’s a Contradiction at the Core of Christianity

Here's my response to this week's challenge:

Challenge Response: Christians Who Benefit from Science Are Hypocritical

Here's my response to this week's challenge:

 

Atheists Can't Have Their Cake and Eat It Too

The question of the so-called Canaanite “genocide” is a difficult one to answer. It's difficult to answer for a few reasons. First, there is no sound bite response. In fact, I have a 50-minute talk devoted to addressing this one subject, and still much more could be said. Second, any adequate response requires laying out the historical and theological context. However, many who raise the challenge are biblically illiterate and have no interest in even attempting to understand the context. Third, any rational response may not be emotionally satisfying. There is something deeply disturbing about these accounts, and the apologist can’t just wave a magic wand to make it go away. Even though a response may not be emotionally satisfying, that doesn’t mean it’s not a reasonable response to the challenge.

Rather than rehearse my response to this challenge, I want to make an observation about the challenge. Many atheists have cited the killing of the Canaanites in the Old Testament to charge God with being a genocidal monster. Christians have rightly pointed out that the conquest of the land of Canaan was an act of judgment on a very wicked society. In fact, the Canaanites engaged in idolatry, incest, temple prostitution, adultery, homosexuality, bestiality, child sacrifice, witchcraft, and sorcery (Lev. 18:20-30). For instance, the Canaanites worshiped the underworld god Molech. Molech was represented as an upright, bull-headed brass idol with a human body. The Canaanite people would heat the idol to hundreds of degrees and then place one of their children in its glowing hot arms. The child would burn to death. So this was judgment, not genocide.

Despite the horrors the Canaanites were committing, many atheists complain that God was immoral for stopping them. Yet, the most common challenge raised against the existence of God is the problem of evil. If God exists, why is there so much evil in the world? Why doesn’t God do something about the wickedness in the world? Why doesn’t God intervene?

At this point, there is a obvious inconsistency. They say, “God must not exist since He doesn’t intervene to stop wicked people.” But then when He does intervene in history to punish the wicked, they call Him a moral monster. The atheist cannot have it both ways. On the one hand, the atheist will complain about God because He is doesn’t intervene to stop evil in the world—the problem of evil. On the other hand, he complains about God because He intervenes to stop evil in the world—the killing of the Canaanites. I’m sorry, but you can’t have your cake and eat it too. 

Here is a short clip where I walk through this observation.

You can see the entire talk here. 

“Jesus Said You Shouldn’t Judge”

A while back, I posted the following comment on my Facebook Page:

Everyone—Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jew, New Ager, Atheist—needs to answer the same question: What makes humans valuable in the first place?

Normally, I don’t take the time to rehash a Facebook post, but the response I got was extremely characteristic of our culture and deserves some careful thinking. Under the circumstances, I thought it might be instructive to take a closer look at the retort and then walk through how I would respond.

The retort I got was:

The Buddhists already know. You’d know that if you research them before blindly judging them. You Christians are good at judging, so I wasn’t surprised. I think Jesus told you not to judge, or you’d be judged yourself.

It seems like a Christian can’t say almost anything without someone chiming in, “Jesus said you shouldn’t judge!” For this reason, I think it will be very beneficial to carefully think through how one should respond to this particular challenge.

First, notice that I didn’t say that Buddhism doesn’t have an answer to the question. I simply pointed out that everyone, not just the Christian, needs to answer the question. The commenter seems to assume something about me; namely that I don’t believe Buddhism can explain human value. Moreover, he believes that I’ve come to this conclusion without doing any research, and that I’m “blindly judging them.”

If you are an astute reader, you’ve probably already picked up on the hypocrisy riddled throughout this comment. Hasn’t this person done exactly what he accused me of doing? Isn't he blindly judging me without knowing anything about me? How does he know I haven’t done my homework on Buddhism? The truth is, it was just assumed.

So my first more general point is that the “judgment sword” cuts both ways. He cannot escape the charge. In fact, nobody can! Here is a little helpful question that I use whenever someone accuses me of judging. The first words off my lips are, “Why are you judging me?”

In this instance, the comment was dripping with judgment. The commenter seems to think it’s fine for him to judge me, but when Christians judge, it’s wrong! Why is it only okay for him, but not for me? It seems to me that there couldn’t be a clearer example of a hypocritical judgment. This brings me to my next, more specific, point.

Second, this person goes even further and makes the very common exegetical mistake that Jesus said we should never judge. He says, “I think Jesus told you not to judge, or you’d be judged yourself.”

Let me be very clear, Jesus never said not to judge. This isn’t my opinion. This isn’t up for debate. If words mean anything, Jesus couldn’t have said not to judge. Just read the text:

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:1-5)

This text is not prohibiting all judging; it’s prohibiting hypocritical and self-righteous judging. Read verse 5 carefully! Jesus says, “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”

Jesus is spelling out the steps to take to make a proper judgment. He is explaining to his audience how to make a proper judgment (“then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye”).

Jesus isn’t a solitary voice on this issue either. The Apostle Paul affirms Jesus’ word in his second letter to Timothy. He says, “Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage — with great patience and careful instruction” (2 Timothy 4:2).

Now just ask yourself, how does one “correct, rebuke, and encourage” without making judgments? It would be impossible.

The irony is that this commenter has unwittingly made Jesus and Paul’s point! The comment was a rebuke of my original comment, and thus a judgment. It turns out that this rebuke was both unfounded (because he didn’t really know my beliefs about Buddhism) and uninformed (because he misunderstands Jesus’ words taken in context). But it wasn’t just any judgment; it was a hypocritical and prideful judgment, which is exactly what Jesus was warning against.

So remember: Jesus never said not to judge. In fact, the command to judge is implicit in His words recorded in Matthew 7. However, we must not judge with a prideful or self-righteous heart. We must remain humble and self-reflective; never forgetting that we, too, are sinful and no better than anyone else.

Challenge Response: The Collection of Books in the Bible Changed Until the Printing Press

Here's my response to this week's challenge:

Does Christianity's Uneven Geographical Distribution Prove It's Not a Universal Truth?

How can Christianity be true for everyone if it hasn't reached certain parts of the globe?

Does the Bible Condone Genocide?

This is the final post in a four-part series titled Answering Gosptacles. The last gosptacle—obstacle of the Gospel—I look at is the alleged Canaanite genocide in the Old Testament. How could God command the complete destruction of the Canaanites—every man, woman, and child? This is not an easy question to answer, but I hope that this talk will give you a place to start.

If you missed the first three parts of the Answering Gosptacles series, then click here, here, and here.