The objection
The Holy Spirit is poured out, given and received. People are filled with him. Such expressions fit a power or substance, not a divine person.
1. Imagery describes an effect, not material composition
In Acts 2,17–18, God announces through Joel the pouring out of his Spirit. Peter thereby explains prophetic speech and God's active presence among his people. The text does not say that the Spirit consists of a liquid. Deducing an impersonal substance from the image confuses the expression with its subject.
Christ, too, is to dwell in believers (Ephesians 3,17); they are to put him on (Galatians 3,27). No one concludes that Christ is a building's contents or an item of clothing. Images of receiving and being filled do not exclude a personal presence.
2. The one poured out acts himself
The same Luke who reports the pouring out has the Spirit speak in Acts 13,2: Barnabas and Saul are to be set apart for the work to which he has called them. In verse 4, they are sent out by the Spirit. Here the Spirit is not merely the effect of someone else's decision. He claims the work, calls his servants and sends them.
Paul makes the same connection clear concerning gifts: The one Spirit apportions to each as he wills (1. Corinthians 12,11). He is both the personal agent and the one whose activity fills the church. The images of the gift must be read together with these statements, not against them.[1]
3. Being a gift does not mean being an object
God's deepest gift is not something separable from him, but his own presence. The Son, too, can therefore be given (John 3,16) without thereby becoming a thing. Thomas precisely distinguishes being given from the nature of the one given: The relationship to the recipient does not make a divine person an inferior being.[2]
Correspondingly, the Spirit is not a part of God distributed in portions. Many believers receive the one Spirit. His presence is not spatially limited like that of a body. The diversity of his effects does not divide him into pieces.
4. Pentecost is a Trinitarian event
Acts 2,33 names the exalted Jesus, the Father and the promised Spirit. The Son receives the promise of the Spirit from the Father and pours out what the hearers perceive. The sending reveals an order of action; it proves no gradation in divine being. The context connects the gift of the Spirit precisely with Jesus' exaltation as Lord.
The inference “poured out, therefore impersonal” thus fails twice: It treats an image as a description of material substance and isolates it from the statements about the Spirit's own willing and acting.
5. Is “God's Spirit” merely God's possession or power?
An expression of belonging does not yet determine a kind of being. “God's Son” likewise denotes someone in a relationship to God, not an impersonal possession. In Romans 8,9 the same Spirit is called both God's Spirit and Christ's Spirit; Paul then speaks of Christ in believers. The expressions connect the Spirit's indwelling with the presence of God and Christ. They make him neither two different powers nor a thing separable from God.[3]
Personhood is not deduced from the genitive “God's” alone. It follows from the described knowing, willing and acting of that same Spirit. Prescribing a fundamentally impersonal meaning to possessive language would replace these clear statements with an unjustified grammatical rule.
Biblical texts in context
Sources and further study
- Robert L. Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian FaithSection on the deity and personhood of the Holy Spirit, pp. 313–315.
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiaeI, q. 38, a. 1: “Gift” as a designation of a divine person; especially the replies to the objections.
- Romans 8,9–11God's Spirit, Christ's Spirit and Christ's presence in believers within the same line of argument.