6 points not in dispute · 3 positions on the one that is
The Holy Spirit
The hardest thing about the third person of the Trinity is that the word for him is also the ordinary word for wind and for breath, in both languages the Bible was written in. Translators have to choose one English word at every occurrence, and that choice is interpretation printed as though it were the text.
This page keeps three things apart. What the word means, which is not contested. What the New Testament says the Spirit does, which is also largely not contested and is worth seeing gathered in one place. And the live disagreement, over whether there is a second experience after conversion, with each position given its best case and its hardest question.
What the word means
First, it means breath and wind
Hebrew ruach and Greek pneuma both mean wind, breath, and spirit, and neither language separates the three into different words. A translator meeting the word has to decide which English word to print, and that decision is interpretation appearing on the page as though it were the text.
So the same word that hovers over the waters in Genesis 1 is the wind God sends over the earth to dry the flood, and the breath that goes out of a person when they die. The vision in Ezekiel plays on all three senses at once and is nearly untranslatable for that reason: the prophet speaks to the ruach, and the ruach comes into the slain, and they live.
Jesus tells Nicodemus that the wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound but do not know where it comes from or where it goes, and that so is everyone born of the Spirit. In Greek that is one word used twice, pneuma, and the sentence is built on the fact that it means both.
English cannot carry it. Every translation has to print wind in one half of the sentence and Spirit in the other, which turns a pun into a comparison and loses the reason the comparison works.
The same doubling is behind the scene where the risen Jesus breathes on the disciples and says receive the Holy Spirit. The verb John chooses there is the rare one the Greek Old Testament uses when God breathes into the man in Genesis 2, and it appears in the New Testament only here.
The Spirit in the Hebrew Bible is given for tasks and can be withdrawn. It rushes on Samson, comes on Saul and later departs from him, and is asked for rather than assumed in the psalm of : do not take your Holy Spirit from me.
It is also given to far fewer people than a modern reader expects, which is what makes Moses' outburst so pointed. Told that two men are prophesying in the camp, he says he wishes all the LORD's people were prophets and that the LORD would put his Spirit on them.
Joel is the text that answers him, promising an outpouring on all flesh, on sons and daughters, on servants both male and female. Peter quotes exactly that passage on the day of Pentecost and says this is that.
Every item here is agreed across Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant teaching. They are included because they tend to be the parts a reader has not been told, not because anyone disagrees.
The first person Scripture says is filled with the Spirit is a craftsman
Not a prophet, a priest or a king. Bezalel, who builds the , is filled with the Spirit of God in wisdom, understanding, knowledge and all kinds of workmanship, and the list that follows is trades: metalwork, stonecutting, carpentry, engraving. Three chapters earlier the men who make the priestly garments are described the same way, filled with the spirit of wisdom. Both are craftsmen. Joseph is called a man in whom is the Spirit of God earlier still, which is a different phrase and worth keeping distinct, but it does not change the pattern: the earliest people the Bible describes this way are an administrator and a workshop.
The pronoun question is a fact about grammar, not about gender
Ruach is grammatically feminine in Hebrew, pneuma is grammatically neuter in Greek, and spiritus is masculine in Latin. Each language uses whatever pronoun its own grammar requires, and none of that is a statement about the Spirit. Grammatical gender is a feature of nouns, not a claim about persons, the way a table is feminine in French. Arguments in either direction that rest on the pronoun alone are resting on the accident of which language the sentence is in.
Parakletos means one called alongside, and its ordinary use is a legal advocate, the person who stands with you and speaks for you. English versions render it Comforter, Helper, Advocate, Counselor, or leave it as Paraclete, and each choice foregrounds a different part of the word. The legal setting is not an outside guess: the surrounding chapters use the language of witness, testimony, conviction and judgment.
All four Gospels report the Spirit descending as a dove at the baptism, and not one of them says why a dove. The suggestions offered since are all inference: the bird of the flood and a , the hovering over the waters in Genesis 1, the offering of the poor in Leviticus, or simply gentleness. It is worth knowing that this is an image the text leaves as an image.
At Pentecost the Spirit comes and Peter then calls for repentance and baptism. In Samaria believers are baptized and receive the Spirit later through the apostles. In Caesarea the Spirit falls on Cornelius and his household while Peter is still speaking, before any baptism, and that is precisely the evidence Peter uses. In Ephesus disciples are baptized and then have hands laid on them. Any account of the Spirit and baptism has to reckon with the fact that Luke narrates the sequence four different ways.
The Spirit is grieved, lied to, blasphemed against, resisted. The Spirit speaks, sends, forbids, teaches, intercedes, decides. The council in Jerusalem writes it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us. This is the observation the doctrine of the Spirit's personhood was built from, over roughly three centuries, and it was settled at Constantinople in 381 with the clause that the Spirit is worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son.
No one says Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. Being born of the Spirit is how a person enters the kingdom in John 3, and Paul states flatly that anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. On this the traditions do not divide: the Spirit is not an optional upgrade for advanced Christians.
The Spirit is called a deposit, arrabon, which in ordinary Greek commerce is a down payment that both guarantees the rest and is the same kind of thing as the rest. Paul uses it three times. The related image is a seal, a mark of ownership, and the third is : the Spirit by whom we cry Abba, Father, bearing witness with our spirit that we are God's children.
The fruit of the Spirit is a single noun in the Greek, fruit rather than fruits, followed by nine items, which is generally read as one crop with nine features rather than a menu to pick from. It is also, notably, a list of character rather than of ability, and it is set against a list of works of the flesh in the same paragraph.
The word for this work is , and it is described as a process with setbacks rather than an event, which is why the same letters can tell people they are already holy and tell them to become what they are.
Four lists appear and no two match, which is usually taken to mean none of them is meant as a complete inventory. What they share is the stated purpose. Gifts are given for the common good, to build up the body, and the chapter on love sits deliberately in the middle of the longest discussion of them.
Whether the miraculous gifts continued past the apostolic age is one of the genuinely live disagreements, and it has its own entry rather than an answer here.
Romans 8 says the Spirit helps in our weakness because we do not know what to pray for as we ought, and intercedes with groanings too deep for words. It is one of the few places the New Testament addresses not knowing what to say, and its answer is not a technique.
Stands behind Scripture, and behind understanding it
Prophecy is described as men carried along by the Holy Spirit, and Hebrews introduces Old Testament quotations with as the Holy Spirit says. The same Spirit is then said to be needed on the reader's side, which is the point of the line that the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God.
How much that promise covers, and whether it makes teachers and tradition unnecessary, is exactly what the Scripture and tradition question is about.
Where Christians actually differ: baptism in the Spirit
Luke tells the story of the Spirit coming on people four times in Acts, and he tells it in a different order every time. At Pentecost the Spirit comes and Peter then calls the crowd to repent and be baptized. In Samaria people believe and are baptized, and the Spirit comes later when the apostles arrive. In Caesarea the Spirit falls on a Roman officer's household while Peter is still mid-sentence, before anyone is baptized at all. In Ephesus disciples are baptized and then have hands laid on them.
Paul, writing to Corinth, says something that sounds different in kind: in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body. Not some. All.
The question is how those fit together. If Paul is describing what happens to every Christian at the start, what are the episodes in Acts where believers plainly receive something later? And if Acts is describing a normal second stage, why does Paul use the language of all?
Common ground first
Everyone here holds that the Spirit is given to every Christian, that no one belongs to Christ without the Spirit, and that the Spirit's work is not an optional extra for advanced believers. Nobody in this argument thinks there are two classes of Christian in terms of standing before God. The disagreement is about whether there is a distinct, datable empowering after conversion, what to call it, and whether it has a standard sign.
A distinct second experience
Held by Classical Pentecostal denominations: Assemblies of God, Church of God in Christ, Foursquare, Apostolic Faith bodies, and the Wesleyan-Holiness churches they grew out of.
The New Testament describes an enduement of power that is distinct from and usually subsequent to being born again. Jesus' own disciples are the pattern: they are already believers, already sent, already breathed on in John 20, and they are still told to wait in Jerusalem until they are clothed with power from on high. Waiting for something implies not yet having it. In classical Pentecostal teaching, speaking in tongues is the initial physical evidence that it has happened, though the wider charismatic renewal generally holds the experience without insisting on that sign.
— Paul asks disciples whether they received the Spirit when they believed, which is only a sensible question if the two can come apart.
Its strength
It takes Acts at face value rather than harmonising it away. Luke does describe believers receiving the Spirit after believing, twice, and he does not treat those as irregularities needing explanation. The question Paul asks in Ephesus is the strongest single piece of evidence, because it presumes the possibility of a gap.
What it has to answer
Paul never uses the phrase for a second stage. The one time he says baptized in the Spirit he says all of us were, and he says it to a church he is rebuking, some of whom he calls worldly. If the experience were the mark of the empowered, that is the last congregation he would grant it to universally. And the episodes in Acts are transitional by design: Samaria and Caesarea are the gospel crossing ethnic boundaries for the first time, with apostles present precisely so the crossing is witnessed and accepted.
How it answers that
Paul and Luke are not using the same vocabulary for the same thing, and requiring them to is the error. Paul's phrase describes incorporation into the body; Luke's describes an outpouring for mission, and Luke is the one narrating the experience. On the transitional reading, the reply is that Ephesus is not a boundary crossing at all, it is a group of ordinary disciples a long way into the book, and Paul's question there is put in general terms rather than as a special case.
One baptism, at conversion
Held by Most Reformed, Baptist, Lutheran and conservative evangelical teaching, and the position of writers such as John Stott and, in a different key, D. A. Carson.
Baptism in the Spirit is initiation, not promotion. The seven New Testament uses of the phrase either predict Pentecost or describe entry into the body of Christ, and none of them commands anyone to seek it. What the New Testament does command repeatedly is to be filled with the Spirit, in a present continuous tense that means keep on being filled, and the same people in Acts are filled more than once. So the later experiences are real and are to be sought; they are simply not what baptism in the Spirit means.
— People already filled at Pentecost are filled again, which shows filling is the repeatable term.
Its strength
It is the only reading on which the phrase means one thing in every place it appears, and it takes seriously that the one apostle who writes doctrine about the Spirit at length never tells anyone to seek a second baptism. Given how much practical instruction Paul gives, an omission that size is hard to explain if the experience were normative.
What it has to answer
It makes Acts 8 and 19 into curiosities. If the Spirit is given automatically at faith, then a group of Samaritan believers went some period without the Spirit and Luke reports it without alarm, and Paul asked the Ephesians a question that on this view could only be answered one way. There is also a pastoral objection: the position is often held by people whose churches display little of the power Acts describes, which invites the charge that the is fitted to the experience rather than the other way round.
How it answers that
Samaria is answered by its own context. It is the first non-Jewish group to believe, in a community with a centuries-old from Jerusalem, and the delay until apostles arrive is what prevents two separate churches forming. Luke reports it without alarm because he is showing the unity being secured. On the pastoral charge, the reply is that a doctrine is not falsified by the dryness of the people holding it, and that the remedy the New Testament prescribes for dryness is to be filled, which this view actively urges.
Given in the sacraments of initiation
Held by Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox teaching, and in varying strengths Anglican and Lutheran sacramental theology. Catholic charismatic renewal describes a further release of what was already given.
Water baptism and the anointing that accompanies it are where the New Testament locates the giving of the Spirit, and the laying on of hands in Acts is the seed of confirmation rather than evidence of a two-stage Christianity. Peter's promise at Pentecost joins them in one sentence: repent and be baptized, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. In the Eastern churches follows baptism immediately, including for infants, so the two are not even separated in time.
— Anointed, sealed, and given the Spirit as a deposit. Sealing language underlies chrismation.
Its strength
It accounts for the laying on of hands in Acts as something the church kept doing rather than as an anomaly, and it has the longest continuous practice behind it. It also avoids making the Spirit's arrival depend on the intensity of an individual's experience, which is a real pastoral advantage for people who have never felt anything.
What it has to answer
Cornelius is the counter-case and it is a hard one. The Spirit falls on his household before baptism, before any laying on of hands, and Peter's argument is that the water cannot be refused to people who have already received the Spirit. That is the reverse of the sacramental order, and it is narrated as the decisive precedent for admitting .
How it answers that
Cornelius is exceptional and the text presents it that way, as God overruling to settle a question the church had not yet settled. The response to it is still baptism, immediately, which is the point: the extraordinary case is regularised by the ordinary means rather than replacing it. God is not bound by the , on this view, but the church is bound to them.
Where the popular ideas came from
The shy or self-effacing Spirit
The idea that the Spirit never draws attention to himself is usually built from one verse, that he will not speak on his own authority but will glorify Christ. It is a fair reading of that verse. It is worth noticing that the same books have the Spirit filling a room with a sound like a rushing wind and stopping Paul from entering a province, so the generalisation is doing more work than the single text supports.
The Spirit as a force or influence
Language like filled with, poured out, and a portion of the Spirit reads naturally as substance rather than person, and some groups have taken it that way, notably Jehovah's Witnesses and, in the fourth century, the group Basil wrote against. The mainstream answer has never been to deny that the imagery is there, but to hold that the personal verbs listed above cannot be accounted for by it. This is one of the few places where all three of , and Protestant Christianity give the same answer.
And the Son
The Nicene as agreed in 381 says the Spirit proceeds from the Father. The Western church later added and the Son, in Latin, and the East never accepted it, partly over the wording and substantially over the fact that it was added to a conciliar creed without a council. It is one of the two named causes of the split of 1054. The creeds article walks the clause in full.
Holy Ghost
Ghost is not a different word in the original. It is Old English gast, which meant spirit or breath long before it meant an apparition, and the King James Version uses Holy Ghost and Holy Spirit interchangeably for the same Greek. The drift in the English word, not a change in the text, is why most modern versions print Spirit throughout.
Carrying the disagreement well
Two things are worth separating before anyone argues. The first is whether a further experience of the Spirit after conversion happens, which is a question about what the New Testament describes. The second is what to call it, which is a question about vocabulary. A surprising amount of this disagreement is the second one wearing the clothes of the first, and people who would never share a label often describe remarkably similar experiences.
It is also worth noticing what nobody here argues. No one in this conversation holds that some Christians lack the Spirit, or that the Spirit is a reward for effort, or that the experience is the measure of a person's standing with God. The New Testament's own test of the Spirit's presence, given at length in the passage that sits in the middle of the longest discussion of gifts, is love.
Keep reading
Read the wind and Spirit wordplay in place at John 3, the valley of dry bones at Ezekiel 37, and Pentecost at Acts 2.
Whether the miraculous gifts continue is a separate question, at Spiritual gifts. The clause the East and West split over is walked in full in Creeds & Councils.
Every position on this page is held by Christians who love the Bible and have read it carefully. The texts are given so you can weigh them yourself.
