In this article, I wish to address the two main points of contention with the idea of the Trinitarian view of “the Holy Spirit.”
- The Omission of the Holy Spirit
When speaking of the mainstream view of the Trinity, it is believed that all three “persons” of the Godhead are co-equal. However, Scripture speaks out against this, placing a clear hierarchy between the Father and the Son (1 Corinthians 11:3, 1 Corinthians 15:27, John 14:28, John 8:54, etc.). Oddly, “the Holy Spirit” is never even mentioned in any clear verse giving it the position that the doctrine of the Trinity claims. What becomes evident with a thorough reading of Scripture is that if there was a third “person” in a triune God, then there are many verses that inexplicably leave him out. For example, 1 Corinthians 8:4-6 states, “Therefore, concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we all understand that ‘no idol in the world really exists,’ and that ‘there is no God but one.’ For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many gods and many lords), yet to us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we are for him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we are through him.” This verse is clear that there are only two beings: one God and one Lord; unexplainably leaving the third “person” of the trinity out. Additionally, there are many verses, usually in the greetings of the letters written to the churches, that speak of the Father and the Son, but no Holy Spirit (Romans 1:7, 1 Corinthians 1:3, Ephesians 1:2, Philippians 1:2, etc.). One such verse is 2 Peter 1:1-2, which reads, “Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God, and our Savior Jesus Christ: Grace and peace be multiplied to you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.” In these verses, Peter explains how we get our faith through the righteousness of God and of Jesus, and how knowing them will bring us grace and peace. Why is it not also mentioned that we get our faith from, and we need to know, the third person of the trinity here?
More so, Scripture teaches that anyone who continues in right doctrine has both the Father and the Son, but “the Holy Spirit” is omitted (2 John 1:9). Similarly, in 1 John 1:3, Christians are said to fellowship with the Father, Son, and each other with no mention of the “the Holy Spirit.” The Bible also says, “No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also” (1 John 2:23). Similarly, 1 John 2:22 says that a person who denies the Father and Son is an antichrist, but why is the Holy Spirit” not included as well? Most baffling is that in the everlasting city of Revelation 21 and 22, God and Jesus Christ are portrayed sitting on a throne but there is no throne for “the Holy Spirit” in the everlasting city, and in fact, there is no mention of “the Holy Spirit” at all in the everlasting city.
Something that should stand out in all of these records, and the many others that are similar but not mentioned above, is that Jesus never taught that there was a Trinity and never taught that there was a “person” in a triune God referred to as “the Holy Spirit.” Furthermore, he never corrected the theology of the people he was speaking to. Instead, he reinforced what his Jewish audiences already believed: that there was one God, who even Jesus called his “God” and his “Father” (John 20:17). One very good example of this is Mark 12:28-34, in which an expert in Old Testament law asked Jesus about the greatest commandment, and Jesus taught that there is one God.
2. The Pronouns of the Holy Spirit
I believe the most confusion about the holy spirit is from the inherent translation bias associated with the original Greek. In Greek, the same word is used for “he”, “she”, and “it”, so it is important to understand that when you see those pronouns in your Bible, they could correctly be translated as any of those. It is left up to the translator and how they understand the subject of the sentence as to which pronoun they pick. Meaning, if the translator believes that the holy spirit is a separate “person” in the trinity, they will translate those pronouns as “he” and then capitalize it, because in the doctrine of the Trinity, the holy spirit is God. In regards to this, it is important to note that the entire Bible was written in all capital letters, so to capitalize a word or not is similarly determined by the translator. Equally important, there is no punctuation in Biblical Greek, so many very important things are left up to the person translating the text. The fact that the term “Holy Spirit” is almost always capitalized and then referred to as “he” is certainly one of the reasons that most Christians believe that it refers to a third “Person” in a triune God. For example, almost every English version translates John 14:17 similarly to the ESV: “even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.” The ESV translators capitalize “Spirit” and use “he” and “him” because of their belief in the trinity (translation bias). The Greek word “spirit” is neutral and the text could also be translated as “the spirit of truth” (lower case, rather than capitalized) and paired with “which” and “it.” For example, the New American Bible reads, “…which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows it.” Logically then, when Yahweh is being referred to as “the Holy Spirit”, as in Matthew 12:32, capitalizing the “H” and “S” and using the English pronoun “He” is appropriate. However, when the subject under discussion is Yahweh’s gift to us when we become believers, “the holy spirit,” the “h” and “s” should be lower case, and all the pronouns referring to that spirit should be impersonal, such as “it” and “which.” Once again, the only way to tell if our English Bible should read “the Holy Spirit” and be paired with pronouns such as “he” and “whom,” or read “the holy spirit” and be paired with pronouns such as “it” and “which,” is knowing the subject and the context, of which the Greek text cannot tell us. Accordingly, when we see different translations of the Bible, it may not be that one is correctly translated and the other is not, but rather they are both accurate translations coming from a different translation bias.
