Is the Lord Jesus the Holy Spirit?

[Paidion]

Hi Psimmond,

1. Why did Jesus have to ascend before his spirit could leave his body? Do we have reason to believe there was a change that occurred to him after ascension?

I don't think the critical point was His ascension, but rather His resurrection. Through His birth, He had become a real human being, 100% human. He could do no miracles; rather,the Father did the miracles THROUGH Him, just as He created the universe through the Son. So while Jesus was a human being, His personality was confined to His body. He said,"... I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the advocate (paraclete) will not come to you; but if I go, I will send it to you." (John 17:7) As I see it, after Jesus was resurrected, He could then send His personality anywhere in the universe. He "became a life-giving spirit." (1 Cor 15:45).

Perhaps someone will object to my translating "αυτον" as "it" rather than "him." This Greek word is masculine, not neuter. So how can I translate the word as "it"? In Greek the gender of a pronoun agrees with the gender of its antecedent. And the antecedant of "αυτον" is "παρακλητος" (paraclete) which is a masculine noun.

However, I have no problem with "I will send him to you" since the spirit of Jesus is personal, and IS, in fact, Jesus, and Jesus is a "him." Yet, as far as I know, there is nothing in the Greek language itself that constrains us to refer to the spirit of God as "him" rather than "it."

2. Are you aware of any books that go into this in more detail?

No, I am not aware of any. My view originates from my own reading of the New Testament, and of Justin Martyr's "Dialogue With Trypho."

[psimmond]

Paidion wrote: I don't think the critical point was His ascension, but rather His resurrection. Through His birth, He had become a real human being, 100% human. He could do no miracles; rather,the Father did the miracles THROUGH Him, just as He created the universe through the Son. So while Jesus was a human being, His personality was confined to His body. He said,"... I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the advocate (paraclete) will not come to you; but if I go, I will send it to you." (John 17:7) As I see it, after Jesus was resurrected, He could then send His personality anywhere in the universe. He "became a life-giving spirit." (1 Cor 15:45).

It seems to me that it was not his resurrection but his going to the Father that made it possible for the paraclete to come. It appears Jesus needed the ok of the Father before he could send his spirit. "Then I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever" (John 14:16).

[dizerner]

Paraclete is a description not an official title.. Christ said he'd send another paraclete, so obviously Christ saw himself as one too.

[psimmond]

dizerner is right that both Jesus and God's spirit are referred to as paracletes.

In the Old Testament, Yahweh sent his spirit upon individuals to empower them. God’s spirit would remain on them until a task was accomplished and then his spirit would depart, but God promised that the day would come when he would pour out his spirit on all humanity (Joel 2:28). In the gospels, we read about how God the father sent his spirit upon his son Jesus on the day Jesus was baptized to empower him for his ministry. And before Jesus returned to his father in heaven, he told his disciples that his father would send the promised spirit and the spirit would empower them and would remain with them.

Since Jesus and his father are one, and since Jesus asked his father to send his spirit, and since the father sent his spirit in Jesus’ name, it is right and fitting to refer to the spirit who indwells us as a result of our faith as both the spirit of God and the spirit of Christ. (Romans 8:9)

But I think it would be a mistake to say Jesus is God's spirit. It would actually be much easier in my opinion to make the argument that the Father is the spirit (or at least that the spirit always comes from the Father).

Gregory of Nyssa wrote:

The one (i.e. the Son) is directly from the First and the other (i.e., the Spirit) is through the one who is directly from the First (τὸ δὲ ἐκ τοῦ προσεχῶς ἐκ τοῦ πρώτου) with the result that the Only-begotten remains the Son and does not negate the Spirit's being from the Father since the middle position of the Son both protects His distinction as Only-begotten and does not exclude the Spirit from His natural relation to the Father.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filioque

[Paidion]

Hi Dizerner,

Paraclete is a description not an official title.. Christ said he'd send another paraclete, so obviously Christ saw himself as one too.

Yes, Jesus is called a paraclete (advocate) in 1 John 2:1. The word "αλλος" (another) means "another of the same kind," and not "a different one." The Greek word for the latter is "ετερος"(heteros). So Jesus is an advocate, and His spirit is another advocate of the same kind. This does not imply that His spirit it a different person. It is simply His spirit or personality that He can extend anywhere. The Father and He share the same spirit.

The phrase "the spirit of Jesus" is found in Acts 16:7, the phrase "the spirit of Jesus Christ" is found in Philippians 1:19, the phrase "the spirit of Christ" is found in Rom 8:9 and 1 Pet 1:11, the phrase "the spirit of your Father" is found in Matthew 10:20, and the phrase "the spirit of God" is found in eleven other places in the New Testament.

Sometimes "the spirit of God" is referenced when the spirit descended on Jesus at His baptism.

[Paidion]

Hi PSimmond,

But I think it would be a mistake to say Jesus is God's spirit.

Yet, Paul does exactly that. Does he not? In fact, he does so TWICE in the following passage.

But their minds [the minds of the Jews] were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord [still referring to Christ], the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Cor 3:14-18)

[psimmond]

Paidion,
How do you know "Lord" refers to Jesus here? At the start of the chapter (v3) he says it's the Spirit of the living God. And throughout the passage he calls the father, "God" and Jesus, "Christ." It's not clear to me that "Lord" refers to Jesus here. The subject in v3-5 is God, not Jesus, so the pronoun "he" in verses 6 should also be God (the father).

Edit: Verse 14 does transition to Christ and Paul is usually referring to Christ when he says "Lord," so verses 17-18 do support your idea, but I feel there are many more verses that seem to disprove the idea.

[Paidion]

Hi Psimmond,
The closest reference to "The Lord is the spirit" is to Christ in verse 14, and not to God or the Father.
Yes, I agree with what you say about verse 3 containing the phrase "the spirit of the living God" being the spirit of the Father. I quoted a number of verses to Dizerner, in which the expressions "the spirit of God" and "the spirit of Christ" etc. were used. In some sense, the Father and the Son dwell in heaven in a special way. We read of the Son sitting at the right hand of the Father. But they can extend their Persons anywhere in the universe, and especially into the hearts of the faithful. I think the Father and the Son share the same spirit, and that spirit is, for the want of a better word "composed" of the Father and the Son. And yet there is one spirit, because the Father and the Son are so totally united. On the other hand, sometimes the Father extends his Person alone, as at the baptism of Christ. So this is called "the spirit of God." And perhaps the Son extends His spirit alone, as in the following:

And when they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. (Acts 16:7)

I am not sure how a Trinitarian deals with the fact that both phrases "the spirit of God" and "the spirit of Jesus" appear in scripture. I am sure they don't think they are two different spirits, since the scriptures state unequivocally that the spirit is one. They believe in the spirit as a third divine Individual, and so I suppose they think of that third Individual as somehow being owned by both the Father and the Son.

[psimmond]

Paidion, if the spirit of God proceeds from the father (John 14:26, 15:26) and works through the son, then I think we can refer to the spirit as the spirit of God & the spirit of Christ. We know that God's spirit came upon Jesus when he was baptized. I wonder if power going out of Jesus when the bleeding woman touched his robe (or any of his other miracles) demonstrated on a small scale how God's spirit would be poured out on all humanity through his son after Jesus' ascension.

Also, going back to 2 Corinthians 3, I noticed that commentaries have many different views. Some question the traditional view and say since this passage was comparing two covenants and Moses and Jesus, "Lord" probably referred to the Father (normal OT usage), not the son. Verse 17 says "spirit of the Lord" (πνευμα κυριου). Paul only used this phrase one time but it is used repeatedly throughout the Old Testament to refer to Yahweh's spirit. Others suggest that "the lord is the spirit" probably means that in the new covenant, God reaches out to mankind through his spirit, not through written words (v3). In other words, in the New Covenant, Yahweh is experienced as the spirit.

James Dunn argues in his 1970 article "2 Corinthians 3:17: The Lord is the Spirit" that "the definite article with KÚrioj in v. 17a is anaphoric and becomes virtually a demonstrative: this Lord (i.e., the one spoken of in Ex. 34:34) is the Spirit. Paul is giving a Christian midrash on Exodus 34 and thus the Spirit is not to be identified with Jesus at all but with Yahweh. ‘Verse 18 is seen to take up and amplify v. 16: the glory comes from the Lord to whom Moses turned and that Lord is the Spirit." (I believe Geisler, Pinock, Wright, Witherington, Hurtado and several other well known scholars side with Dunn on this.)


I don't know, but I think these verses are open to several reasonable interpretations so I'd be leery about using them as a foundation for a doctrine equating Jesus with the Holy Spirit.

[dizerner]

Don't you guys see how many logical problems are solved simply by giving the Spirit its own personhood? I mean we also see Jesus and the Father sometimes seeming interchangeable as well.