IN STEP WITH THE SPIRIT: AN ADDENDUM
by Richard Burkard
In 2005 we posted the article In Step With the Spirit, which challenged the traditional teaching by "Armstrongism" Church of God groups against a "trinity" of God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We noted several key Scriptures which support a triune understanding were overlooked, while inconsistent usage and explanations raised larger questions.
We used two magazine articles by the United Church of God as a basis for discussion. In 2011 UCG expanded its explanation into a detailed 87-page book, Is God a Trinity? Parts of the booklet are historic in nature, while other parts focus much more on Jesus than the controversy surrounding the Holy Spirit.
We wanted to know if UCG resolved any of the issues and verses left unanswered in its two-part 2005 Good News magazine explanation. So we used the booklet as a "Bible study aide" for several months, to borrow a UCG phrase. It resulted in enough notes for us to write a full point-by-point review, as we have with other UCG literature -- but much of that would have repeated what we posted earlier.
This addendum will be limited specifically to the points we mentioned originally, after examining the Good News articles. UCG didn't really revise or delete its earlier statements, choosing instead to add a lot of new content. But it turns out the study led to new and deeper understanding on our part, to respond to those statements....
January-February 2005 issue
PG. 55 (of the booklet): "The Holy Spirit is spoken of in many ways in the Bible that clearly demonstrate that it is not a divine person. For example, it is referred to as a gift...."
We mentioned originally that Jesus the "Son of Man" was God's greatest gift to humankind. Consider also this prayer from the King James Version of Nehemiah 9:27: "....Yet when they returned, and cried unto thee, thou heardest them from heaven; and according to thy manifold mercies thou gavest them saviours...." More than one? Finish the verse: "....who saved them out of the hand of their enemies." The NIV calls them "deliverers" - so God gave the Israelites people.
There's also the example of Hannah in the Old Testament, who prayed in a vow to God: "O Lord Almighty, if you will only look upon your servant's misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life...." (I Samuel 1:11)
Hannah asked for a human gift, who would be given back in service to God -- and the great Israelite leader Samuel turned out to be that person.
"....that it [Holy Spirit] can be poured out on people (Acts 2:17, 33)...."
We originally noted Psalm 62:8, about "pouring out your heart" to God. But let's head back to Hannah, who explained her quiet prayers by saying to a priest, "I have not been drinking wine or beer; I was pouring out my soul to the Lord." (I Samuel 1:15). The same phrasing appears in Psalm 42:4 and Job 30:16.
Souls which can die and be resurrected (Ezekiel 18:4/Revelation 20:4) are described as poured -- although I suspect UCG would reject this as a "literary device," instead of accepting it as a personal attribute.
"The Holy Spirit.... must be stirred up within us (2 Timothy 1:6).... These impersonal characteristics are certainly not attributes of a person or personal being!"
This is a strange statement in light of Acts 14:2. "But the Jews who refused to believe stirred up the Gentiles...." Acts 21:27 also notes a crowd of people which was "stirred up." We can understand this in an emotional sense -- but it still clearly shows a person can be stirred. (Or has UCG forgotten the "Stir to Action" speech in the old Worldwide Church of God/Grace Communion International Spokesman Club manual?)
PG. 57: "Paul's standard greeting in his letter to the churches, as well as individuals to whom he wrote, consistently mentions 'God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.' Yet in each of these greetings he never mentions the Holy Spirit!"
We noted originally the end of II Corinthians, which mentions Jesus Christ, God and the Holy Spirit (13:14). The 2011 UCG booklet explains that by saying all three are mentioned "only in connection with the 'fellowship of the Holy Spirit' (NIV) in which believers share -- not in any sort of theological statement on the nature of God.... God's Spirit is the unifying agent that brings us together.... Yet here, too, God's Spirit is not spoken of as a person" (pg. 59). Well, OK -- but the Father and Son are not called "people" in that verse, either.
The booklet actually adds this claim to its explanation of Paul's greetings not mentioning the Holy Spirit: "The same can also be said of Peter in the salutations of both his epistles." HUH?!?! Didn't we cite I Peter 1:2 in our original article to disprove this?
PG. 63 (sidebox) attempts to clarify this verse: "The middle of the verse says we are sanctified -- meaning 'set apart' -- through means of the Holy Spirit. This says nothing about personhood of the Spirit. Setting apart can be accomplished in various ways...."
That's true, so let's look at a couple of those ways. "For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband...." (I Corinthians 7:14, KJV) Paul writes people can sanctify each other in a marriage. And even better....
"For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be sanctified" - the words of Jesus in the flesh, in John 17:19. While UCG contends sanctification "does not require that the Holy Spirit be a person - only a source of power from God," the Biblical fact that people can sanctify other people doesn't exclude personhood for the Spirit, either.
March-April 2005 issue
PG. 59 (sidebox): "There is absolutely no theological of biblical justification for referring to the term 'Holy Spirit' with masculine pronouns, even in Greek. The Greek word pneuma, translated 'spirit'.... is a grammatically neuter word."
The UCG trinity booklet tries to clarify this earlier quote by adding: "Only if the parakletos or helper were known to be a person could the use of a gender-inflected pronoun justifiably be used in English. And the term parakletos certainly can refer to a person -- as it refers to Jesus Christ in 1 John 2:1. Yet the Holy Spirit is nowhere designated with personhood. So personal pronouns should not be substituted for it."
Yet UCG is inconsistent in applying its own rule. For instance: "Jesus observed that the Father Himself had revealed this wonderful to truth to Peter...." (pg. 43). The Father is given a personal pronoun -- yet the first half of the booklet emphasizes Jesus so much that it never proves how the Father can be considered a person deserving of "He."
"Another example is Matthew 10:20, where Jesus says: 'For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which [not who] speaketh in you.' Another is 1 Peter 1:11, which refers to 'the Spirit of Christ which [again, not who] was in them...'"
Our original article explained how "which" can mean "who" in the New Testament. To advance this farther, I went through Strong's Exhaustive Concordance and categorized every reference to "Spirit" and "Ghost" in the KJV. Did the texts depict those elements as things? "One," as in a person? Or something in between? While some of the references admittedly could be open to dispute, here was my final score:
SPIRIT - Thing: 5. Leaning toward a thing: 56. Leaning toward One: 61. One; 25.
GHOST - Thing: 0. Leaning toward a thing: 18. Leaning toward One: 45. One: 16.
So taking the Bible in full, I conclude the balance is tilted a bit toward the "person" side.
PG. 61: "In the languages of Bible times, nonpersonal things were sometimes described in personal ways.... in the book of Proverbs, wisdom is personified as calling aloud and crying out...." (Proverbs 1:20-21)
In addition to what we wrote earlier, we should note Jesus Christ is called "the wisdom of God" in I Corinthians 1:24. Compare that to "the spirit of the Lord.... the spirit of wisdom...." in Isaiah 11:2. Spirit is capitalized in the NIV and CEV, as if it refers to the Holy Spirit -- but it's not capitalized in the King James and Moffatt translations.
PG. 57: "In Matthew 1:20.... we read that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit. However, Jesus continually prayed to and addressed God the Father as His Father and not the Holy Spirit (Matthew 10:32-33; 11:25-27; 12:50)."
Our original article went into detail about that perilous use of the word "by." Beyond that, perhaps Jesus didn't pray to the Holy Spirit because He prayed in the Holy Spirit! The New Testament instructs believers to do that in Jude 20 ("Holy Ghost" in KJV).
PG. 59: "Jesus likewise never spoke of the Holy Spirit as a divine third person."
Yet Jesus said in John 4:24, "God is a Spirit." Church of God groups long have noted the Revised Standard Version removed the "a" - to make it "God is spirit." (So do NIV, NASB, NKJV and ESV.) But we quoted above from the King James, which has "is" italicized (as do NKJV, Young's Literal Translation and Darby) to denote it was added to the text - to make the sentence a rather awkward, "God a Spirit."
So we've found many of our earlier difficulties with UCG arguments about the nature of God remain. And our study actually found more complete evidence to back our objections. We could go farther (and will if anyone is interested), but we choose to stop there.
Lessons of History
We'll conclude this addendum on a historical note. The UCG booklet notes the trinity doctrine became part of mainstream church teaching with a declaration by the Council of Constantinople in 381 AD (pg. 21). The concept "isn't spelled out in the Bible.... wasn't formalized until three centuries after the time of Jesus Christ and the apostles, that was debated and argued for decades...." (pg. 24)
But hold on here. Before pointing fingers at the Roman Catholics and debunking the concept of "progressive revelation" of the Bible - haven't "Armstrongism" Church of God groups done the same thing?
Was the concept of "British Israelism" - of Ephraim and Manasseh being Great Britain and the United States -- "spelled out in the Bible" for the first-century church? How could it have been, if the U.S. did not declare its independence from Britain until 1776?
Further: could the "seven revivals" of the Holy Roman Empire - with "seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come" (Revelation 17:10) - have been "formalized" in its current COG interpretation before approximately 1940?
Critics of Herbert Armstrong can point to his own writings from the 1930s, in which he predicted the Nazi German "Third Reich" would conquer Britain and lead directly to Jesus's second coming. He wound up backtracking, then claiming the "one is" sixth revival referred to the Hitler-Mussolini Axis.
Today's Church of God groups love to point to lessons of history -- yet hardly any COG has brought up this internal history, during my decades of Sabbath-keeping. (Herbert Armstrong's autobiography certainly did not.) Perhaps today's leaders fear what would happen to their attendance and membership, if they point out any Armstrong flaws.
At least WCG/GCI had the intellectual honesty to admit the imperfections of its founder, for better or worse. May other COG's have the courage to examine the entire Bible on major doctrinal points, instead of simply quoting "the old paths" pet verses which seem plausible to them. Making revisions where necessary will assure a church is fulfilling the direction of II Peter 3:18: "....Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."
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