IN STEP WITH THE SPIRIT
by Richard Burkard
When the Worldwide Church of God declared it was reviewing all its doctrines during the 1990's, it meant exactly that. The most stunning change for many was the "Sabbath is voluntary" announcement by Joseph W. Tkach in suburban Atlanta in December 1994. But another doctrinal change occurred in 1993, which went all the way to the top in church understanding - the top of religious order, in terms of the nature of God. Consider two statements by the late Pastor-General:
"As I have written before, we do not teach the doctrine of the Trinity." (Worldwide News, 8/25/92, p. 1)
"....What we began to find, after a short time, was that most of what we had written on the development and history of the Trinity doctrine was at best superficial and based on misunderstanding, and at worst, just plain false. Believe me, I did not expect that. I thought our published materials on the Trinity had been accurate, but I found that much, if not most, simply wasn't." (Worldwide News, 8/3/93, p. 6)
Herbert Armstrong rejected the concept of the trinity, saying the Father and the Son constituted the "family of God" with believers to become God's children eventually. The Holy Spirit was not considered God, and was not really considered an entity. It was the power or force of God at work. I heard a WCG minister during the 1980s compare it to power steering on a car -- as it did not steer the car for you, but provided extra strength and force to bring about the movement of the steering wheel you desired.
The official thinking of the WCG changed on that issue in 1993, as Joseph W. Tkach declared the Holy Spirit a "person" (based on the Greek word hypostasis) similar to the Father and the Son. In effect, the church said, God was triune -- "three in one." Spinoff groups of the WCG tend to dispute that, still saying the Holy Spirit is not a personal part of the Godhead. Which prompts the obvious question: which side is right? Or could both sides of the debate be wrong?
This was one of those issues I admittedly put on the "spiritual shelf" for years. Since salvation is dependant on the name of Jesus Christ, not the Holy Spirit (Acts 4:10-12), it was a mysterious area where I felt God would allow me to trust Him with whatever the right answer is. But when the United Church of God's magazine The Good News brought up the trinity is its "questions and answers" pages early in 2005, the time seemed right to examine this anew - hoping to settle my thinking, and perhaps help others wrestling with the topic.
This article will be built upon the anti-trinity arguments printed in the January-February and March-April 2005 issues. We'll also examine other concepts regarding the Holy Spirit offered by the WCG over the years, to see how accurate they are.
Questions and Answers
It's interesting first to note that The Good News spelled the word "Trinity" throughout its printed answers, with a capital T -- yet declared over and over God is not one. If He isn't, why capitalize the word as though He is? To avoid offending readers? But let's move beyond matters of writing style and usage, and comment on selected quotes from the articles:
JAN-FEB 2005, p. 29: "Consider this admission in The Oxford Companion to the Bible.... 'Likewise, the developed concept of three coequal partners in the Godhead found in later creedal formulations cannot be clearly detected within the confines of the [New Testament] canon....'"
NOR ARE OTHER THINGS. The Churches of God have claimed a "100-year period" will be provided as a "time of testing" for people raised in the second resurrection -- but there's no New Testament evidence to support that. And even UCG pastors admit the New Testament says nothing about celebrating the Feast of Trumpets in the fall, although the Old Testament does.
"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...."
SO WAS JESUS! As much as Church of God ministers tend to belittle John 3:16, it's still in the Bible as a direct quote of our Lord: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son...." Also, don't overlook the reference to "gifts of the Holy Spirit" in Hebrews 2:4.
"We are told that the Holy Spirit can be quenched (I Thessalonians 5:19)...."
CHECK OTHER TRANSLATIONS. UCG tends to use the New King James Version, but the New International Version puts the verse this way: "Do not put out the Spirit's fire...." This fire may or may not be literal. Football coaches and politicians in the United States (especially the South) like to talk about having a "fire in my belly" -- meaning they have a deep conviction or a passion about something. (And I suppose in some cases, they might have eaten too much dinner.)
"....and that it [Holy Spirit] can be poured out (Acts 2:17)."
IS THIS LITERAL? Psalm 62:8 urges believers to "pour out your hearts" to God -- but if we use common sense, we realize this does not mean conducting open-heart surgery to confess our sins.
(By the way, verses such as this one ought to put to shame the believers who claim they "take the Bible literally, word for word." This psalm was written in the era of King David, when people never did this in a physical sense.)
"The Holy Spirit must be stirred up within us (2 Timothy 1:6).... These are certainly not the attributes of a person."
COMPARE SIMILAR VERSES. The phrase "stirred up" here means "rekindle." The same phrase (with a different Greek root) also appears in II Peter 3:1: "....I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance." (KJV) Is this something people do physically - outside perhaps an old Three Stooges movie?
Consider also II Corinthians 4:16 in KJV: "....though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day." The second "man" is italicized, meaning it was added by translators to the text. Yet an inner renewal is described - something we might consider spiritual, implying a "spirit" of some sort is within.
"If God were a Trinity, surely the apostle Paul.... would have comprehended and taught this understanding."
PAUL'S LACKING ELSEWHERE, on other Biblical topics. Where will you find him reminding believers to keep the Feast of Trumpets? And outside a passing reference to a "better resurrection" in Hebrews 11:35 (assuming Paul wrote Hebrews, and that's open to question), Paul doesn't mention the concept of multiple resurrections the way John does in Revelation.
"Paul's standard greeting in all 13 epistles that bear his name.... is: 'Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.' Yet not once in these greetings does he mention the Holy Spirit."
CHECK THE ENDINGS. "May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." So ends the book of II Corinthians! (13:14) And what about Peter's greeting in his first epistle? It mentions "the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ...." (I Pet. 1:2)
"Paul.... makes no mention of the Holy Spirit as a divine person."
II CORINTHIANS 3:17! Both articles in The Good News never bring up this verse: "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." The KJV puts it, "the Lord is that Spirit" - and you have to go all the way back to verse 3 to find which Spirit that is: "the Spirit of the living God." The Contemporary English Version goes all the way to declare, "The Lord and the Spirit are one and the same...."
So if the magazine won't address this verse, how did the old WCG explain it? We pulled out the Ambassador College booklet Is God a Trinity? (George L. Johnson, 1973) -- and were stunned to discover while dozens of Bible verses are mentioned, II Corinthians 3:17 is not. Nor is it mentioned in the 2001 UCG booklet Who Is God?, which readers are asked to obtain for more information on this topic.
To be fair, the "WCG reformation" didn't focus much on this verse either. It was mentioned in the 8/17/93 Worldwide News, to refer to the Holy Spirit as "the will of the Father at work in the world." Perhaps that's because Bible commentators dispute what this verse actually means. Barnes' Notes from the 1880's contends "it does not mean absolutely and abstractly that the Lord Jesus was 'a Spirit....'" But John Calvin's Commentaries accepts "Christ is the Spirit" as a proper way to read the verse.
MAR-APR 2005, pp. 29-31: The first article clearly left some Good News readers unconvinced - so the entire "Questions & Answers" section of this issue is devoted to the trinity topic:
"Greek, like the Romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian, etc.) invokes a specific gender for every noun. Every object, animate or inanimate, is designated as either masculine, feminine or neuter."
CORRECT - and today's WCG probably would agree with this statement. In fact, WCG based its change in doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit in part on this: "These are questions of the grammar of the language, not questions of theology." (Worldwide News, 8/31/93, p. 3) But UCG seems to go on to make it a theological matter -- and perhaps a smokescreen for the real issue....
"There is 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."
CORRECT, BUT.... WCG agrees with UCG in the article cited above, noting: "....it is not grammatically correct to refer to the Holy Spirit as 'he,' because 'Spirit' is a neuter word, both in Greek and English."
But consider carefully what the 1993 "Personal from Joseph W. Tkach" goes on to say: "It is important to understand that God is neither male nor female." (I rediscovered this quote only as I prepared this article at my computer.) Let's respectfully ask some questions along this line:
1. Is God a "masculine" male? Churches of God have taught from the beginning that spirit beings have no gender, based on verses such as Matthew 22:30: "At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven." (Critics might argue this verse says nothing about reproduction, yet no other Bible passage definitively states angels do this.) Yet the Bible declares God a "Father" with human characteristics as far back as Psalm 68:5: "A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling."
2. If angels are "neuters" (what we'll call a being neither male nor female), what does that make Satan? As the fallen angel Lucifer (Rev. 12:7-9), the devil is a neuter as well. Yet the Bible describes Satan often with human characteristics, such as being able to devour (I Pet. 5:8, actually compared to a lion), throwing fiery darts (Eph. 6:16), and speaking to Eve as a serpent in Genesis 3. And in Greek, "devil" is a masculine word.
3. If God, His angels and the devil can be neuters with human characteristics, is it impossible for God to have a Holy Spirit with such characteristics? Since God Himself asks in the Bible, "Is anything too hard for me?" (Jer. 32:27/Gen. 18:14) - the only logical answer we can draw is NO. God CAN have a Holy Spirit that's more than a force or a power, carrying out His will!
"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...'"
WHICH CAN BE WHO -- and that odd-sounding phrase is not meant as a joke. We found a Greek-English Concordance (Smith, 1955) at a religious university's library to help sort this out.
The word translated "which" in these verses actually can be three different Greek words: ho, he and to for masculine, feminine and neuter forms (#3588 in the New Testament Strong's Concordance, #3639 in Smith's book). The little word appears as "which" 395 times in the New Testament - BUT it also appears as "whom" 262 times and "who" 84 times! So the word indeed is interchangeable.
Consider John 14:26 in the KJV: "But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name...." The words "which is" are in italics, meaning the translators added them from Greek - and then the Holy Ghost is called a whom.
"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...." (Prv. 1:20-21)
KEEP READING - and you'll see this in Proverbs 2:6: "For the Lord gives wisdom, and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding."
Bible literalists would understand this to mean God has a mouth. In fact, Herbert Armstrong spent two paragraphs in his 1985 book Mystery of the Ages arguing the Bible reveals God as human in appearance (pp. 46-47). But he never mentioned Psalm 91:4 - "He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge...." If we take this as literally as Proverbs 2:6, part of God must look like a bird! Does this disqualify Him from being "personified?"
Even in modern times, nonpersonal things are described in personal ways - from "screaming tires" at a raceway to sailors calling their boats "she." Our point here is that the use of such linguistic devices can go back and forth - and should not by itself rule out the Holy Spirit having personal characteristics.
"For example, in Matthew 1:20.... 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)."
INCORRECT ASSUMPTION. The KJV quotes an angel as telling the eventual husband of Mary: "that which is conceived in her is OF the Holy Ghost." The NASB agrees with this preposition, while the NIV, CEV and Moffatt translations have "FROM the Holy Spirit." Not one major translation has "by!" This is significant for two reasons:
1. It means the Holy Spirit did not "engender" Jesus inside Mary's womb, as the UCG booklet Jesus Christ: The Real Story also claims (2004 ed., p. 59). Consider Jesus's own words of rebuke in John 8:44: "Ye are of your father the devil..." Would we dare say Satan engendered those criticizing Pharisees?
The idea of the Holy Spirit engendering Jesus seems to come from Luke 1:35: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you...." But as one commentary notes, "overshadow is not a euphemism for 'beget'" (The New Bible Commentary: Revised, 1970 ed., p. 891)
2. It means Jesus Christ walked the earth as a human being. After all, didn't Jesus tell Nicodemus, "That which is born of the Spirit IS spirit"? (John 3:6, KJV) Herbert Armstrong and various WCG spinoff groups have contended for decades this verse and verse 8 show you can't see anyone "born of the Spirit." So if "of the Holy Ghost" means engendered by, Jesus would have been a spirit being -- or at least a 50-50 changeable spirit/human mix. But the New Testament does not present Jesus that way, before his crucifixion.
(Unless, of course, the COG explanation of John 3 is in error - and today's WCG would suggest it is.)
"Jesus likewise never spoke of the Holy Spirit as a divine third person."
NOR WAS GOD! The Son never called the Father a "person" anywhere in the New Testament.
"The Holy Spirit as a person is conspicuously absent throughout Christ's teaching."
LUKE 4:18 -- which quotes Jesus as saying, "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me.... He has sent me...." Depending on whether you emphasize "The Spirit" or "The Lord," either one could have done these things. There are also several passages in John which UCG dismisses as analogy, which could be seen as showing the Holy Spirit as a person (14:16-17; 15:26; 16:7-8).
"We should also consider that, in visions of God's throne recorded in the Bible, although the Father and Christ are seen, the Holy Spirit as a third person is completely absent. For example, Acts 7:55-56.... and Revelation 4-5...."
FOR GOOD REASON! Acts 7:55 says Stephen was "full of the Holy Spirit." The Spirit didn't have to be "up there" for Stephen - it was "down here" with him!
In Revelation 4:2, John was "in the Spirit" in his vision. CEV puts it, "the Spirit took control of me, and there in heaven I saw a throne...." It's as if the Holy Spirit was by John's side, as he looked toward the throne. And remember, this is a vision - so how much of it is literal?
But read on in the NIV for another perspective: "Before the throne, seven lamps were blazing. These are the seven spirits of God" - or as the margin notes it, "the sevenfold Spirit." (4:5) In the KJV, the phrase is "seven Spirits" with a capital S, as in Holy Spirit - so it would seem the Holy Spirit "sent out into all the earth" (5:6) might not be absent after all! (We'll leave it to you to investigate what each of those seven Spirits are.)
"Jesus is repeatedly mentioned as being at the right hand of God, but no one is mentioned as being at the Father's left hand."
INCORRECT. An Old Testament prophet named Micaiah once declared, "I saw the Lord sitting on his throne with all the host of heaven standing on his right and on his left." (II Chr. 18:18) Admittedly, Micaiah doesn't mention the Holy Spirit here - perhaps he saw that, perhaps not -- but he saw something.
"Nowhere are three divine persons pictured together in the Scriptures."
OTHER MINISTRIES DISAGREE. One radio ministry captured my attention on this in early 2005, by turning to Isaiah 48:16: "And now the Sovereign Lord has sent me, with his Spirit." In the KJV it's "the Lord God, and his Spirit."
One commentary makes an observation about who says these words: "It could be the prophet, but it is more meaningful if it anticipates the 'me' of 49:1.... in other words, the Servant in whom Jesus was to see Himself. It is a remarkable glimpse, from afar, of the Trinity." (N.B.C., p. 616) We should note the UCG "Bible Reading Program" on Isaiah never addressed this matter.
But perhaps another verse crossed your mind first regarding this UCG statement: "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." (Mt. 28:19) Church of God ministers traditionally have used these words in baptism ceremonies - but UCG calls this a "proper baptismal formula, not a description of the nature of God." (Who Is God?, 2001 ed., p. 50)(1)
The formula argument apparently is a historic one, because Bible commentaries address it. "The reference to the Trinity here may not be intended as a baptismal formula, but as a theological description of the meaning of the sacrament." (N.B.C., p. 850)(2)
"Even in the final book of the Bible (and the last to be written), the Holy Spirit as a divine person is completely absent from its pages."
HUH?!?! The Holy Spirit is described as speaking no fewer than nine times in Revelation -- including Jesus declaring "the Spirit says" to seven different church areas in chapters 2-3. While UCG dismisses this again as a literary device, we've shown the Holy Spirit can in fact speak.
"The book describes 'a new heaven and new earth' (Revelation 21:1).... The Holy Spirit as a separate person, however, is again absent...."
REVELATION 22:17! "The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come!'" My red-letter Bibles indicate Jesus Christ says verse 16, but not verse 17.
An Earnest Discussion
Let's move on to some other Church of God claims about the Holy Spirit, and whether they're accurate or not. For instance, does a believer only have part of the Holy Spirit now - or all of it?
This question stems from II Corinthians 1:22 in KJV, which says God "has also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts." (There's similar language later in II Corinthians 5:5.) Churches of God historically explained this as a "partial payment" to believers - that we must grow in the Holy Spirit, but we won't fully have it until we become spirit beings at Jesus's second coming.
But this explanation goes against the very logic of a payment plan. If you put an "earnest payment" down on a new car, do you only receive part of the car? Does a 20-percent down payment on a house entitle you to only one-fifth of the house? (If so, which part do you.... naahh, we'd better not go there.) Would your local car dealer or realtor be more generous and giving than God?
The NIV translation of this verse puts the concept much better. God "set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come." The Holy Spirit in entirety is within Christians -- and the event to come is "the day of the Lord Jesus" (v. 14), indicating His second coming.
Paul makes this more clear in Ephesians 1. "Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who (KJV "which") is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession...." (Eph. 1:13-14) That possession includes you, if you accept Jesus as your Savior.
The Spirit as a Weapon
Related to this concept is one which I fear has given some Church of God members a puffed-up "power trip" over the years. It's the idea that people have varying amounts or degrees of the Holy Spirit.
I know about this well, because I've personally endured it. One member (it could be a Pastor, church officer, spouse or bossy roommate) would claim to have more of the Spirit than I have. Therefore my reasoning on an issue was wrong, his was right, and he was the winner whose word must be heeded at risk of disobeying God. Far from being "another Comforter" (Jhn. 14:16, KJV), these members practically used the Holy Spirit as a billy club to get their way.
Jesus Christ obviously should be the Christian's standard -- "he whom God has sent.... For God gives not the Spirit by measure to him." (Jhn. 3:34, KJV) The King James shows "to him" is italicized, and added to the original text. So actually we can make this a generic statement, as the NIV does: "God gives the Spirit without limit." PERIOD.
Doing Spirit Math
But, you may be asking, what about a couple of times in the Old Testament when it seems the Holy Spirit was multiplied and divided? Let's conclude by considering those cases.
In II Kings 2:9 Elisha makes a request that even mentor Elijah considers difficult. "Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit." Did that mean an increase from one unit of Holy Spirit to two, or four to eight? Some Bible commentaries reach a different conclusion -- that this refers to inheritances. "Elisha is asking to be recognized as the firstborn or heir of Elijah in relation to the other sons of the prophets." (N.B.C., p. 349) This privilege concerning "double shares" is detailed in Deut. 21:15-17.
The opposite seems to occur in the wilderness, as the Lord says to Moses: "I will take of the Spirit that is on you and put the Spirit on them.... then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke with him, and he took of the Spirit that was on him and put the Spirit on the 70 elders." (Num. 11:17, 25) The Revised Standard Version says God took "some of the Spirit," implying some still was left in Moses after this 70-for-1 "Spirit split."
Admittedly, a few commentaries we checked conclude from this passage Moses did in fact have more of the Holy Spirit. But to be consistent with the other verses we've read, we lean toward the view that what happened here did not lessen the gift of the Holy Spirit which Moses had. (Henry's Commentary, vol. 1, 1939)(3)
Conclusions
"The Spirit of God is not something material, which is diminished by being divided," says the Keil-Delitzch Commentary on the Old Testament concerning Numbers 11, "but resembles a flame of fire (Acts 2:3), which does not decrease in intensity, but increases rather by extension."(4) This seems like a much better definition than the 1980's WCG statement we quoted at the beginning.
We've seen the Holy Spirit can have physical traits, just as God the Father and angels can have. And we've accepted the one verse anti-trinity writers in the Churches of God tend to jump over - much as mainstream Christian groups tend to jump over John 3:13, where Jesus says no one has ascended to heaven.
Remember the last words of that verse, II Cor. 3:17: "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." May we not be afraid to be free - and be willing to let the Holy Spirit "guide you into all truth." (Jhn. 16:13) Even the truth about exactly what the Holy Spirit is.
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© 2005 Richard Burkard, All Rights Reserved
1. Some denominations would ask why the formula isn't repeated anywhere else in the New Testament. The booklet itself goes on to quote Acts 2:38, "be baptized.... in the name of Jesus Christ...." The late Bishop S.C. Johnson built the entire "Apostolic Faith" movement on this doctrine; you can still hear his tapes on radio claiming even if the words of Matthew 28 are used during baptism, the baptism is false and "hell is their portion." This seems absurd to me, since it implies Jesus either didn't know what He was talking about, made a misleading statement or outright lied.
2. We are intentionally not using I John 5:7-8 in this discussion of the Holy Spirit, because there's a major dispute about whether parts of those passages are authentic and in original New Testament texts. But we'd point out verse 6, which mentions "the Spirit who testifies...."
3. Was this actually a symbolic show of Moses sharing responsibility with others? The CEV gives that impression, saying "the Lord took some authority from Moses." And several translations indicate after this one-time event, the prophesying by the elders stopped.
4. Vol. 1, III:70, 1983.