Reading Isaiah like an Early Christian (1): "The Lord has sent me and his Spirit" (Isaiah 48:16)

Introduction

Isaiah 48:16 in Context

Echoes of Isaiah 48:16 in the Gospel of John

Early Christian Interpretation of Isaiah 48:16

Conclusion

Introduction

This is the first part of a series of posts in which I hope to explore the Christological significance of certain passages in Isaiah.¹ Early Christians drew extensively on the Jewish Scriptures to form their understanding of the person and mission of Jesus Christ, and few books influenced them more in this respect than Isaiah. Some of this influence is attested through direct quotations of Isaiah in the New Testament. For example, all four Gospels quote from Isaiah 40:3 to explicate John the Baptist's role in the divine purpose.² However, the New Testament (NT) does not contain a verse-by-verse commentary on the Old Testament (OT); indeed, the NT only provides us with an Christological interpretation for a relatively small number of OT texts.

Should we conclude that only those OT texts that are explicitly quoted in the NT are legitimate Messianic texts? Or when we read that Jesus "interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures" (Luke 24:27) and that Apollos "powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the scriptures that the Messiah is Jesus" (Acts 18:28), should we suppose that these Scriptures are strictly those cited elsewhere in the NT? Of course not. The OT, when read with the light of Christ, is saturated with Christological significance, and explicit NT quotations only scratch the surface of this.

In this article, we will examine Isaiah 48:16, an OT text that is never quoted in the NT but that (it will be argued) has enormous Christological significance. But before we turn to this passage, we need to ask a question: how can we know that an OT text is Messianic if the NT doesn't say it is? Are we not then merely imposing our own subjective opinions onto the text? Well, not quite. There are at least three lines of evidence by which such a claim can be evaluated objectively. 

These are: (i) mysterious or enigmatic features in the text; (ii) literary or conceptual echoes of the text in the NT; (iii) the witness of early Christian writers. First, the text may contain enigmas that point the reader toward some deeper significance. An NT example of this phenomenon can be seen in Acts 8:26ff. The Ethiopian eunuch is puzzled about the identity of the Servant figure as he reads Isaiah 53. The mysterious character of the text becomes an opening for the Spirit, speaking through Philip, to reveal the text's Christological significance. Second, even if a text is not explicitly quoted in the NT, there may be allusions or faint echoes that suggest that it had influenced the NT writer's ideas about Christ. Third, early post-apostolic Christian literature testify to how the early Church interpreted OT texts, and in some instances these writers are likely reporting traditional interpretations handed down to them from previous generations of believers. Thus, the temporal and linguistic proximity of these writers to the NT make their witness far more weighty than your or my private opinion.

One last thing needs to be said before we turn to Isaiah 48:16. To assert that a particular OT passage has a Messianic application is not to assert that this is its only meaning. Au contraire, there are arguably very few texts in the Jewish Scriptures that refer at the grammatical-historical level of meaning to the eschatological Messiah—and arguably none that refer to Jesus of Nazareth!³ Rather, Christological meaning, if present, operates as sensus plenior—a subtler spiritual, moral, or eschatological sense that may have been lost on the human author but was intended by the Divine Author. This distinction between grammatical-historical and theological interpretation must be borne in mind or misunderstandings are inevitable.⁴ One cannot accept the NT as Sacred Scripture and yet insist that the grammatical-historical sense is the only valid meaning of the text, because this is not how the NT writers interpret the OT.⁵

Isaiah 48:16 in Context

Isaiah 48:16 occurs in the middle of an oracle in which Yahweh addresses Israel concerning the people's disobedience and his divine mercy and redemptive purpose. It is clear that Yahweh is speaking in the first person:

12 Listen to me, O Jacob, 

      and Israel, whom I called:
     I am He; I am the first,
     and I am the last. 

13 My hand laid the foundation of the earth,
    and my right hand spread out the heavens; 

    when I summon them, 

    they stand at attention.⁶

The first-person address continues in v. 15: "I, even I, have spoken and called him..." and again v. 17 opens with "Thus says Yahweh..." But in v. 16 we have this:

Draw near to me, hear this!
From the beginning I have not spoken in secret,
from the time it came to be I have been there.
And now the Lord Yahweh has sent me and his spirit.

Considering only the first three lines, there is nothing to suggest that the speaker is other than Yahweh, who has been speaking throughout this oracle. Yahweh has been making calls to "Hear" and "See" throughout the oracle (vv. 1, 6, 12, 14). Yahweh emphasises throughout this and other oracles in Isaiah 40-55 that he has existed and declared things from the beginning (vv. 3, 5, 12-14),⁷ and has not spoken in secret (45:19). Yet the speaker of the last line is obviously distinct from Yahweh, as he says he has been sent by Yahweh.

Who then is the speaker? Even according to the grammatical-historical sense, this question has proven puzzling for biblical scholars; there is no consensus as to its answer. John N. Oswalt summarises the problem and the scholarly positions:

The first three cola of the verse are clear enough, as has just been explained; but the last two constitute a problem that, in turn, raises problems about the first three. The difficulty is in identifying the speaker. It clearly cannot be God, yet there is no indication of a change. Does this mean that the speaker in the first part of the verse is, despite initial impressions, not God? Four basic positions have been taken. (1) The subject of the entire verse is the prophet... (2) the subject of the first three cola is God, and the subject of the last bicolon is the prophet... (3) the subject of the last bicolon is the Messiah... (4) the last bicolon is disarranged from some other place, either accidentally or on purpose...⁸

According to Claus Westermann, "Editors are unanimous" that the words of v. 16c ("But now, the Lord Yahweh has sent me and his spirit") "cannot possibly be explained in their present context"; he concludes that this fragment is a late addition to the text.⁹

The Septuagint (LXX) Greek translation of Isaiah, which dates to perhaps the second century B.C.,¹⁰ follows the Hebrew Masoretic Text (MT) closely.¹¹ A translation of the Septuagint Greek is:

Draw near to me, and hear these things! 

From the beginning I have not spoken in secret; 

when it happened I was there, 

and now the Lord has sent me and his spirit.¹²

The Septuagint text proves that, if the last line of Isaiah 48:16 MT is due to a textual disturbance, this disturbance was established by the second century B.C. and was thus almost certainly part of the Scriptures as known to Jesus and the earliest Christians. If it is a corruption, it is a canonical corruption and thus its significance for Christian theology cannot be dismissed.

One question that arises from the last line of Isaiah 48:16 is whether the Spirit is the subject or object: is it "the Lord and his Spirit sent me" or "the Lord sent me and his Spirit"? It happens that the syntax is ambiguous in both the Hebrew and the Greek, but as Oswalt notes, "While the former is grammatically possible, it is unlikely, both syntactically and theologically. See 11:2; 32:15; 44:3; 59:21; 61:1, where in all cases the Spirit is the one sent."¹³

Thus, to summarise, both the Hebrew and Greek versions of Isaiah 48:16, as they were known at the time of Jesus, contain an enigmatic line in the midst of speech by God where an unidentified speaker said that he and the Spirit have been sent by the Lord.

Echoes of Isaiah 48:16 in the Gospel of John

We have already mentioned that Isaiah 48:16 is never quoted directly in the NT. However, in this section I will argue that echoes of Isaiah 48:16 can be heard in the Gospel of John, and that these echoes indicate that this Evangelist interpreted the unidentified speaker—not only of the last line but of the entire verse—to be the preexistent Logos, the divine Son.

We will observe that there are echoes in John of all four lines of Isaiah 48:16.

Draw near to me and hear these things.

Just as the speaker of Isaiah 48:16 calls on Israel to "Draw near to me" (pros me in LXX), so Jesus in John calls on people to "come to me" (pros me, John 5:40; 6:35, 37, 44, 45, 65; 7:37). Likewise, just as the speaker of Isaiah 48:16 calls on Israel to "Hear this,"¹⁴ so in John it is by "hearing" Jesus that people may have eternal life (John 5:24, 25; 10:3, 16, 27; 18:37). Now someone may object that there is no striking parallel here since coming near to and hearing are generic, commonplace ideas. But let us go on.

From the beginning I have not spoken in secret.

The speaker of Isaiah 48:16 declares that he has spoken from the beginning and not in secret (ouk ap' archēs en kryphē elalēsa). At his trial, according to John, Jesus tells the high priest that "I have spoken openly to the world; I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all the Jews come together. I have said nothing in secret (kai en kryptō elalēsa ouden)" (John 18:20). Moreover, Jesus in John is one who has spoken from the beginning: he is the Word who was in the beginning (John 1:1), and when asked, "Who are you?" he gives the enigmatic reply, "What I have told you from the beginning" (John 8:25).¹⁵ Jesus also tells his disciples that he did not tell them something from the beginning (John 16:4), which implies that he did tell them other things.

When it happened I was there.

The speaker of Isaiah 48:16 declares, "At the time when it happened (or, came into existence), there I was."¹⁶ This statement very closely parallels the language about the Logos in John 1:1-3, though it is only apparent from the Greek. In Isaiah 48:16 LXX, the line is hēnika egeneto, ekei ēmēn. The verb egeneto is an aorist of ginomai, which has a broad range of meaning including "come into existence" and "happen."¹⁷ Notably, egeneto is used frequently in Genesis 1 LXX to describe the happenings of the creation story.

The verb ēmēn, meanwhile, is an imperfect of eimi, meaning "be." Now here is the fascinating bit: just as in Isaiah 48:16 the aorist egeneto is juxtaposed with an imperfect of eimi, so also in John 1:1-3. Here we read that the Word "was" (ēn, third-person imperfect of eimi) in the beginning with God and that all things "came to be" (egeneto) through him. The shift in verb and tense implies a contrast: while everything else came into existence or happened, the Word simply was. The same contrast is found in Isaiah 48:16: when it came into existence or happened, there I was. The imperfect probably has a durative sense in both cases: things happened, but the Logos/I was there throughout.¹⁸

There are other Johannine texts similar to this line from Isaiah 48:16 in John 1:15, 30,¹⁹ John 8:58,²⁰ and John 17:5,²¹ all of which contrast Jesus' primeval and continuous existence with the coming into being of some finite reality.

And now the Lord has sent me and his Spirit.

The theme of Jesus as the one sent by the Father is mentioned many times in the Gospel of John, and significantly, Jesus draws a parallel between the Father's sending of him and the sending of the Holy Spirit:

...the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me... the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. (John 14:24, 26) 

But now I am going to him who sent me... Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. (John 16:5, 7)

Isaiah 48:16 is, in fact, the only text in the entire OT that speaks of God sending two figures, one of whom is his Spirit. The order is also striking. In other texts, God sends his Spirit upon people, who then prophesy;²² but here the speaker is sent before the Spirit, just as the Son is in John.

To summarise, then, all four lines of Isaiah 48:16 are closely paralleled in the Fourth Gospel's depiction of Jesus. He is the one who calls people to come to him and hear him. He is the one who has not spoken in secret from the beginning. He is the one who "was" there when things "came to be." He is the one who is sent before God's Spirit. It is not a stretch to say that Isaiah 48:16 functions as a program statement for John's Christology, and has influenced John's view that Christ is both God and distinct from God (John 1:1, 18).

Early Christian Interpretation of Isaiah 48:16

The earliest extant quotations from Isaiah 48:16 in Christian literature are found in the writings of Origen. In his work Contra Celsum, the great Alexandrian exegete writes:

Since, however, it is a Jew who raises difficulties in the story of the Holy Spirit's descent in the form of a dove to Jesus, I would say to him: My good man, who is the speaker in Isaiah that says 'And now the Lord sent me and his spirit'? In this text although it is doubtful whether it means that the Father and the Holy Spirit sent Jesus or that the Father sent Christ and the Holy Spirit, it is the second interpretation which is right. After the Saviour had been sent, then the Holy Spirit was sent, in order that the prophet's saying might be fulfilled (1.46).²³ 

In a briefer comment in his Commentary on Matthew (13.32), Origen follows the same interpretation (the Father sent the Son and the Spirit). In his Commentary on John, however, he takes the opposite view on the "doubtful" issue mentioned above:

How is the Spirit honored, as it were, above the Christ in some Scriptures? In Isaias, Christ admits that he has not been sent by the Father alone, but also by the Holy Spirit (for he says, 'And now the Lord has sent me, and his Spirit')... And if our Lord says, according to Isaias, that he has been sent by the Father and the Spirit, it is possible even there to allege of the Spirit which sent the Christ, that he does not excel him in nature, but that the Savior was made less than him because of the plan of the incarnation of the Son of God which was taking place. (2.79, 81)²⁴

For Origen, therefore, it is clear that the speaker of Isaiah 48:16 is Christ. A few decades later, the same interpretation is attested in the writings of Eusebius of Caesarea, who comments on the passage both in his Eclogae Propheticae ("Prophetic Extracts") and in his Proof of the Gospel, both of which are ante-Nicene works.²⁵ Some of Eusebius' statements sound very Arian, and he would in fact defend Arius during the Arian controversy but ultimately accepted the creedal formula and anathemas of the Council of Nicaea.²⁶

No English-language translation of the Eclogae Propheticae has yet been published, but—with some assistance from Dr. Logan Williams, for which I am most grateful—I have attempted a translation of the relevant passage below:

‘Draw near to me, and hear these things: from the beginning I have not spoken in secret; when it came to be, I was there. And now the Lord, the Lord has sent me and his spirit.’²⁷ Seeing as the person who is speaking these things is one, now who else might be the Lord ‘who created heaven and established it, and made the earth firm,’²⁸ who says, ‘I am the first, and I am forever,’²⁹ and sets things in order, according to all those having interpreted the divine Scripture, ‘and now the Lord God has sent me, and his spirit,’ or [might it be] the sacred Word of God, the first God named after the uncreated beginning of all created things, about whom also it is written elsewhere, ‘he sent his word and healed them,’³⁰ for he is the one ‘through whom all things came into being,’³¹ even ‘things in heaven and things on earth, whether visible or invisible,’³² whom also the Lord God the Father sent—and with him also the Holy Spirit—so that he will steward the salvation of men? 

But it may be that what is stated is adapted toward the Jews, teaching that the other is the Lord who crafted all things with the God of all, by whom he confesses to having been sent, saying, ‘And now the Lord has sent me,’ and it may be he by whom the Father commanded nature, [saying] ‘Let there be light,’³³ at the creation of the world, and ‘Let there be some things and other things,’ and, ‘Let us make man according to our image,’³⁴ for this also in Psalms is inscribed, ‘He spoke and they came into being, he commanded and they were created.’³⁵ For it is evident that the one commanding and saying something commands and orders another besides himself. Indeed really, to examine each word of the passage does not belong to the present undertaking. (Eclogae Propheticae 4.23)³⁶

Eusebius later offers a similar interpretation in his Proof of the Gospel,³⁷ and still later in his Commentary on Isaiah (which post-dates the Council of Nicaea).³⁸

Thus, both extant Christian interpretations of Isaiah 48:16 from the ante-Nicene period hold that the speaker of this scriptural text is Christ, the pre-existent Word. One might object that two witnesses does not constitute overwhelming evidence. Perhaps not, but on the other hand there is zero evidence for any non-Christological interpretation of this text in the early Church.

Conclusion

We have seen that there are three lines of evidence supporting a Messianic interpretation of Isaiah 48:16: (i) the enigmatic character of this text in the original Hebrew; (ii) the echoes of this text in the Gospel of John; and (iii) the testimony of two early Church Fathers, namely Origen of Alexandria and Eusebius of Caesarea. If we accept that Christ is the speaker in the sensus plenior of this passage, what are the Christological implications? Firstly, the text implies Christ's pre-existence, not only because he is able to speak through the words of an OT prophet who prophesied long before his birth, but also because he expressly declares that he has been speaking from the beginning—meaning, in the Isaianic context, the beginning of creation. Secondly, the text implies Christ's divinity, because—apart from the last line about being sent—the speaker of this text claims prerogatives that deutero-Isaiah elsewhere says are exclusively God's. Thirdly, Christ does not make himself God in a Sabellian sense (as though he is the Father himself), but distinguishes himself from God and his Spirit. Just as the Gospel of John says, he is God but also sent by God. In fact, what we have here is an explicit mention of all three Trinitarian persons together, in the Old Testament!

• 1 See my previous article on Isaiah in John for some background on the Book of Isaiah and "deutero-Isaiah" in particular.
• 2 Matt. 3:3; Mark 1:3; Luke 3:4-6; John 1:23.
• 3 By grammatical-historical meaning, I mean the sense that the human author of the text intended to convey to his contemporary readers.
• 4 See the Introduction to my article on Genesis 1:26 for a case in point.
• 5 For two obvious examples, see Matthew's interpretation of Hosea 11:1 in Matthew 2:15 and Paul's interpretation of Deuteronomy 25:4 in 1 Corinthians 9:9-10.
• 6 Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise indicated, with the exception that "LORD" is substituted with Yahweh for linguistic clarity.
• 7 Cf. similar statements in Isaiah 40:21, 41:4, 41:26-27, 43:10-13, 45:18-19, 45:21, 46:9-10.
• 8 The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 40-66 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 278. Oswalt's own view is that the oddity results from "the close identity between God and the prophet"; the prophet switches temporarily from speaking Yahweh's words to speaking in his own person.
• 9 Isaiah 40-66: A Commentary (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox, 1969), 202-203.
• 10 Rodrigo F. De Sousa observes that the translator understands "Tarshish" in Isaiah 23 to refer to Carthage. This may indicate that the destruction of Carthage by the Romans in 146 B.C. was regarded as a fulfilment of this prophecy, in which case the translation must be no earlier than 146 ("Isaiah," in The Oxford Handbook of the Septuagint, ed. Alison Salvesen and Michael Timothy Law [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021], 249).
• 11 One difference is that, while אדני and יהוה are each usually rendered by kyrios in the Septuagint, אדני יהוה is here translated with a single kyrios rather than κύριος κύριος. Interestingly, the Greek text known to Eusebius of Caesarea (discussed below) does have a double kyrios, and Eusebius sees great theological significance in this, as highlighting the superiority of the Father's Lordship to the Word's: "And yet though the Word of God is Himself proclaimed divine by the word ‘Lord,’ He still calls One Higher and Greater His Father and Lord, using with beautiful reverence the word Lord twice in speaking of Him, so as to differentiate His title. For He says here, ‘The Lord, the Lord has sent me,’ as if the Almighty God were in a special sense first and true Lord both of His Only-begotten Word and of all begotten things after Him, in relation to which the Word of God has received dominion and power from the Father, as His true and Only-begotten Son, and therefore Himself holds the title of Lord in a secondary sense" (Proof of the Gospel 5.6, trans. W. J. Ferrar, The Proof of the Gospel, Being the Demonstratio Evangelica of Eusebius of Caesarea [2 vols.; London: SPCK, 1920], 1:251).
• 12 Moisés Silva, "Esaias," in New English Translation of the Septuagint, ed. Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G. Wright (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 861-62. The Greek text is as follows: προσαγάγετε πρός με καὶ ἀκούσατε ταῦτα· οὐκ ἀπʼ ἀρχῆς ἐν κρυφῇ ἐλάλησα· ἡνίκα ἐγένετο, ἐκεῖ ἤμην, καὶ νῦν κύριος ἀπέσταλκέ με καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα αὐτοῦ. (Septuaginta, ed. Joseph Ziegler [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983], vol. 14.)
• 13 Book of Isaiah, 274 n. 61.
• 14 In the MT the verb is שמע, used famously in Deuteronomy 6:4, the Shema.
• 15 This translation occurs in a footnote in the NRSV; the main translation is, "Why do I speak to you at all?" The Greek of Jesus' reply, tēn archēn ho ti kai lalō humin, is notoriously difficult; see my comments here, where I argued that "What I told you at the beginning" is a plausible translation.
• 16 The adverb hēnika has the sense "at the time when" (BDAG 439).
• 17 Here, it translates a form of היה, the Hebrew verb meaning "be" (but which, like ginomai, can also mean "happen"). Incidentally, the divine name Yahweh is etymologically related to the verb היה, as is evident from Exodus 3:14.
• 18 The Greek imperfect conveys the incompleteness of the action, and often indicates duration over time. For instance, in Job 29:5 LXX, Job reminisces about former days "when I was (ēmēn) very much a person of substance and my children were around me" (NETS).
• 19 Here, John the Baptist—who is first introduced in the Gospel with the verb egeneto in 1:6 (literally, "there came into existence a man")—says that the one coming after him has surpassed him, because "he was (ēn, imperfect) before me."
• 20 Here, Jesus declares, "Before Abraham was (genesthai, aorist infinitive), I am (eimi, present tense)." I have commented in more detail on this text here.
• 21 Here, Jesus petitions the Father to glorify him "with the glory that I had (eichon, imperfect) in your presence before the world existed (einai, present infinitive)."
• 22 See, e.g., Num. 11:29; 3 Kgdms 10:6; 2 Chr. 20:14-15; Isa. 59:21.
• 23 Trans. Henry Chadwick, Contra Celsum: Translated with an Introduction and Notes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 42.
• 24 Trans. Ronald E. Heine, Origen: Commentary on the Gospel according to John, Books 1-10 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1989), 114-15.
• 25 According to Aaron P. Johnson, the former work (which is the surviving part of Eusebius' General Elementary Introduction) was written before Eusebius became Bishop of Caesarea in 313, while the Proof of the Gospel was written during the period 314-324 ("Narrating the Council: Eusebius on Nicaea," in The Cambridge Companion to the Council of Nicaea, ed. Young Kim [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021], 203). W. J. Ferrar dates the Proof of the Gospel to 314-318, reasoning that some of theological language is too "unguarded" to have been written after the Arian controversy erupted c. 319 (The Proof of the Gospel, 1:xiii).
• 26 Eusebius has sometimes been accused of selling out on his theological convictions at the Council of Nicaea, but Johnson ("Narrating the Council") argues that the Council's language was in fact compatible with Eusebius' theology.
• 27 Isaiah 48:16. Eusebius actually quotes Isaiah 48:12-16 but for sake of brevity my translation begins from v. 16.
• 28 Isaiah 42:5.
• 29 Isaiah 48:12.
• 30 Psalm 106:20 LXX.
• 31 Cf. John 1:3, 10.
• 32 Colossians 1:16.
• 33 Genesis 1:3.
• 34 Genesis 1:26.
• 35 Psalm 32:9; 148:5 LXX.
• 36 Greek text in Thomas Gaisford, Eusebii Pamphili, Episcopi Caesariensis: Eclogae Propheticae [Oxonii: E Typographeo Academico, 1842], 205-206.
• 37 "See now how He that says, ‘I am the first, and I am the last. He that established the earth and the heaven,’ clearly confesses that He was sent by ‘the Lord, the Lord,’ calling the Father Lord twice, and you will have undeniable evidence of what we seek. And He says that He is first among beings begotten in all reverence since He allots Being, original, unbegotten, and beyond the first, to the Father. For the customary meaning of first in the sense of ‘first of a greater number,’ superior in honour and order, would not be applicable to the Father. For the Almighty God of course is not the first of created things, since the idea of Him does not admit of a beginning. He must be beyond and above the first, as Himself generating and establishing the First, and the Divine Word alone is to be called the First of all begotten things. So if we ask with reference to the words, ‘He spake and they were made, he commanded and they were created,’ to which of the begotten beings He gave the command to create, we see now clearly that it was given to Him, Who said, ‘My hand has laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand has made the heaven strong’: Who also confesses that He was sent by One greater than Himself, when He says: ‘Now the Lord, the Lord has sent me, and his Spirit.’ And it must be the Word of God Who said also, ‘By the word of the Lord were the heavens made firm,’ if we compare the Psalm. And yet though the Word of God is Himself proclaimed divine by the word ‘Lord,’ He still calls One Higher and Greater His Father and Lord, using with beautiful reverence the word Lord twice in speaking of Him, so as to differentiate His title. For He says here, ‘The Lord, the Lord has sent me,’ as if the Almighty God were in a special sense first and true Lord both of His Only-begotten Word and of all begotten things after Him, in relation to which the Word of God has received dominion and power from the Father, as His true and Only-begotten Son, and therefore Himself holds the title of Lord in a secondary sense" (Proof of the Gospel 5.6.1-7, trans. Ferrar, Proof of the Gospel, 1:250-51); "You have here the Lord sent and the Lord sending, that is to say the Father and God of the Universe, entitled Lord twice as was usual" (Proof of the Gospel 6.22, trans. Ferrar, Proof of the Gospel, 2:43-44).
• 38 Eusebius indicates that it is "the Word" who is speaking in this passage, and comments, "For when the Father planned these things, I was with him, and now the Lord himself, who is God over all, sent me his Spirit of holiness in order that I might accomplish once and for all the things that he has ordained." (Eusebius, Commentary on Isaiah 305-306, trans. Jonathan J. Armstrong, Eusebius of Caesarea: Commentary on Isaiah [Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2013], 239).

Biblical Unitarian Pneumatologies and the Danger of Bitheism

1. Introduction

2. Tuggy's Argument against the Trinity

3. Turning Tuggy's Argument against Unitarianism

4. Biblical Unitarian Pneumatologies

 4.1. The Holy Spirit is a divine power or energy

 4.2. The Holy Spirit is a property or aspect of God

 4.3. The Holy Spirit is a circumlocution for God the Father

 4.4. The Holy Spirit is a sub-divine, created thing

 4.5. Summary

5. A Biblical Critique of the Circumlocution and Creature Pneumatologies

 5.1. The Holy Spirit is distinct from the Father

 5.2. The Holy Spirit is divine

6. Conclusion

1. Introduction

Is biblical unitarianism bitheistic (believing in two gods)? Such a question, posed by a Trinitarian, may strike unitarians as audacious and absurd. "We accuse you of denying monotheism. How dare you accuse us of that." In this article, however, I am going to make an argument that the answer to this question is, "Yes." The argument is intended to be slightly tongue-in-cheek; its main purpose is to show that a particular unitarian logical argument against Trinitarianism is self-defeating. However, I also hope to persuade unitarians to think more carefully about their pneumatology—their doctrine of the Holy Spirit. 

I will not be arguing—though one could—that by worshipping and praying to a mere man (on which unitarians have historically disagreed amongst themselves) and ascribing the divine Name to him, unitarians are effectively making Jesus a second god. Instead, I will rely on the logic of Prof. Dale Tuggy, a philosopher who happens to be one of the world's leading biblical unitarian apologists. Tuggy has made a formal logical argument that the Trinity contradicts monotheism. I argue here that, if this argument is valid (which I deny it is), it also implies that unitarian theology contradicts monotheism, unless the Holy Spirit is defined in a way that does violence to the biblical witness.

Let me state up front that, unlike Tuggy, I am not a philosopher or an analytic theologian. So I will not be too formal or technical in my argument. If the reader spots flaws in my logic, please do let me know by leaving a comment.

2. Tuggy's Argument against the Trinity

In his research review essay, "Metaphysics and Logic of the Trinity," Tuggy briefly traces out the history of the Trinity as a philosophical theory (as he sees it).¹ Tuggy then constructs a formal logical argument against the Trinity and discusses various ways that recent analytic theologians have sought to counter it (unsuccessfully, in his view) and salvage the Trinity.

The full argument can be viewed here; the claims and justifications (without the logical and semi-logical translations) are reproduced below.

Claim	Justification
1. The Father is divine.	Premise
2. The Son is divine.	Premise
3. The Father and Son have differed.	Premise
4. Things which have differed are non-identical.	Premise
5. Therefore, Father and Son are non-identical.	3, 4
6. For any two (or “two”) things, they are the same god only if each is divine, and they are identical.	Premise
7. Therefore, Father and Son are not the same god.	5, 6
8. Therefore, there are at least two gods.	1, 2, 7
9. There is exactly one god.	Premise
10. But this is contradictory.	8, 9
11. Therefore, one or more of these is false: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9.	1-10

Tuggy observes that premises 1, 2, 3, and 9 are affirmed in Trinitarian dogma and argues that 4 and 6 follow from "Unaided human reason, quite apart from any theological concerns." If the argument is valid, it entails that the doctrine of the Trinity is polytheistic and thus contradicts monotheism (premise 9).² Tuggy maintains that it is valid, and that the best option—in light of biblical revelation—is to deny premise 2 (that the Son is divine) and adopt unitarianism. Tuggy uses the argument to describe various Trinity theories in terms of how they seek (unsuccessfully, in his view) to avoid the conclusion that the Trinity contradicts monotheism. This is usually done by denying one or more of the premises.

While I personally lack the philosophical expertise to formally argue the point, my intuition is that premises 4 and 6 are both invalid as applied to God, since they treat "Father" and "Son" as "things" and "god" as a "sort" of thing. This runs contrary to the classical Christian doctrine of God's simplicity, which posits that God is not composed of parts and implies that God is not merely the greatest of all "things" that exist, but is existence itself, and thus the ground and cause of all "things."

However, for purposes of this article I am going to assume arguendo the validity of Tuggy's argument. In the next section, we will alter the argument slightly by replacing the Son with the Holy Spirit and use the revised argument to conclude that unitarian doctrine also entails multiple gods (bitheism to be exact).

3. Turning Tuggy's Argument against Unitarianism

We revise Tuggy's argument simply by replacing all references to "the Son" (in 2, 3, 5, and 7) with "the Holy Spirit."

Claim	Justification
1. The Father is divine.	Premise
2'. The Holy Spirit is divine.	Premise
3'. The Father and Holy Spirit have differed.	Premise
4. Things which have differed are non-identical.	Premise
5'. Therefore, Father and Holy Spirit are non-identical.	3', 4
6. For any two (or “two”) things, they are the same god only if each is divine, and they are identical.	Premise
7'. Therefore, Father and Holy Spirit are not the same god.	5', 6
8. Therefore, there are at least two gods.	1, 2', 7'
9. There is exactly one god.	Premise
10. But this is contradictory.	8, 9
11. Therefore, one or more of these is false: 1, 2', 3', 4, 6, 9.	1-10

From a Trinitarian perspective, nothing has changed about the validity and implications of the argument (since, for Trinitarians, the Holy Spirit is another of what the Son is).³ From a unitarian perspective, however, the Holy Spirit is not another of what the Son is, but is something entirely different. This is precisely what makes the revised argument interesting, for while unitarians certainly deny the original premise 2 (that the Son is divine), it is not clear that they deny 2' (that the Holy Spirit is divine). Consequently, unless unitarians deny one of the other premises in the revised argument, the conclusion follows (according to Tuggy's logic) that unitarianism contradicts monotheism.

We will describe unitarian pneumatology in more detail below and discuss how unitarians might rescue monotheism from the jaws of Tuggy's argument, and at what cost in terms of interpreting the biblical witness. But first, let us pre-empt a shortcut that some unitarians may wish to take to avoid the issue. Perhaps a unitarian would deny premise 3', that the Father and the Holy Spirit have differed. But not so fast. Consider Tuggy's own justification for the original premise 3 (that the Father and Son have differed):

Premise 3 is implied by the New Testament and by any trinitarian theology. The Father sends his unique Son to save the world, but Jesus does not do that; Jesus doesn’t send his own Son into the world.

The same justification can be given for premise 3'. God (the Father) sends his Spirit,⁴ but the Holy Spirit does not send its Spirit. Therefore, the Father and the Holy Spirit have differed. By Tuggy's own logic, premise 3' stands.

4. Biblical Unitarian Pneumatologies

There does not seem to be any doctrinal consensus among biblical unitarians concerning what the Holy Spirit is. Indeed, the statement of belief that one must affirm to join the Unitarian Christian Alliance (a biblical unitarian network organisation) makes no mention of the Holy Spirit! Thus, while biblical unitarians (today, at least) seem to be united in what they deny about the Holy Spirit—that it is a Person—there seems to be no particular affirmation about the Holy Spirit that unites them.

Moreover, unitarian/Trinitarian polemic concerning the Holy Spirit tends to concentrate largely on the question of personhood (and, a functional level, on whether the Holy Spirit is active).⁵ This debate is over personhood is practically a red herring, as I have argued previously. This is partly because unitarian-Trinitarian debaters do not agree on (and often do not even mention) a definition of personhood,⁶ and partly because Trinitarian theologians do not claim that "Person" (or any other noun) completely captures what the Father, Son, and Spirit are in their distinctness.⁷ Whether or not the Holy Spirit is a "Person" is also irrelevant to Tuggy's logical argument and thus will not be discussed here.

Biblical unitarians, then, emphatically deny that the Holy Spirit is a person, but it is very difficult to pin down what biblical unitarians affirm about that the Holy Spirit. I will attempt to summarise four views that I have encountered, but I must stress that biblical unitarian writers often use vague language about the Holy Spirit and sometimes seem to vacillate between two or more of the views below in the same document.

4.1. The Holy Spirit is a divine power or energy

One of the most common definitions of the Holy Spirit that one finds in biblical unitarian literature describes it as God's power. For example, a website called Australian Christadelphians summarises Christadelphian beliefs about God thus: "There is only one eternal, immortal God. Jesus Christ is his only begotten son and the Holy Spirit is his power." Catechetical materials produced by the Christadelphian Bible Mission (CBM) state that "The Spirit of God is His power through which He makes and supports all things."⁸ The BBC's profile of Christadelphians states simply, "They believe that the Holy Spirit is the power of God." Christadelphian apologists James H. Broughton and Peter J. Southgate describe the Holy Spirit as "the Father's mind and power." They subsequently describe God's Spirit as "His agent," while qualifying that this agent is "not a separate person" and does not have "its own volition."⁹

This language is frustratingly vague. What kind of agent lacks volition (which seems to be necessary for agency)?¹⁰ And what exactly is meant by "his power"? Jesus Christ is also called the power of God (1 Cor. 1:24), but no one would accept "God's power" as an adequate definition of Jesus Christ. So what is this thing that is God's power? Is it something concrete like an energy or force, or something abstract like a property or attribute?

Some biblical unitarian writers tend more in the concrete direction. The Racovian Catechism of the Polish Brethren (originally published in 1605) offers such a view: "The Holy Spirit is a virtue or energy flowing from God to men, and communicated to them."¹¹ In our own time, Anthony Buzzard and Charles F. Hunting write, "In both Testaments 'Holy Spirit' describes the energy of God directed to creation and inspiration. It is God in action and an extension of His personality."¹² The 19th-century founders of the Christadelphian movement, John Thomas and Robert Roberts, describe the Spirit of God in concrete, quasi-physical terms as a kind of energy or matter, and Roberts seems to literally equate it with electricity.¹³ Graham Pearce characterises the Spirit of God as "power, as light from a source."¹⁴

Biblical unitarian writer Sean Finnegan, in an article entitled A Unitarian View of the Holy Spirit, sets out to "put forth a scriptural definition of the Holy Spirit." Having dismissed the idea that the Holy Spirit is "merely an impersonal power...like a battery pack," Finnegan describes "spirit of God" as a "literary device," "a way of referring to Yahweh in action" (which sounds like definition 4.3 below). Yet when he finally offers a "definition," it is more convoluted:

The holy spirit is God in action...as well as the abiding helper distributed under the auspices of the Father by the ascended Messiah... Thus one could say, 'the holy spirit is God,' as well as, 'the holy spirit is Christ,' even though it is technically neither, since they are in heaven, whereas the holy spirit is in God's people. The spirit is simply the way God and Christ are able to indwell and influence the church.

So the holy spirit is God in action, but one would technically be wrong to say "the holy spirit is God." The definition starts off plainly but ends with a non-definition, as a "way...to influence" simply raises the question, "So what is it?" Indeed, "way...to influence" sounds very much like an impersonal power, so it seems Finnegan has taken the reader by a circuitous route back to what he had rejected earlier.

If "Holy Spirit" names a concrete thing like an energy or force distinct from the Father, and this energy or force is divine (which appears to follow if it can be called "God in action" and "God's power"), then premises 2' and 3' hold firm. Therefore, this brand of unitarian pneumatology entails bitheism, if Tuggy's argument is valid.

4.2. The Holy Spirit is a property or aspect of God

Summarising his argument concerning the Holy Spirit in a debate with a Trinitarian, Christadelphian apologist Dave Burke writes,

In Week 4 we saw that the OT provides a consistent doctrine of the Spirit as the power of God manifesting His divine presence; yet not a divine person ('God the Holy Spirit') or the totality of God Himself. We saw that throughout the OT, God’s Holy Spirit is described as something that belongs to Him, like a property or a power. We saw that the NT follows this model exactly, without deviating in any way from OT teaching.

Again, we have some serious vagueness here. Is it like a property or a power, but in fact some unnamed third thing, or is it a property or a power? And if the latter, which of the two is it? (It is a recurring theme of biblical unitarian pneumatology that writers are unable to capture what the Holy Spirit is under a single term.)¹⁵ But, notably, Burke characterises the Holy Spirit as something that belongs to God but cannot be fully identified with him ("not...the totality of God Himself").

Is the Holy Spirit therefore something distinct from God? Or is the Holy Spirit a part of God (akin to his mind, or analogous to the spirit of man)?¹⁶ If the former, then premise 3' holds, and bitheism follows according to Tuggy's argument (unless the Spirit is sub-divine, on which see below). If the latter, then premise 3' may not hold (as the Spirit is then part of the Father, not different from him), but we are not out of the woods. This would be a denial of the classical doctrine of God's simplicity (which holds that God is not composed of parts). But if God (the Father) is a totality composed of parts, and his Spirit is one of the parts, there must be at least one other part that is not the Spirit. Take that part and replace "the Father" with it in premises 1, 3', 5', and 7' in the revised argument. We will still have two things (the Spirit and the Other Part) that differ and that are divine, so by Tuggy's argument we still have at least two gods.

4.3. The Holy Spirit is a circumlocution for God the Father

A third view denies that the term "Holy Spirit" names any distinct reality. "Holy Spirit" is simply a name of God or a circumlocution for God, a "way of speaking" that emphasises especially God's presence and activity in creation. This view is less commonly articulated by Christadelphians but is prevalent among other biblical unitarians such as those who maintain the 21st Century Reformation website and BiblicalUnitarian.com.

The 21st Century Reformation website states, "The spirit of God is not a separate individual from the Father. It is the Father extending himself to us by his mighty power" (emphasis added). In another article on the same site, J. Dan Gill states, under the heading "His Spirit is Him,"

The spirit of God is the Father himself at work... the spirit of God is not a separate agent or person of co-Deity. Rather, it is the Father in action. What has been done by the hand or spirit of God has literally been done by the Father himself.

An anonymous article "What about 'the Holy Spirit'?" on BiblicalUnitarian.com expresses a similar view:

Since 'the only true God' is 'the Father,' and since He is 'holy' and He is 'spirit,' He is also referred to in Scripture as 'the Holy Spirit.' ... The Giver is God, the only true God, the Father, the Holy Spirit... the Holy Spirit is not a person, existing independently of God; it is a way of speaking about God’s personally acting in history, or of the risen Christ’s personally acting in the life and witness of the Church. (emphasis added)

Another anonymous article on the same site, "What is the Holy Spirit?" adds that the term "Holy Spirit" has two distinct meanings in Scripture, which should actually be capitalised differently to distinguish them:

In the Bible, “HOLY SPIRIT” is primarily used in two very different ways: One way is to refer to God Himself, and the other way is referring to God’s nature that He gives to people. God is holy and is spirit, and “the Holy Spirit” (capital “H” and “S”) is one of the many “names,” or designations, for God (the one God, known as “Yahweh”). Also, however, God gives His holy spirit nature to people as a gift to spiritually empower them, and when HOLY SPIRIT is used that way it should be translated as “holy spirit” (lower case “h” and “s”)... “HOLY SPIRIT” is either a way of speaking about God, or the gift of God’s nature¹⁷

This view of the Holy Spirit looks a lot like Sabellianism or modalism, a heresy in the early church that reduced the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to modes of divine revelation like masks God would put on, rather than maintaining the real distinction between the three.¹⁸ However, it is not really modalism, because in this case God the Father is the reality and the Holy Spirit is neither the reality nor a mode. It is merely a "way of speaking about" the Father: a literary device; a figure of speech. In short, the Holy Spirit as such does not exist—does not name any distinct ontological reality—and for that reason this circumlocution pneumatology could be called apneumatism. It is not very far removed from the view held by some disciples in Ephesus who admitted that they were not aware "that there is a holy spirit" (Acts 19:2).

The circumlocution view does avoid the charge of bitheism under Tuggy's argument, since it denies premise 3' (that the Father and the Holy Spirit differ). The question is, at what cost in terms of fidelity to the biblical witness?

4.4. The Holy Spirit is a sub-divine, created thing

The notion that the Holy Spirit, like the Son, is a sub-divine creature or created thing would allow unitarians to escape Tuggy's argument by denying premise 2'. However, this does not seem to be a popular position among contemporary unitarians. It has had its proponents historically; it seems to have been popular among non-Trinitarians of the patristic age.¹⁹ A famous post-Reformation defender was the 17th-century English unitarian John Biddle. In his Confession of Faith, Biddle argues that Ephesians 4:4-6 implies that the Holy Spirit is created:

For when he saith, that there is one Spirit, he must mean either one created, or one uncreated Spirit, since (whatsoever some talk to the contrary) no other kind of Spirit is conceivable: Not one uncreated Spirit, for so there will be another uncreated Spirit besides God, (which is absurd) since this Spirit here is plainly and purposely distinguished from God; wherefore he meaneth one created Spirit²⁰

He proceeds to infer "that the holy Spirit is in the number of Angels... I intimate the Holy Spirit to be an Angel"²¹ To identify the Holy Spirit as an angel one must first accept his personhood, which Biddle did but most unitarians do not.²² However, it is in principle possible to view the Holy Spirit as a sub-divine energy or power (as in 4.1) that God creates or produces. Some contemporary unitarians seem to hint that the Holy Spirit is sub-divine without explicitly stating that it is created. Dave Burke, for instance, writes concerning the Farewell Discourse of John 14-16 that Jesus' language

does not ascribe any divine names or titles to the Holy Spirit, and it does not ascribe any uniquely divine properties, privileges or attributes to the Holy Spirit. Why doesn’t Jesus refer to the Holy Spirit as “God”, or even “Lord”?

Despite such language, one generally does not find unitarians who hold view 4.1 or 4.2 above explicitly calling the Holy Spirit sub-divine or denying that the Holy Spirit is divine. There are obvious logical reasons for this: how can "the Spirit of God" not be divine? How can God make himself present through a sub-divine force or energy? Or how can God have a sub-divine property or be composed of sub-divine parts?

4.5. Summary

Those who hold one of the first two views—that the Holy Spirit is a divine thing (such as a power or energy or property or aspect)—seem to affirm premises 2' and 3', and are therefore, by the logic of Tuggy's argument, bitheists. Those who hold one of the last two views—that the Holy Spirit is a circumlocution for God the Father, or a sub-divine created thing—escape the charge of bitheism, by denying premise 3' or 2', respectively. The third and fourth views are thus stronger theological positions (again, assuming the validity of Tuggy's argument). The question that we need to ask, however, is whether these two positions are tenable in light of the biblical witness. In the next section, we will argue briefly that they are not.

5. A Biblical Critique of the Circumlocution and Creature Pneumatologies

Before discussing the merits of views 4.3 and 4.4 in light of Scripture, let us observe that these two pneumatologies are in direct contradiction, as strongly as (say) Arianism and Sabellianism in Christology. Any argument that the Holy Spirit is simply a "way of speaking about" the Father will necessarily refute the idea that the Holy Spirit is sub-divine or created, and vice versa. In fact, however, the Scriptures overwhelmingly testify that the Holy Spirit is both distinct from the Father and divine.

5.1. The Holy Spirit is distinct from the Father

In the Hebrew Bible there is definite tension between the identification between God and his Spirit and the distinction between God and his Spirit. Mehrdad Fatehi summarises well:

The ruach Yahweh in the OT is a relational concept referring to Yahweh in his active relation to his creation and his people. This has three important corollaries: 1) The Spirit does not refer primarily to Yahweh as he is in himself or to his inner being or personality, but to Yahweh as he communicates himself, i.e. his power, his life, his wisdom, his will, or his presence, to the world. 2) Nevertheless, the Spirit of Yahweh is never regarded as an entity distinct or separable from Yahweh. It rather represents Yahweh himself in his action towards the world. 3) Yahweh though is not reduced to his ruach. The identification between Yahweh and his Spirit is always dynamic. Yahweh is always greater than his revelatory or redemptive act through his Spirit.²³

There is an obvious tension here: the Spirit is Yahweh himself but in a dynamic relation that cannot be reduced to simple identity as in Yahweh = ruach Yahweh. The tension means that the Spirit cannot be reduced to a sub-divine entity separate from God (pace view 4.4 above) but also that it cannot be reduced to a circumlocution for God (pace view 4.3). Preserving this tension and avoiding reductionism is one of the advantages of Trinitarian theology. But I digress.

One of the most intriguing references to the Spirit in the Hebrew Bible occurs in Isaiah 48:16. Here, between two oracles spoken by God in the first person ("Thus says Yahweh...") is sandwiched a little speech by a mysterious third party:

Draw near to me, hear this!

From the beginning I have not spoken in secret,

from the time it came to be I have been there.

And now the Lord God has sent me and his spirit. (NRSV)

This verse has so vexed scholars that some regard part or all of the verse as a late gloss, or propose various emendations of the text.²⁴ If we interpret as it stands (as the Church Fathers did, unsurprisingly in Trinitarian fashion),²⁵ we have a quasi-divine figure who uses language just like Yahweh has been using throughout deutero-Isaiah about having existed and spoken from the beginning,²⁶ and yet who distinguishes himself from God as having been sent by him. Most intriguing for our purposes is that the quasi-divine speaker groups himself together with the Spirit as having been sent by God. If the Spirit is merely a circumlocution for God, we apparently have in this passage two circumlocutions for God—one of them unnamed—who are distinguished from God as having been sent by him!

Pursuant to the idea expressed in Isaiah 48:16, in the New Testament the Holy Spirit is re-revealed as a figure (whether you choose to call it a person or a thing) analogous to the Son of God. Just as the Father sent the Son, so he will sent "another Advocate" (allos paraklētos, John 14:16) who, like Jesus, will not speak on his own, but what he hears from the Father (John 16:13; cp. 5:30; 7:17). Since biblical unitarians emphatically affirm that the Son is distinct from the Father—indeed, Tuggy used precisely such "sending" language as proof of this—they should have no difficulty acknowledging that the Spirit is likewise distinct from the Father. And if this were not enough, we have numerous passages where the Holy Spirit is listed alongside the Father and the Son.²⁷ How can we read "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 28:19) and conclude that the Son is really distinguished from the Father but the Holy Spirit is not? Or how can the Spirit be described as the Spirit of God's Son (Gal. 4:6) if God's Son is a distinct,²⁸ sub-divine figure but the Spirit is a circumlocution for God himself?

5.2. The Holy Spirit is divine

Although, as mentioned, few unitarians since John Biddle have denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit, it is worth briefly commenting on this issue. We have already stated that it is difficult to conceive of how the Holy Spirit could be a power, energy, property, or part of God without being divine itself. As for being a creature, the Scriptures speak of the Spirit's involvement in creation (e.g., Genesis 1:1-2, Job 33:4, Psalm 104:30, Judith 16:14), but never—as far as I can tell—of the Spirit having been created. In Acts 5:3-4, Peter equates lying to the Holy Spirit with lying to God. And Jesus teaches that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the one kind of blasphemy that will not be forgiven (Matt. 12:31-32 par.) This, together with the broad evidence for dynamic identity between God and his Spirit (as acknowledged by the "circumlocution camp") ought to suffice to demonstrate that the Holy Spirit is divine.

We can very briefly respond to six of biblical unitarian Sean Finnegan's objections about the Holy Spirit, though he is not explicitly objecting to the Holy Spirit's divinity, but to the idea that the Holy Spirit is a distinct "person." (1) Finnegan objects that the Holy Spirit does not have a name, whereas the Father and the Son do. But Matthew 28:19 explicitly says "in the name of the Father and [the name] of the Son and [the name] of the Holy Spirit." The words to onoma ("the name") are not repeated thrice as this would be verbose and redundant, since it is obvious to the reader that the parallel occurrences of kai tou ("and of the") refer back to onoma. (2) The Holy Spirit never sends greetings in the salutations in Paul's letters. But if we regard Paul's letters as Scripture, and the Holy Spirit speaks through scriptural authors (Acts 28:25), then the Holy Spirit is speaking these greetings from the Father and the Son. Furthermore, Finnegan seems to have overlooked that in Revelation 1:4-5, the seven churches of Asia do explicitly receive greetings from God, "and from the seven spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ". As Bogdan G. Bucur writes,

The blessing with ‘grace and peace’ is suggestive of a divine origin. The three must, then, in some way stand for the divinity…It seems most likely, therefore, that the mentioning of the ‘seven spirits’ corresponds to the expected reference to the Holy Spirit. In other words, the author’s expression ‘seven spirits’ would designate what the early Church usually referred to as ‘Holy Spirit.’²⁹

(3) The Holy Spirit is owned by God, because it is called "the Spirit of God" the way Grace's dog might be called "the dog of Grace." This is an oversimplification of the function of the genitive, which has many functions besides ownership. Moreover, if Finnegan's argument holds then the phrase "the Spirit of Christ" implies that the Holy Spirit is also owned by Christ—a real oddity for unitarian theology. In fact, the genitive can refer to source. And as the Creed itself states, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. (4) The Holy Spirit is never prayed to. This objection misapprehends the function of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. The Spirit is not primarily regarded as dwelling in heaven but in the church and in the hearts of the faithful. Therefore, rather than praying to the Holy Spirit, believers pray in the Holy Spirit (Eph. 6:18; Phil. 3:3; Jude 20), and the Spirit intercedes for them (Rom. 8:26-27). (5) The Holy Spirit is missing from statements like that of Matthew 11:27 ("No one knows the Father but the Son, and no one knows the Son but the Father"). This is an argument from silence; if the theological implication is that the Holy Spirit does not know the Father or the Son, it is odd that Paul should elsewhere write, "So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God." (1 Cor. 2:11 NRSV) (6) The Holy Spirit is left out of heavenly throne visions such as those in Isaiah 6, Daniel 7, and Revelation 4. Firstly, some early Christian interpreters understood the two "seraphim" in Isaiah's vision to be the Son and the Spirit.³⁰ Secondly, the absence of the Spirit of God from the vision of Daniel 7 is hardly surprising given that the Book of Daniel never mentions the Spirit of God at all.³¹ Thirdly, the throne vision of Revelation 4 does mention "and in front of the throne burn seven flaming torches, which are the seven spirits of God" (Rev. 4:5 NRSV). The unusual phraseology does not mean that the seven spirits of God are other than the Holy Spirit; the expression alludes to the seven operations of the Spirit of God mentioned in Isaiah 11:2-3 LXX.³² In Revelation 5:6, the seven spirits of God are depicted again, now as seven horns and eyes of the Lamb in the midst of the throne. So the Holy Spirit is certainly not absent from the throne in this vision.

6. Conclusion

  

Biblical unitarians who teach a pneumatology like that described in 4.1 or 4.2 above—that the Holy Spirit is a power, energy, property, or aspect of God—have departed from monotheism, at least according to the logical argument of unitarian philosopher Prof. Dale Tuggy. Biblical unitarians who wish to avoid bitheism basically have two options, which are the circumlocution pneumatology that I have pejoratively called apneumatism (4.3) and a sub-divine creature pneumatology like that of John Biddle (4.4). However, both of these positions are biblically untenable.

An alternative is to reject the logic of Tuggy's argument. But in that case, biblical unitarians must either construct a new argument or admit that the doctrine of the Trinity is monotheistic. And so perhaps the best option of all for biblical unitarians is to return to their catholic roots and accept the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, the touchstone of Christian unity for over 1600 years. While Trinitarian theology is often accused of overcomplication, the Trinitarian view of the Holy Spirit can be stated very straightforwardly: the Holy Spirit is another of what the Father and the Son are. Call it a divine "Person" if you prefer.

• 1 Dale Tuggy, "Metaphysics and Logic of the Trinity," Oxford Handbooks Online (2016): 1-8. doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935314.013.27.
• 2 "Multitheistic" might be a more accurate term, since the prefix "poly-" means "many" and not merely "multiple." However, the word English multitheism is usually used to refer to the existence of multiple kinds of theism, rather than the belief in multiple gods.
• 3 This is not to say that the Son and the Holy Spirit are identical for Trinitarians, since for example the Son has become incarnate and the Spirit has not.
• 4 See, e.g., Psalm 104:30, Wisdom 9:17, John 14:26, Galatians 4:6, 1 Peter 1:12, Revelation 5:6.
• 5 The debate over whether the Spirit is active is sharpest among Christadelphians, who have historically held a hypercessationist position. I have not looked extensively into what other biblical unitarian groups believe about the Spirit's present activity, but they do seem to allow for it.
• 6 See further discussion on pp. 3-4 of my Review of and Response to The Doctrine of the Trinity: Christianity’s Self-Inflicted Wound, By Anthony F. Buzzard and Charles F. Hunting.
• 7 St. Augustine discusses this at length in his work de Trinitate. He usually refers to the Father, Son, and Spirit as three personae ("persons"), but acknowledges that this term is insufficient: "When, then, it is asked what the three are, or who the three are, we betake ourselves to the finding out of some special or general name under which we may embrace these three; and no such name occurs to the mind, because the super-eminence of the Godhead surpasses the power of customary speech" (de Trinitate, VII.4.7). At one point he famously remarks that it cannot be denied that there are tria quaedem ("three somethings," de Trinitate VII.4.9), just as St. Anselm would later write, "And so it is evidently expedient for every man to believe in a certain ineffable trinal unity, and in one Trinity; one and a unity because of its one essence, but trinal and a trinity because of its three—what (tres nescio quid, literally "three I know not what")? For, although I can speak of a Trinity because of Father and Son and the Spirit of both, who are three; yet I cannot, in one word, show why they are three" (Monologion 79).
• 8 Some biblical unitarian writers suggest that the Spirit of God and the Holy Spirit are different (e.g., Graham Pearce, The Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit Gifts [Adelaide: Logos, 1975], 13). Such a distinction is unwarranted. That these terms are interchangeable is evident from passages such as 1 Corinthians 12:3, Ephesians 4:30, and Romans 15:16-18. Often in the New Testament the shorter term "the Spirit" is used.
• 9 The Trinity: True or False? (2nd edn; Nottingham: The Dawn Book Supply, 2002), 82, 93, 97.
• 10 One definition of agency given by Cambridge Dictionary is "the ability to take action or to choose what action to take". Notably, 1 Corinthians 12:11 certainly appears to ascribe volition to the Spirit, stating that it allots gifts to each person as it wishes.
• 11 Thomas Rees (trans.), The Racovian Catechism (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, 1818), 285).
• 12 The Doctrine of the Trinity: Christianity's Self-Inflicted Wound (Lanham: International Scholars Publications, 1998), 226.
• 13 See footnotes in the tenth paragraph of this article for relevant quotations from their writings.
• 14 The Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit Gifts, 13.
• 15 It is the Father's mind and his power; it is like a property or a power; it is one of the names of God and it is the gift of God. Christadelphian writer Aleck Crawford, in his book The Spirit: A General Exposition on New Testament Usage (1974) does not give any definition of the Spirit, and seems to think it inadvisable to do so. But he conflates the multivalence of the Greek word pneuma with the particularity of the reality designated "the Holy Spirit" or "the Spirit of God": "The very large number of attempts that have been made at establishing a blanket rule is itself an indication of the difficulty, not to say the impossibility, of arriving at a universally satisfactory solution to the problem."
• 16 We have seen above that Broughton and Southgate equate the Holy Spirit with the Father's mind. About the closest that Christadelphian writer Peter Schwartzkopff comes to defining the Spirit of God in his book of that title is, "Clearly in one sense the Spirit of God has to do with his mind –his way of thinking and feeling" (The Spirit of God [n.d.], 5). To his credit, Schwartzkopff realises that he is trying to "Defin[e] the Undefinable" (ibid., 3), seemingly acknowledging that there is an element of mystery in any attempt to describe God. Biblical unitarian Kermit Zarley writes that "the Spirit of God is to God what the spirit of man is to man." This matter-of-fact anthropomorphism seems to miss that any analogy we may make from the human sphere to describe God is going to be woefully inadequate for describing his infinite majesty.
• 17 Ironically, another biblical unitarian, Kermit Zarley, criticises Trinitarian translators for capitalising "Holy Spirit" whereas the original biblical manuscripts did not distinguish between lower and upper case and thus only reflect interpretative bias.
• 18 Notably, Sean Finnegan actually describes Old Testament language about the spirit of God as "ways of referring to the almighty, transcendent God in His mode of acting within creation".
• 19 Fourth-century Church Fathers such as St. Basil of Caesarea warned about those who attack the Holy Spirit (called Pneumatomachi) by asserting that he "is a creature" (Basil of Caesarea, Letters, 8.10).
• 20 John Biddle, A Confession of Faith Touching the Holy Trinity according to the Scripture (London: 1648), 3.
• 21 Confession of Faith, 50, 57.
• 22 Biddle rebuts the arguments of other non-Trinitarians who held the Holy Spirit to be a personified power.
• 23 The Spirit’s Relation to the Risen Lord in Paul: An Examination of Its Christological Implications (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 63.
• 24 For an overview of the text and interpretative options, see Wonsuk Ma, Until the Spirit Comes: The Spirit of God in the Book of Isaiah (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1999), 117-21.
• 25 Origen, the earliest extant writer to cite this passage, writes: "Since, however, it is a Jew who raises difficulties in the story of the Holy Spirit's descent in the form of a dove to Jesus, I would say to him: My good man, who is the speaker in Isaiah who says 'And now the Lord sent me and his spirit'? In this text although it is doubtful whether it means that the Father and the Holy Spirit sent Jesus or that the Father sent Christ and the Holy Spirit, it is the second interpretation which is right. After the Saviour had been sent, then the Holy Spirit was sent, in order that the prophet's saying might be fulfilled" (Contra Celsum 1.46, trans. Henry Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum: Translated with an Introduction and Notes [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953], 42).
• 26 Cf. Isaiah 40:21; 41:4; 41:26; 45:21; 46:10. Ma notes that if v. 16b ("And now the Lord God has sent me and his spirit") is removed, "the entire passage from v. 12 to v. 22 flows undisturbed" (Until the Spirit Comes, 117). In other words, there is nothing about the first part of v. 16 to suggest that it is spoken by a figure other than God himself.
• 27 E.g., Matthew 3:16-17, 2 Corinthians 13:13, Ephesians 4:4-6, 1 Peter 1:2, Revelation 1:4-5.
• 28 See also Acts 16:7, Romans 8:9, Philippians 1:19, 1 Peter 1:11.
• 29 Angelomorphic Pneumatology: Clement of Alexandria and Other Early Christian Witnesses (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 92.
• 30 Origen, for instance, writes concerning his Jewish Christian teacher, "My Hebrew master also used to say that those two seraphim in Isaiah, which are described as having each six wings, and calling to one another, and saying, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God of hosts, were to be understood of the only-begotten Son of God and of the Holy Spirit." (De Principiis 1.3.4). This interpretation likely also underlies the throne vision in the late-first-century Jewish Christian apocalypse The Ascension of Isaiah (on which see more here), in which Christ and the Spirit are seated at the right and left of the great throne, and both receive worship and worship the Great Glory. 
• 31 There are several mentions of "a spirit of the holy gods," but always on the lips of Babylonians.
• 32 "And the spirit of God shall rest on him, the spirit of (1) wisdom and (2) understanding, the spirit of (3) counsel and (4) might, the spirit of (5) knowledge and (6) godliness. The spirit of (7) the fear of God will fill him." (NETS; numbering added). St. Augustine, quoting this text, asks, "Are they not there called the seven Spirits of God, while there is only one and the same Spirit dividing to every one severally as He will? But the septenary operation of the one Spirit was so called by the Spirit Himself" (Tractates on the Gospel of John 122.8). St. Hippolytus of Rome actually paraphrases Isaiah 11:2 as stating, "And the seven spirits of God shall rest upon Him" (Fragment on Proverbs 9:1).