THE holy spirit can be grieved and can speak, teach, bear witness, act as a remembrancer and serve as a helper. Yet some other things attributed to God’s spirit are never applied to persons. For example, that spirit can be ‘poured out’ upon humans and can ‘fill’ them. Such an active force could be ‘poured out’ or imparted to numerous persons at the same time and could ‘fill’ them, as is stated of the holy spirit.—Acts 2:4, 33.
Note the comments of a Trinitarian source, the New Catholic Encyclopedia (Vol. 13, p. 575): “The majority of N[ew] T[estament] texts reveal God’s spirit as something, not someone; this is especially seen in the parallelism between the spirit and the power of God. When a quasi-personal activity is ascribed to God’s spirit, e.g., speaking, hindering, desiring, dwelling (Acts 8.29; 16.7; Rom 8.9), one is not justified in concluding immediately that in these passages God’s spirit is regarded as a Person; the same expressions are used also in regard to rhetorically personified things or abstract ideas (see Rom 8.6; 7.17). Thus, the context of the phrase ‘blasphemy against the spirit’ (Mt 12.31; cf. Mt 12.28; Lk 11.20), shows that reference is being made to the power of God.”
Personifications are no positive proof of personality. For example, the Bible speaks of sin as ‘ruling as a king,’ “receiving an inducement,” ‘working out covetousness,’ ‘seducing,’ and ‘killing.’ (Rom. 5:21; 7:8-11) Wisdom is similarly personified and is spoken of as having “children” and “works.” (Matt. 11:19; Luke 7:35) Yet no one would claim that this means that “sin” and “wisdom” are persons. Likewise the personifying of God’s spirit does not conflict with clear Bible testimony that it is indeed “something, not someone.”
The fact that baptizing is to be done in the “name” of the holy spirit does not in itself establish that the spirit is a person. Even Trinitarians recognize that the word “name” at Matthew 28:19 does not mean a personal name. Says Greek scholar A. T. Robertson (Word Pictures in the New Testament, Vol. I, p. 245): “The use of name ([Greek] onoma) here is a common one in the Septuagint and the papyri for power or authority.” That the term “name” so used does not necessarily imply the existence of a person might be illustrated with the English expression “in the name of the law.” No one familiar with the English language would conclude therefrom that the law is a person. The expression simply means ‘in recognition of what the law represents,’ its authority. Similarly, baptism ‘in the name of the spirit’ signifies a recognition of that spirit and its source and functions.
A footnote in The New American Bible on John 14:17 admits: “The Greek word for ‘Spirit’ is neuter, and while we use personal pronouns in English (‘he,’ ‘his,’ ‘him’), most Greek MSS [manuscripts] employ ‘it.’”
Thus we can see that Trinitarians point to personal pronouns when these seem to support their view but ignore them when they do not. A careful examination of passages used by Trinitarians, however, reveals that John’s use of pronouns—both neuter and masculine—is a matter of grammar and therefore does not support their claim that the spirit is a person, the “third person” of the triune God. So, then, not just a majority of Bible passages, but all the Scriptures are in agreement that God’s spirit is, “not someone,” but “something.” A simple but careful reading of the Scriptures makes it clear that God’s spirit is indeed his invisible active force.
