Mat. 3:16, 17—“Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway from the water: and lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon him; and lo, a voice out of the heavens, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”; Luke 3:21, 22—“Jesus also having been baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form, as a dove, upon him, and a voice came out of heaven, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.” Here are the prayer of Jesus, the approving voice of the Father, and the Holy Spirit descending in visible form to anoint the Son of God for his work. “I ad Jordanem, et videbis Trinitatem.”
F. This ascription to the Spirit of a personal subsistence distinct from that of the Father and of the Son cannot be explained as personification; for:
(a) This would be to interpret sober prose by the canons of poetry. Such sustained personification is contrary to the genius of even Hebrew poetry, in which Wisdom itself is most naturally interpreted as designating a personal existence. (b) Such an interpretation would render a multitude of passages either tautological, meaningless, or absurd,—as can be easily seen by substituting for the name Holy Spirit the terms which are wrongly held to be its equivalents; such as the power, or influence, or efflux, or attribute of God. (c) It is contradicted, moreover, by all those passages in which the Holy Spirit is distinguished from his own gifts.
(a) The Bible is not primarily a book of poetry, although there is poetry in it. It is more properly a book of history and law. Even if the methods of allegory were used by the Psalmists and the Prophets, we should not expect them largely to characterize the Gospels and Epistles; 1 Cor. 13:4—“Love suffereth long, and is kind”—is a rare instance in which Paul's style takes on the form of poetry. Yet it is the Gospels and Epistles which most constantly represent the Holy Spirit as a person. (b) Acts 10:38—“God anointed him [Jesus] with the Holy Spirit and with power” = anointed him with power and with power? Rom. 15:13—“abound in hope, in the power of the Holy Spirit” = in the power of the power of God? 19—“in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Holy Spirit” = in the power of the power of God? 1 Cor. 2:4—“demonstration of the Spirit and of power” = demonstration of power and of power? (c) Luke 1:35—“the Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee”; 4:14—“Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee”; 1 Cor. 12:4, 8, 11—after mention of the gifts of the Spirit, such as wisdom, knowledge, faith, healings, miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, tongues, interpretation of tongues, all these are traced to the Spirit who bestows them: “all these worketh the one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one severally even as he will.”Here is not only giving, but giving discreetly, in the exercise of an independent will such as belongs only to a person. Rom. 8:26—“the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us”—must be interpreted, if the Holy Spirit is not a person distinct from the Father, as meaning that the Holy Spirit intercedes with himself.
“The personality of the Holy Spirit was virtually rejected by the Arians, as it has since been by Schleiermacher, and it has been positively denied by the Socinians”(E. G. Robinson). Gould, Bib. Theol. N. T., 83, 96—“The Twelve represent the Spirit as sent by the Son, who has been exalted that he may send this new power out of the heavens. Paul represents the Spirit as bringing to us the Christ. In the Spirit Christ dwells in us. The Spirit is the historic Jesus translated into terms of universal Spirit. Through the Spirit we are in Christ and Christ in us. The divine Indweller is to Paul alternately Christ and the Spirit. The Spirit is the divine principle incarnate in Jesus and explaining his preëxistence (2 Cor. 3:17, 18). Jesus was an incarnation of the Spirit of God.”
This seeming identification of the Spirit with Christ is to be explained upon the ground that the divine essence is common to both and permits the Father to dwell in and to work through the Son, and the Son to dwell in and to work through the Spirit. It should not blind us to the equally patent Scriptural fact that there are personal relations between Christ and the Holy Spirit, and work done by the latter in which Christ is the object and not the subject; John 16:14—“He shall glorify me: for he shall take of mine, and shall declare it unto you.” The Holy Spirit is not some thing, but some one; not αὐτό, but Αὐτός; Christ's alter ego, or other self. We should therefore make vivid our belief in the personality of Christ and of the Holy Spirit by addressing each of them frequently in the prayers we offer and in such hymns as “Jesus, lover of my soul,” and “Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove!” On the personality of the Holy Spirit, see John Owen, in Works, 3:64-92; Dick, Lectures on Theology, 1:341-350.