Who is the Holy Spirit?
Short answer
The Holy Spirit is, in Christianity, the third person of the Trinity — God present and acting, not an impersonal force. The Bible presents him from creation onwards and, after Pentecost, as the one who dwells in Christians: he comforts, teaches, intercedes, and produces a way of living that Paul calls the fruit of the Spirit.
- Written by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 3 min read
The question is common for a simple reason: Father and Son are easy to picture, and the Spirit is not. The original vocabulary does not help — ruah in Hebrew and pneuma in Greek mean breath, wind and spirit all at once, which is why the texts reach so often for images: wind, fire, water, a dove. Someone looking for a face finds metaphors, and concludes too quickly that this is a kind of energy.
The Christian tradition reads it the other way, and the reading rests on how the texts speak of him. The Spirit teaches, decides, sends, intercedes, can be grieved — verbs you do not use of an electrical current. The promise in John 14 is more explicit still: Jesus speaks of "another" Advocate, placing the Spirit in parallel with himself rather than with a power. It is from that body of material that the formulation of the councils comes, which Catholics and Protestants recite alike in the creed.
What he does, according to the texts, has a clear landmark: Pentecost. Before it, the Spirit appears coming upon specific people at specific moments; after it, the New Testament starts speaking of a presence that dwells in the whole community. The practical change is in the narrative: a frightened group behind closed doors becomes, in the same chapter, a group speaking in public. The text attributes that difference to the Spirit.
There is a test the texts themselves offer, and it is remarkably ordinary. Paul measures the presence of the Spirit by a list of character traits — patience, kindness, gentleness, self-restraint — and not by extraordinary manifestations. On which gifts continue to operate today and in what form, Christians differ, and the disagreement runs through Catholics and Protestants from the inside rather than separating them. This page does not settle that discussion; it records that the test the Bible proposes first is the one about everyday behaviour.
What the passages say
2But the earth was empty and unoccupied, and darknesses were over the face of the abyss; and so the Spirit of God was brought over the waters.
The Spirit is not a New Testament novelty: he appears in the second verse of the Bible, over the waters, before anything is formed. It is the first datum to weigh in any answer to this question.
16And I will ask the Father, and he will give another Advocate to you, so that he may abide with you for eternity:
17the Spirit of Truth, whom the world is not able to accept, because it neither perceives him nor knows him. But you shall know him. For he will remain with you, and he will be in you.
The promise where the vocabulary of person is clearest. The Greek term rendered here as Advocate — parakletos — comes from legal language and means one called to stand beside someone, like a defence counsel. Speaking of "another" one of those places the Spirit in the same category as Jesus.
1And when the days of Pentecost were completed, they were all together in the same place.
2And suddenly, there came a sound from heaven, like that of a wind approaching violently, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.
3And there appeared to them separate tongues, as if of fire, which settled upon each one of them.
4And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. And they began to speak in various languages, just as the Holy Spirit bestowed eloquence to them.
Pentecost: the moment the promise stops being future. Notice that the narrator describes everything by comparison — the sound is like a wind, what is seen is as if of fire. It is the record of someone trying to write down something for which he had no ready vocabulary.
22But the fruit of the Spirit is charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, forbearance,
23meekness, faith, modesty, abstinence, chastity. There is no law against such things.
The criterion Paul offers, and it is deliberately ordinary: a list of character, in the singular — one fruit with several faces, not a shelf of optional gifts. This edition, coming from the Latin, carries a longer list than most English Bibles. Any conversation about the Spirit that ignores this list is skipping the test the New Testament proposes first.
26And similarly, the Spirit also helps our weakness. For we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself asks on our behalf with ineffable sighing.
What the Spirit does when a person cannot pray. It is probably the most consoling passage about him and one of the least quoted: the text assumes the Christian will freeze, and the response is not a reprimand, it is substitution.