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Summary
- Christian teaching holds that the Holy Spirit is God, the third person of the Trinity, one God with the Father and the Son.
- Scripture gives the Spirit a mind (Romans 8:27) and a will (1 Corinthians 12:11), and says the Spirit can be grieved (Ephesians 4:30).
- In a 2009 Barna survey, 58% of American Christians agreed the Spirit is a symbol of God’s power rather than a living entity.
- Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus defended the Spirit’s divinity, and the Council of Constantinople confessed it in 381.
- Churches differ on how the Spirit is received and on whether baptism in the Spirit is a separate experience after conversion.
Bibliography (Click to show)
- Scripture quotations are from the King James Version (1611), text of Project Gutenberg eBook no. 10. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10
- Barna Group. “Most American Christians Do Not Believe that Satan or the Holy Spirit Exist.” 13 April 2009. Survey of 1,871 self-described Christians, 2008. https://www.barna.com/research/most-american-christians-do-not-believe-that-satan-or-the-holy-spirit-exist/
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997. Paragraphs 245–248: https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_one/section_two/chapter_one/article_1/paragraph_2_the_father.html; paragraph 692: https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_one/section_two/chapter_three/article_8/ii_the_name,_titles,_and_symbols_of_the_holy_spirit.html; paragraph 1289: https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_two/section_two/chapter_one/article_2/i_confirmation_in_the_economy_of_salvation.html; paragraph 1831: https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_three/section_one/chapter_one/article_7/iii_the_gifts_and_fruits_of_the_holy_spirit.html
- Teer, Torey J. S. “Basil of Caesarea, Inseparable Operations, and the Divinity of the Holy Spirit: A Pro-Nicene Case Study.” Evangelical Quarterly 92, no. 4 (2021): 312–327. https://brill.com/view/journals/evqu/92/4/article-p312_2.xml
- Rozumna, Yuliia. “The Interrelatedness of Doctrine and Ascetic Life: St Basil of Caesarea’s Proof of the Divinity of the Holy Spirit.” PhD thesis, University of Nottingham, 2018. https://www.academia.edu/105722946/The_interrelatedness_of_doctrine_and_ascetic_life_St_Basil_of_Caesareas_proof_of_the_divinity_of_the_Holy_Spirit
- Gregory of Nazianzus. Fifth Theological Oration (Oration 31), “On the Holy Spirit.” Translated by Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 7. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310231.htm
- Artemi, Eirini. “Gregory Nazianzen’s Trinitarian Teaching Based on His Twentieth Theological Oration.” De Medio Aevo 2, no. 2 (2013): 127–146. https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/DMAE/en/article/view/75831
- “First Council of Constantinople.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/event/First-Council-of-Constantinople-381
- Assemblies of God (USA). “Statement of Fundamental Truths,” sections 7 and 8. https://ag.org/Beliefs/Statement-of-Fundamental-Truths
- Fee, Gordon D. “Baptism in the Holy Spirit: The Issue of Separability and Subsequence.” Pneuma 7 (1985): 87–99. https://doi.org/10.1163/157007485X00076
- Espinosa, Gastón. William J. Seymour and the Origins of Global Pentecostalism: A Biography and Documentary History. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822376873
