Holy Ghost vs Holy Spirit: Same Person, Two English Names

There is no difference. “Holy Ghost” and “Holy Spirit” are two English translations of the same Greek words, pneuma hagion, for the third person of the Trinity. The King James Bible of 1611 usually says “Holy Ghost” because “ghost” then meant spirit. Most modern Bibles say “Holy Spirit” because “ghost” now suggests the spirit of a dead person.

Are the Holy Ghost and the Holy Spirit the same?

Yes. The Greek New Testament has one expression, pneuma hagion (“holy spirit”) or to hagion pneuma (“the holy spirit”). English translators rendered it two ways. The Hebrew Old Testament uses a similar phrase, “holy spirit” (ruach qodesh), in Psalm 51:11 and Isaiah 63:10–11.

The King James Version itself shows that the two names are interchangeable. In Luke 11:13 Jesus says the Father will “give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him.” One chapter later, in Luke 12:12, he says, “For the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say.” The Greek behind both verses is the same phrase with the words in a different order. The translators chose different English words, not different beings.

No Christian church teaches that the Holy Ghost and the Holy Spirit are two persons. Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches all confess one God in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and use either name for the third person.

Why does the King James Bible say “Holy Ghost”?

Because “ghost” was the ordinary English word for spirit. It comes from Old English gast, which meant breath, spirit or soul. Christian writers in Old English used it to translate the Latin spiritus, and that use survives in “Holy Ghost.” The phrase “to give up the ghost,” meaning to die, goes back to Old English as well. The sense of a ghost as the spirit of a dead person haunting the living is recorded only from the late 1300s.

The King James Version of 1611 says “Holy Ghost” 90 times and “Holy Spirit” 7 times: Psalm 51:11, Isaiah 63:10 and 63:11, Luke 11:13, Ephesians 1:13 and 4:30, and 1 Thessalonians 4:8. It also mixes the two within one book, as Luke shows. Catholic readers had the same word in the Douay-Rheims Bible, which renders Matthew 28:19 as “baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

Because the King James Version shaped English Christian speech for centuries, “Holy Ghost” remained the usual name in English prayers, hymns and catechisms long after “ghost” had gained its modern meaning.

Why do modern Bibles say “Holy Spirit”?

The change began with the revisions of the King James Version. The American Standard Version of 1901 adopted the renderings its American readers preferred, including “Holy Spirit” for “Holy Ghost.” Later English translations followed, and today nearly all of them use “Holy Spirit” throughout.

The main reason is clarity. For a reader who knows “ghost” only as the spirit of someone who has died, “Holy Ghost” can suggest an apparition. “Holy Spirit” carries no such meaning, and it matches the word “spirit” that translators already used for pneuma in other verses. The older name has not disappeared: some churches that use the King James Version keep “Holy Ghost,” and so does the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in its scriptures and teaching.

Do Catholics say Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit?

Catholics say both, but official English texts now use “Holy Spirit.” The older Catholic Bible in English, the Douay-Rheims, said “Holy Ghost,” as did the traditional English wording of prayers such as the Glory Be. The Catechism of the Catholic Church uses “Holy Spirit” and states in paragraph 691: “‘Holy Spirit’ is the proper name of the one whom we adore and glorify with the Father and the Son.”

Catholic teaching also speaks of the gifts and the fruits of the Holy Spirit. The Catechism, paragraph 1831, lists seven gifts: “wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord.” Paragraph 1832 lists the fruits, following Galatians 5:22–23. Catholic theology on the gifts draws heavily on Thomas Aquinas. William C. Mattison III (2023) examines how Aquinas distinguishes the gifts from the infused virtues, and Eleonore Stump, in an article first published in 2023, studies Aquinas’s account of the virtues, gifts and fruits that come with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Is it wrong to say “Holy Ghost”?

No. “Holy Ghost” is an older name, not an incorrect one. It appears in the King James Bible and the Douay-Rheims, in traditional hymns and prayers, and in the older English form of the baptismal words, “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19). A Christian who prays with either name is praying to the same person. Modern translators preferred “Holy Spirit” because a listener who does not know the older meaning of “ghost” may misunderstand it.

How do different churches understand the Holy Spirit?

The Nicene Creed, completed at the Council of Constantinople in 381, is shared by Catholic, Orthodox and most Protestant churches. It confesses “the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father,” who “with the Father and the Son” is “worshipped and glorified.” The churches differ on emphasis and on a few points of doctrine.

• Catholic Church. The Latin form of the Creed says the Spirit proceeds “from the Father and the Son” (filioque). The Catechism, paragraphs 246–248, notes that these words were not in the Creed of 381 and explains the Western tradition behind them.
• Eastern Orthodox Church. The Orthodox churches keep the Creed as it was written in 381, saying that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, and they reject the later addition of the filioque. This remains one of the main doctrinal differences between East and West.
• Lutheran, Anglican, Methodist and Reformed churches. These churches confess the Nicene Creed and teach that the Spirit brings people to faith and makes them holy. Reformed churches stress the Spirit’s work with Scripture: the Westminster Confession (1.6) acknowledges “the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the Word.”
• Pentecostal churches. Pentecostals stress the gifts of the Spirit, such as tongues, prophecy and healing. The Assemblies of God teach that baptism in the Holy Spirit “is distinct from and subsequent to the experience of the new birth,” and that its first sign is speaking in tongues. Much of early Pentecostalism spread from the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles, led from 1906 by William J. Seymour, whose life and teaching Gastón Espinosa documents in a 2014 biography.
• Quakers. Quakers speak of Christ as the Inward Light, present and met in the meeting for worship. Their language for the Spirit centers on direct, inward guidance rather than on creeds.
• Unitarians and Unitarian Universalists. Unitarians took their name from belief in one God rather than a Trinity, so they do not treat the Holy Spirit as a distinct divine person.
• Latter-day Saints. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints uses “Holy Ghost” and teaches that the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are three distinct beings. Doctrine and Covenants 130:22 says the Holy Ghost “has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit.” Latter-day Saints do not accept the Nicene doctrine of one divine substance.

Within any of these churches, individual congregations and believers may hold views that differ from the official statement.

Who is the Holy Spirit in Christian teaching?

Christian teaching holds that the Holy Spirit is a person, not an impersonal force. The New Testament speaks of the Spirit in personal terms. The Spirit teaches (John 14:26), can be grieved (Ephesians 4:30) and gives gifts “to every man severally as he will” (1 Corinthians 12:11). In Acts 5:3–4 Peter tells Ananias that he has lied “to the Holy Ghost,” and then that he has “not lied unto men, but unto God.” Christos Karakolis, a New Testament scholar at the University of Athens, examined whether Luke and Acts present the Spirit as a personal entity or as an impersonal power, and concluded that the Spirit appears there as a distinct character with personal attributes, who interacts with the other characters and guides the church.

The Bible describes several kinds of work done by the Spirit:

• Giving life. In the creation account “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2), and the Creed calls the Spirit “the giver of life.”
• Helping and comforting. Jesus promises “another Comforter,” “even the Spirit of truth” (John 14:16–17). The Greek word is parakletos, one called to someone’s side, and newer translations render it Helper, Advocate or Counselor.
• Teaching and guiding. “When he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13).
• Prayer. “The Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Romans 8:26).
• Gifts and fruit. Paul describes gifts given for the good of the church (1 Corinthians 12) and “the fruit of the Spirit”: “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Galatians 5:22–23).

What did the early Church teach about the Holy Spirit?

The earliest Christian writers took the Spirit’s gifts as part of church life. Johannes van Oort (2012) shows that the Didache treats prophecy as a normal ministry, that Justin Martyr says the prophetic gifts once given to Israel are now at work in the Church, and that Irenaeus describes tongues, prophecy and healing in the churches of his time. Van Oort also argues that this experience of the Spirit shaped the wording of the Creed of 381.

In the fourth century some Christians accepted the divinity of the Son but denied that of the Spirit. Basil of Caesarea answered them in his treatise On the Holy Spirit and in Against Eunomius. Torey J. S. Teer (2021) argues that Basil’s case rested on the doctrine of inseparable operations, the teaching that all the acts of the triune God in creation are undivided: if the Spirit does the works of God together with the Father and the Son, the Spirit shares their divinity. The Council of Constantinople in 381 settled the question by adding to the Creed that the Spirit is “the Lord and giver of life” and is worshipped and glorified with the Father and the Son.

In the West, Augustine of Hippo developed another line of thought. In Book 15 of On the Trinity he writes that the Spirit, being of both the Father and the Son, “intimates to us a mutual love, wherewith the Father and the Son reciprocally love one another,” and he calls the Spirit “the gift of God.” The later description of the Spirit as the bond of love between the Father and the Son comes from this Augustinian tradition.

How is the Holy Spirit distinct from the Father and the Son?

Christian doctrine holds that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God, sharing one divine nature, and yet are three distinct persons. The distinctions lie in their relations and their missions. The Father sends the Son, and the Father and the Son send the Spirit (John 14:26; 15:26). The Son became man in Jesus Christ; the Spirit did not take a body. Jesus calls the Spirit “another Comforter” whom the Father will send in his name (John 14:16, 26), which marks the Spirit as someone other than Jesus himself.

Theologians also describe the Spirit’s part in salvation. The Father sends the Son to redeem the world, and the Spirit brings that redemption to believers, uniting them with Christ and making them holy. Adam Johnson and Tessa Hayashida (2022) argue that the Spirit is fully involved in the atonement itself, as “the love of God directed toward the incarnate Son,” so that the Spirit, “just as much as the Father and the Son, is the one who saves us in the death and resurrection of Jesus.”

What are common misconceptions about the Holy Spirit?

That the Spirit is only a force or an energy. Christian creeds and Scripture speak of the Spirit as a person who teaches, guides, can be grieved and gives gifts as he chooses.

That the Spirit is less divine than the Father and the Son. The Council of Constantinople rejected this view in 381. The Creed says the Spirit is worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son.

That the Spirit’s work ended with the apostles. Christians disagree about whether gifts such as tongues and prophecy continue today. They agree that the Spirit’s presence and work in believers continue. Irenaeus reported the gifts in the churches of his own day, while Augustine, in his earlier writings, thought gifts such as tongues had belonged only to the Church’s beginnings.

That only some Christians receive the Spirit. Paul writes, “if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his” (Romans 8:9), and “by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body” (1 Corinthians 12:13). Most churches read these verses to mean that every Christian receives the Spirit at conversion or baptism. Pentecostal churches agree that believers have the Spirit from the new birth, but they teach a further baptism in the Spirit for power in service. Gordon D. Fee, himself a Pentecostal scholar, argued in 1985 that the New Testament gives little support for treating that later experience as a required second stage. “For them,” he wrote of the first Christians, “to be Christian meant to have the Spirit.” He still valued the Pentecostal experience of the Spirit’s power.

That feelings are the proof of the Spirit. Scripture names the Spirit’s fruit as love, joy, peace and patience, and the gifts are given for the good of the church (1 Corinthians 12:7). Many Christian teachers treat a changed character as a surer sign of the Spirit’s work than any single emotional experience.

That the Holy Spirit and the human spirit are the same. Romans 8:16 says “the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit,” which distinguishes the two. Christian traditions teach discernment, testing impressions against Scripture and the judgment of the church, because a person’s own thoughts can be mistaken for the Spirit’s guidance.

How do Christians experience the Holy Spirit?

Christian traditions point to ordinary practices rather than dramatic signs. In prayer, Romans 8:26 describes the Spirit helping believers who “know not what we should pray for as we ought.” In reading Scripture, churches teach that the Spirit gives understanding, as the Westminster Confession states. In the sacraments, Catholic, Orthodox and many Protestant churches teach that the Spirit is given in baptism, and Catholic and Orthodox churches also in confirmation, which Eastern churches call chrismation. In community, the gifts of the Spirit are given “to profit withal” (1 Corinthians 12:7), for the good of others. In daily life, the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23) grows over time. Many traditions also recommend fasting, silence and service as ways of making room for this work.

Related reading

• Who Is the Holy Spirit?
• What Are the Fruits of the Holy Spirit?