The Spirit
. . . and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Genesis 1:2b NASB
Spirit of God – The ruach ha-kodesh, or, as in this verse, rûaḥ ʾĕlōhîm, is one more of the controversial theological subjects of Christian doctrine. Many Christians believe that phrases like this one refer to “The Holy Spirit,” commonly understood as the third person of the Trinity. Of course, this requires rereading the text with a Christian lens. Actually, it requires rereading the text with a Christian lens after 325 C.E., since before that the formation of a Trinity was still either unknown or in great debate. Statements like this one from Kyle Bair are simply historically inaccurate, even though they are widely accepted:
The Trinity was present from the earliest days of Christianity, as its documents and history shows. No person or council added it in; they only codified in a memorable formula what was already believed. It was not invented later; it was present from the very beginning.[1]
A more accurate investigation of the development of the idea of a Holy Spirit leads to the following:
No theologian in the first three Christian centuries was a trinitarian in the sense of a believing that the one God is tripersonal, containing equally divine “persons”, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The terms we translate as “Trinity” (Latin: trinitas, Greek: trias) seem to have come into use only in the last two decades of the second century; but such usage doesn’t reflect trinitarian belief. These late second and third century authors use such terms not to refer to the one God, but rather to refer to the plurality of the one God, together with his Son (or Word) and his Spirit. They profess a “trinity”, triad or threesome, but not a triune or tripersonal God. Nor did they consider these to be equally divine. A common strategy for defending monotheism in this period is to emphasize the unique divinity of the Father. Thus Origen (ca. 186-255) . . . It was only in response to the controversy sparked by the Alexandrian presbyter Arius (ca. 256–336) that a critical mass of bishops rallied around what eventually became standard language about the Trinity.[2]
Perhaps we should insist that no one become a theologian unless he is first an historian. At any rate, the word itself, rûaḥ, is the common Hebrew word for “wind, breath, mind” or “spirit.”
The basic idea of rûaḥ (Gr. pnema) is “air in motion,” . . . although the word is used in a wide variety of sense, from physical breathing to emotional breathlessness. It’s particularly interesting that “rûaḥ comes finally to denote the entire immaterial consciousness of man: . . Flesh and spirit combine to form the “self,” so that while man may be said to have a rûaḥ he is a nepeš (yet he is sometimes said to possess a nepeš, which departs from his body at death).”[3]
Payne goes on to note:
rûaḥ can exhibit a range of meaning. The “breath” of God may be a strong wind (Isa 40:7; 59:19; cf. Num 11:31). His “spirit” may indicate no more than active power or mood (Isa 40:13, “Who hath directed the spirit [intention] of the Lord?” or, “who has known the mind [intention] of the Lord,” so LXX and I Cor 2:16). At most points, however, context approves and the analogy of the NT strongly suggests that the rûaḥ YHWH is the Holy Spirit, “in the fullest Christian sense” (A. F. Kirkpatrick, Cambridge Bible, Psalms, II, p. 293).[4]
Once again we are in the realm of anachronistic exegesis, reading the Tanakh through the lens of fourth century Christian doctrine.
Consider the Jewish alternative as described by Heschel:
The Bible tells us nothing about God in Himself; all its sayings refer to His relations to man. His own life and essence are neither told nor disclosed. . . The only events in the life of God the Bible knows of are acts done for the sake of man: . .[5]
God in the universe is a spirit of concern for life. What is a thing to us is a concern to God; what is a part of the physical world of being is also a part of a divine world of meaning. To be is to stand for, to stand for a divine concern.[6]
When the Jewish idea of ruach ha-kodesh is understood as the invisible power of God working in the creation, exegesis changes, for both the Tanakh and the apostolic authors. In fact, unless we are willing to claim that the apostolic authors were all fourth century Christians, it’s hard to imagine that any of them thought of rûaḥ ʾĕlōhîm as a person.
But you’ll have to decide for yourself—after you’ve done a bit of historical investigation, I trust.
Topical Index: rûaḥ ʾĕlōhîm, ruach ha-kodesh, Holy Spirit, Genesis 1:2
[1] Kyle Davison Bair, https://www.quora.com/When-and-by-whom-was-the-concept-of-the-Holy-Trinity-added-to-Christianity
[2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trinity/trinity-history.html#Intro
[3] Payne, J. B. (1999). 2131 רִיַח. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 836). Chicago: Moody Press.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Abraham Heschel, Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (Free Press Paperbacks, 1959), p. 111.
[6] Ibid.
