Is the Holy Spirit a Person? R. A. Torrey's Case From Scripture
Yes. The Bible speaks of the Holy Spirit as a Person, not a force. He knows, wills and loves. He speaks, teaches, prays and leads. He can be lied to, grieved and blasphemed. He is also God, distinct from the Father and the Son. That is the answer R. A. Torrey gives in the opening chapters of The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit, and he builds it verse by verse. This article walks through his case.
Why the question matters
Torrey starts with worship. If the Holy Spirit is a Divine Person and we treat Him as an influence, we rob Him of the love, faith and surrender that are His due. Then he turns to practice. A power is something we try to get and use. A Person is Someone who gets hold of us and uses us.
If we think of the Holy Spirit as so many do as merely a power or influence, our constant thought will be, “How can I get more of the Holy Spirit,” but if we think of Him in the Biblical way as a Divine Person, our thought will rather be, “How can the Holy Spirit have more of me?”
The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit, chapter I
He adds that the "power" view breeds pride, the person who struts about as a "Holy Ghost man." The Person view humbles us. A Being of Divine majesty has come to live in our hearts and is willing to use even us.
Four lines of proof that the Spirit is a Person
Torrey says there are "at least four distinct lines of proof in the Bible that the Holy Spirit is a person." He first clears up a common mistake. Personality does not mean hands and feet; those belong to a body. The marks of personality are knowledge, feeling and will. "Any entity that thinks and feels and wills is a person."
1. He has knowledge, will, mind and love
The Spirit "searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God" (1 Corinthians 2:10-11). He knows. He also chooses:
But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.
1 Corinthians 12:11
Torrey presses this point hard. Many seekers want a power they can use according to their own will. They will not find it. What God offers is a Person, wise as well as mighty, who uses us according to His will. Romans 8:27 speaks of "the mind of the Spirit." And Romans 15:30 speaks of His love:
Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me.
Romans 15:30
Torrey asks his readers to stop on those words. We thank the Father for His love and the Son for His. How often do we thank the Spirit, who sought us out and followed us until we saw our need of a Saviour?
Yet we owe our salvation just as truly to the love of the Spirit as we do to the love of the… Father and the love of the Son.
The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit, chapter I
He shows the same truth in the Old Testament: "Thou gavest also thy good spirit to instruct them" (Nehemiah 9:20). And then the verse he calls the most tender of all:
And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.
Ephesians 4:30
A young man may turn away from a door of sin because his mother would be grieved if she heard of it. Torrey says there is One holier than any mother who sees every act and hears every word, and He is grieved by what is impure, unkind or untrue. He calls this thought one of the greatest helps to a holy life.
2. He does what only a person can do
If the Spirit is not a person, Torrey says, many verses become "meaningless and absurd." The Spirit speaks to the churches (Revelation 2:7). He cries "Abba, Father" in the believer's heart (Galatians 4:6). He prays: "the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered" (Romans 8:26). He testifies of Christ (John 15:26). He teaches and brings Christ's words to remembrance (John 14:26). He leads the sons of God (Romans 8:14). He forbade Paul to preach in Asia (Acts 16:6-7). He said, "Separate me Barnabas and Saul" (Acts 13:2), and He makes men overseers of the church (Acts 20:28).
Torrey takes comfort from Romans 8:26. Every believer has two Divine Persons praying for him: Christ at the Father's right hand, and the Spirit within.
3. He holds an office only a person can hold
On the night before the cross, Jesus told His sad disciples He would not leave them alone:
And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever.
John 14:16
Could Jesus have spoken this way, Torrey asks, if the One coming to take His place were only an influence? Could He have said it was "expedient" for them that He go away (John 16:7)? One Divine Person was going, and another Person just as Divine was coming.
4. He is treated as only a person can be treated
Israel "rebelled, and vexed his holy Spirit" (Isaiah 63:10). Only a person can be rebelled against or grieved. Hebrews 10:29 warns of doing "despite unto the Spirit of grace," that is, insulting Him. Ananias lied to the Holy Ghost (Acts 5:3). And Jesus warned that blasphemy against the Holy Ghost would not be forgiven (Matthew 12:31-32). Torrey's point is simple: you cannot insult, lie to or blaspheme an influence.
Is the Holy Spirit God?
Chapter II asks the next question. If He is a Person, what sort of Person? Torrey gives five proofs that He is God.
- He has the attributes only God has. He is "the eternal Spirit" (Hebrews 9:14). He is everywhere: "Whither shall I go from thy spirit?" (Psalm 139:7). He knows the deep things of God (1 Corinthians 2:10-11). He is the power of the Highest (Luke 1:35).
- He does the works only God does: creation (Job 33:4; Psalm 104:30), giving life (John 6:63), and prophecy (2 Peter 1:21).
- Words the Old Testament credits to Jehovah, the New Testament credits to the Spirit. The Lord speaks in Isaiah 6; Paul says, "Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias the prophet" (Acts 28:25). Israel tempted the Lord in the wilderness; Hebrews 3:7-9 says "as the Holy Ghost saith."
- His name stands beside the Father's and the Son's in a way no creature's could: in the baptismal command of Matthew 28:19 and in the benediction of 2 Corinthians 13:14.
- He is called God. Peter said to Ananias that he had lied to the Holy Ghost, and then, "thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God" (Acts 5:3-4).
God in His own Word distinctly proclaims that the Holy Spirit is a Divine Person.
The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit, chapter II
Distinct from the Father and the Son
In chapter III, Torrey turns to Luke 3:21-22. Jesus is praying after His baptism, the Father speaks from heaven, and the Spirit descends upon the Son "in a bodily shape like a dove." In John 14:16 the Son prays, the Father gives, and the Spirit comes. The three speak to and of one another. They are three Persons.
Chapter IV adds a balance. Though the Spirit is fully Divine, in His present work He is sent by the Father and by the Son. He speaks what He hears and glorifies Christ, just as the Son, in His earthly ministry, did the Father's will and sought the Father's glory.
Knowing Him, not only believing it
Torrey is not content with a correct creed. He tells of a longtime church member who heard him speak on this subject and said afterward, "I never thought of It before as a Person." She had sung the Doxology for years. He asks every reader whether the Holy Spirit is as real to them as Jesus Christ, and whether they know "the communion of the Holy Ghost":
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen.
2 Corinthians 13:14
But it is not enough to believe the doctrine — one must know the Holy Spirit Himself.
The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit, chapter I
Read more
Torrey's five chapters on who the Spirit is take under an hour. Read them in The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit, starting with chapter I. For the whole book, see our chapter-by-chapter summary. For what Torrey taught about being filled with the Spirit for service, see The Baptism With the Holy Spirit: What R. A. Torrey Taught. Other writers on the same truth are gathered in the best books on the Holy Spirit.