Word and Spirit: Two Persons in the Godhead

Pattern theology rests on the idea that God exists as two persons who are one, rather than the trinitarian model of three in one. The Word and Spirit together form the composite person of the Father, and this explains the biblical understanding of marriage, childbearing, and a host of other other doctrines.

To arrive at this point, we’ve looked at various problems that I see in trinitarian christology, in particular the idea that Jesus’ sonship is a property of his divine nature. Like trinitarians, patternists believe that Jesus is truly divine, and truly man. But to call him the “son of God” is primarily a reference to his human nature, similar to other sons of God described in scripture, such as Adam and the everyday Christian.

This subtle change in definition keeps Jesus’ divine and human natures intact, but it modifies our understanding of the godhead. Because Jesus’ sonship is like Adam’s, he isn’t the son of one member of the godhead; he is the son of God as a whole. So the person of the Father is no longer seen as a member of the trinity; rather it is a true synonym for “God.” Whatever persons there may be in the godhead, all of them together form the Father.

Similarly, the person of the Son is no longer a member of the godhead, given that the title is a reference to Jesus’ created, human nature. One might therefore conclude that the Holy Spirit must be the only remaining person of the godhead, but it’s important to recognize that Jesus’ divine nature, the Word, is still intact. Patternists view a distinction between the Word and the Son, whereas trinitarians use those terms synonymously. In many contexts, they certainly can be used interchangeably. But a patternist would say that the Word is an uncreated, co-equal, co-eternal member of the godhead, whereas the Son is the Word joined to a created nature that bears the image of God (through e.g. the incarnation).

This leaves us then with two persons who are one, the Word and Spirit, which serve as a pattern that God used in his design of the world, and especially those created in his image. The remaining articles in this series will examine various specific areas where the pattern is seen. This article is intended to serve as a bridge between pattern christology, and the claim that God exists as two persons who are one. To that end, I’ll lean on existing trinitarian research to demonstrate that the Word and Spirit truly are distinct persons within the godhead, and then look at the nature and interplay between them.

My primary goal in this series is to reason with trinitarians, because they tend to have a higher view of scripture than most non-trinitarian groups. This allows us to at least speak from the same foundation, despite disagreeing on the outcome. Conversations with other groups who reject the trinity, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses or LDS, are usually more difficult in that the authority of scripture has to first be argued. And in those discussions, sharing the gospel is often a more pressing task than debating the nature of God.

So there are points of this argument that I can profitably summarize, or spend less time on, because they’re points of agreement with trinitarian theology. In that regard, it is already accepted that the Word and Spirit are distinct, divine persons who are one; I don’t really need to build that case. But because some non-trinitarians deny the distinction, personality, and/or oneness of the Word and Spirit, I will spend a little time on the subject for completeness sake. I just won’t go in-depth, relying instead on what trinitarians have already written. If it becomes important to defend the point in the context of pattern theology, due to other groups engaging with this content, I may address specific arguments more thoroughly in an objections post.

With that said, it should be pointed out that there are some non-trinitarians who do provide significant and compelling biblical rebuttals to trinitarian arguments for the distinct personality of the Word and Spirit (especially the latter). From what I’ve read, my assessment is that the Bible provides good evidence in this regard, but perhaps 90% of the passages used by trinitarians can be explained through other means.

Consider for example a common argument from grammar, that the masculine gender used for the neuter noun “Spirit” is explained only through personhood. One rebuttal to this claim (from trinitarian scholars) pointed out that it’s been used for at least 500 years as first-class evidence for the personhood of the Holy Spirit, and it’s based on a completely inaccurate claim about the grammar of the passages involved.

Sometimes well-intentioned people argue for the right thing the wrong way. Their position may be right even though at least one of their arguments is not. This seems to be the case with a popular exegetical and theological argument for the personality of the Holy Spirit. The right position is that the Holy Spirit is a person, and the fallacious argument is that the masculine demonstrative pronoun ἐκεῖνος in John 14:26, 15:26, and 16:13–14 proves it. Trinitarian theologians through church history have rightly defended the personality of the Spirit, and an astonishing number of defenders appeal to this argument for support…

The gender of the nouns and pronouns in these chapters neither supports nor challenges the doctrine of the Spirit’s personality. It is time to put this erroneous argument to rest once and for all.

— PROOFTEXTING THE PERSONALITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT: AN ANALYSIS OF THE MASCULINE DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUNS IN JOHN 14:26, 15:26, AND 16:13–14

Because of problems like this, I wanted to find one passage that clearly brings together the distinction, personality, and oneness of the Word and Spirit, from the immediate context rather than grammar. Working through a survey of trinitarian prooftexts, I found a good, clear passage that checks most of these boxes in the book of Romans.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. (Rom 8:26-27)

Here the Spirit is doing something that can only be accomplished as a personal being — interceding on behalf of people who are having difficulty knowing what to pray. The Spirit is described as having a mind, and he uses this mind to present requests on behalf of the saints to some other being. This other being also appears to be divine; he is the person to whom saints are trying to pray; he searches their hearts — presumably through the Spirit, whose mind he knows. Because we elsewhere see the Holy Spirit described as truly divine (cf. Jer 31:33-34, Heb 10:15-17), this shows us that the godhead possesses at least two distinct persons who are truly divine, and therefore are able to engage with one another as a believer prays.

As for who the other person is, one could biblically posit the Word or the Father, and either would fit into a patternist view. If it were the Word, the reasoning would be straightforward enough, that the Spirit here is communicating with his counterpart, the Word. The mention of God however may imply that the Father is in view (based on how new testament authors typically use those terms interchangeably). So we would be dealing with a composite union of persons, in which case the conversation would be between one member of the composite whole, and a representative of the whole.

Passages where the Word and Spirit are interacting with “God” can be tricky to understand in any viewpoint, so a few notes on how this works in pattern theology are in order. Trinitarians generally render this as the writers of scripture using the term “God” as a synonym for “God the Father,” rather than view the entire godhead as personal. However, as I argued in my article on composite personhood, even trinitarians implicitly rely on God as a whole being personal (hence they actually believe in four divine persons, or else are being inconsistent). Patternists agree that the “Father” is often used as a synonym for “God,” but rather than create a third person in the godhead, we view this as a description of the whole.

Any viewpoint that holds to a plurality of persons in the godhead (two or three persons who are one) faces the challenge of explaining the dynamics when one person in the godhead interacts with the whole. Who is that person speaking to, exactly? In the passage above, if the Spirit is interceding with “God” on behalf of the Christian, who exactly is the Spirit speaking to? The idea from a patternist view is that one engages with a composite person through a single individual who represents the whole. This is similar to how scripture will sometimes ascribe the actions of a king or representative to the actions of a nation, and vice versa. For example,

King Solomon built a fleet of ships at Ezion-geber, which is near Eloth on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom. And Hiram sent with the fleet his servants, seamen who were familiar with the sea, together with the servants of Solomon. (1Ki 9:26-27)

Then all Israel gathered together to David at Hebron and said, “Behold, we are your bone and flesh. In times past, even when Saul was king, it was you who led out and brought in Israel. And the LORD your God said to you, ‘You shall be shepherd of my people Israel, and you shall be prince over my people Israel.'” So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron, and David made a covenant with them at Hebron before the LORD. And they anointed David king over Israel, according to the word of the LORD by Samuel. (1Ch 11:1-3)

In the first passage, Solomon is credited as the one who built a fleet of ships. However, he probably was not himself actively performing the woodwork etc. Rather, he is the one who gave the order for the nation he represented (Israel) to perform this task, through the work of skilled craftsmen. In the second quote, we see “all Israel” gathered to David, speaking with him. Taken in a wooden fashion, this is challenging to interpret, because David was also an Israelite. Was he therefore speaking with himself? No, we see later in this passage that “all Israel” was represented by a group of elders who made a covenant with him, to come under his rule. The actual dialog and covenant was made between a select few people, but these were actions done on behalf of a composite union of people.

Now whether or not these composite unions of people are rightly called composite persons is beside the point (though God does seem to refer to nations as individual people, using personal and individualistic language with them, e.g. Israel, Judah, Edom, Moab etc.). The point here is that dialog with a composite group of people tends to be done through representatives. So if the Spirit is speaking with the composite group of persons known as “God,” then he is likely speaking with a person within the godhead who is acting on behalf of the whole. Since the Spirit is speaking independently, interceding with God on the behalf of the Christian, then the other person (in a patternist view) would have to be the Word. So whether the Spirit is interceding with the Word or the Father, in both cases, the actual conversation would be between the Word and the Spirit, similar to a mother interceding with her husband to make a particular decision that will impact the whole family.

The personhood of the Word is extremely easy to establish under a trinitarian view of scripture, because the Word and the Son are viewed as equivalent terms that are interchangeable in every context; they both refer to Jesus’ divine nature. Because there’s a wealth of highly personal texts focusing on the relationship of the Son to the Father, trinitarians can therefore appeal to these texts to establish the personhood of the Word.

As mentioned above, patternists nuance this view of the Son by claiming that it only refers to the Word insofar as the Word is united to a created nature, through the hypostatic union. Because of this distinction, prooftexts about the personhood of the Son can’t be used to prove the personhood of the Word; that has to be established separately.

Fortunately, John 1 provides us with a good, personal description of the Word that seems to make him a distinct, divine person.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. (Jhn 1:1-3)

In its normal, trinitarian interpretation, this passage provides clear proof of the distinct personhood of the Word as a co-equal, co-eternal member of the godhead. Because patternists share this belief with trinitarians, I am highly motivated to accept the classic interpretation of the Word in this passage, and simply adapt it to a two-person godhead. However, as discussed elsewhere, I believe there is a subtle problem with the trinitarian reasoning on this verse, and an alternative interpretation that seems to fit better with the context, and broader scripture.

I lay out the full argument in my article on Jesus’ preincarnate form, but the conclusion of the matter is that whatever you do with John 1 and the nature of Christ, an uncreated, truly divine person of the Word still provides the best understanding of christology and scripture at large. So for the purposes of this summary article, we can just take the classic trinitarian exposition of John 1 as evidence for a member of the godhead known as the Word.

The next step then would be to establish that the Word is truly distinct from the Spirit, not just a synonym or a layer of composite personhood. A good passage in this regard would be Jesus’ discourse on the Christian’s relationship to the Spirit.

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. (Jhn 14:15-17)

Even though Jesus had a relationship with the Spirit in some sense (e.g. Mat 4:1), his personality wasn’t united with that of the Spirit, outside of his occasional identification with the person of the Father. In this passage, the Word and Spirit are specifically distinguished from one another; Jesus (the Word incarnate) speaks of the Spirit as another helper, someone who will teach the disciples when he is gone (Jhn 14:26).

As I mentioned earlier, trinitarians have already collected, defended, and catalogued many proofs of the distinct, divine personhood of the Word and Spirit; this article provides a mere sampling of texts that remain after the nuancing of pattern christology. So I’ll defer to the work already done, and move on to discuss the meaning of the Word and Spirit as one God. How does this pattern impact our understanding of the godhead?

While there are many points of application that give us insight into the nature of God — instances of the pattern which we will develop in other articles — to give a summary or overview of the subject, here we will begin with only two. The first relates to the human body, and the second to marriage.

Concerning the first, we see that Word and Spirit are conceptually related ideas reflected in God’s design of the human body. Here the pattern has an advantage over the doctrine of the trinity, where the titles for the persons don’t necessarily relate. For example, Father and Son relate to each-other conceptually as a parent/child relationship or analogy. But it’s difficult to then extend that to Spirit — how does the Holy Spirit relate to that familial language? Alternatively, you could describe the trinity as Father, Word and Spirit, in which case Word and Spirit are related conceptually, but Father is not.

By removing the father/son pairing from the godhead, and viewing it an external relationship between God as a whole, and Jesus as a man, this leaves only the Word and Spirit relationship within the godhead. These two are related because “Spirit” can also be translated “Breath” or “Wind” in many contexts, both in Greek and Hebrew. Looking at the design of our bodies, we see that breath sustains life, and at times can even give life to others (Gen 2:7, Jhn 20:22). It is also used to carry the words of a speaker, reproducing them by creating air waves that carry the word to those with ears to hear.

Without breath, a person’s words are impotent. A good example of this would be astronauts in space, who are unable to communicate directly because of the lack of air between two people. Air waves have to be translated into light waves before they can cross the distance of space. In spiritual terms, this is seen in the parable of the sower/soils. Seed (corresponding to the Word) is only potent when it falls on good soil (corresponding to a life full of the Holy Spirit). Without the presence and fullness of the Spirit, the Word is either entirely or mostly unfruitful (Mat 13).

On the other hand, breath without words is also impotent. It may be sufficient to keep someone alive, but in the realm of communication, it doesn’t accomplish anything. Spiritually, this is seen in the relationship of God’s word to both salvation and growth unto maturity. The Spirit may convict the world of sin (Jhn 16:8), but it is by the convicting work of the Spirit united with the preaching of the gospel that a person is born again.

For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” (Rom 10:13-15)

This of course might be nuanced to allow for salvation in response to other forms of revelation, such as creation, but the point remains that a person is always responding to truth, in terms of his own sinfulness and need for God’s salvation. So the Word and Spirit, though different in role, are equally necessary to provide useful communication. We see this in the natural and spiritual realms, and God’s taking this description unto himself can provide us with useful insight into the nature and meaning of the godhead.

Perhaps a good starting point for understanding the role of each person would be to suggest that the Word brings order and truth, while the Spirit sustains and reproduces life. Certainly those attributes may be communicable; scripture speaks of the “word of life” and the “spirit of truth” (Phil 2:16, Jhn 14:17). But in that case, I suspect the attributes are given because of the relationship between God’s word and spirit, vs (e.g.) that of the enemy. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth because it rejoices with the truth, and rejects error. God’s word is the word of life, because of what it produces in creatures who yield to the Spirit of life rather than the spirit of death. (Further nuancing of the concept of life can be found in the next article on creation.)

This correlates with Jesus’ claims about himself. Because these two persons of the godhead are postured toward one another, the Word of life and the Spirit of truth created a child, a son who provided the “way” back to God that restores what was broken in the fall.

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (Jhn 14:6)

In whatever way these attributes of truth and life are ascribed to, or grounded in the nature of God, viewing the structure of God as a union of Word and Spirit provides us with a pattern that usefully explains and ties together his design in creation, salvation, marriage, and other areas of theology.

One central application of pattern theology is its explanation of gender. God created man and woman after his image and likeness (Gen 1:27), and he created them as two persons who are one (Gen 2:24). Unlike trinitarian theology, patternists can explain this design decision through our theology of the godhead. He created us male and female because we are patterned after his own nature, the Word and Spirit. I’ve committed a full article to developing this issue, but because gender is so intimately tied to many of the other applications, it’s worth giving some brief attention to it now.

If the two-in-one of marriage is patterned after the godhead, an immediate question arises — which gender correlates to which person? Pattern theology holds that in the area of gender and family, men are created after the image of the Word, and women after the image of the Spirit. In other areas, such as body and soul structures, all humans (regardless of gender) are created in the image of God in general; we possess elements of both Word and Spirit. According to our gender alone, we separately bear the image of Word and Spirit.

I’ll refrain from backing that claim here, as it will happen naturally in other articles that address specific subjects. For this article, the important thing is to affirm the correlation between gender and the godhead, and to address one objection that trinitarians sometimes raise against the idea of assigning the Spirit to femininity.

The problem for pattern theology is that scripture seems to always refer to God in the masculine gender, including (I’m told) references to the Holy Spirit. I could point out in response that the word for “Spirit” in the old testament is feminine, and in the new testament it is neuter, not masculine (as the article linked above briefly mentions). But the gender of a word in languages doesn’t necessarily correlate to the gender of a person referred to by that word, so the femininity or neutrality of Spirit doesn’t automatically help my point.

I’m not aware of all the arguments that establish the Spirit’s masculinity, and I don’t have the skillset necessary to vet them, as it’s an issue of grammar and translation, rather than contextual meaning. So I’m just going to bypass that argument altogether, and simply reply that the gender of the divine persons doesn’t really impact the patternist position at all. We’re not saying that the Holy Spirit is feminine. We’re saying that the concept of femininity is created in the image of the Spirit.

To put it another way, in the last section we briefly discussed body parts that correlate to one or the other person. The tongue correlates to the Word, and lungs correlate to the Spirit. But just because the tongue is patterned after the Word, that doesn’t mean that the tongue is masculine; women have tongues too, complete with xx chromosomes in every cell. The point is that the godhead explains many abstractions in creation; gender is only one instance of the pattern. So even if the Spirit relates to humanity in a masculine sense, that’s irrelevant to the question of whether or not femininity comes from the Holy Spirit. God is the creator of gender, not necessarily someone governed by it.

So granted, it would be pretty cool if someone with a thorough knowledge of Greek and Hebrew could build on this work, and demonstrate that the Holy Spirit is viewed in the feminine or neuter genders, rather than masculine (a subtle hint to any sympathetic readers out there ;-)). But that would only be icing on the cake; it isn’t necessary to apply the pattern to gender.

With that qualification in place, it’s worth asking the trinitarian, “How do you justify gender in your understanding of God? Where did it come from?” It’s easy enough to say that it came from Genesis 1-2, but all that does is tell us what God created; it doesn’t tell us why. One could claim that the purpose was procreation, but God just as easily could have granted Adam asexual reproduction, like many other creatures. Another might say that it prefigures Christ and the Church, which is true enough. But why do Christ and the Church relate according to these different roles? Where did they come from? Why did God create two very different kinds of people who work together in marriage to create and raise children? What do the differences between men and women mean? Why are they so central to so much of Christian theology? If God exists as three persons who are one, why did he create his image-bearers as two persons who are one? How do you justify gender in your understanding of the godhead?