"Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" (Romans 1:7; 1 Corinthians 1:3; 2 Corinthians 1:2).

"Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ" (Galatians 1:3).

"Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" (Ephesians 1:2; Philippians 1:2).

"Grace to you and peace from God our Father" (Colossians 1:2).

"To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: grace to you and peace" (1 Thessalonians 1:1).

"Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" (2 Thessalonians 1:2).

"Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord" (1 Timothy 1:2; 2 Timothy 1:2, also see 4:1).

"Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Saviour" (Titus 1:4).

"Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" (Philemon 3).

Is it not an extraordinary thing that if Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, were convinced of trinitarian doctrine, he should exclude this third "equal and eternal person" from all his greetings! And more strangely still, where in the body of one letter he does include a further name, it is not the Holy Spirit:

"In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of the elect angels I charge you to keep these rules without favour ..." (1 Timothy 5:21)

If the Holy Spirit was a third member of the Trinity why was it omitted in favour of the angels, who indisputably are of lower status? Here, to add weight to this argument, are two comparable passages where reference to the Holy Spirit is lacking and one to the angels included. Would a 'God the Holy Spirit' be absent from the scenes described here?:

"For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels" (Luke 9:26).

"I [Jesus] will confess his name before my Father and before his angels" (Revelation 3:5).

What a contrast this makes to the endless repetition of the trinitarian doxology in church liturgy throughout Christendom! If the Holy Spirit exists as a separate person, why this repeated omission?

Careful students of the Scriptures have also noted that although there are innumerable verses describing worship offered to God the Father, many also to His Son, and at least a few to men, ⁽²³⁾ there is no place where the Holy Spirit is said to be worshipped, or a command to do so is given! Again, what a contrast with church practice.

(3) THE FATHER OF JESUS

There is an inherent contradiction in trinitarian doctrine over the identity of the father of Jesus. All Scripture and reason recognises God the Father (in trinitarian parlance "the first person") as the begetter of Jesus. Do Trinitarians ever ask themselves how it is that the Father is the father of Jesus, when actually he is described as being begotten of the Holy Spirit? The angel Gabriel told Mary:

"'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God"' (Luke 1:35).

And in Matthew's record we read:

"Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 1:18).

The begetter here is expressly stated to be the Holy Spirit, who, according to trinitarian teaching, was "the third person" and not "the first"! Where is Jesus ever called the Son of the Holy Spirit?. What are we to believe this false teaching or the straightforward declaration that Jesus was begotten by "the power of the Most High", as Luke's parallelism makes perfectly clear?

If the Holy Spirit is a person, yet another serious objection involves the partial bestowal of one person upon another:

"And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh .. yea, and on my menservants and my maidservants ... I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy" (Acts 2:17-18).

The Authorised and Revised Versions have here the literal rendering (in both places) "of my Spirit", meaning "some of my Spirit". The same Greek preposition (apo) is used in Mark:

"When the time came, he sent a servant to the tenants, to get from them some of [apo] the fruit of the vineyard" (Mark 12:2). ⁽²⁴⁾

On the Acts 2:17-18 passage Weymouth's translation has a footnote: "literally 'of' or 'from' My Spirita share or portion." In the sense of sharing a power there is no difficulty, but how possibly can one receive a fraction of a person?

Nor is this the only occurrence of this concept; we have also:

"By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his own Spirit" (1 John 4:13).

Here a different preposition (ek "out of") is used, but the import is the same. Schonfield's "Authentic New Testament" reads: "Has given us some of his own Spirit;" the "Translator's New Testament" and "Today's New Testament" read: "a share of his Spirit", and Weymouth "a portion of ..." ⁽²⁵⁾  A person cannot be portioned out in this way, but a power easily can be.

(5) IS A "PERSON" A "FLUID"?

The Acts passage just considered (2:17) poses a further problem to Trinitarians, viz. how a "person" can be "poured out" on others. This expression is to be found in not a few biblical texts besides that quoted by Peter from Joel 2:28-29 (see also Proverbs 1:23; Isaiah 32:15; 44:3; Ezekiel 39:29; Zechariah 12:10; Acts 10:44-45; Romans 5:5; Titus 3:6). In most of these passages, if not in all, the analogy of anointing with oil is being used (with Acts 10:38 compare 1 John 2:27). The likeness of Spirit to a fluid (either liquid or, in the case of wind and breath, a vapour) underlies many diverse New Testament references. For example, the Spirit is likened to "rivers of living water" (John 7:38-39): the Corinthians were a letter from Christ "... written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God" (2 Corinthians 3:3), and they had been "made to drink of one Spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:13). The Ephesian believers were exhorted not to drink wine but to be filled with the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18). These analogies are consistent with an invisible motivating or controlling power, but are they fitting even compatible with a person?

Yet another serious problem for the trinitarian believer is the "deafening silence" of the record in "Acts of the Apostles" about the alleged "three persons of the Godhead". Over half this book is concerned with the Jewish scene, mainly in Jerusalem but also in Judea and Samaria, and in synagogues abroad. There can be no shadow of doubt that the strong monotheism of Jews and Samaritans would have flared up instantly and vehemently, had the apostles preached anything remotely savouring of trinitarian doctrine. But on this subject Luke is silent throughout; not a hint, not a whisper of such contention does he mention, and the only reasonable and fair conclusion is that such novel teaching was totally absent from "the words of salvation" proclaimed in the earliest decades of the Christian era. False doctrine on this subject first appears in the writing of the sub-apostolic church fathers, after the entry of "fierce wolves" into the flock as Paul had warned (Acts 20:29)many of them only half-converted Greek philosophers, whose speculations are known to have included concepts of a triune godhead. This historical trend is described in chapter 8.

The conclusions we have come to from our analysis of many Scriptural references to the Holy Spirit (see pp.83ff) may now be applied to the series of passages on "the Comforter" in John 14-16. Trinitarians consider these to be some of the strongest evidence for believing in the existence of a "third person" in the Godhead. It will be helpful at the outset to reproduce the passages in full and then examine the detailed statements of each:

"If you love me, you will keep my commandments. ¹⁶And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counsellor, to be with you for ever, ¹⁷even 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. ¹⁸I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you" (John 14:15-18).

"These things I have spoken to you, while I am still with you. ²⁶But the Counsellor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you" (John 14:25-26).

"But when the Counsellor comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness to me; ²⁷and you also are witnesses .." (John 15:26-27).

"Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counsellor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. ⁸And when he comes, he will convince the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment: ⁹of sin, because they do not believe in me; ¹⁰of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no more; ¹¹of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. ¹²I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. ¹³When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. ¹⁴He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. ¹⁵All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you" (John 16:7-15).

5. This promise was given to "the Twelve", ⁽²⁹⁾ and it is more than possible that the Pentecostal outpouring of the Spirit was only upon these (see below on "Spirit gifts" pp. 118ff).

6. According to these chapters the role of the Counsellor was:

(a) to teach the twelve all things

(b) to bring to their remembrance all that Jesus had told them (John 14:26).

(c) to bear witness to Christ (John 15:26)

(d) to convince the world of sin, righteousness and judgment (John 16:8)

(e) to guide the twelve into all the truth

(f) to declare the things that were to come (John 16:13)

7. The impression made by these passages on the reader looking for proof of the existence of the Trinity is that another person is being described (i.e. other than Jesus or his Father) both by the frequent personal pronouns ⁽³⁰⁾ and also the various functions assigned to the Counsellor: indeed the very title "Counsellor" strongly suggests this.

We propose that the key to the problem is to be found in the circumstances in which Jesus made this promise. The occasion was, of course, "the last supper", when Jesus' arrest, trial and crucifixion were but hours ahead. For three years he had been the close companion, guide and protector of the twelve. Now he was about to be taken from them, no longer to be physically with them (except for the forty days before his final ascension Acts 1:3). There had, however, been at least one occasion during his earthly ministry when the Twelve, and later the Seventy, were sent out in pairs, on a mission to preach the gospel and heal the sick and for the latter work they were given Spirit power, about which they rejoiced on their return to Jesus (Luke 9:1ff; 10:1ff and 10.17ff). The promise of Pentecost was that, in the absence of Christ's physical presence, his Spirit power was to be poured out upon them in much fuller measure than previously to perform even greater works than he himself had accomplished (John 14:12). Nevertheless it was as if he were still bodily with them, hence he said categorically: "I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you" (John 14:18). The record in Acts shows how "the Spirit" of Jesus taught, guided and stimulated the memories of the Twelve of all Jesus had said and done during their three-year discipleship. By this Spirit they became effective and fruitful witnesses to his sacrificial death, resurrection and glorification at his Father's side. ⁽³¹⁾

The identification of the Counsellor with the Spirit of Jesus has strong confirmation from a number of other passages, notably the reference (already quoted) in John's first epistle (this epistle is indubitably an inspired commentary on his gospel): "but if any one does sin, we have an advocate [parakletos] with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous" (1 John 2:1). We may well ask, are there really two separate advocates? Does not such an idea call into question the adequacy of Christ's own omnipresence and power with his followers? We are plainly told that there is only one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5). So Jesus would appear to have a two-fold role, viz.: as our advocate in heaven with the Father, and on earth by his Spirit guiding and directing the witness of his Apostles. As for the Spirit of Christ in action and in a law court too! what better example could we have than that described by Paul?:

"At my first defence no one took my part; all deserted me ... But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength to proclaim the word fully, that all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion's mouth" (2 Timothy 4:16-17).