Part 53

(5) Turn now to a passage in the Old Testament. Neh. 9:20. +"Thou gavest also thy good Spirit to instruct them, and withheldest not thy manna from their mouth, and gavest them water for their thirst."+ Here both intelligence and goodness are ascribed to the Holy Spirit. This passage does not add anything to the thought that we have already had: I brought it in simply because it is from the Old Testament. There are those who say that the doctrine of the Personality of the Holy Spirit is in the New Testament, but is not in the Old Testament; but here we find it as clearly in the Old Testament as in the New. Of course, we do not find it as frequently in the Old Testament as in the New, for this is the dispensation of the Holy Spirit: but the doctrine of the Personality of the Holy Spirit is there in the Old Testament. There are many who say that the doctrine of the Trinity is not in the Old Testament, that while it is in the New, it is not in the Old. But it is in the Old, in the very first chapter of the Bible. In Gen. 1:26 we read, +"And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness."+ Here the plurality of the persons in the Godhead comes out clearly. God did not say, "_I_ will" or "Let _me_ make man in _my_ image." He said, "Let _us_ make man in _our_ image, after _our_ likeness." The three persons of the Trinity are found in the first three verses of the Bible: +"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."+ There you have God the Father. +"And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."+ There you have the Holy Spirit. +"And God said,"+ there you have the Word, +"Let there be light: and there was light."+ Here we have the three persons of the Trinity in the first three verses of the Bible. In fact the doctrine of the Trinity is found hundreds of times in the Old Testament. In the Hebrew Bible it occurs in every place where you find the word God in your English Bible, for the Hebrew word for God is a plural noun. Literally translated, it would be "Gods" and not God. In the very passage to which the Unitarians and the Jews, who reject the Deity of Christ, refer so often as proving conclusively that the Deity of Christ cannot be true, namely Deut. 6:4, the very doctrine that they are seeking to disprove is found; for Deut. 6:4 literally translated would read +"Hear, O Israel: Jehovah our Gods is one Jehovah."+ Why did the Hebrews with their intense monotheism, use a plural name for God? This was the question that puzzled the Hebrew grammarians and lexicographers, and the best explanation they could arrive at was that the plural for God here used was the pluralis majestatis, the plural of majesty. The explanation is entirely inadequate, to say nothing of the fact that the pluralis majestatis in the Old Testament is a figure of very doubtful validity. There is another explanation far nearer at hand, and far more adequate and satisfactory, and that is that the Hebrew inspired writers use a plural name for God in spite of their intense monotheism, because there is a plurality of persons in the one Godhead.