The Spirit Who Knows the Things of God

Article 7 of 13 in the series “The Old Paths of Trinitarian Doctrine: Reading Edmund Calamy’s Thirteen Sermons.”

Calamy’s seventh sermon answers objections against the deity and personality of the Holy Ghost. Its text is 1 Corinthians 2:11:

“For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.”

The 1722 contents and sermon heading mistakenly cite “2 Corinthians 2:11.” The quoted text and argument plainly belong to 1 Corinthians 2:11. Correcting the reference matters because Calamy’s method depends upon the precise scriptural context.

Paul’s comparison is the centre of the sermon. As a man’s own spirit knows his inward thoughts, the Spirit of God knows the deep things of God. The analogy expresses intimate, immediate knowledge. It does not reduce the Holy Ghost to an impersonal faculty or identify him personally with the Father.

The Spirit Searches the Deep Things of God

Created minds know God only because God reveals himself. Angels and saints may receive astonishing knowledge, but it remains communicated and finite. The Spirit searches “all things, yea, the deep things of God” and then reveals them to the apostles.

Calamy argues that this is not the knowledge of an outsider. The Spirit knows God as a man’s spirit knows the man’s own inward life. He is not informed by observation or granted selected facts. His knowledge belongs within the divine life.

The analogy therefore supports deity. A finite spirit cannot comprehend the infinite mind. If the Holy Ghost knows all the things of God and communicates divine mysteries authoritatively, he possesses omniscience.

The same verse supports personality. Knowing, searching, and revealing are acts of an intelligent agent. The Spirit is not simply the content revealed or the power by which another person acts. He is the knower who discloses what eye has not seen and human imagination could not discover.

Does the Analogy Make the Spirit the Same Person as the Father?

An objection reasons that a man’s spirit is not a second person alongside the man; therefore the Spirit of God cannot be personally distinct from God. Calamy answers that an analogy may be exact in the point compared without extending to every feature.

Paul’s point concerns inward knowledge. The spirit of a man knows the man’s thoughts; even so, the Spirit knows the things of God. The text does not say that the personal constitution of God is identical to the constitution of a human being.

Other Scriptures establish the distinction. The Father sends the Spirit. The Spirit proceeds, hears, speaks, testifies of the Son, glorifies the Son, and intercedes for believers. One who is sent is not, in that relation, the sender. One who glorifies the Son is not the Son whom he glorifies.

The biblical doctrine therefore receives both lines of evidence. The Spirit possesses an intimacy of divine knowledge no creature can possess, and he is personally distinguished from Father and Son.

Is the Spirit Merely the Power of God?

The Spirit’s coming is described as power from on high, and his operations display divine power. Some therefore concluded that “Holy Ghost” means the power of God rather than a divine person.

Calamy distinguishes the agent from his effect. Scripture says the Spirit exercises power and distributes powerful gifts. It also distinguishes the gifts from “the same Spirit” who gives them “as he will.” An impersonal force does not choose recipients, send ministers, forbid journeys, speak in the first person, or appoint overseers.

Christ calls him “another Comforter,” not another name for the Father’s energy. He teaches, reminds, testifies, reproves, guides, hears, speaks, and shows things to come. The accumulation cannot reasonably be dismissed as one extended figure of speech while the personal language concerning Father and Son is accepted.

Is the Language Only Personification?

Scripture sometimes personifies wisdom, charity, blood, sin, and death. Calamy grants the fact. The question is whether the Spirit passages bear the marks of obvious poetic personification or present a sustained personal agent within historical action and divine discourse.

Wisdom building a house is visibly figurative. The Holy Ghost saying, “Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them,” occurs in the church’s worship and directs real persons into a real mission. “It seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us” records deliberative authority. The Spirit’s intercession, grief, witness, and will belong to a coherent personal pattern across genres.

If every inconvenient personal predicate can be labelled personification, the same method could dissolve the personality of the Father and Son. The interpretation is controlled not by the text but by the desired conclusion.

Must Scripture Say “The Holy Ghost Is God” in One Formula?

Calamy’s opponents demanded a frequent explicit sentence using the exact word God as a predicate of the Spirit. He challenges the demand. Creatures do not dictate how revelation must phrase a doctrine. Scripture may teach directly by identifying the Spirit with Jehovah, calling believers his temple, treating a lie to him as a lie to God, and assigning him divine attributes and works.

Moreover, the Spirit is in effect called God in Acts 5 and Lord in 2 Corinthians 3. The relative name “Spirit of God” also carries weight when joined to the Spirit’s possession of what belongs essentially to God.

Doctrines are commonly established by necessary consequence. Scripture nowhere needs to gather every conclusion into the precise sentence a later controversialist demands. The question is whether the conclusion arises fairly from the words God chose.

Does Shared Work Confuse the Persons?

Another objection says that applying Old Testament acts of Jehovah to the Spirit would prove that the Spirit is the Father or Son. Calamy answers by distinguishing unity of nature and operation from identity of person.

Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are all concerned in creation, redemption, and sanctification. Their shared divine work demonstrates that each possesses the one divine power. It does not imply that each is the same person.

The Son creates without being the Father. The Spirit sanctifies without being the Son. The works of God toward creation are undivided, while Scripture reveals a personal order and fitting appropriations. Confusing those categories creates the false dilemma that Calamy is trying to avoid.

What about Apostolic Salutations?

The Father and Son are more commonly named in the opening salutations of the epistles. Some argued that the Spirit’s comparative absence proves inferiority.

Calamy questions the factual premise, pointing to Revelation’s greeting from the one upon the throne, the seven Spirits, and Jesus Christ. He then challenges the inference. A doctrine does not depend upon equal numerical frequency in one literary formula. The Spirit appears with Father and Son in baptism, benediction, access to God, gifts, worship, and the entire work of salvation.

The apostolic blessing—“the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost”—is especially significant. The Spirit is not a created benefit placed beside divine persons. He is the personal source of communion.

The Pastoral Meaning of the Spirit’s Deity

Calamy ends where the doctrine lives. If the Spirit is God, believers depend upon him for understanding, holiness, assurance, prayer, courage, fruitfulness, and perseverance. His work cannot be reduced to extraordinary gifts in the apostolic age.

The Spirit who inspired Scripture illuminates without contradicting the Word he gave. He forms Christ in believers, witnesses to their adoption, mortifies sin, and preserves them in truth. Grieving him is therefore not a metaphor for misusing religious energy. It is personal resistance against the Holy One who dwells in his people.

The sermon’s answer to objection is finally simple. The Holy Ghost knows God from within the divine life, acts with sovereign will, bears the divine name, and remains distinct from Father and Son. The church may therefore confess him without either multiplying gods or reducing him to an impersonal attribute.

Previous: Article 6, “The Deity of the Holy Ghost.”
Next: Article 8, “None Other God but One.”