Is the Holy Spirit a 'Person' or something entirely different?

Answer 1

A:Unlike God (the Father) in the earlier parts of the Old Testament, and Jesus in the New Testament, the Holy Spirit never appears in human form. The Hebrew etymology helps establish that the Jews and their Hebrew forebears regard the Holy Spirit essentially as the breath of God - hardly a 'person'. In the Christian New Testament, John's Gospel somewhat follows this by having the risen Jesus breathe on the disciples, saying (John 20:22, KJV), "Receive ye the Holy Ghost [Spirit]." In Acts of the Apostles, at the Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was represented by tongues of flame and the sound of rushing wind. Elsewhere there was a different motif, with the Holy Spirit appearing as a dove. It seems that the early Christians were somewhat tied to the ancient Jewish notion of the Holy Spirit as the breath of God, but beginning to see him as something more.

By the third century, the Holy Spirit was beginning to be seen as a definite third force. The Nicene Creed, developed in the fourth century, established the Holy Trinity, which henceforth consists of three 'persons' in one God: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. On this view, the Holy Spirit should be seen as a 'person', but not in the human or anthropomorphic sense.