God the Holy Spirit: Examining the Old Testament

Montague wrote a book entitled The Holy Spirit: Growth of a Biblical Tradition. He suggests that in Solomon's day the Yahwehists only talked about the fact that God had breathed into man the breath of life. This breath of life was not a spirit or a soul; it was just life. It was God-breathed because of a special relationship that man had with God.

Montague then noted how the Eloists claimed that Joseph had been endowed with the Spirit of God. Montague suggested that this really referred only to a charismatic gift for interpreting dreams. He suggested that the deuteronomist contributed an important idea in the book of Judges. Here the nation's charismatic leadership became the work of the Spirit of the Lord. Remember that Montague would date the book of Judges late in the monarchy, not in the days of the judges themselves. He claims that the 8^th century prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah began to stress the role of the Spirit of Yahweh who gave them their authority. Then the exilic prophets like Ezekiel even began seeing the Spirit of Yahweh as an objective agent used by God to bring renewal. It was from these roots that the idea just slowly developed that the Spirit was a separate person of the Godhead. (This of course is a liberal view).

Wood notes that the Old Testament often talks about the Holy Spirit coming on people, and then leaving them. He notes that many have taken this to mean that the Holy Spirit did not indwell people permanently in the Old Testament as He did in the new. Wood argues that Old Testament saints must have been filled with the Spirit in a way that parallels New Testament saints. Otherwise, they would have lost their salvation. After all New Testament passages like 2 Timothy 1:12 and 1 Peter 1:5 make it clear that believers are preserved by the Holy Spirit within them. At Pentecost, Wood suggests that the word "filled" is used in several different ways in reference to God's Spirit. The filling at Pentecost has special reference to the believer's baptism at the beginning of the church. Wood also pointed out that the Holy Spirit is omnipresent so He cannot really be said to come into or leave anyone; He is everywhere. So, the Old Testament filling of God's Spirit must refer to some aspect of His work that either begins or ends in some point in history.

Payne argued that the Old Testament had very little to say about either the Angel of the Lord or the Spirit of the Lord. He argued that, generally speaking, when God was present within people He was God's Spirit, and when God appeared outside of people He was the Angel of the Lord. Payne argued that there are two Old Testament passages that suggest the presence of the whole Trinity. One of these was Proverbs 1:23-29. Here Wisdom promised to pour out His Spirit on Israel, but censors Israel for not fearing Yahweh. The second passage is Isaiah 63:9, 10. Here Isaiah declared that the Angel of Yahweh's presence saved them, Yahweh redeemed them, and they vexed His Holy Spirit.

Wood's view is of course the most-conservative view, but even it carries further unanswered questions.