The 2025 State of Theology study from Lifeway Research found 7 in 10 Americans (71%) agree there is one true God in three Persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. However, many Americans struggle with the practical implications of this trinitarian belief. Namely, most (57%) say the Holy Spirit is a force, not a personal being. This reveals doctrinal confusion and contradictory beliefs among many Americans.
And this confusion does not evade evangelical circles. Although evangelicals are much more likely than Americans in general to affirm there is one true God in three Persons (97% vs. 71%), more than half of evangelicals (53%) still say the Holy Spirit is a force, not a personal being.1
Some of this confusion is understandable. Even believers who frequently read the Bible may be limited in their understanding of the Holy Spirit. Scripture gives relatively little attention to the Holy Spirit compared to the Father and the Son. This is partly due to the reality that God progressively reveals Himself through Scripture, bringing different degrees of clarity to the different Persons of the Trinity at different points in redemptive history. But some of the ambiguity of the Holy Spirit results from the Holy Spirit’s office in God’s unfolding kingdom—to glorify Jesus (John 16:14).
The Holy Spirit in Christian History
While the State of Theology study reveals an alarming percentage of evangelicals who are confused about the personhood of the Holy Spirit, this confusion is not new.
In 325, the Council of Nicaea condemned Arianism (which claimed Jesus was not God) by clarifying that Jesus Christ is “very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father” in the Nicene Creed. At that time, the Nicene Creed affirmed belief in the Holy Spirit without expounding on this belief. This left room for a group that became known as Semi-Arians to affirm the Nicene Creed while understanding the Holy Spirit to be a force or a power—a belief in opposition to the orthodox position that the Holy Spirit is the Third Person of the Trinity.
This led to another council convening in Constantinople in 381 where both sides presented scriptural reasons for their beliefs about the Holy Spirit. But ultimately, the council sided with Gregory of Nazianzus, who argued that despite verses that suggested the Holy Spirit is impersonal, the majority of Scripture speaks of the Holy Spirit as a personal being. With this, the Nicene Creed was expanded to clarify the personhood of the Holy Spirit.1
The question of whether the Holy Spirit is a force or a personal being is not new, but it is also not unanswerable. For more than 1,600 years, the church has affirmed the Holy Spirit is a personal being, but Christians still get tripped up over this question today.
God the Holy Spirit
To understand who the Holy Spirit is, we must examine the doctrine of the Trinity. This doctrine teaches us “each divine person is equally and identically the one true and living God; the only real distinction between the persons are their relations to each other.”2
As Scripture speaks of the triune God, it distinguishes the three persons by their relations to one another. This is called relations of origin, which essentially means each person of the Trinity is distinguished only by how “he is eternally related to another person of the Trinity as his personal principle or source.”3
The Father eternally begets the Son, and the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and Son. Thus, as the third person of the Trinity, we understand the Holy Spirit is God, distinguished from the Father and the Son only in that He is eternally breathed forth from the Father and Son. This is the Holy Spirit’s “personal property,” known as spiration. The Holy Spirit is not a part of God but is God in all His fullness.
As you may have noticed, the Holy Spirit has a double relation of origin, proceeding from both the Father and Son in eternity and time. We see this in a variety of ways throughout the Bible. Scripture testifies to the Holy Spirit being the Spirit of the Father (Matt. 10:20) and of the Son (Gal. 4:6). The apostle Paul speaks of Him as the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ (Rom. 8:9). Jesus speaks of the Holy Spirit as coming from the Father (John 15:26), but Jesus Himself breathed out the Spirit on the disciples (John 20:22). According to Jesus, the Father sends the Spirit in Jesus’s name (John 14:26), but also the Son sends the Spirit from the Father (John 15:26).4
Why does it matter that we get the Holy Spirit right?
Answering the question “Who is the Holy Spirit?” is about more than answering a Bible trivia question or participating in a theological thought exercise. Understanding the Holy Spirit as the Third Person of the Trinity matters for the believer seeking to walk by the Spirit today.
When Jesus was ascending to the Father, He didn’t promise His disciples a force that would guide them. Instead, He promised Himself. God the Holy Spirit who would be with them always, guiding the believer in the truth (who we know is Jesus), speaking what He hears from the Father, and glorifying Christ (John 16:13-14).
At the heart of the Trinity is a God who gives Himself to us. One way He does this is with the fellowship of the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 13:13).
As the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is both the object and the cause of the believer’s worship. He is the one who opens our eyes to see God “and causes us to enter the kingdom of praise to our triune King (John 3:3,5; Rev. 4–5).”5 Our Christian walk and worship is shaped by the Holy Spirit.
Works Cited
- Justin S. Holcomb, Know the Creeds and Councils (Zondervan, 2025), 77–78.
- Scott R. Swain, The Trinity: An Introduction, edited by Graham A. Cole and Oren R. Martin, Crossway, 2020, 61.
- Swain, 137.
- Swain, 100.
- Swain, 102.
About Marissa Postell Sullivan
Marissa Postell Sullivan serves as managing editor of lifewayresearch.com, where she helps equip church leaders with data-driven insights for ministry. She holds a Master of Theological Studies from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Marissa and her husband Caleb make their home in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, where she serves in student ministry in their local church. In her free time, she enjoys traveling, hiking, and connecting with family and friends.
