5. QUESTION 5.
Is not the Holy Spirit in the New Testament the same as the Spirit of God in the Old Testament, only with the difference that before the Lord's incarnation it proceeded from the Divine Esse or Jehovah directly, or through the mediation of angels, while after the incarnation it proceeded through the Son or Divine Human?
Is the Holy Spirit not the same as the sphere of God?
ANSWER
The Spirit of God and the Holy Spirit are two distinct things. The Spirit of God did not and could not operate on man except imperceptibly, whereas the Holy Spirit, which proceeds solely from the Lord, operates perceptibly on man, and enables man to understand spiritual truths in a natural way; to His Divine Celestial and Divine Spiritual the Lord has united the Divine Natural by which He operates from them. Besides, 'Holy' in the Word is attributed solely to the Divine Truth, thus to the Lord, Who is Divine Truth both in the celestial and spiritual sense and also in the natural sense, wherefore it is said in Revelation that the Lord alone is holy, Revelation 15:3-4. See further Apocalypse Revealed 173 n.. And it is said in John that the Holy Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified, 7:39.
The Holy Spirit is the same as the Divine Sphere when by this is meant the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom, both of which proceed from the Lord Jehovah out of the sun of the angelic heaven and make its sphere in the way that heat and light proceed out of the sun of the natural world and constitute its sphere; for heat from the sun of the angelic heaven is in its essence love, and light from the same sun is in its essence wisdom. To these two the heat and light of the sun of the world correspond.
