The nature of the Holy Spirit is a topic where there's a marked difference between standard Christian theology and the New Christian perspective. The "official" dogma of most Christian teaching is that the Holy Spirit is one of the three persons that make up one God, in the role of reaching out to people with the power of God to bring them into a desire for righteousness. He is perceived to be proceeding from the other two: God the Father and Jesus the Son.

That old formulation was the result of three centuries of debate among early Christians, as they tried to understand the nature of God. At that time, there was a sizeable minority that rejected the God-in-three-persons view, but -- the majority won out, at the Council of Nicea, in 325 AD.

The New Christian teaching is more akin to some of the old minority viewpoints. It regards the Holy Spirit as a force, or activity, coming from God -- not a separate being. This aligns with our everyday understanding of "spirit" as the projection of someone's personality. It also accounts for the fact that the term "the Holy Spirit" does not occur in Old Testament, which instead uses phrases such "the spirit of God," "the spirit of Jehovah" and "the spirit of the Lord," where the idea of spirit connected closely with the person of God.

The Writings describe the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as three attributes of one person: the soul, body and spirit of the one God. They also say that the term "Holy Spirit" emerges in the New Testament because it is connected with the Lord's advent in the physical body of Jesus, and because of the way that advent changed the way we can learn the Lord's truth and become good people.

According to the Writings, the churches that came before the advent were "representative." The people in them (in the best of those churches, anyway) knew that the Lord had created the world, and that the world was thus an image of the Lord, and they had the ability to look at that created world and understand its spiritual messages; they could look at the world and understand the Lord. And they did it without trying and with great depth, much the way we can read a book when what we're actually seeing is a bunch of black squiggles on a white sheet of paper.

That ability was eventually twisted into idol-worship and magic, however, as people slid into evil. The Lord used the Children of Israel to preserve symbolic forms of worship, but even they didn't know the deeper meaning of the rituals they followed. With the world thus bereft of real understanding, the Lord took on a human body so He could offer people new ideas directly. That's why the Writings say that He represents divine truth ("the Word became flesh," as it is put in John 1:14).

The Holy Spirit at heart also represents divine truth, the truth offered by the Lord through his ministry in the world and its record in the New Testament. The term "the Holy Spirit" is also used in a more general sense to mean the divine activity and the divine effect, which work through true teachings to have an impact on our lives.

Such a direct connection between the Lord and us was not something that could come through representatives; it had to come from the Lord as a man walking the earth during His physical life or - in modern times - through the image we have of Him as a man in His physical life. That's why people did not receive the Holy Spirit before the Lord's advent.

What we have now, though, is a full-blown idea of the Lord, with God the Father representing His soul, the Son representing his body, and the Holy Spirit representing His actions and His impact on people.

(რეკომენდაციები: The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord 58; True Christian Religion 138, 139, 140, 142, 153, 158, 163, 164, 166, 167, 168, 170, 172)

140. Now because the Holy Spirit means the Divine truth, and this was in the Lord Himself and was the Lord Himself (John 14:6), and so because the Holy Spirit could not proceed from any other source, it is said:

The Holy Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified, John 7:39.

and after His glorification:

He breathed on His disciples and said, Receive the Holy Spirit, John 20:22.

The reason why the Lord breathed on the disciples and said this was that breathing on was the external sign standing for inspiration by God; and inspiration means being brought into contact with communities of angels. This will allow the understanding to grasp what the angel Gabriel said about the Lord's conception:

The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; so that the holy thing that is born of you will be called the Son of God, Luke 1:35.

Also:

The angel of the Lord said to Joseph in a dream, Do not be afraid to take Mary as your betrothed, for what is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; and Joseph did not touch her until she had given birth to her first-born son, Matthew 1:20, 25.

The Holy Spirit stands there for the Divine truth proceeding from Jehovah the Father; it was this that came forth which was 'the power of the Most High' which overshadowed His mother. So this statement tallies with what John says:

The Word was with God, and the Word was God; and the Word was made flesh, John 1:1, 14.

For a demonstration that the Word there means the Divine truth see the Faith of the New Church (3 above).

3. THE FAITH OF THE NEW HEAVEN AND THE NEW CHURCH IN PARTICULAR TERMS IS AS FOLLOWS.

Jehovah God is Love itself and Wisdom itself, or Good itself and Truth itself. He came down in the form of Divine Truth, which is the Word and which was God with God, and took upon Himself human form, so as to reduce to order everything in heaven, in hell and in the church. For at that time the power of hell was stronger than the power of heaven, and on earth the power of evil was stronger than the power of good, so that utter damnation stood threatening at the gates. This impending damnation was removed by Jehovah God by means of His Human, which was Divine Truth, and thus angels and men were redeemed. Afterwards He united in His Human Divine Truth with Divine Good, or Divine Wisdom with Divine Love, and so returned into the Divinity which was His from eternity, together with and in His glorified Human. This is the meaning of the passage in John:

The Word was with God and the Word was God; and the Word was made flesh, John 1:1, 14.

In the same gospel:

I came out of the Father and I came into the world; I leave the world again, and go to the Father, John 16:28.

Further in the following passage:

We know that the Son of God came and gave us understanding, so that we might know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God and everlasting life. 1 John 5:20.

These passages show that without the Lord's coming into the world no one could have been saved. The situation today is similar. So unless the Lord comes into the world again in the form of Divine Truth, that is, the Word, no more can anyone now be saved.

[2] The particular details of faith on man's part are:

1 God is one, in whom is the Divine Trinity, and He is the Lord God the Saviour Jesus Christ.

2 Faith leading to salvation is believing in Him.

3 Evil actions must not be done because they are the work of the devil and come from him.

4 Good actions must be done because they are the work of God and come from Him.

5 A person must perform these actions as if they were his own, but he must believe they come from the Lord working in him and through him.

The first two points deal with faith, the second two with charity; and the fifth deals with the joining of charity with faith and thus of the Lord with men.