How do Biblical Unitarians understand verses that appear to identify God (the Father) and the Holy Spirit as different beings/entities?

score:1

Accepted answer

The issue of the Holy Spirit with Biblical Unitarianism is a bit different from Jesus.

"Every use of “the Holy Spirit” and “holy spirit” can either be explained as being a name for God or the name of the gift of God." Appendix 6: Usages of "Spirit"

In some cases, then, for Biblical Unitarians, references to the 'holy spirit' are synonyms for 'God'. If it's the latter, though (the 'gift of God'), it is in some sense a different 'entity'.

For a more detailed discussion of this, see "2) The “holy spirit” (lower case “h” and “s”) is the gift of God’s nature" in Appendix 11: What is the Holy Spirit?.

I believe all the verses you reference are dealt with as this second sense - the gift of God's nature which transforms the recipient. For example, as pertains to Luke 3:22,

"Jesus himself needed God’s gift of holy spirit to have supernatural power, just as the leaders and prophets of the Old Testament did; which is why God put holy spirit upon Jesus. God put holy spirit upon Jesus immediately after he was baptized by John the Baptist (Matt. 3:16; Mark 1:9-10; Luke 3:21-22). This fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies that God would put holy spirit upon the Messiah, enabling him in his ministry (Isa. 11:2; 42:1; 61:1)." (ibid.)

So the answer is yes, Biblical Unitarians would view the holy spirit as in some cases conceptually distinct from God ('the Father'), but in this sense the holy spirit isn't technically speaking God himself.

More post

Search Posts

Related post