Holy Spirit

In Judaism, the Holy Spirit is the divine force, quality, and influence of God over the Universe or over his creatures. In Nicene Christianity, the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost is the third person of the Trinity. In Islam, the Holy Spirit acts as an agent of divine action or communication. In the Baha’i Faith, the Holy Spirit is seen as the intermediary between God and man and "the outpouring grace of God and the effulgent rays that emanate from His Manifestation". The Hebrew Bible contains the term "spirit of God" (ruach elochim) which by Jews is interpreted in the sense of the might of a unitary God. This interpretation is different from the Nicene Christian conception of the Holy Spirit as one person of the Trinity. The Christian concept tends to emphasize the moral aspect of the Holy Spirit more than Judaism, evident in the epithet Spirit that appeared in Jewish religious writings only relatively late but was a common expression in the Christian New Testament. Based on the Old Testament, the book of Acts emphasizes the power of ministry aspect of the Holy Spirit. According to theologian Rudolf Bultmann, there are two ways to think about the Holy Spirit: "animistic" and "dynamistic". In animistic thinking, he is "an independent agent, a personal power which (...) can fall upon a man and take possession of him, enabling him or compelling him to perform manifestations of power" while in dynamistic thought it "appears as an impersonal force which fills a man like a fluid". Both kinds of thought appear in Jewish and Christian scripture, but animistic is more typical of the Old Testament whereas dynamistic is more common in the New Testament. The distinction coincides with the Holy Spirit as either a temporary or permanent gift. In the Old Testament and Jewish thought, it is primarily temporary with a specific situation or task in mind, whereas in the Christian concept the gift resides in persons permanently. On the surface, the Holy Spirit appears to have an equivalent in non-Abrahamic Hellenistic mystery religions.