The word “spirit” appears in the second verse of the Bible and then appears something like 765 more times. Clearly, the idea of “spirit” is important. Jesus said that “God is spirit.” People have spirits. The gift of the Spirit is one of the most important events in salvation history and in personal experience.

But do we even understand what “spirit” is? I’m not sure that I do.

In Hebrew and Greek, the words translated as “spirit” are polysemous, that is, they have multiple (but related) meanings. So in both languages, the words can be translated as “spirit,” “breath” or “wind.” On the sixth day of creation, God “breathed” or “spirited” into the man’s nostrils the “breath” or the “spirit” of life, “and the human became a living being.” (See also Jesus’s explanation regarding the new birth to Nicodemus in John 3:8, where the word pneuma is translated as “wind” twice and “Spirit” once.)

The polysemous nature of the words is only the beginning of our difficulties. In the Bible we learn that God’s Spirit and our spirits are not the only spirits occupying (can one use that word of spirits?) our planet. “All angels,” according to the author of Hebrews, are “ministering spirits.” But there are still other spirits, and at least some of these interact with humans—sometimes disastrously.  

King Saul was tormented by a “distressing spirit,” surprisingly sent from the LORD himself. A “lying spirit” deceives wicked King Ahab. (God sends this one too, and there are many other accounts of God sending an “evil” or a “harmful” spirit to people.) When Saul goes to the witch of Endor, he asks her to divine for him “by a spirit” and bring Samuel up from the dead.

The spirit world really gets crowded when Jesus arrives on the scene. There seem to be “unclean” or “evil” spirits everywhere. Some of them speak, some of them are mute, and all of them are bad company for decent people.

Occasionally, these spirits are identified as demons – another difficult word to understand. It is used 63 times in the New Testament (though, interestingly, not once in Acts, even though it occurs regularly in Luke) and always in a negative sense. But in the larger Greek and Roman culture of the Mediterranean in the first century, daemons were viewed more positively. People actually wanted to be influenced by daemons; they thought such influence inspired them and heightened their creative powers.

Dallas Willard describes “spirit” as “unbodily personal power.” However, the word “spirit” as it is used in the Bible does not always imply personhood. So, for example, God has given some people “a spirit of skill” (Ex. 28:3). Jerusalem will be given a “spirit of judgment” and “a spirit of burning” (Isa. 4:4). Egypt is under a “spirit of confusion” (Isa. 19:14). Perhaps such spirits can be personal in the sense that we understand personhood, but that is certainly not clear in the text. We read also of a “spirit of sleep,” of “justice,” and of “whoredom.”

When the disciples first see Jesus after the resurrection, they think they are seeing a “spirit” – a mistake he quickly corrects. What exactly did they think a spirit is? A “ghost,” as the NIV translates it in Luke 24:37?

Understanding the nature of spirit is difficult enough within the borders of Holy Scripture, but when we leave the Bible, we enter a befuddling world of spirits. In late medieval and early Renaissance periods, even theologians who considered themselves Christians believed that there are spirits abroad in the world (or in the air, like Shakespeare’s “airy sprite” in the Tempest) that were not exactly evil or good. They were neutrals, neither aligned with heaven nor with hell. They were among what C.S. Lewis described as the “mundana numina.”

Lewis made use of his remarkable scholarship to write That Hideous Strength. In the story, Merlin reappears in modern England and uses his familiarity with spirits (familiar spirits) to serve God and destroy the evil powers that seek to dominate England and the world. How does Lewis, an orthodox Christian, justify his character’s use of familiar spirits to achieve a good result? Rather ingeniously, I would say.

Lewis speaks through Professor Dimble, a scholar who in some ways resembles Lewis (and in other ways does not), to explain. Here is the quote at length from That Hideous Strength.

“Have you ever noticed,” said Dimble, “that the universe, and every little bit of the universe, is always hardening and narrowing and coming to a point?”

His wife waited as those wait who know by long experience the mental processes of the person who is talking to them.

“I mean this,” said Dimble, answering the question she had not asked. “If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family—anything you like—at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren’t quite so sharp; and that there’s going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing.”

Dimble explained to his wife that there were still spirits in 1940s England that were neutrals, but that soon even they would need to take a side because everything is coming to a point. Perhaps that point has been reached and now all spirits are either good or bad, holy or diabolical. Perhaps that point was reached in the incarnation, when the Point-of-it-all incisively entered our world. Or perhaps there never was such a thing as neutral spirits, which seems most likely to me. (Jesus does not seem to have met any.)

My point is not that neutral spirits might exist or have existed, still less that Lewis thought or didn’t think they did. My point is that my understanding of spirit is so limited. Yet I usually skim over the word without even pausing to think about it, though it is rich in history and full of mystery.

And the whole Bible is like this. The whole of life is like this. There is so much to know and we know so little of it. Thank God, we are not saved by knowing everything, but by God’s mercy (Titus 2:5) in sending Christ.

It is clear that intellectual modesty is required of us. There is far more that we don’t know than we do know. That’s okay. Jesus would tell us to be of good cheer. Though we don’t know all these things, we do know God.

Paul would emend that last line (as he did his own line in Galatians 4:8) by adding: “Or rather, are known by God.”

Ah, yes. And that is reason enough – and more than enough – to be of good cheer.