Crackpot Bob has once again favored us with a linguistic demonstration that the Holy Spirit is, in fact, not a person. In the May-June 2025 Sabbath Sentinel he carefully notes that the Koine Greek word pneuma is neuter, that some English translations sneak in the masculine "he" and "who," and that therefore the whole idea of a personal Holy Spirit is a pagan Trinity trick. Grammar, we are told, has spoken: it is an "it."
This is not new theology. It is simply the latest polishing of a doctrine Herbert W. Armstrong pounded for decades. In Mystery of the Ages and assorted Plain Truth and Good News pieces, Armstrong declared with absolute certainty that originally there were only two divine Personages. The Trinity, he insisted, "is nowhere found in the Bible" and was "formulated by men under the influence of Satan." Why the vehemence? Because a closed Godhead of three would ruin the sales pitch. Armstrong's gospel required an open "God Family" into which the faithful could eventually be born as additional Gods. A third Person would slam that door shut. Hence the Holy Spirit had to be demoted to "the agency by which God the Father works... an agency, a force, a power." Armstrong was explicit: "The Holy Spirit, we repeat, is not a person."
Crackpot Bob's article is the same project with more footnotes. He cites Daniel Wallace's careful grammatical work, notes that pneuma is neuter, and treats the personal pronouns in John 14-16 as unfortunate translation bias. Wallace himself, of course, is a Trinitarian who never claimed that neuter gender proves the Spirit is impersonal; he simply observed that the grammar does not force personhood. But never mind. The useful bit is the neuter, so the useful bit is kept. The rest of the New Testament's language-where the Spirit speaks, grieves, intercedes, forbids, sends, and can be lied to-is explained away as personification or grammatical necessity. It is a force that just happens to talk, feel, and act with purpose. Convenient.
The practical problem is that Armstrongism still needs the Spirit to do personal work. Conversion, begetting, guidance, and the "gift" that comes after baptism all require it. So the groups that descended from Armstrong-including Crackpot Bob's improperly named "continuing" Church of God-continue to baptize people with a formula that sounds suspiciously Trinitarian. They say something like "into the name of the Father and the Son and through the Holy Spirit," then lay hands on the candidate and ask for the gift of that same Spirit. They will not call the Spirit a person, yet they cannot perform the rite without invoking it alongside the Father and the Son. Consistency, as the old saying goes, is optional when the alternative is looking too much like the pagans you have spent fifty years denouncing.
The entire exercise is driven by the same two-Person architecture Armstrong locked in. John 1:1 is read as revealing only the Father and the Word. Everything else must be forced to fit. The Spirit that conceived Jesus cannot be personal, or it would have been his Father. The Spirit that can be "poured out" or "stirred up" cannot be personal, because persons are not poured. And the Spirit that is grammatically neuter is therefore ontologically an "it." All of this keeps the God Family open for new members while still allowing the leadership to claim they are simply following the Bible and the original Armstrong revelation.
Crackpot Bob's grammatical scissors are sharp enough for the magazine article. They just do not cut the deeper inconsistency. Armstrongism continues to need the Holy Spirit's power, presence, and activity for its members to be considered real Christians, while simultaneously insisting that the Spirit is not a person at all-lest the Family of two stop being expandable. The neuter gender is real. The personal actions of the Spirit are also real. The baptismal formula is still spoken. And the God Family sales pitch remains the point of the whole exercise.
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