Cornerstone Curriculum, Official Certification Edition

244 / CORNERSTONE CURRICULUM STUDENT WORKBOOK

I. The Life-Giver We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Life-giver, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who along with the Father and Son is worshiped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets.

Video Outline

II. The Powerful Breath of God

A. The study of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is known as pneumatology.

1. Pneuma is the Greek word for “wind or breath or spirit.”

2. The Hebrew word ruach (which is used in the Old Testament Scriptures) carries the same basic meaning of “wind or breath or spirit.”

B. The best description of the Holy Spirit as portrayed in the Old Testament Scriptures would probably be “the powerful breath of God.”

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T heology and E th i c s

1. In the Hebrew Scriptures, God’s breath is a powerful force which both destroys (Exod. 15.10; Isa. 11.4) and creates (Ps. 33.6).

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The Hebrew word for ‘spirit’ is ruach . The root r-w-ch , from which the noun is derived, means primarily “to breathe out through the nose with violence.” . . . The word ruach stands for hard, strong, violent breathing, as against neshamah , which means ordinary, quiet breathing. . . . The word ruach is frequently used of the wind; some eighty-seven times in all. Of these thirty-seven speak of the wind as the agent of Jehovah, mostly destructive, and always strong and violent. . . . The ruach adonai [Spirit of the Lord] is the manifestation in human experience of