Two spirits. God’s Spirit and the spirit in Humans
Two spirits are distinguishable in the Bible. First, there’s God’s Holy Spirit. Second, the spirit God formed in humans.
Two spirits are present in the Bible narrative. It behooves us to understand their differences and their relationship. Especially since in both the Old and New Testaments, they use the same Biblical Hebrew (ruach) and Greek (pneuma) words.
Here’s a summary of what we’ve covered in Genesis 2:7 so far about the creation of the first man. Yahveh formed man out of dust, the most sterile part of the ground. Yahveh, the Potter, the future Jesus, then breathed into his nostrils. That man is called a living soul composed of a material body and an immaterial singularity, akin to the mind, that only humans possess; this is a result of the breath of life which is the neshama, which again, only humans and God possess, revealing a relationship between humans and God. This neshama meaning confers lives (plural) on humans, confirmed by reference to resurrections (plural). Hence neshama meaning is better rendered by the divine essence of lives. Neshama is always associated with ruach, both of which are possessed by God and humans.
In Genesis 1:2, it says the Spirit (ruach) of God moved upon the face of the waters; this is the…
