[Cal]

Wow. Pretty humbling that this thread I started six years ago still has some legs.

The question of Spirit as substance is one we probably cannot come to a conclusion about. In one sense it seems the Spirit is "stuff." But the problem sets in when we limit him to only that.

My belief is that spirit is the reality of what a person is. It is the essence of what matters. This is why the Holy Spirit is "the Spirit of reality." The Holy Spirit is always about the essence of God, both in himself and in our experience. So though it is not wrong to think of the Spirit in terms of a "substance," we need to realize the potential problems of equating him to a physical, non-personal substance.

The Spirit is the reality of God; and God is, first and foremost, a personal Being. Because of this, personality and personal relationship are most important aspects of the Spirit. Everything we experience about the Spirit is an aspect of a relational Personality, not of an unconscious substance.

This why emphasizing substance over personality, which Lee did, is questionable. It moves the experience of God from the experience of a Person to the experience of a Thing. We must always remember that all our experiences of God are experiences of a conscious Being. We must not reduce them to unconscious things which exist for our benefit.

Hope this helps.