Can anyone provide any sources where earlier English Theologians distinguished between Holy Ghost and holy Spirit?

Question

I have heard the claim (and especially here) that English theologians in the Middle Ages made a distinction between the Spirit of Christ as the indwelling Spirit or holy Spirit (holy as an adjective rather than part of the Divine Name/Title) and the Holy Ghost as the third member of the Trinity. I cannot find anything myself that demonstrates that they made this distinction, other than deliberately translating Holy Ghost when referring to the unembodied Third Person of the Trinity, and Spirit (or holy Spirit)(please don't edit this - they lowercase is part of the Translation as an adjective) when referring to the indwelling Spirit of God/Christ in the believer. And this quote from a footnote in the Shepherd of Hermas - Similitude Fifth, Chapter VI.

[If the reader feels that the explanation itself needs to be explained, let him attribute it to the confused and inaccurate state of the text. Grabe says emphatically, that “the created Spirit of Christ as a man and not the Holy Ghost, the third person of the Trinity,” is spoken of in this chapter chiefly. The apparent confusion of words and phrases must be the result of ignorant copying. It is a sufficient answer to certain German critics to cite the providential approval of Athanasius, a fact of the utmost moment. Nobody doubts that Athanasius was sensitive to any discoloration of the Nicene Faith. In the text of Hermas, therefore, as it was in his copy, there could have been nothing heretical, or favouring heresy. That Hermas was an artist, and purposely gave his fiction a very primitive air, is evident. He fears to name the Scriptures he quoted, lest any one should doubt their use, in the days of Clement, in the Western Churches.]

I think the footnote is quoting John Ernest Grabe, but I cannot find his work on the Shepherd of Hermas.

Can anyone direct me to this or some other sources where this distinction seems to be made by earlier English theologians?

Answer 1

The word in the original Greek scripture is pneuma (spirit, or wind or breath) and it is indistinguishable (other than context) whether it means the divine person of the Holy Spirit, the spirit of a person (whether divine or human), or breath or air movement. While I have yet to find sufficient material to fully answer the question but this was somewhat helpful:

(Wikipedia suggests 93 occasions of 'Ghost' in the KJV) :

The English terms "Holy Ghost" and "Holy Spirit" are complete synonyms: one derives from the Old English gast and the other from the Latin loanword spiritus. Like pneuma, they both refer to the breath, to its animating power, and to the soul.

The Old English term is shared by all other Germanic languages (compare, e.g., the German Geist) and it is older, but the King James Bible used both interchangeably, and 20th-century translations of the Bible overwhelmingly prefer "Holy Spirit", probably because the general English term "ghost" has increasingly come to refer only to the spirit of a dead person.[20][21][22]

[20] Robin W. Lovin, Foreword to the English translation of Karl Barth's The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life (1993 ISBN 0-664-25325-3), page xvii

[21] Millard J. Erickson, L. Arnold Hustad, Introducing Christian Doctrine (Baker Academic 2001 ISBN 978-0-8010-2250-0), p. 271

[22] "Norfolk schools told Holy Ghost 'too spooky'". The Guardian. London. 2005-04-11. Retrieved 2010-05-04.

Wikipedia - Holy Spirit in Christianity

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Additional Edit :

Focusing just on Romans, I have checked on 5:5, 9:1, 14:17, 15:13 and 15:16 (the places which have πνευματος αγιου in the original). The Wycliffe 1382, Tyndale 1534, Coverdale 1535, Matthew;s 1537, Great Bible 1539, Geneva 1560, Bishop's bible 1568, and the Douay Rheims (Challoner) all have 'Holy Ghost'.

Only Young's Literal Translation departs from this, Robert Young consistently using 'holy spirit' throughout, but not using capitals.

It seems to me that no theological point was being made. It was simply an attempt to distinguish those places in scripture where the words 'holy' and 'spirit' were juxtaposed and clearly indicated a reference to the Divine Person.

Reference - Textus Receptus Bibles

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Further EDIT from comments :

With regard to Luke 11:13; Eph 1:13; 4:30; 1 Thess 4:8 (where, although pneuma and agion are present they are not juxtaposed, but separated by the article or by other grammar) . . . .

In each of those four places, there is interpolation in the text (between pneuma and agion) separated by article or insertion (promise).

The activity is on the part of the Father, not the initiation and sole agency of the Spirit.

Perhaps it is only when the Holy Spirit is in view independently that the word 'Ghost' is used.

Answer 2

When did Holy Spirit become Holy Ghost?

• "John Wycliffe translated from Jerome's Latin Vulgate, not from Greek texts. Even though Wycliffe made a "spirit" and "ghost" distinction in his version, Jerome did not. He uniformly used the word spiritus. Therefore, Wycliffe's choice to use ghost in some texts and spirit in others derived from theological traditions within the English church. It would be worth checking the translations of Coverdale (1535), Matthew (1537), and the Great Bible (1539) to see if these distinctions also exist in them."

• "Fragments of pre-14th century Bible translations have no ghost/spirit distinction: Gothic [Ahma=Spirit], Anglo-Saxon [Gast=Spirit], Old English [Gast=Spirit], Middle English [Gost/Goost=Spirit]. The English word "Spirit" derives from the Latin spiritus. [Joseph Bosworth, The Gothic and Anglo-Saxon Gospels (London: n.p., 1865); Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1933), Vol. 1, pp. 790-91.] " - [http://www.hebrew-streams.org/works/spirit/spirit-to-ghost.html]