Dionysus on a Bike

Psalm 104:24-35 – 5/26/2026

The word “Spirit” in both the Greek and Hebrew portions of the Bible is a tricky word. In both languages the word that gets translated as “spirit” primarily means wind. Secondarily, the this same word also means the breath of living beings, including divine beings. Since breath was associated with being animated, with having dynamic life, the word that gets translated “spirit” comes to mean that which makes us living beings and not simply mere matter or mere life (such as a plant). In modern English we lose that association between breathing and being a conscious being, so “spirit” comes to mean something not associated with the body at all, a kind of non-material counterpart to our material bodies.

In Biblical languages this separation of “spirit” from body is not possible since “spirit” simultaneously means literal breath. We are living, animate beings with consciousness and at the same time and in the same respect we a breathing creatures who are what we are in virtue of having a body. Whenever we invoke the spiritual, our spirit, or God’s Holy Spirit, we are invoking the invisible but palpable movement of matter. We are naming that which pertains to the very act of being alive.

“Spirit” gets even trickier when we consider the choice whether to capitalize it or not. When not capitalized, spirit gives the simple connotation of embodied life and the imperceptible but still material difference that separates life from non-life, applying to animals, humans, and higher beings from angelic to divine. When it is capitalized Spirit has the same connotation with the addition of being a name, specifically a divine name. When used in this way “Spirit” picks out the Third Person of the Divine Trinity. Here is not just any wind, any breath, any spirit, but the breath of God itself, personified. This difference between “spirit” in general common to all that have it and the specifically Holy Spirit is that the Biblical text is not always clear which is meant, meaning the choice to capitalize the word or not is an interpretative choice of the translator.

What is the purpose of highlighting these two interpretive considerations with the word “spirit” in biblical texts? Spirit, whether God’s Spirit as co-equal member of the Trinity or the spirit of God’s creatures given by God at creation, is at the heart of the Gospel message. Whatever the spiritual is, it pertains to us in the very core of our being according to the teachings of the church. Our spiritual side, the part of us that is touched by God’s Spirit and which animates our being, is often separated from and even opposed to the body. Remembering that “spirit” is breath reminds us that we cannot be separated from our bodies. Spiritual truths are bodily, material truths. Faith cannot be concerned with the otherworldly, the disembodied, and the dispirited, that which lacks breath. To say that to follow Christ is to follow the path of life is not an abstraction. Real life involves having a body, which is always implicated in the very life of God.

Reflections of a Dionysian Lutheran, comments on the daily readings of the Revised Common Lectionary.