Chapter 14

The Spirit of the Dake Bible

Dake gives the Holy Spirit a body of His own and sets terms for receiving Him

Picture a young woman at the altar rail on a Wednesday night. She has come forward in tears, and an older man kneels beside her and starts asking questions. Has she confessed every sin? Is she holding anything back? Has she really surrendered everything? She cries harder and tries harder, and she goes home empty. The next Wednesday she is back at the same rail, trying again.

The second altar is in Acts 2. About a hundred and twenty believers were gathered in one house in Jerusalem. Peter was among them, a few weeks after he had denied three times that he knew Jesus, and so were the other disciples who had run away on the night of the arrest. None of them had earned anything. Then a sound came from heaven “as of a rushing mighty wind,” and Luke writes that “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:2, 4). Every one of them was filled, including the men who had failed worst.

What separates those two altars is a doctrine of God. Finis Dake taught the doctrine behind the first one, and he taught it carefully. His course God’s Plan for Man opens its lesson on the Holy Spirit with these words.

The Holy Spirit is pictured in Scripture as God, as a real person separate and distinct from both the Father and the Son. He is an individual member of the Godhead or Deity, and He has a separate body, soul, and spirit from both the Father and the Son. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Twenty-five, p. 444¹

Dake means a real spirit body, with shape and parts, in one place, apart from the body of the Father and the body of the Son. His Holy Spirit is a third separate divine being. That is the teaching of Chapter 6 applied to the Spirit, and the church calls it tritheism, belief in three Gods, which is heresy. Two more teachings grow from it. Dake said the Spirit dwells in believers only “in the sense of UNION WITH,” never by entering them, so the believer is joined to a Spirit whose body is somewhere else. And he set legal terms for receiving the Spirit, which turn a gift into a wage. Both are errors, and both follow from the first.

I hold three degrees from Assemblies of God schools, and I believe in the baptism in the Holy Spirit and the gifts He gives today.² None of what follows is aimed at the altar or at the people who seek God there. My argument is with the doctrine of God that stands behind the altar.

What the doctrine does at the altar

A teaching about the Holy Spirit settles some ordinary questions for a believer: where the Spirit is when you pray, whom you may pray to, and how you receive Him. Dake answered each of them, and his answers come straight from his three separate beings.

If the Spirit has a body in one place, then the promise that He dwells in you has to mean something less than it says. A Father who outranks the Spirit turns prayer into a chain of command. And a Spirit who is somewhere else can only come to you by a transaction, with terms that you have to meet. A seeker who believes all of that will end up where the young woman ended up, checking herself against a list.

Dake’s Holy Spirit

A person, not a power

Lesson Twenty-five is long, and much of it is sound. Dake lists divine names, attributes, works, and offices of the Spirit, and he calls Him “the Power of God in the Earth” and “the General Overseer of the Churches.”³ He also insists that the Spirit is a person.

We must learn that the Holy Spirit is not a mere power that we need to get hold of and use, but we must learn that He is a person who is infinitely wise, holy, just, and gracious, and who seeks to get hold of us and use us. We must become acquainted with Him as a person and not merely as an influence or power derived from a person. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Twenty-five, p. 445⁴

He is right, and churches that treat the Spirit as a supply of power need to hear him. Whatever else is wrong in this lesson, Dake never made the Spirit an impersonal influence, and no critic should say he did.

Next he gives a set of proofs that the Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son.⁵ Many of them are true. Scripture distinguishes the three at the Jordan, in the Great Commission, and in Jesus’ promise of “another Helper” (John 14:16). The trouble lies in what Dake does with that word.

Common sense alone demands us to understand that when the word another is used it means two or more. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Twenty-five, p. 446⁶

Two or more of what? The church has always answered that the word means two or more persons within the one God. Dake read it as two or more beings. Every distinction the Bible draws among the Father, the Son, and the Spirit became, in his hands, a line between separate individuals.

A body of His own

Section IV of the lesson is headed “The Holy Ghost Has a Personal Spirit-Body.”⁷ It opens with an argument from reason, and the verses come later.

If God has a body, soul and spirit and if there are three distinct persons in the Godhead, then each person in the Godhead naturally has a personal body, soul, and spirit as does each human being. If there was nothing in Scripture that says that they all have bodies, our intelligence and reason would convince us that they do have. No person can exist without a body or a shape. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Twenty-five, p. 448⁸

God has a body, there are three persons, and so each of the three has a body. The middle sentence grants that Scripture might say nothing of the kind, and then it says reason would settle the question anyway. A few lines later he applies the same reasoning to all three persons: since they are separate, “it is only reasonable” that “they all have had from eternity the same kind of spirit-bodies, soul passions, and spirit-faculties.” That passage concerns his whole Godhead, and Chapter 6 prints it in full.⁹

In one of the numbered proofs that follow, Dake reasons from the works that Scripture ascribes to God’s fingers and hands, which the Spirit performed, to the conclusion that “it proves that He has fingers, hands, and bodily parts.”¹⁰ In another, the Spirit is “subordinate to the Father and the Son” and can be sent by them.¹¹ The last proof turns the Bible’s silence into evidence.

There is no statement in Scripture that says He does not have a body, so any teaching to the contrary is man’s theory and is not worth a thing. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Twenty-five, p. 450¹²

Dake does not claim that any verse gives the Spirit a body. He argues that no verse denies it, and he waves away anyone who disagrees. On the next page he adds that it is “not hard to conceive that the Holy Ghost has a spirit-body like the Father still has, and like the Son did have before He became a man.”¹³ The two sections after that give the Spirit a personal soul and a personal spirit by the same reasoning.¹⁴ If the Spirit has a body, and a body is in one place at a time, how does He live in a believer?

Dwelling in men without entering them

Dake answers near the end of the lesson, under the heading “How the Holy Spirit Dwells IN Men.” The capital letters are his.

The Holy Spirit dwells IN men only in the sense of UNION WITH, but never by bodily entrance into the human body to live there like an incarnation. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Twenty-five, p. 453¹⁵

So Dake does say that the Spirit dwells in men. What matters is what he means by “in,” and the lesson sends the reader back to Lesson Four for the definition.

This word means in union with and when used of persons it does not mean bodily entrance into, except, in the case of disembodied spirits, or demons. ... Persons can be in each other and one with each other, though there are thousands of miles between them bodily. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Four, Point I, 4, p. 50¹⁶

On his own definition, then, union holds across any distance. The Spirit can dwell in you, in Dake’s sense, while His body is thousands of miles away. The Study Bible says the same thing. Among the “96 facts about the Holy Spirit” in its index, fact 65 says the Spirit “Dwells in men in the sense of union with, not bodily entrance into the human body” and cites 1 Corinthians 3:16–17.¹⁷ Its note on Satan entering Judas applies the same rule to the devil: “It means in union with, consecration to the same end - one in mind, purpose, and life, not bodily entrance into.”¹⁸ His booklet on the baptism in the Holy Spirit puts the whole teaching in a few sentences.

In the booklet the Spirit, the Son, and the Father all “exist as separate persons outside of man” and enter no one bodily. Indwelling is a shared purpose between separate beings, the way a husband and wife become one in life. Dake then draws the conclusion that reaches the altar rail.

To the extent a man is consecrated to God and is one with Him, to that extent he is filled with the Spirit. The Truth About the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, sec. XIV²⁰

Fullness becomes a measure of the believer’s consecration. The more consecrated you are, the more filled you are, and when your consecration slips, the fullness slips with it.

Dake does list omnipresence among the Spirit’s divine attributes, and he cites Psalm 139:7–10 for it.²¹ But he redefined that word for all three persons. His index entry “Omnipresent” says of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, “All three go from place to place bodily as other beings in the universe do.”²² Chapter 9 sets out that redefinition. On these terms the Spirit shares the problem of a God who is in one place.

Prayer goes to the head

The same frame shapes Dake’s teaching on prayer.

God the Father is the head of Christ and the Holy Spirit, and therefore He should be the one directly addressed in prayer. The habit of praying either to Jesus or to the Holy Spirit personally should be broken, for we have no authority for any such praying. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Sixteen, p. 284²³

On the same page he tells believers to “worship all three persons in the Godhead and commune with all three in the proper way,” so he does not forbid every word to the Spirit.²⁴ His reason for the rule is rank. The Father is “the head of Christ and the Holy Spirit,” so petitions go to Him. That is how requests travel in an organization of three separate beings. Many of the choruses Pentecostals sing are prayers to the Holy Spirit, asking Him to come and fill the singer, and on Dake’s page that habit “should be broken” because “we have no authority for any such praying.”

The terms for receiving Him

Lesson Thirty, on the baptism in the Holy Spirit, states the principle.

Men are promised unlimited power and such can be attained to in this life if men will meet the conditions. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Thirty, p. 552²⁵

The booklet applies it to every promise God has made.

There is no limitation or qualification to these promises concerning any good and lawful thing for which one may ask. Every limitation on them is human, and not divine. All one must do is to meet the conditions contained in the promises in order to receive full benefits. The Truth About the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, sec. XVI²⁶

The general law of conditions belongs to Chapter 18. Here the question is what it does to the Spirit. Dake explains fullness with a glass and water. Water poured into a glass fills it, but the glass is baptized only when it is plunged under the water. Then he draws the lesson.

One so “filled” and “baptized” must keep this way, for the minute one gets out of the “fulness” of the Holy Spirit and lives in self, he is no more baptized than the glass would be if it were taken out of the water. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Thirty, p. 550²⁷

Dake was pushing against careless religion, and he was right that a believer can grieve the Spirit. But in his picture the believer is the glass. You stay in the water only as long as you keep yourself there, and the moment you live “in self” you are out. Put that beside his definition of “in,” and the scene at the Wednesday rail makes sense. The young woman had been taught that the Spirit is a separate being outside her, joined to her only as far as her surrender reaches. The man beside her was applying that teaching faithfully.

What Scripture says about the Spirit

Lying to the Spirit is lying to God

Dake opens his proof of the Spirit’s deity with Acts 5, and he is right to.²⁸ This is what Peter said to Ananias.

“Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself? . . . You have not lied to men but to God.” Acts 5:3–4 (NKJV)

Peter draws no line between lying to the Spirit and lying to God. The lie told to the Spirit was told to God, because the Spirit is God, present in the room with Ananias. Paul argues the same way: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16).²⁹ The church is God’s temple because the Spirit lives in it, and that only works if the Spirit’s presence is God’s own presence.

Dake cites Psalm 139 for the Spirit’s omnipresence. The psalm says more than his system allows.

“Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.” Psalm 139:7–8 (NKJV)

David describes a God he cannot get away from, in heaven, in the grave, or at the far edge of the sea. A presence felt from a distance does not match those words, and a being whose body is in one place cannot be found in all of those places at once.

Dake also cites a passage from Paul to prove that the Spirit knows all things.³⁰ Paul’s comparison says more.

“For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.” 1 Corinthians 2:10–11 (NKJV)

Paul compares the Spirit’s knowledge of God to a man’s knowledge of himself. Your spirit knows your thoughts because it is your inmost self, and it has no body or address of its own across the room. The Spirit of God knows the depths of God in the same way, from within the one God. If the Spirit were a separate being with His own body somewhere else, Paul’s comparison would fall apart. Dake used the passage for the Spirit’s knowledge and passed over what it says about the Spirit’s oneness with God.

A person with no body

Dake is right that the Holy Spirit is a person. The Spirit speaks, telling the church at Antioch to set apart Barnabas and Saul.³¹ He distributes gifts “to each one individually as He wills.”³² He can be grieved, and He prays for believers.³³ These are the acts of a person.

Scripture never gives Him a body. No verse describes His face, His hands, or His height, and Dake’s case rests on reason filling a gap where Scripture is silent.³⁴ That habit of supplying doctrine where the Bible says nothing is the subject of Chapter 4. Jesus did give a picture of the Spirit’s work, and it points the other way.

“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” John 3:8 (NKJV)

The Lord compared the Spirit to wind, which is real and powerful and cannot be pinned to one place. When a teacher trades that picture for a body with fingers and hands, he has moved away from the text, though Dake would have called it reading more literally.

What the church means by “person”

Much of the difficulty turns on one word. In everyday English a person is a separate individual, and Dake read the creeds’ “three persons” that way, as three individuals with three bodies. The church used the word differently. Its Greek term was hypostasis, a distinct “who” within the one God, and the being that the three share it called ousia.³⁵ One God exists eternally as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Chapter 7 sets out the case, and the creed’s article on the Spirit answers this chapter directly.

And [we believe] in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver-of-Life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spake by the prophets. Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (381), article on the Holy Spirit³⁶

The creed calls the Spirit “the Lord” and says He is “worshipped and glorified” together with the Father and the Son. That is the honor Dake’s prayer rule holds back. The creed also says the Spirit “proceedeth from the Father” and those words describe an eternal relation within God. They say nothing about a journey from one place to another, and the church confessed a Spirit who comes from God without ever leaving God.

A gift, not a wage

Paul asked the Galatians a question that settles the matter of terms.

“This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” Galatians 3:2 (NKJV)

He expected the answer to be obvious. They received the Spirit by hearing and believing, and a few verses later he says Christ redeemed us “that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (Galatians 3:14). Jesus said the same thing more warmly.

“If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” Luke 11:13 (NKJV)

Jesus pictures a father and a child who asks. The father gives because he is good, and the child does not have to reach a score first. That is a family, and Dake’s terms describe a contract.

He makes His home with you

On the night before the cross Jesus told His disciples that the Spirit of truth “dwells with you and will be in you” (John 14:17). A few verses later He said more.

“If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.” John 14:23 (NKJV)

Jesus says We will come: the Father and the Son will make their home with the one who loves Him. In Dake’s system that has to shrink to a union of purpose, because the Father’s body is in heaven and so is the Son’s. In the church’s confession it can be believed as it stands. The one God, who fills heaven and earth, lives in His people, and the Holy Spirit is the way He does it. Paul says it to every believer: “your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you” (1 Corinthians 6:19).

Doesn’t Acts state conditions?

The strongest defense of Dake is that he only repeats what Acts says. Peter did tell the crowd at Pentecost, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). Repentance and faith are real conditions, and Dake did not invent them. The question is what kind of conditions they are. Peter calls what follows a gift, and repentance does not pay God for it. Repentance turns a person around to receive what God is already holding out. Dake wrote, “All one must do is to meet the conditions contained in the promises in order to receive full benefits.” Jesus said the Father will give the Spirit “to those who ask Him!” The first sentence describes terms that bind God once they are met. The second describes a Father who loves to give.

Isn’t the Spirit God’s presence in us?

Some readers will say that Dake teaches what every Christian believes. The Spirit is how God dwells in His people, and Dake says the Spirit dwells in men. The words agree, but the meaning of “in” does not. For Dake it is a union of purpose that holds across thousands of miles, with each person’s body in its own place. John 14:23 says the Father and the Son come and make their home with the believer. The historic doctrine of God has no trouble with that verse, because God is not three bodies in three places. Dake’s Godhead has every trouble with it.

Won’t creeds quench revival?

Some fear that talk of creeds will cool the fire. The Pentecostal fellowships themselves confess the historic Trinity. The Assemblies of God speaks of the Lord our God “as a trinity or as one Being of three persons” and says that “neither Person in the Godhead either exists or works separately or independently of the others.”³⁷ Dake’s three separate beings are not the Pentecostal confession. A believer can confess the Trinity and still seek the Spirit with everything in him. The Spirit he seeks at the altar is the Lord, and He is already near.

The Spirit who lives in you

Dake’s Holy Spirit is a third divine being with a body of His own, subordinate to the Father and the Son. That is the tritheism of Chapter 6, and it is heresy. His teaching that the Spirit dwells in believers only by “UNION WITH,” and his terms for receiving the Spirit, are errors that follow from it. Scripture says the Spirit is God, that no one can flee from Him, that the Father gives Him to those who ask, and that He makes His home in the believer.

Go back to the young woman at the Wednesday rail and tell her the truth. She does not have to raise her consecration high enough to draw a distant being closer. If she belongs to Christ, her body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in her. He was in her on the dry days and on the nights she felt nothing at all. Keep the altar, keep seeking God, and keep asking Him for more of Himself. Only set down the meter.