Does Jesus send the Holy Spirit, or does the Father?

The passages

John 14:16

Jesus will pray the Father, “and he shall give you another Comforter”.

And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;

John 14:26

The Comforter is the Holy Ghost, “whom the Father will send in my name”.

But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

John 15:26

The Comforter is the one “whom I will send unto you from the Father”, the Spirit of truth.

But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:

John 16:7

“If I depart, I will send him unto you.”

Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.

Acts 2:33

At Pentecost, Peter says the exalted Jesus received “of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost” and poured it out.

Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear.

In John 14:26 Jesus says that the Father will send the Holy Spirit. A chapter later he speaks of the Spirit “whom I will send unto you from the Father” (John 15:26). Critics ask which of them sends the Spirit.

The answer

Both do, and each time Jesus says so in the same sentence. The Father sends the Spirit “in my name”, that is, on the Son’s account and at his request (John 14:16, 26). The Son sends him “from the Father” (15:26; 16:7). Neither verse says that the other does not send him. At Pentecost Peter described the same thing: the exalted Jesus “received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost” and poured him out (Acts 2:33). The sending is one work in which the Father and the Son act together. Ellicott notes that the Father’s sending in answer to the Son’s prayer, his sending in the Son’s name, and the Son’s own sending are all one and the same.

This fits what the New Testament says of the Spirit throughout. He is called both “the Spirit of God” and “the Spirit of Christ” (Romans 8:9), and God sends “the Spirit of his Son” into believers’ hearts (Galatians 4:6). The church has read these passages as part of the Bible’s witness to the Trinity: one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, whose works towards the world are undivided, though each person has his own part in them. Jesus’ words would contradict each other only if he had said that he alone, or the Father alone, sends the Spirit, and he says neither.

Sending and proceeding

John 15:26 also says that the Spirit “proceedeth from the Father”. Western churches, Catholic and most Protestant, confess in the Nicene Creed that the Spirit proceeds ‘from the Father and the Son’ (the filioque); the Eastern Orthodox confess that he proceeds from the Father, while agreeing that the Son sends him into the world. That old disagreement concerns the Spirit’s eternal relation within God, not the sending at Pentecost, which both sides ascribe to the Father and the Son.

From the classic commentators

That then which the Lord says — Whom I will send unto you from the Father, — shows the Spirit to be both of the Father and of the Son; because, also, when He had said, Whom the Father will send, He added also, in my name.Augustine, On the Trinity, Book IV, 20.29 (about 400–420), at New Advent

The mission by the Father in answer to the Son’s prayer, and the mission by the Father in the Son’s name, and the mission by the Son Himself, are thought of as one and the same thing.Charles John Ellicott (ed.), Commentary for English Readers, on John 15:26 (1878), at Bible Hub

Does Jesus send the Holy Spirit, or does the Father?

The passages

The objection

The answer

Other answers Christians give

Sending and proceeding

From the classic commentators

Sources

Further reading