In Alpha Course video #8, the title promises to tell us exactly who the ‘Holy Spirit’ is. But as we saw in previous videos, it’s pure folly to trust this series’ titles to live up to their promises. In this review, we’ll explore what the video says, what it studiously doesn’t say, and why Christians won’t notice any problems either way.
Plus, today we get a venerable Christian diagram to illustrate the concept! What’s not to like?
(This post first went live on Patreon on 10/17/2025. If you don’t already, please consider subscribing for early access! Also: Answering Alpha series tag.)
SITUATION REPORT: Alpha Course #8: Who is the Holy Spirit?
In the venerable evangelism video series Alpha Course, each video tackles questions that its creators think prospective new recruits might ask about Christianity. This one promises to tell those prospects who the Holy Spirit is.
But as one does when describing someone who isn’t real, Nicky Gumbel starts the video by talking about someone else entirely: A newspaper editor who “hated himself deeply” and wasn’t satisfied with any level of success. But then, Alpha Course held out to him a promise “of the Holy Spirit, the love of God being poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.” Finally, during the very last evangelism session, this self-hating editor cried out within himself for Gumbel to get to the part where the Holy Spirit actually does something. He wrote to Gumbel later about the experience, and Gumbel reads from the note on the video:
“Do it now! I can’t hold out any longer! I’m not exaggerating when I say I was in agony.” Quite a common experience for people listening to my talks. “Then he—” that’s the Holy Spirit— “came. And oh, the relief. Do you know, for the first time in my life I feel normal.” [Timestamped at 3:12]
See where the editor writes “he,” clearly meaning Jesus/Yahweh, but then Gumbel hastily amends that pronoun to “that’s the Holy Spirit”?
That verbal sleight of hand captures this entire video in a nutshell. Nobody associated with Alpha Course has any idea who or what the Holy Spirit even is. But they still need to talk about it because it’s one of the personages of the Christian god’s so-called Trinity.
A quick synopsis of Alpha Course #8
Actually, there isn’t really a synopsis to offer you. Literally nothing happens in the video except Nicky Gumbel preaching. I found a far slicker, higher-production-value video that’s much more like what we’re used to seeing:
But with one subtle exception, it consists of the same blah-blah as the one our Watch Party saw. Different people offer the talking points Gumbel does in the video we watched, that’s all.
What this Alpha Course video tells us about the Holy Spirit…
This video informs viewers these things about the Holy Spirit:
- One can find mentions of it throughout the New Testament, but particularly past the Gospels.
- It makes Christians feel loved and accepted, as well as inspiring Christians with “new attitudes, new desires, new ways of worship, new songs” [timestamped 6:45].
- Christians tend to focus on Yahweh (the “Father” of the Trinity) and Jesus (the “Son,” of course), but not so much on the Holy Spirit.
- In the “Authorized Version“, most likely meaning the KJV (King James Version of the Bible), the Bible’s writers use the name “Holy Ghost.” That’s actually precisely why Pentecostals like it. Most of that crowd insists on using only the KJV. But King Nicky does not like the phrase “Holy Ghost,” so he’ll be using “Holy Spirit.” He considers it far more dignified and less spooky.
- It orders Christians to do stuff and ordered ancient Hebrews to do stuff too in the Old Testament.
- “One can be a talented musician without the Holy Spirit” [timestamped 8:44]. So it’s not all-important in art, but um uh just look at Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo! Their artwork was inspired by the Holy Spirit! And Handel’s “Messiah” chorus!
- It wants to “fill you with skill and ability and creativity for what you do” [timestamped 11:16].
- It also “gives us freedom to break the habits, the addictions, the stuff that keeps us spiritually bound” [timestamped 13:11]. Hear that, you millions of Christian addicts? You have no excuse, according to King Nicky.
- When you admire someone Christian, that’s the Holy Spirit nudging you to become “more loving, more kind, more generous” [timestamped 17:43]. One of his illustrations here is Pope Francis. Another is a mother who wrote him to say that her son went from grouchy and unmanageable to cheerful and well-behaved after “being filled with the Holy Spirit.” We’re coming back to this situation in a minute.
- The other, slicker video also tells us that “everyone’s experience [with the Holy Spirit] is different” [timestamped 23:30]
… and what it studiously avoids saying
Anything, literally any tangible thing whatsoever, about exactly what the “Holy Spirit” even is, its operating mechanics, its exact relationship to Yahweh and Jesus, or how to tell when it’s doing something—or not. These Alpha Course folks share nothing concrete or objective about it.
What we got instead isn’t a description in any way
Instead, we hear a lot about how people feel about it and how to tell it operated somewhere after the fact. But we can explain all of these feelings and past presences in purely natural terms. Unfortunately for Christians, feelings and impressions are literally all they have to go by regarding the “Holy Spirit.” So evangelists can’t reveal anything concrete about it.
Nicky Gumbel himself tells us that artists can do great work without the Holy Spirit. So why couldn’t Handel and Michelangelo have done their music and painting on their own? It’s really on Christians to prove otherwise if they think something supernatural was at work. But you sure won’t see Nicky Gumbel doing anything like that here.
As for the vast personality changes noted in the young boy, Nicky Gumbel never met his mother. Rather, a much older relative of hers brought the boy to church one day. Afterward, the mother wrote a note to Gumbel. In it, she attributed his personality change to “his encounter with the Holy Spirit.” In fact, she added, in her letter, that her family and friends had also been “touched” by the Holy Spirit “in powerful and what can only be described as refreshing and equipping ways.”
(“Equipping” is evangelical Christianese for “teaching and emotionally preparing Christians to perform evangelism.” I’ve never seen it used in any other context. So an evangelical mom with evangelical friends wrote that letter—if it’s real.)
Of course, Nicky Gumbel clearly never had further contact with anyone involved in his anecdote. So he thinks that the mom accurately described a permanent change in her son.
Gumbel’s claims about the Holy Spirit breaking addiction broke my heart, too. It also angered me. Way too many struggling Christian addicts have prayed their butts off without ever getting a Holy Spirit kiss to break the spell of their addiction. At most, they got temporary reprieves that were likely only the byproduct of brief religious euphoria. Gumbel’s making huge claims here without a single bit of evidence, and worse, with tons of other evidence contradicting him.
The slicker video erred as well by telling us that “everyone’s experience is different.” Oops! These guys revealed a weak hand indeed with that weasel wording. When unhappy customers come to Nicky Gumbel complaining that they didn’t get the promised feelings, he has an easy flyswatter close to hand.
Why this Alpha Course video might have trouble answering its own title’s question
Within Christianity, no one belief or doctrine is universal. That rule particularly includes the most basic assertions about Jesus and Yahweh! Alpha Course struggles to describe just what the Holy Spirit is because Christianity as a whole has always struggled with that question.
Early Christian leaders fought like cats in a sack over Jesus’ attributes alone. One of the earliest heresies, Arianism, persisted for centuries. Arianism asserts that Jesus was created by Yahweh within time. That means Jesus isn’t eternal and did not exist until he was born. It also means Jesus is distinct from Yahweh. To nonreligious folks, that sounds logical. But to Catholics and later Trinitarian Protestants, it’s absolute heresy. Jesus = Yahweh = Holy Spirit. But at the same time, Jesus ≠ Yahweh ≠ Holy Spirit. As blogger A Pasta Sea has noted, Yahweh didn’t suffer and die on the cross—except kinda he really did.

Oneness Theology competes with Trinitarianism. It derives from early Christian views on Modalistic Monarchianism, which became—you guessed it!—a heresy as well. Really, there’s only a sliver of difference between heresy and a beloved, centuries-old canonical doctrine. That sliver is typically drenched in blood and befouled by politicking.
But Oneness Theology made so much more sense to me as an evangelical-turned-Pentecostal. It cut through all that noise with a chainsaw! Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the burning bush, the narrow gate, the mighty rushing wind of Acts 2, the opening door, and much more became aspects and titles of just one unified god. (One might impishly include here modern and quite extrabiblical conceptualizations of the Metatron.) So naturally, the Holy Spirit in a Oneness framework becomes instantly understandable as this one god’s power. His power exists as part of him, not separate from him in any way.
A Pasta Sea correctly contends, however, that Oneness Theology bears its own problems: In places, the Bible both supports and contradicts both doctrines! Trinitarianism bears the battle scars of centuries of battle precisely because it’s so nonsensical—and because the Bible is so poorly written and edited that it can support many other opinions.
(As right-wing evangelicals continue to fuse with right-wing Catholicism, calling Trinitarian Protestants “heretics” will only get funnier. One evangelical’s worried-sounding 2022 essay seems to blame all the confusion about the Holy Spirit on those ickie Catholics.)
In the Wild: What various Christians think about the Holy Spirit
The evangelical group Cru repeats repeatedly: “But the Holy Spirit is a person, not a thing. The Holy Spirit is God. The Holy Spirit has thoughts and a will.” They repeat the phrase “the Holy Spirit is God” four times on that page without actually telling us anything tangible about it.
Another evangelical site, Got Questions, tries very very hard to differentiate the Holy Spirit from Yahweh’s general omnipresence. They also try very very hard to differentiate seeking some sign that Yahweh even exists and cares at all about his followers from wanting a scrap of kindness from the god they call “the Comforter.” On both counts, they fail.
Catholic site LifeTeen tells us not to worry our pretty li’l feather heads none ’bout it:
[N]o one can ever fully comprehend the Holy Spirit. Like many things in the Catholic faith, it has an element of mystery to it. I don’t mean the type of mystery where you shrug your shoulders and say, “Hmm, I don’t know.” I mean the type that is definitely understandable, but because of the infinite nature of God, we can’t understand all of it.
But that is 100% the type of mystery going on here. It’s splitting hairs to say something’s totally understandable, just nobody can possibly ever understand it. They continue: “if it was possible to fit the entirety of God [. . .] into our little brains, our God wouldn’t be very impressive, would He?” So you see? Yahweh’s thinking of us, here. He wants us to be impressed! That’s just how loving he is!
Oneness believers seem much more comfortable insisting that the Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost, as many Pentecostals prefer as it’s from the KJV) isn’t a person at all. The way they talk about it, it sounds a bit like the reputation of the Dread Pirate Roberts. It’s the real power behind Wesley’s fashionable black mask!
As Alpha Course accidentally leads us to Reddit—and a dealbreaker
That Oneness stuff annoys the Christians over at r/Christianity, one of whom argued about this exact point some years back: “You may have done this unintentionally, but you have referred to the Holy Spirit as ‘it’.”
Whoops! How could that poor sap have made such a cardinal mistake?!?
Gosh, it’s too bad Yahweh couldn’t have arranged to clearly explain everything in a book or something. His omnimax power would ensure that even translations correctly relayed this information across the centuries. Using that book, Christians could settle all their arguments very easily. No heresies to Inquisit, no Metatron needed to translate garbled ineffability…
… oh wait.
Remember, every minute spent on pointless doctrinal squabbles is one minute Christians don’t need to spend doing all that boring stuff Jesus actually ordered them to do, like feeding the hungry and comforting the bereaved.
You’d really think a real god would care more about his followers’ actions than all the nitpicking they do about supernatural stuff. But maybe that’s just me and my hopelessly primitive, direct, results-oriented side talking.
When something’s not real at all, Alpha Course sure won’t be able to describe it
When someone is real, we have no trouble describing them. We describe their height, sex, race, style of dress, age, hair and eye color, and more. If more detail is needed, we can talk about their voice, specific features of their face, maybe scars or tattoos on their skin. Indeed, police sketch artists know to be wary when a witness describes a super-generic suspect, as Susan Smith did in 1994, or describes someone nearby. Such descriptions can indicate that something’s not right about witness’ story.
Even if we’ve personally never interacted with someone, we can describe them if they’re real. For example, you may have no idea who Indra Nooyi is. Most people wouldn’t. But what if I tell you she was the CEO of PepsiCo from 2006 to 2018? Or that she’s from Chennai, India? Or that since leaving PepsiCo she’s served her home state of Connecticut in various economic-development positions? These are concrete, tangible descriptions. CEOs are real, PepsiCo is real, India is real, and as far as I know, so is Connecticut. Evidence supports my claims about her. I could describe her as a person as well, because pictures and videos of her abound online (here’s an interview she did in 2014).
I can do none of these things when talking about the Holy Spirit. Nobody can. Everything about the Holy Spirit truly is “inconceivable,” as Vizzini kept saying in The Princess Bride, except this time it’d be an accurate word to use.
That’s how everyone’s experiences with the Holy Spirit really can be different. It’s why Christians really have argued for millennia now about just how it functions and exactly what it is. And why Alpha Course really can only offer anecdotes and rah-rah sales hype instead of solid descriptions of one of the most important concepts in their entire religion.
Alpha Course #8 is just another episode of Whose Christianity Is It Anyway? —where everything’s made up and the points don’t ever, ever matter.
NEXT UP: Considering how incredibly postmodern today’s evangelicals are, it might seem confusing that they hate postmodernism so much. But it makes perfect sense that they do. Cap’n Cas explains all, next time. See you soon! <3
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