Hi Winner —
The Holy Spirit is called the Comforter and the Helper.
Indeed. He has many names.
Is the Comforter the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ?
Simple answer — no. The Comforter is sent by God: "And I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another Paraclete" (John 14:16).
Longer answer is not quite so simple: "But the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name" (John 14:26) begins to confuse the issue — why would the Father not send in His own name? And furthermore "But when the Paraclete cometh, whom I will send you from the Father" (John 15:26) — by what authority does the Son tell the Father what to do?
Here we are 'alerted', if you will, to a central Mystery of Christianity, and here we engage in Trinitarian theology.
Because in John 16:7 Jesus says that He has to depart from the disciples before the Helper will come. It sounds to me that Jesus had to die first before He could send the Helper.
I would say not quite — rather, Jesus' Mission has to be fulfilled before the Mission of the Holy Spirit can commence. John says:
"He that believeth in me, as the scripture saith, Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. Now this he said of the Spirit which they should receive, who believed in him: for as yet the Spirit was not given, because Jesus was not yet glorified" (John 7:38-39).
In His last instruction to His disciples, He says: "But you shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you, and you shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and even to the uttermost part of the earth" (Acts 1:8). The implication is that they shall be witnesses only after the coming of the Holy Spirit, as evidenced at Pentecost (Acts 1 and 2).
So I would say that Jesus's Mission was accomplished through His death on the Cross (the accomplishment being His victory over our dying). By His rising physically — body and soul — from the dead can we too rise from our own deaths, and this is Mission of the Holy Spirit, in that by participation in the life of the Holy Spirit we are joined in the eternal life (because the Holy Spirit is in the Father and the Son eternally and thus equally coexistent and consubstantial with Them) of the Son and of the Father.
St Paul was equally aware of the necessity of the Presence of the Holy Spirit, and the particular nature of His mission: "And no man can say the Lord Jesus, but by the Holy Spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:3).
So it's more a case that only in the Holy Spirit can we know the Son, and only in the Son can we know the Father.
So to make this short, Is Jesus the comforter, Helper, Holy Spirit?
In short: Yes — He is God, as the Holy Spirit is God, as the Father is God, and No — He is other than the Holy Spirit as He is other than the Father.
Perhaps a way to think of it is this:
John 14:16-17: "And I will ask the Father, and he shall give you
another Paraclete, that he may abide with, you for ever. The spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive";
Two things — Jesus says 'another' Paraclete, so he is not talking of Himself, and yet he says that other Paraclete is 'the spirit of truth', which is who He is "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" (John 6:14).
As we know even His closest disciples did not understand all things He said to them. He, Jesus, the spirit of truth, was
with them, but they knew Him only as man might know Him. Christ makes that point when Peter makes his confession, Peter says: "Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answering, said to him: Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 16:16-17).
So man cannot know who Christ is, unless it is revealed in him, and this is the work of the Holy Spirit, in bringing man to the fullness of that knowing. It is the Father's will that the Son be known, that the Father might be known to man; it is the Son's will that the Father be known, that the Father might be known to man — both wish that man knows the Other as He does, and Each knows the Other in the Holy Spirit, and each wills that in the Holy Spirit we might know Them.
Otherwise, our knowledge is always external to the reality — we know of God, but we don't know God. The term Father,
Abba, 'father', implies a whole different order of knowing, beyond knowledge and ideas (physical gnosis), and it is to
that order of knowing that we are called, adoption into a family, the most intimate expression of a union in any language, that is the true gnosis of which the Christian speaks (cf. 1 Timonthy 6:20).
"And because you are sons, God hath sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying: Abba, Father" (Galatians 4:6).
By the power of the Holy Spirit, the Son became incarnate in Mary (Luke 1:35), and it is by the power of the Holy Spirit that we become part of that new order of incarnation.
"For whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For you have not received the spirit of bondage again in fear; but you have received the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry: Abba" (Romans 8:14-15).
The spirit of adoption comes from God, not from ourselves — therefore we have no claim upon the Divine Life as such.
Thomas
