1 Corinthians 2:12

But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God; that we might know the things that were freely given to us of God.

Not the spirit of the world ... By this, Paul did not mean that such a spirit of the world, comparable in a sense to the Holy Spirit and opposed to him, actually exists. Nor can we agree with Marsh that "It may mean Satan."[31] What Paul had in view here was the secular, materialistic thinking of unregenerated people. The Germans had a word for it, the Zeitgeist, which means "the spirit of the times," or "the intellectual and moral tendencies of an age or epoch."

The Spirit which is from God ... "What is meant here is not the perpetual indwelling of the Spirit in the congregation, but the historical fact of his coming."[32] The reference here is to Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit to guide the apostles into all truth.

[31] Paul W. Marsh, A New Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1969), p. 379.

[32] F. W. Grosheide, op. cit., p 70