So we come to our faith in the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. The Apostles’ Creed is minimalist as usual, saying ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit’, not expounding it any further. The Nicene Creed is more elaborate: ‘We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.’
At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, at his baptism, we are told in the Gospels that the Spirit appeared proclaiming that Jesus was the Son of God. Jesus himself talked about his Father throughout his ministry, but it is mainly towards the end of his life that he talks about the Spirit, whom he variously described as the Comforter, Advocate, the Spirit of Truth, Helper and so forth. Strangely it is none of these descriptions of the Spirit that is used in the Nicene Creed: we say we believe in and celebrate the continual renewal of life through the Holy Spirit within us in this statement. The Spirit, ruach, in the Old Testament, is a feminine noun, so many Christians. especially feminists, refer to the Spirit as ‘she’, thus seeing the Godhead as comprising both maleness and femaleness.
The Old Testament, a legacy from the strictly monotheistic Jewish religion, talks of the spirit of God, but not as a separate person. Nevertheless, we read at the very beginning of the Bible (Gen. 1:1) that ‘the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters, when the earth was ‘formless and empty’. Then there are many references to the Spirit being with judges and kings (for example, Gideon, Samson, Saul). Psalms of David in particular suggest that Holiness is inspired by the Spirit (for example in Ps 143). We may note in passing that in our Eucharistic prayers at Holy Communion, it is the Holy Spirit that we invoke to sanctify the bread and wine.
Then there is the clear reference in Isaiah (Ch 11:1-5) to the spirit being on the Messiah (‘the stem of Jesse’):
“There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, And a Branch shall grow out of his roots. The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, The Spirit of counsel and might, The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.”
The allusion in the Nicene Creed to the Spirit ‘who has spoken through the prophets’ is easily understood. Of course, with hindsight, after hearing Jesus’ promise about sending the Holy Spirit after his death, and feeling the need to see Jesus as fulfilling prophesies of the Old Testament, the early Christian leaders were keen to locate the Trinitarian nature of God – the Creator, the Word and the Spirit – in Jewish history.
The words, ‘...proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified are rather more mysterious and, indeed, have been controversial. In the very early versions of the Creed, the Spirit was described as proceeding from the Father, through the Son: as the Father sent the Son into the world, he also sent the Spirit, through the Son. However, Jesus’ words about the Comforter coming to them after he had gone, made it logical to say that The Spirit was, and is being, sent to Earth by both Father and Son.
Not so obviously logical, it would seem! The words ‘and the Son’ here, in what is known as the filioque (meaning and the Son in Latin) clause, split the church into two factions. A major reason for the Orthodox churches in the East and the Roman Catholic church in the West parting company in the Medieval ages was the filioque clause. However there was an important non-doctrinal issue also causing division, namely the authority of the Pope. The two issues are inter- related, and the reason why the filioque clause was not acceptable to the Orthodox churches was that it had not been approved by a Church Council – that is, they questioned where the authority for the change came from.
I often think of the words of St John of Damascus: God is infinite and incomprehensible, and all that is comprehensible about Him is His infinity and incomprehensibility. The more I think about the Trinity, the more acutely I become aware of the truth of that statement.
Comments