Over the past few weeks’, we’ve been going over the history, theology, and spirituality of the Nicene Creed, an ancient statement of faith that has been one of the major standards of Christian orthodoxy for close to 1700 years. Today our attention will shift to what it says about the Holy Spirit. In the original statement from the First Council of Nicaea, the Creed ended rather bluntly with the words, “And in the Holy Spirit.” Full stop. But in the ensuing decades and ongoing debates around Arianism, the divinity and personhood of the Holy Spirit also began to be challenged, and so, the text we have now, which incorporates the decisions of the First Council of Constantinople from 381, added several additional clauses about the Spirit and its role in the life of faith. Today, I’ll be taking on the first of these: “And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life.”
One of the major things that marked the nascent Christian movement in the first century was its insistence that the Holy Spirit had come in a new way, upon not just prophets and kings, but on all of the faithful. Its manifestation was, in fact, one of the major signs of someone’s conversion, faith, and adoption into God’s family. As Peter said, when confronted with the Spirit very clearing coming upon the new Gentile believers in the household of Cornelius, “‘Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” (Acts 10.47). It was the Holy Spirit’s presence that convinced Peter to let go of the Law of Moses as a primary determiner of community boundaries. The point of the story for us is that for the early Christians this change in how the Holy Spirit was present in the world was a very big deal. And so, yes, as Christians, we believe “in the Holy Spirit.”
This Holy Spirit is called “the Lord,” just as God the Son was called the “one Lord” earlier in the Creed, and a title that doubled in Greek as the replacement for the personal name of the one God known as “the Father.” We are now into obvious Trinitarian territory: We Christians know and trust one Lord, but we know and trust that one Lord as Father, as Son, and as Spirit. It’s confusing to be sure — the Greek Fathers had to break the language of philosophy in order to find a way of talking about it* — but it’s the faith that was demanded by the lived experience and faith of the Christian community.
This Lord is also called “the Giver of life.” Again we find ourselves in a Trinitarian place: Previously the Creed has said that the Father is the “Maker of heaven and earth,” and that it is the Son “through whom all things exist.” Now, it’s calling the Spirit “the Giver of life.” Three Persons of the Trinity, all engaged together in the one act of creation.** By “Giver of life,” the Creed is referring to such texts as Psalm 104, in which the Spirit of God enlivens the animals and “renew[s] the face of the earth.” It’s the sense that many centuries later Hildegard of Bingen would call veriditas, the unstoppable, insatiable greening force of life in the world.
I’ve written quite a bit about the Spirit and its connection to Christian spirituality over the years. In addition to the links above, if you’d like to read more about it, please feel free to follow the links below:
- A Spirit of Freedom
- Winds of Change
- Babel Revisited
- Come, Holy Spirit, Come
- Babel’s Curse, Babel’s Blessing
- A New People
- Baptism with Fire
- Come, Drink
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* The accepted formula in Greek is that there is one divine essence (ousia) in three instantiations (hypotases) — the problem is that ousia and hypostasis were essentially synonymous in contemporary philosophy. Far from these Trinitarian formulations being the takeover of theology by philosophy, the way theologians used these terms would have made no sense to philosophers of the day.
** This is why attempts at ungendered alternatives to the language of “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” that rely on divine activities miss the mark. We can’t say that “Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier” are alternatives to “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” because all of these activities are undertaken by all three of the Trinity.
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We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only-Begotten, Who was begotten of the Father before all ages, light from light, true God from true God, Begotten not made, Who is of the same essence as the Father, Through whom all things exist. Who, for us humans and for our salvation, came down from heaven, And was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became human. Who was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried, and rose gain on the third day, in accordance with the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. Who is coming again in glory to judge the living and the dead, whose kingdom will have no end.
And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life…
Matthew Root 
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