The Holy Spirit in Church History, Part I: Patristic Thought

[Due to some poor planning on my part, and a last-minute vacation, instead of doing a post on today’s readings, today I’ll be continuing with my series on the Holy Spirit. If you’d like a post on today’s readings, check out this older post .]

During the whole Easter season, we’ve been exploring how the understanding of the Holy Spirit’s work developed throughout the Scriptures. In looking most recently at the New Testament teaching, we saw three significant themes emerge:

1. The Holy Spirit as the marker of belonging to the new apocalyptic Kingdom of God (closely linked to, but distinct from the ritual of baptism);
2. The Holy Spirit as the agent enabling the faithful to live like Jesus; and
3. The Holy Spirit as the giver of abilities and vocations to serve and support the community of faith.

Before we leave this series, it’s important to see how these Scriptural themes fared in Church history. Today we’ll look at ancient and Medieval Christianity. Later this week, we’ll turn to the Spirit in Eastern and Western Medieval Christianity. And finally, we’ll look at the wild world of post-Reformation Christianity. (Note: These will by necessity be only very brief surveys; each of the theologians and movements could merit a post of their own and the excerpts or ideas I’ll be pulling out are meant to be suggestive, rather than exhaustive of their thought.)

When looking at the writings of the Apostolic Fathers (the first generation of Christian leaders after the Apostles), what is surprising is the dearth of references to the Holy Spirit. It’s not absent — present in threefold doxologies and baptismal formulas (’in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit’) and a handful of other references — but it’s far from the major teaching we see in the New Testament. For example, St. Ignatius of Antioch mentions the Spirit in passing in his Letter to the Magnesians, but in a past tense, calling the Prophets of old “disciples [of Jesus] in the Spirit” (9.2). The Didache, a late first-century Christian instruction manual, gives the Spirit a preparatory role for those who come to follow Jesus: “He comes to call not with regard to reputation, but those whom the Spirit has prepared” (Didache 4.10). The Didache also devotes quite a bit of time to the gift of prophecy, with instructions on how to discern false prophets from true ones, and making provisions for the care of genuine prophets (12-13). But overall, there’s little in the Apostolic Fathers about the Holy Spirit, not even in reference to the Church hierarchy — a major theme in these books. I’d be remiss not to mention a passage in the pseudepigraphal and likely later text known as 2 Clement; it has a high doctrine of the Spirit, calling its gift “so great… that no one is able to proclaim or tell what things the Lord has prepared for his chosen ones,” but makes it a conditional gift rather than a universal one: only those who have not “abused the flesh [and thereby] abused the Church” will receive the Spirit (2 Clement 14.3-5).

Because of 2 Clement’s questionable provenance, it’s not really until the late second century and the writings of St. Irenaeus of Lyons that we find solid evidence for how the Holy Spirit was understood in the early post-apostolic Church. In his Against Heresies, Irenaeus had quite a bit to say about the Holy Spirit. In one crucial passage (3.17.2) alone, he develops: the motif of the gift of tongues at Pentecost undoing the ‘curse of Babel’ and reuniting humanity under a new covenant; the apocalyptic theme of those who’ve received the Spirit as the “first fruits” of the Kingdom of God; the ‘sevenfold Spirit’ of Isaiah 11 granted to Christ and through him to all the faithful; a unique analogy comparing the Spirit to water that turns flour into workable dough; and the biblical metaphor of the ‘Advocate’ as the defense of the faithful against the wiles of the devil. (All this in a single paragraph!) In another passage (4.6.2), Irenaeus also refers to Paul’s understanding of the Spirit’s role in the Church hierarchy (see Ephesians 4.11-12), encouraging submission to bishops since they have “received the infallible charism of truth.” But overall in Irenaeus we have a strong and balanced understanding of the Holy Spirit, very much in line with the spirit of the New Testament: “Knowledge of God’s Son is obtained through the Holy Spirit” (Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 7), the Spirit “walks at everyone’s side” (Against Heresies 3.12.14), leads “the righteous in the way of righteousness,” and has been “poured out in a new way on humanity, to renew it over all the earth and to bring it into union with God” (Demonstration 6).

The third century saw the start of a shift in Christian writing away from a focus on practical concerns of faith and Church life, as Christianity began to be reframed within primarily Greco-Roman philosophical language. Thus, metaphysical questions about the relationship of the Spirit within the Trinity and ethical questions about the virtues began to take precedence. But thankfully for us, some discussion of the role of the Spirit within the lives of Christians was still necessary within these writings. For example, Origen of Alexandria insists that, while the Spirit had previously been granted to only the few, “now there are countless of multitudes of believers” upon whom “whether by baptism or by the grace of the Spirit, the word of wisdom, or the word of knowledge, or of any other gift, has been bestowed” (On First Principles 2.7.2 & 7). The Spirit also plays a prominent role in Origen’s famous understanding of the different senses of Scriptures:

[T]he Scriptures were written by the Spirit of God, and have a meaning, not such only as is apparent at first sight, but also another, which escapes the notice of most. For those words which are written are the forms of certain mysteries, and the images of divine things. Respecting which there is one opinion throughout the whole Church, that the whole law is indeed spiritual; but that the spiritual meaning which the law conveys is not known to all, but to those only on whom the grace of the Holy Spirit is bestowed in the word of wisdom and knowledge. (On First Principles Pref 8)

Moving to the fourth and fifth centuries, St. Athanasius of Alexandria wrote: “The Word made himself ‘bearer of the flesh’ in order that human beings might become ‘bearers of the Spirit’” (On the Incarnation 8). According to St Gregory of Nazianzus, the goal of Christ’s work was to “offer the whole of creation to the Father so that the Father may bring it to life in the Holy Spirit” (Oration 45). For St Gregory of Nyssa, the Spirit “guides toward the good those who are worthy,” is associated with mystical revelation, and causes the “flourishing” of grace (The Life of Moses 2.121, 173, 178, 187). Similarly, St Basil the Great wrote that “the Spirit gives us the down payment of life” and “pours in the enlivening power, renewing our souls from the deadness of sin unto their original life” (On the Holy Spirit 15.35). Turning West, St. Augustine of Hippo wrote that “it is the Holy Spirit of which [God] has given us that makes abide in him and him in us” (On the Trinity, 15.31). St. Ambrose of Milan associated the Spirit primarily with virtue ethics, through an appropriation of the Sevenfold Spirit of Isaiah 11, which we also saw in St. Irenaeus’s thought. This focus on virtue was often described in the Church Fathers in terms of attaining the likeness of God, or likeness of Christ. Thus Diadochus of Photike wrote:

Our spiritual sensitivity shows us that we are in the process of being formed to the likeness. … Indeed no one can attain to spiritual love unless he is brought to certainty by the light of the Holy Spirit … And only the enlightenment of love, when it is added, shows that the image has completely attained the beauty of the likeness. (Chapters 89)

Beyond the writings of the Church Fathers, in order to understand how Ancient Christians understood the work of the Spirit, we also have to look at their liturgical texts.  A common wording in ancient Eucharistic Prayers asked God: “Send Your Holy Spirit upon these gifts of Your holy Church, that gathering them into one, You would grant to all the saints who partake of them to be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Likewise, when a new bishop was consecrated, his fellow bishops prayed that God would “pour fourth now that power which is Yours of Your royal Spirit.” The Holy Spirit was therefore understood to be integral to everything happening in and through the Church’s worship.

So then, throughout the ancient Church, we see ideas about the Holy Spirit that more or less keep on with the biblical themes: The Holy Spirit is still understood to have been poured out upon humanity in a new way at Pentecost, and be the main agent within the Christian life, including gifts bestowed upon the faithful. But there are some important shifts too throughout this period. The more ‘miraculous’ spiritual gifts such as tongues and prophecy become less emphasized as time goes on, with a greater emphasis placed on spiritual gifts given to clergy, and with the focus for everyday Christians being more and more about the Spirit inspiring virtuous living, particularly in and through the Church’s sacraments.

In the next post, we’ll look at how these ideas fit into Medieval thought, both East and West.