Part 9: "I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord ..."

Up to this point the Creed has focused on the Father and Son. Now it turns to the third person of the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Spirit.

We talk about the Holy Spirit all the time. He plays a huge part in our Christian lives; at our baptism, our confirmation, in our prayer life, etc. But, unlike the Father and the Son, He is sometimes hard for us to visualize.  We easily imagine God the Father. Artists have for centuries depicted the Father as an older, wise-looking, loving, white-haired, grandfatherly-looking man. With Jesus, we visualize a man who looked like us, walking among us 2,000 years ago. But with the Holy Spirit it is a little harder. Again, artists, scholars, and the writers of Holy Scripture have depicted him with the image of a dove, the wind blowing, or tongues of fire, but it is hard for us to think of the Holy Spirit as an actual person. Nevertheless, we know from Scripture, especially from the New Testament, that in addition to the Father and the Son, there is a third person who is fully divine and equal to them. This is why the Creed speaks of the Holy Spirit as “the Lord,” just as it does the Father and the Son.

Christ told his apostles before His Ascension, “It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate (the Holy Spirit) will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you” (John 16:7).

Why would Jesus tell them it would be to their advantage for Him to leave?  Peter Kreeft, Ph.D., in his book, Catholic Christianity, puts it this way: “If Jesus Christ would appear visibly in person anywhere on earth [today], a billion people would probably come. Yet, we have something better than that, according to Christ’s own teaching. We have the Holy Spirit. But why is this better?

"Because the Spirit’s presence to us can be even more intimate than Christ’s. Or, rather, Christ Himself can be more intimately present through His Spirit than He was bodily to His apostles. They knew Him better – more intimately and more accurately – after He left them and sent His Spirit. This is clear by comparing the apostles, especially Peter, in the Gospels, with the same apostles in Acts.

"The same is true for us. The visible Christ is separated from us by two thousand years of time and four thousand miles of space. We are not first-century Jews; we did not see Him. The Father is separated even more: He is infinitely transcendent and 'dwells in inaccessible light.' But the Spirit makes Christ known to the eyes of our spirit, as Christ made the Father known to our bodily eyes. The Father is God outside us; the Son is God beside us; the Spirit is God inside us, God 'possessing' us. He is maximal intimacy. That is why it is ‘better.’”^xlvi

“The Spirit is God inside us.” What a wonderful way of helping us understand how we can relate to the person of the Holy Spirit!

… the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son,

“We also say that the Holy Spirit is the ‘giver of life.’ In the ancient world, breath in the body (which is what spirit means) was a sign of life. God’s breath came to mean the principle source of life. God’s Spirit was involved in the production of all life as we read in Genesis 1:2. Since it is the Spirit who pours out charity into the hearts of the faithful, He is the source of all true life in God – the ‘giver of life.’”^xlvii

The Council of Toledo, in 589, added the words “and the Son” [Latin, Filioque] at this point in the Creed to clarify the Creed’s statement of belief that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both Father and the Son, not just from the Son.^xlviii It was gradually admitted into the Latin liturgy between the eighth and eleventh centuries.^xlix

…, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,

In the early days of the Church, in the fourth century, (after the Nicaean council in 325), there were many debates as to whether or not the Holy Spirit was truly God, as Jesus and the Father are. Those who opposed the idea of the Holy Spirit being divine where called “Pneumatomachians, ” or “those who make war against the Spirit.” (A $50 word if ever there was one!) Their challenge was met by our friend, St. Athanasius of Alexandria, whom we talked about earlier in this series (see parts 2 and 3). In addition, writing after the death of Athanasius, three Greek Church fathers (Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus) were significant in the development of the doctrine of the Trinity.  They were known as the “Cappadocian Fathers” as they were from an area in present-day Turkey known as Cappadocia. Through their efforts, the Church confirmed at the Council of Constantinople in 381 that the Holy Spirit is co-equal with the Father and the Son and is to be worshiped with the same glory.

Scripturally, we see this in St. Matthew’s Gospel where the three persons of the Trinity are spoken of with the same level of dignity and recognition: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”^l

…who has spoken through the prophets.

When speaking of “the prophets” the Church understands this to mean all whom the Holy Spirit inspired through both the spoken word and the composition of the sacred books, both the Old and the New Testaments.^li This inspiration was not necessarily verbally given “word for word,” but was certainly more than just a vague help or inclination towards the topics expressed and written. The people who were inspired were not just puppets, but they spoke through their different personalities, backgrounds, and styles of writing. The Holy Spirit insured that their writings would have infallibility (incapable of error) and would be of divine authority, so that we can be certain of its truth.^lii

Next week…I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.

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