Download an outline of the Creed.
Go to the beginning of this study of the Creed.
Download the handout.
Table Talk: What have been your experiences in different churches when the topic of the Holy Spirit is brought up? Have you seen disagreements? Why do you think the Holy Spirit seems to be more of a source of controversy than the Father or the Son?
[“Table Talk” is an opening question or topic for discussion at the beginning of our time together. The intent is to help group members (around tables, with four to six at each table) build connections with each other, as well as to guide thinking in a direction related to the passage.]
Before our group met, I was in a conversation with a person who does not attend the group but occasionally reads this blog. When I mentioned that the day’s topic was “I believe in the Holy Spirit,” the immediate response was, “Oh, what a controversial topic.” The brief chat continued with lament that so much discord should grow out of such an important topic.
Our group discussion continued that thread with the “Table Talk” question. The group members are from diverse backgrounds, from Southern Baptist to Assemblies of God. Not surprisingly, experiences varied widely, but the unfortunate common theme seemed to be conflict. Different church backgrounds reacted to “too much” of the Holy Spirit or “not enough.” Experiences indicated either growing spiritual maturity or demon possession, depending on the denominational dispositions. Some churches seem to focus on the Holy Spirit, while others virtually ignore Him, concentrating on the Father or the Son.
We explored why the Holy Spirit is such a volatile topic when the Father and the Son seldom raise those levels of disagreement. One person suggested that the Father and the Son are easier to imagine, based on earthly counterparts, than the vague idea of a Holy “Spirit.” Certainly there is more explicit and detailed information about the Father and the Son in the Bible. The Spirit is present and mentioned (starting in Genesis 1:2) but in ways that are not always completely clear and obvious. There seems to be more clarity in Scripture about the Father and the Son. The Spirit sometimes seems a little more ambiguous, more unpredictable.
Maybe the Father (in heaven) and the Son (at His right hand) are at a safe distance, but the Holy Spirit is right here among us, even within us. We might be satisfied with theological outlines about the Father and the Son, but the Spirit is acting here and now in very practical and very immediate ways. We can become quite uncomfortable when someone suggests that He is acting in ways that exceed our comfort zone or in ways that fall below our own experiences and expectations. Accusations and acrimony often follow.
As we have seen before in the Creed, the ancient church Fathers did not address most of the issues that draw most of our attention today. What about the gifts of the Spirit? What does the baptism of the Spirit look like? Is that different from being filled with the Spirit? Which gifts are still active today (all, some, none)? Just what issues did the Creeds include? What was on the minds of those leaders of the developing church?
Development of the Creeds
Comparing the Apostles’ Creed (ca. AD200) with the Nicene Creed (ca. 325-381) reveals a significant expansion:
|
Apostles’ Creed (ca. AD 200) |
Nicene Creed (ca. AD 325 – 381) |
| I believe in the Holy Spirit, | I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets. |
Clearly the council at Nicaea felt more needed to be said to supplement the brief statement in the Apostles’ Creed. A bit of history hopefully will help clarify the changes.
History Lesson
In AD312 the Emperor Constantine made the Christian faith an accepted religion in the Roman Empire. Soon imperial politics and the ecclesiastical practices intertwined. Theological conflicts in the embryonic church affected political alliances and jeopardized the stability of the government. The tipping point was the debate over the exact nature of Jesus.
Emperor Constantine called for a council of bishops to deal with the controversial teachings of an Alexandrian presbyter named Arius. Arius was a popular preacher who taught that Jesus was a created being like God the Father but not the same as God the Father. The council took place in AD 325 [in the city of Nicaea, modern day Iznik, Turkey] and its central affirmations were that Jesus was truly God, he was of the same essence as the Father, and he was begotten not made. However, the debate continued for the next fifty years, with the political class committed to an Arian interpretation of the Creed of Nicaea.[1]
The “Arian interpretation of the Creed of Nicaea” suggests the reason for the continuing development of the creeds. The best wording still was subject to “loopholes” that the false teachers would use. Affirming a creed but defining terms in their own ways enabled them to give the appearance of orthodoxy and continue to infiltrate and undermine the true, apostolic teaching. The words of Machen (quoted in an earlier article) bear repeating: “It is not that part is denied and the rest affirmed; but all is denied, because all is affirmed merely as useful or symbolic and not as true.”[2] The additions at Nicaea to the Apostles’ Creed attempted to fill the loopholes. However, the diverging interpretations continued, requiring another meeting.
Another council was called in Constantinople in AD 381 to deal with the teachings of Apollinaris, who taught that the Logos replaced the soul of the man Jesus, thereby injuring his full humanity. In response, the council expanded the Creed of Nicaea to include affirmations about the deity of the Holy Spirit, gave more explicit wording to the incarnation, and referenced the eternal nature of Jesus’s kingdom. The Nicene Creed is the creed recited by all Christian churches, East and West, Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox, as the definitive expression of the Christian faith.[3]
While most of the “loophole-filling” work was dedicated to defining the divine-human nature of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit also drew the attention of the false teachers and the response from the orthodox Fathers. Arian doctrines of Christ were excluded at Nicaea, but they found other potential points of entry in the creed.
The expansion resulted from the continuation of the Arian controversy, which became even more radical and bitter following the rejection of the Arians at the Nicene Council in 325. The Holy Spirit was a convenient point of attack for those whose main target was the divinity of the Son. If the Spirit that worked through the Son and is at work in Christians is only a creature and not God, then the Son is not God either.[4]
One more controversy
The result from the council at Constantinople was the so-called Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, commonly (and thankfully) called simply the Nicene Creed today. While later creeds (such as the Athanasian Creed) were developed to continue clarifying the doctrine of the Trinity, the Nicene Creed (still used today) defined orthodoxy for over six-hundred years. However, in its original form, one line was changed from “Who proceeds from the Father” to the form we know, “Who proceeds from the Father and the Son.”
The sixth-century Latin-speaking church created controversy when it added the so-called filioque (Latin for “and the Son”) clause to the Nicene Creed. This addition was made to emphasize that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. This cosmetic addition… was the catalyst for a schism between the Eastern and Western churches in AD 1054… [5]
There may have been both theological and political reasons[6] for the addition, but a point of contention was the fact that the change was made unilaterally by the church centered in Rome. The eastern branch of the church in Constantinople was not part of the decision. Whether the change was “cosmetic” as in the quotation above, whether it was “theology at its worst,”[7] it divided the church. Whether the Eastern Church was primarily moved by theological issues or political power, the change divided the church. That example serves as a sober warning about how even the value of the creeds can be misused.
Deity of the Spirit
Gregory of Nazianzus, 4th-century Archbishop of Constantinople, described the incremental process of God’s self-revelation as Trinity. (Recall our discussions in 1 John regarding the repeated mention of Father and Son and only brief mention of the Holy Spirit.[8])
The Old Testament proclaimed the Father clearly, but the Son more darkly; the New Testament plainly revealed the Son, but only indicated the deity of the Holy Spirit. Now the Holy Spirit lives among us and makes the manifestation of himself more certain to us; for it was not safe, so long as the divinity of the Father was unrecognized, to proclaim openly that of the Son; and so long as this was still not accepted, to impose the burden of the Spirit, if so bold a phrase may be allowed.[9]
Interestingly, one phrase in that quotation generated significant discussion in our group: “impose the burden of the Spirit.” Even Gregory’s apologetic tone (“if so bold a phrase may be allowed”) generated conversation. Group members suggested he was saying, “Let this percolate for a while.” Digesting the idea that Jesus is fully God, that He and the Father are both divine Persons in a multi-personal Deity, takes some serious thought. Gregory seemed hesitant to add the “burden” of the third Person of that Trinity into the already overloaded thinking of the early Christians.
Importance
Ever-vigilant for theological gobbledygook, we discussed the question of why the deity of the Spirit is important enough to be included in the Creed. One suggestion pointed to the message to Mary and the conception of Jesus by the divine Holy Spirit (Luke 1:31-35). That key event at the beginning of the Incarnation of the Son is balanced by another key event at the end of His earthly ministry. Jesus said to His followers, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). As one writer succinctly expressed, “One does not baptize in the name of a divine person, a holy creature, and an impersonal force.”[10] The baptismal significance of the deity of the Spirit was recognized in the ancient church.
When controversy did break out after 350, however, the assertion that the Holy Spirit is really a creature was denounced by Athanasius as a subversion of the foundations of the faith, for it divided the Holy Trinity and undermined holy baptism….[11]
The mission of Jesus, and the mission of His church is a mission about the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. “The risen Jesus sends us out to continue the mission of the triune God.”[12]
Controversy
If the deity of the Spirit was important in the ancient church (and still is), why was it so controversial, and is it still controversial today? As mentioned above, the deity of the Holy Spirit was a way to attack the deity of Christ. Both of those concepts, and the whole idea of a “three-personal God,”[13] were troubling to the rationalists then just as now. Any concept of God that will not fit neatly into pre-defined categories is not considered. Logic and human reason are raised above God’s self-revelation:
In utter differentiation from all created nature, the nature of God is so incomparable with anything we know, that it is not fitting for us to ask human questions about the Godhead – God may be known, not from without, but only from what he is within himself…. Arians operated with the principle that what they could not humanly conceive could not be.[14]
John 14 (excerpts); John 16:5-15
While the Holy Spirit is mentioned throughout Scripture, we focused on a brief inductive study of sections for the Gospel according to John. There are many interesting and valuable observations in these passages. In order to focus the study on our discussion of the Creed, we primarily considered the source of the Spirit and the functions of the Spirit.
The Source of the Spirit
The passage variously describes where or from whom the Spirit comes: from the Father at the request of the Son (John 14:16), from the Father in the name of the Son (14:26), and from the Son Himself (16:7). John 16:13 says simply that the Spirit will come. The passage clearly shows that the Triune God works in complete harmony. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all participate in the work of God. This harmonious operation seems to support the filioque, the added phrase in the Nicene Creed that the Spirit “proceeds” from the Father and the Son.
In our discussion, we made a distinction between the “source” and the “origin” of the Spirit. When the word “origin” was used in our dialogue, we decided we preferred the word “source” since “origin” implies a starting point, a possible misunderstanding of the Spirit’s eternal, divine nature. This was an example of the limits of language in our description of the three-person God. Even “source” feels inadequate in describing the eternally-existing Spirit.
In our “Table Talk” discussion at the beginning of our time together we discussed the fact that the Father and the Son were easier to relate to than the less imaginable Spirit. That difference may make it more difficult to recall the equal deity of the Spirit. Consider three verses from the New Testament that mention all three persons:
- Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19)
- The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all. (2 Corinthians 13:14)
- Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons. (1 Corinthians 12:4-6)
The fact that ‘Father’, ‘Son’, and ‘Holy Spirit’ are each mentioned first seems to indicate that the order used does not detract from full equality between the three divine Persons.[15]
The Functions of the Spirit
Some members of our group suggested various other Biblical references that describe the functions of the Holy Spirit. However, the goal of our inductive approach is to focus on the passage at hand. The results will not be exhaustive, but the methodology enables us to concentrate on the depth of a particular passage. The numerous other passages will provide a great study at another time.
These eighteen verses from the Gospel according to John provided several specific functions of the Holy Spirit. He is “in” believers (14:17), He teaches and reminds us (14:26), He provides conviction (16:8-11), guidance (16:13). He speaks for the Son from the Father (16:13-15). He glorifies the Son (16:14), especially by disclosing the character of the Son. The functions of the Spirit, like the source of the Spirit, point to His divine nature as a member of the “three-personal God.” [16]
One member of our group asked about the coming of the Spirit, the omnipresent eternal Spirit of God mentioned throughout Scripture. Wasn’t He here already? The response focused on John 14:17b, “He abides with you and will be in you.” Jesus seems to be describing a new way that God the Holy Spirit would be relating to His people. His general presence becomes an intensely intimate presence indwelling believers.
The last verse of the passage in the handout (John 16:15) is one of many references that produced the Nicene summary of the working of the Godhead. “All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He [the Spirit] takes of Mine and will disclose it to you” could be summarized as “from the Father, through the Son and in the Holy Spirit.”[17]
“First Steps…”
The succinct expression in the Apostles’ Creed and the significant expansion in the Nicene Creed both focus on the deity of the Holy Spirit. In the Apostles’ Creed, the statement about the Spirit is parallel to and given equal weight with the statements about the Father and the Son:
- I believe in God the Father…
- I believe in Jesus Christ…
- I believe in the Holy Spirit.
The Trinitarian structure of the Creed was completed in response to attacks on the “irrational” idea of a God in three Persons.
With the understanding of the Holy Spirit not only as a power but a person, we finally come to appreciate the richness of the inner life of God that has been revealed to humans and into which the baptized have been initiated, the life of the triune God.[18]
The unity and harmony of the Creed reflects the self-revelation of God in Scripture: “Knowledge of the Father, knowledge of the Son, and knowledge of the Holy Spirit cannot be separated from one another, for God is known only through the one movement of self-revelation from the Father, through the Son and in the Holy Spirit.”[19] In contrast, our group commented on the fact that some churches tend to focus on the Holy Spirit, or to focus on Jesus, or even to focus on the Father with vague references to “God” in a generic sense. The Creed is a powerful reminder of the nature of the three-personal God.
In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis titles one section “Beyond Personality: Or First Steps in the Doctrine of the Trinity.” Neither Lewis nor our discussion group have any illusions of “understanding” or “defining” the Trinity. We must be willing to take “first steps,” doing the best we can do to grow in our knowledge of the beauty and delightfulness[20] of the three-personal God.
Several members of the group mentioned previous illustrations (probably familiar to many) of the Trinity: the egg (shell, white, yolk); water (ice, liquid, steam); the three leaves of a clover. None of these images communicate the interpersonal relational nature of the Triune God. A few other illustrations may be helpful (as long as we remember they are illustrations, attempts to describe the indescribable).
C. S. Lewis
We must think of the Son always, so to speak, streaming forth from the Father, like light from a lamp, or heat from a fire, or thoughts from a mind. He is the self-expression of the Father— what the Father has to say. And there never was a time when He was not saying it…. In Christianity God is not a static thing— not even a person— but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance. The union between the Father and the Son is such a live concrete thing that this union itself is also a Person. I know this is almost inconceivable, but look at it thus. You know that among human beings, when they get together in a family, or a club, or a trade union, people talk about the ‘spirit’ of that family, or club, or trade union. They talk about its ‘spirit’ because the individual members, when they are together, do really develop particular ways of talking and behaving which they would not have if they were apart. It is as if a sort of communal personality came into existence. Of course, it is not a real person: it is only rather like a person. But that is just one of the differences between God and us. What grows out of the joint life of the Father and Son is a real Person, is in fact the Third of the three Persons who are God.[21]
The “joint life of the Father and Son” is perfectly relational, eternal, and infinite. Those perfections surpass the limitations of families or clubs or trade unions that Lewis mentions. A Person “proceeding” (to use Nicene language) from a perfect relationship is a stimulating illustration.
John Owen
Regarding Ephesians 2:18, John Owen (a seventeenth-century Puritan theologian) says, “Our access to God, in order that we might have communion with Him, is “through” Christ, “by” the Spirit, and “unto” the Father [using three distinct Greek prepositions – mw[22]]. Each Person of the Godhead is here considered as having a distinct and separate part to play in accomplishing the purpose of God’s will revealed in the gospel.”[23] If Owen was right (and I certainly believe he was), the better we see and savor the specific Persons of the Trinity the more fully and deeply and intimately we will know God.
On another verse, Owen illustrates his point. “‘If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.’ (Romans 8:11). In this text, we see all the persons of the Godhead agreeing to raise us from death to life:
- The Father’s authoritative work
- The Son’s mediatory work
- The Spirit’s direct work” [24]
Dorothy L. Sayers
An author of murder mysteries, a translator of Dante’s Divine Comedy, a friend of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, Sayers wrote a book describing the parallels between the three-personal Creator and human artists:
Every work of creation is threefold, and earthly trinity to match the heavenly.
- There is the Creative Idea … beholding the whole work complete at once…and this is the image of the Father.
- There is the Creative Energy, begotten of that idea, working in time, … being incarnate in the bonds of matter, and this is the image of the Word.
- There is the Creative Power, the meaning of the work and its response in the lively soul, and this is the image of the indwelling Spirit.
And these three are one, each equally in itself the whole work, whereof none can exist without the other: and this is the image of the Trinity.[25]
The goal of increasingly seeing our communion with God in terms of the Trinity is not to subdivide neat categories or limit how we relate to God. That would directly contradict the idea of the Trinity’s perfect relationality and their dance described by Lewis. Rather, the goal is to help us to think more clearly, and especially more Biblically, in order to make our communion more specific and in the process become deeper and sweeter. Our fellowship and interaction with each member of the Trinity should enhance our communion with the whole Godhead. Eugene Peterson uses the image of a square dance,[26] with all the participants moving together in different patterns. Our goal, and our eternal destiny, is to join the Dance with the three-personal God.
John Owen described our present efforts to join the Dance, now and eternally: “May He give you such a taste of His sweetness and excellence in this communion as to be stirred up to a greater longing for that eternal enjoyment of Him in eternal glory.”[27]
[1] Michael F. Bird, What Christians Ought to Believe (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2016), 25; Kindle Edition location 355, emphasis added.
[2] J. Gresham Machen, What is Faith? (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1991, orig. 1925), p. 34; Quoted by John Piper, “Communing with God in the Things for Which We Contend” in Contending For Our All (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2006), 134. The audio and text of the sermon are available at
http://www.desiringgod.org/messages/j-gresham-machens-response-to-modernism , accessed March 13, 2017.
[3] Michael F. Bird, What Christians Ought to Believe (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2016), 25; Kindle Edition location 355.
[4] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why it Matters (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 216; Kindle Edition location 3118.
[5] Michael F. Bird, What Christians Ought to Believe (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2016), 25; Kindle Edition location 239.
[6] Michael F. Bird, What Christians Ought to Believe (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2016), 25; Kindle Edition location 360.
Luke Timothy Johnson, The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why it Matters (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 230; Kindle Edition location 3311.
[7] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why it Matters (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 231; Kindle Edition location 3327.
[8] “Perhaps John wisely, and under the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit, chose to describe the Father and the Son first before adding even more complications to his explanation.” 1 John 2:15 -25 October 9, 2016 Discussion
[9] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why it Matters (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 217; Kindle Edition location 3128.
[10] John P. Meier, Matthew, NTM 3 (Wilmington, DE: Liturgical Press, 1980), 371– 72; quoted in Michael F. Bird, What Christians Ought to Believe (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2016), 58; Kindle Edition location 900.
[11] Thomas F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith: Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church (London: T&T Clark Cornerstones, 2016), Kindle Edition, location 4694.
[12] Michael F. Bird, What Christians Ought to Believe (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2016), 59; Kindle Edition location 901.
[13] A phrase used repeatedly to describe the unique nature of the Triune God in C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 160; Kindle Edition location 2009.
[14] Thomas F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith: Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church (London: T&T Clark Cornerstones, 2016), Kindle Edition, location 4861.
[15] Thomas F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith: Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church (London: T&T Clark Cornerstones, 2016), Kindle Edition, location 4714.
[16] A phrase used repeatedly to describe the unique nature of the Triune God in C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 160; Kindle Edition location 2009.
[17] Thomas F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith: Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church (London: T&T Clark Cornerstones, 2016), Kindle Edition, location 4816.
[18] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why it Matters (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 216; Kindle Edition location 3111.
[19] Thomas F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith: Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church (London: T&T Clark Cornerstones, 2016), Kindle Edition, location 4816.
[20] Psalm 27:4.
[21] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 173-174; Kindle Edition location 2166-2175.
[22] ὅτι δι’ αὐτοῦ ἔχομεν τὴν προσαγωγὴν οἱ ἀμφότεροι ἐν ἑνὶ πνεύματι πρὸς τὸν πατέρα.
[23] John Owen, Communion With God, ed. R. J. K. Law (Carlisle, Pennsylvania: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1991), 5.
[24] John Owen, Communion With God, ed. R. J. K. Law (Carlisle, Pennsylvania: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1991), 11.
[25] Dorothy L. Sayers, The Mind of the Maker (New York: HarperOne, 1987), 37-38.
[26] Sharon Tam, The Trinitarian Dance: How the Triune God Develops Transformational Leaders (Eugene, Oregon: WIPF & Stock, 2015), 48.
[27] John Owen, Communion With God, ed. R. J. K. Law (Carlisle, Pennsylvania: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1991), 3.