In the original Nicene Creed, after expressing magnificent truths of the Father and the Son, we find this curiously short statement regarding belief in the Holy Spirit:
“And in the Holy Spirit.”
According to Jehovah’s Witnesses, the brevity of this original statement is evidence that the Holy Spirit was not considered a divine person by Christ or the apostles. But is this true?
Far from it.
What I hope to do in this essay is, first, give you a brief glimpse of how this simple Nicene statement on the Holy Spirit developed over time. Then, I want to show you how the creedal statement on the Holy Spirit emerges from biblical truth and properly befits the God we adore.
We Believe in the Holy Spirit
For the Western Church, the development of Nicene teaching on the Holy Spirit progresses in three stages. The first two stages are clearly demarcated by the Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.) and the Council of Constantinople (381 A.D.). The third stage was more extended, rife with controversy, and surrounded the addition of the filiqoue (“and the Son”) clause in the West. Here is a summary of the changes in each stage (new additions italicized):
Stage 1: | Stage 2: Council of Constantinople (381 A.D.) |
Stage 3: Third Council of Toledo[1] (589 A.D.) |
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And in the Holy Spirit |
And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets. |
And 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 worshiped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets. |
1. For the sake of simplicity, I have chosen the Third Council of Toledo as the marker to indicate the emergence of the filioque clause’s formal approval in the West. This council was regional and did not amount to the kind of ecumenical approval that was forged in Nicaea and Constantinople. From this point on, the filioque’s formal acceptance in the churches of the West would continue to increase. Ultimately, of course, the Eastern Orthodox have contended that no ecumenical agreement with the churches of the East was ever achieved. For those interested in a deep dive on this controversy, see Gerald Bray, “The Filioque Clause in History and Theology,” Tyndale Bulletin 34, no. 1 (1983): 91–144.
Given that we are celebrating the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea (i.e., the first version of the creed), our first task will be to answer the question: “Why is this five-worded phrase about the Holy Spirit all that those original bishops could muster?”
Why So Short? The First Nicene Creed
First, keep in mind that this simple statement affirms that the Holy Spirit must be included in our confession. The same “We believe in” (pisteuomen eis), is directed first to the “one God, Father almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,” is then applied equally and without qualification to both the Son (“and in,” kai eis) and the Holy Spirit (“and in,” kai eis):
- We believe (pisteuomen eis) in one God, the Father…
- And in (kai eis) one Lord Jesus Christ…
- And in (kai eis) the Holy Spirit.
The fuller statement from the Council of Constantinople in 381 A.D. lies here in nascent form, placing the Holy Spirit without reservation in the triune framework of the creed.
Second, remember the heretical context. The preeminent concern for the bishops gathered at the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. was Arianism (and related heresies) that attacked the true nature of the Son by denying his deity and declaring him to be a creature. The purpose was not to address errors regarding the Holy Spirit, for these had not yet been fully articulated.
2. Some important primary sources countering these errors, between stages one and two of creedal development, are Athanasius’s Letters to Serapion, Basil of Caesarea’s On the Holy Spirit, and Gregory of Nazianzus’s Oration 31. In many instances, you find strong resonances between their work and the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381 A.D.
Third, it was only after the Council of Nicaea that fresh heresies emerged explicitly denying the deity and personhood of the Holy Spirit.[2] According to Gregory of Nazianzus, when men became “weary in their disputations concerning the Son,” they struggled “with greater heat against the Spirit.”[3] The early church fathers fought valiantly against these heretics, who were called, among other things, the Pneumatomachians or “Spirit-fighters.” The Spirit-fighters, while often affirming the Son’s consubstantiality with the Father, were eager to maintain that the Holy Spirit was a creature, like an angel, or, even less—a mere activity. What we find post-Nicaea, then, alongside a resurgence in Arianism, is a new slate of questions regarding the Holy Spirit. These received an answer in 381 A.D. at the Council of Constantinople.
3. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 31, ii.
The Biblical Foundation of the Longer Creed
So let’s take a look at this expanded version of the original creed in 381, which included the church’s responses at Constantinople to the “Spirit-fighters.” This Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed—which is usually the version that people today refer to when they speak of the Nicene Creed—proclaims four central truths about the Holy Spirit. Each has deep biblical roots, and each is essential for the worship of our Triune God.
1. The Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of Life.
First, it should go without saying that, given the Bible’s own categories, the Lord alone is the “giver of life.” Thus, it is not surprising that the fathers of the creed identified the Spirit as ‘the Lord’ in the same breath that they called him the ‘giver of life.’ But is this biblical? If we attend closely to the storyline of Scripture, will we see the Holy Spirit presented as this “life giver” and therefore the very Lord God himself? Yes!
From the beginning, we see the Holy Spirit participating in the divine work of creation and providence (Gen. 1:1, Ps. 104:30). He also empowered his people for certain tasks requiring great skill (Exod. 31:1–5), might (Judg. 14:6), and prophetic inspiration (Num. 11:25, 2 Sam. 23:2). And it was he, as the confession also declares, who came upon Mary with “the power of the Most High” (Luke 1:35) and created the incarnate life of our Lord Jesus.
But that’s not all. When the Holy Spirit is poured out on God’s people, he gives their cold and dead hearts new spiritual life (Ezek. 36:27, 37:14) by his “washing of regeneration and renewal” (Titus 3:5–6), just as Jesus declared he would: “It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh is no help at all” (John 6:63, emphasis mine). Even the new creation will evidence the Holy Spirit’s powerful life-giving work. When he is poured out at that time, even the parched wilderness will become a fruitful field (Isa. 32:15).
And if even this brief survey of the Holy Spirit’s person and work is not enough to convince you of the fittingness of these names, what if Paul gave them both to us in one fell swoop? This he does in 2 Corinthians 3. Here, Paul introduces to us the glory of the new covenant, inaugurated in Christ, as the life-giving covenant administered by the Holy Spirit, “the Spirit who gives life” (2 Cor. 3:6, emphasis mine). Paul then calls the Holy Spirit the Lord (2 Cor. 3:16–18), the God of Mt. Sinai (Exodus 34), evoking the tetragrammaton of Exodus 3:14.[4] With such power, holiness, and life-giving authority, who else could the Spirit be but the one Lord himself?
4. Two things are critical to see here regarding the Holy Spirit’s Lordship, aside from its connection to God’s covenant name, namely (1) Paul calls this Lord “the Spirit,” not just “spirit” (without the article) (ho de kurios to pneuma estin) and (2) Paul links the new covenant’s sanctifying work to the Lord, the Holy Spirit. This is what we should expect, as sanctification is appropriated to the Holy Spirit by the biblical authors (1 Pet. 1:2). To be transformed from one degree of glory to another is the work of the Holy Spirit, which Paul says “comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
2. The Holy Spirit Proceeds from the Father and the Son.
Now, let’s focus on the next clause: that the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Life-giver, proceeds from the Father and the Son. This statement is grounded in a few central truths regarding the nature of our God.
First, the three persons (hypostases) of the Trinity are one in essence/nature (ousia). Therefore, each person equally and fully possesses the glorious attributes of the divine nature (e.g., omniscience, omnipresence, simplicity, goodness, holiness, love, etc.), as well as one mind, will, and power (which are capacities of rational natures, not of persons).
5. Among other things, divine simplicity means that God is “not composed of parts.” So, in this context, the three divine persons are not pieces or parts of the Trinity. Instead, each person fully subsists in (that is, exists in and fully possesses) the one undivided divine nature in a particular way.
Second, the three persons of the Trinity are distinguished by their “personal properties” or “modes of subsistence.” These terms help us answer the question (bear with me here): If the three persons subsist in the one, simple[5] divine essence, what uniquely distinguishes the Father as the Father (and not the Son or the Spirit), the Son as the Son (and not the Father or the Spirit), and the Holy Spirit as the Holy Spirit (and not the Father or the Son)? Traditionally, classical Trinitarian theology has affirmed that:
6. “Spiration” can be defined as “breathing out,” which theologians have found to be a fitting judgment considering the Holy Spirit’s name as Spirit, as well as the biblical testimony regarding the Christ’s breathing the Spirit on his disciples (John 20:22). Generally, we can also recognize “spiration” as “the act by which the Father (and the Son if the filioque is affirmed) is the eternal source of the Holy Spirit, who proceeds without division, change, or imperfection.” D. Glenn Butner Jr., Trinitarian Dogmatics: Exploring the Grammar of the Christian Doctrine of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2022), 229. Strictly speaking, since spiration is common between the Father and the Son, it is not a distinguishing property.
- The Father is distinguished from the Son and the Spirit by paternity (i.e., fatherhood). He is unbegotten, yet he eternally begets the Son, and, with the Son, spirates the Holy Spirit.[6]
- The Son is distinguished from the Father and the Spirit by filiation (i.e., sonship). He is begotten (by eternal generation) from the Father and, with the Father, spirates the Holy Spirit.
- The Holy Spirit is distinguished from the Father and the Son by procession. He is neither unbegotten nor begotten but proceeds from the Father and the Son, who spirate Him.
Each of these personal properties indicates the way, or “mode” that each of the three persons eternally subsists in the one divine ousia. While other articles this month will demonstrate the biblical warrant and fittingness of Father and Son’s personal properties, my mission here is to simply give a sense of how the Holy Spirit’s personal property emerges from Scripture. This leads me to my next point.
7. It is worth pointing out that in John 15:26, Jesus says that the Spirit of truth proceeds from the Father. He does not include the Son. But this is no cause for concern, as Francis Turretin notes: “Although the Spirit may be said to proceed from the Father (Jn. 15:26), it is not denied of the Son. Indeed it is implied because the mission of the Spirit is ascribed to him and whatever the Father has, the Son is said to have equally (Jn. 16:15).” Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., trans. George Musgrave Giger (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992), 309–310 (I, Third Topic, Q.XXXI, V). In other words, in the same verse that Jesus says the Spirit proceeds from the Father, he affirms that he too (with the Father) sends the Spirit. As I show briefly in the next paragraph, this suggests that the Holy Spirit also proceeds from the Son. For a more rigorous account, I highly recommend Anselm of Canterbury’s defense of the filioque clause in his work On the Procession of the Holy Spirit.
Third, the idea that the Holy Spirit “proceeds” is a concept that originates, not from idle speculation, but from Jesus himself in John 15:26, “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.”[7] Gregory of Nazianzus enjoyed pointing this out to the Spirit-fighters, stating the rather obvious: Jesus was “a better Theologian than you.”[8] Indeed. It sure is helpful when Jesus says it plainly, isn’t it?
Our Savior instructs us even further regarding the nature of the Spirit’s procession, comparing it to his own personal property and relation to the Father. For just as the Son does nothing of himself but does only what he sees and hears the Father doing (John 5:19, 30), so too the Holy Spirit does not speak of himself, but only declares that which he hears from the Son (John 16:13–15). And just as the sending of the Son into the world by the Father alone exhibits the Son’s personal property (filiation), the sending of the Holy Spirit by the Father and the Son exhibits the Spirit’s personal, incommunicable property of procession, as Jesus called it.
As you can see, the language of Scripture leads us to affirm the personal properties of triune persons in similar ways. Each is irreducibly grounded in biblical teaching. No doubt, much more could be said about the Holy Spirit’s personal property of procession. But for now, as you consider the creedal formula—we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son[9]—remember that the Holy Spirit is the third, distinct person of the Trinity, sharing fully in the one divine essence according to his distinct personal property, or mode of subsistence.
8. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 31, viii.
3. The Holy Spirit Should Be Worshiped and Glorified.
9. For a fuller treatment on why Western theologians correctly insist that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son rather than the Father only, see Keith Goad’s article with Christ Over All, to be published later this month.
The creed’s third affirmation regarding the Spirit is arguably its most important implication—the Holy Spirit should be worshiped and glorified. In the words of the early church father Basil, “Should we not exalt him who is divine in nature, unbounded in greatness, powerful in his energies, and good in his deeds? Should we not glorify him?”[10] Those who diminish the ontological status of the Holy Spirit by calling him a creature or impersonal force seek to undermine the worship and glory he is due. Today, both the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses are contemporary Spirit-fighters. The former calls the Holy Spirit a divine “personage,” rejecting his omnipresence and eternality. The latter, with even greater boldness, denies the Spirit’s existence altogether, calling the “holy spirit” God’s “power in action, his active force.” Beware of those fighting the Spirit. For they fight not only against him, but against the triune God himself, and they seek to slay true worship.
10. Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, trans. Stephen Hildebrand (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladmir’s Seminary Press, 2011), 93.
4. The Holy Spirit Spoke by the Prophets.
11. See John Owen, The Works of John Owen, vol. 3, Pneumatologia: Or, A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit, ed. William H. Goold (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2000), 29.
Finally, we gladly affirm with Peter that “no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:21). This affirmation warns us against many who have and will come “under the pretense of the name and work of the Spirit” to deceive and abuse the members of Christ’s church.[11]
We gladly affirm that the Holy Spirit has spoken. And what he said was an all-sufficient word through the apostles and prophets. For God “spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Heb. 1:1–2). And in these last days, because the Spirit searches the depths of God (1 Cor. 2:10–13), he has taken what is the Son’s and declared it to us (John 16:14–15). It is by him that the Scriptures were written. And it is by him that the eyes of our hearts are enlightened (Eph. 1:18), that we may have spiritual discernment (1 Cor. 2:14) and come to behold the glory of our triune God and the exceedingly precious gift of the gospel.
Conclusion
In summary, we have seen how the creedal statement on the Holy Spirit matured in light of heretical challenges and how its truths are derived chiefly from Scripture. Let us join together then to confidently give our triune God the glory he is due and be prepared to defend the deity and personhood of the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
