BY THE time we reach the clause about the Holy Spirit in the Apostles’ Creed, we are hurtling towards the end (of the creed, though not of this series: following the liturgical calendar means taking clauses out of order). We may not be giving each line the attention it deserves. But what if we remain with those few words — “I believe in the Holy Spirit” — and look to find in them an announcement of the Christian gospel? Will we find it? We will, and more than could be packed into this column.
For one thing, this clause about the Holy Spirit is important for thinking about the good news, because, with it, the creed has completed its profession of God as Trinity. With these words, the creed has now named Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The Christian message — our Christian gospel — is good news about God as Trinity. The threefold life of God, replete in love and relation, is everything: it is where the Christian proclamation springs from; and the shape of how it unfolds; and the destination to which we are being drawn. The good news is not about forgiveness handed down from some distant generic deity. It is reconciliation with the triune God. It is the drama of being drawn into that love and relation: into the relation of the Son to the Father; into that love which is the Holy Spirit. Only with the Trinity can we really see the gospel for what it is: an invitation to be participants in the divine nature (2 Peter 1.4); an invitation to be adopted as sons and daughters through the Son; an invitation to share in the fellowship that is the Trinity, through the Holy Spirit.
THAT is all very well, you might say, but do not move too quickly on to Trinity Sunday before you have considered Pentecost. Fair enough. Then let us see that the sending of the Holy Spirit reiterates the gospel message we first hear with the incarnation, at Christmas: that “God is with us”. Christ’s departure at the Ascension, he tells us, opens up the way for the Holy Spirit to be sent (John 16.7; Acts 2.17-18). The gospel of Pentecost is therefore the proclamation of Christmas — “God is with us” — although in a different key.
In its way, this presence of the Holy Spirit is yet more extensive than the incarnation, since the Spirit is poured upon “all flesh” (Joel 2.28–29; Acts 2.33). In another way, for us, it is even more intimate, since the Spirit enters each person who receives him, whereas the man Jesus speaks to us externally, as one person speaks to another. There is, then, emphatically, a proclamation of the gospel in this clause of the creed, extending and completing the message of God’s presence and solidarity.
THE Apostles’ Creed is generally succinct. It is certainly succinct here, with six words in English: “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” Let us therefore turn for a moment to the Nicene Creed for some extra material. There, we read that the Holy Spirit is “the Lord and Giver of Life”. In that, too, we hear the gospel, since life lies at the heart of the Christian announcement: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10.10).
There is so much in this idea of the Spirit as “Giver of Life”. Although it takes us beyond all that we could imagine, all that is ours by nature, it does not despise nature, or run it down. Far from it: the gospel opens our eyes to creation as God’s gift, and to its goodness. The Spirit is the origin of life in nature, and the origin of the life of grace; he creates; he saves; he elevates us to a dignity beyond that of any unfallen state.
FOR those used to hearing sermons, the more familiar point might be that the Spirit, as “Giver of Life”, offers to those who turn to him a life beyond any we could imagine: a participation in God’s own life — abundant life, eternal life. But there is another angle to the good news here: a proclamation about the goodness of what we already experience, but may not understand; what lies around us, but might not appreciate. Biological life, social life: these, too, are the Spirit’s work and gift.
There seems to me something important here about the gospel. It both promises a life beyond nature and yet also celebrates the life and nature given in creation in new and forceful ways. It takes us beyond God’s gift in creation; it also calls us to acknowledge that gift, and to live richly within it. The gospel of the Spirit as Giver of Life meets the nihilism of our time — often now expressed as “post-human”, or “anti-human” — on two fronts at once. It opens up upon a destiny beyond what the created order could offer, with new heavens and a new earth, while also insisting in new and dazzling ways on the value and dignity of creation, and especially of human life. Hence, so many in the Anglican social tradition have said that it follows from Christian theology to be active in the provision of good drains.
FINALLY, at least for this brief survey of the gospel in the creed’s clause about the Holy Spirit, we should recognise that the Spirit is named as “Holy”. In this we hear the gospel’s call to repentance, since the Spirit is holy, but we are not. That call is not only God’s challenge and warning, but also his gift, since God wishes to work true holiness in us, conforming us to his Triune holiness (Leviticus 11.44-45; Matthew 5.48; Romans 8.29; 2 Thessalonians 2.13 — and notice the Trinitarian pattern in 1 Peter 1.2).
To see here another aspect of the gospel in all of the creed is also to be shown the gospel in all of Christian ethics. If holiness is God’s gift — a participation in his life, through the Spirit who is the Giver of Life — then ethics is not primarily about rules (and certainly not rules to be obeyed for the sake of obeying rules) but an invitation to be imitators of God, caught up in his fellowship, sharing in “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14.17).
Perhaps, then, seeing the creed in a new light, as a commentary on the gospel, might lead us to see Christian ethics — with all its rigours — in a new light as well. There is also good news in all of our ethics. Consider Paul’s list of the fruit of the Spirit, where there is both the call to repentance (they stand in stark contrast, he writes, to the “works of the flesh”), and such a promise: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5.22-23). This, too, is the gospel.
The Revd Dr Andrew Davison is Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford, and a Canon Residentiary of Christ Church.
In the Old Testament:
“When you send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the ground.” (Psalm 104.30)
IT IS easy to forget the Holy Spirit’s work in creation (Genesis 1.2). One of the two great Western medieval hymns to the Holy Spirit offers a corrective, addressing the “Creator Spirit”. Our verse from a psalm connects the Spirit in creation to the work of restoration or recreation. When biblical authors are searching for language that is powerful to express what God offers by way of redemption, it seems that often only repurposing the language of creation or birth will do (John 3.3; 2 Corinthians 5.17).
Augustine provocatively took this further, writing that redemption may even exceed creation: that it may be a greater work to make the ungodly righteous than to create righteous beings in the first place (here thinking about the hosts of heaven). The conjunction in this psalm reminds us that the Creator Spirit does something even more remarkable than abolishing the sinful creature and replacing it with another: the Spirit renews the old, and recreates the broken.
In the New Testament:
“Now the Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3.17).
THIS verse turns up as an interjection within Paul’s discussion of how a Christian should relate to the law. Although this verse emphasises freedom, the suggestion is not that the Holy Spirit dispenses with the law, as if that meant setting aside what the law teaches us about right and wrong, or the character of God. Instead, the Spirit helps us to live according to the character of God out of love, rather than fear. It internalises the law for us, and helps us to delight in holiness. That is what it means here for the Spirit to bring freedom.
Paul underlines that in the next verse. This freedom is rooted in the transformation of who we are: “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness.” This reminds us that the gospel promises a truly extraordinary newness of life: making us holy through the holiness of Christ, and free by the freedom of his Spirit.
Quotations
“Knowledge of the divine persons was necessary for us . . . chiefly, that we may think rightly about the salvation of the human race, accomplished by the Incarnate Son, and by the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 32, a. 1, reply to the objection 3.
“The Spirit flew away from us because of sin, but the one who knew no sin became one of us so that the Spirit might become accustomed to remain in us. . . Therefore, Christ receives the Spirit through himself for us, and he restores to our nature the original good.” Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, Book II, ch. 1, on John 1.32-33.
“Through the Holy Spirit comes the restoration to paradise, the ascent to the kingdom of heaven, the return to adopted sonship, the freedom to call God our Father and to become a companion of the grace of Christ, to be called a child of light, to participate in eternal glory, and generally, to have all fullness of blessing in this age and the age to come. We see as in a mirror the grace, as already present, of the goods laid up in store for us in promises, and we enjoy these goods through faith.” Basil, On the Holy Spirit, ch.15.36.
“For as God alone can properly bear witness to his own words, so these words will not obtain full credit in the hearts of men, until they are sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit.” John Calvin, Institutes, I.7.4, I.72.
“The external word is of no avail by itself, unless animated by the power of the Spirit.” John Calvin, Commentary on the First Twenty Chapters of Ezekiel, on Ezek. 2.1-2.
“The Father justifies effectively; the Son, meritoriously; the Holy Spirit, applicationally.” Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, IV, 205.