God's Spirit

When the Bible speaks of the Holy Spirit it uses a variety of metaphors and images to describe the Spirit’s activity in the world.  But even the word “Spirit” is a metaphor.  The term began as an image rather than a concept.  Spirit is the modern translation of the Greek word “pneuma” which names invisible forces that are real without being tangible and, though intangible, are felt without people being able to see or control them.  Pneuma is the word for wind – the fresh breeze of a spring day or the fury of a tornado.  Pneuma is also breath – the breath of life that gives life.  Whatever image we use, spirit implies something dynamic – energy, activity, life.

In the Creed we say with firm conviction that the Spirit is the “Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” By doing so we are saying that the Spirit is also God – in the same way that the Son is God.  But this one phrase, while making a unifying statement about who God is – is the divisive statement between the Latin Church, of which we are members and the Orthodox Churches. 

The original language of the Creed, still maintained in the Orthodox churches says that the Spirit comes from the Father only.  The statement we in the Latin Church recite is that the Spirit comes from both the Father and the Son.  This idea began in the 8th Century in Spain and within a few hundred years had swept through the Western Church.  Pope Benedict the ninth had the phrase added to the Creed and recited in churches in the 11th Century.

Both the Latin and the Orthodox churches are endeavoring to do the impossible – describe God – so neither can be exactly correct.  Both are mankind’s attempt to put a handle on God.  The Latin Church says, “three persons in God” and the Orthodox says, “one God in three persons.”  By doing so we emphasize the unity of the divine nature while the Orthodox look at the individual persons and emphasize how they function in perfect unity. 

However we describe the Spirit, we are saying that it is the Spirit we acknowledge when we say, “with the Father and the Son He is adored and glorified.”