"We Believe in the Holy Spirit"

The Nicene Creed has three paragraphs in which we confess our faith in the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The original creed drafted at the Council of Nicaea in 325 only had one line on the Holy Spirit, simply confessing: “We believe in the Holy Spirit.” In the decade following the council of Nicaea, the church was confronted with various teachers who denied the divinity of the Spirit, just as the Arians denied the divinity of the Son. 

Athanasius of Alexandria (ca.296/98 – 373) defended the divinity of the Holy Spirit from Scripture, just as he had defended the divinity of the Son from Scripture:

We will need to examine, one by one, each passage in the Divine Scriptures that speaks about the Holy Spirit. Like good bankers, we need to judge whether the Spirit has anything that is proper to creatures or whether he is proper to God. In this manner we will be able to determine whether to call him a creature or something other than a creature and proper to and one of the divinity of the Trinity. (Ep. Serap. I.21.4).

Athanasius goes on to demonstrate from Scripture that the Holy Spirit is God. 

Basil of Caesarea (330 – 379) and Gregory of Nazianzus (329 – 390) also defended the divinity of the Holy Spirit, drawing out the implications of a right doctrine of the Holy Spirit for a right doctrine of God, creation, salvation, scripture, the Christian life, the church, and worship. For example, Basil warns us:

If someone rejects the Spirit, his faith in the Father and the Son is made useless; it is impossible to believe in the Father and the Son without the presence of the Spirit. He who rejects the Spirit rejects the Son, and he who rejects the Son rejects the Father. “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3), and “no one has ever seen God; the only begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has made him known” (John 1:18). Such a person has no part in true worship. It is impossible to worship the Son except in the Holy Spirit; it is impossible to call upon the Father except in the Spirit of adoption. (On the Holy Spirit 11.27)

When the council of Constantinople met in 381, one of the issues they addressed was the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. They recognized that the church cannot simply confess that we believe in the Holy Spirit, so they elaborated the creed’s third paragraph:

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father [and the Son]. With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets.

Over the next few weeks we will consider the meaning and significance of each phrase concerning the Holy Spirit. He is the Lord, Yahweh, I AM. He is the Giver of Life, both in creation and redemption. He proceeds from the Father [and the Son]. We need to consider why Eastern and Western Christians disagree on this point. He is worshipped and glorified with the Father and the Son. Our worship must be robustly trinitarian. He has spoken through the prophets. The Scriptures are Spirit-inspired and Spirit-illuminated, Spirit-given and Spirit-received.