February 18th, 2024
The Nicene Creed has three paragraphs in which we confess our faith in the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We confess that “we believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ” and we confess that “we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord.”
Lord (Kurios in Greek) refers to the divine name, Yahweh. Israel is summoned in Deuteronomy 6:4-5: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” Israel’s confession of faith in Yahweh is trinitarian. The one LORD, Yahweh, is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
In the late fourth century, when many Christians questioned whether the Holy Spirit is God, Gregory of Nazianzus preached a sermon defending the divinity of the Spirit. Some argued the divinity of the Spirit is not in the Bible. Gregory responded: “But now you shall have a swarm of proof-texts, from which the Godhead of the Holy Spirit can be proved thoroughly scriptural” (Oration 31.29).
Among the swarm of scriptural texts to which Gregory alludes are several texts from 1 and 2 Corinthians:
For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. (1 Cor 2:10-11)
Only I know my own thoughts. Only you know your own thoughts. Only God knows his own thoughts. If the Spirit of God knows the thoughts of God, he must be God.
But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Cor 6:11)
Only God, who is holy, can sanctify. He is the source and subject of sanctification, but never the object. He sanctifies; his creatures are sanctified. If we are sanctified by the Holy Spirit, he must be God.
But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Cor 3:16-18)
Here Paul explicitly writes that the Holy Spirit is the Lord. He also assumes that the Lord is triune. We turn to the Lord (the Father) in repentance, we behold the glory of the Lord (the Son), and we are transformed from one degree of glory to another by the Lord who is the Spirit.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. (2 Cor 13:14)
Paul’s benediction is thoroughly trinitarian. We know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God the Father by our fellowship with the Spirit. To be in communion with the Spirit is to be in communion with God, because the Spirit is God.