Pneumatology: The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit Explained

Introduction: The Holy Spirit and the Nature of the Issue

If the Old Testament can be called the Age of the Father, and the Gospels the Age of the Son, the time since Pentecost can be referred to as the Age of the Holy Spirit — for it is at Pentecost that the Paraclete comes to the Apostles, confirms them in the Faith, and gives them the courage to set about their mission of evangelizing the world. The Holy Spirit is thus important to understand because time is shaped so thoroughly by this Third Person of the Holy Trinity. As a divine person in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is at work from the beginning of time even to now. Yet in man's time, recognition that the Father sent the Holy Spirit into the world through the Son — as part of the divine plan of man's redemption and attainment of Heaven — has not always been accepted. In fact, the nature of the Trinity has been disputed throughout history, and even the nature of Jesus Christ has been disputed (was He God and Man, only Man, only God, or neither?). This dispute has led to confusion in modern times about the nature of man's relationship to God and particularly to the Holy Spirit.

Before addressing the various disputes that have arisen, it is helpful to first understand that the Holy Spirit and the Triune God constitute a mystery that man is asked to accept on faith. St. Paul states clearly in 1 Corinthians 2:5 that the Spirit of God is something beyond the ken of man — it is not something that can be understood through direct application of reason because it is divine and above man's understanding: "My message and my preaching were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith would not rest on men's wisdom but on God's power." This quote from St. Paul shows that the Spirit's power and God's power are the same. This admonition is also an indication that the wisdom of God is higher than the wisdom of man. It does not mean, however, that God's wisdom and its expression through the Holy Spirit cannot be seen and accepted by man. On the contrary, the work of the Holy Spirit is evident from the beginning of creation to now. The problem is that man often wants to understand more than he is capable of, and so he attempts to explain away the mysteries of God and His Triune nature as revealed through Scripture and the work of the Christian church.

Nonetheless, the fact that God's wisdom is above man's has not prevented man from attempting to understand the things of God. St. Augustine, for instance, put his own powers of reason to the subject of the Trinity. Coffey describes the effort this way:

"In Trinitarian theology, St. Augustine is renowned for his doctrine of the filioque: the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as from a single principle. This doctrine gave to Western Trinitarian thought and indeed to Western theology in general a distinctive stamp, which despite the upheavals of its history has remained with it ever since" (193).

Indeed, St. Augustine's words on the matter are sufficient to settle all arguments, as Scripture is quite clear on the procession of the Holy Spirit. St. Augustine writes:

"Nor can we say that the Holy Spirit does not proceed also from the Son, for it is not without reason that the same Spirit is said to be Spirit of both the Father and the Son. Nor do I see what else he intended to signify when he breathed in the face of the disciples and said, 'Receive the Holy Spirit.' For that bodily breathing, proceeding from the body with the sensation of bodily touching, was not the substance of the Holy Spirit but a manifestation through a fitting sign that the Holy Spirit proceeds not only from the Father but also from the Son." (De Trinitate 4, 20 (29) (PL 42, 908))

Here one can see clearly that the filioque argument for the procession of the Holy Spirit is squarely rooted in Scripture. But what does it say of the role of the Holy Spirit in general? What is one to think of the Holy Spirit in terms of God's relationship to man? What part does the Holy Spirit play in the creation, redemption, and regeneration of man?

One possible answer to these questions might also come from St. Augustine, for at the same time that he puts forward the filioque argument, St. Augustine also puts forward the mutual-love theory, which has received acceptance particularly among the Orthodox churches. As Coffey points out, St. Augustine identifies the Holy Spirit as "the 'communion' that exists between" the Father and the Son (196). This idea is made apparent in these words of St. Augustine:

"The Holy Spirit … is properly called Holy Spirit relatively, since He is referred to both the Father and the Son, because He is the Spirit of both the Father and the Son. But the relation is not itself apparent in that name, but it is apparent when He is called the gift of God, for He is the gift of the Father and of the Son, because 'He proceeds from the Father,' as the Lord says … Therefore the Holy Spirit is a certain unutterable communion of the Father and the Son." (De Trinitate 5, 11 (12) (PL 42, 919))

While this explanation helps to clarify the Holy Spirit's relation to man, it leaves room for exploring the meaning of the Holy Spirit's role within the Trinity. As Coffey points out, St. Augustine's argument "still only tells us about the Spirit's relation to us and not about His relation to the other two persons in the immanent Trinity" (197). It is the aim of this paper to provide a deeper explanation of the Holy Spirit so as to facilitate the development of one's understanding.

This paper explains how the Holy Spirit is at work from the beginning in the act of creation, and how the Holy Spirit also proceeds from the Father through the Son, Who prepared the Apostles for the coming of the Paraclete that they might be filled with the Holy Spirit and enabled to set about their mission of facilitating man's regeneration and spreading belief in the Resurrection. To do so, it focuses also on the role of the Holy Spirit in the Redemption and in the renewal of man. This tri-fold role of the Holy Spirit in the story of man aligns well with the tri-fold nature of God and reflects the tri-fold nature of the mysteries of the rosary as fixed by Pope St. Pius V in 1563 (Duffner).

This study proceeds by first examining the Holy Spirit within the context of the Holy Trinity. The Creation, the Redemption, and the Evangelization of the world are all examined from the standpoint of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Chapter 1 focuses on the Creation. Chapter 2 focuses on the Redemption and the role of the Holy Spirit there. Chapter 3 focuses on the role of the Holy Spirit in regeneration and evangelization. Chapter 4 discusses what this can mean for people today who seek to live and follow in the footsteps of Christ.

"Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the one to come." (Matt. 12:32)

Why does God insist that speech against the Holy Spirit is the unpardonable sin? The reason lies in the nature of the Holy Spirit, for it is the very life and love of God — the very essence of His being. Christ received the rebukes and buffets of the world willingly, to pay for man's sins. He understood that the scorn He received was because of man's pride and fallen human nature. To err in attacking Him through unbelief or doubt — like the doubt Thomas showed before seeing the Resurrected Christ, or the denial Peter made following His arrest — is not an unpardonable sin: Christ could forgive it as a weakness of the will. But to resist the Holy Spirit is to resist the very grace necessary for reunion with God. It is to close all one's windows and doors to any discourse or possibility of discourse with God. It is to reject life itself. This Life is the spiritual foundation of the world, of all creation. That is why Christ views rejection of the Spirit as unpardonable: he who rejects the Spirit rejects God totally, and who rejects God also rejects any opportunity to have peace with Him in eternity. It is unpardonable because the sinner refuses the possibility of pardon. The person who rejects the Spirit becomes like Judas, hanging himself.

Chapter 1: The Holy Spirit in Creation

To truly understand the gravity of Christ's admonition, it is helpful to understand the Spirit as the foundation of life — and to that end, it is helpful to understand creation from the beginning. One must look at the beginning to see one's end.

The creation of the world saw the Holy Spirit at work: but regeneration (John 3:5–8) and resurrection (Romans 8:11) also see the same Holy Spirit at work. After the creation, when the Holy Spirit breathed life into the world, the Fall of Man occurred, which corrupted creation and brought about a need for more divine intervention to correct the mistake that man had made in failing to fulfill the will of God in the Garden of Paradise (Gen. 1:2; Psa. 104:30).

Yet the Holy Spirit was always recognized by those willing to acknowledge the role of God in the shaping of all things. As Job 33:4 states, "The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life." The Spirit and the breath of God are spoken of in the same sentence, both having a part in the creation and life-giving process. The Spirit is identified as maker, and the breath of God as life-giver. Regardless of how one chooses to interpret these words, the fact is clear: the wise Job, who never lost faith in God, sees the work of the Spirit in his creation quite clearly. This Spirit is there from the beginning: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters" (Gen. 1:1–2).

Is it necessary to have a complete understanding of how the Spirit operates? Given St. Paul's admonition that God's wisdom is beyond that of man, it is fitting to accept these mysteries as mysteries and to be content with only an outline or a kind of silhouette of the picture. God gives man sufficient understanding of this mystery — enough to see the picture without knowing necessarily how it all works. The Holy Spirit is involved in the creation of the world. This is plain from Scripture. This knowledge can help one understand more clearly that the Holy Spirit is present in the work of God.

Horton laments the fact that people often see the Holy Spirit as typecast or as making "cameo appearances" as though He were but a bit player — a third wheel brought on only to break up the monotony of events (24). The point Horton makes is that the Holy Spirit is an active participant in the life of every man who is of God. Romans 8:9 makes clear that those who do not believe in Christ do not have the Spirit within them — but every man has been created as a Temple of the Holy Spirit, meaning he has been built to possess the indwelling Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). This is an astonishing thing to consider — but it is evident that this was the case from the beginning. The Holy Spirit was there, involved in the creation of the world. And the Holy Spirit filled Adam and Eve, which allowed them to enjoy their union with God in the Garden of Eden.

Unfortunately, Adam and Eve chose to work with a malevolent spirit — Satan — by disobeying God's commandment regarding the Tree of Knowledge. This defection from God to join the ranks of the fallen angel and his legion is what is known as the Fall. At this moment, Adam and Eve broke with God and the Holy Spirit departed from them. Whereas they were once clothed in innocence and love, the departure of the Spirit from their souls left them ashamed, empty, destitute, aware of their separation from God, and suddenly no longer in perfect control of themselves or of the gifts God gave them. Their break from God was a break with His Spirit. The communion they had enjoyed was now gone. The Fall led to punishment: God barred Adam and Eve from Paradise, closed the gates of Heaven, and ensured them that they would toil, labor, suffer, and die for their transgression. Yet He also promised that there would come one who would crush the head of the serpent: "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel" (Gen. 3:15). In this promise one sees the Holy Spirit again at work, according to St. Augustine's mutual-love theory: the Spirit is there in that promise of a Redeemer, in that foretelling of the love between the Father and the Son that is to be expressed in the Redemption.

The children of Adam and Eve bore children of their own and the world's population increased — but the children of man continued to displease God, Who wanted love in return for his sustaining of all life. When the sins of man mounted to such a point that God, in justice, could no longer tolerate the behavior, He sent the Flood and directed Noah to preserve two of all species, that life might continue once the waters subsided. God then made a covenant with Noah, promising never to destroy the Earth through flood again.

By assisting in the restoration of the Earth, God showed His faithfulness to those who, like Noah, were faithful to Him. He did not withhold the Spirit from the world, but directed the world to ready itself that it might receive the Spirit properly. The time would come when the Paraclete would come directly to men to empower them to preach the Word of God to the world, that men might be made perfect in Christ, the Redeemer. Thus, to all nations and in all languages, the Word of God has been revealed, and the Holy Spirit has facilitated that process of evangelization.

It is not possible to understand the Holy Spirit without understanding the Trinity; thus, it is necessary to understand the Father and the Son and their presence from the beginning as well. It is not difficult to see the Father at work in Genesis — He is ever-present, openly engaged in discourse with Adam. But where is the Son? Where is the Word? For that matter, where is the Holy Spirit?

God actually reveals His nature during the course of creation. At the very beginning of time, the God of the Universe revealed His unique characteristics when He said, "Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness" (Gen. 1:26). Why did God use the plural when talking about Himself — "Let Us" and "our" rather than "me" and "my"? Is God referring to multiple gods? Not at all. To understand what God is saying here, one must have a sense of the concept of the Trinity. Although it is not until the New Testament that the Godhead's triune nature is fully revealed, the reality of God's nature is nonetheless reflected throughout the Old Testament. In the beginning, God was speaking not only to what the New Testament would later reveal concerning the other Persons of the Trinity, but to what the entire host of heaven could already plainly see — that God had a Triune Nature: He was one God with three distinct divine Persons. How this can be is a mystery that can never be fully understood by man's reason in his fallen state — but the evidence of this Triune nature is there to be accepted.

The doctrine of the Trinity holds that God consists of three distinct Persons within one Being: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit — one God with three different expressions or Persons of His divine nature. Similarly, a man is composed of a body, a soul, and a spirit. Those are three expressions of the same individual being. Man is created in God's image (Gen. 1:27) as a triune being. 1 Thessalonians 5:23 states, "Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." Scripture fully accounts for man's triune nature in this way.

The Holy Spirit is revealed by Isaiah as well. Moreover, Isaiah not only describes the nature of the Holy Spirit but also how the Spirit is united to the Lord:

"Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit. And the Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord … They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." (Isaiah 11:1–9)

Isaiah describes the promise of God's faithfulness to those who are faithful to Him. The Holy Spirit is characterized as bearing gifts: wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge, and fear of the Lord. These gifts of the Holy Spirit have long been recognized as essential to faith by patristic authors, such as Augustine (Bright). But Isaiah does more than list the gifts of the Spirit. He also describes how those gifts will spread across the Earth and what their effect will be: the Holy Spirit brings peace, understanding, an end to enmity, and knowledge of God. When Christ said, "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you" (John 14:27), He was foreshadowing the coming of the Paraclete and the breath He would breathe on the Apostles following His Resurrection: "The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have told you" (John 14:26). Isaiah links holiness with knowledge, and as knowledge is a gift of the Spirit, holiness is associated with openness to the Spirit.

Thus, there is a clear link between the creation of the world — in which the Holy Spirit had a direct part — and the Redemption of the world, brought about by Christ. Christ then departed from the world and the Father sent the Holy Spirit to renew the world and give men the ability to follow Christ and to become Christians: "The spirit giveth life" (2 Cor. 3:6). The Spirit was there, giving life at the beginning of the world. When Adam and Eve sinned, they sinned against the commandment of the Father, trading true knowledge of God for false knowledge of themselves. They listened to the serpent instead of to God the Father. By breaking His commandment, they severed ties with the Spirit and cut themselves off from God.

Yet God never abandoned mankind. He still continued to love His creation, even as in justice He punished His creatures. In the end, it would be ones like the woman at the well, announcing the good news of the Messiah, who would help to prepare the way. It would be ones like John the Baptist, filled with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, who would prepare the way for the Redeemer.

"But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life." (Titus 3:4–7)

Conclusion

What then is the Holy Spirit? Helper, Truth, Breath, Love. The Spirit is the essence of mutual love between the Father and the Son. The Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son. The Spirit was there at the beginning, and took part in the creation of the world, which was made out of this same Love. The Holy Spirit took part in the Redemption. He was there at the Incarnation, overshadowing the Virgin Mary the same way the Spirit hovered over the world at the time of creation. The first man rejected the Spirit in the Fall. The New Eve (Mary) would accept the Spirit and take part in the submission to the Father that would allow for the New Adam (Jesus) to be born and redeem mankind. The Spirit was there throughout the ministry of Jesus — as He taught, healed, and forgave. The Spirit was there with Christ on the cross, when He seemed most abandoned — yet He was not alone, for it was in the Spirit that He was able to continue to teach, to forgive, and to promise Paradise to the penitent. The Spirit was delivered to the apostles when Christ rose from the dead, when He breathed on them and they received their confirmation in the faith. The Spirit filled them with fire, passion, courage, and fortitude. Today, the Spirit seeks a home in the Temple of every living human being, so that every man can come to God.