From the beginning of the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit was an active participant in creation as an active and dynamic force of wind hovering over the waters of primordial earth (Gen 1:2). This dynamic force of wind took many forms throughout the Tanakh, including the burning fire inside Jeremiah’s bones (Jer 20:9) as well as the breath animating the dry bones (Ezk 37:1-14). The Spirit of the Lord, the Spirit of the LORD, the breath of God, all of these point directly to the same rushing wind on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:2) filling the Apostles with the fire of the Spirit, the Pneumatos Hagiou, signifying the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in these Apostles. I was raised to believe that this event, the Day of Pentecost, was a singular event from which began the reign of the Holy Spirit on Earth. However, looking at biblical references from Basil and the Cappadocians, one can see a kind of continuity between the ruach of Ezekiel and the pneumatos of the day of Pentecost.

 Finding the Spirit in the Bible

 

The biblical texts show God the Spirit active on Earth from the very beginning of Genesis, but most non-Christians would likely see the Holy Spirit as first emerging during the flight of the Israelites from Egypt, the pillar of fire that protected Charlton Heston from the evil Yul Brynner in the popular movie The Ten Commandments. As theologians, we tend to think more of the Spirit of the Lord as both immanent and transcendent, not in such a fiery particularity. I feel it is important to note here that the Tanakh uses the word for spirit, ruach, in hundreds of different ways, but for our purposes there are two main ways: either as a sensible spirit of being, as in the Spirit that burned Jeremiah’s bones, or as an insensible spirit, such as a haughty spirit (Prv 16:18) or a Spirit of Hope. As Dr. Bedford noted in class, the Tanakh shows several examples of the power of the Holy Spirit among the people of Israel, divided into four groups: Creation, Outstanding Gifts, Prophecy, and Future Hope.

I see these four categories in two groups, where Creation, Outstanding Gifts, and Prophecy (which is certainly an outstanding gift) outline the Spirit’s ability to interact with the sensible world, either through feats of strength or ecstatic possession. For Samson the spirit of the LORD came upon him in a rush, empowering him to tear a lion apart. (Jgs 14:6) This spirit, which initially allows him to survive a deadly animal attack, becomes the instrument of his salvation and deliverance from the Philistines. For Gideon, the LORD spoke to him personally many times, mainly to give him military directions. Heron points out that the Spirit was very active in Judges, appearing in or with Othniel (Jdg 3:10), Gideon, Samson, and Jephthah (Jdg 11:9), as well as with Saul in First Samuel.^[1] In all of these cases, the Holy Spirit is active in the physical lives of humans, whether through military wisdom or super-human strength.

Future Hope is a more insensible, intangible Spirit, also endowing us with spirits of Truth, Wisdom, and Discernment^[2]. As the prophet Joel says of God, “Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh…even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit.” (Joel 2:28) For Joel, the Spirit of the LORD was present through the gifts of dreaming, visions, and interpreting those visions. Joseph was so deeply endowed with the Holy Spirit that even Pharaoh and his servants knew to go to him for dream divination. (Gen 41:38) All four of these categories show the Spirit as an agent of God’s change on Earth, acting to carry out God’s plans, creating, moving, giving power, giving wisdom.

This same Spirit was translated into Greek in the LXX as Pneuma, a word seen both in reference to a physical wind (Jn 3:8) as well as an internal spirit of self-awareness (1 Cor 2:11). The New Testament adds the definition of the Holy Spirit as an advocate, a paraklete, one who will be sent by God to be with us and guide us, a Spirit of Truth. (Jn 14:15-17) The NT has many ways of referring to this spirit, including the spirit of Resurrection (Rom 8:11), the agent that brought the gospel to the world (1 Thess 1:5), and the giver of God’s love poured out over our hearts (Rom 5:5). Heron believes these references show clearly the connection between ruach and Pneuma, saying, “These formulations capture and articulate a fundamentally new perception, in which the active divine presence, the ‘Spirit,’ took on Christian shape as the essential third term in the pattern, as the activity of God which is centered in and reflects Jesus Christ himself, as a second focus in the ellipse of divine operation.”^[3] Castelo points out that the entirety of the Scriptures in themselves are inherently pneumatological: “The reception and appropriation of this word must also be understood in a Spirit-related way, for the hearing and reading of Scripture as Sacred Writ can only be done on the basis of another work of the Holy Spirit, namely, illumination.”^[4]

Romans 5:5 recalls the verse in Joel where the Spirit is poured out, a physical action calling for a flooding of fresh, clean water over a desert, or a delicious caramel poured over a cheesecake. We are inundated in God’s love which is poured over our hearts by the Spirit of God. The Spirit is also that which gives us life, the breath of life (Jn 6:63). As Morse says “The Holy Spirit as gift, and the Holy Spirit as the Lord and Giver, commissions gifts that are described as the ‘fruit’ of the Holy Spirit.”^[5] Galatians outlines the fruits or gifts of the Spirit as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Gal 5:22) I do wonder about this list, as these are a list of positive aspects of the human psyche and are certainly not specific to Christianity. Sometimes it seems as though Christian belief is that these are exclusive to the Spirit of Christ, or that they can only be found in Christendom. I believe this exclusive attachment to Christianity has led to declaring many colonial and marginalized peoples as outside of Christendom, and therefore things like joy and peace cannot possible exist there. As the giver of all life, the Spirit is the constant and immanent driving force behind all of humanity’s daily existence. Life is not a machine that you can start and then walk away from. All life requires constant refreshment and animation in order to survive. This, I believe, is how the Spirit is the active and dynamic force of creation, life-giving, wisdom-giving, and hope-giving.

 

Finding the Spirit in the Early Church

 

It seems the early church was mainly consumed with resolving the situation of the divinity of Christ, and couldn’t find time for the theology behind the Holy Spirit until Basil of Caesarea, St. Basil the Great, in the mid 4^th century. During his time, Basil was tasked with fighting the pneumatomachians, a group of Christians who were opposed to worshipping and regarding the Holy Spirit as co-equal with Jesus Christ and God the Father in the Trinity. From his work, On the Holy Spirit, one can deduce that the battles he had with these anti-Spirit forces were both annoying to him (as he speaks as if their arguments are petty and legalistic) as well as confusing (as they applied different logics to different parts of their arguments where it suited them). In writing this work, Basil had to explain why it was not “innovative”^[6] that he prayed “Glory to the Father along with the Son with the Holy Spirit”^[7] in a mass.

Basil begins by arguing that the skeptics are being too legalistic with their words, splitting hairs and assigning discrete definitions to prepositions that can have multiple meanings. He then delineates all the times these prepositions have been used in a multitude of ways in the Scriptures. Its quite humbling to think of Basil writing down all of these numerous biblical references without either a big unified book like we have, or a Bible Gateway website that is easily searchable. Basil’s point is not that the skeptics were being too strict about their words, or that he was in favor of more fluid definitions of theological terminology. He was trying to say that words are human inventions, and therefore are insufficient for describing things like the economy of the Trinity, and therefore relying on word play alone to satisfy your theology is also insufficient.

Basil also must refute their refusal of subnumeration. As Basil quotes from Corinthians, “One and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each as he wishes.” (1 Cor 12:11) He becomes quite frustrated with their inability to understand these basic theological ideas: “Their argument goes, that co-numeration is appropriate for objects that are equally honorable, while sub-numeration suits those that differ in that they are inferior. Why in the world do you say this? For I do not understand your strange wisdom.”^[8] For Basil, subnumeration means the opposite, namely that any substance thus divided into three parts or persons still contains the same substance. For me, this division tends to cut off the possibility for perichoresis, but since they are the same substance they are dynamically connected and intermingled, leading to sufficient perichoresis. Perichoresis also played a part in the filioque controversy with the Eastern churches, that of adding language to the creeds that claims that the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. As Castelo explains, “The East believes the filioque threatens the uniqueness of the persons by blurring the distinction between the Father and the Son…and by subordinating the Spirit below the Father and the Son.”^[9] For Basil, this rests on the consubstantiality of the divine persons. Basil insists that the Scriptures refer to the Father, Son, and Spirit all involved in divine actions, and that as they are all divine, they are all one divinity.

By insisting on both perichoresis and subnumeration, Basil sets the Holy Spirit on equal footing with the Father and the Son eternally, since to be of the same substance with eternal God means eternal co-equality. The Spirit then can be seen as the authors of Genesis wrote, the eternal breath of God hovering over the waters of creation. The Spirit can also be seen with Christ at his crucifixion and resurrection, the giver of life while Jesus lay in the tomb. Both of these involve the interaction of the Spirit with the material of reality, not a transcendent Spirit who only talks to Samuel in his sleep but one who plays an integral part in creation from the motion of the spheres to the driver of electrons and protons inside our very atoms.

Another key activity for the Spirit lies in the moment of Baptism. Basil believes this to be a type, a way of signifying that we recognize the need for salvation as well as a memorial of the way Christ brought salvation to us. As he says, “We imitate the burial of Christ through baptism…The water furnishes the image of death, just as the body is received in burial, but the Spirit infuses life-giving power, renewing our souls from the death of sin to their original life.”^[10] Basil’s point is not that we are baptized by the water, but that the water is symbolic for the initial work of salvation by Christ, and that by repeating the work of Christ through the sacrament of baptism we are symbolically dying to our old life and flesh and being renewed by the life-giving power of the Spirit to a new life. As John the Baptist says, “He himself will baptize you in the Spirit and fire.” (Mt 3:11)

 

Finding the Spirit in the Here and Now

 

For my ministry and vocation, I will focus on how the immanence of the Holy Spirit works to equalize all of humanity through integrating and sanctifying our hearts and our bodies. As Felker Jones puts it, “In the spiritual life, guided by the Holy Spirit, all is united in an integrated whole: interior and exterior, individual and corporate, soul and body, contemplation and action, commitment and practice, emotion and the day-to-day life of the church. The Christian life must always be spiritual and religious in this sense.”^[11] Although I believe she is setting up a host of false dichotomies here, the point is the same, namely that the Holy Spirit works to help us integrate all aspects of our spiritual and physical lives in order to bring about the Kingdom of God on Earth. She later refers to this as the “continual process of sanctification.”^[12]

One of the false dichotomies I believe the Holy Spirit can help humanity struggle through is that of gendered language for divinity. As the Spirit indwells in all of humanity, including those persons of varying sexuality and gender, we all can thus experience the Holy Spirit in a “Transpersonal” way, as Castelo puts it.^[13] Removing the modality of the Trinity means removing a concrete and static reliance on any gendered language that our traditions have used for centuries. Associating God’s nature with only one kind of gender or sexuality has left entire populations of humanity out of Christian God-talk. While Felker Jones relies specifically on tradition to substantiate the perpetuation of male gendered language when referring to God, Castelo’s approach is much broader. He prefers gender-neutral language for the Spirit, but recognizes the disconnection this can create between Christians and a personal God. I am glad that he at least addresses the fact that using gendered language, whether male or female, can serve to privilege that group over the other, as well as over those who prefer neither gender. Recognizing the active and dynamic power of the Holy Spirit in the lives of Christians means recognizing the Spirit’s transcendence of gender binaries. As the agent of creation, giving us life on a daily/momentary basis, the Spirit is well acquainted with people of varying gender identifications and sexualities. The limitations of the English language need not limit the activities of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

This unlimited Holy Spirit can also allow us to see our common humanity across racial, sexual, gendered, economic, social, religious, and national boundaries. As our TA Min-Sung has shown us, engaging deeply in our own personal pneumatology shows us the connections existing between all of creation, and that violations of any part of the creation constitute eco-cide. This term is used by theologians like Mark Wallace to “reenvision the Holy Spirit as God’s invigorating presence within the society of all living beings.”^[14] This radical reimagining of the Holy Spirit is perfectly inline with my vocational goal of realizing the connection the Holy Spirit gives to all human beings. We cannot interact individually without thinking communally and globally any longer. When thinkers like Felker Jones insist on masculine language for the Holy Spirit because that’s the tradition, she fails to recognize the tradition is based on male authorship writing frequently to oppress and marginalize people of different gender and sexual identities. We cannot simply assume our actions no longer have global consequences, or even consequences for our neighbors in our own state. The fruits of the Spirit include both patience and benevolence, but I believe the time for patience with this kind of backward Christian thinking has passed. Through the indwelling and activity of the Holy Spirit giving us strength and perseverance, we can call upon our Christian family to recognize the damage they do both to human life as well as the life of the planet when they discount our existence in humanity because of convenience or tradition. Christ and the Spirit call us to work for equality and justice now.

^[1] Alasdair Heron, The Holy Spirit (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1983), 13.

^[2] The Spirit of Discernment calls to mind the book Not Every Spirit by Christopher Morse, which we studied in Dr. Bedford’s Intro to Theology Class. The Title is a reference to 1 John 4:1, recognizing that not all spirits are from God, and therefore we are to test each spirit with discernment, which also comes from God.

^[3] Heron, 47-48.

^[4] Daniel Castelo, Pneumatology: a Guide for the Perplexed (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015), 91.

^[5] Christopher More, Not Every Spirit: A Dogmatics of Christian Disbelief (Valley Forge, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 1994), 191.

^[6] St. Basil the Great, On The Holy Spirit, trans. Stephen M. Hildebrand (Yonkers: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), 116.

^[7] From class notes, Dr. Bedford, 9-18-2015.

^[8] Basil, 77.

^[9] Castelo, 61.

^[10] Basil, 68.

^[11] Beth Felker Jones, God The Spirit: Introducing Pneumatology in Wesleyan and Ecumenical Perspective (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014), 44.

^[12] Jones, 86.

^[13] Castelo, 9.

^[14] Mark I. Wallace, “The green face of God: Christianity in an age of ecocide.” Cross Currents 50, no. 3 (September 2000): 314.