Spirit

Spirit, HOLY, or HOLY GHOST, the third Person of the Trinity. The doctrine of the Spirit follows and depends on that of the Son in Scripture and in the development of dogma. It is significant for the whole subject that ruach and pneuma, Hebrew and Greek for spirit, literally mean 'wind' or 'breath.'

In the Old Testament 'the Spirit of God' is first the principle of life in creation (Gen. i. 2), in particular of man's life (ii. 7). Then to the Spirit are traced the special gifts, intellectual and even bodily, of the instruments of the theocracy, as Moses, Bezalel, Samson, and above all the prophets, who are the men of the Spirit. At length in the later writings—e.g. Ps. li. 11, cxliii. 10—the Spirit is called 'holy' and 'good,' and the agency comes to be spoken of chiefly as moral. But there is nothing at all decisive as to personality, and the action is temporary and external, and is not general except in predictions of the period to be introduced by the spirit-anointed Servant of the Lord, when the Spirit is to be poured out on all (Joel, ii. 28).

In the New Testament the Spirit is throughout 'the Holy Spirit,' and is now also the 'Spirit of Christ,' the doctrine being conditioned by the two great facts, the coming of Christ, and His return to the Father. The Synoptists deal almost exclusively with the Spirit's influence on Christ Himself, especially in the miraculous conception of His humanity, and in the descent at His baptism, by which He is equipped for His office. But the fulfilment of the predicted baptism by Christ with the Holy Spirit (Matt. iii. 16, &c.; cf. Joel, ii. 28) is found in the Acts in the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, and subsequently, by which not only the apostles, but disciples generally, are endowed with 'tongues' and other miraculous gifts of witness-bearing to Christ. All this, and the similar teaching of Peter and the author of the Hebrews, still runs largely on Old Testament lines. But in Paul and John, along with these representations, distinct developments are found. All the epistles of Paul contain his characteristic doctrine of the Spirit as the principle of the new life, in its beginning and progress. As such, the Spirit is the witness of sonship, the ground of fellowship with Christ, and of every Christian grace, and the earnest of complete salvation. Those so consecrated form the church, the temple of God, the body of Christ. John touches on Paul's view (John, iii. 5). But his special contribution is the farewell words of Christ (xiv. 16, 17, 26; xv. 26; xvi. 7-14), where the Spirit as the Paraclete (Advocate or Comforter) is first expressly presented as a person, proceeding from the Father, and to be sent after Christ's departure, that as the Spirit of truth He may confirm and complete the revelation already given in the Son. Thus, while the personality is implied in the baptismal formula (Matt. xxviii. 19) and the apostolic benediction (2 Cor. xiii. 14, and other passages), it comes clearly out only in the 'He' of this latest writer of the New Testament.

After apostolic times the church's faith in the Spirit was for long simply that of the baptismal formula held without dogmatic definition. Montanism, with its conception of the Spirit as still operating in the manner of the apostolic age, called attention to the subject. But it was as complementary to the doctrine of the person of Christ, the starting-point of the Trinitarian dogma, that the Spirit doctrine was elaborated, at first incidentally, then directly. The reply to the Gnostic emanation theories, and to the Sabellian view of the Trinity as merely modes of God's manifestation, helped to draw out the church's mind on the Spirit's essential deity and personality, though, in distinguishing the persons, Origen and others unduly subordinated the Son, and especially the Spirit. The doctrine was directly handled after the middle of the 4th century, when Arianism, which carried this subordination to the extreme in denying the deity of the Son, was explicitly extended to the Spirit by Eunomius, and diverted thereto by the Semi-Arians, hence called Pneumatomachi. Against their view that the Spirit is only a creature Athanasius and others brought the consubstantiality of the Spirit into line with that of the Son, and in 381 the Council of Constantinople added to the bare Nicene profession of faith in the Holy Spirit—'the Lord, and giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spake by the prophets.' From that day to this almost all the divergencies from the church doctrine of the person have been of the Sabellian order. It remained to define the essential relation of the Spirit to the Son. Western theology tended to emphasise the unity of essence in the

Trinity, Eastern the Father as the fountain of godhead. Accordingly the doctrine of the Spirit's eternal procession from the Father and the Son (Filioque), fully developed by Augustine, rooted itself in the West, while in the East the procession was held to be from the Father only, or from the Father through the Son. At or before the Synod of Toledo in 589 the Filioque was inserted in the Creed of Constantinople, and this interpolation became one of the main causes of the schism between East and West. The churches of the Reformation accepted the procession from the Son, which as recently as 1875 was discussed at the Bonn conference between Easterns, Anglicans, and Old Catholics. But Protestantism was long naturally occupied rather with the Spirit's work. From strong interest in the latter peculiar views have sometimes emerged, not least in the religious movements of the 19th century, which has seen Montanism revived in Irvingitism.

The dogmatics of the Spirit, in its two divisions of the person and the work, encounters the two great problems of theology. In exhibiting the Spirit's work in conviction, regeneration, and sanctification, and also in inspiration, the relation of the Spirit's activity to man's falls to be determined. See CALVIN, ARMINIUS, JANSEN, WILL, and INSPIRATION. All progressive dogmatics not rationalistic addresses itself more and more to a thorough-going recognition of both factors. As for the Trinitarian problem, which has come again to the front, a stricter biblical theology has somewhat narrowed the basis of dogmatics, so far as the Scripture evidence of the Spirit's personality is concerned. And it is now more clearly recognised that not the ontological or essential, but the economic, Trinity—i.e. the Trinity in relation to man—is presented in Scripture, even the 'proceedeth' of John, xv. 26, being understood as temporal, not eternal. All the more does theology feel called upon to rise to the ontological Trinity, and labours, especially in Germany, to deduce it from the idea of the Divine self-consciousness, the Divine love, &c. Philosophy itself takes similar paths. Many, however, who call themselves Trinitarian are so only in a pantheistic or Sabellian sense, and regard the Spirit as merely a divine energy, or, with Schleiermacher, as God operative in the church.

Literature.—(1) Patristic: Athanasius, Epistolæ ad Serapionem; Didymus Alex., Basil the Great, and Ambrose, De Spiritu Sancto; Gregory Nazianzen, Orationes de Theologia, v.; Augustine, De Trinitate, iv. v. xv., Tractatus in S. Joannem, and Contra Maximinum. (2) Modern: Owen, Pneumatologia (1674), still, though prolix, the profoundest of the numerous English works; Heber, Personality and Office of the Comforter (Bampton Lectures, 1816); Burton, Testimonies of the Anti-Nicene Fathers to the Divinity of the Holy Ghost (Works, vol. ii. 1831); Hare, Mission of the Comforter (1846; 4th ed. 1877); Kahnis, Die Lehre vom Heiligen Geiste (Halle, 1847—historical); Cardinal Manning, Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost (1865) and Internal Mission of the Holy Ghost (1877); Swete, Early History of the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Camb. 1873) and History of the Doctrine of the Procession (1876); Smeaton, Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Cunningham Lectures, 1882). For the different departments of the subject reference should also be made to the standard works on biblical theology, the history of doctrines, and dogmatics. See also the articles CHRIST, TRINITY.