Holy Spirit in Holy Church: From experience to doctrine

Anglican Theological Review, Summer 2001 by Wright, J Robert

The history of the Holy Spirit in the early Church can best be understood as a development from experience to doctrine: from experience in prayer, worship and charismatic gifts as seen especially in Origen, Hippolytus, Tertullian, and Montanus, to a development of doctrine as written in St. Basil of Caesarea and formulated in the third paragraph of the Nicene Creed. I shall begin where the scriptural accounts end. The general outlines of pneumatological development evaluated in this essay are already well known, and hence the facts that are summarized here are not all individually annotated.1

The Early Chyrch After theTime of the New Testament

The vagueness of the scriptural evidence concerning the Holy Spirit in the early Church, especially regarding the Spirit's identity and distinction from the Son, was noted as early as St. Gregory Nazianzen in the later fourth century, who remarked that Scripture itself does not "very clearly or very often call the Spirit God in so many words, as it does call God first the Father and later on the Son." Indeed, before the Second Ecumenical Council added the third paragraph to the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed in 381, most creeds both eastern and western ended simply with the words "and in the Holy Spirit." In fact, it is not entirely certain that the entire expanded form of the third paragraph as we have it actually came from Constantinople in 381. How the Church's faith moved from such a statement found in the Nicene version of 325 to the 381 formula "Lord and giver of life, proceeding from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is together worshiped and glorified, who spoke through the prophets" is a major consideration in this essay.

Origen, ca. 185-254, emphasizes in his Treatise on Prayer that the characteristic sphere of the Spirit's operation is the Church, especially in prayer, as contrasted with the whole of creation, which is the operative sphere of the Logos. Origen states that all things derive their existence from the Father, their rational nature from the Logos, and their holiness from the Holy Spirit, which is given in water-baptism. Emphasizing the Spirit's role in prayer, Origen stipulates: "Neither can our understanding pray, unless previously the Spirit prays" (Treatise on Prayer 2.4).

In The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, a treatise whose unity and authorship have been under much question of late but which for the purpose of this essay will be regarded as a substantial body of evidence pointing to the early third century, there is an explicit connection of the Holy Spirit with baptism or Christian initiation, as is also the case in Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, and the Didache. However, Hippolytus connects the Spirit also with ordination and the eucharist. The biblical association of Spirit and breath (the Hebrew word roach is translated both ways) is recalled by Hippolytus, as the bishop breathes into the faces of the recently exorcized catechumens, as well as in the threefold baptismal immersion, in the signing of oneself by the cross with one's moist breath, in the Spirit's breathing the adversary away, and, possibly, in the eucharistic epiclesis. When a bishop is being ordained, and the other bishops have laid their hands upon him, Hippolytus says, "All indeed shall keep silent, praying in their hearts for the descent of the Spirit," and one of the ordaining bishops prays, "Pour forth now that power which is thine, of thy royal Spirit, which thou gavest to thy beloved servant Jesus Christ, which he bestowed upon his holy apostles." Here is suggested the empowering which the Holy Spirit effects, but we must note that this power of the Spirit is something in particular given to persons in ordination. Hippolytus refers to the "Spirit of high priesthood" as giving authority to remit sins. Yet in another context Hippolytus indicates that all believers have the Spirit. Finally, Hippolytus ends his prayers with a doxology, which includes mention of "the Holy Spirit in the holy church."

Tertullian (ca. 200) seems to have had a rather prematurely clear Trinitarian formula of three persons and one substance, in which the Spirit equally with the Father and the Son is called "God and Lord" and in which the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son.

For the present purpose, however, our major interest in Tertullian is in his relationship to the late second-century apocalyptic movement known as Montanism, which Tertullian eventually joined ca. 206-207. Traced back to Montanus, who lived in the region of Phrygia in central Asia Minor in the mid-second century, the adherents of this movement lived in expectation of the speedy outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the Church as well as the imminent return of Christ. They believed they were already experiencing the first beginnings of all this in their own prophets and prophetesses and especially in Montanus. The Montanist movement, however, did not claim to be entirely new. Rather, it looked to the Scriptures of the New Testament and found there the sort of church that it claimed to be continuing.