The Spirit Is God

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. MATTHEW 28:19

On the Incarnation ends with a doxology. Having set out the whole work of the Word made flesh, Athanasius gives glory to the Father through the Son, “with the Son Himself, in the Holy Spirit”. It is a line that believers had been praying for generations. For most of the fourth century nobody thought to argue about the third name in it. The battle was over the Son. But once the Son’s full divinity had been fought for, a question about the Spirit could not long be avoided. And when it came, Athanasius was among the first to answer it.

The letters from the desert

During his third exile, while he was hiding among the monks of Egypt, Athanasius received letters from his friend Serapion, bishop of Thmuis, a town in the Nile delta. Serapion was troubled. Some Christians in his region, he wrote, were saying that while the Son was indeed God, the Holy Spirit was a creature — a ministering spirit, higher than the angels perhaps, but made nevertheless. Athanasius replied in a series of letters, known as the Letters to Serapion, which are among the earliest full defences of the Spirit’s divinity. Serapion, a monk before he was a bishop, is very probably the same “Serapion the bishop” to whom the dying Antony left one of his sheepskins.

Athanasius gave his opponents a nickname, the Tropici, because they explained away inconvenient Scriptures as mere figures of speech. And he answered them, as he had answered the Arians, from Scripture and from the logic of salvation.

One Trinity

His first argument was simple. The church does not believe in a Father and a Son who are God, plus a third being who is something else. It believes in one Trinity, one God, into whose single name believers are baptised. If the Spirit were a creature, then the Trinity would be a mixture of Creator and creature, and Christians would be baptised into the name of God and of something made. That, he said, is not the faith handed down from the apostles.

Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. 1 CORINTHIANS 12:4–6

Paul speaks of Spirit, Lord and God in one breath, as the single source of every gift in the church. Athanasius’s case rested on this whole shape of Scripture, above all on the baptismal command of Christ and the blessing with which Paul closed his second letter to Corinth.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen. 2 CORINTHIANS 13:14

What the Spirit does

His second line of argument follows the same path as On the Incarnation. What the Spirit does shows who He is. Creatures are sanctified; the Spirit sanctifies. Creatures receive life; the Spirit gives it. Creatures are in one place; the Spirit fills all things. Creatures change; the Spirit is unchanging. Creatures partake of God; the Spirit is the One through whom we partake of God.

Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? PSALM 139:7

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? 1 CORINTHIANS 3:16

This last point is the heart of it, and it mirrors exactly his argument for the Son. If the Spirit joins us to God, He must Himself be God. A creature cannot make us sharers in the divine nature, because a creature does not possess it. Paul says that because of the Spirit dwelling in us we are the temple of God. If the Spirit were a creature, we would be the temple of a creature. But we are God’s temple, because the Spirit who lives in us is God.

Of the Father and the Son

Athanasius also insisted that the Spirit belongs to the Son as the Son belongs to the Father. Scripture calls Him both the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ. He is sent by the Father and by the Son; He takes what is Christ’s and makes it known. There is one activity of the Trinity: the Father does all things through the Word in the Spirit. We never meet one Person of the Godhead without the others.

But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me. JOHN 15:26

Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. ROMANS 8:9

He was careful, too, not to say more than Scripture allowed. The Spirit is not a second Son, nor a grandson of the Father; Scripture does not speak that way, and we should not try to picture the relations within God as if they were human family ties. Here, as always, Athanasius combined boldness about what God has revealed with reverent reticence about what He has not.

The fruit of his letters

Athanasius did not live to see the question settled. But his letters shaped the thinking of the next generation, above all the great Cappadocian fathers, Basil of Caesarea and the two Gregorys. In 381, eight years after his death, the Council of Constantinople expanded the creed of Nicaea to confess the Holy Spirit as the Lord and giver of life, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified. That line is said in churches every Sunday. Much of it was first argued in letters written by a hunted bishop in the Egyptian desert.

Why it matters now

Many Christians today have a firm belief in the Father and a warm devotion to the Son, but think of the Spirit vaguely, as a force or an influence or a feeling. Athanasius would have us think better. The Spirit is not an it but He, not a power God sends but God Himself, present with us and within us. When we pray, it is the Spirit who helps us. When we are made holy, it is the Spirit who does it. When we are joined to Christ, it is by the Spirit. To neglect Him is to neglect God.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Notice this week how you speak of the Holy Spirit. If you have been calling Him it, practise saying He, and ask what difference it makes.

2. Read Romans 8:1–27 and list everything the Spirit does. Beside each, ask whether a creature could do it.

3. Begin one prayer each day by asking the Holy Spirit to help you pray, as Romans 8:26 says He does.

4. Think of one area where you need to be made holier. Ask the Spirit, who sanctifies, to do in you what you cannot do yourself.

5. Learn the Nicene Creed’s words about the Spirit by heart, and say them slowly as an act of worship.

A PRAYER

Holy Spirit, Lord and giver of life, You are not a creature but God, worshipped and glorified with the Father and the Son.

Forgive me for neglecting You, for speaking of You as a force, and for trying to be holy without You.

Dwell in me as in Your temple; sanctify what is unholy, give life to what is dead, and join me to Christ.

To the Father, through the Son, in You, be glory for ever and ever. Amen.