We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life

The Text

The third article opens. The catholic faith, having confessed the Father (Article 1) and the Son (Article 2), now confesses the Holy Spirit. The structure of the creed is trinitarian by deliberate design: there is one God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the catholic confession of that one God takes the form of a three-fold credal articulation.

The clause names the Spirit by three of his proper titles: Holy, Lord, Giver of Life. Each is dogmatically loaded. The Spirit is holy — in the same sense the Father is holy, and the Son is holy, and the divine being itself is holy. The Spirit is Lord — and the title is the same one used of the Father (kyrios throughout the LXX) and of the Son (clause 4: one Lord, Jesus Christ), so that the catholic confession of the Spirit’s divinity is encoded in the title itself. The Spirit is the giver of life — the one through whom the divine life is communicated to the creature, in creation, in new birth, and in resurrection.

The clause is the dogmatic foundation of the catholic confession of the full divinity of the Holy Spirit. In the period between 325 and 381 (between the original Nicene Creed and its Constantinopolitan revision), a major theological dispute emerged over the divinity of the Spirit. The party known as the Pneumatomachi (the Spirit-fighters, sometimes called Macedonians after Macedonius, the bishop of Constantinople who is said to have been associated with the position) held that the Spirit was a creature — perhaps the highest of creatures, but a creature nonetheless — not God in the full sense. The Cappadocian Fathers (especially Basil the Great’s On the Holy Spirit, c. 375) developed the dogmatic case against this position, and the 381 Council of Constantinople formally affirmed the Spirit’s full divinity by adding to the original Nicene Creed the present clause and its successors (clauses 17–19).

The clause is brief but theologically decisive. Every word does dogmatic work.

Translation Notes

Pneuma Hagion / Spiritus Sanctus — Holy Spirit. The standard New Testament title. The Greek πνεῦμα (and the Hebrew רוּחַ behind it) carries the triple sense of breath, wind, and spirit. The Spirit’s name is not arbitrary: he is the breath of the Father (Ps. 33:6; John 20:22), the wind that blows where it will (John 3:8), the spirit who searches the deep things of God (1 Cor. 2:10–11). The qualifier Holy names not merely a moral attribute but the divine being itself: the Spirit is holy with the holiness of God, and where the Spirit is, the holiness of God is.

The older English Holy Ghost (BCP 1662, and standard in older Methodist and Anglican usage) renders the same Greek. Ghost in older English (Old English gāst) meant spirit, with no implication of an apparition or a phantom; the contemporary English narrowing of ghost to apparition has made Holy Ghost potentially misleading, and the modern translations have uniformly switched to Holy Spirit. The older usage is retained in some traditional Anglican and Roman Catholic settings and in certain hymns where the meter requires it.

Kyrion / Dominum — the Lord. The dogmatic crux of the clause. The title Lord is the title of God: in the Septuagint, kyrios renders the Tetragrammaton (יהוה); in the New Testament, the title is applied to Jesus (Phil. 2:11) and through him to the divine Son; in the present clause, the title is applied to the Spirit. The catholic confession is therefore that the one Lord of Article 2 (clause 4) and the Lord of the present clause are not two separate lords (which would be polytheism); both are confessed as Lord within the one Lordship of the one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The application of Lord to the Spirit is a deliberate ascription of full divinity.

Zōopoion / vivificantem — the giver of life. The biblical title of the Spirit. The Spirit is the giver of life in three integrated senses. In creation: the Spirit hovers over the waters of Genesis 1:2 and breathes the breath of life into the human creature in Genesis 2:7 (Ps. 104:30: when you send forth your spirit, they are created; Job 33:4: the spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life). In new birth: the Spirit gives the life of the new creation to the believer through baptism and faith (John 3:5–8: no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit; Titus 3:5: the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit). In resurrection: the Spirit raises the dead at the eschaton (Rom. 8:11: the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead… will give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you).

The three life-givings are one work of one Spirit. The clause therefore claims that the biological life of every creature, the new life of every believer, and the resurrected life of every saint are all the work of the same divine Spirit, who is the life of God communicated to the creature.

Historical Context

The Pneumatomachian controversy of the mid-fourth century is the immediate context. After the Council of Nicaea (325) had settled the question of the Son’s full divinity, a substantial party of theologians who accepted the Nicene Christology nevertheless held a reduced doctrine of the Spirit. The most common position was that the Spirit was a creature, perhaps the highest of creatures, ministering between the divine Father-Son and the created order; he was therefore worthy of honor but not of worship in the strict sense.

Basil of Caesarea’s On the Holy Spirit (c. 375) is the great patristic refutation. Basil’s argument: the Spirit is treated in Scripture as God treats himself; he is named alongside the Father and the Son in the baptismal formula (Matt. 28:19); he is worshiped in the church’s practice (the doxology to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit, and equivalently to the Father, with the Son, with the Holy Spirit); he gives what only God can give (life, sanctification, the divine indwelling); he does what only God can do (raises the dead, searches the depths of God, inspires the prophets). Therefore the Spirit is God in the full sense. Basil’s argument was not new — the Nicene fathers had presupposed it — but its full articulation in the 370s was the dogmatic settlement.

Gregory of Nazianzus’s Theological Oration V (the Oration on the Holy Spirit, c. 380) gives the rhetorical climax. Gregory’s argument runs through the various names and works of the Spirit and concludes with the famous progression: the Old Testament made the Father manifest, but the Son obscure; the New Testament manifested the Son and gave us a glimpse of the Spirit; now the Spirit himself dwells among us and gives us a clearer manifestation of himself. The trinitarian doctrine is the fullness of the Christian revelation, and the doctrine of the Spirit is the climax of that fullness.

The Council of Constantinople (381) added the present clause and its successors to the Nicene Creed, formally affirming the Spirit’s full divinity. The expansion was not a development of doctrine but the explicit confession of what had been catholic teaching from the apostolic period; the conciliar form was necessary because the Pneumatomachian position had to be specifically refuted.

The clause has had a long subsequent history. The doctrine of the Spirit has been the most contested article in modern Christian theology — partly because the doctrine has been less developed in much Western theology than the doctrines of the Father and the Son (the medieval West sometimes received the Spirit as the bond of love between the Father and the Son, which has been criticized as reducing the Spirit’s personal status); partly because the dispute over the filioque (clause 17) has been the principal theological cause of the East-West schism. In the late 20th century, both the global charismatic-pentecostal renewal movements and the Eastern Orthodox pneumatological renaissance have placed the Spirit back at the center of theological attention. The recovery has been ecumenically productive.

Lines of Interpretation

Patristic

Tradition: Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit; Gregory of Nazianzus, Theological Oration V; Athanasius, Letters to Serapion; Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John; Augustine, On the Trinity

The patristic settlement on the Spirit’s divinity is the foundation of all subsequent catholic confession. Athanasius’s Letters to Serapion (c. 357–360) is the first major patristic treatise on the doctrine of the Spirit; Athanasius’s argument is patristic-biblical: the Spirit is treated in Scripture as God, and the catholic baptismal practice (in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit) presupposes the full divinity of all three.

Basil’s On the Holy Spirit (c. 375) is the comprehensive Cappadocian treatment. Basil’s careful argument structure: against the Pneumatomachi, he shows (1) that the Scriptural language attributes to the Spirit what is properly attributed to God alone; (2) that the catholic liturgical doxology presupposes the Spirit’s full divinity; (3) that the Spirit’s works (especially the divinization of the saints through participation) are works that only God can do. Basil’s articulation became the dogmatic settlement.

Gregory of Nazianzus pushes the doctrine into rhetorical-confessional climax. His famous lines: Was the Holy Spirit God? Yes! Was he then consubstantial with the Father? Yes — if he is God. … If you ask me what the Holy Spirit is, I shall say: he is God. Did he himself come down? Yes! And he is descending to us, in this very moment, in our prayer.

Augustine’s On the Trinity, especially Books V and XV, gives the great Latin patristic articulation of the doctrine of the Spirit. Augustine’s distinctive contribution: the Spirit is the love of the Father and the Son, the bond by which the Father and the Son are eternally united; the Spirit is therefore the gift of God, the gift that the Father gives to the Son and that the Father-and-Son give to the church. The Augustinian love-bond doctrine has been broadly influential in the Western tradition but has been criticized by Eastern theologians as reducing the Spirit’s personal status to a relation between the Father and the Son.

Strengths

• The patristic settlement is the foundation of catholic pneumatology
• Basil’s On the Holy Spirit is one of the great patristic theological treatises
• Athanasius’s argument from the baptismal formula is permanently valuable
• Gregory of Nazianzus gives the doctrine its rhetorical-confessional climax
• Augustine’s love-bond articulation has shaped the Western tradition deeply

Weaknesses

• The polemical context (Pneumatomachian) occasionally produced sharper articulations than catholic substance required
• Augustine’s love-bond doctrine has been criticized for risking the personal status of the Spirit; the Eastern critique has been substantive

Scholastic

Tradition: Anselm, Monologion; Hugh of St Victor, On the Sacraments; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.36–38 (on the Spirit); Bonaventure, Sentences I; Richard of St Victor, On the Trinity

The scholastic tradition received the Augustinian-Latin doctrine of the Spirit and developed it under the heads of procession, relation, and appropriation. Aquinas’s treatment in ST I.36–38 articulates the Spirit’s personal subsistence as the Love of the Father and the Son in substantial form (not a mere relation between two persons but a third person constituted by the eternal procession of love), and articulates the Spirit’s role in the divine economy under the heading of gift (donum: the Spirit is the gift that the Father and the Son give to the world).

Bonaventure’s Sentences I and his Itinerarium develop a more affective Franciscan articulation. The Spirit is the fire of divine love, the agent of the believer’s ascent into participation in the Trinity, the locus of the Christian’s spiritual experience.

Richard of St Victor’s On the Trinity (12th c.) is an unusually rich and influential scholastic-mystical treatment, with a famous argument for the trinitarian structure of God on the basis of the nature of love: love requires not only a lover and a beloved (Father and Son) but also a condilectus — a third person co-loved by the first two — which corresponds to the Holy Spirit. Richard’s argument has been broadly influential in the modern recovery of trinitarian theology.

Strengths

• Aquinas’s articulation of the Spirit’s personal subsistence as substantial Love is permanently valuable
• The doctrine of gift (the Spirit as the divine gift to the world) is biblical and pastorally rich
• Richard of St Victor’s love-trinity articulation is one of the great medieval contributions
• The Franciscan affective tradition has shaped subsequent Christian spirituality deeply

Weaknesses

• The Aristotelian-essence vocabulary requires translation
• The Western love-bond articulation has been a major point of East-West theological tension

Lutheran

Tradition: Luther, Large Catechism on the Third Article; Augsburg Confession I, V; Formula of Concord II, XI; Lutheran scholastic theology; modern: Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Robert Jenson

The Lutheran tradition has held the clause in catholic form, with characteristic pastoral integration with the gospel. Luther’s Large Catechism on the Third Article — I believe in the Holy Ghost — is one of the great Reformation pneumatologies: I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him; but the Holy Ghost has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and preserved me in the true faith, just as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth. The catechetical form integrates the Spirit’s work with the gospel of grace: the Spirit is the divine agent of the believer’s faith, illumination, sanctification, and preservation.

The Augsburg Confession I confesses the trinitarian dogma in classical form. AC V articulates the Spirit’s role in the means of grace: the Holy Spirit is given through the word and the sacraments, and the Spirit works faith, when and where it pleases God, in those who hear the gospel.

The Formula of Concord II addresses the question of the bondage of the will and the role of the Spirit in conversion; the Formula affirms that the Spirit is the sole agent of regeneration, and the believer is the passive recipient (rather than the active cooperator) in the initial moment of conversion. The Lutheran emphasis on the monergism of the Spirit in regeneration is a distinctive Reformation contribution.

Robert Jenson’s Systematic Theology I gives a major late-20th-century Lutheran articulation of the doctrine of the Spirit, with particular attention to the integration of the Spirit’s work with the doctrine of the church and the eschatological consummation.

Strengths

• The catechetical use of the doctrine is pastorally unmatched
• The integration with the means of grace gives the doctrine its proper concrete location
• The Lutheran monergism of the Spirit in regeneration is a substantive Reformation contribution
• Jenson’s modern Lutheran articulation has been ecumenically influential

Weaknesses

• The Lutheran reading has occasionally been thinner on the cosmic and charismatic dimensions of the Spirit than the catholic balance requires
• Some Lutheran scholastic articulations pressed the doctrine into refinements the New Testament does not warrant

Reformed

Tradition: Calvin, Institutes III; Heidelberg Catechism QQ. 53; Belgic Confession Article 11; Westminster Confession Ch. 1.5–10, 14; Abraham Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit; Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/4; Geoffrey Wainwright

The Reformed tradition has held the doctrine of the Spirit with particular pastoral seriousness, and Calvin in particular is known as the theologian of the Holy Spirit in the Reformation. Calvin’s Institutes Book III is the great Reformation treatment of the Spirit’s work in the believer: the internal testimony of the Spirit, by which the believer becomes assured of the truth of Scripture and the gospel; the application of redemption by which the Spirit unites the believer to Christ; the regeneration by which the Spirit gives new birth; the sanctification by which the Spirit transforms the believer in love; and the assurance by which the Spirit witnesses to the believer’s adoption.

The Heidelberg Catechism Q. 53 gives the catechetical form: What dost thou believe concerning the Holy Ghost? First, that he is true and co-eternal God with the Father and the Son; secondly, that he is also given to me, to make me by a true faith partaker of Christ and all his benefits, that he may comfort me and abide with me forever. The catechism integrates the dogmatic substance with the personal application.

Abraham Kuyper’s The Work of the Holy Spirit (1900) is the great 19th-century Reformed pneumatology, with characteristic Kuyperian breadth (the Spirit’s work in creation, common grace, and culture as well as in the church and the believer). The Reformed general work of the Spirit (the Spirit’s preservation of the natural order, the Spirit’s restraint of evil, the Spirit’s enabling of human culture) is a distinctive Reformed contribution.

Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics IV/4 (the unfinished volume on baptism) and Barth’s broader treatment of the Spirit in the Dogmatics give the major 20th-century Reformed articulation. Barth’s reading: the Spirit is the subjective realization of what the Son has objectively accomplished — the Spirit applies to the believer what the Son has done for the world.

Strengths

• Calvin’s Institutes Book III is one of the great Reformation pneumatologies
• The Heidelberg Catechism Q. 53 gives the catechetical form its definitive Reformed shape
• Kuyper’s articulation of the Spirit’s work in creation and culture is a permanent Reformed contribution
• The Reformed tradition has consistently held the doctrine of the Spirit with great pastoral seriousness

Weaknesses

• Some Reformed scholasticism pressed the doctrine into refinement of ordo salutis questions
• The Reformed tradition has occasionally been suspicious of charismatic-pentecostal expressions in ways that have created unhelpful pastoral distance from the catholic breadth of the doctrine of the Spirit

Eastern Orthodox

Tradition: the Cappadocians; Symeon the New Theologian; Gregory Palamas; the iconographic tradition (the Pentecost icon); modern: Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church; Sergei Bulgakov, The Comforter; John Zizioulas, Being as Communion; Dumitru Stăniloae

The Eastern tradition has held the doctrine of the Spirit with particular depth and is, in many ways, the great pneumatological tradition of the catholic faith. The Eastern emphasis on theōsis (deification by participation) makes the Spirit central to the Christian’s entire life: the Spirit is the divine agent of the believer’s deification, the one by whom the divine life is communicated to the human creature in actual participation.

Gregory Palamas’s 14th-century articulation of the uncreated energies of God — the doctrine that God is unknowable in his essence but is communicated to the creature in his energies, which are uncreated and divine — gives the Eastern doctrine of the Spirit its mature articulation: the Spirit is the gift by which the divine energies are communicated to the creature, and grace is the participation in the divine energies through the Spirit.

The Eastern tradition has consistently held the Spirit’s personal status with great care, resisting the Western tendency to articulate the Spirit primarily as the love-bond between the Father and the Son (which can risk reducing the Spirit’s personal status to a relation). The Eastern Trinitarian articulation maintains the monarchy of the Father: the Father is the sole source (ἀρχή) of the Son and the Spirit, with the Son and the Spirit being two distinct persons proceeding from the one Father by two distinct modes (the Son by generation, the Spirit by procession).

Vladimir Lossky’s The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (1944) is the major 20th-century Eastern Orthodox articulation of the doctrine of the Spirit in dialogue with Western theology. John Zizioulas’s Being as Communion (1985) gives a substantial Eastern trinitarian articulation with particular attention to the Spirit’s role in the constitution of the church.

The iconographic tradition expresses the doctrine visually. The Pentecost icon (Acts 2) depicts the apostles seated together with tongues of flame descending on each of them, and is the visual confession of the Spirit’s coming. The Theophany icon (the baptism of Christ) depicts the Spirit descending as a dove, the Father’s voice from heaven, and is the visual confession of the trinitarian structure of the divine economy.

Strengths

• The Eastern tradition has held the doctrine of the Spirit with permanent depth
• Palamas’s uncreated energies doctrine is a major Eastern contribution
• The Eastern resistance to reducing the Spirit’s personal status is a substantive theological gift
• Lossky and Zizioulas have made major modern Eastern contributions to ecumenical conversation
• The iconographic tradition makes the doctrine visible in the liturgy

Weaknesses

• The Palamite distinction of essence and energies has been disputed (some Catholic and Protestant theologians have not received it)
• The Eastern critique of the filioque remains a major point of unresolved East-West theological dispute (see clause 17)

Wesleyan

(See Wesleyan Voice below.)

Modern Ecumenical

Tradition: Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics; Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life; Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology III; John Zizioulas, Being as Communion; Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self; Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen; the global Pentecostal-charismatic recovery

The 20th- and 21st-century recovery of the doctrine of the Spirit has been one of the major theological developments of the modern period. The convergence of three factors has been decisive: (1) the Eastern Orthodox theological renewal of the 20th century (Lossky, Bulgakov, Florovsky, Zizioulas, Stăniloae); (2) the global Pentecostal-charismatic renewal (beginning with the Azusa Street revival, 1906, and expanding through the 20th century into one of the largest movements in Christian history); (3) the ecumenical recovery of trinitarian theology (Barth, Rahner, Pannenberg, Moltmann, Jenson, Coakley).

Jürgen Moltmann’s The Spirit of Life (1992) is the major late-20th-century pneumatology in Reformed-ecumenical register. Moltmann reads the Spirit as the Giver of Life across the entire scope of creation, redemption, and consummation, with particular attention to the cosmic-ecological dimensions of the Spirit’s work.

Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Systematic Theology III gives a substantial Lutheran-ecumenical articulation, with particular attention to the integration of the Spirit’s work with the doctrine of the church and the eschatological trinitarian consummation.

Sarah Coakley’s God, Sexuality, and the Self (2013) gives a major modern Anglican-feminist articulation of the doctrine of the Spirit, with attention to the priority of the Spirit in the trinitarian-praying life of the believer (the Spirit is first in our experience of God, even though the Spirit is the third in the order of the trinitarian persons).

The global Pentecostal-charismatic renewal has restored to ecumenical attention the doctrine of the Spirit’s gifts (1 Cor. 12; Rom. 12; Eph. 4), the doctrine of the Spirit’s empowering of the believer for witness and ministry, and the doctrine of the Spirit’s present-tense operation in the church. The conversation between Pentecostal-charismatic and historic confessional traditions has been one of the major ecumenical theological developments of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Strengths

• The modern recovery has restored the Spirit to a central place in Christian theology
• Moltmann’s Spirit of Life is a major recent articulation
• Coakley’s recovery of the Spirit’s experiential-prayer priority is permanently valuable
• The Pentecostal-charismatic renewal has restored attention to the Spirit’s gifts and empowering
• The ecumenical conversation has been productive

Weaknesses

• Some modern reconstructions have so emphasized the Spirit’s universal cosmic-creational work that the Christological specification has been weakened
• Some popular Pentecostal teaching has pressed the doctrine into directions that the catholic mainstream cannot follow

Wesleyan Voice

Wesley’s confession of the Holy Spirit is unambiguous, deeply pastoral, and characteristically central to his entire theology. The Methodist Articles of Religion (1784), Article IV — Of the Holy Ghost — names the doctrine in classical form: The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, is of one substance, majesty, and glory with the Father and the Son, very and eternal God. The dogmatic substance is the catholic Cappadocian-Nicene-Constantinopolitan settlement.

What is distinctively Wesleyan is the experiential-pneumatological register of the entire Methodist tradition. Wesley’s theology is, in important measure, a theology of the Spirit. The doctrine of the new birth is the doctrine of the Spirit’s regenerating work. The doctrine of Christian perfection is the doctrine of the Spirit’s sanctifying work. The doctrine of assurance (the witness of the Spirit) is the doctrine of the Spirit’s testimony to the believer’s adoption. The doctrine of prevenient grace is the doctrine of the Spirit’s universal antecedent operation in every human life. Every distinctive emphasis of Wesleyan theology is, in some way, a pneumatological emphasis.

Sermon 10, “The Witness of the Spirit, I,” and Sermon 11, “The Witness of the Spirit, II,” are the great Wesleyan sermons on the doctrine of assurance — the doctrine that the believer may be assured of their adoption by the inward testimony of the Spirit. Wesley’s definition (drawn from Romans 8:16, the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God): the testimony of the Spirit is an inward impression on the soul, whereby the Spirit of God directly witnesses to my spirit that I am a child of God; that Jesus Christ hath loved me, and given himself for me; that all my sins are blotted out, and I, even I, am reconciled to God. The doctrine is one of the most distinctive Wesleyan contributions to catholic pneumatology.

Sermon 8, “The First-fruits of the Spirit,” integrates the Spirit’s work with the believer’s progressive sanctification. Sermon 18, “The Marks of the New Birth,” and Sermon 45, “The New Birth,” integrate the Spirit’s regenerating work with the gospel of justification. Sermon 40, “Christian Perfection,” integrates the Spirit’s sanctifying work with the doctrine of perfect love.

The Wesleyan doctrine of prevenient grace (the divine grace that goes before conscious faith) is the Wesleyan articulation of the Spirit’s universal antecedent operation. Sermon 85, “On Working Out Our Own Salvation,” gives the classic articulation: the Spirit is at work in every human life from before the moment of conscious faith, drawing every human being toward the offer of grace. The doctrine refuses both Pelagian readings (in which the human creature initiates the movement toward God) and high Calvinist readings (in which the divine grace is restricted to the elect); the doctrine affirms that the Spirit’s grace is universally antecedent and resistibly offered.

Charles Wesley’s hymnody confesses the Spirit with characteristic passion. Come, Holy Ghost, our hearts inspire, / let us thine influence prove; / source of the old prophetic fire, / fountain of life and love. Spirit of faith, come down, / reveal the things of God. Love divine, all loves excelling, / joy of heaven, to earth come down. Granted is the Saviour’s prayer, / sent the gracious Comforter.

The pastoral Wesleyan posture: confess the Holy Spirit as Lord and giver of life without modification; receive the doctrine as the dogmatic foundation of the new birth, sanctification, Christian perfection, and the witness of the Spirit; integrate the doctrine of the Spirit with the doctrine of prevenient grace and the universal scope of divine love; let the Spirit’s actual present-tense work in the believer’s life be the experiential confirmation of the catholic dogma.

Hymnody

The hymnody on this clause is one of the great Pentecostal-pneumatological repertoires of the Christian tradition.

“Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire” (Latin, 9th c., Veni, Creator Spiritus, attributed to Rabanus Maurus; trans. John Cosin, 1627) is the great Latin Pentecost hymn, sung at every Pentecost in the Western liturgical tradition and at every ordination in the Anglican-Catholic-Methodist traditions.

“Come down, O Love divine” (Bianco da Siena, 14th c.; trans. Richard Frederick Littledale, 1867) is the great mystical-pneumatological hymn: Come down, O Love divine, / seek thou this soul of mine, / and visit it with thine own ardor glowing.

“Breathe on me, breath of God” (Edwin Hatch, 1878) is the great evangelical-pneumatological hymn: Breathe on me, breath of God; / fill me with life anew, / that I may love what thou dost love, / and do what thou wouldst do.

“Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove” (Isaac Watts, 1707) is the great Reformed-pneumatological hymn: Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove, / with all thy quickening powers; / kindle a flame of sacred love / in these cold hearts of ours.

“Spirit of God, descend upon my heart” (George Croly, 1854) is the great Anglican-pneumatological hymn: Spirit of God, descend upon my heart; / wean it from earth; through all its pulses move.

“Holy Spirit, Truth divine” (Samuel Longfellow, 1864) is the major American Unitarian-Universalist hymn of the Spirit, often included in mainline Protestant hymnals.

“O Holy Spirit, Root of Life” (Jean Janzen, 1991, based on Hildegard of Bingen) is the major modern hymn drawing on Hildegard’s pneumatological imagery: O Holy Spirit, Root of life, / creator, cleanser of all things, / anoint our wounds, awaken us / with luminous movement of your wings.

“Veni Sancte Spiritus” (anonymous, 13th c., the Golden Sequence of Pentecost) is the great Latin sequence of Pentecost, set to chant and to many modern settings.

“Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me” (Daniel Iverson, 1926) is the great evangelical-charismatic hymn of the Spirit in the modern American renewal.

“Filled with the Spirit’s power” (J. R. Peacey, 1969) is the major modern Anglican Pentecost hymn.

“Come, thou Almighty King” (Charles Wesley, 1757) confesses the Spirit in trinitarian doxology: Come, holy Comforter, / thy sacred witness bear / in this glad hour.

“Holy Ghost, with light divine” (Andrew Reed, 1817) is the major 19th-century hymn of the Spirit.

For the liturgical year: this clause is the dogmatic substance of Pentecost (the fiftieth day after Easter, the conclusion of the great fifty-day Easter season), of Trinity Sunday (the Sunday after Pentecost), and of ordinations (where the Spirit’s gift of office is invoked). The great Pentecost hymn Come, Holy Ghost (in any of its translations) has been sung at ordinations in the Western liturgical tradition for over a millennium.

Pastoral and Liturgical Use

Three pastoral tasks attach to this clause.

The first is restoring the doctrine of the Holy Spirit to its proper place in pastoral teaching. In much mainline American Protestantism, the doctrine of the Spirit has been quietly demoted — partly out of suspicion of the charismatic-pentecostal movements with which the doctrine has often been identified, partly because the doctrine has been less developed in the Western tradition than the doctrines of the Father and the Son. The pastor’s task is to restore the doctrinal centrality. The Spirit is Lord — fully God, fully personal, fully active in the church and in the believer’s life. The doctrinal substance is the catholic settlement, and the pastoral neglect of the doctrine has impoverished the church’s actual life.

The second is integrating the Spirit’s work into the parish’s actual life. The Spirit is the giver of life in the biological, regenerational, and resurrectional senses. The pastor’s task is to teach the parish that every breath they breathe is the gift of the Spirit; every act of love they perform is the work of the Spirit; every word of prayer they speak is enabled by the Spirit; every moment of comfort in suffering is the presence of the Spirit; every act of obedience to the gospel is empowered by the Spirit. The doctrine of the Spirit is not a piece of remote dogmatic speculation; it is the dogmatic articulation of the actual present-tense reality of the Christian life.

The third is teaching the parish to pray to the Spirit. The catholic tradition has consistently held that the Spirit is the proper object of worship — not as a separate divine being alongside the Father and the Son (which would be polytheism) but within the one divine being of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The traditional Christian prayer addresses the Father (the source of all things), through the Son (the mediator), in the Spirit (the animator); but the catholic tradition has also held that direct prayer to the Spirit is appropriate (the Veni, Creator Spiritus and the Veni Sancte Spiritus are both direct invocations of the Spirit). The pastor’s task is to teach the parish that the Spirit is not merely the means of prayer but is the object of prayer; he is Lord, and he is to be invoked.

For the preacher: the doctrine of the Spirit comes around in the Sunday creed every week, but the Pentecost sermon is the proper opportunity for sustained pastoral teaching on the present clause. The pastor who does not preach a substantive Pentecost sermon each year is neglecting one of the great pastoral opportunities of the liturgical year.

For the liturgist: the Veni, Creator Spiritus — Come, Creator Spirit — is one of the great catholic prayers of the church, and its inclusion in worship at Pentecost, at ordinations, at confirmations, at gatherings for prayer, and at the opening of liturgical seasons is a substantial pastoral resource.

Further Reading

• Genesis 1:2 — the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters
• Genesis 2:7 — the Lord God… breathed into his nostrils the breath of life
• Numbers 11:25–29 — Moses’s wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets
• 1 Samuel 16:13 — the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David
• Psalm 33:6 — by the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth
• Psalm 51:11 — take not your holy Spirit from me
• Psalm 104:30 — when you send forth your spirit, they are created
• Isaiah 11:1–2 — the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him
• Isaiah 32:15; 44:3; 59:21 — the eschatological pouring out of the Spirit
• Isaiah 61:1 — the Spirit of the Lord is upon me
• Ezekiel 36:25–27; 37 — the new heart and the breath of life
• Joel 2:28–32 — I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh
• Matthew 1:18, 20; 3:11, 16–17; 4:1; 12:18, 28; 28:19 — Spirit references
• Mark 1:10, 12; 13:11 — Spirit references
• Luke 1:35, 41, 67; 2:25–27; 3:16, 22; 4:1, 14, 18; 11:13; 12:12; 24:49 — Lukan pneumatology
• John 3:5–8; 4:23–24; 6:63; 7:37–39; 14:16–17, 26; 15:26; 16:7–15; 20:22 — Johannine pneumatology
• Acts 1:5, 8; 2:1–47 (Pentecost); 4:31; 8:14–24; 10:44–48; 11:15–18; 13:1–4; 19:1–7 — Acts pneumatology
• Romans 5:5; 8 (the entire chapter); 14:17; 15:13, 16, 30 — Pauline pneumatology
• 1 Corinthians 2:10–16; 6:11, 19; 12 (the gifts); 14 (prophecy and tongues); 15:45 — Pauline pneumatology
• 2 Corinthians 3:6, 17–18 — the Lord is the Spirit
• Galatians 3:1–5; 4:6; 5:16–25; 6:8 — Galatian pneumatology
• Ephesians 1:13–14; 2:18, 22; 3:16; 4:3–4, 30; 5:18; 6:17–18 — Pauline pneumatology
• Philippians 1:19; 2:1; 3:3 — Spirit references
• 1 Thessalonians 4:8; 5:19 — do not quench the Spirit
• 2 Thessalonians 2:13 — sanctification by the Spirit
• 1 Timothy 4:1; 2 Timothy 1:14; Titus 3:5 — pastoral pneumatology
• Hebrews 2:4; 3:7; 6:4; 9:14; 10:15, 29 — Hebrews pneumatology
• 1 Peter 1:2, 11–12; 3:18; 4:14; 2 Peter 1:21 — Petrine pneumatology
• 1 John 2:20–27; 3:24; 4:1–6, 13; 5:6–8 — Johannine pneumatology
• Jude 19–20 — Spirit references
• Revelation 1:4, 10; 2:7, 11, 17, 29; 3:6, 13, 22; 4:5; 5:6; 14:13; 19:10; 22:17 — apocalyptic pneumatology
• Didache §§7–10 (early baptismal-eucharistic context)
• Ignatius of Antioch, To the Magnesians and To the Ephesians (early trinitarian liturgical context)
• Tertullian, Against Praxeas (early trinitarian articulation)
• Origen, On First Principles I.3
• Athanasius, Letters to Serapion
• Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit
• Gregory of Nazianzus, Theological Oration V
• Gregory of Nyssa, Against the Pneumatomachi
• Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures XVI–XVII
• Augustine, On the Trinity V, XV
• Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John
• John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith I.7–8, 13
• Anselm, On the Procession of the Holy Spirit
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.36–38
• Bonaventure, Sentences I
• Richard of St Victor, On the Trinity
• Symeon the New Theologian, Discourses
• Gregory Palamas, Triads
• Luther, Large Catechism on the Third Article
• Augsburg Confession I, V; Formula of Concord II, XI
• Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion III
• Heidelberg Catechism Q. 53
• Belgic Confession Article 11
• Westminster Confession of Faith Chapter 1.5–10
• Articles of Religion of the Methodist Church (1784), Article IV
• John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament on John 14–16, Acts 2, Romans 8
• John Wesley, Standard Sermons, Sermons 8, 10, 11, 18, 40, 45, 85
• Charles Wesley, “Spirit of faith, come down,” “Granted is the Saviour’s prayer,” “Love divine, all loves excelling”
• Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections; A Treatise concerning Religious Affections
• Abraham Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit (1900)
• Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/4 (fragment on baptism)
• Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (St Vladimir’s, 1976)
• Sergei Bulgakov, The Comforter (Eerdmans, 2004)
• Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit (3 vols., 1979–80)
• Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life (Fortress, 1992)
• Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology III (Eerdmans, 1998)
• John Zizioulas, Being as Communion (St Vladimir’s, 1985)
• Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self (Cambridge, 2013)
• Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Pneumatology (Baker, 2002)
• Frank Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit (Zondervan, 2006) — Pentecostal-ecumenical articulation