who has spoken through the prophets

The Text

The clause closes the pneumatological cluster of Article 3 and bridges to the ecclesiological cluster that follows. Having confessed the Spirit’s divinity (clause 16), procession (clause 17), and co-worship (clause 18), the creed now confesses the Spirit’s speaking — the work by which the Spirit has communicated the word of God through the prophetic history of Israel and, on the catholic reading, through the whole inspired succession that issues in the Scriptures of the church.

The clause is the creed’s compressed doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture — and it locates that doctrine pneumatologically. The Bible is not, in the creed’s confession, primarily a human literary deposit, nor a divine dictation bypassing the human authors, but the speaking of the Spirit through human instruments. The same Spirit who is Lord and giver of life and co-worshiped is the Spirit who spoke — and what he spoke is the Scripture the church reads. The doctrine of Scripture is therefore, in the structure of the creed, a sub-clause of the doctrine of the Spirit: bibliology is pneumatology.

The clause also does a quiet but decisive piece of dogmatic work against an ancient heresy: it confesses that the same Spirit who inspires the church’s faith is the same Spirit who spoke in the Old Testament prophets. This is the creed’s refutation of Marcionism — the second-century heresy that severed the God of the Old Testament from the God of the New, rejected the Hebrew Scriptures, and constructed a truncated canon. The creed will not allow it: the Spirit who is confessed in Article 3 is the Spirit who spoke through the prophets, and the prophets are the prophets of Israel. The two Testaments have one divine Author.

Translation Notes

Lalēsan / locutus est — has spoken. The verb of the Spirit’s communicative agency. The aorist/perfect names a completed speaking with abiding effect: the Spirit spoke, definitively, in the prophetic history, and what he spoke abides as Scripture. The choice of speaking (λαλέω, the act of utterance) rather than merely word (λόγος, the content) is significant: the creed confesses the Spirit as the personal speaker, not as the impersonal medium of a message. Revelation is, in the creed’s grammar, an act of personal divine address.

Dia tōn prophētōn / per prophetas — through the prophets. The preposition of instrumentality, and the term that defines the scope. The διά / per names the prophets as the human instruments through whom the Spirit spoke — neither bypassing them (the Spirit did not dictate over the heads of the prophets, erasing their humanity) nor being reduced to them (the prophetic word is not merely human religious genius). The patristic-catholic doctrine of inspiration holds both: the Spirit is the primary author, the prophets are true secondary authors, and the one Scripture is fully the Spirit’s word and fully the prophets’ words. The instrumental διά exactly parallels clause 9 (creation through the Son): as the Father creates through the Son, so God reveals through the Spirit in the prophets — the same trinitarian grammar of mediated divine action.

Prophētēs / propheta — prophet. The word names a spokesperson, one who speaks for another (πρό + φημί), not primarily a predictor. The biblical prophet is the one through whom God’s word comes to God’s people — a word of judgment, of comfort, of summons, of promise, and (among other things, but not primarily) of things to come. The creed’s prophets has been read by the catholic tradition with deliberate breadth: it embraces Moses and the Law (Deut. 18:15–18; 34:10), the former and latter prophets, the psalmists (David is called a prophet, Acts 2:30), and — patristically — the whole inspired succession reaching John the Baptist and the apostolic-prophetic foundation of the church (Eph. 2:20; 3:5; 2 Pet. 3:2). The clause is therefore not a narrow reference to the prophetic books alone but a confession that the Spirit is the author of the whole of inspired Scripture.

The older BCP 1662 who spake by the Prophets uses by where modern translations use through; the older English by could carry the instrumental sense (by the agency of), but through is unambiguous in contemporary English and has become standard.

Historical Context

The clause was added at the Council of Constantinople (381) as part of the pneumatological expansion (clauses 16–19). Its immediate dogmatic context is twofold.

First, it completes the anti-Pneumatomachian argument. The Pneumatomachi reduced the Spirit to a creature; the creed has confessed his divinity (16), his eternal procession (17), and his co-worship (18); the present clause adds his divine work in revelation. A creature cannot be the author of the word of God; the Spirit is the author of the word of God (he spoke through the prophets); therefore the Spirit is not a creature. The clause is the pneumatological argument’s final move: the Spirit does what only God can do — he speaks God’s own word.

Second, the clause stands against Marcionism and, more broadly, against every severing of the two Testaments. Marcion of Sinope (mid-2nd c.) had taught that the God of the Hebrew Scriptures was a lesser, inferior deity, distinct from the Father of Jesus Christ; he rejected the Old Testament and constructed a truncated canon (an edited Luke and ten Pauline letters). The rule of faith and the creeds were, from the beginning, in part a refutation of Marcion: the one God of the first article is maker of heaven and earth (against Marcion’s denigration of the creator), and the Spirit of the third article spoke through the prophets (against Marcion’s rejection of the Hebrew prophetic Scriptures). The clause confesses the unity of the two Testaments under one divine Author. The Spirit of the church is the Spirit of Isaiah and Ezekiel; the God who speaks in the gospel is the God who spoke in the Law and the Prophets.

The clause has subsequently been the creed’s locus for the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture. The catholic tradition has consistently read the clause as the confession that Scripture is theopneustos — God-breathed (2 Tim. 3:16) — by the agency of the Holy Spirit, who spoke through the prophets (2 Pet. 1:21). The patristic, scholastic, Reformation, and modern doctrines of Scripture are, in their various idioms, expositions of this clause. The Reformation disputes over Scripture (its authority, sufficiency, clarity, relation to tradition) and the modern disputes over Scripture (inspiration, inerrancy, historical criticism, the relation of the divine and human authorship) are all, in the structure of the creed, sub-disputes within the doctrine of the Spirit who spoke through the prophets.

Lines of Interpretation

Patristic

Tradition: Irenaeus, Against Heresies III–IV, Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching; Tertullian, Against Marcion; Origen, On First Principles IV; Athanasius, Letters to Serapion; Basil, On the Holy Spirit; Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, City of God; Gregory the Great, Moralia (preface)

The patristic settlement reads the clause as the confession of the Spirit’s authorship of Scripture and the unity of the two Testaments. Irenaeus’s Against Heresies and Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching are the foundational anti-Marcionite texts: the one God spoke through the prophets and through the apostles; the Old Testament and the New have one Author and one economy; the prophets did not speak of a different God than the God of the gospel but prophesied the very Christ who came. Irenaeus’s principle — that the prophets prophesied Christ, so that the Old Testament is itself a Christian book — became the catholic reading.

Origen’s On First Principles IV is the great patristic treatise on the inspiration and interpretation of Scripture. Origen’s doctrine: the whole of Scripture is inspired by the Spirit; Scripture has a bodily (literal-historical), psychic (moral), and spiritual (mystical-Christological) sense; the Spirit who inspired the text is the Spirit who illumines the reader, so that Scripture is rightly understood only in the same Spirit by whom it was written. Origen’s threefold sense developed into the medieval fourfold sense; its dogmatic substance — that the Spirit is both the author and the interpreter of Scripture — is the catholic settlement.

Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine gives the great Latin patristic hermeneutic: the Spirit who spoke through the prophets gave a Scripture whose res (subject matter) is the love of God and neighbor, and every reading that builds up love is a reading in the Spirit’s intention, even where the reader has not grasped the literal sense the human author intended. Augustine’s City of God reads the whole of salvation history as the prophetic-Spirit-authored narrative of the two cities.

Basil’s On the Holy Spirit integrates the clause with the anti-Pneumatomachian argument: the Spirit who inspired the prophets is the Spirit who is co-worshiped; the church’s Scripture is the Spirit’s speech, and a creature cannot be the author of the word of God.

Strengths

• The patristic anti-Marcionite settlement (one Author, two Testaments) is the permanent catholic foundation
• Origen’s doctrine of the Spirit as both author and illuminator of Scripture is permanently valuable
• Augustine’s love-hermeneutic gives the doctrine its proper telos
• The integration with the anti-Pneumatomachian argument is dogmatically decisive

Weaknesses

• The patristic allegorical hermeneutic, pressed without discipline, could detach the spiritual sense from the literal — a danger the catholic tradition itself recognized and worked to constrain
• The polemical anti-Marcionite context occasionally produced sharper articulations than the catholic substance required

Scholastic

Tradition: Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon; Peter Lombard, Sentences; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.1, II-II.171–174 (on prophecy); the medieval doctrine of the fourfold sense; Nicholas of Lyra

The scholastic tradition received the clause and articulated it under two heads: the doctrine of prophecy (the mode of the Spirit’s speaking through the human prophet) and the doctrine of the senses of Scripture (the literal and the threefold spiritual sense: allegorical, moral, anagogical).

Aquinas’s treatment of prophecy in ST II-II.171–174 is the comprehensive scholastic articulation. Prophecy is a gift (a charism, not a habit), by which the Spirit elevates the prophet’s mind to perceive and to communicate divine truth; the prophet is a true instrument — neither a passive automaton (the Spirit does not erase the prophet’s human faculties) nor an independent author (the prophetic word is the Spirit’s, not merely the prophet’s religious insight). Aquinas’s instrumental doctrine of inspiration (the prophet as the Spirit’s instrumentum) parallels his doctrine of the incarnate Son’s humanity as the instrumentum coniunctum (clause 11): the Spirit works through the human author without overriding the human author’s proper agency.

Aquinas’s ST I.1.10 affirms the literal sense as the foundation (all the spiritual senses are founded on the literal, and no doctrine is to be built on the spiritual sense alone that is not elsewhere taught literally) — a discipline that constrained the allegorical excess the patristic tradition had risked. Nicholas of Lyra’s 14th-century literal-historical commentary pressed this further and was a major influence on the Reformation’s hermeneutical recovery of the literal sense.

Strengths

• Aquinas’s instrumental doctrine of inspiration (true divine authorship, true human authorship) is the catholic settlement
• The scholastic discipline of grounding all doctrine on the literal sense constrained allegorical excess
• The integration of the doctrine of prophecy with the doctrine of the incarnation (the instrumentum parallel) is theologically elegant

Weaknesses

• The fourfold-sense schema, mechanically applied, could still detach interpretation from the text
• The Aristotelian-faculty psychology in which prophecy is articulated requires translation

Lutheran

Tradition: Luther, prefaces to the biblical books, Bondage of the Will, On the Councils and the Church; the Formula of Concord (the sola Scriptura principle); Lutheran scholastic bibliology (Gerhard, Quenstedt)

The Lutheran tradition has held the clause as the dogmatic ground of sola Scriptura — the principle that Scripture, as the Spirit’s speech, is the supreme authority and norm for the church’s faith and life. Luther’s doctrine: the Spirit who spoke through the prophets and apostles gave a Scripture that is clear in its central message (the perspicuity of Scripture in what pertains to salvation), sufficient for faith and life, and self-authenticating by the inward witness of the same Spirit who authored it. The external word (Scripture, preaching, sacrament) and the internal witness of the Spirit are not opposed: the Spirit speaks through the word, not apart from it (Luther’s polemic against the Schwärmer, the enthusiasts who claimed the Spirit apart from the word).

Luther’s Christological hermeneutic — was Christum treibet, “what presses Christ” — is the Lutheran reading of the clause’s scope: the Spirit spoke through the prophets of Christ, and the whole of Scripture is rightly read as it bears witness to Christ. The principle is patristic in inheritance (Irenaeus) and characteristically Lutheran in its sharpness.

The later Lutheran scholastic bibliology (Gerhard, Quenstedt, Calov) developed a highly elaborated doctrine of verbal inspiration; some of these articulations pressed toward a near-dictation theory that the catholic instrumental doctrine (true human authorship) does not require, and that the Lutheran confessional substance does not demand.

Strengths

• The clause as the ground of sola Scriptura is a substantive Reformation contribution
• Luther’s Christological hermeneutic recovers the patristic reading of Scripture’s scope
• The integration of external word and internal Spirit-witness guards against both rationalism and enthusiasm

Weaknesses

• The later Lutheran scholastic verbal-inspiration articulations pressed toward a dictation model the catholic instrumental doctrine does not require
• The was Christum treibet principle, applied without discipline, has occasionally been used to relativize portions of the canon (Luther’s own ambivalence about James)

Reformed

Tradition: Calvin, Institutes I.6–9; the Belgic Confession Articles 3–7; the Westminster Confession Ch. 1; the doctrine of the internal testimony of the Spirit; B. B. Warfield; Herman Bavinck; Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1–2

The Reformed tradition has held the clause with particular doctrinal development on the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit (the testimonium Spiritus Sancti internum). Calvin’s Institutes I.7 is the foundational text: the authority of Scripture is not finally established by the church’s authorization, nor by rational proofs, but by the inward witness of the same Spirit who spoke through the prophets; the Spirit who authored the word persuades the believer’s heart that the word is God’s. The doctrine integrates the present clause with the doctrine of assurance: the Spirit who spoke through the prophets is the Spirit who witnesses to the believer that what was spoken is true.

The Westminster Confession Ch. 1 is the most fully elaborated Reformed bibliology in the confessional tradition: Scripture is given by the Spirit, is the supreme judge of controversies, is sufficient and (in what pertains to salvation) clear, and is finally authenticated by the Spirit’s internal witness. The chapter is the high-water mark of Reformed scholastic bibliology.

The Old Princeton tradition (Hodge, Warfield) developed, in the 19th–20th centuries, a doctrine of plenary verbal inspiration and inerrancy of the original autographs; the Dutch Reformed tradition (Kuyper, Bavinck) developed an organic doctrine of inspiration that emphasized the Spirit’s work through the full humanity and historical particularity of the human authors. Barth’s Church Dogmatics I/1–2 reframed the doctrine around the threefold form of the word (revealed, written, preached) and the event of Scripture becoming the word of God as the Spirit speaks through it — a substantial 20th-century Reformed reconstruction that has been both influential and contested.

Strengths

• The doctrine of the internal testimony of the Spirit is a permanent Reformed contribution, integrating bibliology and pneumatology exactly as the clause does
• The Westminster Confession Ch. 1 is the most carefully elaborated confessional bibliology
• The Dutch organic doctrine of inspiration honors the full human authorship the catholic instrumental doctrine requires

Weaknesses

• The Old Princeton inerrancy articulation has been contested both ecumenically and within the Reformed tradition; critics argue it presses precision beyond what the doctrine of inspiration requires
• The Barthian reconstruction has been criticized from the other side for underdetermining the abiding given-ness of the inspired text
• Reformed scholastic bibliology, like the Lutheran, sometimes drifted toward a dictation model

Eastern Orthodox

Tradition: the patristic-liturgical tradition; the lectionary and the iconography of the prophets; the doctrine of Scripture within Holy Tradition; modern: Georges Florovsky, John Behr, Andrew Louth

The Eastern tradition has held the clause with characteristic emphasis on the unity of Scripture and Tradition in the one life of the Spirit-bearing church. The Eastern doctrine: Scripture is the Spirit’s speech through the prophets and apostles, but Scripture is not read in isolation from the Spirit-filled life of the church; the same Spirit who spoke through the prophets indwells the church and illumines the church’s reading. Scripture is the supreme written deposit within Holy Tradition, not a source set over against Tradition; the East does not frame the question as Scripture vs. tradition (the Reformation antithesis) but as Scripture within the one Spirit-borne Tradition.

The Eastern reading is intensely Christological and liturgical. The prophets are read, in the lectionary and the iconography, as those who beheld and proclaimed Christ before his coming; the great prophets appear in the iconostasis and the festal iconography as witnesses to the incarnation. The Eastern Old Testament lectionary (the paroemia) selects prophetic readings precisely for their Christological-festal resonance: the clause’s spoke through the prophets is performed every time the church reads Isaiah at Christmas or Ezekiel’s closed gate at a Marian feast.

Georges Florovsky’s “neo-patristic synthesis” and John Behr’s work on the formation of Christian theology have, in the modern period, recovered the patristic reading for ecumenical conversation: Scripture is the church’s book, authored by the Spirit, rightly read in the Spirit within the church’s rule of faith.

Strengths

• The integration of Scripture within the one Spirit-borne Tradition avoids the sterile Scripture-vs.-tradition antithesis
• The Christological-liturgical reading of the prophets is faithful to the patristic settlement
• The modern neo-patristic recovery has been ecumenically fruitful

Weaknesses

• The Scripture-within-Tradition framing can, if imprecisely held, blur the normative priority of the inspired text — the substantive Reformation concern
• The liturgical-lectionary selection of prophetic texts, while theologically rich, can underexpose the church to the prophets’ full canonical range

Wesleyan

(See Wesleyan Voice below.)

Modern Ecumenical

Tradition: the historical-critical movement and the church’s response; Dei Verbum (Vatican II, 1965); Karl Barth; Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative; the modern recovery of theological interpretation of Scripture; the Pentecostal-charismatic recovery of the prophetic

The modern period has been the period of the most intense engagement with the doctrine the clause confesses, because the rise of historical criticism (18th c. onward) posed the sharpest test: if the biblical books have a complex human history of composition, redaction, and transmission, in what sense did the Spirit speak through the prophets? The major modern positions:

The Roman Catholic Dei Verbum (the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, 1965) is one of the great modern ecumenical statements: revelation is the self-communication of God, supremely in Christ; Scripture is written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit with God as author and the human writers as true authors; Scripture is to be read in the same Spirit in which it was written, attending to both the human historical particularity and the divine intention, within the living Tradition of the church. Dei Verbum substantially converges with the Reformed organic doctrine and the patristic instrumental doctrine.

Hans Frei’s The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (1974) diagnosed the modern hermeneutical crisis: the historical-critical method tended to relocate the meaning of the text from the narrative itself to the reconstructed events or sources behind it, eclipsing the Scripture as the Spirit-authored narrative the church reads. The subsequent theological interpretation of Scripture movement (the Scripture Project, the theological commentary series, the work of figures across the traditions) has, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, recovered the catholic conviction the clause confesses: Scripture is the church’s Spirit-authored book, rightly read theologically and ecclesially, with historical criticism a servant and not the master of the reading.

The global Pentecostal-charismatic renewal has recovered, in much of world Christianity, the present-tense dimension of the prophetic: the Spirit who spoke through the prophets is the Spirit who speaks, and the ecumenical conversation about the relation of the closed canon to continuing prophetic gifts has been one of the live questions of the period.

Strengths

• Dei Verbum is a landmark modern ecumenical convergence on the catholic instrumental doctrine
• The theological-interpretation movement has recovered the church’s Spirit-authored reading against historical-critical reductionism
• The clause provides the dogmatic frame within which historical criticism can be a servant rather than a solvent of the doctrine of Scripture

Weaknesses

• Some modern reconstructions so emphasized the human-historical dimension that the divine authorship became attenuated
• The relation of the closed canon to continuing charismatic prophecy remains an unresolved live question between traditions

Wesleyan Voice

Wesley’s confession of the clause is unambiguous and is, characteristically, intensely practical. The Methodist Articles of Religion (1784), Article V — Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation — confesses: The Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation; so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an article of faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. Article VI affirms the unity of the Testaments against the residual Marcionite temptation: The Old Testament is not contrary to the New; for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ. Wesley’s articles are the Methodist confession of exactly what the present clause confesses: the Spirit spoke through the prophets, the two Testaments have one Author, and the Spirit-authored Scripture is sufficient for salvation.

What is distinctively Wesleyan is the phrase Wesley applied to himself: homo unius libri — a man of one book. In the preface to his Standard Sermons he writes: I want to know one thing — the way to heaven… God himself has condescended to teach the way… He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God! The Wesleyan doctrine of Scripture is not primarily a theory of inspiration but a posture toward the Spirit-authored book: it is the book by which one finds the way to heaven, to be read on one’s knees, in prayer to the same Spirit who authored it, for the practical end of salvation and holiness.

The Wesleyan integration of the clause with the doctrine of the witness of the Spirit is characteristic. The Spirit who spoke through the prophets is the same Spirit who, by the internal witness (a doctrine Wesley shares with the Reformed tradition; see [[i-believe-in-the-holy-spirit]]), persuades the believer’s heart that the word is God’s and that its promises are for me. Scripture-reading, in the Wesleyan practice, is not a merely intellectual exercise but a means of grace in which the Spirit who authored the text speaks it afresh into the believer’s life. The Quadrilateral later attributed to the Wesleyan tradition (Scripture, tradition, reason, experience) is, in its authentic Wesleyan form, not four coordinate authorities but the affirmation that Scripture — the Spirit’s speech through the prophets — is the primary and norming authority, illumined by tradition, reason, and experience, never displaced by them.

Charles Wesley’s hymnody confesses the clause directly. Come, divine Interpreter, / bring me eternal life; / put thy own perception here, / and end the dark’ning strife: / open my eyes of faith, and show / the Father and the Son; / let me thy real presence know, / and feel that God is one. The hymn prays to the Spirit as the divine Interpreter of the very Scripture the Spirit authored — the clause turned into prayer. And Spirit of truth, essential God, / who didst thy ancient saints inspire, / shed in their hearts thy love abroad, / and touch their hallowed lips with fire — a direct confession that the Spirit who inspired the ancient saints (the prophets) is the Spirit invoked over the church’s reading.

The pastoral Wesleyan posture: confess that the Spirit spoke through the prophets and that the two Testaments have one Author, without modification; receive Scripture as the sufficient, Spirit-authored means of grace, to be read prayerfully and practically for the way to heaven and the life of holiness; integrate the doctrine of inspiration with the doctrine of the Spirit’s internal witness, so that reading is communion with the Author; hold Scripture as the primary and norming authority within, never against, the church’s tradition, reason, and experience; and let the parish read the Bible homo unius libri — as people of one book, on their knees, before the Spirit who wrote it.

Hymnody

The hymnody on this clause is the repertoire of the word of God — the hymns that confess Scripture as the Spirit’s speech and that pray for the Spirit’s illumination of the reader.

“Break thou the bread of life” (Mary A. Lathbury, 1877) is the great American hymn of the Spirit-illumined Scripture: Beyond the sacred page / I seek thee, Lord; / my spirit pants for thee, / O living Word. The second stanza prays the present clause directly: Bless thou the truth, dear Lord, / to me, to me, / as thou didst bless the bread / by Galilee.

“Spirit of God, descend upon my heart” (George Croly, 1854) prays for the Spirit’s illumination of the word: Teach me to feel that thou art always nigh; / teach me the struggles of the soul to bear.

“Come, Holy Ghost, our hearts inspire” (Charles Wesley, 1740 — Wesley’s own hymn on Scripture) is the great Wesleyan hymn of the present clause: Come, Holy Ghost, our hearts inspire, / let us thine influence prove; / source of the old prophetic fire, / fountain of life and love. // Come, Holy Ghost, for moved by thee / the prophets wrote and spoke; / unlock the truth, thyself the key, / unseal the sacred book. The phrase moved by thee the prophets wrote and spoke is the credal clause turned into a hymn — and the phrase the prophets wrote and spoke draws directly on 2 Peter 1:21.

“O Word of God incarnate” (William W. How, 1867) confesses the Spirit-authored Scripture in the great Victorian form: O Word of God incarnate, / O Wisdom from on high, / O Truth unchanged, unchanging, / O Light of our dark sky: / we praise thee for the radiance / that from the hallowed page, / a lantern to our footsteps, / shines on from age to age.

“Lord, thy word abideth” (Henry W. Baker, 1861) is the great hymn of the abiding Scripture: Lord, thy word abideth, / and our footsteps guideth; / who its truth believeth / light and joy receiveth.

“Thanks to God whose Word was spoken” (R. T. Brooks, 1954) is the major modern hymn of the Spirit-spoken word: Thanks to God whose Word was spoken / in the deed that made the earth. / His the voice that called a nation, / his the fires that tried her worth.

“Book of books, our people’s strength” (Percy Dearmer, 1929) is the major early-20th-century hymn of Scripture.

“Wisdom’s feast is spread, come dine” and the modern hymns of the lectern and the open Bible carry the clause in contemporary worship.

For the liturgical year: this clause is performed every time the church reads the Old Testament lesson and the prophets in the lectionary — which is every Sunday. The proper liturgical context for sustained teaching is Bible Sunday (where observed), the season of Advent (the prophetic season par excellence, when Isaiah is read week by week), and any service that includes the response The Word of the Lord / Thanks be to God — which is itself a confession of the present clause.

Pastoral and Liturgical Use

Three pastoral tasks attach to this clause.

The first is teaching the parish that bibliology is pneumatology. Most parishioners hold their doctrine of Scripture, if they hold one consciously at all, as a free-standing belief — Scripture is true, or authoritative, or inspired — without connecting it to the Holy Spirit. The creed will not let the doctrines stand apart: the Bible is what it is because the Spirit spoke through the prophets. The pastor’s task is to teach the parish that the authority of Scripture is the authority of the Spirit who is Lord; that the right reading of Scripture is a reading in the same Spirit who authored it; that Bible study is, properly, a means of grace and an act of communion with the divine Author. This reframing rescues the doctrine of Scripture from the sterile modern polarization (inerrancy vs. liberalism) by relocating it where the creed puts it — within the doctrine of the Spirit.

The second is teaching the unity of the two Testaments. The functional Marcionism of much contemporary Protestant practice — the Old Testament quietly neglected, treated as sub-Christian, read only for its messianic prooftexts or its devotional psalms, the prophets reduced to predictors — is exactly what this clause was added to refute. The pastor’s task is to teach the parish that the Spirit of Pentecost is the Spirit of Sinai; that the God who speaks in the Sermon on the Mount is the God who spoke through Amos; that to neglect the prophets is to neglect the Spirit’s own speech. A congregation that does not read and preach the Old Testament has, in the precise sense of the creed, a deficient doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

The third is restoring the prayed reading of Scripture. The catholic tradition has always read Scripture epicletically — with the invocation of the Spirit who authored it. The collect for the Spirit’s illumination before the reading, the lectio divina of the monastic and devotional tradition, the Wesleyan practice of reading on one’s knees, Charles Wesley’s prayer unlock the truth, thyself the key, unseal the sacred book — all of these enact the clause: the Spirit who spoke the word is invoked to speak it again. The pastor’s task is to recover, in the parish’s corporate and private practice, the prayer for the Spirit’s illumination — so that the reading of Scripture is not the analysis of an ancient document but the church’s listening to its living Author.

For the preacher: this clause warrants and demands the preaching of the whole counsel of God, both Testaments, the prophets included. The lectionary is itself a confession of the clause; the preacher who follows it faithfully, and does not silently drop the Old Testament lesson, is teaching the doctrine of the Spirit who spoke through the prophets. The proper homiletical posture before the text is the epicletic one: the preacher invokes the Spirit who authored the word to speak it again through the preaching, and trusts that the same Spirit who spoke through the prophets will speak through the faithful exposition of what he said.

For the liturgist: the dialogue The Word of the Lord / Thanks be to God (and The Gospel of the Lord / Praise to you, O Christ) is a small, weekly, almost invisible performance of this clause — the congregation’s confession that what has just been read is not merely an ancient text but the speech of the living Spirit. The liturgist who ensures that the Scriptures are read well, audibly, and with the dialogue intact is catechizing the parish in the doctrine of inspiration more effectively than instruction alone.

Further Reading

• Deuteronomy 18:15–22 — the prophet like Moses; the test of the prophetic word
• Numbers 11:25–29; 12:6–8 — the Spirit and the prophets
• 1 Samuel 10:6, 10; 19:20–24 — the Spirit and prophecy
• 2 Samuel 23:2 — the Spirit of the Lord speaks by me
• Nehemiah 9:30 — you warned them by your Spirit through your prophets
• Psalm 19; 119 — the word of God
• Isaiah 6; 8:11; 59:21; 61:1 — prophetic call and the Spirit
• Jeremiah 1:4–10; 36 — the word that comes; the dictated scroll
• Ezekiel 2:1–3:11; 11:5 — the Spirit entered into me
• Joel 2:28–29 — I will pour out my Spirit… your sons and daughters shall prophesy
• Micah 3:8 — I am filled with power, with the Spirit of the Lord
• Zechariah 7:12 — the law and the words that the Lord of hosts had sent by his Spirit through the former prophets
• Luke 24:25–27, 44–47 — beginning with Moses and all the prophets
• John 5:39, 46 — the Scriptures… testify on my behalf
• Acts 1:16; 2:16–21; 4:25; 28:25 — the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by David / through Isaiah
• Romans 1:1–2; 16:25–26 — promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures
• 2 Corinthians 3 — the two covenants and the Spirit
• Ephesians 2:20; 3:5 — the foundation of the prophets and apostles; revealed by the Spirit
• 2 Timothy 3:14–17 — all Scripture is God-breathed
• Hebrews 1:1–2 — long ago God spoke… by the prophets… in these last days by a Son
• 1 Peter 1:10–12 — the Spirit of Christ within them
• 2 Peter 1:19–21 — moved by the Holy Spirit, men and women spoke from God
• 2 Peter 3:2, 15–16 — the prophets, the apostles, and Paul’s letters as Scripture
• Irenaeus, Against Heresies III–IV; Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching
• Tertullian, Against Marcion
• Origen, On First Principles IV
• Athanasius, Letters to Serapion; Festal Letter 39 (on the canon)
• Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit
• Augustine, On Christian Doctrine; City of God (esp. XVII–XVIII)
• Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, preface
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.1; II-II.171–174
• Nicholas of Lyra, Postilla literalis
• Luther, prefaces to the books of the Bible; On the Councils and the Church
• Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion I.6–9
• Belgic Confession Articles 3–7
• Westminster Confession of Faith Chapter 1
• Articles of Religion of the Methodist Church (1784), Articles V–VI
• John Wesley, preface to the Standard Sermons (homo unius libri)
• John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old and New Testaments, prefaces
• Charles Wesley, “Come, Holy Ghost, our hearts inspire,” “Come, divine Interpreter”
• Dei Verbum (Second Vatican Council, 1965)
• Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1–2 (the doctrine of the Word of God)
• Georges Florovsky, Bible, Church, Tradition
• Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (Yale, 1974)
• John Webster, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (Cambridge, 2003)
• Telford Work, Living and Active: Scripture in the Economy of Salvation (Eerdmans, 2002)
• John Behr, The Way to Nicaea (St Vladimir’s, 2001)