Posted on 07/16/2004 9:50:41 PM PDT by narses
The Father and Jesus are well known - both have starred in movies and have been the subjects of countless books, paintings and music compositions. What about the third member of the Trinity?
The Holy Spirit does lots of heavy lifting in the Bible by providing supernatural strength, direction and courage to scriptural heroes.
When the world was created, when Jesus was conceived, when he was crucified, the Holy Spirit was there. When Saul was converted, when John baptized Jesus, the Holy Spirit was there. When the early Christian church was founded on the Day of Pentecost nearly 2,000 years ago, the Holy Spirit was there.
But the Holy Spirit never got the attention the Father and Son did. After the third century many early Christians stopped speaking a holy language called "tongues" - a gift the Holy Spirit bestowed upon the Apostles, Mary and more than 100 other believers on Pentecost, according to Christian tradition.
The Holy Spirit fell from prominence in modern times. It took the founding of new religious movements, increase in scholarly interest and popular literature for the Holy Spirit to return to the spotlight.
In the past 20 years, experts said, more books have been written about the Holy Spirit than at any other time in history. In the early 20th century, a religious movement began that stressed the work and gifts of the Holy Spirit. Known as Pentecostalism, the movement grew steadily, and in the 1960s it began to have an influence on Catholicism and other mainstream denominations.
The expanding Pentecostal movement has brought the mysterious and often misunderstood figure to center stage.
The Rev. Andrew Apostoli of St. Leopold Franciscan Friary in New York recalled his ordination in 1967. It was just after the Second Vatican Council, a worldwide meeting of the Catholic Church convened to address reforms. Around that time, Catholics interested in the Holy Spirit were launching a movement that came to be known as "charismatic renewal."
Archbishop Fulton Sheen, he said, "told me I had just finished four years of theology and had never made a major study of the Holy Spirit. It occurred to me that the Holy Spirit had not been emphasized, and he needed to be."
Apostoli, who has written four books on the Holy Spirit and is working on a fifth, said: "As a young brother, I started seeking the Holy Spirit. Vatican II had stressed the Holy Spirit, and many Catholics became curious."
The mainstreaming of Pentecostal practices brought its adherents out of isolation.
"We've jumped over the firewall and gone mainstream," said J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma & Christian Life, a popular Pentecostal magazine.
"Our readers were once considered low-income and from the wrong side of the tracks. Now, there are Pentecostal Catholics who use the term 'charismatic,' Lutherans, Episcopalians and Baptists. Interest in the Holy Spirit is broad.
"We've got celebrities and people in public life talking about the Holy Spirit. Think of this - the attorney general of the United States is Pentecostal." (Attorney General John Ashcroft is a member of the Assembly of God, one of the largest Pentecostal denominations, with more than 2.5 million members nationwide.)
Pentecostalism has had an impact on popular culture. Evangelists speak in tongues on television. Magazines track the cultural appeal of the Holy Spirit.
In many places, Pentecostal, "sanctified" and "holiness" churches are no longer storefronts but megastructures sprouting along interstate highways, Grady said.
And scholars at seminaries and universities have turned their attention to the Holy Spirit with pneumatology, the study of spiritual beings and phenomena, especially belief in spirits intervening between humans and God - in short, study of the Holy Spirit. The serious scholarship has helped blunt the criticism that early Pentecostals once emphasized experience over doctrine. On Sunday, Pentecost Sunday, millions of people in the United States and around the world will attend services and seek the Holy Spirit.
The congregation of Lighthouse Church of God in Christ was expecting a visit from the Holy Spirit. After an hour of praying and praising, they were not disappointed.
During a recent service at the Dallas church, there were shouts of joy and tear-soaked faces. Some members were swaying, running and speaking in tongues.
The sermon was interrupted when the pastor deviated from his text to speak in tongues.
"The spirit cannot be choreographed," Michael Clerkley said later in his study.
"When the spirit moves, you are going wherever it takes you."
At 17, he said, the Holy Spirit took him to the altar, inspiring him to ask God into his life.
"There I was shouting and crying," Clerkley, 49, said. "I told the pastor later that I wanted to be a preacher. He laughed and said everyone knew that, because I couldn't introduce a speaker or read the announcements without preaching myself."
By age 19, he was an assistant preacher.
Deborah Ezell, a minister at Gospel Tabernacle Church in Dallas, recalled growing up in Tulsa, Okla., and "no one really talking about the Holy Spirit." She watched the Holy Spirit move other people while she was a child "but I didn't understand what was happening."
Then in 1987, she was going through a second divorce. She wanted God to make some changes in her life.
In the middle of Bible study, "my body was suddenly on fire, from my fingertips to my toes. My mouth twisted and I could hear myself saying something I did not comprehend."
The Bible study started at 7 p.m. "But God didn't get through with me until 2 a.m. I will never forget how everything looked brand new as I was driving home. The colors were brilliant. I was looking at the world with new eyes."
When a woman predicted years ago she would write a book, Ezell scoffed at the notion. Today, "Tongues of Fire: A Book About The Holy Spirit" (Dorrance Publishing Co., $15) is selling well, and she is planning a workshop to help people understand the Holy Spirit. "No one would have been able to tell me all those years ago that I would be writing and witnessing for the Holy Spirit," she said.
"My questions have been answered."
Confusion about the Holy Spirit - or Holy Ghost - abounds in theology and in Scripture.
If God is a spirit, why is the Holy Spirit needed?
Clerkley, the Lighthouse pastor, said that since God is infinite and man is finite, "how can the two communicate without a person in the middle? Jesus fulfills that role and so does the Holy Ghost.
"We are Clark Kent, but with the Holy Ghost we become Superman."
The Bible, chiefly through Paul's letters, attributes personal characteristics such as intellect, will and emotions to the Holy Spirit, Ezell wrote.
Yet, some theologians, looking to biblical metaphors of wind, fire and water, argue that the Holy Spirit represents a spiritual energy. They see the Holy Spirit as an impersonal entity - and thus make a point of referring to "it," not "him."
Translation from the ancient languages is a primary reason for the confusion over whether the Holy Spirit is personal or impersonal, said Alan Schreck, chair of the theology department at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio.
"The word 'spirit' in the original language of Greek and Hebrew is in the neuter form," said Schreck. "It is also difficult because in English, we don't think of a spirit as a person."
Does the Holy Spirit proceed from just God the Father, as Orthodox doctrine has insisted since 381? Or from the Father and the Son, as the Vatican decreed in 1014, when it rewrote the Nicene Creed? (That change has divided the two Christian branches for nearly 1,000 years.)
"This is still under discussion by the Vatican," Schreck said, "but when Pope John Paul prays with the Orthodox, he prays as they do as a way of seeking to reconcile the two branches. The Western Catholic Church's view is influenced by St. Augustine's writing of the Holy Spirit as a mutual procession from the Father and the Son."
If the Holy Spirit is a difficult concept to grasp, it's because the Trinity is, said French Arrington, who taught for 30 years at the Church of God Theological Seminary, a Pentecostal school in Cleveland, Tenn.
"The Holy Spirit is the third person in the godhead and acts within the will of God and of Jesus," he said.
"The nature of God is spirit. God communicates and gets things done through the Holy Spirit as he did through Jesus while his son was on earth. The three are intertwined and yet have independent actions: God the creator, Jesus the redeemer and the Holy Spirit the sanctifier or seal."
Schreck said, "At one point the Holy Spirit did take a back seat to God and to Jesus. From an academic and theological perspective, it has taken years for the role of the Holy Spirit to receive as much focus and attention."
Is the growth of Pentecostalism, which has been seen a new religious movement with very old roots, part of a cultural shift or, as some religious leaders believe, a sign that God, through the Holy Spirit, is preparing the body of the church for Christ's return?
"I don't know whether it is a cultural change or personal preferences that has brought so much attention to the Holy Spirit," said Corwin Smidt, head of the Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich.
"There are some people for whom the experience is more than the doctrine or the dogma," said Smidt, who has studied the charismatic movement among Catholics. Although the numbers are hard to pin down, Smidt said the Catholic charismatic movement grew steadily for 20 years before starting to slow in the late 1980s. He estimates there are 12 million charismatic Catholics, about 22 percent of the 65 million Catholics in the United States.
"The influx of Hispanic Catholics has kept growth steady during the past decade," Smidt said.
At one point, Paul warned the early Christians about reliance on speaking in tongues as the only gift of the Holy Spirit and evidence of salvation, Clerkley said. "It was not to say that it was bad, but that to experience God is much broader and deeper."
Grady, the magazine editor, said: "If the early criticism of Pentecostalism was there wasn't enough doctrine, there has been a flip-flop. There are hundreds of workshops on how Scripture should be read and applied.
"Scripture is being effectively used to say why we celebrate the gifts of the Holy Spirit."
Ezell believes the Holy Spirit has guided her life since she was a child.
"The Holy Spirit pulled me out of the clubs and helped me use gifts I did not know I had," she said.
"Ever since I was 6 years old, I knew there was something different about me. I knew that I would experience something extraordinary."
Ezell said she had to go "through the travails and heartache - to receive the Holy Spirit." She added, "When he claims you, there is no turning back."
She likens her work to the Apostles at the first Pentecost.
"When the Spirit filled them with different tongues and other gifts, they had to go forth. It's the same now. The Holy Spirit wants to be there when the faithful call out and when there is a job to be done. And the Spirit will empower you to do what is needed."
"This is still under discussion by the Vatican," Schreck said, "but when Pope John Paul prays with the Orthodox, he prays as they do as a way of seeking to reconcile the two branches. The Western Catholic Church's view is influenced by St. Augustine's writing of the Holy Spirit as a mutual procession from the Father and the Son."
Does the Holy Spirit proceed from just God the Father, as Orthodox doctrine has insisted since 381? Or from the Father and the Son, as the Vatican decreed in 1014, when it rewrote the Nicene Creed? (That change has divided the two Christian branches for nearly 1,000 years.)
"This is still under discussion by the Vatican," Schreck said, "but when Pope John Paul prays with the Orthodox, he prays as they do as a way of seeking to reconcile the two branches. The Western Catholic Church's view is influenced by St. Augustine's writing of the Holy Spirit as a mutual procession from the Father and the Son."
1.—Since there is a quarrel between the Romans and Greeks about the procession of the Holy Spirit, which greatly impede unity really for no other reason than that we do not wish to understand one another—we ask that we should not be compelled to any other creed but that we should remain with that which was handed down to us in the Holy Scriptures, in the Gospel, and in the writings of the holy Greek Doctors, that is, that the Holy Spirit proceeds, not from two sources and not by a double procession, but from one origin, from the Father through the Son. (Union of Brest)
But only the theology behind it, which is aptly expressed by St. Basil in his Adversus Eunomium:
Even if the Holy Spirit is third in dignity and order, why need he be third also in nature? For that he is second to the Son, having his being from him and receiving from him and announcing to us and being completely dependent on him, pious tradition recounts; but that his nature is third we are not taught by the Saints nor can we conclude logically from what has been said.
The Nicene creed written up by St Athanasius contained the filioque. Arian heretics who didn't believe that Jesus was fully God sought to remove the filioque, and "orthodox" heretics today are doing the same.
I'm sure even the "orthodox" agree that the Holy Ghost does NOT proceed from the Charismatic Renewal.
Charischismatics is a more appropriate term.
No, it didn't. You're thinking of the Creed of Pseudo-Athanasius.
Are you referring to the "Hinduque" in the Vatican 2 pseudo-Catholic version of the creed?
Even if the original version of the creed as adopted at the venerable council of Nicea doesn't contain the filioque, we know (from some of his letters) Saint Athanasius certainly acknowledged that the Holy Ghost does proceed from the Son.
For example:
St. Athanasius writes in about 360 to Serapion of Thmius:
Insofar as we understand the special relationship of the Son to the Father, we also understand that the Spirit has this same relationship to the Son. And since the Son says, "everything that the Father has is mine (John 16:15)," we will discover all these things also in the Spirit through the Son. And just as the Son was announced by the Father, who said, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased (Matthew 3:17)," so also is the Spirit of the Son; for, as the Apostle says, "He has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!' (Galatians 4:6)."
Unfortunately, as you know, the filioque isn't the only difference between the true Catholic Faith and the orthodox religion.
Here's an official statement made by a saintly pope a couple of decades after the Council of Nicea which addresses this question authoritatively.
Pope St. Damasus I, in a statement that has been preserved in the Acts of the Council of Rome of 382, writes:
"The Holy Spirit is not of the Father only, or the Spirit of the Son only, but He is the Spirit of the Father and the Son."
Clothe this matter in whatever ecumaniac double-speak you will, but the bottom-line is - the "orthodox" are wrong.
It wouldn't surprise me if our misguided "orthodox" adversaries have also removed any mention about "sins of omission".
I wonder how many who post on this thread consider themselves to be Charismatic. I've wondered this for some time. Are there any Catholics here who were or are involved in the Charismatic Movement within the Catholic Church?
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