An Examination Of Homotimia In St. Basil The Great’s On The Holy Spirit, And Contemporary Implications

By John L. W. James

[John L. W. James is pastor of Helier Chapel, Northfield, Birmingham, U.K., and is a graduate of Oak Hill Theological College, London.]

If “the nature and being of God is the foundation of all true religion and holy religious worship in the world,”[1] then the study of the person and work of the Holy Spirit is always paramount. However, given that contemporary evangelicalism divides itself along Charismatic and non-Charismatic lines (whatever those titles mean), that it tends towards disagreement and confusion in this area, and that dialogue is often characterized by overreaction countered with overreaction, such study is perhaps particularly timely.

Feelings run high precisely because, as John Owen states above, what we believe about the Spirit affects the shape of our corporate worship, about which we all care a great deal. In reaction to a perceived imbalance within sections of the Charismatic movement, we can be quick to reassert Christ-centered worship. The Spirit is “shy” and “self-effacing,” we say. He is a “sign-post” to the Son, glorified only as we bring glory to the Son to whom he points. Such was the zeal of my local University Christian Union that it banned the song “Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow” with the line “bring glory to the Spirit,” in order to avoid the mistake of giving the Spirit undue attention.

Perhaps it is better to be overcautious than risk losing sight of our Savior. I want to suggest, however, that far from being a position of safety, this attitude carries many dangers of its own. The equal honor of the Holy Spirit is a necessary outworking of our doctrine of the Trinity. If we neglect the Spirit we will divide the Godhead, and find ourselves teetering on the precipice of polytheism. Such a move erodes the very gospel we seek to protect, with significant theological and pastoral implications, as the spiritual bond that unites us to Christ begins to come unstuck.

The contemporary challenge highlights how historically anemic we have become, and how desperately we need to unearth our confessional heritage. Far from being new, the issue was addressed comprehensively by St. Basil the Great in the fourth century.

Basil’s argument for the equal honor of the Spirit contributed to the Constantinopolitan revision of the Nicene Creed, and this historical context provides a suitable lens for a contemporary critique. This article will begin with the theological developments of the fourth century, examine systematically the validity of the equal honor of the Holy Spirit, and finally draw some implications for our contemporary evangelical constituency.

I. Athanasius, Basil, And The Developments Of Nicaea-Constantinople

In a.d. 325 the council of Nicaea defended orthodox Christianity against the Arian heresy of ontological subordination within the Godhead through the formulation of a creed that asserted that the Son is consubstantial with the Father. However, the term consubstantial (homoousios) remained ambiguous, particularly as the final anathema used the terms hypostasis and ousia as apparent synonyms.[2] Also notably, belief in the Holy Spirit was asserted without clarification of his identity or relation to the Godhead. The result was that though traditional Arianism had been addressed directly, the door was open for Sabellianism on the one hand, in which hypostasis truly would be equated with ousia, and a second wave of Arianism on the other, in which ontological subordination would now also be applied to the Spirit.[3]

Our concern is primarily with this second heresy: the ontological subordination of the Spirit, fought against by both Athanasius and Basil after Nicaea in 325. This first section of the article will consider their arguments for the equal nature and honor of the Spirit with the Father and the Son, and their contribution to the clarification of Nicaea in a.d. 381.

1. Athanasius’s Foundational Work

Athanasius wrote to Serapion between 358 and 360 concerning the Holy Spirit.[4] Serapion sought advice on how to respond to believers who acknowledged the deity of the Son, but not the Spirit.[5] These letters constitute “the first extensive treatment of the Holy Spirit in the history of the church,”[6] and two important lines of argument can be summarized.

Firstly, Athanasius asserts the Spirit’s divinity by establishing his economic activity within the context of God’s inseparable operation.[7] In revelation, the Spirit can only be known through the Son, but we can only see the Son by being enlightened by the Spirit (Ep. Serap. 1.19).[8] Therefore, “only he who is of God . . . and consubstantial with him can thus impart knowledge of God in himself.”[9] In creation, “the Father creates all things through the Word in the Spirit,” and so also in recreation (Ep. Serap. 3.5).[10] The Spirit receives his mission as “sanctifier” from the Son. He does not himself partake in sanctification, but is instead partaken (Ep. Serap. 1.23). And so, “that which joins creation to the Word cannot belong to the creatures” (Ep. Serap. 1.25). The argument runs both ways, with soteriological implications.[11] “As the grace given is from the Father through the Son, so we can have no communion in the gift except in the Holy Spirit” (Ep. Serap. 1.30). The Spirit must necessarily be the uncreated creator working inseparably with the Son and the Father, in the one mission of God.

Secondly, Athanasius moves from the one divine mission to mutual indwelling and divine unity, asserting the Spirit’s indivisibility from, and thus ontological equality with, the Father and the Son. He establishes first the Son’s mission from the Father, and then, because “the Spirit bears the same relation to the Son as the Son to the Father” (Ep. Serap. 1.21), he moves to establish the Spirit’s mission from the Son and shows that “what the Spirit is in his mission from the Son he is antecedently and eternally in himself in God.”[12] He speaks of a perichoresis within the Godhead.[13] “When the Spirit is in us, the Word also, who gives the Spirit is in us, and in the Word is the Father” (Ep. Serap. 1.30; 3.6), moving from activity to nature. “There is from the Father one grace which is fulfilled through the Son in the Holy Spirit; and there is one divine nature, and one God ‘who is over all and through all and in all’” (Ep. Serap. 1.14). The Spirit then is united with the Father and the Son in a Trinity that is necessarily “all creative . . . consistent and in nature indivisible, and in activity . . . one” (Ep. Serap. 1.28).

Athanasius understands that the Spirit’s economic work is his mission from the Son: a mission that in turn is given by the Father. He builds his Pneumatology on his Christology asserted at Nicaea.[14] “If the Son is not a creature because he does not belong to the many, but is one as the Father is one; then the Spirit likewise” (Ep. Serap. 3.3). For Athanasius, “our experience of being created and sustained, of being saved and sanctified begins and ends in a relationship with the One who is Father, is Son and is Spirit.”[15] With an inseparable, indivisible Godhead he is then free to apply homoousia to the Spirit.[16] The economic inseparable operation is the revelation of an immanent ontological equality. The Spirit must share equal divinity for he is the third person in the shared mission of God.

2. Basil’s Development Of Athanasius

Basil addresses the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in an early work against the Neo-Arian heretic Eunomius written in 364, and in a number of letters, but his unique contribution is established finally in his work On the Holy Spirit, written between 373 and 375.[17] Though detailed engagement with Athanasius’s theology has not been demonstrated, Basil evidently builds on the foundation Athanasius laid.

It is likely that Basil is writing in opposition to his old mentor Eustathius, Bishop of Sebaste.[18] There is no specific internal evidence, but he uses the label Pneumatomachoi both in the book, and for Eustathius (Spirit 11.27; 21.52).[19] Basil’s understanding of the pneumatomachian argument, reconstructed from his response, turns thus: the Spirit must not be ranked with the Father or the Son, because “he is different in nature and inferior in dignity to them” (Spirit 6.13; 10.24). The difference of nature divides the Spirit from the Father and the Son (Spirit 10.25).[20] As a result, though his status may be elevated, the Spirit is not divine, but a creature (Spirit 3.5; 20.51; 24.56).[21] Because he cannot be ranked with the Father and the Son he must not be honored with the Father and the Son.[22]

Foundational to the work is Basil’s insistence on a doxological formula that ascribes equal honor to the Spirit with the Father and the Son. He offers “substantially the same teaching as Athanasius,”[23] with a defense of the Holy Spirit founded on Nicene Christology (Spirit 6–8). Just as Athanasius first establishes homoousia for Father and Son as the basis for the equal nature of the Spirit, Basil first establishes homotimia for Father and Son (chs. 6–8) as the basis for the equal honor of the Spirit. The inseparable operation of the divine persons in the one divine mission is again the key to understanding their unity and equality.

The main body of On the Holy Spirit takes the form of three theses with regards to the Spirit, interjected with refutations of anticipated objections from the Pneumatomachoi. The first thesis asserts the Spirit’s ontological equality with the Father and the Son. The second asserts the Spirit’s inseparable operation with the Father and the Son in the economy of creation and salvation. The third asserts the Spirit’s equal honor with the Father and the Son, defending Basil’s doxological formula.[24]

(1) The Spirit’s ontological equality with the Father and the Son. Basil considers the Spirit’s titles (Spirit 9.22).[25] He is the Spirit of God, the Spirit of truth, the right Spirit, willing Spirit, and Holy Spirit. In John 15:26, God is described as Spirit. The word implies one unlike a creature, but sharing the attributes of God: immutable, omnipotent, holy, eternal, unapproachable, simple. The Spirit is a giver but is never depleted, and by him we are reconciled to God and become like him (Spirit 9.22, 23).

The baptismal formula of Father, Son, and Spirit in Matt 28:19 “testifies to their union and fellowship,” and that “the Holy Spirit is to be ranked with the Father” (Spirit 10.24–25).[26] It declares that our salvation is all of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit working together. So, “if someone rejects the Spirit, his faith in the Father and the Son is made useless” (Spirit 11.27).[27] The Spirit is not included because God employed his help, like an angel, but because he is “organically united with God” (Spirit 13.30).

Both 1 Cor 12:3 and Matt 28:19 are fundamental to Basil’s understanding of the Spirit. “The Spirit is divine, because he epistemically unites the baptized to the Father through the Son.”[28] The Spirit’s own testimony is that “the Holy Spirit is indivisibly and inseparably joined to the Father and the Son” (Spirit 16.37). Though Basil does not use the word homoousios, he affirms that because of the Spirit’s titles, attributes, work, and testimony, he must be ontologically equal with the Father and the Son.[29]

(2) The Spirit’s inseparable operation with the Father and the Son in the economy of creation and salvation. Basil demonstrates that the Spirit does God’s work. God is present through the Spirit’s gifts, to sin against the Spirit is to sin against God, and so, “in every operation, the Holy Spirit is indivisibly united with the Father and the Son” (Spirit 16.37).[30] Basil establishes the Spirit’s role in the creation of angels as this distinguishes the Spirit’s creative identity from their creaturely identity (Spirit 16.38). The Spirit’s work in salvation is traced through the OT, the ministry of Jesus, the NT church, and the final day of judgment (Spirit 16.39–40). Though operating inseparably in the divine mission, the persons are distinct: the Father is first cause, the Son is creator, and the Spirit is perfector (Spirit 15.38).

The Spirit is not a third of God, or a lesser part (Spirit 17.41). Numerical ranking does not imply ontological subordination (Spirit 17.42). Numbers are symbols of quantity not nature, but lest we think there might be three Gods, when applied to the persons of the Trinity they indicate “the uniqueness of the persons, while maintaining the unity of the Monarchy” (Spirit 18.44–45). Such unity is described perichoretically, and so we talk of “one, one and one,” not “one, two and three.” The Spirit “is not ranked with the plurality of creation, but is described in the singular,” perfectly united with the Godhead, and sharing the glory of God (Spirit 18.45–46).[31]

“Knowledge of any one of the persons of the Triad is at the same time knowledge of the other two.”[32] Confessing the persons does not divide God or assert subordination; the Spirit is not a slave, nor a freeman, but the master, with the Father and the Son (Spirit 18.47; 19.50–20.51).

Basil establishes the immanent nature of God from his economic work.[33] He is convinced, as LaCugna notes, “the Spirit is what the Spirit does.”[34] Through it all are two strands: relational subordination with ontological equality: “the unity of action of the one God, who acts always through Christ in the Spirit.”[35] Some have questioned whether identifying sanctification as the distinct role of the Spirit economically shows adequately the role of the Spirit immanently, for “He cannot be thought of as making the Father and Son holy.”[36] But Basil argues here for unity, not distinction. “Common activity demonstrates a common essence.”[37] The Pneumatomachoi are not Sabellian but are, despite themselves, Arian, and if ontological equality can be affirmed on the basis of inseparable operation, then subordinationism is banished.

(3) The Spirit’s equal honor with the Father and the Son. Up to this point Basil has simply fortified Athanasius’s argument, but here Basil advances: if we rightly understand the Spirit economically, and so also immanently, “how can we be afraid of giving the Spirit too much honor?” (Spirit 19.49).[38] The imperative throughout is doxological, so where Athanasius asserts homoousia, Basil asserts homotimia. The Spirit is rightly called “Lord” (Spirit 21.52).[39] He is unfathomable, and only in our salvation can we contemplate him rightly, so “is there any limit to the honor he deserves?” (Spirit 22.53). The form that honor should take is “the recounting of His own wonders. . . . To describe His wonders gives Him the fullest glorification possible” (Spirit 23.54). And so Basil declares again the Spirit’s unity with the Godhead and his inseparable operation in the divine mission and asks, “Why should He be deprived of His glory?” (Spirit 24:55). If the Holy Spirit cannot be divided from the Father and the Son in his nature or work, then he “cannot be divided from the Father and the Son in worship. If you remain outside the Spirit, you cannot worship at all, and if you are in Him you cannot separate Him from God” (Spirit 26.64).

Having established the relational subordination yet ontological equality of the Spirit, Basil establishes the necessity of two doxologies to ascribe him honor. “Glory to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit” and “Glory to the Father with the Son, together with the Holy Spirit” (Spirit 1.3; 25.60). “The preposition in expresses the relationship between ourselves and the Spirit, while with proclaims the communion of the Spirit with God” (Spirit 27.68). And so, “the Spirit who makes possible the praise of God becomes an object of praise, worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son.”[40]

3. Is There Any Cause For Concern?

Some have argued that Basil falls short of asserting the full divinity of the Holy Spirit because he does not describe the Spirit as homoousios with the Father and the Son.[41] Basil does seem more reticent than Athanasius, or Gregory Nazianzen, to speak of such homoousios.[42] He may have been trying to be faithful to the language of Scripture, or strategic, attempting to hold the church together and win over the Pneumatomachoi.[43] Though it has been suggested that it reveals Basil’s inconsistency, in the light of what was then achieved at Constantinople it may show his wisdom.[44]

In any event, the charge against Basil may not even be substantiated. Basil does say that we must not assert different essences for the different persons, that the Spirit is “divine in nature,” and “organically united with God” (Spirit 13.30, 17.43, 23.54; my italics). Larson notes that Basil has no intention of holding back, and that in arguing for the Spirit as Lord, he regards his task complete.[45] Though he avoids applying the term homoousios to the Spirit this should not be seen as a failure to articulate the Spirit’s equality with the Godhead, his inseparability from the Father and the Son, and his full divinity.

4. The Outcome: Nicaea-Constantinople

Basil died in 379, two years before the Constantinopolitan council revised the Nicene Creed.[46] However, it is likely that Amphilochius, to whom Basil wrote On the Holy Spirit, was present at the Council and represented his views.[47] Certainly when one considers the Niceno-Constantinople creed on the Holy Spirit, it reads as a restatement of Basil’s conclusions, with homotimia in the foreground, not homoousia.[48] Having considered Basil and the context of the Pneumatomachoi, this is not a lesser assertion of the full divinity of the Holy Spirit, and by including a doxological imperative, may be regarded as a stronger creed than 325’s formulation.

5. Conclusion

Athanasius and Basil fight subordinationism by considering the Father-Son and Son-Spirit relationships, and the mission of the Spirit from the Son. By establishing that the Spirit is from the Son and the Son is from the Father, they are able to give content to the Bible’s perichoretic language: just as they are from, so they are in.[49] For, “salvation history is . . . the self-revelation of God.”[50] The Spirit’s relational subordination and ontological equality exists immanently and is revealed economically.[51] As a result, “You cannot know the Father and the Son without knowing the Holy Spirit but further . . . God would not really be God without the Holy Spirit.”[52] On that basis Athanasius asserts homoousia, and Basil, assuming homoousia, asserts homotimia. We honor the Spirit rightly as we recognize, recount, and worship him for his distinct activity in the one divine mission.[53] The flow of the argument is: action demonstrates essence, and on the basis of essence, honor is asserted. It is a twofold doxology; we bring glory to the Father through the Son, in the Spirit, and yet (to use the language of Nicaea-Constantinople) the Spirit is also to be worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son. Basil preserves a christological approach to the Trinity and upholds the divine monarchy, but by asserting homotimia takes us from the right theological conviction of equality of nature, to the right Christian practice of equality of honor, lest we should know God, but not honor him as God (Rom 1:21).

II. Relational Subordination, Ontological Equality, And Homotimia Considered Systematically

We shall now establish what homotimia means when applied to the Spirit by, firstly, testing the legitimacy of the move from the mission language of inseparable operation, to the perichoretic language of divine unity; secondly, evaluating the biblical account of the Spirit’s relational subordination to, and ontological equality with, the Father and the Son; thirdly, drawing out implications for our understanding of divine personhood; and finally, providing content for Basil’s twofold doxology.

1. The Relationship Between The Economic And The Immanent Trinity

The legitimacy of the move from God’s work to God’s being lies in the truthfulness of God’s revelation. Here we must leave Basil for more recent discussions. Bavinck makes clear that there is no religion apart from God’s self-revelation. God reveals himself because “God is God and wants to be served as God.”[54] Religion and revelation are inseparable.[55] This establishes a foundation for Rahner’s argument that what is seen of God economically must belong to God immanently.[56] His dictum, “The ‘economic’ Trinity is the ‘immanent’ Trinity and the ‘immanent’ Trinity is the ‘economic’ Trinity,”[57] expresses the truthfulness of God’s self-communication.[58]

Congar responds to Rahner by dividing economy and immanence to preserve God’s mystery.[59] His modification may simply assert that the immanent Trinity is not exhaustively the economic Trinity, but as he concludes by stating that the Father’s omnipotence is not displayed economically, he questions the reliability of God’s revelation to us.[60]

LaCugna responds to Rahner by collapsing the economic and the immanent. She asserts, “There is neither an economic nor an immanent Trinity; there is only the oikonomia that is the concrete realization of the mystery of theologia.”[61] God is God for us. There is no longer a Triune God independent of creation completing the mission of God in creation, but a pantheistic or panentheistic, “impersonal theological principle,” as Weinandy notes.[62]

Both departures are unsatisfactory. Because God is truthful it is entirely appropriate for Athanasius and Basil to use their understanding of inseparable operation to give content to perichoresis. Relations should be established immanently as they are revealed economically. This means that moving forward, the Spirit is what the Spirit does, and in the first instance, “the doctrine of the Trinity means getting our redemptive story straight.”[63] We shall now consider the biblical material to establish the Spirit’s distinct work in the divine mission.[64]

2. The Biblical Account Of The Work Of The Spirit

As space is lacking and our final concern is a contemporary application of homotimia this study shall be restricted to the Spirit’s work in the church.[65]

The Spirit provides our knowledge of the gospel (Acts 2:16–21). He is our teacher (Luke 12:12), revealing the secret things of God (1 Cor 2:6–13). These activities relate to his life-giving activity (John 3:5–8). He enables the writing of Scripture, and opens our eyes to understand it (2 Pet 1:19–21 and Eph 1:15–23). He fills us with boldness, empowers us, and directs us to speak of Jesus (Acts 4:23–31). His power accompanies our preaching (1 Cor 2:2–5). The Son pours out the Spirit, that the Spirit may bear witness, and bring glory to the Son and his gospel (John 16:14–15). And so, when the Spirit speaks, God speaks (Acts 28:25–27; 2 Pet 1:21).[66] No one can comprehend God’s thoughts except by the Spirit (1 Cor 2:10–11). He teaches all truth (John 14:25–26).

The Spirit applies the gospel to our lives. He justifies us in the name of Jesus (1 Cor 6:11). He assures us of our salvation (Eph 1:1–14). Only by him can we say, “Jesus is Lord” (1 Cor 12:3–6). He sets us free in Christ (Rom 8:2). He is the firstfruits of the hope to come who calls us to the new heaven and earth (Rom 8:23–25; Rev 22:17). He guarantees we will respond, as the life of our resurrection (2 Cor 5:1–5; 1 Cor 15:44). And so, the Spirit is included with the Father and the Son in baptism, for in completing the one mission of God, it is truly his mission as God (Matt 28:19).[67] He grants new birth and gives life (John 3:3–8; Ezek 37). As the Lord the Spirit brings freedom (2 Cor 3:17–18). To be born of him is to be born of God (John 1:12–13).

The Spirit prepares the church for glory. He makes us into the one body of Christ (1 Cor 12:13). Paul prays for the fellowship of the Spirit, for a Spirit-filled church displays unity in Christ (2 Cor 13:14; Eph 4:1–6). The Spirit gifts the church accordingly, that Christ’s body may be edified (1 Cor 12:7–11, 14:12). He washes and sanctifies us in the name of Jesus (1 Cor 6:11). If we belong to Christ we must walk by the Spirit, for that is Christ in us (Gal 5:16–26). And so, unless he dwells in us, we cannot belong to God (Rom 8:9–11). His dwelling in us is God dwelling in his temple (1 Cor 3:16–17). The same Spirit, Lord, and God distribute gifts, so the Spirit’s gifts are the work of God (1 Cor 12:4–6; Heb 2:4). He executes God’s will in our lives, and he enables our worship of God (Rom 9:26–27; Phil 3:3). So, when Ananias lies to the Holy Spirit he is told, “You have not lied to men but to God” (Acts 5:3–4).

The Spirit is distinct, but not separate, doing everything in relation to the Father and the Son.[68] In the Spirit, through Christ, we gain access to the Father (Eph 3:18). The persons are not interchangeable, but they co-operate together in their specific roles in the mission: the begetting and spirating Father, the begotten Son, and the spirated Spirit.[69] As Basil articulated: the Father is the first cause, the Son the creator, and the Spirit the perfector (Spirit 16.38).[70] The Godhead upholds a divine monarchy; the Spirit is a delegation from the Father and the Son in his work.[71] So it is right to consider him “self-effacing,” as He completes in us the Father’s mission through the Son.[72] But, his subordinate office does not alter his necessary equal divinity.[73] The Spirit’s inseparable operation with the Father and the Son requires both relational subordination and ontological equality.

3. The Spirit’s Personhood

Following Rahner, we can now move from the Spirit’s work to the Spirit’s person retaining both relational subordination and ontological equality. Consequently, divine personhood is defined by relational distinction, not diverse substance, and “person” is a category for which we do not have a strict analogy.[74]

For Bavinck personhood is “the unity of the divine being [opening] itself up in a threefold existence.”[75] Calvin explains, “In each hypostasis the whole divine nature is understood, with this qualification—that to each belongs his own peculiar quality.”[76] So Turretin argues, personal distinctions are not formal or proper, but eminent and analogical, “all imperfections being removed.”[77]

Rahner clarifies personhood by explaining that “the one God subsists in three distinct manners of subsisting,”[78] but in doing so Rahner depersonalizes the persons.[79] Instead, with Augustine, we must retain the term “person,” and with it affirm God’s unity and diversity in his divine simplicity.[80] The one and the many must be held together. We should conclude with Gregory of Nazianzen, “No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the Splendor of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Them than I am carried back to the One.”[81]

4. The Equal Honor Of Holy Spirit

Homotimia must hold together both relational subordination and ontological equality, for each person “is identical with the entire being and equal to the other two [persons] or all three together.”[82] Both relational subordination and ontological equality are of equal importance in the divine mission, both are necessary for our salvation, both are retained in the immanent person, and both must be asserted as we honor the Spirit. As Owen concludes, “The Holy Spirit is an eternally existing divine substance, the author of divine operation, and the object of divine and religious worship.”[83]

Therefore, Basil defends two equally important doxological formulations:

1. “Glory to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit,” relating to their distinct economic work.
2. “Glory to the Father with the Son, together with the Holy Spirit,” relating to their common essence. (Spirit 1.3; 25.60; my italics)

Both doxologies ascribe glory to the Spirit, and both matter if we are to recount God’s work back to him (Spirit 25.59). We shall consider each proposition.

Doxology 1: In the Holy Spirit: Honoring the Spirit as relationally subordinate to the Father and the Son. Firstly, because we live in the economy of the Spirit, in some ways he is the author rather than the object of our prayers.[84] He is self-effacing, with a “floodlight ministry.”[85] Stephen accuses the Jewish council of dishonoring the Spirit by resisting him, by which he means refusing to look to and accept the One to whom the Spirit points (Acts 7:51). So Owen notes, “The not obeying of [the] word . . . is called resisting the Holy Ghost.”[86] As we seek to know God through his Word, “come Holy Spirit and shine your light on Jesus” may well be our prayer.[87]

Secondly, “without the Spirit there is no union with Christ.”[88] God the Holy Spirit completes the mission of God: we are not left to our own devices.[89] When Jesus speaks of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, it is a failure to recognize the Spirit’s work as God’s work, thus disqualifying oneself from inclusion in God’s salvation (Matt 12:31–32; Mark 3:28–30; Luke 12:10). In response, thanks and praise must be attributed to all three together, author, treasure, and effector.[90]

Thirdly, we are called not to grieve and not to quench the Spirit (Eph 4:30; 1 Thess 5:19). We are to walk by, and keep in step with, the Spirit (Gal 5:16–26). Basil’s goal in writing was to encourage holy living (Spirit 30.76–79).[91] We belong to God, but more specifically, we belong to the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 3:16; 6:19).[92] So does the church, and the Spirit’s work in both is closely related as we honor him by maintaining his unity (Eph 4:3).[93]

A right honor of the Spirit preserves his dignity whilst recognizing what is at stake in that dignity.[94] In honoring the Spirit as relationally subordinate to the Father and the Son, we may well pray more for him as their delegate, but he must also be included in our praise. His personal distinction proves that God continues to hold the initiative in revelation, salvation, and sanctification, and we must submit to and worship him for it.

Doxology 2: With the Holy Spirit: Honoring the Spirit as ontologically equal with the Father and the Son. The Spirit’s divinity can be established from the first doxology. It is because the Holy Spirit is God that he can perform his “self-effacing” function and point to our Savior. But unless we move to the second doxology we do not proclaim the necessity that He be God to achieve our salvation with the Father and the Son, nor do we proclaim that he is not another God, but the same God, with the Father and the Son. It is on account of this work as God, that we must pay him attention, give him honor, and worship him with the Father and the Son.[95]

Divine attributes are located in the person and the nature.[96] So Owen concludes, “The divine nature is the reason and cause of all worship; so that it is impossible to worship any one person, and not worship the whole Trinity.”[97] Gunton explains, “There is . . . a distinction of persons according to their operations . . . but not as to their being objects of worship.”[98] And so Letham follows Gregory: “As we think of the three in their distinctness, we recall that they indwell each other in undivided union.”[99]

We must distinguish between the access to our worship, which takes into consideration relational subordination in the divine mission, and the object of our worship, which are those persons in their equal divinity. So when we worship the Spirit, Owen concludes, “he is not worshipped exclusively, but the whole Godhead is worshipped.”[100] In order to assert both the necessity of the Spirit’s divinity, and his identity as God with the Father and the Son, we rightly honor him by not only acknowledging his divine work in the one mission, but by worshipping him together with the Father and the Son.

5. Conclusion

Homotimia for the Spirit is marked by both of Basil’s doxologies. They inform each other: not only does the Spirit’s inseparable operation with the Father and the Son show his divinity, it also shows his equal divinity with the Father and the Son. He can be distinctly resisted, blasphemed against, quenched, grieved, and lied to, so he can be distinctly honored because of who he is and what he has done.[101] When honored and adored, he must be so in the context of the relations he has with the Father and the Son, and the one ousia they hold together.[102]

III. Contemporary Implications

The Pneumatomachoi rejected Basil’s second doxology because they misunderstood his first. However, glory can only be brought to the Father in the Holy Spirit because the Spirit is fully divine with the Father and the Son. The Spirit is not a lesser or different God, he is God with the Father and the Son. Basil’s second doxology shows that inseparable operation requires both relational subordination and ontological equality, and with his first doxology can be used to evaluate our contemporary practice.

1. An Over-Individualized Spirit

Trinitarian relations are rightly used to explain our human need for relationship, but we must be careful to avoid wrongly assuming that human relations speak univocally rather than analogically of the Trinity. Though as humans we long for oneness, and in a sense are homoousios, this is in a different way to God; we are not just personally distinct, but individualized in a way that God is not.

In the Trinity we cannot speak of individualized persons. The Son and the Spirit are not rivals to the Father, they uphold the monarchy distinctly by demonstrating relational subordination; and the language of inseparable operation becomes a basis for perichoresis. Divine personhood affirms both distinction and ontological equality.

In contemporary evangelicalism however, a Trinitarian person, especially the Spirit, is often only considered as distinct. Our emphasis is almost entirely on his “self-effacing” character.[103] The result is that our doxologies only ever look like Basil’s first. So Chester concludes, “I would want [my Muslim friends] to see a supernatural community that reflects the sending by the Father of the Son in the power of the Spirit and the glorification by the Spirit through the Son of the Father.”[104] Though Chester briefly considers Basil’s work On the Holy Spirit in his historical section,[105] at no point does he affirm Basil’s second doxology.

A brief look at more popular works on the Spirit confirms this tendency.[106] But, if Basil’s second doxology is not affirmed, the first doxology becomes considerably weaker. When the Spirit is honored with the Father and the Son, the one divine ousia is established and the Spirit’s distinct work rests on his necessary equal divinity. If omitted, in the first instance this does not strip the Spirit of his divinity, but it does result in division and ultimately polytheism.

2. Leaning Towards Division And Polytheism

If personhood is only ever explained in terms of distinction, without properly affirming that each person displays the full ousia, distinction begins to look like division. Jackman reasons, “The Spirit . . . glorifies Jesus, and the church glorifies Jesus too. . . . Anything that brings glory to the Spirit, rather than the Son and the Father, is not the Spirit’s work.”[107] Jackman may simply be trying to avoid a wrongly divided worship of the Spirit that he has witnessed in Charismatic circles.[108] However, at no point does Jackman correct the perceived imbalance by asserting Basil’s second doxology. His corrective is not that “instead of bringing glory to the Spirit rather than the Son and the Father, we should instead bring glory to the Spirit with the Son and the Father.” By suggesting that it is possible to divide our worship of the Spirit from our worship of the Son and the Father, and by grounding that division in the Spirit’s economic work, personhood seems to have slipped momentarily from distinction to division.

If we only ever talk about the Spirit as self-effacing, then we give the impression that we bring glory to the Spirit only by bringing glory to the Father and the Son, with serious implications. If the Holy Spirit is divine, but we do not bring him glory together with the Father and the Son, then he must be divine in a different way: he must be a different God. If we assert homoitimia we are by implication asserting homoiousios, and ontologically subordinating the Spirit under the Father and the Son.[109]

Jackman has no intention of ontologically subordinating the Spirit under the Father and the Son.[110] However, as he guards against bringing glory to the Spirit, it is possible Basil would respond, “The Holy Spirit cannot be divided from the Father and the Son in worship. If you remain outside the Spirit, you cannot worship at all, and if you are in Him you cannot separate Him from God” (Spirit 26.64).[111]

Letham is able to make the same point as Jackman and voice the same concern but in a way that retains the equality of essence and honor. He writes,

Richard Gaffin, in a recent article, points to a tendency in the charismatic movement to separate the Holy Spirit from Christ. He counters by pointing to the close connection that Paul draws between Christ and the Spirit. This argument is undergirded by the patristic teaching on perichoresis, the mutual indwelling of the three persons, all occupying the same divine space. The Father is in the Son, the Son is in the Father, the Holy Spirit is in the Son and the Father, the Father is in the Holy Spirit, and the Son is in the Holy Spirit. Thus, to worship one person at the expense of the others is to divide the undivided Trinity. Worship of any one of the three at once entails worship of all three and worship of the indivisible Trinity. An undue emphasis on one person, whether it be the focus on Jesus in pietism or the concentration on the Holy Spirit in charismatic circles is a distortion.[112]

It is extremely rare to find this kind of corrective with the appropriate emphasis, and as a result, in our attempt to distance ourselves from a perceived Charismatic overemphasis, we become a part of Letham’s other concern, we place an undue emphasis on Jesus and become pietistic.

3. A Confused Christocentrism

One concern we have is that by asserting homotimia for the Holy Spirit we may lose our christocentric focus. However, our Christocentricity requires the Spirit’s application of Christ’s accomplishments to our lives. A christocentric church should praise the Spirit for making Christ all in all, and ask for the Spirit’s help in keeping Christ central.

This is not a call for Pneumatocentrism,[113] but a call to prevent our Christocentrism from collapsing into Christomonism: to assert a Christ-centered gospel, whilst honoring equally the Father and the Spirit. Ortlund concludes, we must remain Christ-centered, “while cheerfully affirming the co-equality, co-eternality, co-divinity and soteriological co-necessity of Father, Son, and Spirit.”[114] It is striking, however, that he also follows the tendency not to affirm homotimia.

Ortlund’s article is problematic. He draws two conclusions: (1) it is only through Christ that we know of the Trinity, and (2) the Trinity itself is Christ-centered. His first point is clear and welcomed; however, the second point is confusing. What does he mean by the Trinity being Christ-centered in itself? He wants to conclude, “We comprehend the Triune God through the lens of Christ (adequately, not exhaustively) and Christ through the lens of the triune God.” What does it mean to be christocentric through the lens of the triune God? We have established above that the divine mission is from the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit, and Basil’s first doxology reflects that truth by bringing glory “in the Spirit, through the Son, to the Father.” What does “Christ-centered” mean when the Trinity itself upholds the divine monarchy of the Father?

There is a difference between our need to be Christ-centered, for there is no true worship without revelation, and the Trinity being eternally and immanently Christ-centered in itself. As we, with Paul, desire to know nothing except Christ crucified, we should do so while asserting how it is that we know and believe in him, just as Paul does (1 Cor 2:2–16).[115] As we do, we testify to the perfection of God’s inseparable operation in his one mission, thereby bringing glory to all three persons.

4. The Forgotten Foundation Of Our Spiritual Union With Christ

The immediate problem of dividing the Spirit from the Father and the Son is blindness to his divine work in our lives. In my role as a church pastor it has quickly become apparent just how difficult many people find it to grasp the new identity that we have in Christ, and how hard it is to truly believe the implications of our faith union with him. If we never move from Basil’s first doxology to his second, we quickly forget that the Spirit does not just happen to be God, but He has to be God, with the Father and the Son, and his work is no less assured.

Because Calvin states, “faith is the principal work of the Holy Spirit,”[116] so he can conclude, “Christ . . . dwells within us. Not only does he cleave to us by an indivisible bond of fellowship, but with a wonderful communion, day by day, he grows more and more into one body with us.”[117] Leaving him to warn, “It is . . . miserable blindness to charge with arrogance Christians who dare to glory in the presence of the Holy Spirit, without which glorying in Christianity itself does not stand!”[118]

5. Conclusion

If we do not affirm with our worship that the Spirit is fully divine with the Father and the Son, then we leave room for both his person and his work to be diminished. It is not enough to simply affirm the Spirit’s deity. We must affirm that he is divine just as the Father and the Son are divine, and worship them together. If we do not, then the Spirit is quickly divided from the Father and the Son, their operations are separated, and the door is left open for polytheism. Basil understood this danger well. In the face of a second wave of Arianism, he insisted on two doxologies that mutually inform each other, and that bring equal honor to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: our Triune God.

Are we guilty of neglecting Basil’s second doxology? Basil has, I think, much to teach us. This issue alone underlines the importance of drinking deeply from the great theologians of history, having our eyes drawn beyond our own cultural horizons, in order that we may appropriately critique our God-given contexts with the God-breathed Word, and respond with balance. A good dose of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed may be just the tonic to relieve our current pneumatological blindness in theology and worship.

Notes

1. John Owen, The Holy Spirit (vol. 3 of The Works of John Owen; 16 vols.; London: Banner of Truth, 1965), 64.
2. Robert Letham, The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2004), 116. Letham notes that the terms ousia and hypostasis were often used interchangeably in Greek philosophy and that, as a result of this lack of semantic clarity, there was a great deal of ambiguity and miscommunication for decades after Nicaea. The terms are only used together in the anathema at the end of the creed, and the term hypostasis does not appear in the main body of the creed itself. Because of this, the terms were taken as synonymous, though that may not have been the council’s intention.
3. Marcellus of Ancyra, though a prominent defender of Nicaea, was also strongly associated with a species of Sabellianism. See Franz Dünzl, A Brief History of the Doctrine of the Trinity in the Early Church (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 65-69. Though they would not have considered themselves as Arian, we shall show that the Tropicii and Pneumatomachoi were considered Arian by both Athanasius and Basil. Basil himself notes, “On the one hand are those who confuse the Persons and revert to Judaism; on the other are those who oppose the natures, and are swept away into Greek polytheism” (Basil, On the Holy Spirit [trans. David Anderson; New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1981], 30.77). Hereafter references to this work will appear in the text.
4. Athanasius, The Letters of Saint Athanasius Concerning the Holy Spirit [to Saint Serapion] (trans. C. R. B. Shapland; London: Epworth, 1951), 18. Hereafter references to this work will appear in the text.
5. Ivor J. Davidson, A Public Faith: From Constantine to the Medieval World, A.D. 312-600 (Oxford: Monarch Books, 2005), 87.
6. Letham, The Holy Trinity, 141.
7. Concerning inseparable operation, Ayres suggests that this “may well represent the earliest clear statement of the doctrine applied to all three persons” (Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004], 214).
8. Here we should note that Athanasius is able to keep his Trinitarian theology christocentric. As the only image of the Father, the Son remains the focus of Athanasius’s gaze, and becomes the revealer of his doctrine of the Spirit.
9. Thomas F. Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction (London: SCM Press, 1965), 215.
10. See also ibid., 215-16.
11. Alvyn Pettersen, Athanasius (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1995), 189.
12. Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction, 215-16. See Athanasius, Ep. Serap. 2.1-3.7.
13. Letham, The Holy Trinity, 142.
14. Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit (3 vols.; New York: Seabury, 1983), 3:25.
15. Pettersen, Athanasius, 141-42.
16. Letham, The Holy Spirit, 144; Dünzl, A Brief History, 120.
17. Paul J. Fedwick, “A Chronology of the Life and Works of Basil of Caesarea,” in Basil of Caesarea: Christian, Humanist, Ascetic: A Sixteen-Hundredth Anniversary Symposium (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1981), 10, 16-17. Letters of particular interest include 8, and 189 addressed to Eustathius (though authorship is disputed for different reasons in both cases). 189 is written either by Gregory of Nyssa or Basil. Most early scholars consider Basil the author, and as it was likely to have been written around 374-375 it fits well with the writing of his work On the Holy Spirit. See Basil, “Letter 189: To Eustathius, the Court Physician,” in Saint Basil the Great: Letters, Volume 2 (186-368) (trans. Sister Agnes Clare Way; FC 28; Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1955), 25.
18. Anthony Meredith, The Cappadocians (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995), 31.
19. See Mark J. Larson, “A Re-Examination of De Spiritu Sancto: Saint Basil’s Bold Defense of the Spirit’s Deity,” SBET 19 (2001): 76.
20. See also Basil, “Letter 189,” 27-28.
21. See also ibid., 28.
22. The issue of equal honor (homotimia) for the Spirit was the presenting issue for Basil. He recalled, “Lately while I pray with the people, we sometimes finish the doxology to God the Father with the form, ‘Glory to the Father with the Son, together with the Holy Spirit’” (Basil, Spirit 1.3). It is this that provoked the opposition from the Pneumatomachoi.
23. Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction, 219.
24. The basic structure of “thesis” and “refutation” is taken from Hildebrand, but the summarized argument differs significantly. Stephen M. Hildebrand, The Trinitarian Theology of Basil of Caesarea: A Synthesis of Greek Thought and Biblical Truth (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 181-83.
25. See also Basil, “Letter 189,” 30
26. See also Basil, “Letter 189,” 28. Here Basil notes, “The Lord, in handing over the saving faith to those who are being instructed in His doctrine, joins the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son.”
27. Here Basil quotes 1 Cor 12:3, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit,” and John 1:18, “No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has made Him known.”
28. Hildebrand, The Trinitarian Theology of Basil of Caesarea, 179.
29. Though he does not use homoousios in this work (a point for discussion later), he does, however, assert it in Letter 189. He writes, “Identity of the operations indicates community of nature” (Basil, “Letter 189,” 33).
30. See also Basil, “Letter 189,” 29, 31, 32. Here Basil talks specifically of the Spirit’s “inseparability.”
31. Basil writes, “The Son is in the Father and the Father is in the Son; what the Father is, the Son is likewise and vice-versa—such is the unity” (Spirit 18.45).
32. John McIntyre, The Shape of Pneumatology: Studies in the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), 97.
33. So Basil writes, “It is very necessary for us to be guided in our investigation of the divine nature by its operations. Accordingly, if we see that the operations of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit differ from each other, we will infer from the dissimilarity of the operations that the natures which are producing them are different. . . . But, if we consider the operation of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit to be one, differing or varying in no way at all, it is necessary because of the identity of the operation for the oneness of the nature to be inferred” (Basil, “Letter 189,” 31).
34. Catherine M. LaCugna, God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 117.
35. Ibid., 120.
36. Meredith, The Cappadocians, 105.
37. Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, 216; my italics.
38. See also Basil, “Letter 189,” 29. Here Basil notes, “All the concepts and terms proper to God are equal to each other in honor, since they show no variation at all in regard to the designation of the subject.” The footnote explains, “Since all the Persons are equal, all the terms applied to Them are of equal honor.”
39. Here Basil considers 2 Thess 3:5, “May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ,” and asserts that it must be the Spirit who is being referred to here as “Lord.”
40. LaCugna, God for Us, 127.
41. Meredith, The Cappadocians, 33.
42. Gregory writes, “What, then? Is the Spirit God? Certainly. Well, then, is he consubstantial? Yes, if he is God” (“The Fifth Theological Oration, Oration 31, On the Holy Spirit,” in On God and Christ [trans. Frederick Williams and Lionel Wickham; New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002], 123).
43. Davidson, A Public Faith, 88; Dünzl, A Brief History, 120-21; Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, 216-17.
44. Hanson suggests Basil is inconsistent (see R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, 318-381 [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988], 668-69). Dünzl suggests Basil is wise (see A Brief History, 121-22).
45. Larson, “A Re-Examination of De Spiritu Sancto,” 68, 70-71.
46. Fedwick, “A Chronology of Basil,” 19.
47. Larson, “A Re-Examination of De Spiritu Sancto,” 72.
48. See Basil Studer, Trinity and Incarnation: The Faith of the Early Church (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993), 148-49; Dünzl, A Brief History, 125-26.
49. It is worth noting that in the same century in the West, Hilary of Poitiers was doing exactly the same thing in his doctrine of the Trinity. He writes, “The Son is from that Father who is, the only begotten from the unbegotten, the offspring from the parent, the living one from the living one. As the Father has life in Himself, so the Son has been given life in Himself. The perfect one from the perfect one, because the whole one from the whole one. There is no division or dissection, because the fullness of the Godhead is in the Son. . . . The one is from the other and is not different in anything, because the life of the living one is in the living one” (Hilary of Poitiers, On The Trinity [trans. Stephen McKenna; Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1954], 2.11; my italics).
50. Dünzl, A Brief History, 137.
51. Kevin Giles uses the Athanasian and Cappadocian arguments for ontological equality to conclude that there was no concept of relational subordination at Nicaea. See Kevin Giles, The Trinity & Subordinationism: The Doctrine of God and the Contemporary Gender Debate (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2002), 32-43. However, as we have seen, Athanasius and Basil establish inseparable operation and divine unity by establishing both ontological equality and relational subordination as necessary outcomes of the relations in question. In doing so, they counter their subordinationist opponents without slipping into the opposite heresy of polytheism.
52. McIntyre, Shape of Pneumatology, 98.
53. McIntyre notes helpfully concerning the Tropicii and Pneumatomachoi, “Their views amounted not just to a misunderstanding of the nature of the Holy Spirit and to a depreciation of his status, but to what was much more serious—a total failure to understand the Godhead, the way in which God works in creation, redemption and sanctification, and the implications of baptism and regeneration. It was the whole nature of God which was at stake” (McIntyre, Shape of Pneumatology, 100). This comes across clearly in Basil, “Letter 189,” 33.
54. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics (ed. John Bolt; trans. John Vriend; 4 vols.; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003-2008), 1:279. Turretin makes a similar point when he argues that “the Word of God is the sole principle of theology” (Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology [ed. James T. Dennison, Jr.; trans. George Musgrave Giger; 3 vols.; Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1992], 1:55 [2.1.1]).
55. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 1:349.
56. Karl Rahner, The Trinity (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 36.
57. Ibid., 22; italics original. Bavinck concludes in the same way, “The ‘ontological’ Trinity is mirrored in the ‘economic’ Trinity” (Reformed Dogmatics, 2:318).
58. Letham, The Holy Trinity, 296. Cole stresses the need to clarify Rahner’s warning that one might relate the authority of the Spirit over Jesus in his earthly life back into the immanent Trinity to establish a subordination of the Son to the Spirit in the eternal internal life of the Trinity (Graham A. Cole, He Who Gives Life: The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit [Wheaton: Crossway, 2007], 171-72). However, a Chalcedonian understanding of the one person of Jesus in two natures helps to avoid confusion.
59. Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, 3:12-15.
60. Ibid., 3:15.
61. LaCugna, God for Us, 223.
62. Thomas Weinandy, The Father’s Spirit of Sonship: Reconceiving the Trinity (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), 131-32. See also Letham, The Holy Trinity, 298, 364. Also, Mark Husbands, “The Trinity Is Not Our Social Program,” in Trinitarian Theology for the Church (ed. Daniel J. Treier and David Lauber; Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2009), 121.
63. Daniel J. Treier and David Lauber, introduction to Trinitarian Theology for the Church (ed. Daniel J. Treier and David Lauber; Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2009), 17.
64. Rahner notes, “If it is true that we can really grasp the content of the doctrine of the Trinity only by going back to the history of salvation and of grace, to our experience of Jesus and of the Spirit of God, who operates in us, because in them we really already possess the Trinity itself as such, then there never should be a treatise on the Trinity in which the doctrine of the ‘missions’ is at best only appended as a relatively unimportant and additional scholion” (Rahner, The Trinity, 40; see also p. 48).
65. Had we space it would be worthwhile also considering the Spirit’s work in creation, Israel, and the person of Jesus according to his human nature. Such studies would very much confirm the nature of the Spirit’s work in the one mission of God outlined in this chapter.
66. Note that in Isa 6:9 (quoted in Acts 28:25-27) Yahweh is speaking.
67. On this verse Calvin notes, “This means precisely to be baptized into the name of the one God who has shown himself with complete clarity in the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Hence it is quite clear that in God’s essence reside three persons in whom one God is known” (Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion [ed. John T. McNeill; trans. Ford Lewis Battles; 2 vols.; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960], 1:140 [1.13.16]). Bavinck also notes, “The choice is clear: either the Holy Spirit is a creature—whether a power, gift, or person—or he is truly God. If he is a creature he cannot in fact in truth communicate to us the Father and the Son with all their benefits; he cannot be the principle of the new life either in the individual Christian or in the church as a whole” (Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:312).
68. Gunton, Father, Son and Spirit, 82. See also McIntyre, Shape of Pneumatology, 93.
69. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:319; Gunton, Father, Son and Spirit, 80; Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, 3:147. The filioque debate does not affect this order. As Cole notes, “What is of great importance is that whether one takes the Western approach or the Eastern one, in the economy of salvation Pneumatology must not be divorced from Christology” (Cole, He Who Gives Life, 199). In terms of the one mission of God, the Spirit is clearly asked for by the Son, to be sent by the Father (John 14:16), sent by the Father in the name of the Son (John 14:26), and sent by the Son directly (John 16:7). The question of whether “sending” implies “procession” is not relevant here, and beyond the scope of this article.
70. See also Calvin, Institutes, 1:143 (1.13.18); Cole, He Who Gives Life, 103; McIntyre, Shape of Pneumatology, 99. Bavinck has a slightly different way of expressing a similar sentiment by describing the essence of Christianity as, “the absolute self-revelation of God in the person of Christ and the absolute self-communication of God in the Holy Spirit” (Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:296). Calvin expresses the distinction in terms of the Son accomplishing our salvation and the Spirit applying it to our lives (Calvin, Institutes, 1:537 [2.1.1]).
71. John Owen, Communion with God (vol. 2 of The Works of John Owen; London: Banner of Truth, 1965), 229.
72. Gunton, Father, Son and Spirit, 81.
73. Owen, Communion with God, 229. See also Turretin, Institutes, 1:303 (3.30.2-4).
74. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:304. Rahner’s comment is helpful, “‘Person’ as a concrete concept, in contrast with ‘personality’ (‘subsistence,’ ‘subsistentiality’), means not formally the distinctions as such, but those who are distinct. But ours is a case where we should speak of three persons, yet not think of three who are distinct as multiplied also in their essence, as we may do without any difficulty in other instances, e.g., when we speak of ‘three individuals.’ This shows us already that, in reference to God, we may not speak of three persons in the same way that we do elsewhere. . . . We keep forgetting that “three persons” means neither a group-building multiplication of the essence nor an ‘equality’ of the personality of the three persons” (Rahner, The Trinity, 105).
75. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:302.
76. Calvin, Institutes, 1:143 (1.13.19).
77. Turretin, Institutes, 1:278 (3.27.3).
78. Rahner, The Trinity, 109.
79. Letham, The Holy Trinity, 296.
80. See both Augustine’s discussion on the term “person” (Augustine, The Trinity [trans. Edmund Hill; New York: New City Press, 1991], 217-32 [7]); and his discussion on simplicity (Augustine, City of God [trans. Henry Bettenson; London: Penguin Books, 1972], 440-42 [11.10]). In fairness to Rahner, this is actually an observation he makes too as he reflects, “It makes sense to affirm this mutual ordination of ‘generation’ and knowledge on the one hand, of ‘spiration’ of the Spirit and love on the other hand, even though we cannot further explain why or how these two basic actuations of God’s essence, as present in the unoriginate Father and, on account of God’s simplicity, essentially identical within him, constitute nonetheless the basis for two processions and thus for three distinct manners of subsisting” (Rahner, The Trinity, 116-17). Turretin, in his discussion of the Trinity, also makes it clear that when talking about three persons we are not talking about a composition (Turretin, Institutes, 1:278 [3.27.4]).
81. Gregory Nazianzen, “Oration 40: On Holy Baptism” (NPNF2 7), online at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf207.iii.xxiii.html, xli (accessed Dec. 22, 2009). It is worth noting that Calvin also ends up quoting Gregory as he considers the persons of the Trinity. See Institutes, 1:141 (1.13.17).
82. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:304.
83. Owen, Communion with God, 400; my italics.
84. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:311. See also Turretin, Institutes, 1:307 (3.30.16).
85. Cole, He Who Gives Life, 284.
86. Owen, Communion with God, 268.
87. Gunton, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, 90. This article shall not discuss the question of praying to the Spirit in great detail, but suffice it to say that the economic work of the Spirit and the testimony of Scripture suggest that our usual pattern in supplication should take into consideration the monarchy of the Godhead. Within that, though, we should still consider that the Spirit is not passive in his operations, but willingly sent, and that in order to fully consider and express the divine unity and equal essence of the persons it can also be helpful to pray to the Spirit in relation to the Father and the Son. Such prayer will not undermine the monarchy, but will guard against dividing the Trinity.
88. Cole, He Who Gives Life, 241. See also Calvin, Institutes, 1:537 (3.1.1) and 1:736 (3.11.10).
89. Cole, He Who Gives Life, 243.
90. Owen, Communion with God, 16.
91. Noted by Gunton, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, 8. Charry describes Basil’s work as “aretegenic,” meaning that it had a “virtue shaping function” (Ellen T. Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine [New York: Oxford University Press, 1997], 19, 102-15).
92. See also Turretin, Institutes, 1:307 (3.30.15).
93. So Owen notes, we must “consider him by faith as the immediate author of all supplies, assistances, and the whole relief we have by grace, of all good actings, risings, motions in our hearts; of all strivings and contending against sin” (Communion with God, 267).
94. Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds, 110. Turretin is helpful here too as he notes that what is at stake with the Spirit is our salvation. “Divine worship is given to him because we are baptised in his name as well as in that of the Father and the Son. In the Apostles’ Creed, we are commanded to believe in him as well as in the Father and the Son. We seek grace and peace and other benefits from him no less than from the Father and the Son” (Institutes, 1:307 [3.30.15]).
95. As Bavinck notes, “The Holy Spirit is God himself [or Christ] living in us. . . . Who can grant us all these blessings? Who can cause God himself to dwell in our hearts? Who can do all these things but [the Spirit] who is himself God? To him accordingly, divine honor is due” (Reformed Dogmatics, 2:278-79). See also Owen, “We are distinctly to worship the Holy Ghost. . . . The formal reason of our worshipping the Holy Ghost is not his being our comforter, but his being God; Yet his being our comforter is a powerful motive thereunto” (Communion with God, 270).
96. Bavinck writes, “If there are distinctions, that is, these persons, have to be the same in essence. In God there cannot be anything that is something other or less than God. There is nothing intermediate or transitional between the Creator and the creature. Either Father, Son, and Spirit all possess the same being and are truly God, or else they sink to the level of creatures. From a Christian perspective there is no third possibility” (Reformed Dogmatics, 2:332).
97. Owen, Communion with God, 268. He continues, “The proper and peculiar object of divine worship and invocation is the essence of God, in its infinite excellency, dignity, majesty, and its causality, as the first sovereign cause of all things. Now, this is common to all the three persons, and is proper to each of them; not formally as a person, but as God blessed for ever. All adoration respects that which is common to all; so that in each act of adoration and worship, all are adored and worshipped” (ibid., 269).
98. Gunton, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, 84-85.
99. Letham, The Holy Trinity, 421.
100. Owen, Communion with God, 269. See also Letham, The Holy Trinity, 419-20.
101. See Owen, Communion with God, 270.
102. Letham, The Holy Trinity, 419; my italics.
103. See David Jackman, Spirit of Truth (Fearn, U.K.: Christian Focus, 2006), 49-62; Graham Beynon, Experiencing the Spirit (Nottingham: InterVarsity, 2006), 25-36; J. I. Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit (Leicester: InterVarsity, 1984), 65-66; Tim Chester, Delighting in the Trinity (Oxford: Monarch, 2005), 55.
104. Chester, Delighting in the Trinity, 186; my italics.
105. Ibid., 93.
106. See four of the most popular books on the Holy Spirit published in the last five years for the evangelical constituency (biased towards the U.K.): Chester, Delighting in the Trinity; Jackman, Spirit of Truth; Beynon, Experiencing the Spirit. Cole in his recent work does not include the second doxology, and as he addresses the question of prayer to the Spirit, discourages us from addressing him directly in order that we avoid “disproportion” (Graham Cole, Engaging with the Holy Spirit [Nottingham: Apollos, 2007], 70).
107. Jackman, Spirit of Truth, 61; my italics.
108. Although it is questionable as to how well founded such an observation is. Parry laments the lack of glory given to the Spirit in his own Charismatic circles (Robin Parry, Worshipping Trinity: Coming Back to the Heart of Worship [Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2005], 116).
109. Another mistake would be to assert isotimia: a divided equal of worship that implied polytheism. Crucially, homotimia is about united equal worship. The Spirit is worshipped together with the Father and the Son, equally and without division.
110. Jackman, Spirit of Truth, 11-25.
111. See also 18.45 and 19.49.
112. Letham, The Holy Trinity, 421
113. For example, Pinnock suggests that we should view “Christ as an aspect of the Spirit’s mission, instead of (as is more usual) viewing Spirit as a function of Christ’s” (Clark H. Pinnock, Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit [Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1996], 80).
114. Dane C. Ortlund, “Christocentrism: An Asymmetrical Trinitarianism?,” Them 34 (2009), online at http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/publications/34-3/christocentrism-an-asymmetrical-trinitarianism (accessed Dec. 22, 2009).
115. It is so striking both that vv. 3-16 begin with v. 2, and that v. 2 is followed by vv. 3-16!
116. Institutes, 1:541 (3.1.4).
117. Ibid., 1:570 (3.2.24).
118. Ibid., 1:587 (3.2.40).