The third section of the Apostles' Creed begins, "I believe in the Holy Spirit," bringing us to the Third Person of the Trinity, perhaps the hardest part of our Christian faith to grasp. Most of us can conceive of God as Father; after all, we all have experiences with fathers, for good or ill. The same is true of Jesus as the Son of God. We understand humanity and what it means to be a son. But what about spirit? This kind of talk conjures up images of either ghosts or hard liquor, hardly the sort of stuff to make its way into the Creed. The fact is, we don't use this kind of language these days. So the question is, to what did the word refer when first used in Scripture, and what in our modern life corresponds with it?
The first mention of spirit in the Bible is in the Creation story at the very beginning where it says, "The Spirit of God moved upon the waters..." In the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, the word for "spirit" is the same as for "breath" and "wind," Of these, Jesus himself said we can't see them, but can see the effect of them. Spirit then, is immaterial, but real in its effect. Its use as "breath" is perhaps our best clue as to what it means in the Creed. While today we have technological means (such as brain waves) of determining whether a body is alive or dead, for thousands of years it was the presence or absence of breath. My seminary professor of pastoral care began his ministerial career in the Australian outback. He told of being called to attend to a dying man in a small home miles from any neighbors and even further from any medical attention. As the man's breathing became shallow and sporadic, the young pastor held a mirror up to the man's nose. Finally, the mirror failed to fog. There being nothing left to do, he and the man's wife removed to the next room to have "a cuppa tea." The absence of breath was the proof that the man had died. In other words, the spirit had left him.
A pastor friend of mine calls God's Holy Spirit as "the Aliveness of God." I like that. It gives the term a substance that makes sense to me. As does theologian Walter Wink's way of describing the word. The most common way we use the word outside of religious settings is when we speak of team spirit or corporate spirit, or even mob spirit. It's hard to describe, but most of us know this kind of spirit when we see it. The interesting thing about this way of using the word is that this kind of spirit evaporates when the group disbands.
The theological use of the word speaks of the Father and the Son existing in the unity of the Holy Spirit. Wait! That's a group! Taking my friend's description, the Spirit is the Aliveness of God, the Life in which the Father and Son live and move. This last sentence wouldn't even begin to pass muster in any serious work of theology, but it comes as close as I can do on the fly. And it peeks through in the Creed where it says that Jesus Christ was "conceived by the Holy Spirit." Whatever else we may say about the Holy Spirit, whenever life is involved, he is there. "I believe in Holy Life;" the life of God that was manifest in the conception of Jesus Christ, and in our conception not only into this life on earth, but into life eternal. Tonight I am grateful for the Life, the Aliveness of God manifest in Jesus Christ, and in me.
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