The Eighth Article – The Holy Ghost

With the eight Article the portion of the Christian Creed in which we directly confess our belief in the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity is concluded.   Since the Creed is Trinitarian in its structure, the last four Articles fall under the section of the Holy Ghost but, although they cover matters that are related to the present ministry of the Holy Ghost, they do not expand upon the eighth Article in the same way the third through seventh Articles expand upon the second.

 

In the Apostles’ Creed the eighth Article is as simple as possible – Credo in Spiritum Sanctum.   Thomas Cranmer’s rendition of this in our Book of Common Prayer is similarly simple and straightforward – “I believe in the Holy Ghost”.   It is in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed that matters get more complicated, not only because more is said about the Holy Ghost, but because the Latin version of this Creed, from which our English version is translated, adds a word that is not there in the Greek original, which addition broke the fellowship between the Greek and Latin speaking Churches a thousand years into Church history, which Schism has yet to be healed, but persists to this day.   The Greek version, most of which was put in the Creed at the First Council of Constantinople for the Nicene original was simply the equivalent of the Article in the Apostles’ except using the word for “and” rather than “I believe”, is Καὶ εἰς τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ Ἅγιον, τὸ Κύριον, τὸ ζῳοποιόν, τὸ ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον, τὸ σὺν Πατρὶ καὶ Υἱῷ συμπροσκυνούμενον καὶ συνδοξαζόμενον, τὸ λαλῆσαν διὰ τῶν προφητῶν.   Here is how the Book of Common Prayer rendition of this would go if it did not include a translation of the extra word from the Latin version: “And I believe in the Holy Ghost the Lord, and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father; who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified; who spake by the Prophets.”   The actual Book of Common Prayer rendition is “And I believe in the Holy Ghost the Lord, and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified; who spake by the Prophets.” I have italicized the translation of the additional word in the Latin, which is Filioque, for which reason the theological dispute at the heart of the Great Schism is called the Filioque Controversy.

 

Before looking more closely at what the Creed says about the Holy Ghost I should say something about the way the Book of Common Prayer translates the Greek Πνεῦμα and the Latin Spiritus (1).   “Ghost” in English, which is cognate with the German “Geist” – think “Zeitgeist” or “Spirit of the Age” - was originally a synonym for spirit that was used for any sort of spirit.   In recent centuries its usage has come to be mostly limited to a certain type of spirit – the spirits of the dead, and usually more specifically than that, the spirits of the dead manifesting themselves in some way to the living on earth.   Obviously, when we speak of the Third Person of the Holy Trinity as the Holy Ghost, it is with the older meaning of the word, not the more recent narrower meaning.   Many, wishing to avoid potential confusion, prefer to just use “Spirit”, transliterating rather than translating the Latin.   I think that this exaggerates the potential for confusion and that it is a lazy way of handling it as it is not difficult at all to explain the older meaning of the word.  Neither rendition is wrong and whichever you use in no way affects Pneumatology – the doctrine of the Holy Ghost – of course.   My aesthetical and liturgical preference is for the older term.  It just sounds better, like the “quick” in “the quick and the dead”.

 

The original Nicene Creed had been composed by the First Ecumenical Council of the Church which had been convened primarily to deal with the Arian heresy which pertained to the deity of the Son.   The Arian heresy did not just die out after the Nicene Council and, indeed, there was a period between the First Ecumenical Council and the Second where it came to predominate.  The Arians in this period divided among themselves.  Some who continued to hold to Arius’ original position that Jesus was a created being, a small-g god, came to be known as Anomoeans from their insistence that Jesus was ἀνομοιος – of a different nature – to God the Father.  Others accepted the Nicene Creed but altered the word ὁμοούσιον – “being of one substance”, i.e., with the Father, to ὁμοιούσιον – “being of a similar substance”.   These were often called Semi-Arians.   In 335 AD they were able to depose the leading orthodox theologian of the day, St. Athanasius, from his See in Alexandria.   In 342 AD they were able to have one of their own, Macedonius I, installed as Bishop of Constantinople.   Those who are unsound on the Second Person of the Trinity are seldom sound on the Third and Macedonius would lend his name to the heresy of Macedonianism which claimed that the Holy Ghost was not a Person, nor co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, but an impersonal force created by the Father, which served the Father and the Son.   The heresy of the Macedonians – also called Pneumotachi from the Greek for “combatting the Spirit” – was soundly rebutted by the Cappadocian Fathers, especially St. Basil the Great of Caesarea and St. Gregory of Nyssa, and one of the main reasons for convening the Second Ecumenical Council at Constantinople, was to formally condemn the Macedonian heresy and revise the Nicene Creed to more fully express the orthodox view of the Holy Ghost.

 

Everything added to the eighth Article by the First Council of Constantinople was for the purpose of making plain that the Holy Ghost is a Person co-equal, co-eternal, and co-substantial with the Father and the Son.   The first thing said about Him is that He is τὸ Κύριον – “The Lord”.   As we saw when we looked at the second Article, this is the word that the translators of the LXX wrote wherever the Holy Name of God was found in the text, following the Jewish custom of saying the Hebrew equivalent whenever the text was read aloud, which custom survives in our Authorized Bible which in most Old Testament instances puts LORD in allcaps rather than Jehovah where the Name is found.   Each Person of the Trinity is both Lord and God.   In St. Paul’s epistles, the Apostle regularly uses the Greek word for “God” for the Father, and the Greek word for “Lord” for the Son, but not so consistently or in such a way as to suggest that the Father is not “Lord” or that the Son is not “God”.   The Fathers who composed the Creed followed the Pauline usage in declaring there to be “One God” – The Father, and “One Lord” – The Son, Who is “God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God”, i.e., equally God with The Father.   Here they have done the same and declared The Holy Ghost to be equal with the Son and therefore equal with the Father with Whom the Son is equal by saying of the Holy Ghost that He is that of which the Son is the One.

 

The next phrase, τὸ ζῳοποιόν, “the Giver of Life” is in this Article the functional equivalent of “Maker of heaven and earth” in the first Article and “through whom all things were made” in the second.   It affirms the Holy Ghost’s role in Creation.   Just as St. John’s Gospel, in declaring that it was through the Word (the Son) that all things were made pointed back to the first chapter of Genesis where God creates everything by speaking – i.e., “Let there be light” – so when St. John records Jesus saying “It is the Spirit that quickeneth” (Jn. 6:63), “quickeneth” meaning “gives life”, this points back to the second chapter of Genesis where God “formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul”. (v. 7).   The words for “spirit” in the Biblical languages are the same words that mean “breathe” and “wind”.

 

This brings us to the controversial, Schism-generating, section of the Article.   Before delving into the rightness or wrongness of the filioque let us consider what the conciliar Fathers were getting at by borrowing the language of procession here from Jn. 15:26.   The orthodox doctrine of the Trinity is that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are Three Persons, each distinct from the Others – The Father is not the Son nor the Holy Ghost, the Son is not the Father or the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost is neither the Father nor the Son – Who are co-equal, co-eternal, and co-substantial, each of Whom is fully God rather than a part of God, but Who are One God, not Three Gods.   We being finite beings, constrained by the limits of Creation, cannot fully grasp God, Who is infinite and outside Creation, but the closest we have to an understanding of how One God is Three distinct Persons, is that the essence of God – that which makes God God – is something the Father has of Himself, which He eternally shares with the Son and the Holy Ghost so that it is the Father’s divine essence, not a duplicate copy, that the Son and the Holy Ghost each possess, and that this sharing or communication of essence eternally occurs through the process, for lack of a better word, by which the Son is distinguished in Person from the Father, and the Holy Ghost is distinguished in Person from the other Two Persons.   Now, the process by which the Son is distinguished from the Father, and through which the Father’s divine essence is communicated to the Son so that the Father and Son are distinct Persons, but the same God, is called Eternal Generation, a term that refers to a father’s begetting a son, which is eternal in this case because there never was a moment before which the Son existed when the Father did not have a Son.   Clearly, since the Son is the Only-Begotten Son of the Father, the process by which the Holy Ghost is distinguished in Person and the divine essence is communicated with Him is not Generation but something else.   The Creedal term for this is procession.   Theologians also use the term “Spiration”.   The purpose of this term is to express the Scriptural idea of the Holy Ghost as the “Breathe of God”.   Again, the ideas of spirit, breathe, and wind – invisible forces that are seen in their visible effects in the world – are expressed by the same words in the ancient languages.   Jesus said “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” (Jn. 4:24).   Now if God is a Spirit, and gives life to the man He created out of the dust by breathing into him, what else could this Breathe of the God Who is a Spirit be, but a Spirit Who is God?

 

In the original Greek of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed it says that the Holy Ghost is He: τὸ ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον – “who proceedeth from the Father”.   This is exactly what Jesus said of Him in Jn. 15:26.   Does that mean that the Latin Church fell into heresy by adding Filioque – “and the Son”?

 

The Eastern Church certainly answers this question with a strong affirmative.   Certainly the Latin Church erred in terms of protocol.   The original Nicene Creed had been composed by a General Council, the revised Nicene-Constantinopolitan version that we usually just call the Nicene Creed today was revised by the same type of Council with the same authority.  To further amend the Creed the way the Latin Church did should have been done through another General Council, but it was not.   That does not make the addition heretical.   Nor does the fact that there is no “and the Son” in Jn. 15:26, because there is no “only” in Jn. 15:26 either.

 

What we in the West don’t always understand well about the Eastern Church’s position regarding the Filioque is that the serious error they accuse us of is more about the Father than the Holy Ghost.   They place a strong emphasis upon the Father’s being the sole source of the divine essence shared by the Trinity.   None of the Three Persons had a beginning, but the Son and the Holy Spirit both receive the divine nature of the Father from the Father.   Think of how the Quicumque Vult puts it:

 

Pater a nullo est factus: nec creatus, nec genitus. Filius a Patre solo est: non factus, nec creatus, sed genitus. Spiritus Sanctus a Patre et Filio: non factus, nec creatus, nec genitus, sed procedens. 

 

In the Book of Common Prayer this reads:

 

The Father is made of none: neither created, nor begotten.

The Son is of the Father alone: not made, nor created, but begotten.

The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son: neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.

 

Although this is the Western framework the point that the Eastern Church places so much emphasis on still comes across here – The Father is God of Himself and no one else, the Son and the Holy Ghost are God and as God, like the Father are neither made nor created, but they are both of the Father, Who alone is of Himself alone.   The Eastern Church thinks that the Western Church has detracted from this by saying that the Holy Ghost proceeds from both the Father and the Son.

 

I do not think the Eastern Church, as much respect for her as I have, is right on this, for two reasons.   The first is that as just noted, the Father’s uniqueness in the Trinity as the Sole Person Whose deity has no source in any Person other than Himself comes across strongly in the text just cited from the Athanasian Creed, which is clearly well within the Western tradition with its Filioque.   The second is that Procession, when used of the Holy Ghost in discussing intra-Trinity relationships, is clearly the same thing as Spiration.   Think of the Second Person of the Trinity.   He is the Eternal Son of God.   He is also the Eternal Word of God.   When we speak of Him as God’s Eternal Son we use the word Generation to describe how He was Eternally Begotten of the Father.   We could also, if we wished, describe Him as the Word as being Eternally Spoken of the Father.   For some reason we don’t usually talk about Him that way but we would be well within Biblical orthodoxy if we were to do so.  We would not say, however, that Jesus being Eternally Spoken as the Word is different from His being Eternally Generated as the Son.   If someone were to try and claim that we would recognize immediately that he was speaking an absurdity.  The most we would say is that His being Eternally Spoken and Eternally Begotten are two different aspects of the same thing.   The same thing is true of Procession and Spiration with regards to the Holy Ghost.   In the twentieth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, the Resurrected Jesus tells His disciples – except St. Thomas who was not present on the occasion - that as the Father sent Him, so He was sending them.   Then St. John records:

 

And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: (v. 22)

 

In this verse the Son clearly breathes out the Holy Ghost upon His disciples.   If the Holy Ghost can be said to be breathed out by the Son as by the Father, then He proceeds from the Father and the Son, for Procession and Spiration are the same.

 

In recent dialogue between the East and West it has come out that the wording “Who proceeds from the Father through the Son” would be more acceptable to the East than the Filioquue as it currently stands.   Whether having found a wording that is acceptable to both sides will eventually end the Controversy and heal the thousand year Schism remains to be seen. 

 

In the remainder of the Article, we confess the equality of the Holy Ghost with the Father and Son – “with the Father and the Son together He is worshipped and glorified” and His Old Testament ministry “Who spake by the prophets”.

 

We shall discuss His New Testament ministry when we turn to the next and ninth Article about the Church.   For now, let us close by saying that for sixteen centuries, all the ancient orthodox Churches – Greek, Latin, Middle Eastern – have confessed their faith in the Holy Ghost, co-equal, co-eternal, and co-substantial with the Father and the Son, in the words of the Article we have just looked at, and for the past five centuries the orthodox Churches of the Reformation have done the same.   In the last century we have seen the rise of new enthusiasts who have accused all Christians prior to them of not teaching the Holy Ghost because these Christians of long ago believed that Christianity was about Jesus Christ and not about exciting experiences, signs, miracles, wonders, personal revelation, falling on the floor, barking like a dog, raising millions of dollars on television to waste on vanity projects and the like.    Clearly these accusations against past generations of orthodox Christians are false.

 

(1)   The Greek and Latin words have the same meaning, but the Latin is masculine – fourth declension not second - and the Greek neuter.   This is why Spiritus appears as Spiritum in the Creed.   As the object of Credo it is in the accusative case, which for masculine nouns is different from the nominative case, which is the lexical or dictionary form of the word, and hence the one used when not directly quoting a text that uses another case.   The Greek also uses the accusative case in the Creed because the same rule applies, but in both languages neuter nouns always have the same spelling in the nominative and accusative cases.

 

 

The Third Article – God Became Man

As we have seen in the first Article of the Creed we confess our faith in God the Father and in the second Article we confess our faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.   We looked at how in the longer conciliar version of the Creed, the Nicene and Constantinopolitan Fathers took care to use such precise language with regards to the deity of the Son of God as to preclude any interpretation that would make His deity a lesser sort than that of the Father.   In the third Article of the Creed, which is our subject today, we confess our faith in the Incarnation, that God – more specifically God the Son – took human nature upon Himself and became a Man.

 

The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed was published and revised in the two ecumenical Councils of the fourth century.   The primary heresy with which those Councils had to contend was Arianism which denied the co-equality and co-eternality of the Son with the Father and declared the Son to be a created being.    This was a heresy concerning the deity of Jesus Christ.   There were also heresies that concerned His humanity.    Docetism, for example, denied His humanity by denying that He had a physical human body and teaching that He had the mere appearance of one.   In the century that followed the century that gave us the conciliar Creed the foremost Christological heresies that the Church contended with pertained to the relationship between Christ’s deity and humanity.     Nestorius, who was Patriarch of Constantinople until he was condemned and deposed by the third ecumenical Council held in Ephesus in 431 AD, sought to settle a theological dispute older than himself pertaining to the use of the title Θεοτόκος in reference to the Virgin Mary.   This word means “God-bearer” and is more usually rendered “Mother of God” in English.   Some objected to the title on the grounds that Mary was not the source of Jesus’ divine nature but of His human nature.   This fact was not in dispute – nobody claimed that Mary was a divine being or that Jesus derived His deity from her – but the reasoning used to derive the objection to the title Θεοτόκος from it was problematic.   Nestorius, by seeking to mediate in the dispute, ended up lending his name to the side which rejected the title and to the problematic Christological doctrine that was formally condemned as the heresy Nestorianism.   The problem with Nestorianism was that the Virgin Mary was the Mother of Jesus, Who is a Person not a nature.   That Person, Jesus, is God.   Therefore Mary was the Mother of God.   Of course, Jesus Christ, God the Son, always was God from eternity past, and derives His deity through Eternal Generation from the Father and not from His Mother, but to object to the title on these grounds is to divide what was forever united in the Incarnation – deity and humanity in the One Person of Jesus.  

 

The condemnation of Nestorianism at Ephesus did not end the Christological disputes of the fifth century.   Indeed, it opened the door to a new heresy.   Eutyches, who had been a priest and monk under Nestorius in Constantinople where he was in charge of a monastery, strongly supported Cyril of Alexandria who presided over the condemnation of Nestorius at Ephesus.   He took Cyril’s position to an extreme, however, and taught that in the Incarnation the humanity of Jesus Christ was swallowed up in the ocean of His deity so that not only was He One Person but had only One nature as well.   This too was problematic because it was a denial of Christ’s true and full humanity and so twenty years after Nestorius was condemned and deposed Eutyches was himself condemned as a heretic at the fourth ecumenical Council at Chalcedon.   His heresy sometimes bears his name, Eutychianism, but is more commonly called Monophysitism.

 

In the Council of Chalcedon the Church did not more than just condemn Eutychianism.   It also issued a statement that positively affirmed what the orthodox Church did believe regarding the Person and Nature of Jesus Christ as opposed to both the heresies of Nestorianism and Eutychianism.   This statement is sometimes called the Chalcedonian Creed although since it was not intended as a revision of the Creed nor is it a full statement of the Faith but is rather a supplement to the Creed it is more properly and more usually called the Definition of Chalcedon.   It asserts that the Incarnate Jesus Christ is One Person, Who has Two Natures, and so that One Person is both fully and truly God and fully and truly Man.   (1)    As a positive affirmation of faith the Chalcedonian Definition has been more valuable than all the anathemas pronounced against the myriad of heresies that in one way or another take away from His deity, humanity, or unity of Person.   It came with a cost, however, in terms of the unity of the Church.   Six centuries before the Greek speaking and Latin speaking Churches followed the Patriarchs of Constantinople and Rome in mutually disfellowshipping the other, the Definition of Chalcedon produced a major and lasting break in Communion between the ancient Churches which confessed Christianity in accordance with the faith of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.   While most Churches affirmed the Chalcedonian Definition, four ancient Churches (2) rejected it because they thought the language of two Natures was too close to Nestorianism for their liking.  (3)  The Chalcedonian Churches have historically regarded these Churches as Monophysite although they have always maintained that they rejected the heresy of Eutyches.   Of themselves they say that they follow the faith as taught by St. Cyril of Alexandria, that the Incarnate Jesus Christ is One Person with One Nature but that this One Nature is such that He is fully Man as well as fully God, His deity and humanity being united into a single Nature in such a way that His humanity is not lost in His deity.   They call their position Miaphysitism.  In recent years dialogue has opened up between these and other Churches and the Chalcedonian Churches, especially the Eastern Orthodox have been more willing to take seriously their claim that their position is not the heresy condemned at Chalcedon.

 

It is the third Article of the Creed which asserts the truth the implications of which were debated in these fifth century controversies.

 

In the Apostles’ Creed the third Article is qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria Virgine which is rendered in the English of the Book of Common Prayer as “who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary”.   Grammatically, this is part of the same sentence that begins with the second Article and it begins a relative clause that continues through the seventh Article in Latin.  The English inserts a sentence break after the fourth Article but this does not affect the meaning in any way.   The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed is, as usual, longer here than the Apostles’ Creed.   It asserts τὸν δι' ἡμᾶς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους καὶ διὰ τὴν ἡμετέραν σωτηρίαν κατελθόντα ἐκ τῶν οὐρανῶν καὶ σαρκωθέντα ἐκ Πνεύματος Ἁγίου καὶ Μαρίας τῆς παρθένου καὶ ἐνανθρωπήσαντα, which in the English of the Book of Common Prayer is “who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man;”.   Note that the English translation in saying that Jesus was “incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary” follows the Latin text which uses “ex” instead of “et” where the Greek text reads καὶ (“and”). 

 

We have already discussed how the conciliar Creed arose in a century in which theological controversy centered around the deity of Jesus Christ.   This focus can be detected in the different way in which the Creeds word this Article.  The Apostle’s Creed speaks of the Incarnation in terms of two events which are common to all descendants of Adam and Eve – conception and birth.   Thus, although these were miraculous and supernatural in that the conception was the work of the Holy Ghost and so Mary gave birth to Jesus as a Virgin, this wording emphasizes Jesus’ sharing fully in the human experience.   In the Nicene-Constantinopoltian version the same three Persons appear – the Holy Ghost, the Virgin Mary, and Jesus Himself – but the events are condensed into a single word, the participle σαρκωθέντα which, with the meaning it has here, is hardly a word that is used of common human experience.  (4)    It means what John 1:14 means when it asserts that “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us”.   This manner of speaking about the Incarnation throws the emphasis back upon the deity of the One Who was made flesh.   Note that it is an ancient custom in many Western Churches to genuflect both at this point in the recitation of the Creed and when John 1:14 is read in the reading of the Gospel.   Where the Nicene Creed stresses what God the Son became rather than what He always was is in the words καὶ ἐνανθρωπήσαντα – “and was made man”.

 

In this Article the Nicene Creed states that Jesus “came down from heaven.”   This is, of course, something that can be inferred from the Creed’s declaration that Jesus is the eternally begotten Son of God Who was made man, but clearly the conciliar Fathers thought it important to state it explicitly, as Jesus Himself did in His interview with Nicodemus (John 3:13).     When, later in the Article we affirm that Jesus “was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary and was made man” we affirm the aspect of the Incarnation in which Jesus’ role was passive.   He “was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary”.   In the wording of the Apostles’ Creed the passivity of Jesus in the Incarnation is particularly emphasized.    That people do not get an active choice in their own conception and birth is proverbial.   By saying that Jesus “came down from heaven”, however, we affirm another aspect of the Incarnation, one in which Jesus was indeed active.

 

The Gospel account of all that Jesus did for us has often been expressed in terms of a two-part journey.   In the first part, His Humiliation, He started at the highest place (Heaven) and went to the lowest place (Hell).   The second part of the journey, His Exultation, begins in the lowest place with His Triumphant entry into Hell as conquering Victor and ends with His return to the highest place in His Ascension back into Heaven.  Both Creeds include the Ascension in the sixth Article, as well as the most important things Jesus did on earth in both parts of the journey.      The beginning of the journey – His leaving Heaven to come down to earth – and the pivotal point where His Humiliation ends and His Exultation begins, do not appear together in the Creeds.   The one appears here in the third article of the conciliar Creed, the other appears in the fifth Article of the Apostles’ Creed.   The fullest picture of the Son of God’s entire Gospel journey, therefore, requires both Creeds.

 

In the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed this Article – and the longer relative clause of which it is the start – begins by stating the purpose for which the Son of God became Incarnate and did all that He did.   It was “for us men and for our salvation”.   In Greek and Latin “us men” is “ἡμᾶς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους” and “nos homines” respectively.   ἄνθρωπος and homo are the Greek and Latin words that mean “man” in the sense of “human being”, as opposed to ἀνήρ and vir which are the words that mean “man” in the sense of “male adult human being”, so all people are the intended beneficiaries and not just males, not that there has ever been much confusion about this contrary to what the politically correct advocates of “gender neutral language” would have you believe.   Salvation, like the Greek word it translates, basically means “deliverance”, i.e. from some sort of danger and “preservation”, with implications, depending upon the context, of health, well-being, safety, security, and freedom.   In a spiritual or religious context, it has a specialized meaning derived from these more basic meanings, of deliverance from sin, the curse that sin brought upon Creation, including the evils of death and hell.  

 

This part of the third Article is of particular importance because it shows that what we affirm in the Creed is the very Gospel itself.   That the historical facts of the Gospel are affirmed in the Creed is not in dispute.   The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which St. Paul declares to be the Gospel in the fifteenth chapter of his first epistle to the Corinthians, are affirmed in the fourth and fifth Articles, and the Articles before these provide the necessary context to these events by affirming Who Jesus Christ is.   What makes the Gospel the Gospel - the Good News that Christians and the Church are to proclaim to the world – is that everything that Jesus did He did for our salvation.

 

The Article about the Incarnation was a very appropriate place to put this because it is the Incarnation that made everything else Jesus did for our salvation possible.   “For there is one God”, St. Paul wrote, “and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (I Tim. 2:5).   Jesus could be such a mediator because He was both God and man.   Jesus saved us by dying for our sins.   He had to become man in order to do so, because God qua God cannot die, and because it having been man who sinned payment was required from man.   Only the sinless God-Man could be the Saviour.

 

 

 (1)    This is called the Hypostatic Union from the Greek word ὑπόστασις.   At one time this word was basically a synonym for οὐσία which means being, essence, or substance.   In the theological disputes leading up to and including those of the first four ecumenical Councils it took on a different meaning.   In the context of discussing the Trinity οὐσία was used for the way in which the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are One, while ὑπόστασις came to be used to denote the way in which they are distinct from each other.   In the Christological context it denotes that of which the Incarnate Christ is One.   In English we use the word Person for this, from the Latin words persona that came to be used in the place of ὑπόστασις in Latin theological discussion.

(2)   These are the Coptic Orthodox Church, founded by St. Mark the Evangelist, the Syriac Orthodox Church which grew out of the Church of Antioch in the book of Acts, the Armenian Apostolic Church founded by the Apostles Bartholomew and Jude, and the Indian Orthodox Church which was established by St. Thomas.   There is also an Ethiopian Orthodox Church and an Eritrean Orthodox Church both of which belong to this type of Church – they are collectively called the Oriental Orthodox Churches – but these were part of the Coptic Orthodox Church at the time of the Chalcedonian Controversy.   The Ethiopian Orthodox Church became autocephalous when it was given its own Patriarch by the Coptic Pope in 1959.   In 1993 the Eritrean Orthodox Church, which up to that point had been part of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, also became autocephalous with its own Patriarch.

(3)   Earlier, the ancient Assyrian-Persian Churches which like the Indian Orthodox Church trace their origins to St. Thomas, broke fellowship with the other ancient Churches over the Council of Ephesus which they condemned and canonized Nestorius as a saint.

(4)   The Greek verb σαρκόω means “to make flesh”.   Ordinarily this word was used for situations like when a smaller, weaker, person gets bigger and stronger or when flesh grows to fill in a wound.   In the Creed it is used with the very specialized meaning of a spiritual being having been given flesh.

 

 

Some Whitsunthoughts

God, who as at this time didst teach the hearts of thy faithful people, by the sending to them the light of thy Holy Spirit; Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgement in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through the merits of Christ Jesus our Saviour, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the same Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen. - Collect for Whitsunday, Book of Common Prayer

Today is the major Christian feast day that is traditionally known in English as Whitsunday or sometimes just Whitsun. It is more generally known as Pentecost but I prefer the traditional English name for two reasons. The first is aesthetic - it is far more charming and pleasant to the ear. The second reason has to do with precision. Pentecost, from the Greek word meaning fifty, denotes two distinct, although related, festivals in two distinct religions. It can refer to the Jewish Feast of Weeks, on the fiftieth day after the Jewish Passover, or it can refer to the Christian feast which falls on the fiftieth day after the Christian Passover, Pascha or Easter. The name Pentecost, therefore, requires an explanation of whether reference is being made to the Jewish or the Christian Feast. Whitsunday can refer only to the Christian Pentecost, just as Shabuot or Shavuoth can refer only to the Jewish Pentecost. (1)

The distinction between the two having been made it is important to observe their close relationship and to note similarities and differences. As St. Paul makes clear in the book of Hebrews, the Old Covenant, its sacrifices, and Tabernacle/Temple were shadows, types, and images of the New Covenant, the atoning sacrifice of Christ, and the heavenly Tabernacle not made with human hands. The relationship is not unlike that of the shadows depicting the visual world and the shadow casters depicting the Forms in Plato's famous allegory of the Cave. Not much is said in the New Testament about Christian feasts and festivals for the obvious reason that most - some would argue all - of the New Testament was completed prior to AD 70 when Rome sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple. Up to that point Jewish Christians continued, to the extent that the Jewish authorities allowed this, to participate in the worship of Second Temple Judaism, whereas the Apostolic Council of Jerusalem had determined that Gentile converts to Christianity did not have to become Jews - be circumcised, eat kosher, follow the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament, etc. - in order to be Christians. St. Paul's epistles, all except for Hebrews being written either to predominantly Gentile Churches or individuals such as Philemon and Bishops Timothy and Titus, stress the doctrine of Christian liberty. Little was written in this period about distinctly Christian patterns of worship common to Jewish and Gentile Christians alike, apart from the Gospel Sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, although it is evident from the Book of Acts that Christians had already begun holding meetings on the first day of the Week in remembrance of the Resurrection.

After AD 70, the worship of Second Temple Judaism ceased to be an option for Jewish Christians, because the Temple and everything that took place there was now gone, and they were persona non grata in the synagogues taught by rabbis who were increasingly hostile to Christianity. It now became important for the Church to develop its own distinctly Christian liturgical calendar for the use of all Christians. The earliest and most important of Christian feast days were Christmas and Easter. Both were established prior to the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, which was the first Ecumenical Council. The evidence suggests that the Church had begun celebrating December 25th as Christmas, calculating the date of Christ's birth through a logic that is internally consistent even if it rests on a somewhat questionable premise, long before Aurelian declared the Festival of Sol Invictus on the same date and that the latter was done to compete with the Church and not the other way around. While the major reason for the Council of Nicaea was to address the Arian heresy an important minor reason was to settle the controversy over the date of Easter.

In some cases the feasts appointed by the Church have a corresponding Old Testament feast and in some cases they do not. This itself illustrates the Apostolic and especially Pauline doctrine of Christian liberty - the Church under the New Covenant was not bound to either follow the Old Testament calendar or depart from it entirely. The feasts that do correspond to Old Testament feasts point back to events which their Old Testament counterparts pointed forward to, thus extending the principle of what St. Paul said in the epistle to the Hebrews. Christmas, although it occurs at approximately the same time as a major Jewish festival - Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, commemorating the rededication of the Temple after it was defiled by Antiochus Epiphanes in the events leading up to the Maccabean revolt - and one which was certainly kept by Jews in the time of Christ (John 10:22), must be counted as a Christian feast with no corresponding Old Testament feast. There is no record of Hanukkah being ordained by God in the Old Testament, even in the Septuagintal books which recount the events to which it points back, and there is no obvious thematic connection between the two feasts.

Easter, on the other hand, very much corresponds to the Old Testament Passover and, indeed, in most countries that do not speak a Germanic tongue is called by a name derived from the Greek word for Passover, Pascha. Here we see most clearly how the principles laid down by St. Paul in Hebrews can be extended in application to Old Testament feasts in relationship to Christian ones. Easter or Pascha is the Christian Passover. Every year in the period leading up to Easter, the Church's lexicons assign Old Testament readings from Genesis and Exodus that relate the events leading up to and including those the Jewish Passover commemorated, whereas the Gospel readings led up to and include the events which the old Passover pointed forward to and which the Christian Passover looks back to - the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which brought to the world deliverance from the spiritual bondage to sin, Satan, death, and hell which ancient Israel's literal bondage in Egypt signified.

Whitsunday is very much like Easter in this respect. The events it commemorates, which are related in the second chapter of Acts, took place on the Jewish Pentecost. The first time this feast is mentioned in the Bible is in the twenty-third chapter of Exodus. Here it is mentioned as the second of the three feasts each year when all Israelite males were commanded to appear before the Lord, which, when Israel was established, and the Temple built, translated into the requirement of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The other two were the Passover itself, and Sukkot or Succoth, the Feast of Tabernacles. Neither Shavuoth nor Succoth are referred to by these names yet, in this passage, but are called "the feast of harvest, the first-fruits of thy labours" and "the feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year" respectively (v. 16). The pilgrimage requirement explains why Jerusalem was filled with people from all over the Mediterranean world speaking a myriad of languages in the second chapter of Acts. Later in the book of Exodus when the thrice annual assembly of the Israelites is mentioned again, it is called the "feast of weeks, of the first-fruits of wheat harvest" (34:22) but the name is not yet explained.

More detailed instructions with regards to this feast are found in the twenty third chapter of Leviticus and the sixteenth chapter of Deuteronomy. On the day following the first Sabbath of Passover, the day on which they were to first "put the sickle to the corn" (Deut. 16:9), the Israelites were to offer a sheaf of the first-fruits of the grain harvest as a wave offering, along with a number of accompanying offerings (Lev. 23:10-14). Note that the grain harvest in Palestine occurs at about the same time grain is planted in this part of the world. The grain harvest was the early harvest, the spring harvest, as opposed to the late or fall harvest of the fruit. Passover occurs in the month of Abib or Aviv, (2) later called Nisan, which roughly corresponds to late March and early April. The sheaf waved in the first-fruits offering during the week of Unleavened Bread was of barley, the first grain harvested. From this offering of the first-fruits, they were to count seven weeks. At this point in time the wheat was being harvested. Seven weeks are forty-nine days, and the day after the final Sabbath of the seven, would be the fiftieth day. On that morning, they were to offer a "new meat offering unto the LORD" ("meat" here means "wheat meal"), consisting of two leavened loaves of fine flour, along with a whole bunch of other offerings which are spelled out in Leviticus and the twenty eighth chapter of Numbers. These sacrifices made the gathering at the Tabernacle/Temple a practical requirement as well as a commandment in itself. The name of the feast in both Hebrew and Greek is derived from its calculation. The "weeks" are the seven weeks, the "fiftieth day" is the following day on which the Feast actually occurred.

Note that in the instructions in the Torah or Pentateuch itself, it is quite clear that the weeks begin on a Sunday, i.e., the day after the Jewish Sabbath which is Saturday, and that Pentecost would always fall on a Sunday too. This was still the case in the Book of Acts. Pentecost there fell on the Sunday that was the fiftieth day after the Resurrection, which occurred on the Sunday after the Passover, the day of the first-fruits wave offering. Rabbinic Judaism interprets the Torah differently. It now celebrates Shavuoth each year on the same calendar date, the sixth of Sivan which does not fall on Sunday each year and which is the fiftieth day, not counted from the day after the first Sabbath in Passover but from the Ides of Nisan, which is Passover day itself. The Talmudic rabbis justified this by interpreting the sabbath in Leviticus 23 as referring not to the weekly sabbath but to the Passover Day itself as a special day of rest. This interpretation seems forced, and the more obvious understanding of a period of seven weeks beginning on a "day after the sabbath" and ending on a "sabbath" is that the regular sabbath is in view. It is worth noting that the same rabbinic tradition that interprets the Feast of Weeks as falling on the sixth of Sivan also says that this was the day on which the Ten Commandments were handed down. This is not possible without torturing the meaning of the first verse of the nineteenth chapter of Exodus. While that verse does state that the Israelites arrived at Mt. Sinai on Sivan - the third month after leaving Egypt counted by the same method as that by which the Sunday of the Resurrection is counted the third day after the Friday of the Crucifixion, i.e., with Nisan/Friday being the first in the count - but the expression "self-same day" would indicate that it was the Ides of the month or possibly the day after, but at any rate well after the sixth. Furthermore, the Commandments were not given until Moses was summoned up the mountain after the glory of God descended upon it three days after their arrival - the seventeenth of the month at the earliest. Even a Pentecost calculated by the interpretation of Leviticus I have argued for, would at the latest place the feast on the eleventh of Sivan, (3) which is still earlier than Exodus allows the arrival at Mt. Sinai to be. The original association between Shavuot and the Ten Commandments was clearly due to the events occurring in the same month, and only later was it tortured into the idea that they occurred on the same day.

While the observations in the previous paragraph may tend to put the damper on those who like to preach sermons connecting the Old and New Testament Pentecosts through the parallelism of the coming of Law and Grace they do not affect the actual connection that is evident in the Scriptures themselves.

The idea of a grain harvest is the thematic connection between the two Pentecosts. Obviously, this theme was very literal with regards to the original Pentecost. In the second chapter of Acts we see the first-fruits offered to God from a different type of harvest. It was the Lord Jesus Christ Himself who drew the analogy. The ninth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel ends with Him going through the cities and villages, teaching and preaching, and healing people of their sickness and disease and, seeing the multitude coming to Him for these ministrations, saying to His disciples:

The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest. (vv. 37-38)

This leads directly to the commission of the twelve Apostles in the next chapter. Similarly, in the fourth chapter of St. John's Gospel, in speaking to His disciples after His encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well He says:

Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together . And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour: other men laboured and ye are entered into their labours. (vv. 35-38)

The harvest in both of these passages is a spiritual harvest, in which the fruit of the seed of the Word sown among the people who hear it is reaped in their coming to faith in Jesus as the Son of God and the Christ. In the second chapter of Acts we see the Apostles' reaping precisely this harvest when, after the Holy Ghost descends upon them in fulfilment of the promises of John 14:16-18; 15:26-27; 16:7-13 and Acts 1:8, they speak and are heard by each of their auditors in the multitude in their own tongue, and St. Peter delivers his first sermon calling upon them to turn in repentance and believe in the Christ Who was crucified and had risen, about three thousand so believed, and were baptized into the Church on that very day.

It is because of what happened on the first Christian Pentecost that they day has traditionally been one for baptisms and confirmations. Baptism is, of course, the first of the Gospel Sacraments, the ceremony in which one is initiated into the Christian faith, ritually cleansed, and made a member of the Church. Confirmation, which in the Eastern tradition occurs at the same time as baptism, is the extrascriptural name given to the very Scriptural practice, evident throughout the book of Acts, in which the Apostles, and later those succeeded them in the governance of the Church, lay their hands on the heads of the baptized and pray that the Holy Ghost would come upon them - which is where the association with Pentecost comes in. It is from the practice of holding baptisms on this day, and specifically the white robes traditionally worn by those about to be baptized as well as those doing the baptizing - that the day came to be called "White Sunday" or Whitsunday.

This year there will be few to no baptisms or confirmations on Whitsunday. Even if the Communist health apparatchiks loosened their unjust, totalitarian, evil and Satanic restrictions on the size of gatherings enough for us to obey God's commands and assemble together in Churches again, they would undoubtedly tell us that rituals involving tactile contact like baptism and confirmation could not take place. The only baptisms and confirmations that will take place today, therefore, will be where a bishop has made the courageous decision - one which would undoubtedly be condemned as "selfish" by professedly "Christian" writers such as Rod Dreher - to not render unto Caesar that which belongs to God.

Wherever such courage may be found, there will be seen the work of Him Who descended upon the disciples on the first Whitsunday, empowered them, and united them into the body of Christ which is the Church.

(1) That is, when it is used as the name of a single day. Since the word for "week" in Hebrew is identical to the number of days in a week, the word meaning "weeks" also means "sevens". This is the plural of the name of the Jewish Day of Rest, which simply bears the name of the number of the day of the week upon which it falls, "seven".
(2) The different spellings given for the Hebrew names of months and days reflect the difference between older and more recent rules for transliterating Hebrew into English, not two alternative Hebrew spellings. Obviously, however, whether spelled Abib or Aviv in English, it and Nisan - which can also be spelled with a double s - are alternative names for the same month. Aviv means "spring" in Hebrew and Nisan is a loan-word from Akkadian, dating to the Babylonian Captivity, meaning "first-fruit."
(3) If the 14th of Nisan falls on a Sunday, the first Sabbath in Passover Week would be the twentieth, making the day after the twenty-first. This being counted as the first day, there would be ten towards the fifty in Nisan, twenty-nine in the intervening month of Zif/Ziv or Iyar, leaving eleven for Sivan.