November 13, 2024
The Spirit, the Holy Spirit, and Holy Ghost, One in the Same
an offering by Dick Fichter, parishioner with support from Rev. Dina
Because of my age, I grew up with the Holy Ghost and not the Holy Spirit. I just have to keep in mind the old adage by Indiana poet James Whitcomb Riley (1849–1916) who may have coined the phrase when he wrote: When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck. This concept seems to work for me for the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost and the Spirit in the Old and New Testaments since they are one in the same.
I decided to go to the Episcopal glossary to see about the definition of the Holy Ghost, but none is provided. However, there is a definition of the Holy Spirit as follows.
The Holy Spirit
The third person of the Trinity. In the OT, “spirit” was primarily used to express God’s power in the world. In the NT, Jesus is called the Christ because he is the one anointed by the Spirit. The gift of the Spirit to Jesus’ disciples after the crucifixion is associated with the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus in Jn 20:19-23 and with the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2. The Catechism states that the church is holy “because the Holy Spirit dwells in it, consecrates its members, and guides them to do God’s will” (BCP, p. 854).
The Council of Constantinople in 381 stated that the Holy Spirit is as truly God as the Son, both being of “one substance” with the Father. The Nicene Creed states belief “in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the prophets” (BCP, p. 359). In the relations of the persons of the Trinity, the Spirit is said to proceed from the Father by the mode of “spiration” or “breathing,” while the Son is said to proceed from the Father by the mode of “generation.” Western theology came to speak of the Spirit proceeding “from the Father and the Son.” The Episcopal theologian William Porcher DuBose stated in The Soteriology of the New Testament (1892) that “all God’s operations in us as spiritual beings are by the word through the spirit” (p. 56).
Pneumatology is the theological study of the Holy Spirit. The Hymnal 1982 provides a section of hymns on the Holy Spirit (Hymns 500-516), including “Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire” (Hymns 503-504) and “Breathe on me, Breath of God” (Hymn 508). See Filioque; see Trinity.
Obviously, the Holy Spirit was more recently considered a preferable translation over the earlier translation of Holy Ghost, probably for cultural reasons and modernization. However, growing up with the Holy Ghost, I would have liked a more specific acknowledgement of equivalence of the Holy Ghost and the Holy Spirit in the definition of the Holy Spir as provided.
The Holy Spirit in the Early Church
Insofar as they began to separate or be separated from Judaism, which did not accept Jesus as the Messiah, the earliest Christians expressed certain ideas about the one on whom their faith focused. As with other religious people, they became involved in a search for truth. God, in the very nature of things, was necessarily the final truth. In a reference preserved in the Gospel According to John (14:6), however, Jesus refers to himself not only as “the way” and “the life” but also as “the truth.” Roughly, this meant “all the reality there is” and was a reference to Jesus’ participation in the reality of the one God.
The Holy Spirit as a Mediator
In John, the Spirit mediates truth in the disciples which enables them to do their work. And, to Jesus sends his advocate and helper, the Holy Spirit to provide a spiritual force field to direct man’s moral compass to the truth. Just like the earth’s magnetic field, which is also always present to us, the compass needle can be distorted by other fields so that it no longer points to true north. To be “spiritual” without patiently and with deep and abiding discernment with the Holy Spirit, it seems to me, is to lose sight of the truth. The compass needle must be made of a substance which responds to the earth’s magnetic field. In my opinion, there must be a similar requirement for a substance in you to receive the Holy Spirit for you to learn and act on the truth. What is the substance what constitutes your conscience?
NEXT WEEK: One Experience & the Gifts of the Holy Spirit from the Old & New Testament
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