We Believe in the Holy Spirit

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1. 00:00

   Michael Horton

   The Apostle Paul says to sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs so that the word of Christ may dwell in us richly, teaching and admonishing one another. I think I speak for all the speakers when I say thank you for your singing these past couple of days, and to the team for leading us in that marvelous worship. You see how the word of Christ — not just vague sentimentality, but the word of Christ — is dwelling in us richly. May we take that home along with the talks that are being given.

2. 01:00

   Michael Horton

   According to a recent study just last month, among self-identified Christians, 53 percent believe in God — presumably God the Father — 59 percent believe in Jesus, and 29 percent believe in the Holy Spirit. According to the Ligonier State of Theology study, done in partnership with LifeWay Research, the conclusion was that most professing evangelical Christians are Arians and Pelagians, according to their answers.

3. 02:09

   Michael Horton

   Now, these are people whose answers to several questions rank them as evangelical Christians, and most said that the Holy Spirit is a force but not a person. One comment here in the introduction: Arianism is always the offspring of Pelagianism. Historically, Arianism came first, but as we've already heard, it comes out of works righteousness. It's always been true that to the extent you believe the gospel is following the moral example of Christ, to that extent you do not need God to come down and save us — what you need is a good example. Adam was a bad example; Jesus is a good example. "What would Jesus do?" — that's the gospel. Arianism and Pelagianism hunt in packs, and that's certainly what we've seen. I think what these surveys underscore is a tendency, a problem in our thinking about what to do with the Holy Spirit. He's kind of like the third wheel in the Trinity.

4. 03:00

   Michael Horton

   We don't quite know — we know the Father-Son relationship; that analogy makes sense to us. But what is a Father, Son, and Spirit? So we've got to fit that into something we can understand. Is the Spirit a child, as some evangelical theologians have recently said? That's subordination on steroids — a pretty odd view of the Holy Spirit, demoting His role to that of a child. Part of the problem, too, is that we introduce the Holy Spirit too late in the story. The Holy Spirit appears in the second verse of the Bible, and we often don't pick up on Him again until Pentecost and the application of redemption. By then He's had a long and fruitful career.

5. 04:02

   Michael Horton

   So here's what I want to look at: two major things — the unity of essence and the distinction of persons with respect to the Holy Spirit — and then a third, how the Holy Spirit changes everything. First, the unity of essence. We've been seeing that the Nicene Fathers were very careful with every phrase in this creed. Every phrase tackles a particular heresy — protects the gospel from a particular heresy. And so here, the Holy Spirit is "the Lord."

6. 04:45

   Michael Horton

   This was written between the Council of Nicaea and the Council of Constantinople. Two years ago, with our Theo Global team, we were writing and putting our chapters together for the book that just came out. We did it in Istanbul, to meet in the middle, and we happened to go to the Hagia Sophia — Hagia Irene, actually, which is almost intact because it was used as a Turkish artillery depot for centuries. We went in and prayed together and took a picture in the chancel area, where the bishops came up and signed the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. And there we were, from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and India — still united after all these centuries.

7. 06:06

   Michael Horton

   So He's the Lord — the Son is of the same essence as the Father. That was settled at Nicaea. But the question then is, what's the relationship of the Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son? We're not Binitarians — we're Trinitarians. The original Nicene Creed simply had, "and we believe in the Holy Spirit." That clearly wasn't enough, because a group rose up who said the benedictions and doxologies in the New Testament don't extend worship and praise to the Holy Spirit — those go to the Father and the Son. We're clear on that. But in those doxologies, particularly in Paul, we have the Father and the Son. And Basil the Great, in the fourth century, introduced the Gloria Patri. He wrote it: "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen."

8. 07:09

   Michael Horton

   His opponents, whom he dubbed "spirit killers," said we have to use only Bible words in our doxology — our liturgy must be only Bible words, Bible verses. And he said, "Your biblicism is unbiblical." So he introduced "glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit" — not "glory be to the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit," but "with, and with, and with." And through that emphasis — Basil wasn't alone; the other Cappadocian writers pressed this too — in the intervening years it led to that third article in our Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed: He's Lord, who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified. He's not a force. He's not a tool God uses. He's not a power outlet.

9. 09:01

   Michael Horton

   The Holy Spirit is the Lord who, with the Father and the Son, is worshiped and glorified. There is no subordination here — just as there's no subordination between the Son and the Father, there's no subordination between the Holy Spirit and the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is exactly who God is, but He's not the Father, and He's not the Son. The same logic Nicaea applied to the Father and the Son now carries into the third article with the Holy Spirit. There are not three Lords, but one Lord. Consequently, to say the Holy Spirit is Lord is to say the Holy Spirit is the one God. The Holy Spirit has the whole essence that belongs to the Father and the Son.

10. 10:00

    Michael Horton

    The Holy Spirit is not a divine energy, a divine power, a semi-divine agent. Origen, in the third century, said he wasn't sure what to do with the Holy Spirit — maybe a "super-duper angel." Once you start down that subordinationist road, the Father is highest, the Son is second fiddle, and the Holy Spirit is third fiddle. If you rank them that way, maybe the Son lies on the Creator side of the Creator-creature ledger, but the Holy Spirit is a creature — the highest creature, perhaps — of God. But you can't worship and glorify a creature. That's as much a no-no in Christianity as it is in Judaism. You can only worship one God.

11. 11:14

    Michael Horton

    Eager to discern the Trinity in the Old Testament, Christians have often turned to Genesis 1:26 — "then God said, let us make man in our own image." There are debates about what "us" means here, but there was no real debate among the early Christians reading the Old Testament in light of the New — which is how we should read it — that this is a Trinitarian reference. Who else is God the Father talking to? Who else could make man but God, and secondly, "in our image" — that can't be the image of God and angels. It's the image of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Now that redemptive revelation has reached its climax so far, with the Father sending His Son and His Spirit into our world, we have new spectacles with which to read the Old Testament. Now we see references to the Son as God in the Old Testament that puzzled Jews reading the Scriptures. Why? Jesus has come. Something has happened. An event has happened — a meteor has struck earth. God has come down to us. He says He's God. He performs the works of God. His resurrection proves He is God.

12. 13:07

    Michael Horton

    The same is true with the Holy Spirit. It's when the Spirit is actually poured out — no longer just promised — at Pentecost, that people can look back and interpret Old Testament passages in a Trinitarian way. I think the clearest argument for the Spirit's identity as God early on in Scripture is that second verse of Genesis: "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit was hovering over the face of the waters." The Father spoke creation into being — "Let there be," and there was. But it was still a disordered mass, and it needed to be divided, separated — a house needed to be turned into a home. And Christ is the one in whom all things hold together. It is the divine word that the Father speaks in the Son — the Son eternally had these divine ideas, these divine purposes, in Him — and then the Holy Spirit is the one who brings it down to earth, who is at work within creation to make it respond to the word the Father has spoken in His Son.

13. 14:14

    Michael Horton

    So you have the word spoken into being by the Father, the Son as the mediator of all creation with all the principles of what will be created in Him, and then the Holy Spirit actually hovering over the waters spoken into existence — this tohu wa-bohu, this darkness and void, this watery wasteland. And suddenly, as He hovers, the waters stir with life. He makes the waters fruitful. He hovers like the dove over the waters, making them fruitful so that the words spoken by the Father in the Son will come to pass.

14. 15:00

    Michael Horton

    Now, some translators render "ruach Elohim" as "a wind from God" — some translations, like the NRSV, read "a wind from God was hovering over the waters." I have no idea what the point of that would be — the second verse of the whole Bible, and it was really windy? I think clearly "ruach Elohim" means the Spirit of God. First, wind doesn't hover with deliberate intention — wind blows, but it would be odd to speak of wind hovering purposefully. Furthermore, later revelation takes for granted that the Spirit is giver of life, as in Psalm 104:30 — "when you send your Spirit," not "when you blow your breath." When you send your Spirit — ruach — they are created. They aren't created until the Holy Spirit gets involved.

15. 17:02

    Michael Horton

    The Spirit is not just the one who applies redemption — the Holy Spirit is Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. So the Holy Spirit is God. It's by the Holy Spirit that Moses performed his miracles. It's by the Spirit that the Israelites were led out of Egypt through the wilderness, and the Holy Spirit hovered over the camp — the same terms used for Him hovering over the waters in Genesis, making a fruitful place in the midst of a wilderness.

16. 17:45

    Michael Horton

    The Holy Spirit is the one who spoke through the prophets, as the creed goes on to say — the Holy Spirit hovered over the prophets. Peter says the Holy Spirit came upon them so that what they wrote was not their own ideas but the very word of God. The Spirit isn't merely an empowerment of teaching — the Holy Spirit is the divine teacher. He's not merely the glory of God emanating from the temple; He is God, whose glory emanates from the temple when He indwells it. Once again, hovering over the temple, making it holy, making the whole land fruitful in the midst of a wilderness by the emanation of glory from the temple.

17. 18:31

    Michael Horton

    It's especially in the prophets that the Spirit is both divine and personal. He will be poured out in the last days upon all God's people, indwelling them — especially Joel 2:28–32. You may shield yourself from the wind, but only a person can be grieved, as the Spirit was grieved by Israel's violation of the covenant in Isaiah 63:7–14, and is grieved today when we resist His sanctifying influence, Ephesians 4:30. Only a person can be grieved. He is identified by the divine name in many passages. The Spirit also has divine attributes ascribed to Him — omnipotence, omnipresence, impassibility — as well as divine works: creation, providential renovation, regeneration, resurrection of the dead, all appropriated to the Holy Spirit.

18. 20:13

    Michael Horton

    The Spirit is accorded divine homage — you worship the Holy Spirit, bow down to the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is equally worshiped and glorified in the Old Testament. He is referred to by Jesus and the apostles as the author of Scripture, the very word of God — the very word of God because the Father speaks it concerning His Son and the Holy Spirit inspires it. The Holy Spirit is always the person of the Godhead who is at work within creation to bring about the perfect response of the creature to the Creator. Just as Jesus reveals the Father, He also reveals the Holy Spirit. Sometimes we say the Holy Spirit is the shy person of the Godhead — He never talks about Himself. That may be true to some extent, but Jesus has a lot to say about Him.

19. 21:00

    Michael Horton

    The Son testifies to the Holy Spirit, especially in John 14–16, the Upper Room Discourse, where Jesus prepares His disciples for His departure: "I have to go, because if I don't go, the Holy Spirit cannot come." What could justify Jesus leaving? The coming of the Holy Spirit. In Acts 5, Peter confronts Ananias and Sapphira, telling them they have lied to the Holy Spirit — verse 3. In fact, verse 4, they have not lied to men but to God. In 2 Corinthians 3, the apostle singles out the Son and the Spirit as Lord: "whenever anyone turns to the Lord Jesus" — verse 16, referencing Exodus 34 — "the veil is taken away." Then he turns to the Holy Spirit, verse 17: "now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom."

20. 22:39

    Michael Horton

    The first clause underscores the equality of the Holy Spirit with God — the Spirit is the Lord, and He's the Spirit of the Lord; He's a distinct person of the Godhead. Verse 18 mentions both persons: "and we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's" — that is, Christ's — "glory, are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." Conformed to the image of Christ the Mediator, the one in whom the word is spoken, by the power of the Holy Spirit at work in us. This emphasis guards against any kind of ontological subordination. There are two main heresies here in the Trinity — there are others, but two main ones. Subordination, where you emphasize the distinction of persons in a way that ranks them, and modalism, the heresy that says there's only one person — you so emphasize the unity of the three that there aren't really three persons, just one person acting like three.

21. 24:00

    Michael Horton

    This first clause — the Holy Spirit is the Lord, worshiped equally with the Father and the Son, He is Lord — guards against the heresy of subordination. The Holy Spirit is everything the Father and the Son are, except that He's the Holy Spirit, not the Father and the Son.

22. 24:30

    Michael Horton

    The second point: He is the Giver of Life. Having affirmed the unity of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son, the Nicene bishops now emphasize the distinction of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is the Giver of Life. Properly speaking, the Father is not the giver of life; the Son is not the giver of life. The Holy Spirit is the giver of life. When the Father and the Son are said to give life, they only do it through the Holy Spirit. This is particular to the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

23. 25:00

    Michael Horton

    In Protestant liberalism, which is basically Arianism, you have figures like Friedrich Schleiermacher, who was actually a modalist — he said he was a Sabellian — so he's probably closest to that camp. But why does this matter, practically speaking, for our Christian life? Does it matter whether God is one person, three persons, or twenty? We only experience one person, God — but of course that isn't true at all. Even at the level of experience, as Gordon Fee has written, Christians came to believe in the Holy Spirit not out of doctrinal, scholastic debate — they came to believe in Him because they'd experienced Him. They experienced Him at Pentecost, just as they had experienced Jesus — 500 people, witnesses to the resurrection.

24. 26:21

    Michael Horton

    Now you have all these witnesses to the presence of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. It happened — deal with it. Now we have to explain it; it's not that we explain it first and then it happens. That's what occurred with the formation of the third article of the Nicene Creed. We've already heard — I don't have to go through this material — the distinction between the immanent and economic Trinity, the processions and the missions, the external works of the Godhead being indivisible, and so forth. We just heard wonderful discussions of these things. The external works of the Godhead are revealed in creation.

25. 27:14

    Michael Horton

    The eternal processions cannot be read out of the economy into the immanent Trinity. When Jesus says, "the Father is greater than I," He's speaking about His humiliation, His incarnate state as the Servant of the covenant. Yes, He's also the Lord of the covenant, but here He speaks as the Servant of the covenant, doing all the Father tells Him to do. The sending of the Son and the Spirit in the fullness of time is distinguished qualitatively from the eternal procession of the Son and the Spirit from the Father. The Son is eternally begotten, and the Spirit is eternally spirated.

26. 28:19

    Michael Horton

    Someone once asked one of the Nicene bishops — one of the Arians or semi-Arians — "So what does 'spirated' mean? We know what 'begotten' means — what does 'spirated' mean?" And the bishop said, "We must use a term different from 'begotten' to distinguish the Spirit from the Son. That is the only reason we use that word. If you want to know how spiration works, then let's hang out for a while and both go mad together." Isn't that a great response?

27. 29:00

    Michael Horton

    As we've heard, the external works of the Godhead are undivided. There is the doctrine of appropriations, where you can say the Father is especially highlighted as Creator, the Son especially identified with our redemption, and the Spirit especially identified with our sanctification — the creeds follow that form: "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in... Son, Jesus Christ," who died for our sins, and so forth, "the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life." That's fine, but we have to remember the works of the Godhead are undivided. Everything the Father does, He does in the Son by the Spirit. Neither the Father nor the Son does something different — they do something differently in every work.

28. 30:40

    Michael Horton

    That's an important point: even if creation had never existed, they eternally have different personal attributes. They have exactly the same essential attributes, which make them one God, but also personal attributes that our Reformed theologians called incommunicable. The Son can never be the origin of anything, because the Father is the origin even of the Son's existence. The Father can never be the mediator of any activity of the Trinity. And the Holy Spirit can never be the origin or the mediator of God's works — because ontologically, in the immanent Trinity, the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, and the Spirit is eternally spirated from the Father.

29. 31:08

    Michael Horton

    But the Spirit is also Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier — just in a different way than the Father and the Son are. The Father is the originator of creation, redemption, and sanctification; the Son is the mediator of creation, redemption, and sanctification; and the Spirit is the one who perfects the work of creation, redemption, and sanctification.

30. 31:40

    Michael Horton

    So what we meet in the unfolding biblical drama isn't just three personas, but three concrete persons — which is why the East used the strange word "hypostasis": a "somewhat" existing in a something. Philosophically, something that subsists in a substance — a real "somewhat" existing in a something. Not three roles, but three actors, as in the baptism of Jesus: the Father speaking — "this is My Son, listen to Him" — the Son as the one being spoken of, and the Holy Spirit as a dove hovering over the waters once again, dividing the waters from the dry land so there can be a habitable space of fruitfulness. And Jesus is that tree of fruitfulness.

31. 32:40

    Michael Horton

    There are various ways to formulate this: creation exists from the Father, in the Son, by the power of the Spirit. In the new creation, Christ is the head, while the Spirit unites the members to Him and renews them according to Christ's image, to the glory of the Father. Or: the Father works for us, the Son works among us, and the Spirit works within us. Or, one more formulation: in the covenant of grace, the Father is the promise-maker, Hebrews 6:13; the Son is the promise, 2 Corinthians 1:20; and the Spirit brings about within us the "amen" of faith, 1 Corinthians 12:13.

32. 34:00

    Michael Horton

    So the Holy Spirit is the one who works among us. In Islam, for example, there's one person — Allah could not have love as an attribute before he created the world, because there was no one to love. He had to create a world before He could love, before that could be an attribute of Allah. God has been eternally love because He's the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit — three persons in a loving relationship, all bearing equally that attribute of love.

33. 34:28

    Michael Horton

    And that means creation came into being not because of a need God had for an attribute — it came into existence out of the overflow of the attribute God has eternally, from the Father, in the Son, by the Spirit. Gregory of Nyssa wrote that none of the persons executes any work apart from the others, but every operation extending from God to creation has its origin in the Father, proceeds through the Son, and is perfected in the Holy Spirit. John Calvin repeated much the same when he wrote that to the Father is attributed the beginning of all action, the fountain and source of all things; to the Son, wisdom, counsel, and arrangement in action; while the energy and efficacy of action is assigned to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit makes every work of the Trinity effectual.

34. 36:32

    Michael Horton

    Even in common grace, not just saving grace, it's the Holy Spirit who helps the sciences and the humanities flourish — if there's any justice at all in the world, it's because of the Holy Spirit. In fact, Calvin says that all who, in their super-piety, mock the secular writers, insult the Holy Spirit who gave them those gifts. If there's anything good in this world at all, even apart from regeneration, it's because the Father is speaking in His Son by His Holy Spirit. He is Lord in exactly the same way as the Father and the Son, and yet He is also the giver of life in a way the Father and the Son are not.

35. 37:15

    Michael Horton

    This means we don't have a despotic monarch we call God. We have a God at work in the world — even to the point of becoming a creature, crossing that Creator-creature bridge — and sending His Holy Spirit at every point along the way to be at work within nature. Not against it, not forcing it against its will, not a coercive force — just one person acting upon a world; the Father sending His Son into the world and the Holy Spirit operating within the world to bring about its "amen" to what the Father has ordered it to be.

36. 38:18

    Michael Horton

    So, my third and final point: the Holy Spirit changes everything. That's what the Holy Spirit does in every work of the Godhead — the Father is the originator, the Son is the mediator, and the Spirit is the one who brings it into effect. We shouldn't look for the works done uniquely by the Holy Spirit, but for the unique role of the Holy Spirit in every work of the Godhead. First, He is the uniting Spirit — the Holy Spirit unites and divides. Sometimes you have to divide things in order to unite them — anybody here in construction? You've got to make a mess before you can bring order.

37. 39:00

    Michael Horton

    The Holy Spirit is the one who turns a house into a home, who brings order out of chaos. He takes the materials that were in the mind of the Architect, purchased by His Son, and erects a beautiful edifice — a living temple with living stones. The Holy Spirit is the one who separated the waters in creation so there was dry land for communion, the one who separated the waters so that Israel could be delivered from Egypt and become His own people in His own holy land.

38. 39:40

    Michael Horton

    He comes in judgment to Adam and Eve after their transgression of the covenant. It's often translated "in the cool of the day," but that doesn't quite fit. Adam and Eve have just sinned, just transgressed the covenant, and God comes along — it's a hot day, and He waits for the sun to go down to be a little nicer, so He comes for dinner. But that doesn't make sense given what's just happened — Adam has just broken the covenant. God comes in "the Spirit of the Day," capital S. The Holy Spirit came in judgment. The Spirit of what day? The Spirit of the Day of Judgment.

39. 40:30

    Michael Horton

    And that's why Jesus describes the Holy Spirit as another attorney. "Parakletos" does not mean "Comforter" — it means attorney. "I will send you another attorney." He will be an attorney outside of you, in heaven; He will be an attorney inside of you, within you, bringing you to conviction so that you will come to Christ for righteousness — and everything that Christ has, He will give to you. In a certain sense, because of the distinction of persons — think of Jesus in His ministry. How many followers did He have? Yet the Holy Spirit didn't die on the cross for us. The Spirit wasn't raised for us. Jesus accomplished our redemption, but it wasn't until Pentecost that people's hearts were opened, that the graves were opened, that the dead came to life.

40. 41:59

    Michael Horton

    It was the Holy Spirit who was hovering over the tohu wa-bohu — the wilderness, the darkness and void — of our hearts. And then the Holy Spirit hovered over the waters of the Virgin Mary's womb. The same Spirit who hovered over the waters of creation hovered over the waters of Mary's womb, dividing and separating, so that what is born of her is nothing less than the Son of God. Not only did Jesus give us the Holy Spirit at Pentecost — the Holy Spirit gave us Jesus in the incarnation.

41. 42:50

    Michael Horton

    And now it is the Spirit who baptizes us in the waters of judgment, crucifying and raising us together with Christ. It's the Spirit who indwells each of us as a deposit guaranteeing our final possession — "arrabon," the pledge, Ephesians 1:14. Paul also says in Romans 8 that the Holy Spirit is given to us, groaning within us, as a pledge of our final redemption, which is the resurrection of our bodies. The Holy Spirit is credited with raising Jesus from the dead — that's God; only God can raise from the dead. The Holy Spirit is credited with raising us from the dead. One day, the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead will raise our mortal bodies, Paul says.

42. 43:04

    Michael Horton

    It was the Holy Spirit who took Jesus out into the wilderness — the tohu wa-bohu — to be tested as the last Adam. Literally, the verb is that He threw Him out into the wilderness. Jesus said it was by the Spirit that He cast out demons and performed His miracles. When we attribute everything to the deity of Christ — of course He did this as God — we can almost make the deity of Christ a substitute for the Holy Spirit. Even though He's God, He's the Son, and He depends on the Holy Spirit to do what He does. This same Spirit indwells us so that we say our "amen" to God in Christ — "Abba, Father." As adopted children and co-heirs with Christ, the Spirit performs the prophesied circumcision of the heart within us, cutting us off from this passing evil age and uniting us to Christ, who has already entered before us into the age to come.

43. 44:00

    Michael Horton

    So that, brothers and sisters, that same humanity glorified at the right hand of God the Father right now — sitting at His right hand — is the prototype of the humanity you will have when your body is raised. You will be as much like God as it is possible for a creature to be. You'll be higher than the angels. You will judge the angels. And that's why the early church often spoke about deification.

44. 45:57

    Michael Horton

    We will be deified. The Son is deity by nature; we are deities by grace. That doesn't mean we become one essence with God, but that the image and likeness in which we were created will be so fully realized as it already is in the humanity of Christ, who fulfilled all righteousness and won the right to enter the gates of glory — gates open up for us. We will be able to walk through those gates because we're not only justified, not only sanctified, but glorified. And as Calvin says, deification is the greatest of all possible blessings.

45. 46:59

    Michael Horton

    And it simply means, as Peter tells us, that we are partakers of the divine nature. Can you believe that — partakers of the divine nature? Because the Holy Spirit unites us, breaks us away, cuts us off from this passing evil age of Adam, and unites us to our glorified Head in heaven, so that as He is now, we will one day be. Is that good enough to sing about?

46. 47:36

    Michael Horton

    Let's stand and sing the Gloria Patri, in defiance of the spirit killers. Sing out loud: "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Amen."