Rather than drawing attention to himself, the Sprit has always delighted in shining the spotlight upon the Son, to the glory of the Father. And this is precisely why, as Joel Elowsky has wisely noted, any discussion of the Holy Spirit is fraught with particular difficulty as the church seeks to define and understand Someone who purposefully averts attention away from himself! We are tempted, lest we blaspheme the Holy Spirit, to remain silent. And yet, as Gregory of Nyssa wrote so long ago against the Macedonian heresy, “there is a danger that through our silence error may prevail over the truth.”

Walking up to his pulpit before preaching, Charles Spurgeon would often repeat to himself that great line of the Apostle’s Creed, “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” For Spurgeon this was no doubt a reminder that any fruit which would come from his preaching would be fruit attributed only to the gracious work of God the Spirit. But for Spurgeon, the evidence of such fruit would not be any preoccupation with the Holy Spirit himself but rather upon the person and work of Jesus Christ. If Christ was at all exulted, it was only because the Spirit was working to exult Him.

Indeed, as Jesus himself taught, “the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” Rather than drawing attention to himself, the Sprit has always delighted in shining the spotlight upon the Son, to the glory of the Father. And this is precisely why, as Joel Elowsky has wisely noted, any discussion of the Holy Spirit is fraught with particular difficulty as the church seeks to define and understand Someone who purposefully averts attention away from himself!^[1] We are tempted, lest we blaspheme the Holy Spirit, to remain silent. And yet, as Gregory of Nyssa wrote so long ago against the Macedonian heresy, “there is a danger that through our silence error may prevail over the truth.”^[2]

And so it was, in light of such encroaching error that the church sought to formally confess what we believe about God the Holy Spirit. As already noted, the Apostle’s Creed provided the church with a short confession concerning the Spirit, succinctly saying “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” And in 325, the First Council in Nicea retained this simplicity, ending the Creed with “We believe in the Holy Spirit.”

But alas, this mere confession allowed too much leeway for variant interpretations. And so, in order to shore-up any misconceptions, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (381) came to clarify that by believing in the Holy Spirit Christians also believe that the Spirit is “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.”

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