65: What Is The Holy Spirit?
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Now we come to one of the most fascinating aspects of the Christian faith – the third aspect of the Divine – the Holy Spirit. The idea of a Father-God makes sense to us because most of us have grown up with fathers and we know what they are about. The notion of the Son of God is similar – half of us are sons and the other half has lived with sons all their lives. But what is this ‘Holy Spirit’ that the church talks about?
I think we are right to be confused about this point, because the Church itself has been confused. Unlike the first two persons of the Trinity, the notion of the Holy Spirit has gradually been constructed by the Church over time.
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Going back to our roots in the Old Testament, the “Spirit of God” (Ruach Elohim) generally meant God’s power in action, his life-giving breath, or his divine presence. Importantly, Judaism did not understand the Spirit as a distinct divine person. Rather the Spirit was seen as the power of God’s action rather than a separate center of consciousness. This notion is still with us today, and threads through our current understanding.
The historical Jesus appears to have understood himself as uniquely empowered by the Spirit and he often speaks as one who is empowered by God’s Spirit. For example, he exorcises demons by the power of the Spirit and he proclaims the kingdom of God with that same Spirit.
Pentecost, the decisive event for early Christians, was perceived as the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples, often illustrated with flames leaping above their heads. This descent of the Spirit was empowering and communal in nature. Of note, it was democratic – descending upon all who were present. While the Spirit is sometimes described as a descending dove, it is notable that the Spirit is never presented in a human form.
It is useful, I think, to enumerate some of the gifts of the Spirit as described in the New Testament. Foremost among them is the power of God’s love. Power and truth and sanctification are gifts of the Spirit, as are purity, joy, and renewal. In essence, the Holy Spirit seems to embody all of the best qualities of our humanity, and none of the worst.
Paul is the first real theologian to tackle the notion of the Holy Spirit. He transforms the discussion rather dramatically. For Paul, the Spirit is the presence of the risen Christ. At times he seems to almost equate Christ and the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3.17). In any case, he talks about the Spirit as a participation in God. For Paul, the Spirit unites believers in Christ, creates holiness, produces gifts, and transforms consciousness. He goes on to state that the Spirit dwells within believers and empowers moral transformation. As you can see, Paul is explicitly theistic – identifying the Spirit as an aspect of God, a critical step in the Church’s growing understanding.
The gospel of John deepens and personalizes the Spirit. John portrays the Holy Spirit as a guide and teacher, as an advocate, and as a comforter for believers in distress. This is a major development because the Spirit looks increasingly personal and less and less like an impersonal divine power. John, here, has laid the groundwork for our Trinitarian theology.
You can see from these developments that the understanding of the Holy Spirit is gradually developing as these new Christian believers grow in experience in their faith. The developments and that took place in these early years laid the ground for the theological debates of the third century.
There were three views about the Spirit that emerged during this time. The first saw the Spirit as a divine power, merely an expression of God’s energy – a very Old Testament notion. The second view saw the Spirit as a subordinate being, as part of the Divine but less than the Son. The third view, embraced by Tertullian and Origen, finally won out, and in this view, the Spirit was seen as a separate consciousness who was fully divine. Tertullian was the first to describe the Spirit in fully Trinitarian language: una susbstantia, tres personae, meaning that God has one substance in three persons. The Council of Nicaea embraced this doctrine, and since that time the Holy Spirit has been seen as a fully divine and fully equal person of the Trinity.
I think it is notable that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit evolved from experience to metaphysics. The early church first experienced the charismatic gifts of the Spirit. These gifts resulted in profound inner transformations and were the inspiration for the communal nature of the early church. Only later did believers begin to ask, “What exactly is the Holy Spirit?” In this sense, doctrine followed religious experience rather than preceding it.
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While this covers the historical development of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, I find it less than satisfactory. It somehow seems wispy, insubstantial, and difficult to wrap my head around. Perhaps it is the lack of a concrete anthropomorphic figure. I can relate to a Father and a Son, for example, but I have trouble relating to a descending dove or a tongue of flame above someone’s head.
I can easily relate to the Power of God. I have experienced that power over the course of my life in many different and completely unmistakable ways. That Power has preserved my life on at least two occasions of which I am aware. I suspect there are many other occasions of which I am not aware.
I have felt that Power when it pushed me to go to seminary and become a priest. When it pushed me to develop OneHeart, a Christian meditation community in Southern California. I have felt that Power as it pushed me to write Inside the Invisible. I feel that Power right now as I am pushed to write this newsletter. That said, no image comes to mind that adequately describes that Power for me. And perhaps this is the reason why I have such difficulty with the notion of the Holy Spirit. It just doesn’t lend itself to a concrete and substantial image.
The truth is, if I can see and touch something, I immediately assume it’s a real. In the absence of these concrete sensory experiences, I have difficulty. And yet, seeing these words on paper, I wonder if they are really true? I have never seen an electron. I’ve never seen the dark side of the moon. I have never seen love itself; I’ve seen the effects of something that I call love, but never the thing itself. Yet I have no trouble in believing that all of these exist. So why do I have trouble with the notion of the Holy Spirit?
Perhaps it’s because all of the “gifts of the Spirit” are actually the very best qualities of we, ourselves. The gifts of the Spirit – Power, Love, Truth, Joy, Renewal – are all aspects of our human life. Part of me wonders how these very human qualities can be considered Divine. And another part of me is horrified as this sentence comes out of my mouth! In effect, these words deny the divinity within each of us. And perhaps that’s the issue…
We hear Jesus’s words in the gospel of John, that “he dwells in us and we in him.” (John 14.20) Despite this, our lives rarely if ever reflect this astounding reality. They don’t reflect this reality because we don’t allow ourselves to fully trust these words. We regularly deny that the Divine has anything to do with us!
And what would we look like if we let ourselves fully accept the Christ who lives within us? Our lives would gradually conform to the life of Jesus, wouldn’t they? We would tell the truth all the time. We wouldn’t be reactive when people condemn us. We wouldn’t perform for others, because performance means denying our true self and denying the Reality that is God. There would be an openness and a loving-kindness about us – the very same openness and love that Jesus demonstrated to the world.
We would be whole, not fragmented into a thousand different pieces. We would be at one with ourselves, and by that means, one with everything around us. One with God. One with each other. One.
That seems to be grand choice in front of us – to be One or to be fragmented and in pieces. Put this way, the choice seems obvious.
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Last week, I shared with you a challenge – to be truthful, no matter what. I’m sure some of you took up that challenge.
Please write me at my new email (ken@insidetheinvisible.com) with your experiences.
I expect you will wrestle with multiple failures. (Don’t worry, I won’t embarrass you by publicizing your name. The only person I regularly embarrass in these pages is myself, and that all too frequently!) It is helpful to all of us to see that we are not alone in our struggles in this regard. You are reading this because you want to change. So, push yourself a bit, and share your struggles so that others might be encouraged in their efforts as well.
Along these lines, I have an important update for those of you who are serious about your spiritual growth. A team is working right now developing a website that presents the spiritual journey into Oneness. Using the map developed in Inside the Invisible, we are creating a practice-centered program that is powerfully transformative. It is rigorous and real, demanding a daily practice commitment and resulting in immediate changes. Changes you can actually feel happening in your own person.
We will be beta-testing it soon, so I will be asking for volunteers for this in the next month or so.
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That’s all for now. Thank you for joining with me to explore these difficult topics. Remember to set aside time for meditation or at least, for some quiet reflection this week. Sit and let go of the constant stream of self-talk which afflicts us all. Our self-talk is a constant stream of noise that distracts us from the immediate Presence of Christ in our hearts. Let yourself be still and look at what comes before the self-talk. Ask yourself, “What is the matrix from which all of my blathering arises?” What lies just underneath these conversations I have with myself?
I hope you have a splendid week, and I look forward to continuing our discussion in the next newsletter.
May God make his face to shine upon you, this day, and always!
What Invisible Offers
After reading Invisible for a short while, you will begin to notice:
A quiet groundedness beneath the noise of daily life
Greater calm, clarity, and inner freedom arising from within
A growing awareness of God in ordinary moments
Language for truths you have long sensed but never named
A gentle opening of the heart – free from dogma or pressure
Invisible will not give you new beliefs.
It will help you see with new eyes.
P.S. These newsletters were written in a particular order, but due to the limitations of our email delivery system, we cannot send them in the order in which they were written. We can send out the first five in order, but then the system sends out the next one, whatever that happens to be.
So, if you are suddenly moving from issue #5 to issue #whatever, it might be a little jarring. If this sounds like you, I would encourage you to go back into our archives and do your best to read them in order.
Humility as a Tool → Letting go → Fear → Openness → Acceptance & Growth
If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇
