7 marks to understand the Holy Spirit
1. A heresy that lasts
Despite the text of faith proclaimed by the Council of Nicea (current Türkiye) in 325, the thought of Arius, denying the divinity of Christ, continued to spread. To the point that several successors of the Emperor Constantine finally joined Arius. Including his own immediate son and successor, Constance II.
2. Theodosius takes up the initiative
It will be necessary to wait for the advent of another emperor, Theodosius I (347-395), that faith in a Trinitarian God is again officially defended. He summons a council, this time in Constantinople, the capital, in spring 381, bringing together a hundred oriental bishops.
3. Grégoire enters the scene
To do things well, Theodosius I depicts the bishop of the city, himself a supporter of Arianism, to replace it with Grégoire de Nazianze, a theologian renowned for his Orthodox faith.
4. The Holy Spirit is also divine
The debates are largely concentrated around the identity and the place of the Holy Spirit in the Christian faith. A new text, completing that of Nicea, is written to assert the divinity of the third person of the Trinity.
5. Express the mystery
Like Christ, the Holy Spirit is not created by the Father: both “proceed” from the Father, and share with him the same substance, explain the Théo Ogiens. They rely on the finesse of the philosophical concepts of the time to express this mystery of the Divine Trinity, revealed by the Scriptures.
6. The translation divides
But these finesse, sometimes, create difficulties. Incomprehensions, linked in particular to translation problems between Greek and Latin, take place between the bishops of East and West: does the Holy Spirit proceed only from the Father, or the Father and the Son? This theological disagreement will be one of the causes of the great schism of 1024.
7.
In 2021, the French translation of the Credo was specified. The formula recited so far – “the son is of the same nature as the father” – becomes “the son is consubstantial with the father. If this adjective may seem more complex, it has the merit of reconnecting with the philosophical notion of “substance” used to evoke the Trinity.
