We Believe: Who With the Father and the Son is Worshiped and Glorified
Wait. If the Nicene Creed has already established that the Holy Spirit is God, “the Lord, the giver of life,” why must we then confess that, “with the Father and the Son, [the Holy Spirit] is worshiped and glorified”? We find no such addendum attached to the sections on the Father and the Son. Why should the authors of the Creed feel the need to make such a self-evident statement about any person of the Godhead?
“With The Father and the Son Together”
Older versions of the Book of Common Prayer contain a slightly expanded version of this line in the Creed:
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Who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified…
BCP 1928; BCP 1979 Rite One
This traditional version, which combines “with” and “together,” provides a fuller and more literal rendering of the Creed in Greek. The Greek original has the preposition “with” (syn) followed by two compound verbs, literally “worshiped together” (sym-proskyneō) and “glorified together” (syn-doxazō)—syn, sym, syn.
Is all this just redundancy in language to emphasize a point? In one sense, yes. Clearly, our Church fathers in Constantinople (the part of the Nicene Creed on the Holy Spirit was not composed at the First Council of Nicaea [325] but at the First Council of Constantinople [381]) expended every effort to highlight the divinity of the Spirit. But there is also perhaps a broader with-ness that the Greek and the old English seek to capture: that the Holy Spirit is “worshiped and glorified” together with the Father and the Son, both corporately (adore one, adore all) and equally (co-sharers in full adoration).
“Worshiped and Glorified”
Are these two words the same? Not exactly. The Greek word for “worship” (proskyneō), as the New Testament and the Creed use it, means to “worship” or “kneel before” or “pay homage to.” It only describes a person in relation to a divine object. Pagans would use the term only to describe outward religious ceremony for their gods.
It is Jesus of Nazareth who begins, with his full knowledge of Hebrew scripture’s injunctions for internal surrender to YHWH, to attach a demand for internal surrender in worship to the Father God, and to him, to match the outward ceremony. This is plainly evident in our Lord’s interaction with the Samaritan woman, where “worship” is the central focus of the conversation. Jesus says to her, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24). The authors of the Creed have this expansive, spiritualized understanding of worship in mind.
Glorify
The Greek word for “glorify” (doxazō) carries as a base meaning “to have a high opinion of.” In the New Testament, however, we find profound connections to the Hebrew term “kabod,” which can be variously translated as “glory,” “honor,” or “weighty influence.” It describes men of honor, such as Abraham or Joseph, as those who receive kabod (Genesis 13:2; 45:13). God, who is invisible, is “glorified” through manifestations of himself in the world: his creation, his miracles, and his mercy all bring “glory” to God. We can understand glory, then, as basically the manifestation of hidden holiness. Thus, humans not only give glory to God, but glorify God by making his holiness known in the world (see John 17:22-23 in this light).
But here’s a question related to both words: Who is worshiping and glorifying the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit? The Council divines would undoubtedly say it is the believing community on earth. But would they not also have heaven in mind? The visions of the Book of Revelation were only just available to them in the late fourth century. From these, they would have had in mind also seraphim, beasts, elders, and angels, as well as the “great multitude of humans worshiping and glorifying God (Revelation 5:13-14; 7:9-17). I’ll say a little more on this point later.
Adoration of the Holy Spirit in Scripture
All that said, a problem existed that the authors of the Creed had to face head-on: there is (and was) no explicit reference—neither in the Hebrew canon nor in the documents that were coming together to form the New Testament canon—to the adoration of the Holy Spirit as God. Scriptural evidence exists that the Holy Spirit is God (earlier installments in this series cover this). However, there is no indication that worship is addressed to the Holy Spirit. The clause, “Who with the Father and the Son, he is worshiped and glorified,” we must conclude, is installed in the Creed by way of implication.
The Fellowship Charism of the Holy Spirit
However, this is a well-founded implication. We can best understand the absence of worship of the Holy Spirit in Scripture by also considering how Scripture reveals the divine nature of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, as spirit, is inherently connected to both man and the Father and the Son. As Jesus reveals only what comes from the Father, “the Spirit of truth…will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is to come” (John 16:13). Consider the well-known “Grace” recorded at the end of 2 Corinthians:
Consider the well-known “Grace” recorded at the end of 2 Corinthians:
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
2 Corinthians 13:14
Of course, we can attribute the qualities of grace, love, and fellowship to all three members of the Trinity. Yet should we not also consider these three charisms (“gifts”) as fitted each to the person of the Trinity with whom they are associated?
The “fellowship” charism of the Holy Spirit works in two directions—toward the Godhead and toward man. Here we will only look at the first. Again, when examining visions of heavenly worship in Revelation, it is striking that the book distinguishes the Father and the Son as divine persons in the throne room, with the Spirit of God associated with each.
To the Father:
From the throne came flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God.
Revelation 4:5
To the Son:
And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.
Revelation 5:6
It is widely understood here that the “seven spirits of God” are the Holy Spirit (or, “the seven-fold Spirit,” NIV mg., 4:5,5:4).
Later comes the worship: “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” Adoration is given to the Father and the Son, who are each in “fellowship” with the Spirit.
So, Why the Addendum?
Basil the Great (d. 379, just before the Council in Constantinople) wrote these words in his work, On the Holy Spirit:
Through the Holy Spirit comes our restoration to paradise, our ascension into the kingdom of heaven, our return to the adoption of sons, our liberty to call God our Father, our being made partakers of the grace of Christ, our being called children of light, our sharing in eternal glory, and, in a word, our being brought into a state of all “fullness of blessing,” both in this world and in the world to come, of all the good gifts that are in store for us, by promise hereof, through faith, beholding the reflection of their grace as though they were already present, we await the full enjoyment.
St. Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit
Without doubt, the bishops at Constantinople would have had these words available to them as they deliberated at the Council. They included the addendum, “Who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified,” so that the Church of Christ should, without hesitation, give divine worship and honor to the Holy Spirit as a member of the Triune God. He has every measure of divine personhood that the Father and the Son possess. Despite the lack of evidence from Scripture of the worship of the Holy Spirit alone, we bow our knees in praise to him and give glory to his name.
Image by danymages from Getty Images, courtesy of Canva.
Today in the Spirit: Epiphany 3C
In the Sundays following Epiphany 1, the Church moves us through the Scriptures in an ordinary (numbered) series of Sunday celebrations, still with an emphasis on the Father’s manifestation of Jesus of Nazareth as Son of God but in a progressive contemplation of the events of Jesus’ early ministry.
We Believe: In the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life
As we commemorate the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed from the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, our focus shifts to the Council of Constantinople in 381 AD to explore the profound theological affirmation of the Holy Spirit’s divinity encapsulated in the phrase, “…We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of…
