The Spirit as Hypostasis

The Holy Spirit is a who, not a what: not a divine influence, energy, atmosphere, or mode of God’s action, but a person of the Holy Trinity, possessing the whole divine nature and distinguished from Father and Son by his own relation of origin. This file sets out the argument that he is a hypostasis, reports the “impersonal power” reading at its strongest, examines the grammatical argument from John 16 and finds it weaker than it is usually made, and takes up the Spirit’s characteristic self-effacement.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

What Is at Stake

The Church settled at Constantinople in 381 that the Spirit is Lord, Giver of Life, proceeding from the Father, and worshipped and glorified with the Father and the Son. The history of that settlement, the Pneumatomachian case against it, and what the Creed does and does not say belong to the Trinity collection and are not repeated here (see The Pneumatomachoi and the Creed).

What belongs here is the narrower question that governs everything this collection goes on to say about the Spirit’s work. If the Spirit is God’s power rather than a divine person, then everything ascribed to him in this collection — the Church’s constitution, the consecration of the gifts, the seal of chrismation, the acquisition of grace — is a description of God acting anonymously, and the language of relationship in which the Church speaks of him is decorative. If he is a person, then the Christian is dealing with someone, and the whole vocabulary of grieving, quenching, obeying, and communing with the Spirit is meant.

The Grammar of the Question

The Cappadocian settlement supplies the terms. Ousia names what is common; hypostasis names the particular subsistence, the who; the divine hypostases are distinguished by nothing except their relations of origin (see Ousia and Hypostasis). To say that the Spirit is a hypostasis is therefore to say two things at once: that he possesses the whole divine nature, no more and no less than the Father and the Son; and that he is not the Father and not the Son, being distinguished from them by proceeding rather than by begetting or being unbegotten.

St. John of Damascus gives the received formulation: the Holy Spirit is “a substantive power (δύναμιν οὐσιώδη), contemplated in his own proper and peculiar hypostasis, proceeding from the Father and resting in the Word… not a mere breath that passes away, but an essential power, herself contemplated in her own proper hypostasis, proceeding from the Father and resting in the Word and being his manifester” (John of Damascus, Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith I.7; trans. NPNF II/9). The formula is precise about exactly the point in dispute: power — but substantive, and in his own hypostasis.

The Argument from Substance and Accident

St. Gregory the Theologian’s version of the argument is the most economical, and it is worth following because it disposes of the “impersonal power” account on its own terms.

“The Holy Spirit must certainly be conceived of either as in the category of the self-existent, or as in that of the things which are contemplated in another; of which classes those who are skilled in such matters call the one Substance and the other Accident. Now if he were an accident, he would be an activity (ἐνέργεια) of God, for what else, or of whom else, could he be? … And if he is an activity, he will be effected, but will not effect, and will cease to exist as soon as he has been effected, for this is the nature of an activity. How is it then that he acts and says such and such things, and defines, and is grieved, and is angered, and has all the qualities which belong clearly to one that moves, and not to movement?”
(Gregory the Theologian, Oration 31.6; trans. NPNF II/7.)

The argument is a dilemma. Either the Spirit is a subsistent reality or he is an operation of something else. If he is an operation, he is exercised and does not exercise, and expires with the act — but Scripture has him doing things, choosing, being wronged. The one who “divides to every man severally as he will” (1 Corinthians 12:11) is not a distribution but a distributor.

Gregory then completes the dilemma on the other side: if the Spirit is a substance, he is either a creature or God — and if a creature, we are not deified by him and should not be baptized into him (Oration 31.6; cf. 31.28).

The scriptural material this rests on is set out in Pentecost and the Apostolic Preaching, and it is dense: the Spirit speaks (Acts 13:2), forbids (Acts 16:6–7), appoints (Acts 20:28), is lied to and thereby God is lied to (Acts 5:3–4), intercedes (Romans 8:26), can be grieved (Ephesians 4:30) and quenched (1 Thessalonians 5:19), and is joined to the Church’s own decision in one verb (Acts 15:28). Impersonal forces are not grieved.

The Grammatical Argument, Honestly Assessed

A familiar apologetic argument runs: in John 14–16 the pronoun ἐκεῖνος, “he,” is masculine, whereas πνεῦμα is neuter, and the mismatch proves that the Evangelist regarded the Spirit as a person.

The argument should be handled carefully, because in its usual form it proves less than it claims. In John 16:13–14 the masculine ἐκεῖνος most naturally agrees with the masculine noun παράκλητος in the preceding context rather than overriding the neuter πνεῦμα; the grammar is regular, not anomalous. Where the pronoun stands closer to πνεῦμα the Evangelist can and does use the neuter (John 14:17, 26). A reader who is told that the Greek is grammatically impossible unless the Spirit is a person has been told something the text will not support.

[Disputed: the evidential value of the masculine pronouns in John 14–16. (a) A long apologetic tradition treats ἐκεῖνος at John 16:13–14 as a deliberate grammatical irregularity asserting the Spirit's personhood. (b) The standard grammatical assessment is that the masculine agrees with παράκλητος and involves no irregularity — so Daniel B. Wallace, *Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics*, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996, 331–332, who examines and rejects the apologetic use of the construction while himself holding the Spirit's personhood on other grounds. This collection follows (b): the personal designation *Paraclete*, and the actions predicated of the Spirit throughout the discourse, carry the argument; the pronoun does not need to and cannot.]

The real Johannine argument is the noun, not the pronoun. Paraklētos is a personal office — an advocate, one called alongside — and it is used of Christ himself (1 John 2:1). “Another Paraclete” (John 14:16) says that the one coming stands to the disciples as the one going stands to them, which is not a thing one says of an influence.

The Impersonal Reading, at Its Strongest

The case for treating the Spirit as God’s power rather than a distinct person is not frivolous, and it has been made by serious people in every century.

Scripture never calls the Spirit God, never records a prayer addressed to him, and never narrates his being worshipped — three facts that are simply true and that the Trinity collection states without softening (see The Pneumatomachoi and the Creed). The Old Testament ruach language reads most naturally as God’s own breath and power. Much New Testament language is instrumental — the Spirit is given, poured out, received, and one can be filled with him, which is not how one speaks of a person. And where the Spirit is spoken of as acting, the actions can be read as God’s acts described by way of his power, as a man’s works may be attributed to his hand.

The modern forms of the reading vary in seriousness. The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ teaching that the Spirit is God’s “active force” is the most explicit; nineteenth-century liberal Protestant theology tended in a different way to treat the Spirit as the name for the divine immanent in religious consciousness; and a diffuse contemporary usage treats “spirit” as an energy or atmosphere without a subject. These are not the same position and are not equally serious, but they converge on the same denial.

The Church’s answer is not a proof-text. It is the whole shape of Christian initiation and worship, which is the subject of the companion file: the Spirit is named in the baptismal formula alongside Father and Son, and he is glorified in the doxology alongside them, and neither of those things can be done to a force without idolatry (see The Argument from Worship and Baptism).

The Spirit’s Anonymity

There remains a real asymmetry, and Orthodox theology has made a theme of it rather than explaining it away.

The Father and the Son have names taken from their relations of origin; the Spirit does not. “Holy Spirit” is composed of two words that belong to the divine nature as such — God is spirit (John 4:24), and God is holy — so that the third person is named, uniquely, by what is common. St. Gregory of Nyssa notes the difficulty; St. Gregory the Theologian records the flood of scriptural titles applied to the Spirit and observes that none of them is a name of origin except by negation: “What titles which belong to God are not applied to him, except only Unbegotten and Begotten?” (Gregory the Theologian, Oration 31.29; trans. NPNF II/7).

And the Lord himself says that the Spirit “shall not speak of himself” and “shall glorify me” (John 16:13–14). The Spirit’s proper work is to make another known.

Vladimir Lossky drew from this the claim that the Spirit’s is a hypostatic self-effacement: he “hides himself, as it were, in his very appearing,” having no image of his own in the way that the Son is the image of the Father, and being known instead in the deified persons whom he fills (Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, ch. 8; In the Image and Likeness of God, Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1974, “Redemption and Deification”). Sergius Bulgakov developed a related theme of the Spirit’s kenosis in The Comforter (Paris: YMCA Press, 1936), within a sophiological frame whose reception is contested and which is treated elsewhere (see On Godmanhood: The Major Trilogy).

Two cautions are in order about this theme, and Orthodox writers have not always observed them. Self-effacement is not anonymity of being: the Spirit is a hypostasis with a name he is given in the baptismal command, and the Church addresses him directly at the opening of nearly every service (see The Liturgical Witness). And the claim that the Spirit “has no image” must not be pressed into the claim that he has no proper economy — that is precisely the error the third section of this collection is written to identify (see The Spirit of Christ and What the Filioque Costs).

The Spirit is not less personal for being reticent. He is the one who, having no face of his own to show, gives faces back to the persons he sanctifies.

References

Gregory the Theologian. Oration 31 (Fifth Theological Oration), 6, 28, 29. Trans. NPNF, Second Series, vol. 7.
John of Damascus. An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith I.7–8. Trans. NPNF, Second Series, vol. 9.
Basil the Great. On the Holy Spirit 16.38–39; 18.46. Trans. NPNF, Second Series, vol. 8.
Gregory of Nyssa. On the Holy Spirit, Against the Macedonians. Trans. NPNF, Second Series, vol. 5.
Lossky, Vladimir. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. London: James Clarke, 1957, ch. 8; In the Image and Likeness of God. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1974.
Bulgakov, Sergius. The Comforter. Paris: YMCA Press, 1936; trans. Boris Jakim, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004.
Wallace, Daniel B. Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996, 331–332.
Scripture: John 4:24; 14:16–17, 26; 16:13–14; Acts 5:3–4; 13:2; 15:28; 16:6–7; 20:28; Romans 8:26; 1 Corinthians 12:11; Ephesians 4:30; 1 Thessalonians 5:19; 1 John 2:1.