The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Latin Fathers

1954 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-132
Author(s):  
John H. S. Burleigh

For the first two centuries of its existence Christianity was, even in the West, a Greek thing. Domitian might find Christian victims among members of the reigning family, but Tacitus could still regard the Christians of Rome as the off scourings of the eastern provinces. The language of the Roman Church was Greek throughout the second century A.D., the language of Bible, Creed and Worship. However Roman in feeling Clement might be his letter to the Corinthians was in Greek; and Hermas' Shepherd was meant for home consumption. During the century nearly all the leading Christians from the East appear to have visited Rome bringing their ideas as to a sort of clearing house; and towards the end of it Bishop Victor of Rome, a genuine Roman, had still to struggle with Theodotus the Tanner from Byzantium, and Blastus and Florinus from Asia. Under his successors Zephyrinus and Callistus theological controversy was still carried on in Greek, but their opponent Hippolytus seems to have been the last Greek-speaking Father of the Roman Church. Similarly in Gaul the Christians of Lyons and Vienne were Greek migrants from Asia, and their bishop, 180–200, Irenaeus, was a product of Asia, the authentic voice of Christian Ephesus.

2020 ◽  
Vol 80 (3) ◽  
pp. 230-242
Author(s):  
Sylvie Avakian

Abstract This article presents the theology of the Orthodox theologian Nikolai Afanasiev, who calls the Church, the Church of the Holy Spirit. The Church, as Afanasiev expresses it, »lives and acts through the [Holy] Spirit,« so the Holy Spirit is its true inner principle. For Afanasiev, all the baptized are called to the Holy Priesthood. He recognizes the love and witness of Christ as paramount for the Church, before ecclesial power and its law. In this sense, Afanasiev's position differs from the prevailing understanding of the Church in the two common traditions of the West and the East, which often regard the Church as subject to the conditions and necessities of the law.


1965 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 19-37
Author(s):  
E. C. Ratcliff

It is well known that the old Syrian, or to give it a more comprehensive description, the old Eastern liturgical usage of Baptism differed markedly from that which obtained in the West. The most obvious difference is one of pattern, and appears in connection with the ceremony known to us as Confirmation. In Western usage, as we find it in North Africa, described by Tertullian at the beginning of the third century in his De Baptismo, the act of baptising is followed by two ceremonies. The first of these is an anointing with oil. Tertullian connects this anointing with that of Aaron by Moses, and ascribes to it an undefined spiritual benefit. The second ceremony is the last of the rite, and its culmination; it conveys, according to Tertullian, the gift of the Holy Spirit. ‘Dehinc,’ he says, ‘manus imponitur per benedictionem advocans et invitans spiritum sanctum. . . . Tunc ille sanctissimus spiritus super emundata et benedicta corpora libens a patre descendit.’ Shortly after the writing of De Baptismo, we meet with evidence for the existence of a similar rite at Rome. The text of Apostolic Tradition, as it has been put together from its several versions, requires to be treated with caution; but there is no doubt that Hippolytus knew a post-baptismal ceremony, comparable with the use of oil after the bath, and held to apply, ώς μύρῳ, the powers of the Holy Spirit, to those who have newly come up from the ‘bath’ (λουτρόν) of Baptism.


Pneuma ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-184
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Gros

Abstract The members of the Society for Pentecostal Studies have made significant contributions to ecumenical reconciliation, to the promotion of the intellectual life in the Pentecostal and Charismatic communities, and to service to the classical Pentecostal churches in their development from a movement into mature churches in the community of Christians. For this leadership we are grateful. The Pentecostal scholar in whatever church has a calling to be of service to the whole people of God and to the churches in their task of preaching, handing on the faith and nurturing the faithful. This Society has been a place where this ecclesial vocation has been and can be nurtured. There are many intellectual challenges before the Pentecostal community as it moves into its second century as a renewal movement among Christians worldwide. This presidential address suggests three of these challenges: (1) a renewed understanding of the two thousand years of Christian history and the role of renewal movements within it, including the last century of Pentecostal service; (2) an understanding of the sacramental character of Pentecostal worship, using the example of healing as a ritual where Pentecostals have unique gifts to offer other Christians and a long heritage of sacramental thinking from which to learn; and (3) the doctrine of the church and its call to visible unity, as the institutions that serve the Pentecostal churches mature into their second century and begin to become more theologically grounded, self-reflective, and ecumenical.


Author(s):  
John A. Radano

This article looks at the Global Christian Forum (GCF) as a new initiative in the historical context of the modern ecumenical movement and from a Catholic point of view. It puts the GCF in three perspectives: as a new stage in ecumenical development, as part of a turning point in ecumenical history and as a new impulse of the Holy Spirit. By bringing in the Evangelicals and Pentecostals, the GCF has widened the range of church families in conversation with one another. The GCF may begin to make a substantial contribution in the situation since Vatican II in which some critical issues between divided Christians have been solved. The beginning convergence of the two movements that have marked the past century — ecumenical and Pentecostal/evangelical — may be the work of the Holy Spirit.


1966 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 446-456
Author(s):  
R. H. S. Boyd

The rapidly deepening river of Indian christological thought is fed by a number of streams. The main current is of necessity the biblical witness, which has to be expounded afresh in every country and age. To this are added the various ecclesiastical channels by which theological thought has reached India; the Syrian in the South, and the many types of Western theology which have always been influential, and still continue to be so. From the other bank there comes the stream of Indian culture, in particular the philosophical systems of Sankara and Ramanuja, and the bhakti tradition of devotion to a personal God. To all these is added, like the rain, the continual influence of the Holy Spirit, who, in India as elsewhere, is ever drawing from what is Christ's and making it known to men (John 16.14). There has therefore been in India, as one might expect, a departure from some of the traditional christological formulations of the West.


1975 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 175-188
Author(s):  
Hjalmar Sundén

Tong-il is the Korean title of a movement known in the West as The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, or the Union Church. God has formed Tong-il as an instrument of purification and renewal, bringing a new truth telling all men about the purpose of life, the responsibility of man, the way to establish a world of brotherhood and love and make the world into one family. This truth will raise Christianity to a higher dimension and give it the power and zeal which it needs to achieve God's purpose at the time of the second Advent. Tong-il works to renew Christianity, but its ultimate goal is to unite all religions, with its founder as a centre.


2019 ◽  
Vol 90 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-181
Author(s):  
Shawn J. Wilhite

In second-century Trinitarian thought, some early figures may often overlook the role of the Holy Spirit in contrast to providing a more secure identity for the Son. This contrast seemingly appears in Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho. In 2008, Michel Barnes wrote an essay on the early formation of Christian Pneumatology. As Barnes’s argument proceeds, Justin and Trypho focus upon the clarity of language that concerns the Son: (1) a triumphant and (2) suffering Messiah. Yet, with regard to the Holy Spirit, both Trypho and Justin do not appear to question the terminology that one another employ. So, Barnes suggests that both Trypho and Justin maintain a similar pneumatological presupposition that overlaps with Jewish Pneumatology. This article revisits how Justin addresses the pneumatological language in the Dialogue with Trypho and inquires what pneumatological discontinuities exist between Justin and Trypho. Even if Justin coheres with many facets of Jewish pneumatological ideas, he still distinctly represents, though incipiently, a Christian pneumatology.


2021 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 32-53
Author(s):  
Josef Lössl

The second half of the second century saw the development of a more hierarchical institutionalized church and of a theology of the Holy Spirit (Pneuma) reflecting this development. A driver of this development was a higher educational level among church leaders and Christians participating in theological discourse. In fact, ‘higher education’ (paideia) became a guiding value of Christian living, including for the study and interpretation of Scripture and for theology and church leadership. Yet the same period also saw a new wave of ‘inspired’, ‘pneumatic prophecy’, later known as ‘Montanism’, which was perceived as a threat in an increasingly institutionalized church and attacked and suppressed. This article sees a paradox here, and asks how Pneuma could be promoted as a source of Christian leadership under the banner of paideia, when the Spirit (Pneuma) at work in the ‘New Prophecy’ was perceived as such a threat. One area of investigation which may provide answers to this question is the controversial role women played both as educated participants in theological discourse and leading figures in the Montanist movement.


Author(s):  
Maxwell Johnson

“Christian initiation” refers to the ritual process employed by various churches in forming new Christian converts through catechesis (instruction) during the “catechumenate” to baptism, postbaptismal rites (including hand-laying and anointing, sometimes called “confirmation”), culminating in First Communion, and leading to the further integration of these newly initiated members into ongoing Christian life through “mystagogy.” Christian initiation is the story of diversity and change as the biblical images of initiation lead toward a rich variety of early Christian practices and theological interpretations, eventually coming to focus on Christian baptism as “new birth” or the “washing of regeneration” in water and the Holy Spirit (John 3:5 and Titus 3:5) in early Syria and Egypt and baptism as participation in the death and burial of Christ (Rom. 6) in North Africa and other places in the West. In the 4th and 5th centuries, after Christianity emerged as a cultus publicus, the rites of Christian initiation underwent a certain standardization and cross-fertilization as various churches borrowed from one another to construct rites that display a remarkable degree of homogeneity. These rites include a decided preference for celebrating Christian initiation at Easter, after a period of final catechetical preparation in Lent; prebaptismal rites with an exorcistic focus; an almost universal (Rom. 6) theological interpretation of baptism; and postbaptismal hand-layings or anointings associated explicitly with the gift or “seal” of the Holy Spirit, still leading to First Communion within a unitive and integral process. Another characteristic, thanks to the controversies faced by Augustine with Pelagianism, was the development of a new theological rationale for the initiation of infants, which focused on the inheritance of “original sin” from Adam. This would have far-reaching consequences for subsequent centuries as infant baptism became the norm for practice and theology. If the Eastern rites underwent little further development in the Middle Ages, the West experienced what many have been called a sacramental dissolution, disintegration, and separation. Gradually, the postbaptismal rites of hand-laying and anointing, associated with the gift of the Holy Spirit and now with the physical presence of the bishop, became separated from infant baptism and were given at a later point. Similarly, the reception of First Communion also became separated and was often postponed until the canonical age of seven. This process was inherited by the adherents of the Protestant and Catholic reformations of the 16th century. Little was done to restore the unitive and integral process of Christian initiation from the earlier centuries and confirmation itself developed among the reformers largely into a catechetical exercise or rite with First Communion either prior to or after confirmation. In the early 21st century, thanks to the Roman Catholic Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults and similar rites in other churches, the unitary and integral process of initiation has been restored. What remains to be done, however, is the full integration of infants and children into this process, although in several Anglican and Lutheran contexts infants now are again recipients of the full rites of initiation, including First Communion.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document