The Person and History of the Holy Spirit Part 2: Trinitarian Ecstasy (cont.)
Previously, we discussed how the Scripture describes the very nature of the Spirit as fellowship or relationship. Not only does fellowship constitute the essential nature of the Holy Spirit, but Scripture seems to indicate that the Holy Spirit himself is indeed love itself. This concept finds its seed and foundation in the fourth chapter of 1 John and was later extensively developed in Augustine’s work on the Trinity.
12: No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us…
16b: God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
13: By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
In verses twelve and sixteen love brings forth the abiding of God. In verse thirteen, the Spirit takes that role. In fact, in either verse, Spirit and love seem virtually interchangeable. Paul adds an additional insight when he adds that “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Romans 5.5)
Altogether, we see that “the gift of God is the Holy Spirit. The gift of God is love. God communicates himself in the Holy Spirit as love.” The Holy Spirit is Love itself. “The basic and central meaning of what the Holy Spirit is and what he effects is ultimately not “knowledge” but love.”
What sets the Holy Spirit apart, that is, what makes the Spirit Holy, His set-apart-ness is love. This gives us a crucial window into the “wholly otherness of God.” God’s holiness, his transcendence is not abstractly manifest apophatically, but concretely in love and relationship.
Apophatic theology refers to a theological method in which God’s nature is expressed through negations. Because God is infinite and uncreated any actual description would be false. Examples include:
- Self-existence – God’s existence is un-derived
- Self-sufficiency – God’s existence is non-dependent
- Eternity understood as a-temporality (timelessness)
- Infinitude – without limits
- Simplicity – God is in-divisible
- Immutability – without change
- Immovability – without movement, unable to be moved
- Omnipresence – in-definable by any of our concepts of space and location
This passage indicates to us that God’s transcendence, specifically the holiness of the Spirit is not primarily to be found it negative descriptions of God, but in love. Love forms the foundation of a cataphatic theology, in which we can truly make affirmations about a God whose essential nature is relationship. His essential nature is not difference. Such would be impossible. Neither is the most we can say about God that which concerns difference. Such would make him utterly unknowable.
Certain theologians throughout history have only been confident about understanding God through the negations of all we know (matter, earth, time, space, even ourselves). Understanding God in the fellowship of the Spirit, the Spirit who is love (indeed the God who is love), we can be confident in affirmations about a God who has made himself known beyond the difference that exists between us.
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