Credo 34 ...who proceeds from the Father...

‘The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters’ (Gn. 1.2).

‘But when the Counsellor comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness to me’ (Jn 15.26).

‘God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For what person knows a man's thoughts except the spirit of the man which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God’ (1 Cor. 2.11-12).

There are many allusions to the Spirit of God in the scriptures. It is through the teaching of Christ and the experience of St Paul and the other Apostles in the early church that the Counsellor, the Advocate, the Paraclete is known as the third Person of the Trinity. That is, the Trinity is revealed to us by its missions, by the fact that the Son and the Spirit are sent from God, the Father: the Son from the Father and the Spirit of God whom the Son sends from the Father.

But these Persons do not begin to exist when they are sent in these missions, for then God would have some parts that are not eternal and we would have divided God. The Father, Son and Spirit are eternally related, for God is simply one.

The language we received from Jesus helps us to understand these relations. The first is clear: the Son is begotten by the Father. That is, the Son finds his eternal origin in the Father as the names suggest. But the Spirit too, as the Spirit of God is eternally generated in God, a generation which Jesus calls procession.

When we say that the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life proceeds from the Father, we are simply stating the revelation that the Holy Spirit sent by God is simply God from all eternity. God sends himself into the world to dwell in humanity. It is in the light of this astonishing thought that we must continue to address St Paul’s question to ourselves: ‘do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?’ (1 Cor. 3.16).