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John 15:26
“When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.”
Relations of origin are the only distinctions between the three persons of the Trinity. In other words, these properties show how the persons of the Godhead are distinct. The Father begets the Son, and He is eternally unbegotten. The Son is eternally from the Father: He is eternally begotten of the Father. As we will consider today, the Holy Spirit is eternally from the Father and the Son: He eternally proceeds from (or is spirated by) the Father and the Son, as the Western church’s version of the Nicene Creed states.
Like the generation (or filiation) of the Son by the Father, the eternal procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son does not refer to temporal sequence. That is, the Spirit does not come after the Father and the Son in the sense that They existed for a time, however long it was, and then the Spirit came forth. Instead, we are talking about an order. The Father is first in order, the Son is second in order, and the Holy Spirit is third in order without the three persons’ differing at all with respect to the single divine nature that They each possess in its fullness. God acts from the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit.
Here we have to admit that we do not know what the difference is between being begotten and proceeding. Neither is an act of creation, and the generation of the Son is different from the breathing forth (i.e., procession or spiration) of the Spirit, but we do not know precisely how except that the Son is from one divine person (the Father) and the Spirit is from two divine persons (the Father and the Son). Beyond that, there is not much more that we can say.
So the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit because He proceeds from the Father and the Son, but where do we find the Spirit’s double procession in Scripture? One passage would be John 15:26, where Jesus talks about sending the Spirit, who proceeds from the Father. The Western church has long confessed that the sending of the Spirit reflects something about the eternal processions or relations of origin in the Godhead. Christ can send the Spirit in time because the Spirit has proceeded from the Son, as well as the Father, from all eternity. Moreover, this helps us understand why the Spirit is called the “Spirit of Christ” (Rom. 8:9) and why the Spirit does not put the focus on Himself but draws people to Christ. These things are true because He is from the Son, just as the Son’s being from the Father means that He is the way to the Father (John 14:6).
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
We do not have to know exactly what it means for the Holy Spirit to proceed from the Father and the Son in order for us to know that procession is what distinguishes Him from the Father and the Son. We are called simply to believe what God has revealed even if we cannot fully grasp it. Indeed, we are to believe all that God has revealed even if we cannot fully understand it.
For further study
- Ezekiel 39:29
- John 16:4–15
- Acts 2:33
- Galatians 4:6
The bible in a year
- Leviticus 24–25
- Mark 1