Читать книгу The Holy Spirit - Mitch Pacwa - Страница 10

Session 1

The Holy Spirit in Creation

“The Holy Spirit, then, as Jesus promises, guides us ‘into all truth’ (Jn 16:13). He leads us not only to an encounter with Jesus, the fullness of Truth, but guides us ‘into’ the Truth, that is, he helps us enter into a deeper communion with Jesus himself, gifting us knowledge of the things of God.”

— Pope Francis, General Audience (May 15, 2013)

Just as the whole of the Bible opens with creation and its first mention of the Spirit of God, so will this study begin with examining passages in five books of the Old Testament that present the role of the Holy Spirit in creation. The importance of this doctrine is shown in that it appears in narrative books (Genesis and Judith), a prophetic book (Ezekiel), a psalm, and a wisdom book (Wisdom of Solomon). The diversity of literature indicates that the link between God’s Spirit and creation took deep roots in all sectors of Israelite thinking, especially after the exile.

Study

Genesis

The Old Testament does not use the phrase “Holy Spirit” very often, but it does speak frequently of the “Spirit of God” or “Spirit of the Lord.” In fact, the account of the creation of the universe contains the first reference to the “Spirit of God.”

Stop here and read Genesis 1:1-3 in your own Bible.

Genesis opens with the claim that God “created” the heavens and the earth. The word meaning “create” occurs about a hundred times in the Old Testament. However, only God is the “creator,” and never is this action shared by anyone else.

Babylonian Creation Myth

The Babylonian creation myth, Enuma Elish, begins with the Father god Apsu, who was fresh water, and the Mother goddess Tiamat, who was salt water. They procreate children gods, each of whom is a force of nature. Apsu hates their noisiness and decides to kill them, so Tiamat incites the wind god to kill Apsu by freezing him — thereby explaining the Ice Age and polar cap. Then Tiamat fears that her children will kill her, and so she creates a monster, Kingu, to kill them. The children ask the storm god, Marduk, to be their king, and he leads them in battle, killing both Tiamat and Kingu.

Marduk cuts Tiamat’s corpse in two, the long way, making the earth from her bottom half and the sky from the top. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow from her eyes, while the sun, moon, and stars hang on her rib cage like a track lighting system, controlling the “destinies of gods and men” (this is the origin of astrology). Marduk cuts off Kingu’s head, mixes his blood with the earth, and makes human beings into the slaves of the gods, forcing them to feed the gods by offering sacrifices to keep them nourished. In that light, read all of Genesis 1 and contrast the two versions of creation, especially the role of the sun, moon, and stars, the sea monsters, and the purpose of human beings.

Using some terminology from Babylonian myths, the earth is described as a primeval chaos, translated here as “without form and void” (Gen 1:2) and absolutely dark over a vast abyss. The Babylonian myth portrays “formless” and “void” as the parent gods of everything, but Scripture demythologizes them into mere natural forces. While the Babylonian myth tells of the wind god killing his grandfather Apsu — the Abyss of fresh water — by freezing him, Scripture (in Hebrew) describes how the “Spirit of God hovers” over this chaos. Just as the eagle “flutters” or “hovers” (same Hebrew word) to draw eaglets out of the nest to try to fly, so does the Spirit of God “move above” or “hover” over the chaos in order to prepare it for God’s next step of speaking everything into existence: “God said, ‘Let there be …’ ”

In the Gospel of John, the prologue starts like Genesis 1:1, in order to draw attention to Christ’s divinity: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made” (Jn 1:1-3).

Not only does the text explicitly say “the Word was God” but also that he has his role in the creation of the universe: “All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” John is hereby saying that when God “said” in order to create, his word was the second Person of the Holy Trinity.

When Christians read Genesis 1:1-3 and John 1:1-3, they then recognize that all three Persons were intimately involved in the creation of the world: God the Father speaks creation into being; the Son is the Word through whom all things come to be; and the Holy Spirit hovers over chaos in order to draw forth from it the potential by which the Word gives it form, shape, principles of motion, and any other elements of being a creature. With such reflection in mind, it is no surprise that some of the Fathers of the Church saw the Blessed Trinity being prefigured in Genesis 1:26: “God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’ ” The first-person plural “us” and “our” hinted at the three divine Persons, but only the revelation made by Jesus Christ could clarify its meaning.

Consider

Psalm 104

Ancient Israel had a very positive attitude toward creation — God created it himself, and he declared all of his creatures to be good. Psalm 104 praises God for his creation and its orderly structure, encouraging amazement at creation’s wonder so as to learn to live wisely in accord with its good order. The role of God’s Spirit enters when the psalm describes God’s determination of death and life.

Stop here and read Psalm 104 (especially verses 29 and 30) in your own Bible.

Here we see the role of the Spirit in the life and death of every living thing. When the Lord sends his Spirit, life comes and living beings are created. As in Genesis, the coming of the Spirit precedes the acts of creation, but appears as a necessary, preparatory step. The only difference here is that the Spirit is engaged in the ongoing work of creation, even at very small, individual levels, making possible the ongoing renewal of the face of the earth.

Ezekiel

Ezekiel and thousands of others had been taken prisoner to Babylon in 598 B.C., the first time King Nebuchadnezzar subdued the Kingdom of Judah. Throughout his exile, Ezekiel kept warning Judah to repent or be destroyed. Just as they had failed to listen to Jeremiah, they refused his warnings. Nonetheless, like Jeremiah, when Ezekiel learned that Jerusalem had been completely destroyed in 587 B.C., he never gloated. Rather, the Lord sent him a series of prophecies and visions of a new future. One of the best known is his vision of the valley of dry bones, over which he prophesies. The bones are rejoined, sinews and flesh come upon them, and then he prophesies to the breath to return to these dead people and bring them to life.

Stop here and read Ezekiel 37:1-14 in your own Bible.

Though the exiles felt as good as dead because they were without any hope, the Lord gave them a vision of hope through Ezekiel: the Spirit of the Lord can bring forth life even out of a vast valley filled with death. In 37:14, the Lord explains, “I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live.” The Spirit of the Lord makes it possible even for dried-up and scattered bones to live, demonstrating the role of the Spirit in creation and re-creation. The life-giving role of the Lord’s Spirit occurs when the prophet speaks and makes possible the action of the Spirit, showing that the creative and prophetic roles belong together.

Judith

Judith 16:1-17 is a hymn of thanksgiving for the way the Lord delivered Israel from the invading army of Holofernes. As in Psalm 104:30, the Lord’s Spirit is sent out by him to form creatures.

Stop here and read Judith 16:1-17 in your own Bible.

The purpose of this hymn is to praise God for his salvation of Israel during the crisis of the invasion of the land by Holofernes. As part of that “new song” (Jud 16:13), all creatures are summoned to serve the Lord, their creator. As in Genesis, God speaks all the creatures into being, but God also sends his Spirit, who formed the creatures. At the same time, the Spirit of God helps the creatures hear God’s voice, and the formation of creatures by the Spirit makes it hard for them to resist the call of God’s voice. This passage links the Spirit’s role in forming creatures with the power of God’s word to create them and the power of his word to summon them to perform his will. This latter function is a connection between the Spirit’s creative role and his role with the prophets.

Study

Book of Wisdom

One last book treats of the role of the Lord’s Spirit in creation: the Book of Wisdom. This was written in Greek, probably in Alexandria, Egypt, in the first century B.C. Wisdom identifies the Spirit of the Lord as the one who fills the whole world and sustains all things in existence.

Investigate

The Spirit’s Creative Power

Look up the following passages and make notes on the role of the Lord’s Spirit.

PASSAGE	NOTES
Wisdom 1:7-8
Wisdom 12:1-2

The first reading takes the creative power of the Spirit of the Lord to two other levels. The first level claims that the Spirit of the Lord continuously and in an ongoing way sustains all that has already been created. He did not simply give it an original start but is constantly bestowing new life. The second level claims that the Spirit of the Lord is also able to know everything that people say and speak. He notices all unrighteousness, judges it, and punishes it.

Lying to the Spirit

An understanding of the Lord’s Spirit as knowing everything people say and speak stands behind the episode in Acts 5:1-11, when Ananias and his wife Sapphira held back money they had promised to contribute to the Church. Peter called this a lie to the Holy Spirit, who struck each of them dead in punishment. Clearly, the Spirit of the Lord is aware of all unrighteous behavior and punishes it with full divine authority.

Two more passages in Wisdom express the ongoing presence of the Lord’s Spirit in all of creation and the effects of the Spirit to maintain all of reality. Wisdom 12:1-2 simply offers an acknowledgment to God that his Spirit is a moral presence throughout all of creation. Being everywhere and within all things indicates the divine quality of the Lord’s Spirit. God’s infinite nature is omnipresent and is within everything that exists. This teaching is not the same as pantheism, which claims that everything is God. God is the creator of everything, and even his action of creating is one that only God does; everything else is a creature that is limited in space and time, and an infinite gap exists between the creatures and the infinite, uncreated, and eternal God. At the same time, all of creation and everything within creation is sustained in existence by the infinite presence of God. He is within everything, and yet without being merely one thing among the rest of creatures. He sustains all creatures, but they do not sustain him in the least.

The passage further reveals that the omnipresence of the Spirit of the Lord goes beyond simply sustaining all creation. The Spirit also corrects human beings when they sin against God. The goal of his moral correction is that “they may be freed from wickedness and put their trust in you, O Lord” (Wis 12:2, RSV-SCE). Jesus will teach that the Holy Spirit of truth will have the same role of correcting people about “sin and righteousness and judgment” (Jn 16:8; also see Jn 16:9-11). In this way, Wisdom indicates that moral virtue and faith are linked to each other, and that both are connected to the action of the Spirit of the Lord acting within creation. People cannot claim to have faith and yet ignore their need for moral improvement. Such is God’s way of leading and guiding people ever closer to himself.

Consider

Wisdom 7:21-30 is a statement that flows from the secrets learned from wisdom about a Spirit that permeates wisdom itself, all other spirits (including the human spirits), and everything else that exists.

The first important point is to accept that the Spirit is capable of penetrating wisdom itself. In saying this, the Book of Wisdom is recognizing that the Spirit is superior to wisdom. Also, the Spirit is able to penetrate all “intelligent and pure and most subtle” spirits (Wis 7:23). This indicates that he is superior to the angels, who are super-intelligent, pure spirits. He is superior to human spirits, who are intelligent, though less intelligent and less pure than the angels. The obvious conclusion one should draw from this teaching is that human spirits should have at least as much respect for God’s Spirit as do the angels, especially since human intelligence and goodness is so inferior to the angels, yet alone God’s Spirit. Having asserted that the Spirit is superior to wisdom, and to angelic and human spirits, the sage then lists some of the qualities of this Spirit.

Investigate

Qualities of the Spirit

Read Wisdom 7:22-30 and list the qualities of the Spirit.

Each quality bears reflection to help us deepen our understanding of the Spirit of the Lord. Some of the characteristics are intellectual — as when the Spirit is described as intelligent, manifold, and keen. Some characteristics are moral qualities — holy, unpolluted, loving the good. Some characteristics belong more to the divine nature — invulnerable, irresistible, all-powerful. Human beings cannot fully understand these characteristics, but they can consider them prayerfully and meditatively so as to grow in wonder and awe at the greatness of God’s Holy Spirit. This is a way to avoid taking him for granted or thinking we are more intelligent than he.

Discuss

1. What was, and still is, the role of the Spirit in creation?

2. Which of the Old Testament passages you’ve read this week gave you new insights into the Holy Spirit?

3. What quality of the Holy Spirit do you wish to incorporate into your daily life?

Practice

This week, think about how the Holy Spirit is active in the creation of your life. What areas of your being need the enlightenment and work of the Spirit to activate them? How can you live a richer and fuller life with the assistance of the Spirit? Choose one of the qualities of the Spirit and look for ways to bring it to life in your own life over the next few days.