The Lord Is the Spirit. John A. Studebaker
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Название: The Lord Is the Spirit

Автор: John A. Studebaker

Издательство: Ingram

Жанр: Религия: прочее

Серия: Evangelical Theological Society Monograph Series

isbn: 9781630876852

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ Letters Concerning the Holy Spirit and Letters to Serapion present perhaps the best defense of the Spirit’s divinity in the first millennium of the Church. As the chief elaborator and defender of the Nicene Creed after 325, Athanasius suffered considerable persecution from Arian politicians. When Athanasius turned his attention to the doctrine of the Spirit he gained many converts from Arianism, such as the followers of Serapion, who had accepted the homoousios of the Son with the Father but continued to view the Spirit as a creature. In his Letters to Serapion, Athanasius uses divine attributes such as immutability and supremacy to convincingly demonstrate the Spirit’s divinity. First, the Spirit’s divinity is witnessed in His immutability.

      Second, the Spirit’s divinity emerges from His supremacy over all things.

      Athanasius also applies the logic of Nicean Christology and the concept of homoousios to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, demonstrating that the Spirit bears the same rank and relative function to the Son as the Son does to the Father.

      Even more central to Athanasius’ argument, however, is his association of the Spirit with our sanctification (which is indeed a vital part of our salvation), concluding that the Spirit must therefore be our savior, together with the Father and the Son. The argument is inductive, beginning with the work of the Spirit and moving to the person of the Spirit. Since sanctification is a divine activity, the Spirit must be divine. Athanasius provided this argument at a synod in Alexandria in 362, at which the full divinity of the Spirit was clearly acknowledged.

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