The Holy Spirit
Dear People of St. Boniface,
You will obviously realise that as I went on my way teaching the truths of Christ, I could not benefit from the decrees of the Council of Nicaea (325AD), etcetera, about the nature of the Holy Trinity. I would like to think, however, that I might have contribute to these, albeit unwittingly. Nor did I have at my fingertips the allusions to the threefold life of God which you find in St. John’s Gospel, and which was written at least 20 years after I was beheaded!
The Spirit of God is referred to repeatedly in the “Scriptures”, such as they existed in my lifetime – and these you would now call the “Old Testament”. Far be it from me to suggest that the Spirit of God could change, or that God sent a new Spirit; that would be impossible. Rather, through the coming of Christ, we received a new awareness of the Holy Spirit, and that is what I present in my letters, as we will examine again next week.
In my First Letter to the Thessalonians [5:23] I speak of the believers’ “whole spirit, soul and body”, and in my First Letter to the Corinthians [15:44] I speak of the “natural body” and the “spiritual body”. For me, the “body” meant something akin to an anatomy lesson: bones, sinews, muscles. And – for me at least – “the soul” meant the pulsating life of the body, like the blood coursing through the arteries and veins.But “the spirit” meant the inbreathed divine force, which makes a human a human, conscious, reflective, dignified – divine! And we only receive that “spirit” as a gift from …. who else but “The Holy Spirit”!
To this I will return next week.
My blessing, from Heaven, PAUL.