Quotations from papal and other Vatican-generated documents available on vatican.va are copyright © Libreria Editrice Vaticana.
English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for use in the United States of America copyright © 1994, United States Catholic Conference, Inc. — Libreria Editrice Vaticana. English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: Modifications from the Editio Typica copyright © 1997, United States Catholic Conference, Inc. — Libreria Editrice Vaticana.
English translation of the Nicene Creed by the English Language Liturgical Consultation (ELLC).
Excerpts from the English translation of The Liturgy of the Hours, © 1973, 1974, 1975, International Commission on English in the Liturgy Corporation (ICEL). All rights reserved.
Introduction
“O Holy Spirit, descend plentifully into my heart. Enlighten the dark corners of this neglected dwelling, and scatter there Thy cheerful beams.”
— St. Augustine
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that
“Holy Spirit” is the proper name of the one whom we adore and glorify with the Father and the Son. The Church has received this name from the Lord and professes it in the Baptism of her new children. (CCC 691)
This Bible study looks at the Holy Spirit in Scripture, beginning with the Old Testament and moving through the New Testament. In seven sessions, we examine: the role of the Holy Spirit in creation; how authority and power come from the Spirit; how the Spirit worked in the lives of the prophets; the Spirit as the giver of wisdom, guidance, and truth; the Spirit as part of the Trinity; empowerment and the Spirit; and finally, the Spirit in lives of Christian believers.
It is our hope that this Bible study will encourage all of us — in the words of the Veni, Creator Spiritus, which dates back to the ninth century — to ask the Holy Spirit, “In our hearts take up Thy rest.”
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