Notes on Pneumatology

The Holy Spirit participated in creation with the Father and the Son. Foundational texts
here include not only Genesis 1:2, with the Spirit of God hovering over the face of the deep, but
Psalm 33:6: By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all
their host. We cant divvy up precise roles for each person of the Holy Trinity, since each
participates in the works of the other in their essential unity. Nevertheless, the primary aspect of
creation attributed to the Holy Spirit is animation: He gives life to lifeless things. Thus Job 33:4,
The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath [Spirit] of the Almighty gives me life.
Likewise Isaiah 42:5, Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them
out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and
spirit to those who walk in it. Even Genesis testifies to this. In the first place, God makes man
a living soul by breathing into his nostrils the breath [Spirit] of life (Genesis 2:7). More subtly,
the Spirit who hovers over the face of the chaotic primordial waters (1:2) has transformed them
by the second chapter, not only introducing order to them, but making them life-giving: A mist
was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground . . . A river flowed out
of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers (2:6, 10).
Does this mean that the Father and the Son do not animate? Of course not. As said
before, each person of the Holy Trinity participates in every work of God. Nevertheless, just as
we must broadly say that the Father creates through the Son, so also the Father and the Son
animate through the Spirit. The Spirit, even from eternity, before there was a creation, is the
Spirit of the Son. His work in creation is Christological. The waters which He orders, giving a
river in Eden to water the garden and the surrounding nations, were made to be a type of Himself
flowing from Christ. Likewise, the human beings whom He inspired [in the strict sense of God-

breathed] were made male and female that they might foreshadow the relationship of Christ and
the Church. If we take seriously Johns assertion that no man has ever seen the Father, but that
the Son reveals Him, we must assume that Adam and Eve also knew the Father through the Son,
and that they know the Son through the Holy Spirit who was within them. The text of Genesis
itself, through which we have come to know the Father in the Son, was inspired by the Holy
Spirit, and not one word of it was written without His inspiration. From the beginning, the Holy
Spirit has been testifying to the Son of God.