Writing in the book “On Classical Trinitarianism” Christopher Hall asks and answers:
“Exactly what are we saying and doing when we recite the Nicene Creed as members of Christ’s body, the church? We are affirming our trust in the Holy Spirit’s guidance and empowerment of the church as it studied, contemplated, and articulated the meaning of the gospel as expressed in the Bible and the church’s liturgy. The church’s worship informed and shaped the church’s creedal statements. Lex orandi, lex credendi.”[1]
He goes on to say:
“Quite simply, the Holy Spirit has a history. The Holy Spirit did not stop speaking, guiding, and working at the end of the first century, push the mute button, and tap the speak button back on seventeen years into the sixteenth century, with Luther’s posting of the Ninety-Nine Theses. No, the Spirit has been speaking and acting throughout the church’s history and in special ways in the church’s earliest centuries, when the contours of orthodox Christian belief were honed and shaped.”[2]
These are some intriguing and rather confusing comments in those statements. First of all, what does Hall mean when he sats that “The Holy Spirit didn’t stop speaking, guiding, and working at the end of the first century.” I write as a Charismatic Christian, so I believe that the Holy Spirit continues to use prophecy, dreams, visions, pictures, words of knowledge to guide and speak. I believe that this is an aspect of God’s General Revelation and this means that God has consistently been doing this, throughout history.
There is of course the question about whether or not Protestants and Evangelicals think that there may have been a period of “darkness” when the Church went so far away from God that she was not being guided by the Holy Spirit. However, the assumption tends to be that this describes a later period of history, after the Creeds, in effect the medieval period. In that this period of time particularly reflects a departure from Scripture and the Gospel then there is a strong case for arguing that yes, there was a time, not because the Holy Spirit hit mute but because the Church stuck her fingers in her ears that it could be said that she was not hearing God.
Furthermore, we want to affirm that the Holy Spirit did not speaking in “a special way”, helping the Church to hear Special Revelation. This was not because he was adding to Special Revelation but rather because he continued to speak through the once and for all delivered Special Revelation of Scripture.
This brings us to the other crucial, intriguing and confusing statement:
“We are affirming our trust in the Holy Spirit’s guidance and empowerment of the church as it studied, contemplated, and articulated the meaning of the gospel as expressed in the Bible and the church’s liturgy.”
Again, for clarity, Evangelicals, as opposed to Fundamentalists recognise that we don’t jus tpick up our Bibles in individualistic isolation to offer our own novel interpretations. We read Scripture with the rest of the Church, including the historical Church. However, our concern is with the way in which the Church has consistently interpreted and understood God’s Word. This is different from positing an alternative, authoritative form of revelation, as some treat tradition.
Yet, here the author talks about two sources of revelation for the church, with the help of the Holy Spirit to engage with, interpret and apply: Scripture and Liturgy. We need to be careful about creating mystical periods of time in church history when special things happened, distinct from the unfolding revelation of Scripture, focused in Christ Jesus. Indeed, to do so is to go beyond the self-understanding of those involved in forming the creeds and those early church fathers who engaged in debate and reflection in the first few centuries.
[1] Christopher Hall, “The Nicene Creed” in Barret Matthew; Billings, Todd. On Classical Trinitarianism: Retrieving the Nicene Doctrine of the Triune God InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition), 21.
[2] Hall, “The Nicene Creed”, 21,
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