The Third Person: A Critique of Trinitarian Systems and Cosmological Footings through the Binitarian Pneumatology of the Early Church

We embark then, by returning to the question of the cosmological function of the Third Person within Early Christian thought. One might critique the legitimacy of this question by pointing out that the particularities and modern sensitivities of this question may have been alien to early Christian intuition. As we continue, it should become apparent how the validity of this criticism will, in fact, support the basic conclusions of this analysis by advocating a reconsideration of our "modern sensitivities" in light of the outlook of the early Church.

Early Christian pneumatology is discussed in a numbers of works, but for the purposes of this analysis, it is succinctly and comprehensively synopsized by Michel René Barnes in his article The Beginning and End of Early Christian Pneumatology, "There are four traditions of Jewish Christian pneumatologies [...] the theology of the Spirit as creator; angelic pneumatology; wisdom pneumatology; and consort pneumatology."⁶ For the purposes of this analysis, we are not particularly interested in the intra-theological aspects of these different modes of early pneumatology, but rather, the underlying meta-theological, and therefore cosmological, premises. We can, from this, further refine our question: what do Early Christian pneumatologies intimate about the perceived cosmological function of the Third Person?

With this being said the intra-theological implications of early pneumatologies, and the given relationships to protology, soteriology and eschatology, provide a path into the cosmological function of the Third Person. Beginning from the earliest Judaic experiences, it appears that one centralizing theme around which appearances of the Spirit of God orbit is the empowerment of a human (through word or deed) to communicate God's will.⁷ We will see how early Christians follow this basic premise, although not uncritically, and further develop the role of the Third Person in its context to Jesus and his Church.

An appropriate place to begin is with the Apostle Paul. In his article discussing the Holy Spirit in early Christian theology, Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte builds on the work of New Testament scholars F. F. Bruce and Gordon D. Fee. He expounds the pneumatology of Paul as part of the theological narrative carried over from Judaism, through Luke-Acts and into the second century "Apostolic Fathers" (i.e. Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Tatian and Athenagoras). The two fundamental theological roles which the Holy Spirit fulfills, Peerbolte argues are: first, the eschatological fulfillment of the old promise that God would speak directly to his people in the final days of history; and second, the establishment of God's personal presence.⁸ We will not develop these exhaustively on the basis that they are not developed schematically by Paul but more importantly, because one can argue that more specific categorizations can be unified under the auspices of these premises (if not solely by the latter).⁹ For example Fee, elsewhere writes:

[...] [T]here is little question that Paul sees the Spirit as distinct from God; yet at the same time the Spirit is both the interior expression of the unseen God's personality and the visible manifestation of God's activity in the world. The Spirit is truly God in action; yet he is neither simply and outworking of God's personality nor all there is to say about God.¹⁰

We will note, as well, that that these are largely consonant with the rest of the early Judaic and Christian consideration of the Third Person. We can expound these roles through further consideration of the question of other apostolic patristics, and then seek to draw some conclusions about the cosmological function of the Third Person to the early Church.

In the earliest experiences of the Church following the death and resurrection of Jesus, the importance of legitimizing apostolic preaching and prophecy is designated as the work of the Holy Spirit.¹¹ The significance of this can hardly be understated, and it is evidenced not only by the role of the Spirit in the individual life of an apostle, but also, in legitimizing and unifying the apostolic church as a community and institution.¹² Cognar, in his exhaustive three volume work on the Holy Spirit, unpacks the subtleties of the question of charism and institutionalization in the early Church (vis-à-vis later disputes concerning Montanism). He lists some patristic examples:

Ignatius of Antioch, for example, claimed that he called out his essential message under the action of the Spirit, Polycarp of Smyrna was called a "teacher who was both an apostle and a prophet" and Melito of Sardis was said to "live entirely by the Holy Spirit."¹³

Another second century father, Athenagoras, will serve as an helpful example on which to pivot this analysis from a historical theological outloock, to our driving cosmological question. In part as an apologetic appeal for the apostolic legitimacy of his church's teaching, he writes in his Apology, "The Holy Spirit Himself also, which operates in the prophets we assert to be an effluence of God, flowing from Him, and returning back again like a beam of the sun."¹⁴ It is not the content of his (potentially Middle Platonist) cosmology worth noting—but rather that if the Spirit flows from God and returns back to Him, this would suggest that the place the Spirit flows is through the world. This analogical picture of the movement and role of the Third Person hearkens back to Paul and propels us forward into the question of cosmological function.