Giver of Life by Fr. John W. Oliver

Author:Fr. John W. Oliver
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Paraclete Press

3

The Spirit of Truth

O heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, Who art everywhere present and fillest all things; Treasury of good things and Giver of life; come and abide in us, and cleanse us from every impurity, and save our souls, O Gracious Lord.

A GROUP OF SCHOOLCHILDREN ages six and seven were meeting with Sister Magdalen, a contemporary Orthodox nun, at a convent in England. The kindly nun was helping the children understand the meaning of the word Orthodox. One meaning, Sister Magdalen explained, is “right worship.” One child exclaimed, “We worship in school and sing songs about God. There’s one that goes . . .” and the rest of the children added their voices to the tune.

“It is nice music,” the nun replied. “You must have nice schools if you learn songs about God.” Sister Magdalen noticed a line in the children’s song—“the creed doesn’t matter”—and referred to it when speaking about the importance not only of believing but also of what one believes.

What is a creed? the children wanted to know.

“When we say, ‘I believe,’ ” Sister Magdalen replied. “When you’re a baby your godmother says it for you but now you’re all old enough to say ‘I believe.’ It does matter what you say about Jesus Christ and who He is. If you say the wrong creed it’s like saying lies about God. If we don’t say right things it’s like having a bad drawing of God and you can’t find Him.”31

True soul work within a person involves discarding any bad drawings of God we may have acquired in the search for the real thing. For some atheists, the God they do not believe in is simply a collection of bad drawings they have picked up over the years—the Merciless Tyrant, for example, or the Cosmic Killjoy. The believer who has bathed in the mercy and joy of the true God shares with the atheist an unbelief in that kind of deity.

The creed to which the nun was referring is recited by Orthodox Christians at every Divine Liturgy. It’s a good drawing of God. As we learned in chapter 2, Christians of antiquity convened councils as a way to sift through competing truth claims, and the first two councils drafted the “Nicene-Constantinopolitan” Creed, which the Orthodox have embraced ever since. From the Latin term credo—“I believe”—the creed is our statement of what we believe to be true.

Reading through the creed together, we can consider what it reveals about the Holy Spirit, who is the “Spirit of truth,” as Christ calls Him in the Gospel of John (14:17; 15:26; 16:13), and about the Godhead in which He dwells:

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible;

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Onlybegotten, Begotten of the Father before all worlds, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, Begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father; by Whom all things

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.