by CCW | 30 March 2023 18:00
The Second Book of Homilies (1563) contains a number of homilies which are attributed to Bishop John Jewel (1522-1571). Among those is “An Homily concerning the coming down of the Holy Ghost; for Whitsunday”. It establishes a number of the basic themes which would be taken up and enlarged upon by others after him, such as Lancelot Andrewes’ remarkable series of fifteen sermons on the sending down of the Holy Spirit prepared and preached before King James I in the first three decades of the 17th century. As with Cranmer, Jewel’s homily complements the Articles of Religion, in this case, Article V, “Of the Holy Ghost”.[1]
Jewel first locates the Scriptural sources for the liturgical Feast of Pentecost or Whitsuntide in both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament; in each case highlighting their divine authorship. It belongs to the Exodus story of deliverance and to the giving of the Law, on the one hand, and to the descent of the Holy Ghost on the disciples in Jerusalem, on the other hand, both observed on the same day, the fiftieth day after Easter and the Jewish Passover. Jewel then considers “what the Holy Ghost is” and what the Holy Ghost does, namely, “his miraculous works towards mankind”.
This establishes the classical Anglican teaching about the Holy Spirit, emphasizing first, the essential divinity of the Holy Spirit, as attested by Scripture and Creed understood in tandem, and, secondly, the western understanding of the double procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son (filioque). This, too, is the burden of Article V.
The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, is of one substance, majesty, and glory, with the Father and the Son, very and eternal God.
Thus Jewel states that “The Holy Ghost is a spiritual and divine substance, the Third Person in the Deity, distinct from the Father and the Son, and yet proceeding from them both,” as witnessed by “the creed of Athanasius,” and by the witness of Christ’s baptism in Jordan and by the dominical injunction “to baptize all nations, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” Jewel notes that “his proper nature and substance … is altogether one with God the Father, and God the Son; that is to say, spiritual, eternal, uncreated, incomprehensible, almighty; to be short, he is even God and Lord everlasting … the Spirit of the Father” who “is said to proceed from the Father and the Son.” From this consideration of Deus in se, he moves on to the works of the Holy Ghost, Deus pro nobis, “which plainly declare unto the world his mighty and divine power”.
The first of those works concerns the illumination and inspiration of the Patriarchs and Prophets by the Holy Spirit. Prophecy comes “not by the will of man;” but “as they were moved inwardly by the Holy Ghost.” Secondly, there is the work of the Holy Ghost “in the conception and nativity of Christ our Saviour.” Thirdly, there is the work of the Holy Ghost “by the inward regeneration and sanctification of mankind.” The works of the Holy Ghost are understood in connection and communion with the Father and the Son. “For, as there are three several and sundry persons in the Deity; so have they three several and sundry offices proper unto each of them: the Father to create, the Son to redeem, the Holy Ghost to sanctify and regenerate.” This echoes the instructions in the classical Prayer Book Catechisms about the Apostles’ Creed.
But the primary work of the Holy Spirit is inward and invisible: “the secret and mighty working of God’s Holy Spirit, which is within us.” The Holy Spirit is the principle of God’s working within us, dwelling and abiding in us. “The Spirit of God dwelleth in you.” How is this known by us? By “the fruits of the Spirit” as enumerated by Paul in Galatians 5. 22-23. This leads to a consideration of “the gifts of the Spirit” (1 Cor. 12. 4-11), all of which “proceed from one Spirit and are severally given to man according to the measurable distribution of the Holy Ghost,” and which testify to God’s divine power. Further witness to the divine power of the Holy Spirit is indicated by the council of Jerusalem (Acts 5) and what he calls “the learned and heavenly sermons of Peter and the other disciples” who “were never brought up in school of learning.” This points to the Holy Spirit as Spirit of Truth and as teacher. He quotes Bede that “where the Holy Ghost dost instruct and teach, there is no delay at all in learning.”
The second part of Jewel’s sermon is more polemical and brings out a reformed critique of the Roman Church not only as not showing evidence of “the fruits of the spirit” but the exact opposite in terms of the actions of various Popes, and, as such in Jewel’s view, not being a true church. This viewpoint will be largely qualified by Hooker and Bramhall who will view the Roman Church as a true church but one which has erred.
Jewel defines the true church as “an universal congregation or fellowship of God’s faithful and elect people, built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the head corner-stone.” In Jewel’s view the three marks of the true church are “(1) pure and sound doctrine; (2) The sacraments ministered according to Christ’s institution; (3) And the right use of ecclesiastical discipline.” About the first, he says very little, being more concerned about innovations on more practical matters.
These will later be regarded by Hooker and Bramhall and, by extension, Andrewes, as belonging more to matters indifferent. By the seventeenth century, the English reformed position was focussed more on the problem of things being added to the essentials of the Faith which cannot be required as necessary to be believed. This is explicated most completely by John Bramhall (1594-1663).
It is Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626) who emphasizes the primacy or centrality of the Holy Spirit in the life of faith and in the liturgical life of the Church. Liturgical time is a kind of constant circling around and into the mysteries of God. The feasts of the Church Year are all inter-related and co-inherent through the work and person of the Holy Spirit. “This feast”, meaning Pentecost, “is the period of all the feasts of the year” by which he means their defining feature: they all belong to the same end or purpose, our life in the eternity of God by way of the liturgical cycle of feasts, themselves the means of our participation in the life of God.
The Holy Ghost is the Alpha and Omega of all our solemnities. In His coming down all the feasts begin; at His annunciation, when He descended on the Blessed Virgin, whereby the Son of God did take our nature, the nature of man. And in the Holy Ghost’s coming they end, even in His descending this day upon the sons of men, whereby they actually become “partakers,” θειας φυσεως, “of His nature, the nature of God” (III, 55).
Pentecost, in this view, is not just “one of the Magnalia Dei”, the great things of God, but interpenetrates and gives purpose and meaning to all of the feasts (I, 41).
Howsoever we make it, sure it is that all the rest, all the feasts hitherto in the return of the year from His incarnation to the very last of His ascension, though all of them be great and worthy of honour in themselves, yet to us they are as nothing, any of them or all of them, even all the feasts in the Calendar, without this day, the feast which now we hold holy to the sending of the Holy Ghost.
But what might seem to be an almost exaggerated emphasis and affirmation of the Holy Spirit is immediately qualified. Such is the dance of kataphatic and apophatic theology, positive and negative theology, about what can and cannot be affirmed about God and us and in what way. It would not be easy, he says, to compare or to determine which is greater, the incarnatio Dei or the inspiratio hominis, the mystery of the Incarnation or the mystery of our inspiration. Because what matters is their inter-relation and mutual dependence. Both are great mysteries of godliness but “both above all comparison” because of their interdependence upon one another and their mutual relation in terms of human redemption.
Yet this we may safely say of them: without either of them we are not complete, we have not our accomplishment; but by both we have, and that fully, even by this day’s royal exchange. Whereby, as before He of ours, so now are we of His made partakers. He clothed with our flesh, and we invested with His Spirit. The great promise of the Old Testament accomplished, that He should partake our human nature; and the great and precious promise of the New, that we should be consortes divinae naturae, “partake His divine nature,” both are this day accomplished (I, 41).
The main theological concerns are the forms of co-inherence, the forms of our participation in the life of God. Pentecost is, “festum charitatis, ‘the feast of love;’ and He Whose the feast is, the Holy Ghost, love itself, the essential love and love-knot of the two Persons of the Godhead, Father and Son. The same, the love-knot between God and man, and yet more specially between Christ and His Church. Properly, as faith referreth to Christ the Word, so doth love to the Spirit, and comfort to love” (III, 56). The Holy Spirit as the principle of indwelling love operates on these three inter-related planes. Most of his sermons end on an explicitly sacramental note as the sign and form of God’s life indwelling us.
We said even now: to “dwell among us,” He must dwell in us; and in us He will “dwell,” if the fruits of His Spirit be found in us. And of His fruits the very first is love. And the fruit is as the tree is. For He Himself is love, the essential love, and love-knot of the undivided Trinity.
Now to work love, the undoubted both sign and means of His dwelling, what better way, or how sooner wrought, than by the sacrament of love, at the feast of love, upon the feast-day of love; when love descended with both his hands full of gifts, for very love to take up his dwelling with us? (VII, 91).
Andrewes’ sermons exhibit a going out and a return to a principle but that exitus-reditus structure is really redire ad principia, ‘a kind of circling,’ and thus an overcoming or reconciliation of opposing motions through the forms of co-inherence both of God in himself and God in us.
Will ye now hear the end of all? By this means God shall “dwell with us” – the perfection of this life; and He dwelling with us, we shall dwell with Him – the last and highest perfection of life to come … So the text comes about round. It began with an ascension, and it ends with one; began with Christ’s, ends with ours. He ascended, that God might dwell with us; that, God dwelling with us, we might in the end ascend and dwell with God. He went up “on high,” that the Spirit might come down to us below; and, that coming down, make us go the same way, and come to the same place that He is. Sent Him down to us, to bring us up to Him (VII.91).
“So the text comes about round.” The Books of Homilies illustrate the various ways in which the scriptural texts all come round, ”a kind of circling,” that is always a redire ad principia, a return to a principle, “to return to Him by repentance from Whom by sin we have turned away,” as Andrewes puts it in an Ash Wednesday homily. That turning is all the grace of God in us. Such is the centrality of the Holy Spirit. Lent began with the Temptations of Christ being led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to be tempted of the devil. It ends with the last word of the Cross. “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit”, in the going forth and return of the Son to the Father having accomplished all that belongs to the redemption of our humanity and the restoration of creation to God.
Fr. David Curry
March 30th, 2023
Lenten Programme III
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