Holy Spirit (2016)

Metadata of the chapter that will be visualized online Chapter Title Holy Spirit Copyright Year 2015 Copyright Holder Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg Corresponding Author Family Name Kay Particle Given Name Suffix Peggy Division/Department Organization/University City Department of Religion The George Washington University Washington State Country Email DC USA [email protected] Email [email protected] Au1 1 H 2 Holy Spirit 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Peggy Kay Department of Religion, The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA The Term, Concept, Tradition, and Theology The Holy Spirit is a scriptural spiritual tradition, which has evolved into a doctrine, in the Christian tradition. It is present throughout the Christian Scriptures and has arisen and evolved from “the Spirit,” “Spirit of the LORD,” or “Spirit of God” in the Hebrew Scriptures. Michael Ramsay (1977, pp. 14–15) summarizes this evolution. We see that Spirit is a part of the Hebrew theology, with the prevailing imagery of wind. Spirit is not a thing-in-itself, or a person-in-himself, or a philosophical entity in itself; it means that God himself is active in the world. He is a God at once beyond and within, the creator and sustainer of his creation, manifesting himself in particular events and persons to forward his righteous purpose, and preparing the way for its future climax. Christians believe that this climax is Jesus of Nazareth. The term “Holy Spirit” is capitalized as a name that refers to an identity of the Divine, named God in Christian tradition. Holy Spirit is a more recent expression of the traditional name “Holy Ghost,” but they refer to the same “Spirit.” Conceptually, it has evolved to be part of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, which is a way of understanding God as triune: God as Father, God as Son Jesus incarnate in the material world, and God as dynamic Spirit at work in the world. The Trinity is said to consist of “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost/ Spirit,” with the Holy Spirit as the third element. The Trinity as a concept has developed as followers of Jesus Christ have struggled to understand Jesus in his dimension as a man, son of man and Son of God, and in his Christ dimension as God incarnate in the world, in attempt to understand the nature of God and Jesus’ relationship to God. In Christian scriptural tradition, Luke says of John [the Baptist] who later baptized Jesus, “even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit” (Bible, Luke 1:15). The conception and birth narratives of Jesus Christ portray Mary, his mother, as a virgin chosen by God, according to the Archangel Gabriel, to be impregnated by the Holy Spirit – God active in the world (Luke 1:26–38 and Matthew 1:18–21). This story in Christian scripture is known as the Annunciation of Gabriel to Mary. From these beginnings we see Jesus the man as the physical son of Mary and the Divine Son of God, the Son aspect of the Trinity. Theologically, we begin to understand God as the Father of Jesus, and active in the material world as the Holy Spirit. We see Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in relationship to each other, which forms the Trinity. We begin to understand God further as having simultaneous presence in each aspect, being triune – three in one. We observe that God is more than each aspect, and # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015 D.A. Leeming (ed.), Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-27771-9_9172-1 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 2 Holy Spirit Holy Spirit, Fig. 1 Dove renderings denote characteristics attributed to the Holy Spirit: Wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge, godliness, Holy fear (Photo courtesy of Washington National Cathedral) 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 is present in the relationships between the aspects. With these understandings of God helped by the knowledge of the Trinity, we come to realize not only that God is multifaceted while being One but must also be greater in essence than the Trinity because each aspect and each relationship described within the Trinity is partial and not whole. In the Trinity, God understood as Father is known only in relationship to Jesus the Christ. God understood as Son is known only as Spirit incarnate in humankind in the example of Jesus. God understood as the Holy Spirit is known only as dynamic Spirit moving on Earth. In order to be Father, God must be the sum of what is not yet created and what is created, eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent, all, and must be creator. In order to be Son in body and spirit, God must be both essence and manifestation, manifestor, and manifested. In order to be the Holy Spirit at work in the world dynamically, God must be Spirit itself in the world and outside of space and time. God must also be the agent who determines the agency of the Holy Spirit in the manifested world. The doctrine of the Trinity has been debated about and struggled with since it became a formal doctrine. It provides a vehicle or a model to try to understand who God is, how God functions, and how God relates to humanity and through the person of Jesus Christ. We can see the dynamics of the Trinity at work when St. Peter speaks to the crowd, saying, “This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at [or by] the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you both see and hear” (Acts 2:32–33). The elements and relationships of the Trinity are scriptural, as in these passages when Jesus speaks to his disciples. “I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate [or Helper], the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you” (John 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 Holy Spirit 3 Holy Spirit, Fig. 2 Kneeler depicting descending dove (Photo courtesy of Washington National Cathedral) 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 Au2 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 14:25–26). “If you loved me you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). “I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world will know that I love the Father” (John 14:31). “When the Advocate [or Helper] comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf” (John 15:26). “I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate [or Helper] will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7) “. . .When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). The explicit, constructed Trinitarian model is doctrinal. The Holy Spirit is traditionally represented as a dove descending from God in heaven to Earth (See Fig. 1). This comes from the story of the baptism of Jesus by John, identified as John the Baptist. He said to those coming for baptism before Jesus came, “I baptize you with (or in) water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with [or in] the Holy Spirit and fire” (Matthew 3:11). “And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him (See Fig. 2). And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved [or my beloved Son), with whom I am well pleased’” (Matthew 3:16–17) (See Fig. 3). The Psychology of Holy Spirit St. Paul in his first letter to the church at Corinth says, “Anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him (I Corinthians 6:17). . .Do you not know that your body is a temple [or sanctuary] of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body” (6:19–20). Paul speaks first of spiritual union with “the Lord,” making the listener aware of his/her new level of existence in spiritual union. It is a new identity, new sense of self, new selfawareness and self-understanding, and a new way of being. Italian psychoanalyst Robert Assagioli calls this transformation into new spiritual selfawareness, psychosynthesis (1965). Paul concludes his second letter to Corinth with relational dynamics of the elements of the Trinity and of the Trinitarian elements to the faithful followers, because of their new self-understanding. “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of [or and the sharing in] the Holy Spirit be with all of you” (II Corinthians 13:13). Lionel Corbett, in his article Depth Psychology and Spirituality in this volume, says, “For many depth psychologists with a spiritual orientation, psychology and spirituality are two perspectives on an identical reality, because the divine manifests itself by means of the psyche.” Dourley (1981) has pointed out that the psyche is 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 4 Holy Spirit Holy Spirit, Fig. 3 Holy Spirit Chapel of Washington National Cathedral, Washington, DC (Photo courtesy of the Cathedral) 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 sacramental, since it is a medium of connection to the sacred and it has its own transpersonal dimensions which reveal the sacred or the holy. The depth psychological approach to spirituality appeals to direct, personal experience of this level of reality, and eschews reliance on doctrine, dogma, religious tradition, or religious authority. This helps us to see how the psyche can experience the Holy Spirit as it “manifests itself by means of the psyche” or in the sacrament of baptism. The experience happens in the “transpersonal dimensions” of the psyche and manifests as “direct, personal experience.” This experience is in addition to traditional knowledge and doctrinal understanding. The nature of the Holy Spirit is such that it can be known on any of the levels on which the psyche can experience and/or know it. In the psychology of religion, we examine the relationship between the psyche of the person and the institution and effects of religion on the person and personal psyche. The Holy Spirit can be understood psychologically as a name in the Christian religious tradition for dynamic spiritual 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 Holy Spirit 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 input into the personal and collective psyche. Stein (1998, pp. 220–221) describes it this way. The human psyche and our personal psychology participate in the order of this universe most profoundly through the psychoid level of the unconscious. Through the process of psychization, patterns of order in the universe become available to consciousness and eventually can be understood and integrated. Each person can witness the Creator and creative works from within, so to speak, by paying attention to image and synchronicity. For the archetype is not only the pattern of the psyche, but it also reflects the actual basic structure of the universe. “As above, so below,” spake the ancient sages. “As within, so without,” responds the modern soul explorer, Carl Gustav Jung. Jung wrote an extensive treatise on the Trinity, called A Psychological Approach to the Trinity (1958). His overview describes the Trinity in terms of psychology, consciousness, and experience in the person. The history of the Trinity presents itself as the gradual crystallization of an archetype that moulds the anthropomorphic conceptions of father and son, of life, and of different persons into an archetypal and numinous figure, the “Most Holy Three-inOne.” The contemporary witnesses of these events apprehended it as something that modern psychology would call a psychic presence outside consciousness. . .a collective presence. . . “Holiness” means that an idea or thing possesses the highest value, and that in the presence of this value men are, so to speak, struck dumb. Holiness is also revelatory: it is the illuminative power emanating from an archetypal figure. Nobody ever feels himself as the subject of such a process, but always as its object. He does not perceive holiness, it takes him captive and overwhelms him; nor does he behold it in a revelation, it reveals itself to him; and he cannot even boast that he has understood it properly. Everything happens apparently outside the sphere of his will, and these happenings are contents of the unconscious. Science is unable to say anything more than this, for it cannot, by an act of faith, overstep the limits appropriate to its nature (1958, pp. 47–48). Ramsey has an afterthought that puts our topic in context. “Goodness has God as its author. . .Yet, for the world’s salvation, it is the 5 work of the Holy Spirit not only to produce goodness in human lives but to lead human lives to acknowledge God as the author of goodness and to glorify Christ” (1977, p. 125). See Also ▶ Analytical Psychology ▶ Archetype ▶ Baptism ▶ Christ ▶ Christian Mysticism ▶ Collective Unconscious ▶ Depth Psychology and Spirituality ▶ Mysticism and Psychoanalysis ▶ Mysticism and Psychotherapy ▶ New Testament ▶ Psychoanalytic Spirituality ▶ Psychospiritual ▶ Religious Experience ▶ Trinity Bibliography Assagioli, R. (1965). Psychosynthesis (p. 1976). New York: Penguin. Bible, new Oxford annotated, new revised standard version with the Apocrypha (3rd ed.) (2001). New York: Oxford University Press. Corbett, L. (2013). Depth psychology and spirituality. In Encyclopedia of psychology and religion (2nd ed.). http://www.springerreference.com/docs/html/chapterd bid/70323.html Dourley, J. (1981). The psyche as sacrament: A comparative study of C. G. Jung and Paul Tillich. Toronto: Inner City Books. Jung, C. G. (1958). A psychological approach to the trinity. In Psychology and western religion (trans: Hull, R. F. C.). Princeton University Press. 1984. Ramsey, M. (1977). Holy spirit: A biblical study, foreword by James E. Griffiss. Boston: Cowley Publications. 1992. Stein, M. (1998). Jung’s map of the soul: An introduction. Chicago: Open Court Publishing. 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 Author Queries Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion Chapter No: 9172-1 ___________________________________________________________________ Query Refs. Details Required AU1 Please confirm if the chapter title and the author names are correct. AU2 Please check if the insertion of quotes at the end of sentence “I will send him to you” and beginning of sentence “. . .When the spirit” is okay Author’s response Note: If you are using material from other works please make sure that you have obtained the necessary permission from the copyright holders and that references to the original publications are included.