Reformed Wrestling with the Spirit: Navigating Nicaea 325 and Beyond

Eastern and western theologies went different ways in their conception of the Spirit. Sarah Coakley investigates how Nicaea’s council led to a position of the Spirit as ‘third.’ With this position of the Spirit Reformed theology has been wrestling ever since. Coakley points to a diversity of lived traditions in which the Spirit came first, most of them were contemplative traditions based on Rom. 8 where the Spirit is praying and groaning with the world. In discussion with Reformed theology, it turns out that there is a dichotomy in thinking about the Spirit. For instance, Calvin has an expansive idea of the Spirit as God who is present in all things and at the same time a restricted idea in which Spirit is strictly linked to word and sacrament. The Spirit is thought of as both unbounded and limited, for instance, to intellectual understanding which led to a dominance of mind over body. Most of it emerged from a federal theology in which the Father and the Son take prominent places in the inner covenant, with the Spirit coming third as the one who applies. Coakley pleads for a prayer-based and Spirit-led trinitarianism based on the tradition of Rom. 8 that was sidelined in Nicaea. For this she finds Schleiermacher on her side who rehabilitated church fathers like Sabellius. In their view there is a radical equality between Father, Son and Spirit, which are all particular circumscriptions of the divine being. Ways of thinking about a radical reciprocity are opened opposed to a patriarchal view in which the father as Godhead comes first. Thinking Nicaea trough with Schleiermacher and Coakley prevents us from falling back behind views of patriarchal hierarchy, that generate and legitimize other hierarchies as well.