Stephen Barkley
The story of how Jesus became recognized as God is well-told. From the New Testament documents through the councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon, pastors and theologians have hammered out how to understand Jesus’ two natures in increasing detail. The historical process by which the Spirit was recognized as God is less understood. Kyle R. Hughes’s How the Spirit became God tells this story with clarity.
Hughes uses the metaphor of a mosaic to structure his book to great effect. Each tile in the mosaic adds a necessary piece to the overall picture. The tiles are:
- The Spirit’s testimony of God
- The recognition that the Spirit in the Old Testament pointed to Christ
- Prosopological exegesis, that the Spirit speaks “theodramatically” (74)
- The Spirit’s revelation of the divine economy
- The fully divinity of the Spirit as taught in the context of the Pneumatomachian controversy.
It’s important to recognize that this process wasn’t merely academic. The experience of the Spirit was critical, providing glue for the tiles. Hughes writes:
we marvel at how the tiles [of the mosaic] have managed to adhere to the wall for so many centuries. This strong and lasting adhesive represents the experience of the Spirit, and therefore we can date the first mixing of this adhesive as far back as Pentecost. (34)
Through the experience of the Spirit and a series of logical steps, the Spirit was recognized as fully divine by the church by the time St. Basil the Great wrote On the Holy Spirit in AD 375.
How the Spirit became God is an detailed yet clear historical walk through the process by which the early church came to recognize the Spirit as fully God. This book is an excellent resource for theology students or pastors with a theological interest.
Hughes, Kyle R. How the Spirit became God: The Mosaic of Early Christian Pneumatology. Cascade Books, 2020.
