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    Giver of Life: The Holy Spirit in Orthodox Tradition
    Giver of Life: The Holy Spirit in Orthodox Tradition
    Giver of Life: The Holy Spirit in Orthodox Tradition
    Ebook135 pages2 hours

    Giver of Life: The Holy Spirit in Orthodox Tradition

    By Fr. John W. Oliver

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    About this ebook

    Presents the Orthodox perspective on who the Holy Spirit is, where the mystery of God comes alive.

    Delving deep and subtly into Orthodox tradition and theology, The Giver of Life articulates the identity of the Holy Spirit as the third Person of the Trinity as well as the role of the Holy Spirit in the salvation of the world. Written with a poetic sensibility, Fr. Oliver begins with Pentecost, an event uniquely celebrated in Orthodoxy as a time when greenery of all kinds is brought into churches. "The splash of green foliage calls to mind not just life, but a special kind of life. It is the life that transcends biological existence and flows from the very Godhead Itself; it is life that's a state of being—immortal, everlasting, changeless. Ferns and flowers fade and die, but souls filled with this ‘life from above' flourish forever."

    Reflecting on the relationship of the Holy Spirit to the Church, to the world, and to the human person, Giver of Life looks to the impressive biblical and liturgical tradition of Orthodox Christianity. This is a book weighty in content but accessible in tone, not an academic study of the mind, but a lived experience of the heart.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherParaclete Press
    Release dateJan 1, 2011
    ISBN9781557259134
    Giver of Life: The Holy Spirit in Orthodox Tradition
    Author

    Fr. John W. Oliver

    Father John W. Oliver is the priest of St. Elizabeth Orthodox Christian Church in Murfreesboro, TN. A graduate of St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, he later joined their faculty as instructor in Old and New Testament and American Religious History. He lives in TN with his wife, Lara, and their four children.

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      Book preview

      Giver of Life - Fr. John W. Oliver

      1

      O Heavenly King

      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.

      •

      FLOWERS, like those with which the Orthodox adorn our churches during Pentecost, open gradually. So too does Holy Scripture, revealing its inner treasures over time. Orthodoxy is an emphatically Trinitarian faith, but the book of Genesis does not open with an explicit and detailed explanation of Holy Trinity or three Persons or Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Yet Orthodox Christians believe that the aroma of the Trinity rises from the first page.

      Let Us make man in Our image (Gen. 1:26). Who, exactly, is Us? Then the Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of Us (Gen. 3:22). Like Whom? Come, let Us go down there and confuse their language (Gen. 11:7). Who is coming down? These references to God are uttered by God Himself. Is He referring, perhaps, to Himself and the angels? But why would humanity be made in the image of both God and the angels? Or is He referring to some plurality within Himself? But if, as Moses wrote, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord (Deut. 6:4), how can there be plurality in one?

      So pages are turned and petals are opened: while early Genesis suggests some kind of plurality, later Genesis hints toward three. The Orthodox perceive God’s appearance to Abraham in the form of three mysterious visitors as rich with Trinitarian significance. A famous icon often used in churches during the season of Pentecost—by the Russian iconographer Andrei Rublev and called The Hospitality of Abraham—shows three angelic figures seated at table, two looking toward one, and is often adorned with boughs that represent the ancient oak of Mamre beneath which the encounter occurred (Gen. 18).

      When Orthodox Christians reach the end of the Old Testament and turn around to survey the landscape covered, we see perhaps the most powerful foreshadowing of the Holy Trinity: the presence, everywhere, of God who gives His Word and shares His Spirit.⁷ Yahweh is in the midst of His people not as a concept or an idea but as Word that is also an act and as Spirit that is also a presence.

      Entering the New Testament, the three come into sharper relief. When He had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him. And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’ (Matt. 3:16–17). At the baptism of Christ, the three have now been identified—God, a Son, and a Spirit.

      Later, Jesus commands the disciples to go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19). Name here is singular—a vital detail. In this call to evangelize known as the great commission, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are identified individually yet are united in some way.

      More pages, more petals. In the last book of the four Gospels—the Gospel according to the apostle John, the last in order and the last written—Jesus reveals greater detail and distinction about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—the Spirit of truth (John 14:16–17). The New Testament Greek word for Helper is parakletos, or Paraclete, also translated as Comforter and found in the prayer to the Holy Spirit serving as our

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