(This short article was written for a memorial volume in honour of the late Professor Ferenc Szűcs (1942–2020) for his 70th birthday. Unfortunately, it has never been published in print. The celebrant received a copy of the volume in which his disciples explained the articles of the Apostles› Creed.)
Our question has a lot of question marks because, although our Christian churches are unanimous on the third article, the practical implications are far from clear. At the same time, the Holy Spirit as power and authority is also the possibility through which we can, in the recognition of the finite loneliness of our human lives, come to know who we really are as human beings and as members of the Christian Church. In this way, then, the third article has epistemological and anthropological implications.
From an epistemological point of view, faith in the Holy Spirit is a prerequisite for recta cognitio. Calvin knew this well, and it was clearly seen—and seen clearly—by the authors of the Heidelberg Catechism. According to the Institutio, true knowledge is «the knowledge of God and of ourselves.» The Protestant theologian, educated in the theology of revelation, can be quite satisfied with the first half of the sentence, but the small confusing factor remains: it is the Holy Spirit who unlocks the mystery of revelation before us and makes us willing to live a life pleasing to God.
We can and may know God, even if this question immediately projects the image of a God who is hidden and revealed. The second half of the sentence, however, warns of a much more serious lack, and with it, the need for the work of God the Holy Spirit. For the knowledge of ourselves is only a seemingly simple task, and although the words of the great philosophers of antiquity have been taken seriously by all men of all ages, it is the task before which we must experience the failure of our human potential, in the most fundamental area of our human existence.
Sartre defined cognition as nothing less than making oneself other. However, the classic 20th-century definition continues with the statement, already known by Kant, that the self that cognizes and reflects cannot make itself other. The realization of this leads man to a present-being in flight, in which no other perspective emerges. The freedom to think differently, which the Holy Spirit protects against all ideologies, cannot be recognized by the human being in his loss of the Spirit, closed in on himself.
This loss of the Spirit leads to murderous distortions, to the emergence of destructive powers and forces, the only seemingly acceptable solution to which is to recognize and declare the absurdity of existence—which, in Nietzsche’s case, meant madness. Our human existence, trapped in the self-constructed shackles of categories, cannot, because it cannot, transcend the shadows of its own existence, and the freedom given by the Spirit does not appear as a real alternative.
Epistemologically, the consequence of faith in the Holy Spirit is a different vision in which the reality of freedom and a different approach is revealed and effectively builds up a different vision and understanding of the world. The man who is a prisoner of finite but seemingly infinite ideologies has no choice but to pray, in the words of the great hymn poets of the Middle Ages, «Veni creator Spiritus!»
The consequence of the creative work of the Holy Spirit is, or at least should be, also evident in the field of anthropology. Indeed, faith in the Holy Spirit answers the question, «Who am I?» with irrefutable clarity. Faith in the Holy Spirit prevents us from self-deception since it makes effective in our lives what Calvin calls the mirror of the Law. As a result, the Holy Spirit saves us from the burden of a self-deceptive, self-centered life—what Paul condemns in the New Testament as the sin of κενόδοξια.
The person who has come to right self-knowledge, precisely by recognizing that his own life can be a burden, seeks a welcoming, accepting, and communicative medium for others. This is the purpose of the solidarity community of the Church, traditionally seen as the work of the Holy Spirit. The epistemological and anthropological categories are thus complemented by individual and socio-ethical components.
For the person called to and living in communion, the Spirit is the key to the realization of the orientation of his life toward God. Thus, through the work of the Holy Spirit, man can become a being of possibility, whose only but indispensable sigh and prayer is, «Come, Lord God, come Holy Spirit!»
