I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life ....
As Gabriel told the blessed virgin Mary, the "Holy Spirit shall come upon you" and she would conceive the Son of God in her womb.
I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver-of-Jesus ....
(Seems to me to fit with the High Priestly Prayer and Augustana V.)
I don't mean this to be contradictory at all to what you're saying, in fact I think it fits quite nicely... But at seminary, we went over how in the very early church, one of their favorite names for the church was Zoe - life. Prof. Bushur said he couldn't be certain, but he wondered if John didn't have that in the back of his mind, too, when writing his Gospel.
ReplyDelete"In Him was the Church, and the Church was the light of men."
Also, "I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver-of-Church" kind of fits better with what Luther said the Church was than our Roman or Orthodox brethren. They find the Church in human constructs. Luther found the Church in the life giving Spirit of the Word of the Father. Where the Word (incarnate) is preached, there the Spirit is, creating the Church, which is the Body of Christ.
I find it fascinating how all of these things fit together as "one thing." Makes you think that maybe Paul was onto something in Ephesians...
I wonder if somebody might've said once, somewhere, something about the Church being the body of Christ...
ReplyDelete;-)