Playing Telephone with the Holy Spirit

“Pieces of a whole cannot escape sharing the nature of the whole…”

Basil The Great, one of the “Church Fathers” we are reading from, wrote the above quotation in describing the Holy Spirit and how the Spirit fits into the Trinity. He was an important player in the church’s developing language around the Spirit, and reading his work gives us insight into the arguments the church has been having for centuries, many of which carry on to today.

How are Father, Son, and Spirit One? In Basil’s understanding, all three are of the same essence and live in relationship with one another and with God’s creation. In the same way a slice of pizza removed from the pie has all the same elements as the original pie, the Holy Spirit is of the Father and Son. The Spirit empowers us to reflect the image of God which has been imprinted on us.

In the process of discernment, Basil was highly concerned with the small grammatical variations in Scripture and the resulting doxology. He warned against intellectual laziness. Small details (such as prepositions) matter in our search for truth, as we should strive to be like God insofar as it is possible with human reasoning.

Our group considered the game of “Telephone,” and how overtime, passed from person to person, one message can change detail by detail and result in an entirely off- base version of the original by the time it reaches the end.

In order to play a game of “Telephone” in which the message remains in its truest form from beginning to end, Basil would argue human beings must be equipped with the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is what enables us to exercize an “unyielding, unchangable commitment to holiness.” Without the Spirit, we are missing a portion of the pizza pie, and the whole is not complete. Father, Son, and Spirit all add up to one.