The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed is the capstone of the doctrinal development of the Ancient Church as it relates to the Trinity. From a creedal standpoint what is unique about this text is the elaboration of the article about the Holy Spirit, which confesses the full deity of the Spirit by focusing on who he is—he is “Lord” and the One who proceeds from the Father—and what he does—he is “the Giver of life,” physical and especially spiritual, and the inspirer of those who wrote the Holy Scriptures. He is thus worthy of our heart’s adoration and worship along with the Father and the Son. And as such he must be fully God. The roots that gave rise to this confession are fully biblical ones, found first in passages that implicitly affirm him as God for he does what only God can do (e.g. Luke 1:35; Acts 10:38; Matthew 12:28; Hebrews 9:14; Romans 8:10–11; 1 Corinthians 12:3; 2:10–12; 2 Corinthians 3:6, 17–18) and then in Scripture texts that rank him alongside the Father and the Son, so again implying his deity (Titus 3:4–7; 1 Corinthians 12:4–6; 2 Corinthians 13:14; Revelation 1:4–5; Matthew 28:19). The later expansion of this article of the Creed in the early Middle Ages by Latin-speaking theologians and churchmen, namely the assertion that proceeds “from the Father and the Son”—what is called the “Filioque”—is a biblically motivated assertion for it seeks to affirm the central truth of the New Testament that the Holy Spirit is always the Spirit of Christ (see Romans 8:9; 2 Corinthians 3:17).

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