The spirit of prophecy and the spirit of knowledge (gnosis) are not subject to the will of the prophet and the enlightened one; revelation of the Spirit in the prophetic Word or in the Word of knowledge that becomes Holy Scripture, which as “divinely breathed” “cannot be broken” and lays claim to a lasting validity for the church.

The Spirit, is also expressed in the various officeholders of the church, likewise it is the foundation of the authority of ecclesiastical offices. The laying on of hands, as a sign of the transference of the Holy Spirit from one person to another, is a characteristic ritual that visibly represents and guarantees the continuity of the working of the Spirit in the officeholders chosen by the Apostles. It becomes the sacramental sign of the succession of the full power of spiritual authority of bishops and priests. The Holy Spirit also creates the sacraments and guarantees the constancy of their action in the church. All the expressions of church life—doctrine, office, polity, sacraments, power to loosen and to bind, and prayer—are understood as endowed by the Spirit.

The same Holy Spirit, however, also comes forth as the revolutionizing, freshly creating principle in church history. All the decisive reformational movements in church history, which broke with old institutions, have appealed to the authority of the Holy Spirit. This is probably the main reason that in the history of church dogma the article of the Holy Spirit has been developed only hesitantly and incompletely in comparison with the Christological article. A characteristic view of the Holy Spirit is sketched out in the Gospel According to John: the outpouring of the Holy Spirit takes place only after the Ascension of Christ. It is the beginning of a new time of salvation, in which the Holy Spirit is sent as the Paraclete (Counselor) to the church that remains behind in this world. The ecstatic phenomena, which are prominent in the church at Pentecost, are understood as fulfillment of this promise. With this event (Pentecost) the church entered into the period of the Holy Spirit. After a process of institutionalization in the church, opposition against it—through appeal to the Holy Spirit—became noticeable for the first time in Montanism, in the mid-2nd century. Montanus, a Phrygian prophet and charismatic leader, understood himself and the prophetic movement sustained by him as the fulfillment of the promise of the coming of the Paraclete.

. The charismatic continuation of the Revelation, in the form of new scriptures of revelation, was also checked. In the long historical process during which the Christian biblical canon took shape, Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria, in his 39th Easter letter (367), self-selected a number of writings—of apostolic origin—that he considered “canonical.” Revelation in the form of Holy Scriptures binding for the Christian faith was thereby considered definitively concluded. The canon, henceforth fixed, can no longer be changed, abridged, or supplemented.

The part about the Holy Spirit in the church creeds reflects little of these struggles. It suppresses the revolutionary principle of the Holy Spirit. Neither the so-called Apostles' Creed nor the Nicene Creed goes beyond establishment of faith in the Holy Spirit and its participation in the incarnation. In the Nicene Creed it is further emphasized that the Holy Spirit is the life-creating power—i.e., the power both of creation and of rebirth—and that the Spirit has already spoken in the prophets.

The emergence of Trinitarian speculations in early church theology led to great difficulties in the article about the “person” of the Holy Spirit. In the New Testament the Holy Spirit tended to be present more as power than as person, though there was distinctive personal representation in the form of the dove at Jesus' baptism. But it was difficult to incorporate this graphic or symbolic representation into dogmatic theology. Nevertheless, Athanasius by his selective ideas completed merger of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son was achieved. According to Athanasius, the Holy Spirit alone guarantees the complete redemption of humanity: “through participation in the Holy Spirit we partake of the divine nature.”

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