While belief in the Holy Spirit is affirmed as an article of faith within the Nicene Creed (325 CE), the person and work of the Holy Spirit awaited the more robust, Trinitarian definition provided by the Constantinopolitan Creed of 381 CE. As Jaroslav Pelikan opined: “At Nicea the doctrine of the Holy Spirit had been disposed of in lapidary brevity.” Since the immediate challenge to the church was Christological in nature, this is not surprising. However, the Holy Spirit’s person and role was already being discussed prior to Nicea. One example is Hippolytus of Rome’s Commentary on Daniel, the earliest known commentary on any book of the Bible by a Christian theologian, written in or around 202 CE and predating the Nicene Creed by a century. The proposed paper will demonstrate that Hippolytus stands as the first orthodox Biblical commentator to identify the Holy Spirit as the one who provides the connection between the mind of God as revealed in the written Scriptures and the mind of the believer who seeks to understand them.
Hippolytus is careful to distinguish between inspiration (4.1.2) and illumination (4.12.1), that is, between the production of the Scriptures and the comprehension of already existing Scripture. He vests authority in the already-written Scriptures, and finally resists all efforts to extend the possibility of additional inspiration beyond the apostolic era. This is seen in his response to the claims of Montanism.
Hippolytus is frequently cited on a range of subjects, most notably premillennialism, but little extended analysis accompanies the various claims. Other works attributed to Hippolytus are readily available but their authenticity is contested by contemporary theologians. W. Brian Shelton provides one such survey of the difficulties in his Martyrdom from Exegesis in Hippolytus: An Early Church Presbyter’s Commentary on Daniel (2008). T. C. Schmidt’s Hippolytus of Rome: Commentary on Daniel and ‘Chronicon’ (2017) offers another. Neither evaluate Hippolytus’ actual comments concerning the Holy Spirit in his Commentary on Daniel.
The primary resources to be considered in the proposed paper is Hippolytus’ Commentary on Daniel. The sources are two: the recent translation by T. C. Schmidt (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2017) and the older translation contained in The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325 (Reprint, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1986). While contemporary works of systematic theology are also considered, Hippolytus’ own comments provide the primary source for his position and this paper.