Why is the Holy Spirit called “the Giver of Life”?

St. Athanasius the Apostolic says, “He is called a life-giving Spirit. For it says: ‘He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you’ (Rom. 8:11). The Lord is the very life, and ‘author of life’ (Acts 3:15), as Peter put it. And as the Lord himself said: ‘The water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up into eternal life . . . But this he spoke concerning the Spirit which those who believed in him were to receive’ (John 4:14, 7:39). But the creatures, as has been said, are given life through him. He who does not partake of life, but who is himself partaken of, and gives life to the creatures, what kinship can he have with things originated? How can he belong to the creatures which in him are given life from the Word?”³³⁶

And St. Ambrose says, “So when the Spirit was moving upon the water, the creation was without grace; but after this world being created underwent the operation of the Spirit, it

334 St. Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit , trans., Stephen Hildebrand (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011)

9:22: p. 53.

335 St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 17.13–14 (NPNF II/7:127) amended.

336 St. Athanasius of Alexandria, The Letters of Saint Athanasius Concerning the Holy Spirit to Bishop Serapion , trans. C. R. B. Shapland (Epworth Press, 1951) Epistle 1.23: p. 123, amended.

gained all the beauty of that grace, wherewith the world is illuminated. And that the grace of the universe cannot abide without the Holy Spirit the prophet declared when he said: ‘You will take away Your Spirit, and they will fail and be turned again into their dust. Send forth Your Spirit, and they shall be made, and You will renew all the face of the earth’ (Ps. 104:29–30). Not only, then, did he teach that no creature can stand without the Holy Spirit, but also that the Spirit is the Creator of the whole creation … do we doubt that the Spirit of God is the Creator of all things? But why do I delay with matters not to the purpose? Let them accept a plain proof that there can be nothing which the Holy Spirit can be said not to have made; and that it cannot be doubted that all subsists through His operation, whether Angels, Archangels, Thrones, or Dominions.”³³⁷

The Tenth Article: “And in one holy, catholic (universal), and apostolic Church.”