Theological glossary · FaithLogic

Pneumatomachianism (the 'Spirit-fighters')

The 4th-century teaching that accepted the deity of the Son but denied it of the Holy Spirit, treating him as a creature or a ministering spirit.

Greek pneuma ('Spirit') + machomai ('to fight') — 'Spirit-fighters'. Also called Macedonians, after Macedonius of Constantinople (the link is historically uncertain), and the Tropici (in Egypt).

The Pneumatomachi argued from Amos 4:13 LXX ('the one who … creates the spirit/wind'), 1 Timothy 5:21 (the Spirit not listed), and the absence of an explicit 'the Spirit is God' sentence.

Answered by Athanasius (Letters to Serapion, c. 359), Basil (On the Holy Spirit, 375), and Gregory of Nazianzus (Oration 31, 380); condemned by name at the Council of Constantinople (381), whose creed confesses the Spirit as 'the Lord and Giver of life … together worshipped and glorified'.

Rejected because the Trinity cannot be 'made up of Creator and creature' (Athanasius), because we are baptised into the Spirit's name and worship in him (Basil), and because the Spirit does divine works and is spoken of as God (Acts 5:3–4).

A dead position in the historic churches; the 'active force' view of Jehovah's Witnesses is a modern parallel but goes further, denying personhood.

Open in the glossary for related terms and the doctrines this concept appears in.