Breath of Spirit

Challenged to explain what he means by the notion that the Father “breaths” the Spirit, Jenson writes: “in the Old Testament ruach often appears as the breath of life, and when it is the breath of God’s life it is a creating wind that blows creatures around like leaves in a hurricane. Thus when in the Book of Judges Israel’s history gets stuck, the Spirit falls upon some poor unfortunate and makes him or her the instrument of rescue; that is, God blows Israel into motion again. So far an economic specification of the Father’s breathing of the Spirit.”

And immanently? “God the Father is monarch or source not of a static divine being but of a divine life . God agitates God into being God; he breathes life into Godhead. And that agitation, that breath of life, is so perfectly the Father’s own agitation, that like the Son it is the same God as the Father.”