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The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son

John 7.37-39 (NRSVA)
One of the more obscure arguments in Christian history concerns a phrase in the Nicene Creed, ‘We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.’ Those words in italics constitute just one single word in Latin, ‘Filioque’. But from them sprang the ‘Filioque Controversy’. 
Roman Catholics, and subsequently Protestants too, believe that the Holy Spirit flows from Jesus as well as from God and draw their conviction about this from verses like verse 39: ‘Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.’ Other Christians maintain that this is incorrect. The Spirit comes from God alone and isn’t subservient to Jesus in any way, which presumably explains why some ancient texts read, ‘for as yet the Spirit had not been given’.
Jesus’ proclamation, paraphrasing Isaiah 55.1, that anyone who is thirsty may come to him to drink living water, comes on the last day of the Jewish Feast Of Tabernacles, when a jug of water from the Pool of Siloam was carried in solemn procession up to the altar in the Temple and poured out as a libation to God. During the Temple ceremony the congregation chanted words from Isaiah 12.3 ‘With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.’
The Scripture to which John refers in verse 38 is unclear, unless he is referring back to Isaiah 55.1. The closest alternative is a passage from the Old Testament Apocrypha, Sirach 24.30-1, where God’s Wisdom is compared to ‘a canal from a river, like a water channel into a garden. I said, “I will water my garden and drench my flowerbeds.”’ 
Because the living water flows ‘out of the believer’s belly’ in Greek, not the ‘heart’ as in English, there may be an allusion to the water which flowed from Jesus’ side on the Cross. And this leads on to the real meaning of what John has to say about the Spirit. Some people think the outpouring of the water on the Temple altar was a symbol of the outpouring of God’s Spirit on Israel. But for John, the Spirit can only become ‘a spring of water welling up to eternal life’ (John 4.14) when believers have put their trust in the crucified, risen and glorified Jesus.

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