The Cure for Spiritual Suffocation

We’ve been studying early Christian practices prior to and around the time of the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325. One fascinating practice associated with baptism was insufflation—the act of breathing upon a baptismal candidate or upon the water he was about to be baptized in.

Why would Christians do such a thing?

In the New Testament, pneuma can mean breath, wind, spirit, or Spirit. So when the New Testament speaks of being “baptized in the Holy Pneuma,” there is imagery contained in the Greek that you may not see with our english word “spirit”

Think about it: baptizō means to immerse, and pneuma belongs to a family of words associated with breath and blowing.

They were baptized in the Holy Pneuma—immersed in the Divine Breath.

Look at Genesis 2:7…

“Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being”

And look at John 20:22…

“And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit”

Perhaps those early Christians were simply mimicking what they saw God do in creation and Jesus do with His disciples—breathing upon new believers as a symbolic representation of God's life-giving Holy Pneuma.

Maybe those early Christians understood—or at least could hear—something that we easily lose in translation because we don’t have an equivalent English word that carries all of those different meanings.

We read “Holy Spirit"

They heard Pneuma—Spirit. Wind. Breath.

Without physical breath you can’t live

Without the Breath of God… you never really experience true life.

Take a deep breath and thank God for giving us both kinds.