A Brief History of the Doctrine of the Work of the Holy Spirit

From Glory to Glory

Many individuals can be shocked to find that the work of the Holy Spirit was not developed as a doctrine till after the Protestant Reformation. In fact, Jesus taught his disciples about it, the letters of the apostles had been stuffed with it, and if Pentecost means something, the church couldn’t have existed with out it. Individuals skilled the Spirit of their hearts, however after they talked about theology it was often about one thing else—might the God of the Outdated Testomony be equated with the Father of Jesus Christ? Was the Creator God additionally the Redeemer? How can Jesus Christ be divine when there is just one God who’s transcendent and utterly totally different from something he has made? These had been the questions that had been debated, and it was solely late within the day that spotlight turned to the work of the third individual of the Trinity as distinct from that of the opposite two.

A key distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit is that the Spirit got here into the world however with out changing into incarnate. He was poured out on the church at Pentecost, however he had an elusive high quality that was not true of the Son. As Jesus mentioned, “The wind blows the place it needs, and also you hear its sound, however you have no idea the place it comes from or the place it goes. So it’s with everybody who’s born of the Spirit.”¹ The one manner anybody might know the Holy Spirit was by his work, however within the early church that data was used primarily to show that he was a divine individual. We are able to see this within the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, the place he’s described as “the giver of life.” On the floor, it is a description of his work, however that’s not what the creed is making an attempt to say. Its emphasis is on the equality of the Spirit with the Father and the Son, of whom Jesus mentioned, “Because the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son additionally to have life in himself.”² In different phrases, to admit that the Holy Spirit is a “giver of life” is to admit that he is the same as the opposite individuals of the Godhead; it isn’t meant to elucidate his work as one thing distinct from theirs.

This isn’t to say that the work of the Spirit was ignored, nevertheless it was mentioned in different methods. Non secular expertise was at all times on the coronary heart of the church’s life, however for a lot of centuries it tended to be considered one thing extraordinary that was loved by an elite minority of its members. Within the early days these had been the martyrs, whose sacrifice gave them an air of holiness that atypical mortals didn’t possess. In a while, this aura was transferred to monks and hermits, whose day by day self-sacrifice was meant to deliver them nearer to God and gave them the fame of being extra religious than others. Even throughout the monastic custom there have been grades of sanctity, relying on the severity of the self-discipline to which the monks subjected themselves, and periodic renewals of the non secular life invariably aimed for larger strictness in mortifying the flesh.

Quest for Holiness

As time went on, asceticism mixed with mystical expertise to present an added dimension to the hunt for holiness, and it was on this sphere, greater than in another, that ladies had been to make a historic contribution to the event of Christian theology. The fathers of the early church had been all males, although there have been some notable feminine martyrs. However within the Center Ages ladies like Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179), Girl Julian of Norwich (1342?–1416?), and Margery Kempe (1373?–1438) left a corpus of devotional writing that’s universally acknowledged as foundational to the Western mystical custom. Solely towards the top of the medieval interval was there an try to translate the beliefs of the monastic life into the humdrum world of on a regular basis existence, and this started, because it most likely needed to, as the event of a brand new type of monastery. Gilbert of Sempringham (1083?–1190) had led the best way with the institution of joint female and male non secular homes, nevertheless it was left to Gerhard Groote (1340–1384) to develop the household convent, the place full communities strove to apply the religious rules thitherto reserved for the cloistered life. Groote’s mission each mirrored and inspired a thirst amongst atypical laypeople for a deeper expertise of God, and this contributed in no small measure to the success of the Reformation 150 years after his time.³

The work of the Holy Spirit can’t be understood except his divine personhood is acknowledged.

It was the Reformation that offered the impetus for the event of a spirituality for the atypical believer. Practices like day by day prayer and Bible studying, that had at all times been considered monastic actions, now turned the inspiration of the Christian life for everybody. The idea of a vocation, which had beforehand been understood to imply a name to the priesthood or to the monastic life, was now prolonged to cowl each type of human exercise. Women and men had a calling to serve God wherever they had been positioned and in no matter occupation or exercise by which they had been engaged. The nice divide between clergy and laity, between the non secular and the secular, was damaged down, partly by dismantling the options that had set the previous aside (notably by the abolition of obligatory celibacy) however largely by elevating the dignity of occupations that had beforehand been considered profane and second-rate. Within the Protestant kingdom of God, a carpenter or a gardener was simply as holy as a priest or a monk, and extra so if he was extra trustworthy within the train of his calling than they had been.

From there it was a brief step to the view that solely a Spirit-filled individual might accomplish the desire of God on the earth, and that those that weren’t so blessed had been probably not Christians in any respect. The results of that educating had been, and nonetheless are, revolutionary. For the primary time, massive numbers of individuals got here to consider that tutorial achievement and ecclesiastical promotion meant nothing if the individual so honored was not stuffed with the Holy Spirit—and it was apparent that many members of the church institution weren’t. A poor and comparatively uneducated man like John Bunyan (1628–1688) was a religious large in contrast with the bishops who persecuted him, and the final recognition of this fact has left an indelible mark on the spirituality of the church ever since. The evangelical revival of the eighteenth century was the incarnation of that angle, and in some ways it stays a counterculture to the institutional church(es) whose leaders understandably really feel threatened by a motion that they can not management and that tends to not settle for their claims to authority. John Wesley (1703–1791) might have been one of many first to interrupt the mould of church authorities by ignoring hostile bishops and ordaining his personal males to the ministry, however he was actually not the final, and the notion of what Christian service is has modified in consequence. “Traditionalists” might remorse this and react towards it, as John Henry Newman (1801–1890) did, however they can not put the clock again, and (as Newman found when he turned a Roman Catholic) they’re in actuality as a lot the product of this transformation as these whom they oppose.

At this time the doctrine of the Holy Spirit’s private divinity is seldom given a lot consideration. Books about him are likely to gloss over who he’s and focus nearly fully on what he does. It is a pity, as a result of the work of the Holy Spirit can’t be understood except his divine personhood is acknowledged. If he weren’t a divine individual, his work can be akin to that of an angel, simply because the work of the Son can be like that of a prophet. That will not make it unimportant, however it might be totally different and our relationship with God wouldn’t be what it’s.

This text is customized from God Has Spoken: A History of Christian Theology by Gerald Bray.

Associated Articles