Classic Christianity: A Systematic Theology

2 THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT

THE SPIRIT IS AT WORK WHERE NEW LIFE in Christ is being drawn forth, he truth of the Son attested, and the community of faith enlivened.

God has chosen humanity to be the special object of divine grace, the unique vessel through which the divine glory is to be revealed. According to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, it is for us humans and our salvation that God came. The salvation event occurred “for us men” [i.e., propter nos homines, for humanity, anthrōpous] (Creed of 150 Fathers; Cyril of Alexandria, Letters 55).

What moved God to act on behalf of the salvation of humanity? God’s own good pleasure (Eph. 1:5, 9; Phil. 2:13) in saving sinners by grace. God was not bound to save some or all by a higher will imposed by some external necessity. Saving grace springs from God’s freedom to love. Peace on earth is offered to those “on whom his favor rests” (Luke 2:14). The work of grace is a central feature of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Marius Victorinus, Epis. to Eph. 1.1.8).

The Spirit’s Preparatory Work

The Christian teaching of salvation deals first with the general features of the Spirit’s administration of redemptive grace, followed by the specific teachings of call, repentance, justification by grace through faith, regeneration, adoption, sanctification, and union with Christ.

The Economy of Redemption

The economy of the Holy Spirit in the administration of the work of redemption begins even before the incarnation. Administration is what the Spirit does to prepare for and make effective the benefits of Christ. “Surely you have heard about the administration [oikonomian, stewardship, dispensation] of God’s grace that was given to me for you” (Eph. 3:2; Chrysostom, Hom. on Eph. 6.3.2).

Both economy and administration may seem like modern terms. We may be surprised to discover that they have gone through almost two thousand years of liturgical usage before entering modern times. They refer to a central aspect of the classic Christian teaching of the Holy Spirit. Tertullian wrote: “What then, is the Paraclete’s administrative office but this: the direction of discipline, the revelation of the Scriptures, the re-formation of the intellect…. First comes the grain, and from the grain arises the shoot, and from the shoot struggles out the shrub: thereafter boughs and leaves gather strength, and the whole that we call a tree expands: then follows the swelling of the germen, and from the germen bursts the flower, and from the flower the fruit opens: that fruit itself, rude for a while, and unshapely, little by little, keeping the straight course of its development, is trained to the mellowness of its flavor” (Tertullian, On the Veiling of Virgins).

The scriptures reveal an economy of redemption—the overall ordering of God’s saving activity toward humanity. Through this broad-ranging design, God has “made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect [oikonomian] when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head” (Eph. 1:9, 10).

It is crucial to grasp what such an economy requires, and in what sense God eternally grasps and foreknows the entire plan, yet by foreknowing does not unilaterally decree the plan so as to make human responsiveness irrelevant (Eph. 1:3–23). Only God knows how it can be that the plan is characterized by contingency, yet finally certain in its outcome, while specific outworkings remain obscure to finite human knowing (Augustine, CG 5.9–1; Nicetas of Remesiana, Power of the Holy Spirit, FC 7:32).

This economy or plan of salvation requires an envisioned end or purpose for history, appropriate means fitting to that end, and the effective application of these means to accomplish this purpose. To make all these work together is to economize them, or administer them as an ordered arrangement, an oikonomia, a vision of the whole and how each part works within it to order and provide for the divine-human covenant relation from beginning to end (Col. 1:25; Tertullian, Ag. Praxeas 2). “Before the law, before the very constituting of the world, God had formed this economy for the whole universe” (Chrysostom, Interp. of Col. 1:26)

The Spirit’s Economy Makes Salvation Ultimately Sure Through Grace

In this economy God the Spirit did not merely render salvation hypothetically possible while leaving the outcome entirely dependent upon whether other finite wills might or might not respond to grace. The salvation of which the Bible speaks is by faith known to be ultimately secured and made certain by God’s own determination, even though at present it is still penultimately being worked out.

There is little ambiguity in the ultimate promise: “I give them eternal life and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:27–28; Theodore of Mopsuestia, Comm. on John 4.10.28–29), though many hazards remain yet ahead before the full accomplishment of God’s saving purpose on the last day. On the rock of Peter’s confession (“You are the Christ”) the community of faith is being built so securely that “the gates of hell cannot prevail” against it (Matt. 16:18). Although essentially accomplished already in Jesus Christ, its historical outworking is still in process. Meanwhile the faithful are assured by the Spirit that what has begun in Jesus Christ will be consummated in future history in a fitting way.

To speak of the saving work of the Spirit, it is necessary first to speak of the eternal purpose of God as that purpose has become manifested through finite and contingent historic events. The eternally envisioned divine purpose has gradually unfolded through a series of historical developments or economies or providences, which from the postresurrection viewpoint may be seen as times of preparation. Through providence, God coordinates the divine purposes with human freedom so as to govern fallen aspects of history without coercing the liberty of creatures (Cyril of Alex., Comm. on Luke, Hom. 90).

The Redemptive Purpose Pervades the Economy of Salvation

Christ came to fulfill in time the eternal intention of the divine will. When the Son came into the world, he said to the Father, “I have come to do your will” (Heb. 10:9). The intent to reconcile whatever might fall was present in the triune God prior to creation. The Son could therefore be aptly described as “the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world” (Rev. 13:8). Salvation is being enabled through the Spirit according to the eternal counsel of God’s pretemporal will (Eph. 1:11; Chrysostom, Hom. on Eph. 2.1.11–14).

An integral vision of history is assumed in the New Testament connecting creation, redemption, and consummation (Rom. 5). This eternal foreknowing did not woodenly imply that all companionate wills are reduced to nothing by the divine will (Chrysostom, Hom. on Eph. 1.5). That God permits other finite wills to exercise choice is evident from their actual creation.

Redemptive love is thus the primordial purpose and motivation preceding creation. Its manifestation is the reason God creates (Irenaeus, Ag. Her., 3.18).

What God Purposes from Eternity the Spirit Enables Through Time

The Spirit’s mission is to bring about and complete God’s purposes within fragile human histories. The being of God the Spirit is eternal. The Spirit’s work in nature and history occurs in time.

The eternal being of the Spirit is the premise of the temporal work of the Spirit. It is the nature of the Holy Spirit to accomplish God’s purpose, to make it happen.

What God does is formed by who God is and what God wills. It is not as though God first does something and then that is subsequently called God’s will. God is Spirit eternally prior to any consequent activity as Spirit.

Classical Christianity posits love and intercommunion within the triune God prior to creation. “Let us make humankind in our image” (Gen. 1:26, italics added; Chrysostom, Hom. on Gen. 8.8). Father, Son, and Spirit are communicating with each other before creation. “A stream is one until it falls over the precipice and divides into many drops. So is the life of God one and undivided while hidden within Himself; but when it is poured out into created things its colors stand revealed” (Kuyper, WHS: 14, 15). The Spirit reveals and weaves together the textures and colors and contours of God’s purpose in history.

The Work of the Spirit in Creation and Providence

The work of the Spirit is celebrated in liturgy as manifested throughout all creation, not stingily, but abundantly through every phase of cosmic and human history. The work of the Spirit does not begin belatedly with Pentecost, but is found profusely in all creation and its continuing providences, and throughout the entire history of salvation, which in due time comes to fulfillment in the incarnation and the Spirit’s enabling of the body of Christ, whose purpose is yet to be finally consummated in the general resurrection.

The Spirit illumines reason, enables political order, and restrains the capacity for humanity to destroy itself. These are among the “general operations” of the Spirit which are conjointly being enabled by the Spirit in full concurrence with the Father and the Son: offering of life, supporting of life newly given, nurturing continuing life, strengthening life nurtured, and guiding life strengthened. This applies to all forms of life, whether plant, animal, or human. In these ways scripture celebrates God’s Spirit in creating (Gen. 1:2; Ps. 104:30; Job 33:4), redeeming (Isa. 44:3, 23), and offering gifts to all creatures (Gen. 2:7; 41:38; Exod. 28:3; 31:3) according to their ability to receive.

The Spirit Provides

The Spirit of God moved to bring order from chaos, elegance from emptiness, making beautiful in its own way each creature touched, garnishing the heavens. “There can be nothing which the Holy Spirit can be said not to have made” (Ambrose, Of the Holy Spirit 1.5.37). “By his breath [ruach] the skies became fair,” exclaimed Job, acknowledging that “these are but the outer fringe of his works,” which only bespeak “the whisper we hear of him” in his full glory (Job 26:13–14). The finite mind is unable to grasp in how many ways the Spirit provides. “Who has understood the mind of the Lord, or instructed him as his counselor?” (Isa. 40:12, 13).

The Spirit works through providence to sustain all that is created (Ps. 104:10–14, 30; Chrysostom, Hom. on Cor. 8.3). The Spirit filled Bezalel and the craftsmen as they worked on the temple (Exod. 31:3; 35:31). Even the sins of the fallen, for which God is not responsible, are in time made serviceable to the whole (Origen, Ag. Celsus 4.54, 70; Comm. on Numbers, Hom. 14.2).

Only One who is “God of the spirits of all flesh” (Num. 16:22) could pour out his Spirit “on all flesh” (Acts 2:17; Bede, Comm. on Acts 2.17). Only this One could unify all diverse human purposes (Job 32:8), inspiring not only the civil lawgivers and sages but also the poets, and above all the prophets (Num. 1:7, 25, 26; 2 Sam. 23:2; 1 Kings 22:24; Ezek. 2:2; 11:5; Dan. 4:8, 11; Mic. 3:8), commissioning magistrates, judges, kings, and prophets, restraining evil, and enabling good. The Spirit works in universal human history, striving with persons (Gen. 6:3), witnessing to all of God’s own coming (John 15:26, 27), convicting of sin (Acts 2:36), attesting God’s righteousness, making sure the promises of God (Acts 2:32, 33). Cyril of Jerusalsm taught his young seekers that it is by God’s own Spirit that “Othniel judged; Gideon waxed strong; Jephtha conquered; Deborah, a woman, waged war; and Samson, so long as he did righteously and grieved Him not, wrought deeds above man’s power” (Cyril, Catech. Lect. 16.28).

The Spirit inspires human insight in literature, the arts, the sciences, philosophy, poetry, and political life. Renaissance art at times portrayed Socrates as teaching on the porch of the temple (Justin Martyr, Address to the Greeks 20–33). Justin was convinced that Plato knew of the Holy Spirit (Exhortation to the Greeks 32–38). There is no work or thought or achievement in human history that is deprived of the Spirit’s gifts (Jer. 31:35; Ps. 136:25; 2 Cor. 3:3–11; John 3:34; Wisd. 7:17–20). The Spirit is present in preparing all humanity for God’s own coming in the Son.

The Spirit Gives Life

Merely to be alive is to be endowed with life by the Spirit of God. To imagine the withdrawal of the Spirit is to think of death. “The Spirit of God has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life” (Job 33:4). If God would withdraw “his spirit [ruach] and breath [neshamah], all mankind would perish” (Job 34:14, 15). “When you take away their breath [ruach], they die and return to the dust” (Ps. 104:29; cf. Gen. 2:7; Ezek. 37:9). “The Spirit which speaks and sends is a living Spirit” (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 17.28), though death is a necessary boundary of all finite life under the conditions of sin. The Spirit is bestowing life (Theodore of Mopsuestia, Comm. on John, 7.20.22). Creatures are receiving life.

The Spirit is preparing the conditions for bringing contrite sinners into communion with God. Only through free, conscious beings is this communion possible. How else could the vast, silent, otherwise unperceiving creation respond to God in conscious, knowing companionship and relationship (Gen. 2:7; Gregory of Nyssa, On the Creation of Man 28.1–29.1). Though God may be glorified by the huge speechless cosmic and natural creation, the scriptures speak more clearly of the delight that comes to God from conscious, rational, free creatures who love God in and through all creation (Basil, Exegetic Homilies on Ps. 19.8).

The hard question turns upon how erring children of the divine Father might be made able to glorify the incomparably holy God. The plan of the triune God for redemption is accomplished only when God’s own Spirit dwells in the fallen human heart so as to refashion it (Jer. 31:31–34; Chrysostom, On Epis. to Heb. 16.1).

The Spirit quickens the life of faith, seals the promise in baptism, sustains the new life in prayer, and reveals glimpses of “what is yet to come” (John 16:13; Didymus the Blind, On the Holy Spirit 38).

The Spirit Redeems

The primordial work of God in creation provides the pattern of the work of God in regeneration or re-creation of fallen freedom dead in sin (Eph. 2:1–10; Athanasius, LCHS 1.9). As the heavens were made by the breath of the Lord (Ps. 33:6), so the fallen creature is remade by God’s Word through the Spirit as if breathing new life into sinners.

The Spirit accompanies the Word as breath conveys speech (John 20, 22; Cyril of Alex., Comm. on John 9.1; Gregory of Nyssa, The Great Catechism 2, 3). “The same Spirit who in the beginning moved upon the waters has in the dispensation of grace given us the holy Scripture, the Person of Christ, and the Christian Church” (Kuyper, WHS: 25; Athanasius, Discourses Ag. Arians, 1.12.50; LCHS 1.19–22).

Through the Spirit the almighty God directly touches, meets, and indwells within the human spirit (Theodore of Mopsuestia, Comm. on John 6.14.15–17). God the Spirit sustains the soul through the hazards of moral struggle. God’s Spirit works to draw human freedom without coercion back to its original purpose of refracting the goodness of God. Whether the freedom of the creature chooses to remain alienated from God or to be free for God, the Spirit continues to work within the inner sphere of personal freedom to glorify God in whatever ways possible by drawing freedom quietly toward its true ground (Augustine, Confessions, 1–4). God is at work in the soul from the beginning of its creation to its final restoration.

When the Lord “gave his life for our life,” he poured “out the Spirit of the Father to unite us and reconcile God and man, bringing God down to man through the Spirit, and raising man to God through his incarnation,” “attaining his purpose not by force…but by way of persuasion” (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 5.1.1–2).

God Spoke By the Prophets Through the Spirit

The covenant community that appears in the Old Testament as seed of Abraham reappears in the New Testament as ekklēsia (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 4.5). From the remnant of Israel there comes the promise of the new Israel. The chosen seed bears fruit for all humanity (Bede, Comm. on Acts 3:25).

Seen in terms of the continuous history of covenant, there is only one called out people of God, made one by the One who called them out of nothing (Hosea 2:23; Ambrose, Of Holy Spirit 2.10). Yet this one people has journeyed through many stages of historical development (Theodoret, Interp. of Heb. 1). Amid astonishing varieties of complex history, there remains a distinct thread of continuity in the economy of salvation history (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 4.33.7).

The intent of prophecy is clearly set forth in John’s Gospel: “I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe” (John 14:29; cf. 13:19). These Old Testament anticipations must not be forgotten but by the power of the Spirit. They are savored and remembered in Christian teaching (Isa. 41:23; 42:9; 43:19; Heb. 11:3–38).

In the creed the church confesses that God the Spirit “spoke through the prophets” (Heb. 1:1; 1 Cor. 12:8–10; Creed of the 150 Fathers; Cyril of Jerusalem, SCD 9). “By your Spirit you admonished them through your prophets” (Neh. 9:30, italics added; Theophilus, To Autolycus 2.9). Joel specifically told of a future time when the Spirit would be poured out upon all flesh (Joel 2:28, 29). Peter preached that Joel’s prophecy (2:30, 31) had been explicitly fulfilled at Pentecost (Acts 2:14–21; Chrysostom, Hom. on Acts 5; Kuyper, WHS: 112–16).

God has never left himself without witness in the world. The world has never been without some anticipatory form of the calling and ingathering of the people of God (Acts 14:17; Chrysostom, Hom. on Acts 31). Before the incarnation this covenant people was being gathered in the form of expectation; after the incarnation in the form of fulfillment (Hippolytus, On the Consummation of the Word).

Prior to the incarnation, the Spirit was omnipresently working in and beyond Israel to call forth the community of faith in the form of hope (Heb. 11:4–22). After the incarnation, the Spirit was omnipresently working in and beyond Israel to call forth the community of faith in the form of fulfillment, indwelling within that community to enable each member of the community to be united with the living risen Lord (Col. 3:16; 1 John 4:12–16).

The Spirit Calls Forth a Continuous History of Covenant

The Hebraic idea of the called people of God (qahal) is that of a people brought by Yahweh into covenant, elected not for superiority but for service (Exod. 19:3–66; Deut. 7:6; 1 Sam. 12:22; Ps. 135:4; Rom. 1:6; Eph. 1:4, 5; 1 Pet. 2:9). Paul wrote that his forefathers were “all baptized into Moses in the cloud and the sea” (1 Cor. 10:2). He was seeing the exodus from the viewpoint of the resurrection. He was describing an imitative anticipation of the future, an exhibition of things expected (Heb. 11:2,3; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 5.1–3). Thus the manna was regarded by the consensual exegetes as “a type of the living bread,” the exodus a type of baptism (Basil, On the Holy Spirit 1.14; Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, CWS: 38–41).

Before the Son, the Spirit came to humanity in the form of figurative types and shadows of that which was to come. Upon the coming of the Son as light of the world, all previous shadows of revelation were bathed in pure light (1 John 1:4–9; Kuyper, WHS: 53).

Those earlier anticipations (temple sacrifice, feast days, the codification of Levitical law, the ordering of priesthood) continued to have transmuted relevance to the new people of God, viewed in the light of the resurrection (Heb. 7:1–23). After the resurrection, the searching of scripture focused on the spiritual exercise of seeking to understand the anticipations of God’s own coming in salvation history and universal history (Heb. 10:1–5; Origen, OFP 4.2.4).

The work of God the Spirit prior to the incarnation had an anticipatory meaning for those who experienced it and an interpretive meaning for those who remembered these anticipations from the viewpoint of their fulfillment in the resurrection (John 14:26; Augustine, Tractates on John 77.2). In due time each of these preliminary meanings would be seen from the vantage point of their fulfillment and completion in Christ.

The Continuity of Old and New

The history of the people of Israel has become Christianity’s own history, without which the story of God’s coming in Jesus would be vacuous and ephemeral. Marcion’s attempt to “tear away” the Old from the New Testament (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 1) and to dismiss the old covenant as if irrelevant to the new was considered dangerous (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 4.7; Tertullian, Ag. Marcion).

The Spirit “used this gentle treatment, fitted for our needs, gradually accustoming us to see first the shadows of objects, and to look at the sun in water, to save us from dashing against the spectacle of pure unadulterated light, and being blinded. Just so the Law, having a shadow of things to come…[became the] means to train the eyes of the heart” (Basil, On the Holy Spirit 1.14).

The Spirit has always been calling forth faith. In that sense, “the one, holy universal church” has sought to call and enfold believers from the time of Abel onward (Gregory I, Hom. on Ezek. I.8.28; 2.3.17). Even though the covenant community has always been mixed with hypocrites while in history (Hilary, On Matthew, 2.4; Melanchthon, Corpus Reformatorum 12.481–483; 21.834), in various times and places throughout history there have been anticipations of the called out community of covenant enabled through the Spirit.

As the called out community prior to the incarnation shared in God’s coming salvation by way of hope in God’s promise, so does the called out community after the incarnation share in God’s accomplished salvation in the form of Spirit-led recollection, testimony, remembrance, and celebration of God’s own coming, which is even yet awaiting God’s coming again (John 14:26; Basil, On Holy Spirit 9.22; Eusebius, Proof of the Gospel).

This new called out people began to exist when after the ascension the Head of the body, sitting at the right hand of the Father, was ready to form the body through the indwelling Spirit. “God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way” (Eph. 1:22, 23).

The Pivot of History

All this happened within weeks after the death of Jesus. This intense series of events is the pivot of covenant history, the inauguration of the new aeon. This vast body of scriptural testimony becomes blended in the single proclamation of God’s salvation (yeshuah, soteria) of humanity, the history of the divine-human covenant (Isa. 51:6–8; Luke 19:9; Acts 16:17; Rom. 1:16; 1 Pet. 1:9).

Christ, having died for our sins, was buried, descended, raised, ascended to the right hand of the Father in heavenly intercession. The new covenant was ratified, the great commission given, and all this was immediately followed by:

The outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost

The calling out of the new people of God

The forming of the body of Christ

The introduction of the new law of love

The apostles were sent to preach the gospel to the whole world

To understand this sequence is to think in an orderly way about the coming and indwelling of the Holy Spirit. To draw near to this matrix of events invites reflection upon key symbols and signs by which it has been conveyed and remembered.

Types and Symbols of the Holy Spirit in Scripture

Symbols of the promise of the coming of the Holy Spirit that recur in the Hebrew Bible include wind, fire, water, dove, and the oil of anointing. These figures of speech all dramatically coalesce in the event of Pentecost: “Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting,” and “all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit,” who appeared to them as flaming tongues parting asunder so as to settle upon each one of them (Acts 2:2–4); they received the promised “baptism with the Spirit and with fire” (Matt. 3:11), after which they preached the baptism of repentance (Acts 13:24), and received the anointing of the Spirit that was promised to be poured out in the last days (Acts 2:17, 33; Titus 3:5, 6).

The Spirit as Invisible Wind

The breeze is not discernible to the visual sense, though one can feel it on one’s skin. The breath of God is like wind (Athanasius, LCHS 1.7–8; Clement of Alex. Comm. on John 9.1).

The Spirit of God is that invisible enabling agent by which God’s power is manifested while remaining unseen. Ruach is the outbreathing, the proceeding, the imperceptible going forth of the life of God (Athanasius, LCHS 1.15–19; Ag. Arians 1.12.50). Jesus compared the Spirit to the wind that moves where it wills (Ambrose, Chr. Faith 2.6.47). One cannot ever account precisely from where it comes or goes or why. Similarly we are born of God from above by the Spirit (John 3:8).

No words can be said without wind moving through the flexing chambers of our voices. As we use invisible wind to speak words and convey meanings, so God’s unseen Spirit is moving by silent means to convey God’s revelation (John 20;22; Augustine, Trin. 15.26.46).

Spirit as Cleansing Water

The Spirit is typified by water, a symbol for cleansing, reviving, and refreshing, without which life does not long continue (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 16.12; Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia: 141). Water is “a perfect, gladsome, simple material substance, pure in itself” that “supplied a worthy vehicle to God” (Tertullian, On Baptism 3). As the Son, the living water, cleanses the faithful from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9), so is cleansing from sin enabled by the Spirit, who like a deep source of spring water renews the believer steadily (John 4:14; Athanasius, Defense of Dionysius; Cyril of Alex., Comm. on John 2.4).

Water as a symbol or type of the Spirit becomes most explicit in John’s Gospel, where during the first seven days of the Feast of Tabernacles, the people brought water from the Pool of Siloam to the altar. Then on the eighth day, “the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.’ By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified” (John 7:37, 38; Ambrose, Of Holy Spirit 3.20.153–156; Chrysostom, Hom. on John 51). The Spirit, like water, is life-nurturing, revitalizing (Apostolic Constitutions 7.1.43; Athanasius, LCHS 1.19).

Spirit as Fire Burning away Dross

Divine revelation was often experienced as accompanied by light, fire, radiance, or brightness—Moses’ burning bush, Elijah on Mount Carmel, Paul on the road to Damascus, and John on Patmos all attest the presence of light or fire in divine disclosure (1 Kings 18:38; Rev. 22:5; Athanasius, Defence of the Nicene Definition).

Fire symbolized both the coming of God’s grace toward those who were responsive and the rejection of sin by the holiness of God (Exod. 3:2; 14:20; 24:17), whose anger against sin is like a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29). Fire both “improves good deeds like gold, and consumes sins like stubble” (Ambrose, Of the Holy Spirit 1.14.169). By fire the dross is burned away and the pure element conserved (Chrysostom, Hom. on John 32.1).

As fire warms, so does the Spirit. As fire ignites, so is human speech and action ignited by the Spirit (Cyprian, Treatises 12). Jeremiah wrote of Yahweh’s address, “I will make my words in your mouth a fire, and these people the wood it consumes” (Jer. 5:14). When Jeremiah tried to keep quiet about the word he heard from the Lord, he found that “his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones” (Jer. 20:9).

Zealous service of the Spirit is likened to fire, where love is flaming into human warmth and fervent prayer (Ambrose, Duties 3.18). The Spirit desires to kindle this fire with all speed, “for He longs for speed in doing us good” hence the Spirit “moves with speed like the speed of light” (Gregory Nazianzus, Orat. 40.36–37; Athanasius, LCHS I.19).

Spirit as Dove

At Jesus’ baptism the Spirit descended upon him in the form of a dove. The dove is without guile, lacking any form of deception (Matt. 3:16; Mark 1:10; Luke 3:22; John 1:32; Augustine, Christian Combat, 22.24). The dove descended from heaven to earth, resting upon the anointed One (Gregory of Nyssa, FGG: 189, 284). John the Baptist had testified, “The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God” (John 3:33, 34; Ambrose, Sacr. 1.6).

The dove that returned to the ark with an olive leaf furnished Noah the proof that God’s judgment of humanity was ending and that the renewal of humanity was occurring (Gregory Thaumaturgus, Fourth Hom., On Holy Theophany). The dove was a figure or type of the Spirit suggesting peace, gentleness, grace, beauty, and guilelessness (Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church; Letters; Tertullian, On Baptism 8; Ag. Valentinians, 3).

Anointing with Oil as a Biblical Symbol of the Spirit

The figure of anointing embraced metaphors of consecrating, setting apart, giving gifts and blessings, and making fit for service. Anointing is an expression of the Spirit’s comforting presence, seal, blessing, and commissioning.

Prophets were anointed that God’s own Spirit might address the people directly (1 Kings 19:16). Priests were anointed that the Spirit might minister to the people through worship and sacrifice (Lev. 8:12). Civil servants were anointed that the Spirit might rightly govern the people and judge justly (1 Sam. 15:1, 17; Gregory I, Pas. Care 2.6).

Oil [shemen, Gk: elaion] was considered useful not only as a source of nutrition (Rev. 6:6) but also as a medicine (Mark 6:13; James 5:14). Oil also had sacrificial and ceremonial functions (Ambrose, Letters 52). Oil was used in the setting apart of holy places, offices, and duties (Exod. 40:9–16; Lev. 8). Oil was employed for many uses in healing, illuminating, comforting, commissioning, and anointing (Num. 4:9, 6:15; Matt. 25:3–8; Methodius, Banquet of the Ten Virgins, 6.4). Similarly, God the Spirit works by healing, illuminating, comforting, commissioning, and anointing (Apostolic Constitutions 7.4.42; cf. Calvin, 4.19).

As oil was used to light up the tabernacle (Exod. 25:6), the faithful are called to walk according to the light provided by the Spirit. The lamp of the Word that guides our path through the dark is kept burning by the Spirit (Ps. 119:105; Chrysostom, Baptismal Instructions).

Christ was anointed with oil as a symbol of the healing, guiding, consecrating Spirit. Cyril taught his seekers that similarly “you were anointed with ointment, having been made partakers and fellows of Christ” in baptism. This is not plain ointment, he explained, any more than eucharistic bread is merely bread after the invocation, for then it becomes Christ’s gift that by the Spirit is being “made fit to impart His Divine Nature. This ointment is symbolically applied to your forehead and your other senses; and while your body is anointed with the visible ointment, your soul is sanctified by the Holy and Life-giving Spirit” (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 21.2). In this way chrismation, or anointing with oil, accompanied baptism in ancient Christian liturgical practice.

As oil makes one’s face shine, so does the Spirit make the believer radiant with the “oil of joy” (Ps. 45:7). When David was anointed, the “Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward” (1 Sam. 16:13; Cassiodorus, Expos. Of Ps. Preface, 1). Samson was filled with enormous strength when the Spirit came upon him (Judg. 14:19). God’s ruach came upon Gideon, Jephthah, and Saul amid combat (Judg. 5:34; 11:29; 1 Sam. 11:6). As the Spirit empowered Joseph’s administrative skill (Gen. 41:38, 39), so the Spirit enabled the skill of artisans to enhance the beauty of the temple (Exod. 31:2–4; 1 Kings 7:14), and so blessed Aaron’s garments of consecration (Exod. 28:3). The Spirit was in Joshua in leading Israel to the promised land (Num. 27:18), in Gideon’s stunning triumph (Judg. 6:34) and in enabling Ezekiel to speak to a rebellious nation (Ezek. 2:2, 3).

The prophets foresaw that the Spirit would inaugurate the messianic kingdom (Isa. 32:15; 44:3; 59:21; Zech. 12:10), which would extend even to the Gentiles (Isa. 60:3–11; Acts 2:16, 17). The turn of history finally came when John the Baptist announced that one would come after him baptizing with the Holy Spirit and with fire (Luke 3:16; Chrysostom, Baptismal Instructions 11:13).

Baptism as Anointing

The relation of bathing and anointing is seen early in the Mosaic covenant where Aaron was first bathed in water and then anointed.

Oil was applied in a special sequence in ceremonial cleansing first to the ear that one would be ready to hear, then to the thumb of the right hand that it might become an instrument of righteousness, then to the great toe of the right foot that one might walk in the way of holiness. The remainder was poured on the head so the whole soul might be consecrated to God in an act of overflowing grace (Lev. 8:12; Cyril of Jerus., Catech. Lect. 3.6).

This Levitical use of oil became the pattern for rites of healing through the Spirit and for final passage (viaticum). In the early church those baptized were anointed on the forehead (Exod. 28:38), that they with unveiled face might reflect as a mirror the glory of God. Once having received this anointing, this chrism, believers were ready to be named by Christian names and called into the Christian life, having received new birth into a new family.

Anointing Spirit, Anointed Son

The community prays that the Spirit will be the active agent in the rite of anointing by oil (Lev. 8; 1 Sam. 16; Athanasius, LCHS 1.22–4). Aaron became the model of one who being first anointed was then called to anoint others, a pattern that was followed by the high priest anointing priests and the apostles anointing the apostolate (Exod. 40; 1 John 2:27).

The archetype of the anointed One (Mashiach, Christos) is the Son of whom it would be said that “the Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18; cf. Isa. 61:1, 2). Peter vividly remembered “how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power” (Acts 10:38; Bede, Comm. on Acts 10.38).

All these images complement each other in speaking of the varied ministries of the Holy Spirit. All major aspects of the work of the Spirit in the New Testament are anticipated in Old Testament types. The believer is clothed with power, born from above, anointed, and set apart for service by the work of the Spirit (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 17.12). “Thus with divine accuracy did even the types anticipate the two-fold provision for the Christian life, cleansing by the blood and hallowing by the oil—justification in Christ, sanctification in the Spirit” (A. J. Gordon, MS: 95). So in Christian worship, our adoption into the family of God is offered liturgically as a gift of grace in baptism.

The Work of the Spirit in the Present Age

The Present Age

The present age is the age of the Spirit, to whom has been committed the work of applying the redemption of the Son to the lives of persons by calling, justifying, and sanctifying them. The new age or dispensation of the Spirit is given to comfort and guide the witnessing community following Christ’s ascension. The present age is now continuing in our present history, and at some point it will be completed with the return of the Son (Jerome, Epis. to Eph. 2.3.20–21).

The subject matter of this ecumenical teaching is very different from comparative or developmental accounts of the varieties of Christian teaching. My passion is the search for ecumenical general lay consent in the reception of consensually received texts that reflect the one mind of the believing church. That is all I am trying to do. It is an exercise in discernment using classic texts as our guide. Given the limits of this study, we leave many ancillary questions of development to historians, except as those varieties of developments can be shown to be consensually received within classic Christian teaching over two millennia. It is this pattern of wholeness that we now seek to identify as it pertains to the work the Spirit has been doing since Jesus came.

The simplicity of scripture has always been a stumbling block to those who view themselves as wise above scripture. “Those things which appear humble are considered senile, foolish, and common. So they regard nothing as true except that which is pleasant to the ear; nothing as credible except that which can excite pleasure. No one estimates a subject by its truth but by its embellishment” (Lactantius, DI 5.1). So today has scripture study stumbled over the simplicity of the gospel and found offense in its clarity. Scripture remains its own best interpreter, by means of the analogy of faith applied by comparing text with text under the guidance of the Spirit (Tertullian, Ag. Praxeas 17–21). Christian truth is best defended in its plain sense (1 Cor. 1:18–21; 3:18–23; Tertullian, Ag. Valentinians 3; Ambrosiaster, Comm. on Paul, Eph. 1.20).

The Spirit Enables the Mission of the Son

Every gift requisite to the Son’s mission is provided by the Spirit. “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit” (Luke 4:1). It was “the Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David,” who was “through the Spirit of holiness,” according to Paul, “declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:4). To the Son “whom God has sent,” the Father has given “the Spirit without limit” (John 3:34). The living body of Christ today shares in these gifts, which are distributed at God’s good pleasure.

The Spirit works to enable the faithful to hear and respond to Christ’s living personal presence. The Spirit makes effectual the work of the Son in ways beyond our knowing, at a depth that cannot be uttered (Rom. 8:26; Augustine on Romans 54). This occurs not merely with words but with a demonstration of the Spirit and power (1 Cor. 2:4; Origen, OFP 4.1.17; Calvin Inst. 3.1.1; 4.14–19).

The Administration of Redemption in the World

The Spirit comes to guide the faithful into all truth, put doubt to flight, magnify the power of God, remember accurately the events of the Son’s coming, provide for its accurate transmission, and assure the faithful of their adoption as sons and daughters in the family of God. The Spirit is given as a seal or stamp that God places upon his own, an earnest or pledge of what is to come in the final consummation (Chrysostom, Hom. on Eph. 2.1.11–14; Jerome, Epis. to Eph. 1.1:14).

The present age extends from Pentecost to Parousia, wherein the Spirit is working to awaken and sustain the continuing body of Christ, to restore humanity as a whole. We now experience the age between the first and second advent of Christ. The work of the Spirit will be crowned by the return of the Son and the judgment of history.

The notion of a new age (a new creation, Gal. 6:15; new covenant, 2 Cor. 3:6; new life, Rom. 6:4; a new and living way, Heb. 10:20) is recurrent in the New Testament. This makes ironic the fact that the term new age has been so long commandeered by faddists that it is already feeling old. It is precisely amid declining modernity that “New Age” has come to mean the old paganism. But that irony gives no sufficient reason why Christian orthodoxy should abandon a term long offered by apostolic teaching. The apostolic language is better defended against distortion than abandoned.

The Personal Direction of the Spirit

As the apostles were under the personal direction of the Son during his earthly ministry, so after the resurrection the apostolic tradition is under the Spirit (Acts 8:25–40; 10:19; 11:12). In baptism the whole person is drenched with the love of God. So in the coming of the Spirit the whole of history is being met with the revelation of that love (Chrysostom, Hom. on Acts 22).

The Spirit is given in the place of Christ’s bodily presence. Before the pivot of covenant history, the Spirit was not yet unreservedly self-offered as indwelling. Afterward, when the risen Lord ascended, he promised that the Spirit would come as helper and abiding companion of the people of God, and that the Spirit would accompany the witnessing community until he personally returned (Gregory of Nazianzus, On Pentecost, Orat. 41.11).

The Spirit reproves and challenges the faithful to accountability to the holy God, and comforts the faithful in their sin. “His coming is gentle; the perception of Him is fragrant, his burden most light,” Cyril taught. “He comes to save, and to heal, to teach, to admonish, to strengthen, to exhort, to enlighten” (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 16.16).

The Spirit Allows Due Time for Conveying the Word to the World

The present age is the age of Gentile inclusion, not Gentile hegemony or superiority, but inclusion in the salvation history into which Israel has been covenanted from the time of Abraham. The present age is providentially being allowed time for the gathering-scattering community to attest God’s saving action through the Son and the Spirit (Bede, Comm. on Acts, 19.4–5). In the time remaining in world history, God intends to restore whatever might have fallen through sin so as to apply the work of the Son fittingly to all who have ears to hear, eyes to see.

Prior to his ascension, even Jesus did not actively extend his mission beyond Israel, for he explicitly said at this preresurrection stage, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel” (Matt. 15:24). After his ascension, however, a new age had begun. The disciples were commanded to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature until Christ’s return. The penitent Gentiles were privileged to enter into the sphere of divine reconciliation just as much as the penitent Jews. Paul reminded Gentile hearers that “formerly” (before the present age of the gospel) “at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ” (Eph. 2:12, 13; Ambrosiaster, Epis. to Eph. 2.13–14).

The entire present age from Pentecost to Parousia is an age of testimony, proclamation, self-giving witness (marturia), so as to fulfill Israel’s calling to become a blessing for all humanity, so that “all people on earth will be blessed through you” (Gen. 12:3). “When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. And you also must testify” (John 15:26, 27a, italics added; Ambrose, Of Holy Spirit 1.1.25).

Because Judaism was provincially grounded, focused as it was upon the promised land and the temple in Jerusalem, as the children of Abraham, it could not be the vocation of Judaism in its Levitic form to expand and serve and transmute the whole of humanity. From Judaism by grace has come something other than Judaism—a people with a universal mission, capable of being adapted within all races, all cultures, all particular histories, all stages of human development, all worldviews.

If the decisive spatial category of Judaism was “the land,” for Christianity it was “the world” (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho). The ministry of the Spirit that was revealed through law and prophets was anticipatory of the wider and more inclusive indwelling of the Spirit following the work of the Son on the cross (Cyril of Alex., Comm. on John 10.2).

By means of the Eucharist, the Son and Spirit found fit means for remission of human sin and sanctification of persons. In Christian preaching Christ’s sacrifice for sin was applied to all who would repent and believe. This new wine must be poured into new wineskins (Mark 2:22). “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse” (Mark 2:21; Chrysostom, Concerning the Spirit, Horn. 16.9). The old sacrificial system that had been maintained in temple Judaism was not adequate to universal human needs. As the Son had a time of earthly ministry that he came to fulfill, and having finished has returned to the Father, so does the Spirit have a time of ministry on earth, which begins with a particular event, Pentecost, and continues until the general resurrection. As the earthly history of the Son is open to historical inquiry, so is the history of the Holy Spirit (Eusebius, Proof of the Gospel; CH; John of Damascus, OF 3.19).

Evil in the Present Age

The present age is being ultimately shaped and constrained by the power of the Spirit while at the same time it penultimately struggles with the continuing remnants of the power of evil. The “present evil age” from which Christ came to rescue humanity will remain an age of human fallenness until the end of history.

The reason: the consequences of sin do not end with the sinful act. These consequences continue until the final days, though the ultimate defeat of evil has already occurred on the cross and been declared already defunct by the resurrection. This victory has already begun in human hearts (Eph. 5:13–16; 6:12–16; 2 Tim. 3:12, 13; Marius Victorinus, Epis. to Eph. 2.5.13).

Believers expect to be engaged in a continuing struggle with the world, the flesh, and the devil, to test and strengthen their faith (Gal. 5.13–18; Augustine, On Nature and Grace 61). They are called to “put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 6:10–12; Jerome, Epis. to Eph. 3.6.11).

The Spirit’s Work in Applying the Work of the Son

The Spirit works as personal agent of the mission of the Son to reveal the Son and bring his redemptive work to consummation (Hilary, Trin. 8.19).

The Spirit Remembers the Son with Complete Reliability

The Spirit is sent by the Father in the name of the Son: “But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you” (John 14:26; cf. 1 John 2:27; Gaudentius of Brescia, Sermon 14). From this text derive classic interpretations of the inspiration of scripture (Chrysostom, Hom. on John, Hom. 23). It is primarily by this canonically received holy writ that the Spirit teaches “all things”—all that is necessary for salvation, brought to accurate and sufficient remembrance.

The Spirit assists our recollection of the history of salvation, both by inspiring a written record of it and making certain that record is sufficiently reliable to be an adequate memory of the salvation event (Augustine, Hom. on John, 104). Beyond the text itself, the Spirit works internally toward helping the believer to discern the meaning of the prophetic and apostolic witness, to compare scripture with scripture, and to prompt reason to reflect consistently on their testimony to God’s revelation (Origen, Hom. on Jer. Hom. 21.2; 39).

Theories of inspiration of scripture go amiss when they attempt to locate the authority of scripture autonomously in the text itself or the writer while neglecting to pray for the Spirit who inspires, transmits, and rightly recalls the text. The inspiration of scripture is essentially a doctrine of the work of the Holy Spirit, and only secondarily therefore a doctrine of independent authority or textual transmission or scientific verification (2 Tim. 3:16; Chrysostom, Hom. on 2 Tim. 5; Calvin, Inst. 3.2).

The apostolic witnesses were specifically instructed when facing persecution: “Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit” (Mark 13:11; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 16.21). This is not an alternative revelation different from that declared in Jesus that the Spirit is bringing, but rather the ever-fuller clarification of the revelation Jesus brought from the Father (Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 31). The Spirit does not speak independently of the triune God as if the Spirit possessed an autonomous authority apart from the Father and Son. The Spirit recalls the plain truth of what happened in Jesus, causing it to be rightly remembered by those who pray for grace (Gregory I, Forty Gospel Hom., 30).

As the Son attests the Father, so the Spirit attests the Son (John 15:26; Gregory of Nazianzus, On Holy Spirit, Orat. 5[31].8–10). “For he who does not believe the Spirit does not believe in the Son, and he who has not believed in the Son does not believe in the Father…for it is impossible to worship the Son save by the Holy Spirit; impossible to call upon the Father save by the Spirit of adoption” (Basil, On the Spirit 1.11).

It is precisely what the Son conveys from the Father that the Spirit truthfully conveys from the Son to the believer’s heart. The Son promised that “when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you” (John 16:13, 14; Chrysostom, Hom. on John 78.2).

The Spirit elicits not only accurate memory of salvation but freely willed confession of Christ: “Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, ‘Jesus be cursed,’ and no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3; cf. Ambrose, Of the Holy Spirit 3.22.167).

The Son Intercedes Through the Spirit for the Life of the World

The Son tasted death for all humanity (Heb. 2:9). Before the Comforter came to dwell in the present age, however, it was necessary that the Son first appear before the heavenly Father to attest the sacrifice he offered for humanity’s sin as sufficient for their salvation. Entering in the Father’s presence as humanity’s advocate, mediator, priest, and brother, the ascended Son sat at the Father’s right hand, where he was restored to the position of equality he had enjoyed before the humbling descent of the incarnation. The artistic imagination of Renaissance Christianity soared dramatically in portraying this reconciling event of the Son showing his wounded hands and feet to the Father as the basis of his intercession: “Father, I want those that you have given me to be with me where I am” (John 17:24; Origen, OFP 3.6.1–3; Cyprian, On Morality 7.22).

The Son’s ascension to the Father signified a refilling with that majesty of which he had been emptied. It was expedient that the Son go away, for only if he went to intercede with the Father could he send the Spirit to comfort the body of believers (Cyril of Alex., Comm. on John 11.9).

The Son’s acceptance by the Father was thus the basis of the Spirit’s pledge or seal of our acceptance by the Father. When Jesus was accepted by the Father, those whose lives are hid in him through the Spirit were also accepted by the Father (Eph. 1:7). God’s acceptance of penitent sinners is thus settled once for all on the cross. What remains is for each hearer to make a full personal response to the Spirit’s witness (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 110).

The Spirit Applies the Benefits of the Son’s Death to Believers

The Sons’ heavenly intercession is presupposed in the holy table which is set for the Eucharist. “Without the expiatory work of Christ for us, the sanctifying work of the Spirit in us were impossible; and on the other hand, without the work of the Spirit within us, the work of Christ for us were without avail…. The fact that the Comforter is here is proof that the Advocate is there in the presence of the Father” (Gordon, MS: 38).

Peter preached: “God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear” (Acts 2:32, 33). Pentecost was the clear signal that redemption had been accomplished by the Son and was now being administered by the Spirit (Proclus, Orat. 16).

There is an intrinsic connection between Jesus’ proclamation of the expected divine governance and the actual divine governance that has in fact come in the indwelling of the Spirit: “Luke makes it plain that the intention of the clause ‘Thy kingdom come’ is to implore the aid of the Holy Spirit. For in his gospel, in the place of ‘Thy kingdom come,’ he says ‘Let the Holy Spirit come upon us and purify us,’” (Gregory of Nyssa, The Lord’s Prayer 3, LCF: 149).

The Triune Work Economized

This cohesive economy unfolds in the long history of revelation: The law is given, with its ordering of sacrifice, to bring the people of God under its tutelage. Christ comes to culminate all sacrifice on the cross so as to do for us what the law could not do. The Spirit communicates and applies to humanity the finished work of the cross (Rom. 8:1–4; Augustine, Spirit and Letter; John of Damascus, OF 3.1).

The Anglican Catechism viewed the saving work of the one God as the work of the Father in creation; the work of the Son in reconciliation; and the work of the Spirit in sanctification (BCP; cf. Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia 23). The Spirit “is given to those who believe,” concluded the Council of Antioch, having come to the faithful for their “comfort, and sanctification, and initiation.” It was the Son who died for us and rose again, not the Spirit. The Spirit did not perform any high priestly function, as did the Lamb of God. The work of the Spirit in us is distinct from that of the Son for us. For “the Holy Spirit could not be crucified, Who had not flesh and bones, but the Son of God was crucified, Who took flesh and bones” (Ambrose, Of the Holy Spirit 1.9.107). The Spirit is remembered in scripture as “proceeding [ektoreuomenon] from the Father and receiving [lauba-nomenon] from the Son” (Epiphanius, Creed, Second Formula).

The Spirit must penetrate our motives, the hidden springs of our thought, the nuances of character, the dynamics of will. Yet this inwardness is not lacking in social consequence: “Souls in which the Spirit dwells, illuminated by the Spirit, themselves become spiritual, and send forth their grace to others,” Basil observed, and in this social process “the weak are held by the hand, and those who are advancing are brought to perfection” (On The Spirit 1.9).

Birth, Nurture, and Growth Through the Spirit

The Spirit in the present age is giving birth to the called out community, quickening its life, adding to its common life by converting persons one by one (Chrysostom, Hom. on John 24.2–3). As Christ has life in himself, so does the Spirit as Life Giver breathe life into the worshiping community.

The church is not only engendered, but also nurtured by the Spirit, its walk daily illumined by the Spirit through the written and preached Word attesting the revealed Word. The believing church is protected from utter failure by the Spirit, who has promised not to abandon the church, though the church may temporarily fall into error (Matt. 28:20; Chrysostom, Hom. on Matt. Hom. 90.2).

The Spirit continues to work to consecrate, sanctify, and perfect the church, setting it apart from the world for its special mission and ministry within the world, abiding in this community the sins of Churchmen, indeed, “reduce these benefits, but the Spirit continues to retain sinners within the Church, in order that He may make the grace of repentance available to them” (Hall, DT 8:22, 23).

The Spirit Creates Redeeming Communities

At Pentecost the Spirit who is eternally present to all humanity was poured out in an exceptional indwelling among the apostles. After Pentecost the Spirit was found constantly to be forming actual living communities of grace and testimony. All those united to Christ by faith are united with the called out community by the Spirit (Cyprian, The Unity of the Catholic Church, LCC 5:124–42).

The Holy Spirit after the incarnation was not creating an atomized conglomerate of isolated regenerated persons but rather a community, a family of the regenerated, an ordered household, an organic body. Ekklēsia is called to be a bonded, caring community, a koinonia, a new social creation of grace, the resurrection of the people of God raised up in the light of God’s own coming, a peculiar people (Eph. 1:10; 2:13; Ambrosiaster, Epis. to Eph. 1–2; Kuyper, WHS: 119, 120).

The Spirit works in the church to form the ekklēsia (1 Cor. 12:13), to dwell in the body of believers (2 Cor. 6:16), to build up the community of faith (Acts 2:47; Eph. 2:21, 22; 1 Pet. 2:5, 6), to elicit true worship (Phil. 3:3, John 4:24; Athanasius, LCHS 1.32–33; Goodwin, Works 6:13–39). The Spirit empowers the church’s witness (Acts 1:8). The Spirit calls living persons to specific vocational tasks (Acts 13:2), unifying diverse gifts in the one body of Christ (Phil. 2:2–4).

The Son placed under the governance of the Spirit not merely redeemed individuals one by one but also the redeemed community as a whole. The Spirit works in the community to offer new life, birthing, regenerating (John 3:3; Titus 3:5), baptizing believers into the body (1 Cor. 12:13), indwelling in their hearts (1 Cor. 3:16), freeing from guilt, sin, and death (Rom. 7:9–8:2), strengthening the inner life amid hardships and challenges (Eph. 3:16–19), bearing witness to their daughterhood and sonship with the Father (Rom. 8:16), sealing believers until the day of redemption (Eph. 4:30), bearing fruits of faith active in love (Gal. 5:19–23; Rom. 14:17; 15:13), guiding into all truth (John 16:13), directing the life of prayer (Rom. 8:26, 27; 1 Cor. 14:15; Eph. 6:18; Jude 20), bringing into accurate recollection the words of Christ (John 14:26), enabling fitting proclamation of the good news of God’s own coming (Acts 1:8; 1 Cor. 2:1–5), revealing the deep things of God through spiritual discernment. For “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind conceived what God has prepared for those who love him’—but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:9; Chrysostom, Epis. to Cor. 7.4–7).

The Spirit is attested in healings, exorcisms, tongues (Acts 2:4–6; 10:46), proclamation (4:8, 31), power (6:10), prophecy (11:28; 21:4, 11), martyrdom (7:55), counsel (8:29; 10:19), mission (13:4), hedgings of the way (16:6, 7), warnings (20:23), and in the authorization of overseers to watch over the flock (20:28; Philoxenus of Mabbug, On the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit).

Even when we are unable to pray, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will” (Rom. 8:26, 27). No one is so devoid of grace that he cannot pray for grace (Augustine on Romans 54).

The Personal Indwelling of the Spirit

The Spirit’s presence in the church was understood as God’s own real presence, promised to abide till the end of history, making the Son’s presence real, making the Father’s love known. “He is called Comforter, because He comforts and encourages,” and “makes intercession,” prompting supplicants to turn away from temptation (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 16.19, 20).

The central role of the Spirit in the economy of salvation would not be fully manifested until the act of atonement was complete on the cross and confirmed in the resurrection. Only then was the time fulfilled for the Spirit’s outpouring on the day of Pentecost. Then the coming fire that had been anticipated in the Shekinah (the ancient symbol of the glory of the presence of God with humanity) became poured out in tongues of fire, attesting the resurrection in all human languages (Acts 2:8).

The Counselor

The Personal Naming of the Spirit

Parakletos is one called to another’s side to take his or her part, as a friend, a counselor, always lending aid, a partaker in another’s cause (John 16:7; cf. 1 John 2:1). Parakletos is more than a descriptive noun. It is the personal name chosen by the Son by which the faithful were privileged to address God’s own Spirit in the present age (Hilary, Trin. 8.19–27). Variously translated as Comforter, Advocate, Helper, Counselor, or Guide, the literal meaning of parakaleo is to call to one’s aid (Nicetas of Remesiana, Power of the Holy Spirit, FC 7:36).

The fuller implication of this name would be revealed only through a history of the Spirit’s activity. Parakletos is the One called to breathe life into the community of faith, who is sent personally to fill the void that otherwise would have been left by Christ’s departure (Origen, OFP: 116–19). “Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you, but if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7; Augustine, On Trin., 1.9).

The Spirit had been present in history prior to the Messianic event, cooperating with the Father and the Son in the plan of salvation, but after the Messianic event, the Spirit became the principal advocate to speak of and for the Son, to enliven and dwell in the body of Christ, to make his atoning work effective in history (Tertullian, Ag. Praxeas 27–30). As the Messiah is the personal Word of redemption, the Spirit is the personal administrator and executor of the redeeming Word.

Why Another Helper?

The Son had promised to send “another Helper to be with you forever” (John 14:16). The Paraclete is both sent by the Son (John 14:26) and the coming of the Son in a new form. “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you” (John 14:18; Augustine, Tractates on John 75.1).

As long as Christ was on earth, he was the comforter, guide, and guardian of the disciples. After his ascension he promised to give them “another Counselor.” Why “another” if the first was sufficient? Gregory Nazianzus answered: “That you might acknowledge His coequality. For this word Another marks an Alter Ego, a name of equal Lordship, not of inequality” (Gregory Nazianzus, Orat. 41.12). In this way Parakletos became a name applied by apostolic rememberers first to the Son and then to the Spirit (Ambrose, Of the Holy Spirit 1.13.157).

While the ascended Son continues in heavenly intercession as an advocate to “speak to the Father in our defense” (1 John 2:1; Origen, Principles, 2.7), the descending Spirit is here to counsel the world of sin, of the righteousness of the Son who intercedes with the Father, and of future judgment of the idolatries of this world (John 16:8–11; Augustine, Ag. Two Letters of the Pelagians 3.4; Sermon 144.6). By the Son’s death “the inheritance becomes available, and when he had ascended into heaven he sent down the Holy Spirit to distribute the estate among those who were joint heirs with him” (A. J. Gordon, MS: 49–50).

The Personal Coming of the Spirit

Through the Son human history was brought into concrete meeting with the incarnate God, who felt our human infirmities, afflictions, and death. Through the Spirit, this encounter comes to even closer quarters by indwelling in our hearts and attesting the work of the Son in our hearts (Origen, Comm. on Rom. 8:16; Barth, CD 2/2, 344).

As a person enfleshed in history, Jesus could only be one place at one time. As present in the Spirit, the Son could be present to the church in all places and times. In his flesh he dwelt with humanity for a particular time. By his Spirit he came to dwell with humanity for all times (Augustine, Question 59.4; 61.4). By the Spirit the triune God would become accessible to all, thus nearer to the far-flung body of believers than had he remained on the earth endlessly.

The resurrected Lord had instructed the disciples that after the resurrection, “repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. I am going to send you what the Father has promised, but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:47–49; Bede, Hom. on Gospels 11.15).

Pentecost: The Outpouring of the Holy Spirit

After Passover and the Feast of the Unleavened Bread in the Jewish calendar came the Feast of the Firstfruits (a liturgical foreshadowing of the resurrection; Lev. 23:17–20; Rom. 8:23; 1 Cor. 15:20–23; Cyril of Alex., Letter 50.14). Fifty days after firstfruits, two loaves of bread were offered, the yeast of which prefigured the formation of the church on the day of Pentecost (Lev. 23:15–21; Leo I, Sermon 75; Bede, Hom. on Gospels 2.17).

The key text of Levitical instruction for Pentecost was, “From the day after the Sabbath, the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, count off seven full weeks. Count off fifty days up to the day after the seventh Sabbath, and then present an offering of new grain in the Lord” (Lev. 23:15, 16). Thus Passover was followed fifty days later by pentecostē, the Greek term for “fifty days.” It was celebrated “a week of weeks” after Firstfruits (Exod. 23:16; Bede, Comm. on Acts 2.1; Tho. Aq., ST 1–2 Q102.5, I), which presented the firstfruits of harvest, the Hebraic type of the firstfruits of the ingathering of the reign of God.

Tarrying in Jerusalem for a Week of Weeks

While tarrying in Jerusalem, the disciples were not yet authorized to set out on their mission to the world, until the Spirit had come to indwell with them to empower their testimony. The descent of the Spirit was the signal that the atoning work had been fully accepted by the Father, and that the Son was reigning with the Father in heaven (Matt. 3:16, 17; Origen, Hom. on Lev. 7.4; Calvin, Comm. 16:202–6).

The Lord had instructed the disciples to wait in Jerusalem for the Spirit. This was an auspicious moment for a new beginning in the history of salvation. The feast of Pentecost had gathered large numbers of people to Jerusalem only a short time after Jesus’ death and resurrection (Acts 2:1; Chrysostom, Hom. on Acts, 4; Calvin, Comm. 8:73–74). They had come from remote parts of the known world. It was to this gathering that the Spirit came and was poured out with such power.

The Christian Pentecost referred backward to the Levitical Feast of Weeks and forward to the celestial banquet in the general resurrection. The disciples did not wait an indefinite period for the descent of the Spirit, but precisely fifty liturgically prescribed days after the resurrection (Augustine, On Spirit and Letter 16.28). Leo I states the reason why: “For as of old, when the Hebrew nation were released from the Egyptians, on the fiftieth day after the sacrificing of the lamb the Law was given on Mount Sinai, so after the suffering of Christ, where the true Lamb of God was slain, on the fiftieth day from His Resurrection, the Holy Ghost came down upon the Apostles and the multitude of believers” (Leo I, Sermons 75).

In this way Pentecost is “the sequel and completion of the Paschal feast” (Leo I, Letters 15). “Pentecost is a reminder of the resurrection expected in the age to come,” for eternity is symbolized by seven times seven, and as a circle that begins again on the same point that it ends (Basil, On the Spirit, NPNF 2 8:42.

The Spirit No Longer a Transient Visitor

At Pentecost the ekklēsia became indwelt as temple of God, a renewed holy temple for intercession, prophecy, celebration of the sacraments, and praise (Jude 20). The one Holy Spirit who before had sporadically called, anointed, and visited chosen vessels, at last came to dwell in and with the faithful community, and in the form of hope with the whole of humanity (Heb. 8:10; John 14:15–19; Gaudentius, Sermon 14).

At Pentecost the Holy Spirit “descended into the temple of his apostles, which he has prepared for himself, as a shower of sanctification, appearing no more as a transient visitor, but as a perpetual Comforter and as an eternal inhabitant” (Augustine, in A. J. Gordon, MS: 26; Tractates on John 94). God the Spirit is taking up residence in the ekklēsia at the precise point in history when God the Son ascends to intercede with the Father. This indwelling was promised to continue until the end of time. The One who is taking up residence with the church is named by the Son: “the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name” (John 14:25, italics added). Note that within this single text, the triune teaching is already fully in place (Ambrose, Of the Holy Spirit 1.13.134).

The Son uses plural pronouns to underscore the triunity of the indwelling: “If anyone loves me he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home [monēn] with him” (John 14:23, italics added; Gregory I, Forty Gospel Hom. 30.2). Father, Son, and Spirit are all taking up abode in the faithful through the indwelling Spirit (Leo I, Sermon 76).

Before and After Pentecost—The Quickening Sequence of Events

Christ had prayed that the Spirit would be a continuing, abiding, indwelling presence with his own beloved people (John 14:16–17). After repeated promises of the coming of the Spirit (John 14:17, 26; 15:26; 16:7, 13), Jesus breathed the Spirit upon his disciples after his resurrection, saying: “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22; Chrysostom, Hom.” on John 86.3). The Spirit was poured in fullness on the whole gathered community at Pentecost (Acts 2:17; Bede, Comm. on Acts 2.17).

From this poured a steady succession of remarkable disclosures. The Spirit again came through the laying on of hands of Peter and John in Samaria (Acts 8:14–17) and again fell on Gentile believers in the house of Cornelius: “While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God” (Acts 10:44–46; Chrysostom, Hom. on Acts 24). When Paul baptized the Ephesians “the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied” (Acts 19:6).

After Pentecost, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Acts 2:42). “And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47). After Pentecost the gifts (charismata) were diversely distributed by the Spirit to the whole church. Those who had been timid, quarrelsome, and confused before receiving the Spirit, went out illumined, united, courageous, and determined (Hilary, Trin. 13.31–35).

After Pentecost it becomes clearer that the Spirit is essential to every moment and each specific phase of the manifestation of God’s salvation to and for humanity. The wide range of the Spirit’s work was aptly summarized by the Augsburg Confession as ruling, comforting, enlivening, and protecting (Augsburg Conf, art. 3).

The Early and Latter Rain

Rain had long been a symbol of the refreshing, life-giving outpouring of the Spirit (Ps. 72:6, 7). “I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and oil” (Deut. 11:13, 14).

The comparison of the Spirit’s coming with rain was easily grasped by all who knew the two rainy seasons of Palestine, early and late, the first rain at the time of planting when the seeds were just sown in fallow ground, and the latter rain when the grain was ripening for harvest. Similarly it was promised to occur in the economy of salvation that the Comforter would come both early and late, and with special power and efficacy at the latter time. The Spirit was working both in planting and harvest (Joel 2:23).

One tradition of exegesis has viewed the early rain as prophetic expectation and the latter rain as prophetic fulfillment. Another tradition viewed the early rain as Pentecost and the latter rain as the outpouring of the Spirit in the end time. In either case the Spirit comes both early and late, preveniently and consummately.

In the Paraclete, God the Spirit comes silently, as gentle rain, invisibly within the ambiguous conditions of human history. In the Parousia, the Son returns gloriously and openly under decisive conditions of the final judgment of history. The Comforter is promised to indwell from Pentecost to Parousia to work as “Guardian and Sanctifier of the Church, the Ruler of souls, the Pilot of the tempest-tossed, leading wanderers to the light” (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 17.13).

This ordered sequence of the divine economy helps the worshiping community to grasp the import of one of the most astonishing statements of Jesus: “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He [Parakletos] will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12). “For it is a mightier thing for a shadow, than for a hem of a garment, to possess the power of healing” (Augustine, Tractates on John 71.3). As executor and fulfiller of Christ’s mission the Spirit contextually teaches and applies the truth concretely (Augustine, Comm. on John 72–73).

The Tongues at Pentecost and After

The Spirit “came in the form of Tongues because of His close relation to the Word” (Gregory Nazianzus, Orat. 41.11). A word in the mind requires a tongue to be spoken. Thoughts without tongues remain unknown. With the distribution of fiery tongues, the Spirit came not in the form of occasional energy, but fully indwelling, coming as God “associating with us, and dwelling in us. For it was fitting that as the Son had lived with us in bodily form—so the Spirit too should appear in bodily form; and that after Christ had returned to His own place, He should have come down to us—Coming because He is the Lord; Sent because He is not a rival God” (Gregory Nazianzus, Orat. 41.11).

The Church’s First Miracle: Tongues at Pentecost

Those who received the Spirit at Pentecost spoke in the languages of many nations. What happened was not that the visitors in Jerusalem all talked nonsense without understanding each other. Nor did they all speak the same language. Rather, the Jews gathering from diaspora spoke numerous Gentile languages as an anticipatory indication that the Spirit was intending to make the gospel known to all nations.

The national cultures named among those present at Pentecost (Galileans, Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Judeans, Cappadocians, persons from Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, Libya, and Crete) symbolically spanned all known countries in every direction from Jerusalem (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 17.16). They were devout Jews dwelling in Jerusalem temporarily, symbolically representing “every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5; Chrysostom, Hom. on Acts, Hom. 4).

Luke reports: “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them” (Acts 2:4). Upon the outpouring of the Spirit, “each one was hearing them speak in his own language” (Acts 2:6). Presumably the sounds the apostles would have previously been hearing at the Feast of Weeks would have been unfamiliar to their own native language. Apart from the outpouring of the Spirit, these would be without understanding. But with the Spirit they were hearing and understanding (Bede, Comm. on Acts 2.13).

The Galileans were speaking but they were astounded and asked “How is it that we hear each of us in his own native language?” (2:8; Arator, On the Acts, 1). “We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God” (2:11). Many present at Pentecost attested hearing God the Spirit speak to them in their own indigenous languages. To the Greeks, the Gospel was proclaimed in Greek, to Romans in Latin, to local inhabitants in Aramaic (Acts 2:5–12). The miracle of Pentecost was that they understood each other in their various languages either by a miracle of hearing or a miracle of speaking (Gregory Nazianzus, Orat. 41.15).

The International Implication of the Mission of the Holy Spirit

An awesome consequence is implied: Since Pentecost the Word spoken in Christ is being empowered by the Spirit to be spoken everywhere in each one’s own heart language. It thenceforth becomes imperative for the remembering, proclaiming community to attest God’s own coming in all languages. The Spirit was actively promising to help facilitate this difficult process (Basil, On the Spirit 1.27; Congar, IBHS 2:145).

A stunning international implication arises out of Acts 2: The Spirit intends to assist the proclamation of the Gospel in all languages (Augustine, Tractates on John 6.3). Startling parallels still exist between what liturgical traditions call Epiphany, Pentecostals call glossolalia, and social liberationists call inclusiveness. However disparate are these three symbol systems, all coalesce in the core idea of the mission of the Word to the world through the Spirit.

None of the languages mentioned in Acts 2 were “unknown tongues.” Someone knew how to speak each one of those languages. The purpose of this cross-cultural, international gift was to enable the mission of the Son to be realized through the mission of the Spirit, through clear communication of the gospel to the whole world, with its many languages. Each person was hearing the speech of the apostolate “in his own native language,” whether “Parthians, Medes, Elamites” (Acts 2:8). The reference was not limited to ecstatic utterance without translatable meaning. There is an enormous difference between disconnected speech patterns that have no meaning and the gift of hearing the gospel clearly in one’s own native tongue that was reported at Pentecost. The Aramaic of the disciples of Galilee was assisted by the Spirit so that Jerusalem visitors of all languages began immediately to understand it (Chrysostom, Hom. on Acts 4).

The disciples had no time or opportunity or learning to acquire immediately the capacity to speak in all these languages. The Holy Spirit demonstrated the divine intent to communicate to all in the church’s first miracle (Bede, Comm. on Acts 2.37). Three thousand were saved (Acts 2:37–41).

The Spirit soon after taught Peter in the presence of Cornelius to remember “what the Lord had said, John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 11:15, 16). The implication was not that baptism must be inevitably connected with ecstatic utterance, but that the special ministry of the Spirit was present to point the emergent church toward the Gentile world, the world of many tongues, to proclaim the gospel to all nations in all languages (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 17.14).

The Road to Everywhere

The early church quickly went from Jerusalem to the cosmopolitan centers of trade, at major crossroads of humanity, from Jerusalem and Antioch to Alexandria, Ephesus, Athens, and Rome, to attest this incomparable truth now revealed. The time from Jerusalem to other Mediterranean capitals was not overwhelming—a few days sea journey.

The church is from the outset composed of many persons speaking different languages. It became an important task for the church to learn quickly to speak and translate into many different languages, otherwise the speech of others would simply sound like gibberish. “The Holy Spirit taught them many languages at once, languages which in all their life they never knew,” in sharp contrast with their previous unlearned condition (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 17.16).

At Pentecost “the languages peculiar to each nation became common property in the mouth of the church. And therefore from that day the trumpet of the Gospel-preaching has sounded loud; from that day the showers of gracious gifts, the rivers of blessings, have watered every desert” (Leo I, Sermons 75).

Cyril of Jerusalem was aware that the first Pentecost had taken place only a short walk from the very spot where he was teaching his catechumens (the Church of the Holy Sepulchre). He reminded them that it is not only “in our time have multitudes of strangers first begun to assemble here from all quarters, but they have done so since that time” (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 17.18), i.e., since Pentecost. Cyril as bishop was thoroughly familiar with local Jerusalem tradition and memory in the fourth century. He is attesting a steady continuum of world pilgrims to Jerusalem prior to the fourth century. For this reason, not a frivolous one, Jerusalem is called “mother of cities,” for from there the good news would go out to the whole world (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 18.34).

Beyond Babel: The Renewal of Broken Human Speech

The classic Christian exegetes loved to contrast Babel and Pentecost (Origen, On Genesis 1; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 17.16–17; Gregory Nazianzus, Orat. 41.16; Chrysostom, Homily 2 on Pentecost 2). As the idolatry of Babel had resulted in the breaking down of international communication through divine judgment on sin, now the grace of God was reaching out to all nations in the midst of their egocentric incapacity to communicate (Chrysostom, Demons Do Not Govern the World; Cassiodorus, Expos. On Ps. 80.6).

The Spirit of God speaks all languages (Augustine, Sermons 267, 268, 269; Chrysostom, Homily 35 on First Corinthians), hence “supersedes the divisiveness of Babel” (Vat. II, Mis. 4). Pentecost was an international event signaling that God’s peace was not limited exclusively to the Jews but that God was pouring out his own Spirit upon all flesh, as long ago promised (Joel 2:28).

Classic exegetes viewed the fall of language as an expression of the fall of humanity (Gen. 11:5–9; Ps. 55:9–11; James 3:5–8; Chrysostom, Hom. on Gen. 30). If one thinks of what the world might have been like if wholly unstained by sin, language would attest truth. Under the prevailing conditions of the history of sin, however, language became Babel—deceptive and untruthful. When the heart is self-deceived, language cannot bring truth to accurate expression (Augustine, Tractates on John 74.2; Calvin, Comm. 1:320–39).

Pentecost is an anticipation of the end time when all human speech will finally be redeemed and brought back to unblemished truth in the celestial community. In the midst of the babbling of the nations of the world, divided and conquered by sin, the Holy Spirit at Pentecost comes to unite all humanity by making all human languages congruent with God’s address (Ephrem, Hymns of Paradise 11.14; Calvin, Comm. 18:77; Kuyper, WHS: 136–38).

One may think without a tongue but not speak. Logos (word, thought) is attested only by means of glōssa (tongue). The tongue gives the mind a means of expression. Without a tongue one cannot speak one’s mind. The coming renewal of broken human language is a dramatic expression of the Spirit’s overarching mission of human renewal (Phil. 2:11; Rev. 5:9–13; Augustine, Narration on Psalm 54 11; Sermon 271; Gregory I, Hom. on the Gospels, 2, 30, 4).

Tongues and Interpretation: Pentecost and Corinth Contrasted

The risen Lord had indicated to the disciples in the Markan epilogue that they would “speak in new tongues” (Mark 16:17), in varied languages. Among the gifts of the Spirit in Paul’s view was the gift of “speaking in different kinds of tongues” (heterō gene glossōn), accompanied by a complementary gift of “the interpretation of tongues” (1 Cor. 12:10; Ambosiaser, Comm on Paul’s Epis., 1 Cor. 12.10). “These gifts were given to women as well as men” (Theodoret, Comm. on 1 Cor. 245). This need not be limited to ecstatic utterance of unknown languages but may also refer to proclaiming the gospel in other known human languages. After Pentecost these utterances were understood only by some, perhaps only a few, and needed hermēneia, “interpretation,” a process that itself was a gift of the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:10).

The miracle of Pentecost pointed the way toward the laborious and practical task ahead for the church: to learn the world’s languages. Paul placed strong emphasis upon the translation of tongues so that prophetic utterances could be rightly understood. Contemporary worldwide print, broadcast, preaching, and discipling ministries are among the Spirit-enabled modern forms of speaking in the varied tongues of humanity (Paterius, Expos. Deut. 2).

Paul did not hesitate to remind his hearers that he had spoken “in tongues more than all of you” (1 Cor. 14:18). He then qualified this by warning that “in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand in a tongue” (1 Cor. 14:19). Shortly thereafter Paul would warn the great international Christian community at Corinth of abuses of this gift: “If anyone speaks in a tongue, two—or at the most three—should speak, one at a time and someone must interpret. If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and God” (1 Cor. 14:27, 28). Isaiah had earlier warned against “spiritists, who whisper and mutter” (Isa. 8:19). The Spirit wishes to communicate accurately God’s merciful will to save. “Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers” (1 Cor. 14:22). “Tongues are a sign to unbelievers not for their instruction, as prophecy is for both believers and unbelievers, but to astonish them” (Chrysostom, Hom. on Cor. 36.2).

With Jerusalem’s tongues of Pentecost, the Spirit was offering gifts that granted understanding, resolved confusions, and reordered lives. With Corinth’s tongues, the pattern at times reverted to sounding more like Babel; tongues became a serious pastoral problem for Paul, who admonished that “everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way” (1 Cor. 14:40). “If we take a closer look at the origin of sin, I think that it is nothing else than the inordinate love by a rational creature of the things set in order by God” (Fulgentius, To Monimus 1.20.2).

Paul did not forbid the Corinthians to speak in tongues but reminded them that there are greater gifts, the more excellent way of faith, hope, and love (1 Cor. 12:31; 13:13; Theodoret, Comm. on Cor. 255). If one speaks in tongues without love it sounds merely like “a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Cor. 13:1).

The Spirit freely and sovereignly bestows gifts of the Spirit. If so, it is hardly fitting for recipients to set their hearts upon receiving particular special gifts. Rather, they do well to receive gratefully whatever the Spirit offers (1 Cor. 12:11). We are taught to be willing to be filled with the Holy Spirit with the gifts God chooses to distribute (Eph. 5:18), not to seek to acquire particular gifts or control the allocation (Origen, OFP 1.3; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 14.12).

The Continuing Need for Discernment: Testing the Spirits

The apostles were aware that false claims would be made concerning the Spirit: “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons” (1 Tim. 4:1). We are specifically warned not to “believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God” (1 John 4:1–3; Didymus the Blind, Catena, CEC 129). The faithful are instructed to test the spirits by assessing any atypical claims in relation to the whole connected history of God’s self-disclosure.

The revealed Word of God as consensually and canonically received by this resilient transgenerational community through twenty centuries thus becomes the trustworthy standard by which diverse spirits can be tested. Anyone may make a reasonable test of the claims of the competing “spirits” to see if they are of God by examining whether they are consistent with what is historically and reliably known of the revealed God. God the Spirit is always meeting us in what appear to us to be new ways, yet always in continuity with the ways in which the triune God has already become self-revealed in the histories of Israel, Jesus, and the church, and the world (Origen, OFP 3.6.6; Vincent of Lérins, Commonitory, 2).

The Spirit assists in this discernment, bringing the gifts in time toward consensual reception. “God is not the author of confusion, but of peace” (1 Cor. 14:33). “We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey” (Acts 5:32).

Holy Spirit and Holy Writ

“All Scripture is God-breathed [theopnuestos) and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16, 17; Theophilus, To Autolycus 2.22.9; 3.11–14; Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 2.16.2, 9). Scripture is breathed out by God, the product of God’s Word or speech, as breathing is intrinsically connected with human speech (Ambrose, Of the Holy Spirit 3.14.112). Although “inspiration of scripture” is commonly used to describe this doctrine, theopneustos focuses upon the simple metaphor of spiration (the breathing) of God’s own life into the written word (Regulations of Horiesios 52).

God’s Own Word Breathed Into the Written Word

The Paraclete is the Spirit of truth, who brings Christ’s words to reliable remembrance and bears witness to him (John 14:16, 26; 15:26). God the Spirit has shepherded the recollection of the revelation that is faithfully remembered in canonical scripture. The list or canon of scriptural texts was repeatedly received consensually as the Spirit’s own address, who bestowed upon the writers the gift of rightly remembering the events through which God became revealed (Athanasius, Festal Letters 39; Third Council of Carthage, SCD 92).

In their original form and language, prior to any possibility of copyist errors or glossings, the canonical scriptures, according to ecumenical teaching, constituted the address of God to humanity enabled by the Holy Spirit working through attentive, reliable attestors. The believing church ecumenically consents to the premise that the Spirit has so reliably protected this recollection and transmission of scripture that no truth essential to salvation has been lost. The account of God’s saving action toward humanity is in this way available to be read wherever canonical scripture is rightly recalled, translated, understood, and reappropriated. “When we do understand it, we are right. But when we are wrong because we haven’t understood it, we leave it in the right. When we have gone wrong, we don’t make out Scripture to be wrong, but it continues to stand up straight and right, so that we may return to it for correction” (Augustine, Sermons 23.3). This is not a recent idea spawned by fundamentalists, but what orthodox Christians have always believed. “The soul watered by sacred Scripture grows hearty and bears fruit in due season. This is the orthodox faith” (John of Damascus, Orth. Faith 4.17).

The New Testament repeatedly acknowledges God’s Spirit as author of Hebrew scripture. Jesus regarded Psalm 110 as written by David but given by the Spirit (Matt. 22:43). Peter assumed that Psalm 2 had been spoken “by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of our father David” (Acts 4:25; cf. 1:16).

Paul told the Jewish leaders of Rome that “the Holy Spirit spoke the truth to your forefathers Isaiah the prophet” (Acts 28:25, 26; Isa. 6:9, 10). When the author of Hebrews quoted Psalm 95:7–11, he did not hesitate to say, “So, as the Holy Spirit says” (Heb. 3:7; cf. 10:15, 16).

The Authorship of God the Spirit Through Idiosyncratic Human Writers

The theandric analogy as set forth above (on the Person of Christ) was cautiously applied by classic exegetes to thinking about the address of scripture. Jesus Christ is truly human and truly God. So also the address of God the Spirit in scripture is truly human—in the sense that it is “fleshed out” in human language, in a historical setting by actual persons living finite lives—without ceasing to be truly God’s own Word that abides forever (Rom. 1:3, 4; 8:3; 2 Cor. 2:8; Phil. 2:2–8).

God the Spirit is viewed by the consensual tradition as author of scripture (Origen, Ag. Celsus 5:60; Basil, Hom. on Ps. 1). The authors wrote or spoke as moved by God’s own Spirit. Their consciousness, peculiarities of language, personalities, and psychological makeup became fittingly adapted instruments of the divine address (Chrysostom, Hom. on 2 Tim. 8–9; Calvin, Inst. 4.8.5–9).

The Spirit found their particular psyches, their intelligence, their readiness, their social location, their historical placement, useful to the divine plan and purpose, and spoke through them to and for all. It is the personal particularity that made the most difference in telling the story, since each hearer is unique. That their idiosyncrasies appear in holy writ is a testimony to the humanity of God. Each one’s personal human existence is unique and characteristic of that person; this is especially so in respect to speech.

Nor does this necessarily imply that the writers themselves always understood fully the import of their own writings. Daniel specifically articulated this ambiguity when he, “exhausted” and “ill,” wrote of his vision as recorded in scripture: “I was appalled by the vision; it was beyond understanding” (Dan. 8:27). It was while Balaam was intending to curse Israel that he was inadvertently led by the Spirit to offer Israel a beautiful blessing (Num. 22–24). Even Balaam’s ass became a useful means for the divine address (Num. 22:28; Origen, Hom. on Luke 14.9).

Prophecy was not understood by ancient ecumenical exegesis as a product of the human imagination, but of human agency being gloriously transfigured by God’s own Spirit, wherein human egocentricity did not interrupt or distort what God sought to communicate. “For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:21; Andreas, Catena, CEC 89).

Theophilus proposed a classic early form of the doctrine of God-breathed scripture: “Men of God carrying in them a holy spirit and becoming prophets, being inspired and made wise by God, became God-taught,” being deemed worthy to become “instruments of God, and contain the wisdom that is from Him,” attested accurately what God had been doing before their own time, in their own time, and would yet do in the future (Theophilus, To Autolycus 2.9).

Church Doctrine Judged by Scripture

The apostles repeatedly appealed to Christ’s own precise words as having binding authority (1 Thess. 4:15; Gal. 6:2; 1 Cor. 7:10–25; Acts 20:35). Unless they made disclaimers, they often assumed that their readers would regard their own utterances as having similar binding authority insofar as they were consistent with those of the crucified Lord of glory (2 Thess. 2:15; 2 Cor. 2:9; 7:15; cf. Barnabas 9.9; Ignatius, Philadelphians 7.1).

Amid controversy, the precise words of Christ as apostolically attested were the final court of appeal. “Unless I find it in the originals in the gospel, I do not believe, and when I said to them, ‘It is written,’ they answered me, ‘That settles it’” (Ignatius of Antioch, Philadelphians 8.2; cf. Smyrnaeans 7.2).

Already by the time of the writing of Second Peter, the letters of Paul were being read, along with the Hebrew Bible, as comparable with “the other scriptures” (loitas graphas, 2 Pet. 3:16). The Gospels and epistles were regularly read in services of worship (1 Thess. 5:7; Col. 4:16; James 1:1; 1 Pet. 1:1; Clement of Rome, Corinth 47.1; Justin Martyr, Apology 1.67; Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 2.27.2; Muratorian Canon). Clement of Rome considered the communications he had exchanged with the church at Corinth as having been “written through the Holy Spirit” (Clement, Corinth 63; Tertullian, Prescription Ag. Her. 36).

Prior to the formal firming up of the apostolic canon, other writings besides the New Testament were also being read and highly esteemed, especially Hermas, Barnabas, Didache, Clement of Rome, which were at times read in public along with the others (Hermas, Vis. 2.4.3; Dionysius of Corinth and Hegesip-pus as reported in Eusebius, CH 4.23.11). After formal canonization (Council of Carthage 3, SCD 92), these other writings, though revered, were not considered first-generation apostolic testimony.

Though no consistent theory of inspiration of scripture was ecumenically received, certain metaphors recur in the earliest apologetics. Athenagoras spoke of the prophets as elevated to a state of ecstasy wherein the Holy Spirit breathed upon them like a musician might play a flute (A Plea for the Christians 7–9).

The Conveyance of the Written Word Through Generations of Cultures Is Spirit Guided

Augustine acknowledged that the writers brought to bear their own memory and imagination and will in the report of revelatory events, yet the Holy Spirit elicited these recollections so as to ensure the accuracy of their reporting, transcription, and reception. He made detailed inquiry into seeming inconsistencies and discrepancies of the Gospel narratives (Harmony of the Gospels).

The commonly received assumption was that the Spirit so guided the writers that without circumventing their own human willing, knowing, language, personal temperaments, or any other distinctly personal factors, God’s own Word was recalled and transmitted with complete adequacy and sufficiency (Jerome, Letters 52.7).

The same Spirit who calls forth the canon of sacred scripture protects it from distortion and illumines our minds in the reading of it (Origen, Principles, preface). The Spirit gives special gifts to human authorship to guarantee an adequate and sufficiently reliable conveyance of the divine address (John 16:14; Chrysostom, Hom. on John 78).

Called Out People Under the Norm of Canon

The church from its beginnings has been shaped by a received tradition of holy writ in the Torah and prophets and wisdom literature. Then, as the New Testament became consensually received by the church, the worshiping community understood itself to stand under the norm of the apostolic proclamation, for apostolicity was the chief criterion of the New Testament canon.

Reliable Christian proclamation in each generation must be shaped in correspondence with the testimony of the written Word of Old and New Testaments (Decree of Damasus, Roman Synod, AD 382, SCD 84). The definition of the commonly received canon is an act in which the church places itself freely and unreservedly under the authority of the apostolic testimony (Tertullian, Prescription Ag. Her. 19–21). “Suppose there arise a dispute relative to some important question among us, should we not have recourse to the most ancient churches with which the apostles held constant intercourse, and learn from them what is certain and clear on the question at issue?” (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 3.4.1).

Protestants often argue that “the church did not produce the Scriptures; but the Scriptures gave birth to the church” (Ursinus, CHC: 290). The exception that validates this rule is the fact that in the first generation of witnesses it was the oral preaching of the witnesses that preceded the written word they preserved.

Thus classic Orthodox, Catholic, and Anglican writers are equally correct to argue (in a way that long predates form-criticism by centuries) that the remembering church by the power of the Spirit gave birth to scripture in its first generation. The first generation church delivered the scriptures so that the scriptures would deliver subsequent generations to the church.

Why Historical Revelation Requires a Written Word

If revelation occurs in history, then it must be remembered, otherwise it is a fleeting event perhaps forgotten. If it is to be remembered accurately, it requires written texts (Chrysostom, Hom. on John 88.2). If the written texts are able to be twisted, they must be protected from exploitation by those who do not grasp their meaning.

Christianity proclaims a Savior who meets us personally. The saving act of God is an event that occurred through the life and death of Jesus in history. Hence the recollection of the salvation event always has the character of historical and personal recollection. This constant historical reference of faith runs counter to a rationalism that seeks to formulate unhistorical ideas, or a mysticism that wishes to merge self in God (Origen, OFP: 29, 116), both of which seek timeless truth, not the truth that is personally made known in time through a personal history.

The reason the worshiping community reveres the canonical list of received scriptures today is the same reason they were specified in the early centuries: to preserve accurately the apostolic memory through changing historical circumstances. If revelation occurs in history and calls for continued recollection amid subsequent histories, it cannot proceed safely to transmit this memory without a written word. Those most eager to revise and rewrite the scripture are often those who have undisguised ideological interests that seek to override the primitive testimony to the truth (Gregory of Nyssa, Ag. Eunom. 3.7.1).

It was precisely while explaining why he was “writing these things to you” that the author of the First Letter of John, resisting Gnostic views that the apos tolic teaching needed to be supplemented with a higher form of knowing, said: “The anointing you [already] received from him [the Holy One] remains in you, and you do not need anyone [else] to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him” (1 John 2:20, 26–27). John is not rejecting all human teachers, but is opposing those who would expect new revelations that pretend to surmount the anointing, recollecting, and teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit in passing along the remembered and written apostolic witness.

The classic evidences by which the written word is recognized as God’s own address are

the power of the word to change lives
the incomparable once-for-all events to which it testifies
the truthfulness and moral excellence of its teaching
its “mighty effect” upon hearts

This is seen in the fact that “twelve Apostles, taken from among poor and unlearned people, of the lowest class, by this doctrine overcame and subdued to Christ the mighty, the wise, and the rich” (Longer Catech. Eastern Orthodox Church, COC 2:454, 455; cf. J. Wesley, A Clear and Concise Demonstration of the Divine Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures).

The Spirit Works Through the Word in the Heart to Persuade

The Spirit both inspires the scripture and convinces the hearer of its truth. The power by which the Word becomes hearable is itself the same power that breathed forth the scriptural testimony (Calvin, Inst. 1.9.2; 2.15.2). “The Spirit is the uniter of inner and outer, past and present, written Word and faith’s hearing, Christ and ourselves” (Heron, HS: 106).

If the scriptures were wholly unambiguous and always plain, then Peter would not have written that some of Paul’s letters contain some things hard to understand. If always obvious, there would have been no need to follow the Lord’s command to search the scriptures (Conf. of Dositheus 18).

The Personal Hearing of the Written Word

The Spirit works inwardly in the heart to elicit repentance, and to offer the gifts of faith, hope, and love. This is a work that transcends the bare text, the objective argument, or logical reasoning. The gospel speaks a personal word about the incarnate Person who has sent the Person of the Spirit to illumine its implication inwardly. In this way the Spirit works to bring the saving grace of the triune God to realization by eliciting full response to the unalloyed message of salvation, the whole counsel of God.

Two steps are implied: the Holy Spirit works in the administration of redemption first to speak to the human spirit through scripture and preaching, and then to work within the human spirit to elicit repentance and faith (Augustine, Tractates on John 77).

Spirit thus works both externally in bearing the objective testimony of scripture and preaching and inwardly within the hearts of the resistant as well as the faithful. It is through the work of the Spirit that humanity has come to hear of the work of the Son.

The Author of the divine address helps the hearer to understand the address itself. The Spirit assists hearers to “understand what God has freely given us” (1 Cor. 2:12; Ambrosiaster, Comm. On Paul’s Epis, 1 Cor. 2:12). Unless the Spirit is active to penetrate our self-deceptions, how could we, trapped in a history of finely tuned deception, recognize this address? The Spirit works preveniently to make the mind proximately receptive, to enable openness to the divine address, and to prepare the believer to be unafraid to receive the truth (John of Damascus, OF 4.17).

This reception occurs by the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit (testimonium internum spiritus sancti), for only God the Spirit can authenticate the Father’s own address to the hearer (Calvin, Inst. 1.7.4). Scripture conveys the living Word of God to us only as the Spirit makes us able to hear (Augustine, Spirit and Letter 28–45). “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Heb. 4:12; Symeon the New Theologian, Discourse 3.6).

Now we see as if dimly through a mirror. The Holy Spirit works to make the image clearer. Ultimately we will come closer to a more perfect knowledge (1 Cor. 13). Meanwhile, in the growing experience of the worshiping community, “the words of the Lord are flawless, like silver refined in a furnace of clay, purified seven times” (Ps. 12:6).

Gregory offered a memorable picture of the master biblical teacher in his fond description of Athanasius: “From meditating on every book of the Old and New Testament with a depth such as none else has applied even to one of them, he grew rich in contemplation, rich in splendor of life, combining them in a wonderful way by that golden bond which few can weave; using life as the guide of contemplation, contemplation as the seal of life” (Gregory Nazianzus, Orat. 21.6).

The Personal Nature of the Word Revealed Through the Spirit

The recollection of the saving action of God in Christ could not be carelessly passed along like other memories. It dealt with God’s own self-communication through a living person to a living person. Nothing happens in Christianity unless the Son meets persons inwardly through the Spirit.

The Spirit works by writing the image of Christ upon the hearts of the faithful. Your life is like a letter to each emerging neighbor: “You are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Cor. 3:2, 3; Ambrose, Paradise 8.39).

Wherever this word of scripture is read attentively, it transforms human lives, affects human societies, changes political structures, redeems human fallenness. When Paul left the elders of Ephesus, he committed them “to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified” (Acts 21:32).

It is the Spirit and not our cleverness that ensures that the writing and transmission of the apostolic witnesses are sufficiently accurate to deliver the testimony of salvation to subsequent generations. Hence the next generation already has in hand a written testimony to which preaching becomes accountable: an account of the history of salvation sufficient to depend upon, not merely hearsay tales or abstract theories, but historical reports of eyewitnesses.

The omnipotent God is not lacking in ability to deliver his Word to humanity accurately through the writers of scripture “without waiving their human intelligence, their individuality, their literary style, their personal feelings, or any other human factor” (Walvoord, HS: 60). Conviction is not the result of our skill but the Spirit’s work. “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:4, 5; Chrysostom, Horn on Cor. 21.3).

The Spirit in Preaching and Sacrament

The Spirit works in preaching, seeking to elicit through speech an accurate attestation to the salvation event, and in the hearers a sufficiently accurate reception. Both the written and preached word are addressed to the unconverted to awaken their desire for the truth, and to the faithful to bring them into closer personal union with the truth (Calvin, Inst. 3.1–2; Barth, CD 1/1:51).

Luther rightly resisted the individualistic notion of a direct, unmediated operation of the Spirit, as if apart from written word, sacrament, and community. As the Son comes in the flesh within the historical continuum of a particular people, so does the Spirit meet us in community through bodily signs, water, poured-out wine, the heard words of preaching, and the written word. The Spirit “has determined to give the inward part to no man except through the outward part” (Luther, EA 21.208, 212). “And so Paul preached the Word outwardly to Lydia, a purple-seller among the Philippians; but the Lord inwardly opened the woman’s heart” (Second Helvetic Confession, CC: 134; cf. Acts. 16:14). The Spirit’s illumination occurs “with and through the word” (Schmaldcald Articles, cf. Luther, EA 14.188).

Through Word and Sacrament the Spirit comes to us and operates within our hearts (intus operans, Luther, EA 29.108; 9.210) to apply the chief miracle that Christ operates upon the soul—the giving of life. When the word of God goes out in preaching, it does not come back empty (Luther; EA 29.208). In doing so, the Spirit does not enlarge or add to the apostolic testimony, but brings home that word to the individual contextually (Athanasius, Ag. Arians).

The Spirit assists the community of faith in accurately remembering, rightly interpreting, and practically applying the scripture (John 14:26; 1 Cor. 2:13; 2 Tim. 1:5). This is why the clearest and surest expositions of the scripture are to be found in the community of faith guided by the Spirit and not among individualistic interpreters (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 5.26; Vincent of Lérins, Commonitory, 1).