By Larry Dixon
Larry Dixon is a graduate of Emmaus Bible College and is Professor of Church History and Theology at Columbia Biblical Seminary and School of Missions in Columbia, South Carolina. He attends Woodland Hills Community Church in Columbia. This is the fourth article in a six-part series on the subject, “Understanding the Trinity.” The six articles were originally lectures delivered at a symposium on the Trinity held at Emmaus Bible College on October 10-12, 2002.
Introduction
In 2002 I wrote an article in The Emmaus Journal entitled “The ‘Shy’ Member of the Trinity: The Holy Spirit.” [1] Numerous authors have noted the neglect in the area of doctrine that relates to the person and work of the Holy Spirit. [2] In the opinion of A. W. Tozer:
Our blunder (or shall we frankly say our sin?) has been to neglect the doctrine of the Spirit to a point where we virtually deny Him His place in the Godhead…. Our formal creed is sound; the breakdown is in our working creed…. A doctrine has practical value only as far as it is prominent in our thoughts and makes a difference in our lives. By this test the doctrine of the Holy Spirit as held by evangelical Christians today has almost no practical value at all. In most Christian churches the Spirit is quite entirely overlooked. Whether He is present or absent makes no real difference to anyone…. The doctrine of the Spirit is buried dynamite. Its power awaits discovery and use by the Church…. When He gets into the thinking of the teachers He will get into the expectation of the hearers. [3]
Church history illustrates the failure to thoroughly study the Holy Spirit. W. H. Griffith Thomas writes:
After making every allowance for historical circumstances, it is surely not without significance that the Apostles’ Creed contains ten articles on the Person and Work of Christ, with only one on the Holy Spirit. And when we consider the scarcity of references in the New Testament to the Holy Communion, contrasted with the prominence given to it in the history of the Church, we have another significant illustration of the comparative neglect of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. [4]
As we will see in our study, the Holy Spirit has always been there to be studied and appreciated. But the disclosure of information about the Spirit of God has varied down through biblical history. [5]
We will examine the promises of Jesus to send the Spirit (including a discussion of the expression “the other Comforter”), the place of the Spirit in the Trinity (including the Spirit’s presence in the Old Testament), analyze one evangelical scholar’s doctrine of the Spirit, and conclude with several implications for our lives. We will not provide a detailed theology of the Spirit, although such a study would be of immense value. [6] We will discuss in an Appendix to this article one example of the danger of theological speculation in studying the Holy Spirit.
Jesus’ Promise of the Spirit
One scholar writes: “God the Holy Spirit worked behind the scenes in the Old Testament. When the main actor in the drama of salvation, the Lord Jesus, appeared on the stage of history, he drew attention to the Spirit of God in a new way. By talking about the Holy Spirit in connection with himself, Jesus put the spotlight on the Spirit.” [7]
Two primary New Testament texts give evidence to us of the Savior’s spotlight on the Spirit: John 7 and the Upper Room Discourse (John 14–16).
John 7:37–39
On 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.
The Context of the Chapter
John 7 begins with a confrontation between Jesus and his earthly brothers. They mockingly challenge him to go up to the Feast of Tabernacles and show himself to the world (v. 4); their mocking flows out of their unbelief (v. 5). Jesus rebuffs their invitation, for it was not the right time to present himself publicly. He, however, goes up secretly and keeps in the background until halfway through the Feast (v. 14). His teaching in the temple courts leads some Jews to ask, “How did this man get such learning without having studied?” (v. 15). He then engages in a vigorous debate about his own identity, the source of his teaching, his working of miracles on the Sabbath, and the threats to his life (vv. 14–36).
The Feast of Tabernacles
Before we look at Jesus’ proclamation in verses 37–38 (and John’s divine commentary in verse 39), it might be helpful to review the Feast of Tabernacles, a festival rich in symbolism. The people camped out in leafy bowers during the Feast and carried with them bunches of leaves called lulabs (see Leviticus 23:40). The lulabs symbolized the stages of the journey in the wilderness, and the fruit reminded them of the good land to which the Lord had brought them. Certain psalms would be recited, the lulabs would be shaken, and prayers would be offered for rain and a fruitful season. As one scholar says:
On each of the seven days of the feast a priest drew water from the pool of Siloam in a golden flagon and brought it in procession to the temple with the joyful sounding of the trumpet. There the water was poured into a bowl beside the altar from which a tube took it to the base of the altar. These symbolic ceremonies were acted thanksgivings for God’s mercies in giving water in past days (probably looking right back to the smiting of the rock in the wilderness and then on to the giving of rain in recent years). They were also an acted prayer for rain for the coming year. [8]
Isaiah 12:3 was associated with these ceremonies: “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.” Morris points out that the Jerusalem Talmud links this text in Isaiah and the ceremonies of Tabernacles with the Holy Spirit. “Why is the name of it called, The drawing out of water? Because of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, according to what is said: ‘With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.’” [9] The Lord Jesus takes the water symbolism of the feast and speaks of something far greater than the need for rain for the crops.
The Invitation to Drink, v. 37
Loudly and emphatically Jesus cries out his invitation in verse 37, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.” He does so standing, although the custom was for a teacher to sit with his disciples. Both his words and his posture indicate the importance of his invitation. One cannot help but recall Jesus’ statement to the Samaritan woman in John 4:10, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
Morris believes that Jesus’ primary reference may not be to the temple rite, but to the supply of water from the rock in the wilderness. He favorably refers to Godet’s comment regarding the symbolism of John’s gospel in terms of Old Testament figures, e.g., that Jesus presents himself as the true temple in John 2; as the true brazen serpent in John 3; as the bread from heaven, the true manna, in John 6; as the true rock in John 7; as the true luminous cloud in John 8, and so on, until chapter 19, where Jesus will finally realize the type of the Paschal lamb. [10]
In this text the Lord Jesus makes a startling proclamation about himself and a specific promise about the Spirit of God. About himself “Jesus’ pronouncement is clear,” says D. A. Carson; “he is the fulfillment of all that the Feast of Tabernacles anticipated.” [11]
His invitation is indiscriminate—“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink;” and, although it sounds strange to say it, Christocentric—he invites any to come to him and believe in him. Despite the claims of liberal commentators and scholars that Jesus never directed attention to himself, John’s testimony challenges such an assumption. Although we will later look at the relationships within the Trinity, Jesus’ proclamation here makes it clear that one’s belief is to be in him. Edersheim asserts that Jesus is “not only in the Temple, but, at the close of the most solemn rites of the Feast, asserting, within the hearing of all, His claim to be regarded as the fulfillment of all, and the true Messiah!” [12]
A master of metaphor, the Lord Jesus equates coming to him and drinking of him with believing in him. Perhaps some of those present could not help but recall the Psalmist’s declaration, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God” (Ps. 42:1). [13]
The Promise of Living Water, v. 38
Not only is Jesus inviting his listeners to believe in him, but he declares that such faith will be rewarded and is a fulfillment of the divine Scriptures. He promises that “streams of living water will flow from within him” (v. 38), probably referring back to the Old Testament texts of Exodus 17:1–6 and Ezekiel 47:1–11. What a bold statement—to claim that one’s belief in him is a fulfillment of a divine promise of God’s Holy Word! And the reward for such belief, Jesus says, involves Someone other than himself. Morris points out that there was a saying of Rabbi Akiba from Midrash Sifre on Deuteronomy 11:2 which stated, “The disciple who is beginning is like a well who can give only the water it has received; the more advanced disciple is a spring giving living water.” [14]
Jesus’ invitation focuses directly on himself, but also declares a result which the one who is thirsty could not anticipate. For all who come to him and drink, “streams of living water will flow from within them.” G. R. Beasley-Murray writes:
The word of Jesus implies that as God intervened to save his people in the past and promised fullness of blessing in the coming kingdom, so Jesus offers that gift of water in the present. What gift is that? Jews interpreted gift of water in varied ways. In the Old Testament it is applied to God himself, “the fountain of living waters” (Jer. 17:13; see Zech. 14:8); in Judaism to the law (“As water is life for the world, so are the words of the Tora life for the world,” Sifra Deut. 11, 22) and to Wisdom (“Those who eat me will hunger for more, and those who drink me will thirst for more,” Ben Sira 24:21), and not infrequently to the Holy Spirit. Among rabbinical sayings illustrating this last application there are several which specifically link the water-drawing ceremony of the Feast of Tabernacles with the Holy Spirit, e.g., Sukkah 5:55a: “Why did they call it (the court of the women) the place of drawing water? Because it was from there that they drew the Holy Spirit, according to the word, ‘with joy you will draw water out of the wells of salvation.’” [15]
One Christian leader sometimes preaches on what he calls “prepositional Christianity,” and we see that angle here in John 7. Those who are thirsty come to Jesus; the result of coming to Jesus is that those streams “will flow from within them.” And such streams of living water are not intended for the self alone. As one commentator points out:
Believers are not self-centred. As they receive the gift of God, so they pass it on to others. Or to put the same thought in another way, when people believe they become servants of God, and God uses them to be the means of bringing blessing to others. [16]
The Apostle’s Interpretation, v. 39
John, the Gospel writer, then gives us a divine commentary on what Jesus has declared. What audacity to presume to interpret the words of God Incarnate! But, led by the same Spirit of God, John writes, “By this He meant the Spirit” (v. 39). Here, finite man interprets the Living Word of God. John not only identifies the subject of Jesus’ analogy, but he gives further revelation concerning the Spirit. John indicates an order in God’s working and says that this Spirit is the One whom “those who believed in him were later to receive” (v. 39). [17]
There is a logical sequence of God’s working with man—of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit engaging man. And John writes a summary statement across this temporal scene at the Feast by saying, “Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified” (v. 39). Barclay says, “In this apparently startling sentence John is not saying that the Spirit did not exist; but that it took the life and death of Jesus Christ to open the floodgates for the Spirit to become real and powerful to all men.” [18] Another commentator notes:
There is nothing in the Greek corresponding to “given,” and a more literal rendering would be “for it was not yet Spirit.” This probably points us to the period after Pentecost. The gift of the Holy Spirit to the infant church that day transformed everything, so that all that followed might be called the era of the Spirit. [19]
The giving of the Spirit awaited the glorification of the Son. There is here (indicated by John) a paradigm shift from, one might say, the time of the Son to the presence of the Spirit. Those who receive would be given, but that giving would not take place until there was the glorifying of the Son. Albert Barnes writes, “It was a part of the arrangement in the work of redemption that the influences of the Holy Spirit should descend chiefly after the death of Jesus, as that death was the procuring cause of this great blessing.” [20] S. H. Hooke concludes that “never until the Son of Man had ascended up where he was before, and the last Adam had become a life-giving spirit, had it been possible for the Spirit to enter into and become the life of the believer, producing in him the life of Jesus, as Paul says, ‘That the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.’” [21]
Is the declaration that “up to that time the Spirit had not been given” to be taken as absolute? Was there no presence of the Spirit of God in the Old Testament? Hardly. As one surveys the Old Testament passages, it is obvious that the Spirit was active in the Old Testament, but not to the degree or with the fullness that he is in this new dispensation of God’s working. Morris reminds us that “the Bible does not speak of the Spirit as totally inactive until that point; There is much about him in the Old Testament and the Gospels. But nothing can compare to his activity in the apostolic age.” [22] Carson adds, “What the Evangelist means is that the Spirit of the dawning kingdom comes as the result—indeed, the entailment—of the Son’s completed work, and up to that point the Holy Spirit was not given in the full, Christian sense of the term.” [23]
The Upper Room Discourse
The second source of information concerning Jesus’ promise concerning the Spirit is the “Upper Room Discourse” (John 14–16). [24] In these three chapters [25] Jesus brings his disciples into his confidence as he prepares them both for his leaving and the Spirit’s coming. We will handle each of the three chapters in order.
John 14
If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.
All this I have spoken while still with you. 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 14:15–21, 25–26).
In this text Jesus promises that he will request the Father to send the disciples “another Counselor” (14:16). [26] The Spirit will come at the Son’s request of the Father. The order of the Godhead in giving the Spirit is in view here. This Spirit that will come, Jesus says, will be with the disciples forever (14:16; in contrast to the Son’s returning to the Father). Beasley-Murray states, “The fact that the ‘other Paraclete’ is to be with the disciples ‘forever’ confirms the generally accepted understanding that he is to be the successor to Jesus and is to remain with them ‘unto the age,’ i.e., till the revelation of the kingdom of God.” [27] This same commentator writes, “It is conceivable that the roles of Jesus and the Holy Spirit in relation to the ‘trial’ of the Lord and his disciples are also in view; in that case Jesus as the exalted Lord is now the judge, and the Spirit-Paraclete takes on his task of accusing the world and defending the followers of Jesus.” [28]
Millard Erickson points out that “Jesus has been a teacher and leader, but his influence was that of external word and example. The Spirit, however, is able to affect one more intensely because, dwelling within, he can get to the very center of one’s thinking and emotions, and lead one into all truth, as Jesus promised.” [29]
It almost appears that Jesus is confusing his person with the Spirit when he says, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me” (14:18–19). Verse 18 does not seem to be a reference to Christ’s Second Coming, but to the Spirit’s first coming: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” [30] And in verse 19 Jesus seems to be saying that the disciples will see what the world will not be able to see. Rather than the expression “you will see me” being understood as referring to his Second Coming, Jesus may well be implying that the disciples will see Christ in the Person of the unseeable Holy Spirit (compare 16:16). [31]
In verse 26 we read, “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.” The Spirit’s coming is seen in verse 26 as a future event (“whom the Father will send in my name”). And both the Father and the Son are involved in that promise of the Spirit’s coming: the Father will do the sending, but the sending will be in the name of (at the request of) the Son.
Looking at 14:25–26, Beasley-Murray says:
Observe that the Paraclete is to be sent by the Father “in the name of” Jesus. Jesus was sent in the name of his Father (5:43), i.e., as his representative; the Paraclete is sent in the name of Jesus and is thus his representative…. the Spirit will enable the disciples to recall the teaching of Jesus and to understand its meaning. [32]
He continues:
Two lessons seem clear from this saying: first, the Spirit brings no new revelation—he reminds disciples of the teaching of Jesus and enables them to comprehend it; second, the role of the Spirit as representative of Jesus and his task of recalling and interpreting the revelation brought by him show the personal nature of the Spirit. [33]
John 15
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, for you have been with me from the beginning (John 15:26–27).
Westcott analyzes the expression “who goes out from” in verse 26 and says:
The use of the…preposition para in this place seems…to shew decisively that the reference here is to the temporal mission of the Holy Spirit, and not to the eternal Procession. [34]
Concerning this sending of the Holy Spirit, we are given the promise of Jesus in John 14 of “the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name” (14:26). There it was the Father sending the Spirit in the name of Jesus. Here in John 15 Jesus says that the Spirit is the One “whom I will send to you from the Father” (John 15:26). Is it the Father or the Son who sends the Spirit? Or both? [35] Church history shows us that words matter, for the so-called filioque controversy, the addition of the phrase “and from the Son” to the Nicene Creed, had powerful ramifications in both the Eastern and Western churches.
The Western church’s addition of “and from the Son” (filioque) originated in Spain in the sixth century as a safeguard against Arianism. (It was meant to emphasize the full divinity of Jesus.) Its use spread to France and Germany and was adopted at the Council of Frankfurt (794). Rome did not use the filioque clause until the start of the eleventh century. The Greeks did not pay much attention to it until the ninth century—and then reacted strongly against it.
The Orthodox church objected (and still does) for two reasons: First, the Nicene Creed was seen as the common possession of the whole church. Feeling that any changes would need to be made at an ecumenical council by the whole church, the Orthodox viewed the addition as a sin against the unity of the church. Second, they believed that the phrase was theologically mistaken, even heretical, feeling that it changed the delicate balance in the Trinitarian doctrine. The division between the Western and the Eastern churches continues today. [36]
Erickson makes the point that the Eastern objection was based on John 15:26 which speaks of the Spirit as proceeding only from the Father. He writes:
Furthermore, the Eastern churches based their rejection of the word filioque on the concept of the monarchia (sole rule) of the Father—he is the sole fountain, root, and cause of deity. They could subscribe to a statement that the Spirit proceeds “from the Father through the Son,” but not to a statement that he proceeds “from the Son.” [37]
Grudem adds, concerning the filioque clause:
This was a statement about the nature of the Trinity, and the phrase was understood to speak of the eternal relationship between the Holy Spirit and the Son, something Scripture never explicitly discusses. The form of the Nicene Creed that had this additional phrase gradually gained in general use and received an official endorsement in ad 1017. The entire controversy was complicated by ecclesiastical politics and struggles for power, and this apparently very insignificant doctrinal point was the main doctrinal issue in the split between eastern and western Christianity in ad 1054. (The underlying political issue, however, was the relation of the Eastern church to the authority of the Pope.) The doctrinal controversy and the split between the two branches of Christianity have not been resolved to this day. [38]
John 16
But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me; in regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.
I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But 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. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.
In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me (John 16:7–16)
In John 16 the disciples are given both bad news and good news by Jesus. He says that he is going away, but his going away is necessary for the sending of the other Counselor to the disciples. Jesus tells them categorically, “Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (16:7). [39] In the working out of the Trinity’s plans, the Son needed to depart so that the Spirit could arrive. And Jesus actually says that his going away should not be for the disciples a cause of grief, but an occasion of anticipatory joy! We then learn of the two-fold ministry of the Spirit in verses 8–16.
The ministry to the world. The first ministry of the Holy Spirit articulated by Jesus here in John 16 concerns the world. His will be a ministry of conviction towards the world (16:8–11). [40] Beasley-Murray sees these verses as the Paraclete’s exposing the world. He writes that these verses present
the concept of a trial of the world before God. The “world” conducted a trial of Jesus, wherein he was declared to be guilty of sedition and blasphemy, and therefore worthy of death…. Both in the Fourth Gospel and in the Synoptics the accounts of the trials of Jesus before the Jews and the Roman governor are written to show that in reality Jesus was the innocent one and that the “world” was condemned by its action. The task of the Paraclete is to “expose” this situation; the trial before the Jews and Pilate accordingly gives place to the tribunal of God in heaven. [41]
Edersheim views the three-fold convicting ministry of the Spirit (sin, righteousness, and judgment) as having a chronological aspect. He writes:
Taking, then, the three great facts in the History of the Christ: his First Coming to salvation, his Resurrection and Ascension, and his Sitting at the Right Hand of God, of which his Second Coming to Judgment is the final issue, this Advocate of Christ will in each case convict the world. [42]
The ministry to the disciples. The second ministry of the Spirit set forth in John 16 will be a teaching ministry to the disciples. Thomas Oden reminds us (in the words of Ignatius), “All that we understand of the Father and the Son, we understand through the illumining work of the Spirit.” [43] Jesus was unable to deliver the full content of his teaching to his disciples because it was more than they could bear (v. 12). And the Holy Spirit would be sent as a substitute Teacher, but not with the associations which we often connect with such people. Substitute teachers appear as stand-ins who accomplish little while the main teacher is away—and they are frequently abused or ignored by their students. This substitute Teacher not only fits into Jesus’ “lesson plan,” He will guide the disciples into all truth. And his teaching ministry is not temporary. As the Spirit of truth, he will communicate to Jesus’ followers only what he hears.
The substance of his teaching will not only be “all truth” but also “what is yet to come” (v. 13). He will make known what is Christ’s and in so instructing Christ’s followers he will bring glory to Christ. [44] His “making known” ministry to the disciples appears to be his primary purpose for his being sent by the Son of God.
We are told in verse 14 that the Spirit will bring glory to the Son. We read in John 17:4 that Jesus had glorified his Father during his earthly ministry. There appears to be no Scripture that speaks of the Spirit being glorified by either the Son or the Father.
The “Other Comforter”
Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as “another Comforter” in John 14:16, and simply as “the Comforter” in John 14:26, 15:26, and 16:7 (KJV). In those contexts he also refers to the Spirit three times as “the Spirit of truth” (John 14:17, 15:26, and 16:13), once as “the Holy Spirit” (in John 14:26), and once simply as “the Spirit” (John 16:15). All of these titles are worthy of serious contemplation, [45] but we want to focus on the controversial expression, “another Comforter.”
The Greek expression is simply allos parakletos (ἀλλος παράκλητος)—an adjective followed by another adjective (a substantive). The term allos (ἀλλος) carries the idea of “another of the same kind.” [46] Jesus does not use the adjective heteros (ἕτερος), which would carry the implication “another of a different kind.” Swete says that the Spirit is “a second of the same and not of a different order.” [47] The expression “another” Comforter raises the question “other than what or whom?” One commentator argues that since Christ did not refer to himself as a paracletos, he might mean “one other than yourselves,” that is, “another Spirit like yours but beyond yours.” But it must be pointed out that although Christ did not use the term Paraclete of himself, he did speak of performing actions which a Paraclete might well perform.
The traditional translation of the phrase as “another Comforter” has met strong opposition, especially from Samuel Chadwick. He writes:
It is deplorable that our English version mistranslates the Greek Paraclete by the word Comforter. Jesus did not promise another Comforter, but another Paraclete…. It is impossible to read the four passages in which the word occurs without feeling the inadequateness of Comforter for the office He fills. Instruction, witnessing, and conviction are not usually associated with the ministry of consolation. The translation entirely misses the mark, and is responsible for untold mischief in both doctrine and experience; and yet it has prevailed from the days of the Fathers to the latest version of the Scriptures. It misrepresents the Mission of the Spirit, has led believers to think less of obligation than of comfort, and has associated Christianity with soothing consolations rather than with conflict. The need is not comfort, but power. The call is not to pampered softness, but to the hardship of service and the strain of battle. The Holy Spirit is not given to be a nursing mother to fretful children, but the captain of a mighty host full of nerve and fire. [48]
Carson wryly says, “In today’s ears, ‘Comforter’ sounds either like a quilt or like a do-gooder at a wake, and for most speakers of English should be abandoned. ‘Helper’ (GNB) is not bad, but has overtones of being subordinate or inferior, overtones clearly absent from John 14–16.” [49]
It must not be forgotten that Jesus is also called our paraclete in 1 John 2:1. The NIV translates that verse, “But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.” Six words are needed in English to translate the one Greek term (“one who speaks…in our defense”). In the context of 1 John 2, the need is not comfort but defense for the believer who has sinned. [50]
Beasley-Murray compares the Holy Spirit and Jesus in light of this use of paraclete for Jesus in 1 John 2:
Here Jesus is depicted as an intercessor in the court of heaven, representing the cause of his own, whereas the Holy Spirit is the Paraclete from heaven, supporting his own in the face of a hostile world. The ministries of the two Paracletes, however, are thought of not as simultaneous, but as successive. The Spirit-Paraclete takes the place of the Paraclete Jesus after Jesus’ departure to the Father. [51]
Although the term paraclete is explicitly used only once of the Lord Jesus, John 14:16 should also be considered by implication a reference to Jesus as Paraclete (“another Comforter”). Because the logical meaning is that the Spirit would be to the disciples as Jesus was to them, there are a number of implications which we will notice momentarily.
The Greek term Parakletos has generated much discussion concerning its definition. Being passive in form it has the literal meaning of “called to the side of.” Morris points out that “as a substantive it was used (though not often), like its Latin equivalent advocatus, as a legal term indicating the counsel for the defense.” [52] Therefore it could be defined as “called to one’s aid in a court of justice.” [53]
However, “Advocate” might not be the best translation in all contexts. When the Spirit engages in activities like arguing and instructing, these are not necessarily actions associated with an advocate. One commentator points out that “such a person would certainly argue, but on behalf of his client. He would instruct, but not the client. He would instruct the court. In John the παράκλητος is found instructing those whose παράκλητος he is.” [54] In short, παράκλητος “as the Greeks knew this legal functionary was not as precisely defined as our counsel for the defence.” [55]
John Wycliffe gets the credit or blame for the translation “Comforter,” according to Leon Morris. [56] “Comforter” can be defended as a translation if the English word is taken in its etymological sense (Latin, con, “with” and fortis, “strong”). It will then have the implication of “Strengthener” or “Helper.” [57]
But in modern times “comfort” has come to have a meaning like “consolation.” It points to a making the best of a difficult situation, whereas the idea in παράκλητος is not so much this as that of providing the assistance that will deliver from the difficult situation. “Helper” is better, but it does not really face the fact that the word is not active in meaning. [58]
C. K. Williams opts for the translation “Friend.” Others suggest especially a legal friend. Knox has renderings like “another to befriend you.” Morris points out that “it seems as if something like “friend” is needed, though the legal background of the term is not to be overlooked. John is thinking of the Friend at court.” [59]
Morris concludes the discussion on the meaning of Paraclete by writing:
The One who stands for us as the Friend at the heavenly court will perform functions that would not be required in any earthly court. Thus he will remind us of what Christ has said (14:26). For heavenly purposes in certain circumstances this may well be the most important thing that can be done. So with his teaching of us, of his bearing witness to Christ, his convicting of the world, and the rest. In all these things he is the legal helper, the friend who does whatever is necessary to forward their best interests. But it is impossible to find one English word that will cover all that the παράκλητος does. We must content ourselves with a term which stresses a limited aspect or aspects, or else use such a term as “Paraclete.” [60]
Implications of Our “Other Comforter”
R. E. Brown provides a helpful summary:
The Paraclete is a witness in defence of Jesus and a spokesman for him in the context of the trial of Jesus by his enemies; the Paraclete is a consoler of the disciples; more important, he is their teacher and guide and thus, in an extended sense, their helper. No one translation captures the complexity of these functions…. Christian usage has given a peculiar connotation and status to παράκλητος—a connotation not entirely independent of related Hebrew concepts and of the secular Greek meaning of the words, but a connotation that is unique just the same. [61]
Jesus says the Holy Spirit would be “another paraclete” to his disciples. Would the term “comfort” be the first to come to mind when we think of how Jesus was to his disciples? He rebuked them for their unbelief, for their sleeping, for having no faith; he defended them when they were accused of violating sacred rules of ceremonial washing or ignoring Sabbath observance; he “came alongside” them when their faith was too weak to exorcize a demon-possessed boy.
“Comfort” seems to imply bringing solace to one who is weeping. The disciples (during the earthly ministry of the Lord) did not know enough to weep. He did not “comfort” them—he challenged, chastised, corrected, and even cajoled them. “Comfort” is far too weak a term. And sometimes the last thing the believer needs is a sympathetic companion who wipes away his tears. We need One who is fully divine to come alongside of us and put his finger on our sins and remind our hearts, “You belong to Your Heavenly Father.” We require One who will motivate and empower us to take risks for the Kingdom of God, One who will not be satisfied with one-seventh of our week, with the leftovers of our hours and days. We need One who will be “called alongside of” us, even when we ourselves don’t have enough wisdom to invite his intrusive presence.
In an age of comfort food, we need the Bread of Life broken to us by the Spirit who yearns for our sanctification. We desperately require a Defender in the face of undeserved, snarling rebukes by an unbelieving world—and in the face of deserved charges of our sins by the great Accuser, Satan himself. The Spirit is not a soothing Teddy Bear, but the Hound of Heaven who will not let us be.
Our primary need is not for Someone who will say, “There, there. It will all be okay. It really doesn’t matter.” We require Someone who will remind us that life matters greatly, that we might well die for the sake of the gospel—and we are no fools if such happens to us. We need Someone who will remind us of our sonship even when Satan, the world around us, other Christians, and even our own conduct seem to contradict the very idea that we could be loved and forgiven by God. We need to be rescued from our consumeristic culture and transformed into God-centered, other-focused ambassadors for the King. In our postmodern atmosphere where it seems no one knows who they are and has stopped asking such questions, the Spirit reminds us of our adoption into God’s family. In our subjective circles of pooled ignorance, often punctuated by “here is what the Lord says to me,” we need the determined Applyer of the truth of Scripture to do his mighty work in conjunction with the serious attention to the meaning of the Word. Surrounded by moral relativity and a resistance to anyone who defends the concepts of right and wrong, we desperately need the inner conviction of the Spirit who does not debate moral matters with us, but puts his divine finger on the shortcomings of our thoughts and actions. In brief, we need Someone like Jesus.
The Place of the Spirit—A Study of His Trinitarian Relationships
As we have said, this will not be an intense, in-depth study of the Person or ministries of the Spirit of God. [62] In this section we will briefly look at the Trinitarian references in Scripture that set forth the Holy Spirit as God. We will also touch on the binitarian passages (i.e., those which leave out the Spirit). A critique of one popular evangelical’s study of the Spirit will then be undertaken. Lastly, we will draw out certain implications for our lives as we take the Spirit of God and his ministries seriously.
Trinitarian References to the Spirit of God
We will not seek to set out all the references in the Word of God to the Trinity, [63] but a few points are in order. [64] The doctrine of the Trinity is progressively revealed; that is, all that God wanted us to know of his Trinitarian nature was not disclosed at one point. Warfield aptly comments:
The principle of the progressive delivery of doctrine in the age-long process of God’s self-revelation, is not only a reasonable one in itself and one which is justified by the results of investigation, but it is one which is assumed in the Scriptures themselves as God’s method of revealing himself, and which received the practical endorsement of our Savior in His manner of communicating His saving truth to men. [65]
Warfield points out that although mention of the Spirit of God is common to both Testaments, “it is not equally common in all parts of the Bible. It does not occur as frequently in the Old Testament as in the New. It is found as often in the Epistles of Paul as in the whole Old Testament…. In only some half of the thirty-nine Old Testament books is it clearly mentioned.” [66] Suggestions, hints, and implications mark the Old Testament where we are led to believe that God is more than one person (e.g. Gen. 1:26; 3:22; 11:7; and Isa. 6:8). There are texts where one person is called “Lord” or “God” and is distinguished from another person who is also said to be God (e.g. Psalm 45:6–7 which is cited in Hebrews 1:8; and Psalm 110:1 which is used by the Lord Jesus in Matthew 22:41–46). Passages which speak of the “the angel of the Lord” imply a plurality of persons in God (Gen. 16:13; Ex. 3:2–6; etc.). Particularly relevant for our study is Isaiah’s statement that God’s people “rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit” (63:10). This suggests that the Holy Spirit is a person and is distinct from God himself. [67]
Our clearest information about the divine Trinity comes from the New Testament. We have texts where all three persons are named together. At the baptism of the Lord Jesus, “he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased’” (Matt. 3:16–17). In the Great Commission the Lord Jesus charged the disciples to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt 28:19). [68] Grudem suggests that the New Testament writers use the term “God” to refer to the Father, and “Lord” to refer to God the Son. If this is the case, then 1 Corinthians 12:4–6 (concerning spiritual gifts) would also be a Trinitarian reference. “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.” Clearly the benediction of 2 Corinthians 13:14 is Trinitarian. “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” Other key New Testament Trinitarian texts include Ephesians 4:4–6, 1 Peter 1:2, and Jude 20–21. [69]
Regarding our particular study on the Holy Spirit, Scripture makes it clear that he is indeed a distinct person rather than simply the “power” or “force” of God. [70] The Holy Spirit is described in relationships with the Father and the Son. [71] Logically, if the Father and the Son are persons, so must the Spirit be. Personal activities are ascribed to the Spirit. [72] According to Scripture, each person is fully God, but there is only one God. We must affirm the three statements: (1) God is three persons; (2) each person is fully God; and (3) there is but one God. [73]
The doctrine of the Trinity is no contrivance by man. As MacLeod points out, “The Trinity is not primarily a doctrine…. There is a doctrine about the Trinity…but if Christianity is true, the Trinity is not a doctrine; the Trinity is God.” [74]
The Binitarian Passages Worthy of Consideration [75]
Binitarian Passages in the New Testament
There are a number of passages where one would expect the Spirit to be included with the Father and the Son, but where we find he is omitted.
In Mark 13:32 Jesus said, “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” It is almost as if the Spirit does not merit mention as a member of the Godhead in this text.
The book of the Acts does not contain any clear binitarian passages. This makes sense in a book some have called “The Acts of the Holy Spirit.”
In the Pauline epistles the apostle’s characteristic benediction is “Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ” (cf. Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:3; 2 Cor. 1:2; Gal. 1:3; Eph. 1:2; Phil. 1:2; 2 Thess. 1:2; and Philem. 3). In 1 and 2 Timothy his benediction reads, “Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord” (1 Tim. 1:2; 2 Tim. 1:2). In the epistle to Titus Paul writes, “Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior” (1:4). First Thessalonians bears the brief benediction “Grace and peace to you” (1:1), while Colossians simply says, “Grace and peace to you from God our Father” (1:2). What conclusion can be drawn from looking at Paul’s benedictions? Simply that he nowhere includes the Holy Spirit in his greeting to the various churches and individuals to whom he writes.
Surveying Paul’s other binitarian statements in his epistles, we note that he introduces himself as “Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God” (1 Cor. 1:1; cf. 2 Cor. 1:1). He describes himself in Galatians as an apostle “sent not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father” (1:1). He identifies himself in 1 Timothy as “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope” (1:1). In 2 Timothy he describes himself as “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, according to the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus” (1:1). In Titus he writes, “Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ” (1:1).
Paul tells the Corinthians that they have been called by God into fellowship with “his Son Jesus Christ our Lord ” (1 Cor. 1:9). In chapter 8 of this same epistle he states, “For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live” (8:5–6). There is no mention in this text to the Spirit as either “God” or “Lord.”
Concerning headship in the home, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11 that “the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God” (11:4). Perhaps because Paul is dealing with the two individuals in a family (the woman and the man) he does not bring in the issue of the Spirit’s subordination within the Trinity.
After his treatise on the Resurrection, Paul writes, “When he [God] has done this [put all things under Christ], then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28). Paul has been contrasting Christ the Second Adam with the first Adam (verses 21ff) and concludes his discussion with the declaration that everything will be put under Christ (except for God himself, verse 27). Finally, the Son will be put under God “so that God may be all in all.”
The Galatians are reminded by Paul that Christ gave himself for our sins “according to the will of our God and Father” (1:4). “No immoral…person…has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God,” writes Paul in Ephesians 5:5. The Christian is to be “always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 5:20). Paul closes Ephesians with the expression, “Peace to the brothers, and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (6:23).
In that great doxological text of Philippians 2, we read that “every tongue [will] confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (2:11). Paul concludes this epistle by saying, “To our God and Father be glory for ever and ever. Amen…. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen” (4:20, 23).
In Colossians Paul gives a tightly-argued treatise on the supremacy of Christ (cf. 1:12–22). He begins that treatise by “giving thanks to the Father” (1:12) and concludes his opening section by saying, “for God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him” (1:19) and “he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death” (1:22). In chapter 3 Paul challenges the Colossians: “set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God…. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (3:1–3). In the same chapter he says, “whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (3:17).
In 1 Thessalonians, Paul addresses the church as “in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (1:1). “We continually remember,” Paul says, “before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ” (1:3). He refers to the fact that the Thessalonians “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath” (1:9–10). Paul’s prayer for these Christians in chapter three focuses on the Father and the Son: “Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus Christ clear the way for us to come to you. May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus Christ comes with all his holy ones” (3:11–13).
The salutation in 2 Thessalonians says, “To the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 1:1–2). In 2 Thessalonians 1:12 we are told to glorify the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. (“We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”) Again the Son and the Father are connected in 2:16–17 where we read, “May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.”
Paul reminds Timothy in 1 Timothy 2:5–6 that “there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men.” [76] In 5:21 we find the Father, the Son, and the angels grouped together: “I charge you, in the sight of God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels, to keep these instructions without partiality, and to do nothing out of favoritism” (cf. Mark 13:32).
We have a fascinating historical reference in 1 Timothy 6:13: “In the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession.” In Philemon 4–5 Paul expresses his gratitude for Philemon: “I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers, because I hear about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints.”
In non-Pauline literature, we also find several binitarian texts. For example, the subject matter of Hebrews 1 is the relationship between the Son and the Father and the latter’s exaltation of the former. We also read the author’s benediction in 13:20–21, “May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” I have been unable to find any references to glory being brought specifically to the Spirit.
Lest one think that the Spirit is absent from the epistle to the Hebrews, nothing could be further from the truth. He is cited as the source of a number of Old Testament Scriptures (e.g., 3:7, a warning against unbelief; and 9:8 and 10:15–17, a demonstration by the Spirit of the superiority of the New Covenant). In fact, Hebrews’ human author seems determined to solely refer to the Spirit as the source behind the words of God. Human authorship does not appear to be all that critical to the author of this epistle (whom scholars seem so determined to identify!).
James refers to himself in 1:1 as “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Peter opens with the doxological statement, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!” (1 Peter 1:3). Second Peter 1:1–2 also seems somewhat binitarian. “To those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours: Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.”
In 1 John 1:3 we read, “And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.” Other biblical texts tell us about our “fellowship with the Spirit” (Phil. 2:1), but here John’s emphasis is on our fellowship with the Father and the Son. We also read in 2:1 that we have a Paraclete other than the Holy Spirit. “We have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.” Later in chapter two, John declares, “Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the antichrist—he denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also” (2:22–23). This connection of the Father and the Son is also seen in 1 John 2:24 where John says, “See that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father.”
In 2 John 3 we have the benediction, “Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, will be with us in truth and love.” John also explains how to identify true teachers in verse 9: “Whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.”
Jude begins his epistle by addressing his concerns “to those who have been called, who are loved by God the Father and kept by Jesus Christ” (Jude 1).
In John’s Apocalypse we read about the 144,000 who have the Lamb’s and the Father’s names written on their foreheads (Rev. 14:1). We read of those in the millennium who are described as the ones who “will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years” (20:6). John writes that he did not see a temple in the New Jerusalem “because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple” (21:22). Twice in Revelation’s last chapter we read of “the throne of God and of the Lamb” (22:1, 3).
Conclusions from the Binitarian Passages in the New Testament
What conclusions might we draw from these binitarian references regarding the role of the Holy Spirit in the Trinity? We must be cautious because arguing from silence can be fairly speculative. Are we to conclude that the Holy Spirit did not care about the churches to whom Paul wrote bearing in mind that all of his introductory greetings in his epistles are binitarian? When Paul introduces himself in his epistles, are we to derive some primary theological point from his consistent reference to himself as an apostle only of Christ Jesus and God the Father?
We do have fellowship with the Spirit, according to Paul in Philippians 2:1. But that aspect of our fellowship is not Paul’s emphasis in 1 Corinthians 1:9. There is indeed but one God and one Lord, as 1 Corinthians 8:5–6 states. But that is not a denial of either the deity or the Lordship of the Spirit. That subject was simply not Paul’s concern in this passage.
The Spirit’s “place” in the Godhead is not Paul’s point in the famous text on headship in the home (1 Corinthians 11). That passage is binitarian by its very nature (relating to husband and wife).
First Corinthians 15’s emphasis on all things being put under Christ and Christ being put under God “so that God may be all in all” sounds on the surface like it is denigrating Christ’s deity and overlooking the Spirit’s reality. However, I would insist that this text is neither a diminishing of the Son’s full deity nor a denial of the Holy Spirit’s place in the Trinity. Those two theological subjects are not Paul’s concern in this section.
When Paul says in Galatians that Christ gave himself for our sins “according to the will of our God and Father” (1:4), we are to understand an order in the Godhead: the Father plans redemption, the Son carries out redemption, and other texts (e.g., John 3:8; Acts 16:14; Tit. 3:5) indicate that the Spirit applies redemption.
The giving of thanks to God the Father in Christ’s name (Eph. 5:20) emphasizes the object of our prayer and the right we have to pray. Paul is not in this text writing about the Spirit’s intercessory ministry on behalf of the Christian, nor does he deal with the question as to whether the Christian can pray to the Holy Spirit.
It is Christ who will be confessed at the end of the age by every tongue, writes Paul in Philippians 2:11. And that universal confession [77] will be to the glory of God the Father. Again, there is no textual evidence which indicates that the Spirit will be the primary object to be glorified by humanity.
The epistle to the Colossians provides an apologia for the person and work of Christ, emphasizing that it was in him that the fullness of God dwelt (1:19) and that it was he who performed the work of reconciliation (1:22). The God-Man, Jesus Christ, is the One who is seated at the right hand of God (3:1–3). It is not the Spirit who became incarnated for our sakes.
One might suggest that the name of the Spirit could well have been added to texts like 1 Thessalonians 1:1, so that Paul’s greeting would be to the church which is “in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.” We would welcome additional Trinitarian references in the Word, but ours is not the task of adding to Scripture.
When the Thessalonians are described as having “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath” (1 Thess. 1:9–10), we are not at liberty to add something like Romans’ statement that it was “through the Spirit of holiness [that Christ] was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:4). That is certainly true, but it is not Paul’s emphasis in this section of 1 Thessalonians.
It is the Lord Jesus Christ whom we are to glorify according to 2 Thessalonians 1:12. Nowhere are we directly told to glorify the Spirit of God. In fact, the purpose of his ministry would be to bring glory to Christ (John 16:14).
Other Pauline binitarian texts (such as 1 Timothy 5:21 [cp. Mark 13:32] or Philemon 4–5) provide great opportunities for speculation as to why the Spirit is not included, but we are given no encouragement from the Word to engage in such.
In terms of non-Pauline literature, a number of texts deserve more attention than can be given here. For our purposes, only John’s epistles and Jude will be considered. Is our fellowship only with the Father and his Son (1 John 1:3)? Of course not. As we have seen, Philippians 2:1 reminds us of our fellowship with the Spirit. John’s emphasis on Jesus as our paraclete in 1 John 2:1 is connected with the fact that the Son is the atoning sacrifice for our sins (see verse 2). Again it was the Son who became incarnated and who died in our place.
The antichrist, according to John, is the one who denies the Father and the Son (1 John 2:22–23). Why would one not read that the denial of the Spirit would be a characteristic of the antichrist? Perhaps the answer is that it is the Son who demands belief, and that belief is to be in himself. Those who reject him reject the Father. Would it then be fair to say that the Spirit, strictly speaking, is not the direct object of the Christian’s faith?
The epistle of Jude emphasizes the love of God the Father and the keeping power of the Lord Jesus Christ (v. 1), without denying the reality of the Spirit. Jude reminds his readers that the false teachers who are plaguing them “do not have the Spirit” (v. 19) and that the believers are to “pray in the Holy Spirit” (v. 20).
John’s Apocalypse contains several binitarian references but also refers frequently to the Spirit’s speaking to the churches (2:7, 11, 17, 29; 3:6; etc.). The Spirit appears to be in the background in terms of those whose names are written on the foreheads of the 144,000 (14:1), regarding the fact that believers will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign a thousand years with him (20:6), and regarding the truth that the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb will be heaven’s temple (21:22) and occupy heaven’s throne (22:1, 3).
These binitarian references in Scripture are interesting and illustrate, we think, the behind-the-scenes’ role which the third member of the Godhead plays. As someone has so cogently argued, the Holy Spirit is not into self-promotion. However, he is not immune from the efforts of some to invert the biblical order.
A Critique of Pinnock’s Flame of Love
Always the theological gadfly, Clark H. Pinnock has for years raised questions about the very fundamentals of evangelical orthodoxy. He once stated, “It often seems to me that we face not just a few minor changes on the outskirts of historic Christian conviction but a virtual revolution in fundamental beliefs.” [78] He has frequently led the charge in that revolution by advocating after-death opportunities for conversion, a wider-hope view which finds potential redemptive elements in world religions, as well as annihilationism for those who die without faith in Christ. He has rejected the doctrine of inerrancy in his text Scripture Principle. He has argued for some form of Protestant purgatory and, of late, has spearheaded the “Open Theism” movement which recently threatened to tear apart the Evangelical Theological Society and presently poses a serious challenge to the truth of God’s omniscience.
One should not be surprised that he has taken some rather interesting positions on Pneumatology (the person and work of the Spirit) in his 1996 work
Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit. [79] Pinnock resents the Spirit’s being treated as what he calls “a theological afterthought” and objects to Western Christianity’s subordinating the Spirit to the mission of the Son. [80] He suggests that we have not simply been forgetful of the Spirit; we are quite likely guilty of theological suppression.
“I have a suggestion,” he says. “Let us see what results from viewing Christ as an aspect of the Spirit’s mission, instead of (as is more usual) viewing Spirit as a function of Christ’s. It lies within the freedom of theology to experiment with ideas.” [81]
At the beginning of his discussion of the Spirit, Pinnock acknowledges his struggle with the issue of the Spirit’s gender and admits to wanting to use the pronoun “it” or “she” for various reasons. He says that we could “introduce feminine pronouns into God-talk in an orthodox way.” [82] He is thinking of feminine functions like birthing, nurturing, grieving, and sheltering. Although he capitulates on the pronoun issue, I find it fascinating that he employs the anarthrous (without the use of the definite article) noun “Spirit” frequently throughout his study. As an example, he writes, “Spirit is essentially the serendipitous power of creativity, which flings out a world in ecstasy and simulates within it an echo of the inner divine relationships, ever seeking to move God’s plans forward.” [83]
He argues that “Spirit…makes Christ’s work of redemption universally accessible.” [84] And he asks, “What if people thought that they detected stirrings of the Spirit in the heathen world?” [85]
He takes familiar pot-shots at propositional revelation when he says, “God does not reveal himself mostly in an abstract way, through propositions.” [86] And he criticizes the contemporary church when he writes, “We have placed emphasis on the sermon and the clergy at the expense of the Spirit.” [87]
In perhaps one of his more alarming sections, Pinnock deals with the relationship between the Spirit and the Son. Sounding somewhat like the early Gnostics, he writes, “Jesus experienced the baptism of the Spirit and became the unique bearer of the Spirit. At his baptism the heavens were opened.” [88] He further argues that “it was anointing by the Spirit that made Jesus ‘Christ,’ not the hypostatic union, and it was the anointing that made him effective in history as the absolute Savior. Jesus was ontologically Son of God from the moment of conception, but he became Christ by the power of the Spirit.” [89]
Concerning Christ’s humanity, Pinnock says, “It is important to recognize that Jesus was dependent on the Spirit. He had to rely on the Spirit’s resources to overcome temptation. He was weak and human and did not know the life of undiminished deity.” [90] Committing the same error as Edward Irving, the father of modern Pentecostalism, Pinnock writes, “According to Paul, Christ came in the likeness of sinful flesh (Rom. 8:3). He did not protect himself but took on fallen human nature.” [91]
Concerning his miracles, Pinnock writes of Christ, “In becoming dependent, the Son surrendered the independent use of his divine attributes in incarnation.” [92] “The Spirit enabled Jesus to do his mighty works…. They are not evidence of Christ’s deity but evidence of the Spirit at work in him.” [93]
I would be remiss if I did not point out what appears to be a distinct universalistic flavor characterizing some of Pinnock’s comments about the Spirit:
There is a cosmic range to the operations of the Spirit, the Lord and giver of life. Pope John Paul II speaks of “the breath of life which causes all creation, all history, to flow together to its ultimate end, in the infinite ocean of God.” [94]
By acknowledging the work of the Spirit in creation, we are actually allowed a more universal perspective where Spirit can be seen as seeking what the Logos intends and where one can believe and hope that no one is beyond the reach of grace. A foundation is laid for universality if indeed the Spirit pervades the world and if no region is closed to his influences. [95]
With the glorification of Jesus a process began which will end in the divinization of the world. [96]
Sounding like the universalist Karl Barth (and footnoting his Church Dogmatics), Pinnock writes, “The atonement tells us that God intends to be God for us, whatever it costs him. God registers his yes decisively against the human no.” [97]
Pinnock also attacks the penal-substitutionary view of the atonement when he writes:
What I am going to propose now is an interpretation of the work of Christ stimulated by the reappropriation of Spirit Christology. The heart of it is that the Spirit facilitated the Christ event in order to save humanity by way of recapitulation. This is what atonement looks like when Christology is placed within the mission of the Spirit. [98]
This explains why the Spirit had to take Jesus on a representative journey for the sake of wholeness. It encourages us to seek the meaning of atonement not in a rationalistic theory but in the mighty act of God in which sin and death are annihilated and the world begins to be recreated. [99]
Continuing his attack on the forensic view of the atoning work of Christ, Pinnock writes:
We need fresh thinking on how we are saved by his death. On that subject our thinking has gone astray. We have placed such emphasis on the legal dimension of atonement that the resurrection, which does not address that issue as framed, drops away as a saving event. [100]
The work of Christ was not primarily a legal transaction but a power event. [101]
The popular view is distorted, picturing the Father as judge and the Son as victim. It gives the impression that God values his honor more than he values us, and it threatens the unity of Father and Son in the work of atonement. [102]
Sacrifice is best understood not primarily as balancing the scales of justice. It is the surrender of a life and not so much an appeasement. [103]
A brief critique of Pinnock’s text must include the following elements. Although I agree with his charge that we have often treated the Holy Spirit as a theological afterthought, it is an overreaction to invert the biblical revelation and see the Son as an extension of the Spirit’s ministry. Such a position does not do justice to what we have seen in John 7:39. When Dr. Pinnock says that “it lies within the freedom of theology to experiment with ideas,” we must be extremely careful. [104] Thomas Howard (in an article entitled “The Parts Angels Play”) makes the point that “the Bible is the Book with the story in it. You have to follow how the author tells his story. You have to stick with his own emphases. You cannot go tooting off to write your own story and then call it his.” [105] Regarding the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, we must follow his agenda, not impose our own.
It also appears that Pinnock flirts with a non-personal view of the Spirit by his use of the anarthrous noun “Spirit” and by his characterization of the Spirit as “the serendipitous power of creativity.” Further, his diminuation of propositional revelation and his challenges to the doctrine of inerrancy seem to reflect a sympathy with Barthian thought. And some of his universalistic-sounding passages bear a striking resemblance to Barth’s doctrine of universal election. Both his position of Christ’s taking on a sinful nature and his rejection of a forensic view of the atoning work of Christ lie outside standard biblical orthodoxy.
Implications of Taking the Spirit of God Seriously
One of the challenges in a study of the third member of the Godhead is that of balance. If we are indeed guilty of doctrinal oversight at best or theological suppression at worst, we need to repent of our ignoring the Spirit and recover what the Word says about him and his ministries. The answer is to return to the Word and examine its emphases lest we replace the Bible’s plot-line with our own.
The Lord Jesus made it abundantly clear that the Spirit would be sent at his request of the Father. And the Holy Spirit would be given as a result of sinners believing in Christ. The object of saving faith is the Son; the Spirit is bestowed upon believers as a result of such faith. The divine (and invisible) Pneuma manifests himself in such believers, a manifestation which is metaphorically described as “streams of living water” (John 7:38). The normal Christian life, the Spirit-filled life, is one which is lived to bring spiritual refreshment to others.
The Spirit, who could not come in fullness until the Son was glorified, comes to bring further glory to the Son (John 16:14). When we with best intentions sing praise songs with words like, “Spirit, we praise You. We worship and adore You. Glorify Your name in all the earth,” we are missing the biblical emphasis that the Spirit’s task is to glorify Christ. If our hymnody is, as someone once put it, unfrozen theology, then we had better make sure our theology is biblical.
There is an order, a progression, to the working of the Members of the Trinity among humanity. Jesus spoke of leaving so that the Spirit could come. He compared his own temporary presence with the disciples to the permanent, abiding presence of the Spirit in the disciples (John 14:17). The Spirit will continue the teaching ministry of the Lord Jesus; he will remind them of what Christ had taught and will add to that fund of knowledge those truths which they at that moment could not bear (John 16:12). The Spirit does not originate the information he imparts; he takes from what is Christ’s and makes it known to the disciples (John 16:14). He speaks “only what He hears” (John 16:13). He is not the Creator of the truth but the divine Applyer of it.
His will be a two-fold ministry: he comes to bring conviction to the world and teaching to Christ’s disciples (John 16:5–16). As the Other Comforter, the Spirit is to the disciples what Jesus had been to them. Through their witness he brings conviction to the world.
Although the Son and the Spirit are distinguishable in their Persons and their ministries, they are so united that Jesus could say of the Spirit’s coming, “I will come to you” (John 16:18–19). Our differentiation of the Persons of the Godhead should be controlled by the statements of Scripture, lest we lose the unity of the Trinity.
The Spirit would come to testify about Christ as Christ had testified about the Father (John 15:26–27). And the Spirit in the disciples would cause them to testify about Christ. The Spirit is not the object, but the power, of the Christian’s testimony.
One must conclude from all the binitarian references in the New Testament that the Spirit’s role is that of support, empowerment, and conviction. He is in the background, as it were, and his focus to honor Christ should be our focus. Seeking to creatively invert the prominence of the Son and the deference of the Spirit flies in the face of numerous Scriptures.
Appendix: A Warning on Theological Speculation
In his discussion of the Pneumatology of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, theologian Robert Reymond makes the point that the Nicene Council, in countering the claims of the Arians, said nothing about the Holy Spirit beyond the simple declaration that the church believed in him. The deity and personal subsistence of the Son needed to be settled before much progress could be made regarding the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.
This lack was addressed at the Council of Constantinople in ad 381 when the Apollinarian heresy regarding Christ’s full humanity was one of the primary issues. It also challenged the Arian and semi-Arian groups who were teaching that just as the Father had created the Son, so also the Son had created the Spirit. The Council spoke of the procession of the Spirit, meaning to say that “just as the Son is essentially, necessarily, and eternally generated by the Father, so also the Spirit essentially, necessarily, and eternally proceeds from the Father.” [106]
The addition of the filioque clause was proclaimed a tenet of orthodoxy at the Third Council of Toledo in Spain in ad 589 and reflected Western Christianity’s anti-Arian theology “by announcing in the fact of the Spirit’s procession from both the Father and the Son, the latter’s co-equality with the Father.” [107] Berkhof speaks of the Holy Spirit’s “spiration” as “that eternal and necessary act of the first and second persons in the Trinity whereby they, within the divine Being, become the ground of the personal subsistence of the Holy Spirit, and put the third person in possession of the whole divine essence, without any division, alienation or change.” [108]
Reymond argues that such a definition misunderstands the intention of the Constantinopolitan Council to set forth the unique property of the Spirit that distinguished him from the Father and the Son. It is also, writes Reymond:
another instance of the early fathers going beyond Scripture in their effort to explain how it is that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God and of Christ. In so doing, they subordinated the Spirit to the Father and the Son not only in modes of operation but in essential and personal subsistence as well and, as Nicaea did with the Son earlier, denied thereby to the Holy Spirit the attribute of autotheotic self-existence. [109]
Only one verse in the entire New Testament “even remotely approaches such a teaching [of an inscrutable mysterious process transpiring eternally within the Trinity], namely, John 15:26, which contains the phrase, ‘who is coming forth…from the Father.’” [110] “But even here, the much more likely meaning, in accordance with John 14:26, is that the Spirit ‘comes forth from the Father’ into the world on his salvific mission of witnessing to Jesus Christ.” [111] Reymond cites Westcott for support that the preposition para “seems therefore to show decisively that the reference here is to the temporal mission of the Holy Spirit, and not to the eternal Procession.” [112] Plummer also sees the clause as “simply yet another way of expressing the fact of the mission of the Paraclete.” [113] H. R. Reynolds declares:
[John 15:26] is the great text on which the Western Church and the Greeks have alike relied for their doctrine concerning the “procession of the Spirit,” the timeless, pre-mundane relations among the Personalities of the Godhead…. There are those…who urge that these passages do not bear at all upon the internal relations of the Godhead, but simply refer to the temporal mission of the Holy Spirit…and much may be said in favour of this view. If this verse does not furnish the basis of an argument, there is no other which can be advanced to establish the view either of the Eastern or Western Church. [114]
Reymond points out that Raymond E. Brown, F. F. Bruce, Leon Morris, J. I. Packer, and D. A. Carson all concur with this view. Carson writes that “it is almost certain that the words ‘who goes out from the Father,’ set in synonymous parallelism with ‘whom I will send to you from the Father,’ refer not to some ontological ‘procession’ but to the mission of the Spirit.” [115]
B. B. Warfield suggests that, although Calvin accepted the concepts of “generation” and “procession,” the conception itself he found difficult, if not unthinkable; and…refused to make them constitutive of the doctrine of the Trinity.
He rather adjusted everything to the absolute divinity of each Person, their community in the one only true Deity; and to this we cannot doubt that he was ready not only to subordinate, but even to sacrifice, if need be, the entire body of Nicene speculation. [116]
Warfield adds that it was a very great service to Christian theology when Calvin firmly asserted for the second and third persons of the Trinity their autotheotes [“self-deity”].” [117] “Accordingly,” Reymond writes, “Warfield expresses great astonishment ‘at the tenacity with which [Calvin’s] followers cling to all the old speculations.’” [118]
Loraine Boettner adds that “it seems much more natural to assume that the words of John 15:26, which were a part of the Farewell Discourse, and which were, therefore, spoken within the very shadow of the cross, were not philosophical but practical, designed to meet a present and urgent need, namely, to comfort and strengthen the disciples for the ordeal through which they too were soon to pass.” [119]
Reymond writes:
I do not intend to deny that the three Persons of the Godhead do have distinguishing, incommunicable properties which are real, eternal, and necessary. Indeed, without them there would be no Trinity. The distinguishing property of the Father is paternity (paternitas) from which flow “economical” activities in which the Son and Spirit do not share; the Son’s is filiation (filiatio) from which flow “economical” activities in which the Father and Spirit do not share; and the Holy Spirit’s is spiration (spiratio) from which flow “economical” activities in which the Father and Son do not share, all descriptions which can be justified by Scripture. [120]
Reymond concludes by saying,
Finally, there can be no question that the Holy Spirit is a divine Person who is the Spirit of God and of Christ (Rom. 8:9), and that he “proceeded” or “came forth from” the Father and the Son (John 14:26; 15:26; 16:7; 20:22) at Pentecost on his salvific mission. But we must not attempt to define, beyond the fact of the clearly implied order, a modal “how” of the Spirit’s spiration. It is enough to know that the Scriptures affirm that this title distinguishes a third subjective conscious self in the depths of the divine Being. [121]
In conclusion, I would say that it was not in their concern to distinguish between the persons of the Godhead that the Nicene and post-Nicene fathers made their mistake. That task had to be undertaken in the face of the Sabellian heresy which denied any real personal distinctions between them. Where they made their mistake was in their attempt to explain how it is that the Son becomes the Son of the Father and how it is that the Spirit is the Spirit of God and of Christ. The explanations they offered have the Son acquiring his essence and personal subsistence from the Father through an eternal act of being begotten and the Spirit acquiring his essence and personal subsistence from the Father and the Son through an eternal act of proceeding. But in doing so they went beyond Scripture and concluded to formulations that in effect made God the Father alone autotheotic and the cause and “deifier” of the Son—the very opposite effect to the dominant intention which governed them throughout their labors—and the Father and the Son the co-causes and “co-deifers” of the Spirit. [122]
I would caution against such an approach, when clear scriptural warrant for it is slim to none, because it is a pretentious metaphysical speculation and as such faces the particular prospect of being discredited or ignored which every such speculation always faces. [123]
Thomas Oden reminds us of Irenaeus’ statement in his Against Heresies that “it is not our duty to indulge in conjecture.” [124]
Notes
- Larry Dixon, “The ‘Shy’ Member of the Trinity: The Holy Spirit,” EmJ 11(2002): 289-298. This term actually comes from Bruner in his work, The Holy Spirit—Shy Member of the Trinity, eds. Frederick Dale Bruner and William Hordern (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984). Other expressions which have been used in this vein regarding the Holy Spirit include “the Unknown Third,” “the God about whom no one writes,” “the forgotten God,” and “the Cinderella of the Trinity” (see David MacLeod’s “The Trinity and Scripture,” EmJ 11 [Winter 2002]: 156, n. 123). Watson E. Mills has produced a commendable bibliography (encompassing books and articles in several languages) on the Spirit (The Holy Spirit: A Bibliography [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1988]), although it needs to be brought up to date.
- The story is told of a little boy who stopped in front of a Catholic church with his bike and saw the priest come out. The priest said, “Come inside, young man. I want to show you something very important about our Catholic faith.” The little boy said to the priest, “But somebody will steal my bike.” The priest responded, “Don’t worry, the Holy Spirit will watch it.” So the little boy went inside and the priest said, “Let me show you how to make the sign of the cross.” The priest made the sign of the cross and said, “‘In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.’ Now you try it.” So the boy makes the sign of the cross and said, “In the name of the Father and the Son, Amen.” The priest asked, “What happened to the Holy Spirit?” The boy replied, “He’s outside, watching my bike.” The question of the priest is a very good question. What happened to the Holy Spirit?
- A. W. Tozer, The Divine Conquest (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1950), 65–66.
- W. H. Griffith Thomas, The Holy Spirit of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955), 2–3. The second-century church father Irenaeus (in his Against Heresies) testified that the early church believed “in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven.” (Quoted in Thomas C. Oden, Life in the Spirit, vol. 3 of Systematic Theology, 3 vols.[Peabody, MA: Prince Press, 1998], 3:6). The early Christian creeds mention the Spirit, but often quite sparingly. The Apostles’ Creed (Third-Fourth centuries) only has the expression “I believe in the Holy Ghost.” We learn nothing of the Spirit in the Chalcedonian Creed (ad 451). In the Athanasian Creed (c. ad 400) we learn that the Persons of the Trinity are not to be confused; that each is fully divine; that each shares equal glory and majesty with the others; that “the Holy Spirit is not created by the Father and the Son, nor begotten, but proceeds;” that he is uncreated, infinite, and eternal; and that there is one Holy Spirit, not three. In the Nicene Creed (ad 325) we are told that Christ came down from heaven, for “by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary.” This creed also affirms that “we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” We also learn in this creed that the Holy Spirit is worshiped and glorified with the Father and the Son and it is he who has spoken through the Prophets. Further discussion of the Person, works, and relationship of the Spirit to the other Members of the Godhead are taken up by such statements as are found in the Westminster (1643–1646) and the Belgic (1561) Confessions.
- Gregory Nazianzen makes the point, “The subject of the Holy Spirit presents a special difficulty” because, by the time we get to it, “worn out by the multitude of questions,” we may become like those who have “lost their appetite, who having taken a dislike to some particular kind of food, shrink from all food; so we in like manner have an aversion from all discussion” (Quoted in Oden, Systematic Theology, 3:3).
- Tozer felt that an appreciation of the Spirit has a preserving effect upon orthodoxy: “I have to tell the truth, and the truth is not very well received, even by the saints. The simple truth is that unless we have a lighting down upon evangelicalism, upon fundamentalism, upon our gospel churches, unless the Dove of God can come down with His wings outspread and make Himself known and felt among us, that which is fundamentalism will be liberalism in years to come. And liberalism will be unitarianism” (A. W. Tozer, The Quotable Tozer II [Camp Hill, PA: Christian Publications, 1997], 115–116).
- Robert A. Peterson, Getting to Know John’s Gospel: A Fresh Look at Its Main Ideas (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1989), 110.
- Leon Morris, The Gospel According to John, NICNT, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1995), 372.]
- Morris, The Gospel According to John, 373.
- Morris, The Gospel According to John, 374, n. 80.
- D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 322.
- Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, 2 vols. (reprint ed., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986 [=1886]), 2:160
- Earlier, Jesus had said to a leader of the Pharisees, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit” (John 3:5). On this controversial verse, Beasley-Murray sees “water” in John 3 (born “by water and Spirit”) as water baptism. “Since both nouns are anarthrous and are governed by a single preposition, what we most likely have is a hendiadys in which both terms should be coordinated to give a single concept. This means that 3:5 reflects the typical Johannine idiom of ‘pairs in tension.’ The significance of the one spills over into the other; and as often is the case, the accent falls on the second noun” (G. R. Beasley-Murray, Gospel of Life: Theology in the Fourth Gospel [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991], 65–66, quoting G. M. Burge). Beasley-Murray rejects Burge’s contention that baptism in this context is “superfluous.” “On the contrary, Nicodemus is reminded that he, as all others, should respond to the call to repentance proclaimed by John and Jesus and expressed in baptism, for he also needs cleansing and renewal by the Spirit if he is to enter the kingdom of God…. In the time of the church…baptism in water and baptism in Spirit are to become a unified experience for one who repents and believes in the crucified and risen Savior (3:14–16)” (Beasley-Murray, 66).
- Morris, The Gospel According to John, 375, n. 84.
- Beasley-Murray, Gospel of Life, 68.
- Morris, The Gospel According to John, 378. Morris quotes J. Behm in this regard: “the basic thought is that he who is touched by Jesus in the innermost recesses of his personal life will from thence send forth saving powers in superabundant measure” (The Gospel According to John, 378, n. 92).
- Morris points out a number of Old Testament prophecies which speak of spiritual blessing for God’s people under the symbolism of water. He then comments, “The meaning of our passage, then, in accordance with such Old Testament prophecies, appears to be that when anyone comes to believe in Jesus the Scriptures referring to the activity of the Holy Spirit are fulfilled” (Morris, The Gospel According to John, 376).
- William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of John, 2 vols. (Toronto: G. R. Welch, 1975), 1:252. Warfield states that “the Spirit of God is in the Old Testament the executive name of God—‘the divine principle of activity everywhere at work in the world’” (B. B. Warfield, “The Spirit of God in the Old Testament,” Biblical Doctrines, in The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, 10 vols. [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981 {=1929}], 105, quoting the expression by C. F. Schmid). Warfield’s fascinating discussion on the Spirit of God in the Old Testament emphasizes, for example, that, in the Old Testament, God is presented as Creator and the Spirit as Sustainer. Further, God is shown in his majestic transcendence while the Spirit is set forth as the immanent agent of change (p. 111). He summarizes the roles of the Spirit in the Old Testament as “the immanent Spirit,” “the inspiring Spirit,” and “the indwelling Spirit” (p. 120).
- Morris, The Gospel According to John, 378. Westcott adds that “the addition of the word given expresses the true form of the original, in which Spirit is without the article…. When the term occurs in this form, it marks an operation, or manifestation, or gift of the Spirit, and not the personal Spirit” (B. F. Westcott, The Gospel According to St. John [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962 {=1881}], 123).
- Albert Barnes, “Luke and John,” in Notes on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1978), 261.
- Cited by Morris, The Gospel According to John, 378, n. 94.
- Morris, The Gospel According to John, 378. Charles Ryrie states, “It is true that there was a sharp contrast between the enablement under the law and the work of the Holy Spirit today (John 14:17), but it is not accurate to say there was no enablement under the law” (Charles Caldwell Ryrie, Dispensationalism Today [Chicago: Moody Press, 1965], 120). R. C. Sproul responds to the question, “What was the role of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament?” by saying, “The role of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament was not principally different from the role of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. Where there are some differences, there’s an essential unity between the two Testaments.” The principle difference Sproul sees between the Old and New Testaments concerns empowering for ministry. In the Old Testament the Spirit’s enabling was limited to a few; “Now the Spirit to empower the church for ministry is given to everybody, not just to the leaders” (R. C. Sproul, Now, That’s a Good Question! [Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1996], 58–60). Of course, the question of the continuity or discontinuity between the Testaments is one of the issues which divides Reformed and Dispensational theologians. Warfield argues that “in passing from the Old Testament to the New, the reader is conscious of no violent discontinuity in the conception of the Spirit which he finds in the two volumes” (Warfield, “The Spirit of God in the Old Testament,” 102). He also says, “If there be any fundamental difference between the Old and the New Testament conceptions of the Spirit of God, it escapes us in our ordinary reading of the Bible, and we naturally and without conscious straining read our New Testament conceptions into the Old Testament passages” (p. 103). The Scripture index to Wayne Grudem’s theology implies that he does not touch on John 7:37–39, but he does comment on 7:39 by stating that the verse does not “mean that there was no activity of the Holy Spirit in people’s lives before Pentecost. Both of these passages [he is including John 14:17] must be different ways of saying that the more powerful, fuller work of the Holy Spirit that is characteristic of life after Pentecost had not yet begun in the lives of the disciples” (Systematic Theology [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994], 637).
- Carson, The Gospel According to John, 329.
- Beasley-Murray sees the Upper Room discourse as containing five sayings regarding the Spirit as the Paraclete (14:15–17, 25–26; 15:26–27; 16:7–11, 12–15) (Beasley-Murray, Gospel of Life, 70). He adds, “Many scholars have been persuaded by Windisch’s arguments [that the five sayings can be removed from their contexts without leaving gaps], while taking exception to some of his ideas, above all the notion that the Paraclete sayings are alien to the discourses; on the contrary, there are those who think that the passages so well harmonize with their contexts that it is difficult to envisage that they ever existed apart from their present position. In my judgment the Paraclete sayings do form a coherent body of utterances about the Holy Spirit. They show a clear progression of thought, but the central one, 15:26–27, provides the key to the rest. It is closely parallel to a saying found in Mark 13:11 and the Q passage, Matthew 10:19–20/Luke 12:11–12; it assures the disciples of the Holy Spirit’s aid when they are placed on trial, presumably by reason of their preaching the gospel of Christ. Interestingly, the contexts of the saying in the three synoptic Gospels are all different, and that in John’s Gospel is different again, indicating that the saying circulated in the early churches as an independent logion. The feature common to Matthew, Mark, and John is the continuation by the disciples of the mission of Jesus in the face of the opposition of the world. It is likely that the other Paraclete sayings clustered around this one, for they are related to it thematically, and furthermore it gives us the clue to the use of the word Paraclete” (Beasley-Murray, Gospel of Life, 71).
- Erickson refers to these three chapters as “virtually the only extended treatment” of the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures. He suggests that the study of the Spirit “is often more incomplete and confused here than with most of the other doctrines. Among the reasons for this is that we have less explicit revelation in the Bible regarding the Holy Spirit than about either the Father or the Son. Perhaps this is due in part to the fact that a large share of the Holy Spirit’s ministry is to declare and glorify the Son (John 16:14)” (Millard Erickson, Christian Theology, 2nd edition [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999], 863).
- We will discuss this critical title of the Holy Spirit below, pp. 14-18.
- Beasley-Murray, Gospel of Life, 73.
- Beasley-Murray, Gospel of Life, 73. We will examine the trial motif in our discussion of John 16. See pp. 12-13.
- Erickson, Christian Theology, 889. Erickson says, “It is in the Fourth Gospel that the strongest evidence of a coequal Trinity is to be found. The threefold formula appears again and again: 1:33–34; 14:16, 26; 16:13–15; 20:21–22 (cf. 1 John 4:2, 13–14). The inter-dynamics among the three persons comes through repeatedly…. The Son is sent by the Father (14:24) and comes forth from him (16:28). The Spirit is given by the Father (14:16), is sent from the Father (14:26), and proceeds from the Father (15:26). Yet the Son is closely involved in the coming of the Spirit: he prays for his coming (14:16); the Father sends the Spirit in the Son’s name (14:26); the Son will send the Spirit from the Father (15:26); the Son must go away so that he can send the Spirit (16:7). The Spirit’s ministry is understood as a continuation and elaboration of that of the Son. He will bring to remembrance what the Son has said (14:26); he will bear witness to the Son (15:26); he will declare what he hears from the Son, thus glorifying the Son (16:13–14)” (p. 357). Erickson adds that one should not be surprised that the world cannot know the Spirit because it neither knew the Father (John 17:25) nor the Son when he came (John 1:10–11) (p. 661). Westcott points out that three different prepositions are used to describe the relation of the Spirit to believers: he will be “with (meta) them,” “abideth by (para) them,” and “in (en) them.” “The first marks the relation of fellowship: comp. xiv. 9, xv. 27. The second that of a personal presence: comp. viii. 38, xiv. 23, 25, xvii. 5. The third that of individual dwelling: comp. xiv. 10f” (Westcott, The Gospel According to St. John, 205).
- Quoting an unnamed commentator, David MacLeod comments here that “the Spirit who comes is not the Son coming back” (MacLeod, “The Trinity and Scripture,” EmJ 11 [Winter 2002]: 181).
- Beasley-Murray makes the comment that “His name ‘the other Paraclete’ has led to viewing him as the ‘alter ego’ of Jesus, ‘the other I.’ This is legitimate, as long as the temptation is resisted of identifying the Risen Lord with the Holy Spirit. It is equally questionable to adopt the common view of regarding him as the presence of Jesus in the church” (Beasley-Murray, Gospel of Life, 81). Westcott adds about the Spirit here, “He is ‘another,’ yet such that in His coming Christ too may be said to come (v. 18)” (Westcott, The Gospel According to St. John, 205).
- Beasley-Murray, Gospel of Life, 74. “The things of which he will remind them are the things that Jesus has spoken to them. In other words, the Spirit will not dispense with the teaching of Jesus. The teaching to be recalled is his” (Morris, The Gospel According to John, 583). Morris notes that the expression “has spoken” is Aorist and “gives an air of finality to the expression. Jesus’ teaching has come to its end” (Morris, 583, n. 75).
- Beasley-Murray, Gospel of Life, 74. But one could ask, what about the New Testament Scriptures? Does not the Spirit of God give additional revelation (viz., on end-times events, on the doctrine of the atonement, on church government, etc.) to the Apostles? Does the Spirit “remind” the disciples of teachings that Christ never got to (John 16:12)? Or, is Jesus continuing his teaching through the Spirit which he had only begun (Acts 1:1) during his time on earth? Larkin says that the book of Acts “will report what Jesus continued to do and teach (as in 2:47; 9:34; 14:3; 16:14; 18:10)” (William J. Larkin, Jr., Acts [Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1995], 38). Westcott helpfully comments: “The revelation of Christ in His Person and work was absolute and complete, but without the gradual illumination of the Spirit it is partly unintelligible and partly unobserved” (Westcott, The Gospel According to St. John, 208).
- Westcott, The Gospel According to St. John, 225. See the Appendix, pp. 30-33, for Reymond’s understanding of this issue.
- Carson comments, “It is not that the Evangelist cannot distinguish these expressions one from the other, still less that the two ways of referring to the sending of the Spirit are ‘in direct tension’ (Burge)…. Rather, the same sending can be described in various complementary ways, granted the tight cohesion of the Father and the Son (cf. 5:19–30)” (Carson, The Gospel According to John, 499).
- Some of this information is taken from Mark Galli’s article, “The Great Divorce,” Christian History, Spring 1997. Please see our Appendix, pp. 30-33, for a further discussion of some of these issues.
- Erickson, Christian Theology, 868. Avery Dulles, S.J., emphasizes the “fact that the Father is the fontal source of all divinity.” Dulles investigates several options regarding the filioque controversy and quotes Juan-Miguel Garrigues’ suggestion of the complex formula: “The Holy Spirit who comes forth in his personal originality as Spirit from the one only Father of the Only-Begotten through and by reason of this unique Begotten, proceeds in origin from the two in the consubstantial perichoresis of the Trinity, while being, by his relation to the Son, what the Son is, just as the Son, by his relation to the Father, is what the Father is, that is to say God” (quoted in Dulles’ article “The Filioque: What Is at Stake?” [Concordia Theological Quarterly 59 {Jan-Apr 1995}:45]). Some Catholic scholars affirm Paul VI’s “Profession of Faith,” where he declared, “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the uncreated person who proceeds from the Father and the Son as their eternal love” (Dulles, 33). Others use language such as, “The Holy Spirit, then, results from the friendship between the Father and the Son” (Dulles, 37). Dulles points out that “many theologians teach that the Spirit, as the fruit of the love of the Father and the Son, is the bond of peace and unity between them” (Dulles, 37).
- Grudem, Systematic Theology, 246–247.
- Morris comments on this verse, “He can come only when Jesus goes away (16:7). This appears to mean that the work of the Spirit in the believer is a consequence of the saving work of Christ and not something separate from it…. It is only because Christ has died for us and put away our sin that the Holy Spirit can be found at work within our hearts” (Morris, The Gospel According to John, 588). Morris quotes Gore who says, “The Coming of the Holy Ghost was not merely to supply the absence of the Son, but to complete His presence” (Morris, The Gospel According to John, 618, n. 17). The statement that Jesus must depart before the Paraclete can come has led to some questionable exegesis. It is viewed as affirming “the impossibility of a concurrent ministry of the two Paracletes” (Beasley-Murray, Gospel of Life, 76, quoting W. F. Howard). Porsch suggested that the future presence of the Paraclete is better than the bodily presence of Jesus! He explained, “Only after Jesus’ departure to the Father can the Paraclete demonstrate who he really is. To that extent full faith was possible only after the completion of the work of Jesus” (cited in Beasley-Murray, Gospel of Life, 76).
- Morris makes the following point on John 16:5–15: “Now we have the additional thought that he is a Prosecutor, convicting sinful people of being in the wrong” (Morris, The Gospel According to John, 617). Barclay adds, “When you think of it, it is an amazing thing that men should put their trust for all eternity in a crucified Jewish criminal. What convinces men that this crucified Jew is the Son of God? That is the work of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who convinces men of the sheer righteousness of Christ” (quoted in Morris, The Gospel According to John, 620, n. 25). A. W. Tozer makes the point that “The Holy Spirit came to carry the evidence of Christianity from the book of apologetics into the human heart” (Tozer, The Quotable Tozer II, 108).
- Beasley-Murray, Gospel of Life, 76–77. “By the power of the Spirit’s ministry, the ongoing trial of Jesus and his church becomes reversed in the trial of the world by the exalted Christ; through the joint testimony of church and Spirit, people become convicted of their sin and of the righteousness of Jesus, and so repent as the guilty before the tribunal of God” (Beasley-Murray, 81). We often juxtapose the convicting ministry of the Spirit with the convincing ministry of the disciple. As a case in point, in his otherwise helpful Humble Apologetics, John Stackhouse falls back on the convicting ministry of the Holy Spirit, seemingly because he has little confidence in the disciple’s power to persuade others to believe the gospel. It is biblical to say, “Conversion is a divine work only, effected by the Holy Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 3:5–7)” (John Stackhouse, Humble Apologetics: Defending the Faith Today [New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002], 82). But he goes on to suggest that the question, “What can I do to convert another person?” is out of bounds. His response to such a question is “Nothing. God’s Spirit alone can truly convert” (p. 85). I found his conclusion concerning one of his unbelieving university professors somewhat weak. “As for Professor Sack? Well, I think we did each other the good that we could do in that academic relationship. And since our paths have diverged widely over the years, I simply must entrust him to the ongoing care of Christ and his church—as I hope Professor Sack has done with me” (p. 85). Later Stackhouse states that “one of the fundamental affirmations of this book [is]: that Christian apologetics cannot convince anyone to become a Christian. Apologetics cannot do so, in this case, because argument cannot produce affection.” No one can love God “without conversion—the exclusive activity of the Holy Spirit” (p. 113). [See also the following pages: 160, where we are dissuaded from trying to prove Christianity’s superiority; 203, where he argues against presenting a gospel digest which the unsaved must accept or reject; 226, where the plausibility of the message does not rest on intellectual argument, etc.]. He does say that we should not denigrate the good gifts of God “such as intellectual argument—that are often used by the Holy Spirit precisely in his work of conversion” (p. 126). But he argues against pressing for an immediate decision regarding the gospel because the knowledge of such a crisis moment is “the province and prerogative of the Holy Spirit of God” (p. 200). But what about verses such as “behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2, KJV) and texts which speak of the urgency of believing the gospel (2 Cor. 5:11, etc.)? Stackhouse may be using hyperbole when he writes, “We worship God as we remember that the conversation that really counts is not the one between us and our friend, but between our friend and the Holy Spirit.” But don’t both matter? Aren’t we responsible to persuade men? Rather than presenting an either-or regarding intellectual argument and the convicting ministry of the Spirit, would he not have been more helpful in unpacking how our apologetics can be the means by which the Holy Spirit does his work? [In correspondence with him, he expressed to me his concern that Christians avoid both extremes of passivity on the one hand and a desperate and self-centered urgency on the other, an approach which pushes too hard and drives people away. And he believes that his work is an effort at unpacking how our apologetics can be used by the Spirit.]
- Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, 2:525. Morris says concerning verse 8, “This is the one place in Scripture where the Spirit is spoken of as performing a work in ‘the world.’ The many other references speak of what he will do in believers” (Morris, The Gospel According to John, 618–619). “Normally it [the word “Advocate”] denotes a person whose activities are in favor of the defendant, but here the meaning is that the Spirit will act as prosecutor and bring about the world’s conviction” (Morris, The Gospel According to John, 619). Perhaps the Christian’s dual role as “salt” and “light” (Matthew 5:13–16) is the primary means by which this exposing ministry of the Spirit is accomplished. Peterson follows Carson in his understanding that the Spirit convicts the world as the doer of sin, righteousness, and judgment” (Peterson, Getting to Know John’s Gospel, 121ff).
- Oden, Systematic Theology, 3:3.
- Is it not true that when we put off a serious study of the Word we are denying the Spirit an opportunity to bring glory to the Lord Jesus? As Morris says regarding John 16:13, “It is not said whether he hears them from the Father or the Son, but the point is probably not material. The emphasis in these verses is on the Spirit rather than on either of the other Persons. This expression will indicate his harmony with them. He is not originating something radically new, but leading people in accordance with the teaching already given from the Father and the Son” (Morris, The Gospel According to John, 621).
- The expressions “the Spirit of truth” and “the Holy Spirit” should be kept in mind when considering the term paraclete. Abbott points out that “emphasis is laid on the Paraclete, or Advocate, as not being one of the ordinary kind—the kind that takes up a client’s cause, good or bad, and makes the best of it—but as being ‘holy,’ and—which is twice repeated—‘a Spirit of truth’” (Morris, The Gospel According to John, 588, n. 94). Could it not be said that the Spirit’s nature of being holy and being the truth dictates that he will not defend us when what we merit is prosecution?
- Carson disagrees and says, “John’s use of this term [ἀλλος, allos] forbids us to rest so much weight on it” (Carson, The Gospel According to John, 500).
- Morris, The Gospel According to John, 576, n. 44.
- Samuel Chadwick, Humanity and God (London: The Expositor’s Library, 1904), 185–186.
- Carson, The Gospel According to John, 499.
- The implication of the aorist subjunctive verb “does sin” (ἁμάρτῃ, hamartē) appears to be a simple commitment of sin and not a habitual pattern of sinning. Westcott makes the point that Christ our Advocate pleads the believer’s case with the Father against the accuser Satan (cp. Rom. 8:26; Rev. 12:10; and Zech. 3:10). The Holy Spirit as our Advocate pleads the believer’s cause against the world (John 16:8ff) and also Christ’s cause with the believer (John 14:26; 15:26; 16:14), [Westcott, The Gospel According to St. John, 212–213]. See also Westcott’s thorough discussion of the term “advocate” in early English versions, in Philo, in Rabbinical writers, and in the Greek Fathers (p. 211ff).
- Beasley-Murray, Gospel of Life, 73. But are not their ministries presently simultaneous? The application of 1 John 2:1 does not appear to be limited to his earthly ministry, but applies to the present.
- Morris, The Gospel According to John, 587. Beasley-Murray tells us that the term paraclete means “one called alongside.” “It was commonly used of one called to help in a court case, but it never became a recognized technical term” (Beasley-Murray, Gospel of Life, 71). It refers to a legal advisor or helper or advocate in the relevant court. “Now this raises a problem: the term Paraclete brings to mind an individual called to aid another in a trial; such a meaning is eminently suitable to John 15:26–27 and 16:8–11; the former indicates a barrister for the defense, the latter one who accuses or brings charges against defendants. Yet in the other sayings the Paraclete has quite different functions: in 14:16–17 and 16:7 he has the role of one who takes the place of Jesus to aid his disciples, and in 14:26 and 16:12–15 his task is specifically to reveal the truth set forth in the life and teaching of Jesus. How do we reconcile this usage of the term Paraclete with his function regarding revelation? The answer appears to lie in the presentation of Jesus as involved in the greatest trial in history. We have referred to this motif already, as it appears in the narrative of the ministry of Jesus, but it is of central significance also in the discourses of chapters 14–16. Jesus is depicted as opposed and condemned by this world, and his disciples are set in a similar situation through their relation to him. It is in this context that the Paraclete is to be sent to the disciples of Jesus, to bear witness to him and to his word and work. This he will do directly in the disciples, but also with them and through them. Accordingly, another name is given to him in this ministry, ‘the spirit of Truth’ (14:17; 15:26; 16:13). It is of no small interest that this term was current in contemporary Judaism, notably in the Qumran community. Also in the Testament of Judah 20:1–5 we read this significant passage: ‘Understand, my children, that two spirits await an opportunity with humanity: the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. In between is the conscience of the mind which inclines as it will. The things of truth and the things of error are written in the affections of man, each one of whom the Lord knows. There is no moment in which man’s works can be concealed, because they are written on the heart in the Lord’s sight. And the spirit of truth testifies to all things and brings all accusations. He who has sinned is consumed in his heart and cannot raise his head to face the judge’” (Beasley-Murray, Gospel of Life, 72). “There is a comparable description of the ‘spirit of truth’ and a ‘spirit of perversity’ in 1QS 3:18–21, where they are named the Prince of Light and the Angel of Darkness. Such citations illustrate not the dependence of John on such writings but the familiarity of these ideas in contemporary Judaism. The Paraclete-Spirit in John has the unique task of bearing witness to the truth which is in Jesus (14:6)” (Beasley-Murray, 72).
- The Holy Spirit is our defense attorney in John 14:16, 26 and is the prosecuting attorney of the world in John 16:7–11. But he also prosecutes believers. So, he defends us, prosecutes the world, and prosecutes us!
- Morris, The Gospel According to John, 590.
- Morris, The Gospel According to John, 590.
- Morris, The Gospel According to John, 576, n. 44.
- Morris, The Gospel According to John, 589.
- Morris, The Gospel According to John, 589. E. J. Goodspeed suggests “a character witness” as a possible meaning, Morris, 589, n. 99. Edersheim suggests “Defender,” “Representative,” “Counselor,” and “Pleader” (Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, 2:516).
- Morris, The Gospel According to John, 590.
- Morris, The Gospel According to John, 591.
- Quoted in Morris, The Gospel According to John, 591, n. 100. But doesn’t the Spirit defend us against our own hearts (1 John 3:19–20)? Could it be that the “God who is greater than our hearts” is the Holy Spirit (cp. 1 John 4:14)?
- For a discussion of the Spirit from a dispensational viewpoint, see John F. Walvoord, The Holy Spirit: A Comprehensive Study of the Person and Work of the Holy Spirit (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1954). C. I. Scofield’s Plain Papers on the Holy Spirit (London: Fleming H. Revell, 1899), although brief, provides some interesting points regarding the Spirit before and after Pentecost. Warfield’s essay also provides very helpful insight into the Old Testament understanding of the Holy Spirit.
- Augustine made the point concerning the Trinity, “We say, three persons, not in order to express it, but in order not to be silent.” Gregory of Nyssa said that though it may seem “undignified to give any answer at all to the statements that are foolish,” the mute alternative is more dangerous “lest through our silence error may prevail” (Oden, Systematic Theology, 3:9). David J. MacLeod does a fine job of examining the biblical foundation of the doctrine of the Trinity in his article “The Trinity and Scripture” (EmJ 11 [Winter 2002]: 127-219). Other helpful works include Wayne Grudem’s chapter “God in Three Persons: The Trinity” in his Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 226–261; Millard J. Erickson’s chapter “God’s Three-in-Oneness: The Trinity” in his Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999, 2nd edition), 346–367; and the section “Holy Spirit in Holy Triad” in Oden’s Systematic Theology: Life in the Spirit, 3:23–28.
- This summary is based on material in Grudem, Systematic Theology, 226ff.
- Warfield, “The Spirit of God in the Old Testament,” 104.
- Warfield, “The Spirit of God in the Old Testament,” 101.
- Grudem points out that Isaiah 61:1 also distinguishes “the Spirit of the Lord God” from “the Lord” (Grudem, Systematic Theology, 228).
- Athanasius emphasized that the Great Commission makes clear the Spirit’s equality with Father and Son, but sets forth an equality that does not erase distinguishability (Oden, Systematic Theology, 3:16).
- “There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you were called — one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:4–6). “Who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood” (1 Pet. 1:2). “But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit. Keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life” (Jude 20–21).
- Certain passages do not make sense if the Spirit is but the power or force of God, for in the following texts the Holy Spirit and God’s power are both mentioned: Luke 4:14; Acts 10:38; Romans 15:13 and 1 Corinthians 2:4. (see Grudem, Systematic Theology, 232–233).
- See as examples Matthew 28:19; 1 Corinthians 12:4–6; Ephesians 4:4–6; etc. from the previous paragraph.
- We have seen a number of his activities as we examined the Upper Room Discourse.
- See Grudem, Systematic Theology, 231ff for Scripture references and explanation.
- MacLeod, “The Trinity and Scripture,” EmJ 11 (Winter 2002): 133, quoting Eric Mascall.
- For the sake of brevity, we will not examine possible binitarian texts in the Old Testament.
- Scripture is clear that the Christian has two Intercessors, but only one Mediator.
- We believe that the lost will do so by compulsion. See our discussion in The Other Side of the Good News (Great Britain: Christian Focus Publishers, 2003), 71–83.
- Clark H. Pinnock, Tracking the Maze: Finding Our Way through Modern Theology from an Evangelical Perspective (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990), xi.
- Clark H. Pinnock, Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1996). For example, he opines, “The theory of evolution is a working hypothesis in science. It cannot answer every question and is not immune to criticism. But it is a well-researched and thoughtful proposal based on a wealth of observation which theology should seek to integrate properly” (p. 65). Pinnock agrees with Moltmann that “the Spirit is the principle of evolution,” (p. 69) and appears to argue for theistic evolution (p. 71).
- Pinnock, Flame of Love, 10. He insists that “it is not right to be Christocentric if being Christocentric means subordinating the Spirit to the Son” (p. 82). When Pinnock says “a history of the Spirit preceded Jesus,” is he forgetting John’s statement in John 7:39 that the Spirit was not yet given? Later he clearly says, “Neither Son nor Spirit ought to be subordinated to the other” (p. 92).
- Pinnock, Flame of Love, 80.
- Pinnock, Flame of Love, 16. Pinnock later writes, “One might think of Spirit as child of the Father and Son and the fruit of their love” (p. 38). This opinion also marks Catholic thought (for sources see the article by Avery Dulles, “The Filioque: What Is at Stake?” Concordia Theological Quarterly 59 [Jan-Apr 1995], cited in footnote 37).
- Pinnock, Flame of Love, 21.
- Pinnock, Flame of Love, 21–22.
- Pinnock, Flame of Love, 54.
- Pinnock, Flame of Love, 26.
- Pinnock, Flame of Love, 11
- Pinnock, Flame of Love, 27.
- Pinnock, Flame of Love, 80–81.
- Pinnock, Flame of Love, 88.
- Pinnock, Flame of Love, 88. My dissertation, “The Pneumatology of John Nelson Darby (1800–1882)” (Ph.D. dissertation, Drew University, 1985, University Microfilms), discusses Edward Irving and his being defrocked from the ministry for the same aberrant view of Christ’s humanity.
- Pinnock, Flame of Love, 88.
- Pinnock, Flame of Love, 89–90. Such a position seems contradicted by certain passages in the Gospel of John. Later Pinnock writes, “As human, Jesus cried out for the cup to pass from him, but as Spirit-filled he prayed for God’s will to be done” (p. 90). We would suggest that another interpretation of Gethsemane is that the Holy Son of God is confronting the reality of “becoming sin” (2 Cor. 5:21) for the world (1 John 2:2). Pinnock further says, “In Jesus the Spirit experienced an undistorted acceptance of God’s love and found the ideal receptacle for God’s self-communication as the Son” (p. 91).
- Pinnock, Flame of Love, 49.
- Pinnock, Flame of Love, 63.
- Pinnock, Flame of Love, 94.
- Pinnock, Flame of Love, 103. For a full discussion of Barth’s universalism, see my The Other Side of the Good News, chapter 2, 39–49. Quoting Barth, Pinnock says about Jesus, “In his person he has made an end of us as sinners and therefore of sin itself by going to death as the One who took our place. In his person, he delivered up us sinners and sin itself to destruction. He took this present evil world and buried it in his tomb” (pp. 108-109). “Calvary is something like a black hole into which is sucked all the power of death and law, wrath and alienation, to be annihilated” (p. 109). “The effectiveness of this reconciliation is not so much opting in as not opting out” (p. 109).
- Pinnock, Flame of Love, 93.
- Pinnock, Flame of Love, 95.
- Pinnock, Flame of Love, 99.
- Pinnock, Flame of Love, 99.
- Pinnock, Flame of Love, 102.
- Pinnock, Flame of Love, 104. Pinnock suggests that C.S. Lewis held to a participation (rather than a propitiatory) theory of the atonement (p. 105). “We are used to thinking of [the atonement] in a legal framework in which God, the angry judge, requires retribution and satisfaction. We are used to construing the death of Christ as the propitiation of God that makes God willing to show mercy. God is viewed in effect as humankind’s enemy, whose justice must be satisfied before he is willing to receive them. The popular view of atonement is that God poured out the fury of his wrath on Jesus Christ, who in bearing this penalty effected an atonement. The theory is that a wrathful Father punished a merciful Son instead of us, with the result that we go free. The logic of it leads inexorably to ideas of a limited atonement, since presumably God does not assault the same person twice…. The penal theory may be wrong-headed, yet something like it may be true” (p. 106). Further he writes, “Of course this creates a very strange impression theologically. It pits the Father against the Son and construes forgiveness as something God finds difficult to give. It makes grace conditional upon penal satisfaction and gives the impression that the Father actually hates sinners and cannot love them until his wrath is appeased. It belies the central point that it was the Father who took the initiative in reconciling the world through Christ. God was not disinclined to be favorable until his wrath was appeased. He is not humanity’s enemy; it was love that moved him to send his Son in the first place. Love provided the incarnation and the atonement, not wrath. Our Lord’s self-sacrifice bespeaks a gracious God, not an angry God…. God is the reconciler, not the one requiring reconciliation. God is the subject, not the object, of reconciliation. Love for sinners, not anger, brought Jesus into the world. God did not reject his beloved Son—Israel rejected him, and the Romans punished him” (p. 107) [But one must ask, what about the “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” of Matthew 27:46?] Pinnock continues, “In the legal framework, the divine wrath has been viewed as vindictive anger and God as vengeful. But wrath is not a dark side of God that frustrates his grace and demands satisfaction. It is an aspect of God’s saving righteousness. It is the other side of God’s saving action, and it serves grace. Even in wrath, grace is working” (p. 109). [My article, “Warning a Wrath-Deserving World: Evangelicals and the Overhaul of Hell” (EmJ 2 (Summer 1993): 7-21) challenges this assumption that wrath is somehow remedial rather than retributive. And Pinnock’s reasoning here sounds very much like the logic of the contemporary universalist Thomas Talbott (see The Other Side of the Good News, 67–70).] Pinnock argues, “Christ did not appease divine anger—his death and resurrection constitute the saving event into which we are being drawn” (Flame of Love, 110–111). “The judgment did not fall on the beloved Son but on our representative and therefore on us. Christ delivered sinful humanity up to a well-deserved destruction. The participatory model of atonement has a different kind of appeal and rationality from those of the legal theory. It portrays a world in which humanity dies and is raised to life in Christ. It speaks of new creation and of the Spirit who invites us to enter into it by faith” ( 110–111). Pinnock concludes his challenge with the words, “While offering a relational Spirit Christology, I do not intend here to deny truth in the penal substitutionary model of atonement” (p. 111). [However, it appears that he has done exactly that.]
- I am reminded of the alarming challenge of the universalist, Thomas Talbott, who says, “Nothing works greater mischief in theology, I am persuaded, than a simple failure of the imagination, the inability to put things together in imaginative ways” (Thomas Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God [USA: Universal Publishers, 1999], 245–246). His application of theological imagination serves only to support his universalism. (By his imagination he concludes that even 2 Thessalonians 1:9 is redemptive!)
- Thomas Howard, “The Parts Angels Play,” Christianity Today (December 12, 1980): 20.
- Robert L. Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1998), 331.
- Reymond, A New Systematic Theology, 331–332.
- Reymond, A New Systematic Theology, 332, quoting Berkhof’s Systematic Theology, 97.
- Reymond, A New Systematic Theology, 332.
- Reymond, A New Systematic Theology, 332.
- Reymond, A New Systematic Theology, 332.
- Reymond, A New Systematic Theology, 333, quoting Westcott on John’s Gospel.
- Reymond, A New Systematic Theology, 333, quoting Plummer’s commentary on John.
- Reymond, A New Systematic Theology, 333–334, quoting H. R. Reynolds commentary on John.
- Reymond, A New Systematic Theology, 334, quoting Carson, 528–529.
- Reymond, A New Systematic Theology, 334, quoting B. B. Warfield’s “Doctrine of the Trinity,” Calvin and Augustine (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1956), 257.
- Reymond, A New Systematic Theology, 334–335, quoting Warfield, 273.
- Reymond, A New Systematic Theology, 335, quoting Warfield, 279.
- Reymond, A New Systematic Theology, 335, quoting Boettner’s Studies in Theology, 123.
- Reymond, A New Systematic Theology, 336.
- Reymond, A New Systematic Theology, 336.
- Reymond, A New Systematic Theology, 337.
- Reymond, A New Systematic Theology, 337.
- Oden, Systematic Theology, 3:11.
