THE HOLY SPIRIT
Holy Spirit and
the creeds.
The prophets and ancient Israel
had a problem and so did
the early church. If God was one God where did the Holy Spirit fit
in? They knew the Spirit of the Lord came upon people. Was it God personally or an emanation from
God or an independent
power? In the OT they called Him
‘the Spirit of the prophets” but
did not comprehend how something
like a breath, a power at work from God
– what was it or he?
Then Christ came working wih
extraordinary power seen
as “anointed with the Holy
Spirit and power”. It was recognised that so were the apostles, But after Christ the
role of the Spirit was not understood or
was almost forgotten, little mention of Him and no teaching about Him for
centuries.
The Montanists where an exception. John’s Gospel had reached
more remote areas
with its promises of the Spirit. It excited interest - prophesying especially . Two women prophets
said the kingdom
of God was about to be set up in Phrygia. According to their enemies their worship was wild and noisy. They were
excommunicated as heretics in AD 140.
That affected the Church till today, dampening church excitement and emotion. The powers of the Spirit were claimed for Bishops only who
were afraid of losing their authority if
laymen became prophets. A|ll supernatural giftings
also were claimed as exclusive for bishops.
(Except ‘ the saints’) . This began
sacerdotalism – priestcraft. These priestly powers were also believed to
be by apostolic succession, transmitted
from Christ through the apostles and to bishops and clergy by
hand. Speaking in tongues became Latin.
Before the Nicene Council and creed in 325,
summaries of the
faith were formulated. It is a messy part of Church history and not
surprising. Who was Jesus and who was the Spirit? It
was a period of speculation and heresies, with names ike
Praxeus, Sabellius, Nestorias, Arius. involved in heresies
about the unity of the Trinity and the
two natures of Christ.
The fact of Christ and of the Spirit – how did they relate to
God? Three Gods or one monarchial Being? A tritheism
or a Trinity? General understanding was of a Trinity, but needed
discussion. The word Trionity
was coined by the great Montanist Tertulian
(c. 200 AD..
Some talked about the Logos as the Spirit and that
the Logos was the Spirit that
hovered creation. This was particularly Philo, a philosopher but a Jew.
(The Greeks were thinkers but the Jews
were always pragmatics and left ambiguities as they are, unexplained as in Psalms.)
If God was one – a monarchical God, were the Spirit and
the Son only modes of God?
This was a common suggestion, that God was sometimes the
Son, or the Spirit and sometimes
the Logos, producing the term Monarchial Modalism. Men like Praxeas
(c.200) taught that
Father, Son and Spirit were different names
for the same Person. Sabellius followed a similar
road. Others suggested
that the Logos was the
Spirit – and so on.
At Nicene the creed declared Christ was fully God, but
still questions arose. Three more ecumenical Councils followed and finally, 100 years later, 451 AD the Declaration of Chalcedon established the orthodox
faith. Augustine used the term Co-Equal.
However, even knowing He was the Third person of the Trinity, His place seemed a
problem. and little understood – His presence was
merely academic, a matter of orthodox
faith.
The Apostles creed began as a collection of popular statements
added to over four centuries. In that
document the Holy
Spirit was no more than a
name - “I believe in the Holy Spirit”
and never prominent in church
life. The activity of God was not
specifically said to be by the Spirit, more usually to a mysterious power
called ‘grace’. Augustine following Cyprian made ‘grace’ the centre of Catholic theology.
Grace is still high lighted, especially in Calvinism (It is Calvin’s 500th
anniversary) “Amazing
grace”, seen as a Divine unpredictable
power mode of God. But all God does in the earthly sphere is by the Spirit.
There is no other power. The Spirit has always been at work though credited to
grace or to Christ.
Even the Pentecostal revival
has not always given credited
Him with His full place. In
the 19th century He was taken
as a spiritual extra acquired by
various spiritual means – nobody was sure how but such means as much prayer,
laying on of hands, great faith, holiness, or what they called “ waiting on God”. This kind of approach has clung on till today
despite clear
teaching in the Word.
Jesus spoke of asking for the Spirit. At the time nobody
had ever asked for the Spirit and no
disciple ever asked. There had been no work of the Spirit in ordinary people
until the day of Pentecost. Jesus spoke
of an experience awaiting
the day of Pentecost and actually to ask meant to ask for salvation,
then new birth. Even on the day of
Pentecost nobody asked for
the Spirit and He
came upon them ‘suddenly’.
Jesus indicated that
the Spirit is given to those who pray – habitually, i.e. those who are
believers. When Jesus said “ask and you shall receive”,
He obviously spoke of a future experience, something nobody had
known, promised in Joel 28 as an
outpouring of the Spirit. It came with
the Gospel. Salvation is by the Holy Spirit.
This hesitation about the Spirit, confused with
‘unpredictable grace,’ often as prayer-power, power generated by prayer, the more the prayer
the more the power – led main 19th century
pre-Pentecostal prayer. But Christ promised the Spirit and we cannot
generate the Holy Spirit. Efforts of
ours, travailing, prevailing, groaning
are unknown in the
NT. The Spirit
is the gift bestowed or received at new
birth blossoming with various gifts as the Spirit sees fit.
Jesus
said “ask”, Paul said “be filled”. Jesus used the active tense and Paul the passive.
It is time to see that the Pentecostal revival is the
product of Divine guidance in revelation
is much as the Reformation. We are still learning and need to shake of the
clinging immature ideas of evangelicalism. It is the revelation of the
Gospel as for body and soul, for the physical and the
spiritual. Many
of the older
commentaries, like the Matthew Henry, are non-Pentecostal and mostly
devotional. Modern commentaries are extremely analytical, down tocorrect Ms Greek itself
As said in
previous notes, healings took place but usually were exclusive to the saints. The Pope
nominated saints, based on their sacrificial service and who have earned grace in such quantity
as to make them more god-like. They become by Papal edict a special order
beyond the clergy. At present they are
searching whether certain people have ever performed a miracle.
Yunggi Cho
has signed a book by a ghost writer about a spiritual realm from which both
Buddhists and Christians draw by prayer. How far Yunngi
Cho follows this I do not know, but it is not NT
teaching. There is ONE Spirit (1 Cor. 12)
In extreme Pentecostal circles, it is assumed that to be filled with the Spirit makes people a kind of little
God able to do what God does and say
what God does with the same words and same power. It might be that an individual believes that
God has elevated him or her above normal believers. Actually, He lifts us all above the ordinary
according to his will, but He has no favourites with a red telephone direct to Him for Divine
revelation.
The NT
prophet is nothing like the OT prophet whatever. In prophecy we do use
such words as “Thus saith the Lord”.
The Holy Spirit is not usually predictive and a prophet is never sent to
a nation except that
the Gospel is a prophetical message and all true Word preaching is by the Spirit prophetical, not polemical.
The whole Word, the Gospel, the whole council of God is utterly
dependent on the Holy
Spirit. I showed in my book that Christ and the Spirit were as much one as the Son
and the Father. They never operate without one another though
each is individual. To see the Spirit at work we
see Jesus. Jesus did not incarnate or
represent one ‘mode’ of God, but all that God was. The idea that we must wait and pray and
make special efforts to be endowed with
the Spirit is to suggest God won’t be
what He is unless under pressure from us.
