2.3 A Lasting Conversion (radical evangelicalism series)

2.1 The State of Faith in America
2.2 Dunk and Run
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Lasting Conversion
8. So what is a lasting conversion, an eternal conversion? What is the conversion that ultimately matters?

Let me start by speaking practically rather than technically. The most imporrtant conversion is one that lasts to eternity. It is true that a person can be truly converted and yet fall away (Heb 6:3; Jude 24). But the end result is as if the person was never truly saved at all. They are like the seed along the path, scorched by the sun, or choked by weeds. They are Israelites that do not enter the promised land, "whose corpses fell in the desert" (Heb. 3:17).

9. How does a lasting conversion begin? It is ultimately a matter of the Holy Spirit. This is the repeated message of the New Testament. 

Repentance is a precursor to conversion. Faith is an essential lead up. All along the Holy Spirit has been involved, drawing you to Christ. Baptism is significant, an "outward sign" of God's working inside us.

But, according to the New Testament, the Spirit is the moment of conversion. "If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they are not his" (Rom. 8:9).

The Spirit is God's "seal" of ownership on us (2 Cor. 1:22). The Spirit is the "guarantee," the "downpayment" of our future inheritance (2 Cor. 1:22; Eph. 1:14). Without the Spirit in us, we are not yet truly and fully converted.

We see this in the book of Acts. In Acts 8, in Samaria, a group of individuals have been baptized, but they have not received the Holy Spirit. This is a problem because Acts 2:38 gives the clear pattern: Repent, be baptized, and you will receive the Holy Spirit. Something was wrong.

By the same token, conversion can happen without baptism. In Acts 10, Paul has hardly finished presenting the good news to Cornelius and his men before the Holy Spirit has come upon them. In that incident, baptism simply enacts what the Spirit has already done inside of them.

10. How do we know if we have received the Holy Spirit? I suspect that, for most of us, it will chiefly manifest itself as a "peace that passes understanding" (Phil. 4:7). [10] As the hymn goes, "blessed assurance, Jesus is mine; oh, what a foretaste of glory divine."

However, Paul tells us explicitly what the presence of the Holy Spirit looks like, and this is true not only in me as an individual but in the church collectively. He tells us that "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control" (Gal. 5:22-23). 

Are these the characteristics that most would use to describe the American church? Not likely. In that respect, we have to wonder how much of the American church is actually truly converted.

The Parable of the Weeds makes it clear that not everyone in the church is actually part of the Church (Matt. 13:24-30). The true Church is "invisible." It does not coincide with the people who hold up a Bible or quote Scripture. Indeed, Satan has the entire Bible memorized (e.g., Matt. 4:6).

Matthew puts it sharply, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 7:21). The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats also puts it starkly. Those who did not use what God gave them in the service of those in need turn out to be goats rather than God's sheep. They find their end in eternal judgment (Matt. 25:45-46). [11]

11. We have to conclude that either a good deal of the American church is either not truly converted or not fully converted. My pastor used to put it this way. "Don't worry. You're all still going to heaven. You're just not fully converted yet." [12]

I would put it this way. Some in the American church are not truly converted. But many others are not fully converted. Like Paul's description in 1 Corinthians 3, their faith is mixed with hay and straw (1 Cor. 3:12). 

That is one of the main purposes of this book, to call the American church to a truer and deeper faith. It is a call to recognize where our faith has been corrupted. And for those with fake faith, it is a call to genuine faith.

[10] There are individuals whose "peace receptors" are damaged. While 1 John 3:20 probably was not psychologizing originally, there is great truth to the fact that, when our consciences are not working properly, God knows the real story. Once upon a time, I found David Seamands' book, The Healing of Memories (David C. Cook, 1986) very helpful on this score.

[11] Note that the Parable of the Talents immediately preceeds the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. While this parable is often read as a capitalist manifesto, in context, the investment of talents would seem to be giving away what God has given us to those in need. We miss this context because of the glasses we are wearing when we read.

[12] Steve Deneff, College Wesleyan Church.

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1. What is Evangelicalism?
1.1 Revivals of the 1700s and 1800s
1.2 The "New" Evangelicalism
1.3 The Poltical Takeover

Sermon Starters: Fill Her Up

Title: Fill Her Up
Location: Lakeview Wesleyan Church
Date: Father's Day, 2019 (June 16)
Text: Acts 4:23-31

Introduction

• Happy Father's Day
• Scripture/Prayer
• My father would never have run out of gas... [insert story on running out of gas or fuel of some kind]
• Keep your spiritual tank full!

I. We need spiritual gas.

• Ephesians 5:18 (present tense - ongoing command)
• Growing up - thought of the Holy Spirit mainly in terms of entire sanctification, of a check off moment in your spiritual life.
• Like turbo boosters in some movie - Batman, Fast and Furious...
• The Holy Spirit is part of the entire life of a believer... He's the Spirit that gives us spiritual life.
• Romans 7 was not about Christian life. It was about a person without the Spirit (a not-yet Christian).
• Sin is not like a mass removed by divine surgery. It's not something to be removed. It's a power shortage fixed by plugging in.
• Holy Spirit is what makes us a Christian - 2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5; Eph. 1:14. An "earnest" (downpayment and guarantee), a seal (of God's ownership).
• When? How do we know? Usually there's a moment when you invite God in. In Acts often associated with baptism. Prayer is key. Usually there is a peace, although sometimes we have to speak peace to someone (especially melancholics like me).

II. Don't run out.

• Insert story about running out of steam. Mine was a marathon story. 
• Sometimes you don't know you're on empty--why it's important to go to church, to be part of Christian fellowship, to be "under the spout where the glory comes out." Means of grace.
• The trials come unexpectedly, and there isn't always a gas station around. If you're on empty, it might tank you.
• Parable of the Soils in Mark 4 - the weeds choke out the good news.
• Parable of the Bridesmaids in Matthew 25 - they didn't have oil ready

III. Sometimes you need a boost.

• The story in Acts 4.
• Turbo-boost
• What are you facing? God is up to the challenge!
• 1 Corinthians 10:13.

IV. Conclusion with prayer

SP1. The Spirit is a distinct person, but one in substance with the Father and Son.

I have now finished the raw material for two books I hope to self-publish soon. The first is material that covers God and Creation from one Wesleyan-Arminian standpoint. I hope to self-publish it by the end of the week. The other covers Christ and Salvation. Both are part of a series I started over a year ago called my Theology in Bullet Points. It is an attempt to provide some resources for those of us in the Wesleyan tradition.

Myself and a few others have started a new Wesleyan academic series with Pickwick Publishing, a series called the Wesleyan Via Media series. I am hoping to have a conference at IWU next year aiming to chart a future for Wesleyan thinking in the years to come. I'm hoping that one result of this series will be some classic resources for those of us in my corner of the Wesleyan tradition.

Don Thorsen, for example, has agreed to write something on the Reformation for the 500th anniversary of Wittenberg. I am writing a book on how to read the Bible. And I am hoping we will have a proper Wesleyan systematic theology come out of the series as well. More on these things to come.

Today, however, I start the third and final part of my overview of Wesleyan theology. This one might prove to be the most interesting of all, by the time it's done: The Spirit and the Church.

SP1. The Spirit is a distinct person, but one in substance with the Father and the Son.
1. The branch of Christian theology that studies the Holy Spirit is called pneumatology, from the Greek word for spirit, pneuma. As we saw in our discussion of the Trinity, the Spirit is fully God like God the Father and God the Son. The Spirit is "of one substance with the Father," for there is only one God.

But the Spirit is a distinct person, like God the Father is a distinct person and God the Son is a distinct person. This is a mystery. Christians believe there is only one God. But Christians believe God is three persons.

It would be easy to think of the Spirit as an "it" rather than a "he." The Spirit of God in the Old Testament is pictured like the breath or wind of God that comes over a person in power (e.g., Judg. 13:6). [1] It would be easy enough to think of the Spirit in this way in parts of the New Testament, such as on the Day of Pentecost, when a violent wind blows through from heaven (Acts 2:2).

Nevertheless, the New Testament moves beyond impersonal language and uses personal language of the Holy Spirit. "It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us," Acts 15:28 says. Here the Holy Spirit is seen giving directions to the early church. We should thus see the various things that the Holy Spirit does in the Old and New Testament as the actions of a distinct person within the eternal Trinity.

Nowhere is the personhood of the Spirit clearer, however, than in the Gospel of John, where the beloved disciple glides from the neuter pronoun for the Greek word spirit to the masculine pronoun implying, "he." [2] John 14:28 starts by using the neuter pronoun for spirit, following the nature of the Greek word. But before the verse is even finished, John slips into the masculine pronoun: "that one," masculine, "will teach you." John thus considered the Spirit to be a person.

2. All the divine attributes of the Father and Son are thus also the attributes of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is eternal. The Spirit is all-powerful. The Spirit is all-knowing. The Spirit is everywhere present.

This latter attribute of omnipresence is intuitive to us, for what is spirit as we think of it but an entity without a body that would locate or limit its location? As spirit, the Holy Spirit is both everywhere present and heavenly in origin. These are the two original ways that the biblical authors understood God's Spirit--God in his presence everywhere and God as other than the material creation around us.

3. One of the more regrettable conflicts in Christian history was a debate over whether the Holy Spirit proceeds only from God the Father or whether he proceeds from the Father and the Son (filioque, in Latin). This seemingly minor point of debate was the flash point issue over which the Eastern and Western churches split in AD1054.

The real issue, as it often is, was really over power. Was the Pope the "first among equals," as the East thought, or was he truly the supreme authority in the Church? Did the Western church have the authority to insert this word, filioque, into the Nicene Creed on its own, without it being approved by an "ecumenical" (universal) council? The result of the conflict was the Roman Catholic Church in the West and the Orthodox churches of the East. [3]

Even today, some in the Orthodox Church would say that the problem with filioque ("and the Son") is not the doctrine, but the fact that it has never been approved by the whole Church. We therefore should not consider this a point of core dogma, but a doctrine over which different parts of Christendom disagree.

4. Both sides of this debate probably are fighting for a truth. In the Old Testament, the Father sends the Spirit when there is no mention of the Son. The New Testament, however, speaks of both the Father and the Son sending the Spirit. John 14 speaks of the Father sending the Spirit in Jesus' name (e.g., 14:16). However, in John 15:26, Jesus says that he will send the Spirit, and Romans 8:9 calls the Spirit the Spirit of Christ and the Spirit of God.

Of course the debate today especially focuses on the relationship between the persons of the Trinity before creation. I have said before that it is unwise for us to think we know much about that. We are prone simply to project anthromorphisms on them and then call them God's will for us today. The truth is rather that God has revealed analogies to his eternal being that have everything to do with the way he has created this universe. It is unwise to think of them as part of God's literal "eternal nature" but as pictures to help us understand him in this creation.

Next Sunday: SP2. The Holy Spirit enacts the wills of the Father and Son in the world.

[1] The English word, pneumonia, captures this sense of the Greek word for spirit as related to breath.

[2] In Greek, words have what is called, "gender": masculine, feminine, or neuter. These genders are not the same as the "sex" of an entity. So a noun that is feminine in Greek is not necessarily female. Similarly, the Greek word for "spirit" is neuter without saying anything about the "sex" of the Spirit.

Of course, as we saw at the beginning of this series, God is not literally male. He has no penis. How much less should we think that the Holy Spirit has a sexual organ! To call the Spirit a "he" is to use a human image to try to understand "him."

[3] We cannot really speak of the Roman Catholic Church until 1054. Before that point, everything was simply the church catholic, the church everywhere. Even to this day, there are groups within Christianity that consider themselves Catholic without being Roman Catholic. Indeed, some in the Anglican Church consider themselves Catholic in this sense.

Oops, we've killed the messiah (4)

... continued from yesterday.
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The people listening to Peter are cut to the heart. Have you ever made a major mistake before, one that really hurt someone? Imagine making a mistake that got someone killed!

Many times, those in this situation refuse to admit that they have messed up, especially if clear wrongdoing or wrong motives are involved. No doubt many of those most responsible for Jesus' death fell into this category.  But the crowd in Acts 2 do not have hard hearts. Peter does not specifically say here that they were the ones who had cried for Jesus' crucifixion, but they clearly recognized their past sins and need for God's forgiveness.

Peter gives the bottom line for salvation in Acts 2:38.  It is similar to other verses like Romans 10:9 or John 1:12 that all point to the same basic attitude toward God.  Peter says, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."

To "repent" is to recognize that you have wronged God and others in the past and that you need God's grace and forgiveness.  Luke-Acts does not focus so much on Jesus' death, but for the apostle Paul, Jesus' death made it possible for believers to get out from under the curse of sin (e.g., Gal. 3:13). But Acts focuses much more on Jesus' resurrection and the fact that it opened the door for the Spirit to cleanse our hearts.

Although Peter's sermon does not mention faith here, it is clear from elsewhere in Acts that "believing" or "having faith" in the message was a clear element in the process of getting right with God (4:4). Although the word "believe" and "faith" look quite different in English, they are actually the same root in Greek (pisteuo and pistis). Both words can focus on "head belief," and both words can lean more toward "trusting in" someone or something.

In this context, to believe the message is more than just checking "true" on a true/false test.  Believing in the message implied in itself repentance from previous behavior and a turn to embrace a new direction and a new way of living. Faith implied commitment to everything the message implied as far as how to live and, more importantly, who to serve.

So repentance and faith were key elements of the response of the crowd.  They also became baptized in water to symbolize the washing away of their past sins. It arguably was not the baptism itself that saved them from the judgment to come, but it was an important action. Symbolic actions are powerful, usually far more powerful than mere words or ideas.

We can get right with God without baptism--it happens to the Gentiles in Acts 10. They receive the Holy Spirit before they get to the baptism part.  But why would we want to skip the power of such a sacred moment, a "sacrament" where God uses ordinary water to meet us in an extraordinary way?

Up to this point, the process of getting right with God has not differed from the process John the Baptist had brought to Israel at the beginning of Jesus' ministry. The baptism of the earliest Christians in Acts differed in one incredibly significant way.  It involved receiving the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit sealed the deal.

The factor in the New Testament that shows par excellence that you are in the people of God in this age is the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is the single determining factor of whether someone is in the people of God in the New Testament (e.g., Rom. 8:9).  The Spirit can come whether a person is baptized or not. The Spirit can come on a child long before it has the presence of mind to repent or have faith (e.g., Luke 1:15). But if a person has not received or been filled with the Spirit, the person is not "in" the people of God in this final age.

The Spirit is God's "seal of ownership" on us (e.g., 2 Cor. 1:22), the stamp or brand that says we belong to God.  The Spirit is a down payment of the kingdom, that guarantees us a place in it (2 Cor. 5:5; Eph. 1:14). Earlier in the chapter, we recognized that not everyone will have a deeply dramatic experience of the Holy Spirit. Most do not speak in tongues.  Many experience a boldness to witness to Christ's power on their lives.

Most will have a sense of peace, but even here some need the body of Christ to speak God's love directly to them in ways they have difficulty feeling. Most will have a clear sense that God has washed away their past and cleaned up their lives.  Most will have a new sense of the possibilities of the future, a future filled with goodness, love, and a live devoted to God.

The Power of the Spirit (4)

... continued from Friday.
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But this is exactly what it means for someone to be a Lord. A lord is a master, someone whom you must serve and obey. We do not have masters today in most contexts, certainly not in America. We do not have kings who can have us put to death if we do not submit to their authority.

It seems that few people have a real comprehension of what a God is. We take God for granted, almost as if he exists to serve us rather than the other way around. So the notion that we would want to give God complete authority over our lives may at times seem foreign even to many who actually call themselves Christians.

So there is nothing wrong with using the idea of being filled with the Spirit for a new sense of purity, power, and authority God takes over our lives that comes once we surrender completely to him. Although it is not exactly biblical language, holiness preachers were on to a marvelous image when they talked of the fullness of the Spirit. After all, will God take full control of our lives if we have not given him all of our lives that we know to give?

But this idea, valid though it is, does not seem to be what the book of Acts had in mind. [1] As we have seen, the coming of the Spirit in Acts primarily has to do with the initial experience of Christians when they first believe in Jesus as Messiah and are baptized.  The situation of the disciples is different because the Spirit had not yet come in this way until the Day of Pentecost.

In Luke-Acts, the Day of Pentecost, as we saw earlier, is finally the fulfillment of the prediction John the Baptist made that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit. [2] The disciples could not have been filled with the Spirit in this way until after Jesus died and rose from the dead.

So what is the coming of the Holy Spirit about in Acts?  Yes, for those who are first believing on Jesus, being filled with the Spirit is truly the mechanism of past sins being cleansed.  Baptism is the outward act with our bodies that corresponds to the spiritual act the Spirit does in cleansing our sins. Acts 15:9 tells us that the hearts of the Gentiles had been purified when they received the Spirit.

But Acts focuses much more on the power that comes when people receive the Holy Spirit.  Isn't this exactly what Jesus predicted in Acts 1:9: "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you"?  And it is exactly power that we see the disciples have in the chapters that follow the Day of Pentecost.  They receive power to perform miracles, such as the healing of the lame man in Acts 3. They receive boldness to witness to the resurrection even though they are persecuted for it.

And this power is available for believers even today. In Romans 8:9, Paul tells the Romans that a person is not truly a child of God if he or she does not have the Holy Spirit. Most people today do not experience as dramatic an experience as those in Acts, although some do.  Most today experience a peace, a calm assurance. [3]

Luke-Acts draws a line to us, as if to tell us that in the power of the Spirit we can do the same miracles today.  Luke-Acts shows Paul doing the same miracles that Peter did, which were the same miracles that Jesus did.  The three points make, as it were, a line that points to today.

[1] Again, if the Spirit-fillings of Acts were about a distinct spiritual experience like entire sanctification, we would surely expect Acts to be more explicit about it. We should always question interpretations of this magnitude that require us to read between the lines. Interestingly, John Wesley himself did not use Acts to present his teaching on sanctification anywhere in his writings.

[2] Again, John 20:22 is not part of the narrative of Luke-Acts. As far as Acts is concerned, the Day of Pentecost is the first time the promise of Luke 3 comes to pass.

[3] For whatever reasons, some believers are also plagued with difficulty experiencing the love of God. In such cases, the body of Christ often steps in to embody the love and assurance of God for them.

Tongues 1--the Spirit Comes

... continued from Wednesday.
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"When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place" (Acts 2:1). There were about 120 in an upstairs room (1:15), quite possibly the room where they ate the Last Supper (Luke 22:12). [1] The number included the original eleven disciples, others who had followed Jesus from the beginning (like Matthias and Joseph), and women who had followed Jesus (cf. Luke 23:55-56). It also included Jesus' mother, Mary, and Jesus' brothers like James and Jude. They have been praying and waiting on the Holy Spirit to come, as Jesus promised.

They hear a violent wind. The word for spirit in both Greek and Hebrew is related to the word for wind. The Spirit is, in a sense, the breath of God, breathing on his people, giving them life as in Genesis 2:7. The tongues of fire are like traditions about what happened when God gave the Law on Mt. Sinai, except now God is enacting the new covenant, in which he writes his laws on the hearts of his people through the Holy Spirit. [2]

They begin to speak in other languages or "tongues" as they are often called. They apparently come out of the upper room to the outside and are telling of the wonders of God in all sorts of different languages. It is the Feast of Pentecost.  Jews are in Jerusalem from all over the known world.  Fifteen different areas are mentioned. Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and people from Mesopotamia hear, people from the far east of that time. Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia are places in modern day Turkey. Egypt and Libya are in Africa, Crete and Rome from the broader Mediterranean. Arabs lived in Palestine and Judea was of course where Jerusalem itself was.

These are Jews and converts to Judaism. We remember that there were more Jews scattered outside of Jerusalem at the time than lived in the home country. The Egyptian city of Alexandria alone probably had more Jews in it than in all of Jerusalem. These individuals hear the witness of the 120 in their own languages.

Probably the most natural way to take the tongues of Acts 2 is that these individuals are given the ability to speak in these other languages. The only hint of something different would be the fact that some think that they are drunk. The situation in Acts 2 points to something a little different from 1 Corinthians 14:23, when outsiders do not understand what is being said. The tongues-speakers in 1 Corinthians 14:13 also do not seem to know what they are saying, while those in Acts 2 presumably do.  The experience in Acts 2 is a tool for witness and mission. In 1 Corinthians 14 it is a very personal experience that Paul criticizes for not being edifying to the congregation as a whole.

Tongues come in two other places in Acts.  In Acts 10:46, Gentiles speak in tongues when the Spirit first comes on them.  This is the first time in Acts that the Spirit comes on the Gentiles, proving that they can be in the people of God without having to convert to Judaism and get circumcised. Speaking in tongues shows that their experience of the Spirit is every bit as authentic as the Spirit-filling experience the Jews experienced on the Day of Pentecost.

But tongues are not mentioned every time someone is filled with the Spirit. For example, tongues are not mentioned in another filling the followers of Jesus experience in Acts 4:31. Tongues are not mentioned at Samaria when the Spirit comes (8:17) or when Paul receives the Spirit in 9:17-18. The only other place tongues are mentioned is in Acts 19:6 at Ephesus.

The situation here is that some individuals have only been baptized in the way of John the Baptist. They have not been baptized in the manner of Jesus, which involves receiving the Holy Spirit. So Paul baptizes them and the Holy Spirit comes on them.  They speak in tongues just as the disciples had on the Day of Pentecost.

Tongues in these instances seem to be particularly significant as a sign of the new age of the Spirit. In each instance, some important boundary is crossed or is remembered being crossed. There are some groups that insist that anyone who is truly a Christian will speak in tongues. Such groups often put Acts 2 at the center of their understanding of Christian life today. There are at least two key features of their understanding.

The first is that receiving or being filled with the Holy Spirit is part of a person's conversion experience. We will look at this issue in a moment. Are the Spirit-fillings of Acts an initial experience that believers have when they first come to believe on Jesus as their Lord? Or is receiving the Holy Spirit a second or later experience a person has some time after he or she has believed? For that matter, do all Christians receive the Holy Spirit at all or is it a special experience just for some?

The second assumption is that all those who receive the Holy Spirit in Acts spoke in tongues, even though Acts does not always mention them. Certain Pentecostal groups distinguish between tongues in Acts as the key evidence that a person has received the Holy Spirit and tongues as a special gift from God that only some Christians receive. Such groups would say that 1 Corinthians 14 is about the gift of tongues, while Acts 2 tells us about tongues as evidence that a person has in fact truly become a Christian.

There are good reasons to believe that not all Christians will speak in tongues when they first believe...

[1] Was it the home of John Mark in Acts 12:12?

[2] Cf. Jer. 31:31-34; Heb. 8:8-12; Rom. 2:15.

The Promise of the Spirit 1

Now beginning chapter 2 of life reflections on Acts...
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To understand Acts 2 and the coming of the Holy Spirit, we have to go back to the very beginning of Luke-Acts in Luke 3. John the Baptist is baptizing people at the Jordan River. The people are wondering if he might be the Messiah. He assures them that he is not.

"I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire" (Luke 3:17).

This verse is the background for the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2.  It may take us a little doing, but we have to remember that the Gospel of John was not sitting between Luke and Acts when Luke's audience first heard Luke-Acts.  These two books were one work, one continuous story. What that means is that if you stick material from John into the flow of Luke-Acts, you're changing the story from how it was originally meant to be read.

Why am I telling you this?  Because it is very common in some circles to insert a moment in John 20:22 into Acts' story line. In John 20:22, Jesus breathes on his disciples and tells them to receive the Holy Spirit. Some Christians thus like to see Acts 2 as an additional event involving the Holy Spirit.

But not for Acts.  The moment in John 20 is not part of the story of Luke-Acts.  For Luke-Acts, the coming of the Spirit in Acts 2 is the fulfillment of John's prediction in Luke 3. For Acts 2, the Spirit has not come yet in the way that John anticipated before the Day of Pentecost. [1]

The event on the Day of Pentecost thus represents a kind of full instatement of Jesus as Messiah.  John the Baptist says that the Messiah will bring a new baptism, a baptism in Spirit. That prediction is enacted in Acts 2.  It goes in force. Jesus is now fully operating as the king--at least as he plans to operate in this age until his return. The Day of Pentecost is, in a sense, the birth of the church and the church age. The benefit of Christ's death and resurrection for the world are now fully in play.

The Day of Pentecost was one of three feasts in the Old Testament when, in theory, every Jewish male was to go to Jerusalem and present himself before the Lord (cf. Deut. 16:10, 16). It was also called the "Feast of Weeks" because it was 7 weeks or 50 days after Passover. It was also called the "Feast of First Fruits" because it celebrated the beginning of the wheat harvest.

The symbolism is clear.  The Day of Pentecost represents the first harvest of Jesus followers now that the age of the Spirit has come. It is hard to know if Jews at the time associated the Feast of Pentecost with the giving of the Law at Mt. Sinai, but later Jewish tradition did, and some Jewish writers of the time saw fire as part of the giving of the Jewish Law. [2] Is it possible that Luke wanted us to see Pentecost as the enactment of the new covenant (Luke 22:20)?

John the Baptist had predicted that Jesus' baptism would involve fire.  The function of fire in this context is to cleanse and purify (Luke 3:17). Yes, this cleansing probably does involve a sifting of people.  But Acts 15:9 also tells us that the coming of the Spirit purifies the disciples' own hearts, as well as the hearts of all those who receive the Spirit.

What is happening in the time before this inaugural event of the church? First they are waiting.  Jesus has told them to wait for this promise of the Father, the promise that John the Baptist also foretold (1:4).  Will we have to wait for the Spirit ourselves today?

Quite possibly. We live in such an instantaneous world.  We can text message someone from the other side of the world. We have our phones in our pockets and purses continually. We are not used to waiting.

The disciples only had to wait 10 days, but the coming of the Holy Spirit when we are waiting may not come that quickly for us.  While it is hard for us, part of Christian maturity is the patience to wait on God.  Sometimes he may come quickly. At other times we may wait years. With God a day is like a thousand years (Ps. 90:4), and we should be prepared for the possibility that some answers may not even come within our lifetime.

The disciples also prayed while they were waiting (1:14). The ten days of waiting were spent in prayer. There are probably times when you should move from praying to acting in faith, but this time was not one of them. Jesus had given them clear instructions.  The next event was the unique event of Pentecost, the unrepeatable first time inauguration of the age of the Spirit. It came next.

So prayer was the clear order of business while they waited. Pentecost is not the only time in Acts when the Holy Spirit comes in the middle of praying. The Spirit will come in the middle of preaching too.  In both instances, those who were filled with the Spirit were open and longing for God. They had an earnestness about their waiting. So should we always be...

[1] As an aside, this instance is a good example of how the difference between the original shape of the biblical books and the current shape of the Bible can create new meanings that were not part of the original meaning. John does not have a second volume that gives the history of the early church. But John 20:22 may very well be John's version of Acts 2.

[2] Philo in his essay, "On the Decalogue," paints a scene in which the breath of God would bring words which took the form of flames and the people heard the flames in their native language (Dec. 9-13).

Practical Theology 7: God as Spirit

More in the theology series...

Introduction
1. Is Theology Practical?
2. Why Believe in God?

God as Creator
3. God as Other
4. God as All-Powerful
5. God as All-Knowing
6. God as Eternal

7. God as Spirit
John 4:24 proclaims that "God is spirit, and it is necessary for those who worship him to worship in spirit and truth." As is often the case, the first statement is often lifted out of its context and made to make an abstract theological claim. But as with all words, what were these words doing in context?

In John 4, Jesus is telling a Samaritan woman that neither the temple in Jerusalem or Samaria localize God.  God is present in spiritual form, not in physical form. The spirits of human beings are what worship God. To say God is a spirit in this sense is thus to say that he is not visible or tied down to a fixed location. It points us toward the Christian sense that God is everywhere present in the universe, though not often visible.

The New Testament tells us that the Spirit of God spoke through the prophets of the Old Testament (e.g., 2 Pet. 1:21). The Spirit of God reveals truth to his people (1 Cor. 7:40). The Spirit of God empowers his people (Acts 4:8). Most intriguing of all, a few places seem to speak of the Holy Spirit as a distinct person from God the Father (John 14:26; 2 Cor. 13:13).

Of course this is exactly what Christians would officially affirm in the earliest centuries of the church. God the Spirit is a distinct person of the Trinity, of one substance with the Father.  The practical implications are that God is with us, wherever we go. He is with us to empower us, as he did to the apostles in Acts.  He is with us to give us knowledge of the truth (John 16:13), knowledge of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8-11).

The Spirit is God's seal of ownership on us (Eph. 1:13-14), a deposit and guarantee of our future existence.  Spirit is the stuff of heaven--the biblical authors probably thought literally, although we are best to take it as a picture (spirit was understood in material terms at the time of Christ, just thin material). Romans 8:9 tells us that if someone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to him.  In the same way, the Holy Spirit is the definitive ingredient of eternal life in Acts (11:18).

The Spirit of God cleanses and purifies our hearts (Acts 15:9).  The Spirit sets us apart as God's people, both individually and corporately (2 Thess. 2:13).  He "sanctifies" us, cleansing us and setting us apart. He can sanctify God's people thoroughly, in every aspect of our lives (1 Thess. 5:23).

What does it look like to have the Holy Spirit today? Some Christians think you will speak in tongues if you have the Holy Spirit, but the New Testament hardly says anything of this sort and Paul clearly does not think all believers will speak in tongues (1 Cor. 12:30). American Christianity has tended to dramatize receiving the Holy Spirit to where everyone would have some emotional experience patterned off of Acts, but this is hardly our experience of your average person "getting saved." We would normally expect a peace to come but some individuals have blocks that keep them from feeling God's presence.

We must leave it to God rather than formulate some "one shoe fits all" approach. Most people experience peace and a confidence that they are right with God--if they are taught to expect it (remembering that assurance is a fairly recent notion). Some people get a significant feeling of God's presence. Some people get a sense of spiritual power. Some people speak in tongues.

Others must trust in the knowledge that they have put their trust in God, whether they feel anything special or not. At times other believers need to be faith for the troubled. God has given the body of Christ collectively the spiritual authority to forgive sins (e.g., John 20:23). Sometimes we have to exercise this authority on those who, for whatever reason, are troubled by doubt.

There are instances in Scripture where God's Spirit comes on individuals who are not serving him (e.g., Saul) or are even still in the womb (e.g., John the Baptist). So we should not assume that a person must be an adult or a believer to experience the power or presence of God's Spirit. The Spirit can also depart from God's people, as seems to have happened to Israel at one point (cf. Ezek. 10:18).

What does God's Spirit look like against the backdrop of a robust understanding of creation out of nothing? It is fascinating to think that the picture of God as spirit both served to indicate his invisible presence everywhere while also indicating that he transcended the embodied realm.  From the standpoint of creation ex nihilo, these are two quite different functions, although they connected well to each other in the worldview of New Testament times.

So in New Testament times, spirit is the stuff from the top of the creation. [1] If you go straight up, you proceed through layers of sky (=heavens. It's the same word. We only use two different words--sky and heaven--because our view of the world has changed from ancient times).  When you get to the highest sky, you get to the highest heaven where beings like angels, "ministering spirits" (Heb. 1:14), were located. From the standpoint of Bible times, this is all part of one uni-verse. [2]

But with a robust sense of creation out of nothing, we now see more clearly than ever that the essence of God is "outside" this universe. The picture of God as Spirit in Scripture thus comes to refer to two quite different claims, both of which are truth: 1) that the essence of God is "other" than this creation and 2) that God is still nonetheless present everywhere in this world.

The trinitarian formulation of Nicaea in 325, like all revelation, was made within the categories of those to whom God revealed it. There are possibilities in a robust understanding of creation out of nothing for understanding God the Spirit as God in this universe and God the Father primarily as a reference to the essence of God outside this universe, remembering that the biblical language was not trying to explain these sorts of things.  They were simply pointing to different things the one God did and they used different names to do so without defining them in anything like a philosophical sense. [3]

But these sorts of speculations should make us uncomfortable. They are, after all, the stuff of ecumenical councils and the whole of Christendom. It is also, however, a warning to the current trendiness of Trinity-talk right now among theologians.  Theology literature right now is rife with what must surely in the end be wild speculation about how the nature of the Trinity impacts us.  In the end, such theologians are probably embarrassing themselves beyond comprehension. Most of this speculation, I suspect, will turn out to be impractical, even if it comes in practical garb.

God the Spirit means that God is with us everywhere, even though we cannot see him.  God the Spirit means that we have purity and power at our disposal.  God the Spirit means that we have direction and knowledge at our disposal. God the Spirit means that we have God at our disposal.

[1] In Old Testament times, spirit is wind, breath (ruach). The Spirit of God is thus conceptualized as the wind or breath of God.

[2] The Bible does not seem to have any category for anything being outside the cosmos.  It seems to operate with the picture of a three-story universe, with heaven being up and Sheol, the realm of the dead, being down.

[3] What I am saying here is that "God the Father" and "God the Spirit" is phenomenological language that refers to God as he appeared to his people and was experienced by them in their thought categories, God in the way he functioned with them. Philosophically and theologically, we might at least in theory give a more precise delineation if we had a more precise understanding of their roles. For example, could some functions that were experienced as being functions of "God the Father" have more precisely been functions of God the Spirit?


8. Three in One
9. God as Love
10. God as Just
11. God as Unchanging

Gospel of John on the Spirit

Here's an excerpt from the Jesus book I just finished.
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One of the key features of the Farewell Sermon in John is Jesus’ repeated mention of the coming of the Holy Spirit. Another reason why the disciples should not be troubled is because Jesus will be sending back the promised Holy Spirit after he ascends to heaven...

While John does not mention John the Baptist's prediction of the coming of the Holy Spirit, he does talk extensively about the Spirit’s coming. Jesus is sending back the Spirit of truth (14:17). The Holy Spirit will be like an advocate for them. He will teach them what they need to know along with reminding them of what Jesus had taught while he was on earth (14:26). The Spirit will bring peace to their troubled hearts (14:27).

This sense of the Spirit as leading us into truth underlies the Christian sense of prophecy. Anyone, man or woman, can speak the prophetic word of God to others because we all have partaken of the same Holy Spirit. Acts 2:17 explicitly brings out the prophetic implications of the Spirit inside us, quoting the prophet Joel: “I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy.”

There is a tendency among many evangelicals to limit the Spirit’s speaking to the reading of the Bible. Certainly most of us have no problem believing that the Bible is the primary place today from which God speaks to his people. But what of the great many of God’s people throughout history who have either been illiterate or have not had easy access to the Scriptures? What of the fact that very few people indeed are schooled in the kind of historical and cultural knowledge necessary to hear the words of the Bible as they were first understood?

God’s answer has always been the Holy Spirit. Mainstream evangelicals have often resisted charismatics and holiness revivalists because their openness to the Spirit seemed too unpredictable, too dangerous. These fears are not entirely ungrounded. But Jesus did not tell his disciples that the Holy Spirit would lead them to the right interpretations of the Bible. He told them that the Spirit himself, directly, would lead them into all truth...

John 16:8-11 give additional functions that the Holy Spirit does in the world. The Holy Spirit will “convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment” (NASB). The Holy Spirit functions with regard to sin, to show the world that it stands guilty. People in the world do not believe in Jesus, but the Holy Spirit will prove to the world that it is in the wrong before God. The Spirit will convince the world that judgment is coming, because Satan stands condemned. Finally, without Jesus around to show the disciples what righteousness is, the Spirit will show them.

John doesn’t give a lot of specifics about what these revelations look like precisely. Indeed, John says the Spirit himself will fill in the blanks after Jesus leaves. What does it mean for the Spirit to convict the world of sin? I grew up hearing it preached that the Spirit will bring you to a strong realization that you had sin in your life. Some traditions think of the conscience like it’s some software that everyone has. By contrast, I grew up thinking about it more as a matter of God coming to you as an individual and grabbing hold of your conscience, making it come alive, bringing you under conviction. [of course I heard the other approach two]

One important push-back to both of these interpretations is that the Spirit is not merely convicting individuals of sin, righteousness, and judgment, but the world. It may very well be more of a collective than an individual conviction. The Spirit will show the world where it is wrong and the church where it is right.

But the Holy Spirit does show us as individuals where we are wrong and where we are right. It is much less something universal, something everyone has on their hard drive from birth. Anthropologists will tell you that there is very little in the way of a common conscience built into human nature across the world. The model that sees the Spirit bringing the conscience alive fits what we observe much better.

The fact that there is more to be said about righteousness reminds me of the fact that there will always be new situations, especially as science continues to transform our world. How does love of God and neighbor play out in a world of in vitro fertilization and cloning? Here it seems important that we pray together and think through new issues together, trusting in the Holy Spirit to show us the way.

After the resurrection, Jesus appears to the disciples, breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (20:22). There is probably a small play on words because the word for “spirit” can also mean breath or wind. This is probably John’s version of Luke’s Day of Pentecost. Both play the same role in each gospel’s narrative. For Luke, the Day of Pentecost is the fulfillment of John the Baptist’s promise that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit. For John, Jesus’ breathing on them is the fulfillment of the promise that, if he went away, he would send another advocate for them...

2.2 Getting In: The Holy Spirit

Here is the second section of a sample chapter for a possible proposal I'm thinking of making, Generous Ecclesiology.
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So baptism in water was the most concrete way of telling whether a person was presumed “in” or “out” of the early church. Certainly attendance at a local assembly of believers pointed in this direction as well, although we can imagine un-baptized individuals being present in a local “church” who would not yet have been considered fully “in.” However, at the same time that baptism played this visible role, the early church soon conceptualized an even more important, underlying element in the entrance equation. What about someone who did not believe Jesus was the messiah but who had been baptized by John the Baptist? Were they “in” or “out”? At some point, at least some Christians came to conclude that such individuals were “out,” even though they were baptized almost exactly like the followers of Jesus. The difference was that these individuals did not have the Holy Spirit, which only could come through Jesus, not John the Baptist.

The portrayal of the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2 gives us an excellent picture of this understanding. The disciples have been told to wait in Jerusalem for the promised coming of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4-5). John the Baptist baptized in water, but Jesus will baptize with Holy Spirit (Luke 3:16).[i] So on the Day of Pentecost, those who have believed in Jesus’ resurrection are gathered together and are “filled” with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1-4), also called receiving the Spirit (2:38) or being “baptized” with the Holy Spirit (1:5). In Luke-Acts, this event is part of the commencement of the “last days” foretold by the prophet Joel, the age at the end of which God would restore Israel and establish his kingdom once and for all (e.g., Luke 1:68; 21:24).

Throughout the book of Acts, the coming of the Holy Spirit is the essential moment in “conversion,” as we have seen, more crucial even than baptism. If we are to use this word, conversion, we must make it very clear that—at least in the case of Jewish “converts”—we are not speaking of a change from one religion to another. When we speak of “conversion” to the Way or into the body of Jesus followers, we are talking about joining a group that understood itself as nothing other than the truest people of Israel. Ethnic Israel and its basic categories remained the foundation on which the house of God’s “elect,” his “last days” kingdom people, was built. When Paul speaks of the Gentiles coming “in” to God’s people, he thinks of them being grafted into a tree whose natural branches remain ethnic Israel (cf. Rom. 11:17-24).

Nevertheless, as we keep these things in mind, the Holy Spirit is clearly the key element of conversion in Acts, whether one is a Jew or a Gentile. Two incidents we mentioned in the first part of the chapter make the point clear. In Acts 8, some Samaritans have believed and have been baptized, but they have not yet received the Holy Spirit (8:14-17). Peter and John lay hands on them so that they will receive this most crucial element in conversion. In the thought world of Acts, it does not matter that they have been baptized, indeed that they already believe (8:12-13). They are not “in” because they have not received the Spirit. Similarly, in Acts 10, the question of whether Cornelius and the Gentiles with him can be included in God’s people and baptized is made moot by the fact that God has already poured out the Holy Spirit on them. The question of the ritual act is settled by the fact that the reality it signifies has already taken place (cf. Acts 15:8-9).

When we move beyond the presentation of Luke-Acts, we find a very similar theology of the Holy Spirit in relation to becoming a true “child of God” and a true member of God’s people. Paul does not consider anyone—Jew or Gentile—to be one of the elect, a true descendant of Abraham, part of the body of Christ and a member of God’s true Israel, unless they have the Spirit. “If someone does not have the Spirit of Christ, this person does not belong to him” (Rom. 8:9). “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God” (8:14). “You have received the Spirit of adoption, by which we cry, ‘Abba, Father’” (8:15).

Similarly, Paul speaks of the Holy Spirit as the arrabōn of what is to come, God’s “seal” on us that shows he is our owner (2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5; cf. Eph. 1:13-14). An arrabōn was like the earnest money someone puts down on a house. It is both a guarantee that makes it clear you are going to buy the house and a deposit toward buying the house. The sense is thus that the Holy Spirit is both a guarantee that believers will receive the inheritance of the kingdom, while providing a spiritual deposit of what that kingdom will be like. When we compare what Paul has to say about the Spirit with what he has to say in his writings about water baptism, there is simply no comparison. The Spirit is the primary element.

The anonymous book of Hebrews similarly presupposes that true membership among the descendants of Abraham (cf. 2:16) entails partaking and tasting of the Holy Spirit (6:4-5). We should not think of such tasting as merely dabbling any more than Jesus “tasting” death was a mere flirtation with death (2:9). As problematic as Hebrews 6:4-8 may be to us, we can be sure that Hebrews understands those who fall away at one time to have been full members of God’s people.

But what did this experience look like, and what would it then look like today? In Acts, the coming of the Spirit is frequently depicted in dramatic terms, with miracles and tongues often accompanying. Paul and Hebrews also imply that wonders often served as ratification of the Spirit’s presence (e.g., Gal. 3:1-5; 2 Cor. 12:12; Heb. 2:4). Are we to think, though, that everyone in the early church who was understood to have the Spirit experienced some dramatic manifestation of the Spirit’s coming? It does not seem likely. While we hear of many dramatic conversions, the New Testament is silent about such manifestations in relation to the vast majority of the early believers. Paul speaks of the Spirit witnessing with our Spirit that we are children of God (Rom. 8:16), which might imply only a calm sense of assurance.

When we ask today, almost two thousand years later, what receiving the Spirit might look like, at first the answer seems straightforward. Regardless of when you were baptized, you receive the Spirit after you repent of your sins and confess faith in Jesus as Lord. Thereafter the Spirit “fills” you—as God sees fit.[ii] Acts 2:38 captures this sense well when Peter tells the crowd on the Day of Pentecost, “Repent and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Although it is probably fair to say that most Christian traditions do not focus much on the Holy Spirit at all, we still find significant disagreements among different Christian groups on their official positions. For example, perhaps most Christian traditions associate the timing of the Spirit with the timing of baptism more closely than we would argue the New Testament would necessarily warrant. Although in many respects they are on opposite ends of the church spectrum, both the Roman Catholic Church and some forms of the Christian Church would so associate baptism with receiving the Spirit that one’s salvation is in deep trouble without it. The first baptizes infants, the second only adults, but both see baptism as essential to receiving the Spirit to where the soul of an un-baptized person is in serious danger regardless of any confession of faith they might have made.

The United Pentecostal Church is a fascinating example of a group that sees baptism as essential to getting in and links receiving the Spirit closely with baptism. But its real uniqueness comes in that it considers speaking in tongues the sign that a person has received the Spirit and insists that baptism can only take place in the name of Jesus alone, since this group does not believe in the Trinity. Thus a person who does not speak in tongues or who has not been baptized in this way has a dubious claim to be a Christian. Other Pentecostal and holiness groups have considered the Day of Pentecost a model not for conversion but for a second experience as a Christian. But even these groups usually have a place for receiving the Spirit in some sense at conversion as well.

The question of those Christian groups that baptize infants is a tricky one as well. Such groups usually associate receiving the Spirit officially with baptism, even though the child is obviously unable to make a confession of faith or repentance. Although the first impression of many is simply to dismiss this idea out of hand, we remember that in Luke 1:15 John the Baptist is filled with the Spirit even before he is born. Luke-Acts makes no clear distinction between this filling with the Spirit and the baptism with the Spirit in Acts 2. The clear implication is that the author of Luke does not see repentance and confession necessary for an unborn child to be filled with the Spirit. We thus cannot make a clear theological objection to the idea that baptized infants might receive the Spirit at that time, at least not biblically. Certainly it is biblical to expect that such a person will also need to appropriate Christ as Lord and as their means of atonement later in life.

When the smoke clears from the disagreements between different Christian traditions, we are still left with potential common ground. On the one hand, the absolute necessity that a person have the Holy Spirit in order to belong to God’s people remains. We also find the strong common sense of Christendom and the Bible that receiving the Holy Spirit is closely associated with baptism. It is appropriate for us to maintain this association as long as we do not insist that a person must be baptized to receive the Holy Spirit and recognize the need for a person to maintain the presence of the Holy Spirit to the end of one’s life. Whether a person was baptized as an infant or adult, the Spirit must nevertheless be present till death if one is to be "saved."

[i] The Gospel of John preserves this same thinking when Jesus says, “If I go away, I will send him [the Holy Spirit] to you” (John 16:7-11).

[ii] We remember that at Samaria the Spirit filling was not immediate and, theologically, we probably want to give God the final say as to when a person actually receives the Spirit, rather than making conversion a matter of some formula that we as mortals can effect whenever we want.

In House Quote from Dunn's Galatians Commentary

"In view of a continued emphasis within Christianity on the Spirit as a second experience, subsequent to conversion (so still in classic Pentecostalism), it is important to note that Paul saw reception of the Spirit as essentially the 'beginning' of Christian discipleship" (156, on Galatians 3:3).

Of course Wesleyans believe this as well... I just never really heard the Spirit preached in any way but in regard to entire sanctification until seminary. Despite my quarrels with Asbury and my enthusiasm for IWU's new kind of seminary, I would give Asbury the primary credit for lifting the maturity and depth of the Wesleyan Church into something recognizable by the broader church these last fifty years. For that I thank it.

Theology Sundays: Pre-Existent Spirit

In Genesis 1:2, the spirit of the LORD seems to be the breath of God (ru'ach). The breath or the wind of God hovers over the chaotic waters of pre-creation (cf. NRSV). It is not clear whether the spirit of God is personal or how it relates to God himself.

In Judges, the "breath" or "spirit of God" comes on people like Jephthah and Samson (Judg. 11:29; 14:6). These are not particularly righteous people, by Christian understanding. The spirit of the LORD comes on Jephthah right before he makes his famous vow that ends with him sacrificing his daughter. The spirit of the LORD comes on Samson enabling him to rip a lion apart as well as kill hoards of people. In each case the spirit involves empowerment to do various tasks.

In Samuel, the "moral neutrality" of the spirit is very clear when the spirit comes on Samuel as he in the process of trying to kill David (1 Sam. 19:23). The spirit of God in such cases seems to be an empowerment or, in Samuel's case, the ability to prophesy.

The connection between the Spirit of God and prophecy is also apparent in Isaiah 61, a passage that Jesus quotes in Luke 4 about himself: "The Spirit of the Lord GOD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted..." In its original context, this is a word from the prophet to the discouraged in Jerusalem after their return from captivity. They are told that God will "build up the ancient ruins" (61:4), a statement that indicates a great deal of time has passed since Jerusalem was destroyed in 586BC.

Yet what the Spirit is here is ambiguous. It is something that issues from God to be sure. In Joel 2:28-29, God promises that He will pour out His Spirit on all flesh after He restores Israel. On the Day of the LORD, the nations that have persecuted Judah will be destroyed, but those who call on the name of the LORD will be saved. Afterward all that remain will experience the Spirit and will prophesy, particularly those who escape in Zion.

The parallelism of Psalm 51:11 is helpful: "Cast me not away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me." The spirit of God is thus God's presence with the psalmist.

The picture that emerges is that the spirit of God is one of the ways in which He acts in people. He empowers through His spirit and prophesies by way of it. It is His presence in the creation. For the OT, it is not clear that the idea of God's spirit makes sense apart from the existence of a creation. Even in Genesis 1:2, it is present over the primordial waters.

In the New Testament, the nature of the Spirit is not much clearer, although the NT at points uses personal language in relation to the Spirit. Paul can speak of both the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ, but he is unclear whether these two are the same thing. My hunch is that they were slightly different for Paul.

There is the intriguing passage in 2 Corinthians 3 where Paul says, "The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2:17). I personally do not think that Paul is equating Jesus and the Spirit here. Rather, I think Paul is engaged in an allegorical comparison of Exodus 34 to the new covenant. The LORD in that story of the old covenant represents the Holy Spirit in the new covenant. Just as the LORD came to Moses with a glory that faded in the old, the Spirit of the Lord Jesus comes on believers in the new with a glory that doesn't fade.

If I were doing more research on this topic, I would look at Gordon Fee's new book on Pauline Christology and in Dunn's chapter on the Spirit in Christology in the Making.

The Spirit of course does many things in the NT, but our focus is on the "pre-existent" Spirit in this post. We have little to go on in this regard. Certainly Paul in more than one place speaks of God the Father, Christ, and the Spirit in a way that points to three distinct things (e.g., 1 Cor. 12:4-6; 2 Cor. 13:14). But if scholars debate whether Paul saw Christ as literally pre-existent, we could also debate whether he saw the Spirit as pre-existent.

One key question is whether the NT yet understands God to have created the world out of nothing, a topic we will visit next Sunday. It makes sense to suppose that as long as the material of the creation has existed, chaotic or not, Jews would have understood the Spirit of God to be present in and around it.

We have already noticed that John more than any other NT author makes the pre-existence of Christ explicit. Christ was there before the creation (John 17:5). John also is (I think) the only NT author to use masculine pronouns in relation to the Holy Spirit (e.g., 14:26). What is striking about this masculine reference is that the word for spirit itself is neuter, pneuma. We would thus expect grammatically for John to refer to the Spirit by way of neuter pronouns.

While John specifically states that the Spirit will not come until Christ ascends, this certainly does not mean that the Spirit did not yet exist at that time. We can probably infer that, for John, as long as there was "stuff" apart from Him, there was a Spirit to be His presence there.

Perhaps the dynamics of the Spirit of God being God in relation to the other can be extended in the manner of the western church to suggest that the Spirit does indeed proceed from the Father and the Son, by way of their very relationship. Such thoughts seem light years beyond the New Testament, but they do not seem to contradict it.