THREE Holy Spirit and Holy Scripture
T H R E E
Holy Spirit and Holy Scripture 1 Corinthians 2:6-16
1 C O R I N T H I A N S 2 : 6 - 1 6
We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written:
"No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him"— but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may
understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment:
"For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?"
But we have the mind of Christ.
Holy Spirit and Holy Scripture There is a heavy emphasis in 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 on the person and ministry of the Holy Spirit. Directly or indirectly he is mentioned nine or ten times. And the particular focus is on his teaching role. Indeed, this is a very important New Testament passage on the relations between the Spirit and the Word, between Holy Scripture and Holy Spirit. Christian leaders need to be clear on this topic.
Christians know that the Holy Spirit and the Holy Scriptures are supposed to have something to do with one another, and indeed Holy Scripture is the creative product of the Holy Spirit.
As the Nicene Creed declares, "He spoke through the prophets." And as Peter affirmed, "Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Pet 1:21). It is the precise relationship between the Spirit and the Word that we are going to investigate in this chapter, and notably the part played by the Holy Spirit in the composition of the Scriptures. But first we must see the text in its context. Commentators agree that with 1 Corinthians 2:6 Paul's argument changes course. Up to this point he has been emphasizing the foolishness of the gospel of Christ crucified (1:18, 23). But now in verse 6 he writes, We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature.
What does he mean? Gordon Fee, for example, argues forcefully that God's secret wisdom (v. 7) is the same as in chapter 1 and denotes the gospel of "salvation through a crucified Messiah," and that the mature (teleioi) are simply Christians whom
God has called, not a special group.1 Similarly, Donald Carson
Basic Christian Leadership writes that "all Christians are mature in the sense that they have come to terms with the message of the cross."2
It is easy to understand the motives that impel commentators in this direction. They are anxious (and rightly so) to avoid any hint that there are two gospels, "a simple gospel of the cross for babes . . . and a different wisdom gospel for the mature,"3 or that there are two classes of Christian, the initiated and the uninitiated. No, no! They rightly insist that there is only one gospel, the message of Christ crucified, and that all Christians may become mature; there is no esoteric grouping.
What does Paul mean, then, in verse 6? F. F. Bruce clarifies it.
The wisdom Paul now says he spoke among the mature is "not something additional to the saving message of Christ crucified; it is in Christ crucified that the wisdom of God is embodied. It consists rather in the more detailed unfolding of the divine purpose summed up in Christ crucified."4
Thus, according to Bruce, although Paul does speak wisdom, he immediately adds three correctives or qualifications.
• It is wisdom among (i.e., for) the mature. It is not for the unregenerate. It is not even for babes in Christ, since it is
"solid food" which they cannot digest (3:1-2). It is rather for mature Christians who are anxious to penetrate into the fullness of God's saving purpose through the cross.
• It is wisdom from God (2:7). It is not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing (v. 6). Nor is it "the wisdom of the wise" (1:19) or "the wisdom of the world" (1:20); it is "the wisdom of God" (1:21, 24; cf. 2:7).
• It is wisdom destined for our glory (doxa, 2:7). Now doxa is essentially an eschatological word: "We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God" (Rom 5:2). It includes the resurrection
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body, which will be a body of glory (1 Cor 15:43; Phil 3:21), and the renewal of the universe (Rom 8:18-25, 30;
2 Cor 4:17). So God's wisdom for the mature is not just the good news of justification: it relates to our glorification as well. It alludes to the regeneration of all things through sharing in the glory of God. It concerns what God has prepared for those who love him (1 Cor 2:9).
All this seems to mean that there is a legitimate distinction between evangelism and Christian nurture. In evangelism we proclaim the foolishness of Christ crucified, which is the wisdom of God. We resolve to know nothing else, and through the folly of this message God saves those who believe. In Christian nurture, however—building people up into maturity—we do not leave the cross behind. Far from it. We rather teach the full implications of the cross, including our ultimate glorification.
This is God's secret wisdom, which can be known only by revelation. It cannot be deduced by secular leaders. If they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory (1 Cor
2:8). They were not exceptional, however. All human beings, if left to themselves, are ignorant of God's will and purpose.
Paul insists on this in verse 9, which is a loose quotation of Isaiah 64:4. God's wisdom is something no eye has seen (it is invisible), no ear has heard (it is inaudible), and no mind has conceived
(it is inconceivable). It is altogether beyond the reach of human eyes, ears and minds. It cannot be grasped either by scientific investigation or by poetic imagination. It is absolutely unattainable by our little, finite, fallen and fallible minds. It can be known only if God should choose to make it known—which is exactly what he has done: God has revealed it to us by his Spirit (1 Cor 2:10).
Thus Paul affirms most forcefully the necessity of revelation.
Basic Christian Leadership He is not denigrating our minds. He is simply insisting that the human mind, capable as it is of remarkable achievements in the empirical sciences, flounders helplessly out of its depth when it is seeking God.
The Old Testament equivalent to 1 Corinthians 2:9-10 is Isaiah 55:8-9, in which God says:
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD.
"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."
In other words, the mind of God is as much higher than our minds as the heavens are higher than the earth, which is infinity.
There is no ladder by which we can climb into the infinite mind of God. So how can we know his mind? The answer is that we cannot if he remains silent. Why, we cannot even read one another's minds. Try! What am I thinking about as I stop writing?
I'll tell you. I was picturing myself climbing the steeple of All Souls Church in London. But you had no idea what was going on in my mind. Now, however, you know exactly what
I am thinking because I have resumed writing, and I am clothing the thoughts of my mind with the words of my mouth. If, then, we cannot read human minds unless we speak or write, how much less can we read God's mind unless he speaks or writes?
But God has spoken!
As the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
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and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish . . . so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. (Is 55:10-11)
Similarly, God has revealed it to us by his Spirit (1 Cor 2:10).
The word us is emphatic in the Greek sentence. It cannot refer to all Christian people, for we are not all recipients of direct divine revelation. It must rather refer to the apostles, to Paul himself and by extension to his fellow apostles. Another plural of apostolic authority occurs later in this letter: "Whether
. . . it was I [Paul] or they [the other apostles], this is what we [all the apostles] preach, and this is what you believed'
(15:11).
One is reminded also of Ephesians 3:4-5, where "the mystery of Christ," including the incorporation of Jews and Gentiles into his body on equal terms, "has now been revealed by the Spirit to God's holy apostles and prophets," who are also said to be the foundation on which the church is built (Eph 2:20). In both 1 Corinthians 2:10 and Ephesians 3:4-5, God is the author of the revelation, the Spirit is its agent, and the apostles are its recipients.
This, then, is the context. In what follows Paul gives us a comprehensive statement of the ministry of the Holy Spirit as the agent of the divine revelation. He is presented to us in four stages as "searching," "revealing," "inspiring" and "enlightening." Together these four verbs sum up the relations between the Holy Spirit and the Holy Scriptures.
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STAGE 1: THE HOLY SPIRIT IS
THE SEARCHING SPIRIT (2:10-11)
Notice how this first verb assumes that the Holy Spirit is personal, for only persons with minds are capable of engaging in search and research. True, computers can analyze the data fed into them, but original research, as every doctoral student knows, requires personal investigation and reflection. This the Holy Spirit does because he is a person and has a mind of his own with which to think.
Paul now uses two fascinating pictures to indicate the Holy Spirit's unique qualifications in the work of divine revelation.
He searches the depths and knows the thoughts of God.
First, the Holy Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God (v. 10). The verb eraunao4, meaning "to investigate," is the one Jesus applied to the Jews who "searched" the Scriptures, studying them diligently (John 5:39). And Moulton and Milligan in their Vocabulary of the Greek Testament (1930) quote a papyrus from the third century A.D., in which the "searchers" seem to be customs officials who rummage about in travelers' baggage.
Further, ta bathe4 ("the depths") became in the second century A.D. a favorite term of the Gnostic heretics, who claimed to have been initiated into the depths of God. It may be an anachronism to suggest this here, but it is at least possible that Paul deliberately borrowed from their vocabulary, at the same time insisting that the deep things of God—"the depths of God's own self," even "God's inmost heart"5—were investigated and known not by proto-Gnostics but by the Holy Spirit himself. At all events, the Holy Spirit is depicted as a restlessly inquisitive researcher, even a deep-sea diver seeking to fathom the deepest
Holy Spirit and Holy Scripture
depths of the being of God. The Holy Spirit is God exploring the infinity of God.
Second, the Holy Spirit knows the thoughts of God (v. 11). For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no-one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. "Thoughts" is more literally "things," a human being's things, perhaps our "humanness." Nobody understands humanness except humans. An ant cannot possibly even begin to conceive what it is like to be a human being. Nor can a frog or a rabbit, or even a chimpanzee, for all its rich DNA. How often, especially in adolescence, we complain, "Nobody understands me!" It's true! Nobody understands me except I myself, and even my own self-understanding is limited. Yet to some degree at least human beings are self-conscious and self-aware.
Paul applies this concept of self-understanding to the Holy Spirit, drawing a parallel: In the same way, he writes, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit is likened to the divine self-consciousness and self-understanding. Just as nobody can understand a human being except that human being, so nobody can understand God except God himself. Only God knows God.
So then, to sum up this first truth about the Holy Spirit, he searches the depths of God and knows the things of God. Both statements indicate that the Holy Spirit has a unique understanding of God because he is himself God. This prompts the question: What has the Holy Spirit done with what he has searched out and come to know? Answer: He has done what only he is competent to do—he has revealed it. Since only he knows God, only he can make him known. The searching Spirit becomes the revealing Spirit.
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STAGE 2. THE HOLY SPIRIT IS
THE REVEALING SPIRIT (2:10, 12)
The Holy Spirit's work of revelation has already been stated in verse 10: God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. Now Paul elaborates this in verse 12: We (the same emphatic apostolic "we" as the "us" in verse 10) have not received the Spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God—namely, the searching and knowing
Spirit—that we may understand what God has freely given us.
This indicates that the apostles had received two separate but related gifts of God. First, they had received God's salvation, that is, what God has freely by grace given us. Second, they had received God's Spirit to enable them to understand the salvation he had freely given them.
The apostle Paul himself is perhaps the best example of this double divine gift, the gift of salvation and the gift of the Spirit. Paul's letters give us a superb exposition of the gospel of grace—how God set his love on the very people who did not deserve it; how he sent his Son to die for sinners like us who deserved nothing at his hand but judgment; how God raised him from the dead to demonstrate that he had not died in vain; and how, by faith inwardly and by baptism outwardly, we may become united to Christ in his death and resurrection. Paul's moving exposition stretches the mind and fires the heart. But how did he understand all this? How could he make such a comprehensive statement of salvation? The first answer is that he had himself received this salvation, while the second is that he had also received the Holy Spirit to interpret his experience to him. Thus the searching Spirit became the revealing Spirit, making God and his work of salvation known to the biblical authors.
Holy Spirit and Holy Scripture
STAGE 3: THE HOLY SPIRIT IS
THE INSPIRING SPIRIT (2:13)
This is what we speak or "we impart this" (RSV): namely, this understanding, which the apostles had been given by revelation. Verse
12 refers to what the apostles received, while verse 13 refers to what they went on to impart or speak to others. For the apostles imparted to others the understanding they had themselves received. Thus the searching Spirit, who had revealed God's plan of salvation to the apostles, went on to communicate it through them to others.
Just as the Spirit did not keep his research to himself but revealed it to the apostles, so the apostles in their turn did not keep his revelation to themselves but imparted or communicated it to others. They knew that they were trustees or stewards of God's revelation. They could not claim a monopoly of God's truth or keep it to themselves. No, truth is for sharing. So they delivered faithfully to others what they had themselves received. And how did they do so? Verse 13 answers: not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit.
Observe this further reference to the Holy Spirit. The same Spirit who searches the depths of God and who revealed God's secrets to the apostles now gave them the words with which to pass on this revelation to others. This is an unambiguous claim on the part of the apostle Paul to "verbal inspiration." That is, the very words in which the apostles expressed their message had been given them by the Holy Spirit.
Now the verbal inspiration of Scripture is an unpopular concept in the church today. But I strongly suspect that the reason it is unpopular is that it is misunderstood. So let me try to clarify what it means by three negatives (what it is not) and a single positive (what it is).
Basic Christian Leadership Verbal inspiration does not mean that "every word of the Bible is literally true" (a dictionary definition). The adverb literally is inappropriate, for the biblical authors have used a rich diversity of literary genres, each of which must be interpreted according to its own rules—history as history, parable as parable, poetry as poetry, and so on. What is inspired is the natural sense of the words, according to the intention of each author.
For instance, when the author of Psalm 19 within a single verse likens the sun to a tent-dweller, a bridegroom and an athlete, we know that he is writing poetry, not science. Jesus himself sometimes used dramatic figures of speech in his teaching and rebuked his contemporaries for their excessive biblical literalism, as when Nicodemus thought the new birth was a second physical birth, and the Samaritan woman asked how Jesus could give her living water, since he did not have a bucket and the well was deep.
Verbal inspiration does not mean verbal dictation. The Christian understanding of the Bible is different from the Muslim understanding of the Qur'an. Muslims believe that Allah, through the medium of the angel Gabriel, dictated the Qur'an to Muhammad in Arabic, and that Muhammad had nothing to do except to take down the dictation. Christians, however, believe that the biblical authors were persons, not recording machines, and were in full possession of their faculties even while the Holy Spirit was communicating to them and through them.
The phenomena of Scripture make this plain.
Thus each biblical author had his own vocabulary, literary style and theological emphasis. These distinctives of theirs were not ironed out by the process of inspiration. In addition, many biblical authors were historians, and much of the Bible is his-
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tory. We do not imagine that all this history was supernaturally revealed to them. No, the human authors engaged in historical research, which is what Luke tells us he did (Lk 1:1-4). So divine inspiration and historical research are not incompatible.
The inspiring Spirit did not smother the personality of the human authors. Their literary styles, theological emphases and historical research all demonstrate this.
Verbal inspiration does not mean that every text of Scripture is true even in isolation from its context. The Lausanne Covenant (1974) declares Scripture "without error in all that it affirms." But full weight must be given to this qualification, since not everything contained in the Bible is affirmed by the Bible.
Consider those long and tedious speeches by Job's so-called comforters. Their thesis, repeated ad nauseam, was that Job was being punished for his sins. But they were mistaken, as the context makes plain. In the first verse of the book Job is introduced as a righteous man, blameless and upright, who "feared God and shunned evil" (Job 1:1). And in the last chapter God twice says to the comforters that they have not spoken of him what was right (42:7, 8). We have no liberty, therefore, to quote any sentence from their speeches as God's word. It may not be. It may have been included in order to be contradicted, not endorsed. The book of Job as a whole is the Word of God, but each biblical text must be interpreted in its context.
After these three negatives, we can now be positive.
Verbal inspiration means that what the Holy Spirit spoke through the biblical authors (understood according to its literary genre, its plain, natural meaning, the intention of the human author and each context) is true and without error.
There is no need to be embarrassed by, or afraid of, this tradi-
Basic Christian Leadership tional Christian belief. It is eminently reasonable because words are the building-blocks of sentences and so of speech.
Words matter! Some theologians argue that what is inspired is the sense, not the words. But this is an unhelpful distinction because the sense depends on the words. It is impossible to convey a precise message without choosing precise words, as authors and speakers know. In the middle of the nineteenth century Charles Kingsley, the Christian socialist and prodigious author, wrote:
These glorious things—words—are man's right alone. . . . Without words we should know no more of each other's hearts and thoughts than the dog knows of his fellow dog. For, if you will consider, you always think to yourself in words, though you do not speak them aloud; and without them all our thoughts would be mere blind longings,— feelings which we could not understand ourselves.
This, then, is the apostolic claim: the same Holy Spirit of God, who searches the depths of God and knows the thoughts of God, and who revealed his findings to the apostles, went on to communicate them to others through the apostles in words which he gave them. He spoke his words through their words, so that their words were simultaneously his. This is the double authorship of Scripture and the meaning of inspiration.
STAGE 4: THE HOLY SPIRIT IS THE
ENLIGHTENING SPIRIT (2:13-16)
How are we to think of those who received the apostles' letters and listened to them being read? Were they left to themselves to understand what was written? Indeed not! The same Holy
Spirit who was active in the apostles who wrote the letters was
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also active in those who received and read them. The Holy Spirit was working at both ends of the communication process—inspiring the apostles and enlightening their hearers and readers.
This is already implied at the end of verse 13, which reads pneumatikois pneumatika synkrinontes. It is a complicated and even enigmatic phrase which has been variously interpreted.
The NIV has expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. It seems to me, however, that the verb synkrino4, which can mean "combine," means here (as it usually does in the Septuagint) "to interpret" or "to explain." Then I think the RSV is correct in its rendering "interpreting spiritual truths to those who possess the Spirit."
In other words, the possession of the Holy Spirit is not limited to the biblical authors. Bible readers share in him too. To be sure, the Spirit's work of inspiration was unique. Preachers and teachers must not claim to be "inspired" as the apostles were. But to this unique apostolic experience the Spirit added his work of illumination and interpretation, which all Christians may experience.
It will be helpful if we distinguish between these words. Revelation and inspiration describe the unique, objective process by which the Holy Spirit taught the biblical authors. Illumination, however, describes the Holy Spirit's subjective work of enlightening our minds to grasp what they wrote. Supposing you were to bring a blindfolded friend to an unveiling ceremony, two actions would be necessary before your friend could read the words on the plaque. First, the plaque would have to be unveiled (which is revelation). Second, your friend's blindfold would need to be removed (which is illumination).
Basic Christian Leadership Verses 14 and 15 elaborate this truth and are in sharp contrast to each other. Verse 14 begins with a reference to the psychikos, the "natural" or unregenerate person, the man without the Spirit. Verse 15 begins, however, with a reference to the spiritual man, the person who has been born of the Spirit and consequently has the Spirit. For the indwelling of the Holy
Spirit is the distinguishing mark of the true Christian: "If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ' (Rom 8:9).
But what difference does it make whether we have the Holy Spirit or not? It makes all the difference in the world, not least in regard to our understanding. Look at verses 14 and 15 again.
The man without the Spirit (the psychikos person) does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned, that is, discerned only with the aid of the enlightening Spirit.
The spiritual man (the pneumatikos person, who has the Spirit), by contrast, makes judgments about all things, or perhaps "discerns" all things (the verb is anachrinoo4, as in the previous verse) or "evaluates" all things. He has not, of course, become omniscient or infallible, but things to which he was spiritually blind now at last begin to make sense to him. He understands what he had not understood before, even though he himself is not understood (the verb is anachrinoo4 for the third time) by anyone. That is, he remains something of an enigma to other people because of the inner secret of his spiritual life, which they have not experienced.
This is not surprising, because (Paul alludes to Isaiah 40:13) nobody knows the mind of the Lord or can interpret or instruct
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him. And since they cannot understand Christ's mind, they cannot understand ours either, who dare to say (because the Spirit enlightens us) that "we have the mind of Christ" (1 Cor
2:16).
This illumination of our minds by the Holy Spirit is common Christian experience. A good example is that of William Grimshaw, an eighteenth-century evangelical leader in England. After his conversion it was said of him, "If God had drawn up his
Bible to heaven, and sent him down another, it could not have been newer to him."6 I could say the same thing.
A digression seems to be needed at this point, in response to the following question, which may have formed in my readers' minds: "If the Holy Spirit is the enlightening Spirit, and if we have the mind of Christ, why is it that we still disagree with one another?" My general answer is that we actually agree with one another a great deal more than we disagree, and that we would agree more still if we fulfilled the following five conditions.
1. We must accept the supreme authority of Scripture. The big and painful Christian divisions are between the so-called reformed and unreformed churches, that is, between those churches which are determined to submit to Scripture and those which are unwilling to do so or which elevate traditions and opinions to the same level as Scripture. Among churches that do submit to the supremacy of Scripture we are perhaps 90 percent agreed.
2. We must remember that the chief purpose of Scripture is to bear witness to Jesus Christ as the Savior of sinners. In the central truths concerning Christ and salvation, Scripture is plain or "perspicuous." It is in the realm of the adiaphora, mat-
Basic Christian Leadership ters indifferent because of secondary importance, that we must give one another liberty of belief.
3. We must develop sound principles of biblical interpretation. It is often said that "you can make the Bible teach anything you like." I reply, "Yes, you are right, you can make the Bible teach anything, but only if you are unscrupulous enough." If we apply proper principles of interpretation to Scripture, we find that far from our manipulating it, it controls us. In particular, we must learn to look for the natural sense (whether literal or figurative), the original sense (as the author intended and his readers would have understood him) and the general sense (in harmony with the rest).
4. We must study Scripture together. The church is the hermeneutical community, in which God means his Word to be received and interpreted. We can help one another to understand it, especially if we reflect on it crossculturally. This is what Paul meant when he prayed that we might be able
"with all the saints" to grasp the full dimensions of God's love (Eph 3:18). We could never do this alone. We need one another.
5. We must come to the biblical text with humble, open, receptive spirits. We must be ready for God to break through our cultural defenses, to challenge and to change us. If we come to Scripture with our minds made up and closed, we will never hear the thunderclap of his Word. All we will hear is what we want to hear, the soothing echoes of our own cultural prejudice.
The spiritual discernment the Holy Spirit promises to the students of Scripture is not given in defiance of these five conditions; it rather presupposes them.
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CONCLUSION
We have considered the teaching role of the Holy Spirit in four stages—searching, revealing, inspiring and enlightening. First, he searches the depths of God and knows the thoughts of God, and is therefore uniquely qualified for his teaching role. Second, he revealed his findings to the apostles and the other biblical authors. Third, he communicated those things through the biblical authors to others and did so in words chosen by him.
Fourth, he enlightens the minds of Bible readers to discern what he has revealed to and through the biblical authors, and continues this work of illumination today.
So we need to humble ourselves before both the Word and the Spirit. We still have to study the Word, to ponder its meaning and application, but we also need to cry to the Holy Spirit for enlightenment. Humble prayer and diligent study need to be combined. A heavenly messenger said to Daniel, "Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard"
(Dan 10:12). Similarly Paul wrote to Timothy, "Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this" (2
Tim 2:7). We do the pondering; he does the enlightening. For the Word remains a dead letter until the Spirit brings it to life.
Charles Simeon of Cambridge used to illustrate this point by reference to a sundial in the garden. If we consult the dial on a dull day, when the sun is not shining, we cannot tell the time.
The dial has only figures; there is no message. But when the sun breaks through, and illumines the dial, immediately the finger points and we can tell the time.
Just so, if we read Scripture on a dull day, when there are clouds between us and God, the book has only paper and print;
Basic Christian Leadership there is no message. But when the clouds lift, and the sun breaks through, the light of the Spirit shines onto the printed page and into our minds, and God speaks through what he has spoken.
The Word and the Spirit belong to each other. Let's not separate what God has joined.