The Functions of the Spirit
The Functions of the Spirit
What does the Holy Spirit do? Many theologians have tried to provide brief summaries of the work of the Spirit. For example, Basil of Caesarea made the succinct statement, “Through the Holy Spirit we are restored to paradise, led back to the Kingdom of heaven, adopted as children, given confidence to call God ‘Father' and to share in Christ's grace, called children of light, and given a share in eternal glory.” The Christian tradition has generally understood the work of the Holy Spirit to focus on four broad areas: God's presence in the world, God's self-disclosure through revelation, the appropriation of salvation, and energization of the Christian life. In what follows, we shall provide a brief indication of the Christian understanding of the role of the Spirit in each of these four areas.
God's Active Presence in the World
A central theme in any understanding of the person and work of the Holy Spirit relates to God's presence and action in the world beyond the boundaries of Christian communities. The Spirit is seen as active in the world, preparing hearts and minds for an encounter with God. One of the most familiar statements of this theme is found in Ambrosiaster's famous statement: “whatever truth is said by anyone is said by the Holy Spirit.” This theme is found in many Christian writers, and is now often paraphrased as “all truth is God's truth.” However, the original reference makes it clear that the Holy Spirit is seen as leading people to truth, and hence to God.
This emphasis on the Holy Spirit as God's active presence in the world has been a major theme in recent theological reflection on the nature of mission and evangelism. In his encyclical letter Dominum et Vivificantem (“Lord and Giver of Life”), published on Pentecost 1986, John Paul II (1920–2005) emphasized that the Holy Spirit is actively present when anyone confronts and attempts to answer ultimate questions in life, including religious questions. The activity of God is not limited to the church as the body of Christ; God is already present in the world, illuminating and informing minds. A similar point was made in the 1990 encyclical Redemptoris Missio (“The Mission of Christ the Redeemer”):
The Spirit manifests himself in a special way in the Church and in her members. Nevertheless, his presence and activity are universal, limited neither by space nor time. The Second Vatican Council recalls that the Spirit is at work in the heart of every person, through the “seeds of the Word,” to be found in human initiatives – including religious ones – and in mankind's efforts to attain truth, goodness and God himself.
There is a potential difficulty here. If too much emphasis is placed on the uniqueness of the work of the Holy Spirit in the world, it might be concluded that the work of the Spirit is independent of, and potentially unrelated to, the work of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, emphasizing the unity of the divine work in the world could create the impression that the missions of the Son and the Spirit are indistinguishable.
Redemptoris Missio recognizes this point, and emphasizes that this general work of the Spirit in the world is not to be seen as “an alternative to Christ” but as a means of leading people to Christ. The work of the Spirit is set in the context of a Trinitarian understanding of the “economy of salvation.” It is not seen as an independent or self-serving activity but as a means of leading human hearts and minds to discover and embrace the fullness of God.
Whatever the Spirit brings about in human hearts and in the history of peoples, in cultures and religions serves as a preparation for the Gospel and can only be understood in reference to Christ, the Word who took flesh by the power of the Spirit so that as perfectly human he would save all human beings and sum up all things.
The Illumination of Revelation
There has been a widespread recognition of the pivotal role of the Spirit in relation to God becoming known to humanity through revelation, whether in Christ or through the Bible. Irenaeus thus wrote of the “Holy Spirit, through whom the prophets prophesied, and our forebears learned of God and the righteous were led in the paths of justice.” True knowledge of God comes about through the work of the Holy Spirit. The task of the Holy Spirit is to lead into God's truth; without that Spirit, truth remains elusive. In his 1536 commentary on the gospels, the sixteenth-century Protestant theologian Martin Bucer (1491–1551) argued that revelation cannot occur without the assistance of God's Spirit:
Before we believe in God and are inspired by the Holy Spirit, we are unspiritual and for that reason we are completely unable to apprehend anything relating to God. So all the wisdom and righteousness which we possess in the absence of the Holy Spirit are the darkness and shadow of death.
The role of the Spirit in relation to the most important theological source of the Christian tradition is of particular importance. The doctrine of the “inspiration of Scripture” affirms that the Bible has a God-given authority by virtue of its origins. This doctrine, in various forms, is the common tradition of Christianity, and has its origins in the Bible itself, most notably the affirmation that “every Scripture is God-breathed [theopneustos]” (2 Timothy 3: 16). Although Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant theologians will disagree over the relative weighting to be given to the Bible in theological reflection, all agree that it is set apart from other texts on account of its apostolic origins and its inspiration by the Holy Spirit.
In Protestant theology, however, the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture serves an additional purpose – that of insisting on the primacy of Scripture over the church. Whereas more Catholic writers point to the formation of the canon of Scripture as indicating the authority of the church over Scripture, Protestant writers argue that the church merely recognized an authority which was already present within Scripture itself. The Gallic Confession (1559) illustrates this point well:
We know these books to be canonical, and the sure rule of our faith, not so much by the common accord and consent of the Church, as by the testimony and inward persuasion of the Holy Spirit, which enables us to distinguish them from other ecclesiastical books which, however useful, can never become the basis for any articles of faith.
Yet it is not simply God's revelation which is linked with the work of the Spirit; the Spirit is also widely regarded as being involved in the human response to that revelation. Most Christian theologians have regarded faith itself as the result of the work of the Holy Spirit. John Calvin (1509–64) is one writer who draws attention to the pivotal role of the Spirit in revealing God's truth and applying or “sealing” this truth to humanity.
Now we shall have a right definition of faith if we say that it is a steady and certain knowledge of the divine benevolence towards us, which is founded upon the truth of the gracious promise of God in Christ, and is both revealed to our minds and sealed in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
The Appropriation of Salvation
We have already noted how patristic writers justified the divinity of the Spirit with reference to the functions of the Spirit. Many of those functions relate directly to the doctrine of salvation; for example, the role of the Spirit in sanctification, making humanity like God, and divinization (theosis). This point is particularly important within the eastern Christian churches, with their traditional emphasis on deification. The Orthodox theologian Basil Krivocheine (1900–85) emphasized the central role of the Holy Spirit in bringing about divinization:
Divinization is the state of man's total transformation, effected by the Holy Spirit, when man observes the commandments of God, acquires the evangelical virtues and shares in the sufferings of Christ. The Holy Spirit then gives man a divine intelligence and incorruptibility. Man does not receive a new soul, but the Holy Spirit unites essentially with the whole man, body and soul.
As noted earlier (pp. 293–4), western concepts of salvation tend to be relational rather than ontological. Nevertheless, they also emphasize the role for the Spirit in appropriating salvation. Thus, in Calvin's doctrine of the application of salvation, the Holy Spirit plays a major role in relation to the establishment of a living relationship between Christ and believer. For Calvin, the “gracious promise of God in Christ” is both “revealed to our minds and sealed in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.” This can be seen more clearly in some of the Reformed confessions of this age, such as the Belgic Confession (1561):
We believe that, to attain the true knowledge of this great mystery, the Holy Spirit creates in our hearts an upright faith, which embraces Jesus Christ with all his merits, takes hold of him, and seeks nothing more besides him.
A similar point is made in Catholic theology. For example, the “Dogmatic Constitution on Revelation” of the Second Vatican Council regularly affirms the critical role of the Spirit in preparing the human mind and heart for revelation and salvation. “To make this act of faith, the grace of God and the interior help of the Holy Spirit must precede and assist, moving the heart and turning it to God, opening the eyes of the mind and giving joy and ease to everyone in assenting to the truth and believing it.” A similar point about the role of the Holy Spirit in the appropriation of salvation is made by the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “The grace of the Holy Spirit has the power to justify us, that is, to cleanse us from our sins and to communicate to us the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ and through Baptism.”
The Renewal of the Christian Life
For many writers, the Holy Spirit plays an especially important role in relation to the Christian life, both individual and corporate. The fifth-century writer Cyril of Alexandria is one of many to have stressed the role of the Spirit in bringing unity within the church:
All of us who have received the one and the same Spirit, that is, the Holy Spirit, are in a sense merged together with one another and with God. [...] Just as the power of the holy flesh of Christ united those in whom it dwells into one body, I think that, in much the same way, the one and undivided Spirit of God, who dwells in us all, leads us all into spiritual unity.
Another classic statement of the work of the Holy Spirit in renewing believers and the church is found in the liturgical sequence Veni Sancte Spiritus (“Come Holy Spirit”), traditionally attributed to the medieval theologian Stephen Langton (c.1150–1228) and sometimes known as the “Golden Sequence.” This hymn speaks of the work of the Spirit using a number of images, all focusing on the Spirit's role in recreating, renewing, healing, and redirecting human nature. The Latin text of this sequence will be familiar to some readers and is difficult to translate into English without losing its rhyme and rhythm. A few stanzas of the original Latin are printed out below, along with my translation, to give an idea of the comprehensive vision of the function of the Spirit found in this famous liturgical piece.
- Lava quod est sordidum,
- riga quod est aridum,
- sana quod est saucium.
- Flecte quod est rigidum,
- fove quod est frigidum,
- rege quod est devium.
- (“Wash what is dirty; refresh what is dry; heal what is wounded; bend what is stubborn; melt what is frozen; direct what is wandering.”)
However, any properly Christian understanding of the role of the Spirit in renewing individuals and the church will go far beyond this and will include reference to at least two other themes. First, there is the “making real” of God in personal and corporate worship and devotion. The importance of the role of the Spirit in relation to Christian prayer, spirituality, and worship has been stressed by many writers, classical and modern. Second is the enabling of believers to lead a Christian life, particularly in relation to morality. Martin Bucer thus draws attention to the necessity of the Spirit, if believers are to keep the law:
So those who believe are not under the law, because they have the Spirit within them, teaching them everything more perfectly than the law ever could, and motivating them much more powerfully to obey it. In other words, the Holy Spirit moves the heart, so that believers wish to live by those things which the law commands, but which the law could not achieve by itself.
Yet the Christian life is corporate, not just individual, and it is important to note the ecclesiological dimensions of the work of the Holy Spirit. Since the Second Vatican Council (1962–5), many Catholic theologians have explored the role of the Spirit in shaping and sustaining Christian community, and fostering its witness in the world. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994) thus speaks of the church as both “the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit.”
The Spirit prepares people, and goes out to them with his grace, in order to draw them to Christ. The Spirit manifests the risen Lord to them, recalls his word to them and opens their minds to the understanding of his Death and Resurrection.
As we noted earlier (p. 292), growing interest in the theology of mission, linked with an increasing awareness of the importance of tracing God's imprints in other cultures and faiths, has led many to explore the role of the Spirit in the world, preparing the way for the proclamation of Christ.
In this chapter, we have considered some themes in the person and work of the Holy Spirit. We are now ready to move on to discuss one of the most distinctive – and, many would say, difficult aspects of the Christian understanding of God: the doctrine of the Trinity.