The Holy Spirit

Scripture focus

Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak.

John 16:13 KJV

At a glance

Summary of the chapter

Edwards's doctrine of the Holy Spirit grows directly out of his account of the Trinity: the Spirit is the mutual love and delight that eternally passes between the Father and the Son, so intimately shared that this love itself is a distinct divine person. Because the Spirit just is this act of communication within God, Edwards can describe the Spirit's outward work — in creation, in Christ's incarnate life, and in the believer's heart — as one continuous overflow of that inner-triune love rather than a series of unrelated divine operations.

The excerpted pages on Christ's two natures show this pattern concretely. Edwards taught that the Holy Spirit is the “means of conveyance” carrying the eternal Son's knowledge, will, and power into the human mind and will of Jesus, so that the man Christ Jesus, though finite, shared a real “identity of consciousness” with the Logos. The same Spirit who binds Father to Son in eternity, on this reading, is the very Spirit who binds divinity to humanity in the one person of Christ.

Edwards then extended the pattern once more: the believer does not simply receive the Spirit's ordinary help but is given the Holy Spirit himself to dwell within as a resident principle of new life, so that regeneration is a real, if creaturely, participation in the love that unites Father and Son — the seed of the “divinization” theme later chapters take up.

Key points

• Edwards grounds the Holy Spirit's identity in the inner life of the Trinity: the Spirit is the mutual love and delight the Father and Son have for one another, itself a distinct divine person.
• In the incarnation, the Spirit serves as the “means of conveyance” by which the eternal Son communicates his knowledge, will, and power to the human mind and will of Jesus.
• This mediating role produces what Edwards called an “identity of consciousness” between the divine Logos and Christ's human soul, without erasing the distinction of the two natures.
• Edwards applied the same logic to believers: the Spirit does not merely assist natural faculties but indwells the regenerate as a new, resident principle of holiness and love.
• Because one Spirit accomplishes all these works, Edwards's Trinity, Christology, and soteriology form a single interlocking pattern rather than separate doctrines.

A line worth remembering

The Holy Spirit is the “means of conveyance” of the Logos' will and understanding to Christ's human will and understanding.

McClymond & McDermott The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, ch. 17

Related Scripture

• John 14:26
• Romans 8:26
• 1 Corinthians 2:10-11
• Galatians 5:22-23

For reflection and discussion

1. In what sense does Edwards's picture of the Holy Spirit as the 'bond of love' between Father and Son help make sense of the Spirit's other works in Scripture?
2. How does thinking of the Spirit as uniting Christ's two natures change the way you understand Jesus's humanity?
3. What difference would it make in your own spiritual life to think of the Holy Spirit not merely as an influence but as a person who comes to dwell within you?