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Interim Conclusion—Who Spoke by the Prophets

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The concluding clause to the third article is that the ancient prophets spoke through the Holy Spirit. The question left for consideration is whether the Spirit’s speaking through the prophets was merely a thing of the (ancient Hebrew) past. This specific confession is itself drawn from the apostolic witness (2 Peter 1:21), so it must be assumed at least that the Spirit continued to speak through the followers of Jesus the Messiah, beyond the prophets of ancient Israel. If so, then by extension, in a post-apostolic context, does the Spirit speak similarly and perhaps in an ongoing way through the church? Orthodox Christians urge that there is a sense in which the earliest ecumenical councils were vehicles of the Spirit even as the Roman Catholic magisterium suggests there are limited albeit no less real occasions in which the Spirit has spoken and continues to speak through the ecclesial hierarchy. Contemporary pentecostal and charismatic movements insist on sola scriptura (with the Reformers against Catholic and Orthodox emphases on the tradition of the church) and on the ongoing manifestations of the gifts of the Spirit (here in opposition to dispensationalist theologies which argue that such ceased with the apostolic period). For theology, not just pneumatology, in a global context that engages with Majority World voices and perspectives, one senses that this question will continue to be debated, even if part of an affirmative “answer” to it consists in arguments such as those found in this chapter and book.

The Spirit over the Earth

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