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In this chapter I will examine and compare various perspectives on “the authority of the Holy Spirit” that emerge from critical debates in theological history. Then I will propose provisional definitions of the Spirit’s authority that emerge from the debates. These debated center around five periods of historical theology: (1) Patristic theology: First through Fourth Centuries (including both “early” and “late” Patristics), (2) Medieval theology: Fifth Century to the Reformation (including Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic theology), (3) Protestant theology: Reformation to Twentieth Century, (4) Modern theology, and (5) Postmodern and Contemporary theology.1 In each period I will consider the arguments and contributions of those theologians who (1) sought to provide significant clarification of the doctrine of pneumatology, and (2) did so within the context of the discussion of divine authority.

Assumptions

In the last chapter, we defined the “principle of authority” in Christianity along with its corresponding “pattern of authority.” Our principle of authority revealed the possibility of the Spirit’s “divine authority” as a divine Person within the Triune God. The pattern of authority (incorporating Christ, the Scriptures, and the Holy Spirit) revealed the possibility of the Spirit’s “executive authority.” So, we can assume that since the Spirit is an essential partner in both our principle of authority and our pattern of authority, the authority of the Holy Spirit should be evaluated in relation to the authority of the Triune God (who possesses divine authority over the world) as well as in relation to the authority of Christ and the authority of Scripture. In addition, since this work is concerned with the implications of the Spirit’s authority in the Church, such a relation should be evaluated as well.

The Progressive Development of the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit in Theological History

As we can evaluate these critical debates in Church history, we will begin to observe a progressive development of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. In fact, each major period of theological history contained a critical debate that focused on one of the “relations” mentioned above. Thus, each debate seemed to result in further clarification of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Since each debate revolved around a very significant ecclesiastical problem of the time (i.e., a heresy or conflicting views of sanctification) each served to shape and define that theological period in a significant way. As a result, the “storyline” development of the doctrine of the Spirit’s authority, though often unnoticed, emerges as a hidden theme in the storyline of the Church itself. The doctrine progressively unfolds—unwittingly and covertly—on the pages of theological history.

According to Oden, the history of the doctrine of the Spirit can be traced in parallel to the earthly history of Christ. Whereas the story of Christ in the New Testament is available for historical inquiry, the earthly “story” of the Spirit is open to investigation in the form of Church history.2 The Spirit has “a history that can be narrated by remembered events.”3 In the Church age, these events include the substantive debates that arise between orthodoxy and “heterodoxy.”

The councils thought that the Spirit was providentially allowing heterodoxy to challenge the truth of Scripture in order that the Spirit would lead the Church to search Scripture more deliberately to consider a more cohesive reflection upon the triunity of God.4

Therefore, we must not only acknowledge the Spirit’s role in the authorship of Scripture, but also in the historical development of orthodox theology. Ramm notes that the interpreter of revelation must pay due regard to the Spirit in the history of theology. “The Holy Spirit is the Teacher of the Church, and surely in some manner the history of theology reflects this teaching ministry.”5 Ramm warns that “every generation of Christian theologians must be prepared to take seriously the history of theology (broadly interpreted to include symbols, councils, theologians, treatises) as possessing manifestations of the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit.”6 This teaching ministry of the Spirit, of course, manifests the progressive “story” of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit as well!

The Discernment of “The Authority of the Holy Spirit” in Theological History

We must admit that most theologians in Church history do not specifically refer to “the authority of the Holy Spirit” in their writings (though there are exceptions7). Rather than attempting to “force” such language into the writings of these theologians, I will examine their writings within the context of the particular theological debates, looking to discern notions of the Spirit’s authority in relation to the triune God, to Christ, to Scripture (both its inspiration and illumination), and to the Church. In other words, though most theologians do not use the word “authority” in discussing or debating the Holy Spirit, we can analyze these debates in an attempt to gather information for discerning provisional definitions of the Spirit’s authority. Of course, any information gathered or conclusions drawn will need to be confirmed (or disaffirmed) by an exegetical study of the Scriptures (which will be the task of chapters three and four).

Historical Methodology

An overview of the five debates is as follows:

1. Patristic theology. In the period marked by the development of Patristic theology we find a critical debate over the divinity of the Spirit. The question here is essentially, “Is the Spirit a divine Being or merely a creature?” Two significant figures in this debate are Arius and Athanasius. While Arius argues for a “creature” view of the Spirit, Athanasius argues for the Spirit’s divinity based on an analysis of the Spirit’s relationship with the world.

2. Medieval theology. In this period a debate ensues regarding the relationship between the Spirit and the authority of Christ. The crucial question in this debate is: “Does the Spirit have an authority ‘independent’ of the authority of Christ (i.e., a purely ‘executive authority’ of his own), or does the Spirit always act ‘under’ the authority of Christ (i.e., an ‘executorial authority’)?” This debate begins with Augustine and the Cappadocians, continues through medieval and orthodox theology and persists to this very day.

3. Reformation theology. In the period a debate concerning the relationship between the Spirit and the Scriptures ensues. The question here is: “Does the Spirit authorize the Church to serve as authoritative interpreter of Scripture, or does this ‘interpretive authority’ ultimately lie with the Spirit alone, speaking through Scripture?” This debate begins with Martin Luther and the Roman Catholic Church and continues its development through John Calvin and subsequent theological movements.

4. Modern Theology. In this period, which arguably begins with nineteenth-century liberal theology (i.e., Friedrich Schleiermacher) and continues through twentieth century Protestant Evangelicalism (i.e., Carl Henry), we find a continuous debate brewing with regard to the Spirit’s relationship to the individual believer interpreting the Word of God. “How does the Holy Spirit execute his authority in the life—and particularly the mind—of the believer attempting to interpret Scripture?” The “debate” in this period might indeed be drafted between Schleiermacher, who took an experiential tack to the question of the Spirit’s authority with respect to the believer, versus Henry, who opted for a rationalistic approach.

5. Postmodern theology. Finally, in postmodern theology we discover yet another critical debate—this time concerning the relationship between the Spirit and the Church community. The question here is: “What is the nature of the Spirit’s authority within the Church?” This question has to do with the way we should understand the Spirit’s authority to govern the Church. Here we discover that “evangelical” theologians generally want to retain an understanding of the Spirit’s authority within the Church that corresponds with our principle and pattern of divine authority (i.e., his authority over the world, under the authority of Christ, and speaking through the Word of God), while postmodern or contemporary theologians, in general, seem to be more concerned with the Spirit’s power and function within the Church. Since the discernment of postmodern theology is such a critical part of this entire study, I will survey several theologians (whom we might more or less consider “postmodern”) in order to investigate the general “landscape” of this debate in contemporary theology. This will allow me to develop an initial understanding of some critical “dialogue partners” that will need to be addressed in the remainder of this study.

In evaluating these debates I will follow a specific pattern of investigation. At the beginning of each section I will briefly investigate the various conceptions of “authority” that predominate within that particular historical period (including political, philosophical, and/or theological conceptions). Then I will identify two or more prominent theologians within that period who emerged as primary contributors to the specific debate. I will examine their arguments, paying particular attention to any discussion regarding the Spirit’s place in relation to the Triune God (and to the world), to Christ, to the Scriptures and to the Church. After this I will briefly examine other theologians within that period that provided significant contribution to the debate. Finally, I will attempt to answer the question, “What provisional definition of the Holy Spirit’s authority might evangelicals infer from this specific defense?”8 I will conclude by attempting to account for the impact of that particular debate upon the developing “storyline” of the Spirit’s authority in historical theology.

The goal of this chapter, therefore, is to attempt to find within historical theology initial confirmation that the Holy Spirit does indeed have an important place in our Christian “principle of authority” and our “pattern of authority” and to make initial discernment regarding the nature of the Spirit’s authority within this principle and pattern. Such discernment will provide parameters for our exegetical analysis in chapters three and four. These insights will also allow us to grasp the significant contributions made by previous theologians, to avoid some of their exegetical mistakes, and to know what sort of questions to address in subsequent chapters.

Significant Resources

Three kinds of works are of crucial importance for this chapter. The first are those that discuss historical approaches to the “problem” of authority in the Church throughout her history. One of the most helpful works in this category is Harold J. Berman’s Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (which examines the interaction between political authority, Church authority, and theology through the patristic and medieval ages). Other important works include Gregory Bolich’s Authority and the Church (which defines the witness of the Spirit to the Word of God in terms of a functional authority), Hans von Campenhausen’s Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power (which investigates the Spirit’s authority in the first three centuries), Rupert Davies’ Religious Authority in an Age of Doubt (which examines issues of authority from Schleiermacher to today), P.T. Forsyth’s The Principle of Authority (which views all authority in terms of the soul’s relation to God), John Frame’s The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (with an excellent model of divine Lordship), Francis Hall’s Authority: Ecclesiastical and Biblical (apologetics for a “modern” evangelical authority), Robert Johnson’s Authority in Protestant Theology (especially helpful for understanding Luther, Calvin, and Schleiermacher), Karl Morrison’s Tradition and Authority in the Western Church: 300–1140, and Bruce Shelley’s By What Authority (which examines standards of truth in the early Church).

The second kind of works includes those that provide a “storyline” analysis of the historic doctrine of pneumatology and that occasionally relate this discussion to issues of divine authority. These include Gary Badcock’s Light of Truth and Fire of Love (which attempts a “storyline” of pneumatology through the analysis of crucial episodes and debates; especially helpful on Moltmann), Yves Congar’s I Believe in the Holy Spirit, volumes 1 and 3 (which provides technical analysis of pneumatological debates in the context of pneumatological history; especially helpful on Augustine), Alasdair Heron’s The Holy Spirit (which presents the “story” in terms of key pneumatologists in Church history), Brian Gaybba’s The Spirit of Love (a general history of pneumatology from a Catholic perspective), Thomas Oden’s Life in the Spirit (which systematically analyses pneumatology in the Patristic period), Griffith Thomas’ The Holy Spirit of God (which contains a very helpful section on “Historical Interpretation” that attempts to isolate the “essence” of pneumatology into specific Church “epochs”), and Morris Inch’s Saga of the Spirit (which attempts to provides an “update of Griffith Thomas’ volume”).

The third kind of helpful works are those that examine the pneumatology of specific theologians. These include Regin Prenter’s Spiritus Creator (on Martin Luther), Philip Rosato’s The Spirit as Lord (on Karl Barth), Lycurgus Starkey’s The Work of the Holy Spirit (on John Wesley), and John Thompson’s The Holy Spirit in the Theology of Karl Barth. Articles include Eugene Osterhaven’s “John Calvin: Order and the Holy Spirit” and Emilio Brito’s “Hermeneutique et Pneumatologie Selon Schleiermacher.”

The Development of the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit’s Authority in Historical Theology

Now we shall examine the five periods of historical theology from the perspective of the development of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit’s authority.

Patristic Theology

In the Patristic period (ca. 100–450), divine authority was understood in terms of Hebrew (i.e., Old Testament) understandings. The word exousiva occurs fifty times in the LXX, with the book of Daniel providing important background material for understanding the New Testament use of the word. Daniel’s usages imply dominion or power, and often refer to the whole world. The authority of the human world-rulers always originates from the supernatural realm; it is delegated by God, the Lord of history, whose rule is eternal (4:31), who installs and removes kings (2:21), and who can remove their dominion at any time (7:12). The “Son of Man” is invested with sovereign authority to rule all nations, and his dominion will never pass away (7:14). Old Testament authority was often conceived of in terms of Word and Spirit, two closely related “authorities” (i.e., Isa 59:21). Clement of Rome refers to the role of the Spirit in the inspiration of the Old Testament, saying “Look closely into the Scriptures, which are the true utterances of the Holy Ghost.”9 Clement also reported that the Apostles appointed bishops and deacons by the leading of the Spirit to govern the Church and that the gift of apostleship was given to continue the apostolic tradition into the patristic period (i.e., through inspired writings). According to Nielsen, Clement viewed the Spirit as “a reality connected with the . . . governmental structure of the Church.”10 Nielsen adds,

It is significant, is it not, that the Holy Spirit is interested enough in the tradition of ecclesiastical succession to help guarantee it. According to Clement, one must keep contact with apostolic tradition simply because the Apostles had unique authority.11

The institutional Church eventually tried to gain political authority through symbiotic union with the Empire. Athanasius said that Constantius had attempted to make the Church a “civil senate” by “mingling Roman sovereignty with the constitution of the Church” and had led the Arians to consider “the Holy Place a house of merchandise and a house of juridical business for themselves.”12 Constantine’s Rome not only began to guard against persecution but against the Empire’s intrusion into the Church. The Church was given free reign to develop its tradition for preserving its own integrity. After Constantine, however, a “hostile separateness” between Empire and Church emerged and eventually grew so strong that the question of the day became, “What has the Emperor to do with the Church?” It was the Church’s opportunity to search the Scripture and to draft a series of doctrinal precedents, developed only through a long series of controversies, upon which she could assert her own “authority.” Imperial authority, whether paraded by Church or State, found its flourishing soil upon these semi-alienated grounds.

It is within this context that the debate over the Holy Spirit’s divinity began to erupt—the Arian perspective often collaborating with the Empire and the orthodox “Fathers” at times finding themselves on the defensive, trying to protect the early Church from heresy.

Arius

Arius was a priest over the Church of Bacucalis in Alexandria (318) who systematically taught a subordinationism that thought of the Father alone as “God” and the Son and Spirit as “creatures.”13 The Arians held that the Spirit is really an angel, created by the Son, and one of the spirits ministering to God in heaven. Arianism is well known for denying the deity of the Son and particularly the idea of the Son being homoousious (“of one essence”) with the Father. According to Arius,

The essences [ousia] of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are separate in nature. They are estranged, unconnected, alien . . . and without participation in each other. . . . They are utterly dissimilar from each other with respect to both essences and glories to infinity.14

The “Arians” increased along with the Church’s imperial authority, replacing the Scriptures with numerous creeds of their own. Athanasius referred to them as “modern Jews and disciples of Caiaphas.”15 As legalists, the Arians sought to justify their doctrines with an appeal to the authority of synods. Morrison claims that, for the Arians,

Exegesis was therefore more important than the actual text. Theology and concepts of Church cohesion had shifted from repetition of scriptural passages to the right interpretation, from the text to the gloss. True believers were no longer simply those who upheld the Scriptures as true, but those who shared a particular understanding of the Scriptures’ inner meaning or implications.16

The various “Arian Councils” were actually the first ones to attempt to draft a formal theology of the Holy Spirit for the Church at large. Before that time extensive writings on the Spirit were made by Clement of Rome and Ignatius, but their teaching “seems to be solely personal and experimental, and only indirectly doctrinal,”17 serving only to confirm the presence of the Spirit in the Body of Christ. The Arian Councils (up until 360), however, expressed their theology of the work of the Spirit “in terms which were in thorough accord with the spiritual simplicity of the Holy Scripture.”18 Lest we discount the contribution of the Arians entirely, Swete acknowledges:

The Church owes a debt, it may be freely admitted, to the Arian leaders who thus persistently called attention to the teaching and sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit, at a time when there was grave risk of Christian thought being turned too entirely to theological controversy.19

Nevertheless, Arian and semi-Arian teaching on the mission and work of the Spirit made the doctrine of the Spirit’s nature conspicuous by its absence. It was “unsatisfactory and even misleading; professing to be scriptural, it represents only one side of the teaching of Scripture.”20 As a result, new controversy regarding the deity of the Spirit arose throughout Christendom. While the “trinitarian” orthodoxy of the third century was both modalist and subordinationist—shaped largely by Origen, who saw the distinctions of the three Persons mainly in terms of three levels of divine outreach to the world—Arius drafted a radical metaphysical discontinuity amongst the Persons. Arius’ denial of the Spirit’s divinity emerged from his reaction to this third-century modalism.21

The council of Nicea sought to correct such heresy through an articulation of homoousios, which was employed to define the nature of the triune God. The Council constitutes a decisive step in a general movement in the fourth-century from economic to immanent trinitarianism. Many Christians, however, were horrified at the conclusions of Nicea (conclusions which were essentially unclear regarding the specific nature of homoousios), and thought that the idea of the Father and Son as one identical ousia implied modalism. Arianism took advantage of such fears, leading many believers to the conclusion that the Holy Spirit is less than divine. In reaction, the Church Fathers gave considerable attention to the nature of the Spirit (particularly in relation to the Son and to the Father) in their writings (up to and even after the Council of Constantinople in 381).22

Athanasius

Athanasius’ Letters Concerning the Holy Spirit and Letters to Serapion present perhaps the best defense of the Spirit’s divinity in the first millennium of the Church. As the chief elaborator and defender of the Nicene Creed after 325, Athanasius suffered considerable persecution from Arian politicians. When Athanasius turned his attention to the doctrine of the Spirit he gained many converts from Arianism, such as the followers of Serapion, who had accepted the homoousios of the Son with the Father but continued to view the Spirit as a creature. In his Letters to Serapion, Athanasius uses divine attributes such as immutability and supremacy to convincingly demonstrate the Spirit’s divinity. First, the Spirit’s divinity is witnessed in His immutability.

That the Spirit is above the creation, distinct in nature from things originated, and proper to the Godhead, can be seen from the following considerations also. The Holy Spirit is incapable of change and alteration. For it says, “The Holy Spirit of discipline will flee deceit and will start away from thoughts that are without understanding.” (Wis. 1:5). And Peter said, “In the incorruptibility of the meek and quiet Spirit” (1 Pet 3:4). . . . The Holy Spirit, being in God, must be incapable of change, variation, and corruption.23

Second, the Spirit’s divinity emerges from His supremacy over all things.

Again, the Spirit of the Lord fills the universe. Thus David sings, “Whither shall I go from your Spirit?” (Psalm 139:7) Again, in Wisdom it is written, “Your incorruptible Spirit is in all things.” (Wis. 12:1) . . . But if the Spirit fills all things, and if the angels, being his inferiors, are circumscribed, and where they are sent forth, there are they present; it is not to be doubted that the Spirit does not belong to things originated, nor is he an angel at all, as you say, but by nature is above the angels.24

While Origen took a “spiritualizing” approach to the exegesis of Scriptures, Athanasius emphasized the use of a “grammatical-historical” interpretive scheme.25 Well known for his knowledge of Scripture, Athanasius actually moved beyond the letter of Scripture and theological tradition in order to confront sects that denied the deity of the Spirit. Perhaps his most famous argument lies in the contrast he drew between the nature of creatures and the nature of the Spirit. He employed Gen 1:1–23 to demonstrate that creatures are created from nothing and come into being at a particular time, and 1 Cor 2:11–12 to show that the Spirit is not created but emerges directly from God.26 Athanasius backed this contrast with persuasive logic:

They say also in their hearts “there is no God” (Ps. 14:1). For if, as no one knows the thoughts of a man save the spirit who is in him (en autw): would it not be evil speech to call the Spirit who is in God (en tw Qew) a creature, him who searches even the depths of God? For from this the speaker will learn to say that the spirit of man is outside himself, and that the Word of God, who is in the Father (en tw patri) is a creature.27

Athanasius also applies the logic of Nicean Christology and the concept of homoousios to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, demonstrating that the Spirit bears the same rank and relative function to the Son as the Son does to the Father.

And if the Son, because he is of the Father, is proper to his essence, it must be that the Spirit, who is said to be from God, is in essence proper to the Son. And so, as the Lord is Son, the Spirit is called Spirit of sonship. Again, as the Son is Wisdom and Truth, the Spirit is described as the Spirit of Wisdom and Truth. Again, the Son is the Power of God and Lord of Glory, and the Spirit is called Spirit of Power and of Glory. So Scripture refers to each of them. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor 2:8). . . . Peter wrote, “If you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are you; because the Spirit of glory and of power rests upon you” (1 Pet. 4:14). The Lord is called the Spirit, “Spirit of truth” and “Paraclete;” whence he shows that the Triad is in him complete.28

Thus, for Athanasius, the Spirit’s attributes of divine power and divine glory seem to be “lordship” attributes. Athanasius cites the baptismal formula, “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” maintaining that since we now know that the Son is God along with the Father, it makes no sense to introduce a creature (i.e., the Arian Holy Spirit) into the Trinity.29 The Spirit must therefore be a procession of the Father and not a mere creation of the Father (Athanasius cites John 15:26, “the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father”).

Even more central to Athanasius’ argument, however, is his association of the Spirit with our sanctification (which is indeed a vital part of our salvation), concluding that the Spirit must therefore be our savior, together with the Father and the Son. The argument is inductive, beginning with the work of the Spirit and moving to the person of the Spirit. Since sanctification is a divine activity, the Spirit must be divine. Athanasius provided this argument at a synod in Alexandria in 362, at which the full divinity of the Spirit was clearly acknowledged.

Other Contributors

Eunomius (ca. 335–393), a relatively late Arian, regarded the Son as a creature of the Father and the Spirit as a creature of the Son (as the first and greatest work of the Son). Since “the Son is inferior to the Father, but superior to the Spirit,”30 the Spirit is third not only in rank and dignity but also in nature. Such pneumatomachi (those who “fight against the Spirit”) based their teaching on the notion that the Spirit is not specifically referred to as “God” in Scripture, but rather as a power that seems subordinate to God or placed between God and the creatures.31

The Cappadocian Fathers (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus) developed some of the most penetrating rebukes to such Arian theology. Their strategy, essentially, was to distinguish between ousia and hypostases (i.e., between divine oneness and the distinctiveness of the three Persons). Writing around the time of the Iconium Council (375), Basil continued in the logic of Athanasius (in his On the Holy Spirit), countering Arian assertions that the Spirit is a creature by insisting that the Spirit’s equality and dignity qualifies the Spirit as a member of the Trinity. Basil’s most penetrating questions to Eunomius are: “Why should ‘third in order’ necessarily mean ‘third in nature’?” and “How could the name of a created being have found place in the baptismal formula together with the Father and the Son?”32 Arguing from the Spirit’s work to his divinity, Basil essentially asked: “If the Spirit is the breath of God and has the power to sanctify, how can he be a mere creature? If the Spirit is an intelligent substance (ousia) of infinite power, unlimited by time, and naturally sought by all those seeking holiness and virtue, does this not establish his divinity?”

[Basil] is describing the Spirit as the divine goodness that permeates the world and that the world somehow shares in; the Platonic philosophical basis of his thought, together with his Christian faith, certainly makes him inclined to see goodness in such metaphysical and indeed specifically theological terms.33

Gregory of Nyssa also used the baptismal formula in his defense of the Spirit’s divinity. He went further than Athanasius, however, by developing this classical argument into a theological anthropology, which is witnessed in the Spirit’s formation (morphosis) and perfection of the Christian. Gregory argued at Constantinople (ca. 381) that this action requires the Spirit to be God and to receive the same honor as the Father and the Son. The sanctifying Spirit is to be considered consubstantial (possessing the same nature or substance) with the Father and Son without losing his distinction in hypostasis. Gregory of Nyssa held to the conviction of the monarchy of the Father, which is illustrated by several metaphors—a lamp, for example, which communicates its light to another lamp and through that lamp to a third lamp. The Spirit alone shone in this way, he taught, eternally through the Son.34 The result of this argument was a “new” view of the Spirit as deifier or sanctifier, the one who transforms various common or material elements through his sanctifying power. In turn, humans are transformed by partaking in the sacramental provision of the Spirit. It is “the visitation of the Spirit that comes sacramentally to set us free.”35

Gregory of Nazianzus (ca. 330—ca. 385) is often called “the theologian” by the Eastern Church, and was the first of the Cappadocian Fathers to declare that the Spirit is “God.” He proclaimed, “Each [of the three persons] is God by reason of ‘consubstantiality,’ the three are God by reason of monarchy.”36 He was called in 380 by the emperor to clarify the doctrine of the deity of the Spirit (which was considered the key debate of the day). Gregory’s Fifth Theological Oration was as much of an attack upon the Orthodox Church (which seemed ambivalent on this issue) as it was upon the Arians. He argued, somewhat like Gregory of Nyssa, that there is one light that comes to us from the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit:

Light, and light, and light, but one light, and one God. David anticipated this when he said, “In your light shall we see light.” But now we have seen and we preach, receiving the light of the Son from the light of the Father, in the light of the Holy Spirit.37

For Gregory of Nazianzus, this divine outreach cannot be divided up between creature and Creator. The light that is received by the creature must be true God in itself—for if the Spirit in whom the light comes to us is not God, how can we be saved? “If he is ranked with me, how can he divinise me?”38 he asks. Then he poses the rhetorical question, “Is the Spirit God?” to which Gregory answers, “Most certainly,” and adds, “Is he homoousios ? Yes, if he is God!”39 Whereas the Arians objected that the plurality of the Father, Son, and Spirit is on the same level as the plurality of “three crabs,” Gregory rebuts that consubstantiality makes such a ridiculous comparison impossible because “the fact that the three are consubstantial is affirmation enough of the divine unity, while also making simply numeration along creaturely lines logically and metaphysically inappropriate.”40

One would think that the council of Constantinople (ca. 381) would recognize the impenetrable logic of Gregory’s argument. However, because of the fear of a tumultuous reaction from the newly excommunicated Arians, their expansion of the Nicean creed settled on a via media position: “[We believe] in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and the Life-giver, who proceeds from the Father, who is worshipped and glorified together with the Father and Son, who spoke by the prophets.”41

The “Divine Authority” of the Spirit—Definition and Storyline

Is there a provisional definition of the Holy Spirit’s authority that we are able to infer from these defenses of the Spirit’s divinity? If so, how might this definition: (1) correlate with our principle and pattern of divine authority? (2) provide a beginning or basis for the “storyline” of the Spirit’s authority in theological history?

In order to assess these questions, we will need to borrow a bit of logic regarding authority from some contemporary theologians. Frame, for example, defines divine Lordship as “covenant headship.”42

[All created things] are appointed to be covenant servants, to obey God’s law, and to be instruments of His gracious purpose. If God is covenant head, then He is exalted above His people; He is transcendent. If He is covenant head, then He is deeply involved with them; He is immanent. Note how beautifully these two concepts fit together when understood biblically.43

Divine Lordship thereby provides a key window into our understanding of divine authority and Personhood. According to Frame, Lordship involves control, authority, and presence.44

Control is evident in that the covenant is brought about by God’s sovereign power. . . Authority is God’s right to be obeyed, and since God has both control and authority, He embodies both might and right. To say that God’s authority is absolute means that His commands may not be questioned (Job 40:11ff.; Rom 4:18–20; 9:20; Heb. 11:4, 7, 8, 17, passim), that divine authority transcends all other loyalties (Exod 20:3; Deut. 6:4f.; Matt. 8:19–22; 10:34–38; Phil. 3:8), and that this authority extends to all areas of human life (Exod.; Lev.; Num.; Deut.; Rom 14:32; 1 Cor 10:31; 2 Cor 10:5; Col. 3:17–23). Control and authority—these are the concepts that come to the fore when the Lord is present to us as exalted above creation and they are as far removed as possible from any notion of God as “wholly other” or as “infinitely distant.”45

Several arguments in patristic pneumatology clearly allow us to infer the Spirit’s “divine authority” as a Divine Person. Each looks to the Spirit as one whose supreme right with respect to the world can be described in both transcendent and immanent terms. Athanasius’ argument from Gen 1:1–23 and 1 Cor 2:11–12 allows us to infer his belief in the Spirit as a first cause. Classical theology recognizes God to be the principium essendi (“first cause”), the foundation that underlies all activity. This attribute displays divine transcendence and yet is centered in immanence (as the divine causation of all creation). God is the beginning and the end, the “author” of all things and all authority. However, “this metaphysical absoluteness does not (as in non-Christian thought) force God in to the role of an abstract principle.”46 Athanasius’ “absolute” language regarding the Spirit’s divine immutability and divine supremacy over all things provides valuable contributions as well to our understanding of the Spirit’s divine Personhood.

Basil’s inductive reasoning (from the Spirit’s activity as the breath of God and sanctifier to the Spirit’s infinite power, eternality, and moral supremacy) employs similar logic. Basil’s insistence on the Spirit’s equality (with the Father and the Son), dignity, and demonstration of divine goodness also confirms the Spirit’s authority as a divine Person. Here Basil does expose his platonic leanings, pointing to his preference for transcendence in theology. Nevertheless, Basil’s thought did serve to pave the way for the popular notion of divine ousia and accounted for the “oneness” of the three “hypostases.” The implication of a shared divinity is the sharing of divine authority amongst the three hypostases.

Gregory of Nyssa’s theological anthropology demonstrates the Spirit’s divine Personhood as well. Gregory’s understanding of the Spirit’s sanctification is described as an internal process within us arising from an external source that descends upon us. Forsythe clarifies this key distinction:

An authority must be external, in some real sense, or it is none. It must be external to us. It must be something not ourselves, descending on us in a grand paradox. . . . [It] must reveal itself in a way of miracle. It does not arise out of human nature by any development, but descends upon it with an intervention, a revelation, a redemption.47

Such an authority, according to Forsythe, is not foreign or alien—it is “other.” It represents a kind of pressure upon our souls. Gregory’s transcendent understanding of the Spirit certainly drives a premeditated stake through the heart of the “modern soul”—that “transcendent ego” or individuality that refuses the sanctifying wisdom which comes “from above” (James 3:15, 17). According to Forsythe, such wisdom is dispensed by the “Grand State Secretary of heaven on earth, the Holy Spirit.”48

In speaking of the Father and Son as being “consubstantial,” Gregory of Nazianzen recognizes that the light of the Spirit must also be “true God in itself” in order to save us. While Athanasius argues for the Spirit’s divinity from the Spirit’s participation in the divine act of creation, Gregory argues from soteriology. Forsythe tightens this crucial link between divine authority and soteriology:

If there is any authority over the natural man, it must be that of its Creator; and, if the New Humanity has any authority above it, that authority must be found in the act of its creation, which act is the Cross of Christ.49

This is where our “story” begins—the story of the progressive unveiling the Spirit’s authority in theological Church history. This first substantial “unveiling” emerges through a heated debate regarding the Spirit’s essential nature—the idea that the Spirit, as a divine Person, possesses divine authority. The Spirit retains authority over the world while revealing God’s authority to us. The Patristic arguments for the Spirit’s equality and shared divinity with the other Trinitarian Persons point toward his authority as a divine Person. Their arguments for the Spirit’s divine transcendence, divine “absoluteness,” and involvement in certain activities (i.e., creation, salvation, and sanctification) confirm this authority.50

As seen in the previous chapter, the “principle of authority” in Christianity grants the Spirit “divine authority” as a divine Person. This lies at the foundation of pattern of divine authority. The Church Fathers seem to claim that the Spirit, as a member of the Trinity, reveals himself to all humanity by demonstrating his authority over all humanity. This seems to become the first parameter within which a case for the Spirit’s authority can be developed.51 Any attempt to portray the Spirit’s nature as subordinate, “creaturely,” or in purely “anthropomorphic” terms will only run against these theological conclusions in that they only serve to reduce the Spirit to something less than a fully divine Person (and thus not able to possess divine authority at all).

Historians will rightly point out that the Nicene and Constantinople Creeds are ambiguous regarding the divinity of the Spirit. The reason for this, however, is well-known—namely, the Church rightly saw the need for clarification of Christology before pneumatology.52 Yet, interestingly, the word choice given in the Constantinople Creed in describing the Spirit as “the Lord, the Life-giver” represents the Spirit’s authority more so than his divinity.53 Yet this is only where the story begins.

Medieval Theology

In this section, I will evaluate the medieval debate over the Filioque 54 clause in an attempt to discern implications for the relationship between the Spirit’s authority and Christ’s authority. To begin this discernment it will be very helpful to trace the impact of political/theological history upon the development of Eastern and Western pneumatologies. In doing so we discover the true nature, potency, and impact of this debate.

Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) brought the center of civilization westward to Europe, and after Roman occupation the pax Romana eventually extended there as well. Though this might give the impression of a unified confederation, Ramm points out that this is a “mirage” because “the map fails to convey the enormous diversity that persisted in the Roman Empire. Underneath the apparent unity was a great cultural division of the East and West.”55 After the birth of Christianity, this division was only exacerbated by the rise of Byzantine (Eastern) Christianity (which eventually proved to be a serious threat to the primacy of Rome), the rapid rise of Islam (which created internal pressure within Christendom) and the eventual missionary movements of both Eastern and Western Churches (which further underscored the polarity).56 This division found theological support as well, with the Eastern Church tending toward “mystical” theology and the Western Church toward a more “rational” one. The great modern pneumatologist Ives Congar cites T. de Regnon’s studies of the Eastern and Western conceptions of the Trinity. According to de Regnon, “The Latins regarded the personality as the way in which nature was expressed, while the Greeks thought of nature as the content of the person. These are contrary ways of viewing things, throwing two concepts of the same reality on to different grounds.”57 The Latin theologian therefore says, “three persons in one God”; whereas the Greek says, “one God in three persons.” The faith and the dogma are approximately the same in each model, but the mystery is presented in two different forms.

The impact of medieval history upon pneumatology becomes most apparent when one explores the tense cohabitation that developed between Church and State. This relationship stems back to the late patristic era, and particularly to Constantine, who attempted to “christianize” the Roman Empire in AD 312. Though Constantine was converted in 313, we learn from Berman’s excellent analysis that Constantine’s project may have actually stunted the early Church’s growth.

[It] raised in stark terms the question whether Christianity had anything positive to contribute to the ruler’s role as supreme judge and supreme legislature in his domain. The question was reduced especially acute by the belief that the emperor was the head of the Church and represented Christ on earth. . . . The Christian emperors of Byzantium considered it their Christian responsibility to revise the laws, as they put it, “in the direction of greater humanity.”58

Berman cites many positive changes that took place under Constantine—changes regarding women’s rights in marriage and society, slave rights, judicial reform, and the systematization of law as a step toward a “humanized” Christianity.59 Still, the elimination of anti-Christian laws was very difficult, and the Roman legal system was in decay throughout most of Byzantium history.

Despite its generally humanizing influence on the law, Eastern Christianity may indeed have ultimately exerted, on the whole, a negative effect upon Byzantine legal science, since it robbed Roman law of its ultimate significance while offering no alternative system of justice in the world.60

This occurred, seemingly, because of a lack of significant “grounding” with respect to the Eastern Church’s understanding of legal authority; in other words, there was a lack of true connection made between divine authority and such practical issues as law. Nevertheless, while this “authority vacuum” was developing in the East, an even greater one appeared in the West, but for a different reason. From 476 on, and particularly after 495 when Clovis was converted, the West began the process of independence from imperial rule. Clovis, who was called Christus Pantocrator (“Christ as ruler” over the world and especially over the emperor), began the process of setting the Church free from the secular empire, which resulted in the rise of a desacrilized secular state as well. The Popes attempted to fill this authority vacuum by vehemently asserting that their authority was derived from Peter and not from their political setting. It was Gelasius (Pope from 492 to 496) who, over against the emperors, began to intervene at will in ecclesiastical affairs, asserting an independent and higher political authority in religious matters. So, while the doctrine of the Spirit seemed to diminish considerably during this time (mostly because Church leaders were fearful of “enthusiasm”) the authority of the Church itself was on the rise. Between Constantine and Clovis there was certain “deadness” in both Eastern and Western Churches. Though papal claims remained lofty throughout the Middle Ages, the actual ecclesial power of the Popes diminished considerably between 600 and 1050. Councils of Bishops often ruled in various Western territorial Churches with kings presiding over them. With the “prophets” of the early Church no longer exhibiting Church authority, with no official emperor, and with the diminishing influence of the papacy, Western Churches (those previously controlled by the emperor) were able to develop a greater degree of local ecclesial control.

Within this context we can examine the importance of the Filioque debate. The clause was first inserted into the Nicene Creed at the third council of Toledo (ca. 589) under King Reccared (ca. 586–601). Though the Eastern Church objected to this emendation, they were more offended at not having been consulted about the change. The struggle reached its climax in 1054 with the “official” addition of the Filioque clause into the Nicene Creed. This amendment, performed by Pope Benedict VIII at the Council of Florence,61 stated that, by begetting the Son, the Father also bestowed upon the Son that the Spirit should proceed from the Son as well as from Himself. This action factored heavily into the intense political upheaval that soon followed. Pope Hildebrand (1070s) proclaimed the legal supremacy of the Pope over all Christians and of the clergy over all secular authorities, and Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade in 1095. Berman demonstrates that Filioque gave the papacy theological grounds to capitalize on the schism. In attempting to use the crusades to export the Papal Revolution to Eastern Christendom, the schism eventually took the form of violence and conquest. Filioque was thereby a major contributor to the conception of the popular slogan, “the freedom of the Church.”62

The Papal Revolution is described as rapid (with sweeping changes often occurring overnight) and total (including political, socioeconomic, cultural, and intellectual changes). Technological developments and new methods of cultivation contributed to the rapid increase in agricultural productivity, surplus, and trade. European population increased by more than half between 1050 and 1150, and thousands of new cities and towns emerged. Cultural changes include the creation of the first universities, the first use of scholastic methods of learning, and the rigorous systematization of theology, jurisprudence, philosophy, and science.63 Behind these improvements stood a critical change in the conception of the Church itself and its responsibility to reform the world. This Papal Revolution resulted in a political disengagement (but not separation) of the sacred from the secular, as well as the “desacrilization” of the state, granting various political and religious groups a relative freedom of religion (though the Popes attempted to rule in matters of faith and morals) along with freedom from state rule and oppression. “The freedom of the Church” became an apocalyptic struggle for a new order of things. As a result, the concept of the Church became one of dynamic involvement in the world and in its practical affairs (i.e., ethics, law, government, etc.).64

Is there any connection between the Filioque emendation and the change that occurred regarding the Church’s understanding of its role in the world? This question is one to ponder as we examine two major contributors to the Filioque debate: Augustine and John of Damascus.

Augustine

Augustine (354–430) was intensely interested in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Though the Filioque doctrine had already been taught in one form or another by other Church Fathers (i.e., Tertullian, Hilary, Ambrose), Augustine’s understanding of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of love and the Spirit of unity between the first two Persons of the Trinity was considered novel for his time. Beginning with the idea of the Trinity as pure relation, Augustine calls the Spirit the vinculum caritas (“bond of love”) between the Father and the Son,65 and a caritas (“mutual gift”) primarily from the Father to the Son, but also from the Son to the Father.66 As the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, he “proceeds”67 simultaneously from both the Father and the Son (and thus from only one source). Holding that the Spirit receives His divinity from the Son (just as the Son receives His divinity from the Father), Augustine rules out the idea that the Son is only a medium through which the Spirit proceeds (as proposed in the Eastern view). Instead, the Spirit acts as the principle agent in the economy of Christ’s salvation by bringing the sinner into the life of the Trinity, into the relationship of love provided therein. Augustine gives the following summary of the Spirit’s work:

According to Holy Scripture, this Holy Spirit is neither only the Spirit of the Father nor only the Spirit of the Son, but is the Spirit of both. Because of this, he is able to teach us that charity which is common both to the Father and to the Son and through which they love each other.68

Latin tradition regarding the trinitarian Persons exposes this understanding of the Spirit. In the unity of the godhead (which is defined in the word homoousios), the Persons are distinguished by the way they are relationally opposed to each other. Since the Spirit and Son proceed equally from the Father, there must be a processional relationship between Son and Spirit as well (proceeding from Son to Spirit) in order for them to be distinguished.69 In De Trinitate Augustine confirms this Latin conception of procession by referring to the terms “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit” as “relative” terms—that is, expressions of relationship. Since such relational diversity exists within the same substance or “essence,”70 absolute terms such as “good,” “all-powerful,” and “Creator” apply to each of the Persons without diversifying or multiplying the substance. Though all three Persons may rightly be called “Creator,” this does not amount to three creators.71

Augustine deals with the question of Filioque in De Trinitate as well, and his conclusions accord with the above thinking. In his writing he seems to make a deliberate effort to oppose the Eastern conception of the Spirit by associating divine auctoritas (i.e., authority or source or authorship) with the Father alone (rather than to all three Persons). Augustine states,

Scripture enables us to know in the Father the principle, auctoritas, in the Son being begotten and born, nativitas, and in the Spirit the union of the Father and the Son, Patris Filioque communitas. . . . The society of the unity of the Church of God, outside of which there is no remission of sins, is in a sense the work of the Holy Spirit, with, or course, the co-operation of the Father and the Son, because the Holy Spirit himself is in a sense the society of the Father and Son.72

How does Augustine deal with John 15:26, which tells us that the Spirit “proceeds from the Father”? He replies that the Father communicated to the Son all that he is, apart from his being Father. Thus, all that the Son has comes from the Father.73

John of Damascus

John of Damascus (ca. 675—ca. 749) has been described as “the last great theologian of the Eastern Church.” John’s pneumatology is essentially a synthesis of the basic concepts provided by Athanasius and the Cappadocians. His De Fide Orthodoxa came to serve as a primary textbook for Eastern theology that provided Greek theologians with many theological standard concepts, including the monarchy of the Father, the distinction between the Son’s begetting and the Spirit’s ekporeusij (“procession”), and clarifications regarding the Son/Spirit relationship (i.e., the Spirit comes “through” the Son, “rests in” the Son, expresses the Son, and is communicated by the Son). He also provides one of the few early documents that literally grant “authority” to the Spirit:

Likewise we become also in one Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, which proceeds from the Father and rests in the Son, the object of equal adoration and glorification with the Father and the Son, since it is con-substantial and co-eternal, the Spirit of God, direct, authoritative, the foundation of wisdom and life and holiness; God existing and addressed along with the Father and the Son; uncreated, full, creative, all-ruling, all-effecting, all-powerful, of infinite power; Lord above all creation, and not under any Lord.74

Such an authority is associated with the energies of God, which Eastern theology distinguished from God’s essence.75 The divine energies function to make the incomprehensible and inaccessible essence of God comprehensible and accessible, thus providing a theoretical foundation for communion with God and for the Eastern understanding of the Trinity. John also popularized the use of the term perichoresis in the theology of the Trinity.76 It was first used by Maximus the Confessor to express the oneness of action and effect resulting from the union of the two natures in Christ.

Perichoresis in the theology of the Trinity points to the in-existence of the Persons within each other, the fact that they are present to each other, that they contain one another and that they manifest each other. This in-existence is based on the unity and identity of substance between the three, even in the teaching of the Greek Fathers.77

The Greek en was used to indicate the way that the Persons that exist within God “hypostatize” the same substance. They are “in” or “within” each other. Each one is also eij, turned “toward” the other and given “to” the other. John begins by speaking of the one God as the absolute being, rather than of the three hypostases. This one God, however, is also the Father, who by means of monarchy is Father by nature of the Son and the “Producer” of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is not another Son—he does not proceed by begetting but by ekporeutoj.78 In contrast to Augustine, John draws a parallel between the Son who is “begotten” and the Spirit who “proceeds”: “We have learned through faith that there is a difference between begetting and proceeding, but faith tells us nothing about the nature of that difference.”79 The Spirit, therefore, proceeds from the Father alone. The crucial distinction between John’s theology and Western theology thereby arises when we consider the relationship between the Spirit and the Son. John says, “We do not say that the Son is the cause, nor do we say that he is Father . . . We do not say that the Spirit comes from the Son (ek tou Uiou), but we do say that the Spirit is of the Son.”80 The idea here is that the Spirit’s property—procession—is only accessible and intelligible to us in reference to the Son, and that the Spirit “penetrates” the Son until the Spirit remains and dwells in the Son while still dwelling in the Father.

Other Contributors

John of Damascus’ conception of the procession of the Spirit from the Father and through the Son did not stand in direct opposition to Filioque. It was only with Photius that the issue became one of serious controversy, so much so that the Filioque addition became grounds for official separation. For Photius, “the distinction between the divine persons was adequately explained by the personal properties of each.”81 In 867, while Patriarch of Constantinople, Photius attacked Filioque on several fronts, arguing that: (1) it was a Western innovation, (2) it was unbiblical (nowhere in Scripture, he proclaimed, is the Son mentioned as the source of the Spirit within the divinity), (3) the Western position splits the divinity (because the Spirit appears to proceed from two principles), and (4) Augustinian thought (that the Father and Son form a single source) cancels the distinction between the Father and Son. Photius’ most persuasive argument, however, is that the Augustinian view distorts the idea of personal source (the Father being that source), by replacing it with an essentially impersonal one—the relationship between the Father and the Son.

Anselm (1033–1109) begins with the common ground between the Latin and the Greek conceptions of the Trinity in order to attempt a reconciliation regarding Filioque (at the Council of Bari). He examines the identity of the Person (which is found in either origin or procession), and the Father and Son as source, and concludes that there is no inequality between the Father as principle source and the Son as a derived source. The Spirit’s procession is from “God,” who is the divine essence. This essence includes Father, Son, and Spirit—each possessing equality of divinity.82 Anselm, however, broke from the previous tradition regarding procession. Augustine had regarded the Father as the sole origin (with the Holy Spirit proceeding originally [principaliter] from the Father but also from the Son), and Aquinas has affirmed the Father is the source and that the Son’s procession is thereby derivative from the Father. Nevertheless, Anselm did not recognize the Father’s originality, and has perhaps influenced Western theology more than any of his predecessors.

The “Executorial Authority” of the Spirit—Definition and Storyline

Medieval theology challenges the universal Church to consider whether or not the Holy Spirit’s authority to execute God’s will in the world is in any way related to the authority of Jesus Christ, the one who proclaims, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt 28:18). Is the Spirit’s authority executed under the authority of Christ or, as the Eastern tradition implies, is the Spirit somewhat “independent” of Christ’s authority in his execution of God’s will?

Whereas Patristic theology helps us discern a provisional definition of a generic “divine authority” with respect to the Spirit of God (the “who” of the Spirit’s authority), in this section we begin to discern the nature of the Spirit’s “executive authority” (the “how” of the Spirit’s authority with respect to the pattern of divine authority). In other words, while both Eastern and Western theologies grant the Spirit some measure of divine authority by nature,83 the difference between the two lies in the nature of the execution of this authority in the world. The two views are implied by their conceptions of the Spirit’s procession:

1. The Eastern formulation (as expressed by John of Damascus as the procession of the Spirit from the Father through the Son) implies that the Spirit has an “authority” derived from or delegated by the Father alone. Photius, in particular, emphasizes the parallel between the Spirit’s procession and the Son’s generation, thus giving them distinct origins in and from the Father. The Spirit has his own complementary role alongside the Son, cooperating with the Son. Rather than the unity of the Trinity residing in the Spirit, as we have seen in Augustine, unity in the Orthodox tradition lies in the Father. A supreme “executive authority” of the Spirit (one that parallels the “executive authority” of Christ) is thereby implied by Eastern Orthodox theology.84 The Spirit simply possesses an authority to execute the Father’s will. This authority is not subject to Christological limitations, and there is no directly implied subordination of authority by the Spirit to the Son.85

2. The Western view implies that the Spirit has an authority derived from and delegated by both the Father and the Son for the primary purpose of glorifying the Son (John 16:13–14). The Spirit does this by carrying out the Son’s will after his departure. Therefore, we may infer that an analogy to an executor of a will may best describe the Western understanding of the Spirit, as one who has been given the authority to carry out Jesus’ will on earth after Jesus has departed. It would then seem to be more accurate to speak of the Western understanding of the Spirit’s authority as that of an “executorial authority” rather than as an “executive authority.”

Is the Filioque debate solvable? Two ecumenical councils (Lyons in 1274, and Florence in 1438) both attempted and yet failed to resolve the struggle. Florence concluded that “from the Son” and “through the Son” means essentially the same thing, but this was later dismissed by the East. These councils probably failed because they only sought to persuade the Greeks to agree to Latin ideas. Many theologians throughout Church history (i.e., Anselm, Moltmann) have attempted various “compromises,” but none have proved satisfactory to both sides. Congar, a filioquist, asserts instead that the two formulas are complementary, as seen in the fact that the Fathers of the Church held both formulas in communion.86 Likewise, when we examine the Filioque debate in medieval theology, we seem to find complementary evidence as well.

Before attempting to “resolve” this debate exegetically (in chapter 3), we may make an initial comparison of these two views along two lines—historical (i.e., the impact of the respective positions upon history), and theological (i.e., the strengths and the weaknesses of the theological positions themselves). First, in our historical analysis, we notice two related themes regarding the Eastern Church: (1) it never completely broke from the handcuffs of imperialism, and (2) it did not recognize the authority of Christ over the Holy Spirit in ecclesiastical and soteriological issues to the same degree as the West. While granting “monarchical” authority to the Father as divine source, the “working out” of this authority in the context of humanity tends to escape into mysticism. Berman notices that this tendency is revealed in Eastern art:

Eastern Christian art has reflected the theology of the Eastern Church, and also the theology of the West between the sixth and tenth centuries, in its emphasis on transcendence (or “otherworld-liness,” as it is called in the West). This is a theology centered in heaven, in man’s “ascent to the infinite,” in man’s deification. The emphasis is on God the Father, the Creator. Christ has shown mankind the way to him. The icons reflect this.87

The Western Church, on the other hand, and Western culture as well seem to exemplify some strong benefits in association with of the Filioque. The clause was ratified by Popes who, in general, attempted to insure that the Church would not be mastered by the State but would be subject to Christ alone. Christ is King; the Pope is “vicar.” The results of their “incarnational” focus seem non-coincidental in at least two ways—the rapid development of the Catholic faith, and the progress of Western culture and the Western legal system. Berman provides the logic needed for such a conclusion:

But Western theology of the eleventh and twelfth centuries shifted the emphasis to the second person of the Trinity, to the incarnation of God in this world, to God the redeemer. God’s humanity in Christ took the center of the stage. This was reflected in the papal amendment of the Nicene Creed by the proclamation that the Holy Spirit “proceeds” not only “from the Father” but also “from the Son” (Filioque). God the Father, representing the whole of creation, the cosmic order, was incarnate in God the Son, who represents mankind. By the Filioque clause, God the Holy Spirit, who is identified in the Nicene Creed with the Church, was said to have his source not only in the First Person but also the Second Person of the Trinity—not only in creation but also in incarnation and redemption.

Thus the Church came to be seen less as the communion of saints in heaven and more as the community of sinners on earth. Rationalism itself was an expression of the believing in the incarnation of divine mysteries in human concepts and theories. God was seen to be not only transcendent but also immanent. . . . It was not transcendence as such, and not immanence as such, that was linked with the rationalization and systematization of law and legality in the West, but rather incarnation, which was understood as the process by which the transcendent becomes immanent. It is no accident that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, all three of which postulate both a radical separation and a radical interconnection between God and man, also postulate that God is a judge and lawgiver and that man is governed by divine laws. Nevertheless, the distinctive features of the Western concepts of human law that emerged in the eleventh and twelfth centuries—as contrasted not only with Judaic and Islamic concepts but also with those of Eastern Christianity—are related to the greater Western emphasis on incarnation as the central reality of the universe. This released an enormous energy for the redemption of the world; yet it split the legal from the spiritual, the political from the ideological.88

Though the data provided by cultural and legal improvements as witnessed in the West do not provide conclusive evidence with respect to the Filioque debate, we may safely infer from Berman’s analysis that such improvements may well be linked to the Spirit’s unique role in Western theology—not as one that places a specific focus upon the Spirit himself, but because in the Filioque the Spirit has been recognized as one who possesses “executorial authority” to magnify Christ and to dispense Christ’s salvation. The Spirit is seen as the one who executes Christ’s authority (including Christ’s legal authority) in time and space in order to bring glory to Christ. Filioque Christology thus displays the heart of medieval theology—that Christ is to be honored in all respects: theology, law, culture, art, politics, et cetera. Berman’s argument is that almost all modern liberties, as promoted through the legal and civic institutions of the West, and our modern understanding of “local autonomy” are related to what happened during this time (though many of its benefits will not be completely seen until the Protestant Reformation and after). From this we can safely infer that, because of the imperial authority possessed by the State, such liberties could not have developed in the East.

In evaluating the theological strengths and weaknesses of these two positions, it seems that the logic of Augustinian thought regarding procession (and particularly with respect to Augustine’s conception of “relational opposition”) is fairly convincing. Applying such logic to the doctrine of the Spirit’s authority with respect to the divine economy in the Church age, we can deduce that the authority of the Son and the authority of the Spirit can only be distinguished (and understood to be non-conflictory) if the Spirit is “under” the authority of Christ.

This outstanding strength, however, is coupled with a considerable weakness. Colin Gunton has noticed a common complaint among many contemporary theologians that Augustine’s persona of the Spirit—identified as God’s love and gift to the world—does not adequately distinguish the Spirit from the Son, who “might equally, perhaps with more justification, be described as the Father’s love and gift to the world.”89 Such a lack of distinction is understandable when we remember that Augustine owes much to Platonic thought, as evidenced in his analogy of the immanent Trinity to the threefold structure of the human mind, with the Spirit being compared to the will. As with Plato, who said that knowledge consists in the recollection of the Forms known before one’s temporal existence, Augustine views the will as that which relates memory to knowledge by bringing the contents of memory into conscious reasoning. Likewise, the function of the Spirit in the Trinity is to bring the Father and the Son unto relationship—a unitive function that neglects many other features of the Spirit’s actions and can easily lead to a subordination of the Spirit to the Son, even within the immanent Trinity.90 The effect may well be a neglect of the Spirit’s nature as a divine Person in his own right. This is essentially ratified in Augustine’s description of the Father as auctoritas and the Spirit as communitas. The Spirit seems to possess an executorial role in the economic Trinity but not the personal authority to carry it out.

Jenson holds that Augustine’s three “persons” are functionally indistinguishable. “Augustine could no longer conceptualize the saving relation between God and creatures by saying that the Father and the Son are transformingly present in the Spirit, as the Greek originators of trinitarianism had done.”91 Thus, the work of the Spirit can be easily thought of as an impersonal process whereby God acts upon us. Since (as we have seen) authority always resides in persons, this conception of the Spirit diminishes or eliminates the Spirit’s authority and implies that the Spirit is simply a function of Christ. Inch, a Western theologian who remains strongly in favor of Filioque, summarizes the effect of this weakness upon the Western Church:

Herein lies one of the fundamental errors in the Western Church, according to their Eastern counterpart: it presumes to know the secret working of the Spirit in others. It does not respect the sanctity of life expressed in the diversity of the Spirit’s work. Thus, this understanding of the way of the Spirit proves too narrow. But the problem lies more deeply in that the West presumes to understand what escapes us all. By attempting to bring divine truths down to human forms, it loses the mystical quality of faith and the transcendent character of the Spirit as being present within us.92

Such criticisms, while valid, do not pose a death sentence upon Filioque or the notion of the Spirit’s executorial authority. We must realize that the Eastern view has gaping weaknesses as well (and that in discerning the Spirit’s authority to act we must take contributions from both views into consideration). Gunton charges that, like the charismatic movement, Eastern Orthodox theology tends to develop an insufficient relationship between Christ and the Spirit. As Barth has stated, this suggests a mystical assent to the Father without the mediation of the Son.93 Such a lack of theological development gives the impression that the Church can stand under the authority of the Spirit alone. This can be sensed in Hryniewicz’ description of the Spirit’s “authority” with respect to Orthodox Church bishops.

In light of the orthodox tradition, the function of the bishops does not emerge out of the personal legal delegation, which is given to him individually through Christ; it is instead the work of the Holy Spirit in the entire community. . . . The general consensus of all bishops became the expression of the highest authority in the Church as the indication of the presence and the work of the Holy Spirit.94

Kasper points out another weakness in Greek pneumatology. Not only is the Eastern tradition, in its dogmatic creedal formulas, almost completely silent about the relation of the Spirit to the Son, but there is also no relation drawn between the economy of salvation (the economic Trinity) and the inner life of the Trinity (the immanent Trinity). According to Kasper, if the Son has a share in the sending of the Spirit in the history of salvation (which he obviously does), then he cannot fail to have a share into the intra-trinitarian procession of the Spirit.95

Protestant Theology

The Catholic-Protestant controversy battled in two arenas—the nature of authority and the basic doctrines of the faith—that became interwoven through the notion that “correct” doctrine is ultimately determined by the authority one accepts regarding the interpretation of Scripture. Such an “interpretative authority” was presumed by both parties to be possessed primarily by the author of the text. In this section, we will examine the nature of “interpretive authority”96 as well as the Holy Spirit’s possession or delegation of such an authority. Western Medieval theology, which developed a general framework for understanding the Spirit’s role as authoritative “Executor” of Christ’s will on earth, had not yet worked out precisely how the Spirit fulfills this role in the world, particularly in relation to the interpretation of Scripture. Thus, in the development of a “post-medieval” pneumatology, the issue of scriptural interpretation was naturally the first “executorial” question to arise. It is “prolegomena” in that, before the Church can develop a systematic set of doctrines, she must first determine her interpretive methods.

The Reformers sought to establish a pneumatological method of interpretation that could guide their subsequent theologizing. Before the Reformation began, however, interpretive authority was essentially equated with Roman Catholic authority. The Roman Church claimed that she possessed two key ingredients necessary for interpretive authority: (1) the proper source of truth—the Bible, and (2) the proper hermeneutical tools for interpreting the source of truth—Tradition. God, who was considered final authority, had expressed his authority in revelation and continues to express his authority in and through the Church. This led to the doctrine of the Church’s “infallibility.” Several factors led to the eventual mistrust of Roman Catholic hermeneutics from the perspective of the “Protestants.” The Protestant rallying cry, “sola scriptura,” did not mean that scriptural authority excludes all other means of knowing God’s will (i.e., Tradition, reason), but that Scripture provides the norm for the other means as the “final court of appeal.” Luther, for example, held to the primacy and all-sufficiency of the sensus literalis of Scripture, thus countering the four-fold hermeneutical approach of medieval theology (which included analogical [logical], allegorical [mystical], and anagogical [moral] approaches). The cultural changes that resulted from the Reformation did not come about by any attempt toward social revolution—the “revolutionary” aspect of the Reformation era was its new emphasis on the Word of God. This emphasis coincided with the rise in literacy, the invention of the printing press, and the rediscovery of Greek and Roman classics within the culture of Renaissance humanism. All of these changes resulted in an interest in returning to “sources.”

The Reformation of the sixteenth century was a modern movement that drew inspiration from the general culture and learning of the time. It is no accident, therefore, that the earliest heroes of the Reformation were, when all is said and done, not visionaries or social revolutionaries or even religious mystics, but scholars and Bible translators.97

The Reformation also coincided with the breakdown of ecclesiastic unity, cultural unity and denominational unity. Without an emperor or Pope as their ecclesial authority, the Protestant’s authority became individualized or denominationalized. The Bible, as interpreted by the individual believer or the denomination, could once again become the foundation of societal authority.

Martin Luther and John Calvin

The debate over the nature of the Spirit’s role in biblical interpretation is exemplified at the Diet of Worms, where Martin Luther cried, “It is written!” and the Church replied with excommunication. While many theologians recognize Luther’s role in the development of the Western world’s understanding of the nature of authority, few however, have understood Luther’s perspective regarding the authority of the Spirit. For Luther, the Spirit has his own existence in God’s eternal glory, apart from the Word and apart from the physical world, and thus cannot be controlled by us. The Spirit is the “sphere” of revelation where Christ is present and the Word is alive. Luther remarks,

For Christian holiness, or the holiness common to Christendom, is found where the Holy Spirit gives people faith in Christ and thus sanctifies them, Acts 15[:9], that is, he renews heart, soul, body, work, and conduct, inscribing the commandments of God not on tables of stone, but in hearts of flesh, II Corinthians 3[:3].98

Luther also proclaims, “In the whole of Scripture there is none but Christ, either in plain words or in involved words.”99 Instead of adopting the Augustinian view of the Spirit as the gift of grace mediated primarily through the Church, Luther connected the Spirit once again with the authority of Christ and the authority of the Word of God—and thus gave us grounding for our pattern of authority. As a result, Luther’s pneumatology is best understood as the Spirit of Christ working through the channel of the Word of God. This became a major theme of Reformation theology, representing a shift away from the earlier concern for precise definitions of the Spirit’s nature and toward the doctrine of the work of the Spirit in terms of the subjective appropriation of the gospel by the believer.

In Luther’s theology, the Spirit’s work continues in the Christo-centric theme of Western medieval theology, but takes on a new role—that of securing or mediating the incorporation of the believer into Christ through the Word of God. This Word reaches the heart and leads the believer to genuine faith through the inward work of the Spirit. As the instrument of the Spirit, the Word is connected to the Spirit through the resurrection of Christ. How does this occur? By placing the power of the resurrection into the context of the gospel, the Spirit causes the risen Christ to live His risen life in our midst through the message of the Word. Luther thereby holds that the work of the Holy Spirit is always a logical outworking of the Filioque clause, in that the Spirit serves as a mediator of the experience of Christ, and thus “reveals every relation to Christ which is not experience, which does not rest on the mediating, real and redeeming presence of Christ.”100 All other talk about the presence of Christ outside this sphere is either spiritualistic mysticism or moralistic imitation of Christ. Indeed, the only Spirit Luther knows is the Spirit of Christ. Luther tells us that the main work of the Spirit is not to authorize or justify the actions of the magisterium, but rather to create faith within those who believe—and specifically, faith in the historical Christ.

Although John Calvin is frequently acknowledged as “the theologian of the Holy Spirit” among the sixteenth century reformers, the doctrine of the Spirit’s authority may be the most overlooked aspect of Calvin’s pneumatology as well. According to John Hesselink, “an important aspect of his doctrine of the Holy Spirit has been neglected, namely, how the Holy Spirit leads, guides, governs, and rules in the life of the believers.”101 Calvin at times allows the Spirit a certain freedom over the Word and the inspiration of the Word (even more so than Luther) without ever speaking of the Spirit as disconnected from Christ. This is alluded to in his statement, “Our mind must be illuminated, and our heart established by some exterior power, in order for the Word of God to obtain full credit with us.”102 At other times, however, Calvin subordinates the Spirit to the Word of God (both the Word of God in the Person of Christ and the written Word) and in such thinking we can discern an executorial authority of the Spirit.103 This latter aspect is evident in Calvin’s criterion (German, kriterion 104), which was utilized by the reformers to designate a functional authority, and in his discremin, which is a set of related criterion. Johnson explains how such a criterion was applied to the office of the Spirit as He speaks through the Word:

The word discremin, which is used frequently, is intended to designate a configuration of criteria that are in some way organically related to one another as reciprocal coefficients. Calvin’s doctrine of the Word and Spirit may be cited as a classic example of the theological discremin. It requires the testimonium Spiritus Sancti, or that the Holy Spirit “attests” the written Word of Scripture, in order for it to be authoritative and useful for theological purposes. It also reassures that the Word of Scripture be utilized to “test” the Holy Spirit, or to “test the spirits to see whether they are of God” (1 John 4:1). Within this doctrine both the Scripture and the testimony of the Holy Spirit are criteria, but they are inseparably related as reciprocal coefficients.105

Calvin illustrates the nature of this discremin when arguing that the Spirit is only being consistent with himself when he uses that Word which he has previously revealed:

By a kind of mutual bond the Lord has joined together the certainty of his Word and of his Spirit, so that the perfect religion of the Word may abide in our minds when the Spirit, who causes us to contemplate God’s face, shines; and that we in turn may embrace the Spirit with no fear of being deceived when we recognize him in his own image, namely, in the Word.106

Oosterhaven finds Calvin’s concept of order in the background of all Calvin’s theology. Calvin was educated in Stoic philosophy, which identified God with order and held that the unity of the world was maintained by Reason.107 The Spirit is seen in this model of God as the archetype and controller of order through reason. The Spirit is to be understood as active in creation, demonstrating authority in and through his bestowal of “beauty and order.” As a result, Calvin gave Protestant theology and doctrine a hermeneutic that reflects his concept of order and that is derived from his discremin.

If we . . . look only to Calvin, we are forced to take with total seriousness his reiteration that the Word and the Spirit are inseparable in constituting the discremin that must reign over Christian doctrine. It was the development of this second noetic office of the Spirit which gave Protestantism a systematic doctrine of theological authority. . . . It was this same Calvin, who emphasized and re-emphasized, more than any of the other Reformers, that the Word becomes authoritative as, and only as, it is joined with the testimonium Spiritus Sancti.108

The Roman Catholic Magisterium

The authority of the Spirit, according to the counter-Reformation, is evident in the “infallibility” of the Roman Catholic Church. According to Congar,

The Spirit is guaranteed to pastors insofar as they are pastors of the Church, recognized by the Church as having the grace that dwells in it and as appointed or given by God Himself. This guarantee of faithfulness, of which the Spirit is the principle, is given to the Church. It is such a firm guarantee that to admit that the Church is capable of error is to impute a failure on the part of the Spirit.109

The Catholic Church’s faithfulness, according to counter-reformation Catholic theologians, was radically and yet erroneously questioned by the Reformers. John Fisher exemplifies this attitude by arguing that the promise of the Spirit was not made simply to the apostles but to the Church until the end of the age. As a result, the Spirit provides the hermeneutical principle for determining truth.

The universal Church cannot fall into error, being led by the Spirit of truth dwelling in it for ever. Christ will remain with the Church until the end of the world. . . . [The Church] is taught by the same one Spirit to determine what is required by the changing circumstances of the times.110

Such an “interpretive authority” was made an institutional standard via the Council of Trent. Catholic theologians at Trent appealed to the continual activity of the Spirit throughout the Church age as a primary justification for the handing down of the apostolic traditions and for the trust that should be placed in those traditions. This, however, is not distinguished from the trust we are to have in the canonical Scriptures. What the Reformers attributed to the Holy Spirit (that is, the authentic interpretation of the Scriptures) the theologians of Trent ascribed to “the Church,” the body of Christ where the Spirit was living in the form of a living gospel.

This lead to the doctrine of the Church’s “infallibility,”111 by which the Roman Church claims to be the authoritative interpreter of written revelation.112 Since Christ is the Head of the Church and the Church is His body, the authority of the Roman Church becomes the authority of the indwelling Christ. This is witnessed in the statement declared at the Council of Trent (Fourth Session), that all interpretation was to be in accord with the “holy mother Church—whose role is to judge the true sense and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures.” In a sense this seems to amount to an elevation of the Church’s interpretation of the Bible over the Bible itself. This is admitted openly in traditional Catholic doctrine, as seen in the introduction to A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scriptures :

Nevertheless . . . the Church is superior to the Bible in the sense that she is the Living Voice of Christ and therefore the sole infallible interpreter of the inspired Word, whenever an authoritative interpretation is required.113

The teaching magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church refers to the Holy Spirit as the guarantor of its teachings and decisions. The magisterium is not the same as the theologian, who has an inherent pastoral dimension and aims to build up ecclesiastical communities. The magisterium, however, “teaches in light of a gift of the Holy Spirit and passes authoritative judgment on ‘new teachings and on considerations proposed by theology.’”114 The World Council of Churches has given a very positive definition of the nature and role of the magisterium:

[The magisterium] is the guarantee that the salvific Word of Christ will be really addressed to the concrete situation of the given age. Hence it does not replace the work and rule of the Spirit. In fact, the “magisterium” lives through the Spirit and is always subject to its guidance. The “magisterium” is the concert form in which the guidance of the Spirit maintains historical continuity with Jesus Christ. . . . The charismatic structure of the Church ensures that the Holy Spirit imparts impulses to the Church in other ways besides through official hierarchical organs of the Church. This means also when it is applied to the relationship between the Pope and the Bishops, that individual bishops can be channels for the impulses of the Holy Spirit.115

The vital connection of the magisterium with the authority of the Spirit is examined in John Wright’s article, “Authority in the Church today: A Theological Reflection.”116 Wright attempts to clarify that the authority transferred from the Holy Spirit to Roman Church leaders is not exercised above the Church but from within the Church by respecting the rights conferred by the Spirit to each believer.117 According to Wright,

[I]t is the Holy Spirit vivifying the whole Church who is the source of their authority, not simply the will and consent of the members of the Church; for all parts of the Church receive the Holy Spirit for their particular tasks as a gift given by the risen Lord to the whole Church and through the whole Church, especially through the Word and Sacrament. This interrelationship of the Holy Spirit, the whole Church, and authorities within the Church solidifies both the mode in which authority is to be exercised in the Church and also the scope of its exercise.118

This structure, however, reflects the inner reality of the Church, which is essentially the Spirit. There is therefore a direct correlation between the “magisterium” and the Holy Spirit—the One who provides the internal reality of authority. According to Inch, “This stance [held by the Roman Church] likened the structural and pneumatic aspects of the Church to body and soul, so that one might not be viewed apart from the other.”119

Congar, however, admits that the tendency of the counter-Reformation was to “give an absolute value to the Church as an institution by endowing its magisterium with an almost unconditional guarantee of guidance by the Holy Spirit.”120 Biblical references in some of its decisions (i.e., the Mariological dogmas of 1854 and 1950) have been “quite remote,” and basis for such decisions was essentially based on faith in the Church itself, “animated by the Spirit.”121

The “Interpretive Authority” of the Spirit—Definition and Storyline

The central debate within this theological period has to do with the relationship between the authority of the Spirit and the authority of Scripture. As an integral part of the Pattern of divine authority, the nature of this relationship is crucial for both Protestant and Roman Catholic theologies in their respective understandings of the Spirit’s interpretive authority.

The Catholic version of “interpretive authority” essentially reduces to their understanding of “Tradition,” which Congar refers to as a single apostolic tradition handed down in the Church through written Scripture as well as through teaching, discipline, and rites.122 Vatican II described Scripture and Tradition as forming a unity through which the faithful are brought to a full knowledge of God’s truth.123 Such understandings of Tradition place the Spirit-inspired writings and decrees of the teaching magisterium (i.e., councils and bishops) essentially on par with Scripture. One indeed wonders whether the Spirit is actually placed over the magisterium, is replaced by the magisterium, or is conjoined with the magisterium. Eno admits that, “in practice, a juridical criterion like Roman approval, while secondary, becomes the operative norm.”124 While the Spirit has “interpretive authority” to speak “through” the Word as interpreter of the Word, the Roman magisterium, in essence, assumes the role of “mediator” between the Spirit and the Word.

Protestants, on the other hand, claim that the recognition of this Spirit/Word relationship, as stated in terms of their theological discremin, is probably the reason for the success of the Protestant Reformation. Davison traces the roots of Reformation theology back to medieval theology in order to show how earlier attention to this relationship laid the necessary groundwork.

During the long night of the Middle Ages the teaching of the New Testament was obscured by the huge shadow of the Church, a building which, intending to point men heavenwards, gradually blocked out from view the sun in its splendour and the azure of the sky. Reformers before the Reformation and the great leaders in the sixteenth century did much to clear the air and bring men face to face with God in Christ. . . . In vindication the authority of the Scriptures against the encroachments of the Churches were [sic] helping to prepare the way for the complete supremacy of the Spirit.125

Bolich points out that the genius of the Reformation was not that the doctrine of the Spirit’s witness provides a “principal thesis from which other doctrines were to be systematically deduced,” but rather that the Reformers began with the text of Holy Scripture and made the witness of the Spirit integral to their entire doctrinal system, so that the witness of the Holy Spirit was inextricably bound up with the Scriptures.126

In Luther’s theology, the Spirit is not to be seen as some “doctrine” creating an unquestionable rational theory but as a living presence over the world, one that reveals Christ in the world.127 Christ is revealed through the Spirit, who is ultimately the interpreter of the Word, so that the written Word becomes a “living Word” through the Spirit. The crux of the Spirit’s “executorial authority” in Luther is thus the contemporaniety of the Word. The “Word of the Spirit” becomes an “inward Word” when the outward (written or preached) Word penetrates the heart. In this action the Spirit is authoritative with respect to the believer or the one who is being saved. Luther, however, refuses to bind the Spirit in the Word, allowing his theology (unlike many theologians who followed him) to retain the authority of the Spirit over the Word. In opposition to Roman theology, Luther’s model does not allow for a delegation of the Spirit’s own infallibility to any human person or institution, but only to the Scriptures. In this way, “interpretive authority” is retained as a property of the Spirit.

Calvin’s pneumatology and particularly his “internal testimony of the Spirit” teach us that the foundation of the Spirit’s interpretive authority can only be what Ramm refers to as veracious authority. The Spirit has the authority to testify biblical truth to the individual, thus giving the Spirit authority over the individual believer. While believers are utterly destitute of the light of truth, they are not ignorant that this Word is the instrument of the Spirit’s illumination.128 Calvin’s emphasis is always on the work or agency of the Spirit of Truth whereby the Spirit serves as the source of internal or spiritual interpretation within the believer. This implies an interpretive authority of the Spirit that is essentially instrumental—the Spirit is the instrument through which Christ speaks his Word in the human heart. While Calvin essentially limited the Spirit’s work to that of salvation and sanctification, the Spirit is attributed with a certain veracious authority to restore order to humankind and “seal our minds” in truth.129

As a result, Luther and Calvin portray the Spirit as possessing an interpretive, veracious authority, which is in turn an expression of the Spirit’s “executorial authority.” This authority is enacted with respect to Scripture and within the Church. This illuminating Spirit, in other words, authoritatively resides over the Church and yet executes his authority under Christ, speaking through the Word. Because the Word is a product of the Spirit and because the Spirit continues to speak this Word in contemporary confirmation, the witness of the Holy Spirit is seen as the interpretive authority established for man by God. For the Reformers the Spirit is not bound to the Word but always speaks through the Word or in accordance with the Word, thus remaining consistent with himself.

Ramm strongly asserts that the “Protestant Principle of Authority”—the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scriptures—is the only means for avoiding the imposition of the erring voice of man upon the authoritative Word of God. His convincing logic runs as follows:

The truer Protestant principle is that there is an external principle (the inspired Scripture) and an internal principle (the witness of the Holy Spirit). It is the principle of an objective divine revelation, with an interior divine witness. These two principles must always be held together, so that it may be said either that (1) our authority is the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scriptures, or, (2) our authority is the Scriptures sealed to us by the Holy Spirit.130

As a result, the “storyline” development of the Spirit’s authority has now reached a level of practical objectivity. In other words, Protestants could begin to see Scripture as an objectification of the Spirit’s authority, and thereby begin to grasp God’s character and will with much more significant detail than ever before.

Modern Theology

Since precise limitations of the Spirit’s authority with respect to the Word were not yet well-defined within Protestant theology, a door was left open for followers to either limit the Spirit’s authority to the Word alone (resulting in various forms of Christian rationalism), or to overreact to this thinking by separating the Spirit from the Word (often resulting in various forms of Christian “enthusiasm”). Either way, Prenter contends that after the Reformation the work of the Spirit was narrowed to the individual, especially with respect to the work of sanctification, regeneration, and the interpretation of Scripture. Several other related activities (i.e. the Spirit’s work in creation, providence, history, Church governance, and mission) were given little or no attention.131

On top of this, rapid changes in European intellectual and social culture during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries—particularly in the natural sciences, philosophy, and literature—elevated modern confidence in human reason as well as skepticism regarding “traditional authority” or “Spirit.”132 Hume challenged religious “authority” by attacking the validity of making empirically demonstrable statements about God. Kant was helpful to the Christian concept of authority in some ways, but his argument that theology must be based only upon moral laws meant for the “modern man” that God could be known only through rational means, if at all. As a result, many groups throughout the modern period “hungered” for a new sense of the Spirit and decried that almost all traditional approaches left them only half full. Anabaptists, for example, believed themselves to “possess” the Spirit and sought a more pronounced doctrine of the Spirit’s interpretive authority (thereby rejecting Lutheran and Reformed teaching regarding authority). Quakers held that the “authority” of Church and Scripture must yield to the Spirit’s “inner light” of immediate revelation as the final authority for Christian theology and life. Pentecostal and charismatic groups at times disconnected the Spirit from the Word completely, looking for an experience that lay beyond the teaching of Scripture. This modern landscape was often shaped by a shift in the notion of “the priesthood of the believer,” which now meant that the individual was no longer bound by an authoritarian Church and was free to use his or her own intellectual and spiritual capacities for discerning truth. According to Livingston, the “modern age” brought a renewed awareness and trust in each person’s own capacities.

Reason supersedes revelation as the supreme court of appeal. As a result, theology faced a choice of either adjusting itself to the advances in modern science and philosophy and, in so doing, risking accommodation to secularization, or resisting all influences from culture and becoming largely reactionary and ineffectual in meeting the challenges of life in the modern world.133

Modern theology therefore emerged through an accommodation to human subjectivism, and took the form of both experientialism (which often seemed to replace the Spirit with human morality) and rationalism (which replaced it with human reason).134 These two approaches are represented by the theologies of Schleiermacher and Henry. For our purposes, the essential debate had to do with the final “authority” or method one could rely upon when interpreting Scripture.

Friedrich Schleiermacher

Friedrich Schleiermacher, often referred to as “the father of modern theology,” defines the Spirit as “the union of the divine essence with human nature in the form of the common Spirit which animates the corporate life of believers.”135 Schleiermacher’s “liberal theology” does not give the Spirit a metaphysical status apart from this union. The Spirit confirms the notion of an immanent deity, which seems to be best understood as emerging “from below” as the presence of God in the Church. This presence is defined in terms of a “feeling of absolute dependence.” The operation of the Spirit is to be recognized primarily with regard to the humanization of the individual, so that one can be released from external sanctions and enjoy the positivistic (scientific) character of modernity. Schleiermacher asserts, “Without being knowledge, [religion] recognizes knowledge and science. In itself it is an affection, a revelation of the Infinite in the finite, God being seen in it and it in God.”136

As a result, all doctrine is to be derived from an experiential foundation. The interpretation of the Bible in the establishment of doctrine does not proceed on grounds of rational objectivity, but as a function of the Christian Church wrestling with questions of personal faith, piety, and ethics. Each witnessing community possesses an “interpretative authority” in that each views the Holy Spirit as the one who works to form and define that particular community of believers.137 “The Spirit for Schleiermacher is effectively the spiritual influence left behind by Jesus that gives coherence to the life of the Church as a spiritual entity, and therefore to the life of the Christian faith.”138 Within this paradigm the Spirit is freed from the Catholic/Protestant approach to pneumatology (which to the “liberals” limited the Spirit to a role of preservation of life through specific methodologies) and given “authority” to meet new challenges with fresh insights and unique results.139

Following in the steps of Schleiermacher, nineteenth-century liberal theologians portray the Christian faith, and particularly Jesus’ life and teaching, as the fulfillment of humanity’s highest religious or moral aspirations. Such aspirations are thought to be embryonically implanted in universal human nature. Sabatier, for example, interprets Schleiermacher psychologically, and holds his “feeling of absolute dependency” to be an “emotional experience” that is prompted by the internal testimonium Spiritus Sancti and that becomes the sole authority over Christian theology. The Bible and the Church are historical and experiential “consequences and effects” of such an authority, and since neither is a “first cause,” neither can play a role in the theological discremin.140

Carl Henry

Carl Henry’s pneumatology has attempted to combat liberal and neo-orthodox notions of “authority” and in doing so has served to define the Spirit’s role in the inspiration and illumination of authoritative Scripture more precisely. For Henry, the Spirit’s establishment of biblical authority must precede the Spirit’s own interpretive activity. This was one of the main points established in his classic work God, Revelation, and Authority. Henry’s key hermeneutical principle is that the Spirit’s work in the inspiration of biblical propositions must be distinguished “from the Spirit’s present function as authoritative interpreter in the believer’s comprehension of the scripturally given revelation.”141 Henry is concerned that the Holy Spirit is given a rightful place in the transference of authority from Christ to Scriptures, thus avoiding the development of the sort of “dualism” between Christ and Scripture that we see in Barth, liberal theologians, and others. Henry explains how this duality develops:

Because the prophetic witness anticipates Christ as its climax and the apostolic testimony exalts Jesus as the promised son of God to whom all authority is given, Scripture has sometimes been adversely contrasted with Jesus Christ or with the Spirit of God as the sovereign authority. This contrast has been prompted during the past two centuries by champions of higher critical views of Christ. But the critical assumptions governing negative theory of Scripture inevitably carry over also into other spheres, such as Christology and pneumatology, so that any attempt to seal off the authority of Christ or of the Spirit from the fate of Scripture is vain.142

Henry posits that the Holy Spirit stands between Christ and Scripture and thereby confers to the Scripture a corresponding authority.143 Though he is concerned that evangelicals have forgotten the Spirit’s role in conferring such an authority, Henry refuses the corrections offered by many “neo-Barthians” (i.e., Leowen, Pinnock, Kelsey),144 arguing that they always move toward communal or functional hermeneutics. Instead, Henry asserts that “the Spirit of God—not any private interpreter (2 Pet. 1:20), evangelical or nonevangelical—is the authoritative illuminator of the scripturally given Word.”145 Henry’s pneumatology is best expressed by Leonard Champion: “The testimony of Scripture possesses the authority of the Spirit and every believer, guided by what Calvin calls ‘the testimony of the Spirit within,’ will recognize and respond to its truth.”146

Henry’s evangelical approach, however, does tend to incorporate a classic scholastic approach to theology, as witnessed in his assertion that the sole foundation of theology rests on the presupposition that the Bible, as God’s self-disclosure, presents the truth of God in propositional form, and that the theological task is simply “to exhibit the content of biblical revelation as an orderly whole.”147 Such an approach to doctrinal development adopts a modern or scientific hermeneutic in that it excludes the possibility of any interference from (or need to reference) tradition or culture. Indeed the theologian can interpret Scripture and develop a doctrinal system in isolation from such influences. Henry’s thinking, in a real sense, mirrors that of modern philosophers Descartes and Kant with respect to their confidence in the mind’s ability to know truth and to make rational decisions without needing to recognize the influence of tradition. The Spirit, as a result, can aid the systematic theologian in the correct interpretation of Scripture through the use of rational exegetical methods alone.

Other Contributors

Karl Barth’s view of the Spirit departs from many of the evangelical theologians of his day, particularly those who attempt to precisely define the Spirit’s nature. According to Barth,

Spirit . . . is neither a divine nor a created something, but an action and attitude of the Creator in relation to his Creation. We cannot say what Spirit is, but that he takes place as the divine basis of this relation and fellowship. Spirit is thus the powerful and exclusive meeting initiated by God between Creator and creature.148

Barth’s “relational” pneumatology is essentially a response to attacks from “liberals” on the Spirit’s divine sovereignty. Barth viewed the Spirit as having a sovereignty of action that, once encountered, makes us “free for God.”149 Barth’s pneumatology does not limit the Spirit’s function in divine revelation to the giving and recording of the Word of God, but instead reasserts the Spirit’s lordship in the event of revelation.150 According to Barth,

The Holy Spirit is the Lord (acting upon us in revelation as the Redeemer) who makes us really free, really children of God, who really gives His Church utterance to speak the Word of God. . . . [the Spirit] is really the hidden essence of God Himself, and therefore the Lord in the most unrestricted sense of the concept, who—in His utter unsearchableness—becomes manifest in revelation in this respect also.151

Barth’s pneumatology also seems to be a reaction against modern conceptions of truth, particularly against the modern idea that the human subject may determine truth through rational or experimental methodologies. According to Rosato, “The strict Christological framework in which Barth situates his pneumatology in the Church Dogmatics is proof enough the he is struggling against subjectivism with as much force as he can assemble.”152

Barth’s theological method presents Jesus Christ as the “objective” executor of revelation and the Holy Spirit as the “subjective” executor, though it is this subjective aspect that becomes the primary determinate. God’s grace is manifested both in the objective revelation of God in Christ and man’s subjective appropriation of this revelation through the Spirit.153 For Barth, the Spirit as revealer always remains the Lord and interpreter of the truth of God as well. Scripture is the “Word of God” because by the Holy Spirit it became and will become to the church a “witness” to divine reveltion. This witness is not identical to the revelation; rather, God’s revelation occurs in our encounter with the Spirit and enlightenment by the Spirit to a knowledge of God’s Word. Thus, the outpouring of the Spirit is God’s revelation, and in this reality we are free to be God’s children and to know, love, and praise him in his revelation.154

Barth says that the verification of God’s truth is provided by the Holy Spirit alone (not by reason, the individual, or the Church itself). Thus, interpretation of Scripture is a function of the Spirit’s work in shaping the Church, and is a very practical endeavor.

With his insistence on the concept of theopneustia Barth nullifies any purely philosophical hermeneutics. Pneumatology is from now on to afford him a specifically Christian tool of interpretation which corresponds to his trinitarian teaching and to his Christology.155

The Veracious Authority of the Spirit—Definition and Storyline

In response to enlightenment humanism, which granted supreme authority to the human intellect and moral conscience, modern theologians began searching for ways to define and establish a Christian understanding of authority, to establish that Christianity was indeed the highest form of rationality or the most rational system, and to determine the ultimate methodology in the determination of truth. Though many theologians attempted to employ the doctrine of the Spirit in their methodologies, they often became victims of “modern” reductionism. In particular, the Spirit’s veracious authority—his work with respect to the determination of truth—seems to be essentially reduced to a work of humanization (Schleiermacher), human or enlightened rationality (Henry), or personal encounter (Barth). Borrowing from Kantian philosophy—which divides the “noumenal” realm of spiritual knowledge from the “phenomenal” realm of experiential knowledge—Schleiermacher reduces the Spirit’s work to religious experiences, and particularly to the role of interpreter of religious experiences within the Christian community. The Spirit has authority only in that he helps the interpreter to get behind the printed words to the author’s wider social context, and then relate to that context as a manifestation of universal life. The Spirit’s veracious authority to inspire the written Word of God as a historical document, however, begins to be questioned. Schleiermacher’s “liberal” followers reduced the Spirit to humanity’s highest religious or moral aspirations and the Spirit’s authority to a moral authority that allows believers to enter the Church community and function as moral beings.

Barth is certainly to be complimented on his fresh attempt to portray the Spirit’s transcendence in the midst of modern reductionism. It is questionable, however, that this authority is indeed immanent, in that Barth seems to reduce the Spirit’s work to a merely noetic function, “pointing back to its role in the Trinity rather than forward to its work in the world.”156 Barth, as a result, seems reluctant to grant the Spirit a firm place in the “pattern of authority.” His tendency to blur the distinction between Spirit and Word makes the truth of the Bible seem dependent on encountering or hearing the Spirit’s voice speaking through it, and makes the Word seem as transcendent as Barth’s portrayal of the Spirit.157 The Spirit is granted a functional authority (to cause the Word to function as revelation for today) rather than a veracious authority (to inspire an historical, authoritative Word).

Unlike Barth, Henry refuses to make the authority and infallibility of Scripture conditioned on human response. Though Barth denounced bibliolatry and professed to exalt the Spirit, Henry accuses Barth’s “functional reinterpretation of inspiration” of promoting a “broken biblicism” in that Barth wants to “detach discussion of the doctrine [of inspiration] from any correlation of it with a cognitively valid and infallible text.”158 While Henry coincides closely with Barth’s emphasis on the Spirit’s sovereignty in relation to the Word of God, Henry also finds in the Spirit a veracious authority to inspire the historical Word.

The transcendent Spirit of God therefore remains no less active in the relation to the authority and the interpretation of Scripture than in its original inspiration. Prophetic-apostolic inspiration stands in the larger context of the whole process of divine relation involving the communication activity of the Spirit of God.159

Henry, however, seems to have reduced the Spirit’s authority to the authority of the Word of God. Henry is typical of “modern” evangelical theologians who tend to bypass the discussion of theological method—and the Spirit’s place in that discussion—and move directly to the task of constructing theological systems (as though the process of moving from the ancient biblical text to the contemporary affirmation of doctrine and theology was self-evident). According to Grenz and Franke,

Although [evangelical systematics] are written from a variety of different theological perspectives (Reformed, Wesleyan, Baptist, dispensationalist, charismatic, etc.) and arrive at strikingly different conclusions about issues of central importance in theology, on the question of method they are remarkably similar. For the most part these evangelical systematic theologies make use of a decidedly rationalist approach to theological method.160

Such an approach seems to look back to Charles Hodge, who derived his “propositional” approach from post-reformation Protestant orthodoxy and its rationalism. The Protestant reaction to the counter-reformation led second-generation reformers to adopt the methods of their adversaries, in essence trying to “prove the authority of the Bible using the same Aristotelian-Thomistic arguments which Roman Catholics used to prove the authority of the Church.”161 Thus, a significant shift in theological method occurred from the neo-platonic Augustinianism of Luther and Calvin to the neo-aristotelian-thomistism of their immediate followers—a shift that obviously led to a de-emphasis on the Spirit’s witness.

Whereas Schleiermacher neglects the Spirit’s inspiration of the Word, Henry reduces the need for the Spirit’s illumination of the Word. Such erroneous tendencies tend to neglect the history of theology as well as the Spirit’s role as teacher with respect to the Word of God and the historical Church. Ramm’s pattern of authority, once again, provides the needed balance:

If Christ has founded a Church and given it His word; if the Holy Spirit is the Teacher of the faithful; if the Church is “the house of God . . . the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15); then every generation of Christian theologians must be prepared to take seriously the history of theology (broadly interpreted to include symbols, councils, theologians, treatises) as possessing manifestations of the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit.162

Ramm holds that “veracious authority” is spoken “not only of the one who possesses truth but also of one who aids in the determination of truth,” and makes a vital link between the Spirit and such an authority:

Here is the Spirit who is veracious within himself; and in his ministry he ministers the truth. . . . Here in the ministry of the Spirit is the ultimate credibility of the New Testament; here is the sufficient and necessary cause for the writing of the New Testament; here is the authority of the divine Scriptures traced to their executor; and here is the real source of our own inward certainty of the Christian faith. And the testimonium is an integral element in the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit.163

The veracious authority of the Spirit, therefore, is demonstrated in both the inspiration and illumination of Scripture. Since a person possesses veracious authority on a given subject when “he would be more likely to possess the truth about the subject than most other men,”164 we can extrapolate this principle to the omniscient Holy Spirit, inferring that the Spirit of God possesses ultimate veracious authority.

In the history of theology, our pattern of divine authority is repeatedly demonstrated in terms of adherence to a veracious authority granted to the Word of God by the veracious Spirit. The New Testament carries the authority which Jesus delegated to his apostles and which the Holy Spirit held over the inspired writers.

Here as elsewhere, the mode of delegation of authority in the New Testament is by the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit who inspired the New Testament, it is the Spirit who witnesses to Christ in the heart, and it is the Spirit who quickens the heart to see the truth of God in the pages of the New Testament.165

While the Spirit’s veracious authority is primarily witnessed through inspiration and illumination, the Spirit may also grant secondary authority to theologians, Churches, persons, creeds, symbols, councils and treatises—but only for the purpose of Christ’s ministry and government. The quality of their work or words must be judged by its adherence to the pattern of authority. The Spirit, however, always retains primary veracious authority that cannot be equated with any of these mediums.

Postmodern and Contemporary Theology

Our study of the first four periods of theological history has allowed us to discern provisional definitions of the Spirit’s authority in relation to the Triune God (an authority over the world), to Christ (an authority to execute Christ’s will), and to the Scriptures (an authority to inspire and illuminate them). We have seen in Church history initial argumentation for the Spirit’s place in the “principle” and “pattern” of authority.

Now, as we survey postmodern and contemporary theology, we find that the concern in pneumatology shifts to the relation between the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and the doctrine of the Church. In searching for a renewal of the Spirit’s power in the Church, we find postmodern theology often proceeding from a different starting point than previous theologies. According to Bloesch, “Many theologies today encourage us to seek a doctrine of the Spirit ‘from below’—beginning with the impact of the Spirit in human life—rather than one ‘from above,’ in which we begin with the doctrine of the immanent Trinity.”166 Contemporary theology does not usually begin with transcendent ideas that the Church should adopt but with ideas that stem from the various needs of the Church. The question in this section is therefore, “Does the Holy Spirit possess authority in or over the Church?” In other words, does the Spirit function as governing authority within the Church, and if so, what is the nature of such an authority?

Perhaps the simplest definition of postmodernism is that philosophy which comes after modernism, usually as a response to the deficiencies of modernism. Postmodernists, of course, would remind us that there is no single postmodern philosophy or theology and that postmodernism is as varied as the responses themselves. What are some of the contemporary responses being given to “modern” understandings of pneumatology? To answer this, a brief survey and comparison of five “postmodern” theologians will be conducted in order to initially discern various contemporary understandings of the relationship between the Spirit and the Church. In doing so, however, we must keep a larger goal in mind. Since the ultimate goal of this entire work has to do with the recovery of a biblical conception of the Holy Spirit’s authority in and over the Church—one that might confront contemporary misconceptions of “Spirit”)—these five theologians should also be investigated for the purpose of further dialogue (and indeed will serve as such in chapters three and four)

Evangelical “Postmodern” Theologies of the Spirit

According to Veith, “One response to the end of modernism is to recover what was of value in the premodern era and to apply old worldviews in new creative ways to our contemporary times.”167 This seems to be the response of a few evangelical and Catholic theologians. A recent Catholic/Methodist joint summit, for example, observed that, “encouraging signs of the activity of the Holy Spirit” in the Church today include “a growing hunger for truth now clearly unsatisfied by the achievements and claims of science and technology.”168 They also see a revitalization of the Spirit’s role in the mediation of authority in the Church to be based on Scripture and Church history:

Christ’s authority is mediated through the Spirit, who is Love, and hence all authority that flows from this source is part of God’s good gift. . . . But this mediation is not static; it is not a matter of endless repetition or formulae. The Spirit moves the Church to constant reflection on the Scriptures which he himself inspired and on their traditional interpretation.169

This “postmodern” approach recognizes once again the essential community basis for the discovery of truth and spiritual life, but seems to retain the Spirit’s place in the pattern of divine authority. Oden, for example, speaks of a “postmodern paleoorthodoxy” which calls theologians to assess all texts from the historic Church that allege to be consensual Christian teaching, listening continually to the centrist interpreters of the received traditions. According to Oden, we will recognize heresy not by pure rational analysis, but “only by first knowing and sharing deeply in the language, worship, ethics and ethos of the ecumenical testimony of many cross-cultural generations of apostolic testimony.”170 The result of such a “paleoorthodox” approach seems to be a renewed focus on an experience of the Spirit within the Church that coincides with a general (though perhaps not total) respect for the pattern of divine authority. Two recent whole-book treatises on the theology of the Holy Spirit that attempt such an approach from an “evangelical” perspective include Clark Pinnock’s Flame of Love and Gary Badcock’s Light of Truth and Fire of Love.

Clark Pinnock’s Flame of Love

Pinnock’s opening concern is with the work that remains to be done regarding the recovery of “a more experiential basis for the doctrine of Spirit.”171 Pinnock asks us to view the Church from the standpoint of the Spirit, rather than as an institution or sacrament, because “this is the natural way to regard a community that was created by the Spirit on the day of Pentecost.”172 The effectiveness of the Church is thus due to God’s power rather than human competence. “The Church rides the wind of God’s Spirit like a hawk endlessly and effortlessly circling and gliding in the summer sky. . . . The main rationale of the Church is to activate all the implications of the baptism of the Spirit.”173 Pinnock adds,

My concern here is to try and recover the two-dimensionality of charism and sacrament original to Christianity. . . . The Spirit comes in power through sacrament and charism to enable the Church to participate in God’s mission of mending creation and making all things new.174

While Pinnock claims to be an evangelical theologian, his focus seems to be on the experience of the Spirit rather than on any sort of authority of the Spirit. One of Pinnock’s main concerns is to clarify the nature of the relationship between Christ and the Spirit. Pinnock tends to grant the Spirit a mission that is distinct from the mission of Christ (and thereby tend toward a “universalistic” understanding of salvation). What might we conclude about his assessment of the Spirit’s authority in relation to Christ’s authority? In chapter three we will investigate this question in light of our pattern of authority.

Gary Badcock’s Light of Truth and Fire of Love

Badcock vigorously argues that the experience of God—which is for him the primary issue in all discussion regarding the Spirit—“has not always been integrated in any meaningful way into systems of theology.”175 His concern is thus with the Spirit’s role in the spiritual life as it is experienced within the Church. According to Badcock, “one of the central arguments that will be developed in what follows is that there is a more subtle, reciprocal relationship between . . . Spirit and Church, than is generally allowed.”176 Badcock hopes that such a reformulation of the Spirit/Church relationship will mean that pneumatology might be linked to ecclesiology without necessarily being dominated by it.

Badcock provides a penetrating analysis of the history of pneumatology. In particular, he notes that Western theology seems unable or unwilling to integrate the work of the Spirit into theological thought. Badcock demonstrates that when such deficiencies exist the first result is an impoverished Church life. The Church’s theology “hardens into intellectual or moral Puritanism”177 and “ceases to be really related to the God who is the source of life.”178 Nevertheless, Badcock’s model gives the Spirit a somewhat “mystical” role in relation to the Church, a role that provokes spiritual experience. Can we discern any notion of the Spirit’s authority from this model? If so, what sort of authority does the Spirit possess in light of the pattern of authority? We will investigate this further in chapter four.

Communitarian “Postmodern” Theologies of the Spirit

Veith adds that, “The other response to the end of modern rationalism is to take the next step and deny rationalism altogether. These postmodernists maintain that truth claims and moral absolutes are nothing more than a personal or social construction.”179 This might be thought of as a strictly “communitarian postmodernism.” In this model, the denial of modern rationalism seems to coincide with a general dismissal of the need to place primary reliance on traditional sources of “authority” that emerged before the modern era (i.e., the authoritative Word of God and, secondarily, orthodox theologians and Church creeds). While these sources may be respected, the primary focus seems to be on the experience of “Spirit” (i.e., as God’s power, liberation, or presence) in the context of the Church community. Three contemporary whole-book treatises that attempt to construct theologies of the Spirit on such a “communitarian” perspective include Michael Welker’s God the Spirit, Jürgen Moltmann’s The Spirit of Life, and Peter Hodgson’s Winds of Spirit.

Jürgen Moltmann’s The Spirit of Life

Moltmann attempts to provide a “Universal Affirmation” of the Holy Spirit that can serve as “a new paradigm in pneumatology” appropriate for our time.180 Our problem, according to Moltmann, is one of experience, and particularly “the false alternative between Divine Revelation and human experience of the Holy Spirit”181 provided by dialectical theology (i.e., Barth, Brunner, Bultmann). The modern antithesis between revelation and experience only results in “revelations that cannot be experienced, and experiences without revelation.”182 Such theology presents God as “Wholly Other” and the Spirit as the “being-revealed” of God’s self-revelation. Moltmann resolves this tension in his doctrine of the Church, extolling that, as “the fellowship (koinwni,a) of the Holy Spirit” (2 Cor 13:13), the Spirit “draws [believers] into his fellowship . . . into the [Trinitarian] community he shares with the Father and the Son.”183 Moltmann characterizes his worldview as “panentheism,” which begins with “the world in God and God in the world.”184 In his vision of the Church, this worldview translates into a breakdown of the distinction between the fellowship amongst the trinitarian Persons and fellowship amongst believers. Moltmann thus defines the Spirit in terms of God’s presence “as community.”185

God the Spirit evidently enters into a relationship of reciprocity and mutuality with the people concerned and—in line with this—allows these people to exert an influence on him, just as he exerted an influence on them.186

Since, for Moltmann, the Spirit amongst believers “becomes their fellowship,”187 we must ask whether the Spirit in this model possesses any sort of “authority” with respect to the Church. This will be discussed further in chapters three and four.

Peter Hodgson’s Winds of Spirit

Hodgson develops this book by first saying that “theology is drawn and driven by winds of the Spirit,”188 and then by building an entire “constructive Christian theology” around his postmodern understanding of the Spirit. For Hodgson, “God is not an isolated supreme being over against the world. Rather, embodied by the world, incarnate in the shapes of Christ, God becomes a concrete, living, relational God, ‘Spirit.’”189 Borrowing from Tillich, Hodgson’s God is not a Being (which to Hodgson is a term developed by modern metaphysics) but a power of being by which all beings are. Amazingly, Hodgson’s modified Trinity includes God, the world, and Spirit, and this Spirit is “not something that exists in advance as a supernatural person of the Godhead.”190 Rather, the Spirit is seen as a panentheistic “primal energy” that “takes on the shape of many created spirits; not just the spirits of living persons but of ancestors and animals as well as plants, trees, rivers . . .”191

Emerging from this understanding of the Spirit is Hodgson’s idea of “ecclesial community,” whereby the very purpose of the Church as a liberating experience of God comes forth. “My proposal is that [constructive theology] makes the direct object of its concern neither the practice of faith nor the texts of faith but the experience that gives rise to faith—a revelatory experience having its source and referent in God.”192 Using Hegel’s ecclesiology, Hodgson expands on Augustine’s idea that the Holy Spirit is the “bond of love” and as such the “soul” that indwells and quickens the mystical body. The Spiritual community is “transfigured intersubjectivity,” distinguishable from all other forms of human love and friendship. As a result, what sort of authority does Hodgson’s model grant to “Spirit?” We shall investigate Hodgson’s views further in chapters three and four.

Michael Welker’s God the Spirit

Welker’s book is an explication of a postmodern pneumatology that emerges from the Holy Spirit’s “pluralism.” A theology of the Spirit is best developed against the background of “postmodern sensitivities,” which abandon the assumption of a “unity of reality” and instead “assume a reality that consists of a plurality of structural patterns of life and of interconnected events.”193 Upon this grounding a “realistic theology” is birthed, one that allows us to gain a recognizable reality of the Spirit and theological access to the Spirit without sliding back to the problematic thinking associated with modernity—namely that a single system of reference could put God and God’s power at our disposal. According to Bloesch, “[Welker] theologizes in a postmodern way, avoiding totalistic metaphysics and respecting differences in cultural ethos,” and this makes his pneumatology essentially a “Spiritology from below” that begins with human experience.194 What results is a postmodern ecclesiology, one in which the Spirit’s main work is to reveal God’s power in the formation of pluralistic communities.195

The Spirit reveals God’s power by simultaneously illumining different people and groups of people and enabling them to become not only recipients, but also bearers of God’s revelation. The Spirit reveals the power of God in strong, upbuilding, pluralistic structures. This pluralism is not a disintegrative, Babel-like pluralism, but constitutes enriching, invigorating force fields. It is not bound up with an abstract, uniform individualism that reduces everything to an unrealistic, abstract quality, reducing everything to “the ego,” the subject, the decision-maker, the consumer, or the payee.196

Welker finds most theologies of the Spirit yield to the tendency to “jump immediately to ‘the whole’ [and thus remain] stuck in the realm of the numinous, the conjuration of merely mystical experience, and in global moral appeals.”197 The pluralism of the Spirit, on the other hand, is more “realistic” because the promises of the outpouring of the Spirit give witness to a specific sensitivity to differences. Unity of the Spirit continues to exist within such pluralism, but “becomes a reality not by imposing an illusory homogeneity, but by cultivating creaturely differences and by removing unrighteous differences.”198 In this way the Church is depicted by Welker, first and foremost, as a pluralistic society of believers. Still, the Spirit’s work in the Church seems to only possess a functional authority. Does the Spirit truly retain any sort of “governing authority” with respect to the Church? We shall investigate this further in chapter four.

Other Contributors: “Practical” Theologies of the Spirit

Since this work also has to do with the Spirit’s authority in practice, I will also briefly examine the works of several other contemporary theologians that wrestle with practical issues in the Church from the perspective of the Holy Spirit’s work therein. These theologians and their recent works include: Stephen Fowl’s Engaging Scripture and Stanley Grenz and John Franke’s Beyond Foundationalism (on hermeneutics); Richard Hütter’s Suffering Divine Things and Grenz and Franke’s Beyond Foundationalism (on the practices of the Church); James Buckley and David Yeago’s Knowing the Triune God and Gregory Jones and James Buckley’s Spirituality and Social Embodiment (on Christian spirituality). These contemporary theologians will in turn become ideal “dialogue partners” for chapters five, six, and seven.

Stephen Fowl’s Engaging Scripture

Fowl builds his hermeneutics on a specific view of authority, placing primary emphasis upon the Spirit’s work within the Church. Fowl begins his “essay in the theological interpretation of Scripture” by saying that, “for Christians, Scripture is authoritative.”199 As his thesis develops, it becomes clear that, for Fowl, authority is essentially ecclesial, in that it “recognizes that the Spirit has been and still is at work in the lives of Christians and Christian community.”200 The Spirit seems to possess ultimate authority in hermeneutics, an authority to assist local church communities to reach crucial theological decisions based on “communal consensus.”201

For Fowl, the Spirit seems to display some sort of “hermeneutical authority” with respect to the community. What sort of authority might this be? We will investigate this further in chapter five.

Stanley Grenz and John Franke’s Beyond Foundationalism

Grenz and Franke present a hermeneutical model that understands the Church to be a “socially constructed” reality through the Spirit’s work of “world construction.” As individual members of society deem their knowledge about the world to be “objective,” so religion involves a legitimization of the socially-constructed world that places a society within a sacred and cosmic frame of reference and gives participants a sense of being connected to ultimate reality. This “world construction” today does not lie in the text itself but in the Spirit as he speaks through the biblical texts and, in doing so, “performs the perlocutionary act of creating a world ”202—which is precisely the eschatological world in the Church, the world God intends for creation as disclosed in the text.

For Grenz and Franke, this Spirit who constructs the Church community seems to display some sort of “authority” in the construction process. What sort of authority is this? We will pick up this discussion in chapters five and six.

Reinhard Hütter’s Suffering Divine Things

A contemporary doctrine of practical ecclesiology that seems to grant the Spirit some sort of “authority” is found in Hütter’s ecclesiology. Reminiscent of Luther, Hütter aligns the Spirit with the doctrines and practices of the Church. The Church begins with a trinitarian conception of “communio–ecclesiology,” where the Church is the fellowship of participation in the communion of the Father with the Son in the Spirit. Hütter’s concern is that the Church see herself rightly, as “a glad recipient” of God’s saving work, but also as a body that understands how this “receiving” takes place. “This receiving embodied in practices is precisely the way in and through which the Holy Spirit works the saving knowledge of God.”203 In this paradigm, Church doctrine and practice become the “mediate forms” through which the Spirit guides the Church to truth, and these truths become the “binding authority” of the Church.204 Since Hütter describes the Spirit’s actions as the “poimata” of the “Spiritus Creator,” the Spirit seems to possess a sort of “poetic authority” with respect to the local church. How might such an authority of the Spirit be discerned in light of our pattern of divine authority? We shall investigate this further in chapter six.

James Buckley and David Yeago’s Knowing the Triune God

Buckley and Yeago seek to construct an “evangelical Catholicity” that is “deeply embedded in the Luther tradition.”205 Like Hütter, who seeks to discover the Spirit’s work in the practices of the Church, these editors attempt to understand the Spirit’s work in the Church’s practice of spirituality—they “hope to know the triune God by the gift of the Spirit in the practices of the Church.”206 They want to re-focus on the Spirit’s work as that which goes beyond the modern “dividing line between the inner and the outer” (which aligned the Spirit with inward subjectively and posited the Spirit against outward practices). Instead, all aspects of spirituality must begin from “one single starting point: in the Spirit, beginning with God’s action and beginning with the Church and its practices are one beginning, in a unity in which the divine and the human are neither divided nor confused.”207 Because of the Spirit’s intimate role in the practices of spirituality, we must ask Buckley and Yeago whether the Spirit has a specific authority with respect to spirituality. We shall investigate this further in chapter seven.

Gregory Jones and James Buckley’s Spirituality and Social Embodiment

Jones and Buckley’s goal is to confront modern “spirituality,” which only “takes us out of the socially embodied world into a more inward (mystical) space.” A “socially-embodied spirituality,” on the other hand, “calls us beyond our selves to more material realities.”208 Jones develops this spirituality by looking at Bernard of Clairveaux, and concludes that,

Christian living involves a journey of learning to know oneself precisely as one who is known by God. This journey of self-knowing requires awareness of both our absence from God . . . [and] our being renewed in the divine image by God’s Spirit learned through such practices as prayer and almsgiving.209

Yeago builds on this initial approach to spirituality by showing its actualization in the Church. “The mature Luther” described the Church as “the gathered people” which believes in Christ and has the Holy Spirit: “The inward is given through the outward: it is by virtue of its divine character as a bodily, public assembly that this community is endowed with these inward, spiritual blessings.”210 The Spirit is thereby the one who distributes Christ’s salvation “through the Christian Church and through the forgiveness of sins imparted in the Church.”211 The Spirit incorporates believers into the Church so that one’s private spirituality can find expression in adherence to the Church.212 Since such a view seems to elevate the practices of the Church to a place of paramount importance in the development of the believer’s spirituality, we will need to ask Jones and Buckley whether the Spirit retains “authority” with respect to this development. We shall investigate this further in chapter seven.

The Governing Authority of the Spirit—Definition and Storyline

Now that we have observed several contemporary approaches to the Spirit/Church relationship (both theoretical and practical approaches) we are able to examine them in search of a provisional definition of the Spirit’s governing authority, and then pose initial questions for each approach regarding its alignment with the provisional definitions discerned earlier. These questions will be further addressed in chapter three and four as well.

In discerning the “authority” of the Spirit in relationship to the Church, it seems that these various “communitarian” and “paleoorthodox” perspectives might be categorized in terms of “functional power” and “governing authority,” respectively. A function is the ability or power to perform specific duties, but does not imply any delegation of authority from one person to another213 (and in this sense it is not an “authority” at all, since it is not essentially personal). In the “communitarian” approaches to ecclesiology presented by Welker, Moltmann, and Hodgson, the Spirit only seems to possess the functional power to perform a specific task within communities (i.e., creating pluralistic communities within our human experience, experiencing the Spirit “as community,” or invoking liberating experiences, respectively). The Spirit’s “authority” seems to be reduced to his “power” to create an experience of God in the context of the Church community, but without due concern for the pattern of authority.

“Governing authority,” on the other hand, incorporates the authority inherent in one’s own person along with a delegated authority to work or function as “governor” (we might think of a “governor” who is granted the authority to rule locally under the auspices of a President or King). Such a “governing authority” of the Spirit seems to coincide with Oden’s “paleoorthodox” understanding of the doctrine of the Spirit (which generally respects the pattern of authority) while listening to the “postmodern” desire for a renewed focus on the experience of the Spirit within the Church. In this scenario, the body of Christ, having a temporary status until Christ returns with his eschatological Kingdom, is created and administered by the “governing authority” of the Holy Spirit.

Whereas a “functional power” of the Spirit is not necessarily associated with the other aspects of the Spirit’s authority already discussed, the Spirit’s “governing authority” implies a vital connection to these aspects. If the Spirit’s authority or power is not related to the other elements in our pattern of authority, what will this do to our understanding of the Spirit’s “authority”?

As a result, initial questions can be asked regarding each of the above-mentioned “whole book” theologies of the Holy Spirit. For instance, in their concern for the experience of the Spirit, have these theologians left behind various aspects of our pattern of authority in the developing their models? What does this do to the notion of the “governing authority of the Spirit”? In particular, we will need to ask:

1. Does Moltmann’s “panentheism” depreciate the Spirit’s authority as a divine Person?

2. Does Pinnock’s “universalism” or Hodgson’s “modified trinitarianism” nullify the Spirit’s executorial authority?

3. Does Welker’s “pluralism” reduce the Spirit’s veracious authority with respect to inspiration, and does Badcock’s attention to spiritual experience reduce the Spirit’s veracious authority with respect to illumination?

4. Precisely what effects do any deficiencies in Moltmann’s, Hodgson’s, and Welker’s models have on a development of a biblical understanding of the Spirit’s “governing authority”?

Conclusion

In chapters three and four I will attempt to confirm the above definitions of the Spirit’s authority through the exegesis of Scripture and through Biblical/Systematic theology. If it can be demonstrated in Scripture that the Spirit indeed has an “authority” in keeping with each of the definitions proposed in this chapter, we would then be able to speak of the Spirit as possessing plenipotentiary authority.214 This is an authority that incorporates and activates all aspects of authority discussed thus far (i.e., authority over the world, authority to execute Christ’s will, authority to execute Christ’s will in accordance with Scripture, and the authority to execute Christ’s will as governor of the Church).

We have surveyed theological history and uncovered a story that reflects the doctrinal development of the Spirit’s authority within the context of the pattern of authority. We began with a study of the patristic writers and inferred that the Fathers of the early Church recognized the Holy Spirit’s divine authority as a divine Person. We then examined the traumatic debate in medieval theology regarding Filioque and concluded that Augustine’s model seems to grant the Spirit an “executorial authority” to act under the authority of Christ. We studied the Protestant debate regarding the “interpretive authority” of the Spirit and discovered that the reformers did not allow such an authority to be delegated to any human institution. We briefly surveyed the landscape of modern theology and found that evangelicals have affirmed that the “veracious authority” of the Spirit is allied with the inspired text rather that with human reason or experience. Finally, we surveyed several “postmodern” theologians and discovered that “paleoorthodox” theologians point toward the Spirit’s “governing authority” within the Church.

1. Griffith Thomas divides pneumatological Church history into two main epochs. The first, extending from the Sub-Apostolic age to the Reformation, “was concerned with the Personality and Deity of the Holy Spirit and His relation to the Father and the Son. . . . The second took rise at the Reformation, and has been connected almost wholly with the Work of the Spirit” (Thomas, The Holy Spirit of God, 114). Morris Inch makes a tripartite division: “Early Church,” (first through fourth centuries), “Establishment of Christendom as State Religion” (fifth century through the Reformation), and the Post-establishment era or “The Modern Era” (from the Reformation to today) (Inch, Saga of the Spirit, 199). Inch’s scheme closely aligns with mine, except that I have divided his third period into “Reformation” and “Modern” periods, and have added the postmodern period.

2. Oden, Life in the Spirit, 50.

3. Ibid., 25–26.

4. Ibid., 27.

5 Ramm, The Pattern of Authority, 59.

6. Ibid., 57.

7. Such as Tertullian, Calvin (Institutes), and Carl Henry (God, Revelation, and Authority).

8. “Evangelical” will be defined as theology that attempts to honor the notion of the historic Trinity, the “inerrancy of Scripture” (properly understood according to its literary “genres”), and the authority of Scripture above the authority of “tradition.”

9. Clement, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 1:17.

10. Nielsen, “Clement of Rome and Moralism,” 142.

11. Ibid., 142.

12. Athanasius, Historia Arianorum, cc. 33–34.

13. According to Arius, there was no distinction drawn between the Son being begotten and being created; though the Son was the “first” created being, he also had a beginning and there was a time when the Son did not exist.

14. Arius, as quoted by Athanasius, Orations against the Arians, 1.6.

15. Athanasius, De decretis Nicaenae synodi, c. 27.

16. Morrison, Tradition and Authority, 63.

17. Thomas, The Holy Spirit of God, 78.

18. Ibid., 85.

19. Swete, The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, 169.

20. Ibid., 169.

21. See Gregg and Groh, Early Arianism; also Badcock, Light of Truth and Fire of Love, 47–48.

22. Badcock, Light of Truth and Fire of Love, 50. This shift in thinking is illustrated by the emergence of the word theologia, which refers to the doctrine of the “immanent Trinity,” as opposed to oikonomia, or economy, referring to everything else that the Trinity does in relation to creation (see LaCugna, God with Us, 37ff.).

23. Athanasius, “First Letter to Serapion,” 129–30.

24. Ibid., 129–30.

25. Hanson points out that “Athanasius unmistakably believed in the sufficiency and primacy of Scripture for doctrinal purposes . . . showing that he desired to prove tradition from Scripture” (Hanson, “Basil’s Doctrine of Tradition in Relation to the Holy Spirit,” 243). Athanasius says, “It is our task now to search the Bible and to examine and judge when it is speaking about the divinity of the Word, and when about his humanity” (Athanasius, “Third Letter to Serapion,” 2.8).

26. Athanasius, “Third Letter to Serapion,” 2.28.

27. Athanasius, “First Letter to Serapion,” 22.121.

28. Gregory of Nazianzus, “On the Holy Spirit,” 325–26.

29. Badcock, Light of Truth and Fire of Love, 54.

30. Eunomius, quoted by Augustine, de Haeresae, LIV.

31. Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, vol. 3, 29.

32. Swete, On the Early History of the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, 63.

33. Badcock, Light of Truth and Fire of Love, 55.

34. Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, 31.

35. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Baptism of Christ, 5:519.

36. Gregory of Nazianzus, Select Orations, XL:41.

37. Ibid., V:3.

38. Ibid., V:4.

39. Ibid., V:10.

40. Badcock, Light of Truth and Fire of Love, 57.

41. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 97–98.

42. Frame states that “Lord is the name God gives to himself as head of the Mosaic Covenant and the name given to Jesus Christ as head of the New Covenant” and cites the following Scriptures as examples: Exod 3:13–15; 6:1–8; 20:1–2; John 8:58; Acts 2:36; Rom 14:9 (Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 11–12). Lord” (Yahweh in Hebrew, kyrios in Greek) is also the name given in the New Testament to the exalted Christ (Acts 2:36; Rom 14:9) and to the Spirit (2 Cor 3:17–18).

43. Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 13 (emphasis his).

44. Frame adds, “It is important to see the three lordship attributes as forming a unit, not as separate from one another. God is ‘simple’ in the theological sense (not compounded of parts), so there is a sense in which if you have one attribute you have them all” (Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 17). Frame does interrelate these attributes further: “God’s control, according to Scripture, involves authority, for God controls even the structure of truth and rightness. . . . Authority involves control, for God’s commands presuppose His full ability to enforce them. Authority involves presence, for God’s commands are clearly revealed and are the means by which God acts in our midst to bless and curse. . . . Presence involves authority, for God is never present apart form His Word” (17–18). Nevertheless, these three critical attributes can and should be discerned when God’s “Lordship” is revealed in Scripture, so that divine authority might not be confused with divine power or presence, particularly when discerning divine “authority” within the world or church community (15–18).

45. Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 15–16.

46. Ibid., 17.

47. Forsyth, The Principle of Authority, 271, 299.

48. Ibid., 190.

49. Ibid., 58.

50. I would argue that Arian pneumatology not only sought to strip the Spirit of divinity, but, perhaps even more so, of divine authority. This intention seems apparent in various metaphors and conciliation: the Arian analogy of the Father, Son, and Spirit to gold, silver, and brass makes the Spirit seem inferior. According to Swete, Eunomius’ reference to the Spirit as a created Person implies that “Spirit” remains “destitute indeed of Deity and of creative power” (Swete, On the Early History of the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, 62).

51. As we shall see in the subsequent theological periods, such a parameter seems to provide a very specific limitation upon further discussion. The Medieval Church, for example, will require that subsequent investigations into the nature and work of the Spirit in relation to Christ conform to this foundational doctrine. Postmodern theology, on the other hand, will often violate this fundamental limitation.

52. Badcock concedes, “Although one had to admit . . . the fact that any creed must be economical in order to be functional, a great deal about the work of the Spirit—about the relation between Spirit and Church, for example—has been left unsaid. Perhaps this is wise, as doctrinal definition is intended to point the way rather than to exhaust all possibilities, but perhaps it also reflects a general uncertainty concerning the Spirit’s role in human salvation and in the spiritual life” (Badcock, Light of Truth and Fire of Love, 61).

53. Could it be that the Spirit’s Lordship—his control and authority—are more recognizable in Scripture that his divinity? A brief perusal of pertinent Old Testament and New Testament passages seems to demonstrate this to be the case, but it also seems that, in Scripture, the Spirit’s divinity is extrapolated, in part, from his divine authority.

54. Filioque is Latin for “and the Son,” and was inserted into the Nicene Creed after the statement, “I believe . . . in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father.”

55. Ramm, The Evangelical Heritage, 17.

56. Inch, Saga of the Spirit, 221.

57. Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, 3:xvi.

58. Berman, Law and Revolution, 167–68.

59. Ibid., 168.

60. Ibid., 169.

61. Charlemagne tried to have it formally confirmed at Frankfurt (794). He was attempting to correct the Second Council of Nicaea (787), which had received the profession of Tarasius, who stated that the Spirit proceeds “from the Father per (‘through’) the Son.” The two Churches remained in communion through these challenges. It wasn’t until Florence, when the East felt it views were unrepresented, that the departure become official.

62. Berman, Law and Revolution, 105.

63. See Berman, Law and Revolution, 99–106.

64. Berman points out that many historians mark this as the beginning of the modern era. See Berman, Law and Revolution, 87–88.

65. Augustine’s approach, according to Badcock, “suggests a certain priority of the Father-Son relation over everything else; indeed, strictly speaking, the Spirit is this Father-Son relation” (Badcock, Light of Truth and Fire of Love, 77–78).

66. Augustine, “De Trinitate,” VI:7–9.

67. Gregory of Nazianzus developed the concept of “divine procession.” Referring to such Scriptures as John 15:26, Gregory says that the Spirit is neither Father nor Son; he is neither unbegotten (as is the Father), nor begotten (as is the Son), but proceeds—and none of these three concepts can be understood rationally. Thus, the Spirit is not a “second son” or a “grandson.” See Gregory, Select Oracles, 31:8.

68. Augustine, De Trinitate, XV:17, 27.

69. See Congar, The Word and the Spirit, 1:107–8. See Anselm for further detail.

70. Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, 3:81.

71. Therefore, an Augustinian conception of the Trinity contains both relational and absolute aspects, and each Person exists by a relationship of “eternal source” or “eternal procession.” Defining “Person” in terms of relationship actually coincides closely with the theology of the Cappadocian Fathers, on whom Augustine was possibly dependent. There are, however, important differences. Basil, for example, deduces from the divine relationships the unity of the divine essence, while Augustine begins with the divine identity and then deduces from this the divine relationships (See Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, 3:82–83).

72. Augustine, Sermo 71:18.

73. Augustine, Commentary on John the Evangelist, XCIX:8–9.

74. John of Damascus, De fide orthod. I:8 (emphasis mine).

75. “In his essence, God remains the unattainable, incomprehensible mystery; and at the heart of that mystery lies the generation of the Son and the sending forth of the Sprit, both issuing in their different modes from the Father. But God also reaches out by activity of his uncreated energies to create and to involve the creation in participation in the movement of his triune being. At the level of the energies . . . the Spirit shines out in the Son, reflects the Son, and manifests the glory incarnate in him. And what enables and underlies this activity of imaging and displaying the Son is the primal springing of the Spirit from the same One who is Father of the Son, not a procession of the Spirit from both. The abyss of the divine nature overflows doubly in the begetting of the Son and the sending forth of the Spirit, the Lord, the Life-giver, who proceeds from the Father” (Heron, The Holy Spirit, 85, emphasis his).

76. This term provides balance to the Eastern conception of the Trinity. Eastern theology argues that the Nicene Creed speaks of the Spirit as a distinct Person within the trinitarian Godhead, rather than as a subordinate agent of the Son. Eastern Churches have particularly emphasized the uniqueness of function of the three divine hypostases. The Trinity is not to be viewed, however, as a sort of tritheism, because of the balance provided by the concept of perichoresis, which implies that each member of the Trinity functions in vital correspondence and involvement with the other two.

77. Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, 3:37.

78. John of Damascus, De fide orthod, I:8.

79. Ibid.

80. Ibid.

81. Gaybba, The Spirit of Love, 74.

82. See Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, 3:98–110; Gaybba, The Spirit of Love, 74–75.

83. As we shall see, some Western theologies—such as Augustine’s—do bring the Spirit’s divine authority with respect to the immanent Trinity into question. However, there is no prominent Western theologian who is both orthodox and has actually denied the fact that the Spirit possesses divine authority of some sort.

84. In the previous chapter we identified “executive authority” as simply “the right or the power to act in certain ways” (DeGeorge, The Nature and Limits of Authority, 62). This definition contains no specific limitations regarding the right or power to act.

85. Eastern Orthodoxy’s mindset is grounded in the ideas that there exists a substantial continuation of the Spirit’s authority from the days of the early Church until now. This idea is described well by Hryniewicz, “The early Church often appropriated to itself the conviction that she was controlled by the Holy Spirit, and for this reason the identity and continuity of her sacramental nature was preserved. The Holy Spirit, which takes effect in the community of believers, was the highest authority for the early Church and the only real security. Very early on, conscious decision was affirmed in the conviction: ‘the Holy Spirit and us’ (Acts 15:28). . . . The authority and rule of the Holy Spirit in the early Church, however, was placed far ahead of all individualism and subjectivism” (Hryniewicz, “Der Pneumatologishe Aspekt der Kirche aus Orthodoxer Sicht,” 137–38).

86. Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, 1:188.

87. Berman, Law and Revolution, 176–77.

88. Ibid., 178.

89. Gunton, Theology through the Theologians, 109.

90. Ibid., 110.

91. Jensen, The Holy Spirit, 2:126–27.

92. Inch, Saga of the Spirit, 224 (emphasis mine).

93. Barth, Church Dogmatics, 1/1:481.

94. Hryniewicz, “Der Pneumatologishe Aspekt Der Kirche,” 137–38 (emphasis mine).

95. Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ, 218.

96. Ramm sees this as an aspect of “veracious authority.” In connection with the Church, Ramm defines “veracious authority” as the authority to determine the truths of revelation (Ramm, The Pattern of Authority, 56). As the “source” of truth, the Holy Spirit is the one who possesses the veracious authority necessary to claim a legitimate and ultimate “interpretive authority” (12).

97. Badcock, Light of Truth and Fire of Love, 87.

98. Luther, “On the Councils,” 145.

99. Luther, The Works of Martin Luther, 11:223.

100. Prenter, Spiritus Creator, 61.

101. Hesselink, “Governed and Guided by the Spirit,” 161.

102. Calvin, Institutes, III.ii.7.

103. This subordination occurs in a different way, though, than in Augustine’s formulation. Whereas in Augustine’s theology believers are seen as justified by the Spirit’s caritas, in Calvin’s theology the Spirit comes through other means, in particular the Word and the Sacraments. Calvin sees the Spirit’s role in salvation as quite distinct (though not completely independent) from the role of Christ, and this distinction clarifies the nature of the Spirit’s executorial authority in almost all subsequent evangelical theology.

104. Reformers first used this word to describe the role of the judge who presided over and passed sentences in a court of law. Such an authority was understood to be resident in one’s office, commission, or status—not in the person.

105. Johnson, Authority in Protestant Theology, 15.

106. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I:ix.3.

107. Osterhaven, “John Calvin,” 25.

108. Johnson, Authority in Protestant Theology, 54.

109. Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, 1:151.

110. Fisher, La Documentation Catholique, 942, col. 481.

111 Küng says that “infallibility” means that “the Church is not deceiving or deceived, because she has a share in the truth of God himself, ‘who can neither deceive nor be deceived’ (Vatican I: Deus revelans, qui ned falli nec fallere potest, D 1783)”; also that “a fundamental remaining in the truth, which is not disturbed by individual errors” (Küng, The Church, 342). Kung cites John 14:16–17 as God’s promise of infallibility to the Church.

112. Ramm holds, “The Roman Catholic Church traditionally believes that it is graced with infallibility when it teaches and interprets revelation (in her case, oral and written). Her interpretations and teachings are therefore as authoritative as the revelation she interprets” (Ramm, The Pattern of Authority, 56). Ramm later adds, “The Church is, therefore, the supreme interpretive authority in all matters of faith and morals, and under certain stipulations speaks with infallibility” (64).

113. Orchard, A Catholic Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, 2.

114. Richard, “The Enigma of Theologians,” 331.

115. Authority, Conscience, and Dissent, 125–26.

116. Wright, “Authority in the Church,” 364–82.

117. Ibid., 364–82.

118. Ibid., 373–74.

119. Inch, Saga of the Spirit, 230.

120. Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, 1:151–57.

121. Ibid.

122. A synthesis of Congar’s thoughts regarding Roman Catholic Tradition can be found in Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, vol. 3.

123. Van Engen, “Tradition,” 1106.

124. Eno, “Pope and Council,” 210.

125. Davison, “The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit,” 211.

126. Bolich, Authority and the Church, 65.

127. See Prenter, Spiritus Creator, 201.

128. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I.ix.3.

129. Ibid., ix.1–2.

130. Ramm, The Pattern of Authority, 29.

131. Commenting on Prenter, Carlson says that this has opened the door to a philosophical / “substantial” concept of God’s Spirit, which regards the Spirit as a divine energy that can be infused and appropriated. With the help of this “energy” man is able to produce the “fruits of the Spirit.” Thus he will grow in grace and holiness, as he follows the example of Jesus Christ. “Prenter contends that when you do that to Luther’s theology, you distort it by trying to compress his thought within the molds of mediaeval scholasticism, against which Luther himself rebelled. Luther held a much more dynamic view, which can be summarized by saying that the work of the Holy Spirit is to conform man to Christ. This is accomplished by conforming man to Christ’s death and resurrection. This whole concept of conformity to Christ must be set over against the scholastic concept of imitation of Christ” (Carlson, “Luther and the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit,” 137).

132. Newton’s mathematical physics, for example, presented nature as a rational, unified order where there were no “hidden purposes” (of God) to discover. “As a result of Newton’s work, ‘God’ was no longer needed as the hypothesis to authorize the world; ‘God’ became a projection of nature. . . . This shift led to a heightened stress on reason as a primary authority for interpreting all human experience. It meant as well that traditions (as promoted by the Church) or supernatural appeals to the ‘Spirit’ were suspect” (McKim, “Authority,” 47).

133. Livingston, Modern Christian Thought, 2.

134. Erickson defines “Modern Theology” as simply the “Theology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, beginning particularly with reaction to the thought of Immanuel Kant” (Erickson, Concise Dictionary of Christian Theology, 107).

135. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, 123.

136. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 36.

137. Badcock, Light of Truth and Fire of Love, 112.

138. Ibid., 112.

139. Inch, Saga of the Spirit, 241.

140. Johnson, Authority in Protestant Theology, 78.

141. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, 2:13.

142. Ibid., 4:35.

143. Ibid., 4:256–68.

144. For example, Henry states that “[Howard J. Loewen’s] implication that ‘the authority of the Bible can . . . be . . . truly demonstrated only in the context of the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit who is essential to the personal appropriation of the Word of Scripture’ is highly questionable, if this means that inner personal experience establishes the truth and/or the authority of the Bible” (Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, 4:268).

145. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, 4:289.

146. Champion, “The Baptist Doctrine of the Church,” 38.

147. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, 1:244.

148. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/2:356 (emphasis mine). In agreeing with Barth’s idea that the Holy Spirit “seems to be behind a wall” and hidden from humanity, Pentecostal theologian Burton Janes asserts that, for believers, “our actions can either enlarge or destroy the barrier, revealing the Spirit for all to see” (Janes, “Taking a Step Toward Pentecost,” 24). Janes particularly finds comfort in Barth’s three cautions regarding the Spirit in revelation: (1) Barth holds that subjective revelation must never override the objective. Here Janes quotes Barth, “Subjective revelation is not the addition of a second revelation to objective revelation”; (2) Barth cautions against specifying the precise way man experiences the Holy Spirit. Barth says that we can never express or state that which lies behind our experiences of the Holy Spirit because it is not revealed to us, because it is revelation itself; (3) Barth steers clear of sectarianism, which perceives the testimony of the Spirit in terms of an immediate spiritual inspiration and bypasses the Word (26).

149. Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1:536–39.

150. Barth’s pneumatology “elevated the long-neglected role of the Holy Spirit to new significance in its exposition of divine revelation” (Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, 4:256).

151. Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1:536–39.

152. Rosato, The Spirit as Lord, 84. Barth’s response to the “subjectivism” of Schleiermacher is particularly penetrating: “Were the Spirit, the mediator of revelation to the subject, a creature or a creaturely force, we would be asserting and maintaining that, in virtue of his presence with God and over against God, man in his own way is also a lord in revelation” (Barth, The Doctrine of the Word of God, 535).

153. As a result, Barth becomes not only one of the greatest defenders of Filioque in modern times, but he also links this doctrine with divine revelation by making Christ the true revealer of the Word. In this way the Spirit, not the human subject, is the authoritative interpreter of the Word. Rosato explains, “By welding pneumatology to Christology, Barth removes even from the subjective appropriation of the Christ-event by the believer every trace of subjectivism. Thus, the existential experiences of Christian consciousness, which are the direct result of the Spirit’s presence, are ultimately rooted in the objective election of Jesus Christ, which alone lends their noetic quality ontic significance” (Rosato, The Spirit as Lord, 84).

154. See Barth, Evangelical Theology, 53ff.

155. Rosato adds that, in doing so, the Spirit “continually fashions the Church into the contours of the incarnate Word” (Rosato, The Spirit as Lord, 80–81).

156. Thompson, The Holy Spirit in the Theology of Karl Barth, 198.

157. Indeed Barth has been criticized by many evangelicals for promoting a “transcendent” Spirit that seems remote, abstract, and divorced from history and humanity.

158. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, 4:258.

159. Ibid., 258.

160. Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 13.

161. Rogers, Biblical Authority, 29.

162. Ramm, The Pattern of Authority, 57 (emphasis his).

163. Ramm, The Witness of the Spirit, 57.

164. Ramm, The Pattern of Authority, 12.

165. Ibid., 55.

166. Bloesch, The Holy Spirit, 49.

167. Veith, “Out-Clintoning Clinton,” 21.

168. Roman Catholic-World Methodist Council Joint Commission, “The Holy Spirit, Christian Experience, and Authority,” 226.

169. Ibid., 231.

170. Oden, Life in the Spirit, 474.

171. Pinnock, Flame of Love, 10.

172. Ibid., 113.

173. Ibid., 114.

174. Ibid., 119–20, 142.

175. Badcock, Light of Truth and Fire of Love, 1.

176. Ibid., 2.

177. Ibid., 4.

178. Ibid.

179. Veith, “Out-Clintoning Clinton,” 21.

180. Moltmann, The Spirit of Life, back cover endorsement by Peter C. Hodgson.

181. Ibid., 5.

182. Ibid., 7.

183. Ibid., 217.

184. Ibid., 98, 103. Moltmann admits, “We can find in many [mystical theologians] a pantheistic vision of the world in God and God in the world. . . . This history of the Holy Spirit that is poured out upon all flesh, and this new world that is glorified in God, are what the mystical theologians mean with their neoplatonic-sounding doctrine” (Moltmann, “Theology of Mystical Experience,” 517–19).

185. Moltmann, The Spirit of Life, 217.

186. Ibid., 218.

187. Ibid.

188. Hodgson, Winds of the Spirit, xii.

189. Ibid., xii.

190. Ibid., 282.

191. Ibid., 284.

192. Ibid., 35.

193. Welker, God the Spirit, 37–38. Here Welker looks to the postmodern theology of Mark Taylor, whose “trilemma of postmodern theology” asks us “to acknowledge tradition, to celebrate plurality, and to resist domination” (footnote on M. Taylor, in Welker, God the Spirit, 21); also to the postmodern philosophy of J. F. Lyotard as developed in his The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge.

194. Bloesch, The Holy Spirit, 260.

195. In this intersubjective work, Welker concludes that “the Spirit of God, not the communion of the sanctified itself, is the power that recognizes, enlivens, and maintains the body of Christ in constantly new ways” (Welker, God the Spirit, 312). An example of such “concrete manifestations” of the pluralistic Holy Spirit is the charismatic movement—where the abundance and diversity of the gifts of the Spirit are taken seriously and the separation between community leaders and laity is broken down. Welker asserts that “speaking in tongues,” for example, was a privilege given by the Holy Spirit for healthy, pluralistic reasons: it works against abstract individualism (such as we witness in modernity), it gives rise to concrete attestations to the presence of the Spirit, and it prevents collapse into a disintegrative pluralism and relativism.

196. Welker, God the Spirit, 21–22.

197. Ibid., x.

198. Ibid., 25.

199. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, 2–3.

200. Ibid., 203.

201. Ibid.

202. Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 77 (emphasis theirs).

203. Hütter, “The Church,” 23.

204. Hütter, Suffering Divine Things, 128. Hütter adds, “As paradoxical as it may sound, the core Church practices and Church doctrine, precisely in their binding nature, are essential if the Holy Spirit is to lead the Church to perfect truth and teach it new things by perpetually reminding it of Jesus Christ” (128).

205. Buckley and Yeago, Knowing the Triune God, 2.

206. Ibid., 6 (emphasis theirs).

207. Ibid., 17–18 (emphasis theirs).

208. Jones and Buckley, Spirituality and Social Embodiment, 1.

209. Jones, “A Thirst for God or Consumer Spirituality,” 6.

210. Yeago, “A Christian, Holy People,” 108.

211. Ibid., 115.

212. Ibid., 116.

213. “Function” can be defined as “the occupation of an office. By the performance of its duties, the officer is said to fill his function” (Black’s Law Dictionary, “Function,” 606).

214. “Plenipotentiary authority” is possessed by “one who has full power to do a thing; a person fully commissioned to act for another” (Black’s Law Dictionary, “Plenipotentiary,” 1176). Oxford English Dictionary has “Invested with full power; esp. as the deputy, representative, or envoy of a sovereign ruler; exercising absolute power or authority (The Compact Oxford English Dictionary, 1365). Such an authority goes beyond that of an ambassador, who simply acts on behalf of another, but includes a full authority to govern as well.