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MODERN REFORMATION VOL.27 | NO.3 | MAY-JUNE 2018 | $6.95

“ We can rediscover the Holy Spirit as he strides across the pages of the Bible.”

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FEATURES 18

Word, Water, Supper: The Work of the Spirit B Y M I C H A E L S. H O R T O N

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Signs and Wonders A W H I R O U N D TA B L E W I T H M I C H A E L H O R T O N , R O D R O S E N B L A D T, KIM RIDDLEBARGER, AND JUSTIN HOLCOMB

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The Work of the Holy Spirit and the Ministry of the Word

BY HYWEL R. JONES

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The Role of the Spirit in Current Trinitarian Controversies B Y N I C K B AT Z I G

COVER ILLUSTRATION BY SACHIN SHAH

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TELL US YOUR STORY. What have White Horse Inn and Modern Reformation meant to you, your family, or your church? Your stories encourage us in our work, and we’d love to hear them.

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DEPARTMENTS

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AND BRIAN LEE

BOOK REVIEWS

GEEK SQUAD

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Serving Local Schools

Electric Feel

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REVIEWED BY

BY RICK RITCHIE

C H R I S T & C U LT U R E

Two Kingdoms: A Way Forward?

A DISCUSSION BETWEEN STEPHEN WOLFE

Christianity as Civil Society’s Adornment

ANDREW MENKIS

BY STEPHEN WOLFE

The Pastor’s Book

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J U L I U S J. K I M

REVIEWED BY

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Is Christianity an Ornament or the Tree?

BY BRIAN LEE

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In Defense of Cultural Christianity

Night Driving REVIEWED BY E R I K O’ D E L L

72 B A C K PA G E

Mission Creep

BY ERIC LANDRY

Luther in Love REVIEWED BY M A R Y LY N N S P E A R

BY STEPHEN WOLFE

MODERN REFORMATION Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton Executive Editor Eric Landry Managing Editor Patricia Anders Associate Editor Brooke Ventura Marketing Director Michele Tedrick

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Creative Direction and Design Metaleap Creative Review Editor Ryan Glomsrud Copy Editor Elizabeth Isaac Proofreader Ann Smith

Modern Reformation © 2018. All rights reserved.

ISSN-1076-7169

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LETTER from the EDITOR

our flesh remains weak. If that’s so, then why is the Holy Spirit called the Helper? What does he help us do? Why did he allow the apostles to heal the lame, cure the sick, and give sight to the blind, but not us? Does the scientific age need signs and wonders less than a superstitious era?

These questions go all the way back to the foundation-laying period of the church, which Editor-in-Chief Michael Horton explains in “Word, Water, Supper: The Work of the Spirit,” describing when and how the Spirit has acted (and continues to act) from the beginning of creation to today. He and White Horse Inn cohosts Kim Riddlebarger, Rod Rosenbladt, and Justin Holcomb unpack the And suddenly there came from heaven a contemporary settings of these questions in their sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it roundtable discussion, focusing particularly on filled the entire house where they were sitthe difference between how the Spirit can act and ting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared how he has promised to act. Professor Hywel Jones to them and rested on each one of them. And elaborates on the work of the Spirit through the they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and preached word by the prayers of Christ’s people, began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit and Presbyterian pastor Nick Batzig brings the gave them utterance. (Acts 2:2–4) theological heat with his essay on how the current discussion over the “eternal subordination of the here’s a great scene in Thor: Ragnarok Son” debate—and a biblical understanding of the during the siege of Asgard where Trinitarian economy—enhances our understandThor comes flying out of ing of who the Spirit is and what the heavens (not unlike he does. a mighty rushing wind), complete As we walk, run, plod, and crawl with thunder and lightning, and sinour way through this earthly pil“ THE INDWELLgle-handedly battles the hordes from grimage, we may not feel like ING OF THE the underworld. It’s pretty cool— superheroes. But make no misHOLY SPIRIT the army of death rushes against an take: we are warriors, fighting the IS . . . NOTHING electrified Chris Hemsworth as Led ultimate cosmic battle against the Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” bumps rulers, authorities, and powers of LIKE A MARthe soundtrack. This, coupled with the this present darkness. We cannot VEL MOVIE.” image of the Valkyrie going to war on summon thunder and lightning at white flying horses against Hela (the our command, but we can put on goddess of death), is rather what one the full armor of God and extinimagines the battle in Revelation 20:11 will be like. guish the darts of the evil one. Our war is less The anticlimactic truth is that the indwelling of visibly spectacular and our army underwhelmthe Holy Spirit is (generally) nothing like a Marvel ing—but our Captain has already won, and his movie. We don’t vanquish cosmic foes, we’re not (and our!) kingdom will never be shaken. imbued with supernatural powers, and we certainly don’t look like we’ve spent our leisure hours at CrossFit. We’re the same frail-framed humans we always have been—our spirits are willing, but BRO OKE VENTURA assoc iate editor

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Two Kingdoms: A Way Forward?

A discussion between Stephen Wolfe and Brian Lee

ew issues have generated more heated debate in modern Reformed circles than the discussions currently taking place about two-kingdom theology.

Books have been written disparaging learned theologians and pastors for taking the wrong position. Presbytery exams that take up the issue threaten to devolve into shouting matches among elders in the church. Facebook comments on the subject are even—if possible—more unseemly.

At the heart of the disagreement is a topic that we should all be concerned to get right: What is the proper function of the church in society and how should a Christian live coram Deo in the world?

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Stephen Wolfe, a PhD candidate in political theory at Louisiana State University, has endeavored to find a third way that avoids the old battle lines and engages the topic from a new point of view. In the spirit of modeling a charitable and thoughtful conversation, the editors asked Dr. Brian Lee, pastor of Christ United Reformed Church (URCNA) in Washington, DC and frequent contributor to MR, to reply to Mr. Wolfe.

Although Wolfe and Lee have differing views on the kingdom of man, the kingdom of God, and how Christ rules over both, their exchange is edifying for the weighty matters they discuss as well as the way in which they discuss them.

We commend it to you as an example for your own future discussions on this and other theological topics.

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Christianity as Civil Society’s Adornment

by Stephen Wolfe

ebates between neo-Calvinists and Reformed two-kingdom advocates have revealed a seemingly irreconcilable divide on the Christian’s relationship to culture and politics. Many neo-Calvinists see the gospel as inaugurating a social and political project, one that was recovered alongside the truths of soteriology at the Reformation. Nicholas Wolterstorff, a neo-Calvinist philosopher, has argued that “the responsibility of the saints to struggle for the reform of the social order in which they find themselves is one facet of the discipleship to which their Lord Jesus Christ has called them. It is not an addition to their religion; it is there among the very motions of Christian spirituality.” Political and social order are not fixed or dictated by nature, he argues; they are the results of human decision. The gospel provides the saints the principles to fundamentally restructure society.

Advocates of a modern variant of two-kingdom theology have suggested a very limited role for the gospel in transforming culture and society, arguing for a more otherworldly and worship-focused Christian religion. Darryl Hart, for example, argues in his book A Secular Faith that “efforts to use Christianity for public or political ends fundamentally distort the Christian religion.”

For Christianity is “essentially a spiritual and eternal faith, one occupied with a world to come rather than the passing and temporal affairs of the world.” Hart insists that Christians participate in the public square as humans, sharing the same political concerns, means, and ends as their

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unbelieving neighbors. The principal activity of the Christian life qua Christian is the corporate worship of God, not political activism. The ends of political action are not changed or transformed above what the natural order already dictates. The essence of the spiritual order—the order of which is determined by spiritual worth, not civil merit—is widely different from the essential features of the natural order. Hence, though Christians ought to participate in politics, these two-kingdom advocates argue that it is not a Christian’s duty to “Christianize” or fundamentally transform the political order with the gospel. Christianity principally concerns the invisible, yet-to-come, and eternal kingdom of God, not the kingdoms of this world. For this reason, Christians are not to collapse the spiritual into the natural through political action but are to remain fixed on the world to come.

This essay argues for a middle position that consistently affirms key elements of both positions: While the natural order, which includes the fundamentals of social and political order, is immutable (viz., the gospel cannot alter it), the gospel can shape those aspects of society that admit legitimate difference and variety.

Put differently, there can be a Christianization of those accidental elements of society, such as public and civic symbols, public art, manners, greetings, civic rituals, festivals, certain laws, and religious worship. Hence, this middle position affirms that while Christians are not called to replace the essence of the natural order with the spiritual one, given the right conditions, they still ought to seek the transformation of

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those features of human society that work to complete, perfect, and adorn it. In this way, the two kingdoms are kept separate, the eschaton is not immanentized, yet society is truly Christian.

IMMUTABLE NATURAL ORDER The underlying principles of civil society are fixed, immutable, universal, and accessible to the regenerate and unregenerate alike. These basic structures—authority, order, the nature of power, social relations, law, civil justice, and so on—cannot be objects of transformation or alteration. Contrary to Wolterstorff, who claims that these are not “part of the order of nature [but] the result of human decision,” the principles of civic order are dictated by nature. Reformed theologians have consistently affirmed that Christ did not abrogate or change the standard of righteousness established at Creation. As Calvin said in his commentary on Matthew 5:21, Christ “intended no correction in the precepts of the law. . . . We must not imagine Christ to be a new legislator, who adds anything to the eternal righteousness of his Father.” Further, Calvin, along with most Reformed theologians until recently, affirmed in many places a natural hierarchical ordering of civil society (e.g., see his comments on Numbers 3:5). That is, a hierarchical society, as found in most human societies of history, is dictated by the created order. According to Calvin, Christ had no intention of transforming this order.

Moreover, many Reformed and post-Reformation theologians had a somewhat positive view on unregenerate civil righteousness, indicating the enduring accessibility of the principles of political order. The fall of Adam obliterated man’s heavenly, eschatological orientation, but it only wounded or corrupted man’s earthly life. The political theorist Johannes Althusius, for example, stated in Politica (XXI.41) that “in political life even an infidel may be called just, innocent, and upright because of ” their external and civil

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life of words, deeds, and works, since they have “natural knowledge of and inclination towards the Decalogue.” In his commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, Zacharias Ursinus writes, “The excellent virtues and deeds of renown, which are found among heathen nations, belong, indeed, to the vestiges or remains of the image of God, still preserved in the nature of man.” Francis Turretin argued that fallen man can still “exercise justice and temperance, put forth acts of mercy and charity, abstain from theft and homicide, and exhibit the operations of similar virtues” (Institutes of Elentic Theology [IET], 10.4.3).

In his Reformed Dogmatics, Herman Bavinck strikingly writes, “The doctrine of the incapacity for good is a religious confession. In light of the standard people usually follow in their daily life or in philosophic ethics, one can wholeheartedly admit that much of what people do is good and beautiful” (RD 3.123). Indeed, the unregenerate “can inwardly possess many virtues and outwardly do many good deeds that, viewed through human eyes and measured by human standards, are greatly to be appreciated and of great value for human life” (RD 4.257).

All of this is consistent with the thought of Calvin, who affirmed that since “some principle of civil order is impressed on all . . . this is ample proof, that, in regard to the constitution of the present life, no man is devoid of the light of reason” (Institutes of the Christian Religion [Inst.] 2.2.13). And Turretin writes that the “universal consent of the nations” on justice and equity shows the enduring relevance of the natural law from “which as a fountain have flowed so many laws concerning equity and virtue enacted by heathen legislators, drawn from nature itself” (IET 11.1.13). The Reformed tradition clearly affirms that the principles of civil order are natural and that the unregenerate can both know and implement this order.

If it is the case that fallen, unregenerate man can attain civil righteousness (worthy of praise among men, even from the regenerate), and if regeneration necessarily effects a radical change

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in the one regenerated, then the principal effect of regeneration cannot (pace Wolterstorff) be civil righteousness, political, social, or anything related to the basic elements of civil or domestic life. The principal effect must be the restoration of one’s immediate relationship to God, one’s orientation to the spiritual kingdom of God, and the true worship of God. The main effect on the individual is the restoration and reorientation of the principal part of man—the original righteousness that made possible the worship of God, which Calvin, in his comments on Isaiah 44:9, says is “our principal distinction from the brutes.” The gospel will change the individual’s civil life, but only as a renewal of the natural law. The gospel does not inaugurate a political project of radical reordering and alteration of the essential properties of natural civil order, power, and social relations.

CHRISTIANITY AS CIVIL SOCIETY’S ADORNMENT How, then, can any civil society become a Christian civil society? There is an important distinction between the essence of social order and the accidental features of civil society. The accidents are those aspects of society that could legitimately be otherwise and admit of endless possibilities and varieties. Customs and traditions, for example, are what distinguish the French, English, and Germans. And these varying practices—the particularities of regions—speak to the same universal human need for consensus on matters that could be otherwise. Put differently, human belonging is made possible and accomplished by shared attachment to things, people, places, and ways of life that could be different in different places. These particulars are the basis of people’s solidarity, mutual trust, fellow-feeling, and self-understanding. Hence, it is possible for all the kingdoms of the world to be just (viz., in accordance with the natural law) and yet look very different on the surface. Just as church

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architecture, though having the same basic function, permits a variety of ornamentation and design, human societies can be equally just while having widely diverse customs.

If there is a universal human need to belong to a particular way of life and shared understanding of behavior, rooted in custom and tradition, then we can conclude that there is a formal command by nature, whose content humans can express in innumerable ways, to engender solidarity through distinct ways of life. A formal command does not preclude uniquely religious cultural content. Indeed, most civil societies, at least prior to modernization, have had religion-fused cultures.

Christianity, along with other cultural features, can likewise adorn a society, serving as the surface object of a civil community’s solidarity and sense of belonging. There is nothing inconsistent with uniquely Christian features in part fulfilling the formal command of nature to constitute social belonging through the transformation of the accidental features of civil society.

With this schema, one can affirm the immutability of the natural law while also affirming that Christians can implement a uniquely Christian society—a societas Christiana. Christianity does not fundamentally transform the natural order; it perfects it by adorning it. A just Christian society is therefore one that conforms to natural justice while having uniquely Christian features, such as symbols, public prayers, manners, customs, greetings, festivals, rituals, worship, and certain laws.

The civil community ought also to recognize not simply the divine ground of civil order (which even Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero recognized) but Christ as the king of creation. This civil obligation is also formal, for the content of its fulfillment can come from natural and supernatural revelation. The civil recognition of Christ as the governor of creation, the civil protection of true religion, and the adorning of civil society with Christian features do not, however, spiritualize the civil realm. The essence of natural civil order remains unaltered. Only the accidental features have been transformed.

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The Christian domestic society (i.e., the family) is similar in this regard to the Christian civil society. An unbelieving family can have a loving husband and wife, disciplined children, means of forgiveness for harms done, and can even be religious. Becoming a Christian family does not change the essential nature of family, nor does it significantly change their conformity to the essential properties of family (though, of course, it could change a corrupted family life when present). But becoming a Christian family necessarily involves a type of transformation, such as the addition or altering of certain practices, rituals, and worship. They now conduct family worship through Christ; thank God through Christ for life, shelter, and sustenance; attend Christian worship together; and forgive one another in Christ. The family is perfected through the adorning of Christian practices, and in this perfection the essential properties of family are not changed but strengthened.

The civil society is no different. When the civil society alters and adds certain distinctively Christian features without changing the essence of civil order, it does not immanentize the eschaton, spiritualize the civil realm, or collapse the two kingdoms any more than a Christian family does. If you allow such transformation of the family, then you must allow it for civil society. In other words, if the type of Christian society described here constitutes a spiritualized civil realm, then so too does the Christian family. The concept of Christian family would have to be rejected.

A pagan kingdom, for example, that converts to Christ does not throw off kingship in the name of some Christian conception of political equality, nor does it only destroy the pagan public features of its preconverted society.

Rather, the kingdom replaces or transforms the various symbols, rituals, and practices. While not changing as to essence, the social order still becomes a Christian one. Christianity perfects this society with Christian ornamentation.

By “perfects” I refer to a relative perfection—a perfection relative to the possibilities of creation.

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“There is nothing inconsistent with uniquely Christian features in part fulfilling the formal command of nature to constitute social belong­ing through the transformation of the accidental features of civil society.”

The ultimate perfection comes only by the divine action at the consummation. Further, nothing in this argument necessitates an abuse of power forcing an unbelieving society into a Christian society. Rather, most of these distinctively Christian features would arise spontaneously from social interactions in a predominantly Christian community (which, admittedly, we no longer have in the West) and would be enforced socially. They become “social facts,” to use Émile Durkheim’s term—basic social expectations enforced through social means. Still, there are civil laws necessary to constitute a proper Christian commonwealth, such as the civil recognition of the true God and religion, and Sabbath laws. While these are nonessential to civil order, they do strengthen it.

As a variant of the classical two-kingdom conception of Christian society, my view naturally calls into question neo-Calvinism more than the modern versions of the two kingdoms, but it affirms in part the neo-Calvinist concern for a uniquely Christian approach to society. In addition, the middle position is both consistent with the Reformed tradition and reconciles the alleged contradictions in the classical twokingdom tradition.

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Is Christianity an Ornament or the Tree?

A response to Stephen Wolfe by Brian Lee

hat I like most about Stephen Wolfe’s proposal above is that it co m e s i n s h e e p’s clo t h i n g.

Seriously. Allow me to say how grateful I am to be having this conversation and to be reading fresh, new, and creative engagement on a well-worn topic. This is saying a lot when you address a debate where the battle lines have been dug so deeply.

“Speaking makes writing easier, and writing makes speaking more precise.” I have always taken Quintilian’s famous dictum as advice to writers: When you get stuck with the pen, try talking about your topic to a friend. It works!

But the great rhetorician’s advice is equally applicable to the value of dialogue to productive thought. Constructive conversation between neo-Calvinists and two-kingdom advocates is rare. All too often we write past one another, when speaking could facilitate greater understanding and clarity in our printed exchanges.

I do regret that this exchange is in print.

Verbal dialogue is best, and no doubt my response would have been improved by a conversation or two. But I rejoice that Wolfe and Modern Reformation have initiated an engagement and exchange of ideas, and I pray I can hold up my end of the bargain.

Wolfe is also to be commended for reminding us how much both sides really have in common.

Leave it to a bunch of Calvinists to focus on what little divides us. But both sides in this discussion believe in the transformative power of the gospel. Both sides recognize that the coming of the king changes everything, and both sides

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believe in the antithesis between the kingdom of Christ and the kingdoms of this world. As is often the case, many partisans have exaggerated the differences. In short, we need more beer summits and fewer Beer Hall Putsches! But Wolfe has also succeeded in identifying some differences, to which we must now turn.

CHRISTIAN ADORNMENT My fundamental concern with Wolfe’s proposal is his clear statement in his title and conclusion that the Christian life is an adornment. It is not; it is new creation.

When I first read Wolfe’s essay, I confess to being a bit lost. As with all “third-way” proposals that seek to mediate two disparate views, his reshuffled the deck, and I found it a bit difficult to track with the details. Thus I found it helpful to step back from the trees and consider what sort of forest I was looking at. Wolfe helpfully has made his basic, overarching theme as clear as day in both his title and conclusion: “Christianity as Civil Society’s Adornment.”

While you may be reading this in the summer, I am writing these words in the season of Advent, looking at my family’s Christmas Tree. I love the holiday ritual of decorating the Tree (capitalized here to show my devotion to this pagan rite). I made some of the ornaments by hand as a child, and my daughter made some others. In our house, every year’s Tree is the most beautiful Tree ever.

I love decorating the Christmas Tree. And yet,

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I don’t think ornamentation—“adornment”—is a fitting metaphor for the Christian life. I struggle to see how adornment sufficiently captures how the gospel makes all things new. The Christian life is not tinsel. It is new creation. I do not mean to belittle Wolfe’s proposal by calling it tinsel—far from it. I believe I am taking his words seriously—words carefully chosen and deployed at the most crucial points of his essay.

Furthermore, I think this characterization is backed up by the details.

Wolfe repeatedly uses “adorn” and “adorning,” and he speaks of “accidental features of civil society,” “customs and traditions,” and “variety of ornamentation and design.” The following sentences capture this idea and show that I’m not cherry-picking: Neither the civil recognition of Christ as king, nor the adorning of civil society with Christian features, spiritualizes the civil realm. The essence of natural civil order remains unaltered. Only the accidental features have been transformed.

The language of substance and accidents is well established in philosophical and theological thought. To call something “accidental” is to identify it as incidental, unnecessary, or nonessential. It also implies something is the product of chance or unintentional. I can’t fathom how, given the fullness of the revelation of Christ, we could describe his coming kingdom or any aspects of it in these terms. His is the blood of the eternal—not accidental—covenant.

Now, I am sure Wolfe did not intend his proposal to speak disparagingly of Christ or his kingdom. I am certain he did not mean to imply that the in-breaking of the kingdom of Christ in the life of the believer produces anything but lasting fruit. He was, I trust, seeking another advantage by employing this metaphor—to gain a sense of how the eternal and the temporal expressed themselves in the present age, how the “not yet” became a part of our “already.” In short, he is proposing an

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“In attempting to synthesize two divergent views, he has managed to lose something we both hold dear: the antithesis between this kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world.”

accidental or secondary use of Christianity in the civil sphere.

And yet, the upshot of this proposal seems to me to be not just wrong but 180 degrees wrong.

In attempting to synthesize two divergent views, he has managed to lose something we both hold dear: the antithesis between this kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world. He takes something essential and eternal and turns it into something accidental and temporary. This may seem to be a blunt evaluation of Wolfe’s proposal, but I hope that in putting this in the starkest terms, he may be able to reformulate it in a manner more faithful to the New Testament claims of new creation.

A FEW DEVILS IN THE DETAILS I confessed earlier to getting lost in the details of Wolfe’s essay. That assessment would be uncharitable if I didn’t at least identify some of the details I found confusing. I regret that space

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“The new creation and resurrection life really break in to the here and now. If Wolfe grants this, the question then becomes, what kind of change does the gospel effect in this world, and how?—instead of, does the gospel effect change in this world or the next?”

doesn’t allow me to more fully engage in these specifics. What follows, in no particular order, is a rundown of details that this reader believes need greater clarification to open the door to more fruitful dialogue.

(1) Wolfe characterizes the two-kingdom position, typified by Darryl Hart, as “other-worldly and worship focused.” This is a recurring criticism among two-kingdom opponents, and I think it fundamentally misconstrues the twokingdom position. As I read Hart and other proponents of the view, “churchly” is a far better descriptor of the position, and the activity and power of the church is very much of this world.

Gospel ministry—this worldly word and sacrament—and diaconal care really transform flesh and blood sinners. The new creation and resurrection life really break in to the here and now.

If Wolfe grants this, the question then becomes, what kind of change does the gospel effect in this world, and how?—instead of, does the gospel effect change in this world or the next?

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(2) Wolfe posits a fundamental distinction between the “immutable natural order” and more variable social and political structures of society. This substitutes “nature” for the more traditional (and biblical) understanding of “natural revelation.” For instance, Wolfe writes, “The principles of the civil order are dictated by nature.” Does Wolfe perhaps mean to say that they are dictated by God, via natural revelation? This is an important distinction.

Principles drawn from nature aren’t immutable, in the sense of existing prior to God, and the perception of them is not unscathed by the effects of sin nor immune to the regenerating power of new life.

(3) Wolfe is correct that the Reformed tradition has a “somewhat positive view on unregenerate civil righteousness,” but his language here lacks precision. David VanDrunen has shown that the Reformed tradition carefully defined natural law and precisely qualified its utility in life and doctrine. Indeed, this

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precision is the hallmark of the Reformed tradition’s use of natural law, and one of the genuine advances on this topic brought about in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By speaking imprecisely and abandoning careful qualifications, Wolfe runs the risk of falling into the same errors of pre-Reformation thought on natural law.

(4) Wolfe’s use of “conversion” is unclear to me. What would it mean for a pagan kingdom to be converted to Christianity? Is it a matter of majority rule and getting to 51 percent of the population? This is not the complete and total change of allegiance we usually mean when we discuss personal conversion. Similarly, what would it mean to become a “Christian family”? I affirm that God’s way of salvation is covenantal and works through the natural order of the family unit and parental headship. But if a single adult child converts, are his siblings and elderly parents now part of a “Christian family”? Do you need a majority?

Wolfe maintains that Christianity perfects this family, but it is a “relative perfection.” Again, the antithesis between Christianity and the world is minimized.

(5) I don’t understand how superficial elements of Christianity can provide any meaningful “solidarity and sense of belonging” for a civil community. Christianity is a faith; it is meaningfully understood only when it is personally confessed, with lips and heart. It can provide solidarity and belonging only within a community whose members universally confess it—that is, within the church. This unity, within the church, is the only unity the New Testament knows. In fact, the church is promised the opposite of “solidarity” with the world—namely, separation and alienation from the world and persecution at its hands. To take one of Wolfe’s examples—Sabbath laws—what does preventing a pagan from buying a fifth of Jack Daniels on the Lord’s Day have to do with the fourth commandment? For believers, the fourth commandment is about creating space in our mundane lives for worship and experiencing a foretaste of our heavenly rest.

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I admit this is a hodgepodge of concerns, but there are real devils in these details. I may have misconstrued some of these elements of Wolfe’s proposal; but their number and diversity, I fear, is an occupational hazard of Wolfe’s attempt at a synthesis of distinct views. By attempting to borrow from the best of both worlds, he has muddied some clear distinctions developed by each. In short, his novel approach suffers from its novelty, and I hope and pray this interaction may help him to further clarify it, so he can continue his interaction with the Reformed tradition.

THE TREE OF LIFE The relation of Christianity to culture is an elusive topic, and the church’s wrestling with it is ever changing precisely because it must always reflect the unique context of its particular moment. Stephen Wolfe is to be commended because he has attempted to wrestle with it in a fresh and different way. We should not be surprised that he encounters some difficulties.

However, there is one factor that both sides in the neo-Calvinist/two-kingdom debate affirm: Christianity is not merely an adornment to civil society, nor can it be used as such without fundamentally altering its essence. To return to my Christmas metaphor, Christianity is not an ornament, it isn’t tinsel. It is the Tree. As we see in the classic seventeenth-century English carol, “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree”: The tree of life my soul hath seen Laden with fruit and always green The trees of nature fruitless be Compared with Christ the apple tree His beauty doth all things excel By faith I know but ne’er can tell The glory which I now can see In Jesus Christ the apple tree.

Christianity—Christ—is not adornment.

Christ is the Tree.

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PA RT 3

In Defense of Cultural Christianity A response to Brian Lee by Stephen Wolfe

r. Lee’s gracious and penetrating response greatly contributes to this discussion, and I’m grateful for the time he’s devoted to deciphering my view (which, I admit, is unique in its approach and a bit confusing in its language). I’m also grateful to Modern Reformation for granting me the space to respond. Since Dr. Lee devotes his attention to my terms, distinctions, and my “third way,” I will focus here on elaboration and clarification in an attempt to assuage some of his concerns.

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CLASSICAL TWO-KINGDOM THEOLOGY First, I’d like to clarify that while my position is “third way,” as Dr. Lee points out, my political theology assumes classical two-kingdom (C2K) theology, while being modified in its approach through selected works by T. S. Eliot, Edmund Burke, and Roger Scruton. C2K affirms that the two kingdoms are the invisible, internal, and spiritual kingdom and the visible, outward, natural kingdom. Both the ecclesiastic and civil administrations, being visible and temporal, belong to the outward kingdom. The ecclesiastical (i.e., the institutional church) is not spiritual per se, but it exclusively has the role of ministering to the spiritual. The “church,” on the other hand, as Turretin wrote, is “a spiritual and internal communion,” not a “visible assembly” (ITE 18.6.4). Calvin likewise called the church the “invisible kingdom of Christ” (see his commentary on 1 Peter 1:8). He stated, “The nature of

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[Christ’s] kingdom . . . is not external, but belongs to the inner man” (see his commentary on Isaiah 42:1; cf. Luke 17:20). The church is essentially spiritual and invisible; the ecclesiastical serves the spiritual and is visible. The two kingdoms then are outward (civil and ecclesiastical) and internal (spiritual), not the magistracy and the ministerium. It is not institutional church and state, contrary to widespread belief.

Moreover, the civil and ecclesiastical are both subject to Christ as mediator. The civil is subjected to Christ, the incarnate Word, not merely the eternal Word (we are not Nestorians), as the mediator of common grace (restoring Adamic dominion). The ecclesiastical is subjected to Christ as the mediator of salvific grace.

Modern two-kingdom (M2K) advocates, however, fail to distinguish between the spiritual kingdom and the ecclesiastical, effectively spiritualizing the latter and driving the visible church from its place in the outward order, leading to distorted views of Christian pilgrimage.

They see little or no role for civil government in protecting and supporting true religion with civil actions even indirectly related to the procurement of spiritual good. Indeed, they often deny that the civil administration is obligated to recognize the true God, affirming a sort of political atheism. M2K denies the standard view of pagan antiquity, the medieval tradition, and the magisterial Reformation on the civil authorities’ obligations vis-à-vis religion.

In C2K, however, the magistracy and the ministerium being in themselves visible administrations are twin species of the same

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genus, “Christian communion,” and together constitute the Societas Christiana. A Christian society is constituted by the same people underlying both the ecclesiastical and civil, and each supports the other within the limits of their respective authority and power.

FORM AND CONTENT This leads me to my second (and much needed) clarification. I use the terms “form” and “content” to allow room for distinctively Christian content in what is ultimately natural, universal, and not distinctively Christian. For example, a formal command for the family is that families “worship the true God” (that is, conduct family worship).

But as formal, this command leaves open the possibility that supernatural revelation would further reveal additional elements of worship, obligating families to worship God in light of that revelation. Prior to special revelation, families were to worship God in light of natural revelation. But supernatural revelation completes the knowledge of proper worship. Hence, by worshiping God through Christ as a family, families fulfill the natural formal command to worship the true God as a family with content from natural and supernatural revelation. The ground of the obligation remains a natural command, despite fulfilling that obligation by following supernatural revelation.

An example of this relationship of form and content is when a US soldier is commanded by his superior officer to take all orders from an allied officer. This formal command does not in itself supply the full content to fulfill the order, for the necessary additional content is supplied by the allied officer. Yet the soldier obeys the allied officer only because his US officer commanded him to. He is ultimately obeying his US superior by obeying the allied officer.

Similarly, the natural formal command that civil communities “recognize the true God” does not in itself exhaust the possible content of recognizing God properly—a content that can be completed with both natural law and

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If the natural law dictates that the civil government ought to “protect true religion,” then civil governments today ought to protect true religion as fully revealed (that is, Christianity).

supernatural law. God revealed as Creator issued the formal command whose content is completed by the revelation of God as Redeemer.

Thus if the natural law dictates that the civil government ought to “protect true religion,” then civil governments today ought to protect true religion as fully revealed (that is, Christianity).

None of this, however, immanentizes heaven on earth: the ground of the civil action remains natural, despite the command being fulfilled by following supernatural revelation.

In a Societas Christiana, the cultural practices of the people are going to be colored with Christianity. The manners, greetings, civic rituals, centers of solidarity, and so on are “Christianized” in the sense that while the formal principles are natural (and therefore not distinctively Christian), their content will be distinctively Christian. For example, the principle of manners as a necessary part of civility does not in itself dictate any particular set of manners, yet in a Christian society manners would be Christian in content. Festivals would be Christian festivals. Civil ceremonies would include Christian invocations. Christianity is adjectival vis-à-vis civil community. Such Christianization, while not abrogating natural principles, perfects outward order.

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C H R I S T & C U LT U R E

ADORNMENT This leads to the third and final clarification. Dr. Lee questions my use of the words adornment and accidental, calling them “disparaging” of Christ’s kingdom. But this assumes a certain hierarchy between accident and essence, privileging essence over accident. By “accidental,” I simply mean that the Christianized cultural practices of a Christian society are nonessential for civil order, for the principles of civil order originate from creation. The Christianization of civil society, stemming from the full revelation of God, strengthens, perfects, and adorns civil order but does not constitute it.

My use of the words accidental, perfecting, and adorning follows Francis Turretin, who in his comments on theological anthropology wrote (ITE 5.11.11): It is one thing to speak of the essence of man; another of his integrity and perfection. At the taking away of a part or of some essential property, there follows in truth the destruction of the thing, but not forthwith at the privation of that which contributes to the integrity and perfecting of nature (as such as original righteousness was).

Turretin states here that man’s “original righteousness” was accidental vis-à-vis man’s essential nature, yet it is still the crowning feature of man— the quality of prelapsarian man that ensured complete, heaven-directed worship of God. That which made man holy was not essential to man as man. Turretin wasn’t disparaging the principal part of righteous man by calling it nonessential; he later calls it “adorning and perfecting.” This adorning quality—while pointing to man’s ultimate, heavenly end—does not destroy or abrogate man’s essential, earthly properties.

Another helpful analogy might be this: Christianization as perfective of civil society is similar to the way righteousness perfects man.

Christian cultural practices perfect and adorn, but do not constitute, civil society. Just as Burke

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says that the “decent drapery of life” elevates man from a sort of nakedness to dignity, so Christian culture—being rooted in true revelation—elevates a society to true social dignity. It would be fair to call my view a Burkean variant of C2K. Further, Christian adornment is not mere bauble. Man lives on the surface of things. His principal realm of being is a sort of life-world transcending bare nature, constructed by his drive to elevate himself through distinctive practices or “secular liturgies.” Is man as man a devourer of food, or an orderly and attentive diner? The latter is true human being, while the former is mere animality. Humans qua animals gobble food, but qua humans they keep their knife edge facing in and their forks on the left.

Humans exist, as Roger Scruton argues, on the “surface of the world.” We rightfully dwell in the decorous. If the gospel is to transform anything in civil society, then it ought to transform the realm in which man dwells—the cultural adornment that elevates him above beasts.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT Since this culture is not spiritual per se but simply fulfills a natural principle, its protection does not require spiritual weapons, only natural ones. Whatever is justly used to preserve culture can be used to preserve Christian culture. That is, if one agrees that people have a right to cultural preservation, then the fact that some culture is Christian does not exclude the right of cultural preservation. To say otherwise betrays a categorical confusion and confounds the two kingdoms by attributing a spiritual status to what is natural.

This view of two-kingdom theology ensures that the spiritual and the civil kingdoms are in their proper places. The principal accomplishment of Christ—the securing of a spiritual kingdom for the elect—remains in heaven, while the natural order, following its own principles, is completed by adorning itself with symbols of that accomplishment. Cultural Christianity is the completion of civil society.

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V O L .2 7 | N O. 3

FEATURES

[The Holy Spirit] is found as if tracing a light back to its source— a light shining on the redemption of God’s people in time and place, giving glory to the Son, and effecting the pur­pose of the Father.”

— MICHAEL S. HORTON

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WORD, WATER, SUPPER: THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT

SIGNS AND WONDERS

THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD

THE ROLE OF THE SPIRIT IN CURRENT TRINITARIAN CONTROVERSIES

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by

illustration by

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MICHAEL S. HORTON

WORD, WATER, SUPPER: THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT SACHIN SHAH

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NE OF THE TRAGEDIES of modern debates about the Spirit’s work in the church and in our lives today is that we have narrowed his repertoire. The Third Person of the Trinity is frequently associated almost exclusively with:

(1) the application of salvation (regeneration and sanctification); (2) direct, immediate, and surprising activities within us that defy any external means; and (3) the extraordinary (miraculous signs and wonders, gifts of healing and tongues, and so on).

In the first case, we fail to appreciate that the Holy Spirit is the “Lord and giver of life” in every work of the Godhead. It is not at Pentecost but at Creation—in the second verse of the Bible—where we meet the Holy Spirit in Scripture. Hovering over the waters of creation, making the Father’s speech, mediated by the Son, to bear its intended fruit, the Spirit is the divine person at work within creaturely reality to shape and vivify it.

The Spirit breathed life into Adam and was “out in front” to lead him to glory. When Adam quenched him, the Spirit came in judgment “in the cool [ruach] of the day” (Gen 3:8). Then the Spirit led Israel through the Red Sea to the Promised Land with the pillar and cloud.

Throughout biblical history (as I demonstrate in Rediscovering the Holy Spirit), the Holy Spirit is engaged in judgment and power, leading his people by type and shadow to hope in the messianic seed who will “redo” Adam’s failed trial and enter the Sabbath consummation with his people in his train. The Spirit also hovered over the “waters” of Mary’s womb: “And the angel answered her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God’” (Luke 1:35).

The Spirit joined the Father’s benediction over the New Creation—Jesus himself (Luke 3:22).

“And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil.

And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry” (Luke 4:1–2). It

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was by the Spirit that Jesus performed his miracles and cast out demons (Matt. 12:28, 31), by him that Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice (Heb. 9:14) and was raised (Rom. 8:11). Only with such a wide canvas can we appreciate the fact that the same Spirit was poured out at Pentecost to regenerate, indwell, empower, sanctify, and glorify us, distributing particular gifts to each for the good of the whole body (1 Cor. 12).

Second, contrary to common notions, the Holy Spirit ordinarily works through creaturely means. We see this already with his brooding over the waters to make them fruitful. The Spirit did not work against nature in the incarnation but above it, so that the eternal Son assumed our full humanity, yet without sin. The Spirit works through means in our lives now: through preaching, water, bread, and wine. If we fail to appreciate how the Spirit works through means, then we will fall into either formalism (the means without the Spirit) or enthusiasm (the Spirit without the means).

The third misconception challenged by biblical teaching is that the Spirit’s work is always extraordinary. Sometimes it is, of course, as

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in the incarnation. But the Spirit was just as involved in the ordinary process of Jesus’ gestation and growth into a mature young man (Luke 2:40–41). He not only regenerates us through the gospel, but he also brings forth the fruit of the Spirit in our lives in ways that are often imperceptible through a process of gradual growth (Gal. 5:22–23).

So, before we become embroiled in the usual controversies of recent generations, it is helpful to set before us this wider canvas that can bring us together instead of tear us apart.

THE REFORMATION AND THE SPIRIT Since the second-century Montanist heresy, there have been movements that set the Spirit against the ordinary ministry of the church. The medieval church experienced these waves as well, with those in charge often seeming to eliminate the need for the Spirit in favor of the external institution and its power and mystics going their own way. Roman Catholic theologian Yves Congar notes that, instead of being seen as means of the Spirit’s operations, the sacraments often were regarded as efficient in and of themselves, which rendered the Spirit somewhat irrelevant. The pope, the saints, and the Virgin Mary also could 1 become “substitutes for the Holy Spirit.” In reaction to this, various spiritualist movements arose that set the Spirit in opposition to the church and its ministry of word and sacrament. A cleavage developed between a hierarchical institution filled with abuses and charismatic individuals who sought a direct and personal experience of God through visions, miracles, and ecstasy even apart from the ordinary ministry of the church.

This was the situation at the time of the Reformation. The pope replaced both the word and the Holy Spirit as the vicar of Christ on earth.

But the Anabaptists also frequently opposed the ordained ministry—and the Scriptures themselves—with the immediate work of the Spirit. Luther, Calvin, and the other magisterial Reformers rejected this dichotomy.

It is not saying too much, with B. B. Warfield, that the Reformation constituted a major

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rediscovery of the Holy Spirit. Whereas medieval theology emphasized grace as a created substance infused into the soul to aid its upward ascent, the Reformers proclaimed that the uncreated Spirit is the gift who unites sinners to Christ with all of his benefits. Despite Luther’s vehement criticism of the “enthusiasts,” he said in his Small Catechism, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Ghost has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.”

It is widely recognized that among the magisterial Reformers, John Calvin especially contributed the richest pneumatological reflection. Of the Reformers, observes Pentecostal theologian Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Calvin’s theology was the most thoroughly pervaded by pneumatology, although he was as critical as Luther of “enthusiasm” that separates the 2 Spirit from the word. Roman Catholic theologian Brian Gaybba goes so far as to say that “with Calvin there is a rediscovery—in the West at any rate—of a biblical idea virtually forgotten since patristic times. It is the idea of the Spirit of 3 God in action.” The great humanist Desiderius Erasmus wrote a scornful letter to Calvin’s elder colleague Guillaume Farel, reproaching the people of Geneva: “The French refugees have these five words continually on their lips: 4 Gospel, Word of God, Faith, Christ, Holy Spirit.”

Yet Calvin was hardly alone in this regard, as we see from other well-known Reformed leaders—such as Bucer, Vermigli, Cranmer, Knox, Jan Łaski, and Beza—and lesser-known women writers such as the queen of Navarre, Jeanne d’Albret, and Olimpia Fulvia Morata. Without any loss of Christ-centeredness, the Reformed confessions and catechisms give a prominent place to the person and work of the Spirit. In fact, mention of the Holy Spirit appears in the first answer of the Heidelberg Catechism.

Engaging Scripture as well as patristic and medieval sources, the era of what is often called Reformed orthodoxy reopened grand vistas on the Spirit in liturgical and devotional forms alongside more scholarly explorations. John Owen’s

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“THROUGHOUT BIBLICAL HISTORY THE HOLY SPIRIT IS ENGAGED IN JUDGMENT AND POWER, LEADING HIS PEOPLE BY TYPE AND SHADOW TO HOPE IN THE MESSIANIC SEED WHO WILL ‘REDO’ ADAM’S FAILED TRIAL AND ENTER THE SABBATH CONS UMMATION WITH HIS PEOPLE IN HIS TRAIN.”

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lengthy treatises on the Holy Spirit are merely examples of the enormous influence of Puritan writers such as William Perkins, Richard Sibbes, and Thomas Goodwin. One thinks of Scots, such as Gillespie and Rutherford, as well as Continental contemporaries, such as the Czech Jan Komenský (Comenius), Voetius, Witsius, à Brakel, Pierre du Moulin, and Jean Taffin, to name only a few.

But for some reason, the confessional Lutheran and Reformed views of the Spirit have been replaced largely by either a marginalization of the Spirit or an “enthusiasm” that ignores the Spirit’s ordinary way with words. One exception is the lengthy tome on the Holy Spirit by Abraham Kuyper at the end of the nineteenth century.

“Even tho [sic] we honor the Father and believe on the Son, how little do we live in the Holy Spirit!

It even seems to us sometimes that for our sanctification only the Holy Spirit is added accidentally 5 to the great redemptive work.”

Whatever forgetfulness of the Holy Spirit may be evident in Protestantism more generally, and in Reformed circles as well, must be part of a forgetfulness of the rich treasures of our own past.

Though a generalization, Benedictine theologian Kilian McDonnell puts the matter well: In both Protestantism and Catholicism, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, or pneumatology, has to do mostly with private, not public, experience. In Protestantism, the interest in pneumatology has been largely in pietism where it is a function of interiority and inwardness. In Roman Catholicism, its dominant expression has been in books on spirituality or on the charismatic renewal, or when speaking of the structural elements of the church. In the West, we think essentially in Christological categories, with the Holy Spirit as an extra, an addendum, a “false” window to give symmetry and balance to theological design. We build up our large theological constructs in constitutive Christological categories, and then, in a second, nonconstitutive moment, we decorate the already constructed system with pneumatological 6 baubles, a little Spirit tinsel.

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If the Spirit is too often an afterthought in our theology, then it is not surprising to see sometimes a subtle demotion of the Spirit creep into our prayers, discourse, praise, and other aspects of daily piety. Obviously, the Father is God, and faithful Protestants have battled mightily for the Son’s full divinity. However, the Spirit can easily be seen merely as a facilitator of our relationship with the Father and the Son. But is the Holy Spirit fully God in the same sense as the Father and the Son? Does the Nicene Creed sometimes give us pause when we say that the Spirit “together with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified”?

With the aid of the classics of patristic and Reformation spirituality, we can rediscover the Holy Spirit as he strides across the pages of the Bible—and into our own hearts today. The Spirit is not found in the ravings of the modern-day “enthusiasts,” whom Calvin as well as Luther warned against. He is found as if tracing a light back to its source—a light shining on the redemption of God’s people in time and place, giving glory to the Son, and effecting the purpose of the Father.

MICHAEL S. HORTON is the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido.

1. Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit: The Complete Three Volume Work in One Volume, trans. Geoffrey Chapman, Milestones in Catholic Theology (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1997), 1:160–66.

2. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, The Holy Spirit: A Guide to Christian Theology, Basic Guides to Christian Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2012), 46.

3. Brian Gaybba, The Spirit of Love: Theology of the Holy Spirit (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1987), 100. With Matthew Levering (Engaging the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit [Eerdmans, 2016], 321n43), from whom I discovered this reference, I think that Gaybba overstates the point. Nevertheless, the richness of Calvin’s pneumatological reflections is exhibited throughout his theological reflections and exegetical commentary in ways that were not typical in late medieval treatises.

4. Quoted in Emile G. Leonard, A History of Protestantism, Volume 1: The Reformation (London: Thomas Nelson, 1965), 306.

5. Abraham Kuyper, Preface of the Author, The Work of the Holy Spirit, trans. Henri De Vries (New York: Funk & Wagnall, 1900; repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), xii.

6. Kilian McDonnell, OSB, “The Determinative Doctrine of the Holy Spirit,” Theology Today 39, no. 2 (1982): 142, quoted by Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen in The Holy Spirit: A Guide to Christian Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004).

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a WHI roundtable with

illustration by

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MICHAEL HORTON, ROD ROSENBLADT, KIM RIDDLEBARGER, AND JUSTIN HOLC OMB

SIGNS AND WONDERS SACHIN SHAH

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he first time our associate editor heard someone talk about the Holy Ghost, she immediately thought of the Spirit of Christmas Past—a looming, spectral figure. As it turns out, she wasn’t alone. Maybe not everyone associates the Third

Person of the Trinity with a story by Charles Dickens, but they may associate him with a higher spiritual state or spiritual gifts (such as healing or speaking in tongues), or any mystical experience. Other people don’t know what to think about him. Both reactions are understandable. In post-Great-Awakening North America, we’ve inherited a lot of peculiar ideas about who the Spirit is, and the scriptural account of who he is and what he does in redemptive history is a bit more obscure than those passages that concentrate on the Father or the Son. So where does biblical truth end and spiritual experience start?

Our friends at the White Horse Inn—Michael Horton, Kim Riddlebarger, Rod Rosenbladt, and Justin Holcomb—sat down to discuss who the Holy Spirit is, what he does, and even why biblical miracles are not like mayonnaise on a ham sandwich or what Kim’s wife would do if he began jumping off chairs at home.

M H : I think many of us still remember the “Holy Ghost” from the King James Version, which brings Halloween to mind more than Pentecost—he’s the spooky member of the Trinity, the one we don’t really understand since he has more of a “supporting role” (or so it seems). How important is it for us to recognize the Holy Spirit’s divinity with the Father and the Son and, therefore, that he’s involved with the Father and the Son in every work of creation, redemption, and consummation?

KR: The degree to which we deny the deity of

the Holy Spirit is the degree to which we deny the Trinity. It’s pretty fundamental: the Holy Spirit possesses the same divine attributes as the Father and the Son and eternally proceeds

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from both; he is one with the Father and with the Son, one from all eternity.

MH: There’s this wonderful recovery of interest

in the Holy Spirit, but also a kind of polarization, so that whenever you bring up the topic of the Spirit’s person and work, people tend to gravitate toward different aspects of the discussion. Do you think part of this is because the Holy Spirit today is usually identified in people’s minds with whatever is extraordinary and mysterious, with things that go bump in the night—again, the ghost thing?

JH: I’ve noticed that as people talk about the Holy

Spirit, they talk about him through two rather strange categories: either the powerful mysterious things that happen, or the things that people refer to as feminine characteristics or actions— such as compassion, nurturing, soft, nice, and gentle. They somehow separate those two aspects of his energies, and as a result many people gravitate toward one or the other and miss what the Scriptures actually say about the Holy Spirit. Of course, I’m not trying to create division and say that Jesus accomplished redemption and the Holy Spirit applies redemption and there’s no overlap in any way. But by holding that distinction (not separation) between those two persons of the Trinity—by understanding that the Holy Spirit is the one who applies the work of Christ to us—the role of each is clarified and our comprehension is improved. Jesus himself spoke of the Spirit as glorifying him, taking what is his and making it known to us (John 16:14). Talking about the weird, mysterious things or the nice sentimental feelings isn’t as helpful, because it gets us off course. The result is that people inadvertently end up saying that the Spirit points to lots of things—but not Christ or the work that he has done.

KR: Isn’t it also unfortunate that in trying to be theologically Christocentric—preaching Christ from all the Scriptures and making a concerted effort to make his life, death, and resurrection the central emphasis in all we say—reformational and Lutheran Christians tend to forget that the work of Christ saves no one unless it is applied by the

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Holy Spirit. Some of it is our own nomenclature: We’re trying to say that we’re not man-centered; we’re Christ-centered; we don’t look for subjective application in every text. When we say that, we have to be careful not to push the Holy Spirit off the page. It’s a rhetorical point we have to make, but we also have to add that qualification.

We’re not eliminating the Spirit from the work of Christ; the work of Christ wouldn’t save anyone apart from the work of the Spirit.

MH: We’re saying that Christ is the one who leads

us to the Father, the Father is the one who says “This is my beloved Son; listen to him,” and the Holy Spirit is the one who enables us to listen to Jesus and to embrace him as Savior.

KR: Exactly.

MH: A lot of the church fathers used a formula

that I’ve found helpful, even in praying: “All things proceed from the Father, through the Spirit.” The Reformers talked about this as well: The Father is the origin of all things, the Son is the mediator of all things, and the Spirit is the one who brings every work of God to completion. I grew up thinking that the Holy Spirit comes in during the last scene in the movie—at Pentecost, when people are speaking in different languages and there are tongues of fire, that’s when we meet the Holy Spirit. It’s been revolutionary to see the Holy Spirit from the very beginning—Genesis 1:2—as the one who brings to completion everything the Trinity does.

RR: In some ways, the language has made it dif-

ficult for us. I remember starting to go off the tracks a bit when my Old Testament professor told me that the basic word could be translated as “breath” or “wind” or “spirit.” I would wonder about each of the passages, but I shouldn’t have.

There are many passages that could have been helpful in enabling me to see the Spirit’s work from the creation of everything in Genesis to the end of Revelation.

MH: It helps us to see that the Holy Spirit is

not set over against creation and matter, but

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actually the one at work within creaturely reality in order to bring it to where the Father has worded it or declared it to be in the Son. KR: That’s the way we have to look at it.

JH: When we get past that dualistic Gnostic picture of the world, we see the deficiencies of thinking of the Holy Spirit in that way—the idea that God is somehow over or above the vulgar, mundane realities we live. The fact is that he is involved with the miraculous and supernatural, but he’s also involved with resurrection, creation, and the incarnation—all these earthy real-life things. Many Christians who focus on this wrong-headed view of the Spirit inadvertently (sometimes intentionally) decry the sacraments and decry the real-life relationship and community in the church while they search for some otherworldly spiritual experience, which is unfortunate, because Scripture gives us a different picture. The Spirit is involved with breaking in the not-yet into the now— breaking into the kingdom here, not out there somewhere.

MH: Great point. Let’s start with creation as

a backdrop to our discussion of the Spirit’s person and work, and then sum up with the incarnation and Pentecost. We’ve mentioned that he “hovers” in Genesis 1:2, separating the waters from the dry land for communion between God and man. He then comes in judgment to Adam and Eve after their transgression of the covenant. Our modern translations of Genesis 3:8 sort of obscure this: “He comes in the cool of the day,” which doesn’t make much sense. God comes in the Spirit, the ruach of the day: specifically, the Spirit of judgment.

The Holy Spirit is associated here in Genesis 3 with judgment, which is important because in everything we see in the history of Israel—such as the pillar of fire in the wilderness that separated them from the nations—there’s a kind of judgment where God is justifying or judging his people in the cloud. In John 16, when Jesus says, “I will send the helper and he will convict the world of sin and of judgment and

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of righteousness,” he’s foretelling the day of Pentecost. The Spirit comes, and the people are cut to the quick to hear the gospel and receive Jesus Christ. We don’t usually associate the Holy Spirit with the forensic, the judicial— that’s Jesus; he died on the cross for our sins and was raised for our justification. But the Holy Spirit is just as much identified with this courtroom drama.

KR: When we hear “clouds,” we think of rain and

dark sky. But these are clouds of glory. God is present through his Spirit, which means this is a heavenly manifestation of an otherworldly glory. When we hear “clouds of glory,” we have to be careful not to trivialize that to weather or some atmospheric phenomenon. The Spirit of God inhabits this cloud.

MH: We see the Spirit dividing the waters of the

Red Sea, just as he divided the waters in creation—delivering his people while burying his enemies in watery judgment. He’s associated with circumcision—the rite of cutting off a portion of the flesh so the whole person won’t be cut off or excommunicated—which is a material, creaturely thing. We also see the prophets associate the Holy Spirit with the last days: “In the last days I will pour out my Spirit” (Joel 2:28–32). We know it’s the last days by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on all flesh. This is a new thing—the Holy Spirit dwelt among Israel, but he never dwelt in them, as it were.

KR: That raises an interesting point of interpretation. If the Reformed and Lutherans tend to make our theology Christ-centered, then modern Pentecostals and charismatics tend to make their theology Holy Spirit-centered.

They’ll start with the event in Acts 2 and extrapolate that this is normative for the church age.

They disassociate the earlier work of the Spirit in previous periods of redemptive history to get the dramatic signs and wonders they claim to possess in their own church. We can discuss whether or not speaking in tongues and other Pentecostal gifts are possible for the church age, but we must recover that Trinitarian focus

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“WE MUST RECOVER THAT TRINITARIAN FOCUS WHERE THE FATHER IS WORK­ING IN THE SON THROUGH THE SPIRIT AND RECOGNIZE THAT PENTECOST IS A CONTINUATION OF THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. THIS IS A GREATER MANIFESTATION OF WHAT WAS ALREADY PRESENT, NOT A DO-OVER.”

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where the Father is working in the Son through the Spirit and recognize that Pentecost is a continuation of the work of the Spirit in the Old Testament. This is a greater manifestation of what was already present, not a do-over. This isn’t tearing out the whole old covenant and all of redemptive history with it, where the Spirit does something completely unrelated and wholly new. This is the Spirit doing now in a greater way—because of Christ’s death and resurrection—what he had already been doing in the Old Testament.

MH: You’ve actually done a series of sermons on

this, Kim. Could you summarize them for us?

KR: In Zechariah 6, there’s a vision of the four chariots going forth, and the last line of that particular oracle is that the Holy Spirit brought peace to the nations. Zechariah sees the wrath of God coming forth, and the result is the Spirit of God bringing rest to the nations—the ruach again. The Spirit is all-powerful—as much as the Father—and the prophets see the work of the Spirit as subduing the nations.

MH: He’s not just this still small voice inside of

your heart.

KR: Exactly; he’s every bit as active as the Father.

There’s a scene in Daniel 7 where the Son of Man is led in to the Ancient of Days, and he comes down in clouds of glory. The Spirit is there, present when Christ is there. There are several other examples of this throughout the Old Testament.

MH: You can say that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit bring peace to the nations, but that they do it differently. Christ does it by becoming incarnate and dying on the cross, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that messianic reign to fulfillment, to completion.

Justin, you mentioned that the Spirit is attributed with raising Jesus from the dead and will bring life to our mortal bodies in the resurrection. So much for the Spirit being the one who leads us to escape our embodied human existence, right?

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JH: I use that frequently as a pastor: The same

Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead is the same Holy Spirit who resides in you. If he can handle a dead Jesus, then he can handle the dead parts of your life that need to be changed and revived. Death doesn’t shock or stump him.

When you characterize the Spirit as some mystical mysterious being, you overlook all of the work the Spirit actually does, which results in an anemic picture. He’s the baptizer, the access to God, the gift-giver; he glorifies Christ, he creates, he interprets Scripture, he leads, he liberates—the list is extensive. If we limit him and what he does to the thing that goes “bump in the night” (I love this new category!), then we miss out on so much of the pastoral comfort that applies not only to gifts of the Spirit to the church but to the individual Christian as well.

MH: What are we to make of the comparison of the Holy Spirit hovering over the waters of creation, sanctifying, consecrating, and out of the watery expanse bringing life, and what we find in Luke 1:32 where the Holy Spirit “hovers over the waters” within Mary’s womb, so that the one she bore was the holy Son of God? KR: It’s remarkable that it is the Holy Spirit who creates, who begins that process in the womb of Mary.

MH: It’s sort of a microcosmic picture of what

happened macrocosmically in creation. It has such incredible ramifications for how we understand what it means for the Holy Spirit to indwell us. It’s absolutely spectacular to imagine that the same one who hovered over the waters in creation to make it fruitful hovered over the waters of Mary’s womb microscopically, and now dwells within us, making us new, and living in us as a down payment on the final redemption.

KR: I was just thinking of Paul’s language in

Ephesians 1, where he describes the Spirit as a down payment toward the redemption of our bodies. By indwelling us he’s promised that he will raise us from the dead on the last day, in the

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same kind of remarkable, miraculous way that Christ himself was raised.

JH: When you look at the location and presence

of God throughout all of Scripture—when the Holy Spirit hovers over the waters, when he’s in the garden, in the wilderness with God’s people, in the tabernacle, then in the temple, then in Jesus, then in us—you see this narrowing down of where the presence of God resides. It’s fascinating to focus on the presence of God from creation all the way down to individual believers. God is not annoyed or irritated by us; he is not rolling his eyes in frustration; he actually resides in us. This intimacy should get our attention and blow our minds.

“The Spirit doesn’t bring out unnatural things in us; he restores us to the ‘natural’ state for which we were created.”

MH: There’s a line from Calvin where he says that

one of the big differences between the medieval church and the Reformers was that, in medieval piety, union with Christ meant that you followed the spiritual Martha Stewart guide on how to get ready for the guest: sweep the floor, wash the dishes, and make your heart presentable for the Holy Spirit. Calvin says that the Holy Spirit basically finds the house condemned, that there is no safe landing for him. He then comes in and turns a house into a home—and that should encourage us.

JH: One of my friends likes to emphasize the

presence of the Holy Spirit as not just some personal benefit—“Oh, the Holy Spirit is in me”—but (as Acts 1:8 shows us) as an indication that the gospel is going out to the entire world.

God doesn’t continually focus his presence on us so we can feel better about him and ourselves— although we certainly do, and that shouldn’t be denigrated—but also for the expansion of the work of Christ to the entire world.

MH: You bring up an important point: We not only

associate the Holy Spirit with the extraordinary rather than the ordinary, and the escape from creation rather than the renewal within creation, but also with the individual rather than with the great cosmic world epochal events that form the narrative of creation-fall-redemption-consummation.

The Holy Spirit is painting on a wide canvas.

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KR: We trivialize this work when we speak of the

Holy Spirit as simply giving us some sort of subjective experience that will allow us or cause us to do something in public we would never even think to do in private. The Spirit doesn’t bring out unnatural things in us; he restores us to the “natural” state for which we were created. There can be an unhelpful stress on the extraordinary rather than the re-creative work of the Spirit that brings all things back to where they’re supposed to be at the consummation.

M H : We seem to view the Spirit as working immediately—that is, independently of any means—in individuals internally, secretly, subjectively. It’s disorderly, spontaneous, and sudden. It is living and alive versus a dead letter. It is obvious, measurable results versus promised long-term results that are often imperceptibly recognized by us. Contrast this to the way in which Scripture describes the Spirit working through means in the human heart, corporately as well as individually, externally and publicly, objectively and subjectively within us, and in an orderly way, gradually rather than a loud, spectacular flash. If the Holy Spirit is associated only with the extras, then you’re going to have some people who want only the extras.

Some will be fine without the extras, but their understanding of who God is and how he acts is based on a false view of the Holy Spirit’s work.

KR: It took me a long time to get over that.

RR: We find in the New Testament that the Lord speaks about demanding signs and wonders usually in a negative way. Americans especially forget the depth of the effect of Pentecostalism, which tapped into the human desire for signs and wonders. There’s a way in which that piques our interest, and we do well to face it honestly rather than pretending we don’t care. We do care. We want contact with the divine and the transcendent.

“The Spirit does all kinds of things throughout redemptive history, and they all point to the fact that God is going to overturn the curse, so that by the time we reach the end of all things, all of creation is redeemed and restored. ”

MH: Thanks for the perfect segue, Rod. You’ve

brought us to the focal point of our discussion: What are signs and wonders in the Bible?

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KR: They’re signs of new creation. They take

shadows to the realities, where the Spirit is not just in the Holy of Holies, approachable only by the ordained High Priest, but in the heart of every Christian. I don’t have to come to church and slaughter something, pull out its entrails, cook part of it, and offer up the rest. All I offer is a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.

place in the natural and cosmic way. They take place in particular ways: healing of particular individuals, Jesus’ seven signs in John’s Gospel, for example. They’re everything from turning water into wine at a wedding to show his glory, to healing a man who hadn’t walked for his whole adult life. The Spirit does all kinds of things throughout redemptive history, and they all point to the fact that God is going to overturn the curse, so that by the time we reach the end of all things, all of creation is redeemed and restored.

KR: That’s the work of the Spirit in the new covenant.

MH: Let’s discuss some of these signs, such as the

JH: Those are all signs of the covenant: the rain-

rainbow in Genesis 9. After cataclysmic judgment, God says, “I’ll put the rainbow in the clouds, in the skies, and every time I look upon that rainbow, I will remember not to judge you again the way that I have with this flood.”

KR: He was talking about water. He didn’t say anything about fire.

MH: Or how about in Genesis 15 with the smok-

ing firepot, with God as a theophany passing through the pieces as a blood oath. If this promise isn’t fulfilled, then God will bring judgment down on himself. After Abraham had asked “How will I know?” God gave him a vision. Isn’t God always saying “Let me bend down into my creation and take something I made,” not just as an illustration but actually as confirmation, as testimony, to what he has said in his word?

KR: Absolutely. In Genesis 15, the animals were

cut in half because folks in that age were used to the ritual cutting in preparation for sacrificial meals. Things were butchered and there was blood everywhere. That carries over to the temple. Think of the implements in the temple.

Think of what it would take to hold an ox still and cut its throat; think of all the work that goes into that and of all the blood. The priest wears an apron because blood splatters on him. In the new covenant, we go to church and we don’t kill anything. There is no blood anywhere, because the Spirit has moved us from the types and

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MH: Because God himself has provided the sac-

rifice: Christ on the cross.

bow in the sky, the mark of circumcision, the role of Passover, the throne and temple for David, and the sign of the new covenant—the Lord’s Supper.

It’s interesting to note that the signs are always pointing to God breaking in on time and space.

It’s a helpful foundation to understand the whole conversation of signs and wonders and miracles.

The covenants are the bond in blood of God’s sovereign initiative with us—I think it was O. Palmer Robertson who came up with that definition— and the signs are indicators of God’s agreement with his rebellious people whom he pursues, not something that dazzles us with shock and awe.

When we confuse those two, we become distracted and go off track.

MH: It really is, especially when in a lot of the examples you brought up it’s God who is remembering. The sign is basically for us to know and to be assured—to know that God is binding himself to fulfill his promise through this sign. “When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh” (Gen. 9:13). “When I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you” (Exod. 12:13).

KR: This is my body, and this is my blood given

for you.

MH: What then about the burning bush? The angel of the Lord appears to Moses in a flame

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of fire out of a bush. It burned but wasn’t consumed. God calls out to him and Moses says, “Here I am.” God says, “Do not come near. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” How is the burning bush a sign and wonder?

KR: This is another instance where the Spirit is

present and we see a miraculous appearance of God’s glory in a bush. It looks like fire, but the bush isn’t being consumed. Heaven has come down to that spot for that moment, and it’s really hard for Moses to understand what it is he’s seeing. It’s the presence of the Spirit and it looks like fire.

MH: The Spirit is associated with fire, isn’t he?

KR: Yes. We read about tongues of fire in Acts 2,

and there’s the scene of the heavenly glory and the chariots of fire in 2 Kings. All of those are typological of the Spirit.

MH: What about Moses in Exodus 4 when he answers God, “But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, the Lord did not appear to you.” Then the Lord says to him, “What is that in your hand?” I love that— “What do you have on you right now? I can use that. I can use a stick.”

The Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?” He said, “A staff.” And he said, “Throw it on the ground.” So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses ran from it. But the Lord said to Moses, “Put out your hand and catch it by the tail”—so he put out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand—“that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.” (Exod. 4:2–5) What is the role of a sign and wonder? What is it a sign of?

KR: It’s a sign of God’s faithfulness to his people

that they will be able to go out in the desert and

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worship him and Pharaoh’s power can’t and won’t stop them.

MH: Then there are the ten plagues, which are signs of God’s judgment against Egypt and the deliverance of his people.

KR: And which are replicated in the book of Revelation. The same signs that appeared in Egypt will appear throughout the course of the age—the Spirit will be at work again bringing things to that final point of consummation.

MH: It sounds like you’re saying that the signs are never arbitrary. From Genesis to Revelation, there is a running thread that the signs and wonders are specifically attached to something that is promised.

KR: One of the things we see in the Gospels that

relates to exactly this point are the kinds of things Jesus heals. He doesn’t heal male-pattern baldness or fill cavities; he restores sight to the blind.

Why is that? Because that miracle shows us that God can enable us to see his work. Why is hearing restored to the deaf? So they can hear the words of God. Those who were lame are healed so they can walk in the right way. People are healed from congenital diseases that made them ceremonially unclean (for example, the woman with the issue of blood, and the ten lepers) so that by these signs and wonders, in that healing, they point to the great work of God in redemption. They’re not only proofs of Christ’s deity, but they’re also signs that point to the things that will happen by his death and resurrection.

RR: All of this points to the fact that we have a basis for trusting his particular word of promise, which is a promise to rescue. Basically, God says, “I’m going to rescue you, and I’m going to give you a pledge of that promise, so you can trust my word.”

MH: It’s amazing how he condescends to us, how

he stoops as a Father who loves his children and says, “I’m going to make this so clear and easy for you to understand that a child could get it.”

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RR: I think of Thomas, who said that unless he

could put his hand into Jesus’ side and wrists, he wouldn’t believe. The Lord was under no obligation whatever to Thomas, and yet he gave him the sign he asked for.

JH: Many of these signs are miraculous demon-

strations of God’s sovereign power over creation, which show his good commitment to his people.

But a lot of them also confirm the authenticity of God’s messengers who bring his revelation to humanity. It’s something we see throughout Scripture: the testing of God’s authority, and the authority given to his prophets.

KR: And that fits perfectly with Paul’s language

of Scripture being “God-breathed.” This same Holy Spirit who confirms the messengers also gives the messengers God’s word so that when they’re speaking, they’re speaking forth the very words of God. It’s not their ruminations; it’s the word they’ve received from the heavenly throne, from the Spirit who gives and breathes forth those words. The Spirit not only confirms these spokespeople, these prophets, but he gives them the words that have become our Scriptures.

RR: In many cases, I think it’s the same sort of thing because of the broad spread of Pentecostal thinking. If the culture now thinks in terms of signs and wonders and you asked a question of law or gospel, to them it’s always going to be law.

The linkage to that word of God is going to be law.

MH: That’s a great point. If Christ is the terrifying

judge of the last judgment—and not the suffering servant who gives his life for his people—then of course you’re going to look to the Holy Spirit as the kinder, gentler person of the Trinity, the way a lot of medieval people—and a lot of people today—look to Mary. We’ve made the point that God condescends, but isn’t it striking that God doesn’t give signs grudgingly? The sign goes with the word. I’m especially thinking of Isaiah 7:14, where King Ahaz is judged by God precisely because he’s so proud that he refuses a sign. God says, “I’m going to give you one anyway: a virgin will conceive and bear a son, and his name will be

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Emmanuel, God with us.” God basically says, “I will give you a sign even if you don’t want it.” How do we square that with Jesus saying in Matthew 16:4, “A wicked generation looks for signs”?

KR: In that case, they were looking for signs they associated with magic, with natural things, things tied to fertility, to a bountiful harvest. In a sense, they reflected the pagan religions, Baal worship, the kinds of signs the Romans were looking for. (“Let’s go through the chicken bones. Do something really dramatic, Jesus. Entertain us!”) Illness was common, mortality rates were high (compared to today), life expectancy was much shorter, and they saw Jesus as a walking emergency room. To them, he was a healer, a medicine man. There were pagans who wanted to know if their wives were going to bear children the next year or if they would have bountiful crops; and there were the zealots who wanted to see Jesus do miracles of power in anticipation of his raising up an army to defeat the Romans. People were looking for signs, but they were the wrong signs, and they asked for them for the wrong reasons—not the kind that could forgive them of their sins but the kind that could give them satisfaction.

MH: Does this underscore the point that signs that are not signs of the word of promise are not the Holy Spirit’s work?

R R : They’re not to be followed, believed, or trusted.

MH: There are always going to be signs of the

gospel.

RR: Yes, those are the ones you pay attention to.

KR: I grew up in an age where we had a signs and wonders movement, and I once went to the Vineyard Church to see what it was about.

People were jumping off the chairs, trying to touch the Shekinah glory as it “came down.” If I had gone home and started jumping off chairs, my wife would have killed me. But there, people were being told to do that because the Spirit was

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coming down. In seeking some extraordinary experience, they forgot that if the Shekinah glory were actually to come down and be touched, they would be instantly consumed.

MH: That’s why we have to be raised with a glorified form.

JH: I grew up in central Florida, where Benny

Hinn used to have a church. I went there as an eighteen-year-old with my youth group. Back then, he was talking a lot about the double anointing of the Holy Spirit—it was all about me getting stuff and affirming my spiritual vitality. I went up for my double-anointing, and everyone who was up there fell down on the ground, except for me. I looked at Benny Hinn, and he looked at me kind of quizzically as if to say, “Uh, kid, you’re supposed to fall over.” I turned around in disgust, handed the vehicle keys to one of the other youth leaders, walked back to the van, and sat there for the two-hour ride home. I thought that the Holy Spirit was avoiding me either because I had hidden sin in my life I hadn’t found yet or because this was wrong. It took hours of agonizing. The foundation of how I viewed spirituality crumbled, and I had nothing to put in its place. Thankfully, I did have a good pastor who met with me after that. I’m not saying that everyone who wants to see a miracle is just looking for some sense of self-affirmation or satisfaction—the desire to feel spiritually fulfilled is a natural one—but there’s a right and a wrong way to go about it. In my own experience, I needed some confirmation that I was doing it right; if I fell over, that was going to be it. But that didn’t work out, so I needed assurance somewhere else, and that’s where my pastor was such a help. He said, “You have assurance, Justin. It’s called the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

“And the best news of all is that if you’re look­ing for the Spirit to work through the ordinary, he’s working in powerful ways when you don’t feel a thing. ”

MH: Isn’t it true that when we look for signs

and wonders to confirm the gospel, we turn to the Scriptures; but when we look for signs and wonders as ends in themselves, we look away from Christ and the gospel? That’s what your story suggests.

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RR: It takes a wise pastor to be able to draw someone back to what’s solid, when the whole thing has collapsed underneath them.

KR: And the best news of all is that if you’re looking for the Spirit to work through the ordinary, he’s working in powerful ways when you don’t feel a thing.

MH: That is so important for people to realize. He

is objectively indwelling you; he is objectively the deposit.

RR: There is objectively peace between you and

God.

KR: I may not feel it—I may be thinking about

the drive home or who knows what—but the Spirit still works.

MH: And he will continue to work. We’re not saying that the Holy Spirit doesn’t create subjective feelings of joy and exultation, but it’s always because of the external word he links us to and opens our hearts to understand and embrace.

One last question: When we open our Bibles and walk through Genesis to Revelation, is it easy for us to miss the fact that the miracles or the signs we’ve been talking about here cluster around fresh stages of redemption and revelation of that redemption rather than as continuous?

R R : They are, and it’s really important for

Christians to know that. In biblical revelation, signs cluster; they’re easily distinguishable.

It’s not like mayo on a ham sandwich evenly spread through the whole history of redemption. They’re clustered around specific points in redemptive history, such as the Exodus, the time of the prophets, and the incarnation and resurrection of Christ.

And Eli says, “No, I didn’t call you. Go back to bed.” Then Samuel hears the voice again. He was hearing God when he never expected to hear God. It wasn’t a still small voice; it was an external voice, and the text says that in those days, God didn’t speak frequently to people. There were no prophets. Now he was calling Samuel.

During the exile, Israel was given a promise that God would free them; but while they were in the exile—even though the Holy Spirit is with them—we’re told that there were no prophets and that they weren’t hearing the word of God. A whole generation passes, and then they return to Israel. Everybody weeps when they discover what they have of the Old Testament. They read it and preach it—a whole generation who had never heard these words before, much less new words of revelation. And then along came John the Baptist with revelation after revelation, and signs and miracles.

KR: After four hundred years of silence from the

prophet Malachi to the apostle John.

MH: The Holy Spirit is here, not to point to him-

self but to Christ as the promise, the one in whom all of God’s promises are yes and amen.

If we look for the Holy Spirit where he highlights Jesus’ person and work, then we can’t go wrong.

Michael Horton is editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation and the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido.

Rod Rosenbladt, now retired, served as professor of theology at Concordia University in Irvine, California, and as an ordained minister in the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.

Kim Riddlebarger is pastor of Christ Reformed Church in Anaheim, California. He is visiting professor of systematic theology at Westminster Seminary California and a frequent contributor to Modern Reformation.

MH: In fact, there are sections of Scripture that

explicitly identify these periods as unique. In 1 Samuel, when Samuel is called by God, we see that this isn’t something that happens every Thursday. He goes to Eli and says, “You called?”

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Justin Holcomb serves as Canon for Vocations in the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida. He also teaches at Reformed Theological Seminary and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

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by

illustration by

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HYWEL R. JONES

THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD SACHIN SHAH

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I

N RECENT DECADES, the ministry of preaching has thankfully been regaining its proper place in churches. After a long period of marginalization (and, in some cases, forfeiture) by the combined forces of liberal theology and secular communi-

cation theory, there is a resurgence in the primacy and power of the preached word during the divine service.1 As part of this recovery of preaching, much has been written about the importance of a hermeneutic that is appropriate to the character of Holy Scripture and a homiletic adapted to the preacher’s audience.2 This distinction between hermeneutics and homiletics is often not appreciated by (would-be) preachers, which results in preaching that is overly didactic and un-prophetic. But correct interpretation and contemporary proclamation are two essential components of authentic preaching. They correspond to John Stott’s description of preaching as a bridge that connects the two banks of a river— the worlds of Scripture and of contemporary hearers.3

Fueling this renewal has been the recovery of a true biblical theology that looks at a text in its time-space slot in redemptive history and revelation. This is not the biblical theology movement of the mid-twentieth century associated with G. E. Wright or John Bright, who saw revelation as an event but not a word, in keeping with the theology of Karl Barth and Emil Brunner. Instead, it harks back to the work of Geerhardus Vos at the turn of the nineteenth century, and it extends to include the whole of the canonical text, not only the parts that record a divine encounter. The late Ed Clowney had a profound influence in this very area. As a result, preaching classes have been given more prominence in the curriculum of seminaries and workshops in conferences have become popular. There is a new eagerness to “preach the [whole] word” by the time-honored method of lectio continua and a greater confidence in the possibility of doing so in a way that does not amount to Spurgeon’s mischievous witticism:

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“ten thousand, thousand are their texts but all their sermons one.”

But in all this there has been what we will call a striking oversight—namely, that in all such literature not much explicit and concentrated attention has been given to the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and certainly not to his power. Numerous biographical studies of individual preachers have been published in connection with “seasons of refreshing,” but one suspects that these do not carry as much weight as they should with those who are driven by the importance of exegetical accuracy and contemporary relevance.

The question can therefore be raised as to whether, in the campaign to restore the whole Bible as the “word” for preaching, there has been a tendency to take the ministry of the Holy Spirit for granted. If that is so, then how should that assumption be regarded? Can anything be said for it? Certainly—something can and should be said, and it will be in a moment.

But something else should also be said, and the

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concern that this latter point might be forgotten instead of being restored to prominence in all appropriate ways and places is what animates this essay. There is not much of an emphasis at all on praying for the Holy Spirit’s power to descend on the ministry of the word and on the preacher and hearer alike. This is a telltale sign.

Is that prayer superfluous now that we have the whole Bible and the skills to interpret any passage in it? Or is it doctrinally unacceptable?

These are uncomfortable but necessary questions for those who uphold written Scripture as the word of God: Is the Holy Spirit “forgotten” or 4 “unknown”? Is his presence and activity taken for granted and therefore minimized?

LIGHT FROM THE PAST There are five points of reference for our subject we ought to bear in mind. The first two are wholly positive; the next two are of indirect benefit in that they provoke at least strong reservations.

The last is a bit like the proverbial curate’s egg. It is therefore arguable whether our age is the best or the worst of times for considering our subject, but that is a theoretical matter compared with “the need of the times.” In favor of its being “the best of times” are the following two facts.

1. The Corpus of Holy Scripture Has Been Determined In the latter half of the fourth century, the sixtysix books of the Bible were firmly recognized as the written word of God in the Christian church.

The thirty-nine books of the Old Testament were endorsed at the Council of Jamnia after AD 70, and the rabbis excluded the apocryphal books from that list. In a similar way (that is, by the testimony of the Spirit validating certain books in the consciousness of churches), the twenty-seven books of our New Testament were endorsed as the word of God at the Council of Carthage in AD 397. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Lutheran and Anglican churches recognized apocryphal books as being acceptable for “example of life and instruction of manners,” but Genevan

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churches did not. No Reformed tradition, therefore, recognized them as part of the church’s rule of faith. Extra-canonical books may be of interest and use to biblical scholars, but they should not be regarded as part of “the word” to be preached from, and certainly not be given any decisive weight in relation to any Christian doctrine or the relationship between Scripture and the Spirit.

2. The Divine Personhood of the Holy Spirit Has Been Confessed The personhood of the Holy Spirit, along with that of the Father and of the Son in the Godhead, was expressed in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed in AD 381. The relevant words are “the Lord and Giver of Life who, together with the Father and the Son, is worshipped and glorified.”

The full “membership” of the Spirit in the Holy Trinity therefore does not need to be established as a point of doctrine today, but it does need to be understood (insofar as is possible) and strongly 5 maintained in both worship and preaching.

God is a tri-unity of persons. Each person of the Godhead acts in coherence with the other two (circumincessio), or the unity of the Godhead would be destroyed. There cannot be any competitiveness between them. God is a God of shalom.

No person in the Trinity therefore acts (or could act) in an idiosyncratic way, but each acts freely and sovereignly: that is, when, where, and how he wills. This freedom also entails acting with varying degrees of power to effect a purpose that is also shared equally by the others. Although a specific task is predicated of each person in creation and redemption, the other two are neither uninterested nor inactive in those same acts.

In the creed just mentioned, the Spirit is also designated as the one “who spoke by the prophets.” This early formal connection between the Scriptures (Old Testament) and the Spirit via the prophets pointed to the coming of the Messiah in the New Testament era. This was perhaps due to the church’s wish to reject a Marcionite excision from the New Testament of anything to do with the Old, a fear of sects—for example Montanism—or more probably to its desire to veto Arian or SemiArian exegesis of the Old Testament. The Spirit

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“MERCIFULLY, HOLY SCRIPTURE EXISTS AND THE HOLY SPIRIT IS STILL ACTIVE THE FORMER IS DEFINABLE IN THE SENSE THAT IT CONSISTS OF SPECIFIC TEXTS, BUT—ALARMINGLY—THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IS NOT AS EASILY DISCERNIBLE TO MANY CHRISTIANS.”

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and the word are therefore not to be equated. The former is God; the latter is not, seeing as it is the product of the Spirit (2 Tim. 3:16–17). This means that the Spirit is as free and sovereign in his activity as is both the Father and the Son, and that the word that is his product is but his chief instru6 ment. He remains the agent.

In favor of its being “the worst of times” is the unavoidable fact that the elements of the heritage just referred to have been progressively and largely squandered in the past three hundred years or so. Although they were never without a challenge of some sort (for example, the recognition of extrabiblical tradition in the Eastern and Roman Catholic churches, whether written or oral, and the growing detachment of Spirit from word in Quakerism and Romanticism), revisionist movements have arisen with regard to them in churches that owe their existence to the sixteenthcentury Reformation. These movements—the Scriptures, the Spirit, and the relationship between the two—have had considerable influence, and so the Protestant world has been considerably altered in its belief, character, and internal alignments.

THE HOLY SCRIPTURES In the eighteenth century, the Enlightenment built on Kant’s denial of any one-to-one connection between the meaning of Scripture’s texts and the supernatural realm. The books of the Bible became human (rather than divine-human) products, and so their trustworthiness was made subject to human verification and their value dependent on human approval. The well-known result is that the sola scriptura principle became threatened and was progressively abandoned.

Attempts that were made to stem the tide in the nineteenth century (that is, on the European continent) by Hengstenberg, Krummacher, Keil and Delitzsch, and Oehler were met with little success, whereas Warfield, Machen, and others were more successful in the United States.

In the decades after the Second World War, a neo-evangelical movement arose, centered on the

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endeavors of Fuller Theological Seminary, that restricted the infallibility of the Bible to matters of faith and conduct. By way of reaction to this, an International Council of Biblical Inerrancy was founded in 1978 in which the term “inerrancy” was used so that the full scope of the term “infallibility” might be maintained. In arguing this case, great emphasis (understandably) was placed on the Holy Spirit’s work in verbal inspiration that resulted in the inner harmony of the contents of Scripture, and addresses given at the council’s congresses were published during the ten years or so of its existence. It was terminated in 1986 because of the realization that the debate was not only over the text, but also over interpretative methods. The Chicago Statement marked the conclusion of this necessary enterprise.

THE HOLY SPIRIT Two twentieth-century movements need to be brought into the picture here—namely, the ecumenical movement and the charismatic movement. The former had a nineteenth-century precursor in the World Student Christian Federation, and the latter was an outgrowth of older Pentecostal denominations. Both gained significance in the years following the Second World War. The ecumenical movement may be said to have begun in 1910, with a concern about the great hindrance posed to the church’s mission by her dividedness. In the years before 1939, it added a social dimension to its missionary vision, but each of these retained its distinctiveness until 1970.

Since then, a larger multi-religious and socioeconomic preoccupation has replaced the pursuit of a worldwide ecclesiastical union between the churches based on the settlement of doctrinal differences. In this movement, the Spirit’s ministry has been effectively disconnected from the production of Holy Scripture and from bearing unique testimony to the sole mediatorship of Jesus Christ. Instead, the Spirit is linked with a zeitgeist composed of an all-embracing ecclesiastical tradition, a pursuit of social justice, and the religious 7 awareness of non-Christian religions.

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The charismatic movement originated in the mid-1960s. Although it was distinct from the Pentecostal denominations, it had elements in common with them—for example, a two-stage understanding of the work of the Spirit being necessary for every Christian, evidenced by glossolalia. From a psychological and sociological perspective, this movement may be considered as a result of the breakup of the structures of family, community, and ecclesiastical life due to the Second World War. Elevating the importance of the individual, it caught on and soon swamped those earlier forms of Pentecostalism and the Christian Brethren. It even infiltrated the ecumenical movement, producing renewal movements in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox communions. It has now morphed into a kaleidoscope of opinion and activity that has profoundly challenged the theologies and worship practices of many church traditions, but its main feature is its emphasis on the experience(s) of the individual Christian.

J. I. Packer addressed this charismatic phenomenon in his book Keep in Step with the Spirit. The aim of his book was to bring an orthodox pneumatology to bear on charismatic pneumatology by way of biblical exegesis and theological evaluation. There is an immense amount of the soundest sense in these pages, but not that much on the role of the Spirit in preaching. His views on that are, of course, well known and are found elsewhere.

Gerald Bray points out that a focus on the Spirit’s work to the neglect of that of the Father and the Son in certain forms of the charismatic movement makes it . . . difficult to tell what connection these [experiences] have with the gospel message of sin, righteousness and judgment. If nothing outside the self really matters, if it is what I feel and experience that gives me the assurance that I am on the right track, then no objective criteria will be allowed to interfere with my judgment. This attitude is common in certain charismatic circles, and it is the result of ignoring the Trinitarian context of the Spirit’s promises and work. Its inadequacy can be seen in its fundamental

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self-centeredness and its tendency to reduce the knowledge of God to a series of unusual human experiences that have no obvious 8 purpose beyond themselves.

Something of relevance to our subject ought to be learned from these movements, because they have forfeited the uniqueness of Holy Scripture and of the Holy Spirit, as well as the proper relationship between them. How many times does one hear, “The Bible is a book like any other book”? How often has the Spirit been connected with the stirrings of the human spirit and neither with the text of the Bible nor with its central focus, the Christ of God? A morass of intellectualism and mysticism, sacramentalism and sacerdotalism and, of late, environmentalism has broken the connection between the Spirit of truth and the text of Scripture and the Spirit of Christ and that of Man. Mercifully, Holy Scripture exists and the Holy Spirit is still active. The former is definable in the sense that it consists of specific texts, but— alarmingly—the work of the Holy Spirit is not as easily discernible to many Christians. The question of how to differentiate between the Spirit and the “spirits” would not occur to many people, let alone the answer to it—and that in spite of the New Testament’s description of the Spirit as being “true” and “holy”!

Preaching lost its supreme place in the church because the church lost the Bible. Consequently, the church forfeited the power of the Spirit and lost her influence in the world. The pulpit, the pew, and the pavement are never as far apart spiritually as they may be spatially. The Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of truth, will never marginalize the Bible and exalt the church, nor will he minimize the Lord Jesus Christ by drawing attention to himself. Nor will he deny the universal fallenness of human beings.

THE HOLY SPIRIT IN RELATION TO HOLY SCRIPTURE There is one other matter from the past that must not be overlooked. It is the position

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“The Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of truth, will never mar­ginalize the Bible and exalt the church, nor will he minimize the Lord Jesus Christ by drawing attention to himself. ”

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established as a result of the sixteenth-century Reformation, which correlated word and Spirit in such a decisive and definitive way that B. B. Warfield called Calvin “the theologian 9 of the Holy Spirit” and the late John Murray wrote that “the Word and the Spirit was the keynote of the Reformation. This was the legacy 10 of Protestantism.” The written word was the product of the living Spirit who still spoke by means of it. The Scriptures were therefore the Spirit’s voice, as is demonstrated in the Epistle to the Hebrews by the use of the present tense “says” instead of the usual past tense of the verb “written.” The Bible was (is) alive. From all that has been advanced so far, there are two points that must be emphasized.

1. The Word Is Conjoined to the Holy Spirit and Must Never Be Disconnected The Holy Scriptures are God’s inerrant and sufficient word, and wherever and whenever any part of them is properly explained, God speaks by it. This means that the Scriptures do not become the word of God—that is what they already are and what they will never cease to be, whatever other books written about them may say and however many copies of them may be sold! The Bible may one day cease to be the world’s best-seller (perhaps it has already), but that does not change the essential nature of its being or its power.

Any and every text from it may be truly prefaced with the words “Thus saith [says] the Lord.” When we say “the power of the Holy Spirit,” we’re not talking about something that brings God’s silence or absence to an end; he is near whenever the book is opened, and he speaks and acts. Nor may his power be sought as if he were not present in and with the word.

The powerful voice of God in the word of God has some self-evidencing quality in every conscience—whether men will believe or not. And there is also a “word” (sensus divinitatis) that testifies to God’s existence, wisdom, power, and justice in the moral constitution of every human being (Rom. 1:18–2:16).

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2. The Holy Spirit Is “Greater” Than the Word and Must Not Be Imprisoned in It As a Divine Person, the Holy Spirit is an agent and the Holy Scriptures are his chief instrument.

His are the arms and hands that make the sword of the word “two-edged, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow,” and his are the eyes that “discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12). He uses the Scriptures as sovereign but in accord with the purpose of the Father and of the Son. He therefore works where he wills and as he wills, but in differing degrees of might as it pleases him. This is nothing but the principle that underlies the modus operandi in relation to the distribution of the charismata referred to in 1 Corinthians 12:4– 11. And it is also present and active in degrees of grace given to believers and held out to them as part of growth in holiness. The Spirit has been given, but he has more—much more—of the fullness of Christ to give.

What, then, is “the power” of the Holy Spirit?

This question has to be asked because we have been acknowledging that the word is never without the Spirit and yet have been arguing that there is a greater degree of the Spirit’s power.

What does this greater degree look like? Simply that when we talk about the powerful activity of the Spirit, what we mean is that he pursues his standard, regular work as the Spirit of truth and holiness with far more intensity and extensiveness than at other times. This matter relates to “boldness,” “plainness of speech,” or “a door of utterance” (Acts 4:13, 29, 31; 1 Cor. 16:8–9; 2 Cor. 2:12; 3:12; Eph. 6:19–20; Col. 4:3). They are synonymous expressions and are the concomitants of the new covenant. They do not merely refer to the opportunity to speak (much less to the existence of human need), but to the kind of speech that is in keeping with the character of the gospel of the glory of Christ. That was something that had to be prayed for—even by apostles. Paul knew the content of the gospel and what was to be said, but he also knew that he was dependent on the aid of the Spirit to say it as it should be said, so that people might receive it as it ought

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“As a Divine Person, the Holy Spirit is an agent and the Holy Scriptures are his chief instrument.”

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to be received (see 1 Cor. 2:1–4). He prayed for that, and he asked the churches to do so as well.

This—and its effects—is the divinely given extra.

This work is promised and described by the Lord Jesus Christ toward the conclusion of his Upper Room Discourse. In John 16:8–15, Jesus speaks of the coming of the Spirit and his ministry in the world (vv. 8–11) and in the church (vv.

12–15). While his words have a special sense for the eleven disciples who are to become apostles, 11 they do not refer exclusively to them. Jesus is speaking of his disciples who are to be his witnesses, but also of all who believe on him. The Spirit will endorse their testimony to unbelievers, convincing them of their unbelief, of their inadequate righteousness, and of their liability to judgment. He will also disclose the Savior to them 12 as being God’s exclusive and replete Mediator.

The book of Acts describes such preaching and believing, both by those who preach and those who come to believe. A comparison between the Gospels and the book of Acts on both those counts almost reveals a different world. There is no more failing to understand, forsaking, and fleeing on the part of the disciples, and there is fearing on the part of the unbelieving Jewish and Gentile world. People turn to God from idols to serve him and wait for his Son from heaven.

Others spread the message, and it travels faster than human instruments can take it. In such a setting, the Spirit is active beyond the regular witnessing ministry of the church; for example, Rahab had “heard” but not from the Israelites, just as Macedonians had heard but not from Paul or the Thessalonians. He may even stir minds and consciences directly (by dreams!) and bring them to the truth or bring the truth to them (see Job 33:14–30). But this activity, which is apart from Scripture, is never in contradiction of the truth of the word of God but in harmony with it. Such a change is evidence of the “greater things” Jesus predicted the Holy Spirit would do as a result of his glorification (John 7:38). Time and again something like Pentecost happened, and knowledge, joy, peace, and power flooded the churches and flowed over their environment.

The Puritan John Owen desired these things and described them as follows:

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When God shall be pleased to give unto the people who are called by his name, in a more abundant manner, “pastors after his own heart, to feed them with knowledge and understanding”, when he shall revive and increase a holy, humble, zealous, self-denying, powerful ministry, by a more plentiful effusion of his Spirit from above: then, and not until then, may we hope to see the pristine glory and beauty of our church restored unto its primitive 13 state and condition.

Since those words were written in 1676, something of that order has happened at many places and in many times. The like needs to—and can!—happen again.

HWYEL R. JONES is professor emeritus of practical theology at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido.

1. Carl F. H. Henry documented this in God, Revelation and Authority, 6 vols. (Waco: Word Books, 1976). David Wells did the same in No Place for Truth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), as did the French sociologist Jacques Ellul in The Humiliation of the Word (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985). Ellul wrote, “Anyone wishing to save humanity today must first of all save the Word” (quoted in Wells, 187).

2. See the writings of Sidney Greidanus, Haddon Robinson, and Bryan Chappell.

3. John Stott, Between Two Worlds: The Challenge of Preaching Today (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 137ff. Klaas Runia also uses this image in his Moore College Lectures of 1980, The Sermon under Attack (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1983).

4. Sinclair Ferguson, The Holy Spirit (IVP Academic, 1997).

5. Robert Letham, The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, Theology, and Worship (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2004).

6. Dennis E. Johnson, Him We Proclaim: Preaching Christ from All the Scriptures (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2007).

7. For further information and evaluation, see the author’s Gospel and Church (Bridgend: Bryntirion Press, 1979); also, Only One Way (Nottingham: Day One, 1996).

8. Gerald Bray, “Evangelicals Losing Their Way: The Doctrine of the Trinity,” in The Compromised Church, ed. John H. Armstrong (Wheaton: Crossway, 1998).

9. B. B. Warfield, Calvin and Calvinism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1931), 21.

10. John Murray, review of The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience by G. F. Nuttall, in Collected Writings of John Murray, vol. 3 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1982), 325.

11. See Andreas J. Kostenberger, The Missions of Jesus and His Disciples according to the Fourth Gospel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), esp.

142–53.

12. See D. A. Carson, “The Function of the Paraclete in John 16:7–11,” Journal of Biblical Literature 98 (1979): 547–66.

13. John Owen, “Nature and Causes of Apostasy from the Gospel,” in The Works of John Owen, vol. 7 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1966), 195.

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by

illustration by

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NICK BATZIG

THE ROLE OF THE SPIRIT IN CURRENT TRINITARIAN CONTROVERSIES SACHIN SHAH

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T

HE YEAR 2016 will almost certainly go down in the annals of church history as the year of the “Great Evangelical Trinitarian Controversy.” A debate, which had brewed for well over a decade through the publication of various

books and articles, came to a head through a series of blog posts published in the summer of 2016. The defense of historic doctrinal formulations regarding the Triune God, the Person of Christ, inner-Trinitarian relations, and the implications of those relations for gender roles are among the more substantial issues at stake in the debate. The interconnectedness of the matters involved in the controversy makes just about any attempt to distill the essence of the debate into a summary form an extremely daunting task. However, there is one supremely important component of the debate that has been largely neglected—namely, the role of the Holy Spirit in the ontological (i.e., immanent) and economic inter-Trinitarian relations.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND When the Trinitarian debate erupted in June 2016, certain Reformed theologians such as Liam Goligher, Carl Trueman, and Mark Jones wrote a series of ardent critiques of what has come to be known as the “eternal subordination of the 1 Son” (ESS) position, a position propagated by such notable evangelical theologians as Wayne Grudem, Bruce Ware, and Owen Strachen. The former insisted that the ESS position severely undermines Nicene, Reformation, and post-Reformation formulations concerning the unity and 2 equality of the three members of the Godhead.

Several opponents of the ESS position have gone so far as to suggest that those propagating it have essentially espoused a form of tritheism.

The ESS position made its way into evangelical circles in 1994 through its appearance in Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology. Although several theologians drew attention to it in the

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later years of the twentieth century, the debate itself made headway into the evangelical and Reformed world when Kevin Giles, an Anglican theologian, critiqued certain aspects of a lecture Bruce Ware delivered at the 2006 national meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS).

In that lecture, Ware asserted: Scripture clearly teaches (and the history of doctrine affirms) that the Father and Son are fully equal in their deity—as each possesses fully the divine nature—yet the eternal and inner-Trinitarian FatherSon relationship is marked, among other things, by an authority and submission structure in which the Father is eternally in authority over the Son and the Son eter3 nally in submission to the Father.

In response, Giles charged Ware of disseminating a form of tritheism. He wrote: To teach that the Son must obey the Father, and the Spirit must obey the Father and the Son, implies each has their own will. For all eternity the Son must submit his will to the Father’s will, and the Spirit his will to the Father and the Son. Three separated “persons,” each with their own will, is the error of tri-theism. . . . Dr. Ware publicly admitted he believed that each divine person had 4 their own will.

Although Ware did not explicitly state in his 2006 ETS lecture that he believes that each of the members of the Godhead has his own unique will, he seemed to imply as much when he said: It is the Father’s prerogative to sanctify and send the Son into the world, and by this he demonstrates that the Son is “inferior” to the Father . . . the Son follows the Father’s command and submits to the Father’s will.

For some time, the ESS issue seemed to fade out of public view. Then in May 2015, Rachel Green Miller wrote two blog posts highlighting concerns she had with the ESS position and its

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5 implications for complementarianism. Her posts, in turn, brought the Trinitarian controversy into the blogosphere.

In June 2016, Aimee Byrd invited Liam Goligher to write two guest posts at the Mortification of Spin—a website of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals—in which Goligher offered a stringent critique of the ESS position. These two posts then set off a chain reaction that intensified the debate at an alarmingly rapid rate. In the first of those posts, Goligher wrote:

To speculate, suggest, or say, as some do, that there are three minds, three wills, and three powers with the Godhead is to move beyond orthodoxy (into neo-tritheism) and to verge on idolatry (since it posits a different God). It should certainly exclude such people from holding office in the church of God. On the other hand, to say, suggest, or speculate that God’s life in heaven sets a social agenda for humans is to bring God down to our level.

Those provocative words served as the stimulus for pushing the debate to the height to which it rose in the summer of 2016.

In his rejoinder to Goligher, Grudem wrote a post at Reformation21 in which he sought to defend the ESS position from a historical standpoint. In that post, Grudem appealed to various Reformed and evangelical theologians in an effort to lend historical support to the ESS position. During and after Goligher and Grudem’s interactions, many theologians weighed in on both sides of the debate with regard to the seemingly countless interrelated parts. While the overwhelming focus of the ESS debate has been on the eternal generation of the Son—and the relationship between the Father and the Son in the ontological and economic Trinity—our understanding of the personhood and personal properties of the Holy Spirit is equally at stake.

Many of the proponents of the ESS position have insisted that their belief that the Son of God is eternally submissive to the Father is based largely on exegetical considerations. As

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noble as that may sound, we must acknowledge at the outset that it is impossible to separate exegesis from systematic theology, and that it is impossible to detach systematic theology from church-historical developments of the doctrines 6 into which our exegetical conclusions fit. As is true with regard to our understanding of the deity and personhood of the Son, we must establish a few of the major systematic categories that contain our exegetical conclusions regarding the divine personhood and personal subsistence of the Holy Spirit.

THE DIVINE PERSONHOOD OF THE SPIRIT Prior to the widespread influence of the Pentecostal and charismatic movements, it was not uncommon for pastors and theologians to refer to the Holy Spirit as “the forgotten member of the Trinity.” While this is no longer so, Sinclair Ferguson has rightly insisted that for many the Spirit remains an “anonymous, faceless aspect 7 of the divine being.” There are several reasons for a lack of understanding about the Person of the Holy Spirit: one is our own ignorance of the Scriptures and church-historical formulations; another is the fact that the Scriptures speak sparingly about the Third Person of the Godhead; and another is the fact that the Trinitarian debates of the early church were of a different nature when concerning the Son of God over against those that focused on the Spirit of God. Christological debates always centered on his deity and two natures. Pneumatological debates were over the personhood and relation of the Spirit to the other members of the Godhead. Herman Bavinck explained: With reference to the second person, the crux of controversy was almost always his deity—generally speaking, his personhood was not in dispute—in the case of the Holy Spirit it was his personhood that primarily sparked the polemics. If his personality was acknowledged, his deity followed 8 naturally.

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The same truths about the Spirit are taught in both the Old and New Testaments. However, while the opening words of the Old Testament make mention of the work of the Spirit of God (Gen. 1:2), the deity and personhood of the Spirit are not as evident from the preparatory revelation of the Old Testament. There are clear allusions to the divine personality of the Spirit scattered throughout the pages of the Old Testament; for example, in his dying speech, David acknowledged, “The Spirit of the Lord speaks by me” (2 Sam. 23:2).

Impersonal forces do not speak—persons do.

Additionally, when the Lord set the dry bones in the valley before the prophet Ezekiel, he commanded him to “prophesy to the Spirit . . . [and] say to the Spirit, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “Come from the four winds, O Spirit, and breathe on these slain, that they may live”’” (Ezek. 37:9).

Again, the Lord commanded his prophet to pray to the Spirit, not to an impersonal force.

In the New Testament, the divine personality of the Spirit comes to a full and clear light. Bavinck gave a helpful summarization of the teaching of the New Testament about the personhood of the Spirit when he wrote: He is spoken of as a person. The personal [demonstrative] pronoun “he” (ἐκεινος) is used with reference to him (John 15:26; 16:13–14); he is called “Paraclete” (παρακλητος), John 15:26; cf. 1 John 2:1); “another Paraclete” (John 14:16), who speaks of himself in the first person (Acts 13:2). All kinds of personal capacities and activities are attributed to him: searching (1 Cor. 2:10–11), judging (Acts 15:28), hearing (John 16:13), speaking (Acts 13:2; Rev. 2:7, 11, 17, 29; 3:6, 13, 22; 14:13; 22:17), willing (1 Cor. 12:11), teaching (John 14:26), interceding (Rom. 8:27), witnessing (John 15:26), and so on. He is coordinated with the Father and the Son (Matt. 28:19; 1 Cor. 12:4–6; 2 Cor. 13:13; Rev. 1:4). None of this is possible, we think, unless 9 the Spirit, too, is truly God. In addition to using the personal demonstrative pronoun when speaking of the Spirit, Jesus

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“The Father is the one who begets, the Son is the one who is begotten, and the Spirit is the one who proceeds from the Father and the Son.”

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defended the divine personhood of the Spirit by appealing to the Spirit’s authorship of Psalm 110:1. While disputing with the Pharisees about his own divine nature, Jesus said, “David, in the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord,’ saying . . . ” In similar fashion, the writer of Hebrews appealed to the Spirit’s personal and divine authorship of Psalm 95 when he wrote, “As the Holy Spirit says: ‘Today, if you hear his voice . . .’” In both places, there is a revelation of the Spirit as a communicative divine person. Again, it is important for us to note that persons, not impersonal forces, speak.

If this were not proof enough, then the account of Ananias and Saphira lying to the Spirit serves to further prove both the Spirit’s personhood and deity. When the apostle Peter confronted Ananias, he said, “Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?” (Acts 5:3). In the next verse, Peter acknowledges the deity of the Spirit when he tells Ananias, “You have not lied to men but to God” (Acts 5:4). The apostle Peter, in no uncertain terms, refers to the Holy Spirit as God.

DIVINE PERSONAL PROPERTIES When theologians have sought to distinguish between the personal subsistence of the three persons who are one in essence, they have done so by employing the category of personal properties. These personal properties delineate the distinction between the subsistence of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit in the Godhead.

As Cornelius Van Til stated, “We need both the absolute cotermineity of each attribute and each person with the whole being of God, and the genuine significance of the distinctions of 10 the attributes and the persons.” The Father is the one who begets, the Son is the one who is begotten, and the Spirit is the one who proceeds from the Father and the Son. Begetting, being eternally begotten, and proceeding are merely properties by which the three persons of the Godhead are distinguished within the whole being of God. Personal properties do not, in any way whatsoever, diminish or

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divide the one essence, mind, and will of God. The personal properties of the members of the Godhead belong to the manner of personal subsistence of each person of the God who is one in essence. Likewise, the personal subsistence of each member of the Godhead is derived from the divine essence, not from the personal subsistence of one of the other members of the Godhead. The Son does not derive his existence from the Father.

The Spirit does not derive his existence from the Father and the Son. The Son and the Spirit are both eternal in their divine existence; and, together with the Father, the Son and Spirit are the one true and living God. Again, Bavinck articulated this well when he wrote: The generation [of the Son] is eternal generation (αἰωνιος γεννησις). . . . There was no time when the Son did not exist. . . .

The Father is not Father before the existence of the Son but through the existence of the Son. . . . There is no separation: the Father does not exist apart from the Son. . . . The Father and the Son have all the divine attributes in common: the Son and the Father are one. It is not alongside but in God that we worship the Son. . . . The Son has the same wisdom, truth, and reason as the Father (αὐτοσοφια, αὐτοαληθεια, 11 αὐτολογος . . .).

Although this had already been formulated and articulated by the time of Origen, Bavinck noted that even “Origen calls into play the aid of subordinationism, and reaching back behind Tertullian, he again derives the Trinity from the person of the Father, not from the being of 12 God.” That error was rejected by the time of Augustine. The ESS position returns to a form of subordinationism in the divine being.

A miscalculation here impacts our doctrine of the Spirit in the same way it affects our doctrine of the Son. The New Testament distinguishes the Spirit from the Father and the Son as being the member of the Godhead who proceeds. He is the gift of God. As Augustine insisted, “The Holy Spirit . . . was already a gift also before He was given. . . . [A] gift may exist even before it is

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given.” Here, Augustine is emphasizedthat the personal property of the Spirit is not an action of the Spirit. Rather, it is his distinguishing property. Though the work of the Spirit, in the economy of redemption, will involve an action that corresponds to the property he uniquely possesses, we must not speak of the personal property of the Spirit, in the being of God, as coterminous with his procession from the Father and the Son. Whatever God does in his works of creation, providence, and redemption—either in the decree (i.e., ad intra) or in time (i.e., ad extra)—must be understood to be analogous to the personal property of each member of the Godhead, rather than being identical with those properties. In other words, the Spirit is sent from the Father and the Son to the people of God in order to apply the finished work of the Son, because it is the “property” of the Spirit to proceed.

Reformed theologians have occasionally employed the moniker “subordination” when speaking of the order of the subsistence of the persons of the Godhead. When they have done so, however, they have spoken in terms of the taxis regarding manner of existence and manner of working outwardly, rather than with regard to the possession of the one divine substance. Geerhardus Vos wrote: Although these three persons possess one and the same divine substance, Scripture nevertheless teaches us that, concerning their personal existence, the Father is the first, the Son the second, and the Holy Spirit the third, that the Son is of the Father, the Spirit of the Father and the Son. Further, their workings outwardly reflect this order of personal existence, since the Father works through the Son, and the Father and Son work through the Spirit. There is, therefore, subordination as to personal manner of existence and manner of working, but no subordination regarding pos14 session of the one divine substance.

Though acknowledging some priority in the order of the personal subsistence of the members of the Godhead, Vos clearly rejected any

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“THE SON DOES NOT DERIVE HIS EXISTENCE FROM THE FATHER. THE SPIRIT DOES NOT DERIVE HIS EXISTENCE FROM THE FATHER AND THE SON. THE SON AND THE SPIRIT ARE BOTH ETERNAL IN THEIR DIVINE EXISTENCE; AND, TOGETHER WITH THE FATHER, THE SON AND SPIRIT ARE THE ONE TRUE AND LIVING GOD.”

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idea of subordination in the possession of the one divine substance. The members of the Godhead 15 “are distinct as to their order and economy” but not according to the divine essence. Neither the Son nor the Spirit is subordinate to the Father in essence. There can be absolutely no subordination in the essence, intelligence, or will of the three persons within the Godhead.

To insist that there is even functional subordination as to the will of the members of the Godhead is to put the biblical doctrine of the Trinity in a precarious position. It is because of their apparent confusion on this point that some have suggested that the ESS position falls into a functional tritheism.

DIVINE PERICHORESIS The fact that each member of the Godhead has his own unique personal property does not, in any way whatsoever, destroy the unity and equality of the Godhead. Personal properties are not outward actions. They do not impinge on the essential deity of each member or the unity of the Godhead on the whole. Christian theologians have embraced the concept of perichoresis (i.e., the mutual and comprehensive indwelling of each person) in order to defend the full deity of each member of the Godhead while affirming the unique personal properties of each member.

Charles Hodge explained the nature of perichoresis when he wrote: As the essence of the Godhead is common to the several persons, they have a common intelligence, will and power. There are not in God three intelligences, three wills, three efficiencies. The three are one God, and, therefore, have one mind and will. This intimate union was expressed in the Greek church by the word perichoresis, which the Latin words “inextentia,” “inhabitation” and 16 “intercommunio” were used to explain.

The idea of perichoresis is essential for maintaining the distinction of personal properties among the three members of the Godhead, while

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affirming the essential unity of essence, intelligence, and will in the one God.

THE ONTOLOGICAL (IMMANENT)/ ECONOMIC TRINITY When we speak of God, we must do so in one of two ways: we must either speak of him as he is with regard to his being in himself (i.e., ontology), or as he is with regard to his acts toward his creation (i.e., economy). This crucial distinction allows us to maintain the Creator/ creature distinction, the simplicity of God, the aseity of God, the immutability of God, and the equality of the divine persons. Additionally, this distinction allows us to speak of the voluntary submission of the incarnate Christ to the Father—as well as the willing procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son—in the work of creation, providence, and redemption. It is for this reason that theologians commonly distinguished between the ontological Trinity and the economic Trinity. The first category refers to God in himself, and the second refers to God as he works toward that which is without.

Proponents of the ESS position seem to err most significantly at this vital point. Instead of keeping the ontological relations distinct from—yet interrelated to—the economic relation of the members of the Godhead, they have conflated them. There is correspondence, but not uniformity, between the two categories. The error runs deeper when proponents of the ESS position—either explicitly or implicitly—have stated that each member of the Godhead has his own will. To suggest that the Son eternally submits to the will of the Father in the immanent Trinity is to deny the historic Nicene teaching that the three persons of the Godhead have one essence, mind, and will. Rather than speaking of three wills, it is only appropriate to speak of a tri-consciousness in the one divine consciousness. Cornelius Van Til captured this vital distinction when he wrote, “Unity and plurality are equally ultimate in the Godhead. . . . God is a one-conscious being, and yet he is 17 also a tri-conscious being.” Suggesting that

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there is tri-consciousness among the members of the Godhead is not at all the same as saying that each member has his own will. It is merely to say that the Son knows himself to be the Son in distinction to the Father, and that the Spirit is conscious that he is not the Father and the Son. Failing to make this distinction is one of the most significant theological errors on the part of proponents of ESS/ERAS (“eternal relational authority-submission”).

In his 2006 ETS lecture, Ware conflated the ontological and economic categories when he said, “What distinguishes the Father from the Son and each of them from the Spirit is the particular roles each has within the Trinity—both immanent and economic—and the respective relationships that each has with the other divine Persons.” The problem with Ware’s position is that he suggests the Son—and by way of implication, the Spirit—is subordinate to the Father in the ontological (immanent) Trinity. To insist on any subordination in the interpersonal relations in the immanent Trinity is to justly open oneself up to the charge of tritheism. It is a move away from classic orthodox Trinitarian formulations into a sphere of novelty and—at best—heterodoxy. Furthermore, it is to blur the ontological and economic categories in such a way as to functionally make them null and void.

It is debatable whether or not proponents of the ESS position have fallen into a form of tritheism. However, of this much we can be sure: While there are a number of biblical doctrines that are of a secondary or tertiary nature, the doctrine of the Trinity is not one of them. There is no greater truth with which we may fill our minds than that which concerns the one true and living God who has revealed himself to us in his word as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

When we turn to his word, we find that blessed truth that has been articulated and defended by the church throughout the centuries—that each member of the Godhead is “the same in substance, equal in power and glory.” We must stand against any insistence of subordination among the persons of the Godhead in his being.

Not to do so is to jeopardize the self-revelation of the one true and living God.

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REV. NICK BATZIG is pastor of New Covenant Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Savannah, Georgia. He is the editor of Refor­ mation21 and The Christward Collective. He blogs at Feeding on Christ and writes regularly for Ligonier Ministries. You can find him on Twitter (@nick_batzig) and Facebook.

1. Proponents of the ESS position have also referred to it as either the “eternal functional subordination” (EFS) or the “eternal relational authority-submission” (ERAS) position.

2. See Carl Trueman, “Fahrenheit 381,” http://www.alliancenet.org/ mos/postcards-from-palookaville/fahrenheit-381#.WjQ1F7Q-dE7.

3. Bruce Ware, “Equal in Essence, Distinct in Roles: Eternal Functional Authority and Submission among the Essentially Equal Divine Persons of the Godhead,” lecture presented to the Evangelical Theological Society National Meeting, Washington, D.C., November 2006; audio recording at http://www.wordmp3.com/details. aspx?id=7384.

4. Kevin Giles, “The Evangelical Theological Society and the Doctrine of the Trinity,” Evangelical Quarterly 80.4 (2008): 338.

5. Miller’s posts correspond with the release of God in Three Persons: Unity of Essence, Distinction of Persons, Implications for Life, ed.

Bruce Ware and John Starke (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015). See Rachel Miller, “Continuing Down this Path, Complementarians Lose,” https://adaughterofthereformation.wordpress.com/2015/05/22/ continuing-down-this-path-complementarians-lose/; and “Does the Son Eternally Submit to the Authority of the Father?” https:// adaughterofthereformation.wordpress.com/2015/05/28/ does-the-son-eternally-submit-to-the-authority-of-the-father/.

6. For a defense of the interdependence of various theological sciences in the interpretive process, see Moisés Silva, “The Case for Calvinistic Hermeneutics,” in Introduction to Biblical Hermeneutics, ed. Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. and Moisés Silva (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 251–69. Silva writes, “Sometimes we make the fact fit our preconceptions and thus distort it. The remedy, however, is neither to deny that we have those preconceptions nor to try to suppress them, for we would only be deceiving ourselves. We are much more likely to be conscious of those preconceptions if we deliberately seek to identify them and then use them in the exegetical process. That way, when we come across a fact that resists the direction our interpretation is taking, we are better ready to recognize the anomaly for what it is, namely, an indication that our interpretive scheme is faulty and must be modified. In contrast, exegetes who convince themselves that, through pure philological and historical techniques—they can understand the Bible directly—that is, without the mediation of prior exegetical, theological and philosophical commitments—are less likely to perceive the real character of exegetical difficulties.”

7. Sinclair Ferguson, The Holy Spirit (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1996), 12.

8. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation, ed. John Bolt and John Vriend, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 311.

9. Bavinck, 277–78.

10. Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1979), 229ff.

11. Bavinck, 284–85.

12. Bavinck, 285.

13. Augustine of Hippo, “On the Trinity,” in St. Augustine: On the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal Treatises, Moral Treatises, ed. Philip Schaff, trans.

Arthur West Haddan, vol. 3 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature, 1887), 95.

14. Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. and trans. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., vol. 1 (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014), 43.

15. Bavinck, 284.

16. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999), 461.

17. Van Til, 229ff.

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YOU’VE GOT QUESTIONS. WE’VE GOT ANSWERS. Do we all worship the same God? Who am I? Our study kits are perfect for small groups, family devotions, or individual study. With a donation of $15, you can download a Leader Guide, full-length audio, and short audio clips.

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BOOK REVIEWS

Book Reviews 60

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Serving Local Schools

The Pastor’s Book

Night Driving

Luther in Love

by Chad Bird

by Douglas Bond

by Chuck Bomar

by R. Kent Hughes and Douglas Sean O’Donnell, contributing editor

REVIEWED BY

REVIEWED BY

REVIEWED BY

REVIEWED BY

Andrew Menkis

Julius J. Kim

Erik O’Dell

Mary Lynn Spear

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BOOK REVIEWS

Serving Local Schools: Bring Christ’s Compassion to the Core of Your Community

by Chuck Bomar Zondervan, 2017 208 pages (hardcover), $18.99 huck Bomar’s new book, Serving Local Schools, offers sage advice for churches that desire to engage with and serve their communities.

He argues that serving local schools is the best entry point into a community.

In fact, Bomar believes “it is critical for every church to engage local public schools on some level” (14). The first part of the book lays out a biblical foundation for this claim, with the remainder spent on practical “how-to” questions and considerations.

In chapter 1, Bomar answers the question, “Why public schools?” His first claim is that churches should be a resource to serve the community. Public schools connect a broad cross-section of people; therefore, Bomar contends, a church that wants to serve the community will find that schools are the perfect starting place. “They provide the perfect pathway for us [the church] to be who we are called to be and to reflect who we believe God to be” (34).

Bomar then transitions to discussing the foundation for Christian service. Throughout the second chapter he repeats the refrain, “Jesus had a way about him.” Focusing on Jesus’ example, he exhorts Christians to live a life of service. He explains that Christianity is not merely about following the moral example of Christ, but that our service should be motivated by God’s love for us. “We are the recipients of grace, a love we did not deserve; and because we have been loved in this way, we naturally respond by loving others” (46). This unique motive is what sets Christian service apart from all other service. The indicatives of the gospel are the basis for the imperative to serve as Christ served. Bomar shows that ultimately our love is to mirror the love of the

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Trinity. Just as each Person of the Trinity looks to and loves the other, we should also be outwardly focused and love our neighbor.

In the third chapter, “Loving the Marginalized,” Bomar suggests that Christian love should focus on the poor and disadvantaged. He explains that in the Bible “poor” is not simply a socioeconomic category. It refers to a person’s spiritual state, not simply a financial state. He also argues that the poor should not be thought of as those far off in other countries: “We’re all called to be missionaries, right where we live” (65). We should humbly serve those who are in our immediate community.

Bomar explains that Christian service is humble because it is an exercise in generosity, not power.

At this point in the book, Bomar transitions to practical matters. Having laid a foundation for why we serve and why public schools are a good starting point for service in our communities, in chapters 4 through 8 he answers the question “How?” Chapter 4, “More than Theory,” is full of anecdotes about the ways in which public schools in Portland, Oregon, connected with Bomar’s church to receive help in meeting their needs. Bomar says, “I think this kind of relationship can and should be the norm throughout our country and around the world” (75–76). He says this should be the case because partnering with public schools allows the church to have a faithful presence in the community, to do something for the good of its neighbors, and ultimately to offer itself in the service of others.

Bomar puts a strong emphasis on God’s people coming together to serve. He states that Bible studies and small groups are important, but they should lead to action that helps foster unity.

In chapter 5, Bomar provides examples of how to be creative with projects, programs, and people. Chapter 6 contains advice for strategically getting to know people at a public school.

He makes his point vividly when he says, “You will want to know who holds the keys to doors you’d like to open and how to develop meaningful relationships with those folks so you aren’t constantly banging your head against a wall” (115). To help find these people, Bomar shares

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“We should humbly serve those who are in our immediate community. Bomar explains that Christian service is humble because it is an exer­cise in generosity, not power.”

a list of “gatekeepers,” such as principals, school counselors, or front office managers. Chapter 7 discusses the legal precedents for the separation of church and state as it pertains to schools. Bomar gives practical advice and examples of how to navigate the laws regarding the separation of church and state. One of the points of tension, he suggests, is the fact that preaching the gospel is not allowed in a public school. In the final chapter, “Understanding Contexts,” Bomar discusses some of the differences between urban, suburban, and rural areas.

Alt hough t hese contexts vary in many ways, he argues that they have one thing in common: “The school district is a way to embrace the biblical mandate of love through the gospel toward the poor and disadvantaged in that community” (157). The chapter concludes with advice and questions for learning about your context and imparts an exhortation to do something.

In addition to these eight chapters, Serving Local Schools includes two appendices: “Safe Families” and “Compassion.”

These are two programs that Bomar’s church has started, and which he offers as models of what a church can do in conjunction with the local public schools.

Overall, Bomar presents a strong case for using public schools as an entry point for the

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church to engage the local community. He shows that a great number of connections and opportunities to serve the community can be discovered through these means. If this was the extent of his contention, he would have a compelling argument. However, he overstates the case, claiming that engaging local schools is the “key,” “should be the norm,” or is “critical.”

He does not offer adequate evidence to support such a strong conclusion. In addition, while Bomar lays a strong theological foundation for Christian service, there is a lack of detail and nuance that leaves something to be desired. For example, there is no discussion of the diaconate and their roles, which one might expect in a book about Christian service and mercy ministry. There is no distinction between the work of the church and how an individual Christian might choose to serve their community. It seems that while helping the local public school would be a great way to start serving one’s community, it is not the only way, nor is there anything in Scripture dictating that the church as an institution should serve through that avenue as opposed to any others. In short, the place of Christian liberty in deciding how to serve is an oversight of Bomar’s argument.

All of this said, if one chooses to engage with the school district in order to serve the local

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community, Bomar provides excellent practical advice in the second half of his book.

ANDREW MENKIS (MA, Historical Theology, Westminster Seminary California) is head of the theology department at Washington Christian Academy in Olney, Maryland.

The Pastor’s Book: A Comprehensive and Practical Guide to Pastoral Ministry

by R. Kent Hughes and Douglas Sean O’Donnell, Contributing Editor Crossway, 2015 592 pages (hardback), $45.00 rom counseling parishioners and visiting the sick to leading worship services and preaching sermons, pastors must become specialists in a variety of ministry duties. While seminaries can help with some of the training necessary to prepare these pastors, there’s only so much they can do. What then can a young pastor do to learn some of the skills necessary to be a faithful and fruitful minister? One thing he can do is read The Pastor’s Book, written by longtime pastor R. Kent Hughes with help from Douglas Sean O’Donnell, senior pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Elgin, Illinois.

Currently the professor of practical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and former pastor of College Church in Wheaton, Illinois, Kent Hughes provides a sound and accessible resource that pastors can use in their day-to-day ministry— especially during their early years (although

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veteran pastors can also benefit from the many suggestions and examples). As the subtitle suggests, this resource helps pastors gain a more comprehensive understanding of the main aspects of pastoral ministry and provides practical guidance in the wise application of them.

The book is divided into three main parts: “Christian Gatherings” (part 1), “Parts of the Worship Service” (part 2), and various “Ministerial Duties” (part 3). The book ends with an appendix with sample wedding services from diverse Protestant churches and a helpful bibliography for further reading.

In part 1, the authors cover specific topics: the weekly Sunday worship service, annual services such as Christmas and Easter, and occasional services such as weddings and funerals. Prior to providing sample services and liturgies, the authors begin by carefully presenting their foundational convictions on these aspects of pastoral ministry. They rightly argue that ministry and worship must be rooted in the trustworthy Scriptures and centered on the gospel. They also devote several sections to provide both the biblical and historic reasons why they endorse certain practices. These are helpful to the pastor seeking theological rationale for the unique elements and circumstances of the worship service.

In part 2, the authors discuss the important place of public prayers, historic creeds, hymns and songs, baptisms (both credo- and paedo-), and Communion found in the worship services. This reviewer is especially thankful for the section on infant baptism, as the book is primarily written from a free-church perspective (as opposed to Reformed/Presbyterian).

While O’Donnell does not provide a full covenantal defense from the Old and New Testaments regarding infant baptism, he

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nonetheless provides a winsome and practical description of the main positions as well as some practical liturgies.

In the last section, much wisdom is dispensed regarding the two main “private” areas of pastoral ministry: counseling and hospital visitation. With decades of experience under their belts, these discerning pastors provide sage advice not only on the possible problems a pastor may encounter in counseling but also the potential pitfalls. Younger pastors will gain much from listening to and learning from these experienced men.

Although comprehensive in its scope, the book does not cover several important aspects of pastoral leadership in the church. While the authors recognize that they cannot cover every aspect of pastoral life and ministry, one wishes they were able to provide some wisdom on two often-neglected topics—namely, the pastor as leader and the pastor as peacemaker (several books on leading a pastoral staff and working with elders are listed in “Books for Further Reading”). Whether they want to or not, pastors are often called on to lead the church, sometimes providing and executing a long-term vision or staffing and managing employees and volunteers. Furthermore, the pastor is often the primary person involved in resolving the many conflicts that occur in the life of a church, from broken marriages to dysfunctional committees.

It’s understandable, however, that some topics didn’t make the cut, since the book is already about six hundred pages long!

Finally, several other resources may be helpful to supplement what may be lacking in this otherwise helpful and practical book.

For example, pastors serving in Reformed or Presbyterian churches may want to consult several other books on worship, starting with those by Hughes Oliphant Old. From his magisterial seven-volume series The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church to his eminently practical Leading in Prayer, Old provides many resources for pastors within this tradition.

Other helpful resources include Worship by

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the Book edited by D. A. Carson and Leading in Worship by Terry Johnson.

All in all, Hughes and O’Donnell provide a comprehensive, clear, wise, and practical resource for busy pastors within various traditions. In spite of some minor caveats, this book will provide not only young pastors but also experienced ones with helpful categories and tools to navigate the many complex issues and challenges that are part and parcel of pastoral ministry.

JULIUS J. KIM is dean of students and professor of practical

theology at Westminster Seminary Escondido in California.

Night Driving: Notes from a Prodigal Soul

by Chad Bird Eerdmans, 2017 160 pages (paperback), $16.99 n the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the main character Joel Barish (played by Jim Carrey) meets a quirky, bluehaired woman named Clementine (Kate Winslet) on a train, and after a short period of mutual flirtation, they begin an emotionally intense relationship. Then one day Joel receives a crushing revelation about Clementine when he makes a surprise visit to the bookstore where she works—and she has no idea who he is. We later learn that Clementine had undergone a procedure to erase him completely from her memory.

Everything else about her history is seemingly intact, but on the day he visits, he is a complete stranger to her. Understandably devastated, Joel undertakes the same procedure. He wants to erase the memories of their time together and the scars left by her decision to erase him. The procedure offers Joel the opportunity to start fresh, to end the pain of failure and rejection, and to get on with his life.

Lord knows that when I experienced difficult times in my life, I wished such a procedure

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existed. That is primarily why the film remains at the top of my all-time favorites—because it resonated so deeply with where I have been and the temptations I’ve wished I could forget and move on.

Then there is Night Driving by Chad Bird, which offers the exact opposite picture of how we should view our painful pasts. I’m not speaking hyperbolically when I say that in terms of impact, this book is Eternal Sunshine’s literary equal. What the reader gets in Night Driving is a raw, autobiographical trip through darkness, with a destination at the end of hope—hope in a God who “specializes in broken people,” who has “a long history of being intimately and graciously involved in the lives of people who screw up on a large scale,” and who is “in the thick of that disaster to begin the work of making us whole again” (15). The very existence of the book is a testament to that truth, especially when you learn about the long, dark, bourbonstained path Bird has walked.

Mr. Bird was once a rising academic star during his time in seminary. After he graduated, it wasn’t long before he was ordained to the pastorate and his dream of becoming a seminary professor came true.

Cheering him on were his faithful wife and two young children. Fast forward and we read of him sitting on the floor of his lonely one-bedroom apartment, having just waved goodbye to his crying kids as they were driven away by his soon-to-be ex-wife, and he is staring down the barrel of a .357 Magnum. Soon after, he’d be driving a Mac truck through the Texas oil fields with plenty of time to be alone with his thoughts—thoughts you can imagine he would be tempted to erase if the procedure depicted in Eternal Sunshine were a real possibility.

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There were many times while reading Night Driving that I let out an audible “Yes! Exactly!”

That is probably because like me, Bird is a little salty when he describes his emotional state at various parts of the book—using words one doesn’t typically say in polite Christian circles.

While there is no profanity in the book, Bird’s descriptions are no less colorful. In one place, he likens his feeling that God has abandoned him to being the man in Jesus’ parable, lying half-dead on the road to Jericho, and either God just walks on by while whistling Dixie or stops only to give him a swift kick to the groin (37).

Like Bird, there are surely many Christians who feel they have done too much harm to too many people and deserve to be alone. When that happens, as I have experienced, you begin to try to cobble together your own little self-justification project; and like the many failed New Year’s resolutions, you try and “recapture your old self” so the darkness doesn’t seem so dark. Bird poignantly captures this natural tendency in sharp and biting prose, reminding the reader of the vanity of such a facade.

I cannot recommend Night Driving enough. I found that while reading this book and living through a season when it seemed God was standing by silently, I read the words on the page that I had prayed to God just days before. Bird sets the reader in the context of the Psalms and reminds us that we have permission to cry out from the bottom of the pit, and that in using the words of the psalmists, we are “giving full vent to our woes,” praying his own words back to him (41).

He further likens the scars of our sins on the “long, crooked road to repentance” as the way in which God brings us to full acknowledgement of who we truly are, harming us so he may heal. Ultimately, we grow to be more like

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Christ because of the scars we collect in this life.

Deep scars are “icons of divine love” in which God shows his strength in our weakness (140).

When by grace we bear this in mind, we begin to see that the procedure in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the worst thing we could do to ourselves. We would forget where we came from and the redemption that God brings about from our own messes. Chad Bird gives us a compelling, moving, and hopeful reminder that what we mean for evil, God means for good.

“Ultimately, we grow to be more like Christ because of the scars we collect in this life. ”

ERIK O’DELL holds an MA in theological studies from Westminster Seminary California and attends Christ Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Temecula, California.

Luther in Love

by Douglas Bond Inkblots Press, 2017 300 pages (paperback), $14.99

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t’s easy to yawn over yet another new book on Martin Luther, this past year’s five-hundredth anniversar y of the Reformation notwithstanding. We’ve seen the

movie, right?

We all know he fell terror-struck in a thunderstorm, confessed copious amounts of sins we would today label as personality foibles or age-related distress, gave the “Here I stand” speech, and married a nun. Well, of course he did. Who better to marry? It comes ironically, then, for me to answer the following questions thus: “What’s in the top list of entertaining books you’ve read this year?”

This book on Luther.

“In the anniversary year of the Reformation, in which book have you read some of the

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most succinct and meaningful explanations of grace alone, Christ alone?”

This book on Luther.

“Do you think it’s possible to know much about a person who lived five hundred years ago?”

Well, no, except that there’s this book on Luther…

In his exceptional book Luther in Love, Doug Bond manages to write a delightful love story, clarify doctrine in simple yet profound words of truth from Luther himself (proving Luther’s brilliance in speaking to every age), reveal the heart of differences between Catholic and Protestant belief, and deliver us effectively into the smelly but picturesque streets, homes, and cloisters of sixteenth-century Germany.

From Katharina von Bora’s inglorious arrival in town to her surreptitious recordings of her husband’s stratospheric calling, we are taken by the hand to meet her and to love her as a godly woman and mentor for today. Martin was no paramour, but his unfolding adoration of this strong woman elevates the joys and dignity of marriage (if he would but have washed his sheets). I may have even laughed out loud a few times at their

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unorthodox romance, which emerges as robust and winsome and rivals the best of love stories.

There lingers a sweetness about their relationship that heightens our definition of romantic love and increases our understanding of the strength a womanly helpmeet infuses into her man and the cherishing of his woman that comes through such a man.

Bond opens the tale when Martin is sixty-two and worn out from long years of travail for the truth but content in his home with his Katie. She pretends to be ciphering her household affairs with quill and ink, when in reality she is hoping to capture some of the man she knows on paper.

Through her pen we travel back to his childhood, with Martin intensely processing the events unfolding before him. Then entering the cloister, wracking his body and mind to become penitent enough but never succeeding—and unwittingly gaining a name for himself—he struggles through the awakening light in his soul and the death throes of righteousness through his works. As a professor kindling fire under his students at one of Germany’s prestigious universities, Martin’s titanic clash emerges as Wittenberg is enflamed with his lectures and conversations with his students: “Did the Christ, Herr Doctor, bear all of his father’s wrath against sin? . . . Because if he did…,” continued Pieter, his voice trailed off.

“If he did,” said Walter, “then why must we do penance?”

“Or go on pilgrimage?”

“Or buy indulgences?” said another.

“Or why does the priest sacrifice Christ again and again on the altar in the mass?” asked Pieter.

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“Would not these doctrines of the Church,” said Walter, “if he is a God who is satisfied, would not Church doctrine be a reproach to God’s satisfied justice?”

Pieter stood to his feet, his face pale.

“And if so, would not Church doctrine, thereby, be mutinously false?”

Then Tetzel came to town and the rest, as they say, is history. But we’ve never heard it told in the gripping way that Bond weaves the unfolding crisis rocking the city.

Even Luther’s parents don’t understand. Of course, the best solution is to have him kidnapped.

Sometime later, as in all love stories, fish barrels arrive in town with women hidden inside of them—wives for the townsmen in need of one. Martin, however, didn’t have need of one—until the leftover fireball, Katharina, let him know that in this he was misguided.

A loving, rollicking household with children, company, good food, and stimulating conversation was the result of her sagacity, and a lifetime of fruitfulness spent loving people and sowing the truth became their legacy spanning five hundred years.

One notable strength of this book lies in its appeal to readers of all age groups. Bond’s strong tale-weaving, delightfully told from Katie’s point of view, meshes with theological truths so that anyone can enjoy it—a teacher or student, a theologically minded person, someone who loves a good yarn, or anyone who just wants a good read. Thinking expansively, it might even serve as a nonconfrontational marriage counseling tool. Don’t think you know everything about Martin Luther until you read this book.

MARY LYNN SPEAR is a freelance editor based in Seattle,

Washington.

VOL.27 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2018

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GEEK SQUAD

Electric Feel: Don’t Impose Your Expectations on the Holy Spirit

by Rick Ritchie

hile linking the ministry of the Holy Spirit to the gospel is not really controversial, binding the Holy Spirit to the word is. When considering how the Holy Spirit operates in the lives of Christians, there seems to be a tendency to gravitate to either end of the spectrum—some will insist that the Spirit operates everywhere in every way, from exciting the impulse to sell all worldly goods and devote oneself to missions abroad, to inspiring the laughter of a child on the playground. Others say that the Spirit operates only in one place (the church), at one time (the divine service), and that any attempts to credit anything extraordinary to his will or action is heterodox at best and blasphemous at worst. Reformational Christians are

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often accused of the latter—we are told that we are putting God in a box by denying that the Holy Spirit operates apart from the word. A comparison will show that our view gives more credit to the power of God than is popularly thought.

The test case most often presented to refute the Reformation viewpoint is that of the tribal Afghan who never meets a missionary. If we say that only those who actually hear the gospel can be saved, are we saying that God cannot reach that person? Is God really so dependent on our missionary efforts in saving the souls of the lost?

Before answering this case, I want to present another test case to show the underlying motive in the tribesman.

One class of persons whom the Reformation classifies as eminently suited to receive the

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ministry of the Holy Spirit are infants. Since we do not believe in free will, we believe it is always a supernatural event when an individual comes to faith in Christ. The decisive factor is not the intellect of the individual but the power of God. As demonstrated by the case of John the Baptist, even infants can be filled with the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:15) and are capable of faith.

Scripture says that “without faith, it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11:6). Are we to believe that John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit but did not have faith? Does not his leaping for joy at the coming of his Messiah provide evidence of faith?

If we are willing to say that God can overcome any impediments that may be brought about by an individual’s lack of ability to reason, then we are certainly not making God dependent on human ability. In the case of the unevangelized tribesman, I suspect that many who do not consider the possibility of infant faith will believe in the ability of the native to come to faith. This is not so much because they believe in the power of God to convey the gospel apart from Scripture, but because they believe that the Afghan tribesman has the spiritual ability to discover the gospel himself. It is not God’s ability to speak, but man’s ability to hear that is being extolled.

Trying to read motives is a tricky thing. I do it here only because I have heard the idea of infant faith ridiculed by the very people who would accuse me of putting God in a box. These people believe that God can bring someone who has never heard the gospel to spiritual life where it is absent, but that he cannot enliven an infant where the gospel is present. The power of God’s gospel is made out to be unnecessary, while the reasoning ability of the individual is made decisive.

To choose a grosser example, I have heard of well-known pastors claiming that “the living word” is greater than the “written word.” At first it sounds as if what is being claimed is that God is greater than the Bible. No one disagrees with that, but the necessary consequent is that these pastors claim for themselves the ability to

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discern what the living word is saying without the aid of the Holy Spirit. When they claim that their message comes from “the living word,” they now place themselves in authority over the Bible, since they have a more authoritative word. What at first appears to be a defense of the greatness of God is really only an attempt to place man over Scripture.

CAPTIVITY TO THE WORD IS OPENNESS TO THE SPIRIT At the Diet of Worms, where Martin Luther made his famous stand before church and empire, Luther declared himself captive to the word of God. His warnings against seeking the Spirit apart from Scripture were especially stern: Accordingly, we should and must constantly maintain that God will not deal with us except through his external Word and sacrament. Whatever is attributed to the Spirit apart from such Word and sacrament is of the devil. For even to Moses God wished to appear first through the burning bush and the spoken word (Ex. 3:2, 4), and no prophet, whether Elijah or Elisha, received the Spirit without the Ten Commandments.

John the Baptist was not conceived without the preceding word of Gabriel, nor did he leap in his mother’s womb until Mary spoke (Lk. 1:13–42). (Smalkald Articles, Part III, Article VIII, 11) Many Christians are afraid that embracing the Reformation will bring about a captivity of another sort. Do we worship a God who cannot speak personally to us? It is feared that binding the Holy Spirit to the word will silence God. If we wish to have God advise us personally about our money worries, comfort us when we feel arthritic, or affirm the inner child within, then we are likely to be disappointed. God does speak of many things in his word, many things that may be pertinent in the above instances.

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The Holy Spirit can illuminate Scripture, making it understandable when it has not been before.

His timing in illumination will often be remarkably providential.

For the Christian experiencing anguish of conscience, however, real comfort can be taken in knowing that the Holy Spirit is to be sought in the word. For this individual, being directed to a voice outside of Scripture is exactly the thing that might drive him or her to despair.

I hate long waits. Even worse than a long wait is waiting for what may never arrive. I have read literature where the enquirer is left knocking at heaven’s gate but warned that the sovereign Spirit might pass one by. In such a position, the enquirer might feel that knocking will decrease the likelihood of salvation. Maybe the Spirit will demonstrate his sovereignty by choosing the person who did not knock, passing by the seeker with bleeding stubs of knuckles. Not only does waiting for illumination burden Christians by making them wait for God, but it asks them to look for grace in the wrong place. Born-again Christianity focuses on the new birth—something that happens to the Christian. While it does not deny the new birth, Reformation Christianity focuses on the gospel instead.

This outward orientation is not destructive of true inner experience. In Scripture, we see the two wedded. King David speaks of the forgiveness of God in very personal terms: “Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord’; and you forgave the guilt of my sin” (Ps. 32:5). This is true even though forgiveness for his most notorious sin was not found through a sense of “inner forgiveness” but announced through the mouth of another: “Then David said to Nathan, ‘I have sinned against the Lord.’ Nathan replied, ‘The Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die’” (2 Sam. 12:13).

Thank heaven Scripture points weary sinners to the gospel and not to their own inner strivings. No dark corners for us and no long waits.

Illumination is not something that takes place

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inside one’s head but from the outside. It is hearing the news that changes us. This might happen when reading Scripture, listening to a sermon, or hearing a small child tell of how Jesus took our sins away. It is not the power of the messenger that accomplishes this, but the power of the message. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3:17). Paul says this right after describing the difference between the ministry of the Spirit and the ministry of condemnation, so he is certainly talking about freedom from the effects of sin. Being chained to the word is not bondage but liberty.

Along with the whole church, the Reformation confesses that the Holy Spirit is a source of power. To have a living church, the Holy Spirit is necessary. We understand this in biblical terms, however, and not primarily by means of nineteenth-century analogies to electricity, wherein the indwelling of the Spirit resembles a kind of spiritual electrocution that jolts the believer into a state of religious fervor. We know of a different kind of power, one that may not give us the spark of energy we would expect but effects a genuine regeneration that enables us to truly love our enemies and our neighbors, and to seek the good of our cities and communities.

The Bible tells us that the ministry of the Spirit is the ministry of the gospel, which is the power to salvation. If the gospel is being proclaimed, then the church is living, not dead. It may be stodgy, tacky, and awkward. It will have its faults and its sins, and the earnest Christian will not dissemble or cloak them in pompous protestations of virtue.

But it will possess the promised true power of the church and will one day be presented to her bridegroom in splendor—holy and unblemished without spot or wrinkle.

RICK RITCHIE is a long-time contributor to Modern Refor­ mation. He blogs at www.1517legacy.com.

This article was originally published as “The Word and the Spirit” in the September-October 1992 issue of Modern Reformation magazine.

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04

B AC K PAG E

Mission Creep

by Eric Landry

s a pastor, I get all kinds of advice.

There’s always someone, somewhere, who thinks it’s their job to tell me how to do mine. (I sometimes wonder if lawyers or doctors get the same kind of “help.” I know football referees do!) Over the past week, I’ve been told via e-mail, magazine columns, blog posts, and junk mail that I’m not doing my job as a pastor unless I am concerned about and a have a plan for my church to tackle gentrification, the homosexual agenda, the next election, racial reconciliation, Islamic terrorism, and pro-life causes.

Since most of these issues are probably worthy of my attention, I began to tally up all the time I would need to spend on each issue I was told was vital to my ministry and the survival of the church in the twenty-first century. I soon filled up this work week and the next and the next. I had to cut out the time I planned to spend with the recently widowed woman in my congregation to hear her laugh and cry as we remembered her husband, whom she dearly loved. I had to postpone the meeting with the man whose marriage is failing. I had to delete the Facebook message from the young Millennial who is struggling with assurance. I guess I still need to prepare a sermon, but I’ve also been told that we should cancel Sunday worship occasionally to do a day of volunteer service in the city. I’ll pray in my car. Meeting a new neighbor will just have to wait.

It doesn’t matter how many times the alarm bell is rung about the danger of “mission creep”

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in the local church, we are all suckers for the next big thing—the revolutionary idea that will make our churches relevant and effective.

It’s like an addiction, and I am not immune to it. “So, what are you guys working on?” I ask a fellow pastor. I’m expecting to hear about their new ministry, their big plans, the shiny thing we’re all chasing.

Everyone makes plans, of course. You need to know what Sunday school classes you’ll offer—or if you’ll even have Sunday school. If God has given you a new opportunity to do evangelism or mercy ministry in your community, then you have to decide how to faithfully accomplish that work.

Some churches have opportunities for ministry that others don’t, but the core of our work should be the same—whether we’re in an urban center or “flyover country,” or whether we minister faithfully to dozens or faithfully to thousands. Every church is called to gather together for worship, to grow deeply as disciples of Jesus, and to serve God and our neighbor with the same loving service God exhibited toward us in Christ.

When I remember that simple process, it is easier for me to ignore all the advice I get from well-meaning folks who just want to help.

I know that if I listen to them, I won’t be the help God has called me to be to the people he is calling from every tribe, tongue, and nation to worship him.

ERIC LANDRY is executive editor of Modern Reformation and serves as senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas.

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