riiTERATURE.— Trench, NT Synonyms, § 1
Lowe, Psalms ;
HOLt SPIRIT.- With the (
eption of the 2nd
and 3rd Epistles of John, every book in the NT mentions the Spirit. On a comprehensive view, indeed, it may be said that to understand what is meant by the Spirit is to understand these two things— the NT and the Christian Church. Not that the two can be precisely co-ordinated ; yet in them and in their mutual relations we have the only adequate witness to what the Spirit means for Christians. To the men who wrote the NT and to those for whom they wrote, the Spirit was not a doctrine but an experience ; they did not speak of believing in the Holy Sjiirit, but of receiv- hig the Holy Spirit when they believed (Ac 19=). In some sense tliis covered everything that they included in Christianity. The work of the Christ w.as summed up in the words : 'He shall baptize with holy spirit ' (Mk 1% The acceptance of the
gospel is the subject of the question : ' Was it by works of law or by the hearing of faith that you received the Spirit ? ' (Gal 3=). The entire equality of .Jews and Gentiles in the Christian community is asserted in the words : ' God who knows the heart bore them witness in that he gave the Holy Spirit to them even as he did to us ' (Ac 15"). After this, there was no more to be said. Yet the \'ery fact that all who speak to us in the NT are familiar with experiences of the Holy Spirit does not always make it easier for us to understand them. It is clear that very various experiences are described in this -nay, and some- times we cannot refrain from asking' whether ex- periences which one writer reeotuits without any eference to the Spirit would not
plained as ' pneumatic' by another ; or
ibed to the Spi writer would not in another have found a diflerent
whether experiences ascribetl to the Spirit by one
interpretation. F'urther, there is the difficulty raised by the fact that wliile the experiences thus explained are reiiresented, broadly speaking, as the work of the Risen Saviour, and as dependent some- how on His death and resurrection, the Spirit appears also in His life on earth. Was this the same thing 'i When we read that Jesus was bap- tized with the Holy Spirit, are we to suppose that He had experiences in consequence which were analogous to those of Christians in the Apostolic age? The purpose of this article is to bring out the facts as they are presented in the oldest Gospel to begin with, and to show from later stages in the history the relation between the Spirit and Je.sus the Christ.
1. The earliest reference to the Spirit is in the preaching of the Baptist. To the end John was conscious of the impotence and iiKide(|uaiy of all his efibrts : the true Helper of Israel, whatever else he might be, must be 'One mightier tlian I.' ' I baptize you with water, he shall baptize you with holy spirit' (Mk 1"). A Christian Evangelist, like the author of the Gospel, might interpret such words in the light of his own post-Pentecostal ex- periences ; and when we lind tlie later Evangelists (Mt 3", Lk 3'") add to ' holy spirit ' the words ' and lire,' it is nearly certain that they have done .so.* But it is not clear that for the Baptist the Holy Spirit (if which he spoke was so clcarlj- defined. He liail noi tlie Christian experience to 'put mean- ing into his wcuds, and he can only have intended .sometliing which could be understood through its OT antecedents, or through experiences with which he had been in contact at an earlier period. The earliest form of the Gospel says nothing of such experiences, and when we look backward we can- not but be struck by the almost total disappear- ance of the Spirit from the apocalyptical literature of Judaism. 'First and Second Maccabees and Daniel are each in a different way witnesses for a very profound religious feeling of exactly ^he sort tihat in other ages, either earlier or later, would have been ascrilied to the Spirit' (AVood, The Spirit of God in Biblical Literature, p. 71 : cf. Gunkel, Die Wirkungcn des hciligen Geistc.i, p. 50 f.). Yet the Spirit is not appealed to in ex- planation. When we come to the Hebrew OT, however, the one idea which is dominant in con- nexion with the Spirit is the one which is wanted here to explain the prophecy of the Baptist— the idea of power as opposed to impotence. The in- ability of Egypt to help Israel is expressed by Isaiah in the words : ' The Egyptians are men and not God, and their horses flesh'and not spirit' (31"').
* The reference of the ' fire ' in this connexion to the fire of Gehenna seems to the present writer (in spite of Mt 31^, Lie 81') simplv innretlible. The true liev to it is Ac 2^, and tlie many p.assa^'es in which the same or a similar figure recurs, e.y. 1 Th Oi», Ko 12", Ac 1825.
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HOLY SPIEIT
HOLT SPIRIT
Men and flesh are the impotent 'things, in contrast witli the omnipotent, God and spirit. As A. B. Da\ddson puts it (Theology of the OT, 126), 'the Spirit of God 06 intra is God active, showing life and power . . . the Spirit of God ab extra is God in efticient operation, whether in the cosmos or as giving life, reinforcing life, exerting efficiency in any sphere.' John the Baptist was a worker for God, but he never claims for himself either to have the Spirit or to be able to give it; he has the sense, however, that when the Mightier than himself comes. He will be distinguished in precisely these ways. He will baptize with ' holy spirit ' in ^■irtue of being full of the Spirit himself.