and tlie Fallierwlio gives tlic Spirit ; the three are one as tliey confront tlie disciples, co-operating for tlieir salvation. In this Gospel, as everywhere in tlie NT, the Sjiirit belongs to the same region as the Father and the Son ; it is included in what a Christian means when he speaks of ' God.' This is the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity ; no man means all that a Christian means by ' God ' unless he puts into ' God ' all that is meant by the separate terms ' Father,' ' Son,' and ' Spirit.' This is a pro- position which is securely based on experience, and which is implied in NT experience from the day of Pentecost onward (see Ac 2*', 1 Co 12^-6, Eph 2'», Jn 14-*). More particularly, too, it may be said that the Spirit in the Fourth Gospel belongs to the Kingdom of God and to the religion of revela- tion : to the world it is unknown. And within the Messianic realm the full experience of it is ethically conditioned : ' If ye love me, ye will keep my commandments, and I will ask the Father,' etc. (3) The next reference to the Spirit (14=«) is still more definite. 'The Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, which the Father shall send in my name, he {(Kiivoi) shall teach you all tilings, and shall bring to your remembrance all things that I said unto you.' Both the masculine pronoun (iKuvoi) and the function ('he shall teach ') represent the Spirit as personal, with a definiteness hitherto un- noticed. Not that suggestions of this are wanting elsewhere (cf. esp. 1 Co 12"), and, of comse, it must be in the last resort meaningless to speak of the spirit of a personal God as itself impersonal ; but very often the meaning is covered by the idea of an impulse communicated by God, whereas here the personalizing is much more definite and con- scious. The function of teaching or revealing, which, as we have seen above, has but a small space and a mainly eschatological reference in St. Paul, is far more prominent in St. John, and far more decisively defined by relation to the historical Saviour. The Spirit does not teach independently, but brings to remembrance all things that Jesus said to the Twelve, inro/xy^irei is a word on which it is worth while to dwell. The Evangelist gives us two illustrations of things which the disciples remembered after the Spirit came, and which received a new meaning as they rose in the spiritual light. When He rose from the dead, they remem- bered the word that He spoke about destroyin" the temple and rebuilding it in three days ; it had slept in their memories, an inert, meaningless, and therefore forgotten thing ; now it leapt into meaning, and they had a vivid recollection of it (2--). Cf. 12" of the circumstances of the Trium- phal Entry. We cannot think of these two illus- trations without asking. What is involved in the spiritually quickened action of memory in such cases? Something is recalled, but it is not only recalled, it is for the first time understood : it is remembered becau.se a key to it has liecn found ; it is not only the dream, so to speak, wliich is recalled, but the dream and its iiiterinctation together. AVIk-h; events have deeply interested and inipr(--iil nirn, .is the words and works of Jesus did 111" ili-.iiil.-. .-111.1 especially where they have initiaii'.l :jii-:ii spiritual movements in Avhicli their significance has become apparent, memory cannot lie insulated so as to perceive them in a purely neutral or 'objective' fashion. They are remembered in the heart as well as in the brain ; they are remembered with an ardour which con- teniplates, explores, makes discoveries, worships ; and when they are reproduced in the Spirit, it is not the unintelligent and misleading truth of an amateur photograph with which we are confronted, but something like the work of a great painter, something which is truer in a manner than tlie most literal recollection would be. It is not open
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to question that the Fourth Gospel is, in tliis sense, a ' spiritual ' Gospel ; it is the decisive proof that the words of Jesus in 142« have been fulfilled. On the relation of Father, Son, and Spirit, this pas- sage only confirms what has been said above under (2).
(4) In 15* many have sought for more than it contains. Here it is the Son who sends the Spirit from the Father, and the Spirit is described as that which proceeds from the Father. To pretend that we can distinguish between the ' procession ' of the Spirit from the Father and the ' generation ' of the Son by the Father, is only to invite Gibbon's sneer about ' the science, or ratlier the language of metaphjrsics.' The really important point here is that which has already emerged in Rev 19]" (see above) : CKetvos ixaprvprqaei. irepl (fi-oO. Christ is the Spirit's subject. The Spirit is the Spirit of truth because it bears witness to Him who can say, ' I am the truth ' (14"). The truth with wliich it deals is that which is incarnate in Christ, the very same truth to which the Apostles also are to bear wit- ness, because they have been with Hini from the beginning (15").