genuinely lowed also
744
HOLY SPIRIT
HOLY THING
utterance as spiiitual is that it is a testimony to the historical Saviour. What the Spirit hears— all that He hears— He shall speak. It is not easy to say how tlie Spirit is conceived as hearing, hut the main point is clear : hearing precedes speaking, and limits and controls it. In particular, it is said of the Spuit, ' He shall announce to you the things that are coming.' Westcott, interpreting rd epx6- //.eva on the analogy of the Messianic 6 ipx^moo^, and thinking of the needs of the Apostles at the stage of transition between the old and the new era, finds the main reference in this to be to the constitution of the Christian Church : the Spirit will enable the Apostles to understand (by antici- pating ?) the new age on which they are about to enter. Godet is inclined to render the words in a more prophetic sense, and regards them a-s having their fultilment in the Apocalypse. This is too precise : perhaps if we said ' in apocalypses ' (such as are suggested by 1 Co 2<"- W^-^, Eph I''') it would be nearer the mark. It is a special function of the Spirit to animate hope by unveiling the future (H. Holtzmann, Handcom. ad loc). But whatever the special reference in rd epxi/ieva may be, the work of the Spirit on this side Ls summed up in the words dKc'iyos i/ii Soia(rei. In every sense ot the terms the Spirit's work is to testify to Christ — to wliat He is, to His words, to wliat He lias done and sufi'ered, to what He is to acliieve. In this His function, if not His being, as the Spirit of truth is exhausted. And to say that He uses only what is Christ's is not to narrow the range or the means of His action ; for, as the Speaker goes on to say, ' All that the Father hath is mine.' All that belongs to the truth of God's Fatherhood is revealed in the Son, and all that is revealed in the Son is interpreted and vivified by the Spirit. The most striking feature of this passage is, after all, that with which it opens : ' I have many tilings to say unto you, but ye cannot bear tliem now,' with the implicit promise that they should hear the Spirit say them when they were able to bear it. The Apostolic reading of the truth, as truth is in Jesus, is perfectly conscious that it goes beyond the i2)sissima verba which Jesus spoke on earth ; but the Apostles would have felt it strangely un- real if they had been asked to cut down their testi- mony to Jesus to what Jesus Himself had expressly j)ut into words. There were many things which circumstances made it impossible for Him to put into word.s — many things which it was rather for them to say about Him than for Him to say about Himself ; but when they said these things, under the guiding and quickening impulse of His Spirit, they had no doubt that they were declaring the truth of Christ. It was a proof of ' Clirist speak- ing in them,' as St. Paul puts it (2 Co 13'). Once they had listened to His voice on earth, now they heard Him in their hearts interpret all He had been, and between the voices they made no dis- tinction. A great part of the peculiarity of the Fourth Gospel is covered if we say that the word of the Risen Saviour, speaking by His Spirit in the heart of the Apostle, is presented as though it had been actually spoken on earth. And, little as this may agree with our ideas of a purely historical narrative, it is a precarious operation to set asiile such a testimony, based on Christian experience and contemplated by Christ, as though it could be merely irrelevant to the Christian religion.
(c) The Spirit in tlie First Epistle of John does not call for separate treatment. One important pa.ssage has been already mentioned (4-) : another (5*"*) in wliich the Spirit and the sacraments are again mentioned in conjunction is to be interpreted on the analogy of ch. 3 and ch. 6 in the Gospel (see the present writer's Death of Christ, p. 277 ff.).
The NT hardly invites to any discussion of the
metaphysics of the Spirit. Of course, it is the Spirit of God, and Divine. It is part of the one Divine causality which— as Father, Son, and Spirit ^confronts the sinful world, and works in unison for its redemption. It belongs unmistakably to the sphere of the Divine, not of the human. Yet there is something in man which is akin to it, and it is through it that God dwells in man, and makes him partaker of the Divine nature. As the Spirit of God, it cannot be truly thought of as im- jier.sonal, and yet it is far more frequently spoken of in a way which is satisfied by the conception of a Divine impulsion to or stimulation of human thought, feeling, oraction, than as a distinct per- sonality. This is so even in writers who, like St. Paul (1 Co 12") and St. John (16"), distinctly have the latter mode of representing the Spirit. Cer- tainly the Spirit is not so unmistakably thought of as a person as is the Father or the Son. We never, for example, find the Spirit in the salutations of the Epistles : ' Grace to you and peace from God the J'ather and the Lord Jesus Christ' is never supplemented by 'and from the Holy Spirit.' Neither do we ever find the Spirit united witTIi the Father and the Son in prayer, as, e.g., in 1 Th 3" 'Now our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus Christ direct our way to you.' Even in the Apostolic benediction (2 Co 13'^) it may fairly be questioned whether the Spirit is conceived as per- .sonally as the Lord Jesus Christ and God. As for attempts to distinguish -within the Trinity the relation of the Spirit to the Father from that of the Son to the Father as 'procession' from 'genera- tion,' the present writer can only repeat that they have no reality which he can apprehend. But the NT and Christian experience are at one in teach- ing that the Christian conception of God includes all that is meant by Father, Son, and Spirit ; and as tlie omission of what is meant by any of these terms leaves the Christian conception unsatisfied, it may fairly be said that the doctrine of the Trinity is tlil- fundaiiiontal doctrine of our faith. The Fatlier, tlie Son, and the Sjiirit in their unity constitute the God whom we know as the God of our salvation.