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HOLY SPIRIT
HOLY SPIRIT
As the government of God, the Creator, embraces both the external and the internal, the operation of the Spirit finally extends also to the body. From the Spirit man receives the new, incor- ruptible, and immortal body (Ro 8", 1 Co IS^^'^s). This manifestation, however, does not take place in the present age, but is connected with the re- velation of Christ yet to come. As regards the present, the experience of the Spirit generates the conviction that the goal has not yet been reached, and that the perfect is not yet come, for meanwhile the Spirit makes manifest the Divine grace only in the inner life of man. It is true that in the pro- positions setting forth the action of the Spirit, the Divine grace finds supreme expression. In them the consciousness of being reconciled to God is clearly set forth. Man's antagonism to God is at an end, and his separation from Him has been overcome. Fellowship with God has been im- planted in the inner life, and this determines man's whole earthly career and his final destiny. At tlie same time, however, the doctrine of the Spirit lays the foundation of hope, and sets the existing Church in the great forward movement that presses towards the final consummation. For it is but in the inner man, and not in the body, or in that side of our being which nature furnishes, that our participation in the Divine grace is realized. Hence the Spirit is called the Srst-fruits, and the earnest that guarantees the coming gift of God (Ro 823, 2 Co P2 55). Thus from the apostolic experience of the Spirit, side by side with faith there arises hope ; and, as both have the same source, they reinforce each other.
Here again, therefore, there was a profound cleavage between the Christian doctrine of the Spirit and the pre-Christian ideas regarding it. The former dissociated itself not only from the niantic phenomena that occupy a prominent place in polytheistic cults, but also from the ideas with which the Jewish Rabbis explained the operations of the Spirit in the prophetic inspiration of Scrip- ture. The intervention of the Spirit had been universally represented as the suppression of human personality. This view was founded upon the as- sumption that a revelation of God could be given only in the annulment of the human, that the voice of God became audible only when man was dumb or asleep, and that the operations of God were visible only when man was deprived of volition by an overpowering impulse. Such notions are far remote from the propositions expressive of the Spirit's work among Christians, although they may to some extent survive in the early Christian view of the OT Scriptures, and the exegetical tradition with which these were read. The profound re- volution of thought seen here was not the result of any merely psychological change, or of fresh theories regarding the nature and action of the human or the Divine Spirit, but was due to the transforma- tion wrought in the conception of God by the earthly career of Jesus. The faith that found its object in Jesus penetrated all the ideas by M-hich the Christian community interpreted the govern- ment of God, and suliordinated them to its re- collections of Jesus. The figure of Jesus became the pattern to which all its thoughts about the Holy Spirit were conformed. The disciples had seen in Him a human life marked by a clear certainty, a solemn vocation, and a power of freedom, which were quite individual and personal. Yet that life was wholly given to the service of God, at once revealing His character and fulfilling His will, because the will of God manifested itself in the life of Jesus as grace. This fact did away with the idea that the S[iirit of God operates in man only as a force that lays hold of and over- powers him — a view which could seem the sole I
possible one only so long as the unreconciled mind regarded God as an enemy to be feared. Similarly, there was now no place for the thought that the Spirit of God acted only upon the human under- standing, simply endowing the mind with ideas. This view, again, rested upon the belief that the will of man as such was evil, and incapable of being used in the service of God. But Jesus had im- planted faith and love in the hearts of His disciples, and their sense of being reconciled to God trans- formed their thoughts about the Holy Spirit. No longer did they think of the Spirit as annulling the human functions of life, for they now realized that the Holy Spirit made it possible for man to live, not from and for himself, but from and for God.
6. The Spirit given in a special measure to some. — With the belief that the Spirit lays hold of all who accept Jesus was connected the fact that some were regarded as in a special sense ' spiritual ' (■jrvevixa.TLKoi). That the Divine love made all men equal was an ideal quite alien to the Apostolic Cliurch. It was expected that the Spirit would establish the fellowship of believers in such a way that each member should retain his own individual type. The fact that the same Spirit operated in all guaranteed the unity of the Christian body. That unity, however, did not degenerate into uni- formity, for, since the Spirit works in all as a life- giving power, the community combined in itself an infinite profusion of national, social, and in- dividual diversities. From the one Spirit, accord- ingly, proceeds the 'one body' (1 Co 12^'^^-, Ro 125, Eph 4^), and this implies that the many who com- pose the community have not all the same power and function, but differ from one another in their gifts and vocations. Hence, besides the continuous activities which constitute the stable condition of the Christian life — besides faith, love, repentance, knowledge, etc. — there are special and outstanding occasions on which the individual or even an assembly is 'filled with the Holy Spirit' (Ac 4^'^' 13"). Similarly, certain individuals stand forth fi'om the mass as in a peculiar sense the vehicles of the Spirit, and as making its presence and opera- tions known to the community.