Introduction
In his Institutes, the fifth century monk and ascetical theologian John Cassian relates some words of wisdom that he and his friend Germanus received from one Abba Theodore. Cassian writes,

'We also met Abba Theodore, who was endowed with the greatest holiness and knowledge not only in practical affairs but also in familiarity with Scripture. This he had obtained not from a zeal for reading or from worldly learning but from purity of heart alone, since he could hardly either understand or speak more than a few words of Greek. When he was seeking out the answer to some particularly obscure question he would pray untiringly for seven days and nights until, thanks to a revelation from the Lord, he reached the solution to the question at issue.

When some of the brothers, then, were marveling at the remarkable clarity of his knowledge and were asking him about certain interpretations of Scripture, he said to them: ‘A monk who desires to attain a knowledge of Scripture should never toil over the works of the commentators. Instead he should direct the full effort of his mind and the attentiveness of his heart toward the cleansing of his fleshly vices. As soon as these have been driven out and the veil of the passions has been lifted, the eyes of his heart will naturally contemplate the mysteries of Scripture, since it was not in order to be unknown and obscure that they were delivered to us by the grace of the Holy Spirit; rather they are made obscure by our vices, when the veil of our sinfulness clouds over the eyes of the heart.’¹

Thus, for Theodore, coming to understand the meaning of the Scriptures is not only based on one’s intellect or one’s education and training, but fundamentally on one’s disposition to sin and one’s openness to the indwelling and illumination of the Holy Spirit. Jumping ahead a thousand years we read something similar in John Calvin’s Institutes:

'Those who, rejecting Scripture, imagine that they have some peculiar way of penetrating to God, are to be deemed not so much under the influence of error as madness. For certain giddy men have lately appeared, who, while they make a great display of the superiority of the Spirit, reject all reading of the Scriptures themselves, and deride the simplicity of those who only delight in what they call the dead and deadly letter. But I wish they would tell me what spirit it is whose inspiration raises them to such a sublime height that they dare despise the doctrine of Scripture as mean and childish. If they answer that it is the Spirit of Christ, their confidence is exceedingly ridiculous; since they will, I presume, admit that the apostles and other believers in the primitive Church were not illuminated by any other Spirit. None of these thereby learned to despise the word of God, but every one was imbued with greater reverence for it, as their writings most clearly testify… Again, I should like those people to tell me whether they have imbibed any other Spirit than that which Christ promised to his disciples. Though their madness is extreme, it will scarcely carry them the length of making this their boast. But what kind of Spirit did our Saviour promise to send? One who should not speak of himself, but suggest and instill the truths which he himself had delivered through the word. Hence the office of the Spirit promised to us, is not to form new and unheard-of revelations, or to coin a new form of doctrine, by which we may be led away from the received doctrine of the gospel, but to seal on our minds the very doctrine which the gospel recommends.'²

For Calvin, then, the Spirit’s role is to illumine a person’s understanding so that they can know “the very doctrine which the gospel recommends,” that is, that they may fully understand the Scriptural texts. Finally, in the eighteenth century Jonathan Edwards also comments on the role of the Holy Spirit in understanding the Holy Scriptures. In a section entitled “Gracious affections arise from the mind being enlightened, rightly and spiritually to understand or apprehend divine things,” Edwards writes the following:

'Holy affections are not heat without light; but evermore arise from the information of the understanding, some spiritual instruction that the mind receives, some light or actual knowledge. The child of God is graciously affected, because he sees and understands something more of divine things than he did before, more of God or Christ, and of the glorious things exhibited in the gospel; he has some clearer and better view than he had before, when he was not affected: either he receives some understanding of divine things that is new to him; or has his former knowledge renewed after the view was decayed… Hence also it appears, that affections arising from texts of Scripture coming to the mind are vain, when no instruction received in the understanding from those texts, or anything taught in those texts, is the ground of the affection, but the manner of their coming to the mind. When Christ makes the Scripture a means of the heart’s burning with gracious affection, it is by opening the Scriptures to their understandings….'³

This opening of the Scriptures to a person is accomplished by

'a divine taste, given and maintained by the Spirit of God, in the heart of the saints, whereby they are in like manner led and guided in discerning and distinguishing the true spiritual and holy beauty of actions; and that more easily, readily, and accurately, as they have more or less of the Spirit of God dwelling in them.'⁴

From these examples, we can conclude with some certainty that it has been the church’s general understanding that a role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer is to bring illumination and enlightenment so that Scripture may be faithfully interpreted. In light of the evangelical conviction that Scripture is the foundation for all theology, the implication is that, ultimately, it is by the Holy Spirit working in us that results in good scriptural interpretation. As John says in his gospel, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth” (16:13).

In light of the fact that scriptural interpretation is, at its very heart, a work of the Holy Spirit, then it may be fitting to ask a follow-up question: if our understanding of the Scriptures is, in the end, a work of the Holy Spirit, what other means does the Holy Spirit use to communicate truth to us? By asking this I am assuming two things: (1) the Scriptures contain truth; and (2) the Holy Spirit shows us or leads us into this truth. Therefore, it is reasonable to ask, where else is truth found into which we may be led by God’s Spirit? My purpose today is not to answer this question out of my own experience or from my own doctrinal position. Rather, I want to examine the writings of other theologians from a variety of historical eras and ecclesial traditions to see how they respond to this question. To accomplish this I will group the teachings of these theologians into several, somewhat artificial categories: mystical, Pentecostal and Protestant. None of these titles is intended as pejorative but is used simply as a means of organizing the various strands inherent in the theologians and traditions under review. Neither are these titles wholly encompassing of the plethora of theological views concerning the Holy Spirit since that would be too large a project for today’s talk. That said, let us begin with what I am calling the “mystical.”

Mystical
Mysticism is often understood to include a direct experience of the divine presence, one that is perhaps ineffable and ecstatic, thus presupposing a direct encounter with God Himself.⁵  Some Eastern Orthodox theologians such as Gregory of Sinai and Gregory Palamas, both Byzantine theologians of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, posit that this direct encounter with God involves one’s participation in God’s energies, not his essence.⁶  What exactly are these energies? For Gregory Palamas they are the “processions, manifestations and natural energies of the one [Holy] Spirit.”⁷  Consequently, to participate in God’s energies is to participate in the Holy Spirit Himself, whatever that may look like.
Western mystical authors use a variety of ways to describe this participation. For example, Mechthild of Magdeburg, a thirteenth century German beguine, in her Flowing Light of the Godhead describes this mystical encounter as an interaction between the heart of God and the human heart. She writes,
   

(Soul:)    ‘Lord, you are constantly lovesick for me.
        That you have clearly shown personally.
        You have written me into your book of the Godhead;
        You have painted me in your humanity;
        You have buried me in your heart…
        Ah, allow me, my dear One, to pour balsam upon you.’
    (God:)    ‘O One dear to my heart, where shall you find the balm?’
(Soul:)    ‘O Lord, I was going to tear the heart of my soul in two and intended to put you in it.’⁸

This co-inherence of one’s heart with God’s heart is made possible, says Mechthild, by the Holy Spirit who purifies her and acts as her very breath of life:

'Lord, eternal Father, I, too, the most unworthy of all human beings, have flowed forth spiritually from your heart and, Lord Jesus Christ, was born in the flesh from your side and, Lord God and Man, I have been purified by the Spirit of you both. Thus do I, poor despondent human being, speak:

‘Lord, heavenly Father, you are my heart.
Lord Jesus Christ, you are my body.
Lord Holy Spirit, you are my breath.
Lord, Holy Trinity, you are my only refuge and my eternal rest!’⁹

A less startling articulation for our ears may be that found in Dante’s Paradiso. In Canto X, lines 1-3 Dante describes the Trinity as follows,
   

'The uncreated Might which passeth speech,
       Gazing on His Begotten with the Love
       That breathes Itself eternally from each…'¹⁰

Later, as Dante is led by Bernard of Clairvaux to the very vision and experience of God, we read,
   

'Bernard conveyed to me what I should do
       By sign and smile; already on my own
       I had to look upwards, as he wished me to.

    For now my sight, clear and yet clearer grown,
       Pierced through the ray of that exalted light,
       Wherein, as in itself, the truth is known.'¹¹

This vision of God, according to Dante, is a vision of God’s love, that is, a vision of the Holy Trinity made possible by the Holy Spirit Himself who is love:
   

'Eternal light, that in Thyself alone
       Dwelling, alone dost know Thyself, and smile
       On Thy self-love, so knowing and so known…

   My will and my desire were turned by love,

The love that moves the sun and the other stars.'¹²

For Dante, then, the visio Dei is a substantial experience facilitated by the Holy Spirit resulting in a growth in truth. Again, what does this look like?

This all too brief selection reveals that for mystics the Holy Spirit may be both the object of our participation in God as well as the divine person facilitating our ascent to God. More importantly for our purposes today is to note that these mystics are articulating a pneumatology that goes beyond viewing the Holy Spirit only as the illuminator of Holy Scripture and an enlightener of scriptural exegetes, but instead posit that God’s Spirit is an active agent in bringing us actually closer to God. By extension, these authors would likely agree that if the Holy Spirit leads a person to encounter God directly, then that experience is a valid source for developing one’s theology, in particular, one’s spiritual theology. In other words, when one encounters God directly through the facilitation of the Holy Spirit, what is learned about God is true and therefore the experience itself can be used to speak theologically.

Pentecostal
By Pentecostal I am referring, in particular, to that group of theologians and churches that trace their theological and/or ecclesial identities back to outpourings of the Holy Spirit on either the students at Bethel Bible School in Topeka, Kansas on January 1, 1901 or to the revival that occurred in 1906 at the Azuza Street Mission in Los Angeles, CA. Many scholars refer to this group as the “classical” Pentecostals to distinguish them from the Neo-Pentecostal movement.¹³  Though there is much variety among those who identify themselves as “Pentecostal,” it is possible to identify a definite penumatology, especially since “[t]he single most important aspect of Pentecostal penumatology is the doctrine of Spirit baptism.”¹⁴  For early Pentecostals, the baptism of the Holy Spirit is distinct from and subsequent to conversion. The first stage of one’s Christian life is one’s conversion. The second stage is “sanctification as a subsequent second blessing at a specific moment in time in which carnal human nature is removed and the heart of the person becomes totally pure in love.”¹⁵  The third stage of the Christian life is baptism by the Holy Spirit, accompanied by the gift of speaking in tongues, presupposing that one has already experienced the first two stages. More recent Pentecostal teaching “has increasingly minimized or even disregarded a second work of sanctification as a prerequisite to Spirit baptism.”¹⁶  Thus, Pentecostals mostly see baptism in the Spirit as a second experience of God’s grace, evidenced by speaking in tongues. As Articles 7 to 9 of the Assemblies of God’s “Statement of Fundamental Truths” state,

7. The Promise of the Father
All believers are entitled to and should ardently expect and earnestly seek the promise of the Father, the baptism in the Holy Spirit and fire, according to the command of our Lord Jesus Christ. This was the normal experience of all in the early Christian Church. With it comes the enduement of power for life and service, the bestowment of the gifts and their uses in the work of the ministry.
This experience is distinct from and subsequent to the experience of the new birth.
With the baptism in the Holy Spirit come such experiences as:
•    an overflowing fullness of the Spirit,
•    a deepened reverence for God,
•    an intensified consecration to God and dedication to His work,
•    and a more active love for Christ, for His Word and for the lost…

8. The Initial Physical Evidence of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit
The baptism of believers in the Holy Spirit is witnessed by the initial physical sign of speaking with other tongues as the Spirit of God gives them utterance.
The speaking in tongues in this instance is the same in essence as the gift of tongues, but is different in purpose and use.

9. Sanctification
Sanctification is an act of separation from that which is evil, and of dedication unto God.
The Scriptures teach a life of ‘holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.’
By the power of the Holy Spirit we are able to obey the command: ‘Be ye holy, for I am holy.’
Sanctification is realized in the believer by recognizing his identification with Christ in His death and resurrection, and by the faith reckoning daily upon the fact of that union, and by offering every faculty continually to the dominion of the Holy Spirit.

Like the mystics, Pentecostals posit that the Holy Spirit is the key instigator and agent of our ability to grow into holiness. Where they differ is in putting forward that evidence of this facilitation is evidenced by a speaking in tongues. Though there are believers in the church’s history prior to the twentieth century who clearly spoke in tongues, they never conceived of this as a sort of evidence of the divine indwelling. In fact, some mystics would have suggested that mere speaking in tongues was too basic a proof and would have rather suggested that discernment or even translocation would be a more accurate demonstration of the Spirit’s work. Regardless, the question now raised by this Pentecostal pneumatology is whether or not that which is said while speaking in tongues becomes, somehow, a normative source for doing theology. If the Holy Spirit enables one to speak in tongues, what is the theological significance of what is spoken in those moments?

Protestant
For my Protestant examples, I will briefly examine the writings of Karl Barth and Donald Bloesch. Karl Barth’s specific and concise treatment of the Holy Spirit is found in Chapter 2 of Volume I, Part I of the Church Dogmatics. After discussing the doctrine of the Trinity, Barth considers first God the Father, then God the Son and finally God the Holy Spirit. Barth asserts that the Spirit is “the subjective side in the event of revelation.”¹⁷  That is, “God’s Spirit, the Holy Spirit, particularly in revelation, is God Himself, so far as He can not only come to man, but be in man, and so open up man for Himself, make him ready and capable, and so achieve His revelation in Him.”¹⁸  In relation to revelation, Barth makes three declarations: (1) “The Spirit guarantees man… his personal participation in revelation;” (2) “The Spirit gives man the instruction and guidance which he cannot give himself;” and (3) it is the Holy Spirit that makes it possible for humankind to “speak of Christ.”¹⁹  Thus, like many of the authors already discussed, Barth gives the Holy Spirit a unique and personal role as an illuminator. For Barth, the Holy Spirit prepares us to hear God’s Word, a ministry that we are unable to accomplish on our own. The Spirit then enables us to confess Christ, again, something that we are unable to do in our own power.

A one-time post-doctoral student of Barth, Donald Bloesch goes further than his teacher in describing the actual works of the Holy Spirit. He gives them as follows:²⁰

1.    The Spirit discloses the truth of Jesus Christ to us – he is a revealer.
2.    He inspires the prophetic and apostolic writings of the Scriptures.
3.    He illumines the minds of the readers of Scripture.
4.    He guides the church into the “right understanding of the gospel message.”²¹
5.    “The Spirit plays a crucial role in the creation of humanity and the world and in their renewal. He is Spiritus Creator…”²²
6.    He quickens our spirit toward the offer of salvation.
7.    The Spirit convicts us of sin and empowers us to obey.
8.    He purifies us and cleanses us from all unrighteousness.
9.    “Through the power of the Spirit we are enabled to become not only more godly but also more Godlike,”²³ that is, the Spirit performs a deifying work in us.

For Bloesch, the Spirit performs a host of different works in us broadly understood as acts of creating, revealing and sanctifying. Significantly, in Bloesch’s thought, part of the illuminative role of the Holy Spirit is actually to act as an interpreter of Scripture. Bloesch writes, “Owing to the Spirit’s superintending action, the mysteries of God are reflected in the Bible, but they are not revealed in all their splendor until the Spirit opens our inward eyes to their truth and significance.”²⁴  The question, then, it seems would be something along these lines: can the Holy Spirit illumine a person’s mind and interpret the Scriptures to someone in a way that would result in the formulation of currently unrecognized truth? Is Bloesch creating a space theologically for a work of the Holy Spirit that moves beyond mere illumination and may more properly be thought of as an apostolic or prophetic speaking forth?  If so, then Bloesch is moving beyond those views given by Cassian, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards and others. This is an area of inquiry that may prove quite profitable for those interested in spiritual theology but, again, it is beyond the scope and purpose of this talk today.

Conclusion
In this entirely too brief and simplistic survey, it is clear that, largely in the history of the Christian church, the Holy Spirit has been viewed as our illuminator and enlightener. Though this ministry may be described in different ways among diverse authors across chronological and ecclesial boundaries, there is no doubt that there is a consensus on this theological principle. Yet, the implications of this for developing a spiritual theology are minimal. What is necessary in the area of spiritual theology is a more vibrant pneumatology, one that takes the historic, orthodox and received penumatology of the church and applies it directly to those questions asked by the field of spiritual theology. For example, where is the Spirit and what are his roles during one’s times of consolation and desolation? What is the role of the Holy Spirit in relation to one’s rule of life? What is the connection of the Holy Spirit to the so-called dark nights of the soul? Surprisingly, even Roman Catholic theologians of the twentieth century, so well known for their manuals of spiritual theology, give little space to pneumatology and often the space that they do devote to the Spirit is little more than a reiteration of the Thomistic positions that were so influential in the last century.²⁵  Again, what we need is a constructive spiritual theology of God the Holy Spirit, one that will address the fullness of the Spirit and the abundance of his works. As the mystical writers referenced in this paper, if the Holy Spirit facilitates an ascent to God and perhaps is even that person of the Godhead with whom we relate, is this interaction then a valid source for forming theological principles, especially about the spiritual life? If the Pentecostal church is correct in its pneumatology, then what is the significance of the message that one speaks forth when God grants the gift of speaking in tongues? Is Donald Bloesch creating a space where a person endowed with the Holy Spirit can take the words of the Scriptures and speak forth a theological message? These areas need investigation before we can formulate a constructive theology of the Holy Spirit with reference to spiritual theology. That is the task before us today.

Discuss


References

  1 John Cassian, The Institutes V.xxxiii-xxxiv. Eng. in Boniface Ramsey, trans., John Cassian: The Institutes (New York/Mahwah: The Newman Press, 2000), 136-137.
  2 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion I.ix.1. Eng. in Henry Beveridge, trans., John Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 84-85.
  3 Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections (Edinburgh/Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2001), 192-194.
  4 Ibid., 209.
  5 See Donald G. Bloesch, The Holy Spirit: Works and Gifts (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 91.
  6 See their collected works in G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard and Kallistos Ware, trans., The Philokalia, The Complete Text, Volume Four (London: Faber and Faber, 1995).
  7 The One Hundred and Fifty Chapters 71. Eng. in Robert E. Sinkewicz, trans., Saint Gregory Palamas: The One Hundred and Fifty Chapters (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1988), 167.
  8 III 2; Eng. in Frank Tobin, trans., Mechthild of Magdeburg: The Flowing Light of the Godhead (New York: Paulist Press, 1998), xxvii.
  9 V 6; Ibid., 185-186.
  10 Eng. in Dorothy Sayers and Barbara Reynolds, trans., The Comedy of Dante Alighieri the Florentine, Cantica III: Paradise (London: Penguin Books, 1962), 135.
  11 Ibid., 344.
  12 Ibid., 346-347.
  13 Henry I. Lederle, Treasures Old and New: Interpretations of “Spirit-Baptism” in the Charismatic Renewal Movement (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1988), 15.
  14 Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Pneumatology: The Holy Spirit in Ecumenical, International, and Contextual Perspective (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 95.
  15 Lederle, Treasures Old and New, 16.
  16 Kärkkäinen, Pneumatology, 96.
  17 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Volume I: The Doctrine of the Word of God, trans. G. T. Thomson (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1936), 515.
  18 Ibid., 516.
  19 Ibid., 518-521.
  20 Bloesch, The Holy Spirit, 285-289.
  21 Ibid., 286.
  22 Ibid.
  23 Ibid., 288.
  24 Ibid., 286.
  25 For example, see Jordan Aumann, O.P., Spiritual Theology (London: Sheed and Ward, 1980).

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© Copyright 2006 Greg Peters. All rights reserved.

Read at the 58th Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in Washington, DC on November 15, 2006.