The Work of the Spirit

Main Passage: John 16:7-14.

Main Points:

1. Why do we have spiritual experiences?

Here the lecture swerved to a shallow appeal to human nature. We all have experiences which are inexplicable in a purely material world. The bare assertion was made that we are spiritual beings and that there is a spiritual reality, but no grounding was given, even from Scripture.

2. What is the work and person of the Holy Spirit?

Here, there was a mixture of what you'd get from reading a Reformed catechism and a slightly extended discussion of John 16:8-11. The preference for the NIV was stated, since it renders v 8 as "will prove the world wrong" instead of "convict the world" in the ESV. I'm not sure that one is better than the other, except that the ESV's translation is more generally applicable. The Spirit is not only there to answer the atheist apologist, proving them wrong. Rather, the Spirit speaks into dry bones, bringing conviction where there was only the death of agnosticism. Conviction is not the same as error, and the Spirit's ministry is not merely the correcting of error. The Spirit brings life to the conscience dead in sin, and this work has the necessary effect of realigning one's belief concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment. This point is proved in the passage. The Spirit does not merely contradict falsity, but shows the true essence of sin (which is rejection of the providence of the Father, providence itself personified in Jesus Christ), of righteousness (which is Jesus' obedience to the Father's will), and of judgment (which is Jesus' victory over the powers of this world). 

There is so much more that could have been taken from this passage on these points, but which was missed or set aside. Sadly, no indication was given of a follow up sermon, and this sermon is indicative of the one-off Pneumatology Sunday sermons which happen every other season, seemingly to convince the people that the elders really do believe in the Holy Spirit. All of this is predicated upon an acceptance of weak trinitarianism, which works itself out in expressions like "well, the Holy Spirit is a mysterious force who prefers to work behind the scenes and doesn't like attention. He's the one it's OK to call a she, from time to time; you know, the person of the Godhead for you introverted types."

3. How do we know that it is the Spirit working?

Here, the shallow Reformed sermon gets a pass because of the natural focus on the centrality of Scripture, sola scriptura if you will. Here the focus moves to John 16:13-14. The point is proven that the Spirit is, to quote Derek Webb, a mockingbird, who only speaks what he has heard. That is, there is no new revelation beyond the Canon, which is asserted to be closed. Thus, the "many things" of v 12 must have been explicated by the apostles after Christ, leading to a Canon of Scripture which is "all-sufficient". Words such as "inerrant" or "infallible" were avoided, for the record. The only weakness here, as I see it, is that "he [the Holy Spirit] will guide you into all the truth" in v 13 gets interpreted into a need-to-know situation of scriptural sufficiency. That is, Scripture tells you what you need to know to be obedient to the will of God, in the image of Christ, by the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit. But where is the semper reformanda in this Reformed sermon. There's a false dichotomy being enforced here between "no new revelation" and "new revelation" a la Word of Faith heresies and such. What about the ongoing interpretive work of the Church in which she is made to stand under the Word of God as it is spoken to her. This limiting stance to Scripture might have the effect of sterilizing the Church's witness by enscripturating the Reformed tradition itself. Thus, this sermon on the Holy Spirit was a mere recitation of a safe catechesis on Pneumatology. Here are the facts. Here is the text. Here is the personality profile.....of God? 

To digress a bit, this sermon reminded me of the need to do pneumatology through the lens of the apocalypse. After all, the Spirit comes in and for the last days. Read the rest of John 16 and see the application Jesus makes Himself. Why is it to our advantage that Jesus goes away, that the Helper comes to us (v. 7)? It isn't so that the Spirit can correct the doctrinal mistakes of pagans. No, it is so that we can be taught to pray and to receive the providence of God with joy. Jesus is putting us through trial and tribulation. The advantage is inverse. The Spirit comes so that the world may be judged without an excuse, and so that the Church may bear witness to the light although it remains in darkness. The Spirit isn't coming to make our lives easier, like the big brother who shows up to take care of his little brother's bullies. No, the Spirit has come to teach us the meaning of lamentation, so that we can in the end understand what it means to rejoice.

Here's a relevant quote from "Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul" by Richard B. Hays, which unpacks a better direction for our view of illumination than mere "all-sufficiency" without resorting to bibliolatry:

By reading Scripture under the conviction that God's word is near, in the mouths and hearts of the eschatological community, Paul collapses the distance between past and present. Scripture retains tremendous power as an instrument of God's speech, yet at the same time the community's acts of interpretation manifest great freedom. This is not really a paradox: the notion that hermeneutics is a zero-sum game in which the authority of the text must cancel the creativity of the interpreter (or vice versa) poses a rationalistic conundrum that Paul would find unintelligible. For him the nearness of the word at the end of the ages insures that faithful readers, for whom the veil is removed, will be empowered by the Spirit to generate imaginative intertextual readings that illuminate the witness of the Law and the Prophets to the gospel of God's righteousness. The "original" meaning of the scriptural text, then, by no means dictates Paul's interpretation, but it hovers in the background to provide a cantus firmus against which a cantus figuratus can be sung. (177-178).