John Oman suggested some years ago that the importance of any matter can be measured by the difficulty of defining it. We can understand his point: ordinary things are settled by ordinary explanations, extraordinary things constantly demand further explanation. If you announce that you are “in love,” that may well be understood by someone else who is “in love” but impossible to define to anyone else. In fact, to explain love to someone “in love” sounds like nonsense. Louis Armstrong once said about jazz music, “If I have to explain it to you then you ain’t got it,” or as they are saying in youthful circles today, “If you have to ask what it is you don’t know where it’s at.” There is a measure of truth for us in all this these days as we experience an inundation of information and misinformation, experience, pseudo-experience, and quackery regarding the Holy Spirit. But with others in these confusing times we can try to sort out a few things.
One idea clearly evident from Scripture—and Scripture is the only source for information on this subject—is that the Holy Spirit is “the Spirit of Truth” (John 14:17; 15:26). It would seem, therefore, that he is the subject and source of truth and not the object. When we try to define him we are going at him objectively, and this is quite impossible. We are faced with the same kind of problem when we try to examine our own ego. The ego is always the subject of our examining and not the object of it. In the case of the ego, even our own ego, we can examine only the manifestations of the ego, the outgoing of the person; we can know our own selves essentially only by what shows itself, and the ego never shows itself; in short, we know only indirectly and by implication what the true nature of self or other selves may be. Thus the Holy Spirit is recognized in his works—mighty acts, words of truth, gifts of the Spirit like tongues or healings, fruits of the spirit like love and joy, troublings and anxieties of our own spirits within, reflecting perhaps the work of the Spirit through conscience. And since spiritual things are spiritually discerned, we must be a little hesitant today in passing judgment on all the opinions we hear about manifestations of the Spirit. Since we are directed to “test the spirits” (1 John 4:1), there must often be much to be said on both sides.
The Scriptures also tell us that the Spirit is given to “guide you into all truth” (John 16:17). I take it that these words mean what they say about “all truth.” We hear it said that “all truth is God’s truth,” and surely that statement is true. What other ground for truth can there be except in Truth Himself? It follows, then, does it not, that the work of the Holy Spirit could be manifested in many areas not usually thought of as religious or churchy. William Temple once remarked that on the day of judgment many good people will be surprised to discover that God is interested in many other subjects besides religion. God is surely interested in earthworms and oysters, the stars in their courses and the laughter of children. And if all truth is God’s truth, then good Christian people should rejoice in mathematics and poetry, a nice double play, and statues in the park. In religious circles there has been a constant error, a false dichotomy, concerning the sacred and the secular. The Incarnation should have headed that off long ago; surely the idea of “all truth” in the work of the Holy Spirit forces us to rethink such things. “The heavens declare the glory of God,” and “there is a true light that enlightens every man.” Paul says in the first chapter of Romans that even pagans can understand God’s power and deity from the created world, and the wrath of God is against them if they don’t. There is something of the Holy Spirit at work, therefore, in all those who are working on truth, or are concerned with truth, who seek the truth, who wonder, or are troubled, or question. We Christians can rejoice that such seekers are in some measure “in the Spirit” and can earnestly pray that they can recognize what Spirit it is and be led to loyalty and worship.
Another clear office of the Spirit is set forth in these words of our Lord: “He will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:15). Since all things are summed up in Christ and since it is in him that all things “consist,” we can entertain the hope that all seekers after truth will end with Christ. In any case this should be the be-all and end-all for the Christian. Whatever is truly of the Spirit will lead us to Christ. We recognize how this works out in experience. We set ourselves to examine the Spirit only to find that the longer we look at him the more we are looking at Christ. This is a strange and also informative experience: examine the Spirit and he is always pointing away from himself to Christ, so in a sense we miss the Spirit and find Christ. But this is the way it is supposed to be, this is the way the Trinity seems to function: we look at the Spirit and see Christ, who reveals the Father. At this Pentecost season, any sober analysis of the Spirit, therefore, will not, and should not, end with analysis or definition of the Spirit (impossible in spiritual things anyway) but will lead to those things that are essentially visible, the Word become flesh. And Christ incarnate is now in his body, the Church; yet some enthusiasts of the Spirit in our day have forgotten all about the Church. The manifestations of the Spirit will always be related to Christ and therefore always related to the Body of Christ. This is a sobering and controlling fact. The Spirit and the Word are also inevitably bound up together; as the reformers made plain, never the Spirit apart from the Word, never the Word apart from the Spirit.
The coming of the Spirit at Pentecost suggests some other things. Notice on that day, and notice indeed when the Spirit descended on Jesus at his baptism, how the observers and the recorders have to shift to figures of speech to tell what happened. The Spirit descended on Jesus “as a dove,” and the phenomenon of Pentecost is described “as it were” tongues of flame and “as it were” the sound of rushing wind. There were no exact words or exact analogies and parallels to describe what happened. Charles Finney in his autobiography describes his experience of the Spirit as the shock of electricity going through his body. In the history of the Church there have been shakers and quakers, ecstasies and outcries. It is not an argument in favor of quackery or against Spirit-filled Christians to point out that there can be some pretty wild manifestations of the coming of the Spirit: this may be one of the expectancies of his coming in some situations. We argue that he comes in sober truth, that he comes with the reading and understanding of the word or in the preaching of the word: yet we cannot dismiss out of hand other manifestations that come outside the ordinary experience and structure of things. Our day is filled with reports of the coming of the Spirit. Is there someone wise enough to tell us just how he has to come, in what manner and with what accompanying phenomena? I think not.
A helpful book for me was The Faith That Rebels by D. S. Cairns. Cairns’s rebellion was against the easy dismissal of the manifestations of the Holy Spirit, the limiting of his work to certain works and ways. This won’t do. The Holy Spirit works when and where and how he pleases. We can expect the gifts of the Spirit and we can expect the fruits of the Spirit, but we cannot expect to be the referee and call the game. It isn’t our game. We are recipients, not directors.
All this leads to something else that is true. “The wind blows where it wills …” (John 3:8). We do not and cannot know whence it comes and whither it goes. The Pneuma of God is something like the pneuma of nature: he has his own ways and his own times and seasons. How refreshing a gentle breeze; how frightening a tornado! So is the Spirit of God.
Music, language, ecstasies, Jesus freaks, glossolalia, strange accounts of strange healings—these and much more are about us in these days. Who is wise enough for these things? Are these all movements of the Spirit of God or are some demonic? Some things we can say for sure: explosiveness, differences, a certain wildness, need not be unexpected. But there are controls. What of the things of Christ, what is the relationship to the Scriptures, what of the building of the body of Christ? Do the gifts of the Spirit also bring with them the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control? Against such there is no law, and we shouldn’t try to enforce one.
Addison H. Leitch is professor of theology at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, South Hamilton, Massachusetts. He has the Th.M. from Pittsburgh Seminary and the Ph.D. from Cambridge University. Among his books is “A Reader’s Introduction to the New Testament.”
Scripture-Sanctioned Revolution
Radical involvement in social change on the part of churchmen allegedly finds wide support in both the Old and the New Testament and in historic behavior patterns of the Christian community. Moses’ ultimatum to Pharaoh and the ensuing rebellious action are often cited as biblical warrant for revolt by a covenant people against a corrupt political and social order. Standing in this line of protest are the great prophets of Israel, more than one of whom spent some time in jail, the reward for bashing their heads against an insensitive establishment. Turning to the New Testament we find the often quoted words of Jesus: “I have come to set fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled.” And we are assured that Jesus’ followers of post-apostolic days, acting out the moral and ethical implications of the Christain Gospel, were frequently charged with atheism and civil disobedience. On the face of it there appears to be plenty of evidence that biblical religion, far from being inimical to revolution, actually fosters it.
But what kind of revolution? At this point some of us had better do some soul-searching. The revolution supported by Scripture is the revolution that replaces the evil that is in the world with the doing of God’s will. Said Ezekiel: “Ruin! Ruin! I will bring about such ruin as never was before, until the rightful sovereign comes. Then I will give him all” (21:27, NEB). According to the Old Testament, divine judgment rests upon every human enterprise that stands in the way of God’s righteous and holy will. Implied in this insight is the recognition that divine judgment rests upon the economic and political systems of our own day that foster war and widen the gulf between men and nations. But what economic and political system does not do that? Man in his sin is not capable of building God’s kingdom, here or anywhere else. All that man can do is to structure for the day his own systems, out of which violence and strife, always endemic to man, come.
This is not to say that one temporal kingdom is as good as another, or as bad as another. Nor is it to say that the Church ought not to pass discriminating judgment on the works of men and nations. The sovereignty of God works in and through the works of men and nations, and part of the task of the Church is to point to the ways and means through which God’s righteousness is asserting itself in the circumstances of life. The God who in ancient times used pagan King Cyrus as well as the spiritually sensitive Isaiah to work his will can, in our time, use a Marxist as well as an Episcopalian to serve his ends. But the goal of God’s work is neither a Marxian state nor an Episcopal kingdom. The goal of biblical revolution is God’s kingdom in which God’s righteousness dwells.
The churchman who insists on God’s righteousness as the goal of the kingdom will be no less discriminating about the means of bringing it in. The means must be as demanding as the goal. For the sake of argument let us assume that in a particular social situation today, a Marxian solution would make for a more “just” order than the existing one. From this it does not follow that the Christian can either condone or use the means a Marxist uses to achieve his end. The Christian does not deal in human relativities when presenting the mind and will of Christ.
When we study the biblical mandate for revolution, we find the context illuminating. The command of the Lord through Moses to Pharaoh, “Let my people go!,” is invariably coupled with the plea, “that they may serve me in the wilderness.” The prophets most vocal in condemning incompetence and corruption—Isaiah, Amos, and Jeremiah—are the ones who eventually moved furthest toward grace. Their final plea is not for a new social order but for a new covenant between man and God. The purpose of Jesus’ one militant act—the cleansing of the temple—was to restore the room as a house of prayer for all people.
As the most significant works that Jesus’ followers can hope to do, the New Testament cites acts of mercy, love, forgiveness, gentleness, which are the fruits of the spirit of Christ (1 Cor. 13; Matt. 5:7). The New Testament Christians who turned the world upside down wielded the sword of Christ’s spirit.
What disturbs me in the situation today is that some of our clerical revolutionaries, like Jesus’ tempter in the wilderness, want to short-cut the means. They say that there isn’t time to wait for men to love the Lord their God with all their heart, and their neighbors as themselves. They would love the neighbor as Che Guevara loved him, half hoping that from the ruin of a no-good world something better is bound to rise. They want a kingdom now that men and women can manipulate while they are still in their sins. This isn’t necessarily an ignoble or unworthy goal. It is always being tried, and sometimes the new order proves to be an improvement—though often temporary—over the old. But we should not confuse this kind of kingdom with the kingdom of God and his righteousness, which Christians are asked to seek first.—The Reverend VICTOR FIDDES, Westminster United Church, Regina, Saskatchewan.
