Our Paraclete, the Paul Lamey, Preaching and Leadership Training, Grace Community Church

Part Two: The Spirit through Church History

I. Introduction: The Wonder, Mystery, and Ministry of the Holy Spirit II. The Spirit through Church History: a summary of the last 2,000 years1

“Tradition . . . is the fruit of the Spirit’s teaching activity from the ages as God’s people have sought understanding of Scripture. It is not infallible, but neither is it negligible, and we impoverish ourselves if we disregard it.”2

“It seems odd, that certain men who talk so much of what the Holy Spirit reveals to themselves, should think so little of what he has revealed to others.”3

A. The Patristics4 of the Early Church (ca. AD 100 –8TH Century)

1. The Spirit empowered worship and ministry (Didache—ca. AD 70, Shepherd of Hermes—late 1st or early 2nd Century AD, Clement of Rome— ca. AD 96)5.

“He is the sanctifier of the faith of those who believe in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Spirit. This rule of faith has come down to us from the beginning of the .”6

2. They acknowledged that the Spirit was doing a new work since but they took pains to show that it was the same Spirit at work.

“It is the same Holy Spirit . . . in those who believed in God before the advent of Christ, or in those who by means of Christ have sought refuge in God.”7

3. The Spirit is God and is equal with God

1 A conventional way to divide the Christian past is by four time periods. For example, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, “History of Theology,” New Dictionary of Theology, 309-312. 2 J. I. Packer, “Upholding the Unity of Scripture Today,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 25 (1982): 414. 3 Charles H. Spurgeon, Commenting and Commentaries (1876; repr., Grand Rapids: Kregal Publications, 1988), 9. 4 “patristic” is from the Latin pater meaning (father). These “Church Fathers” were key writers, theologians, and pastors who wrote from the end of the Apostolic age (ca. AD 100) to ca. 8th Century AD. For a helpful and accessible introduction, see Michael A. G. Haykin, Rediscovering the Church Fathers: Who They Were and How They Shaped the Church (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011). 5 See Didache also called “The Teaching of the Twelve,” 4:10; 7:1, 3; 11:7, 8, 9, 12. Varner dates the Didache to ca. AD 70 or possibly earlier, see William Varner, The Way of the Didache: The First Christian Handbook (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 2007), 4. 6 Tertullian, Against Praxeas, 2, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, 3:598. 7 Origen, First Principles, 2.7.1, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, 4:284.

1 Tertullian (AD 160-225) wrote that “Thus the connection of the Father in the Son, and of the Son in the Paraclete, produces three coherent persons, who are yet distinct one from another. These three are one essence, not one person.”8

“Tertullian’s wording became the foundation for the church’s definition of the Trinity: God is one in essence yet three in persons. This means that the Holy Spirit is fully God, just as the Father and the Son are; yet he is also distinct from those two.”9

Athanasius (AD 296-373) said that the Spirit “belongs to and is one with the Godhead which is in the Triad.”10

Augustine (AD 354-430), “For as the Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, which no one doubts to be said in respect to substance, yet we do not say that the very supreme Trinity itself is three Gods, but one God.”11

4. Fighting Error: • Monarchianism/Modalism (denies three Persons) • Arianism (not fully divine, a created being)12 • Macedonianism/Pneumatomachians (denied the deity of the Spirit as being equal with the Father and Son, a lesser deity). • Lingering questions of the procession, generation, and subordination of the Spirit.

So by the time of the Council of Constantinople (AD 381) they could say, “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spoke through the prophets.”13

B. The Medieval Church (800’s--1500)

1. Division over the procession of the Spirit (filioque—“and from the Son”).

“In the first millennium of at the great Councils the Churches could agree on God and, for the most part, on Christ; but East and West ultimately split apart over the Spirit.”14

8 Tertullian, op cit., 3:621. 9 Gregg R. Allison, Historical Theology: An Introduction to Christian Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 434. 10 Athanasius, Letters to Serapion, 1.21, cited in Allison, 435. 11 Augustine, On the Trinity, 5.8/9, in Nicene- and Post-Nicene Fathers, 3:91. 12 Named after Arius (250 or 256-336), this heresy is present today in the teachings of the Jehovah Witnesses who teach that the Holy Spirit is not a divine person but a force. They deny that He is alive and that He is a person. 13 Nicene-Constantinople Creed, in Schaff, 2:59. 14 Raymond E. Brown, “Diverse Views of the Spirit in the ,” Worship 77 no. 3 (May 1983): 226.

2 • This ushered in the great Schism of Eastern and Western Christianity in AD 1054. The West embraces filioque and the East rejects it.

2. Rome links the Spirit with the authority of the Church

“The sixth [article of faith] is the sanctification of the church by the Holy Spirit, and by the sacraments of grace, and by all those things in which the Christian Church communicates. By which is understood that the Church, with its sacraments and discipline, is, through the Holy Spirit, sufficient for the salvation of every sinner; and that outside the Church there is no salvation.”15

C. The Reformation (1500—late 1600’s)

“The Reformation was a battle among Western Christians who were united in the belief that the Spirit had come forth from the Son (as well as the Father) but who were divided over how the Spirit functioned in the church.”16

1. Luther (1483-1546) links the Spirit with the Word, the necessity of the Spirit, the sanctification of the Spirit

“No one can correctly understand God or his Word unless he has received such understanding immediately from the Holy Spirit.”17

“That this treasure, therefore, might not lie buried, but be appropriated and enjoyed, God has caused the Word to go forth and be proclaimed, in which he gives the Holy Spirit to bring this treasure home and appropriate it to us.”18

2. John Calvin (1509-1564)—the Spirit and the Word are inseparably linked. Criticizing the Catholic Church for boasting “of the Holy Spirit solely to commend with his name strange doctrines foreign to God’s Word—while the Spirit wills to be conjoined with God’s Word by an indissoluble bond.”19 The testimony of the Spirit is more excellent than all reason. For as God alone is a fit witness of himself in His Word, so also the Word will not find acceptance in men’s hearts before it is sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit. The same Spirit, therefore, who has

15 Archbishop John Peckham, “On the Ignorance of Priests’ Pastoral Delinquency in Instruction and Preaching,” in Constitutions on Clerical Responsibility; Petry, 338. 16 Raymond E. Brown, op cit. 17 Martin Luther, Magnificat, LW, 21:299. 18 Martin Luther, Large Catechism, 2.3 in Triglot Concordia: The Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, trans. F. Bente and W. H. T. Dau (St. Louis: Concordia, 1921), 689. 19 John Calvin, Institutes, 4.8.14.

3 spoken through the mouths of the prophets must penetrate into our hearts to persuade us that they faithfully proclaimed what had been divinely commanded.20 3. John Owen (1616--1683)—distinguish b/t inspiration and illumination

D. The Modern Church (1700’s—present)

1. George Whitfield (1714-1770)—The Spirit’s mission is to regenerate and sanctify.

2. John Wesley (1703-1791)—an experience of assurance.

“By the testimony of the Spirit, I mean, an inward impression on the soul, by which the Spirit of God immediately and directly witnesses to my spirit, that I am a child of God; that Jesus Christ has loved me, and given himself for me; that all my sins are blotted out, and I, even I, am reconciled to God.”21

3. Neo-Pentecostalism—The First “wave” occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century with the rise of the Pentecostal movement. This was then greatly accentuated at the time of the Azusa Street Revival (April 14, 1906—ca. 1915).

4. Charismatic Renewal Movement—The Second “wave” occurred during the 1960s as the Charismatic movement spread throughout mainline protestant denominations, as well as the Roman Catholic Church. The Word of Faith movement is also an expression of this wave.

5. Third “wave” evangelicalism—occurred during the mid 1980s and continues today, the phrase was coined by C. Peter Wagner and was initially associated with John Wimber (Vineyard Movement) and more recently, Sovereign Grace Ministries (formerly People of Destiny International, founded by Larry Tomczak and C. J. Mahaney).

‘Third wave’ people encourage the equipping of all believers to use the New Testament spiritual gifts today, and say that the proclamation of the gospel should ordinarily be accompanied by ‘signs, wonders, and miracles,’ according to the New Testament pattern. They teach, however, that baptism in the Holy Spirit happens to all Christians at conversion, and subsequent experiences are better called ‘filling’ with the Holy Spirit.22

20 Ibid., 1.7.4. 21 John Wesley, The Witness of the Spirit: II, 2.2, in Wesley’s Standard Sermons, ed. E H. Sugden, 2 vols. (London: Epworth, 1921), 2:345. 22 Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994, 2000), 763–64n2.

4 Summary:

Evangelicals hold to the historical beliefs about the Holy Spirit’s deity and ministry (including the position that the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son), but they reflect a significant amount of disagreement on the Spirit’s link to the sacraments and his role in Spirit baptism and distribution of miraculous gifts.23

“Glory to the All-Holy Trinity and one Divinity: Father and Son and all-provident Holy Spirit, forever, Amen.”24

23 Gregg R. Allison, Op cit., 430. 24 John Behr, trans. “St. Irenaeus of Lyons: On the Apostolic Preaching” in Popular Patristics Series, vol. 17 (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), 101.

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