The revelation of the Holy Spirit

Preface

The class of persons for whom this Essay is strictly intended is not, of course, theologians, but men and women who, without having received a theological education, yet are or may be interested in the results and processes of Theology. It is not, therefore, an exact or elaborate treatise, but it is designed to serve a special purpose. For the danger of

the Church to-day is that Theology may cease to occupy her proper place as the queen of the sciences, and may come to seem a study or pursuit in itself, the affair of mere specialists, without relation to the ^-practical issues of modern life. For then, however much the clergy may insist upon doctrine, the in- ] tellectual energetic world will hold aloof from it, and will give it no part in their thoughts and affections, or will regard it as something separable ^ / from religion. And the only remedy is to bring home to the world that Theology vitallyjififects the intellectual, and moral problems of life.

Among the articles of the Christian Creed I have chosen the doctrine of the Holy Spirit as

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3 supreme in interest and importance at the present } * f time. For the belief of the Holy Spirit as a Divine Pprson, living, acting, quickening, elevating, sanctifying, is the^key to the solution of many spiritual problems, or at least to the temper in which alone it is possible to think of solving them. And the object of this book is rather to suggest thoughts than to elaborate them, to trace the outlines and not the details of Revelation, not so much to define truth as to ascertain the true way of looking at it. For as the world and all that is in it and human life become wholly changed, when they arejpgarded no more materially but spiritually, so in the _realisa- y y tion of the Holy Spirit’s Presence lies a new hope, a new energy for mankind.

Goethe says wisely that the battle of faith and infidelity is the one momentous issue in human history ; all other issues are subordinate to this. But faith in one point of religion facilitates faith in all religion. Truth is a whole, and every part of it is indissolubly linked to other parts. It is possible, then, that a plea for the ^doctrine of the Holy Spirit may possess some slight value in Christian Apolo- ^ getics. If it were so in the instance of this book, that would be my deepest joy, my best reward.

The Essay has been written at so many different times and in circumstances of so much difficulty, as when I was far from my books at Simla or elsewhere in India, that I am afraid I may have fallen

PREFACE vu into some mistakes which ought to have been, and yet could not easily be, avoided. But I may state in simple gratitude that a large part of it has been read by my friend Canon G. H. Whitaker, although he is not in any sense responsible for it.

In respect of the passages quoted, whether from ancient or modern literature, I have tried to assume such knowledge as the readers whom I had in view would probably possess. I have generally translated passages of foreign languages, ancient or modern, and have not cited the original, unless it seemed to be specially important.

I ought perhaps to add that in some few cases I have borrowed thoughts and expressions from other writings of my own.

April 1902.

J. E. C. WELLDON.

Chapter I The Revelation In The Old Testament

It is my hope in this Essay to examine with as much care as possible the teaching of our Lord Himself and of His Apostles after Him in regard to the Holy Spirit, and then to determine what light it throws or is capable of throwing upon the religious problems of the modern Christian world. It is true that that teaching cannot be fully understood without reference to the anticipations of it in the Old Testament and the Apocrypha, and to the interpretations of it or inferences from it among the Fathers of the Church, as well as in some degree to the belief and language of our Lord’s own time. For every religious teacher, and the greatest as much as the humblest, teaches in a certain intellectual or spiritual atmosphere : he makes assumptions, or does not make them, according as they are or are not warranted by the opinion of his day ; he uses expressions which are naturally intelligible, as being familiar, to the minds of the persons to whom he speaks or writes or stands in some special relation ; and as it is his immediate predecessors who pave

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the way for his teaching upon any subject, so it is his immediate successors who receive it from his hands and carry it on to its legitimate and reasonable consequences. Still, in the judgment of the Christian Church, as indeed in the nature of things, the words of our Lord occupy the first, and the words of His Apostles the second, place of authority. There is no authority equal or parallel to theirs. If it be possible, then, to arrive at any definite conclusions upon the doctrine of the Holy Spirit as enunciated in the New Testament by our Lord and His Apostles, without taking any account of other witnesses, that itself will be a positive result of considerable value ; and if it shall appear that these conclusions agree with the general tenor of thought in the Scriptures of the Old Testament and in the early patristic writings, the result will be greatly confirmed. For to know the* mind of Christ and to follow it in life is the essence of vital Christianity.

The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is one of the cardinal articles of the Christian faith. It is an important element in the system of belief which is the common property of the whole Christian world, which unites all Christians and distinguishes them from all who are not Christians. It is expressly declared in all the three Creeds of the Catholic Church ; it ranks in Christian ecclesiastical history as second only to the doctrine of our Lord’s Divinity. If the one doctrine was determined at Nicsea, the VV. other was determined at Constantinople. It was the cause of the strangest and saddest of all schisms, by which the Churches of the East and of the West have, on a point of mere definition (which prob-

I ably does not represent diversity of belief), been separated for more than eight centuries. It has been celebrated alike in the Eastern and in the Western Church from primitive antiquity by the annual festival of Whitsunday. Nor has there ever been a lack of theologians who have discerned in it the hope or promise of a solution / — not indeed perfect or complete, but at least approximate — of many speculative difficulties which have long agitated the conscience of humanity.

“ Whitsunday,” says F. D. Maurice, “ as connected with Trinity Sunday and leading to it, seems to me to contain the most marvellous and blessed witness of the whole year, and that without which all the rest would be in vain.” “ The great intellectual and religious struggle of our day,” says Bishop Thirlwall, “turns mainly on the question, whether there is a — Holy Ghost.” And the late Professor Milligan

speaks of “ that doctrine of the Holy Spirit which, hardly less than that of the Resurrection of our Lord, has been too much neglected in the theology of our time.” May it be permitted me to affirm my own belief that no doctrine — apart from the Incarnation itself — -is such a solace and strength to Christian hearts in the present difficult days as the Personality of the Holy Spirit ?

But the doctrine, in spite of its historical interest, has not been realised in its full practical importance.

It has not been uniformly felt as a living influence upon all that Christians believe and all that they do. How few churches, for example, have been dedicated to the Holy Spirit ! How scanty is the contribution which sacred art or music or literature has

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made in the Christian centuries to the thought of that Spirit as informing and inspiring the Church of Christ ! Yet an oblivion of the Holy Spirit characterises the dark hours in the religious life of a Church or of an individual soul. It is when religion has grown materialised, when faith has sunk into a form, when human hearts are set more upon ceremony than upon righteousness, and human ears listen more keenly and intently for the far-off dying echoes of an ancient law than for the living present voice of inspiration, that the belief in the Holy Spirit becomes necessarily dull and inoperative. And the greater the mechanical tendency of an age in religious life, the greater is the need to revive men’s faith in the Holy Spirit.

Upon the whole, it is a curious fact that the relative proportions of particular doctrines in the New Testament and in Christian history often present so significant a contrast. Thus the doctrine of the Church or the doctrine of Holy Communion fill comparatively few verses in the Gospels and Epistles, far fewer indeed than the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Yet these are the doctrines which have rent Christendom asunder in the last four centuries; while over the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, which once, though for a brief while only, excited strong theological animosity, a peace as of death has seemed to reign. Even to-day, while men dispute about the Church or the Communion, they seldom dwell upon the ^doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and never dwell upon it in the fierce and angry temper of controversy.

It is possible, perhaps, to regret the decadence

I of a living faith in the Holy Spirit and yet not to regard it as inexplicable ; for human nature labours under a remarkable difficulty of apprehending as a whole whatever subject is offered to its observation. It takes notice of parts or phases of a complex truth, but it does not realise all the truth. Thus in the realm of art there is a disposition to criticise a painting, even when it represents a landscape, not so much by the general comprehensive effect of its various features, although it is there that the charm of the painting probably lies, as by some one particular feature taken alone. Similarly, while Nature creates no simple harmonious character, but always characters of light and shade, in which good and ill, humour and sadness, passion and patience are in various measures intertwined and intermixed, the criticism of such characters is apt to look upon them not as human beings but as types, each . representative of some special quality and of no others —

The difficulty of attending at one time to many aspects of a composite whole lies in the character of humanity itself. Life, like Nature, is always manifold, but human judgments upon it are often partial and incomplete. And this law holds good in the human estimate of Divine truth. Christianity

1 Horace, Ars Poetica, 120- 124.

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entered the world as a system complete and complex, built up of many parts which are dependent one upon another, each in itself perhaps scarcely intelligible, but in relation to the others fraught with a high and holy significance. It is like some vast cathedral, where nave and transept and choir and lofty pillars and delicate tracery and painted windows must be viewed together, and each in relation and subordination to the whole, if the general effect upon the mind is to be appreciated.

It follows that the due “ proportion of faith ” is necessary to the faith itself. The loss of this pro-_^_ portion is heresy. For most heresies of ecclesiastical history have not been untruths, but perversions and exaggerations, or, at the best perhaps, one-sided views of sacred truth. And the evil of heresy is that, as — soon as one truth or one aspect of truth assumes a dominant interest in men’s eyes, all else comes to seem unimportant and evanescent, and in the end is apt to fade out of sight. Christian history may, in fact, be divided into several ages according to the prevalence of particular doctrines at certain times. There has been the age of our Lord’s Divinity, the age of Catholic orthodoxy, the age of the Church’s unity, the age of the religious life in communities ; and since the Reformation and among the Reformed Churches, the age of justification by faith, the age of personal conversion, the age of return to the principles and practices of the sub - Apostolic Church. But there has not been, I think, what may be called the age of the Holy Spirit. It was only In the fight against the Macedonian heresy, and in the agony of severance between the Eastern and

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Western Churches, that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit loomed for a brief while into greatness, and then (as will presently be shown) it took a character singularly alien from the thoughts and motives of the modern Christian world. And yet it is one of the few doctrines which may be said to occupy a primary position in the New Testament.

If the New Testament is the standard of value or importance as between the various doctrines of the Christian Creed, then the doctrine of the Holy Spirit necessarily claims little less than a primacy of importance in the devout and reverent thought of the Christian world.

It is there more prominent, as has been said, than the doctrine of the Church. In the New Testament the references to the Church are strangely few. Our Lord, it is true, expressly declared His intention of founding a Church against which “ the gates of hell (i.e. “of Hades”) should not prevail.” And although He seldom speaks of a Church, the idea of a society called by His name and inspired by His revelation is frequent, and indeed essential, in His teaching. But of the Christian society or Church, of its nature, its character, its constitution, the system of its law, the methods of its ministry, He said little. St. Paul, as his Epistles indicate, was much more occupied with local or individual churches than with the Church as a Catholic body. But in the Epistles' as in the Gospels, long passages turn upon the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise of the Spirit, His nature, His function, His descent at Pentecost, His subsequent operation, His relation to the human

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spirit, His testimony, His influence, and the graces and virtues of which He is the author — are subjects constantly present to the Christians of the New Testament, and strangely forgotten by Christians in the later history of the Church.

Again, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is more prominent in the New Testament than the Holy Communion. The Holy Communion, by the circumstances of its institution and its special relation to the death of Him who instituted it, has ever occupied a commanding position in the minds and hearts of Christians. Yet even when such passages as occur in the sixth and fifteenth chapters of St. John’s Gospel are taken in due reference to the mystical doctrine of the Eucharist, it remains true that the doctrine of the Holy Communion does not occupy so large a space as the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the pages of the New Testament. It may be suggested that the pure spirituality of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit has militated against its popularity ; for human nature instinctively desires what is visible or palpable or material. How strong the desire is, the Roman hypothesis of Transubstantiation may sufficiently declare. For whereas our Lord said, “ It is expedient for you that I go away,” and in these words showed the higher value to be set upon t^His spiritual than upon His bodily presence, His followers 'have aimed at keeping Him in a bodily or quasi-bodily form ; and thus it is that the doctrine of His presence in the consecrated bread or wine, however it may have been interpreted, has proved more attractive and persuasive than the doctrine of

I the Holy Spirit, who is ethereal and immaterial, and, like the wind, “ bloweth where it listeth,” and no man knows, or can know, “ whence it cometh or whither it goeth.” But to emphasise the doctrine of the Holy Communion, and to neglect the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, is to violate the “ proportion of faith ” in the New Testament.

A revival, then, of interest in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is, it would seem, a special need of the present day. Yet the revival, when it occurs, will hardly follow the old lines of theological opinion or expression. The question of the single or twofold Procession of the Holy Spirit in the eleventh century tore the Churches of the East and the West asunder. Their continued separation proves how_easy it is to ^ make a rent in the seamless garment of Christ’s Church ; how difficult, if not impossible, to repair it.

But the question of Procession seems in a sense to be remote from modern theology. It would not now create or justify a schism. It is rather a survival of an old controversy than a living separative force in the minds of men. The Holy Orthodox Church of Russia herself, although she insists upon her special tenet in regard to the Procession of the Holy Spirit, has yet on a memorable occasion shown herself neither unable nor unwilling to unite with the Church of EJngland in public Christian worship.

Nay, it may be doubted if the doctrinal difference of the Churches upon the Procession does not consist more in language than in fact. At all events, modern thought will •not trouble itself, mainly or largely, with any such purely speculative difference. It is the influence of the Holy Spirit upon human vA/*

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conduct that is now the interesting question. To that question this Essay will be addressed. It will aim at treating the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in a practical aspect. In fact, it will follow the general line of the Collect for Whitsunday, in which the record of the Holy Spirit’s descent at Pentecost is made preparatory to the petition that the same Holy Spirit may guide the minds of Christians to “ have a right judgment in all things,” and “ evermore to rejoice in His holy comfort.”

The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is in a pre-eminent sense a doctrine of the New Testament. Our Lord enunciated it ; His Apostles interpreted it; His Church consolidated it. Like the doctrine of the Incarnation of the Second Person in the sacred Trinity, the doctrine of the inspiration of the Third Person is but adumbrated, it is not expressed or defined, although it is more or less evidently postulated, in the writings antecedent to Christ’s Advent. But in the New Testament it takes a definite shape and character.

There is indeed a sense in which it may be said that the doctrine overshadows the whole Bible. Nowhere is it altogether absent from the sacred writers’ minds. It is, so to say, one of the axioms — which are always far more impressive than the conclusions — of religious faith ; for what is demonstrated is an attainment of the intellect, what is assumed is an intuition of the heart. Thus the volume of Revelation begins with the “ moving ” or “ brooding ” of “ the Spirit of God upon the face of the waters ” at the Creation ; and it ends with the

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REVELATION IN OLD TESTAMENT i invitation of the Spirit and the Bride, i.e. of the Spirit and the Church, in the one word “ Come.” And yet it will appear, as this Essay proceeds, that all that is revealed in the Old Testament is but a faint intimation of the great truth which in the New Testament is brought out into fulness of light. Of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, if of any Christian doctrine, it is true that Novum Testamentum in Vet ere latet , Vetus Testamentum in Novo patet.

Before the teaching of the Old Testament upon the nature and influence of the Holy Spirit can be estimated, it is necessary to make some few preliminary remarks.

(1) The Hebrew word uniformly employed to

denote “ spirit ” is rm. But this word means

primarily the “ wind.” From this all its other

meanings are derived. And while undoubtedly it ascends in meaning, as the Old Testament shows, to the “ breath of human life,” to the “ soul,” i.e. the intellectual and emotional element or faculty in human nature, to the “ spirit ” or spiritual faculty (although this is less frequent), and ultimately to the “ Spirit of God ” Himself, yet its original identity with the “ wind ” is always essential to a full understanding of the various senses in which it is used. And the comparison or identification of the Holy Spirit with the wind that “ bloweth where it listeth ” finds its consummation in the words of our Lord to Nicodemus in the third chapter of St. John’s Gospel.

(2) The fact that the same Hebrew word is used, and is in general use, for the spirit of man and the

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Spirit of God is at once an evidence of the peculiarly intimate relation which in the Bible is conceived as existing between the Holy Spirit and the spiritual faculty in human nature. So intimate is that relation that it is sometimes difficult, as will be shown in the sequel, to determine whether the sacred writers, in speaking of the “ Spirit,” mean the Divine Spirit in His operation upon human nature, or the human spirit under the inspiration of the Divine. Such a passage as the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans is enough to exemplify the close and constant interaction, almost amounting to identification, of the Divine and human Spirits.

(3) The word “spirit” naturally associates itself with the thought or doctrine of inspiration. The sacred Scriptures do not dwell upon “ inspiration ” ; but if the word is seldom used in them, they are full of the thing. No doubt it is possible, and even probable, that the word “inspiration,” like “spirit” itself, may possess both a - lower and a higher signification. But wherever the energy of the Holy Spirit is seen and felt, there is inspiration. To limit the sense of inspiration by any narrower bounds than those which the sacred writers assign to the working of the Holy Spirit is to rob it, in part at least, of its amplitude and dignity.

(4) In the Old Testament the Holy Spirit isuniformly considered in reference to God Himself ; that is to say, He is considered relatively rather than absolutely. Thus the phrase “ the Holy Spirit ” standing by itself is unknown to the sacred writers of the Old Testament. At the most, one of the

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Psalmists can say, “Take not thy holy spirit from me” 1 and the second Isaiah, “ They rebelled and grieved his holy spirit.” 2 So, too, God is often represented, especially in the Psalms and prophetical books, as using the expression “ My Spirit.” And the words “ the Spirit of God ” are found commonly in the Old Testament. But it is only in the New Testament that such absolute phrases as “ the Spirit ” or “ the Holy Spirit,” or phrases in which a particular character of the Holy Spirit is expressed, as eg. “ the Spirit of truth ” or “ the Paraclete,” occur, or occur commonly. It will be seen that the change of phraseology corresponds to a greater definiteness in the conception of the Holy Spirit. It is an approximation to the precise definition of the Holy Spirit in the Christian Creeds. Still, while this increasing lucidity of thought regarding the Holy Spirit must ever be recognised, the Old Testament itself affords ample sanction to the belief in the personal being and energy of the Holy Spirit Himself.

It is now possible to consider the various aspects under which the operation of the Holy Spirit is delineated in the Old Testament.

A. The Holy Spirit , or the Spirit of God , is the author of creative or formative energy — in short , of life.

In the cosmogony of Genesis “ the Spirit of God ” is represented as “ moving,” or more strictly “ brooding,” as a bird over her nest, “ upon the face of the waters,” while as yet the earth was formless and void, and darkness rested “ upon the face of the

1 Psalm li. 11, 2 Isaiah lxiii. io,

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deep.” If the verb nprno conveys, as it probably does, the idea of “ brooding,” it must mean that the Spirit of God gave life and form to the dull matter of the universe, as the mother-bird to her eggs by sitting upon them, and so approved Himself the primary agent in evolving physical order out of chaos. St. Thomas Aquinas, indeed, gives a different explanation of the figure employed in Genesis, but he too sees in it the forming or ordering power of a divine Creator : “ Spiritus Domini in Scriptura non nisi pro Spiritu sancto consuevit poni ; qui aquis superferri dicitur, non corporaliter, spd sicut voluntas artificis superfertur materiae quam vult formare.” 1 To give life, then, and to create order in the universe was the work of the Holy Spirit at the Creation. So it is that one of the Psalmists can write, “ By the word of the Lord were the heavens made ; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth,”2 uniting the action of the Divine Word and the Divine breath or Spirit.

But as in the life of Nature, so too in the life of Man, the Holy Spirit operates.

He imparts life.

Thus in the book of Job Elihu says, “The spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty giveth me life.” 3

He sustains life.

Thus Job himself says, “ My life is yet whole in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils,” 4 where the second half of the verse is clearly equivalent to

2 Psalm xxxiii. 6. 3 xxxiii. 4, 4 xxvii. 3.

I the first ; and it implies that, so long as the Spirit of God was in his nostrils, life remained.

And from this verse it becomes apparent that the language of Genesis ii. 7, “ The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,” is rightly understood as signifying by “ the breath of life ” the Spirit of God, who gives life and is Himself Life.

The Spirit of God, then, breathed life into the first man, and breathes it into every man who is born into the world. And not only does He originate life, but He sustains it. Other passages of the Old Testament bearing upon the vitalising and energising power of the Spirit of God are the following •; —

Psalm civ. 30: “Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created ; and thou renewest the face of the ground,” a simple reference to the continual creative energy of the Spirit.

Job xxvi. 13: “By his spirit,” i.e. the Spirit of God,-“ the heavens are garnished,” or, as the Hebrew word literally means, “ By his spirit the heavens are beauty,” i.e. “ it is the spirit of God who beautifies the heavens,” the Spirit of God being now regarded as the author not of life only, nor of order only, but of beauty. The thought of beauty in the heavens, and of that beauty as the work of the Divine Spirit, marks an interesting advance in the cultivation of the aesthetic and religious faculties in human nature.

Another passage, Genesis vi. 3, is ambiguous in its language, but the context almost necessitates the translation “ My spirit shall not rule (or

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1 6

“abide”) in man forever”; and if that translation is accepted it represents the Spirit of God as the sustainer of physical life in man ; for when the Spirit ceases to abide in man, death follows.

Isaiah xxxii. i is a vision of physical regeneration associated with the time when “ a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment. And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest ; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.” And it is remarkable that such regeneration should be depicted in the words, “ Until the spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness become a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted for a forest.” Whether the Messianic interpretation of the passage be accepted or not, it seems impossible that these words should be wholly figurative. Rather, the outpouring of the Spirit is regarded as the concomitant, and indeed the cause, of a bountiful prosperity in Nature.

And as the Spirit is the author of physical regeneration, so when Ezekiel (xxxvii. 13) seeks to describe in poetical language the restoration of Israel to its high privilege and prerogative under the image of the dry bones in the valley, he uses the expression, “Ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, and caused you to come up out of your graves, O my people. And I will put my spirit (or “ breath ”) in you, and ye shall live, and I will place you in your own land.” But life in this passage is the symbol of a new prosperity which should be as a rising from the grave ; and it follows that the phrase, “ I will put my spirit in you,” must be also symbolically understood.