Word, Water, Supper: The Work of the Spirit

One of the tragedies of modern debates about the Spirit’s work in the church and in our lives today is that we have narrowed his repertoire. The Third Person of the Trinity is frequently associated almost exclusively with: (1) the application of salvation (regeneration and sanctification); (2) direct, immediate, and surprising activities within us that defy any external means; and (3) the extraordinary (miraculous signs and wonders, gifts of healing and tongues, and so on).

In the first case, we fail to appreciate that the Holy Spirit is the “Lord and giver of life” in every work of the Godhead. It is not at Pentecost but at Creation—in the second verse of the Bible—where we meet the Holy Spirit in Scripture. Hovering over the waters of creation, making the Father’s speech, mediated by the Son, to bear its intended fruit, the Spirit is the divine person at work within creaturely reality to shape and vivify it.

The Spirit breathed life into Adam and was “out in front” to lead him to glory. When Adam quenched him, the Spirit came in judgment “in the cool [ruach] of the day” (Gen 3:8). Then the Spirit led Israel through the Red Sea to the Promised Land with the pillar and cloud. Throughout biblical history (as I demonstrate in Rediscovering the Holy Spirit), the Holy Spirit is engaged in judgment and power, leading his people by type and shadow to hope in the messianic seed who will “redo” Adam’s failed trial and enter the Sabbath consummation with his people in his train. The Spirit also hovered over the “waters” of Mary’s womb: “And the angel answered her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God’” (Luke 1:35).

The Spirit joined the Father’s benediction over the New Creation—Jesus himself (Luke 3:22). “And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry” (Luke 4:1–2). It was by the Spirit that Jesus performed his miracles and cast out demons (Matt. 12:28, 31), by him that Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice (Heb. 9:14) and was raised (Rom. 8:11). Only with such a wide canvas can we appreciate the fact that the same Spirit was poured out at Pentecost to regenerate, indwell, empower, sanctify, and glorify us, distributing particular gifts to each for the good of the whole body (1 Cor. 12).

Second, contrary to common notions, the Holy Spirit ordinarily works through creaturely means. We see this already with his brooding over the waters to make them fruitful. The Spirit did not work against nature in the incarnation but above it, so that the eternal Son assumed our full humanity, yet without sin. The Spirit works through means in our lives now: through preaching, water, bread, and wine. If we fail to appreciate how the Spirit works through means, then we will fall into either formalism (the means without the Spirit) or enthusiasm (the Spirit without the means).

The third misconception challenged by biblical teaching is that the Spirit’s work is always extraordinary. Sometimes it is, of course, as in the incarnation. But the Spirit was just as involved in the ordinary process of Jesus’ gestation and growth into a mature young man (Luke 2:40–41). He not only regenerates us through the gospel, but he also brings forth the fruit of the Spirit in our lives in ways that are often imperceptible through a process of gradual growth (Gal. 5:22–23).

So, before we become embroiled in the usual controversies of recent generations, it is helpful to set before us this wider canvas that can bring us together instead of tear us apart.

The Reformation and the Spirit

Since the second-century Montanist heresy, there have been movements that set the Spirit against the ordinary ministry of the church. The medieval church experienced these waves as well, with those in charge often seeming to eliminate the need for the Spirit in favor of the external institution and its power and mystics going their own way. Roman Catholic theologian Yves Congar notes that, instead of being seen as means of the Spirit’s operations, the sacraments often were regarded as efficient in and of themselves, which rendered the Spirit somewhat irrelevant. The pope, the saints, and the Virgin Mary also could become “substitutes for the Holy Spirit.”1 In reaction to this, various spiritualist movements arose that set the Spirit in opposition to the church and its ministry of word and sacrament. A cleavage developed between a hierarchical institution filled with abuses and charismatic individuals who sought a direct and personal experience of God through visions, miracles, and ecstasy even apart from the ordinary ministry of the church.

This was the situation at the time of the Reformation. The pope replaced both the word and the Holy Spirit as the vicar of Christ on earth. But the Anabaptists also frequently opposed the ordained ministry—and the Scriptures themselves—with the immediate work of the Spirit. Luther, Calvin, and the other magisterial Reformers rejected this dichotomy.

It is not saying too much, with B. B. Warfield, that the Reformation constituted a major rediscovery of the Holy Spirit. Whereas medieval theology emphasized grace as a created substance infused into the soul to aid its upward ascent, the Reformers proclaimed that the uncreated Spirit is the gift who unites sinners to Christ with all of his benefits. Despite Luther’s vehement criticism of the “enthusiasts,” he said in his Small Catechism, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Ghost has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.”

It is widely recognized that among the magisterial Reformers, John Calvin especially contributed the richest pneumatological reflection. Of the Reformers, observes Pentecostal theologian Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Calvin’s theology was the most thoroughly pervaded by pneumatology, although he was as critical as Luther of “enthusiasm” that separates the Spirit from the word.2 Roman Catholic theologian Brian Gaybba goes so far as to say that “with Calvin there is a rediscovery—in the West at any rate—of a biblical idea virtually forgotten since patristic times. It is the idea of the Spirit of God in action.”3 The great humanist Desiderius Erasmus wrote a scornful letter to Calvin’s elder colleague Guillaume Farel, reproaching the people of Geneva: “The French refugees have these five words continually on their lips: Gospel, Word of God, Faith, Christ, Holy Spirit.”4 Yet Calvin was hardly alone in this regard, as we see from other well-known Reformed leaders—such as Bucer, Vermigli, Cranmer, Knox, Jan Łaski, and Beza—and lesser-known women writers such as the queen of Navarre, Jeanne d’Albret, and Olimpia Fulvia Morata. Without any loss of Christ-centeredness, the Reformed confessions and catechisms give a prominent place to the person and work of the Spirit. In fact, mention of the Holy Spirit appears in the first answer of the Heidelberg Catechism.

Engaging Scripture as well as patristic and medieval sources, the era of what is often called Reformed orthodoxy reopened grand vistas on the Spirit in liturgical and devotional forms alongside more scholarly explorations. John Owen’s lengthy treatises on the Holy Spirit are merely examples of the enormous influence of Puritan writers such as William Perkins, Richard Sibbes, and Thomas Goodwin. One thinks of Scots, such as Gillespie and Rutherford, as well as Continental contemporaries, such as the Czech Jan Komenský (Comenius), Voetius, Witsius, à Brakel, Pierre du Moulin, and Jean Taffin, to name only a few.

But for some reason, the confessional Lutheran and Reformed views of the Spirit have been replaced largely by either a marginalization of the Spirit or an “enthusiasm” that ignores the Spirit’s ordinary way with words. One exception is the lengthy tome on the Holy Spirit by Abraham Kuyper at the end of the nineteenth century. “Even tho [sic] we honor the Father and believe on the Son, how little do we live in the Holy Spirit! It even seems to us sometimes that for our sanctification only the Holy Spirit is added accidentally to the great redemptive work.”5

Whatever forgetfulness of the Holy Spirit may be evident in Protestantism more generally, and in Reformed circles as well, must be part of a forgetfulness of the rich treasures of our own past. Though a generalization, Benedictine theologian Kilian McDonnell puts the matter well:

In both Protestantism and Catholicism, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, or pneumatology, has to do mostly with private, not public, experience. In Protestantism, the interest in pneumatology has been largely in pietism where it is a function of interiority and inwardness. In Roman Catholicism, its dominant expression has been in books on spirituality or on the charismatic renewal, or when speaking of the structural elements of the church. In the West, we think essentially in Christological categories, with the Holy Spirit as an extra, an addendum, a “false” window to give symmetry and balance to theological design. We build up our large theological constructs in constitutive Christological categories, and then, in a second, nonconstitutive moment, we decorate the already constructed system with pneumatological baubles, a little Spirit tinsel.6

If the Spirit is too often an afterthought in our theology, then it is not surprising to see sometimes a subtle demotion of the Spirit creep into our prayers, discourse, praise, and other aspects of daily piety. Obviously, the Father is God, and faithful Protestants have battled mightily for the Son’s full divinity. However, the Spirit can easily be seen merely as a facilitator of our relationship with the Father and the Son. But is the Holy Spirit fully God in the same sense as the Father and the Son? Does the Nicene Creed sometimes give us pause when we say that the Spirit “together with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified”?

With the aid of the classics of patristic and Reformation spirituality, we can rediscover the Holy Spirit as he strides across the pages of the Bible—and into our own hearts today. The Spirit is not found in the ravings of the modern-day “enthusiasts,” whom Calvin as well as Luther warned against. He is found as if tracing a light back to its source—a light shining on the redemption of God’s people in time and place, giving glory to the Son, and effecting the purpose of the Father.

Michael S. Horton is the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido.