A basic theological question in Christianity is: how is God present to us today? In New Testament times, the answer was pretty easy: God is present to us in Jesus of Nazareth. If you lived back then and you wanted to be near to God, a good bet was to go find this Jesus character and follow him around.
Things, of course, are somewhat different now. Jesus is no longer present on earth the way he was in the Gospels. Indeed, God can often seem completely absent from the world. It is much harder to say with certainty ‘God is here’ or ‘God is there’ than it was when Jesus was wandering around Galilee and eating meals and being born in mangers.
Perhaps anticipating that this would be a problem, the Holy Spirit was sent to be with us in his place (John 16:7). So nowadays when we talk about how we know God, how we experience him, how he is involved in the world from day to day, we are talking first and foremost about the Spirit. The theological term for the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is ‘pneumatology’.
When Christians talk about the Holy Spirit, then, we are usually talking about the ways in which God is present to us today. So, for example, if we say that God makes himself known to us through scripture, we talk about it being inspired by the Spirit. That is, God is present through the Bible insofar as the Spirit speaks to us through it. The same sort of thing has often been said of the sacraments and, one way or another, the church. It is also true of the personal immediacy and guidance associated with Pentecostal and charismatic experience (As these examples indicate, some of the biggest historical disagreements between Christians have been about pneumatology.) Any time Christians talk about the practical and concrete ways the invisible God meets us now, we tend to bring up the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit, then, is very important! It is where God the idea becomes God the reality in our lives.
For Mockingbird purposes, I think a few further themes associated with the Spirit are of particular interest:
(1) The Spirit creates freedom. ‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom’ (2 Cor. 3:17).
(2) The Spirit gives life, particularly to the dead (Gen. 2:7; Ez. 37:3-6; Rom. 8:11).
(3) The Spirit is present in the experience of judgment upon sin, as well as in suffering and being led into the wilderness (John 16:8; Rom. 8:22-23; Luke 4:1-2). More here.
(4) The Spirit is the source of creativity (Gen. 1:2-3; Ps. 104:30).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrTB-iiecqk&w=600
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10 responses to “Mockingbird Glossary: Pneumatology aka The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit”
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It would be interesting to hear a discussion of how a robust doctrine of the Holy Spirit and the idea of "the presence of His absence" intersect, if in fact they do. Maybe this could be addressed in the upcoming conference???
I love the Chagall painting.
Philadelphia Freedom
but I've seen the Liberty Bell…it's cracked too
great song!
Michael, I am not understanding your original post "the presence of His absence" intersect… can you tell us more?
Robert Farrer Capon (I think in his book "the astonished heart") points out that most of us are used to thinking of God´s presence as a sewing machine needle piercing a piece of fabric and then withdrawing.
He then suggests that a better metaphor is that of an iceburg that is just below the visible surface that at certain points manifests its everywhere presence by poking visibly above the surface of the water.
It seems that second understanding is what lies behind the ancient version of the understanding of that word "sacrament": the manifest-ation of something.
What impresses me there is that God choses to uniquely promise His presence attached to the profane: water, bread, wine, palm-on-pate in absolution and ordination.
This reality mirrors one certain Jew who had to be pointed out in a crowd, had a reputation as a heavy drinker and eater, hung out with bad people, and about Whom Isaiah said "there is nothing about him that man should want him." Ordinary. Unremarkable. Exactly what sanctification (which is Christ-in-us) looks like.
Frank– The "presence of His absence" is the idea that the "presence" of the risen Christ in the world is most evident by the acute sense of His absence. This can sound a bit like Ted Hughes' poem "Song of a Rat" where the rat, caught in a trap, in not even able to sing "No answer is also an answer…" Even that kind of skepticism aside, the idea can sound like a rather convoluted conceit designed to avoid modern objective demands concerning God, but it is given some flesh and bones by Paul Zahl, in _A Short Systematic Theology_ where he explains that "If you want to find the presence of the risen Christ, you can find him paradoxically in loss, despair, suffering and solitude." I accept that claim enthusiastically, but I am also interested in how this idea relates to the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus is said to have given as our Comforter in His absence. This Holy Spirit is depicted in the NT as God with us in the presence of Jesus' absence, bringing healing, love and hope in the midst of suffering to the community of believers. Is the comforting Holy Spirit the primary way God is present to us in the absence of the risen Christ, or is "the prescience of His absence" the way God is "present"? Or are these two claims part of the same whole? I don't have the answers, but I do think these are important questions.
Michael. Wow. That is alot to chew on.
My former pastor often told me that we need to seek Jesus where he has told us he will be found.
Luther and the Luth Confessions give witness to the idea that the scriptures are all and only about the Incarnate Christ in which only, a terrified conscience can find rest.
Luther and the first evangelicals were quite adamant in saying that we should look for the Holy Spirit nowhere apart from the Word of God spoken and written.
"Life is mortification of the flesh." M Luther.
The four parameters I just mentioned I think would represent the discipline of reason being made captive to the Word of God here. Our existential experiences of suffering would need to be identified as God at work, as disciplined by these parameters. what do you think about that idea Michael?
I always understood suffering as part of Earthly visible righteousness/mortification of the flesh and not heavenly righteousness/sanctification. Here would maybe be the Law/Gospel distinction?
Mortification of the flesh is also a work of the Holy Spirit isn´t it? eg "running the race" "fighting the good fight" "subduing our members". All this represents suffering. I am thinking that the sanctification part of all this is that , as JDK pointed out in a recent post, that we "suffer" this suffering to happen because we know it is for the good in that the Old Adam is made service-able to others, and is also being killed.
Penny for your thoughts here! I am not sure how to tie these thoughts together as elegantly as you seem capable of MC!
another thought I would like to run past you Michael:
The Holy Spirit also convicts and kills using the law. This is his alien work that prepares us to hear the Holy Gospel. He does not only comfort.
Further: my understanding is that the Holy Spirit uses the law written in the heart (aka "conscience" aka "(per lutherans "natural law") to squeeze and force out of the old adams of pagans and christians alike, and in an identical way, ALL the earthly goods listed in Luther´s catechisms under the first article and 4th petition of the our father, ie: ALL earthly goods God providences for us.
This law work of the HS can be both carrot (pleasure, positive incentive) and stick (pain):
example "get up out of bed, even if you don´t want to, and go to work, so you can earn your money and buy that 52 inch flat screen you are lusting after, so you can impress the babe you are eager to date, watch the superbowl with your buds and impress them… etc…"
5 cents here for your thoughts!
Frank–I think that you are hitting on some of the core issues when it comes to the Holy Spirit. As I said, I don't have the answers. The wind bloweth were it listeth, and this made Luther as nervous as it did the Pope. It makes me nervous too. But the wind keeps on blowing, even if I tuck into a safe hole. Although I would not want to get too didactic when it comes to where and how the Holy Spirit may be manifest, I do think it is important to remember that Paul wrote Galatians to people who had massively experienced the Holy Spirit, but who were nevertheless theological train-wrecks.