PERHAPS THE OLDEST AND MOST PERSISTENT OF ALL OUR RELIGIOUS IDEAS," WRITES E. F. SCOTT, "IS THAT OF THE SPIRIT." ¹

It is the concrete and vital expression of the twofold conviction of religion, that there is a Power greater than man and that this Power touches man's life not only as rule but as presence and help. Christianity is the clear and full expression of this double conviction. The thought of the divine presence and sharing is embodied in the unity of a threefold faith in God: the Father "in heaven," holy, mighty, and merciful; the God who gave himself in love and saving deed through Jesus Christ; the God who is not only with us but dwells in us as Holy Spirit. The faith in the gift of the Spirit was vital to the primitive Church. The birth of the Church came with the gift of the Spirit. The life of the Church and that of the individual disciple was through the indwelling Spirit.

Although formally retained in the teaching of the Church, the doctrine of the Spirit cannot be said to have any such central place in the life and thought of the Church today. Many think of the Holy Spirit only in connection with the apostolic benediction and the Apostles' Creed. The doctrine of the Spirit, as of the Trinity, is left to the discussion of the theologians. If they think of its personal religious meaning, it is as something belonging to the few, to the saints or the mystically minded. By some it is discredited through its association with emotional excesses and fanatical ideas as found in certain cults. And yet, whether associated with the term "Holy Spirit" or not, the basic idea has remained. For this conviction of the living presence and power of God in us and in his Church is inseparable from the Christian faith. There is, in fact, a growing appreciation of the vital importance of this truth, alike for our faith in a living God here and now working in the world, for our interest in a religion of spiritual dynamic and not merely of doctrine and duty, and for the deeply felt need of strength and help in personal life.

Our primary concern in this study is with the meaning of the Spirit in relation to salvation. This empirical approach is that of the New Testament. Its writers nowhere formulate a doctrine of the Spirit, but everywhere there is evidence of the experience of a new life of love and power and peace. Men knew this life as a gift of God. But it was not something simply handed down from a distant God. It meant God's own presence in them. They used various terms to denote this presence: the Spirit, the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, God in men, Christ in men. But all these referred to the same experience and reflected the same faith, the faith in the living God, the holy God, who gave himself to men to dwell in them and give them life. The work of the Spirit in salvation must be seen in relation to the whole concept of God.

The Holy Spirit and the Concept of God

The varying forms in which the Spirit has been conceived have reflected varying conceptions of God, and these must be indicated briefly.

1. We note first the conception of God which emphasizes his transcendence and otherness and subordinates to this the personal and ethical. Here God is first of all sovereign power, absolute and inscrutable. The Spirit is not so much God's presence but rather a power from God acting upon man or communicated to him in gifts miraculously bestowed or perhaps in an ecstatic experience in which man's spirit is dispossessed as the divine Spirit enters in.

This conception appears in the Old Testament stories concerning Samson and Saul (Judg. 14:6, 19; 15:14-15; 1 Sam. 11:6; 19:23-24). In the Samson stories the spirit of Jehovah means supernatural strength, with Saul a frenzied enthusiasm; in neither case is any moral element suggested. This frenzy, or ecstasy, seemed to have marked the bands of "prophets"; hence Hosea declares, "The prophet is a fool, the man that hath the spirit is mad" (Hos. 9:7 A.S.V.). There are survivals of this in the New Testament, especially in the "speaking with tongues." From Paul's references this appears as an incoherent utterance, under stress of great emotion, unintelligible, and requiring in the speaker or in another a special power to interpret. The general viewpoint has survived in various forms. Here belongs the idea of the inspiration of biblical writers as a control which secured absolute infallibility, including the "scientific, historical, or geographical," and even supplied the words to be written. On the ecstatic side we find throughout the Church's history and in our own time the groups which stress emotional experiences, healings, and speaking with tongues as the marks of the Spirit's presence. ²

2. In contrast with this conception the idea of God as spiritual substance, or essence, has entered in to influence the doctrine of the Spirit. Broadly speaking, it is the Hellenistic as against the Hebraic viewpoint. It appears in extreme, or metaphysical, mysticism, where the kinship of God and man is stressed and the distinction of persons is to be overcome by the absorption of man into the divine. Where the Spirit is referred to, the thought is that of a divine substance to be received by man. And this is the background of the sacramentarian conception of salvation, where the dominant idea is not that of a saving personal fellowship with God by the work of the Spirit but that of the transformation of a sinful "nature" through the divine "substance" into which the elements have been miraculously changed.

3. A third conception of God underlies the dominant idea of the Spirit in the New Testament. Here the emphasis is personal-ethical. God is transcendent; the Spirit is Holy Spirit, Spirit of the transcendent God. Yet man is akin to God and so can receive God's Spirit. God is the God of power, and to receive his Spirit is to receive power from on high; but the power is moral-spiritual, the power of a new life from a God of righteousness and love. The prophetic faith of the Old Testament was the background for this teaching. There we find a God who is personal-ethical and a living, redemptive presence. The spirit of such a God means wisdom and understanding for his people. It brings gifts of mind and heart and devotion such as are indicated in the Servant of Jehovah (Isa. 11; 42; 61). It means God going with his people as guiding presence and giving them rest (Exod. 33:14). It means the rebirth of a people and the coming of a time when the Spirit will be given to a whole people, not to the few (Ezek. 37; Joel 2:28-32, quoted in Acts 2:17-21; Isa. 32:15-16; Zech. 12:10).

The Spirit in the Teaching of Paul

The Church is especially indebted to Paul as regards the doctrine of the Spirit. His approach is vital and practical. He deals with excesses in church life, as at Corinth, which sprang from wrong ideas and issued in wrong practice; but his chief concern is to interpret the new way of faith and life.

For Paul the Holy Spirit is (1) the Spirit of the one God from whom comes all life, all salvation. Whether he speaks of God in us, or Christ in us, or the Holy Spirit, the reference is to the one life given to us, the one God who dwells in his children- (2) We know the Spirit of God when we look at Christ. "The Lord is the Spirit" (2 Cor. 3:17). Hence the Spirit is ethical. "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control" (Gal. 5:22-23). Here is the test of the disciple: "Any one who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him" (Rom. 8:9). And the Spirit of Christ in us is the Holy Spirit in us. (3) The Spirit is the source of all Christian life and of every grace, not simply of special gifts and unusual experiences. The moral power of the new life is wholly from the Spirit (Rom. 8:1-11). A man cannot even confess Jesus as Lord save by the Spirit. Harriet Auber's hymn is wholly in Paul's spirit:

And every virtue we possess,

     And every victory won,

And every thought of holiness

     Are his alone.

(4) The Spirit, therefore, belongs to all Christ's followers. To be a Christian is to have the Spirit. There are differences in gifts and in service rendered, but "all these are inspired by one and the same Spirit." And the highest gift, that of love, is the gift which all must have (1 Cor. 12:13). (5) The Spirit is wholly from God, but we may have it only as we express it in life. "If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit" (Gal. 5:25). That follows necessarily when the Spirit is conceived ethically. (6) The Church is the creation of the Spirit, the instrument of the Spirit, the place where the Spirit dwells and where the individual may most fully receive its gifts.

Briefly stated, by the Holy Spirit we mean God as presence and power working in his world, and first of all in the heart and life of man. The Spirit is God giving himself, dwelling in man, bringing light, overcoming evil, creating the new life of faith and love and righteousness, creating fellowship with himself and among men.

The Significance of the Doctrine of the Spirit

The doctrine has abiding significance for Christian faith and life.

1. It brings into living unity the aspects of divine transcendence and immanence. It is Holy Spirit, the spirit of the transcendent God; and man's life is seen, not as unaided human achievement or development but as a gift from above. It is indwelling Spirit, the Spirit of the immanent God. Here the kinship of God and man is recognized, not only in God's dwelling in man but in the fact that by the gift of God's Spirit man becomes truly and fully man. The Spirit shows how otherness and likeness both belong to God and are in unity.

2. It makes clear and effective the union of the individual and the social in religion. Here religion appears as the inner and intimate relation of the individual soul with God. At the same time through the Spirit men are made one in vital fellowship with each other. For the Spirit is love, and man may have it only as he lives in love with others; it is the fellowship-creating Spirit. It is the Spirit that has come to us through Jesus Christ, that we receive and share in Christ's Church, that is witnessed through the historic revelation. The individualism and subjectivism of extreme mysticism are here excluded. Yet the stress of fellowship and the historic Church does not mean institutionalism nor exclude God's access to men outside the Christian Church or preceding this.

3. The Christian concept of the Spirit shows how the religious and the ethical are united. The Christian life is seen as wholly the gift of God, a life of absolute dependence upon God. But the life thus given is through and through ethical It is love and righteousness, and man can have it only as he expresses it actively in outgoing love and righteous living. Thus the life of dependence is one of freedom; it is not submission to rule or compulsion by external power. The life is wholly the work of the Spirit, yet it is in the deepest sense the life of man, chosen in the freedom of faith, expressing his supreme desire and inmost spirit, lived out in freedom of thought and act.

4. Here freedom and authority are joined. Authority remains, as it must remain, in religion; for religion is seeing our life in the light of the Eternal and living our life according to his will. But here God by his Spirit is the life within us, not simply the will above us. So the will of God becomes our life and joy and peace. The psalmist could say, "I delight to do thy will, O my God," because the law was within his heart.

How Men May Receive the Spirit

How may men receive the Spirit? The question has really been answered in the discussion of the means of grace. Though the New Testament uses various names, the life which God gives us is one and undivided. One may speak of the gifts of grace, of eternal life as a present possession, or of the indwelling of God or the Spirit or Christ; all these refer to the one fact, that God gives us life by giving himself to us. By the Holy Spirit in us we mean this presence of God by which we have life.

This helps us to rule out certain not uncommon errors. These root in the idea of the work of the Spirit as a special and separate form of God's saving action. In this way men thought of miraculous gifts like those of healing and "speaking with tongues," or of special endowment for office given uniquely to pope and bishops and priests. Here, too, is the Roman misconception of an exclusive possession and control by the Church.

At the other extreme is the limiting conception of a gift bestowed in some one-time emotional experience where "the power" comes upon men in some overwhelming action. True, not all share equally in this gift; there are men whose sanctity of life and uniqueness of service reveal an unusual presence and work of the Spirit. But the truth remains: God gives his Spirit to all who seek after him and will receive him, and there is no Christian faith and life which is not the work of God's Spirit.

All this indicates how simple the way is by which man may receive that divine indwelling by which he gains peace, courage, strength, joy, and, above all, that spirit of love which was the spirit of Christ and which marks the child of God* What he needs is to come into personal fellowship with God and to live in that fellowship day by day. That means a daily attitude of confession and repentance, of trust and devotion, and of conscious communion with God. In a word it is the habitual opening of the door of life in thought and affection and will so that God can come in.

A final query awaits us. We speak of God entering into a man's soul, of God's Spirit possessing and ruling and transforming the spirit of man. But these are terms of space and substance. Do they not violate the essential nature of personal being, self-conscious, self-ruling, dwelling in a world of its own? The answer is found in the analogies of human relations* Explain it as we will, the facts are clear. A man finds a friend, strong in character, ripe in experience, rich in wisdom and love, broad in his sympathies. Let him bring to such friendship time and sympathy and devotion. His own life will grow through the spirit of his friend. That spirit will enter in to shape his own spirit. It will not, however, dispossess or diminish his personality; rather it may mean the achieving of it, and that in terms of his own distinct individuality. But if that can happen between man and man, how much more between God and man, the God who is "closer . . . than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet," who has a thousand ways of intimate access to human life. There is mystery here, but it is the mystery which belongs to life itself, especially on its highest levels. There is reason for wonder here, but the wonder is that of infinite love which is thus willing to dwell with us, not that of the magical or mechanical or ecstatic with which men have so often sought to understand God's spirit-working.

1) The Spirit m the New Testament, p. 11,

2) Cf. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, pp. 155, 163, 164. 'Inspiration in itself has no sanctifying influence. Balaam was inspired. Saul was among the prophets." The dogma of infallibility of pope and council involves the same idea. Infallibility involves an absolute control, external and compulsive rather than ethical-spiritual.

The Alexandrian Jew Philo gives us perhaps the earliest definite statement of this viewpoint. "A prophet utters nothing of his own, but the foreign message of another who speaks through him. „ . . His own intelligence departs at the arrival of the divine Spirit, and returns with its departure." See T, Rees, The Holy Spirit, pp. 50, 51.