In seeking to develop a spirituality that corresponds to the resurrection of Jesus, one that avoids the gnostic and schizoid tendencies of spiritualities that split life in two and quench its vitality, we will take some time to discuss the person of the Holy Spirit specifically related to its history as revealed in the Scripture. This will be done in four stages: pre-existence, creation, redemption and consummation.
In unfolding a doctrine of the Holy Spirit and specifically its presence in our lives, it is necessary to first ask the questions, who is the Holy Spirit? What characterizes its person? What have been its primary activities in history? How has its work been explicated in the Scripture? Before we can understand our relationship to the Spirit and our life in the Spirit, we need to understand who the Holy Spirit is and how its nature has been demonstrated in its activity in history.
Since the charismatic renewal, pneumatology (the doctrine of the Holy Spirit) has experienced quite a renaissance in both popular and academic circles. Unfortunately, some of these discussions have focused exclusively on the present validity of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in vitriolic debate. It doesn’t take much to see the destructive nature of such discourse. Others skip directly to activating the gifts of the Holy Spirit in congregational settings in some ways abstracted from the Spirit’s primary roles in history as revealed in the scripture. Likewise, many of us know how gifts of the Spirit (or so-called) have been used in manipulative, abuse and destructive ways.
These discussions often miss the mark from the very beginning because regardless of whether one is arguing for the cessation of spiritual gifts or advocating their current use, the starting point is one’s own personal experience. Such an individualistic vantage point is certainly to afford distortions in something that is so much bigger than the experience of any individual and even larger than the cumulative experience of the entire body of believers. The Spirit’s person and history extends through the lives of every created being, to the beginning of life itself, further back into the depths of Trinitarian ecstasy in eternity past and pushes forward into God’s future of redemption in the renewed earth. It is therefore time to explore who the Holy Spirit is as revealed in redemptive history as the necessary basis and starting point for discussions of the present experience of the Spirit.
Allow me to illustrate where I am going with this. Let us take the gift of healing as an example. This gift of the Spirit, depending upon one’s theological and ecclesiological persuasion, either is a demonstration of God’s supernatural power or was a confirmation of the gospel as it was initially going forth in the apostolic period.
However, as we explicate this dimension of life in the Spirit, in context to the history of the Holy Spirit, we will see the discussion moved to an entirely different frame of reference.
In light of the Holy Spirit’s role of union in the Fellowship of the Trinity we see healing as a union with the life of God and an expression of God’s compassion to bring us into closer relation with Him.
In relation to the Spirit’s role in creation we see healing, not really as supernatural power, but a profoundly natural power, the life-force of creation flowing in unrestricted measure.
When we glimpse the eschatological movement of the Spirit we understand healing not in abstraction, but as a sign of the complete restoration that will be effected in the new creation and the resurrection. Healing is a sign and symbol of God’s kingdom and God’s future and therefore it is curious why such would be restricted to the apostolic age. The goal of these signs is not to “get the gospel off the ground” but to continually point towards the future.
With regard to the experience of the Spirit in redemption, it comes as the downpayment of that future inheritance. Healing is not simply a display of power to prove the existence of God, but is a dynamic movement of the power and life of the age to come into the present. Healing is a powerful dimension of the “already” (of the already/not-yet) of the Reign of God that has invaded the present.
All of the gifts, ministries, fruit and activity of the Holy Spirit need to be interpreted in this way: not primarily as elements or non-elements of our experience, but elements in the much larger story of God’s Trinitarian relations, their interactions with humanity and the Holy Spirit’s unique personhood and roles in the midst of it all. When we do this, a much broader perspective of the Holy Spirit’s activities comes into view.
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