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Wanted: Apathetic Lutherans and Calvinists.........
Posted : 15 Jan, 2012 02:33 PM
"For as God alone can properly bear witness to� His own
words, so those words cannot obtain full credit in the heart
until they are sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit.
The same Spirit who spoke by the mouth of the prophets
must penetrate our hearts, in order to convince us that they
faithfully delivered the message with which they were
divinely entrusted. ."
John Calvin
"Religious muddle around us is frantic and furious. How
urgently we need, in these days, to get clear about the Holy
Spirit!"
J.l Packer
About seventeen years ago, my brother, then an assistant
football coach at Arizona State University, introduced me to
Danny White, who was at the time the star quarterback for
the Sun Devils. I was only twelve years old and in awe of
White. Meeting him was one of those moments when you
are aware of every movement you make, of every nervous
gesture. As we walked toward him on the football field
where he was running, I would feel my feet become lead.
Fear grippeq me and I almost wanted to go back, but there
was no turning back now. With a dry throat and clumsy
handshake I met White-just when my brother announced
that he needed to take care of some business with the
trainer. So here we were, Danny White and this awkward
teenager who was unusually short on words. But Danny
immediately broke the tension when he said, "Hey, Horts,
how about a few passes?" "What's he talking about?" 1
wondered, concerning what would be a fairly straightforward
invitation were I not so nervous. "You mean passes to
a game?" "No," he replied, "I mean throwing some passes
here on the field for awhile;" For the next twenty minutes or
so there we were, Danny White and Mike Horton, thro~ing
the ball around and getting to know each other-not just as
a fan gets to know a hero by following his career, but as one
person gets to know another.
Since then, I have had the opportunity to meet some
other people who make me feel pretty nervous: other sports
stars, actors, writers, and a few foreign dignitaries. But no
meeting presents a greater challenge than when we meet
God in the person of the Holy Spirit. It is a wonderful
opportunity, to be sure, but it is also a challenge. We do just
fine in the stands, shaking our heads at the unbelievable
skill and energy of the Holy Spirit, and we follow His work
closely through the years. But to actually meet Him? To get
to know Him, not just as an aw&struck fan meets a celebrity,
but as two friends out on the field together?
We often findsuch intimacy beyond what we can (or should even attempt to) reach.
But it is at God's invitation that we leave the
stands, walk out to the field, and befriend Him through the
person of the Holy Spirit.
God the Father longs to have a relationship with us. He
loved the world so much that "He gave His one and only
Son" so long ago to save us. When God the Son took on flesh,
suffered, died, and rose again, He brought us everlasting
peace with God. If it were not for the Holy Spirit, we would
still be up in the stands, unrelated to God as anything other
than an admiring fan. It is through God the Holy Spirit that
the Father's initiative in Christ-adoption and reconciliation-
is finally fulfilled. It is He who brings us into the
benefits planned for us by the Father and purchased for us
by the Son.
The Reformation tradition, while eschewing the fanaticism
of "those who think they've swallowed the Holy Spirit,
feathers and all" (Luther's phrase), recovered the legitimate
biblical teaching concerning the Spirit by focusing
their lens once again on His role as the one who reveals
Christ, illumines our souls to understand the Word, and
enables us to believe it and to repent of everything that
stands up to challenge it. In fact, Calvin has been called "the
theologian of the Holy Spirit," not, of course, because he
instructed the third person of the Trinity, but because so
much of his emphasis falls on the work of the Holy Spirit in
bringing us into union with Christ and communicating to us
the benefits of that union. In the remainder of this article, I
want to challenge us all to return to the classical doctrine of
the Trinity as we attempt to recover what we who claim to
be heirs of the Reformation have lost concerning the person
and work of the Holy Spirit in our day.
Back to the Trinity
There is only one God. On that Christians and Jews (as well as Muslims) are agreed. But the Father is God, the Son
is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. Yet, there are not three
Gods, but one. The biblical writers do not explain this
apparent contradiction, but affirm it nonetheless. In the
second century, the church father Tertullian came up with
the phrase, one in essence, three in person and the term
trinitas (trinity) was employed for the first time to explain
the relationship of those two affirmations: three persons
(tri); one God (unity).
And yet, this staggering mystery has proved easier to
affirm in public worship than in personal faith. In every age
the church seems to carve up the Trinity and emphasize
one person of the Godhead above the others. Sometimes
this is done to redress imbalances, but it often results in
other imbalances.
In our day, many hyper-Calvinists are so fascinated with
the sovereignty of God that the person and work of the Son
and the Holy Spirit get short shrift, while many hyperLutherans
and Barthians risk ~mbracing a form of
Christomonism, in which the Father and the Spirit are
footnotes to the person and work of Christ.
Like the sovereignty of God for hyper-Calvinists, justification for hyperLutherans can become not only the central doctrine (after
all, it must occupy that spot for all evangelicals), but the
only doctrine in the system, divesting the biblical message
of its fullness, driving the Father and the Spirit into the
shadows, and leaving the flock unbalanced and malnourished.
In the meantime, the charismatic movement has brought
much attention to the reality of the third person of the
Godhead, while often underplaying the study of the divine
attributes and the objective character of Christ's person
and work.
It's not doctrine that concerns most charismatics,
as it concerns most Calvinists and Lutherans, but experience.
So, the Holy Spirit becomes the central trinitarian figure. Just as the Holy Spirit's person and work can be
ignored when we emphasize only the objective side of
salvation (the Father and Son's work outside of us in history),
so also it is true that the Father's and Son's saving
work can be pushed aside in an obsession with the real and
alleged experiences and gifts of the Holy Spirit. But for us
Reformation Christians, emphasizing the objective character
of salvation in the face of so much subjective introspection
and emotionalism, we risk keeping the work of Christ
external and "outside us." What the Reformers meant by
emphasizing Christ's saving work "outside" and "external"
to us was that our justification does not refer to inner
renewal by the Spirit or the life of Christ within us, but to the
once-and-for-all work of Christ for us. Nevertheless, as
Calvin wrote,
"It is not enough to have Christ working
outside of us for our salvation unless this gift becomes ours
and is brought into us by the Holy Spirit."
There must be a
spiritual union with Christ if we are to receive the blessings.
There must be faith if we are to be justified, sanctified, and
glorified, and this faith we have by virtue of our union with
Christ, the gift of the Holy Spirit.
What we desperately need, then, is a return to a practical,
real-life, realization of the doctrine of the Trinity in our daily
thinking: God the Father so loved the world that He gave
Christ to His people and His people to Christ; then the
Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit. If the person and
work of any member of the Trinity are overlooked or underplayed
then to that degree we will be unbalanced Christians.
The Shy Member of the Trinity
The Holy Spirit, often called the "shy member of the
Trinity" because He does not draw attention to Himself, but
chiefly to Christ, is not, therefore, an impersonal "force" or
appendage to the Godhead, but the vibrant, life-giving,renewing partner of the Father and the Son, whose essence
He shares. As the Father has assigned to the Son a name
which is above every other name, so Jesus Himself declared,
"It is good that I go~ for if I go I will send the
Comforter." In other words, Jesus measures the importance
of the Holy Spirit's coming by the fact that it will compensate
for the loss of His leaving. But our Lord further states,
"It is He who testifies concerning Me." The Holy Spirit is
essential in the redemptive mission, but He does not "blow
His own horn." Rather, He trumpets the glories of Christ's
person and work.
I worry that the charismatic movement,
generally speaking, misses this chief role of the Holy Spirit
by trying to make Him the center of attention. The Holy
Spirit refuses to be center stage, and any group or movement
that seeks to put Him there gravely misses the point
of His mission.
But if our Reformation tradition has erred, especially of
late-and it has-it has been on the side of denying experience,
subjectivity, emotion, and the application of redemption.
Sanctification, inner renewal, life in the Spirit, victory
over sin-because these have been so emphasized, twisted,
disfigured, misinterpreted and misapplied in our day, we
risk becoming cynical about some very holy matters, quenching
the same Spirit who brought us everything Christ purchased
for us. While we find it easy (and too often delightful)
to apply to charismatics the apostle Paul's lament,
"Theyare zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge,"
can anything be said in favor of knowledge without
zeal? In fact, which is the more inexcusable offense: serving
God in spite of poor theology, or ignoring Him in spite of
better?
In every great move of God in His church, reformation
(doctrinal purification) and revival (spiritual renewal and
awakening) have gone hand-in-hand. In the Reformation,
Luther was hardly afraid of the Holy Spirit. The German Reformer wrote,
"Without the Holy Spirit hearts are either hardened in sins or
they despair .... Now, this is the article which must ever be
and remain in operation; for creation is an established fact,
and redemption, too, is finished. But the Holy Spirit carries
on His work without ceasing until the Last Day ...."
In Calvin's crest there is a hand holding out a heart, with
the inscription, "Behold, I offer you my heart, promptly and
Sincerely." The divorce between doctrine and piety, the
mind and the heart, characteristic of both orthodox Reformation
folk today on one side and pietists and charismatics
on the other, is a course for disaster, not for either reformation
or revival.
Reformation without revival can change the way we
think, but it will never transform our attitudes, feelings, and
actions. It will be a short-lived mid flight correction. Revival
without reformation cannot happen in any case, for revival
is the sovereign work of the Spirit of God, and He will not
bless with revival a church that refuses to conform its
teaching and preaching to the Word of God. The First Great
Awakening in the eighteenth century was great because it
called the colonies back to the Reformation truths and
encouraged people to make those truths their own in an
experiential, personal way. Combining the mind and the
heart, Edwards, Whitefield, and others used the Word of
God to bring the whole person into confrontation with the
truth and presence of God's Spirit.
Conclusion
The Heidelberg Catechism has the right idea. After every
major doctrine, it asks, "How does this comfort you?"
Sometimes we get so caught up in defending particular
doctrines and frustrated at being told so often, "But doctrine
isn't practical," that we stop trying to answer that question, "How does this comfort you?" Our own tradition
calls us back to go beyond rehearsing doctrinal formulae
and formal terms-not to ignore them, but to go beyond
them, to take these great truths on board and use them in
daily life. Further, the Westminster Shorter Catechism answers
that the chief end of man is "to glorify God and to
enjoy Him forever." Glorify, sure. That's a word we orthodox
folk can understand. But enjoy? That's a bit too emotional.
To experience God is a delight that only children
enjoy. Like an awestruck fan, it's more comfortable to
glorify God from the stands than to enjoy Him on the field.
But let's not settle for anything less than God's very best.
Author
Michael S. Horton is president of CURE and the author of
Made in America and Putting Amazing Back Into Grace. He is
editor of the best-sellers The Agony of Deceit and Power
Religion. He is presently completing doctoral studies at
Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. He serves as an advisory council
member for Reformation & Revival Ministries.
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