THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST.

The specific and distinctive feature of the New Testament on the present subject is the close and intimate association of the Holy Spirit with Jesus Christ. It is not in His Absolute Being, but as the Spirit of Christ that He is revealed in the New Testament (Acts xvi. 7, R.V.).

' It is only on the basis of the Christian revelation that we can found a doctrine of the Holy Ghost as the Spirit of Truth Who guides the thought of the Christian ages. Who teaches and imparts the mind of Christ, Who takes of Christ and declares it to Christ's people.'1

This is the most natural view of the New Testament teaching, and the steps leading up to it call for fresh consideration. As we have already seen, the Holy Spirit in the earlier books of the Old Testament is depicted as the Energy of God for human life, with particular reference to the covenant with Israel. Then gradually the doctrine deepens and widens until the Spirit is seen to be the indwelling life of God in man, and is specially associated with the promises connected with the Messiah (Isa. xi.). In the Synoptic Gospels the Spirit is pre-eminently the possession of the Man Christ Jesus, though even there the disciples are bidden to wait for ' the promise of the Father,' while the baptismal formula clearly associates Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in relation to the new work of Christian initiation. In the Fourth Gospel this promise of the Spirit is clearly connected with Christ Himself, His glorification (ch. vii. 39), and His Word (ch. xvi.). The relation of the Spirit to Christ is thus made clear, more particularly in the use of the word ' Paraclete.'2 Then follows the specific bestowal of the Holy Spirit on the disciples on the day of Christ's resurrection.

' This is not the action of one who, by prayer, would invoke upon them, a Spirit which is not of, or from. Himself: it is the symbolism rather of one who would transfer to them the very Spirit which animates — which may be said to be — Himself.'3

In the Acts the ' promise of the Father ' is interpreted to mean the promise of the Father to the Son, received at the Ascension and poured out by the Son on the Day of Pentecost (ch. ii. 33).

' It was the promise of the Father — part of Christ's reward for His obedience unto death, even the death of the Cross. The giving of the Spirit was thus the conclusive sign of God's acceptance of Christ's work, and we should not lose this signification of it. Pentecost was won for us at Calvary.'4

When we turn to St. Paul we find substantially the same set of ideas. The language about the indwelling of Christ and of the Spirit is practically identical. ' The Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty ' (2 Cor. iii. 17). ' Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts ' (Gal. iv. 6). Thus, in St. Paul, as also in St. John, the Holy Spirit is the Divine power in a personal form through which the Christian life is realised in the believer, the means by which God makes Himself known to and felt by the Christian man.

As the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit is the Revealer and Bestower of Redemption. Everything we have of and from Christ comes through the Spirit. He is the Spirit of Life, of Truth, of Holiness, of Power, of Grace. His work it is to make Christ real, to recall to us the words of Christ, to reveal to us His Person, and to bestow upon us His grace. While the title ' Spirit of God ' expresses the oneness of essence with God, and ' the Holy Spirit ' the nature of His word, ' the Spirit of Christ ' indicates the method of His coming as the Giver of Life, the Revealer of truth, and the Bestower of sanctification. And we believe that God can only become known to us in the historic Jesus, the experience of Whom is mediated to us by the Holy Spirit.

' As He represents the Person and supplies the place of Jesus Christ, so He works and effects whatever the Lord Christ has taken upon Himself to work and effect towards His disciples. Wherefore as the work of the Son was not the Son's own work, but (as He loves to say) the work of the Father Who sent Him, and in Whose Name He performed it, so the work of the Spirit is not the Spirit's own work, but rather the work of the Son by Whom He is sent and in Whose Name He doth accomplish it.'5

We are therefore not at all surprised at the variation of the theological expression connected with the Holy Spirit. Sometimes He is regarded as a separate Personality within the Godhead, having a self-consciousness separate from and yet connected with Jesus and the Father. At other times the Spirit is used for the Name of God's own personal activity, as He dwells in the soul of man. But however difficult it may be to express the difference between Christ and the Spirit regarded as within God Himself, no difficulty must allow us to ignore the plain teaching of the New Testament and the personal testimony of Christian consciousness. In our Lord's discourses, while He distinguishes between the relations of the Father and the Spirit with Himself to the disciples, yet there is no essential difference or separation. Whether the Father lives or the Son lives; whether the Father comes or the Son comes; whether the Father gives the Spirit or the Son gives Him, the essential relationship is the same. But while closely and intimately connected, Christ and the Spirit are never identical.

' As no Old Testament writer would have used the terms " Spirit of God " and " Angel of the Lord " for each other, so neither can a confusion of the Word with the Spirit be admitted in any writer of the New. St. Paul says (2 Cor. iii. 17): " The Lord is the Spirit." But he does not therefore confound the Person of the glorified Saviour with the Holy Ghost.... Their parts are perfectly distinct. And they are quite as much so in the work of Pentecost as in that of the Incarnation. The Holy Ghost did not become Christ by producing Him in the Virgin's womb, nor does the Spirit become Jesus by glorifying Him and causing Him to live in us. The Word is the principle of the objective revelation, the Spirit that of the subjective. Jesus is the object to be assimilated, the Spirit is the assimilating power. Without the objective revelation given in Jesus, the Spirit would have nothing to fertilize in us; without the Spirit, the revelation given in Jesus would remain exterior to us, and resemble a parable which is not understood. Hence it is in one sense true, that when the Spirit comes, it is Jesus Who comes again; from one without, He becomes one within us.'6

It is essential to preserve with care both sides of this truth. Christ and the Spirit are different yet the same, the same yet different. Perhaps the best expression we can give is that while their Personalities are never identical, their presence always is.

' It is not for an instant that the disciples are to have the presence of the Spirit instead of having the presence of the Son. But to have the Spirit is to have the Son.'7

It is this close association between Christ and the Spirit that gives point to the historical and theological question of the ' Procession ' of the Spirit, The relation between the Father and the Son is usually expressed by ' Generation,' and in order to express at once the unity and yet the distinctness, we are accustomed to speak of the ' Eternal Generation.' But the relation between the Son and the Spirit is described by ' Procession,' and on this there is a historical, and, it would seem, vital difference between the two great sections of the Eastern and Western Church. In the East this ' Procession ' is related only to the time of the Incarnation and the fact of Redemption. The passages in St. John which speak of the Spirit being given by the Son are interpreted in a temporal way. In the West, on the other hand, this ' Procession ' is regarded as an eternal, essential fact of the Deity. Godet thus states the position:

' The divine facts of revelation are based upon the Trinitarian relations, and are, so to speak, their reflections. As the incarnation of the Son is related to His eternal generation, so is the mission of the Holy Spirit to His procession within the divine essence. — The Latin Church, starting from the words: I will send, is not wrong in affirming the Filioque, nor the Greek Church, starting from the words: from the Father, in maintaining the per Filium and the subordination. To harmonize these two views, we must place ourselves at the Christological view-point of St. John's Gospel, according to which the homoousia and the subordination are both at the same time true.'8

The question is often raised whether the doctrine itself is justified, and whether it really represents a vital difference between the East and West. A number of modern writers hold very strongly that it is this addition which has given to the West its admitted spiritual superiority over the East. One writer goes so far as to say that the denial of the Procession from the Son

' operated to the deep injury of vital religion in the East.... And the Greek Church has become much of a fossil, untouched by any of the reformations or revivals that renovated the Western Church.'9

To the same effect is the following:

' The Spirit of the Incarnate is the Spirit of God. But it is not so much the Spirit of God, regarded in His eternal existence, or relation, in the Being of Deity: it is the Spirit of God in Humanity, the Spirit of God become the Spirit of Man in the Person of the Incarnate, — become thenceforward the true interpretation and secret of what true manhood really is, — it is this which is the distinctive revelation of the New Testament, the distinctive significance and life of the Church of Christ. This is the truth, immense in its significance for practical Christianity, which the so-called doctrine of the " Double Procession " directly protects; and which the denial of that doctrine tends directly to impair. It may be that the removal of the " Filioque " from the Nicene Creed, would not necessarily imply a denial of the doctrine: but there can at least be little doubt, historically speaking, that the " Filioque " has served, to the doctrine, as a bulwark of great importance.'10

Another and very different writer expresses the same opinion:

' As the Spirit of the exalted and glorified Lord, He is not the Third Person of the Trinity in His absolute and metaphysical existence, but that Person as He is mediated through the Son, Who is human as well as Divine. It is on this particular aspect of His being that He diffuses Himself through the members of Christ's body, and abides in them.'11

So also, the Bishop of Durham is of opinion that the doctrine is

' no mere phantom of abstract and unlicensed speculation, but a truth of life and love.... Such a humble belief is neither an arbitrary and barren demand upon a bewildered or unreflecting assent, nor a thing so sublimated and vanishing as to find no point of contact with life and love.... In the light of this belief, every part and detail of the work of the Spirit in connexion with the Person and work of Christ gains indefinitely in our view in respect of closeness and tenderness of contact.'12

On the other hand, Dr. Burn believes that all the spiritual results for which these writers contend

' seem to be secure if it is taught that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son.'13

Certainly no Western theologian wished for a moment to imply that there were two Sources or Founts of Deity, but only to associate in the closest possible way the Holy Spirit with the Incarnate and Glorified Son, and it must be admitted that in so doing they were keeping very close to the predominant New Testament conception of the Spirit, as the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of God's Son. But whether or not we attribute the undoubted spiritual superiority of the West over the East to this cause, the fact itself does not admit of doubt. And so we may say that ' without the Holy Spirit we have practically no Christ,' while, on the other hand, it is equally true that without Christ we have practically no Holy Spirit.14

Literature. — Swete, The Holy Spirit in the New Testament, p. 295; Moule, Veni Creator, p. 31; ch. vi.; Walker, The Holy Spirit, ch. iv.; Smeaton, The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, p. 116; Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, p. 322; Ridout, The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit, ch. vii.; j' M. Campbell, After Pentecost, What? ch. ii.; Elder Cumming, Through the Eternal Spirit, ch. xiii.; p. 89; Elder Cumming, After the Spirit, pp. 62, 231; Parker, The Paraclete, p. 96.

1 D'Arcy, Idealism and Theology, p. 256. See also Moberly, Atonement and Personality, p. 195, quoted below, p. 145.

2 Walker, The Holy Spirit, p. 128.

3 Moberly, op. cit. p. 197.

4 Denney, Studies in Theology, p. 157.

5 Owen's Works, Goold's edition, iii. p. 195.

6 Godet, Commentary on St. John's Gospel, Vol. III. pp. 146, 147.

7 Moberly, op. cit. p. 168.

8 Godet, op. cit. p. 175.

9 Smeaton, The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, p. 291.

10 Moberly, op. cit. p. 195.

11 Milligan, The Ascension of our Lord, p. 189.

12 Veni Creator, pp. 26, 27, 29.

13 The Nicene Creed, p. 91.

14 Laidlaw, Questions of Faith, p. 123.