attested to his ministry, not only at Corinth, but everywhere Paul preached the gospel, “from Jerusalem and round about as far as Illyricum” (Rom. 15:19b). This preaching of the gospel “in the power of signs and wonders,” moreover, is preaching “in the power of the Spirit” (Ram. 15:19a). It seems to be an inescapable conclusion that for Paul the only authentic apostolic ministry was one empowered by the Spirit.
Not only is Paul’s experience and vocation charismatic, but that of his converts is also. Though neither Luke, in Acts, nor Paul, in his epistles, gives any details, the Galatians had
“begun by the Spirit,” that is, God had provided them with the Spirit and worked miracles among them (Gal. 3:s). Similarly, as Paul reminds the Thessalonians, “for our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and the Holy Spirit” (1 Thess. 15a). The Thessalonians, in common with Christians at Corinth, lacked no gift (1 Cor. 1:8), including the more spectacular gifts of the Spirit, such as the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, faith, the gift of healing, the effecting of miracles, prophecy, the distinguishing of spirits, various kinds of tongues, and the interpretation of tongues (1 Cor. 12%10).
The Christians in Rome, as well, Paul reminds them, have a variety of gifts, including the ubiquitous gift of prophecy (Rom.
12:6ff.). Because, with the possible exception of his epistles to the churches at Rome and Ephesus, Paul’s letters are circumstantial, our knowledge of the charismatic experience of his converts is as incidental as it is of Paul’s own charismatic experience. In particular, we know so much about the experience of the Corinthians b e c a u s e o f their misunderstanding of the gifts of the Spirit and their undisciplined excesses in the exercise of those gifts.
Significantly, then, wherever the evidence is explicit, the churches which Paul founded are charismatic in reality, as well as in theory. And this is exactly what we would expect from reading about the ministry of this charismatic apostle to the Gentiles in the Acts.
characteristic terminology echo the charismatic pneumatology of the Septuagint. Of course, there are significant differences between the pneumatology of the Septuagint and Luke-Acts. In the main, in Luke’s pneumatology the charismatic activity of the Holy Spirit is potentially universal, rather than limited to leaders, and is hypostatized--the Holy Spirit is fully personal.
But these differences are developments, rather than contradictions t o o r n e w d i r e c t i o n s of Septuagintal Pneumatology. Therefore, Luke’s pneumatology reflects a Septuagintal heritage in a way which the pneumatology of John and Paul, in spite of their own indebtedness to the Old Testament, does not.
Whereas the conceptual world of Luke is Septuagintal, the conceptual world of John is Non-conformist Judaism (the Judaism which doesn’t conform to Pharisaism). Of the four sects of Judaism which Josephus writes about only Pharisaism survived the Jewish Revolt of AD 66-73 and became normative Judaism by default. The Sadducees, the Essenes and the Zealots (the political, the pietistic and the revolutionary sects, respectively), all disappeared when the Romans reconquered the land and destroyed its institutions. John the Baptist, the Essenes and other pietistic groups constituted what is best called Nonconformist Judaism. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls beginning in 1947, and their subsequent publication, reveals another community of Non-conformists, probably of the Essene type. The Johannine literature has many affinities with this recently discovered library of the Qumran sectaries.
In his monograph, John--EvangeZisf and Interpreter,
Stephen Smalley summarizes the numerous links between the Scrolls and John’s Gospel. He writes:
There are, to begin with, obvious literary parallels. These are particularly evident in the Manual ojDiscipline (or Community Rule), the best manuscript of which was discovered in cave 1; although they also exist in other documents from Qumran. The opening column of the Rule, for example, refers to ‘practicing truth’, and loving the ‘sons of light’ while rejecting the ‘sons of darkness’, in a way that i:s reminiscent of the Fourth Gospel. Again, the concept of knowledge in association
with the existence and activity of God, and man’s relationship to him, is present in both the Rule and John. Similarly, the Scrolls and the Fourth Gospel both contain references to the wisdom of God, and his enlightenment of the worshipper (and initiant) in answer to (covenant) faith. Even the title of the War Scroll (IQM), The War offhe Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness (in Vermes, The War Rule), has a Johannine ring about it; although its apocalyptic content approximates more closely to the ethos of the Revelation than the Gospel of John.’
Of particular interest for our subject is the similarity of the “two-spirit” theology between Non-conformist Judaism and John. We read of this as early as the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs. According to the Testament Judah admonished his children: “Know, therefore, my children, that two spirits wait upon man--the spirit of truth and the spirit of error” (Judah 2&l) Furthermore: “And the spirit of truth testifieth all things, and accuseth all; and the sinner is burnt up by his own heart and cannot raise his face to the judge” (Judah 20:5). Similarly, in the Community Rule we read:
He (God) has created man to govern the world, and has appointed for him two spirits in which to walk until the time of his visitation: the spirits of truth and falsehood. Those born of truth spring from a fountain of light, but those born of falsehood spring from a source of light. All the children of righteousness are ruled by the Prince of Light and walk in the ways of light, but all the children of falsehood are ruled by the Angel of Darkness and walk in the ways of Darkness.
Moreover, ” . . . the God of Israel and His Angel of Truth will succor all the sons of light.” All of this sounds very Johannine.
Jesus promised the disciples:
And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is, the Spirit of truth (John 14:16-17a).
When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness of Me (John 15%). And He, when He comes, will convict the
.
’ Stephen S. Smalley, John: EuungeZist and interpreter (Greenwood, S.C.: The Attic Press, Inc., 1978), p. 31.
world concerning sin, and righteousness, and judgement . . . But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all truth (John 16:8,13).
To those who have received the “anointing” but who are, nevertheless, in danger from “antichriits” or “false prophets”
John himself warns “We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from, God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error” (1 John 4:6).
Clearly, the Spirit-Paraclete in the Johannine literature echoes the “two-spirit” language in the literature of Non- conformist Judaism. This language is at the center, rather than the periphery of Johannine pneumatology, in the same way that,
“filled with the Holy Spirit” and other terminology is at the center of Lucan pneumatology. Just as the latter is clearly Septuagintal, so the former belongs to the world of Non- conformist Judaism in general. Specifically,
. . . John was familiar with Qumranic patterns of thought . . . It is otherwise difficult to account for the proximity of John’s Gospel to the Scrolls, and for the fact that certain features in both afford a closer parallel than that which exists in any other Jewish or Greek non- Christian literature of the time or earlier. John’s relation to sectarian Judaism as exemplified by Qumran, then, helps to fill in the picture so far as the Jewish influence on his background is concerned.9
This is not to suggest that the Johannine Spirit-Paraclete is
derived from Qumran. It is merely to suggest that John shares a common background with this Nonconformist Judaism.
Furthermore, we must not forget that, whether John had any personal contacts with Qumran, or not, and as striking as the parallels between the two are, the chief influence of Johannine pneumatology is Christian and not Qumranian.
9 Ibid., p. 66.
Paul’s religious heritage is radically different from Luke’s Septuagintal background and John’s Jewish Non- conformist heritage. In contrast to Luke and John, Paul was a converted Pharisee. For example, he reminds the Galatians:
For you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure, and I tried to destroy it; and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions (Gal. 131314).
Similarly, he boasts about his former advantages in Judaism, which he now discounted in the light of Christ, when writing to the Philippians: “. . . circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee” (Phil. 3:5). While there are many differences among scholars about the impact of Paul’s rabbinic background upon his theology, few would be so brash as to deny that Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, was formerly a fanatical Pharisee.
The subject of Paul and Pharisaic Judaism is massive and fully deserving of the magisterial treatment it receives, for example, in Paul and Rubbinic Judaism by Davies, and Paul and Palestinian Judaism by E. P. Sanders. For our purposes it must suffice to observe that just as Luke’s pneumatology echoes a Jewish Nonconformist heritage, so Paul’s pneumatology echoes his Rabbi& heritage. According to Davies, for the Rabbis on the one hand, “the experience of the Holy Spirit demanded membership in a certain kind of community,’ and , on the other hand, “the Spirit could only be experienced in a fitting ‘age”‘.”
Similarly, on the one hand, the most characteristic aspect of Paul’s pneumatology, “is his emphasis on the Spirit as the
lo W D Davies, . . Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: Sme Ralhinic Elements in Pauline
7’heoZogy. Revised Edition (New York Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc., 1967), p.
2AM.
source of Christian fellowship and unity”.” The evildence for this is both obvious and ample. For example:
. . . for Paul the Spirit is not only the life of the new man but of the New Israel, the Church. The latter’is the body of Christ and is animated by the Spirit (1 Cot. 1213); the solidarity of all Christians with one another and with their Lord, through the one Spirit, is such that Christians as a Body no less than individuals constitute a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16). It is wholly consonant with this that gifts of the Spirit are bestowed not for individual self-gratification but for the upbuilding or edification of the whole society of Christians (1 Cor. lk14ff.).”
Having surveyed the relevant Rabbinic and Biblical data.
Davies concludes: “[Paul’s] insistence on the essentially social nature of the Spirit’s activity falls into line with Rabbinic thought”.13 Furthermore, on the other hand, Paul is, “a Pharisee who believed that the Messiah had come”.‘* We have seen earlier that for Paul the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ and will not repeat this data. To conclude: “The Pauline doctrine of the Spirit, then, is only fully comprehensible in the light of Rabbinic expectations of the Age to Come as an Age of Spirit and of the community of the Spirit”.”
To sum up, the pneumatology of Luke, John and Paul is shaped by the Christ-event and their own subsequent and complementary experience of the Spirit. Moreover, the pneumatology of all three is rooted in the Old Testament revelation of the Spirit of God (though, due to the constraints of time, we have not discussed this in relationship to the I1 Ibid., p. aO1.
“Ibid.
l3 Ibid., p. u)7.
I4 Ibid., p. 216.
I5 Rid., p. 217.
188
pneumatology of John or Paul). Though the pneumatology of all three is shaped by Christ and rooted in the Old Testament revelation, it is mediated through the particular religious heritage of each author: the Septuagint for Luke, Non- conformist Judaism for John, and Pharisaic Judaism for Paul.
Herein, then, is the explanation for the unity and diversity in New Testament pneumatology. The unity derives from the common Christian experience of each author; the diversity lies in the way each author expressed this common Christian experience according to the canons and idioms of his particular theological heritage.
.
Dlvenity of the Holy Splrlt’s Roles
In addition to the diversity of religious background which impacted upon their respective pneumatologies, Luke, John and Paul also assign a variety of roles to the ministry of the Holy Spirit. This diversity of role is loosely related to a combination of factors such as: 1) their diversity of religious heritage, 2) the experience of each author, and 3) the authorial intent of each for his writings. The three primary roles for the Spirit are in the areas of service, salvation, and sanctification.
We have already discovered that not only for Luke, ‘but also for John and Paul, the gift of the Holy Spirit to God’s people is vocational in purpose and result. That is, it is charismatic, gifting them for service and empowering that service to make it effective. In respect to Christian vocation, the charismatic experience of God’s people parallels that of Christ. For John and Paul, as well as for Luke, therefore, God’s people are a charismatic community. This dimension of the Spirit’s activity is the only one which is common to the pneumatology of all three.
While Luke describes the role of the Holy Spirit exclusively in terms of charismatic vocation, or service, John describes it in terms of service, as we have seen, and also in terms of salvation. Thus, not only will the Spirit-Paraclete teach
IRQ
and SUCCOUT the disciples, but the Spirit is also part of the salvation process. In this regard, the Spirit-Paraclete, “He, when He comes,” Jesus announces to hi disciples, “will convict the world concerning sin, and righteousness, and judgment;
concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me” (John 16%9).
Thus, the spirit of Truth, who will come as Jesus’ alter ego, will give succour to the disciples, and will bring conviction of sin to the world. Moreover, the spirit is the agent by which the sinner is transformed into a disciple, or believer. To the Pharisee Nicodemus, Jesus announces “unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God” (John 3:3). Further, for one to enter the Kingdom of God, he must be, “born of water and the Spirit” (35), because, “that which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (3:6). Nicodemus is not to marvel that Jesus had said, “You must be born again” (3:7), for, “the wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it but do not know where it comes from and where it is going;
so is everyone who is born of the Spirit” (3:8). In salvation, then, the Spirit both convicts of sin, and causes the sinner to be “born again,” or born of the Spirit. In contrast to Luke’s pneumatology, then, in John’s pneumatology the Spirit has two roles: service and salvation.
Whereas Luke has but one dimension of the activity of the Spirit in his pneumatology, namely, service, and John has two, service and salvation, Paul has three dimensions: sewice, which he shares with both Luke and John; salvation, which he shares with John alone; and sanctification, which is his exclusive emphasis. In regards to the role of the Spirit and salvation, the Spirit initiates the salvation process; that is, it is through the agency of the Spirit that the individual is brought into the community of believers, the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:13). As Paul points out to the Romans, if anyone does not possess the Spirit, he actually does not belong to Christ, regardless of what he professes (Rom. 8:9). Moreover, the Spirit’s actions in the salvation process include washing, sanctification, and justification (1 Cor. 6:ll). In writing to Titus, Paul insists that salvation (did not come on the basis of righteous acts which man
ICMl
performed, but by the “washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:s). The Spirit’s presence in the believer’s life is also the pledge or guarantee (ad&) that the salvation process which began in regeneration, renewal and incorporation, will be brought to completion (2 Cor. 122; 5:~;
Eph. 1:14). With this hype, the Spirit is also the firstfruits (apmche) of final salvation (Rom. 8z23), and the Christian is one who is sealed (sphratiz) until the time of God’s redemption (2 Cor. 1% Eph. 1:13-14).
For Paul, the Spirit’s role is also to be seen in the sanctification of the believer. Sanctification speaks of dedication to God, and entails a process by which a believer moves on to a life of holiness in his walk with God. In 2 Thess. 2:13, Paul writes that salvation comes through a belief in the truth and the sanctification of the Spirit. In this process of sanctification, the fruit of the Spirit--the very character of Christ--is reproduced in the lives of the believers (Gal. 522-23). This sanctification which the Holy Spirit brings has an ethical dimension. For example, Paul contrasts it with sexual immorality (1 Thess. 4:1- 8), and with the works of the flesh, such as immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, and many other sins, both social and religious (Gal. 5:19-21). Thus, those who have been made “saints” in salvation by the washing of the Spirit, are to live saintly lives through the fruit of the Spirit.
To sum up, Luke, John and Paul each has his own perspective on the roles of the Spirit. For all three, the Spirit is brought into relation to service. For John and Paul, the Spirit is brought into relation to salvation, and for Paul, the Spirit is brought into relation to sanctification. In other words, in Luke’s pneumatology the Spirit has one role: service, in John’s pneumatology the Spirit has two roles: service and salvation, and in Paul’s pneumatology the Spirit has three roles: service, salvation and sanctification. Clearly, Luke, John and Paul each has his own distinctive and yet complementary perspective on the Holy Spirit. For each one his pneumatology is rooted in the Old Testament, is mediated by his religious heritage, is shaped by the Christ-event and his own experience of the Spirit and is
la1
expressed through the role(s) which he attributes to the Spirit.
the following chart illustrates this complex chain of interrelationships, influences and emphasis.
Septuagint 1 Christ 1 Luke 1 Service
+
OT Non-conformist
--D
Christ ;hn Service
I- 13
I SalvationI I I
OT Rabbinic Judaism 1 Christ 1 Paul 1 Service
Thus, there is unity and diversity in the pneumatology of Luke, John, and Paul. Every interpretation which ignores the unity and/or denies the diversity will distort the New Testament doctrine of the Holy Spirit,
The observation that there is unity and diversity in the Lucan, Johannine, and Pauline perspectives on the Holy Spirit has far-reaching implications for the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, furthermore, for the suspicion, hostility, misunderstanding, and acrimony which deplorably divides the main Protestant traditions from each other. In fact, the New Testament reality of unity and diversity is the key to breaking the impasse which characterizes much Protestant theologizing on the .Holy Spirit.
The key is to recognize that the Reformed, Wesleyan and Pentecostal traditions, with their soteriological, holiness and charismatic emphases, respectively, are each legitimate expressions of the diversity of the New Testament witness to the Holy Spirit. The challenge which then comes to each tradition is to recognize that the emphasis in the pneumatology of the other traditions is not contradictory to its own emphasis, but is complementary. Consequently, each tradition then faces the Biblical mandate to embrace the full unity of New Testament pneumatology and to produce a doctrine of the Holy Spirit which is fully canonical, neither denying nor despising any dimension of the role of the Spirit in Salvation, Sanctification and Service.