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109
Life in the
Spirit
in an
Unjust
World
Richard J. Mouw*
I
Christians
play
favorites with the members of the
Trinity.
Some Christian
groups
find it most natural to
pray
to God the
Father; their
hymns
and
pious expressions
seem to dwell
mainly
on the First Person of the
Trinity,
an
emphasis
that is also carried over into their
theological
reflection. Other
groups
find it very appro- priate
to
pray
“dear Jesus”
prayers,
and to
sing about,
and center their
theological
discussions
on,
the Second Person of the
Trinity. And then there are
Holy Spirit
oriented Christians:
people
who address their
prayers
and
hymns
to the Third Person of the
Trinity, and who; make the
Holy Spirit
a very central
topic
of
theological discussion.
That there is a
pattern
of this sort at work in the Christian community
seems to me to be an undeniable
fact;
it also seems to be a fact that it is important not to deny. Taking this fact
seriously,
and giving
it some sustained
attention,
can
help
to
clarify
some issues which are of significance for the Christian
community.
At least I suspect so. As I have
thought,
as an
ethicist,
about
why it is that Christians who
accept
the Bible as their infallible
guide
in matters of faith and
practice,
can nonetheless
disagree strenuously with each other about the
application
of Biblical
teaching
to specific
moral
matters,
this is one of the factors that has seemed to me to be important to take into account. To be sure, there are other factors.
People
come to the Bible with different cultural and ideological
blinders.
They operate
with different hermeneutical systems
and
emphases. They
stress different
parts
of the Bible as morally
relevant-some
pay
most attention to the
stories,
others to the
apostolic letters,
others to the wisdom
literature,
others to legislative passages. People “weigh”
Biblical
principles differently.
But I am also convinced that there are different moral
styles
or temperaments
in the Christian
community,
and that these
styles correspond
to differing
emphases
on one or another of the Persons of the
Trinity.
I haven’t
developed
a satisfactory typology of these styles.
But I do think that
something along
the
following
lines can be
developed
into such a typology.
One
way
of
testing
out the kind of
special
attachment to a member of the
Trinity
which I have in mind here is to ask a specific group
a question of this sort: When
you
think about
obeying
God,
1
110
‘
to which member of the
Trinity
do
you
view
yourself
as
having
a primary relationship?
Which of the divine Persons is it who calls you
to obedience?
There
certainly
seem to be Christian
groups
whose ethical
style
is strongly
oriented toward God the Father. An obvious
example
of such a
style
is the ethical scheme in which the idea of God as Law-giver occupies
a very central
place.
The Law which God
gives can be thought of in terms of natural law, as in a dominant strain of traditional Roman Catholic
thought,
or in terms of revealed
law,
as in much of Dutch and Scottish
Calvinism,
where the
Decalogue
is viewed as the
primary
moral document for the Christian com- munity.
What is common to Christians who exhibit the obedience- to-Law ethical
style
is that
they
think of themselves as
relating primarily
to the First Person of the
Trinity.
But there are other
groups
of Christians who would
respond
to our test
question by referring
to the Second Person of the
Trinity. In
fact, Jesus-centered
ethical
emphases
come in
many
different varieties;
there are
probably many
more
sub-categories
here than with either of the other two basic
options.
This
variety
is due to the fact that the
person
and
ministry
of Jesus are
subject
to
very different interpretations
in the broad Christian
community,
and this
diversity
has
spawned
a wide
variety
of ethical
programs.
There
is,
for
example,
a strong imitatio Christi ethical strain in Roman
Catholicism,
which stands
along
side of the more dominant natural law
emphasis.
The
presence
of this strain is obvious in the great
devotional work
by
Thomas i
Kempis,
The Imitation
of Christ,
and it manifests itself also in Franciscan
piety.
On the Protestant
side,
this kind of “imitation” ethics
appears
in a number of contexts. It certainly is a central
emphasis
in Mennonite ethical thought.
And, ironically,
both the fundamentalists and the liberals in North American Protestantism have
developed
a significant “be like Jesus”
emphasis;
each
camp
has
promoted
a moral
style
in which the
question,
“What would Jesus do?” is a central reference point
for moral
deliberation-although,
to be
sure,
the two sides disagree very
much as to what Jesus would
actually
do in a variety of situations.
What unites these various ethical
programs
is the conviction that significant guidance
for
living
the
good
life can be received
by attending
to the
person
and
ministry
of Jesus.
Indeed,
not
only
can guidance
for the moral life be received
by way
of devotion to Jesus, but
proper
and
adequate
moral
guidance must, according
to this view,
be received in this manner. It is not
enough,
for
example,
to be aware
of,
and reflect
upon,
the Law that was
given
on
Sinai;
the person
and
ministry
of Jesus
provides
us with new moral
materials,
2
ethical argument, dust”
morality publicized
Sinai
degree understand
“doing
111
of the
Kuyper’s
that with the
coming
of
a new moral content, which
goes beyond
the deliverances Older Covenant. Thus, Christians who manifest this Jesus-centered
style
would not be satisfied with Abraham
in his Stone
Lectures,
that Jesus
merely “swept away
the
which had
accumulated,
because of sin, on a moral order that had been his thesis from the
beginning-so
Christ it was not the content of morality that
changed
but rather the
which had been there all
along,
and which had been
at
Sinai,
was now made more accessible to human beings.’ Rather, they
would insist-and on this formal
point
I think that St. Francis and Walter Rauschenbusch and
Dwight
L. Moody and John Howard Yoder would
agree-they
would insist that the
Law is not a fully adequate basis for the moral
life,
but that the
person
and
ministry
of Jesus
provides
us with new moral materials which must be
appropriated by
Christians.
Our third basic ethical
style
is grounded in the insistence that it is the
ministry
of the
Holy Spirit
which
brings
with it a
significant
of moral newness. Christians who manifest this
style
the will of God”
primarily
in terms of following the
leading
of the
Holy Spirit.
For
them,
a moral
program
that
or
primarily
on the deliverances of the Old Testament or on the
ministry
of Jesus-or even on the combined
to these two
persons
of the
Trinity-is seriously
The Christian moral life is to be lived with a conscious awareness of the
Spirit’s presence
and
guidance.
In our
attempts
to be obedient to the God of the
Bible,
the Person of the
Trinity
with whom we deal
directly
is the
indwelling Holy Spirit.
This kind of ethical
style
can be found in classic Pentecostalism and in the more “mainline” charismatic renewal movement.
‘
focusses
exclusively
materials
relating defective.
.
published
isms,
II
Each of these Unitarian-
Niebuhr consciously such as
Recently
I discovered that I am not the first to toy with a scheme like the one which I have
briefly
outlined here. In an
essay
in the 1940’s, H. Richard Niebuhr sketched out a similar typology.2 Niebuhr suggested
that there are three kinds of Unitarian- isms at work in the Christian
community.
he
argued,
focusses
exclusively
on one of the
persons
of the Divine
Trinity.
In
sorting
out these three strands of
thought
was not
primarily
interested in churches which self-
and
officially
endorse some sort of Unitarian
dogma-
the Unitarian-Universalist denomination in North America or even the “Jesus
Only”
offshoot of classical Pentecostalism.
Rather,
Niebuhr was
investigating
what he
thought
of as a much
3
112
more common
“practical monotheism,” “functional Unitarianism.”
piety
Unitarianism,
involves a favoritism Trinity,
but that the favoritism certain kind of motive
Niebuhr
ians who are interested
and natural
theology. be,
They
pattern
which he described as
is
displayed
wher-
attractive
to Christ-
bent.
phenomenon-a
and which we can also refer to as
This
phenomenon
ever a group directs its attention
and/
or devotion toward one of the Persons of the
Trinity
in such a manner
that,
however
officially Trinitarian the
group might
be in its confessional
formulations,
its
and
operating theology
are for all practical purposes Unitarian in
scope.
As Niebuhr sorts out the three basic varieties of functional
he seems to be suggesting that each
variety
not
only
with
regard
to one of the Persons of the
itself is in each case
guided by
a
and takes on a distinct kind of
cognitive tone. For
example,
thinks that a “unitarianism of the Father”-or a First Person Unitarianism-is
in the kinds of
questions generated by philosophy
First Person Unitarians seem to
on his
understanding, people
with a strong speculative
are
looking
for answers to cosmic
questions-questions which are satisfied
by belief
in a deity who is, for
example,
“the first
the
grand designer.”
Niebuhr seems to think that Second Person
who subscribe to what he calls a
of the Son”-tend
questions redemption.
entered their
history,
who has drawn near to them in order to save
First
person
Unitarians have a speculative
bent,- this kind of Unitarianism is oriented, Niebuhr
argues,
toward
cause and
Furthermore,
Unitarians-those Christians “practical
monotheism
about
personal
them. Whereas the
historical revelation.
nor to the
us in historical contemporaneous
revelation;
gy is
to be
preoccupied
with They
want a God who has
scheme,
They
ministry
is presented to want an
indwelling Spirit,
a
available “in the inner
and his Tri-Unitarian
typolo-
I have some
qualms
about
theisms” he seems discussing
as much more them.
The Unitarians of the
Holy Spirit are,
in Niebuhr’s
interested in religious experience. direct their attention not to a Creator-God who is beyond
nature,
and who is known
by way
of speculation,
Redeemer-God who has entered into the human condition and whose incarnational
they
deity
who is
directly
life”-“through spiritual
awareness.”
Niebuhr’s discussion is provocative,
in certain
ways helpful.
Nonetheless
the
way
in which he makes his case. For one
thing, by spelling things out in terms of functional
“Unitarianisms”
and
“practical
mono-
to want to treat the
positions
which he is
‘
reductionistic than 1 am inclined to treat
4
113
I suspect that he has a vested interest in viewing these
positions
as virtual “Unitarianisms.” Niebuhr
attempts
to draw an ecumenical moral from his discussion of these
practical
monotheisms. He sees each
group
as
lodging
a
legitimate protest against
the reduction- isms of the other
groups. By recognizing this,
Niebuhr
things
that some
people
at
least-presumably
those
people who,
like
him,
are interested in viewing these matters in the
light
of the overall
unity
of the church-will be able to come
up
with “a
synthesized (Trini- tarian)
formula in which all the
partial insights
and convictions are combined.” Such a formula, he is convinced, “will never
please any one
part
of the Church but it will be an ecumenical doctrine
not for the exclusion of heretics but for their inclusion in
providing
the
body
on which
they
are
actually dependent.”
It should be clear
why
someone like
me,
who
operates
with theologically
conservative
scruples,
would be suspicious of what is going
on here. Niebuhr doesn’t
really
seem to want to
change anyone’s ‘overemphasis
on a
particular
member of the
Trinity. Rather,
he wants a “synthesized” doctrine of the
Trinity
that will allow all
practical
monotheisms to remain unaltered.
By insisting that we are all heretics after
all-except,
of
course,
for the elite group
of ecumenists who are fortunate
enough
to have a synthetic grasp
of the whole
picture-we
need not treat
any particular group, however, inbalanced,
as regrettably heretical.
I am also not convinced about
many
of the
particulars
of Niebuhr’s discussion. Let me offer
only
one
example,
since it is important
to the rest of my discussion here. Niebuhr wants to link a special
attachment to the First Person of the
Trinity
to a fondness for the
questions
of
philosophy
and natural
theology,
whereas a Second Person
emphasis
is
closely
related to an interest in historical revelation. But I am not sure that Niebuhr has this
exactly right.
I have
already observed,
for
example,
that certain strands of Calvinism seem to serve as prime examples of a kind of ethical
style which is strongly oriented toward the First Person of the
Trinity.
In that
part
of the Reformed
community
which I call
my spiritual home this seems to be the dominant
pattern. Many
of
my
fellow Calvinists exhibit a
piety
and a
theology
and an ethical
style
in which it is clear, to me at
least,
that their sense of the
presence
of God in their lives is understood
by
them
primarily
in terms of the presence
of God the Father.
But this First Person orientation is not
grounded,
as I view the situation,
in any sort of speculative bent. Rather it seems to me to be very clearly based on an
acceptance
of historical revelation-an emphasis
which Niebuhr attributes to Second Person Unitarians. If
5
114
you
were to ask First Person oriented Reformed Christians about the
process whereby they
have come to encounter the God whom these
worship, they
will
surely
formulate their answer in terms of historical revelation. The God who calls his covenant
people
to
obedience is the God who
published
his law on Mount Sinai.
There does not
seem, then,
to be any obvious
logical requirement that an ethical
style
that is oriented toward the Father be grounded in a fondness for
philosophical speculation.
But there
may
nonethe- less be some sort of connection here. I suspect that there
is, and my hunch is that the connection can be explained along these lines: it is not that there is a direct connection, as Niebuhr
suggests
that there is,
between an
emphasis
on the Father-Creator and a speculative bent;
rather the connection is between an
emphasis
on
Law,
which is of course related to an orientation toward the First Person of the Trinity,
and a speculative philosophical bent. In any
event,
I think it is worth
looking
for some such
connection,
because
quite apart from the
logic
of the
situation,
Niebuhr seems to be correct in pointing
to a historical link between an
emphasis
on the First Person and a
deep
interest in
philosophical and/or
natural theological
issues-as is evidenced
by
the fact that the two examples
of communities which are
clearly
First Person
oriented, Roman Catholicism and the Reformed
Community,
have also been much more committed to
philosophical
articulation than other groups.
Now this does
not, by itself,
demonstrate that there is a link between a special affection for God the Father and an interest in philosophical exploration.
But when other factors are taken into account,
I think the link can be established. For
example,
it is my impression
that when Christians in the Reformed and Roman Catholic
communities,
who have
previously
exhibited a God-the- Father
orientation,
turn from that orientation to a more Jesus- centered or Spirit-centered style, they also often view themselves as abandoning
what
they
see as the
heavily
“intellectualistic” or highly “philosophical”
tone of their
previous style.
III
This last remark
brings
me close to the main theme that I want to explore:
the
relationship
between our
understanding
of the work of the
Holy Spirit
and our Christian witness in an unjust world. What does our life in the
Spirit
have to do with our
presence
in an
unjust world?
.
There are
many
who think that there is a basic
incompatibility between a self-conscious
emphasis
on life in the
Spirit
and an active social witness. In
fact,
this conviction is shared
by
two
very different
groups.
On the one
hand,
there are Christians who are
6
115
very
critical of a Holy-Spirit oriented
Christianity
because it is, in
their
view,
antithetical to an aggressive
program
of societal
change.
And there
are,
on the other
hand,
self-described
“Spirit-filled”
Christians who
provide
evidence for the critics
by insisting
them-
selves that life in the
Spirit
has little or nothing to do with a concern
for structural
justice.
As a piece of historical or
sociological analysis
the claim that an
emphasis
on life in the
Spirit
is incompatible with intensive efforts
at social
change
seems to have a point-although it is important to
introduce the
necessary qualifications.
For
example,
the seven-
teenth-century
German Pietists did indeed
place great emphasis
on
an
experience
of the
presence
of the
Holy Spirit. Philipp
Jakob
Spener,
one of the leaders of the German
Pietists, insisted,
as a
counter to what he viewed as the lifeless
orthodoxy
of his
day,
that
“it is not
enough
that we hear the Word with our outward
ear,
but
we must let it penetrate to our
heart,
so that we may hear the
Holy
Spirit speak there,
that
is,
with vibrant emotion and comfort feel
the
sealing
of the
Spirit.”3
This celebration of “vibrant emotion”
and the felt
“sealing”
of the Word
by the Spirit certainly qualifies
as
the kind of
emphasis
on
“experience”
which Niebuhr associates
with a focus on the
Holy Spirit.
But the fact is that
Spener
and other
early
Pietists were far ‘
removed from the kind of
thorough-going “world-flight”
Christ-
ianity
which has often been associated in
people’s
minds with the
Pietist movement. The historical
reputation
of the seventeenth-
century
Pietists has
recently
been
upgraded by, among others,
Ernest Stoeffler, who has done much to counter the false witness
.
which has
regularly
been
lodged against
German
pietism.
Stoeffler points
out that the
early
Pietists advocated a kind of “holy
living” which was a necessary manifestation of life in the
Spirit,
and which featured
“good
works” as a necessary result of regeneration.4 These good works,
as advocated
by the Pietists,
included a strong concern for the
poor
and the destitute.
Early
Pietism was committed to the reform of both the church and the
larger
social order. To be sure, in urging
these reforms the Pietists
placed great
stress on the need to begin
with the reform of the individual
life,
in a manner that is not completely
unlike the kind of “changed hearts will
change society” talk that we hear
very
often
today.
But in stressing this kind of thing the
early
Pietists did not mean to
ignore completely
the
goal
of social-political
reformation.
It is
unfair, then, simply
to
identify
the kind of Pietism which encourages
Christians to cultivate an experiential
relationship
with the
Holy Spirit
with a thorough-going “other worldliness.” Nonethe- less,
in analyzing the
legacy
of German Pietism in North American
7
116
religious life,
Stoeffler himself admits
that,
while that
legacy
has in many ways
been a positive
one,
“Pietism has contributed its
share to some of those features of American Protestantism which are widely regarded
as less admirable.” Here
he notes some defective traits,
one of them
being
a tendency among Pietists to be “escapist in their
theology., putting
the
emphasis
on blessedness in the hereafter rather than
justice
for all here and now.”5
Stoeffler, then, makes the
explicit
link: even
though
the
original
Pietist leaders cannot
legitimately
be blamed for
overtly denying
the connection between life in the
Spirit
and a commitment to social
reform,
there is nonetheless a Pietist
tendency
in that direction which can be observed
historically.
It
certainly
seems to be the case on the
contemporary
scene that the dominant strains of Christian social activism are linked to First Person and Second Person
emphases.
The
primary emphasis
in much liberation
theology
is on the God of the Exodus.6 A similar First Person orientation characterizes fundamentalist “civil reli- gion”
movements in the United
States,
whose
primary appeal
seems to be to the God who has
providentially guided
America’s career as a nation in order to cultivate her for some sort of messianic role in the world. Calvinistic “reformational”
programs
also are
very
First Person, law-giver,
oriented.7
The most
prominent
of the Second Person oriented
political programs
seems to be associated with the
“politics
of Jesus” emphasis
of the
contemporary
radical
Anabaptists,
or “neo”- Anabaptists.8
To the
degree
that the older liberalism is still a respectable option
in North
America,
there are some remnants of the kind of Jesus-oriented social
Gospel
that Walter Rauschen- busch
developed.9
And in the more
politically-active wing
of fundamentalists-dispensationalism
there is a recognizable brand of “King
Jesus”
political thought-albeit
of a rather Israel-centered or Israel-monistic
variety.
10
But it is difficult to find visible activist movements
today
which are
Holy Spirit
oriented. The
possible exceptions
here are the small activist branch of the Roman Catholic charismatic
renewal,”
as
well as whatever
activity
there is that
might
be associated with the rather feeble case which
Larry
Christenson
presented
in his book A Charismatic
Approach
to Social Action
(Bethany Fellowship, 1974).
And there are
surely important exceptions among
Black Pentecostals and in the renewed
interest,
as
displayed
in Donald Dayton’s book, Discovering
an
Evangelical Heritage (Eerdmans, 1976),
in the activist roots of the
Wesleyan-Holiness
movement.
But it is still a fact, I suggest, that
many
of us do not associate an emphasis
on life in the
Spirit
with an
aggressive program
of social
8
about how the
117
justice.
This
is, I am convinced,
a regrettable state of affairs. I want to devote the remainder of
my
discussion here to some comments
link between life in the
Spirit
and the
quest
for structural
justice might
be sustained in a healthy manner. I will do
that link from each side of the
relationship.
First I will
that life in the
Spirit, properly understood, requires
an active
Then I will
suggest
that the active
pursuit
of
needs to be rooted in a conscious awareness of
so by viewing
argue
pursuit
of
justice.
justice desperately
the
power
of the
Holy Spirit.
‘
giving compelled Spirit
quoting anointing
,
IV
.. ,
issue forth in
I am
thinking
here of the
Why
should life in the
Spirit, properly understood,
the
pursuit
of
justice?
Let me
begin
to answer this
question by
an answer in very broad terms.
Spirit-filled
Christians will be
to seek
justice
if they understand the
relationship
of the
to the other two members of the
Trinity.
The
Holy Spirit
is the
Spirit
of God who wills justice for the creation that is the work of God’s hands. The
Holy Spirit
is the
Spirit
of the Christ
who,
in
the
inaugural
text for his own
earthly ministry,
claimed an
of that
Spirit
for a ministry of liberation
(Lk. 4:18-19).
The
Holy Spirit
does not have a narrower vision than the other members of the
Trinity.
The
ministry
of the
Spirit
is not a more restricted mission than the divine
program
to which the Father and the Son are committed. The Creator formed the earth and all that is in
it,
as an instrument of divine
glory,
and God has
promised
to reclaim that creation. The Redeemer-God came into the cosmos in order to reclaim that which
belonged
to
him,
so that
by paying
the price
with his own blood the renewal of the whole creation could be secured.
Indeed,
some have
argued-and
expositions
of both Geerhardus Vows12 and Hendrikus Berkhof’3- that the future
age,
the new creation, is the
proper “sphere”
or arena of the
Spirit;
it is the
only “place”
that the
Spirit
can call “home.” the with the is
In
Spirit’s dealings individuals, then, Spirit drawing
to the new
age,
an
age
in which
justice
and
righteousness will cover the earth and where God’s benediction of Peace will be pronounced
over all the works of God’s hands.
The brief
summary
is meant to outline the Trinitarian
persons
program, in the lives of believers
convinced
from which the
ministry
of the
Holy Spirit
cannot be separated or abstracted. And I am thoroughly
that
my summary
here
faithfully represents
the Biblical
scenario, albeit
sketchily.
But I also think that it is possible to draw a parallel like the one which Niebuhr
suggests,
between the members of the
Trinity
and
9
118
certain
cognitive
elements or
pieces
which are crucial to an overall understanding
of the work of the
Trinity. Allowing
for the qualifications
which I mentioned
earlier,
I think that it is fair to associate a
speculative
or
philosophical
bent to those Christians who are First Person
oriented,
a focus on historical revelation to those who are Second Person
oriented,
and a fascination with a
‘
subjective experiential
base to those who are Third Person oriented. Or if I may be
permitted
to
change
the
terminology slightly
for
my own
purposes here,
it seems to me that a
proper grasp
of the creation-renewal
program
of the Triune God must include attention to the formulation of a philosophically articulated world-and-life view,
which is in turn based on the careful
study
of God’s revelation as we find it in the
Scriptures,
which is in turn
grounded
in an experience
of the
presence
and
power
of the divine
Spirit.
That kind of formulation allows us to
identify
some of the problem
areas in a style of Christianity in which a strong
emphasis is placed on the work of the
Holy Spirit
and where the work of the other two members of the
Trinity is, as a result, under-emphasized or subordinated to that of the
Spirit. Holy Spirit
Christians have often
neglected
to
develop
a theoretical
perspective
on a broad range
of issues
having
to do with Christian
thought
and
practice, and
they
often have failed to
pay
careful attention to the full
scope of Biblical revelation. I will not
argue
the case
here,
but I think that it can be shown
quite easily
how a neglect or a slighting of these two areas could lead to a serious
narrowing
of one’s
conception
of the life of obedience to God.
But,
more
specifically,
how shall we chart out the movement from an
emphasis
on life in the
Spirit
to a commitment to promoting justice
in an
unjust
world? The first
step, certainly,
is to understand
that Spirit-filled living may
not be exhaustively under- stood in purely individual terms.
My suspicion
is that this
point
has been made
convincingly enough
in
enough places by
now that anyone
who has not
yet
been touched
by
the
power
of the arguments
is not
going
to be influenced
by my repeating
those arguments
here.
It is
important, however,
to
keep
the fact in mind that a highly individualized
understanding
of the Christian
life,
and more specifically
of the
Spitit-filled life,
has indeed had its
impact
in many places.
When Hendrikus
Berkhof gave
his Princeton
Seminary lectures in
1964,
which were
published
in that same
year
under the title The Doctrine
of the Holy Spirit,
he described one of the main tensions with
regard
to the work of the
Spirit
in these terms:
“In Roman Catholic
theology,
the Spirit is mainly the soul
and sustainer of the church. In Protestant
theology
he is
10
119
mainly
the awakener of the individual
spiritual
life in
justification
and sanctification. So the
Spirit
is either
institutionalized or individualized.”‘4 ,
Two decades later, this account does not seem to characterize adequately
the
present
state of the discussion. Since
Berkhof gave that account the
Spirit
has been
partially
individualized
by many Roman
Catholics,
and
partially
ecclesiasticized
by many
Protes- tants,
and if it is still
possible
to have
energetic arguments
about such
matters-which
it is-at least the
participants
in the
argu- ments no
longer represent typically
“Protestant” or “Roman Catholic”
positions,
as Berkhof described those
positions
in
1964; nor are the
positions
themselves so unnuanced
today.
Most
people
who write about these
things today
seem to
agree that the
question
of whether the
Spirit
works in individuals or in ecclesiastical bodies
presents
us with a false choice. Most would agree that,
for
example,
the
Spirit
works with
individuals,
but that one of the most
important things
that the
Spirit
does to individuals is to unite them
together
into
confessing
and
worshipping
commun- ities. And most would
agree
that the
Spirit
works in and
through communities,
but that one of the
important things
that the
Spirit does in and
through
communities is to draw
upon
the
gifts
of unique
and
irreplaceable individuals,
so that each
may
contribute to the
vitality
of the whole.
It is difficult to
get
a genuinely
polarized argument going
these days
about such matters. But there are rather
energetic
discussions taking place
over
whether,
in talking about the identifiable
working of the
Holy Spirit,
we should limit our attention to the
territory
that is charted out
by the older debates. Norman Pittenger,
for
example, has insisted that it is wrong “to confine the
Spirit
and his working to the individual Christian or to the Christian church.” He wonders whether,
as a case in point, when D. H. Lawrence claimed that in his writing
he sensed that he was
being
used as an instrument of “the wind that blows
through me,”
whether we as Christians
might
not properly say
that Lawrence was
experiencing
the work of the
Holy Spirit. Might
there not
be, Pittenger asks,
a “working of God which is not
specifically
5
religious
but nonetheless is
wonderfully divine?”‘
C.F.D.
Moule,
on the other
hand, explicitly
denies that we have any
solid Biblical
grounds
for
identifying
a work of the
Spirit apart from the Christian
community.
The New
Testament, according
to Moule, certainly
does not offer us such
grounds:
“So far from the Spirit’s being
cosmic in scope (as
Christ,
the
Logos
of God,
is),
the Spirit
is scarcely mentioned
except
as among Christians and as the agent
of the new creation-the
bringing persons
to new life in Christ. “16
.
.
_
11
120
I am not
exactly
sure what Leonard Sweet means when he says in his
book,
New
Life
in the
Spirit,
that
Pittinger
and Moule are presenting
us with
“profound half-truths,”‘7
because I’m not sure that either of them has
gotten
that close to the truth on this
subject. Moule seems to me to
interpret
the
Spirit’s ministry
in very narrow terms. For one
thing,
it seems
strange
to
say
that Christ’s work is cosmic in
scope
but the
Spirit’s
is not. But more on this later. Suffice it to
say
here that we need not
challenge
Moule’s claim that the
Spirit
is “the
agent
of the new
creation;”
but we certainly must challenge
what seems to be Moule’s
understanding
of what it means for the
Spirit to function
as an
agent
of the new creation. Moule says
that this
agency
consists in “the
bringing persons
to new life in Christ.”
Thus,
Moule seems to assume that the “new creation” of which the
Spirit
is the divine
agent simply is
the new life in Christ that we
experience
as individual members of the church. In this way, then,
Moule can view the
Spirit
as working
primarily
within the Christian
cdmmunity
and not “out there” in the
larger
world- Christ,
as he views
things,
is at work in the whole
cosmos,
but the Spirit
is not.
It seems to me much more
plausible,
in terms of formulating a coherent
perspective
on the work of the
Spirit
that
captures
the fulness of the Biblical
witness,
to
begin
with the kind of
emphasis which Abraham
Kuyper
was
getting at,
in what
may
well be the central thesis-statement of his volume on the
Holy Spirit:
“the work of the
Holy Spirit
consists in
leading
all creation to its destiny, the final
purpose
of which is the
glory
of God.”18 8
The
Spirit, then,
is-on a cosmic
scope-preparing
the
way
for the new creation. And as a case in point for this cosmic
agency,
the Spirit
leads individuals into the new life that is in Jesus
Christ;
the renewal of individuals is an
aspect-an important aspect,
to be sure,
but an
aspect-of
the more
general
work of renewal to which the
Spirit
is commited on behalf of the whole creation.
Pittinger’s position
is a little more difficult to assess than is Moule’s. Is the
Spirit
of God
doing
a
preparatory
work that
goes beyond
the so-called
“religious”
realm? The answer seems to me to be, “Of Course.” In contrast to
Pittenger, however,
it does not seem to me that the
question
of whether D. H. Lawrence was
directly inspired by
the
Holy Spirit
is a terribly
interesting place
to focus our attention,
but to the
degree
that I can
get
interested in the
question
I am
very
much inclined to answer it differently than
Pittenger
does. For me the more
interesting
versions of the
question
arise in
very different contexts. When after thousands of
years
of
hostility between
Egyptian
and
Jew,
the leader of the
Egyptian people proclaims,
to the utter
surprise
of friend and foe
alike,
“I will
go to
12
121
Jerusalem,”
and when that leader
steps
off the
plane
to embrace the political
leader of
Israel,
is that the
identifiable
work of the
Holy Spirit?
Is it
legitimate
to
identify
the cries of
revolutionary movements in Southern Africa with the
promptings
of the
Spirit? Can we hear the
recognizable
voice of the
Spirit
in feminist calls for an end to
patriarchal oppression
and in the
protests
of those who cry
out on behalf of the unborn?
Note that I am not
asking
whether it is reasonable to assume that the
Spirit
is somehow at work in such events and movements. I think so.
My question
is whether the
Spirit
is identifiably at work there-whether the
Spirit’s
movements in the realm
beyond
that community
in which the name of Jesus is confessed are
recog- nizable and chartable
by
Christians.
This is a
good
and
important question,
and it deserves our attention. But I do not think that it is
necessary
to answer that question fully
in order to demonstrate that life in the
Spirit
commits us to a ministry of justice. Much of the case here can be made
simply by looking
at what it means for us to be joined
by
the
Spirit
to the church of Jesus Christ.
In
fairness to Moule, it should be noted that he recognizes that
by identifying
the work of the
Spirit
with the life of the
church,
we are already
committed to an “opening up” dynamic. He admits that his
position might
look at first like
gross exclusivism,
and as
though
the
Christian Church had become narrow and closed in on .
itself and had
forgotten
the
mighty
doctrine of God as ‘
Creator and as penetrating the whole of his creation. But
this is not
really
the case….
(I)t
is precisely the
Holy
Spirit
that activates the evangelistic work of Christians. If
the
Holy Spirit
is
recognized
in Christians
alone,
it is
certainly
not in order to make them a closed circle. On the
contrary,
the effect is to
open them, indefinitely
and
constantly,
to what is outside and beyond them, and to send
them out into the world with
responsible
concern for
everybody.”‘9
.
To admit this much
is, as I view things, already
to have committed Christians to a significant address to the issues of a world
plagued by injustice.
Our
evangelistic
activities take
place
in an
unjust world. And there is no
way
that we can avoid
dealing
with the patterns
of injustice if we are to evangelize
properly
and
effectively. It is very often
necessary
in properly-sensitive
evangelism
to focus on the fact that those whom we would
evangelize
are to some
degree or another either
oppressors
or oppressed; and it is also crucial that we come to the
evangelistic
situation with an awareness of our own involvement in the
patterns
of social and
political
and economic oppression.
13
122
But
questions
of justice also arise in connection with that state of affairs which is the goal of evangelism. Evangelism aims at
bringing persons
into that
community
which confesses Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. And it is
important
to
emphasize
the fact that evangelism
aims at the
incorporation
of human
beings
into a universal church. To
belong
to Jesus
Christ,
to live in the
Spirit,
is to
be joined
to a community in which the barriers of race and
gender and
ethnicity
and
nationality
are no
longer
effective as barriers. This
community
is one where no other
identifying
“blood”
counts, save for the blood of the
Lamb,
which made that new
community
of royal priests
and
priestesses possible, according
to the
great hymn of Revelation 5. But the immediate
agent
for the establishment of this new peoplehood is the
Holy Spirit
who
according
to the ancient promise
is poured out on all flesh,
empowering
women and men to prophesy,
and
giving
visions to the
young
and dreams to the old (Joel 2:28;
Acts
2:17-18).
To
recognize
that this is the
community
into which the
Spirit incorporates
us is to take on a clear commitment to the work of justice
in a world in which societies and their
governments regularly insist on
maintaining
the
very
barriers which the
Holy Spirit
breaks down.
The
Biblical case for a witness on behalf
of justice
can be put in
many ways;
but we need to
recognize nothing
other than our Spirit-anointed
status as members of the universal church of Christ to sense the need to
cry
out on behalf of black Christians in South Africa
who,
even
though they
have been anointed
by
the
Spirit
as members of the
royal
household of
faith,
are treated
by
white Christians as if
they
were mere hewers of wood and drawers of water,
or to
protest
the treatment of Russian Pentecostals
by
a government
which refuses to
grant
them the
right
to
practice
their religion peacefully,
or to be deeply offended
by societal institutions which discriminate
against
our sisters in the faith
purely
on the basis of their
gender.
–
I do not mean to
suggest
here that we should
only
be concerned about the
unjust
treatment of our fellow Christians. But I am
saying that our
membership
in the universal
church, whereby
the
Spirit binds us together with men and women from
every
tribe and
tongue and
people
and nation of the earth, is itself a relationship in which we ought to benefit from the
Spirit’s pedagogy of justice.
Our life in the
Body
of Christ should serve as the means
whereby
we become sensitized to the
reality
of
injustice,
as the
Spirit
creates in us an empathy
for the oppressed of the Christian
community-a sensitivity and
empathy
which can then be
expanded
on behalf of all who experience oppression,
Christian or not.
‘
14
123
Henri Nouwen makes a similar
point
about the
empathy-creating work of the
Spirit
in terms of the
prayer
life.
During
his seven months at the
Trappist Monastery
of the Genessee in New York state,
Father Nouwen
kept
a
daily
record of his
attempts
to cultivate an effective
prayer-life.
In one of his
journal
entries he speaks
about the
way
in which the
Holy Spirit
binds us to others
through prayer:
(P)rayer
is the only real way to clean my heart and to create
new
space.
I am
discovering
how
important
that inner
space
is. When it is there it seems that I can receive many
concerns of others … I can
pray
for
many
others and
feel a
very
intimate
relationship
with them. There even
seems to be room for the thousands of suffering
people
in
and in the deserts of North Africa. Sometimes I feel
as if prisons my heart extends from
my traveling
in ‘
Indonesia to
my
friends in
parents
Los
Angeles
and from the
Chilean
prisons
to the parishes in Brooklyn.
Now I know that it is not I who pray but the Spirit of God
who prays in me … He himself prays in me and touches
the whole world with his love right here and now. At those
moments
all
questions
about “the social relevance of ]
prayer,
etc.” seem dull and unintelligent.
.
. .
.
‘
There is a profound point here. It is not just that
prayer
can
bring
us social and
political
sensitivities if we should
happen
to want them. Rather, prayer-understood
as
prayer
in the
Spirit-ought
to provide
us with those sensitivities. When we
pray
we are
experi- encing
the divine
Spirit
who is at the same time
touching
all who belong
to the Lord.
Prayer
in the
Spirit
binds us to the universal church,
which includes the
suffering
church. Life in the
Spirit ought to make us ill at ease with all that stands in the
way
of the
coming
of the new
age.
Let me come at the
relationship
between life in the
Spirit
and a concern
for justice
from
yet
one more
angle. Many pietists
tend to understand “Christian
growth”
in
very
“intensive” terms.
Holy living
is for them a process of coming to feel closer and closer to God. This
emphasis
on intensification is something which I have already
discussed elsewhere
by using
as an
example
a story which I heard
many
times when I was
growing up
in “conservative evangelical”
circles. This
story,
which I heard from
many preachers and
evangelists,
went like this.
Imagine
a scholar
teaching today
at a well known
university,
who is a
leading expert
on the
political career of Abraham Lincoln. He knows
everything
there is to know from
scholarly
sources
about
Lincoln’s
public
life. He has memo- rized his
speeches,
and can tell
you
what
preoccupied
Lincoln’s attention
during any given
week
during
Lincoln’s
presidency.
But he
has,
of course, never met Lincoln
personally.
15
124
Now,
the
story goes on, imagine
a little
girl
who lived next door to Mr. Lincoln. Often when Lincoln would come out of his house he would see this
girl
and
pick
her
up
and
whisper something
to her, or put
her on his
lap
and tell her a story. This little
girl
did not know many
facts about Lincoln; but she did know him
personally.
The
preacher always
finished this illustration with a punch-line type question:
Which
person
knows Lincoln better? The scholar who knows all the facts about Lincoln but does not know him personally,
or the little
girl
who doesn’t know
many
of the
facts,
but has
experienced
Lincoln as a living, breathing human
being?
There is a
legitimate point
to that
illustration,
which I do not mean to
deny.
The
preachers
were
telling
us that we must know Jesus
personally,
and not
merely possess
a lot of facts about Jesus. But there is also
something misleading
about this way of making the case.
Consider,
for
example,
a reporter at a large city
newspaper who is an expert on the career of a leading figure in organized crime. He knows all of the
publicized
facts about this
man,
but he has never met him
personally.
Now
imagine
a little
girl
who lives next door to this criminal
figure.
Each
day
when he sees her he picks her up
and
gives her
a hug. Sometimes he whispers a joke into her
ear, or sits with her and tells a story.
Which
person
knows the criminal
figure
better? It isn’t at all obvious to me that the little
girl
has the
edge
in this situation. She may
know the
gangster personally,
as a warm,
breathing
human being.
But there are
many important things
about him which she does not
know-things
without which she does not have an adequate grasp
of who this
person
is.
And a similar
point
can be made about our
relationship
to Jesus Christ. Intensive
growth
in Christ is not
enough.
It is not
enough
to feel closer and closer to Jesus. There is also a kind of extensive growth
that is
necessary.
We must
grow
in our
knowledge
about Jesus’ about the extent of his
power
and
authority.
And this also relates to an extensive dimension of our
growth
in the
Spirit.
Jesus sends the
Spirit
to the church to lead the church into all truth. In a very central
way,
the
Spirit
witnesses to us about Jesus;
the
Spirit
leads us into the truth about the Son of God. This involves our
being
instructed
by the Spirit
about the fact that Jesus is not
only
the Savior of our souls but is also the Lord of the church and the ruler over all of the
principalities
and
powers
of earth. Growth in the
Spirit
involves our
learning
more and more about the fact that the
reign
of Jesus is a reign of justice, that the
Mighty
God is also the Prince of
Peace,
that Jesus calls his disciples to
identify with the needs of the
poor
and the
oppressed,
that the
healing
which the Savior
brings
in his
wings
is not
only
for broken hearts and
16
balm in Gilead
125
there is a
diseased bodies, but it is a
healing
for the
nations, that
for the victims of racism and sexism and militarism. All of these
things
are involved in the
teaching
of the
Holy Spirit
in our lives.
ministry
,
V
and
sensitizing
,
must
necessarily
be rooted in a
in the justice, conscious
But I must turn now to a brief discussion of how
things
also flow
other direction: how an active Christian commitment to
if carried out
properly,
awareness of the
personal presence
of the
Holy Spirit
in our lives.
making
must
.
.
means intention, suggestions insights
activism
combined
authority neglecting thereby
.
attempt
ministry? Well,
acknowledge
of the
Trinity
to our
understanding Third Person adds to this situation.
Here I must
repeat my
earlier insistence that Christian decision-
take
place
in a Trinitarian context. Thus far I might have
given
the
impression
that I only want to use that insistence as a
for
criticizing Holy Spirit
oriented Christians. This is not
my
so it is
perhaps fitting
that I conclude with some
as to how the rest of us can better draw
upon
the
that flow from a strong emphasis on the work of the
Spirit. . Let me put
my point
here in very
simple
terms: a style of Christian
which concentrates
primarily
on the
authority
of God the Father or on the
authority
of the Divine
Son,
or even on the
of these two Persons of the
Trinity,
while
the work of the
Holy Spirit,
will
inevitably
fall short of Biblical standards for vital Christian witness.
Suppose
that we do
neglect
the work of the
Holy Spirit
as we
to be agents of God’s justice. What is missing in our societal
let’s
briefly
review what it is that we
ought
to
as the contributions of the First and Second Persons
justice; quoted by
(Jeremiah
divine Son, .
practice,
but
Testament
‘
of justice, and then see what the
to do insistence-in a passage often to understand and know the
of justice
–
justice.
.
Suppose
that we have heard the call of the Father-God
we have
grasped
Jeremiah’s
liberation
theologians-that
Lord is to know that the Lord
delights
in the
practice
9:24). Suppose
also that we have understood that the
in his
earthly ministry,
not
only
re-issues this call to
that he adds much to our
understanding
of that Old
mandate. He
speaks
in rich terms about a life that is characterized
by
a hungering and
thirsting
after
righteousness
and
He tells
parables
which deal with the
relationships of justice to
love,
and
justice
to
mercy. He
also models the life of justice in a very personal way-thereby fleshing
out our
understanding
of what a perfectly just and
righteous
human
being
would look like: in the
17
126
‘
Gospel
accounts we see Jesus
attending
to the concerns of the neglected
and voiceless
ones;
we see him not
only talking
about justice,
but
actually having compassion
on the crowds
(see,
for example,
Matt.
9:35-36).
We grasp these
things.
We also understand all of these matters in the context
of Jesus’ proclamation
of the
Kingdom
of God. And we know that in our own
attempts
to
bring
some measure of justice into an unjust world we are
witnessing
to the fact that
someday
this reign
of Shalom will cover the earth.
Most of
all, though,
we understand the marvelous truth that Jesus in a profound sense made this
Kingdom possible by his death on the
Cross,
that
by
the
shedding
of his blood he purchased the new
creation,
and broke Satan’s
grip
on the cosmos. We under- stand, then,
that it is only because he satisfied the demands of divine
–
‘
–
.
.
‘
justice
on the Cross that human
beings
can
hope
for
a just
order that will characterize human
relationships.
Suppose, then/that
we acknowledge all of these
things.
What are we
missing by
not
yet having acknowledged
the work of the
Holy Spirit?
One
thing
we have failed to acknowledge,
surely,
is that it is the
Spirit
who have enabled us to understand the divine call to justice
and to see the work of the Son as the means
by which we are empowered
to respond to that call. It is the
Spirit
who
appropriates these matters to our inner selves. On a purely formal level one could somehow
intellectually acknowledge
the command to
seek justice, and also
go through
the motions of imitating the models of Jesus as the Just
One,
and still be missing that element which is requested in the Biblical
prayer,
“Create in me a new
heart,
0 Lord.” It is the Holy Spirit
who creates the
longing for justice
within
us,
who fills us with
compassion
for those whose
well-being
we seek. The
Spirit creates in us a love for the
poor
and the
needy,
a heart that desires the
good
of the widow and the
orphan, felt compassion
for the sojourner
and the
prisoner
and the
courage
and
hope
that will sustain us in the
struggle-all
of which are
necessary
if our
quest
for justice
is to be
pleasing
to the Lord.
The
Spirit, then, provides
us with the
subjective equipment
for the work of justice. But the
Spirit
also aids us in the
process
of decision-making
as we seek to
promote righteousness
and
justice and
peace.
It is not
enough
to have commands and
general norms, and even
living examples
and models for our
decision-making.
It is also
necessary
to
possess
those skills and sensitivities which the New Testament writers associate with the
gifts
of the
Spirit.
The quest
for
a just political
order,
for
example, requires-to
follow the list
given
in 1 Corinthians 12-the utterance of
political
wisdom and
political knowledge,
the exercise of political
faith,
the
ability
to
.
18
127
.
.
.
.
.
.
bring
about
political healing,
the
working
of political
miracles,
the ability
to
prophesy politically,
to
distinguish
between
political spirits
and to
interpret political tongues.
“And all of these are inspired by
the same
Spirit.”
These are some reasons
why,
I think, the
quest for justice
must be grounded
in an experience of the
presence
of the
Holy Spirit
in our lives. The kind of ministry to which we are called in the
political
and economic
spheres
must be sustained
by
a
deep, pious, prayerful reliance on the
Spirit
of the
Living
God.
These are not trivial matters to emphasize. We have seen in recent years, especially
in North America and Western
Europe,
a brand of Christian activism
emerge
in which the call to
orthopraxy-correct practice-is
often
consciously
intended as a rejection of an interest in both
orthodoxy-correct
beliefs-and in what we
might
label “orthopathy”-correct feelings.
But these elements of the Christian life cannot be separated from each
other;
indeed the
understanding of the need to
integrate
these matters is nowhere
stronger
than among many
Third World Christians-whose
interests, ironically, the
orthopraxists
of the North Atlantic
community
often claim to represent.
: The community of Christian activists
desperately
needs a revival of orthopathy,
a seeking of the
personal presence
of the
Holy Spirit. Indeed,
that is a need that
permeates
the entire Christian
community today:
a need for the
Holy Spirit
to convict all of us of our own sin-both
personal
and
corporate-so
that we
might
be anointed by
the
Spirit
as ministers of justice, in order that the
gifts
of the Spirit may
be employed in the service of the full
gospel
in an unjust world,
to the
glory
of the Triune God.
‘
r
*Given as the
opening
address for the conference on “The Spirit-Empowering Presence,”
held at the Institute for Christian Studies, July 16-19,
1984. Richard J. Mouw serves as Professor of Christian
Philosophy
and Ethics at Fuller
Theological Seminary
in Pasadena,
CA. He is a member of the Christian Reformed Church.
‘Abraham
Kuyper,
Lectures on Calvinism,
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 193 I ), 71-72.
2H. Richard Niebuhr, “The Doctrine of the Trinity and the Unity of the Church,” Theology Today, 1946, 371-384..
3Philip
Jakob
Spener,
Pia Desideria
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1964), 1 17. 4Cf. F. Ernest Stoeffler, ed., Continental Pietism and
Early
American Christianity (Grand Rapids,
M 1: Eerdmans,
1976), 269.
5Stoeffler,
Continental Pietism, 270.
°
19
128
6For an
example
of an Exodus-centered account of
liberation,
see J. Severino Croatto, E:rodus: A Hermeneutics
of Freedom (Maryknoll,
NH:
Orbis, 1981).
7Th is is obvious
in, for example,
Abraham
Kuyper’s
1898 Stone Lecture , in “Calvinism
and
Politics,”
in his Lectures on Calvinism
(Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, l 931 ), 78- I 09; cf. especially
82-85.
8Cf. John Howard Yoder’s The Politics
of
Jesus
(Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1972).
yRauschenbusch’s
strong emphasis
on Jesus comes in
XIV of his A For
through clearly
chapter Theology
the Social
Gospel (Nashville:
Abingdon, 1945).
Hal
Lindsey,
The Late Great Planet Earth
(Grand
171-179.
Rapids:
Zondervan, 1970),
“See,
for
example,
Cardinal
Leon-Joseph
Suenens and Dom Helder .
Camara, Charismatic’
Renewal and Social Action: A
Dialogue (Ann
Arbor, M I: Servant Books, 1979), and
Sheila Macmanus Charis-
matic Social Action:
Reflection/ Resource
Manual
Fahey,
(New
York: Paulist
Press, 1977).
12Geerhardus Vos, “The
Eschatological Aspect
of the Pauline Con-
ception
of the Spirit,” Bihlical and
Theological Studies, by the members of
the
Faculty
of Princeton
Theological Seminary, (New
York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, (912), 209-259.
13Hendfikus Berkhof, The Doctrine of the
Holy Spirit, (Richmond:
John Knox, 1964) and Christian Faith (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979),
Section 36.
14Berkhof, Doctrine of the Holy Spirit,
33.
15Norman Pittenger, The Holy
Spirit (Philadelphia: Pilgrim, 1974) 22,
61.
1r’C.F.D. Moule, The Holy Spirit (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 19.
leonard 1. Sweet,
New Life
in the
Spirit (Philadelphia: Westminster,
1982) 94.
“,,Abraham
Kuyper,
The Work of the Holy Spirit
(New York: Funk and
Wagnalls, 1900), 22.
19 M oule, Holy Spirit, 20.
211Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Genesee
Diary (Garden City: Doubleday, .
1976), 74-75.
20
Anonymous
a very real need for operating the Gifts of the Spirit today Duane L Burgess