Come, Holy Spirit:

Pneumatology as Methodology

in the Wesleyan Tradition

Dr. Richard K. Eckley

John 14:23-31; 20:19-23 

Interest in the Holy Spirit has been heightened today due to the influence of the Charismatic Renewal on all Church traditions.  This interest is more than a curiosity piece along the loci theologici (the points of theology) but has engaged us at the very point of our worship and experience of God.   The Wesleyan Church, the denomination from which the history of Houghton College flows, traces its roots back to the Methodist movement, a movement spawned by John Wesley--perhaps the first modern theologian of the Spirit.  The Pentecostal/Charismatic movements also trace their theological roots to this same source.  Some have noted that the divisions between holiness and Pentecostal histories in the 20^th century could be understood as differences created by the distinct mission of the Holy Spirit.  The Holiness tradition began to emphasize the role that the Holy Spirit plays in our discipleship in Jesus Christ, and the Charismatic movement became entrenched in the experiences of the Holy Spirit.  This division between fruits and gifts, between ethics and experience, became an unfortunate family dispute left to the heirs of Wesleyan pneumatology.  Certainly Wesleyans have not cornered the market on the doctrine of Holy Spirit, but it’s emphasis and reflection has marked the method of all those who follow in this tradition.

The texts that I have read today are helpful for the backdrop for the three main areas that I wish to direct our attention to:  The person of the Holy Spirit; the work of the Holy Spirit; and the role of pneumatology in modern theology.  Forgive me for not being expositional in my approach, but much of our interest in the Holy Spirit is taken from the trajectories flowing from the unity of the Biblical witness, and not in any one preaching text. 

The Person of the Holy Spirit.  Generally speaking, the history of Christian doctrine has been fixated on the second person of the Trinity—Jesus Christ—for most of its existence.  This isn’t bad or good, just a fact.  The doctrine of the Holy Spirit has often looked like an afterthought in the history of Christian theology.  And yet it is within the parameters of this doctrine that we experience the most grand and joyous experience allowed for our humanity.  In the gift and presence of the Holy Spirit we are allowed to participate in and enjoy the very presence of God himself.

        Unlike the second person of the Trinity, who has a face and a human existence, the Holy Spirit has diverse descriptions and is difficult to think of in personal terms.  The Holy Spirit is a dove, a tongue of fire, and a wind.  It is often depicted as more of a force than a person.

Furthermore, when one attempts to develop an understanding of how the Holy Spirit relates to the Triune God it becomes even more difficult.  Augustine gave us the picture of a perfect community centered on the nature of God as giver—the Holy Spirit being the gift. Augustine himself understood that this notion would create a certain type of created grace idea—that there was a time when God created the Holy Spirit—and so acknowledged that the Spirit always was in the economic design of the Godhead.

The early fathers, Irenaeus being the most famous, never tired of speaking of the dual mission of the Son and the Spirit.  Irenaeus had described this dual mission as the two hands of God; God’s right hand, the Son, offering the rationality; and His left hand, the Spirit, the creativity (Against Heresies  4.20.1)  Quite often this resulted in the dominance of the Son over the Spirit, as developed through the Western addition of the filioque to the Nicene Creed.  This is often referred to as a Christomonism.  In our text in John chapter 20—the description of “John’s Pentecost”--we saw how Jesus’ own breath creates the Holy Breath of God.  John has Jesus and the Spirit intricately bound together; unlike Luke who separates Easter from Pentecost with his own epoch or dispensation.  John would remind us as Paul in Romans 8, that if you have Christ, then you have his Spirit.   No one has the Spirit of Christ without being in Christ, but more importantly, everyone who is in Christ has the Spirit of Christ.

We are reminded through the Advent season that our Lord was born through the conception by the Holy Spirit.  This image of the Holy Spirit being the birthing agent of the Son has given us some of the most intriguing work done on the relationship of the Holy Spirit to the Trinity.   Two early influences on John Wesley came by way of the Greek dessert father, Macarius the Egyptian, and, consequently, the Moravian Count Zinzendorf.  Through this tradition we come to see the language of the Holy Spirit as a mother, speaking of the Third Person in feminine terms.  Zinzendorf had written that ‘since the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is our True Father, and the Spirit of Jesus Christ is our True Mother, because the Son of the Living God is our true brother.’   This familial pattern for the Trinity helps us understand how community is the bi-product of the Trinity.  One can also then see why the apostle Paul was so distraught over divisions in the Corinthian Church when it would appear that they were so engulfed in the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  One of the marks of the Church of the Spirit is its koinonia.  And this koinonia comes about through the expression of love. 

The Work of the Holy Spirit.  The questions relating to the personhood of the Holy Spirit are far from resolved, but this dogmatic question will not slow the Church’s interest in the work of the Spirit.   We are heirs to Jesus’ claim that one cannot know much about the Spirit’s ontology, but we can see its effectiveness.  The Spirit is not a dogmatic point that one can argue some sort of conclusion; one can only be effected by it.  One is reminded of Karl Barth’s exposition on the Spirit in his Evangelical Theology: 

. . . theology now supposes it can deal with the Spirit as though it has hired him or even attained possession of him.  It imagines that he is a power of nature that can be discovered, harnessed, and put to use like water, fire, electricity, or atomic energy.  As a foolish church presupposes his presence and action in its own existence, in its offices and sacraments, ordinations, consecrations and absolutions, so a foolish theology presupposes the Spirit as the premise of its own declarations.  The Spirit is thought to be one whom it knows and over whom it disposed.  But a predisposed spirit is certainly not the Holy Spirit, and a theology that presumes to have it under control can only be unspiritual theology (Barth, Evangelical Theology, 58.) 

Ever since the advent of the modern Charismatic Movement, this uncontrollable force has threatened many Church traditions.  Traditional folk have been concerned that their norms and liturgies would be disrupted by the Spirit’s presence.  And some corners of the Charismatic church have given many reasons to be concerned.  Particularly as the effects of the Spirit, the charismata themselves become the center of attention in their midst.  Because of the controversies associated with these gifts some churches have minimalized and suppressed their use.  I would rather ask a more probing question:  why hasn’t the charismata been even more emphasized?  Why have the gifts of the Spirit not moved beyond the confines of worship and the walls of the Church to engulf economics and politics and life in the world?  There is no more dangerous a mix than the post-modern fixation on subjective experience and the theology of the Holy Spirit.  It creates a type of modern Gnosticism that is disconnected from the reality of this world.

Early in my pastorate, I visited a woman after she had phoned me regarding a “new teaching” that she had heard on the television.  It seems some T.V. preacher had convinced her that I was one of those liberal preachers who had not given her the insights into the special workings of the Holy Spirit that she was entitled to.  In fact, as I sat in her home, with the week’s dishes piled high in the sink, she showed me in the book of Ephesians how she was meant to “live in the heavenlies” through a spiritual existence—and that she was not to concern herself with earthly matters.  She went on for hours as her kids came to the table with dirty diapers and runny noses demanding her attention.  She continued on, as her husband came home from an overtime shift in the coal mine with no dinner prepared.  She had discovered the teaching of the Holy Spirit, but it had done nothing to aid her in her this-worldly existence.  God’s left hand did not know what his right hand was doing.

What this woman did not know was that I too am a Pentecostal Christian.  Raised in a Wesleyan home and church, it has always been my desire to follow Christ into everything that He would desire of me.  Many years ago, in my quest for such spiritual gold, I discovered a teaching on the Holy Spirit I have never been able to shake.  At the height of the Jesus People Charismatic movement, the late Keith Green sang a prophetic message to his audiences.  I will never forget the outdoor concert where a sea of thousands of upraised hands was confronted with his words: 

“Oh bless me Lord, bless me Lord"
You know it's all I ever hear
No one aches, no one hurts
No one even sheds one tear

But He cries, He weeps, He bleeds
And He cares for your needs
And you just lay back
And keep soaking it in
Oh can't you see it's such a sin

'Cause He brings people to your door
And you turn them away . . .

[Keith Green, “Asleep in the Night”]

        Up until that point, I had never even entertained the possibility that seeking God with such earnest could be “such a sin.”  “Soaking” in God’s spirit is an act of our own desire to control this empowering Spirit, even when this same Holy Spirit is seeking to control us.

If there is one thing that John understands the work of the Holy Spirit to be it is that it is a “sending Spirit.”  “Even as the Father has sent me, so I send you.”   The mission of Jesus is the mission of the empowered Church.  When we turn the pages of our Bible over just two, we find the Acts account of the Holy Spirit’s coming.  A Spirit that, as in John, propels us from our upper rooms of fear--with Luke’s favorite accompanying trait-- boldness.  We are never allowed to hide behind our personality quirks of shyness—shyness is a sin.  Ours is not a “timid spirit” but one that enable us to be and do what we have been sent to be and do.  When Peter and James are asked for gold, they give the request something greater: a healing in the name of Jesus.  The very Jesus that everyone in Jerusalem thought was dead was now alive walking in the streets!  In the power of the Spirit, Jesus sends us out … just as He was sent.  A Holy Spirit that does not work in the streets will never work in the Church.

Oh, I am very thankful that this new interest in the Spirit has given the church a more vital worship, a more nuanced and expressive fellowship.  This has been good.  Some will even leave this chapel today questioning the vitality of this Word, of this sermon.  Where was the mighty wind?  Where were the tongues of fire?  Where was the baptism of the Spirit that makes John’s look like an unworthy, untied shoelace?  I would like to see such a powerful manifestation of the Spirit as well.  You may say, “Well, then, Eckley, quit your babbling on about the Spirit, and get out of the way, and let it happen!”  I like you, would covet the Spirit’s entry into our chapel.  Wouldn’t it be exciting if today, in this place, that we begin to see the rustling of the curtains, the windows opening in, and the sound of a rushing wind coming into our sanctuary?  Do you want such a Holy Ghost Revival?  I am looking for one of a different kind.  I look forward to the day when these windows fall out the other way… and the Spirit of God is released from this place and from all our walls of confinement.  When a family in a far off place from here can go to bed at night without the fear that a mile-high bomb will land in their living room—then we will finally see the Spirit of God moving!  When you can walk the streets without the fear that religious bigotry and hatred might cause a young dreamless child to blow herself up in your way—then the Spirit will be active and alive! When the World Trade Organization is filled with a spirit of justice and equality; when a couple makes wise decisions in the backseat of a car—then there will be a Holy Ghost Revival!   When Jesus’ Spirit arrives it comes with the message, “Peace be with you!”  When the Holy Spirit is active, the life and teachings of Jesus are active as well; because the work of the Holy Spirit is a holy work. 

The role of Pneumatology in Modern Theology.  In recent decades the aforementioned lack of interest in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit has been displaced by a myriad of books on the subject.  But these traditional divisions of theological reflection on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, the person and work of the Spirit, are no longer the dominant topics in serious theology.  The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is also being used in bringing Christians together unlike any other ecumenical movement before it.  The Ecumenical Review, the journal of the World Council of Churches, has noted the surprising envelopment of the Third World among Roman Catholics and various other Missions organizations by the Pentecostal Church.  This is something that was unattainable through decades of ecumenical work centering on the oneness in Christ, through the doctrine of Christ.  The Churches of the world could not agree on the standards that would allow for a common communion or the acceptance of diverse baptisms, but they can experience the same God, the same Spirit.

In my own work with the French Dominican theologian, Yves Congar, I have been asked as a Protestant Christian from some backwater denomination in the Methodist Tradition to engage Roman Catholic and Orthodox theologies at the point of this common experience of the Holy Spirit.  Reformed thinkers such as Clark Pinnock, an evangelical, and Jorgen Moltman, a German Lutheran, are adding Wesley to their list of theological dialogue partners.  The result?  A spirited theology with unique possibilities for an authentic Christian experience in our Post-modern culture.

Probably most exciting about this new role the Holy Spirit is playing in academic and ecclesial life is the ability to move us past Reformation fixations on individual and personal piety to a concern for the social and political dimensions of salvation.  From the mouth of Jesus, there is a fresh and constant wind blowing.   But the person of the Spirit refuses to be controlled, even by the Church herself.  The Spirit is at work, but in ways and places that we have yet to imagine or comprehend.  May we welcome the Spirit and the Spirit’s work, and may we seek always to live out our lives in the Spirit. 

The spiritual life committee had given me a difficult task to instruct our chapel life in the role of the Holy Spirit today.  The common teaching of the Church has always known this: that one cannot limit or confine the role of the Spirit in the Church or the World.  Where God His Holy Spirit is present there is life and freedom.  All we can do is end this reflection today with the ancient epiclesis:  “Veni, Creator Spiritus” “Come, Creator Spirit!”  I would add the final words to the final volume of Jurgen Moultmann’s Trinitarian theology, an exposition on this same benediction.  May this invocation be our benediction: 

God, creator of heaven and earth,

It is time for you to come,

For our time is running out

And our world is passing away.

You gave us life in peace, one with another,

You made your creation in harmony and equilibrium,

Come Creator of all things,

Renew the face of the earth.

Come, Lord Jesus,

Our brother on the way.

You came to seek

That which was lost.

You have come to us and found us.

Take us with you on your way.

We hope for your kingdom

As we hope for peace.

Come, Lord Jesus, come soon.

Come, Spirit of Life,

Flood us with your light,

Interpenetrate us with your love.

Awaken our powers through your energies

And in your presence let us be wholly there.

Come, Holy Spirit.

God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

Triune God,

Unite with yourself your torn and divided world,

And let us all be one in you,

One with your whole creation,

Which praises and glorifies you

And in you is happy.