The Spirit Adds Nothing; The Spirit Adds Everything

In Doctrine of the Knowledge of God John Frame explains an important biblical concept he calls “seeing as.” “Seeing as” is more than merely seeing, it’s seeing or perceiving something in a particular light or in light of a particular perspective. Often we sin, knowing full well what Scripture says about our actions. But our protective rationalizations shield us from guilt. Only the Holy Spirit can transform seeing to “seeing as.”

The Spirit’s work also helps us to use and to apply the word. Obviously, the Spirit cannot assure us of the truth of Scripture unless He also teaches us its meaning. And meaning, as we have seen, includes the applications. We can see this in 2 Samuel 11 and 12 for David sinned against God by committing adultery with Bathsheba and by sending her husband, Uriah, to his death. Here, David, the “man after God’s own heart,” seemed trapped in a particular spiritual blindness. What happened to David? In one sense, he knew Scripture perfectly well; he meditated on God’s law day and night. And he was not ignorant about the facts of the case. Yet he was not convicted of sin. But Nathan the prophet came to him and spoke God’s word. He did not immediately rebuke David directly; he told a parable – a story that made David angry at someone else. Then Nathan told David, “you are the man.” At that point, David repented of his sin.

What had David learned from that point? He already knew God’s law, and, in a sense, he already knew the facts. What he learned was an application – what the law said about him. Previously, he may have rationalized something like this: “Kings of the earth have a right to take whatever women they want; and the commander-in-chief has the right to decide who fights on the front line. Therefore my relation with Bathsheba was not really adultery, and my order to Uriah was not really murder.” We all know how that works; we’ve done it ourselves. But what the Spirit did, through Nathan, was to take that rationalization away.

Thus David came to call his actions by the right names: sin, adultery, murder. He came to read his own life in terms of the biblical concepts. He came to see his “relationship” as adultery and his “executive order” as murder...

Much of the Spirit’s work in our lives as of this nature – assuring us that Scripture applies to our lives in particular ways. The Spirit does not add to the canon, but His work is really a work of teaching, of revelation. Without that revelation, we could make no use of Scripture at all; it would be a dead letter to us.

Thus in one sense, the Spirit adds nothing; in another sense, He adds everything.

-John M. Frame, Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 157, 158.

Better Bumper Sticker Theology

I’m with Michael Bird on this one:

I’m not a big fan of bumper sticker theology: that is, sticking pithy theological slogans onto the bumper of the car. I particularly dislike the one ‘Christians are not perfect, just forgiven.’ While true at one level, it overlooks the crucial ingredient in the Christian life being the renewing power of God working in us through the Spirit. It might be better to write, Christians are not perfect, but God is at work in them through the vitalizing power of the Holy Spirit to transform these cracked jars of clay into glorious vessels of holiness, righteousness and goodness – if only bumper stickers word that big! In Paul’s writings, renewal is the process of transformation into the image of God that is realized through the operation of God’s glory and via the agency of the Spirit. The Spirit is continually at work in believers to make them less like themselves and more like God’s son.

Michael F. Bird, Introducing Paul: The Man, His Mission and His Message

Does the Doctrine of Biblical Inspiration Suppress the Importance of Scripture’s Human Authors?

Here is the single greatest explanation of the divine-human partnership in the creation of Holy Scripture I’ve ever read. Here Scott Swain, in Trinity, Revelation, and Reading, clears away misunderstandings of biblical inspiration. The book is a tad bit pricey, but analyses as good as this make it worth every penny. I quote at length:

*********************************************************************************

Some worry that such an emphasis on the Spirit’s power in the production of Holy Scripture overrides or ignores it’s human authorship. The more the Spirit’s responsibility for this book is stressed, the more the intelligence, freedom, and personal activity of the Bibles human authors are suppressed – or so it is argued.

But this worry is unfounded, because the One who is “the Spirit of the Father and the Son” is also “the Lord and Giver of Life” (the Nicene Creed). The presence and operation of the Spirit’s sovereign lordship in the production of Holy Scripture does not lead to the suppression or overruling of God’s human emissaries in their exercise of authorial rationality and freedom. Rather, his sovereign lordship leads to their enlightening and sanctified enablement. The Spirit who created the human mind and personality does not destroy the human mind and personality when he summons them to his service. Far from it. The Spirit sets that mind and personality free from its blindness and slavery to sin so that it may become a truly free, thoughtful, and self-conscious witness to all that God is for us in Christ. He bears his lively witness and therefore prophets and apostles also bear their lively witness (Jn. 15.26-27). The Spirit creates a divine-and-human fellowship – a common possession and partnership – in communicating the truth of the gospel (Jn. 16.13-15).

Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jesus, and the Spirit

In a former entry, we looked at several  questions raised by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, also known as Jehovah’s Witnesses. I wanted to return to some of those questions by zeroing in on question 18:

Who is [referred] to prophetically at Prov. 8:22-31?

Let’s review the content of the passage:

“The LORD possessed me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of old.
Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth,
before he had made the earth with its fields,
or the first of the dust of the world.
When he established the heavens, I was there;
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master workman,
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the children of man.
(Proverbs 8:22-31 ESV)

Sadly, this passage has been hotly debated throughout the course of church history. It’s one of the chief passages from which Arius argued for during the council of Nicea in 325 AD. As the understood by the JWs, Proverbs 8 “prophetically” speaks of Jesus, the “first of [God’s] acts of old.” According to Watchtower Bible and Tract Society doctrine, Jesus Christ is Michael the Archangel, and the first created being of God. Through Michael/Jesus, on their view, God created all other things.

Though others have responded to this challenge is ways quite different from my own, I remain persuaded in thinking that the proper response is straightforward. The JW insistence that Lady Wisdom is Jesus reveals a glaring ignorance of Hebrew poetic literature. Proverbs 8 is not speaking of the pre-incarnate Christ; it is a Hebraic literary device known as personification. Leland Ryken define personification as follows:

Personification—ascribing personal action or characteristics to a nonpersonal thing—is a prevalent figure of speech in the Bible. From the blood of Abel that cries from the ground (Gen.4:10) to the tongues of the arrogant that strut through the earth (Ps.73:9), biblical writers use personification often. Rivers clap their hands (Ps.98:8), God’s light and truth guide pilgrims to the temple (Ps.43:3), Babylon is a prostitute (Rev.18), and money is a rival deity (Matt.6:24).

In much the same way, “wisdom” is portrayed as a female. And surely we don’t want to apply that literary device to say that Jesus was a female!

Now, I would leave my response there, if I didn’t know better. But I’ve discussed this answer to real Witnesses and I’ve been frustratingly impressed with their ingenuity. And this is how it’s done: above I’ve claimed the JW error in regard to Prov. 8 is a mistaken reading of metaphorical and anthropomorphic language as 1) as a prophecy, and 2) as semi-literal. To (some creative) Witnesses this is exactly what orthodox Christians do in regarding to the Holy Spirit. We claim that Scripture addresses the Holy Spirit in personal ways (he feels, speaks, can be lied to, can be grieved, etc.), therefore the Spirit is, contrary to JW theology, a He, not an it. JWs may be tempted to think that personalized language of the Holy Spirit is likewise a case of personification. Therefore, some may argue, we’re doing the very same thing that we accuse them of doing.

But this isn’t the case. Why? They aren’t playing by the rules. The claim that Jesus is doing with the Holy Spirit what I claim the author of Proverbs is doing with Lady Wisdom (personification) is guilty of genre confusion. Proverbs is poetic literature (that’s why it’s grouped along with the Psalms of other like books in our Bibles) and thus communicates using the standard tools of poetic literature: personification, metaphors, similes, parallelism, etc. The various literary genres of Scripture dictate the proper means of interpreting them. In contrast, the Gospels are historical narrative. The “rules” of interpretation are different, though the astute reader is probably aware of more rules for interpreting narrative than they’re aware of. When Jesus speaks of the Holy Spirit, he does so in the same fashion he would speak about Peter, James, or John. There is no literary cue that something else is going on. In closing, Ryken notes the counterintuitive nature of this type of genre confusion:

Is the Holy Spirit a personification? Well, did that possibility ever occur to you until it was suggested by someone? The plain meaning of the passages is that they describe a divine person. There is nothing in the passages to signal that they are figurative rather than literal. They do not obey the ordinary rules of personification. In fact, to read them as personifications is beyond most people’s power of comprehension.

I agree. Orthodox Christians aren’t employing a double standard when they interpret Prov. 8 as personification and accept Jesus’s (and Paul’s, and Peter’s, etc.) language of the Spirit as literal and historical.

Here is the article by Leland Ryken titled, “Is the Holy Spirit a Personification?” (though his target is not the JWs)