From henceforth, Katherine Jefforts Schori will be referred to as the presiding oceanographer. Her ineptitude at doing theology is the subject of the following essay. ed.
God the Holy Spirit and “being led into all truth”
Written by: Rev. Professor Christopher Seitz
Sunday, June 6th, 2010
A reflection on the Pentecost Letter of the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church
The central teaching of Jesus Christ in John’s Gospel concerning the Holy Spirit is found in chapters 14 and 16 of the Fourth Gospel. The Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church is representative of the view that the Holy Spirit (or “the Spirit”) is responsible for endorsing a new understanding of sexual relationships as appropriate for members of the same gender. The warrant for this view more widely held is John 16: God the Holy Spirit is ‘leading the church into a truth’ the church has not known until now, and continues not to know elsewhere, as God has spoken this to The Episcopal Church (“The Spirit does seem to be saying to many within The Episcopal Church that gay and lesbian persons are God’s good creation, that an aspect of good creation is the possibility of lifelong, faithful partnership, and that such persons may indeed be good and healthy exemplars of gifted leadership within the Church, as baptized leaders and ordained ones”). This could either be a matter of timing – so technically God the Holy Spirit speaks only one truth on this matter, and so those who have not heard the Holy Spirit will hear the Holy Spirit leading them into new truth eventually (“Above all, it recognizes that the Spirit may be speaking to all of us, in ways that do not at present seem to cohere or agree. It also recognizes what Jesus says about the Spirit to his followers, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come” [John 16:12-13]) – or it could be that the Holy Spirit endorses diversity of hearings (“That growing awareness does not deny the reality that many Anglicans and not a few Episcopalians still fervently hold traditional views about human sexuality”) . This latter understanding seeks grounding in the Presiding Bishop’s understanding of the Pentecost event of Acts 2 (“Pentecost is most fundamentally a continuing gift of the Spirit, rather than a limitation or quenching of that Spirit”) as contrasted with the Archbishop of Canterbury’s reading of Pentecost as a “single understanding of gospel realities”(as she puts it) in a letter to which she is responding in defense of her own position.
We note in passing that: 1) John’s account of the Holy Spirit involves several aspects, explained in the narrative movement of his Gospel, and that any reading of John needs to be able to integrate all of these if Christ’s teaching is to be coherent as intended (hence Christ’s concern with truth); 2) the Holy Spirit can only with difficulty be seen as ‘inspiring diversity’ in Acts; the tension in the account is between a gift of foreign languages that are heard as intelligible by Jews from the widest geographical reach in their first or native tongues (so Calvin et al); or the gift is of a single tongue language that all these gathered Jews are inspired to hear as intelligible in their native languages; the history of interpretation is not uniform here. But in neither case is the point that the Holy Spirit inspires diversity, but the opposite: the Gospel is heard and received with power because the Holy Spirit overcomes the diversity that has hindered such a reception (the fact that the recipients are all Jews – with some proselytes – who have come to Jerusalem for the Feast of Weeks to hear the marvelous single account of God’s giving of Torah is also missing from her account); and finally 3) an account of John as inspiring a new truth that all will in time come to hear and acknowledge cannot be squared with an account of the Holy Spirit as inspiring or endorsing diversity of hearings.
But what of the idea of the Holy Spirit (the Advocate, the Comforter) inspiring the church to receive something new? This seems to be the major biblical ‘theme’ the proponents of a new teaching on sexuality appeal to.
In chapter 14 of John’s Gospel the Comforter is to be Christ present with the church after the Ascension. The earthly Christ will take his risen and ascended life and be with the Father, but the Holy Spirit will bring that risen and ascended life to the church. “I will ask the Father and he will give you another Comforter…I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you” (14:16,18).
What kind of Holy Spirit teaching can be called a ‘guiding into truth’ and ‘a disclosure of things to come’ (John 16:13)? We are given a hint of it in 16:8-11, so far as the world at large is concerned: the Holy Spirit will convict the world concerning sin, and righteousness and judgment. That is, the Holy Spirit will carry on the earthly Christ’s work after his ascension. This extension ministry of Christ will have its counterpart in the church itself (16:12). The church referred to in contrast to the world is represented by those for whom Christ is praying. Many more things are to be said, because they cannot now bear them or understand them. This theme appears elsewhere in John’s Gospel and it is a prominent one at the Cross and in the Resurrection appearances themselves (belief happens incrementally, with the beloved disciple, then Mary, then the others, then Thomas, but blessed are they who have not seen but come to belief via the testimony of John’s Gospel).
The circle of disciples around Jesus in his earthly ministry is unable to grasp the significance of all he is saying and intending. The Holy Spirit’s work is to see that comprehension of what Christ taught and intended is grasped. He takes what is of Christ, including that which was not grasped or understood, and makes it known (16:15). He has no speech of his own initiative, but hears what Christ speaks and has spoken (16:13). There is no Holy Spirit speaking that is not Christ speaking, but now in a form that can be borne and received. John 14:26 puts it in simplest form: “But the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, bringing to your remembrance all that I have said.”
What is new is capacitated understanding, which takes the form of enlarged content only because of this. What Jesus has taught but was not grasped in his earthly life is to be grasped, including the things which Christ (and the scriptures of Israel) taught pertaining to the providential life of the church beyond the scope of Jesus’s sign ministry amongst his disciples, carried out in his incarnation life. The beloved disciple is the example of such initial grasping. But the revelation of scripture (the Old Testament) as witness to Christ and the testimony of the beloved disciple in the form of the written Gospel –these will adequately convey the truth about him by the agency of God the Holy Spirit. The continuity with Christ is everywhere at the fore. (The example of the new covenant in Jer 31 is a type of this: the new covenant is the covenant given to the original disciples of Moses, but now comprehended via a new heart and understanding as to its truthful purpose).
Here we are able to see the continuity of John and Acts, in spite of their differences in narrative form and authorship, that is missing in the Presiding Bishop’s account of the Holy Spirit, where she speaks of John’s ‘new truth’ and Acts’ ‘diversity of truth’ as somehow mutually informing. When the Holy Spirit manifests His life, now with the Gentile (much favored of the Jews) Cornelius and those who heard Peter’s evangelical proclamation, Luke says that this is the same Holy Spirit at work within the household of God (Acts 10:45). So when Peter gives account of the baptism of Cornelius and those upon whom the Holy Spirit came, before the circumcised, the Holy Spirit is the central actor and warrant in his undertaking. When the Holy Spirit “fell upon them just as He did upon us” Peter says he remembered the word of the Lord, how he said “John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” Here is a perfect example of what John means by the Holy Spirit’s vocation. What could not be borne, or what was not appropriate to the earthly ministry of Christ, given its providential purpose, is now unveiling its significance. It is what Jesus had said and intended. It is what the Holy Spirit takes from him and sets down as true in the providential life of the church. It can be seen in the record, can be referred to specifically, whose purpose is now taking form.
The same pattern is to be observed when a fuller account of Peter’s (and Paul and Barnabas’s) ministry among the providentially prepared gentiles is given in Jerusalem in Acts 15. Critical is continuity with the message of the Prophets (‘with this the words of the Prophets agree, just as it is written’, Acts 15:15) and the Law. There is a ‘law for gentiles’ inside the Torah of Moses, pertaining to the ‘sojourner in the midst of Israel,’ that is, those among the nations that came out of Egypt with the household of God (the injunctions laid upon the gentiles brought near are to be found in Leviticus 18-19). The laws pertaining to them were given so as to guide the apostolic decree as the Holy Spirit revealed what was God’s purpose imbedded and providentially prepared in the first covenant, “For Moses from ancient generations has in every city those who preach him” (Acts 15:21). The Holy Spirit is pleased to declare no greater burden than these (15:28). Continuity and agreement with the teaching of the Lord, on the one hand, and the revelation of God to Israel, on the other. The truth being led into is a truth given in the Lord Christ and in the LORD God, but whose purpose is now revealed. It can be cited in the record (“it is written,” “I remembered the word of the Lord”) and the Holy Spirit’s guidance is required to understand the agreement and continuity now appropriate for its time, but given of old. The same dynamic animates the canonical shape of the Book of Isaiah in its final form, where “the former thing” is appealed to in order to ground the proclamation until such time as its orienting power gives rise to perception of a new thing, in full continuity with it, but whose purpose is for a later generation able to hear because gifted by the Holy Spirit’s speaking through the Prophet.
We are grateful that the Presiding Bishop has sought to ground her appeal to diversity and new truth in a public message available for the Church’s evaluation and testing. It explains what kind of vision for the Episcopal Church she is seeking to defend. On the one hand, she believes the Holy Spirit has spoken in truthful and special (timely) ways to those who share this view in TEC. On the other hand, she believes diversity on this matter is equally a gifting warranted by the pentecostal event, explaining why the majority of the Anglican Communion and the vast preponderance of Christians worldwide (including the saints numbered on another shore) attended and attend to different Holy Spirit guidance and a different confession of God the Holy Spirit, “who spake by the prophets…who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified.” Her remarks help frame the matter in clear ways, which we can only pray is itself a gift of God the Holy Spirit, whose vocation is to glorify Christ and convict the world in respect of him. St Paul reveals that appeals to the Spirit and the Spirit’s manifestation required testing in the earliest Christian Churches, especially those with large gentile numbers. Discerning the work and person of God the Holy Spirit was necessary and was an evangelical challenge.
John and Acts provide the record given to the church so that the Holy Spirit’s work might be recognised, adjudicated, and confessed. The Holy Spirit’s deliverances are those of the Risen and Ascended Christ, in agreement with the providential will of the Father as expressed in the Law and the Prophets, whose subject matter is Christ, latent and now patent (St Augustine). The Presiding Bishop’s account of the Spirit as bringing a truth without prior testimony or dominical warrant, which at the same time gives rise to diversity as a pentecostal gift, diverges in extreme ways from the Gospel of John and the Acts of the Apostles. It is a teaching lacking continuity and agreement with the witness of Christians in our present day, in the worldwide body, and because without biblical warrant, it is also nowhere attested in the history of the church’s teaching.
We conclude this teaching comes from a conviction already held, independently of what is customarily sought in respect of a warrant of God the Holy Spirit (see the Catechism of the BCP), because of cultural assumptions about the intentions of sexual activity in our age and because TEC has already acted on these. Recourse is therefore sought in a general way to scriptural themes, like ‘inclusion’ or the dynamic of God’s life with Israel and the apostles, independently of the specifics of the scriptural witness (the first pentecostal event was Jewish; Cornelius was not a generic convert; the rules for gentiles in Acts are from Leviticus; ‘all truth’ and ‘new truths’ are inconsistent concepts). This is not what has been held up in times past as scriptural testing, and one may doubt how central such testing really is, especially when the Spirit is being invoked as the bearer of new truth. Almost in the nature of the case such new revelations of the Spirit must be without precedent. That is what makes them new in a way independent of questions of truth, so critical to Christ’s teaching in John’s Gospel.
This mindset is deeply tied up with the progressivistic orientation of Western consumerism, where the old is constantly to be discarded, as new, better, improved versions are marketed for our attention and our consumption. Against such a climate John’s words receive even sharper convicting force, precisely as the lines blurring the church and the world, so crucial to his account of the work of The Comforter (“this is the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold him or know him” 14:17) are erased in the name of ‘new revelation.’ We begin to see an understanding of newness that is indebted to an account of time the scriptural witness is keen to distinguish from God’s electing and adopting purposes in Christ Jesus. Truthful agreement and continuity inside the work of the One God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit – this is what is testified to in the two testaments of one Christian Scripture. On the account we are being presented with in the Presiding Bishop’s Letter, this activity of God in time has been adjusted so that the Holy Spirit is taken to be a warrant for convictions already held and acted on, and has become an independent agent of ‘revelation.’ The ‘Holy Spirit’ is precisely that spirit which speaks in ways that cannot be continuous with ‘prophet and apostle’ because newness requires unprecedented testimony. This is not what the church has confessed when it speaks of God the Holy Spirit, “who spake by the prophets, and “who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified.”
Bishops of the church are charged by solemn vow before God the Holy Trinity with guarding the witness of prophet and apostle and properly setting forth their teaching. The Presiding Bishop rightly understands this solemn charge as she seeks to defend her views by recourse to Christian Scripture, in respect of Acts’ account of Pentecost and also based upon John’s Gospel. In this she has clarified what she understands to be the biblical warrant for her view of the Holy Spirit as an agent of new truth. This view is however not consistent with what the witness of prophet and apostle states and the church would be in error should it follow her novel reading. We must test the Spirit, Paul says. The Holy Spirit cannot be an agent of truth not expressly warranted by Christ or a Christian apprehension of the sense of prophetic teaching in the Old Testament. This is what we see as crucial to an account of the work of the Holy Spirit in Acts and John. It is to her credit that the Presiding Bishop has sought publicly to defend her novel view and so explain how the Holy Spirit can be showing the way within TEC on matters of sexual relationships and yet speaking in precisely the opposite way to the majority of Christians in time and space. The argument must be made as the warrants for such a novel view must be found if the church’s teaching is to be overthrown.
This has not been accomplished in the Pentecost Letter though we are helped in seeing what the effort must undertake if it wishes to displace the classical confession of God the Holy Spirit as grounded in Holy Scripture. This is indeed a question before the church regarding the work of the Holy Spirit properly understood, and she is right to focus her discussion on this crucial theological confession. This puts the argument for a change in teaching where it belongs, on a proper account of theological truth as given through the Holy Spirit’s work, as heard through the witness of Prophet and Apostle. Who is the Holy Spirit and how is He known, worshipped, and obeyed? We have rehearsed the classical position here and pointed to its biblical warrants. It will take a clear overthrowing of that confession if the church is to proceed as the Presiding Bishops urges. If not, the teaching would be opposed to the Holy Spirit’s work of unifying the church according to Christ’s prayer and the Father’s purpose in sending Him. The Holy Spirit cannot speak against Himself, and always speaks of the love of the Father for the Son. To Him be glory and honor, who with the Father and the Son is One God, world without end. AMEN.
June 06 2010 04:22 pm
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