The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Major Reformed Confessions and Catechisms of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

Yuzo Adhinarta

• Publisher: Langham Monographs
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781907713309
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

With the rise of Pentecostalism in the early twentieth century and growth in the charismatic movement since, a resurgence of interest in the Holy Spirit and Christian spirituality in both theology and the church's life has become evident. Along with increased interest in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, there are criticisms of the treatment of the doctrine in church history for having neglected the Holy Spirit in both theology and the church's life. Critical studies of the treatments of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in church history have been laboriously conducted. However, there have not been many studies on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in Reformed orthodoxy, particularly in its confessional standards.Recognizing the gap in the history of scholarship, this work explores and provides a systematic account of the person and some aspects of the work of the Holy Spirit as presented in the major Reformed confessions and catechisms of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Attention is particularly given to those aspects of the work of the Holy Spirit that have not been greatly explored but are pertinent to contemporary discussions.

Chapter 1

Introduction

With the rise of Pentecostalism in the early twentieth century and the charismatic movement from the middle of the century until recently, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit has received more attention than it did before. The widespread impact of Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement is such that “literature on the Holy Spirit is now of such proportions that the mastery of the corpus would be beyond the powers of any individual.”1 A resurgence of interest in the Holy Spirit and Christian spirituality in both theology and the life of the church has become indubitably evident.

However, along with the remarkable increase of interest in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the twentieth century, there are criticisms of the treatment of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in church history, including in the Reformed tradition, for having neglected the Holy Spirit in both theology and the life of the church. The formulation of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit has been perceived by some scholars as scarcely improved since the fourth century and has even been described as “slipshod.”2 As a result, many critics say the church today lacks the guidance of ecumenical statements concerning the Holy Spirit, since the creeds and confessions in the past only contained the barest outline of the doctrine, leaving the doctrine dogmatically undeveloped3 or lacking adequate expression in thought and action.4

As expected, these criticisms have helped to incite a burgeoning interest in pneumatology within Christendom. Within the last few decades a plethora of books on the Holy Spirit has appeared. Reflection on the third person of the Trinity has been a major topic of theological discourse and discussion within and across theological disciplines.5 Critical studies of the treatments of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in church history have been laboriously conducted. As careful explorations of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit within diverse Christian traditions have appeared, the negative sentiment of the criticisms of the Christian tradition’s treatment of the Holy Spirit has been by and large counterbalanced.

In spite of a growing number of studies conducted to explore the treatment of the doctrine in church history, there have not been many studies on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in Reformed orthodoxy, particularly in its confessional standards. An adequate study on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Reformed confessions and catechisms of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is yet to be done.

Thesis Statement

Recognizing the gap stated above, this dissertation attempts to explore and provide a systematic account of the person and some aspects of the work of the Holy Spirit as presented in the major Reformed confessions and catechisms of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly those aspects of the work of the Holy Spirit that have not been much explored and are pertinent to contemporary discussions. The aspects of the work of the Holy Spirit that will be addressed are: (1) creation and providence, (2) the church’s unity, diversity of spiritual gifts, mission, and (3) social responsibility.

While there is considerable diversity of doctrinal emphasis in the presentation of the doctrine in the confessional documents due to their particular historical contexts, carefully observed, the confessional documents demonstrate and uniformly affirm that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is of paramount importance in the Reformed tradition. The confessional documents present the Spirit as playing an indispensable role not only in the doctrines commonly and closely associated with the Spirit, such as the Trinity, Scripture, sanctification, faith, and sacraments, but also in other doctrines such as creation, providence, the church, and so forth. Moreover, the doctrine of the Spirit in these documents includes social and political dimensions as well as personal dimensions of Christian life.

As evidenced by its confessional standards, the Reformed tradition offers more materials for theological reflection on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit today than has been perceived. As such, the Reformed tradition may well provide valuable doctrinal sources for the development of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit to meet the need of the church in the contemporary world.

Present Status of the Problem

The criticisms of the treatment of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in church history have been made by a variety of scholars since the late nineteenth century from both the Protestant camp and the non-Protestant camp. As F. LeRon Shults rightly observes, since the 1950s, most treatments of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit “began with a complaint about the inadequacy of the Christian tradition’s treatment of the ‘third person’ of the Trinity.”6 Some of the recent critics have also made contrasts between the surging interest in the doctrine in contemporary theology—usually marked by the rise of Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement of the twentieth century—and the lack of attention, that is, the neglect, which the doctrine has suffered in past centuries.

However, these critics understand the neglect differently. In recent criticisms, the neglect is often associated with (1) the scarcity of materials of the doctrine in church history (quantity); (2) the less significant place given to the doctrine (priority); (3) the less comprehensive treatment of the doctrine (breadth); and (4) the superficiality of the doctrine (depth). In general, they agree that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit has been neglected, but concerning the nature of the neglect and clear criteria for what amounts to the neglect, the critics are ambiguous. As an instance, some critics have looked at a few confessional documents, for example, the Westminster Confession of Faith, which did not have a chapter on the Holy Spirit, and concluded that the Reformed creeds and confessions do not do justice to the biblical emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit.7 One might legitimately question this kind of criticism, whether the absence of a chapter is a sign of neglect. Considering the nature of the confessional documents as professions of faith, one might also ask whether one or even a few chapters of any doctrine in a confessional document could ever do justice to the biblical emphasis on the doctrine discussed. Another problem with these criticisms is that they are mostly undocumented, thus creating a historiographical problem. These criticisms are often overgeneralizations.

The criticisms of the neglect of the Holy Spirit naturally drew out waves of responses. Some scholars attempt to respond to the criticisms by pointing out some broader theological contexts within which the person and work of the Holy Spirit have been largely discussed in Christian theology, namely, creation, sabbath glory, sanctification/holiness, beauty, the communal life of the church as God’s present Kingdom.8 Some do general as well as critical studies of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit that include the development of the doctrine in history. The studies of the doctrine have become more and more available,9 not to mention relatively short articles on the topic found in the books of systematic theology by many authors. Some other scholars attempt to do further studies of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in church history. The studies span from the early Church Fathers, the medieval, the Reformation, to the modern period. The historical study and survey on the treatment of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit are growing significantly in number since the early twentieth century.10 These studies prove that the criticisms of the neglect have little substance.

Theologians from many Christian traditions have entered the contemporary scene, marking the recent development in theological thought concerning the Holy Spirit. The theologians that will be mentioned here, however, are merely representations of different traditions. From the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the contributions of theologians such as Paul Evdokimov, John Zizioulas, and Sergius Bulgakov to the theological discussions on pneumatology are manifest.11 From the Catholic tradition, Yves Congar’s three-volume work on the Spirit gives a helpful starting point for grasping the complexity of the development of the doctrine of the Spirit, especially from the Roman Catholic perspective.12 From the Protestant tradition, some prominent theologians who have contributed to the development of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit are, to name but a few, Herman Bavinck, Abraham Kuyper, Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Rudolf Bultmann, Jürgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Regin Prenter, Clark Pinnock, and Michael Welker.13 Among scholars of significant repute who are associated with Pentecostalism are J. Rodman Williams, Gordon D. Fee, Velli-Matti Kärkkäinen, and Amos Yong.14

What seems to be missing in the history of scholarship of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is a comprehensive study of the doctrine in both Reformation period and Reformed Orthodoxy. For studies of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Reformation period, John Calvin has become such a major figure that many studies are conducted to discuss his doctrine of the Holy Spirit by setting it against the historical context of the Reformation. Some important studies on Calvin’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit have been done in the twentieth century. The studies, for the most part, reaffirm Benjamin B. Warfield’s assertion that Calvin is “the theologian of the Holy Spirit” and that the doctrine of the work of the Holy Spirit is “a gift from Calvin to the Church.”15 A few of these studies worth mentioning are Simon van der Linde’s De Leer van den Heiligen Geist (1943), Werner Krusche’s Das Wirken des Heiligen Geest nach Calvin (1957), and H. Quistorp’s lengthy essay “Calvin’s Lehre vom Heiligen Geist.”16 However, besides the studies cited above, as I. John Hesselink remarks, “so little has been written concerning Calvin’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit” and “we have had only a few essays on isolated themes.”17 Responding to this lacuna, Hesselink has also published some articles in which he deals with some themes in Calvin’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit.18

Interestingly, not much work has been done to study the development of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in Reformed orthodoxy, including some major Reformed orthodox figures, such as John Owen, whose Pneumatologia has been an evident contribution of Reformed orthodoxy to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.19 Abraham Kuyper lists some works done on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit by some theologians from the late sixteenth to the first half of the eighteenth century besides Owen’s Pneumatologia, including the works by Voetius, Maresius, and Vitringa.20 Warfield also mentions some works on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit written by some Puritan contemporaries of Owen, such as Godwin, Charnock, and Swinnerton, and some others in later generations.21 Despite the fact that both Kuyper and Warfield mentioned works on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit by various Reformed orthodox theologians, these works remain uncultivated.

In the fourth volume of Richard A. Muller’s Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, one can find an apt and brief summary of the Reformed orthodox doctrine of the deity and the personhood of the Spirit.22 Muller does present some brief discussions on the Reformed orthodox teaching of divine works of the Spirit and the ad intra-ad extra distinction of the operations of the Spirit. However, his discussions in that particular chapter are more focused on the divinity and the personhood of the Holy Spirit than on the work of the Spirit. The theology of the confessions concerning the Spirit is not discussed.

As to the studies of the confessional documents in Reformed orthodoxy, only in a comparatively few pages can one find the discussions of pneumatological issues.23 One can certainly find the discussion of the Holy Spirit at various points in the commentaries on the confessions. However, only a few short articles were written, and a few studies conducted, to explore the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Reformed confessions and catechisms of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, even in Reformed circles.24 This means that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Reformed confessions and catechisms of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries still needs to be further studied to see whether the Reformed tradition can in some ways contribute to the contemporary discussions of the Holy Spirit, and whether Reformed orthodoxy, or perhaps Reformed tradition, is appreciative toward the Holy Spirit and pneumatology.

The Studies of the Confessional Documents in Reformed Orthodoxy

As mentioned briefly above, the studies that focused on exploring the various confessional documents in Reformed orthodoxy are very few. Two of the studies that remain as valuable sources and are widely used as scholarly guides to the riches of the Reformed confessions are those of Barth and Jan Rohls.25 Hence their contributions to the studies of the Reformed confessions are not to be overlooked. However, regarding the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Reformed confessions, neither has displayed a comprehensive treatment of the doctrine. Considering the different approaches employed in their studies of the confessional documents, it is necessary to give a brief summary in the following paragraphs of how both studies deal with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit contained in the confessional documents.

Barth’s The Theology of the Reformed Confessions is a series of lectures h...