The Spirit among the dissenters

Other Voices in Understanding the Spirit of God

William H. Brackney

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781498237475, 9781498237499
• eBook ISBN: 9781498237482
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

This work examines the development of a "dissenting" perspective on the emerging doctrine of the Holy Spirit in Post-Reformation Protestant thought. By "dissenting," the author means "beyond the mainstream of thought, sometimes affirming but expanding orthodox positions, but at other times pursuing new directions and images of the Spirit." A new look is offered at the Puritan-Separatist era in English dissenting traditions, as well as organized dissenters in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Of particular interest are the applications of current philosophic and scientific writers. There are sections on major German thinkers of the nineteenth century and major influential theologians of the last century who laid new foundations in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Readers will be interested in the inclusion of new religious movements in two eras, and creative contemporary ideas of the Spirit. How an ongoing "dissenting" perspective contrasts with mainstream thinking is woven through four centuries of literature on the Spirit. The author contends that we have learned much from the "dissenting" perspective, and he offers seven constructive affirmations of the Spirit of God drawn from his survey and analyses of the previous four centuries. The bibliography is comprehensive of major works on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, plus unusual sources of dissenting thought.

1

The Spirit and Early English dissent

Be now our guide while life shall last, and our eternal home.

—Isaac Watts

The term “dissent” most frequently applies to post-Reformation English Protestant usage, as historian Michael Watts understands it:

The name “Dissenter” was used both of erstwhile sectaries and of the more numerous body of men and women who, though they had worshipped in their parish churches during the Interregnum, under the leadership of some two thousand ejected clergymen refused to submit to the restored episcopal church.1

Dissenters were initially part of a larger evolving Puritan movement.2 The foundations of the Puritan tradition lay in their strict attention to the Word through the lens of experience. As William Chillingworth had quipped, “the Bible, I say the Bible only,” was the solid basis of Puritans. It was widely written that the Scriptures were inspired internally as originating in God through the Spirit, and secondarily as well in enlightening or inspiring its readers. Here the Puritans followed closely John Calvin.3 Early Puritans like Richard Sibbes, lecturer at Gray’s Inn and Master of St. Catherine’s Hall, Cambridge, said it this way: “There must be a double light. So there must be a Spirit in me, as there is a Spirit in the Scriptures; the same Spirit doth not breathe contrary motions. . . . The Word is nothing without the Spirit; it is animated and quickened by the Spirit.”4 According to Geoffrey Nuttall, the preaching of Sibbes directed many Puritans to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.5

The Puritan emphasis upon Spirit and Word was in part derived from Radical Reformation Spiritualists like Caspar von Schwenkfeld, Hans Denk, Sebastian Frank, Jacob Boehme, and Dirck Coornhert.6 In their own context, Puritan views of Spirit and witness, the ordinances, and discernment varied widely from conservative thinkers like Thomas Goodwin and John Owen to more radical Brownists, Barrowists, and eventually the Quakers. Perhaps the most important dimension of Puritan spirituality was their rediscovery of religious experience of a directly biblical type, mostly known to seventeenth century believers as “being filled with the Spirit.”7

In the seventeenth century, bolder Puritans were pushing on in the experientialism of the age: religious experience was witnessed in Scripture and “without,” but never contrary to Scripture. As Nuttall has observed, “When Puritans read the Bible, something took place in their hearts, not only in their heads.”8 Thomas Goodwin thought that this was the result of the indwelling of the person of the Holy Ghost: “it is no error to affirm that it is the same in us and the man Christ Jesus.” To which Samuel Petto added, “It is the Spirit himself by an immediate presence.”9

At the end of the Great Puritan Era, Richard Baxter summarized his tradition’s idea of the Holy Spirit in a twofold way. First, he explained the extraordinary inspiration or impulse, as the Spirit moved the prophets and apostles that revealed new laws, precepts, or events without any command other than the Spirit’s urging. Those kinds of examples of the work of the Spirit ceased as the laws will last until the end of the world. Secondly, Baxter thought, there is the work of guidance and quickening of the Spirit, which is the believer’s duty and these are the motions all true Christians should expect of the Spirit.10 For Baxter, the Spirit itself is present as the immediate Operator, working through human virtues.”11

Dissenters objected to not only certain practices in the Established Church, but also specific theological teachings. Doctrines of Christ, Trinity, salvation, and the church were brought into close scrutiny with varying revisionist results.

Gradually as early voices crystallized into pamphlets, treatises, and confessions, new understandings and perspectives on doctrine emerged. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit was no exception.

Francis Johnson

Francis Johnson (1562–1618) was a remarkable Puritan thinker and later Separatist [Brownist] theologian at Cambridge University, the teacher of several of the Separatist leaders. He identified himself as “the pastor of the English Church, now sojourning at Amsterdam in the Low Countreyes,” which was a dynamic role he filled between London and Amsterdam at the turn of the seventeenth century. His authorship of the “True Confession” (1696) influenced generations of dissenters.12 Johnson is at the head of a line of dissenters/theologians.

Johnson’s main literary thrust was directed at his idea of the doctrine of the church. He heavily critiqued Romanism, the Church of England, and the Anabaptists. He was likewise warmly inclined toward the Reformed churches. Not surprisingly, Johnson couched his scant words about the Holy Spirit in article 2 of the “Trve Confession”:

That God is a Spirit whose being is of himself, and giveth being, moving, and preservation to all other things being himself eternall, most holy, every way infinit, in greatness, vvisdom, povvre, goodness, justice, truth, &tc. And that in this Godhead there bee three distinct persons coeternall, coequal, & coessentiall, being every one of the one & the same God, & therefore not divided but distinguished one fro another by their severall & peculiar propertie: The Father of none, the Sonne begotten of the Father from everlasting, the holy Gost proceeding from the Father and the Sonne before all beginnings.13

Johnson’s trinitarian definition was entirely christological, providing only a passing reference to the Spirit. In his most extensive work, A Christian Plea, concerning three treatises (1617), likely his las...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Spirit and Early English dissent
• Chapter 2: The Spirit in Organized dissenting Communities
• Chapter 3: Broadening Ideas of the Spirit in the 18th Century
• Chapter 4: The Spirit among Nineteenth Century dissenter Voices
• Chapter 5: A New Era of the Spirit
• Chapter 6: The Spirit Unleashed
• Chapter 7: A New (Yet Old) Understanding of the Spirit
• Bibliography