The Holy Spirit
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Christian Theology
Pentecost
Spirit of Christ
Theology
New Testament
Divine Intervention
Spiritual Awakening
Sacrifice
Divine Guidance
Chosen One
Prophecy
Transformation
Inner Struggle
Mentor
Spiritual Growth
Communion of the Spirit
Spirit of Holiness
Gifts for Ministry
Salvation
Church
About this ebook
The Holy Spirit, once forgotten, has been "rediscovered" in the twentieth century - or has he? Sinclair Ferguson believes we should rephrase this common assertion: "While his work has been recognised, the Spirit himself remains to many Christians an anonymous, faceless aspect of the divine being." In order to redress this balance, Ferguson seeks to recover the who of the Spirit fully as much as the what and how.
Ferguson's study is rooted and driven by the scriptural story of the Spirit in creation and redemption. Throughout he shows himself fully at home in the church's historical theology of the Spirit and conversant with the wide variety of contemporary Christians who have explored the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.
Foundational issues are surveyed and clarified. Hard questions are explored and answered. Clarity and insight radiate from every page. Here is the mature reflection of a Reformed theologian who will summon respect and charity from those who disagree.
Sinclair B. Ferguson
Sinclair B. Ferguson (PhD, University of Aberdeen) is a professor of systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary.
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Book preview
The Holy Spirit - Sinclair B. Ferguson
The Word took bodily form
so that we might receive the Holy Spirit:
God became the bearer of a body
so that men might be bearers of the Spirit.
ATTRIBUTED TO ATHANASIUS
TITLES IN THIS SERIES
The Doctrine of God, Gerald Bray
The Work of Christ, Robert Letham
The Providence of God, Paul Helm
The Church, Edmund P. Clowney
The Doctrine of Humanity, Charles Sherlock
The Holy Spirit, Sinclair B. Ferguson
IllustrationInterVarsity Press
P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426
World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com
E-mail: [email protected]
© Sinclair B. Ferguson, 1996
Published in the United States of America by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, with permission from Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship, Leicester, England.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.
InterVarsity Press® is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship®, a movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, write Public Relations Dept., InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, 6400 Schroeder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI53707-7895, or visit the IVCF website at <www.intervarsity.org>.
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the British edition of the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-0-85111-895-6
Printed and bound in the UK by 4edge Limited
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ferguson, Sinclair B.
The Holy Spirit/Sinclair B. Ferguson.
p. cm.—(Contours of Christian theology)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-8308-1536-8 (alk. paper)
1. Holy Spirit. I. Title. II. Series.
BT121.2.F38 1997
P 34 33 32 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22
r 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16
To
Bill and Barbara
Edgar
With gratitude
Contents
Series Preface
Preface
1 The Holy Spirit & His Story
2 The Spirit of Christ
3 The Gift of the Spirit
4 Pentecost Today?
5 The Spirit of Order
6 Spiritus Recreator
7 The Spirit of Holiness
8 The Communion of the Spirit
9 The Spirit & the Body
10 Gifts for Ministry
11 The Cosmic Spirit
Notes
For Further Reading
Index of Biblical References
Index of Names
Index of Subjects
Series Preface
Contours of Christian Theology covers the main themes of Christian doctrine. The series offers a systematic presentation of most of the major doctrines in a way which complements the traditional textbooks but does not copy them. Top priority has been given to contemporary issues, some of which may not be dealt with elsewhere from an evangelical point of view. The series aims, however, not merely to answer current objections to evangelical Christianity, but also to rework the orthodox evangelical position in a fresh and compelling way. The overall thrust is therefore positive and evangelistic in the best sense.
The series is intended to be of value to theological students at all levels, whether at a Bible college, a seminary or a secular university. It should also appeal to ministers and to educated laypeople. As far as possible, efforts have been made to make technical vocabulary accessible to the non-specialist reader, and the presentation has avoided the extremes of academic style. Occasionally this has meant that particular issues have been presented without a thorough argument, taking into account different positions, but when this has happened, authors have been encouraged to refer the reader to other works which take the discussion further. For this purpose adequate but not extensive notes have been provided.
The doctrines covered in the series are not exhaustive, but have been chosen in response to contemporary concerns. The tide and general presentation of each volume are at the discretion of the author, but final editorial decisions have been taken by the Series Editor in consultation with IVP.
In offering this series to the public, the authors and the publishers hope that it will meet the needs of theological students in this generation, and bring honour and glory to God the Father, and to his Son, Jesus Christ, in whose service the work has been undertaken from the beginning.
Gerald Bray
Series Editor
Preface
The Holy Spirit! It was commonplace in my student days for authors, lecturers and preachers to begin their comments on the subject of the Holy Spirit with some such statement as, ‘The Holy Spirit has been until recently the forgotten person of the Godhead.’ No-one writing on this topic today would employ such language. Such has been the widespread impact of Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement 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.
The Holy Spirit is no longer thought of as the ‘forgotten person’ of the Godhead, and insofar as this is true, Christians of all persuasions should rejoice. Indeed, it might be thought that the pendulum has swung so far in the direction of an obsession with the powers of the Spirit that a moratorium on books on the Holy Spirit is a great desideratum; only the exigencies of a series would seem to justify the writing of yet another study on a now well-worn theme.
Yet the assumption which became virtually an article of orthodoxy among evangelicals as well as others, that the Holy Spirit had been discovered almost de novo in the twentieth century, is in danger of the heresy of modernity, and is at least guilty of historical short-sightedness. It forgets that it was with good reason that the Reformation pastor-theologian John Calvin was described as ‘the theologian of the Holy Spirit’.1 Moreover, each century since his time has witnessed events which were ascribed to the unusual working of the Holy Spirit. Even in the late twentieth century, the two opera magna on the Holy Spirit remain the extensive studies by the seventeenth-century Puritan John Owen, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, and by the great Dutch theologian-politician, Abraham Kuyper, founder of the Free University of Amsterdam. Looking back even further, the assumption that the twentieth century had recovered truth lost since the first two centuries displays a cavalier attitude to the material unearthed by H. B. Swete in his valuable series of studies on the Spirit begun more than a century ago. These richly demonstrate the attention which much earlier centuries gave to honouring him along with the Father and the Son.
The assertion that the Holy Spirit, once forgotten, is now forgotten no longer needs rephrasing. For while his work has been recognized, the Spirit himself remains to many Christians an anonymous, faceless aspect of the divine being. Even the title ‘Holy Spirit’ evokes a different gamut of emotions from those expressed in response to the titles ‘Father’ and ‘Son’. Perhaps the facts of the situation would have been better stated by describing him as the unknown rather than the forgotten (or even ‘shy’, as has recently been done) person of the Trinity.
The demands of a doctrinal series require contributors to cover the basic ground of the locus assigned to them. In this volume in the Contours of Christian Theology series, the focus of the concern is to trace the revelation of the Spirit’s identity and work in a biblico-theological and redemptive-historical manner. This is not to say that historical theology is bankrupt, and certainly not to reject the apostolic principle that we understand the riches of the gospel in concert with the whole church (Eph. 3:18–19). My interest in and sense of indebtedness to the church’s understanding of the Spirit will, I hope, be evident.
According to Thomas Aquinas, theology comes from God, teaches about God and leads us to God (a Deo docetur, Deum docet, ad Deum ducit). That is true in a special sense of the theology of the Holy Spirit. The great desideratum in all our reflection on the Spirit is surely the goal of personal and intimate communion with him by whom we are brought to worship, glorify and obey the Father and the Son. This marriage of theology and doxology is normative in the pages of Scripture, and it is for that reason that the pages which follow trace the work of the Spirit in a biblico-theological way.
It will be clear in what follows that I have taken the canon of the Old and New Testaments at their face value, believing that here we find God’s word, and that the form in which it has come to us (undoubtedly by various means) is the only reliable foundation on which to build a theology of the Holy Spirit. But, in keeping with the general concerns of the Contours of Christian Theology series, along with the Pilgrim Father John Robinson, I share the conviction that there is still fresh light breaking out on the church from the word of God.
The person and work of the Holy Spirit continue to be an area of controversy among Christians. In this respect, some readers, perhaps many, will believe that they themselves see light where I do not. It is a remarkable fact of recent church history that convictions which were controversial in my student days in the 1960s and 70s have now become so broadly adopted that it is the mainstream views of those days which are now regarded as controversial. That notwithstanding, I have tried to keep in mind both the apostolic injunction to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, and my own ordination vows to maintain a spirit of brotherhood to all the Lord’s people. My hope and prayer is that the opinions expressed in areas of controversy touched on in this book will not prejudice fellow-Christians against the whole.
This volume stands in the Contours of Christian Theology series between the study of The Work of Christ and The Church; it therefore includes some discussion of elements of soteriology (the application of Christ’s work) and ecclesiology (the gifts of the Spirit to the body of Christ). It thus serves as a bridge between these companion studies and, it is hoped, will be read in conjunction with them.
I wish to thank Gerald Bray, the General Editor of this series, for the invitation to contribute the volume on The Holy Spirit. I am grateful to David Kingdon, Theological Books Editor of IVP, both for his friendship and for his patience with a procrastinating author, seasoned with only the occasional pinch of cajoling! The completion of these pages represents a downpayment on two further debts: first to the Board of Trustees of Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, for granting me sabbatical leave in the Fall Semester of 1994; and chiefly to my wife Dorothy, who more than anyone has encouraged me to complete this work.
Sinclair B. Ferguson
Westminster Theological Seminary
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1
THE HOLY SPIRIT & HIS STORY
What, or who, is the Holy Spirit? Most Christians readily and warmly respond to the description of Jesus as the Son of God not only because of his humanity (Jesus), but also because the designation ‘Son’ indicates a relational identity (son–father) with which we are familiar. In addition, when, in Christ, we learn to call God ‘Father’, that name conveys a rich kaleidoscope of images which helps us to understand and respond to him as the one who governs, guides, provides for, guards and loves his children.
But the name ‘Holy Spirit’, or worse (at least at the emotional and psychological levels) ‘Holy Ghost’, tends to convey a cold, even remote image. After all, what is ‘Spirit’? Yet, perhaps the older ‘Holy Ghost’, with its connotations of vagueness, mystery and insubstantiality, did in fact express what many Christians experience: the Holy Spirit is seen to be distant and impersonal by comparison with the Father and the Son. ‘We know not what spirits are, nor what our own spirit is,’ wrote Abraham Kuyper.1 How much less capable are we of comprehending the Spirit of God?
What, or who, then, is the Holy Spirit?
Holy ruach
The root significance of the biblical term ‘holy’ (Heb. qādôš, qōdeš; Gk. hagios) has been long debated, but there is general consensus that it connotes such ideas as to be cut off or separate from; to be placed at a distance, and hence to be set apart in order to belong to God. Employing this spatial language metaphorically, the Old Testament underlines the ‘otherness’ of the Spirit’s being. The classic illustration of this, Isaiah’s devastating encounter with the Holy One of Israel (Is. 6:1ff.), exemplifies the way in which spatial imagery is employed to convey moral distance. God is ‘high’, while Isaiah is low; ‘lifted up’ (RSV, AV) and ‘exalted’ (NIV), while Isaiah is thrust down. God’s presence (‘the train of his robe’) fills the temple, while Isaiah shrinks back into a corner. God’s holiness is the seering purity of his eternal and infinite being. By comparison, Isaiah feels himself to be unclean and undone.
The biblical words for ‘spirit’ (Heb. Ruach;2 Gk. pneuma) are onomatopoeic terms, both their physical formation and their sound conveying a sense of their basic meaning: the expulsion of wind or breath, the idea of air in motion. ‘Spirit’ expresses, in its most fundamental form (‘the breath of life’), power, energy and life.
In the world of Hellenistic philosophy, which provided the wider intellectual environment of the later biblical period, pneuma was thought of as a kind of deeply refined and purified matter (matter itself being thought of as fallen and evil by definition). In the philosophy of the Stoics, for example, it was thought of as the stuff of the soul, a kind of ‘vital nervous fluid’ which extends from the soul throughout the person, endowing him or her with energy and life.3
Although often understood as near-immateriality, in fact the Old Testament term ruach more particularly underlines the presence of energy and activity. While air, or wind, could well serve as an analogy for highly refined matter, this is not the focus of attention in the biblical use of ruach (or, for that matter, pneuma). In the Old Testament, ruach ordinarily implies air in motion, often manifested in the natural order as a powerful wind or storm (e.g. Jb. 1:19, and in perhaps more than a quarter of the Old Testament instances), or in the life-breath of the individual. Thus, for example, the marvels of Solomon’s wisdom and achievements left the Queen of Sheba breathless (1 Ki. 10:4–5: ‘she was overwhelmed’ is how NIV puts it, ‘she had no more ruach’ is what the text tells us!). Indeed, in human activity, ruach can refer not merely to breathing out but to snorting (e.g. 2 Sa. 22:16; Jb. 4:9). Energy rather than immateriality is what is in view.
While in the natural order ruach may occasionally denote a gentle breeze (as in some translations of Gn. 3:8), the dominant idea in the Old Testament is that of power. The parallelism in Micah 3:8 well illustrates this: ‘But as for me, I am filled with power, with the Spirit of the Lord.’4 When used of God (around one third of the Old Testament uses), therefore, ruach does not connote the idea of divine immateriality (spirit, not matter), although doubtless that is implied in the general biblical perspective. The emphasis is, rather, on his overwhelming energy; indeed one might almost speak about the violence of God. ‘Divine Spirit’ thus denotes ‘the energy of life in God’,5 as in the striking parallelism of Isaiah 31:3: ‘The Egyptians are men and not God; their horses are flesh and not spirit.’ The emphasis lies in the contrast between weakness and power, not in the contrast between material and immaterial. Spirit here contrasts with flesh whose ‘characteristic is inertia, lack of power, such as can only be removed by the Spirit of God’.6
The results of the activity of ruach are in keeping with its nature. When the ruach Yahweh comes on individuals they are caught up in the thrust of an ‘alien’ energy and exercise unusual powers: the faint are raised into action; exceptional human abilities are demonstrated; ecstasy may be experienced. Yahweh’s ruach is, as it were, the blast of God, the irresistible power by which he accomplishes his purposes, whether creative or destructive. By his ruach he creates the host of heaven (Ps. 33:6), gives power to judge-saviours like Othniel and Samson (Jdg. 3:10; 14:6), snatches up prophets, lifts them and places them elsewhere (as, for example, Ezk. 3:12, 14; 11:1; cf. 1 Ki. 18:12). Those who are the subjects of the activity of the divine ruach act in supernatural ways, with supernatural energy and powers. God’s ruach, therefore, expresses the irresistible force, the all-powerful energy of God in the created order. He cannot be ‘tamed’ by men. Instead, through his ruach he is able to ‘tame’ or subdue all things to fulfil his own purpose.
This almost violent dimension of the Spirit is vividly portrayed by Isaiah: ‘He will come like a pent-up flood that the breath [ruach] of the LORD drives along’ (Is. 59:19); ‘The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath [ruach] of the LORD blows on them’ (Is. 40:7).
Already, however, it is clear from the various biblical references above that ruach denotes more than simply the energy of God; it describes God extending himself in active engagement with his creation in a personal way. This raises a question to which we must later give attention: are these references to the Spirit to be thought of merely as describing the mode of God’s presence in the world, or as denoting hypostatic (personal) distinctions within the being of God, adumbrating the diversity in God which would be expressed in the later church doctrine of the Trinity?
In pursuing this theme, we must first follow through the strands of Old Testament teaching on the Holy Spirit.
Creator Spiritus?
Scripture hints that God’s Spirit has been engaged in all of his works from the beginning. In early Christian theology this was traced back to the work of creation.7 When ‘the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep ... the Spirit of God iruach elohim] was hovering over the waters’ (Gn. 1:2).
Ruach elohim here has often been understood as a reference to the Spirit of God and translated accordingly. While there has never been unanimity on this point, more recently, within the Christian tradition of exegesis, this view has been vigorously challenged, largely it would seem on the presupposition that behind the traditional interpretation lies a misplaced hermeneutical desire to find an early, or at least embryonic, hypostatization of the Spirit, and (within Christian exegesis) a corresponding embryonic trinitarianism, in the opening words of Genesis.
In addition, the way in which the idea of the wind features in Near Eastern creation myths, particularly the Phoenician creation narrative, seems to some scholars to suggest that wind, rather than the divine Spirit, is probably in view.8 The text is therefore often read as describing the gloomy chaos of the nascent creation. The emptiness of the wasteland, the darkness and the ruach thus belong together as the inchoate mass of existence which must be overcome and transformed into the order and fullness which Genesis 1 will later describe. The fact that no further allusion is made to the activity of the ruach is taken as indicating that it belongs to the chaos rather than to the creating agent. Thus, while some, like Gerhard von Rad, are still prepared to translate ruach elohim as ‘God’s storm’, others yet more radically sever ruach altogether from divine actions and translate ruach elohim as an ‘almighty wind’.
Such reservation and hesitation to see any hint of hypostatization, far less trinitarianism, in the opening verses of the Bible are, of course, by no means new. Already in the sixteenth century, Calvin (not himself one to find the doctrine of the Trinity under every Old Testament text) was familiar with them but described them as ‘too frigid to require refutation’.9
Yet the context of Genesis 1:2 suggests that the ruach elohim does not stand in antithetical relationship to the creating agent. Rather, what is in view is cosmic order being established by the ruach elohim. The further clear references (Gn. 1:1, 3) to the activity of elohim as creative divine activity suggest that the most natural reading of ruach elohim in verse 2 is in terms of divine activity. The verb translated ‘hovering’ (rahap) conveys the idea of shaking or fluttering. It is used in only two other places in the Old Testament. In Jeremiah 23:9 it is used of the shaking of bones. Despite suggestions to the contrary,10 shaking would surely be an unusual way to describe the activity of the wind.
Furthermore, we find a significant series of (deliberate) connections later in Scripture between the creation, the Exodus and the Spirit. Isaiah 63:7–14 clearly identifies the Spirit as the executive of the Exodus. But earlier, in Deuteronomy, the executor of the Exodus is one who protects the people in ‘a barren and howling waste ... like an eagle ... hovers over its young’ (Dt. 32:10–11). This is the only other instance of the use of the word tōhu (‘formless’) in the Pentateuch (although its use again in Je. 4:23 is instructive). It cannot be accidental that, here in Deuteronomy 32:10–11, as in Genesis 1:2, it occurs in conjunction with the verb rāhap. An analogy (surely deliberate) is thus drawn in the Old Testament between the ‘hovering’ of the ruach elohim over the inchoate creation and the presence of the Spirit of God in the as-yet-incomplete work of redemption. This suggests that already ruach elohim in Genesis 1:2 was intended to denote the divine Spirit.
Other more general Old Testament reflections on the Genesis narrative, as they celebrate God’s work in the created order, suggest that the earliest interpreters of Genesis 1 (i.e. later biblical authors) also detected the presence of the divine Spirit in the work of creation. Thus Psalm 104:30 records: ‘When you send your Spirit [ruach], they are created.’ This stands in parallel with ‘When you hide your face; they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust’ (104:29). Here again there seems to be a deliberate echo of Genesis 1:2 and 2:7. The ruach of God and the face of God are complementary ideas, both indicative of personal divine presence. Clearly, ruach stands on the side of God, not on the side of chaos.
Job 33:4 points in the same direction: ‘The Spirit [ruach] of God has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life.’ While the second half of the verse echoes Genesis 2:7, the first half appears to echo Genesis 1:2. Here ruach means more than wind or storm.
In the light of this tradition of exegesis within the Old Testament itself, ruach in Genesis 1:2 is best understood as a reference to the activity of the divine Spirit, not the impersonal activity of the wind. Pannenberg’s contention that to translate ruach in Genesis 1:2 as ‘storm’ or ‘hurricane’ is ‘grotesque’ may seem over-reactionary; but in the light of the fact that elsewhere ruach elohim is assumed to mean Spirit of God, he is surely right to suspect the intensity of the effort to reject that meaning in Genesis l:2.11 At the very least, in the light of the Old Testament’s own reflections, the hovering and the blowing of Genesis 1:2 must be taken as indices of the presence of the power of the Spirit.12 Indeed, while generally unnoticed in the exposition of Genesis 1, it can be argued that recognizing the presence of the divine Spirit in Genesis 1:2 would provide the ‘missing link’ in the interpretation of the ‘Let us make ...’ in Genesis 1:26–27. The Spirit of God would then be the only possible referent of this address within the structure of the account itself13 In this case, the engagement of the Spirit in the work of creation would mark the beginning and end of a literary inclusio in Genesis 1.
This is not to claim that the Old Testament provides a detailed analysis of the role of the Spirit of God in creation, or that the enigmatic statement in Genesis 1:2 alone is adequate to ground the idea that the Spirit of God is a distinct divine hypostasis. Much remains opaque. What is of interest is that the activity of the divine ruach is precisely that of extending God’s presence into creation in such a way as to order and complete what has been planned in the mind of God. This is exactly the role the Spirit characteristically fulfils elsewhere in Scripture. In the New Testament the Spirit undertakes this role in the accomplishment of redemption: the Father sends, the Son comes, the Spirit vindicates (1 Tim. 3:16); the Father plans, the Son sacrifices and rises, the Spirit applies (e.g. 1 Pet. 1:1–2).
Alongside the (admittedly scanty) references to the work of the Spirit as the executive in ordering creation there lies another fundamental strand of Old Testament teaching: the Spirit of God is the executive of the powerful presence of God in the governing of the created order.
Governing presence
Ruach expresses the idea of wind or air in motion. As such it serves well as a bridge term to describe the outgoing of the Creator to the creation.
The divine ruach is the mode of God’s power-presence among his people. Ezekiel suggests an intimate relationship between the Spirit of God and the face or presence of God: ‘I will no longer hide my face from them, for I will pour out my Spirit on the house of Israel, declares the Sovereign LORD’ (Ezk. 39:29; see Ezk. 37 for the outpouring in view; cf. also Pss. 104:29–30; 139:7).
The Lord’s power-presence is revealed in his Spirit with a view to fulfilling a variety of goals in redemptive history. He not only carries individuals beyond their normal physical capacities; he gives them abilities which extend beyond their native wit. Thus he distributes gifts of statesmanship and craftsmanship. Joseph and Daniel, the two leading figures with savoir faire in the Old Testament, were men in whom ‘the spirit’ of another world was seen to dwell in unusually great measure (Gn. 41:38; Dn. 4:8–9; 5:11–14). Both displayed the characteristics which would be fully expressed in the activity of the messianic Spirit later described in Isaiah 11:1–5, especially the wisdom and understanding which are the fruit of knowing and fearing God.
Similarly, Moses was endued with the divine Spirit to enable him to govern, and this in turn was shared with the seventy elders who undertook with him the burden of administration and rule among God’s redeemed people (Nu. 11:25). Just as the Spirit produced order and purpose out of the formless and empty primeval created ‘stuff’ (Gn. 1:2), so, when the nation was newborn but remained in danger of social chaos, the Spirit of God worked creatively to produce right government, order and direction among the refugees from Egypt (cf. Is. 63:7–14).
In pursuing his purposes among his called-out people, God’s Spirit also granted gifts of design and its execution to men like Bezalel and Oholiab (Ex. 31:1–11; 35:30–35). Again there is a significant theological pattern operative here. The beauty and symmetry of the work accomplished by these men in the construction of the tabernacle not only gave aesthetic pleasure, but a physical pattern in the heart of the camp which served to re-establish concrete expressions of the order and glory of the Creator and his intentions for his creation. A hint was thus given that the work of ‘re-creation’ must begin with the chosen people. Among them stood earthly reflections of the dwelling-place of God. As Calvin rightly says, ‘The tabernacle was a sort of visible image of God.’14 Here, already in the Exodus narrative, we find the principle which will emerge with full clarity only later in the New Testament: the Spirit orders (or re-orders) and ultimately beautifies God’s creation. In the Garden of Eden, the tabernacle and the temple the worshipper discovers the beauty of holiness, which is but a reflection of the beauty of God himself (1 Ch. 16:29; Ps. 96:9). In the final temple, the man filled with the Spirit, Jesus (Jn. 2:19–22), this pattern will reach its apex. But already, from the beginning, the ministry of the Spirit had in view the conforming of all things to God’s will and ultimately to his own character and glory.
Spiritus recreator
The ministry of the Spirit is not limited to gifts which serve the national establishment of God’s people. His work is also moral and redemptive. Already in the Old Testament the Spirit of God is holy Spirit. Whatever objective and cultic orientation ‘holiness’ may have, it also involves moral and ethical characteristics. Thus, in Psalm 51:11, David confesses that his relationship to God’s Spirit as holy has been jeopardized by moral failure.
Isaiah 63:7–14, to which reference has already been made, is particularly illuminating in this respect, serving as it does as a commentary on the Exodus narrative. As God became their Saviour:
In his love and mercy he redeemed them ...
Yet they rebelled
and grieved his Holy Spirit ...
Then his people recalled the days of old,
the days of Moses and his people ...
Where is he who set
his Holy Spirit among them,
who sent his glorious arm of power ...?
... like cattle that go