target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_887973bc-97a9-53d0-bd29-259b84fa418d">210 The Spirit is thereby the one who distributes Christ’s salvation “through the Christian Church and through the forgiveness of sins imparted in the Church.”211 The Spirit incorporates believers into the Church so that one’s private spirituality can find expression in adherence to the Church.212 Since such a view seems to elevate the practices of the Church to a place of paramount importance in the development of the believer’s spirituality, we will need to ask Jones and Buckley whether the Spirit retains “authority” with respect to this development. We shall investigate this further in chapter seven.
The Governing Authority of the Spirit—Definition and Storyline
Now that we have observed several contemporary approaches to the Spirit/Church relationship (both theoretical and practical approaches) we are able to examine them in search of a provisional definition of the Spirit’s governing authority, and then pose initial questions for each approach regarding its alignment with the provisional definitions discerned earlier. These questions will be further addressed in chapter three and four as well.
In discerning the “authority” of the Spirit in relationship to the Church, it seems that these various “communitarian” and “paleoorthodox” perspectives might be categorized in terms of “functional power” and “governing authority,” respectively. A function is the ability or power to perform specific duties, but does not imply any delegation of authority from one person to another213 (and in this sense it is not an “authority” at all, since it is not essentially personal). In the “communitarian” approaches to ecclesiology presented by Welker, Moltmann, and Hodgson, the Spirit only seems to possess the functional power to perform a specific task within communities (i.e., creating pluralistic communities within our human experience, experiencing the Spirit “as community,” or invoking liberating experiences, respectively). The Spirit’s “authority” seems to be reduced to his “power” to create an experience of God in the context of the Church community, but without due concern for the pattern of authority.
“Governing authority,” on the other hand, incorporates the authority inherent in one’s own person along with a delegated authority to work or function as “governor” (we might think of a “governor” who is granted the authority to rule locally under the auspices of a President or King). Such a “governing authority” of the Spirit seems to coincide with Oden’s “paleoorthodox” understanding of the doctrine of the Spirit (which generally respects the pattern of authority) while listening to the “postmodern” desire for a renewed focus on the experience of the Spirit within the Church. In this scenario, the body of Christ, having a temporary status until Christ returns with his eschatological Kingdom, is created and administered by the “governing authority” of the Holy Spirit.
Whereas a “functional power” of the Spirit is not necessarily associated with the other aspects of the Spirit’s authority already discussed, the Spirit’s “governing authority” implies a vital connection to these aspects. If the Spirit’s authority or power is not related to the other elements in our pattern of authority, what will this do to our understanding of the Spirit’s “authority”?
As a result, initial questions can be asked regarding each of the above-mentioned “whole book” theologies of the Holy Spirit. For instance, in their concern for the experience of the Spirit, have these theologians left behind various aspects of our pattern of authority in the developing their models? What does this do to the notion of the “governing authority of the Spirit”? In particular, we will need to ask:
1. Does Moltmann’s “panentheism” depreciate the Spirit’s authority as a divine Person?
2. Does Pinnock’s “universalism” or Hodgson’s “modified trinitarianism” nullify the Spirit’s executorial authority?
3. Does Welker’s “pluralism” reduce the Spirit’s veracious authority with respect to inspiration, and does Badcock’s attention to spiritual experience reduce the Spirit’s veracious authority with respect to illumination?
4. Precisely what effects do any deficiencies in Moltmann’s, Hodgson’s, and Welker’s models have on a development of a biblical understanding of the Spirit’s “governing authority”?
Conclusion
In chapters three and four I will attempt to confirm the above definitions of the Spirit’s authority through the exegesis of Scripture and through Biblical/Systematic theology. If it can be demonstrated in Scripture that the Spirit indeed has an “authority” in keeping with each of the definitions proposed in this chapter, we would then be able to speak of the Spirit as possessing plenipotentiary authority.214 This is an authority that incorporates and activates all aspects of authority discussed thus far (i.e., authority over the world, authority to execute Christ’s will, authority to execute Christ’s will in accordance with Scripture, and the authority to execute Christ’s will as governor of the Church).
We have surveyed theological history and uncovered a story that reflects the doctrinal development of the Spirit’s authority within the context of the pattern of authority. We began with a study of the patristic writers and inferred that the Fathers of the early Church recognized the Holy Spirit’s divine authority as a divine Person. We then examined the traumatic debate in medieval theology regarding Filioque and concluded that Augustine’s model seems to grant the Spirit an “executorial authority” to act under the authority of Christ. We studied the Protestant debate regarding the “interpretive authority” of the Spirit and discovered that the reformers did not allow such an authority to be delegated to any human institution. We briefly surveyed the landscape of modern theology and found that evangelicals have affirmed that the “veracious authority” of the Spirit is allied with the inspired text rather that with human reason or experience. Finally, we surveyed several “postmodern” theologians and discovered that “paleoorthodox” theologians point toward the Spirit’s “governing authority” within the Church.
1. Griffith Thomas divides pneumatological Church history into two main epochs. The first, extending from the Sub-Apostolic age to the Reformation, “was concerned with the Personality and Deity of the Holy Spirit and His relation to the Father and the Son. . . . The second took rise at the Reformation, and has been connected almost wholly with the Work of the Spirit” (Thomas, The Holy Spirit of God, 114). Morris Inch makes a tripartite division: “Early Church,” (first through fourth centuries), “Establishment of Christendom as State Religion” (fifth century through the Reformation), and the Post-establishment era or “The Modern Era” (from the Reformation to today) (Inch, Saga of the Spirit, 199). Inch’s scheme closely aligns with mine, except that I have divided his third period into “Reformation” and “Modern” periods, and have added the postmodern period.
2. Oden, Life in the Spirit, 50.
3. Ibid., 25–26.
4. Ibid., 27.
5 Ramm, The Pattern of Authority, 59.
6. Ibid., 57.
7.
