Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, 1:244.
148. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/2:356 (emphasis mine). In agreeing with Barth’s idea that the Holy Spirit “seems to be behind a wall” and hidden from humanity, Pentecostal theologian Burton Janes asserts that, for believers, “our actions can either enlarge or destroy the barrier, revealing the Spirit for all to see” (Janes, “Taking a Step Toward Pentecost,” 24). Janes particularly finds comfort in Barth’s three cautions regarding the Spirit in revelation: (1) Barth holds that subjective revelation must never override the objective. Here Janes quotes Barth, “Subjective revelation is not the addition of a second revelation to objective revelation”; (2) Barth cautions against specifying the precise way man experiences the Holy Spirit. Barth says that we can never express or state that which lies behind our experiences of the Holy Spirit because it is not revealed to us, because it is revelation itself; (3) Barth steers clear of sectarianism, which perceives the testimony of the Spirit in terms of an immediate spiritual inspiration and bypasses the Word (26).
149. Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1:536–39.
150. Barth’s pneumatology “elevated the long-neglected role of the Holy Spirit to new significance in its exposition of divine revelation” (Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, 4:256).
151. Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1:536–39.
152. Rosato, The Spirit as Lord, 84. Barth’s response to the “subjectivism” of Schleiermacher is particularly penetrating: “Were the Spirit, the mediator of revelation to the subject, a creature or a creaturely force, we would be asserting and maintaining that, in virtue of his presence with God and over against God, man in his own way is also a lord in revelation” (Barth, The Doctrine of the Word of God, 535).
153. As a result, Barth becomes not only one of the greatest defenders of Filioque in modern times, but he also links this doctrine with divine revelation by making Christ the true revealer of the Word. In this way the Spirit, not the human subject, is the authoritative interpreter of the Word. Rosato explains, “By welding pneumatology to Christology, Barth removes even from the subjective appropriation of the Christ-event by the believer every trace of subjectivism. Thus, the existential experiences of Christian consciousness, which are the direct result of the Spirit’s presence, are ultimately rooted in the objective election of Jesus Christ, which alone lends their noetic quality ontic significance” (Rosato, The Spirit as Lord, 84).
154. See Barth, Evangelical Theology, 53ff.
155. Rosato adds that, in doing so, the Spirit “continually fashions the Church into the contours of the incarnate Word” (Rosato, The Spirit as Lord, 80–81).
156. Thompson, The Holy Spirit in the Theology of Karl Barth, 198.
157. Indeed Barth has been criticized by many evangelicals for promoting a “transcendent” Spirit that seems remote, abstract, and divorced from history and humanity.
158. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, 4:258.
159. Ibid., 258.
160. Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 13.
161. Rogers, Biblical Authority, 29.
162. Ramm, The Pattern of Authority, 57 (emphasis his).
163. Ramm, The Witness of the Spirit, 57.
164. Ramm, The Pattern of Authority, 12.
165. Ibid., 55.
166. Bloesch, The Holy Spirit, 49.
167. Veith, “Out-Clintoning Clinton,” 21.
168. Roman Catholic-World Methodist Council Joint Commission, “The Holy Spirit, Christian Experience, and Authority,” 226.
169. Ibid., 231.
170. Oden, Life in the Spirit, 474.
171. Pinnock, Flame of Love, 10.
172. Ibid., 113.
173. Ibid., 114.
174. Ibid., 119–20, 142.
175. Badcock, Light of Truth and Fire of Love, 1.
176. Ibid., 2.
177. Ibid., 4.
178. Ibid.
179. Veith, “Out-Clintoning Clinton,” 21.
180. Moltmann, The Spirit of Life, back cover endorsement by Peter C. Hodgson.
181. Ibid., 5.
182. Ibid., 7.
183. Ibid., 217.
184. Ibid., 98, 103. Moltmann admits, “We can find in many [mystical theologians] a pantheistic vision of the world in God and God in the world. . . . This history of the Holy Spirit that is poured out upon all flesh, and this new world that is glorified in God, are what the mystical theologians mean with their neoplatonic-sounding doctrine” (Moltmann, “Theology of Mystical Experience,” 517–19).
