| 8721 Forestell, «Paraclete,» 157, doubts that the Paraclete saying is an interpolation, but believes that 14:12–17 as a whole interrupts the context. 8722 Metzger, Commentary, 245; Berg, «Pneumatology,» 131; Morgan-Wynne, «Note.» Michaels, John, 253, and Hunter, John, 146, take the second verb as present but read both verbs in a future sense. 8725 This is acknowledged even by most who emphasize futurist eschatology in the Gospel (e.g., Holwerda, Spirit, 65, 76). 8726 Cicero Fam. 12.30.4 speaks of the Senate «bereft of relatives» (orbus) by the loss of its consuls (whom Cicero would have regarded as «fathers» to the state); murdering onés benefactor could be seen as parricide (Valerius Maximus 1.5.7; 1.6.13; 1.7.2; 1.8.8). 8727 E.g., Isa 47LXX; 1 Thess 2:17; perhaps Pss. So1. 4:10; cf. Bernard, John, 2:546. Achilles» mere absence from his (living) parents is described as ρφανιζομνω in Pindar Pyth. 6.22–23. No one else could fully replace a deceased father (Homer I1. 22.490–505); nevertheless, the Kjv " s «comfortless» is untenable (Bernard, John, 2:547). 8729 R. Akiba for R. Eliezer in " Abot R. Nat. 25A. Commentators frequently follow Billerbeck, Kommentar, 2here (e.g., Holwerda, Spirit, 41–42; ÓDay, «John,» 748); Brown, John, 2also cites Plato Phaedo 116A. 8732 Holwerda, Spirit, 38–45. In later tradition «orphan» could be mildly derogatory (b. Hu1. 111b), perhaps alluding to a father " s death as punishment (e.g., allegedly Ben Azzai in p. Meg. 1:9, §19), but it was not necessarily a figure of shame (Tob 1:8). As children they remained legally defenseless (p. Ketub. 3:1, §4), although only as minors (p. Ter. 1:1). 8733 On the connection between the impartation of the Spirit and the resurrection, see also Schlier, «Begriff,» 265. 8736 Also noted in DeSilva, «Wisdom of Solomon,» 1275. On «keeping the word» in the Fourth Gospel, see Pancaro, Law, 403–30. 8737 Dionysius of Halicarnassus Lit. Comp. 25; cf. Wis 2:22; 1QH 2.13–14; 9.23–24; see Keener, Matthew, 378–79. Gnostics may have developed their «secret tradition» to explain their lack of earlier attestation; but some authentic traditions actually were probably initially «secret.» |
| What is most significant is that the Spirit remains on Jesus, a term used elsewhere in the Gospel for mutual indwelling and continuous habitation (e.g., 14:23). 4084 Some have contrasted this experience with the mere temporary inspiration of the Spirit Jewish writers thought accompanied typical Israelite prophets, 4085 though Tannaitic texts speak of the Spirit «resting» on individual persons 4086 or on Israel 4087 and some biblical texts suggest that the Spirit did abide with particular persons. 4088 At the least, as Hill points out with regard to the less explicit Synoptic baptismal pericope, Jesus» reception of the Spirit confirms «the ending of the era of the quenched Spirit … the prophetic Spirit has again been given.» 4089 The LXX translators usually depicted the Spirit " s charismatic activity with the aorist tense, 4090 a tense which contrasts strikingly with John " s usage here. (I mention more specific interpretations only in passing. The adoptionist interpretation of 1:32 4091 has little to commend it contextually or culturally, failing completely to reckon with Johannine Christology in genera1. Bürge and others who accept a messianic interpretation 4092 would be closer to the mark, as would perhaps someone stressing a parallel with the Philonic Moses. 4093 The Spirit remaining on Jesus might also contrast with the glory of Moses which faded; cf. 1:17–18; 2Cor 3:11 .) Thus Jesus and His followers are sealed with a divine mark that their opponents did not even claim, and this can encourage John " s audience in their conflict with their accusers: as John could recognize Jesus by his possession of the Spirit, so could the Christians be recognized as God " s anointed by their possession of the Spirit 4094 (even if their spiritually insensitive opponents could not recognize this, 3:8). 4. The Spirit-Baptizer (1:33) The central point here is that not merely human agents like John but God " s own Spirit testifies to Jesus» identity. The Fourth Gospel often speaks of God " s Spirit, but two of the three uses of the particular title «Holy Spirit» frame the Gospel " s pneumatology (1:33; 20:22)–this passage introducing the Spirit as one who descends to the world on account of Jesus, the middle one emphasizing the continuity between Jesus» revelation and that of the Spirit (14:26), and the final one emphasizing Jesus» sending of the Spirit (20:22). |
| John further emphasizes here the inseparable relationship between the Father and the Son, repeatedly emphasized and clarified throughout the Gospel (e.g., 1:1–2). The Spirit «proceeds» from the Father (cf. Rev 22:1) 9148 but is sent by the Son (15:26; 16:7; cf. Luke 24:49) as well as by the Father (14:16,26); yet even in sending the Spirit, Jesus first receives the Spirit from the Father (15:26; Acts 2:33; cf. Rom 8:11 ). John attempts no precise disinction between the roles of the Father and the Son here except in acknowledging the Father " s superior rank; the Father often delegates his own roles to the Son in the Gospel (5:20–29). Various other early Christian texts likewise appear unconcerned to make stark differentiations between the roles of Father and Son here; some portray the Spirit as from the Father (e.g., Acts 2:17; 5:32; cf. Eph 1:17 ; Phil 3:3 ; 1Pet 1:12 ), others perhaps from the Son (cf. Rom 8:2, 9 ; Phil 1:19 ; 1Pet 1:11 ). Early Christians probably regarded the alternatives as complementary rather than contradictory (see esp. Gal 4:6 ). On the title «Spirit of truth,» see comment on 14:17. 3A. The Spirit Testifies against the World Certainly the Spirit " s witness is not limited to prosecuting the world as in 16:8–11; the Spirit can witness to believers to confirm their relationship with God, as both the Johannine tradition (1 John 5:6–8, 10) and other early Christian tradition ( Rom 8:16 ; cf. 9:1; Acts 15:8) concurs. But in this context the emphasis lies on prophetic witness to the world (cf. Rev 19:10). Certainly «witness» appears in a forensic sense in some Jesus tradition reported in Mark 13 : believers will be brought before authorities for a witness to (or against) them ( Mark 13:9 ), which will be empowered by the Holy Spirit ( Mark 13:11 ). Although the world could not receive the Spirit (14:26), the Spirit could witness to it (15:26–16:11), just as Jesus testifies but no one receives his witness (3:11,32; 1:10–11). The Spirit of truth and the disciples would both testify concerning Jesus. It is possible that this Paraclete saying is a general statement that summarizes the next two: when the Spirit comes, he will bear witness both to the world (16:8–11) and to the community (16:13–15); both of these sayings are introduced in a manner similar to the ταν ελθη of 15:26, and in each instance the Spirit comes to believers (15:26; 16:7,12–13). 9149 |
| The battles around ancient authorities often concentrated on texts by those Fathersespecially Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria, and Epiphanius of Cypruswhose main concern was anti-Arian or anti-Nestorian polemics, i.e., the establishment of Christ« " s identity as the eternal and pre-existing divine Logos. In reference to the Holy Spirit, they unavoidably used expressions similar to those also adopted in sixth-century Spain where the interpolation first appeared. Biblical texts, such as John 20:22 («He breathed on them and said: Receive the Holy Spirit»), were seen as proofs of the divinity of Christ: if the «Spirit of God» is also the «Spirit of Christ»» (cf. Rm 8:9), Christ is certainly «consubstantial» with God. Thus it is also possible to say that the Spirit is the «proper» Spirit of the Son, 134 and even that the Spirit «proceeds substantially from both» the Father and the Son. 135 Commenting upon these texts and acknowledging their correspondence with Latin patristic thought, Maximus the Confessor rightly interprets them as meaning not that «the Son is the origin of the Spirit,» because «the Father alone is the origin of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,» but that «the Spirit proceeds through the Son, expressing thus the unity of nature.» 136 In other words, from the activity of the Spirit in the world after the Incarnation, one can infer the consubstantiality of the three Persons of the Trinity, but one cannot infer any causality in the eternal personal relationships of the Spirit with the Son. However, those whom the Byzantines called Latinophronesthe «Latin-minded " and especially John Beccos (1275–1282), enthroned as patriarch by Emperor Michael VIII Paleologus with the explicit task of promoting in Byzantium the Union of Lyons (1274), made a significant effort to use Greek patristic texts on the Spirit " " s procession «through the Son» in favor of the Latin Filioque. According to the Latinophrones, both «through the Son» and «from the Son» were legitimate expressions of the same Trinitarian faith. |
| Although the grammatical argument by itself is not decisive in 3:5, 4909 John " s explicit explanation of «water» as the Spirit in 7invites us to read the more ambiguous 3as a hendiadys: 4910 «since both nouns are anarthrous and are governed by a single preposition,» 4911 the και likely functions here epexegetically, hence «water, i.e., the Spirit.» 4912 The text probably «reflects the typical Johannine idiom of «pairs in tension.»» 4913 Thus Origen suggested that «water» differed from the «Spirit» here only in «notion» and not in «substance»; Calvin also identified the two. 4914 At the least the grammar suggests a close connection between «water» and «Spirit» here, «a conceptual unity» of some sort; 4915 but the full and explicit identification of water and the Spirit in 7probably suggests a full identification here as wel1. (This would answer the objection that the otherwise likely identification of «water» and «Spirit» here appears tautologous.) 4916 In other words, Jesus calls Nicodemus to a spiritual proselyte baptism, a baptism in the Spirit. 4917 Some streams of early Judaism, particularly Essene thought, associated the Spirit with inward purification. 4918 Ezek 36 provided ready biblical precedent for this association of the Spirit with purifying water, and usually appears as the clear basis for early Jewish teaching to this effect. It stands as an allusion behind early Jewish claims concerning eschatological deliverance from sin (Jub. 1:23). 4919 Some commentators, while acknowledging the similarity in Ezek 36:25–27 , reject it as background here, preferring to emphasize unspecified Greek ideas. 4920 Other commentators accept the far more likely interpretation that «water» here alludes to Ezek 36 . 4921 Given the possible allusion to Ezek 36:26–27 in John 3 (see below), it is possible (though not definite) that this passage even involves an implicit midrash on Ezek 36 (especially if 3alludes to the wind of Ezek 37 ). An appeal to Ezek 36 reinforces the probable use of proselyte baptism as an illustration for Spirit baptism here. Qumran " s Manual of Discipline connects Ezek 36 with an immersion in conjunction with repentance (1QS 3.8–9). In this context, the «Spirit of holiness» cleanses God " s people from sin (1QS 3.7), cleansing them «like purifying waters» 4922 poured out on his chosen at the time of the end (1QS 4.21). 4923 Later rabbis also read in Ezek 36 an eschatological, purifying immersion. 4924 While Essene baptism required immersion rather than pouring, the image of God «pouring» his Spirit like water on his people (e.g., Isa 44:3; Ezek 39:29 ; Joel 2:28 ) 4925 provides a foundational water image for early Christian teaching about a «baptism» in the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:17). |
| The mystery of Pentecost is not an incarnation of the Spirit, but the bestowing of these gifts. The Spirit does not reveal His Person, as the Son does in Jesus, and does not en-hypostasize human nature as a whole; He communicates His uncreated grace to each human person, to each member of the Body of Christ. New humanity is realized in the hypostasis of the Son incarnate, but it receives only the gifts of the Spirit. The distinction between the Person of the Spirit and His gifts will receive great emphasis in Byzantine theology in connection with the theological controversies of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Gregory of Cyprus and Gregory Palamas will insist, in different contexts, that at Pentecost the Apostles received the eternal gifts or «energies» of the Spirit, but that there was no new hypostatic union between the Spirit and humanity. 323 Thus, the theology of the Holy Spirit implies a crucial polarity, which concerns the nature of the Christian faith itself. Pentecost saw the birth of the Churcha community, which will acquire structures, and will presuppose continuity and authorityand was an outpouring of spiritual gifts, liberating man from servitude, giving him freedom and personal experience of God. Byzantine Christianity will remain aware of an unavoidable tension between these two aspects of faith: faith as doctrinal continuity and authority, and faith as the personal experience of saints. It will generally understand that an exaggerated emphasis on one aspect or the other destroys the very meaning of the Christian Gospel. The Spirit gives a structure to the community of the Church and authenticates the ministries which possess the authority to preserve the structure, to lead, and to teach; but the same Spirit also maintains in the Church prophetic functions and reveals the whole truth to each member of Christ " " s body, if only he is able and worthy to «receive» it. The life of the Church, because it is created by the Spirit, cannot be reduced to either the «institution» or the «event,» to either authority or freedom. It is a «new» community created by the Spirit in Christ, where true freedom is recovered in the spiritual communion of the Body of Christ. 3. The Spirit and the Church |
| Many scholars, such as Marinus de Jonge, have contended that the Fourth Gospel argues for its own inspiration: «The Fourth Gospel presents itself as the result of the teaching and the recalling activity of the Spirit within the community of disciples leading to a deeper and fuller insight into all that Jesus as the Son revealed during his stay on earth.» 956 Müller similarly suggests that John felt that Jesus» word continued to work in his Gospel, 957 and Dietzfelbinger, that it claims to be inspired by the Paraclete. 958 Some have gone so far as to identify the author and the Paraclete (see below), but even if this position goes beyond the evidence, the close association of functions indicates that the author felt that the Paraclete was inspiring his writing. While a claim to inspiration does not constitute proof of inspiration, or even proof that inspiration by deity, deities, or spirits exists, it is only the claim which presents itself for examination in the epistemological framework within which historical-critical study of the Bible has been conducted in the past two centuries, and it is thus the claim we examine here. The Fourth Gospel claims its inspiration by indicating that its implied author was an agent of the inspiring Spirit who enabled believers to know and articulate Jesus. 959 If 1 John assumes or interprets the Jesus tradition in this Gospel, then the Gospel was functioning as scripture in Johannine circles at an early stage. 960 That the Gospel was intended to function in this way is a possibility that should be investigated. After all, other Jewish groups were producing books which they viewed as authoritative for their communities, some implying continuity with biblical history. 961 The inspiring Spirit was generally associated with prophecy in early Judaism, although other associations were also attached to the Spirit in many circles, particularly the Qumran community. 962 The Fourth Gospel also merges different aspects of the Spirit " s work; the stretch of narrative sometimes called the «Signs Gospel» associates the Spirit with purification, but Jesus» final discourse in chs. 14–16 associates the Spirit with inspiration and instruction. Against some scholars, this difference does not necessitate a separate source for these two sections; 963 these aspects of the Spirit " s work had already coalesced in some segments of early Judaism, as the Dead Sea Scrolls attest. The climax of John " s presentation of both aspects is fulfilled by the same inception of the Spirit in 20:21–23; the Spirit is imparted as a breath of life, as in 3:3–8, and the Spirit also enables the disciples to fulfill their mission as Jesus» representatives, as in 15:26–27. But the inspiration aspect of the Spirit imparted to Jesus» followers is significant to the composition of the Fourth Gospel, for if it does not purport to be a recollection and proclamation of Jesus (cf. 14:26), what does it purport to be? 1. The Paraclete and Johns Composition |
| The Eucharist is the communion of all things penetrating into our presently mutually antagonistic ‘communions’. The fulfilled communion that is the Church is brought into being for us now by the entrance of the future reality of communion into our presently divided communities. Only a properly pneumatological Christology can give us the ecclesiology that understands the Church as the witness of the future. Next we must consider how neglect of the role of the Holy Spirit in theology has impoverished the Church. When Christology provides the sole foundation of ecclesiology, the Holy Spirit has only a subsidiary role. For some it is important that Christ founded the institution of the Church, because it is the institutions which have allowed the Church to persist through history. For others the primary reality is the historical events of the incarnation, recorded in the bible. Both these views are based on a Christology without pneumatology: Christ constructs the body, which the Holy Spirit subsequently enters and brings to life as a soul animates a body. Protestants have not had much interest in the institution of the Church, some even doubting whether Christ intended to found the Church at all. The Holy Spirit is regarded as the inspirer, who assists every person individually, and the community generally, to receive the word of God. The Spirit is subordinate to Christ, who either founded the Church, as Roman Catholics have it, or provided the word which the Spirit reveals to as, as Protestants have it. However, Christ does not form the Church without the Spirit, and the Spirit does not arrive later to till a Church that is already in existence. The Holy Spirit. ‘composes the entire institution’ of the Church, as one Vespers hymn puts it at Pentecost. The institution of the Church was not founded once and for all at one point in history, but is perpetually constituted and renewed through history by the Spirit. Every time that the Church congregates, it becomes the Church anew. The Spirit therefore makes the Church gather around the Son, giving it its basic structures and offices, the people through baptism and chrismation, and their ministers through ordination. The ordination of a bishop is a manifestation of the Spirit’s foundation of the Church, and a renewal of Pentecost, for the gathering of the Church will he renewed around him. The Spirit constitutes and re-constitutes the Church with the Son and thus it receives its continuity, historically, from the eschaton. |
| The conflict between the Johannine and synagogue communities included competing theological claims and competing grounds for epistemological validation of those claims. Whereas the synagogue authorities, like the emerging rabbinic movement in Palestine, seem to have based their claims on interpretation of the Law and limited the scope of acceptable evidence to this area of their special competence, many of the early Christians apparently refused to allow the field of debate to be narrowed so as to exclude additional revelatory data. For whereas the Palestinian Jewish authorities did not even claim to possess the Spirit, 1723 the Christians claimed to possess the Spirit and thus eschatological validation that they spoke for God. Since most of Judaism believed that the Spirit of prophecy was no longer available in its OT fulness, but Jewish people recognized the OT teaching that the Spirit would be poured out in ultimate fulness in the messianic era, Christian possession of the Spirit marked them as the people of the end time. 1724 In 1 John, the Spirit also distinguishes the true Christians from the false. 1725 The Qumran sectarians may have used their claims to the presence of the Spirit in their community in the same way; in both early Christianity and the Qumran movement, the spirit of truth was the unique possession of the elect community. 1726 If the consensus that the Qumran sectarians were Essenes is correct, it is significant that the Essenes considered themselves «seers» 1727 (even if the Qumran texts themselves speak more of illumination than the sort of prophesying Josephus attributes to Essenes). If John has the tendency to emphasize the Spirit as the present possession of the elect, the rabbinic movement exhibits an opposing tendency. The rabbinic view that prophecy and/or possession of the Spirit had ceased may well have been a polemic against the emphasis of the early Christians and, to a lesser extent, other pneumatic movements within Judaism that challenged the goal of rabbinic hegemony. 1728 They may have posited the localization of the Spirit of prophecy in the land of Israel for the same sort of reason, that is, to challenge Christian claims that the Spirit had urged them to cross cultural and geographical boundaries. 1729 By the time John wrote, the rabbis had probably already refused to accept the validity of new revelation, anchoring as much as possible in prior scholarly tradition; but the charismatic challenge of early Christianity apparently moved them to a further reaction. 1730 As Bamberger puts it, |
| The early Christian understanding of creation and of man " " s ultimate destiny is inseparable from pneumatology; but the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament and in the early Fathers cannot easily be reduced to a system of concepts. The fourth-century discussions on the divinity of the Spirit remained in a soteriological, existential context. Since the action of the Spirit gives life «in Christ,» He cannot be a creature; He is indeed consubstantial with the Father and the Son. This argument was used both by Athanasius in his Letters to Serapion and by Basil in his famous treatise On the Holy Spirit. These two patristic writings remained, throughout the Byzantine period, the standard authorities in pneumatology. Except in the controversy around the Filioquea debate about the nature of God rather than about the Spirit specificallythere was little conceptual development of pneumatology in the Byzantine Middle Ages. This does not mean, however, that the experience of the Spirit was not emphasized with greater strength than in the West, especially in hymnology, in sacramental theology, and in spiritual literature. «As he who grasps one end of a chain pulls along with it the other end to himself, so he who draws the Spirit draws both the Son and the Father along with It,» Basil writes. 305 This passage, quite representative of Cappadocian thought, implies first that all major acts of God are Trinitarian acts, and secondly that the particular role of the Spirit is to make the «first contact,» which is then followedexistentially, but not chronologicallyby a revelation of the Son and, through Him, of the Father. The personal being of the Spirit remains mysteriously hidden, even if He is active at every great step of divine activity: creation, redemption, ultimate fulfillment. His function is not to reveal Himself, but to reveal the Son «through whom all things were made» and who is also personally known in His humanity as Jesus Christ. " " It is impossible to give a precise definition of the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit and we must simply resist errors concerning Him which come from various sides.» 306 The personal existence of the Holy Spirit thus remains a mystery. It is a «kenotic» existence whose fulfillment consists in manifesting the kingship of the Logos in creation and in salvation history. 1. The Spirit in Creation |
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