Commentary

 

Holy Spirit

By New Christian Bible Study Staff, John Odhner

Henry Ossawa Tanner (United States, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, 1859 - 1937) 
Daniel in the Lions' Den, 1907-1918. Painting, Oil on paper mounted on canvas, 41 1/8 x 49 7/8 in.

The nature of the Holy Spirit is a topic where there's a marked difference between standard Christian theology and the New Christian perspective. The "official" dogma of most Christian teaching is that the Holy Spirit is one of the three persons that make up one God, in the role of reaching out to people with the power of God to bring them into a desire for righteousness. He is perceived to be proceeding from the other two: God the Father and Jesus the Son.

That old formulation was the result of three centuries of debate among early Christians, as they tried to understand the nature of God. At that time, there was a sizeable minority that rejected the God-in-three-persons view, but -- the majority won out, at the Council of Nicea, in 325 AD.

The New Christian teaching is more akin to some of the old minority viewpoints. It regards the Holy Spirit as a force, or activity, coming from God -- not a separate being. This aligns with our everyday understanding of "spirit" as the projection of someone's personality. It also accounts for the fact that the term "the Holy Spirit" does not occur in Old Testament, which instead uses phrases such "the spirit of God," "the spirit of Jehovah" and "the spirit of the Lord," where the idea of spirit connected closely with the person of God.

The Writings describe the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as three attributes of one person: the soul, body and spirit of the one God. They also say that the term "Holy Spirit" emerges in the New Testament because it is connected with the Lord's advent in the physical body of Jesus, and because of the way that advent changed the way we can learn the Lord's truth and become good people.

According to the Writings, the churches that came before the advent were "representative." The people in them (in the best of those churches, anyway) knew that the Lord had created the world, and that the world was thus an image of the Lord, and they had the ability to look at that created world and understand its spiritual messages; they could look at the world and understand the Lord. And they did it without trying and with great depth, much the way we can read a book when what we're actually seeing is a bunch of black squiggles on a white sheet of paper.

That ability was eventually twisted into idol-worship and magic, however, as people slid into evil. The Lord used the Children of Israel to preserve symbolic forms of worship, but even they didn't know the deeper meaning of the rituals they followed. With the world thus bereft of real understanding, the Lord took on a human body so He could offer people new ideas directly. That's why the Writings say that He represents divine truth ("the Word became flesh," as it is put in John 1:14).

The Holy Spirit at heart also represents divine truth, the truth offered by the Lord through his ministry in the world and its record in the New Testament. The term "the Holy Spirit" is also used in a more general sense to mean the divine activity and the divine effect, which work through true teachings to have an impact on our lives.

Such a direct connection between the Lord and us was not something that could come through representatives; it had to come from the Lord as a man walking the earth during His physical life or - in modern times - through the image we have of Him as a man in His physical life. That's why people did not receive the Holy Spirit before the Lord's advent.

What we have now, though, is a full-blown idea of the Lord, with God the Father representing His soul, the Son representing his body, and the Holy Spirit representing His actions and His impact on people.

(References: The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord 58; True Christian Religion 138, 139, 140, 142, 153, 158, 163, 164, 166, 167, 168, 170, 172)

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Doctrine of the Lord #59

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59. This much in the doctrine has to do with the trinity and unity of God. It is followed next there by a treatment of the Lord’s assumption of manhood in the world, called the Incarnation. This treatment in the doctrine is also in its every word true, provided we clearly distinguish between the humanity acquired from the mother, which was the Lord’s state when He was in a state of submission or kenosis and suffered temptations or trials and the cross, and the humanity acquired from the Father, which was His state in a state of glorification or union. For the Lord assumed a humanity in the world that was conceived of Jehovah, who is the Lord from eternity, and born of the virgin Mary. He possessed, therefore, a Divinity and a humanity — a Divinity from His Divinity from eternity, and a humanity from Mary, His mother in time. This latter humanity, however, He put off, and put on a Divine humanity. The humanity He put on is what we call His Divine humanity, and which in the Word is called the Son of God.

So, then, when what is said first in the doctrine about the Incarnation is interpreted to apply to the maternal humanity, which was the Lord’s state when He was in a state of submission, and what is said there afterward to apply to the Divine humanity, which was the Lord’s state when He was in a state of glorification, then everything said there also concurs.

Concurring with the maternal humanity, the Lord’s state when in a state of submission, is the following statement that precedes in the doctrine:

Jesus Christ...(was) God and man; God, of the substance of the Father..., and Man of the substance of His mother, born in the world; perfect God and perfect Man, of a rational soul and human flesh subsisting. Equal to the Father, as touching His Godhead; and less than the Father, as touching His manhood.

Also the statement that this manhood was not converted into the Godhead, nor commingled with it, but put off, and a Divine manhood put on in its stead.

Concurring with the Divine humanity, the Lord’s state when in a state of glorification, and now to eternity, is the following statement that comes afterward in the doctrine:

...although (our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God) is God and Man, yet there are not two, but one Christ...; (indeed) one altogether..., (for) He is one person. For as the rational soul and flesh form one man, so God and man is one Christ.

  
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Published by the General Church of the New Jerusalem, 1100 Cathedral Road, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania 19009, U.S.A. A translation of Doctrina Novae Hierosolymae de Domino, by Emanuel Swedenborg, 1688-1772. Translated from the Original Latin by N. Bruce Rogers. ISBN 9780945003687, Library of Congress Control Number: 2013954074.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

True Christian Religion #166

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166. (ii) THOSE THREE, FATHER, SON AND HOLY SPIRIT, ARE THE THREE ESSENTIALS OF A SINGLE GOD, WHICH MAKE ONE AS SOUL, BODY AND ACTIVITY DO WITH A PERSON.

Each object has general essentials and particular essentials; and the two together make up a single essence. A person's general essentials are his soul, body and activity. These make up a single essence, as can be seen from the fact that one arises from the next, and exists on account of the next, in an unbroken chain. Every person starts from the soul, which is the true essence of the seed. This not only initiates but also produces one after the other the bodily structures; and later on it initiates the products of the soul and the body working together, what are called its activities. Since then one is produced by the next and by its being implanted and attached, it is plain that these three belong to a single essence. This is why they are called the three essentials.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.