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

 

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.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

True Christian Religion #164

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164. (i) THERE IS A DIVINE TRINITY CONSISTING OF FATHER, SON AND HOLY SPIRIT.

The existence of a Divine Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is plainly demonstrated by the Word, especially the following passages:

The angel Gabriel said to Mary, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, so that the holy thing that is born of you will be called the Son of God, Luke 1:35.

Here all three are named: the Most High, who is God the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the Son of God.

When Jesus was baptised, behold, the heavens were opened, and John saw the Spirit of God 1 coming down like a dove, and alighting upon Him; and a voice from heaven saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, Matthew 3:16-17; Mark 1:10-11; John 1:32.

It is even clearer in the words which the Lord used to the disciples:

Go and make all nations disciples, baptising them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Matthew 28:19.

Moreover in this passage of John:

Three there are that bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit. 1 John 5:7.

In addition there is the fact that the Lord prayed to His Father, and spoke about Him and with Him, saying that He would send the Holy Spirit, and this too He did. Moreover, the Apostles frequently named in their Epistles the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. These passages show plainly that there is a Divine Trinity consisting of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Footnotes:

1. The Latin has 'the Holy Spirit', but this is corrected in the author's copy.

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