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. Such as Tertullian, Calvin (Institutes), and Carl Henry (God, Revelation, and Authority).
8. “Evangelical” will be defined as theology that attempts to honor the notion of the historic Trinity, the “inerrancy of Scripture” (properly understood according to its literary “genres”), and the authority of Scripture above the authority of “tradition.”
9. Clement, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 1:17.
10. Nielsen, “Clement of Rome and Moralism,” 142.
11. Ibid., 142.
12. Athanasius, Historia Arianorum, cc. 33–34.
13. According to Arius, there was no distinction drawn between the Son being begotten and being created; though the Son was the “first” created being, he also had a beginning and there was a time when the Son did not exist.
14. Arius, as quoted by Athanasius, Orations against the Arians, 1.6.
15. Athanasius, De decretis Nicaenae synodi, c. 27.
16. Morrison, Tradition and Authority, 63.
17. Thomas, The Holy Spirit of God, 78.
18. Ibid., 85.
19. Swete, The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, 169.
20. Ibid., 169.
21. See Gregg and Groh, Early Arianism; also Badcock, Light of Truth and Fire of Love, 47–48.
22. Badcock, Light of Truth and Fire of Love, 50. This shift in thinking is illustrated by the emergence of the word theologia, which refers to the doctrine of the “immanent Trinity,” as opposed to oikonomia, or economy, referring to everything else that the Trinity does in relation to creation (see LaCugna, God with Us, 37ff.).
23. Athanasius, “First Letter to Serapion,” 129–30.
24. Ibid., 129–30.
25. Hanson points out that “Athanasius unmistakably believed in the sufficiency and primacy of Scripture for doctrinal purposes . . . showing that he desired to prove tradition from Scripture” (Hanson, “Basil’s Doctrine of Tradition in Relation to the Holy Spirit,” 243). Athanasius says, “It is our task now to search the Bible and to examine and judge when it is speaking about the divinity of the Word, and when about his humanity” (Athanasius, “Third Letter to Serapion,” 2.8).
26. Athanasius, “Third Letter to Serapion,” 2.28.
27. Athanasius, “First Letter to Serapion,” 22.121.
28. Gregory of Nazianzus, “On the Holy Spirit,” 325–26.
29. Badcock, Light of Truth and Fire of Love, 54.
30.