Inter-Varsity Press

Contents

Preface
1. The wind blows where it wills
The Spirit and religious experience
2. The Spirit and the church
The Spirit in the life of the church
3. I will pour out my Spirit
The Spirit as the fulfilment of promise
4. The Spirit of the living God
The Spirit as God’s personal presence
5. The two hands of God
The Spirit and the Trinity
5. The Spirit of truth
The Spirit and the Word
6. Life in the Spirit
The Spirit and salvation in Christ
7. The community of the Spirit
The Spirit and the church
8. Keeping in step with the Spirit
The Spirit in the world

Series Preface

This book is one of a series entitled The Global Christian Library, and is being published by a partnership between Langham Literature (incorporating the Evangelical Literature Trust) and Inter-Varsity Press. Langham Literature is a programme of the Langham Partnership International.

The vision for The Global Christian Library has arisen from the knowledge that during the twentieth century a dramatic shift in the Christian centre of gravity took place. There are now many more Christians in Africa, Asia and Latin America than there are in Europe and North America. Two major issues have resulted, both of which The Global Christian Library seeks to address.

First, the basic theological texts available to pastors, students and lay readers in the southern hemisphere have for too long been written by Western authors from a Western perspective. What is needed now is more books by non-Western writers that reflect their own cultures. In consequence, The Global Christian Library has an international authorship, and we thank God that he has raised up so many gifted writers from the developing world, whose resolve is to be both biblically faithful and contextually relevant.

Second, what is needed is that non-Western authors will write not only for non-Western readers, but for Western readers as well. Indeed the adjective ‘global’ is intended to express our desire that biblical understanding will flow freely in all directions. Certainly we in the West need to listen to and learn from our sisters and brothers in other parts of the world. And the decay of many Western churches urgently needs an injection of non-Western Christian vitality. We pray that The Global Christian Library will open up channels of communication, in fulfilment of the apostle Paul’s conviction that it is only together with all the saints that we will be able to grasp the dimensions of Christ’s love (Eph. 3:18).

Never before in the church’s long and chequered history has this possibility been so close to realization. We hope and pray that The Global Christian Library may, in God’s good providence, play a part in making it a reality in the twenty-first century.
John R.W. Stott
David W. Smith
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(From the) Preface

It is impossible to love God and at the same time be dispassionate about the study of God. Deep devotion to Jesus and an all-consuming desire to see his glory fill the earth should fuel the passion of anyone who ventures to write about God and help illuminate other people’s understanding of God and his ways. Few themes call for as much of a blending of mind and heart as that of the Holy Spirit. The spate of literature on the topic in recent years, while indicating growth in interest, also reflects sometimes divergent – often strongly disputed – perspectives on various aspects of the Holy Spirit’s person and work.

The heat and dust generated by debate over some controversial questions has, however, frequently obscured essential underlying concurrence on more crucial issues among those with a shared commitment to the authority of Scripture. I am thankful to the Langham Partnership International and the editors of the Global Christian Library project for the opportunity to outline a biblical and theological basis for these common affirmations, while acknowledging with sensitivity real differences of interpretation on some matters among evangelicals around the globe. -------------------------------------------------------------------------
Extract from Chapter 1

The wind blows where it wills
The Spirit and Religious Experience

The train was due to arrive on the platform in five minutes. Although I was carrying study tapes, books and work with me, I was still not looking forward to the twenty-hour train journey ahead. It was really a thought rather than a prayer: Lord, I really don’t feel up to a debate or argument with anyone. It would be nice if during the train journey I could meet someone who was a genuine seeker – someone whom the Holy Spirit had already prepared. Three hours later the conversation began.

Priya was a creative designer, probably in her early forties. Obviously well educated, she had lived abroad, was married to a successful corporate executive and was the mother of two boys. ‘I am a teacher of theology’ was my polite answer to what appeared to be a casual social query, and was surprised by the response. Her face lit up and she moved a seat closer: ‘I am interested in knowing how I can have a deeper experience with God. I am a seeker – can you tell me more?’

I spent the best part of the next four hours listening and sharing as the lady described various experiments in her journey within contemporary Hinduism, and I shared how my own search for truth and meaning in life had been fulfilled in Christ. Halfway through our conversation a quiet young man who had been paying close attention to our conversation began to express deep interest. He was also a sincere seeker on his way to visit a famous guru whom he believed would guide him to spiritual enlightenment. To my astonishment, later in the evening, two middle-aged couples in the adjoining compartment, fellow-travellers who had been listening to our conversation, also began to participate in the discussion. They were on their way back after having just concluded a religious pilgrimage to several temples in the south. The evening ended with our exchanging visiting cards and my praying with Priya: for her mother who was dying of cancer, for the difficulties in her family situation and for the living Christ to fill the God-shaped vacuum her life.

This experience was a forceful reminder to me of what is undoubtedly the most critical question of our times: Can I have a genuine experience of God in the here and now? In most parts of the non-Western world, people have always been at home with the notion of religious experience. Thus the vast majority of cultures outside Europe and North America have always viewed non-physical realities as having real existence. These cultures include followers of the primal religions found in Africa, Asia, Latin America and other parts of the world, as well as Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and devotees of other Eastern religions. They routinely accept the reality of the spirit world and accordingly view people as having the capacity for two kinds of experience, one, of the physical world, and the other, of the non-physical world, both of which exert a powerful influence on human life.

The post-Enlightenment West, on the other hand, for the most part, has relegated this dimension to the realm of poetic imagination or the pre-modern world of superstition, along with fairies, genies and ghosts. This modern attitude of scepticism towards the non-physical and the supernatural has its roots in the seventeenth-century Enlightenment project’s quest for certainty in knowledge and its conviction that true knowledge is obtained only through sense experience. The Enlightenment thus led humanity into a space-time box, programmed by the laws of natural science within which there was no room for a genuine experience of divine–human encounter. Under the Enlightenment influence a liberal and critical Christian tradition developed, which nurtured an intellectual scepticism towards miraculous elements in the Bible and virtually denied the possibility of a direct experience with divine reality.

The latter half of the twentieth century, however, witnessed the abandonment of many of the intellectual assumptions of the Enlightenment. Many discoveries of physical science, anthropology, biology, psychology and medicine split open the space-time box of the Enlightenment mindset, opening up the possibility of a divine–human encounter beyond the realm of sense experience (Kelsey 1972: 15 - 140). And several global indications signalled the waning influence of the Enlightenment world view.

The first wind that blew across the West was a widespread disillusionment with the modern dream reflected in the counter-culture movement of the mid-twentieth century. This movement was motivated by a rejection of the preceding generation’s obsession with materialism and was marked by an intense quest for spiritual reality. Large numbers of Western youth turned to Eastern religions and the mystical spirituality offered by gurus and god men in order to fill this spiritual void. Others turned to spiritualism, the occult, the revival of pre-Christian nature religion and the emergence of New Age spirituality.

The universal discontent with humanistic materialism in the West had its counterpart in the dismissal of communistic materialism in Eastern Europe. The last quarter of the twentieth century thus witnessed a tumultuous wind of change in Eastern Europe with the collapse of confidence in Marxist utopian ideals. They were found wanting in their ability to satisfy the physical needs of the masses and just as bankrupt in their ability to respond meaningfully to the intimations of the transcendent in the human heart.