“capacitating the incapacitated”

George Hunsinger, “Karl Barth’s Doctrine of the Holy Spirit” from The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth

Those who are awakened to lifelong conversion by the Spirit never cease to be sinners themselves. Yet despite their continuing sinfulness, the miracle of grace never ceases in the hearts (183).

What the miraculous operation of the Holy Spirit brings about [in conversion] . . . is not essentially restoration or healing but resurrection from the dead (184).

Since to be a sinner means to be incapacitated, grace means capacitating the incapacitated despite their incapacitation. Sinners capacitated by grace remain helpless in themselves. Grace does not perfect and exceed human nature in its sorry plight so much as contradict and overrule it.

In this miraculous and mysterious way, by grace alone—that is, through a continual contradiction of nature by grace that results in a provisional conjunction of opposites (coniunctio oppositorum)—the blind see, the lame walk, and the dead are raised to new life (cf. Matt. 11:4) (185).

The Last Days, the Spirit and “Being Saved”

Acts 2:16-21

But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel: “And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke; the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

N. T. Wright, Acts for Everyone (Part One)

Up to this moment, God has acted by his spirit among his people, but it’s always been by inspiring one person here, one or two there—kings and prophets and priests and righteous men and women. Now, in a sudden burst of fresh divine energy released through the death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s spirit has been poured out upon a lot of people all at once. There is no discrimination between slaves and free, male and female, young and old. They are all marked out, side by side, as the nucleus of God’s true people.

This work of God is wonderfully inclusive, because there is no category of people which is left out: both genders, all ages, all social classes. But it is wonderfully focused, because it happens to all “who call on the name of the Lord” (verse 21). . . . All who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.

“Being saved” doesn’t just mean, as it does for many today, “going to heaven when they die.” It means “knowing God’s rescuing power revealed in Jesus, which anticipates, in the present, God’s final great act of deliverance” (33-4).

Pentecost

Acts 2:1-4

When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

N. T. Wright, Acts for Everyone (Part One)

It is most significant, in the light of what we said before about the ascension, that the wind came “from heaven” (v. 2). The whole point is that, through the spirit, some of the creative power of God himself comes from heaven to earth and does its work there. The aim is not to give people a “spirituality” which will make the things of earth irrelevant. The point is to transform earth with the power of heaven, starting with those parts of “earth” which consists of the bodies, minds, hearts, and lives of the followers of Jesus—as a community . . . . The coming of the spirit at Pentecost, in other words, is the complementary fact to the ascension of Jesus into heaven. The risen Jesus in heaven is the presence, in God’s sphere, of the first part of “earth” to be transformed into “new creation” in which heaven and earth are joined; the pouring out of the spirit on earth is the presence, in our sphere, of the sheer energy of heaven itself. The gift of the spirit is thus the direct result of the ascension of Jesus. Because he is Lord of all, his energy, the power to be and do something quite new, is available through the spirit to all who call on him, all who follow him, all who trust him (22-3).

Aaron Orendorff

Two points of note:

First, Pentecost was an agricultural festival celebrated fifty days after Passover in remembrance of the giving of the Law at Sinai. During Pentecost the people of Israel would offer the “first fruits” of their yearly harvest as a way of acknowledging their profound dependence upon and thankfulness toward God. In keeping with the spirit of the day (pun intended), the Holy Spirit ought to be understood a “first fruits” of sorts (a “down payment,” as Paul calls is) of the full redemption (i.e., the harvest) that is to come. The presence of the Spirit now anticipates and points towards the day when God’s presence will be poured out without limit over the entity of creation.

Second, the Spirit is not the energy of God, but rather (as Wright says), the Person through whom Jesus’ energy (as the resurrected King) is made “available.” The Spirit’s work is to reveal, glorify and unite Jesus to his followers.

Union with Christ & the Christian Life

Andrew Purves, Reconstruction Pastoral Theology (pg. 84)

To be clear: union with Christ does not lead to an imitation of Christ, a life spent following Jesus’ example in the hope that we will become better people. The Christian life is not to be understood as obedience to either an ethical imperative or a spiritual ideal. Rather, the Christian life is the radical and converting participation in Jesus Christ’s own being and life, and thus a sharing in his righteousness, holiness, and mission through the bond of the Holy Spirit.

Note, too, the emphasis I place on the work of the Holy Spirit. Union with Christ is entirely a work of God. Our human acts, beliefs, and decisions are powerless to effect a relationship with God. John Calvin understood that our deepest self had to become reconfigured and reconstituted or, to use his words, “regenerated” or “vivified,” through related to Jesus Christ. … God must reorder us be turning us in a new direction be uniting us to Jesus. So our being and becoming Christian is a divine initiative and not something that can be worked out through heightened religiosity, morality, activity, will, or spirituality. We are conjoined to Christ by the unilateral work of God though the Holy Spirit – to effect what Calvin called a “mystical union.”

The “Self-Effacing” Spirit

J.I. Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit

In [the Holy Spirit’s] new covenant ministry (for this is what Jesus was talking about [in the Upper Room Discourse from John 14-16]) the Spirit would be self-effacing, directing all attention away from himself to Christ and drawing folk into the faith, hope, love, obedience, adoration, and dedication, which constitute communion with Christ. … Thus the Spirit would glorify the glorified Savior (16:14), acting both as interpreter to make clear the truth about him and as illuminator to ensure the benighted minds receive it. Jesus, the Lord Christ, would be the focal point of the Spirit’s ministry, first to last (56-57).

Andrew Purves, Reconstructing Pastoral Theology

In the context of the ministry of God [that is, God’s ministry toward us, not our ministry toward each other], the Holy Spirit is the personal presence of God by whom God bring us into communion with himself through relationship with Jesus Christ. According to Karl Barth, the Holy Spirit “is the power in which Jesus Christ is alive among [people] and makes them His witnesses.” Christian doctrine teaches that the work of the Holy Spirit is a Christ-related event; as such it is a God-glorifying, person-empowering, and church/mission creating event. … There is no dissociating of the Holy Spirit from Jesus Christ; rather…the Holy Spirit has a diaphanous self-effacing nature, showing us the Son and joining us to him, so that in and through the Son we have communion with and serve the Father (39).

According to Karl Barth, the Holy Spirit is the power in which Jesus Christ is alive among people and makes them his witnesses. That is, Christian doctrine teaches that the work of the Holy Spirit is a Christ-related event, and as such, it becomes a God-glorifying, person-empowering, and church/mission creating event. … The Spirit calls the church into existence to be a community of worship and ministry through union with Christ. Thus when we speak of the communion of the Holy Spirit we mean the communion-creating work of the Holy Spirit – communion with the Father through our Spirit-led union with Christ and, consequently, communion with one another as we are formed into the missionary body of Christ, the church. For this reason we do not speak of communion in the Holy Spirit, but the communion of the Holy Spirit, meaning by this, communion in Christ (124).