The Holy Spirit: A Summary and Review

Sanders, Fred. The Holy Spirit: An Introduction. Short Studies in Systematic Theology 8. Wheaton: Crossway, 2023. 162pp excluding end matter.

SUMMARY AND CRITIQUE

In Holy Spirit, Sanders takes a Trinitarian approach to studying the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit’s internal relations to the Father and the Son help us understand the Spirit’s external works and relations. The appendix on rules for thinking well about the Holy Spirit provides a good summary of the contents of the entire book.  The appendix—a list of 27 items—helps support one of Sanders’s final claims, which is that the Holy Spirit is most often spoken of in list-form. 

As someone who has three Bible degrees, Pneumatology was covered quickly in only a few systematic theology lessons in one of my degrees (a course on Pneumatology was offered, but not required for any of my programs). As such, I had a decent understanding of the Person and work of the Holy Spirit from this course and my own Bible reading.  What Sanders does in his book, however, is bring coherence to the Holy Spirit by showing how the Spirit’s Personhood in the Trinity is related to his works in Salvation History.  This coherency that Sanders brings makes understanding the Person and work of the Holy Spirit easier to grasp and makes it easier to identify the Holy Spirit in theology and in life. This approach also suited the goal of the book—to be an introduction to the Holy Spirit—admirably.

Those who are more Pentecostal may be disappointed that Sanders does not address the gifts of the Spirit, such as speaking in tongues and prophecy. However, Sanders’s big-picture Trinitarian approach to the Holy Spirit enables the reader to set these gifts within their proper context. 

Those who have taken an entire Seminary or Bible College course on the Holy Spirit and remember what they were taught may not find much new in Holy Spirit. For everyone else, however, I highly recommend Holy Spirit. 

SUMMARY OF EACH CHAPTER

Chapter 1: Meeting the Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is “the prevenient person in our experience of the Trinity,” meaning that the Holy Spirit goes before; he has always already been there (12, emphasis original). The Holy Spirit’s prevenience is reflected in his presence to Christians. Christians are affected by the Holy Spirit well before they learn of him (19). The Holy Spirit is the one who gives Christians knowledge and awareness of the Father and the Son (17–18).  

Further, the Holy Spirit is the one “who makes the confession of faith possible and actual,” not by making himself the object of attention, but by making the Father and Son the objects of attention (23).  

Thus, the Holy Spirit’s main work is intimately tied up with the work of the Father and the Son. Sanders concludes this chapter with the following sober thought: “If our goal is to do proper justice to the Holy Spirit, the most strategic move is not to rush on to some new topic that is his special preserve; the most strategic move is to insist that he has been central to all God’s works and ways all along” (29). 

Chapter 2: The Holy Spirit in the Trinity

The Person of the Holy Spirit in the Trinity

The Holy Spirit is fully God (35; Is 63:8–13; Eph 4:30). However, the Holy Spirit is a distinct person from the Father and the Son: “He has all the attributes of deity in common with the Father and the Son but does not have fatherhood or sonship in common with them” (34). 

Not only is the Holy Spirit God, but the Holy Spirit is in God: “he is interior to God, deep inside of divinity, dwelling within the divine life in its depths” (38). Thus, the Spirit “comes forth from within” and also dwells in believers revealing to them what is in God (39). 

The Holy Spirit is also “from God” (42). There are two fromnesses. (1) The Father (and the Son) sent the Holy Spirit to indwell believers to be a source of life within them and to empower them to testify about Jesus (42; Joel 2; Acts 2; John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7). This fromness is based on (2) the Spirit as eternally from the Father in the life of God—eternal internal procession: “the Holy Spirit eternally subsists as the one eternally spirated or proceeding from God the Father” (43–44). Sanders helpfully sums up the doctrine of fromness as “the Holy Spirit is eternally from God, within God, as God” (45). 

The Work of the Holy Spirit in the Trinity

“The most important thing to say about the work of the Holy Spirit is that it is inseparable from the work of the Father and the Son. His work is always radically united to the work of the whole Trinity and yet is truly his own work” (47). This doctrine is known as the inseparable operations of the Trinity (47). 

Sanders elaborates on the doctrine of inseparable operations of the Trinity: “[E]ach divine work is inseparably the work of all three persons in unison, though we can recognize each of them in it. We recognized them not by the differences or distances in their ways of working but by the repetition of their eternal order, which we can indicate prepositionally: fromthe Father, through the Son, in the Spirit. From, through, in” (50, emphasis added). 

With inseparable operations of the Trinity in mind, there are two main reasons that Scripture assigns certain particular divine works to particular persons of the Trinity: 

1. “[T]here are some divine actions that are actual missions of the Son and the Holy Spirit” (53); this is the doctrine of processions. 
2. “God has chosen to use certain actions as opportunities to show us what the distinct persons of the Trinity are like” (54). This is called the doctrine of appropriation. “Common divine actions in which origin is prominent cluster around the Father; actions in which God accomplishes his plan cluster around the Son; actions in which created things are finalized cluster around the Spirit” (54, emphasis added). 

Based on the doctrine of appropriation, “we should learn to associate him [the Holy Spirit] and his work with the conclusion, completion, and perfecting of all God’s work” (56).

Chapter 3: The Holy Spirit and the Father

This chapter considers God the Holy Spirit in relation to God the Father. Sanders begins with the Old Testament.  In the Old Testament, God the Father promises to send forth (or “pour out”) his Spirit (62).  The pouring out of the Spirit is seen as the final, culminating event (63). According to Sanders, there are three advantages to looking at the outpouring of the Spirit from the Old Testament first: 

1. Anticipation. “The promise-and-fulfillment approach helps us retrace, in our own understanding, the actual historical developmental way God made himself known” (64). 
2. The Father. “The prophetic approach highlights for us the relation between the Father and the Spirit” (65). The Father desires to pour out his Holy Spirit on all flesh (65).
3. Eschatology. “We get to know the eschatological Holy Spirit as the one whom the Father promises to send in the last days, and then we meet him in person when he is poured out in fulfillment of the promise” (65–66). 

“God the Father’s plan has always been to dwell among his people, and the Holy Spirit is, in person, the fulfillment of that plan” (68). When Sanders speaks of God’s desire to dwell among and in his people, he adds two clarifications: 

1. God’s desire to dwell among his people does not come from any lack, deficit, or neediness on God’s part (70). 
2. To dwell among and in his people, God overcame sin through Jesus (71–72). 

The result of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is worship: “Just as all divine action comes from the Father, through the Son, and in the Holy Spirit, so all human participation in that action begins in the Spirit, goes through the son, and returns to the Father” (75, emphasis added).  God draws so close to those he indwells that “he supports and empowers our prayers at a deeper level than we can even articulate” (80; Rom 8:26). 

Chapter 4: The Holy Spirit and the Son

This chapter focuses on the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Son, especially the Son’s incarnate ministry. From one perspective, “the work of Jesus Christ prepared the way for the work of the Holy Spirit,” but from another perspective, “the work of the Holy Spirit prepared the way for the work of the incarnate Son” (90). “[T]he very work that the Son did to prepare for the Spirit’s indwelling was itself work that the Son did in the power of the Holy Spirit, by the enabling of the Holy Spirit, or in some other way in connection with the Holy Spirit” (90). For example, the Spirit was directly operative with the conception and birth of Jesus (91) and the entire earthly ministry of Jesus takes place in the power and the presence of the Spirit (93).

The Holy Spirit is also at work in Jesus’ threefold office of prophet, priest, and king: “What prophet, priest, and king have in common is that they are all set apart by God and anointed to fulfill their tasks. The anointing, symbolized by the ritual application of oil, was a special endowment by the Holy Spirit on prophets, priests, and kings. Each of them was anointed, or christened, or Christ-ed, by the Spirit” (97). 

Finally, the Holy Spirit’s special work does not begin until Jesus’ special work reaches its completion in his glorification because the Son’s work “is the foundation and presupposition of the Spirit’s [work]” (101).

The Spirit-Son connection is also important for understanding salvation. Salvation is accomplished in the Son and applied in the Spirit: “we appropriate the accomplishment of salvation to the Son, and we appropriate the application of salvation to the Holy Spirit. This helps us hear the two-beat dynamic of salvation (accomplished and applied) as an echo of the Son-Spirit relation” (108, emphasis added). 

To conclude this chapter, Sanders comments on the eternal relation of the Holy Spirit to the Son, Jesus: “The Holy Spirit’s relation to the Son, enacted among us for us and our salvation, flows directly from his eternal relation to the Son in the depths of the Trinity” (120). Sanders concludes that the Spirit does proceed from the Son, or more accurately “from the Father ‘through the Son’” and that the Holy Spirit’s “Trinitarian identity is bound up with the identity of the Son, and the Son is never excluded from the Holy Spirit’s essence, person, way of being, or action” (117–18). 

Chapter 5: The Holy Spirit Himself

The Holy Spirit “is a person who often behaves impersonally” (127). The Spirit is a person like the Father and the Son, but the Bible frequently speaks of the Spirit in nonpersonal terms, such as wind, fire, water, and oil (126–32). With that being said, “Holy Spirit” is the name most frequently given to the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, but he is given a myriad of other names throughout Scripture that tell us about him and bring out different aspects of pneumatology (132–39). 

While Christians are permitted to pray to the Holy Spirit, the Bible’s focus is that we pray in the Holy Spirit: “while it is possible for Christians to pray to the Spirit, for the Spirit, and in the Spirit, the Bible overwhelmingly focuses on the latter. Prayer in the Holy Spirit, understood in its full Trinitarian context, is the very shape of New Testament devotion” (139). 

Sanders admits that summarizing the work of the Holy Spirit is extremely difficult to do succinctly, which is why most scholars make lists of the works of the Holy Spirit (144). With that being said, Sanders attempts to summarize the work of the Holy Spirit under two categories: “(1) the Spirit applies the work of Christ, and (2) the Spirit indwells believers” (147). 

Sanders concludes this chapter with a few comments on the Holy Spirit’s relationship to Scripture: “The Spirit superintends the Scripture from both ends, at its origin point and at its reception. When we speak of the Holy Spirit’s work in the origin of Scripture, we speak of inspiration . . . . When we speak of the reception of Scripture, we speak of illumination” (152). 

Appendix: Rules for Thinking Well about the Holy Spirit

Sanders lists 27 rules for thinking well about the Holy Spirit that I think are worth quoting at length. 

1. When you set out to study the Holy Spirit and find him expertly pointing to the Son or to other theological truths, follow his lead by paying attention to those things. You will end up understanding the Spirit better by obeying him than by resisting his pointing. 
2. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is one of several doctrines of Christian theology, but it is also the doctrinal background of every other doctrine and of all real theological knowledge. Watch for the Holy Spirit in every doctrine. 
3. Remember that the Holy Spirit surrounds and empowers Christian life and thinking, which often places him not out in front of our attention but back behind our power of attending. 
4. Don’t try to be more spiritual than Jesus and the apostles by forcing a reference to the Holy Spirit into every statement. Jesus and Paul often left the Holy Spirit unmentioned even where we would expect them to name him. 
5. If somebody is neglecting the Holy Spirit, the first way to correct that tendency is to recognize the Spirit’s presence and power in the main, central things of the gospel. Resist the urge to rush off toward a special, unfamiliar zone where the Spirit is supposedly lurking. 
6. The Holy Spirit is always already at work before you recognize his activity, and when you recognize him, it’s because he is at work enabling you to do so. He is the prevenient person. 
7. Remember that if you know the basics of the doctrine of the Trinity, you already have your bearings for the most important facts about the person and work of the Holy Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity is the natural home of pneumatology. 
8. Never think of the Holy Spirit as only a third of God. Always confess that he has the full divine essence. 
9. Remember that the Holy Spirit is in God and from God. His being from God is revealed in his mission, but it is based on his eternal procession. 
10. From, through, in. The outward works of the Trinity are inseparable but distinct, and everything God does is done from the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. Rehearsing this formula is a great help to locating the Spirit’s work. 
11. Just as creation is appropriated to the Father, consummation is appropriated to the Holy Spirit. It belongs to him to bring things to completion, because completion is instructively like his place in the Trintiy. 
12. The Father’s promise to pour out the Spirit on all flesh is a salvation-historical reality so big that it gives structure to the whole Bible.
13. The outpoured Holy Spirit gives believers a gracious ability to pray rightly. 
14. The Holy Spirit has a double depth, deep in God and deep in us. As a result of this nearness to us, his peculiar office is to strive with us, groan with us, and be within range of being grieved. All of this is because of his double depth, and not because he is in himself anything less than almighty, immutable, and impassible. 
15. The Holy Spirit proceeds principally from the Father, through the Son. He is eternally the Spirit of the Father and also the Spirit of the Son. 
16. The Holy Spirit permeated the life of Jesus Christ at every point, but his presence is especially evident in the virginal conception, the baptism in the Jordan River, and the turning point where Christ ascends and the Spirit descends. 
17. The Spirit is the anointing that constitutes Jesus as who he is, the Christ (anointed, Messiah). In this anointing, Jesus is prophet, priest, and king. 
18. Christ did not send the Holy Spirit until his ascension and seating at the right hand of God, because the Spirit’s sending is the result of the completion of the Son’s work.
19. The accomplishment of redemption belongs to the Son, while its application belongs to the Holy Spirit. Maintaining these appropriations helps us order our entire doctrine of salvation. 
20. We must take our doctrine of the Holy Spirit from Scripture and accept it for what it is and is not. Failure to do this will leave us vulnerable to a desire to make up all sorts of specific details about the Spirit in an effort to make him seem more real to us and to improve on his self-revelation. 
21. In biblical revelation, the Holy Spirit is a person who sometimes behaves impersonally. If we maintain both sides of this truth, we can benefit from using the impersonal emblems of the Spirit to know him better personally. 
22. While “Holy Spirit” is a special, definitive name for the third person, it takes on this definitive form over the course of Scripture, and he goes by many other names both before and after this special name comes together. This is great. 
23. Though it is permissible to pray to the Holy Spirit, we should observe Scripture’s proportionality and be glad to pray always in the Holy Spirit, only sometimes to him. When we do pray to him, it is also wise to make explicit connections to the other persons of the Trinity. 
24. It is characteristic of the doctrine of the work of the Spirit that it is expressed in lists, wonderfully various lists of numerous things the Holy Spirit does. 
25. Be vigilant not to let the work of the Holy Spirit be parceled out to other things and other doctrines, leaving the Spirit underemployed. We are most tempted to replace the Holy Spirit with our other favorite doctrines. 
26. The Holy Spirit speaks to us in all of Scripture but very rarely in his own person. Instead, he is the one who brings us the voice of the Father and the Son and the prophets and apostles. 
27. The same Holy Spirit who inspired the writing of Scripture illuminates the reader of Scripture, and bears witness with us in a confirming testimony in our own hearts.