The Church as the Community of the Holy Spirit

The Church as the Community of the Holy Spirit

            Spring was an interesting time for the earliest community of those gathered together as disciples of Jesus. After following this great teacher around for about three years, spring brought rather amazing experiences. First they witnessed the death of their beloved leader, a tension which was resolved a few days later when they found the tomb empty and Jesus in their midsts. For forty days during this delightful Spring they were able to interact with this risen Jesus, experiencing with their senses the dawning of a new era. One day, however, Jesus departed, saying as he left, "This is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” He continued by saying, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." [1]

After about ten days of gathered prayer, on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit indeed came upon the gathered community, giving them power, and insight, and wisdom to be used in mighty ways for the Kingdom of God. What was an association of like-minded followers became a community united in the very power of God working in their lives and in their midst.   It is for this reason we can understand the nature of the church as being a true Community of the Holy Spirit. In this paper, I will seek to examine at least in part what it means to be such a community. I will do this by examining some of the thoughts of two theologians from very different traditions who have greatly contributed to the concept of the Church as the community of the Holy Spirit. My goal in this is to simply offer a taste of a broader movement which is re-examining the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church, and is attempting to reflect the Pneumatological emphases of the earliest church in a way which seems to have been lost to much of Christian history.

Vladimir Lossky was an eminent Orthodox theologian of this mid part of the last century. He sought to create a dialogue between the Western and Eastern churches, and with this helped to communicate the richness of the Orthodox Pneumatology. [2] According to Lossky the Holy Spirit is the image of Christ to those who believe in him, continually enlightening and informing the believer concerning the source of our salvation, and leading us into greater understanding of the one who saves. Yet we do not have a similar image of the Holy Spirit that would enlighten us concerning the work of this third member of the Trinity. The Son points us to the Father, and the Spirit points us towards the Son, each giving us insight into the nature of that which is pointed to.

But the Spirit remains mysterious to us, as we do not have another image from within the Trinity from which to learn, leading Lossky to say that “the doctrine of the Holy Spirit has the character of a secret, a partially revealed tradition.” [3] The person of the Holy Spirit diverts attention towards the Son revealing the truths of Christ and the Father to us, communicating to humanity the “fire of deity” and “uncreated grace.” [4] The Holy Spirit also opens up the divine life within us, and allows us to participate in the fullness of divinity.

            This fullness is not one of individualistic pursuit, nor of isolated undertaking, but is rooted in the life of the community of the Church which the son has united into one undivided whole. The Son has gathered together people to become one under his headship, united in their pursuits and fellowship together. Lossky uses Ephesians 1:22-23, however, to show that there are two different aspects of the church which correspond to the two persons of the Son and the Holy Spirit. “The Church is body in so far as Christ is her head; she is fullness in so far as the Holy Spirit quickens her and fills her with divinity, for the Godhead dwells within her bodily as it dwelt in the deified humanity of Christ.” [5]

Christ is the head, but the Spirit is the life of the Church, filling, guiding, indwelling those who have been united by Christ and have accepted the salvation which allows us as a community to seek after union with God. However, the work of the Spirit is substantively different in another way. For while the work and goal of the son is to bring unity and wholeness, gathering together those who have been scattered, in the church of which he is the head, the work of the Holy Spirit is to take that which has been made whole and bring diversity to those individual parts. Christ transforms human nature, allowing humanity to find wholeness and restoration, and restores community to humanity. The Holy Spirit is more “personal”, dealing with each person in the church, allowing the individuality and personality of each believer to find his or her own fullness, “marking each member of the Church with a seal of personal and unique relationship to the Trinity, becoming present in each person.” [6]

Although we are bound together in a community, our own distinct personalities are not swallowed up into the whole, but rather our impoverished selves are made whole in themselves through the personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit, which enables us to then be bound to other “whole” persons within the unity of the Church. For even as the Trinity is of one essence made up of three persons, so too is the church one unity made up of many persons, under the headship of Christ, but diverse through the work of the Spirit. The Spirit opens up the divine life in each person, conferring grace and manifesting the divine within us so that we co-operate with the divine will.

The fullness of the deity becomes revealed in each believer through the work of the Holy Spirit, in unity and diversity within the Church, so that we can say that the Son reveals the Father, the Holy Spirit reveals the Son, and now the Church manifests the image of the Holy Spirit. For although there is no image of the Spirit within the Godhead, this image has been conferred upon those who believe in the Triune God, and are unified under the headship of Christ, and filled with the Holy Spirit, so that as the Church we reflect God to the world. Thus one can say that as the Community of the Holy Spirit we as the church are, as a whole, an incarnation of the Divine.

Clark Pinnock is a modern theologian who is willing to explore the boundaries of evangelical thought. The Spirit is, in Clark Pinnock’s thought, revealed in the Gospels as being the bond of love between Father and Son, mediating their relationship, and also “evoking its ecstasy”. [7] It is the creative force that actively and continually works in this world drawing us in hope and love towards the relationship with God that was intended for us to have. “By the Spirit we access the presence of the Father through Jesus Christ” and we “are swept into a divine world of mutual love and begin to experience the very goal of our nature as spiritual and social beings.” By understanding the Spirit as the “ecstasy” of the Trinity we see that God is not a solitary fortress of being, but rather a loving community, an “open circle”, and “a source of pure abundance”. [8]

One of the clearest marks of this continuation of the Spirit of Jesus in our lives is the establishment and work of the Church in this world. The Church is not founded on human rationale or competency, but instead is imbued with the life, leading, and especially the power of the Spirit. According to Pinnock, then, a “Spirit ecclesiology focuses not on the quality of the members, but on the power of God at work in and through them.” [9] As the Church we are not primarily to recite philosophical theology, but rather “the main rationale of the church is to actualize all the implications of baptism in the Spirit.” [10] It is the power that makes us the Church, as seen in the life of Jesus and now given to us by the same Spirit. Because we share the same Spirit, we are bonded with the Son, and now share in the community of the Trinity itself. As the Spirit is the bond between the Father and the Son, we now share that bond in eternity, and in fact share a bond with all humanity through the unity that the Spirit provides. [11]

            Pinnock delineates three areas of the life of the church that show this unity and power that comes through the work of the Spirit in our lives. [12] Through the Sacraments we reunite the spiritual and the physical in our worship, receiving the gifts of grace of the Spirit through physical expressions and participation, just as seen in the incarnation of Jesus. God is concrete, and through the sacraments we are given concrete grace. [13] In the charismatic presence of the Holy Spirit is the works of power and visible signs of the Holy Spirit in our communities, showing that God is not theory, but true power working in marvelous ways restoring and edifying those within, and outside, of the community. Thirdly, the Spirit brings power not only for our own benefit, but rather that we might become true disciples of Jesus, and continue the spread the message of his kingdom to the world. This missionary enterprise is not dependent on techniques or theory, but on the power of the Spirit working in the Church, and those hearing and seeing the message of the church.   When the church is at the command of the Spirit, its deeds, words, and activities are empowered by the Spirit so as to point to true life for all humanity and will draw people from all backgrounds into the community of the Spirit and into fellowship with the Triune God.

[1] Acts 1:4-5, 8. NRSV.

[2] A pursuit of several of his books. In this brief study, however, I will focus on The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998)

[3] Lossky, 161. See also Lossky, 84ff; 1 Cor 12.

[4] Lossky, 162.

[5] Lossky, 157.

[6] Lossky, 168.

[7] Clark Pinnock, Flame of Love (Downers Grove: IVP, 1996), 37.

[8] Pinnock, 38.

[9] Pinnock, 114.

[10] ibid.

[11] See Pinnock, 117.

[12] Pinnock, 119ff. Cf. 1 Cor. 10-15.

[13] Pinnock, 129.