A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. John A. Vissers, formerly the pastor of Seymour Community Pres. Church in North Vancouver, B.C., is currently a PhD. student at the Toronto School of Theology.

“The Spirit-Empowering Presence’’ was the theme of a theological conference sponsored by the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto from July 16 to 19, 1984. Focussing upon the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, the conference was significant for it represented an increasing interest on the part of academic theologians in this important area, at least among evangelical scholars.

As indicated by the welcoming remarks of Dr. Bernard Zylstra, President of the Institute for Christian Studies, the reformed community has tended to begin its theology with the doctrine of God the Father and creation (theology proper), call attention to the doctrine of the person and work of Jesus Christ (christology and soteriology) within this context, and address the doctrine of the Holy Spirit (pneumatology) as an afterthought. Because this has been the tendency in most reformed theology, it was pointed out by many participants at the conference that much was to be learned from our Pentecostal and charismatic brothers and sisters.

Although the conference was primarily academic in format, with papers being read and responded to by various speakers and followed by a time of discussion, the participants included a good number of pastors and lay people. And although there were a number of participants from outside the reformed community, the conference was primarily an attempt by reformed theologians to address the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, Pentecostalism, the Charismatic Movement, and church renewal.

The conference opened with a public lecture by Richard Mouw, Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College and Professor-Elect of Philosophy and Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary. In his lecture, “Life in the Spirit in an Unjust World”, Mouw suggested that it was possible to develop a Christian ethic along Trinitarian lines and that it was in fact possible to discern such developments in different segments of the Christian church and at different periods of the church’s history. An ethic which focusses upon God as Father, for example, stresses obedience to the law which God gives in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament (worked out variously in Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed theology). A Jesus-centred ethical emphasis is one in which there is an attempt to imitate what Jesus would do in any given situation. Here the person and ministry of Jesus provide a new moral substance beyond the law. Mouw suggested it was possible also to discern an ethic of the Holy Spirit in the history of the church and to develop such an ethic for the Christian life in an unjust world today. He argued that life in the Spirit requires an active pursuit of societal justice and that the pursuit of justice in society needs life in the Spirit as its basis. Christian ethics and Christian spirituality are not then antithetical. There was some discussion after Mouw’s lecture as to what extent we could speak of the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the individual Christian believer, the corporate Christian community, and the unjust world in which we live, and how these might be related. Mouw’s lecture set the parameters for the widest possible discussion throughout the rest of the conference.

Two papers were read by Professor James Dunn of the University of Durham on the first full day of the conference. The first paper, “Jesus and the Spirit”, was an attempt by Dunn to re-examine and develop further his earlier work on Jesus’ own experience of the Spirit (see his book Jesus and the Spirit) and “the rich Spirit-christology of different New Testament writers” (see his book Christology in the Making). Dunn’s second paper tackled the topic. “The Spirit and the Body of Christ” and focussed on the Pauline theology of the Holy Spirit in relation to christology and ecclesiology. In it Dunn argued that the church ought to be the church of the Spirit of Christ and as such death and resurrection, even in the life of the church, must be taken seriously. He concluded his paper with these challenging words:

“If my final reflections were to the point, it follows that we should be looking more carefully at whether our corporate life reflects Good Friday as much as Easter Sunday. Do we recognize the presence of death as quickly as we should? Ought our congregations to be looking together at our church structures to check what features of their corporate life ought to be allowed to die? nay, encouraged to die? nay, even put to death in hope of the resurrection to life! I would not pretend that this is an easy task. It is hurtful when part of the corporate life of the body dies. But then part of the sharing in Christ’s sufferings is the sharing of the sorrow and anguish of death with those of the body most affected by it. Or again, are we not too much concerned with being faithful to the voice of past generations and being responsible to the generations yet unborn that we are unable to listen as we should to the voice of the Spirit in the here and now? The picture of life as a pilgrimage in a foreign land where we have no continuing city is too uncomfortable; we like our carpeted sanctuaries and our pipe organs too much; the thought of living in a tent has lost its appeal! And yet, and yet, which of these pictures is truer to the followers of one who had nowhere to lay his head?”

If what Dunn was saying is correct surely it must affect the way we think about church renewal, especially in the Presbyterian Church in Canada!

Gerald Sheppard, Associate Professor of Old Testament at Union Theological Seminary, New York, and a pastor within a pentecostal denomination in the United States, opened the second day of the conference with a paper called, “True and False Prophecy – Discerning The Spirits”, in which he examined “the problem of discerning true and false prophecy, especially regarding the criteria used for discernment.” In addressing this subject, Sheppard examined Jeremiah 28 closely and commented on “the changing role and function of prophecy in ancient Israel, particularly in response to the canonization of the Hebrew Scripture.” Relying heavily upon a social, economic, and cultural analysis of the place of prophecy in ancient Israel, Sheppard attempted to make some observations and draw out some implications for Christian prophecy and the criteria for its discernment. Much of the discussion following this paper centred around the issue of whether such an analysis does not in fact reduce the truth of the Word of God given in prophecy to a sociological description of competing factions within a community of faith, so that no ultimate criteria or judgements concerning prophecy are in fact possible. It is easy to see the importance of this issue if we are going to grant a place for prophecy in the church today. Who are the true prophets and what criteria can be used to distinguish the true parties of prophets from the false?

Two other papers were presented on this second day of the conference. The first, “Life In The Spirit: Some Biblical and Theological Perspectives”, addressed the relationship of the Holy Spirit to eschatology and was given by Richard Gaffin, Jr., Professor of New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary. The second, given by Ian Rennie, a Presbyterian minister and Dean and Professor of Church History at Ontario Theological Seminary, was titled: “The Charismatic In British Protestantism: Undoing The Protestant Prohibition 1825-1835.” Dr. Rennie’s paper was a most fascinating historical case study which examined the emergence of a charismatic style Christianity in 19th century British Protestantism and focussed particularly upon the life and ministry of Edward Irving and his Catholic Apostolic Church. Having situated Irving’s movement within the wider context of what was taking place in Confessional Anglicanism and British Protestantism in general, the discussion which followed his presentation included a consideration of the theological affinity between the Puritans, Irving, and present-day Pentecostalism and the implications of this for charismatic renewal in the church today.

The conference concluded with papers presented by Jan Veenhof, Professor of Systematic Theology at the Free University of Amsterdam, and George Vandervelde, Professor of Theology at the Institute for Christian Studies. Veenhof s paper, “Charismata – Supernatural or Natural?”, addressed the issue as to whether the charismatic gifts – the gifts of the Holy Spirit or the charismata – are best understood as new capacities given by God to the Christian community’ and therefore unique to that community or whether they might be best understood with reference to the context of that which God has already given, that is to say a natural capacity “animated and enlivened by the Spirit to some unusual degree.” After exploring these two positions, Veenhof argued that the problem had to be situated with the wider theological issue of nature and grace, expressing his conviction that the problems of the nature-grace scheme in connection with the natural-supernatural dichotomy of the charismata may be overcome by taking the Protestant and reformed idea of the covenant relationship fully into account. The charismata, then, must not be interpreted as being substantive but relational:

“In that case we don’t mean that this person acquired other ‘substances’, ‘qualities’, or whatever, in a quantitative sense, next to or in place of that which was already present. No, it is the same person, but he or she is now in a different situation, in a different relation, and has thereby become a different person.

“It is in this sense that the Spirit want to turn us into different people, also by means of charismata – not into religious supermen, but into ‘men of God’ who are ‘perfect’, ‘thoroughly equipped for good work of every kind’ (2 Timothy 3:17).”

Vandervelde’s paper dealt specifically with the gift of prophecy. In it he argues the thesis that “the special gift of prophecy is a catalyst for the general office of prophet and vice versa.” After explicating his understanding of the gift of prophecy in relationship to the office of prophet and in the context of the prophetic church, Vandervelde concluded by arguing that “one may speak of an ongoing special revelation, which would be denatured if stripped of a verbal component”; that “the exercise of the particular gift of prophecy should be regarded as a normal manifestation of the living Christ in his community”; that “those particularly gifted as prophets are distinct from fellow believers only in being the somewhat more sensitive ear of the body”; that “any insight into the Lord’s will, whether couched in painstaking reflection, manifest in natural wisdom, or expressed practical know-how, is at its core like prophecy in that it is a response to the manifestation of Christ.” Vandervelde further concluded:

“The exercise of the particular gift of prophecy can be edifying not simply because of its specific content but also because its very occurrence i) reminds the believing community that it is the privileged locus of the manifestation of Christ, and ii) continually challenges the community to be sufficiently mature in Christ, immersed in the Scriptures, in tune with the Spirit, and in touch with his groaning creation to be equal to the task of weighing the content of any prophecy.”

In sum, Vandervelde, to the surprise of many, argued from a reformed perspective for the exercise of the gift of prophecy in the contemporary church in such a way that the charismatic element of the gift was not denigrated. To be sure, the number of times that the gift of prophecy was discussed during the course of the conference indicates that it is still one of the main issues which makes many wary of the Pentecostal experience and the charismatic renewal. Vandervelde’s paper addressed this problem directly in a most helpful way.

The most remarkable aspect of the conference to my mind, then, was the degree of openness on the part of the reformed theologians and pastors…

The most remarkable aspect of the conference to my mind, then, was the degree of openness on the part of the reformed theologians and pastors to Pentecostalism and the charismatic renewal, the sincere desire to articulate a biblical and contemporary doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and the welcome absence of polemics in the presentations and discussions. So impressive were these aspects of the conference that Gerald Sheppard expressed his appreciation for the manner in which both his theological and biblical work as an Old Testament scholar and his background and experiences as part of the Pentecostal church were received by the participants of the conference. Clark Pinnock, Professor of Systematic Theology at McMaster Divinity School in Hamilton, in his response to the concluding paper of the conference called upon the conferees, especially the pastors, to consider how a new openness and a fresh approach to the person and work of the Holy Spirit, which he felt had come out of the conference, might affect the church in Canada.

It is commonly supposed by many in the church that theology is an impediment to renewal. Though much of theological reflection often tends to be academic, it does not necessarily follow that such reflection is irrelevant to the concerns and experience of the Christian believer in the church and in the world. What this conference in fact demonstrated was an attempt to do solid constructive biblical theology from a primarily reformed and evangelical perspective, but to do it with a willingness to be instructed by what was happening in the life of the church, both from within and beyond the reformed community. Many evangelical theologians have argued for the importance of theology in the renewal of the church. This conference on “The Spirit-Empowering Presence” represented a model for such a theology – a theology which is both biblical and contemporary; a theology which is responsible to the church and seeks to serve the Christian community; a theology which does not disparage the intellect but is open to the working of God’s Holy Spirit in all areas of people’s lives; an evangelical and reformed theology willing to be in dialogue with others in the Christian community. If renewal is to take place in our church it will be partly in measure due to such a theology and opportunities for theological discussion and reflection such as offered in this conference on “The Spirit-Empowering Presence.”