Two Distinct Methods Owen and Didymus Every Defend the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit

Divinity and Personhood of God

Blinded by illness at age 4, Didymus (ca. 313–ca. 398) misplaced his sight earlier than he may even be taught to learn. Centuries later, nevertheless, he’s nonetheless known as the “seer” (cf. 1 Sam. 9:9) for his religious imaginative and prescient of the grandeur of God, particularly his work on the Holy Spirit. Didymus, like Owen over 1,000 years later, encountered opposition to a biblical and orthodox view of the Holy Spirit. Didymus argued in opposition to those that denied the divinity of the Spirit (i.e., the Spirit is a divine particular person), and Owen argued in opposition to those that denied the personhood of the Holy Spirit (i.e., the Spirit is a divine particular person), but they each used the identical arguments to defend these distinct claims.

Argument 1: The Holy Spirit Acts in Each Act of God

Didymus’s Deal with the Divinity of the Holy Spirit

Didymus’s interlocutors claimed that the powers and capacities of an individual reveal their nature, simply as the power to breathe underwater reveals a fish’s nature. So if the Spirit had inferior powers and capacities, then the Spirit would have an inferior nature and never be God. However Didymus claimed that the Holy Spirit works inseparably with the Father and the Son, since “those that have a single exercise even have a single substance.” And the Spirit does what the Father and Son do, so he has the identical nature because the Father and Son.

For instance, the Father sanctifies (John 17:17; 1 Thess. 5:23), the Son sanctifies (1 Cor. 1:30; Heb. 2:11), and the Spirit sanctifies (Rom. 1:4).¹ The Father (John 14:23; 2 Cor. 6:16), Son (John 14:23; Gal. 2:20; Eph. 3:16–17), and Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16) all dwell in believers. Didymus concluded, “Now if the Holy Spirit can also be discovered within the very home and temple the place the Savior and Father dwells, this demonstrates that the substance of the Trinity is indivisible.”²

Lastly, concerning the query of which divine particular person established the church, Didymus mentioned that one may reply that it was the Father (1 Cor. 12:28) or the Son (Matt. 28:19), however we should acknowledge that it was additionally the Spirit who “has made you overseers, to take care of the church of God” (Acts 20:28). And Didymus added,

If these whom Christ despatched to evangelize and baptize . . . are these whom the Holy Spirit positioned in control of the church and the Father appointed by his decree, there may be little doubt that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have a single exercise and approval. It follows from this that the Trinity has the identical substance.³

Owen’s Deal with the Personhood of the Holy Spirit

Owen, like Didymus, affirms that “The a number of individuals are undivided of their operations, appearing all by the identical will, the identical knowledge, the identical energy. Each particular person, subsequently, is the creator of each work of God, as a result of every particular person is God.”⁴ But, it isn’t as if “one particular person succeeded unto one other of their operation, or as if the place one ceased and gave over a piece, the opposite took it up and carried it on.” So we should not conceive of God’s operations in creation as being like a divine relay race during which the Son’s actions stop as he arms off the baton to the Spirit. As an alternative, “Each divine work, and each a part of each divine work, is the work of God, that’s, of the entire Trinity, inseparably and undividedly.”⁵

But Owen was conscious that Scripture speaks of “works [that] are ascribed peculiarly to the Father, . . . to the Son, and . . . to the Holy Ghost,” and he used these “peculiar” (i.e., distinct) works to defend the distinct personhood of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.⁶ In books 1, 2, and three of Pneumatologia, he mentioned the “peculiar works” of the Holy Spirit in creation, Israel, Christ, the church, regeneration, and sanctification, noting that the Spirit’s acts of “prepared” with “understanding and selection” (e.g., John 3:8; 1 Cor. 12:11) display that the Holy Spirit is an individual.⁷ Equally, he famous that, after inspecting the Spirit’s acts of educating, witnessing, comforting, and sure different actions (e.g., talking, guiding, listening to, looking), “acknowledge him to be a divine particular person. . . . [A]s it proves him to be an understanding agent, so it undeniably denotes a private motion.”⁸ He thinks that is so clear in Scripture that he concludes, “If the Spirit isn’t an agent, and subsequently particular person, then the Scriptures have been meant to deceive us.”⁹

Argument 2: The Holy Spirit because the Present of God Himself

Didymus’s Deal with the Divinity of the Holy Spirit

Didymus defended the Spirit’s deity because the essence of God by arguing that the present of the Spirit is the present of God himself. Didymus mentioned, “The Holy Spirit is the fullness of the items of God,” and “the products bestowed by God are nothing apart from the subsistent Holy Spirit.”¹⁰ Didymus commented on Romans 14:17 that since “everything of advantage . . . is united to the enjoyment of God” within the Holy Spirit, Paul “most clearly demonstrates that these items are nothing apart from the substance of the Holy Spirit.”¹¹ Didymus drew from Isaiah 44:3—“I’ll pour my Spirit upon your offspring, and my blessing in your descendants”—saying that “nobody ever receives the religious blessings of God until the Holy Spirit precedes. For he who receives the Spirit will consequently have blessings, that’s, knowledge, understanding, and so forth.”¹² Isaiah identifies the Spirit because the present of God, and this affirmation is key for Didymus’s protection of the doctrine of the Spirit’s deity.

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The Holy Spirit is both the infinite Creator who’s the supply of all good issues, or he’s a creature and relies upon upon God to be good and holy. Didymus drew his readers’ consideration to Ephesians 1:13–14 and Ephesians 4:30, which each say that Christians are “sealed” with the Holy Spirit, and concluded that these texts meant that we “tackle his type and likeness,” in order that “the one who’s made a sharer within the Holy Spirit turns into, by communion in him, concurrently religious and holy.”¹³ The Spirit doesn’t merely bestow on us some high quality known as “holiness,” however quite he bestows himself! Because the Holy Spirit is holiness in and of himself, and since we’re made religious and holy by taking part in him, then “it’s clear that he’s not created and never made”—that means that he’s the Creator, not a creature.¹⁴

The Spirit doesn’t merely bestow on us some high quality known as “holiness,” however quite he bestows himself!

Owen’s Deal with the Personhood of the Holy Spirit

For Owen, the “two nice means” of engaging in salvation and the “two basic heads of the promise of God” are the giving of the Son and the giving of the Spirit to God’s individuals.¹⁵ He mentioned that “all the guarantees of God [can] be decreased” to those two items.¹⁶

Utilizing the biblical language of “present,” Owen argued,

As far as I can observe, δωρεά[dōrea], “the present,” with respect unto God, as denoting the factor given, is nowhere used however solely to indicate the Holy Ghost. And if or not it’s so, . . . “the present of the Holy Ghost” [means] not that which he [i.e., the Holy Spirit] provides, however that which he’s. . . . The Holy Spirit is singularly “the present of God” underneath the New Testomony.¹⁷

Owen labored to be sure that his readers distinguished the present itself (i.e., the Holy Spirit) from the consequences of that present. The Spirit is an individual, and individuals are both current or absent (there is no such thing as a in-between). However even our means of talking about individuals as “much less current” in sure conditions (if they’re preoccupied or inattentive) is beneficial right here. We don’t imply that they’re roughly current of their being, however that their results on a state of affairs are much less current than at different instances. Likewise, after we communicate of items and graces as roughly quite a few at completely different instances and to completely different individuals, we’re referring to the results of the Spirit and to not the Spirit himself—he isn’t parceled out in items.¹⁸ Thus, the phrase “present” can refer at one time to the factor given and at one other to the impact of that present.¹⁹ Owen handled the “items” of grace, peace, sanctification, endurance, and so forth on this means—as results of the present itself, the Holy Spirit.²⁰

Their Arguments As we speak

These arguments assist each Didymus and Owen in their very own days, they usually may help us in our day as effectively. These two theological matters might not be continuously mentioned in church buildings, however their neglect can contribute to pastoral issues. Neglecting the inseparability of God’s operations can result in a divided view of God: for instance, some individuals come to imagine that the Son loves us however that the Father (at finest) tolerates our presence, just like the austere father of a birthday boy who lets us within the door solely as a result of his son invited us. Equally, we’re tempted to view salvation in distant and financial phrases during which God treats us merely as numbers in an accounting drawback, and his items are the switch of possessions. We fear about our state of forgiveness, we obsess about our ethical enchancment, we assess which religious items we have now and easy methods to use them, we speak about “grace” as if it’s a substance or merely an motion—all of the whereas forgetting that God’s chief present to us is himself, that every part else in life rests on figuring out him as our Father by the Son by the Holy Spirit. The gospel is just not most essentially that God provides us grace or forgiveness however that God provides us himself as Father within the present of his Son and Spirit. That’s, the triune God acts inseparably for us in giving us himself (see Matt. 7:11; Luke 11:13; Rom. 5:8; 1 Pet. 3:18). We subsequently affirm the Spirit as each really God and really a particular divine particular person.

Kelly M. Kapic and Ty Kieser are coauthors of Owen Among the many Theologians: Conversations Throughout the Christian Custom.

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