Start with a um word of scripture and this is supposed to see you through the whole quarter so remember it well so Psalm 1 how blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked nor stand in the path of Sinners nor sit in
The seat of scoffers but his Delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law he meditates day and night he will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season and its Leaf does not wither and in whatever he does he
Prospers the wicked are not so but they are like chaff which the wind drives away therefore the wicked will not stand in the Judgment nor sinners in the Assembly of the righteous for the Lord knows the way of the righteous but the Way of the Wicked Will will perish we
Begin with a word of prayer Lord we stand in your presence only by the power of the spirit he works in US guides us and leads us and all that we are is from his work only we ask that he continue to work in our lives
Help us this quarter to learn well what needs to be learned to be able to articulate the things we are learning and to be able to accomplish the task of this quarter more importantly we ask that the spirit would work in us to form us shape us through your word and
Through Christ’s living presence in Us in the spirit to be what you want us to to be help us to be the men and women you’ve created us to be in service to those around us and in particularly in service to your church we pray these things in Christ
Amen all right so this is systematics 3 you have arrived somewhere last quarter you didn’t notice but you went over the hump yeah and see not only are you almost you’re more than halfway now through your systematic sequence whatever it will be when you come back fourth here who knows um remember says
Master it’s all different but better than that you’ve actually gone over the hump of kind of arriving at being a decent Theologian and this is from my experience of teaching this for a long time and you know Lutheran mind it’s a bunch of bozos in there you know who
Just think they know everything and don’t and you’re just fighting uphill the whole time it’s a drag um but the systems one you get the kind of you know wide-eyed oh it’s all freaking me out I’m reading peer um and then system to is like yeah Okay we okay then I you get
To this course and everything starts kind of coming together everything kind of congeals and um because that’s a really nasty verb and it all kind of starts to come together in a way that you feel like I think I’m starting to kind of get this and this is where
Things get to be a little more fun so this is this is a fun quarter I like teaching this class um so in this course we’re going to be doing Holy Spirit cover the three so in systems one you had the father last quarter was Jesus
And out this quarter we get the holy spirit makes pretty good sense and then along with the Holy Spirit we do Holy Spirit stuff so we throw in means of Grace word and Sacrament we get the Bible finally and we also talk about sanctification and then while we’re at
It why not eschatology sure we got nothing else to do and so there’s a lot going on in this course far too much for the confines of one quarter but we’ll do what we can and we’ll just crank through it so that’s the that’s the goal here all right so the catalog
Description this is study the doctrines of the Holy Spirit the word of God the Christian Life and eschatology exactly what I just told you performance indicators yep got that skip those course goals through readings of primary and secondary sources and class discussions the course will seek to nourishing the students willingness to
Speak Faithfully as Servants of the word appreciation of theology is an essential church practice that’s probably one of my most important things when it comes to teaching you guys Doctrine I want you to see how integral Doctrine is to everything you do that Doctrine is not
Just something to kind of get your head straight now go do real theology or go out and do real practice everything you do is theology everything you do is doct and it’s either good or it’s bad and so the better you know your Doctrine the better you can assess what you’re doing
In the parish and say wait a minute does this fit our confession is is on track and so I’m convinced that knowing Doctrine makes you a better Pastor I really am and I I I see that played out again and again confidence in the word
Of God faith in God Christ in the spirit and a love for the study of Theology and its practical relevance for Ministry and life so the attitudinal things are significantly important that’s what we’re going after there and then we want to encourage the or developing you the ability to describe and understand the
Role of the Holy scripture in the life of the church so like I mentioned we’re going to finally talk about the Bible now systems three after you’ve done four no five systematics courses now finally we get to talking about the Bible and there’s a reason for that and that will
Become clear in time we’re going to construct a proper articulation of the Christian Life as new obedience so we’re going to talk about the whole idea of what sometimes gets called sanctification and that’s a word you won’t hear very often in this course we’re going to articulate an accurate
Understanding of baptism in the Lord’s Supper as means of Grace distinguish Orthodox eschatological expression from erant eschatological teachings and we’ll cover that towards the end appropriately and then recognize and characterize theologically issues and situations in the world the one of the cool things about learning theology is you just get
A theological lens and then you start to see all of life through that lens and that’s good and so you’re going to learn to you’ll start seeing your relationships your your marriage your um friendships all of them through the lens of Theology and you’re going to start analyzing people through theology that’s
Good don’t tell them you’re doing it always but just do it and so this is a a good thing and it’s because you’re seeing the world according to God’s reality finally developing the students their knowledge and understanding of the person of the Holy Spirit and his acan church and the believer Orthodox
Expressions of the doctrines of pneumatology which is just the fancy way of saying Holy Spirit stuff the nature and uses of Doctrine in the life of the church and that’s what we’re going to be looking for now the last stuff is what people zero in on that’s all the stuff
You learn stuff you shove in notes and that kind of thing but it’s really the first two sections are the most significant because that’s what you where you get formed and shaped and long after you’ve forgotten about evees kar’s views on filo and that’s kind of a
Distant memory you learned it for a test and soon forgot it hopefully you will still be shaped by your understanding of how theology works and where you kind of fit in the grand scheme of things and that’s the things I really want to try to impress upon you and that’s the stuff
That happens simply by being present doing the readings and participating the life of the course all right next page we can skip a whole bunch of stuff because that’s all in there because I have to put it there but I don’t really care about it all right so the course
Outline this is March 6th so we do the introduction today and that’s what I’m doing right now and then on Thursday the 9th you will be coming to class armed with congar having been read and congar you’ve got three volumes now it gets sold as one big fat volume all kind of
Run together and so volume one Pages 3 to 62 pay attention to that because later on we come back to congar and it’s in volume three so do note the the page pagination there so you’re not reading the wrong place all right so we’ve got
Um congar volume 1 3 to 62 and this game plan is real simple in here the readings are the readings for that class period read them and come to class I don’t give you a whole bunch of like headings and groupings of readings and telling you
What we’re doing in each section of the course and there’s that’s by intention not just because I trying to save space and time but I like you just to read the readings on their own Merit and kind of crank through that and say what’s this
Guy up to what’s going on and I like you frankly coming into those readings cold and just what’s going on here and see how they hit you and just jump into them see what you get and that way you’re not predisposed to think I should be liking
This guy or I should be hating this guy just kind of see what you think and then we come to class and we unpack um reading the material is exceedingly important and that will become more clear here in a minute so the course Clips right along we deal with the Holy
Spirit and cover that material and then after that we’re going to jump right into um interesting things like um means of grace and the Bible and then we finally get to really interesting things like the Christian Life and ethics and then we get to okay things like
Eschatology and then we’re all done so that’s how the course moves and and it moves right along at a blistering pace so today we’re going to get right down to it you don’t get a freebie so we need to get started about some of the stuff so we’re going to start talking about
The Holy Spirit today and get rolling already so in the context of the Holy Spirit we’re going to be dealing with the guy I figured this out finally fall term Isn’t that cool oo all right so let’s talk about this guy EES Conger any of you heard of EES
Conar all right yeah where Coleman um from you I think he’s a Catholic yeah he’s a Catholic Theologian all right so e Conger is a Roman Catholic Theologian and he actually um lived and function in the 20th century so he’s a 20th century dude so e conar was born in
1904 he was born in 1904 and with a name like EES conar and he guesses on his nationality no he’s a French dude yeah so he’s French so e conar was born in France and in 1904 he died in 1995 so he had full life okay 91 years
And rather rich life so he was a Roman Catholic Theologian he ended up becoming a um Catholic priest and he was of the Dominicans okay so he was a Dominican priest and what does that tell you the fact that he’s a Dominican remember Rome has tons of these you know different
Societies and different orders and different fraternities and all kinds of variety and you’ve heard of the franciscans and you’ve heard of the Jesuits they always say like that and you’ve heard of the you know the Society of Jesus the Jesuits and the franciscans and then there’s the um oh more um
Augustinians sure okay then we have Dominicans so what do you know about Dominicans they’re often if you if you see them in in print you know their title you often see op which stands for some Latin thing but it kind of comes into as order of the preachers order the
Preachers because the Dominicans are not noted for their their homolytic abilities for their preaching and the Dominicans also then are noted for their scholarly work so this is one of the more scholarly studied orders okay like um for example franciscans not scholarly kind of stupid okay keeping in
Mind where um where our present Pope comes from okay so he is not part of the Dominicans okay and so it starts to show all right I think he’s actually Jesuit is isn’t he yeah that’s what I thought and they’re not known for their their um great theology they’re known for their
You know ink to the world kind of stuff and that’s their thing they Society sort of thing but they’re not heavy Scholars Dominicans tend to be pretty serious theologians and doctrinal Scholars that’s their thing so that’s where evees congar is coming from so congar was born in 1904 he’s
French um his story of course is like typical a lot of people in the living in the in the continent then in France so in the um Second World War II in World War II think about his age he’s going to be in his you know young 20s or his
Upper 20s 30s he was a medical orderly and like most Frenchmen he ended up as a p sorry couldn’t couldn’t resist that so he ended up as a p in the second world war he escaped which was to his credit so he’s got some wherewithal there and
He was a p for like five years of the war so he was spent a long time but he did Escape um and then after the war he became very involved in something called the worker priest movement the worker priest movement anybody familiar with that or have any idea what
That’s all about and this was in the 50s so in the 50s he was involved in this thing called the worker priest movement the worker priest movement was kind of a homegrown thing to sort of empower the leoty and it was kind of this idea that
You know I could be having a normal job and be a priest and serve in the world and kind of bridging this Gap a little bit sort of like you know we talk about bivocational kind of thing that’s a little bit what’s going on there but the
Wider sense of this was was kind of this idea of empowering the leoty and having the Ley more involved and this is already in the 50s this is happening in the Roman Catholic Church um it was not received with a great deal of enthusiasm by the Vatican and in fact for his
Support of the worker priest movement and when anything becomes a movement in Rome it’s always greeted with suspicion and so the worker priest movement was greeted with a great deal of Suspicion by the Vatican and because of his interest in this he was actually banned by the Vatican because of his supported
The worker priest movement nevertheless he was a really great Theologian and quite quite brilliant and so in the runup to Vatican 2 he was actually consulted and played a pretty significant Ro role and the Vatican 2 is member in the early 60s so we in the early 60s then the next decade he’s
Involved in the run up to Vatican 2 as kind of a consultant and even some of the Vatican 2 stuff that comes out and some of the stuff that comes down you can see the influence of guys like kongar on this and other guys like Carl
Roner come into play as well but conar is clearly a force at Vatican 2 and he was rather influential there in 1968 tragically he began to develop personal health problems with some neuron neurological problems and then by the time of 1986 he was actually an invalid and unable to function anymore
And so the last nine years of his life he really wasn’t very active and and then died in ’95 but the one kind of interesting part of this whole story is in 1994 he was declared a cardinal Deacon by the Vatican and so bygones were bygones and all was made right and
He was you know kind of died in the good graces of of the church so that’s EV conar story just a little bit now he wrote this book wel um on the Holy Spirit um I believe in the Holy Spirit and the date when he wrote this was 79
So he wrote this in 79 and then it came into English a few years later so the English edition we have was written and published in ‘ 883 so this is a little dated obviously it’s like not not like it’s cut Edge last year kind of stuff
And yet this is still a really good work because of Just The Way Conger is approaching things at least in my opinion I think he’s got a good hand a lot of this stuff and rather interesting angle on these things all right so what
I’m going to do then is I want to share with you just some introductory things I know you haven’t read Conger and prep for the class unless some of you you know were really zealous and downloaded stuff and tracked it down and readed a little bit already which is fine but I’m
Just going to cover some of the material from the general introduction and then for the next class period you’ll jump in with the Old Testament section is where you get started and it’ll be fine so I’m just going to kind of work us our way through what he has as for his
Introductory stuff um one of the things I like about kongar is he has this ability to say things rather turly and you wouldn’t think that’s the case when you’re looking at this huge book you know with these three volumes you know hugely long but he actually does say
Things rather rather succinctly and and kind of in a in a py way I I like that and is kind of a trait he has pretty consistently so that shows up especially in these introductory kind of things so he has a general introduction and some preference and some kind of working his
Way through and he introduces some ideas here that are worth thinking about a little bit first point he he kind of gets that is what is the task of a theologian and he has I think a great perspective on this his conception is following Anselm from the 11th century
That the goal of theology is always Faith seeking understanding and you’ve heard that phrase before because anom said rather famously Faith seeking understanding and there are some in the church who have been critical of this Axiom and they’re they’re suspicious of it you know the idea of Faith seeking
Understanding because it makes it sound like faith is maybe insufficient that we’ve got to add knowledge to it or that it’s inadequate and so there are in my experience there are some lutherans who are actually kind of um kind of little bit cherry or where not too crazy about
This they don’t like this idea but to me this kind of gets what theolog is really all about and I and I I’m really kind of all all on board with this and this is onone who says this conar is quoting onal here but what’s the idea of faith-
Seeking understanding in other words I have this gift of faith God’s given it to me and now what is my task as the as the Christian is to grow in my understanding of who God is and of the world he’s put me in and so when I’m looking to understand his reality his
Truth this is not a bad thing or a negative thing this is an appropriate thing this is what creatures do creatures want to understand their creator they want to understand the creation they’ve been placed into and so it’s in other words there’s not an incompatibility here there’s a complete
Compatibility faith is not supplemented by understanding but Faith drives into a a thirst for understanding and I think this is really a great kind of watch word for any kind of academic work so a Christian has faith and now we seek to understand and in theology we’re trying
To understand God and His reality if I’m a biologist is this still relevant oh yeah I have faith and now what I’m going to do I’m going to learn about the world around me is it whose world is it it’s God’s world and so in other words I’m already kind of slashing
And cutting through all the stupid divide between the secular and the sacred as if well the Seminary we deal with sacred things and we don’t touch secular stuff that’s just nonsense it’s complete nonsense there’s just God’s reality there’s God’s truth and God speaks to all of it so any Christian in
Any line of work can use this as his motto I have faith in God he has given me this reality I’m going to to dig into his world and learn about his reality Faith seeking understanding this is what I’m this what I’m doing this is what
It’s all this is what it’s all about and it’s rather simple when you think about it that way even though people get often quite confused about this now the other thing we come into the problem we have with um this the study about the Holy Spirit is we immediately hit kind of a
Difficulty because the holy spirit is not easily conceived in our minds now think about this a minute Conger talks about this rather rather helpfully so you hear about Jesus what kind of images do you get yeah you get human images you can think about the Sunday School pictures
Or your favorite Jesus laughing picture you’re going to have on your wall someday in your office and all the little kids will think that’s great or whatever you know but you have these concrete images of a man is that appropriate yeah he’s incarnate he is human that’s altogether appropriate so
It’s easy for for us to get our mind around Jesus and even so the son well the son that’s kind of bizarre the Son of God yeah but he’s he’s incarnate in Christ so now now we’ve got to handle on this this is not hard and so now we got
To we got we got that so then we move to the father even the Father the very name oh Father of the son so now we get that so in relation to Jesus Jesus is the son so then the father is the father son we get how father son relationships work we
We have all lived in them or we experienced and some around us we know what that’s about we see how that works so the the father’s not that hard to conceive and we even think about the father often because of you know the creating hand and we think about you
Know Yahweh talking to Adam and Eve and God showing himself and so even in the father I think we it’s easier to get images but when we talk about the Holy Spirit what are your images that you get a bird yes a bird usually white and usually his
Tail’s on fire yeah right and he’s flying down like a bat out of hell I mean a dove out of heaven and his his tail is going in the Flames as he goes right what else do you get wind the wind all right how concrete is the idea of image of
Wind it’s not you know and even this Dove thing is is kind of hard because so is the holy spirit a dove no he’s not and in fact if you actually pay attention to the ex of Jesus on these texts what it says in the gospels is and then the Holy Spirit
Descended like a dove it doesn’t say incarnate in the form of a dove okay it doesn’t say the Holy Spirit took the form of a dove it just says kind of descended like a dove in other words the way a bird would kind of this is what
You get and even when you have the tongues of fire at Pentecost okay the other Holy Spirit manifestation what do we have we have the spirit rested on each like tongues of fire you know so you always think you know the little fire up there burning but it’s not like
It’s the Holy Spirit became fire or was incarnate in fire it’s just that somehow it reminded those who were looking at it kind of like their heads you know got something burning on it but this is whatever that is is what it is and you’re kind of at a loss to describe it
And that’s where we start rning the problems with the Holy Spirit across the board how do you describe what’s Indescribable and how do we get our minds around this and see even our terminology starts to point towards this father son and spirit well isn’t the father Spirit yeah is the son
Spirit he’s God he’s fully Spirit sure so is the holy spirit Spirit Well yeah and so what’s the spirit got that those two don’t that’s a good question you know and the son is distinguished by having the body the father is distinguished by being the father what’s
The Spirit Well he is the connection between them you know it starts to it just gets vague and that’s part of the the problem here now what’s kind of cool is Kar plays on this and he says you know what this is okay because this is
Precisely the mo of the spirit all the time he is always kind of just H little hard to get your hand on and that’s all right it’s how it’s supposed to be in fact Kar uses this term he says the term um Spirit has none of these associations
Of concrete the whole terminology used to speak of the third person is common and absolute the word spirit is equally substitutable for the father and the son so is the word holy so the father Son and Holy so we don’t have anything special going on here and the spirit is
Always kind of like not being crystal clear and we see him sort of kind of pulling back a little bit and so what Kar is going to do is he’s going to actually call this a kosis of the holy spirit all right and you thought last quarter was over over and
Done so you remember kosis from systems 2 what is kosis the emptying okay kosis literally means to pour out you remember that okay so the kosis of of Jesus was what this is Review Time chance to redeem yourself attributes Co Coleman by becoming incarnate he his kinosis is holding back being
Full Divinity of himself yes the nonuse of the full Divinity so he’s not pouring out his divinity his kosis is the fact that he’s not using what’s there remember the idea of wrestling with your four-year-old and letting him win okay so the nonuse of the powers that he has
That’s the kosis of the H of the son so what about the Holy Spirit in what sense is the holy spirit having a kosis so the kosis is the idea of emptying or of pulling back so what KRA says well you see what the holy spirit is he’s always
Emptying of himself because he’s always pointing away from himself somewhere else the holy spirit’s always putting all the attention on the son holy spirit’s giving all the glory to the father holy spirit’s always pointing away from himself and so the very fact that the holy spirit is a little hard to
Pin down or to get your hands on is exactly the way the Holy Spirit wants it he doesn’t want to be the center of attention and this is worth remembering because every once while you’re going to come across one of these kind of pent conally oriented parishioners who says
You know pastor we don’t talk about the Holy Spirit nearly enough and your response should be I think we talk about the Holy Spirit just as much as he wants to be talked about and so in other words we need to keep some perspective on this
You know we don’t talk about the spirit maybe as much but it’s not because the holy spirit is being given short shrift it’s because that’s the way the spirit wants it to be he points to the son he points to the father that’s what’s going
On here and so the Holy Spirit then is evident by what he does not so much in what he is but in what he does and so the Conger talks about this on page um um seven in the Roman numeral 7 so V VII for those of you who are Roman numeral
Illiterate so Roman numeral 7 in the preface in the general introduction he talks about this that there is the kosis of the spirit where he’s kind of pouring himself out I’ll just read from from Conger here for a minute Holy Spirit empties himself in a kind of kosis of
His own personality in order to be in a relationship on the one hand with God and Christ and on the other with men who are called to realize the image of God in his son and so the Holy Spirit really does this cool thing you have God and
You have man and you have the Holy Spirit who is bridging this gap between them so the Holy Spirit indwells us and interacts with us and the Holy Spirit is God and so the holy spirit is this kind of fluid being who is pointing to God and
Pointing man to God and bringing us together and always taking attention off of himself so I think he’s on the right track here all right colan maybe jump the again here but is the the emptying of himself is it also the non-coercion or non yeah you know you can certainly
Go that way you know this is um where you got CS Lewis who says it so well that God can only woo he can’t compel and he doesn’t ravish he just Woos us and that’s the same idea with the holy spirit so this kind of emptying he comes
Across in ways that seem impot and kind of trivial and yet these are his ways of working and so it’s it’s a retiring sort of um not powerful way and yet it’s his working sure I think that you could extend it to that the key that
Conar is getting at here is this idea of always kind of this self- defferential so the holy spirit is never calling attention to himself he’s always putting attention somewhere else he’s always pointing to to this to the to the son always pointing to the father it’s not
About him and he doesn’t want to be the center of attention what is the spirit’s task the spirit’s task is to enable things to function this will become very clear when you’re reading congar for next time and what he’s going to basically do for you next time is he’s
Going to crank through the canonical material so he’s going to crank through OT and N Stuff and look at all the stuff going on there about the holy spirit so that’s what congress’s task is going to be all right and that’s where he goes next so then in his introduction he says
I’m going to begin my study in the classical manner by an investigation of the canonical scriptures so that’s what he’s going to do he’s going to take a look at the scriptures then his next move in the book if you bought it you want to crank through the whole thing is
He’s going to start going through the church history then and look at other things um and there’s a reason for this um because he he wants to look at the whole sweep of the holy spirit’s work but now he’s going to start with the Bible and now he he makes an interesting
Observation he says so we’re going to start with the canonical scriptures let’s see what the Bible has to tell us about the Holy Spirit and all of our Lutheran sensibilities say nice good the Bible how how good for him so he’s not just going to quote Augustine and
Aquinus the whole time and he’s not um he’s going to he’s going to dig into the Bible which is a welcome thing but he points out a problem and this is very interesting from a systematic standpoint this is on page nine he writes there’s of course a problem here raised by
Modern ex Jesus greatly improved methods are used today but this has frequently meant the classical groups of proof texts have been broken up it has been shown for example that Luke’s presentation of the activity of the holy spirit is different from Paul’s but very often what one exog claims to have
Established is contradicted by another anybody ever experienced that and the original ideas contained in one monograph make the arguments in another seem outdated so what he’s describing is a problem of EX Jesus in the late 20th century that exitus can’t seem to agree on what a text actually says anybody
Ever experienced that problem yet today don’t tell the exites this um then he congra continues it is obvious then that the church cannot wait to live and confess its Faith until the exites have reached complete agreement or until Luke and Paul or Mark and John are made to
Dovetail neatly into each other so in other words we’re not going to wait for the exit to tell us what the Bible says we’re just going to go ahead and do it so this is systematics we don’t wait around for the exes we just do our job
The church has never in fact yielded to the temptation to melt the four gospels down into a single one but has always regarded and here’s a great this is an example of his pithy way of saying things but has always regarded the four evangelists as the animals of Ezekiel
Each one walking straight ahead it has spoken of the Gospel as tetramorphic and has included these four forms as they are in a cannon the unity of which corresponds to the unity of God himself boom that’s awesome and he’s just done a whole bunch of stuff there really quickly so we all
Know the four gospels right got Matthew Mark Luke and John and what are the symbols for each you should all know this you got to know how to read stained glass when you see it so Matthew is lion Matthew’s the angel okay and then Mark is lion Luke is the ox the
Sacrifice and John is the eagle and where do those four forms come from from The Book of Ezekiel that’s where they come from that’s the connection and so the four symbols for the Evangelist tie into the prophet Ezekiel and this Vision he has where you have these four
Creatures one’s like an ox one’s like a lion one’s like an eagle One Like a Man and each of the four creatures is walking Straight Ahead in their own Direction and this is that big whirling thing that Ezekiel sees and he’s trying to figure out how to describe it and
Here’s what Congress says so we have named our gospels for the vision of Ezekiel but what’s going on in the vision of Ezekiel each of the four creatures is walking straight going his own Direction so Congress says and that’s what we see in the gospels Matthew does his thing Mark does his
Thing Luke does his thing and John’s over here doing his thing and they’re all doing their thing do they all neatly dovetailed together together not really and their exites the new te guys are going to continually bombard you don’t try to harmonize don’t shove them together no gospel account into one big
Story it says Matthew’s his Mark’s his Luke’s his John’s his coner is on board with that and he says church has never had a problem with this we know we’ve got four accounts and yet we have one God and all four accounts are describing one Cool Reality that’s how we function
And that’s okay so this is exactly what congar is up to here and this is what I mean by he takes you know a whole lot of thought and shoves it into tight little phrases and there’s a lot going on there I think which is kind of cool all right
So this is his his argument then that we’re going to go ahead and start looking at what the Bible says and we’re not going to just wait for Exodus to tell us precisely what’s going on in Luke and how that’s different from Mark we’re just going to read Luke see what
Happens let’s read Mark and see what’s going on and let’s just drive some theology out of what’s going on here because the church has always function this way and that’s okay all right and that’s good I think now the other thing he’s going to stress which is also very
Interesting is he says he believes though that this presence of the spirit doesn’t end with the age of the prophets because isn’t the spirit still present in the church today and so do does the church’s experience of the Holy Spirit have any relevance today for our understanding of the Holy Spirit and
Conar would say yes I think he’s on track here as well that we shouldn’t operate with this kind of idea of a closed Canon so that once Revelation is in the books and officially accepted as Canon that’s it no more Holy Spirit knowledge after that no the spirit’s
Present in his church and so even the experiences of saints can teach us about how the Holy Spirit functions by seeing what the Holy Spirit does and I think this this is right this is this is good all right so he talks about this being then this kind of a series of experience
And manifestations of the Holy Spirit and I think he’s on the right track with that this is good um he also makes the point before he is moving too far along here then that if we’re going to understand the spirit and be able to do theology it needs to be from the context
Of faith and this is an important premise that conar has and I would argue every good Theologian who had the same position that you can’t really do theology if you’re doing it from a standpoint outside the church and there are plenty of people especially in the late 20th century who thought you could
It was strange how in the late 20th century you would have people doing theology and writing books on Doctrine who are not worshiping who are not part of any congregation because they didn’t see the need they could just do Theology and separate it off from that worship life Kar would disagree completely you
Know if you’re not in the church you’re not part of the church if you’re not worshiping you have no business trying to do Theology and what’s interesting is a guy like Stanley howas makes the same claim um if the Theologian is not part of the church worshiping Community he
Can’t do Theology and he should be ignored and I think that’s exactly right conar gets that then conar goes even further and he makes one of these arguments which I find so compelling um this is on page 10 he writes I believe intensely in the the essential Union of
Theological study and a life of praise the doxology and practice of the Liturgy in which by celebrating them we are in communion with the Mysteries now what he’s saying then is that a active worship life receiving word in sacrament hearing the word preached preaching the word is intensely communal with the Holy
Spirit and is actually doing Doctrine and then he goes you can go even further and you have the whole idea that if I’m doing do drinal study is that Praise of God and congra would say yes profoundly and this I want to push hard on because I know there are others who
Are going to tell you things like now make sure you have an active devotional life because your sermon prep isn’t devotional life I say that’s garbage That’s Just Junk one of the cool things about your life is you get to immerse yourself in scripture and in Doctrine
All the time so when you’re prepping a sermon yeah it’s hard work you’re prepping a sermon but is it doxological and is it devotional for you absolutely it is and here’s the cool thing even in this class when we’re going to be doing hard theological work and thinking about
Things thinking about Doctrine it’s praise it’s worship because whose thoughts are we thinking gods and by thinking God’s thoughts and lining our thinking up with God’s thinking that’s Praise of God this is worship this is an important concept see see on Sunday morning when you have Bible study time
That’s not just the academic head time we had our worship time now let’s go do our head stuff no let’s we can continue our worship by going and now engaging our minds in serious study of God’s truth that’s worship too and it’s important I think to kind of expand this
Understanding of praising God with our minds and learning to think hard about things and explore things is kind of a cool way of operating and I think he’s on the right track with this all right good um he he talks about um and this is
Also typical of a good a good writer he describes himself this is the last paragraph on this little general introduction he writes each one of us has his own gifts his own means and his own vocation mine are as a Christian who prays and as a theologian who reads a
Great number of books and takes many notes and so he’s being again rather self you know deferential he he’s said I just pray a lot and I read a lot and take a lot of notes and then I just try to do my best to write and I can relate
To this so kar’s kind of my guy he’s not making a lot of claims for novelty he’s he’s trying to consolidate things he’s trying to bring things together and kind of push it fix the things together but he’s not an Innovative thinker necessarily and I I appreciate that and
I appreciate his approach so he’s on the right track with this I think all right now the last section is his introduction then to volume one when he’s going to actually get into volume one the experience of the canonical scriptures and the experience of the church and
Kind of the history of the Holy Spirit what we learn and so now he has a few little notes in here on as well as he’s getting into this and he makes an interesting comment here um his very first line he writes this now I’m on to page um
17 um this is still Roman numeral 17 I’ve given this volume the subtitle Revelation and experience of the spirit so Revelation and experience of the spirit when you hear those two words all right you hear those words Revelation Revelation and experience of the spirit what is your your reaction to
That how do you process that based on what you have learned and what you’ve been taught when you hear Revelation and experience of the Holy Spirit what’s your reaction to that colan go for it um to turn away from it that that’s bad stuff what’s bad stuff Revelation experience that’s well
I’ve got an and up here okay Revelation and exprience you’re equating them well even that you’re on the right track I go ahead revivalism Pentecostalism that type of that there’s some that there’s some Revelation experience out all right so we you have kind of a reaction to this
Enthusiasm is the technical term for this yes enthusiasm is the term that was coined or not coined but used by Luther to describe those who are looking for special manifestations of the spirit apart from where God has promised to work that’s enthusiasm all right um sometimes
Nowadays we might call it that sounds a little neop Pentecostal and so enthusiasm neop Pentecostalism charismatic and the old 70s terminology it’s all the same thing this is looking for the spirit to do something apart from where he’s promised to work and when you hear Revelation and experience
All right so we’re concerned about that seems to Leading that way anything else what else what other thoughts do you have when you hear Revelation and experience could be totally different but go ahead tell me your thoughts actually go against enthusiasm because Revelation is not internal Revelation
Has to be external all right so you’re going to read it in a very Lutheran kind of way the way you were taught Revelation is based on an extranos you remember that Latin phrase and those of you who have not had me before my rule is if Latin appears on the board then
You’re responsible for it all right so I’m going to put it on the board all right so extranos you should know this extros means outside of me and so revelation we think is pretty safe because it’s extra no it’s not happening inside me it’s outside it’s okay there but what about this word
Experience Kyle well my thought and this kind of goes with that I think is that you can’t separate the two okay um and so your Revelation and experience should confirm each other and in a sense inform each other okay they should be mutually informing okay good
Yes for me when I hear Revelation is is God’s word and then experience is not only how it applies to us but how it changes Us and how it um forms our life all right so the experience is absolutely the kind of the personal application and I think that’s kind of
What we’re after here but I want to unpack this a little bit more because for a lot of us I know how I was raised and what I was taught in my educational process I was taught to be confident in Revelation really suspicious of experience does that ring any bells all
Right so I see a lot of nodding heads now so Revelation cool extros experience starts to smell like enthusiasm starts to smell like the schwar marai that’s your German equivalent the swear marai is you know whoa this holy spirit’s coming and oh man they’re rolling on the floor look
Out speaking in tongues all kinds of weird stuff going on and we’re we’re cautious of this this is the guy coming saying pastor I had a vision last night I’m supposed to be your new pastoral assistant and okay you know really and so yeah just wait uh it’s people have
People have these and they bank a Lot on this so we’re taught to be really wary of this now what Conger is doing though is he’s on track kind of where you guys are going with this a little more he’s he’s arguing that experience is simply
The word he’s going to use to define anytime we as human beings are encountering God’s reality because let’s let’s kind of work through this thing is your Christian faith based on experience it is but that’s a strange thing to hear coming from a Lutheran because you have been taught your whole
Life no it’s not it’s based on what God has done but how in the world you know about it when you were baptized was that an experience you had you probably don’t recall it but you were absolutely the one getting dunked with the water or sprinkled or whatever it was being
Politely done so we don’t get too much water flying around more on that later um so you were the one who was baptized right and if you become a Christian as an adult did you have an experience when you heard about God’s gospel and when you went to communion
The last time were you experiencing the body and blood in your mouth and in your guts did you experience it well if you were awake you should have I would hope you did so we are all always experiencing God’s reality in the context of the Revelation he speaks he
Acts he comes to us and we experience this we should not be anti- experien so I’m going with this and I want you to pull back and dial back a little bit some of your kind of hyper anti- experienc that you have been has been drilled into you we’re not anti-
Experien Jess there logical or through how these must proceed though does revelation always have to proceed experience correct and we would say any experience that is right is going to be based on the Revelation coming from outside now you might not know it at the
Time you might not label it as this is the revelation of the Holy Spirit I’m just kind of aware of something I’m experiencing but the reality is the holy spirit is always the one who takes initiative he’s the one who makes the first move so I don’t have an experience
Of the Divine and then go searching for the Holy Spirit to try to validate this that’s that’s not legit what’s going on is God is working through his Revelation and then we have the encounter and we experience this and that’s kind of where conar is going with this this whole
Thing now conar has some pretty good working definitions so still on page 17 he he writes this he said say so Revelation and experien is this is the ways that are offered to our objective knowledge of the spirit not to our subjective personal experience and see that’s spoton he’s not talking about our
Subjective personal experience where we try to manipulate he’s talking about the ways that are offered to our objective knowledge so I have knowledge I have senses I have perception of things and I perceive these things and I assimilate these things that’s my experience of these things but it’s not about what I
Putting on it but it’s about what spirit’s bringing into me so I’m not assessing and evaluating and then making a valued Judgment of that reality of that Revelation but the Revelation is what is setting the context and then I experience that working in my life that’s what he’s getting at so by
Revelation great definition from congar he writes Revelation consists of what God himself has communicated to us through the history of his people as interpreted by The Inspired prophets and wise men of is Isel and later in regard to the decisive event of Jesus Christ the evangelists the apostles and their
Spokesmen so it’s kind of a long definition but the idea is this Revelation is what God himself communicates to us this is the key thing and this is a very good definition of revelation so Revelation is what God communicates to us through His prophets who are pointing
To Christ in the decisive event of Christ himself and then in the evangelists and the apostles who are reflecting on the Christ event and teaching the church now what conar is going to toy with a little bit and this gets people nervous is has that reflection on the Christ event ceased
With the time of the Apostles and Kar would say no and so while the Canon is closed is the work of the spirit in the life of the church done well no and so is God continuing to reveal himself in the life of the church and we have to be
Willing to say yes every time celebrate the Lord’s Supper is the holy spirit revealing God’s truth to us he is every time a pastor gets in the pulpit and preaches the word of God to that congregation in that time and place is the holy spirit speaking his truth into
The lives of those people yes he’s revealing himself now obviously this Revelation is not at odds with anything that’s gone before it’s quite consistent with it and that’s why we can validate it that’s why with the Marines we can say right it’s it’s jibes with everything here it’s all cool so we’re
Right but it is a continuing Revelation and this is where and I’ll Grant you this even our some of our Lutheran forbears would say Kar you’re pushing the envelope but I think Kar is pushing the envelope in an appropriate Direction and he reminds us that the spirit is
Still very active and very alive and we shouldn’t try to clamp stuff down so neatly just because we’re afraid of abuses of these things abuse doesn’t mean we stop the use of it the spirit is active and Kar I think I find refreshing because he’s a little more tuned into
That and a little more willing to talk about that and I and I think this is not a bad thing saw a hand or thought going up somewhere it might not be in this this realm but maybe later but the contingency of the spirit moving working
On the people is that contingent on the hearer on the preacher on yes yeah see I I I I think we don’t need to pin it down if this preacher is being faithful he’s he’s getting it right and then you know you learn about the stuff in your communication Theory
And your htics classes just because I’m preaching Faithfully will the guy hear it right I have no control over that I could have some guy who’s totally messed up and he I can be preaching an orthodox sermon and he hears it totally wrong you’re going to experience this plenty
You know the person comes and says wow you said this Sunday in your sermon he starts telling you some horrendous crazy idea and well I didn’t say that at all but he heard it and so you know you have to trust the spirit to work even in your
Hearers and I think it is a very much Dynamic much more live thing and I think what congar is doing is he’s paying attention to a little more of the um the dynamism of the preaching task and of the work of the church it’s not it’s not
So cut and dry it’s not like I just get up in the Pulpit you know write recite 10 facts everybody writes them down learns some those 10 facts cool perfect transfer no it’s not that simple and we all know it’s not it’s it’s much more Dynamic than
That yep is the experience just limited to things in the church or just any like yeah good question I think congar is going to say why limit it can the spirit you know work through your family can you have an in you know dialogue with your spouse that becomes profoundly
Important in your spiritual formation yeah you know and so you know this is I’m not I’m not a big fan of guys you say you know I I commun with God in the deer blind Pastor I don’t need to come to church you know right you commun with
Beer in the deer blind um that’s what you’re doing I know um but um but there’s some truth to that the spirit does work through other experience and relationships and even through the created world he does it’s God’s created world and the and so this is back to
Revelation again so we hear Revelation and we have a tendency to narrow it down to special Revelation and we we know oh the Bible but Revelation is also General Revelation so is God speaking to you through the trees and the rocks and the mountains is he yeah it’s his Rock his
Mountain and if you’re tuned in and paying attention and listening to what you’re supposed to hear you might learn something about looking at that stupid mountain and again this starts to sound a little Enthusiast kind of sounding here but this is not far off and how often does Luther talk about the
Power of music or the beauty of the created realm around him and what he learns from that so and how much does Jesus say look at the birds of the field and the flowers of the of the grass so are is that oh that’s just a metaphor no
There’s there’s something going on there and so that’s the that’s what’s happening with conar so Revelation is not just limited to the special Revelation clean cut means a Grace kind of stuff there’s more going on and this is going to be relevant through this course because when we get to the whole
Charismatic stuff and that kind of thing it’s we’re talking about some more we’ll hit this again but I think Kar is is pointing Us in the right direction and has the right sensibility about these things it’s it’s a little unnerving to us frankly because you start moving out
There into nature and the deer blind and sitting on the Mountaintop and communing with God and it’s like all bets are off and you get off in the weird land out there and it kind kind of scary but if you can keep that rained in and grounded
In the the life of the church and the in the concrete Revelation can those things be you know supplementary and Powerful in our understanding of God and his reality i’ would say yeah no problem Chris I mean this is definitely something we’re going to encounter with our parishioners discussing Revelation
Experience but uh coming I mean just in our day and age I know the Pentecostal movement is very big so how do we kind of distinguish Revelation and experience from enthusiasm right and we will get into that we’re not we’re not going to be done with it right now I just want to
Kind of open your filters a little bit so you’ve got running a little more freely um so when then we’ll kind of reput some stringent things on there and kind of help you filter it out but the the quick answer is that anybody who’s going to claim you know special
Revelation by the spirit has to be able to say and here’s how this call sides with everything else in scripture and then the other rejoinder is if somebody’s if the holy spirit’s giving you some kind of special word then what whatever he’s telling me should probably
Be in sync with that and so the guy who comes and announces I’m now supposed to be your pastoral assistant the spirit talked to me last night your response is he didn’t get that message to me yet and so I’m still waiting to hear and so you
Know words that’s how you put the checks and the balances on this kind of stuff and kind of rain it in okay in fact what what will happen before we’re done with this course is I I’m going to load a whole dose of skepticism in here because anytime you want to attribute anything
To the Holy Spirit Beyond what’s clearly recorded in the in scripture and in church you always have to put quotations around it you just have to and and so in fact I’m going to be going the other direction of where I’m going today but by intention so somebody who says the
Spirit told me my response is always how do you know well I may not say that I’m a little more kind and a little pastoral than that but what I’m thinking is yeah right spare me um you don’t articulate those things but you you gently guide
Them but you know how do you know well because it was a good thing how do you know well the spirit really wants me to marry this person no you decided to that’s fine go ahead and marry the person but don’t blame it on the spirit you know
And don’t don’t don’t try to pin it on someone else you know just do that do what you need to do and you know the Holy Spirit told me I should this the holy spirit said that no you know you just came to that conclusion and maybe
It’s a good conclusion I’m cool with that but don’t go dragging the spirit into it all the time because you don’t know it could have just been Satan whispering in your ear whoa say wouldn’t tell me to do that maybe he would how do you know you don’t don’t you don’t know
And so I I think there needs to be a lot more skepticism in how we function as Christians uh in our Bible study uh yesterday we talked about uh Satan doesn’t appear as the devil with pointy horns right he appears as snake was well
Yeah but he he appears as as as one of God’s angels he appears as as a saint he appears Jesus right right right yeah so yeah yeah and so he’s he’s subtle he and so you have to be a little bit smart right exactly yep and we’ll get to that
Stuff a little more all right good so I think he’s on the right track here now conquer thing also goes on still on page 17 he writes middle the first parag second full paragraph We should not interpret simplistically the idea that Revelation closed with the death of the
Last Apostle see that’s where he just spells out what I just kind of getting at you know it’s not like well Revelation stopped when the last Apostle died oh not so much he goes on he says it is as intense and urgent as it ever
Was in the past even though what we can learn from the constituative period continues to be normative so see he’s got this the constituative period in other words the Canon that’s normative but is a spirit still operating on the basis of that normative Revelation well
Yeah but it’s not at odds with it and it’s not going to contradict it and it’s not going to supplement it it’s just going to be confirming that normative Revelation all right so then he he writes this towards the end of that same paragraph I shall not strictly be
Speaking retracing the history of Dogma I shall rather be following history in order to explore the idea that Christians have expressed about the activity of the Holy Spirit and in this I shall try to go beyond the dogma of the third person so he doesn’t want to
Just kind of hang on to the Dogma he wants to look at what’s actually going on what do we learn when we see what’s happening and so this is kind of the cool this what um you know we try to do a little bit in systems 2 this I was
Trying to do is let’s just actually read the story of Jesus and think about it what it’s actually what do you what kind of conclusions do you reach when you just kind of read it without your presuppositions in place same thing with the Holy Spirit what do you learn about
The spirit when you just see what’s going on and that’s what he’s going to do when he runs us through the canonical stud all right now it’s definition for experience so still on page 17 by experience I mean our perception of the reality of God as he comes to us is
Active in us and operates through US drawing us to him in communion and friendship as one being exists for the other another very good definition and the key part is in the first part of it our perception of the reality of God as he comes to us so you see experience is
Not negative at all and it’s not antithetical to Revelation these are not at odds with each other Revelation is god making himself known primarily in Christ and then experience is how God comes to us and then this is our perception of the reality of that and then how he’s active in US operates
Through us and then draws us to him in communion and friendship as one being exists for the other this is pretty cool this is this is right so maybe seems a little touchy feely for you but this is the reality we are human beings we have emotions we have experiences we
Experience these things Luther was all about experience you let’s never never missed this Luther was all about experience he experienced the gospel he experienced the weight of God’s Wrath he was a rather emotional kind of guy that’s not a wrong thing but you don’t base your salvation on that you don’t
Base a certainty of your Dogma on that you simply realize this is how God operates taking into account who I am so I think it’s a good definition of experience all right now Congress says this this is worth debating a little bit bit so let’s see what you think true and
False he writes simply we find ourselves in finding God this is the religious experience par Excellence so what do you think of that we find ourselves in finding God Adam my first no I’m not gonna make you all vote let’s just discuss my first thought is that we don’t find God God
Finds us all right good good response right we don’t go out looking for God he finds me at Coleman that’s not what he said he said we find ourselves in God that so God has found us in finding God he said he did say that right find ourselves in finding God
So God finds us first that’s finding God and we find ourselves all right so you want to put the subject in a different place and that’s fine I can live with that go ahead I I think when we I I agree with Adam but once we get that get
Past that point oh we find God or whatever we do uh we are made whole we are made we who we are supposed to be we are made fly human when we are baptized and red by the holy the only real human in the history of the world um post fall
Was Jesus all right good on track Josh I mean to go off of that um you just have to go to Genesis 1 what does it mean to be created in the image of God um and if that was lost then the only way to have
That back is to have that re be restored by God all right that’s defining God all right good so I agree completely with Adam’s concern so we aren’t going out to look for God and idea of notion of searching for God no God has to come to
Us he makes the first move we are dead in our sins all cool there but now the second notion and this is one you guys are defending quite well I’d also agree with so that in finding God however we want to Define that in the universe in the relationship with God where we
Realize who God the Creator is he can make the first move he reveals himself to us but when God has made this move and he’s established a relationship it’s when we see God as our creator that we finally know who we are um this is what Bon haer was getting
At back in systems 1 when you remember when you reading creation and fall that Adam didn’t really know himself until Eve was created you remember that that’s such a awesome text go back and read it again sometime so Adam didn’t really know himself until Eve was
Standing in front of him and then when Eve’s there it’s like very a woman I’m not that and now he really not in very many obvious ways and then in seeing her he realizes now I know who I am because in a sense the negative reflection back
Shows me more clearly what I’m about and you get the same thing operating with the Creator so the God’s God I’m not so what am I I’m a creature and I really understand what it means to be me only in relation to the Creator now how relevant is this thought in our 21st
Century world of people trying to find meaning and identity in their life how how does this speak to the pursuit of people looking for significance in their living what tells you to look outside of yourself not to go on a journey to try to find yourself
Look deeper in but to look outside to the Creator all right so you’re never going to get anywhere to discovering Who You Are by having your eyes turned into your own navl it ain’t going to happen the more you turn in on yourself the more bewildered and the more lost you
Get the only way you ever learn who you are is to turn your head up and look out and see God the Creator and see Christ then you can start to see who you actually are that’s very true how else is this relevant is it possible for anybody to
Have a full complete human life apart from Christ it’s not theologically it’s not they can tell you they’re fine they can tell you about how great their life is they can put on all the show and all the errors but the reality is no person no
Human being can ever be squared away and be fully human apart from Christ can’t happen so that what that means is no matter how happy and content somebody might look the reality is apart from Christ we know theologically they are incomplete things are out of whack and
So probably the first move of evangelism the first move of any kind of witnessing attempt is always to Simply establish the reality of what it means to be a creature before the Creator and coming to terms with that and that that’s that’s the fundamental sin
What is what is what do Adam and Eve hope to do become like God they want to diminish the gap between Creator and creature and what Christ does is he Resto he restores it again you’re God’s God and you’re not you know okamoto loves the phrase but it captures so much
Which is right what it means to be creature is the key to understanding our identity and that’s what Conger is getting at here so we really understand ourselves when we see God and I think he’s right about that and I think that’s that’s quite good all right good um he
Wraps this introduction up on page 18 his last paragraph he writes I shall not trace the course of that experience of the church and of Christians in ways in which it is expressed as a living reality in spiritual writings of lives of the Saints I shall try to interpret
That reality theologically not by studying or analyzing the spiritual life but rather by attempting to revolve a Theology of the Holy Spirit and his role in the church so he’s not going to delve into autobiographies he’s not going to look at Augustine’s personal experience instead he’s going to look at what has
The spirit done in the life of the church and then from that what can we learn about the Holy Spirit and how he works so that’s what conquer up to so you’ve got a little introduction to conar now and you kind of get a sense of where he’s coming from how he’s
Operating so yes he’s a Roman Catholic but you shouldn’t be afraid of him um and don’t be reading him with you know a huge skepticism always read with caution I don’t care what you’re reading if it’s coming from cph or where it’s coming from always read it with careful be
Paying attention what’s going on you should be to that point now you never read uncritically you should always be reading with a critical eye but you can read anybody and you can gain from them so don’t just look for the negatives look for what’s right here and I think
You’re going to find just a lot right in congar maybe you’ll disagree with me but we’ll see
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