A Brief Book Summary from Books At a Glance
by Steve West
Table of Contents
Introduction: Haunted by the Holy Ghost
1 Meeting the Holy Spirit
2 The Holy Spirit in the Trinity
3 The Holy Spirit and the Father
4 The Holy Spirit and the Son
5 The Holy Spirit Himself
Appendix: Rules for Thinking Well about the Holy Spirit
Summary
Introduction: Haunted by the Holy Ghost
Since every Christian has the Spirit of Christ, every Christian knows the Spirit in the most important way. We need to know the Spirit better, and this requires a unique approach because how we get to know the Spirit is not identical with how we get to know other human beings. The Holy Spirit points us to the Son, turning our attention to Jesus Christ. When the Spirit is powerfully at work in us, our focus is on Christ. He opens our spiritual eyes, allowing us to see the truth, beauty, and depths of our salvation and theological truth. In fact, the Spirit does not merely introduce us to new ideas, he forges connections in our knowledge so that we can grasp the coherence of biblical truth and the interrelatedness of biblical doctrines. We cannot study the Spirit in isolation from other doctrines; our doctrine of the Spirit should be formulated through the Spirit’s own work. This book introduces the Spirit to those who already know him, moving from the big picture to the smaller individual parts. Many readers already know many things about the Spirit, and this book hopes to provide a framework in which those truths can be organized.
Chapter 1: Meeting the Holy Spirit
When we become aware of the presence of the Spirit, we realize that he was present before our awareness of him. In fact, our awareness of the Spirit comes from him in the first place. Human beings cannot live without breathing, and breathing presupposes a vast, complex system of reality much greater than we are. There is an obvious analogy between our dependence on God and our dependence on air, even though there are also clear differences. The Spirit is all around us, but he is also personally related to us. Although we require a particular environment in which to live, God does not. God is fully self-sufficient and independent: he is his own environment. God’s life comes from himself, and our life is dependent on his. Without the Spirit, we would have no spiritual life. God’s breath is intrinsically part of him, whereas ours is not. We are created to live according to the Spirit, and he is the principle of our new life. We could not exist and live without him, but he has always existed in God. It is God’s design to deal with us through his Spirit. The Spirit is eternal, but in God’s unfolding revelation the Father, then the Son, and then the Spirit are made clear. Long before he was the focus of discussion in Scripture, the Spirit was at work revealing God and causing people to know God. The Spirit is the presupposition of our knowledge of God; he is the presupposition of our knowing the Father and the Son. Even in the Gospels, the Spirit is in the background, with the attention focused on the Father and Son.
The presence and role of the Spirit is often implicit rather than explicit. Divine revelation is not completed until the Spirit is revealed and completes it, and even when the Spirit isn’t mentioned, he is present. Without the Spirit, there would be no active power of revelation. In Paul’s epistles it is clear that the only people who know the Father and confess the Son do so by the power of the Spirit. “Jesus and his apostles follow the same general rule, speaking always in the Spirit, but only sometimes of the Spirit.” The Bible teaches the doctrine of the Trinity; there is no need to overread an explicit mention of the Trinity into every text that mentions the Father and Son. When a book has made something clear, it can be presupposed in other locations where it is not explicitly highlighted. When the Spirit’s presence is made clear, it is also made clear that he has always been there. The Spirit does not take us past the Father and Son; we are not to learn about him in a way that leads us away from the first and second persons of the Trinity. He lives in the center of God and the gospel; he does not lead us into a new and esoteric realm. The Spirit brings us grace and peace and is vitally involved in the work of salvation. When Scripture introduces us to the Spirit, it is not to rush past the gospel and the Father and Son. God’s Spirit is tied to eschatology, and although he is chronologically last in revelation, he is the piece that completes it and through whom the past makes sense retrospectively. Our knowledge of God in Christ, and our knowledge of the Bible, are only what they are because of the Spirit. . . .
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