The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament

Extract

When the atomic bomb was dropped at Bikini Atoll in operation Grossroads, water on the surface of the sea rushed out from the centre of the waterspout at a speed greater than sound. Many of us will find this an apt symbol of a world that seems to be rushing headlong to disaster because men are in danger of putting the creative energies of the Lord God to evil uses; physical energy in such weapons; biological energy in the depersonalising of women and workers and citizens; and what we can only call spiritual energy in the fields of culture and political societies. The question is how we are to be enabled to reverse this process; and here the doctrine of the Spirit as holy, transcendent power ought to be relevant. It has been rightly suggested that this may be indeed “the back of the whole contribution of Christian thought to the cultural problem of our time. ” One outstanding difficulty in the way of an apologetic statement of our faith is the bias provoked at least among some sections by the scientific outlook. Indeed F. W. Dillistone goes so far as to write (The Holy Spirit in the Life of to-day p. 105) the scientist “is tireless in his search for ‘truth, ’ but again it is ‘truth’ which is contained within his own system. He insists, in other words, that ‘truth’ which cannot be apprehended by scientific methods has no real claim to the name but belongs to the realm of phantasy or wishful thinking.