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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2025
If a strong working concept of the Spirit–Word relationship and the means of grace is lacking in many contemporary churches, part of the solution may be a fresh analysis and articulation of those themes. An adequate doctrine of the means of grace will reflect the complexity of the Holy Spirit's partnership with the Word, highlight the Word of God as the one essential means of grace, and throw as much light as possible on why the Word is the Spirit's necessary and perfectly suited instrument for applying redemptive grace in human lives.
1 This article will focus on the Spirit–Word relationship and the means of grace primarily as those doctrines are conceived within a Protestant frame of reference.
2 Credo-baptist churches in particular are often suspicious of the expression ‘means of grace’, because they associate it with sacramental views they reject.
3 The Wesleyan tradition broadens the concept to include practices such as prayer, obedience, self-denial, acts of piety and acts of mercy. See Thompson, Andrew C., ‘The General Means of Grace’, Methodist History 51 (2013), pp. 249–57Google Scholar; and The United Methodist Church, ‘The Wesleyan Means of Grace’, https://www.umc.org.
4 Some Protestant confessions also identify prayer as a means of grace. See the Westminster Shorter Catechism, question 88, and the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, 14.1.
5 Including both justifying and sanctifying grace. Some theologians speak of the means of grace only in relation to sanctification, and some only in relation to justification. See the discussion in Berkhof, Louis, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1953), p. 672Google Scholar.
6 See e.g. Herman Bavinck: ‘Moreover, faith, conversion, and prayer are rather the fruits than the means of grace. They are not objective institutions but the subjective conditions for the possession and enjoyment of the remaining benefits of the covenant. Strictly speaking, the Word and the sacraments alone can be viewed as means of grace, that is, as external, humanly perceptible actions and signs that Christ has given his church and with which he has linked the communication of his grace.’ Bavinck, Herman, Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation, vol. 4 of Reformed Dogmatics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2008), pp. 447–8Google Scholar.
7 The external character of these means remains true even in the case of personal Scripture reading, or when believers address God's Word to themselves.
8 See Berkhof, Systematic Theology, p. 605.
9 Or if baptism and the Supper are grouped together as sacraments, two different forms, verbal and visible.
10 To affirm this is not far from viewing the Word as the means of grace par excellence. See Bavinck's comment on the Reformation stance: ‘Not the church but Scripture, the Word of God, became the means of grace par excellence. Even the sacrament was subordinated to the Word and had neither meaning nor power apart from that Word’. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4.444.
11 ‘The question, then, is not whether the Lord's Supper is a means of grace but how it functions as a means of grace.…it does so through the proclamation of the finished redemption of Christ and the promise of the kingdom to come.’ Russel D. Moore, ‘Baptist View: Christ's Presence as Memorial’, in John H. Armstrong (ed.), Understanding Four Views of the Lord's Supper (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), p. 35. Biblical support for identifying the ordinances as forms of the Word comes from 1 Cor 11:26 (where those who partake in the Lord's Supper are said to ‘proclaim the Lord's death’) and Luke 22:19 and 1 Cor 11:24–25 (where Jesus tells his disciples to partake of the Supper in remembrance of him). Proclaiming Christ and calling him to remembrance are major functions of the Word. Moreover, in Israel's history as well as in Jesus' ministry, symbolic objects and actions were often used to communicate a message from God.
12 J. Todd Billings speaks of ‘the symmetry of God's promise in the gospel and God's promise in the sacraments’. J. Todd Billings, Remembrance, Communion, and Hope: Rediscovering the Gospel at the Lord's Table (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2018), p. 71. Bavinck (Reformed Dogmatics, 4.462, 479) describes the conviction that the sacraments offer no benefit that is not also received through the Word as the mainline Reformed position. On the Lutheran side, Francis Pieper insists that all means of grace have the same purpose and same effect, citing the Augsburg Confession, articles V and XIII. Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, vol. 3 (Saint Louis, MO: Concordia, 1953), p. 108.
13 Those who hold that the sacraments function in a distinctly different way from the written and spoken Word may thus find the ensuing discussion of the means of grace incomplete. Little of what I positively argue about the grace-bringing function of the Word depends on a particular view of the sacraments, however.
14 According to Brian Gerrish, ‘Bullinger's parallelism…lacks the use of instrumental expressions; the outward event does not convey or cause or give rise to the inward event, but merely indicates that it is going on.’ Brian Gerrish, The Old Protestantism and the New: Essays on the Reformation Heritage (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 124. Cf. Jan Rohls, Reformed Confessions: Theology from Zurich to Barmen (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1998), p. 179.
15 No explicit reference to instrumentality is found in statements like, ‘God teaches us by his word, outwardly through his ministers, and inwardly moves the hearts of his elect to faith by the Holy Spirit’ (chapter 18), and with respect to the Lord's Supper, ‘Therefore the faithful receive what is given by the ministers of the Lord, and they eat the bread of the Lord and drink of the Lord's cup. At the same time by the work of Christ through the Holy Spirit they also inwardly receive the flesh and blood of the Lord, and are thereby nourished unto life eternal’ (chapter 21).
16 The statement about the sacraments in chapter 19, for example, seems to reflect instrumentalism.
17 Interpreting John 15:26 as a reference to the Spirit's inward testimony and Acts 5:32 as at least including a reference to inward testimony. See Timothy Wiarda, Spirit and Word: Dual Testimony in Paul, John, and Luke (London and New York: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2017), pp. 115, 196.
18 See article 25.3: ‘Unto this catholic visible church Christ hath given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God, for the gathering and perfecting of the saints, in this life, to the end of the world: and doth, by his own presence and Spirit, according to his promise, make them effectual thereunto.’
19 The image of the implanted Word in James 1:21, where the implanting agent must be God or the Holy Spirit, might also be cited here.
20 Theologians occasionally describe the Spirit's activity of making the Word effective as a matter of working on the Word itself. J. V. Fesko, e.g. speaks of ‘the pneumatically charged preaching of the word’, saying ‘it is this pneumatically charged word that brings salvation, that redeems, and calls into existence things that do not exist’. J. V. Fesko, ‘Preaching as a Means of Grace and the Doctrine of Sanctification: A Reformed Perspective’, American Theological Inquiry 3/1 (2010), p. 41. But while the NT does speak of Spirit-empowered preaching, it attributes the effectiveness of the Word primarily to a work of the Spirit in those who hear it.
21 ‘It is through faith alone that we share in Christ and all his benefits: where then does that faith come from? The Holy Spirit produces it in our hearts by the preaching of the holy gospel, and confirms it by the use of the holy sacraments.’ Heidelberg Catechism, Question 65, version approved by Synod 2011 of the Christian Reformed Church. Cf. the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles, art. 25, and the Marburg Articles, art. 8.
22 Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4.442.
23 Wiarda, Spirit and Word, pp. 75–6; Jacob Adai, Der Heilige Geist als Gegenwart Gottes in den einselnen Christen, in der Kirche und in der Welt (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1985), p. 145.
24 A paradoxical and very Pauline juxtaposition of divine and human action.
25 Cf. the interplay of beholding Christ (as known through apostolic witness) and being transformed into his image by the Spirit in 2 Cor 3:18.
26 Hendrikus Berkhof, The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1964), p. 38.
27 Berkhof, Systematic Theology, pp. 604–5. Cf. Charles Hodge, who describes the means of grace as ‘those institutions which God has ordained to be the ordinary channels of grace, i.e. of the supernatural influences of the Holy Spirit, to the souls of men.’ Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (New York: Scribner's, 1898), p. 466. Philip E. Hughes describes the means of grace as the ‘media through which grace may be received’ in Philip E. Hughes, ‘Grace, Means of’, in Walter Elwell (ed.), Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2001), p. 482.
28 In John 6:63c, πνεῦμα could be taken as a direct reference to the Holy Spirit (e.g. NIV, GNB; cf. Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John, i–xii [Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1966], pp. 295–300), or perhaps to ‘spirit’ in the sense of a new Spirit-produced nature (as may also be the case in the second appearance of πνεῦμα in John 3:6 (see Donald Carson, The Gospel According to John [Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1991], p. 96). Even in the latter case, this passage would still refer to a Spirit-given work of grace.
29 As in the GNT: ‘The words I have spoken to you bring God's life-giving Spirit’. The Greek is τὰ ῥήματα ἅ ἐγώ λελάληκα ύμῖν…ζωὴ ἐστιν. A similar usage of ζωὴ ἐστιν occurs John 12:50, where the sense is ‘his commandment brings eternal life’ (GNB; cf. NIV, ‘leads to eternal life’).
30 See also John 6:44, 65.
31 Passages like John 15:26–27 lead readers to expect that where the disciples are obedient to their mission, the Spirit will also carry out his; and where the disciples do not bear their outward testimony, the Spirit will not bear his inward testimony. I will not enter the Lutheran-Reformed debates regarding the absolute necessity of the Word as a condition for the Spirit's action, and whether or in what sense the Spirit always accompanies the outwardly ministered Word. Those discussions have their place, but to the extent that one foregrounds the practical aspects of a doctrine of the means of grace – the way it can help practitioners answer questions concerning their ministry responsibilities and expectations – it may be sufficient to simply affirm that Christian ministers must communicate the Word if they expect the Spirit to act, and that when they do use the Word, they should expect the Spirit to act.
32 Michael Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims On the Way (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), pp. 754–5. For a Roman Catholic perspective on this question, see Scott Hahn, ‘Scripture is Sacramental’, Crossroads Initiative, 3 February 2016, https://www.crossroadsinitiative.com.
33 Contra Horton, The Christian Faith, p. 754. Gerrish, Brian (Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin [Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1993], pp. 85–6)Google Scholar attributes a sacramental view of the Word to Calvin, citing his reference to the ‘sacramental word’ in Institutes 4.14.1. But in its context, that reference carries a very different sense. Calvin refers to the spoken word at the celebration of the sacrament, emphasising how the sacrament is nothing without the attending spoken word which explains it. That is far different from saying that the Word functions in a sacramental fashion or suggesting we can learn how the Word works by looking at how the sacraments work.
34 An aspect of the Spirit's role that lies outside of this set of images is his work of instigating and empowering believers to use the Word (e.g. Acts 1:8).
35 On Ephesians 5, see Arnold, Clinton, Ephesians (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), p. 35Google Scholar1; Gombis, Timothy, ‘Being the Fullness of God in Christ by the Spirit: Eph 5:18 in Its Epistolary Setting’, Tyndale Bulletin 53 (2002), pp. 268–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
36 Lutherans have traditionally preferred to speak of the Spirit working through the Word (per Verbum) while Reformed theologians have preferred to say with the Word (cum Verbo); although that difference in formulation is not hard and fast. According to Henk van den Belt, the Lutheran confessions ‘maintain that the external Word is a necessary condition for the internal work of the Spirit, while the Reformed confessions say that the internal work of the Spirit is a necessary condition for the effect of the external Word’. van den Belt, Henk, ‘Word and Spirit in the Confessions of the European Reformation’, Religion and Theology 23 (2016), p. 103CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
37 A careful exponent of the central Reformed tradition like Louis Berkhof, for example, can describe the Word and sacraments as channels through which Christ communicates grace (in harmony with the fourth formulation discussed above), while at the same time, describing the Word and sacraments as being ‘productive of spiritual results only through the efficacious operation of the Holy Spirit’ (language similar to the second formulation), and speaking of gospel preaching as an instrument through which ‘the Spirit works the beginning of the new life or of faith’ (the language of the third formulation). Berkhof, Systematic Theology, pp. 604–6.
38 Berkhof, The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, p. 38.
39 See Eph 3:14–19 in relation to Col 3:16.
40 I am assuming a distinction between the Word as immaterial message and the physical organs and objects that might play a role in its transmission and reception. I am also assuming a distinction between a person's mind or heart and their physical brain.
41 To put this in another way, the Word's function as a means of grace pertains especially to the reception of justification, the experience of adoption, and the outworking of sanctification. There are also aspects of human redemption that the Holy Spirit effects without using the Word as his instrument; these include raising the bodies of believers, giving spiritual gifts, effecting physical healing and other physical manifestations, and perhaps effecting some kinds of emotional healing.
42 That is, the decision to read and listen to the Word, or to minister it to others is under human control. Of course, the Word is not under human control in the sense that we are free to change it or make it mean whatever we want.
43 The apostles’ testimony and teaching is the form of God's Word that stands directly behind the New Testament and affirms and interprets the Old.
44 Rom 8:9–11 and Eph 3:14–17 likewise speak of Christ's real indwelling presence with believers and link that reality to the action of the indwelling Holy Spirit.
45 See John 14:21–24.
46 In Rom 10:14, Paul quite possibly depicts those who hear the gospel as not simply hearing about Christ but hearing him. See the ESV alternative translation: ‘How are they to believe in him whom they have never heard.’
47 ‘for the Reformers the proclamation of the Word is not simply teaching concerning Christ, but the personal address of Christ himself through which the Spirit delivers Christ to us and unites us to him’. Horton, The Christian Faith, p. 758.
48 Note the correlation between the Father–Son relationship underlying John 14:7–11 and the Son–Spirit relationship underlying John 14:16–20.
49 Cf. e.g. Ps 33:6; Heb 11:3; Mark 4:39. On the distinction between God's creative word of power and the Word of God as contained in Scripture and preached in the church, see Berkhof, Systematic Theology, p. 676. Theologians sometimes cite passages like Ps 33:6 when discussing the role of God's Word in redemption, but this is potentially misleading.