Month: May 2010

Categories Book Notes, Faith

Our incomplete theology

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Notes on Francis Chan’s
Forgotten God
Chapter 3: Theology of the Holy Spirit 101

“I’m reading this book by Francis Chan called Forgotten God–”

“Forgotten God?” my dad quizzed.

I described the thesis of the book as I understand it now: Chan believes that Christians have “forgotten” the third person of the Trinity and need to remember Him again.

“I think he’s right.” Dad replied–and went on to tell me that he’d just been thinking that same thing in relation to the Nicene Creed. He quoted the pertinent passage:

“And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.”

And I thought, “Huh, yeah. He’s right.”

When was the last time I heard a sermon on the Holy Spirit–on who He is, not just what He does? I have no idea. When was the last time I heard a hymn of adoration to the Holy Spirit? I can’t remember. My church does not publicly recite the creeds, so I know it has been years since I heard or recited the Nicene creed.

This fundamental confession of our faith declares that the Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of life–and that He is worshiped and glorified together with the Father and Son–but I see little evidence that the church accords the Spirit the same adoration that they do the Father and the Son.

I remember one particular year where I found myself in a liturgical church on Pentecost Sunday. My own church is not liturgical and pays no mind to the liturgical calendar except for lighting advent candles (frequently in the wrong order, although I try to refrain from being nit-picky)–so I know better than to expect a Pentecost sermon on Pentecost there. But in a liturgical church, I had high hopes of hearing a true Pentecost sermon–a sermon on the Holy Spirit. Sure enough, the readings were rife with mention of the Holy Spirit. My anticipation mounted for the sermon–and then was quickly dashed when the pastor mentioned the Holy Spirit exactly…never…in his sermon. Forgotten God is right.

Recently, I was visiting the website of some churches in my area–and I found a “statement of faith” that quoted from Mike Yaconelli of Youth Worker Magazine from Nov/Dec 2003:

“We’re about Jesus. We know He’s a part of the Trinity and all the other important stuff we also believe, but if we’re honest, we’re partial to Jesus. Don’t get us wrong. God is like a Father-no, God IS the Father-and the buck stops with Him (if you’re going to have the buck stop somewhere it might as well stop with Someone who is…well…all about love with a capital L. Of course, He’s also about justice with a capital J, but we’ll take out chances that, in the end, justice will also feel like love!) And then there is the Holy Spirit-mysterious, windy, seems to like fire a lot, whispering, and always pointing us to…you guessed it…Jesus. We not only like Jesus a lot, He likes us a lot, enough to die for us. We know that when life gets tough (and it always does) He’ll be there for us.

I was absolutely shocked by the way this “statement of faith” treated the Holy Spirit. Mysterious, windy, pyromaniac whisperer who points at Jesus? Honestly? I understand that within the original context, this likely (hopefully) was never intended to be a distillation of belief about the Trinity. Yet I don’t doubt that this is the essence of many a Christian’s beliefs regarding the Holy Spirit.

Even as I look at my own church’s statement of faith–I see discussion of the Holy Spirit, but more in reference to the “baptism of the Holy Spirit” than in regard to WHO the Holy Spirit truly is.

It’s a hole in our theology. The word theology strictly means theos-God, -logy-study. The study of God. Yet we study the Father, we glorify the Son, and we forget about the Holy Spirit–or at best, turn Him into little more than a cosmic gift-giver. We’ve got an incomplete theology–only two-thirds formed. The Christian God is a triune God. Why then do we not include all three persons of the Trinity in our theology?

Seeing a hole in our theology makes me glad that Chan chooses not to jump right into the “practice” of the Holy Spirit–into charismata or the “baptism of the Holy Spirit” or even the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit that accompanies Christian witness. Instead, Chan takes the time to establish a basic (although non-comprehensive) theology of the Holy Spirit–both who He is and what He does.

Some of Chan’s main points:

  • The Holy Spirit is a person
  • The Holy Spirit is God
  • The Holy Spirit is eternal and holy
  • The Holy Spirit has His own mind, and He prays for us
  • The Holy Spirit has emotions
  • The Holy Spirit has His own desires and will
  • The Holy Spirit is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient

It seems to me that we can easily fall into a trap of either ignoring the Holy Spirit entirely or considering Him as a means to our own ends. Either way, we tend to deny Him His deity.

My heart, then, is to reverse this trend–starting with myself. I want to know the Holy Spirit so that I might worship and glorify Him together with the Father and the Son.

I love the description Chan gives of why the Christian should be interested in the theology of the Holy Spirit:

“Know that even as you seek to understand the Spirit more, He is so much more and bigger than you will ever be able to grasp. This is not an excuse to stop seeking to know Him, but don’t limit Him to what you can learn about Him. The point is not to completely understand God but to worship Him. Let the very fact that you cannot know Him fully lead you to praise Him for His infiniteness and grandeur.”

Why should I develop my theology of the Holy Spirit? In order that I might worship Him–and the entire Trinity–more fully.

(See more notes on Forgotten God here.)

Categories Recap

Recap (April 25-May 1)

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Busy week –> Not much blog reading –> Short Recap

Sorry, folks–since I know you all look forward to these recaps SO much! :-P

On bekahcubed

Book Reviews:

  • Home by Julie Andrews.

Photo Albums:

On the web

Laugh out loud funnies:

Books for the TBR list:

Thought-provoking posts:

  • Eric does it again, with a beautiful post that brought tears to my eyes. On reading the Bible “in context”:

    “The problem with seminary – and with insular churches, self-righteousness, and every other manifestation of Christian isolationism – is that it never reads Luke 4 in this setting. It never sees the bondage of addiction, the blindness of unbelief, or the poverty of the truly poor on their own terms. Since we live in a world that is very good at pretending its problems are small, Isaiah’s promise ends up feeling pretty small too. Put another way, many Christians fail to see the transformative power of the gospel because the only sick people they know hide their cancer behind closed doors and strained smiles. Here, they wear it on their sleeves (sometimes literally – I’m guessing that rainbow on my favorite waitress’s t-shirt isn’t meant to be a Care Bears reference).”

    Read the whole post.

Categories Education

Dead Week

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At the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the week before finals is “Dead Week”–the week in which professors are not supposed to give homework or tests unless previously scheduled. Of course, this just means that the professors are careful to schedule homework and tests in advance.

My modus operadi throughout my undergraduate career was to get sick every dead week. I’m moderately (Hah!) Type A and tend to work myself rather hard over the course of the semester. By dead week, my body has had enough of the stress I’ve inflicted upon it and it simply gives in. I stay in bed for a week, wishing I were dead–and then rise again on the seventh day to take finals.

Then came grad school.

I don’t remember whether I got sick in my first few semesters of grad school. It all begins to blur in my mind. But I do know what this semester’s dead week has looked like–and I definitely had no time to get sick.

I TA for a class of 200 students–and we gave them an assignment due last Thursday. So I’ve been frantically grading all week. Then on Thursday, I administered a lab practical to my other (much smaller) class. My supervisor and I sat down right away to get the practicals graded.

I had a job interview on Tuesday (I didn’t get the job–which I’m feeling ambivalent about.) I had a bit of an emotional shock on Wednesday. I had a major physical shock on Thursday. And yesterday, I baked a cake.

Actually, it wasn’t just a cake. It was a cake plus several dozen cupcakes. My sister is throwing a bridal shower for our sister-in-law-to-be today, and she’d asked me to prepare the cake. No problem. But our family…well, we have a rather large family. And even with half of the invitees not being able to show up, we’re still expecting 35 or so at the shower. So LOTS of cake making and decoration was in order.

My sister and our good friend Mary are in town for the shower–so I spent some time with them last night.

And I woke up today with an allergy-stuffed nose, a pressure-related headache, a heaviness in my fingers and toes that indicates dehydration, and a realization that I’d made it through dead week without getting sick.

Let’s hope I can do the same for finals week.