God’s own quiet coming

by | Aug 21, 2017 | Theology | 0 comments

Here’s some gold from Thomas Oden, on the Holy Spirit:

The theater in which God has chosen to meet rational creatures quietly is the inward realm of conscience, moral reasoning, prayer, and study, especially study of the revealed word…

The Spirit is God’s own quiet coming to execute the Father’s plan in due time, to attest the Son’s saving work, to enlighten, counsel, and strengthen redeemed life until the Son’s return.

There is nothing too subtle or dense for the Spirit to penetrate or too sinful for the Spirit to cleanse or too weary for the Spirit to refresh or too dead for the Spirit to breathe life into again. The Spirit strives with us, prays for us, groans with us…

I mean, ponder that for a few minutes. Everyone’s running into fantasy these days. Everyone wants to lose themselves in pretend worlds which seem to offer something more alive and luminous than their worlds of jobs and computers. But the true reality is better than all the tiny fantasies. Better than Yoda’s corny speech about the Force in front of wide-eyed Luke (“The Force is all around us!”), the real reality is this: “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence?”

Oden continues:

There is no place where God’s Spirit is not. There is no time when God’s Spirit was not.

…In “coming” to one place the Spirit does not “leave” another. God the Spirit can “descend,” “indwell,” “and “fill” without changing place or emptying… God the Spirit breathes life into the souls of human persons…

While human beings have spirit, God is Spirit…

Nothing less than God is meeting us when God’s Spirit is present. God’s own Spirit is shared effortlessly with other spirits without ceasing to be entire, as a “sunbeam whose kindly light falls on him who enjoys it as though it showed for him alone, yet illuminates land and sea and mingles with the air.” (Basil, On the Holy Spirit)

(…from Classic Christianity, p.516)

Here’s the truth: there is no corner of the entire universes which is lonely, dark, or without his life.