The Holy Spirit and Scripture

El Espíritu Santo y la Escritura Oración de Aliento

The Holy Spirit and Scripture

Image_of_the_Holy_Spirit_in_the Church_20230407

But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth

and in your heart, so that you can do it.

(Deut 30:14)

By Stephen W. Hiemstra

The Holy Spirit plays a crucial role in the Apostle Paul’s reading of scripture because scripture is veiled to our eyes and can only be understood through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. When the Corinthian church asked Paul for his letters of recommendation, he boldly replied:

“You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” (2 Cor 3:2-3)

His letter of recommendation, obvious to the whole world, was the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of Corinthian church.

In this same chapter in his letter, Paul turned to an enigmatic story of how Moses’ face shined when he communed with God, so much that he had to veil his face:

“But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” (2 Cor 3:14-17)

In this same way, when one reads scripture outside the context of faith, it remains veiled and can only be unveiled through the power of the Holy Spirit. In summarizing Paul’s hermeneutical method, Hays (1989, 191) writes: “No reading of Scripture can be legitimate, then, if it fails to shape the readers into a community that embodies the love of God as shown forth in Christ.”

This is why when Paul speaks of faith, he speaks in terms of this unveiling as when he writes, paraphrasing Deuteronomy 30:14:

“The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” (Rom 10:8-11)

This unveiling metaphor is crucial to understanding both Paul’s hermeneutical method (interpretation of scripture) and the mystery of faith: Both require the instrumentality of the Holy Spirit.

Implicit in Paul’s copious use of Old Testament scripture is the continuity of the Nation of Israel with the church, a theme explicitly drawn out in Paul’s grafting analogy in Romans 11. The curiosity of scriptural echoes arises in Paul’s writing as a tension between theme and counter-theme. Hays (1989, 46) writes:

“In Romans 1:18-3:20, even where Paul uses scriptural allusions to underscore the message of God’s judgment, the texts themselves whisper the counter-theme of God’s mercy.”

This statement jumps out at me because this particular passage is much reviled by postmoderns and hammered like a bible-over-the-head by some commentators. Hays (1989, 47) refers to this as the ”judgment/grace paradigm that undergirds the whole witness of Scripture.”

The role of the Holy Spirit in Paul’s hermeneutical method is so basic that it sometimes goes unnoticed. Consider the famous passage in Timothy:

“All Scripture is breathed out by God [Theo-pneumatos, θεόπνευστος] and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Tim 3:16-17)

Note the phrase,“breathed out by God.” In both Hebrew and Greek, the term for Holy Spirit can mean spirit, breath, or wind. The implication here is that scripture is both inspired by the Holy Spirit and best read through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

References

Hays, Richard B. 1989. Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul. New Haven: Yale University Press.

The Holy Spirit and Scripture

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