The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 38

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

xxxviii

and is operative in the sacraments as a matter of fact, the sacraments tend, in all such cases, to absorb the attention, and the theoretical explanations of their efficacy as vested in the Spirit's energy tend to pass out of the vivid interest of men. The libertarian ;

tendency, on the other hand, was the nerve of the old semi-Pelagianism vv^hich in Thomism and Tridentinism became in a modified form the formal doctrine of the Church of Rome and in various forms it soon began to seep also into and to trouble the churches of the Reformation first the Lutheran and after that also the Reformed. To it, the will of man was in greater or less measure the decisive factor in the subjective reception of salvation; and in proportion as it was more or less developed or more or less fully applied, interest in the doctrine of the subjective work of the Spirit languished, and in these circles too men's minds were to that degree distracted from the study of the doctrine of the work of the Spirit, and tended to focus themselves on the autocracy of the human will and its native or renewed ability to obey God and seek and find com;

—

No doubt here

munion with Him. tion

which

is still

allowed the

logical constructions

on

too

it is

Spirit, in

this basis.

But

easy to point to the func-

most

at least of the theo-

the practical effect has been

that just in proportion as the autocracy of the human will in salvation has been emphasized, the interest in the internal work of the Spirit has declined.

When we

take into consideration the wide-

spread influence that has been attained even in the Protestant

world by these two antagonistic tendencies, we shall cease to wonder at the widespread neglect that has befallen the doctrine of the work of the Spirit. And we shall have prosecuted our inquiry but a little way before we become aware how entirely these facts account for

phenomena before us how completely it is the doctrine of the work of the Spirit has failed the

:

true that interest in just in those regions

epochs in which either sacramentarian or libertarian opinions have ruled; and how true it is that engagement with this doctrine has been intense only along the banks of that narrow stream of religious life and thought the keynote of which has been

and just

in those

the

Deo

soli

gloria in all its fulness

of

meaning.

With

this

key

in hand the mysteries of the history of this doctrine in the Church

are at once solved for us.

One

of the chief claims to

book makes, therefore, great religious

is

movement

our attention which Dr. Kuyper's it is a product of a

rooted in the fact that in the

Dutch churches.

This

is

not the

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