Balthasar's Explorations In Theology: Creator Spirit

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Balthasar, Hans Urs Von, and Brian McNeil. Explorations in Theology: Creator Spirit. Vol. III. San Francisco, Calif: Ignatius, 1993. Print. In section II, chapters two and seven of Explorations in Theology: Creator Spirit, Balthasar provides us with a particular Johannine oriented pneumatology. The bulk of his argument seems to be situating the Holy Spirit within an understanding of the Holy Trinity, which establishes the Spirit as truly divine, rejecting any notions to just reduce the Holy Spirit to an afterthought or as a function between the Father and the Son. “The Spirit is not so much a divine object of faith as the divine medium of the gift of faith made from Father to Son” (118). He provides an interesting argument which could explain …show more content…
He aims to find “a middle course between enthusiasm and rationalism” (268) two extreme theological camps that Wesley doesn’t find particularly helpful. The main question he is answering is: “how does he (The Spirit) bear witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (270)? In other words, how do we know that the Holy Spirit dwells in us? For Wesley it all resolves down to having the marks of loving God and loving neighbor (272). Simply put, we recognize the possession of this form our consciousness. This “consciousness that we are inwardly conformed by the Spirit of God to the image of the Son. “The testimony of the Spirit is an inward impression on the soul, whereby the Spirit of God directly witnesses to my spirit that I am a child of God, that Jesus Christ hath loved me, and given himself for me, that all my sins are blotted out, and I, even I am reconciled to God” (274). When our “spiritual senses are rightly disposed” we are able to intuit the difference between spiritual light and spiritual darkness within us. These quotes capture the about-ness of Wesley’s thoughts on the witness of the Spirit. It is not as far reaching as Balthasar’s pneumatology, an interesting point of

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