Church of the Holy City

Receiving the Holy Spirit

Receiving the Holy Spirit
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
June 12, 2011

John 7:37-39 Acts 2:1-21 Psalm 104

This Sunday we celebrate Pentecost. As we heard from our reading from Acts, Pentecost was when the Holy Spirit was poured out into the Apostles and into the whole world. In the history of Christianity, Pentecost was a high feast day, celebrated by elaborate meals. So it is fitting that we are having a barbecue today, here at this church.
There were miracles associated with Pentecost. First, there was a noise as of a rushing wind. Then, flames came and rested above the heads of the 12 Apostles. Then, miraculously, the Apostles stood up and started speaking in foreign languages. Although uneducated fishermen from Galilee, they spoke in languages understood by Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Asians, Egyptians, Romans, Cretans, Arabs, and others–all in their own languages. Some cynics made fun of the Apostles and said that they were drunk. But Peter stood up and said, “These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning!” Peter goes on to quote the prophet Joel about the days when the Holy Spirit would be poured forth upon the world. In our reading from John, Jesus breathes on the disciples and they receive the Holy Spirit from Him.
Different Christian churches vary in the weight they give the Holy Spirit. Some churches make the Holy Spirit the center of their worship life. They speak of being on fire with the Spirit. Some churches make it part of their services to act as if they are receiving the Holy Spirit. They roll in the church aisles and start talking in tongues. They think that talking in tongues is a gift of the Holy Spirit. And they support this belief with the passage from Acts that we heard this morning. In the King James Version of the Bible, it says that the Apostles spoke in tongues. Now in Old English, speaking in a tongue meant speaking in a language. And the same is true of New Testament Greek. To say that someone is speaking in a language, you say that he or she is speaking in a tongue. And the passage from Acts is very clear. The Apostles were speaking in foreign languages. People from foreign lands heard the Apostles in their own tongue. But the Pentecostal churches think that speaking in tongues means spouting out nonsense gibberish. And they think that such babbling is what being filled with the Spirit means. They totally misread the Bible and the translation that they have. But these are extreme cases. Other churches speak of the Holy Spirit as one Person of the Trinity. They assign powers to the Holy Spirit like enlightenment, and sanctification.
It is difficult to briefly talk about how Swedenborg views the Holy Spirit. In one sense, it receives only minor treatment. In another sense, it is absolutely central to his whole theology. Like so much in Swedenborg, it is not a matter of either-or. Rather, it is a matter of both-and.
Traditional Christians speak of the Holy Spirit as one Person in the Trinity of persons who make up the Godhead. Swedenborg rejects the doctrine of the Trinity, so when he talks about the Holy Spirit it is done very carefully. He begins his comprehensive final book, True Christian Religion with his interpretation of the Trinity. We will have more to say about this next Sunday, which is called Trinity Sunday. This Sunday, we will discuss only the Holy Spirit.
As I said, Swedenborg is very careful when he talks about the Holy Spirit. In his discussion, Swedenborg says that he is talking about the Holy Spirit only because the church in his day talks about it. In Swedenborg’s day, different powers were associated with the different Persons of the Trinity. Creation was associated with God the Father, Salvation was associated with God the Son, and Sanctification and enlightenment with God the Holy Spirit. For Swedenborg, there is only the one Person who is God, and that Person is Jesus Christ. So for Swedenborg, the powers that the churches give to each Person of the Trinity are all contained in the one Person of Jesus Christ. So Swedenborg begins his discussion of the Holy Spirit by saying that it is none other than the Lord, Jesus Christ. “By the Holy Spirit is properly signified the Divine truth, thus also the Word, and in this sense the Lord Himself is also the Holy Spirit” (TCR 139). In this sense, Swedenborg minimises the Holy Spirit. He would rather talk about the Lord. But then, Swedenborg does go on to talk about the Holy Spirit. But he does so merely because it is a convention of his day. In his day, the Holy Spirit was said to justify, or save the human race. Swedenborg follows this convention, and attributes God’s justification to the Holy Spirit–but only because that is how people in his day understood it. So Swedenborg writes, “but because in the church at this day the Divine operation which is called justification is described by the Holy Spirit, therefore this is here assumed as the Holy Spirit . . .” (TCR 139). Swedenborg then goes on to talk about the Holy Spirit according to his understanding of justification and salvation. But he wants us to remember that he is really talking about the power of the Lord.
So the powers that Swedenborg ascribes to the Holy Spirit are all those powers that save the human race. In traditional Christianity, justification happens immediately when a person accepts Jesus as his personal savior. But for Swedenborg, justification is a life-long process of actual character reformation. For Swedenborg, a person is not justified in an instant, but by a long process whereby he is purified from evil. He calls this process reformation and regeneration.
The Divine power and operation which are meant by the Holy Spirit are, in general, reformation and regeneration . . . and, according to these, purification from evils and the remission of sins and finally salvation (TCR 142).
Again, purification from evil is a slow, life-long process. To be purified from evils, a person first must learn what they are. Once identified, a person then must desist from doing them. To learn what evil is, a person needs to be instructed by truths. Another way to phrase this is to say that a person needs to acquire faith. Faith is nothing more than truth. So whether one says truth or faith, it amounts to the same thing. So we need to acquire faith, or learn truths to show us the way into the light.
By means of Divine truth from good, that is, by means of faith from charity, a person is reformed and regenerated; also renovated, vivified, sanctified, justified; and, according to the progress and increase of these, is purified from evils, and purification from evils is remission of sins (TCR 142).
So purification from evil is the life-long process called reformation and regeneration. Reformation means to be reformed. And regeneration means to be reborn. The way this process works is to learn truth and use truth to guide us into good. Truth tells us what is evil, which we are to shun. And truth tells us what is good, which we are to accept. It is as the prophet Ezekiel says, “Make you a new heart, and a new spirit” (Ezekiel 18:31). Swedenborg’s commentary on this is, “By a new heart is meant a will of good, and by a new spirit, the understanding of truth” (TCR 143). Reformation and regeneration is nothing more than finding out what is good and incorporating that good into our life as we turn from evil. Since it is truth that shows us the way to good, we can say that reformation is the union of good and truth. As higher and higher truths lead us into higher and higher good, our soul is gradually lifted out of the world and into heaven.
But this exaltation of mind is not effected except from time to time; and it is effected as a person procures for himself truths and conjoins them to good (TCR 152).
This process of reformation and regeneration is all done by the power of the Holy Spirit, if we want to use traditional Christian language. In this way, the Holy Spirit is in the very center of Swedenborg’s theology. But the union of good and truth is also how the Lord is described. So Swedenborg would really say that it is that the Lord who reforms and regenerates us. It is only according to traditional Christian language that Swedenborg ascribes this power to the Holy Spirit.
In this process, God is completely on our side every step of the way. God wants nothing more than to lift us into heaven’s delights and into company with Himself. “The Lord wills the salvation of all, and therefore salvation of all is His end” (TCR 142). This is being filled with the Holy Spirit in Swedenborg’s sense. For Swedenborg, being filled with the Spirit means opening our minds to truth and letting good into our heart. This union of good and truth is God in us. God is Goodness and Truth itself. So when we have good and truth in us, we have God in us. This is what makes heaven in a person–whether they are still on earth, or whether they have passed over to the other side.
The angels taken together are called heaven, because they constitute heaven; but yet it is the Divine proceeding from the Lord, which flows in with angels and is received by them, that makes heaven . . . . The Divine proceeding from the Lord is the good of love and the truth of faith. In the degree, therefore, in which they receive good and truth from the Lord, they are angels and are in heaven (HH 7).
This Divine proceeding of good and truth from the Lord is what we could call the Holy Spirit. In order to be in heaven, we need to accept this divine good and truth into our souls. Since God is divine good and truth, we are actually accepting God into our souls when we do this. This is why Swedenborg is called a mystic. Mysticism means a direct experience of God. And in Swedenborg’s system, we all have that direct experience of God when we let His good and truth into our hearts and souls. When I talk about this with people from other churches, I say that we believe in letting the Spirit of God into our souls. And using this language, many understand and accept Swedenborg’s teachings. Swedenborg used traditional language to talk about the Holy Spirit. But he was clear in saying that actually, it is the Lord Jesus Christ who fills us with His good and truth. Call it good and truth, call it the Holy Spirit, call it what you will. Our final salvation is nothing more than letting God into our hearts and souls. This is what Jesus says in the Gospel of John, “Remain in me, and I will remain in you” (John 15:4).