The Holy Spirit in Action in History

These notes were found in the September 1952 issue of Progress, the monthly magazine of the Romford Congregational Church. They come from an address given by the Rev. Ronald Ward at the Annual Conference of the Guild of Heath.

1. The Biblical View of History
The Biblical view of History can best be indicated by comparing Isaiah 40:3-4 with the first chapter of Ecclesiastes. The writer of this section of Ecclesiastes, though a Jew, has a pagan spirit. For him there is "no new thing under the sun". History can best be represented as a circle. "The thing that hath been it is that which shall be".

Deutero-Isaiah, on the other hand, has a view of history which is Biblical through and through. The verse containing the words "make straight in the desert a highway for our God" sums up the whole matter. In this thought history may best be symbolised not by a circle but by a straight line. The human race is on a road, not a roundabout. History is moving towards an ultimate and triumphant conclusion. Time is therefore an all important element in experience, and this is why the Biblical writers are in the main concerned with meaningful events rather than ideas.

Western man derives his view of history, and in particular his conception of progress, from the Bible.

2. The Lord of History
The Biblical view of history is accounted for by the Biblical view of God. God is creator and Lord of History. As creator He is necessarily above events in this world, and ultimately in control of them. Nevertheless the Bible stresses the immanence of God, and reveals Him as actively at work within world events.

3. The Holy Spirit History
To say God is active in History is to say that the Holy Spirit is active there. For the Holy Spirit is not a vague influence for good, but the life of God Himself as actually encountered by us in the world. 

Two things are to be observed about the world of the Holy Spirit.

1. According to the Bible the Spirit's activity is always associated with the Word of God - the declaration of the Divine will and intention - just as a man's breath is always involved in his speech. Spirit and Word come inevitably together. 
2. The Spirit works in and through persons or communities to whom some Word of God has been addressed.

In addition to this it should be noted that the Spirit is thought of as active in all the works of nature, as well as in personal life. But then the natural world only comes into existence through the Word of God. "God said, Let there be light, and there was light".

The Bible would have us recognise the activity of the Holy Spirit in history through the following Divinely elected ways.

• (a) In and through the human race, as such.
  All men experience some measure of the Spirit, otherwise they would not be human. All men are conscious of responsibility, even though they often resist or ignore it, and in this awareness they acknowledge that a Word from God has come to them calling them into responsible existence. Thus the Word and the Spirit are really part of the experience of everyone. (See the works of Emil Brunner for the development of this idea.)
• (b) In and through Israel, the chosen people.
  Chosen to minister to the whole race Israel has, through its history, experienced a special measure of the Spirit. This is because a special Word came to Israel, calling it into special responsibility. That is why we owe to the Jew all our most profound religious insights.
• (c) In and through individual prophets.
  We owe more to Israel's prophets than we realise. Through the unique and personal Word of God which came to them they experienced an indwelling of the Spirit which enabled to interpret that nation's mission to it. Without them Israel would have been blind to the meaning of its existence.
• (d) In and through the Messiah.
  Through Israel the work of the Spirit in history leads to the most important event of all - the Incarnation, the coming of Jesus, the Word made flesh. Our Lord reveals God and He also defines Man. As He reconciled the world to God, so he showed the meaning of human life, and the end to which is moving in the Kingdom of God.

4. The Holy Spirit in the Church
Henceforth the Holy Spirit, though active everywhere, is shaping the course of history through the New Israel, the Christian Church. The Church alone has heard and received the full Word of God which is in Christ, and therefore it is through the Church that the Spirit will realise the Kingdom of God on earth. That is why Christianity is, in Christopher Dawson's phrase, "a world changing religion". The restless enterprise of Western man, though seldom related to religious ends and often evil in its result, is nevertheless due to the impact of Christianity. It is no coincidence that empirical science has flowered in the West and not the East, where religion preserves a static culture for centuries, but provides no impulse for bringing a new kind of world into existence. For the religions of the East time is an illusion, For the Christian faith time, and therefore history, is the loom of God.

5. The Holy Spirit in the Contemporary Situation
Today Christianity exists under the menace of atheistic Communism. It must be remembered that the Communist view of history is in many essentials derived from the Bible (Marx was a Jew). This accounts for its dynamic and revolutionary character. Communism is a perversion of Christianity.

But if God is the Lord of History the present situation has not emerged by accident and cannot get out of control. There is a Word of judgement in it - upon the world, because it has rejected Christ again in this generation, but also upon the Church because it has sought to accept Christ on its own terms.

The Holy Spirit is certainly active in the present scene of world affairs - perhaps forcing us, through events, to take Christianity seriously once and for all. Rest assured that the Work of the Spirit, which we have seen running like a thread through all the centuries, cannot be frustrated by anything men have power to do. History will not end with an atom bomb. It will end when He who began it has finished what He is doing in it.