How does the Holy Ghost lead the Church into all truth?
Christ sometimes expressed his revelation to the Apostles in seed form, leaving the Holy Ghost to bring them to a full understanding.
Christ sometimes expressed his revelation to the Apostles in seed form, leaving the Holy Ghost to bring them to a full understanding.
Editor’s Notes
In this part, Fr. Coleridge tells us…
How the Holy Ghost accompanies the Church like a guide, illuminating truth in real time.
That he transforms Christ’s brief sayings into the full architecture of Christian doctrine.
Why his teaching is not new, but the living echo of Christ’s own, heard in a new way.
He shows us that the Spirit’s voice in the Church is the continuous unfolding of Christ’s word—not its replacement.
The Holy Ghost and Our Lord
Passiontide, Part III, Chapter V
Chapter VI
St. John xvi. 12-15, Story of the Gospels, § 156
Burns and Oates, London, 1886
Fourth Sunday after Easter
The action of a guide
‘But when the Spirit of Truth is come, He will teach you all truth.’
Our Lord is speaking of the Paraclete, as the Greek words show, and the sentence might be more strictly translated, He Who is the Spirit of Truth, will be your guide into all truth.
The difference of genders in the Greek language shows that the words, the ‘Spirit of Truth’ are used as a description of the Paraclete, suggested by the repetition of the word truth—as if it had been said, being the ‘Spirit of Truth,’ He will be your guide into ‘all truth’ Our Lord says of Himself, that He is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life, and the Holy Ghost is the Spirit of Truth, because He proceeds from Him.
Thus there is a continuity of subject between this and the former sentence. Our Lord has many things to tell them which they are not able to bear now, but they will be led to them by the guidance of the Holy Ghost. The Greek word, which both in the Latin and in the English version is rendered will ‘teach,’ is the word which describes the action of a guide, who shows the way by going along it with the person whom he guides, not giving a number of directions and then leaving him to himself to carry them out, but accompanying him, step by step, along the path.
The idea, therefore, of a gradual growth in truth in the minds of those who are guided by the Holy Ghost, is plainly suggested by the language of this passage. And indeed the contemplations which are suggested by the use of the word which our Lord here employs of the Blessed Paraclete may be worked out in a very beautiful way in holy meditation. The word contains the idea of the Holy Ghost as the companion of our pilgrimage, leading us on step by step with His ‘kindly light,’ which is the way in which He deals with individual souls who are approaching the full possession of the truth.
Various ways suggested
We find various ways suggested in which the Holy Ghost was to teach the Apostles, as their guide in the visible absence of our Lord. One way is that which our Lord has Himself mentioned in the former part of this discourse, when He said that the Paraclete would teach them all things and ‘bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I shall have said unto you.’
St. John mentions more than one instance of this, when the disciples afterwards remembered words of our Lord which they had not understood at the time. In the same way, words and actions of our Lord which did not impress themselves on their memory when they were said or done, may have been recalled to them by the Holy Ghost, with full enlightenment as to the deep meaning conveyed or contained in them.
Again, it has frequently been said in the course of these volumes, that it was our Lord’s method with the Apostles to deliver to them great truths in a few and pregnant words which conveyed the doctrines which they were to teach to the Church, as it were, in seed, at least in a form which was afterwards to bear expansion and development, something in the way in which He spoke of the Kingdom of God as a grain of mustard-seed, which eventually becomes a great tree, filling the air with its branches.
It may be considered that it was the office of the Paraclete to make the Apostles understand the many great truths which were thus at first wrapped up in a small compass, until at length the whole magnificent growth of truth was enabled to unfold itself in all its manifestations, connections, and bearings. Our Lord, for instance, as far as we learn from the Evangelists, said very little, at least before His Resurrection, about the Church, though we can gather from what He did say most of its chief gifts and characteristic qualities, and much about its hierarchy, its government, its law of unity, its prerogatives, and the special gifts with which it was to be endowed.
Unfolding of his teaching by the Holy Ghost
The truths thus imparted, as it were seminally, to the Apostles by Himself, were afterwards unfolded in their minds by the working of the Holy Ghost, and the whole system of Christian theology, on this as on other subjects, is founded on the marvellous outpourings of the Apostles in their Epistles, which again came from the fulness of knowledge implanted and fostered in them by the Holy Ghost.
The Epistles do not formally legislate on all subjects, for the legislation was completed in principle before they were written, and is taken for granted in them, but they are the products of the great system of truth on the law of God, the obligations of Christians, social, moral, and political, which was the creation, in the mind of their writers, of the operation of the Holy Ghost, bringing, as has been said, to their remembrance hints, and words, and examples, dropped, as it were, on a most fruitful soil by our Lord Himself.
And again, there was the whole system of truth contained in the prophecies, the Psalms, and the other books of the Old Testament, and in the traditions of the holy people, for which our Lord had conferred a special gift of intelligence on the Apostles when He opened their understandings, as St. Luke tells us. And the general guidance and agency by which all this beautiful system was to be worked out into practical and familiar knowledge, was the guidance and the agency of the Paraclete.
The Holy Ghost speaking what He shall hear
What has been now said may help to explain the words of our Lord which follow here in the text of St. John. ‘For He’—the Paraclete—’shall not speak of Himself, but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak,’ as well as other words which follow closely on this passage.
The Holy Ghost is said to hear what He is to speak, and not to speak of Himself, because He has His essence and His knowledge from the Father and the Son, His being and knowledge and speech is one with theirs. In the same way the Son is said by our Lord1 to do nothing but what He sees the Father do, because He has His Essence and Power from the Father, one and the same as His. Not to speak of Himself is the same thing as to speak what He hears from another, and this is the same thing as to have His knowledge and Essence from another, and to be the same with that other in Being and knowledge.
What is here said shows that the Holy Ghost hears what He speaks from the Son, because our Lord is engaged in declaring that the Paraclete was to tell them the same truths which He had Himself to tell them, and which they were not able at that time to bear. The whole tenour of the passage is to assure the Apostles of the same thing, the intimate resemblance, or rather the identity of the teaching of the coming Paraclete with that of Himself, of which we have been lately speaking.
Testimony of the New Testament
And indeed this truth is forced on our attention in every page of the New Testament. The second part of that precious volume is occupied with the history and the writings of the Apostles, who were guided in all that they did, and inspired in all that they wrote by the Paraclete of Whom our Lord here speaks.
It is plain to any one who attentively studies the relation between the first and the second parts of the New Testament, how completely the latter is founded on the former, not more by historical connection than by identity of spirit. The words of our Lord are but seldom actually quoted, and the actions of His life are mentioned with comparative rarity. But it is easy to see how deep and intimate an acquaintance with His character, His methods, His peculiar and distinguishing virtues, if we may so speak, underlies the whole of this part of the sacred volume, so that His presence in the minds and thoughts of the writers seems to be perpetually suggesting itself, as an atmosphere in which their souls habitually lived and breathed.
If it be said that this was in truth the case with all, at least, who had personally known our Lord, and with His disciples, this is only saying the same thing in different words—that the Holy Ghost was continually at work to impress our Lord’s likeness upon them, both individually and collectively, though He may have used in some cases more and in others less, the power of personal recollections founded on the memories of some, and the traditions received from them by others.
End of Part II. Part III addresses how prophecy works in the Church of Christ.
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The Holy Ghost and Our Lord
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St. John v. 19.