There are many divergent views on the relationship between Word and Spirit. The issue basically is about this question: what is the function of the Holy Spirit in understanding the Bible, and what influence does the Bible have through the work of the Spirit in someone’s faith and life? By no means is there always a proper balance between Word and Spirit. The following quotes serve to illustrate this.

“There is (in this orthodox faith community, jcb) a rather significant undercurrent of loving, reliable, and respectable people, who subconsciously do not subject themselves any longer to God’s Word. When someone attempts to argue about something using the Bible, it may happen that they simply respond with: ‘That might be so, but God’s people understand it differently.’” (Quotation from a conversation between Paul Meinders and prof. dr. Johan Blaauwendraad, Koers, Aug. 22, 1997)

“Is that a … variation on the teaching of Karl Barth: the Bible is only true when I experience it as such?”

“Unfortunately in our (as noted above, jcb) circles God’s Word is not always the standard, but frequently it becomes the spiritual man who determines the norm. Therefore, we are always looking out for people with spiritual authority. As long as well-respected people are speaking within a familiar, trusted framework, they are close to speaking ex cathedra (binding for all believers).” (Quotation as per above)

“Postmodern spirituality seeks to know God not through the revelation of himself in his Word and through Jesus Christ, but seeks after a private truth by means of personal mystical experiences. Therefore, such spiritualty has a gnostic character. As it was in the time of the apostles, so also in our time gnostic ideas are attempting to influence Christ’s church. Many preachers of new teachings do not appeal primarily to God’s Word but to ‘new revelations.’ A rather current term in this connection is ‘knowledge of revelation.’ … This term is not so much an indication of the profound knowledge of God’s Word as it is a certain ‘higher’ spiritual understanding of that Word, which enables man to overcome the limitations of the natural. According to them, people who have this ‘knowledge of revelation’ become some sort of supermen.” (Quotation from an article “Knowledge of Revelation: Modern Gnosticism?” Hans Frinsel, De Oogst, March 1997)

And then finally this passage with a very different content:

“Therefore, we appeal to the restoration of the primacy of God’s Word. We believe the Bible alone to be the highest source of authority in matters of faith and life … Restore truth instead of error. Some teachings are based on so-called (extra-biblical) knowledge of revelation or on false prophecies. There needs to be a new emphasis on the truth that we find in God’s Word.” (Quotation from an article “An Appeal: Back to the Bible,”
a portion of a declaration of evangelistic leaders in the magazine “Prophecy Today,” De Oogst, Nov. 1997)

The Filtered Word⤒🔗

We encounter here a fascinating yet at the same time not so easy problem concerning the connection between revelation and experience. It is about the relationship between God’s speaking and acting on the one hand, and the possibilities of people to understand God’s voice on the other hand. This is an important topic because it deals with the core of the relationship between God and man. In God’s Word, how does the encounter between God and us originate? By defining this even further, it focuses on the connection between the written Word of God and the Holy Spirit. Not everyone confesses and experiences this connection in the same way or to the same extent.

In dealing with the Bible, the Christian church has up till now experienced much difficulty in finding a responsible balance in the relationship between Word and Spirit. Even though we know that without the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit the Bible would remain a closed book for our hearts, there is yet the question about the extent to which the words tell us something and the Spirit brings something to life in our hearts. In a certain sense it concerns therefore the relationship between the letter and the Spirit. The apostle Paul writes about this issue in 2 Corinthians 3:14ff., for example, when it deals with a veil whenever reading the Scripture. In the synagogues the books of the old covenant were read, but it was as if a blindfold was applied. It concerns here a spiritual veil, an obstruction to arrive at the proper understanding of the text. They were reading all right, but did not understand the meaning. However, when the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in the hearts of the believers, he removes that veil. And even then it is quite the challenge to come to a properly balanced understanding of the Scriptures.

The Examples←⤒🔗

In Hyper-Calvinism it is sometimes the pious community of faith that bypasses the literal meaning of Bible passages and instead gives it a spiritualized interpretation. God’s Word is then filtered by the common experience of a small elite within the pious congregation. Most often only a faint ray of light becomes visible in this manner. The clear light of life thus becomes limited in its scope and power, concentrated on only small segments of life.

The following example gives proof of a liberal interaction with God’s Word. We find this, for instance, in the ethical school in theology. This movement came about from a desire to warn against dead orthodoxy and intellectualism. The relationship with God is not in the first place a matter of intellectual thought, but of the heart and the will. God’s revelation, therefore, is not found in any doctrine, but instead in the witnessing and passing on of life. Obviously this approach has effect on their view of the Bible and inspiration. Above all, the Bible (for them) gives witness of the new life that God has worked in the hearts by his Spirit. Then it is not so much about what the letter says about the new life, but about the faith experience that is caused by the new life. The Bible itself is therefore not so much the Word of God, but becomes the Word of God when it speaks to our hearts. The emotions, or better yet, the faith experience determines what is God’s Word. The filter of our experience, of what God’s Word is saying to our heart, determines here the ray of light – and again it leads to a loss of luminosity.

An extreme consequence of this looser connection between Word and Spirit can be found in the early Baptist movement. People often applied an overloaded emphasis on the experience of the Holy Spirit at the cost of the revealed truth of Scripture. The life of faith then depends on “the Spirit only”; the individual guidance of the Spirit becomes the determining factor in what is God’s Word for the Spirit-filled believer. This can even be carried so far that the clear language of a Bible text is shoved aside on account of the receipt of some “inner light” or illumination. A modern expression of this we find in extreme charismatic movements when Scripture no longer has any correcting functionality and where the “experience of the Spirit” determines everything. The step to new revelations that leads to unbiblical teachings then speaks for itself. This overestimation of the experience, where the Bible begins to play a subordinate role, gives a totally warped and distorted life of faith. There is no longer a regulating factor. The Spirit operates independently from the Word, and as a result Word and Spirit become separated from each other. Where God’s Word no longer functions in the encounter between God and man, there the human soul with all its emotions, wants, and desires easily takes the place of the Holy Spirit. This kind of replacement has as consequence a dangerous subjectivism and great impulsivity. It is therefore very understandable and also praiseworthy that in the worldwide evangelistic community a serious call has gone forth to return to a life that stays close to the Bible, by which God’s Word receives once again its legitimate place.

The Encounter through Word and Spirit←⤒🔗

The best-known way by which God interacts with people is that of conversation. The Lord God has chosen to establish a relationship with us and in that encounter words are the most common means of contact. As we read the Bible we hear repeatedly, “And God said…” God spoke and continues to speak! Words are like vehicles. When they are put in a particular order, words result in understandable sentences. In this way a word, often in a composition of words and sentences, relays a certain message. When we listen to each other, in the sense of truly understanding one another, this means that we agree on the content of the words and sentences. We then experience it as a breakthrough in our loneliness. We are in touch with each other; we experience a mutual encounter. The Lord God not only spoke forth his creation, but he is still speaking through his Word today in order to meet us, to restore and to maintain the broken relationship. And from our end, we speak to him in prayer. In a certain sense, praying is responding. This is not in the sense of a dialogue, but like a relationship of a father and his child where the believer becomes convinced through God’s words, recognizes its authority, and gives heed in an attitude of faith.

When we speak about God’s Word we need to point first of all to Jesus Christ. He is the Word of God who has become man (John 1:1, 14). God’s revelation to us has become visible, audible, and tangible in the most wonderful way in his Son, Jesus Christ. “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Heb. 1:1, 2). Jesus Christ is the revealed Word of God. Beside him is the written Word of God, the Bible, which has come to us by means of people. The Bible itself informs us that God is the actual author and that the Holy Spirit was involved in the entire process (e.g., 2 Peter 1:21). In summary one could say: the Bible is the witness of God the Father about Jesus Christ his Son and has been given to us by the Holy Spirit.

The Relationship between Spirit and Word←⤒🔗

We will now examine how the relationships are. We pay attention first to the question of how the Holy Spirit is at work in and through the Bible. One aspect in the multifaceted work of the Holy Spirit is the experiential, his work in our hearts. One of the ways in which God’s kingdom on earth is established is through the Spirit’s work in and on the hearts and lives of the believers. To the question how the Spirit accomplishes this is the biblical response: particularly through the Word (2 Tim. 3:15-17; Acts 16:14). Even though we realize that the Spirit is not locked up in Scripture in the sense that the Spirit would be a prisoner of the Word, the Spirit has definitely bound himself to the Word. The Spirit wants to use the means of the Word, but not so that we know exactly how he goes about his work (John 3:8). We cannot take control of the Spirit’s work and neither can we fathom his actions. In the relationship between Word and Spirit we encounter a mystery. In the Bible the Spirit makes known to us God’s will and counsel, and he calls us to surrender in faith and obedience. We can say: the Spirit brings the Word into the heart. But how it is that the one accepts this Word in faith and the other bypasses it or even rejects it entirely is to us a mystery. However, we can say this: the Spirit enlightens the believers in the understanding of the Word, not only to comprehend it but also to apply it in their personal lives. The Spirit who inspired the authors of the Bible and who testifies in the Bible of truth, that Spirit of God works convincingly from the outside in and works certainty and confidence in the believers. That is how the Spirit makes hard hearts ready and eager to obey the Word.

This internal work of the Spirit is first of all rational. Because man is a creature gifted with reason, the Spirit through the Word opens our understanding for the truth of God. In addition, the illumination also has a moral influence and our conscience is addressed in regard to our walk of life. Further, the witness of the Spirit through the Word is in a certain way also experiential. What the Spirit teaches us through Scripture is then also experienced as reality. In this way, for example, the Spirit confirms to our heart that we are God’s children in Christ (Rom. 8:16; Gal. 4:6) and internally we arrive at the insight that we have been adopted to be God’s children. This witness of the Holy Spirit by means of the Word in and to the believers is the deepest cause of our faith (for the role of the Holy Spirit in the process of revelation, see 1 Cor. 2:6-16). Therefore, it is important for each child of God to pray for the help and enlightenment of the Holy Spirit. In this way we begin to experience that our heavenly Father speaks to us through what he has spoken. It is this respectful boldness and trust by which a Christian may go to God, as a child goes to his father, that shapes our walk with God. In this experiential encounter Word and Spirit work closely together in the teaching of God’s children. “Therefore, those who want to live under the authority of the Spirit need to bow before the Word as the workbook of the Spirit, while those who wish to live under the authority of the Word must seek the Spirit as the one who explains that Word” (J.I. Packer).

Word and Spirit←⤒🔗

Maintaining the right connection between the Bible and the work of the Spirit is of great importance in our life of faith as well as in church life. When we disconnect the Word from the Spirit we easily fall into a disproportionate intellectual approach to spiritual life. The consequence is often a dry orthodoxy and too much emphasis on external matters. But aside from this there is an equally great danger in disassociating the Spirit from the Word. This form of imbalance ensures that people begin to live by impulses and inspirations, by impressions and emotions. This causes a deep ambiguity concerning the truth. The wholesome guidance of the Spirit who emphasizes clarity and insight (Phil. 1:9, 10) is being subordinated to a “good feeling” and to a “warm and pleasant atmosphere.” We need to search, or perhaps even struggle, for a biblical balance between Word and Spirit and to hold on to it. Spiritual people will live close to that Word. With the spiritual gifts they receive they will serve others and journey together in the ways of the Spirit. When we wish to go the ways of the Spirit we will need to keep close to the teachings of the Word. Whatever gift of grace we received will then certainly not become disconnected from the healthy teaching of the Bible, or be leading us in different ways. For in the matter of charismatic gifts it concerns always the same Spirit who inspired the authors and who causes the sinner to be regenerated. The Spirit brings revelation and insight.

Even though we know that some parts of the Bible are not easy to understand for everyone (2 Pet. 3:16), yet it holds true for the believer that the Bible is clear and transparent when it comes to learning to know God. When there is any fogginess in regard to the Bible, then this is on account of our inability or unwillingness (2 Cor. 4:3, 4). The Bible is as a light shining in a dark place. Scripture in itself is not dark but the place where it shines becomes dark to us when there is no inclination on our part to drive the darkness away. The Holy Spirit gives us eyes to see so that together with all the saints (Eph. 3:17,18) we may live safely by the light of God’s Word. The most important reason that the Word of God will dwell in us richly is not that we should be enriched by it but that the Lord would be honoured and praised by it (J. Stott). Therefore, we do well to be renewed, to be created after the likeness of Christ, and that is possible only when we are filled with the Spirit of the Word.

Lord, show us your paths, through your Word and your Spirit. Teach us the ways of truth and direct us in your ways. Teach us to listen and to know that you hear us. Almighty God, govern us by your Spirit and Word.

This article was translated by Wim Kanis