‘Reformed theology has ... ended up creating a monster of theology that dampens the place of our passion and partnership with God.’¹ The President of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, Jack Hayford, recently spoke these words about what he sees as the inevitable results of the beliefs of Reformed churches. Sadly, his outlook is not uncommon in evangelical circles today; as this Reformed pastor can testify after hearing literally hundreds of visitors to my con­gregation say Reformed churches are cold, lifeless, dry, and dead. Per­haps it is because of our lack of preaching, writing, and teaching on the person and work of the Holy Spirit that we have been called the ‘frozen chosen’. Our seeming timidity towards the Holy Spirit is what Hayford has seized upon, saying that our theology causes our passion and part­nership with God to be dampened.

While we, as Reformed believers and preachers, may have given this impression in our age that is so dominated by Pentecostalism, the ques­tion is whether the fault really lies at the doorstep of Reformed theol­ogy itself. A prima facie reading of one source of official Reformed teaching, the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), may reasonably seem to give the impression that the Reformed Christian Faith lacks any em­phasis on the Holy Spirit. After all, the Catechism speaks for itself, as only one question and answer is devoted directly to the Spirit of God (Q & A 53):

Q. What dost thou believe concerning the Holy Ghost?

A. First, that he is co-eternal God with the Father and the Son. Secondly, that he is also given unto me, makes me by a true faith partaker of Christ and all his benefits, comforts me, and shall abide with me forever.²

This seeming lack of emphasis has even led one within the Reformed circle, Eugene Heideman, to conclude that:

...in the Catechism one finds only the barest outline of Christ­ian teaching about the Holy Spirit ... the Catechism’s discussion of the doctrines of the Holy Spirit and the church is deficient for our day, in that the biblical concept of evangelism and mission as being essential to the ministry of the Spirit and the life of the church is absent.³

As one who has come out of Pentecostalism to be an inheritor of the theology of John Calvin I must say that it is vital to re-capture our rightful claim as sons and daughters of ‘the theologian of the Holy Spirit’.⁴ This is urgent if we seek to minister the precious Reformed Faith to those who come to us influenced by Pentecostalism. As Sinclair Ferguson says about the Reformed emphasis on the Holy Spirit, ‘Indeed Edmund Campion, the famous Jesuit missionary to England, said on one occasion that the great dividing line between Rome and Geneva lay along the axis of the doctrine of the person and work of the Holy Spirit’s.’⁵ We need to recapture our doctrine of and emphasis upon the Holy Spirit, then, in order to counter the claim that our theology damp­ens a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. One way to make a begin­ning in doing this is by examining the theology of the Holy Spirit in the Heidelberg Catechism which is an ecclesiastical document of Reformed churches across the world.⁶

Is This Only a Bare Outline?⤒🔗

Heideman’s thesis, as stated above, is incorrect for at least two reasons. First, the Heidelberg Catechism is an ecclesiastical document that was intended to be a curriculum for children, a basis for catechetical preach­ing, and a form of unity for a region beset by theological and political strife.⁷ A document such as this cannot be expected to express all that the Bible says on any given subject, nor can we expect a sixteenth-century document to answer nor anticipate all our modern theological questions. Second, and more importantly for the purposes of this essay, Heideman’s thesis is incorrect because the person and work of the Holy Spirit are integrated into the overall structure and essential content of the Heidelberg Catechism. Although we would have serious issues with his overall theology, this feature of the Heidelberg Catechism has been recognized even by Karl Barth, who said, ‘One may say that it is distinc­tively a theology of the third article, a theology of the Holy Spirit.’⁸

As we look more closely at what the Heidelberg Catechism says about the Holy Spirit, we will see that it is a pastoral exposition of the Spirit’s work.⁹ From its beginning to its end the Holy Spirit is described in his Person as well as in his work, in relation to Christ, to the believer, and to the Church.¹⁰

The Spirit and the Overall Structure of the Catechism←⤒🔗

In this essay we want to recognize the comprehensiveness of teaching about the Holy Spirit in the Heidelberg Catechism in light of its system of doctrine. Far from being a bare outline or a cold theology that damp­ens our passion for Jesus Christ, we see that the entire catechism is filled with references to the Holy Spirit. It naturally follows that our entire faith gives attention to the Spirit’s Person and work.

The Theme (Q & A 1)←⤒🔗

Question and Answer1 gives the overall theme of the Catechism as being the Christian comfort derived from the Triune God – the work of Jesus Christ, the providential care of God the Father, and the work of the Holy Spirit in assuring believers of eternal life and producing within them heartfelt gratitude:

Q. What is thy only comfort in life and in death?

A. That I, with body and soul, both in life and in death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ, who with his precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins, and redeemed me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must work together for my salvation. Where­fore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me heartily willing and ready henceforth to live unto him (Emphasis added).¹¹

The Christ-centredness of this answer is evident. What is so interest­ing is that because we belong to Christ, among other things, his Holy Spirit assures us and makes us ready to live for him. The conclusion, then, is that the Holy Spirit is of the very essence of the Heidelberg Cat­echism’s theme of our Christian comfort in Christ and of our devotion to him. Apart from the Holy Spirit we would have neither comfort nor heartfelt inclination to serve the Saviour.

The Outline (Q & A 2)←⤒🔗

Question and Answer 2 is grouped with Question and Answer 1 as Lord’s Day 1 of the Catechism, and so it flows out of what was just said. Since our comfort in Christ is the theme, the next question asks:

How many things are necessary for thee to know, that thou in this comfort mayest live and die happily?

The answer, like Answer 1, is a classic in Reformed catechetical literature:

A. Three things: First, the greatness of my sin and misery. Second, how I am redeemed from all my sins and misery. Third, how I am to be thankful to God for such redemption:¹²

Question and Answer 2 give the overall structure of the Heidelberg Catechism, as we will examine below. As Heidelberg Catechism scholar, Lyle Bierma, has demonstrated, this threefold division of our knowledge of our guilt, God’s grace, and our gratitude, was a part of ‘the common stock of Protestant theology’:¹³ How does this relate to the purpose of this article on the Holy Spirit? As a part of the common stock of Protestant doctrine, this common division had at least one contemporary expression in Theodore Beza’s 1559 Altera brevis fidei confessio, according to Walter Holweg. In his Confession, Beza described this same threefold knowledge that the Heidelberg Catechism uses as its outline of the threefold work of God the Holy Spirit:¹⁴ The entire Christ­ian life, then, is one in which the Holy Spirit works in us to convict us of sin, to apply to us the grace of Jesus Christ, and to create heartfelt gratitude within us. As we will see below, the Holy Spirit is essential throughout these three sections of the Catechism.

Guilt (Q & A 3-11)←⤒🔗

As we move into the body of the Catechism, Question and Answer 8 bring home the all-too-real predicament which the Holy Spirit reveals to us, that we are ‘wholly unapt to any good, and prone to all evil’. The way out of this situation of guilt and misery (Q & A 3-11) is to be ‘born again by the Spirit of God’. Here the Catechism draws upon Jesus’ familiar double entendre about the work of the sovereign Spirit to cause us to be born again, or born from above (John 3). Apart from the Holy Spirit, not only would we not be convicted of our sins, but also we would have no ability to escape them.

Grace (Q & A 12-85)←⤒🔗

Furthermore, those to whom the Spirit of Christ gives this new birth are also given true faith. Not surprisingly, the Heidelberg Catechism emphasizes that it is the Holy Spirit who creates this faith in us, accord­ing to question and answer 21:

Q. What is true faith?

A. It is not only a certain knowledge whereby I hold for truth all that God has revealed to us in his Word, but also a hearty trust which the Holy Ghost works in me by the Gospel, that not only to others, but to me also, forgiveness of sins, everlasting righteous­ness and salvation, are freely given by God, merely of grace, only for the sake of Christ’s merits (Emphasis added).

The Catechism goes on to say that this faith believes ‘all that is prom­ised us in the Gospel’ (Q & A 22) – a Gospel ‘which the articles (that is, of the Apostles’ Creed) of our catholic, undoubted Christian faith teach us in sum’ (Q & A 23). Thus faith is created by the work of the Holy Spirit, and faith has as its object the work of all three persons of our Triune God – the Father who created us, the Son who redeemed us, and the Holy Spirit who sanctifies us (Q & A 24).

We learn about the intent of the primary author of the Catechism, Zacharius Ursinus, in his Commentary upon it. At this point in his Commentary he even shows the reason for the seemingly random division of the third section of the Apostles’ Creed in the Catechism. In the Catechism’s division into fifty-two Lord’s Days, the holy catholic Church, communion of saints, and forgiveness of sins go together. In commenting on all the clauses in the third section of the Creed, Ursinus makes the telling remark that: ‘...A holy catholic church, the com­munion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting’ are all the benefits of Jesus Christ bestowed upon believers by the work of the Holy Spirit.¹⁵ Appended to the ‘grace’ section of the Heidelberg Catechism, which focuses on an exposition of the Apostles’ Creed, is an explanation of the means of grace (Q & A 65-82), that is, preaching and the sacraments. In another article we will have opportunity to demonstrate the pneuma­tological focus of preaching and sacraments, but for now it suffices to say that they are described as the work of the Holy Spirit in creating and confirming faith in the people of God:

Q. Since, then, we are made partakers of Christ and all his benefits by faith only, whence comes this faith?

A. The Holy Ghost works it in our hearts by the preaching of the holy Gospel, and confirms it by the use of the holy Sacraments (Q & A 65; emphasis added).

The Holy Spirit, then, reveals our guilt and makes us partakers of Jesus Christ and his saving benefits through the means of preaching and sacraments.

Gratitude (Q & A 86-129)←⤒🔗

The final section of the Catechism, dealing with our gratitude for the overwhelming grace of Jesus Christ, is organized around the person and work of the Holy Spirit. Just as he convicts of sin, and creates and confirms faith, so also he renews us after the image of Christ in a life of gratitude:

Q. Since, then, we are redeemed from our misery by grace through Christ, without any merit of ours, why must we do good works?

A. Because Christ, having redeemed us by his blood, renews us also by his Holy Spirit after his own image, that with our whole life we may show ourselves thankful to God for his blessing, and that he may be glorified through us; then, also, that we ourselves may be assured of our faith by the fruits thereof, and by our godly walk may win our neighbours also to Christ (Q & A 86; emphasis added).

Within this section are expounded the Ten Commandments and Lord’s Prayer. The Holy Spirit is central to this section on gratitude as well. He is mentioned in the key summary question on the Ten Com­mandments in question and answer 115:

Q. Why, then, doth God so strictly enjoin upon us the ten com­mandments, since in this life no one can keep them?

A. First, that all our life long we may learn more and more to know our sinful nature, and so the more earnestly seek forgiveness of sins and righteousness in Christ; secondly, that we may continu­ally strive and beg from God the grace of the Holy Ghost, so as to become more and more changed into the image of God, till we attain finally to full perfection after this life (Emphasis added).

The strict preaching of the Ten Commandments has as one of its ends stirring us up to a constant begging for the grace of the Spirit to transform us into Christ’s image.

As well, the Spirit’s centrality in the third section of the Catechism is seen in its opening question and answer on prayer:

Q. Why is prayer necessary for Christians?

A. Because it is the chief part of the thankfulness which God requires of us, and because God will give his grace and Holy Spirit only to such as earnestly and without ceasing beg them from him and render thanks unto him for them (Q & A 116; emphasis added).

Conclusion←⤒🔗

In understanding this structure of the Heidelberg Catechism, we have seen that the Catechism is far from being an insufficient, bare outline of the person and work of the Holy Spirit, and is even further from being a ‘dampening’ theology, since the Holy Spirit is the source of Christian comfort as well as of our constant experience of our guilt, God’s grace in Jesus Christ, and our response of gratitude for it. The Heidelberg Catechism, by its overall structure and content – a content that focuses on the work of the Holy Spirit in relation to Jesus Christ, in relation to the Christian, and in relation to the church – helps us re-capture the personal and powerful work of the blessed Spirit in these ‘spiritual’ days.