Wednesday, February 28, 2018

John Calvin on the Holy Spirit as the True Jehovah

"Nor does the Scripture, in speaking of [the Holy Spirit], withhold the name of God.  Paul infers that we are the temple of God, from the fact that 'the Spirit of God dwelleth in us' (1 Cor 3:16; 6:19; and 2 Cor 6:16).  Now it out not to be slightly overlooked, that all the promises which God makes of choosing us to himself as a temple, receive their only fulfillment by his Spirit dwelling in us.  Surely, as it is admirably express by Augustine (Epist. 66 ad Maximinum), 'were we ordered to make a temple of wood and stone to the Spirit, inasmuch as such worship is due to God alone, it would be a clear proof of the Spirit's divinity; how much clearer a proof in that we are not to make a temple to him, but to be ourselves that temple.'  And the apostle says at one time that we are the temple of God, and at another time, in the same sense, that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit.  Peter, when he rebukes Ananias for having lied to the Holy Spirit, said, that he had not lied unto men, but unto God.  And when Isaiah had introduced the Lord of Hosts as speaking, Paul says, it was the Holy Sprit that spoke (Acts 28:25, 26).  No, words uniformly said by the prophets to have been spoken by the Lord of Hosts, are by Christ and his apostles ascribed to the Holy Spirit.  Hence it follows that the Spirit is the true Jehovah who dictated the prophecies" (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.13.15).

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