Systematic Theology VI: Pneumatology

The doctrine of the Holy Spirit, following directly on the doctrine of salvation (ST5) and presupposing the Trinity and the person and work of Christ (ST2).

The course opens with the Spirit's work across biblical history: the Spirit in creation and the Old Testament, the Spirit's role in the life of Christ, the inauguration of the new covenant at Pentecost, the Spirit's spread through Acts and Paul, and the continuity-and-discontinuity debate between covenantal and dispensational readings of the Old and New Testament Spirit. It then establishes the Spirit's person and deity: full personhood against sub-personal pictures, the fourth-century struggle that settled the Spirit's deity at Constantinople in 381, the East-West filioque controversy, the Spirit's place within the Trinity, and the Spirit's biblical names and symbols. The third chapter covers the Spirit's work in applying salvation - common grace, conviction and calling (with the Reformed/Arminian/Catholic dispute over effectual versus prevenient versus sacramental grace), regeneration, indwelling and sealing, and assurance. The fourth turns to sanctification: definitive and progressive holiness, the fruit of the Spirit, mortification and vivification, the means of grace, and the Spirit's intercession in suffering. The fifth chapter takes up spiritual gifts and the questions that most divide the readers of this course: the baptism and fullness of the Spirit, cessationism versus continuationism on tongues and prophecy, healing and the prosperity gospel, and testing the spirits. The course closes with the Spirit, the church, and the world today: the Spirit's role in the church's unity and mission, global Pentecostal and charismatic renewal and its historical revivals, contemporary controversies, and the state of ecumenical convergence and remaining difference between Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, and Pentecostal pneumatology.

Six chapters plus an introduction, thirty-one lectures. Scripture is quoted from the World English Bible. Reformed, Wesleyan/Arminian, Pentecostal/charismatic, cessationist, Catholic, and Orthodox positions are each named with their strongest advocates wherever they genuinely differ, because few doctrines divide this course's readers as sharply, or as painfully, as this one.