The Reformed churches, confessions, and theologians have a high doctrine of the Holy Spirit. From the earliest days of the Reformation the Reformed devoted much time and energy to the person and work of the Spirit but they did so in a way that was distinct from the Romanists and from the Anabaptists and other radicals. The former subsumed the Spirit into the institutional church and the latter groups, said Luther, thought that they had “swallowed the Holy Spirit, feathers and all.” What we know as modern Pentecostalism was found in them by their Reformed critics, e.g., Guy de Bres, author of the Belgic Confession, who described phenomena among the Anabaptists that we recognize today as Pentecostal and Charismatic. The Reformed were Trinitarian in their theology and were influenced by the fathers and ecumenical creeds, e.g., the Nicene-Constantinoplitan (AD 381), which itself had been enlarged to give a more complete account of the person and work of the Spirit. B. B. Warfield called Calvin “the theologian of the Holy Spirit” because fully one-half of his Institutes were devoted to the person and work of the Holy Spirit in the application of redemption and in the church as the locus where salvation is applied by the Spirit through the Word. This pattern is in our confessions and in our orthodox Reformed writers and in their successors.
Here is a resource page with the season 7 of Office Hours, which was devoted to the person and work of the Holy Spirit.
Here are all the Office Hours episodes.
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More Resources
- How To Subscribe To Heidelmedia
- Heidelberg 53: We Believe In The Holy Spirit (1)
- Heidelberg 53: We Believe In The Holy Spirit (2)
- Heidelberg 53: We Believe In The Holy Spirit (3)
- Heidelberg 47: We Are Not Orphans
- What Luther Meant And Didn’t Mean About The Holy Spirit Preaching
- Did Calvin’s Theology, Piety, and Practice Need To Be Rounded Out With Müntzer’s?
- Why This Reformed Christian Will Not Be Charismatic In 2018
- The Coherence Of Word And Spirit