AUTHORITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT: THE "MISSING LINK" IN OUR CONTEMPORARY UNDERSTANDING OF DIVINE AUTHORITY?, THE

The Spirit causes the risen Christ to live his risen life in our midst through the message of the Word. Luther thereby holds that the work of the Holy Spirit is always a logical outworking of the Filioque clause, in that the Spirit serves as a mediator of the experience of Christ, and thus "reveals every relation to Christ which is not experience [sic], which does not rest on the mediating, real and redeeming presence of Christ."53 All other talk about the presence of Christ outside this sphere is either spiritualistic mysticism or moralistic imitation of Christ. Indeed, the only Spirit Luther knows is the Spirit of Christ. Luther tells us that the main work of the Spirit is not to authorize or justify the interpretive conclusions of the Roman Catholic magisterium, but rather to create faith within those who believe -and specifically, faith in the historical Christ through the Word of God. Equipped with the Spirit of God, the believer has the ability to interpret the Word, though this interpretation should not be performed outside the context of the broader church community.

Counter-Reformation pneumatology, however, regarded the "authority" of the Spirit to be evident in the "infallibility" of the Roman Catholic Church. The Catholic Church's "faithfulness,"54 according to Counter-Reformation Catholic theologians, was radically and yet erroneously questioned by the Reformers. Fisher argues that the promise of the Spirit was not made simply to the apostles but to the church until the end of the age. As a result, the Spirit in the church provides the hermeneutical principle for determining truth.

The universal Church cannot fall into error, being led by the Spirit of truth dwelling in it forever. Christ will remain with the Church until the end of the world. . . . [The Church] is taught by the same one Spirit to determine what is required by the changing circumstances of the times.55

Such an "interpretive authority" was made an institutional standard via the Council of Trent (1545-63). Catholic theologians at Trent appealed to the continual activity of the Spirit throughout the church age as a primary justification for the handing down of the apostolic traditions and for the trust that should be placed in those traditions. This, however, is not distinguished from the trust we are to have in the canonical Scriptures. What the Reformers attributed to the Holy Spirit (that is, the authentic interpretation of the Scriptures), the theologians of Trent ascribed to "the church," the body of Christ where the Spirit was living in the form of a living gospel. The doctrine of the church's "infallibility"56 is therefore essentially the Roman Church's claim to be the authoritative interpreter of written revelation.

Nevertheless . . . the Church is superior to the Bible in the sense that she is the Living Voice of Christ and therefore the sole infallible interpreter of the inspired Word, whenever an authoritative interpretation is required.57

Wright attempts to clarify that the authority transferred from the Holy Spirit to Roman Church leaders is not exercised above the church but from within the church by respecting the rights conferred by the Spirit to each believer.58 Congar, a Roman Catholic theologian, admits however that the tendency of the Counter-Reformation was to "give an absolute value to the church as an institution by endowing its magisterium with an almost unconditional guarantee of guidance by the Holy Spirit."59 Biblical references in some of its decisions (i.e., the Mariological dogmas of 1854 and 1950) have been "quite remote," and such decisions were essentially based on faith in the Church itself, "animated by the Spirit."60