this advancement of His work it is important not only that new believers be won (xvii. 20), but that they be kept in faith. Since fresh sins are ever occurring, even in believers, which threaten to destroy their possession of salvation, there is no higher object for prayer than the conversion and forgiveness of the sinning brother, by which life is gotten for him (I. v. 16; comp. Jas. v. 15). Thus it is important to know whether such a prayer is yet permissible, or whether the deadly sin has been committed, which leaves no more room for any hope of forgiveness (I. v. 16; comp. § 151, c). For this end has the risen Christ given (xx. 22) to the apostles His Holy Spirit (comp. § 145, d), that they may be able to distinguish between sins of weakness and deadly sins, and that they may be able to announce forgiveness, or refuse it accordingly (ver. 23).10

obedience to the commands of God (ver. 22; comp. ix. 31), then it is clear from the connection with ver. 19 that this comes into notice but as a token that they are of the truth, and therefore stand in the place of disciples (comp. Ritschl, ii. p. 373), as even in the Synoptists only the members of the kingdom (i.e. the real disciples) receive that promise. In the passage I. v. 14, 15, this confidence appears connected with this, that we ask according to the will of God, which amounts again to the prayer of the members of the kingdom, inasmuch as their whole efforts are directed to the realization of the divine will (§ 26). But neither is acceptable prayer generally, nor is prayer in the name of Jesus, regarded as conditioned by the gift of the Spirit; for even xvi. 26, 27 is not prayer in the name of Jesus as such, but its directness and confidence connected with the consciousness of the divine love, which is the result of the believing reception of Christ, and this consciousness, if we refer xvi. 25 to the gift of the Spirit, is only in so far brought about by this gift of the Spirit, as it carries forward and perfects the revelation of God given in Christ (comp. § 155).

10 If, according to the oldest tradition, Jesus gave to the community of the disciples in the wider sense the power of absolution (§ 31, c), the exercise of this is here connected with the apostles (Matt. xvi. 19, as also specially with Peter) sent out by Him (ver. 21) plainly in the sense, that their decision as to the distinction between sins of infirmity and deadly sins, may remain for that regulative.

CHAPTER V

THE CONSUMMATION OF SALVATION.

§ 155. The Paraclete.

When Christ had finished His work, the Father sends the Holy Spirit as His substitute to believers, to carry forward His work in them (a). As the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit is represented as a person in the speeches of Christ in the Gospel, without this idea being assimilated with the Johannean system of doctrine (b). This task is, to keep to believers the revelation of God given in Christ, and evermore to appropriate it (c). He can testify of the truth to the world only by the instrumentality of believers, and in that way lead it from the sin of its unbelief (d).

(a) On His going to the Father (xvi. 7), and the heavenly glorification thereby given Him (vii. 39), the apostle makes the sending of the Spirit depend, as Jesus Himself does, and this, to be sure, not because during the earthly life of Jesus the independent activity of the disciples was repressed (Neander, p. 891; Immer, p. 523), nor because the Spirit was as yet connected with His human personality (Frommann, pp. 465, 466; Baur, pp. 384, 385), but because His earthly work was completed only by His final departure to the Father (comp. § 154, c, footnote 7), and room was thereby made for the new epoch of the history of salvation, which commences with the sending of the Spirit. It is clear from this, that the promised sending of the Spirit cannot be intended by the breathing on the apostles of the Risen One, when He appeared to them (xx. 22). For as long as Jesus was seen on earth,

1 This breathing on them cannot, therefore, be strictly the gift of the Spirit (Köstlin, p. 206, and even Kübel, p. 294), or the beginning of it (Schmidt, i. p. 201), because the disciples received it, not as the representatives of believers generally, but as His messengers in particular (ver. 21), while the gift of the Spirit seems to be connected not with one particular calling, but only with faith (vii. 39) and the confirmation of discipleship (xiv. 15, 16; I. iii. 24, iv. 13), and hence it is not given simply to the apostles, as is clear from xv. 26, 27. Even the want of the article shows that it was not the Spirit in the solemn sense that was given to the apostles, but of the Holy Spirit of

He had not yet gone home to His Father (xx. 17); moreover, He nowhere promises that He will give the Spirit directly, but that He will send Him (xvi. 7) from the Father (xv. 26), which, according to xiv. 26, can only be so understood that the Father will send Him at His request (ver. 16); wherefore even in the Epistle the Holy One, from whom Christians have the anointing (I. ii. 20, 27), is God Himself (§ 147, b, footnote 5). Quite as little, to be sure, is the gift of the Spirit, as elsewhere in the apostolic preaching (§ 41, a; 84, a), expressly connected with baptism, of which iii. 5 does not speak. Regard is only had to the fact, that after Christ's departure the Father sends the Spirit in His stead (xiv. 26). The Spirit is to carry forward the work begun by Christ during His earthly life on believers, as His substitute, who needs to be replaced no more by a new one, as He abides for ever in the disciples (xiv. 16, 17; comp. I. ii. 27). The final epoch of the history of salvation begins with the sending of the Spirit.

(b) As Christ's substitute, the Spirit is throughout represented as a person in the speeches of Christ in the Gospel, as Christ Himself is. He is the other advocate and patron (πаρáκληтоs, advocatus), whom God after Christ's departure (who is Himself, I. ii. 1, called πаρáкλпτos) gives to believers as their abiding help (xiv. 16), or sends (ver. 26), as He has given and sent the Son into the world (iii. 16, 17). He proceeds from the Father (xv. 26), and comes to them (xvi. 7, 13), as does the Son (xvi. 28); He is received (xiv. 17), as Christ is (xiii. 20), and is in them (xiv. 17) as Christ is in them. He proclaims (xvi. 13-15), testifies (xv. 26), and teaches (xiv. 26), like the Son, nay, His teaching depends on a hearing and receiving (xvi. 13, 14), as do the words of Christ. Jesus speaks of Him throughout, as of Him who carries forward His work in believers, and who stands in a position of complete equality with Him.2 But there is nothing therewith said of an eternal existence of Christ, and that, according to § 154, d, for a quite special object. Yet it must be admitted that this special equipment of the Spirit is as little expressly brought about by the circle of the other Johannean ideas, as is the descent of the Spirit on Christ Himself at His baptism (§ 145, d), and it therefore belongs all the more certainly to the real reminiscences of the evangelist (comp. § 140, d).

2 Hence, also, He stands throughout in equal dependence on the Father, as

the Spirit with the Father, or even of an inherent relation to the Father and the Son. We may from this infer as a logical consequence an ontological trinity, but we are not to seek to infer it from the speeches of Christ, which speak throughout only of the saving historical sending and activity of the Spirit. But if Reuss so represents it, as though in the doctrine of the personal Paraclete, the idea of Christ's fellowship with believers were gradually hypostatized, and this rather speculative way of looking at it only had not yet quite got the better of the popular (ii. pp. 528-533 [E. T. ii. 469-477]), he overlooks the fact, that fellowship with Christ is certainly not thought of as brought about by the Spirit (§ 149, d, footnote 12), and that the idea of the Spirit as the personal substitute of Christ is quite exclusively peculiar to Christ's speeches. In the Epistle is the Spirit the chrism (comp. Ex. xxix. 7), with which those who have really given themselves to God (§ 152, d) are consecrated to be entirely God's (I. ii. 20, 27; comp. § 44, b; 54, b).3

(c) The Spirit is Christ's substitute, because He is the Spirit of truth (xiv. 17, xv. 26, xvi. 13; I. iv. 6), i.e. because

does the Son, to whom He is in no way subordinated (against Köstlin, p. 110). What He hears He hears of the Father, as Christ does (xvi. 13); and what He hears is the possession of Christ only (ver. 14), in so far as all possessions are common to the Father and the Son (ver. 15). That He comes to testify of Christ (xv. 26), and to glorify Him (xvi. 14), is involved in the very object of His mission, but it testifies of no subjection to Him.

3 If a teaching activity is ascribed even to the chrism, that is likewise a simple personification, as when, I. v. 6, 7, along with the water and the blood, the Spirit too is regarded as testifying (rò μapTupour). Quite as with Paul (§ 84, a, footnote 4), and in the Epistle to the Hebrews (§ 124, b, footnote 8), is the Spirit thought of, therefore, as a divine power, of which God gives by measure (iii. 34 ; I. iv. 13; comp. i. 33, vii. 39; I. iii. 24), as the Spirit, which comes from God, but is not a person, but only speaks as the divine power in those who are inspired (I. iv. 1, 2; comp. § 150, b). We have here, therefore, the case that a method of representation handed down in the speeches of Christ, has not been so far assimilated by the apostle as to come to be regulative for his own peculiar method of doctrine (comp. § 140, d). But if he has not kept fast hold even of the personal character in the representation of the Paraclete, yet has he transferred the recognition of the idea given with Him in the time of the saving historical consummation in so marked a manner to the spirit given to believers, that it appears, vii. 39, as though He did not formerly exist at all. In conformity with this the apostle has also nowhere traced back the preparatory revelation of God to the Spirit, as it yet happens elsewhere (§ 46, a; 116, c, footnote 4; 127, b), and the communication of the Spirit to Christ is accepted only traditionally, according to § 145 d.

He possesses the full knowledge of God, or because He is the Truth itself, i.e. the communicator of it (I. v. 6), as Christ was (xiv. 16; comp. § 147, 6). He can have, therefore, but the task to communicate further to believers the revelation of God which had appeared in Christ. He reminds the disciples of all which Jesus had said (xiv. 26); and since abiding in Christ, and therewith the working of the revelation of God, which had appeared in Christ, depends on keeping the words of Christ (§ 149, c, footnote 10), so the continuance of the salvation given in Him is secured only by the Spirit.1 But the Spirit is not only to preserve Christ's work in believers, He is to advance and perfect it. Jesus had not yet been able to tell them much in general, because they were not yet able to bear it (xvi. 12); but the Spirit will teach them all things (xiv. 26), will be their Leader into the whole truth (xvi. 13); so that they now know all things which belong to the full truth, i.e. to the full revelation of God (I. ii. 20, 21), and they need no other teacher (ver. 27). Not as though Christ's work were in that way reduced to an imperfect work. All enlightenment of the Spirit will help only towards this, to glorify Him, while it teaches to know Him ever more perfectly (xvi. 14); and it is in that way clear, that the full revelation of God has been already given in Him (ver. 15), and everything which the Spirit announces is but taken from what is His (ver. 14). The new epoch of saving history, beginning with the sending of the Spirit, brings no perfecting of the revelation of God given in Christ, but only an ever fuller appropriation of it. If the Spirit is but He who carries forward the work of Christ, then His whole activity is to be regarded as the maintaining and perfecting of the revelation of God given in Christ, and it must hence be but a revealing

In particular, everything which they came fully to comprehend later (ii. 22; comp. § 140, c), the Spirit will have but recalled to them. Much of what Jesus, during His earthly life, had spoken to them of His Father, but in figurative dress, is proclaimed to them in the Spirit, without figure or veils (xvi. 25), as what had been meant in the synoptical speeches of Christ by the figurative announcement of God as the Father (§ 20), the apostle, on the ground of the enlightenment by the Spirit, without figure and veil, now designates as the perfect revelation of the love of God (§ 147, c). Even according to I. ii. 27, it is the Xpioμa which by His teaching, in so far as that teaches to know Christ ever anew as the perfect revelation of God, brings about our abiding in God.