Evangelicalism, the Word of God, and the Spirit

In Memory of George of B. Davis Spiritual Advocate for the Word of God Ministry of the Gospel Baptist Evangelical

Evangelicalism is an imperfect tradition, an inexact model of ideal Christianity, a mere approximate image of the flawless gospel-inaugurated, gospel-infused, gospel-oriented, gospel-governed, gospel-formed community of Paul’s “new humanity,” the “body of Christ,” “the church” as it ultimately will be when all things are made new, as the age to come is consummated in the final state. As such, it is fair game for both adoring admiration and sage review, criticism, evaluation, and reformation. The reader will notice that I have been using the term “Evangelicalism” and singular pronouns referring to it. Yet, it is difficult, if not impossible, in the cultural-religious discourse of 2025, to speak of Evangelicalism as if it were a monolithic tradition or movement with a universally attested single cardiovascular system. We will see that its features have always been in debate. In some ways it is more representative to speak of “evangelicalisms.” The Christian tradition, Evangelicalism, certainly has a history, one that is inseparable from the various cultures and times in which its forms develop.¹

In America, say, that involves a variety of forms common to scholarly taxonomies, for example: Pietism, Fundamentalism, neo-Evangelicalism, and whatever else has now evolved. Each of these forms had or have different defining characteristics, including certain doctrinal barriers, that, depending on the group, are either more or less porous. But Evangelicalism is not simply an American theological phenomenon. It appears globally in a variety of forms that exhibit both commonality with other geographical manifestations and also idiosyncrasies.² For some circles of Evangelicals, a particular view of the end times, the Bible, or God is determinative. For others the discriminatory issue is political and applies to a certain candidate, law, and perspective on national religious identity. For others still it is a modest, prime set of doctrinal and behavioral commitments. Therefore, adjectives and other qualifiers are required to modify the nouns “Evangelicalism” and “Evangelicals.” For example, we might list: Contemporary Evangelicalism, Evangelicalism in Asia, Evangelicals for America, Nationalist Evangelicals, Peace and Justice Evangelicals, and iVangelicals.³ “Evangelical,” it seems, has become a codeword, a polychrome term, one that everyone thinks they may know how to precisely define, but which requires a place in a lexicon with several entries to reflect the diversity of usage. What should be clear at this point is that “Evangelicalism” and “Evangelicals” are still very much in the process of self-definition. Some definitions are clinging faithfully to older, more standard criteria; others are forming new cultural alliances.

My interest here is to go back before the contemporary global (or peculiarly American) dictionary of “Evangelical” and “Evangelicalism” in order see how the origin of the term, especially in exegetical-theological discussion, might be of assistance in fine-tuning our own definition. I expect no grand, primitivist discovery but hope for a measure of precision and perhaps a grain of passion fed by Scripture, theological-cultural context, and protective pastoral care.

If Linford D. Fisher is correct, and it seems to me that he is, the early Reformation usage of the term arose from a perspective of the history of salvation.⁴ The Reformers understood themselves to be positioned in the last days, an economy that began with Christ’s advent and the inauguration of the New Covenant, an age of gospel and grace that stood in contrast to the previous age of law.⁵ This period of early modernity also was seen as more spiritually enlightened than the medieval period. So, even though Jesus had introduced this new economy of Gospel, the early Protestants had brought about a re-birth, a renaissance, of the age of grace and evangelicalism within their own day. John A. Maxfield addresses this historiography of Luther by describing it as a Christian apocalypticism. As in Noah’s day, Luther’s students found themselves in a time within history where God was especially active through their preaching of the evangelical message—“the condemning word of the law as well as the saving word of the gospel”—despite the opposition they faced. Their message of judgment and grace as well as their tribulations verified their identity as members of the true church who were living in an age of dramatic “Christian renewal” and “of moral and spiritual degeneracy.” It was from within this redemptive-historical outlook that a new Protestant language developed.⁶

The Christian terminology itself was not coined by the Protestants, we find it in the early and medieval church, but it is recast in the 1520s and 1530s with a polemical, anti-Catholic tone (that will soon include a similar tone against other Protestant communities and individuals) that is already “gospel-centered” and “Bible-based” within the usage of well-known figures like, Martin Luther, William Tyndale, and Menno Simons.⁷ For Luther, the term became the epithet for a new Christian identity within which he sought to spiritually form his pupils largely through biblical exposition that related the ancient content to the contemporary struggle to reform. His part of the historic ecclesiastical schism, substantially marked by his thought and life, needed leadership and molding as the evangelical reform movement by future pastors. His exegetical–theological work in his classrooms served to lay the foundation for the Lutheran Reformation’s approaching step to confessionalization.

First as a term to construe a movement and then to define a group of urban churches, “evangelical” in its sixteenth-century environment, especially in the 1520s, 1530s and 1540s, conveyed the axiom that the vision of beliefs and life represented by “evangelical” communities that identified with the evangelical movement conflicted with the competing vision represented by that which was “Catholic.” In the same manner that “Catholic” had evolved from the meaning simply “universal” to then represent a set of conciliar creeds and theological positions against various schismatics (e.g., Arians and Donatists), “evangelical” came to designate a collection of non-Roman communities, especially, at first, German Lutheran ones, but then eventually also the groups of other Reformers with agendas that at times rivaled Luther’s. Luther’s own usage of the term and the way in which he would question the authenticity of another Reformer’s right to the epithet demonstrates that such early evangelical “unity” was fragile, if not already fractured. After Luther’s death the term would be used to designate both Evangelical Lutheran and Evangelical Reformed traditions and, in much later days more contemporary to our own, to designate a generic union of Protestants with broadly agreeable visions.

The details with Luther’s polemical–expositional–theological use of the word are complex and show rich, diverse nuances in how he fills the term with granular theological flavor and displays the key characteristics of the movement to his students.⁸ We will treat only one of these found in his Lectures on Galatians.

A Return to Martin Luther

Martin Luther’s Lectures on Galatians (1535) is one model of an early Protestant Reformer’s concept of evangelicalism or perhaps more accurately, what he meant by “evangelical.” Luther joined himself to Paul’s epistle in an intimate manner, a manner that undergirded his vision of Christianity and for which he had departed all previous fathers and mothers, cleaving to it in a manner paralleled only by holy matrimony. He once said, “The Epistle to the Galatians is my epistle, to which I am betrothed. It is my Katie von Bora.”⁹ His reason in these lectures for expounding Galatians is stated clearly. His concern was the Reformation’s focus on justification by faith in contrast to a demonic orientation on human works: “But it is because, as I often warn you, there is a clear and present danger that the devil may take away from us the pure doctrine of faith and may substitute for it the doctrines of works and of human traditions. It is very necessary, therefore, that this doctrine of faith be continually read and heard in public.”¹⁰ This text will be our field of exploration, our archaeological site waiting to be uncovered and analyzed.

Luther builds up to his summary of the argument of Galatians by setting forth what he sees as the Pauline interests concerning authentic righteousness understood hand in hand with his own context.¹¹ First, he treats the three types of the righteousness of works that he will distinguish from the righteousness of faith/Christian righteousness: (1) “political righteousness” (the worldly, regulatory statutes of emperors, kings, philosophers, and lawyers [we could add the branches of contemporary democratic governments]); (2) “ceremonial righteousness” (such as papal traditions that erroneously seek earned merit from God [we could add other religious services and disciplines that are believed to placate God], or parental instruction that wisely uses ceremony as a device for moral instruction); and (3) Mosaic legal righteousness (that can only properly be embraced in the light of Christian faith) all of which can be attained through active human labor fueled either by natural potency or providential–universal divine gifting.

Second, he contrasts these worldly manifestations of the vain, active righteousness of works to the mysterious, heavenly righteousness of faith which unlike political, ceremonial, legislative, or works-based righteousness is “a merely passive righteousness,” one for which the human being works “nothing,” renders “nothing to God,” but only receives and allows God to perform an inward work, one which confounds the world (we could add: the empire, the nation, the government, the papacy, the legalist, the traditionalist) and is even frequently unappreciated and undiscovered by the tempted, tormented, guilty conscience of the believer.

Third, Luther then more fully develops the ramifications of the passive righteousness of faith for a person’s helpless, distressed conscience that inevitably, in step with the reason of the world and Satan, looks to human works, to active righteousness, rather than to the passive righteousness of grace, mercy, and forgiveness that the Father grants through Christ and the Spirit, “which we do not perform but receive.”

Fourth, to assist comprehension of the utter dependence of the creature upon the Creator to freely bestow the latter righteousness, he provides a theological analogy for passive righteousness. God imputes and gifts it apart from human merit and works in the same way that divine providence gifts and furnishes the rain to the parched earth without the earth’s labor.

Fifth, in typical fashion, Luther, then, starkly contrasts (1) the need of “stubborn, proud, and hardhearted” people to always have the law before them so that they may be “terrified and humbled” to run to Christ, with (2) the wise focus of the Christian who must “ignore” the misleading promises and false accusations of the law as if there were no law, but only grace. This distinction allows Luther to present the tightrope-like character of Christian ministry: one that spotlights the law only until there is contrition, but immediately, then, provides hope and comfort through enunciating and accentuating grace’s passive righteousness.

Sixth, Luther reviews his classic theology of the two types of righteousness, two different worlds, to which his discussion has been leading: (1) “active righteousness,” the righteousness of the law, earthly righteousness, with which he associates morality, works, secular society, the papacy, carnality, the old Adam and person, flesh and blood; and (2) “passive righteousness,” the righteousness of faith, heavenly righteousness, Christian righteousness, which is only received, accepted and for which the believer does absolutely nothing. This righteousness is not merited, earned, innate or performed, and Luther associates it with faith, grace, piety, the new (heavenly) Adam and person, sinlessness (for in the absence of law and the presence of new birth, sin is no more [Rom 4:15; 1 John 3:9], the Spirit, and the sufficient ministry of Christ, the High Priest.)

Finally, in a sober manner, Luther underscores that throughout this life, prior to glory, believers experience the unremitting, demoralizing, accusing buffeting of their flesh by the righteousness of the law, yet, too, the spirit of the redeemed rejoices in the passive righteousness bestowed by the ascended, triumphant Christ–Priest. Immediately after he states this dual reality of Christian existence prior to resurrection, Luther sets before the reader his synopsis of Paul’s message to the Galatians. It relates to this very flesh–spirit, active righteousness–passive righteousness struggle. When Christians give ear to the lies of active righteousness, flirting with the notion that the treasure of passive righteousness is absurd, and dwell
in the inky depths of the law’s accusations against them, they take their gaze off of Christ, the exalted, merciful, sympathetic High Priest, and glance instead over at the vicious, snarling, salivating, condemning beast of the law wrongly understood. He says,

In this epistle, therefore, Paul is concerned to instruct, comfort, and sustain us diligently in a perfect knowledge of this most excellent and Christian righteousness. For if the doctrine of justification is lost, the whole of Christian doctrine is lost. And those in the world who do not teach it are either Jews or Turks or papists or sectarians. For between these two kinds of righteousness, the active righteousness of the Law and the passive righteousness of Christ, there is no middle ground. Therefore, he who has strayed away from this Christian righteousness will necessarily relapse into the active righteousness; that is, when he has lost Christ, he must fall into a trust in his own works.¹²

Luther, in his own religious world, believed that Roman Catholic, some Protestant (fanaticists and sectarians), Jewish, and Islamic contexts were undergirded or contaminated by active righteousness, the discipline of works, and the righteousness of the law. Because of the ubiquitous force of active righteousness, Luther urges a ministry governed by acknowledging this realistic view of the world and the blessing of passive righteousness. The minister must continually distinguish them from each other, for on passive righteousness alone is the church built and upon this doctrine is true theology constructed. Failure to prioritize the passive righteousness solely by the mercies and grace of God will produce not Christian theologians, but “lawyers, ceremonialists, legalists, and papists.”¹³ Here, the Reformer takes the potential minister back to the beginning of his introduction where he told of one model of active righteousness that stood in challenge to Christian righteousness: that “political righteousness, which the emperor, the princes of the world, philosophers, and lawyers consider,” where the thirst for righteousness is believed to be quenched in earthly civil powers, jurisprudence, or schools of thought that contemplate metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.¹⁴ If these are not convicting one of sin and failure before the law, if they do not point one to Christ, the Priest, and Christian righteousness, they lead to ruinous satisfaction with the law and works. They prosper faith in governmental (both national and ecclesiastical) theories, measurements, and exactors of justice, over the justice that is given by passive righteousness through Christ and the Spirit; they inspire love for Moses, Plato, Cicero, Marsiglio, Kant, Machiavelli, and Locke over affection for Christ; and they inspire hope in the present things of the earth, those things that are below, contemporary rewards that are merely impoverished resemblances of celestial things, rather than heavenly things, the things that are above.

Therefore, the teaching servant of Christ should concentrate on skillfully distinguishing the two kinds of righteousness in proper measure to attain the godly result. The one of law and action is oriented toward the flesh and is taught to evoke genuine, conscious need for Christ and to outline godly morals. Its sphere of influence in relation to the believer is the flesh, not his or her conscience. The spiritual instructor does not employ it to plunge a child of God into despair, for in that usage Moses exceeds his limits. The purpose of the law for Christians, and here he includes also the teachings of Jesus that specify punishment for failure, is not to drive them to despondency and pain but to instruct them in the type of behavior that pleases God and that ought to characterize the morals of a Christian who obeys “for the sake of love.” Their High Priest does not condemn but welcomes the righteous because of passive righteousness where the law no longer stands against them, not disturbing but pacifying their conscience. The believer’s conscience is the gospel’s, not the law’s, territory. So, despite how the law in an inflated reign might attempt to confiscate his joy, he announces that

through the Gospel I have been called to a fellowship of righteousness and eternal life, to the kingdom of Christ, in which my conscience is at peace, where there is no Law but only the forgiveness of sins, peace, quiet, happiness, salvation, and eternal life. Do not disturb me in these matters. In my conscience not the Law will reign, that hard tyrant and cruel disciplinarian, but Christ, the Son of God, the King of peace and righteousness, the sweet Savior and Mediator. He will preserve my conscience happy and peaceful in the sound and pure doctrine of the Gospel and in the knowledge of this passive righteousness.¹⁵

Evangelicalism and the Unity of then Word and Spirit

As Luther thought his way through Galatians and read it with the goal of understanding Paul’s whole argument, he did so with a perspective that he elucidates in his exegesis of the opening of the letter.¹⁶ In Galatians he was hearing and reading the true, rather than false (Papal or mystical, misleading Protestant) apostolic word of God that manifests the only true gospel given to the apostle Paul not from human sources, but from the proprietary divine revelation of Jesus Christ, the gospel he was called to preach. In Galatians he and his students were face to face not simply with Paul, but through Paul, with Jesus Christ and the Father, for the apostle Paul in his letter mediates the divine words to all. Yet, too, he wanted his student-ministers to recognize that they too were genuinely, assuredly called to preach the gospel of the word for God, for God had mediated his authoritative, true, verifiable calling to them through the prophets and apostles whose words were not potentially deceptive, demonic, or merely human words, but rather the authoritative, trustworthy word of God. Since this is the case, each student-minister of the word may say “with John the Baptist (Luke 3:2): ‘The Word of the Lord has come upon me.’”¹⁷ When our ministerial calling is rooted in answer to the biblical word of God, then all people “may know that our word is in fact the Word of God.”¹⁸

With this précis of the way in which Luther understood the argument of Galatians and his perspective on the prophetic–apostolic word of God as the foundation for all Christian identity, soteriologically and ministerially, we are positioned to take our next step. We can now more fully appreciate his very early notion of what is essentially evangelical. He uses the term four times in his lectures on the first four chapters of Galatians and five times in his lectures on the last two chapters.¹⁹

In these contexts, he uses the term quite polemically, not only to distinguish the Lutheran Protestants from Rome and the papacy, but also as he discusses other Protestant groups, about which he is not impressed. These include the “enthusiasts” (“fanatics”), sectarians, and anabaptists. Such Christian polemics throughout history have sometimes tended to exaggerate, misrepresent, embellish, and distort the theological perspectives of others. For instance, we can observe this in the second century when some zealous Gentile Christian theologians presented an ugly, contemptible portrayal of Judaism which represented an early anti-Jewish position among some early Christians. Some scholarship is taking better account of the history, ideology, and theological opinions at stake.²⁰ Our interest here is not in Luther’s polemic but in the positive theological principles that he thinks were being marginalized.

The first of these principles is my focus in this essay. It captures Luther’s attention as he reads Galatians 3:2, 5: “This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by works of the Law, or by hearing with faith. … So then, does He who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you, do it by works of the Law, or by hearing with faith?”(NASB). Contemporizing Paul’s questions, Luther says, “We can say the same thing today to those who boast that they are evangelicals and have been delivered from the tyranny of the pope: ‘Did you overcome the tyranny of the pope and achieve freedom in Christ through the fanatical spirits or through us, who have preached faith in Christ?’ If they are willing to admit the truth here, they will be compelled to say: ‘Through the preaching of faith, of course.’”²¹ Here is the focus of this paper. An evangelical, in Luther’s taxonomy, is first of all one who believes correctly about the exclusive source of the gospel, the euangelion, where it can be found, read and heard. Prior to being an evangelical, one must know that the way in is through the gospel and that the gospel is found only in the prophetic-apostolic word of God, not in a detached, revelatory mysticism.

1. Formula of Concord and Smalcald Articles. Luther’s concern here is much the same as we find in the Formula of Concord: “Likewise we reject and condemn the error of the Enthusiasts who imagine that God draws men to himself, enlightens them, justifies them, and saves them without means, without the hearing of God’s Word and without the use of the holy sacraments.”²² A marginal note of the Formula at this point, sometimes appearing as a parenthetical clarification, helps to narrow the nature of the problem: “Enthusiasts is the term for people who expect the Spirit’s heavenly illumination without the preaching of God’s Word.”²³ As a matter of fact, Paul L. Maier, in his insightful article employs the note as his definition for this Lutheran concern: “‘Fanaticism’ or ‘enthusiasm’ will be limited strictly to the Formula of Concord’s own brilliantly concise definition: ‘Enthusiasts we call those who expect the heavenly illumination of the Spirit [‘coelestes revelations’ = ‘celestial revelations’] without the preaching of God’s Word’ (Epitome, II, 13).”²⁴

Though the Formula of Concord has in mind, in keeping with Lutheran doctrine, both the word of God and the sacraments, Luther’s issue in his Galatians lectures is to underscore the apostle’s point about God’s word, now preserved authoritatively in the apostolic and prophetic preaching and inspired scriptural writing which is repeated in the church’s reading and preaching. Justification occurs as a response of faith to the inspired, inscripturated gospel, precisely, in Paul’s thought (Gal 3:8), the good news as found in Genesis 12:3. The gospel of God, spoken by God to Abraham or spoken by Moses and the apostles is something exterior to the human being that sinners encounter outside themselves through reading Scripture or hearing Scripture preached.²⁵

Prior to the article on “enthusiasts,” the Formula of Concord had stipulated Scripture as the Lutheran normative, governing source for doctrinal construction. The later articles look back to it:

We believe, teach, and confess that the prophetic and apostolic writings of the Old and New Testaments are the only rule and norm according to which all doctrines and teachers alike must be appraised and judged, as it is written in Ps. 119:105, “Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” And St. Paul says in Gal. 1:8, “Even if an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed.”²⁶

But the Formula of Concord, in preparing the background for its comments on “enthusiasm,” does not only set out Scripture as the governing norm for doctrine. It relates the word to the Spirit, connecting and joining them inseparably, but in a particular fashion. The Spirit operates as the sole agent of conversion, yet only in union with the means of the soteriologically powerful, faith-inducing word of God. This miracle of means and agent presents the normative pattern for the inseparability of word and Spirit. The external, written word of God is already in place when the Spirit employs it as his “instrument” in his illuminating–converting ministry.

God the Holy Spirit, however, does not effect conversion without means; he employs to this end the preaching and the hearing of God’s Word, as it is written that the Gospel is a “power of God” for salvation; likewise, that faith comes from the hearing of God’s Word (Rom. 10:17). It is God’s will that men should hear his Word and not stop their ears. The Holy Spirit is present with this Word and opens hearts so that, like Lydia in Acts 16:14, they heed it and thus are converted solely through the grace and power of the Holy Spirit, for man’s conversion is the Spirit’s work alone.²⁷

Luther’s theology on this point is part of his faith in the unity between word and Spirit. In the Smalcald Articles, where again he treats “enthusiasm” among both papacy and Protestants, his theological disquiet pertains to notions that belief in the word of God is not the a priori starting point that inaugurates conversion and the indwelling presence and ministries of the Spirit within a Christian.²⁸ For him, the external word of God read, heard, and believed must precede the internal blessings of the Spirit.

In these matters, which concern the external, spoken Word, we must hold firmly to the conviction that God gives no one his Spirit or grace except through or with the external Word which comes before. Thus we shall be protected from the enthusiasts—that is, from the spiritualists who boast that they possess the Spirit without and before the Word and who therefore judge, interpret, and twist the Scriptures or spoken Word according to their pleasure [a problem that was inaugurated in the garden of Eden by Adam and Eve when they discounted God’s words and turned to their own demonically influenced notions].²⁹

2. Andreas Karlstadt, Old Prophecy, and New Prophecy. Further, papal pronouncements that are said by the pope to arise from his heart and to be of the Spirit disturb Luther for he finds many such papal statements to contradict Scripture. In Protestant circles, he perceived of Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt as a central adversary, one of those he numbered among the new prophets. And yet, to him, the basic worry was not Karlstadt, for he saw the battle against the foundational word of God as a spiritual one led by the forces of darkness. The devil was at work supplanting the witness of the prophets and apostles with exciting but presumptuous and ambitious “Spirit-engendered” departures from the scriptural faith. It is this reason why Luther responded in a two-fold manner: prayer, first, and theological-polemical preaching and writing, second, with his literary response coming in the form of his treatise, Against the Heavenly Prophets in the Matter of Images and Sacraments (1525).³⁰ He began with prayer for “it was not within human power to preserve the Word of God against the devil.”³¹ When one misattributes to the Spirit that which is not of him no matter how ecstatically felt nor eloquently presented, it detours the faithful from the essence of the faith, and in that way the devil succeeds through a “prophet.”³² Such “prophecy” and communications from the “Spirit” take the form of not only contradicting biblical teaching, at least as understood by the Lutherans, but also elevating “new articles” of faith and “new teaching” above the “main articles,” especially conversion by believing the word of God.³³ In particular, such a theology of divine revelation, for Luther, prioritizes the inward, making the exterior secondary, which is the reverse of Scripture’s pattern and teaching. This is the case because in Scripture’s normative pattern the effective gospel, announced outwardly in the audible, visible ministry of the church which repeats and enacts the words, examples, and signs of the prophets, Jesus, and the apostles, lays the foundation for the gospel’s benefits received by faith at conversion, including the inward ministry of the Spirit. The evangelical order is the gospel of the word of God read, heard, and believed, first, followed by the benefits of the Spirit that are experienced at conversion, second.

Out of his great mercy God has again given us the pure gospel, the noble and precious treasure of our salvation. This gift evokes faith and a good conscience in the inner man, as is promised in Isa. 55[:1], that his Word will not go forth in vain, and Rom. 10[:17], that “faith comes through preaching.” The devil hates this gospel and will not tolerate it. … The inward experience follows and is effected by the outward. God has determined to give the inward to no one except through the outward. For he wants to give no one the Spirit or faith outside of the outward Word and sign instituted by him. … Observe carefully, my brother, this
order, for everything depends on it. However cleverly this factious spirit makes believe that he regards highly the Word and Spirit of God and declaims passionately about love and zeal for the truth and righteousness of God, he nevertheless has as his purpose to reverse this order. His insolence leads him to set up a contrary order and, as we have said, seeks to subordinate God’s outward order to an inner spiritual one.³⁴

Despite Luther’s strong emphasis on the inseparability of the Word and the Spirit, he should not be taken as one attempting to rope off divine freedom. Rather, he is expressing what he sees Scripture laying out as the normative, historical pattern displayed in the history of salvation from the prophets to the apostles. This design is the constant provision of the divine promise in the external manifestation of the Word of God, the gospel in the divine Word. Luther stresses that God has said and shown where and how his promise will be present and available. God may certainly act as he chooses, even, conceivably in separation from the external word. The question is not God’s sovereign freedom; the issue is epistemology. Apart from the Word surety is threatened; the human receiver cannot know whether it is God or another revealer. Especially when the gospel is at stake, the seeker should seek God where the inscripturated revelation assures that he can be found. Although God is free to encounter us as he wills and as omnipotent and omnipresent is not limited to being known in only one place or one way, we might say that although Luther believes that God is not bound, he binds us to the Word as the standard, prescribed means by which we know the gospel and are converted by and to the Spirit and his blessings. What Luther does know is that the Spirit is present where the Word is proclaimed.

Although he is present in all creatures, and I might find him in stone, in fire, in water, or even in a rope, for he certainly is there, yet he does not wish that I seek him there apart from the Word, and cast myself into the fire or the water, or hang myself on the rope. He is present everywhere, but he does not wish that you grope for him everywhere. Grope rather where the Word is, and there you will lay hold of him in the right way.³⁵

3. Thomas Müntzer, Revelations, and Human Opinions. Thomas Müntzer, too, in Luther’s perspective, challenged the prescribed standard of the word of God preached and written in history by the prophets and apostles, introducing a division between word and Spirit, and arguing for the present normativity and priority of immediate extra-biblical revelation, which provided insight for the interpretation of Scripture and license to either remain with Scripture or to depart from it for one’s own revealed knowledge.

When a group of Swiss Anabaptists wrote to Müntzer in September 1524, they addressed him as though he had departed from a life devoted to the authority of Scripture to one of pastoral leadership driven by his own non-scriptural novelties. “We beg and admonish thee,” they plead, “to preach only the divine word without fear, . . . to esteem as good and right only what may be found in pure and clear Scripture, to reject, hate, and curse all . . . opinions of men, including thine own.” Any liturgical or sacramental innovations he wished to make should not be informed from his own “notions” for “we must add nothing to the word and take nothing from it.” Any external liturgical fixtures he may wish to institute in service, may confuse the neophyte about the spiritual necessity of a collection of visible symbols. Instead, he should be satisfied with the “external word” as is clear in the “commandment of Scripture.” Müntzer is to “go forward with the word and establish a Christian church with the help of Christ and his rule” for there “is more than enough of wisdom and counsel in the Scripture” regarding matters of piety.³⁶

We should note at this point that these Swiss Anabaptists are defining themselves, especially in comparison to Müntzer, as serious Bible readers. Here, that biblicism serves the purpose of attempting to rein in what appears to them as Müntzer’s excessive movement towards formalism, outward exhibition, and external symbolism in liturgy and sacraments.

Curiously, for Müntzer, this agenda is being driven by extra-biblical private revelations. In their hearts, the Anabaptists in Zurich are employing the New Testament to safeguard one of their most sacred duties: the practice of a genuine, inner, spiritual life of piety unencumbered by superficial, external fixtures. They wish to separate from the perfunctory and to bind themselves to God and each other in holy fellowship, true personal faith, and godly morals and piety.³⁷ On the other hand, other types of Reformers would seek the even more democratic model of Müntzer and find in his experience of the Spirit distanced from the “restrictive, impersonal” word a version of Christian freedom from spiritual inauthenticity, ritual formalism, intellectualism, and rote performance. Through their pneumatology and concept of revelation they were seeking true inner union with Christ and his agent of spiritual transformation. In a stern biblicism, doctrine, and creed they feared finding only the head and the law. They were parched for spiritual liberation and the life of the heart.

This sixteenth-century view of revelation and Scripture exemplified by Müntzer required the inspiration of Protestant readers and pastors, a new line of prophets, who replaced the papacy and the Roman church as the authoritative individuals who now oversaw biblical interpretation and theological construction by means of new, Spirit-given, revelation. What is addressed in quite a courteous manner in the Zurich letter can be seen in Müntzer’s own writings as a severe situation. One example of Müntzer’s ideas can be seen in his evaluation of his Reformer opponents whom he criticizes for being overly attentive to Scripture and limiting the Spirit’s inward ministry to his attestation that they are the children of God. In doing so, they discount what Müntzer believes is a common, generally experienced revelatory speaking of the Holy Spirit to believers. Such language gives rise to a counter polemic that argues since a new prophetic movement of novel, extra-biblical revelation is afoot within Protestantism, the unity of word and Spirit must be recemented, and the historic, exterior, prophetic-apostolic writings in priority to the inward and subjective spiritual experience must be reestablished for gospel ministry. In his The Prague Protest (1521), Müntzer says,

Again and again I hear nothing from the doctors of theology but the mere words of Scripture, which they have knavishly stolen from the Bible like malicious thieves and cruel murderers. They will be damned for this theft by God himself, who spoke thusly through Jeremiah 23[:18], “Behold, I have said to the prophets: I never once spoke to those who steal my words, each from his neighbor, for they deceive my people, and they usurp my words and make them putrid in their stinking lips and whoring throats. For they deny that my spirit speaks to people.” So they display their monasticism with flattering, high mockery. And they say that the holy spirit gives them an invincible witness that they are children of God, Romans 8[:16], Psalm 192 [perhaps Psalm 89:7 is meant].³⁸

And, again, he insists that true ministers must receive extra-biblical “revelations,” the fruit of what he terms “the living voice of God,” the inward words of the Spirit written on hearts, in order to hear Christ’s voice which extends beyond the whole of Scripture and verifies their identity among the saved. If they do not receive such revelations, they are to be counted among the condemned.

Therefore, as long as heaven and earth stand, these villainous and treacherous parsons are of no use to the church in even the slightest matter. For they deny the voice of the bridegroom, which is a truly certain sign that they are a pack of devils. How could they then be God’s servants, bearers of his Word, which they shamelessly deny with their whore’s brazenness? For all true parsons must have revelations, so that they are certain of their cause, 1 Corinthians 14[:30]. . . . [For] after they presume to have devoured the whole of Scripture [that will not be enough]—they shall be struck down with the words of St. Paul [who tells of the extra-biblical, revelatory writing of the Spirit on the hearts of believers], 2 Corinthians 3[:3].³⁹

Müntzer goes as far as to indicate that the inward writing of the Spirit, the Father’s intimate communication with his child, the inward inscripturation of God’s living word done by God’s living finger, is the writing of “the true holy Scripture,” “the Gospel and the whole of Scripture,” the consummate Scripture, to which the exterior Bible merely bears witness and which is closed to those who forsake the inward revelations and lock Scripture up within the Bible:

This is then the paper and parchment on which God does not write with ink but rather writes the true holy Scripture with his living finger, about which the external Bible truly testifies. And there is no more certain testimony, as the Bible verifies, than the living speech of God, when the father speaks to the son in the hearts of people. All of the elected people can read this Scripture, for they increase their talent. But the damned [because of their hard hearts] will surely let God’s living voice pass [them by].⁴⁰

Given these last words from Müntzer we can understand more clearly the concerns that Luther had. All that we have surveyed in this brief recounting of Martin Luther’s tension over a perceived division between the Word of God, the Spirit’s indwelling ministry, and the rise of a “new prophecy” movement among some early Protestants reflects one of Luther’s deeply held convictions: reform is planted and flourishes in the soil of the gospel that is revealed in the prophetic-apostolic word of God read, taught, and preached. In his second of eight Invocavit sermons preached in 1522 at Wittenberg upon his return from Wartburg, he makes this point. Treating at first the problem of private partaking of the Lord’s Supper, he clarifies his limitations. All he can do is proclaim the Word; the work of changing hearts is God’s alone. He is not the potter that fashions people’s hearts.

I can get no farther than their ears; their hearts I cannot reach. And since I cannot pour faith into their hearts, I cannot, nor should I, force any one to have faith. That is God’s work alone, who causes faith to live in the heart. Therefore, we should give free course to the Word and not add our works to it. We have the jus verbi [right to speak] but not the executio [power to accomplish]. We should preach the Word, but the results must be left solely to God’s good pleasure.⁴¹

Just as God’s word created the heavens, the earth, and all things that fill them (Psalm 33:6), “the Word must do this thing, and not we poor sinners.”⁴² Reflecting on his earlier ministry of reformation and keeping in mind the spiritual nature of conversion from unbelief to belief, he recalls,

The Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything. . . . I did nothing; I let the Word do its work. What do you suppose is Satan’s thought when one tries to do the thing by kicking up a row? He sits back in hell and thinks: Oh, what a fine game the poor fools are up to now! But when we spread the Word alone and let it alone do the work, that distresses him. For it is almighty, and takes captive the hearts, and when the hearts are captured, the work will fall of itself.⁴³

Roland H. Bainton, in his classic biography of Luther, provides an informative summary of Luther’s trouble with Müntzer that helps us appreciate the importance for him of both the unity of word and Spirit and the primacy of the tangible, historical revelation of the prophets and apostles:

Müntzer was readily able to find support for his view of the spirit in the Scripture itself, where it is said that “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life” (II Cor. 3:6). Luther replied that of course the letter without the spirit is dead, but the two are no more to be divorced than the soul is to be separated from the body. The real menace of Müntzer in Luther’s eyes was that he destroyed the uniqueness of Christian revelation in the past by his elevation of revelation in the present.⁴⁴

Conclusion

We have presented our review of Luther and his context as a gateway back into consideration of foundational, inaugural evangelical commitments in a time of dizzying diversity. In the sixteenth century, where the term “evangelical” received nascent use and meaning, we took notice of one of Luther’s criteria for the authentic evangelical in his lectures on Galatians. This Pauline epistle has much to do with what is gospel, what is truly evangelical, so we were well rooted. What mattered first to Luther, as he ruminated on how this epistle addressed his contemporary need to define true Evangelicalism within his own theologically challenging culture with its own options for defining the tradition, was the doctrine of Word and Spirit. So, we entered into the critical issue of the nature and role of Scripture and the interrelationship between the Spirit and the Word of God. His exegetical point was that hearing and believing the Word of God resulted in the reception of the Spirit. This indicated an order: first the Word, then the reception of the Spirit. Faith in the spoken, written word is the means by which one receives the Spirit. The blessing of the Spirit presupposes the Word and gives the prophetic–apostolic revelation a fixed, absolute status. Any subsequent relationship between the Spirit and the word would honor this order, this sequence. We then surveyed how Luther’s troubled Protestant, theological context justifiably oriented his attention on this question.

Luther’s answer to the theological problems he faced brings to mind Paul’s words in Romans 10 that put to the fore the words of the apostolic proclamation sourced in Scripture (Deut 9:4, 30:12–14; Isa 28:16; 53:1; Ps 19:4), words that in contrast to Moses’s teaching about the righteousness of the law, speak instead about the righteousness that is by faith, for “faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ” (Rom 10:17), which is the word of faith preached by the apostles (Rom 10:8). Luther’s concept of “Evangelicalism” was grounded in the gospel (euangelion) uniquely manifested historically in the past—in the unique and extraordinary written and spoken words of Moses and Paul. It was in these historic, anomalous moments in past space and time when God exhaled the words of Scripture, moving the prophets and apostles to speak and write the gospel, that Luther found one of the immovable characteristics of evangelicalism. All future evangelical representations of the gospel find their foundational, basal, constitutional source only here. The good news of the righteousness of faith is not news that arose subjectively and extra-biblically anew as a novelty within individuals of the sixteenth century any more than it is intuited or freshly unveiled within individuals outside of Scripture today. Luther’s consternation can be summed up in this way: such post-biblical, novel, individualistic, revelations of the “gospel” would perhaps be a different, contrary, distorted, humanly invented, erroneous “gospel” (Gal 1:6–8, 11; 2:5–14) rather than the one entrusted to and preached by the apostle Paul among the Gentiles and preached to the patriarch Abraham (Gal 2:2, 7; 3:8; 4:13).

At this point, we can turn to more contemporary reflections that assist us in concluding our short study and bringing forth some theological principles:

First, I think that Luther guides us to a point where to be evangelical is to unite in first place the revelatory ministry of the Spirit to the prophetic–apostolic word of God both in the past and present. I appreciate how Malcolm Yarnell puts it: “The revelatory work of the Spirit in the apostles’ teaching continues today through the texts they wrote, texts that the church collected into the New Testament.”⁴⁵ Even as the Spirit with and through the church speaks personally to every needy soul, we know what he says because of the written apostolic testimony. He bids the thirsty who hear to come and drink of the water of life (Rev 22:17).⁴⁶

Second, embracing this evangelical trait does not suggest that the personal, inward, genuinely relational and spiritual dimensions of the Spirit’s ministry are exchanged for a mere formal religion of external, outward, impersonal documents that do not convert, comfort, or change the reader’s and hearer’s communion with God, spiritual circumstances, commitments, and confident expectations of his or her destiny. The inspired, truthful words of the Bible foretell and retell the living, life-giving, active gospel that must be believed to the end that the believer becomes a new creation, born of the Spirit to true life in intimate, transformative relationship with the incarnate Word of God, Jesus Christ.⁴⁷

Finally, embracing the evangelical characteristic of a unity of the word and Spirit which inseparably connects the revelatory ministry of the Spirit to the prophetic-apostolic preaching and writing does not necessitate a uniform evangelical hermeneutical method or an unvaried set of emphases. Daniel J. Treier, in his Introducing Evangelical Theology, offers the helpful language of “The Spirit’s Accompaniment of the Word” for our doctrine.⁴⁸ He writes that this accompaniment is all encompassing as it superintends every facet of the blessing the divine word affords to the human creature throughout the history of redemption with the Spirit’s contemporary activity focused on illumination, a movement of the Spirit that enlightens both interpretively and virtuously:

The Spirit accompanies the Word from beginning to end: from election to prophetic inspiration to incarnation to apostolic mission, and then from inscripturation to preservation to illumination. The Spirit’s illumination heals sinfully blind eyes, opens stubbornly closed hearts, and shines light upon shadowy nooks or neglected crannies of biblical texts. The Spirit leads hearers of the Word into the freedom of obedience.⁴⁹

The hermeneutical strategies of spiritually illuminated evangelicals may differ. Some will emphasize tradition and reason while others underscore experience; some seem to highlight the virtue and life of the mind, the intellectual dimensions of the Spirit’s radiance, while others appear immersed in devotional and pragmatic pursuits for authentic piety. Both are the fruit of the Spirit’s attending to the flourishing of the word within the lives of Christ followers.⁵⁰

Maybe I should simply have stated the following words at the beginning of our study. They address the matter of our concern in a faithful, concise, lucid, and discerning manner:

The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God’s revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. … [It] will remain to the end of the world, the supreme standard by which all … religious opinions should be tried. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, fully divine. He inspired holy men of old to write the Scriptures. Through illumination He enables men to understand truth.⁵¹

1. E.g., George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University, 2006); Francis Fitzgerald, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017); Randall Balmer, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America, 25th Anniversary ed. (Oxford: Oxford University, 2014). ↩︎
2. E.g., D.W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London/New York: Routledge, 1989); Global Evangelicalism: Theology, History and Culture in Regional Perspective, ed. Donald M. Lewis and Richard V. Pierard (Downers Grove: IVP, 2014); Mark Hutchinson and John Wolffe, A Short History of Global Evangelicalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2012); Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Asia, ed. David H. Lumsdaine (Oxford: Oxford University, 2009); Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Latin America, ed. Paul Freston (Oxford: Oxford University, 2008); Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa, ed. Terence O. Ranger (Oxford: Oxford University, 2008). ↩︎
3. Center for Religion and Civic Culture (University of Southern California), “The Varieties of American Evangelicalism,” https://crcc.usc.edu/report/the-varieties-of-american-evangelicalism/, accessed 10 December 2024. ↩︎
4. “Evangelicals and Unevangelicals: The Contested History of a Word, 1500–1950,” Religion
   and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 26 (2016): 184–226, esp. 189. ↩︎
5. See, e.g., Lectures on Galatians, in Luther’s Works, 26:318, 413–14. ↩︎
6. John A. Maxfield, Luther’s Lectures on Genesis and the Formation of Evangelical Identity
   (Kirksville: Truman State University, 2008), 212–14. ↩︎
7. Fisher, “Evangelicals and Unevangelicals,” 188. For much of what follows in this paragraph, I am indebted to Maxfield, Luther’s Lectures on Genesis and the Formation of Evangelical Identity, 1–4. ↩︎
8. See below n. 14. ↩︎
9. Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, vol. 26, Lectures on Galatians, 1535, Chapters 1–4, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1999), ix. ↩︎
10. Lectures on Galatians, in Luther’s Works, 26:3 ↩︎
11. Lectures on Galatians, in Luther’s Works, 26:4–9. ↩︎
12. Lectures on Galatians, in Luther’s Works, 26:9 ↩︎
13. Lectures on Galatians, in Luther’s Works, 26:10. ↩︎
14. Lectures on Galatians, in Luther’s Works, 26:4. ↩︎
15. Lectures on Galatians, in Luther’s Works, 26:11. ↩︎
16. E.g., “Paul, an apostle, not sent from men nor through human agency, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father. . .. For I would have you know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel which was preached by me is not of human invention. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ (Gal 1:1–12 NASB); Lectures on Galatians, in Luther’s Works, 26:13–21, quotations, 18–19, 20. Italics mine. ↩︎
17. Lectures on Galatians, in Luther’s Works, 26:19. ↩︎
18. Lectures on Galatians, in Luther’s Works, 26:21. Italics mine ↩︎
19. Lectures on Galatians, in Luther’s Works, 26:221, 312, 398, 413; Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, vol. 27, Lectures on Galatians, 1535, Chapters 5–6, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1999), 48, 100, 125. I will discuss in this article only his first usage in relation to the external word and gospel. The other occurrences are related to his concerns about “questionable” Protestants who seemingly: (2) do not comprehend the proper use of the law; (3) misinterpret Christ’s words and treat the virtue of love as a necessary work; (4) hate the Lutherans, having been seduced by “fanatical spirits;” (5) boast about gospel-given Christian freedom that then turns to licentiousness; (6) turn to novelty of doctrine in the name of the Spirit and heavenly insight seeking primacy among evangelicals; (7) have given themselves to greed in the name of ministry. ↩︎
20. For example, on Karlstadt, Müntzer, and the Zwickau prophets see, e.g., Amy Nelson Burnett,
    “Karlstadt and the Zwickau Prophets: A Reevaluation,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte
    Archive for Reformation History, 114 (2023): 105–128. Her opening footnotes and discussion
    help to orient the reader to the literature and issues. On our interests she lists, for
    instance, Harold S. Bender, “The Zwickau Prophets, Thomas Müntzer, and the Anabaptists,”
    Mennonite Quarterly Review 27 (1953): 3–16; Olaf Kuhr, “The Zwickau Prophets, the
    Wittenberg Disturbances, and Polemical Historiography,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 70
    (1996): 203–14. ↩︎
21. Lectures on Galatians, in Luther’s Works, 26:221. Italics mine. ↩︎
22. The Formula of Concord, Epit., Art. 2.6 (13) in The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, ed. and trans. Theodore G. Tappert, collab. Jaroslav Pelikan, Robert H. Fischer, and Arthur C. Piepkorn (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 471. ↩︎
23. The Formula of Concord, Epit., Art. 2.6 (13), trans. Tappert, 471, n.3. Italics mine. For an introduction to the “enthusiasts” (Schwärmer) and Luther see, Amy Nelson Burnett, “Luther and the Schwärmer,” in The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology, ed. Robert Kolb, Irene Dingel, and L’ubomír Batka (Oxford: Oxford University, 2014), 511–24. ↩︎
24. Paul L. Maier, “Fanaticism as a Theological Category in the Lutheran Confessions” Concordia Theological Quarterly 44 (1980):171–83, here 173. ↩︎
25. Cf. Maier, “Fanaticism as a Theological Category in the Lutheran Confessions,” 176. ↩︎
26. Formula of Concord, Epit. 1, in Tappert, ed. and trans., The Book of Concord, 464. ↩︎
27. Formula of Concord, Epit. II.3, in Tappert, ed. and trans., The Book of Concord, 470. ↩︎
28. Smalcald Articles, 3.8.3–13, in Tappert, ed. and trans., The Book of Concord, 312–13. ↩︎
29. Smalcald Articles 3.8.3–13 in Tappert, ed. and trans., The Book of Concord, 312. ↩︎
30. Luther’s Works, vol. 40, Church and Ministry II, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1999],73–223. ↩︎
31. Martin Brecht, Martin Luther, vol. 2, Shaping and Defining the Reformation, 1521–1532, trans. James L. Schaaf (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 165. Brecht, 157–72, has informed my comments here on Luther and Karlstadt. See his opening, earnest prayer for the protection of God’s word at the beginning of Against the Heavenly Prophets (Luther’s Works, 40:80): “First, that each one with complete earnestness pray God for a right understanding and for his holy, pure Word. In view of the fact that under such a mighty prince and god of this world—the devil—it is not within our power to preserve either the faith or God’s Word, there must be divine power which protects it, as Psalm 12 well prays and says [Ps. 12:6–8], ‘The promises of the Lord are promises that are pure, purified seven times. Do thou, O Lord, protect us, guard us ever from this generation. On every side the wicked prowl, as vileness is exalted among the sons of men.’ If we boast that we have God’s word and do not take care as to how we are to keep it, it is soon lost.” ↩︎
32. Against the Heavenly Prophets in Luther’s Works, 40:82. ↩︎
33. Against the Heavenly Prophets in Luther’s Works, 40:137. ↩︎
34. Against the Heavenly Prophets in Luther’s Works, 40:146–47. ↩︎
35. The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ—Against the Fanatics, in Luther’s Works, vol. 36, Word and Sacrament II, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1999), 342. I am helpfully informed on this issue of the priority of the word and the divine freedom in Luther by Jeffrey G. Silcock, “Luther on the Holy Spirit and His Use of God’s Word,” in Kolb, et al. eds., The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology, 294–309, esp., 297–300. ↩︎
36. “Letter from Zurich Anabaptists to Thomas Müntzer, 3 September 1524,” trans. and annot.
    Walter Rauschenbusch, The American Journal of Theology 9 (1905): 91–106, here, 92–95; cf.
    Bender, “The Zwickau Prophets, Thomas Müntzer, and the Anabaptists,” 15. ↩︎
37. Cf. Rauschenbusch’s analysis of the letter and his helpful raising of these points, “Letter from
    Zurich Anabaptists to Thomas Müntzer, 3 September 1524,” 102–6. ↩︎
38. The Prague Protest in The Radical Reformation, ed. and trans. Michael G. Baylor (Cambridge:
    Cambridge University, 1991), 1–10, here, 2–3. ↩︎
39. The Prague Protest in Baylor, ed. and trans., The Radical Reformation, 4. ↩︎
40. The Prague Protest in Baylor, ed. and trans., The Radical Reformation, 4. ↩︎
41. The Second Sermon [at Wittenberg], March 10, 1522, Monday after Invocavit in Luther’s Works, vol. 51: Sermons I, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1999), 75–78, here, 76. ↩︎
42. The Second Sermon [at Wittenberg], March 10, 1522, Monday after Invocavit in Luther’s
    Works, 51:77. ↩︎
43. The Second Sermon [at Wittenberg], March 10, 1522, Monday after Invocavit in Luther’s
    Works, 51:77–78. ↩︎
44. Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (New York/Nashville: Abingdon-
    Cokesbury, 1950), 261. ↩︎
45. Malcolm B. Yarnell II, Who Is the Holy Spirit? Biblical Insights into His Divine Person
    (Nashville: B & H Academic, 2019), 92. ↩︎
46. Cf. Yarnell, Who Is the Holy Spirit? Biblical Insights into His Divine Person, 120. ↩︎
47. For this summary I am informed by David S. Dockery and Malcolm B. Yarnell, Special
    Revelation and Scripture (Brentwood: B & H Academic, 2024), 47. ↩︎
48. Daniel J. Treier, Introducing Evangelical Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019),
    314. ↩︎
49. Treier, Introducing Evangelical Theology, 314. ↩︎
50. Treier, Introducing Evangelical Theology, 314, informs my thoughts in this paragraph. ↩︎
51. “Article 1: The Scriptures”; “Article 2.C: God the Holy Spirit” in Baptist Faith and Message
    2000. ↩︎