Published last fall, Fred Sanders’s The Holy Spirit: An Introduction is one of the latest editions in Crossway’s Short Studies in Systematic Theology series. The title of this particular volume leaves little to the imagination in terms of the subject matter. Sanders, professor of systematic theology at Biola University, sets out to introduce the reader to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. More precisely, he seeks to introduce the reader to the Holy Spirit as a Person.
Summary
From the outset, however, Sanders is keenly aware that, paradoxically, he is “introducing [his Christian readers] to somebody they already know.”[1] Those who have made the good confession that Jesus is Lord have done so in the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit indwells all of Jesus’ disciples. Sanders is not, then, introducing believing readers to someone they have never met. He is “showing readers just how much they already know about the Holy Spirit.” Now, many believers clearly feel like they do not know the Holy Spirit very well. Nevertheless, Sanders argues that contextualizing “the doctrine of the Spirit within the doctrine of the Trinity” will sharpen believers’ personal awareness and understanding of the Holy Spirit.[2]
Many believers are more consciously aware of the other two Persons of the Trinity, the Father and the Son, than they are of the Holy Spirit. However, this fact is according to divine design. “God’s method of bringing believers to conscious awareness of himself seems to be a two-stage process,” writes Sanders. “The first stage is to focus our attention on the Father sending the Son to save us; the second stage is to recognize that the only reason our attention was focused in that way was the presence, power, and person of the Holy Spirit influencing us anonymously in the first place.”[3] The only way we come to know the Father and the Son is by the Holy Spirit, but only after we come to know the first two Persons do we become consciously aware of the third Who introduced us to the others. Recognizing the Spirit’s role in revealing the Father and the Son to us is the “first step” to a proper adoration of Him.[4]
The second step is to reflect on divine revelation regarding the Spirit’s relationship to the Father and Son. Before considering the relationships separately, however, Sanders carefully articulates a robust yet succinct and understandable doctrine of the Trinity in which he affirms the full deity and personality of the Holy Spirit and roots the “sending of the Spirit into salvation history” in “the eternal procession of the Spirit within the life of God.”[5] Crucially, Sanders also demonstrates from the Biblical witness that “everything that God does happens from the Father, through the Son, and in the Spirit.”[6] With this Trinitarian framework in mind, Sanders proceeds to contemplate the Spirit’s relationships to the Father and the Son.
Sanders begins his discussion of the Spirit’s relationship to the Father in terms of “Promise and Fulfillment.”[7] Furnished with Jesus’ revelation that the Holy Spirit is “the promise of [the] Father” (Luke 24:49), Sanders explains how “we can read the promises of the Old Testament as one massive testimony to the Spirit’s relation to the Father.”[8] The core promise is God the Father’s promise to dwell with humans, and in the New Testament we find that this dwelling takes place by the Holy Spirit. For this dwelling to take place, however, the “obstacle of sin” had to be overcome, and it was when “God the Father sent God the Son to atone for sin, which prepared the way for the Spirit of God to be poured out on all flesh.”[9]
This last fact reminds us that “there can be no Sonless pneumatology.”[10] After all, it is impossible to consider the relationship between the Father and the Spirit without reference to the Son just as it is impossible to consider the relationship between the Son and the Spirit without reference to the Father. Indeed, the very terms Father and Son presuppose one another.[11] Though it is not totally possible to isolate the Father’s and Son’s relationships to the Spirit, Sanders draws out rich pneumatological insights by foregrounding the respective relationships without ever losing sight of the other.
Foregrounding the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the Son, Sanders points to the obvious fact that “the work of Jesus Christ prepared for the work of the Holy Spirit.” However, Sanders cautions us against understanding this relationship in quasi-Modalist terms as “a kind of relay race or tag team: first the Son arrives, and then later the Holy Spirit arrives.” Instead, he explains, “The Holy Spirit is always already present and active in the work of the incarnate Son.”[12] Indeed, the Holy Spirit was active in the event of incarnation itself as well as in the life and ministry of Jesus. “To study the life and work of Jesus in the Gospels,” writes Sanders, “is to see the person and work of the Holy Spirit in him.”[13] The Pentecostal difference is not the presence of the Spirit previously absent. The difference is the application of the Son’s work to believers and the sending of the Spirit into believers as a result.[14]
When Sanders arrives at a discussion of the Holy Spirit Himself, readers more clearly understand the book’s overarching premise. “The truths we have already considered—the oneness of God, the promise of the Father, salvation through the Son—are exactly the truths most emphasized in Scripture. And if we have succeeded in focusing on what Scripture emphasizes,” writes Sanders, “then that means, since Scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit, that we have already focused on the very things the Holy Spirit most wants us to know about himself.”[15] The Holy Spirit has chosen to reveal Himself to us by revealing the Father and the Son. Therefore, we should avoid the “impulse to force our ideas about the Holy Spirit to be as clear and distinct as possible.”[16] The Holy Spirit makes us aware of Himself without drawing too much attention to Himself. We must always, then, consider Him in relation to the Father and the Son whom He reveals.
Analysis
As in all of his writings, Sanders demonstrates an impressive mastery of Biblical and historical materials. He seamlessly moves from Patristic sources like Irenaeus and the Great Cappadocians to Puritan sources like John Own and Nathaniel Vincent to more modern sources like R. A. Torrey, C. S. Lewis, Yves Congar, and many in between. There are enough citations in this short introduction to keep busy the reader wishing to learn more.
Moreover, Sanders’s writing style is a delight. He has a genuine knack for making some of the most conceptually difficult of theological topics (e.g., the Trinity) eminently accessible to scholar and savvy layman alike. In fact, while readers will clearly find his pneumatological insights helpful, I would like to suggest that this book would serve as a wonderful introduction to the doctrine of the Trinity itself.
If there is one shortcoming of the book, it is, in my humble opinion, the fact that Sanders gives precious little attention to the Biblically revealed results of the Spirit indwelling believers today. In his defense, Sanders is vocally reticent to make a list of what the Holy Spirit does in the life of believers. He worries that such lists are often arbitrary and limited.[17] Still, it is hard to fathom how one could write an introduction to the Holy Spirit with absolutely no reference, for example, to the gifts of the Spirit (1 Cor. 12) or the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5). Surely, those New Testament passages are important for recognizing the effects of the Spirit’s work in believers today. Thankfully, there is no shortage of books to supplement this lone defect.
Shortcomings notwithstanding, Sanders has written a lovely introduction to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, “the prevenient person, always already at work, never Father-free or Sonless in his being or in his work, closer to us than our own breath, and making known to us in the depths of ourselves the deep things of God.”[18] Reading this book is sure to heighten your awareness of the Spirit’s presence and activity in the Scripture, in the world, and in your own life. Take up and read.
[1]Fred Sanders, The Holy Spirit: An Introduction, Short Studies in Systematic Theology, ed. Graham A. Cole and Oren E. Martin (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2023), 13. Google Book. Pagination oddities are owed to the e-book format.
[2]Sanders, The Holy Spirit, 18–19.
[3]Sanders, The Holy Spirit, 27–28.
[4]Sanders, The Holy Spirit, 37–38.
[5]Sanders, The Holy Spirit, 52–53.
[6]Sanders, The Holy Spirit, 57–58.
[7]Sanders, The Holy Spirit, 69–79.
[8]Sanders, The Holy Spirit, 72–73.
[9]Sanders, The Holy Spirit, 78–79.
[10]Sanders, The Holy Spirit, 94–95.
[11]Cf. Sanders, The Holy Spirit, 52–53.
[12]Sanders, The Holy Spirit, 97–98.
[13]Sanders, The Holy Spirit, 102–03.
[14]Sanders, The Holy Spirit, 108–09.
[15]Sanders, The Holy Spirit, 128.
[16]Sanders, The Holy Spirit, 130–31.
[17]Sanders, The Holy Spirit, 148–49.
[18]Sanders, The Holy Spirit, 160–61.
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