387 - Human Spirit and Holy Spirit

Human Spirit and Holy Spirit
By Arnold B. Come
208 pp. Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1959. $4.00.

This is the most constructive contribution to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit that has appeared for a long time. As the title indicates, the author has been bold enough to reverse the currently orthodox method and to approach the subject from below upwards instead of from above downwards. This is not to say that he attempts to argue from the human to the divine in the fashion of idealism. But he recognizes that the rigid application of the orthodox method to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit leads to its evisceration, as the example of Karl Barth points up, and that this is precisely the point at which it is imperative for theology to take account of man's quest for knowledge of himself and to listen to those who are concerned to articulate it. It is really a method of correlation that Come employs, though lie is understandably reluctant to accept this designation. But the method of correlation is not necessarily bound up with the system of its distinguished formulator; as Come sug-

388 - Human Spirit and Holy Spirit

gests, it is prescribed by the "accommodation" of the grace of God, on which Calvin loved to dilate. And as Paul on the Areopagus found in the frustrated religiosity of the Athenians a point of contact for the Christian message, Come finds in the quest of man for authentic selfhood, as it is variously manifested in the Platonic tradition, existentialism, and psychology, "nothing less than the struggle of the broken image of God in man towards self-realization" (p. 16).

Come devotes a series of chapters to a sketch of a Christian anthropology which he develops on the basis of a study of the Biblical terminology in some detail. His argument that man is spirit in a sense analogous to that in which God is Spirit has firmer Biblical foundation than that of Barth and Eduard Schweizer (in Kittel's Worterbuch) that spirit in man has no reality apart from his relation to God-a position which, as Come points out, reduces man from the status of a personal subject in relation to God as person to that of "a mode of a Mode of God's being." The reluctance of these men to concede created spirit to man in the name of a (surely misunderstood) sovereignty of grace stems from fear of an exaggerated human self-sufficiency. The conclusion of Come's study of Biblical anthropology, however, is that spirit in many points precisely to the insufficiency of human selfhood; because he is spirit, man has to become what he is, and this not as an isolated self, but in relation to God and to his neighbor. Spirit is a given possibility, yet one which man is incapable of realizing on his own.

The "other-reference" of spirit is the point of analogy (that is, similarity and dissimilarity) between human spirit and Holy Spirit; while each seeks to be self in relation to the other, the drive of the human spirit arises from creaturely need, that of the divine from the fullness of gracious love. In his treatment of the Holy Spirit in the context of Trinitarian doctrine the author, as could be expected, favors the Athanasian-Augustinian-Barthian approach in terms of the "psychological' analogy rather than the "social" analogy, or, as he expresses it, in term of the structure of interpersonal being rather than that of interpersonal relationship; and by the same token lie is severely critical of Barth for the latter's inconsequent use of both at the same time. Come's interpretation of the doctrine of the Trinity, though perhaps too highly compressed to be fully intelligible, is reminiscent of an approach suggested by the late K. E. Kirk in his contribution to Essays on the Trinity and the Incarnation. The last chapter of the book is devoted to the Koinonia of the Holy Spirit, and Come stresses the interpersonal character of the relationship it describes against notions of "participation' as employed by Thornton and Tillich, by which lie feels it is imperiled lie suggests "commonwealth" as a less misleading translation of Koinonia

389 - Human Spirit and Holy Spirit

The doctrine of the Holy Spirit presents many difficult problems, and ,Dr. Come has not solved them all, as lie freely owns; but he has opened them up in a highly illuminating and stimulating way.

George S. Hendry
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey