A page of theology and about church and very much a work in progress, which is why there are some headings for currently empty sections

Preamble - Why this page

This page is to provide some information on the Christian experience called the Holy Spirit.

It is a work in progress... currently a very rough draft

Who has the Holy Spirit?

Every person to whom God chooses to give the Spirit has it.

Every Christian has the Holy Spirit. Jesus promised us that.

And probably lots of others too. The Holy Spirit gave Abraham faith long before Pentecost.  

The Gifts and Fruits of the Spirit

Gifts

There are various gifts of the Holy Spirit mentioned in many places in the Bible. 

There is an often-quoted list in 1 Corinthians 12:4-11 which lists nine gifts: the expression of wisdom, the expression of knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, mighty deeds, prophecy, discernment of spirits, varieties of tongues and interpretation of tongues. Many scholars do not consider this an exhaustive list, but it's at least a good start.

In my opinion, it is unwise to use any snippets from 1 Corinthians Chapters 12-14 without first reading the whole three chapters. This is an essay on the Holy Spirit. In particular we often hear Chapter 13 "The Love Chapter" read out at weddings. But this chapter does not contain the words "Holy Spirit" at all, either together or separately. It is not about any sort of love, it is about love as a fruit of the Spirit. We sometimes hear this sort of love referred to as agape as if that would explain to the congregation, typically a mix of Christians and others at various states of grace, what is meant. It doesn't. 

The list

So here is the Biblical list:

• wisdom
• knowledge
• faith
• healing
• mighty deeds
• prophecy 
• discernment of spirits
• tongues
• interpretation of tongues

Fruits

There is a list of nine fruits given in Galatians 5 22-23 in most versions of the Bible.

These nine are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Re there nine or twelve fruits?

Does it matter? How? But if we must decide, we need to go with nine.

Some scholars contend. and a significant minority of Christians believe, that there are in fact twelve. This is based on the Vulgate, which unpacked some of these nine in the process of translation from Greek into Latin. That is to say. apparently in some cases they didn't think that there was any single Latin term which did justice to the Greek.

And so they added long-suffering, modesty, and chastity to that list, for the purposes of best expressing its meaning in Latin. And fair enough. That's a valid and important technique in translation.

But the merits of adding these three as they apply to practical Christianity escape me. It may even be counter-productive, if for example the inclusion of chastity fuels common misunderstandings of the proper place of sex in the Christian lifestyle. It's particularly sad if the whole reason for expanding the list is to push this sad agenda, as it sometimes seems to be.

And equally important, this academic argument is quite simply invalid. Translation from Greek to Latin may pose some problems, but that does not mean that there is any difficulty translating the original list to English. Why prefer the Latin when we have the Greek on which it was based? It is to be noted I think that the Roman Catholic Church now endorses the English translation I cited above (that's one reason I chose that particular version).

The list

So here is that Biblical list:

• love
• joy
• peace
• patience
• kindness
• generosity
• faithfulness
• gentleness
• self-control
• long-suffering (maybe)
• modesty (maybe)
• chastity (maybe)

Are they in any sort of order?

Yes. But not the order that most people who think about it at all seem to assume.

For example, 1 Corinthians 14 is mostly dedicated to promoting prophecy as being superior to tongues.

But all of the fruits and gifts are important. And that is very much what Scripture says repeatedly. 

Do they happen today?

Yes.

On the Fruits of the Spirit there is no dispute. They are still happening.

But the more spectacular Gifts of the Spirit are controversial. There are two views on this, known as cessationism_and continuationism.

This controversy dates from the Reformation. Some reformers, rightly as it turned out, feared that the Church of Rome would claim that they had the unique right to infallibly discern the gifts and particularly to prophesy. This fitted well with their rejection of the CoR's doctrines, dogmas and practices concerning Saints, indulgences, and that sort of thing generally.

But I'm afraid I think that they threw the baby out with the bathwater.  

Some other mentions in the Bible

lots more could be added and will be

• Hebrews 2:4

The heresies

The fakes

The Good News

Some other external links

The good

The others