Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 178:709 (Jan 2021)
Article: Jesus’s Promise Of The Spirit And The Teaching Of The Faith: From Kerygma To Catechesis
Author: Douglas A. Sweeney

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Jesus’s Promise Of The Spirit And The Teaching Of The Faith: From Kerygma To Catechesis

Douglas A. Sweeney

Douglas A. Sweeney is Dean and Professor of Divinity at Beeson Divinity School, Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama.

* This is the first article in the four-part series “Sources of Authority for Teaching Christian Doctrine: A Brief Historical Sketch,” delivered as the W. H. Griffith Thomas lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary, February 4–7, 2020.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. . . . [T]he Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. . . . I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. . . . I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you (John 14:15–16:14, NRSV).

There would be no history of doctrine if Jesus had not promised the Spirit to his disciples in the upper room before his crucifixion.1 Or, at least, the history of doctrine would have proven far poorer. Still frightened and confused, the apostles

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needed help understanding and believing—let alone handing on—what the master had been teaching. They had lived with their rabbi for about three years. Still, they failed to comprehend much of what the Lord had said. They abandoned him, in fact, when the going got tough. One sold him out to members of the Jewish Sanhedrin who sought to have him killed. Even the boldest of the group, named the “rock” by Jesus (Πέτρος in Greek, Matt 16:18), denied him three times. Jesus seems to have foreseen their bewilderment and weakness. In keeping with an inner-Trinitarian arrangement, he assured them that the Spirit would soon come alongside them, abide with them, speak to them, reignite their faithfulness, and help them sort things out.

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