Below is a listing of DOXOLOGY’s lectures and videos from our Insight in August, 2014 – Springfield, IL.
1. The Spirit as Comforter: Challenge from Pentecostals – Dr. John Kleinig
Dr. Kleinig discusses Pentecostal misunderstandings of worship and the Holy Spirit, contrasting the Biblical view of Reception of the Holy Spirit and the Work of the Spirit in the life of the Christian.
1. The Spirit as Comforter: Challenge from Pentecostals
Kleinig names spiritual embarrassment, the sense of being less holy than others, as the wound the Pentecostal challenge exploits, and traces that movement’s rise to the mainstream church’s neglect of the Holy Spirit and of sanctification. He credits it with recovering the supernatural and the Spirit’s empowering work, but critiques its two-baptism scheme, tongues as proof, and above all its praise-singing worship built as a threefold human ascent from earth to heaven that leaves out Jesus the mediator and drops confession, absolution, intercession, creed, gospel proclamation, and the Supper. Against this upward ladder he sets the classical pattern in which God the Father comes down through the Son to give the Spirit. Reading Luke 24, Romans 8, and Ephesians 3, he shows the Spirit as the Paraclete who clothes the weak with power from on high, assures us of our baptismal identity in Christ, and leads us to pray to the Father as if we were Jesus, His heirs. The Spirit’s power is made perfect in weakness and comes through faith and prayer, which is also why Christ entrusts that power only through prayer, so that even an unbeliever who prays for the Spirit is turned into a believer. Watch the lecture and read the transcript →
2. The Means of the Spirit: The Ministry of the Spirit through Holy Things
Kleinig traces the church’s present confusion about spirituality to a Gnostic contempt for the body and physical things, in which “spiritual” wrongly comes to mean “non-material.” Against this he shows that the Holy Spirit is a person who works through physical means, above all the spoken word, which carries and delivers the Spirit just as breath carries speech; the word is the instrument of the Spirit, given and received through faith. He argues that everything in the Divine Service must be done with and according to God’s word, so that where the word is enacted the Spirit is certainly given, even when nothing is felt. In the extended discussion he commends what the charismatic movement recovered about praise, treats music as adiaphora ordered to serve the word, and grounds the pastor’s certainty in faithfulness to Christ’s institution rather than in people’s responses. Watch the lecture and read the transcript →
3. Heavenly Power for Earthly Work: Our Corporate Reception of the Holy Spirit in the Divine Service
Kleinig presses the corporate character of the Spirit against Western individualism, arguing that the congregation gathered in worship is the temple where the Holy Spirit dwells and where believers can be certain of receiving Him. He walks through the three means by which the Spirit is given and received again and again: baptism, the preaching and hearing of the gospel as law and gospel, and the true body and blood of Christ in Holy Communion, showing from 1 Corinthians 10 and Luther’s Large Catechism that the Supper delivers forgiveness and the Spirit with all His gifts. He insists the Spirit is never possessed but continually received through faith, like a gift that keeps being given, and roots this in Augsburg Confession V. In the questions he counters the notion that baptism means one simply owns the Spirit, addresses synergism by locating our “cooperation” as empty-handed reception, and answers pastoral questions on children at worship and ministering to those from Pentecostal backgrounds. Watch the lecture and read the transcript →
4. Daily Reception of the Holy Spirit Through Meditation and Prayer
Using the image of a solar flashlight that shines only while receiving light, Kleinig argues that Christian life is receptive: we can give only what we continually receive, so the Spirit must be taken in daily and is never a stored possession. He corrects both the Lutheran misreading that baptism means owning the Spirit and the Pentecostal scheme of a second Spirit-baptism evidenced by tongues, insisting on one baptism and an ongoing reception of the Spirit through the word. He shows from Jesus’ teaching on prayer that we receive the Spirit by asking the Father for Him, and from Luther that daily devotion means praying for the Spirit and meditating on Scripture aloud, letting the external word plant a seed that the Spirit brings to fruit in its own time. The point lands on daily prayer and meditation as the secret of a sustainable Christian life and ministry, sanctifying us for our vocation. Watch the lecture and read the transcript →
5. Heavenly Power for Earthly Service: The Communal Nature and Purpose of the Charismata
Kleinig surveys the New Testament teaching on the charismata, showing there is no single term or fixed list and that the two catalogs in Romans and Corinthians are descriptive of what the Spirit gave in particular places, not prescriptive checklists every Christian must possess. He reframes the modern “what is my gift” question, insisting the prior question is vocation: God gives whatever gifts are needed to serve in one’s station, distributing them by location and calling rather than by our choosing or naming and claiming. He warns that Satan mimics the more spectacular gifts and offers three tests for discerning spirits: confession of Christ come in the flesh, consistency with Scripture, and submission to the apostolic word; and he stresses that every gift is given for the common good, to build up the congregation as the temple, with love as the mark without which any gift is destructive. Closing pastorally, he shows even suffering and endurance can be a charisma, illustrated by his dying father’s calling to bear the cross and pray, and he addresses the 1970s charismatic controversy in Missouri as partly a war over words that clearer distinctions could have eased. Watch the lecture and read the transcript →