Abstract
Recent Protestant soteriology has been leaning in the direction of what some have called ontological accounts of salvation. Without necessarily eschewing the traditional Protestant doctrines of grace and justification, these will emphasize descriptions of salvation in metaphysical categories. The language of participation, deification, etc., is front and center in these soteriologies. The ascendence of these ontological frameworks has not gone without notice and resistance mostly motivated by their proximity to Catholic notions of infusion. Simeon Zahl’s recent book, The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience, highlights another concern with this trajectory: their disconnection from actual, bodily experience. Concerned with the rehabilitation of experiential categories in Christian theology, Zahl identifies a number of weaknesses in an ontological approach. First, without an experiential anchor, metaphysical claims are “particularly vulnerable to the problem of projection” (75). That is, there is nothing to prevent us from filling in the abstract metaphysical categories “in whichever way is most convenient to us or which matches concerns we have already determined in advance.” (74) A second related problem is that such “punctiliar ontological models” (227) are committed to assuming a transformation of the individual who has been thus affected ontologically. But this flies in the face of the evidence of what Zahl calls “non-transformation”. Not every believer experiences a moral transformation of the kind one is led to expect if such an ontological infusion of virtue would be true. Zahl laments here the lack of attention to the dynamics of affective transformation: just how does the presence of the Spirit affect bodies and desires?
In response to this Zahl has produced an account of the Spirit’s transformative presence in terms that engage the affective apparatus of the individual. He hopes to have improved on what he thinks are abstract and empty metaphysical accounts with a pneumatology that is concrete, bodily, and in tune with our knowledge of affect. So what does the Spirit do to desires, in Zahl’s proposal? He proposes an “affective Augustinian model” (183) of Christian transformation, according to which the Spirit (as the triune person to whom this moral transformation is appropriated) engages in an “affective pedagogy” of desire. This education of desire is taking place not “in the ontological depths of humanity” (185), hardly connected to our bodies and desires in an explicit way. God changes our desires, Zahl argues, not through implanting some ineffable substance, but “through a providentially ordered process of God attracting and persuading the sinner to hate sin and love righteousness in the context of the particularities of their life. God sanctifies by operating in the life of the Christian to make himself delightful and by causing sin to delight no longer.” (190)
The pivot of Christian transformation is this new experience of delight. This is produced through the common operation of the Trinity (here Zahl embraces without flinching the ancient rule of inseparable operations), although according to scriptural instruction we appropriate it to the Holy Spirit. Importantly, this transformation is effected through the natural mechanisms of desire: “Delight is generated through a psychological sequence of affective predicates like fear of divine judgment or longing for rescue from some plight being transformed through encounter with the grace of God through the forgiveness of sins secured in Jesus Christ.” (194) The Christian is transformed precisely through the hearing of the Gospel, whose truth consoles and transforms. Zahl thus gives the lie to critics of classical Protestantism’s alleged failure to connect justification to sanctification. The doctrine of justification by faith is not simple make-believe, but has a direct experiential effect.
In addition to this advantage of being experientially concrete, this account offers a better explanation of the non-transformation of the Christian. Appealing to what he has called the intransigence of desire, Zahl explains that sinful desire still persists in Christians the same as before, only there is a recognition now that it neither damns nor condemns. The result is that the fear of God’s judgment, and the correlative fear of being unloved by God, really are altered in the perception of the Christian, and this feels like liberation – even if the core affective energies of sin […] do not appear to have been transformed. (228–9)
I have provided a description of Zahl’s central argument by focusing on those areas most germane to the particular focus of my critique in the remainder of this paper. It concerns the particular role played by the indwelling of the Spirit, or his invisible mission in the Christian. Without neglecting the Spirit’s indwelling, Zahl discusses it almost entirely in terms of the providential operations, which are common to the whole Trinity. As someone who has recently defended a classical account of inseparable operations, I find Zahl’s commitment to the doctrine to be refreshing. Nevertheless, something is lost in his transition from the ontological to the affective accounts. One strength of the ontological accounts has been precisely the stress on the supernatural dimension of salvation, e.g., in terms of participation in the Trinity by our inclusion in Christ’s filial relation to the Father, through the Holy Spirit. Participationist soteriologies wish to express that there is a surplus to our natural experience of grace, a sharing in a supernatural reality. Whether this is expressed sacramentally 1 , mystically, or in other ways, they correct a certain naturalization of salvation and gesture towards its transcendent dimension. All of the above could sustain longer discussions, yet in the remainder of this article, I would like to briefly elaborate on what I think is somewhat downplayed in Zahl’s account. Specifically, I would like to suggest that we should not circumvent an ontological account of the indwelling of the Spirit, despite the challenges so aptly pointed out by Zahl. In his search for the experiential footprint of the Spirit, Zahl has focused to such an extent on the created effects, which are the common product of the Trinity, to the neglect of a distinct experience of the Spirit. As providential, these created effects can equally apply to Christians and non-Christians. Non-Christians too can feel the fear of divine judgment and the delight of God. Yet, according to Christian theology, there is a qualitative difference between these two. In addition to the phenomenological experience of grace and consolation, the Christian has a distinct relation to the triune persons, which is not reducible to the former. While Zahl does not dispute this claim, his reduction of the Spirit’s work to the affective effects (of the whole Trinity) leaves him without an articulation of this supernatural relation between the Christian and the distinct triune persons. If the effects of the Spirit are only spelled out in the language of affective transformation, commonly caused by the whole Trinity, this will be lost from sight.
Instructively, Aquinas’ admittedly ontological account does provide a correlation to experience, of the kind that might satisfy Zahl’s desiderata. According to Thomas, the indwelling of the triune persons produces an affect, which he often refers to as a tasting. He explains this at length:
The experiencing of a thing is gained through the senses; but in one way, of a thing present, in another, of an absent thing. Of an absent thing, by reason of sight, smell and hearing; but of a thing present, by touch and taste – of a thing extrinsically present, by touch; by taste, however, of a thing intrinsically present.
2
According to Aquinas, the missions of the Son and the Spirit are such that they create an effect within man which is expressive of God, and particularly of the personal properties of the Son and Spirit. As Emery puts it, “the divine person is sent to transmit a participation in his eternal property.” 3
The soul is made like to God by grace. Hence for a divine person to be sent to anyone by grace, there must needs be a likening of the soul to the divine person Who is sent, by some gift of grace. Because the Holy Ghost is Love, the soul is assimilated to the Holy Ghost by the gift of charity: hence the mission of the Holy Ghost is according to the mode of charity. Whereas the Son is the Word, not any sort of word, but one Who breathes forth Love. Hence Augustine says (De Trin. ix 10): “The Word we speak of is knowledge with love.” Thus the Son is sent not in accordance with every and any kind of intellectual perfection, but according to the intellectual illumination, which breaks forth into the affection of love, as is said (John 6:45): “Everyone that hath heard from the Father and hath learned, cometh to Me,” and (Psalm 38:4): “In my meditation a fire shall flame forth.” Thus Augustine plainly says (De Trin. iv, 20): “The Son is sent, whenever He is known and perceived by anyone.” Now perception implies a certain experimental knowledge; and this is properly called wisdom [sapientia], as it were a sweet knowledge [sapida scientia], according to Sirach 6:23: “The wisdom of doctrine is according to her name.” (ST I, q. 43, a. 5, ad. 2)
This account, then, is far from abstract: the ontological union between the Christian and the divine persons results in an experience of the persons and the Christian’s being made like God. Christian sanctification is then energized by this assimilation unto the divine persons. This likening turns on the proximity of the triune persons to the Christian, which is not available in the condition of nature. Thus, Thomas can distinguish between a natural knowledge of God and a knowledge by grace:
The knowledge of truth is twofold: one which comes of nature, and one which comes of grace. The knowledge which comes of grace is likewise twofold: the first is purely speculative, as when Divine secrets are imparted to an individual; the other is affective, and produces love for God; which knowledge properly belongs to the gift of wisdom. (ST I, q. 64, a.1, corp)
This affective knowledge is just what the natural man lacks, for while one may have an inchoate nostalgia for God, a deep longing for him, it is shrouded in ignorance (Acts 17:23). Through grace, on the other hand, man gains an intimate personal knowledge of the Father, Son, and Spirit, through proximity and union with them. Such a knowledge is aptly called tasting because in it the persons become internal to the Christian, without sacrificing their transcendence. This tasting of God, then, anchors a spiritual and moral transformation, as John F. Dedek explains.
the just man judges from a connaturality or union with the things of God which is effected by charity and spiritual taste: from this taste he is enabled to form a right estimation of God and creatures. […] [H]e learns divine things by experiencing them. For unlike the proud man he knows not only how divine things are but also how they taste. That is why the just man’s knowledge of the goodness and sweetness of God is said to be experimental or affective knowledge, because it is joined to an affective experience of love and spiritual taste.4
Such a tasting, then, is premised upon a relation of exemplary causality5 whereby the divine person imprints their personal property upon the Christian, the Son, wisdom and knowledge, the Spirit, love. Without the divine persons becoming the form6 of these faculties and affects, they are nevertheless precisely what is given in their respective missions. Just how the Spirit imprints himself in and through charity is not something that needs to be explained. There is no affective causal joint, so to speak, which might explain just how the Spirit does this. Neither is there any necessity that the presence of supernatural charity is necessarily completely and immediately transformative of all natural love.7 Christian teaching and proclamation are not rendered redundant by the presence of the indwelling Spirit through the formality of charity. The providential proclamation of the Gospel may be both the intermediary step, a natural thorough-way leading to the ineffable experience of the persons. Similarly, the preaching of the Gospel continues to work in sanctification in the very education of desire, which Zahl has so helpfully spelled out. Both can be liberating, for sure, but one is a natural teaching, the other a supernatural tasting.
What does such an ontological account supply in addition to Zahl’s proposal? I would suggest that the fundamental difference consists in a different dynamism of transformation. For Zahl Christian sanctification takes place through constant exposure to divine teaching, a pedagogy of desire appropriated to the Spirit. Desire, despite its intransigence, is transformed as the Spirit works providentially to make God delightful. Zahl doesn’t quite answer just how this new delight is produced, but it is either supernaturally (in which case it lacks an explanation – here Zahl invokes the freedom of the Spirit), or through the natural hearing of the Gospel. On the present account, however, desire is changed precisely by supplying it with the summum bonum. To put it simply, on the present model God transforms desire by satisfying it, through giving us a taste of the supreme good, which is the Triune God himself (“Taste and see that the Lord is good” Ps 34:8). While law and gospel instruct us and lead us to God, in charity the Spirit is given to us by the Father and the Son, while in wisdom and knowledge we enjoy the gift of the Son from the Father. The qualitative difference between the two experiences must be stressed. The phenomenological reduction glosses over the qualitative distinction between Christian and non-Christian experience, since both could enjoy natural effects of common grace, so to speak, including a yearning for God and divine consolations. On Christian teaching, however, only Christian experience is produced (partly) by a supernatural tasting of the persons.
The wayfarer’s taste of the supernatural triune person is not a perfect enjoyment. It requires faith and it does not possess epistemic certainty. Direct vision is reserved for the saints in glory. Now we see “through a glass, darkly” (1 Cor 13:12). However, despite our imperfect enjoyment of the triune persons, their dwelling in the Christian in their distinct personal modes, rather than simply through the common operation of the Trinity, should not be muted in an account of sanctification. The Spirit sanctifies not simply through created effects that nudge us to delight in God, but precisely by giving us a foretaste of the end of our desire. The sanctifying power of this tasting does not necessarily consist in the immediate transformation of desire itself, for it is still possible to reject and resist the Spirit after having tasted him. (Heb 6:4) We might say that the enjoyment of the divine persons in their personal property is an acquired taste. The first experience does not immediately subordinate all other earthly desires. Here Zahl’s natural and providential means do indeed play a part in educating and clarifying this taste. We develop a taste for the triune persons partly through these pedagogical means.
The present model locates the qualitative difference between Christian and non-Christian experience in the object of the experience. The object of Christian experience is the tri-personal God. For the non-Christian the object of the experience may be God regarded as single cause of the various affects. Importantly, for the Christian the object of the experience remains the same through death: in the beatific vision our enjoyment of the triune persons will be perfect. In this way, the present invisible missions really are a foretaste of the eschatological banquet. The imperfection of our current state, which partly accounts for the reality of non-transformation, is due to our limited discernment of the summum bonum, and to the intractability of our desires and passions. But this fallible reaction does not negate the objective fact of our supernatural experience.
To conclude, I have attempted to pick up the gauntlet laid by Zahl’s critique of ontological and participationist soteriologies. It would be a mistake to pit these as opposites of Zahl’s experiential account. The models are compatible and should inform one another. An ontological account such as the one I have sketched here still requires the pedagogy of desire, despite the ineffable tasting of the triune persons, precisely because of our limited understanding. Like the earliest Christians in Acts, we still need to be taught what we have experienced, we need to be reminded that we have been baptized into the body of Christ, and we need to be encouraged to persevere through suffering. All of these natural instruments work together with the invisible presence of the Spirit. Nevertheless, without an acknowledgement of that presence, we miss out on something essential to Christian sanctification, namely that its energy comes from the very saporous possession and enjoyment of the divine persons.