Friday, February 14, 2020

George T. Montague on the Holy Spirit in Romans 8:18-27


Speaking of the intercession of the Holy Spirit, the Apostle Paul wrote:

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. (Rom 8:18-27)

Note that this text is not poetical. I mention this as the Spirit is clearly being presented as an intercessor (and ergo, as a person) in the same way Jesus is an intercessor and a numerically distinct person from God the Father and the people for whom He intercedes. This is a powerful text showing the personality of the Holy Spirit. Commenting on this text, George T. Montague, a Catholic New Testament scholar who has written many books on pneumatology, wrote:

The Spirit as intercessor for man is new. The ruah of the Lord in the Old Testament was never sufficiently personalized or personified to be a separately operating entity, and certainly not toward God as in the case here. Intercession was the function of the prophet (Ex 32:11; Am 7:2; Jer 15:1; 18:20 etc.) or, in later Judaism, of angels, either by presenting the prayers of the faithful before the throne of God (Tob 12:12) or by themselves personally interceding (Zech 1:12). here in Romans the heavenly intercession is attributed equally to Christ (8:34) and to the Spirit (here). So here again we encounter the same theological dynamic as above in 8:10-11, where identical functions are applied in one case to Christ and in another to the Spirit. The shade of difference here is that Christ apparently intercedes in heaven and the Spirit here on earth. But the close association of the two and the apparently "seperable" character of the spirit as an interlocutor with God like Jesus himself, points to an understanding of the Spirit akin to the Johannine paraclete . . . (George T. Montague, The Holy Spirit: Growth of a Biblical Tradition—A Commentary on the Principal Texts of the Old and New Testaments [New York: Paulist Press, 1976], 211)

As with texts such as Acts 13:1-2 (see this post), this pericope is strong biblical support for the Holy Spirit being a person, contra Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christadelphians, and other groups.