The Witness of the Spirit

When certain Christians speak of the Spirit’s witness (usually citing Romans 8), this sort of understanding of the expression is fairly common:

“God’s primary method of leading us in matters the Bible does not specifically address (such as which job to take or which person to marry), is the inner witness, which is a knowing communicated by the Holy Spirit to our spirit. It is not a voice, but an inner knowing.”

I am left with the obvious question: how is an “inner knowing” any more reliable or less subjective than hearing voices in my head? Is this really what the New Testament writers mean by the Spirit “witnessing”?

More by Running Than by Considering

When I worked in print years ago, every shift started the same way. The lead would put a job into production by stacking all the marked-up hard copy on a central table, where typesetters would queue up to grab themselves a handful of pages and go to work coding or correcting the content to produce the desired output.

One of my fellow employees became notorious for loitering at the table, picking through the hard copy looking for what we referred to as the ‘cake’: pages of straight text with no complex tables to code and no graphics to insert, or corrections that amounted to nothing more than adding a few periods to the end of existing paragraphs.

You couldn’t miss what he was doing; he was always holding up the line. The only time ‘Norm’ ever attempted anything more challenging was if you put it right in his hand and assured him he had no other option.

Quote of the Day (49)

Assurance of salvation and eternal security are not identical concepts. The former describes my level of confidence in my relationship with God, while the latter refers to what God has actually done, whether I fully understand it and benefit from that knowledge or whether I quiver in terror of eternal damnation every time I catch myself sinning yet again.

Which I will, and so will you. One may feel confidence with no scriptural basis. One may also feel fear for which there is no biblical reason.

A Monumental Self-Own

On the recommendation of David de Bruyn — with whom I have a lengthy history of compatible tastes in things spiritual — I am in the process of attempting to read Jonathan Edwards. Hailed as “one of the great classics of theological literature”, the subject of A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections intrigues me and provoked me to order the book. Distinguishing between authentic and inauthentic religious emotions (and therefore true and false conversions) is a critical faculty for all mature Christians.

Though I have little hope of success in this area, it seems to me it might be especially helpful to be able to distinguish real from unreal within the confines of one’s own heart.