The Blog of Hobbes

The Spirit of God works by inspiration upon and within the humanity that has been bestowed upon us. Such inspiration embraces the conscious and unconscious realms of the human person and produces effects. In the unconscious or psychic realm these effects may take unusual and dramatic forms as energies are unlocked. Because these are essentially human experiences, they are always potentially to be induced or evoked by other forms of inspiration, supremely by other human beings or groups. There is no particular need to resort to the category of the demonic at this point (although I would not want absolutely to exclude it) and it is usually unhelpful and high-blown to do so, just as it is to assess all unusual phenomena as being necessarily inspired by God. There is something much more human going on. However, humanly to induce such phenomena, intentionally or otherwise, is spiritually unhelpful, since it pushes people into their own subjectivity rather than into God and ultimately leads to spiritual emptiness.

[Nigel Wright, 'Does Revival Quicken or Deaden the Church?' in Walker and Aune (eds.), On Revival: A Critical Examination (Paternoster 2003), p130]

I think we should go further than Wright. Surely it is dangerous and harmful to humanly induce human phenmona while giving the impression that it is the Spirit who is causing such manifestations?

…a trenchant warning for any revivalistic tendencies [is]: the Spirit [should] not to be understood in terms of his own independent personality. Whilst danger bells may well be ringing at this point, the issue needs to be stated unequivocally: the Spirit never comes to us in his own name but in the name of another, whether Father and/or Son. As such, then, to focus attention on either the Spirit himself or on his effects is to miss the whole point. Whoever or whatever the Spirit is and does, it is for another. He is never and end in himself.

[Graham McFarlane, in Walker and Aune (eds.), On Revival: A Critical Examination (Paternoster 2003), p49]

…we suffer from what [Plascher] calls the ‘domestication of transcendence’ (Plascher 1996). God no longer comes to us strangely. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is no longer a startling figure. He is benign, friendly, overly familiar. Consequently, the Spirit who raised our Lord Jesus from the dead is no longer a Holy Spirit, that is, other, transcendent, different, or, to use Brueggemann again, evasive, irascible, polyvalen. Rather, this Spirit is a terribly familiar Spirit, whom we have made into our own family likeness: the evasive has been captured; the irascible has been broken and controlled; the polyvalent has been reduced to a single theology economy.

[Graham McFarlane, in Walker and Aune (eds.), On Revival: A Critical Examination (Paternoster 2003), p46]

Living obediently, resolutely, diligently and faithfully according the teachings of Scripture can never quench the Holy Spirit. It’s impossible. Therefore, to insist that a particular charismatic practice or method is unbiblical (assuming that it is indeed unbiblical) will actually encourage the Spirit, and will not drive Him away in any way. We have nothing to fear by holding tightly to the Word of God. We have nothing to fear by turning our backs on unbiblical teaching and practices - even if they are accompanied by all sorts of powerful manifestations in other places.

If anyone, even an angel from heaven, tells you that you must do something that is not commanded in Scripture in order to receive an outpouring of the Spirit, then let him be… wrong.