In Luke 24:49, Jesus says that the disciples should expect the coming of the promise of the Father. This is clearly a reference to the Holy Spirit, but the terminology is interesting. Augustine said that the Spirit is both “Gift” and “Love,” and Luke 24 adds “Promise.” And since it’s the Spirit as Gift and Love that binds the Father and Son, so it is the Spirit of promise who maintains the Father and Son in covenant loyalty.
And since the Father-Son relation is the model of the relation of God to man, we can say that God is bound to man by the Spirit, who comes to us as Gift, Love, Promise.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
