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8 The Holy Spirit’s Mission of Obedience The previous chapter synthesized and analyzed the economic mission of the Son as an obediential theology. This chapter continues with the Holy Spirit’s economic mission and characterizes the Holy Spirit as a religious rule—over and in the Son and over and in the disciple. This chapter also offers von Speyr’s intriguing insight that the Trinity is at the origin of the sacraments and prayer. Whereas the last chapter examined von Speyr’s mysticism of the Son’s obedience to his mission, this chapter treats her mysticism of the mission of the Holy Spirit. This chapter and the following two complete the last segment of the central thesis. The Holy Spirit has been sent by the Father and the Son to be like a religious rule (Ordensregel) accompanying the Son and the disciple. Through the sacraments and prayer, which have their origin (Ursprung) in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit inserts the church into the inner Trinitarian love. This chapter and the following ones will show that von Speyr has a robust understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit. They will also show how thoroughly Trinitarian she is in that she refers Christian mysteries, e.g., the sacraments and prayer, back to their foundation in the Trinitarian relations. She does this retrieval of the Trinitarian origin in order to teach how the economic mission of the Holy Spirit brings humans back into the triune relations of love. To begin, I would like to offer a stanza from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets to help me interpret von Speyr’s theology of the Holy Spirit. Here in “Little Gidding,” Eliot invokes Christian imagery of the Holy Spirit: The dove descending breaks the air With flame of incandescent terror Of which the tongues declare The one discharge from sin and error. The only hope, or else despair 189 Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre— To be redeemed from fire by fire.1 As T. S. Eliot writes in the last of the Four Quartets, the Holy Spirit descends like a dove, breaking the air with tongues of flame.2 He gives humans the only hope of entering the gate of heaven or the despair of being shut out. The Holy Spirit gives the fire of triune love in order to save humans from the everlasting pyre of torment. The Holy Spirit redeems “from fire by fire” so that humans might enter through the gate of heaven in the sacraments and prayer to be inserted into the flaming Trinitarian relations of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Suddenly from heaven, a sound came “like a rush of a mighty wind” (Acts 2:2), and all were “filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:4). The tongues of fire rested upon them, making them look drunk at the third hour of the day (Acts 2:3, 15). But what was happening was fulfillment of God’s promise that in the last days he would pour out his “Spirit upon all flesh” (Acts 2:17; cf. Joel 2:28). The Holy Spirit has come from the open heaven to spread across the earth the good news that the Father has raised the Son, “having loosed the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it” (Acts 2:24). Suddenly from heaven, the Father and the Son reveal the Holy Spirit. They send the Holy Spirit on a mission of obedience to spread the obedience of the Son to all the sons and daughters of God. This chapter gives von Speyr’s understanding of the Holy Spirit’s economic mission of obedience. As in the previous chapter, obedience means the complete being seized in the other’s possession with no desire to be released into a neutral sphere. It means freely binding oneself in love, by being completely transparent and interiorly ready to do the will of the other. In renouncing one’s self, one feels joy in obeying the other in love. Mission, as discussed in the previous chapter, is the being sent from and for the sake of the other. One kenotically surrenders subjectivity to the objectivity of being sent. The center of obedience and mission is found in the Son—sent by the Father to be the Obedient One fetching back his disobedient ones. The Son’s mission of obedience does not stand in an isolated particularity. The Holy Spirit is sent by the...

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