The Spirit of Christ: The Holy Spirit in the Lutheran Tradition

In her article, “The Holy Spirit: Lutheran Perspectives,” Cheryl Peterson observes that, due to their historic emphasis on the doctrine of justification by faith on account of Christ as the chief article of Christian teaching, Lutherans are generally known for their focus on the second article of the creed, especially Christology and justification. However, if one looks deeper into the Lutheran tradition, there are a surprising number of contributions to the theology of the third article.¹ The following article describes some contributions of the Lutheran tradition toward the study of the Holy Spirit through a survey of Martin Luther (1483–1546), the Lutheran Confessions (condensed in the Book of Concord of 1580), and selected contemporary Lutheran writers.

Martin Luther on the Holy Spirit

In her article “Martin Luther and the Holy Spirit,” Lois Malcolm lays out key teachings in the Reformer’s pneumatology based on a review of selected writings. She argues that Luther’s teaching on the Holy Spirit relates significantly to the theologian’s reflections on the interrelated themes of justification and sanctification. Malcolm illustrates the link between pneumatology and justification in sections of Luther’s early commentaries on the Psalms (1513–15) and Romans (1515–16), and in his treatise on the The Freedom of a Christian (1520) and Lectures on Galatians (1535). She points especially to Luther’s discussion of the Spirit and sanctification in selections from his catechisms, Confession of 1528, Lectures on Genesis (1535), and Sermons on John (1537).²

The common criticism leveled against Luther and Lutherans that they shout justification but whisper sanctification does not account properly for how the Lutheran tradition speaks to the unity of these divine works in the Christian life.³ Malcolm’s survey stresses how Luther’s approach to the Holy Spirit assumes both the proper distinction and indissoluble link between faith in Christ which justifies before God and the holiness of life in Christ that bears fruit in inner renewal and good works. As she puts it, “For Luther, the righteousness of God as a gift we receive in passive faith was inseparable from the Spirit’s work of sanctifying us.”⁴

Luther’s pneumatology can be rightly understood according to his distinction between two kinds of righteousness, which avoids confusing faith and works while relating them to one another. In the preface to his Lectures on Galatians (1535), Luther distinguishes the alien righteousness of God received as a gift by faith in Christ (also known as passive righteousness because it is received apart from our activity) and the proper righteousness of the justified lived out in service to the neighbor (known as active righteousness because it involves faith active in love). Luther’s distinction between both kinds of righteousness avoids confusing faith with works and warns against the idea that we are justified by our merits. Luther explains:

As the earth itself does not produce rain and is unable to acquire it by its own strength, worship, and power but receives it only by a heavenly gift from above, so this heavenly righteousness is given to us by God without our work or merit.⁵

At the same time, the two kinds of righteousness relate to one another as the rain makes the earth fertile:

When I have this righteousness within me, I descend from heaven like the rain that makes the earth fertile. That is, I come forth into another kingdom, and I perform good works whenever the opportunity arises.⁶

Luther’s pneumatology must also be seen in the broader context of his theology of the Word (spoken, written, sacramental), according to which the Spirit works through means to justify and sanctify. Moreover, because Luther’s writings are occasioned by different pastoral issues and theological controversies, he can contextualize his teaching on the Holy Spirit to warn against works-righteousness (justification by works), enthusiasm (seeking the Spirit apart from the Word), or antinomianism (the idea that the justified do not need to be guided by the law as a guide in sanctification). In his Lectures on Galatians, Luther speaks against those who seek justification by works by highlighting the apostolic teaching that the Holy Spirit is received not by works of the law but by faith in the hearing of the gospel promise.⁷

In response to the enthusiasts or fanatical spirits who seek the Spirit and judge spiritual matters apart from the external Word (Scripture and preaching), the apostle shows that the Holy Spirit, through the spoken Word, purifies the heart by faith and dwells in us to give us spiritual motivations, right judgment, and a desire to avoid sin.⁸ Moreover, in On the Councils and the Church (1539), Luther criticizes “fine Easter preachers” who are nevertheless “very poor Pentecost preachers” because they only proclaim Christ’s redemption but not the Spirit’s work of sanctification. He observes that “Christ did not earn only gratia, ‘grace,’ for us, but also donum, ‘the gift of the Holy Spirit,’ so that we might have not only forgiveness of, but also cessation of, sin.”⁹

Malcolm tracks Luther’s teaching on the Spirit as sanctifier in various writings, including his catechisms.¹⁰ In the Small Catechism (1529), the Reformer highlights the Holy Spirit’s calling and preserving us in the faith through the gospel in the community of the church, and thus apart from our human reason and power. In the Large Catechism (1529), Luther observes that the Holy Spirit creates and daily increases holiness in the church through the Word, making faith and its fruits strong in the lives of the saints. The Spirit’s work of sanctification will come to fulfillment in the resurrection and glorification of the body. In the meantime, the Spirit works in us daily to put sin to death and raise us with Christ to new life through the forgiveness of sins.

Because Luther frames his catechetical teaching on the Spirit in the context of the creed, which tells us not what we should do (as in the Ten Commandments), but what God does for us in creation, redemption, and sanctification, his focus on the divine “giftedness” or “undeserved generosity” of the Spirit comes through strongly in his exposition.¹¹ Luther also expresses a Christological understanding of the Spirit’s sanctifying work. Christ’s work of redemption from sin, death, and the devil remains a hidden treasure unless the Spirit unveils it to us so that it can be received by faith.¹² The Spirit is “the Church’s abiding preacher and teacher of Christ” in two senses. Through the Word, the Spirit brings us to faith in Christ (justification) and “shapes us to be Christlike” (sanctification).¹³ The Spirit unites us to Christ in his death and resurrection through a life of repentance, in his fight against the evil one through the Word and prayer, and in his sacrificial service to others through various gifts.¹⁴

The Holy Spirit in the Lutheran Confessions

Except for Luther’s teaching on the Holy Spirit’s work in his catechisms, the Lutheran Confessions do not present articles specifically dealing with the Holy Spirit. Instead, the Confessions offer a comprehensive view of the Spirit in a variety of articles dealing with various doctrinal topics.¹⁵ The Augsburg Confession (1530), composed by Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560), points to the Spirit’s work in articles dealing with God, original sin, the Son of God, the office of preaching, repentance, free will, faith and good works, and the power of bishops. It confesses the Holy Spirit as a person of the Trinity and rejects the Arian teaching that the Spirit is “a created motion in all creatures” (I, 6).¹⁶ All humans are born in original sin and under God’s wrath unless they are “born again through baptism and the Holy Spirit” (II, 3). Sitting at the right hand of the Father, Christ rules over all creation “so that through the Holy Spirit he may make holy, purify, strengthen, and comfort all who believe in him, also distribute to them life and various gifts and benefits, and shield and protect them against the devil and sin” (III, 5–6). Through the means of the gospel and the sacraments, God “gives the Holy Spirit who produces faith, where and when he wills, in those who hear the gospel” (V, 1–3). Rejected is the teaching that “we obtain the Holy Spirit without the external Word of the gospel through our own preparation, thoughts, and works” (V, 4).

The Augsburg Confession rejects the denial that “those who have once been justified can lose the Holy Spirit” because such teaching does not promote contrition from sin, the forgiveness of sin, and fruits of repentance (XII, 7–8, Latin Text). Against the Pelagian teaching that humans have the free will to keep God’s commandments “without grace and the Holy Spirit” (XVIII, 8), the confessors teach that without the Spirit’s work “a human being cannot become pleasing to God, fear or believe in God with the whole heart, or expel innate evil lusts from the heart” (XVIII, 2–3). Although faith alone saves, faith is never without good works: “Because the Holy Spirit is given through faith, the heart is also moved to do good works” (XX, 31). Against the claim that bishops have secular power to establish civil laws, the confessors distinguish between spiritual and secular power. To comfort consciences with the gospel and based on John 20 where Jesus gives the apostles the Holy Spirit to remit and retain sins, bishops must exercise “the power of the keys … to preach the gospel, to forgive and retain sin, and to administer and distribute the sacraments” (XXVIII, 5–6).

The Apology of the Augsburg Confession (1530), also composed by Philip Melanchthon, elaborates on the Spirit’s role in justifying us to fulfill the law by loving God and neighbor, constituting the church, making baptism effective, and making us living sacrifices acceptable to God. Without the Holy Spirit, it is impossible to love God. However, having been justified by faith, we have received the Holy Spirit and “spiritual impulses in our hearts” so that “we begin to fear and love God, to pray for and expect help from him, to thank and praise him, and to obey him in our afflictions. We also begin to love our neighbor because our hearts have spiritual and holy impulses” (IV, 125). The church is not ultimately an external civic organization or institution, it is “principally an association of faith and the Holy Spirit in the hearts of persons” (VII, 5). In a brief argument for infant baptism, the Apology observes that if their baptisms had been “ineffectual,” the Holy Spirit would not have been given to anyone, no one could be saved, and there would be no church (IX, 3). The work of the Holy Spirit in us produces “eucharistic sacrifices,” such as “the preaching of the gospel, faith, prayer, thanksgiving, confession, the afflictions of the saints, and indeed, all the good works of the saints” (XXIV, 25).

The Smalcald Articles (1537), composed by Martin Luther with the assistance of a group of theologians including Melanchthon, lay out especially the Spirit’s work through the Word in bringing about repentance against the problem of carnal security. The text’s first and third sections contain pneumatological teaching. The first one briefly deals with Trinitarian theology and, in accordance with the Athanasian Creed, teaches the Western filioque, namely, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (I, 2). The third section refers to the Spirit when speaking about sin, repentance, and confession. Regarding the teaching of scholastic theologians who claim that the human will has the natural capacity to do the works that God commands without the help of the Holy Spirit, the confessors reject the claim “that there is no basis in Scripture that the Holy Spirit with his grace is necessary for performing a good work” (III, 1:7). The article on repentance teaches that the Holy Spirit, through the “hammer” of the law, convicts of sin or “destroys both the open sinner and the false saint,” so that they may be led to true repentance or “‘passive contrition,’ true affliction of the heart, suffering, and the pain of death” (III, 3:2). Open sinners are those who, fearing no punishment, publicly go about breaking God’s commands. False saints are those who, presuming a high view of their human capacities to fulfill God’s law, become blind to the power of sin in their lives (cf. III, 2:2–3).

The text singles out “fanatical spirits” who downplay the seriousness of sin and their need for the Spirit’s intervention in their lives. Through the forgiveness of sins, sinners receive “the gift of the Holy Spirit,” who “daily cleanses and sweeps away the sins that remain and works to make people truly pure and holy” (III, 3:40). Because one is never without sin, and thus one is always in need of the Spirit, the confessors reject the argument that those who “have received the Spirit … should they sin after that, would still remain in the faith, and such sin would not harm them” (III, 3:42). To avoid this error, which leads to unrepentance, they teach that “when holy people … fall into a public sin (such as David, who fell into adultery, murder, and blasphemy against God), at that point faith and the Spirit have departed” (III, 3:43). Instead, true repentance does not justify sin but leads us to struggle against sin daily with the help of the Holy Spirit, who “does not allow sin to rule and gain the upper hand … but … controls and resists so that sin not able to do whatever it wants” (III, 3:44).

In the context of a discussion on the comfort of the practice of confession and absolution, the Smalcald Articles level a critique against the “enthusiasts” (meaning, “those looking for god within”) who instead of seeking the Spirit in the proclamation of “the spoken, external Word” (III, 8:3) move “from the external Word of God to ‘spirituality’ and their own presumption” (III, 8:5). Against the enthusiasts, the confessors assert that “God gives no one his Spirit or grace apart from the external Word which goes before” (III, 8:3). An “external” Word comes from “outside of us” (extra nos) and includes the spoken Word of absolution heard and received in confession, but also the written Scripture, and the sacramental Word in baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Because the Spirit ordinarily speaks through his Word to forgive our sins and thus comfort our consciences with the gospel, the confessors note that “everything that boasts of being from the Spirit apart from such a Word and sacrament is of the devil” (III, 8:10).

The treatment of the Spirit in the creedal section of Luther’s catechisms has already been discussed. Outside the creed, the Spirit comes up a few times. In the Small Catechism, Luther interprets the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come,” to mean that “our heavenly Father gives us his Holy Spirit, so that through his grace we believe his Holy Word and live godly lives here in time and hereafter in entirety” (“The Lord’s Prayer,” 8). Introduced in the second edition of the Small Catechism, Luther’s “Baptismal Booklet” includes a prayer for the baptized in the language of spiritual warfare: “Depart, you unclean spirit, and make room for the Holy Spirit” (11). The Apology’s passing argument for infant baptism receives more attention in the Large Catechism, where Luther states that “the best and strongest proof for the simple and unlearned” of infant baptism is that baptized children’s “teaching and life attest that they have the Holy Spirit” and that they “have been given the power to interpret the Scriptures and to know Christ, which is impossible without the Holy Spirit” (“Infant Baptism,” 49–50).

Seeing itself in continuity with the writings discussed above, the Formula of Concord (1580), composed by the second generation of Luther’s disciples, including Jacob Andreae (1528–1590), Martin Chemnitz (1522–1586), David Chytraeus (1531–1600), and Nicholas Selnecker (1528/30–1592) lays out the Lutheran teaching in response to theological disagreements among Lutherans. On the question of whether humans after the fall have free will to be born anew through the Holy Spirit, the Formula expands on the Augsburg Confession’s critique of “crass Pelagians,” “semi-Pelagians,” and “Synergists” who attribute to the human will the ability to merit forgiveness of sins, respectively, without the grace of the Spirit, with the Spirit’s help after humans initiate the process, or with some small human cooperation after the Spirit initiates the process (Epitome, II, 9–11; cf. Solid Declaration, II, 24, 42, 75­­–78).

As in the Smalcald Articles, they reject the “enthusiasts” who assert the Spirit’s work of conversion happens “without means, without hearing God’s Word, even without the use of the holy sacraments” (Epitome, II, 13, cf. 4; cf. XII, 22; cf. SD, II, 46, 48, 54–56). When in doubt about the Spirit’s work amidst one’s weaknesses (SD, II, 47), one must not assess the Spirit’s presence “‘ex sensu,’ as a person feels it in the heart” but rather seek the certainty of his work in our hearts “on the basis of and according to the promise, that the Word of God, when preached and heard, is a function and work of the Holy Spirit” (SD, II, 56). Because the Spirit works through means, he can be resisted (SD, II, 57–60). If the baptized give sin free reign in their lives, they “grieve the Holy Spirit in themselves and lose him” (SD, II, 69, cf. 72, 83; cf. SD IV, 33). When penitent believers doubt or despair over their election, they must rely on God’s Word through which the Spirit converts and be assured that the Spirit will testify in their hearts that they are God’s children (SD, XI, 29–31, 33, 56). When impenitent believers use their election to justify sin, they must be warned not to resist the Holy Spirit who comes through the Word (SD, XI, 39–42). Instead, “they should abstain from sin, repent, trust the promise, and rely completely upon Christ,” trusting that the Spirit will effect repentance through the Word (SD, XI, 71–72).

The Formula speaks about the believer’s “cooperation” with God in sanctification. After conversion, “the reborn human will is not idle in the daily exercise of repentance, but cooperates in all the works of the Holy Spirit which he performs in us” (Epitome, II, 17; cf. SD, II, 88). The regenerated human will becomes “an instrument and tool of God the Holy Spirit, in that the human will not only accepts grace but also cooperates with the Holy Spirit in the works that proceed from it” (Epitome, II, 18). Such cooperation must be understood in the sense that “the converted do good to the extent that God rules, leads, and guides them with his Holy Spirit,” but not as if the Spirit and the converted are equal partners “in the way two horses draw a wagon together” (SD, II, 66).

Several statements deal with the relationship between the righteousness of faith before God and good works. We are not justified before God because of “the love and virtues which are infused by the Holy Spirit and through the works which result from this infusion” (Epitome, III, 15; cf. SD, III, 47). At the same time, the justified who are “reborn and renewed through the Holy Spirit, are obligated to do good works” (Epitome, IV, 8; cf. SD, IV, 38). The Spirit alone justifies and preserves us in the faith “working through faith,” and “good works are a testimony of his presence and indwelling” (Epitome, IV, 15; SD, III, 20). Because the believer is never fully pure in this life on account of the sinful flesh, his love, renewal, sanctification, and good works by the Spirit are a work in progress and cannot be the cause of justification which is given freely by faith on account of Christ (SD, III, 28). The Spirit brings about both justification and sanctification, but the logical order of these works remains. The Spirit first “kindles faith in us through the hearing of the gospel,” and “thereafter, once people are justified, the Holy Spirit also renews and sanctifies them” (SD, III, 41). Similarly, the indwelling of the Spirit (or the Trinity) in the believer is a blessing of justification but not its cause (SD, III, 47, 54).

The Formula also speaks to the Holy Spirit’s work through law and gospel. Through the Word, the Spirit undertakes a twofold work in relationship to sinners. First, the Spirit does his “alien work” by convicting the world of sin, “until he comes to his proper work—which is to comfort and to proclaim grace” (SD, V, 11). Although believers are empowered by the Spirit through the gospel to delight in the law by bearing fruits of the Spirit, they still need the Spirit to guide or instruct them through the law as a rule for discerning what God’s will is for their lives (SD, VI, 11–14, 17). The reborn need the law as a guide for God-pleasing behavior because in this life the Spirit in them still struggles against the sinful flesh (SD, VI, 6–9, 18–19). Moreover, the Spirit, working through the law, instructs them so that they do not come up with their own self-designed forms of “holiness and piety” and “service to God … without God’s Word or command” (SD, VI, 20).

Contemporary themes in Lutheran pneumatology

Malcolm’s and Peterson’s surveys of historical developments and contemporary issues in Lutheran pneumatology show, with very few exceptions, a dearth of focused studies on the Holy Spirit from the seventeenth through the early twentieth century. Their surveys provide brief but helpful summaries of the works of contemporary Lutheran authors who have written on the Spirit as part of larger systematic theologies (e.g., Wolfhart Pannenberg and Robert W. Jenson, who share eschatologically oriented views of the Spirit’s person and work), or as part of works in other areas of systematic theology (e.g., the Finnish school on justification and theosis, Paul R. Hinlicky on the church after Christendom, and Christine Helmer on the Trinitarian theme of glory, to name a few). Peterson in particular highlights ecumenical interactions between Lutherans and Pentecostal/charismatic Christians on questions related to the experience and gifts of the Spirit.¹⁷ An important addition to update these surveys, Simeon Zahl’s study on the pneumatological basis for experience and emotion argues that early Protestants (i.e., Luther and Melanchthon) offer an “affective Augustinianism” that describes salvation as an affective participation of the believer in the Spirit, grace as an affective pedagogy that the Spirit works in the believer through law and gospel, and sanctification as the Spirit’s habituation of believers in holiness in a way that accounts for sin in their lives.¹⁸

In Luther studies, the most significant shift towards a pneumatological renewal takes place with the publication in 1946 of Regin Prenter’s treatment of Luther’s pneumatology—the most comprehensive account on the topic to date.¹⁹ Through a historical–systematic study of texts, Prenter concludes that Luther’s pneumatology, whether in his early response to the scholastics or later to the enthusiasts, shows a continuity of teaching grounded in a “biblical realism of revelation.”²⁰ Prenter emphasizes four major themes. First, based on Romans 8:26, Luther describes the experience of the Spirit’s work in the heart as an “inner conflict,” through which the Spirit groans in the believer for Christ’s victory over sin because the Spirit first leads him to feel God’s wrath against sin and despair of his own sin. Luther associates this experience of inner struggle with God’s infusion of love in the heart by the Spirit (Rom 5:5), but it differs from the scholastic interpretation of such love as a supernatural aid to a natural human urge to love God (known as caritas idealism).²¹

Second, the Holy Spirit’s work in inner conflict consists in making the risen Christ present redemptively in the believer, and the Holy Spirit brings this about by conforming him to Christ who in his own groanings suffered and conquered sin and death. The Spirit conforms us to Christ in his death through the preaching of the law (the Spirit’s alien work or opus alienum in inner struggle) and in his resurrection through the preaching of the gospel (the Spirit’s proper work or opus proprium as gift or donum). This conformation (conformitas) theology is different from imitation (imitatio) piety, which first requires humans to do the work of repentance and self-mortification before the Spirit works justification and sanctification in their lives.²²

Third, as the first fruits of the coming resurrection, the Spirit works in the believer in the struggle against the flesh to bring him into the realm of Christ’s living presence through a “double motion” of faith and love. By the Spirit’s work, faith looks away from the believer’s own righteousness and holds to Christ’s alien righteousness for forgiveness; moreover, love looks away from the believer’s own piety and directs him to serve neighbors through callings or vocations in everyday life.²³

Finally, Luther’s pneumatology reveals a “theocentric” perspective, which sees the Spirit alone as God himself, Creator Spirit, working through the Word to redeem and sanctify persons. Thus the Spirit is not a supernatural spiritual “power” that aids or is a “means” to human piety in its natural striving for redemption and sanctification.²⁴

Full-length works dealing with classic theological areas from a pneumatological perspective, which are ecumenical in scope but significantly informed by the Lutheran tradition, include Cheryl M. Peterson’s Spirit-oriented narrative ecclesiology for exploring the church’s identity in post-Christendom, and Leopoldo A. Sánchez M.’s works in Spirit Christology and its implications for theology and life. Although appreciative of neo-Protestant word-oriented and ecumenical communion ecclesial paradigms, which Peterson associates in part with Lutheran theologians such as Gerhard Forde and Robert Jenson respectively, she notes that their emphasis on God’s gathering of the church through word and sacrament assumes the cultural situation of Christendom.²⁵ The author builds more directly on the missio Dei paradigm, whose focus on God’s sending of the church into the world aligns best with the context of post-Christendom and is amenable to her own narrative missional ecclesiology of the church as a “Spirit-breathed” community in the world. Drawing especially from the book of Acts and Luther’s Large Catechism, Peterson offers a “story arc” that portrays the Spirit as the divine agent who breathes life into the church through the gift of faith lived out in witness to the world in proclamation and in relationships transformed by repentance and the forgiveness of sins.

Seeing a partial eclipse of the Holy Spirit’s role in the life and mission of Jesus in the history of doctrine, Leopoldo Sánchez has developed a Nicene (or Chalcedonian) Spirit Christology as a complement to the classic Logos (one person, two natures) Christology of the ecumenical councils.²⁶ Sánchez proposes his own pneumatological reading of sixteenth-century Lutheran theologian Martin Chemnitz’s Christology, arguing for a way to talk about the presence, activity, and supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit inherent in the humanity of the Logos—what Sánchez calls a genus pneumatikon, or genus habitualis. The author shows the implications of this genus of the Spirit for speaking about events in Jesus’ life and mission (Christology), salvation through Christ (atonement theories), models of the Trinity, and Christian practices such as prayer, proclamation, and sanctification. Parting from the thesis that Christ gives the same Spirit who dwells in him to the members of his body, Sánchez depicts five ways in which Scripture, early church fathers, Martin Luther, and contemporary theologians speak about the Christlike life that the Sculptor Spirit shapes in the saints.²⁷ The Spirit sculpts the saints to share in Christ’s death and resurrection (renewal model), his fight against the evil one (dramatic model), his servanthood and life of sharing (sacrificial), his marginality and welcoming of strangers into the kingdom (hospitality), and his life of work, prayer, and rest (devotional).

Related resources

• The Book of Concord
• Sculptor Spirit: A Model of Sanctification from Spirit Christology
• T&T Clark Introduction to Spirit Christology
• Luther’s Works
• Receiver, Bearer, and Giver of God’s Spirit: Jesus’ Life in the Spirit as a Lens for Theology and Life
• The Freedom of a Christian: Luther Study Edition
• T&T Clark Handbook of Pneumatology
• Luther’s Large Catechism with Annotations and Contemporary Applications

1. Cheryl M. Peterson, “The Holy Spirit: Lutheran Perspectives,” in the T&T Clark Handbook on Pneumatology, eds. Daniel Castelo and Kenneth M. Loyer (London: T&T Clark, 2020), 197.
2. Lois Malcolm, “Martin Luther and the Holy Spirit,” in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 1, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.328.
3. See Carter Lindberg, “Do Lutherans Shout Justification but Whisper Sanctification?,” Lutheran Quarterly 13 (1999): 1–20.
4. Malcolm, “Martin Luther and the Holy Spirit,” 8.
5. Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 26: Lectures on Galatians, 1535, Chapters 1–4, eds. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999), 6.
6. Luther, Luther’s Works, 26:11.
7. Luther, Luther’s Works, 26:213–14.
8. Luther, Luther’s Works, 26:375.
9. Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 41: Church and Ministry III, eds. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1999), 114. Cited in Malcolm, “Martin Luther and the Holy Spirit,” 8–9, and Peterson, “The Holy Spirit: Lutheran Perspectives,” 201.
10. Malcolm, “Martin Luther and the Holy Spirit,” 9–11.
11. Leopoldo A. Sánchez M., “The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit,” in Luther’s Large Catechism with Annotations and Contemporary Applications, eds. John T. Pless and Larry M. Vogel (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 2022), 425.
12. Sánchez, “Person and Work of the Holy Spirit,” 426.
13. Sánchez, “Person and Work of the Holy Spirit,” 427–28.
14. Sánchez, “Person and Work of the Holy Spirit,” 427–29.
15. Peterson, “Holy Spirit: Lutheran Perspectives,” 198.
16. All references to the Confessions in this section are from Robert Kolb, Timothy J. Wengert, and Charles P. Arand, eds., The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000).
17. Peterson, “Holy Spirit: Lutheran Perspectives,” 202–204; see also Carter Lindberg, The Third Reformation? Charismatic Movements and the Lutheran Tradition (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1983).
18. Simeon Zahl, The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience (New York: Oxford, 2020).
19. Regin Prenter, Spiritus Creator, trans. John M. Jensen (Philadelphia, PA: Muhlenberg, 1953).
20. Prenter, Spiritus Creator, xx.
21. Prenter, Spiritus Creator, 205–09, cf. 3–8, 55–64.
22. Prenter, Spiritus Creator, 209–23, cf. 8­–55.
23. Prenter, Spiritus Creator, 224–38, cf. 64­–100.
24. Prenter, Spiritus Creator, 238–46, cf. 173–202.
25. Cheryl M. Peterson, Who Is the Church? An Ecclesiology for the Twenty-First Century (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2013).
26. Leopoldo A. Sánchez M., Receiver, Bearer, and Giver of God’s Spirit: Jesus’ Life in the Spirit as Lens for Theology and Life (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2015), and T&T Clark Introduction to Spirit Christology (London: T&T Clark, 2022).
27. Leopoldo A. Sánchez M., Sculptor Spirit: Models of Sanctification from Spirit Christology (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2019).