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Sinclair Ferguson, The Holy Spirit (IVP, 1996), p. 12:

The assumption which became virtually an article of orthodoxy among evangelicals as well as others, that the Holy Spirit had been discovered almost de novo in the twentieth century, is in danger of the heresy of modernity, and is at least guilty of historical short-sightedness.

It forgets that it was with good reason that the Reformation pastor-theologian John Calvin was described as “the theologian of the Holy Spirit.”

Moreover, each century since his time has witnessed events which were ascribed to the unusual working of the Holy Spirit.

Even in the late twentieth century, the two opera magna on the Holy Spirit remain the extensive studies by the seventeenth-century Puritan John Owen, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, and by the great Dutch theologian-politician, Abraham Kuyper, founder of the Free University of Amsterdam.

Looking back even further, the assumption that the twentieth century had recovered truth lost since the first two centuries displays a cavalier attitude to the material unearthed by H. B. Swete in his valuable series of studies on the Spirit begun more than a century ago. These richly demonstrate the attention which much earlier centuries gave to honoring him along with the Father and the Son.

Dr. Ferguson says that the idea that “the Holy Spirit was forgotten but is now rediscovered” needs to be rephrased:

While his work has been recognized, the Spirit himself remains to many Christians an anonymous, faceless aspect of the divine being. Even the title “Holy Spirit” evokes a different gamut of emotions from those expressed in response to the titles “Father” and “Son.”

Perhaps the facts of the situation would have better stated by describing him as the unknown rather than the forgotten (or even “shy,” as has recently been done) person of the Trinity.

Ferguson’s book is one of the best I’ve ever read on the Holy Spirit. Along with Graham Cole’s work, here are two contemporary Spirit-filled theologians who will help you know the Holy Spirit and his work better.

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