Tonight 7/11 at 7:30 we will hold the seventh lecture of series three on “A Theological Grounding for a Standard Sacred Text — The Holy Spirit and a Standard Sacred Text.”
Henry Venn (1724-1797), the Anglican rector of Huddersfield in Yorkshire and later of Yelling in Huntingdonshire, was the author of the once well-known book The Complete Duty of Man. In this volume Venn argues for the absolute necessity of the Holy Spirit’s illumination of the written word if the saint is to glean what God intended to be received, (1 Cor. 2:15; Heb. 5:14). Of the Holy Spirit’s essential influence Venn writes,
This doctrine is of the utmost importance; for, if you take away the influence of the Holy Spirit from the members of the church, then the very Gospel of Christ will be no more than a sublime speculation, as ineffectual to change the heart or reform the world as the pagan philosophy. The Holy Spirit, the Comforter, is the inestimable promise made to the church; if therefore we would read the Bible for our reproof, our correction, our instruction in righteousness, we must before, and as we read, pray to God for his influence and teaching.[1]
Speaking hypothetically, though the word is self-attesting, self-authenticating, and self-interpreting, these characteristics will go unrecognized without the work of the Spirit in the heart and mind of “members of the church,” even for them the word would merely be “sublime speculation” and “ineffectual to change the heart.” In powerful terms, Venn describes the indispensability of the Holy Spirit’s influence in the church to the effectual work of the Gospel of Christ. Written in the late 18th century, Venn continued the long Protestant commitment to the Person and influence of the Holy Spirit in the Church through the Scriptures clearly articulated 200 years earlier by John Calvin in his Institutes.
[1] Henry Venn, The Complete Duty of Man, or A System of Doctrinal and Practical Christianity designed for the use of families, 1763, Revised and Corrected by H. Venn, (New York: American Tract Society, 1838), 391. (italics in original) It is said of Venn that after his spiritual awakening towards the end of his years at Cambridge University, he served several curacies in the Church of England before being called to minister in Huddersfield in 1759. In the twelve years of his ministry there the town was transformed from spiritual and moral darkness through Venn’s preaching and many confessed Christ as their savior.
Don’t miss the study of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the unquantifiability of the Canon tonight at 7:30.
Standard Sacred Text.com 