John 15:26-27

“ But when the support shall have come, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he shall testify of me; 27. and you also shall testify, because you are with me from the beginning. ”

Weiss sees in this intervention of the Spirit's testimony a fact which Jesus alleges in order to demonstrate the truth of the word without cause, John 15:25. But this connection is unnatural; it would have required a γάρ in John 15:26. It is more simple to suppose that, in speaking of the hatred of the world, Jesus interrupts Himself for a moment in order to show immediately to the disciples the power which will sustain them in this terrible conflict. He only indicates this help for a moment in passing. The idea will be completely developed in the following passage, John 16:5-15, when the picture of Jewish hostility will be finished.

In saying: whom I will send, Jesus is necessarily thinking of His approaching reinstatement in the divine condition; and in adding: from the Father, He acknowledges His subordination to the Father, even when He shall have recovered that condition.

Jesus here designates the Spirit as Spirit of truth, in order to place Him in opposition to the falsehood of the world, to its voluntary ignorance. The Spirit will dissipate the darkness in which it tries to envelop itself.

Most of the modern interpreters, Meyer, Luthardt, Weiss, Keil, refer the words: who proceeds from the Father, to the same fact as the preceding words: whom I will send you from the Father, to the sending of the Holy Spirit to the disciples. The attempt is made to escape the charge of tautology by saying that the first clause indicates the relation of the Spirit to Christ, and the second His relation to God (Keil); as if in this latter were not already contained the from God, which, repeated in the second clause, would form the most idle pleonasm. It must be observed that the second verb differs entirely from the first; ἐκπορεύεσθαι, to proceed from, as a river from its source, is altogether different from to be sent: the ἐκ, out from, which is added here to παρά, from the presence of, also marks a difference. But especially does the change of tense indicate the difference of idea: whom I will send and who proceeds from. He whom Jesus will send (historically, at a given moment) is a divine being, who emanates (essentially, eternally) from the Father. An impartial exegesis cannot, as it seems to me, deny this sense. It is that the historical facts of salvation, to the view of Jesus, rest upon eternal relations, as well with reference to Himself, the Son, as to the Spirit. They are, as it were, the reflections of the Trinitarian relations. As the incarnation of the Son rests upon His eternal generation, so the mission of the Holy Spirit is related to His eternal procession from the very centre of the divine being. The context is not in the least contradictory to this sense, as Weiss thinks; on the contrary, it demands it. What Jesus sends testifies truly for Him only so far as it comes forth from God.

The Latin church is not wrong, therefore, in affirming the Filioque, starting from the words: I will send, and the Greek church is no more wrong in maintaining the per Filium and subordination, starting from the words: from the Father. In order to bring these two views into accord, we must place ourselves at the Christological point of view of the Gospel of John, according to which the homoousia and the subordination are simultaneously true.

The pronoun ἐκεῖνος, “ he, that being, and he alone,” sums up all the characteristics which have just been attributed to the Holy Spirit, and makes prominent the unique authority of this divine witness.

Does this testimony given to the person of Jesus consist only in the presence of the Spirit on the earth, as proof de facto of His glorification? This sense would not suit either the name support nor that of Spirit of truth, and would not account for the pronoun you, in the promise: “I will send to you.” The question here is rather of the testimony given before the world, in answer to its hostile attitude, by the intermediate agency of the apostles; for example, by the mouth of Peter and the one hundred and twenty on the day of Pentecost.

But if it is so, we ask ourselves how can Jesus afterwards distinguish this testimony from that of the apostles themselves, in John 15:27: And you also shall bear witness for me; and the more, since the particle καὶ δέ indicates a marked gradation (comp. John 6:51); καί, and also; δέ, and besides. To understand the distinction, we must begin with John 15:27, which is the simplest one. The apostles possess a treasure which is peculiar to them, and which the Spirit could not communicate to them the historical knowledge of the ministry of Jesus from its beginning to its end. The Spirit does not teach the facts of history; He reveals their meaning. But this historical testimony of the apostles would, without the Spirit, be only a frigid narrative incapable of creating life. It is the Spirit which brings the vivifying breath to the testimony. By making the light of the divine thought fall upon the facts, He makes them a power which lays hold upon souls. Without the facts, the Spirit would be only an empty exaltation devoid of contents, of substance; without the Spirit the narrative of the facts would remain dead and unfruitful. The apostolic testimony and the testimony of the Spirit unite, therefore, in one and the same act, but they do so while bringing to it, each of them, a necessary element, the one, the historical narration, the other, the inward evidence. This relation is still reproduced at the present day in every living sermon drawn from the Scriptures. Peter, in like manner, distinguishes these two testimonies in Acts 5:32: “ And we are witnesses of these things, as well as the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him. ” We understand, after this, why, when the apostles wished to fill the place of Judas, they chose two men who had accompanied Jesus from the baptism of John even to His resurrection (Acts 1:21-22).

The καὶ ὑμεῖς signifies therefore: “And you also, you will have your special part in this testimony.” The present μαρτυρεῖτε, you bear witness, which we have translated by the future, does not by any means refer, as Weiss and Keil think, to the present moment, when the disciples are already bearing witness. Besides the circumstance that the fact was at that time true only in a very limited sense, why should it be mentioned here, since the question is of the future and the testimony of the Spirit? This present transports the disciples to the time when the Spirit shall speak: “ And then, on this foundation you bear witness also.”