The Holy Listener

Martin Luther on the intra-trinitarian conversation that sustains the church.

Photo by Josh Eckstein on Unsplash

In preparation for a recent sermon on John 16, I was perusing Martin Luther’s exegesis of that chapter when I stumbled upon this profound and provocative passage in which the beloved reformer designates the Holy Spirit as the divine “Listener.” This nomenclature was foreign to me at first, but Luther’s explanation brings a dose of clarity and certainty to what might otherwise be an esoteric concept. To that end, the Spirit as Listener offers a helpful angle by which to understand the Triune God and the intra-trinitarian conversation that ultimately results in our redemption. This particular excerpt comes from Luther’s comments on John 16:13, where the Lord himself says, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.” In many ways, these words function as Christ’s own definition of the office and ministry of the Spirit, a fact that injects them with a measure of equal parts severity and solemnity. According to Luther, Christ has just made “the Holy Spirit a Preacher.”¹ What he hears in that Triune “conversation in which no creatures participate” is that which he speaks and ministers unto the saints. Consequently, the Spirit is the best preacher of all — namely, because he listens and reports only what he has heard. Here’s how Luther explains it:

Christ points in particular to the distinctive Person of the Holy Spirit or His attribute, also to His divine essence together with the Father and the Son, when He says: “Whatever He hears He will speak.” For here Christ refers to a conversation carried on in the Godhead, a conversation in which no creatures participate. He sets up a pulpit both for the speaker and for the listener. He makes the Father the Preacher and the Holy Spirit the Listener. It is really beyond human intelligence to grasp how this takes place; but since we cannot explain it with human words or intelligence, we must believe it. Here faith must disregard all creatures and must not concentrate on physical preaching and listening; it must conceive of this as preaching, speaking, and listening inherent in the essence of the Godhead.

Here it is relevant to state that Scripture calls our Lord Christ — according to His divine nature — a “Word” (John 1:1) which the Father speaks with and in Himself. Thus this Word has a true, divine nature from the Father. It is not a word spoken by the Father, as a physical, natural word spoken by a human being is a voice or a breath that does not remain in him but comes out of him and remains outside him. No, this Word remains in the Father forever. Thus these are two distinct Persons: He who speaks and the Word that is spoken, that is, the Father and the Son. Here, however, we find the third Person following these two, namely, the One who hears both the Speaker and the spoken Word. For it stands to reason that there must also be a listener where a speaker and a word are found. But all this speaking, being spoken, and listening takes place within the divine nature and also remains there, where no creature is or can be. All three — Speaker, Word, and Listener — must be God Himself; all three must be coeternal and in a single undivided majesty. For there is no difference or inequality in the divine essence, neither a beginning nor an end. Therefore one cannot say that the Listener is something outside God, or that there was a time when He began to be a Listener; but just as the Father is a Speaker from eternity, and just as the Son is spoken from eternity, so the Holy Spirit is the Listener from eternity . . .

Thus these words confirm and teach exactly what we confess in our Creed, namely, that in one divine essence there are three distinct Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.²

The “Creed” referred to is, of course, the Apostles’ Creed, wherein the church confesses, “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” Even so, distilling what that means is more than a little difficult. Indeed, the person, office, and ministry of the Holy Spirit have served as a contentious point of doctrine for ages. Discerning the Spirit’s role within one’s life of faith is often a facet of the Christian life that is muddied by colloquial tropes regarding who the Holy Spirit is and what he does. This is where Luther’s vocabulary proves helpful, especially since it clarifies the Spirit’s function. He is the one who hears and bears witness to what the Word of the Father — the Word who “became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14) — has done, bringing it to bear in us and for us in the living present. As the Holy Listener, then, the Spirit communicates to us what the person of the Son declares, who condescends from “the Father’s side” to make known (exēgeomai) the Father’s heart (John 1:18).

The point is that what the Spirit of God hears and administers to us are the things concerning the Son of God. He does not and “will not speak on his own authority,” Christ explains (John 16:13). Rather, he takes what belongs to the Son (“what is mine,” John 16:14–15), which is coeval with what belongs to the Father, and brings that to bear for the glory of the Triune God and the building up of his church. It is in this way, then, that we can understand Christ’s Spirit as the divine paraklētos, that is, our Counselor, Comforter, Helper, and Advocate (John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7; 1 John 2:1). What sustains the church as the Body of Christ is none other than the Spirit of Christ, who dispenses the Word of Christ as the very lifeblood of hope, joy, peace, and faith.

Grace and peace to you.

1. Martin Luther, “Sermons on the Gospel of St. John Chapters 14—16,” Luther’s Works: American Edition, Vols. 1–55, edited by Jaroslav Pelikan and Daniel E. Poellot (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1961), 24:362.

2. Luther, 24:364–65.