The Boundless Love of God: A Holy Spirit Story

By E. Stan Lennard M.D. Sc.D.

The Boundless Love of God:
A Holy Spirit Story
E. Stan Lennard, M.D., Sc.D.

Christianity is evidence based, and this book innovatively shows concordance between Scriptural narratives and applications from the neurosciences that speak to personal interaction between the Holy Spirit and the human spirit and soul through the synaptic networks of the brain. Direct and personal communion with the Holy Spirit is restored when one accepts the New Covenant of the Gospel in repentance. It was given by the grace and boundless love of God for Man through the redemptive sacrifice of Jesus Christ. This book tells the story of the redemption of fallen mankind by the work and power of the Holy Spirit.

It is a common belief in the Church that personal, direct communion from the Holy Spirit to mankind ceased at the closure of the Canon of Scripture. The information presented in this book shows that interaction between the Holy Spirit and the mind of man enabled by the human spirit is bidirectional and continues in our time. Evidence is presented from theological and scientific resources that confirms dualist interaction between the immaterial mind and the physical brain of man. It further substantiates personal, direct interaction between the Holy Spirit and the mind of human beings.

The model for study used in this book is the neural synaptic network and incorporates the microsite hypothesis of Nobel laureate Sir John C. Eccles. Dualist interaction proposed by Eccles has been increasingly substantiated by contemporary theologians and investigators in the neurosciences and information theory, building on advances in quantum wave theory. The author addresses the mechanism for dualist interaction involving probabilistic quantum tunneling across synaptic clefts. Specified information with meaning and purpose actualized within neural codes is transmitted within spike trains of action potentials distributed through synaptic networks. The trigger for initiating spike trains is postulated as an immaterial energy source by which the Holy Spirit communicates with the mind of man. Through a lifetime of learning archived in memory, the cognitive mind of humans interprets neural codes enabled by their unique capacity for language. Communication from the Holy Spirit or other human minds as senders to human minds as recipients draws upon current understandings of information theory.

Evidence presented in this book provides a compelling rationale for the reality of bidirectional communion with the living, personal Holy Spirit in our time. That Jesus Christ indwells those who accept his truth as a personal, living Spirit is confirmation of the promise in John 14:15–21. Interaction with God by his atoning grace through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit gives receptive mankind hope and counsel today and into eternity to His glory.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796039665

E. Stan Lennard M.D. Sc.D.

Doctor E. Stan Lennard is a retired general surgeon and certified Christian apologist. His Doctor of Medicine degree was awarded at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas in 1968, and he received a Doctor of Science in Surgery degree through the University of Cincinnati School of Medicine, defending his thesis in 1976. The first half of his career was at the University of Washington in Seattle where he completed his Chief Surgical Residency in 1977 and joined the fulltime academic faculty with a subspecialty in surgical infectious disease. He entered fulltime private practice at Evergreen Healthcare in Kirkland, Washington in 1987 and retired from clinical practice in 2001. Since his retirement he has continued his affiliation since 1987 with the international, interdenominational Reasons To Believe ministry. He served on the Board of Directors for four and a half years, for four serving as its Chairman. For eleven years he served as an online instructor with Reasons Institute, the educational arm of the ministry, while conducting research that has extended over 18 years. Articles from his research have been posted on the ministrys website, and this book summarizes his research findings. Now fully retired he will resume his lifelong hobby of art, now focusing on oil painting. He is married with two grown children.

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Copyright © 2019 by E. Stan Lennard, M.D., Sc.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. [Biblica]

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 06/17/2019

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CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1: The God-Man

1.1 The Nicene Creed

1.2 Creeds and Confessions

1.3 Jesus the Word, the Logos

1.4 Jesus Christ, the God-Man Incarnate

1.5 The Baptism of Jesus

1.6 Jesus’ Indwelling by the Holy Spirit

1.7 The Power of the Indwelling Spirit

1.8 The Promise of the Counselor

Chapter 2: Condemnation of the Savior:

The Relational Price Paid by the Trinity

2.1 Spiritual Intimacy with the Father

2.2 The Prince of This World

2.3 Forsaken by the Father

Chapter 3: Communion with the Holy Spirit Restored

3.1 Belgic Confession

3.2 The Father’s Purpose for Humankind

3.3 Restoration of Communion by God’s Grace

3.4 The New Covenant of the Gospel and the Church

Chapter 4: Man’s Restored Communion with the Holy Spirit

4.1 Holy Spirit in the Gospel of Luke and Book of Acts

4.2 Peter’s Sermon at Pentecost – A Closer Look

4.3 Holy Spirit in the Gospel of John – the Ultimate Companion

4.4 Holy Spirit in the Theology of Paul

4.5 Effects of the Indwelling Holy Spirit

Chapter 5: Commentary on the Neuroscience of Communion

5.1 Interactive Dualism

5.2 The Immaterial Spirit and Mind

5.3 Interaction between the Immaterial Mind and Material Brain

5.4 Neural Synaptic Transmission

5.4.1 Information

5.4.2 Eccles’ Microsite Hypothesis

5.4.3 Neurophysiology of the Neural Synapse

5.5 Neural Correlates of Cognition

5.5.1 Frame of Reference

5.5.2 Information and Energy

5.6 A Scheme for Communication

Chapter 6: Our Hunger for Communion Today

6.1 Intimacy with Jesus Christ

6.2 The Depths of the Holy Spirit

6.3 A Gentle Whisper

6.4 The One Who Restrains

6.5 The Gospel for the Redemption of Mankind

6.6 Spiritual Rebirth of Man

6.7 The Love of God

6.8 The Story of the Love of God

6.9 John 10:27

Epilogue

End Notes

Figures

PREFACE

I N RAISING TWO children my wife and I learned through trial and prayer how to teach, encourage, advise, correct and discipline them. We learned the importance of extending grace in their formative years to achieve greater objectives. All was possible because of our love for them. Our relationship in their adult years has developed into that of mentors and friends, and yes, sometimes as parents too. But our grace and love is a mere thimble full compared to the boundless love and grace of God for Man, the crown of his creation. It is my goal in this book to explain God’s love manifested by his grace and extended to mankind through his Son, Jesus Christ. It is a story about the Holy Spirit, given, withdrawn and restored, so we can share eternal life in the presence of the living Jesus Christ.

I had a thirst during my youth to understand the Holy Spirit mentioned in the Apostle’s Creed and recited each Sunday in my family’s church services, but it went unquenched. Unfortunately there was little teaching about the Holy Spirit from the pulpit in my denomination, a deficiency that persists to this day in many churches. It was my connection beginning in 1987 with Reasons To Believe, an international, interdenominational ministry, and my academic training and tenure in the medical profession that provided direction and resources for the study of the Holy Spirit in my adult years. It was not enough to recite belief in the Holy Spirit in the creed. I wanted to learn how the Spirit relates to mankind, how by God’s grace and love the Holy Spirit is available, to me. I wanted to experience Him.

My Journey

I embarked on more than eighteen years of research on interaction between the Holy Spirit and the human spirit and soul. My studies directed me to the ultimate parent of us all, God the Father, who is Spirit and personal. I learned about the eternal loving relationship between the Holy Spirit and the human spirit and soul of the God-Man, Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten Son, and how the relationship accounted for the redemption of mankind. We were created by God for direct communion with Him, and the person in the Trinity who communicates with us is the Holy Spirit. But beginning with Adam mankind lost the direct, indwelling communion with the Holy Spirit in a spiritual death through the sin of rejecting the authority of God the Father. "But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. (Ephesians 2: 4-5) Jesus Christ died as a sin sacrifice to redeem us. He arose glorified and restored the indwelling of the promised Holy Spirit as Counselor and Helper to make salvation and eternal life in Christ possible for repentant mankind. I wanted to understand how this happened.

The Forsaking of Jesus

In the course of my studies I questioned the anguished cry of Jesus shortly before he died on the cross, asking why he had been forsaken by his Father. How was it possible that the Son of God who was in eternal triune union with the Father could experience such desolation? I came to understand that God’s grace and love was manifested by the sacrificial death of his Son for the redemption of fallen mankind, for me. There truly is no greater love than for one person to die for another when the one for whom the sacrifice is made deserves death. I wanted to know the Holy Spirit personally, to understand this expression of the awesome magnitude of God’s love for mankind.

Science behind Communion

My neuroanatomy professor in medical school served as a research fellow with Sir John Carew Eccles who was awarded the Nobel Prize for his studies of neural synaptic transmission. My professor often referred to Sir Eccles during his lectures, and when I spoke with him by phone years later at the inception of my research into the Holy Spirit he referred to Eccles as a man of the spirit. This description of him launched my study of interaction between the immaterial Spirit of God and the spirit of Man through which the Holy Spirit communes with us. I drew upon the insights and research findings of Sir Eccles. The interaction provides for an intimate and personal communion between the Mind of God and the mind of Man, a mind that was created in the imago Dei. Sir Eccles’ work showed how the immaterial human mind depends upon the synaptic networks of the material brain but cannot be reduced to them. The mind is a separate immaterial entity as is the spirit, and both are distinct from the material brain with which they are in an interactive functional relationship, a relationship referred to as dualist interactionism. I applied this model to my studies to come to an understanding of God’s love.

Communion Lost and Restored

The ultimate tragedy that can befall a human is being overcome by sin. Sin can claim our thoughts, desires and will. It can damn our soul and accounts for the loss of the intimate, indwelling communion between the Holy Spirit and the spirit of fallen mankind. Jesus the God-Man had a human spirit and soul and was indwelled by the Holy Spirit at his baptism by John the Baptist. He lived in full obedience to the Spirit’s counsel, even to his death on the cross. It was for this redemptive death that Jesus entered into our human existence on Earth. He came to save mankind from sin by his sacrifice on the cross to restore the indwelling by the Spirit.(1) My studies offer why Jesus was forsaken by the Father at that moment in history when he bore mankind’s sins, and I offer an explanation of how it occurred. It made unmerited redemption possible. Mankind in repentance can receive a renewed indwelling of their spirit by the Holy Spirit. We are afforded life in a direct union with the living Jesus Christ, a union for which God created us (Galatians 2: 20). "…because Jesus is present on Earth through his Spirit, without limitation of body, he is really and literally able to communicate and commune directly with us." (2) I have drawn upon both neuroscience and Scripture to provide an explanation for this transformative gift of grace. With proper interpretation we find that these resources are in concordance, a state in which points are in agreement. (3)

My First Book

I extend sincere thanks to my friend and former senior pastor, Dr. Jan D. Hettinga, who has been a Scriptural advisor to me throughout my writing of this book and the book preceding it, Nerve Endings of the Soul: Interaction Between the Mind of God and the Mind of Man Through Neural Synaptic Networks. I will be making frequent references to it. Through these two literary contributions it is my hope that the reader will share my gratitude and praise to God for his saving grace extended to us through and in Jesus Christ. He has provided for our eternal life, and I want my readers to understand and accept the reality of the redemption provided by the Gospel compellingly substantiated by neuroscience. My thirst to understand the Holy Spirit is beginning to be quenched.

Jesus preached that eternal life is available now. "Eternal life in the individual does not begin after death, but at the point where God touches the individual with redeeming grace and draws them into a life interactive (Italics added) with himself and his kingdom." (4)

INTRODUCTION

Forsaken

W HEN JESUS CHRIST was dying on the cross of crucifixion he cried out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Up until that moment Jesus was in eternal triune communion with God the Father and His Holy Spirit. Was it impossible for Jesus the God-Man, the begotten Son of God, to lose intimate, personal communion with God the Father? In this book I will address the significance of Jesus’ cry on the cross, an echo from Psalm 22:1 in fulfillment of the prophecy expressed by King David. Why did the Father withdraw His Spirit from the human spirit of Jesus, the sinless God- Man ? Why did Jesus experience this emotional desolation in his soul shortly before he died? What was God’s eternal purpose? Answers to these questions will show how the truth of the Gospel has provided for mankind’s redemption and eternal communion with the living Jesus Christ. John Ortberg has said that Jesus was disunited from God on the cross so that we could be reunited with him. ( 5) In our examination of recent findings from the neurosciences we shall see that applicable neuroscience is concordant, in agreement, with Scripture, a relationship that is largely unappreciated. To come to this understanding is a purpose of this book.