The Holy Spirit and the Unconscious: Insights from Douglas F. Kelly on the publication of his 3rd volume on “The Holy and the Church” (Text + Video)

Here is the clip, the particular section on the Holy Spirit and His operations on an unconscious level in the lives of believers starts at ‘18.

And below is a very brief synthesis provided to us by Dr. Kelly. It may offer us a starting point to begin grasping the very real, but often unseen and unfelt, movements of the Holy Spirit.

[Reading time: 2 minutes]

When the Holy Spirit comes into the life of a believer, he fills every part of his/her being. This would include both conscious aspects of one's mentality, as well as unconscious (or subconscious) levels of the mental frame. There may well be a certain echo of this in what Jesus said in John 14: 26 - "But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you."

Some of the words of our Lord generally remain 'below-level' in the subconscious, but the Holy Spirit brings them upwards into our daily thought, as he deems them to be needed. Much of the teaching of the Word of God has to be made clear to us as the Lord prepares us to receive it: "I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself: but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come" (John 16:12,13).

This text does not specifically say that these truths are first kept in our subconsciouness, but that seems likely, for sometime after we have heard them, it would appear that they grow brighter in our thinking, and this is an aspect of the Holy Spirit's inner ministration inside us. He works to magnify in our understanding "Christ in you, the hope of glory"(Colossians 1:27).

For instance, it took the disciples some time to make sense of much that Jesus did, as with his triumphal entry: "These things understood not his disciples at the first: but when Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these things were written of him, and that they had done these things unto him" (John 12:16).

That is to say, the Holy Spirit makes vivid to us truths that have been told us in God's Word, and that have to some degree been stored in our memory, and thus, what was already true makes sense to us in a new way.

The publication date for the third volume of his Systematic Theology is Nov 5th and the amazon link is here:

For further sermons “from the archives” dating back to the 1970’s, see this link with sermons on prayer or this exposition of II Cor 4:6-18, entitled “Brokenness in Christian Ministry,” among many others.