In his book entitled Christianity is Christ, W.H. Griffith
Thomas concluded that,
“The Christ of Experience cannot be sundered from the Christ
of History, and the appeal to experience is impossible unless
experience is based on historic fact. The history must guarantee the
experience in the individual. ...If we lose our faith in the historic
fact of the Christ of the Gospels it will not be long before we lose
our faith in the experience of the Christ of today. 12
“...the central truth of Christianity (is) that the Holy Spirit
brings to bear on our hearts and lives the presence and power of
the living Christ, and thereby links together the Christ of History
and the Christ of Faith. ...thus the work of the Holy Spirit in
relation to Christ is the very heart of Christianity. 13
“Christ is essential, Christ is fundamental, Christ is all. 14Indeed, the intrinsic unity of the physically incarnated Jesus
and the resurrected, ascended Jesus poured out in the form
of the Spirit of Christ on Pentecost, continuing to function
in every age and unto eternity in the expression of His own
Being, must be maintained unequivocally as the essence of
Christianity.
As the particular purpose of this study is to call
Christian theology back to a personalized understanding of
the unified work of Christ in His ever-present spiritual
Being, we shall proceed to consider the divine reality of the
internalized presence and activity of the risen Lord Jesus by
His Spirit. In considering the subjective and experiential
implications of the life of Jesus Christ in Christians, we