No. 47 I have a follow�up request to the question Eric just asked. About a year ago, a good friend of mine introduced me to a book written by a contemporary Irish theologian. The book purports to examine the contradictions between Catholic and Lutheran structures of thought and, if I�m remembering correctly, was entitled Christian Contradictions. I think the author�s name was Hampson. In any event, in the introduction the author quotes a German Lutheran theologian, Wilfried Joest, as stating that Luther understood the believer to be someone carried by another with a capital A. That Other�s power � that is, the Holy Spirit�s power � works through the believer, Joest argues, not in the indirect sense of empowering the believer or giving the believer capacity � as the Catholics teach � rather in the direct sense that the Spirit works in the believer�s work in such a powerful way that it can only truthfully be described as God�s work. Would you be kind enough to comment on Joest�s thesis? >>DR. LEOPALDO SANCHEZ M.: Thank you for the follow-up, David. I think there is a sense in which one can properly speak of the Spirit and power or giving the believer the capacity to do good works. If we speak only in this way, however, we could get the impression that the Spirit as Jost seems to argue openly works on the believer indirectly. In other words, when we get the sense that the Spirit is primarily an external and sporadic presence in the believer's life. Consequently one might also get the sense that the believer's life is primarily a matter of doing this or that holy thing, this or that good work as the Spirit leads here and there. The Spirit, however, does not simply act in such an indirect way on believers as a sort of external and sporadic presence in their lives. Much more than that, the Spirit dwells in believers. The church is a temple of the Holy Spirit. We bear the Holy Spirit. So the Spirit is our close companion throughout our lives. From the time of our baptism to the time of our resurrection until life everlasting. In this sense the Spirit works in us not only indirectly but directly to use Jost's terms. We may say that the Holy Spirit is the one in whom we live and move and have our being. Because he dwells in us our lives bear fruit. And we serve the neighbor. From this angle, sanctification is then in a fundamental way God's work in us and through us. There is a theologian by the nay of Adolf Koberle who even speaks of sanctification as monergistic which means that it is all in the end God's work in us.