Certainly, the Holy Spirit is the one who guides the disciples of Christ into "all the truth" (John 16:13). So I guess your question depends on how you define "conveys" and "core Christian doctrines".

I don't know the Gospel of John well enough to have any confidence about this. But since knowledge requires belief, there is inevitably this question: whatever the deliverances of the Holy Spirit, shall we say that such "core doctrines" [perhaps the existence of God, His perfect goodness, our sin and need for divine assistance, at a minimum] are, or are not, belief-inducing? There's the content question, and then the belief question -- and parties of faith and good will might fairly divide on how ready they are to grant some form of doxastic voluntarism. (Doubtless the HS won't provide us with falsehoods; my point is simply that it's unlikely that St. John is going to answer the question of whether belief itself is part of the gift [in addition to the content = truths] or not. One would much prefer a unified epistemology, on this business of doxastic voluntarism. Modus Ponens is self-evident -- except to a third of undergraduates.)

I would like to follow this discussion, thanks!

David Dunaetz Within the context of my question, I define 'conveys' as 'communicates the truth of,' or 'convinces one of,' and 'core Christian doctrines,' as those contained within the Ecclesiastical Conciliar Decrees, i.e. Chalcedon.

Jan Cover Can the individual Christian believer as cogniser, know for herself that the core Christian doctrines are true, or constitute knowledge?

Gary John Eulenfeld I hope that you gain something beneficial from the question and responses.

Epistemological Role of Holy Spirit in John

Here are all occurrences of both "spirit" and "Holy Spirit" in the Gospel of John:

1.32-33 (John the Baptizer):

"And John testified, 'I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me,' "He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit."

3.5-8 (to Nicodemus):

“Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit)."

"The wind [πνεῦμα] blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."

3.31–35 (to John the Baptizer):

"The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks about earthly things. The one who comes from heaven is above all. He testifies to what he has seen and heard, yet no one accepts his testimony. Whoever has accepted his testimony has certified this, that God is true. He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in his hands."

4.23-24 (to the Samaritan woman):

"But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."

6.63 (to the disciples on eating the flesh of Jesus):

"It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life."

7.37-39 (on the last day of the festival of booths – the general context is the uncertainty and/or disbelief of many, and the mounting pressures to detain/arrest Jesus):

“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified."

11.33 (at the tomb of Lazarus):

"When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved."

13.21 (after washing his disciples feet, and speaking of receiving him, and the one who sent him):

"After saying this Jesus was troubled in spirit, and declared, 'Very truly, I tell you, one of you will betray me.'”

14.15-17 (words on the way [τὴν ὁδόν] to the Father, and the oneness of Father and Son):

"And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you."

14.25-26 (same context):

“I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you."

15.26 (same context as above):

“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf."

16.12-13 (Departure Narrative – continuation of above):

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come."

19.30 (at Jesus' death on the cross):

"Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit."

20.23 (Resurrection appearance):

"As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

I guess I need clarification on the function of "or" in your original question.

Is it posing a contrast between the two phrases or a separation that the last phrase is an expansion or refinement of the second phrase?

Is the contrast between the role of "the Holy Spirit as Epistemic Agent" and "One who conveys the Truth of the core Christian doctrines to the individual Christian believer?"

It will be interesting to see how you reconcile – given your focus on Calvin – a few points (strictly rhetorical, no need to answer these of course):

1. What does one do with this Spirit, once having received it, given Calvin's assertion of total depravity. Will one somehow be able to recognize the Spirit? And if so, what does one do with it?

And if I am reading Calvin correctly, he seems to follow Augustine in positing the human will to be the locus of the Fall: it is the will that is fallen. If this reading is permissible, one can then ask a few other questions:

2. If one may correctly say that the will precedes all action, then we can ask: Can one in fact do anything at all with the received Spirit, given the depth to which the will has fallen? Does this fallenness not hobble all action? Is one not then inextricably caught in a circle demarcated by both a fallen will and a hobbled praxis – a massa damnata from which escape is predetermined to be not an option?

3. If this is the state of things, then we may ask: What precisely is the role of the Spirit if one may neither identify it, nor will any degree of participation in it, nor act on it once received?

4. If this is the state of things, we could even ask: What precisely is the purpose – particularly in light of a presupposition that it has at least something to do with salvation – of creation? What is the purpose of history? Why is there something when all we can do is nothing?

5. It will also be interesting to see if you can reconcile the Gospel of John's emphasis on oneness (chapter 17 passim) with what seems to be an opening of the door to exegetical and hermeneutical relativism. In the absence of an epistemological and doctrinal 'control mechanism' how might the church avoid falling into ever further exponential division as it seeks understanding while labouring under the constraints of a fallen and utterly "depraved" will?

6. Granting that the Gospel of John does permit a seeing of Holy Spirit as "Epistemic Agent," as the "One who conveys the Truth of the core Christian doctrines to the individual Christian believer," then the question is:

Where in the Calvinistic universe does one go from here, mired beneath a double-pronged and absolute passivity in the form of the inability to both will and to act? Is this not tantamount to a casting of spiritual pearls before static swine who can only twiddle their thumbs in their solipsistic, insular, and compelled state of destined, yet both depraved and damnable, inaction?

When one comes to God in the state as Psalm 51:17 describes, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise” (NASB) or as Jesus said “poor in Spirit” (Matthew 5:3) humbled not puffed up in knowledge. Their heart being receptive and open to the knowledge of the truth then the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, indwells that person and then, yes, the Spirit conveys the Truth because He is the Spirit of Truth as Jesus said, “He will teach you ALL things” (John 14:26 emphasis mine). However, if one comes to the Word puffed up with knowledge then it will be that they are “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the Truth” (2 Timothy 3:7 emphasis mine). Jesus is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6).

Tom Walker, I have made a slight edit to my original question.

I believe that, concerning the question raised, Fr. Raymond Brown's exegesis on the Gospel of John may provide a plausible answer, especially with regard to the Spirit as the "Spirit of Truth", and the one that has been "gave up" by Christ, when he died on the Cross. Even in the resurrection account in John, when Christ "breathed into them" and gave his Spirit, is a good starting point. In my opinion, the Spirit as Jesus' in-breathing to each Christian believer may also be a good starting point in "reflecting" the Spirit's role as the Epistemic Agent...