Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-pfhbr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-12T17:36:20.336Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Holy Spirit

from Part I - Doctrines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2022

Michael Allen
Affiliation:
Reformed Theological Seminary, Florida
Get access

Summary

The person and work of the Holy Spirit are central to visions of the Christian doctrine of God, the Christian gospel, and the Christian life. This judgment is not simply based on a single biblical episode (such as the Pentecost narrative in Acts 2 or the Farewell Discourses of the Gospel of John). Rather, the centrality of the Spirit is grounded in the very logic of how the God of Christian confession, YHWH-Trinity, acts in the world and how this One goes on to be known and worshipped by followers of the Risen One. Christian initiation, the availability of grace, the remembrance of Jesus, the transformation of the heart, the eucharistic life of the church, the reading of Scripture, growth in holiness, the embodied mission of the people of God with “power” and “authority,” the sustained hope of living a cruciform existence in the eschatological “last days” – in short, every feature of God’s self-manifestation and work in the economy of salvation history is not just pneumatologically related but pneumatologically constituted and driven. Gordon Fee captures this sentiment well when he remarks of Paul’s pneumatology: “‘salvation in Christ’ not only begins by the Spirit, it is the ongoing work of the Spirit in every area and avenue of the Christian life.”1 The disciples of Jesus, then, are those called to be a people of the Spirit, ones who walk according to the Spirit and those who bear the gifts and fruit of the Spirit. As Kallistos Ware has so compellingly suggested, “The whole aim of the Christian life is to be a Spirit-bearer, to live in the Spirit of God, to breathe the Spirit of God.”2

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Further Reading

Athanasius the Great, and Didymus the Blind, (2011), Works of the Spirit (trans. Mark DelCogliano, Andrew Radde-Gallwitz, and Lewis Ayres; Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press).Google Scholar
Briggman, Anthony (2012), Irenaeus of Lyons and the Theology of the Holy Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Coakley, Sarah (2013), God, Sexuality, and the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Habets, Myk, ed. (2016), Third Article Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Humphries, Thomas L. Jr. (2013), Ascetic Pneumatology from John Cassian to Gregory the Great (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinnock, Clark (2022), Flame of Love, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic).Google Scholar
Rogers, Eugene F. Jr. (2005), After the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans).Google Scholar
Sicienski, A. Edward (2010), The Filioque (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinandy, Thomas (1995), The Father’s Spirit of Sonship (Edinburgh: T&T Clark).Google Scholar
Zahl, Simeon (2020), The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Holy Spirit
  • Edited by Michael Allen
  • Book: The New Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine
  • Online publication: 03 November 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108885959.009
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Holy Spirit
  • Edited by Michael Allen
  • Book: The New Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine
  • Online publication: 03 November 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108885959.009
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Holy Spirit
  • Edited by Michael Allen
  • Book: The New Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine
  • Online publication: 03 November 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108885959.009
Available formats
×