Inheritance of the Spirit

A few days ago, I suggested in passing that N.T. Wright misses the connection of the Spirit and the Abrahamic promise in Galatians 3. I was wrong. I just hadn’t gotten far enough in his book, and he addresses that very point in his exegesis of Galatians 3 ( Paul and the Faithfulness of God , . . . . Continue Reading »

Passionate self-control

Coakley ( God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay ‘On the Trinity’ , 14-15) neatly shows that self-control does not result from a restraint of passion but from the source passion itself, which is the Spirit: “The Spirit’s ‘protoerotic’ pressure, felt initially as . . . . Continue Reading »

Pneumatological turn

Calvin’s early Eucharistic theology was neither Zwinglian nor Lutheran. It was Melanchthonian, argues Richard Muller in a 2010 Calvin Theological Journal essay: “Of great interest here is that the 1536 Institutio, despite its denial of a substantial presence of Christ’s natural . . . . Continue Reading »

One Person in Two

Aidan Nichols gives a neat summary of the Triune unity of the church in his Figuring out the Church: Her Marks, and Her Masters . Following Heribert Muhlen, he particularly emphasizes the role of the Spirit, who is “one Person in many persons” (27). More fully: “The Church’s . . . . Continue Reading »

Spiritual Food

John Zizioulas ( The Eucharistic Communion and the World , 9) says that once the Eucharist is understood as an epicletic memorial, then there is no longer any question of “”renewing the Supper and the sacrifice ofChrist accomplished once for all.’” He suggests that . . . . Continue Reading »

Spirit in Church

Jenson points out ( Systematic Theology: Volume 1: The Triune God , 25) that, though the church’s witness is carried on and received by institutions and traditions, “no structures of historical continuity merely as such can assure the integrity of witness to reality that is other than . . . . Continue Reading »

Spirit of Augustine

In his essay on Augustine in The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity , a precis of his Augustine and the Trinity , Lewis Ayres offers two lovely quotations illustrating Augustine’s pneumatology. He begins with one from the final book of The Trinity and follows with one from Augustine’s . . . . Continue Reading »

Breath of the Spirit

According to Isaiah 57:13, Judah’s kibbutz of idols will be driven away. They are no more than breath/vanities ( hebel ; Deuteronomy 32:21) and they will be disbursed with a breath. The wind ( ruach ) of Yahweh will carry them all away. Sweeping away idols is one of the regular jobs of the . . . . Continue Reading »