Over the past few posts in this series on the development of beliefs about the Holy Spirit, we’ve seen a growing sense of expectation that God was going to unleash the Holy Spirit in an unprecedented way upon the world. This began like a distant roll of thunder in the Prophets, grew more insistent throughout … Continue reading The Spirit and Pentecost
We’re still in the midst of an extensive survey of how ideas about the Holy Spirit developed over time. In the most recent post, we saw how the birth narratives of John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth, especially in Luke’s Gospel, show the Spirit moving in a big way. Not only is the Spirit … Continue reading The Spirit in the Gospels, Part II
One of my favourite things about John’s Gospel has always been the “I am” statements, the seven places where Jesus says (with an emphasis that’s hard to get across in English) “I am” followed by a big and illustrative metaphor: “I am the bread of life,” “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” … Continue reading Flock and Shepherd: A Reflection on John 10.11-18
We’re in the midst of a series exploring the development of beliefs about the Holy Spirit. So far we’ve looked at how the concept was used in the Law and Deuteronomistic History (or ‘Former Prophets’), the Prophetic tradition, and the Hebrew Bible’s creation theology, as well as how these ideas developed during the Second Temple … Continue reading The Spirit in the Gospels, Part 1
So far in this series on the evolution of beliefs about the Holy Spirit, we’ve seen how the Old Testament has two streams of thought — the general, in which the Holy Spirit is nothing other than the breath of life that fills all creation, and the particular, in which the Holy Spirit empowers specific … Continue reading The Spirit in the Second Temple Period
Matthew Root 