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
One of the most notorious problems in theology (and belief in God more generally) is what is known as theodicy: the question of how God can be good and just in a world such as ours. While God still may have a lot of answer for — earthquakes, hurricanes, famines, plagues and pandemics, and so … Continue reading Human Action, God’s Action: A Reflection on Acts 3.12-19
So far in this survey of how the Old Testament speaks about the Holy Spirit, we’ve looked at the examples where the Spirit is given as a particular gift to a particular person. In the Torah and Deuteronomistic History, we found a consistent pattern of gifts of practical wisdom and communication for the purpose of … Continue reading The Spirit and the theology of Creation
Last week, in the first post of three looking at what the Old Testament has to say about the Spirit of God, we saw the emergence, throughout the Law and Historical books, of a general pattern of the Spirit setting apart and empowering individuals for effective leadership, including both good judgment and decision-making and prophetic … Continue reading The Spirit in the Prophets
One of the most striking things about the post-Resurrection stories in the New Testament is how they go out of their way to show just how radical, and radically different, of a community the earliest Church sought to be. The clear fact that, by and large, Christians have completely failed to live that out over … Continue reading No More Rivals: A Reflection on John 20.19-31 and Acts 4.32-35
Matthew Root 