A recurring theme on this blog (and indeed in the New Testament) is that being a Christian means living a radically different life. There is supposed to a marked difference between life following Jesus and life following our own impulses, between life with the Spirit and life outside of the Spirit. There are few places … Continue reading Life in the Spirit: A Reflection on Romans 8.12-17
[I'm on vacation this week, so I thought I'd repost some of my favourite older posts for Pentecost. Enjoy this post from 2019.] The great promise of Christianity is that a fundamental change has come into the world. The “normal” ways of the world, whether conceived of as sin or fate or the writing of … Continue reading A Spirit of Freedom (A Reflection for Pentecost 2019) [Repost]
[I'm on vacation this week, so I thought I'd repost some of my favourite older posts for Pentecost. Enjoy this post from 2023.] The creation story in Genesis famously imagines the chaos out of which God creates life as being a fathomless ocean. Whatever else we might think about this story, it rightly places water … Continue reading Come, Drink: A Reflection for Pentecost 2023 [Repost]
Just in time for Pentecost Sunday, it's time to bring my historical survey about the Holy Spirit to a close with some theological affirmations and a call to action.
In Tuesday’s post, we saw how the Medieval Church tried to hold a public, ecclesiastical, and sacramental understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit in creative tension with a private and mystical one. Today we turn to the Reformation, which exploded all of the Western Church’s attempted syntheses and compromises. The centuries since the … Continue reading The Holy Spirit in Church History, Part 3: The Reformation and Beyond
Matthew Root 