christianity

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

Yesterday we saw that while, by and large, the Church Fathers had a high view of the Holy Spirit and its role in the life of Christians, there were some significant shifts from the second through fifth centuries in what Christians expected the Holy Spirit to do. Specifically, teaching on spiritual gifts became less about … Continue reading The Holy Spirit in Church History, Part 2: Medieval Thought

[Due to some poor planning on my part, and a last-minute vacation, instead of doing a post on today’s readings, today I’ll be continuing with my series on the Holy Spirit. If you'd like a post on today's readings, check out this older post .] During the whole Easter season, we’ve been exploring how the … Continue reading The Holy Spirit in Church History, Part I: Patristic Thought

The end of Tuesday’s post in this series unpacking the development of beliefs about the Holy Spirit brought us to the question of vocation and spiritual gifts. This is the final, but by no means least important, of the major themes in the New Testament about the role of the Spirit in the lives of … Continue reading The Spirit in the Epistles, Part 3: The Spirit of Power

In the most recent post in this series looking at the development of ideas about the Holy Spirit, we saw how the Epistles continued an ancient tradition of associating the Spirit of God with revelation, whether through Scripture, prophecy, public defense, or evangelism, and the confirmation of that revelation as true. This is particularly true … Continue reading The Spirit in the Epistles, Part 2: The Spirit of Christ