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
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
Matthew Root 