[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
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
Matthew Root 