The Holy Spirit before Christianity
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
With his latest book, The Holy Spirit before Christianity, John R. Levison again changes the face and foundation of Christian belief in the Holy Spirit. The categories Christians have used, the boundaries they have created, the proprietary claims they have made―all of these evaporate, now that Levison has looked afresh at Scripture.
In a study that is both poignant and provocative, Levison takes readers back five hundred years before Jesus, where he discovers history’s first grasp of the Holy Spirit as a personal agent. The prophet Haggai and the author of Isaiah 56–66, in their search for ways to grapple with the tragic events of exile and to articulate hope for the future, took up old exodus traditions of divine agents―pillars of fire, an angel, God’s own presence―and fused them with belief in God’s Spirit. Since it was the Spirit of God who led Israel up from Egypt and formed them into a holy nation, now, the prophets assured their hearers, the Spirit of God would lead and renew those returning from exile.
Taking this point of origin as our guide, Christian pneumatology―belief in the Holy Spirit―is less about an exclusively Christian experience or doctrine and more about the presence of God in the grand scheme of Israel's history, in which Christianity is ancient Israel's heir.
This explosive observation traces the essence of Christian pneumatology deep into the heart of the Hebrew Scriptures. The implications are fierce: the priority of Israelite tradition at the headwaters of pneumatology means that Christians can no longer hold stubbornly to the Holy Spirit as an exclusively Christian belief. But the implications are hopeful as well, offering Christians a richer history, a renewed vocabulary, a shared path with Judaism, and the promise of a more expansive and authentic experience of the Holy Spirit.
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- 1. The Emergence of the Spirit
- Recasting Exodus: The Font of Pneumatology
- 2. The Essence of the Spirit
- Retelling Exodus: The Precursors of Pneumatology
- 3. The Absence of the Spirit
- Recalling Exodus: The Dawn of Pneumatology
- 4. The Assurance of the Spirit
- Rekindling Exodus: The Force of Pneumatology
- 5. The Significance of the Spirit
- Rediscovering Exodus: The Future of Pneumatology
With this book, Jack Levison proves to be, once again, an ‘inspired’ reader of biblical texts. There is no other pneumatologist writing today who has taken so seriously the whole of the biblical witness for constructive theological reflection that aims to combat what could be called a latent pneumatological supersessionism. His skill as an interpreter, his exquisite prose, his sheer energy, and his humble, curious, and delightful spirit are all on full display in this work.
—Daniel Castelo, Professor of Dogmatic and Constructive Theology, Seattle Pacific University and Seminary
Fresh, perceptive, vigorous, energetic, provocative, interesting, and written with flair. Levison makes a fascinating case here for these two prophetic texts (Isaiah 63 and Haggai 2)—one lament, the other promise—as windows onto the origins of pneumatology, and thus pointers to the role of history, specifically historical crisis, in the emergence of holy spirit notions. The implications for rethinking Christian Spirit conceptions in serious conversation with Judaism are significant and clear.
—John T. Carroll, Harriet Robertson Fitts Memorial Professor of New Testament, Union Presbyterian Seminary
The Holy Spirit Before Christianity is a fascinating study and written in a lively fashion. I suspect it will provoke discussion and productive thinking among those interested in pneumatology. What makes this work perhaps most significant is that it forces readers to reckon with the tension between historical description—the historical moment when ‘holy spirit’ enters the script—and divine ontology—the theological prolegomena that affirms God’s eternal existence as triune.
—Andrew T. Abernethy, Scottish Journal of Theology
- Title: The Holy Spirit before Christianity
- Author: John R. Levison
- Publisher: Baylor University Press
- Print Publication Date: 2019
- Pages: 272
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
- ISBNs: 9781481310031, 9781481310789, 1481310038, 148131078X
- Resource ID: LLS:HLYSPRTCHRSTN
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-09-25T15:06:58Z