God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul
by Fee, Gordon D.
•Baker Academic 2011
Overview
God’s Empowering Presence is a fresh and original analysis of all the passages in the Pauline corpus that concern the Holy Spirit, including Ephesians, Colossians, and the Pastoral Epistles. Through comprehensive lexical, historical, and grammatical study, Fee provides an exegesis of every Spirit text in Paul’s writings. He investigates the Holy Spirit’s crucial roles in Pauline theology: eschatological fulfillment, divine person of the Trinity, and evidence for and guarantee of salvation.
The Logos Bible Software edition of this volume is designed to encourage and stimulate your study and understanding of Scripture. Biblical passages link directly to your English translations and original-language texts, and important theological concepts link to dictionaries, encyclopedias, and a wealth of other resources in your digital library. In addition, you can perform powerful searches by topic and find what other authors, scholars, and theologians have to say about the Word of God.
Key Features
- Provides a detailed analysis of every verse written by Paul that talks about the Holy Spirit
- Presents an extremely thorough work of exegesis
- Includes an appendix that overviews the Spirit in the Old Testament as well as intertestamental developments
Contents
- Part 1: Analysis
- The Thessalonian Correspondence
- 1 Corinthians
- 2 Corinthians
- Galatians
- Romans
- The Captivity Epistles: Philemon and Colossians
- The Captivity Epistles: Ephesians
- The Captivity Epistles: Philippians
- The Pastoral Epistles
- Part 2: Synthesis
- The Spirit as Eschatological Fulfillment
- The Spirit as God’s Personal Presence
- The Soteriological Spirit
- The Spirit and the People of God
- Where to from Here? The Relevance of Pauline Pneumatology
Praise for the Print Edition
Fee’s book is the most comprehensive treatment available of Paul’s understanding of the Holy Spirit, a topic that has rarely received sufficient attention in studies of Pauline theology. Fee’s method is exemplary: he first analyzes Paul’s statements about the Spirit in each individual letter and then moves to a synthesis of Paul’s general pneumatology. The result is a book that is deeply exegetical, doing justice both to the particularity of Paul’s writings and to the fundamental unity of his vision for the Spirit’s role in the life of the Christian community. Most importantly, Fee emphasizes insistently that the Holy Spirit must be experienced as a living presence within the church. That message is both faithful to Paul and urgent for the community of faith in our time.
—Richard B. Hays, George Washington Ivey Professor of New Testament, Duke University
With the energy and care that is a trademark of his work, Gordon Fee here fills a significant gap in Pauline studies. Both those who find talk about the Holy Spirit congenial and those who would happily marginalize it will be instructed by this book. Fee makes a genuine contribution as he examines Paul’s letters in conversation with both the exegetical tradition of the academy and the pressing needs of the church.
—Beverly R. Gaventa, Helen H. P. Manson Professor of New Testament Literature and Exegesis, Princeton Theological Seminary
Fee uniquely combines professional competence as a text critic, an exegete, an author and editor of major commentaries, and a foremost evangelical interpreter of Paul with a lifetime of formation and ministry among the Pentecostals—this century’s providential witnesses to the work of the Spirit of God among us. . . . Fee’s work offers an enduring encyclopedia of Pauline pneumatological exegesis, easy to consult for next Sunday’s sermon . . . a must-have, within arm’s reach, for serious interpreters of Paul’s gospel. . . . Fee’s work is the theological crown of a distinguished exegetical career.
—Russell P. Spittler, senior professor of New Testament, Fuller Theological Seminary
Product Details
- Title: God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul
- Author: Gordon D. Fee
- Publisher: Baker Academic
- Publication Date: 2009
- Pages: 992
About Gordon D. Fee
Gordon D. Fee is an emeritus professor at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. He is the author of several books, including the popular How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, as well as many commentaries.
