The New Testament deals with the activity of God’s Spirit (literally “the Breath of God”) more frequently than the Old Testament. The student of the Spirit is inevitably led to ask, “Where did the New Testament authors get their understanding of the Holy Spirit?” Jesus speaks comparatively infrequently about Him (as little as 6% of NT passages which mention the Spirit are on Jesus’ lips). Were the authors informed by teachings of Jesus which were left unrecorded? Was Paul illuminated on this topic while receiving visions in the third heaven? Or did they get their understanding of the Spirit primarily from the Old Testament? In other words, when comparing the use of “Spirit” in the New Testament with the Old, do we find more continuity or discontinuity? How much pneumatological innovation do we see by the apostles?
The hypothesis to be put to the test in this study is that, rather than fueled by fresh innovation in pneumatology, the understanding of the Holy Spirit by the apostles and New Testament authors is almost completely founded on the Old Testament material, which was then applied to the miraculous outworking of the Spirit which they saw occurring around them in the Church.
PH 693, Supervised Research
Dennis Lindsay
2 – 2:30 PM
Join the Zoom discussion afterward. The presenter and faculty advisor both have the password.