Carroll John T. - The Holy Spirit in the New Testament

THE
HOLY SPIRIT
IN THE NEW
TESTAMENT

General Editors

Core Biblical Studies
Louis Stulman, Old Testament
Warren Carter, New Testament

Other Books in the Core Biblical Studies Series

The Apocrypha by David A. deSilva

The Dead Sea Scrolls by Peter Flint

Apocalyptic Literature in the New Testament by Greg Carey

God in the New Testament by Warren Carter

Christology in the New Testament by David L. Bartlett

John and the Johannine Letters by Colleen M. Conway

The Pentateuch by Marvin A. Sweeney

JOHN T. CARROLL

THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

Copyright 2018 by Abingdon Press

All rights reserved.

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed in writing to Permissions, Abingdon Press, 2222 Rosa L. Parks Blvd., PO Box 280988, Nashville, TN 37228-0988, or e-mailed to .

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been requested.

ISBN: 978-1-4267-6637-4

Unless otherwise noted, all scripture quotations are from the Common English Bible. Copyright 2011 by the Common English Bible. All rights reserved. Used by permission. www.CommonEnglishBible.com.

Scripture quotations marked NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org/

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MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

for James Rose Carroll and Mildred Lester Carroll
Parents of beloved memory who modeled life in the Spirit

The last few decades have offered a steady stream of books on the Holy Spirit, from a variety of perspectives, some of them conflicting and conflicted. This book does not attempt to settle such debates, nor does it set out to open up new interpretive vistas. Rather, my aim is more modest: (1) to provide a map for readers who have an interest in this intrinsically fascinating topic, (2) to help them gain a new appreciation of the variety of perspectives on the Spirit within the New Testament, and (3) to guide their further explorations through continuing study. My readers will discover signposts indicating some of the exciting work on the Spirit that scholars have been producing. The particular interest in this project, though, is a fresh encounter with the various treatments of the Holy Spirit, or Spirit of God, within the pages of the New Testament.

I am grateful to Warren Carter, chief editor of the Core Biblical Studies series of Abingdon Press and professor at Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University, for the invitation to write this book. Warrens friendship and robust scholarship, his remarkable talents as an editor, and our shared commitment to ethically responsible biblical interpretation and to the value of wit and humor in serious scholarship make this collaboration especially meaningful to me. I express appreciation as well to the editorial and production staff at Abingdon Press for their skill in bringing this book to readers hands and eyes.

As I have developed and honed the ideas that eventually made their way into this book, I have benefited greatly from the opportunity to present work-in-progress and receive instructive feedback from listeners in a number of settings. They are too numerous to mention here, but I single out the members of the Moveable Feast group of pastors and educators, who devoted a portion of their meeting in 2017 to a set of biblical texts addressing the Spirit; attendees at a Virginia Conference annual gathering of United Methodist alumni/ae of Union Presbyterian Seminary; and workshop participants at Union Presbyterian Seminarys Seminary for a Day and at a Union on the Move educational event cosponsored by the Coastal Carolina Presbytery. The privilege of learning alongside and from students in my classes at Union Presbyterian Seminary continues to invigorate me. For this project, the opportunity to supervise three students in directed studies on the Holy Spirit in the Bibletheir initiative, not mine!was especially formative, and I thank each of them: Carrie Cifers, Chad Beck, and Joshua Lewis. Joshuas intense commitment to deep and critical learning as a budding Pentecostal theologian offered important insight to me as a scholar who lacks direct experience of that tradition, for which awareness of the Spirit is so crucial.

Coinciding with my work on the Holy Spirit has been delightful collaboration with colleagues on the steering committee of the Society of Biblical Literatures Gospel of Luke Section. I am especially grateful for the friendship and collegial sharing I have enjoyed with my cochair Mark Matson, not least in drawing up plans for a session focused on the Spirit and the Gospel of Luke at the annual meeting of the society in November 2017. Fellow steering committee member Mikael Winninge has also been hard at work on a collaborative book-length study in Swedish. The time seems to be ripe for such undertakings! I also thank two eminent scholars from whose work on the Spirit I have learned immeasurably, Volker Rabens and Jack Levison. Their generous spirits have been very much in evidence in personal exchanges over the last couple of years. I am relieved that Volkers book on the New Testament and the Spirit will appear sometime after mine, as his erudition will no doubt put mine to shame. And as to Jacks publications on the Spirit, I am, well, deeply grateful for the inspiration I have drawn from his scholarship. (Pun intended, but the debt is immense, and no joke.)

I continue to enjoy teaching in the company of splendid faculty colleagues at Union Presbyterian Seminary. If one of the gifts of the Spirit to be discovered in the pages that follow is administrative skill, then my academic dean Ken McFayden is abundantly gifted. And if another of the gifts of the Spirit is eloquent preaching, then my president and Bible Department colleague Brian Blountsoon to serve a years term as president of the Society of Biblical Literatureis likewise Spirit-gifted to an extraordinary degree. Just as important, I count them both as supportive colleagues and friends. I am truly grateful.