Gordon Fee on the Holy Spirit 4

Having just finished Gordon Fee's, God's Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul, I thought it might be cool to do a series of posts featuring quotes from the book on the Holy Spirit.

In this section, Fee comments on 2 Corinthians 5:13, "Now the one who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave us the Spirit as a down payment." (NET)

And here is where our sentence fits in. Whether we die or are transformed, God has fashioned us for this future bodily existence, in which the present mortal body is swallowed up by life. The clearest evidence of for this is the gift of the Spirit, which functions for us as God' down payment that we shall indeed inherit the very thing God has fashioned us for, namely, a new form of bodily existence in a pneumatikon soma ('Spiritual body'; 1 Cor 15:44) or soma tes doxes (a 'body of glory'; Phil 3:21).

Two things need to be emphasized about the second appearance of 'down payment' imagery in the letter: First, as we have already noted on 1:22, this is a case where the Spirit serves as the evidence for Paul of our essentially eschatological existence. We are destined for a glorious future, which is guaranteed precisely because the down payment of that future, the Spirit himself, is already our present possession. In giving us his Spirit, God has guaranteed our future. Thus, we live in the present, 'already' but 'not yet.' (326, Greek transliteration mine)

Again, Fee points out that the "down payment" language is eschatological. The Spirit is evidence that we are living in the "latter days," and it is a foretaste of what is to come.

Gordon Fee on the Holy Spirit 3

Having just finished Gordon Fee's, God's Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul, I thought it might be cool to do a series of posts featuring quotes from the book on the Holy Spirit.

In this passage, Fee comments on 2 Corinthians 1:21–22, "But it is God who establishes us together with you in Christ and who anointed us, who also sealed us and gave us the Spirit in our hearts as a down payment." (NET)

The metaphors in this text also demonstrate in striking ways that the Spirit for Paul is principally an eschatological reality. The presence of the Spirit as God's seal and down payment is the unmistakeable evidence of salvation as 'already but not yet.' The future is already in evidence through the 'down payment,' the present guarantee; but he is present only as 'down payment': the final inheritance, which he guarantees, is yet to be realized. (294)

Fee describes the experience of the Spirit in "Already but Not Yet" terms. The Holy Spirit is the very presence of God in the believer today--it is the primary way that we experience the eschaton. However, the Holy Spirit is not present in the complete way that He will be in the eschaton. It is a real presence, but not a complete presence.

Gordon Fee on the Holy Spirit 1

Having just finished Gordon Fee's, God's Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul, I thought it might be cool to do a series of posts featuring quotes from the book on the Holy Spirit.

Today we will look at Fee's words on 1 Corinthians 2:14, "The unbeliever does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. And he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." (NET)

This sentence in particular, along with Galatians 3:2–5, demonstrates that in Pauline theology, the Spirit is the sine qua non, the absolutely essential, crucial matter, in becoming a part of the people of God. The Spirit--alone--distinguishes believer from nonbeliever. This is why the latter 'are perishing' and consider the cross foolishness; this is why they do not understand the ways of God in Christ. The Spirit differentiates between what is of Christ and what is not. (107)

God's Empowering Presence by Gordon Fee

I just finished a monster book--God's Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul by Gordon D. Fee. I am not going to turn this blog back into a series of book reviews, but I have to mention this. It is 903 pages of goodness. New Testament theology is my "specialty," and this is a top 10 NT theology book in my opinion. The book is technical (it assumes a knowledge of Greek), so it's not for the casual reader.

Gordon Fee is Professor Emeritus of New Testament studies at Regent College. He comes from a Pentecostal background. He also wrote the industry standard on 1 Corinthians (New International Commentary on the New Testament).

After plowing through every mention or hint of the Holy Spirit in Paul, Fee concludes:

1. The Holy Spirit is crucial to Paul's understanding of the Gospel and the Christian experience. Christ may be the center of Paul's theology, but the Spirit isn't far from center.


2. The Spirit plays a leading role in Paul's eschatology. It is the "down payment" and evidence of what is to come.


3. The Holy Spirit is dynamically experienced in the Christian life and in the life of the Christian community.


4. The Holy Spirit is God's personal presence dwelling in His people.


5. Paul is trinitarian (may sound trite, but a number of New Testament scholars doubt this).


6. Salvation in Christ is trinitarian. (By this he means that the Holy Spirit plays a vital role in the salvation process. "The effectual realization and appropriation of the love of God as offered by the Son is singularly the work of the Spirit.")


7. From beginning to end, the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential to the Christian life.


8. The Holy Spirit is key to Christian spirituality.

I was introduce to Fee's work through James Dunn's The Theology of Paul the Apostle. When it comes to Paul's theology of the Spirit, Dunn more or less endorses Fee. Indeed, Fee's work fits nicely within the New Perspective on Paul (although I don't know if Fee would call himself New Perspective).

Reading Fee's work has opened my eyes to the role of the Spirit in the Christian life. It's not that I doubted it before, but I don't think I grasped the prominence that the Paul gave the Spirit in his theology. The work of the Holy Spirit in the church and in our lives is the primary way in which we "experience" God today. I don't think that it is inappropriate to say that our faith is in some ways grounded in our experience of the Spirit.

I just bought James Dunn's new book on early Christianity, volume 2 of his Christianity in the Making series. Volume 1 was about "the search for the historical Jesus," and volume 2 is about "the search for the historical early church." I am excited about it.

Christian Spirituality

I'm back. Sorry I was gone so long.

What does it mean to be "spiritual"? What does it look like? What does it feel like? When we talk about having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, what on earth do we mean? I know that I have a personal relationship with my wife, but my relationship with God is nothing like that. I know the phrase "personal relationship" when referring to spirituality is simply a metaphor, but sometimes it seems like a pretty meaningless metaphor. I see very little "personal" about my relationship with God.

I am in the middle of a sermon series at Believers Fellowship call Roots: Understanding our Spiritual Heritage, in which we have been going through the Book of Colossians. I have been very excited about it because it has helped me clarify the role that the Scriptures play in my faith story. Throughout Colossians, Paul reminds his readers that they are not alone in this thing called Christianity--that they have inherited a tradition passed down from Paul and the other apostles. He criticizes them for being unfaithful to this tradition, as if they were trying to change the plot of the story halfway through (that's a party foul). Studying Colossians has really affirmed to me that there were historical men--Jesus, Paul, Peter, John, etc.--who had radical views of what God was doing with humanity. By calling myself a "Christian," I am claiming to be a student of these ways of looking at the world. There are limits to ways in which I can interpret the world and still be faithful to this tradition and thus call myself a "Christian." Good stuff.

One of the things that we have been looking at in Roots is "spiritual transformation." I believe that Paul viewed the world as two ages--the present age and the age to come. The resurrection of Jesus inaugurated the age to come, but it will not be consummated until His return. Thus, followers of Jesus always live in this tension between "already being radically renewed" and "not yet being completely renewed."

I can deal with the "not yet" part of Christianity. I realize that God has a lot of work left to do in the world and that we are not experiencing the kingdom as He intended. But the "already" part has been perplexing me. In Romans 8:9, Paul writes "But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Any one who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him" (RSV). About this verse, James Dunn writes, "The fact that was immediately discernible was not whether they were Christ's--attested by baptism or confession--a fact from which their possession of the Spirit could be deduced as a corollary. That which was ascertainable was their possession of the Spirit; that was the primary factor from which their relation to Christ could be deduced. Their Christian status was recognizable from the fact that Christ's agent was in evident control of their lives" (James Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle [Grand Rapids: Eerdman's, 1998], 430). Dunn essentially says that people didn't know that they had the Spirit because they were Christians, but they knew they were Christians because they possessed the Spirit. The power of the Holy Spirit was so obvious in their lives that it could be used as evidence for their being in "the age to come."

That bothers me. It bothers me because I do not see the Holy Spirit working in my life in a way that makes me say "of course the Gospel is true; how else could I explain all of these changes?" Further, I don't see that kind of power in most Christians that I meet.
So, I am off to find out what it means to be spiritual. I feel that the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the original Christians was the major evidence for the truth of the Gospel. I want to reclaim that. Further, I am not interested in a series of proof texts or books on ten easy steps to spiritual bliss. I have read all of those and they don't work. I am going to use the Scriptures as a starting point to help me discern the kinds of things that the Spirit does in the lives of believers (i.e. I don't think it makes people bark like dogs or laugh uncontrollably), but ultimately I am not going to be satisfied with a biblical doctrine of what the Spirit should do, but rather an existential description of what He is doing. I am really not interested in more theories or quick fixes at this point.

I am going to start by studying the letters of Paul, reading Gordon Fee's God's Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul and by returning to some classic spiritual disciplines of the Christian faith, especially as outlined in the works of Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, and others. I will keep you updated on what I find out.