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Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God
"In Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God, Pentecostal scholar Gordon Fee has redefined the terms of the discussion about the Holy Spirit in a way that transcends today's paradigm of 'charismatic' or 'noncharismatic' orientation. His words are a strong reminder of what God, through his Holy Spirit, intends the church to be. . . . His work is an attempt to point us back to the Bible and reinvigorate our own vision of how the Spirit mobilizes the community of believers in the local church."--Wendy Murray, author; former senior writer, Christianity Today"Gordon Fee, one of our truly master exegetes, has put steel and sinew into the words Spirit, spirit, and spiritual--words that have become flabby through subjectivizing indulgence and lack of exegetical exercise. His accurate, fresh, and passionate recovery of the place and meaning of Spirit in Paul and for us Christians is a provocative stimulus and reliable guide to the recovery of the experienced presence of God in our lives. For those of us who want to live in continuity with all that has been revealed in Jesus and given in the Spirit, this is an eminently practical book."--Eugene H. Peterson, professor emeritus of spiritual theology, Regent College"Gordon Fee is one of the finest Bible expositors I have known. Whenever he speaks and writes, I listen, and recommend you do the same."--Chuck Colson, founder, Prison Fellowship Ministries
227 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 1, 1994
225 people are currently reading
670 people want to read
About the author
Gordon D. Fee
71 books210 followersGordon Fee was Professor Emeritus of New Testament at Regent College, where he taught for sixteen years. His teaching experience also included serving schools in Washington, California, Kentucky, as well as Wheaton College in Illinois (five years) and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts (twelve years).
Gordon Fee was a noted New Testament scholar, having published several books and articles in his field of specialization, New Testament textual criticism. He also published a textbook on New Testament interpretation, co-authored two books for lay people on biblical interpretation, as well as scholarly-popular commentaries on 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus and on Galatians, and major commentaries on 1 Corinthians and Philippians. He is also the author of a major work on the Holy Spirit and the Person of Christ in the letters of Paul.
Gordon Fee served as the general editor of the New International Commentary series, as well as on the NIV revision committee that produced the TNIV. Besides his ability as a biblical scholar, he was a noted teacher and conference speaker. He has given the Staley Distinguished Christian Scholar lectures on fifteen college campuses as well as the annual NT lectures at Southwestern Baptist Seminary, North Park Seminary, the Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary, the Canadian Theological Seminary, Duke Divinity School, Golden Gate Baptist, Anderson School of Theology, Asbury Seminary, and Chrichton College. An ordained minister with the Assemblies of God, Gordon Fee was well known for his manifest concern for the renewal of the church.
Gordon Fee was married and had four married children.
Gordon Fee was a noted New Testament scholar, having published several books and articles in his field of specialization, New Testament textual criticism. He also published a textbook on New Testament interpretation, co-authored two books for lay people on biblical interpretation, as well as scholarly-popular commentaries on 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus and on Galatians, and major commentaries on 1 Corinthians and Philippians. He is also the author of a major work on the Holy Spirit and the Person of Christ in the letters of Paul.
Gordon Fee served as the general editor of the New International Commentary series, as well as on the NIV revision committee that produced the TNIV. Besides his ability as a biblical scholar, he was a noted teacher and conference speaker. He has given the Staley Distinguished Christian Scholar lectures on fifteen college campuses as well as the annual NT lectures at Southwestern Baptist Seminary, North Park Seminary, the Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary, the Canadian Theological Seminary, Duke Divinity School, Golden Gate Baptist, Anderson School of Theology, Asbury Seminary, and Chrichton College. An ordained minister with the Assemblies of God, Gordon Fee was well known for his manifest concern for the renewal of the church.
Gordon Fee was married and had four married children.
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October 11, 2011
I wondered whether I would be disappointed -- this book has been many times recommended to me as the go to book on the topic of Holy Spirit, and Gordon Fee has a massive reputation as an exegete. Happily, it lived up to expectations on both counts! It's thorough, balanced, sober, Christ-centred and built almost completely on exegesis of passages from Paul's letters. The blurb on the back promises that Fee "transcends today's paradigm of charismatic or noncharismatic", and he actually does. At almost every point he offers corrections to both points of view. It's quite academic & theological in tone, and it's not light reading, but it's also quite practical and certainly rewards the effort. Numerous highlights including the Spirit as the renewed presence of God with His people, the thoroughly escatological nature of Paul's churches (everything was viewed through the lense of the future brought into the present in Jesus, by the Spirit) and the essentially relational nature of the Holy Spirit's activity (everything in the context of the community of God's people).
**************************
Here's the full text of a 1000 word book review I wrote for my NT class:
Paul, the Spirit and the People of God by Gordon Fee is an authoritative exposition of the Holy Spirit in the letters of Paul. The book is built on exegesis, but the chapters are arranged topically rather than passage by passage. Through fifteen chapters, Fee first outlines the nature and identity of the Holy Spirit and his place in salvation history, then describes his role in conversion and finally the place of the Spirit in ongoing Christian life. The scope of the book is quite comprehensive, quite an achievement given the significant of the topic and the length of the book. Fee’s overarching concern is that the Holy Spirit has often been marginalised in contemporary Christianity, either through neglect by non-charismatics or selective overemphasis by charismatics. He argues that the Holy Spirit is in fact completely integral to every aspect of Paul’s theology of the Christian life. Because of the thoroughness of Fee’s exegesis and the consistent balance and soberness of his conclusions, it’s easy to have great confidence in Fee’s argument.
The book is quite academic in tone, including a healthy dose of footnotes and regular interaction with scholars holding opposing views . It is “thoroughly exegetical” , which in keeping with Fee’s reputation is its strongest feature. He keeps the textual discussion to a reasonable length by making regular reference to his larger work on the topic , and while this is occasionally frustrating , generally he seems to get the balance about right. The book is not dry -- Fee openly admits to “trying to persuade” , and he begins with a list of the “urgencies” which motivated the book, including most broadly “the generally ineffective witness and perceived irrelevancy of the church in western culture” . Fee has clearly made an effort to help non-academic readers engage with the book, including helpful summary statements and interesting illustrations to begin each chapter. The reader does need to be willing do the heavy reading required to follow the exegesis at the core of every chapter. However, the investment is worthwhile – Fee’s conclusions are persuasive, challenging, encouraging, practical and possibly even life changing.
Fee describes the Holy Spirit as the renewed presence of God with his people. For Paul, he argues, the Spirit was the fulfilment of Old Testament hopes for the return of God’s presence with his people. Thus Christians are the renewed people of God with His personal presence dwelling in our midst. The Spirit, being God himself, is a personal being, contrasting the impersonal picture of the Spirit held by many contemporary Christians. Fee examines the Spirit’s relationship to Christ also, pointing out that “Christ has put a human face on the Spirit as well” as the Father, and the role of the Spirit being to “carry on the work of Christ”. It is reassuring that Fee is consistently Christ centred and cross centred in his theology, affirming often that Paul’s primary concern was always the gospel – the death and resurrection of Christ – with the work of the Spirit always relating to this. Fee emphasises continually that in Paul’s churches the Spirit’s presence was an experienced presence. This experience God’s powerful presence among them, through the Spirit, was evidently a normal, everyday feature of life in Paul’s churches. This is where Fee draws a contrast with the experience of Christians throughout most of church history, where the evidenced power of the presence of God has been unusual and remarkable rather than normal and everyday. Fee also links the ineffective witness of the contemporary church with the loss of this experienced presence of God in our midst.
Fee also places heavy emphasis on the early church as a thoroughly eschatological people. The coming of the Holy Spirit, he argues, was a decisive sign to them that the future had come into the present, even as they waited for the final return of Christ. This ‘already / not yet’ worldview “conditioned everything about them” , and was only made possible by the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit, who was both evidence of God’s presence now and guarantee of the final fulfilment. Fee makes the intriguing statement that if he was to return to ministry in a local church, his central and sustained priority would be to recapture this eschatological understanding of life as God’s people . Living within this tension, he says, guards against overbalancing either towards triumphalism or defeatism. One of many helpful discussions of this paradigm concerned the way God’s power is expressed in weakness.
Another constant theme of the book is the communal and relational nature of life in the Spirit. Salvation occurs individually, but is defined as entry into the people of God. Fee’s discussion of ethics is very helpful – rather than being individualistic law-keeping, Christian ethics are relational in every way, and are always empowered by the Spirit. His exegesis of the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5 – again thoroughly relational – makes the book worthwhile on its own. Similarly, Fee emphasises that spiritual gifts were almost always expressed with the focus on the community of the people of God rather than the individual. He is particularly scathing of the separation of the fruit of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit in the contemporary church, with the selective focus of ‘non-charismatics’ on fruit and ‘charismatics’ on gifts. Finally, Fee examines the Spirit/flesh struggle in terms of God’s people in the world rather than at an individual level.
At times the book was almost discouraging because of the great contrast between the everyday experience of the Spirit in Paul’s churches and the everyday experience of Spirit in most churches since then. Interestingly, Fee’s main proscription for recapturing this lost experience of the Spirit is to regain the fundamentally eschatological outlook of the early church. His conclusions, characteristically, are sober and balanced – we must “bring life to into our present institutions, theologies and liturgies” rather than tearing them down. He argues for a “more vitally trinitarian” approach to the Christian life which is thoroughly communal rather than individualistic. Personally, reading Paul, the Spirit and the People of God has given me a more fully rounded, all of life theology of the Holy Spirit. I greatly appreciated the integration of various topics which are usually treated in isolation. The book also provided plenty of fuel for my own relationship with God, especially regarding the relational nature of the fruit of the Spirit, the everyday experience of the Spirit’s power that was normal in the early church and a fresh view of the Spirit/flesh conflict.
**************************
Here's the full text of a 1000 word book review I wrote for my NT class:
Paul, the Spirit and the People of God by Gordon Fee is an authoritative exposition of the Holy Spirit in the letters of Paul. The book is built on exegesis, but the chapters are arranged topically rather than passage by passage. Through fifteen chapters, Fee first outlines the nature and identity of the Holy Spirit and his place in salvation history, then describes his role in conversion and finally the place of the Spirit in ongoing Christian life. The scope of the book is quite comprehensive, quite an achievement given the significant of the topic and the length of the book. Fee’s overarching concern is that the Holy Spirit has often been marginalised in contemporary Christianity, either through neglect by non-charismatics or selective overemphasis by charismatics. He argues that the Holy Spirit is in fact completely integral to every aspect of Paul’s theology of the Christian life. Because of the thoroughness of Fee’s exegesis and the consistent balance and soberness of his conclusions, it’s easy to have great confidence in Fee’s argument.
The book is quite academic in tone, including a healthy dose of footnotes and regular interaction with scholars holding opposing views . It is “thoroughly exegetical” , which in keeping with Fee’s reputation is its strongest feature. He keeps the textual discussion to a reasonable length by making regular reference to his larger work on the topic , and while this is occasionally frustrating , generally he seems to get the balance about right. The book is not dry -- Fee openly admits to “trying to persuade” , and he begins with a list of the “urgencies” which motivated the book, including most broadly “the generally ineffective witness and perceived irrelevancy of the church in western culture” . Fee has clearly made an effort to help non-academic readers engage with the book, including helpful summary statements and interesting illustrations to begin each chapter. The reader does need to be willing do the heavy reading required to follow the exegesis at the core of every chapter. However, the investment is worthwhile – Fee’s conclusions are persuasive, challenging, encouraging, practical and possibly even life changing.
Fee describes the Holy Spirit as the renewed presence of God with his people. For Paul, he argues, the Spirit was the fulfilment of Old Testament hopes for the return of God’s presence with his people. Thus Christians are the renewed people of God with His personal presence dwelling in our midst. The Spirit, being God himself, is a personal being, contrasting the impersonal picture of the Spirit held by many contemporary Christians. Fee examines the Spirit’s relationship to Christ also, pointing out that “Christ has put a human face on the Spirit as well” as the Father, and the role of the Spirit being to “carry on the work of Christ”. It is reassuring that Fee is consistently Christ centred and cross centred in his theology, affirming often that Paul’s primary concern was always the gospel – the death and resurrection of Christ – with the work of the Spirit always relating to this. Fee emphasises continually that in Paul’s churches the Spirit’s presence was an experienced presence. This experience God’s powerful presence among them, through the Spirit, was evidently a normal, everyday feature of life in Paul’s churches. This is where Fee draws a contrast with the experience of Christians throughout most of church history, where the evidenced power of the presence of God has been unusual and remarkable rather than normal and everyday. Fee also links the ineffective witness of the contemporary church with the loss of this experienced presence of God in our midst.
Fee also places heavy emphasis on the early church as a thoroughly eschatological people. The coming of the Holy Spirit, he argues, was a decisive sign to them that the future had come into the present, even as they waited for the final return of Christ. This ‘already / not yet’ worldview “conditioned everything about them” , and was only made possible by the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit, who was both evidence of God’s presence now and guarantee of the final fulfilment. Fee makes the intriguing statement that if he was to return to ministry in a local church, his central and sustained priority would be to recapture this eschatological understanding of life as God’s people . Living within this tension, he says, guards against overbalancing either towards triumphalism or defeatism. One of many helpful discussions of this paradigm concerned the way God’s power is expressed in weakness.
Another constant theme of the book is the communal and relational nature of life in the Spirit. Salvation occurs individually, but is defined as entry into the people of God. Fee’s discussion of ethics is very helpful – rather than being individualistic law-keeping, Christian ethics are relational in every way, and are always empowered by the Spirit. His exegesis of the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5 – again thoroughly relational – makes the book worthwhile on its own. Similarly, Fee emphasises that spiritual gifts were almost always expressed with the focus on the community of the people of God rather than the individual. He is particularly scathing of the separation of the fruit of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit in the contemporary church, with the selective focus of ‘non-charismatics’ on fruit and ‘charismatics’ on gifts. Finally, Fee examines the Spirit/flesh struggle in terms of God’s people in the world rather than at an individual level.
At times the book was almost discouraging because of the great contrast between the everyday experience of the Spirit in Paul’s churches and the everyday experience of Spirit in most churches since then. Interestingly, Fee’s main proscription for recapturing this lost experience of the Spirit is to regain the fundamentally eschatological outlook of the early church. His conclusions, characteristically, are sober and balanced – we must “bring life to into our present institutions, theologies and liturgies” rather than tearing them down. He argues for a “more vitally trinitarian” approach to the Christian life which is thoroughly communal rather than individualistic. Personally, reading Paul, the Spirit and the People of God has given me a more fully rounded, all of life theology of the Holy Spirit. I greatly appreciated the integration of various topics which are usually treated in isolation. The book also provided plenty of fuel for my own relationship with God, especially regarding the relational nature of the fruit of the Spirit, the everyday experience of the Spirit’s power that was normal in the early church and a fresh view of the Spirit/flesh conflict.
February 16, 2021
The older I get, the more curious I've become to hear voices outside of my own theological tradition.
Dr. Gordon Fee is a Pentecostal scholar, and in this book, he does an excellent job of teaching on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.
A few quick takeaways:
1. I love Fee's definition of the Spirit as the personal presence of God, and have used it in my own teachings.
2. The Spirit empowers the people of God to live the life of the future (ie., the Kingdom) now in the present.
3. As such, believers live in the already-but-not-yet tension: Already God has given us his Spirit, but the consummation of all things (or as Jesus put it, the Renewal of all things) still remains, so the Spirit is also the down payment or guarantee of this future.
4. I loved his discussion of the fruit of the Spirit as well as the flesh vs. Spirit. Still thinking on this as it challenged me in several ways.
5. Fee rightly says the Christ is the center of Paul's theology, not the Spirit. But, he adds, the Spirit is close to that center "making Christ known and empowering all genuinely Christian life and experience."
My big takeaway is to seek more of the Spirit's work and influence in my own life, and not be satisfied by a mere intellectual Christianity but an experiential one as well. As Fee says over and over again, the Spirit for Paul and the early church was a lived experience of the personal presence of God both empowering their ethical life and energizing their corporate life together.
This book is an attempt to make his larger work, God's Empowering Presence, more accessible. I'm planning on working through this larger work which exegetes every mention of the Spirit in each of Paul's letters.
All in all, it's a good read, and best read with the Bible open before you.
5 stars
Dr. Gordon Fee is a Pentecostal scholar, and in this book, he does an excellent job of teaching on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.
A few quick takeaways:
1. I love Fee's definition of the Spirit as the personal presence of God, and have used it in my own teachings.
2. The Spirit empowers the people of God to live the life of the future (ie., the Kingdom) now in the present.
3. As such, believers live in the already-but-not-yet tension: Already God has given us his Spirit, but the consummation of all things (or as Jesus put it, the Renewal of all things) still remains, so the Spirit is also the down payment or guarantee of this future.
4. I loved his discussion of the fruit of the Spirit as well as the flesh vs. Spirit. Still thinking on this as it challenged me in several ways.
5. Fee rightly says the Christ is the center of Paul's theology, not the Spirit. But, he adds, the Spirit is close to that center "making Christ known and empowering all genuinely Christian life and experience."
My big takeaway is to seek more of the Spirit's work and influence in my own life, and not be satisfied by a mere intellectual Christianity but an experiential one as well. As Fee says over and over again, the Spirit for Paul and the early church was a lived experience of the personal presence of God both empowering their ethical life and energizing their corporate life together.
This book is an attempt to make his larger work, God's Empowering Presence, more accessible. I'm planning on working through this larger work which exegetes every mention of the Spirit in each of Paul's letters.
All in all, it's a good read, and best read with the Bible open before you.
5 stars
November 26, 2022
Pentru mine cartea aceasta a reprezentat o adevarata piatra de temelie in ce priveste subiectul Duhului.
Vreau sa incep prin a spune ca am ramas placut surprins de modul in care greutatea teologica e scrisa in lucrarile lui Fee, reusind sa creeze un fel de tensiune in ceea ce scrie. Pare ca intotdeauna mesajul sau tinde sa fie unul devotional, dar, care, neglijat putin ajunge sa isi piarda consistenta argumentativa.
Acum, dupa ce am expus putin modul in care Gordon Fee ca autor si a lasat amprenta asupra mea, imi doresc sa prezint pe scurt subiectele care au avut un impact de ordin teologic pentru mine.
Cartea in sine reprezinta un material relativ exhaustiv, sau cel putin introductiv in ceea ce tine de un subiect atat, dar atat de putin valorificat. Spre dezamagirea mea si, totodata motivul pentru care aceasta carte primeste doar 4 stele se datoreaza faptului ca ii lipseste "scheletul", si anume baza exegetica care se afla in cartea originala GEP.
Cu toate ca acest lucru a reprezentat o mare dezamagire pentru mine, beneficiind doar de niste concluzii teologice, mai mult decat de niste analize exegetice, totusi materialul, valorificat in context, (lucru care pentru o carte de teologie mi s-a parut, din pacate, revolutionar) a fost de o deosebita profunzime. Ca urmare a citirii cartii, intelegerea mea asupra rolului comunitar pe care Duhul il ocupa si, totodata intelegerea expresiei "templul Duhului", convertirii si fictivei lupte intre Duh si fire a fost imbogatita semnificativ.
In concluzie, recomand aceasta carte oricui doreste sa inteleaga subiectul, dar pentru cei care vor sa il aprofundeze, bazat pe niste analize exegetice, cu siguranta ca as apela la GEP.
Vreau sa incep prin a spune ca am ramas placut surprins de modul in care greutatea teologica e scrisa in lucrarile lui Fee, reusind sa creeze un fel de tensiune in ceea ce scrie. Pare ca intotdeauna mesajul sau tinde sa fie unul devotional, dar, care, neglijat putin ajunge sa isi piarda consistenta argumentativa.
Acum, dupa ce am expus putin modul in care Gordon Fee ca autor si a lasat amprenta asupra mea, imi doresc sa prezint pe scurt subiectele care au avut un impact de ordin teologic pentru mine.
Cartea in sine reprezinta un material relativ exhaustiv, sau cel putin introductiv in ceea ce tine de un subiect atat, dar atat de putin valorificat. Spre dezamagirea mea si, totodata motivul pentru care aceasta carte primeste doar 4 stele se datoreaza faptului ca ii lipseste "scheletul", si anume baza exegetica care se afla in cartea originala GEP.
Cu toate ca acest lucru a reprezentat o mare dezamagire pentru mine, beneficiind doar de niste concluzii teologice, mai mult decat de niste analize exegetice, totusi materialul, valorificat in context, (lucru care pentru o carte de teologie mi s-a parut, din pacate, revolutionar) a fost de o deosebita profunzime. Ca urmare a citirii cartii, intelegerea mea asupra rolului comunitar pe care Duhul il ocupa si, totodata intelegerea expresiei "templul Duhului", convertirii si fictivei lupte intre Duh si fire a fost imbogatita semnificativ.
In concluzie, recomand aceasta carte oricui doreste sa inteleaga subiectul, dar pentru cei care vor sa il aprofundeze, bazat pe niste analize exegetice, cu siguranta ca as apela la GEP.
August 29, 2016
Brilliant!!!
Gordon Fee compresses his 900 page tome "God's Empowering Presence" into an appr 210 page book for mere mortals like me, and I must say it is the best treatment of the subject of the Holy Spirt via a vis the Christian life and the church. Every church tradition will get its fair share of correction, from Penteco-charismatics to evangelical to Anabaptist.
If your theology is driven by the more recent rediscovery of the kingdom of God as breaking forth into the present, you will find this book helps you appreciate the need for the Holy Spirit even more. If you relegate everything about the kingdom of God to a future heaven, get ready for your world to be rocked.
And if you're are waking up to the devastating impact of individualism in Christendom, you will learn much to encourage you from Fee.
This is now my go-to book on the Holy Spirit. I cannot recommend it more.
Gordon Fee compresses his 900 page tome "God's Empowering Presence" into an appr 210 page book for mere mortals like me, and I must say it is the best treatment of the subject of the Holy Spirt via a vis the Christian life and the church. Every church tradition will get its fair share of correction, from Penteco-charismatics to evangelical to Anabaptist.
If your theology is driven by the more recent rediscovery of the kingdom of God as breaking forth into the present, you will find this book helps you appreciate the need for the Holy Spirit even more. If you relegate everything about the kingdom of God to a future heaven, get ready for your world to be rocked.
And if you're are waking up to the devastating impact of individualism in Christendom, you will learn much to encourage you from Fee.
This is now my go-to book on the Holy Spirit. I cannot recommend it more.
December 1, 2023
The Holy Spirit is a bit of an enigma to most Christians, myself very much included. We can, at times, find ourselves slipping into practical "bi-nitarianism" with a clear picture of the Father and the Son but only intellectually affirming to the Holy Spirit as far as the words in our creeds mention Him. I have personally wrestled with the question of how people, including myself, truly change: are we supposed to simply try harder while mentally reminding ourselves of our truth claims about Jesus' substitutionary atonement? Of course, the right answer is that some sort of deeper transformation is supposed to be taking place, and that somehow the Holy Spirit is involved, but the details are pretty murky.
So you can imagine my excitement at finding that Dr. Gordon Fee, a highly eminent New Testament scholar, has taken the time to analyze every single time Paul mentioned anything related to the Holy Spirit and compile these into a massive exegetical tome titled "God's Empowering Presence". And imagine my even greater excitement that Dr. Fee went on to distill this huge opus into a lay-friendly version: "Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God".
This book was incredibly helpful to me and surprisingly encouraging in its final pastoral outlook. Christ is the absolute centerpiece of Paul's writing, however at the same time everything that Christ accomplished is transmitted to us through the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is God's very own precious presence, the special promise by which the ancient Hebrews comforted themselves. The loss of God's presence with us (see Ezekiel) has not only been reversed in the pouring out of the Spirit but radically heightened as God's Spirit comes to dwell not in a temple made by human hands but in our very beings, both individually and collectively as God's people. The Spirit's work empowers and builds up the church to conform to the image of Christ in every way, transforming us into His likeness and glory, multiplying Spiritual gifts which empower us to love each other and the world. These gifts are rich and varied: some gifts are "ethical" such as peace, patience, gentleness, etc.; some transform our outlook, e.g. gifts of hope, joy, etc.; others empower us to speak truth boldly, e.g. gifts of teaching, wisdom, knowledge; others are patently supernatural gifts such as prophecy and tongues. The Spirit thus enables us to truly live "the life of the future" into which we have been newly born by the death of Christ; a life marked by love, holiness, and power despite our continued frailty as human beings. Scripturally speaking, the pouring out of the Spirit is a clear prophetic signal that we are approaching the culmination and conclusion of history.
Dr. Fee argues persuasively that the earliest church was transformed by not only the powerful reality of Christ's resurrection but also by the manifest, experienced reality of the pouring out of the Spirit. This unshakeable confidence in the Spirit marks Paul's letters and empowered the early church in countless ways as they persevered, on the one extreme, under violent persecution and, on the other extreme, through the indifference of a secular/polytheistic dominant culture (not so unlike the current Western culture). We in the West must wrestle with why the modern Western church so rarely experiences the Spirit with such confidence and power; instead we often find ourselves resorting to self-improvement/organizational techniques to "keep the ball rolling". I appreciate the author's kind and gentle closing pastoral suggestions. He speaks both to individuals and leaders, exhorting us to ask God for help to change, and that we seek to open our good traditional institutional structures to willingly invite the Spirit to move in whatever way He chooses. This will involve encouraging the practice and exercise of all Spiritual gifts in an orderly and edifying way; Dr. Fee reminds us that this is a clear command of Scripture, not an optional nice-to-have.
In the evangelical/Reformed circles I swim in, our charismatic/Pentecostal brethren are, sadly, often unnecessarily dismissed as "holy rollers" with little exegetical depth. So it is a joy to read Dr. Fee, a lifelong Pentecostal who nevertheless had a highly esteemed voice in the evangelical world. I appreciated Dr. Fee seeking to let the Scripture speak clearly on its own terms and, as such, his willingness to lovingly both affirm and critique the traditional views of both evangelicals and Pentecostals. To God be the glory, now and forever, in the church which He graciously indwells and empowers through His very own Spirit.
So you can imagine my excitement at finding that Dr. Gordon Fee, a highly eminent New Testament scholar, has taken the time to analyze every single time Paul mentioned anything related to the Holy Spirit and compile these into a massive exegetical tome titled "God's Empowering Presence". And imagine my even greater excitement that Dr. Fee went on to distill this huge opus into a lay-friendly version: "Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God".
This book was incredibly helpful to me and surprisingly encouraging in its final pastoral outlook. Christ is the absolute centerpiece of Paul's writing, however at the same time everything that Christ accomplished is transmitted to us through the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is God's very own precious presence, the special promise by which the ancient Hebrews comforted themselves. The loss of God's presence with us (see Ezekiel) has not only been reversed in the pouring out of the Spirit but radically heightened as God's Spirit comes to dwell not in a temple made by human hands but in our very beings, both individually and collectively as God's people. The Spirit's work empowers and builds up the church to conform to the image of Christ in every way, transforming us into His likeness and glory, multiplying Spiritual gifts which empower us to love each other and the world. These gifts are rich and varied: some gifts are "ethical" such as peace, patience, gentleness, etc.; some transform our outlook, e.g. gifts of hope, joy, etc.; others empower us to speak truth boldly, e.g. gifts of teaching, wisdom, knowledge; others are patently supernatural gifts such as prophecy and tongues. The Spirit thus enables us to truly live "the life of the future" into which we have been newly born by the death of Christ; a life marked by love, holiness, and power despite our continued frailty as human beings. Scripturally speaking, the pouring out of the Spirit is a clear prophetic signal that we are approaching the culmination and conclusion of history.
Dr. Fee argues persuasively that the earliest church was transformed by not only the powerful reality of Christ's resurrection but also by the manifest, experienced reality of the pouring out of the Spirit. This unshakeable confidence in the Spirit marks Paul's letters and empowered the early church in countless ways as they persevered, on the one extreme, under violent persecution and, on the other extreme, through the indifference of a secular/polytheistic dominant culture (not so unlike the current Western culture). We in the West must wrestle with why the modern Western church so rarely experiences the Spirit with such confidence and power; instead we often find ourselves resorting to self-improvement/organizational techniques to "keep the ball rolling". I appreciate the author's kind and gentle closing pastoral suggestions. He speaks both to individuals and leaders, exhorting us to ask God for help to change, and that we seek to open our good traditional institutional structures to willingly invite the Spirit to move in whatever way He chooses. This will involve encouraging the practice and exercise of all Spiritual gifts in an orderly and edifying way; Dr. Fee reminds us that this is a clear command of Scripture, not an optional nice-to-have.
In the evangelical/Reformed circles I swim in, our charismatic/Pentecostal brethren are, sadly, often unnecessarily dismissed as "holy rollers" with little exegetical depth. So it is a joy to read Dr. Fee, a lifelong Pentecostal who nevertheless had a highly esteemed voice in the evangelical world. I appreciated Dr. Fee seeking to let the Scripture speak clearly on its own terms and, as such, his willingness to lovingly both affirm and critique the traditional views of both evangelicals and Pentecostals. To God be the glory, now and forever, in the church which He graciously indwells and empowers through His very own Spirit.
March 7, 2025
While I love Fee and can appreciate what he sets out to do in this book, it’s got a number of problems. Probably the biggest issue is how he reads later tradition into Paul—a problem that reflects older scholarly approaches to the NT. Instead of letting later doctrines of the Spirit be providential developments, Fee seems to want these doctrines to already be in the Pauline writings. For example, Fee sees Paul as a Trinitarian and uses pneuma (spirit) language almost invariably to describe a *person.* Today, however, most NT scholars recognize a variety of things going on with Paul’s pneuma language that do not fit neatly into OT imagery and patristic explanation. It would have been better to say that Paul’s view was amenable to later Patristic representations of the Holy Spirit as a person.
Still, I think Fee’s instincts are right—the tradition about a person of the Spirit is not so far from Paul as some scholars have argued. Best of all, Fee helpfully draws attention to the frequent use that the Pauline texts make of the pneuma. He also rightly, though indirectly, makes cessationist readings appear rather silly. The Pauline letters *never* imagined that, short of the redemption of bodies, the church would not need the various manifestations of the holy pneuma. Here, if Fee would have paid more attention to the sanctifying (making holy) imagery associated with the spirit, this also would have been a lot stronger.
In the end, a reader would be better off either going with Fee’s larger and more exegetical God’s Empowering Presence or read more up-to-date scholarship on Paul.
Still, I think Fee’s instincts are right—the tradition about a person of the Spirit is not so far from Paul as some scholars have argued. Best of all, Fee helpfully draws attention to the frequent use that the Pauline texts make of the pneuma. He also rightly, though indirectly, makes cessationist readings appear rather silly. The Pauline letters *never* imagined that, short of the redemption of bodies, the church would not need the various manifestations of the holy pneuma. Here, if Fee would have paid more attention to the sanctifying (making holy) imagery associated with the spirit, this also would have been a lot stronger.
In the end, a reader would be better off either going with Fee’s larger and more exegetical God’s Empowering Presence or read more up-to-date scholarship on Paul.
April 15, 2022
In a more digestible form than God's Empowering Presences, Gordon D. Fee breaks down his systematic theology of the Holy Spirit as seen in the letters of Paul. I started this book as it is a distant partner to particular work on the language Paul used around Jesus (which was rather impactful for me).
A lot of this book feels remedial to anyone with a strong theological base. However, the latter half of the book contained some of the best observations of the Spirit's communal role in Pauline churches I have seen, as well as an explanation for the charismata. The largest takeaway from the Fee was that the Holy Spirit most notably operates through and for the sake of strong church communities. This insight came as a shock for someone who has largely ignored the role of Spirit after spending much time in a charismatic school that placed emphasis on the individual.
Overall, I would recommend this book to one who wishes not to put the Holy Spirit on a shelf, but to an earnest follower of Christ who desires better language and understanding of the Trinue God.
A lot of this book feels remedial to anyone with a strong theological base. However, the latter half of the book contained some of the best observations of the Spirit's communal role in Pauline churches I have seen, as well as an explanation for the charismata. The largest takeaway from the Fee was that the Holy Spirit most notably operates through and for the sake of strong church communities. This insight came as a shock for someone who has largely ignored the role of Spirit after spending much time in a charismatic school that placed emphasis on the individual.
Overall, I would recommend this book to one who wishes not to put the Holy Spirit on a shelf, but to an earnest follower of Christ who desires better language and understanding of the Trinue God.
July 9, 2024
Gordon Fee es un increíble biblista! Su exposición de la teología Paulina y la importancia práctica del Espíritu Santo en la vida cotidiana es simplemente magistral. Este es un libro muy recomendable y aunque su lectura no es tan densa si se requiere tener un conocimiento previo de teología para entender algunos conceptos.
September 21, 2020
Don’t agree with 100% of everything but I appreciate the work more so for that because it forced me to think. Really solid work and very quick read. The chapter on the Spirit and Worship (chapter 13) is particularly good.
July 2, 2024
Very good reference book about what Paul says about the Holy Spirit throughout his letters. It shows a much wider (and deeper) understanding than typical charismatic books about this subject.
July 11, 2024
Un libro muy profundo sobre el Espíritu Santo ❤️ Lo amé
March 14, 2019
A thorough and amazing study over the third person of the Trinity. Fee does an incredibly good job at explaining how the Spirit has been at work throughout all of history and how He is preparing the body in the eschatological framework of the "already but not yet".
I would highly recommend this book to anyone curious about knowing the Spirit more deeply.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone curious about knowing the Spirit more deeply.
March 8, 2023
The Holy Spirit is God's Empowering Presence. Paul teaches and lives it. He urges the people of God to do the same. How do we not only learn more about the Holy Spirit? Is it possible to experience the presence of the Holy Spirit, maybe like what the Early Church had experienced? Perhaps, before we move into the actual application, we need to learn more about the continuity and discontinuity gap between the Old and New Covenant. Recognizing the struggles to link these two important truths, well-respected professor, Dr. Gordon Fee has written his Magnus opus on the Holy Spirit from the perspective of Pauline theology. From Paul's window into the Holy Spirit, he draws out the connection between what Paul says and what we experience in our present life in Christ, before extending it to the relevance of the Holy Spirit's work in the lives of the Church. For that to happen, we need to draw a series of connections between the past and the present. This includes relationships between:
- Understanding and experiencing the Theology of the Holy Spirit;
- The old covenant and the new;
- The Individual and the Community;
- Present and Future
- Soteriology and Eschatology;
- Conversion to Covenant;
- and more...
A quick way to navigate the book will be to use the four key aspects:
1) The Foundation of the work of the Holy Spirit is in God's love
2) Framework of God's promises involves the already-not yet paradigm
3) Focus on the Holy Spirit's work is on Christ
4) Fruit of the Spirit is not just about the manifestation of individual attributes but the Church becoming God's new covenant people.
God came to us because we are all incapable of returning to Him on our own. Just as Jesus promised, the Holy Spirit is now our enduring presence. Which brings us to the first point in the book: Who is God? The first three chapters are dedicated to this point. God is always with us. In the Old Testament, His Presence is through the Tabernacle and the Temple. In the first century, God's Son came to dwell among the people. After his ascension, the Holy Spirit came to dwell among us and in us. The Holy Spirit is a Person and is a member of the Trinity. The second aspect is the framework of the already and not yet paradigm. The kingdom is here but still yet to come. Both are to be held in tension so as to remind us that God has revealed Himself to us already, but there is a future revelation of perfection that is to come. God as Trinity is the Perfect Unity in Diversity. We learn about the potential of true unity by following the example of God's Triune Being. Fee's description of the "Presence of the Future" points us to this. We gain insights into how God's revelation of who He is, prepares us to become the community that we are called to become. That means churches are called not to be homogeneous but to be as diverse as possible. The third aspect is about getting there. Four chapters on "Conversion" unpack this. Beginning with the preaching and the hearing of the gospel, Fee asserts that we need a new understanding of conversion, that the beginning point of conversion is not "go and make converts" but to "go and make disciples." The Holy Spirit initiates and sustains our desire to make disciples of all nations. The proclamation of Faith needs to be accompanied by acts of faithfulness. Salvation is not the end goal in itself. It is the call to Christ. The truly converted will manifest true Christian ethics, desire for holiness, walking in the Spirit, and many more. The fourth aspect of the work of the Holy Spirit is about bearing fruit. This has two components: Bearing the fruit of the Spirit and resisting the temptations of the flesh.
My Thoughts
==============
This book remains one of the best resources available to us about the theology and experience of the Holy Spirit. Used as a key textbook in many Bible schools, seminaries, churches, and various Christian organizations, there are many reasons why this book remains so popular. Let me offer three reasons. First, the author sees a lack of materials on the Holy Spirit and this book is a resource to help fill that gap. Seeded way back in 1988 as a dictionary article about the Holy Spirit, the author has added exegesis and scholarly exposition to publish his thoughts into a book in 1994 by Hendrickson Publishers. Even today, resources on the Holy Spirit remain relatively few, and this book continues to serve this very purpose. Now in a refreshed edition, publishing this book is also a tribute to the life of the beloved professor.
A second reason to read this book is to grow in our understanding of the Holy Spirit. If we ask around our community about how much they know about the Holy Spirit, chances are, they will mention common phrases like, "Baptism of the Holy Spirit," "Filling of the Holy Spirit," "Fruit of the Spirit," "Spiritual gifts," or anything related to the word "spiritual." Even the limited understanding of these phrases hides a general lack of awareness about the Person of the Holy Spirit. Fee helps us by teaching us about the Trinity, the role of the Holy Spirit, and the presence of God. Not only that, he bases his material on the theology of Paul, chiefly the epistles. The Holy Spirit is not some faraway muse but a real Person present with us. By showing us the reality of God's Presence and the manifestation of the Spirit in our giftings, works, and indwelling, it is hoped that ordinary believers will grow beyond simply cliches of the Holy Spirit to something that can be experienced.
A third reason is to recognize that without the Holy Spirit, we can do nothing. One of the saddest things to happen in churches all over the world is the ignorance of the Third member of the Triune Godhead. Francis Chan calls this the "Forgotten God." Songwriters are full of words describing God the Father and God the Son, but when it comes to the Holy Spirit, the number of songs drops drastically. The recent 2023 Asbury revival is a reminder to all of us that we need the Holy Spirit to work. The difference between Church growth strategies and revivals is simply the Presence and work of the Holy Spirit. The Early Church has two things in common: They are faith-filled and Spirit-dependent. The modern church, however, is replete with people selected on the basis of their abilities (instead of faith) and available only when they are free-time-filled (instead of Spirit-filled). Without the Holy Spirit, any Church growth will be stunted at best and absent at worst.
The Holy Spirit is God and God is interested in the health of believers all over the world. May God use this book to inject fresh vigour and renewed understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit we need you. Fill our minds and souls with Your Presence anew.
Gordon D. Fee (1934-2022; PhD, University of Southern California) served as professor of New Testament studies at Regent College, Vancouver. Prior to Regent, he taught at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He coauthored the bestselling How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth and wrote numerous books, including Pauline Christology, God's Empowering Presence, Jesus the Lord according to Paul the Apostle, and commentaries on 1 Corinthians, Philippians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and Revelation.
Rating: 4.75 stars out of 5.
conrade
This book has been provided courtesy of Baker Academic via NetGalley without requiring a positive review. All opinions offered above are mine unless otherwise stated or implied.
- Understanding and experiencing the Theology of the Holy Spirit;
- The old covenant and the new;
- The Individual and the Community;
- Present and Future
- Soteriology and Eschatology;
- Conversion to Covenant;
- and more...
A quick way to navigate the book will be to use the four key aspects:
1) The Foundation of the work of the Holy Spirit is in God's love
2) Framework of God's promises involves the already-not yet paradigm
3) Focus on the Holy Spirit's work is on Christ
4) Fruit of the Spirit is not just about the manifestation of individual attributes but the Church becoming God's new covenant people.
God came to us because we are all incapable of returning to Him on our own. Just as Jesus promised, the Holy Spirit is now our enduring presence. Which brings us to the first point in the book: Who is God? The first three chapters are dedicated to this point. God is always with us. In the Old Testament, His Presence is through the Tabernacle and the Temple. In the first century, God's Son came to dwell among the people. After his ascension, the Holy Spirit came to dwell among us and in us. The Holy Spirit is a Person and is a member of the Trinity. The second aspect is the framework of the already and not yet paradigm. The kingdom is here but still yet to come. Both are to be held in tension so as to remind us that God has revealed Himself to us already, but there is a future revelation of perfection that is to come. God as Trinity is the Perfect Unity in Diversity. We learn about the potential of true unity by following the example of God's Triune Being. Fee's description of the "Presence of the Future" points us to this. We gain insights into how God's revelation of who He is, prepares us to become the community that we are called to become. That means churches are called not to be homogeneous but to be as diverse as possible. The third aspect is about getting there. Four chapters on "Conversion" unpack this. Beginning with the preaching and the hearing of the gospel, Fee asserts that we need a new understanding of conversion, that the beginning point of conversion is not "go and make converts" but to "go and make disciples." The Holy Spirit initiates and sustains our desire to make disciples of all nations. The proclamation of Faith needs to be accompanied by acts of faithfulness. Salvation is not the end goal in itself. It is the call to Christ. The truly converted will manifest true Christian ethics, desire for holiness, walking in the Spirit, and many more. The fourth aspect of the work of the Holy Spirit is about bearing fruit. This has two components: Bearing the fruit of the Spirit and resisting the temptations of the flesh.
My Thoughts
==============
This book remains one of the best resources available to us about the theology and experience of the Holy Spirit. Used as a key textbook in many Bible schools, seminaries, churches, and various Christian organizations, there are many reasons why this book remains so popular. Let me offer three reasons. First, the author sees a lack of materials on the Holy Spirit and this book is a resource to help fill that gap. Seeded way back in 1988 as a dictionary article about the Holy Spirit, the author has added exegesis and scholarly exposition to publish his thoughts into a book in 1994 by Hendrickson Publishers. Even today, resources on the Holy Spirit remain relatively few, and this book continues to serve this very purpose. Now in a refreshed edition, publishing this book is also a tribute to the life of the beloved professor.
A second reason to read this book is to grow in our understanding of the Holy Spirit. If we ask around our community about how much they know about the Holy Spirit, chances are, they will mention common phrases like, "Baptism of the Holy Spirit," "Filling of the Holy Spirit," "Fruit of the Spirit," "Spiritual gifts," or anything related to the word "spiritual." Even the limited understanding of these phrases hides a general lack of awareness about the Person of the Holy Spirit. Fee helps us by teaching us about the Trinity, the role of the Holy Spirit, and the presence of God. Not only that, he bases his material on the theology of Paul, chiefly the epistles. The Holy Spirit is not some faraway muse but a real Person present with us. By showing us the reality of God's Presence and the manifestation of the Spirit in our giftings, works, and indwelling, it is hoped that ordinary believers will grow beyond simply cliches of the Holy Spirit to something that can be experienced.
A third reason is to recognize that without the Holy Spirit, we can do nothing. One of the saddest things to happen in churches all over the world is the ignorance of the Third member of the Triune Godhead. Francis Chan calls this the "Forgotten God." Songwriters are full of words describing God the Father and God the Son, but when it comes to the Holy Spirit, the number of songs drops drastically. The recent 2023 Asbury revival is a reminder to all of us that we need the Holy Spirit to work. The difference between Church growth strategies and revivals is simply the Presence and work of the Holy Spirit. The Early Church has two things in common: They are faith-filled and Spirit-dependent. The modern church, however, is replete with people selected on the basis of their abilities (instead of faith) and available only when they are free-time-filled (instead of Spirit-filled). Without the Holy Spirit, any Church growth will be stunted at best and absent at worst.
The Holy Spirit is God and God is interested in the health of believers all over the world. May God use this book to inject fresh vigour and renewed understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit we need you. Fill our minds and souls with Your Presence anew.
Gordon D. Fee (1934-2022; PhD, University of Southern California) served as professor of New Testament studies at Regent College, Vancouver. Prior to Regent, he taught at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He coauthored the bestselling How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth and wrote numerous books, including Pauline Christology, God's Empowering Presence, Jesus the Lord according to Paul the Apostle, and commentaries on 1 Corinthians, Philippians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and Revelation.
Rating: 4.75 stars out of 5.
conrade
This book has been provided courtesy of Baker Academic via NetGalley without requiring a positive review. All opinions offered above are mine unless otherwise stated or implied.
February 2, 2016
This is the best book I have ever read on the subject of the Holy Spirit!
Having spent most of my life in Charismatic circles, hearing sermons and references to the Holy Spirit has been a regular experience for me. No surprise there! But no one has laid out the case as well as Fee has in just how central the Holy Spirit is to Paul's gospel and to the Christian life. The heart of the gospel is Jesus Christ and Him crucified but the Holy Spirit plays an incredibly important and monumental role in the gospel. Sadly, He has been overlooked and ignored by far too many believers, and the more traditional churches. This important work will benefit all who have ears to hear.
A couple quotes I'll share -
"The plea of this study, therefore, is not that of a restorationist, as if we really could restore 'the primitive church,' whatever that means and whatever that would look like. Rather, it is a plea for recapturing Paul’s perspective of Christian life as essentially the life of the Spirit, dynamically experienced and eschatologically oriented—but fully integrated into the life of the church." - Pg.3058 Kindle Edition
"...our theologizing must stop paying mere lip service to the Spirit and recognize his crucial role in Paul’s gospel; and it means that the church must risk freeing the Spirit from being boxed into the creed and getting him back into the experiential life of the believer and the believing community." - Pg. 3092 Kindle Edition
Having spent most of my life in Charismatic circles, hearing sermons and references to the Holy Spirit has been a regular experience for me. No surprise there! But no one has laid out the case as well as Fee has in just how central the Holy Spirit is to Paul's gospel and to the Christian life. The heart of the gospel is Jesus Christ and Him crucified but the Holy Spirit plays an incredibly important and monumental role in the gospel. Sadly, He has been overlooked and ignored by far too many believers, and the more traditional churches. This important work will benefit all who have ears to hear.
A couple quotes I'll share -
"The plea of this study, therefore, is not that of a restorationist, as if we really could restore 'the primitive church,' whatever that means and whatever that would look like. Rather, it is a plea for recapturing Paul’s perspective of Christian life as essentially the life of the Spirit, dynamically experienced and eschatologically oriented—but fully integrated into the life of the church." - Pg.3058 Kindle Edition
"...our theologizing must stop paying mere lip service to the Spirit and recognize his crucial role in Paul’s gospel; and it means that the church must risk freeing the Spirit from being boxed into the creed and getting him back into the experiential life of the believer and the believing community." - Pg. 3092 Kindle Edition
August 23, 2024
This was written to be a more condensed, approachable-to-the-layperson version of Fee's treatment of the Holy Spirit in his God's Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul. The chapters are pretty short, and while Fee does provide some additional references, many of the citations are to his more substantial discussions in GEP. Even still, this little book isn't a lightweight; it packs a punch. Fee's passion is to rescue believers from viewing the Holy Spirit as a "gray oblong blur" and to recover His centrality in Paul's vision of the life of the Christian individually and corporately. As he puts it, many believers secretly feel something like this: "We believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; and we believe in Jesus Christ his son; but we are not so sure about the Holy Spirit" (25).
Fee addresses this common sense of the impersonality of the Holy Spirit, working through what Paul's letters have to tell us about who the Spirit is and about the reality of God's triune nature (despite the absence of the term "Trinity," Fee shows that it's an accurate way of summing up how God is presented to us in the New Testament). He also deals with the Spirit's role in conversion and sanctification/Christian ethics, and - in an interesting appendix - the relation of the rite of baptism to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. All of this is helpful, but I think the most impactful part of the book is the one Fee returns to regularly throughout the chapters: that the Holy Spirit was understood by Paul (and thus needs to be understood by us) to be the eschatological fulfillment of God's promises through the prophets to return to dwell with His people. Ezekiel had the horrific vision of God's presence from the temple, then the wonderful restorative vision of God returning to take up residence there. The outpouring of His Spirit on His new temple, the Church, was and is the answer to that promise. Fee stresses that from this perspective, we need to get to grips with the corporate nature of the Spirit's work. Whereas modern Christianity tends to focus exclusively on the individual and interpret "sanctification" as a matter of personal morality, Paul's focus was on the life of the Spirit in the local body of believers and the ethics of living together as the people of God. The Spirit, as "God's empowering presence," is what allows us to do this.
I think Fee's arguments remain a badly needed biblical reality check for much of evangelical Christianity. It can feel like he downplays the individual aspect of the experience of the Spirit too much, but I think he does this for the sake of radical emphasis: as the products of modern individualism, we need to re-hear the message that Paul wasn't writing to individuals (for the most part), but to churches. He was writing about life in the community. As Fee points out, the virtues identified as the fruit of the Spirit in Paul's letters are primarily relational, not individual. Now, Fee is clear in pointing out that to live the radical eschatological community life that Paul envisions, individual believers must also walk by the Spirit, putting to death the deeds of the flesh; but he's trying to show that we have reduced the Spirit to some poorly-understood help for us as individuals to "be better people" (usually in legalistic terms). Paul's vision of the Spirit as the fulfillment of God's promises is more radical than that.
I had qualms about some of Fee's arguments, such as his interpretation of Romans 7. He distinguishes between triumphalist and pessimist views of the Spirit (those who view the age to come as largely/entirely realized now, and those who view it as largely/entirely not yet) and criticizes both, but as a Pentecostal, he leans triumphalist. That's probably better than leaning pessimist, but I think it leads him to downplay the continuing 'drag' of sin in our present, pre-resurrection bodies: hence his interpretation of Romans 7 as referring entirely to pre-converted Paul and seemingly having no relevance to believers' experience. I agree with his point that the purpose of Romans 7 is not to give believers an excuse for sin or to be defeatist about our ability to please God - the Spirit is indeed the answer - but I still think Romans 7 captures an ongoing struggle in the now/not yet existence of believers. It isn't all "old Saul."
Again, this is a perceptive and in some ways radical book (at least radical for its time, and I think many believers will continue to find it radical and eye-opening today). Fee's diagnosis of the inefficacy of the modern church and our failure to properly understand Paul and the earth-shattering, promise-fulfilling nature of God's work through the coming, dying, and resurrection of Jesus and the outpouring of the Spirit is given both sharply and compassionately. I think we need to hear it, and chew on what he has to say.
Fee addresses this common sense of the impersonality of the Holy Spirit, working through what Paul's letters have to tell us about who the Spirit is and about the reality of God's triune nature (despite the absence of the term "Trinity," Fee shows that it's an accurate way of summing up how God is presented to us in the New Testament). He also deals with the Spirit's role in conversion and sanctification/Christian ethics, and - in an interesting appendix - the relation of the rite of baptism to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. All of this is helpful, but I think the most impactful part of the book is the one Fee returns to regularly throughout the chapters: that the Holy Spirit was understood by Paul (and thus needs to be understood by us) to be the eschatological fulfillment of God's promises through the prophets to return to dwell with His people. Ezekiel had the horrific vision of God's presence from the temple, then the wonderful restorative vision of God returning to take up residence there. The outpouring of His Spirit on His new temple, the Church, was and is the answer to that promise. Fee stresses that from this perspective, we need to get to grips with the corporate nature of the Spirit's work. Whereas modern Christianity tends to focus exclusively on the individual and interpret "sanctification" as a matter of personal morality, Paul's focus was on the life of the Spirit in the local body of believers and the ethics of living together as the people of God. The Spirit, as "God's empowering presence," is what allows us to do this.
I think Fee's arguments remain a badly needed biblical reality check for much of evangelical Christianity. It can feel like he downplays the individual aspect of the experience of the Spirit too much, but I think he does this for the sake of radical emphasis: as the products of modern individualism, we need to re-hear the message that Paul wasn't writing to individuals (for the most part), but to churches. He was writing about life in the community. As Fee points out, the virtues identified as the fruit of the Spirit in Paul's letters are primarily relational, not individual. Now, Fee is clear in pointing out that to live the radical eschatological community life that Paul envisions, individual believers must also walk by the Spirit, putting to death the deeds of the flesh; but he's trying to show that we have reduced the Spirit to some poorly-understood help for us as individuals to "be better people" (usually in legalistic terms). Paul's vision of the Spirit as the fulfillment of God's promises is more radical than that.
I had qualms about some of Fee's arguments, such as his interpretation of Romans 7. He distinguishes between triumphalist and pessimist views of the Spirit (those who view the age to come as largely/entirely realized now, and those who view it as largely/entirely not yet) and criticizes both, but as a Pentecostal, he leans triumphalist. That's probably better than leaning pessimist, but I think it leads him to downplay the continuing 'drag' of sin in our present, pre-resurrection bodies: hence his interpretation of Romans 7 as referring entirely to pre-converted Paul and seemingly having no relevance to believers' experience. I agree with his point that the purpose of Romans 7 is not to give believers an excuse for sin or to be defeatist about our ability to please God - the Spirit is indeed the answer - but I still think Romans 7 captures an ongoing struggle in the now/not yet existence of believers. It isn't all "old Saul."
Again, this is a perceptive and in some ways radical book (at least radical for its time, and I think many believers will continue to find it radical and eye-opening today). Fee's diagnosis of the inefficacy of the modern church and our failure to properly understand Paul and the earth-shattering, promise-fulfilling nature of God's work through the coming, dying, and resurrection of Jesus and the outpouring of the Spirit is given both sharply and compassionately. I think we need to hear it, and chew on what he has to say.
November 7, 2017
I was lent this book by someone in my church who was convinced that this was the best thing she'd read on the Holy Spirit. After finishing Gordon D. Fee's book, I am also of the same opinion.
Fee's book on the Holy Spirit is explained from Paul's perspective. His choice to center his discussion around what Paul had to say about the third person of the Trinity is helpful and manageable (as opposed to a full discussion of what the entire New Testament has to say about the Holy Spirit). But more than being manageable, Fee's choice to stick to what Paul says is surprising. So often, Paul is reduced to his views on justification, leading us to wonder if Paul ever spoke of anything else; it initially seemed, to me, that for someone to take up the task of writing an entire book on Paul's view of the Spirit, one would be at a loss for material. How mistaken. As Fee states in his introduction, "one reads Paul poorly who does not recognize that for him the presence of the Spirit, as an experienced and living reality, was the crucial matter for Christian life, from beginning to end" (xiii).
While I was surprised by a variety of ideas within the book, Fee's fourth chapter on the Spirit and the Trinity was the most surprising. While there is a scholarly hesitance to do New Testament criticism with the help of "later fourth century Nicene theology," Fee embraces the doctrine of the Trinity. That being said, Paul is a pastor and doesn't have the luxury of "purely reflective theology" (38). Rather, Paul's trinitarian theology is experienced, "and then expressed ... in a fundamentally trinitarian way" (37). Fee wants Christians to possess this experience as well, as opposed to being what he calls "practical binitarians" (37).
It is also worth noting that Fee, coming from a
Pentecostal tradition, waits until the second last chapter of his book to discuss speaking in tongues. Even more surprising is how brief his discussion of this gift is. Examples like this lead me to agree with those like Wendy Murray who say that Fee's "discussion about the Holy Spirit ... transcends today's paradigm of 'charismatic' or 'noncharismatic.'"
Overall, I found "Paul, the Spirit, and The People of God" to be the best thing I'd ever read on the Holy Spirit. After being lent this book, I do not want to give it back. I highly recommend this book for anyone seriously interested in who the Holy Spirit is.
Fee's book on the Holy Spirit is explained from Paul's perspective. His choice to center his discussion around what Paul had to say about the third person of the Trinity is helpful and manageable (as opposed to a full discussion of what the entire New Testament has to say about the Holy Spirit). But more than being manageable, Fee's choice to stick to what Paul says is surprising. So often, Paul is reduced to his views on justification, leading us to wonder if Paul ever spoke of anything else; it initially seemed, to me, that for someone to take up the task of writing an entire book on Paul's view of the Spirit, one would be at a loss for material. How mistaken. As Fee states in his introduction, "one reads Paul poorly who does not recognize that for him the presence of the Spirit, as an experienced and living reality, was the crucial matter for Christian life, from beginning to end" (xiii).
While I was surprised by a variety of ideas within the book, Fee's fourth chapter on the Spirit and the Trinity was the most surprising. While there is a scholarly hesitance to do New Testament criticism with the help of "later fourth century Nicene theology," Fee embraces the doctrine of the Trinity. That being said, Paul is a pastor and doesn't have the luxury of "purely reflective theology" (38). Rather, Paul's trinitarian theology is experienced, "and then expressed ... in a fundamentally trinitarian way" (37). Fee wants Christians to possess this experience as well, as opposed to being what he calls "practical binitarians" (37).
It is also worth noting that Fee, coming from a
Pentecostal tradition, waits until the second last chapter of his book to discuss speaking in tongues. Even more surprising is how brief his discussion of this gift is. Examples like this lead me to agree with those like Wendy Murray who say that Fee's "discussion about the Holy Spirit ... transcends today's paradigm of 'charismatic' or 'noncharismatic.'"
Overall, I found "Paul, the Spirit, and The People of God" to be the best thing I'd ever read on the Holy Spirit. After being lent this book, I do not want to give it back. I highly recommend this book for anyone seriously interested in who the Holy Spirit is.
July 3, 2024
Very good. Fee is careful and judicious. I walked away from this book not thinking how much better I understood the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, but longing for a deeper experience of the Spirit of God. The theology was good, but more than that, it was lively. There is a gulf between Paul's experience of the Spirit and my own, and while Fee does not make me fearful because of it, he certainly makes me desire to close that gap.
Fee is charismatic/pentecostal, and while I doubt dissenters will find him convincing, it was interesting to see what he drew from Scripture that a cessationist would have no eye to see. Again, he is judicious.
His ethical exposition is wonderful, pointing again and again to the corporate context of Paul's instructions, and how we misread him through a modern individualist mindset.
I greatly appreciated his exposition of the location of the church as an eschatological body ("already/not yet").
Finally, I loved his handling of the law/spirit teaching in Paul, and his careful exposition of the meaning of "flesh." Superb. Of course I say that because my own understanding has been essentially his (in the law/spirit aspect) for many years, despite most of my friends taking a more "Reformed" view on the modern applicability of the Law of Moses.
As a weakness, he often jumps too quickly from what Paul says to his understanding of what Paul means. I believe this is because of the nature of the book (a distillment of a much longer work). And while I rarely disagreed with him, my mind tended to react with, "Wait, how do *I* know that's what Paul means?"
Probably the greatest challenge for me to consider is that Fee's Pentacostal/Charismatic faith allows him to take *more* of the New Testament Scripture (especially in Paul's Epistles) as directly related to the life of the church today. Cessationism suffers from this weakness, that it rejects direct relevance of considerable sections of the Scripture's testimony to New Testament Church life. Despite having so long heard that the P/C movements exalted experience at the expense of Scripture, my exposure to P/C writers (e.g., Gordon Fee, Craig Keener, Michael Brown) tends to confirm they take Scripture more naturally and at face value than what I grew up with.
Fee is charismatic/pentecostal, and while I doubt dissenters will find him convincing, it was interesting to see what he drew from Scripture that a cessationist would have no eye to see. Again, he is judicious.
His ethical exposition is wonderful, pointing again and again to the corporate context of Paul's instructions, and how we misread him through a modern individualist mindset.
I greatly appreciated his exposition of the location of the church as an eschatological body ("already/not yet").
Finally, I loved his handling of the law/spirit teaching in Paul, and his careful exposition of the meaning of "flesh." Superb. Of course I say that because my own understanding has been essentially his (in the law/spirit aspect) for many years, despite most of my friends taking a more "Reformed" view on the modern applicability of the Law of Moses.
As a weakness, he often jumps too quickly from what Paul says to his understanding of what Paul means. I believe this is because of the nature of the book (a distillment of a much longer work). And while I rarely disagreed with him, my mind tended to react with, "Wait, how do *I* know that's what Paul means?"
Probably the greatest challenge for me to consider is that Fee's Pentacostal/Charismatic faith allows him to take *more* of the New Testament Scripture (especially in Paul's Epistles) as directly related to the life of the church today. Cessationism suffers from this weakness, that it rejects direct relevance of considerable sections of the Scripture's testimony to New Testament Church life. Despite having so long heard that the P/C movements exalted experience at the expense of Scripture, my exposure to P/C writers (e.g., Gordon Fee, Craig Keener, Michael Brown) tends to confirm they take Scripture more naturally and at face value than what I grew up with.
May 13, 2017
Another book that should be on the required reading list for Christians! Fee opens with a concise evaluation of the problem: The Holy Spirit is in our creeds, but do we know Him? Do we know his role in the Trinity, our personal life, and in our communal life?
This is not a breezy read. It's approximately 200 pages, but I found that I could only do a chapter or so at each sitting in order to properly absorb what I was reading. I also found it helpful to look up every scripture reference as they came up in the text, which significantly adds to the reading time!
The effort is well worth it however, in order to benefit from Fee's rigorous investigation of Paul's perspective of the Holy Spirit. I should mention that this book is the very condensed version of Fee's other book, God's Empowering Presence, which is over 900 pages long and carefully shows each text's exegesis. Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God is a hugely useful book because it makes the information gleaned from God's Empowering Presence available to more readers in lay terms. Another benefit is that you can read the condensed version, but don't have to take Fee's word for any of the conclusions he draws. If any questions or doubt arise, one can cross reference God's Empowering Presence to see how Fee arrived at his conclusions, and then decide for yourself. Fee also references other writers who have had opposing views to his conclusions, and so provides a bibliography against which to check his work.
Beyond that, I found his conclusions to be both sound and insightful, and the topic certainly worthwhile. I would recommend this book as a must read.
This is not a breezy read. It's approximately 200 pages, but I found that I could only do a chapter or so at each sitting in order to properly absorb what I was reading. I also found it helpful to look up every scripture reference as they came up in the text, which significantly adds to the reading time!
The effort is well worth it however, in order to benefit from Fee's rigorous investigation of Paul's perspective of the Holy Spirit. I should mention that this book is the very condensed version of Fee's other book, God's Empowering Presence, which is over 900 pages long and carefully shows each text's exegesis. Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God is a hugely useful book because it makes the information gleaned from God's Empowering Presence available to more readers in lay terms. Another benefit is that you can read the condensed version, but don't have to take Fee's word for any of the conclusions he draws. If any questions or doubt arise, one can cross reference God's Empowering Presence to see how Fee arrived at his conclusions, and then decide for yourself. Fee also references other writers who have had opposing views to his conclusions, and so provides a bibliography against which to check his work.
Beyond that, I found his conclusions to be both sound and insightful, and the topic certainly worthwhile. I would recommend this book as a must read.
June 10, 2018
This is an excellent and worthwhile book, that reminds me (in content, not style) of NT Wright, yet predates him. Here Prof. Fee is discussing the theology (practical and theoretical) of the Holy Spirit. The book starts very slowly and drying, such that I wondered if I was going to be able to get through it. The introduction I found especially dry. But, after chapter one, the book gets much more interesting and useful. This book fits in the highly unusual category of discussing charismatic issues positively from both a scholarly and practical level, rather than being mostly emotive and intellectually weak. The book seems to be a condensed, more accessible version of a much longer book by the author on the same topic entitled: God’s Empowering Presence (I may need to read this one eventually). I would recommend the book to any non-cessationist who is interested in better understanding the doctrine of the Holy Spirit from an intellectual, practical, and experiential perspective. But, I would give the warning about getting through the introduction and first chapter.
July 22, 2022
Fee does a masterful job at addressing how Paul talks about the Holy Spirit in his text. Upon reading this book it is clear that for the early church, the essence of what it meant to be a Christian was to be a person of the spirit. They were marked by real, ongoing encounters with the third person of the Godhead and we should marked by the same things. Regardless of ones background or theological tradition, I think Fee will challenge one to think biblically about what it means for believer today to recapture what it means to be people of the Spirit. Excellent read.
March 16, 2024
I think many within my own tradition will shy away from this book, but I've enjoyed this a lot. It is broad in scope (e.g. the charismata take up only a few of the fifteen chapters; Fee is interested in developing a pneumatology from the ground up, beginning with who he is, how he is involved in salvation, etc.), and made me think a great deal. Probably due to the fact that I disagreed with him more here, I think Jesus the Lord according to Paul the Apostle is a better work. Both are abbreviations of much larger works on the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit.
September 29, 2019
This is a condensed version of his other book "God's Empowering Presence". This is not for everyone, but it brings down his conclusions to every person's level. There is no explanation or exegesis in this book for that reason. If you are a teacher or preacher you should buy the other book instead. This book is also part of the larger one, but if you don't want all the exegetical notes then this one is for you.
August 6, 2020
A great book on the Holy Spirit and a great reminder of how God intends the church to be. A thorough look at the Spirit from Paul’s perspective helped me to recognise where I have personally failed to live a fully Spirit-filled life and where the church has failed to live a fully realised eschatological existence as part of the world today.
Written in the 1990’s, but still as relevant now as it was then. Essential reading.
Written in the 1990’s, but still as relevant now as it was then. Essential reading.
November 28, 2023
I am not a Pentecostal but believe in Pentecostalism.
Fee does a wonderful job grasping Paul’s teaching of the Holy Spirit and applies this to the church of today.
Fee critiques the modern charismatic movement for its extremes whilst sensitively warning those who dismiss the gifts altogether.
A compelling argument for how Paul’s teaching on the Holy Spirit to the early Church can assist today’s congregations that are witnessing the truth of Christ in a secular age.
Fee does a wonderful job grasping Paul’s teaching of the Holy Spirit and applies this to the church of today.
Fee critiques the modern charismatic movement for its extremes whilst sensitively warning those who dismiss the gifts altogether.
A compelling argument for how Paul’s teaching on the Holy Spirit to the early Church can assist today’s congregations that are witnessing the truth of Christ in a secular age.
December 2, 2024
I really did not enjoy this book. Though I didn't have many problems with it theologically it was so boring, repetitive, and full of paragraphs and pages without making a new point that it made me start to resent Paul and want to disagree with everything that Fee says towards the end that I didn't get anything out of the final chapters. He did the worst thing you can do as a theologian while still having sound theology which is making the Bible boring.
August 18, 2025
I had to force myself to finish, just to see if I could gleam some good from it. For sure there is good to be found, but the way the book is written makes it SO difficult to read. Much of it is so convoluted I found myself wondering what his point was and wishing he was more linear in his presentation so it would be more widely consumable. Trying to clarify scripture in a way that is difficult to understand kind of seems counterintuitive.
February 3, 2018
Excellent, convicting, and thought-provoking book. My only complaint is that it seems to be targeted at the popular level, but it is often quite dry and laborious for a popular level book. I'm not saying it didn't enjoy it. I did. I'm simply saying that the writing style probably misses its target audience. Still highly recommended for pastors and anyone in ministry.
June 22, 2022
Excellent treatises on the subject
This book is a must-read for the church at large. Very sound teaching on the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of believer and the gathered comfy city of faith. Correction is needed in a powerless church which has adopted a marketing form of success for the church. Time ask the Spirit to co.e in power to change us all again!
This book is a must-read for the church at large. Very sound teaching on the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of believer and the gathered comfy city of faith. Correction is needed in a powerless church which has adopted a marketing form of success for the church. Time ask the Spirit to co.e in power to change us all again!
July 20, 2022
Fantastic overview of Paul's view of the Spirit. Read it for a paper in my seminary class. It's aimed at a general Christian audience and is a summary of his larger work (God's Empowering Presence). However, most lay people may still find it a little tough to read. I would quickly add, though, that its content is a reward for a patient and determined reader.
September 22, 2025
Okay this book took me a while to get through not because it was bad just heavy in information. I LOVE the Holy Spirit and always have and I feel like Fee does a good job reminding me why and backing it up with scripture. Paul is a cool dude not my absolute favorite but I love the statements and realizations brought forth in the book.
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