Paul’s pneumatology found in his writings has been a matter of interest in recent New Testament scholarship. Gordon Fee has been a great contributor in this area and in Paul, the Spirit and the People of God he outlines the various elements found in Pauline pneumatology giving us greater insight into this subject. In this paper I will highlight some of these elements that are unique to Paul and are not found in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts.
The first distinctive of Pauline pneumatology is the way he sees the Spirit as God’s personal presence. For Paul, the coming of the Spirit meant that God had fulfilled the promises He had made to Jeremiah and Ezekiel when He said, ‘I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel’ (Jer. 31:31), and
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This brings us to the third aspect of Paul’s pnuematology. Paul is truly Trinitarian in that he understands that God is truly one and personal, that the Spirit is the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ and that they are both personal and divine. In spite of this, the Spirit is distinct from the Father and from the Son. Fee also observes that Paul’s interest in Christ and the Spirit is “not with the nature of their being God, but with their role in salvation and Christian experience” (Fee, 33). Christ and his work help define the Spirit and his work in the Christian life (Fee, 32). In Paul’s view, Christ is the main character in the act of salvation, but salvation is initiated by the Father and goes together with the activity of the …show more content…
Charism plays an important role in both the communal and individual life of a believer. Here Menzies is in agreement that “the rich variety of gifts granted to every believer for the common good appear to be a natural extension of Paul’s larger pnuematological perspective”(Fee, 192). The significant thing to note though is that for Paul the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives is connected to our participation in the body of Christ. As we walk in the Spirit, He produces fruit in our lives. The fruit of the Spirit in our lives is not just individualistic and for personal benefit but for corporate benefit of the body of