The Beeson podcast this week offered up a 1993 lecture by Gordon Fee on the role of the Holy Spirit in Paul's doctrine. Fee has some intriguing observations as to why the Spirit, so integral to everything in the New Testament, has tended to be forgotten in the doctrinal life of the Church. He argues, with some persuasiveness, that the eventual displacement of adult conversion with infant baptism as the predominant means by which members are added to the Church has the inevitable consequence of making a personal experience of a new coming of the Holy Spirit rather rare.
Thankfully, though Fee is an Assembly of God minister and does (wrongly) call for a revival of extraordinary charismata, he argues that the institutional life of the Church is itself a work of the Spirit and also calls attention to the importance of hymnody for personal experience of the Spirit's presence in the life of the Church. All in all, a very helpful contribution for someone (sadly) outside the Presbyterian world.
No comments:
Post a Comment