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Book Reviews / Pneuma 30 (2008) 147-191
Christopher J. H. Wright, Knowing the Holy Spirit through the Old Testament (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006). 159 pp., $15.00.
Many Christians are unaware of the extensive work of the Holy Spirit in the Old
Testament, according to Christopher Wright’s Knowing the Holy Spirit through the
Old Testament ( KHSOT). By focusing on the experience of the early church, Wright
believes that most Christians today have an impoverished pneumatology, which results in a corresponding lack of effectiveness in Christian mission. “So if we want to have a fully biblical understanding of the Holy Spirit, as well as a biblically informed and biblically evaluated experience of his presence and power in our lives, then we need the Old Testament too” (10). KHSOT is a collection of five addresses delivered at the
New Horizon convention in Northern Ireland in August 2004, which accounts for its brevity and popular expository style. Due to the limits of this genre, Wright is able to treat just five themes: the creating Spirit, the empowering Spirit, the prophetic Spirit, the anointing Spirit, and the coming Spirit.
In his first chapter (“The Creating Spirit”), the Holy Spirit’s various acts of creation in
the OT, which occur on the cosmic, terrestrial, and anthropological levels, should help Christians understand the many ways in which they can participate in the new creation of God’s redemption. Among the opportunities available for Christians, Wright stresses the sciences and ecology.
In his next chapter (“The Empowering Spirit”), Wright shows how the OT prepares us
for times when the Spirit moves in unpredictable, sudden, and surprising ways. Further- more, the power of the Holy Spirit in the OT was never intended to cultivate pride, jeal- ousy, or vain ambition, as is sometimes the case today.
Wright’s third chapter (“The Prophetic Spirit”) off ers several criticisms of prophetic
charlatans. In the OT, true prophets possessed two key qualities: “the compulsion to speak the truth” and “the courage to stand for justice” (76-85). Wright’s account should, however, be supplemented by Rickie Moore’s scholarship on OT prophecy (e.g., JEPTA 24 [2004]:
16-29).
In “The Anointing Spirit,” Wright draws deeply upon the portrait of the Coming Serv-
ant-King in Isaiah 42-61 to demonstrate how Jesus Christ fulfilled the four marks of the
Anointing Servant: justice, compassion, enlightenment, and liberation. The anointing of
the Spirit on Christians should equip believers for “mission in Christ’s way” (117, emphasis
original).
In his final chapter (“The Coming Spirit”), Wright addresses the anticipated age when
the Spirit arrives in fullness to transform creation. He points out that the “already . . . but
not yet” dimension of hope, commonly associated with the NT, was also part of the experi-
ence of the OT prophets.
Books that draw our attention to the Hebrew Scriptures as a vibrant resource for con-
temporary theology should be received with deep appreciation. T ough not a monograph,
KHSOT nevertheless repays attention and can be read usefully beside Wilf Hildebrandt’s
An Old Testament T eology of the Spirit of God (Hendrickson, 1995). Wright helps us reflect
more deeply upon the work of the Holy Spirit from a biblical perspective and, thereby,
encourages us to be more fully “people of the Spirit.” It will take such people to advance the
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008 DOI: 10.1163/157007408X287984
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Book Reviews / Pneuma 30 (2008) 147-191
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state of the discipline. In this undertaking, KHSOT can help us. May we never forget how, even before the New Testament materials existed, the Holy Spirit enabled the earliest Chris- tians to reflect upon and appropriate the theology of the Old Testament.
Reviewed by Kevin L. Spawn
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