"Life-giving spirit": Probing the center of Paul's pneumatology

RICHARD B. GAFFIN, JR.* A survey treatment, in short compass, of so rich and multifaceted a topic as the Holy Spirit in Paul is bound to be superficial. A surely more promising alternative is to identify and reflect on those viewpoints in his teaching on the Spirit that are dominant and most decisive.

My subtitle reflects certain convictions: (1) Paul had a theology, (2) this theology has a center, and (3) his teaching on the Spirit is tethered to that center/core.

These sweeping-and for some, I recognize, debatable-assertions, along with related questions of method in doing Pauline theology, will largely have to be left in the background here. I limit myself to some brief comments. Does Paul have a theology? Paul, as Albert Schweitzer has put it, is "the patron-saint of thought in Christianity." 1 We need not agree with Schweitzer's particular analysis of Paul's thought or play Paul off as a thinker against the other NT writers to appreciate that this statement captures an undeniable state of affairs. Is this to suggest, then, that Paul is a (systematic) theologian? Yes and no, depending on how one defines theology. Obviously Paul does not write systematic theology, at least not as we usually conceive of it. From beginning to end, even in the more generalized and reflective sections, say, of Romans and Ephesians, his writings are "occasional"-that is, genuine letters, pastoral pieces addressing specific problems and circumstances in particular church situations.

At the same time, however, over against a recurrent tendency, most glaring in the failed old-liberal effort to enlist him as an exponent of idealistic, post-Kantian religiosity, neither are Paul's letters marred throughout by the ad hoc expression of ideas that are poorly thought through, disconnected, or mutually contradictory. 2 In their fully occasional and contingent character Paul's letters are fully coherent-to adapt Beker's well-known distinction here.3 They evince a unified, consistent body of teaching, a thought-out worldview and in that sense, especially given their relative size and quantity, a theology. The Pauline corpus discloses, in the words of Geerhardus Vos, "the genius of the greatest constructive mind ever at work on the data of Christianity."4 Not to appreciate this doctrinal and synthetic dimension inhibits a proper understanding of Paul's teaching and maximizes the ever-present danger of reading our own ideas and prejudices into him.5

Does Paul's theology have a "center"? By that metaphor I mean principally to affirm that there is in his letters an identifiable hierarchy of interests. Some concerns are more important to him than others. Present in the overall coherence of his teaching is a pattern in which each part is more or less dominant in relation to the rest. Certainly Paul may be approached from a variety of perspectives, and it is valuable to do so. But all are not equally controlling.

The center of Paul's teaching, as it finds expression in his writings (and in Acts), is his Christology. It could indeed be insisted otherwise that the center, say, is the Triune God of Israel, the Creator of heaven and earth. But, as Paul reminds Timothy, Christ is the "one mediator between God and man" (1 Tim 2:5). Christ, for Paul, has a unique mediatorial indispensability and hence centrality.

With that said, however, it must also be noted that this center is not the person of Christ in the abstract but his person and work focused in his death and resurrection. "Of first importance" (ev np(coto) in the gospel tradition that Paul has received and passes on is "that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter and then to the Twelve" (1 Cor 15:3-5). Death and resurrection, not as isolated events but in their significance and as the fulfillment of Scripture (entailing revelatory, tradition-establishing appearances of the resurrected Christ to the apostles), are central to Paul's message.

Again, in a nutshell the gospel, which the apostle holds in common with the Romans, "concerns [God's] Son, who was begotten of the seed of David according to the flesh and who was declared to be Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead" (Rom 1:3-4). Similarly to the Corinthians, reflecting in a sweeping fashion on his ministry focused in "the word of the cross" (1 Cor 1:18), he declares his fundamental epistemic commitment "to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (2:2). And he enjoins Timothy: "Remember Jesus Christ raised from the dead, descended from David. That is my gospel" (2 Tim 2:8). Such statements could be multiplied (e.g. Rom 4:25; 10:9; 2 Cor 5:15). And in contrast it is noteworthy, unless I have missed something, that there are in Paul no like categorical, programmatic assertions having another focus. Christ's death and resurrection or, more broadly, messianic suffering and glory (e.g. Phil 2:6-11; 1 Tim 3:16) comprise the center of Paul's theology.s