BEN: I like your willingness to be creative and try differing readings of all too familiar texts, like the birth narratives, but it seems to me that both Matthew and Luke are clear enough about a miraculous God induced conception, and it is one of the remarkable convergences between Mt. 1-2 and Lk. 1-2 while otherwise those texts take very different slants on the story. I would take the angelic announcement ‘and behold…’ in Lk. 1.31 as a clear statement... Read more

BEN: Two of the concepts I have stressed in my recent volume Biblical Theology is, as Goldingay says we must let the OT be the OT, but also we must have a sense of progressive revelation in the Scriptures, and progressive understanding of that revelation across the canon. The author of Hebrews in Heb. 1 says that before Christ the revelation was partial and piecemeal. This does not mean it was inaccurate or untrue, but it does mean it was... Read more

BEN: On p. 15 you stress that it is a myth that the Holy Spirit does not show up until Pentecost. You are absolutely right about that, as it’s hard not to notice the Spirit at work in the Gospels, including in the life of Jesus, and of course you are right as well that these folks including Jesus were all Jews. The rub comes if one equates the spirit of Elijah which Elisha asked a double portion of with... Read more

BEN: I found your reading of Matthew’s birth narrative in light of Isaiah 63 and Ps. 51 interesting, but was unconvinced that the Evangelist was talking about Mary’s own holy spirit. The absence of the definite article in Greek happens for a variety of reasons, including the mere position of the noun in the sentence, whether it is before or after the verb and whether it is the subject or object of the verb….. but it is an interesting theory.... Read more

BEN: I really enjoy your way with words. You write like a person who has had a good English lit degree, which I was fortunate enough to have in college. Tell us how you acquired, developed , learned this sort of winsome wordsmithing. JACK: Thank you, Ben. An author-friend, David Laskin, once told me about his experience as an English lit major in college (which I was not). The professor told him that his prose should match the character of... Read more

BEN: In your first chapter on the birth narratives, you allude to several of your previous books about the Holy Spirit, including the Holy Spirit in the OT. It appears to me that we may differ on whether the OT actually refers to the third person of the Trinity. I would take the references to the spirit in the OT as references to Yahweh’s living presence, active in the world and in God’s people. I don’t think the writers were... Read more

BEN: A practical question— why no bibliography in this book? It is after all a book published by Baker Academic, not merely Baker generic? I found that confusing. I realize there are a few references to your other works in the few footnotes sprinkled throughout, but on the important topic of Jesus and the Spirit a bibliography for further reading would be very helpful. JACK: Good question, Ben. You are probably right. Maybe I should leave it at that. But,... Read more

BEN: It is the measure of a good book that it causes a person to rethink some things that one has taken for granted, and to look at familiar Biblical texts in fresh ways, teasing the mind into active thought. I would call this ‘good trouble’ to borrow a phrase from the dearly departed John Lewis. It looks to me like one of the main aims of your stimulating new book is to trouble the comfortable and complacent rather than... Read more

Jack Levison is not a one trick pony. But he certainly has focused a lot of his scholarly work, and his more popular writings on the Holy Spirit. When we do the dialogue starting in the next post, we will ask him why.  In his most recent book, an Unconventional God which focuses on the Gospels presentation of the Spirit he presents us time and again with fresh insights into the four different presentations of this subject in the four... Read more

Peter Gomes came to Harvard in 1970, and in 1974, the year I got there he had just been named preacher to the University, serving Sunday by Sunday in Memorial Chapel.  I was a student in the BTI, the Boston Theological Institute which allowed me to take courses at Gordon-Conwell and at Harvard, which I indeed did. But as a Methodist who got a job at South Hamilton UMC, alas I was on the North Shore on Sunday mornings and... Read more