BEN: The church fathers long ago observed that the first truly Trinitarian text in the NT is the story of Jesus’ baptism in which the Father speaks, the Son listens and is baptized, and the Spirit descends on the Son. What has all your study of the Holy Spirit taught you about the role of the Spirit not because one is hard pressed to find any genuinely Trinitarian texts in the OT. As Hebrews says, not even the three strangers... Read more

BEN: I quite agree with you about the purifying role of the Spirit in a believer’s life, John however seems to be talking about a coming judgment on Israel if they do not repent and turn, and there the imagery doesn’t have to do with cleansing from within but rather with judgment from without. And why the phrase baptize with Spirit AND fire if the latter is just a dimension or function of the former? One of the trends in... Read more

BEN: In your second chapter (p. 31) you seem to negate the Johannine contrast between John’s baptizing with water and Jesus with the Spirit (John 1.33). You would prefer it to say ‘I baptize with water , but I am unworthy to untie his shoelaces’. But surely the text says that John said both— both that he was unworthy to untie Jesus’ sandals and that Jesus will baptize with the Spirit. Explain why you don’t want to take John 1.33... Read more

BEN: Talk to us a bit about the value of comparing texts which use a similar or same word to describe a divine activity. Here I’m thinking of the word translated ‘overshadow’ and you helpfully lay out various OT texts that talk about God’s living presence descending on the tabernacle and elsewhere, and the same sort of language is what Luke uses to says Mary will be overshadowed by God’s Spirit….. The same word can of course be used with... Read more

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