The Holy Spirit and the "Already" of the Kingdom

(avg. read time: 12–24 mins.)

The entry today is based on a paper I wrote in seminary for Dr. Roger Olson’s class on the Holy Spirit. That will explain why it is probably shorter than you are expecting. Maybe I can return to this subject in more detail another time, but this will suffice as an introduction to the subject of the role of the Holy Spirit in establishing the kingdom as “already.”

As many New Testament scholars have often noted, the eschatology of the kingdom of God in the New Testament has both an “already” dimension and a “not yet” dimension. The theological shorthand for this belief is “inaugurated eschatology.” But why was there a sense of inauguration at all, considering that kingdom expectations were eschatological and unlikely to inspire prospects of inauguration? The primary warrant for this belief was surely the resurrection and exaltation of the crucified Jesus (i.e., the occurrence of eschatological events in the midst of the present age). However, there was another warrant for this belief, one that made those events have a perfect tense rather than a simple past tense. Consequent to Jesus’s resurrection and exaltation was the outpouring, presence, and work of the Holy Spirit.

The argument of this analysis is that the earliest Christians held their eschatological beliefs in part because of the eschatological presence and work of the Holy Spirit in their midst, bringing the eschatological future—as well as the “eschatological past” of the christological events—to bear on the present. All of the experiences of the eschatological present stem from the Holy Spirit so that the Spirit is the basis for the “already” of the kingdom.¹ While there are multiple demonstrations for this argument, this analysis focuses on three of them. First, the OT background shows that the Jewish eschatological expectations of the earliest Christians involved the presence and work of the Holy Spirit/Spirit of God (even if the notion of the Spirit’s identity was not as developed in the OT as in the NT). Second, the NT writers attribute the eschatological/kingdom life they experience in the present to the Holy Spirit as a continuation of Jesus’s resurrection life. Third, the fruit of the Spirit expected of each Christian is an eschatological reality.

The New Testament Foregrounding of the Old Testament Background

Since this section undergirds the others in terms of eschatological framing, it is necessary to devote some extended space to outlining the eschatological character of the Holy Spirit’s presence and work in both Testaments. Naturally, two elements are involved in this analysis. First, it is important to outline briefly some of the OT texts that illustrate the pneumatological expectations in Israel’s eschatology. Second, it is important to see some of the ways in which the NT expresses the fulfillment of these expectations.

Old Testament Expectations

A survey of the OT shows bases for believing that the presence and work of the Spirit of God/the Lord would be an identifying mark of the expected kingdom. In Isa 32:15–20, the author expresses hope for the outpouring of a spirit from on high upon the people of Israel. The resulting conditions of the Spirit’s outpouring are superabundant fruitfulness of the land and superabundance of the consummate God-given conditions: משׁפט (“justice”), צדקה (“righteousness”), and שׁלום (“peace”). Each of these words has rich theological content, but suffice it to say that they indicate conditions of deliverance (involving both liberation and transformation), covenantal faithfulness, community restoration, wholeness, harmony, and stability. And fruitfulness of the land to this degree is similarly an eschatological expectation (Isa 27:6; 35:1–2, 6–7; 37:31–32; 45:8; 51:3; 58:11; Ezek 36:8–11, 29–30, 35; Joel 2:21–27; 3:17–18).

Isaiah 44:1–5 provides a similar link between the outpouring of the Spirit of God and fruitfulness/fertility. There is also an interesting connection between the imagery of God’s Spirit and renewing water, as well as between the outpouring of the Spirit and blessing. Even more interesting is the connection between the Spirit’s outpouring and the covenantal identification—as well as possession—of the people of God (cf. Isa 59:21). This statement of eschatological expectations is in the midst of one of the OT’s most direct and most polemical statements of monotheism. But it is not simple monotheism in question; it is what N. T. Wright has labeled “creational” and “covenantal” monotheism (i.e., only Israel’s God is the Creator of the world and only Israel’s God is at work through his covenantal promises to Israel in order to save Israel and the world from evil).² Naturally, with such monotheism there is a strong sense of monolatry (i.e., only this God is worthy of worship) and this worthiness of worship is closely tied with who God is, with what God has done, and with what God has promised he will do.

The passages above hint at what would become a more commonly expressed expectation of the Spirit bringing the eschatological empowerment, invigoration, and purification of the people of God.³ In the OT, perhaps no prophet makes this connection more strongly than Ezekiel. Ezekiel 36:25–27 is another connection between cleansing water and the renewing work of the Holy Spirit. In this instance, it is especially clear that the Spirit effects new covenantal faithfulness in the people of God (cf. Jer 31:31–34; Ezek 11:18–19). Verse 27 clarifies that the new spirit put within Israel in v. 26 to make Israel live is God’s own Spirit.⁴ As is typical in prophetic eschatology, the covenant is at the center of this picture, and it is the unilateral action of God through the sending of his Spirit that reestablishes and enables covenantal faithfulness. Along with this spiritual renewal/cleansing and covenantal faithfulness, other indicators of the eschatological setting of the Spirit’s work in Israel throughout this chapter include fruitfulness (of land and people), covenantal land restoration, stability, and climactic vindication of God’s holy name by means of a new exodus (cf. Ezekiel 39:29).⁵

In the next chapter, Ezekiel’s vision of “Death Valley” (37:1–14) provides a more vivid picture of the Spirit’s revitalizing work. Although it is common to translate most of the ten instances of ruach in this section as “breath,” v. 14 indicates that the breath of life that brings the corpses of Israel back to life is God’s Spirit. The return to life and land involving an act of new creation (compare 37:9–10, 14 with Gen 2:7) certainly befits an eschatological setting.⁶ The Spirit is at work here in bringing about resurrection life for the people of Israel, even if a literal resurrection is not yet in view.

Joel 2:28–32 is in some sense the fulfillment of Moses’s hope in Num 11:29. This outpouring of the Spirit on all of Israel is a universalization of “prophethood.”⁷ All the people of God will be able to proclaim the prophetic messages of God. It is a heavily amplified promise of covenantal renewal, as the prophets were God’s spokespeople in proclaiming what it means to follow God’s covenant. They are often associated with judgment because the OT narrates them calling for faithfulness to the covenant in times of unfaithfulness and proclaiming warning if their calls went unheeded. Similarly, the day in which the people prophesy is a day of judgment (as shown in the cataclysmic imagery). But that day is not only a day of judgment, but also a day of deliverance for those people who are willing to call on the name of God, acknowledging him as God, and accepting the full implications of his name.

Finally, another group of texts are relevant for this study in that they show a conjunction of the Spirit with an anointed one: Isa 11:1–10; 42:1–4; 48:16 (cf. 49:1–7, which seems to have the same speaker); 61.⁸ There is, of course, precedent of spiritual anointing for prophets, priests, and kings in Israel’s history. But the anointed one in each of these passages surpasses all precedence in being the means of God’s eschatological deliverance. Through proclamation and rule, the one anointed with the Spirit will effect the eschatological conditions noted earlier (as well as others), such as righteousness, justice, peace, fruitfulness, harmony, stability, and so on.

New Testament Fulfillment

The earliest Christians established the fulcrum of their eschatology on this Anointed One, Jesus the Messiah. This one anointed with the Holy Spirit is the one who inaugurated the kingdom of the future in the present precisely through the work of the Spirit in him. While one could cite other examples of such “fulcrum” declarations in the NT (e.g., Luke 4:16–21; 24:45–49; Acts 1:4–5; Rom 15:12–13), the most extensive and direct connection appears in Peter’s gospel proclamation on Pentecost in Acts 2:14–39. Peter declares that the expectation of the Holy Spirit’s presence and work associated with the coming of God’s kingdom in Joel 2:28–32 (also see Joel 3:17–21) is fulfilled already, though the day of judgment and subsequent events have not yet arrived. Even so, the occurrence of such eschatological events in the present establishes the urgency of responding to the prospect of judgment with calling upon God for this promised deliverance.⁹ He declares that such has happened because of the resurrection of Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:32–33).¹⁰ Indeed, the events of Pentecost open the way for the proclamations in the rest of Acts that the promises and warnings of Scripture are coming true in the apostles’ own time (Acts 3:24–26; 10:43; 13:23, 26–27, 32; 15:15–17; 17:2–3; 24:14–15; 26:22–23; 28:23).

The fulfillment of expectations of the Spirit’s work also takes the form of new covenant language (e.g., Rom 7:6; 2 Cor 3; Gal 3:2–5, 14; 4:4–6, 23–29; Heb 8–9). Though the NT does not always directly quote the OT, the echoes of language and the role of the Holy Spirit appear often. In sum, Brenda Colijn observes, “The ‘newness’ of the new covenant consists in the permanent forgiveness of sins; the writing of God’s law on the people’s hearts; and the universal, more intimate knowledge of God. The New Testament writers assert that sins have been forgiven in Christ, and the other two promises have been fulfilled in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.”¹¹ It is the Spirit who fulfills the righteousness of the commandments of the Torah in Christians (Rom 8:4). Insofar as the NT writers describe the “new” covenant, there is an element of discontinuity, but as Gordon Fee argues:

Continuity lies in the Spirit’s “fulfilling” Torah by leading God’s people in the paths of God to live in such a way so as to express the intent of Torah in the first place—to create a people for God’s name, who bear God’s likeness in their character, as that is seen in their behavior…. When this is happening Torah is fulfilled in such a way that for all practical purposes it has become obsolete; however, Torah as part of the Old Testament story, of which ours is the continuation, is never obsolete.¹²

A final noteworthy element of the new covenant language in the NT, which is more of a hint in the aforementioned expectations associated with the Holy Spirit, is the inclusion of gentiles among the covenant people (John 4:21–24; Acts 10:44–48; Rom 8:14; Gal 3:14; Eph 2:11–22).¹³ In the power of the Holy Spirit, gentiles—along with Jews—fulfill the Law because the fruit the Spirit bears in them fulfills the purpose (“spirit”) of the Torah.¹⁴ Ephesians 1:13–14 uses subtle changes in pronouns to bring Jews and gentiles together as the recipients of the seal of the promised Holy Spirit, showing both to be among the people of God, all of whom are the heirs of redemption.¹⁵ As the story of Acts shows (as well as the argument of Romans leading into Rom 8), the earliest Christians believed the fulfillment of these expectations took the shape they did because of the manifest presence and work of the Holy Spirit among the gentiles.

The belief in the fulfillment of these expectations has more dimensions than the examination here shows. What this analysis has noted already establishes a basic support for why the earliest Christians believed that the hoped-for kingdom of God was in some measure already present. They believed the kingdom was already inaugurated because Jesus, the Christ anointed with the Holy Spirit, had already brought some of the hoped-for conditions into the present and that he was still doing so through the Holy Spirit. And the Spirit was present and active in such a way as to inaugurate the fulfillment of the eschatological promises and expectations of Scripture.¹⁶

Kingdom and Resurrection Life in the Present

As noted before, the work of the Holy Spirit gives the events of Jesus’s earthly life a perfect tense with ongoing effects in the present. One of the primary ways in which the Spirit works in this regard is to reproduce Jesus’s life in the lives of his disciples (i.e., making the gospel story their story). The NT writers describe such life as the life of the age to come and as resurrection life (i.e., life that recapitulates the drama of the resurrection).

Although sometimes interpreters have attributed a realized (or over-realized) eschatology to the Gospel of John and 1 John, it is more accurate to say that the emphasis of these works is on the present dimensions of eschatological life, though both retain a definite sense of “not yet” in their eschatologies (John 5:25–29; 6:39–40, 44, 54; 11:24–26; 12:47–48; 14:1–3; 1 John 2:25, 28; 3:2). Though the explicit language of the kingdom is infrequent (John 3:3, 5; 18:36), the frequent references to “life” (ζωή), especially “everlasting life” or “life of the age [to come]” (ζωὴν αἰώνιον), tend to have eschatological meaning made manifest in the present. This point emerges especially in John 3:1–21 with the links between the new birth, everlasting life, and entering the kingdom. Jesus is the one who provides this everlasting life to others, but here he does so through “water” and “Spirit.” The precise referents of these words, though controversial, need not occupy this analysis, but the linkage between water and Spirit in terms of purification is noteworthy in light of the OT background. It is also noteworthy that possibly additional confirmation of the eschatological theme of this text comes from the link between water, Spirit, and new life/new creation, a similar link as the one established in Ezek 36 and 37.¹⁷

In both of these Johannine books, everlasting life is the life of the coming kingdom, the participation in the vivifying life of God, the fruit of God becoming all in all through the resurrection and new creation.¹⁸ The Gospel of John often points to Jesus as the source of this life, who in turn derives it from the Father (John 1:3–4; 3:15–16, 36; 4:14, 36; 5:21, 24–26, 29, 39–40; 6:27, 33, 35, 40, 47–51, 53–54, 57–58, 63, 68; 8:12, 51; 10:10, 28; 11:25–26; 12:25, 50; 14:6, 19; 17:2–3; 20:31; cf. 1 John 1:1–2; 2:24–25; 3:14, 16; 5:11–13, 16, 20). The gift of life comes from abiding in Jesus, which is the bond the Spirit forges by his presence and work, particularly as a consequence of Jesus’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension (John 1:32–33; 3:3–8, 34; 4:23–24; 5:38; 6:56, 63; 7:39; 14:16–18, 23–24, 26; 15:1–11, 16, 26; 16:7–11, 13; 20:22; cf. 1 John 3:24; 4:13; 5:6, 8).¹⁹ Therefore, the presence of eschatological/resurrection life in the present is the effect of the Spirit enabling people to participate in the life of/from Jesus.²⁰

Though the motif of everlasting life is more pervasive in the Gospel of John than anywhere else, other NT texts make similar connections between the Holy Spirit and the gift of eschatological life in the present. In 1 Cor 15:35–49 the focus is on future eschatology. However, there is an important implied element of inaugurated eschatological life. But to explore this point, we must go on an extended detour.

The “Spiritual Body” and Inaugurated Eschatology

Paul speaks of the σῶμα πνευματικόν in v. 44, which is often translated as “spiritual body.” The terminology does not signify that the resurrection body will be composed of spirit, even as its contrast, σῶμα ψυχικόν, does not describe the present body as composed of “soul.” The definition Paul gives the term is a function of both contrast and content. And the contrast is notably not that of spirit vs. flesh, although that would be a natural contrast in Paul’s context, as Andrew Clinton Johnson is keen to note, “The careful hierarchy represented by the first three pairs of antitheses is disrupted by this antithesis. In a hierarchy of ‘stuff’ composing the human body in the ancient world, the material of psyche and that of pneuma simply aren’t at opposite ends of the scale. The most natural opposite of pneuma on the cosmological scale is clearly flesh (sarx), not psyche.”²¹ If Paul’s point was to teach that the resurrection body will have no consistency of flesh (specifically in the neutral sense of referring to the body or the substance of the body) or be physical, this alternative contrast would have been the clearest way to signify such. However, it is not what Paul says.

Rather, the resurrection body is “spiritual” in that it “pertains to” and “belongs to” the life-giving Spirit (here identified with Christ in v. 45). Such is the general sense derived from the -ικος suffix to the root word (cf. Rom. 1:11; 7:14; 15:27; 1 Cor. 2:13–15; 3:1, 3; 9:11; 10:3–4; 12:1; 14:1; Gal. 6:1; Eph. 1:3; 5:19; Col. 1:9; 3:16).²² In this case, one can be more precise in observing what the term positively signifies. First, as many scholars recognize, the adjective, when used in contrast with ψυχικόν as a description of the other body, signifies the Spirit’s animation and governance of the resurrection body.²³ However, too many analyses of the term stop at the point of referring to this sense of the term, which I think is ultimately too restrictive an understanding in this context, not least because Paul’s other uses of the adjective confirm that the suffix has a more general sense of ‘belonging to.” In no other case does the -ικος suffix signify strictly ‘animated by,’ including in the immediate context with reference to χοϊκός in vv. 47–48, and there is no reason for such restriction here.²⁴ Rather, the uses may include “animation,” but only in the sense of what “governs” the people described, with the different -ικος adjectives serving as synecdoches for belonging to the present age (humans defined by ψυχή) or belonging to the age to come (humans defined by πνεῦμα; cf. 1 Cor 3:16; 6:19).

Second, as such, the term also signifies union with Christ the life-giver, who communicates resurrection life with the Spirit (in light of the reference to Christ as life-giving Spirit in v. 45). Third, in light of the series of contrasts in vv. 42–44 that also have cosmic significance, the suitability of the body for the new creation according to the purposes of the God who will be ‘all in all’ (v. 28) in a world in which the effects of sin are removed (in light of what was noted in the previous segment of vv. 36–41 about the fitness of bodies for their environment).²⁵ In other words, “spiritual,” as the adjective πνευματικόν is often (albeit unhelpfully) translated, has nothing to do with what the body is composed of, but is rather a function of defining the body in relation to what animates, governs, possesses, and, indeed, contextualizes the body (note that this description of the body is the last in a series in vv. 42–44 that characterizes the body in terms fit for a new creation).²⁶

The implied element of inaugurated eschatology emerges in the statements Paul has already made in 1 Cor 3:16–17 and 6:19–20—both of which served as the indicative foundation of imperatives—that the Spirit already indwells Christians as temples. Even though their bodies do not yet conform to the eschatological reality, the one through whom they will have resurrection life is already present.²⁷ Furthermore, there is oneness of function here with Christ and the Spirit, as both grant eschatological life and—as in a few texts elsewhere—the Spirit is also identifiable as the Spirit of Jesus (Rom 8:9; Gal 4:6; Phil 1:19).

That identification becomes stronger as the Spirit’s work of sanctification is ultimately about conforming people to Jesus (e.g., Rom 8:29; 2 Cor 3:17–18; Phil 2:1–13; Col 3:1–4). It is the Spirit who makes everlasting life concrete in the life of the believer, actualizing the potential of what Jesus has accomplished for enabling others to be heirs of everlasting life (Rom 2:7; 5:10, 17–18, 21; 6:4, 22–23; 8:2, 10).²⁸ The Spirit of Jesus conforms Christians to the pattern of dying and rising to new life, which means participating/sharing in the death and resurrection of Jesus by the same Spirit who was in Jesus and raised him from the dead (Rom 6:1–13; 8:10–15, 23–24; 1 Cor 6:11; 2 Cor 3:6, 18; 4:10–12, 16; 5:5; Gal 2:19–20; 5:22–25; 6:8, 14–15; Col 3:1–4; Titus 3:3–7).²⁹ The followers of Jesus took on the name of Christianoi, and they considered the indwelling of the Spirit the sine qua non of Christian life, the essential identifier of covenant membership (Rom 8:1–2, 9, 12–17; 1 Cor 6:11; 12:3; Gal 3:2, 5, 13–18, 29; 4:6; Heb 2:4; 6:4; 10:29).³⁰ As in John, one cannot inherit the life of Christ without the life of the Spirit or vice versa.

Because the earliest Christians received the Spirit after Jesus’s glorification, they experienced the fruit and life of the kingdom to come. Though bodily resurrection is clearly “not yet,” there is a sense in which, because of the presence of the Spirit, Christians already partake of Jesus’s resurrection life. This fact is due to the Spirit’s work in shaping Christians to the image of Jesus, making them into icons that participate in the reality they symbolize. Of course, the divine life of the kingdom and resurrection life has more qualities than sheer durability.

Eschatological Fruit of the Spirit

Although Gal 5:22–23 is probably the most popular “fruit” passage in the NT, there are several references to bearing the fruit of kingdom life (Matt 7:16–20; 21:34, 43; Luke 6:43–45; John 15:1–17; Rom 7:4–6; Eph 5:9; Phil 1:9–11; Col 1:3–14). While other passages do not reference fruit, they do identify virtues of the kingdom and tie them to the Holy Spirit (Rom 14:17; Eph 4:1–4; Phil 2:1–5). These fruit and virtues are the evidence of resurrection/kingdom life because in them one sees the shape of Jesus. In some ways, they also evoke—though they do not directly reference—the expectations of eschatological fruitfulness as well as the other God-given conditions noted above (such as righteousness, justice, and peace). Similarly, they evoke the expectations of covenantal revitalization of the people of God according to the will of God.

The significance of such passages is that the Spirit prepares Christians for the kingdom and bears fruit in them in anticipation of kingdom life in order to enable them to inherit the future.³¹ In fact, only the people who have lived by the indwelling Spirit and borne the fruit of the Spirit in the present will inherit the proper resurrection body (the σῶμα πνευματικόν noted above) for the age to come (1 Cor 15:35–49; Gal 5:19–24).³² In the Pauline texts in particular, there is a mysterious interplay of moral exhortation and theological declaration in this regard. Including the texts above, there are many places in which Paul writes of divine power and energy (sometimes explicitly named the Spirit) at work in him (or others) as well as his own hard work (or that of others) for the sake of the kingdom (1 Cor 3:8; 15:10, 58; 2 Cor 3; 6:4–10; Col 1:29; Gal 6:9; 1 Thess 2:9; 3:5; 5:14; 2 Thess 3:6–13). Wright expresses this mystery well:

Part of the mystery of the spirit’s work, at least as Paul understands its work, is that that work does not cancel out human moral effort, including thought, will, decision and action. Rather, it makes them all possible. It opens up a new kind of freedom and offers help, encouragement and companionship in discerning and putting into practice the fresh actions to which different believers may be called … It felt like hard work at the time – which is why he regularly encourages his hearers not to give up when faced with the same challenge – but in retrospect he knows that the energy came from elsewhere.³³

Few passages demonstrate such a point as well as Gal 5:16–26, within which one finds the aforementioned text on the fruit of the Spirit. The fact that the character traits of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are the fruit of the Spirit does not prevent Paul from exhorting the Galatians to live by such virtues. As Wright has noted elsewhere, the image of “fruit” does not preclude the work of cultivation, tending, protection, weeding, pruning, and feeding.³⁴ The reference to the kingdom of God in the midst of the passage (5:21) and the implied resurrection life of the Spirit (5:24–25)—as well as the larger tenor of Galatians—provide an eschatological overlay to this teaching about the fruit of the Spirit.³⁵ Ephesians 4:1–4 similarly involves instruction to work out the unity of the Spirit, which is an inauguration of the eschatological reality of uniting all things in heaven and on earth under the Lordship of Jesus (Eph 1:8–10).

Likewise, the Johannine books combine these elements of exhortation and declaration. As noted above, believers abide in Jesus by sharing in his life through union with the Spirit. The consequence of participation in everlasting life is bearing the fruit of obedience (an image Jesus uses extensively in John 15:1–17). In the Johannine literature, the primary emphasis in terms of the fruit of everlasting/eschatological life falls on commandments of love and unity (John 13:34–35; 15:12–17; 17:21; 1 John 2:6; 3:14, 16; 4:19; 5:14–16).³⁶ Such love and unity is the fruitful evidence of the Spirit’s life-giving work because there could be no better evidence of participation in divine life. Love is the foundation and subsistence of eschatological salvation and life precisely because the divine love is the salvation of the community of the faithful and the means by which it continues to live as its members reflect the divine love to one another.

Conclusion

While the earliest Christians believed that many important eschatological events had not yet come to pass, the overall emphasis in the works they wrote for each other was what had already happened and was already happening among them. One of the major reasons for holding to an eschatology that so thoroughly shaped early Christian worldviews of the present was their experience of these elements of what one might call “pneumatological eschatology.” They beheld and participated in the fulfillment of many of the prophetic visions of the eschatological Spirit’s presence and work contained in their own Scriptures. Because of Jesus and the Spirit of Jesus, they pictured themselves as being at the awaited turning point of the grand scriptural narrative. They believed such because the eschatological events associated with Jesus were in their own past—especially his reception of resurrection life as the firstfruits of the general resurrection—and because they experienced the Christomorphic resurrection life, the life of the kingdom already by faithful union with Jesus through the Holy Spirit. Finally, they witnessed and participated in the bearing of the fruit of kingdom life in the present, which was the fruit they knew in Jesus.

This analysis has used past tenses throughout because the subject involved what the earliest Christians said and did. But for Christians, these past tenses must not remain simple past tenses. The Spirit’s work in relation to the eschatological events of the past is to give the past a perfect tense. Furthermore, the notion of inaugurated eschatology is about the future coming to bear on the present. As long as the Spirit continues working until the eschaton, it is essential for Christians to remember that these matters of the Spirit’s inaugural work are not simply realities they look back on and observe. By nature, the Spirit calls for them to bear fruit and to participate in such eschatological events, and to find therein the essence of what it means to be disciples of the God who raises the dead.

1. For similar statements, see G. K. Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 579; Brenda B. Colijn, Images of Salvation in the New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2010), 54–55; James D. G. Dunn, The Christ & the Spirit, vol. 2: Pneumatology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 138; Gordon D. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), 554, 805–6, 897; Craig S. Keener, The Spirit in the Gospels and Acts: Divine Purity and Power (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997), 27, 201; Thomas R. Schreiner, New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 33–34; N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, vol. 4 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013), 546; Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, vol. 3 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 282. Ben Witherington III says in his assessment, “The Spirit brings God’s dynamic saving and sanctifying activity into the life of the believer. However, the Spirit’s presence is not strictly equivalent to that activity” (Jesus, Paul, and the End of the World: A Comparative Study in New Testament Eschatology [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1992], 72.

2. N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, vol. 1 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 248–52.

3. Keener, Spirit, 9, 151.

4. For more on the importance of the renewal of the heart and the connection to the Spirit, see N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, vol. 2 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 282–87.

5. On the new exodus, see my series beginning here.

6. For more on this passage in terms of resurrection theology, see Jon D. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life (Yale: YUP, 2006), 156-165; Wright, Resurrection, 119-121. I have also reviewed this passage at some length here.

7. As Beale notes in New Testament, 687–89, “all flesh” (kal basar) in this context most likely applies to Israel, in consonance with the use of the phrase in Jer 12:2; 45:5; Ezek 20:48; 21:4–5.

8. On the anointing in these Isaianic texts, especially ch. 61, see Daniel M. Gurtner, “Luke’s Isaianic Jubilee,” in From Creation to New Creation: Biblical Theology and Exegesis, ed. Daniel M. Gurtner and Benjamin L. Gladd (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2013), 129–30.

9. Beale, New Testament, 577; Keener, Spirit, 196.

10. Wright, Paul, 690 cites the continuing presence of Jesus through the Spirit as one of the necessary conditions for the emergence of the early “high” Christology (for this particular condition, he outlines the argument on 709–28). Though there is not space here to explore the argument further, it fits with the close association of Christology and pneumatology with eschatology outlined in this analysis.

11. Colijn, Images, 52. Also see Dunn, Spirit, 213.

12. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence, 816.

13. Beale, New Testament, 574; Dunn, Spirit, 345.

14. James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1-8, WBC 38A, ed. Bruce Metzger (Dallas: Word, 1988), 423.

15. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence, 812.

16. For more on related themes of fulfillment in the New Testament, see Gurtner, “Luke’s Isaianic Jubilee,” passim; Schreiner, New Testament, 24–26; Wright, Jesus, 216–18.

17. Beale, New Testament, 237.

18. Colijn, Images, 85–87; Schreiner, New Testament, 84.

19. On the close connection between Jesus’s glorification (including his death, resurrection, and ascension) and the gift of the Spirit, see Cornelis Bennema, “The Giving of the Spirit in John 19-20: Another Round,” in The Spirit and Christ in the New Testament & Christian Theology: Essays in Honor of Max Turner, ed. I. Howard Marshall, Volker Rabens, and Cornelis Bennema (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 960–99; Dunn, Spirit, 214; Keener, Spirit, 160; Schreiner, New Testament, 28, 464–65; Wright, Resurrection, 470–71.

20. Bennema, “Giving of the Spirit,” 94 points to John 20:22 in particular having a sense of new creation since the verb it uses for Jesus breathing (ἐνφυσάω) only appears here in the NT and only appears in the LXX in Gen 2:7; Ezek 37:9; Wis 15:11.

21. Andrew Clinton Johnson, “Turning the World Upside Down in 1 Corinthians 15: Apocalyptic Epistemology, the Resurrected Body and the New Creation,” EvQ 75 (2003): 301.

22. BDAG, s.v. πνευματικός; Pierre Chantraine, Études sur le Vocabulaire Grec (Paris: Librairie Klincksieck, 1956), 170; James H. Moulton and Wilbert F. Howard, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament, vol. 2: Accidence and Word-Formation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1920), 359, 378; Wright, Resurrection, 349–52.

23. Among many others, see Kenneth E. Bailey, Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes: Cultural Studies in 1 Corinthians (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press Academic, 2011), 461, 464–66; Timothy A. Brookins and Bruce W. Longenecker, 1 Corinthians 10-16: A Handbook on the Greek Text, BHGNT (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2016), 174; Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, rev. ed., NICNT (Grand Rapids; Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2014), 869–70; John Gillman, “Transformation in 1 Cor 15,50-53,” ETL 58 (1982): 328–29; David R. Kirk, “Seeds and Bodies: Cosmology, Anthropology and Eschatology in 1 Corinthians 15:35–49” (PhD diss., University of Aberdeen, 2015), 215–17; Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids; Cambridge: Eerdmans; Carlisle: Paternoster, 2000), 1276–77; James P. Ware, “Paul’s Understanding of the Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15:36–54,” JBL 133 (2014): 832; Wright, Resurrection, 351–52.

24. As for the use of χοϊκός, it is true that the Genesis story states that Adam was made from the dust, but with this particular suffixed term, Paul is not stressing what Adam and his descendants are made out of, but what characterizes him (and them) by virtue of that origin (i.e., ‘belonging to dust’ or being ‘of dust’). The role of this term in v. 48 in the series of contrast that defines this whole unit shows that it is parallel to σῶμα ψυχικόν. In the same vein, the antitheses linked to Christ—ἐξ εὐρανοῦ in v. 47 and ἐπουράνιος in vv. 48–49— are not terms that convey his being composed of heavenly substance, but as having heavenly characteristics (defined by the parallel of σῶμα πνευματικόν) and being of heavenly origin. Once again, the definitions of the key terms are functions of both contrast and content.

25. The preceding text summarizes all to briefly my analysis in K. R. Harriman, “Why Should God Raise the Dead? Worldview Foundations and Functions of Resurrection Belief in Dan 12, 1 Cor 15, and Q Al-Qiyamah 75” (PhD diss., Asbury Theological Seminary, 2022), 226–37.

26. Harriman, ‘Why Should God Raise the Dead,’ 217–25.

27. Wright, Resurrection, 256.

28. Colijn, Images, 92–93; Fee, God’s Empowering Presence, 546, 548–52; Schreiner, New Testament, 84–85.

29. Dunn, Spirit, 135, 351, 354; N. T. Wright, Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009), 236; Wright, Paul, 930–32.  Keener, Spirit, 62 posits a similar point underlying Mark 1 (68-70 describes the themes of sharing in Jesus’s sufferings and miracle-working power in Mark 4:38–41; 5:31; 6:6–13, 30, 35–37; 8:4, 16–21; 9:18–19, 28–29; 11:20–25; 13:10).

30. Dunn, Romans, 430; Fee, God’s Empowering Presence, 898–99; Steve Motyer, “The Spirit in Hebrews: No Longer Forgotten?” in The Spirit and Christ in the New Testament & Christian Theology: Essays in Honor of Max Turner, ed. I. Howard Marshall, Volker Rabens, and Cornelis Bennema (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 219–22. On “children of God” as an eschatological identity, see Wright, Paul, 424, 546.

31. Dunn, Spirit, 133.

32. Ibid., 134; Fee, God’s Empowering Presence, 268.

33. Wright, Paul, 1107. Also see Ibid., 1127.

34. Ibid., 430. Also see Wright, Justification, 210, 237–39.

35. On the contrast between “Spirit” and “flesh” as an eschatological contrast, see Fee, God’s Empowering Presence, 817, 821.

36. Colijn, Images, 95–96.