Review: A Biblical Theology of the Holy Spirit

In my work on a forthcoming monograph on the Holy Spirit, few volumes have proved as helpful as Trevor Burke’s and Keith Warrington’s edited volume Biblical Theology of the Holy Spirit. The volume is well conceived in that the chapters helpfully break up the material into discrete sets of writings such as “The Pentateuch,” “The Historical Books,” “The Wisdom Literature, and so on. Also, the contributors were carefully chosen, in many cases having written their dissertations on their chapter topic (Wonsuk Ma, Mathias Wenk) or in other cases having contributed significantly to scholarship on the topic for many years (James Dunn, Max Turner).

This review will not address every chapter, but will mention several insights regarding the scriptural teaching on the Holy Spirit that emerged from a close reading of the individual essays, both in their own right and in relation to one another, as well as a few weaknesses in the volume.