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Holy Spirit: Growth of a Biblical Tradition

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Pope John Paul II has encouraged Roman Catholics to make 1998 the year of the Holy Spirit in preparation for the millenium. <Holy Spirit: Growth of a Biblical Tradition> is an ideal guidebook for this enterprise. Fr. Montague is an eminent scripture scholar, and has been an impressive theological apologist for the Catholic Charasmatic renewal movement. His exposition of the scriptural basis for the role of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers is both scholarly and leading to devotion. The material dealing with Old Testament references is somewhat dry and plodding. But, the New Testament commentary is fresh, accessible, and truly "inspiring." All intelligent Christians will gain knowledge from Fr. Montague's illumination of the 3rd Person of the Trinity--but, more than that they will become more aware of the power of the Spirit in their lives.

This book is an extremely useful treatment of the appearance of the Spirit throughout biblical and Qumran literature. It is organized by books of the Bible (in order of their composition), but often draws conclusions after a number of related texts have been treated. These conclusions build, as the experience of the Spirit changes and becomes more complex over the centuries of Hebrew and Greek thought. The author is sensitive to the nuances of the Hebrew and Greek words translated by the English "spirit," and also to the literary, theological and historical contexts in which the sometimes sparse references to "spirit" are embedded. There is considerable interpretation within the short treatments of individual passages, but it seemed to me to be fairly transparent, so that someone with questions or objection to the angles Montague took would be able easily to identify where interpretations diverged. I also appreciated the clarity of the author's style, making what is to a certain extent an encyclopedia into a pleasant and illuminating reading experience. The Rev. Dr. Linda L. Clader, Professor of Homiletics, Church Divinity School of the Pacific

Many dogmatic works on Pneumatology begin with two or three chapters on the Holy Spirit as an emergent doctrine, progressively revealed in the Scriptures. Montague expands upon this type of effort, working through nearly all references to the Holy Spirit from the Hebrew Bible through Qumran and into the Early Christian Scriptures. This work surpasses more limited treatments in that he moves beyond simple lexical references (i.e. "ruach" and "pnuema," etc.) and deals in the rich metaphoric and symbolic vocabulary of the Spirit throughout the canon. While the chapter divisions and historical format make his work useful as a periodic reference tool, Montague's greatest strength is that he is able to weave a compelling narrative of growth and development from the many threads contained in the source documents.

For all its remarkable strengths, the work suffers greatly for a lack of interaction with other scholarship. If this work intends to account for a "biblical tradition" one hopes that interaction with the great traditions of Christian and Jewish reflection on the Scriptures would be in evidence. Even where extant scholarship is referenced no citations or references are provided (cf. the citation of R.H. Charles on the "seven spirits" of the Apocalypse on pp. 327-8). Here a re-write is called for, with extensive footnotes or endnotes. The publishers could also serve the reader by providing an index of scriptural citations.