One Spirit: Pneumatology and Unity in the Corinthian Letters

by Kris Song

Overview

Many of the prevailing scholarly positions in Pauline studies have focused on the ethnicity of Jews and Gentiles as the dividing obstacle towards unity. Proposed solutions to this dichotomy seem to raise more questions than answers. Does the Holy Spirit transform new communities in Christ into a transcendent "third race" (as has been argued from some new perspective scholarship)? Does Paul regard the Spirit as providing a distinct genealogical basis for Gentiles to become recognized as children of Abraham (as argued by some Paul-within-Judaism-scholars)?

One Spirit examines the ways in which Paul understands how the Holy Spirit establishes unity among the various groups of believers he sought to bring together. Kris Song recasts Paul's unitive dimensions of the Spirit in terms that join Jewish and Gentile differences around the valence of cultic expression and temple worship. Ultimately, Paul regards the Spirit as establishing a new cultic space around the person of Christ such that Jewish and Gentile believers are permitted to retain important differences yet join together in common worship of the same Lord.

Rooted in an extensive background study clarifying the uses of pneuma and its function in Pauline thought, and elaborating Pauline pneumatology in the context of the Corinthian correspondence (away from the dominance of recent discussion around Romans and Galatians), One Spirit occupies a unique space from which to re-enter and improve some of the more dominant paradigms in Pauline theology. In rendering a community of Pauline churches that struggled to accommodate both Jewish and Gentile customs of worship, this study further critiques comparatively simplistic supersessionist readings concerning Paul's view of Israel. In an age where the Spirit is ironically the subject of significant disunity among churches, One Spirit provides fresh insight into the shape and manner of the unity of the Spirit that Paul intended to promote.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781481321044
Publisher:	Baylor University Press
Publication date:	08/01/2024
Pages:	278
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Kris Song is an adjunct professor of New Testament at Bethel Seminary and previously at Talbot School of Theology.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction
2 Jewish Background Material for One Spirit
3 Stoic and Greco-Roman Background Material for One Spirit
4 Christ, the Spirit, and God's Temple
5 One Spirit among Israel and God's Churches
6 One Spirit in Pauline Studies
7 Conclusions

What People are Saying About This

Chris Tilling

Judicious, cutting-edge, learned, up to date, exegetically alert, and lucid. These are words that come to mind as I seek to describe Kris Song's  One Spirit. Perhaps most significantly, he reminds us that Paul's  pneuma language is inflected profoundly by Christology and by 'being in Christ.' This means that he can critically appraise purported parallels with Stoic language, thereby offering an appropriate critique particularly of those approaches often (dubiously?) labeled 'Paul within Judaism.' Though tightly focused on the issue of Paul's pneumatological discourse and ecclesial unity, there is much in this volume to rethink wider and central debates relating to Pauline theology. This is an important contribution to recent discussions concerning Pauline pneumatology, ecclesiology, and more besides.

Darian Lockett

One Spirit is an attempt to bring together Paul's spatial understanding of the Spirit in terms of the temple as 'cultic space around the person of Christ' where both Jews and Gentiles are brought together in unified worship of the one Lord. The scope of the work is ambitious and wide-ranging while at the same time well-ordered and judicious. The scholarly assessment of Paul's view of the Spirit has been both fractured and fractious, two shortcomings Song's work manages to avoid. This is a well-conceived work that is a pleasure to read. Song orders the conversation well and makes a contribution that will need to be considered.

John Anthony Dunne

Eschewing articulations of Paul's thought that imagine Jew and Gentile unity in Christ as constituted by an ethnic or genealogical manipulation of the Spirit, Kris Song contends that Paul understands this unity in spatial and relational terms, since the Spirit mediates the presence of God. Instead of creating a 'third race,' the Spirit configures a 'Thirdspace' for Jews and Gentiles to retain their differences as they are centered cultically on Christ in the worship of the same God.  One Spirit provides helpful correctives to the pneumatologies of the major interpretative trends in Pauline scholarship, and it highlights what 1 Corinthians in particular can offer in response to several of the questions that contemporary Pauline scholars more readily turn to Galatians and Romans to address.

J. Brian Tucker

This innovative book offers a compelling examination of Paul's pneumatology and its function in constructing unity among Christ-followers in Corinth. Drawing creatively on critical spatial theory, the study insightfully analyzes how the Spirit brings cohesion, both relationally and spatially, without requiring the dissolution of Jewish and Gentile identities. This is a groundbreaking contribution that provides sage perspective on unity, diversity, and supersessionism in early Pauline thought.

Matthew Thiessen

In  One Spirit, Kris Song demonstrates how indispensable the unifying power of the Spirit is to Paul's gospel. He deftly works through various schools of Pauline interpretation to elucidate how the Spirit enables both Jews and gentiles to live together in the new messianic age. This is a must-read for anyone thinking about the role of the Spirit in Paul's writings.

Jeannine Hanger

'For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body,' Paul says to the church at Corinth. But how does he understand the Spirit establishing unity amid the diversity composed of Jew and Gentile? In  One Spirit, Kris Song suggests that this unity occurs within a 'cultic space around the person of Christ' which allows Jew and Gentile to flourish together—as Jew and Gentile. Drawing on insights from spatial theory, Song's articulation of the  pneuma discourse is both an incisive contribution to Pauline pneumatology as well as a refreshing picture of unity that our world—and the church—so desperately needs.

T.J. Lang

This superb book is a sophisticated, impressively wide ranging, and original contribution to New Testament studies, and Pauline studies in particular. This is no minor accomplishment in such a congested domain of research. But this book is more. Besides exhibiting extraordinary command of the total scope of relevant ancient data, it also provides imaginative analytic resources for theologians working in more systematic modes. In disciplines so often bifurcated, this book is a model of intellectual creativity—and an enticement for theologians to engage New Testament scholarship (and the ancient world more broadly) with much greater seriousness.

Clinton E. Arnold

This is an altogether convincing case for understanding how the Holy Spirit is the means by which God joins his new covenant people to Christ. In developing his case, Song contends that God does not form a 'third race' but enlarges his covenant assembly to include Gentiles by expanding the biblical notion of sacred space, especially seen in Paul’s imagery of the temple. Jews remain Jews both ethnically and culturally and Gentiles remain Gentiles, but God unites them by the 'one Spirit.' In this carefully argued and well-written monograph, Song reveals some of the inadequacies of how certain schools of thought on Paul (viz. the New Perspective, Paul within Judaism, and Apocalyptic) have interpreted the role of the Spirit. This book thus provides some carefully nuanced correctives to Pauline scholarship.