"Life-giving spirit": Probing the center of Paul's pneumatology

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Dec 1998 by Gaffin, Richard B Jr

Certainly in the immediate context this life-giving contemplates Christ's future action when he will resurrect the mortal bodies of believers (cf. 1 Cor 15:22). It seems difficult to deny, however, that his present activity is implicitly in view as well. That the resurrected Christ, as life-giver, currently exists in a suspended state of inactivity would be a strange notion indeed to attribute to Paul. And in fact, as he explicitly teaches elsewhere, believers have already been raised with Christ. The resurrection life of the believer in union with Christ is not only future but present (e.g. Rom 6:2-6; Gal 2:20; Eph 2:5-6; Col 3:1-4). Christ, as resurrected and ascended, is already active in the Church in the life-giving, resurrection power of the Spirit. And that activity is rooted in whom he has become and now is: "the life-giving Spirit."

Paul's inherently eschatological conception of the Spirit's activity is on the face of this passage. The sustained link here between the Spirit and resurrection, the primal eschatological event, is hardly merely incidental. The eschatological aeon, the resurrection order, is by way of eminence "spiritual." That is the virtual sense in v. 46 of the generalizing expression "the spiritual."la Elsewhere the instrumentality of the Spirit in the resurrection is explicit in Rom 8:11 (cf. 1:4) and implied in 1 Cor 6:14 ("through his [God's] power"); Rom 6:4 ("through the Father's glory").

That this eschatological aspect is inalienable, not waiting to be assumed by the Spirit only in the future at Christ's return, is clear from the wellknown metaphors Paul uses to describe the present work of the Spirit in the Church and within believers. He is *the firstfruits" of their full adoption to be realized in "the redemption (= the resurrection) of the body" (Rom 8:23). Similarly he is "the deposit" toward the resurrection body (2 Cor 5:5). Again, in his sealing activity as "the Spirit of promise" he is the "deposit" on the Church's "inheritance" (Eph 1:14), an unambiguously eschatological reality (cf. 4:30). Note how effectively both metaphors capture the already/not-yet structure of Paul's eschatology, the partial yet nonetheless consummate quality of the Spirit's work in the believer. That present experience is of a piece with the full experience of the Spirit's activity at Christ's return and so anticipates that future activity.

Turning now to the modern and contemporary understanding of v. 45b, a curiously mixed state of affairs presents itself. On the one hand, it seems fair to say, across a broad front a substantial majority of commentators and other interpreters who address the issue recognize a reference to the Holy Spirit in v. 45.19 That may be seen, for instance, in various articles in the recently published Dictionary of Paul and His Letters. 20 At the same time, however, giving rise to a certain overall dissonance or at least ambiguity, virtually all the standard English translations, for whatever reasons, continue to render "spirit" in v. 45 with a small "s." The most notable exceptions are the Living Bible (and now the New Living Translation) and Today's English Version. They-correctly, I believe-capitalize "Spirit."21