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

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

From the viewpoint of contemporary evangelical and historic Christian orthodoxy, the apparent objection to this translation and the supporting exegetical sketch given above is as obvious as it is serious. To find here a reference to the person of the Holy Spirit seems clearly to put Paul at odds, even in conflict, with later Church Trinitarian and Christological doctrine. It apparently makes him, as the historical-critical tradition has long and typically argued, an advocate of a so-called functional Christology that has no place for a personal distinction in deity between Christ and the Spirit. This objection needs to be confronted. But then, we must ask, what exegetical arguments are there against a reference to the Holy Spirit in v. 45? I cite two here, the principal objections raised by Gordon Fee in his recent valuable critiques of the functional Spirit-Christology that James Dunn and others find in Paul.22 (1) Paul's interest in the context is soteriological (Christ's own resurrection as the basis of our future, bodily resurrection), not Christological and/or pneumatological. (2) The expression "life-giving Tcvei)pa" was coined by Paul in his effort to find an appropriate contrasting parallel to the description of Adam as "living uux,oXi" in Gen 2:7, which he has just cited. Paul is likely alluding to the "breath [rtah] of life" just mentioned in the same Genesis text and so intends a looser, less exact expression.

Assuming that these arguments have been fairly represented here, at least in their basic contours, are they satisfying exegetically? I respond to them briefly in reverse order. To deny a reference to the Holy Spirit in v. 45 at the very least undercuts a reference to his activity in the cognate adjective "spiritual" in v. 44 and ends up giving it a more indefinite sense of something like "supernatural."23 That easily tends toward the persisting misconception that it describes the (immaterial) composition of the resurrection body (though that is not Fee's own view). Along the same line, it has to be asked: Within the first-century Mediterranean thought world of Paul and his readers, what is a "life-giving spirit" with a small "s"? What would that likely communicate, at least without further qualification such as is lacking here, other than the notion of an angel or some other essentially immaterial being or apparition? But nve*xa in that sense is exactly what Jesus, as resurrected, denies himself to be in Luke 24:37-39.

Furthermore to say that in this passage Paul "is intent on one thing" and that his "whole point is soteriological-eschatological"24 surely overstates (or understates). Paul's main point (the believer's hope of bodily resurrection) is certainly soteriological and eschatological. But that does not exclude, just in the interests of making that point, that 1 Cor 15:45 also says something about Christ and, as I have tried to show, the Holy Spirit. Present in this passage as well are Christological and pneumatological dimensions, profoundly so.