God's Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul

"With the energy and care that is a trademark of his work, Gordon Fee here fills a significant gap in Pauline Studies. Both those who find talk about the Holy Spirit congenial and those who would happily marginalize it will be instructed by this book. Fee makes a genuine contribution as he examines Paul's letters in conversation with both the exegetical tradition of the academy and the pressing needs of the church."

"Fee's book is the most comprehensive treatment available of Paul's understanding of the Holy Spirit, a topic that has rarely received sufficient attention in studies of Pauline theology. Fee's method is exemplary: he first analyzes Paul's statements about the Spirit, in each individual letter, and then moves to a synthesis of Paul's general pneumatology. The result is a book that is deeply exegetical, doing justice both to the particularity of Paul's writings and to the fundamental unity of his vision for the Spirit's role in the life of the Christian community. Most importantly, Fee emphasizes insistently that the Holy Spirit must be experienced as a living presence within the church. That message is both faithful to Paul and urgent for the community of faith in our time."

"Students of Paul's letters and theology have long been in need of a major scholarly investigation of his treatment of the Spirit. By providing such an investigation with the same high standards of scholarship and skills of communication exhibited in his outstanding commentary on 1 Corinthians, and by doing so with an eye on the present renewed interest in the work of the Spirit in the church, Gordon Fee has put us doubly in his debt. His effective combination of thorough and robust exegesis with invigorating theological reflection that views Paul's experience of and concern with the Spirit from an eschatological and Trinitarian perspective drives home what we should have known -- that the Spirit is far more central to Paul's thought than most of his interpreters have recognized. Fee's comprehensive and challenging new study will be appreciated not only by professional interpreters of Paul but by all who have a serious interest in the biblical resources for spiritual renewal."

"Our appreciation of the Holy Spirit in Paula, both in academic and larger church circles, has long needed thorough exegetical and theological analysis. By focusing on careful examination of every Pauline text related to the Spirit, Gordon Fee has helpfully filled this lacuna."

"Fee uniquely combines professional competence as a text critic, an exegete, an author and editor of major commentaries, and a foremost evangelical interpreter of Paul with a lifetime of formation and ministry among the Pentecostals this century's providential witnesses to the work of the Spirit of God among us... Fee's work offers an enduring encyclopedia of Pauline pneumatological exegesis, easy to consult for next Sunday's sermon, yet substantial enough to take its place near George Ladd's Theology of the New Testament as a must-have, within arms' reach for serious interpreters of Paul's gospel... Fee's work is the theological crown of a distinguished exegetical career."