Carroll offers fresh insight in the understanding of the Holy Spirit

RICHMOND, VA (March 14, 2018) — In an area of study that is sometimes neglected and often debated, “The Holy Spirit in the New Testament” by Union Presbyterian Seminary Professor of New Testament John T. Carroll offers readers fresh insight through careful attention to the different ways the New Testament writings present and interpret the Spirit of God.

“An excellent and essential introduction to the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, this book is the work of a seasoned scholar with a love for the church and a knack for teaching,” said Jack Levison, W.J.A. Power Professor of Old Testament Interpretation and Biblical Hebrew, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas.

With Carroll’s guidance, readers will gain a sense of the identity and activity of the Spirit manifest in the cultures and literature that informed the New Testament and its earliest audiences. Readers discover that for the writers of the New Testament, all of life is touched by the Holy Spirit.

And for human beings, this life is lived in the awareness of God’s presence, sustained in hope through adversity and pain, open to change and new possibilities, and equipped and empowered to act boldly and speak prophetically by wise Spirit shaped discernment. The Spirit in the New Testament is a creative force sustaining, fostering, and restoring life—the first and last word both whispered and even shouted as the divine breath animating embodied human life and community.

“Spirit: comforter, prophetic prompt, navigator, and more. John Carroll’s inviting, image-rich book on the Holy Spirit in the New Testament (and its contexts) is full of scholarly insight, and yet is highly readable, ” said Michael J. Gorman, Raymond E. Brown Professor of Biblical Studies and Theology, St. Mary’s Seminary and University, Baltimore, Maryland.

John T. Carroll is the Harriet Robertson Fitts Memorial Professor of New Testament at Union Presbyterian Seminary.