Michael Horton, in Rediscovering the Holy Spirit, is wary of the many unhelpful, and even heretical, ways the Holy Spirit has been understood. While various conceptualizations dualistically pit the Spirit against the material creation or erase the Creator-creature divide and devolve into panentheism (God and world are codependent), Horton calls for a sober-minded return to a balanced, orthodox pneumatology.  Explains Horton, “Any authentically biblical doctrine of creation, providence, Christ’s person and work, Scripture, preaching, the sacraments, the church, and eschatology must include a robust account of the Spirit’s agency” (17). This statement serves as the roadmap for this “rediscovery,” which takes the reader through the various relevant aspects of biblical theology’s touchpoints with systematic theology and church history. 

Horton’s treatment of the Spirit is thoroughly Trinitarian, reminding his readers that the work of Father, Son, and Spirit in creation, recreation, and redemptive history is undivided (Ch. 1). “The Father is the source, the Son the mediator, and the Spirit is the consummator” (35). This means everything from creation to recreation and the ordo salutis (204) “is done by the Father, in the Son, through the Holy Spirit” (35). Honoring this fact should prevent the Spirit from being treated as an instrument in the possession of the church (Ch. 10), viewed as merely the “soul” or “common spirit” of the church (Ch. 12), found as Comforter in contrast to the Son’s judgment (Ch. 4), or relegated to merely demonstrations of the extraordinary; on the contrary, most of the Spirit’s work is done in the mundane ordinariness of life. 

One of the book’s strengths, aligning with the theme of keeping all Trinitarian works undivided, is a helpful clarification of the Spirit’s work in the sacraments, closely tied to Christ’s ascension. Rather than the sacraments being effective ex opere operato, a way the Spirit is “domesticated” in Roman Catholic theology—ironically the Anabaptists also “domesticated” the Spirit in their push away from the institutional church (252)—the sacraments and the Spirit are not separable because they are the means by which, in Christ’s absence, the Spirit “has seated us with Christ in the heavenly places” (266). “The Spirit attaches his ordinary operations to these means not because he cannot work apart from them but because we need to know where God has promised to meet us in grace” (259). Any separation of Spirit from sacrament, in either direction, effectively suggests the Spirit acts independently of the Father and Son. 

In short, the book serves as a guide for how to not fall off the horse on either side by neither depersonalizing the Spirit nor collapsing the Father and Son into the Spirit. Maintaining the Spirit’s distinct personhood and incommunicable attributes along with His essential unity with the Father and Son (a distinction without separation) is paramount to a proper understanding of the Spirit’s work in redemptive history, individual and corporate salvation, sanctification, and glorification. This is perhaps the book’s greatest strength; Horton shows this very dynamic, the tendency to err in either depersonalizing or absolutizing the Spirit, is at the center in all the major controversies involving the Spirit from spiritual gifts and glossolalia (Ch. 9) to ecclesiology (Ch. 12).

While Horton’s clarification regarding the work of the Holy Spirit as undivided from that of Father and Son, involved in every part of the Trinity’s work is timely and helpful, it is not without its challenges. First, Horton’s concerns about pneumatological errors in Pentecostalism are warranted, although some Pentecostal readers may find his presentation of their beliefs truncated and underrepresented since he tends to overgeneralize their theology and practice and cites only one Pentecostal author, Gordon Fee, and only in a way that supports the book’s perspective. A second issue some readers may have is with the unfortunate use of the term “extroverted” in the final chapter (318), used to refer to the Spirit’s work in the church that ultimately leads us to look to Christ and to help our neighbor. Extroversion ordinarily refers to a personality trait characterized by energizing from social interaction. Horton is undoubtedly not using the term in that sense, but many introverted people (and readers) struggle to know how best to engage in the life of the church without being extroverted, making this an unfortunate bit of verbiage.  

Finally, occasionally Horton’s interpretation of texts seems to rely too much on systematic theology as an interpretive grid, or even tenuous exegetical arguments, which can weaken his case. For example, he employs a fairly unconvincing argument that the church offices in Ephesians 4:12 are for “perfecting,” rather than “equipping,” the saints, a lexically under-supported reading contrary to all English versions except the KJV (231-232). This reading likely overestimates how controlling “building” is as a metaphor in Ephesians. There are also a few places where Horton’s perspective on the Spirit in Genesis is shaped by Meredith Kline’s “primal parousia,” a theory unmentioned (ignored?) by virtually all Genesis commentators even within his own tradition. While these do not take away from the essential message of the book, they remain examples of what happens when the theologian is too far down the hall from the exegete.

That said, assuming more than elementary familiarity with theological concepts and Scripture, this book will surely be a help to those wishing to understand more fully the works of the Spirit from beginning to end, and in daily life. 

Michael Durso