Episode 92: Jack Levison on the Spirit (spirit?) of God
Should the spirit of God be capitalized, like in the Holy Spirit? Is the Spirit for personal experience like salvation or for corporate transformation? Did it come to us at Pentecost or has the Spirit been working for eternity?
If you are confounded by questions like these about the elusive Spirit of God, particularly in the Judeo-Christian tradition, you'll love this conversation between George and Jack Levison, who writes books and teaches theology about the Spirit.
His newest book has just been released, Boundless God: the Spirit according to the Old Testament.
Listen here, read the transcript below, or click here for the full video version.
George Mason: Christians talk about the Holy Spirit. Is it more proper to say that the Holy Spirit is an it, or a person, a force, or the living presence of God among us? We're going to be talking with Jack Levison who teaches at Perkins School of Theology and has done much work on the Holy Spirit on Good God. Stay tuned.
George Mason: Welcome to Good God, conversations that matter about faith and public life. I'm your host, George Mason, and I'm delighted to welcome to the program today, Dr. Jack Levison. Jack, welcome.
Jack Levison: Hi George.
George Mason: Glad to have you here.
Jack Levison: Great to be here.
George Mason: Jack is the William Powers Professor of Old Testament Interpretation and Hebrew Bible at Perkins School of Theology at SMU.
Jack Levison: Right. More or less.
George Mason: Something like that.
Jack Levison: Something like that.
George Mason: Yeah. Okay.
Jack Levison: I like to think I'm just in the power chair.
George Mason: Aha, very nice okay. Yes, I understand. Well, and we're going to talk about power today because we're going to talk about the Holy Spirit, so. Nice segue Jack.
Jack Levison: Thank you.
George Mason: That's really good. I do want to say also what a privilege it is that you and your wife Priscilla Pope-Levison are very active in our congregation and we're delighted about the ways that you teach and encourage people and Priscilla also singing in the choir now-
Jack Levison: Yes.
George Mason: ... and it's a delightful thing. She works at SMU at Perkins also and so it's great to have you here.
Jack Levison: Yeah, Priscilla, right down the hall.
George Mason: That's right.
Jack Levison: We're loving being here and we were-
George Mason: Terrific.
Jack Levison: ... at the Hanging of the Green the other night, it was really lovely, thank you.
George Mason: Terrific. Well, so we will spend this episode talking about your work academically and for the sake of the church on the Holy Spirit.
Jack Levison: Yeah.
George Mason: A subject that you've written about five books on already and still more to come. The ones I have in my lap here today, The Holy Spirit Before Christianity, which is something we'll get to talking about in just a moment. This is really a more academic book I would say, and has some interesting insights about what you've learned in your study about where the concept of the Spirit comes before Christianity. And then you extend that a bit through this book. Now I have an advanced copy. It's coming out about the time we'll release this conversation, this program. It's called The Boundless God. And it is also about the Holy Spirit according to the Old Testament.
Jack Levison: Yeah.
George Mason: And I know you have a followup book that will be The Unconventional God, about the Holy Spirit and Jesus.
Jack Levison: Yes, exactly.
George Mason: So there's lots to talk about the Holy Spirit, but let's begin at a simple place.
Jack Levison: Sure.
George Mason: And that is to say-
Jack Levison: Is there a simple place when it comes to the Spirit? Go ahead George.
George Mason: I don't know. I think probably-
Jack Levison: Good, you find it.
George Mason: Probably saying anything about the Holy Spirit, the first thing you should be able to say is, "I don't know."
Jack Levison: That's right.
George Mason: Right, yes. It's what one theologian called the shy member of the Trinity.
Jack Levison: Yeah, right.
George Mason: So in a sense, if we know too much about the Holy Spirit, we probably are being presumptuous.
Jack Levison: Agreed.
George Mason: So, nonetheless, I think a lot of people, Christians particularly know the big moment of the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. And so this idea of the Spirit, we get a sense of the Spirit's role in Jesus' life, of course. But the big moment seems to be the coming upon the church at Pentecost. And many people seem to think that somehow God was one thing before that moment, and became something else after that moment. Which is why your work in the Hebrew Bible is so important in all of this. Let's talk about the background, the origins of the Spirit in the mind and heart of the Hebrew people and how it comes to us as Christians after.
Jack Levison: Yeah. Well the first thing, I think, I don't have this planned, but I'm going to go through it anyway. I think there are three misconceptions that Christians have. So let me start with misconceptions-
George Mason: Sure, that's good.
Jack Levison: ... about the Spirit in the old Testament. The first is that the Spirit was an intermittent presence. And now with Christians we have it all the time. I think when you read your Bible, when you read your old Testament, you know that's not true. The Spirit was very much present and for whole lives. So that's not true.
George Mason: Okay.
Jack Levison: The second is that somehow in the period before Jesus came, the Spirit had withdrawn and was absent. So you read in the curriculum, right? The silent era, or the 400 intertestamental years where the Spirit was gone. That's not true, because if you study the Jewish literature, there's a ton of reference to the Spirit in the Jewish literature.
Jack Levison: And the third thing is Christians I think will say, "Well, the Spirit was there in the old Testament, but it wasn't a person. It becomes a person in the new Testament." So you have these three misconceptions that from the get go I think make people say, "I don't really need the old Testament. I've got Pentecost, I've got Paul. That's all I really need." It was intermittent, it wasn't a person. And I forget the third one already. Oh, the silent years.
George Mason: The silent years. Okay. Word studies don't do everything, right. I mean, sometimes we as preachers love to get into the word in Hebrew-
Jack Levison: Don't disabuse any, no one out there can listen to this right now because George does do word studies.
George Mason: I do, I do, but-
Jack Levison: Once you've done them, you can then say, "Well, they don't do everything."
George Mason: Well that's true, right?
Jack Levison: But nonetheless.
George Mason: It is true.
Jack Levison: It's absolutely, of course it's true.
George Mason: They mean something, but they don't mean everything.
Jack Levison: Exactly. They mean something, but not ... So where are you going with that?
George Mason: Where I'm going is, let's talk about the absolute preponderance in the Old Testament of the word ruah in Hebrew. And the fact that it dwarfs every other significant word in Old Testament literature. And yet we still have this idea-
Jack Levison: I know.
George Mason: ... that the Spirit is intermittent or not fully present at all times and all that sort of thing. So ruah is the word that means Spirit, wind or breath, right.
Jack Levison: Or all three combined.
George Mason: Or all three combined. And of course Hebrew is a fairly spare language. So a lot of times one word supplies as you have to understand context and that kind of thing. But this takes us back to the very beginning of creation in the book of Genesis, and then on forward. So let's talk about Genesis and the significance of the Spirit there.
Jack Levison: Yeah. Well Genesis one right away, in verse two, it's however you translate it and Bible translations differ. So you have ruah Elohim. And so the New International Version says, "Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters," with a capital S.
George Mason: Yes.
Jack Levison: The New Revised Standard Version said, "A wind from God hovered over the waters." So right, like in word 17 in the Hebrew, we say, "Okay, is this a wind? Is this Spirit with a capital S? Is this a breath?" Because immediately God starts to speak, right? And God said, and God said, and it was, and it was. So which is it? Wind, Spirit, breath? Yes.
George Mason: Yes.
Jack Levison: Yeah, exactly. It's like in the sermon you said, "Wait for it."
George Mason: Wait for it.
Jack Levison: And that was it.
George Mason: That was it.
Jack Levison: Yeah, it is Spirit, wind, and breath hovering over. So whereas we in English, we in English have to decide, is that Spirit with a capital S in Genesis one, is it Spirit with a small S? Is it breath or is it wind? In Hebrew they didn't have to do that. I would suggest that my shoulders are like English. I have kind of narrow shoulders. Your quarterback shoulders are like Hebrew. Your shoulders can bear the weight of ruah.
George Mason: Okay.
Jack Levison: Hebrews' powerful big shoulders, linguistically ruah. In English not so much. In English you have to make the decision. So right away over the creation, not in hearts, not in individuals, over this soupy cosmos. The Spirit, breath, wind is hovering.
George Mason: Okay. So what's interesting about this is a lot of times I think people associate the role of the Spirit with breaking things up, with kind of untangling things that have been knotted with a kind of a wild and uncontrollable sort of experience. And yet there in Genesis it is actually the ordering presence of God-
Jack Levison: Exactly.
George Mason: ... over the chaos. So how do we have both things be true about the Spirit?
Jack Levison: Well, that's a wonderful question. When we're our truest selves, we're our freest selves, right?
George Mason: Yes.
Jack Levison: You preach best when you're incredibly well-prepared and also incredibly receptive to the moment, right? A ballet, a football player. When you see someone stretch out and keep their feet in the end zone and make a catch with one hand, they're incredibly disciplined-
George Mason: Ah, beautiful.
Jack Levison: ... and they're incredibly free.
George Mason: Ah, lovely.
Jack Levison: And it seems to me that is the Spirit, so.
George Mason: Ah, I love that.
Jack Levison: If you're learning to dance, you're not quite there. If you're trying to be ecstatic, you're not quite there. If you're trying to have a prayer life, you're getting there. But the Spirit is when all of this comes together and you see them stretch out with their feet and then they fall over and you think, "Oh my gosh, that was a beautiful reception."
George Mason: Okay.
Jack Levison: Right?
George Mason: Beautiful. I like that.
Jack Levison: Or music, you hear a piece of music and you think, you're transported. That's because Spirit has combined extraordinary discipline with extraordinary freedom at that moment.
George Mason: Oh, I love that. It's sort of like maybe also in music say. You can't really improvise unless you know the scales. And unless you're disciplined enough-
Jack Levison: Exactly.
George Mason: ... to know the standards, say of a piece and then you can move off of that. It's both of those things at the same time. I love that. Great. Now you have, you make the case that we probably overdo it with capitalizing the Spirit with an S-
Jack Levison: I get in trouble for making that case, yeah.
George Mason: We love good trouble on this show, so.
Jack Levison: Oh, it's good.
George Mason: Let's talk about why.
Jack Levison: With the capital T.
George Mason: Yes. With capital, oh very good. Here we are in River City. Okay yes. But what's your point? What would you like us to learn about having a little more discipline of letting the Spirit be the Spirit with a lowercase S?
Jack Levison: Yeah, I think we tend to dichotomize. We love to bifurcate. There's the liberal and there's the conservative, there's the Republican, there's the Democrat, there's the divine, there's the human, and what does Jesus do? Jesus somehow combines these two spheres, but we know they're still separate. There's heaven and there's earth, there's pastor, there's clergy, and there's laity. And ruah does not allow that dichotomy, where my breath ends and the divine Spirit begins, we don't know. And so in the old Testament, especially Job will talk about the ruah in me and my integrity.
Jack Levison: Or at the Exodus, right? You have the story of the Exodus and God, it's the blast and it's the word blast is really ruah. The blast of God's nostrils blows into the water and the waters come open. Is that a wind? Yeah. Is that a breath of God's nostrils? Yes. Is that God's Spirit with a capital S? Yes.
George Mason: Yes, yes.
Jack Levison: And so I'm a yes man at this point, all of them go together. So to try to say the human spirit and the divine Spirit and we have to decide which is which is just inappropriate. So I will either, I think in 40 Days With the Holy Spirit, I capitalized every reference to Spirit. In Fresh Air I left every reference to Spirit uncapitalized, but I refused if I can help it to say, "Is it sometimes divine and sometimes human?" We can't divide. The Hebrew doesn't let us divide, but I think in human life we can divide.
George Mason: Right. So having said that, then we should probably acknowledge that part of the case being made here is that the Spirit is not particular only to a few people, whether in the Hebrew scriptures being just say the prophets who are particularly inspired or maybe the anointed kings or some such thing. But instead, this is the Spirit of life and it is the Spirit of God in all living beings.
Jack Levison: You know this better than I because you've read your Pannenberg and your Rahner and your Moltmann.
George Mason: Inside baseball here.
Jack Levison: Yeah, but I mean, you've read these major theologians. I dabble in these major theologians, but they are very clear that the Spirit of creation and the Spirit of salvation are not distinctive. Now for evangelical Christianity, and I'm still very much a part of evangelical Christianity. The experience of conversion or that moment of receiving the Spirit is a great moment. But what that then gets translated into, there was no Spirit before that experience. There was no Spirit in the world or in my life.
Jack Levison: I don't agree. I'm a Methodist. And so I believe in prevenient grace that the Spirit goes before and leads me into it, a deeper reception of the Spirit, which I then call salvation and sanctification, right? So I think there's a great Pentecostal theologian, Frank Macchia, and he actually responded to one of my books and he said, "We are in the revivalist tradition." He's a Pentecostal. He said, "But does that mean we need to deny the Spirit to everything else? Does there have to be darkness before there was ever light?"
George Mason: Wonderful.
Jack Levison: And so I-
George Mason: This gets back to your whole dichotomy thing again.
Jack Levison: It does.
George Mason: We're trying to find a way to see the spectrum rather than the either/or, right?
Jack Levison: Absolutely. Well said.
George Mason: All right, so let's take a break and when we come back, I'd love for us to trace the times when the Spirit keeps turning up in key stories of our biblical tradition. And then talk a little bit more about the ways that we tend to domesticate the Spirit in our lives. Thanks for being with me Jack.
Jack Levison: Thanks George.
George Mason: Thank you for continuing to tune into Good God. This program is made possible by the contributions of friends of the program and we are delighted that they continue to support it so generously so that we don't have to ask for additional support every episode. I'm sure you're glad about that too. If you'd like to know where else you can tune in to find Good God, whether in a video format or audio or even to get a transcript of the program, go to www.goodgodproject.com. That's our website and it's the best place to go to receive an archive of all the previous episodes and to get a new one each week if you'd like. Thanks again for your support.
George Mason: We're back with Jack Levison talking about the Holy Spirit and having so much fun doing it, because really when you talk about the Spirit, it is the Spirit of life, the Spirit of joy, the Spirit of peace, and you should have some fun talking about the Holy Spirit.
Jack Levison: Absolutely.
George Mason: Now we can also, as the Bible says, grieve the Spirit and the Spirit can call us to account and all those sorts of things. But I think once you begin to read the Bible through this lens, and sort of spot this continuing presence of the Spirit in the Bible, some of the big stories actually take on some amazing new dimensions, don't they? Because, so you mentioned for instance the Exodus story. And God breathing, and the waters parting and from God's nostrils the wind of God, the breath of God, the Spirit of God creates dry land.
George Mason: Wow. Where did I hear that before, right? And of course, in biblical tradition, the Exodus happens first, but then when they go back to write the story of creation and God separated-
Jack Levison: Exactly.
George Mason: ... the waters and dry land appeared. And this again is the work of the Spirit hovering over the deep. And then when we go all the way to Jesus-
Jack Levison: Exactly yeah.
George Mason: ... and Gabriel shows up and talks to Mary and says what? "The Spirit of God will overshadow you, hover upon you"
Jack Levison: Exactly, and Matthew, forgive me for interrupting, but. Don't forgive me, we're New Yorkers and we interrupt.
George Mason: We're New Yorkers. We're talking about the Holy Spirit. It's all that matters, right?
Jack Levison: Matthew describes the birth of Jesus. It's always translated and the birth of Jesus. The word's Genesis-
George Mason: Of course.
Jack Levison: ... takes you right back to Genesis one.
George Mason: Genesis, exactly.
Jack Levison: Yeah, so I mean the birth of Jesus is a Genesis. Then you go to the baptism, baptism what happens? The Spirit comes down, hovers. I mean, you've got creation, creation, creation, creation. God's creating with the Spirit.
George Mason: And it's-
Jack Levison: Okay, I'm done.
George Mason: And we start talking about new creation.
Jack Levison: Absolutely.
George Mason: And so it's not just Genesis, but it's also the new heaven and the new earth where it's ... This is the Spirit is the Spirit of the renewal of life.
Jack Levison: Absolutely.
George Mason: Over and over and over again.
Jack Levison: Over and again over.
George Mason: Which really leads us, doesn't it, into this sense of how we can depend upon God to be on the side of life and to be for us. And isn't that what we should be thinking about when we think about the role of the Holy Spirit?
Jack Levison: I'm going to dichotomize now those two things. I think we do need to think about God and the Spirit as the Spirit of life. I worry about the for us, because that can sometimes seem partisan. So it could mean for us as opposed to for them, but what you mean is for life. For our life, for our flourishing.
George Mason: For the sake of the world.
Jack Levison: For the flourishing.
George Mason: Exactly. Exactly right.
Jack Levison: I mean, the first reference is to the Spirit hovering over the murky abyss of the deep and God's about ready to make life.
George Mason: Yes.
Jack Levison: And in the last reference, the Spirit and the bride say, "Come." In the book of Revelation. I mean, this is a beautiful set of bookends that are all about life. In fact, the Spirit and the bride say, "Come." And then, "Come take the waters of life without price." And this beautiful image of flourishing and giftedness and openness that you're talking about. Yeah God is for life. God is for renewal.
George Mason: Okay. Which also leads us to this, and that is that we do have a tendency to think of the Holy Spirit as being as Christians something that is purely interior in the individual's life. And in American Christianity in particular, we have a problem of people who think that genuine Christianity is about only a personal experience of God through Jesus Christ that the Holy Spirit enables, right? And when we begin to talk about a more just society, where there are shackles on people's sense of opportunity. Where people's created dignity is in some sense denied to them. And so the church and people of faith begin to speak about the need for society to change in order for people to be liberated and to experience the full flourishing that God intends. People say, "Oh, well that's not really the work of the Holy Spirit. Now you're talking about politics."
Jack Levison: Justice.
George Mason: Or justice, or some such thing, right? And once again, it's ... In our minds it's either or. Why not both and.
Jack Levison: Let's go to Pentecost.
George Mason: Okay.
Jack Levison: Right. The miracle of Pentecost is not speaking in tongues. It's speaking in other tongues.
George Mason: Yes.
Jack Levison: Luke's very clear.
George Mason: Yes.
Jack Levison: And my Pentecostal scholar friends know this. And what happens? People from around the world who would not normally talk to one another, can hear the praiseworthy acts of God. What's more social justice than that? And then of course they're baptized. And then what they do is they share their possessions and they share their food and they share their prayers and they share their teaching. And everybody around them is pleased with what's going on. So I don't know what's more others-centered and society-centered and church-centered ecumenically speaking than Pentecost. And yet we've transformed it into this deeply individualized experience of the Holy Spirit.
George Mason: Why do you think that when we have examples in the New Testament over and over again, and certainly the prophets, the biblical prophets in the Hebrew Bible are always, when they're inspired by the Spirit, they're always calling for the poor to be counted. For there to be an uplift of people where they have access to food and to harmony, and there is a call for justice. And yet, we are afraid that we've moved out of the realm of faith now into another realm. Why do you think we fear that so much?
Jack Levison: You know better than I, I mean. I mean, you work with people all the time. I work with books and students.
George Mason: Well-
Jack Levison: No, not entirely. No. I shouldn't even play that card just for fun. It's frightening to think about economics and giving up. It's frightening to think about other people who look different and smell different. It's just all very frightening. So what do we do? We interiorize the Spirit and I was sitting next to a Pentecostal last night in class. We celebrated Purim together at the end of the day.
George Mason: Oh, okay.
Jack Levison: It was a lovely class. And she's a Pentecostal, and she said, "We need to have discernment politically. It's not enough that we have the experience internally. We need to have discernment economically, socially, politically." And I just think that's much harder. I mean, face it, I've probably spoken in tongues once or twice in my life. I probably have-
George Mason: It's once or twice more than I have.
Jack Levison: Right. It's once or twice more than most. And if it is, it was a little glimpse. It felt great. It was cathartic. It was freeing. The problem is that's very little of what there is about the Spirit, certainly in scripture and I'm a scripture guy. The rest of it has to do with much broader things like economics and making the church a just society so that the society can be a just society.
George Mason: Good.
Jack Levison: So George, I just think it's frightening. It's much easier to have an internalized Spiritual experience that's cathartic, much harder to translate. And I'll speak personally, it's much harder to translate into my wallet.
George Mason: Well of course, there's that. So I think this is one of the things that frightens us, that if the Spirit really gets a hold of those of us who are people of resources, where we have more than we need, then the Spirit might actually call us to give them up for the sake of those who don't have as much that need. And I think yes, the answer's yes and there's reason for us to be a bit fearful about that. Because that's the trajectory of the Spirit is that not that everyone has exactly the same amount in some sense. But that everyone gets to share fully the gifts that they have to bring and isn't denied a place at the table.
Jack Levison: And unfortunately we think it's a limited pie.
George Mason: Yes.
Jack Levison: We think there's a limited pie. We don't realize, Philo, the Jewish philosopher in the first century talked about I think, I think he talked about the Spirit of this respect, like fire. He said, "You don't lose flame by creating more flames." But we think we do somehow. We think if I share more, if I give more, if I'm more generous, somehow I'll have less.
George Mason: Yes.
Jack Levison: Which of course we know as Christians isn't true, but in practice it's really hard to make it a habit.
George Mason: Okay, which leads me to the ways that we do have a tendency to try to control the Spirit, right? That is to say, and this is true in some Christian traditions. No, in all Christian traditions, whether you domesticate the Spirit into the mass, say to the sacraments, or into the clergy who only have the-
Jack Levison: God forbid.
George Mason: Yes, I know, right?
Jack Levison: God forbid.
George Mason: I have the Spirit, therefore I get to decide.
Jack Levison: I had a friend, Pentecostal friend who say, "The one with the microphone is the one with the Spirit."
George Mason: Exactly, right. And sometimes we domesticate the Spirit into the text, into the words. So Paul talks about how it's not the literal word, but it's the Spirit that has prominence, and the Lord is the Spirit-
Jack Levison: That's right.
George Mason: ... not the text.
Jack Levison: That's right.
George Mason: And so this fundamentalism into doctrines say for instance, and these sorts of things. So, oh my goodness, we just keep doing this Jack, don't we? But the Spirit is the real subject, not the object of our lives. Which is to say, maybe we need to learn to open ourselves to what the Spirit wants to do in and through us and in the world rather than trying to control.
Jack Levison: Yes.
George Mason: Yes.
Jack Levison: Yes. It's a little hard though when you say that. I think, well yeah, I do this too. So like I've become increasingly frustrated, let's say with some Pentecostals who in today's political era are deeply experiencing the Spirit on this internal level I suppose. And yet in my opinion, making misjudgments politically, so. But I do the same. And so it's very difficult to criticize other people for I think we are just naturally hoping for us a little experience that we can have and that's enough. And you know, if I can get it at baptism, great. If I can get it in the word, great. So it is difficult though to know how to expand beyond my experience to others.
George Mason: And yet the Spirit and experience is something we don't want to deny, because the Spirit is the Spirit of comfort as well. And I think again, some in the more mainline Protestant tradition and in the social work of the Catholic church tradition, we have a tendency to push it all into the world and into justice matters. But the Spirit is also that which holds us up when we're falling. The Spirit is also that presence of God that knits us back together when we're broken. That reconciles us when we're divided brothers and sisters from each other. And so this is an overarching theology of the work of the Spirit that we're talking about, isn't it?
Jack Levison: You think about two texts, Luke 4, which is Jesus' initial sermon in the synagogue.
George Mason: Yes.
Jack Levison: And he's bringing, he said, "The Spirit has anointed me." He's using the words from Isaiah. "The Spirit has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, sight to the blind." You know, healing. Economic, social, physical, healing. And they're all together. They're not separate. We know this. We know that, and talking with Jeremy, my son about healthcare and he's 23 and he's a freelance photographer and he's thinking ahead till he's 26, and what will he do about healthcare? His health depends upon economics. Economics determine health, not entirely, but partly. So Jesus' vision in the synagogue at Nazareth I think is a wonderfully holistic vision. You even think that about Pentecost. The Spirit comes down, they speak in other tongues. People from all around the Mediterranean can understand. And what does Peter quote, "Slave women. Slave men. They'll prophesy."
George Mason: They'll prophesy.
Jack Levison: Old man will have visions. Those on the margins, they're in.
George Mason: They're brought in.
Jack Levison: They're brought in, so you can't divide personal spirituality from corporate spirituality. They really do belong together, whether at Jesus' sermon or at Pentecost.
George Mason: Or in the Hebrew Bible and all the way back to creation and forward to new creation.
Jack Levison: All the way back, all the way up.
George Mason: Jack, your work is stimulating and helpful to the church and to all of us. I know those who have listened and watched this program are grateful for it.
Jack Levison: Thanks.
George Mason: And we look forward to what's next beyond Boundless God to the-
Jack Levison: Unconventional God.
George Mason: ... Unconventional God.
Jack Levison: The Holy Spirit according to Jesus.
George Mason: Terrific. Thanks for being on the program.
Jack Levison: Thanks George.
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