John Levison: Filled with the Spirit

John R. Levison, Filled with the Spirit (Eerdmans, 2009), 490 pages, ISBN 9780802863720.

As Pentecostals and Charismatics, we are people who have been confronted by an intense experience of the Holy Spirit. This has led us to reappraise the importance we attach to the Holy Spirit within our Systematic Theologies, as well as reviewing our understanding of the Holy Spirit’s ministry. But this can lead us into territories of exciting and worrying discoveries. Does the Holy Spirit really do that? Can that person really have the Holy Spirit too, as they claim?

Fundamental to Levison’s thesis is his discovery that the Spirit is not only the bearer of charismatic endowment, but the very spirit of life that brings our life into being and on which we, as living beings, are contingent. From the Genesis narratives onwards, Levison traces life itself as contingent on the presence and empowering of the Spirit: the breath of God or wind of God are synonymous with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is there in Creation and giving birth to all life of all kind.

It is this refusal to dichotomise the activity of the Holy Spirit, into that of the Creator Spirit and the Regenerative Spirit, that is the distinctive mark of Levison. He sees the action of the Spirit of God in the perception and experience of those without the Judaeo-Christian tradition as well as within it. So it is that he can refer to experience of ecstasy in the Graeco-Roman cults, comparing these writings to contemporary Jewish and Christian texts (see for example page 346).This is very much engaged at the level of literary comparison.

The challenge arises in that, in this reviewer’s perspective, Levison does not appear to engage with the challenge of discussing where the real experience and engagement with the Spirit of God ends and that of counterfeit and demonic spirits begins.

Levison emphasises the vision of the Spirit in Ezekiel, and the dynamic dimension of the Spirit, life-giving in phases from prediction, to partial reality to complete fulfilment (p 97). He argues that we need to build our reading of the early church’s intensified experience of the Spirit on this basic perspective.

This insight is found by Levison in the writing of Luke. The Pentecostal experience is seen to combine both comprehension and incomprehension, not either or: “To opt for either ecstatic tongues or comprehensible foreign languages in the interpretation of the Pentecost experience, not to mention subsequent moments of inspiration in Acts, is to diminish the fulness of the spirit and to deplete the levels of resonance that Luke, like Philo and the author of 4 Ezra, preserves. Pentecost encapsulates not merely the ecstatic or the intellectual but a rare, inspired blend of both” (p 345).

Levison hints that the endowment of the Spirit is an intensification of the natural attributes of men and women, established by the creative and also recreative power of the Spirit. It is a blending of “an ecstatic atmosphere and mental acuity” (p 362). Thus, again in speaking of Luke’s presentation in Acts,

While set in a context that portends a rich experience of ecstasy, the Pentecost experience entails a heightening of the native abilities of Jesus’ followers, and a heightening that is aimed at a uniquely viable interpretation of scripture (p 348).

In other words, it is the experience, including ecstatic, of the Spirit of God that enables the increased ability of Peter and others to speak in a manner that shows Jesus as the fulfilment of the covenant promises of God, as found in the Holy Scriptures.

Likewise, with Paul, “Being filled with the spirit … is not a spiritual transformation that takes place on a sphere other than the human and earthly. It is not an experience that transpires without a radical revision of reality” (p 278). Levison perceives that, for Paul, an experience of the Spirit constitutes a new humanity, the people becoming a new Temple for the dwelling of God (p 283ff). “The Spirit exists in the community in a way that transcends individual believers. It is the community, not merely a collection of spirit-filled individuals, that establishes the spirit of holiness” (p 288). Levison, in exploring how this leads to examining sexual practices and the need for clear parameters that Paul insists upon, comments, “What is at stake is the holiness of the community and not just the holiness of individuals … relationships both within the community and with those outside are intended to make others holy” (p 299).

In other regards, the present reviewer finds a small disappointment in this work, in that the challenge of upholding the canonicity of Scripture does not lie upon Levison’s shoulders. Thus, in speaking of 1 John, he can remark, “This is a prophetic community, the legitimate heirs of the elders who received from the spirit that was upon Moses. Prophets, therefore, remain, they are the pivotal means of revelation. Teachers, he communicates with consummate clarity, are banished to oblivion” (p 421).

However, this is an important study and is to be commended to readers. Levison does not attempt to resolve what he sees as different perceptions of the spirit in different New Testament writings. In this he is disappointing, in that he is offering no more than a comparison of styles of literature. At the same time, the questions that he raises—the relation between the Spirit who is there in Creation and the Spirit who inhabits the lives of Christians—an important one. His work helps us engage with this greater question.

Reviewed by Jim Purves

Publisher’s page: www.eerdmans.com/Products/6372/filled-with-the-spirit.aspx

Correction: When originally published, this review was attributed to another author and not Jim Purves. The editors regret the error.