{"id":21235,"date":"2012-11-20T18:19:16","date_gmt":"2012-11-20T18:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/frank-macchias-justified-in-the-spirit-reviewed-by-john-poirier\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T00:19:48","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T00:19:48","slug":"frank-macchias-justified-in-the-spirit-reviewed-by-john-poirier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/frank-macchias-justified-in-the-spirit-reviewed-by-john-poirier\/","title":{"rendered":"Frank Macchia’s Justified in the Spirit, reviewed by John Poirier"},"content":{"rendered":"From Pneuma Review<\/em> Fall 2012<\/a>\n

\"JustifiedFrank D. Macchia, Justified in the Spirit: Creation, Redemption, and the Triune God<\/i> (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 360 pages, ISBN 9780802837493.<\/b><\/p>\n

Justified in the Spirit<\/i> is a sophisticated attempt to do what its title suggests: to find an increased role for the Spirit within the Christian doctrine of justification. The book represents a bringing together of a number of different perspectives\u2014including those that derive primarily from centuries of tradition, along with more recent insights from biblical scholarship. The book moves through discussions of the shape of soteriology within different streams of tradition (Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, Pentecostal, etc.), and combines these with significant contributions from well known theologians. Although Macchia is a theologian himself, he pays more attention to the fruits of New Testament scholars than many other theologians working today.<\/p>\n

One of the book\u2019s main arguments is summed up on p. 53: \u201cParticipation in Christ is first and primarily a pneumatological reality as believers are caught up in the communion of the Spirit with Christ and, through Christ with the heavenly Father.\u201d This sentence says a lot. One of the book\u2019s main aims seems to be to forge links between aspects of soteriology and Trinitarian language.<\/p>\n

Many of the main features, it must be said, are indicative of the age in which this book was written: it is certainly vogue to be \u201cbroadly Trinitarian, ecclesiological, and eschatological\u201d (a description found on the back cover). While there may a proper place to be \u201cTrinitarian\u201d, the way in which that call has been handled in recent years has been a little over the top, as it sometimes seems as if one\u2019s handling of any<\/i> given doctrine can somehow be graded on how great a role it assigns to each member of the Trinity. It is almost as though theologians are afraid to leave out one of the members of the Trinity in any given discussion, even when the topic (e.g. hermeneutics) does not have a natural bearing on the doctrine of the Trinity. This danger seems to be somewhat greater among Pentecostals, as some appear to have a strong desire to bring the Spirit into doctrines in which the Spirit arguably does not belong.<\/p>\n

\"Frank-Macchia\"
Frank D. Macchia<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Does Macchia do that here? It is difficult to say. His discussion is at all places carefully researched, and his arguments are never fleeting or forced. Although he never gives the keys (so to speak) to NT scholarship, he does listen to it intently and with a genuine openness. And yet the question remains whether Macchia accomplishes a pneumatological orientation of the doctrine of justification simply by construing \u201cjustification\u201d more broadly than others do, by allowing it to include (rather than lead to) the fruit of the spirit-filled life. The same could be said of how Macchia achieves his heightened emphasis on the role of the spirit-filled community<\/i>. Both of these concerns naturally belong within a theology, but are they really a part of justification per se<\/i>? Macchia evidently disagrees with the habit of identifying \u201cjustification\u201d with a forensic aspect of salvation, and identifying the other aspects of salvation with other terms. Yet he writes as if the term \u201cjustification\u201d must<\/i> apply to all<\/i> aspects of salvation\u2014including justification per se<\/i>, sanctification, and redemption. (See esp. pp. 204\u20135.) Macchia is not alone in this, but it is still unfortunate that he does not explain why<\/i> he takes this approach.<\/p>\n

Macchia\u2019s expanding use of the term \u201cjustification\u201d could be both good and bad. It is good in the sense that Macchia isn\u2019t forcing pneumatology in where it doesn\u2019t belong (as I think others sometimes do), but it\u2019s bad in that it relies a little on a trick of the light in order to do what the book claims to be doing. It appears that Macchia doesn\u2019t so much find an increased role for the Spirit within<\/i> the Christian doctrine of justification, but rather that he increases the territory covered by that doctrine until it includes the Spirit. There is one significant exception to this: where many Pentecostal scholars construe the baptism of the Spirit in Acts 2 as an empowerment for mission, Macchia takes a more traditionally Protestant approach by linking the gift of the Spirit in that context more directly with justification. Unfortunately, Macchia does not admit to the reader that he is in this sense being less representative of Pentecostalism. In fact, he hides from view the fact that a debate over Acts 2 even exists.<\/p>\n

These quibbles do not detract from what is otherwise a fine book. The reader will learn a lot about the differences between historic theological traditions, as well as the contributions of a number of important theological figures. The reader will have to look elsewhere, however, to find a true \u201cPentecostal\u201d discussion of Acts 2.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by John C. Poirier<\/i><\/p>\n

Publisher\u2019s page and preview: www.eerdmans.com\/Products\/3749\/justified-in-the-spirit.aspx<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frank D. Macchia, Justified in the Spirit: Creation, Redemption, and the Triune God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 360 pages, ISBN 9780802837493. Justified in the Spirit is a sophisticated attempt to do what its title suggests: to find an increased role for the Spirit within the Christian doctrine of justification. The book represents a bringing together…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2844,"featured_media":21236,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5820,17],"tags":[3343,3751,3403,3275,3561,4790,5830,3622],"ppma_author":[4607],"class_list":["post-21235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fall-2012","category-indepth","tag-creation","tag-holy-spirit","tag-justification","tag-pneumatology","tag-redemption","tag-salvation","tag-soteriology","tag-trinity","author-johncpoirier"],"authors":[{"term_id":4607,"user_id":2844,"is_guest":0,"slug":"johncpoirier","display_name":"John Poirier","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/JohnPoirier-150x150.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/JohnPoirier-150x150.jpg"},"0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2844"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21235"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24021,"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21235\/revisions\/24021"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21235"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=21235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}