Book Review: Matthew Levering, Engaging the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit: Love and Gift in the Trinity and the Church

Abstract

Matthew Levering’s eloquent contribution to the study of pneumatology, Engaging the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit: Love and Gift in the Trinity and the Church, is a compelling defense of the proper names—Love and Gift—of the third Person of the Trinity. The principal aim of this volume is to counter all who question the scriptural and theological justification for applying these names to the Holy Spirit in the inner life of the Trinity as proper names, meaning that these two names distinguish the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son within the immanent Trinity. Levering presents three key arguments from those who take issue with attributing the names Love and Gift: some thinkers assume that these names for the Holy Spirit are only metaphorical, as does Jürgen Moltmann, or they agree with Sinclair Ferguson that the names are not biblically justified, or else they side with Steven Studebaker, who thinks the names Love and Gift indicate the passivity and subordination of the Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son. To refute such objections, Levering sets out to survey the landscape of contemporary pneumatology and to respond to the concerns presented by Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox theologians. In the end, Levering successfully demonstrates the perennial validity of the Augustinian and Thomistic doctrine that stands behind the proper names of Love and Gift. In Levering’s substantial introduction, he lays the foundation for defending the proper names of Love and Gift for the Holy Spirit. He does so by contrasting the Augustinian and Thomistic vision with three attempts in contemporary theology to explicate the theology of the Spirit—the accentuation of the role of the Holy Spirit, contextualization in postmodern trinitarian theology, and social trinitarianism—and the juxtaposition reveals the weaknesses of the modern approaches. Levering maintains that the Augustinian/Thomistic conception of the names Love and Gift, and the understanding of the subsisting relations in the Trinity that follows therefrom, offers a richer account than the 1028355 PRE0010.1177/10638512211028355Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical TheologyBook Review book-review2021