Chapter 12: The Holy Spirit
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The Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit has long been the Cinderella of the Trinity. The other two sisters may have gone to the theological ball; the Holy Spirit got left behind every time. But not now. The rise of the charismatic movement within virtually every mainstream church during the twentieth century has ensured that the Holy Spirit figures prominently on the theological agenda. A new experience of the reality and power of the Spirit has had a major impact upon the theological discussion of the person and work of the Holy Spirit in recent decades. In this chapter, we shall consider the historical development and significance of the theology of the Holy Spirit, an area of theology occasionally referred to as “pneumatology” (from the Greek: pneuma, “spirit”).