Author’s Preface
Author’s Preface
Some explanation is needed about this collection of essays, only one of which (chapter 8) appears in print here for the first time. The origin of the collection reflects what is true about most of the essays as well: they were gathered at the instigation of friends at Regent College and Eerdmans Publishing Company, who thought there might be some value for them to reach a broader audience. So also most of them were written by invitation of some kind, which often provided an opportunity to put into writing some matters that I had been reflecting on for myself.
These essays have two things in common. First, they tend to reflect my interests in Pauline studies and especially in the role of the Spirit in Paul’s own spiritual life and in that of his churches. The first chapter gets at the very heart of things for me: that the Spirituality of the biblical text should be part of our historical investigation — and obedience — as New Testament exegetes. Second, in contrast to much of my work, the essays were not written with the New Testament guild or professional clergy in view, but for a much broader audience. Indeed, six of them appeared first in Crux, whose subtitle is “A Quarterly Journal of Christian Thought and Opinion published by Regent College.” Along with chapter 8, which was a Regent College Summer School lecture in July 1997, five of them were prepared first for oral presentation (chs. 1, 3, 6, 10, 11), which only later were presented for publication; and in some of these cases I resisted revising them too much from their original oral form.
I also resisted making any substantive changes to these essays from their original printed form. Together these various factors mean that (1) there is a degree of unevenness about them, (2) there is a degree of inevitable repetition, and (3) there are sometimes oblique references to other people or works that are not footnoted. With regard to the second point, this is especially true about my deep concern to rescue the word “spiritual” (and therefore “spirituality”) — especially with reference to Paul’s usage — from its various meanings in English that all stem from a Greek worldview that has absolutely nothing to do with Paul. With regard to the third point, I need to note especially the references in chapter 6 to essays by my three Regent colleagues, Maxine Hancock, Iain Provan, and Rikki Watts. Their three lectures preceded mine in a Regent College Winter School course on gender issues and also appear with mine in the same issue of Crux.
I need to thank two former Regent College students, Rob Clements (who edits Regent College Bookcentre publications) and Mike Thomson (a former Teaching Assistant, who is now Sales Director for Eerdmans), for their initiative in seeing this project through to publication. I also need to thank Eerdmans for their willingness to publish these essays and for letting them remain in their original form, since they are of such a different genre from my other Eerdmans publications (commentaries on 1 Corinthians and Philippians, and a collection of essays [with Eldon J. Epp] on New Testament textual criticism).
Finally, a word of thanks to other publishers/publications (Hendrickson Publishers, InterVarsity Press, Crux, New Oxford Review, Theology Today, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society) for permission to reprint these essays here. The original publication data:
Chapter 1: Crux 31/4 (1995), 29-35.
Chapter 2: Theology Today 46 (1990), 387-92.
Chapter 3: Crux 28/2 (1992), 2-5.
Chapter 4: Alive to God: Studies in Spirituality presented to James Houston (ed. J. I. Packer and L. Wilkinson; Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1992), 96-107.
Chapter 5: New Oxford Review 48 (May 1981), 8-11.
Chapter 6: Crux 35/2 (1999), 34-45.
Chapter 7: Crux 29/4 (1993), 34-39.
Chapter 9: Crux 31/1 (1995), 22-31.
Chapter 10: Crux 25/4 (1989), 3-13.
Chapter 11: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 28 (1985), 141- 51.
Chapter 12: Called and Empowered: Pentecostal Perspectives on Global Mission (ed. M. W. Dempster, B. D. Klaus, D. Petersen; Peabody MA: Hendrickson, 1991), 7-21.
GORDON D. FEE