Pneumatology: The Holy Spirit in Ecumenical, International, and Contextual Perspective

Rating:
Summary: Revealing
Review: As a Pentecostal, I found this book very interesting. This book exposed me to a wider spectrum of belief concerning doctrines of the Holy Spirit in Christianity than I was even remotely aware existed. Granted, I find many of the alternative views in this ecumenical presentation rather frightening, but, ultimately, informative. The book is well written, and easy to read, and is very well documented, though, is very unlikely to challenge individual convictions.

Rating:
Summary: Revealing
Review: As a Pentecostal, I found this book very interesting. This book exposed me to a wider spectrum of belief concerning doctrines of the Holy Spirit in Christianity than I was even remotely aware existed. Granted, I find many of the alternative views in this ecumenical presentation rather frightening, but, ultimately, informative. The book is well written, and easy to read, and is very well documented, though, is very unlikely to challenge individual convictions.

Rating:
Summary: Informative
Review: I felt that Karkkainen's book on pneumatology is something that is definitely needed in a time when the study of the spirit is something that often falls on the wayside. He makes several good points in how the "Holy Spirit" has throughout Christendom been considered simply "the third person" of the Trinity and so consequently has not received the scholary attention it deserves. He does a fine job covering many different (as his substitle states) perspectives that range from the ecumenical role of the spirit to the spirit's role in the context of different cultures.

However, it seems that the book is lacking in depth somewhat. Granted that this book was not meant to be a dissertation on pneumotology, at the end of the book, due to its brevity, I was left wishing that it had been. Because of its brevity other branches of Christianity's perspective on the Holy Spirit were bypassed altogether. One wonders why the author neglected to mention the Holy Spirit's role in the Calvinist tradition and its many branches (such as the Puritan movement). This might seem a mute point but when you consider that it has been the Reformed Calvinist view of the Holy Spirit that has dominated much of Christian thought in America one wonders why Karkkainen did not cover this particular perspective. Instead he focuses on the Lutheran tradition when discussing Reformed perspectives on the Holy Spirit.

Another point of contention that I have is that although Karkkainen is obviously trying to remain neutral in his book as to the different views concerning pneumotology at certain points one can see his bias towards pneumatologies that are heavily trinitarian. And yet, ironically, when I finished with the book I also was left with the notion that Karkkainnen was saying that at the end of the day, no perspective on the Holy Spirit is wrong. It seems that Karkkainen would have his readers adopt a plurastic pneumatology in which each perspective on the Holy Spirit is simply another perspective.

Yet for the faults that I found within this work it was otherwise well written and at least informative so that I did not feel that I wasted money or time on this book. I suggest it for people who want to know more about pneumotology. Though not an exhaustive survey, Karkkainen's book presents readers with at least a starting point to an otherwise neglected discipline.