As I mentioned last week I will be co-blogging with Daniel James Levy through Jack Levison’s Fresh Air: The Holy Spirit for an Inspired Life (see Pt. 1). We don’t want to review the book in atypical fashion, nor do we want to say so much about it that we provide Cliff Notes on it, but rather we hope to give you a glimpse of the value of this work. Both Daniel and I believe the book will benefit all who read it.
In my first post I shared the message and intent of the book. Today I want to give readers a glimpse of Chapter One: Job’s Pledge. In this book Jack reads Psalm 104.24-30; 146.1-4; Job 12.7; 27.1-6; 33.1-7; 34.10-20; and Ecclesiastes 3.16-22; 12.1-7. If you read these passages you should get an idea of what this chapter addresses.
What may surprise readers is that Jack doesn’t try to interpret ruach as something disconnected from God. Something like a soul he gives humans but that has nothing to do with him. Or mere “breath,” as in the oxygen we consume. Rather, the ruach of God every day. It sustains us. It gives us life. Yet sometimes we forget this during the harder seasons.
What Jack aims to convey in this chapter is that, “…many of us have learned to encounter the spirit on the mountaintop (p. 23).” Yet the spirit is found in the darkness. For Jack there are three characters that help us think about the spirit’s role in our times of trouble. First, there is Job who knows there is hope as long as he had spirit-breath to sustain him. There is Job’s friend Elihu who recognizes and appreciates the spirit-breath, but he does it from the vantage of youth not realizing how precious and fleeting our lives may be. Third, there is the Preacher of Ecclesiastes who find all life to be vanity. He is not thankful for the spirit-breath that gives him another day (pp. 33-34).
Jack calls readers to recognize God’s holy spirit even in times of suffering and pain. He writes, “…persistent pain cannot extinguish praise…praise is more precious perhaps when it is peppered by pain (p. 27).” Job realized this. Elihu does not. The Preacher does not.
Jack writes,
“…the holy spirit works, and works hardest within us, as we lumber through the valley of the shadow of death. We should not let ourselves be hoodwinked into thinking that pain and grief are always the enemies of the spirit. The ruach, the spirit-breath, is an amazing amalgamation of human breath and divine spirit-all of this a gift of God (p. 35).”
I am sure for many this all sounds quite new and you may wonder how speaking of God’s spirit as that which gives all people sustaining life and breath relates to God’s Holy Spirit as the third person of the Trinity. If we get a chance to address this we will. If the book doesn’t tell us maybe Jack can write a guest post explaining his views? What I will say now though is that a quick examination of his exegesis of the aforementioned passages do support his use of holy spirit.
In our next post Daniel James Levy will share his thoughts on chapter two.
the archives near Emmaus 
Well, I need to get and read the book too – I can see how the spirit gives life for it is the spirit of life (are there any connections to Molmann?) – God did afterall breathe life into adam – yet even so, there is the person and work of the Holy Spirit, third person of the Trinity – so, yes, it would be nice to hear of any ties to this. Maybe it is just too perplexing to think how evil human beings would have the spirit of life in them. if they are breathing, then somehow they do?
Brian
I think I’ve heard Jack mentioned reading Moltmann, but it is hard to tell how much influence he has on Jack’s line of thought since as a popular level book with very few notes in the back. Christian theology does tend to differentiate between that life-force holy spirit in “adam” and the resurrection life-force of the Holy Spirit in say Romans 8. It is challenging b/c there does seem to be a difference, yet the difference isn’t radical. It has given me a lot to think upon!
Brian, Daniel, this sounds like an interesting series you have planned, and the subject important.
It’s reasonable to see God’s spirit as that which gives life. So anything possessing life has claim in possessing something of God’s spirit. Still [Acts 2:4] makes it seem that who filled the apostles at Pentecost was something superior, something extra-ordinary. It will be interesting to see how Jack Levison sees this.
One comment about the Preacher of Ecclesiastes though, who finds all to be vanity; I’m not sure how Jack takes Ecclesiastes, but it is not that he (the Preacher fo Ecclesiastes) is not thankful for the spirit-breath that gives him another day, but that he sees all endevours as vanity, save for ‘fearing God’ [Ecc 12:13]. So living for its own sake is vanity – but it seems from [Ecc 11:5-8] that the the author of Ecclesiastes has a right view of of the role of the spirit and advocates an appreciate nature.