The Holy Spirit and Worship

Rezensionen / Stimmen

This timely and scholarly book deepens ecumenical thinking about the connection between the Holy Spirit and the church's worship. Elizabeth Welch reveals unexpected convergences between John Owen (Reformed) and John Zizioulas (Orthodox), widely separated in time and in ecclesial tradition, in her dynamic, relational, and transformative theology of the Holy Spirit in worship. Both liturgy and theology will be enriched by the study of this book.
Paul Avis, Durham University and University of Exeter

Throughout this book, Elizabeth Welch makes fresh and stimulating connections. She writes persuasively about the meeting of Christian West and Christian East in the rich theology of the Holy Spirit and of worship developed by the seventeenth-century Puritan John Owen and the contemporary Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas. Through this sharply focused study, she illuminates central ecclesiological themes common to East and West. This is an original, thought-provoking, and profoundly irenic book.
Nicholas Sagovsky, King's College London

What connects a seventeenth-century English Puritan with a twenty-first-century Greek Orthodox theologian? The Holy Spirit! Elizabeth Welch's analysis of pneumatology in John Owen and John Zizioulas reveals unexpected convergence between the two thinkers. Insightful and stimulating, there is much here which promotes the quest to renew Christian worship and reinvigorate ecumenical dialogue.
Robert Pope, Westminster College, Cambridge, United Kingdom

In a post-denominational era, where the momentum of the church seems to have shifted to the 'new' and 'pentecostal' churches, Dr. Welch's book is an important contribution to the contemporary ecumenical discussion about the place and work of the Holy Spirit in the worship of the church and a reminder of the significance of the historic discussions to that debate."
John Burgess, retired minister and training officer of the United Reformed Church

In my opinion it is still the case that the latter has far too little emphasis, especially in Protestant services. I am therefore happy with this pneumatological attention to the liturgy and find it very commendable that the author also empahasises this in one (special) reformed 'father'. At the same time I think that the pneumatological reflection in this book are undeveloped. Owen and Zizioulas and their diverse contexts and positions demand so much from the author, that a pneumatological approach to worship in the primer remains. It would be great if Welch came soon time takes us into the next layers of paint.
Klaas Bom In KERK EN THEOLOGIE 74.3 (2023), pp317-318.