Lord of the Spirit

The worship of Jesus seems to have exploded onto the scene in the very earliest period of the church. In recent years a growing number of scholars have sought to understand how such veneration could have arisen and been maintained in the soil of Jewish monotheism.

In this innovative book Max Turner proposes a new solution to this puzzle. He argues that religious experiences of Christ's 'Lordship' through the Spirit initiated and sustained devotion to Christ. In particular, Judaism held that only God was the Lord of the Spirit and yet the early Christians attributed to Jesus the control over and agency through the Spirit that was God's alone. The Spirit was thought to act now as the dynamic extension of the risen Christ's personality and activity, as formerly he had been thought to act as God's.

Turner argues further that recognition of Jesus' 'Lordship' through the Spirit probably moved Christian God-talk not merely in the direction of christo-monotheism, but inevitably also towards trinitarianism. This embryonic trinitarian worship is explored in the writings of Paul, Luke-Acts and John.