Looks to me like a text worth picking up – do you have any thoughts after reading this snippet from the review?
John R. (Jack) Levison is no stranger to writing about the holy spirit. He has written articles, essays, and influential books such as The Spirit in First-Century Judaism (1997) and Filled with the Spirit (2009). In 2012 he ventured in writing for a popular audience with Fresh Air: The Holy Spirit for an Inspired Life. In that book he said of himself, “I am one of those Christians, you see, who has one foot in the mainline Protestant church and one in Pentecostalism, more or less (p. 3).” Levison is a Professor of New Testament at Seattle Pacific University, an institution associated with the United Methodist Church, yet he often talks of the holy spirit like a charismatic or a Pentecostal. Likewise, Levison has one foot in the academy where most of his research has led him to ask what people thought of spirit in ancient Israelite, Graeco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian contexts and another foot in the Church where he has applied pastoral sensitivity when speaking to people about the reality of the holy spirit in our every day lives. There are few people as qualified as Levison to write a book that aims to bridge the gap between the holy spirit as a charismatic endowment and the holy spirit as a cultivated reality resident within us all (if this language seems strange consider the Christian Doctrine of the imago Dei which we might say is recognized most fully in Christ, is being restored and renewed in Christians, yet resides within each and every human being). Can ecstatic, emotional experiences of spirit be reconciled with discipline, learning, and ethics? Levison says “yes” and goes to work making his case from a variety of angles. […]
