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Book Reviews / Pneuma 32 (2010) 431-473
George K. A. Bonnah, The Holy Spirit: A Narrative Factor in the Acts of the Apostles, Stutt- garter Biblische Beiträge 58 (Stuttgart: Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2007). 422 pp., €49.90 paper.
Although not stated explicitly, the acknowledgements in the foreword suggest that it is a revision of the author’s doctoral thesis, completed under the direction of Michael Theobald, and accepted at Tubingen in 2006.
Te operative word in the title is narrative, which Bonnah defines in keeping with stan- dard usage in the literary guild: a narrative approach to any text respects the text as an accomplished piece of artistry; in doing so it brackets any consideration of sources or ante- cedent connections with external referents such as actual persons or events. Tus are set aside many of those historical-critical issues that have plagued interpreters of all of the NT narratives. Te claim of the literary guild is that while such questions may be legitimate, the answers have a tendency to atomize the text, and thus to misrepresent what the text is saying. In the end, this is a critical trade-off: what is lost is the rootedness of the story in actual historical events; what is gained in this transaction is a heightened critical apprecia- tion for the integrity and coherence of the text as such.
Te book moves forward in five sweeping chapters of analysis, preceded in Chapter 1 by an opening review of the state of the question, and followed in Chapter 7 by a review and summary. Each of the five central chapters analyses the role of the Holy Spirit in Acts in relationship to some other point of comparison, often sifting the material with a very fine exegetical sieve.
Chapter 1 contains the opening review of the state of the question by summarizing the positions of seventeen exegetes and theologians: the function of the Spirit is euangelizest- hai (Baer), to initiate conversion and incorporate converts into the community of faith ( J. G. D. Dunn), to empower for mission and witness (F. J. May, R. P. Menzies, J. B. Shelton), to empower for preaching, conversion, incorporation, the transformation of lives, and salvation (F. F. Bruce, J. D. G. Dunn, H-S. Kim, J. Jervell, C. S. Keener, J. A. Fitzmyer, M. Turner, J. M. Penney), the Spirit “makes the story” (D. Schneider), the Spirit has a “socio-ethical function” (M. Wenk), and is analyzed as a character within the story (W. H. Shepherd, J. A. Hur). A final discussion examines Spirit in Trinitarian thought (W. J. Larkin). What is striking here is that some of these categories overlap so closely that it difficult at times to discover the rubric by which Bonnah has sorted them. Nevertheless, together they signal Bonnah’s own position: that the Spirit plays several and distinct but overlapping roles in the narrative, and that any argument that focuses on a single role will end up distorting the evidence.
Chapter 2 contains a rapid overview of the places in which the Spirit can be said to play a role in the narrative, including mention by the narrator or by individual characters. Helpfully, a subsection discusses places where one would expect mention of the Spirit, but in which the text is — against those expectations — silent.
Te exegetical work begins in earnest in Chapter 3, which focuses directly on Acts 1, which is taken as a programmatic key to the book as a whole. Tat is, this opening chapter serves an important orienting role by connecting Acts with its prequel Luke, and by sig- naling the reader what to expect in the narrative that follows. Implicitly, in this context
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010 DOI: 10.1163/157007410X533996
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Book Reviews / Pneuma 32 (2010) 431-473
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the arrival of the Spirit turns a critical narrative corner: whereas the disciples had been awaiting a parochial kingdom, the Spirit will drive a completely unexpected, universal mission that encompasses the Gentile mission. Tough Bonnah does not say this as clearly as one might hope, the narrative role of the Spirit may serve an apologetic end of legiti- mating the mission to the Gentiles that will occupy more than half of the narrative that follows.
Chapter 4 then massively sweeps the narrative, returning again and again to the appear- ances of the Spirit at different points in the Mission — Pentecost (1:1-2.41), the embold- ened proclamation of the disciples (4:23-31) following the release of Peter and John from prison (vv. 13-22); the fall of the Spirit in Samaria (8:4-25), Caesarea (9: 2-11:18), and Ephesus (18:24-19:7). Te focusing question here is whether the Pentecost experience in 2:1-24 is distinctive, a one-time event, or repeated variously in these other occurrences. Is there a Gentile Pentecost, or are there Pentecosts? Bonnah answers in the negative: Pentecost was a distinctive event, after which the Spirit, now given, moves to empower mission to bring others into the ecclesiological framework of that singular event.
Chapter 5 examines the interface between the Spirit and references to Scripture. Tis is a long analysis, very nuanced at points. Te takeaways, I think, are 1) the Spirit and Scrip- ture sometimes serve similar functions, 2) that each thus corroborates the other, and 3) together they corroborate the narrator’s voice. In this way, Acts, too, is made to func- tion within the conceptual framework evoked by the word Scripture.
Chapter 6 turns to the role played by the Spirit in driving forward the mission of the Church, especially in the great geographical thrusts foregrounded in Acts 1:8 — Jerusa- lem, Judea and Samaria, the “end of the earth”: in the absence of the Spirit, none of this would have happened.
Chapter 7 ties the study off with a review and reiteration. Te author’s conclusion seems helpful, but hardly startling: the Spirit is indeed a narrative factor in the Acts of the Apostles. Tat much seems clear on the surface of it. Te strength of this study is that what Bonnah has demonstrated with literary method corroborates and complements con- clusions reached by historical-critical approaches. He adds this nuance to the discussion: the Spirit indeed plays many roles in Acts, all of them marshaled in the direction of including Gentiles within the community of faith. Pentecostals will find especially inter- esting Bonnah’s conclusion that the events in Acts 2 constitute a distinctive, one-time event, rather than the first of a series of “Pentecosts” reiterated throughout the book.
Reviewed by Jerry Camery-Hoggatt
Professor of New Testament and Narrative Theology Vanguard University, Costa Mesa, California
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