Reconciling Ecclesiastes 8:12 claim that sinner might be lengthening his life Vs Ecclesiastes 8:13 claim that the evil man will Not lengthen his days?

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  Reply August 7, 2025

  Troy Day

  Desiring to avoid what he sees as contemporary misunderstandings of “Spirit,” John A. Studebaker, Jr., Adjunct Professor at Cornerstone University and Spring Arbor University and Executive Director of Bridge Ministries in Michigan, raises the question of the Holy Spirit’s authority. Studebaker contends that among the proliferation of recent scholarship on pneumatology, the Spirit’s authority — not to be confused with the Spirit’s power — remains largely unarticulated. He states that this is detrimental to both systematic and practical theology and that evangelicals need to recognize the fundamental importance of a theology of the Spirit’s authority, even to the extent of giving it place within theological prolegomena. Studebaker’s inquiry leads to considerations of the Spirit’s role within the larger pattern of divine authority, various aspects of the Spirit’s authority (e.g., “executo- rial,” “veracious,” and “governing”) and their relationship to the authority of Christ, as well as their implications for hermeneutics, church structure and guidance, and Christian spiri- tuality. He proceeds by examining relevant pneumatological debates in the history of theol- ogy, assessing some tendencies in current systematic theology in light of select scriptures, and addressing the import of the Spirit’s authority for church practices. Studebaker’s most consistent argument is that the Spirit is a “person” that cannot be reduced to human sub- jectivity or to an inanimate force or process within the world. In fact, this is a primary reason that he goes to such lengths to demonstrate from scripture that the Spirit acts authoritatively, usually in contrast to fi gures like Jürgen Moltmann and Peter Hodgson, whom he curiously and with little elaboration labels “postmodern.” Decrying the overem- phasis on the Spirit’s immanence in their “panentheism,” Studebaker reasserts the Spirit’s transcendence — wishing to balance the two — by enlisting Colin Gunton, Paul Molnar, and T omas F. Torrance. While this engagement with the Spirit’s personhood is not prob- lematic in itself, it receives inordinate attention in a book devoted to the conceptual rela- tionship between “Spirit” and “authority.” Too frequently arguments return to the rather banal conclusion that the Spirit is a divine person who acts.