Word for the Day: Pneumaformity

On the shelf of those interested in the earliest Christian perceptions of the Spirit are books by Jimmy Dunn, and I’m thinking of Jesus and the Spirit, by Gordon Fee, especially his God’s Empowering Presence, by Craig Keener, like The Mind of the Spirit, as well as the many books of Jack Levison, and I’m a fan of his Filled with the Spirit. I could name others, like Leonard Allen’s Poured Out, but I’ll stop there.

The new kid on the block examines NT pneumatology with a view to the process of transformation. The book has the appropriate title: Pneumaformity: Transformation by the Spirit in Paul. The author is Mark J. Keown, who is teaching in Auckland. The book’s style reminds of the work of Fee, in that it is exegesis front to back and thus a biblical exposition of dominant themes in the Pauline corpus. My endorsement on the back cover included these words: “at once academically respectable and pastorally useful, Pneumaformity will be a generational book.” The secret sauce for this book is that it turns recent scholarship on both spiritual formation and the Spirit into a pastorally formed and personally shaped pneumatology.

He riffs on Michael Gorman’s cruciformity, my Christoformity, and David de Silva’s emphasis on transformation, baptizing these into Fee’s exposition of the Spirit as the God’s empowering presence in our life. Of course, charismatics and Pentecostals will take note and read any significant book on the spirit, and this is such a book. But at the same time, this book will prove valuable for all those who care about Spirit-formed “Spiritual” formation. For Keown, pneumaformity defines “The process of God's transformation of his people.” It is the Spirit who transforms humans into Christlikeness, into “conformity with God’s Son.” Thus, this is not pneumaformity in the sense being conformed into the image of the Spirit, but the Spirit as agent in transforming believers into the image of Jesus.

Here are Keown’s major thematic conclusions:

First, we need to understand the Spirit and what the Spirit is doing: conformed to the image of Christ.

Second, we need to heed the call of the Spirit. “Keeping in step with the Spirit involves hearing the summons of God by the Spirit in and through his creation, his call to us through his Word, and then yielding to it.”

Third, acknowledging the Spirit: “The pneumaform life acknowledges the Spirit's presence from beginning to end.”

Fourth, “The pneumformed push against the rampant individualism of the age and acknowledge that when we were redeemed from sin and its horrific consequences, we were swept up into God and his people.”

Fifth, pneumaformity leads into yearning for God, interceding with the Son, and into leading us into worship and praise.

Sixth, “Being formed by the Spirit, as we seek conformity with Christ, we determine to live by the Spirit and not the flesh and its wicked allies – evil spirits, the corporate evil of the fallen world.”

Seventh, “As those determined to live by the Spirit, we devote ourselves to learning to hear the Spirit.” “God’s Spirit is a breath, so we must learn to hear his wordless breathings in our beings.” Scripture and sacraments and embodiment are central to hearing.

Eighth, “Pneumaformed people recognize that their path to glorification is paved with suffering.” You can't read Paul and not see this.

Ninth, “Pneumaformity calls us to participate in God's mission by being obedient to our call and using our gifts with a posture of love.”

Tenth, “Pneumaform people yearn with great eagerness for Christ’s return.”

Thus, understanding in the Spirit, heeding the Spirit, acknowledging the Spirit, living together with others by the Spirit, praising by the Spirit, not by flesh but by the Spirit, hearing the Spirit, suffering in the Spirit, engaging in mission by the Spirit, and hoping in the Spirit.

You may know someone who needs this Substack, maybe you could …