ABSTRACT
Evangelical understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit has been shaped primarily by two distinct pneumatological developments. The first development dates back to the heart of the Reformation in the sixteenth century: the conviction that Scripture is the supremely privileged and authoritative instrument of God’s Spirit in the world. Although the ‘Scripture principle’ is often discussed as a theological locus in its own right, historically it was first worked out mainly as a pneumatological designation, as we shall see. The second development is closely associated with evangelicalism’s historical ‘grandparent’, European Pietism, and involves the importance of felt personal experience of Christ through the Spirit. This mediation of what is often referred to as a ‘personal relationship with Jesus Christ’, too, is primarily a pneumatological category: Christ is made known to us and dwells in us by the Spirit. These two pneumatological emphases are so integral to evangelical identity that Timothy Larsen counts them as two of the five determining criteria for defining what an ‘evangelical’ is.1
