A stubborn missionary, a slave girl, and a scholar

the ambiguity of inspiration in the book of acts

John R. Levison

pp. 15-27

in: Amos Yong, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Kirsteen Kim (eds), Interdisciplinary and religio-cultural discourses on a spirit-filled world, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013

Abstract

Paul's mandate to discern the spirits (1 Thessalonians 5:20–21) provides a glimpse of a complex and ambiguous dimension of Israelite and early Christian literature. Toward the end of the story of Israel's first king, for example, "the spirit of God came upon" Saul,¹ and he prophesied, then spent the night naked and catatonic (1 Samuel 19:23–24). This story is the mirror image of Saul's first experience of the spirit, which transformed him into another man (10:6–7).² But there is a twist. By the second story, Saul has, on several occasions, succumbed to an evil spirit of God. It is not clear whether the spirit, which prompts him to prophesy this last time around, is a good or evil spirit. This ambiguity prompts one commentator, Ralph Klein, to suggest that "the spirit may have been the evil spirit from God previously referred to (cf. 16:14)."³