People often assume that one of the major contributions of ecumenical dialogue is mutual understanding, but another important feature of this work involves ecclesial traditions delving more deeply into their own articulations and confessions as they are challenged by engagement with ecclesial others. One could say such a scenario is the case in this book: Peterson, a Lutheran, actively mines her tradition in sustained conversation with Pentecostal/charismatic voices, and the result is a work on the Holy Spirit that shows both surprising convergences and a renewed sense of important accents and identity markers.

Peterson begins the work with a stress on the current situation in the United States (her own context), in particular, the rise of the category of the ‘Nones’, those who do not identify with a form of organised religion but who nevertheless often stress an inclination to be ‘spiritual but not religious’. Interestingly, only one-third of this group reject belief in some kind of deity, which may mean that this category (the ‘Nones’) in this context (the U.S.) marks a further permutation of a kind of American evangelical constant in which experience (in contrast to organised forms of religion) continues to be a marker of a popular spirituality. Peterson believes that this situation suggests that a pneumatological deficit exists, and that a certain kind of pneumatological proposal is needed, one that stresses the Holy Spirit not in abstract or speculative terms, but in personal and relational terms that touch on how people live. For this reason, Peterson focuses her book on not simply the Spirit per se, but the Spirit in the Christian life, particularly at the junctures of justification, sanctification and mission – and these indexed (per the subtitle of the book) to prepositional forms, namely that the Spirit works for, in and through us, respectively.

In order to make this case, Peterson dives deeply into the current pneumatological literature, drawing especially from some of the gestures on offer in Simeon Zahl’s recent work. In particular, Peterson stresses the personhood of the Spirit (as distinguished from the Spirit as an impersonal force) so as to give some specification and concreteness to the amorphous notion of ‘religious experience’. By doing so, she resists some of the unnuanced readings of Luther, who both critiqued enthusiasts of his day and maintained an important place for the transformative experience of God (as evidenced in his ‘tower experience’). This baseline work sets up three subsequent chapters, each devoted to one of the themes from the Christian life noted above. A final chapter on ‘means of grace’ (language that Lutherans use alongside those in Anglican and Methodist traditions) explores sacramentality. Each of these four chapters sets up a conversation with various Lutheran scholars and approaches on one side and Pentecostal/charismatic scholars and approaches on the other (with other voices and figures interspersed throughout).

Of these chapters, the most interesting to this reviewer is the chapter on justification. People typically associate the forensic model of justification with Lutheran sources, and recent proposals in Pentecostal/charismatic circles (in particular, the work of Frank Macchia) would set up a contrast to this model with one focused on transformation. Peterson skilfully wades into the specifics of various proposals to show that more is to be gleaned from the theme of justification, especially when the pneumatological focus is front and centre. For instance, the Lutheran Confessions sometimes stress both declarative and regenerative dimensions of justification when the Spirit is cited as part of that work, and Luther himself stressed in his elaboration on the third article of the Apostles’ Creed a kind of ‘heart’ language that would be at home in Wesleyan settings. However, Peterson acknowledges that these features of the Lutheran tradition are often overlooked, including by such a prominent Lutheran interpreter as Gerhard Forde. It is no wonder, then, how Macchia (among others) could perpetuate this understanding of Lutheranism and set up explicitly contrasting proposals. Peterson aims to qualify these unnuanced presentations, and she focuses on showing how both Lutherans and Pentecostals can learn from one another in light of current proposals. A similar structure is attempted in the other chapters, but this chapter on justification shows her ecumenical design working to its fullest effect.

A lingering question in this text has to do with the factors that go into a tradition denying some of the claims in its own confessional documents. Is the neglect due to interpretive decisions tied to biblical metaphors, methodological constraints accompanying something like systematising/scholasticising within a tradition, or something else? One can imagine this question requiring a research agenda all its own, but it is an important matter in this presentation, since the success of a retrieval seems to be dependent in part on the avoidance of another, subsequent neglect. Furthermore, one senses in the book the possibility and need for further interlocutors at critical points, and for explicit rationales for the ones that were (and were not) included. Overall, this volume is helpful in introducing readers to how one particular doctrinal locus – in this case, pneumatology – can benefit from a specific form of sustained, ecumenical engagement.