Books on the Holy Spirit

Michael Kinch said:

I am studying the work and ministy of the Holy Spirit.  I searched the forums and came across some post on “God's Indwelling Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Old and New Testaments” by James M. Hamilton Jr.  It looks very interesting.  I have a number of books by Charles Stanley as well that I am working through.  My question is, what do you consider to be the best and most thorough book(s) on the subject of the Holy Spirit?  I am interested in both Logos and print books if they are not available in Logos format. 

In Logos, one of the most thorough was written by R.A. Torrey: http://www.logos.com/product/8052/the-person-and-work-of-the-holy-spirit (also in the R.A. Torrey collection)

For a charismatic/3rd wave view that comes out of the Reformed/Presbyterian tradition, I found this book to be fascinating and quite helpful to me personally (following a dramatic experience of the Spirit I didn't have a theology for): http://www.amazon.com/Receiving-Power-Preparing-Holy-Spirit/dp/0800792467

There's a lot more both in Logos format and not of varying quality and helpfulness. Much isn't very helpful, isn't very thorough, or is very tied to one tradition vis a vis all the others. Others can be helpful depending on your own background that the folks whose lives you need to speak into. At the risk of starting a debate, I'll stop there.

Michael Kinch said:

“God's Indwelling Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Old and New Testaments” by James M. Hamilton Jr. 

I have this and was pretty disappointed in it. Here's an excerpt to tell you what to expect:

While the Gospel of John nowhere addresses the question of how Old Testament saints became and remained faithful, the question is implicit in the Gospel itself. If the Spirit is not received until Jesus is exalted (7:39), what did Jesus mean when He told Nicodemus that he must be born of “water and spirit” (3:5)?4 When we examine the biblical material that reflects what comes before and after the events recorded in the Fourth Gospel, this question becomes yet more vivid. The Old Testament does say that some have the Spirit (see e.g., Num 27:18), but it is by no means clear that this is the experience of every member of the old covenant remnant. The New Testament, on the other hand, indicates that the Spirit regenerates and indwells all believers (see Rom 8:9–11).
At the appropriate point in this study I will seek to elucidate the distinctions between regeneration and indwelling seen in John’s Gospel (see chap. six). Based on the conclusions reached there, I will use the word regeneration to refer to God’s work of granting to humans the ability to hear, understand, believe, obey, and enter the kingdom. The New Testament’s metaphor of “new birth” matches the Old Testament’s metaphor of “heart circumcision.” That is, I take circumcision of the heart to be the same experience as regeneration (Rom 2:29; Col 2:11–13). Apart from the enablement God gives in regeneration, men remain slaves of sin (John 8:34) and of the Devil (8:44), or as Paul puts it, dead in trespasses and sins (Eph 2:1; Col 2:13). I will use indwelling, on the other hand, to refer to God’s abiding, positive, covenant presence in believers through the Spirit. This book seeks to understand and articulate the role of the Holy Spirit in the faithfulness of believers who live both before and after the exaltation of Jesus. This exercise in biblical theology will focus largely on the Gospel of John because it has so much to say on this question.5
John’s Gospel, I believe, teaches that the continual indwelling of the Holy Spirit began to take place only after Jesus completed the work that the Father gave Him to do (17:4). When I first began to pursue this question, because of the Bible’s clear teaching on mankind’s sinful state (e.g., Gen 6:5; Jer 17:9; John 8:34; Rom 3:10–18), I was convinced that saving faith requires both regeneration and indwelling by the Holy Spirit. I have concluded, however, that in the absence of a clear affirmation in the Old Testament that the Spirit continually dwelt in the hearts of believers, passages such as John 7:39; 14:17; and 16:7 will not permit us to say that the Holy Spirit dwelt in ordinary members of the old covenant remnant on an individual basis.
What does the Bible say about how the Spirit relates to believers before and after the glorification of Jesus? I believe this question is answered by Jesus’ statement in John 14:17: “He is with you, and he will be in you.”6 Here Jesus encapsulates the Bible’s teaching on God’s dwelling in relation to believers in the old and new covenants. In the old covenant God faithfully remained with His people, accompanying them in a pillar of fire and cloud, then dwelling among them in the tabernacle and the temple. Under the new covenant, the only temple is the believing community itself, and God dwells not only among the community corporately (Matt 18:20; 1 Cor 3:16; 2 Cor 6:16), but also in each member individually (John 14:17; Rom 8:9–11; 1 Cor 6:19). This is the overarching thesis this book seeks to establish.


James M. Hamilton, Jr., God’s Indwelling Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Old & New Testaments (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2006), 2-3.