ABSTRACT
A robust Spirit Christology must display the distinct identities and shared mission of the Son and Holy Spirit, especially as the Spirit perfects Jesus’ humanity and opens his life for our participation. Such a pneumatological Christology seems largely absent in Matthew’s Gospel, especially in his Lord’s Prayer text. Yet interpretations by Augustine and Gregory of Nyssa invite a rereading of the Lord’s Prayer as Spirit Christology. This article correlates Matthew’s unique Lord’s Prayer material with five Matthean co-texts to argue that Jesus is the Father’s Son who humanly prays and lives this prayer in the Spirit, thereby opening it for our participation. The Spirit makes Jesus’ baptism an embodied prayer for the heaven opening arrival of God’s kingdom; the Spirit joins heaven to earth to make Jesus the Father’s New Temple; the Spirit conforms Jesus’ human will to triune will when Jesus hungers in the desert and agonizes in Gethsemane; and the Spirit delivers Jesus, and through him us as well, from evil.
