The Spirit over the Earth. Группа авторов

The Spirit over the Earth

Christian terms is a nonstarter since the religions invoke neither Christ nor the biblical way of salvation—that is precisely why they are non-Christian traditions; yet defining them in relationship to Christ (as needing to be fulfilled by Christ or as lacking Christ’s saving power, for instance) misrepresents the religious other in defining them negatively, precisely what Christians hope to avoid in terms of their own representation to people of other faiths.

Any pneumatological and trinitarian theology of religions will need to give both a Christological and an ecclesiological account as part of a comprehensive approach. The latter locus related to the church will need to resist triumphalism while also empowering appropriate Christian missional praxis. Toward this end, a pentecostal theology of hospitality, based on the outpouring of the Spirit on all flesh, empowers members of the church to be hosts of those in other faiths amid the presence of the welcoming Father even while enabling them to be guests of religious others just as Christ sojourned in a far country and was received by strangers.^[54] This involves bearing witness from out of Christian commitment even as it discerningly welcomes the gifts of others as potentially enriching and even transforming Christian self-understanding. Such a pneumatological praxis may also have the capacity to reconcile all people—indeed, “everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him” (Acts 2:39b)—to the Father according to the image of the Son even if the trinitarian identity of God is not clearly perceived by those in other faiths not fully or formally initiated into the Christian church.

That the life-giving Spirit also proceeds from the Father thus invites consideration of how the world’s religious traditions, insofar as they are life-giving conduits of goodness and holiness,^[55] are also related to the primordial source of all living creatures. Pentecostal theologian Koo Yun thus pneumatologically reframes the classical doctrine of general revelation in dialogue with East Asian philosophical and religious sources (particularly the classic I Ching).^[56] Distinguishing the formal dimension of the Spirit of God as being present and active in all cultures and even religious traditions from the material aspect of the Spirit of Christ (and the church and its missional arm), Yun suggests what he calls a chialogical pneumatology and theology—following the East Asian cultural, philosophical, and religious concept of chi, which is at least semantically parallel to the Hebrew ruah or the English “wind” or “breath”—whereby the cosmic Spirit is generally revelatory of the divine even in the world religions. Others have forayed in similar directions, albeit seeking not only theological but also sociopolitical cache in observing how points of contact between Christian pneumatology and East Asian notions of chi are suggestive for reconfiguring democratic public spaces that are egalitarian, liberative, and life-giving.^[57] While these efforts remain distinctive on multiple fronts and precipitate new perspectives, insights, and questions—not to mention precipitate questions that heretofore have not yet garnered answers agreed on across the ecumenical spectrum—each seeks to think theologically in conversation with East Asian religious and philosophical sources via a pneumatological bridge and demonstrates the potential for rethinking the procession of the Spirit from the Father in our late modern and pluralistic global context.^[58]

Who with the Father and the Son Together Is Worshiped and Glorified

Yet even if the original Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed did not include the filioque, the following clause leaves no doubt that the Spirit is worshiped and glorified together with—neither more nor less than—the Son. Hence there can be no pneumatomonism (as if focused only on the Spirit) even as there cannot be a Spirit-Father binitarianism that neglects the Spirit or the Spirit’s relationship with the Father and the Son. Any theology of the third article as well as pneumatological theology, then, will have to include both a Spirit Christology and a pneumatologically configured trinitarian theology.^[59]

Classical Spirit Christologies regularly treated pneumatology as an appendix to the person and work of the Son. But what if Christological reflection not only began with but also understood the Spirit as essential to the identity and achievements of the Son?^[60] On the one hand, there is no doubt that the Spirit is understood as the Spirit of Jesus and the Spirit of Christ, and that the Day of Pentecost sending of the Spirit was by the Son from the right hand of the Father (Acts 2:33). On the other hand, the Word is incarnate by the Spirit and Jesus of Nazareth is the anointed Messiah—the Christ—through the empowering Spirit. Further, there is also no recognition of the Son apart from the Spirit (cf. 1 Cor. 12:3), so that authentic acknowledgment of the Son is always and already pneumatically mediated. Last but not least, even any initial confession of the Son awaits both moral and behavioral confirmation, usually related to manifestations of the fruit of the Spirit, and final or eschatological verification (Matt. 7:21–23). For all of these reasons, besides others, any Spirit Christology must proceed at least methodologically as if both hands of the Father were equally definitive. Put alternatively, a Spirit Christology is the flip side of a Christological pneumatology, with both approaches mutually and variously informing each other.^[61]

Finally, for present purposes, if the Spirit is worshiped and glorified together with the Son and the Father, then the Spirit is not only the culmination of the doctrine of the Trinity but also constitutive of trinitarian confession.^[62] If so, then the triune nature of the Christian God is simultaneously patrological, Christological, and pneumatological. Anything less than a fully articulated pneumatology—whatever is possible within present horizons—will be deficiently trinitarian. More weightily, if the Spirit is the eschatological horizon through which all creation is reconciled in the Son to the Father, then there is also a fundamental sense in which “now we see in a mirror, dimly” (1 Cor. 13:12a), not only because of epistemological constraints but because the full glory of the triune God is yet to be revealed, if not achieved. Christian pneumatology thus charts new trajectories for trinitarian theology, and does so, as can be seen through this exploratory essay, by inviting reassessment of Christology, the theology of religions and of interfaith encounter, the theology of creation, and global theology, among other traditional and newly emerging theological loci.^[63]

Interim Conclusion—Who Spoke by the Prophets

The concluding clause to the third article is that the ancient prophets spoke through the Holy Spirit. The question left for consideration is whether the Spirit’s speaking through the prophets was merely a thing of the (ancient Hebrew) past. This specific confession is itself drawn from the apostolic witness (2 Peter 1:21), so it must be assumed at least that the Spirit continued to speak through the followers of Jesus the Messiah, beyond the prophets of ancient Israel. If so, then by extension, in a post-apostolic context, does the Spirit speak similarly and perhaps in an ongoing way through the church? Orthodox Christians urge that there is a sense in which the earliest ecumenical councils were vehicles of the Spirit even as the Roman Catholic magisterium suggests there are limited albeit no less real occasions in which the Spirit has spoken and continues to speak through the ecclesial hierarchy. Contemporary pentecostal and charismatic movements insist on sola scriptura (with the Reformers against Catholic and Orthodox emphases on the tradition of the church) and on the ongoing manifestations of the gifts of the Spirit (here in opposition to dispensationalist theologies which argue that such ceased with the apostolic period). For theology, not just pneumatology, in a global context that engages with Majority World voices and perspectives, one senses that this question will continue to be debated, even if part of an affirmative “answer” to it consists in arguments such as those found in this chapter and book.

The Spirit over the Earth. Группа авторов