Pneumatology: A Guide for the Perplexed

Daniel Castelo

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780567006806
• eBook ISBN: 9780567659705
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

This guide aims to elaborate and constructively engage some of the ongoing dogmatic challenges within the field of Christian pneumatology. Rather than a strict survey, the book largely represents a collection of working proposals on a number of relevant themes, including cosmology, mediation, the nature and role of Spirit-baptism, and discernment. For those who have found pneumatology frustrating and confusing, the book can serve as an aid to clarify some of the most crucial matters at stake in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and in turn provide some ways forward amidst the morass of possibilities available.

1

Facing the wind

Challenges and expectations within pneumatology

“Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away,

for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you;

but if I go, I will send [this One] to you”

JOHN 16:7

One of the most perplexing moments within the biblical testimony is when Jesus tells his disciples on the evening of his betrayal that they will actually benefit from his absence. Earlier in this section of John’s Gospel (a section sometimes labeled the “Farewell Discourses,” Chapters 14–17), Jesus made the link explicit between “another Advocate” and “the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees [this One] nor knows [this One],” but, according to Jesus, the disciples know this One because this One abides with them, and this One will be in them (John 14:16–18). Later in Chapter 14, Jesus makes much of the same gesture: “I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you” (14:25–26; see also 15:26). When discussions of these passages ensue, often they take as their focus the many meanings that can be rendered from the word “Advocate” or paraklētos (sometimes transliterated as “Paraclete” in English); these possibilities include “representative,” “counselor,” and “comforter.” These exegetical forays, however, do not reckon with the startling claim made by Jesus himself that the disciples would be at an advantage by his leaving. Would the contrasting corollary also hold, namely that the disciples would have been disadvantaged had Jesus remained with them? More to the point: What is the logic at work in this reasoning? What particular advantage does the Holy Spirit provide the disciples, one that apparently is unique to the Spirit?

Challenges of pneumatology

Before moving to speculate what these advantages could be, we should consider what sometimes people hold as the opposite view (at least implicitly), namely that the departure of Jesus and the coming of the Spirit are actually disadvantageous for believers. This view is often held because people generally find the study of Christ (Christology) much more helpful and available than the study of the Spirit (pneumatology). The mood is pithily captured by Eugene Rogers: Many Christians often think that “there’s nothing the Spirit can do that the Son can’t do better.”¹ And people may hold this view because of the assumption, held by no less of a theologian than Wolfhart Pannenberg, that “there is almost no other subject in modern theology so difficult to deal with as the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is.”² The perceived accessibility of Christology and the dumbfounding qualities associated with pneumatology make for a scenario where one will be privileged over the other. What might be some of the underlying factors for this current state of affairs, and when rigorously probed, are they ultimately compelling?

Take for instance the most obvious reason why many people think Christology to be superior to pneumatology: Jesus was a living human being. Since we are humans, we tend to think that a natural bond exists between Jesus and us on the basis of our shared humanity. When the Bible speaks of Jesus sleeping, eating, walking, weeping, and so on, we can relate to those activities; he was a human with flesh and bones, just like we are. By way of contrast, Spirit-talk³ is nebulous and difficult to pin down, and it is unclear how to make a connection between God’s Spirit and us. Part of the difficulty, no doubt, relates to anthropological concerns. The following illustrates the challenge: Do humans have a spirit and/or a soul, or are they simply bodies and minds? In addition to anthropological questions, the broader category itself is unclear: The word “spirit” could mean any number of things, not just in terms of our own context but within the biblical world as well. In the Old Testament (OT), the word ruach can refer to breath, wind, entities that can in turn be morally evaluated (e.g. “evil spirits”) pertaining to a “spiritual world,” and internal aspects of both creatures (for instance, “the spirit of Elijah”) and God’s very self (“the Spirit of the LORD”).⁴ Additionally, the relevant word in Greek, pneuma, carries with it similar levels of indeterminate multiplicity: wind, human dispositions, a distinctive feature of God’s identity and life—these are all possible renderings from the New Testament (NT) usage of pneuma. Therefore, pneuma is a fitting choice in the Septuagint to render the Hebrew word ruach; both words are similarly vague and open to multiple referents.

This form of indeterminacy surrounding such speech is difficult for Westerners to accommodate. One reason for this difficulty is the shape of Western intellectual history as it has been experienced in the contemporary era, for that tradition has experienced a sustained period of demythologization in which true knowledge is limited to a naturalized, empirical, material world. For many today, especially those in the Transatlantic North, a “spiritual world” is simply a construct of prior, unenlightened peoples who ordered their lives on superstition and folklore. Talk of spirits alongside angels, demons, and the devil is simply a remnant of a bygone worldview, one that was necessarily superseded by a vision of reality that was deemed more consistent, reliable, testable, and generalizable. Although this tradition and its contemporary accoutrements are different from others across the globe (especially in regions collectively denominated as the “Global South”), for English-speaking domains, it almost goes without saying: A spirit-world is close to—if not altogether—an intellectual impossibility.

These circumstances create exceptional challenges for translators who are tasked with rendering very ancient literature and materials in ways that can be accessed by contemporary readers. Particularly within the domain of Spirit-talk and broadly in terms of allusions to spiritual realities, English translators of the Bible have often shown quite a bit of variety in the way they have gone about their work. Even in some cases, the typical reader would not know that the original term in question would be ruach or pneuma given translational prerogative.⁵ Some cases where exceptional latitude has been exercised may be more understandable than others, but again, translators—at least on first blush—should be given some leeway in light of their formidable task of communicating in English what is so unwieldy for many contemporary hearers to appreciate both linguistically and conceptually.

Two particularly difficult aspects of translational work related to Spirit-talk that are significant for theological construction are capitalization and articular demarcation. For those who may not know, capitalization is a strict translational decision made in light of the biblical materials since the biblical manuscripts used to render modern-day translations do not exhibit decisions for or against capitalization. As for articular definition, there are cases in biblical Spirit-talk in which the explicit use of definite articles is available; in other cases, however, the definite article is not present but nevertheless possibly implied. On both counts, then, translators are left with some difficult choices, and the decisions they do make have a number of implications—including theological ones—whether they consciously and intentionally recognize them or not.

Christians have typically wanted to capitalize and offer articular definition when the referent of ruach or pneuma is judged to be the Holy Spirit, that is, God’s Spirit. One suspects Christians have engaged in such activities not simply out of pious reverence but also in light of the way they came to formulate their doctrine of God, which they gradually took to mean as involving God’s Spirit within God’s self-presentation as a unity-in-distinction.⁶ Pneumatology, then, has usually been understood as a field that has to do with the identity and work of God’s Spirit as Christians have come to understand such themes. Broadly, this approach will also be the one assumed in the present book, and that is why Spirit-references will typically be capitalized since generally they will be understood (unless specifically stated) to pertain to the Spirit of God. To repeat the point, pneumatology in this book is understood as a sub-area within the doctrine of God.

This kind of specification, however, need not take away from the recognition that the terms ruach and pneuma have a wide range of application in the Bible and that their referents are sometimes unclear. This last point is especially the case in which the interface between God’s Spirit and a “human spirit” is involved.⁷ Given certain people’s commitments, the realm of pneumatology would involve all the cases in which ruach and pneuma present themselves, and with such a strategy, these scholars would wish to make a strong (perhaps even conflationary) link between the divine and human spirit.⁸ After all, some passages simply lend themselves to multiple readings because of their inherent ambiguity.

In response to this expansive strategy towards pneumatology, let me say the following. No doubt, given the challenges involved, translators and interpreters bring much of themselves to the process of rendering judgments regarding how best to relate the many instances of ruach and pneuma. These factors not only involve textual but also worldview-related (and so theological) concerns. For this reason, these judgments and renderings should be tested and probed by any serious student of pneumatology and so not taken simply at face value as they are presented in any particular translation of the Bible. Furthermore, the background commitments at play for translator and reader alike should be identified to the degree possible, which is oftentimes quite difficult since these are rarely brought to the fore for evaluation and negotiation. In the case of this volume, the doctrine of creation—as a mechanism for preserving a dialectical relationship between the Spirit’s nearness and vastness—proves crucial, and its range of significance will be pursued in a subsequent chapter.

For the sake of clarity, let me say here: I find the biblical materials to suggest an array of distinctions between God’s Spirit and other spirit-phenomena (human spirits, evil spirits, the wind, and so on), even if the same terms are used to denominate all of them. As appropriate as some scholars have been in pushing against the tendency to offer rushed delineations in such cases, I believe the point still stands that there is a distinction to be maintained particularly along the lines of the Creator-creation interface. That the same words (ruach and pneuma) can be appropriated in such varied ways need not mean that they are referring to the same thing. The analogous nature of God-talk presents itself once more as it does in all cases in which the same terms are used in service of describing the Creator and the creation. God’s Spirit and a human spirit are not necessarily unrelated matters (univocity), but given the agents involved, it is worth noting also that they are markedly different (equivocity).

The challenges of pneumatology continue not only at the level of language and translation but also in terms of relationality. Typically, Christians feel more at ease in relating to Jesus than they do to the Spirit. Why? Jesus was a personal entity. He had a name, personality, and heritage. He was a son, teacher, carpenter, and friend. We can relate to Jesus on the basis of such demarcations and characteristics since these are part of the human experience that frames everything we are and know. In contrast, how does one relate to God’s Spirit? Can one address or speak to the Spirit? Broadly, should God’s Spirit be thought of in personal terms?⁹ These and many other questions are difficult for contemporary Christians to pursue because of their epistemic frameworks, but interestingly, Spirit-talk has always had a degree of relational difficulty associated with it. As it will be noted below, concerted formulation of Christian pneumatology within the church took place after quite a bit of efforts were pursued in Christology. Additionally, there were various stages of pneumatological development, and these emerged from and interacted with both Jewish formulations as well as a number of eventually deemed heretical sensibilities and movements. All of this to say that the early church struggled with precisely this line of inquiry for centuries, and it did so with very good reason. When some refer to the Spirit as the “shy member of the Trinity,” part of the warrant for such a description relies on difficulties in categorizing the Holy Spirit in personal terms.

The language of John’s gospel (which will serve as a guiding refrain in this book) as well as many instances elsewhere in the NT and across Christian tradition would suggest that the Holy Spirit is an entity who is distinctly identifiable and who engages in specific activities, including relating to, guiding, and reminding Christ’s disciples. In other words, on this account the Spirit appears to be hypostatically personal. Part of the rationale for this judgment is that Jesus spoke of the Spirit as “another Paraclete,” which by implication suggests that the Spirit is an entity similar to Christ, the forerunning paraklētos. On the basis of this understanding, the matter would seem to be settled—the Spirit is personal like Jesus. And yet, Scripture complicates this uniform presentation.

For instance, the Spirit is also portrayed in Scripture as a power or presence that comes upon or is mediated via some other agent. As illustrative of this possibility, consider the following: A typical biblical pattern is that God’s Spirit comes, rests, rushes upon, or fills a person, and that person goes on to speak or act in distinct ways. Jesus himself spoke of the Spirit as being in the disciples, a claim suggesting that the work of the Spirit would be through them—that is mediated via their speech and activity. Put another way, one can hear and read the words of Jesus in the gospels,¹⁰ but where are the Spirit’s voice and words to be found apart from the voice and words of others? The thrust of these questions points toward the recognition that the Spirit works in and through creaturely contingencies and means.¹¹ Of course, Jesus’ voice and words are mediated through the gospel writers, but this kind of mediation is on the basis of what they had heard, seen, and touched concerning the word of life in the flesh (cf. 1 John 1). The mediation involved with the Spirit is of a different order. In this case, Christ’s disciples necessarily experience the Spirit differently, not in terms of the “Spirit’s flesh” per se but through others’ bodies, through the sacramental activities of faith communities—in short through a larger dynamic involving the Spirit’s manifold self-presentation and work within the community of the faithful, that is the church.

With this kind of fluidity at play, the historical and contextual boundaries and restraints are less pronounced. As a result, questions present themselves, particularly of an epistemological variety so that one genuinely wonders how one can know the Spirit’s presence and work. Despite these formidable challenges, Christians were bold enough to speak of the Spirit in personal ways because of certain prompts in Scripture and also because o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• 1  Facing the wind: Challenges and expectations within pneumatology
• 2  The shape of Spirit-talk: Biblical tags, patterns, and themes
• 3  The testimony of the Spirit: Pneumatology in the first centuries
• 4  Spirit and life: Creation and cosmology
• 5  In the Spirit: Mediation and the economy of sanctification
• 6  Receiving the Spirit: Spirit-Baptism and subsequence
• 7  Guided by the Spirit: Discernment
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright