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      Chapter 1

      I Believe in the Holy Spirit: From the Ends of the Earth to the Ends of Time^[9]

      Amos Yong

      Abstract

      The first section of this chapter provides an overview of the broad spectrum of the Christian tradition and highlights the diversity of its pneumatological thinking, especially in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, Majority World theologies of the past century, and modern pentecostal-charismatic movements. Building on such foundations, the second section of the chapter revisits the third article of the Nicene Creed and suggests how such global perspectives can enrich contemporary pneumatological resourcement even as the latter might be disciplined in light of historic Christian commitments.

      The doctrine of the Holy Spirit—pneumatology—is experiencing a contemporary renaissance that promises to correct its relative neglect by the classical tradition.^[10] Yet the claim that the Spirit historically has been the “shy” or “hidden” member of the Trinity^[11] tells us only half the story when assessed in a world Christian context. This chapter revisits the broad spectrum of the Christian tradition and highlights the diversity of its pneumatological thinking, especially in the past century. Such pneumatological pluralism reflects both the many ways in which the divine breath^[1] encounters people across space and time and the various modalities through which understanding of such occurs. Contemporary “third article theology”—which refers to the theology of the Spirit (pneumatology) and theology informed by a Spirit-oriented approach (pneumatological theology)^[2]—retrieves and elaborates on the third article of the creed both by being anchored in the revelation of God in Christ and by being open to wherever and however the wind of God blows.

      This chapter begins descriptively with an overview of pneumatology in a global historical context, and then shifts toward a constructive theology of the Spirit that is simultaneously a theology inspired by the Spirit (pneumatological theology). As a pentecostal theologian,^[3] I find inspiration from the New Testament book of Acts, especially in a number of phrases in the early chapters. The narration of Luke, the author, about Peter’s Day of Pentecost sermon—quoting from the prophet Joel: “God declares, . . . I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh” (2:17)^[4]—invites consideration of the global character of Christian pneumatological reflection, especially non-Western voices and perspectives. Even before this, Luke records Jesus telling the disciples that they will receive the empowerment of the Spirit to be his witnesses “to the ends of the earth” (1:8b). The Greek in this case, eschatou tēs gēs, refers not only to the spatial breadth of the earth but more technically to its temporal ends as well, the ends of the times of the earth, in fact.^[5] Both aspects of the Spirit’s outpouring—the spatial and the temporal—are reiterated at the end of Peter’s Day of Pentecost homily where the gift of the Spirit is promised “for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him” (2:39b).^[6] So if the first part of this chapter attempts to document the breadth of pneumatological reflection “upon all flesh,” the second section seeks to think creatively with the historical and dynamic deposit of faith, particularly with the Nicene confession about the Spirit, in ways appropriate to the third-millennium global context and beyond.

      Poured Out on All Flesh: Pneumatology in Global Historical Perspective

      This initial mapping proceeds along three lines. I begin with Eastern Christian understandings of the Spirit in order to ensure that this important historic stream is not neglected in any constructive pneumatology for the present time, move on to more recent Majority World perspectives, and conclude with developments in pentecostal-charismatic and renewal theology. Throughout I highlight minority reports on theology of the Spirit in order to gain traction and momentum vis-à-vis the dominant Western pneumatological tradition for when we turn to the second part of this chapter.

      Eastern Christian Pneumatology

      There is no doubt that the achievement of a fully trinitarian orthodoxy, one that speaks not just to the Son’s relationship with the Father but also includes the Spirit, would not have been secured apart from the efforts of theologians in the Eastern, or Greek-speaking, church in the fourth century. The Cappadocian fathers—Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus—each played crucial roles in arguing against those who did not believe the Spirit to be divine as the Son and the Father.^[7] Against these so-called Spirit-fighters (Greek pneumatomachians) from the region of Macedonia,^[8] these champions of trinitarian faith followed out the theological logic of the church’s hallowed practices of baptism into the triune name and of prayer and worship offered to the Spirit, and insisted that such liturgical commitments sustained over centuries would be invalid apart from the implicit recognition of the Spirit’s divine essence and character. Their efforts not only secured creedal elaboration on the deity of the Spirit (at the Council of Constantinople in 381) but also have profoundly impacted the main lines of Christian pneumatological reflection even in the Western tradition.

      For our purposes, however, it would be a mistake to overlook the distinctive features of early Syriac pneumatology given their shaping of Cappadocian thinking about the Spirit. Second- and third-century Syriac sources clearly delineate the role of the Spirit in the process of Christian initiation.^[9] The Spirit is invoked in the pre-baptismal anointing of new catechumens, is present to generate faith and active in healing, cleansing, and purifying them through their new birth of baptism in water, and enables their reception of the Messiah in their first Eucharist, thus accompanying their initiation from death to eternal life. While numerous biblical symbols for the Spirit are prevalent in these sources (e.g., the Spirit as fire, dove, or oil), it is the regenerative work of the Spirit that is prominent: to indwell believers, to catalyze new birth and sonship, to sanctify and bring about union with God. For these early Syriac pastors and leaders, then, this life-giving Spirit stimulated symbolic reflection about a divine motherhood that nurtured, refreshed, and purified human creatures in order that they might participate in the divine nature.^[10]

      The Eastern emphasis on salvation as union with God and deification has given rise to a distinctive spiritual tradition across the Orthodox world. In this framework the life-giving work of the Spirit includes first and foremost the sanctifying formation of saints, and Pentecost becomes a symbol, then, of a community devoted to the spiritual path of disciplined ascent to the divine presence from the mundane and fallen world of creaturely passions.^[11] Yet this tradition of contemplative praxis has also, when explicated with certain intellectual resources informed by philosophical idealism and even gnosticism, opened up to controversial theological developments. The pneumatology of Russian Orthodox thinker Sergei Bulgakov (1871–1944), for instance, set against the backdrop of his Christian divine-humanity and Neoplatonic sophiology (philosophy of divine wisdom), led to charges of heresy that, although eventually formally absolved, marked his views as at least disconcerting, if not flawed and aberrant.^[12] Yet some of Bulgakov’s central notions, such as the kenosis of Spirit in creation and the Spirit’s gift of love being made available as a continuing Pentecost, resonate with important pneumatological themes both East and West, even as they are both consistent with and arguably intrinsic to Orthodox sensibilities and spiritual life. If Orthodox theologians have by and large prided themselves on retrieving the patristic tradition rather than reconstructing what has been received and handed down from the ecumenical church of the first millennium, Bulgakov is exemplary of those within this Eastern Christian milieu that have attempted to creatively reappropriate inherited resources according to the pneumatological dynamic of a continuing Pentecost.

      Nevertheless, Orthodox pneumatology remains largely scriptural in foundation, liturgical in orientation, and poetic in expression. Contemporary Orthodox pneumatologies generally draw from the patristic heritage and attempt biblical articulation in ecumenically relevant categories.^[13] Over time, then, the main lines of Orthodox thinking about the Spirit have permeated Latin traditions and contemporary Western theologies so much so that it almost goes without saying that efforts to formulate

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