re-creation or Pentecost, but to acknowledge that any hard and fast bifurcation between the two goes beyond the scriptural witness.[47] Acknowledgment of the continuity, rather than discontinuity, between the Hebraic wind of YHWH and the apostolic Spirit of Jesus reopens old questions and raises new ones about the relationship between the older and newer covenants, testaments, and peoples of God.
Among a number of other tasks, then, a theology of the third article includes a theology of creation. More precisely, what opens up is a pneumatology of creation, even a pneumatology (rather than just theology) of nature itself,[48] since the work of the Spirit rests not only on material bodies but also animates the very dust of the ground if not the stardust of the cosmos. Such a pneumatological and theological vision, however, is not just theoretical, but also potentially practical. The liberative, transformative, and salvific work of the life-giving Spirit in this case is not limited to the practice of spiritual disciplines but also includes the deployment of scientific, political, and socioeconomic rationalities in order to effect change and bring about the common good.[49] Hence, when assessed as the Spirit of life, pneumatology opens up to theology’s interface with the broad scope of the scientific and anthropological disciplines. Theology of life as an inter- and multidisciplinary undertaking is here fundamentally pneumatological.[50]
Who Proceeds from the Father
It is well known that the addition of the filioque clause (the Spirit proceeds not only from the Father but also from the Son)[51] by the Roman Church has been a perennial source of dogmatic division between East and West. While there are many implications that follow from retention, or not, of the filioque, for our purposes one important question for pneumatology in the global context relates to how to understand the economies of the Son and the Spirit in relationship to the religious traditions of the world. On one reading, assertion of the filioque subordinates the economy of the Spirit to that of the Son and, concomitantly, defines the soteriological work of the triune God ecclesiologically (the church being the body of Christ); in this case, then, any consideration of the religions would either be ecclesiological (subsuming the diversity of religions within the sphere of the church), or without theological warrant altogether. An alternative approach, apart from the filioque, insists on the economies of Son and Spirit as related and yet distinct, as the two hands of the Father, to use Irenaeus’s metaphor; following this line of thought, if the religions were to be understood in relationship to this pneumatological economy, then their domain would be related to but yet also distinct from that of the church, defined Christologically.[52] The need to attend to the world religions on their own terms, not just understand them according to Christological or even ecclesiological categories, is what motivates this proposal. Simultaneously, application of the Irenaean metaphor of the two hands of the Father to the theology of religions not only risks bifurcation of the economies of the Son and the Spirit but also, from an Orthodox perspective, fails to secure the interconnections between (a pneumatologically rich) trinitarian theology and ecclesiology.[53] The problem, of course, is that to ask about whether the religions are salvific in 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,
