Caso 2. El elemento directamente afectado por el cambo puede estar en muchas vistas de
7.3 Estimación del Impacto y Propagación del Cambio
This subsection entails a brief survey of five modern theological positions related to the action of the Spirit in relation to the human spirit. First, liberal theology is surveyed as the tradition in which theologians articulated the notion that the Spirit as immanently acting in history. Second, Neo-Orthodox theology is surveyed as the tradition in which theologians considered the Spirit as “acting in being”. Third, the perspectives of Wolfhart Pannenberg and Karl Rahner are documented, who saw the Spirit as working in human nature. Fourth, the perspective Jürgen
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Moltmann is documented, who saw the Spirit as at work through immanent transcendence.87 Finally, the perspective of Michael Welker is documented, who sees the Spirit as selflessly at work in the selflessness of humanity.
4.7.3.1 Liberal Theology: The Spirit Immanently Acting in History
Liberal theologians of the nineteenth century were dissatisfied with the radical disunity between the divine and human spirit. Theological liberalism dealt with pneumatological themes primarily concerned with direct human experience of the Spirit (Badcock 1997:112). The inaugurator of liberal theology, Frederick Schliermacher (1768-1834 CE) considered the Holy Spirit the “divine essence” with human nature in the form of the common Spirit that exists among Christians (Schleiermacher 1999: §123). Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889 CE) emphasized the work of the Spirit in and over the person of the Spirit. For Ritschl, the only meaningful way to speak of the Spirit was in regard to the Spirit’s work in history (according to Badcock 1997:116-117). Not unlike Hegel’s dialectical understanding of history, liberal theologians viewed the Spirit as a force at in the world, but attempted to reconcile their view with the prevailing rationalism of their time.
The German term for Spirit, Geist, communicates a unity of both spirit and mind in a more comprehensive way than its English equivalent; this was especially true in early Hegelian conceptions of spirit as “life” (Hilberath 1994:523). In so doing, Hegel blurred the line between “Spirit” and “spirit”. In the Hegelian vision, the final goal of all human history is the reciprocation of the knowledge of God to humanity by the Spirit; that is, the process of humanity knowing God in the same way God knows Godself. In Christ, the universal goal of divine-human unity was realized and actualized in a particular historical individual (Grenz & Olsen:37).
87 It should be noted that Moltmann’s position is not altogether unique, as the church has struggled with the tension between immanence and transcendence for millennia.
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4.7.3.2 Neo-Orthodox Theology: The Spirit Acting in Being88
For Paul Tillich (1963), the Spirit of God may be regarded as the life-giving principle that makes human life and the life of the entire creation meaningful and distinct (Tillich 1963:294). Similarly, Karl Barth (1969) affirms that the work of the Spirit was “the divine preparation of man for the Christian life in its totality” (Barth 1969:31). The notion of the Spirit as the essence of Christian life, or in Tillich’s understanding, the “ground of being” itself, was a contribution by neo- orthodox theologians to pneumatological ideas of the divine-human relationship. If the Spirit is the source of life, or as Barth states, the divine preparation for Christian life, then the human spirit is by its very nature dependent on the divine Spirit.89
4.7.3.3 Pannenberg and Rahner: The Spirit Working in Human Nature
Wolfhart Pannenberg (1991) notes two historical approaches have been taken concerning the essence of God. The patristic fathers maintained the idea of God as wholly “other” to combat the idea of a physical pneuma which the Stoics saw as “supreme reason”. In high scholasticism, the idea of “God as reason” was complemented with the idea of “God as will”, both of which Pannenberg criticized as inadequate (Pannenberg 1991:370-378). For Pannenberg, the essence of God consists of both immanence and transcendence; as the Spirit transcends the world the Spirit is simultaneously the immanent life of the world. In so doing, Pannenberg sees the Spirit was the force90 that elevates creatures from their environment and orients them toward the future (Pannenberg 1991:118-123). The
88 While this section is admittedly short, a brief mention of Tillich and Barth is, I believe, worthwhile in light of the pneumatological discussion in this chapter.
89 I recognize that this subsection is short and somewhat awkward, however, I believe the contribution of the neo-orthodox theologians to pneumatology is worth mentioning.
90 According to Pannenberg, the Spirit may be understood as the environmental network or, “force field” in which and from which creatures live. The Spirit is also the “force” that lifts them above their environment and orients them toward the future. This work of the Spirit ultimately leads to self-transcendence and forms the basis for the special life in Christ (Grenz 2001:52-54).
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Spirit, Pannenberg believes, is the agent who makes possible the immediacy of Christ to all believers (Pannenberg 1991:102). This is Pannenberg’s ecclesiological principle: the idea that the Spirit releases and reconciles the tension between the individual and the church and thus also releases tension between social influence and individual freedom.
Karl Rahner (1975:122-132) agrees with Pannenberg that God is an intrinsic aspect of human nature that functions as the necessary condition for human subjectivity; God is not alien to human nature. For Rahner, “God actually communicates [Godself] to every human person” by grace so that the presence of God becomes an “existential, a constitutive element, in every person’s humanity”.91 Further, Rahner affirms that God has already communicated Godself in the Holy Spirit “always and everywhere and to every person as the innermost center” of human existence (Rahner 1978:139). Since God is regarded as “central to human nature” for Rahner, when humanity expresses personal love for one another, it is an “all embracing act… which gives meaning, direction, and measure to everything else” (Rahner 1969:241).
More so than the neo-orthodox theologians, Pannenberg and Rahner united the divine Spirit with the human spirit in an existential way. Dependence on the divine Spirit was not seen by Pannenberg and Rahner as a perception of human experience,92 but as an aspect of human nature itself. Therefore, concursus in this sense was seen not as an encounter that occurs spontaneously or on certain occasions, but always and at once. The divine-human relationship functions in every human person by virtue of the very nature of their existence.
4.7.3.4 Moltmann: The Spirit at Work through Immanent Transcendence
Jürgen Moltmann (1992) notices the Augustinian influence on Western
91 See also Grenz & Olson (1992).
92 This notion would be similar to Schleiermacher’s idea of the human feeling of complete dependence.
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pneumatology and lamented the situation where both Protestant and Catholic theology have confined the Spirit to the work of redemption and thereby suppressed the Spirit from bodily, everyday life. Moltmann affirms the cosmic dimension of the activity of the Spirit in everyday life and asserts that concurrence with God should “carry experiences of the world into the experience of God. Reverence for life is absorbed into reverence for God and veneration of nature becomes part of the adoration of God. We sense that in everything God is waiting for us” (Moltmann 1992:8). Moltmann sets this argument in classical terms: the Spiritus sanctificans had been severed from the Spiritus vivificans. Moltmann states that “experience of the life-giving Spirit in faith and in the sociality of love leads itself beyond the limits of the church to the rediscovery of the same Spirit in nature, in plants, in animals, and in the ecosystems of the earth” (Moltmann 1992:9-10). Further, the experience of the universal Spirit of life, to which Moltmann calls for cooperation, encompasses everything from sexuality to politics (Moltmann 1992:225-226).
Moltmann believes that the church participates in the life of the Spirit (Moltmann 1993:33). In Moltmann’s relational ecclesiology, the church exists in relation to God and the world; everything, including God, exists only in relationships (Moltmann 1992:289-290). Moltmann concludes that individuals in the church, in relation with one another and in relation with God, serves God and the world simultaneously. Moltmann viewed the relationship between the Spirit and the world as mutual; that is, divine activity and human experience are not mutually exclusive, they are mutually dependant aspects of reality (Moltmann 1992:5-7). For Moltmann, the relation between divine and human activity is to be found in “God’s immanence in human experience and in the transcendence of human beings in God”. Not unlike Rahner, the presence of the Spirit transcendently aligns the human spirit with God (Moltmann 1992:7). Moltmann calls this view “immanent transcendence”, the idea that “every lived moment can be lived in the inconceivable closeness of God in the Spirit” (Moltmann 1992:35).
For Moltmann, the human spirit participates in the Spirit by acting for itself, even in the most mundane of human activities. Moltmann believes that in the activity of
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the church, concursus occurs, primarily because it is through the church, invigorated by the Spirit, that God interacts with the world. Moltmann’s notion of immanent transcendence was quite different from earlier notions of the Spirit’s action wherein the Spirit transcends the human Spirit for empowerment or illumination. Therefore, according to Moltmann, the Spirit of God is always immanent in human experience and it is the human spirit that transcends the divine Spirit.
4.7.3.5 Welker: The Spirit at Work in Selflessness
In a manner similar to Pannenberg and Moltmann, Michael Welker (2004) argues for a pneumatology in contrast with the “pneumatologies of beyond”, favoring an emphasis on the Spirit acting “in, on, and through fleshly, perishable, earthly life, and precisely in this way wills to attest to God’s glory and to reveal the forces of eternal life” (Welker 2004: xii). Welker (2004) defines the activity of the Spirit as a “domain of resonance”93 that develops the relation between God and humanity in the same manner of the development of human persons through diverse relationships only partially dependent on individual activity. In other words, human beings are developed passively by society in as much as they are developed actively by the individual. In the same way, the Spirit gives life to human creatures in as much as they give life to themselves (Welker 1994:314). Welker challenges the Western notion of self-determined individuation insofar as it promotes the Aristotelian notion of humans (and anthropomorphically the Spirit in turn) as “self-referential, outside the world and yet related to it, comprehending everything and thus perfect, controlling everything and at the same time at one with self”.94 The Spirit, for Welker, is contrary to self-creative self-sufficiency; the Spirit, according to Welker, is the essence of a self-giving, self-withdrawn, selflessness (Welker 1994:280). The Spirit’s work, Welker concludes, is that of
93 A term adopted from Niklas Lühmann.
94 Aristotle’s views can be found in Metaphysics XII 7.
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turning the attention of humankind away from oneself and onto others (Welker 1994:284).
For Welker, the Spirit is seen as giving of Godself to humanity. The divine Spirit not only empowers the human spirit, but the Spirit selflessly gives life and power to human beings in measure to how much they give selflessly to other human beings. In Welker’s view, concursus is the divine will concurring with the human will toward selflessness; when such concurrence occurs, the creature is oriented toward the reality of eternal life and thus, the reality of God at work in the world.
4.7.4 Summary
Pneumatological perspectives have varied greatly throughout history. At the consultation of Geneva in 1980 the World Council of Churches defined three major orientations of the work of the Spirit in the world: first, the ecclesial approach, whereby the Spirit works for unity of all churches, second, the cosmological approach, whereby the Spirit renews creation and bestows the fullness of life, third, the sacramental approach, whereby the Spirit is mediated through personal religious experience, faith, ritual, and formation (Kärkkäinen 2002:162-163). Clearly, in this survey, all three aspects of the Spirit’s work are identified in various forms. However, the most difficult notion of the Spirit is not what the Spirit does, but how the Spirit does it; thus, the notion of concursus and the interaction of the divine Spirit and the human spirit varied greatly among different traditions and theological perspectives.
From the earliest understanding of the Spirit at work in the biblical accounts to the divisions of Eastern and Western thought, the definition of the Spirit’s was anything but congruent. However, as the understanding of the divine Spirit’s relation to the human spirit developed, a clear shift away from complete transcendence to immanence and interdependence has been identified. Theologians have struggled to relate the Spirit to the temporal world. It was assumed that God must be “pure spirit” as the antithesis of “mutability, multiplicity, and temporality” of the physical world (Kärkkäinen 2002:152). The theological struggle in pneumatology thus became a struggle to meaningfully
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speak of the Spirit as literally present in the world. While Pannenberg, Moltmann, and Welker all understand the nature of the divine-human relationship differently, especially in contrast with earlier conceptions of pneumatology, their work contributes to a broad understanding of concursus, and serves as basis for subsequent chapters where concursus, in light of pneumatology and operational theology in the Pentecostal-Charismatic and Process-Relational traditions, is critically compared.
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