The Spirit in creation

2014 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
David T. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
External Action ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Discrete Elements ◽  
Second Person ◽  
The World ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
The Creation

AbstractThe result of the Arian controversy was the affirmation of the total equality of the trinitarian persons. This led to the realisation that all three persons of the Trinity are involved in every external action of God. Despite this, the role of the Holy Spirit in creation has not been clear, partly due to few specific references in the creation narratives. However, it may be suggested that the Spirit does not act in the creation of matter, which is the role of the second person, but in the provision of the underlying form and order necessary for very existence, and specifically for the dynamic interaction which is of the essence of life, as in the second account of the creation of the man (Gen 2). This reflects the fact that the action of the Spirit is also essential in salvation to link Christ's work on the cross to the believer. While separation is a feature of the Genesis creation narrative, this is balanced by the interrelating of what had been created.So, although Christian theology has commonly seen the world as ‘spirit’-less, restricting the action of the Holy Spirit to the church, this would be understood as referring to the limitation of his direct action. His immanent presence is nevertheless essential in all for very existence. The Spirit is not in the world, but underlies it.Creation may be seen as a theistic act, by transcendent intervention to give matter, and giving interaction in immanent presence. The nature of the world therefore reflects the theistic nature of God, involving both distinction and relating. Indeed it then reflects the trinitarian nature of the creator, in which the persons maintain their absolute distinction at the same time as their total equality through the interaction of perichōrēsis, specifically enabled by the action of the Spirit as generating and undergirding relationship. The parallel between the created and the creator is seen especially insofar as the discrete elements of matter interrelate to give form and interaction.It is in their interaction that the elements of creation fulfil their purpose, and so specifically that humanity reflects its nature as created in imago Dei.

Experiencing the Spirit

2020 ◽  
pp. 48-79
Author(s):  
Simeon Zahl
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Systematic Theology ◽  
Emotional Impact ◽  
Temporal Specificity ◽  
The World ◽  
The Holy Spirit

This chapter argues that a constructive recovery of the category of “experience” in Christian theology is best accomplished through the lens of the theology of the Holy Spirit. Thinking about experience in terms of the work of the Holy Spirit helps specify what we mean when we talk about Christian “experience,” while also avoiding the problems that arise in appeals to more general concepts of “religious experience.” The chapter shows how a pneumatologically informed theology of experience draws attention to a problematic tendency towards abstraction and disembodiment in much modern systematic theology. It then argues that the work of the Spirit is likely to take forms that are “practically recognizable” in the lives of Christians in the world, exhibiting temporal specificity as well as affective and emotional impact, and that pneumatologies that cannot take account of such practically recognizable effects are deficient.

"The Whole Earth My Altar": A Sacramental Trajectory for Ecological Mission « La terre tout entière est mon autel » : trajectoire sacramentelle pour une mission écologique "Die ganze Welt ist mein Altar": Eine sakramentale Wegbeschreibung für eine ökologische Mission "La tierra entera es mi altar": Una trayectoria sacramental para una misión ecológica

2008 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-72
Author(s):  
Philip Knights
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Christian Mission ◽  
The World ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
The Face ◽  
Pierre Teilhard De Chardin ◽  
Sacramental Vision ◽  
Ecological Action

AbstractThis paper proposes a sacramental vision of the world as both an expression of and an impetus for Christian mission in the face of the current ecological crisis. This is an outworking of Panentheist turns in recent theology and spirituality, although there is much variety in forms of Panetheism and also such emphases have a long Christian history. The paper examines a particular form of sacramental Panentheism as found in two pieces of writing by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: e Priest and e Mass on the World. In both of these Teilhard de Chardin considers the world around him through the lens of the pattern of the eucharistic liturgy and the role of the priest. The world is offered; the Holy Spirit is invoked; and divine transformation is celebrated. These almost poetic meditations stress the divine compassion for and connection with the material world. Teilhard de Chardin's "eucharistic extensions" suggest seeing the cosmos as both a signifier of the Divine and a location of divine action and energy. Christian mission in this perspective demands: that we discover the truth of where we are; that we experience our location in nature deeply, even spiritually; that we seek the advancement of the world; in particular that it may be fashioned according to its destiny in God. The frame of the Eucharist shapes our perception of the world and utilises the worldly as a vehicle of divine transformation. Our attitudes to the world must be the inspiration for our activity in the world. The sacramental vision demands missional and ecological action. Cet article propose une vision sacramentelle du monde à la fois comme une expression de la mission chrétienne face à la crise écologique actuelle, et un élan de cette même mission pour y répondre. Ceci est une retombée des tournants panenthéistes dans la théologie et la spiritualité récentes, même s'il y a beaucoup de variétés dans les formes de panenthéisme et si de tels accents ont déjà une longue histoire chrétienne. L'article examine une forme particulière de panenthéisme sacramentel rencontré dans deux écrits de Pierre Teilhard de Chardin : Le Prêtre et La messe sur le monde. Dans ces deux textes, Teilhard de Chardin regarde le monde qui l'entoure à travers la lunette du schéma de la liturgie eucharistique et du rôle du prêtre. Le monde est offert ; le Saint Esprit est invoqué ; et la transformation divine est célébrée. Ces méditations quasi poétiques soulignent la compassion divine pour le monde matériel et le lien entre les deux. Les « extensions eucharistiques » de Teilhard de Chardin poussent à considérer le Cosmos comme un signe du Divin et un lieu de l'action et de l'énergie divine. Der Artikel trägt eine sakramentale Weltsicht vor, die sowohl Ausdruck als auch Impuls für die christliche Mission angesichts der gegenwärtigen ökologischen Krise ist. Sie ist eine Anwendung panentheistischer Entwicklungen in der neueren Theologie und Spiritualität, obwohl es eine große Vielfalt an Panentheismusformen gibt und solche Akzentsetzungen eine lange christliche Geschichte haben. Der Artikel untersucht eine besondere Form des sakramentalen Panentheismus, wie er sich in zwei Schriften von Pierre Teilhard de Chardin zeigt: Der Priester und Die Messe der Welt. In diesen beiden Schriften versteht Teilhard de Chardin die Welt um ihn im Sinne einer eucharistischen Liturgie und der Rolle des Priesters. Die Welt wird geopfert; der Heilige Geist wird angerufen; und die göttliche Wandlung wird gefeiert. Diese fast poetischen Meditationen betonen das göttliche Erbarmen und die Verbindung mit der materiellen Welt. Teilhard de Chardins "eucharistische Ausweitungen" schlagen vor, den Kosmos sowohl als Zeichen als auch als Ort göttlichen Handelns und göttlicher Energie zu verstehen. Este texto propone una visión sacramental del mundo como una expresión y un impulso para la misión cristiana de cara a la actual crisis ecológica. Se trata de una elaboración de giros panenteístas en la teología y espiritualidad recientes, aunque exista una gran variedad en las formas de panenteísmo y estos énfasis tengan una larga historia cristiana. El artículo analiza una forma particular de panenteísmo sacramental como se lo encuentra en dos escritos de Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: El Sacerdote y La Misa sobre el Mundo. En ambos, Teilhard de Chardin considera el mundo a su alrededor a través del lente de la estructura de una liturgia eucarística y el papel del sacerdote. Se ofrece el mundo; se invoca al Espíritu Santo; y se celebra la transformación divina. Estas meditaciones casi poéticas enfatizan la compasión divina por y la conexión con el mundo material. Las "extensiones eucarísticas" de Teilhard de Chardin proponen mirar el universo tanto como el significante de lo Divino como la ubicación de la acción y energía divinas.

scholarly journals Seeing God and the Poetry of Ursula Bethell

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Marit Flinn
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Direct Link ◽  
Natural Beauty ◽  
The World ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Invisible

<p>Mary Ursula Bethell's poems are almost exclusively celebrations of natural beauty. What, then, is the significance of the beauty within the world to the poet? This question is central to Bethell's poetry and this thesis attempts to answer it. Beauty, for Bethell, is the invisible shining through the visible. It is the glory of God shown in the physical world. As Bethell searches for and celebrates beauty, she is in fact searching for and celebrating the face of God.  Bethell's first collection, From a Garden in the Antipodes, introduces the role of beauty in the poet's life: a role of revealing the world as a point of connection between herself and her God. Time and Place continues with this theme. Here the focus is on Christ as the ultimate Being - the foundation of all things, who is revealed most perfectly through the beauty of the world. Day and Night holds the climax of the revelation of God. It unveils the Holy Spirit as the 'Spirit of Beauty', so creating a direct link between the poet and her God - a link which is made evident by the beauty of the world.</p>

scholarly journals KATEKIS DALAM PERUTUSAN GEREJA DI TENGAH TUNTUTAN PROFESIONAL

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (10) ◽  
pp. 3-16
Author(s):  
Albert I Ketut Deni Wijaya
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Literature Study ◽  
Missionary Work ◽  
World Today ◽  
The World ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
The Church

A catechist can be called a missionary and saint. This call is very appropriate considering their role in the missionary work of the Church. This research will answer two questions: (1) What is the role of catechists in the missionary work of the Church? (2) What is the professional catechism model in the midst of the needs of the world today? This study uses a qualitative method of literature study. Through this paper, it will be explained that in the mission of the Church, the catechist acts as a spokesman for the Christian congregation, a prophet, an educator and a witness. Where as the professional catechists needed are catechists who always present the Holy Spirit as their soul and missionary spirit while equipping themselves with skills and knowledge.

An Inhuman God for Our Inhuman Times

Symposion ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-232
Author(s):  
Rajesh Sampath ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Being And Time ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Divine Transcendence ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Human Flesh

This paper attempts a careful reading of chapter I of Division Two, particularly section 53, on death in Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927). Our aim is to deconstruct some of Heidegger’s assumptions while imagining the margins of his text that could warrant a comparison and contrast with the biblical theological material of the New Testament. In parallel by reading the Synoptic Gospel of Mark on Jesus’s agony in the garden prior to his arrest, trial, death, and resurrection, we can initiate a series of comparisons and contrasts. For Heidegger, there is no conception or idea beyond death, and yet death itself as a possibility, even as the greatest possibility to be, is not like any other point in time that a human being can experience, grasp, remember, or anticipate while they are alive. It is not the witnessing of the medically certified death of another person or animal. Out of this paradox, we will argue for a greater philosophical degree of complexity that Jesus the human being experiences when it comes to the possibility of death and the impossibility to surmount it. In the same token we cannot exclude the theological doctrine of the single hypostatic substance (as two natures) of the historically finite person Jesus as human flesh and divine transcendence. So philosophically speaking, his death is unique even though its event as physical expiration on the Cross is like any other human being. However, the physical death of the human called Jesus does not answer the question of the meaning of death in the split-natured unified hypostatic substance of Christ, the Second Person of the Triune Christian God, which includes the First Person of the Father and the Third Person of the Holy Spirit. By tracing a series of complicated philosophical relations, we hope to contribute to the fields of philosophical theology, albeit a heterodox one, and the philosophy of religion while attending to the inherent secular limits that Heidegger’s philosophy requires in so far as he imagines his project as ‘ontological,’ and not ‘theological’ or ‘historical.’ We conclude with certain philosophical speculations to what is other to both Heidegger’s ontology and mainstream Christian theology.

Dua Tangan Allah Merangkul Semesta

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-41
Author(s):  
Joas Adiprasetya
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Triune God ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Universe

This article proposes a Trinitarian imagination that demonstrates the embrace of the whole universe by the Son and the Holy Spirit, the two hands of God, through the creation and perfection of the universe. Both divine acts take place in the incarnation of the Son and the inhabitation of the Holy Spirit. The Trinitarian perichoretic principle also applies to the relationship between God and creation in such a way that, not only is the whole universe in the Son (panentheism), but so too the Holy Spirit permeates the whole universe (theenpanism). As a result, Christian theology offers a comforting pastoral message, namely, that the universe is never entirely separable from the loving communion of the Triune God.

The Pathos of Theology as a Pneumatological Derivative or a Poiemata of the Spirit? A Review Essay of Reinhard Hütter's Pneumatological and Ecclesiological Vision of Theology

Pneuma ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-282
Author(s):  
Steven Studebaker
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Review Essay ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Theological Method ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Church Doctrine

AbstractReinhard Hütter is a leading theologian who has made important contributions to ecclesiology, pneumatology, and Christian rationality, but his most fundamental one is to the nature of theology and theological method. What makes his work of particular interest to Pentecostals is its attempt to give theology a pneumatological and ecclesiological ground. He suggests that the pathos of theology is doctrina and core church practices; theology receives its character and content from church doctrine and practices. Although successful in respect to his ecclesiological program, his proposal does not give theology a direct pneumatological ground and pathos. Nevertheless, his notion that theology receives its pathos from church doctrine and practices can be adapted to suggest a pneumatological pathos of Christian experience and theology. The result is a proposal that the Holy Spirit conditions the pathos of Christian experience and theology, which provides a theological and explicitly a pneumatological pathos not only for Pentecostal experience and theology but also for the role of Pentecostal experience in developing a uniquely "orthopathic" ecumenical contribution to Christian theology.

scholarly journals Seeing God and the Poetry of Ursula Bethell

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Marit Flinn
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Direct Link ◽  
Natural Beauty ◽  
The World ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Invisible

<p>Mary Ursula Bethell's poems are almost exclusively celebrations of natural beauty. What, then, is the significance of the beauty within the world to the poet? This question is central to Bethell's poetry and this thesis attempts to answer it. Beauty, for Bethell, is the invisible shining through the visible. It is the glory of God shown in the physical world. As Bethell searches for and celebrates beauty, she is in fact searching for and celebrating the face of God.  Bethell's first collection, From a Garden in the Antipodes, introduces the role of beauty in the poet's life: a role of revealing the world as a point of connection between herself and her God. Time and Place continues with this theme. Here the focus is on Christ as the ultimate Being - the foundation of all things, who is revealed most perfectly through the beauty of the world. Day and Night holds the climax of the revelation of God. It unveils the Holy Spirit as the 'Spirit of Beauty', so creating a direct link between the poet and her God - a link which is made evident by the beauty of the world.</p>

What’s in a Name? Challenges to the Creation of EU Delegations

2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edith Drieskens
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
European Commission ◽  
External Action ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
First Year ◽  
The World ◽  
Un General Assembly ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Eu

Summary One of the Lisbon Treaty’s most significant innovations was the creation of the European External Action Service (EEAS), which changed the EU’s functioning not only in Brussels, but also around the world. Zooming in on the multilateral context of the UN in New York, this article examines the new EU delegations and highlights the main challenges that are inherent in their establishment. These delegations could be engrafted upon a wide network of European Commission delegations, yet the literature gives little indication of success in integrating the functions and actors. Adding to the literature and building upon interviews with policy officials in both Brussels and New York, this article indicates an additional external challenge in implementing Lisbon’s provisions, with the context of the UN General Assembly raising more fundamental questions on status and membership — questions that have also shaped the role of the EU delegation to the UN during its first year of operation.

The Personified Wisdom in the Wisdom Literature

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-32
Author(s):  
Peter Schäfer
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
The Third ◽  
God's Word ◽  
The World ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Wisdom Tradition ◽  
The Universe

This chapter analyzes the wisdom tradition in the biblical Book of Proverbs, which goes back around the third century BCE. Wisdom emerged prior to the creation of the world, before the universe had taken on its final form. The chapter emphasizes that Wisdom is to be understood as a person and even enthroned on a cloud throne in heaven. But in contrast to Proverbs, Wisdom comes forth from the mouth of God and is obviously God's word, which is nevertheless interpreted as a person, since she lives in heaven, sits on a throne, compasses the heavenly and earthly vaults, and rules over the land, seas, and all people. The chapter also talks about Wisdom or the holy spirit as gifts from God to the righteous person.

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