What Mission Is: Our Understanding of Mission as a Factor for Unity or Division

1990 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 439-448
Author(s):  
U Kyaw Than

Drawing on insights from Buddhism and personal experience in Japanese-occupied Burma during World War II, the author brings an understanding of mission to the work of the third person of the Trinity. Faithfulness in mission implies recognition of being enlisted in God's design for the redemption of the world. Christ's ministry on earth was characterized from start to finish by the in-filling of the Holy Spirit. For the church, the eschatological community, mission is the most urgent activity, as history is drawing to a close with the imminent return of Christ. There is also urgent need for the church to express its missionary obedience in unity and not in confusing and scandalous division in the midst of a world, which, though unbelieving, is desperately seeking the way out of its predicament.

1975 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 234-242
Author(s):  
Jay G. Williams

“Might it not be possible, just at this moment when the fortunes of the church seem to be at low ebb, that we may be entering a new age, an age in which the Holy Spirit will become far more central to the faith, an age when the third person of the Trinity will reveal to us more fully who she is?”


Author(s):  
William J. Abraham

This chapter discusses the Person of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Trinity who proceeds eternally from the Father. In his work in Christology Athanasius made the relevant conceptual breakthrough, yet the church was rightly cautious in stating the ontology involved. Efforts to secure the filioque clause are not successful. There is merit in applying the biblical images of breath, rain, water, dove, wine, and oil. Later images focusing on force-field, bond of love, and light are interesting but light should be preferred, not least because it helps us make theological sense of the transfiguration of the Son.


1948 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 299-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Arthur Johnson

The period of the Civil Wars and Commonwealth in England was one of the most momentous epochs in British history. For small groups of people the decade of the 1640's inaugurated a New Age—an age in which the Holy Spirit reigned triumphant. Such believers reached the zenith of Puritan “spiritualism,” or that movement which placed the greatest emphasis upon the Third Person of the Trinity.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-22
Author(s):  
Charles Stanley Ross

Although C. S. Lewis was reticent about holding himself up as an expert in theology, in Mere Christianity he explains the relationship between the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit in a characteristically metaphorical and lucid way. Lewis bases his theology on a direct reading of a passage in Augustine’s De civitate Dei to which he added the explanatory metaphor of the ‘dance’—an image scholars have begun to notice in his fiction—to bring alive to his readers the ‘spirit’ of love between the Father and Son that, as Augustine said, became the third person of the Trinity


Augustinianum ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-190
Author(s):  
Juan Antonio Cabrera Montero ◽  

Isidore of Seville did not leave behind any specifically trinitarian, Christological or pneumatological treatises. We find his theological doctrine evident in sections throughout his works although, as a result of the effort of a good compiler and synthesizer, it is not difficult to trace the passages in which the bishop of Seville deals with each one of these subjects. With regard to the doctrine on the Holy Spirit, the chapter dedicated to the third person of the Trinity in the first book of the Sententiae offers a fairly complete summary of the matter. The following pages are intended to present the content of that chapter and to place it within the context of the rest of Isidore’s theological output. Therefore, in addition to paying close attention to the text of the Sententiae, we will seek its dependence or influence, as the case may be, on other treatises of Isidore, mainly in these three: Etymologiae, De fide catholica and Liber differentiarum [II]. Augustine, Gregory the Great and the theological contribution of the Spanish councils are presented as Isidore’s main sources.


MELINTAS ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-56
Author(s):  
Edy Syahputra Sihombing

The Holy Spirit in Christianity is portrayed as God who exists actively through human experiences. The presence of the Holy Spirit who dwells in human’s heart is a unique presence of one of the Persons of the Trinity. However, the Holy Spirit’s presence in human experiences is not always identified as the ‘Person’ of God. Here the language of dogmatic theology might not be clear and inspiring to Christians to recognise the unique presence of the Holy Spirit in their hearts and in the living of faith in the Church. There is a need to contemplate the aspects of human personal experience of the Holy Spirit in relation to the theological language of the Persons in Trinity so that the faithful may discern the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives. It is therefore important that in theological discussions about the Holy Spirit there is an awareness to view the need of ‘translating’ theological language into simpler language of catechism. In order that the faithful are able to identify the presence and the works of the Holy Spirit in experiences, in prayer, and in the life of faith, catechetical language about the Holy Spirit should bring more images related to human experience.


Verbum Vitae ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 271-279
Author(s):  
Dariusz Lipiec

The Holy Spirit plays a significant role in the process of the ongoing formation of priests. His activity can be perceived in three aspects. (1) He strengthens the charism given during the ordination to the priesthood in such a way that the presbyter is in constant connection with the Father and with the Son. (2) The Third Person of the Holy Trinity raises anew the pastoral love which is necessary for fulfilling the mission of priesthood and which leads to (3) the deepening of the bond between the priest and God. This enhances the priest's pursuit of his own holiness. The priest should actively respond to the Holy Spirit, Who initiates the contact by his engagement, and he should cooperate with Him for the sake of the salvation of the faithful, in order to build God's Kingdom on earth.


Vox Patrum ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 179-192
Author(s):  
Eirini Artemi

Gregory of Nazianzus had to confront with courage the heretical teaching about the divine nature of Holy Spirit. Through his works, he identifies The Holy Spirit as the third Person of the Triune God. One can see that the Bible clearly teaches that the Spirit is God. The Holy Spirit just as the Son, originates from the Father, is coeternal with the Father and illuminates the whole creation. The third Person of Trinity deserves to be worshipped as God and deifies people in their baptism. Gregory wonders: “For if He is not to be worshipped, how can He deify me by Baptism? But if He is to be worshipped, surely He is an Object of adora­tion, and if an Object of adoration He must be God; the one is linked to the other, a truly golden and saving chain. And indeed from the Spirit comes our New Birth, and from the New Birth our new creation, and from the new creation our deeper knowledge of the dignity of Him from Whom it is derived” (Oratio 31, 28). Gre­gory underlined the divinity of Holy Spirit and also explained the soteriological goal of this teaching, because: “If he has the same rank as I have, how can he make me God, or how can he join me with deity” (Oratio 31, 4).


2004 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Chan

AbstractDoctrines are the authoritative teachings of the Church, yet the modern church is hampered by its inability to speak authoritatively even to its own members on matters of doctrine. One reason is that doctrines are widely perceived as archaic and fixed formulations with little significance for the present day. True doctrines, in fact, are constantly developing as the Church moves towards eschatological fulfillment. Yet for doctrines to develop properly there needs to be a proper ecclesiology. The Church is not an entity that God brought into being to return creation to its original purpose after the Fall; rather, the Church is prior to creation, chosen in Christ before the creation of the world (Eph. 1.4). It is a divine-humanity, ontologically linked to Christ the Head. It is the living Body of Christ, the totus Christus.Within the continuing life of prayer and worship, the Church’s doctrines are re-enacted, renewed and developed. These acts constitute the ecclesial experience or the living tradition. The living tradition is the transmission and development of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the on-going practices of the Church through the power of the Holy Spirit. The coming of the Spirit upon the Church at Pentecost is not just to enable the Church to preach the gospel but to constitute the Church as part of the gospel itself. That is to say, the gospel story includes the story of the Spirit in the Church. The third person of the Godhead is revealed as such in his special relation to the Church. The Church, therefore, could be called the ‘polity of the Spirit’, that is, the public square in which the Spirit is especially at work to bring God’s ultimate purpose to fulfillment. There is, therefore, no separation between ecclesiology and pneumatology. They are necessary for maintaining the living tradition and ensuring the healthy development of doctrine until the Church attains unity of the faith. Pentecostals who see the Pentecost event as the distinctive mark of their identity have a special role to play: by becoming more truly catholic in their ecclesiology, they become more truly Pentecostal. This accords well with their early ecumenical instinct.


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