Stephen Pickard and Gordon Preece, eds., Starting with the Spirit. Task of Theology Today II. Hindmarsh, Australia: Australian Theological Forum Inc., and Adelaide: Openbook Publishers, 2001. xiii + 280 pp. ISBN 958639957.
This is an important book not only for AusPS readers, but also for all pentecostals who are thinking about what it means to develop either a distinctively pentecostal theology or a specifically pneumatological theology. With regard to the former, the days when only a select portion of the systematic theology was distinctively pentecostal—the doctrine of initial physical evidence, or the chapters on Spirit baptism and the charismatic gifts, etc.—are long over. With regard to the latter, over the last decade, the appearance of Clark Pinnock’s Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit (InterVarsity Press, 1996) along with the work of contributors to the Journal of Pentecostal Theology (edited by the faculty of the Church of God Theological Seminary, Cleveland, Tennessee, USA) and its supplement series have signaled the emergence of a new direction in studies on pneumatology and theology that is axiomatically structured by pneumatological themes and motifs. Along these lines, whereas in previous generations books focused on one or other aspect of the Spirit, theologians are now exploring the potential and promise of a specifically pneumatological hermeneutic and theological method as well as completely rethinking the theological loci from the perspective of pneumatology. The purpose of this volume, a partial collection of papers from the Easter 1999 colloquium at Canberra on the Holy Spirit titled “Tracking the Spirit in Tradition and Contemporary Thought” and jointly sponsored by the Australian Theological Forum and the School of Theology at Charles Sturt University, is to contribute to the development of this emerging pneumatological paradigm in theology, and to do so specifically from within the Australian context.
Toward that end, the heart of this book is the set of four essays (Part One, “Systematic Exposition”) by D. Lyle Dabney, currently at Marquette University (USA). For those yet unaware of Dabney’s work—so far scattered in a variety of book essays and journal articles and in his German language (only) dissertation, Die Kenosis des Geistes: Kontinuität zwischen Schöpfung und Erlösung in Werk des Heiligen Geistes (Neukirchener Verlag, 1997)—the 100+ pages here provide an extended introduction of his “theology of the third article” to the English speaking world in general. AusPS readers should be alerted, however, that the brief biographical paragraph on Dabney in the “Contributors” section does not mention the following: that he was raised as an American Assemblies of God PK (“pastor’s kid”); that only with reluctance did he leave the Assemblies to study in Tübingen (under Moltmann); and that he sees his own contributions to a pneumatological theology as nurtured from within the matrix of his own pentecostal experiences. This said, the contours of Dabney’s project suddenly takes on a new shape, one that resonates deeply with the main trajectories of contemporary pentecostal theology.
But what is it that Dabney is suggesting? Briefly, it is the call to developing a theology relevant to a post-Christendom world. The theological paradigms that served Christendom—the “both-and” theology of the first article: of God as standing in continuity with creation developed first by medieval Scholasticism and later by Tridentine Catholicism; and the “either-or” theology of the second article: of God as standing in discontinuity with the created order developed in the form of a protest by the Reformers—no longer serve the postmodern situation in which we find ourselves since neither the Scholastic assumptions of a universal rationality nor the corrupt ecclesial conditions that demanded the Reformation’s protests are present. Instead, what is needed is a theology that can speak of both continuity and discontinuity; that is ecclesially and also socially relevant and engaged; that affirms a concrete and particular rationality, but not one that is easily ghettoized; that emerges not from the socio-political center, but from the margins; that is post-Enlightenment, post-colonial, post-capitalist, etc., without abandoning rationality, mission, and democratic ideals altogether. Might it be, Dabney queries, that a theology of the third article, a pneumatological theology, is what is needed for our time?
Yet Dabney’s theology of the third article is not only a theology of the Spirit, but a theology starting with the Spirit and reconfigured pneumatologically. In this set of essays, the outlines of Dabney’s project are clearly sketched. The robustly trinitarian scope of any theology of the third article is fleshed out in the suggestion that the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ not in the subordinationist sense preserved in the filioque but in the most deeply theological sense of the Spirit as the Spirit of the cross. As such, the Spirit is the possibility of God in and through every impossibility; the one who brings resurrection life out of death and the very depths of hell; the “presence of God with the Son in the absence of the Father”—herein lies the christocentric and trinitarian shape of Dabney’s pneumatological theology. Following from this, salvation is reconceived not simply in terms of a christologically enacted sacrificial transaction resulting in justification, but in terms of a pneumatological process that undergirds the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and that results in the fully justifying and sanctifying redemption of the spiritual and material aspects of creaturely existence. And, finally, creation itself is necessarily reconceived as the possibility of God emerging out of the chaotic void (as out of the depths of sin and death on the cross) by the power of the Spirit, and directed toward an eschatological redemption (as is the resurrection of Jesus). Starting with the Spirit means inverting the Aristotelian insistence on the possible as dependent on the real, and calling into the question the Scholastic onto-theological framework. Rather, the priority of possibility means the reconception of creation as “an act of discovery” (p. 104) whereby the Spirit’s mysterious and ubiquitous presence is precisely that which enables creation to be other in relationship to God.
Parts two and three, “Tradition” and “Contemporary Issues,” complement and supplement Dabney’s proposals in Part One. The essays explore, using pneumatological and ecumenical perspectives, a variety of issues: the relationship between Spirit and Christ in Paul (Victor Pfitzner); a theology of liturgy (Gordon Watson); ecclesiology and the doctrine of the sacraments (Gerard Kelly); notions of truth, transcendence and dialogue (Winifred Wing Han Lamb); feminist and liberationist ethics (Nancy Victorin-Vangerud); and ecological theology (Denis Edwards). That the contributors in these sections are all Australians means that the “down-under” context of each of these inquiries is taken seriously. Nowhere is this more evident than in Duncan Reid’s essay, “‘Some Spirit Which Escapes’: Starting with the Spirit in the Southern Land,” which examines the question of whether Australia is a nation-state or a “state of mind,” and reflects on the task of developing a pneumatology relevant to and plausible for the Australian experience.
The exploratory nature of in this volume means that it is designed to evoke questions. While I am largely in sympathy with Dabney’s project, for example, I look forward with anticipation to how its details negotiate the wide expanse (some would say chasm) between the affirmation that all creation lives, moves and has its being in the Spirit of God (what Dabney refers to as being “otherwise engaged with the Spirit”) on the one hand, and the fact that the divine Spirit is named precisely as the Spirit of the cross and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth on the other. This concerns, of course, questions such as that regarding the universality and particularity of the pneumatological symbol for our time; regarding whether or not the experience of Christian redemption is finally continuous or discontinuous with human experience; regarding the nature of the relationship between time and eternity, between actuality and possibility, and between history and the eschaton; and so on. In addition, from a specifically pentecostal perspective, the fact of Oneness Pentecostalism cautions against any attempt to develop a pentecostal theology that ignores Oneness experiences and concerns. And last, but certainly not least, this volume raises various questions about how the work being done by non-pentecostal Christians (in Australia and elsewhere) on a pneumatological theology complements, supplements and perhaps even corrects work done by pentecostals in revisioning of the theological loci from pneumatological perspectives—e.g., on theological method and hermeneutics (Roger Stronstad, Shane Clifton, Amos Yong); soteriology (Frank Macchia); ecclesiology (Simon Chan); theology of mission (Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen); liturgical theology (Daniel Albrecht); liberation theology (Robert Beckford, Eldin Villañe and Samuel Solivan); feminism (Pamela Holmes); theology of discernment (Stephen Parker), etc.—and vice versa.
These questions indicate that AusPS readers are treated here to a variety of thought-provoking explorations in pneumatology. The promise of a distinctively pneumatological theology is, at long last, beginning to be fulfilled. Now insofar as the task of developing a authentically pentecostal theology is itself the responsibility of all pentecostals, to that extant Australian pentecostals also shoulder the burden of engaging the question: what does it mean to think theologically as an Australian pentecostal? While I am in no position to ascertain whether or not the essays (especially in parts two and three) convey and express the Australian experience legitimately, I can say that this volume as a whole is at the vanguard of research in pneumatological theology. And, if this project of advancing a pneumatological theology is central to a distinctively pentecostal contribution to Christian theology for the third millennium, then Starting with the Spirit should be read carefully by all (and, especially Australian) pentecostals engaged in the theological task.
Amos Yong
Bethel College, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA