Theo 351 - Reading Reflection 6 - Kärkkäinen - Epilogue

The following post is a reading reflection on the epilogue of Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen’s Pneumatology: The Holy Spirit in Ecumenical, International, and Contextual Perspective.

In the first part of the epilogue Kärkkäinen affirms a more traditional view of the Holy Spirit’s work. He affirms that the main work of the Holy Spirit is to “turn our eyes away from himself to the Son and through the Son to the Father.”[1] He also applauds the theologians of the first centuries in refraining to speculate too much on the work of the Spirit.[2] But, as seems to be expected of a good scholar, he then goes on to affirm the validity of the various views of the Spirit surveyed throughout his book. He writes, “The one Spirit of God opens himself into a myriad of experiences . . . . Each of these, and many more, testify to the endless bounty and richness of the Spirit’s agenda in God’s creation.”[3]

But, is the Spirit’s agenda the same as the feminist agenda, complete with its adjustments to the doctrine of God? How about the ecological agenda, or process theology? How about the universalist tendency of Rahner and Pinnock, or the panentheism expressed in ecological pneumatology?[4] Or how about the discernment of harmful spirits in market commodities (African pneumatology)? What of the mystic tradition?

I have a difficult time believing that the one Spirit of God is behind all of these varied interests, concerns and innovations. As Kärkkäinen writes, there is indeed “something honorable [sic] and enlightening in the reservation of the theologians of the first centuries to say too much about the Spirit.”[5] Rather than looking for “a fresh interpretation of what the Spirit is doing,” I think I will stick to learning about pneumatology from traditional theology.[6]

______________________________

[1] Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Pneumatology: The Holy Spirit in Ecumenical, International, and Contextual Perspective (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002), 175.

[2] Ibid., 176.

[3] Ibid., 177.

[4] Panentheism is also an element that seems to be present in Rahner (112), Pannenberg (122-123), Moltmann (127), and process theology (150).

[5] Kärkkäinen, Pneumatology, 176.

[6] Ibid., 177.