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Spirit Christology: Ambiguity and Promise Philip J SPIRIT CHRISTOLOGY: AMBIGUITY AND PROMISE PHILIP J. ROSATO, S.J. St. Joseph's College, Pa. [wo AT FIRST seemingly unrelated phenomena form the Sitz im Leben Τecclesiae of this essay on Spirit Christology. The first is that Chris­ tian theologians, engaged in a multifaceted dialogue with other cultures and ideologies, are groping for an effectual Christological paradigm which is both identical with their tradition and relevant to the empiri­ cal, socially critical, and future-oriented outlook of modern man. The second is that the same theologians are being challenged by the lively spirituality of the charismatic renewal to reflect on Jesus' own relation­ ship to the Holy Spirit. What influence do these divergent yet impelling cultural situations have on the Christian theologian? They first corrobo­ rate his own suspicion that a new Christological model is necessary; though valid in itself, the prevailing Logos model of dogmatic Christol­ ogy is not totally adequate to the pressing issues which face fundamen­ tal and pastoral theology. These very issues also stir him to return to the earliest Christology, that based on a Pneuma model, which was formu­ lated to meet the needs of the primitive Church in a social and religious milieu surprisingly not unlike the present one. What was the positive intention of that early Spirit Christology? Why was it deemed ambigu­ ous, rejected, and, except for sporadic reoccurrences, all but forgotten? Can it possibly be rejuvenated? If so, what adjustments would have to be made in such a Christological design in light of significant modern advances, especially in biblical theology? This essay will attempt a preliminary answer to these questions and then propose a paschally oriented Spirit Christology as a paradigm which might well allow Christian theologians to present Jesus Christ in a way more under­ standable to contemporary secular culture and also more appropriate to the current spiritual and pastoral needs in the Christian community. CROSS-DISCIPLINARY INTEREST IN SPIRIT CHRISTOLOGY In his recent work on Christology, Walter Kasper, a leading Catholic dogmatician at the University of Tubingen, has opted quite clearly for a pneumatological approach to Christology.1 Kasper arrives at this posi­ tion by considering the weaknesses of those Christologies which explic­ itly adopt either the perspective of philosophy, anthropology, and cos­ mology or the perspective of world history. The main difficulty with 1 W. Kasper, Jesus der Christus (Mainz: Grunewald, 1975) 296. The English transla­ tion, Jesus the Christ (New York: Paulist, 1977), is now available. 423 424 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES either Irenaeus' Logos Christology, Rahner's Christology in a transcen­ dental-anthropological context, Teilhard's cosmic Christology, or Pan- nenberg's Christology in the context of world history is that the univer­ sal character of Jesus Christ is preserved and enhanced at the expense of his uniqueness.2 As important and necessary as a universal context is for a genuine Christology, the absolute uniqueness of Jesus Christ is equally necessary and important. Kasper argues, therefore, that the danger in the above-mentioned Christologies is that they begin with a particular universal framework, into which at a later point the person Jesus Christ must somehow be inserted. Although one could object that the Scriptures themselves set Jesus into the existing framework of the Hellenistic-Jewish world with its many philosophical, anthropological, cosmological, and historical pre­ suppositions, Rasper's argument is still convincing: it was primarily into an inherently biblical framework that Jesus was inserted in the New Testament, that is, into the framework of biblical pneumatology. Apparently this was done precisely in order to protect both the universal and the unique character of the person of Jesus Christ. The New Testament authors chose the biblical notion of the Spirit of Yahweh as the mediating principle with which both the continuity and the disconti­ nuity of the Christ-event with the Old Testament could best be ex­ plained. It appears from the New Testament's point of view that Chris­ tology is a function of an overarching pneumatology.3 Walter Kasper is not alone in opting for a pneumatological approach to Christology. In the recent past, exegetes, historians, dogmaticians, and moralists have come to see that it was, in fact, the Spirit-filled Church of the first century which set the person and the significance of Christ into the framework of Yahweh's promise to pour out His Spirit on all flesh—a promise which they believed was uniquely fulfilled in the person of Jesus, not because but just as that promise was the central reality of their own existence in the early community. Once current theologians attempt to enter into the minds of their first-century coun­ terparts, they gradually discover that the New Testament itself, the history of the early Church, its dogmas, its liturgy, and its moral teachings resulted from the conviction that the entire life of the commu­ nity was analogous to the Spirit-filled life of Jesus. It was primarily in light of their own personal experience of the Spirit that they could understand how uniquely and how universally Yahweh was at work in the personal history of Jesus. Even if it is true that the explicit teachings on the Spirit in the third 2 W. Kasper, "Einmaligkeit und Universalität Jesu Christi," Theologie der Gegen­ wart 17 (1974) 5-6. 3 Kasper, Jesus der Christus 298. SPIRIT CHRISTOLOGY 425 article of the Creed were chronologically the last ones to be formalized in dogmatic statements, this fact does not deny the actual experience of the early Church as it is recorded in Scripture. It was apparently from a pneumatological point of view that not only the relationship of Yahweh to Jesus was understood, but also the relationship of the community itself to Yahweh and to Jesus.4 In effect, it was from the as yet unformu­ lated third article of the Christian Creed—from the experience of the Spirit, of the community, of forgiveness, and of eschatological hope— that the community was driven on to allow the first and second articles to come into being. It was a lived but as yet implicit Spirit theology from which a theology of the Father, a Christology, an ecclesiology, a sacra­ mental, liturgical, and moral theology were originally developed. This insight into the centrality of pneumatology has always been the particu­ lar hallmark of the Orthodox theology in the East, but it has recently become a central realization of Western theology in the wake of renewed biblical and historical research. A brief survey of these developments in various theological disciplines can shed light on the current revival of Pneuma theology in the area of Christology. Exegetes have always known that Pauline and Lukan Christology is explicitly pneumatic. But it has become consistently clearer that the other Synoptic Gospels as well as the Word-oriented Gospel of John contain significant pneumatological statements about Jesus at key points in their evaluation of his person and mission. Bruce Vawter's commentary on the Gospel of John points out the important role of the Spirit in the Christology and eschatology of that Gospel; and C. K. Barrett's The Holy Spirit and the Gospel Tradition considers the essen­ tial connection between Pneuma theology and eschatology in the Synop­ tics.5 Furthermore, it is precisely this essential relationship between Spirit theology and eschatology which links what have rightly been called the two divergent strands of Spirit theology in the Bible: the Old Testament stress on the Spirit of Yahweh as His life-giving, eschatologi­ cal power and the New Testament's emphasis on the Spirit as the Spirit of Jesus who now directs, aids, teaches, and fills the eschatological community of the Church.6 In both Testaments the outpouring of the 4 E. Käsemann, "Geist und Geistgaben im Neuen Testament," RGG3 2, 1272-79, and E. Schweizer, "Pneuma," TWNT 6 (1959) 394-403. 5 B. Vawcer, "Johannine Theology" JBC 80:39-47; C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: University Press, 1960) 213-27, and C. K. Barrett, The Holy Spirit and the Gospel Tradition (5th corrected impression; London: SPCK, 1970) 153. 6 F. Hahn, "Das biblische Verständnis des Heiligen Geistes: Exegetische Grundlagen einer vergleichenden Pneumatologie," Materialdienst des Konfessionskundlichen Insti­ tuts Bensheim 23 (1972) 90-95; Κ. H. Schelkle, Theologie des Neuen Testaments 2 (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1973) 235-48. 426 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES Spirit marks an eschatological act of God; Yahweh's Spirit breaks His silence and gives life and promise to the people He has called. The Bible, therefore, seems to offer its own universal and explicitly theological framework into which God's eschatological acts can be inserted: the unique, self-mediating power of God's Spirit. When the Jesus of the Gospels is placed in this pneumatological framework, the definitive, eschatological nature of Yahweh's union with him is preserved. But at the same time the universal significance of that union both for the Old and for the New Covenant is fully respected. Historians of the Church point out that both the early suppression of the Spirit Christology developed by Jewish converts to Christianity and the long neglect of a fully adequate dogmatics of the Spirit have contin­ ually proved to be an unbearable strain on the unity of the Church.7 A lamentable law of Church history seems to be that Spirit theology in its various forms has been a mixed blessing. On the one hand, a renewed Spirit theology has often revitalized the institutional Church and led to a rejuvenation of its inner life and outer mission. New Pentecoste swept over the Church at the time of Athanasius and the Cappadocians, at the time of the mystics and of the monastic reformers during the Middle Ages, at the time of Johann Adam Möhler and the contact of the Catholic Church with romanticism and idealism, and in our own time through the charismatic movement following Vatican II.
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