P. Gianni Colzani
To Understand the Concept of Spirit
The term spirit is not easy to understand. Its multifaceted usage in everyday life, in science, and in culture makes it have many meanings: spirit is both the soul and a ghost, personal consciousness and a bond of a certain group of people, an organ of thought and the will to act, a dimension intrinsic to human beings and the essence of God. The multitude of meanings forces us to try to clarify the term spirit, attempting to grasp its original connection to experience. I will use the world of the Bible for this.
In Scripture4 the word ruah denotes a gust of wind, where the wind that refreshes or brings rain creates the atmospheric climate needed for life. For this deep connection to life, ruah signifies vitality – unpredictable and bubbling, physical and psychological; conversely, where ruah is absent, the climate will be oppressive and the situation deadly. During the Babylonian exile, our term begins to denote the calm breath of a person and – in a figurative sense – the life energy of a person and their abilities, their "self." One can thus say that ruah encompasses a close relationship with life, with its dynamic and creative energy, with its ability to express and create a community of joy and love: the spirit is the spirit of life. The fact that one cannot possess the spirit suggests that, in the consciousness of Israel, life is a sovereign force, albeit a mysterious one.
For some time, more authors5 have pointed out the deep relationship between ruah and rewah. The second term denotes a wide and free space, and thus that movement of relief and liberation, which creates space for the other. By connecting ruah and rewah, the fierce breath and giving space, Schüngel-Straumann refers to childbirth as that moment when a vigorous and laborious exhalation finds relief in making room for another life: the relief and release characteristic of childbirth would thus point to the feminine and maternal aspect of the spirit. The spirit is the acceptance of care for life, the spirit is tenderness and deep sharing of life itself. The spirit here is a maternal coming out of oneself, wanting to be close to another and seeking their good and their life.
These human representations were used by Scripture when speaking of God, in order to make God's actions understandable to us. Surely we must not forget that God has no gender, that He is neither male nor female. Especially Augustine rejects explaining the relationship to God using terms borrowed from human love; for him, each individual person is a "reflection" of God. In my opinion, the value of Augustine's admonition lies in reminding us of the limitation of every symbol attempting to explain the mystery of God. Nevertheless, the use of paternal and maternal, male and female categories can contribute in some measure to a better understanding of God and His actions. Therefore, I consider it legitimate to say that Scripture employs these – and indeed other – representations.
In this context, the spirit of life is described as the creative spirit (Ps 33:6; 104:29–30) and prophetic, that is, as the action of that God who cares for the salvation of His people and who accompanies His people with His word. Gradually, the nature and peculiarity of this divine ruah becomes apparent: on the one hand, it is associated with royal dignity (2 Sam 23:2), losing its character of unpredictability, but on the other hand – because kings are unable to remain in the service of the Lord (YHWH) – it dwells deeper in the heart of man as a gift entrusted to him that renews him (Ezek 36:26–27; Ps 51:12). However, the (Babylonian) exile opens a new theme: the relationship between the Spirit and life (Gen 1:2; Ezek 37:1–14). Life here is a divine gift, meaning closeness to God and God's striving for the kingdom of justice and peace (Isa 61:1–3). And the Spirit is therefore that God who goes out of Himself to save and renew man, calling people to communion with Himself, while simultaneously bringing them to the Word and to Wisdom. The Spirit is, however, the Holy Spirit (Isa 63:10,11; Ps 51:13), the transcendent power of that God who has been likened to us.
The New Testament will see the figure of Christ on the one hand in light of the expectation of the universal gift (God's spirit) at the end of times (Mt 12:18–21,28; Luke 4:16–21; 10:21; Acts 10:38), and on the other hand, it will regard him as that Messiah who comes to give the Spirit (Acts 2:17–18). Jesus’ person and all His work are linked to the Spirit. The Spirit is not merely an extraordinary power but the vital force of the community called to holiness. The church community is entirely focused around the Spirit, built upon the expressions of the Spirit (1 Cor 12:1–7) and enriched by His fruits (Gal 5:22), in Him it has the fundamental criterion for its life (1 Thess 5:19–21). Paul – without excluding the personal action of the Spirit (Gal 4:4–6; Rom 5:1–5) – seeks to emphasize the unity of His action with the Risen One: the Spirit is the force by which the Lord unites with Himself the community of His disciples (2 Cor 13:13), making them His living body. This relationship is then extensively developed by the evangelist John, who adds to the usual themes of baptism and mission the theme of the Comforter-Paraclete (John 14:16–18; 15:26–27; 16:7–11). Building on the church's charism parakalein, John centers the work of the Spirit around truth: it is about giving testimony to the truth and leading into the fullness of truth. Since truth is expressed in words that are spirit and life (John 6:63), the truth to which the Spirit leads us encompasses life in all its aspects. The Spirit is present in us and in the church, but is never our possession: the Spirit belongs to the sphere of divine reality, to which we have access only by grace, as a gift from God. With His presence in us, the Spirit awakens fullness of human life and full human dignity in us. Gloria Dei vivens homo. (The glory of God is a living person.)
On this – undoubtedly broad – foundation, the theology of the last decades has moved. It has primarily sought to analyze the biblical basis and clarify disputed historical moments. However, this effort has ultimately resulted in – as noted in 1983 by J. Moltmann in his review of Congar's three-volume work – a limitation to traditional concepts, without managing to offer a new paradigm of understanding the Spirit.6 This will primarily be attempted by two authors – Taylor and Pannenberg – who will seek to radically re-evaluate pneumatology. The first of them7 is inspired by the philosopher M. Buber and the Australian biologist L. C. Birch and hypothetically posits such a relationship between humans and evolutionary development, where the action of the Spirit is closely linked to human cooperation; thus, according to him, the way is outlined where the church's mission "becomes a struggle against many aspects of a technicized society that are directed against human sensitivity and the full realization of his person."8 The second9 criticizes any understanding of the world as a closed whole and clarifies the phenomenon of the "force field," a scientific concept that allows admitting that some influence from outside acts on the material world; he draws inspiration from P. Tillich and Teilhard de Chardin and presents the Spirit as a heavenly force field, in which it is possible to ecstatically transcend oneself: the world opens to God.
The result is a diversity of interpretations of the theology of the Spirit.10 On the one hand, the first group of authors – led by J. Moltmann11 – seeks to articulate the theology of the Holy Spirit in continuity with the concept of life: (for them) the way in which the Spirit, in accordance with His personality, took on the whole world is the vitalization of life. He indeed poured out upon life, and that from His innermost being, the liberating and redeeming power of Jesus' resurrection. Balthasar questions the cultural and theological prerequisites [of the concept] of life, as he fears that the insistence on Pannenberg's autotranscendence of life or on Moltmann's immanent transcendence of the Spirit will not be able to overcome the Old Testament horizon of the historical and cosmological dimension of the Spirit; therefore, he himself offers a more Christological perspective, based on the relationship of the Spirit with the Word that became flesh. For Balthasar12 the Spirit is the spirit of truth and his task is to gradually unveil that truth, which is Christ, in all its dimensions, from trinitarian to ecclesiastical and cosmic. Both the church and the world are conceived in light of that spiritual action, which "will guide you into all truth" (John 16:13), which "will announce to you what he receives from me" (John 16:15). Here opens up the infinity that allows our author to speak of pneuma spermatikós, but only in the form of all in a fraction: in each limited and partial event of the world and history must shine the eschatological fullness. M. Welker13 takes however the pathway of the third concept, which he calls "realistic theology":14 this term means a theology that respects all different biblical traditions, which critically reflects on the past to allow the reality of God to emerge, increasingly radiantly and with greater ability to meet the needs of humanity.
Finally, it is good to recall, even if in summary, the teaching of the magisterium of the church.15 The encyclical Dominum et vivificantem from 1986 mentions, especially in the third part called The Spirit Who Gives Life, a number of manifestations of the Spirit’s action; articles 55–64 analyze the novelty of His action, carried out in a weave of supernatural facts with cultural and anthropological insights. The struggle between the Spirit and the flesh becomes a dramatic cultural key to understanding the clash of the civilization of death with the history of life, whereby the Spirit, who comes to the aid of our weakness, is the beginning of a new self-concept of man and his new orientation forward. The Spirit animates the life of the church and the history of all humanity, the Spirit supports man in his earthly journey and helps him to sail into his final harbor: "God is all in all" (1 Cor 15:28).
(La rivista del clero italiano, Milano, Year LXXVIII, No. 10 – October 1997, pp. 650–654.
Translated by Zdena Kolářová, supplemented by Kateřina Lachmanová.)
