(published
in Italian in Studii Ecumenici)
As
a word of introduction I would like to make a preliminary remark on the
relationship between pneumatology and spirituality. A lot has been written and
said about the connection of “pneumatology” to “spirituality”. But very
often spirituality - and by extension pneumatology - is understood in the wrong
sense, as an idealistic philosophical category, as a way of life distinct from,
or in opposition to, the material life; as if it referred to the spirit of
"human beings" and not to the Spirit of "God", which in the
biblical sense (2 Cor. 13:13) is by definition conditioned by the idea of
koinonia (êïéíùíßá/communion). The Holy Spirit, therefore, is
incompatible with individualism, His primary work being the
transformation of all reality into a relational status.
When
we, therefore, speak of “pneumatological ecclesiology” we have to bear in
mind an authentic trinitarian theology. After all, the Church by
her nature cannot reflect the worldly image of a secular organisation, which is
normally based on hierarchy, power and domination, but
on the kenotic image of the Holy Trinity, which is based on love and
koinonia (communion). Classical theology of the past has been very often
criticized of being "christomonistic", of orienting almost all its
attention to Christ, relegating the Holy Spirit to an anciliary role (agent of
Christ, inspirator of the prophets and the authors of the Bible, helper of the
Church to listen, apprehend and interpret the word of God etc.). This criticism
may have gone too far and may be an exaggeration; it shows however implicitly
the dinstict nature and importance of pneumatology. A proper pneumatology,
however, should never take the form of a "pneumatomonism". A
“pneumatological ecclesiology”, if it is to be accepted within normative
christianity, it has to take unquestionably into consideration Christology. It
is for this reason that we speak of a Christology pneumatologically conditioned;
and vthe other way round: Pneumatology, especially within the context of
ecclesiology, cannot be considered without reference to Christology.
The
christian understanding, therefore, of ecclesiology has undoubtedly to start
with the teaching, life and work of Christ. His teaching, however, and
especially his life and work, cannot be properly understood without reference to
the eschatological expectations of Judaism. Without entering the complexities of
, we could very briefly say that the Jewish eschatology was interwoven with the
expectation of the coming of the Messiah, who in the "last days" of
history (“the Eschaton") was supposed to establish his kingdom by calling
the dispersed and afflicted people of God into one place to become one body
united around him. The statement in Jn 11:51-52 about the Messiah's role is
extremely important. There the writer interprets the words of the Jewish
High priest by affirming that "he prophesied that Jesus should die...not
for the nation only but to gather into one the children of God who are
scattered abroad." (cf. also Is 66:18; Mt 25:32; Rom 12:16; Didache
9:4b; Mart. Polyc. 22:3b; Clemens of Rome, I Cor., 12:6 etc).
Throughout
the Gospels Christ identifies himself with this Messiah. We see this in the
various Messianic titles he chose for himself, or at least as witnessed by the
most primitive Christian tradition ("Son of man",
"Son of God", etc., most of which had a collective meaning,
whence the christology of "corporate personality"). We see it as well
in the parables of the kingdom, which summarize his teaching,
proclaiming that his coming initiates the new world of the kingdom of God;
we see it in the Lord's Prayer, but also in his conscious actions (e.g. the
selection of the twelve, etc.). In brief,
Christ identified himself with the Messiah of the Eschaton, who would be
the center of the gathering of the dispersed people of God.
It
was on this radical eschatological teaching of the Historical Jesus about the Kingdom
of God (which as modern biblical research has shown moves dialectically
between the "already" and the "not yet"; in other words,
begins already in the present, but will be completed in its final authentic form
in the eschaton) that the early Church has developed its ecclesiology.
In
the first two decades after Pentecost the early Christian community understood
its existence as the perfect and genuine expression of the people of God. With a
series of terms taken from the Old Testament the early Christian community
believed that it was the”Israel of God” (Gal 6:16), the ”saints” (Acts
9:32, 41; 26:10; Rom1:7; 8:27; 12:13; 15:25), “the elect” (Rom 8:33; Col
3:12 etc), “the chosen race” (1 Pe 2:9 ), “the royal priesthood” (ibid)
etc; namely the holy people of God (laos of God), for whom all the
promises of the Bible were to be fulfilled at the eschata. During this
constructive period the concept in which the early Church understood herself was
that of a people and not of an organisation. An examination of both the
Old and the New Testament terminology makes this quite clear. The chosen people
of God were an ‘am (in Hebrew, especially in the prophets) or a ëáüò
(in Greek), whereas the people of the outside world were designated by the
Hebrew term goim and the Greek one
Ýèíç
(cf. Acts
15:14)
This
conciousness that when God created a new community, he created a people,
distinguished the Christian Church from those guilds, clubs or religious
societes so typical of the Greco-Roman period. It is quite significant that the
first christian community used the term åêêëçóßá
in the Old
Testament meaning; it is not accidental that this term (ecclesia) in the
Septuagint, corresponds to the Hebrew qâhâl , i.e. to a term
denoting the congregation of God’s people. The Saptuagint never translates by
åêêëçóßá
the Hebrew ‘edhah, the usual translation of which is óõíáãùãÞ.
In this primitive period, therefore, the members of the Christian community do
not just belong to the Church; i.e. they are not simply members of an
organisation; they
are the Church.
The
second generation after Pentecost is certainly characterised by the great
theological contribution of St. Paul. The apostle takes over the above
charismatic notion of the Church, but he gives it in addition a universal and
ecumenical character. To the Church belong all human beings, Jews and Gentiles;
for the latter have been joined to the same tree of the people of God
(Rom11:13ff). The Church, as the new Israel, is thus no longer constituted on
grounds of external criteria (circumcision etc.), but of her faith to Jesus
Christ (“ïõ
ðÜíôåò
ïé
åî
ÁâñáÜì
ïýôïé
ÁâñáÜì”
Rom 9:6
). The term, however, with which St. Paul reminds the reader of the charismatic
understanding of the Church is óþìá
Xñéóôïý
(body of Christ). With this metaphorical expression St. Paul was able to
express the charismatic nature of the Church by means of the semitic concept of
corporate personality. He emphasised that in the Church there exists a variety
of gifts, charisms (÷áñßóìáôá) exercised by the individual
members of the community, and necessary for the building up
and the nutrition of this body, Christ alone being its only head and
authority.
The
Johannine figure of the vine (John 15:1- 8) is equally impressive . As with the
pauline term (óþìá),
the double scheme vine-branches indicates the special relationship existing
between people and Christ, which reveals the inner basis of ecclesial life. The
other N. T. figures for the Church , “household of faith” (Eph 2:11ff),
“fellowship” (1 Cor 1:9 etc), “bride of Christ” (Eph 1:31f ; Rev 21:9),
“little flock” (Lk 12:32 etc) , “family of Christ”, oikos etc,
all point to the same direction: namely that the new community is a people,
bound together by love and the Spirit provided by God in Christ, and not by
external structure.
In
sum: right from the beginning, from the writings of Paul, John, and Luke, in
addition to other works, we see this teaching reflected in images of the Church
as the Body of Christ, as Vine, and especially as unity. The apostle Paul in
particular was absolutely convinced that all who have believed in Christ have
been incorporated into His body through Baptism, completing with the Eucharist
their incorporation into the one people of God. The 4th Gospel develops this
radical eschatological teaching even further in regard to the unity of the
people of God around Christ and their incorporation into Christ's body through
the Eucharist above all.
The
main contribution, which the primitive christian theology has made to the
development of this messianic eschatology, was the common belief of almost all
theologians of the early Church,
emphasized and underlined most sharply by St. Luke, that with Christ's
Resurrection and especially with Pentecost, the Eschaton had already entered
history, and that the messianic eschatological community becomes a reality each
time the Church, the new Israel, the dispersed people of God, gathers åðß
ôï
áõôü
(in one place),
especially when it gathers to celebrate the Holy Eucharist. This development is
undoubtedly the starting point of all ecclesiological considerations,
which in fact relate the ecclesial identity with the Kingdom of God,
the imminent expectation of the Parousia in a dynamic and radical way.
One
can, therefore, easily equate the term “Pneumatological ecclesiology” with
the term “Eschatological ecclesiology”. The missiological imperatives of the
early Church stem exactly from this awareness of the Church as an eschatological,
dynamic, radical, and corporate reality,
commissioned to witness the Kingdom of God “on earth as it is in heaven”
(Mt 6:10 par). St.
Chrysostom commented
as follows on the relevant petition of the Lord’s Prayer: “(Christ) did not
say ’Your will be done’ in me, or in us, but everywhere on earth, so that
error may be destroyed, and truth implanted, and all wickedness cast out, and
virtue return, and no difference in this respect be henceforth between heaven
and earth”.(PG
57 col. 280).The apostles were commissioned to proclaim not a set
of given religious convictions, doctrines, moral commands etc., but the coming
Kingdom, the Good news of a new eschatological reality, which had as its center
the crucified and resurrected Christ, the incarnation of God the Logos and His
dwelling among us human beings, and His continuous presence through the Holy
Spirit, in a life of communion, experienced
in their “eucharistic” (in the wider sense) life.
That
is why they are called Üãéïé
(holy);
because they belonged to that chosen race of the people of God. That is
why they were considered
royal priesthood (âáóßëåéïí
éåñÜôåõìá);
because all of them, without exception (not just some special cast such as the
priests or levites) have priestly and spiritual authority
to practice in the diaspora the work of the priestly class, reminded at
the same time to be worthy of their election though their exemplary life and
works. That is why they were called to walk towards unity ("so that they
may become perfectly one”,
Jn 17:23). That is why they were called to abandon all deeds of
darkness; because the one who called them out of darkness into light, "from
non existence into being", who took them as non-members of the people of
God and made them into genuine
members of the new eschatological community (cf. I Pe 2:10: “once you
were no people, now you are God's people”),
is holy
and perfect (cf. Jn 17:19
also Mt 5:48 par). The writings of John are particularly replete with
evidence of the understanding that with the entrance of the eschaton into
history all of the characteristic elements of the end - judgment, resurrection,
kingdom, and consequently sinlessness, purity - begin to act mystically in the
world.
No
doubt, this initial horizontal historical eschatology, - which identifies
the Church not by what it is in the present, but by what it will become in the
Eschaton, and at the same time suggests that the Church’s mission is the
dynamic journey of the people of God as a whole towards the Eschaton, with the
Eucharist as the point of departure - became interwoven from the very first days
of the Church's life with a vertical
one, which put the emphasis on a more personal understanding of
salvation. From the time of the St. Paul the apostle this personalization is
quite evident in his “justification by faith” theology, but this “paradigm
shift” has also affected the understanding of the Eucharist, the primary act
of self-consciousness of community as a koinonia of the eschata and as a
proleptic manifestation of the coming kingdom of God. No matter for what reasons,
from the time of St. Paul there has been a shift of the center of gravity from
the (eucharistic) experience to
the (christian) message, from
eschatology to
christology
(and further and consequently to soteriology), from
the event (the
Kingdom of God), to the bearer and center of this event ((Christ,
and
more precisely his sacrifice on the cross). Nevertheless, the Eucharist (the theia
koinonia) always remained the sole expression of the Church’s identity.
Although
some theologians consider this second concept, which was mingled with the
original biblical/semitic thought, as stemming from Greek philosophers (Stoics
and others), it is more than clear that the horizontal-eschatological view was
the predominant one in New Testament, the other early Christian writings and the
authentic teaching of the Church. The vertical-soteriological view was always
understood within the context of the horizontal-eschatological perspective as
supplemental and complementary. This is why the liturgical experience of the
early Church is incomprehensible without its social dimension (see Acts 2:42ff.,
1 Cor 11:1ff., Heb 13: 10-16; Justin, 1 Apology
67; Irenaeus,
Adver. Her. 18:1, etc.).
Therefore,
a “Pneumatological ecclesiology” can easily be identified with a
“Eucharistically oriented ecclesiology”. After all, the ecclesiological
understanding of the Church right from the beginning was clearly reflected
within her liturgical order, which from the time of St. Ignatius of
Antioch onwards considers the eschatological people of God, gathered in one
place around Christ, as reflected in the offices of the Church: the bishop is
“in the place and as image of Christ”, while the presbyters around him re-present
the apostles. Above all it is the eucharistic gathering which authentically
expresses the mystery of the Church. Here, in the gathering of the community
around the bishop, the community does not propagate its faith on the basis of a
sacramental redemption from worldly suffering, nor does it proclaim personal
perfection and individual salvation within a historical institution; rather it
witnesses its entity as the proleptic manifestation of the eschatological
Kingdom of God (cf. Ignatius, Ad Eph. 13).
This
eucharistic understanding of the Church (i.e. as an icon of the Eschaton)
also resulted in an understanding of her mission as an imperative duty to
witness her identity as an authentic expression in a particular time and place
of the eschatological glory of the Kingdom of God, with all that this could
imply for social
and cosmic life. It is to be noted, that a conviction began to grow among
Church writers, beginning with the author of Hebrews (10:1), and more fully
developed in the writings of Maximus the Confessor, that the events of the Old
Testament were «shadow» (óêéÜ) of future riches, and that
present Church reality is only an «image» (åéêþí)
of the “truth”
(áëÞèåéá).
The
whole ecclesiological process from the eschatological kerygma of Jesus of
Nazareth, announcing the coming of the kingdom of God during his mission (the
already inaugurated, but not yet fulfiled new heaven and new earth), to the
understanding by the first apostles of their mission to evangelize the world as
a sign of the eschata, and further down to the Ignatian concept of the Church as
a eucharistic community (with
the Bishop as the image of Christ), reveals that it was the eschatological,
and not the historical (in other words hierarchical, and therfore
authoritative, no matter whether episcopal, conciliar, congregational etc.)
nature of the Church that was stressed. Metropolitan J. Zizioulas of Pergamon is
definitely right, when he insists that the Church does not draw its identity
from what it is, or from what
it was given to it as institution,
but from
what it will be, i.e. from the eschata. Drawing, as he did, from an ancient hymn
of the Byzantine Vespers of the feast of Pentecost we may state that “if
Christ in-stituted the Church, it is the Holy Spirit that con- stitutes
her”. The early Christian community understood itself, mainly through the act
of its eucharistic gatherings, as proleptically portraying the kingdom of God on
earth; and the primary consern of the great theologians of the apostolic and
post-apostolic period was to maintain clearly the vision of that kingdom before
the eyes of the people of God.
Hence
the episcopocentric structure of the Church as an essential part of that vision;
and equally the importance of all kinds of primacies (universal,
regional, local) to keep, sustain and minister that vision. In his authentic
function (not the one aquired later through social, not theological, influences
- not always healthy, but equally not necesserilly to be rejected), the primus,
be it the bishop or the first among bishops,
as presiding in love in the Eucharist (i.e. the Church) is not a vicar, a
representative, or ambassador of Christ,
but an
image of Christ. So with the rest of the ministries of the Church: they are
not parallel to, or given by, but identical with those of, Christ.
If
any conclusion is to be drawn from the above analysis and approach of the
Pneumatological Ecclesiology, this is an affirmation of the eschatological
orientation of the Church. And there is no better way to rediscover the
eschatological self-consciousness of the Church than through the Eucharist
as the sacrament of communion,
of love, of sacrifice and of sharing. If this is so, then the
pneumatological ecclesiology goes far beyond denominational boundaries, beyond
Christian limitations, even beyond the religious sphere in the conventional
sense: it is the manifestation of the kingdom of God, the restoration of God’s
“household” (oikos)
of God (K.Raiser,
Ecumenism in Transition, Geneva
WCC Press 1991, 102ff.), in its majestic eschatological splendour; in other
words it is the projection of the inner dynamics (love, communion, justice,
equality, sharing etc.) of the Holy Trinity into the world and cosmic realities.
And this was exactly the experience, but also the primary concern, of the early
christian community expressed right from the beginning in the specific act of
being assembled epi to auto, an act (Eucharist) that is being unseasingly
repeated throughout the history of the Church.
According
to most serious interpreters Orthodoxy means the wholeness of the people of God
who share the right conviction (’Oñèïäïîßá=ïñèÞ
äüîá=right opinion) concerning the event of God's salvation in Christ and
his Church, and the right expression (ïñèïðñáîßá=orthopraxia)
of this faith. Orthodoxia leads to the maximum possible application in orthopraxia
of charismatic life in the freedom of the Holy Spirit in all aspects of
daily social and cosmic life. Everybody is invided by Orthodoxy to transcend
confessions and inflexible institutions without necessarily denying them. I
remember the late N. Nissiotis claiming that Orthodoxy is not to be identified
only with the nominal Orthodox in the historical sense and with all their
limitations and shortcomings. "We should never forget that this term is
given to the One, (Holy, Catholic
and) Apostolic Church as a whole over against the heretics who, of their own
choice, split from the main body of the Church. The term is exclusive for all
those, who willingly fall away from the historical stream of life of the One
Church but it is inclusive for those who profess their spiritual belonging to
that stream...”.
Next
to the meaning of Orthodoxy is the question is of how to determine its criteria.
The Roman Catholics have Vatican II
to draw from; the Orthodox do not. The Lutherans have an Augsburg Confession of
their own; the Orthodox not, and they also lack the equivalent of a Luther of
Calvin, to mention just two from the Reformation movement, who could give them
their theological identity. The only authortitative sources the Orthodox possess
are in fact common to the rest of the christians: the Bible and the Tradition.
How can one establish a distinctly Orthodox view on pneumatology on a basis
which is common to non-Orthodox as well?
The essence of Orthodoxy, vis-a-vis Western theology in its
entirety, i.e. Catholic and Protestant, is
the importance of its liturgical tradition. It is widely held that the
liturgical dimension is perhaps the only safe criterion,
in ascertaining the specificities of the Orthodox pneumatology. The
Church is first of all a worshipping community. Worship comes first, doctrine
and discipline second. The lex orandi has a
privileged priority in the life of the Christian Church. The lex
credendi depends on the devotional experience and vision of the Church,
as G.Florovsky put it, or more precisely on the authentic (i.e. liturgical)
identity of the Church. Heart of Orthodox liturgy, as in all or most all
Christian traditions, is the Eucharist, which is called by the Orthodox Divine
Liturgy. The most widely held among Orthodox of our time criterion for
determining the Orthodox theology is undoubtedly the eucharistic approach to all
aspects of theology, and especially to pneumatology. It is in the Eucharist only
that the church becomes Church in its fullest sence. Eucharist is conceived as
the very manifestation of the Church and as a corporate act of the whole
community. Orthodox theology has been known to non-orthodox as the more
consistent to eucharistic ecclesiology, while the Roman catholic one puts more
emphasis on the universal ecclesiology.
The
orthodox conception of Tradition (to be distinguished from the various local or
regional or even temporal traditions) is not a static entity but a
dynamic reality, not a dead acceptance of the past,
but a living experience of
the Holy Spirit in the present. In G. Florovsky' s words, "Tradition is the
witness of the Spirit; the Spirit' s unceasing revelation and preaching of the
Good news... It is not only a protective, conservative principle, but primarily
the principle of growth and renewal". Thus even tradition, for most the
decisive principle of Orthodoxy, is closely connected to a proper understanding
of pneumatology.
To
properly grasp the quintessence of pneumatology - and I will speak only of the
Orthodox understanding - one has to place it within the economy of the Holy
Trinity. All fundamental aspects of the Orthodox theology, (creation of the
entire cosmos by God, redemption in Christ and salvation through the Church, but
beyond her boundaries in the power of the Holy Spirit, etc.) are mostly
conceived as the natural consequence of the inner dynamics of the Triune God,
i.e. of the communion and love that exists within the Holy Trinity.
Applied
to ecclesiology, and more precisely to the Church’s mission,
this trinitarian basis had tremendous effect in helping the Church to avoid imperialistic or confessionalistic attitudes. "The
trinitarian theology points to the fact that God' s involvement in history aims
at drawing humanity and creation in general into this communion with God' s very
life. The implications of this assertion for understanding mission are very
important: mission does not
aim primarily at the propagation or transmission of intellectual
convictions, doctrines, moral commands etc., but at the transmission of the life
of communion that exists in God" as Ion Bria puts it.
Of
similar importance is the application of the trinitarian theology to the structure
of the Church, at least in theory. By nature the Church cannot reflect the
worldly image of secular organizations, which is based on power and domination,
but the kenotic image of the Holy Trinity, which is based on love and communion.
If we take a little further this trinitarian understanding of ecclesiology and
if we take into consideration the distinction of the hypostases (persons) within
the Holy Trinity, we realize that the Church is a church of "God" (the
father) before it becomes a Church of "Christ" and of a certain place.
That is why in the Orthodox Catholic `tradition all the proper eucharistic
prayers (anaphoras) are addressed to God the Father. This theology has
revealing implications on a number of issues ranging from the profound meaning
of episcopacy (Bishop image of "Christ") to the dilectics between
Christ - Church, divine - human, unity of women, and
men etc.
As
to pneumatology proper, we should remind ourselves of its biblical foundation,
where the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 13:13) is by definition conditioned by the idea of
êïéíùíßá (communion). The
Spirit is incompatible with individualism, its primary work being the
transformation of all reality to a relational status. Classical theology of the
past has been very often criticized of being "christomonistic", of
orienting almost all its attention
to Christ, relegating the Spirit to an anciliary role (agent of Christ,
inspirator of the prophets and the authors of the Bible, helper of the Church to
listen, apprehend and interpret the word of God etc.). This criticism may have
gone too far and may be an exaggeration; it shows however implicitly the importance of pneumatology. A proper pneumatology,
however, should never take the form of a "pneumatomonism". It rather
leads to an understanding of christology conditioned in a constitutive way by
pneumatology.
Three
are the most important distinctive characteristics of the Orthodox pneumatology:
(a) the rejection of any Filioque theology; (b) the importance of the epiklesis,
i.e. the invocation of the Holy Spirit in all liturgical practices, especially
in the eucharistic anaphora; and (c) the understanding of all the church'
s ministries always within the context of the community.
Starting from the last one, I can only underline that the Orthodox Church
has not till recently experienced antagonism between clericalism and
anticlericalism, or the tension between the clergy and the laity, and this is
why the thorny question of the ordination of women, has not yet come up as
an issue and a serious challenge from within the Orthodox Church.
With
regard to the epiklesis, I will only underline that the daily liturgical
cycle of the Orthodox Church is introduced by the well-known prayer to the Holy
Spirit:
O
heavenly King, Comforter, the spirit of truth, present in all places and filling
all things, treasury of good things and giver of life, come dwell among us,
purify us from every stain, and of your goodness save our souls.
It
is therefore significant that in the Orthodox liturgy and in particular in all
sacraments (called by the Orthodox mysteries and not sacraments in the
conventional sense) it is the Spirit which is uniquely, exclusively and
repeatedly invoked. Furthermore, the sacrament of chrismation (the equivalent of
the western confirmation), which is always understood as the seal of the gift of
the Holy Spirit, has never been in the East dissociated from Baptism. And above
all, in the Orthodox Church it was always believed that is during the invocation
of the Holy Spirit, and not during the utterance of the dominical words of the
institution of the Eucharist, that the transformation of the Holy gifts that
took place. The neutral term metabole, and not the scholastic transubstantiatio,
is to be noted here.
What,
however, is even more important is that the epiklesis of the Holy Spirit in the
Eastern Orthodox Liturgy is made for both the holy gifts and the community (in
fact first for the community and then for the holy gifts). The claim,
therefore, of the Orthodox that the Church, in its fullest sense, is nowhere
manifested but in the Eucharist as
a communion event, is well justified. The Church is not only an institution,
i.e. something which is given; it is above all a communion event. We may say
that Christ in-stitutes the Church, but it is the Holy Spirit that con-stitutes
her.
Finally,
with regard to the filioque issue
it is generally acknowledged, implicitly even by Roman Catholics (cf. e.g. Y.Congar),
that with this unnecessary insertion into the Nicean Creed "the charism is
made subordinate to the institution, inner freedom to imposed authority,
prophecy to juridicism, mysticism to scholasticism, the laity to the clergy the
universal priesthood to the ministerial hierarchy, and finally the college of
bishops to the primacy of the Pope". Without considering the filioque as an
error - we should rather speak of a theologoumenon - its rejection in the
East is a clear indication of the Orthodox Church' s consciousness to at
least safeguard the role
and the significance of the Holy Spirit in the life of
the Church. By rejecting any
idea of subordination of the Holy Spirit within the economy of the Holy Trinity, the Orthodox kept alive the idea of
renewal and the concept of the Church as a continuous Pentecost.
Having
said all the above, I must stress that I firmly believe in a synthesis of the
Eastern and Western pneumatology. The authentic catholicity of the Church must
include both East and West. Western theology tends to limit ecclesiology to the
historical context. The Church ends by being completely historicized; thus it
ceases to be the manifestation of the eschata, becoming an image of this world.
At the other end, Eastern theology with its exclusive vision of future or
heavenly things runs the danger of disincarnating the Church from history. A
dynamic encounter will enrich both traditions, resulting in a more integral and
comprehensive pneumatology.