The Spirit is both the one who upholds the human Jesus in the truth of his being and calling and the one who, by mediating the Father's action in raising him from the dead, transforms his body to the life of the world to come. All particular acts of providence derive from and take something of the shape of the paradigmatic redemptive act. The Triune Creator p. 177-8
It is worth asking what this means, 'take something of the shape of'...? A martyrdom, for example, is a particular act of providence which certainly derives from the resurrectional work of the Spirit - but does it take something of the shape of it? He continues:
As a form of enabling personal action, providential action, the Spirit's action is that which libeartes things and people to be themselves, as, paradigmatically, the Spirit's leading enable the human Jesus to be truly himself in relation to God the Father and the world. p. 184
I like especially how he picks up the way in which the Spirit ministered to Jesus in the Gospel narratives - something somewhat eclipsed in the Augustinian tradition.
6 comments:
I always appreciated this in Gunton: he thinks about, and makes sense of, what the Spirit is actually for. This is a most improper way of putting the point, but I take it it's clear what I mean.
So you reading up on providence? I'm speaking on that next year...What/who do you think I should read?
I'm thinking some Berkhouwer...
Berkouwer
Calvin
Barth III.3 pp. 1-58
Gunton...
but also try
Jonathan Edwards
Bavinck
(to keep it more conservative)
I think Gunton has a real insight with his Spirit stuff. A question that could get you going: was the march of the Burmese monks an act of God's spirit? If so, in what sense?
I am told that Balthasar has some stuff on providence, but that is probably a little too far afield for your purposes.
The pastoral issues here are huge of course: people's real sense that they are potential victims of fate or luck, and their need to manage it is a dominant theme in late modern life, and Christians are not exempt from it.
Then there is the tsunami, and my friend's cancer: suffering on a large and personal scale... how does this fit within providence?
See David Bentley Hart's 'The Doors of the Sea' for this - a book I a meaning to get around to
I'm all for the perfecting work of the Spirit but I do worry sometimes that the description needs a stronger foundation in the broader canonical picture.
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