The Church’s Journey Through Time

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Pneuma 41 (2019) 421–438

The Church’s Journey through Time Toward a Spirit Eschatology

Gregory John Liston

Laidlaw College, Auckland, New Zealand gliston@laidlaw.ac.nz

Abstract

Applying the methodology of Third Article Theology to the doctrine of eschatology enables the development of a nuanced understanding of the church’s journey through time. Just as Spirit Christology has revealed insights into Christ’s humanity and growth, similarly a Spirit eschatology informs an understanding of the church’s transforma- tion and development. Such a Spirit eschatology complements rather than replaces the more common christologically focused eschatologies, painting a picture of the Spirit working through but not being beholden to the church, leading us in cruciform lives that echo Christ’s overarching metanarrative.

Keywords

Third Article Theology – eschatology – ecclesiology – pneumatology – cruciformity

Third Article Theology (TAT) is a recently developed methodology that inten- tionally views reality through the lens of the Spirit. Initially, theologians pursu- ing this approach focused on the development of a Spirit Christology.1 Among the many insights arising were the Spirit’s foundational role in understanding

1 Some representative works on this subject include Ralph Del Colle, “Spirit-Christology: Dog-

matic Foundations for Pentecostal-Charismatic Spirituality,”Journal of PentecostalTheology3

(1993): 91–112. D. Lyle Dabney, “Starting with the Spirit: Why the Last Should Now Be First,” in

Starting with the Spirit, ed. Stephen Pickard and Gordon Preece (Hindmarsh: Australian The-

ological Forum, 2001), 3–27. David Coffey,“Did You Receive the Holy Spirit When You Believed?”

Some Basic Questions for Pneumatology (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2005). Myk

Habets, The Anointed Son: A Trinitarian Spirit Christology (Eugene: Pickwick Publications,

2010).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/15700747-04103003

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Christ’s divinity and a nuanced comprehension of Christ’s growth and devel- opment as a human. Following this progress, the methodology of TAT has been applied to a variety of other doctrines, including ecclesiology, Scripture, anthropology, and public theology.2 One locus that has not yet been as rigor- ously examined through the lens of the Spirit as others, however, is eschatology. This is well illustrated in that a recent and comprehensive edited volume of dogmatic developments inTATcontained sections and articles on Christology, Trinity, soteriology, ecclesiology, anthropology, and public theology (among others), but none focused on eschatology.3

Just as Spirit Christology has enabled a more nuanced understanding of Christ’s growth and development as a human to emerge, so a pneumatologi- cally focused Spirit eschatology enables the development of a nuanced under- standing of the church’s situation and journey through time. Consequently, this article investigates the value arising from exploring the doctrine of escha- tology through the methodology of TAT, and particularly its implications for and connection with our current ecclesiological journey. Initially, it determines howTATcan be applied to eschatology, making the Spirit’s foundational role in eschatology explicit. This leads to an even more pivotal investigation explor- ing how a Spirit eschatology provides a nuanced picture of the church’s growth anddevelopmentthroughtime. As AmosYongcomments,“the moreimportant matter … concerns how eternity’s beckoning cuts into each present moment of existence.”4The resulting portrait is one in which the Spirit guides the church on its journey toward its future telos through its suffering obedience—its cru- ciform shape and actions.

2 For an early example see Clark H. Pinnock,Flame of Love: ATheology of the Holy Spirit(Down-

ers Grove: IVP Academic, 1996). More recently, specific examples include Cheryl M. Peter-

son, Who Is the Church? An Ecclesiology for the Twenty-First Century (Minneapolis: Fortress,

2013). Also, Gregory J. Liston,The Anointed Church: Toward a Third Article Ecclesiology (Min-

neapolis: Fortress, 2015). Of particular note are the scholars who utilize a pneumatological

focus as part of a broader pentecostal approach. Examples include Amos Yong, Beyond the

Impasse: Toward a Pneumatological Theology of Religions (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003). Also

Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Toward a Pneumatological Theology: Pentecostal and Ecumenical Per-

spectives on Ecclesiology, Soteriology, and Theology of Mission (Lanham: University Press of

America, 2002). Primarily, a recent dogmatic volume gives a good overview of the burgeon-

ing interest in this approach across denominational streams: Myk Habets, ed., Third Article

Theology: A Pneumatological Dogmatics(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016).

3 Habets, ed., Third Article Theology. Private communication with the editor confirms that he

wasn’t aware of anyone utilizing aTATmethodology to explore eschatology up to the point of

publication.

4 Amos Yong, Renewing Christian Theology: Systematics for a Global Christianity (Waco: Baylor

University Press, 2014), 55.

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1 Constructing a Spirit Eschatology

Virtually all proponents of Third Article Theology recognize two key method- ological criteria, namely (1)TATstarts with the Spirit, and (2)TATlooks through the Spirit rather than at it.5While there are continuing discussions about other aspects of this methodology,6 increasing numbers of scholars argue that a third criterion should be added: (3) TAT complements and does not compete with First and Second Article theologies.7 Such a complementary approach is adopted here. Consequently, this section argues that just as Spirit Christol- ogy complements Logos Christology in demonstrating the Spirit’s foundational role in Christ’s incarnation, so a Spirit eschatology complements a christologi- cally focused eschatology by explicitly acknowledging the Spirit’s foundational eschatological role.8The next section extends this discussion by exploring how,

5 These are the first two criteria listed by Habets in Myk Habets, “Prolegomenon: On Starting

with the Spirit,” inThirdArticleTheology:APneumatologicalDogmatics, ed. Myk Habets (Min-

neapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), 14–16.

6 See, for example, the contrasting approaches of the two prolegomena articles in Habets’s

edited dogmatics. Both of these can be compared with the overlapping approaches of a dis-

tinctly pentecostalapproachtotheology with its prioritization of a pneumatologicallens.See,

for example, Amos Yong, “Introduction: Pentecostalism and a Theology of the Third Article,”

in Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Toward a Pneumatological Theology: Pentecostal and Ecumenical

Perspectives on Ecclesiology, Soteriology, and Theology of Mission, ed. Amos Yong (Lanham:

University Press of America, 2002), xiii–xx. The area where these pentecostal approaches

overlap with aTATapproach to eschatology are particularly noted in this first section. 7 First and Second Article Theologies explore reality through the lenses of the Father and the

Son respectively. Habets listsTAT’s complementarity with these approaches as his fourth cri-

terion. See Habets, “Prolegomenon: On Starting with the Spirit,” 16. Theologians whose pneu-

matologically focused proposals explicitly reject such a complementary approach include

Roger Haight, Norman Hook, Hendrikus Berkhof, and James Dunn, among others. See, for

example, Roger Haight, “The Case for Spirit Christology,” Theological Studies 53 (1992): 257.

For further details and critiques of this non-complementary or replacement approach toTAT

see Habets,The Anointed Son, 30–40, 194–200. Also Philip J. Rosato, “Spirit Christology: Ambi-

guity and Promise,”Theological Studies38 (1977): 423–429. More recently, Gregory J. Liston, “A

‘Chalcedonian’ Spirit Christology,”Irish Theological Quarterly81, no. 1 (2016): 76–78. 8 Similarly to the situation in the christological loci, there are scholars who seek to replace a

focus on the Son with a focus on the Spirit within other fields. Examples include Robert Jen-

son, John Zizioulas, and Reinhard Hütter, among others. For example, Hütter describes the

relationship between the Spirit and the church’s core practices asenhypostatic. See Reinhard

Hütter,Suffering Divine Things: Theology as Church Practice, trans. Doug Scott (Grand Rapids:

Eerdmans, 2000), 132–133. Such a move subsumes the Son into the Spirit’s ecclesial mission

(See Bruce L. McCormack, “Witness to the Word: a Barthian Engagement with Reinhard Hüt-

ter’s Ontology of the Church,”ZeitschriftfürDialektischeTheologie, Supplement Series 5 [2011]:

74.) Further, it essentially institutionalizes the Spirit to the church. See Michael Mawson, “The

SpiritandtheCommunity:PneumatologyandEcclesiologyinJenson,HütterandBonhoeffer,”

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just as Spirit Christology enables a nuanced comprehension of Christ’s growth and development, a Spirit eschatology enables a dynamic understanding of ecclesial time to emerge. In other words, a Spirit eschatology moves beyond a static to a dynamic view of the church: an understanding that clearly accounts for ecclesial growth and development.9

The theological approach of exploring the eschatological relationship be- tween eternity and time through a christological lens without significant ref- erence to the Spirit can be labeled “Logos eschatology” (paralleling the ter- minology of Logos Christology). The pivotal insight of Logos eschatology is (through analogy) to see eternity as corresponding to Christ’s divine nature, and time as corresponding to his human nature, so that eternity and time can be related in a similar manner to Christ’s divine and human natures. Such a Second Article Theology approach is exemplified in the work of Karl Barth and T.F. Torrance, among others, and has proved to be exceedingly fruitful.10 Many argue, however, that it undervalues the Spirit’s role and consequently results in an excessively static account of ecclesial development. For example, Balthasar argues (perhaps a little exaggeratedly) that Barth “avoids all talk about those things that would provide for a real ongoing history between man and God in the sphere of the temporal and the relative … nothing really happens in his theology of history, because everything has already taken place in eternity.”11

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International Journal of Systematic Theology 15, no. 4 (2013): 453–468. For a broader over- view of the challenges arising from identifying the Spirit too closely with the church and church practices, see Nicholas M. Healy, “Practices and the New Ecclesiology: Misplaced Concreteness?,”International Journal of Systematic Theology5, no. 3 (2003): 287–308. See, for example, the detailed exploration of pentecostal eschatologies in dialogue with Moltmann’s work in Peter Althouse,Spirit of the Last Days: Pentecostal Eschatology in Con- versation with Jürgen Moltmann (London: T&T Clark International, 2003). While none of these pentecostal eschatologies (or Moltmann’s) is focused only on the development of a Spirit eschatology specifically (as defined in this article), they all include aspects of this approach in their broader outworking.

Many resources expound the fruitfulness of this approach. For Barth, see particularly George Hunsinger, “Mysterium Trinitatis: Karl Barth’s Conception of Eternity,” in Disrup- tive Grace: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 186–209. For Torrance, see Stanley S. Maclean, Resurrection, Apocalypse, and the Kingdom of Christ: The Eschatology of Thomas F. Torrance(Eugene: Pickwick, 2012).

Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth, trans. John Drury (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 277. These are common critiques of Barth and won’t be expanded further. For a more extended discussion see Adrian Langdon, God the Eternal Contemporary: Trinity, Eternity and Time in Karl Barth(Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2012). Also, Wolfgang Vondey, “The Holy Spirit and Time in Contemporary Catholic and Protestant Theology,”ScottishJournalof Theology58, no. 4 (2005), especially 397–398. And Colin Gun- ton, “Salvation,” inThe Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, ed. John Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 143–158.

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T.F. Torrance’s eschatology provides a mature and developed example of a Second ArticleTheology approach to the subject.The following discussion uses Torrance’s work as an exemplar to demonstrate not just the strengths and weak- nesses of Logos eschatology, but also how constructing a complementary Spirit eschatology corrects its weaknesses without losing its strengths.12Recognizing the presence of both continuity and discontinuity in the relationship between the church and the coming kingdom, Torrance argues for a “Chalcedonian” relationship between the two, helpfully suggesting that the kingdom and the church are related “inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably.”13Tor- rance argues that a “Chalcedonian” analogy can be utilized between church and kingdom because eschatology can and should be characterized christologically. He writes that “eschatology properly speaking is the application of Christology to the Kingdom of Christ and to the work of the church in history.”14

From a TAT perspective, Torrance’s approach here is accurate, yet incom- plete. For Christ’s incarnation itself (let alone its eschatological application) cannot be understood except through the lens of the Spirit. If we affirm the Chalcedonian understanding that in Christ divine and human natures are hypostatically united, this requires an equal affirmation that this union hap- pens through the Spirit. As has been demonstrated elsewhere, “Our Lord Jesus Christ is fully and uniquely the person of the Son and fully and uniquely anointed by the Spirit.”15Any explanation of the hypostatic union that does not explicitly include the Spirit’s mission leads to a flawed christological under- standing, for it is through the Spirit that the divine and human are united in Christ.16 Just as a simplistic understanding of Christology without pneumatol- ogy will end up imbalanced, a simplistic application of Christology to escha- tology without acknowledgement of the Spirit’s constitutive role will end up equally imbalanced.

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Given that Torrance’s characterization of eschatology is utilized only at a high level in the first section of this article, it is described without significant critique. For a helpful and critical analysis that goes into more depth, see Andrew Purves, “The Advent of Ministry: Torrance on Eschatology, the Church, and Ministry,” in Evangelical Calvinism, vol. 2, ed. Myk Habets and Bobby Grow (Eugene: Pickwick, 2017), 95–127. Also, Maclean, Resurrec- tion, Apocalypse, and the Kingdom of Christ, 190–203.

Jaroslov Pelikan andValerie Hotchkiss, eds.,CreedsandConfessionsof FaithintheChristian Tradition: Early, Eastern and Medieval (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 181. Thomas F. Torrance, Royal Priesthood: A Theology of Ordained Ministry (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1993), 43.

Liston, “A “Chalcedonian” Spirit Christology,” 76. Italics added. For a full justification of this point see 74–93.

See, for example, Frank D. Macchia, Jesus the Spirit Baptizer: Christology in the Light of Pentecost (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 11–14. Also, Leopoldo A. Sánchez M., Receiver, Bearer and Giver of God’s Spirit (Eugene: Pickwick, 2015), 86–109.

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Utilizing this Chalcedonian analogy, and launching from what Torrance labels the primary eschatological insight of the twentieth century—Barth’s realization that the Word became a spatiotemporal being (becoming “time” in the same way he became “flesh”17)—Torrance draws out the implication that there are three “times” to be considered: “old” or “fallen” time (what humans currently experience in their fallen condition), eternity (God’s time), and “new” or “redeemed” time (the time Christ experiences, which reconciles “old” or “fallen” time in union with eternity). The relationship between these three can be expressed through a christological analogy. “Here too we may think of there having taken place in the Incarnation as it were a hypostatic union between the eternal and the temporal in the form of new time.”18

The application of aTATapproach to Torrance’s original chain of logic leads beyond this to the recognition that eternity and time are joined through the Spirit. Certainly, it is “in” Christ that time and eternity are intertwined, but the point that is often neglected in a Logos eschatology, and that is explicit and foundational in a Spirit eschatology, is that this happens “through” the Spirit. The relationship between time and eternity is christologically situated, as Tor- rance ably notes, but it is also pneumatologically enabled. Eternity indwells time in Christ through the Spirit, and time is taken up into eternity in Christ through the Spirit. This is precisely why (with nuanced qualifications) the Spirit can take the past reality of Jesus’s work and apply it to our present situation. But it is also precisely why (again, with nuanced qualifications) the Spirit can take the future benefits of Jesus’s coming kingdom and apply them to our current reality.Through the Spirit (and in Christ), all times are this time, just as through the Spirit (and in Christ), all places are this place. As Yong comments, “Not only does Luke say that the time of the last days has begun with the coming of the Spirit, but he also says that theplaceof the kingdom is now being redeemed by the Spirit.”19

But Torrance, of course, is concerned not just with the relationship between time and eternity, but also with the relationship between old (fallen) and new (redeemed) time. “We must think … of fallen time as having perfected itself

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See, for example, Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, trans. G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2010),III.2, 437–442.

Thomas F. Torrance, “The Modern Eschatological Debate,”Evangelical Quarterly25 (1953): 224. See also Thomas F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 334–336. And Thomas F. Torrance, Space, Time and Res- urrection(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1976), 98–99.

Amos Yong, In the Days of Caesar: Pentecostalism and Political Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 331. (Italics added.)

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through the Cross and resurrection into the abiding triumph of a perfection in God which both consummates the original purposes of creation and crowns it with glory.”20 The result is that there are two tensions to be considered, an “eschatological” tension between “new” (redeemed) and “old” (fallen) time, and an ultimate “teleological” tension between the eternal and temporal. For Torrance, the first is equivalent to the tension between the new creation and the fallen world, while the second is equivalent to the holiness/sinfulness ten- sion. Torrance essentially envisions time as two separate lines running in par- allel (new and old time), both of which are positioned within the constant background and framework of eternity, with new time being the christologi- cal union of old time with eternity.

Here again, however, we need to recognize not just the reality of what has been achieved in Christ, but the pneumatological manner through which it was achieved. For both the cross and the resurrection occurred through the Spirit. Not only was Jesus’s life pneumatologically empowered, but it was through the Spirit that he offered himself to God on the cross (Heb 9:14), and it was by the Spirit that he was raised from the dead (Rom 8:11).21 If, then, we think of fallen time as having perfected itself through the cross and resurrection (asTor- rance says), we ought also to think of the means through which this happens— through the Spirit. It is in the Spirit that we who exist in fallen time participate in Christ’s new redeemed time, and it is in the Spirit that Christ’s past, present, and future in this new redeemed time are brought to bear on our present real- ity.22 Essentially, what happens is that through the Spirit, all times in Christ’s new time are brought to bear on the single moment we currently inhabit in old time.

It is at this point that the value of adopting a complementary approach to Spirit eschatology becomes particularly clear. The alternative of replacing a focus on the Son with a focus on the Spirit fundamentally alters the under- standing of new and old time running in parallel that was developed through Logos eschatology.23 When the ecclesial mission of the Son is subsumed into that of the Spirit, the Spirit cannot be identified as a distinct person within the

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Torrance, “The Modern Eschatological Debate,” 224–225.

See, for example, Steven M. Studebaker, From Pentecost to the Triune God: A Pentecostal Trinitarian Theology(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 80–87.

See particularly the detailed discussion of the interaction between God’s time and our time in Matthew K. Thompson, Kingdom Come: Revisioning Pentecostal Ecclesiology(Dor- set: Deo Publishing, 2010), 109–127.

This tendency can be seen in several eschato-ecclesial approaches that replace a focus on the Son with a focus on the Spirit. See, for example, the critiques of Jenson and Hütter in Mawson, “The Spirit and the Community,” 453–468.

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church leading us into the (logically distinguishable) life of the Son. Rather, the Spirit is simply the risen Christ drawing us gradually to himself. With only one active participant, there is only one place the Spirit can act (within the church and its practices) and only one dimension along which the church can be transformed (continuously in fallen time toward its future teleological real- ity). The result is that, in direct contrast to the Logos eschatologies of Barth and Torrance that undervalue the church’s development through time, these replacement Spirit eschatologies essentially merge new and old time together, giving our present experience of fallen time an undeserved precedence. Such an approach ignores the ontological separateness of Christ from the church, confusing and merging the two.

A complementary Spirit eschatology, in contrast, does not alter the broad framework connecting time and eternity developed through a Logos eschatol- ogy approach. Redeemed and fallen time are still understood as existing and evolving in parallel. In addition to these insights arising from Logos escha- tology, however, a complementary Spirit eschatology also enables a dynamic understanding of the church’s transformation within fallen time (as explored in the next section). Further, it ensures that the full interaction between the two times is considered. Using a complementaryTATapproach, all of redeemed time, from its beginning with Christ’s resurrection through to its culmination in the coming kingdom, interacts with the present moment we exist in within fallen time. Looking through the lens of the Spirit ensures that we do not minimize the relationship between the two parallel times by restricting it to just bringing forward Christ’s past work, or just acknowledging the presence of Christ with us through the Spirit. But through the Spirit, the past, present, and future reality of Christ in new time impacts us at the present moment we are experiencing in ecclesial time. Christologically focused attempts to con- nect fallen and redeemed time often focus on specific aspects of redeemed time and neglect other aspects, rather than pneumatologically looking across the entire spectrum of Christ’s existence in new time and its relevance to us now. Barth’s analysis, for example, focuses on bringing forward to us Christ’s past work and has a noetic focus. This aspect can be likened or appropri- ated to Christ’s prophetic role, bringing forward the knowledge of our sal- vation in Christ through the Spirit. Torrance, without losing Barth’s noetic understanding, has an ontic focus, exploring Christ’s present heavenly session and how we participate through the Spirit in Christ’s present and ongoing vicarious humanity. This can be likened or appropriated to Christ’s priestly role, effecting our salvation through standing in the gap between human- ity and divinity, and between time and eternity. But what both Barth and Torrance both arguably undervalue (to differing degrees) is the telic aspect,

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the Spirit’s role in bringing back to us (in part) the reality of Christ’s future kingdom, a connection that can be likened or appropriated to Christ’s kingly role.24

Such a complementary approach to eschatology also enables apparent di- chotomies to move toward resolution. For example, there is some debate in pentecostal scholarship over whether priority should be given to eschatology or Spirit baptism. Faupel and Land, for example, argue for eschatology being Pentecostalism’s “overarching and dominant distinctive.”25 In contrast, Mac- chia and Studebaker maintain that, remaining true to pentecostal history, Spirit baptism should be primary.26 Studebaker adopts the latter position because “the alternative confuses cause and effect.”27I would argue that this dichotomy emerges, at least in part, from understanding time as having a single dimen- sion, which in turn arises from the subtle tendency existing in some pentecostal theologies to overemphasize the Spirit at the expense of the Son. If, in con- trast, eschatology is viewed in dual dimensions—not just as the future end of time, but as an ongoing interaction between eternity, Christ’s redeemed time, and fallen time—then Studebaker’s cause and effect logic does not necessarily hold. If an approach that recognizes both a Logos eschatology and a comple- mentary Spirit eschatology is adopted, then the eschatological reality and Spirit baptism can be seen as mutually reinforcing, two sides of the same coin. Spirit

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For example, both Eugenio and Baxter argue that Torrance’s treatment of Christ’s kingly office is noticeably less in depth than that of Christ’s prophetic and priestly ministry. See Dick O. Eugenio, Communion with the Triune God: The Trinitarian Soteriology of T.F. Tor- rance (Eugene: Pickwick, 2014), 139. Also, C. Baxter Kruger, “Participation in the Self- Knowledge of God: The Nature and Means of our Knowledge of God in the Theology of T.F. Torrance” (PhD diss., University of Aberdeen, 1989) 324–334. As is well known, Barth uses the munus triplex as an (albeit subterranean) organizational schematic for CD IV. While not mutually exclusive options, this characterization clearly extends his, and the interesting exercise of exploring the similarities and differences between them (and other presentations) is unfortunately beyond this article’s scope.

As described in Frank D. Macchia, Justified in the Spirit: Creation, Redemption, and the Tri- une God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 94. For more detail see particularly D. William Faupel,The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the Development of Pen- tecostal Thought (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 42–43. Also, Steven J. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 62–63. For an overview of eschatological perspectives in pentecostal scholarship, see Larry R. McQueen, Towards a Pentecostal Eschatology: Discerning the Way Forward (Dorset: Deo Publishing, 2012), 5–59.

See, for example, Macchia, Justified in the Spirit, 93–95. Frank D. Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 38–48. Also, Studebaker, From Pentecost to the Triune God, 75–76.

Studebaker, From Pentecost to the Triune God, 75.

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baptism leads the community toward the coming eschatological reality, and the already existing eschatological reality enables Spirit baptism.28

While significantly more can and should be said about the broad sweep of this pneumatological connection between old and new time, the discussion above adequately reveals the foundational role of the Spirit in the relationship between time and eternity, together with some of its immediate implications. But the gains of applying a TAT methodology to eschatology go well beyond these affirmations of the Spirit’s foundational eschatological role. The second promised aspect (if the parallel with Spirit Christology is pursued and similar advantages are gained) is that a Spirit eschatology will reveal a dynamic under- standing of the church’s journey through time.

2 The Pneumatological Journey of the Church through Time

Exploring the pneumatological journey of the church through time requires theological analysis of the analogical connection between two relationships. The first is the relationship between Christ’s existence before and after the resurrection. The second is the relationship between the church’s existence in old and new time. The second relationship can be understood to some degree as analogous to and driven by the first. This section observes this connection through a pneumatological lens to see what insight it gives about the journey of the church through old (or fallen) time toward its telic consummation.29

There are five pneumatological parallels between a Spirit Christology and a pneumato-ecclesiology, namely, that (1) the Spirit conceives (Christ and the church); (2) the Spirit sustains the communion (of Christ and the church); (3) the Spirit conforms (the church to Christ’s likeness); (4) the Spirit directs and

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Dempster, for example, is one pentecostal scholar who, by adopting a multifaceted under- standing of eschatology, draws it together with Spirit baptism, effectively leveraging their combination toward a pentecostal social ethic. See Murray W. Dempster, “Eschatology, Spirit Baptism, and Inclusiveness: An Exploration into the Hallmarks of a Pentecostal Social Ethic,” in Perspectives in Pentecostal Eschatologies, ed. Peter Althouse and Robby Waddell (Eugene: Pickwick, 2010), 160–167. See also the comments on Macchia’s position in Peter Althouse, “Pentecostal Eschatology in Context: The Eschatological Orientation of the Full Gospel,” inPerspectives in Pentecostal Eschatologies, ed. Peter Althouse and Robby Waddell (Eugene: Pickwick, 2010), 221–223.

The following work leverages off and extends previous research that used aTATapproach to explore the analogical relationship between Christ and the church. See Liston, The Anointed Church, 121–154. Also Gregory J. Liston, “Towards a Pneumato-Ecclesiology: Ex- ploring the Pneumatological Union Between Christ and the Church,”Colloquium44, no. 1 (2012): 31–58.

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empowers (Christ and the church); (5) the Spirit is displayed and mediated (by Christ and the church). Exploring these enables the church to be metaphori- cally viewed as the incarnation’s sequel, having aspects of continuity (because the church is united with Christ), discontinuity (because the church does not repeat the incarnation), and a clear asymmetry (for the existence and func- tion of the church depends entirely on the existence and function of Christ). A detailed theological analysis of the aspects of continuity, discontinuity, and asymmetry that exist for each of the five pneumatological parallels between Christ and the church above can be constructed. For this analysis, however, the focus is particularly on the third and fourth parallels. While the other paral- lels are important, this article’s focus on the church’s eschatological direction means that parallels three and four, which directly explore Christ’s (and the church’s) journey toward their respective (but intertwined) futures, are the most pertinent.

With regard to the third aspect, a comparison of Christ and the church recog- nizes that just as Christ developed and grew as a human, so the church develops and grows. That is, the church has a pneumatologically enabled christotelic momentum.There are, of course, discontinuities between the two growth jour- neys. Before the church begins its quantitative and communal conformation (the journey that parallels Christ’s), we undergo a qualitative and individual transformation that enables us to be in Christ.30Further, our growth and devel- opment even after this transformation is not perfect as Christ’s was, what McFarland calls the “fundamental disanalogy between the incarnation and the life of the church.”31 But, as Gary Badcock argues, if we have a “thick” under- standing of the Spirit (one that recognizes the Spirit’s intentional bridging role between a holy God and sinful humanity), then even the church’s sinfulness does not stop his conforming presence. Just as on the cross when Christ was “full of sin” the Father and Son were united by the Spirit, so the Spirit continues to be present with the church even in our sinfulness, conforming the church toward her future.32

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In this sentence our qualitative and individual transformation (wherein we become new creatures in Christ) is contrasted with Christ’s and the church’s quantitative, gradual trans- formation, which happens degree by degree as we mature. For more detail, see Liston,The Anointed Church, 136–145.

Ian A. McFarland, “The Body of Christ: Rethinking a Classic Ecclesiological Model,”Inter- national Journal of Systematic Theology7, no. 3 (2005): 245.

See Gary D. Badcock,The House Where God Lives: Renewing the Doctrine of the Church for Today (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 194–209. Or for a summary and application see Liston,The Anointed Church, 142–144.

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The fourth parallel explores how this conformation happens, based on the insight that in the life of both Christ and the church, it is the Spirit that directs and empowers. This is seen in the parallels between the direction (and perhaps compulsion) of the Spirit in Christ’s life (for example, Mark 1:12), and the direc- tion (and perhaps compulsion) of the Spirit in the life of the early church (as in Acts 8:39).The crucial point to recognize here is the centrality of obedience and suffering. Just as the Spirit guided Christ to learn obedience in suffering and to suffer in obedience (Heb 5:5–8, for example), so the Spirit similarly guides the church. “The Spirit conforms the church into the image of Christ, therefore, as she suffers and obeys, or better, as she suffers in obedience.”33 Unfortunately the church does not always suffer obediently (a clear point of discontinuity), but when she does, that is when conformation occurs. In this way, the church is cruciform in shape. It is through our Christlike suffering and obedience that we are molded and conformed to Christ’s image.

Putting these two parallels together, we gain a picture of the Spirit guiding the church toward its ultimate fulfilment and continuing to do so even when we fall and fail. “The Spirit enabled Christ to grow into who he was as his human nature developed. As he surrendered himself in obedient submission, the Spirit led him down the path of suffering and into glory. Similarly, the church as a whole, unified, historic institution grows into what it is over its history, and this growth happens through obedient submission to the Spirit that leads us along the same path of suffering and into glory.”34 Recognizing and extending these pneumatological parallels between Christ and the church’s journey and utilizing the above insight about the connection between Christ (pre- and post- resurrection) and the church (in old and new time) allows several insights to be drawn.

The first is the relatively obvious but nevertheless important observation that the church’s journey from old time through to new time is guided and enabled by the Spirit. Just as it was through the Spirit that Christ was directed to the cross, and through the Spirit that he was raised up after his death, so it is through the Spirit that the church journeys through old time, and through the Spirit that together we as a church will eventually be raised up in Christ in our own resurrection to participate fully and completely in new time. The church should therefore endeavor to be highly conscious of and receptive to this leading. For example, Land comments that among the early Pentecostals, “The vivid presence of the Spirit heightened expectation, propelled into mis-

33 34

Liston,The Anointed Church, 147. Liston,The Anointed Church, 150.

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sion, enlivened worship and increased consecration for the appearance of the Lord of the harvest.”35

The second insight is that this guiding, enabling Spirit is distinct from the church and cannot be identified with it. The Spirit works in and on the church, but the Spirit is not the church (contra Jenson, for example), nor should he be identified or “hypostatically” united with the church’s practices (contra Hüt- ter). Equating Christ’s person with the hypostasis of the Spirit is precisely the error that “replacement” Spirit christologies make when exploring the life of Jesus, and similarly, equating the church’s being and activity with the person of the Spirit is precisely the error the “replacement” Spirit eschatologies make when considering the church’s ongoing journey. The parallel between Christ and the church’s journey suggests, however, that the Spirit is more accurately viewed as a hypostasis who is distinct from but closely related to the church, just as the Spirit is distinct from but closely related to the Logos within Christ. This enables the Spirit to act within the church, guiding, leading, and enabling, but at the same time remaining separate from it, able to work outside of and even at times against the church.

Further, the analogy between Christ and the church, and particularly the distinct existence of both the Logos and the Spirit within Christ’s incarnation, points toward the idea of a communal ecclesial spirit—something that is the analogical equivalent in the church of the Logos in Christ. This is reminiscent of Bonhoeffer’s idea of the church’s objective spirit, which is a communal spirit distinct from the Holy Spirit’s ecclesial presence.36The church’s objective spirit is perhaps most easily seen as the church’s “body,” in a related sense to Christ being the church’s “head.” The Holy Spirit joins the objective spirit (the body of the church) with the head (who is Christ), thereby forming the totus Chris- tus, the “pneumatologically enabled union that exists between the incarnate Christ and the human community of the church.”37 But the Spirit also forms the church as Christ’s body (1Cor 12:13). Bonhoeffer argues that the church’s objective spirit is generated through the pneumatologically guided interaction of the members of the Christian community, writing that the “Holy Spirit uses the objective spirit as a vehicle for its gathering and sustaining social activ- ity in spite of all the sinfulness and imperfection of the individuals and of the whole.”38

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Land, Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom, 72–73.

This is a concept Bonhoeffer developed in his published doctoral dissertation Sancto- rum Communio. Dietrich Bonhoeffer,Sanctorum Communio, trans. Reinhard Krauss (Min- neapolis: Fortress Press, 1998).

Liston,The Anointed Church, 156.

Bonhoeffer,Sanctorum Communio, 215.

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The question naturally arises from this discussion: How does this body of the church, united as she is through the Spirit to Christ who is her head, grow and develop over time? The third insight arising from the pneumatological parallel being explored here suggests that just as the Spirit enabled Jesus to “learn obedience through the things that he suffered” (Heb 5:8), we are similarly conformed to Christ’s image as we suffer in obedience. Torrance, for exam- ple, points in this direction by recognizing that Christ’s image is seen in the church through her suffering obedience, arguing that “wherever the Church shows forth His death until He comes and presents its body a living sacrifice, there the image of Christ is to be seen and His Body is to be discerned in the Church.”39The contention here certainly incorporates this profound point, but goes beyond it. Through suffering obedience and cruciform actions, the church does not justdisplaythe image of Christ (as Torrance argues), but even further, it is as the Spirit guides the church through cruciform actions of suffering obe- dience that the church is conformed to the image of Christ. In other words, it is through suffering obedience, through its cruciform shape and actions that the Spirit guides the church on its journey through time toward its futuretelos. Increasingly, charismatic and pentecostal scholars are seeing the centrality of such suffering obedience as not merely compatible with a belief in the transfor- mational power of the Spirit but indeed biblically and theologically integrated with it.40As the biblical scholar Michael Gorman comments, “Paul clearly sug- gests that transformation into glory begins in the present and advances by degrees into the eschatological future … Somehow, in the midst of suffering and cruciformity, transformation into the image of the glorified Christ is tak- ing place.”41

What this leads to is a picture of the relationship between eternity and time where, through the Spirit, the eschatological tension (the vertical relationship

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Thomas F. Torrance, “Atonement and the Oneness of the Church,”Scottish Journal of The- ology7, no. 3 (1954): 259.

See, for example, the helpful comments on this subject in Kärkkäinen, Toward a Pneu- matological Theology, 176–178. Also Peter Althouse, “In Appreciation of Jürgen Moltmann: A Discussion of His Transformational Eschatology,”Pentecostal Theology 28, no. 1 (2006): 30–32. Althouse also comments that an appropria- tion of Moltmann’s theology of the cross would enable pentecostal scholarship to draw a deeper and richer connection between the eschatological kingdom and its potential to impact and transform oppressive sociopolitical structures. See, for example, Althouse, Spirit of the Last Days, 186–192, especially 192.

Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 35. Note that Gorman sees this transformation as intrinsically commu- nal. “Fundamentally, cruciformity means community, and community means crucifor- mity” (366).

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between new and old time) and the teleological tension (the horizontal or chronological relationship between old time and eternity) come together and reinforce each other. Because, through the Spirit, the church is participating in Christ’s life, we have a fundamentally new way of being where the old rules of before and after do not simplistically apply anymore. Rather, our new exis- tence is intrinsically cruciform as in Christ and through the Spirit we are con- stantly and simultaneously experiencing the reality of death and resurrection in our day-to-day lives.42 This reality is available to us because of the eschato- logical tension in which, through the Spirit, the entirety of Christ’s new time is brought to bear on the current moment in which we exist in old time, but it feeds our conformation process in the teleological tension. The Spirit takes Christ’s past (a prophetic declaration of our salvation through his suffering), Christ’s present (a priestly enabling of a filial relationship), and Christ’s future (a kingly manifestation of our future glory) and brings them all to bear on the church’s present reality. It is precisely because of this simultaneously experi- enced reality that the church is increasingly conformed to Christ’s image as we journey through time. We are living, moment by moment, and day by day, a communal and yet intensely personal experience of life in death, of joy in suffering, of self-giving love. But as we live in this reality, through the Spirit we are being conformed more and more to the image of Christ for whom this cruciform, self-giving way of being is simply the way he was and is.We are learn- ing to be Christ-like. We are learning it by the same process that he learned it, by giving up our rights to self-determination and allowing the Spirit to guide us. And in this way, we are not just reliving Christ’s story as he is in us, but we are practicing, preparing, hoping for, and being transformed toward the time when our ongoing mini-deaths and mini-resurrections will lead us, like him, to an actual physical death and a full, final, complete, and communal resurrection in the Spirit. The small stories and events that we experience con- tribute to the larger community and time-stretching story of which we are a part.

This insight is well illustrated by the mathematical concept of a fractal. A fractal is a curve or geometrical pattern, each part of which has the same char- acter as the whole. If you focus on or magnify just a small portion, you see the same shapes as exist in the overall pattern. Scientists use fractals to under- stand structures such as snowflakes, where similar patterns occur at smaller

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Note that death and resurrection here (and following) does not necessarily refer only to our final death and resurrection that will lead to our participation in Christ’s kingdom, but also to the regular challenges and rewards that we experience in our day-to-day lives, both individually and communally as the church.

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and smaller scales, and each of these smaller patterns adds together to con- tribute to the bigger picture.43 The final insight from this TAT examination of eschatology is that for the community of the church, the shape of time has an intrinsically fractal-like character. The master-story of birth, death, and resur- rection is not just the overarching story of divinity and humanity seen through the broad expanse of time, but it gets lived and repeated over and over again, at successively smaller scales.44 It gets repeated because we participate by the Spirit in Christ, who continues to live his cruciform life in and through us. We see the story repeated in the lives of the worldwide church community,45 in the lives of particular church communities, in our individual lives through time (from birth to death to resurrection), in the day-to-day lives of our families, and as individuals in our day-to-day lived experiences as well. We are always learn- ing what it means to die and rise again. Cruciformity is the shape of time, of our communities, of our overall lives, and of each individual portion of them. Each cruciform pattern is not independent, however, but joins together with other cruciform moments to create in the overall journey of the church a growth, development, and movement toward a fundamental and final self-giving, cru- ciform reality.

So “the past ‘work’ of God’s Son, embodied on the cross, has become the present work of the Spirit of God’s Son, embodied in the believer and in the community.”46What this means for us can be expressed through the commonly used Pauline framework of faith, hope, and love. Faith and hope are the past and future tense of trust. Looking backward we trust that the story of Jesus has become our story. Through the Spirit who defines and empowers us, the cruciform gospel is being lived again in our experience. Looking forward we trust that God’s promises already fulfilled in Jesus will also be fulfilled in us. Through the Spirit we will, together as a church community, share the resur- rection life and enjoy in full the new time that Christ presently experiences. And love is the center of our story right now. It is the present reality of our

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See, for example, K.J. Falconer,Fractals: A Very Short Introduction(Oxford: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 2013).

Thompson beautifully expresses a complementary idea by utilizing the language of the cosmic Pentecost and the symbol of glossolalia as an eschatological sacrament. See Thompson, Kingdom Come: Revisioning Pentecostal Ecclesiology, 128–143.

Examples of the worldwide church community experiencing “death” and “resurrection” moments need to be identified and analyzed with careful historical nuance but could potentially include the early Roman persecutions and subsequent growth of the early church, or, more recently, perhaps the “demise” of the mainline Western church and the rise of Pentecostalism in the Global South over the last century.

Gorman,Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross, 58.

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self-giving lives, as through the Spirit we enjoy continual and ongoing deaths and resurrections. These smaller fractal images describe our present existence, but the Spirit works through each of them to conform us into Christ’s image, so that each of the smaller images echoes and illustrates the larger picture, enabling it increasingly to be the defining image of our lives. Through each of these fractal sub-images, we learn experientially what it means to live a gen- uinely ongoing cruciform existence. Such an approach avoids the error of an isolated Logos eschatology that leads to a static understanding of time where “sin is ever the past and justification is ever the future.”47It also avoids the error of a replacement Spirit eschatology that understands time as having just a sin- gle dimension, and so too closely ties the Spirit to the work of the church and doesn’t “sufficiently acknowledge how the Spirit might be at workeven in spite of the church and its practices.”48 In contrast to both, it provides a dynamic understanding of the church’s journey through time, where the existentially interrelated but logically distinct missions of the Son and the Spirit in the church are both acknowledged and contribute to the cruciform shape of our ongoing experience.

3 Conclusion

Applying the approach of Third Article Theology to eschatology has demon- strated not just the foundational eschatological role of the Spirit, but also nuanced insights into the church’s journey through time. A Spirit eschatolog- ical approach has revealed the church’s intrinsically pneumatological nature, howtheSpiritactswithinthechurchwhilenotbeingidentifiedwithit(through an understanding of the communal or “objective” spirit of the church), the piv- otal role of obedience and suffering in the conformation of the church, and the intrinsically fractal-like character of time, in which the church’s eschatological tension enables it to experience cruciformity in its teleological existence and so to be continuously transformed into the image of its cruciform-shaped God. In an analogous way to how a Spirit Christology has complemented the more tra- ditional Logos Christology, bringing to it both an increased recognition of the foundational role of the Spirit in the incarnation and a more nuanced under- standing of Christ’s growth and development as a human, so a complementary Spirit eschatology works together with the more established christologically

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Balthasar,The Theology of Karl Barth, 277. Mawson, “The Spirit and the Community,” 461.

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focused eschatologies, enabling the Spirit’s fundamental role in uniting time and eternity together in Christ to be acknowledged, and furthermore, enabling the development of a nuanced understanding of the church’s journey through time.

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