Search Results (21)

This study investigates the theological function of the contemporary worship song “The Blessing” by addressing the following guiding research question: in what ways does “The Blessing” function as a form of prophetic declaration and communal prayer in contemporary congregational worship? Drawing on frameworks from Pentecostal theology, lyrical theology, and performative speech-act theory, this study analyzes how the song’s language, structure, and performance embody Spirit-enabled proclamation and intercession. Engaging Rice’s Evagrian–LAPT grammar, Glenn Packiam’s theology of worship as encounter, and Steven Félix-Jäger’s model of New Testament prophecy, the textual analysis focuses on the song’s present-tense verbs of divine action and its lyrical constructions. Scripturally grounded in Numbers 6:24–26, “The Blessing” operates as a sung benediction that invokes God’s blessing, sanctification, divine favor and protection, covenantal presence, and peace. The repetitive use of “Amen” functions as a communal seal of affirmation, turning passive reception into active, prophetic participation when sung. This study contends that the song exemplifies how contemporary congregational song serves as primary theology—Spirit-inspired, embodied, and sounded—where proclamation and prayer are nurtured in lived worship. Ultimately, “The Blessing” functions as a pneumatological and ecclesial act of sung prophecy and intercession—an instance of primary theologizing that nurtures the worshiping community and mediates a Spirit-empowered encounter with divine hope. Full article

From young children to elders in the community, the Holy Spirit’s empowering presence is indiscriminate of age, ability, gender, culture, or status. Many communities continue to wrestle with the pastoral and practical implications of welcoming children into worship as full, distinct participants, yet within the biblical narrative, children are included as full participants in experiencing the Spirit’s gifts and empowerment and encountering God’s dynamic presence. Emerging from the discipline of practical theology and a review of New Testament pneumatology from Acts 2 and 1 Corinthians 12, this paper argues for the full inclusion of children within the church’s worship life as welcomed, distinct participants. Contributing to the emerging field of children’s spirituality, we offer faith-forming pedagogical practices to engage children in congregational songs as participants and as those filled with the Spirit as leaders. This article contributes to the fields of worship studies and children’s spirituality by exploring hospitable approaches in corporate worship and congregational songs that affirm children’s capacity to lead in distinct ways where their own spirituality is formed alongside that of the congregation. Full article

The Christian message evokes the motif of abundant life for all. It is a summon to take seriously the holistic approach to life that has meaning and that is relational in all its expressions and manifestations. It is on this note that one has to appreciate the link between healthcare and the social teachings of the Catholic Church. Such a link is grounded in a pneumatological turn that mandates the Church to explore ways that the common good can be expressed through affordable healthcare for all persons. This work makes a claim that a eucharistic consciousness is the proper way to understand the link between healthcare affordability and the social teachings of the Church. It is eucharistic because the theology of the eucharist is a summon for the Church to be a church for others while upending individualism. Also, a eucharistic disposition is what constitutes the vision of the social teachings of the Church. Thus, if the Church is to offer its own wisdom on how healthcare ought to be understood in our times, it necessarily must be rooted in a eucharistic stance that defines its vision of the common good. Full article

Pentecostal ecotheology presents a holistic approach to healing that recognises the inherent worth of all creation and the interconnectedness of human and nonhuman creation. It draws on the Pentecostal full gospel and the experiences of biblical Pentecost to inspire an expansive pneumatology that transcends an anthropocentric soteriology and views the entire cosmos as the altar where human and nonhuman creation can tarry for and experience the sacred presence, power, and conviction of the Holy Spirit with a sense of eschatological urgency such that (inter alia) repentance from ecological transgression becomes normative. This framework envisions all of creation participating in the Spirit’s presence, power, gifting, and renewal. Leveraging Pentecostal ecotheology for holistic healing involves intentionally engaging, replicating, and contextualising the pneumatological experiences of the biblical Pentecost. It also involves embracing the pneumatological continuity between us and the biblical charismatic communities, enabling us to administer healing in contemporary environmental contexts through the Spirit’s anointing. Engaging in ecotheological intercession, overcoming the creational desacralisation that leads to the mechanistic exploitation of creation, and adopting a Spirit-born sense of solidarity with creation are further essential strategies for leveraging Pentecostal ecotheology for holistic healing. Full article

This paper proposes a synthesis of Christological and pneumatological insights to present a more inclusive vision of creation’s role in divine worship and redemption. While deep incarnation emphasizes Christ’s identification with all of creation, this study extends the discussion by incorporating the Spirit’s ongoing work through the framework of animal glossolalia. Nonhuman creatures are seen not merely as passive recipients of Christ’s redemptive work but as active participants in cosmic worship through the Spirit’s intercession. By uniting the shared flesh of Christ with the Spirit’s transformative presence, the paper suggests a more integrated theological vision that includes all living beings in the divine narrative. This approach invites us to reconsider the role of animals within a broader ecological and theological framework, urging a reimagining of their spiritual capacities and their place in the eschatological hope for the renewal of all creation. Full article

Scholars have connected Calvin’s idea of the imago Dei with the modern concept of inherent human dignity. Others have emphasized how Calvin tried to use the image of God to promote the significance of human dignity without connecting it with political theories. These arguments may be justifiable to some extent. However, my concern is that these scholars focus on the image of God in others rather than on how it transforms individuals who live out its renewal. For Calvin, the restoration of the image of God by the Holy Spirit aimed at enabling a holy and righteous life. In his thought, this life was marked by visible excellence, reflected in social virtues expressed toward others. Based on these insights, I show that, according to Calvin, treating others with dignity, honor, and love is not only made possible by recognizing them as bearers of God’s image but is primarily driven by the renewal of God’s image within those who display these actions and attitudes through the work of the Spirit. This fresh perspective on Calvin’s doctrine of the image of God and human dignity can be presented by analyzing Calvin’s pneumatological account of the imago Dei. Full article

This paper seeks to reimagine ethical leverage in technology for peaceful synodality (the term peaceful synodality is coined to mean a synodality that welcomes participation and inclusion of people from different backgrounds and views without compromising the truth and respecting their dignity and journeying together) through the lens of the bioethics of synodality with technology. The concept of this paper is that technology can be leveraged ethically to promote peaceful synodality in the Catholic Church and that such an approach to technology is rooted in reimagining a bioethics of synodality that emphasize the need for journeying hand in hand with the speed at which technological advancement moves in order to enhance ethical decision-making processes. Ethics has moved at a different pace than technology, especially in matters involving human life. Ethics has been viewed as problematic in technology, especially where science wants to be neutral, but rethinking ethics as a companion of emerging technologies will be helpful in directing the ethical uptake of technology. To argue this thesis, the paper will employ a review of relevant literature while presenting the theological and ethical perspectives of synodality. By and large, an interdisciplinary approach will be employed where various disciplines play a key role. Such methodology advances the theme of reimagining Catholic ethics by offering a fresh perspective on the ethical implications of technology in the context of synodality. By emphasizing the importance of journeying together through enhanced ethical guidelines for proper decision-making and by exploring how technology can respect human rights and dignity among other values, this paper contributes to a broader conversation about how Catholic ethics can be reimagined in light of technological developments. Ultimately, this paper argues that a bioethics of synodality with technology can offer a vision for technology that is grounded in Catholic social teaching that promotes universally accepted human dignity and the common good. A cross-cutting method will also be used, given that ethics has basically constant principles, yet technology keeps on changing. Reimagining ethics means studying the advancement brought about by biotechnology and seeing to what degree human beings are affected in their basic rights and the risks versus the benefits brought about by the same. The assumption is that decisions made regarding the ethics of various technologies will be at par with the rate at which new technologies emerge and are employed. What is of vital importance is that ethics can have the power to journey together with technology, not as an adversary but in synodality. Reimagining ethics means being ever alert in the developing technologies that serve humanity so that in consultation with various experts, the best practices can be embraced within the ethical guidelines for the common good. The outcome of this research is that reimagining Catholic ethics involves listening to the needs of humanity and how technology is bringing solutions to them. Participating in bioethical debates, training on bioethics and listening to experts in various fields will enable a critical, analytical and pneumatological discernment of how ethical decisions on frontier technologies can benefit non-humans and humans. Full article

This article presents a constructive dialogue between contemporary theological phenomenology and systematic theology. It considers the writings of the French phenomenologist Emmanuel Falque by offering a precis of his unique approach to “crossing” the boundaries of theology and philosophy. This methodological innovation serves as an intervention into contemporary theological phenomenology, which allows him to propose an overlooked dimension of human corporeality, what he calls the spread-body (corps épandu). Within the latter is embedded a conception of bodily existence that escapes ratiocination and is comprised of chaotic forces, drives, desires, and animality. The article challenges not so much this philosophical description but rather suggests that Falque’s theological resolution to this subterranean dimension of corporeal life consists in a deus ex machina that re-orders these corporeal forces without remainder through participation in the eucharist. It argues that Falque’s notion of the spread body can be supplemented theologically by an account of ‘affectivity’ that is distinguished from auto-affection, as in the case of Michel Henry, and which also gleans from the field of affect theory. This supplementation is derived from current research in systematic theology, which looks at the doctrines of pneumatology and sanctification to offer a more plausible account of corporeality in light of the Christian experience of the affective body. Full article

This article explores André Scrima’s contribution to the final version of Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum. In so doing, the article shows the way in which Bishop Neophytos Edelby’s speech in aula on 5 October 1964, which was (co)authored by Scrima, led to changes in the draft of Dei Verbum Chapter III, §12. That being the case, the recovery of the pneumatological dimension of Christian exegesis by Dei Verbum III, §12 was largely the result of Scrima’s interventions in the conciliar debates during the third session of Vatican II. In addition, the article focuses on Scrima’s reflections on the final version of Dei Verbum in the years following the closure of Vatican II. Full article

In recent theological scholarship, there has been a wave of interest in the tradition of spiritual sense and marginal social identities within analytic and philosophical theology. In this article, I explore the theologies of spiritual sense in analytic theology (AT) to highlight part of the reason for the predominance of cisgender heterosexual voices in the field. Many feminist voices in AT express a common concern for a lack of integration between the mind, the body, and spiritual sense, which has enshrined the post-enlightenment cisgender heterosexual ‘man of reason’. Through an exploration of these feminist voices (Sarah Coakley and Michelle Panchuk), I argue that the field does not simply need more diverse voices but also voices of spiritual sense that undo a straight cisgender elitism. This elitism has kept the field from widely examining the anthropological questions of sexuality and gender, ethics, and theodicean dilemmas of desire and faith. By opening analytic philosophical approaches to spiritual sense, the field releases noetic control that has two consequential outcomes. Firstly, the field revalorizes pneumatology and ethics. Secondly, as a consequence of this, the field can see those who were previously unseen and heard, and, therefore, AT can develop into a sensing and thinking discipline capable of perceiving the queer or other in its midst. Spiritual sense and its priority for bodily and cruciform realities of suffering and desire can move the field from homogeneity to embracing the diverse ethical concerns of sexuality, gender, and race, and subaltern or queer subjectivities which are yet to be represented well in its midst. Using a distinctly neo-Augustinian approach, I argue that Augustine’s philosophy of the amor dei, with its emphasis on analytic clarity and inner spiritual sense, can redeem the eyes of AT’s heart. Full article

Pope Francis invites the Church to turn to the peripheries of society as the loci of saturated vision and grace, if it is to embody the grace of synodality. This work makes a claim that a synodal church that turns to the peripheries of the world ought to embody three markers that exude the fullness of being church in the world. These include the praxes of compassionate imagination, re-existing as a Pentecost church, and being an embodiment of ritualized hope for all. A turn to the Spirit-centered gift of compassionate imagination is itself a deliberate embrace of the messiness of life where the beauty of the sound of God’s voice is heard and encountered. It involves an embrace of the summons of the Spirit that is found at the peripheries of the world and to embody abundant life for all in a manner that upends the dynamics of empire manipulations. To do this effectively, the Church ought to become an embodiment of hope in all its ways of being in the world. An embodiment of hope that is grounded in solidarity with others must necessarily entail the praxis of suspension of judgment. Full article

In view of the two key themes found in Romans: pneumatology and deification, some pressing questions can be asked. One of these is, what is the role of the Holy Spirit in deification? This essay identifies one area of the work of the Holy Spirit presented in Romans that is often neglected in New Testament (NT) pneumatology, soteriology, and anthropology. This paper argues that, in Romans 8:1–17, the crucial role of the Spirit, as an active person in the triune Godhead, in possessing and being possessed by believers and facilitating the mutual indwelling of Christ and his co-sufferers, is best captured by a new term, namely, pneumasis or pneumafication. In other words, theosis/deification and Christosis/Christification are made possible by pneumasis/pneumafication. Full article

This paper examines the ways in which the Letters of Ammonas, John Cassian’s Conference IV, and the corpus of Macarius-Symeon appropriate and develop the motif of divine abandonment found in St. Antony and shifts it into a distinctly pneumatological key through Scriptural exegesis. Correcting a misconception popularized by Vladimir Lossky, this paper argues for a normative experience of divine abandonment in the Eastern Christian tradition via sustained engagement with the experience of those practitioners of desert spirituality. Engaging with the hermeneutics of Hans Georg Gadamer and following the previously established trajectories of Douglas Burton-Christie, I argue that the desert fathers, despite initial hesitation and eventual qualification, accepted the reality of pneumatic abandonment due to the interlocking pressures of Scripture and monastic experience. The paper concludes with some implications for contemporary pneumatological discussions by drawing critical parallels between the pneumatological tradition of the desert and the contemporary pneumatic doctrine of Ephraim Radner. Radner is affirmed in his insistence on individual pneumatic abandonment but is critically questioned regarding his articulation of the pneumatic abandonment of the Church through the vantage of Macarius-Symeon’s stabilized pneumatology. Full article

Electronic communication of the Christian message—online preaching—raises distinct theological challenges. Notwithstanding the undeniable convenience and unlimited geographical reach of “virtual church”, electronic media have the potential to separate preacher from congregants, congregants from one another, and—potentially of greatest concern—the church from God, even while appearing to accomplish the opposite. Communication theorist Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) argues provocatively that virtual representation is at the cost of authentic human identity (in which case it is inimical to community), while French sociologist and philosopher Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) warns of substituting representation for reality, especially in matters of theology and the identity of God. The paradigm of Jesus’ Incarnation, by contrast, mandates un-mediated divine-human and human-to-human communication, requiring engagement between persons themselves rather than their avatars or provisional simulacra. With respect to electronically mediated communication itself, acknowledging divine initiative in the formation of identity (as a feature of soteriology) and of understanding (under the category of revelation) countermands the more dehumanizing and anti-theological influences that McLuhan and Baudrillard both identify, encouraging direct engagement with God in the person of the Holy Spirit rather than resorting to technological mediation. Full article

This article calls for an examination of the spirituality of Jesus in light of the unique historical and theological distinctives of the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement. Although the topic of spirituality is wide and deep, this study will approach it as personally transformative Christian experiences and practices that enrich one’s life and the lives of others. By drawing from the research of statisticians and social scientists, I will discuss notable ways in which the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement has the potential to make the spirituality of Jesus accessible to the unchurched and the unaffiliated (nones) in the United States. The results of my research reveal that, although such persons do not regularly attend church, they are, in part, open to religious experiences and desire a deeper spirituality. A such, this paper shows that the experience-based, supernaturally empowered, every-member-is-a-minister nature of the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement may indeed appeal to and meet the needs of certain unchurched and the unaffiliated persons. Furthermore, this paper will conclude by presenting suggestions for reform that may enhance this movement’s ability to reach the unchurched and unaffiliated in days to come. In the final analysis, this paper provides a historical foundation and theoretical framework from which Pentecostal-Charismatic influences upon such groups can be further assessed. Full article