tr from Portuguese by Paul Burns. Burns & Oates, Maryknoll NY 1989 (original edition Sao Paulo 1987)

AJM April 2006

Comblin is Belgian theologian working in Latin America since 1958. Book written from within the perspective of Liberation theology, critical of past teaching of the church, interesting on the differences between the Roman, Eastern and Protestant churches, and clear on the need to develop a theology of the Holy Spirit. HS is referred to throughout as ‘it’.

Summary p. 184-86

1. Christianity has two sources: the “Jesus event” and experience of the Spirit—Easter and Pentecost. The two events are intimately bound up in one another, hut neither can absorb or reduce the other. The tradition of Western Christianity has never given enough Importance to the Spirit. There was one Easter there are millions of Pentecosts.

2. The New Testament shows experience of the Spirit as the point of departure for the Christian event, above all in the teachings of St Paul. St Luke and St John. At the outset of Christianity the presence of the Spirit was always something experienced: faith was not separated from experience. This separation came after the second centurv till then, the Holy Spirit was the first thing known, an immediate reference to which Christians could appeal.

3. We are now witnessing an unforeseen renewal of experience of the Spirit: the Pentecostal phenomenon is the most noteworthy development in Christianity today. In its first phase, this laid much stress on certain spectacular phenomena, similar to those found in Corinth. With maturing experience in time. discernment of spiritual experience has come about, renewing the discernment enjoined by St Paul.

4. Among the signs of the times that allowed Vatican II to proclaim a new age for the church of God is the end of a rationalized, intellectualized and institutionalized Christianity modelled on great human organizations. The nation can no longer offer any model to a church living experience of the Spirit in thousands upon thousands of small groups.

5. In the struggle for liberation, experience of God is experience of the Holy Spirit: experience of action, freedom, word, community and life.

6. In Latin theology, the chain Father-Son-church took the place of the old patristic order Father-Son-Holy Spirit. Henceforth the Spirit was invoked only as a prop for everything the hierarchical church had already decided.

7. The Spirit has been at work in the world since its beginning, preparing it for a resurrection, for the kingdom of God, a new creation, the birth of a new humanity. Pentecost brought about a spiritual explosion, announcing the full and final realization. The first-fruits of eternal life are now present. Before Pentecost, ho ever, the Spirit was already at work, just as it still continues at ork in the midst of nations on which the Spirit has not yet been fully poured out.

8. The Holy Spirit lies at the root of the cry of the poor. The Spirit is the strength of those who have no strength. It leads the struggle for the emancipation and fulfillment of the people of the oppressed. The Spirit acts in history and through history. It does not take the place of history, but enters into history through men and women who carry the Spirit in themselves.

9. The signs of the action of the Spirit in the world are clear: the Spirit is present wherever the poor are awakening to action, to freedom, to speaking out, to community, to life.

10. Scripture and tradition endlessly repeat St lrenaeus’ phrase: “Where the church is, there too is the Spirit of God.” The Spirit “dwells” in the church. The presence of the Spirit does not exclude the material, institutional, historical aspects of the church. The Spirit is present in the human body— individual and social—to be as it were its “soul,” as a traditional theological concept would put it.

11. The presence of the Spirit in the church means that the church starts with groups of people gathering in communities, is borne up by historical forces and subject to the rhythms and criteria of history. It is not dominated by the history its task is to transform, hut neither can it prescind from it.

12. The Spirit is the source of the unity, catholicity, holiness and apostolicity of the church. None of these marks is the result of purely human forces. nor of a strategy’ based on criteria drawn from human arts and sciences.

13. The Holy Spirit inspires the church in its three offices: it confers its strength and sheds its light on the office of the word, the liturgical office and the office of service to the community and the world.

14. Ministries, particularly those that include authority, are not outside the Spirit’s sphere of action. The Spirit is present in them too, competing with psychological, sociological and anthropological tendencies.

15. A new spirituality is being born under the impulse of the Spirit, among elites placing themselves at the service of the poor, and among the poor themselves who are irrupting on to the stage of history. This spirituality includes a new form of contemplation, ascesis and prayer, whose first signs are already well apparent.

16. Traditional theology has not valued Jesus’ Messiahship, preferring to define Jesus by the incarnation and from the moment of his conception. The new theology of the Spirit values his anointing by the Spirit and the progressive stages of Jesus’ journey to his Father.

17. Spirit and word are in active collaboration. Classical theology failed to attach sufficient value to the actions of the Spirit because it was distorted by Greek intellectualism. Theologians thought in terms of immediate contact between us and Christ made through the purely human word handed on by tradition. They failed to understand that the word has meaning only from the activity of the Spirit, because all meaning is received starting from a praxis and within a praxis.

18. The Holy Spirit is God, equal to and consubstantial with the Father and the Son.

19. It is possible to see a way out of the quarrel between East and West concerning the relationship between the Son and the Holy Spirit within the Trinity.

20. All attributes of the Spirit denote movement: the Spirit is giving, loving, living. The Spirit comes at the end of movement in God, but the beginning of God’s going-out to creation. It is at the start of creation’s road back to the Father.