The Holy Spirit in Mission

God initiated mission and intends to achieve it by work of the Holy Spirit. Thus, mission—which God commands his church to accomplish—belongs to God, not to human agency. Prior to ascending to heaven, Jesus promised the Holy Spirit to his disciples, and asked them to wait in Jerusalem. This Holy Spirit is given to enable them to be witnesses of Jesus from Jerusalem to the end of the world. This implies that the church has to partner with the Holy Spirit to fulfil this mission. Missionaries need to consciously work together with Spirit and be directed and guided by the Spirit.     

The Impact of International Migration on Home Churches: The Mar Thoma Syrian Christian Church in India

Based on qualitative, multisited research, this article examines the impacts of short‐ and long‐term international migration to the Middle East and the West on the Mar Thoma Syrian Christian demonination of Kerala. Migrants and their foreign‐born children have new demands and expectations, and significant financial contributions have led to adjustments in the orientation and functioning of the denomination and its clergy. Large‐scale emigration has also had indirect effects. International networks and the economic affluence of the population, along with a rise in social problems caused by migration and consumerism, have led to the rise of evangelical and charismatic transdenominational churches in Kerala that challenge the functioning of established Christian denominations such as the Mar Thoma. Church leaders have been trying to bring about changes to address these developments, but are constrained by the tradition, structure, and the mission of the churches. I draw on theories of organizational religious change and theories of transnationalism to explain the process of social change in Kerala, also addressing some limitations of these theories.     

The Spirit Moved Over the Face of the Waters: The Holy Spirit and the Created Order

The article is a sketch for a dogmatics of the Creator Spirit and contends that the Spirit's relation to the creation in general cannot be treated either without attention being paid to its trinitarian matrix or in the absence of some consideration of the human creation in particular. A christologically formed attempt is made to expand the Cappadocian theology of the Spirit as the creation's perfecting cause. This leads into some fragmentary remarks about the Spirit in relation to church, political order and culture more generally.     

Eternal progression and temporal procession of the Holy Spirit

ABSTRACT

This article exposes the way in which Anglican ecumenists have adopted mutually conflicting positions on the historically controverted filioque clause in agreed statements with different bilateral partners. It contrasts the restriction of the filioque to the divine economy agreed with representatives of the Oriental Orthodox tradition in the Procession and Work of the Holy Spirit (2017) with the possibility of an eternal manifestation of the Spirit from the Father through the Son which is explored in the Moscow, Dublin and Cyprus discussions (with the Chalcedonian Orthodox). The article shows how the latter position resonates better with the pneumatology contained in historic Anglican formularies and in theologians such as John Pearson and William Beveridge. The paper concludes by springboarding into broader questions about the purpose and method of Anglican ecumenical endeavour.     

The Holy Spirit and the Humanity of Christ in John Owen: A Re-Examination

This article re-examines John Owen’s construal of the Holy Spirit’s activity in the humanity of Christ. While Owen’s ‘Spirit Christology’ is both lauded as exemplary and criticized as nearly Nestorian, both positions are largely based on a shared (yet faulty) assumption regarding the key text of Owen’s ‘Spirit Christology’ (Pneumatologia 3:159–88; esp. pp. 160–1). In order to correct this assumption, this article examines the claims that Owen makes in this section of Pneumatologia within three different contexts: (1) Owen’s historical context; (2) the context of Owen’s broader corpus; and (3) the immediate context of these claims within the structure and argumentation of Pneumatologia as a whole. I suggest that this rereading of Owen’s Spirit Christology is able to retain many of the desirable theological implications of the original interpretation without the same theological difficulties.     

Democratic Moral Education and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit

How far is Thomas Aquinas available for current discussions in political philosophy? While there are certainly things to be learned from him about our political preoccupations, the pedagogy of his moral teaching typically resists our familiar questions. This holds even when the question is put in terms that Thomas should recognize—say, as a question about the virtues appropriate for a democracy. Thomas not only gives different meanings to these terms, he moves political topics away from the center of theological attention and so organizes them very differently. A reader can notice these differences at many points but perhaps especially in the attention that Thomas gives in the Summa to the gifts of the Holy Spirit. His account of these gifts qualifies significantly what he says of virtue and suggests large limits on human agency, whether in ethics or in politics.