I'm thinking a great deal about Pneumatology at the moment, and trying to explore a potential methodology for Pneumatological reflection. (It occurs to me that many approaches of the past few decades to comment on Pentecostal / Charismatic movements have started from humanist sciences and empiricist academic methodologies - Anthropological / Sociological / Phenomenological / Pyschological and any number of combinations of them!)
Reading Tom Smail's 1975 book Reflected Glory, this quote jumped out at me:
'The answers to all your questions about the one that healed me I do not know: one thing I know that, though I was blind, now I see' (John 9:25). That is why the first literature of revivalist movements, and so of the charismatic renewal is testimony literature, which does not seek to authenticate itself in New Testament terms, but whose chief burden is to say: 'This is what the Holy Spirit has done in me. (p19)
Of course, our usual academic discourse throws us automatically into a hermeneutic of suspicion as we seek to read, evaluate and understand the subject of our interest. Perhaps (with Tom Wright, Kevin Vanhoozer et al) we need to adopt a post-critical hermeneutic of love as we seek to reflect on the person and work of the Spirit. That way, Pneumatology becomes not the subject of our interest, but the object(ive) reality upon whose action we report with words of testimony.
How this continues to work out I'm not quite sure... But testimony as a Pneumatological Methodology seems promising...
The second quote I thought I should remember for the next time of prayer ministry at church:
As Calvin once put it, faith is the empty hand that we hold out to Christ and that he fills with himself, and the impulse and strength to stretch out the hand comes from the Spirit, and it is the Spirit who through our faith fills us with Christ. (p30)
Lovely!
