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Humanity with Spirit

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Paul W. Newman
Affiliation:
St. Andrew's College1121 College Drive Saskatoon Sask. S7N 0W3 Canada

Extract

In the Christian literature about spirit one of the decisive questions that influences the interpretation of spirit at many points is whether all spirit is conceived to be divine or whether there are basically two kinds of spirit, human and divine. In Buber's understanding the spirit of love exists in the sphere ‘between’ and is participated in by humans rather than being produced by human will alone. Buber would thus come into the class of persons advocating that there is basically One Spirit.1 Human spirit is seen to be in some way a response to or a sharing in the reality of the One Spirit. Paul Tillich, one of the greatest Christian students of Spirit, is somewhat unclear as to whether there are basically one or two kinds of spirit. On the one hand, he consistently uses two terms, ‘human spirit’ and ‘Spiritual Presence’, by which he means divine Spirit.2 The use of these two terms would seem to indicate two kinds of spirit. Tillich describes at length these two kinds of spirit and speaks of their relationship as that of ‘mutual immanence’.3 On the other hand, in his view of reality in the broadest perspective all spirit is an ontological reality that has its source in the trinitarian life of God.4 This suggests that there is only one Spirit after all.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1981

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References

page 415 note 1 See Buber, , I and Thou (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1970), p. 89Google Scholar; ‘Spirit is not in the I but between I and You. It is not like the blood that circulates in you but like the air in which you breathe. Man lives in the spirit when he is able to respond to his You.’

page 415 note 2 Tillich, , Systematic Theology (3 vols., New York: Harper & Row, 1967), III, p. 21Google Scholar.

page 415 note 3 ibid., p. 114.

page 415 note 4 Tillich, , ST, 1, pp. 250251Google Scholar.

page 416 note 5 Ferré, Nels F. S., The Universal Word (London: Collins, 1970)Google Scholar.

page 416 note 6 ibid., p. 9.

page 416 note 7 Ferré, Nels F. S., Christ and the Christian (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958)Google Scholar.

page 416 note 8 Ferré, Nels F. S., The Christian Understanding of God (London: SCM Press, 1952)Google Scholar.

page 416 note 9 Ferré, , The Universal Word, p. 133Google Scholar.

page 416 note 10 For example: ‘There is no incoming of what is outgoing apart from an outgoing of what is outgoing.’ (p. 175.)

page 416 note 11 For example: ‘He (God) can be present and absent in the same man at the same time, … without any contradiction in terms.’ (p. 133.)

page 417 note 12 Ferré's articles on Tillich's thought were sharply critical, claiming that Tillich's theology was fundamentally incompatible with genuine Christian faith. In one article Ferré passionately wrote: ‘how I worked on that man (Tillich) and how I prayed for his being changed toward a fuller Christian message!’ See ‘Tillich and the Nature of Transcendence’ in Paul Tillich: Retrospect and Future (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1966), p. 10.

page 417 note 13 Ferré, , The Universal Word, p. 124Google Scholar.

page 417 note 14 ibid., p. 121.

page 417 note 15 ibid., p. 123.

page 417 note 16 ibid.

page 417 note 17 ibid., p. 124.

page 418 note 18 ibid., p. 128.

page 418 note 19 ibid., p. 131.

page 418 note 20 Gal. 5:22–23.

page 419 note 21 Ferré, , The Universal Word, p. 175Google Scholar.

page 419 note 22 See Metz, Johannes B., ‘Foreword’ in Rahner, Karl, Spirit in the World, trans. Dyck, William, S.J., (New York; Herder and Herder, 1968), p. xviGoogle Scholar.

page 419 note 23 ibid., pp. xvi-xvii.

page 420 note 24 Rahner holds that ‘the ontological constitution of man was disclosed in certain characteristics of human knowledge …. From the insight into the possibility of a judgmental, universal knowledge attaining to the in-itself (Ansich) of the object differentiated from the subject, we arrived at the essence of thought, and thereby, at the essence of man as spirit: excessus to esse absolutely; a form subsisting in itself.’ (P. 239.)

page 420 note 25 ibid., p. 283.

page 420 note 26 Barth, , Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1960), III, pt. 2, p. 356Google Scholar.

page 420 note 27 ibid., p. 358.

page 420 note 28 ibid., pp. 344–66.

page 420 note 29 ibid., p. 348.

page 421 note 30 ibid., p. 344.

page 421 note 31 ibid., p. 363.

page 421 note 32 ibid., p. 364.

page 421 note 33 Tillich, , ST. III, p. 421Google Scholar.

page 421 note 34 Ferré, , The Universal Word, p. 140Google Scholar.

page 422 note 35 The chief theological weakness in panentheism is confusion of the distinction between creature and Creator. On the one hand, the creature is divinised, and on the other hand, God is so much identified with the creation that his freedom as God becomes questionable.

page 422 note 36 Barth, , CD, III, pt. 2, p. 352Google Scholar.

page 422 note 37 ibid., p. 327.

page 422 note 38 ibid., p. 365.

page 423 note 39 Aquinas, Thomas said, ‘Man knows through the soul.’ (Quoted by Rahner in Spirit in the World, p. 212Google Scholar.)

page 423 note 40 Barth, , CD, III, pt. 2, p. 390Google Scholar.

page 423 note 41 Cf. Gen. 2:7.

page 425 note 42 Brunner, Emil, Man in Revolt (London: Lutterworth Press, 1942), p. 90Google Scholar.

page 426 note 43 Eduard Schweizer comments on the understanding of Spirit in the Old Testament: ‘Man is subject to this power (Spirit), but he is not identified with it; he is “flesh” and not “spirit.”’ See Schweizer, Eduard and others, Spirit of God (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1960), p. 2Google Scholar.