Wolfhart Pannenberg: Spirit of Life, Spirit of God

Wolfhart Pannenberg: Spirit of Life, Spirit of God

Lindsay ROBERTSON

Pannenberg's doctrine of the Spirit is difficult, philosophically informed and comprehensive. He presents a doctrine of the nature and activity of the Spirit that combines an understanding of the Spirit in creation and the processes of creation, in the human person and in God in a united and parallel way. We find that in all these areas, the Spirit is viewed in a two-fold way: as a more general 'field' and also as a more specified particularity of the field as 'person' or agent. The Spirit's nature is found in the flux between these two concepts.

This paper examines this dynamic interplay between the two aspects of the Spirit's nature in two areas.

1) Person formation where the Spirit is the element of openness and eschatological directedness. The Spirit, the power of the future, is the Spirit of the whole who unites, opens and leads people and creation to the eschaton.

 2) In God, the Spirit is both God-as-Spirit and the Holy Spirit. Here Pannenberg's distinctive view of the Spirit is as a field of force as an explanation of the Trinitarian essence is important. Also discussed is how the Spirit functions within the Trinity especially as a catalyst or opener of relations, and who unites the Trinity in fellowship, providing the outward dynamic of God to the world. Pannenberg links this to the concept of love and identifies the Spirit especially as love and the determining component of divine personality.