Thinking with C. René Padilla about the Holy Spirit (Part II: English Version)
Preface
This is the second essay in a six-part series on C. René Padilla’s essay “The Holy Spirit: Power for Life and Hope.” The series’ first English-version essay is here. Its first Spanish-version essay is here. Mi padre y yo hope you enjoy the series Saludos!
The Spirit of God at the Beginning
Padilla ended his introduction by sign posting. He told us that he’d consider the Spirit’s work in three parts: “We focus first on the work of the Spirit of God in creation and history, then on his role in Jesus’s mission, and finally on his work in the life and mission of the church.” Following this trajectory, he turns to consider the Spirit of God in creation and history.
The Hebrew word רוּחַ (transliterated, “ruach”) means “breath, spirit, or wind.” And, as Padilla writes, “The first reference to God’s ruach is in Genesis 1:2.” Padilla then quotes the NIV’s translation of this verse.
Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. (Gen. 1:2, NIV)
A skilled biblical translator, Padilla draws his readers’ attention to two translation decisions in the NIV’s rendering of the Hebrew. “Both the translation of ruach by ‘Spirit’ and the use of a capital S at the beginning of the term suggest the translators opted for a reading of the text in which the word ruach refers to the Spirit of God, the third person of the Trinity.”
Padilla knows these translation choices are controversial. During my first semester of Hebrew, for example, a professor called such choices dubious Christian projections on to a text whose author could not intend such a meaning. Padilla flags a version of this challenge. “This interpretation may be rejected as an anachronism because it attributes to the author of the text a trinitarian concept of God without taking into account that the concept of God as the triune God did not take shape before the coming of Jesus Christ.”
Noting the charge of anachronism, Padilla offers a reply. “The least that can be said in response to [this] objection is that the reality of the Trinity precedes the human experience of it, concerning which the New Testament bears witness.” Padilla’s response focuses on ontological priority—God is triune before human beings say so—rather than epistemology, or what the original human author would have known about God. Padilla’s decisions not to distinguish between human and divine authorship, intention, and knowledge are striking, but those are topics for another day. Here we must see that Padilla doubles down on significance of the New Testament’s witness for understanding this opening passage. He writes: “[Human] experience [of the Trinity] broadens the horizon for the interpretation of ruach in the Old Testament and thus contributes to the construction of the basis for the Christian doctrine of God as the triune God, a doctrine whose essential ingredients are found in the New Testament (see Mat 28:19; 1 Cor 12:4-6; 2 Cor 13:14; 2 Thess 2:13-14; Titus 3:4-6; 1 Pet 1:2; Heb 6:4; Jude 20-21; Rev 1:4-5).”
Because his essay is not a full defense of the NIV’s translation choices, Padilla pivots to discussing what follows if we accept these choices. “If the NIV interpretation of ruach in Genesis 1:2 as referring to the Spirit of God is accepted, this is the first reference in Scripture to the Spirit’s role in relation to creation.” This reference’s context provides it with multilayered meaning. Padilla writes:
The verb that the NIV translates as “hovering” connotes the idea of flying round about—the action that, according to Deuteronomy 32:11, God performs in order to protect his people in the desert “like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young.” The image points to the Spirit of God spreading his wings over the surface of the water and escorting the whole process of creation, through which the chaos is transformed into the cosmos (order) and out of the darkness emerge multiple forms of existence that constitute the universe.
Given this imagery, Padilla argues, readers must reject hyper-spiritualized visions of the Spirit. “From the first chapter of the Bible it becomes clear that the Spirit’s action is not limited to the ‘spiritual’ sphere but includes material reality, the stage of human history.” Of course, the stage of human history is most properly understood as the stage of divine agency. “The whole of creation, both material and immaterial, is the result of God’s action, the power of the Holy Spirit, through his Word—the same Word that later on will become flesh and make his dwelling among us in the person of Jesus Christ (Jn 1:14).” This Trinitarian frame is incompatible with Manichean dualism that pits spiritual reality against material reality, and affirms that the former is superior to the latter. Turning to the end of Genesis 1, Padilla writes, “when God’s creative work was finished ‘God saw that [sic] all that he had made [including material reality], and it was very good’ (Gen 1:31).”
If creation displays divine activity, it also reflects God’s glory. This is its end, and the Spirit helps it achieve it. “All of created reality has the purposes of reflecting God’s glory, and the work of the Spirit is oriented toward the fulfillment of that purpose.” At this point, Padilla hits another full-throated Trinitarian note.
In both the original as well as in the new creation—the topic of the history of salvation—everything proceeds from the Father through the Son in the power of the Spirit, and everything returns to the Father in glory through the Son in the power of the Spirit. The Spirit who was “hovering over the waters” during the first creation was the same Spirit of holiness through whom Jesus Christ our Lord was “declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom 1:4) and will also be the Spirit through whom, in the final stage of creation, God will give life to the moral bodies of those in whom he lives (Rom 8:11).
The Spirit creates and recreates. And, as Padilla notes, “as in the case of Jesus Christ’s ministry, the Spirit’s ministry has cosmic dimensions.”
A Social Ethic Informed by the Spirit’s Work in Creation and History
Having discussed the Spirit’s role in creation and history, Padilla unpacks what the biblical teachings on these topics entail for a Christian social ethic. He begins on a sobering note. “This biblical perspective on the work of the Spirit in connection with creation raises a number of questions with regard to Christian involvement in society in relation to issues that the majority of Christian believers everywhere generally regard as merely ‘secular.’” How is this possible?
Padilla’s answer is concise. Because many Christians presume that the Spirit’s work “is limited to the sphere of redemption and the church,” where “redemption” stands merely for “people’s redemption from sin,” they also presume that anything beyond these two is “worldly,” and that “‘worldly’ issues have no place in the Christian agenda.”
Padilla rejects this understanding of the Spirit. He presents his view in an if-then formulation. “If, on the contrary, the intermediary God is present in creation and history, all issues that affect human beings, regardless of race, sex, or socioeconomic status in the present world, become a matter of Christian concern.” Padilla notes that this is the view championed by the majority world theologians who crafted the Tlayacapan Declaration. Padilla offers this extensive quotation from that Declaration.
The Spirit’s creative work can be seen in all the spheres of life—social, political, economic, cultural, ecological, biological, and religious. It can be seen in anything that awakens sensitivity to the needs of people—a sensitivity that builds more just and peaceful communities and societies and that makes possible for people to live with more freedom to make responsible choices for the sake of a more abundant life. It can be seen in anything that leads people to sacrifice on behalf of the common good and for the ecological wellbeing of the Earth; to opt for the poor, the ostracized, and the oppressed, by living in solidarity with them for the sake of their uplift and liberation; and to build love relationships and institutions that reflect the values of the Kingdom of God. These are “life sacraments” that glorify God and are made possible only by the power of the Holy Spirit. [Padilla’s translation]
The same Spirit that hovered over the chaos during creation is working to promote recreation and restoration throughout all creation.
Padilla invites readers to consider the Tlayacapan Declaration’s ecological claims. He notes that these claims are one of the Declaration’s strengths. “At a time when ecological topics were almost completely ignored by evangelical Christians, [the Tlayacapan Declaration] included ecology and ‘the ecological wellbeing of the Earth’ among the spheres of life in which ‘the Spirit’s creative work can be seen.’” Padilla notes that the planet’s “ecological vulnerability,” a phrase invented by Bob Goudzwaard, has increased since the Declaration’s publication. He writes:
The damaging effects that corporate capitalism has produced on a global scale can hardly be exaggerated. Among these effects are the depletion of the ozone layer, acid rain, loss of biological diversity, toxic chemicals wastes, deterioration of agriculture, destruction of human health, deforestation, the problem of energy supply, and the one effect that perhaps more than any other places a big question mark regarding the future of life on planet earth: global climate change.
For Padilla, a Trinitarian reading of Genesis 1 should promote a Spirit-empowered concern for creation and the ways corporate capitalism has encouraged its degradation.
Padilla continues following the money trail. And here he adds another layer to his essay’s ecumenical character by quoting the most well-known Latin American Christian: Pope Francis. Noting that global climate change is wreaking the most havoc on the poor, Padilla shares these lines from Laudate si: “Today…we have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social debate on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.” Endorsing Pope Francis’s teaching, Padilla says that “in light of this dreadful double cry, one of the greatest challenges that we Christians face today is a rediscovery of the ecological dimensions of God’s mission in which we are called to participate on the basis of the recognition that the Spirit of God is active in creation and history.”
Padilla concludes his reflection on the Spirit’s work in creation and history by highlighting a voice outside Latin America. Here too, then, we see his attentiveness to the Church catholic—those the Spirit has united to the Word through which creation and human history came into existence. Padilla gives the late English Bishop and theologian John Taylor the last word. I will too.
The Spirit of God is ever at work in nature, in history and in human living, and wherever there is a flagging or corruption or self-destruction of God’s handiwork, he is present to renew and energize and create again. Whenever faith in the Holy Spirit is strong, creation and redemption are seen as one continuous process.
