The Holy Spirit and Theology of the Cross: Significance for Dialogue

Abstract

T DOCTRINE of the Spirit holds potential, I suggest, for interfaith discussion and understanding, and for Christians' dialogue with the secular world. This is especially so if the theme of Spirit is understood within the genre of known as theology of the The Holy Spirit, who is, according to Christian faith, none other than the Spirit of Jesus Christ, is the universal Creator Spirit, present to all people, of all religions and of no religion, to inspire, lead, and bless. Yet, if we are to be faithful in our specific identity as Christians, the universality of the Spirit must be understood in intimate relationship with the particularity of Jesus Christ and his cross. I content that in our context a of the universality of the Spirit of God needs to be kept in tension with the particularity, even exclusivity, of a theology of the cross, if genuine dialogue is to occur between Christians and people of other faith communities and between Christianity and atheism. This is a dialectic not simply of particularity/universality (a particular instance of a universal truth) but of exclusivity/inclusivity, i.e. specific truth claims are being made which, ipso facto, exclude other truth claims. Yet it is dialectical, in that apparent poles or contradictory opposites are held together and challenge each other. There resides in a of the cross also, I argue, a potential for speaking of the universality and uniqueness of Jesus Christ in a way that avoids triumphalism and seeks to respect and learn from the faith of others, i.e. a potential for true dialogue.