After The Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatology From Resources Outside The Modern West (Radical Traditions)

By Eugene F. Rogers Jr. and Eugene F Rogers Jr

To think about the Spirit it will not do to think 'spiritually' to think about the Spirit you have to think materially," claims Eugene F. Rogers. The Holy Spirit, who in classical Christian discourse "pours out on all flesh," has tended in modern theology and worship to float free of bodies. The result of such disembodiment, contends Rogers, is that our talk about the Spirit has become flat and uninspiring. In After the Spirit Rogers diagnoses a related gap in the revival of trinitarian theology, a mentality that "there's nothing the Spirit can do that the Son can't do better."The Eastern Christian tradition, by contrast, has usually linked the Holy Spirit with holy places, holy people, and holy things. Weaving together a rich tapestry of sources from this tradition, Rogers locates the Spirit in the Gospel stories of the annunciation, Jesus' baptism, the transfiguration, and the resurrection. These stories offer illuminating glimpses into both the Spirit's connection with the tangible world and the Spirit's distinctive place in relation to the other persons of the Trinity.Eight gorgeous color plates complement Rogers's witty and passionate prose.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802828914
• ISBN13: 9780802828910
• Release Date: July 2005
• Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
• Length: 263 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Embodied Pneumatology

Eugene Rogers book intrigues and surprises at almost every turn, but an early remark in the acknowledgments remains for me the most tantalizing. Rogers mentions that his book, After the Spirit, is simply an extended footnote on a comment he made in a previous work, Sexuality and the Christian Body. There he claimed "that the congregation at a wedding found itself caught up in the office appropriated to the Spirit, that of celebrating and rejoicing in the love of two" (ix). Seldom has a statement in the acknowledgments of any book so invigorated my interest in reading the rest of the volume! Nor does Rogers's book, an installment in Eerdmans' Radical Traditions Series, edited by Stanley Hauerwas and Peter Ochs, disappoint. It is a constructive proposal for an "embodied pneumatology" that is uniquely scriptural and liturgical, one that postcritically mines the riches of the tradition (writ large) while speaking in a fresh voice that moves us beyond the impasse of much modern thought on the Spirit.