P. Gianni Colzani
The article by P. Gianni Colzani provides a summary reflection of a biblical, historical-theological, and ecclesial nature concerning the third person of the Trinity, and this against the backdrop of the "rediscovery" of the Holy Spirit that took place in recent decades. Especially significant are the reflections on the "structure" of the Holy Spirit, which consists of a dual dynamic: éx-stasis as the presence of God reaching out and kénosis as his limiting of himself in order to be close to the other.
Until twenty or thirty years ago, there was usually talk of silence and forgetfulness regarding the Spirit. The Holy Spirit was a great unknown. Even in 1951, E. Brunner declared that the Spirit would always be the Cinderella of theology and that for theologians, the dynamism of the Spirit would always be an object of fear. The Spirit was indeed presented as unknowable, as an intangible force that freely "blows where it wants" (John 3:8). This is no longer the case today; there is talk of a real and true "rebirth" of the Spirit. It is a rediscovery that has its biblical and ecumenical roots, and which has also found expression in some lay movements, especially in the Charismatic Renewal groups. However, it is necessary to analyze the entire issue; it is not enough to merely give in to optimism. If we are not to fall back into past mistakes, it is essential to analyze and understand the situation; if we are to truly orient ourselves in the future, it is necessary to know the problems of today.
Forgetfulness of the Spirit and its rediscovery
While the first Christian communities significantly associated the figure of Jesus with the Spirit (one only needs to remember the accounts of Jesus' birth and his baptism), it is not the same for us. "Many Christians who happily talk about creation, the incarnation of Christ and the redeeming sacrifice, the Church, and the future, hesitate to discuss the work of the Holy Spirit. In their opinion, it is such a hidden and individual work that any attempt to express it in theological terms would be irreverence. [...] The result is a 'malnutrition' of theology and thus also of prayer, teaching, and the life of the Church." 1 Insufficient attention to the Spirit reflects insufficient attention to the entirety of the gift that the Spirit is for the Church and for humanity. As a consequence, discussions also become impoverished when it comes to aspects that have not been forgotten.
At the root of this dryness are particularly two causes. The first is a reaction to those spiritual movements which throughout the ages (from the Montanists through Joachim of Fiore to the Fraticelli) elevated the Spirit against the Church and against the ecclesiastical interpretation of Scripture. The reaction to this was an attitude of distrust that led to a mutual separation of faith and spiritual experience, to forgetfulness and disinterest in the action of the Spirit, which ultimately flattened Christian and ecclesial life to a minimum necessary: to avoid committing sins. The fact that subjective upliftment (by the Spirit) and obedience to the Church were set up as two distinct alternatives would lead to fear of the inner strength that seems to drive and control some people, including saints; ultimately, this would result in an intellectual and hierarchical understanding of the Spirit and an attempt to subordinate it to the services of the Church. Hence the insistence on the discernment of spirits; the fact that only the discernment was emphasized, even where the Spirit was only sparsely present or not present at all, clearly indicates the prevailing attitude of the Church community: it portrayed the Spirit as a guarantee of the ecclesiastical institution in all its forms, including problematic ones. Hence the widespread notion well expressed by Manzoni: "What a holy person, but what a torment!" – which means that the Spirit is the potential for extraordinary, the mover of some exceptional personalities, people "on the outside." The stubbornness and sometimes even bias with which the current rediscovery of spiritual experience is often viewed likely stems from this mentality, which has not yet been critically reassessed.
The second cause is the theological minimization of the Spirit, so that gradually, he ultimately disappeared from the scene. Christology focused the work of salvation around the historical Jesus and the apostolic and ecclesial community continuing his work. The Spirit is not seen here in his autonomy as a distinct divine person, but only in his action in the service of the Risen One and of the Church. His task seems to have been fulfilled merely by the transmission and spreading of the graces and gifts of the Redeemer. From treatises on grace, such reductionism (limitation) wafts in: attention shifts to the person in a state of grace, more on the renewal of the person than on the source of this renewal. In this understanding, the activity of the Spirit is only an explanation and manifestation of Christ's action: Pentecost is merely the revelation of the mystery of Easter, and the seven gifts of the Spirit – the great theme to which attention is devoted – are merely embellishments of the soul that is in a state of grace. It will be admitted at most that the Spirit is the source of mysterious, although nevertheless unnecessary, internal comforts.
This reductionism has emerged in the accusation of christomonism, which was raised against the Western Church of the second millennium:2 that the Church presents the life of the Christian as well as the life of the Church as a christological extension of the incarnation, concentrating supposedly its attention on the hierarchical and institutional moment of this extension – and the role and task of the Spirit have been left in the second place. The result would be what we have already talked about. Even if we set aside not uninteresting historical clarifications, the fact remains that the Spirit has been pushed to the margins: the Holy Spirit has been left to pious books. We must acknowledge in retrospect that this disinterest in the Spirit gave rise to an inadequate Christology and a Christianity devoid of life. To return to this theme3 cannot mean simply passively repeating truths and schemas, as they were defined in the context of Trinitarian disputes of the early centuries, but rather in the light of the rediscovery of the action of the Spirit "on the living tablets of our hearts" (cf. 2 Cor 3:3) to re-conceptualize the entire experience of faith.
(La rivista del clero italiano, Milano, year LXXVIII, No. 10 – October 1997, pp. 647–649.
Translated by Zdena Kolářová, supplemented by Kateřina Lachmanová.)
