Power and the Spirit of God: Toward an Experience-Based Pneumatology (review)

Pneumatology, a colleague once said to me, is an ethereal discipline. Cooke's excellent new book will not be subject to such critiques. Using a phenomenological method, he probes the actual experience of power in multiple dimensions of human life. He explores physical force and the attendant power of fear; the use of power in the public arena through office, fame, law, and wealth; the power of nature, creativity, and imagination; and the power of symbol, thought, and ritual. Integrating his descriptive analysis of these realms of experience with reflection on Scripture and tradition, he articulates a theology of the Spirit as the power of divine love.

Cooke's analysis is informed by reflections on power in the disciplines of sociology and philosophy, but he emphasizes that power is ultimately a theological issue. The history of religion attests to the close association of divinity with the power of physical and military might. This association was characteristic of the early stages of the religion of Israel, but the prophetic, priestly, and wisdom traditions articulate a theology of a force more powerful than warrior gods: the spirit of Yahweh's Word and Wisdom. Through the power of Word and Spirit, creation itself is brought into being, kings with standing armies are confronted by prophetic challenge, and Yahweh wins the heart of Israel. Jesus Christ deepens this revelation through his life, death and resurrection, which witness to the ultimate power of love, compassion, friendship, servanthood, and self-sacrifice.

Christ's testimony to the power of self-giving love continued in the age of the martyrs. After Constantine and Justinian, however, the amalgamation of civil, military, and ecclesiastical power weakened this Christian witness. Today, Cooke believes, we are on the cusp of a new theology of power, and his pneumatology is a contribution to this development. "It is the contention of this book," he states provocatively, "that the paradigm shift in the theological view of 'power,' in the context of the twentieth-century reappraisal of soteriology, represents what may be the most radical shift in mentality to touch Christianity in eighteen hundred years" (7).

At the heart of Cooke's pneumatology is a theology of divine eros. God, he explains, kenotically relinquishes an absolute form of power and brings creation into being through the power of love. Human persons are the zenith of God's creation and have the unique capacity to freely receive or refuse this love. Cooke's working definition of power is "the ability to achieve a particular goal," and God's providential goal for human beings is the realization of the full personhood for which we were created (168). The Spirit of God is therefore "the most powerful of powers" because the Spirit who is the divine outreach of love can draw creation to its telos (176). In one of the most creative and important chapters of the book, Cooke probes the experience of personal embrace and proposes "the divine embrace" as a unifying metaphor for the Spirit.

He offers a rich phenomenological description of the manner in which this power is manifest in human experience. The Spirit of love drives out fear, as we witness in the life of Jesus Christ and Christian martyrs. The embrace of the Spirit gives us the assurance that we are beloved and that our lives have worth, such that we need not resort to hypocrisy or inauthenticity in the pursuit of the power of fame. The Spirit of love shapes our desires such that we seek the true "good life" and stand converted from the desire for wealth that distorts economic theory and practice. The Spirit is the power of creativity that can bring into being a future that we can now only vaguely envision. The Spirit is found in the power of imagination, the images and symbols that shape our thinking, emotions, affectivity, and action. The Spirit is the power within the Word of God that brings into...