Religion and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit1

Outside the Confines

Within the context of reflection on interreligious dialog and the new evangelization, the topic "Religion and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit" piques the theological imagination. The mind turns with a certain litheness of spirit to a theme that, over the past fifty years, has both animated theologians and appeared in authoritative Church documents. I refer to the claim that the Holy Spirit works "outside of the visible confines of the Mystical Body."² Lumen Gentium §16, though it makes no explicit mention of the Holy Spirit, sparks thinking along these lines. Gaudium et Spes §22 takes up the "outside" theme, though with specific reference to the Holy Spirit: "For, since Christ died for all men (see Rom. 8:32), and since the ultimate vocation of man is in fact one, and divine, we ought to believe that the Holy Spirit in a manner known only to God offers to every man the possibility of being associated with [the] paschal mystery."³ So also Ad Gentes §15 makes reference to "the Holy Spirit, who calls all men to Christ by the seeds of the Lord and by the preaching of the Gospel."⁴ Thus run several significant texts from the documents of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965).

In 1997, the Interreligious Dialogue Commission of the Central Committee for the Year 2000 published a short report on the "outside" theme titled "Presence and Actions of the Holy Spirit in the World and in Other Religions." The author introduces his essay with these words: "The Christian community lives in the firm belief that it is guided by the Spirit, but God's closeness to humankind, which is accomplished by the power of the Spirit, cannot be limited to the Christian community alone. The Spirit is free, and blows where it wills (Jn 3, 8); wherever the Lord's Spirit is, there is freedom."⁵ All in all, the words of John 3:8, "The wind blows where it will," have prompted over the past five decades broad considerations and interpretations about what significance this biblical affirmation may hold for Christian life and practice, including its serving as an endorsement for the "outside" theme.⁶ More recently, in his Presentation of Christmas Greetings to the Roman Curia on 22 December 2014, Pope Francis, citing John 3:8, spoke about the "freedom of the Holy Spirit" to warn against curial "functionalism."⁷ One may view this papal admonition as an in-house variation on the "outside" theme.

Outside is not always a bad place from which to look. For example, it may be useful for students of comparative religion to draw up a list of values or beliefs found in other religions that may compare favorably with the received gifts of the Holy Spirit, for which the first magisterial reference may be found as early as the late fourth century (382).⁸ It would be odd, in fact, to think that such things as wisdom, counsel, and piety do not correspond, at least in name, to some of the highest aspirations found among the practitioners of non-Christian religions. More specific examples of possible inquiries also come to mind. One may envisage research into comparisons such as between knowledge and Brahman, understanding and Confucius, and fear of the Lord and the fatwā.⁹ Moreover, this kind of comparative exercise should be easy to accomplish. Research that aims to establish apparent parallels between Christian and non-Christian categories flourishes in schools where comparative religion has replaced the exercises of Catholic theology. It would surprise me, however, to discover that, today, much fruitfulness for the Catholic Church results from multi-disciplinary investigations. Religious studies, at least in North America, have become increasingly prone to the promotion of religious and ethical relativism. In any event, the pursuit of these correlations would unlikely advance investigations into the place that the virtue of religion holds in the new evangelization. Such a pursuit may even entail odd reversals of theological method. A robust theology of the gifts of the Holy Spirit goes in search of its...