The Spirit over the Earth: Pneumatology in the Majority World by Gene L. Green, Stephen T. Pardue, and K.K. Yeo (review)

Like the two preceding volumes in the Majority World Theology Series—Christology (2014) and the Trinity (2015)—this third volume, The Spirit over the Earth: Pneumatology in the Majority World, is a collection of essays by eight evangelical scholars from the Majority World reflecting on major themes in pneumatology. After an introduction by one of the editors, Gene Green, on why and how pneumatology should be re-emphasized, Amos Yong (Malaysian-American) begins the volume by offering an overview of the broad spectrum of the Christian traditions and highlights the diversity of its pneumatological thinking in the Eastern Orthodox tradition and Majority World theologies of the past century. Yong shows the problem of classical pentecostal theology that dichotomizes the Holy Spirit and Indigenous spirits in doing contextual pneumatology and suggests a nuanced notion of contemporary pentecostal thinking. Yong's article is followed by chapters by Ivan Satyavrata and Zakali Shohe (Indians). While Satyavrata focuses on the personhood of the Spirit, Shohe seeks to explore the communal nature of the Spirit from a Northeast Indian communal perspective.

Another article from Wei Hua (Chinese) comes with a question: How should Chinese Christians respond to the cultural rites of the ancestors and the reception of Pauline pneumatology in China? Built on Paul's reflection on the Corinthian practice of eating meat offered to idols (1 Cor 8–10), Hua proposes the fulfillment and renewal of culture as the methods that suggest that as the Jewish law has been fulfilled by Gentile Christians, and as the Roman customs had been renewed in Paul's time, so the Chinese rites of the ancestors can also be appropriated by Chinese Christians as humanizing etiquette. In contrast to the replacement model, Hua finds the fulfillment and renewal models more helpful in developing a Chinese contextual pneumatology in the light of ancestral rites.

In the middle of the volume, two African scholars—Samuel Ngewa and David Ngong—explore two different yet related perspectives on the African theology of the Spirit. While Ngewa focuses on what the Holy Spirit does in the Lukan narrative of the mission of God and the contemporary mission of the Church, Ngong focuses on who the Holy Spirit is. The former explores the function of the Holy Spirit in bringing people of different ethnicities to the inclusive family of God (Acts 2, 8, 10, 19); the latter focuses on the place of the Spirit in the Trinity. Readers will find these distinct yet related voices helpful for a balanced understanding of the function of the Spirit in the multicultural mission of the Church and the place of the Spirit in the Trinity.

The last two essays are by two South American scholars: Oscar Garcia-Johnson and Rene Padilla. Johnson uncovers and recovers important elements in Indigenous traditions of the Americas by discerning pneumatological continuity between pre- and post-Columbian communities. Central to his argument is how we should recognize the hidden and revelatory presence of the Spirit before and after the European colonial mission in the Americas. Padilla concludes the volume. He treats the Holy Spirit not only as the source of life but also as the power for hope in the midst of despair. While I like Padilla's thesis on the healing role of the Spirit, I wish he would have criticized the Latin American liberation theology that focuses exclusively on Christology and developed a robust Trinitarian liberation theology that is rooted in both Christology and pneumatology.

In short, the contributors to The Spirit over the Earth provide us with the key themes in pneumatology, which has been marginalized at the expense of Christology. The incarnational ministry of Jesus would not have been possible without the Holy Spirit. The ministry of the Church is not possible without the power of the Holy Spirit. While the...