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f o u r What Does the Spirit Have to Do? Bruce D. Marshall A PNEUMATOLOGICAL DEFICIT? From the West as well as the East, among Roman Catholics as well as Protestants, Christian theologians now regularly suggest that western theology suffers from a “pneumatological deficit.” The Western theological tradition accounts for the temporal actions of the triune God, so these critics worry, without giving the Holy Spirit anything to do. In contrast to the Father and especially the Son, the Spirit has no action of his own, and no property, effect, or relationship to us that is unique to him. As a result, the Spirit himself tends to vanish.1 Where we should expect traditional theology to speak of the Spirit, we find instead talk of various created substitutes for the Spirit: grace, the Church, the Virgin Mary, and so forth. This purported deficit not only affects Western theology’s understanding of the Spirit’s action, but insinuates itself into traditional views of the Spirit’s being, as evinced by teachings such as the Filioque and the vinculum amoris (which, so the argument goes, threaten to efface the fully hypostatic or personal character of the Spirit). Augustine is usually assigned the chief blame for this unhappy state of affairs, with Thomas Aquinas a close second. It is striking to observe, therefore, how freely Thomas assigns particular temporal actions and outcomes to the Holy Spirit in his Commentary on John, and in other biblical commentaries as well. To begin  1. Thus, inter alia, Robert W. Jenson: “The common factor in Western problems with the Spirit, one may suggest, is a tendency of the Spirit simply to disappear from theology’s description of God’s triune action, often just when he might be expected to have the leading role.” Systematic Theology, vol. 1: The Triune God (New York: Oxford University Press, 1), 1. Jenson also thinks the Christian East has noteworthy pneumatological problems. = at the end. Donated by Christ in the upper room (Jn 20:22) and on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:), the Holy Spirit himself gives the grace of Christ to the apostles.2 The Spirit was “sent upon” Christ in two ways—the baptismal dove and the cloud of transfiguration—in order to signal both the sacramental and the doctrinal way in which Christ’s grace would reach us. In just the same fashion, the Spirit is sent upon the apostles in two ways—the breath in the upper room and the flaming tongues of Pentecost—in order to signal that the apostles would themselves spread this grace abroad by both sacrament and teaching. But their work too is the Spirit’s doing; it happens only once the apostles are “filled with the Holy Spirit” (Ioan. 20, lect. , n. 2). As the one who gives the grace of Christ, the Spirit naturally forgives sins. This is the “fitting effect” of the Holy Spirit’s coming (conveniens effectus Spiritus sancti), since “the Spirit himself is love and by him (per eum) love is given to us” (Ioan. 20, lect. , n. 21). Interestingly the text of Thomas’s commentary here uses “caritas” for the love that the Spirit is (as well as that which the Spirit gives us), rather than “amor,” which is Thomas’s more typical way of talking about the Spirit’s love. The reason for this lexical oddity immediately becomes clear. Thomas ties the gift of the Spirit to the apostles in the upper room, upon which he here comments, directly to Romans :—the divine love (caritas, in Thomas’s Vulgate), poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. The forgiveness of sins links John 20:22 to Romans :, since the remission of sins entrusted to the apostles “happens,” Thomas argues, “only by love” (Ioan. 20, lect. , n. 21). In his own commentary on this Romans passage, Thomas specifies the bond between the amor that the Spirit is and the love that he gives us. The Holy Spirit, who is the love of the Father and the Son, is given to us in order to lead us to share in that love which is the Holy Spirit himself. By this very participation we are made lovers of God.3 Here both the crucial saving action that leads us to love God (forgiveness of sins) and the effect of that action (our very love for God) belong to the Spirit. Both the act and the...

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