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260
Book Reviews
I. Leon Harris
The Holy Spirit as Communion: Colin Gunton’s Pneumatology of Communion and
Frank Macchia’s Pneumatology of Koinonia(Eugene,OR: Pickwick, 2017). xxi +
240 pp. $31.00 paperback.
Could there be any theological connection between Colin Gunton, a Reformed British theologian in the tradition of the United Reformed Church, and Frank Macchia, a Pentecostal American theologian within a classical Pentecostal denomination? Furthermore, would an interlocution between the two produce a fruitful and ecumenical dialogue? This is what Harris has set out to do, tak- ing two unlikely interlocutors and attempting to extrapolate a pneumatological understanding of community while showing that the Holy Spirit is an “active personal agency” as central to each’s theology.
Harris offers a list of lofty goals that he sets out to accomplish within his work, which includes a critical review of each interlocutors’ works as they relate to the Spirit, the accomplishments and shortcomings of each theolo- gians’ constructions while moving the reader towards the main goal, a the- ological creation exposing the necessity of an active and personal Spirit as central to theological constructs of Trinitarian theology. In order to do this, Harris offers that he will show the active Spirit as “necessary for God to be God”, crucial for Christology, and the Spirit’s role in the “creation, sustaining and perfecting of the church.” Finally, Harris attempts to argue that a proper understanding of the Spirit is needed to fulfill a vision of “salvation as a cosmic reality” (xx).
In order to undertake such an ardent task, Harris is particular with how he structured this work. In a clever move, Harris forms this work in a chiastic structure first dealing with Gunton’s work in chapters 1 through 4 and Mac- chia’s in 5–8. Both theologians within Harris’ understanding find their most expressive and tangible pneumatological expressions within ideas of commu- nity/koinonia. Moving outward from this pneumatological centerpiece, found in chapters 4 and 5, Harris focuses a chapter on each’s Christology, pneumatol- ogy, and, as the starting point for Gunton and the ending point for Macchia, on the doctrine of God.
In his assessment, Harris recognizes that revelation plays a primary starting role in Gunton’s theological construction from which he is able to come to the conclusion that ecclesiology is pneumatological in orientation. Harris accom- plishes this in Chapter 1 by evaluating Gunton’s theological rendering of com- munion being ontologically grounded in God. This is teased out of Gunton’s work in which perichoresis and relationality are the transcendental properties of being for God.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/15700747-04001024
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Chapter two takes up the task of showing Gunton’s theological concerns about the loss of particularity that must be corrected by having a proper “pneu- matic particularity”. It is within this chapter that Harris takes a slight detour to extrapolate Gunton’s reliance on Richard of St. Victor’s work as Gunton never fully develops his idea that the Spirit is the perfector of the Divine life giving proper particularity. In doing so, Harris shows that Gunton takes up pneuma- tological issues with Augustine’s proposal that the Spirit is the bond of love between the Father and Son, as well as topics including the filioque, eschatol- ogy, and the formation of community through the Spirit.Throughout chapter 3, Harris follows through with his extrapolation of Gunton working particularly within ideas of the incarnation, inspiration, and a “Pneumatic Logos Christi- ology”. It is within this chapter that Harris spends most of his time teasing out Gunton’s rich work. Finally, in chapter 4, Harris is able to weave this rich discus- sion on Gunton’s (and others) work to help the reader realize what Gunton was striving to accomplish, showing that the communal life of the church is real- ized in the perfecting work of the Spirit based within the “onto-relationality” of God found in the life of Christ.
After a brief joiner introducing Macchia and Pentecostal theology, and as realized by the chiastic structure mentioned above, Harris begins his extrapo- lation within chapter 5 working through Macchia’s understanding of koinonia as relational being made manifest by Spirit Baptism. It is within Spirit Bap- tism that an open model of community in reaching out towards the other is born. Moving outward within the chiasm, Harris then works towards showing how Macchia useskoinoniato realize and reveal “God’s embrace and God him- self” through a soteriological understanding of Jesus as the Spirit Baptizer and Savior, both works of Christ that must include the work of the Spirit, in chap- ter 6. Necessitated by Macchia’s focus on Spirit Baptism, Harris uses chapter 7 to show the connection between Spirit Baptism, pneumatology, soteriology, and Christology within Macchia’s work. This all drives the reader to the final chapter in Harris’ work in delineating on how the theological structures find- ing its framing in Spirit Baptism. Harris carefully navigates his understanding of Macchia to both show the experiential nature of knowing God through Spirit Baptism, and the communal grounding of knowing God through Trinitarian economic activity.
While Harris is clearly apt in dissecting and moving through the writings of each of the interlocutors, He struggles in constructing anything new out of each theologians’ writings. The majority of this books is simply focused on extrap- olation. While there is a small conclusion at the end of the book that raises questions and provides insight from the author, I could not help but desire this type of input more clearly throughout the writing. This is problematic within
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a book with a primary goal of constructing a framework showing the neces- sity of a personal and active agency of the Spirit. While this goal is ultimately accomplished, a more direct approach and voice of the author to show this conclusion would have proven quite helpful. The same could be said of nearly all of the goals listed above. Harris would have done well to show the trajecto- ries of creation such a dialogue could produce within separate chapters after each section (1–4 and 5–8), as well as, how the goals he set out to accomplish were made manifest. As previously noted, while the structure of the writing was quite clever, it may be this very structure that did not allow for the goals of the book to be clearly completed.
Given that this publication appears to be an edited version of his PhD disser- tation, Harris writes in a way that mainly specialists will be able to understand. Whilethis book providesfascinating insight intothe theologicalconsiderations of each of the interlocutors, this exploration will be limited primarily to grad- uate students and beyond.
Aaron Gabriel Ross
Southeastern University, Lakeland, Florida
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