Castelo provides a succinct and deep examination of significant questions in pneumatology. This text is ecumenically well grounded in the work of past and contemporary theologians, and constructive in its approaches and insights. Castelo begins with linguistic challenges of pneumatology, describing the Spirit as both personal and transpersonal, immanent and transcendent. By defying easy categorization, Castelo suggests, “Spirit-talk” may break down binaries, resist objectifying the divine, and transform limited visions of both God and ourselves.
Castelo initially seems to ignore his own conclusion, as chapter 2 employs two general categories to classify biblical imagery of the Spirit: pneumatology from below, or how the Spirit works through persons and events from the mundane to the momentous; and pneumatology from above, designating the Spirit's anointing and raising up of leaders, including the messiah upon whom the Spirit rests. This chapter finds its pair in the third, which considers early Christian understandings of the Spirit from Ignatius of Antioch to Augustine. It is in the fourth chapter, on the Holy Spirit and cosmology, that the binary categories find an intriguing synthesis. Castelo describes two “rival accounts of ‘how the world works'” (74). One worldview explains the natural world through scientific epistemology alone, and so precludes the spiritual, given the paucity of observable data; a second worldview so strongly distinguishes between the natural and spiritual that the Spirit's activity can only be described as a divine, disruptive intervention into the otherwise “normal” operations of nature. Castelo argues for a third worldview, in which “Nature is Spirit-graced to its core so that what is fundamentally characteristic of nature is that it is Spirit-related” (74; emphasis in the original). In this worldview, the immanent and transcendent aspects of the Spirit converge: the created world arises from and through the Spirit, while through creation human beings participate in God's life.
Castelo's emphasis on the Spirit's mediation continues in chapter 5; the natural world, “charged by and primed for the Spirit,” is the context for sanctification (82). Drawing on William Abraham's work, Castelo argues that the Spirit's mediation through history, persons, and events brings about God's kingdom and creates a “canonical heritage” of gifts, such as liturgy and art, saints and councils (84). This heritage aids the church in knowing and responding to God more deeply. In keeping with his understanding of the Christian heritage, Castelo does not confine Scripture's inspiration to a single moment, but rather describes an ongoing mediation of inspiration from original writing to processes of canonization, traditioning, proclamation, and reception.
Chapter 6 surveys Spirit-baptism within Scripture and in various Christian worldviews, which Castelo designates as sacramental, evangelical, and Pentecostal. This chapter reflects Castelo's thesis from earlier chapters that Christian denominations subscribe to particular “Ur-commitments,” which deeply shape denominational worldviews (78). Castelo views these commitments, whether explicitly acknowledged or implicitly operative, as real obstacles to intra-Christian understanding. While his thesis illuminates the difficulties of ecumenical dialogue, it is also in tension with the scriptural call to share the mind of Christ through the Holy Spirit. If Christians are one with the Spirit and the Spirit is one with God, then potential for true unity between denominations must exist, even though real differences between denominational histories and cultures may make degrees of Christian unity both difficult to ascertain and imperfect.
The final chapter, on discerning the Spirit, is all the more necessary given the complex portrait of the Spirit and Christian life that Castelo has offered. Here he points to the necessity of considering the sources, norms, and purposes of the Spirit's activity while cautioning against using methods of discernment, such as the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, as formulas yielding clear solutions. Castelo's contention that the Spirit is mediated through persons and histories is important, as the Spirit is known by spiritual means. Thus to bear fruit, discernment methods must be undertaken by “epicletic” persons (132).
Castelo's focus on particular questions, breadth of sources, and stimulating arguments create a valuable resource for instructors as well as for graduate students who wish to take a further step into the field of pneumatology, accompanied by the diverse insights of Christian denominations.
