Eugene F. Rogers, Jr., After the Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatology from Resources outside the Modern West. (William B. Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2005) Pp. xii + 251. Paperback, $22.00.
Robert A.
Kitchen
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
George A. Kiraz
James E. Walters
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Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
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Vol. 9, No. 1
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https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/hv9n1prkitchen
Robert A. Kitchen
Eugene F. Rogers, Jr., After the Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatology from Resources outside the Modern West. (William B. Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2005) Pp. xii + 251. Paperback, $22.00.
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/pdf/vol9/HV9N1PRKitchen.pdf
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute,
vol 9
issue 1
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies is an electronic journal dedicated to the study
of the Syriac tradition, published semi-annually (in January and July) by Beth
Mardutho: The Syriac Institute. Published since 1998, Hugoye seeks to offer the
best scholarship available in the field of Syriac studies.
Syriac Studies
Pneumatology
Eugene F. Rogers
File created by XSLT transformation of original HTML encoded article.
[1]
Trinitarian theology has been on the rise, with all manner of
studies and theologies being offered befitting the complexity
and subtlety of One God in Three Persons, the unique Christian
concept in world religion. This contribution by Eugene F.
Rogers, Jr., professor of religious studies at the University
of North Carolina at Greensboro, while a very important one for
anyone interested in the Third Person, would not fall normally
within the scope of topics to be reviewed by this
journal. Rogers, however, is eager to draw the
perspectives of Eastern—and Syriac—Christianity
into his field of vision.
[2] Waiting
on final proofs from the publisher of his previous book, Rogers
found he had plenty of time to delve into works on the Spirit
in translations from the Eastern traditions. In
particular, Rogers really loves Ephrem, citing numerous hymns,
and one section of the seventh hymn on the Virginity is cited
three times in the volume. Many other Syriac authors make
an appearance in Roger’s investigations: Balai, Bar
Hebraeus, Jacob of Serug, Isaac of Nineveh, Philoxenus of
Mabbug, Abdisho bar Berikha. Greek writers such as Gregory
of Nyssa, Gregory Nazianzen, Athanasius and Cyril of
Alexandria, Maximus the Confessor, and Romanos the Melodist,
along with significant forays into the thought of Russian
Orthodox theologians Pavel Florensky, Sergei Bulgakov, and Paul
Evdokimov are not the usual fare for a Western
systematic/constructive theologian.
[3] Is this
not the purpose for which all labors at translation have been
intended: to provide other theologians and historians reliable
source materials for their work? Rogers utilizes well the
materials and assessments of other scholars. His favorite
source is Sebastian Brock’s The Holy Spirit in Syrian
Baptismal Tradition (Poona, India: Anita Printers, 1998)
from which the lion’s share of his Syriac citations are
drawn.
[4] One of
Rogers’ other Eastern favorites is the life of Simeon
Stylites, but it is the life as interpreted in several articles
by Susan Ashbrook Harvey upon which he focuses. Admitting
that he is making an atypical scholarly move, Rogers relies not
upon the actual vitas of Simeon, but upon
Harvey’s secondary study [primarily “The
Stylite’s Liturgy: Ritual and Religious Identity in Late
Antiquity,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6
(1998) 523-539], which shall be examined below.
[5]
Nevertheless, Rogers’ monograph is still firmly planted
in the West. Despite the numerous Eastern (“outside
the Modern West”) references, Augustine and Thomas
Aquinas provide critical mass for the theology of the Spirit,
while Robert Jenson, Donald Mackinnon, and Rowan Williams help
guide Rogers in the thinking of the modern West. Behind
all the scenes remains the presence of Karl Barth. Although
Rogers firmly corrects Barth on several key points in the
latter’s understanding of the Holy Spirit, it is apparent
that Barth still provides the orientation for much of
Rogers’ direction.
[6] In the
midst of his sabbatical reading, Rogers came to recognize that
the Person of the Spirit has usually been neglected,
sublimated, disembodied, and consequently depersonalized in
modern trinitarian theological systems. He begins with
Barth who, while appearing to be the champion of the Spirit, is
one of the culprits for its subtle demise. Paraphrasing
the famous line from the musical Annie Oakley, Rogers
captures the sense of Barth’s approach, “Anything
the Spirit can do, the Son can do better!” Barth
talks about the importance of the Spirit, but over the pages of
Church Dogmatics his Christocentric tendency nudges
him to assign the real work of the Spirit to that of the
Son. His language sometimes speaks of the Spirit being
“the power of Christ,” reducing the Person to a
function. Rogers concludes, “In the background,
Barth is both the model and disappointment here.”
[7] Rogers
sets out fourteen “Preliminary Theses,” providing
the outline of his argument. Several can be helpful for us
here. The second and third theses direct us to the New
Testament witnesses that permit us to glimpse the
intratrinitarian relations and interactions of the
Persons. We are allowed such glimpses through the agency
of the Spirit which then manifests these relations “in
human beings as the conditions for the possibility of human
participation in the trinitarian life.” The life of
the Trinity is not just an idea about which we think and
contemplate, but a reality in which human beings can and do
take part.
[8]
Rogers’ essential summary of this interrelationship is in
his fifth thesis: “The Spirit proceeds from the Father to
rest on the Son.” He prefers the more active verb
“to alight” rather than the passive “to
rest.” The idea is filled out in the following sixth
thesis: “Because the Spirit hovers over the waters at
creation and rests on the body of the Son in the incarnation,
the Spirit rests on bodies in excess of nature, or
‘paraphysically,’ to coin a word out of Romans
11:24; not just in a way that re-befriends the physical, but
also in a way that redeems, transfigures, elevates, and exceeds
it.” For Rogers, it is the non-necessity, the
excessiveness, superfluity, the grace and rest that
characterizes and distinguishes the Spirit as a Person of the
Trinity.
[9] From
here Rogers takes the reader on a rich, but complex tour
amplifying the nature, character and adventures of the
Spirit. Each section warrants time to savor and digest, so
it is not a simple task to summarize all the insights and
arguments elucidated. Yet it is possible to summarize the
narrative of Rogers’ understanding of the Spirit, and
narrative is the word.
[10]
“I propose that the Spirit is a Person with an affinity
for material things. The Spirit characteristically
befriends the body,” declares Rogers. The Spirit is
therefore not just a function or power of the other
Persons. A Person requires a narrative, a vita, and
despite the perspective of some readers, there are plenty of
narratives of and about the Spirit in the Old and New
Testament. Rogers acknowledges that many of these
instances involve the Spirit acting in concert with the Son, so
he uses these primary narratives to frame his development of
the Third Person: Resurrection, Annunciation, Baptism,
Transfiguration, and Ascension/Pentecost.
[11] The
Spirit is often perceived as being inaccessible in a personal
human sense, but Rogers objects that this is “not because
she lacks the qualities of a person; the Spirit is
inaccessible because she has the qualities of a
person. She is not inaccessible because
impersonal, but as personal.” Who,
after all, can really say that one knows completely another
person with all our inner mysteries? It is the
superfluity, the excessiveness of the gifts of the Spirit, that
most marks the character of the Spirit; an
excessiveness—what else is grace but excessive?—by
which human beings are saved. So in the end the Spirit can
do something better than the Son - rest. “The logic
of the Spirit is not of productivity, but of superfluity, not
the logic of work, but of Sabbath. The Spirit like the
Sabbath sanctifies.
[12] A
few notes on Rogers’ journey through the narratives of
the Spirit.
Resurrection: “The most remarkable trinitarian passage
in the New Testament,” Robert Jenson observes, is Romans
8:11—“If the Spirit of the One Who raised Christ
Jesus from the dead dwells in your mortal bodies, you too shall
rise from the dead.” Rogers peers inside the verse
through several other exegetes and early writers, but his most
important insight comes via Aquinas. “Nevertheless
something is to be gained by Christ’s reception of the
resurrection from the Father: The exercise of raw
power is not joinable, because unlike Christ human beings do
not have that power as their proprium; but the
reception of power is joinable, ‘because what
God the Father did in Christ, he does also in
us.’” Human beings become perfect, deified,
not in their accomplishment, but in their reception of the
Spirit’s gift.
[13]
Annunciation: The concept of the Spirit’s superfluity and
excessiveness is perceived especially in Mary’s giving
birth to Christ. One of Romanos the Melodist’s hymns on
the Nativity utilizes the key phrase “para
phusin” that Rogers interprets as “excess of
nature,” as opposed to many translators who render the
phrase, “contrary to nature.” He rightly notes
that it is this excessiveness of the virgin birth that some
Protestants don’t like and feel uncomfortable about, for
it is just too exorbitant, out of control, physically excessive
(Rogers is Presbyterian). The last word on this excessive
Annunciation Rogers gives to Jacob of Serug, “Mary gave a
body for the Word to become incarnate, while Baptism gives the
Spirit for human beings to be renewed.”(P. Bedjan,
Homiliae selectae, Vol. 1, mēmrā 9,
p. 204)
[14]
Baptism: What happens at the River Jordan is to be primarily
understood as an intratrinitarian event, in which other human
beings may participate by their own baptism. The general
problem of why did Jesus need to be baptized is answered by
observing that while the Son does enjoy a divine attribute by
right, there is no barrier to his receiving it also from
another (the Spirit) in humility. This ability to receive
from the Spirit also enables Christ to receive even from human
beings. The Spirit relates to the Son by taking
“something Christ does not need and presents it to him as
gift,” while “Christ does not hold on to what is
his but receives it from another as gift.”
[15]
Rogers is enamored with Ephrem’s seventh hymn on
Virginity [strophes 5, 6, and 14 are selected], placing it as
his epigraph to the volume, examining it at the conclusion of
Part I, and again here. The hymn identifies the oil used
to anoint the baptized as “the dear friend of the Holy
Spirit,” the oil painting the image of Christ onto the
one baptized. “Christ has many facets, and the oil
acts as a mirror to them all: from whatever angle I look at the
oil, Christ looks out at me from it.” Human
participation in baptism leads one back towards participation
in the divine. Rogers cites Vladimir Lossky’s
succinct observation, “The work of the Son deifies human
nature, and the work of the Spirit deifies the human
person.”
[16]
Transfiguration: Rogers pulls together Romans 8 and
Luke’s depiction of the Transfiguration to imply that
only God can pray to God. When human beings pray they are
caught up in the triune activity of the Persons praying to one
another. Prayer is what the Trinity does. Prayer does
not “change God’s mind,” but is a
transfiguration of human beings who do not know how to pray as
they ought.
[17] It
is in liturgy that human beings are nourished and developed by
the Spirit over time. Rogers turns to the life of Simeon
Stylites as an example of how asceticism can be liturgically
channeled to a positive end for both ascetic and
community. Simeon’s vitas witness how
Simeon’s out of control severe asceticism caused
continual dissension in his community, resulting inevitably in
his expulsion. The local priest Mar Bas takes on Simeon
and encourages both his athletic asceticism, pillar and all, as
well as structuring his practices around the eucharist, the
daily and annual liturgical calendar, preaching and teaching,
healing and reconciling disputes. Rogers relays
Harvey’s assessment that “Simeon began his
pillar-standing as an attempt to escape people, but was
transformed into the very center of liturgical life.... His
body becomes spiritual, anticipating the spiritual bodies of
heaven, taking on characteristics associated with the Holy
Spirit—light, fire, incense, presence on the altar,
formation of the seeker, production of the witness, gathering
of the community.” Rogers concludes that Simeon,
under his own authority was pathological, out of control, and
therefore amorphous, while under the liturgical formation of
the Spirit, he is unique and original not as an individual but
to and for his fellows.
[18]
Ascension and Pentecost: Rogers recognizes the problem in
his re-construction of the narrative of the Spirit is that
Pentecost does not take place in the life of Jesus, nor does
the Ascension mention the Spirit. Yet, Rogers sees the two
events forming an excellent example of how the Son defers to
the Spirit in order to receive a gift.
[19] It
would be quibbling for Hugoye readers with their
special interests to require more of Rogers in utilizing the
resources of the Eastern and Syriac churches, though it is true
that many of his Syriac references are branches to his
argument, not the roots. His constructive pneumatology is
just that: a systematic endeavor to understand the Person of
the Spirit in her intertrinitarian activities. I believe,
nevertheless, that Rogers is part of a beneficent trend slowly
developing in Western theological ranks that recognizes and
utilizes the contributions and insights of Eastern Christian
and Syriac theology and literature. Predictably, Ephrem is
the writer most often selected. Jaroslav Pelikan, Hughes
Oliphant Old, Robert Wilken, Carol Zaleski, and certainly
others, have referenced Ephrem and other Syriac writers in
recent writings with no pretensions to Syriac scholarship
per se, just pretensions to good theology. The
more non-specialists in Syriac literature read these works in
translation, the more we will learn in return. As Rogers
would probably assent, there is ample roominess in the Spirit
to accommodate all manner of readers of resources outside the
modern West.