BY Kirsteen Kim*
"When the Apostle Paul stood in front of the Areopagus, he began by connecting with the spirituality of the ancient Athenians, affirming their search for God and the spiritual awareness of their poets. Paul attempted to use the Athenians’ spiritual language to tell about the Creator God and about Jesus and his resurrection. At the same time he discerned a spirit of idolatry which prevented repentance and practical obedience to the Holy Spirit of God (Acts 17:16-34). Trying to bridge the spiritualities of the Jewish and Greek worlds in this way, Paul faced misunderstanding and had limited immediate success in terms of new Christians – but from our standpoint two thousand years later, we can see this is a Christian city and we know how the use of Greek thought and language has contributed to the formation of Christian theology, particularly to our understanding of God the Holy Spirit. So I consider it doubly appropriate that here in Athens we pray, "Ελθέ, Πνεύμα Άγιο", "Come, Holy Spirit!"
My research into the Holy Spirit and mission (Kim 2003) arises from my personal experience of different spiritual contexts: in Britain, where I grew up; in South Korea, my husband’s home country; in the United States where we studied; and in India, where we taught for four years in a seminary. I found that, in each country – and even in different Christian denominations – the spiritual milieu and the cultural meaning of the word "spirit" is different, and this gives a different nuance to the biblical testimony to the Holy Spirit. I also came to believe that, in many cases, we may better communicate the good news of Jesus Christ by beginning with the language of the Spirit.
The Father sends the Spirit into the world and, as followers of Christ, we are privileged to participate in that mission (Rom 8:14-17). In this case, the first act of mission is discernment (Dunn 1998: 72). To join with the Spirit in mission, we need to ask how the Spirit comes and how we recognise the Spirit. In the Bible there are three main events in which the Spirit comes. At Pentecost the Spirit gives birth to the church (Acts 2:41-42) and Christian mission (1:8). But this is only possible because Jesus Christ our Saviour is conceived in the Spirit (Luke 1:35) and the Spirit of God shines forth from him (2Cor 4:6; see Bevans 1998) so that Christians refer to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Jesus or the Spirit of Christ (John 7:39; see Rayan 1998: 37). Nevertheless, the Spirit was also known before the coming of Jesus Christ as the agent of creation and author of life (Gen 1:2; 2:7; cf. 6.17), who continues to be creatively present and active everywhere in the world (Ps 104:30; Job 33:4). These three ways in which the Spirit came – and comes – are inter-related because the new community begun at Pentecost is significant for the future of the whole creation (Rom 8:19-23). Due to the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, the church is given the Spirit as a foretaste of the liberation and new life which God desires for all (2 Cor 1.22; 5.5; Eph 1.13-14; Rom 8.23). However, the Spirit of God is not the possession of any community but as wind moves in the whole creation (John 3:8; Ps 139:7) and as living water is freely given (John 7:37-38).
