Creator Spirit, Spirit of Grace: Trinitarian Dimensions of a Charitological Pneumatology

This dissertation takes up the question of the link between the creative and the redemptive work of the Holy Spirit. It presents creation as ordered to redemption and redemption as the completion of creation, especially for human beings. On the understanding of the relationship between the two orders of the Spirit’s activity proposed here, creation is of a piece with redemption and is therefore an operation of grace just as the latter is. I ground my depiction of the Spirit’s role in both aspects of the divine economy in an account of her role within the immanent Trinity. Indeed, this dissertation focuses primarily on the nature of the Spirit’s eternal relation to the other two persons of the Godhead, which is the foundation of her work in the world. It offers a conception of her intra-trinitarian role that can reconcile some apparently incompatible ideas suggested by the New Testament concerning the relationships between the divine persons, that accords with the principles that have regulated trinitarian theology throughout the history of the universal church, and that attempts to do justice to the concerns underlying different and long-controverted trinitarian models authoritatively supported by separated church traditions. Yet my account also challenges traditional views. Most fundamentally, I submit that the principle of the equality and inseparability of the persons in God calls for understanding the Holy Spirit as having a more active part in the eternal constitution of the Trinity than she has usually been ascribed. In dialogue with Thomas Weinandy and David Coffey, among others, I characterize her as mediating the exchange of love between the Father and the Son in a way that illuminates why she is essential to making them the particular persons they are. I then argue that her work in creating and redeeming humanity stems from this intra-trinitarian activity, drawing on the thought of Gerard Manley Hopkins to illustrate how grace as a theological concept can clarify the link between creation and redemption

Towards an Ecumenical Understanding of the Eucharist: A Proposal for Pentecostals

Historically, most Pentecostals have tended to be wary of the concept of "sacraments," and accordingly have favored a purely memorialist understanding of the Lord's Supper or Eucharist. Yet the resources latent in Pentecostal spirituality hold much potential for developing a conscious theological appreciation of the sacramental character of worship in general, and of certain ecclesial practices in particular. My goal in this thesis is to investigate that potential so as to demonstrate how, if shaped in a certain way, this area of Pentecostal theology can aid doctrinal rapprochement between Pentecostals and other groups of Christians. I begin by clearing a space for talking about sacraments generally from a Pentecostal perspective and then narrow my focus to the Eucharist. Turning to the Wesleyan roots from which many Pentecostal groups sprang, I argue that a retrieval of the Wesleys' understanding of this "means of grace" should be amenable to Pentecostals for a number of reasons and would be ecumenically profitable for dialogue with Methodists, Reformed, and Anglican Christians—and, indeed, with at least some Roman Catholics. I engage various theologians who represent those traditions to determine where Pentecostalism might be able to appropriate some of their ideas, but I also outline a frame of reference within which it might develop its own distinctive take on the Eucharist, a move that would be both internally and ecumenically constructive.Master of Theology Thesi