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Don Sik Kim
Discovering and Redeveloping Cosmic Pneumatology
Don Sik Kim, PhD
Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary
Introduction
Because religions, including Christianity, are not incidentally imagistic but
centrally and necessarily so, theology must also be an affair of the imagination.1
- Sallie McFague
Nature, the world, has no value, no interest for Christians. The Christian thinks of
himself and the salvation of his soul.2
- Ludwig Feuerbach
The urgent commitment to the protection and maintenance of ecological health
and justice required of the human community has brought Christian theology to an
unexpected connection between ecology and ecumenism, both words that denote the
taking care of house, oikos. Ecumenism, which is not committed to the ecological health
of our planet will be discredited and rejected by humanity as a movement of narrow tribal
interest. The Christian faith must be expressed in terms of the webbed relationship
between the life of the planet and the life of all living beings. The ekklesia can live and
remain meaningful if the kosmos stays healthy. The Holy Spirit ecclesiastically
understood must illuminate the Holy Spirit ecologically understood to envision the
ecological health and justice of the oikos. What do these thoughts mean for the future of
greening the doctrine of creation?
My deep concern for both ecological concern and social justice is related to the
anthropomorphic and masculine theistic understanding of God in Christianity. I see a
deep connection for the integration of ecology and pneumatology is the new
1
Sallie McFague, Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1987), 38.
2
Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), 287.
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understanding of the Spirit in the world. As many scholars poignantly described that
Protestant pneumatology in particular was in caught in the perceived in dichotomy
between the Divine Spirit and the human spirit, “the transcendence of the Spirit and the
Spirit’s immanence” (Moltmann, 1992, 5-8).3 Spirit language is particularly useful in
evoking the presence of God in ways that are beyond the human. Indeed, pneumatology
must recognize the Spirit’s work beyond the boundaries of the church and human beings
to overcome the contemporary penchant for experience beyond desire for individual
fulfillment and temporal satisfaction. The Spirit seemed to be an invisible energy and the
power and a kind of transcendent-immanent medium which connected people to God and
the world. God as Spirit is not identical with the material world or any part of it, but also
never separable from it. In Christian theology, however, the concept of the Spirit of God
has been primarily viewed from an anthropomorphic imagery, which God’s relation to
humans is the central focus of the theological enterprise. Human beings are not only
elevated above other beings, but also Western individualism benefits each person’s
relationship with other beings as if each human being belongs to a different category of
existence. Thus, any impersonal or non-personal understanding of the Spirit has been
devalued in Christian traditions.
What is needed today is a new paradigm of the Spirit in the context of
globalization and post-modernism. Such a new paradigm must begin by giving substance
to the meaning of the word “spirit.” Under the influence of modern rationalism and
materialism, the category of spirit underwent a sustained assault, such that the term
became meaningless to many in Western societies. In such a climate, the biblical term
3
Jurgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 5-8.
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“Holy Spirit” is divested of its profound scriptural meanings; it has lost its cosmic
dimensions, and its connection with God the Creator. The problematic of “spirit” is
complex biblically but that complexity is the heart of the matter. There is a strong
distinction but no sharp line between the Spirit that is God, known finally as the Holy
Spirit, and the spirits of creatures, including humans. That distinction, however, must not
be interpreted dualistically, nor monistically flattened.
1. The Spirit in the Scripture – ruach and pneuma
The word “Spirit” is originally derived in the Bible from the Hebrew word ruach,
which means “wind,” “air,” “breath,” or “spirit,” and came to mean divine power,
including the power of life itself. However, in the Septuagint, the Greek word pneuma is
almost always used as a translation for ruach, and so takes on a very similar range of
meanings. The early Christian writers were therefore able to bring together all the varied
meanings of ruach to inform their understanding of the Spirit in life. The Spirit of God in
the ancient Hebrew Scriptures is a way of talking about the presence and action of the
one God of Jewish monotheism. This Spirit was not understood in personal or trinitarian
terms. The Bible puts before us the image of the Spirit as the breath of God that enlivens
in beings and things in the creation. The Hebrew word ruach occurs at the beginning of
the Scriptures in Genesis 1:2, when the Spirit or “wind” of God is described as hovering
over the face of the waters at creation. “Wind” is the most common meaning of ruach,
because it is invisible and was understood to be caused directly by the divine power of
God. The breath of God is both creative of life and destructive in the Bible (Gen. 6:3;
6:17; 7:22). In Genesis 2:7 God breathes into Adam to constitute him as a “living being.”
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Though the word used here is neshama, this is a synonym for ruach. Ruach is often used
in the sense of “breath of life” in the Bible. In a vision of Ezekiel, for example, the dry
bones in the valley come to life as a result of God’s ruach (37:3-10). The two terms
appear in parallel in Isaiah 42:5, where the Lord “gives breath (neshama) to the people
upon the earth and spirit (ruach) to those who walk in the earth.” Job also sums this up:
“The spirit (ruach) of God has made me, and the breath (neshama) of the Almighty gives
me life” (Job 33:4).
As we have seen, the root meaning of ruach leads to an association of the
imaginary of wind, breath and air with God’s Spirit. This association continues in the
New Testament with the word pneuma. The Spirit blows where it wills (John 3:8), and
the Spirit comes like a wind at Pentecost (Acts 2:2). The meaning of ruach is also
reflected in the use of pneuma to refer to the breath of life in the New Testament (2 Cor.
3:6). For example, it is clearly described that when Jesus breathes the Spirit into the
disciples (John 20:19-23). The Hebrew word ruach and the Greek pneuma carried many
different connotations of the Spirit in creation and life in the Scriptures: word, water, fire,
power, new life. Although biblical scholars agree that there is no passage in the New
Testament in which the Spirit of God appears as working in the entire creation, both the
role of the Spirit in bestowing life and the Spirit’s activity in creation are beyond dispute
in the Old Testament. However, biblically the Spirit of God cannot be reduced to the
power of the human spirit or to the power within the Christian community, although it
has been done in traditional Christian theology, specifically in the development of the
Trinity and the Holy Spirit.
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In this way, Paul Tillich’s work in his systematic theology provided a foundation
for the correlation of the Spirit and life, which he understands life to be the process of the
“actualization of potential being,” that is, the unity of the essence and existence of being,
its power and meaning in the Spirit.4 For Tillich, “spirit” (with a lower-case “s”) provides
the necessary symbolic material to understand the religious symbols “divine Spirit” or
“Spiritual Presence.” The relation between the Spirit and spirit is that “the divine Spirit
breaks into the human spirit” and “derives the human spirit out of itself.”5 Tillich’s
association of Spirit with spirit in the sense of the human dimension of life led him to
connect Spirit with human creativity in culture rather than with biological life. However,
he recognized the “multidimensional unity” of life and the influence of the Spiritual
Presence on the ambiguities of life. This is he saw most clearly in healing, which he
described as bringing “self-integration of the centered life.”6 Also, Jurgen Moltmann
poignantly described that Protestant pneumatology was in caught in the perceived in
dichotomy between the Divine Spirit and the human spirit, “the transcendence of the
Spirit and the Spirit’s immanence.”7 Therefore, the question of the scope and nature of
the Holy Spirit’s presence and activity in the world has implications across the whole
range of theological thought.
2. Karl Barth’s Construction of God-World Relationship
4
Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. I (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951), 54-55.
Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. III (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1963), 111-12.
6
Ibid., 275-77.
7
Jurgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 5-8.
5
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An ecological theology needs Spirit language that embraces and includes the
nonhuman. It needs more than parent-child images. Language about God is an important
issue for this study and with feminist theologians I believe that in order to speak rightly
about God who embrace and transcends both human and nonhuman worlds, we need to
propose a theology of reciprocal relations between God and the world. In this section, I
seek an attempt to draw together and synthesize Barth’s thought on a theology of
relations. The analogia relationis in Barth’s work can be termed as a “relational
ontology” because it considers the ontological relationship of two different beings,
namely God and human creature. Barth asserts that the whole of humankind is dependent
upon and related to the being of God in one way or another ontologically. Furthermore, in
Barth’s theology of creation, creation has a sacramental quality. For Barth, the whole of
creation is like a sacrament ceaselessly conveying the loving grace of God.
While much attention has been given to Barth’s use of analogy, I want first to
explore the nature of the relationships which Barth indicates are analogous. The term
analogia relationis (analogy of relations) does not occur until Barth considers the
Christological grounding for anthropology. This makes perfect sense in that there would
be no sense of speaking of some kind of comparison until the second term of comparison
is brought to the foreground, in this case human relations to God and then with each
other. However, since Barth ultimately sees human existence to be grounded in the triune
life of God, a detailed study of the nature of the triune relationships is required for us to
recognize in what way the relationships in the spheres of Christology, anthropology and
special ethics are indeed analogous. Before we move on to the trinitarian relations, we
should note an important way Barth comprehends “relations.” In his discussion of the
analogia relationis, Barth, without much explanation, expounds his understanding of the
nature of relationships using two mutually related terms: “form” or “structure” and
“material content” or “action.” For Barth, relations can be grasped in terms of form and
content, or structure and action. These terms cannot be separated from one another. Each
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interprets the other. The basis for this categorization is not any commitment to Platonism
or Idealism, even if this terminology is found there, too. These terms reflect Barth’s
understandings that the God revealed in the Word is united in being and action.8
The Word concretely and particularly reveals God as united in being and act.
Barth interprets form as pointing to the being/character of the one in a relation and
interprets the content, even more unusually, as the action which corresponds to the being
in relation. Through Jesus Christ, God is true to his being — true to his character, in his
acts of creation, reconciliation and redemption. His actions are actually revelatory of who
God is. The form and content of his relation with God and with us are in complete
correspondence. So, for Barth, all relations can be comprehended in terms of the
theologically defined categories of form and content. The trinitarian, Christological and
human relations can be said analogical in the sense that each in its own way involves
inseparably act and being, content and form.
This discussion leads to the point of considering again the correspondence of the
relations. How can we correlate the intra-trinitarian relations with Jesus’ relations with
God and others and our relations with God and others? Barth begins to make his most
explicit answer at this point. Indeed, Barth indicates that he was familiar with the term
analogia relationis first used by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his Creation and Fall.9 It was
Bonhoeffer who also suggested the contrast between analogia relationis and analogia
entis. Barth’s usage seems largely to be in agreement with Bonhoeffer’s as an
interpretation of the imago Dei being a purposive relation given by God and not a
capacity, possibility or a structure of [hu]man’s being.
This term is especially developed much earlier in Church Dogmatics, II/1, 28, “The Being of God as the
One Who Loves in Freedom.”
8
9
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/1, 194ff. See Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall (New York: The
Macmillan Co., 1971), 38-39.
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The analogia relationis does not serve as a methodology by which to derive
theological truths. Rather, “analogy” is, for Barth, an ontological term. It is an explication
of the person and work of Jesus Christ as the Elect of God revealing God himself, as a
saving of humanity that is not external to humanity or God. It designates the reality of
“Immanuel” and keeps this name from disintegrating into a metaphor. It guards the way
to real relationship now and in eternity which involves the being of God and of humanity,
which involves their very existence. It means that God himself is what God does and so is
freely sovereign and sovereignly free in God’s electing love. It means that God remains
even while being in actual communion with God himself. It connotes that God is not
arbitrary in God’s election but free in himself for humankind. It denotes that God is the
one who saves and is none other than humanity’s salvation. Human is actually created
according to God’s image, Jesus. And all this without God or humanity ceasing to be
what they are or changing into something alien which they are not. This is, of course,
why Barth must insist on no analogia entis in which case one could mistakenly deduce
the interchangeability of humanity and divinity. Ultimately, Barth avoided speaking of
being/ontology in the abstract because he believed this would misrepresent the relational
nature of God’s and human existence. Relations constitute being. So there is no being
without being in relation in the triune life and in human life. Barth consequently focused
on the relations.
Alan Torrance points out, however, that this does not resolve all the issues. There
are still individuated beings being in relationship. And if the relations are properly as
analogous (analogia relationis) and these relations constitute being, then there has to be
some sort of analogy of being, analogia entis. Barth himself allowed a qualified
acceptance of the analogia entis, namely, by way of the analogia fidei, the analogy of
faith, and in Jesus Christ. We may speak of an analogia entis not by way of cause
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according to creation, but by way of covenant by way of redemption.10 The former seems
to represent the Thomistic way of rendering the analogia entis, and this Barth rejects.11
Here, Barth is clear that humanity, which is to say personhood, is essentially constituted
by its being in relationship with other persons. These inner-human relations are not
arbitrary or accidental but necessary for human existence as human. This is a secondary
determination of humanity compared to its relationship with God, but just as essential.
This secondary determination of humankind is parallel to Jesus’ own secondary
determination of his existence by our humanity. Our being is determined by our vertical
relation with God. But, because it is so determined, it is on that basis to be conditioned by
the horizontal relationships as Jesus was both from, to and with and so for God so He is
from, to, with and for humankind. Barth brings together the similarities of all four
relationships: intra-trinitarian, Jesus to God, Jesus to others, and person to person.
Barth summarizes this relation of the images most explicitly in a response to a
question concerning how human is the image of God transcribed in his Table Talk.
Image has a double meaning: God lives in togetherness within Himself [the
Original], then God lives in togetherness with human [first image] then human
beings live in togetherness with one another [a second image].12
This defines the relationship between the two relationships. There is an original intratrinitarian relation of Father, Son and Spirit; the God-God relationship. There is a
10
Karl Barth, CD, II/1, 82.
Analogia entis means an “analogy of being” in a general sense. The concept can be traced back to ancient
Greek philosophical thinking. In Christianity, it was Thomas Aquinas in whose work the teaching of the
analogia entis reached its peak. Aquinas’ teaching of the analogia entis was based on the concept that
every cause produces only the effect that resembles it. In Aquinas’ thought God is seen as the primary and
per se cause and as such whatever God produces might resemble Him in one way or another. Hence, there
is a kind of similarity in the being of God and man. On this ground the knowability of God by human
reason was stressed. However, Aquinas taught that the similarity between God and man is not univocal but
equivocal in essence and nature.
11
John D. Godsey, ed. Karl Barth’s Table Talk (London & Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1962), 57
(Hereafter, Table Talk).
12
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corresponding relationship of human to God and human to human in Jesus which is the
first image of God, of God in triune relationship.
The ontological relation between the being of God and that of the creature is
highlighted in his application of the concept of an analogia relationis. In Barth’s work,
the term analogia fidei and analogia relationis are used interchangeably and as such it is
impossible to make a clear distinction between the two. Jung Young Lee, however, has
made distinction between them from the context in which they are used in the following
way:
The term analogia fidei presupposes epistemology because it is used in the
context of epistemological question, that is, the knowability of God (especially in
CD II/1). On the other hand, the term analogia relationis presupposes ontology
because it is used in the context of ontic relation, that is, God’s relation to the
imago dei and creation (especially in CD III/1).13
In fact, his application of an analogia relationis indicates that the question of beings
becomes more and more a serious subject for Barth. It is in his use of analogia relationis
that the dependence of the creature upon God contingently is brought to light. The
hallmark of his dialectical method is that there is an infinite qualitative distinction
between God and human, heaven and earth, eternity and time, and revealed and natural
theology. As such this infinite qualitative distinction appears to create a gap which
theoretically makes it difficult for any attempt to bridge the gap between God and the
creature ontologically. This being the case he needed a new method to convey effectively
his idea of the ontological relation between God and the creature. Hence, he was forced
to turn from the dialectical method to the concept of analogy.
4. East Asian Construction of God-World Relationship
13
See Jung Young Lee, op. Cit., 138.
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The Neo-Confucian model of the world, “a decidely psycho-physical structure” in
the Jungian sense,14 is characterized by Joseph Needham as “an ordered harmony of wills
without an ordainer.”15 What Needham describes as the organismic Neo-Confucian
cosmos consists of dynamic energy fields rather than static matter-like entities. Indeed,
the dichotomy of spirit and matter is not at all applicable to this psycho-physical
structure. The most basic stuff that makes the cosmos is neither solely spiritual nor
material but both. As Schwartz points out, “ch’i comes to embrace properties which we
would call psychic, emotional, spiritual, numinous, and even ‘mystical.’”16 It is a vital
force. This vital force (ch’i) must not be conceived of either as disembodied spirit or as
pure matter. Ch’i, which is being something that constitutes every being or thing and
underlies every phenomenon in the world, embraces both the spiritual and material
realms. Wing-tsit Chan cautiously notes that the distinction between energy and matter is
not made in Chinese philosophy, for this basic stuff, ch’i, as “matter-energy,” rendering
by H. H. Dubs, is essentially sound but awkward and lacks an adjective form.17 Although
Wing-tsit Chan translates ch’i as “material force,” he cautions that since ch’i originally
“denotes the psycho-physical power associated with blood and breath,” it should be
rendered as “vital force” or “vital power.”18
See Richard Wilhelm, Jung’s Foreword to the I Ching (Book of Changes), trans by Cary F. Baynes, Vol.
19 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), xxiv.
14
15
See Joseph Needham and Wang Ling, Science and Civilization in China, Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1969), 287. Needham’s full statement reads as follows: “It was an ordered harmony of
wills without an ordainer; it was like the spontaneous yet ordered, in the sense of patterned, movements of
dancers in a country dance of figures, none of whom are bound by law to do what they do, nor yet pushed
by others coming behind, but cooperate in a voluntary harmony of wills.”
16
Benjamin I. Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1985), 181.
17
Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, 784.
18
Ibid, 784.
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The term ch’i, in this respect, implies that the underlying East Asian metaphysical
assumption is significantly different from the Cartesian dichotomy between spirit and
matter. Apparently, all modalities of being, from rock to heaven, are integral parts of a
continuum which is often referred to as the “great transformation” (ta-hua).19 Ch’i as
“psycho-physical-spiritual stuff” is everywhere. It suffuses even the “Great Void” (t’aihsu) which is the source of all beings.20 The continuous presence of ch’i in all modalities
of being makes everything flow together as the unfolding of a single process.
In other words, one advantage of rendering ch’i as “vital force,” is its emphasis on
the life process. To the Neo-Confucian thinkers, nature is vital force (ch’i) in display. The
eternal flow of nature is characterized by the concord and convergence of numerous
streams of vital force (ch’i). Ch’i is characterized to describe the cosmological and
ontological process of the world, that is, the world is filled with ch’i and is explained with
the result of the self-transformation or the alteration of ch’i. It is in this sense that
organismic process is considered harmonious. Chang Tsai defined in his metaphysical
treatise, “Correcting Youthful Ignorance,” the cosmos as the “Great Harmony.”
The Great Harmony is called Tao. It embraces the nature which underlies all
counter processes of floating and sinking, rising and falling, and motion and rest.
It is the origin of the process of fusion and intermingling, of overcoming and
being overcome, and of expansion and contraction. At the commencement, these
processes are incipient, subtle, obscure, easy, and simple, but at the end they are
extensive, great, strong and firm. It is ch’ien (“heaven”) that begins with the
knowledge of Change, and k’un (“earth”) that models after simplicity. That which
is dispersed, differentiated, and discernible in form becomes ch’i, and that which
is pure, penetrating, and not discernible in form becomes spirit. Unless the whole
universe is in the process of fusion and intermingling like fleeting forces moving
in all directions, it may not be called “Great Harmony.”21
19
See Ibid, 264.
20
Ibid, 501. See Chang Tsai’s “Correcting Youthful Ignorance.”
21
Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, 500-501.
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In his vision, nature itself is the result of the fusion and intermingling of the vital forces
(ch’i) that assume tangible forms. This dynamism of nature is what is called ch’i-hua
(transformation of ch’i) in Chang Tsai’s view. Mountains, rocks, rivers, animals, and
human beings are all modalities of energy-matter, symbolizing that the creative
transformation of the vital force (ch’i) is forever present. In this respect, Chang Tsai
further denotes the concept of ch’i as follows:
Ch’i moves and flows in all directions and in all manners. Its two elements [yin
and yang] unite and give rise to the concrete. Thus the multiplicity of things and
human beings is produced. In their ceaseless successions the two elements of yin
and yang constitute the great principles of the universe.22
The idea of the moving power of ch’i indicates that harmony will be attained through
spontaneity. The opening lines in Chang Tsai’s Western Inscription describe his
ontological view of the human.
Heaven (t’ien) is my father and earth (k’un) is my mother, and even such a small
creature as I find an intimate place in their midst. Therefore, that which fills the
universe I regard as my body and that which directs the universe I regard as my
nature. All people are my brothers and sisters, and all things are my companions.23
Forming one body with the universe can literally mean that since all modalities of being
are made of ch’i, human life is a part of a continuous flow of ch’i that constitutes the
cosmic process. Human beings are thus organically connected with rocks, trees, and
animals. The proper way of looking at rocks, for Chang Tsai, is to see them as not static
objects but dynamic process with their particular configuration of the energy-matter.
Despite the principle of differentiation, for him, all modalities of being are organically
connected to one another in terms of ch’i.
The uniqueness of human being cannot be explained in terms of a preconceived
design by a creator. Human beings, like all other beings in the universe, are the results of
22
Ibid, 505. In this translation, ch’i is rendered “material force.”
23
Ibid., 497.
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the integration of the two basic vital forces of yin and yang. This idea of forming one
body with the universe is predicated on the assumption that all modalities of being are
made of ch’i, all things cosmologically and ontologically share the same consanguinity
with human beings and are thus companions of human beings. It is in this metaphysical
sense, according to Chang Tsai, that “all things are my companions.” This literal meaning
of forming one body with the universe must be augmented by a metaphorical reading of
the same text. It is true that the body clearly conveys the sense of ch’i as the blood and
breath of the vital force that underlies all beings.
According to Wang Fu-chih, unless human beings see to it that the Mandate of
Heaven (T’ien-ming) is fully realized in our nature, we may not live up to the expectation
that “all things are complete in us.”24 In the metaphorical sense, then, forming one body
with the universe requires continuous effort to grow and to refine oneself.
By nature is meant the principle of growth. As one daily grows, one daily
achieves completion. Thus by the Mandate of Heaven is not meant that heaven
gives the decree (ming; mandate) only at the moment of one’s birth....In the
production of things by heaven, the process of transformation never ceases.25
To act naturally with letting things take their own course means, in Neo-Confucian
terminology, to follow the “heavenly principle” (t’ien-li) without being overcome by
“selfish desires” (ssu-yu).
As Chang Tsai described, a human is endowed with virtuous qualities, but is also
born with the ch’i which is potentially either good or bad. “Whether or not wealth and
nobility can be obtained, depends upon heaven. As to the way of virtue (tao te), he who
seeks for it can never fail to obtain it” (6.112). The ‘Physical Nature’ in its original state
is morally neither good nor bad, but it has become degraded from the ‘Heavenly Nature’
after having come into contact with other objects, human beings as well as things.
24
See Mencius, 7A4.
25
Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, 699.
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Humankind’s Nature in this sense is acquired by oneself and is, therefore, a part of
oneself, although one’s originally good nature is inherited from the ‘Heavenly Nature.’
Chang Tsai made clear that “Heaven’s sequence” or “Heaven’s orderliness” identifies
with li or ‘Principle’. What Chang Tsai seems to implying here is that there must be ch’i
present and something which he calls li or ‘Principle’ in the universe.26 He writes further
(chapter 5), “It is a Principle (li) that nothing can exist independently in itself.” Principle
(li), according to him, is “definite, self-evident, and self-sufficient.” It is in each and
every thing as well as ch’i. As new things appear, new principles are realized. But all
principles are at bottom one, called the Great Ultimate. As such it is universal,
unchanging, and transcendental. However, for him, “li is simply the concrete pattern in
the activities of ch’i. Hence li is confined and contextualized in ch’i and particularities of
things, which would make li more particularistic than universalistic.”27
The activity of change in ch’i or the transformation of ch’i is a process of
creativity and self-transformation, for its gives rise to everything and all life. Therefore, it
is a movement of generation and production. It is significant that Chang Tsai stressed the
notion of creative production (sheng-sheng) and its products (sheng) in explaining the
cosmological and ontological nature of ch’i. He considered sheng (life, production,
generation) as the manifest function of transformation of ch’i. The creativity of ch’i is
continuous as well as purposive. It is purported to preserve life and to continue life by
making the creative activities of life the constant activity of reality. In summary, ch’i, for
Chang Tsai, is the total reality. It is the reality of change between the yin and yang.
Furthermore, it is a creative process of life, which is full of novelty. It is infinite and
26
27
Ibid., 482.
Chung-ying Cheng, New Dimensions of Confucian and Neo-Confucian Philosophy (SUNY Press:
Albany, 1991), 16.
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indeterminate in its potentiality and yet contains all the possibilities of formation,
transformation, and organization. The most important thing is that ch’i is both a creative
agent and an agent for ordering and organization. The significance of Chang Tsai’s
metaphysical position is that it provided a comprehensive explanation of change that
could then be related to the dynamics of spiritual growth in human beings. Because
change is affirmed as purposive process, and humans are called upon to identify with
change and participate in the transformation of things. In this way, the Neo-Confucian
way of thinking on ch’i and li is interwoven with the cosmology and ontology in the East
Asian worldview.
From this point, I want to illustrate the story of a woman’s healing in the Gospel
in the light of the East Asian views on the body as a totality of body, mind and spirit, not
only the body of the individual but also the body of whole cosmos in the interplay of yin
and yang principle. Illness from the point of East Asian view is the unbalanced way of
understanding to the relationships of the individual internally within the body and
externally within the entire cosmos, society, nature, human relations, and so forth. For
this reason, we will begin the story of the woman who had suffered the flow of bleeding
for twelve years in the New Testament, Gospel of Mark Chapter 5:24-34. Perhaps more
than any other, this healing story plunges us deeply into the dimensions of the body, and
shows us the body as a field of energy. Now interestingly enough this touching
experience does not come from any promises of salvation by Jesus. It is located solely in
her body. It is purely bodily well-being. And it is something that she has got for herself.
The one who also feels something is Jesus. He does not know where his energy has gone.
Jesus experiences the truth about himself and his body, which is a human body, but full
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of divine powers, of life-giving energies which he can communicate to others. God is
there in bodies and their energies, alive and active. And the truth about this body is also
that here it releases forces which make another body healthy. The interpretation which
Jesus finally gives to the story goes beyond an individual framework. “Go in peace
(shalom),” it is translated “Go in wholeness” in a deeper study the Greek term.28 What he
literally says is ‘Go in wholeness — shalom.’ Shalom points to the time of salvation in
which it is not just the individual who experiences peace and well-being but the whole
creation, all society, all peoples. In this respect, this embodied experience, which
proclaims the purely bodily healing, shows her complete liberation or salvation from the
community, where she was regarded as a “sinner” or an “outcast.” For the Jewish social
and religious view, the ‘flow of blood’, taken from the Old Testament laws in Lev. 15:25,
posits a person unclean and therefore leads one to social and religious isolation from the
community. Her illness thus was regarded as “dis-ease.” Through her healing, which took
place in the body, we imagine that she has experienced the salvation with health,
freedom, enjoyment and restoration of her boundary.29
The dualism, which divided body and Spirit, body and mind or soul, drew its
spiritual capital from division, I have not seen the body in the holistic view of the East
Asian understanding. It is a new continent to explore the body as a mysterious microcosm
in liking to the macrocosm of cosmos from the cosmo-anthropological perspective. This
See Harper’s Bible Commentary, James L. Mays, ed. (Harper & Row, Publishers: San Francisco, 1988),
991. “In the biblical sense of wholeness” is related to “peace.” And further note the relation of the Latin
integer (unit, whole) to the Greek root so (unit, whole), as in sodzein (to save, ta make whole), soter
(savior, the one who makes whole), and soteria (salvation, wholeness).
28
See also Moltmann, God in Creation, 274-275. Moltmann insists: “Illness, that is to say, is experienced
as a malfunctioning of the organs of body, as a shaking of personal confidence, as loss of social contacts, as
a crisis of life itself, and as loss of significance. This means that the healing of a sick person cannot be
viewed in a single dimension” Ibid., 275.
29
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story makes clear how central the body of God (of Jesus) and the human body (the
woman’s body) once were in Christianity and how they could motivate us, with our
knowledge of the loss of our bodies as the loss of ourselves and of the interchange
between body and energy or body and Spirit, to ask new questions about our bodies in the
present. The body, for long a scientific object, matter to be treated and dominated, proves
to be ‘terrible’ and ‘remarkable.’ It is a new continent to explore, a mysterious
microcosm, like the nature (tzu-jan) which has just been rediscovered, something that
human beings cannot approach as an object but of which we ourselves are always a part.
Therefore, I believe that a new light is being shed on the body as the place in
which many processes are articulated and as a primal experience of the way in which we
are all interconnected from the East Asian arts of healing, which is known acupuncture.
The continuity and unity between spiritual power and its material manifestation are
clearly expressed in the light of ch’i. This organismic and dynamic worldview of East
Asian cosmo-anthropological perspective is grounded on the conception of ch’i, which
provides a basis for appreciating the profound interconnection of body and Spirit.
Conclusion: A Global Conversation for Cosmic Pneumatology
This task involves critically comparing the views of Barth, McFague and
Moltmann with the East Asian cosmo-anthropological concept of ch’i and ferreting out
the relative strengths and weaknesses of each perspective. To facilitate the endeavor I
present these conclusions as a series of propositions or theses.
In addition, this section is a continued defense of the overall thesis of this project,
namely, that the fundamental concepts of human, world, and God must be reconceived in
certain ways. This is, then, an attempt to argue for certain necessary changes in
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anthropology, ontology, and theology. More exactly, a Christian ecological theology will
be adequate to both to its own tradition and the current ecological crisis only if it moves
beyond the dualistic dichotomy of nature and humanity, and Spirit and matter, accounts
adequately for the spontaneity of nature, and takes seriously the “analogy of relation” in
terms of the concept of ch’i from the East Asian cosmo-anthropological perspective.
The first proposition is that an adequate ecological theology must develop and
persuasively articulate an integral anthropology. This claim is supported by all three of
the thinkers examined in this project. For example, Barth, McFague, and Moltmann all
repudiate the typical dualism of body and soul (or spirit) and seek to construct a more
holistic view of the human person. McFague rejects dualism because it legitimates both
the subjugation of women and the exploitation of the nature. Moltmann rejects dualism,
in addition to the above reasons, because seeing the world as home will occur only if we
are at home in our bodies. In their rejections of typical dualisms, they rightly emphasize
the interrelatedness between how we see ourselves and how we see the world of which
we are a part.
McFague is especially helpful in this regard for she presents a persuasive
argument that links the dualism of body and soul with the domination of both women and
nature. McFague argues that if the soul or spirit is viewed as not merely different than but
of higher value than the body, and if the body represents matter, then that which is
identified with the body--nature, women--will be devalued and dominated. Hence,
looking from a feminist perspective, she argues that the dichotomy of spirit and matter, or
soul and body, must be rejected if philosophy is to be liberated and spirituality properly
conceived. McFague provides backing for the affirmation that a Christian ecological
theology must incorporate a more holistic anthropology, that is, one which does not
sanction the domination of women or the earth from the problem of the primary
metaphors in the traditional idea of God. McFague contends:
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This crucial characteristic of metaphorical language for God is lost, however,
when only one important personal relationship, that of father and child, is allowed
to serve as a grid for speaking of the God-human relaionship. In fact, by
excluding other relationships as metaphors, the model of father becomes
idolatrous, for it comes to be viewed as a description of God.30
McFague’s major contribution does not lie in systematic articulation; but if an ecological
theology is to take seriously her perspective analyses and conclusions, then greater
attention must be given to the development of a more sophisticated philosophical and
theological anthropology that specifies in some detail just what a more integral or holistic
view of the human being looks like.
Likewise, Moltmann is instructive because of both the liabilities and the assets of
his own view. For example, Moltmann retrieves the more holistic categories from the
Bible in his attempt to fashion a theological anthropology. And his emphasis on humans
as the ‘priests of creation’ is a helpful way of speaking of the human responsibility to
represent God in creation. To be more specific, Moltmann points to the need for an
expansive ethical orientation which includes justice for both non-humans and humans.
For example, he argues that “we shall not be able to achieve social justice without justice
for the natural environment, and we shall not be able to achieve justice for nature without
social justice.”31 The concept of ecojustice is a necessary feature of any fully adequate
ecological theology.
With this insistence on viewing ecological wholeness and social justice as
integrally related, for example, Ian Barbour claims:
Poverty and pollution are linked as products of our economic institutions.
Exploitation of man and of nature are two sides of the same coin; they reflect a
common set of cultural values and a common set of social structures.32
30
31
32
McFague, Models of God, 97.
Moltmann, The Future of Creation, 130. See also, Moltmann, God in Creation, 24, 320.
Ian Barbour, Western Man and Environmental Ethics, 4. Or as David Tracy and Nicholas Lash simply
state: “The struggle for justice must also include the struggle for ecology.” See David Tracy and Nicholas
Lash, Cosmology and Theology, 90.
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McFague puts it as follows: “Christians, then, should be super, natural, for in our time,
nature can be seen as the “new poor.”33 In order to resist the anthropocentrism and
creatively present a vision and corresponding set of practices which emphasize the
relational character of human existence in the world, McFague depicts many concrete,
practical steps that enhance “community” between humans and nature as well as among
people.34 This practice must include practices which initiate people into nature-friendly
ways of living to establish and maintain ‘community’. McFague insists its point very
clearly:
We think in terms of major metaphors and models that implicitly structure our
most basic understandings of self, world, and God. The basic model in the West
for understanding self, world, and God has been “subject” versus “object.”
Whatever we know, we know by means of this model: I am the subject knowing
the world (nature), other people, and God as objects. It is such a deep structure in
all our thinking and doing that we are not usually aware that it is a model.35
With this intrinsically relational concept of person, McFague also reminds us that humans
are constituted not only by their relationships with other people but also by their
relationships with the non-human world.
Moltmann also emphasizes the inextricably communal character of human being
and action when he argues that as imago mundi the human is “a being that can only exist
in community with all other created beings and which can only understand itself in that
community.”36 Moltmann asserts that the traditional modern paradigm must be replaced
by a view in which human history is integrated into “the wider concept of nature.”37
McFague also proposes as one of her four criteria for a “theology of nature pertinent to
the closing years of the twentieth century” that “it needs to see human life as profoundly
33
Mafague, Super, Natural Christans, 6.
34
Ibid., 115.
Ibid., 7.
35
36
Moltmann, God in Creation, 186.
37
Moltmann, God in Creation, 125.
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interrelated with all other forms of life, refusing the traditional absolute separation of
human beings from other creatures.”38 Ian Barbour concurs when he asserts that “the
Christian tradition has too often set man apart from nature.”39 As David Tracy and
Nicholas Lash succinctly state: “History cannot be understood without nature” and thus
“contemporary Christian theology needs to recover a theology of nature, even to develop
an adequate theology of history.”40
While the call to abandon the dichotomous dualism of nature and humanity is
clear, the specific contours of an acceptable alternative paradigm of choosing a metaphor
are as yet unclear, as evident by the various problems with the constructive proposals
offered by McFague, Barth, and Moltmann. With Moltmann there is much clarity
regarding what he proposes an alternative perspective. His suggestion that the creation
might better be envisioned as the home of God eschatologically is helpful as far as it
goes. In this regard, the concept of ch’i and te are closely related to a constructive
alternative unity and interdependence of God and nature. For the idea of ch’i as a way of
conceptualizing the basic structure and function of the cosmos signifies a symbolic
metaphor to conceive the organismic harmony between nature and human worlds. And
the idea of the transforming power of ch’i indicates that harmony will be attained through
te, which is eschatologically achieved when one/it returns to one’s/its orginal nature
(hsing) that is given by Heaven (or T’ien Ming) or Tao. This underlying message
signifies that human life is a part of a continuous transformaion of ch’i that constitutes
the cosmic process. As we have seen, the Mandate of Heaven is fully realized in one’s/its
nature, that is, te which anticipates the eschatological fulfillment that all things are
McFague, Imagining a Theology of Nature: The World as God’s Body,” in Liberating Life:
Contemporary Approach to Ecological Theology, eds. Charles Birch, William Eakin, and Jay McDaniel
(Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1990), 203.
38
39
Barbour, “Attitudes Toward Nature and Technology,” 152.
40
Tracy and Lash, Cosmology and Theology, 87, 89.
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complete in us/it with letting things take their/its own nature. This ontological
spontaneity of te is the conception of its immanent and transcendent potentiality of the
Way (Tao) or Heaven in the East Asian cosmo-anthropological perspective.
Regarding this, the ambiguity concerning the relationship between nature and
humanity is that the concept of ‘nature’ (tzu-jan) itself is not clearly defined. The
ambiguity to which I refer here is not that there are different views of nature, but that the
idea itself is capable of being understood in more than one way. For example, R. G.
Collingwood traces three different views of nature in the history of Western culture:
nature as organism, as machine, and as evolving process.41 Claude Stewart explicitly
focuses on this question about the nature of ‘nature’ and identifies at least three main
usages of the term. According to Stewart nature can mean: 1) “that which stands over
against ‘culture’ or human artifice”; 2) “the totality of structures, processes, and powers
that constitute the universe,” not including God; and 3) the totality of reality including
God.42 Stewart concludes that because of this ambiguity surrounding the concept of
nature there is “considerable confusion concerning precisely what the theologian of
nature is about.”43 Stewart asserts that “we conclude, therefore, that one of the immediate
duties of the theologian of nature is to engage in a critical examination of the concept of
nature.”44 In other words, the most common concepts of nature entail certain
metaphysical assumptions which should not go unchallenged by Christians. In addition to
these, Paul Santmire asserts that neither cosmocentrism with its “ethic of adoration” nor
41
R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University, 1960). But Collingwood himself
often confuses two particular concepts of nature. Most often nature means the “totality” of reality; it is
defined, as he himself says, in terms of cosmology. However, nature also means the non-human “part” of
reality. And these are only two of several concepts of nature often not distinguished from one another.
42
Claude Stewart, Nature in Grace, 239; cf. 155.
43
Ibid., 237.
44
Ibid., 238.
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anthropocentrism with its “ethic of exploitation” is adequate since both tacitly assume a
dualism between nature and humanity, differing only in which has priority.45
All of these above contentions may perhaps best be summarized by the claim that
an adequate ecological theology must take more seriously the spontaneity of ‘nature’.
That is to say, the common view of nature as ‘natural’ surroundings must be replaced by
a perspective in which ‘nature’ (tzu-jan: being-so of-itself or spontaneity), as the
interaction of yin and yang in Chang Tsai’s thought, is understood not only as the organic
whole of what it exists, but also as the principle that everything must follow (te: innate
power or virtue).46 From this perspective, the immanence of the Way is ontologically and
eschatologically realized by the ‘not yet’ potentiality of its own te, that is, it can be
characterized interchangeably in terms of nature (hsing) or nature (tzu-jan). Thus, as we
have observed in Chang Tsai’s philosophy nature (tzu-jan) and te are identified with ch’i
or tai-ch’i from the organic, dynamic and holistic view of the East Asian cosmoanthropological perspective.
As mentioned previously one of the central issues with respect to theology proper
is how best to conceive of the relations of God to the world and the world to God.
Langdon Gilkey nicely summarizes a number of the important issues at stake in this
discussion:
The immanence of God in creation follows as a polar concept to the divine
transcendence, as the symbol of providence is entailed in that of creation. God is
both transcendent to creation and therefore absolute, and at the same time
immanent and participating in or relative to creation.47
Paul Santmire, “The Future of the Cosmos and the Renewal of the Church’s Life with Nature,” in
Cosmos as Creation, 270.
45
46
See Chang Chung-yun, Creativity and Taoism (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc, 1963), 125
Langdon Gilkey, “Creation, Being, and Non-Being,” in God and Creation, 229. Gilkey contends that this
claim has a number of important implications for the “interrelations between God, the human, and nature.”
for example, he argues that in such a view of God and creation “nature and humankind are implicitly and
deeply related to one another; both have value as God’s creation; both reflect the divine life, order, and
glory; and both participate in the divine purpose of redemption and reunion,” Ibid., 230-231.
47
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McFague, Barth, and Moltmann all support this claim. That is, they all attempt to
articulate a model of God which rejects both monism and dualism and affirms both divine
transcendence and immanence of God in nature. Moltmann affirms divine transcendence
even though his emphasis on the nature and function of the Spirit is designed to
reconceive God as profoundly present in the world. McFague also argues that viewing the
world as God’s body more adequately captures the immanence of God vis-a-vis the world
without necessarily reducing God to the world.
Regardless of which specific model is employed, however, an adequate ecological
theology must give serious attention to this issue of models for the God-world relation
and, in particular, to the topic of divine agency. An ecological theology will be deficient
if it fails to affirm and articulate the reality of the Spirit. In short, the typical view of the
Spirit must be replaced by a vigorous acknowledgment that the Spirit is the authentic and
pervasive presence of God in nature. The dualistic division between God and the world,
or human beings and the world is closely related to the social structure which exalted the
human over the world.
Thus, we can conclude that dualism is intrinsically anthropocentric and
hierarchical in the relationship of God-world and of human-world. For that reason, Barth
uses the concept of analogia relationis to describe the correlation between God and
human and between human and human to the relationship between the Father and the Son
within the innertrinitarian life of God.48 For in his view all the works of God ad extra are
integral parts of the one eternal will and plan of God which took shape in His eternal
48
Herbert Hartwell, The Theology of Karl Barth (Philadelphia: The Westerminster Press, 1964), 56. This
analogy plays an important part in Barth’s doctrine of creation, in particular in his teaching on the image of
God in human.
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decree in and through the person of Jesus Christ. Consequently, creation is rooted in that
decree, which is its eternal basis and in which, so to speak, God’s future works of
creation, reconciliation and redemption are anticipated.49
As Barth engages in reinterpretation of the imago Dei, he attempts to expound his
theological anthropology by way of the analogia relationis and the imago Dei, as it is
most simply, universally and concretely expressed in the marital covenant of man and
woman.50 In the light of his doctrine of analogia relationis, Barth develops the doctrine
of the Trinity under the rubric of revelation. In this respect, for Barth, the categories of
“form” and “content” are used to delineate two interdependent aspects of human
existence. The form refers to the structure and given context of human existence while
the content refers to the appropriate and correlating action of human existing. For Barth
the form of human existence is that of having being by virtue of being in relationship, to
God and to other human creatures. This unity of being in form and action in is similar to
his understanding of the being of God. For Barth this unity of the relational form of being
and actional content of human existence constitutes humankind as a personal being in the
image of God.51
Moreover, Barth holds that because of the character of the imago Dei “God’s
grace takes place in the individual as such and in the I-Thou relationship as the form of
life common both to God as the Triune God and to man as a being in relationship, related
49
Barth, CD, III, 1, 11, 42, 49, 94, 228. Barth claims that his doctrine of creation is intrisically trinitarian in
its ontology, that is, creation is the external basis of God’s covenant of grace with human and that this
covenant is the inernal basis of creation.
50
Moltmann, God in Creation, 241.
51
Barth, CD, I/1.
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to God and created male and female.”52 Hence, “with Barth the image of God in man is
neither a quality in man nor something which man can seize upon and possess but a
relationship which in its structure corresponds to a similar relationship within the inner
Being of God and, whenever it reflects the latter qualitatively, has the character of an
event of grace.”53 Moltmann also states that “likeness to God means God’s relationship
to human beings first of all, and only then, as a consequence of that, the human being’s
relationship to God.”54
Here the description of Barth’s anthropological imago Dei and the ‘analogy of
relation’ show how my exegesis on the East Asian correlative ontological perspective is
validate and helpful. That is, the imperative (Heaven’s mandate or Tao) is grounded on
the reality that has been given (nature or hsing), appeals to it and is intended to bring it
out to full actualization (te). More specifically, we can see this dynamic analogy of
relation in the existence and interaction of ch’i in nature (tzu-jan) including human
beings. To put it differently, for example as we will see later, according to Tung Chungshu in his description of the nature of people (min), actualities are the ‘basic stuff’ (chih)
of a person’s natural tendencies (hsing), and by virtue of their nature people have the ‘not
yet’ capacity (te) to awake from their state of ignorance and become good.55 Thus, the
East Asian cosmo-anthropological ontology can be examined that a name as an example
of hsing (given potential) ought to be appropriate to an actuality (nature natured) by
virtue of the correlation that exists between them and this correlation is determined by the
52
Hebert Hartwell, Ibid, 180.
53
Ibid., 181. See also Barth, CD, III, 2, 325.
54
Moltmann, God in Creation, 220.
55
Wing-Tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, 275.
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way things ‘naturally’ (Heaven or te) are.56 Implicit in Barth’s argument is that Godgiven potential (Mandate of Heaven or hsing from the above ontological view) ought not
be unrealized. Barth’s analogia relationis implies an ontological givenness of an intrinsic
potential for the God-world relation. In Barth’s view, as we have seen above, the analogy
of relation is expressed by the ‘covenantal’ relationship between God and the world. Put
differently, such a view can be understood as Moltmann’s use of the concept of zimzum
(self-emptying, self-humiliation or self-limitation; in other words, kenosis).57 For
Moltmann, the world is in God only because God has withdrawn himself and provided a
space for the world to be.58 This creative thinking gives an important implication for the
purpose of elucidating thinking on the correlation of nature and Spirit and on the
correlation of a micorcosmic and macrosomic model of reality in the East Asian
worldview.
However, Moltmann points out, “only the human being is imago Dei. Neither
animals nor angels, neither the forces of nature nor the powers of fate, may be either
feared or worshipped as God’s image or his apperance or his revelation.”59 “Only human
beings know God’s will, and only they consciously praise and magnify God.”60 Besides,
In order to help better understanding for this, the writer wants to employ the term ‘nature natured’
(natura naturata) from Spinoza’s phrase: Natura est natura naturans. According to Moltmann,
“consequently ‘the nature that is finally manifested’ is to be found in the context of the future -- the future
of the alliances which mediate between human beings and nature.” Thus, Moltmann states, “according to
Bloch, Spinoza’s idea of natura naturans presupposes the profounder idea (which probably derives from
the Kabbala) of the natura abscondita, which thrusts towards its manifestation.” Moltmann, God in
Creation, 43, 212.
56
57
See Moltmann, God in Creation, 86-87, 102.
58
Ibid.
59
Ibid., 221.
60
Ibid., 224.
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Moltmann argues that the Spirit is a subject. Moltmann criticizes Barth for precisely this
reason, namely, that he fails to affirm that the Spirit is a person or subject. “For Barth, he
[the Spirit] is then an energy but not a person. He is then a relationship but not a
subject.”61 Moltmann states that “according to Barth the Spirit is nothing other than the
subjective reality of God’s sovereignty. The Spirit is ‘the principle which makes the
human being into a subject’.”62 In other words, for Barth, states Moltmann, “‘the human
being is the ruling soul of his body, or he is not a human being’.”63 Moltmann clearly
states that “Barth preserves the Platonic primacy of the soul to the body in a relationship
of ownership.”64 Likewise, Moltmann points out that “the history of Western
anthropology shows a tendency to make the soul paramount over the body which is thus
something from which the person can detach himself, something to be disciplined, and
made the instrument of the soul.”65
The relationship of heaven to earth in cosmology, the relationship of the soul to
the body in psychology, the relationship of man and woman in anthropology, all
correspond to the same order -- to mention only the correspondences in the
doctrine of creation. In his account of these analogous structures of dominion,
Barth is following the ancient metaphysicians, especially Aristotle, who even then
treated heaven and earth, soul and body, man and woman, according to the same
pattern.66
61
Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 126.
62
Ibid., 253. Barth, CD, III/2, 364.
63
Ibid. Barth, CD, III/2, 495.
64
Ibid., 252.
65
Ibid., 244.
66
Ibid., 255.
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Yet, Moltmann asserts that the relationship between God and the world must be
characterized in terms of “mutual need and mutual interpenetration.”67 Moltmann argues
that “as a perichoretic relationship of mutual interpenetration and differenciated unity, we
shall not introduce one-sided structures of dominion into it.”68 As stated previously,
Moltmann puts it, “our starting point here is that all relationships which are analogous to
God reflect the primal, reciprocal indwelling and mutual interpenertration of the
trinitarian perichoresis: God in the world and the world in God.”69 Moltmann thus
affirms that “through his Spirit God himself is present in his creation. The whole creation
is a fabric woven and shot through by the efficacies of the Spirit. Through his Spirit God
is also present in the very structures of matter.”70 “It is not merely the spirit of God that is
present in the evolving world; it is rather God the Spirit, with his uncreated and creative
energies.”71 Moltmann asserts that “we have to understand the Spirit as the creative
energy of God and the vital energy of everything that lives.”72 Also Moltmann links the
energies of the Spirit with the potentialities of the Spirit.
As we have seen, McFague also suggests that “its panentheistic form of the world
as God’s body and God as its spirit” radicalize “both divine immanence (God is the
breath of each and every creature) and divine transcendence (God is the energy
67
Ibid., 259.
68
Ibid.
69
Ibid., 9; cf. 98.
70
Ibid., 212.
71
Ibid. Cf. Here also Peacocke, Creation and the World of Science, 203, who restores pan-entheism to
favor, in order to link God’s transcendence with his immanence.
72
Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 91.
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empowering the entire universe).”73 Likewise, McFague states, “we joined the agential
and organic models in order to express the asymmetrical and yet profoundly
interrelational character of the panentheistic model of God and the world.”74
In this respect, these two modes of divine self-manifestation of the Spirit, creative
energy of God and vital energy of all that exist, are obviously closely related to the
cosmo-anthropological concept of ch’i. As Moltmann insists, we have to understand the
Spirit as ch’i is the creative energy of God and the vital energy of everything that exists
with the potentialities of the Spirit. As Moltmann frequently claims, the Spirit as ch’i is a
way of more precisely explaining his version of panentheism that God is in the world and
the world is in God. Thus, I propose a need to revision the traditional anthropocentric and
dualistic metaphor of God for a more appropriate inclusive and relational metaphor of
God as the Spirit, specifically ch’i as the creative energy of God and the vital Spirit of
God.
73
McFague, The Body of God, 150.
74
Ibid., 149.