Amos Yong, The Spirit of Creation
The Spirit of Creation is a unique contribution by a Pentecostal scholar. As a theologian who engages the natural sciences, Yong and the potential reader find themselves in small company. There are few alternative resources from Pentecostals, and while that may suggest that Yong’s position cannot be generalized to the Pentecostal community at large, it should first of all alert Pentecostals to take this proposal seriously. The book is, on a foundational level, an invitation to Pentecostals to engage in the conversation. At this level, the work should be widely read by Pentecostals. At the same time, non-Pentecostals can learn from this book not only what a Pentecostal thinks about the science and theology conversation but also how a Pentecostal might engage this conversation in a constructive manner.
On the sophisticated level of that constructive conversation, Yong’s work approaches a variety of topics in a programmatic manner without pursuing one particular dimension in full depth. This approach is partly necessitated by the absence of existing proposals from Pentecostal theologians or scientists on the subject matter. The reader already acquainted with Yong’s previous work, however, will find no new ideas in this volume, which is a collection of existing or revised publications. Yet for most readers, this collection will likely be the first exposure to the material. The programmatic nature of the argument, distributed across a field of originally disconnected topics, is perhaps the single weakness of the book. The uninformed reader, only marginally acquainted with the vocabulary and discourse of the natural sciences and perhaps unaware of the relationship of science and theology today, will find the text alternating between introductory dialogue to a non-scientific or non-Pentecostal audience and academic scientific discourse. The reader should not dismiss this tension lightly, for it represents the state of affairs of the Pentecostal engagement with the sciences today. In other words, Pentecostals can hardly avoid the dilemma in which Yong finds himself if they wish to engage the sciences as Pentecostals. Similarly, non-Pentecostals cannot afford to dismiss the dilemma if they wish to engage in conversation with Pentecostals.
The image of a spirit-filled cosmos—a pneumatological cosmology—marks the current conclusion of Yong’s proposal. Thinking about divine, human, and other spiritual realities, Yong is sensitive to the Pentecostal imagination of the Holy Spirit, angels, demons, and other spiritual powers. At the same time, he aims at arriving at a more complete understanding of the emergence of a spirit-filled world that reimagines the cosmos consulting biblical, theological, and scientific resources. The resulting pluralistic image of the cosmos accounts for personal, corporate, institutional, embodied, and disembodied spirit-beings that engage the world creatively or destructively all the while moving towards the new creation of all things. This image is the core of the Pentecostal-charismatic theology of creation envisioned by Yong. It is sophisticated, imaginative, and challenging; whether it speaks for the Pentecostal world at large remains to be seen. For most readers, it is a wake-up call.
Reviewed by Wolfgang Vondey
Preview The Spirit of Creation: books.google.com/books?id=gdqJa863XsQC
Category: Spirit, Summer 2012
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