Theological Metaphysics: A Pentecostal Theology of Being (T&T Clark Systematic Pentecostal and Charismatic Theology)

✍ Scribed by Ray C. Robles

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2023
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 225
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Insofar as Christian theology aims to make truthful claims about the nature of reality, it is necessarily involved in the enterprise of metaphysics. Pentecostals, precisely as Christians, are thus obliged to participate. Through this study it becomes evident that pentecostals aim to participate in the metaphysical discipline in the same way they theologize — that is, informed by the norms, practices, and speech acts that constitute their spirituality. This book aims to construct a Christian metaphysics that is at once attuned to pentecostal spirituality/theology and informed by the classical tradition of Christian metaphysics. Ultimately, this work offers a constructive and critical engagement with pentecostal spirituality, and with pentecostal theology via the larger ecumenical, creedal, and dogmatic metaphysical tradition. Thus, this book is explicitly and intentionally limited to understand metaphysics in conversation with the historical Christian tradition, and to understand a pentecostal vision of it.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
The Task
Structure and Flow of the Study
Chapter 1 Can There Be a Pentecostal Articulation of Metaphysics?
Introduction: Theological Metaphysics and North American Pentecostalism
Pentecostal Spirituality/Theology and the Nature of Christian Theological Discourse
Conclusion
Chapter 2 Come, Creator Spirit: Imagining a Pentecostal Metaphysics in Dialogue with the Work of James K. A. Smith and Amos Yong
Introduction
Groundwork for Pentecostal Metaphysics: James K. A. Smith’s Five Elements of a Pentecostal Worldview
“My Soon-Coming King”: Eschatological Orientation
The Surprise of the Spirit: Radical Openness to God
Signs and Wonders: Enchanted Theology of Creation
The Hem of His Garment: Nondualistic Affirmation of Embodiment and Materiality
“This Is My Story, This Is My Song”: Affective, Narrative Epistemology
Groundwork for Pentecostal Metaphysics: Amos Yong’s Foundational Pneumatology
In the Beginning Was the Spirit: Foundational Pneumatology
The Spirit and Nature: Pneumatological Naturalism
The Spirit and Spirits: Cosmic Pneumatology
Personhood and Spirit
Plurality and Emergence
The Spirit and Being: Pneumatological Nondualism
The Spirit and Knowledge: Pneumatological Epistemology
Conclusion
Chapter 3 The Spirit, Reality, and Renewal: Inferring Metaphysics from the Work of James K. A. Smith and Amos Yong
Introduction
The Spirit of the Real: Tacit Metaphysics in the Work of James K. A. Smith
Foundational Claims, Formational Influences, Fundamental Presuppositions, and Final Aims
Overcoming (Super)Naturalisms
Stifling the Spirit: Radical Openness to God and Hostile Scientisms
Conclusion
The Spirit of Renewal: Tacit Metaphysics in the Work of Amos Yong
Foundational Claims, Formational Influences, Fundamental Presuppositions, and Final Aims
Relationality, Rationality, and Dynamism
The Spirit as Bond of Love
The Spirit as Revealer of Truth
The Spirit as Liveliness of God
Speaking with the Spirit: Yong’s Pneumatology and Process Metaphysics
The Spirit and the Renewal of the Real: The Possibilities of a Smithian/Yongian Pentecostal Theological Metaphysics
Conclusion
Chapter 4 Worship, Wisdom, and the Ways of the Spirit: Inferring Metaphysics from Pentecostal Spirituality
Introduction
“This Is Your Reasonable Service”: Reading the Internal Logic of Pentecostal Worship
First- and Second-Level Discourse in Pentecostal Praxis
Spirituality and Theology: Affirming the “and”
Liturgical Studies: Analyzing an Ecclesial Expression of Pentecostal Spirituality
Conclusion
Chapter 5 Toward a Pentecostal Theology of Being-in-the-Spirit: The Knowledge of the Triune God and the Truth of Theological Metaphysics
Introduction
“Come Quickly, Lord Jesus”: Eschatological Reorientation
Introduction
A Trinitarian Nondualist Eschatology
Introduction
Cosmic Salvation and the Fullness of the Full Gospel
The Universality of Jesus’ Particular History
History’s Transfiguration
“For from Him and through Him and to Him Are All Things”: The Triune Determination(s) of Creation
Conclusion
A Foundational Ecclesiological Pneumatology
Introduction
Simon Chan’s Ecclesial Metaphysics
Conclusion
Summary/Conclusion
I Am That You Are: The Radical Openness of God
Introduction
“I Am”: The Being of the One God
“The Holy One of Israel”: God’s Life as Being-in-the-Spirit
“The Lord, Your God”: Being-in-the-World as Ontological Participation
Participatory Ontology and Pentecostal Spirituality
Being-in-the-World
Being-in-the-Spirit
Conclusion
Deep Calls Out to Deep: Re-Enchanting Nature and Rediscovering Creation
Introduction
The Liveliness of God and Gaps in Scientific Explanation
Questioning Yong’s Questioning of Classical Metaphysics
Eschatology and/or Teleology
Creation and/or Causation
The End(s) of Emergence Theory
God Beyond Being: Revising Yong’s Theses for a Pluralistic Cosmos
Conclusion
“This Is My Body”: How Matter Matters
Introduction
Likeness in Unlikeness: Christological Paradoxes and the (Im)Possibility of Naming Reality
The Means of Grace and the Hope of Glory: Nondualistic Participatory Ontology and Pentecostal Models of Healing
Conclusion
“Do This for My Remembrance”: Relating (to) the Truth
Introduction
Life in the Spirit as Storied Existence
Conclusion: Knowing as Affective Participation in the Truth
Conclusion
Chapter 6 The Work of God in the Work of the People: Being-in-the-Spirit and Liturgical Renewal
Introduction
Pentecost and the Spirit of the Liturgy
Conclusion
Conclusion
Contributions of This Work and Suggestions for Further Study
Bibliography
Index