Having just returned from a spiritual pilgrimage in Israel, and soon to go with Nancy on another (we'll hike the French way on El Camino de Santiago in September), I thought I'd begin several posts about spirit and Spirit. I encourage your reading carefully these thoughts and responding critically. My writing about spirit/Spirit is a way of sorting out what I think. And I sort things out by reading what I wrote. So I'll be reading, too.
I think we must distinguish between "Spirit" and "spirit," and their derivatives "Spiritual" and "spirited." Spirit's locus is the divine, spirit the human/animal. Though these loci are usually thought of as being ontologically distinct (think of the sacred/profane oppositional pair), one could conceive of them as a polarity (following Tillich) with pure Spirit at one end and pure spirit at another (perhaps the animus/anima in animals). I like Tillich's conception of polarity because of one primary implication: Spirit and spirit overlap, are enmeshed, so that even in the most extreme case of Spirit, some spirit is evident, and in the most extreme case of spirit, some Spirit is evident. So God's animating power pervades even the simplest life; conversely, the simplest life participates in the divine.
But when we speak of God in terms of persons (and I tend to do so, being Christian), this polarity becomes harder to maintain. When we speak of the Spirit as person, we're actually saying the Spirit is bounded in some way, is distinct, and should be distinguished from spirit. When we wish to determine whether we're experiencing Spirit or spirit, how do we distinguish the two, especially if we think of them as enmeshed? In more classical terms, any experience of the divine is necessarily mediated through the mundane: we experience God in our flesh, or in our fleshly communion with one another. So how can we tell if the Spirit is really present?
Turning to Scripture, Paul says we can identify the Spirit's presence or effect by its fruits: "By contrast (with the flesh), the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." (Gal. 5.22-23a) Yet Paul is writing about "flesh" in terms of a daemonic principality that aggressively counters the divine Spirit, advancing his eschatological argument that the church exists in an end time of supernatural conflict. If I step away from his argument, I can also surely see love, joy, peace, patience, etc. as fruits of the spirit as well as the Spirit. After all, these same attributes have been foundational for human community throughout our long evolution: without them, I doubt we'd be here as humans.
Again, thinking about a continuum between Spirit and spirit, I am not surprised that our best attributes as humans are enmeshed with the effects of God's spirit. But I'm extremely hesitant to argue that even our best attributes are necessarily effects of God's Spirit because of the Spirit's distinctness. I do not want to reduce God's Spirit to something akin to Obi Wan's Force, nor to the sacrilized conception of "life" as something holy. God, even in the third person Spirit, is still Other, Mysterium Tremendum (Otto, of course), whirlwind, all-consuming but not burning fire. And in trying to determine whether an experience is driven by the divinity or by human propensities, the conception of distinctness/personhood seems necessary.
Well, you may say, "Why distinguish? You've been on a spiritual pilgrimage, why wonder whether you experienced human group dynamics or the very presence of God?" Because, given my narrative presuppositions, the argument of that question seems to keep unexamined the narrative about our experience (I'm including my pilgrimage group now), and unexamined narratives are not fully read. Unexamined narratives, conflating Spirit and spirit, have a dastardly history. Now, I'm not imputing anything dastardly to our pilgrimage, participants or leaders. But I hope you see my reservation: without examining the narrative, someone can easily sell us on its being Spiritual instead of spirited. Narratives, certainly my own, always entail rhetoric, an attempt to convince someone of something. And rhetoric is not always benign.
So how to distinguish? In my next post, I'll address this by thinking about a trialectic (advanced from dialectic) between individual, group and God. Thank you for reading.
"Spirit and spirit overlap, are enmeshed, so that even in the most extreme case of Spirit, some spirit is evident, and in the most extreme case of spirit, some Spirit is evident. So God's animating power pervades even the simplest life; conversely, the simplest life participates in the divine."
ReplyDeleteMy mental picture of this is a throwback to the dashboard climate control in my old Honda Civic, where the single lever could be placed at any point along the parallel and inverted red and blue lines. With that as my conceptual framework, the question seems to me to be less about whether a given experience falls into S or s category, but rather, where does the lever fall? It seems to me, though, that the only question that I'm ever meaningfully able to consider is, "Where DID the lever fall?" as I never manage to make this kind of assessment other than retrospectively. The challenge I've set for myself is to learn (if such a thing is possible) to appreciate the lever's placement "in the moment."
Thanks, Morgan, you've captured the basic predicament I'm thinking about: how to gauge the lever's placement in the moment. Though determining the levers placement retrospectively is difficult itself, doing so in real time is more difficult. I guess the basic question is "How can I know when the Spirit is present," or in a less-Christian vein, "How can I know when the divinity is present?"
ReplyDeleteI once attended a seminar on spiritual decision making, which presented a very structured method of spiritual discernment, followed by a reflective period in which the discerners could gauge how they felt/thought about the decision, to see if they were at peace with it, supposedly a sign of the Spirit's presence. Though that reflection period has its own pitfalls, reflecting may be the best way to place the lever, which, ironically, casts doubt on the discernment process itself.
I will, with you, consider placing the lever real-time in subsequent posts. Thank you for reading.