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A Profound Ignorance: Modern Pneumatology and Its Anti-modern Redemption
In the march of modernity and the opening of global boundaries, the face of the world changed. How we understood the world, and our place in it, changed. And with that great shift, our concept of the Holy Spirit also changed. Now the third person of the Trinity became a diffusive power in a universalizing attempt at resolving the expansively harsh realities of human existence.
In A Profound Ignorance , Ephraim Radner traces the development of pneumatology as a modern discipline and its responses to experiences of social confusion and suffering, often associated with questions linked to the category of theodicy. Along the way, study of the Spirit joined with natural science to become study of spirit, which was at root study of the human person redefined without limitation. Radner proposes that the proper parameters of pneumatology are found in studying Israel and her historical burdens as the Body of Christ, showing how the Spirit is the reality of God that affirms the redemptive character of Christ, the Son.
The traumas of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have brought to the fore the problematic distance between earlier and more modern approaches to the Spirit. Drawing on writers from Paracelsus to John Berryman, and including theologians and philosophers like Anne Conway and John Wesley, as well as literary figures from d’Aubigné to Duhamel, Radner attempts to locate modern pneumatology’s motives and interests within some of the novel social settings of a rapidly globalizing consciousness and conflicted pluralism.
It is by following Israel into the Incarnation of Jesus, Radner contends, that humans find their unresolved sufferings and yearnings redeemed. The Holy Spirit operates in deep hope, the kind of hope that is inaccessible to simple articulation. Finally, Radner argues for a more limited and reserved pneumatology, subordinated to the christological realities of divine here, creaturely limitations are not denied, but affirmed, and taken up into the life of God.
In A Profound Ignorance , Ephraim Radner traces the development of pneumatology as a modern discipline and its responses to experiences of social confusion and suffering, often associated with questions linked to the category of theodicy. Along the way, study of the Spirit joined with natural science to become study of spirit, which was at root study of the human person redefined without limitation. Radner proposes that the proper parameters of pneumatology are found in studying Israel and her historical burdens as the Body of Christ, showing how the Spirit is the reality of God that affirms the redemptive character of Christ, the Son.
The traumas of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have brought to the fore the problematic distance between earlier and more modern approaches to the Spirit. Drawing on writers from Paracelsus to John Berryman, and including theologians and philosophers like Anne Conway and John Wesley, as well as literary figures from d’Aubigné to Duhamel, Radner attempts to locate modern pneumatology’s motives and interests within some of the novel social settings of a rapidly globalizing consciousness and conflicted pluralism.
It is by following Israel into the Incarnation of Jesus, Radner contends, that humans find their unresolved sufferings and yearnings redeemed. The Holy Spirit operates in deep hope, the kind of hope that is inaccessible to simple articulation. Finally, Radner argues for a more limited and reserved pneumatology, subordinated to the christological realities of divine here, creaturely limitations are not denied, but affirmed, and taken up into the life of God.
- GenresTheology
463 pages, Hardcover
Published November 1, 2019
30 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 21, 2020
It's hard to describe this book, or, really any book by Ephraim Radner I've read. His main thesis is that the early modern invention of pneumatology was precipitated by and deemed an answer to theodical concerns. Radner seeks to combat this by grounding the work of the Holy Spirit in the concrete body of Christ and in the limitations that surround both it and us. His deeply evocative, even poetic language will test the patience of the reader used to more straight-forward academic prose, but it would be a significant loss to give up on this point. Radner is on to something important, something that no theologian with a concern for the church can miss: the very ordinariness, the very obscurity, the very mortality and limitation of this life given meaning and life by the "enough" that is Christ. Highly recommended.
February 17, 2020
A creative and compelling historical-theological genealogy of modern pneumatology’s utopian characteristics and the sociological realities which gave rise to them. Radner argues for a return to a traditional theology of the Spirit which is bound to the life of Christ. In an era where theologians and average Christians alike obscure the theology of the third Person of the Trinity (by ironically disallowing its appropriate obscurity) this book offers clarity.
It’s clearly written and well argued. The notes offered are copious and helpful. A great reference for brief sketches of the pneumatological developments of dozens of modern thinkers.
It’s clearly written and well argued. The notes offered are copious and helpful. A great reference for brief sketches of the pneumatological developments of dozens of modern thinkers.
July 26, 2020
Stunning. A book that you can't "unsee." I'll be re-reading this for the rest of my life. I most appreciate how Radner put his personal story on the line in the introduction, explaining his deep stake in the matter in light of his mother's suicide. We don't theologize in a vacuum. This is a brilliantly existential book that reaches beyond my "theological opinions" into my very framework for understanding my own narrative and encounters of God.
Radner explores so eloquently the prosperity gospel that lives within the waters of the modern day church, explaining how our death-denying impulses and over-realized eschatologies stealthily emerge from hidden and subtle trajectories of pneumatalogical scholarship within the church and the academy, which are ultimately rooted in our collective globalizing consciousness.
And in response, as an alternative, Radner points to a theology of the Spirit that is located in Christ-- the embodied Christ. What could be better? (to whom shall we go)
Levering put it best: "Ephraim Radner puts his finger on the Christian pretense that the Holy Spirit should serve to alleviate the grim difficulties that plague the fallen world. Instead he invites us to see how the Spirit works in and through the difficulties of Jesus Christ's life. A brilliant and deeply challenging tour-de-force."
My one frustration: Radner's NEEDED diagnostic against the church's tendency to want to make all things better with a blanket use of "the Spirit" swings too far in the other direction at some places. I found myself wanting to add an epilogue at the end stemming from my evangelical and somewhat charismatic conviction that life with the triune God is truly deeper and better and wholly good than any other alternative. Not in a "prosperity sense." But we are joined to Jesus and are GRACED to know the living God. That's beautiful and something to cherish. Radner's realism missed this truth in some ways, in my opinion.
Radner explores so eloquently the prosperity gospel that lives within the waters of the modern day church, explaining how our death-denying impulses and over-realized eschatologies stealthily emerge from hidden and subtle trajectories of pneumatalogical scholarship within the church and the academy, which are ultimately rooted in our collective globalizing consciousness.
And in response, as an alternative, Radner points to a theology of the Spirit that is located in Christ-- the embodied Christ. What could be better? (to whom shall we go)
Levering put it best: "Ephraim Radner puts his finger on the Christian pretense that the Holy Spirit should serve to alleviate the grim difficulties that plague the fallen world. Instead he invites us to see how the Spirit works in and through the difficulties of Jesus Christ's life. A brilliant and deeply challenging tour-de-force."
My one frustration: Radner's NEEDED diagnostic against the church's tendency to want to make all things better with a blanket use of "the Spirit" swings too far in the other direction at some places. I found myself wanting to add an epilogue at the end stemming from my evangelical and somewhat charismatic conviction that life with the triune God is truly deeper and better and wholly good than any other alternative. Not in a "prosperity sense." But we are joined to Jesus and are GRACED to know the living God. That's beautiful and something to cherish. Radner's realism missed this truth in some ways, in my opinion.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews