Abstract
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen attempts a sizeable task in this fourth volume of his ‘constructive Christian theology for the pluralistic world.’ He seeks to develop his pneumatology and soteriology in ‘dialogical’ and ‘hospitable’ engagement with the spectrum of Christian traditions, non-Christian religions, and the natural and social sciences, without minimizing the differences between them (pp. 2–4). Fully one quarter of the volume is devoted to examining the concepts of spirit and salvation in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, which allows Kärkkäinen room to acknowledge their internal diversity. (Indigenous religions are noticeably absent from his comparative pneumatology.)
In the first half of the volume, Kärkkäinen develops a firmly trinitarian pneumatology. Knowledge of God brought by the Spirit always refers back to salvation in Christ (p. 176). Nonetheless, Kärkkäinen highlights the Spirit’s broader activity beyond sanctification: the Spirit is the sustainer of life and the ‘continuing source of novelty and emergence’ in creation (p. 66). The most striking element of Kärkkäinen’s pneumatology is its ‘plural paradigm’ (p. 9) of a ‘spirit-filled cosmos’ (p. 95). Kärkkäinen posits the reality of multiple angelic and demonic powers operating in the world as personalities and embedded within sociopolitical structures (ch. 4). His discussion of discerning the ‘spirits of other religious traditions, whether good or evil’ (p. 173) is regrettably brief, leaving questions about how Kärkkäinen envisions the presence of the Holy Spirit operating triunely within non-Christian traditions in a way that would support his programmatic desire to learn from them. In fact, it is not often clear where Kärkkäinen incorporates insights from religions other than Judaism into his own constructive proposals, rather than using them as foils for Christian ideas or as corroborations of them.
Kärkkäinen’s treatment of salvation in the second part of the text is excellent, remarkable for its balanced ecumenism. This is where his openness to multiple perspectives truly shines. He outlines a ‘holistic, communal, and cosmic trinitarian soteriology’ (p. 203) that engages the full breadth of God’s saving work, from individual justification, sanctification, and deification (ch. 11) to healing and empowerment for ministry (ch. 12) to communal justice and reconciliation (ch. 13) to cosmic renewal (ch. 14). Of particular note is his distinctive definition of electing grace as the empowerment given to all individuals to ‘make an eschatological choice’ (p. 242). Kärkkäinen’s attention to the full range of the Spirit’s activity pays off in this rich soteriology.