Pentecost 2025 A New Pentecost Awaits

Introduction: A New Pentecost Awaits

This is an except from my first book, Spirit, Time, and The Future in 2012… I am including it in my new book, The Spirit Within; The Spirit Without that will be completed in 2025…

The Holy Spirit has within her presence and potentials, a restless, powerful, and urgent expectation of continually giving birth to a new reality. This new Spirit-infused reality is both inclusive and paradoxical; Its effects are both individual and social, personal and cultural. The impulses and directives once acknowledged and released can be experienced as either gracious or tense. These urgings can be genuinely inspiring, and once they are felt, are undeniable.

At times, the release or re-birthing of these energies and principles can appear seemingly profane in its chaotic, alchemical, and transformative energies and its glorious demands. As Spirit, as God, these omnipresent experiences are the pervasive, inclusive actions and expressions of God’s vitality, wisdom, and compassion. Conversely, the willing and the receptive among us can experience them as a gracious, just, sustaining, and loving reality that is present within and among us.

The new Millennia has dawned, but it has not yet become a conscious, intentional, and widely acknowledged part of either our dominant culture or religious practices. She is not perceived widely as being presently active or even present in our prevailing church liturgies or our current theological understandings. However, it is also true that merely tracking carefully the turns of time and calendars does not guarantee an advance of consciousness, or does such observation deter the ripening. The greater or more complete manifestations of the Spirit are continually available, yet most often they lie latent or unused in our lives.

Despite the intense struggle we are currently witnessing on a societal and global level, with the continual wrestlingwith the dark and foreboding forces of the individual human will, entrenched in older, powerful patriarchal systems, and blandly supported by our socially constructed institutional inertia, we can see and experience the increasing light of awareness that displays occasional glimmers of its glistening, supernal brightness.

As a cosmic and cultural force, the omnipresence of God as Spirit can become manifest through an ever-increasing awareness whose growing essence and brightening horizons will bring more hope and change to our beleaguered world.

In ever newly emerging ways, and in ways that are available for all to see, there is a new consciousness dawning, and its effects will be ultimately and progressively revealed. Across the wide spectrum of thought and practice, we can be assured that this new manifestation of Spirit will invite and extend its influences into every home, and into every heart.

The Spirit is brooding over the world (Deuteronomy 32), and she is ready to hatch her offspring— the women and men of God who will fully recognize her, will see the Spirit as a tripartite source:

First, as a world creating, indwelling vital and dynamic presence; Second, as a source for a shared relational wisdom and social experience; Third or lastly, as an ethical imperative for meaningful social reform and ecological repair/transformation. When individuals invite these energies and heed the influences of the Spirit, they open themselves to those life- transformative explorations and move themselves toward a greater commitment of embodiment.

To the degree that this invitation is welcomed and embodied, this awareness will alter and often reshape their perceptions, and they will enliven their religious imaginations. The result will be an alchemical and gracious reordering of spiritual perceptions and baseline ethical realities that will work collectively for a larger scale cultural re-birthing, for it will be focused on bringing forth a greater, broader, and deeper comprehension of the Spiritual dimensions of life, and be understood and applied within our daily human existence.

How these effects are to manifest themselves or become more widely known and more universally assimilated is not fully clear. But what we can affirm is that the cracks in our world’s icy indifference, our rampant egotism, and the increasing fissures of cultural isolation that act so effectively to divide humanity from itself, are cracking more ominously open than the polar iceflows-giving way to the needs for an inclusive personal and cultural interdependence that will be a hallmark of this coming age. In and through the effects of our increasing cultural and personal disillusionment, and maybe as the supernal balance or gracious response to them, Spirit and her ameliorative effects will be brought to greater daily human awareness and foster the necessary larger-scale social changes.

One author, Donald Gelpi, 2 puts it in these words:

“ A contemporary pneumatology faces then a formidable task. In order to counteract those forces which stifle Spirit awareness, it must prophetically challenge individuals and communities to rend their hearts and open themselves to the illumination of the Spirit.”

It is our task and our imperative, our crisis and our opportunity, our social demands and our soulful urgings, that will move us into confronting this formidable task. One of the purposes of this book to contribute to the background and understanding of these powerful and dynamic forces. It is my intention to begin to outline how the Spirit works, and to begin to describe how each person can become more aware, and to begin to embody the social and cultural changes necessary to usher in the genuine or true Age of the Spirit.

As the long, extended article 5 cited in the end notes names it, our Western Christian understanding of the religious life, its examples and archetypes are to have been “exhausted.” Our Western religious language has been stripped of its once dynamic and transformative messages, so, as I see it, the time is ready, even overripe, for a New Pentecost among us….

It is my contention that these changes are not literally connected to a specific time or place; they are not limited to a specific date in a calendar    or on a hour of clock time. With these expected, dire effects and these scary predictions, once we make an objective and scientific allowance for such uncontrollable changes such as shifts in the tectonic plates that cause earthquakes, etc., there is a harsh admission to be made: Most, if not all, the catastrophic dilemmas facing our modern civilization are humanly authored, socially or culturally created, and are humanly perpetuated by our predominant social priorities and sustained by our primary interpersonal values!

On the positive and transformative side, Spirit is manifest whenever the heart is warmed and whenever the will is informed. I believe that our lives can be activated to receive the Spiritual impulses of grace and change, and then we can, as a result of that leavening, act accordingly to make its effects evident in life, and manifest it in our collective culture.

This book aims at being an updated, expanded consideration of the depth and dimensions of the Holy Spirit. It will offer new perspectives without losing sight of its original, linguistic definitions, and will recount some of the wider understandings that are to be found within our larger Western Judeo-Christian heritage. This concern for keeping a consistent dialogue with theology, however, is not a defensive, turgid, or brittle one. 

It will align itself with a progressive working definition from both theological research and the writings of depth psychology that holds to a more inclusive and universal understanding. As such, it freely goes beyond the traditional dogmatic definitions and any of the narrowly accepted more orthodox scope of language and its conforming beliefs. Consequently, the ideas expressed will be along a line of thoughtful consideration that never loses touch with its foundational integrity, while still suggesting how the larger understanding of the Spirit can be modified, and how Spirit can be alternatively understood in the context of these changing times.

As a theological overview, this research affirms that the Spirit has always been, and still remains, an omnipresent and in concurrent correspondence with every archetypal cultural symbol that affirms and honors her place, her possibilities, and her potentials.

The Spirit that emerges theologically and linguistically for her ancient origins progresses into Western Christian thought and practice. Spirit does this in a way that Spirit’s essential being, depth of relationship, and sustaining purpose for humanity remains a consistent and timeless one. It then falls to modernity to recognize this appearing, and then to consciously make room in theology and worship for ever-changing cultural and personal understandings and their sacred aspirations.

Classically, what became the Holy Spirit has been understood as the equally important, dynamic Third Person in the Christian Trinity. However, when compared to all the writings and speculations concerning God as Creator, etc., we have much less evidence and historical writings on which to base our equitable or egalitarian conclusions. Therefore, it is one of the aims of this writer to add to this body of useful information, and to extend our current understandings as a foundational part of an earnest and honest search for greater clarity and provide more useful contemporary applications.

Similarly, when a comparison is done within the theological libraries about the nature of Christ and the person of Jesus, we find that relatively little that has been written or said about this third, fascinating part of Christian dogma and thought. This paucity is curiously and noticeably absent, especially when it is considered over the life-span and centuries of Christian Theology. 6

Generally, in our modern era, theological and devotional writings that center on the Holy Spirit have been the domain of the Pentecostals or Evangelicals because they are decidedly charismatic in their worship or liturgical content. Many, if not most, of those contributions do not adequately examine the theological, historical, and linguistic roots of their professed doctrine.

Neither do most attempts at being Pentecostal reveal further comprehension nor deeper theological insights. They do little to span the needed bridges of inclusivity and consistency between the evolving, changing nature of theological language and the modern lexicon of evolving scientific knowledge during the centuries of Christian teachings. Fewer still seek out or elucidate how the Christian understanding of Spirit, and how that larger comprehension of Spirit, compares or relates to other sources of timeless truth. Principally beginning in Hebrew theology, and those ideas that are more universal and more cross-culturally available and present within the other great world religions.

As a whole, this lack is quite understandable, in that any approach to a contemporary pneumatology would be fraught with complexity. Any author seeking such balance or scope would be stunned by how difficult it would be to generate a complete perspective or provide a comprehensive account.

I fully realize that I can only add to the discussion, and it is my hope that my insights will be further refined and used by future researchers who delve even more fully into the workings of the Spirit.

The connection to pneumatology, past, present, and future, needs to be made in ways that are fresh, vital, and open to new dialogue. It has to be constructed to be fully responsive to the contemporary religious outlooks, and allow for an eager cultural search for an expansive spiritual meaning that directs the individual towards a wider understanding and towards a deeper modern relevance.

 It will be an outlook that contains a respectful, religious outlook. Yet, by necessity, and I would venture to say by the very nature of the unrestricted Spirit herself, it will be a dissenting approach that challenges any or all rigid expectations or established creedal boundaries.

This more inclusive and expansive view is yet to appear more fully in any convincing or provocative way. It will be my attempt to summarize this expansive and dissenting perspective, and attempt to explain how the major writings and traditional doctrines around this “Third Person” over the formative years of Biblical and Christian thought and theology are inadequate to the fulfillment of the modern task.

As I see it, Christianity must become more inclusive, more Spirit-centered, and more responsive to the truths found in science, medicine, and to the universal parallels in wisdom and understanding that are present in the other world religions. The fate of the earth and its people, and the health and vitality of our Western society, might well depend on these changes!

No other cultural organization is as large in our Western world as those who collectively call themselves the Body of Christ, or Christianity. Therefore, no other religious identity has the consciousness potential and the vibrancy of its historic and Biblically based social witness to change stolid attitudes, outdated policies, regressive outlooks, and exclusionary values that are presently active in our society as does the great collective group of faithful witnesses who call themselves Christians.

Short of an economic collapse or an ecological crisis, and maybe in an awful yet necessary tandem with them, no other group, faith, or belief system has the ability to transform the dysfunctions, addictions, and estrangement so commonly found in our Western culture. The perils that plague us cannot be remedied or solved without a sincere spiritual and cultural realignment— not without a thorough reassessment of what it means to be spiritual or religious, or without a desire to hold a collective vision of a world where a spiritually inspired, compassionate set of ethics becomes the standard for our decision-making.

I write this book as a call to assessment and action, as an invitation to exploration and discovery, and as a personal statement of belief, application, and practice that declares a Spirit-centered life as being the one most worth living, sharing, and promoting among us.