Source: “In the Beginning Was the Spirit Science, Religion, and Indigenous Spirituality”, By Diarmuid O’Murchu, Orbis Books, 2012.
Modern theology is currently undergoing a significant upgrading of the Holy Spirit, shifting away from a historical "subordination" where the Spirit was merely a secondary influence following the work of the Father and Son. Thinkers like Jürgen Moltmann and Elizabeth Johnson suggest a reordering of the Trinity that begins with the Spirit as the foundational energy and "principle of evolution" that indwells all created beings. This movement seeks to transcend a narrow, anthropocentric focus by recognizing the Spirit’s presence in the entire cosmos, aligning Christian thought with the indigenous concept of the Great Spirit and the radical relationality found in modern science. Ultimately, the text argues for a Spirit Christology that views Jesus not through rigid metaphysical structures, but as a bridge for divine empowerment within a pluralistic and ecological world.
Re-visioning_the_Holy_Spirit.mp4
The_Cinderella_of_the_Trinity_Takes_Over.m4a
For much of Christian history, the Holy Spirit has existed in a state of theological suspended animation. In the traditional Trinitarian hierarchy—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—the Spirit is often treated as a divine afterthought, a "ghost" in the machine that only arrives once the heavy lifting of creation and redemption is complete. Conventionally, the "Father" rules as a Sky God from above the clouds, the ultimate principle of power and control. The "Son" enters history to rescue a fallen humanity. Only then, in a strange chronological and metaphysical quagmire, is the "Third Person" permitted to descend.
Yet, we are currently witnessing a metaphysical insurgency. This perceived third wheel is emerging as the most radical and necessary concept for the 21st century. As our ecological crisis deepens and our scientific understanding of the cosmos expands, the Spirit is being rescued from the periphery and placed at the very heart of a new, relational ontology.
The contemporary recovery of the Spirit marks what Philip Clayton describes as a tectonic shift from "substantivalist thinking" to a "subject-based ontology." In the medieval imagination, the Spirit functioned as an objective metaphysical principle—a rigid boundary line used to demarcate the natural from the supernatural. Today, that boundary is dissolving. The Spirit is being reimagined not as a divider, but as the principle of unity between the human and the superhuman.