Ekskursio: Rick Waldholm: Pyhä Henki ja Gunkel

Herrman Gunkel julkaisi ensimmäisen kirjansa aiheesta, joka häntä teologisesti ja henkilökohtaisesti suuresti kiinnosti - Pyhän Hengen toiminta alkukirkossa. Hän tarttui teemaan Apostolien tekojen ja apostoli Paavalin kirjeiden antaman aineiston perusteella.

H. Gunkel. Die Wirkungen des heiligen Geistes nach der populären Anschauungen der apostolischen Zeit und der Lehre des Apostels Paulus. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1888. 133 s.

Translated by Roy A. Harrisville and Philip A. Quanbeck II as, The Influence of the Holy Spirit: The Popular View of the Apostolic Age and the Teaching of the Apostle Paul (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1979, 2008).

Lainaan tähän professori Rick Wadholm Jr.ajatuksia tästä Gunkelin ensimmäisestä kirjasta:

It is a brief, but altogether striking volume that was an unexpected gem by the hand of this Old Testament scholarly father of form criticism.

According to Gunkel, “Almost without exception, only those events that impinge on human existence are described as activities of the Spirit” (15). His argument is essentially that Paul was a thorough-going pneumatic, not to be confused as inferring that the Spirit was simply some inward ethical conscience or propulsion. In fact, he argues that there must be a distinction maintained between theologizing about the Spirit for doctrinal formulations and pneumatic experiences as such. (8) The pneumatic experience of life is regarded as central (particularly to Pauline practice and congregations).

It was the pneumatic experiences of the Early Church which offered the evidence of God’s Spirit. Such evidence (particularly glossolalia, according to Gunkel) functioned to testify to possession and indwelling by God’s Spirit. Ethical behavior was the manifested proper use of such gifts of the Spirit. But Paul never made a move to a simply ethical/moral S/spirit as so many others of the Second Temple period (eg, Wisdom of Solomon, Philo, etc.). Paul could not conceive of the Spirit as less than enabling powerful manifestations, but that the ethical belonged still to the supernatural working of God’s Spirit.

While he admits (even requires) that the OT understanding of the Spirit of God was powerfully demonstrative, he likens such activities of the Spirit to insanity. (5) And his understanding of Paul does not seem to reach much further. Gunkel almost seems to regard Paul as someone who has sadly embraced the pneumatic, when he seems so reasonable elsewhere in discerning other matters of faith.(4)

Lue koko blogi Rick Waldholm

Waldholmin kuvaus on mainio - Gunkel pyrkii ensin selvittämään alkuteksteistä mahdollisimman aidosti, mitä Pyhän Hengen vaikutukset siellä merkitsevät.

Sitten hän miltei surullisena toteaa, että nämä Hengen kokemukset hipovat hulluutta ja ovat ikävä kyllä Paavalille tärkeitä. Mies kun näyttäisi muuten olevan kykenevä ajattelemaan uskonasioista aivan järkevästi!