Subversive Fire, the Untold Story of Pentecost

by Albert Hernández

This book offers a historical survey and analysis of the ways that medieval and early modern European Christian writers and visionaries conceptualized the meaning of the pentecostal narrative found in the New Testament. While the primary aim of this study is the recovery and examination of the various meanings of Pentecost as envisioned by Christian thinkers during these two historical periods, the relationship of such ideas and concepts to pneumatology in their respective contexts is also discussed in this book. Pneumatological foundations form the core of numerous Christian doctrines in soteriology, ecclesiology, and eschatology. However, rather than attempting a detailed survey of topics and themes already covered in other histories of pneumatology, this study presents a series of vignettes describing Christian conceptions of Pentecost and pneumatology from the late 1100s to about 1670 while examining related questions of theological discourse. Key questions considered in this study What is it about Pentecost and the Western imagination that allows Pentecost to show up in a variety of literary and theological forms throughout Christian history? Why have so many Christian visionaries revisited the story of Pentecost as an act of theological reconstruction often aimed at subverting dominant ecclesiastical paradigms? What is the relationship between the miraculous pneumatic communication signified in the biblical story of Pentecost and the empowering voice and gifts of the Holy Spirit?

322 pages, Paperback

First published August 20, 2010

Reviews

[Alwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really fascinating historical study on the theme of Pentecost, the syncretism of pagan and Christian spirituality and celebrations in early European Christianity especially in theologies of the holy spirit, the recurring imagery and symbolism related to Pentecost in literature from the Arthurian legends to Thomas Pynchon's _Crying of Lot 49_, and the role of pneumatology in everything from early liberationist uprisings and visions, to mysticism, to alchemy (christiana theologica magica), to the scientific revolution. Hernandez weaves fascinating connections between seemingly utterly disparate fields in really creative ways. He doesn't always tie up loose ends, and in some ways this feels like an unfinished work as it points out connections more often than it draws conclusions about them. It is still, though, one of the most fascinating histories I've read and especially highlighted for me how much the Western Church has largely forgotten the social justice, proto-feminist, and ecological thrust that was, for years, a major part of many Christians' celebration of the work of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost--the celebration of the liberating, connecting power of the Spirit of God who breathes life into our world.

[Jeremy Garber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Historian and Dean of the Iliff School of Theology Albert Hernández uses a historian’s eye to look at the use of the story of Pentecost in the medieval, Reformation, and early modern periods. He connects the “empowering presence of the Holy Spirit” with reform and intellectual innovation, the power and transformative energy of the symbol of fire. Hernández observes a waning of these influences by the 17th and 18th centuries, as previous studies had focused too extensively on apocalypticism and millennialism and not on the power of the story to effect change. He supplies the need for specifically historical contextual examination of stories of the Spirit and the “pneumatological deficit” cited by theologians like Kärkkäinen and McGrath. based in part on assumptions of modernist empiricism. Hernández uses Sheila Davaney’s “pragmatic historicism” and Delwin Brown’s “constructive historicism” to reclaiming the legacies of the “subversive fire” of the Spirit of Pentecost for constructive work of the present.

Hernández methodically examines particular paradigmatic stories with a fine eye for detail and a corresponding connection between recurring themes. Chapter 2, for example, connects King Arthur stories to syncretism with local nature worship and Pentecost season particularly, especially von Eschenbasch’s Parzival. Chapter 3 examines the “church of the Holy Spirit” during the medieval period (Hernández’s academic specialty), placing the growing equation of pneumatology and ecclesiology in conversation with the role of Pentecost story in subversive reformation of the medieval church. This chapter examines such figures as Joachim of Fiore, the Spiritualist Franciscans, and a fascinating introduction to the little-known story of Guglielma of Milan (1260-1300), who considered herself an incarnation of the Holy Spirit (116-121). Chapter 4 examines the spirit of Pentecost in the Reformation, with a (puzzling to this Anabaptist scholar) inclusion of Thomas Müntzer as a representative voice of the Radical Reformation, as well as other mystics such as Johannes Tauler, Servetus, Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and Ignatius of Loyola. Chapter 5, “Those ponderable fire particles…,” provides a sascinating survey of Christian esotericism and alchemy in figures such as Marsilio Ficino and Trithemius, Francis Bacon and the Rosicrucian movement, and the connections between concepts of the Spirit and early scientific and intellectual inquiry.

The strength of this volume is its methodological attention to locating particular stories in their historical context in rich detail, in conversation with each other and the overall theme of the subversive power of the Spirit and the story of Pentecost. This argument is best summarized in Hernández’s own words from the closing summary chapter: “The subversive function of pneumatological claims trumping preconceived notions of authority and exclusivity is a historic trajectory in the history of Christianity that cannot be separated too neatly from the domain of religious interiority and mystical experience.” (269) Hernández provides a tantalizing glimpse at a domain at once utterly unfamiliar and instantly recognizable, a thread running through history in which the idea of an unstoppable power of change motivates individuals and nations. Recommended for historians of religion and medieval literature as well as theologians seeking a supplement to often-neglected periods of pneumatological inquiry.