{"id":6087,"date":"2023-06-01T00:57:32","date_gmt":"2023-06-01T00:57:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/learn.elca.org\/jle\/?p=6087"},"modified":"2023-06-01T12:48:09","modified_gmt":"2023-06-01T12:48:09","slug":"book-review-the-holy-spirit-and-christian-experience-by-simeon-zahl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/learn.elca.org\/jle\/book-review-the-holy-spirit-and-christian-experience-by-simeon-zahl\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience by Simeon Zahl"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[1] Just months before his untimely death in 1963, H. Richard Niebuhr issued a rousing call for \u201ca recovery of feeling in theology.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a> Though he affirmed Barth\u2019s rejection of any point of contact between revelation and human experience, he felt the pendulum had now swung too far. In securing the objectivity of the Word of God, theologians had forgotten that \u201cthe Biblical witness speaks of a God [\u2026] who is objective, but objective to man [<em>sic<\/em>] as emotional being.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn2\" name=\"_ftnref2\">[2]<\/a> The way forward, Niebuhr argued, was to recover a powerful theological tradition that emphasizes the passionate, affective dimensions of the human encounter with God which, for him, culminates with Jonathan Edwards.<\/p>\n<p>[2]\u00a0 Nearly sixty years later, Simeon Zahl has issued a similar call, albeit in a less Reformed key. He, like Niebuhr, detects an enduring tepidness amongst Protestant theologians on the theme of Christian experience, an error that he also attributes to Barth\u2019s legacy. This affliction extends even to contemporary pneumatology, the doctrinal <em>locus<\/em> in which a textured analysis of Christian experience would be most fitting. The absence of such analysis is even more remarkable given the field\u2019s otherwise encouraging return to patristic soteriologies of participation, which promised to locate the Spirit\u2019s activity firmly within the ordinary, natural processes of human life. <em>The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience<\/em> seeks to diagnose this enduring allergy to experience in theology, and the methodological intervention it proposes might, if heeded, bring systematic and practical theologians into a more generative alignment. But the work\u2019s most provocative claim lies in its constructive proposal. For Zahl, the way to recover feeling in theology is to return to the founding experience of Protestantism itself, Luther\u2019s so-called <em>Turmerlebnis<\/em>, as well as the affectively charged pneumatology that occasions it.<\/p>\n<p>[3] This may have a certain intuitive appeal for readers of the <em>Journal of Lutheran Ethics<\/em>, but the truth of Zahl\u2019s proposition is hardly obvious. As he readily notes, the recent turn toward patristic and Neo-Thomist soteriologies has largely come in response to a criticism of Lutheran models of forensic justification as experientially arid, amounting to little more than a rational calculation of merits <em>coram deo<\/em>. Zahl\u2019s constructive task is thus twofold. The first is to defend the phenomenological richness of justification as a full-blooded experience. He does this through sharp, lucid studies of Luther\u2019s own writings, as well as those of Philip Melanchthon and the deep historical source for both, the late Augustine. These form the pillars of what Zahl names the affective Augustinian tradition, and his second task is to show that his own hermeneutical reconstruction of this tradition surpasses the alternatives, which either privilege participation or habituation as their central soteriological motif.<\/p>\n<p>[4] But before developing this alternative, Zahl must first explain why experience has become so fraught for Protestants. The story is a familiar one. Theologians in the shadow of Barth avoid experience for fear of confusing it as theology\u2019s ground or starting point. But Zahl argues persuasively that this is only one way experience can figure theologically. Whether one is formulating a dogmatic proposition, reading a theological classic, or assessing the plausibility of a theological claim, each activity occurs within embodied, socially embedded creatures whose subjectivity simply cannot be extricated from these processes. Conceived in this manner, as \u201cthe complex effects of the theologian\u2019s subjectivity on the processes by which they arrive at and are persuaded of theological conclusions,\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn3\" name=\"_ftnref3\">[3]<\/a> experience is the ineradicable coefficient of all theology. We ignore at our peril.<\/p>\n<p>[5] But ignore it we have, according to Zahl. Unfortunately, he makes only passing reference to feminist and queer theologians, both of which most certainly embrace experience. \u00a0Zahl focuses his critique elsewhere, arguing that some of the most prominent systematic theologians working on pneumatology, including those who embrace soteriologies of participation, actively ignore the role of experience. Through attentive readings of T.F. Torrance and Kathryn Tanner, prominent advocates of participation soteriologies, Zahl identifies a consistent preference for \u201cpurely ontological\u201d or \u201cmetaphysical\u201d categories (i.e., union with Christ, participation in the Godhead, or deification\/<em>theosis<\/em>) at the expense of \u201cexperiential\u201d ones. Even when these theologians make reference to the anthropological correlates of the Holy Spirit\u2019s activity, their formulations remain so vague and abstract (i.e., \u201cnew dispositions,\u201d \u201cnew capacities,\u201d \u201cnew powers\u201d) that they provide little to help Christians distinguish the Spirit\u2019s activity from their own idolatrous projections. In response, Zahl argues that any \u201cfull-orbed pneumatology\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn4\" name=\"_ftnref4\">[4]<\/a> must specify the \u201caffective predicates\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn5\" name=\"_ftnref5\">[5]<\/a> that follow from, or are perhaps even constitutive of, such ontological transformations. This principle of \u201cpractical recognizability\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn6\" name=\"_ftnref6\">[6]<\/a> charges theologians to supplement their conceptually abstract or symbolic figurations of Christian salvation with more concrete descriptions of phenomena that a) transpire in space and time and b) are closely \u201ctethered\u201d to human bodies. While Torrance explicitly refuses to specify any affective predicates for fear of sullying the \u201ccomplete objectivity\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn7\" name=\"_ftnref7\">[7]<\/a> of God, Tanner\u2019s comparatively greater attention to the Spirit\u2019s effects on human bodies in time falls short because she relegates all experiential dimensions of faith to the domain of sanctification, thus reserving the more theologically significant event of justification for purely ontological description.<\/p>\n<p>[6] The principle of practical recognizability marks Zahl\u2019s central methodological contention, which he casts as a corrective \u201crecalibration\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn8\" name=\"_ftnref8\">[8]<\/a> to contemporary theology\u2019s penchant for abstraction. It also motivates his constructive retrieval of an affective Augustinian alternative. In Melanchthon, he finds an account of salvation that emphasizes the forensic character of justification as well as the incongruous, \u201cdisjunctive\u201d quality of divine grace that Torrance and Tanner are eager to protect. But in contrast to these figures, Melanchthon construes saving faith as a \u201cpractically recognizable affective sequence\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn9\" name=\"_ftnref9\">[9]<\/a> that moves from existential terror to the peace and joy of divine consolation. The difference with Tanner lies in Melanchthon\u2019s readiness to call this experiential sequence itself \u201cjustification,\u201d which according to Zahl, effectively dissolves any strict distinction between consolation and regeneration.<a href=\"#_ftn10\" name=\"_ftnref10\">[10]<\/a> The once-terrified sinner who finds their fear of divine wrath replaced by a warm, affectionate love for God <em>just is<\/em> the one who participates in the activity of the Holy Spirit, whose comportment toward God is transformed, and who discovers new powers and dispositions emerging from this sequence. The ontological and the experiential need not \u2013 indeed, should not &#8211; be separated.<\/p>\n<p>[7] This raises a potent concern. Might not this emphasis on the \u201caffective salience of doctrines,\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn11\" name=\"_ftnref11\">[11]<\/a> with its pressure to make the affective predicates of theological convictions explicit and concrete, obviate the need for doctrines altogether? Zahl insists that it does not, and to make this plain, he turns to Luther\u2019s famous teaching on law and gospel. Such dogmatic propositions, he claims, not only emerge from profoundly affective patterns of experience \u2013 in this case, Luther\u2019s terrifying <em>Anfechtungen<\/em> and the sweet consolation of grace. They also serve to interpret and generate such affective sequences. Zahl perceptively notes that, while many living in our so-called secular age are likely to interpret them differently than did Luther, we too find ourselves afflicted with fears of judgment, alienation, and death. Drawing on recent work in affect theory, Zahl argues that these represent semi-stable structures of lived reality that, while clearly shaped by the discursive regimes and cultural forms of a given historical epoch, are not exhaustively determined by them. This means that it is at least possible for historically and culturally distant interpretive schemes \u2013 in this case, doctrinal claims about law and gospel \u2013 to make better sense of these enduring affective dynamics than can more recent, non-theological ones. Luther\u2019s formulation does this by naming the ways in which we \u201cparticipate irrationally and compulsively in the generation of [our] own suffering\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn12\" name=\"_ftnref12\">[12]<\/a> even as we hold out \u201cthe possibility of hope for a deliverance that originates outside the system.\u201d <a href=\"#_ftn13\" name=\"_ftnref13\">[13]<\/a> In short, Zahl\u2019s claim is that doctrines not only bear an affective salience; they can also provide \u201caffective pedagogy\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn14\" name=\"_ftnref14\">[14]<\/a> for those of us bewildered by our own emotional restlessness. The theologian\u2019s task, then, is to continually interpret these structures of lived existence in the light of traditional Christian symbols for the sake of rendering our life before God more intelligible and of inhabiting that life with hope.<\/p>\n<p>[8] Having defended the experiential profundity of justification from its recent despisers, Zahl turns finally to the headwaters of this affective Augustinian tradition to show why this pneumatology should be preferred over its competitors. In Augustine\u2019s soteriology of delight, he finds a nearly identical affective sequence to that of the Reformers, although here it is, unsurprisingly given his Neoplatonist sensibilities, more directly linked with a realist metaphysics of value. The Christian convert discovers a radical reorientation of desire wherein previously delicious sins now elicit disgust and formerly onerous forms of righteousness begin to sizzle with delight. This transformation owes to the Holy Spirit\u2019s activity which move the restless soul through a process of persuasion, soliciting it gradually to discover that which truly merits enjoyment. On Zahl\u2019s reconstruction, this affective Augustinian pneumatology accommodates many features of Christian experience that contemporary participation and habituation models struggle to explain. The fact of sin\u2019s intransigence in post-conversion life hangs together easily with Augustine\u2019s view of the self as a perpetual question whose motives remain enigmatic even to itself. With the virtue theorist, he can affirm the positive role of habituation even as the discourse of affect enables him to refrain from the overly optimistic view that temporally extended practice is either necessary or sufficient for human transformation. And in perhaps his most original insight, Zahl thinks alongside Sara Ahmed\u2019s fecund conception of \u201caffective economies\u201d <a href=\"#_ftn15\" name=\"_ftnref15\">[15]<\/a> to extend Augustine\u2019s soteriology of desire to include the social breadth and material depths of our affections. The enigmas of the self, it turns out, are hardly limited to each self, but rather pervade and circulate through our social, historical, and material environments. Zahl\u2019s affective Augustinianism thus bears a telescopic quality allowing it to move nimbly across various scopes of sin and grace, from pre-personal neurological impulses to supra-personal historical forces, tracking the affective pathways that pulse through human existence and charting the many ways these pulsations alternatively diminish and dignify human life before God.<\/p>\n<p>[9] However the multi-decade story of the recovery of feeling in theology unfolds, this elegantly argued, genuinely constructive work surely makes a significant contribution and, perhaps also, a turning point. Zahl has clarified and reanimated a distinctive and, as of late, neglected tradition in affective Augustinianism. He has also demonstrated the theoretical suppleness of affect as a mediating term between human and divine agency. It thus serves as a prolegomena for future work in the theology of affectivity, indicating, albeit all-too-briefly, the value of turning to research in empirical psychology as well as contemporary affect theory as conversation partners for theology. In Zahl\u2019s hands, these other fields serve largely to confirm the traditional theological positions he favors. One wonders if they could play a more robust, perhaps even critical, role in this conversation, prompting the reconstruction of the doctrinal positions themselves. Working in the other direction, future research might explore how Christian theological insights about affectivity challenge and expand the way those working on this theme in the cognitive sciences, social theory, and phenomenology understand the nature, function, and ultimate limits of our affections. As with the operations of the Holy Spirit, the value of this book will be known by its fruits. But from the present vantage point, Zahl\u2019s achievement here is undeniable.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref1\" name=\"_ftn1\">[1]<\/a> H. Richard Niebuhr, \u201cThe Cole Lectures: \u2018Next Steps in Theology,\u2019\u201d in <em>Theology, History, and Culture: Major Unpublished Writings<\/em>, ed. W. S. Johnson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 3-49.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref2\" name=\"_ftn2\">[2]<\/a> Niebuhr, 41.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref3\" name=\"_ftn3\">[3]<\/a> Zahl, 14.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref4\" name=\"_ftn4\">[4]<\/a> Zahl, 97.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref5\" name=\"_ftn5\">[5]<\/a> <em>Inter alia <\/em>Zahl, 154.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref6\" name=\"_ftn6\">[6]<\/a> Zahl, 70.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref7\" name=\"_ftn7\">[7]<\/a> Torrance, \u2018Relevance of the Doctrine of the Spirit,\u2019 233. Cited in Zahl, 100.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref8\" name=\"_ftn8\">[8]<\/a> Zahl, 78.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref9\" name=\"_ftn9\">[9]<\/a> Zahl, 127.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref10\" name=\"_ftn10\">[10]<\/a> Zahl, 125.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref11\" name=\"_ftn11\">[11]<\/a> Zahl, 3-4.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref12\" name=\"_ftn12\">[12]<\/a> Zahl, 173.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref13\" name=\"_ftn13\">[13]<\/a> Zahl, 175.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref14\" name=\"_ftn14\">[14]<\/a> Zahl, 164<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref15\" name=\"_ftn15\">[15]<\/a> Zahl, 215-225.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[1] Just months before his untimely death in 1963, H. Richard Niebuhr issued a rousing call for \u201ca recovery of feeling in theology.\u201d[1] Though he affirmed Barth\u2019s rejection of any point of contact between revelation and human experience, he felt the pendulum had now swung too far. In securing the objectivity of the Word of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Book Review: The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience by Simeon Zahl - Journal of Lutheran Ethics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/learn.elca.org\/jle\/book-review-the-holy-spirit-and-christian-experience-by-simeon-zahl\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Book Review: The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience by Simeon Zahl - Journal of Lutheran Ethics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[1] Just months before his untimely death in 1963, H. 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Richard Niebuhr issued a rousing call for \u201ca recovery of feeling in theology.\u201d[1] Though he affirmed Barth\u2019s rejection of any point of contact between revelation and human experience, he felt the pendulum had now swung too far. 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