The Spirit and the Trinity: A Christian Perspective of Interreligious Worship

The Phenomenon of Interreligious Worship

Several years ago, I received a desperate phone call from a couple that occasionally had visited the PCUSA church I then served.1 A catastrophe had occurred. Their eight-year-old daughter suddenly had been stricken with a brain hemorrhage and was quickly losing the struggle for her life. Of course I immediately rushed to the hospital where I joined them in counsel, prayer, and sorrow as they made the heart-breaking decision to discontinue life support systems.

The next day I received a request from the grieving mother, asking that I participate in the upcoming memorial service to be held at a neighboring mainline Protestant church. Their daughter had been baptized as an infant there and still remained on the church’s rolls. This location met with the approval of her husband, a non-practicing Jew. Though both the father and mother were nominal in terms of practicing their faith(s), at that time of profound pain, they felt a deep need for a shared worship service in remembrance of their daughter. I quickly agreed to take part and was asked to read Romans 8:31-39 during the service.

As plans further developed, a female Jewish cantor was obtained to lead as the primary liturgist for the memorial service, since the venue was a Christian church. A personal letter from a television celebrity, a family friend, spoke of faith in life after life and received applause from the congregation. A tribute to the girl by a relative encouraged us to hope that she was with God, looking down on us from a better place, from “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Finally, the version of Romans 8:31-39 I was handed to read as we walked into the sanctuary had excised all references to Jesus Christ. Speaking generically of God at such a time was deemed agreeable to a mixed audience of Jews, Christians, and most everyone else in American culture.2 Including the name of Jesus, however, might be construed as a drawing of lines in a context where many would have considered drawing lines to be rude.3

In Protestant churches in general, and particularly in the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition, a funeral or memorial service is considered to be an act of worship, a “Service of Witness to the Resurrection of the Dead.” That day a worship service indeed was held. However, it included elements—not of Reformed Christianity—but of Reform Judaism, Liberal Protestantism, New Age thought, and American sentimentalism, along with the muffled voice of at least one worshiper committed to evangelical and Reformed faith! This ceremony was an interreligious worship service, a patchwork of religious traditions and convictions intended to honor the dead, to comfort the bereaved, and to mediate an encounter with the Divine as each participant conceived of him or her or it.

With rising multiculturalism and religious pluralism in the United States, scenarios resembling this one are becoming increasingly common. In addition to funerals and memorial services, one immediately thinks of interfaith weddings, child dedications, and rite of passage ceremonies in families comprised of blended faiths. In a growing number of communities, Thanksgiving worship services have moved beyond ecumenical cooperation among Christian churches to include adherents to religions such as Judaism and Islam. On the United States national stage, shortly following the tragedy of 9/11/01 millions of Americans viewed a worship service convened in the National Cathedral that featured Muslim, Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant leaders, with Billy Graham figuring prominently among them. Dr. Graham clearly attempted to distance himself from any perception that his presence should be taken as a carte blanche affirmation of the other faiths represented on the platform. One nevertheless can only wonder what long-term impressions most Americans retained as a result of this powerful visual presentation of interreligious unity.

In yet another example, with more direct implications for members of the PCUSA, the Council for the Parliament of the World’s Religions held an international council in Cape Town, South Africa, December 1999. The gathering featured daily interreligious worship, along with a host of seminars and workshops presenting methods for communing with God as practiced among the world religions.4 In a subsequent workshop held in my presbytery, the Cape Town event was hailed as the way forward for Christianity in relationship to the world religions. At that time, Presbyterian minister Dirk Ficca—well known for his query as to “What’s the big deal about Jesus?”—served as the Executive Director of the Council for the Parliament of the World’s Religions (a position he continues to hold).

These examples illustrate the fact that many self-identifying Christians in the North American context affirm that adherents to non-Christian world religions do engage in acceptable and effective forms of worship. Worship by non-Christians as well as by Christians is thought capable of mediating encounters with God. In a 1991 survey of religious views in the United States, George Barna sought responses to the following statement, “Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and others all pray to the same God, even though they use different names for that God.” Sixty-four percent of respondents agreed with the notion, among which thirty-seven percent strongly agreed. A further breakdown of the numbers indicated that among Roman Catholics, eighty-three percent concurred with this perspective. Seventy percent of mainline Protestants assented. Even among self-identifying evangelicals, forty-six percent accepted the statement, forty-two percent rejected it, and thirteen percent were undecided.5 As Americans increasingly believe that members of many religions both pray to and worship the same God using various names and concepts, the propriety of interreligious worship services becomes more reasonable. In fact, such services become symbolic of this shared access to the Divine as expressed through the rich diversity of prayers, rites, rituals, songs, meditations, and recitations inherent in the doxological expressions of the world faiths. What is more, by participating in one another’s means of encountering God through worship, each religion is said to enrich its own doxological understanding, practice, and experience.6

Countering Theological Arguments in Support of the Interreligious Worship Phenomenon

This increasing phenomenon prompts many questions and issues for the church. Within this article, we shall limit our consideration to addressing four major lines of reasoning often cited in its support. After describing each rationale, a brief response that calls the point into question is supplied. Each of the four arguments makes its own unique contribution to building the case for validating non-Christian worship, and by extension, interreligious worship. Yet one shared theological theme holds them together. The Spirit is alleged to be involved actively, positively, and supportively in non-Christian worship and life. The Spirit is said to be capable of indwelling non-Christian worship as well as Christian worship. The Divine Presence animates non-Christian worship experiences in order to create communion with God as each world religion conceives of the Religious Ultimate in its own way.

The assertions of this new perspective differ from those of historic Christianity, which tend to regard non-Christian worship either as communion with demonic spirits at worst or as a potential point of contact for inviting non-Christians to worship in Spirit and Truth by embracing Christian faith at best.7 The new perspective, however, proposes that non-Christians can engage with God through worship via the Spirit apart from any overt participation in Christian worship in the name of the Triune God. Since the Spirit is thought to energize worship among all world religions, interreligious worship provides a platform for witnessing the Spirit at work through each faith’s distinctive approach to God. This movement toward affirming non-Christian worship via the Spirit is not only proliferating due to circumstances in popular culture; it increasingly receives the affirmation in many ecclesiastical and scholarly circles as well.

1. The Spirit as a Preventative to Religious Genocide

A first motivation for building a theology of the Spirit’s involvement in non-Christian worship arises out of the conviction that the great world religions must move toward unity through mutual acceptance. Despite our differences, proponents of various faiths must agree that we cannot afford further opposition and aggression directed at any single people group based on religious beliefs. Genocide justified by religious convictions is a pervasive theme throughout human history. In this regard, Christians often are thought to bear particular responsibility for the recent atrocities of the Shoah or Holocaust perpetrated against the Jews by Nazi Germany. Moreover, Christian involvement in the Crusades (1099-1291) is cited as further evidence that casts a dark shadow over the history of the church in relationship to Islam.8 If the belief that members of another religion worship “a different God (at) a different mountaintop” can be twisted to justify such unconscionable slaughter, then this belief must be jettisoned from religious understanding.9 The risk inherent in retaining the belief simply is too great.

Thus it is asked, what facets of a Christian view of God can be highlighted in order best to emphasize continuity with non-Christian religions concerning encountering the Divine? In our time, when feminist or womanist theologies vigorously protest ostensible patriarchal oppression in Christianity, the fatherhood of God does not present itself as a likely candidate. Any reference to God that is male gender specific is open to the criticism that it may exclude female religionists from the depths of spiritual intimacy with God sought through worship. Likewise, the figure of Jesus Christ as the second person of the Trinity invites as much recognition of discontinuity as of continuity. Focusing on any single, historical person, who is revered as the founder or source of a religion, invariably generates debate concerning the validity of religions that refuse to recognize this individual. For this reason, attempts to present Jesus as the Christian point of contact to other world religions commonly turn to discussions of “the cosmic Christ” or the “Christic spirit.” Jesus of Nazareth becomes but one example of the Christ Presence that also is embodied in other religious geniuses such as Buddha, Confucius, Muhammad, and Ghandi.10 Jesus is only “a Christ” or one manifestation of “the Christ.”

In making this distinction, the concept of the Christ begins to take on a basically spiritual identity, and thus it leads to the third option—the Spirit. In the Spirit, we find a concept that avoids many of the rough edges associated with the Father and the Son when seeking peace among Christians and other world religionists. The Spirit easily can be detached from sexual identification and freed from attachment to any single historical figure. The Spirit is ubiquitous. The Spirit can reveal God and effect the divine purpose throughout history in all corners of the world. Christians may not easily be able to affirm non-Christian worship and engage in interreligous worship on the basis of the Father or the Son, but they may be able to do so through shared experiences of the Spirit. They further are liberated to learn from non-Christian worship because it is proposed that the Spirit has been active in those doxological traditions as well as in Christian practices.11 As some scholars contend, it is preferable to begin a Christian Theology of Religions (Theologia Religium) with the Spirit, not with the Father or the Son.12 Doing so provides perhaps the best option for creating an attitude among the great world faiths that protects against wars of religion.

When considered from this point of view, the interreligious worship service for the little girl mentioned in the introduction is a powerfully positive symbol. A Jewish father and a Gentile mother, joined by their Jewish and Gentile family, friends, and neighbors, were assembled to worship with each other, not to war against each other, in God’s Presence.

In responding to this argument in favor of the Spirit moving in non-Christian religions and their worship, we clearly must decry Christian involvement in actively or passively persecuting members of other faiths in God’s name. To the extent that the Shoah and the Crusades are examples of this activity, Christians openly should condemn them. Yet without excusing the church’s role in these events, we ought to resist interpretations of history that implicate Christians too generally and universally. During World War II, Christians in the Confessing Church drafted the Barmen Declaration in staunch opposition to both the Third Reich and the German State Church, which had acquiesced to Hitler’s influence. Many Christians risked and sacrificed their lives to shelter and protect Jews from the Nazis. Resisting Christians joined Jews in the death camps. With regard to the Crusades, to be sure, the church must own the bloody legacy of its knights slaughtering Muslims and Jews indiscriminately. Nevertheless, Muslims likewise had waged war against predominately Christian territories since the seventh century, subjugating the Middle East, North Africa, Spain, and seeking to conquer Europe.13 The Crusades are a single example of unacceptable Christian counter-jihad in response to Muslim jihad, which is commanded and praised in the Koran and the Hadith.14 Once again, Christian participation in these holy wars is not exonerated. We ought to be wary, however, of historical caricatures of Christianity in relationship to these events.

Second, an implicit assumption in this argument is that belief in the finality or exclusive truthfulness of Christianity inevitably eventuates in Christian suppression of other world religions. Though this course of action certainly has occurred, it is not logically necessary. Christians surely can, and often have, used their convictions concerning the truth of God in Christ as a motivation for improving the welfare of people regardless of religious affiliation. Fully devoted Trinitarian worship often has propelled the church into the non-Christian world to feed the starving, shelter the homeless, establish health care facilities, oppose social injustice, and halt the advance of tyranny.

Third, belief that valid and viable worship in Spirit and Truth is linked to Jesus Christ is a central impulse for Christian evangelism and missions. The Reformed tradition proposes that the highest purpose for human beings is that of bringing God glory and of enjoying God in His glory forever.15 That is to say, there is a fundamentally doxological center to Christian life. This doxological center that engages the Christian with God is to catalyze evangelism and missions to people living “without God in the world.” The hope of evangelism and missions is that others would join the assembly of God’s people who constitute the living, worshiping temple of the Spirit (Eph 2:12, 19-21). Through evangelism and missions, the church invites the world to enter worship in the glorious Presence of the triune God now and forever. Interreligious worship, by prematurely celebrating this goal with members of non-Christian religions, short-circuits the missionary means to this goal.16

2. The Spirit and Religious Experience

Though perhaps not apparent at first glance, this second rationale is related to the first. Contemporary culture and theology often places highest priority on experience as its final authority above all other authorities.17 When religious experience is taken to be ultimate, it becomes self-authenticating. For example, if my experiences in worship of what I consider to be God are my highest source of authority, then by definition they must be seen as authentic. For no other counter-claims against them from other authorities—such as sacred texts, doctrines, historical traditions, or rational arguments—can possibly overturn them, since these are understood to be lesser authorities. Hence, my worship experiences are self-authenticating because no other sources are highly enough respected to refute them.

Avery Dulles describes five types of revelation that may function authoritatively for Christian faith and practice: (1) Biblical and doctrinal data may operate authoritatively when they are taken to communicate or enunciate divine revelation. (2) Historical precedents in the church may be a vehicle by which God reveals His authoritative will. (3)

The presence of Christ as testified to by Scripture and the Spirit interacts dialectically with human beings to spark an encounter with God. This dialectic of Word, Spirit, and experience bears authority. (4) Inner experiences may be understood as direct encounters with God that become authoritative. (5) An individual may arrive at a new awareness or new sense of consciousness that becomes the benchmark for what is valid and vital above all else.18 When assessing non-Christian religions and their worship, Christians historically have emphasized the authority of Scripture, creeds, doctrines, and the history of the church beginning in the biblical period and continuing to the present (Models 1 and 2). Authorities such as personal inner experience and new awareness or new consciousness (Models 4 and 5) have been viewed as valuable secondary sources to be evaluated based on these primary authorities.

In our contemporary context, however, advocates of the new perspective on non-Christian worship tend to reverse the priority of these revelatory authorities. Inner experience and new awareness/new consciousness are elevated while Scripture, doctrine and history are diminished. This occurs for at least two reasons. First, if peace and unity among all world religions are of foremost priority, it must be acknowledged that the Bible, Christian doctrine, and Christian history often clash against core tenets held by other world religions in their worship practices. Attempts to dialogue rationally and intellectually based on these authority sources inevitably expose incompatibilities. For instance, Christians argue that God is three persons in one Being. Jews claim that God is one, apart from Trinitarian associations. Muslims view the Christian understanding of the Trinity to be idolatrous. Theravada Buddhists are altogether atheistic in their understanding of the Religious Ultimate. The Law of Non-Contradiction tells us that God simultaneously cannot be three-in-one, one-but-never-three, and not-at-all. Some religions must be wrong about God; therefore, they consequently may worship wrongly and their spiritual experiences may be flawed as well. Once one admits to the prospect that various religions are right or wrong about God, however, one again may open the Pandora’s Box to another Shoah, another Religious Genocide, by the religionists with the might to oppress those whose understanding of God differs. Since all avenues to these possible atrocities must be closed, it becomes natural to move away from scriptural, dogmatic, and historical authorities presented by way of rational dialogue and debate.

Second, in contrast the experiential and new awareness/new consciousness models become more inviting, for most religions share a common component of relating human experiences to God or the Religious Ultimate. If experience and awareness are deemed to be more valid than Scripture, dogma, and history, then a strong bond may be forged between the world religions. Mutual affirmation of the authenticity of religious experience among all religions becomes a shared, primary value. Corporate experiences in interreligious worship confirm that each worshiper’s approach to the Divine is true. Experience, it is said, moves us out of the pitfalls of conflict intrinsic to rational discussion about sacred texts or religious doctrines. It moves us into a deeper shared Reality.19

The ascendancy of religious experience in worship is quite compatible with a theology of the Divine Presence active in all world religions. The Spirit, it is claimed, is the Presence that mediates all human experiences of God. Both Christian and non-Christian efforts to engage with God through worship are used by the Spirit to create this new consciousness or new awareness in human souls. As devotees of the world religions gather to worship through the power of the Spirit, they will perceive a deeper unity in God’s Presence that surpasses each faith’s particular reflections found in sacred texts, dogmas, and historical traditions. Shared spiritual experiences become the first order of authority; rational explications about these experiences become the second order of authority, which then lose much of their power to divide the religions.

Applied to our opening example, if the attendees at the young girl’s memorial service had been asked to describe their understanding of the Divine Being and how one relates to that Being, a broad spectrum of explanations likely would have been given. With no doubt, many of these explanations would have logically contradicted each other. If, however, the congregation felt a shared experience of a religious nature, and if a new awareness of the value of life was revealed through honoring the dead, and if these occurrences tacitly were given highest priority, then logical contradictions no longer would have created an insurmountable barrier between worshipers. Their secondary ideas about God may have been hopelessly conflicted, but their primary experiences of the Divine Presence ultimately were united, it may be argued.

Christians who subscribe to the Reformation tradition may question this elevation of personal experience and new awareness as ultimate sources of authority. It strikes against the impulse of the Reformation on at least three central points. (1) It replaces sola Scriptura, the final authority of the Bible, by making religious experience ultimate. Instead of Scripture setting the parameters for what constitutes an acceptable experience of worship in the Divine Presence, experience tends to determine what aspects of Scripture will be acknowledged in support of experience. While it is true that how we worship affects what we believe, it is no less true that what we believe, based on the foundational authority of Scripture, should call for an accounting of how we worship.20 (2) Sola fidei, salvation by faith alone, is displaced by the experiential. To be sure, Christians should embrace the significance of experience for faith; nevertheless, the authority of human experience does not circumscribe faith. Faith circumscribes experience. In fact, sometimes faith will direct us to question our religious experiences in worship. (3) The authority of the priesthood of believers often yields to that of the priesthood of each individual. The community of those who gather together in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit no longer mediates and regulates true worship. Individual experience validates worship in the Spirit. Thus, a model of worship in the Spirit that views experience as supreme departs from the foundations of Reformation Christianity and its legacy. Upon brief reflection concerning the girl’s memorial service, we quickly may recognize that sola Scriptura, sola fidei, and the priesthood of believers all were marginalized in that worship event.

3. The Spirit and Universal Salvation

A third point that contributes to this emphasis on the Spirit-Presence active in all religions and their worship practices is tied to the idea of the complete salvation of all humankind, or “universalism.” While it is commonly affirmed that belief in universal salvation is a growing trend among scholars and ecclesiastical bodies, universalists offer a variety of views as to how God will accomplish this goal. (1) Some more pluralistic versions emphasize the idea that God works to establish salvation through many equally valid paths. (2) More inclusive versions claim that Christianity is the truest of all religions, but by grace God acts in and through other less adequate faiths (an in some cases, even through no faith whatsoever) to save all. (3) Another view proposes that Christianity alone is sufficient for reconciling human beings to God; nonetheless, due to the overwhelming victory of Christ on the cross, God unilaterally saves humankind in spite of its religious blindness and obduracy. (4) Still other expressions of universalism are eschatological. That is to say, when the human race encounters God face-to-face at the End, all people will see God an sich (in God’s Self).21 At that point, all will believe, and all will worship. Of course the unifying point to all these universalist approaches is that none shall be lost. Every human being, by one means or another, will enter the Presence of the Eternal forever.

The perspective that the Spirit operates through all religions and their attendant worship practices particularly complements models (1) and (2). These two models include the proposition that God acts in history, and particularly in religious history, to achieve salvation for all. Model (3) focuses on God accomplishing universal salvation in spite of human activity in history. Model (4) places the saving event beyond human history altogether by moving it to the eschatological domain. Those who espouse some version of model (1) or (2) often claim that a loving, generous, and merciful God, who pledges to save all people, would include them in this process during their earthly existence. A charitable God would not save merely in spite of human efforts, nor would a good God only wait until the End to involve humankind. No, through the Divine Presence, God presently acts in Christian and non-Christian religions alike to accomplish salvation. The omnipresent Spirit is said to work out the way of reconciliation in the here-and-now through the world religions.

If this is the case, it is posited, what better place is there to anticipate the work of the Spirit than in the worship practices of all religions? For is not worship the very activity whereby the majority of human beings reach out to encounter the Divine, seeking either salvation or union with what is Religiously Ultimate? Would not worship be the most reasonable place where we should expect to find the Spirit operating to aid human beings in this quest, which is God’s quest as well? Once this line of reasoning is accepted, it follows that interreligious worship services can present a vital means for members of all religions to share together in the Spirit, as the Spirit assists all in pursuit of this divine mission of universal salvation. Applying this again to our opening illustration, one may reason that if God wills to save both the little girl and everyone who attended her memorial service, the Spirit can be depended upon to have been active in that worship event. Human worship was used by the Spirit to mediate encounters with God, thus enabling the congregants to participate in God’s universal saving mission.

The major difficulty with this line of argument is that it presupposes universal salvation. If one refutes universalism, however, the rest of the reasoning crumbles as well. A God who chooses to save a portion of humankind, but not all, may be expected to validate and vivify the worship expressions of that portion via the Spirit. Would one, however, anticipate that the Spirit should operate to mediate encounters with God for the portion of humankind that is not to be saved? Not necessarily. In righteous judgment, God may relinquish fallen human beings to their preferences for forms of worship that are false and idolatrous. In mercy, God may move through illegitimate or inadequate worship practices to stir a thirst for worship that truly engages with God in Christ through the power of the Spirit. The Spirit would not likely validate and enliven direct engagement with God for those who operate beyond God’s particular plan of salvation, however.

It may be added that models (3) and (4) of universalism do not entail divine participation in human worship either. In model (3), God saves despite the idolatrous efforts of human beings to reach God. God reconciles all regardless of human rebellion that shuns the Spirit. In human history, only the church is the community of the Spirit at worship (albeit imperfectly). Likewise, model (4) leaves open the possibility that adherents to the world religions may worship falsely now, but they shall turn to worship truly when they encounter God an sich at the End. The larger point made here is that once the assumption of universal salvation that includes human participation in history is removed, so is the attendant belief that God’s Spirit is mediating non-Christian worship practices. If God is not committed to saving everyone who attended the little girl’s memorial service, then it is not incumbent upon God’s Spirit to endorse and enliven the religious experiences of each one.

4. The Spirit, Scripture, and Christian Imperialism

It is of note that in describing the previous three points in support of the Spirit-Presence establishing the adequacy of non-Christian worship, no reference to Scripture appears. One may fairly inquire as to what biblical evidence, if any, is most frequently used to sustain this position. After all, many proponents of the new perspective do identify themselves as Christians. As Christians it therefore is appropriate to ask how the shared authority and tradition of Scripture informs their view—or any view that claims to be Christian for that matter.

Some writers, such as Stanley Samartha, forthrightly acknowledge that Scripture does not offer adequate material for building a biblical case for acceptable non-Christian worship. Samartha instead argues that if the biblical authors were given opportunity to experience the great world religions at worship today, as we do, they surely would arrive at different conclusions from the ones found in the Bible. If miraculously transported into the present, the writers of Scripture would affirm worship among the great world religions.22 We may praise Samartha for recognizing the dearth of scriptural support for the new perspective. We should be more guarded, however, with regard to his anachronistic, hypothetical conjecture about interfacing biblical authors with contemporary times. Playing the counterfactual game of how historical figures might behave differently in another historical era is indeed interesting, but it is an insufficient basis for developing a theology of non-Christian worship.23

For proponents of the new perspective who do not take Samartha’s approach, John 3:8 certainly is the most cited passage to support the movement of the Spirit beyond the confines of Christianity. “The Spirit (wind) blows where it wills.” Alluding to this verse, Roman Catholic theologian Jacques Dupuis marvels at the Spirit’s movement, unconstrained by the temporal limitations of the historical figure of Jesus. The Spirit is unbounded by the space-time continuum. To be sure, the Spirit indwells the church; nevertheless, the Spirit also inspires “in people belonging to other religious traditions the obedience of saving faith.”24 It therefore is simply a slight to the Spirit’s divine liberty for Christians to presume that non-Christian worship is not a powerful vehicle for communicating salvation in relationship to God.

In a second example, the 1991 Baar Statement produced by the World Council of Churches states, “We affirm unequivocally that God the Holy Spirit has been at work in the life and traditions of peoples of all living faiths.”25 The Baar Statement supports this conclusion based on the liberty of the Spirit to blow where it wills (John 3:8). Paul Knitter, a Baar Statement author, later observed that a Spirit-centered basis for interreligious dialogue had replaced other dialogical approaches grounded in God, Christ, or salvation.26 The Baar Statement then became a foundational document for the Seventh Assembly of the World Council of Churches, which took as its theme, “Come Holy Spirit—Renew the Whole Creation.” It is noteworthy that the assembly featured a worship service in which spirits of suffering people and the spirit of the Amazon Rain Forest were invoked. These were presented as particular expressions of the universal Spirit blowing wherever it wills.27

If one affirms the creative and vibrant movement of the Spirit throughout the world based on a passage such as John 3:8, the Spirit cannot be regarded as the private possession of the Christian church. If Christians do not monopolize the unbridled activity of the Spirit, surely Christians ought not to imagine that only their doxological efforts to engage with God are indwelled by the Spirit. It is better to recognize the Spirit blowing in non-Christian prayers, meditation, songs, litanies, rituals, and so forth. To fail to acknowledge this viewpoint is tantamount to Christian imperialism, as Samartha trenchantly asserts:28

That all people are open to the activity of God’s Spirit seriously challenges a legalistic dogmatism which limits the work of the Spirit to a various segment of time, to an isolated bit of geographical location and to the history of a particular people. The Spirit of God cannot be regarded as the monopolistic possession of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, imprisoned within the steel and concrete structures of Western dogma and a permanent Atlantic Charter.

In order to avoid any appearance of Christian imperialism, theologians such as Amos Yong recommend that we regard Christ and the Spirit as the “two hands of God.” Both Christ and the Spirit equally represent God, but in different ways and to different constituencies. Christ is the hand of God that primarily reaches out to the church in its life and mission. The Spirit is the hand of God that not only influences the church; the Spirit further touches non-Christian religions.29 Using this approach, the church may retain its particular identity as the community of Christ, while it simultaneously affirms the general work of the Spirit in other non-Christian communities of faith. Christians may worship in the name of Christ and may confirm non-Christian worship in the power of the Spirit.

Returning again to the memorial service, if one accepts John 3:8 as meaning that the Spirit moves universally, beyond the bounds of Christ and His church, and if one sees particular linkage of the Spirit to the work of Christ through the church as imperialistic, it becomes nearly impossible to question the possibility of the Spirit blowing as it wills in the hearts and minds of all worshipers that day, regardless of their various beliefs. What is more, while gladly holding to the presence of Christ in their personal worship (one hand), Christians in the congregation could take comfort in the ministry of the Spirit to everyone else present (the other hand). In fact, would it not arguably have been most charitable to refrain from mentioning the one hand of Jesus Christ in reading Romans 8:31-39 in order to free the other hand of the Spirit in its ministry to all?

The weakness of this line of reasoning lies in its interpretation and application of John 3:8. Though a thorough investigation of the verse falls beyond this article, a brief consideration demonstrates that Jesus’ words do not indicate a global movement of the Spirit in and through the great world religions at worship. First, the Johannine context is distinctly Jewish. Jesus speaks with Nicodemus, a Pharisee and leader of the Jews, about an issue that he should understand, given his Jewish background (v. 10). It strains credulity to think that a leading Pharisee naturally would be expected to know that the Spirit moves to bring the world’s people into the Kingdom of God apart from any reference to the covenant people of God. It was commonly understood that God’s Spirit worked through Israel—not apart from Israel—to bring salvation to the world. One should not imagine that Jesus would have expected a Jewish leader to anticipate such a radical departure from the Second Temple Jewish understanding of salvation history.

Second, the Spirit specifically moves in order to achieve a second birth or a birth from above in the lives of men and women (vv. 3, 5, 8). Jesus is not making a generalized statement about the ever-present activity of the Spirit in all times and places. Rather, He indicates that human beings cannot control or harness the movement of the Spirit that brings people into this second birth from above. As the wind blows where it wills, beyond human control, so the Spirit acts with regard to everyone who is born of the Spirit. Being born of the Spirit then is tied specifically to “seeing the Kingdom of God” (v. 3) and to “receiving eternal life” (vv. 15-16). Experiencing eternal life in the kingdom occurs as individuals are saved by believing in Jesus, the Son of God and Son of Man (vv. 14-18). It may be concluded, therefore, that the ministry of the Spirit in John 3:8 is inextricably associated with the identity and ministry of Jesus Christ in the context of a Jewish frame of reference. These factors betray any simple application of John 3:8 to an unconditional freedom and universal mediation of the Spirit, as some progressivists claim.30

In addition to doubting the interpretation and application of John 3:8, we likewise should reconsider the image of Christ and the Spirit as the two hands of God. It indicates something of a “separate but equal” viewpoint regarding them. This understanding is seen as sympathetic to the Eastern Orthodox Church’s contention that the Son proceeds from the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father, but the Spirit does not proceed from the Son as well as from the Father. Western Christianity—in both its Roman Catholic and Protestant expressions—historically has held that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.31 This is to say that the ministry of the Spirit is integrally connected in witness to Jesus Christ as well as to God the Father. The Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus Christ, not the Spirit apart from Jesus Christ.32

Of course, stating that centuries of Western Christians have bound the ministry of the Spirit to both Christ and the Father does not automatically make this position correct. Perhaps the new perspective is right, in which case a loosening of the ties between the second and third persons of the Trinity is appropriate. Once these ties are relaxed, perhaps the plausibility of the Spirit mediating non-Christian worship apart from Christ is enhanced. We should be cautious about casually relinquishing the historic Western understanding of the double procession of the Spirit, however. The idea of the Son and Spirit as God’s two hands may be an appealing image of equability, but it also is a significant departure from Roman Catholic and Protestant doctrine. For if indeed the Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as the Father, and if the Spirit witnesses to the Son as the means of eternal life, then we cannot assume that the Spirit operates as a catalyst for non-Christian worship apart from Christ. In fact, by eliminating the name of Jesus Christ from the New Testament reading at the young girl’s memorial, the service officials were preventing the Spirit’s movement. They were compromising the Spirit’s freedom to witness to the Son, in whom salvation and true worship before the presence of God are to be found.

Conclusion

Underlying much of the rationale in favor of the acceptability of non-Christian worship and interreligious worship services is the contention that all doxological engagement with God is mediated directly by the Spirit. Worship for Christians and non-Christians alike is about “God and the soul, the soul and its God,” to borrow the phrase of the great liberal theologian, Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930). The Spirit represents an inner sense of “independence and immediacy of religious life and feeling, [an] inner union with God.”33 This direct, spiritual access to God or the Religious Ultimate overrides a model of worship that is necessarily Trinitarian. In fact, Harnack himself viewed the Trinity as a “alien element” that unnaturally intruded between this immediate relationship of human beings to God. While many of today’s supporters of non-Christian and interreligious worship might not comment as negatively about the Trinity as did Harnack, they nevertheless render the Trinity optional for valid and viable worship. In effect, a theology of Trinitarian worship is subsumed by a theology of pneumatological (Spirit) worship. Whether this Spirit of worship rightly should be identified as the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, is open to serious debate.34 If multiculturalism and religious pluralism continue to proliferate, as they most likely will, the church should anticipate that it will be pressed to relinquish its historic conviction that worship in Spirit and Truth is offered solely to the triune God, only by the mediation of the triune God, and exclusively in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.35 The church must resist these pressures and continue to give a clear witness to her Lord.

This article first appeared in Theology Matters, Vol. 8, No. 6 (Nov/Dec 2002).