Inscribed Text from Pannenberg following the 'divine light'
Faith
and Reality Pannenberhg
III
The Spirit of Life p. 22
The last phrase would seem
to associate the divine Spirit with
those fruitful winds which renew the vegetation in spring. Yahweh's Spirit had in fact taken over this function
from Baal, who appeared in storms and bestowed fertility.
The life-giving activity
of the divine Spirit is the horizon for
all other functions which the Old Testament attributes to the Spirit of God. That is true especially
of charismatic phenomena. Not only prophetic
vision and inspiration but the work of the artist, the poet's language and the
hero's deeds require a special bestowal of the Spirit of God. These charismatic
effects are not however to be seen in isolation, but have to do with the
same Power which inspires and animates all life. The charismatic effects are only quite outstanding instances of fulness
of life. Because they display especially intensified forms of life, they must
partake to an extraordinary degree of the divine Spirit.
In a similar way Paul's
notion of the new life of the resurrection depends on the traditional understanding
of life as the product of the divine power of the Spirit. Ordinary life is not yet life in the full sense of the word,
because it is transitory. Living beings in the world as it is share only to a
limited extent in the power of life, because (according to Gen 6.3) God has
decided that his Spirit should not
be wholly effective in men; for man is only flesh, and for that reason the time
of his life is limited. When he dies, 'the dust returns to the earth as it was
and the Spirit returns to God who gave
it', as Ecclesiastes says (9.7). That does not of course suggest any immortality
of the human soul, but instead its dissolution into the divine Spirit from which it came. Paul found a
reference to the limited nature of earthly life in the Genesis account of the creation
of man, since it tells only of a living being or soul originating in the creative
breath oflife. For Paul, that meant that the living being brought forth thus
was distinct from the creative Spirit
and this fact explained the transient nature of our present life. Because our life
in the form ofa soul or as a living being is separated from its origin in the
creative Spirit of God, it is subject
to death. Hence the question of another life can arise, of a true life that is
still connected with its origin in the Spirit.
That is expressed in the Pauline idea of the resurrected life which will be one
with the
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