W. Pannenberg Spirit of Life 'special bestowal of the Spirit of God'

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