Atmospheric Rivers of Living Water and Tongues of Mega-Fire: Pneumatology in the Age of the Anthropocene

In Christian theology, the Holy Spirit is described as the Giver of Life. At the same time, in both anecdotal testimony and scriptural record, the Holy Spirit is associated with periods of Kairos. Its presence is felt in extremes of experience. It is a creative force that intervenes to make change: from the Spirit that hovered over the deep in the creation story, to the sparks of fire and wind that entered the bodies of the apostles on the Pentecost to give birth to the Church universal. For centuries, Christian theologians have been driven by concerns of configuring the Holy Spirit into the Trinity more neatly, often as a helpmate of the Christ and overseer of ecclesial community. In various ways these configurations have been both satisfying and unsuccessful, carried out under the weight of Jesus’s prudent observation that “[t]he wind blows where it chooses” (John 3:8). In some cases, the image of Spirit as advocate has triumphed as a scriptural starting point from which to configure what I will describe as a pneumatology of social services. It (or more often “she”) becomes the benevolent comforter of the vulnerable. In other cases, the Spirit remains wily and somewhat aloof, invoked as an eternal wisp that works in and through the mysterious realms of human love and language and nature at large—in the resonating notes of the Sunday morning choir and in the pleasure elicited by bird song and mountain vistas. 
A question then arises for the twenty-first century theologian: as the earth enters a great extinction event (its sixth) and Homo sapiens sapiens faces the likelihood of perishing as a species, how do our various historical pneumatological configurations now serve us?  In this paper I will ask questions about the Holy Spirit’s role in the process of extinction. I will argue that to maintain a working pneumatology in the Kairos event of the sixth great extinction, the Giver of Life must also be read as inhabiting a paradoxical role as a Giver of Death, an advocate for the cyclical renewal of the Creation, for what is sustainable and “good,” human or otherwise. At the center of my argument is the contention that Christian constructive theologies have always been configured with the erroneous belief that the phenomenon we describe as the Trinity functions at its foundation with and for humanity’s flourishing. I will challenge this long held assumption about God’s preferential option for humanity. I will also put forward the observation that it is time for theologians to constructively approach the dissonance between human-centered soteriological configurations (organized around a Homo sapiens on a cross) and the understanding that if there is an eternal, its dance with the temporal life of the universe is hardly dependent upon the presence of humanity. This investigation is accompanied by the following questions: Is it possible to harmonize mass extinction (and particularly human extinction) with traditional Christian theology? How might a direct look at the Anthropocene extinction in relation to Christian scripture and doctrine help humans reconcile with finitude (to borrow a word from Paul Tillich’s vocabulary)? Do Christians have the imaginative capacity (and humility) to celebrate a God and a creation that continues beyond the epoch of Homo sapiens? And, on a materialist level, how might such a theological reckoning help to counter a trend in fundamentalist Christianity in the United States that schizophrenically embraces climate denial, climate rapture, and an ideal of human supremacy that is in fact twinned with white supremacy? I seek not so much to arrive at definitive answers to these questions as to begin a pneumatological investigation that holds space for spiritual intuitions and scientific facts in the midst of the most dire challenge of human history.