Humanity, Culture, and the Spirit

Team Members/Contributors

Néstor Medina Regent University School of Divinity Contact Me

About this first book grant for scholars of color

This book retraces the historical debates concerning the relation between culture and religious faith. In light of the present reconfiguration of the world by way of migration, media and communications technology, and worldwide radical epistemological shifts, I argue for a reorientation of our understanding of culture as crucial to being human and essential for the divine-human interaction. Since all aspects of the human experience are mediated by culture, including the way humans engage the divine, “culture” can be considered theologically as a site of divine pneumatological activity. Drawing on Latina/o and Pentecostal scholars, I reexamine traditional approaches that create a wedge between culture and religious faith/Christianity, and, instead suggest that, the role and impact of culture in/on religious faith is so profound that it allows us to discern divine activity in the most mundane aspects of human existence. I propose that the divine Spirit’s activity in culture can be understood as a continuation of the divine kenosis expressed in the human person of Jesus.

In the first section I examine key figures from specific historical points in the history of Christianity in order to illustrate how questions of the relation between culture and faith have been central concern since the inception of Christianity. I show how the emergence of Contantinianism resulted in the confluence of European culture and Christianity, even as to become undistinguishable during the various expressions of European imperial project. In the second section I explore some of the key theologians who have engaged these questions and show how they operate with inherited Eurocentric notions of culture as civilization. And in the final section, I offer my theological perspective drawing from the Latina/o theological tradition and specific Pentecostal authors, insisting that the divine activity in culture can be understood as a pneumatological cultural kenosis.

Image Title Year Type Contributor(s) Other Info
Christianity, Empire and the Spirit 2018 Book Néstor Medina