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Michael Lodahl, in his book: Shekhina/Spirit: Divine Presence in Jewish and Christian Religion makes an important point which most of us forget. He is speaking about the history and the differences between the terms "Rauch, Pneuma, and Shekhina," when he says "these terms served as ways of referring to God's presence and activity, rather than to a being or beings hypostatically distinct from God." Indeed. Pneumatology is the study of the Evolution of the Divine Spirit within human history and the world. Lodahl, and others, are worried about Christianity's expropriation of the Holy Spirit by Jesus Christ and the dogma that stresses that the only way to the Spirit is thru Jesus. He is worried, in other words, that by freezing the Spirit in a hypostasis we are impeding the evolution of the Spirit. He writes: "The Doctrine of Christology, as well as pneumatology, suffered a significant loss with the triumph of a Logos-Son model of the Church's paradigmatic expression of Jesus' significance. For the same glorification of Jesus to the status of pre-existent Word, which emptied the notion of Spirit of any significant role in creation or redemptive history, also tended to tear the figure of Jesus out of the context of God's history with Israel and to place it in the alien context of a heavenly triad, Father-Son-Spirit." Nazi-Christians, he is saying, have been militantly guarding the notion of "the personality of the Holy Spirit," against a "liberal" interpretation of the Holy Spirit as a force, power, or an influence from god."

Paul Tillich has made the same point: "The Spirit of God is the presence of the Divine Life within creaturely life. The Divine Spirit is `God present'. The Spirit of God is not a separated being." Hans Küng calls the Spirit "the one who seizes man but cannot be seized." In her Feminine form the Spirit warns us again and again, that "No man may lift my veil." And of course we are taken with the sexual implications of God's nudity - but there is another take on this dictum. To lift the veil of god would show us god as god is at this moment - perhaps, like Mélusina, lying in her Saturday Bath - but god is Evolving, with man and the world, so to see god now would be to see god as an unfinished entity. God is not done. God has not found a final form. If we see god today then that is the god that men will worship. They will fall into the Mask of God and mistake that for the Face of God.

This is an analog to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. If you collapse the Omni-Omni into a historical Point then you can no longer know where the Spirit is heading. You may no longer read its Intentions. Leaving God whole means that we will have to live without a `permanent' Mask. The Spirit is a record of God's movement thru the world: Rauch and Pneuma are, at first, only words for wind, and breath. The Shekhina is the history of god's actions within the world - and here we come to the crux of the Postmodern dilemma: like Job, wondering why god would treat him so unjustly - we too must deal with the way our Geschichte merges with the World's Heilgeschichte. How can we reconcile History with God's Intentions in History? Was god at Auschwitz? Why does god allow Darfur to happen? When Yahweh takes his dick out of his Shekhina in Israel and replaces that relationship with the New Covenant with their Son Christ then the bridge between god and his people was broken. Is Auschwitz and Aids and all those starving babies with flies on their eyes the Blowback from this rupture? How does Modern Man reconcile God's active Presence in the World with George Bush and Dick Cheney? With Osama bin Laden and Mel Gibson, bathed in the Blood of the Lamb and shrieking like a Gull that the Jews are the cause of all war and all famine and all evil in the world? If the Spirit lives now, only in and thru Christ, what about the other religions? Is the only way to understand the Buddha to look for the "Hidden Christ" within him? And Islam? Is that Jesus with all that TNT and Plastique strapped to himself and boarding the Jewish school bus? Fundamentalists say Yes, with glee to the question about the Buddha, but they say that's Satan waitin' on the bus. While the rest of humanity shudders. Our age cries for a Menschenkenner who can unite these opposite notions of what is good and what is evil in man's world. But the closest we get these days to the Spirit is Elvis telling us: "You can do anything but stay off of my Blue Suede Shoes." Om Svatta Om.



		Michael Lodahl, in his book: *Shekhina/Spirit: Divine Presence in Jewish and Christian Religion* makes an important point which most of us forget. He is speaking about the history and the differences between the terms "Rauch, Pneuma, and Shekhina," when he says "these terms served as ways of referring to God's presence and activity, rather than to a being or beings hypostatically distinct from God." Indeed. Pneumatology is the study of the Evolution of the Divine Spirit within human history and the world. Lodahl, and others, are worried about Christianity's expropriation of the Holy Spirit by Jesus Christ and the dogma that stresses that the only way to the Spirit is thru Jesus. He is worried, in other words, that by freezing the Spirit in a hypostasis we are impeding the evolution of the Spirit. He writes: "The Doctrine of Christology, as well as pneumatology, suffered a significant loss with the triumph of a Logos-Son model of the Church's paradigmatic expression of Jesus' significance. For the same glorification of Jesus to the status of pre-existent Word, which emptied the notion of Spirit of any significant role in creation or redemptive history, also tended to tear the figure of Jesus out of the context of God's history with Israel and to place it in the alien context of a heavenly triad, Father-Son-Spirit." Nazi-Christians, he is saying, have been militantly guarding the notion of "the personality of the Holy Spirit," against a "liberal" interpretation of the Holy Spirit as a force, power, or an influence from god." Paul Tillich has made the same point: "The Spirit of God is the presence of the Divine Life within creaturely life. The Divine Spirit is `God present'. The Spirit of God is not a separated being." Hans Küng calls the Spirit "the one who seizes man but cannot be seized." In her Feminine form the Spirit warns us again and again, that "No man may lift my veil." And of course we are taken with the sexual implications of God's nudity - but there is another take on this dictum. To lift the veil of god would show us god as god is at this moment - perhaps, like Mélusina, lying in her Saturday Bath - but god is Evolving, with man and the world, so to see god now would be to see god as an unfinished entity. God is not done. God has not found a final form. If we see god today then that is the god that men will worship. They will fall into the Mask of God and mistake that for the Face of God. This is an analog to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. If you collapse the Omni-Omni into a historical Point then you can no longer know where the Spirit is heading. You may no longer read its Intentions. Leaving God whole means that we will have to live without a `permanent' Mask. The Spirit is a record of God's movement thru the world: Rauch and Pneuma are, at first, only words for wind, and breath. The Shekhina is the history of god's actions within the world - and here we come to the crux of the Postmodern dilemma: like Job, wondering why god would treat him so unjustly - we too must deal with the way our Geschichte merges with the World's Heilgeschichte. How can we reconcile History with God's Intentions in History? Was god at Auschwitz? Why does god allow Darfur to happen? When Yahweh takes his dick out of his Shekhina in Israel and replaces that relationship with the New Covenant with their Son Christ then the bridge between god and his people was broken. Is Auschwitz and Aids and all those starving babies with flies on their eyes the Blowback from this rupture? How does Modern Man reconcile God's active Presence in the World with George Bush and Dick Cheney? With Osama bin Laden and Mel Gibson, bathed in the Blood of the Lamb and shrieking like a Gull that the Jews are the cause of all war and all famine and all evil in the world? If the Spirit lives now, only in and thru Christ, what about the other religions? Is the only way to understand the Buddha to look for the "Hidden Christ" within him? And Islam? Is that Jesus with all that TNT and Plastique strapped to himself and boarding the Jewish school bus? Fundamentalists say Yes, with glee to the question about the Buddha, but they say that's Satan waitin' on the bus. While the rest of humanity shudders. Our age cries for a Menschenkenner who can unite these opposite notions of what is good and what is evil in man's world. But the closest we get these days to the Spirit is Elvis telling us: "You can do anything but stay off of my Blue Suede Shoes." Om Svatta Om.

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