The Other Hand Of God Summary

I choose to read “The Other Hand of God: The Holy Spirit as the Universal Touch and Goal,” written by Kilian McDonnell, monk, priest, and active contributor to ecumenical relations, because I have always been interested in learning more about pneumatology, which ia the study of the person and work of the Holy Spirit. I was also interested in reading this work because it was published in 2003, which makes it a more recent work compared to other suggested books for this assignment. Many scholars have stated that “The Other Hand of God” is an accumulation of McDonnell’s life work thus far.
“The Other Hand of God” discusses the theology of the Holy Spirit. It is an overview of the formation of the Christian doctrinal tradition concerning the Holy Spirit. It also poses many thoughts on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit for future theologizing. McDonnell integrates much of the top theology on the Trinity and pneumatology done over the past quarter century amongst his own thoughts
For McDonnell, pneumatology and Trinity go hand in hand. He begins his book by emphasizing this. McDonnell believes that as “Christ was the bearer of the Spirit, so the Christian as a bearer of Christ must also be a bearer of the Spirit” (47). The Holy Spirit is a part of the Trinity of equal importance to Jesus, as well as to God.
The second chapter of “The Other Hand of God” discusses the struggle of ambiguity when it comes to studying pneumatology. By definition, the Spirit is anonymous. He lacks a name, and therefore, revelation is unclear. This difficulty has been talked about over and over again. Hilary of Poitiers wrote, “Concerning the Holy Spirit we should neither be silent nor should we speak. But we cannot remain silent because of those who do not know him.” Although there is great ambiguity when it comes to studying the Holy Spirit, He is an integral part of the Trinity, and cannot be