I just received word today that my second paper proposal to the 2020 Society for Pentecostal Studies annual meeting was approved. I submitted the following proposal to the Ethics Interest Group.
“Bonhoeffer Meets Macchia: Toward a Pentecostal – Pneumatic and Embodied – Christocentric Ethic”
This study will propose to bring two theologians’ Christologies into conversation toward a pneumatic embodied ethic centered in Christ as the embodied and enspirited Son of Man. While Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christological foci and most specifically his Ethics have been mined for their own contributions, a number of his insights (regarding Word, Church, history, world, the ultimate, and the real) are brought into conversation with the recent constructive Christological contributions of Pentecostal theologian, Frank Macchia (particularly in his Jesus the Spirit Baptizer: Christology in Light of Pentecost). Bonhoeffer’s rejection of principlizing ethics and focus upon the real, the ultimate, that is the Christ, offers a welcome conversation partner for those seeking to discern an ethic within the Christocentric full gospel message of Pentecostals. This conversation offers overtures drawn from the Christocentric ethic that Bonhoeffer began to envision, but which Macchia might fill out further with insights drawn from the Spirit Baptizer at Pentecost. Thus, the ethics of Bonhoeffer are drawn into a constructive ethical movement with insights from Macchia’s Spirit Baptizer Christology as a means of explicitly Christocentric-enspiriting of the Christocentric embodied ethic of Bonhoeffer. This movement provides a re-envisioning of ethics centered in the Christ of the full gospel emphasizing the manner in which Jesus as Spirit baptizer speaks to faithful/faithfilled response-able living for God and world.