Jesus the Spirit Baptizer: Toward a Pentecostal Christology

Abstract

In pouring forth the Spirit, Christ fulfills his mission to baptize others “in the Holy Spirit.” In so doing, he also opens himself to history, to his ecclesial and cosmic identity, in a new way, but in a way that is faithful to that which has gone before. Though fundamentally defined by his own sojourn in the Spirit to Pentecost as the divine Son of his Father in flesh, victorious over sin and death, he is now, at Pentecost, to be experienced in contextually diverse ways. Pentecost is therefore the pivot point from the Christ as bearer of the Spirit who gave himself for the salvation of the world to Christ as the one who pours forth the Spirit so as to take humanity in all of its diversity up into the divine communion. In what follows I will attempt to sketch in broad strokes my thoughts on Christology.