Journal of Pentecostal Theology 20 (2011) 252–271 brill.

nl/pent

Theology of Religions, Universal Salvation,

and the Holy Spirit

Najeeb George Awad*

Missionsstr 3-5, 29320 Hermannsburg, Germany
najeebawad72@gmail.com

Abstract
This article is an attempt at viewing the doctrine of salvation from a trinitarian point of view by
shifting the focus of the inclusivist theology of religion from a traditional christocentric version
into a version that, rather than only being linked to christology, is substantially linked and fun-
damentally based on a trinitarian doctrine of God. By this focus, I attempt at promoting a the-
ology of religion that is based on the conviction that the non-christian religions can experience
God’s salvation by means of the particular work of the Spirit and not only by the work of the
Son. The purpose is to take christocentric inclusivism into a more biblically comprehensive
pneumatico-trinitarian attestation. In the Bible, the saviour of the world is the triune God as the
Father, who reconciles the world to Himself particularly by virtue of His Son but universally by
virtue of His Holy Spirit.

Keywords
theology of religions, trinity, soteriology, Holy Spirit

I Introduction

The dramatic events of Sept. 11, 2001 has re-invigorated politically and cultur-
ally a clash between nations and religious groups around the globe. Since it
happened, we started to hear an inimical language energised by a belief that the
existence of a certain religious community lies in subverting and defeating ideo-
logically opposing others.1 Extremists from both the Islamic and the Christian

* Najeeb G. Awad (PhD, Systematic Theology) is Lecturer in Systematic & Intercultural

Theology, EL Missionseminar, Hermannsburg/Goettingen University.
1
See an analysis to the political dimensions of the civilizational clash in today’s and near
future world: S. Huntington, The Clash of Civilization and the Remaking of World Order, (London:
Touch Stone, 1998), pp. 21ff. Huntington structures his analysis on a belief that the dominant
world view today is the one that is based on a Hegelian like conviction that one realizes who he

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI 10.1163/174552511X597143

 N.G. Awad / Journal of Pentecostal Theology 20 (2011) 252–271 253

campaigns started to propagate fundamentalist, exclusivist religious dogmas

that breed opposition and division rather than unity. Intolerant religious leaders
and followers from both sides divided the human race into ‘people of light’ and
‘people of darkness’, ‘people of truth’ and ‘people of aberration’, ‘people of faith’
and ‘people of sinfulness’, ‘people of God’ and ‘people of Satan’, and so forth.
These two fundamentalist attitudes (Christian and Islamic) inescapably
drive today’s theologians to rethink the doctrine of salvation in the Christian
Faith. It drives them to admit the necessity of rethinking the crucial question
of the universality of God’s salvific act: Is there salvation for non-Christians?
Should the understanding of the concept of salvation be exclusively based on
the conviction that reconciliation with God is limited to one, single salvific
mode or unitarian understanding of mediation? More specifically still, should
the Christian understanding of salvation be exclusively filiocentric or christo-
monistic in nature and scope? Should the agency of salvation be limited to
Jesus Christ, or could it also include other agents?
This essay is an attempt to offer some answers to the above mentioned
questions by developing a pneumatico-trinitarian reading of God’s salvation.
I will try to show that the biblical concept of salvation is primarily Trinitarian
in nature and the three divine persons are equally involved in pursuing it in the
history of humanity. I will argue that theology of religions can offer us a proper
framework for developing a more sound and coherent Trinitarian hermeneu-
tics of salvation if we shifted the focus of the inclusivist theology of religion
from a traditionally christocentric version into a version that is substantially
linked and fundamentally based on a trinitarian doctrine of God. By this focus,
I attempt to defend the argument that the non-christian religions can experi-
ence God’s salvation by means of the particular work of the Spirit, even when
they lack an access to the work of the Son. It is an invitation to take christocen-
tric inclusivism into a more biblically comprehensive pneumatico-trinitarian
attestation on the basis of the conviction that the saviour of the world in the
Scripture is the triune God as the Father, who reconciles the world to Himself
particularly by virtue of His Son but universally by virtue of His Holy Spirit.

II The Universality of Salvation Revisited

These questions, as a matter of fact, are not new in theology. We can see
them raised in various forms throughout the history of Christian doctrine.

is by knowing himself in contrast with his foe. Culture, according to him becomes the primitive
‘we’ that identifies us in our difference from the ‘they’ of the others (pp. 43ff).
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Roughly speaking, in the early church the question of the universality of sal-
vation was raised in the following form: Is salvation only by means of obeying
the Mosaic Law and becoming first a Jew? Paul’s and Peter’s debate in what is
usually called the ‘Jerusalem’s council’ was mainly about this issue (Act. 5.1-29;
Galatians 2). In the following centuries, the question became; is there any
medium of salvation other than or outside the church? And the answer that
most of the church fathers gave then was ‘outside the church there is no salva-
tion’ (i.e. extra ecclesiam nulla salus). At the age of the Protestant Reformation,
the question maintained its central place and was asked in the following way:
could reconciliation with God be experienced or achieved by means other
than, or from without, the Catholic Church? The Protestant answer was ‘yes,
the primal means of salvation lies in reality other than the church per se: sal-
vation is by the grace of Christ alone’. This originated the doctrinal conviction
that ‘extra christum nulla salus’ (without Christ there is no salvation).2
With the dawn of the Enlightenment up until the modern ecumenical era,
the awareness of other world religions has noticeably flourished, bringing
with it a renewed attention to the question of the universality of salvation.
The question of salvation has, more or less, been mainly spelled out as fol-
lows: Is reconciliation with the ultimate Being, the transcendental Truth, pos-
sible for all people in every religion? And, is there a restoration and goodwill
to human race outside the borders of Christian religion? More crucially, is it
possible to come to terms with the transcendent Deity by more than one
form of mediation?
The question then is a traditional inquiry. However, the issue of other
religions’ salvation, and the question of whether salvation is restricted to
one single mode of reconciliation or not, seems to be very central today in the
light of the increasing attention of recent theologians to the doctrine of the
Trinity. In the light of this attention, it becomes the more necessary to rethink
the accuracy of the claim of the universality and finality of salvation exclusively
on the basis of a filiocentric or christomonistic understanding of the Triune
God’s work in creation. Could God the Trinity, as three hypostases, be saving
the world, and could salvation be approached from various trinitarian angles
rather than from only the angle of the work of the second divine hypostasis?
What if the universality of the Christian understanding of salvation lies in the
dynamic economy of the three persons each one of whom, although united in

2
For a modern Protestant support of this statement, see: Eberhard Juengel, Theological Essays
(J.B. Webster (trans.); Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), I, pp. 173-88. Juengel basically responds
to Karl Rahner’s theory of ‘Anonymous Christian’ by strictly refusing the idea of ‘anonymity’ as
‘anything but felicitous’ language (p. 173) and then showing that it contradicts the scriptural
attestation.
 N.G. Awad / Journal of Pentecostal Theology 20 (2011) 252–271 255

essence, inaugurates an action that brings man into relationship with the
Godhead in a particular way? If this is the case, what if there is a substantial
role for the Spirit in the universalization of salvation more than it has so far
been acknowledged in Christian theology?
The inquiry whether the universality of salvation is trinitarian and, more
particularly, pneumatological in character or whether it is merely christo-
monistic or strictly filiocentric in extent is doctrinal and biblical in substance.
In this paper, I will tackle the issue from a doctrinal angle that tries to take
seriously into consideration the implications of the biblical attestations on
our understanding of the doctrine of salvation. This attention to the biblical
dimension is, therefore, done with the systematic and doctrinal aspects of the
theology of salvation and of God’s actions in history clearly in mind.
My interest in combining a biblical with a doctrinal analysis of the salvific
work of God stems from the fact that the fundamental traditional convictions
that are dominant among Christians are primarily derived from a certain read-
ing of the biblical texts. This reading claims that the biblical texts show that
God’s reconciliatory action is restricted to His work in Christ, or that becom-
ing a member of a Christian community is the precondition for enjoying
God’s salvation. In response to these two understandings of salvation, I will
try to highlight other scriptural aspects where salvation is approached from
the work of the other two divine persons of the Trinity, the Father and the
Spirit, in such a way that points to a dynamic and multi-faceted trinitarian
activity that prepares for, as well as continues after, the incarnation and
the ascension of the Son. These aspects do not replace or deny the value or the
centrality of the salvific meaning of the event of the cross. They rather place
this meaning within the realm of the influence of the other two divine persons
on the crucified Son. They also show how the Holy Spirit’s particular act
shapes the Son’s sacrifice and extends it into a universal and influential pres-
ence of a Triune God in and towards all creation from the beginning of his-
tory to the end of time.3

3
The systematic constructive approach to this issue could be achieved by first tracing the
doctrinal and philosophical development of the question throughout the history of theology.
This, then, would be followed by a defense of a Trinitarian rather than a christocentric approach
to the question of the universality of salvation. The christocentric trend of soteriology that runs
from Irenaeus and Athansius to Augustine and the Reformation up to Barth and Juengel in the
Twentieth Century, which basically one-sidedly emphasizes the ‘linear mediation’ model for the
trinitarian life of God at the expense of the ‘reciprocal koinonia’ model of the Trinitarian being
of God, should then be theologically corrected. I am still, anyhow, a systematic theologian who
is trying to deal with a theological issue from a biblical theology angle without hesitating to
incorporate the doctrinal debate whenever it is necessary.
256 N.G. Awad / Journal of Pentecostal Theology 20 (2011) 252–271

More crucial to me here is to show that the Scripture also speaks about sal-
vation by virtue of the Holy Spirit, not only or exclusively by virtue of the Son.
In other words, the evidence of Salvation’s universality lies in pneumatology
and not primarily in christology because salvation is a trinitarian reality.

III Basic Trinitarian Qualification

Before analysing some aspects of salvation by the help of the biblical attesta-
tion, there is a systematic question that inescapably needs to be addressed
first. In order to understand correctly the biblical attestation of God’s salva-
tion, we need to be clear about who is the agent of salvation in the Scripture:
Who is the saviour of the world, Christ or God?
The commonly held view is that such a question is sheer tautology. How
can one differentiate between God and Christ if Christ is God in Himself?
One of the premises, if not the ultimate conventional premise, in Christianity
is that Christ is the incarnate God. He is God’s revelation, God in the flesh;
and those who encounter Christ encounter God per se. Belief in Christ is as
much the Alpha and the Omega of Christianity as the concern about Christ’s
person. Asking if the saviour of the world is God or Christ would seem, there-
fore, as a troubling drift into one of the various old christological heresies that
were strictly rejected by the fathers of the church. By saying that the saviour is
Christ and not necessarily God, some heresies denied or undermined Jesus’
divinity, while by emphatically insisting that the saviour is super-human, oth-
ers turned Jesus into a vague being with an unreal humanity.
My inquiry if the saviour is Christ or God neither aims at denying the
orthodox christology of Chalcedon, nor aims at indirectly adopting one of
the naïve claims of the ‘Quest of the Historical Jesus’ school. It does not also
aim at separating Christ from the Trinity. It is rather because of the substantial
place of Christ in a Triune and not in a ‘monistic’ divine reality that this ques-
tion about ‘who is the saviour, Christ or God?’ is in the first place asked. The
discussion here is not, after all, about christology, but rather about soteriology
in its relation to the doctrine of God. This deliberate distinction (not separa-
tion) is just a trial to point to another Christian confession that has always
been parallel to the christological confessions in the history of doctrine. This
confession is that God is Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and not only
an incarnate Son or only a transcendent Father or even only an invisible
Spirit. While the church confesses that ‘Christ is God’ it also, and with equal
clarity, claims that ‘God’s Being is not exhaustively captured in or as Christ’.
It claims this on the basis of a twofold trinitarian belief that: 1) while
 N.G. Awad / Journal of Pentecostal Theology 20 (2011) 252–271 257

the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity, the economic Trinity is not
exhaustively the immanent Trinity. And, 2) while the three divine persons
work everything in unity, they are still three particular persons. Each has His
own particular influence and action over the other two and over creation in
such a way that demonstrates the surprising and unfathomable nature of
God. Christ is God in person, but God’s infinite Being is not exhaustively
captured as or in Christ. Christ points substantially and eternally to God’s
mysterious nature, but He does not reduce the Triune mystery of God into a
Son or into one single, historical manifestation or action, as if the Trinity is
three ways of being rather than the three hypostases.
It is not my purpose here to develop a systematic argument about the
dynamic nature of the triune community. But, it is necessary to point to a
crucial trinitarian qualification usually acknowledged by systematic theologi-
ans. Yves Congar, for example, disagrees with Rahner’s identification of the
immanent and the economic Trinities by asking: ‘We know that Jesus Christ
is God. But how is God Jesus Christ?’4 The same trinitarian qualification under-
pins Karl Barth’s argument about the specific historicity of revelation, show-
ing that no neutral observer who has no faith by virtue of the Spirit can
historically apprehend the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.5
This trinitarian qualification was also affirmed in the church fathers’ reli-
ance on an apophatic accent to speak about God as ‘mysterium tremendum’, as
an infinite reality that is both in and also beyond (not behind) anything we
may apprehend about God’s substantiation in history. This does not make
God a hidden, isolated reality or enigma, but rather a being who is in his very
disclosure a triune infinite reality. While the Trinity is authentically and directly
revealed in this historical Man, Jesus of Nazareth, neither the triune being of
God nor the dynamic personhood of the three hypostases that appears in
their active, reciprocal koinonia are exhaustively limited or exclusively defined

4
Y. Congar, The Word and the Spirit, (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1986), p.93. Congar is
here using this argument to support the effective impact of the Spirit on the truth of God in the
Son. He is supporting a Christology that is based on a sober attention to Pneumatology more
than traditional ways of studying the doctrine of Christ, e.g. Logos Christology, have paid before.
5
K. Barth, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of the Word of God, (Edinburgh: T&T Clark,
1936), I.1, p. 373. ‘Thousands may have seen and heard the rabbi of Nazareth. But this histori-
cal element was not revelation. Even the historical element at the resurrection of Christ, the
empty grave regarded as an element in this event, that might possibly be fixed, was certainly not
revelation’. That is why there is a slight difference between Barth and Rahner’s trinitarian under-
standing of the revelation. While Rahner believes that the eternal Trinity and the historical
Trinity are totally the same, Barth seems to be maintaining an extent of qualification by saying
that the eternal Trinity is the historical but the opposite is not totally so.
258 N.G. Awad / Journal of Pentecostal Theology 20 (2011) 252–271

by virtue of the activities of the incarnate Son alone. The activities of the Son
need also the work of the Spirit in us and in him and the witness and the
power of the Father to become revelatory for the world.
On the basis of this trinitarian qualification to the concept of revelation we
can re-view the question of the universality of salvation from a wider trinitar-
ian standpoint. We can redefine salvation as a multi-faceted divine activity
that is executed as well as shaped by the particularity of the actions and inter-
actions of three divine persons with the world. More specifically, we would see
that in the Bible the saviour of the world is the triune God as the Father, who
reconciles the world to Himself particularly by virtue of His Son, but univer-
sally by virtue of His Holy Spirit. It was necessary to point to this brief doctri-
nal qualification before the biblical analysis. It would show that the following
scriptural reading does not aim at denying salvation in and by Christ but
rather aims at pointing to the wider pneumatological aspects and trinitarian
bases that make the universality of salvation possible.

IV The Holy Spirit and God in the Old Testament

The trinitarian nature and the pneumatological dimension of salvation appear

clearly in the Bible’s attestation of God’s activity as a personal and dynamic
God. Both the Old and the New Testament show that God’s relation to the
universe is not restricted at all to the mediation of the Son or to the Messiah.
In the Old Testament, we have an undeniable speech about the relation of
the Spirit (Ruah) with God the Father of all creation and the YHWH of Israel,
more than we may have about the relation of God with His messiah. We have
a God who breathes His Spirit toward people, toward His prophets and
toward the whole creation. In Gen. 1.2, the Spirit is the agent of God who
hovers over the primeval waters. This does not only point to ‘origination’ but
also designates the act of bringing things from the state of nothingness into
the state of life. In the Old Testament’s thought, this action means deliverance
from void; it means salvation.6 The same idea is attractively implied in

6
According to C. Westermann, it basically means bringing things to life by giving them
‘spirit of life’ (nismat hayyim). Also, creating humanity by the Spirit means that God breathes
His spirit (nismat YHWH) in humanity so that human being is ‘someone’ quickened into life as
emerging from being ‘just something’: C. Westermann, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary, John J.
Scullian. SJ. (trans.) (London: SPCK, 1984), p. 206. For ‘breath’ in Hebrew, read: G.J.
Botterweck; H. Ringgren; H.J. Fabry (eds.), Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (Grand
Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans publishing Company, 1999), X, pp. 65-70. Westermann believes that
this understanding has dominated since Philo up until today. He refers to the contemporary
 N.G. Awad / Journal of Pentecostal Theology 20 (2011) 252–271 259

Gen. 8.1, where YHWH sends His Spirit to blow over nature so that the
flooded water subsides and life starts to flourish all over the world, turning
things again into living beings. This act of bringing things from nothingness
into life by the Spirit is another expression of God’s restoration and salvation
of the world from its chaos and death. In other words, the act of creation ex
nihilo in the Old Testament is substantially an action of salvation.7
The same conception continues in the prophetic literature. Isaiah 63.11-
14, for example, depicts the Spirit as someone to whom the execution of
God’s deliverance of His people from slavery is ascribed. The book in general
clearly claims that the Spirit’s work is what primarily makes God ‘creator’ and
‘Lord’ for creation.8 In other words, God’s creation is not saved by a messen-
ger or an angel, but by God Himself.9 These texts’ speech about the Spirit’s
work is an expression of salvation from the mediatorial work of the Spirit of
YHWH, on the basis of which the servant of the Lord (messiah) is enabled to
embark on his mission of healing the suffering, righteous people of God. Max
Turner even believes that the metaphorical language expressive of the Old
Testament view of the relation of the Messiah with the Spirit of God tends at
depicting a ‘Spirit-anointed Messiah’ rather than a Messiah who bestows the
gift of the Spirit to others.10 If this was true, then one can view the suffering
servant texts of Isaiah as attestations about the Spirit who is the real agent of

scholar, A. Dillmann, who says: ‘And so we find here the specific difference between humans
and the animals, i.e. when the breath of life is breathed into humans it means that what is com-
municated to them personally is not merely physical life but the life of the Spirit’ (p. 207).
7
Amos Yong smartly reminds us that while Genesis 1 portrays God as speaking the world
into existence, it also shows that speaking requires breath, requires ‘ruah’, to take place by attest-
ing to the Spirit that ‘swept over the face of the waters’ (Gen 1. 2): Amos Yong, Beyond the
Impasse: Toward a Pneumatological Theology of Religions (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic/
Cumbria: Paternoster Press, 2003), p. 36. This does not, moreover, only prove the role of the
Spirit in creation, but also depicts a salvific function for this Spirit. Salvation here is the act of
bringing existence out of chaos, out of meaninglessness, out of void. Creation itself in Genesis 1
is an act of salvation.
8
Westermann renders this ‘the first step towards the employment of “Spirit” in relation to
God in which each and all of his acts can be attributed to his Spirit or to God’s Holy Spirit’: C.
Westermann, Isaiah 40-66: A Commentary (London: SCM Press, LTD. 1969), p. 389.
9
This association of salvation with the Spirit indicates, as Joseph Blenkinsopp says, that the
Spirit is a hypostasis who also reflects God’s salvific face: Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 56-66:
A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (The Anchor Bible; New York: Doubleday,
2003), pp. 260-61.
10
Max Turner, ‘The Spirit of Christ and “Divine” Christology’, in Joel B. Green and Max
Turner (eds.), Jesus of Nazareth Lord and Christ: Essays on the Historical Jesus and the New Testa-
ment Christology (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans/ Carlisle: The Paternoster Press, 1994),
pp. 413-36, pp. 419-20.
260 N.G. Awad / Journal of Pentecostal Theology 20 (2011) 252–271

YHWH’s salvation, not only for the people, but also for the messianic servant
himself.
One can say, in conclusion, that the messianic sacrifice of the suffering serv-
ant of God is pneumatological in foundation in the Old Testament.11 This in
turn paves the way for seeing in the Old Testament an indication of the
Spirit’s initiative role in the messianic liberation rather than an indication of
the Spirit’s fulfilling responsibilities as one of the messianic fruits. It shows
that the glorious name of God is made from the work of the Spirit in or
through the messianic servant, and it is not yet from the messiah’s work first.
Isaiah 42.1 and 48.16 also support this trend when they speak about the serv-
ant of the Lord who is first overshadowed and guided by the Spirit, and Isa.
59.21 demonstrates that the Spirit is God’s sign of reconciliation that starts in
the past and would last until the end of days.

V The Holy Spirit and the Trinity in the New Testament

In the New Testament, we have a clearer hint to the divine agency of salva-
tion that is indicative of more than one mode of trinitarian mediation. 2
Corinthians 5.18-19 says: ‘All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself
through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: That God was
reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against
them and he has committed to us the message of reconciliation’. On the other
hand, Col. 1.19-20 says: ‘For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in
Him, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on
earth or things in heaven’. And, 1 Cor. 15.28 adds: ‘When he has done this,
then the Son himself will be made subject to Him who put everything under
Him, so that God may be all in all’.
It is interesting that these verses combine the following claims together:
First, there is a claim of Christ’s central agency in reconciling the world to
God. In other words, Christ is claimed as a primal means for salvation.
However, we also have parallel to this a belief that Christ is also a tool in the
hands of a prior agent of salvation, namely the Father: God is reconciling the
world to Himself through Christ. The trinitarian mode of mediation is here

11
According to Brian Gaybba, Isa. 32.15-17 is one of the most interesting and earliest refer-
ences to the Spirit’s eschatological salvific role that illustrates the process of salvation from the
Spirit by means of showing the Spirit’s role in anointing the ideal king (Isa. 11.2-9) who would
later on become the promised Messiah: B. Gaybba, The Spirit of Love: Theology of the Spirit
(London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1987), pp. 7-8ff.
 N.G. Awad / Journal of Pentecostal Theology 20 (2011) 252–271 261

pointing to salvation from the Father through the Son. It says that it is God
the Father’s reconciliation and salvation first and foremost, for at the end of
days everything, even the Son, would be submitted to God. The Son Himself
points to this by proclaiming in His submission that the Father is the saviour
of all, and He alone is in all and for all.
Other New Testament texts add to the previous dimension an attestation
about the Holy Spirit’s salvific agency towards the whole world. They present
a mode of trinitarian salvation that starts from the Spirit by stating that justifi-
cation is also the role of the Holy Spirit for us and even for the Son (e.g. 1
Tim. 3.16; Rom. 4.25; 8.11; 1 Pet. 3.18; 1 Cor. 6.11). They show that the
Spirit is ‘central to the very substance of God’s salvation through Jesus
Himself ’,12 and suggest that the Spirit’s coming to the world is more than just
a consequence of the cross of Calvary or only ‘the fruit of the crucifixion’.13
The Spirit’s coming is as such an inaugurating salvific power by which Jesus
Christ was personally led, empowered, justified and raised from the dead.
Max Turner also points at this direction when he correctly connects the
New Testament’s ‘the Spirit of Christ’ to the Old Testament’s ‘the Spirit of the
Lord’, and denies any subordination of the Spirit by means of reducing Him
into an expression of Jesus’ lordship (i.e. something James Dunn, for instance,
is emphatic about). Turner denies such reduction by means of showing that
the association of the Spirit with Jesus’ lordship aims at pointing to Jesus’
divinity, his ontological origination from and equality with the divine heav-
enly God. This is an attempt to exceed Jewish monotheistic soteriology into a
notion of salvation that is based on an inclusive view of God as a triune
reality.14 This not only proves the divine nature of Jesus by virtue of his lord-
ship over the spirit, it equally shows that within the trinitarian understanding
of God that exceeds monotheism, the Spirit is more than just a non-divine,
mediating power between God and the human creatures. It prevents the

12
Lyle Dabney, ‘Justified by the Spirit: Soteriological Reflections on the Resurrection’,
International Journal of Systematic Theology 3.1 (2001), p. 51. Robert Menzies, furthermore,
reveals that most of the biblical scholars generally acknowledge this soteriological dimension in
the early pneumatologies of the primitive church, Pauline literature, and even in the post-Paul-
ine texts. See R. Menzies, The Development of Early Christian Pneumatology (Sheffield: JSOT
Press, 1991), pp. 17-49. Menzies personally disagrees with this consensus and argues that only
Paul’s Pneumatology was basically soteriological in emphasis, whereas the primitive church’s was
‘charismatic’ and the one of Luke-Acts was ‘prophetic’. Even if this claim is correct, it does not,
in my view, negate the existence of a soteriological understanding of Pneumatology in the
Scriptures, although it may limits its scope.
13
For example: Thomas Smail, Reflected Glory: The Spirit in Christ and Christians (London:
Hodder and Stoughten, 1975), p.106.
14
Turner, ‘The Spirit of Christ and “Divine” Christology,’ pp. 423-24.
262 N.G. Awad / Journal of Pentecostal Theology 20 (2011) 252–271

identification of the Spirit with Christ to such an extent that unwittingly

makes the New Testament’s phrase ‘the Spirit of Christ’ a designation of a
form of a ‘christified Spirit’.15 Turner believes that this applies to Pauline
literature as well, despite its central and prior christological orientation.
‘While Paul most certainly believes that “Christ” is experienced through the
Spirit’, Turner argues, ‘no text reduces this to an identification of Christ and
Spirit’.16 In the best case scenario, ‘the Spirit of Christ’, as Turner continues,
‘means the Spirit who mediates the presence, character, redemptive activities
and role of Jesus Christ, in a way analogous to that in which he mediates
God’s’.17 There is nothing, therefore, to indicate that the Spirit only designates
a spiritualized form of the personality of Jesus, or Jesus spiritually personified
post-ascension.
It is quite accurate to say that linking the charismatic renewal work of the
Spirit to the redemptive death of the crucified protects the spiritual life of
the believers from mistaken subjectivist approaches that direct them toward
their own personal feelings (i.e. in a sort of a Kantian and a Schleiermacherian
fashion) rather than directing them toward the Lord of the church. However,
it is also necessary to realize the scriptural conviction that the redemptive
death of the Son is itself the fruit of a Fatherly inclusive and extensive recon-
ciling concern that proceeds primarily from the prior agency of the Holy
Spirit. In other words, the coming of the Spirit is the consequence of the
Father’s salvific purpose, and not only the outcome of the resurrection and the
ascension of the Son. Salvation is not, then, ontologically restricted to one
divine person but belongs to the Triune reality and infiniteness of the three
hypostases of God.
Some like to argue against the previous claim by saying that claiming that
the Spirit’s role is only a consecutive completion of the redemption that has
already taken place on the cross can be supported by the Gospel of John’s
understanding of the relation between the Son and the Spirit. According to
this argument, Johannine language is formed in a ‘binitarian’ way that notice-
ably states the inseparability of the Spirit’s main role from the role of the Son,
and the responsibility of the Spirit in reflecting the Father to Man only from
the revelatory initiation of the Son. The Son, therefore, promises to send the

15
Turner, ‘The Spirit of Christ and “Divine” Christology,’ p. 427. ‘It is only if Jesus’ active
‘lordship’ of the Spirit is disclaimed, and if the risen Christ is formally identified with the Spirit,
that ‘the Spirit of Christ’ is in danger of being understood merely as the Christified Spirit or as
Lamp’s Christ-Spirit.’
16
Turner, ‘The Spirit of Christ and “Divine” Christology,’ p. 429.
17
Turner, ‘The Spirit of Christ and “Divine” Christology,’ p. 434.
 N.G. Awad / Journal of Pentecostal Theology 20 (2011) 252–271 263

Paraclete to His disciples after His departure in order to continue the work
He has already started.
In contrast to the previous, I would suggest that chapters 14-17 in the
Johannine gospel do not deny a salvific role that would proceed from the
Spirit after the departure of the Son, but they rather implicitly assume it.
They show that the Spirit has a particular mission that is distinct from the one
of the Son and not limited to it as if a copy or an automatic representation of
what has been already done. There is in the Gospel of John an allusion that
God’s trinitarian work in history is multi-faceted in form.
John 17.6-7 catches the attention in this respect. In his final prayer to His
Father, Jesus says: ‘I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the
world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your
word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you’.
It is worth pondering that these words are about people who are already
‘God’s people’, and the Father gave them to His Son. Now, regardless of the
various perspectives of the Old Testament’s concept of ‘God’s people’, and
regardless also as to whether Jesus here refers to the twelve or to the wider
group of his followers, there is here an interesting indication that there are
people who were already granted the possibility of being related to God with-
out being first given to the Father from or by the Son.
According to the doctrine of salvation, human beings should first become
the followers of Christ in order to be, by virtue of this affiliation, from the
kingdom of God. In other words, there is no access to the Father except by
being first given to God from the Son by virtue of His salvific work. In the
conventional understanding of Salvation, God’s work is always depicted
according to a linear model of mediation that always departs from Christ (i.e.
‘from the Father to the Son through the Spirit’, or ‘from the Son to the Father
in the Spirit’). Because of this, the doctrine of salvation is denied its function
as part of the trinitarian discourse about the totality of God’s reality that is
supposed to be reflective of a more reciprocal model of trinitarian relational-
ity. The doctrine of the triune God, which is the foundation of any theological
understanding of faith, claims a form of trinitarian relationality that is accord-
ing to a ‘reciprocal koinonia’ or ‘perichoresis’ between the Father, the Son, and
the Spirit. This model extends the boundaries of the linear mediation of ‘from
the Son’ and allows for a parallel commissioning and response between the
Father and the Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity states an internal corre-
spondence between the three divine hypostases in terms of ‘from the Spirit’
that should also be relevant to the doctrine of salvation.
In the Johannine text to which I refer, there is an interesting implication
of a slightly distinct salvific process that may allude to the aforementioned
264 N.G. Awad / Journal of Pentecostal Theology 20 (2011) 252–271

reciprocity between the Father and the Spirit in the Trinity. We have a group
of people who already and primarily pray to God, and God gave them to His
Son. How did those people reconcile with God and how did they become the
Father’s before He gave them to the Son? Now let us recall Jesus’ saying in Jn
14.17 to his disciples that the Spirit of truth ‘dwells in you’. The present tense
here may mean that the Holy Spirit is already active in God’s relationship
with people even before Jesus redemptive death and glorification. It is not suf-
ficient according to this possibility to say that the Spirit’s presence with the
disciples is only caused by Jesus’ presence and is conditioned by Jesus’ passing
on the Spirit to the disciples. Here we have the New Testament’s attestation of
a salvific function that starts from the Spirit, that has already begun in the
Old Testament and that will complete the Father’s reconciliatory work in the
Son in the future; even the Gospel of John does not deny this aspect as we can
see from Jesus’ farewell discourse. This discourse speaks about the Spirit who
will reveal the complete truth and make clear things that the Son could not (Jn
14.25-26). If the possibility of the followers of Jesus being already God’s
before even the Son gives them back to the Father, and if what we exposed of
the Old Testament’s Spirit of YHWH’s role in recreating and renewing God’s
creation before the coming of the Messiah, are both tenable, then the Spirit’s
presence and action are not confined to the presence of the Messiah but pre-
cede this presence and have their arche in the Father.
Be that as it may, those whom Jesus claims to be already the Father’s were
brought into God’s community by the work of His Spirit; the Spirit who
according to the Old Testament, recreates and empowers God’s people and
guides the suffering servant in a mission of deliverance and healing for their
own sake. We have, so to speak, an access to the Father that presupposes
another prior and distinct reconciliatory work done by God but in a different
way from the work that would be done by the Son on the cross. There is then
an implicit allusion to the possibility of reconciliation with the Father prior,
or even parallel, to reconciliation by virtue of becoming from the people of
Christ. This is alluded to via the Son’s declaration in his prayer that after they
became His community, those people realized that they did not belong to
Him but rather to God and that they were originally given to the Son from
His Father.
The interpretation of the conversation between the Father and the Son in
John 17 ought not then to ignore this pneumatological aspect in relation to
the people that God gave to His Son. The Johannine gospel as such affirms
the necessity of the attention to the redemptive role of the Spirit when in
Jn 16.8-11 Jesus personally says that the Spirit is the one who will prepare
the hearts of the sinners for the new birth by convincing them of their sin.
 N.G. Awad / Journal of Pentecostal Theology 20 (2011) 252–271 265

Apart from this role people ‘would never be convicted about their sin or their
need to repent and turn to God’.18
John 17.6-7 may need an interpretation that is more sensitive to a possible
particular work of the Spirit in those people before they become Christ’s.
It may not only allude to the centrality of the trinitarian action from the
agency of the word of God, Jesus Christ;19 it may also contain a possibility of
an understanding that points to a triune activity wider than the one that
steams from the relation of the Father and the Son. It may profoundly point
to a more dynamic reciprocity in salvation and allow for a trinitarian action
that starts from God’s free Spirit and exceeds the boundaries of any single
salvific mode. Here comes, in other words, the importance of the New
Testament’s attestation of the eschatological nature of the triune salvation that
is reflected by and in the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit.
The Johannine attention to the Spirit’s mediatorial role that is coming from
the cross ought to be integrated, therefore, with: 1) the aspect of the ministry
of the Son as an outcome of the leadership of the Spirit according to the will
of the Father, and 2) with the Spirit’s justification of the incarnate ‘God’ in (1
Tim. 3.16). These three models of mediation are complementary from a doc-
trinal and hermeneutical point of view. Even if the Johannine text speaks
about the Spirit’s continual work only and strictly from the death of the Son,
other texts speak about the Spirit’s inaugural work before the death of the Son.
And the first epistle to Timothy speaks about the Spirit’s profound and radical
role in the death of the Son, or even about justification from the Spirit. The
three models, after all, are concentrically expressive of a trinitarian dynamic
and agency of reconciliation.
Christologically speaking, the Spirit’s coming to us should be preceded by
the redemptive work of the crucified, because the Spirit, as Tom Smail cor-
rectly says, cannot come in our un-reconciled state unless it is first restored
by the atoning death of Christ.20 This christological necessity is basic in the

18
Amos Yong, Beyond the Impasse: Toward a Pneumatological Theology of Religions (Grand
Rapids: Baker Academic/ Cumbria: Paternoster Press, 2003), p. 39.
19
This is how these verses are usually interpreted. See, for example: Rudolf Bultmann, The
Gospel of John: A Commentary (G.R. Beasley-Murray (trans.); Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publishers,
1971), pp. 497-99. C.K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John: An Introduction with Commen-
tary and Notes on the Greek Text (London: SPCK, 1965), pp. 257-58. George R. Beasley-Murray,
John (Word Biblical Commentary; Waco: Word Books Publishers, 1987), p. 298.
20
Smail, Reflected Glory, p. 111. Smail himself, after all, could not deny that: ‘It was because
the Spirit of the Lord was upon Him [i.e. Christ] that He went to Calvary…it was the hostile
reaction of the Jewish ecclesiastical authorities to the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in His
ministry that sent Him to the cross’ (p. 113). In a recent, unpublished paper represented at
266 N.G. Awad / Journal of Pentecostal Theology 20 (2011) 252–271

context of the relation of the Spirit to the body of Christ, the church. How-
ever, this dimension is one among others, like: ‘the Son’s incarnation and
ministry were executed by the Spirit’, and ‘the Father’s sending of the Spirit to
sanctify us is accompanied by a parallel commission of the Spirit to raise the
Son from the dead’. Both are as central and constitutive dimensions for sote-
riology from the angle of the trinity as the first christological one.21 It is more
methodologically accurate to perceive the Holy Spirit from a ‘theological’, or
more accurately ‘trinitarian’, and not only ‘christological’ point of view.22 This
alone places the Spirit’s role within its trinitarian framework by claiming a
vital role to the Spirit that is parallel to and reciprocal with the role of the Son
and not a complementary role that is either conditioned by the one of the
Son or only a reflection of it.23

VI The Promise of Pneumatological Theology of Religions

Is the emphasis on the salvific role of the Holy Spirit that points to the trini-
tarian substance of soteriology a denial of the central salvific role of the Son?
Not at all. It is rather a relocation of the filial dimension of salvation in its
foundational trinitarian framework in order to: 1) make God again the ulti-
mate ground and the absolute end of salvation, and 2) to argue that what
makes salvation universal is the fact that reconciliation is not only done ‘from
the Son to the Father’ but done ‘from the Spirit to the Father’ as well. It is a
reminder of that the two arms of the Father are both actively and consistently
in action in creation.
In the Protestant theological circle, a strong theological call for developing
a theological approach to Christian theology of religions like the one I pro-
pose here comes from the Pentecostal theologian, Amos Yong. In his book

King’s college Systematic Theology Seminar, fall term, 18/11/2003, Smail transpires as sharper
attention to the Spirit’s role in the atonement of the Son by supporting a trinitarian view of the
atonement and arguing that we should not undermine the intrinsic connection between the
doctrine of God and the doctrine of the atonement. We should rather point to the Trinity’s
communal act of salvation where each acts inseparably with and in the others without His par-
ticularity as a divine person being denied.
21
Mary Thompson recently uses John 14-17 to show that even in the Gospel of John the
Spirit’s close and direct company with the Father makes their role in relation to the Son and to
us overlap and interchange: M. Thompson, The God of the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids: W.B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001), p. 183.
22
Thompson, The God of the Gospel of John, p. 184.
23
Thompson, The God of the Gospel of John, p. 185.
 N.G. Awad / Journal of Pentecostal Theology 20 (2011) 252–271 267

Beyond the Impasse: toward a Pneumatological Theology of Religions, Yong pre-

sents a theologically fresh appreciation of the universality of the work of the
Holy Spirit through the cultures and religions of the world. Departing from a
Tillichan understanding of the phenomenon of religion as an expression of
‘the state of being grasped by ultimate concern’, Yong proposes that theology
of religions is the field of study that aims at understanding human religiosity
in relation to God or to a theistic framework. And, when what is done is
Christian theology of religions, then the theistic framework is based on the
Christian experience of Jesus Christ and His Spirit.24 And, when Yong
attempts to use this experience in developing a theological view of other reli-
gions, he decides to follow in specific a pneumatological hermeneutic that is
prominent in the Pentecostal and charismatic circles of theological reasoning,
yet not restricted to it fully. Why did Yong resort to this option? Because,
as Yong himself argues, ‘pneumatological theology is a robust Trinitarian
theology’.25 It balances in theology the one-sided traditional emphasis on
either the Father (patrocentrism) or the Son (christocentrism) by engaging
the Holy Spirit in the theological reflection on God and bringing God’s tri-
une nature centre-stage again.
Furthermore, Yong follows a pneumatological track for understanding
theologically the relation between Christianity and other religions because the
Holy Spirit represents in Christian faith the one who combines together
the universal with the particular. The first is in the Spirit’s relation to God
the Father, and the second is in the Spirit’s relation to Jesus Christ. It is only
from the angle of the Spirit one can perceive how God’s salvation, which was
particularly achieved in the salvific work of the Christ of the Church, is also
universally inclusive by virtue of the Spirit of all other people who are not
part of the community of Christ.26
From the angle of the particular-universal, on one hand, and the triune
nature of God’s salvation, on the other, the pneumatological theology of reli-
gion that Amos Yong calls for concurs with my proposal in this essay. Neither
of us is pluralist, nor inclusivist in a narrowly christocentric sense. We rather
call for an inclusivism that, as Yong eloquently states, ‘affirms the ontological
normativity of Christ for salvation without insisting that persons who have
never heard the Gospel or verbally confess Christ have absolutely no hope of

24
Yong, Beyond the Impasse, pp. 16-17.
25
Yong, Beyond the Impasse, p. 20. For more detailed exposition of Yong’s understanding of
pneumatology in relation to the Trinity, see A. Yong, Spirit-Word-Community: Theological
Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective, New Critical Thinking in Theology and Biblical Studies,
(Aldershot, UK/ Burlington, USA: Ashgate, 2002).
26
Yong, Beyond the Impasse, p. 21.
268 N.G. Awad / Journal of Pentecostal Theology 20 (2011) 252–271

this great salvation’.27 How can one depart theologically from such an inclu-
sivist approach to God’s relation (salvation included) with His creation? Yong
and I both suggest that this can be achieved by viewing the work of the Holy
Spirit as reflecting God’s trinitarian, and not narrowly christocentric, pres-
ence and activity in creation. This Spirit of God is given this foundational
significance and basicality in the scriptural attestation’s speech about the tri-
une work of the Spirit in creation, re-creation, and new creation.28
This biblical view of the comprehensive role of the Spirit in the triune
God’s salvation history shows methodologically that no theology can be fully
Trinitarian unless it was genuinely pneumatological in foundation.29 This for
sure not to mean that while the trinity needs pneumatology to be coherent
and complete, pneumatology stands fully and independently on its own with-
out the doctrine of the trinity. Far from such pneumatocentrism, Yong’s argu-
ment and mine states that the link between pneumatology and the trinity is
mutually constitutive of their discourses. The emphasis on the Holy Spirit
neither aims at marginalizing the Son for the sake of the Spirit, nor at ‘divorc-
ing’ and ‘putting a distance’ between christology and pneumatology.30 It aims
instead, as Yong says, ‘to capitalize on the relational and mediatorial resources
of pneumatology rather than “forget” the “silent member” of the trinity as
previous generations have done’.31 It aims, that is, as Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen

27
Yong, Beyond the Impasse, p. 27.
28
Yong, Beyond the Impasse, pp. 36-42.
29
Yong, Beyond the Impasse, p. 42.
30
Tony Richie is perceptively correct in his critique of James Merrick’s reading of Amos
Yong’s pneumatological theology of religions from this inappropriate angle of separating chris-
tology from pneumatology. Rather than this, as Richie accurately says, Yong is rather giving
‘more initial attention to pneumatology as a way of overcoming christological stumbling blocks
that may derail dialogue before it ever gets started in order that subsequent conversation about
christology may actually have even richer results’: Tony Richie, ‘The Spirit of Truth as Guide
into All Truth: A Response to James R.A. Merrick, “The Spirit of Truth as Agent in False
Religions? A Critique of Amos Yong’s Pneumatological Theology of Religions with Reference to
Current Trends”’, in Cyberjournal for Pentecostal Charismatic Research (January, 2010): http://
www.pctii.org/cyberj.
31
Yong, Beyond the Impasse, p. 43. I have developed a comprehensive theological defense of
the hypostatic individuation of the Holy Spirit and rejection of the traditional consideration of
her as ‘the silent member’ in my, yet unpublished doctoral dissertation, which is titled
‘Pneumatology and the Defense of the Hypostatic Individuation of the Holy Spirit: Examining
the Validity of Trinitarian Theology on the Basis of a Comparison and a Scrutiny of Eastern and
Western Pneumatological Perspectives,’ (PhD. Diss. Systematic Theology, King’s College,
London, 2006). For my complete thesis on a pneumatico-trinitarian theology of religion see my
publication in Arabic language, Najeeb G. Awad, ‘Does God Save the Non-Christians? On the
Universality of the Divine Salvation’, in George Sabra (ed.), Toward a Contemporary Arabic
Theology (Cairo: Dar-Althakafa), pp. 341-445.
 N.G. Awad / Journal of Pentecostal Theology 20 (2011) 252–271 269

perceptively realizes in his reading of Yong’s thesis, to go beyond ‘the limits of

a christological starting point, which finally leads to exclusive particularism’.32
Ultimately, the pneumatological hermeneutics of the trinity aims at discern-
ing God’s work by means of both of His arms together and inseparably. So,
if the Son is the revelation of the imago Dei, the Spirit is ‘the life-breath of
the imago Dei in every human being and the presupposition of all human
relationships and communities’.33 And, if the Son’s salvation is what grace-
fully turns humanity into the realm of the divine will and purpose of the
Father, the Holy Spirit is the agent of sustaining providentially all the reli-
gions of the world according to the Father’s will.34 It is the Holy Spirit who
can by virtue of this role take Christian theology of religions into its fully
Trinitarian end because in the Spirit we have an expression of the divine pres-
ence that exceeds limitation and spatio-temporality and extends towards the
whole universe without threatening God’s transcendence and otherness by
any static form of visibility.35
In this pneumatico-trinitarian theology of the Spirit, we have a Protestant
theological promise of a tenable combination of the patristic logos-christolo-
gy’s inquiry about the core of the incarnation’s message on the nature of God
with the spirit-christology’s inquiry about how God’s salvation include the
whole world. The foundation of this combination is the conviction that the
Word and the Spirit are, as Yong says, ‘related dimensions of being’.36 Beside
the Son, the Holy Spirit is the other divine person of the Trinity by the power
of whom God could also bring the whole creation and reconciles every human
being to Himself, regardless of the religious, sectarian, cultural, ethnic, his-
torical, and conceptual identifying boundaries, and without making any of
these boundaries a prerequisite for His relation with humanity.

32
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, An Introduction to the Theology of Religions: Biblical, Historical and
Contemporary Perspectives (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003), p. 278 (pp. 277-281).
Kärkkäinen personally believes that in order for theology of religions to remain pluralist in its
acknowledgment of the other religions in the world, yet also free from the deflections of Strict
Pluralism that undermines the differences between the religions and over-emphasizes common-
alities, theology of religion must be trinitarian in nature and should emphasize equally the role
of the Holy Spirit in relating God the triune to the world and to the church and not only within
His eternal being. See on this Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Trinity and Religious Pluralism: The Doctrine
of the Trinity in Christian Theology of Religions (Aldershot, UK/ Burlington, USA: Ashgate, 2004).
33
Yong, Beyond the Impasse, p. 45.
34
Yong, Beyond the Impasse, p. 46.
35
Kärkkäinen, An Introduction to the Theology of Religions, p. 279.
36
Kärkkäinen, An Introduction to the Theology of Religions, p. 280, citing from A. Yong,
Discerning the Spirit(s): A Pentecostal-Characteristic Contribution to Christian Theology of Religions
(Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), p. 122.
270 N.G. Awad / Journal of Pentecostal Theology 20 (2011) 252–271

VII Conclusion

Is there reconciliation between God and man without one becomes first a
Christian? Yes, there is a chance for the non-christian world to enjoy God’s
blessings and God’s Being by coming into relation with God through the per-
son of the universal Spirit. The Spirit reflects the universality of the triune
God who loves and communicates His truth to every man in every culture
and religion in every time and place. The Spirit profoundly extends the limits
of the historically bounded salvation of the Son taking it beyond the multi-
faceted human borders and making God’s presence actual in the whole world.
The Son’s specific work is perfect and sufficient for those who met God
from the Son and then realised by His grace the divine power of the Spirit.
This re-connection with God has not yet been completed (although it was
perfectly effective) and it will not become so unless the triune God eschato-
logically reconciles the whole non-Christian world to Himself and grants
humankind from every religion or culture a dignified and full humanity. This
dynamic nature of the salvific action of the triune God that is yet to be com-
pleted is what the church fathers has always acknowledged by calling the
Spirit the ‘perfecting cause of the Trinity’,37 or ‘the image and likeness of God’
in humanity,38 or the enlightening and revealing God.39 Or, when they also
realised that salvation is substantially omniscient because the Holy Spirit is
omniscient,40 and taught us, accordingly, that the person who belongs to God
is not only the member of Christ’s church, but more substantially the one in
whom the Spirit indwells as a living icon that reflects God’s openness and
respect to the other in his very difference.
Becoming religiously Christian is not the pre-requisite for reconciliation
with God, for God’s desire for everyone’s salvation (1 Tim. 2.4) is actually pos-
sible by the Holy Spirit’s deep reflection of a Triune saviour who is in Christ
but who is also revealed in the Spirit. When we rather take the work of the
Spirit, who blows wherever She pleases (Jn 3.8) and reaches humans every-
where, anytime, and in every situation (Ps. 139.7) into consideration we can

37
Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001),
Ch. 8, pt. 36, 38.
38
Tatian, Admonition to the Greeks, in A. Roberts; J. Donaldson (eds.), Anti-Nicene Fathers
(Peabody: Hendrickson, 1995), II, pp. 13-20.
39
Athanasius, The Letters Concerning the Holy Spirit (C.R.B. Shapland (trans.); London:
Epworth Press, 1951), pp. 109-111.
40
Gregory Palamas, The Triads (ed. John Meyendorff and Nicholas Gendle; London: SPCK,
1983), p. 89.
 N.G. Awad / Journal of Pentecostal Theology 20 (2011) 252–271 271

dispense with the question of: Who is saved and who is not saved, or whether
there is salvation for non-Christians or not. Yes, there are ‘Christians’ and
‘non-Christians’ in the world and there should always be. This should not
allow for an identification of ‘christian’ and ‘saved’. This identification is theo-
logically, leave alone humanly, dangerous and existentially unrealistic, for not
every religiously christian is good or righteous, and not every humanly good
and righteous is christian in belief and values. God does not call us in the first
place to reduce His creation into ourselves. God rather calls us to transcend
ourselves, as He asked His Son to empty Himself and become human, by the
power of the Holy Spirit.
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