Welker, Michael. God the Spirit. 1st English-language ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994.

The Author – Michael Welker

Welker is the Director of the Research Center for International and Interdisciplinary Theology at the University of Heidelberg.

This book has had a significant impact on my research. The key ideas that I glean from Welker are that the Spirit is pluriform and polycentric. In other words, the Spirit takes on many different forms (pluriform) throughout the world, depending upon the place and situation. The Spirit, also, flows from many centers (polycentric), and thus cannot be contained or narrowly defined by one theological construct. The spirit is the field from which theological constructs flow.

Key Quote: “Their sensuality, naturalness, and finitude–in other words, their fleshliness–is not bracketed out or disparaged in this process. Instead God enlists its service.”

These are the initial notes I took as I first read this book in Craig Van Gelder’s class The Hermeneutics of Leading in Mission.

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