The Holy Spirit is the least discussed person of the Trinity, in part because Scripture’s records of the Spirit are complex, elusive, and surprising. Even so, it is to our detriment to shy away from the Spirit’s enigmatic nature, for the Spirit’s abounding activity and presence flow forth from the Godhead in myriad ways. The sixteen essayists featured in Naming the Spirit don’t shy away in the least; they labor to identify specific aspects of the Holy Spirit in order to see how the Spirit is alive in art and artmaking. None of these writers nor the collection’s editors waste time justifying their project. Instead, they simply “get on with the business” of studying theology through art and art through theology, contributing to the rich interplay of the two.

With some variation, each essay in the collection accomplishes two tasks: it first names and discusses a specific aspect of the Holy Spirit’s life and work, then explores how such activity connects with, is illumined by, or is manifested within a work of art. These artworks include, among others, an early Syrian Christian illuminated manuscript, contemporary installation work by Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson, the films of Terrence Malick, Native art, African American spirituals, a poem by Ross Gay, and landscape art. In a refreshing approach, the artworks are not mere illustrations but centers of conversation in the relationship between art and theology. Encountering a theology of the Holy Spirit in conversation with particular works allows readers to concretely engage with the movements and person of the Spirit.

The collection opens with Steve Guthrie’s discussion of the Holy Spirit as Pneuma, saying, “All that lives [lives] by the Breath of God.” This everywhere, all-encompassing God is the God of “mystery and knowledge,” Guthrie says, preparing readers for the revelation and limitations that come in attempting to understand the Spirit. Notably, this essay introduces the theme of reciprocity: the Spirit gives breath and the capacity to breathe, and we exhale in worship and in “answering breath.” In the life of the Spirit, this involves “allowing breath to become shared dwelling,” a theme developed with insight and artistic sensitivity in a subsequent piece. Fittingly, that chapter is followed by one exploring the Holy Spirit’s gift of breadth, of wide spaces in which to move freely and in community.

Indeed, freedom is communal, several writers posit, and defined by respect for others and by interdependency, rather than a singular will to act for one’s own self. To wit, Jennifer A. Craft and W. David O. Taylor, in considering landscape architecture and healthy ecosystems of diverse plants, offer that “making a space for particularity to flourish . . . is intimately tied up in the expression of diversity . . . that impose[s] limits on freedom even as it empowers the expression of one’s own particularity.” As several authors note, this respect for otherness arises from the Holy Spirit’s own activity. One’s selfhood is not lost in one’s yes to God, Chelle Stearns says, for “the Spirit . . . honors the capacity of human flesh and material existence to participate in and with God in an unexpected mutuality.”

This presents a contradictory tension: as one becomes more particular, shouldn’t one be less uniform? Here again, however, several writers find that the Spirit refuses such simple oppositions. Instead, they present examples in Scripture (such as Pentecost) and in artworks wherein multiple identities are connected and bonds forged without losing their distinctiveness. In the conjoining, a new, third reality is made. Take, for instance, Amy Whisenand Krall’s reveling in the song, “Hope for Resolution,” which braids together “Of the Father’s Love Begotten,” an ancient plainsong chant, and “Thula Sizwe,” a South African protest song. Each retains its characteristics of style, language, and recognizable music, even as their integration creates something new. The ability of a listener to hear this work as two distinct pieces in a cohesive, surprising unity animates one’s understanding of the work the Spirit does among us. The Spirit, Craft and Taylor identify, “frees the many to be in right relationship to each other,” as “particularity is never an end in itself [but] for the sake of an ecology of right relatedness.” Agreeing with this vision of the Spirit’s work, Erin Shaw and Taylor Worley offer insight into the interconnectedness of things, advancing a view of shalom as, “‘communal, holistic, and tangible. There is no private or partial shalom. All must have shalom or no one has shalom.’”