Pentecost: something new under the sun
Stephen Curkpatrick

Pentecost is a reversal of Babel. It represents understanding instead of confusion, gathering instead of scattering and a focus on grace as the ultimate reality of human life instead of perpetual quests to make a name that can give a cohesive focus to human existence.

Pentecost is a vision of extraordinary hope and possibility for the human community. This vision counters the perennial experience of Babel—hubris given over to confusion, competing demands and blame that persist within and between human communities.

Pentecost is a reversal of everything that Babel represents. Here as elsewhere in the narrative, Acts conveys what can be within a Christian vision for humanity. Yet in the face of perpetual quests for identity and security—a name, this vision can falter when it is not also celebrated as a triune or perichoretic possibility for human life—that is, dynamic and intimate communion.

Pentecost is confused with Babel when the fresh reality inducted in Pentecost is obfuscated in groping for a name—even within Christian communities.

Pentecost is an ever present possibility for human life; its potential diminution is also present as vying factions seek to secure a political or ecclesial identity in a name. Yet humans will not discover through a church of vying alliances that their existence belongs to a source beyond itself.

The church can easily become a cacophony of competing voices immersed in the limited possibilities of human life and its attempts to make something enduring of life within tangible phenomena however rich and colourful. As a result, Pentecost is glimpsed in fragmentary, even ambiguous ways. For many, Pentecost is only ever explicitly recalled within a liturgical cycle.

Nothing is new under the sun unless something new occurs under the sun. Pentecost makes explicit that something new has occurred under the sun. For Christian memory, Pentecost is the recognition that no durable amelioration of human self-compromise can occur without the resources of grace and the transformation it gives.

v

Babel is a perennial scene of securing a name in the face of scattering and demise—let us make a name for ourselves or we will be scattered. The attempt to make a name is given over to the effects of hubris also present in securing a name—confusion and scattering, as social and tribal entities seek a common identity in the face of potential dissolution and anonymity.

Language is the possibility of communication, yet in Babel it becomes the very occasion of scattering and competing names and voices. This is a scene of conflicted hospitality—at once seeking the universal through one language in the name of accepting others with their diverse languages (Derrida). Ironically, the quest for a common language of communication also becomes a story of assimilating difference in the name of hospitality.

This is also the conflicted scene of religious hospitality where the levelling of religious traditions in a quest for universal ideals negates particular expressions of human identity and experience. Such levelling, in forging a universal accord of assumedly shared religious values, also stimulates the reassertion of particular dialects before the prospect of being subsumed under a common name.

A perennial impetus for one language is inscribed in the desire to allay unwieldy diversity, which in turn generates a focus on a name and its authoritative endorsement—even as socially correct ideals.

The quest to establish a political, social or religious vision—a name—around which the human community might cohere is a seemingly plausible aspiration. Yet it is a flawed aspiration that too easily conjures the scene of Babel—confusion of tongues.

The human thesaurus of competing values and interests represents too many voices to be assimilated into a coherent chorus of peace and goodwill. Human particularity resists integration within a universalising vision, however it is named. The Babel cycle of quest for a common name and confusion is relentless.

History gives repeated testimony to Babel as an appeal to forge a common name and its refusal—identity and resistance, generating endless reassertions of Babel’s scene of confusion. The quest for identity, even in the name of hospitality, is inevitably met by resistance in the name of identity peculiar to every human dialect.

Pentecost recalls the unbridgeable abyss between human finitude and divine grace, that when forgotten, is troubled with the confusion of Babel every time.

v

Pentecost represents a new possibility for human identity—unambiguous understanding through uncompromised translation and reception. Pentecost is a unique message, not of any faction or tribe in assertion of identity but a word otherwise of grace—unique because the word of God, yet heard in a diversity of tongues.

Pentecost is the miracle of hearing a word otherwise than the many on human life—one word transcending all words, heard in a diversity of human dialects, as one community in the Spirit of God.

Pentecost gives a story of universal meaning and destiny—a theological vision—articulated in the tongues of many human tribes. Without this story, every tribe vies for a place under the sun.

The Christian vision of human community and communication in a diversity of tongues is focused in Christ as the word from the beginning—a word beyond our resources, yet heard in every mother tongue. This transformative word gives impetus to tangible relationships across differences as a possibility within the Pentecost miracle of life imbued with the Spirit of God.

Pentecost is only possible within triune reality in which one focus, Christ the Lord, is realised in unique expressions of personal life in the Holy Spirit (Lossky). One language, the word of God, is heard in every dialect across human differences through the Spirit.

Pentecost is the very antithesis of Babel, even within the church. It transcends mere tolerance of difference. Pentecost makes explicit the transformative possibility of grace. The holy, upright and good is inscribed on hearts for triune hospitality, not on prescriptive ledgers that generate blame and counter-blame for the inevitable follies of humans in their mortal fragility.

Any diminution of Pentecost through the quest for a Christian name among competing names—social, political or religious—will only yield Babel effects. It is the diminution of grace focused in Jesus Christ and a word that is heard otherwise in the Spirit, for these alone can give the Pentecost possibility within human life.

We assume we are familiar with our essential humanity and are therefore authorised to consolidate it under one name. Yet the Pentecost vision of community and communication is exposure to a reality given in a word that is not defined or settled by any human discourse. This word is heard in exposure to the reality of God as triune and the source of grace necessary for integral humanity.

v

Pentecost is the difference between God’s future becoming our reality and Babel, in which our vociferous, conflicted assertions of reality, even as religious, give a constricted horizon for the future.

As a vision of the future, Pentecost is also the remembrance of past cul-de-sacs of confusion and scattering that can only be ameliorated by a future that comes from God instead of a limited surveillance of human life. Babel is a vision forged from the past.

In Pentecost, the future comes to us from beyond the many trajectories that can be projected from human attempts to gather a community under one name or universal contract. Pentecost comes from the future. It gives humanity a new voice for the future.

 

References: Derrida “Sauf le nom”; Lossky The Image and Likeness of God