this can be understood both christologically and pneumatologically. On the pneumatological plane, however, when read in the light of ancient Israelite perspectives (above), humans are pneumatically interrelated not only with one another but also with non-human animals since all of life throbs with and through the breath given by the ruach of God. In this sense, Christian mission is thus always and primordially missio Spiritus. But there is one more layer to pneumatological mission theology of creation that should be lifted up before turning to the doctrine of redemption. Divine redemption is required because although the ruach Elohim both hovered over the primordial waters and became the breath of life for all living creatures, nevertheless with the fall of creation, the cosmos and all of its creatures remain alienated from God the Creator. Paradoxically, then, the ruach Elohim is both present to all creatures – enlivening and vivifying the creation – and yet also absent from them – in the estrangement creatures feel towards other creatures and to their Creator – simultaneously. In anticipation of this redemptive work, then, the promise is given in the Hebrew Bible that God will redeem the world pneumatologically through the chosen or elect nation of Israel. There are two moments constitutive of such a pneumatological promise. First, God pledges to Abraham that, ‘in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed’ (Gen. 12:3). Second, however, even the divine promises are insufficient to preserve and ultimately save the people called of God. Rather, God needs to accomplish an internal work, a work of the Spirit: ‘A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances’ (Ezek. 36:26-27). This anticipates the later gift of the Spirit in Christ. But for our purposes at this juncture, it is important to point out that the creational mission of the Spirit not only infuses the dust of the ground with life but also looks ahead to another pneumatic outpouring and infilling. In other words, the creation as a whole, as well as its creatures, is primed to receive the redemptive fulness of the Spirit.
Missio Spiritus – The Doctrine of Redemption The second moment of the missio Spiritus moves us from the universality of the Spirit’s presence and activity in the creation to the particularity of the Spirit’s historical work in redemption. This redemptive history involves the incarnation of the Son via the power of the Spirit, followed by the Son’s gift
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