Particularity Encouraged

Pentecost is sometimes spoken of as the ‘reversal’ of Babel, a return to one language. In fact, the crowds heard the disciples in their own tongues (Acts 2:6). There is no suppression of cultural diversity; quite the opposite. The coming of the Spirit means particularity is preserved and indeed encouraged, as Paul’s vision of the Spirit-directed Church makes clear (1 Corinthians 12). This is rooted in the person and work of Christ: in him, our humanity (and provisionally) the whole of creation, has been freed by the Spirit to be responsive to the Creator, but in such a way that humanity and the created order become more authentically themselves. The Spirit’s work through us is to bring creation to praise its maker in such a way that both creation and our character as finite and contingent creatures are not disrupted but enabled to flourish. Applied to the arts, this would mean that both an artist and the realities with which he or she engages become more fully themselves in their distinctive particularity. —Jeremy Begbie, “Christ and the Cultures: Christianity and the Arts,” in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine, 116