Aira Līcīte is a theologian who, in the spring of 2023, defended her master’s thesis at the UL Faculty of Theology with the work “Three Interconnected Theological Magnitudes: Creation, Jesus, the Holy Spirit.” In this conversation, Aira talks about the relevance of the topic and about the world of theological thought that shapes and surrounds her research. For readers who would like to learn more about Aira’s research, an article by her on this topic is available in the journal “Ceļš” (no. 74, 2023)[1], and it is also possible to receive the full text of the study by contacting the author[2].
Please tell us about yourself — how do you combine your professional life with theological research?
A.L. In my professional field outside theology, my life has been connected with corporate finance for more than 15 years. In my daily work I manage finances at an international company. My area of responsibility is the Northern region — the Scandinavian and Baltic countries. It is a wonderful opportunity to be in constant contact with different cultures and different people, to see the diverse ways of perceiving the world, how others interpret life, through which lenses they look at it. I see a mature society, and it is a great joy every day to be together with such colleagues.
Theology has always come along with me. From an early age there has been an interest in it — not in a specific church or church doctrine, but in how things are, how this world is formed, what we live for, how we can understand God. I grew up in a Christian context, by now at least the fourth generation. This longing to learn more led me to theology. A longing to explore beyond the confessional frame, to explore more broadly, to explore where there is no single correct answer, where one can fly across borders. That is why, with great satisfaction and enthusiasm, I enrolled at the university [UL Faculty of Theology]. Back then it was hard to imagine how I would be able to combine full-time work with full-time studies, but the pull toward theology was so strong that I told myself: at first I will commit to completing just one semester. One semester at a time, I went on for seven years, and right now I have stopped at a completed master’s degree. I need to take a pause, to spend more time with my family, my most ardent supporters, to gather theological strength to move further.
How did you come to pneumatology as your field of research? What motivated you to work with such a large and dogmatic question? Did you see that you would be able to leap across those confessional boundaries you mentioned?
A.L. Looking back at how my theological questions developed, I can say that the whole master’s thesis addressed the very question for which I began to study. I knew there was something I was looking for, but this question had not yet been formulated. I began to sense it during the first year of my master’s studies. When I finished my bachelor’s studies, I had the feeling that everything had been very valuable — I had been given various theoretical instruments, various frameworks that answer the question of why such diversity exists, why in the Christian context there are, one could almost say, different religions. Even Western Christianity has so many different interpretations. I learned how to read a text in its original language, with methodology. And yet, inwardly there was still a nagging question taking shape.
In one lecture, almost in passing, Juris Cālītis spoke about how there are different ways of interpreting the Christian story. One way is to interpret it in connection with creation. In that moment I realized that this was what I was looking for. I have a deep conviction, and these have been my reflections since deep in my youth, that it could not be that the whole story of the world revolves only around sin. That it cannot be that everything was already set in place thousands of years ago and that I now have to somehow connect my life to it. How, then, is my life connected to it? It could not be that because of a single mistake that happened to Adam and Eve, all of history has now gone wrong. That was the seed for where I realized that I very much wanted to explore what other alternative there is to the whole Christian story. How else the emphasis can be placed.
Pneumatology comes from a larger context, from how we tell and understand the whole Christian story in the first place. As well as — how we see ourselves in this story, where our place in it is. It could be a unified system, namely, that our story today is connected with creation itself, that there is something that continues all the time and has never ended. It did not end at Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection, but continues afterward and is just as relevant today. I wanted to find what that other way is.
It was very difficult for me, personally and honestly, to see myself in the context of the sin story, because it seemed too narrow a view of Christianity. I was missing many things. First of all, the fragmentation of the familiar story, that there are these little pieces — one piece is Jesus’ life, one piece the Old Testament, one piece creation, but they do not hold together at all. And another piece — my life now. How am I to attach my little piece to those pieces? I was missing a thread that runs through everything and a meaning that holds it all together. That is how I came to the realization that there could be something very, very important here. That here was the theological question that had been forming and dawning in me, but was now formulated.
What is this pneumatological turn? What is the connection of the Holy Spirit with creation?
A.L. In my work I analyze the first creation story, which, by the way, because of its very specific construction, the movement of its thought, and its structure, is a real “dessert” for theologians. The whole story is deliberately constructed so as to indicate that the most important thing in creation is the seventh day, that the world was created for the sake of the seventh day. What makes the seventh day important, and how it relates to the Holy Spirit, we see in the fact that on this day there are two kinds of God’s blessing actions.
One is expressed by the Hebrew word barak, which we usually understand as benevolence, blessing, kindness, all the good that there can be — God gives all of it to humankind. Humankind is given all of God’s love and benevolence. The other is qadash, which is something entirely different. Unfortunately, in Latvian we use the same word, “to bless.” Qadash means that God is present with God’s presence, that God is there in person. God creates the world in order to be present, and the human exists so that God may be with them. Qadash – God’s holiness and God’s blessing as presence, that which is far greater and wider and deeper, is present and is fulfilled in Jesus. It is the same holiness that Jesus bears, which is why in the New Testament he is designated not only as rabbi and teacher, but also as holy. That same holiness, that same essence and identity, is the Holy Spirit. What God does in creation is fulfilled in Jesus and continues in the Holy Spirit, and in the human. The Holy Spirit is something more than power and energy, as it is all too often narrowly interpreted in Christocentric theology. The Holy Spirit is God himself. The same God the Creator, the same one who dwells in the human. The same I AM WHO I AM, who connects with the human.
In Christocentric theology the Holy Spirit is unfortunately granted neither a role nor a noteworthy function. Such theology also dominates in the Latvian context, which we can see even in the question of how the forgiveness of sins is interpreted. It is connected solely and exclusively with Jesus. Yet in the Nicene Creed we clearly see that the Holy Spirit is the sanctifier and is connected with the forgiveness of sins. I describe this in my work too — what the difference is between connecting the forgiveness of sins with Jesus or connecting it with the Holy Spirit.
What comes to mind is the statement of the Orthodox Church theologian John Zizioulas, that the Western Church is too Christocentric; from the Western perspective, however, the response is often dismissive, asserting that this is not so at all, pointing out that the Orthodox Church may perhaps be too immersed in mystery. Nevertheless, Zizioulas’s observation is significant in dialogue, along with the proposal that the ideal for the theology of the future is one in which these two understandings meet. He also speaks about how the presence of the Holy Spirit is revealed precisely in ecclesiology, in relationships. You are not writing your study within the discipline of practical theology, yet if one were to think about it from an ecclesiological perspective, what would need to change, what is the key?
A.L. First, responding to the first comment, about Western Christianity being Christocentric, I would say that it is Christomonist, because in it there is primarily only Jesus. This is acknowledged by Roman Catholic and Protestant theologians, and by everyone else who thinks seriously about it. One question could be — when does Jesus’ coming end and when is it completed? Usually we would say Jesus’ coming is completed with the cross and the resurrection, but we miss the fact that Jesus’ coming is fulfilled and completed only when he gives the Spirit. The task of Jesus’ coming is fully accomplished with the giving of the Holy Spirit. We see this especially in the structure of the Gospel of John.
In other words, the key lies further on. It lies in the fact that Jesus is here not merely so that God would be with the human, so that there would be presence, but also to give the Holy Spirit. In my view, the step that allows us to overcome the idea that our life is connected only with the narrative of sin lies in our being able to realize that our own life is part of God’s story. There the Western hierarchical conception of the Trinity meets — where the Father is dominance, then there is Jesus and the Holy Spirit — and the Eastern one, where everything is on one level, but the world is not particularly significant. The beautiful combination is perichoresis[3], where all can be in one circle, in one story, together at one table.
But how am I inside that story? I can be part of God’s story, which is still active. Part of this story, which began with creation, so that God might show that God can be together with the human, so that God’s presence and benevolent intention in the world might keep spreading. So that human consciousness might develop and the human might become ever more meaningful and more humane. And, ultimately, so that death is overcome, so that the mechanism by which people operate is unmasked — here I am thinking of Girard’s theory[4]. And the Holy Spirit comes, who allows us to be in that story where we can live in such a way that death is not the greatest threat.
Of course, this can be experienced most directly in the congregation, which is a project of the Holy Spirit. It is the real place where we can test the genuineness of Jesus’ teaching and experience the Kingdom of God. Here I do not mean the congregation in a narrow sense, such as a particular confessional structural unit registered in the business register, but those places where people meet with the intention of honestly living out God’s story in their lives and taking part in it. To be loved and to learn to love. In this way the Holy Spirit helps us to perceive and sense that we are part of something far larger, which changes everything — perception, priorities, interest in particular things, attitudes.
That is why the idea of perichoresis delights me so much, because in it I can see that I am part of something larger, and that together we can be part of something far more significant. We can stand up for the one who suffers, we can be where God is. We can be in God’s story directly and consciously.
The theology of the Holy Spirit is very underdeveloped, but that is no wonder — how could we imagine that we could easily understand and describe and explore the Spirit? Now we have come to understand that the familiar theory of the atonement for sin raises doubts. God is placed in a very peculiar role, and it could not be so, there must be something else. We intuitively feel that there is something more, that there is something life-giving, and that it is connected with the Holy Spirit. Now we are beginning to build this theology, and we begin by trying to perceive how the whole Christian story connects together, overcoming the narrative of sin. How we can find another “main character” in the Christian story — God himself, who reveals himself through holiness.
There are theologians who remind us that the Spirit also reveals itself in what crumbles and breaks, and that this is a positive process, a new opportunity and a way out. For the Church as an institution, this can be an opportunity to open up to something unexpected, honestly facing its subjugating and wounding past as well, without trying to glue and prop up what perhaps should be allowed to crumble into dust. Then there is also another narrative, which preaches that everything is ending, that Christianity no longer has any meaning, and that perhaps the end of the world is near.
A.L. I agree with the positive view. If we connect this question with the stages of faith development or the growth of personal development, we clearly see that at a certain point people outgrow the desire for vertical power represented by the institution, and they want something different — something more horizontal, more solidary and more inclusive, non-discriminating. Of course, there are parts of the world where the vertical is strongly pronounced, where a firm hand is demanded, where the cultural context and the context of people’s consciousness require it. There the Church has the real task of being in the form it still has today, because it is very helpful. However, where people have already outgrown it and are looking for something else, there one must move forward. In such a place there is no longer really any room for a strictly vertical hierarchy. Will the Western world therefore lose Christianity, or will the Holy Spirit not find new paths? We can already see that it will. The Holy Spirit, theologically, is the maker of the congregation, not the institution.
Here it can be mentioned that the large institutional Church is changing. It loses something, it somehow loses relevance for the contemporary Western person. Then there is the question of what the congregation means, that ekklesia which we see in the biblical context. These will most likely be communities that will also exist outside institutions, that will transcend institutions. A congregation where people can open up to one another in a safe and non-judgmental environment, and experience the healing beginning of a journey. When we want to find a way to take part in God’s intention and to be where there is suffering and sorrow, where there is disorder, where there is unnecessary suffering that could be avoided. And to ask, what could be done here for the good?
If I do not want to develop, do not want to be in that story of God — fine, I do not want to. But I can also want to, be able to, and be. As consciousness develops, people no longer wish to leave everything in the hands of the institution; they seek more horizontal structures.
Conceptually — what is the symbol and image that you see as the Trinity? Is it unity — something functionally distinguishable, but in essence nothing is separable?
A.L. I am drawn to the thought of the contemporary theologian James Alison: “If we recognize that the Spirit is doing something, we acknowledge that God — who is Father, Son and Spirit — is doing something. The only difference — if one can speak of a difference — is in God’s ‘inner life.'”[5] I stay with that. It must be taken into account, however, that there exist different views of the Trinity characteristic of Eastern and Western Christian theology, in each of which there is a completely different emphasis on how sin is interpreted, what the problem is, what the task is. One must be careful about which context we are speaking in. Personally, I am most drawn to the aforementioned view of perichoresis, which surpasses and combines both — the Western and the Eastern specific approaches.
Perichoresis, in which we are inside, in which the world is inside — that is the image I find appealing. God’s revelation is as great as the human is able to receive, as much as they are able to understand. For example, we no longer live in a time when it is acceptable to sacrifice our children to gods. We have outgrown that. We have outgrown all kinds of eras as human beings. Now is the time when the Holy Spirit can work further, because humankind has reached a certain maturity and has, for example, outgrown the need for a strictly vertical structure.
I think a lot about what our history determines, all the years of oppression and times of turmoil that must be overcome. How many generations it will take to overcome this vertical thinking, in which we say how great it is that I have a big boss who orders me about and stirs me up. Time must pass before we would no longer choose hierarchy, but would choose cooperation and the horizontal. Would choose to sit at one table, and each share the talents and strengths that we have, complementing one another rather than lording it over each other.
There also exists a theological worldview in which there is no place for the physical world and the world must be conquered, and this can be done in various ways — for example, through asceticism, fasting, keeping sin constantly before one’s eyes.
A.L. That is the classic narrative of sin, which is dominant in the Latvian Christian space of thought, and an alternative view seems like heresy. But it is not heresy at all, because nothing is discarded of that in which God helps us put sin in order in our lives. The dispute is not about that; rather, it is pointed out that the Christian story is much broader, that theologically it does not stop at sin. To put it in theological terms, the greatest opportunity of our life is not justification but sanctification. These are two different theological emphases.
(Interview and transcription: Arta Skuja)
[1] https://www.apgads.lu.lv/izdevumi/brivpieejas-izdevumi/zurnali-un-periodiskie-izdevumi/cels/cels-nr-74/
[3] Perichoresis — the mutual interpenetration, relationship and unity of the persons of the Trinity.
[4] René Girard’s mimetic theory analyzes human behavior and social dynamics, indicating that human action is set in motion by a mechanism of imitation, which at birth manifests itself in learning and developing as a personality. His theory indicates that at a conscious age, the desires and behavior of individuals and communities are influenced by unconscious desires for what or who the other is, and this can subsequently provoke conflict, violence and rebellion.
René Girard’s mimetic theory, in relation to Jesus Christ, indicates that his life, death and resurrection offer an alternative path, breaking the cycle of violent mimesis; the new form of mimesis is the imitation of love, mercy and forgiveness.
[5] James Alison, “How do we talk about the Spirit?” https://jamesalison.com/how-do-we-talk-about-the-spirit/