Love Shed Abroad: The Holy Spirit, Charity, and the Sacrifice of Christ’s Body

This paper considers at least some of the pneumatological dimensions of redemption through a particular focus on what Bernard Lonergan called “the just and mysterious law of the cross,” with an eye towards the subversion of notions of redemptive violence. Elements of Lonergan's trinitarian theology, and particularly the way in which the missions of the Word and Holy Spirit elevate human beings to share in the life of the Trinity through charity — the same charity that informed Christ's redemptive act, and which is given to the redeemed in and as the Holy Spirit — provide the fundamental theological basis. This is further refined by M. Shawn Copeland's womanist appropriation of these categories, calling for a eucharistic solidarity, which keeps alife the dangerous memory of the lynched Jesus, thereby undercutting any recourse to sacral violence, while also recognizing the reality of violence within history and the redemption enacted in history.