Play and Freedom: Patterns of Life in the Spirit

This article explores the pneumatological theme of the freedom of the Spirit from the perspective of experience. It deploys a recently developed methodology of attending to affective and experiential dynamics in pneumatology to identify two significant patterns or modalities of Christian life in the Spirit that are indexed to the Spirit's freedom: a pattern of divine resistance to human attempts to control God, characterized on the human side by experiences of disruption as well as dynamic creativity; and a pattern of life free from the tyranny of the law, characterized by a modality of play or playfulness, as explored in the work of Nimi Wariboko. In identifying and illuminating these patterns, this article extends a project of seeking to make explicit the connections between Christian doctrinal concepts and Christian experience into a new domain, and responds to a long-standing concern that theologies of sanctification emphasizing freedom have little to say about the positive shape of Christian life in the Spirit.