I had the opportunity to hear Daniela C. Augustine respond to a paper at the Society for Pentecostal Studies this year (2019). She was so insightful and passionate, I decided to pick up her book at the CPT table—and I’m glad that I did. Augustine, an Eastern European, brings her uniquely Orthodox-inspired way of understanding theology to culture.

In Pentecost, Hospitality, and Transfiguration (bonus points for the Oxford comma), Augustine unpacks the theological implications of the Pentecost event for society as a whole. Eastern Europe has been torn between two visions: Communism and Capitalism. Both have failed, plunging society into hopelessness. Only a Spirit-inspired and empowered eschata can free society from its endless political cycles of failure.

At the heart of her analysis is a theological assertion: the Kingdom of God is a unity of diversity. That is, as Christ’s body, the church is called to be one. This oneness, however, does not eliminate diversity since the Spirit safeguards and gardens that diversity within the body. The true Kingdom of God is not uniformity, but a unity in which the other is loved through the radical hospitality enacted by God.

The personal freedom in the Spirit’s sobornost does not contradict the freedom of the other, for it is not based on competition for the limited resources of the material reality. It is based rather on the eternal and infinite reality of divine love and grace. In this divinely initiated and infused sobornost, the hospitality of God is incarnated in the community of Christ as a gift of the Spirit, a gift of freedom to the other to be and to become. (95)

Augustine’s prose is poetically informed (as you can tell by the above quote). In her writing, the notes of the Orthodox Church ring out and resonate with Pentecostalism in unexpected and generative ways. Augustine has created a vision of Pentecost that provides true hope for the dismal socio-political quagmire of western culture.

Augustine, Daniela C. Pentecost, Hospitality, and Transfiguration: Toward a Spirit-inspired Vision of Social Transformation. Cleveland: CPT Press, 2012.