I purchased this book because of a negative Amazon review entitled, “Focuses more on climate change and racism than the Holy Spirit.” The reviewer goes on to complain that they feel more preached at than educated. I just so happen to be teaching a Bible College course in pneumatology soon and I found the questions intriguing: how does our pneumatology impact our views on climate change? How might a Korean understanding of language help to broaden our western theological models? Curious, I clicked “buy now.”

Grace Ji-Sun Kim is no academic slouch. She had already published The Holy Spirit, Chi, and the Other: A Model of Global and Intercultural Pneumatology (Palgrave) in 2011. She was also a keynote speaker at last year’s Society of Pentecostal Studies conference in Tulsa. Although this book, published by Cascade, is intended for a broad audience, it is rooted in a sound academic theological understanding of the Holy Spirit.

Reimagining Spirit explores our metaphors for the Spirit including biblical (wind, breath, light) as well as those informed by a mix of pop-culture and string theory (vibration)! With this understanding of the Spirit at hand, Kim reflects on social issues like climate change and racism, informed by Korean language-concepts including Chi and Han.

Kim’s reflections on Chi and the Spirit are particularly illuminating:

Just as chi is ambiguous, the biblical words for the Holy Spirit—ruach in the Old Testament and pneuma in the New Testament—are also ambiguous: wind symbolizes a powerful force in nature and breath symbolizes the power of life in living things. Without chi, life does not exist, and similarly, if there is no Spirit, nothing can live. So it seems that there is a significant overlap between the Western-Christian notion of Spirit and the Asian understanding of chi. (112)

In the end, I wonder if Kim has tried to do too much. In drawing on her expertise and simplifying for a broad audience, some of the ideas that would have connected such diverse topics feel missing.

That said, we need more books from diverse cultural perspectives. Our captivity to the English language (that, and German), direct our theological thoughts along paths that run in comfortable ruts. Kim’s use of Korean language-concepts is a gift to the church and academy.

Ji-Sun Kim, Grace. Reimagining Spirit: Wind, Breath, and Vibration. Cascade Books, 2019.