Cowden Hall: 100 Years
Artistic Theologian
Volume 13
Spring 2026
Editor: Joshua A. Waggener
Taylor, W. David O., and Daniel Train, eds. Naming the Spirit: Pneumatology through the Arts. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2025. 233 pp. $39.99.
Precision or certainty about the person and work of the Holy Spirit have always been a theological struggle. How does one put any definitive boundaries on the intangible Spirit? The blossoming field of interdisciplinary theological aesthetics is a fertile ground for new perspectives on such aspects of theology that may otherwise be obtuse. In Naming the Spirit, W. David O. Taylor and Daniel Train bring together a palette of theologians and scholars who demonstrate what they describe as possible: doing pneumatology through the arts.
Because the contributing authors come from various points on the theological spectrum and have varying methodologies, each chapter stands alone as an approach to the task at hand. Taylor and Train’s editing and organizing of the project, however, bring a kaleidoscopic yet cohesive focus to the book that makes each chapter accessible, regardless of the reader’s familiarity with the art form. The editors asked each author to incorporate a biblical name for the Holy Spirit, a specific piece of art, and the real-world consequences of the work. Each chapter successfully accomplishes this goal, doing theology through a form of art and letting art and the Spirit illuminate one another.
Steven Guthrie’s opening chapter sets the proper tone for the book by examining the implications of “naming,” along with the posture of the artist. Guthrie begins with helpful reflections from Aquinas, then addresses the power of proper names. Guthrie claims, “Our pneumatology grounds, demands, and makes sense of an engagement with art that is not only creative and attentive but responsive and receptive” (19). The Holy Spirit is named as the “Giver of Life” in the Nicene Creed, and “[a]rtistry is an enactment of this giving and receiving of breath” (23). The rest of the chapters of the book put this reciprocal relationship on provocative display.
Responding to Guthrie’s vision for pneumatological engagement with the arts, all the authors in this volume demonstrate creative, attentive, responsive, and receptive methodologies. Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 6 utilize visual art as the means for naming the Spirit, chapter 5 engages with poetry, and chapters 7, 8, 9, and 10 use music to give new voice to the Spirit’s work. Chapter 11 unpacks the power of the Spirit through film, and chapter 12 concludes the book with the help of landscape architecture as a way of recognizing the Spirit’s particularity in time and place. Though visual art and music make up the majority of the art forms represented, each chapter contributes to an approach to theological aesthetics that could be applied through any form of art.
The chapters utilizing visual art span a breadth of mediums from historical folios and paintings to contemporary experiential art installations. Jonathan A. Anderson (chap. 2) uses historical depictions of Pentecost to elaborate on the biblical language of the Spirit and spatial conceptualizations. He evaluates the ways that visual art either enhances the language or “flattens” or limits the concepts. Christina Carnes Ananias (chap. 3) brings Basil of Caesarea’s On the Holy Spirit into conversation with a contemporary installation of light and rainbow by Olafur Eliasson titled Beauty. She seeks to subvert modern assumptions about the visual economy of art— engaging Basil’s trinitarian thought phenomenologically rather than analytically. Just as light is a central element of Eliasson’s art installation, Basil metaphorically presents the Holy Spirit as the light who illumines the portrait (the Son) of the archetype (the Father). In chapter 4, Erin Shaw and Taylor Worley employ the concept of “kincentricity” to mine the rich connections between eschatology, shalom, and hope. Erin Shaw is an Indigenous artist, and her art and reflections are living examples of gospel-informed art that puts belief into action.
Devon Abts and Joelle A. Hathaway (chap. 5) bring focus to the Spirit as “breath” through the poem “A Small Needful Fact” by Ross Gay. Abts and Hathaway draw out the connection to the “breath” that we all share, the “breath” that Eric Garner was denied, and the privilege of receiving the divine bestowal of Spirit-breath. They demonstrate how poems serve as imagination-bearing and imagination-shaping art. Using the performance art example of Blk Halos, Phil Allen Jr. and Justin Ariel Bailey (chap. 6) explore the Holy Spirit as Space Maker. Both the performance and the art installation, they argue, welcome the viewers to see the breadth the Spirit makes for collective breath. This chapter resonates with the final chapter on the particularization of place and the work of the Spirit by Jennifer A. Craft and Taylor, which describes the intentional shape of landscape architecture at Laity Lodge in Texas. The authors explain architectural shape in terms of the Spirit’s sustenance of the unique character of all things in creation and the cooperative particularity of God’s economy.
In chapter 7, Chelle Stearns reframes the “Overshadowing Spirit” by bringing this name of the Holy Spirit into dialogue with the music of Messiaen’s Vingt regards sur L’Enfant-Jésus. Rather than emphasizing subordination or submission, Stearns highlights the mutuality of the Spirit at work in and through human bodies. Julian Davis Reid (chap. 8) then combines the solo performance of black piano music and the Spirit’s work of conviction. Reid first gives biblical examples for both personal and community conviction of sin, and then uses a specific corporate worship performance as an example of when and how music can bring generative conviction to the individual and to the church.
Amy Wisenand Krall (chap. 9) unfolds a musicological and theological exploration of the choral composition “Hope for Resolution” in order to reveal the Spirit as Bond of Peace. Her chapter resonates well with the rest of the book, proving the power of the connection between the various forms of art and the work of pneumatology. Next, Shannon Steed Sigler (chap. 10) combines theological bibliography with hymnology as she uses Charles Wesley’s life and hymn “The Resignation” to offer a perspective on pneumatology that brings freedom to the artist. In the only chapter addressing film, David W. McNutt and Wesley Vander Lugt (chap. 11) argue that Terence Malick’s transcendental filmmaking style creates space for the Spirit to be both Comforter and Disrupter, employing Malick’s The Tree of Life as prime evidence.
As the editors outline in their introduction, pneumatology specifically and theology generally may be done constructively not with the arts, or by the arts, but indeed through the arts. The authors demonstrate this process in their work and invite readers to participate in their own contexts with the tools developed in each chapter. This book is an important signpost in the expanding interdisciplinary field of theological aesthetics, and helpful additions or further developments could include work with narrative fiction, other forms of poetry, or pop art. Naming the Spirit certainly opens the door for other scholars or practitioners to contribute to the conversation, and the collection would be a valuable resource for any reader who works with artists or in creative spaces. This book is a unique and encouraging addition to both the fields of pneumatology and theological aesthetics.
