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Yet even if the original Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed did not include the filioque, the following clause leaves no doubt that the Spirit is worshiped and glorified together with—neither more nor less than—the Son. Hence there can be no pneumatomonism (as if focused only on the Spirit) even as there cannot be a Spirit-Father binitarianism that neglects the Spirit or the Spirit’s relationship with the Father and the Son. Any theology of the third article as well as pneumatological theology, then, will have to include both a Spirit Christology and a pneumatologically configured trinitarian theology.^[59]

Classical Spirit Christologies regularly treated pneumatology as an appendix to the person and work of the Son. But what if Christological reflection not only began with but also understood the Spirit as essential to the identity and achievements of the Son?^[60] On the one hand, there is no doubt that the Spirit is understood as the Spirit of Jesus and the Spirit of Christ, and that the Day of Pentecost sending of the Spirit was by the Son from the right hand of the Father (Acts 2:33). On the other hand, the Word is incarnate by the Spirit and Jesus of Nazareth is the anointed Messiah—the Christ—through the empowering Spirit. Further, there is also no recognition of the Son apart from the Spirit (cf. 1 Cor. 12:3), so that authentic acknowledgment of the Son is always and already pneumatically mediated. Last but not least, even any initial confession of the Son awaits both moral and behavioral confirmation, usually related to manifestations of the fruit of the Spirit, and final or eschatological verification (Matt. 7:21–23). For all of these reasons, besides others, any Spirit Christology must proceed at least methodologically as if both hands of the Father were equally definitive. Put alternatively, a Spirit Christology is the flip side of a Christological pneumatology, with both approaches mutually and variously informing each other.^[61]

Finally, for present purposes, if the Spirit is worshiped and glorified together with the Son and the Father, then the Spirit is not only the culmination of the doctrine of the Trinity but also constitutive of trinitarian confession.^[62] If so, then the triune nature of the Christian God is simultaneously patrological, Christological, and pneumatological. Anything less than a fully articulated pneumatology—whatever is possible within present horizons—will be deficiently trinitarian. More weightily, if the Spirit is the eschatological horizon through which all creation is reconciled in the Son to the Father, then there is also a fundamental sense in which “now we see in a mirror, dimly” (1 Cor. 13:12a), not only because of epistemological constraints but because the full glory of the triune God is yet to be revealed, if not achieved. Christian pneumatology thus charts new trajectories for trinitarian theology, and does so, as can be seen through this exploratory essay, by inviting reassessment of Christology, the theology of religions and of interfaith encounter, the theology of creation, and global theology, among other traditional and newly emerging theological loci.^[63]