When we refer to the remembering of the future we part ways with the whole Western intellectual tradition. The Church confesses that Holy Spirit brings the future breaking in to history. Our kingdoms are founded on opposition to one another, each kingdom is in competition with every other. The peace of God, sustained by the rule of God, breaks into the conflict of all partial kingdoms. The Holy Spirit invades the territory we hold against all others, and brings us into the rule and the peace of God. ‘In these last days, I shall pour forth from My Spirit, upon every flesh.’ The Spirit brings all other rules and kingdoms, under the rule of Christ which brings the peace of Christ by which all things are reconciled and made peaceful. Christ brings the rule and peace of God into history. Pentecost is the fulfilment of all times.
Though many Christians assume that Pentecost and the Holy Spirit illuminate them personally, enabling them to grasp the events of history and so grow in knowledge of Christ, but this is only a partial understanding. The Spirit carries us into a new and much larger dimension, in which we are freed of all the various confinements that hold us within our individual histories or the histories of our nation or social group. The Spirit draws us into the vastly larger dimensions given by the future, in which we are free to be fully present to one another, each of us to all others without limit. The life the Holy Spirit gives us is not divided, but all at once, so for the first time we may live simultaneous to one another, in communion not delimited by space or time.
John Zizioulas Lectures in Christian Dogmatics
