The Routledge Handbook of Pentecostal Theology [1 ed.] 1138580899, 9781138580893

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THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF PENTECOSTAL THEOLOGY

Research on Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity has increased dramatically in recent decades, and a diverse array of disciplines have begun to address a range of elements of these movements. Yet, there exists very little understanding of Pentecostal theology, and it is not uncommon to encounter stereotypes and misperceptions. Addressing this gap in current research, The Routledge Handbook of Pentecostal Theology is an exceptional reference source to the key topics, challenges, and debates in this growing field of study and is the first collection of its kind to offer a comprehensive presentation and critical discussion of this subject. Comprising over forty chapters written by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into five parts: • • • • •

Contextualizing Pentecostal Theology Sources Theological Method Doctrines and Practices Conversations and Challenges.

These sections take the reader through a comprehensive introduction to what Pentecostals believe and how they practice their faith. Looking at issues such as the core teachings of Pentecostalism concerning Spirit baptism, divine healing, or eschatology; unique practices, such as spiritual warfare and worship; and less discussed issues, such as social justice and gender, each chapter builds towards a nuanced and global picture of the theology of the Pentecostal movement. The Routledge Handbook of Pentecostal Theology is essential reading for students and researchers in Pentecostal Studies, World Christianity, and Theology as well as scholars working in contemporary Religious Studies. Wolfgang Vondey is Professor of Christian Theology and Pentecostal Studies and the director of the Centre for Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK.

ROUTLEDGE H A N DBOOKS IN TH EOLOGY

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF PENTECOSTAL THEOLOGY Edited by Wolfgang Vondey THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF AFRICAN THEOLOGY Edited by Elias Kifon Bongmba

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/religion/ series/RHT

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF PENTECOSTAL THEOLOGY

Edited by Wolfgang Vondey

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Wolfgang Vondey; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Wolfgang Vondey to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Vondey, Wolfgang, editor. Title: The Routledge handbook of Pentecostal theology / edited by Wolfgang Vondey. Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2020. | Series: [Routledge handbooks in theology] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019057244 (print) | LCCN 2019057245 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138580893 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429507076 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Pentecostal churches—Doctrines. | Pentecostalism. | Theology, Doctrinal. Classification: LCC BX8762.Z5 R68 2020 (print) | LCC BX8762.Z5 (ebook) | DDC 230/.994—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019057244 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019057245 ISBN: 978-1-138-58089-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-50707-6 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by codeMantra

CONTENTS

Notes on contributors

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PART I

Contextualizing Pentecostal theology

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1 Systematic Pentecostal theology: A typology 7 Christopher A. Stephenson 3 Pentecostal theology as spirituality: Explorations in theological method 29 Daniel Castelo 4 Pentecostal theology as story: Participating in God’s mission 40 Kenneth J. Archer

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Contents PART II

Sources 51 5 Revelation: The light and fire of Pentecost 53 Rickie D. Moore 6 Scripture: Finding one’s place in God’s story 63 Scott A. Ellington 7 Reason: Widening the sources of Pentecostal theology 73 William K. Kay 8 Experience: The mediated immediacy of encounter with the Spirit 84 Peter D. Neumann 9 Tradition: Retrieving and updating Pentecostal core beliefs 95 Simon Chan 10 Culture: Disruption, accommodation, and pneumatological  resignification 106 Néstor Medina 11 Worship: Embodying the encounter with God 117 Michael Wilkinson PART III

Theological methods 127 12 Biblical hermeneutics: Reading Scripture with the Spirit in community 129 Jacqueline Grey 13 Theological hermeneutics: Understanding the world in the encounter with God 140 L. William Oliverio, Jr. 14 The pneumatological imagination: The logic of Pentecostal theology 152 Amos Yong 15 Practical theology: Attending to pneumatologically-driven praxis 163 Mark J. Cartledge 16 The full gospel: A liturgical hermeneutic of Pentecost 173 Wolfgang Vondey vi

Contents PART IV

Doctrines and practices 183





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Contents PART V

Conversations and challenges 333



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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Kimberly Ervin Alexander is associate professor of the history of Christianity at Regent University, Virginia. She is a past president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies and is the author of Pentecostal Healing: Models of Theology and Practice as well as numerous articles and essays on healing, women in Pentecostalism, and early Pentecostal spiritual experience. Peter Althouse obtained his PhD at the University of St Michael’s College, Toronto. His publications include Spirit of the Last Days: Pentecostal Eschatology in Conversation with Jürgen Moltmann, Catch the Fire: Soaking Prayer and Charismatic Renewal, and Pentecostals and the Body. Allan Heaton Anderson  is professor emeritus at the University of Birmingham, UK, where he was professor of mission and Pentecostal studies, 1995–2019. He is the author of many articles and books on global Pentecostalism, the most recent being To the Ends of the Earth, Introduction to Pentecostalism, and Spirit-Filled World. Kenneth J. Archer is professor of theology and Pentecostal studies at Southeastern University, Florida. He has published various books and essays on Pentecostal hermeneutics and theology, including the influential A Pentecostal Hermeneutic: Spirit, Scripture and Community. William P. Atkinson is senior lecturer in Pentecostal and Charismatic studies at London School of Theology, having served previously in local church and theological college settings within the Elim Pentecostal Church. He is author of several books, including Baptism in the Spirit (2011) and Jesus before Pentecost (2016). Daniela C. Augustine is reader in theological ethics and Pentecostal studies at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her publications are in the areas of social transformation, theology of economics, religion and culture, and liturgical theology. She is associate editor of the Journal of Pentecostal Theology and co-editor of the Systematic Pentecostal and Charismatic Theology series. David K. Bernard is chancellor and professor of biblical studies and leadership at Urshan College and Urshan Graduate School of Theology, and the general superintendent of the ix

Notes on contributors

United Pentecostal Church International. He founded New Life Church of Austin, Texas, with 16 daughter churches and has authored 36 books. Mark J. Cartledge is principal of the London School of Theology. He is a past president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies and is co-editor of the Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies series. Daniel Castelo is professor of dogmatic and constructive theology at Seattle Pacific University and Seminary in Seattle, Washington, and the author of several works on Pentecostalism and Pentecostal theology and ethics. Simon Chan was formerly professor of systematic theology at Trinity Theological College, Singapore. Since his retirement, he has been reengaged by the college to serve as part-time lecturer and editor of Asia Journal of Theology. His numerous publications include Pentecostal Ecclesiology: An Essay on the Development of Doctrine. Shane Clifton is honorary professor, Centre for Disability Research and Policy, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Sydney. His current research is interdisciplinary, exploring the intersection between disability studies, virtue ethics, and theology. Dale M. Coulter  is associate professor of historical theology at Regent University, Virginia. He is on the editorial board of Victorine Texts in Translation and co-editor of the first volume in the series. His most recent work is Finding the Holy Spirit at the Christian University. David D. Daniels III  is the Henry Winters Luce professor of world Christianity at McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago. He is a former president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies and the author of numerous articles and chapters in books on topics related to black church history, Pentecostal studies, and world Christianity. Scott A. Ellington is professor of Christian ministries at Emmanuel College in Franklin Springs, Georgia. He spent fourteen years as a missionary in Mexico, England, and Germany, and is the author of Risking Truth: Reshaping the World Through Prayers of Lament. Steven Félix-Jäger is assistant professor at Life Pacific University, San Dimas. A practising artist and musician, he is the author of several books, including Pentecostal Aesthetics, With God on Our Side, and Spirit of the Arts, and numerous articles about art, aesthetics, worship, and Pentecostal theology. Andrew K. Gabriel is associate professor of theology at Horizon College and Seminary, an affiliated college of the University of Saskatchewan. He is the author of four books, including The Lord is the Spirit and Simply Spirit-Filled. He also serves on the Theological Study Commission for the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada. Chris E. W. Green is professor of theology at Southeastern University, Florida. He is the author and editor of several books, including, most recently, The End is Music: A Companion to Robert W. Jenson’s Theology and Surprised by God: How and Why What We Think about the Divine Matters. x

Notes on contributors

Jacqueline Grey  is associate professor of biblical studies at Alphacrucis College, Sydney, Australia. Her research interests and publications include topics in Pentecostal hermeneutics, Isaiah, and the prophetic literature of the Old Testament. Jacqui is a past president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies. Andreas Heuser  is professor for extra-European Christianity at the University of Basel, Switzerland. He is a theologian and political scientist engaged in multi-sited research on the Pentecostal movement and megachurches in sub-Saharan Africa as well as Pentecostal migrant Christianity in Germany and Switzerland. Among his recent publications is Pastures of Plenty: Tracing Religio-Scapes of Prosperity Gospel in Africa and Beyond. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen  is professor of systematic theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pomona, California, and docent of ecumenics at the University of Helsinki. A prolific author, his most recent work is the five-volume series Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World. William K. Kay is emeritus professor of theology at Wrexham Glyndwr University and honorary professor of Pentecostal Studies at Chester University, UK. He is the author of several books on Pentecostal or charismatic history and co-editor of the Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies series. Jeffrey S. Lamp is professor of New Testament and instructor of Environmental Science at Oral Roberts University, Tulsa. He is the editor of Spiritus: ORU Journal of Theology and has published widely on themes related to ecotheology, including The Greening of Hebrews? Ecological Readings in the Letter to the Hebrews and Reading Green: Tactical Considerations for Reading the Bible Ecologically. Andy Lord is an Anglican minister in Oxford Diocese, UK, and Bishop’s Advisor in mission. He has written widely on Pentecostal theology and mission, including the books Network Church, Spirit-Shaped Mission, and Transforming Renewal. Julie C. Ma is associate professor of missions and intercultural studies at Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, Oklahoma. She served as a Korean missionary in the Philippines 1981–2006. Wonsuk Ma is dean and distinguished professor of global Christianity at Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, Oklahoma. While serving as executive director of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, his team published the 35-volume Regnum Edinburgh Centenary Series. Frank D. Macchia is professor of Christian theology at Vanguard University and associate director of the Centre of Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies at Bangor University, Wales, UK. He has published a number of works of relevance to Pentecostal theology, including his most recent book, Jesus the Spirit Baptizer: Christology in Light of Pentecost. Néstor Medina  is visiting professor at the Emmanuel College Centre for Research in Religion at the University of Toronto, Canada. He has written and edited books and articles on Latina/o and Latin American theologies and Pentecostalism, liberation/contextual, and post/decolonial theological currents. He is the author of Christianity, Empire and the Spirit. xi

Notes on contributors

Grace Milton is research fellow for the Edward Cadbury Centre for the Public Understanding of Religion at the University of Birmingham, UK. She is author of Shalom, the Spirit and Pentecostal Conversion, which explores empirically the conversion experiences and theologies of Pentecostals in the UK. Rickie D. Moore is professor of Old Testament and associate dean at the Lee University School of Religion, Cleveland, Tennessee. He has authored several books and numerous articles in Old Testament interpretation and Pentecostal biblical hermeneutics. He taught for 25 years at the Pentecostal Theological Seminary and is a founding co-editor of the Journal of Pentecostal Theology. Peter D. Neumann  is the academic dean and teaches theology at Master’s College and Seminary, Ontario, Canada. He holds a PhD in theology from the University of St. Michael’s College and is the author of Pentecostal Experience: An Ecumenical Encounter. L. William Oliverio, Jr. is associate academic dean and chair of graduate studies at the School of Urban Missions—Bible College and Theological Seminary in El Dorado Hills, California. His writings range across the disciplines of hermeneutics, philosophical theology, systematic theology, and Pentecostal studies. Opoku Onyinah is associate professor of African Pentecostal spirituality at Pentecost University College and chairman of the Church of Pentecost with its headquarters in Ghana. He has written several articles and books on Pentecostal theology, especially on healing and deliverance. Tony Richie  is special lecturer in theology at the Pentecostal Theological Seminary, Cleveland, Tennessee, and lead pastor at New Harvest Church of God in Knoxville. He is author of numerous publications, including Speaking by the Spirit: A Pentecostal Model for Interreligious Dialogue and Toward a Pentecostal Theology of Religions: Encountering Cornelius Today. Cheryl J. Sanders is professor of Christian ethics at Howard University and senior pastor of Third Street Church of God in Washington DC. Her several books include Empowerment Ethics for a Liberated People, Ministry at the Margins, and Saints in Exile: The Holiness-Pentecostal Experience in African American Religion and Culture. J. Aaron Simmons is associate professor of philosophy at Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina. Specializing in philosophy of religion and nineteenth/twentieth-century European philosophy, Simmons has published widely and is the author or editor of numerous books, including God and the Other, Kierkegaard’s God and the Good Life, and The New Phenomenology. Christopher A. Stephenson is assistant professor of systematic theology at Lee University, Cleveland, Tennessee. He is the author of Types of Pentecostal Theology: Method, System, Spirit, the editor of Peter Lang’s Ecumenical Studies monograph series, a bishop in the Church of God (Cleveland, TN), and an avid ecumenist. Lisa P. Stephenson is associate professor of systematic theology and director of the Master of Arts programme in Biblical and Theological Studies at Lee University, Cleveland, xii

Notes on contributors

Tennessee. She has published various essays and articles, and her monograph on American Pentecostal women in ministry won the 2013 Pneuma Book Award. Steven M. Studebaker  is associate professor of systematic and historical theology at McMaster Divinity College, Ontario, Canada. He is the author of A Pentecostal Political Theology for American Renewal, From Pentecost to the Triune God, and several edited books on Pentecostal theology. Wolfgang Vondey is professor of Christian theology and Pentecostal studies and the director of the Centre for Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK. He is the author of several books on Pentecostal theology and co-editor of the Systematic Pentecostal and Charismatic Theology and Christianity and Renewal—Interdisciplinary Studies series. Frederick L. Ware is associate professor of theology and associate dean for academic affairs at Howard University School of Divinity in Washington DC. His is author of Methodologies of Black Theology and African American Theology: An Introduction and co-editor of the T&T Clark Companion to African American Theology. Matthias Wenk  is pastor of the BewegungPlus in Burgdorf, Switzerland. His publications are mainly in the field of Lukan pneumatology and social ethics. He is the author of Community-forming Power: The Socio-ethical Role of the Spirit in Luke-Acts. Greta E.C. Wells  is a lecturer in pastoral ministry at Alphacrucis College in Sydney, Australia. Her postgraduate research focussed on Pentecostal attitudes regarding mental illness, and she has published further work on Pentecostal spirituality in ageing populations. Michael Wilkinson is professor of sociology and the director of the Religion in Canada Institute at Trinity Western University. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including Canadian Pentecostalism: Transition and Transformation, Pentecostals and the Body, and A Culture of Faith: Evangelical Congregations in Canada. Amos Yong is professor of theology and mission, and director of the Center for Missiological Research at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pomona, California. He is the author or editor of over four dozen books, many related to Pentecostal theology.

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INTRODUCTION TO THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF PENTECOSTAL THEOLOGY Wolfgang Vondey

Over the course of the twentieth century, it has become readily apparent that the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements are gradually emerging as a dominant force in global Christianity and have formed what is today a genuine theological tradition. The Pentecostal pioneers anchored their identity deeply in the day of Pentecost as narrated in the New Testament. For many, Pentecostalism marked an exceptional revival at the end of history, while some sought traces of the movement throughout the history of Christian thought. For others, Pentecostalism challenges the established theological conventions and traditions of our times by engaging the world with a steady emphasis on transformation, revival, and renewal brought about by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The different perspectives illustrate the perplexing phenomenon of Pentecostalism in transition from a grassroots movement to a global tradition in the span of less than one hundred years. The development of Pentecostal theology echoes this change. Pentecostal theology shows a clear commitment to a core of theological teachings since the beginning of the worldwide revivals: salvation, sanctification, Spirit baptism, divine healing, and the coming kingdom belong undoubtedly to the central doctrines of classical Pentecostals. As this theology has gradually emerged from an initial missionary focus to include historical, biblical, and eventually systematic and constructive endeavours, the exact content, arrangements, and methods of Pentecostal theology are only now beginning to be defined along a diverse array of conversations. Some of these discussions are internal debates that witness to a diversity of opinions and convictions among Pentecostals, including strong disagreements and divisions. Others are carried out in interdisciplinary arguments and ecumenical conversations with other theological traditions that show the outward hospitality and curiosity of Pentecostal theology. Most of the underlying principal convictions that carry this theology have been documented widely since the beginning of the twentieth century and are understood and taken for granted by those who share a similar experience and heritage. It is not unusual to find the formal articulation of classical Pentecostal theology cast in the arrangement of other theological traditions, although this tendency has led to both misrepresentations and misunderstandings. At the same time, many of the forays into new theological terrain have been advanced by individuals and challenge established expectations and procedures both among Pentecostals and outside the movement. The result is a theology in the process of establishing itself as a tradition along a variety of different and 1

Wolfgang Vondey

debated contexts, methods, sources, doctrines, practices, and conversations that are shaping the history of Pentecostalism worldwide. This Handbook offers a snapshot of the current state of affairs documenting the dominant conversations, teachings, and practices among Pentecostals. Throughout this volume, the term “Pentecostal” designates a variety of manifestations, including classical Pentecostal, Wesleyan Holiness Pentecostal, and neo-Pentecostal theology. Nuances and similarities to the theology of the Charismatic Movements or the Free Church model are indicated in some cases, although it is generally assumed that the Charismatic Movements in the mainline churches tend to remain indebted to their original theological confessions, while the Protestant Free Church model emphasizes an ecclesial and theological individualism so that both belong to the margins of what is here labelled a Pentecostal tradition. However, readers from these streams who find their theology reflected in this volume may be surprised to identify more closely with the Pentecostal movements than expected. In this sense, the Handbook represents a critical descriptive and constructive effort to identify Pentecostal theology as an emerging tradition. The shape of Pentecostal theology is reflected in this volume in five parts intended to chart the established territory, to identify historical changes and debates, to distinguish agreements and disagreements, to survey dominant ideas and practices, and to point to challenges and opportunities for the continued development of theological reflection. While the title of each chapter designates the topic of investigation, the subtitles reflect a snapshot of its central argument. The reader is encouraged to read these texts as an unfolding narrative rather than a reference work of individual chapters. Although each essay can be read on its own, the volume is intended to offer a continuing and coherent narrative of the ideas and arguments that shape Pentecostal theology. Cross-references are provided throughout each essay to indicate the connections between methods, sources, doctrines, and practices. A full picture of Pentecostal theology emerges not only with each chapter but between chapters and in reflection on the whole in a way that is stimulated by the views of the authors but also transcends their efforts. Pentecostal theology is found here not only in the content but also in the way the essays are written and in the spirit that joins them together. In Part I: Contextualizing Pentecostal Theology, the volume begins with essays that introduce the debates about the nature of theology among Pentecostals and thus present a way of reading the subsequent chapters. The intention of these essays is to alert the reader that Pentecostal theology must be engaged with attention to the character of the Pentecostal movements in transition and to Pentecostal ways that evidence their particular identity, reflection, and manner of self-expression. The four chapters represent way markers that, taken together, form a sort of map useful for manoeuvring the rest of the volume. The question whether we can (or should) speak of Pentecostal theology as systematic (Chapter 1) is paradigmatic for this handbook and its presentation of sources, methods, and doctrines. The emphasis on the global diversity of Pentecostal theology (Chapter 2) colours this discussion with important qualifiers regarding its coherence and contextuality. The importance of spirituality (Chapter 3), seen in light of the global diversity of the movement, grounds discussions on the character of Pentecostal theology in the wider landscape and history of the Christian traditions. And the emphasis on story (Chapter 4) offers a foundational perspective on the articulation of the particular approach taken throughout this volume in a manner that mediates the challenges of the systematic, global, and spiritual discussion about Pentecostal theology. Part II: Sources elucidates the still largely uncharted territory of conceptual and practical resources used by Pentecostals for theological reflection. The seven chapters mirror 2

Introduction to The Routledge Handbook of Pentecostal Theology

the heritage of classical Pentecostalism in its use of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral while also identifying the unique understanding and appropriation of these and other sources. By discussing revelation, Scripture, reason, experience, tradition, culture, and worship, the essays contribute a collective array of resources that have shaped the theological debates about methods, doctrines and practices, and the conversations and challenges detailed in the rest of the volume. In Part III: Theological Methods, authors explore, compare, and contrast dominant methodologies for Pentecostal theological reflection. Drawing from the diverse sources of Part II, the five chapters in this section indicate that there is not a single Pentecostal method, but there are dominant themes surrounding debates about a genuine Pentecostal biblical hermeneutic, advances in theological hermeneutics and method, the pneumatological imagination, a pneumatologically driven praxis, and the narrative of the so-called full gospel emerging from the core theological commitments of the historical movement. These themes form the heart of an emerging “Pentecostal” methodology at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Part IV: Doctrines and Practices uses largely established divisions of doctrine to present Pentecostal teachings and practices on traditional themes complemented by the motifs of the full gospel and specifically Pentecostal concerns. The authors reflect on internal debates and historical developments while critically examining differences and offering constructive proposals on trinitarian and Oneness theology, pneumatology, Christology, salvation, sanctification, Spirit baptism, divine healing, eschatology, mission, ecclesiology, spiritual gifts, sacraments, and spiritual warfare. These chapters should be read in light of the contexts, sources, and methods introduced previously. The Handbook does not exhaust all doctrines and practices of Pentecostals, and some elements are dispersed among several chapters. The doctrine of creation, for example, is discussed in chapters on the doctrine of God, salvation, ecotheology, theology of economics, and the theology and science interface. Elements of theological anthropology appear in various debates on social, cultural, economic, ethnic, and racial aspects of Pentecostal theology and feature prominently in discussions on divine healing and disability. This diffusion of ideas signals that Pentecostal theology is still developing at various points. Other topics, including important concerns for the miraculous, sin, and suffering, are discussed under titles more prominent in Pentecostal language, including spiritual gifts, sanctification, and divine healing. Some practices that may be expected under their own heading, for example, glossolalia and prophecy, are treated under larger theological categories, like Spirit baptism, and more inclusive labels, like spiritual gifts. Finally, there are topics, including the theological understanding of atonement and death, that have not yet seen substantive proposals by Pentecostals, although they are found, by implication, in the discussions of other doctrines. In Part V: Conversations and Challenges, the volume ventures towards critical reflection on dominant debates that have come to identify the boundaries of Pentecostal theology since the twentieth century. Organized in alphabetical order, the essays provide a critical discussion of the margins of the Pentecostal movement and its theological self-understanding. These boundaries may challenge the reader’s understanding of not only the topics but also what constitutes a “Pentecostal” approach to the issues. Reflections on arts and aesthetics, disability, ecology, economics, ecumenical theology, feminist theology, philosophy, prosperity theology, race, social justice, theology and science, and theology of religions speak to the conversations and challenges that will likely define the shape of Pentecostal theology for the foreseeable future. The chapters in this section do not attempt to give a definitive 3

Wolfgang Vondey

portrayal but to delineate the questions that guide Pentecostal ventures into new areas, the challenges inherent in Pentecostal perceptions of the various topics, and the particular contributions that have manifested already or that might be expected from Pentecostals. Other themes could be added to this collection, although many are still in their infancy, while some have shifted from explorations to assertive teachings. The dynamic range of this final part confirms that Pentecostalism is developing rapidly along still undefined territory as a global theological tradition.

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PART I

Contextualizing Pentecostal theology

1 SYSTEMATIC PENTECOSTAL THEOLOGY A typology Christopher A. Stephenson This chapter offers a typology of methodologies in systematic Pentecostal theology that introduces the reader to the varieties of this theological tradition. This task faces several challenges: (1) Pentecostal theologians do not always demonstrate that they are aware of the methodological features of their own theology. Some make explicit statements on this score, but others simply proceed without acknowledging these matters. Of course, a theologian’s awareness of one’s own methodology is neither necessary nor sufficient for assessing the methodology. An interpreter can evaluate theological method without explicit statements of the author’s awareness of methodology, and an author’s explicit statements of methodology do not guarantee that the theologian in fact follows the methodological features thus identified. (2) Such a task inevitably requires one to assess the theology of several figures who are still active and, therefore, whose theology is still developing. Small and subtle shifts in successive publications can affect the broad contours of a theologian’s thought. (3) As with any typology, there may be more than one way to arrange the same data and to present it in a way that is faithful to the primary sources in question. Therefore, I offer what I believe is not the only but the most accurate typology of systematic Pentecostal theology. This typology, I argue, provides important perspectives for anyone who seeks to understand the scope and nature of Pentecostal theology in light of the diversity of perspectives of this theological tradition. The above challenges invite humility when classifying the various methodologies. Nonetheless, some theological characteristics are more fundamental than others. While a few characteristics might surface in most or all Pentecostal theologies, there are deeper similarities and differences in areas like the relationship between Scripture and tradition, philosophical sophistication, the relationship between theology and other disciplines, and points of continuity and discontinuity with theologies outside the Pentecostal tradition. Although one cannot altogether separate the formal and material components of Pentecostal theology, I focus here on the basic theological contours of representative Pentecostal theologians rather than trying to give account of the details of each theologian’s views. Herein, “theological method” refers to the ways that Pentecostals go about thinking and writing theologically, not to a stultifying procedure that guarantees precise theological statements if one only makes sure to follow perfectly defined steps and procedures.

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Christopher A. Stephenson

All of the figures that I discuss in this chapter have written either a book that addresses several traditional loci in systematic theology or a constructive volume with implications for theological method. An important fact about the recent surge in Pentecostal systematic theology is that it coincides with a growing distrust for intellectual systems in parts of the academy. Some theologians now prefer “constructive” theology instead of “systematic” theology because they fear that any attempt to organize all theological concerns around one theme or principle—an abiding approach in Western systematic theology—inevitably marginalizes people groups and perspectives. They are also concerned that “systematic” connotes an arrangement of timeless truths immune from constant criticism and reformulation (Coakley 2013, 33–60; Wyman 2017). Pentecostal theologians are only beginning to navigate these questions and have not yet expressed a decided preference for one term over the other, so that I use the designation “systematic theology” to include theology around a thematic principle, as well as constructive, philosophical, fundamental, spiritual, and liturgical theology. I exclude purely scriptural or historical works. Although my presentation is representative rather than exhaustive (Stephenson 2013), I suggest that one can identify six broad types of the way Pentecostals pursue the theological task. I describe and assess each type, in turn, and conclude with some reflections on the impact of this typology for the study of Pentecostal theology.

Theology as Bible doctrines The first type of Pentecostal systematic theology can be labeled “Bible doctrines” and is represented by the works of Myer Pearlman, E. S. Williams, and French L Arrington. This methodology is primarily a categorical arrangement of the biblical texts presented as a simplified version of biblical studies within a structure composed of traditional loci of systematic theology. This methodology features literal readings of Scripture that tend to see equal value for theological reflection in all statements in the Bible, since the Holy Spirit inspires all of the Bible. In short, the Bible doctrines approach largely reduces systematic theological method to biblical interpretation. Pearlman, Williams, and Arrington usually interpret Scripture in a straightforward fashion that avoids tropes like allegory and seeks the so-called plain sense of Scripture. Thus, Arrington notes the value of scholarly tools for studying the Bible and insists that the average Christian can understand Scripture with the Spirit’s help and largely without these tools. This insistence is one of the hallmarks of the influence of common-sense realism on classical Pentecostalism. The three representatives also make word study primary when interpreting Scripture. They seem to assume that words have static meanings that one can uncover by vocabulary-based study, and they employ lexical resources to expound on the meanings of individual Hebrew or Greek words. Rather than detailed exegesis based on historical, grammatical, and literary investigations, one finds word study of biblical terms (Pearlman 1937, 85–86; Williams 1953, 1, 131–35; Arrington 1992–94, 2: 121). The presupposition for this methodology is the assertion that the Bible is the primary source for learning doctrine. That is, to know what to believe about a doctrine, one reads all portions of Scripture related to the topic, since relying on a statement here or there is not sufficient for attaining a comprehensive perspective on a Christian teaching. Pearlman, Williams, and Arrington treat the Bible as if it were a collection of data that one must pour over in order to reach general conclusions. Thus, Pearlman and Williams sometimes do no more than state a proposition followed by Scripture references that serve as prooftexts for a particular belief. Related to this assumed relationship between Scripture and doctrine are other categories such as dogma and systematic theology. For example, by “doctrines,” Pearlman means 8

Systematic Pentecostal theology

complete ideas contained in the Bible, not ideas extrapolated from Scripture that undergo further development and achieve more nuanced articulation in the theological tradition that is in keeping with their biblical points of departure. “Dogmas,” however, are later human developments that formulate the “doctrines” revealed in Scripture into creeds. As an illustration of these conceptual distinctions and their relationships to each other, Pearlman says that early Christians safeguarded the truth of the “doctrine” of the Trinity by formulating “dogmas” such as the Athanasian creed. “Dogmas,” he suggests, are necessary to deter erroneous interpretation of “doctrines” in the Bible (Pearlman 1937, 20–21, 71, 144–46). Each representative places at the beginning of his systematic theology a rudimentary theological epistemology with the Bible as its central component. That is, each discusses Scripture as the means for justifying the claim that one can have knowledge of God. While none of the authors show awareness of basic questions in metaphysics or epistemology, each one operates, even if unconsciously, with presuppositions surrounding the epistemological crisis of the late modern world and the corollary skepticism of some thinkers about the possibility of metaphysics. For Pearlman, Williams, and Arrington, Scripture guarantees that humans can have genuine knowledge of God and that systematic theology (from the perspective of this methodology) is a legitimate enterprise. This practice of starting with theological epistemology highlights the following elements: (1) before one considers various topics in systematic theology one must first give an account of how one claims to have any knowledge of Christian truth or doctrine; (2) God’s revelation alone is the source of this knowledge; (3) some knowledge of God may be attained through general revelation; (4) the inadequacy of general revelation—due in part to the noetic effects of sin—makes special revelation necessary for sufficient knowledge of God; (5) Scripture is the most important form of special revelation; (6) the trustworthiness of Scripture depends on the Spirit’s inspiration of it; (7) one’s ability to interpret Scripture correctly depends on the Spirit’s illumination of it; and (8) all of these seven characteristics are predicated on the conceptual distinctions among revelation, inspiration, and illumination.

Theology and spirituality The second type makes primary the relationship between theology and Christian spirituality, and two major representatives are Steven J. Land and Simon K. H. Chan. Both address the place of elements such as prayer, worship, religious affections, virtues, and spiritual disciplines in systematic theology. Land argues that spirituality is the very means through which Pentecostals express their theology, and Chan argues that Pentecostal theologians should rejuvenate theology and spirituality by incorporating aspects of the wider Christian spiritual tradition and by adopting a normative liturgy centered on word and sacrament. Land (1993, 1) describes spirituality as “the integration of beliefs and practices in the affections which are themselves evoked and expressed by those beliefs and practices,” the integration of orthodoxy, orthopraxy, and orthopathy, and Pentecostal spirituality consists of the various manifestations of this triad (Land 1993, 112). One of the most important Pentecostal beliefs for Land is the fivefold gospel—the confession that Jesus is savior, sanctifier, baptizer in the Holy Spirit, healer, and soon-coming king. Frequent Pentecostal practices are water baptism, the Lord’s Supper, footwashing, singing, praying, spiritual gifts, and preaching. Affections norm beliefs and practices and are also normed by beliefs and practices. Affections give rise to beliefs and practices and are also fueled by beliefs and practices (Land 1993, 120–21, 138). Key Pentecostal affections are gratitude, compassion, and courage. 9

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According to Land, Pentecostal affections are far more than emotions, and maintain Pentecostal spirituality as a way of living. Apocalyptic vision intensifies the affections by adding to them a sense of urgency about the church’s mission. The Holy Spirit ignites a passion for the kingdom of God, which governs all other Christian affections and gives them their distinctively Pentecostal tenor (Land 1993, 136–37). The emphasis on Jesus as soon-coming king invigorates all other Pentecostal beliefs. For Land, then, Pentecostal spirituality’s eschatological context must receive proper consideration for the spirituality to be comprehensible. In fact, the eschatological impulse is the driving force of the Pentecostal tradition (Land 1993, 22–23, 29, 56–64). In Land’s view, the entire worshipping community carries out the theological process, which involves discerning reflection on lived reality. Spirituality—the fundament and precondition of all theology—calls for theology that is concerned precisely with this discerning reflection. In turn, both theology’s process and its result reflect the distinctively Pentecostal spirituality (Land 1993, 192, 218–19). In short, spirituality is theology’s content, medium, and mode of expression, and the theological process establishes spirituality by integrating beliefs, practices, and affections. Ascetical and mystical theology figures prominently in Chan’s descriptions of the relationship between spirituality and theology (Chan 1998, 9–18). Chan insists that Pentecostals must discern the place of their own spirituality within and in light of the broader Christian spiritual tradition. This discernment is necessary because only it can lend the coherence to Pentecostal beliefs and values required for Pentecostals to communicate them successfully to future generations (see Chapter 9). Chan calls this process “traditioning” and maintains that it requires the integrative thinking of systematic theology and the development of a detailed theology of the spiritual life (Chan 2000, 7–12). The failure of Pentecostals to understand their beliefs and spiritual practices against the background of the larger spiritual tradition undermines their ability to “tradition” their members, who, in turn, come to hold relatively shallow versions of Pentecostal beliefs. Chan illustrates the difficulty with two of the most prized Pentecostal beliefs—baptism in the Holy Spirit and glossolalia—which he says are far richer in experience than in the common explanations given by Pentecostals (Chan 2000, 7–16). To demonstrate how even the most distinctive of Pentecostal beliefs might meet with continuity in the wider spiritual tradition, Chan suggests formal similarities between the Pentecostal three-stage soteriology of being saved, sanctified, and baptized in the Holy Spirit and the spiritual tradition’s three ways of purgation, illumination, and union. The church is the most important context in which one lives the Christian life, and Chan highlights Pentecostals’ particular need to develop a strong ecclesiology that is marked by a theology of worship and an accompanying liturgical spirituality. He stresses the “ontological”—rather than purely “sociological” or “functional”—identity of the church as the basis for spiritual practices and worship practices (Chan 2006, 2014). Other characteristics of a robust ecclesiology include acknowledging that the church is closely related to the kingdom of God and that the church defines the rest of creation more than the rest of creation defines the church. The church, he adds, completes the story of the triune God’s activity in creation, inasmuch as the Father sends the Son and the Spirit, and the Spirit establishes and indwells the church (Chan 2011).

Theology in light of the kingdom of God The third type is theology in light of a doctrine of the kingdom of God. The chief representative is Frank D. Macchia, whose theology contains three stages of attention to pneumatology. An emphasis on the kingdom runs through each stage: (1) a facet of pneumatology 10

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(glossolalia), (2) a pneumatological account of justification, and (3) pneumatology as the organizing principle for theology. Macchia (1993, 158–59) finds in the pietist theology of Johann and Christoph Blumhardt an eschatology fueled by the dawning of God’s kingdom manifested in history as the liberation of the sick and the poor. The Blumhardts’ theology of the kingdom, Macchia suggests, encourages Pentecostals to embrace the healing potential of modern medicine through technological advancement and concrete political involvement through social activism, not just through prayer and faith (Macchia 1993, 166–67). Related to a doctrine of the kingdom of God, Macchia develops a thorough constructive Pentecostal theology of glossolalia. He states that Jesus’ death and resurrection make Pentecost an eschatological theophany. Since his death and resurrection are the height of Jesus’ liberating work “for us,” glossolalia should prompt us to seek justice “for others.” Liberating humans takes place within the context of new creation, and when glossolalia promotes social and ecological action that liberates, it is evidence that new creation is already underway (Macchia 1992, 68–72). By emphasizing the connection between glossolalia and baptism in the Holy Spirit, the doctrine of initial evidence points to the heart of baptism in the Holy Spirit, which Macchia describes as encouragement for social engagement. Through glossolalia, believers groan with creation and wait for final redemption; it may also move them to advocate for victims of injustice (Macchia 1998, 159–64). Concerning what Macchia calls “Spirit-baptized justification,” he observes a shift in his own thought to associating justification with the kingdom of God more intentionally. The newer association stems from increasingly seeing God’s kingdom within a pneumatological context by emphasizing Jesus as the one who both inaugurates the kingdom and baptizes in the Holy Spirit (see Chapter 23). Macchia argues that giving justification a pneumatological orientation has implications for Christian ethics: the Spirit’s preparation of humans for ultimate justification in the form of the resurrection from the dead is the work by which the church resists forces like racism and sexism. On this score, Macchia criticizes the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification for an inadequate pneumatological basis, which limits its focus to the justification of individual persons and, thus, hinders a conceptual transition from justification as declared righteousness to justification as the renewal of all of creation (Macchia 2010). Hence, a different organizing principle is needed for Pentecostal theology. Macchia’s organizing principle for systematic theology is an account of baptism in the Holy Spirit that (1) rejects bifurcation between sanctification and charismatic empowerment by serving as a soteriological metaphor that includes justification, sanctification, and charismatic gifts; (2) commends itself as the single central Pentecostal distinctive; (3) resists a false dilemma between baptism in the Holy Spirit and eschatology; and (4) serves as systematic theology’s organizing principle precisely as the Pentecostal tradition’s chief doctrinal distinctive. In the process, Macchia attempts to set baptism in the Holy Spirit within the context of pneumatology itself. The upshot is a thoroughly eschatological doctrine of Spirit baptism that is broad enough to encompass the entire Christian life in the Spirit (Macchia 2006, 15–18). Another implication concerns the relationships among the church, the kingdom of God, and Spirit baptism. Macchia observes that ecumenical debates over Spirit baptism tend to focus on its relationship to Christian initiation, and he states that acknowledging baptism in the Holy Spirit as part of the means through which Jesus inaugurates the kingdom suggests that baptism in the Holy Spirit should not be restricted to the ecclesiological realm. Instead, the kingdom is a more helpful context in which to understand Spirit baptism because the kingdom both includes and transcends the church (Macchia 2006, 62–63). Herewith, Macchia tries to avoid the two extremes of either dichotomizing the church and the  kingdom or 11

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identifying them without any distinction. This approach also leads Macchia to a Christology from the perspective of Pentecost, in which Jesus is both Spirit-baptized and Spirit-baptizer (Macchia 2018).

Philosophical and fundamental theology The fourth type is systematic Pentecostal theology in the form of philosophical and fundamental theology, and the main representative is Amos Yong. His foundational pneumatology, pneumatological imagination (see Chapter 14), and concomitant theory of interpretation take up questions about God’s nature and relationship to the world and first theology (Yong 2002, 2017). For Yong, foundational pneumatology is an account of the relationship between God and the world in pneumatological perspective. The prominence of pneumatology owes to Yong’s contention that “Holy Spirit” is the most appropriate category for referring to God’s agency in the world (Yong 2000b, 175). The ideas of God and the world are correlated such that God is capable of acting in the world and the world is capable of receiving God’s presence and activity (Yong 2000a, 99). Pneumatological imagination spans the gap between the order of being and order of knowing, which are distinct from but related to each other. That is, the Holy Spirit illuminates the rationality of the world (see Chapter 7) and makes it intelligible to human minds (Yong 2002, 123). Nonetheless, human beings should be humble because knowledge is fallible since it is always indirect and semiotic, situated in a particular time and place marked by social and cultural influences on our interpretation, and finite (Yong 2002, 176–83). Communal interpretation refers to the fact that all metaphysics and epistemology are necessarily hermeneutical because human knowledge of reality always arises from within interpretive communities (Yong 2002, 275–76). Yong strives to avoid the polar extremes of naïve realism and epistemological pluralism, for he both grants the perspectival nature of all human knowing and denies that interpretive communities are insulated intellectual ghettos that are normed only by their own narrow concerns. Yong’s theological method forms the logic by which the rest of his theological program operates. Claiming that theology should draw on a plurality of perspectives, he uses the metaphor of “many tongues” from Pentecost, in which a plurality of tongues are spoken and heard by several different people groups. Among the areas of Yong’s thought that most clearly demonstrate this methodology are his theology of religions, his proposals for a global theology, his treatment of certain systematic loci, and his contributions to the dialogue between religion and science. Yong (2000a) has been one of the most vocal theologians encouraging Pentecostals to articulate a theology of religions (see Chapter 41). Integral to his own contributions is his account of discerning the presence, activity, and absence of the Holy Spirit and of other spirits in various religious traditions. He invites Pentecostals to recognize the possibility that the Spirit is at work in places where Christ is not explicitly confessed. This implies that interreligious dialogue partners can temporarily suspend Christological questions that might lead quickly to an impasse in the conversation and can focus on pneumatological questions first (Yong 2000b, 70). The recognition of the Spirit’s presence in non-Christian religions has both ontological and concrete levels. Concerning the ontological, the texts, myths, rituals, and moral codes are what they are to some extent because they are creations of the Spirit. Concerning the concrete, the extent to which these same elements represent themselves authentically and are situated coherently within their respective religious traditions attests to the Spirit’s presence within those traditions to a greater or lesser degree. Not all such symbols convey divine presence, however, and to the extent that they disrupt 12

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human flourishing, they suggest divine absence, or, the demonic. The possibility of divine or demonic presence requires a theology of discernment that carefully interprets religious symbols rather than reaching conclusions a priori about presence, activity, and absence (Yong 2000b, 133, 136–37). With respect to global theology, Yong insists that Christian theology has much to contribute to the current global contexts. Thus, Christians should not shy away from making global claims in the public domain outside their ecclesial contexts. Because Pentecostalism spans the globe, it provides unique resources for shaping a Christian theology that can address all people groups without minimizing the differences among the many Christian traditions. Granting the vast differences among Pentecostals, Yong (2002, 101) contends for a recurring theological theme, namely, an emphasis on the concrete nature of salvation as attested by the Spirit’s works in physical, social, and political dimensions. Hence, the same foundational pneumatology guides Yong’s theology of disability (Yong 2007, 10–14) and the dialogue between religion and science (2012), since Yong sees the natural, social, and human sciences as additional examples of some of the “many tongues” (Yong 2011, 27–29) to which Pentecostals must listen to create a broad and hospitable theology (see Chapters 32 and 42).

Theology as full gospel Type five casts systematic Pentecostal theology in the light of the full gospel, a dominant historical motif derived from classical Pentecostalism, and the chief representative is Wolfgang Vondey. While remaining sensitive to Pentecostalism’s global diversity, Vondey (2013) resists the notion that this diversity necessitates speaking of a plurality of Pentecostalisms to the exclusion of a singular center of the Pentecostal tradition and its theology. He proposes that the full gospel—exemplified in the fivefold proclamation of Jesus as savior, sanctifier, Spirit baptizer, healer, and soon-coming king—is the theological narrative of Pentecostalism, which corresponds to Pentecost as the core theological symbol which the narrative projects (Vondey 2017, 1–10). The origin of the full gospel, and therefore participation in Pentecost, are Pentecostal spirituality and worship manifested in practices oriented around the altar. Pentecostal theology, therefore, does not refer to a central doctrine but to a way of living that is concerned fundamentally with God’s renewing work in the world. Pentecost embodies an ethos of play (Vondey 2010, 2018) before it gives rise to doctrine through a participatory liturgical narrative that yields a biblically and theologically organized and embodied theology (see Chapter 16). Vondey posits that Pentecostal theology is fundamentally soteriological. Although the narrative of salvation is centered on Jesus, in Pentecostal perspective, salvation through Christ is accomplished by the Spirit. Christology is interpreted in pneumatological perspective and pneumatology is interpreted in Christological perspective, so that Pentecostal articulations of salvation always take the form of some kind of Spirit Christology, inasmuch as Luke-Acts describes Christ’s saving work in terms of his anointing with the Holy Spirit. Vondey contends that the Pentecostal perspective of salvation begins with a narrative of Jesus, which is imbued with the Spirit: the Son and the Spirit co-determine the Incarnation; the Spirit creates and unites the humanity of Jesus with the eternal Son; and the Son’s action in Christ is determinative for the Spirit, since the salvation made possible by the Incarnation manifests Jesus’ obedience to the Spirit’s leading (Vondey 2017, 54). From here the theological narrative can be widened to other theological themes and concerns. Vondey’s doctrines of choice and manner of articulating them constitute some of the most exciting and creative portions of his full gospel theology. He selects creation (cosmology), 13

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humanity (anthropology), society (social and cultural anthropology), church (ecclesiology), and God (doxology), and correlates each of these areas with the five tenets of the full gospel. Vondey suggests that Pentecostal theology pursues these (and other) theological loci through the emphases on salvation (see Chapter 21), sanctification (see Chapter 22), Spirit baptism (see Chapter 23), divine healing (see Chapter 24), and the coming kingdom (see Chapter 25). Thus, for example, he explores “creation baptized in the Spirit” and “divine healing and the egalitarian church.” Vondey also connects Spirit baptism explicitly with human embodiment. On a superficial level, making this connection requires little imagination, since the day of Pentecost is the first fulfillment of the promise for the Holy Spirit to come upon all flesh, and the fleshly creatures who will dream, see visions, and so on are human beings. And yet, Vondey insists that the embodiment in question is both social and relational, not purely individual (Vondey 2017, 185–88). He relates salvation to cosmopolitan deliverance and states the need for a “confrontational soteriology” that wrestles with spiritual powers and authorities in social realms such as culture, politics, religion, and economics. In the process, he retains a place for some elements of traditional Pentecostal accounts of demonology and spiritual warfare while replacing the historic dualism of these categories with an emphasis on God confronting all ontological facets of existing things (Vondey 2017, 201–6). Even if it resists strictly doctrinal articulation, the full gospel is an organizing mechanism for global Pentecostal thought and praxis (Vondey 2016). Finally, Vondey claims that Pentecost is an eschatological and not merely historical category. One implication of this emphasis is that Pentecost, in some sense, is an eternal event within the life of God (Vondey 2017, 276). With a focus on the kingdom of God as a corollary to this implication, Pentecostals interpret Pentecost as the final revelation of the kingdom of God before the return of Christ.

Theology for the pluralistic world The five-volume constructive theology (2013–17) of Finish Pentecostal Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen makes him a key representative of the sixth methodological type, which focuses on systematic theology for the pluralistic world. While Kärkkäinen does not see his project as an explicitly Pentecostal theology, he observes that there is never a single theological method but always a plurality of methods at work. In fact, theologians at times become preoccupied with methodology as they attempt to navigate all of the methodological options, and such an approach risks getting lost in contentious details at the outset (Kärkkäinen 2013–17, 1:1–4). Instead, he describes systematic or constructive theology as an integrative discipline that searches for a coherent and balanced understanding of truth in light of the Christian tradition and in the contexts of contemporary thoughts, cultures, and living faiths. It seeks to be inclusive, dialogical, and hospitable (Kärkkäinen 2013–17, 1:13). “Integrative” refers to drawing on multiple sub-disciplines within theology in addition to systematics, as well as drawing on academic disciplines outside religious studies. “Systematic/constructive” refers to a need for theological statements to be coherent, but not at the expense of the characteristic of correspondence. That is, theological claims should avoid both internal contradiction and conform to realities external to the system of thought itself. For Kärkkäinen, attending to external realities in systematic theology requires an engagement with non-Christian religions, particularly through comparative theology. Comparative theology involves taking the theological beliefs of a single faith tradition as the point of departure and exploring the beliefs of another faith tradition comparatively in the hopes of achieving the articulation of a theological belief informed by both the faith tradition in which the comparative theologian is situated and the newly explored faith tradition. This 14

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procedure requires the comparative theologian to have faith commitments to a particular tradition; it does not rule out faith commitments (Kärkkäinen 2013–17, 1:23–29). Kärkkäinen closes his methodological considerations by observing that theology should be understood as an expression of hospitality and mutual exchange since it both receives insights from other traditions and contexts and shares its own convictions by humbly and respectfully arguing for the truth of its claims. Kärkkäinen calls for no less than a shift in pneumatology from a “unitive” model to a “plural” model. The latter speaks of the Holy Spirit within a cosmology of many spirits and powers, whereas the former fails to situate discussions of the Spirit this way. Not to be confused with a sloppy relativism that shies away from normative claims about various spirits in the world, his approach attempts to develop a pneumatology that acknowledges the existence of spirits and their relationship to the Holy Spirit. His pneumatological interests are particularly pronounced in his discussion of the Holy Spirit in non-Christian religions. After examining Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist traditions, he offers guidelines for discerning the s/Spirit(s). In light of the fact that Pentecostals have sometimes reduced discernment of spirits to a gift of the Holy Spirit that enables one to know through supernatural means that someone is under demonic influence, Kärkkäinen describes discernment of spirits in broader terms that include more general assessments of religious traditions’ beliefs, symbols, rituals, and practices and their relationship to Christianity. He believes that no less than a robust trinitarian approach will suffice for this kind of theology and warns against recent approaches to Christian theology of religions that he considers one-sidedly pneumatological (Kärkkäinen 2013–17, 4:119–77). A Pentecostal theology for a pluralistic world is characterized by this hospitable but discerning methodology (see Chapter 41).

Implications of the typology As with any typology, there may be more than one way to arrange the same data and to present it in a way that is faithful to the primary sources in question. For example, (the later) Macchia and Yong converge on the prominence that they give to pneumatology relative to the whole of theology. In this respect, both of them exhibit characteristics of a type of systematic theology that might be called “third article” or “pneumatological theology.” Macchia and Kärkkäinen converge on the decidedly ecumenical shape of their methodologies. While Kärkkäinen exhibits this trait more consistently and thoroughly, Macchia’s appraisal of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification and analysis of baptism in the Holy Spirit in connection with the church and the kingdom could warrant including him in a type of “ecumenical theology.” Yong and Kärkkäinen converge on the prominence of theology of religions and interreligious dialogue within their systematic theologies. Inasmuch as they contend that one can no longer produce systematic theology responsibly without taking seriously the plurality of non-Christian religions, both of them might be considered representatives of a type of “comparative theology.” Yong and Kärkkäinen also converge to some degree on elements of theology and pluralism, although in slightly different ways. Yong strives to maintain the most desirable facets of liberalism’s emphasis on universality and of postliberal and postconservative attentiveness to the particularities and complexities that vary from one community of discourse to another. Kärkkäinen addresses directly questions surrounding the task of theology in a “post- everything world” (Kärkkäinen 2013–17, 1:17). Finally, Vondey could be seen as a representative of systematic theology as spirituality, since he converges with Land and Chan on an emphasis on Pentecostal spirituality and worship as the most important keys to understanding Pentecostal theology, as well as on the centrality 15

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of narrative for Christian self-understanding and accounting for reality. Land and Vondey are especially close to each other on the fivefold gospel as the structure of Pentecostal spirituality and theology. The typology in this chapter organizes these representatives of Pentecostal theology in a way that captures the most fundamental shape of their thought. Nevertheless, alternative arrangements can accentuate various similarities and differences among them. I encourage and hope to learn from the typologies of these theologians and methodologies that other interpreters might offer, even as I continue both to affirm the value of my own typology (Stephenson 2013) and to expand it as Pentecostal systematic theological method increases.

Conclusion The present typology carries important implications for this Handbook of Pentecostal Theology by urging the reader to consider that Pentecostal theology is never only Pentecostal, since theologians simultaneously participate in multiple communities of discourse that shape their method and hermeneutic (see Chapters 12 and 13). The theologians in this typology and the contributors to this Handbook are influenced not only by their Pentecostal identity but also, for example, by culture, ethnicity, nationality, gender, church tradition, and education. The essays that follow offer sometimes decidedly Protestant perspectives, while the angles of others may be more Catholic or Orthodox. In the Pentecostal theological tradition outlined by the representatives in this volume, there are significant variances and different approaches to the task and method of systematic theology. Contributors are trained in different disciplines of theology and religious studies, which have different canons of literature and at times different interpretive strategies, even to the same pieces of literature. These variations include disagreements between the types and their representatives identified here: some types are only in their infancy, others have strong historical roots; some are embraced by most Pentecostals, while others are still contested ideas and pioneering efforts. None of these factors in and of themselves keep the theology that they produce from being Pentecostal; however, because Pentecostal theologians are never only Pentecostal, we do well to remember that there is no such thing as an “ideal” or “pure” Pentecostal theology.

References Arrington, French L. 1992–1994. Christian Doctrine: A Pentecostal Perspective. 3 Volumes. Cleveland: Pathway Press. Chan, Simon. 1998. Spiritual Theology: A Systematic Study of the Christian Life. Downers Grove: InterVarsity. ———. 2000. Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. ———. 2006. Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshipping Community. Downers Grove: InterVarsity. ———. 2011. Pentecostal Ecclesiology: An Essay on the Development of Doctrine. Blandford Forum: Deo. ———. 2014. Grassroots Asian Theology: Thinking the Faith from the Ground Up. Downers Grove: InterVarsity. Coakley, Sarah. 2013. God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay on the Trinity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. 2013–2017. A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World. 5 Volumes. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Land, Steven J. 1993. Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom. JPT Supplement 1. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Macchia, Frank D. 1992. “Sighs Too Deep for Words: Toward a Theology of Glossolalia.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 1: 47–73.

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Systematic Pentecostal theology ———. 1993. Spirituality and Social Liberation: The Message of the Blumhardts in the Light of Wuerttemberg Pietism. Metuchen: Scarecrow. ———. 1998. “Groans Too Deep for Words: Towards a Theology of Tongues as Initial Evidence.” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 1 (2): 149–73. ———. 2006. Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. ———. 2010. Justified in the Spirit: Creation, Redemption, and the Triune God. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2018. Jesus the Spirit Baptizer: Christology in Light of Pentecost. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Pearlman, Myer. 1937. Knowing the Doctrines of the Bible. Springfield: Gospel Publishing House. Stephenson, Christopher A. 2013. Types of Pentecostal Theology: Method, System, Spirit. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vondey, Wolfgang. 2010. Beyond Pentecostalism: The Crisis of Global Christianity and the Renewal of the Theological Agenda. Pentecostal Manifestos 3. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2013. Pentecostalism: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Bloomsbury. ———. 2016. “Full Gospel or Pure Gospel: Principles of Lutheran and Pentecostal Theology.” Dialog: A Journal of Theology 55 (4): 324–33. ———. 2017. Pentecostal Theology: Living the Full Gospel. Systematic Pentecostal and Charismatic Theology 1. London: Bloomsbury. ———. 2018. “Religion as Play: Pentecostalism as a Theological Type.” Religions 9 (3): 1–16. Williams, Ernest S. 1953. Systematic Theology. 3 Volumes. Springfield: Gospel Publishing House. Wyman, Jason A., Jr. 2017. Constructing Constructive Theology: An Introductory Sketch. Minneapolis: Fortress. Yong, Amos. 2000a. Discerning the Spirit(s): A Pentecostal-Charismatic Contribution to Christian Theology of Religions. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. ———. 2000b. “On Divine Presence and Divine Agency: Toward a Foundational Pneumatology.” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 3 (2): 167–88. ———. 2002. Spirit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective. Burlington: Ashgate. ———. 2005. The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker. ———. 2007. Theology and Down Syndrome: Reimagining Disability in Late Modernity. Waco: Baylor. ———. 2011. The Spirit of Creation: Modern Science and Divine Action in the Pentecostal Charismatic Imagination. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2012. The Cosmic Breath: Spirit and Nature in the Christianity-Buddhism-Science Trialogue. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2017. The Hermeneutical Spirit: Theological Interpretation and Scriptural Imagination for the 21st Century. Eugene: Cascade.

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2 PENTECOSTAL THEOLOGY AS A GLOBAL CHALLENGE Contextual theological constructions Allan Heaton Anderson Why does Pentecostal theology present a “global challenge”? There are indeed many challenges with the deliberate juxtaposition of “theology” and “global” in the title of this chapter. “Theology” in the singular might assume that there is one common Pentecostal theology, but I argue that just as there are many different kinds of Pentecostalism, so there are also many different kinds of Pentecostal theology. “Global” is a contested term. It usually means a process of homogenisation of various views in a common “globalized” world, which presents challenges. There is tension between the “global” and the “local,” between the “foreign” and the “indigenous,” and this is no less true of Pentecostal theology. Although the electronic media has made ideas and doctrines quickly available to Pentecostals throughout the world, it is in the way these are interpreted in diverse languages and cultural settings that the (sometimes immense) differences lie. In this chapter, I expand on these ideas and begin by outlining the different varieties of Pentecostalism and how their theologies might differ. I discuss the challenges of cultural and religious settings affecting the ways different “contextual Pentecostal theologies” might be understood and examine the importance of Walter Hollenweger’s original proposal of the “oral structures” and “intercultural theology” for our understanding of Pentecostal theology. I conclude with reflections on the possibility of a Pentecostal global theology.

Pentecostal varieties Categories to define Pentecostalism imposed by academics are often not recognised by the participants themselves, and there are porous borders between these categories (Anderson 2010). The influence of academic power and privilege must also be acknowledged. The task of describing a Pentecostal theology is rendered extremely difficult when these varieties are taken into account. In this discussion it is helpful to remember two broad but important historical facts: 1

There is no single point of origin for Pentecostalism, but revival movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sought to restore a primitive and powerful Christianity to evangelise the world before the imminent coming of Christ (Creech 1996; Robeck 2006; Anderson 2013). These ideas were spread globally by evangelical 18

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2

missionary networks and local indigenous preachers. One could say that Pentecostal theology was forged in the anvil of these revival fires, where the powerful experience of the Holy Spirit was given priority over what were often seen as sterile creeds and doctrines. Pentecostalism did not initially set out to have a distinct theology of its own; rather, it was an ecumenical movement of people from many denominations who had had an overwhelming experience of the Spirit. In many cases, it was only the opposition they encountered from their churches that forced them into forming new denominations. Internal theological differences then caused them to draw up statements of faith, but this was not their original focus, and Pentecostal theology has been in a constant process of formation and re-formation. It follows that when we speak of “Pentecostal” theology, standardisation is precarious, if not impossible. Categories of Pentecostalism can be historically defined by outlining diachronous and synchronous links (Bergunder 2010, 59), but these categories have “blurred edges” (Wittgenstein 2001, 66, 71), and one category can easily move into another or disappear altogether.

Chronologically, the “classical” Pentecostal movements emerged from late nineteenth century revivalist, healing, and holiness Protestant movements in Europe and North America. Wolfgang Vondey (2017, 3, 281) shows that early Pentecostalism “was marked by an ad hoc doxology rather than a systematic and dogmatic theology” and that Pentecostal theology is “at heart a liturgical theology.” Put differently, Pentecostal theology is not a doctrinal theology, because there were a multitude of diffuse doctrines, which soon led to multiple schisms that have marked Protestantism since its beginnings. At first, people coalesced around their common experience of the baptism in the Spirit (see Chapter 23), but soon their doctrinal differences became apparent. As Douglas Jacobsen (2003, 12–13) demonstrates, since there was “no meta-model of Pentecostalism . . . different theological visions of Pentecostal faith” resulted. Pentecostals disagreed on whether their experience would always be accompanied by speaking in tongues as “initial evidence.” They disagreed over whether sanctification was a separate or progressive experience (see Chapter 22). They differed over models of church government. They disagreed over modes of baptism and the doctrine of the Trinity (see Chapters 17 and 18). They also differed on whether there were present-day apostles and prophets (see Chapter 28). Although most of them shared a premillennial eschatology and “missionary nature” (Anderson 2007), Pentecostals competed with each other for converts, even in faraway places like India, China, and South Africa, where Pentecostal preachers usually began with sharing their experience of Spirit baptism with contacts from other churches, their first converts. By the 1920s there were already scores of different Pentecostal denominations that had little to do with each other and often mounted fierce public arguments against each other. There was another parallel movement of the Spirit occurring at around the same time across the world and for which Protestant missions were unprepared. This was the emergence of independent churches, which consciously broke off ties with Western mission churches because of paternalism and colonial practices that made indigenous leaders feel like they had no real authority in the churches they had led. The first independent churches were usually replicas of the churches they seceded from, but soon churches arose that embraced Pentecostal ideas that resonated with their religious background. By the 1920s they were well established in many parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Some of these churches were born during the rising nationalism and opposition to colonialism but saw themselves as a movement of the Spirit that was not determined by European or North American forms 19

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of being Christian. In some cases, independent classical Pentecostal missionaries actually facilitated the rise of these churches (Anderson 2007, 181). Their theology was sometimes less articulate than that of classical Pentecostals, but they had clear Pentecostal features in that prophecy, healing through prayer, and speaking in tongues were main characteristics of these churches. There was a conviction that they had had an experience of the Spirit that drove them to preach the gospel of healing and deliverance from demons (Onyinah 2012). Across the vast continent of Africa, for example, they were almost universally known as “churches of the Spirit.” But again, we must appreciate that there were many different doctrines and practices across the world. Unlike earlier scholars of African independent churches, Walter Hollenweger (1972, 149 and 166) made the connection of these churches with Pentecostalism by arguing that they were “independent African Pentecostal churches.” Instead of the strident and quite common criticism from European observers that these churches were “syncretistic,” Hollenweger saw the need for common understanding and dialogue. Much more recently, from the 1960s onwards, Pentecostal experience began to break out in the established Protestant and Anglican/Episcopalian churches in the form of what became known as the Charismatic renewal. At first it was contact with classical Pentecostals, healing evangelists, and popular literature that sparked this renewal. Leading figures travelled around the world to share their experience, and it caught on quickly. But this was not a simple linear history. Many of the early European Pentecostal leaders would be categorised as “Charismatic” in this sense. They never intended to leave their churches but wanted to continue with their newfound experience in order to renew and revitalize their denominations that had grown somewhat old and tired. Spiritual gifts (including tongues) had been experienced in Protestant churches throughout the first half of the twentieth century (Anderson 2014, 158). Once again, this category has blurred borders. After the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), when Pope John XXIII had prayed for the fresh wind of the Spirit to revitalise the Roman Catholic Church, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal began in 1967. The pope had spoken of his desire for “aggiornamento,” letting fresh air into the church, and he prayed that the Vatican Council might be a “new Pentecost” for the church (Suenens 1975, x; Hughson 2008). Catholic Charismatics, originally called “Pentecostals,” saw themselves as the fulfilment of that prayer. The movement opened up a world of fresh expressions of Catholicism and lay participation. Many of these Charismatics believed in a subsequent experience of Spirit baptism, but within their sacramental framework, and most remained loyal to the Catholic faith. Today, Catholic Charismatics number around a tenth of all Catholics worldwide, well over 120 million, and are particularly strong in Africa, Asia, and Latin America (Alva 2016). Catholic Charismatic churches in the Philippines, India, and Brazil are among the largest in the world. Charismatics in the older churches do not usually attempt to alter their denomination’s theology, and today, one can speak of the “pentecostalisation” of many mainline churches, both Catholic and Protestant. Developments in Pentecostalism more recently render categorisation even more complicated. By far the greatest growth of the movement has happened since the 1970s, when one of the most prolific forms of Pentecostalism emerged in emerging independent “Charismatic” churches. Most of the figures quoted frequently about hundreds of millions of Pentecostals and Charismatics worldwide include the vast numbers of Catholic Charismatics and independent churches. Probably 80% of Pentecostalism worldwide today is found outside North America and Europe. Independent Charismatic churches are now all over the world. They are relatively “new” churches, and often display the entrepreneurial skills of their charismatic (“gifted”) leaders. Some have bishops and archbishops, some wear priestly robes, and some have apostles and prophets, like the Spirit churches in Africa. 20

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Some of the largest megachurches include the so-called “Word of Faith” churches, preaching the “prosperity gospel” (see Chapter 38). The hundreds of these churches worldwide mean again that there are as many different theologies or variations of this theology as there are churches. The “prosperity gospel” presents us with new challenges, and many Pentecostals distance themselves from it. There are different ways of interpreting this doctrine, and it is important to understand the different contexts in which it is found. In Africa and in many other parts of the world, poverty and hardship are seen as the result of a diminishing of power and cannot easily be divorced from the concept of the omnipresent witchcraft, the work of evil-intentioned spirits (see Chapter 30). Good luck, success, progress, and (relative) prosperity are seen as blessings from God, the increasing of power (Asamoah-Gyadu 2013, 116). The Pentecostal message of the power of the Spirit, and especially its focus on healing, deliverance, and abundant living, resonates well with people who live in constant fear of a threatening invisible world of evil forces. Because this “spirit-filled world” is a place of spiritual insecurity only overcome by the power of the Spirit, the prosperity gospel has become widespread in developing countries around the world (Anderson 2018, 137–40). Charismatic preachers proclaim a powerful God who not only heals and delivers but promises success and prosperity to those who have faith. Some of these preachers sincerely believe that their message of prosperity is a contextual message for people troubled constantly by misfortune and poverty. They promote self-help schemes for better living and business initiatives providing employment. These efforts are sorely needed. That a positive message of God’s material provision is so often found in Pentecostal preaching should not come as a surprise. The reasons for this and the context in which this is found are very different from those of notorious preachers of health and wealth in the so-called American Bible Belt (Bowler 2013). I am not seeking to justify a crass interpretation of proof texts and the exploitation of the vulnerable that is characteristic of some forms of these churches. Rather, we need to see how contexts shape and change Pentecostal theology. One way to live above a hostile spirit world in contexts of deprivation is to have more power and material possessions—all of which God can supply. When backed up with biblical verses that show that the power of God’s Spirit can enable people to live above their dire circumstances, this message is very attractive. When it comes to doctrine, many of the newer Charismatic churches, while acknowledging and practising the gifts of the Spirit, do not insist on speaking in tongues as “evidence” of baptism in the Spirit, have no sense of historical continuity with classical Pentecostals, and would not label themselves “Pentecostal” at all. Nevertheless, we might say that they are “Pentecostal” because there is still an emphasis on the experience of the Spirit and the practice of spiritual gifts. This is how I have defined Pentecostalism in the past (Anderson 2010, 16–17), and this is how we can understand it today, even though this broad definition does not satisfy everyone. When it comes to defining Pentecostal theology, I agree with Vondey (2017, 2, 11) that “Pentecostal theology emerges from the root image of Pentecost” and that “Pentecost is the core theological symbol of Pentecostal theology.” It is the experience of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost and the practice of the gifts of the Spirit that ensued that form the common denominator uniting many different kinds of Pentecostal theology worldwide.

Contextual Pentecostal theologies It is understandable that in this complex myriad of different kinds of Pentecostalism, finding “a” Pentecostal theology is a global challenge. As Vondey (2017, 1) has shown, there are those “who anticipate that a single account of Pentecostal theology would conceal the significant diversity of the global movement.” Obviously, I am one of them; Walter Hollenweger might 21

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be another. In the introduction to his last published volume, Pentecostalism, Hollenweger (1997, 2) wrote what he described as a “thoroughly theological book” that “tells theology in the form of histories.” He preferred to describe Pentecostal theology using the plural “contextual spiritualities:” This seems to me to be a form of scholarly treatment which is more appropriate to the contextual spiritualities of Pentecostalism than propositional, so-called universal statements and discussion, because it places Pentecostal convictions and practices in their different cultural contexts. Put differently, propositional, universal statements of Pentecostal theology simply will not do. Placing the different theologies in both historical and cultural contexts is essential if we are to understand their global challenges. I have long argued for a de-Westernisation of Pentecostal theology, because the dangers of misinterpretation are multiplied when we assume that there is a standard, homogenized Pentecostal theology where one size fits all. This is not to say that Pentecostal theology cannot be based on the biblical revelation and on the event of Pentecost, but only when that revelation is interpreted in a way that takes into account the context in which it is read. Hollenweger’s distinctive work was that he set global Pentecostalism within the context and parameters of what he termed “intercultural theology” (Anderson 2018, 199–207). I will use the related terms “contextual theology” and “contextualisation.” Contextualisation is not the same as indigenisation, which is making something that is a constant (like the Christian church) into something that is “indigenous.” The result is usually a “three-self ” church—one that is self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating. This idea has been an important feature of Pentecostal mission education (Anderson 2013, 88–91), and was relatively easy to accomplish when leadership was based on gifting rather than theological education. But the theory did not always become the practice. The concept of indigenisation also has implications for Pentecostal theology. On the one hand, it is easy to confuse expectations of Pentecostal theology with the particular form systematic theology reached in the West; on the other hand, indigenisation often assumes that cultures do not change. Whenever there are “indigenous” leaders and the use of local languages, perhaps also local music in worship, and adherence to the three-self principles, then its goal is achieved. In comparison, “contextualisation” is more comprehensive and assumes that every theology and form of Christianity is shaped by its particular context, and that they must be so shaped to be relevant and meaningful. Contextual theology relates the Christian message to all social contexts and cultures, including those undergoing rapid change. For example, Wessly Lukose (2013) shows how Pentecostal theology relates to the religious context of India; Sang Yun Lee (2018) traces the role of Korean Pentecostalism in providing a contextual “theology of hope” in a changing society; and Naar M’fundisi-Holloway (2018) shows how Pentecostalism relates to civic engagement in Zambia. In other words, contextualisation is dynamic and never static. It is much more than presenting the gospel in a culturally relevant way or creating a three-self church. Pentecostals have cultures, and contextualisation is important to questions of culture (see Chapter 10). Pentecostals sometimes think that their own particular culture’s way is the only way to be “Pentecostal.” The result can be disastrous, for once Pentecostals encounter a different culture, their own cultural traditions become the “right” way to do theology or to model the church, which often results in conflict and schism. Nevertheless, to some extent Pentecostalism has contextualised Christianity anyway, mostly unconscious of the various theories behind the process, and mostly unnoticed by outsiders. The experience of the fullness of the 22

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Spirit (Pentecost) is the central plank of Pentecostal theology, and it is in this focus on experience that contextualisation occurs. In most societies around the world, everything that exists is influenced by an omnipresent spiritual world. In Pentecostalism, the all- encompassing Spirit is involved in every aspect of life—that is, the Spirit is working in the context. Rather than being theorized about, a contextual theology is acted out in the rituals, liturgies, and daily experiences of these Pentecostals (see Chapter 16). Pentecostalism has made a vital contribution to a dynamic contextual theology. Hollenweger’s work is a prime example of a practical contextual theology, and he illustrates this with historical stories. His Pentecostalism (1997, 41–53) updated and developed his earlier ideas with reference to recent academic literature at the time. Hollenweger acknowledged the historical and religious continuity between Pentecostalism and African religions, on the one hand (through his ideological appropriation of the Azusa Street revival), and between different kinds of Pentecostalism, on the other hand. By this time, he had a fully developed argument about the importance of Pentecostalism to intercultural theology. He asked whether the different forms of Pentecostalism worldwide could be regarded as forms of syncretism and answered in the affirmative with a provocative qualification: “so are all forms of Christianity, also and in particular Western Christianity.” It was not whether there is syncretism but “what kind of syncretism”—which led him to discuss a “theologically responsible syncretism” when assessing Pentecostalism. He thought that a “responsible syncretism” was “a pressing theological problem [that] has to be addressed” (1997, 132–33) not only by Pentecostals. Hollenweger (1997, 20–23) also described what he called the “oral structures” of Pentecostalism as central to his concept of an intercultural Pentecostal theology. These oral structures of Pentecostalism’s beginnings—which he likened to Christianity’s origins—were the main reason for the movement’s initial growth, and not because of any particular Pentecostal doctrine. Putting aside his ideologically driven theory and possible hints of primitivism, there are many features of Hollenweger’s analysis that are relevant in a discussion of Pentecostal theology. His well-known list of the characteristics of these oral structures is worth repeating: an oral liturgy, a narrative theology and witness, a reconciliatory and participant community, the inclusion of visions and dreams in worship, and understanding the relationship between body and mind revealed in healing by prayer and liturgical dance. He thought these features were also predominantly African cultural features, evident in the Azusa Street revival (1906–9) of the African American preacher William Seymour, whose “spirituality lay in his past.” Seymour’s Pentecostalism, he stated, was “the oral missionary movement, with spiritual power to overcome racism and chauvinism” (1999, 42). Hollenweger’s oral structures formed the basis of his assessment of Pentecostalism and its ability to form an “intercultural theology.” I have discussed these structures with reference to African Pentecostalism (Anderson 2018, 204–7), but here adapt them to focus on their relevance to the global challenges of Pentecostal theology. In doing so, I follow Hollenweger’s insistence that theology is much more than written, cerebral theology. Pentecostal contextual theologies originate in the liturgies, worship, prayers, songs, preaching, practices, and generally in the life of Pentecostal communities (Cox 1996, 201). These differ from place to place, and as Macchia (2006, 50) observes, Hollenweger’s work shows “that doctrinal conceptions among Pentecostals are too diverse to provide us with that which is theologically distinctive to the movement.” Still, Hollenweger offers six structural identifiers that can be attributed to Pentecostals worldwide. Hollenweger’s first structure is what he calls an oral liturgy. There are still many communities worldwide that remain preliterate or functionally illiterate. These societies are usually more sensitive to non-verbal signals and forms of communication than Westerners. 23

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They are also more community-oriented. Pentecostals emphasise an oral, spontaneous, and joyful liturgy that is attractive in these communities. Hollenweger (1997, 269–71) points out that this spontaneity and enthusiasm produces flexible liturgies memorised by Pentecostal congregations in their music and worship. The most important element is the active participation of every member. A large part of what happens in the worship services consists of congregational singing, dancing, and praying in unison. Call and response sometimes punctuates the preaching. Everyone feels part of the worshipping community and participates enthusiastically, probably fulfilling the Protestant doctrine of the priesthood of the believer more adequately than older churches have done. The second structure is a narrative theology and witness (Hollenweger 1999, 36–39). Preaching is an important part of Pentecostal liturgy throughout the world. The most successful Pentecostal preachers are usually those who can tell a story and use illustration, narrative, and humour to make a point. Theological preaching in its formal, more cerebral forms as found in older, Western forms of Christianity is not attractive in many parts of the world. Theology narrated in sermons and testimonies in Pentecostal congregations is preferred. The experience of the Spirit’s presence is seen as a normal part of daily life and is applied to all situations. God’s salvation is seen in different manifestations of God’s abiding presence through the Spirit in everyday life. These evidences of God’s imminent presence assure Pentecostals that “God is here” to help in every area of human need. The narrative most used by many Pentecostal women is that of personal testimony, telling of divine intervention in what are often situations of extreme hardship and male domination. As women predominate in Pentecostalism, their testimonies empower them on a weekly basis with an acceptable opportunity to participate in and profoundly influence the theology and witness of the congregation. As they are also often the spiritual leaders of their households, their influence on the local congregation is immense, even without the trappings of ecclesiastical office that is often denied them (Anderson 2014, 265–72). Third, Hollenweger (1999, 39) writes of a reconciliatory and participant community. One of the strongest appeals of Pentecostalism is its ability to accept and empower all people who embrace its way of life, without regard to gender, social status, or education. Everyone is made to feel at home and has the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to the community. The church service is one place where maximum participation is encouraged, but this is extended into the involvement of people in church activities throughout the week, particularly in outreaches to the surrounding community. Pentecostal churches see themselves as God’s people, called out from the world around them with a distinct mission. They have a sense of identity as a separated community whose primary purpose is to promote their cause to those outside. “Church” for them is the most important activity in life, and their faith is brought into every situation. Unlike older forms of Christianity, Pentecostalism is not as dependent on foreign specialists and trained clergy and the transmission of Western liturgy and leadership. For migrant Pentecostals in the West, for example, their churches have many practical functions—whether obtaining a visa to remain in the country, receiving employment, dealing with racism, marginalization and rejection, finding financial help, getting advice regarding marriage and family affairs, deliverance from demons or healing from sickness, and other afflictions seen as the attack of Satan. In short, the church is a caring, therapeutic community that is at once a refuge from the storms and difficulties of a new life and an advice and comfort centre for every possible eventuality in an uncertain external environment. Many churches influenced by an individualistic and secular society have lost this sense of therapeutic community and belongingness that is so much a central characteristic of these forms of Pentecostalism. 24

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Fourth are visions and dreams (1999, 39), perhaps not a universal feature of Pentecostal liturgy, but an important part of guidance in many societies. Through visions and dreams people are called to special tasks and to ministry, warned of impending dangers, and given revelations by the Spirit. Pentecostals justify this aspect of their practice by reference to the Bible, where visions and dreams are seen as a normal means of divine revelation. “Words of knowledge” and “words of wisdom” in Pentecostalism worldwide often involve seeing visions and revealing God’s purpose for individuals and communities. Among many African churches of the Spirit, the prophet is the main channel and interpreter of these divine communications in a role not unlike that of the traditional healer. Intercultural theology always intends to offer a prophetic voice and vision. The fifth of Hollenweger’s oral structures is healing and deliverance by prayer (1997, 228–45). Healing and exorcism (by prayer or sometimes through fasting) has always been one of the important features of Pentecostalism, and one of the main reasons for its worldwide appeal (see Chapters 24 and 30). These elements are essential parts of the life of Pentecostals because these problems affect the whole community, especially where access to adequate healthcare is difficult. The experiences of ordinary people form the crucible in which an intercultural Pentecostal theology is made. In the healing and deliverance liturgies, liberation from the terrors and insecurities inherent in experiences of evil spiritual powers in society is achieved. The final structure is liturgical music and dance. Together with healing through prayer, Hollenweger (1997, 269–87) considers that this aspect illustrates the relationship between body and mind. Participation in almost every kind of Pentecostal community is characterised by participating in a joyful, bodily celebration of praise and dance. One seldom takes place without the other. Africans are well known for their rhythmic music and dance usually accompanied by strong and vibrant percussion. Many churches make frequent use of drums accompanied by dance as a central part of their liturgy in keeping with their religious and cultural practices. Pentecostal dance is seldom choreographed and expresses the desire of participants to celebrate their freedom in Christ. For Pentecostals, Christian worship is a joyful experience to be entered into with the whole body (see Chapter 11). This free, exuberant Christianity exists not merely because it is a cultural trait of some people to be enthusiastic, rhythmic, and noisy but because it is an expression of their heartfelt joy in the freedom they have experienced. A new emphasis on the role of the Spirit in the worship, work, and witness of the church is one of the main reasons for Pentecostal enthusiasm. Although most noticeable in Africa, the antiphonal, boisterous singing, simultaneous and spontaneous prayer, and rhythmic music and dance are found throughout global Pentecostalism. They emphasise the freedom, equality, community, and dignity of each person in the sight of God. These various “oral structures” form a template from where we can analyse a contextual Pentecostal theology. Hollenweger’s work indicates that important is not what we do with Pentecostal theology but how we do it: we are to approach theology through the contextual practices of Pentecostals rather than through our preconceived theoretical formulations. The essays in this volume reflect the difficulties of this task and the challenges facing the diverse manifestations of Pentecostalism worldwide.

A global theology? Pentecostal scholars have only relatively recently moved beyond the particularism of classical Pentecostal doctrines to reflection on how Pentecostal theology might relate to its global context (see Chapter 2). Can we find Hollenweger’s structures reflected in contemporary Pentecostal theology? Frank Macchia (2006, 24–25) writes of classical Pentecostal scholars who have moved “significantly beyond the old classical Pentecostal doctrine of subsequence 25

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and tongues as initial evidence.” Vondey (2010) portrays the entire development from classical to global Pentecostalism as a process of going beyond Pentecostals’ historical, sociocultural, institutional, and theological origins. Most elaborately, Amos Yong (2005) frames his study on global Pentecostalism as a paradigm for a global, pneumatological theology. His theological position is that Pentecostalism is diverse, practical, holistic, and has strong connections to the marginalised of this world, so that a reconstruction of a global Pentecostal theology is not only possible but necessary. As Vondey (2006, 294) points out, for Yong: Pentecostal theology is not merely abstract and speculative but also deeply practical. . . [Yong is] not only speaking from the core-orienting motif of pneumatology but also challenging the dominant creedal formulations of Western theology and presenting the realities of Pentecostal practice, worship, and life in the Holy Spirit. Yong’s pneumatological imagination (see Chapter 14) tries to weave a common thread in all the diversity of global Pentecostalism. The experience of the Spirit informs and makes possible a global theology. The question is whether such a global Pentecostal theology is practically possible, or is this only an ideological theory? Yong is at pains to find consensus and to repackage theology while attempting to be Pentecostal, ecumenical, catholic, and evangelical. In his attempt to find a “global theology” with harmony and consensus, he may have overlooked some of the fundamental and irreconcilable differences between his different sources. For example, in his discussion of Spirit baptism, he advocates a conciliatory position, understanding Spirit baptism as at the same time a conversion-initiation, sanctifying, and empowering experience (2005, 118–19). Although much can be said in favour of this position, more conservative Pentecostal theologians who understand what Yong has written will hardly endorse this compromise. Macchia (2006, 20–21) takes a similar position in his attempt to outline “a global Pentecostal theology” that for him finds its centre in Spirit baptism, however variously interpreted. Still, Yong’s highly selective treatment of a mass of reading is highly purposeful: to justify his theological position that Pentecostalism is diverse, practical, holistic, and with strong connections to the marginalized of this world, and to introduce his contention that a “reconstruction” of a global Pentecostal theology is possible (2005, 79–80). Hollenweger’s insights find expression primarily in Yong’s consistent pneumatological focus: it is the experience of the Spirit in all its diversity in global Pentecostalism that informs a global theology. For Yong, Pentecostal theology is grounded in soteriology, a soteriology that is “thoroughly pneumatological,” but is also multidimensional. His methodology draws his theological construction from biblical sources, from contemporary experience, and in dialogue with the historical church traditions (Yong 2005, 82). His method is dynamic and progressive, and therefore open-ended. The experiences of global Pentecostalism mean that the “multidimensionality” of salvation is expanded comprehensively and holistically to include personal, family, ecclesial, material, social (race, class, and gender), cosmic, and eschatological salvation. He tackles the theme of ecclesiology, tracing a pneumatological perspective on the marks of the church: united, holy, catholic, and apostolic. He discusses the church in the fellowship of the Spirit as the eschatological people of God, a pneumatological theology of baptism, and a pneumatological theology of liturgy (including the Lord’s Supper). He deals with the potential of Pentecostalism for ecumenism, as the experience of the Spirit is able to heal fragmentation and division. Yong shows how ecumenism is biblically grounded, realised in Pentecostal history, and is potentially the most significant contribution of global Pentecostalism to the universal church. 26

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Conclusion When we ask whether a global “Pentecostal theology” is possible, some scholars suggest that it is. Yong situates this in the “pneumatological imagination,” while Vondey finds its “core theological symbol” in the experience of Pentecost. Macchia centres it in the concept of Spirit baptism. Hollenweger is more eclectic and considers the “oral structures” and histories of Pentecostalism to be the basis of contextual, intercultural theologies. Theological research on the liturgies, narratives, sermons, testimonies, songs, and communities of Pentecostals, especially outside the Western world, is greatly needed. It is important to recognise that Pentecostal theology, like the Spirit, cannot be contained in one form or creed. The challenge is to discover and analyse how Pentecostal theology is done and what it might look like in Africa, Asia, or Latin America, rather than seeking to impose a rigid Euro-American model on the world. Pentecostal scholars from Africa, Asia, and Latin America are emerging with fresh perspectives and different priorities. In the end, it is the experience of the Spirit that forms the basis for a contextual Pentecostal theology, but the Spirit moves as the Spirit wills in contexts that are very different, rendering any attempt at homogenisation impossible. This is the global challenge of Pentecostal theology today.

References Alva, Reginald. 2016. “Catholic Charismatic Renewal Movement and Transformation of Life.” Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 36 (2): 145–58. Anderson, Allan H. 2007. Spreading Fires: The Missionary Nature of Early Pentecostalism. London: SCM. ———. 2010. “Varieties, Taxonomies, and Definitions.” In Studying Global Pentecostalism: Theories and Methods, edited by Allan Anderson, Michael Bergunder, Andre Droogers, Cornelis van der Laan, 13–29. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 2013. To the Ends of the Earth: Pentecostalism and the Transformation of World Christianity. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2014. An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2018. Spirit-Filled World: Religious Dis/Continuity in African Pentecostalism. Christianity and Renewal-Interdisciplinary Studies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Asamoah-Gyadu, J. Kwabena. 2013. Contemporary Pentecostal Christianity: Interpretations from an African Context. Oxford: Regnum. Bergunder, Michael. 2010. “The Cultural Turn.” In Studying Global Pentecostalism: Theories and Methods, edited by Allan Anderson, Michael Bergunder, Andre Droogers, Cornelis van der Laan, 51–73. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bowler, Kate. 2013. Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel. New York: Oxford University Press. Cox, Harvey. 1996. Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-first Century. London: Cassell. Creech, Joe. 1996. “Visions of Glory: The Place of the Azusa Street Revival in Pentecostal History.” Church History 65 (3): 405–24. Hollenweger, Walter J. 1972. The Pentecostals. London: SCM. ———. 1997. Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide. Peabody: Hendrickson. ———. 1999. “The Black Roots of Pentecostalism.” In Pentecostals After a Century: Global Perspectives on a Movement in Transition, edited by Allan H. Anderson and Walter J. Hollenweger, 33–44. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Hughson, Thomas. 2008. “Interpreting Vatican II: ‘A New Pentecost.’” Theological Studies 69 (1): 3–37. Jacobsen, Douglas. 2003. Thinking in the Spirit: Theologies of the Early Pentecostal Movement. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Lee, Sang Yun. 2018. A Theology of Hope: Contextual Perspectives in Korean Pentecostalism. Manila: APTS Press. Lukose, Wessly. 2013. Contextual Missiology of the Spirit: Pentecostalism in Rajasthan, India. Oxford: Regnum.

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Allan Heaton Anderson Macchia, Frank. 2006. Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. M’fundisi-Holloway, Naar. 2018. Pentecostal and Charismatic Spiritualities and Civic Engagement in Zambia. Christianity and Renewal-Interdisciplinary Studies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Onyinah, Opoku. 2012. Pentecostal Exorcism: Witchcraft and Demonology in Ghana. Blandford Forum: Deo. Robeck, Cecil M., Jr. 2006. The Azusa Street Mission and Revival: The Birth of the Global Pentecostal Movement. Nashville: Thomas Nelson. Suenens, Léon Joseph. 1975. A New Pentecost? London: Darton, Longman & Todd. Vondey, Wolfgang. 2006. “Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology: Implications of the theology of Amos Yong.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 28 (2): 289–312. ———. 2010. Beyond Pentecostalism: The Crisis of Global Christianity and the Renewal of the Theological Agenda. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2017. Pentecostal Theology: Living the Full Gospel. London: T&T Clark. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2001. Philosophical Investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte. Oxford: Blackwell. Yong, Amos. 2005. The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.

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3 PENTECOSTAL THEOLOGY AS SPIRITUALITY Explorations in theological method Daniel Castelo Whenever the topic of Pentecostal theology is extensively and broadly explored, the notion of spirituality must be addressed in some fashion. This chapter focuses on the body of literature which suggests explicitly that Pentecostal theology is best understood as involving spirituality in a significant way. The general claim is that the one goes hand in hand with the other—the way Pentecostals theologically reason and the way they live out their faith are connected. I wish to press the connection more strongly in this chapter by suggesting that Pentecostal theology should be considered as a feature of Pentecostal spirituality. Issues of crosspollination, overlap, and identification are all relevant here. That this latter proposal is at some level counterintuitive or possibly nonsensical, and even radical, says something about the state of theological reflection today. In contradistinction to the Pentecostal situation, the assumption in many theological quarters today is that theology and spirituality are separate if not divorced from one another (Sheldrake 1998, 33–64). This reality influences the way Pentecostals think about the interconnection between theology and spirituality; Pentecostals may see that they are connected, but nonetheless have difficulty establishing how they are. The appeal of the language of “divorce” is that it suggests a breach that once was not, and this is certainly the case with the history of theology and spirituality. Prior to the broad periods known as modernity and the Enlightenment, theology and spirituality were intimately connected in ways that are hard to imagine today. At least from the long vantage point of history, then, it is possible for theology and spirituality to be linked, and intimately so. Part of the challenge of the Pentecostal movement is that it contests this divorce head on, even as it attempts to find its own way in this deeply contested theological landscape. The present chapter proceeds by showing some of the challenges and warrants for thinking of Pentecostal theology as spirituality before moving to consider a number of specific proposals that call for this active connection. Persistent in this discussion are questions related to theological method, since so much of the connection of theology and spirituality rests on assumptions and judgements within this domain. The overall goal here is to show the blissful union between theology and spirituality, one that is at the heart of the Pentecostal ethos, both as challenge and as opportunity.

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Theology and spirituality To put the matter sharply in response to the contemporary situation, Christian theology is a contentiously fragmented discipline. As a result, Pentecostal theology is pursued in different ways in light of this disciplinary fragmentation. The more accurate description is that there are a number of Pentecostal theologies rather than a single Pentecostal theology to consider (see Chapters 1 and 2). It is important to explore some of this terrain to contextualize the rationale for thinking of Pentecostal theology as spirituality. One take on these matters would have it that classical Pentecostalism did not emerge as a movement stressing a new kind of theological methodology or epistemology; it simply has to do with a different kind of revivalist experience sometimes reduced to the speaking with tongues. Given its unusualness, the phenomenon of speaking with tongues or glossolalia is typically the most talked about aspect of Pentecostalism by observers of the movement, thereby receiving considerable attention from many different disciplinary camps (see Cartledge 2006). Moreover, this privileging of glossolalia is not simply on display among outside assessors of the movement; it can also be found among certain rank-and-file Pentecostals as well. For instance, when Pentecostals are asked what is doctrinally distinctive about their movement, some from the orbit of classical Pentecostalism in North America respond with the doctrine of the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the initial evidence of speaking in tongues (see McGee 1991). This appraisal is funded by a particular reclamation of the theology of Charles Parham (see Castelo 2017, 132–48). That this understanding is lifted up as what makes Pentecostalism distinctive from other theological traditions is both promising and challenging on several fronts. The promise rests on the manifest instinct that Pentecostal theology and experience must go hand in hand in some mutually informing fashion. After all, Spirit baptism, with which glossolalia is associated in this formulation, is understood by Pentecostals as a powerful experience of God (see Chapter 23). As for the challenges surrounding this formulation, these relate to the various dynamics associated with the kind of latent reduction of Pentecostal spirituality and theology to a single phenomenon. This construct tends to stress the phenomenon of tongues (particularly with the language of “initial” and “evidence”) more so than the theological underpinnings of that phenomenon (“baptism in the Holy Spirit”), thereby leaving many doctrinal themes unattended (including Scripture, ecclesiology, and the like). In light of this vacuum, other theological paradigms can fill the void in relatively unaltered form from their formulations elsewhere. For instance, one senses this dynamic at work when Pentecostals adopt various fundamentalisms that have often been cessationist, and so outright dismissive of the legitimacy of Pentecostal forms of worship and expression. Amos Yong highlights that of certain proposals (but the point is generalizable to more examples), it is easy for theologies produced with this operative reduction to be “evangelical theologies plus”—that is, evangelical theologies that have added a matter or two related to pneumatology and spirituality in an ancillary way rather than having such themes constitute a methodological orientation that grounds the theological endeavor from the very start (Yong 2014, 10). Hence, we do not arrive at a genuinely Pentecostal theology. A second option in Pentecostal theology would say that one can do theology in a Pentecostal way akin to how other traditions do theology within their own contexts. Given that there are such things as (for example) Lutheran and Reformed theologies, likewise there should be something called “Pentecostal theology.” What would Pentecostal theology modelled after other tradition-based theologies look like? Terry Cross (2000, 34–35) suggests that it would involve thinking of theology broadly as a second-order discourse constructed by humans and responsive to the primary act of God’s self-disclosure. The construction itself 30

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would be ordered according to an organizing principle or integrative motif “for the sake of clarity of presentation and coherency of content” (Cross 2001). For his part, Cross highlights trinitarian theology generally as that kind of principle or motif. Another principle or motif for Pentecostal theology is the “full gospel” schema (see Chapter 16) in which Jesus is cast in a four-fold (“savior, spirit-baptizer, healer, soon-coming king”) or five-fold (“sanctifier” added to the prior titles) way. This model has a rich heritage within the movement itself and has recently been promoted by several Pentecostal theologians (Kärkkäinen 2007; Thomas 2010; Vondey 2017). The election of a guiding motif, framework, or organizing principle for the work of Pentecostal theology is both promising and challenging and does provide a degree of generalizable coherence and logicality. Pentecostal theology presented in this way is both easy to follow and capable of being communicated to wider audiences that are already inclined to think of the theological task in a certain way. However, challenges also exist with this second approach. The adequacy of the preferred principle or motif can be exposed over time as it is extensively used. Furthermore, casting theology as second-order discourse sounds potentially too anthropocentric—a human activity that is responsive to, and so distinguishable from, the act of God’s self-revelation. The paradigm that is Christian spirituality has the potential to address these matters in a fitting way, but some broad points are worth considering first. To summarily define the notion, “Christian spirituality speaks of the lived experience of faith” (Albrecht and Howard 2014, 235). The way faith is practiced, embodied, and lived out are all aspects of spirituality (Albrecht 1999). As a result of this “incarnational” feature of spirituality, it is easy for some to cast theology and spirituality, if they are understood as connected in some way, as poles upon a single line—reflection on one end and embodiment on the other. More, however, could be said, and Albrecht and Howard (2014, 235) continue in a robust theological tone, “Whereas theology examines our understanding of God, spirituality considers our more encompassing experience of God” (emphasis added). The appeal of this depiction is that theology is cast as complementing spirituality. As a result, the connection is more pronounced. The lurking question in this definition, however, is one that is also present in the two proposals outlined above: does “our more encompassing experience of God” in fact involve and include “our understanding of God,” and vice versa? Notice that what is being pressed with this question is not so much a connection between two separate entities (theology/understanding or spirituality/experience/embodiment) but rather a recognition that these dimensions overlap or coincide in some mutually determining fashion. For this arrangement, I tend to prefer the language of “interface” (see Castelo 2017, 27–31) to show that theology requires spirituality in order to properly be theology, and spirituality requires theology in order to properly be spirituality. One cannot thrive apart from the other. This way of connecting theology and spirituality integrates the possibilities and contributions of the proposals above while addressing some of their challenges. In view of the first proposal, casting Pentecostal theology as spirituality retains the fundamental role of experience by placing a premium on experiencing God and living in conforming response to God, all the while avoiding some of the latent reductions at work with exorbitantly focusing on tongues or initial evidence reasoning. As for the second proposal, Pentecostal theology as spirituality can include a multitude of understandings, including the doctrinal loci, by placing these within a holistic, orienting framework. Themes like Scripture, the church, salvation, and others all can operate out of rich dimensions once theology and spirituality are seen as mutually constituting — dimensions that not only stress coherence or organization but also discipleship, character, mission, and the like. 31

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In short, the casting of Pentecostal theology as spirituality opens venues of exploration while staying consistent with certain impulses of the movement. That this proposal sometimes sits uneasily within the contemporary theological landscape is an unfortunate consequence of theology generally being shaped and diminished within the throes of various challenges at work within the Western intellectual tradition. Pentecostal scholars as a result have had to offer supplementary and extensive proposals to shore up these intuitions within scholarly debates. Some of these contributions will be considered in the remainder of the chapter.

Proposals that cast Pentecostal theology as spirituality Before proceeding to the different modes for understanding theological knowledge in the Pentecostal tradition, it should be noted that the field of Christian spirituality in and of itself can be approached in a variety of ways. One dominant way is through the expansive field known as “practical theology,” which at times can draw from the social sciences in order to make specific contributions, and that work has been done within Pentecostal circles (see Chapter 15). More difficult has been the integration of spirituality in traditional notions of systematic theology or theology proper (see Chapter 1). What follows are gestures that point to different modes involved for thinking of Pentecostal theology proper in terms of spirituality. They press diverse methodological commitments within the specific act of theological reasoning. The dominant approaches highlighted are identified as integrationist, philosophical, liberationist, and mystical.

Integrationist The most influential early voice for thinking of Pentecostal theology as spirituality is Steven J. Land and his work Pentecostal Spirituality (1993). This is the watershed book for thinking about Pentecostal theology as spirituality which has set the tone for this approach since its publication. In his opening chapter, Land (1993, 32) establishes a pneumatological center by casting theological science as beginning with the Holy Spirit, that is “God with us.” He cites Lesslie Newbigin to good effect when he notes that the famous ecumenist drew a distinction relevant for Pentecostals, who do not emphasize right structure like Roman Catholicism or right message like Protestantism but rather “the Christian life [as] a matter of the experienced power and presence of the Holy Spirit today” (Land 1993, 33, citing Newbigin 1954, 95). Naturally, beginning the theological task with the Holy Spirit involves human perception of the presence and work of the Spirit, but this within a wider context of consideration: “Theology requires not only discursive reasoning but also the engagement of the whole person within the communion of charisms” (Land 1993, 34, emphasis added). This wider orbit of theology includes those modes and registers where the Spirit touches human selves, including worship, prayer, and testimony. In a summarizing statement, Land (1993, 36) remarks, The language of the vocative and the indicative, of prayer and belief, must be seen together. For Pentecostals it is impossible to know God and the things of God without prayer, because in prayer one responds to the Spirit of truth. To supplement these instincts, Land relies on the work of Karl Barth and Don Saliers (Barth 1985), particularly as both connect prayer to theological epistemology. The overall argument 32

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Land is sustaining here is that on Pentecostal terms, life in the Spirit is the ground for the life of the mind. Land’s vision has been labelled integrationist along a variety of strata with the expansive and all-encompassing presence and work of the Holy Spirit as his starting point. At its most basic, the integrationist theme is registered in various domains within the Christian life, which Land (1993, 41) highlights in a tripartite way: The wholeness of the body of Christ given in the proper relation of Spirit, Word and community has as its corollary a view of spirituality which is the integration of beliefs, affections, and actions (of knowing, being, and doing). Indeed, for a Pentecostal theology-as-spirituality, with a starting point in the Holy Spirit, it is a necessary correlation (emphasis added). Land (1993, 31–34, 182–83) also uses throughout the volume another tripartite formula to communicate the same correlation: “orthodoxy” (right praise-confession), “orthopathy” (right affections), and “orthopraxy” (right praxis). For Land, the integration of these aspects is “necessary” to avoid fragmentations and deviations into intellectualism, sentimentalism, and activism, respectively. Should one of these aspects be isolated from the other two, something other than a vibrant Christian witness would be at work. In the case of the theology-spirituality interface, it is clear: “knowing” apart from “being” and “doing” will not produce the kind of knowledge that is fitting to the Pentecostal theological ethos, for aspects of God-knowledge come to be and are shaped by a person’s character and behavior, which are all undertaken within a Spirit-drenched world. At various stages in the volume, Land nuances the directionality of his tripartite scheme further. Early on, Land (1993, 13) states, “Spirituality is defined as the integration of beliefs and practices in the affections which are themselves evoked and expressed by those beliefs and practices.” As evident in this definition, the momentum of integration tips toward and out of the affections, a religious-psychological-moral category oftentimes associated with John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards. Land (1993, 22) employs the category of the affections as a means of getting at the “‘deep things’ of the human heart; the abiding, decisive, directing motives, and dispositions which characterize Pentecostals.” Later, and in light of the “ortho-” categories, Land (1993, 44) remarks, “The personal integrating center of orthodoxy and orthopraxy is orthopathy, those distinctive affections which are belief shaped, praxis oriented and characteristic of a person.” With this holistic center, he goes on to include themes such as transformation, sanctification, and the fruit and gifts of the Spirit into his vision. All of this points to not simply the “what” of theological reflection (that is, the content of what is said, confessed, or believed) but also to the “who” (the identity and character of the theologian), the “how” (the manner in which theology is undertaken), and the “why” (the rationale or end for which it is pursued) of theological endeavoring important (not only) for Pentecostals. The sheer energy of this text endures to bear fruit today in that Land’s generative vision continues to inspire research projects. Land represents an integrationist perspective on the theme of Pentecostal theology as spirituality because he gives due attention to registers of theological inquiry that go beyond the cognitive, rational, or propositional registers of that work. In short, Pentecostal spirituality offers a vision for “life in the Spirit” that is attuned to various theological discussions and concerns so as to generate fresh methodological proposals that capture many different features of what Pentecostal theologizing can formally be. 33

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Philosophical It may appear strange at some level to think that the casting of Pentecostal theology as spirituality would involve philosophical concerns (see Chapter 37), but on closer inspection, the divide between theology and spirituality within the theological academy is itself the product of various philosophical decisions made over the years in the Western intellectual tradition. Given Pentecostalism’s ethos, which is in some respects out of step with this tradition, it makes sense to think that Pentecostalism’s contribution to wider Christian arrangements is not simply at the experiential level but more fundamentally in terms of how the world is imagined, how truth is discerned, and so on. Walter Hollenweger (1992) was attuned to these possibilities by identifying a “critical tradition” within Pentecostalism, which again, sounds strange on the surface, since early Pentecostals were not typically viewed as participating in the great intellectual challenges of their day. Hollenweger’s keen intuition and analysis here, however, are significant: the Pentecostal way of life is intellectually and socially consequential; as a result, it is philosophically significant. Years later, that “critical tradition” of Pentecostalism was fully explored and elaborated by the Christian philosopher James K. A. Smith in his book Thinking in Tongues. Rather than approaching Pentecostalism with categories pre-established by the (Christian) philosophical academy, Smith ventures into bold territory, actively asking what contributions Pentecostalism could make to the (Christian) philosophical academy itself. That contribution has many aspects to it, but one point bears highlighting from the beginning: this contribution is grounded in an embodied and lived spirituality. As Smith (2010, xiii) remarks in a footnote, “there is a unique ‘genius’ implicit in Pentecostal spirituality that should yield a distinct and integral philosophy.” One could add more nuance to this claim: whereas Pentecostal spirituality could yield and make suggestive philosophical contributions, those contributions are themselves employable in the effort to explore and understand this spirituality. All of this is fitting for the theological task, for as Smith (2010, 5) rightfully acknowledges, “philosophy has often provided the basic concepts (Grundbegriffe) that theology employs.” Put sharply in terms of this chapter, the casting of Pentecostal theology as spirituality requires a distinct philosophical framework, one that openly critiques the division between theology and spirituality itself (a division which in many ways is itself the result of philosophical determination in a particular context) and that offers new terms and possibilities. As Smith (2010, 5) avers, “pentecostal theology should utilize basic concepts forged in a pentecostal philosophy,” and this, I would argue, contributes to a strengthened identification between Pentecostal theology and spirituality. One particular aspect of Smith’s proposals that relates to Pentecostal theology as a spirituality is his notion of a “pentecostal worldview.” Smith uses the term “worldview” loosely here, for he has in mind the way people hold reality together and imagine themselves in it; he thinks of this phrase in terms similar to Charles Taylor’s (2004) notion of a “social imaginary.” As constituent of this worldview, Smith (2010, 11) focuses on five key themes that function as a constellation of “fundamental pentecostal commitments:” (1) a radical openness to God in which something new can happen, including transformation; (2) an “enchanted” theology of creation and culture in which the Spirit of God is at work in all things and throughout all places, as are other spiritual realities and dynamics; (3) a nondualistic affirmation of embodiment and materiality in which latent gnosticisms are critiqued and both human bodies and the created realm retain features of their created goodness; (4) an affective, narrative epistemology that is explicitly rooted in manifest forms of Pentecostal spirituality; and (5) an eschatological orientation toward mission and justice that actively empowers 34

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believers to be agents of change in the world here and now. Each of these themes can be unpacked and developed significantly, but when taken together, they suggest that Pentecostals, in a sense, inhabit a “different world” from others who operate out of different fundamental commitments. Such a claim is not meant to privilege or make exceptional Pentecostal forms of Christianity; however, the claim stresses that differences along such fundamental themes do matter for grounding assumptions and orienting visions. What all of this means for the present chapter is that if Pentecostals inhabit a distinct “world” at this fundamental level, then how they imagine and pursue theology will be affected as a result. Smith’s fourth point—that of an affective, narrative epistemology—is especially fitting to elaborate for the purposes of spirituality. As one can easily see, the language of both affectivity and narrativity is similar to Land’s project; in fact, Smith (2010, 26–27) stresses with explicit reference to Land that Pentecostal spirituality is both a grounding point for Pentecostal theology and philosophy and that it involves its own account of knowledge, a kind of “affective understanding.” This kind of knowledge or understanding is latent, tacit, and pretheoretical; it operates out of distinct registers that are sometimes best communicated through testimony and story (see Chapter 4). At work here is a unique theological epistemology, one that is not antirational but antirationalist. As Smith (2010, 53) stresses, “it’s not reason that is the target, but our idolatrous construction of it.” The implications of this account of epistemology for the theology-spirituality interface are considerable. What God-knowledge is and how it is pursued must be lodged within a different world than the rationalist kind that so grips the modern West (see Chapter 7). Rather than finding the truth in a testimony, this perspective casts truth as the testimony itself (see Smith 2010, 64). Therefore, when a Pentecostal believer claims that “they know that they know that they know” deep things of the Spirit in their lives, and this is attested by hearers, what is on display is not so much a shared solipsistic experience but a manifest critique and alternative to modern forms of theological knowledge brought about by the depths of Pentecostal spirituality.

Liberationist One of the unfortunate consequences of the Western intellectual paradigm regnant today is its penchant toward partitioning the human self. As a result, it makes sense in this environment to keep theology in one realm (public and openly deliberated) and spirituality in another (private and individually justified). One trend that counters this fragmentation is liberation theology, broadly conceived. Liberation theology recognizes that these fragmentations are not simply expressions of a kind of privilege in which the mind is functionally disembodied from the social conditioning and contextualization of the self, but they are also deleterious to the life of faith overall. The greater the partitioning, the more devastating is the incongruence between God, faith, and life. The history of Western colonialism, with all of its Christian influences and support, is one disastrous consequence of such incongruence. Therefore, strong parallels exist between liberation theology and the vision of Pentecostal theology as spirituality. No wonder, then, that some have made these parallels work as fruitful exchanges and emergent permutations. One such case is Samuel Solivan and his work The Spirit, Pathos and Liberation. Significantly, Solivan (1998) also uses a tripartite schema, and similar to Land, one that is marked by orthodoxy, orthopathy, and orthopraxy. The difference, however, largely rests on the middle term. Whereas Land stresses “orthopathy” and develops this along Wesleyan lines, Solivan stresses “orthopathos,” which is at the heart of his distinct proposal. For both Land and Solivan, passion and pathos serve as a kind of integrating center, and the proposals are, per Solivan’s perspective (1998, 13), complementary so 35

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as “to comprise a more integrative understanding of Pentecostal spirituality in its pneumatic and social context.” For Solivan, that particular location and experience have to do with the existential and practical plight of those who are oppressed, poor, and disenfranchised. Solivan’s orthopathos “brings empathic concern for the sufferer into the act of doing theology,” which is important because without such a factor, “‘orthodoxy’ and ‘orthopraxis’ are incomplete epistemologically” in the North American setting (Solivan 1998, 60) and (I would argue) beyond. In Solivan’s view, these realms are incomplete because without this empathic concern, too much is lost in the process of formulating what is “right” belief or practice; in fact, part of what makes these “right” is their directedness to changing what is “wrong,” and what is “wrong” in this world is not simply personal sin and brokenness, but structural sin and brokenness of a kind that keep untold millions from finding the strength and hope to rise in the power of the Holy Spirit beyond those forces that keep them dehumanized and oppressed on a daily basis. What we have once more on display, this time through Solivan’s account, is a problematizing of standard accounts of theological knowledge through the offering of methodological alternatives. In a summary of his concerns with evangelical framings of orthodoxy, Solivan (1998, 64) offers this fitting statement: Orthodoxy, narrowly defined as propositional truth, dehumanizes revelation and elevates the cognitive, radically bifurcating it from the affective. We are not saved by what we know but by whom we know, and how God informs and transforms our lives and our neighbors’ lives. Knowledge about God is not an end in itself. It must point beyond itself to the other, the neighbor. That this concern for the neighbor as inherent to the theology-spirituality interface is difficult to appreciate is itself an indicator of severe and damaging developments, for the witness of history shows otherwise. Some of the most active and empathic expressions of Christianity operated from a basis that cast theology and spirituality as a vibrant interface.

Mystical Another approach worth considering is the mystical connection between the Pentecostal vision of the theology-spirituality interface and ancient Christian tradition. For many, the developments of modernity and the Enlightenment have been characterized as contributing to the divorce of theology and spirituality. In contrast, Pentecostalism has operated with assumptions related to their interconnection, which establishes a working affinity between Pentecostalism and premodern voices and movements. On a broad scale, this link makes sense: when one looks at various Pentecostal testimonies from various times and places, one readily finds expressions and statements that are congruent with such classical phrases as fides quaerens intellectum and lex orandi-lex credendi (see Stephenson 2006) as well as ancient themes such as wisdom and contemplation (Albrecht 1992). Just given the remarks of Land highlighted above, Pentecostals can be said to stand within an Eastern sensibility as highlighted by Kallistos Ware (1993, 207): Theology, mysticism, spirituality, moral rules, worship, art: these things must not be kept in separate compartments. Doctrine cannot be understood unless it is prayed: a theologian, said Evagrius, is one who knows how to pray, and he who prays in spirit and truth is by that very act a theologian. 36

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Of course, the difficulty in all of this involves the widespread perception that Pentecostalism is a relatively recent phenomenon in world Christianity. More established church traditions may think of Pentecostalism as faddish and prone to novel teachings and ideas, whereas insiders might revel in the energy and appeal of offering something “fresh” to jaded or skeptical hearers. And yet, when one observes how Pentecostals stress the relationship between theology and spirituality, one cannot help but recognize longstanding features of the Christian intellectual tradition, particularly ones related to method and epistemology as these are grounded in a pneumatological framework. As it turns out, “life in the Spirit” looks similar in certain respects regardless of time and space, and this because the Spirit of the Lord is the same yesterday, today, and forever. What appears as novel from one vantage point may be something quite ancient from another. One of the most important efforts to situate Pentecostalism within ancient Christian tradition has been the work of Simon Chan (2000). Chan believes that Pentecostalism should locate itself within larger streams of ancient Christian tradition for the sake of Pentecostalism’s ongoing vitality and renewal. This situating exercise would necessarily involve recovering “the ancient art of spiritual theology where reflecting on the nature of God and praying to him are indistinguishable acts” (Chan 2000, 12) as well as other matters that overall can serve a role in the traditioning process within Pentecostalism. For Chan, there is a crisis within various Pentecostal communities of passing on and remaining firm in features of their collective theological identity (see Chapter 9). He believes a way forward is to embed Pentecostalism within the riches of Christianity’s ancient spiritual traditions. Of the terms Ware mentions in the quote above, mysticism is an important term that can help in the process of embedding Pentecostalism within longstanding spiritual traditions and allowing Pentecostals to engage faithfully and critically their tradition. Although Chan does not make significant use of the term, I have done so in my own work for a variety of reasons. One reason is the way that mysticism is often appealed to by people who are trying to make sense of Pentecostalism in broad, generalizable terms. To take but one example, Harvey Cox (1995, 92), in reflecting on his experiences with global Pentecostalism, comes to the conclusion that Pentecostalism represents today “sublime forms of mysticism” inherent to the ancient Christian past. It could very well be, as Margaret Poloma (2003) hints in the title of one of her works, that Pentecostals are contemporary “main street mystics.” Another reason for the appeal of mysticism to describe Pentecostalism relates to what Cox and others sense, and that is how the term can be fruitfully put to use in talking about God and the Christian life. In other words, it can serve a crucial role in substantiating and energizing the theology-spirituality interface. Mysticism itself is a difficult category, but its usage in the Christian past shows that the term need not be condensed to its modern reductions related to privatized, esoteric experiences; rather, mysticism within ancient Christianity dealt with many of the issues that have been developed so far in relation to the theology-spirituality interface, especially as these relate to the ultimate mystery of all, the divine mystery (McIntosh 1998). Beholding and living in the divine mystery requires trading in holy mysteries, whether these be doctrines, sacraments, spiritual disciplines, or other matters. As a result, theological method, theological epistemology, and even theological language must be both invigorated and chastened by the vision of a holy, awe-inspiring God. Intellectual humility, the recognized need for apophaticism, and even a role for pillars of the faith—namely, saints—all can be registered in light of the mystical playing a role in Pentecostal self-identification and self-naming. What does the claiming of the mystical look like in terms of the theme of Pentecostal theology as spirituality? One consequence would be that Pentecostals should give up 37

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trying to be something that they have never easily been, namely “evangelicals who speak in tongues.” The unease associated with the evangelical identifier has to do with the typically impoverished pneumatology that pervades many evangelical fellowships. Put another way, Pentecostals have never really fit well into the evangelical fold because of the latter’s routinely deficient role for the Spirit, especially as it relates to methodological and epistemological registers. Another consequence would be the formulation of doctrine itself. One sees this in particular with the logic of initial evidence reasoning surrounding Spirit baptism, which in many ways relies on and exemplifies a modernist epistemological approach. If doctrines are ultimately expressions of holy mysteries, then the privileging of empirical evidence would need to be replaced with an operative vision of the Spirit baptized life that involves growth, ignorance, and struggle (see Castelo 2017, 126–77). Finally, and most importantly, claiming the mystical within discussions of the theology-spirituality interface places God front and center of all that is said and done. This claim may sound overly pious to some and blatantly obvious to others, but it is fundamental and should not be taken for granted.

Conclusion Pentecostal theology cannot be undertaken and understood apart from Pentecostal spirituality. Much more could be said in this chapter about this claim by way of examples and elaboration, but the larger point would remain the same: casting Pentecostal theology as a kind of spirituality communicates some of the prominent features of the Pentecostal ethos—features that both significantly contribute to the understanding and development of Pentecostal theology and that can have a profound impact on the theological academy as a whole. As Pentecostal scholarship becomes more widely known, the approach to view Pentecostal theology in the terms of Pentecostal spirituality is poised to play a significant role in discussions related to theological method, epistemology, and praxis.

References Albrecht, Daniel E. 1992. “Pentecostal Spirituality: Looking through the Lens of Ritual.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 14 (2): 107–25. ———. 1999. Rites in the Spirit: A Ritual Approach to Pentecostal/Charismatic Spirituality. JPT Supplement 17. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Albrecht, Daniel E., and Evan B. Howard. 2014. “Pentecostal Spirituality.” In The Cambridge Companion to Pentecostalism, edited by Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. and Amos Yong, 235−53. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barth, Karl. 1985. Prayer, edited by Don E. Saliers and translated by S. Terrien. Philadelphia: Westminster Press. Cartledge, Mark J., ed. 2006. Speaking in Tongues: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives. Milton Keynes: Paternoster. Castelo, Daniel. 2017. Pentecostalism as a Christian Mystical Tradition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Chan, Simon. 2000. Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition. JPT Supplement 21. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Cox, Harvey. 1995. Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century. Reading: Addison-Wesley. Cross, Terry. 2000. “The Rich Feast of Theology: Can Pentecostals Bring the Main Course or Only the Relish?” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 8 (16): 27–47. ———. 2001. “Can There Be a Pentecostal Systematic Theology? An Essay on Theological Method in a Postmodern World.” Unpublished paper presented at the Thirtieth Annual Meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

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Pentecostal theology as spirituality Hollenweger, Walter. 1992. “The Critical Tradition of Pentecostalism.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 1: 7−17. Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. 2007. “Encountering Christ in the Full Gospel Way: An Incarnational Pentecostal Spirituality.” Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 27 (1): 9–23. Land, Steven J. 1993. Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom. JPT Supplement 1. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. McGee, Gary B., ed. 1991. Initial Evidence: Historical and Biblical Perspectives on the Pentecostal Doctrine of Spirit Baptism. Peabody: Hendrickson. McIntosh, Mark A. 1998. Mystical Theology: The Integrity of Spirituality and Theology. Oxford: Blackwell. Newbigin, Lesslie. 1954. The Household of God. New York: Friendship Press. Poloma, Margaret M. 2003. Main Street Mystics: The Toronto Blessing and Reviving Pentecostalism. Oxford: Altamira Press. Sheldrake, Philip. 1998. Spirituality and Theology: Christian Living and the Doctrine of God. Maryknoll: Orbis. Smith, James K. A. 2010. Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy. Pentecostal Manifestos 1. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Solivan, Samuel. 1998. The Spirit, Pathos and Liberation: Toward an Hispanic Pentecostal Theology. JPT Supplement 14. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Stephenson, Christopher A. 2006. “The Rule of Spirituality and the Rule of Doctrine: A Necessary Relationship in Theological Method.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 15 (1): 83–105. Taylor, Charles. 2004. Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham: Duke University Press. Thomas, John Christopher. 2010. Toward a Pentecostal Ecclesiology: The Church and the Fivefold Gospel. Cleveland: CPT Press. Vondey, Wolfgang. 2017. Pentecostal Theology: Living the Full Gospel. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. Ware, Kallistos. 1993. The Orthodox Church, 2nd edition. London: Penguin. Yong, Amos. 2014. Renewing Christian Theology: Systematics for a Global Christianity. Waco: Baylor University Press.

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4 PENTECOSTAL THEOLOGY AS STORY Participating in God’s mission Kenneth J. Archer In studies of Pentecostalism, Pentecostal “identity” is an ever-returning topic of inquiry. Although a young Christian tradition, Pentecostalism is a global phenomenon, making life meaningful for multitudes. Expressions of Pentecostalism are rich and varied, often paradoxical. The concerns for identity and definition are deeply connected with Pentecostalism’s polygenetic origins (McClymond 2015) and global diversity (see Chapter 2). Pentecostalism is seasoned with diverse cultures, enhanced by distinct melodies, mystified by peculiar practices, and can appear both confrontational and consoling. Pentecostal doctrine, in particular, “flows in paradoxical continuity and discontinuity with other streams of Christianity” (Land 1993, 18). The theological identity of Pentecostals seems to involve a myriad of tongues and languages reminiscent of Acts 2 (Yong 2011, 35–46). Should we define Pentecostalism theologically primarily by its spirituality (Land 1993), its pneumatological focus (Yong 2005), through a central and unique doctrine (Macchia 2006), its passion for encountering God (Warrington 2008), or its theological narrative of the full gospel (Vondey 2017)? This chapter is concerned with articulating the core commitment and mechanisms underlying the various expressions and modes of articulation of Pentecostal theological identity by taking seriously that “Pentecostal theology is rooted in an experiential, oral, and lived tradition” and is a “theology that is sung, felt and experienced through the Holy Spirit” (Walsh 2006, 199). Pentecostalism, in short, is an affective-experiential Christian tradition (Archer 2007). I suggest that what holds together this approach to Christian theology in a meaningful coherent manner is the Pentecostal story (Archer 2004a). Pentecostal theology is expressed narratively, through story, testimony, songs, and dance. The practices and doctrines of the Pentecostal movement proclaim a hope-filled gospel with a story that brings purpose and meaning as it shapes personal and communal character and conduct. An approach to Pentecostal theology through story demands that we take seriously Pentecostal history and identity in a manner that has found genuine expression among Pentecostals. On the following pages, I address Pentecostal identity via its formational story that, in turn, expresses a narrative doxological theology. The Pentecostal story is not a historical-critical retelling of an event, and it should not be confused as such; instead, it is more of an informed popular story developed through personal experiences of divine encounter, exegetical appropriations of the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospels, and spiritual 40

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expectations among Pentecostal communities. I begin by explaining the early Pentecostal story as it arises out of North America. Even though the Pentecostal story has global variations and takes on particular emphases in different contexts, I am arguing that a basic story line with its central doxological confessions provides a prominent controlling theological narrative of early Pentecostalism regardless of its origins. Pentecostalism is “a religion made to travel” (Dempster, Klaus, and Petersen 1999). Its story, which is attractive and easy to transmit orally, only facilitates the movement’s growth. Although the story has regional accents, important modifications, and distinctions, with new and original themes being added, the basic story line, the primary characters, and its central narrative convictions remain stable enough to be identifiable and fluid enough to migrate and adapt to new contexts (Ramirez 2015). After I describe the narrative identity of Pentecostals, I tease out the theological significance of story for understanding Pentecostal theology. This analysis is intended to provide critical reflection for a re-visioning of the story for Pentecostal communities today.

Narrative identity Why is narrative important to personal and communal identity? Narrative, according to Alasdair MacIntyre (1984, 204–25) is the only suitable means that human beings have to make sense of life. He argues that it is impossible to identify any human being apart from his or her own story. An individual’s particular narrative arises out of the wider social stories of the community. MacIntyre (1984, 216) suggests that “there is no way to give us an understanding of any society, including our own, except through the stock of stories which constitute its initial dramatic resources.” These stories shape persons in such a way as to connect events, characters, actions, and intentions into meaningful plots that offer moral direction. Without a personal story, which is dependent upon the larger societal stories, one cannot know what to do, how to act properly, or the roles individuals are to play in the community. One’s life story serves as a means to narrate personal identity produced through temporal and spatial relationships with other human beings as well as one’s sociocultural contextualized surroundings. From the perspective of narrative psychology, Dan P. McAdams suggest we produce a narrative identity made up of “the internalized and evolving story of the self that a person constructs to make sense and meaning out of his or her life” (McAdams 2011, 99). Used as an interpretive tool, the story is a selective reconstruction of the autobiographical past and a narrative anticipation of the imagined future that serves to explain, for the self and others, how the person came to be and where his or her life may be going. (99) Stories are not predetermined, static identifiers but “the process of narrative identity development continues across the life course” of individuals by drawing “heavily on prevailing cultural norms and the images, metaphors, and themes that run through the many narratives they encounter in social life” (100). What we “see” in a person’s and community’s identity looks like a story: “an internalized and evolving tale with main characters, intersecting plots, key scenes, and an imagined ending, representing how the person reconstructs the personal past (chapters gone by) and anticipates the future (chapters yet to come)” (100). It is our stories drawn from socio-cultural, linguistic, and family systems, including religious experiences 41

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and symbols that allow MacIntyre (1984, 216) to conclude emphatically that “there is no way to give us an understanding of any ‘person,’ including ‘ourselves,’ except through the stock of stories which constitutes the events of our lives.” Life stories are constructed out of the formative stories in which they are embedded. Life stories are a weaving together of personal, familial, and community identity, which gives meaning and purpose, moral guidance, and perspective, direction and anticipation, to persons-in-community. Therefore, if developing a life story is central for understanding what it means to be human, it is the Christian life story which is formative for understanding the theological identity of the individual and the church. The Christian life story evolves through an interactive dynamic process for the per sonin-community. Yet it should not be understood as a static passive acceptance of the Christian community’s projections of identity upon the individual. For Christians, a life story involves the theological interpretation of one’s life drawn primarily from the beliefs of community. For Pentecostals, these beliefs are rooted in the biblical scriptures (see Chapter 6), which provide the grand story or hermeneutical horizon for interpreting their own story. The telling of this grand story is mediated through preaching, testimonies, and songs, and from these a general foundational narrative is constructed in which one’s own story can be integrated. Individual biblical stories are woven into the person’s relational understanding of Jesus and of becoming a part of the story of the Christian community (Land 1993, 63–67). This foundational narrative serves as the hermeneutical foil and filter for understanding and making sense of a reality that is true for both the person in community and the community of persons. A Pentecostal life story is a particular Christian theological understanding of reality and one’s relationships with God, others, creation, and the self. As a person participates in the community’s foundational narratives and core convictions, the story not only shapes the identity of that person but also affects the identity of the community and thus forms Pentecostal theology. The Pentecostal community celebrates and reaffirms participation in the grand formational story of Scripture through re-experiencing its central narrative convictions in communal Christian ritual practices, primarily centered in altar worship experiences (see Chapter 16). The central narrative convictions of the community are articulated through praying, preaching, teaching, testifying, singing, acts of mercy, evangelizing, sharing goods, tithing, and other community rituals. Celebrating the Christian story includes sacraments such as water baptism, Eucharist, foot washing, and praying for the sick, not as isolated rituals but as “narrated” and “narrating” practices of the community’s life of faith (Archer 2004b). In these narrative practices, the community’s identity is held in tension with the participants’ numerous life stories as part of the community’s foundational narrative and central narrative convictions. The community affects the identity of the individual as the individual participates in the life of the community. Although personal testimonies affirm and underscore the central narrative convictions of the Pentecostal community (see Chapter 11) and may challenge certain aspects of a particular understanding of a belief, nevertheless, the general foundational story itself remains stable. For Pentecostals, participating in communal worship is not merely a social encounter but a spiritual event involving the emergence and articulation of one’s own and the community’s narrative identity. As the life stories of individuals and the community intersect, they begin sharing a common perspective, thus allowing the identity and perspective of both to be shaped (“narrating”) and (re)shaped (“narrated”) by the other. From this perspective, theology as story is understood to be a dynamic, porous, and fluid narrative process rather than a static and closed endeavor. For Pentecostals, 42

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the interconnectedness of narrative identity becomes especially significant as individuals corporately participate in the shared mission of Jesus through the means of a liturgical hermeneutic of the full gospel.

Pentecostal story as spiritual identity The Pentecostal story is a teleological telling of the Christian story with a distinct twist. The foundational story shapes how Pentecostals understand Christianity both theologically and historically. The foundational story (in)forms how Pentecostals fit into the larger scheme of Christian history. The story explains their origins and the importance of their existence as a Pentecostal Christian community. More exactly, it is the story itself that creates the Pentecostal theological identity; the story is not merely a narrative expression of faith or articulation of belief—it is their life story. This identity forming is made possible by a historical framing of a core biblical narrative, the Latter Rain motif reinterpreted through the lens of Pentecost. The “Latter Rain” provides a broad motif for the development of the Pentecostal worldview, or to remain within the realm of narrative, the Pentecostal imagination (Faupel 1996, 19–43). The Pentecostal story articulates God’s redemptive involvement within human history in a promise-fulfillment pattern, hence providing a hermeneutical lens for making sense out of God’s involvement in human history in general and their communities in particular. The Early and Latter Rain motif frames the story, and for most Pentecostals the fivefold (or full) gospel serves as a primary narrative for articulating the convictions of the community (see Chapter 16). The full gospel is an open theological narrative articulating both a material and spiritual understanding of redemption (see Vondey 2017). The heart of the liberating story is Jesus—who saves, delivers, heals, sanctifies, Spirit baptizes, blesses, restores, changes lives, and is returning soon (Alfaro 2010). These convictions are confessional and are expressed through doxological testimonies borne out of an experiential redemptive relationship with God. The central narrative convictions articulate the redemptive hope of the community and as such, are the very heart of the Pentecostal story (Archer 2009, 136–70). The Latter Rain motif is a re-appropriation of the Lukan narration of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost (see Acts 1–2). The Lukan Pentecost was the gift of the Father (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4) and the definitive revealing and universal release of the Holy Spirit at the hands of Christ as promised (Archer 2014). Despite the significance of the Latter Rain motif as a model for understanding the Pentecostal movement, the narrative of Pentecost is so formative that the adherents call themselves, and have become known by other Christian traditions predominantly as Pentecostals ( Jacobsen 2003, 353–64). The central position of the Pentecost event does not diminish the importance of Jesus (as narrated in Gospels and Acts) nor subordinate the cross and resurrection; instead, “the bestowal of the Spirit at Pentecost is the culminating point of Christ’s mission on earth” (Macchia 2018, 2). In Luke’s narrative, Jesus baptizes his followers with the Spirit so they will be able to carry on the mission of God until Jesus returns for his followers. For Pentecostals, this past miraculous story does not end with the participants in the upper room in Jerusalem; rather, they take the words of Peter to heart that “the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls” (Acts 2:39). Thus, Pentecostals believe that they, along with every Christian, are recipients of the Father’s promise and should experience a “personal” Pentecost (and thus participate in the Latter Rain). For early Pentecostals, the Acts 2 narrative was not so much about the birth of the church as it was about the recapitulation of the old covenant into something new, enabling the 43

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followers of Jesus to continue his mission through the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit (Archer 2011, 43–64). The Early and Latter Rain motif provides a promise-fulfillment pattern in which Pentecostals retrieve the Lukan promise of God’s Spirit being poured out upon the confessing community in the last days. Hence, the twentieth-century “Pentecostals” are the people of God’s promise to continue to pour out the Holy Spirit upon followers of Jesus. They understand the Latter Rain outpouring as a sign of the soon-return of Jesus and as God’s means to gather in the end-time harvest. Thus, the Pentecostal story has two purposes: first, to explain who they are and what they are to do as followers of Jesus, and second, to explain how they fit into the story and history of Christianity. Pentecostals use frequently the Latter Rain story as a polemical explanation for the apparent lack of miraculous signs and wonders in the modern era. The Pentecostals’ story of Christianity reflects a critical and more Anabaptist perspective of Christian history (Archer and Hamilton 2010). The prototype of this critical story suggests that the apostolic community experienced the signs and wonders of God regularly (as described in Acts). However, as time passed, Christianity became corrupted by worldly desires, causing God to withdraw his Spirit (Spurling 1920). Although signs and wonders began to disappear, God always had a victorious, yet persecuted, remnant. The remnant included all Christians who lived authentic holy lives, many of whom did not always conform to the creedal Christianity of their times. Historically, the significant shift that caused the Spirit to be withdrawn occurred when Rome embraced Christianity as an acceptable religion in the fourth century. For Pentecostals, “Constantinianism” had to do with the corruption of the church by institutionalizing the Spirit through the hierarchical clergy and coerced conformity to official creeds (Coulter 2007, 64–67). This corruption led to a loss of the priesthood and prophethood of all believers. For Pentecostals, the Constantinian shift marks the beginning of the middle of the Pentecostal story within the history of Christianity. In spite of the spiritual drought, there remained a sense that God would pour out his Spirit on all “authentic” Christians. The Reformation brought about the rain clouds. The initial sprinkles of the Latter Rain began to fall upon those Christians who were seeking to restore Christianity. The Reformation initiated the “restoration” of the gospel, which culminated in the twentieth-century Latter Rain outpouring understood as a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Archer 2009, 65–84). When the Latter Rain began in the early twentieth century, Pentecostals were confident that they would have more productive results than the initial sprinklings of the Reformation. The baptism in the Holy Spirit signified by tongues would make the gospel complete. The full gospel would restore New Testament lifestyle, practices, polity, power, and doctrines to the church while also fueling within those baptized a passion for God’s Kingdom (Land 1993). With the restoration of the baptism in the Holy Spirit, the Pentecostal movement was the sign that the story was nearing its end (or climax); that is, Jesus was coming for his sanctified bride! Pentecostals saw themselves as living in the last days and were concerned to bring as many as possible into the story. They often attracted other Christians from different traditions, especially those who shared a similar spirited or so-called supernatural worldview. With Spirit baptism restored to the Christian community, the church once again had the full story of the gospel. This central theological narrative articulates God’s redemptive involvement as a formative doxological confession that is deeply personal and testimonial in nature: it is the personal and communal experience that Jesus is savior, sanctifier, Spirit baptizer, healer, and coming king. Through the telling of this story, Pentecostals identify themselves as participants in the redemptive purposes of God, extending the mission of Jesus through the presence of the Spirit. They become the hands and feet of Jesus, being encouraged to 44

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extend the good news through good works, just as Jesus had done. The heart of the Pentecostal story is this doxological confession pertaining to Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. This brief overarching retelling of Christian history encouraged Pentecostals to seek the baptism in the Holy Spirit. The experience of Spirit baptism, or an individual’s personal Pentecost, marked an intimate relational experience with God and the community. With such an experience came a sense of special importance and dignity, which, in turn, encouraged an ecclesiastical missional fervor. The Pentecostal communities were to be “contrast societies” because they were the family of God existing as the visible embodied witness as the bride of Christ to a lost and dying world. Pentecostal storied-spirituality “seeks to extend its self-understanding as a community of the Spirit in the world and for the world, but not of the world” (Villafañe 1993, 193). As such, holiness, hospitality, and loving kindness were to be their characteristics. The marks of this community are most notably identified by the zealous desire for world evangelism, charismatic worship, holy living according to the New Testament, and concern for the poor, the hurting, the lost, and those in spiritual captivity and physical prisons (Luke 4: 18–19). The Pentecostal story engenders a spirituality that looks to minister to those overlooked by society in general—orphans and children, widows and women, poor and lower income working class ( James 1:27). Historically and globally, the story of Pentecostalism is the story of a movement on the margins of society, Yet the Pentecostal story generates anticipation for transformation and brings a sense of hope and meaning to the community and the world.

Theological identity emerging from the story The Pentecostal story is primarily a grace-initiated and grace-sustained, synergistic soteriological account of God bringing redemption to humanity through the ministry of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. As such, rather than a story of doctrine (Fackre 1996), it is a theological story of the people. The story articulates and encourages personal redemptive experiences with God and social participation through Jesus and the Spirit. The Pentecostal story is an experiential, even mystical, form of the Christian story (see Chapter 4). Hence, experience shaped by the biblical stories serves to ground the people in God’s inspired story (the Bible) and to encourage individuals to interpret their faith and experience with God by the stories found in Scripture. Soteriology becomes the melting-pot from which all other Pentecostal doctrines are forged (Vondey 2016). Framing Pentecostal soteriology within the Latter Rain motif highlights the importance of the missiological ecclesiological and eschatological experiences of Pentecostals narrated in their stories. The theological narrative of the full gospel functions as a restoration of the Christian gospel by placing as the story’s primary character Jesus Christ who, while sent by the Father, and now at the Father’s right hand, is still working by saving, sanctifying, Spirit baptizing, healing, and commissioning people. The Pentecostal communities continue the mission of Christ by joining the mission of his Spirit in the world. As the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit is animating, forming, and empowering the communities as the Spirit leads them in continuing the mission of God. These missiological (see Chapter 26) and ecclesiological perspectives (see Chapter 27) most certainly include some notion of building a counter- or alternative community. However, the polity of ecclesiology is not a focus of the story; it is the purity, power, and charismatic nature of the church that is its chief concern. The testimonies to being saved, sanctified, filled with the Spirit, healed, and commissioned are the narratives for every Christian; hence, all are to become involved in the mission of God. Out of this commitment do Pentecostal communities see themselves as both existing for the world and 45

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yet different and distinct from the world. The charismatic contrast-communities nurture the well-being of the followers of Jesus as they continue the ministry of Jesus to the lost and the hurting. This narrative foundation of the Christian mission finds both its motivation and end in the coming of God’s kingdom. The eschatological perspective of the Pentecostal story fits best with an inaugurated understanding of the coming kingdom (Land 1993, 117–20). The kingdom (or reign) of God has broken into the present world with the ministry of Jesus and is made more evident through the revealing and outpouring of the Holy Spirit (see Archer 2016). Yet the kingdom is also still future—it will come fully and be established completely only with the return of Jesus (Thompson 2010). When this story was formed, the majority of early Pentecostals were premillennial, and this belief encouraged a paradox: Pentecostals were pessimistic in that the world is getting worse, and yet optimistic in that God is working miracles, signs, and wonders. This paradox assisted them in emphasizing the nearness of the return of Jesus while also reinforcing God’s approval of their movement. Pentecostal theology often moved from an imminent perspective that Jesus would return at any moment to an immediate understanding—Jesus is returning now (today, next week, month, or year). In turn, this retelling of the story and its immediacy fueled evangelistic activity, and those identity was shaped by the story were caught up in the missiological fervor. Within this story, everyone had a purpose: to live as God’s holy people ( Jesus is returning soon for a pure bride) and to share the gospel (evangelize as many as will respond). Because the Pentecostal story is enmeshed in the story of Jesus, the primary character in the Pentecostal story is Jesus, alongside the Spirit and Father. The Pentecostal story is more Jesus-centric than Christocentric or trinitarian, which may explain some of the doctrinal divisions among Pentecostals. The story is Jesus-centric because of the devotional emphasis and missional focus of following Jesus; the story encourages a Spirit-Christology from below more so than a Logos-Christology from above (Bryant 2014). This perspective no doubt added to the early split in Pentecostalism over Oneness and trinitarian doctrines of God (Reed 2008). The majority of Pentecostals re-affirmed a historic trinitarian view of God, and yet a substantial group creatively developed a monotheistic oneness perspective of both the one essence of God and one person of God (see Chapter 18): Jesus is one person with two natures, human and divine. Jesus is the one true God, yet Jesus can simultaneously take on the titles of Father, Son and Holy Spirit (French 1999). If we understand Oneness theology as storied theology, then the Pentecostal story reinforces personal devotion primarily to Jesus who is the bearer of the Holy Spirit as promised by the Father. This Pentecostal story thus implicitly echoes a trinitarian perspective, and yet also undermines the traditional doctrinal articulations of trinitarian doctrine. These and other theological constructs of the Pentecostal story are drawn primarily from the Bible, which shapes the storied worldview. Yet the Pentecostal story is not the expression of a historical primitivism marked by the return to a pre-modern worldview; rather, the story thrives on the margins of modernity. In this timeless narrative, Pentecostals see continuity between the world narrated by the Bible and the world in which they live and hold to the testimony that throughout their story, Jesus is “the same yesterday, today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). Thus, Pentecostal story and history are better understood from a para-modern or meta-modern perspective (Archer, 2009, 38–46, 2016). Their para-modern perspective is one which affirms some continuity with the modern age and does so with a modified modern epistemological perspectives and language, while also clearly challenging the closed-universe perspective of the modern age (Yong 2011). A storied Pentecostal identity is marked by a continuing narrative that has not yet come to its conclusion. The 46

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Pentecostal imagination allows the gospel to continue to travel into cultures who have a more heightened spirited perspective of reality and among those persons and communities that have a deep quest for spirituality. The Pentecostal story is open to the encounter with God across history and the world. As a continuing story, it is open to revision, continued surprise, and wonder.

The Pentecostal story revisioned One seldom hears the Latter Rain language explicitly today in Pentecostal or charismatic circles. Although Pentecostals, classical and otherwise, continue to sing songs and hymns that are filled with “rain” imagery, the Pentecostal story can appear decentered and fragmented in a global Pentecostal world. In contemporary academic studies, the fivefold, or full gospel has become a primary narrative for understanding the Pentecostal story, explaining the theological roots of the early movement, and for developing a contemporary narrative theology for Pentecostals worldwide (Dayton 1987; Thomas 1998; Alfaro 2010; Archer 2011; Vondey 2017). Yet the narrative does not find its justification in the story itself. That Jesus is experienced as savior, sanctifier, Spirit baptizer, healer, and coming king is not self-evident. It is the Latter Rain motif that offers justification for the theological narrative by situating Pentecostal theology soteriologically, missiologically, and eschatologically: the Latter Rain is filled with a passionate vibrancy for the liberating work of God embedded in a sense of eschatological urgency. Water symbolizes the baptismal font of regeneration and the nurturing concerns associated with the work of the Holy Spirit. Rain emphasizes the outpouring of God’s Spirit, and all that is associated with it in the contexts of the renewing work and mission of God. The Latter Rain motif places this transformation and renewal unambiguously in the context of Pentecost. In short, the story of the Latter Rain is the story of Pentecost and, by extension, Pentecostals. Pentecost revisited affirms the availability, viability, and importance of the Pentecostal experience of the Latter Rain motif for the whole Christian story. By revisiting the Pentecost story, personally and communally, it becomes clear that Pentecostals as persons-in-community readily identify with the Latter Rain promise (Acts 2:39) and early Christianity. In the motif of the Latter Rain, Spirit baptism remains the lynch pin that keeps the story anchored in Pentecost. The Pentecost event and its leading characters ( Jesus, Father, and Spirit) manifested in the signs associated with the event become formative for the receiving persons-in-community, because the event includes the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as both a personal Pentecost and ongoing renewal of the church. In this way, the Early and Latter Rains mentioned in Acts 2 remain anchored in the biblical story where they function as a prophetic pattern of promise and fulfillment. In the telling of the story, the imagery of rain and other symbols such as fire and cloud, and signs such as prophecy, tongues, joy, and healing, support the importance of the continuation of Pentecost for each generation of believers. Interpreted as Pentecost, the Latter Rain becomes a constant frame of reference for the doctrinal narrative of the Pentecostal story (Vondey 2017, 2–3). Yet, more importantly, this storied approach is a doxological approach to theology (Vondey 2017, 288–94), which allows personal and communal testimony to become the primary mediator of worship and witness. With the story of Pentecost, persons-in-community testify to the redemptive work of God. They, then, are “people of Pentecost,” and as such continue the narration of Luke-Acts. These “Pentecostals” will find more experiential connection to past renewal movements and figures of church history (Burgess 2011). The Pentecostal story signals that the Spirit has been working since Pentecost, and as people of Pentecost, and the 47

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church of Pentecost, the participants too are part of the ongoing work of God. This nuanced change to the story encourages an understanding that Pentecostals are fulfilling the Latter Rain promise, without becoming the fulfillment (past tense) of the promise. More extensive than claiming to be people of the Latter Rain, which is not a false claim, Pentecostals can say that they are a people of Pentecost because their story is the story of Pentecost. This emphasis allows for the argument that Pentecost serves as the theological “symbol” of Pentecostalism (Vondey 2017, 4–5), while the full gospel functions as its theological narrative which is actualized through personal and communal encounters. A revisioned reading of the Pentecostal story is indispensable to an understanding of Pentecostal theology rooted in Pentecost but aimed at a broad emphasis on renewal and the continuity of God’s redemptive mission throughout history.

Conclusion Pentecostal theology exhibits the essential character of story. Experientially, practically, and doctrinally, story serves as the primary means to shape Pentecostal theological imagination and worldview, making reality meaningful as story. In the narrative of this story, Pentecostals are people of Pentecost, testifying to the redemptive experiences associated with the gospel of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit: Pentecost means that Jesus is still working among them through the activity of the Holy Spirit. As people of Pentecost, Pentecostals are living in the last days, awaiting the return of Jesus by actively engaging the mission of God through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Testimonies, songs, Bible reading and hearing, dance, altar times, preaching, service to the poor, prayer, and contemplative experiences are all valid avenues to encounter the living God—all storied opportunities. Pentecostals are encouraged by the story of Pentecost to anticipate that God will work in and through them and will bless them. The Pentecostal life story is one that emphasizes personal dignity and worth, encourages personal responsibility to live a loving and holy life engaged in God’s mission, and continued witness to the story of God. Theology as story takes on regional accents and personal emphases, yet the foundational character of story keeps Pentecostals grounded in the story of God told in the Scriptures. Seen as story, theology encourages Pentecostals to read the Old Testament as promise and the New Testament as fulfillment, in which they participate. Their own story connects them to the narratives of Scripture as well as early and historic Christianity. God who creates and redeems will glorify creation. God who sent the Son, also promises to send the Spirit, and thus raises Jesus from the dead. Jesus baptizes God’s people with the Spirit, fulfilling the promise of the Father and initiating the Latter Rain. Theology as story is relational, communal, and personal. The story is fluid yet stable, doxological more so than propositional, relationally grounded and not abstract. The growth of Pentecostalism suggests that theology as story is attractive and even intoxicating. Like all hope-filled inspiring redemptive stories, it attracts the marginalized who testify to experiencing hope, peace, healing, joy, deliverance, and redemption as they actively await Jesus’ return by participating in God’s mission.

References Alfaro, Sammy. 2010. Divino Companero: Toward a Hispanic Pentecostal Christology. Eugene: Pickwick. Archer, Kenneth J. 2004a. “Pentecostal Story: The Hermeneutical Filter for the Making of Meaning.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 26 (1): 36–59.

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Pentecostal theology as story ———. 2004b. “Nourishment for our Journey: The Pentecostal Via Salutis and Sacramental Ordinances.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 13 (1): 79–96. ———. 2007. “A Pentecostal Way of Doing Theology: Method and Manner.” International Journal of Systematic Theology 9 (3): 301–14. ———. 2009. A Pentecostal Hermeneutic: Spirit, Scripture and Community. Cleveland: CPT Press. ———. 2011. The Gospel Revisited: Towards a Pentecostal Theology of Worship and Witness. Eugene: Pickwick. ———. 2014. “The Holy Spirit and The Early Church in The Book of Acts: The Global Mission of the Messianic Community.” In The Holy Spirit: An Unfinished Agenda, edited by Johnson T. K. Lim, 102–9. Singapore: Word N Works. ———. 2016. “Afterword: On the Future of Pentecostal Hermeneutics.” In Constructive Pneumatological Hermeneutics in Pentecostal Christianity, edited by Kenneth J. Archer and L. William Oliverio, Jr., 315–27. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Archer, Kenneth J., and Andrew S. Hamilton. 2010. “Anabaptism-Pietism and Pentecostalism: Scandalous Partners in Protest.” Scottish Journal of Theology 63 (2): 185–202. Bryant, Herschel Odell. 2014. Spirit Christology in the Christian Tradition: From the Patristic Period to the Rise of Pentecostalism in the Twentieth Century. Cleveland: CPT Press. Burgess, Stanley M. 2011. Christian Peoples of the Spirit: A Documented History of Pentecostal Spirituality from Early Church to the Present. New York: New York University Press. Coulter, Dale M. 2007. “The Development of Ecclesiology in the Church of God (Cleveland, TN): A Forgotten Contribution?” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 29 (1): 58–85. Dayton, Donald W. 1987. Theological Roots of Pentecostalism. Peabody: Hendrickson. Dempster, Murray W., Byron D. Klaus, and Douglas Petersen, eds. 1999. The Globalization of Pentecostalism: A Religion Made to Travel. Oxford: Regnum. Fackre, Gabriel. 1996. The Christian Story: A Narrative Interpretation of Basic Christian Doctrine. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Faupel, D. William. 1996. The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought. JPT Supplement 2. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. French, Talmadge L. 1999. Our God Is One: The Story of Oneness Pentecostals. Indianapolis: Voice & Vision. Jacobsen, Douglas. 2003. Thinking in the Spirit: Theologies of Early Pentecostal Movement. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Land, Steven J. 1993. Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom. JPT Supplement 1. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Macchia, Frank D. 2006. Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. ———. 2018. Jesus the Spirit Baptizer: Christology in Light of Pentecost. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1984. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. 2nd ed. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. McAdams, Dan P. 2011. “Narrative Identity.” In Handbook of Identity Theory and Research, edited by Seth J. Schwartz, Koen Luyckx and Vivian L. Vignoles, 99–115. London: Springer. McClymond, Michael. 2015. “‘I Will Pour Out of My Spirit Upon All Flesh:’ An Historical and Theological Meditation on Pentecostal Origins.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 37 (2): 356–74. Ramirez, Daniel. 2015. Migrating Faith: Pentecostalism in the United States and Mexico in the Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Reed, David A. 2008. “In Jesus Name”: The History and Beliefs of Oneness Pentecostals. JPT Supplement 31. Blandford Forum: Deo Publishing. Spurling, R. G. 1920. The Lost Link. Turtletown: n.p. Thomas, John Christopher. 1998. “Pentecostal Theology in the Twenty-First Century.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 20 (1): 3–19. Thompson, Matthew K. 2010. Kingdom Come: Revisioning Pentecostal Eschatology. JPT Supplement 37. Blandford Forum: Deo Publishing. Villafañe, Eldin. 1993. The Liberating Spirit: Toward an Hispanic American Pentecostal Social Ethic. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Vondey, Wolfgang. 2016. “Soteriology at the Altar: Pentecostal Contributions to Salvation as Praxis.” Transformation: An International Journal of Holistic Mission Studies 34 (1): 223–38.

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Kenneth J. Archer ———. 2017. Pentecostal Theology: Living the Full Gospel. Systematic Pentecostal and Charismatic Theology 1. London: Bloomsbury. Walsh, Arlene M. Sanchez. 2006. “Pentecostals,” In Handbook of Latina/o Theologies, edited by E. D. Aponte and M. A. De La Torre, 199–205. St. Louis: Chalice Press. Warrington, Keith. 2008. Pentecostal Theology: A Theology of Encounter. London: T&T Clark. Yong, Amos. 2005. The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. ———. 2011. The Spirit of Creation: Modern Science and Divine Action in Pentecostal-Charismatic Imagination. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

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PART II

Sources

5 REVELATION The light and fire of Pentecost Rickie D. Moore

When considering the sources of Pentecostal theology, it is best to begin where all things Pentecostal begin, with Pentecost, which, for Pentecostals, is both a biblical narrative (Acts 2) and a personal, existential experience of divine revelation. Pentecostals have long been accused of basing their theology upon experience rather than Scripture. However, this is a criticism that greatly misunderstands just how deeply saturated, soaked, and steeped in Scripture Pentecostals generally are (see Chapter 6), and furthermore, it is a criticism that greatly underestimates just how fundamental and determinative experience (or its absence!) has been and continues to be for every theological tradition. Nevertheless, it is true that, historically, characteristically, and consciously, Pentecostalism has put more weight on experience than have most other faith traditions (see Chapter 8). And there is good reason for this emphasis, indeed scriptural reason. Pentecost itself begins with a sudden, overwhelming experience of divine manifestation and revelation, no matter whether we are talking about the biblical Pentecost or the Pentecost subsequently reiterated and reactivated in the lives of believers. In this chapter, I argue that the Pentecostal understanding of revelation is a reflection of and participation in the day of Pentecost. I begin with a discussion of Pentecost and how it relates to Pentecostal hermeneutics before explaining how Pentecostals view revelation as witness of the Spirit, the Word, and the community in the apocalyptic light and fire of Pentecost.

Pentecost and hermeneutics The event of Pentecost comes first of all as an experience beyond words, thus bursting the boundaries of language to usher in speaking “with other tongues” (see Acts 2:4)—tongues so utterly “other” (héteros) as to traverse boundaries between heaven and earth (v. 2), and thus between “every nation under heaven” (vv. 5–6). The story itself begins with the reporting of a sudden, heavenly (v. 2) manifestation of divine presence experienced by the followers of Jesus who are gathered in Jerusalem soon after his ascension. This manifestation features both auditory (“the sound of a mighty rushing wind,” v. 2) and visual (“divided tongues of fire,” v. 3) phenomena, which immediately result in all disciples being “filled with the Holy Spirit” and beginning “to speak with other languages as the Spirit gave them ability” (v. 4). At the sound of this revelation, a crowd of devout Jews “from every nation under heaven” (v. 5) quickly gathers, and they are amazed to hear, in the midst of all the commotion, a 53

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group they can identify as “Galileans” speaking “in our own languages . . . about God’s deeds of power” (v. 11). In their amazement and bewilderment, some quickly dismiss what they see and hear as no more than a display of public drunkenness (v. 13), while others raise the question, “what does this mean?” (v. 12). Those on the receiving end of this Pentecost experience have been responding to such reactions by outsiders ever since—reactions that often reach the conclusion that “this” is no more than a merely human experience, if not drunkenness, then perhaps distress or dementia (see Chapter 7). However, insiders know differently, and thus they cannot resist being claimed by what is proclaimed by Peter: “This is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh’” (Acts 2:17; Joel 2:28). Pentecost marks the revelation of God’s Spirit. “This is that” is the initial and essential hermeneutical move of Pentecost now extended through the Pentecostal movement (Stibbe 1998; Vondey and Green 2010). Pentecostals, in effect, are saying of their own spiritual experience: “This is what was spoken by the apostle Peter.” This move has deep scriptural roots, specifically in Moses’ words in Deuteronomy when he is remembering the Sinai or Horeb revelation—the very revelatory event and antecedent that the feast of Pentecost came to commemorate: The LORD our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. Not with our ancestors did the LORD make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us alive here today. The LORD spoke with you face to face at the mountain, out of the fire. (Deut. 5:2–3) This claim is tantamount to Moses saying, “In the light and the fire of Horeb, this is that!” It is as if the consuming fire of God that burned at Horeb (Deut. 4:11–24) is consuming the boundaries of space and time and bringing the face-to-face divine revelation, which was spoken out of the fire there, to “all of us, who are alive here today” (Moore 2011, 35–55). One can draw from Peter’s (and Moses’) “this is that” hermeneutic two implied points that have much significance for Pentecostal theology. First, Peter’s words can be taken to indicate: “This” experience is all about “that” Scripture (viz., Joel’s prophecy)—hence, we find no playing off Scripture against experience here, for the experience is respected for its actualizing of Scripture, while Scripture is honored for its illumination of the experience. In fact, one can see here the beginning of a pattern that characterizes, drives, and even defines the entire narrative of Acts. In accord with the Greek term that signifies its very title, “Praxis of the Apostles,” the unfolding dynamic of this narrative is the praxis constituted by the dialectical interplay between the actions and experiences of the apostles (and others) and the biblical and theological reflections, interpretations, and discernments that witness to the Spirit’s will, works, and wonders to the ends of the earth (e.g. Acts 15:1–35; Thomas 2000). This kind of narrative-praxis theology, which is inaugurated in Acts 2 and extended through the book of Acts, has come to characterize what is undoubtedly most distinctive, dynamic, and significant in Pentecostal theology (Land 1993, 58–121). Yet this emphasis did not come about because of some conscious recognition and sophisticated analysis by Pentecostals of this praxis—only much later did Pentecostal scholars take note of this dynamic ( Johns 1993; Land 1993). Rather, it came about partly because Pentecostals in their formative years looked so frequently and tracked so closely with the Acts narrative. But this close following of Acts most likely happened because of an even more fundamental cause. And that is this: when one’s life is suddenly interrupted and upended by an overwhelming encounter of inexpressible glory and wonder, it has a way of spontaneously 54

Revelation

generating testimony or narrative (Moore 2011) that entails reflection on the meaning of the event, like when needy persons in the Gospels had glorious encounters with Jesus, even when Jesus subsequently commanded them not to tell anyone. The narrative-praxis pattern, so prominent and continually generated in the narrative of Acts, simply and irrepressibly explodes forth out of an event like this. And this dynamic leads to the second aspect to be drawn from Peter’s hermeneutic. “This” is not, as some suppose, a merely human experience of garbled human communication but rather “that,” which is none other than divine revelation. Pentecost is divine revelation of a distinct and particular kind, constituted by God pouring out his Spirit and thereby inspiring prophetic utterances, signs, and wonders. It is the aim of this chapter to focus primarily on this distinctive and particular locus of divine revelation in its narrative setting of Acts 2 in view of how this narrative and this revelatory experience have combined to function as such a primal and generative source for Pentecostal theology.

Revelation as witness The topic of divine revelation, of course, covers a broad range of areas in the history of theology. Yet it is not my purpose here to attempt to address the many categories of revelation except to take note of strategic junctures at which Scripture points to a revelation beyond itself (Vondey 2010, 47–77) and thus becomes both gift and challenge to Pentecostal theology. Several Pentecostal theologians have recently produced major theological works that have begun to show how Pentecostal perspectives, especially in relation to pneumatology, can be brought to bear on the wide range of revelatory means (Yong 2002, 2005, 2014; Macchia 2006; Vondey 2010; Kärkkäinen 2014). As the subtitle for this chapter indicates, my aim here is focused upon the revelation that comes “in the light and fire of Pentecost.” For Pentecostals, this revelation is worthy of singular and even primary attention, because Pentecost is arguably the source of divine revelation that most effectively illuminates and ignites interaction with all other theological sources. These other Pentecost-illuminated sources include Scripture, for sure, but they even include the ultimate source of revelation, Jesus, as they surely did in the book of Acts for Jesus’ disciples, who through (and only through) the revelation of Pentecost, in accord with Jesus’ own prediction (Acts 1:8), were inspired, empowered, and ignited to become witnesses of Jesus to the ends of the earth. My phrase “in the light and fire of Pentecost,” merits further comment. Reflecting the experience of Moses with God, noted earlier, my use of it here traces from a keen observation put forward by Pentecostal theologian Chris Green in a response to Craig Keener’s book, Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in Light of Pentecost (Keener 2016; Green 2018, 214–15). Green suggests that thinking and speaking in terms of the “light of Pentecost” (cf. Vanhoozer 2015) can easily play into the hands of our enlightenment obsession with knowledge that informs us, but is an orientation that can be significantly expanded and intensified by speaking in terms of the “fire of Pentecost,” which, in accord with Acts 2 (“tongues of fire,” v. 3), more readily points to the divine force that transforms us (Green 2018, 214–15). Fire not only illuminates but also changes the form of what it touches in a way that light alone does not—a point which cannot be far from what John the Baptist highlights in his prediction of the one coming after him who “is more powerful than I . . . He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (Luke 3:16; emphasis added). Pentecost comes with the expectation (of Jesus, no less) that those experiencing it will be radically changed, not merely informed but transformed, (“you shall receive power,” Acts 1:8, and be “clothed with power from on high,” Luke 24:49), not merely doing something new but being something that they were not before—“my witnesses,” says Jesus, “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Revelation is transformation! 55

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Peter is the prime example (indeed the initial evidence!) of this transformation. Not long before Pentecost in the Luke-Acts narrative, we can see Peter “following at a distance” and then “sitting by the fire” in the high priest’s courtyard, committing his epic failure to be a witness for Jesus, even to the point of denying that he knew Jesus (Luke 22:54–60). However, with the coming of Pentecost when “divided tongues, as of fire, appeared . . . and rested on each of them,” we see Peter “standing with the eleven” (Acts 2:14) and lifting up his voice, and thus actually, truly, and finally being the empowered “witness” that Jesus had predicted that both he and the others would be “when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1:8). Pentecost marks the transformational turning point in the narrative from the wayward actions of the disciples to the wondrous acts of the apostles. The term “witness” (mártur), which is a significant term throughout the New Testament, is especially important in the Acts narrative. It is the term used both by Jesus in his promise in Acts 1:8 and by Peter, in explicit reference to himself and his companions, in his Pentecost message: “This Jesus, God has raised up, and of this we are all witnesses” (Acts 2:32). With this reference, Peter makes a direct connection with Jesus’ promise and shows that he knows himself to be a fulfillment of it. Earlier, in the courtyard, he was mortally afraid of being a witness, a mártur, indeed of becoming a martyr. However, on the day of Pentecost, Peter now stands up in the court of public opinion and knows and declares himself to be a witness, a mártur, a disciple no longer “following at a distance” (Luke 22:54) but rather following close enough to Jesus to become a martyr himself. He expresses explicit awareness that he bears witness before those who had had a hand in executing Jesus (Acts 2:23) and who could reasonably be expected now to intend the same for him. Yet Peter also expresses awareness that Jesus had been “raised up” (v. 32) by the same One who has empowered Peter to stand up as a witness, a mártur (v. 24), and thus who could reasonably be expected to raise him up from the grip of death itself. Indeed, when Peter says of Jesus, “God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power” (v. 24), he is saying something here that he just as easily could have been saying about himself and what had just happened to him there in the middle of Jerusalem. And the same could be said of what Peter says next, quoting from the Psalmist’s words, which Peter sees as referencing Jesus: I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken; therefore my heart was glad and my tongue rejoiced; my flesh also will dwell in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One experience corruption. You have made known to me the ways of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence. (vv. 25–28; Psalm 16:8–11)

Peter’s Pentecost message concludes with a final convicting salvo on God’s exaltation of “this Jesus whom you crucified” (v. 36), which evokes a new question from the onlookers who are “cut to the heart” and so ask, “What should we do?” (v. 37). Peter’s response is, as Pentecostals would say (Vondey 2017, 37–58), to give an altar call: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (v. 38). It is a “way of life” (v. 28) that Peter himself only recently had followed—one that had taken him from “following at a distance” (Luke 22:54) to becoming a close follower, close enough to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit that had empowered him to become even close enough to be a mártur, indeed identifying with 56

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Jesus unto the point of death and of resurrected life. Peter now sees and is a living witness, a mártur, to the revelation of the cross and the revelation of the resurrection that Pentecost has freshly revealed. This narrative of revelation accords with Green’s admonition that “coming into Pentecost, we do not leave Good Friday behind. Life in the Spirit is a life of continually sharing in Christ’s sufferings, allowing his death always to be happening in us” (Green 2018, 216), and also with the words of Frank Macchia: Pentecostal theology is the seamless flow of events assumed from the cross to Pentecost, a flow of events that had the impartation of the Spirit at its very substance. The cross was not an abstract event that reconciles God to humanity totally apart from us but rather an all-sufficient power for regeneration, sanctification, healing, and empowered (Spirit-baptized) witnessing in that it had the resurrection and Pentecost at its horizons as parts of the seamless flow of events by which the Spirit is mediated. (Macchia 2008, 3) Peter points to this “seamless flow of events” in his quote from Psalm 16:11, “You have made known to me the ways of life” (Acts 2:28). Yet Peter knows that the path of life comes with a hard call to repent, just like it did for him when Jesus, a short time earlier, had predicted: “Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back [i.e., repented], strengthen your brothers.” And he said to him, “Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death!” And Jesus said, “I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day, until you have denied three times that you know me”. (Luke 22:31–34) Obviously, Peter had followed Jesus closely—closely enough, so he thought, that he was already prepared to be a martyr with him, but Jesus knew better. He knew what Peter comes to know only with the outpouring of the gift of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. You could say, as Peter is issuing an altar call, he is answering the altar call that Jesus earlier had put to him, for in standing up in this way before those he earlier had mortally feared, he is laying down his life, and yet taking it up again. Peter now knows that he is losing his life and yet finding it, in accord with Jesus’ earlier words to his disciples (Luke17:33; cf. 9:24). In the light and fire of Pentecost, Peter comes to know also that this same path of life and this same gift of the Holy Spirit are now being offered to everyone who receives his word (Acts 2:38–40). Pentecost is not a prophetic gift for the few. In accord with Joel’s words, “all flesh,” it is radically inclusive, pointing to nothing short of a “prophethood of all believers” (Stronstad 1999). “For the promise is unto you . . ., ” Peter declares, but his altar call is not quite finished yet: “. . . and to your children, and to all that are afar off” (v. 39; KJV). • • •

afar off in space, indeed “unto the ends of the earth;” afar off in time, indeed even to “children” throughout all generations; as far off as Peter was on the night he thought he was following closely, only to come to the bitter revelation that he was woefully far from Jesus and indeed “following at a distance,” as the narrative, so we noted earlier, says about Peter in Luke 22:54, using a form of the same word (makrós) now used by Peter and rendered “far away” in Acts 2:39; 57

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•

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as far off as those of us who are modern biblical scholars, following the text of Acts 2 but only while carefully and endlessly maintaining, practicing, and promoting our enlightened historical-critical distance; or as far off as those of us who are post-modern readers and who eagerly promote “close readings” of the narrative but only as long as it does not entail our own narrative and our own mail being read (Moore 2016).

Yet, further still, Peter seems to know that his altar call to “all who are far off” goes only so far, and so he must finally defer to God’s own altar call by adding one more far-reaching line to the promise, “everyone whom the Lord our God calls” (Acts 2:39). The verb at the end of this line makes explicit that this revelation can appropriately be termed an altar “call” (kaléo). If Peter’s call yields to God’s call, then perhaps we should also say that God’s call has taken up Peter’s call and propelled it now, quite literally, to the ends of the earth and to the end of these, now quite conceivably, very “last days.” It is as if God’s revelation—the revelation beyond words that was born in Peter on the day of Pentecost so that he, with inspired words, could bear witness to it and then witness the bearing of its first-fruits in 3,000 souls on that day (Acts 2:41)—has now, after over twenty centuries of human history, generated an unending succession of generations, a truly Petrine succession, through the proclamation, propagation, amplification, and, yes, canonization of Peter’s witness.

Spirit, word, and community But let us not forget the actualization of the “acts of the Apostles,” or one could say, the “praxualization” of the “praxis of the Apostles.” The Pentecost narrative concludes with a final paragraph that notes how a vibrant, dynamic community was immediately formed and activated from the Acts 2 experience of divine revelation (vv. 42–47; Wenk 2000), forged and propelled forward in the fire of Pentecost. It was in no way a merely one-off event for these 3,000 souls, but rather a sustained, continuing, growing (v. 47), erupting revelatory dynamic in their midst, where “awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles” (v. 43). This culminating paragraph on the community rounds out an overall shape to the Pentecost narrative that could be described as highlighting, first, the coming of the Spirit, then the coming forth of the Word through Peter, followed by the coming together of the community. There is something obviously and theologically right and proper about seeing these three important realities of Spirit, Word, and community in this sequence and order, for the Holy Spirit is God, yet Scripture and the ecclesial community, as important and holy as they may be, are not. Pentecostal scholars, who have played a leading role in recognizing the significance of this triad of Spirit, Word, and community, have well understood that seeing these three only in this sequential and segmented way can altogether miss the dynamic of interrelationship, intersection, and interaction among them. Indeed, the emergence and development of Pentecostal hermeneutics could, in large part, be traced from Pentecostal scholars first noting this triadic dynamic (Moore 1987, 1989), then biblically expositing it (Thomas 1994), then historically tracking it through the interpretative practices of the Pentecostal movement (Archer 2001, 2004), and then extensively explicating it theologically and hermeneutically in ways engaged with and for the benefit of global ecumenical theology and ecclesial practice (Yong 2002, 2005; Vondey 2010; Kärkkäinen 2014). The Pentecost narrative itself, when followed closely (especially with the closeness that comes from engaging with it in praxis!), reveals Spirit, Word, and community not just in 58

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terms of three separate and sequential segments of the story and the experience, but rather in dynamic interplay all along the way. For instance, the presence of community comes not just at the end of Acts 2 but also from the beginning with the believers gathered together “all with one accord in one place” (v. 1; KJV). The Word also is implicitly present from the beginning of the Pentecost account in the prophetic words of Jesus, which had already directed these disciples to remain in Jerusalem (Luke 24:49), and in the Scriptures Peter cites from Joel and Psalms (Acts 2:16–21, 25–28, 34–35), which already exist in the background of the story and, we can be sure, in the ready memory of the Pentecost tongue-speakers and devout Jewish onlookers long before Peter ever preaches. And the Spirit is obviously present not only in the coming down from heaven of a rushing mighty wind, but also in the raising up of Peter to be a witness for Jesus, as Jesus’ promise of the Spirit’s empowerment had earlier foretold (Acts 1:8). Thus, the dynamic synergism of Spirit, Word, and community flows through the entire narrative and experience of divine revelation, providing the prime example of how the narrative mode of discourse is especially well suited to weave together, hold together, and reflect this nuanced interplay, as Pentecostal scholars, recognizing the importance of narrative and story for Pentecostalism, have been especially keen to show (see Chapter 4). However, this second-order recognition of and reflection upon the interactive relationship of Spirit, Word, and community in the light of Pentecost, significant as it is, should not be allowed to blur and to blunt a paramount point of the Pentecost narrative and experience of revelation. At the heart of it all for those on the inside—that is, the inside of the erupting encounter of what is being narrated and experienced, which goes well beyond merely seeing in the light of Pentecost to being in the fire of Pentecost—the primary and ultimate focus of attention is not on the synergism and “trialectical” interactions of Spirit, Word, and community (Yong 2002). Rather the focus is completely, utterly, dreadfully, and joyously upon nothing other than “the mighty acts of God” (Acts 2:11)—the divine revelation that alone brings about the activation and actualization of the Acts of the Apostles. There are many moving pieces in the movement of Pentecost and undoubtedly even more in the Pentecostal movement. Like with metal filings being scattered across a table, it can be difficult to grasp all the diversity, complexity, and disunity. And like that scattering of filings, it can resist our best efforts to organize, analyze, systematize, and get handles on it all. However, when a powerful magnet comes down above all those many filings with all of its mysterious power, this is the move above all movements, the one that will cause all of the fragments to come together in one accord and to do this so suddenly and spectacularly that it can seem altogether like magic—the kind of magic that folks like Simon Magus, the magician want to purchase, manipulate, and wield (Acts 8:9–24). And this is a temptation and motivation that has insidiously appeared in the wake of the revelation of Pentecost from the apostles’ day to our own (Hocken 1994).

Revelation as apocalyptic light and fire The day of Pentecost entails the revelation of a day that we do not and absolutely cannot ever own—because it is none other than the day of the Lord. This brings us finally to an extremely important dimension of the divine revelation that comes in the light and fire of Pentecost, namely, the apocalyptic dimension. It is a crucial part of the Pentecost event and experience that has often been overlooked or downplayed, even by many Pentecostals. This was not as much the case for Pentecostalism in its earliest years, where we see a movement much more apocalyptically oriented and on fire, and much more attuned to the specific connection between Pentecost and apocalyptic revelation (Land 1993; Faupel 1996; Althouse 59

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2003). This dimension of the revelation of Pentecost might just be the one most in need of being freshly illuminated in Pentecostal thought and newly ignited in Pentecostal life—or perhaps better put, the one most capable of freshly illuminating Pentecostal thought and re-igniting Pentecostal life (Moore 2020, 131–34). In Peter’s quotation of Joel’s words, “‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh’” (2:16–17), early Pentecostals seized upon Peter’s phrase, “in the last days,” which puts heightened apocalyptic emphasis on Joel’s less eschatologically charged time reference, “afterward” ( Joel 2:28). And yet this variation does no disservice to the thrust of Joel’s message, for the essence of his prophecy, from start to finish, is all about “the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day” (Moore 2020, 128–31), as Joel himself announces, and as Peter’s quotation of Joel includes just a few lines later ( Joel 2:30; Acts 2:20). Thus, Peter recognizes that “the day of Pentecost” has now initiated “the last days,” which culminate in “the day of the Lord.” And in the light and fire of this revelation, Peter takes up Joel’s pronouncement of “portents in the heavens above, and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire,” (yes, fire!) “and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day” (Acts 2:19–20). Thus, the day of Pentecost is a revelation of the day of the Lord. As Pentecost functions as a defining paradigm for divine revelation in Pentecostalism, then through the lens provided by Joel and Peter it surely appears in a thoroughly and fiery apocalyptic light. It appears as a blazing sign and signal of “the last days,” indeed the end of days. The prophets, like Joel, Isaiah, and Moses, found out early on, that to experience a revelatory encounter with God is to die (cf. Deut. 5:24–26), to see the end of self (cf. Isaiah 6:5) and thus to foresee, in that overwhelming revelation, the end of the world—something the modern worldview is incapable of seeing, even dead set on not seeing by any means in order to sustain its own self-perception as “Enlightenment,” the ultimate phase in the ascendency of human progress, of which there can be no end. Modern scholarship’s long practiced reflex of marginalizing the apocalyptic in the biblical canon (ascribing it to late redaction or some foreign influence) and theology, appears as but a reflection of modernity’s long-practiced marginalization of all apocalyptic perspectives and movements in the interest of sustaining its own grand worldview. However, of late this worldview has itself fallen under the shadow of apocalypse in the looming and uncertain specter that is post-modernity. Perhaps this fall brings with it a rare opportunity at last for a wider audience to see the apocalyptic revelation of Pentecost in a whole new light. For Pentecostals, then, the Pentecost revelation points forward to the book that is entitled “Revelation,” apocalypsis (in the Greek)—the biblical book that has the most extensive and elaborate focus upon “the last days” and apocalyptic revelation with all of its intense elements of visionary experience, theophanic encounter, and disclosures of the end time that are associated with this important biblical term. The term “witness” (mártur), which we saw to be very significant in the Pentecost narrative, provides another key connection between Pentecost and the Apocalypse. Forms of this same word are used to introduce John and his “witness” at the beginning of the book of Revelation: “John, who testified (Greek, marturéo) to the word of God and to the testimony (marturía) of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw” (Rev. 1:1–2) . . . “I, John, . . . was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony (marturía) of Jesus” (Rev. 1:9). John, like Peter, has become a witness (mártur) unto the end—bearing witness to the resurrected Jesus (Rev. 1:13–16). And John’s words immediately after this statement add still more to the Acts 2 connection, “I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day” (Rev. 1:10). The inspiring source of John’s witness, like Peter’s witness, is God’s Spirit—the Spirit who opens 60

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up a revelation of the last days, the end times, or in Joel’s phrase, referenced by Peter, “the day of the Lord,” to which John’s phrase here, “the Lord’s day,” is quite likely alluding (see Rev. 16:14; Thomas 2012, 39–41). All of these striking connections between Revelation 1 and Acts 2 further highlight the apocalyptic dimension of the divine revelation that comes in the light and fire of Pentecost. Revelation as a source of Pentecostal theology is always eschatological and apocalyptic. It is revelation of the Spirit that inspires witness unto the end: • • • •

unto the end of the earth; unto the end of time; unto the end of the life of the inspired witness, the mártur; unto the End, the Omega Himself, who bears final witness that this revelation of the end is only the beginning.

Conclusion The Pentecostal understanding of divine revelation is a reflection of and participation in the day of Pentecost deeply connected with the revelation of God’s Spirit. This essay has argued that revelation comes in the light and fire of Pentecost forged by Spirit and Word in the community of those who have encountered God. Revelation is an apocalyptic disclosure of the day of the Lord, a transforming testimony of the mighty acts of God from beginning to end. Revelation is light and fire because it illuminates and transforms all who encounter God to become inspired witnesses to Jesus Christ. Revelation demands human experience and response in the way of a divine altar call confronting the world with the gospel because we ourselves have been transformed by its fire and light. Thus, in the light of Pentecost, it is little wonder that revelation is the primary source of Pentecostal theology. And in the fire of Pentecost, it is little wonder that this revelation continues to be the source of greatest and endless wonder, indeed signs and wonders beyond words.

References Althouse, Peter. 2003. Spirit of the Last Days: Pentecostal Eschatology in Conversation with Jürgen Moltmann. London: T & T Clark. Archer, Kenneth J. 2001. “Early Pentecostal Biblical Interpretation.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 18: 32–70. ———. 2004. A Pentecostal Hermeneutic for the Twenty-First Century: Spirit, Scripture and Community. London: T & T Clark. Faupel, D. William. 1996. The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Green, Chris E.W. 2018. “A Review of Craig Keener’s Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in Light of Pentecost.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 27 (2): 213–21. Hocken, Peter. 1994. The Glory and the Shame: Reflections on the 20th-Century Outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Gildford: Eagle. Johns, Cheryl Bridges. 1993. Pentecostal Formation: A Pedagogy among the Oppressed. JPT Supplement 3. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. 2014. A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World. Volume 2. Trinity and Revelation. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Keener, Craig. 2016. Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in Light of Pentecost. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Land, Steven J. 1993. Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom. JPT Supplement 1. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Macchia, Frank D. 2006. Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

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Rickie D. Moore ———. 2008. “Pentecost as the Power of the Cross: The Witness of Seymour and Durham.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 30 (1): 1–3. Moore, Rickie D. 1987. “A Pentecostal Approach to Scripture.” Seminary Viewpoint 8 (1): 4–5, 11. ———. 1989. “Approaching God’s Word Biblically.” Unpublished paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, Fresno, California. ———. 2011. The Spirit of the Old Testament. JPT Supplement 35. Blandford Forum: Deo. ———. 2016. “Altar Hermeneutics: Reflections on Pentecostal Biblical Interpretation.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 38 (2): 148–59. ———. 2020. “Joel.” In The Book of the Twelve: A Pentecostal Commentary, edited by John Christopher Thomas, 123–84. Pentecostal Commentary Series. Blandford Forum: Deo Publishing. Stibbe, Mark. 1998. “This Is That: Some Thoughts Concerning Charismatic Hermeneutics.” Anvil 13 (3): 181–93. Stronstad, Roger. 1999. The Prophethood of All Believers: A Study in Luke’s Charismatic Theology. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Thomas, John Christopher. 1994. “Women, Pentecostals, and the Bible: An Experiment in Pentecostal Hermeneutics.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 5: 41–56. ———. 2000. “Reading the Bible from within Our Tradition: A Pentecostal Hermeneutic Test Case.” In Between Two Horizons: Spanning New Testament Studies and Systematic Theology, edited by Joel Green and Max Turner, 108–22. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2012. The Apocalypse: A Literary and Theological Commentary. Cleveland: CPT Press. Vanhoozer, Kevin J. 2015. “The Spirit of Light After the Age of Enlightenment: Reforming/ Renewing Pneumatic Hermeneutics via the Economy of Illumination.” In Spirit of God: Christian Renewal in the Community of Faith, edited by Jeffrey W. Barbeau and Beth Felker Jones, 149–67. Downers Grove: InterVarsity. Vondey, Wolfgang. 2010. Beyond Pentecostalism: The Crisis of Global Christianity and the Renewal of the Theological Agenda. Pentecostal Manifestos 3. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2017. Pentecostal Theology: Living the Full Gospel. Systematic Pentecostal and Charismatic Theology 1. London: T&T Clark. Vondey, Wolfgang, and Chris E.W. Green. 2010. “Between This and That: Reality and Sacramentality in the Pentecostal Worldview.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 19 (2): 243–64. Wenk, Matthias. 2000. Community-Forming Power: The Socio-Ethical Role of the Spirit in Luke-Acts. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Yong, Amos. 2002. Spirit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective. Eugene: Wipf & Stock. ———. 2005. The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker. ———. 2014. Renewing Christian Theology: Systematics for a Global Christianity. Waco: Baylor University Press.

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6 SCRIPTURE Finding one’s place in God’s story Scott A. Ellington

Pentecostals identify their own story with those recorded in Scripture. They hold in common a grounding in experiences that shape and direct their understanding of Scripture and its revelatory action in their own lives. The formative experiences of the Spirit that mirror accounts attested to by believers in the book of Acts, together with the manifestation of charismatic gifts in the lives of those who share this encounter throughout history, provide a focused sense of identification with the biblical witnesses, so that Pentecostals read Scripture attuned to points of contact and continuity with the lives of those they find there. In this chapter, I argue that shared experiences of encounter with the Spirit, often through concrete expressions such as miraculous healings, speaking with tongues, and prophetic words, actively shape a Pentecostal’s understanding of the nature and function of the Bible and, as such, remain essential to any articulation of the doctrine of Scripture. I begin by affirming the importance of experience, orality, and story in Pentecostal theology. Next, I consider the dynamic relationship between the past revelation of writing Scripture and the contemporary encounter with the Spirit experienced in the hearing of Scripture for Pentecostals. I then examine three significant influences that continue to shape Pentecostal perspectives on Scripture: evangelical theology, Word of Faith theology, and reader-oriented postmodern reading strategies.

Experience, orality, and story The privileging of experience does not mean that Pentecostals are irrational or arbitrary in their approach to the Bible (Moore 2013, 11–13), but it does mean that their conception of Scripture is transformed in a way that colors every aspect of their readings. John McKay (1994, 39), already established as a biblical scholar prior to his own experience of Holy Spirit baptism, describes reading the Bible in light of that new experience, finding it radically transformed as a result of his Spirit encounter, so that it became a new book through a paradigmatic change in interpretive perspective that results from such a charismatic encounter with God’s Spirit: Pentecostals base their understanding of Scripture “on what they discover themselves thinking after they have been baptized in the Holy Spirit.” At times such experiences challenge approaches to the Bible that rely principally on reasoned argument, so that Pentecostals value “knowing by perception over knowing by proof ” (Davies 2009, 221). 63

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A dispensational approach to the Bible, for example, that confines tongues and miracles to a past dispensation of God’s revelation, or a “demythologizing” of biblical language that seeks to harmonize it with an exclusively Enlightenment understanding of reality by excluding the miraculous, fails the existential test of validity as Pentecostals experience God’s presence and activity in ways that reflect those attested to in Luke-Acts. Reason is not eclipsed by experience (see Chapters 7 and 8), but it is found at times insufficient to account fully for the reality attested to either by the biblical writer or by the contemporary interpreter. As a result of their experience of sharing in the Spirit’s outpouring at Pentecost, Pentecostal theology is “significantly directed by a focused reading of Luke-Acts” (Mittelstadt 2009, 137). This primary focus colors the reading of the whole of Scripture with a sense of immediacy, so that Pentecostals can accept readily and uncritically testimonies of divine power and presence, even when they themselves have not yet directly shared in all of those specific experiences. There is a strong sense of accepting the “plain meaning” of the text, so that Pentecostals expect to be able to identify closely with the lives and experiences of the first Christians. For those Pentecostals immersed in a context that holds a positivist view of history, encounters with the Spirit transcend a restricted perspective on historical events, with the result that the sense of distance between the biblical world and that of the reader is reoriented and radically reduced. God encroaches and that incursion into the lives of his people today facilitates their entering the world of the text. Frank Macchia (2002, 1122) has referred to this as a kind of “Biblicism” by which Pentecostals “believed themselves capable of entering and living in the world of the Bible through the ministry of the Spirit without the need for consciously engaging the hermeneutical difficulties of reading an ancient text from a modern situation.” The speaking, acting, and guiding of the Spirit are no longer confined to the distant past, with the result that the world of the Bible seems suddenly much more accessible. In addition, there is an oral rather than literate orientation among Pentecostals that is more at home with truths communicated through stories as opposed to propositional abstraction or rhetorical argument (see Chapter 4). While this may arguably be less true among North American Pentecostals today than it was in the early days of the movement, orality still characterizes much Western preaching and is the dominant means of communicating Scripture in the majority world. To be oral in orientation is not to be illiterate or uneducated but refers instead to the way in which knowledge and truth about life are acquired and processed. Tex Sample (1994, 6) contends “that about half of the people in the United States are people who work primarily out of a traditional orality, by which I mean a people who can read and write—though some cannot—but whose appropriation and engagement with life is oral.” Knowledge in oral cultures, says Sample (1994, 3–5), is transmitted through stories and proverbs, being validated by the trust established through relationships. Certainly, confidence that the Bible is the divinely inspired word of God rests for Pentecostals more on their trust in their relationship with the Spirit (see Chapter 19) than it does on reasoned argument or doctrinal assertion. This comfort with oral articulation and preference for narrative expressions of truth impact both the genre to which Pentecostals are more likely to turn for understanding their experience of Pentecost and the types of truths that they are likely to derive from those texts. Roger Stronstadt (2012, 5–9) has called attention to the Pentecostal propensity for drawing theology from narrative rather than didactic portions of Scripture. Stories of divine encounter and activity, of theophany and miracle, that have sometimes proven awkward and untenable to the modern reader, are read by Pentecostals with a sense of immediacy and easy accessibility. They see their own stories of divine encounter as a continuation of those 64

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attested to by the faith community in the Bible. “We find ourselves,” says John Goldingay (1997, 8), “by setting ourselves in that other story . . . . In fact, we all tell our individual stories in the light of a worldview, a ‘grand narrative.’” Pentecostals more easily find a place in the biblical narrative because the point of access is not in a particular reading but in a sense of belonging to and participation in the community of believers described in those narratives. The story of the individual believer becomes part of the biblical story and the common practice among Pentecostals of offering public testimony to experience asserts and reinforces that connection.

The Bible as a living word Scripture is understood by Pentecostals to be a lively rather than a sedentary speaking of God’s word, in that the Spirit both spoke to and through the inspired authors and speaks anew to the contemporary hearers of the word. And because, for Pentecostals, the emphasis is decidedly on the latter, a right hearing of the word depends not simply on bridging the gap between the world of the original author and that of the present day hearer, but on being yielded to a Spirit who is able to speak into both worlds, drawing on the words of the original revelatory encounter and also speaking a new word that addresses a fresh context. Often, Pentecostals lack interest in finding the ancient author’s intended meaning, which then requires translation and adaptation to their own situations, pointed out by Frank Macchia (2000, 55), who suggests that “the hermeneutical gap for Pentecostals has not been historical or cultural but spiritual, namely, between the spiritual message of Scripture and the unspiritual mind.” Pentecostals affirm that the word of God in Scripture is inaccessible apart from the ongoing revelatory activity of the Spirit who inspired that word. As Allan Anderson (2013, 122) asserts: “Pentecostals do differ from fundamentalists in that the text does not have authority in itself – rather, it is the Bible as interpreted by the inner working of the Spirit that is authoritative” (emphasis original). It is not possible, Pentecostals maintain, to sever the testimony to inspiration recorded in Scripture from the inspiring Spirit and still to hear Scripture as God’s word. The word of God is found in the encounter with Jesus Christ that the Holy Spirit facilitates in the hearer, so that “revelation as charismatic and prophetic event does not emerge from the written text itself, its letters, grammar, or syntax, but from what occurred and continues to occur in the community as God’s presence seen, heard, spoken, and experienced” (Vondey 2010, 74). The essential point, then, is that for Pentecostals the locus of revelation in Scripture is open-ended (Mittelstadt 2010, 164) and can never be a purely past event, because the inspirer of that word is speaking through and is being encountered again in the hearing of that word in the present. Pentecostals affirm that the Holy Spirit speaks today and does more than simply repeat the biblical text (Archer 2009, 199). Rather, Pentecostals are committed to the belief that the Spirit as the communicator of God’s word both spoke to those who wrote (and edited) the Scriptures and speaks in the community of faith reading (and interpreting) the Scriptures. Pentecostals see themselves as “people of the Spirit” as well as “people of the Book” and are led by both (Arrington 1992, 25). For our purposes, though, the question becomes how best to understand Scripture as divine revelation in light of the continued presence and speaking of the inspiring Spirit (see Chapter 5). For the majority of Pentecostals, prophecy is viewed as subordinate to and to be judged by Scripture (Kay 2004, 75). For example, Grant Wacker (2001, 70) points out that “Pentecostal writers often used carpentry metaphors . . . to reenforce the notion that the Bible came first. All private visions or inspirations by the Holy Spirit, they said, must be ‘plumb-lined by the Word,’ placed on the ‘square of God’s Word.’” 65

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Pentecostals would not, however, consider prophecy to be simply redundant. The reason not all agree on its relationship to the biblical canon rests on the dynamic sense of continuation attributed to divine revelation in and beyond Scripture. We continue to find different interpretations of the understanding of Scripture, and not all are shared by all Pentecostals. Wolfgang Vondey (2010, 63) criticizes the adoption by classic Pentecostals of a dispensational understanding of revelation that resulted, he argues, in the “objectification” of Scripture and the dissolution of the ongoing dynamic interaction between the written and spoken words of the Spirit, with the result that, Pentecostals replaced their oral-affective participation in the self-disclosure of God with a historical-grammatical interpretation of the biblical texts. The result was a “textualization” of revelation that reserved primary status to the written canon and suppressed the function of the imagination in the charismatic community and its affective-prophetic way of being. Early Pentecostals, says Vondey (2010, 62), found in biblical revelation “not a record or performance of a completed act but an expression of the continuing possibility of revelation as an encounter with God that calls for a response in the present.” Although it is questionable if Pentecostals have maintained this perspective everywhere, this understanding of Scripture as a living word, a place of ongoing divine encounter, is at the heart of what distinguishes a Pentecostal appreciation of and approach to Scripture. James K. A. Smith (1997, 66–67) argues for an understanding of Scripture not as the location of divine presence, but rather as offering testimony pointing and attesting to that presence in the church. For Smith, it is neither prophetic experience nor Scripture, if either is devoid of the ongoing presence and revelation of the Spirit, that is the final authority for the community of faith. The canon – that which keeps our weaving straight – I would propose, is the Holy Spirit, not a collection of writings. The Spirit of Christ is the norm or standard for faith, and that Spirit stands in authority over both Scripture and prophecy. It is not Scripture that is the ultimate norm, but Christ. (Smith 1997, 68) This continuing presence of Christ in the midst of the charismatic community, Smith believes, is the best protection against relativism and subjectivity (Smith 1997, 69). He does not make clear, though, how the charismatic community, which is often divided in its understanding and perception of what the Spirit is saying, can best perceive and evaluate the Spirit’s presentation of Christ to that community. John Wyckoff (2003, 35) argues that the activity of the Holy Spirit, far from diminishing or supplanting the authority of Scripture, serves to establish its authority in ways that reasoned argument and doctrinal assertion alone cannot. Specifically, it is through the experience of encountering God in Scripture, revealed by the Spirit, that Scripture is clearly understood, and its authority is affirmed. To speak of Scripture as a locus for encountering God is not, then, to suggest that it is simply a vehicle that can be abandoned once that to which it points has been realized. Rather, the Spirit serves to facilitate present conversation with the canonical witness through words that measure and act as a standard for our own experiences of that encounter. As such, the prophetic word is offered in conversation with, and thus can never eclipse, the Scriptures of the faith community. 66

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In seeking to understand and articulate a Pentecostal doctrine of Scripture, two extremes are to be avoided and a balance between written and spoken Spirit-word maintained. On the one hand, locating revelation exclusively in the past and unrepeatable event of the Spirit’s inspiration of the biblical writers, so that the Spirit’s role is limited to assisting in the exegesis of the ancient texts in a way that steps back from the immediacy of divine encounter, limits God to a purely custodial role with regard to revelation. On the other hand, the Spirit’s speech and activity recorded in the Bible has been recognized as canon and tradition provides the essential dialogue partner in hearing the Spirit in the context of the community of faith today (see Chapter 9). The Spirit stands aloof from neither reader nor text but facilitates a dialogue between them. The Spirit connects the contemporary community of faith with the historical community that has experienced first-hand the covenant promise to Abraham, the Exodus, the building and destruction of the temple, the birth, life, crucifixion, and resurrection of Emmanuel, and the life of the first Christian community. It is that dialogue that the Spirit enlivens rather than supersedes.

Strange bedfellows: evangelicalism, word of faith, and postmodernism It would be fair to say that historically Pentecostalism has been an experiential movement in search of a doctrine to describe its character. The lack of a leading theological figure like a Thomas Aquinas, a John Calvin, or a John Fletcher to grant classic Pentecostalism a clear theological trajectory, has meant that some of the theological alliances made by Pentecostals are at times very much at odds with their core beliefs about the nature and character of Scripture. Two influences in the second half of the twentieth century, in particular, have permeated Pentecostal thinking about the Bible, while at the same time undermining their foundational understanding of Scripture as a place of divine encounter. One has a readier appeal to academic ways of articulating a theology of Scripture, while the other vies for support at the grassroots level of the church. The former is classical evangelicalism, with its commitment to modernist notions of truth and the perfection of a series of inspirational moments that center on the authors and their autographs, and the latter is the “Word of Faith” doctrine founded on the teachings of E. W. Kenyon, with its embrace of universal laws of creation that God has established in his word to be activated by the discerning reader. So far reaching has been their acceptance and appropriation that for many they have become part of the very fabric of global Pentecostalism. It remains to be seen how far these influences that shift the focus away from immediate encounter and engagement with the Spirit in Scripture may eventually reshape the movement. Initially, the evaporation of the distance between the reader or hearer and the biblical writers, together with a centering of experience on divine encounter of the Spirit, led to an elemental suspicion among classic Pentecostals of the brand of modernity prevalent at the time. Modernism, with its dependence on reason and scientific method, either marginalized such experiences of encounter, often relegating them to a past dispensation, in the case of conservatives, or in the case of Protestant liberalism, simply denied them outright. Any understanding of the Bible that directly denied the root experience encounter with the Spirit was seen by Pentecostals as flawed at its heart. But as the twentieth century matured, Western Pentecostals began to come of age in a modern context, so that much of their theological reflection shifted from oral to written, from experiential to propositional, and from present encounter to past revelation, predominantly, if not exclusively, through the pages of Scripture. This shift introduced an essential 67

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rift between those reading the Bible in the parish and those working in the academy (Cargal 1993, 170). Through their association with the wider evangelical world, Pentecostal scholars formed an alliance with Christians determined to resist the liberal dismissal of Scripture as divinely inspired, but in doing so they adopted a view of revelation that is in tension with the foundational experiences of Pentecost (Ellington 1996). Speaking of this association, Jacobson (1999, 100) concludes that Pentecostals could not avoid “being overwhelmed by the homogenizing influence of the more organized and articulate mainstream evangelical movement . . . . Pentecostals (the culturally weaker partner) could not help but be, in a sense, colonized by the stronger.” Vondey (2010, 63) argues similarly that adopting the evangelical dispensational understanding of Scripture, directed Pentecostals to an objectification of Scripture that dispensed the biblical narratives into the realm of history and equated the notion of revelation with the idea of historicity. Revelation now contained the Word of God, and Scripture was no longer seen as a charismatic event but fully embodied as text. Full and final authority was placed in the autographs of Scripture, that is, in the past and unrepeatable speaking of God. Encountering the divine word became an exercise in exegetical excavation to recover a revelatory moment that is now wholly past, instead of a new encounter with the revealer and inspirer as the Scripture is experienced afresh. In its final consequence, James K. A. Smith (1997, 58–59) contends that Pentecostals’ entry into the modernist debate has the potential to nullify that which is uniquely Pentecostal: the textual rather than oral emphasis in evangelical theology has resulted in “a framework which at the same time destroys the foundation.” The uneasy adolescence of Pentecostals has not been fully resolved, leading to a tension, even an open conflict, between those holding divergent views of revelation and scriptural authority. On the one hand, an association with evangelicalism has led to the adopting of formulations such as the verbal inspiration, infallibility, and inerrancy of Scripture that closely identifies truth with that which science and historical method access and affirm. So, for example, Edgar R. Lee (2003, 106) maintains that being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teachings, no less in what it states about God’s acts in creation and the events of world history, and about its own literary origins in God, than in its witness to God’s saving grace in individual lives. Truth is universal and is expressed in terms of historical and scientific accuracy (Cargal 1993, 167). From this perspective, biblical narratives, with their open-endedness and ambiguity, tend not to be well-suited to expressing the heart of the biblical message for Pentecostals. On the other hand, there are Pentecostal scholars who argue against reading the Bible through a positivist view of history, opting instead for a narrative understanding of revelation. John Goldingay (1997, 6) makes the case that Christian faith should not be understood in terms of abstract statements, such as “God is love” or “God is three and God is one,” but rests instead in terms of narrative statements, such as “God so loved the world that he gave . . .,” so that narrative is the appropriate form for doing theology. Pentecostals read Scripture with the conviction that biblical truth points to and is affirmed by the inspiring Spirit who continues to speak and act. From this perspective, texts are valued for their ability to characterize and envision God’s activity and presence today, with less concern for defending this or that understanding of history. With the questioning and dismantling of many of the assumptions 68

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of modernism, it remains to be seen whether Pentecostals will continue to be influenced by the questions and concerns that shape evangelical understandings of Scripture. The Word of Faith doctrine of Scripture shares with classic Pentecostalism the belief that the charismata recorded in the book of Acts can and should be experienced by believers today. But like evangelical theology, this truth is often understood propositionally even when expressed as narrative. More specifically, biblical truth is seen in legal terms. According to Allan Anderson (2004, 157), E. W. Kenyon taught that God’s word operates according to “predetermined divine principles,” so that a Christian need only to use God’s word correctly in order to achieve prosperity, healing, and blessing. “In Africa’s new, fast-growing Pentecostal (or faith gospel) sector,” for example, “the Bible is understood as a record of covenants, promises, pledges, and commitments between God and his chosen” (Gifford 2011, 179). Divine encounter moves from being presented with a living, actively involved, and sovereign God to releasing previously stored-up power that God placed in his words of the past for our use today. For Kenyon, it was the biblical word rather than the Spirit that provides our only access to Christ, because “it imparts Faith to my Spirit, builds Love into it. God’s only means of reaching me is through His Word. So the Word becomes a vital thing” (Kenyon 1945, 3). The encounter with Christ for Kenyon is realized literally through speaking and acting upon the words of Scripture. The Word is God present with us, speaking the Living Message of the Loving Father God. The Word is always NOW. It is His Word to me today. It is His voice, His last message. It becomes a Living thing in my heart as I lovingly act upon it. It becomes a Living thing on the lips of Love. It has no power on the lips of those whose lives are out of fellowship with Him, who live in the reason realm. (Kenyon 1945, 4) This understanding of the nature of Scripture implies a functional deism. Strictly speaking, God need no longer be actively involved in the hearing and enacting of Scripture. God has placed the power of creation itself in the written word and need no longer be directly and personally involved in the release and use of that power. This contradiction has led in some teachings readily adopted by Pentecostals to a separation of the person of God in the Spirit of Christ from the power of God seen to operate independently of that presence. In Pentecostalism in parts of Africa, for example, where the prosperity gospel is particularly prominent, this disconnect between power and person is evident. In contradistinction to this Western liberal position, African Christians, particularly those who belong to the independent indigenous charismatic streams, celebrate the divinity and supernatural status of the Bible. African Christian use of the Bible as a symbol of sacred power – as for example, when it is placed under the pillow of a sleeping infant to provide protection from evil – does not in any way undermine its didactic use. (Asamoah-Gyadu 2013, 167) Paul Gifford (2011, 188) describes these practices as a performative or declarative use of the Bible in which the promises of God, in order to be released and become active in the lives of its hearers, must first be declared by a person of spiritual authority: “In many cases the impression (the very non-Protestant impression) is given that the Bible is the preserve of anointed preachers who can effect it by reason of their gifts.” Hence, to suggest that an 69

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evangelical theology that focuses on the inerrancy of the biblical autographs or a Word of Faith teaching that stresses the release of divine power are simply alien to Pentecostalism would be naïve. Their wide dissemination and frequent acceptance make their influence on Pentecostal views of the Bible substantial. It remains to be seen, therefore, whether a continued emphasis on the Bible as a place of divine encounter where the Holy Spirit breathes new life into the text will be sufficient to blunt and modify these movements’ static views of Scripture, or if it is the foundation stone of divine encounter which is destined to be shifted in the interest of assured stability and a measure of objectivity (evangelicalism) or a guaranteed outcome and level of direct control over God’s activity in our lives (Word of Faith). A third and more recent influence, which both has points of contact with Pentecostal understandings of Scripture and is fundamentally at odds with one of its core assumptions, is postmodernism reader-centered reading strategies. The shift from a modern to a postmodern approach to the Bible with the unfolding of the twenty-first century has informed the Pentecostal understanding of Scripture. Pentecostals are at home with the valuable place given to subjective experience and the validation of story and testimony as means of expressing and appropriating Scripture’s meaning championed by postmodern hermeneutical approaches (Noel 2002, 17, 42). Also, the emphasis given to subjective encounter in postmodern readings is in harmony with the Pentecostal tendency to focus on immediate context, with less of a predisposition to abstracting or universalizing such experiences. On the other hand, Pentecostals have a dialogical understanding of the Bible that transcends and, in some cases, challenges directly a reader-response approach to the text. Both the experiences recorded in the Bible and their reflections in the lives of Pentecostals are experiences of encounter with God, the active agent who places limits on their readings and who makes exclusive claims on their beliefs. It is precisely these encounters with God that invalidate for Pentecostals a bedrock conviction of postmodern readings, namely, the denial of absolute, universal truth and, by extension, of an authoritative and exclusionary metanarrative ( Johns 1995). A dialogical understanding of Scripture that sees the inspiring Spirit as still actively involved in the author-reader conversation requires, regardless of how differently the Bible may be understood from one cultural context to the next or how great the cultural distance may be between the writer and reader, that every reading be seen as part of a larger narrative. The Spirit who transcends every culture provides a universal and unifying voice, so that there can be no purely contextual and exclusively local understanding of Scripture because there can be no reading in isolation, detached from the larger community of faith, the body of Christ (Archer 2001, 124). Put differently, Scripture invites the Spirit’s voice that both speaks the native tongue of every culture and that is free therefore to challenge, to call, and to transform that culture’s readers.

Conclusion The globalization of Pentecostalism, together with the new prominence enjoyed by the reader in determining a text’s meaning, invite and even compel Pentecostals to rethink their theology of Scripture. Modernism, with its identification of truth with objective history, has proven itself limited in its attempts to grasp and articulate the interplay of Spirit, text, and reader in the hearing of Scripture (Cargal 1993). The Enlightenment has provided a measure of stability, uniformity, and safety to Bible reading, but at the cost of maintaining the illusion that divine revelation can be quarantined to a distant and unchanging past. Pentecostal experiences of the Spirit and the text will also need to be articulated in a postmodern milieu, one that steers clear of any claim to universal authority and holds in suspicion any unifying 70

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metanarrative while nonetheless valuing such things as subjective experience and personal story. In addition, the globalization of Pentecostalism will mean that a new variety, breadth, and depth of charismatic experiences of engagement with the Spirit and text will need to be incorporated in the Pentecostal understanding of Scripture. Any Pentecostal articulation of a “doctrine” of Scripture, though, must keep at the forefront the experience of divine encounter that is essential to hearing the word of God. Testimonies to divine encounter by Pentecostals must continue to be offered in dialogue with the testimonies of Scripture. Rickie Moore (2016, 152) speaks of Scripture as “a kind of sacred space that we are graciously invited to enter.” To retreat from divine encounter in Scripture tempts the reader toward a subtle idolatry, to the placing of an object, ironically in this case the Bible itself, between ourselves and the Spirit. Such an idolatry seeks to extract truths and authority from the stories found there while at the same time withholding part of ourselves from the Spirit to whom those stories draw us. “In the church, particularly in its studious quarters,” says Moore, we have reached for a high view of Scripture, but a deep view of Scripture, it seems to me, has scarcely crossed our minds. We have wanted a Scripture that is high enough to give us high authority, but not one that is deep enough to reveal the secrets of our hearts. (2016, 159; emphasis original) Moore underscores the temptation, native to so many models of Scripture, to seek control rather than encounter. But any reading that is truly open to the Spirit resists by its very nature control and manipulation by the reader. Nor can it be expected that each reader who encounters the living Spirit will hear the voice of the biblical writer in the same way. To be led by the Spirit as one hears the text is to step midstream into a conversation that has yet to reach its conclusion. Scripture for Pentecostals, then, is a story with many participants, one that has been told by those who gave us the Bible and one that we are all invited, perhaps compelled, to take up and to carry forward. “By grafting our lives into the biblical narrative,” says Craig Keener (2016, 167), “we become part of the extension of that narrative.” Goldingay (1997, 10) contends that “the biblical narratives . . . invite us to bet our lives on the truth of their sweeping but slightly-less-than-grand-narratives, to live our lives by them and prove their truth by proving that they can be lived in.” Pentecostals go to the Bible not simply to learn someone else’s story, but to discover their own place in the story that God tells about their lives. Testimony, when it grounds itself in the stories of the Bible, does not simply repeat and affirm ancient words, rather it continues the narrative. Scripture, for Pentecostals, is the place where their own story finds its home with those told by the communities of faith that have gone before.

References Anderson, Allan Heaton. 2004. An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2013. To the Ends of the Earth: Pentecostalism and the Transformation of World Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Archer, Kenneth J. 2001. “The Spirit and Theological Interpretation: A Pentecostal Strategy.” In The Gospel Revisited: Towards a Pentecostal Theology of Worship and Witness, edited by Kenneth J. Archer, 118–37. Eugene: Pickwick. ———. 2009. A Pentecostal Hermeneutic: Spirit, Scripture and Community. Cleveland: CPT Press.

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Scott A. Ellington Arrington, French L. 1992. Christian Doctrine: A Pentecostal Perspective, volume 1. Cleveland: Pathway Press. Asamoah-Gyadu, J. Kwabena. 2013. Contemporary Pentecostal Christianity: Interpretations from an African Context. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. Cargal, Timothy B. 1993. “Beyond the Fundamental-Modernist Controversy: Pentecostals and Hermeneutics in a Postmodern Age.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 15 (2): 163–87. Davies, Andrew. 2009. “What Does It Mean to Read the Bible as a Pentecostal?” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 18: 216–29. Ellington, Scott. 1996. “Pentecostalism and the Authority of Scripture.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 9: 16–38. Gifford, Paul. 2011. “The Ritual Use of the Bible in African Pentecostalism.” In Practicing the Faith: The Ritual Life of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christians, edited by Martin Lindhardt, 179–97. New York: Berghahn. Goldingay, John. 1997. “Biblical Story and the Way It Shapes Our Story.” The Journal for the European Pentecostal Theological Association 17: 5–15. Jacobsen, Douglas. 1999. “Knowing the Doctrines of Pentecostalism.” In Pentecostal Currents in American Protestantism, edited by Edith L. Blumhofer, Russell P. Spittler, and Grant A. Wacker, 90–110. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Johns, Jackie. 1995. “Pentecostalism and the Postmodern Worldview.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 3: 73–96. Kay, William K. 2004. “Pentecostals and the Bible.” Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 24: 71–83. Kenyon, Essek W. 1945. New Creation Realities: A Revelation of Redemption. Lynnwood: Kenyon’s Gospel Publishing Society. Lee, Edgar R. 2003. “Inerrancy and Interpretation.” In The Bible: The Word of God, edited by James K. Bridges, 95–125. Springfield: Gospel Publishing House. Macchia, Frank D. 2000. “The Spirit and the Text: Recent Trends in Pentecostal Hermeneutics.” The Spirit and Church 2 (1): 53–65. ———. 2002. “Theology, Pentecostal.” In The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, revised and expanded edition, edited by Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas, 1120–41. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. McKay, John. 1994. “When the Veil is Taken Away: The Impact of Prophetic Experience on Biblical Interpretation.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 5: 17–40. Mittelstadt, Martin William. 2009. “Scripture in Pentecostal Tradition: A Contemporary Reading of Luke-Acts.” In Canadian Pentecostalism: Transition and Transformation, edited by Michael Wilkinson, 123–41. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. ———. 2010. Reading Luke-Acts in the Pentecostal Tradition. Cleveland: CPT Press. Moore, Rickie D. 2013. “A Pentecostal Approach to Scripture.” In Pentecostal Hermeneutics: A Reader, edited by Lee Roy Martin, 11–13. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2016. “Altar Hermeneutics: Reflections on Pentecostal Biblical Interpretation.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 38: 148–59. Noel, Bradley Truman. 2010. Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics: Comparisons and Contemporary Impact. Eugene: Wipf & Stock. Sample, Tex. 1994. Ministry in an Oral Culture: Living with Will Rogers, Uncle Remus, and Minnie Pearl. Louisville: Westminster John Knox. Smith, James K. A. 1997 “The Closing of the Book: Pentecostals, Evangelicals, and the Sacred Writings.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 11: 49–71. Stronstad, Roger. 2012. The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke: Trajectories from the Old Testament to Luke-Acts, second edition. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. Vondey, Wolfgang. 2010. Beyond Pentecostalism: The Crisis of Global Christianity and the Renewal of the Theological Agenda. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Wacker, Grant. 2001. Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Wyckoff, John W. 2003. “The Inspiration and Authority of Scripture.” In The Bible: The Word of God, edited by James K. Bridges, 17–52. Springfield: Gospel Publishing House.

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7 REASON Widening the sources of Pentecostal theology William K. Kay

Many of the Pentecostal denominations founded before 1930 recorded their beliefs in written “fundamental truths” or “tenets of faith.” Still today, on the websites of major Pentecostal groups, there is usually a section announcing, “what we believe.” These beliefs are typically expressed in verbal propositions supported by Scripture references. Once propositions are formulated, they become the basis for deductions: because we believe x, we should do y. So, propositions may be the basis for policies (e.g. missionary outreach) or values (e.g. holiness of life) and are cognitively apprehended even if some of their implications are holistic in the sense of combining reason and emotion. Moreover, behind the doctrinal propositions often lies inductive reasoning. Supportive Scripture verses, sometimes treated in isolation, are thematically organised in a way that facilitates concatenation. The dominant Wesleyan root of classical Pentecostalism suggests a particular connection between experience and reason. Wesley’s sermons sometimes put Scripture, reason, and experience in the same sentence and at other times show the similarity between experience described in Scripture and the experience of his contemporaries. Later formulations schematised his thought into the “Wesleyan quadrilateral” comprising the four intersecting lines of Scripture, reason, experience, and tradition that thereby also found entrance into Pentecostalism (Thorsen 1990). In view of the above, observation shows the rationality of Pentecostals is often exercised in two directions: towards texts and their analysis or synthesis (see Chapters 12) and towards experience and its congruence with verbally expressed doctrine (see Chapter 13). This article explores the concept of reason in Pentecostal theology and recognises the importance of information systematically derived from empirical studies. This emphasis is significant because empirical studies investigating individual psychology and congregational dynamics generate material that adds substance to the primary concepts employed by Pentecostals. Thus, Pentecostal theology is not only a matter of doctrinal texts constructed by verbal reasoning but also a matter of practical Christian living (see Chapter 15). Reason serves as an important resource in Pentecostalism as it invites a widening of the sources necessary for the theological task. To trace this argument, I begin by outlining the challenges Pentecostal theology has faced historically, followed by examples of a variety of modes of rationality prevalent in Pentecostal scholarship today. The chapter then draws upon contrasting claims regarding the

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irrational nature of Pentecostalism and engages with the issue of theological discernment before examining the history of psychological assessment of Pentecostalism and its application to the rapid growth of the movement.

The emergence of Pentecostal theology Pentecostal theology is challenged by the large outlines of Christian theology it has inherited. And if we see theology as essentially composed of a series of jostling disciplines (biblical studies, hermeneutics, historical theology, sacramental theology, etc.), each with their own key concepts and methods, then we can characterise theology as an extensive field rather than merely a singular discipline. Moreover, if we accept theology as the logical or rational attempt to understand the church’s experience of God and, more than this and differently, the nature of God, then we are well placed to set Pentecostal theology within this wider context. The challenges are particularly visible among early Pentecostals, who undoubtedly saw their doctrine as true in the sense that it was considered to reflect accurately the teaching of the New Testament and in what it asserted about the nature of God and the nature of human experience. Doctrine was the formalised teaching of the church intended to create a pattern of life in believers as well as a description of the pervasive and invisible action of God. Pentecostals believed that the words of Scripture incorporate the full range of linguistic tropes including metaphors, analogies, and parables. However, in a philosophical sense, these people were “common sense realists” (Archer 2009, 48–55) whose ontology contained an invisible and impalpable spiritual realm that included a heaven where God and his angels lived and a turbulent airy realm where spiritual wickedness was plotted and perpetrated. Realism propelled Pentecostals to search for correlations between prophetic or dispensational schemes and contemporary events. Their eschatology was literalistic, for instance, so that in Britain, there were Pentecostals who believed Mussolini was the antichrist—his connection with Rome was deemed to point to that conclusion (Frodsham 1926). Among early classical Pentecostals, rationality might be expressed by ingenious interpretations of events upon the world stage. Additionally, for denominational leaders, the priority is to make their organisation grow, and theology, with all the hard and sometimes unanswerable questions it asks, may, in the interests of efficiency, be reduced and simplified. Indeed, theology may become merely a source of values and rhetoric (Stephenson 2013, 2014) rather than a broad, rigorous, and sophisticated field of enquiry. We could say that denominational leaders, in their quest for an applied theology, may be in danger of allowing their beliefs to be superseded by business principles: historic Pentecostal beliefs can be buried and hidden behind church growth strategies which rationalise management discourse. Thus, denominational leaders may cast their rationality in an organisational rather than a theological mode. Only since the 1970s have Pentecostals with the advantages of higher education been able to reconceptualise their doctrine and re-examine their practices, and this has been driven by men and women who work in the academy and are therefore subject to the rational or legal-rational norms prevalent there. Reviewing the literature, we can detect the theology of the first generation of Pentecostals and the subsequent modifications of this theology brought about by later generations of Pentecostals: the first generation with their concordances being inductively rational and later generations adopting a variety of modes of rationality, a development I will evidence with diverse examples. 74

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Theological accounts of rationality One of the most complete programmatic proposals for Pentecostal theology comes from Amos Yong who has pursued a programme of research with extraordinary tenacity and energy (see Vondey and Mittelstadt 2013). The philosophical impetus to Yong’s theology comes initially from the work of C. S. Peirce, whose analysis of reality included a recognition of, first, things as they are in themselves, second as they relate to one another, and third by finding laws and patterns in our manifold sensory experience. Peirce’s philosophy is not only realist in its assumption of reality beyond words or theories but also relational in the search for repeatable connections (Yong 2002, 91–96). From this philosophical vision Yong launches a Pentecostal foundational theology that presumes the presence of the Holy Spirit permeating the whole world and all its domains while, in its relational aspects, having fully trinitarian connotations (Yong 2005, 280–97). Moreover, and intrinsic to this vision, our apprehension of the rationality of the world is a function of the Spirit’s ability to make it intelligible to human minds. With the concept of the pneumatological imagination, Yong attributes rationality to the operation of the Holy Spirit within the material and cultural worlds and within the composition of human beings (see Chapter 15). In this he differs from other theologians who attribute rationality in human beings to the image of God and ensures that divine and human rationality correspond to and answer each other. Instead, rather than saying that rationality is built into humanity by divine design, Yong (2002, 35) is willing to assert the foundational position of the Spirit as the ultimate guarantor of rationality. Having set out his account of reality (his metaphysic and ontology), Yong is in position to argue that propositions enable us to engage with this reality with adequate accuracy. He adopts an “epistemic fallibilism” (Yong 2002, 68–69) whose propositions are coherent with each other while corresponding with their referents; and he anticipates the pragmatic testing or investigation of propositions. Consequently, Yong is open to scientific engagement with reality while, from the point of view of Scripture, willing to interpret the impact of the Spirit through Scripture and in community (Yong 2011). Indeed, the triad of Spirit-Word-Community, crucial to Yong’s theological enterprise, has served as a hermeneutical model in other accounts, though not without critique (Thomas 1994; Archer 2009; Keener 2016, 279–80). This abbreviated account of Yong’s enormous and carefully argued Pentecostal theology is designed to highlight his epistemology and his understanding of the importance of hermeneutics. Regarding theological interpretation, Yong is clear that one cannot conceive of pure pre-critical experience somehow conveyed to the human being since, by his account, all experience is mediated through language, symbols, and culture and only expressible to others because of these shared factors. So, hermeneutics is essential to individual apprehensions of experience, religious or otherwise, and interpretations of Scripture are best made through the interaction between the church and the Spirit (along the lines of Acts 15). The current discussion of hermeneutics within the Pentecostal world (see Chapters 12 and 13) recognises that theological interpretation has become a key discipline within academic Pentecostal scholarship not only because it crosses over boundaries to the other disciplines of biblical studies, ecclesiology, and church history but also because it speaks directly to human rationality (Grey 2017). Alternative and complementing accounts of rationality are offered by other Pentecostal scholars. An altogether more traditional and less philosophical Pentecostal theology is offered by Keith Warrington (2008) who places the human-divine encounter at the heart of his account. 75

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Considering the practices of Pentecostals and their interpretation of Scripture in sermons and statements of faith, he argues, together with numerous commentators, that Pentecostal theology prioritises experience to the extent that experience becomes primary or foundational and theology becomes a second order activity (Warrington 2008, 48–51). Without experience of the divine, there simply is no Pentecostal movement and no Pentecostal theology. Warrington limits himself to the interpretation of biblical texts instead of carrying the process of hermeneutics to a central position within a philosophical system. He shows how early Pentecostals reached their distinctive beliefs and how later and better educated Pentecostals, using the standard tools of textual criticism, could nevertheless remain close to the beliefs which had been formulated by the founding generation. Even so, changes to beliefs have occurred, especially in the realm of eschatology. Early Pentecostals constructed complicated charts following dispensational schemes for interpreting prophecy and allocating separate destinies to Israel and the church (Sheppard 1984). Rational ingenuity harmonised apparently contradictory texts by positing a double return of Christ, each preceded by special prophetic signs. As the charts and schemes, which has once been associated with events in the twentieth century, failed in their predictions, more general accounts less open to obvious falsification, were adopted (e.g. as in the Elim Pentecostal church in the UK). Another influential approach to rationality is Ken Archer’s view from the perspective of the Pentecostal story (see Chapter 4). One aspect of Archer’s important contribution to Pentecostal hermeneutics is his focus upon narrative theology (Archer 2004). As he, and others, have pointed out, human beings are time-bound creatures who like expressing their meanings through the telling of stories. The story itself is a particular kind of literary genre that most human beings learn during infancy. The world of the story will often exist according to the rules of its own logic (so that detective stories follow one logic, fairy stories another and love stories another). The story itself is usually told by arranging events chronologically, although temporal disjunctions are possible to add irony or suspense. Narrative theology takes the narrative of the Bible—the entire overarching story of God’s dealings with the human race as well as all the smaller stories that comprise the totality—and connects these to the life of today’s Pentecostal church in a way that enables Pentecostals to feel that they belong to, and themselves extend, the story told in Scripture (see Chapter 6). Within a Pentecostal reading of the Bible certain motifs are vital and these, as Archer points out, include the former and the latter rain motif that typologically indicates waves of outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Archer 2004, 2009). But what is relevant to this discussion is a story’s obedience to its own rationality and the logic of the genre to which it belongs. Therefore, to say that Pentecostalism is influenced by narrative theology is also to admit the operation of logical entailments within its hermeneutic. More recently, Wolfgang Vondey (2017) has taken the familiar fivefold classificatory system of the full gospel (see Chapter 16) while expanding and applying it to cosmology, church, humanity, society, and God. His intricately woven logical connections comprise a coherent theology that is both systematic and constructive; he thereby creates a unified overview of Pentecostalism’s multiple facets and concerns and in this way takes the debate forward on many fronts. Vondey suggests that a Pentecostal rationality is rooted in Pentecost and, though merely narrated by the theological story of the full gospel, it is not strictly confined by it hermeneutically or directed in terms of traditional systematic accounts of doctrine. Instead, he views Pentecostal theology as ordered not only for the sake of reason but also despite of it: theology is a form of play (Vondey 2018). With this designation, Vondey (2019) identifies the continuing struggle of Pentecostal theology with traditional accounts of rationality and emphasises the significance of Pentecostal spirituality, experience, narrative, 76

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affections, practices, and embodiment. In this sense, Pentecostalism is one possible rearticulating of the Romantic protest against human fragmentation, disengagement of reason from the senses, isolation of bodily existence, neglect of feeling, and loss of creativity resulting from the Enlightenment.

Pentecostal theology and irrationality At the same time, because of its evangelistic tradition and revivalistic origins, Pentecostalism continues to be criticised for being irrational. Pentecostal evangelists have claimed sick people have been healed when, patently, they are still sick, insisting that “genuine faith in God and in His word is stepping out upon what He has said regardless of what one sees or feels or senses in the natural . . . faith ignores every natural symptom or evidence” (Osborn 1951). The principle involved here is one that involves viewing situations without reference to sense data; the faith statement supersedes sense data so that, because it is originally within the realm of sense data that rationality is enacted (Piaget 1953), statements that run contrary to sense data are, by that fact, considered irrational. Yet there are occasions when Pentecostals make seemingly irrational declarations that turn out to be, or become, true, as when healing evangelists state that somebody will become well, and, against all medical prognoses, they do become well. It is this matching of faith declarations with observable reality that justifies their continued use, and in this way, there are occasions when faith statements bring a new reality into being. Equally and unfortunately, there are occasions when faith statements bring no new reality into being and so look like lies or delusions. The minds of many Pentecostals appear to have been open in two directions. On one side, they are delighted to entertain spiritual gifts and supernatural possibilities while imagining all kinds of eschatological scenarios unfolding before them. On the other side, they give close attention to the construction of constitutional documents and detailed bylaws or regulations for the controlling of charismatic gifts. A church may have strong views about the absolute primacy of prophets while, by its written constitution, stipulating strict rules and regulations concerning what prophets are allowed to do (The Apostolic Church 1987, p. 62, 63 1.2, 4). In terms of rationality, one might say, Pentecostals demonstrated willingness to embrace at the same time the non-rational supernatural world and the hyper-rational legal-moral world of regulatory control. Only by standing back and watching Pentecostal history unfold is it possible to gain a rounded appreciation of the place of rationality in their form of life. On the one hand, the Pentecostal life includes a resistance to rules, regulations, and creeds that may stifle the work of the Spirit. On the other hand, the Pentecostal life includes listening to expository preaching and rule-making centred on words. During expository preaching, a piece a biblical text is scrupulously examined word for word by speakers who believe the Bible is divinely inspired. Each word, each clause, the relationship between clauses and wider context, is seen as exemplifying divine pattern and control. Because the words are taken as coming from the mouth of God, they merit painstaking study for the benefit of congregations listening for many hours to detailed exegesis. And as Pentecostals do this, they become aware of the rational arguments implicit in Scripture, whether this be the many “therefore” conclusions in Pauline epistles or the conditional “if ” warnings in the prophetic books. Similarly, within Pentecostal debate at their conferences, there might be long and complex drafting propositions or adjustment of rules in a way that it is entirely rational. The business sessions of British Assemblies of God show categories of ministers created by regulatory constructions and rights and duties assigned to membership of these categories considering whether a person is 77

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a full-time minister, retired emeritus minister or merely retired or might be “retired active” and distinguished from those who are retired but not active in ministry. In summary, then, we find in Pentecostalism multiple uses and modes of rationality accompanied by accusations of irrationality which have been variously rebutted. This situation has raised the notion of spiritual discernment to a level of importance in Pentecostal theology.

Pentecostal theology and discernment Discernment is a form of evaluation. It rose to prominence among Pentecostals in order to assess prophecy or other spiritual activities or utterances according to scriptural (New Testament) standards. Although the processes of discernment among Pentecostals may be intuitive or even emotional and unconscious, it always results in a rationally defensible judgement (Parker 1996). Discernment goes hand-in-hand with the process of inspiration (Fee 2001): a key and early Pauline injunction forbids “quenching the Spirit’s fire” while also demanding that everything be tested (1 Thess. 5: 19–22). This oscillation between a fiery utterance and unfiery “testing” is essential to the operation of the Spirit within both the New Testament and Pentecostalism. The Greek of the biblical text is sharp and precise: the word for “testing” is translated elsewhere with “examine,” “prove,” and “sift,” thereby denoting a robust effort akin to what is described in 1 Corinthians 14:29 as a requirement to “weigh,” “judge,” or “discern” prophecy (Moulton and Milligan 1929). We have, in other words, a two-stage rational process (utterance and then testing) amounting to what might, in modern academic circumstances, be called composition and “peer review” (see Cartledge 1994; Robeck 2002; Chan 2003; Warrington 2008; Kay 2015a). The process of discernment also raises its head in relation to “private prophecy” when personal utterances are given to individuals who then have to decide exactly how much credence should be given to each utterance. A recent empirical study (Lum 2018) explains how Singaporean Pentecostal churches handle discernment at both a collective and a personal level. Lum found the judging of prophecy was made by reference to the consonance of a prophetic utterance with Scripture, the edifying nature of the utterance, the character of the person prophesying, and the way the prophecy was delivered. Personal prophecy is ideally judged according to the same criteria, which, in each case, are rational rather than intuitive. The function of discernment can be traced in the history of assessment of Pentecostal rationality.

A history of assessment of Pentecostal rationality Pentecostalism came into existence at the start of the twentieth century at roughly the same time as psychiatry, and early psychiatric studies of Pentecostal phenomena were almost uniformly hostile (Lombard 1910; Brown 1966; Freud 2001). Speaking in tongues was classified as indicative of psychopathology or, later, as a form of psychological regression towards childhood (Lapsley and Simpson 1964) and, later still by linguistic analysis, as pseudo-language; and this because distributions of consonantal sounds were said to be unlike those in natural speech (Samarin 1972). There was, in short, a struggle for the control of the ownership of the paradigm by which Pentecostal phenomena, including especially speaking with tongues, should be interpreted as rational. While Pentecostals start their interpretations from biblical texts, other academic disciplines begin with their own defining concepts. Consequently, Pentecostal understandings of speaking with tongues are in danger of reinterpretation by disciplines standing at one remove from the phenomenon. 78

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These discussions raise fundamental issues relating to truth and reality. Clearly, theological language concerning an immaterial, infinite God operates differently from discourse relating to restricted physical phenomena (Ramsey 1957). Thus, to say that God is a father is not to say exactly the same thing as to say that a man is a father. All theology is made up of words with semantic ranges whose meaning will depend on usage and referent, and whose metaphors will echo the canon of Scripture. Hence, Pentecostal theology, like all theology, is made up of words that mix and mingle references to spiritual and natural phenomena (“The Holy Spirit is like wind and fire but also has the attributes of personhood”). While scientific language utilises theories that can be falsified in line with the criteria for scientific enquiry (Schilpp 1974; Popper 1976), theological language is open to falsification dependent on personal knowledge or knowledge of a person. In this way the language of theology and the language of science share common features. Moreover, while the language of theology claims a universal validity (“The Spirit inspires glossolalia at all times and in all cultures”), the language of science also claims a universal validity (“light travels at 186,000 miles per second in all cultures and in all times”). And even with regard to the human sciences, human beings belong to one species and can interbreed with each other and share the same maturational sequence of cognitive development as they come to recognise the attributes of space and time (Boden 1995). What empirical studies of glossolalia can do is to balance and undergird the stipulations of theological language. A more balanced psychological assessment of Pentecostalism has appeared in recent decades. With regard to early psychiatry’s clinical judgement that those who spoke with tongues showed signs of mental illness, Kay and Francis (1995) collected data on speaking with tongues from a survey of trainee Pentecostal ministers using a standard personality inventory that included a neuroticism scale. They discovered that Pentecostal ministers were less neurotic than the generality of the population, and that they were more tender-hearted as well. Thus, an empirical test was able to show that the old and hostile research tradition (Freud 1946) that had been based upon a small number of individual case studies (as was the common practice with early Freudianism) conflicted with modern data systematically collected from large samples. Those who spoke with tongues emerged as more stable and kinder than those who did not. Similar studies also showed speaking with tongues was neither a learned behaviour (Francis and Kay 1995) nor associated with individuals prone to hypnotism or excessive deference to authority figures (Spandos and Hewitt 1979). The data collected in this way are consonant with New Testament descriptions that the person who speaks with tongues “edifies himself ” (1 Cor 14:4), a result entirely in keeping with reductions in neuroticism. Similarly, the New Testament reveals Christ as “moved with compassion” (Matt. 9:36), and those who follow Christ ought, then, to feel similar compassion, a finding in tune with the lower psychoticism scores customarily associated with many Pentecostal believers. Cartledge (2003, 2010, 2017) has written a range of books utilising quantitative and qualitative methods with focus on Pentecostal-Charismatic congregations. His investigations of glossolalia, healing, and the role of women in prophecy probe the connections between charismatic, cultural, and institutional authority, the latter being associated with the influence of socialisation. Similarly, I examined the distribution of various doctrinal bases and found the position which presumed healing will always occur if the sufferer possessed sufficient faith was associated with less educated and older ministers (Kay 1999). Educated younger believers tended to have a more nuanced stance. This finding as well as Cartledge’s on socialisation draws attention to the role of training in ministerial preparation rather than to the truth of the doctrine. 79

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Training is also implicated in studies on “initial evidence” which fix the experience of the baptism of the Holy Spirit to speaking with tongues as an observable and necessary physical manifestation. When a number of Pentecostal denominations with slightly different theologies of initiation are compared, the glossolalic beliefs of ministers can be matched against their denomination’s stated fundamental truths (Friesen 2013). There are two relevant considerations here: first, the very concept of “evidence” for Spirit baptism presumes a rational rather than an intuitive criterion and, second, the evaluation of evidence is susceptible to the hermeneutical norms created by denominational training institutions. In other words, the same evidence may be interpreted differently by different constituencies.

An application of reason All the studies derived from recent investigations of Pentecostals using social science methods can be integrated into empirical or practical theology (see Chapter 15). Practical theology in its most developed form operationalises theological concepts and tests them by methodologies developed in the social or psychological sciences (van der Ven 1993; Cartledge 2003). In the sense that the concepts being tested (e.g. theodicy or edification) are derived strictly from a traditional Christian matrix of meaning, this type of practical theology is specifically interdisciplinary: concepts taken from one discipline are tested by the methods of another. This approach is fruitful in observations about the rapid growth of Pentecostalism. If we assume that evangelistic activity carried out by members of the congregation is a key to church growth, then one needs to discover what it is that transforms passive, inactive believers into active Christians. Here, according to theory and data first tested by Margaret Poloma, it becomes clear that charismatic activity within the church is connected with evangelistic activity (Poloma 1989). Likewise, in a study carried out by Kay (2000) on Pentecostal denominations within the UK, he found that the charismatic activity of the minister influenced the charismatic activity of the congregation, and the charismatic activity of the church influenced the evangelistic activity of the church. Thus, there exists a causal link between ministerial charismatic activity and congregational evangelism, and from there to church growth. In essence, the charismatic activity whereby members express their spirituality and their gifts by multiple means for the benefit of others, led very directly to a ministering congregation that was reaching out to its community and beyond. Since Poloma’s model appears to be directly transferable to the British context, Kay (2013, 2015b) then tested these linkages also in churches in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur. I was able to find a similar pattern of correlations within Pentecostal churches widely separated in terms of geography and culture and, in this way, suggest a rationality that is hospitable to charismatic activity which also favours outreach that culminates in growth. There were, it is true, other factors that could be fitted into explanatory equations: for example, the match between a Pentecostal worldview and the worldview of the culture where the church was situated (see Chapter 10). Yet, by making empirical investigations into Pentecostal and charismatic phenomena and by using correlational social science methods, it is possible to validate an account of rationality that makes sense in the light of New Testament data as well as observable behaviour within today’s church. Empirical studies, then, have focussed upon the community element in the Spirit-Word-Community triad and have sought to understand both the psychology of those who are members of Pentecostal communities as well as the social dynamics at work when individuals submerge their personalities into these communities. The rationality of Pentecostal theology is found in diverse applications of reason that seek verification in the evangelistic and missionary praxis of the community. 80

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Conclusion Rationality is intrinsic to Protestant theology and underlies the rationality of many aspects of the Pentecostal movement. Texts and doctrines are carefully drafted, and the interrelation between different parts of documents or the implications that may be inferred from them require the ability to construe sentences and identify the meanings of words. This is so whether the focus is upon the grammatical-historical analysis of biblical texts or on the many documents that circulate Pentecostal denominations: vision statements, fundamental truths, bylaws, minutes of meetings or even legal contracts. On a Sunday by Sunday basis, of course, sermons rich in rhetoric are preached and testimonies, logical in their own way, are given. Despite the prevalence of music, it is words that crystallise and sustain the faith of Pentecostals. Rationality also infuses the theology of Pentecostals whether this is its practical form relating to the requirements of discipleship or its theoretical form relating to the content of doctrine. Reason enables the analysis of religious experience (“Am I hearing from God or is this mere wish fulfilment?” “Is this prophetic utterance reliable or should I dismiss it?”), it drives hermeneutics, and bridges the gap between text and experience. Without rationality there is no common mind within congregations or denominations. Yes, it is true that emotion also unites Pentecostals and brings them to the tiptoe of expectation or commitment, but emotion rises and falls, appears and disappears and, when it has gone, leaves believers flat. Reason remains, and therefore preachers will always attempt to bring their hearers to a point of decision. The implicit assumption here is that human beings are a composite of soul and spirit or mind and body, and it is the mind with its capacity for reasoning that enables stability and consistency of purpose. So, it is reason that enables Pentecostals to build their theological constructions, and it is reason that is required to test these constructions by a further process of discernment. It is reason also that enables Pentecostals to appropriate the methods of the social sciences for investigating their own practices and beliefs; to understand how these beliefs may be connected with their successes or failures; to explain how their churches grow to such huge sizes; to assist in integration between the invisible spiritual realm and the down-to-earth practical realm of ordinary life; to build a composite picture from multiple instances. Reason enables the coordination and integration of empirical studies with what is to be a Pentecostal and how to think theologically.

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William K. Kay Francis, Leslie J., and William K. Kay. 1995. “The Personality Characteristics of Pentecostal Ministry Candidates.” Personality and Individual Differences 18 (5): 581–94. Freud, Sigmund. 1946. New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. London: Hogarth Press. ———. 2001. Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: Moses and Monotheism, an Outline of Psychoanalysis and other Works. London: Vintage. Friesen, Aaron T. 2013. Norming the Abnormal: The Development and Function of the Doctrine of Initial Evidence in Classical Pentecostalism. Eugene: Pickwick. Frodsham, Arthur W. 1926. “Is Mussolini the Antichrist?” Pentecostal Evangel 632 (30 January): 4–5. Grey, Jacqueline N. 2017. “The Spirit of and Spirit in Craig S. Keener’s Spirit Hermeneutics.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 39 (1–2): 168–78. Kay, William K. 1999. “British Pentecostalism: Approaches to Healing.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 14: 113–25. ———. 2000. Pentecostals in Britain. Carlisle: Paternoster. ———. 2013. “Empirical and Historical Perspectives on the Growth of Pentecostal-Style Churches in Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong.” Journal of Beliefs and Values 34 (1): 14–25. ———. 2015a. “Spiritual Discernment.” In Holy Spirit: Unfinished Agenda, edited by Johnson T. K. Lim. Singapore: Word N Works and Genesis Books. ———. 2015b. “A Comparison of Pentecostals in Hong Kong, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur: Culture and Belief.” Journal of Empirical Theology 28 (2): 184–203. Kay, William K., and L. J. Francis. 1995. “Personality, Mental Health and Glossolalia.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 17 (2): 253–63. Keener, Craig S. 2016. Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in the Light of Pentecost. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Lapsley, James N., and John H. Simpson. 1964. “Speaking in Tongues: Infantile Babble or Song of the Self.” Pastoral Psychology 15: 16–24, 48–55. Lombard, E. 1910. De La Glossolalie Chez Les Premier Chrétians et Des Phénomenes Similaires. Lausanne: Bridel. Lum, Dennis. 2018. The Practice of Prophecy. Eugene: Pickwick. Moulton, James H., and George Milligan. 1929. The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Osborn, Tommy Lee. 1951. Healing the Sick. Tulsa: Harrison House. Parker, Stephen E. 1996. Led by the Spirit: Towards a Practical Theology of Pentecostal Discernment and Decision Making. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Piaget, Jean. 1953. The Origin of Intelligence in the Child. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Poloma, Margaret M. 1989. The Assemblies of God at the Crossroads: Charisma and Institutional Dilemmas. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Popper, Karl R. 1976. Unended Quest. London: Fontana. Ramsey, Ian T. 1957. Religious Language: An Empirical Placing of Theological Phrases. London: SCM Press. Robeck, Mel. 2002. “Prophecy, Gift of.” In The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, edited by S. M. Burgess and E. M. van der Maas, 999–1012. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Samarin, William J. 1972. Tongues of Men and Angels. New York: Macmillan. Schilpp, Paul A., ed. 1974. The Philosophy of Karl Popper. 2 vols. La Salle: Open Court. Sheppard, Gerald T. 1984. “Pentecostals and the Hermeneutics of Dispensationalism: The Anatomy of an Uneasy Relationship.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 6 (1): 5–33. Spandos, Nicholas P., and Erin C. Hewitt. 1979. “Glossolalia: A Test of the ‘Trance’ and Psychopathology Hypotheses.” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 88 (4): 427–34. Stephenson, Christopher A. 2013. Types of Pentecostal Theology: Method, System, Spirit. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2014. “Should Pentecostal Theology be Analytic Theology.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 36 (2): 246–64. Thomas, Christopher, J. 1994. “Women, Pentecostals, and the Bible: An Experiment in Pentecostal Hermeneutics.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 2 (5): 41–56. Thorsen, Don. 1990. The Wesleyan Quadrilateral: Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience as a Model of Evangelical Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

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8 EXPERIENCE The mediated immediacy of encounter with the Spirit Peter D. Neumann

One of the primary characteristics of Pentecostalism is its emphasis on the experience of God. Whereas other Christian traditions may emphasize doctrine or formal liturgy as starting points for theological reflection, Pentecostals begin with the assumption of the direct or immediate experience of the Spirit, both personally and communally. Experience serves, then, as a significant theological resource for Pentecostals. For this reason, the nature of the Pentecostal experience of God, as well as the appeal to this experience as an authority, warrants closer examination. In this chapter, I argue that the Pentecostal appeal to experience is motivated by a sense of “mediated immediacy” of the encounter with the Spirit of God. This essay will seek to outline the character of the Pentecostal experience of God by placing it within the broader theological and philosophical discussion of experience. I explore Pentecostalism’s affinity for experience and how experience has functioned as an authority within the Pentecostal worldview, spirituality, and theology. The chapter then identifies important developments within Pentecostal theology that nuance traditional understandings of immediate experience of the Spirit in favour of mediated immediacy.

Pentecostal experience in the theological landscape When situating the Pentecostal experience of God within the larger theological and philosophical discussion, it is important to note that the appeal to experience in Christian theology has become ubiquitous. Not only Pentecostals, but also liberation, feminist, and other theologies regularly draw on the resource of experience for theological construction. One challenge accompanying this appeal, observes Harvey Cox (1995, 304), is that experience can be used as warrant for almost any theological idea, “virtually anyone can claim anything in the name of experience. The results are often exciting but confusing.” George P. Schner (1992, 40–42) suggests that the present assumption of experience’s function as an authority within theology in large part emerged in connection with Enlightenment and modern philosophy with its turn to the subject. Further, this development came with the accompanying assumption that such experience is common to human beings in general. However, the supposition that experience is somehow universally shared has become subject of significant critique with the rise of the postmodern challenge to foundationalist epistemology. In its place, it has been proposed that experiencing God (or the world) does not come in raw 84

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form (common to all human beings), but rather it arrives already mediated in and through the language and culture in which the appeal to experience occurs (Fiorenza 2005, 184–88; Hart 2005a, 81). Another challenge to understanding the appeal to experience is that the notion of “experience” itself is notoriously difficult to define (Gelpi 1994, 1–2). Experience can refer to everything from practical cumulative wisdom, to conscious perception and sense data, to uncritical communally accepted beliefs, to “human evaluative responses” (conscious and unconscious), and even to a metaphysical category (Neumann 2012a, 22–24). For our purposes, when speaking of the Pentecostal experience of God, it involves at least two (possibly three) of the following definitions. First, the Pentecostal appeal to and testimony of experiencing the divine assumes that God is perceived in a particular mode. Second, and along with this initial perception, is the general Pentecostal acceptance, the “uncritical cognition” (Yun 2007, 2) of the content and mode of the experience that has been passed on within the Pentecostal faith community, the subcultural theological context. Thus, the Pentecostal appeal to experience is usually an appeal to an unmediated perception of the Holy Spirit occurring within a particular cognitive epistemological framework containing various assumptions about theology and spirituality. In short, for Pentecostals, experiencing God happens within a particular communal experience of God—an experience within an experience—an encounter with God within and shaped by a tradition of accepted experience. Before exploring this aspect further, more needs to be said about the current state of the question concerning the appeal to experience in theology.

The evolution of experience In the past two centuries, an evolution has occurred concerning the appeal to experience. By the end of the nineteenth century, under the influence of the Enlightenment philosophical turn to the subject, appeal to one’s experience as an epistemological authority had grown considerably. Further, since all presumedly have access to common human experience, what could be more common sense than to appeal to such experience as important, if not the final word on all sorts of philosophical, theological, and other matters? The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, introduced substantial philosophical challenges to the assumptions of direct comprehension of the external world. If access to external reality was not direct, then the appeal to common human experience was also not obvious. Appeal to experience could hardly be assumed to be “disinterested” and objective (Schner 1992, 42–46). Critiques from within linguistic philosophy argued that human experience is always bound within linguistic horizons, further challenging the modern project with its foundationalist epistemology (Schlitt 2001, 22–30; Pattison 2007, 192). Because language and culture are intricately interwoven, all human experience of the world (and God) must be understood as not universal but rather as shaped by these particular frameworks (Fiorenza 2005, 84–88). The central theological question was to what extent the cultural-linguistic framework determines one’s experience of God.

Correlational vs. non-correlational approaches One way to frame this question is to label the two opposite theological poles concerning experience of God as “correlational” and “non-correlational” respectively (Boeve 2005, 13–24; Hart 2005b, 5–7). The correlational approach connects the Christian theological tradition to the broadest context of human experience—the world. This approach generally 85

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looks to common human experience of God for establishing theological truth claims, and less so to specific ecclesial traditions or doctrines. Experience in this view, explains Kevin Hart (2005b, 5), is not so much a “source of our apprehension of God but rather . . . the medium through which we encounter the deity.” God is experienced through and within human experience. Non-correlational approaches are those influenced by postmodern linguistic doubts concerning foundationalist epistemology. This approach emphasizes a radical discontinuity between common human experience and the Christian theological tradition. Karl Barth serves as a primary example of a non-correlational approach, and such emphasis is also held by post-liberal theologians such as George A. Lindbeck. In this camp, appeals to direct experience of God are viewed with considerable scepticism, since unmediated experiences (experience apart from a cultural-linguistic context) are considered impossible (Pattison 2007, 191–94). In Lindbeck’s (1984, 18–23, 113–24) view, for example, language and culture serve to determine one’s experience of God. Any appeal to a direct experience of God, therefore, is fraught with trouble because it risks simply equating the beliefs and assumptions of a given cultural-linguistic context or community with being revelation of God, potentially giving humans potential “mastery” over God (Hart 2005a, 80–81). This latter view of experience has gained considerable traction, in that it is becoming more widely accepted that language and culture mediate human experience of the world and God. Yet some, such as David Brown, believe that the cultural-linguistic approach can become too deterministic and overly suspicious of the appeal to the experience of God. Brown (2007, 160–73) appeals for a middle ground between the extreme poles of the correlational and non-correlational approaches. On the one hand, then, God’s otherness needs to be preserved (his distinction from the world); on the other hand, may not God still allow himself to be encountered (experienced) within a cultural-linguist context? James K. A. Smith proposes a way forward. He grants that human experience of God is always shaped by linguistic and cultural faith horizons yet also posits that God may concede to the conditions of human beings as horizon-bound creatures (Smith 2005, 89–90). The finite human and cultural-linguistic horizon must be understood as never able to contain God. Instead, experiencing God is “an encounter in which God gives himself (in a mode of donation) to be experienced by a finite perceiver” embedded in the world of experience “because the very conditions of encounter for finite perceivers (as created by God) demand that both experience and what [Kevin] Hart calls a ‘counter experience’ must nevertheless be an event that takes place on a register commensurate with finitude” (Smith 2005, 91). Hence, we can say that God may be encountered, but always within a faith horizon. Further, such encounters may very well be far more disruptive than appeals to common human experience assume or allow. Proposed here, then, is the possibility of a direct encounter with God, interpreted within a cultural-linguistic context. In this view, experiencing God is best understood as a “mediated immediacy” (Schlitt 2001, 35–36; Macchia 2006, 224; Neumann 2012b), and some form of this position is becoming more explicitly common among Pentecostal theologians.

Pentecostal experience in the Pentecostal worldview The previous section provided a theological and philosophical overview to help situate the Pentecostal experience of God within a broader context. The task ahead is to identify more closely what Pentecostals mean when referring and appealing to experiences of God, and to highlight why contemporary Pentecostal theology is adopting a mediated immediacy approach to experience. 86

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It is difficult to overstate the importance of experiencing the Spirit for Pentecostals. Harvey Cox (1995, 310) argues that for Pentecostals personal experience is the “sine qua non of spirituality and the indispensable touchstone of faith.” Keith Warrington (2007, 4) fittingly describes experiencing God as the “heartbeat” of Pentecostalism. Likewise, Josh P. S. Samuel (2018, 1) contends that Pentecostal worship is characterized by the assumption of the immediacy of the Spirit’s presence, perceived or felt by the worshipers. Douglas G. Jacobsen (2006, 4) aptly summarizes the significance of experience within Pentecostalism. Pentecostals are Spirit-conscious, Spirit-filled, and Spirit-empowered Christian believers. In contrast to other groups or churches that emphasize either doctrine of moral practice, Pentecostals stress affectivity. It is the experience of God that matters—the felt power of the Spirit in the world, in the church, and in one’s own life. Pentecostals believe that doctrine and ethics are important, but the bedrock of Pentecostal faith is experiential. It is living faith in the living God—a God who can miraculously, palpably intervene in the world—that defines the Pentecostal orientation of faith. In classical Pentecostalism, certain experiences with the Spirit take doctrinal pre- eminence and are understood within a defined theological framework of several distinct stages. The  most dominant historical framework is known as the four- or fivefold gospel (see Chapter 16). These experiences include conversion (see Chapter 21) and a post-conversion Spirit baptism (see Chapter 23), associated with the reception of power for witness and evidenced by speaking in unknown tongues. Some classical Holiness Pentecostals also advocate for a sanctification stage between these two (see Chapter 22). Also prominent is the experience of divine healing (see Chapter 24). However, Pentecostals globally are not necessarily bound to this framework in an exclusively doctrinal sense but celebrate and encourage the broadest possible spectrum of meaningful encounters with the Spirit. All Pentecostals emphasize openness to the Spirit’s direct activity in the life of any Christian believer, eschewing the need for any third-party ecclesial intermediaries. This hospitality is why Cox (1995, 89) proposes that Pentecostalism’s global appeal is largely due to its belief “that the Spirit of God needs no mediators, but is available to anyone in an intense, immediate, indeed interior way.” The emphasis on direct encounter, and the immediacy of the Spirit’s presence is an indispensable characteristic of Pentecostal experiencing of God (Warrington 2008, 20–27), and it is important to flesh out further the significance of this openness for Pentecostal theology.

Distinguishing Pentecostal experience Daniel Albrecht (1999, 237–51) has analysed Pentecostal experiences of God by observing Pentecostal rites and rituals in worship. One of his observations is that experiencing God is understood as “mystical” and “supernatural.” He and others (Chan 2000; Castelo 2017; Vondey 2017) believe that Pentecostals should be associated with the broader Christian mystical tradition. Pentecostal worship, Albrecht (1999, 239) states, is “designed to provide a context for mystical encounter, and experience with the divine. This encounter is mediated by the sense of the immediate divine presence.” The various rites used in Pentecostal worship, such as singing praise songs and laying on of hands during prayer times, encourage “mystical-type experiences,” which include not only the felt apprehension of God but also revelatory expressions such as dreams and visions. “When a worship leader says, ‘Let’s enter into the presence of the Lord,’ it is not heard as mere rhetoric. The congregation expects to 87

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have a keen awareness of divine presence” (Albrecht 1999, 239). Whether personal or corporate worship, Pentecostals anticipate being able to actively engage with God’s Spirit. It is important to note that Albrecht qualifies Pentecostal mysticism by identifying this as a “supernatural” encounter, a term emphasizing that the God being encountered is transcendent other, in contrast to God being experienced immanently within common human experience. While Pentecostals do emphasize God’s immanence, in the sense that God is palpably present by his Spirit, especially in corporate worship (see Chapter 11), Albrecht (1999, 241) explains that the Pentecostal realm envisions a world subject to invasions by the supernatural element. Pentecostals teach adherents to expect encounters with the supernatural. For the Pentecostal the line between natural and supernatural is permeable, but the two categories are radically separate. For this reason, the term “encounter” is an apt descriptor for Pentecostal experiences of God, and for Pentecostal theology (Warrington 2008), preserving the transcendent distinction between God and creation, and highlighting the experience as a meeting with a distinctly other (divine) reality. Pentecostal mysticism should also be distinguished from other more traditional mystical accounts within the Christian tradition that emphasize the loss of oneself in the divine, and the ineffability of communicating such experiences (see Chapter 3). Pentecostals do admit that experiences with the Spirit are at times difficult to put into words, yet they testify to experiences with God, with the intent of encouraging others to expect and seek similar experiences. Pentecostals usually accent external expressions over an inward-focussed orientation and tend to associate the Spirit’s activity with what is palpably felt and tangibly observed— manifestations that are overtly evidenced emotionally or physically, and testable within their subcultural theological tradition (Lewis 1998, 4–7). The term “religious experience,” is also inadequate for describing Pentecostal encounters with God. Though it overcomes the mystical focus on loss of self in the divine (Nieto 1997, 103–42), the term is too generic to sufficiently identify the God encountered or the nature of the encounter (Alston 1991, 35–36). For these reasons, Albrecht’s “mystical encounter” is a helpful working term, provided it is understood within the Pentecostal theological and spiritual framework outlined below. The adjective “mystical” accents the absence of a human third party mediating the experience while retaining the sense of these being powerful encounters, transforming the affections, and even resulting in physical manifestations. The noun “encounter” captures the transcendence of the God who is present and whose personal and revelatory interaction with the perceiver is able to interrupt and transform the life of the individual and the community (Cartledge 2015, 62–66).

The authority of Pentecostal experience The discussion above identifies the immediacy of Pentecostal experience of the Spirit but does not identify what qualifies as authentic Pentecostal experience. It is important to remember that experiencing God bears theological weight for Pentecostals. Pentecostals believe they are encountering God directly, and the encounter, therefore, holds revelatory epistemological value (see Chapter 5). Despite such encounters carrying a measure of divine authority, Pentecostals have always been careful not to accept just any experience as genuine experience of God. If an experience obviously contradicts Scripture, it will be rejected 88

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outright. Jacobsen (2003, 3) affirms, experience alone was never self-authenticating for early Pentecostals: Experiences needed to be examined and evaluated. They needed to be properly labelled and categorized so believers could know where they stood in their relationship with God and to what they should aspire . . . . The very act of becoming a Pentecostal was in a certain sense a function of the theological labels one used to describe one’s religious experiences. Experience alone did not make one a Pentecostal. It was experience interpreted in a Pentecostal way that made one Pentecostal. Further, because Pentecostal theology is Christocentric, focussing on the person of Jesus as saviour, sanctifier, Spirit baptizer, healer, and soon-coming king, any experience with the Spirit must be of the Spirit of Jesus as the one revealed in the pages of the Bible (Clark and Lederle et al. 1989, 43–44). While experiences with God may at times precede conscious theological reflection (Warrington 2008, 15–16), Pentecostals recognize that any theological content arising from such encounters needs to be vetted by the established doctrinal norms of the community (Robinson 1992, 2). So, experience does not immediately trump theological norms; Pentecostals intuitively know that not just any experience counts. Pentecostal experiences of God exist in large part with robust, Christ-centred theological boundaries, even if these are sometimes held tacitly. Pentecostals have not always been sure how to allocate the weight given to experience in relation to Scripture (see Chapter 6), reason (see Chapter 7), and the broader Christian tradition (see Chapter 9). Stephen E. Parker traced the way that some Pentecostals, during the 1970s and 1980s, responded to accusations that they were reading their experience into their biblical exegesis. Initially, some Pentecostals responded to the charge by downplaying the role experience plays in theological understanding (arguing that experience confirms but does not inform biblical truth) or attempted to validate Pentecostal experience through scriptural exegesis largely informed by evangelical historical-grammatical hermeneutical methods (see Chapter  12), especially concerning the doctrines of Spirit baptism and initial evidence. (Parker 1996, 27–40). Parker (1996, 33–39) argues, however, that downplaying experience stifles Pentecostal spirituality and the subjective realities involved in scriptural interpretation, and discourages Pentecostals from drawing on their experiences and practices for constructing their theology. In the 1990s, following a decade of significant hermeneutical dialogue and development, Pentecostal scholarship began to exhibit a more explicit appreciation for and integration of experience in the hermeneutical and theological constructive process (Parker 1996, 30–32). The evangelical hermeneutical criterion of author intentionality, with its reliance on modernist epistemological rationalism, was increasingly questioned. A number of voices proposed the need for greater integration of the subjective and experiential elements in reading Scripture, often appealing to elements of postmodern epistemology (see Neumann 2012a, 124–33). When it comes to the current interplay between Scripture and experience, Pentecostal theologians tend to prioritize the Luke-Acts narrative (Yong 2005, 27), and the belief in the ongoing experiential revelatory activity of the Spirit in helping the church read Scripture (Vondey 2010, 47–77). The Bible still serves as the primary authority for Pentecostals, but their concept of biblical authority is intricately connected with experience of the Spirit (Ellington 1996, 19; Wacker 2001, 70–76). To summarize, Pentecostals have traditionally emphasized a conscious, direct, and unmediated view of experiencing God—interruptive mystical encounters with the Spirit—which transform the believer’s affections while also manifesting in varieties of physical and tangible 89

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expressions, and functioning with some measure of authority for Pentecostal theology and spirituality. There are, however, weaknesses in this understanding, since it insufficiently acknowledges the (sub)cultural-linguistic reality of the communally accepted Pentecostal traditions, in which the experience occurs. What is preached and taught in the community is often simply assumed to be true, and how this truth impacts the experiences of the believers goes largely unacknowledged. For our purposes, then, the above will be considered a naïve view of Pentecostal experience. This characterization is not intended to be a pejorative accusation but identifies that this view lacks explicit acknowledgment of the tacit yet powerful influence that communal theology and experience have on even the most personal of mystical encounters. The naïve view may grant too much theological weight to a given mystical encounter, and the doctrines and practices that may arise from such experiences. Put another way, if experience with God is unqualifiedly immediate, then the authority of the experience is also immediate and self-authenticating. If there happens to be disagreement over the theology or practice derived from such experience, there is a higher risk of schism within the community. This unqualified view has sometimes led to the inadvertent theological ghettoizing of Pentecostals as exclusive overtones developed when it came to identifying those who could be considered authentically Pentecostal. The ongoing debate in some denominations over tongues as the “initial evidence” of Spirit baptism is a case in point, since those who have not demonstrated the external manifestation of tongues are either implicitly or explicitly restricted from full acceptance and participation in those communities (see Friesen 2013; Neumann 2019). Pentecostalism has also been marked by frequent schism within their own churches and denominations, all too often caused by one charismatic leader disagreeing with another over experience-based ideas and practices ( Jacobsen 2003, 354–56). This situation has been exacerbated by the hesitancy and even suspicion Pentecostals have often exhibited towards ecclesial tradition and ecumenical dialogue, although they have exhibited more openness to this theological heritage and resource in the latter part of the twentieth century (Kärkkäinen 2002; Neumann 2012a, 142–44).

The Pentecostal communal experience that houses Pentecostal experience The past two decades especially have revealed a shift within Pentecostal theology towards a more nuanced understanding of experiencing God as mediated immediacy. This shift has enabled Pentecostals to overcome some of the weaknesses inherent in a naïve unmediated view of experience because it attempts to acknowledge explicitly that the experience never occurs within a cultural or theological vacuum but exists within a Pentecostal subcultural-linguistic framework (Shuman 1997, 214 and 220). In brief, there is need to flesh out the internal “grammar” of accepted Pentecostal beliefs and practices to better understand how Pentecostals understand their experience of God. Some of this has been done above in identifying the biblical narrative frame as an assumed part of experiencing God. But there are also some theological and metaphysical assumptions that need to be made explicit to appreciate more fully what intuitively counts as true Pentecostal experience within this theological and spiritual tradition. We are seeking here, then, a way of identifying the theological communal experience that frames or houses personal and corporate encounters with God. James K. A. Smith (2010, 12) proposes five characteristics of a Pentecostal worldview that help frame the broader sense of experiencing God. First, Pentecostals have a “radical openness to God.” This corresponds well with the Pentecostal openness to the supernatural, and the experience of God as encounter. Smith locates this characteristic within the Acts 2 story 90

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of Pentecost, where the disciples encountered God in new and surprising ways (e.g. speaking with tongues) and expected this reality to be ongoing. Second, this worldview is typified by an “‘enchanted’ theology of creation and culture.” This metaphysical outlook assumes the immanent activity of the Spirit in all of creation (and creation includes malevolent spiritual forces as well); so, reality cannot be reduced to physical laws. Third, Pentecostals hold “a nondualistic affirmation of embodiment and materiality,” meaning that God is assumed to be interested in more than redeeming souls but also in healing bodies and bringing wellbeing to life in general. Fourth, Pentecostals hold to “an affective, narrative epistemology.” Here the emphasis on God communicating directly and interiorly with individuals is corroborated; but further, the means of passing on such experiences with God is accomplished most effectively through testimonies (stories). Fifth, there is “an eschatological orientation to missions and justice.” The purpose of the Spirit’s outpouring in Acts 2 was to include Jesus’ followers in God’s eschatological mission, in which they would bear evangelistic witness to Christ and work to overcome injustice through acts of love, peace, and justness. Smith’s characteristics confirm and interpret to some extent the fieldwork of Albrecht’s pioneering congregational study of classical Pentecostalism. Albrecht (1999, 116–22) identifies Pentecostal experience as communal, supplementing Smith’s theme of holistic spirituality with an emphasis on the relational component of experience. This emphasis may seem somewhat counterintuitive, since Pentecostals tend to emphasize individual experience of the Spirit. But experiencing God usually happens within the collective worship experience and involves physical interaction with others, such as the laying on of hands in prayer (Wacker 2001, 94). Albrecht also affirms the missional trajectory of Pentecostal experience. While experiences with the Spirit affect the individual, they are nevertheless aimed at accomplishing greater missional purposes for God’s kingdom; the Spirit, in this sense, is given for others. Albrecht further supplements the theme of mission as well as the involvement of the Spirit in daily life by describing the Pentecostal framework of experience as creative, by which he means entrepreneurial and pragmatic. Pragmatism seems to be almost universally embedded in Pentecostal spirituality (Holm 1995; Wacker 2001, 9–14; Yun 2007, 8; Neumann 2012a, 121–22, 152–60) and underscores that Pentecostal experience cannot be reduced to the Spirit merely impacting the inner affections. Because Pentecostals assume the Spirit is active in the world, the sphere of everyday life and work becomes a testing ground for identifying the activity of the Spirit. This means Pentecostals can become impatient with ideas or practices that do not reap (almost) immediate results in practical life. Conversely, when an idea or activity obtains the results hoped for (often related to missional activity and evangelism), this is often taken as evidence of the Spirit’s endorsement, since it is taken for granted that the Spirit is enabling the results. Experiences with God are usually expected to manifest in some tangible way, serving also to verify the Spirit’s activity (e.g. the doctrine of tongues as the initial evidence of Spirit baptism).

Experience as mediated immediacy: a fruitful venture The discussion detailed thus far characterizes the subcultural-linguistic framework of Pentecostal experience in which personal immediate experience of the Spirit occurs. Pentecostals do not simply experience God in an unqualified direct mode but within and mediated through a spiritual and theological framework, a faith horizon. This sense of mediated immediacy holds promise to help Pentecostals overcome some of the weaknesses of a naïve immediacy; it does so in at least three ways. First, it helps temper the weight of authority granted to personal encounters with God, since any such experiences are already interpreted 91

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experiences, shaped by the theological context in which they occur. Any experience with God cannot be taken as self-authenticating but must be examined within the Pentecostal and broader Christian tradition (see Chapter 9). Second, it encourages Pentecostals to investigate more carefully their own historical, linguistic, social, theological, and philosophical contexts in order to better interpret and articulate their experiences with God. This engagement is becoming progressively more important as broader cultural frameworks and language change and Pentecostals attempt to communicate and pass on their values and experiences in an intelligible way. Third, it enables Pentecostals to listen ecumenically to others within the broad Christian theological tradition (see Chapter 35). If Pentecostal experience is not immediately authoritative, then the experience of God in other Christian traditions cannot be easily dismissed without consideration. The emphasis on mediated immediacy has become more explicit in the work of a number of contemporary Pentecostal theologians (see Neumann 2012b). Simon K. H. Chan explicitly appeals to Lindbeck’s cultural-linguistic theory of doctrine in attempting to help Pentecostals acknowledge the riches of their own and the broader Christian tradition in order to preserve and pass on Pentecostal spirituality (Chan 1997, 81–83, 1998, 16–17, 24–39, 2000, 7–10, 24, 2005, 579; Neumann 2012a, 218–24). Frank D. Macchia (2006, 12–17) also appeals to cultural-linguistic theory, acknowledging that Pentecostals operate within a particular theological symbol-system, while yet insisting that experiencing God is not merely of “interpretive frameworks.” Nevertheless, he utilizes a nuanced approach to the experience of God to inform his expanded understanding of Spirit baptism that he believes better corresponds with God’s missional involvement in the world (Macchia 2002, 2006; Neumann 2012a, 162–217). Amos Yong draws on the unique faith horizon of Pentecostal experience in developing the notion of the “pneumatological imagination” (see Chapter 14) through which to view and understand reality (metaphysics) and giving rise to his epistemological “foundational pneumatology” by which to discern the Spirit’s activity in the world (Yong 2002, 2003, 2005). This emphasis allows him to engage in theological construction in areas such as interreligious dialogue, science, and politics. Mark J. Cartledge (2015) has argued that the mediated quality of Pentecostal spirituality needs to be embraced explicitly. He uses this mediated approach in the construction of a robust framework for Pentecostal practical theology (see Chapter 15), which he argues needs to move beyond the traditional evangelical approach to “applied theology.” In short, a mediated immediacy view of experience is bearing fruit within various dimensions of contemporary Pentecostal theology.

Conclusion This essay has outlined the significance of experiencing the Holy Spirit within Pentecostal spirituality and theology. It has demonstrated that experience is a foundational element of Pentecostal spirituality that can be identified as a mystical encounter with the God who is calling Christian believers into mission. Experiencing God is shaped by the culturallinguistic horizons of the Pentecostal faith community and is best understood as a mediated immediacy of the encounter with God’s Spirit. While Pentecostals are clearly people who submit to the authority of Scripture, they also strongly believe that the God the Bible reveals is one who continues to interact with believers in tangible, transformative ways that allow God to be encountered and, hence, experienced. For this reason, experience serves as an important resource for Pentecostal theology, pragmatically justified by the effectiveness of Pentecostal missional endeavours, and also by the growing fruitfulness evident within Pentecostal constructive theologies utilizing this resource. 92

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References Albrecht, Daniel E. 1999. Rites in the Spirit: A Ritual Approach to Pentecostal/Charismatic Spirituality. JPT Supplement 17. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Alston, William P. 1991. Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Boeve, Lieven. 2005. “Theology and the Interruption of Experience.” In Encountering Transcendence: Contributions to a Theology of Christian Religious Experience, edited by L. Boeve, Hans Geybels, and S. Van den Bossche, 11–40. Leuven: Peeters. Brown, David. 2007. “Experience Skewed.” In Transcending Boundaries in Philosophy and Theology: Reason, Meaning and Experience, edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer and Martin Warner, 159–75. Burlington: Ashgate. Cartledge, Mark J. 2015. The Mediation of the Spirit: Interventions in Practical Theology. Pentecostal Manifestos 7. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Castelo, Daniel. 2017. Pentecostalism as a Christian Mystical Tradition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Chan, Simon K. H. 1997. “The Language Game of Glossolalia, or Making Sense of the ‘Initial Evidence.’” In Pentecostalism in Context: Essays in Honor of William W. Menzies, edited by Wonsuk Ma and Robert P. Menzies, 80–95. JPT Supplement 25. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. ———. 1998. Spiritual Theology: A Systematic Study of the Christian Life. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press. ———. 2000. Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition. JPT Supplement 21. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. ———. 2005. “Whither Pentecostalism?” In Asian and Pentecostal: The Charismatic Face of Christianity in Asia, edited by Allan Anderson and Edmond Tang, 575–86. Oxford: Regnum. Clark, Mathew S., and Henry I. Lederle et al. 1989. What Is Distinctive about Pentecostal Theology? Pretoria: University of South Africa. Cox, Harvey G. 1995. Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century. Reading: Addison-Wesley. Ellington, Scott A. 1996. “Pentecostalism and the Authority of Scripture.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 4 (9): 16–38. Fiorenza, Francis Schuessler. 2005. “The Experience of Transcendence or the Transcendence of Experience: Negotiating the Difference.” In Religious Experience and Contemporary Theological Epistemology, edited by L. Boeve, Y. de Maeseneer, and S. Van den Bossche, 184–218. Leuven: Peeters. Friesen, Aaron T. 2013. Norming the Abnormal: The Development and Function of the Doctrine of Initial Evidence in Classical Pentecostalism. Eugene: Pickwick. Gelpi, Donald L. 1994. The Turn to Experience in Contemporary Theology. New York: Paulist Press. Hart, Kevin. 2005a. “The Experience of the Kingdom of God.” In The Experience of God: A Postmodern Response, edited by Kevin Hart and Barbara Eileen Wall, 71–86. Perspectives in Continental Philosophy. New York: Fordham University Press. ———. 2005b. “Introduction.” In The Experience of God: A Postmodern Response, edited by Kevin Hart and Barbara Eileen Wall, 1–19. New York: Fordham University Press. Holm, Randall. 1995. “A Paradigmatic Analysis of Authority within Pentecostalism.” Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Laval. Jacobsen, Douglas G. 2003. Thinking in the Spirit: Theologies of the Early Pentecostal Movement. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 2006. A Reader in Pentecostal Theology: Voices from the First Generation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. 2002. “Pentecostals as ‘Anonymous Ecumenists’?” In Toward a Pneumatological Theology: Pentecostal and Ecumenical Perspectives on Ecclesiology, Soteriology, and Theology of Mission, edited by Amos Yong, 39–51. Lanham: University Press of America. Lewis, Paul W. 1998. “Towards a Pentecostal Epistemology: The Role of Experience in Pentecostal Hermeneutics.” Unpublished paper presented at the annual meeting for the Society for Pentecostal Studies, Cleveland, Tennessee. Lindbeck, George A. 1984. The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age. Philadelphia: Westminster Press. Macchia, Frank D. 2002. “Christian Experience and Authority in the World: A Pentecostal Viewpoint.” Ecumenical Trends 31 (8): 122–26.

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Peter D. Neumann ———. 2006. Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Neumann, Peter D. 2012a. Pentecostal Experience: An Ecumenical Encounter. Princeton Theological Monographs 187. Eugene: Pickwick. ———. 2012b. “Whither Pentecostal Experience? Mediated Experience of God in Pentecostal Theology.” Canadian Journal of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity 3: 1–40. ———. 2019. “Spirit Baptism, Exclusion, and Emerging Adults: An Ecclesiological Approach to a Present Challenge.” In Pentecostal Preaching and Ministry in Multicultural and Post-Christian Canada, edited by Steven M. Studebaker, McMaster Ministry Studies Series 4, 149–85. Eugene: Pickwick. Nieto, José C. 1997. Religious Experience and Mysticism: Otherness as Experience of Transcendence. Lanham: University Press of America. Parker, Stephen E. 1996. Led by the Spirit: Toward a Practical Theology of Pentecostal Discernment and Decision Making. JPT Supplement 7. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Pattison, George. 2007. “What to Say: Reflections on Mysticism after Modernity.” In Transcending Boundaries in Philosophy and Theology: Reason, Meaning and Experience, edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer and Martin Warner, 191–205. Aldershot: Ashgate. Robinson, Brian. 1992. “A Pentecostal Hermeneutic of Religious Experience.” Unpublished paper presented at the annual meeting for the Society for Pentecostal Studies, Springfield, Missouri. Samuel, Josh P. S. 2018. The Holy Spirit in Worship Music, Preaching, and the Altar: Renewing Pentecostal Worship. Cleveland: CPT Press. Schlitt, Dale M. 2001. Theology and the Experience of God: American Liberal Religious Thought. New York: Peter Lang. Schner, George P. 1992. “The Appeal to Experience.” Theological Studies 53 (1): 40–59. Shuman, Joel J. 1997. “Toward a Cultural-Linguistic Account of the Pentecostal Doctrine of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 19 (2): 207–23. Smith, James K. A. 2005. “Faith and the Conditions of Possibility of Experience: A Response to Kevin Hart.” In The Experience of God: A Postmodern Response, edited by Kevin Hart and Barbara Eileen Wall, 87–92. New York: Fordham University Press. ———. 2010. Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy. Pentecostal Manifestos 1. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Vondey, Wolfgang. 2010. Beyond Pentecostalism: The Crisis of Global Christianity and the Renewal of the Theological Agenda. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2017. Pentecostal Theology: Living the Full Gospel. Systematic Pentecostal and Charismatic Theology 1. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. Wacker, Grant. 2001. Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Warrington, Keith. 2007. “Experience: The Sine Qua Non of Pentecostalism.” Unpublished paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, Cleveland, Tennessee. ———. 2008. Pentecostal Theology: A Theology of Encounter. London: T&T Clark. Yong, Amos. 2002. Spirit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective. Burlington: Ashgate. ———. 2003. Beyond the Impasse: Toward a Pneumatological Theology of Religions. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. ———. 2005. The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. Yun, Koo Dong. 2007. “A Metaphysical Construct of Experience: Concerning the Problematic Usage of ‘Experience’ within Pentecostal Horizons.” Unpublished paper presented at the annual meeting for the Society for Pentecostal Studies, Cleveland, Tennessee.

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9 TRADITION Retrieving and updating Pentecostal core beliefs Simon Chan

Is there any sense to speak of a Pentecostal tradition if Pentecostalism is more of a movement than a structured community? Even when the first Pentecostals organized themselves, they consciously eschewed the word “church” as a self-designation. Yet, over time, Pentecostals recognized the need for ecclesiastical structures; in fact, their existing fellowship and assemblies formed a de facto structure. But it is only in more recent times that Pentecostals have begun to think theologically about themselves as a tradition. This interest may have been the result of their long-running dialogues with the Roman Catholic Church and the emergence of theological scholarship among Pentecostals. It is therefore not surprising that interest in the nature of tradition coincides with interest in Pentecostal theology and especially ecclesiology. In this chapter, I suggest that tradition as a source for Pentecostal theology reveals a deep-seated internal conflict among Pentecostals between a weak ecclesiology and the need for ecclesiastical structures. The formation of Pentecostal tradition relies strongly on the theology of the Pentecostal movements, and the way this theology is articulated, practised, and traditioned. The chapter begins with a definition of the nature of tradition and details the nature of the conflict. I then illustrate the conflict in the case of glossolalia and conclude with a discussion of the relationship of tradition to the development of doctrine and the formulation of tradition through aggiornamento and ressourcement.

The nature and problem of tradition Alasdiar MacIntyre’s (1988, 12) well-known definition of tradition may serve as a starting point for the discussion. A tradition is an argument extended through time in which certain fundamental agreements are defined and redefined in terms of two kinds of conflict: those with critics and enemies external to the tradition who reject all or at least key parts of those fundamental agreements, and those internal, interpretative debates through which the meaning and rationale of the fundamental agreements come to be expressed and by whose progress a tradition is constituted.

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In an earlier work, MacIntyre (1981, 207) defines “a living tradition” as “an historically extended socially embodied argument, and an argument precisely in part about the goods which constitute that tradition. Within a tradition the pursuit of goods extends through generations, sometimes through many generations.” In a given community, a tradition concerns the “pursuit of goods” necessary for the continuity and survival of the community. Those definitions could be applied principally to any community, although they do not immediately convey what those “fundamental agreements” or “goods” are. It suggests that external threats to the fundamental agreements could harm, while progress in internal debate over those agreements could help, the tradition. There is a clear historical dimension to a tradition: the “goods” are not created in vacuo but are passed from generation to generation (“through time”). Tradition presupposes a stable community with a history, and the history of any community is the accumulation of its collective memory expressed in its core beliefs, shared values, stories, and practices. For the healthy development of any community, two on-going activities are always evident: retrieval (ressourcement) and updating (aggiornamento) of its fundamental agreements. If these fundamental agreements are lost or radically altered, the community loses its distinctive identity, morphs into something quite different from what it was originally envisioned, or simply disintegrates. There are a number of features in MacIntyre’s definition which can be fruitfully applied to the development of the Pentecostal tradition. According to Coulter (2014, 2), what binds a Pentecostal community together is “a common narrative identity into which persons became caught up as they encountered Christ in the Spirit.” These narratives or stories (see Chapter 4) are meaningful to the extent that they embody the distinctive Pentecostal ethos for “[a]part from the spirituality of encounter within the pentecostal ethos . . . these narratives lost meaning” (Coulter, 3). This emphasis would explain the pervasiveness of early Pentecostal testimonies and why they followed a certain theological pattern (see Chapter 16). Each personal testimony which conforms to the community’s narrative is a “commitment act” signalling initiation into and finding validation within the Pentecostal community (McDonnell 1983, 337). The personal stories, in turn, reinforce the community’s narrative. Today, however, this pattern is not always apparent. What we hear are a plethora of conflicting stories that are phenomenologically similar but do not readily share theological affinity. Testimonies, which ensure the passing down of the Pentecostal story from generation to generation, no longer form an important part of worshipping communities. If tradition is about a line of reasoning (“arguments”), then, what we are seeing today would not be readily understood in terms of a Pentecostal tradition (or traditions). Instead, what we have are communities of feelings but not a coherent community with shared fundamental agreements. Many churches have become collectivities of individuals in constant flux. In this respect, part of the Pentecostal movement is perhaps better described as a “common consciousness” comparable to the fluid “women’s experience” of feminist spirituality and New Age spirituality (Woodhead 1995, 207). On the other hand, there are still Pentecostal churches rooted in a tradition or seeking fresh understandings of their tradition, and it is in reference to such churches that this essay is primarily concerned. The sign of a robust community is a strong traditioning process. But Pentecostal communities have been weak at traditioning because they have not, until recently, thought much about their ecclesiology (Chan 2000b). Pentecostals have always emphasized the work of the Spirit, but spiritual operations are often understood in relation to individuals and harbour a weak ecclesiology (see Chapter 27). The church as a body is not just an amorphous collection of living cells but assumes a visible form and structure. Theologically, the church as a living body of Christ is a spiritual organism existing as a visible structure joined to Christ its head; 96

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it is the totus Christus (Chan 2000a). A body without flesh and bones is not a real body but a docetic body. Similarly, if the church is merely a collectivity of persons and not bound together by the Spirit with its institutions, ministry, sacraments, and hierarchy—if the “real” church is to be found only in its “spiritual” activities—then it is a docetic church. The church in all its visible authority structures and its gifts is the dwelling place of the Spirit (Eph 2:20, 21 cf. 4:4–11). But the church does not control the Spirit; rather, it is the Spirit who controls the church. The fear of structures has led to the degrading of Pentecostalism as a tradition. If there is to be a vibrant Pentecostal tradition, Pentecostals must resolve this internal conflict. The problem of a weak ecclesiology will not be resolved as long as Pentecostalism is impelled by the spirit of Joachimism and, with it, a tendency to pit charisma against institution. Moltmann’s (1992, 295–98) wide influence among Pentecostal scholars has in some way contributed to this state of affairs: his understanding of salvation history reflects favourably the idea of progress in Joachim of Fiore, with its tendency to pit freedom of the Spirit against the church’s institution, authority, and hierarchy. It is not uncommon to find Pentecostal scholars taking a similar position, as evident in resistance to my own work: [A]s a Pentecostal I resist Chan’s insistence on a hierarchical Trinitarian ordering which is reflected in Church hierarchy, instead preferring a social reading of the Trinity. Ultimately, Chan’s project is overburdened by hierarchical assumptions and a High Church episcopacy that many Pentecostals would find disconcerting. (Althouse 2009, 238) Instead of considering why a hierarchical understanding of the church is necessary (or unnecessary) for a Pentecostal ecclesiology, Pentecostals often dismiss hierarchy, as if it is so obviously wrong for Pentecostals that no further reason is needed. But the issue is far from settled: in their dialogues with Catholics, Pentecostals expressed surprise that some of their commonly held assumptions, like believer’s baptism, Free Church ecclesiology, and a memorialist view of the Lord’s Supper, were not uniformly held by all Pentecostals (Robeck 2012). It would not come as a surprise, therefore, if the work of Pentecostal ressourcement challenges some of the assumptions of many classical Pentecostals from the West concerning egalitarianism as a universal norm (Hocken 2016, 10–11). Many social anthropologists, ethnographers, and historians have also questioned a unidimensional concept of egalitarianism, authority, and human agency. They have demonstrated that what are regarded as universal values are actually culturally conditioned (Brusco 1995; Williams 2014). Mahmood (2005, 16) notes that “anthropologists . . . have long acknowledged that the terms people use to organize their lives are not simply a gloss for universally shared assumptions about the world and one’s place in it, but are, actually constitutive of different forms of personhood, knowledge, and experience.” Church leadership, for example, cannot be reduced to the question, “Who’s in charge?” (Williams 2014, 272). In Pentecostal churches outside the West, men usually exercise formal leadership while women assume informal or prophetic leadership (Martin 1998). In mega-Pentecostal churches in Asia, like Yoido Full Gospel Church in Korea and the Word of Life Church in China, woman leadership predominates (Ma 2018). Outside the West, leadership roles of men and women are a lot more complex than the way Western egalitarians (and their opposition) make them out to be. Usually it is the dominant culture that regards its particular view of equality and freedom as universally valid. But one must ask, à la MacIntyre: Which equality? Whose hierarchy? In point of fact, if there is to be one church, hierarchy is necessary. As Edith Humphrey (2003, 140) has argued, “oneness requires order if there is to be more than a simple unity” and “this 97

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order must be constituted by hierarchy (i.e. with a hieros, ‘sacred;’ arche, ‘head’ or ‘source’), if we are speaking about unity among persons with wills and affections.” The real issue for Pentecostals, therefore, is not a choice between egalitarianism and hierarchicalism but what kind of equality or hierarchy is needed for the church to develop as a strong and living tradition. It is precisely a failure in Pentecostal history to develop a sound theology of church order that has led to the repeated abuse of authority, as seen in the Latter Rain movement in the 1940s, the Shepherding movement in the 1970s, and more recently, the New Apostolic Reformation which is essentially a reinvention by the late Peter Wagner of the two preceding streams (McNair Scott 2014, 182–93). These abuses of authority show that Pentecostals need a theology of church order and authority, but without a robust ecclesiology, they cannot develop such a theology where spiritual gifts are properly regulated without stifling the freedom of the Spirit (cf. 1 Cor. 12 and 14; 1 Thess. 5:19–22). In fact, it is when Pentecostals develop a theology of church order that they can contribute to the renewal of the traditional liturgy (Chan 2011, 120–22) and shape a constructive and therapeutic sense of tradition.

The Pentecostal sensus fidelium Pentecostalism as a historical movement has its precursors. Its language of Spirit baptism is traceable to John Fletcher and Charles Finney, and the experience of glossolalia can be found sporadically in the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition. But what set Pentecostals apart was the theological connection between Spirit-baptism (see Chapter 23) and glossolalia and their placement as an “initial physical evidence” of Spirit-baptism (see Chapter 28). It is this special connection between Spirit-baptism and glossolalia which gave Pentecostals their distinctive identity. As Frank Macchia (1998, 12) points out, speaking with tongues may not be central to the gospel, but as the most distinctive part of the Pentecostal community “tongues have a place in the Christian credo of Pentecostal churches.” The initial evidence doctrine, taken in isolation, may not be a broad enough basis for sustaining the Pentecostal tradition, but as part of the “crown jewel” of Pentecostal faith (Macchia 2006), and when taken together with other core beliefs, it becomes necessary for Pentecostals to continue to focus on this vital issue if Pentecostal churches are to develop as vibrant and distinctive Pentecostal communities. The current state of affairs in many Pentecostal churches is that while the doctrine is officially endorsed, a significant number of Pentecostal ministers and theologians have raised doubts about it. According to a recent survey, the initial evidence teaching is the primary theological reason for Pentecostal scholars leaving their denomination (Lewis 2008, 76). This does not augur well for long-term theological traditioning, since without an adequate “rationale of fundamental agreements,” the Pentecostal tradition will break down. In its initial years, this core belief was supported experientially by the Pentecostal faithful. In other words, it was grounded in the sensus fidelium, which could be understood as consensual orthodoxy implicit in the shared experience of the faithful, both the laity and the leaders. The role of the theologian is to articulate the sensus fidei among the Pentecostal faithful. This task means that there must be constant dialogue between Pentecostal leaders (including scholars and theologians) and the people in the pews. The Pentecostal sensus fidelium can be defined as the whole church consisting of leaders and people working in mutual dependence to discern the movement of the Spirit. From this process of shared discernment, a consensual set of core beliefs emerges. Pentecostal theologians, in particular, cannot ignore the experience of the faithful, if they are to be true to their calling as theologians of the church, any more than the faithful can ignore the direction of the theologians who seek faithfully to articulate the sensus fidei. 98

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The situation is bleak if Pentecostal theologians abandon their church’s core belief and ignore the sensus fidelium, for it is in dialogue that those who have difficulty coming to terms with the doctrine of initial evidence will find their own experience validated. Jack Hayford, in commending the “beauty” of glossolalia, implicitly accepts the “initial evidence” as experience, even though as a doctrine he finds it problematic: “Doctrinal arguments presented by separate sectors of the church neither convinced me nor dissuaded me. I somehow sense there was a valid experience somewhere between the cracks of human debating” (Hayford 1992, 35). Speaking as a pastor, Hayford (1992, 96–97) notices that despite the inability to articulate the integral connection between being filled with the Spirit and glossolalia, the fact of the matter is that whenever he prayed for people to be filled, glossolalia followed. The dialogue between church theologians and the people of God can be restated in terms of the relationship between primary and secondary theology. The widespread experience of Spirit baptism coupled with glossolalia constitutes the theologia prima of the Pentecostal faithful. The initial evidence doctrine is the attempt to make sense of the experience and could therefore be called theologia secunda. The first is the experience of the people of God, including, hopefully, the Pentecostal theologian; the second is primarily the work of theologians. Theologia prima as lived theology is far richer and deeper than one’s ability to articulate it. It includes tacit knowledge (Polanyi 1983) involving all our senses which cannot be fully expressed in words. Secondary theology serves as pointers to and seeks to make the best sense of primary theology. What the early Pentecostal leaders lacked were the conceptual tools for such a task, and consequently, they were unable to transmit their lived experience to subsequent generations. If we begin by taking seriously the sensus fidelium of the early Pentecostals in which the connection between Spirit-baptism and glossolalia was consistently experienced and affirmed, then the corollary question of how to make the best sense of this experience today entails two methodological issues. First, if the Bible taken as a whole is the key text of the Pentecostal community, then we need to approach doctrine canonically, going beyond the methods of “biblical theology” or exegeting key texts which locate Spirit baptism in the context of salvation history (Stronstad 1984; Fee 1985; Menzies 1991). A canonical approach takes other related teachings from the canon into consideration and moves beyond biblical to systematic and historical theology, and such an approach was in fact characteristic of early Pentecostals (Thomas and Alexander 2003; Green 2012, 189–90). Equally, the Pentecostal community does not exist in isolation from other Christian communities. There are older Christian communities which share spiritual affinities with Pentecostals, and Pentecostals need to draw from the larger Christian tradition where they discover a more developed theology of prayer than in modern-day Protestantism and evangelicalism. Here, they will discover that glossolalia as prayer, although called by different names, finds its “fit” within the mystical tradition. It shares the same logic as mystical silence; they are part of the same “language game” (Chan 1997, 2000b). In contrast, while the initial evidence doctrine has become a stumbling block to many Pentecostals, the expectation of glossolalia, when one is filled with the Spirit, continues to be taught to and experienced by millions of Catholic charismatics in their Life in the Spirit Seminars (International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services 2011) in a manner that comes surprisingly close to the classical Pentecostal view.

Tradition and the development of doctrine Any community as a “polis” inevitably faces conflicts or challenges from without and within. Usually challenges from without force members of the community to respond, and differing responses can result in internal conflicts. For the most part, classical Pentecostals 99

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have not been very successful in their attempt to respond to external and internal challenges. Some seek to defend classical Pentecostal doctrines in the way they were originally formulated (Arrington 1992–1994; Horton 1995). Others accept the experience of glossolalia but question its dogmatic status (e.g. Clifton 2007). The former understand the initial evidence doctrine statically, while the latter find it indefensible and reject their own core belief. The Pentecostal community needs to be open to change if it is to respond effectively to these challenges. The changes, however, should not fundamentally alter its core beliefs; otherwise, the community loses its basic identity. Thus, faithful traditioning is about changes in historical continuity with a community’s core belief (“an argument through time”), not its abandonment or substitution. In the case of the Pentecostal community, the initial evidence doctrine requires revision and reconfiguration so as to make better sense of the “integral connection” between Spirit baptism and glossolalia (Macchia 1998, 4–5). If we apply the characteristics of tradition to the Pentecostal movement, we begin to see that what is at stake in Pentecostal theology today is not so much the development of doctrine as the rapid mutation of Pentecostal core beliefs (Chan 2016). There are many factors contributing to the unravelling of the Pentecostal tradition, not the least of which is the theology of glory and triumphalism (Courey 2015), as seen in many evangelicalsturn- charismatics who have also largely abandoned the doctrine of Spirit baptism and initial evidence. Another factor is that Pentecostalism today is widely defined phenomenologically rather than by “fundamental agreements.” The hyphenated descriptor “Pentecostalcharismatic” is indicative of this fact, since it covers a vast range of disparate organizations and movements whose common denominator is extremely fluid and almost impossible to pin down as a single theological tradition. The problem with a phenomenological description is that it lacks theological specificity and may even be contradictory (Kent 1995, 86–103). Such lack of theological focus hampers the formation of a Pentecostal tradition. Instead, the Pentecostal tradition must be understood in all its theological specificity. As Daniel Castelo (2017, 47) has observed, “Pentecostals insist on describing themselves in terms of theological concern” and thus “focus their attention, testimonies, and passions on who God is and what God is doing, and they specify ‘God’ as none other than the One proclaimed by and at work in Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit” (emphasis original). This theologizing is why Pentecostal traditioning must begin with its roots in Pentecostal doctrines. Even though its early doctrinal formulation left much to be desired, it needs to be retrieved and rearticulated in a way that is faithful to the Pentecostal theologia prima and also responsive to the changing contexts in which Pentecostals find themselves. Such is the nature of the development of doctrine, and the failure of classical Pentecostals and modern charismatics is a failure in understanding the nature of the development of doctrine. In this respect, Pentecostals have much to learn from the older Christian traditions. Catholicism and Orthodoxy are better at retrieval and updating; for them, ressourcement and aggiornamento must always go together (D’Ambrosio 1991). If a living tradition is a “historically extended socially embodied argument,” then Pentecostals need to take the historical extension of their distinctive core belief more seriously, namely, the connection between Spirit baptism and glossolalia. Arguably, this is best done by locating glossolalia within the mystical tradition. Glossolalia as initial evidence shares the same logic as the Christian mystical experience where in the paradoxical act of surrender (an active passivity), the person crosses a threshold and experiences a major paradigm shift, an epiphany, to which he or she spontaneously responds in glossolalic utterances, or in the case of the mystic, in silence or a kind of “sleep,” as seen in St. Teresa of Avila (Chan 2000b, 40–72; Castelo 2017, 126–157). For Catholics with a long history of mysticism and a 100

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mystical theology undergirding it, glossolalia could be meaningfully assimilated. But Pentecostals, lacking knowledge of the mystical tradition, are unable to find the language that adequately encapsulates their experience. We see this again in Hayford (1992, 47–50), when commenting on the phrase, “they began to speak . . . as the Spirit gave them utterance,” who comes close to what we have noted in Christian mystical experiences, namely, an active receptivity. According to Hayford, we need to make a decision, yet it is the Spirit who enables us to speak: glossolalia is “naturally supernatural.” Hayford (1992, 38) also links glossolalia to deep intimacy: “Asking questions of someone who spoke in tongues like ‘How did you do it?’ seem like invading a personal privacy, like asking a couple to describe their wedding night.” One is reminded of Christian mystics who often speak of union with God in terms of the intimacy of nuptial union. But unlike Hayford, the mystics are quite explicit about it, sometimes using highly evocative and sensual language, such as the poem of St. John of the Cross (2005, 30). It is this explicit capturing of Pentecostal core experiences that promises ground for the recovery of a Pentecostal tradition.

The recovery of a Pentecostal tradition There are positive signs of change in recent years. First, a growing interest in ecclesiology among Pentecostal scholars inevitably raises the issue of tradition (Thomas 2010; Green 2016). Second, Pentecostal ressourcement is gaining pace. Perhaps the most important rediscovery is that early Pentecostals were far more sacramental in theology and practice than their present descendants. This fact has been highlighted in a number of recent works. Daniel Tomberlin (2010) has shown that water baptism, the Lord’s Supper, footwashing, and anointed touch (anointing with oil and laying on of hands) were no mere rituals but in them Christ was encountered in a real way. Healing was reported in the sacrament of footwashing (75) and the Lord’s Supper (168–78). As he puts it, “early Pentecostals intuitively knew that there is a ‘real presence’ in the celebration of the sacraments. . . . In the early published writings of the Church of God, the Lord’s Supper was known as ‘the Sacrament’” (76–77). Chris Green (2012), in a wide-ranging exploration of early Pentecostal literature, has uncovered pervasive sacramental teachings and practices. According to Green, what led to the loss of Pentecostal sacramentality was the “marriage” between Pentecostals and evangelicals after the Second World War. Similar works of retrieval are being done in the United Kingdom, most notably by Jonathan Black of Apostolic Church (2016). Black has shown how central the Lord’s Supper was for the early Apostolic Christians: “The church feeds on Christ ‘substantially.’ It is this substance of ‘His body and His blood’ which is the church’s sustenance” (95). The Apostolic Church even compiled a hymnal on the Lord’s Supper (Macpherson 1974). Black has also shown that the early Apostolic churches set Spirit-baptism “firmly within the context of the church and leave no room for it to be considered a privatised Christian experience” (33). Pentecostal theology is more than an interpretation of sacramental practices; it is at heart a tradition attuned to a sacramentality that emerges from the very being of the Pentecostal life. The recovery of Pentecostal sacramentality fleshes out two other related doctrines which are critical in advancing the Pentecostal tradition. One is a robust incarnational theology. Tomberlin (2010, 87) describes Pentecostal spirituality as “not simply spiritual; it is encountering the Holy Spirit with our human senses as the Spirit moves and interacts in our physical world. Pentecostalism is a physical spirituality” (emphasis original). Without the Incarnation there is no body of Christ on earth (Black, 100–102). This incarnational theology in early Pentecostalism stands in sharp antithesis to the Third Wavers and modern evangelical charismatic Christians who tend to focus mostly on a “spiritual” Christ especially in their worship 101

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“experience” (Ward 2005). Third Wave charismatics, therefore, cannot be said to represent a genuine development of the Pentecostal tradition. A second positive development is a discovery of the mystical dimension of Pentecostal theology. Here again, Pentecostals have much to learn from the Catholic Charismatic Renewal teaching that the sacramental and the mystical are intimately linked: the sacrament is by nature a mystery which defies explanation; it is “objective efficacy which cannot be further analysed” (Lewis 1978, 105). In the Incarnation, Christ is revealed as the sacrament of God—the mysterious union of the divine and the human. The mystical union between Christ and his church and each individual Christian, between bread and wine and the body and blood, is predicated on the mystery of the Incarnation. The recovery of the sacramental and mystical shows that the theological roots of Pentecostalism are much deeper than its historical roots in the Holiness-Keswick traditions. This recovery is a hopeful sign that Pentecostal core beliefs can be adequately developed using sacramental and mystical resources. The recent work of Daniel Castelo (2017) has shown that Pentecostalism can indeed be understood theologically as a specific manifestation of Christian mysticism (see also Chan 2000b; 2019). With this understanding, the classical formulation of the Pentecostal doctrine of initial evidence can be reformulated without denying the theologia prima the Pentecostal forebears were trying to communicate (Chan 2011, 4–7). Only as Pentecostal churches begin to revitalize their tradition through ressourcement will they be able to preserve their Pentecostal identity. The emphasis on Pentecostal theology as mystical is a helpful step towards articulating a Pentecostal tradition.

Tradition between aggiornamento and ressourcement The contemporary Pentecostal movement is so fluid that it is often difficult to tell apart internal and external conflicts. Some classical Pentecostals have turned charismatic, embracing many of the beliefs and practices of the Third Wave like apostleship which carries “frightening implications” (Blumhofer 1993, 3), while other classical Pentecostals have clearly rejected them (Rice 2005). Historically, Pentecostals are better at aggiornamento than ressourcement. This is epitomized in their popular slogan: “God is doing a new thing!” Much of Pentecostal scholarship is focussed on engaging cultures and seeking relevance without a corresponding concern for the Pentecostal tradition (see Yun 2003, 148–49). The problem of updating without the prerequisite of retrieval is the tendency to succumb to the spirit of the age. The Third Wave is a clear example of cultural accommodation. Some may see this new charismatic movement as an ally in its rejection of secularism in the West. Ben Pugh (2017, 122), for example, gives John Wimber and Bill Johnson high marks while conceding that Johnson’s eschatology “teeters on the brink between inaugurated and realized” (119). Pugh even compares it favourably with Radical Orthodoxy. But the new charismatic movement not only lacks the sophistication and nuances of Radical Orthodoxy, it also draws from the worst features of the pre-modern by its uncritical acceptance of the animistic worldview (Priest, Mullen, and Campbell 1999) and from the worst of late modernity by reconstructing the individual in accordance with the flux and fluidity of the moment (Walker 2002). Nowhere is its capitulation to modern culture more evident than in contemporary forms of “praise and worship” (Percy 1996; Ward 2005). Tradition as a source for Pentecostal theology remains volatile and often immobilized between the demands of updating and retrieving its fundamental agreements. Pentecostal theology has only recently become attuned to the tensions between sacred and secular manifested with particular clarity in Pentecostal worship. 102

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Conclusion Pentecostalism as a tradition, historically and theologically, faces significant challenges that impact the articulation, development, and function of Pentecostal theology. The rediscovery of early Pentecostalism’s sacramental and mystical tradition in the context of an emerging ecclesiology has a profound effect on the future of Pentecostal churches and their core identity as a shared tradition. The common assumption that the Pentecostal trajectory is basically Free Church and egalitarian is perhaps relevant to a small segment of the Pentecostal world, namely, Pentecostalism in the West. For the development of the Pentecostal tradition as a whole, the best form of aggiornamento is through ressourcement.

References Althouse, Peter. 2009. “Towards a Pentecostal Ecclesiology: Participation in the Missional Life of the Triune God.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 18 (2): 230–45. Arrington, French L. 1992–1994. Christian Doctrine: A Pentecostal Perspective, 3 vols. Cleveland: Pathway. Black, Jonathan A. 2016. “The Church in the Eternal Purpose of the Triune God: Toward a Pentecostal Trinitarian Ecclesiology of Thesis Drawing on the Early Theology of the Apostolic Church in the United Kingdom.” PhD dissertation, University of Chester. Blumhofer, Edith L. 1993. Restoring the Faith: The Assemblies of God, Pentecostalism, and American Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Brusco, Elizabeth E. 1995. The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Colombia. Austin: University of Texas Press. Castelo, Daniel. 2017. Pentecostalism as a Christian Mystical Tradition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Chan, Simon. 1997. “The Language Game of Glossolalia, or Making Sense of the ‘Initial Evidence’.” In Pentecostalism in Context: Essays in Honor of William W. Menzies, edited by Wonsuk Ma and Robert P. Menzies, 80–95. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. ———. 2000a. “Mother Church: Toward a Pentecostal Ecclesiology.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 22 (1): 177–208. ———. 2000b. Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. ———. 2006. “Encountering the Triune God: Spirituality Since the Azusa Street Revival.” In The Azusa Street Revival and Its Legacy, edited by Harold D. Hunter and Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. 215–26. Cleveland: Pathway. ———. 2011. Pentecostal Ecclesiology: An Essay on the Development of Doctrine. Blandford Forum: Deo Publishing. ———. 2016. “Pentecostalism at the Crossroads.” In Global Renewal Christianity: Asian and Oceania, vol. 1, edited by Vinson Synan and Amos Yong, 379–91. Lake Mary: Charisma House. ———. 2019. “Contemplative Prayer in the Evangelical and Pentecostal Traditions: A Comparative Study.” In Embracing Contemplation: Reclaiming a Christian Spiritual Practice, edited by John H. Coe and Kyle C. Strobel. Downers Grove: IVP Academic. Clifton, Shane. 2007. “The Spirit and Doctrinal Development: A Functional Analysis of the Traditional Pentecostal Doctrine of Baptism in the Holy Spirit.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 29 (1): 5–23. Coulter, Dale M. 2014. “On Tradition, Local Traditions, and Discernment.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 36 (1): 1–3. Courey, David J. 2015. What Has Wittenberg to Do with Azusa? Luther’s Theology of the Cross and Pentecostal Triumphalism. London: T&T Clark. D’Ambrosio, Marcellino. 1991. “Ressourcement Theology, Aggiornamento, and the Hermeneutics of Tradition.” Communio 18 (4): 530–55. Fee, Gordon. 1985. “Baptism in the Holy Spirit: The Issue of Separability and Subsequence.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 7 (2): 87–99. Green, Chris E. W. 2012. Toward a Pentecostal Theology of the Lord’s Supper: Foretasting the Kingdom. Cleveland: CPT Press.

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Simon Chan ———, ed. 2016. Pentecostal Ecclesiology: A Reader. Leiden: Brill. Hayford, Jack. 1992. The Beauty of Spiritual Language, My Journey toward the Heart of God. Dallas: Word. Hocken, Peter. 2016. Azusa, Rome, and Zion: Pentecostal Faith, Catholic Reform, and Jewish Roots. Eugene: Pickwick Horton, Stanley. 1994. Systematic Theology: A Pentecostal Perspective. Springfield: Logion. Humphrey, Edith M. 2003. “One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic: Awaiting the Redemption of our Body.” In Evangelical Ecclesiology: Reality or Illusion? edited John G. Stackhouse, Jr., 135–60. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services. 2011. “Is the Gift of Tongues for Everyone?” Available at www.iccrs.org/en/doctrinal-commission-questions-and-answers, accessed 24 September 2018. Kent John. 1995. “Have We Been There Before? A Historian Looks at the Toronto Blessing.” In The Toronto Blessing—Or Is It? edited by Stanley E. Porter and Philip J. Richter, 86–103. London: Darton, Longman and Todd. Lewis, Clive Staples. 1978. Prayer: Letters to Malcolm. London: Collins. Lewis, Paul W. 2008. “Why Have Pentecostal Scholars Left Classical Pentecostal Denominations?” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 11 (1–2): 69–86. Ma, Wonsuk. 2018. “Two Tales of Emerging Ecclesiology in Asia: An Inquiry into Theological Shaping.” In The Church from Every Tribe and Tongue: Ecclesiology in the Majority World, edited by Gene L. Green, Stephen T. Pardue and K. K. Yeo, 53–73. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Macchia, Frank D. 1998. “Groans Too Deep for Words: Towards a Theology of Tongues as Initial Evidence.” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 1 (2): 1–20. ———. 2006. Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1981. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. ———. 1988. Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Macpherson, Ian. 1974. Hymns at the Holy Table. London: Evangel Press. Mahmood, Saba. 2005. The Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Martin, Bernice. 1998. “From Pre- to Postmodernity in Latin America.” In Religion, Modernity and Postmodernity, edited by Paul Heelas, 102–46. Oxford: Blackwell. McDonnell, Kilian. 1983. “The Function of Tongues in Pentecostalism.” One in Christ 19 (4): 332–54. McNair Scott, Benjamin G. 2014. Apostles Today, Making Sense of Contemporary Charismatic Apostolates: A Historical and Theological Appraisal. Eugene: Pickwick. Menzies, Robert P. 1991. The Development of Early Christian Pneumatology. Sheffield: JSOT Press. Moltmann, Jürgen. 1992. The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation. Translated by Margaret Kohl. Minneapolis: Fortress. Percy, Martyn. 1996. Words, Wonders and Power. London: SPCK. Priest, Robert J., Thomas Campbell, and Bradford A. Mullen. 1999. “Missiological Syncretism: The New Animistic Paradigm.” In Spiritual Power and Mission: Raising the Issues, edited by Edward Rommen, 9–87. Pasadena: William Carey Library. Polanyi, Michael. 1983. The Tacit Dimension. Gloucester: Peter Smith. Pugh, Ben. 2017. Bold Faith: A Closer Look at the Five Key Ideas of Charismatic Christianity. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. Rice, Edgar Lee. 2005. He Gave Apostles: Apostolic Ministry in the 21st Century. Springfield: Assemblies of God Theological Seminary. Robeck, Cecil M. Jr. 2012. “The Achievements of the Pentecostal-Catholic International Dialogue.” In Celebrating a Century of Ecumenism: Exploring the Achievements of International Dialogue, edited by John A. Radano, 163–194. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Rogers, Eugene F., Jr. 2005. After the Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatology from Resources outside the Modern West. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. St. John of the Cross. 2005. Dark Night of the Soul. Translated and edited by E. Allison Peers. New York: Image Books. Stronstad, Roger. 1984. The Charismatic Theology of St Luke. Peabody: Hendricksen. Thomas, John Christopher, ed. 2010. Toward a Pentecostal Ecclesiology: The Church and the Fivefold Gospel. Cleveland: CPT Press.

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Tradition Thomas, John Christopher, and Kimberly Ervin Alexander. 2003. “‘And the Signs are Following’: Mark 16:9–20 — A Journey into Pentecostal Hermeneutics.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 11 (2): 147–70. Walker, Andrew. 2002. “Thoroughly Modern: Sociological Reflections on the Charismatic Movement.” In Global Religious Movements in Regional Contexts, edited by John Wolffe, 197–223. Aldershot: Ashgate. Ward, Pete. 2005. Selling Worship: How What We Sing Has Changed the Church. Milton Keynes: Paternoster. Williams, Sarah C. 2014. “Evangelicals and Gender: Critiquing Assumptions.” In Global Evangelicalism: Theology, History and Culture in Regional Perspective, edited by Donald M. Lewis and Richard V. Pierard, 270–96. Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press. Woodhead, Linda. 1997. “Spiritualising the Sacred: A Critique of Feminist Theology.” Modern Theology 13 (2): 191–212. Yun, Koo Dong. 2003. Baptism in the Holy Spirit: An Ecumenical Theology of Spirit Baptism. New York: University Press of America.

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10 CULTURE Disruption, accommodation, and pneumatological resignification Néstor Medina

The contexts, beliefs, and concrete experiences and expressions surrounding the idea of “culture” are often neglected as sources in the history of Christian thought but are indispensable resources for understanding Pentecostal theology. At the same time, the concept of “culture” as we know it is inherently flawed and often ill-defined. Understanding the manner in which Pentecostals, in their multiple expressions, deal with “culture” is a complex question which few Pentecostals have engaged. On one hand, some answers may be gleaned by revisiting inherited debates on “culture.” In these debates, three key issues helpfully illuminate the complexity of the conversation. First is the contested nature of the label “culture” itself. Second are recent deliberations about the complicity of Western European and Euro-North Atlantic expressions of Christianity and missionary movements in the colonization of entire communities across the globe. A third issue is the way the debates on the relationship between the cultural realm and Christianity, Christ, and the gospel (see Chapter 20), have developed over the last century. On the other hand, part of the complexity of the question of Pentecostal theology and “culture” relates to the ways in which Pentecostals actually engage with the cultural dimension as part of their cultural traditions. In this chapter, I argue that it is important to view these engagements as threefold: Pentecostals move across a spectrum of choices, (1) sometimes displaying outright cultural disruption and (2) other times displaying great accommodation. This fluidity is unlike Richard Niebuhr’s popular notions of the “Christ-against-Culture” and “Christ-of-culture” and beyond notions of accommodation and adaptation to modernity (Droogers 2014). Yet, within the same movement, the fluid back-and-forth dynamic puts on display how (3) Pentecostal communities weave their own cultural network of relations which borrow from the available material in the larger social context and immediate cultural traditions even as they resignify them. This dynamic thus demonstrates a rich process of culturalization and cultural cross-fertilization inspired by the belief in the power of the Spirit. I begin by defining the cultural terrain before interrogating the colonial cultural heritage and inherited debates. The main portion of this essay then examines the spectrum of choices evident in Pentecostal theological reflections on the cultural domain.

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The cultural domain There exists a tension in the manner in which scholars generally engage the theological questions on the cultural domain. When scholars deploy the term “culture,” they often mean other cultural groups including other religious traditions; at other times it may refer to the larger social context or the world, or it refers to non-Christians people and societies. Many Pentecostals also display this same tendency to use “culture” to mean a number of different phenomena. For example, Michael Bergunder (2010) uses the term with no qualification including specific cultural theoretical currents. Similarly, André Droogers (2014) deploys culture to point to current “global” cultural changes like modernity, globalization, and transnationalism. However, a growing number of Pentecostal scholars from multiple cultural traditions across the globe challenge us to rethink the use and scope of this category. The uncritical and imprecise use of the label “culture” in the singular carries a selfreferential and colonializing understanding of Europeans as racially and culturally superior (Brett 1868; Tylor 1878). The now contested idea of an overarching culture—as shared by all human beings and cultural communities in the world in the same way—emerged as Europe sought to distinguish itself from the rest of the world when the European colonizers were confronted with other peoples of the world, along with their traditions (Hall 2000; Medina 2018, 98–150). The universalist perception of culture is at the root of the European assumption that the rest of the world was backwards, undeveloped, and savage (Tylor 1878; Rousseau 1761). Europeans concluded that Europe’s others had to be treated as children who needed their mature (European) sibling to (civilize or culturally) elevate them (Ginés de Sepúlveda 1951), at best, or who were reducible to brute commodities to be sold, owned, and exploited, at worst (Gilroy 1993). In light of the interrogation of the legacy of colonization, and in view of the growth of Christianity (including Pentecostals) in the global South, the notion of “culture” as a universally shared experience, and which refers almost exclusively to the larger social context, is no longer tenable. This shift, which marks an appreciation of the enormous cultural diversity of the world’s population, is in fact the result of the global South’s rejecting of European and Anglo North Atlantic colonialism while reclaiming its own voice (Medina 2018). For these and other reasons, Pentecostals would do well to use the language of the cultural domain, or of cultural realms, in the plural, as the working category to speak of the multiple forms of being and living in the world by different peoples and how these relate, impact, and condition their understanding of Christianity, Christ, and the gospel. Additionally, the cultural domain also refers to the broad range of ways and dynamics through which human groups create codes to make life meaningful and guide human activity. Though Geertz’s (1973) semiotic approach is useful, the cultural dimension goes beyond the production of meaning. Instead, the cultural realms together weave the web of relationships and connections that humans create and develop, which enables them to live life, interact with each other, their immediate environment, and the divine, all of which they change, recreate, reconfigure every moment as they live life (Medina 2018, 13–50). It is a fluid and dynamic process of constant reconfiguration. In Pentecostal contexts, the cultural realm also refers to the internal dynamics of socialization by which believers borrow “with ease” cultural elements from the communities of which they are part in order to make sense of the gospel message and to live out their Pentecostal experience. Understanding these key dynamics can help theology resignify such cultural elements.

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Interrogating the cultural colonial legacy Cultural communities and believers in the majority world have been interrogating the connections between Christianity and the Western European and Euro-North Atlantic cultural traditions. Pentecostal scholars in some contexts have begun to reflect on this question as well. For centuries, ideas of how Christianity should be lived and celebrated, and how the divine mystery must be understood and spoken about in theological language, were deeply shaped and conditioned by the Western European and Euro-North American cultural and intellectual traditions. Claims of the biological, ethnic, cultural, and intellectual (and theological) superiority of Europeans over the rest of the world were blended together in an undifferentiated hegemonic discourse, which has historically excluded the knowledge, traditions, customs, religions, peoples, and cultures from the rest of the world (see also Chapter 40). European expressions of Christianity and missions often operated as vehicles for the expansion of European cultural ideas. Thus, any Pentecostal reflection on the theological questions of the global cultural realms must confront the colonial legacy of Western Christendom. The rejection of the colonial cultural legacy becomes even more necessary as Christianity grows in the majority world, as the majority world produces its own expressions of theology, as many expressions of Christianity in the global South mirror the expressions in the global North, and most importantly, as we consider how Pentecostals engage the cultural traditions of which they are part (van de Kamp 2013; Medina 2018, 153–164). Early Pentecostal missionaries, along with their missionary zeal, also exported their cultural traditions, including their Eurocentric theological views of local cultural customs and cultural artifacts, as well as Eurocentric ideas of how to live out the Pentecostal experience. In the words of Allan Anderson (2017, 32): The early Pentecostal missionary thinkers assumed that the Gospel message and Christian theology was the same for all cultures and contexts, and so they tried to relate this “constant” Christian message to indigenous cultures. Hodges termed it the “universal” Gospel, which was “adaptable to every climate and race, and to every social and economic level.” This colonial legacy among Pentecostals must be reexamined as part of the larger inherited debates in which Pentecostal mission has developed (see Chapter 26).

Inherited cultural debates Discussions on how Pentecostals “engage” the cultural contexts are part of a larger set of debates on the relation between the cultural dimension and Christianity (Medina 2018, 151–310). Whereas some of the first scholars to engage this question insisted on a level of compatibility between these two, even while privileging the role of Christianity over the cultural context (Herridge 1888; Machen 1913), others furthered the conversation by arguing for diverse cultures as expressions of humanity’s divine imaging (Van Til 1959; Schilder 1977). Similarly, some cultural critics highlighted how the cultural fabric was designed to aid in perfecting humanity (Arnold 1890). Despite the fact that these scholars operated within a Eurocentric hierarchy of values, they nevertheless opened the door to consider the intertwined nature of “religion” (read Christianity) and the cultural contexts. These were some of the questions which Paul Tillich (1948) addressed when he considered how “religion” — which he described as ultimate concern — connected with the cultural context. And it was 108

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in order to articulate this intimate correspondence that he uttered his now classic dictum: “culture” is the form of religion and religion the content of “culture” (Tillich 1948, 16–17). As Tillich saw it, the cultural dimension attained its highest expression at the juncture at which it enables humans to comprehend their finitude even as they quest for the infinite— the ultimate concern. These are foundational theological questions. Many of the theological questions, implications and understandings of the relation between the cultural realms and Christianity, Christ, and the gospel were revisited in the work of Richard Niebuhr. However imperfect, Niebuhr (1956, 32, 259) provided a rubric for evaluating how Christians historically have interacted with, understood, and interpreted their larger cultural context. Much like earlier thinkers, Niebuhr saw the cultural domain as the result of human activity. However, he changed the debates by broadening the category “culture” as encompassing a general, universal even, phenomenon which was expressed in multiple ways and which was shared by all humans, though expressed in a wide variety of cultural traditions in the world. Despite the fact that Niebuhr’s examples remain within a Eurocentric understanding of Christian expressions, he did emphasize that the general phenomenon he called “culture” was the aspect without which humans cannot function. Many scholars have m istaken Niebuhr’s work as a blueprint for understanding the relationship between the cultural and the Christian domains, but many others have taken him to task for some of his shortfalls (Tanner 1997; Carter 2007; Carson 2008; Long 2008). With the emergence of anti-capitalists, liberationists, and post and decolonial currents, our understandings of the dynamics, conditioning power, and pastoral implications of cultural traditions on the manner in which people live their faith has changed significantly (Elizondo 1975; Gorringe 2004; Espín 2007). These recent and diverse proposals help us identify key social-cultural markers like gender (see Chapter  36), class (see Chapter 40), race (see Chapter 39), physical ability (see Chapter 32), among others, in configuring how theologians think about the cultural dimension within the Christian faith. The question of how Pentecostals engage the cultural dimension should be understood as part of these wider complex, contested, and long-standing debates on the manner in which Christianity, Christ, and the gospel relate to the cultural dimension.

Pentecostals-charismatics: moving across a spectrum of choices The Pentecostal scholar Michael Bergunder (2010) has studied the cultural question by engaging in a cultural studies analysis. He proposes that the multiple sources of “Pentecostal” revival (e.g. Mukti, Chilean, Azusa Street, etc.) should be understood more like the constitutive parts of a transnational network, which have contributed to the formation of the contemporary Pentecostal movement. Bergunder adopts a more global approach by which he retraces the sociocultural dynamics and key theological Pentecostal distinctives (e.g. tongue speaking) in operation in the formation of the movement. However, his “cultural analysis” approach does not tell us much about how different local Pentecostal communities wrestle and interact theologically with their immediate cultural and social contexts. Similar limitations are evident in André Droogers’s (2014) discussion of the cultural dimension among Pentecostals. He adopts an anthropological approach to speak of “culture” as a universal experience shared by all. As he reflects on how Pentecostals interact with their immediate cultural context, however, Droogers seems to conflate the larger social context (as culture) with people’s local cultural traditions. His question (Droogers 2014, 203), which asks how Pentecostals deal with general culture and social processes characteristic of the societies in which they operate, reveals this slippage. As a result, he makes unwarranted 109

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“global” affirmations about Pentecostals in attempting to provide something like a “global” rubric for understanding how Pentecostals engage the larger sociocultural context (Droogers 2014, 195–97) and thereby makes invisible the nuances of how multiple communities engage particular, broader social developments at the local level. We must be careful about how we expect Pentecostals to offer a truly global contribution to Christian theology. Today’s dominant theological questions and concerns relating to ethnoracial background, cultural tradition, and gender have been present among Pentecostals since the beginning (McRobert 1988; Espinosa 1999; Qualls 2018). Moreover, recent liberationist, post- and decolonial and Latina/o theological approaches demonstrate how central ethnoracial and cultural issues are in thinking theology and understanding people’s religious experiences and expressions (see Chapter 8). In what follows, I provide a sample of how Pentecostals engage in this complex process of cultural engagement moving from outright rejection and disruption of cultural traditions toward accommodation of cultural elements. However, understanding Pentecostals as inhabiting a liminal space between accommodation and disruption or continuity and discontinuity with their immediate cultural and larger social contexts is only half of the picture. As I argue in the third section, in the same move of the dynamic cultural dance between accommodation and disruption, Pentecostal communities are actually engaged in complex processes of cultural reconfiguration and resignification.

Disruption Stereotypes concerning the disruption and break of Pentecostal with the larger social context have varied from social anomie (Willems 1967) to return to medieval feudal social relations or even attitudes of social escapism (Lalive d’Epinay 1968; Martin 2011). Others have claimed that the break with the larger social context also includes a break with modernity. Pentecostal communities on the ground do not adopt their own “style of modernity” (Droogers 2014, 196) but break from it even while taking advantage of the present globalization networks to become a transnational movement (Vásquez and Marquardt 2003; Garrard-Burnett 2004). The focus on prayer, miracles, the oral tradition, an interpretation of history as receiving its impulse and direction by God, an emphasis on needing the power of the Holy Spirit to understand the divine mystery, the rejection of individualism by situating the person in community, and the primacy of faith as opposed to reason as central tenet, helps us appreciate how Pentecostals construct their own sphere of meaning-making in ways that radically undermine modernity’s positivism. At a more local cultural level, conversion to Pentecostalism often requires a radical break in lifestyle including from one’s previous religious affiliations (Droogers 2014, 204). In many contexts where there is a culture of gang violence, Pentecostals become an alternative to a life and culture of violence; a radical break with the previous lifestyle and culture ensures the safety of the newly converted (Brenneman 2011). The Maya in the countryside of Guatemala and the indigenous communities in Alaska stand against their indigenous, ancestral religious practices encouraging new believers to abandon those practices (Green 1999; Dombrowski 2001). Yet the relation with indigenous, ancestral religious practices is more nuanced. In fact, Pentecostals often travel well in “parts where people are attentive to the workings of spiritual beings” (Lindhardt 2017, 50). But the corresponding beliefs and practices are not entirely rejected. Despite all that can be said of the cultural rupture which Pentecostals undergo upon conversion, an overemphasis on discontinuity with local cultural traditions and the larger social contexts paints a limited and distorted image of how Pentecostals engage and navigate their cultural contexts. 110

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Cultural accommodation A tension can be identified as Pentecostals stand in between breaking with the larger social context or local cultural traditions and accommodating cultural elements that help them to articulate themselves and their Pentecostal experience. Though the fundamental theological underpinnings may remain relatively static, on the ground there is greater fluidity of the manner in which Pentecostals interact with their immediate cultural traditions. Westman (2013) identifies this ambiguity. Responding to Dombrowski (2001), he notes that Cree Pentecostals in Alberta are not irrevocably “against” their traditional cultures. What actually happens is that at times they seem to “accept” and at times they seem to “reject . . . the traditional cultural context or given cosmological principles” (143). Cree Pentecostals use Pentecostalism as an interpretive frame and practical alternative to less preferred aspects of their own culture, which are perceived as running against the Christian faith. More precisely, since the cultural domain points to the dimensions that shape and condition the manner in which people create meaning, understand reality, and interact with each other, the environment, and the divine, it should not come as a surprise that Pentecostals’ particular expressions are deeply embedded in and carry elements of the cultural traditions to which people belong. For example, Inuit Pentecostals in Qikiqtarjuaq—a small region in Nunavut—are “enacting their culture in a manner consistent with their understanding of Christianity . . . not opposing the two” (Westman 2013, 151). Admittedly, shamanism and animism are often condemned as anathema by many Pentecostals, but that does not mean that people have in fact abandoned their allegiance to indigenous practices nor that they have broken with inherited religious traditions (Green 1999). In fact, the relation between Pentecostals and their cultural traditions is so intimate that they unwittingly carry elements from the larger cultural context to which they belong in their expressions. This reality is especially evident among indigenous communities all over  the world, from African Independent Pentecostals, to “Inuit Pentecostalism in Quaqtaq, Québec, [which] bears the imprint of Inuit Shamanism” (Westman 2013, 150), to the h idden African cultural and religious traditions that have made their home in Puerto R ican Pentecostals (Cruz 2005). In other words, the Pentecostal experience is deeply immersed in people’s cultural traditions (Medina 2018, 13–50). We see this back-and-forth dynamic also among Latina/o Pentecostals whereby Pentecostal ethics, theology, and hermeneutics are inconceivable without drawing on Latina/o cultural tradition and customs (Villafañe 1993; Soliván 1996; Medina 2015), as well as among Pentecostal British Jamaicans (Beckford 2000). Moreover, we know that Pentecostals, since their inception, have adopted inherited cultural patriarchal structures—and projected those beliefs onto the biblical text—which has prevented women from flourishing and developing their talents as leaders within the movement (Chapman 2004; Espinosa 2009; Castleberry 2017). In some contexts, some churches remain silent even in the presence of physical and sexual abuse (Castro 1989). Feminist scholars remind us that what is afoot is an all-out structural control of women’s minds, bodies, and sexuality. For our purposes, questions of gender among Pentecostals, particularly the manner in which women encounter great obstacles to their flourishing in various positions of leadership, are directly connected to the degree with which these communities accommodate the Pentecostal experience to their immediate cultural contexts and traditions and what the attitudes toward women are in those contexts. As I will argue in the next section, gender issues remain contested among Pentecostals. Finally, political participation and the embracing of the capitalist ethos are two aspects that can help us elucidate how Pentecostals engage local cultural traditions and dynamics 111

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in the form of accommodation. More political participation among Pentecostals seems to be the result of a self-appreciation as having come of age and of being ready to enter the political arena as full citizens (Sepúlveda 2006). In Guatemala, for example, the Pentecostal involvement in politics has contributed to a shift in their eschatological orientation from premillennial perspectives toward a post-millennial position (Medina 2016). In other contexts, political involvement has contributed to sustained attempts to influence the direction of an entire country as in the case of Brazil, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa Rica (Steigenga 2001; O’Neill 2010), to name a few. Admittedly, many churches are adopting a capitalist ethos. Droogers and others appropriately highlight the various ways in which Pentecostals have become adept at taking advantage of the infrastructure of capitalist economic exchanges and globalizing markets for the benefit of expanding their reach as a “successful” transnational movement and a valid option in the religious market place (Medina and Alfaro 2015). Pentecostals have not only become adept at crossing physical borders, they have also become savvy at utilizing social media, telecommunications, and transportation technologies to strengthen and preserve transnational networks. The commodification of the pentecostal experience can be seen in the way the capitalist ethos has crept in by way of an embracing of the prosperity gospel (Matos 2002; Attanasi and Yong 2012). And in other contexts, an overemphasis on membership numbers, a focus on social upward mobility, and the adoption of Anglo North American cultural traits and liturgical style put on display how the capitalist value system and notions of success are translated into spiritual success, particularly among mega-churches (Holland 2011; Medina Bermejo 2014). These aspects provide a sampling of how Pentecostals interact with their immediate cultural and social contexts. Pentecostals do not entirely reject local cultures but selectively choose elements to accommodate to in order to articulate the “Pentecostal” logic. In so doing, they unwittingly ensure the survival and expansion of the movement.

Dynamic resignification The rise of globalization, increased urbanization, the emergence of mega-cities, and improved communications and media technology have contributed to the spread of Pentecostalism across the world. Yet it would be a mistake to conclude that Pentecostal theology simply “reflects the characteristics of the worldwide global change” (Droogers 2014, 212). As Pentecostalism continues to change and expand among immigrant communities in the global North and increase in the global South, the rich cultural tapestry of the majority world is contributing to shaping and reshaping, configuring and reconfiguring, how the Pentecostal experience is lived and articulated theologically in those different contexts. Global migration in both directions, transnational connections, and “reverse” missions are also contributing enormously to this mix, making the various expressions of Pentecostalism from the global South present in the northern hemisphere. One of the particularly attractive characteristics of Pentecostalism in the world is its capacity to articulate itself through cultural elements of local cultural traditions. This characteristic has given the movement the impetus and dynamism to move across peoples, boundaries, cultures, knowledges, customs, and traditions. Pentecostalism (and more generally Christianity in the southern hemisphere) has entered into a complex, rich, and multilayered process of reconfiguration and resignification. These communities engage in a borrowing process of cultural elements that resonate with the Pentecostal experience in order to articulate themselves even while rejecting elements of those same cultural traditions. As they engage in that borrowing process, Pentecostals establish new relations with the larger social context 112

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and local cultural traditions in ways that go beyond simple dualistic models for Pentecostal theology: hard-and-fast antithetical framings, on one hand, or wholesale embracing of cultural traditions, on the other. Instead, Pentecostal theology enters a deeper level of contested interaction, resignification, and cross-fertilization of cultural values and symbols, which end up transforming local cultural traditions. This unintended transformation is the outcome of living out the Pentecostal experience and how Pentecostals imagine this experience in relation with the Holy Spirit. I conclude by offering a few examples of the discussion on the cultural domain that illustrate the continuing need for further development and refinement of Pentecostal theological reflections on the cultural realms.

Conclusion The cultural domain is a significant resource for Pentecostal theology. Pentecostal theological reflections on the cultural dimension engage with a range of responses from disruption to accommodation to resignification. Among cultural traditions, where beliefs of ancestor worship, nature spirits, spiritual rituals, and shamans are common, a wholesale rejection of cultural traditions does not often take place. Theologically, those spiritual beliefs and practices are often resignified as part of the presence of evil and the domain of the devil (see Chapter 30). Such re-interpretation and reconfiguration of the symbolic spiritual world is then relocated in the light of the power of the Spirit and the spiritual battle in which Pentecostals find themselves. The question of women and gender concerns is a clear indication of how Pentecostals move beyond surface accommodation and into reconfiguration. Though there are reasons to be concerned about how Pentecostals reproduce patriarchal structures, it would be a mistake to think that women are ever passively accepting their condition of oppression and submission. Some commentators argue that women have engaged in an internal cultural change within their church communities (Arróliga 1989; González 1992; Brusco 1995; Nadar 2004). Some women scholars have also argued how in a climate of being “anointed by the Spirit,” women are elevated within their immediate church communities and their larger cultural context and gain significant religious and cultural power (Lorentzen and Mira 2005; Castleberry 2017). As a result of how Pentecostals interact with the larger social and cultural contexts, inherited gender roles are changing, even though the discourse of women’s submissive role seems to remain intact (Santos 2012; Medina 2015). These few examples show that cultural processes in terms of gender among Pentecostals are not stagnant. Present theological configurations, however, are always the result of the active engagement and agency of Pentecostals with the larger social context and local cultural communities. The way in which Pentecostals negotiate their relationship with the larger social context and immediate cultural tradition is evident in Pentecostal responses to questions of social change. Pentecostal theology is often discounted as having no interest in social issues (see Chapter 40). Such a perspective is sorely mistaken, since Pentecostals have often been instrumental in helping people out of alcoholism, drug abuse, prostitution, gang affiliation, and other social maladies. We also know that the majority of Pentecostals have been and continue to be socially and economically poor. Yet many of these churches have begun to enter their social context in order to change social structures (Campos 2001; Lindhardt 2012). Though Miller and Yamamori (2007) overstate their claim concerning the “vacuum” left by liberation theology, there is no denying that among Pentecostals there is a growing segment of people committed to social change as an offshoot of their own Pentecostal experience of the Spirit. 113

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My point is that as Pentecostals engage in the process of reconfiguration, cultural codes of poverty and relations are negotiated and recalibrated. Instead of relaunching and preserving inherited social and cultural norms and practices, in some contexts an affirmation of people as “children of God” and “baptized in the Spirit” results in the dignification of believers, particularly the socially and culturally disenfranchised (Campos 2001; Maduro 2009). To be declared “a child of God baptized in the Spirit” carries within itself a profoundly culturally transforming power both of the immediate culture as well as the larger social context. In this and other aspects, Pentecostals enter into a complex in-depth process of creative cultural resignification and, in so doing, in transforming the cultural traditions of which they are part. In that same process, their own theological tradition is transformed.

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Néstor Medina ———. 2018. Christianity, Empire, and the Spirit: (Re)Configuring Faith and the Cultural. Leiden: Brill. Medina, Néstor, and Sammy Alfaro, eds. 2015. Pentecostals and Charismatics in Latin America and Latino Communities. Christianity and Renewal – Interdisciplinary Studies Series. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Miller, Donald E., and Tetsunao Yamamori. 2007. Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Nadar, Sarojini. 2004. “On Being the Pentecostal Church: Pentecostal Women’s Voices and Visions.” The Ecumenical Review 56 (3): 354. Niebuhr, H. Richard. 1956. Christ and Culture. New York: Harper and Row. O’Neill, Kevin Lewis. 2010. City of God: Christian Citizenship in Postwar Guatemala. Berkeley: University of California Press. Qualls, Joy E. A. 2018. God Forgive Us for Being Women: Rhetoric, Theology, and the Pentecostal Tradition. Eugene: Pickwick. Rousseau, Jean Jacques. 1761. A Discourse Upon the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality Among Mankind. London: R. and J. Dodsley. Santos, José Leonardo. 2012. Evangelicalism and Masculinity: Faith and Gender in El Salvador. Plymouth: Lexington Books. Schilder, Klaas. 1977. Christ and Culture. Translated by G. van Rongen and W. Helder. Winnipeg: Premier Printing LTD. Sepúlveda, Juan. 2006. “Future Perspectives for Latin American Pentecostalism.” International Review of Mission 87 (345): 189–95. Soliván, Samuel. 1996. “Sources of a Hispanic / Latino American Theology: A Pentecostal Perspective.” In Hispanic / Latino Theology: Challenge and Promise, edited by Ada María Isasi-Díaz and Fernando F. Segovia, 134–50. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Steigenga, Timothy J. 2001. The Politics of the Spirit: The Political Implications of Pentecostalized Religion in Costa Rica and Guatemala. New York: Lexington Books. Tanner, Kathryn. 1997. Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology. Guides to Theological Inquiry Series. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Tillich, Paul. 1948. The Protestant Era. Translated with a concluding essay by James Luther Adams. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1974. Teología de la cultura y otros ensayos. Trans. Landro Wolfson. Edited by Robert Kimball. Buenos Aires: Amorrortu Editores. Tylor, Edward B. 1878. Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization. Boston: Estes & Lauriat. van de Kamp, Linda. 2013. “South-South Transnational Spaces of Conquest: Afro-Brazilian Pentecostalism, Feitiçaria and the Reproductive Domain in Urban Mozambique.” Exchange 42: 243–365. Van Til, Henry R. 1959. The Calvinistic Concept of Culture. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House. Vásquez, Manuel A., and Marie Friedmann Marquardt. 2003. Globalizing the Sacred: Religion Across the Americas. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Villafañe, Eldin. 1993. The Liberating Spirit: Toward an Hispanic American Pentecostal Social Ethic. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Westman, Clinton N. 2013. “Pentecostalism and Indigenous Culture in North North America.” Anthropologica 55: 141–56. Willems, Emilio. 1967. Followers of the New Faith. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.

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11 WORSHIP Embodying the encounter with God Michael Wilkinson

It is not uncommon for Pentecostals to be portrayed in various states of worship by insiders and outsiders, the sympathetic, and the antagonistic. These forms of worship can be observed in denominational magazines, articles in national newspapers, and on the covers of scholarly books. The worshipping Pentecostal is represented in different ways but often located in a congregation with arms raised upwards to heaven. Sometimes the person is in a state of ecstasy, speaking in tongues, and laying on the floor. Worshippers can be engaged in dance with flags waving to the sounds of a contemporary band, singing songs of God’s everlasting love. Worshippers appear to be attuned to one another as they sway back and forth enjoying intimacy with God. It is worship that is full of emotion and can be observed with tears, laughter, and joy. Worship is expressive, and bodies are engaged as Pentecostals claim to be healed, transformed, and one with God. All representations suggest that worship is not only important for Pentecostals but central to who they are, how they understand God, themselves, and the world in which they live. In this chapter, I suggest that Pentecostal theology is itself a reflection upon worship, which is the encounter between those who gather together and the focus of their engagement: God. It is the Holy Spirit who activates and energizes the experience of worship. It is the attention given to Jesus, the exemplar for Pentecostals that transforms the worshipper. Worship is kinaesthetic, therapeutic, and socially engaged. This chapter offers a phenomenological and sociological framework for interpreting Pentecostal worship, which is the basis for theological reflection and self-understanding. What follows is a description and explanation of Pentecostalism that is informed by ritual, emotion, and experience as embodied worship. The origin of Pentecostal theology is located at the intersection of worship and the ensuing reflection on that activity. I begin with an overview of Pentecostal embodiment before discussing worship as a source of theology through kinaesthetic, spiritual, and bodily interaction. I close with observations on the significance of a theology steeped in worship as therapeutic and a source for social engagement.

Embodiment, ritual, and the social Pentecostalism is often defined as a bodily and experiential religion that is characterized by healing, speaking in tongues, dreams and visions, fasting, foot washing, exorcism, and encounters with the Holy Spirit that serve to motivate followers to act in specific ways (Burgess 117

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and McGee 1988; Cox 1995; Poloma 2003; Miller 2013). One of the issues with defining Pentecostalism as a bodily religion is the assumption that other religions lack some bodily form, or conversely, that Pentecostalism is void of theological reflection (see Chapter 31). This assumption is problematic because it neglects the vast amount of theological work that is published on Pentecostalism as well as the embodied nature common to all religions. All religions are characterized by embodiment, but, for researchers of Pentecostalism, attention must be given to the specific ways in which the body expresses beliefs, practices, and sentiments. There is a growing body of literature in the social sciences since the 1990s about the body and religion. Some of the most influential works include those of Bryan Turner (1983, 1996), Anthony Giddens (1991), Philip Mellor and Chris Shilling (1997, 2014), Thomas Csordas (2002), Randall Collins (2004), Chris Shilling (2005), and Olie Riis and Linda Woodhead (2010). The body has received much attention especially in the areas of sexuality, gender, disability studies, health and illness, death, and emotions. However, very little social scientific work has examined Pentecostalism, the body, and embodiment. Some research on Pentecostalism has explored the theological implications of worship and its integrating role for orthodoxy, orthopraxy, and orthopathy (Land 1993), the role of ritual (Albrecht 1999), and the sacramental nature of Pentecostal experience (Tomberlin 2010; Vondey and Green 2010). One other important study is an edited volume by Wilkinson and Althouse (2017), where a number of chapters highlight the social, cultural, and theological implications of Pentecostal practices, including an analysis of Pentecostal theology and the body by Vondey (2017a, 102–19). From this literature derive a number of assumptions that shape my analysis of worship, the body, and embodiment by bringing Pentecostal theology in conversation with contemporary sociology. The first assumption that shapes the analysis in this chapter revolves around the idea of embodiment. The sociologist Bryan Turner (1996) argues that bodies are not simply physical entities, but they are also cultural (see Chapter 10). Embodiment focusses on those cultural aspects of the body which include how bodies interact with one another, in different social settings, and across social institutions. There are some general questions the literature raises that can be examined in Pentecostal studies, including the character of the Pentecostal body, how the body is portrayed, the ways in which a Pentecostal body is formed, and the social and cultural importance of Pentecostal bodies. These general questions are shaped by the theoretical assumptions about embodiment and specifically about how bodies are culturally constructed in religious settings, and furthermore, how bodies transport those experiences from religious settings into everyday life. A second assumption related to embodiment is ritual and the role rituals play in shaping Pentecostal bodies. The sociologist Randall Collins (2004) argues that social life is characterized by a series of everyday human interactions that he calls interactional rituals, which can vary from the most mundane, such as eating food, to those activities surrounding more broadly shared civic holidays. Interactional rituals assume some physical assembly of a group of people who share awareness, activity, and emotional energy produced through the interaction and prolonged through ongoing social engagement. The attention given to one another through interactional rituals not only creates emotional energy but also sustains it through a high level of attunement and entrainment. This sustained energy has the effect of carrying the experiences from interactional rituals beyond the face-to-face interaction into other areas of social life. In other words, the emotion experienced in bodies is cultural and has the capacity to be carried by the participants from one setting to another, from the religious to the social. 118

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The third assumption is that Pentecostal bodies are constructed in a particular place and time. For example, Mellor and Shilling (2014) direct our attention to the ways in which religions are shaped by a range of embodied practices in societies that are increasingly secularized. The authors argue that what is often missing from the literature in the secularization debates is the body. However, the body may be one of the most important sites for observing the contested nature of secular society. Observing the body may tell researchers something about the sacred but also the secular. The implication is that Pentecostal worship tells us something about how Pentecostal bodies are constructed, how worship is shared and carried from one social setting to another. Moreover, Pentecostal worship also offers insight into the nature of the sacred as well as the secular. The study of worship among Pentecostals is not simply about understanding what they believe about God but also about the world that Pentecostals inhabit and the possibilities of that world. The fourth assumption revolves around the theological attention given to questions about the relationship between Pentecostalism and bodies, most notably the relationship between beliefs, practices, and emotions. For example, the work of Steven Land (1993) is especially important for its theologizing about the relationship between orthodoxy (right beliefs), orthopraxy (right practices), and orthopathy (right affections). Land’s argument is that Pentecostal spirituality integrates beliefs, practices, and the affections (23). His analysis of the affections is meant to counter the dualism between orthodoxy and orthopraxy by constructing a theological place for orthopathy. The body plays an important role for Land in his analysis where he describes how worship is the site for the expression of Pentecostal spirituality (35). Worship, however, is not simply about Pentecostal practices that are oriented around specific beliefs. Rather, for Land, the affections are incorporated into beliefs and practices, each mutually reinforcing the other (41). The implication is that Pentecostal bodies are not simply emotive or emotional in a way that is separate from beliefs and practices. Rather, affections, and their bodily practices through activities like prayer, are theological expressions of Pentecostalism. These theoretical assumptions point to the importance of reading the body as a site for understanding Pentecostal worship. Pentecostal worship locates the interaction of individuals within particular social contexts and theological interpretations. Furthermore, theological interpretations in the form of doctrines or systematic beliefs are embodied in communities of worship and mutually reinforced through ongoing practice and the affections. These beliefs, practices, and affections serve to animate the structures and culture of Pentecostal organizations and individuals. Pentecostal worship is also an encounter between bodies and the collective spirit that engages the Holy Spirit and other spirits. Pentecostal worship engages bodies where the therapeutic, most notably healing, occurs. And finally, Pentecostal worship socially engages the everyday life of the community and the society, most notably in our current contemporary world, a secularizing impulse that attempts to contain Pentecostal worship as a private matter and hence challenges its authority in the public realm. The following observations serve to expand on these points with examples that illustrate the role of Pentecostal worship in contemporary church and society.

Worship as kinaesthetic interaction The primary theological implication of the kinaesthetic body is that human beings learn through the experience and practice of religious rituals. More specifically, the various activities that Pentecostals engage in, which are deemed worship, are ritualized and, in turn, socialize the worshipper into something else (ecclesially and theologically). Pentecostal bodies 119

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are formed not so much through the cognitive theological understanding of what it means to be a worshipper but through theological practice. This distinction does not undermine the cognitive, which focusses on the level of belief. Rather, it points to the mutuality of belief and practice highlighting the interplay between the two for Pentecostal theology. Individuals become Pentecostals through the practice of particular activities that shape the body. The Pentecostal body, in turn, embodies the cultural assumptions and theological beliefs about the practice. The key questions here are: What role do Pentecostal worship practices play in shaping Pentecostalism? How is Pentecostalism embodied? What is a Pentecostal body? And how do these dimensions influence Pentecostal theology? John Arnott, the charismatic leader of the Toronto Blessing (now known as Catch the Fire) that began in the 1990s, once quipped in a worship service that the chief end of human beings is to worship God (Wilkinson and Althouse 2014). It was not clear if he knew he was quoting from the Westminster Confession, but what was of interest was his following statements. Arnott went on to describe a type of worship that was characterized by fun, playfulness, and the experience of joy found in the love of the Father. Worshippers were encouraged to dance and sing before a loving Father who took pleasure in their freedom to enjoy God’s presence. What followed was an energetic and emotive expression of worship that included singing, glossolalia, laughter, and people laying on the floor of the auditorium, some appearing to rest peacefully, while others gathered around one another engaged in prayer that included bodies freely embracing bodies. Arnott saw this type of worship as celebration but one that was also clearly rooted in his understanding of what bodies looked like when they were engaged in worship. It was tactile, emotive, energetic, and kinaesthetic with bodies fully engaged in interaction with one another. Another example of worship as kinaesthetic interaction is through a particular ritual that Catch the Fire promoted called soaking prayer (Wilkinson and Althouse 2014). Soaking prayer was practised by participants in a variety of settings including large worship gatherings, in local congregations as a regular weekly practice, in smaller groups in homes, and individually. Regardless of the setting, the practice was the same. Participants would find a comfortable place to rest, which may be on the floor of a church building, a chair, or sofa. Pillows and blankets would be unveiled from discrete bags that participants carried with them, and the lights would be turned down. Sometimes a Psalm would be read but always with music playing, which was in the form of a melodic style either with piano, synthesizer, or guitar. The music could be live but in homes was typically recorded from one of the many worship leaders. There were favourites including people like Julie True. Her songs like “Breathe You In” were not your traditional congregational songs but represented another style of worship music that was often an extended version of mostly music, repetitive short lyrics, and on occasion a spontaneous verse that encouraged worshippers to enjoy the love of the Father or to rest in God’s presence (Althouse and Wilkinson 2015). In home settings, following about an hour of soaking prayer, participants were encouraged to discuss what the Spirit was doing in their lives. Participants regularly described the experiences they had in a bodily way. For example, one participant talked about the experience of a heavy weight felt on his chest while resting on the floor. It was described as God laying hands on his body. Another participant described the sensation of a unique floral smell which was interpreted as the presence of God. Some participants described what they experienced as a physical healing within their bodies or some type of emotional healing as they experienced a loving presence that allowed them to love others where relationship was broken. Some participants described times of soaking with the experience of dreams and visions often with highly detailed pictures and colours. Many participants described the experience 120

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with a focus on changes in their breathing, which contributed to the relaxation of their own breath and also with interpretations that focussed on a deep-patterned restful breathing where they were lost in God’s presence. All of these examples illustrate bodily experiences of worship that are kinaesthetic where participants interact with the bodies of other worshippers, senses, emotions, expectations, and experiences that are given explanations within a particular emotional regime (Riis and Woodhead 2010). The theological consequences may include reflections in the form of meditation and prayer, or testimonies that tell stories of what was experienced, to more formal theological work that accounts for some meaning given to worship. These perceptions may lead to some reflection on human interaction with God, God’s presence, the actions of the Holy Spirit, or the nature of salvation, sanctification, and healing (Vondey 2017b).

Worship, spirit(s), and bodies The second example for understanding the significance of Pentecostal worship focusses on the spiritual and bodily interaction of individuals with what are deemed to be either the Holy Spirit or evil spirits. Phenomenologically, the experiences are quite different but similar in that the body encounters what is believed to be another “being” that is in the form of a spirit, either as Holy Spirit or evil spirit. The first example described below is historical and from an early North American Pentecostal meeting, while the second is a contemporary ethnographic study of Pentecostalism in the Caribbean. In 1907, Charles Chawner was attending the Hebden Mission in Toronto. He was part of a new group of Christians who were praying for revival and the baptism of the Holy Spirit. In 1906, Ellen Hebden had opened her Faith Mission home for prayer and healing. She was praying for God to give her a greater ability to pray for healing, when she said God spoke to her and the answer was tongues. Hebden said she responded to God and rejected tongues but soon relented and asked God to forgive her and that any gift from God would be something she would accept. Hebden described what followed as a baptism of the Holy Spirit where she encountered God in a new way that led her to speak in languages she had never learned and to be empowered for ministry in a way she had never experienced. Chawner, a self-described Methodist who was “cold” in his faith, was drawn to Hebden and sought this same experience. Describing what followed, Chawner said: About 2nd of February, 1907, as I was in prayer, I felt a shock go through me that shook me like a leaf. I was made to laugh and cry by turns, to feel myself under a mighty power, shaking different parts of my body, sometimes the whole frame, at the same time feeling such an inexpressible joy that I was dealt with thus; on the third day I saw in a vision numbers of dark faces on the hillside and I among them, and through my own lips a message was given to me that I should be among them, bidding me not to tarry long in one place, that there was much land to be possessed, and Jesus was returning soon. (in Wilkinson 2010, 47) Of note here is what Chawner describes when his body felt what he perceived to be a shock that shook him. What followed was not something that brought him fear but the opposite, so that he laughed, cried, and experienced what he called joy. He also goes on to describe a vision he had of people in a far-away place that needed to hear the message (Wilkinson 2010). Chawner’s bodily experience was so thoroughly convincing for him that it was described as baptism of the Holy Spirit to which he must respond. The encounter was so consequential 121

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that Chawner left for Africa where he served as a missionary for the rest of his life. Chawner continued to practise this form of Pentecostal worship on a consistent basis and often spoke about fixed times of prayer where he would not act until he was clearly told by the Holy Spirit to travel to specific towns or to pray for people or preach. Chawner’s autobiographical stories recount numerous events where some miraculous activity occurred but always in relation to a bodily encounter with the empowering Holy Spirit through daily prayer. The point here is that these bodily encounters are theologically explained in a doctrinal form as Spirit baptism (see Chapter 23), and furthermore, the experience is culturally embodied among participants who logically follow the beliefs through daily living (see Chapter 10). It is the Holy Spirit who baptizes them and is bodily experienced. The experience itself is then embodied and also a carrier of the culture of Pentecostal worship (from Toronto to South Africa). Pentecostals, however, not only encounter the Holy Spirit but also engage other spirits that are considered to be unholy, and bodies are regularly the site for this experience as well (see Chapter 30). Peter Marina (2016) describes an encounter between a Caribbean Pentecostal pastor, known as “Bishop,” and a woman during a church gathering where it was believed she was manifesting an evil spirit in her body. The setting was a congregational worship service where Marina describes how a woman began crying out and screeching with a terrifying voice. Bishop interpreted this as an evil spirit and that the woman who was writhing about the room, body contorted with loud crying, needed to have the evil spirit exorcised. Bishop engaged the evil spirit and asked for its name to be revealed so that he could cast it out. However, according to Marina, the evil spirit would not say what its name was, which only made the pastor and the congregation more engaged as they gathered around her and called upon Jesus to deliver the woman of the evil spirit. During the encounter the woman fell to the ground only to be lifted up by those who were trying to exorcise the evil spirit from her. Bishop continued to command the evil spirit to leave “in the name of Jesus,” which was followed by the woman coughing, foaming at the mouth, and spitting up. In this case, it was explained that she was delivered of the evil spirit through prayer that exorcised the evil spirit leaving the woman to be filled with the Holy Spirit. These examples serve to describe two important aspects of Pentecostal worship that are bodily and embodied resources for Pentecostal theology. The Holy Spirit and evil spirits are perceived and experienced in bodies but are also part of the cultural repertoire that is embodied by Pentecostals. The presence of a Holy Spirit or an evil spirit is encountered in bodies. Not only is the experience felt, but the emotion of the embodied experience is also carried among participants beyond the encounter and socializes Pentecostals in such a way that it is real and consequential as an element of Pentecostal worship. The embodied dimension of Pentecostal worship informs Pentecostal theology and specific doctrines such as salvation, sanctification, Spirit baptism, healing, and deliverance through bodies and the use of hands to anoint, voices for speaking, and ears for hearing (Vondey 2017b). These experiences and practices are dominant sources for Pentecostal spirituality (see Chapter 3), and the pneumatological imagination (see Chapter 14), in particular, and inform more widely Pentecostal practical theology (see Chapter 15) and Pentecostal liturgy (see Chapters 16 and 29). The effects of Pentecostal worship are not only pedagogical and formative but also therapeutic.

Worship and the therapeutic One of the characteristics of Pentecostalism is the therapeutic dimension of worship where participants report some form of healing and transformation. Healing is claimed to be experienced in the body where broken bones are restored, cancers removed, and organs repaired. 122

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Healing is also claimed to be emotional where participants experience forgiveness and peace and reduced levels of anxiety and depression. Healing, writes Candy Gunther Brown (2011, 3), is global and distinguishes Pentecostalism from all other forms of Christianity. The healing of bodies is believed to be a sign of God’s interaction and intervention, a message preached by Pentecostals, practised in local congregations, and articulated in personal beliefs. Worship embodies beliefs, practices, and sentiments that are therapeutic and, for Pentecostals, something that is expected and normalized in everyday life. Theology and worship mutually inform one another. The following examples illustrate this point. In a gathering in Vancouver, British Columbia, John Arnott of Catch the Fire was speaking about the relationship between healing and forgiveness (see Wilkinson and Althouse 2014). Following his sermon, Arnott received a “word of knowledge,” a form of communication from God about specific people in attendance who needed healing. Arnott spoke to those in attendance saying that God wanted to heal someone and that they needed to come forward so he could pray for them. A middle-aged woman responded and came forward believing that she was the person Arnott was to pray for. As Arnott interviewed her, he asked a few questions about the nature of her problem for which she responded that a car accident many years ago continued to bother her leaving her with pain in her back. Arnott asked her if she had forgiven the person who caused the accident to which the woman responded, no, and that she still blamed the person for her pain. He explained to her and those in attendance that, often, physical pain is related to the emotional, including the inability to forgive. The cause of her physical pain, he said, was not simply the car accident but the resentment she held in her body. If she was to experience healing, he had to pray for her to experience God’s forgiveness and ask her to forgive the offender, and then God could also heal her back. Arnott’s prayer focussed on the grace and love of the Father who forgives and heals, restores relationships, and bodies. Healing, said Arnott, is not about five easy steps or coercing God to do something but about accepting the free gift of a God who finds joy and pleasure in healing. Following his prayer, the woman claimed she had forgiven the person who caused the accident and that her back was relieved of pain. This example shows an important interaction between Pentecostal theology and the therapeutic where bodies are holistically healed and restored. Arnott writes: Is there a relationship between forgiveness and healing? I believe there is. For several years now, Carol and I have seen multitudes of people all over the world healed as they worked through unresolved pain and learn to forgive those who have hurt them. Sometimes they need to forgive themselves for things they have done in the past that they cannot seem to forget … But when people forgive themselves and others, powerful emotional healing comes to them as they step into the grace and mercy of God. As we pray for emotional healing, it is common to see wonderful physical healings take place in the wake of forgiveness. (in Wilkinson 2017, 28) Arnott’s view of healing is one view among Pentecostals, and theologically there are variations (see Chapter 24). However, what healing demonstrates is the ritual performance of enacting bodily healing by invoking God to interact and intervene. Healing is an emotionally charged activity that participants experience in worship contexts but also perceive as an act of worship. Pentecostals embody a culture of therapeutic healing not only at the level of belief, but also in practice that includes a range of sentiments experienced by participants. The experience of healing is a context for Pentecostal theology that links together the physical 123

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and emotional or orthopraxy and orthopathy for reflection on orthodoxy. While the healing itself is important for analysis alone, healing theologically is linked for Pentecostals to other beliefs about salvation and restoration more broadly.

Worship as social engagement Pentecostal bodies are also socially engaged bodies that offer service in numerous faith-based settings from shelters to soup kitchens, prisons, orphanages, as well as environmental lobby groups, pro-life activism, and anti-racism groups. Donald Miller and Tetsunao Yamamori (2007) describe world-wide Pentecostal action as progressive Pentecostalism to capture the various ways in which Pentecostals are socially engaged through congregations and social ministries. Progressive Pentecostalism, argue Miller and Yamamori, describes the holistic response to social needs. Progressive Pentecostalism also highlights an important emphasis in Pentecostal worship that illustrates what the authors call the “S-factor” or the empowering work of the Holy Spirit in and through Pentecostals as they attempt to address the needs of people. Miller and Yamamori argue that Progressive Pentecostalism represents a long line of Christian social engagement (see Chapter 40) from the social gospel work of early twentieth-century Protestants in the United States to the liberation theology of Roman Catholics in Latin America. However, Pentecostalism, in spite of its claims to be a unifying force, has had to deal with the forces of racism (see Chapter 39), colonialism (see Chapter 10), and gender inequality (see Chapter 36). In American society, Pentecostal bodies that were defined by race and separated into white churches and black churches illustrate how racism is rooted in Pentecostal notions of the body but also the possibilities for social change. While worshiping Pentecostals historically met in different settings and administrated separate organizations throughout the twentieth century, the rhetoric of racial reconciliation was highlighted in a meeting of white and black Pentecostals in Memphis, in 1994, to seek forgiveness and to dismantle racially separated Pentecostal organizations (Rosenior 2010). The practice of foot washing employed at the meeting embodied theological beliefs and sentiments around reconciliation and reflected more broadly notions of Pentecostal spirituality (Thomas 2014). However, while the hope for unity and racial reconciliation continues, black Pentecostalism and its unique practices offer other possibilities for being Pentecostal and human in a racially charged America (Crawley 2017). Indigenous Pentecostals are also exploring new economic and political possibilities of being Pentecostal and what that means for a socially engaged indigenous Pentecostal body in America (Clatterbuck 2017, 87–89). Women, too, have appealed for the dismantling of patriarchal Pentecostal institutions that have sought to restrain the role of women in ministry while pointing to the dualism of Pentecostalism as liberating but also limiting (Hollingsworth and Browning 2010; Stephenson 2012). Through dancing, shouting, breathing, speaking with tongues, moaning, groaning, and other bodily expressions, black, indigenous, and women Pentecostals embody a particular type of Pentecostalism that reflects a set of social concerns about race, colonialism, and gender. The lack of attention to these issues, although considered important bodily practices, requires some critical engagement with Pentecostal theology. In turn, the future of Pentecostal theology requires further commitment to the resources provided in worship and its engagement of the body. While Pentecostalism may be progressive, and Pentecostals can be found working among the poor and needy, other acts of Pentecostal social engagement are far more controversial and indicate the tension between the sacred and the secular, especially when it concerns views of the body that for Pentecostals require some restriction. Abortion and LGBTQ issues are two examples that illustrate the contentious nature for Pentecostals about the body 124

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(see Wilkinson 2017, 28–30). Bodies are holy, according to Pentecostals, and that means they are also restricted and regulated sexually. Socially engaged worship means that Pentecostals have attempted to ensure that at the level of politics and the law, a particular definition of marriage is maintained along with regulations over sexuality and procreation. The activities of Pentecostals who work together to lobby governments and legislators about marriage and sexuality are acts of worship that bring Pentecostals together. They also separate Pentecostals from other members of society who do not share the same view of the body. Embodied action is socially engaged, and Pentecostal bodies are not only acting together to respond to secularizing trends, but Pentecostal bodies come to embody beliefs that animate the social action itself. The contentious nature of the Pentecostal social action is cultural and social, so that Pentecostals carry with them particular beliefs in their activities. Nevertheless, response and resolution of contested social issues are never exclusively theological unless we understand theology to proceed in and through the human body as a whole.

Conclusion An analysis of Pentecostal worship that focusses on the body and embodiment raises some important issues for Pentecostal theology. First, Pentecostal worship that takes the body as a site for observation allows the researcher to understand how bodies embody beliefs, practices, and sentiments. Pentecostal worship cannot be reduced to the cognitive or a statement of belief or even a statement of doctrine. Second, Pentecostal worship is embodied interaction that is ritually practised, emotionally energized, and socially carried by participants into everyday life. Pentecostal theology takes place not only in church and academy but also in all dimensions of living. Third, the lived experience of Pentecostal worship is also in context, and that world for some Pentecostals may be informed by secularizing and globalizing trends. It may be a world where bodies engage one another in ways informed by racism, colonialism, and gender inequality. It may be a world that is contentious over the very nature of bodies. In some ways, Pentecostal bodies appear to be defined by a series of dualisms, of what they can do or cannot do, who they can marry or not marry, when sexual activity is appropriate or not, and what can enter the body or not enter the body through food or drink. However, regardless of social contexts, Pentecostal worship may open bodies up to other possibilities that begin with sighing, moaning, groaning, and tongues. Other possibilities include the coming together of bodies for worship and work, and expressed as dancing, singing, joy, and often experienced as healing. In this way, worship is not only a significant resource for understanding but also for correcting and constructing Pentecostal theology.

References Albrecht, Daniel. 1999. Rites in the Spirit: A Ritual Approach to Pentecostal/Charismatic Spirituality. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Althouse, Peter, and Michael Wilkinson. 2015. “Musical Bodies in the Charismatic Renewal: The Case of Catch the Fire and Soaking Prayer.” In The Spirit of Praise: Music and Worship in Global Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity, edited by Monique M. Ingalls and Amos Yong, 29–44. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Brown, Candy Gunther. 2011. Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing. New York: Oxford. Burgess, Stanley, and Gary B. McGee, eds. 1988. Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Clatterbuck, Mark, ed. 2017. Crow Jesus: Personal Stories of Native Religious Belonging. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Collins, Randall. 2004. Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Michael Wilkinson Cox, Harvey. 1995. Fire from Heaven. New York: Addison-Wesley. Crawley, Ashon T. 2017. Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility. New York: Fordham University Press. Csordas, Thomas. 2002. Body/Meaning/Healing. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Hollingsworth, Andrea, and Melissa D. Browning. 2010. “Your Daughters Shall Prophesy (As Long As They Submit): Pentecostalism and Gender in Global Perspective.” In A Liberating Spirit: Pentecostals and Social Action in North America, edited by Michael Wilkinson and Steven M. Studebaker, 161–84. Eugene: Pickwick. Land, Steven J. 1993. Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Marina, Peter. 2016. Chasing Religion in the Caribbean: Ethnographic Journeys from Antigua to Trinidad. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Mellor, Philip A., and Chris Shilling. 1997. Reforming the Body: Religion, Community and Modernity. London: Sage. ———. 2014. Sociology of the Sacred: Religion, Embodiment, and Social Change. London: Sage. Miller, Donald E. 2013. “Introduction: Pentecostalism as a Global Phenomenon.” In Spirit and Power: The Growth and Global Impact of Pentecostalism, edited by Donald E. Miller, Kimon H. Sargeant, and Richard Flory, 1–24. New York: Oxford University Press. Miller, Donald E., and Tetsunao Yamamori. 2007. Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement. Berkeley: University of California Press. Poloma, Margaret M. 2003. Main Street Mystics: The Toronto Blessing and Reviving Pentecostalism. Walnut Creek: Alta Mira. Riis, Ole, and Linda Woodhead. 2010. A Sociology of Religious Emotion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rosenior, Derek. 2010. “The Rhetoric of Pentecostal Racial Reconciliation: Looking Back to Move Forward.” In A Liberating Spirit: Pentecostals and Social Action in North America, edited by Michael Wilkinson and Steven M. Studebaker, 53–84. Eugene: Pickwick. Shilling, Chris. 2005. The Body in Culture, Technology, and Society. London: Sage. Stephenson, Lisa P. 2012. Dismantling the Dualisms for American Pentecostal Women in Ministry: A Feminist-Pneumatological Approach. Leiden: Brill. Thomas, John Christopher. 2014. Footwashing in John 13 and the Johannine Community. 2nd ed. Cleveland: CPT Press. Tomberlin, Daniel. 2010. Pentecostal Sacraments: Encountering God at the Altar. Cleveland: Center for Pentecostal Leadership and Care. Turner, Bryan S. 1983. Religion and Social Theory. London: Sage. ———. 1996. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory. 2nd ed. London: Sage. Vondey, Wolfgang. 2017a. “Embodied Gospel: The Materiality of Pentecostal Theology.” In Pentecostals and the Body, edited by Michael Wilkinson and Peter Althouse, 102–19. Leiden: Brill. Vondey, Wolfgang. 2017b. Pentecostal Theology: Living the Full Gospel. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. Vondey, Wolfgang, and Chris W. Green. 2010. “Between This and That: Reality and Sacramentality in the Pentecostal Worldview.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 19 (2): 243–64. Wilkinson, Michael. 2010. “Charles W. Chawner and the Missionary Impulse of the Hebden Mission.” In Winds from the North: Canadian Contributions to the Pentecostal Movement, edited by Michael Wilkinson and Peter Althouse, 39–54. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2017. “Pentecostalism, the Body, and Embodiment.” In Pentecostals and the Body, edited by Michael Wilkinson and Peter Althouse, 17–35. Leiden: Brill. Wilkinson, Michael, and Peter Althouse. 2014. Catch the Fire: Soaking Prayer and Charismatic Renewal. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. ———, eds. 2017. Pentecostals and the Body. Leiden: Brill.

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PART III

Theological methods

12 BIBLICAL HERMENEUTICS Reading Scripture with the Spirit in community Jacqueline Grey

For the last few decades, the subject of biblical hermeneutics has been of intense interest and debate among Pentecostal scholars. While hermeneutics generally refers to the “art and science of interpretation” (Archer 2015, 319), central to this discussion is the question: what makes an interpretive approach Pentecostal? More specifically, how does the charismatic experience of the Spirit impact the way that Pentecostals read Scripture? In this chapter I suggest that a Pentecostal biblical hermeneutic is primarily focused on a reading of Scripture with the Spirit in community. First, this chapter surveys historically the reading practices of the Pentecostal community from its birth among premillennial revivalists to the later theological reliance upon (and alliance with) Protestant Evangelicalism. Second, Pentecostal scholars increasingly, from the 1980s onwards, began to call for a reading approach that would reflect the theology and values of the Pentecostal community. I offer an overview of key issues and scholars engaged in the consideration of a possible uniquely Pentecostal hermeneutic. Within this debate, there have emerged four elements of a Pentecostal interpretative method that can be considered essential: Scripture, experience, Spirit, and community, which I examine subsequently. Finally, the chapter concludes with some challenges and opportunities for the future development of Pentecostal biblical hermeneutics. These challenges center primarily on unpacking the role of the community in the interpretive process and how to be faithful to the origins of Pentecostalism while being critical of the prejudices and interests that emerge in Pentecostal hermeneutics.

A historical overview of Pentecostal hermeneutics From its origins, classical Pentecostalism emerged as a restorationist movement with roots in the various holiness revivals of the late nineteenth century. This emphasis was also reflected in the hermeneutical approaches of the early Pentecostal community. The first generation of readers tended to prioritize the literal, plain message of Scripture. The Bible was considered a book of truth and facts, which the community must only believe and apply. However, for Pentecostals, the truth of Scripture included the manifestation of spiritual gifts, miracles, and the continued work of the Holy Spirit in their contemporary context. Just as God had spoken in the past through the biblical authors, God continued to speak through both Scripture and inspired speech to the community of their day (see Chapter 5). This continued experience 129

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of the Spirit speaking to the community affirmed their belief in the inspiration of Scripture in contrast to the emerging fundamentalism that emphasized the authority of Scripture in its past inspiration (Archer 2014, 35–40). A consideration of the origins of Pentecostalism also helps to account for the sense of premillennial fever in which the movement was birthed, which subsequently impacted their reading practices. The community considered itself living in the last days before the second coming of Christ. They were experiencing the latter day outpouring of the Holy Spirit to empower the church for missionary endeavor that would usher in the return of Jesus Christ. Therefore, when the early Pentecostals read their Bible, they generally considered it not a historical artifact but a living document that could be applied literally to their context. They considered the narrative of Acts to be incomplete; the present community was the continuation of the story of the New Testament. In this sense, early Pentecostals saw themselves as restoring or recovering the “full gospel” of the early church (see Chapter 16). They bypassed much of the tradition and history of the church (particularly that considered inconsistent with this theology) and jumped straight back to Pentecost (Oliverio 2012, 19). As Lee Roy Martin (2013, 4) writes, “early Pentecostals viewed the Bible as a single unified narrative of God’s redemptive plan, whose central message may be summarized in the Five-fold Gospel.” Most read the Bible narratologically as story (see Chapter 4), as though they were also continuing or living out the acts of the Apostles. There appears to be a general, common approach to methods of reading Scripture utilized by the early Pentecostal community, particularly in the USA. Archer (2014, 65) describes their reading approach as both pre-critical and an adaption of the text-proof method, not dissimilar to the reading approach demonstrated by the New Testament writers. In fact, the early Pentecostal community could be said to mimic the hermeneutic utilized in the Lukan narrative, using a form of “pesher” interpretation. This approach would allow interpretation beyond the plain meaning of the text to include a new significance of the words as revealed by the Holy Spirit (Purdy 2015, 73). Scripture reading was not restricted to the intention of the historic author but was spiritualized and contextualized for the contemporary community. However, as some scholars question, just because the early Pentecostals interpreted Scripture in this way does not make it normative for the Pentecostal community today. Yet, these reading practices of the early community do highlight the high view of Scripture that has generally been a consistent feature of Pentecostalism (see Chapter 6). The high view of Scripture within Pentecostalism is generally based on their experience of the Spirit. It meant that Pentecostals read the Bible ahistorically; the text could be applied to their current situation regardless of the cultural and historical gap. However, unlike the fundamentalism of the time, Pentecostals did not primarily defend the authority and inspiration of Scripture based on assumptions of cessationism. Fundamentalists promulgated the inerrancy of Scripture, which could only be retrieved through historical-grammatical exegesis. For Pentecostals, the Holy Spirit was active in both the production and reading of the texts, prophetically inspiring the contemporary community in its interpretation. This process did not require the assistance of professional exegetes or academics—the community had to simply read it and believe it. Yet, both Pentecostals and fundamentalists held in common a literalistic approach to Scripture (albeit understood differently) in contrast to the higher criticism and its “anti-supernatural” presuppositions that were emerging in liberal theology (Archer 2004, 43–45). The Pentecostal community, particularly in North America, was also caught up in the fundamentalist/modernist debate since the 1920s. Like most conservative sectors within Christianity during this time, Pentecostals have continued to emphasize the authority and 130

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reliability of the Bible. However, to explain their high view of Scripture, classical Pentecostals tended to adopt the language and theological statements of conservative Christianity, such as fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, including their theological statements regarding the authority and interpretation of Scripture. The developing alliance with, and theological reliance upon, Protestant Evangelicalism after World War II impacted the interpretive approaches of the Pentecostal community at that time. There were some social factors that also influenced this shift, as the second generation of Pentecostals tended to move toward social conservatism and institutionalizing the movement. However, theologically, the influence of dispensationalism on the Pentecostal community in North America from the 1930s to the 1980s (peaking in the 1950s) was significant (Oliverio 2012, 113). It tended to shift some of the focus of the purpose of reading Scripture from encountering God to the purpose of establishing doctrine. Greater emphasis was placed on proper principles of hermeneutics, including increased focus on the historical and cultural contexts in which the texts were written. Safeguarding from improper doctrines was a motivating factor in developing these principles for interpretation (Oliverio 2012, 120). Since the 1980s, the use of historical-grammatical methods for interpreting Scripture has continued to be advocated among various Pentecostals (Fee 1991; Menzies 1994). Yet, also during this time, the seeming “evangelicalization” of Pentecostal hermeneutics began to be questioned (Thomas 1994; Archer 2004; Moore 2016). This criticism has led to increasing discussion over the nature and future of Pentecostal hermeneutics.

Developing a unique Pentecostal hermeneutic While part of the discussion on a unique Pentecostal hermeneutic has focused on understanding the distinct features of the Pentecostal community generally, much of the debate has been centered on describing the community’s ideal reading practices. This interest reflects primarily an internal Pentecostal debate played out in the conferences and journals of the scholarly community in Western contexts. However, despite the evolving discussion, there has been little consensus among scholars on a single reading approach which reflects their community’s reading practices. Instead, the debate continues to circle, as various scholars advocate for particular emphases they consider essential for a sustainable hermeneutic. Yet, the discussion has raised some important questions and criticisms for consideration, and a lthough the complexity of the entire debate cannot be fully represented here, some key issues and scholars can be highlighted as representative of the broader concerns. Gordon Fee has emphasized the need for Pentecostal readers to engage in responsible exegesis to avoid excessive interpretation. He has argued for the adoption of a historical-critical method, requiring authorial intention as crucial (Fee 1991, 42). Similarly, Robert Menzies argues that the central goal of hermeneutics is in establishing the historical meaning. That is, meaning is found in what the actual text provides (in terms of words, grammar, and genre) to reconstruct the probable intention of its author or editor. Menzies asks: “If we lose the meaning of a text from its historical moorings, how shall we evaluate various and even contradictory interpretations? How shall we keep our own ideologies and prejudices from obliterating the text” (Menzies 1994, 117)? While this is a legitimate question, it raises broader issues of what makes a reading valid or invalid, and importantly, who decides such matters. While the quest for the historical reconstruction of biblical texts may limit the meaning and dynamic quality of a text, it may also provide some important safeguards for Pentecostal scholars to consider. Many proponents of a reliance on historical-critical approaches are nervous of divorcing the biblical text from its historical context because of the inherent relativization and extreme subjectivity of meanings it potentially produces (Grey 2011, 47). 131

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Yet,  this dominance and dependence on historical-critical methodology has been heavily critiqued within the intra-Pentecostal debate. Some (Ellington 1996; Bridges Johns 2014) have posited their critique in the name of postmodernity, calling for a greater emphasis on the role of the reading community. Others (Thomas 1994; Grey 2011) have postured that Evangelical approaches are inconsistent with Pentecostalism and to limit the reader’s encounter with the text to a rational, historical approach contradicts the significance of pneumatic illumination valued by the Pentecostal community. Unique approaches to interpretation that are consistent with the theology and spirituality of Pentecostalism have been proposed by scholars such as John Christopher Thomas, Ken Archer, and Rickie D. Moore who represent the varying perspectives and nuances within the scholarly discussion. These three scholars all belong to what is sometimes called the “Cleveland School,” yet while there is some synergy between their approaches, they each offer unique contributions. Common to all three is an emphasis on the role of the reading community in the interpretive process. Using the council of Jerusalem as a model, Thomas (1994) unpacks the method of decision making utilized by the New Testament community as described in Acts 15. Central to the council’s deliberations on the inclusion of the gentiles were the three components of Scripture, the Spirit, and the community. The situation in Acts was sparked by the experience of the community observing the Spirit at work in converting non-Jews to Christ. As the council heard the testimonies of the converted gentiles, it discerned this activity of the Holy Spirit and affirmed it through an interpretive selection of a scriptural text. The debate was resolved, and the gentiles subsequently accepted into the community in a decision that “seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28). The Spirit is identified by Thomas (1994, 49) as being active in all stages of the interpretive process. He then applies this model to the current debate of women ministers in the Pentecostal community. The model developed by Thomas has been highly formative in the development of Pentecostal hermeneutics. Based on a narrative reading, it affirms the high view of Scripture. Yet, it also emphasizes the role of the community in the process of interpretation. Thomas notes that James’s selection of a text to affirm the decision was arguably influenced by the community’s experience in discerning the activity of the Spirit. However, it was not an individualistic rendering of the situation; the decision was made within, by, and for the community. Thomas highlights that it is the community that guards the interpretation of both Scripture and pneumatic experience from rampant individualism and relativization. This model by Thomas does allow for the study of the historical context of the passage (prioritized by Evangelical scholars) but is not limited to those concerns (Grey 2011, 58). It also grants a substantial role to the community in the process of interpretation. What is significant about this model, particularly in the period of its publication in the 1990s, is that it integrates important values of the Pentecostal community: Scripture, pneumatic experience, oral testimony, and community interaction. This model then provides a prescription for the Pentecostal community on how to approach Scripture in a way that is consistent with the community’s values and spirituality. It also demonstrates practically the role of the community in discerning the experience of the Spirit as an antidote to the individualism of the Western world. Thomas’s model has continued to provide the foundation for scholars seeking to understand and develop a unique method of Pentecostal biblical hermeneutics. This influence includes the important monograph by Archer that provides one of the most definitive descriptions of Pentecostal reading methods to date. Archer (2004) provides three basic tenants for a unique Pentecostal hermeneutic: Scripture, Spirit, and community. However, to ground this triadic model within the tradition, he 132

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looks back to the reading approaches of the early Pentecostal community and identifies their interpretive approach as based on the “Bible reading method.” This approach was a harmonizing and deductive method that combed all Scripture references on a topic and then synthesized the passages (Martin 2013, 3). In practice, it meant scant recognition of the historical context of each individual text, since the narrative of God-at-work within the canon of Scripture was prioritized. While this same Bible reading method was used by other Protestant groups, the burgeoning Pentecostal community used it to develop the new doctrinal understanding of baptism in the Spirit (Archer 2004, 4). It led to a unique way of reading Scripture forged by the early Pentecostal community, based on their narrative tradition. From this foundation, Archer outlines a Pentecostal hermeneutical strategy suggesting “a narrative approach to interpretation that embraces a triadic negotiation for meaning between the biblical text, Pentecostal community, and the Holy Spirit” (Archer 2004, 5). The outworking of these three elements within a concrete Pentecostal hermeneutic are discussed below, particularly the role of the community in safeguarding readings of Scripture from harmful interpretive practices. Finally, the transformative role of Spirit is also emphasized in the writings of Rickie D. Moore, who was one of the first to highlight the role of Spirit, Word, and community (Moore 1987). Among his recent contributions is his development of the idea of an “altar hermeneutics” (see Chapter 5). For Pentecostal readers, the sacred zone of encounter with God alters (or “altars”) the interpretation of Scripture (Moore 2016, 149). The altar is the place of sacrifice; the sacrifice of the reader’s own agenda, self-interests, hurts, fears, and hopes (Moore 2016, 155). These agendas are laid down on the altar before the Lord to allow the living Word to examine and heal. The goal of this process is not information about God, but deeper relationship with God. It allows the “God of the altar” to transform the reading community. At the symbolic altar, readers are freed from their bondage to self-interest into “the freedom that comes with being crucified with Christ” (Moore 2016, 156) and liberty of the Spirit. This approach emphasizes the valuing of Scripture as a prophetic voice to the Pentecostal community. The central tenets of a Pentecostal hermeneutic, as developed by these scholars, have been applied to biblical texts by others, providing examples of this method in practice. Robby Waddell (2006), for example, applies a Pentecostal hermeneutic to the reading of the book of Revelation. His proposed hermeneutic draws out features of the text that are of interest to Pentecostal readers, such as the opening terminology that orients readers toward an experience of a revelation of Jesus Christ (Waddell 2006, 124; cf. Thomas 2009, 229). Similarly, Scott Ellington (2007) has applied some of the central tenets of a Pentecostal hermeneutic to the Psalms, namely the re-experiencing of historical testimonies from the biblical text in the present. This application is based on a model of “truth-as-testimony” by which the truth claim of Scripture is not in its declaration of “historical facts” but in the original testimonies themselves (Ellington 2001, 255). A final example is found in the work of Lee Roy Martin (2008) who develops a Pentecostal “hearing” of the Book of Judges to underscore hearing, rather than reading, as the hermeneutical goal of the Pentecostal community. These applications highlight the challenges and opportunities in applying a descriptive methodology to specific texts. They also emphasize the continued commitment to the development of some common features of Pentecostal biblical hermeneutics.

Essential elements of a Pentecostal biblical hermeneutic While there has been much debate over the validity of developing a unique approach to Pentecostal hermeneutics, there are arguably certain elements to an interpretative method that have emerged as essential, among them the collective emphasis on Scripture, the Spirit, 133

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experience, and community. Although there is yet no consensus on the place and importance of these elements as part of a Pentecostal biblical hermeneutic, these categories emerge regularly in discussions and are worth considering in their own right as formative of a Pentecostal biblical hermeneutic.

Scripture Any discussion of a viable approach to Pentecostal hermeneutics places value on a high view of Scripture (see Chapter 6). While the other elements of a Pentecostal hermeneutic may be debated, the essentiality of Scripture (not just as a proof-text) is undisputed. Generally common to all Pentecostal scholars is the necessity of respecting the context of the biblical text. A responsible reading does take the historical and social context of each passage seriously. However, not all scholars agree on the level to which the historical context should be used to determine the validity of a reading (Grey 2011, 41–49). Similarly, while most scholars agree on the authority of Scripture, they differ in their understanding of the theological foundations for its authority. This assessment is not to caricature scholars into different “camps” but to recognize that the underpinnings for this value differ within the Pentecostal community. For some, the historical context is essential for reading because it safeguards interpretations from relativism. In this view, the historical-critical method provides the basis for determining a valid reading. For Craig Keener (2017, 99), the original context is not dispensable. He writes, “The ancient meaning, however, does matter, and … that ancient, canonical meaning must be the anchor and arbiter for claims to interpret the text today” (119). Yet, Keener also affirms that “… we should recognize the historical contingency of both the ancient and modern horizons” (120). In contrast, John C. Poirier and B. Scott Lewis (2006, 21) insist that the only meaning of the text is the author’s intention. For others, the historical situation of the text is important because it values the context in which God spoke to the earlier community. If God speaks to us today, then we should respect the situation and context in which God spoke to previous individuals and communities. As Ellington (1996, 36) highlights, Scripture is considered to be authoritative for Pentecostal readers because the Holy Spirit is found to be active in and through Scripture experientially in the lives of each member of the community. Yet, the text still holds a privileged position, even if a historical-critical approach to interpretation does not. The Bible is both the standard by which all experience is measured and interpreted, and a resource for the community—one that can be mined for its treasures within (Davies 2013, 256), including pneumatic experiences. Although Pentecostal experience may occur outside of reading the biblical text (such as through prophecy and other such Spirit encounters), that experience is still evaluated and corrected by Scripture. As Chris Green (2015, 134) reminds us while we often claim that the Spirit (in the manifestations of the charismata) will never contradict the Scripture, we often fail to see that if we hope to come into alignment with ‘the mind of Christ’, then the Spirit must contradict us – and that includes, perhaps above all, our readings of Scripture. The role of Scripture in the dialogical construction of meaning helps to temper those who give their own spiritual experiences, revelations, or interpretations canonical significance, including those based on historical-critical methodologies. This critical insight emphasizes once more the authoritative role of Scripture within Pentecostal hermeneutics. 134

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Spirit While recognizing the high view of Scripture within the Pentecostalism, some argue that the authority of the Spirit comes before the authority of Scripture. Nel (2018, 181) suggests that Pentecostals read with an agenda, namely the Pentecostal experience of the Spirit. It is the Spirit who empowers the community that relies on the Spirit to provide revelatory guidance in the reading of Scripture. Particularly, the Spirit points to and reveals Christ because the Spirit is Christ’s Spirit (Nel 2018, 158). In other words, the Spirit guides the community to read Scripture Christologically and transforms the reading community into Christ-likeness (Grey 2011, 99). This emphasis is also consistent with the readings of the early Pentecostal community, as Green (2015, 115) notes, since “first, they came to the Scriptures expecting to encounter Christ and, second, they came to the Scriptures expecting to encounter Christ.” This formation of the interpreter within the worshipping community transforms the reader’s experience and affections which further orients the interpretive process (Thomas 2011, 117). Nevertheless, Scripture is not just an object to be studied, but is also the living Word, enlivened by the Spirit that both tests and transforms the reader. As Andrew Davies (2013, 221) notes, the Spirit also brings an agenda to the reading process: the prophetic transformation of the individual, community, and creation. Hence, for Pentecostals, the Bible is not simply a tool to reinforce the reader’s own prejudices and interests, but through the revelatory activity of the Spirit is a prophetic voice to speak challenge and change to the reading community. According to John McKay (1994, 26), reading the Bible as prophetic persons impacts our reading. In particular, he emphasizes the reading process as a shared experience within the community of the “prophethood of all believers.” While the majority of scholars writing on Pentecostal hermeneutics affirm the role of the Holy Spirit in guiding and illuminating the reader, what is not clear is the actual role the Spirit plays in the interpretive process. Pentecostals do not want to domesticate the mysterious work of God’s Spirit, yet they do want to reflect upon how the Spirit brings revelation and meaning to the biblical text. However, this revelatory role of the Spirit is understood in different ways. For some scholars, the role of the Spirit is to reveal the original intention of the author. They suggest that a Spirit-inspired reading will be consistent with the original meaning uncovered through the process of study (Nel 2018, 187). Others emphasize the role of the Spirit in applying the original meaning of the text to today (Keener 2017, 213). McKay’s (1994, 21) reflections upon his own practice of Bible reading emphasize the role of the Spirit in inspiring “revelation” that comes from more than academic study. This experience can be likened to the “aha” moment of in-breaking insight that transcends the horizons of ordinary ways of thinking (Loder 1989, 18). For Pentecostals, the experience of the Spirit does not discount the role of intellectual reasoning (see Chapter 7) in the reading process but suggests that the Spirit can illuminate passages of Scripture in new ways. Hence, Martin (2013, 6) contends that the role of the Spirit in the interpretive process goes well beyond the Reformed theology of “illumination.” Instead, the Spirit is active to guide the community into new meanings of the text originally inspired by the same Spirit. The Spirit rests on the interpretive moment as a creative act.

Experience Experience is an important element of Pentecostal biblical hermeneutics and an active part of the interpretive process (see Chapter 8). While the level of importance of experience in the reading process is heavily disputed among scholars, most recognize it as an essential factor. 135

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As Keener (2017, 287) notes, “what has been most distinctive about classical Pentecostal hermeneutics has been its explicit invitation to read Scripture from the standpoint of believing and experiencing that we live in the era of spiritual gifts long neglected by the church.” Pentecostal theology does not limit an encounter with God to reading biblical texts but allows for dynamic encounter with the Spirit in contemporary life. It is a dynamic interaction that is mutually informing: Scripture informs contemporary experience and experience informs the reading of Scripture. This cycle is grounded in the Pentecostal impetus to recover, restore, and experience the activity of the Spirit for the present day in continuity with the narrative of Scripture. In a descriptive study of the Bible reading methods of Pentecostal communities in Australia, experience was identified as a key component. Readers often began with a spiritual experience and sought the Scriptures to find resonances with, and understanding of, their parallel pneumatic encounter. The language and symbols of the biblical text provided Pentecostal readers with the vocabulary to express their ineffable experience (Grey 2011, 114). As Nel (2018, 187) comments, “The community testifies to the experiences attributed to the Spirit and then engages Scripture to validate or repudiate the experience or issue, necessitating a dynamic balance between individual, Spirit, Scripture, and the faith community.” The role of the community is essential in this process of discernment of a normative experience of the Spirit. In adopting the language of the biblical text to verbalize their Spirit experience, Pentecostal readers invite the possibility of the transformation of the interpreter. This is because pneumatic experience is not only the beginning of the reading process of the Pentecostal community but also the end result. The goal for many Pentecostal readers is to encounter the divine “author” and be transformed as a result of that encounter (Grey 2011,  114). In this sense, readers approach Scripture as sacred “altar” space (Moore 2016, 152). This space creates new possibilities for the contemporary community as they seek to be altered (or “altared,” to use the language of Moore) by the text and apply it to their particular contexts. Pentecostals emphasize orthopraxy (correctness in practice and life style) rather than orthodoxy (Nel 2018, 159). The application and contextualization processes are important for Pentecostal readers; they want their identity and behavior to be shaped by both the Spirit and Scripture as a means for individual and community transformation. This emphasis on the Spirit in the reading process is a significant element in the development of a uniquely Pentecostal biblical hermeneutic.

Community Common to the majority of approaches to Pentecostal hermeneutics is also the central role of the community. While an emphasis on the reader is often identified with more postmodern approaches, the role of the Pentecostal reader is emphasized because they see themselves as participants and actors in the story of Scripture, not just observers (see Chapter 4). The community is (and also should be) emphasized in the reading process as a corporate entity, rather than a focus on individual readers. While every individual is Spirit-gifted and part of the body of Christ, their gifts serve particular functions for the edification and health of the corporate body (Yong 2002, 32). Spirit-gifting is not given for the promotion of individualism or elitism, including elitist readings of Scripture. Instead, baptism into the body of Christ reconciles people across former dividing lines, such as race, gender, ethnic and social differences (Yong 2002, 33). Green (2015, 183) suggests poignantly that the true home

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of the Spirit-community and its scriptural engagement is not the academy but the church, particularly its worship and mission. Yet, how exactly does the Pentecostal community function in the dialogical construction of meaning? What is the role of the community in protecting against the dangers of subjectivism? Certainly, the role of the community is to discern the activity of the Spirit in both experiences and readings of the text. As Thomas (1994, 49) highlights, it is the community gathered together that is involved in the interpretive decision-making. It is the community gathered that hears the testimonies from members within the body of Christ of the Spirit’s activity and assesses those reports. The role of community is particular rather than universal. In this sense, the immediate group that discerns the direction of God’s Spirit in both experience and reading is the local community, albeit informed by and connected with the wider regional and global community. To disconnect from the ecclesial community (whether at local, regional or global levels) is to be isolated from the body of Christ. Instead, each individual and group must be willing to humbly submit before the body that is of Christ for discernment and guidance. In a sense, Christians (and their interpretive agendas) must go through the purifying fire of the Spirit, with whom Jesus baptizes, to emerge with new life. Yet, how this role of the community functions practically, particularly in overcoming the lingering divisions of race, gender, ethnic and social differences, is still a matter for discussion. Currently, many Pentecostal scholars are looking beyond the categories of Evangelical and postmodern theories to develop their distinct hermeneutic. This perspective includes those that seek to understand Pentecostal hermeneutics beyond the dominance of Western contexts to represent those in the global South. There are various challenges and new directions that these scholars present to the discussion of Pentecostal hermeneutics, particularly regarding the role of the community. There is also an increasing recognition of the diversity within Pentecostalism and the role of the context of the community in the reading process. This includes scholars who have sought to describe and discuss the reading processes of the actual grass-roots community outside the USA (Grey 2011 in Australia; Purdy 2015 in Malawi; Autero 2016 in Bolivia; Nel 2018 in South Africa). These studies have challenged various presuppositions, particularly academic idealism and elitism, the impact of geographic-social context and socio-religious experience, and the limitations of Western individualism. They also highlight the challenge of addressing some neo-Pentecostal groups that insist on remaining outside the global family of Pentecostalism and the safeguarding of discernment it offers while privileging reading approaches that are ethically and theologically suspect (Nel 2018, 20–28). Similarly, factors such as race and gender have emerged as important considerations in Pentecostal hermeneutics. Rodolfo Galvan Estrada III (2015) highlights the role of the community’s identity within a Pentecostal hermeneutic in his case study of a Chicano and Latino community in North America. He demonstrates that other dynamics, such as ethnicity, are essential components in hermeneutics. Rosinah Mmannana Gabaitse (2015) connects the marginalization of women with interpretative practices of proof texting by the Pentecostal community in Botswana. Cheryl Bridges Johns (2014) offers a Spirit-filled feminist approach to Pentecostal hermeneutics in which women can find liberating space. Her approach shares commonalities with other feminist readings in that it begins with a hermeneutic of suspicion and remembrance; however, it does not abandon women to grief. Instead, the brooding of the Spirit over brokenness is like a gestating work of the Spirit that births a new order marked by healing, justice and transformation.

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Conclusion Biblical hermeneutics presents opportunities for the maturing of Pentecostal theology as the roles of Scripture, the Spirit, experience, and community are expanded and clarified. The social location of Pentecostal communities continues to offer an important dynamic in developing future interpretive approaches. Because the community is not static, these debates highlight internal and external challenges for the global Pentecostal community as it increasingly moves into the mainstream, middle-class segments of society. If the role of the community is an important element of its Pentecostal identity, then it is possible that its changing social context will also change its hermeneutic. As Pentecostalism continues to grow, there may also be increased occasion for ecumenical dialogue with groups outside the Pentecostal family and scrutiny by government agencies on the ethical implications of community practices and Pentecostal readings of Scripture. Undoubtedly, the need to articulate a clear interpretive method for those both inside and outside of Pentecostalism will continue to propel the Pentecostal community to develop a viable and responsible biblical hermeneutic.

References Archer, Kenneth J. 2001. “Early Pentecostal Biblical Interpretation.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 9 (1): 32–70. ———. 2004. A Pentecostal Hermeneutic for the Twenty-First Century: Spirit, Scripture and Community. JPT Supplement 28. London: T&T Clark. ———. 2015. “Pentecostal Hermeneutics and the Society for Pentecostal Studies: Reading and Hearing in One Spirit and One Accord.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 37 (3): 317–39. Autero, Esa. 2016. Reading the Bible Across Contexts: Luke’s Gospel, Socio-Economic Marginality, and Latin American Biblical Hermeneutics. Leiden: Brill. Bridges Johns, Cheryl. 2014. “Grieving, Brooding, and Transforming: The Spirit, the Bible, and Gender.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 22 (2): 141–53. Davies, Andrew. 2013. “What Does it Mean to Read the Bible as a Pentecostal?” In Pentecostal Hermeneutics: A Reader, edited by Lee Roy Martin, 249–62. Leiden: Brill. Ellington, Scott A. 1996. “Pentecostalism and the Authority of Scripture.” Journal of Pentecostal T heology 9: 16–38. ———. 2007. “The Reciprocal Reshaping of History and Experience in the Psalms: Interactions with Pentecostal Testimony.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 16 (1): 18–31. Fee, Gordon D. 1991. Gospel and Spirit: Issues in New Testament Hermeneutics. Peabody: Hendrickson. Gabaitse, Rosinah Mmannana. 2015. “Pentecostal Hermeneutics and the Marginalisation of Women.” Scriptura 114 (1): 1–12. Green, Chris E.W. 2015. Sanctifying Interpretation: Vocation, Holiness, and Scripture. Cleveland: CPT Press. Grey, Jacqueline. 2011. Three’s a Crowd: Pentecostalism, Hermeneutics, and the Old Testament. Eugene: Pickwick. Keener, Craig. 2016. Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in Light of Pentecost. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Loder, James E. 1989. The Transforming Moment. 2nd ed. Colorado Springs: Helmers & Howard. Martin, Lee Roy. 2008. The Unheard Voice of God: A Pentecostal Hearing of the Book of Judges. JPT Supplement 32. Blandford Forum: Deo. ———. 2013. “Introduction to Pentecostal Biblical Hermeneutics.” In Pentecostal Hermeneutics: A Reader, edited by Lee Roy Martin, 1–9. Leiden: Brill. McKay, John, 1994. “When the Veil is Taken Away: The Impact of Prophetic Experience on Biblical Interpretation.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 2 (5): 17–40. Menzies, Robert P. 1994. “Jumping Off the Postmodern Bandwagon.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 16 (1): 115–20. Moore, Rickie D. 1987. “A Pentecostal Approach to Scripture.” Seminary Viewpoint 8 (1): 4–5, 11.

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Biblical hermeneutics ———. 2016. “Altar Hermeneutics: Reflections on Pentecostal Biblical Interpretation.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 38 (1–2): 148–59. Nel, Marius. 2018. An African Pentecostal Hermeneutics: A Distinctive Contribution to Hermeneutics. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. Oliverio, L. William, Jr. 2012. Theological Hermeneutics in the Classical Pentecostal Tradition: A Typological Account. Leiden: Brill. Poirer, John C., and B. Scott Lewis. 2006. “Pentecostal and Postmodernist Hermeneutics: A Critique of Three Conceits.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 15 (1): 3–21. Purdy, Harlyn Graydon. 2015. A Distinct Twenty-First Century Pentecostal Hermeneutic. Eugene: Wipf & Stock. Thomas, John Christopher. 1994. “Women, Pentecostals and the Bible: An Experiment in Pentecostal Hermeneutics.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 5: 41–56. ———. 2009. “‘Where the Spirit Leads’—the Development of Pentecostal Hermeneutics.” Journal of Beliefs & Values 30 (3): 289–302. ———. 2011. “‘What the Spirit Is Saying to the Church’—the Testimony of a Pentecostal in New Testament Studies.” In Spirit and Scripture: Exploring a Pneumatic Hermeneutic, edited by Kevin L. Spawn and Archie T. Wright, 115–29. London: Bloomsbury. Waddell, Robby. 2006. The Spirit of the Book of Revelation. JPT Supplement 30. Blandford Forum: Deo. Yong, Amos. 2002. Spirit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective. Eugene: Wipf and Stock.

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13 THEOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS Understanding the world in the encounter with God L. William Oliverio, Jr.

Theological hermeneutics is an approach to theology and a way of human understanding concerning life in general. It considers the world in relationship to God as well as human selves and communities in relationship to God together with the affirmation that all human knowledge is a matter of interpretation formed by cultural-linguistically situated persons in communities who interpret what is and what ought to be. Such inquiry can occur, as has almost always been the case among Pentecostals, with a strong affirmation of divine revelation as well as ontological-metaphysical, moral, and even aesthetic realism (see Chapter 31); that is, with an affirmation of the reality of what is other and beyond, in each of these categories, the interpreter and the interpretive communities’ own interpretive constructions. This chapter details the Pentecostal turn to theological hermeneutics and approaches to understanding, noting the recent development of explicit Pentecostal theological hermeneutics, before moving through implicit historical developments and on to contemporary approaches among Pentecostal theological hermeneutics in global contexts. Considering Pentecostal theologies as theological hermeneutics produces insightful understanding for considering and constructing these interpretive approaches since the category addresses powerful underlying considerations for interpretation of God, human selves, and the world.

The turn to theological hermeneutics Pentecostals have recently begun considering theological hermeneutics as an appropriate and comprehensive approach toward theological knowledge, explicitly reflecting on and developing Pentecostal theological hermeneutics (Yong 2002; Oliverio 2012, 315–62). Considered as such, Pentecostalism has itself been a family of implicit theological hermeneutics of life since its origins, and the Pentecostal traditions have embodied theological hermeneutics in different types among various movements (Archer 2004a; Oliverio 2012). Theological hermeneutics affirms the late modern sensibility that culture and the particularities of human development have led to interpretive contexts which form various types of rationalities, in which various commitments about what is true or held to be true are embedded. Such rationalities are linguistic in that language carries constructions of reality within it and thus shapes human experience and understanding from the outset, while, in turn, human experiences shape language, so that this dialectic altogether forms 140

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hermeneutical paradigms. As a description of the theological task, theological hermeneutics is then a way of accounting for the manner in which theological understanding emerges from various sources in communities and persons in dialogue with transcendent, spiritual, and theological matters. As a prescription for the task of theology, theological hermeneutics holds that the recognition of the contextual and situated awareness of one’s theological understanding is a basic affirmation necessary for the hermeneutical task, and that such contextual self-awareness manifests a responsible and truthful approach to forming theological interpretations (Vanhoozer 1998; Smith 2012). The turn to theological hermeneutics has followed the hermeneutical turn in philosophy (see Chapter 37) where epistemology has been superseded by hermeneutics and where a return to ontology has taken primacy (Taylor 1995; Westphal 2001; Archer and Oliverio 2016). The hermeneutical turn in philosophy is an outworking of the “linguistic turn,” the movement in twentieth-century philosophy which worked with the insight that ordinary human language development embeds culturally constructed understanding into the ways all persons understand life, and that all human knowledge must be understood in light of this insight (Rorty 1967). This turn was anticipated by the Romantic philosophers of language, though the turn itself was initiated by Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and its hermeneutical philosophy by Hans-Georg Gadamer (1989); all of this was paralleled, at least in some regards, by developments in Anglo-American “ordinary language philosophy,” including that of John Austin and John Searle, but also that of Anglo-postmodernisms as found in philosophers such as Richard Rorty and Willard Quine. Yet it has gone in still more directions, from poststructuralism to postcolonialism and to varieties of postmodern Christian thought in late modern contexts (Thiselton 1980, 2009; Taylor 2016). The hermeneutical approach to knowledge is also found in a large stream of philosophy of science which has considered scientific inquiry as a series of human noetic paradigms and research programs (Polanyi 1962; Lakatos 1978; Kuhn 1996). Apart from its modern rationalist as well as fideist forms, late modern Christian thought has often turned toward hermeneutics as a way of knowing, and theological hermeneutics as a way of best accounting for the breadth of the theological task (Vanhoozer 1998; Zimmerman 2004). Working in a dialectic with the contemporary tradition of philosophical hermeneutics as its companion, theological hermeneutics focuses on the theological level of a person or community’s understanding and practices. Pentecostal theological hermeneutics thus includes particularities from Pentecostal affirmations as embedded in its own “Pentecostal” paradigm. The formative level of embedded theological affirmations, at various levels of development and sophistication, and as also formed by embedded cultural-linguistic understanding in dialectic, forms interpretive grids for understanding the objects of interpretation—as an interpretive lens, a way of sensing, and as an affectivity. The objects of theological interpretation for Pentecostals have often included Scripture (see Chapter 6), reason (see Chapter 7), life experiences (see Chapter 10), religious and charismatic experiences (see Chapter 8), t radition (see Chapter 9), symbols of charismatic life (see Chapter 11), and many other interpretive loci. Theological hermeneutics, while able to affirm the authority of Scripture in Christian revelation, contests the concept that one reads the Scriptures without theological or cultural presuppositions, holding that it is naïve and is a way of implicitly begging the question of cultural and theological claims embedded in any hermeneutic. Rather, Pentecostal theological hermeneutics informed by the hermeneutical tradition usually claim that their theological assumptions form a theological hermeneutic which are faithful to the Scriptures, to Pentecost, and to the continuing charismatic and missional work of the church (Archer 2004a; Archer and Oliverio 2016; Keener 2016; Yong 2014a; 2017). Additionally, advocates of Pentecostal theological hermeneutics almost always consider multiple theological approaches as at least potentially illuminating 141

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rather than a single doctrinal perspective, while nevertheless maintaining orthodoxy. Ontologies of both the transcendent and the immanent are considered realities to be interpreted, with multiple vantage points considered advantageous as opposed to a single interpretive standpoint as superior to others, even as these almost always differentiate some theological accounts as truthful and faithful and others as false or inadequate, or at least as more or less so.

Explicit Pentecostal theological hermeneutics The first full-fledged development of an explicit Pentecostal theological hermeneutics was not until the turn of the twenty-first century, when the Pentecostal theologian Amos Yong (2002) published his second major work, Spirit-Word Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective. Yong recognized the formative importance of ontology and metaphysics upon a hermeneutic so that, in developing a religious epistemology as well as an approach to interpretation of Scripture and discernment of the spiritual, certain assumptions powerfully inform the formation of one’s hermeneutic. Thus, theological tenets and emphases, philosophical assumptions—especially ontological and metaphysical assumptions, and an understanding of the human knowing process all work together to form a theological hermeneutic. Yong has constructed a theological hermeneutic which correlates and integrates a large set of particular philosophical and theological concepts into a hermeneutic, putting forth a theological paradigm which correlates a “pneumatological imagination” with the epistemic-metaphysical pragmatism of Charles Sanders Peirce, and integrates these and other concepts of his philosophical hermeneutic into a trinitarian theology that itself draws from both Western and Eastern trinitarian sources (see Chapter 14). The result is a “trialectic” of Spirit-Word-Community for contemporary Christian and Pentecostal theological hermeneutics (Yong 2002; see Oliverio 2009). In recent years, other works have either begun to explicitly address and employ the concept of theological hermeneutics for Pentecostal theology or to basically employ the approach so that they might be considered within this hermeneutical school of thought in Pentecostal theology (Smith 2010; Studebaker 2012; Archer and Oliverio 2016; Vondey 2017; Yong 2018). The explicit development of theological hermeneutics among Pentecostals began almost a century after the origination of Pentecostalism at the turn of the twentieth century. As classical Pentecostals and Pentecostal theology have largely employed practical and informal theological approaches to interpreting God, humanity, and the world, rather than the philosophical and theological categories employed more recently among some Pentecostal systematic and philosophical theologians, Pentecostal theology through its first hundred years has primarily been embedded in Pentecostal spirituality (see Chapter 3); that is, Pentecostal theology has primarily occurred through spiritual practices which carry theologies, such as song, story, testimony, prophetic utterance, and interpreted spiritual and general experiences (Land 1993). As a result, Pentecostal theological hermeneutics may well be considered as an implicit yet important category for considering the first century of Pentecostal theology, functioning within types of interpretive approaches in many movements within the formation of the wider Pentecostal tradition.

Development and types of classical Pentecostal theological hermeneutics Classical Pentecostalism, which represents many of the core and originating elements of the wider Pentecostal tradition, if now a minority within it, emerged at the turn of the twentieth century with a hermeneutic born amidst holiness, revivalist, premillennial, and 142

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(anti-)modernist influences, though with wider cultural worlds, so that the interaction between the classical and global Pentecostal traditions is dynamic and interrelated yet distinguishable (Hollenweger 1997; Oliverio 2012; Vondey 2013). Classical Pentecostal theological hermeneutics may be considered in four basic types. The first is an original classical Pentecostal hermeneutic which was the hermeneutic of origination and birthed classical Pentecostalism. While the original form of this hermeneutic of origination cannot be replicated, since it is not possible to reproduce the cultural conditions and personal agencies from which this hermeneutic arose, this hermeneutic represents an essence or core within Pentecostalism—much of which continues in subsequent Pentecostal hermeneutics. In its historical original form, and subsequently in its hybridization with continuing Pentecostal hermeneutics, it is a hermeneutic of origination: the idea and force of agency within Pentecostal communities produces and originates new Pentecostal understanding and experiences.

Original theological hermeneutics The original classical Pentecostal hermeneutic is a hermeneutic of revelation and origination. It began with the founding fathers and mothers of the tradition—from William Seymour and the Azusa Street leadership to the breadth of the first generation of early twentieth-century North American Pentecostalism to the varied and multi-centered global locations of Pentecostal origins (Anderson 2013). As a theological hermeneutic, it explicitly elevated the Protestant canon as authority in a dialogical relationship with Pentecostal experiences, producing new readings and new experiences of the text. Such was met by the restorationist ethos in the original classical Pentecostal hermeneutic, where the restoration of the faith of the early church was seen as the precursor to the end times missionary movement which would precipitate the eschatological millennium (Blumhofer 1993). These elements met the “full gospel” theology that read Scripture and Christian life through the lens of Jesus as savior, sanctifier, Spirit baptizer, divine healer and soon-coming King, providing further interpretive structure for the early Pentecostal paradigm (see Chapter 16). This theological narrative has been described as a dynamic that emerges in Pentecostal spirituality where the prophetic in Scripture is fulfilled by present experiences, so that the experiences at the Pentecost event in Acts 2 were identified as fulfilling Joel 2 and other prophecies (Vondey 2017, 16–17). This theological hermeneutic of origination is thus productive of theological interpretations of both the present experience and past revelation, even as they usually blend together as these Pentecostal theologies are produced. Nevertheless, at least in principle, at the essence of Pentecostal hermeneutics there has remained the principle that Scripture should be interpreting us, and only, in turn, does the believer interpret Scripture; Pentecostal hermeneutics is a hermeneutic of encounter (Davies 2009). A hermeneutic of origination cannot simply continue unabated, and thus requires stabilization. The three other types of Pentecostal theological hermeneutics that have emerged primarily through classical Pentecostals have each stabilized Pentecostal interpretive approaches in a general area: the Evangelical-Pentecostal in the relationship between the dynamics of revelation and textual-scriptural authority; the contextual Pentecostal with the cultural-linguistic and philosophical underpinnings of spiritual-theological understanding; and the ecumenical Pentecostal with the larger Christian tradition and the development of systematic theology. The outgrowth of the original theological hermeneutic in relationship to this quest for stabilization first occurred early in classical Pentecostal history, within a decade of the 143

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Azusa Street revival, as the early Pentecostal movement turned toward the older American Evangelical tradition to stabilize its approach to theological development, even as the latter was engaging in the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. This development occurred early on in Pentecostal history in the later stages of the ministry careers of Pentecostal pioneers and during the stage of formulation of early Pentecostal doctrines, developing a hermeneutical appeal to the authority of Scripture which operated in the longer Evangelical Protestant traditions ( Jacobsen 2003; Oliverio 2012, 83–184; Stephenson 2013, 11–27) and which then continued throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. The earlier versions of the Evangelical-Pentecostal hermeneutic regulated Pentecostal theological understanding through “Bible doctrines” (see Chapter 1), justified by interpretations of Scripture through older Evangelical literary hermeneutics while still retaining the dynamic of newness and revision from the original and originating hermeneutic, creating a new hybrid. Evangelical-Pentecostal theological hermeneutics emerged during the mid-twentieth century as a quest for a theology based upon a hermeneutic of Scripture that is both a “believing hermeneutic” that engages historical-critical biblical scholarship and a hermeneutic for Pentecostal praxis. Evangelical-Pentecostal hermeneuts considered variations on the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture and author-centered literary hermeneutics, most often drawing from E.D. Hirsch, Jr., the leading author-centered hermeneutic theorist of the twentieth century (Hirsch 1967; Anderson 1994). They also tended to explore a pneumatic element in hermeneutics. Sometimes this pneumatic element seemed more like an add-on to Evangelical hermeneutics, but more often there was an attempt to integrate this hermeneutic into the whole of Pentecostal approaches to biblical and experiential interpretations (Horton 1976; Ervin 1984; Stronstad, 1992). This hermeneutic worked well to establish official doctrinal theologies for Pentecostal fellowships, as these doctrines found biblical justifications on more sophisticated bases than did the earlier Evangelical-Pentecostal theological hermeneutic, yet its philosophical and hermeneutical development often remained underdeveloped in relation to theological hermeneutics across the Christian tradition.

Contextual Pentecostal hermeneutics The contextual Pentecostal hermeneutic began in the 1990s from resources latent within the Pentecostal tradition, from the kind of sources that Walter Hollenweger (1997, 307–25) considered the “critical root” within Pentecostalism, which drew on the modern tradition of critical analysis in the quest for truth and knowledge. Yet the move toward philosophical approaches for Pentecostal hermeneutics came at a time when the modern critical project was being deeply questioned, both from within and by its longstanding critics. A 1993 issue of Pneuma: Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies featured four articles and an editorial, each of which sought to find new approaches for Pentecostal hermeneutics in line with some version of postmodern or Romantic hermeneutics (Byrd 1993; Cargal, 1993; Dempster 1993; Israel, Albrecht and McNally 1993; Plüss 1993), which initially generated debate with proponents of Evangelical-Pentecostal hermeneutics. Contextual Pentecostal theological hermeneutics constructed fuller and more thoroughgoing articulations in the early 2000s, with the work of Amos Yong and James K.A. Smith, as well as John Christopher Thomas, Kenneth Archer and the others from the so-called “Cleveland (TN) School.” Yong’s Spirit-Word-Community (2002) put forth the theological paradigm of one of the leading Pentecostal theologians as a thickly articulated theological hermeneutic which affirms the contextuality of all human understanding. The work of the early James K.A. Smith (2000) provided articulation of a philosophical theology of the 144

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limitations, situatedness, and embodied nature of human understanding, along with the ubiquity of interpretation, in his The Fall of Interpretation. Yong and Smith, and their contextual Pentecostal hermeneutics, recognized the need for Pentecostal theological interpretation to incorporate philosophical understanding of the cultural-linguistic layers involved in biblical and theological interpretation of Scripture and life. The Cleveland School has represented a particular development of this hermeneutic, one which arose among American Pentecostal theologians, but which has had broader influence for classical and global Pentecostal hermeneutics, producing a narratival hermeneutic which emphasizes their own contexts. Among these theologians, Kenneth Archer has emphasized how modern Pentecostal narratives produced meaning for modern Pentecostal interpreters (see Chapter 4) as they formed theologies from their readings of the biblical texts (Archer 2004a, Archer 2004b). Lee Roy Martin has focused on the affective hearing of biblical texts as a more appropriate approach to Scripture, while still employing critical scholarly methods (Martin 2013). John Christopher Thomas had already developed a biblical hermeneutic modeled on Acts 15, where the community’s discernment concerning their experiences and biblical texts led them to practical theological conclusions concerning the Christian life (Thomas 1994). Both Archer and Thomas operate in a school of thought, largely generated by Church of God (Cleveland, TN) theologians, in which Pentecostals draw from their own spiritual and theological wells while retaining an ecumenical spirit. The Cleveland School has also followed the proposal of Steven Land (1993), in which Pentecostal theology is its spirituality, found primarily amidst songs, prayers, wisdom, and practices, and which is centered not just on its orthodoxy but also on its orthopraxy and orthopathy, bringing together right belief and worship with right actions and practices, and with rightfully disciplined affections that drive and motivate Pentecostal living (see Chapter 3). The Cleveland School thus has continued to produce a theological hermeneutic that involves distinctly Pentecostal approaches to interpretation with an emphasis on the affections which are nevertheless ecumenical (see Green 2015).

Ecumenical Pentecostal hermeneutics While other forms of contextual Pentecostal hermeneutics have been arising, ecumenical Pentecostal hermeneutics has emerged gradually alongside (Noel 2010; Archer and Oliverio 2016). The relationship between the contextual Pentecostal and the ecumenical Pentecostal may be understood in line with dynamics of the particular and the whole, or the one and the many, or the local and the global as these arise in Pentecostal studies (Oliverio 2013; Vondey 2013, 9–27, 69–88). The ecumenical Pentecostal hermeneutic is a theological hermeneutic of (re)integration of Pentecostal theology and hermeneutics with that of the wider Christian traditions. The ecumenical Pentecostal theological hermeneutic has deep roots in the ethos of the Pentecostal tradition, drawing on the original drive of Pentecostalism as an ecumenical revival movement, before its early splintering into factions (see Chapter 35). Thus, the ecumenical Pentecostal hermeneutic is a (re)activation of this interpretive movement, to find Pentecostal theology as both a contribution to and participation in the theological interpretations of the greater household of Christian faith. As this approach would necessarily generate dialogue with other interpretations of Scripture from other theological traditions, the dialogical task of systematic theology is most often employed here. Development toward this hermeneutic is seen in the systematic theology of Ernest Swing Williams, General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God from 1929–49. Williams engaged 145

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the complexities inherent in the issues addressed by Christian systematic theology with an irenic tone which dialectically moved between Pentecostal and other Christian understandings (Williams 1953). The approach also functioned as a living theological hermeneutic among pioneering Pentecostal ecumenists, including David du Plessis and Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. Yet it has been most developed by contemporary Pentecostal systematic theologians. The ecumenical Pentecostal hermeneutic is a theological hermeneutic which draws on the spiritual resources of the Pentecostal tradition and dialogically engages other Christian theological traditions in order to produce a Pentecostal theology that is also a faithful rendition of the wider Christian tradition. The contemporary version of this hermeneutic is exemplified by Pentecostal theologians Simon Chan, Frank Macchia, Steven Studebaker, and Wolfgang Vondey, among others who have developed this hermeneutic, including Daniel Castelo, Dale Coulter, Chris E.W. Green, Cheryl Bridges Johns, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Edmund Rybarczyk, Christopher A. Stephenson, Lisa Stephenson, and Koo Dong Yun. This hermeneutic represents an important development that moves away from Pentecostal attempts to stand in contrast to or overcome other Christian traditions and stabilizes the original Pentecostal hermeneutic’s penchant for newness by countering with the resources of these theological, and their attendant cultural, traditions. It thus concurs with the contextual Pentecostal hermeneutic, at least basically, on the conditions of human knowledge, while focusing on bringing about a Pentecostal ressourcement with the older Christian traditions, while retaining the hermeneutical and theological tenet that all traditions must recognize the authority of Scripture. Thus, its current representatives tend toward an incarnational hermeneutic that, like Smith’s approach, finds divine revelation and presence within the created order, drawing Pentecostalism away from more gnostic tendencies, so that the Spirit is found in the church, past and present, as the church develops its understanding of God and God’s ways. While also drawing on the affections, in line with Land’s theological hermeneutic, Simon Chan (1998, 2000) seeks to draw Pentecostal theology back into the larger Christian tradition through spiritual practices in a process of “traditioning” that forms the theological interpreter (see Chapter 9), so that Pentecostal Christian spiritual formation becomes central to biblical and theological interpretation. Frank Macchia’s use of the dialectical approach to theology, in line with Karl Barth, opened space for his development of an ecumenical Pentecostal theological hermeneutics. Such can be seen across his works, but perhaps most so in his development of an ecumenical Pentecostal theology of Spirit Baptism, the “crown jewel” of Pentecostal theology (see Chapter 23). Rather than to defend Pentecostal doctrine through claiming the superiority of Luke’s corpus over other New Testament passages, Macchia broadens the Pentecostal metaphor of Spirit Baptism by drawing from the breadth of the New Testament as well as Reformed and Catholic theological sources in order to construct a theological understanding of Spirit Baptism representative of Pentecostal empowerment in love as well as aspects of the scriptural image as understood in other Christian theologies. In doing so, Macchia has deepened, rather than watered down, the Pentecostal doctrine, through his construction and employment of his version of an ecumenical Pentecostal hermeneutic (Macchia 2006; Oliverio 2016). Vondey’s dialectical approach can be seen in his drawing on the tensions inherent in the coexistence of Pentecostal polarities: local identity and global pluralism, holism and extremisms in spirituality, ecumenicism and separatism, orthodoxy and sectarianism, social engagement and triumphalism, egalitarianism and authoritarian institutionalism, and scholarly development and anti-intellectualism (Vondey 2013). Still, he finds the “full gospel” as the centering narrative underlying Pentecostal theology with its inherent tensions (Vondey 2017). Studebaker has developed a Pentecostal trinitarian theology which also stands as an exemplar of 146

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this ecumenical Pentecostal approach, identifying a “nexus of experience, practices, doctrine, and tradition” in Pentecostal theology as a dialectic between theology and experience takes place for Pentecostals (Studebaker 2012, 14–26). Studebaker (2012) develops his Pentecostal trinitarian theology in dialogue with the trinitarian theologies of other Christian traditions, resourcing the Greek Fathers, Augustine, and Jonathan Edwards, as well as contemporary theologians such as Catholic theologians David Coffey and Thomas Weinandy and the Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas, in addition to a number of contemporary Evangelical Reformed theologians. Contemporary Pentecostal theological hermeneutics is thus moving in more integrative directions. Pentecostal theologians have been addressing the need for coherence and continuity while desiring to retain the original impulse and its power. The original impulse to experience the newness and renewal of God in power and love, at the essence of the original classical Pentecostal hermeneutic, gave birth to a series of movements which emerged into a theological tradition, albeit a very decentered tradition, a tradition amidst late modern cultures that serves as a center of continuity for many movements and Christian fellowships. The work of Evangelical-Pentecostal hermeneutics continues in its work of connecting a hermeneutic of revelation with a hermeneutic of biblical authority and textual hermeneutics (see Chapter 12). That of the contextual Pentecostal continues in connecting the hermeneutic of revelation with a hermeneutic of general knowledge and cultural understanding amidst a plurality of global cultural, philosophical and religious traditions in late modernity (see Chapter 10). The Ecumenical Pentecostal hermeneutic leads the way in connecting the hermeneutic of revelation with a hermeneutic of tradition and the broader church, incorporating and carrying the Christian tradition in the particularities of the Pentecostal tradition.

Developing global Pentecostal hermeneutics Some recent work by leading Pentecostal scholars has not only sought to integrate the existing Pentecostal hermeneutical impulses but to draw them toward more thoroughgoing engagement with the wider global Pentecostal world, a project that is in an early stage. Nevertheless, this tendency can be seen in the work of Craig Keener, Nimi Wariboko, and Amos Yong, and the typology set forth by Donald E. Miller and Tetsunao Yamamori (2007) offers an entry point not merely to Pentecostal socio-religious types but to the theological hermeneutics productive of and resulting from them. Further, local Pentecostal theologies are emerging, and while current trajectories may be tracked, perhaps all that can be well anticipated is that they will likely grow in influence in the twenty-first century. Keener’s Spirit Hermeneutics (2016) is the most comprehensive proposal for a Pentecostal biblical-theological hermeneutic to date, as it integrates the concerns of EvangelicalPentecostal hermeneutics with the concerns and philosophical resourcing of contextual Pentecostal hermeneutics in the irenic spirit of the ecumenical Pentecostal hermeneutic. Notable for its resourcing of the internal resources of the New Testament texts themselves, coming as it does from one of the current era’s leading scholars and commentators on them, Keener’s Spirit Hermeneutics provides sympathetic resourcing for the formation of interpretive habits and spiritual-theological convictions from global Pentecostal communities, what he refers to as “majority world insights.” Keener brings together Western historiography and global Pentecostal spiritual convictions concerning the reality of the spiritual world and the miraculous, in a move to resource and respect Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity and its local insights for global Pentecostal hermeneutics. 147

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Yong’s recent work (Yong 2014b, 2018) also represents an integration of the concerns of the four classical Pentecostal hermeneutical types while moving attention more into global Christian and Pentecostal concerns. In Renewing Christian Theology, Yong uses the World ­­Assemblies of God’s Statement of Faith and draws on global sources in developing a one-volume Pentecostal systematic theology. Learning Theology returns to the Wesleyan quadrilateral for resourcing a pneumatically driven theology, while advocating affective spiritual practices for those who practice theological inquiry and reflection. Further, Yong’s “many tongues” principle, which has been developed throughout his works, theologically considers tongues as a symbol not just of a personal reception of Spirit baptism but also as the multiplicity of voices, interpretations, gifts, skills, disciplines, and insights coming from all of those who have received and are led by, or even temporarily responsive to, the Spirit (Yong 2005). In his total set of works, Yong has put forth the most comprehensive theological hermeneutic from any Pentecostal theologian to date. If Keener has produced the most comprehensive biblical-theological hermeneutic, with attendant global concern, and Yong has developed the most comprehensive theological paradigm to date, Nimi Wariboko has perhaps put forth the most stretching and groundbreaking philosophical-theological interpretations of Pentecostalism. In a series of writings, Wariboko reflects upon continental philosophy and the implicit theological and philosophical affirmations found in Pentecostal practices in order to find insights into what underlays the many localities of global Pentecostalism, producing new interpretive lenses for Pentecostal studies. In The Pentecostal Principle (2012), he proposes that Pentecostalism embodies the “pentecostal principle” as a dynamic principle of life, of God-given energy for existence, which interacts with, following Paul Tillich, Catholic substance and the Protestant principle, respectively substance and reform. He has considered new urbanization in terms of the “charismatic city” where networks of spiritual energy dynamically manifest (Wariboko 2014a), and that in Pentecostal practices God’s attributes are commonly split from the unity of God’s being for their functions apart from the whole (Wariboko 2018). Currently emerging, Wariboko is putting forth an understanding of Pentecostalism as archetypical for the spiritual life of the late modern world and is providing a significant new lens for understanding global ­pentecostalism that has the potential of bringing together African and Western interpretations of Pentecostal realities (Wariboko 2014b).

Conclusion Theological hermeneutics has emerged in the twentieth century from classical Pentecostal origins through the formation of Evangelical-Pentecostal relationships, a contextual appropriation of cultural-linguistic and spiritual-theological approaches, and an ecumenical perspective formed by larger concerns for the Christian tradition and the development of constructive and systematic Pentecostal theology. Global Pentecostal theological hermeneutics are still emerging, with a myriad of local and regional forms of expression. At this historical point, there does not exist a single Pentecostal theological hermeneutic worldwide. The trajectory of the different hermeneutical types can perhaps be best understood through practical, socio-ethical, and theological lenses found in the structures of global Pentecostal communities themselves and the emphases of different scholars. A classical Pentecostal hermeneutic interprets the Christian life in biblical and otherworldly terms, carrying on traditions of prohibitions in a sectarian approach to theological understanding. Other groups propose a variety of metaphysical and interpretive assumptions concerning the spiritual world through which Scripture and human experiences are read. Holistic or 148

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progressive Pentecostals consider living theology to be interpretations of missional action aimed at spiritual salvation, together with social and personal identity and well-being, while again, others react within Pentecostalism against sectarianism and propose reconciliation with broader cultural norms, producing a hermeneutic of accommodation with culture. Local and unanticipated developments are likely to continue to transform the development of theological hermeneutics as the Pentecostal theological tradition moves into the middle decades of the twenty-first century.

References Anderson, Allan H. 2013. To the Ends of the Earth: Pentecostalism and the Transformation of World Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Anderson, Gordon L. 1994. “Pentecostal Hermeneutics: Part I.” Paraclete 28 (1): 1–11. Archer, Kenneth J. 2004a. A Pentecostal Hermeneutic for the Twenty-First Century: Spirit, Scripture and Community. London: T&T Clark. ———. 2004b. “Pentecostal Story: The Hermeneutical Filter for the Making of Meaning.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 26 (1): 36–59. ———. 2010. The Gospel Revisited: Towards a Pentecostal Theology of Worship and Witness. Eugene: Pickwick. Archer, Kenneth J., and L. William Oliverio, Jr., eds. 2016. Constructive Pneumatological Hermeneutics in Pentecostal Christianity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Blumhofer, Edith Waldvogel. 1993. Restoring the Faith: The Assemblies of God, Pentecostalism, and American Culture. Champaign: University of Illinois Press. Byrd, Joseph. 1993. “Paul Ricoeur’s Hermeneutic Theory and Pentecostal Proclamation.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 15 (2): 203–14. Cargal, Timothy. 1993. “Beyond the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy: Pentecostals and Hermeneutics in a Postmodern Age.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 15 (2): 163–87. Chan, Simon. 1998. Spiritual Theology: A Systematic Study of the Christian Life. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press. ———. 2000. Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Davies, Andrew. 2009. “What Does It Mean to Read the Bible as a Pentecostal?” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 18: 216–29. Dempster, Murray W. 1993. “Paradigm Shifts and Hermeneutics: Confronting Issues Old and New.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 15 (2): 129–35. Ervin, Howard. 1984. “Hermeneutics: A Pentecostal Option.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 3 (2): 11–25. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1989. Truth and Method. Translated by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. 2nd rev. ed. London: Continuum. Green, Chris E.W. 2015. Sanctifying Interpretation: Vocation, Holiness, and Scripture. Cleveland: CPT Press. Hirsch, Jr., E.D. 1967. Validity in Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hollenweger, Walter J. 1997. Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide. Peabody: Hendrickson. Horton, Stanley. What the Bible Says about the Holy Spirit. Springfield: Gospel Publishing House. Israel, Richard D., Daniel E. Albrecht, and Randal G. McNally. 1993. “Pentecostals and Hermeneutics: Texts, Rituals and Community.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 15 (2): 137–61. Jacobsen, Douglas. 2003. Thinking in the Spirit: Theologies of the Early Pentecostal Movement. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Keener, Craig. 2016. Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in Light of Pentecost. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Kuhn, Thomas. 1996. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakatos, Imre. 1978. The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Philosophical Papers 1. Edited by. John Worrall and Gregory Currie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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L. William Oliverio, Jr. Land, Steven J. 1993. Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom. JPT Supplement 1. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Martin, Lee Roy. 2013. “Longing for God: Psalm 63 and Pentecostal Spirituality.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 22 (1): 54–76. Miller, Donald E., and Tetsunao Yamamori. 2007. Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement. Berkeley: University of California Press. Noel, Bradley Truman. 2010. Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics: Comparisons and Contemporary Impact. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. Oliverio, L. William, Jr. 2009. “An Interpretive Review of Essay of Amos Yong’s Spirit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 18: 301–11. ———. 2012. Theological Hermeneutics in the Classical Pentecostal Tradition: A Typological Account. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2013. “The One and the Many: Amos Yong and the Pluralism and Dissolution of Late Modernity.” In The Theology of Amos Yong and the New Face of Pentecostal Scholarship: Passion for the Spirit, edited by Wolfgang Vondey and Martin William Mittelstadt, 45–62. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2016. “Spirit Baptism in the Late Modern World: A Pentecostal Response to The Church: Towards a Common Vision.” In The Holy Spirit and the Church: Ecumenical Reflections with a Pastoral Perspective, edited by Thomas Hughson, 44–70. New York: Routledge. Plüss, Jean-Daniel. 1993. “Azusa and Other Myths: The Long and Winding Road from Experience to Stated Belief and Back Again.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 15 (2): 189–201. Polanyi, Michael. 1962. Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. London: Routledge. Rorty, Richard. 1967. “Introduction: Metaphilosophical Difficulties of Linguistic Philosophy.” In The Linguistic Turn: Recent Essays in Philosophical Method, edited by Richard Rorty, 1–39. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Smith, James K.A. 2000. The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press. ———. 2010. Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy. Pentecostal Manifestos 1. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Stephenson, Christopher A. 2013. Types of Pentecostal Theology: Method, System, Spirit. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Stronstad, Roger. 1992. “Pentecostal Experience and Hermeneutics.” Paraclete 26 (1): 14–30. Studebaker, Steven. 2012. From Pentecost to the Triune God. Pentecostal Manifestos 6. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Taylor, Charles. 1995. Philosophical Arguments. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ———. 2016. The Language Animal: The Full Shape of the Human Linguistic Capacity. Cambridge: Belknap. Thiselton, Anthony. 1980. The Two Horizons: New Testament Hermeneutics and Philosophical Description with Special Reference to Heidegger, Bultmann, Gadamer, and Wittgenstein. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2009. Hermeneutics: An Introduction. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Thomas, John Christopher. 1994. “Women, Pentecostals and the Bible: An Experiment in Pentecostal Hermeneutics.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 5: 41–56. Vanhoozer, Kevin. 1998. Is There a Meaning in This Text? The Bible, The Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Vondey, Wolfgang. 2013. Pentecostalism: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Bloomsbury. ———. 2017. Pentecostal Theology: Living the Full Gospel. London: T&T Clark International. Wariboko, Nimi. 2012. The Pentecostal Principle: Ethical Methodology in New Spirit. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. ———. 2014a. The Charismatic City and the Public Resurgence of Religion: A Pentecostal Social Ethics of Cosmopolitan Urban Life. Christianity and Renewal-Interdisciplinary Studies 2. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2014b. Nigerian Pentecostalism. Rochester: University of Rochester Press. ———. 2018. The Split God: Pentecostalism and Critical Theory. Albany: SUNY Press. Westphal, Merold. 2001. Overcoming Onto-Theology: Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith. New York: Fordham University Press. Williams, Ernest Swing. 1953. Systematic Theology, 3 vols. Springfield: Gospel Publishing House. Yong, Amos. 2002. Spirit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective. Burlington: Ashgate.

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Theological hermeneutics ———. 2005. The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. ———. 2014a. Dialogical Spirit: Christian Reason and Theological Method in the Third Millennium. Eugene: Cascade. ———. 2014b. Renewing Christian Theology: Systematics for a Global Christianity. Waco: Baylor University Press. ———. 2017. Hermeneutical Spirit: Theological Interpretation and Scriptural Imagination for the 21st Century. Eugene: Cascade. ———. 2018. Learning Theology: Tracking the Spirit of Christian Faith. Louisville: Westminster John Knox. Zimmerman, Jens. 2004. Recovering Theological Hermeneutics: An Incarnational-Trinitarian Theory of Interpretation. Grand Rapids: Baker.

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14 THE PNEUMATOLOGICAL IMAGINATION The logic of Pentecostal theology Amos Yong The term pneumatological imagination was coined by Lucien Richard, OMI, with whom I took a PhD seminar in Roman Catholic theology in 1997 (Yong 2000, 106n6). In that context, I suggested that such an imaginative approach “provides us with a fundamental orientation to God, ourselves and the world, and renders more plausible the idea of God as present and active in the world” (Yong 2000, 29; see also Oliverio 2009; Stephenson 2013). I initially proposed the concept in the context of Pentecostal theology in my first book, a slightly revised version of my PhD dissertation on a Pentecostal-Charismatic approach to Christian theology of religions. What I was attempting was a constructive theological project along at least three fronts: in Pentecostal theology, in theology of the Spirit, and in theology of religions. The fundamental question, then, was how to take up these tasks in a methodologically cohesive manner. What kind of principle could or would facilitate trialogue, effectively, across these three discursive domains, each of which was in its own a relatively recently emerging arena of inquiry? And since these were all theological topics, the organizing guideline had to derive from within, rather than being imposed in an alien manner from outside, that conversation. My idea was to articulate a certain theological notion—a theo-logic, if one wills—that could mediate these three spheres of inquiry. Two decades later, I not only affirm the basic thrust of the pneumatological imagination as originally developed but also have a more expansive understanding of its theo-logical capacities. Chiefly, its reach is extended by way of delving deeper, more radically, into the Pentecost narrative that is the bedrock of the Pentecostal theological movement and retrieving its pneumatological impulses for the wider ecumenical Christian theological task. Consistent with the aspirations of the early modern Pentecostal believers, I have come to see more vividly that the Pentecostal theological witness is not just for Pentecostal churches but for the church catholic, and that such promise begins to be fulfilled when the logic of the Pentecostal movement and experience—what I have called the pneumatological imagination—is plumbed and its resources unleashed for the wider ecumenical endeavor. This essay begins with a concise historical and thematic part situating the emergence of the concept amid wider theological advances and then devotes its attention to delineating various features of the pneumatological imagination through a re-reading of the Pentecost narrative in the Book of Acts. My goal is to indicate how the logic of Pentecostal theology 152

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can empower Christian theological reflection at large and how a Pentecostal theological logic can serve as a foundational element for all Christian theologizing. Put another way, the pneumatological imagination is, or ought to be, part of the theo-logic or Pentecost-logic— the overarching architectonic/superstructure, or the underlying substructure (these various metaphors communicating different but complementary insights)—of the Christian way, especially having to navigate the pluralism, not just real but recognized, of a dynamic and complex world.

The logic/s of Pentecostal theology As a young and aspiring Pentecostal theologian gripped by the question of religious plurality and therefore committed to engaging the theology of religions discussion in the mid-1990s, I was confronted by the need to find a methodological via media that brought biblical and theological materials into dialogue with religious data, on the one side, and with contemporary scholarship on the religions, on the other. My intuition was that the recent renaissance of pneumatology in the wider theological academy (cf. Kärkkäinen 2002; Shults and Hollingsworth 2008), as well as an emerging turn to the Spirit in theology of religions discussions (see Yong 2003, 83–128), invited exploration of how Pentecostal spirituality, attuned as such was to the work of the Spirit, might make a contribution at this nexus. In hindsight (cf. Yong 2005,167–234), this insight was precipitated by the scriptural witness that, on the day of Pentecost, the work of the Spirit spawned from the assembly of those gathered “from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5), speaking and hearing, “each of us, in our own native language” (2:8), so that those from around the known world exclaimed: “in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power” (2:11). The logic of this Pentecost narrative was that the outpouring of the Spirit enabled the witness of those “from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9b). My extension was that if this language was appropriate for thinking about dialogical theologies with those from many ethnicities, cultures, and linguistic groups (see Yong 2014a), then it was also relevant for thinking theologically about and with others in a world of many faiths. It is important at this juncture to note how I felt this approach navigated the general methodological challenge for theology in the contemporary world. On the one hand, as the Lukan text notes, a pneumatological approach located in the day of Pentecost event was and is theologically funded in the work of the Spirit of Christ poured out on all flesh from the right hand of the Father (Acts 2:17, 33). This narrative opens up explicitly theological resources for whatever tasks may be at hand (see Chapter 16). More exactly, the work of the Spirit foregrounds pneumatology, but as such is related to the person of Christ and the Fatherhood of Yahweh the Jewish deity, this relationship, in turn, prompts elaboration according to the trinitarian traditions evolved in later Christian theological discourse. The point is that my Pentecostal turn to the Spirit was not only a scriptural one grounded in the Acts narrative but also a theological move that both anticipates and can be informed by the tradition’s pneumatological and trinitarian developments. On the other hand, the day of Pentecost account depicts the work of the Spirit not only in abstract theological but in concrete personal and historical terms. God, by the Spirit, is not only present among human creatures but also active within and between them (cf. Fee 1994, xxi). In other words, the turn to pneumatology was not exclusively theological but also anthropological. This equation must also be stated otherwise: the turn to pneumatology is not only anthropological but is also simultaneously theological. This may have been a subtle difference from modernist pneumatologies that may have been reductive of such differences 153

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to the anthropological domain—as the criticism of the line from Schleiermacher to Feuerbach often travels—but it was and continues to be an important one (Yong 2015). Talk about the Spirit mediated pentecostally—i.e. through the day of Pentecost event and its legacies— registered human voices in the theological conversation, but these were never bereft of substantive divine accents (see Chapter 19). One significant interlocutor from those initial days remains important for our purposes: Pentecostal-turned-Methodist theologian D. Lyle Dabney. The major contribution of this student of Jürgen Moltmann was to develop the Moltmannian pneumatological t rinitarianism into a paradigm for thinking theologically in the present time and in light of the historical tradition (see Dabney 1996; cf. Yong 2018b). Dabney suggested it was possible to consider the trinitarian character of the Nicene confession as unfolding also paradigmatically: with the First Article on God as creator characterizing patristic and then culminating in medieval theologies; with the Second Article on Christ the redeemer as being restored to central position in Reformation theological traditions; and with the Third Article focused on the Spirit foregrounded by especially Pentecostal movements in the twentieth century. While this ­ is a horrible generalization at one level, for our purposes the pneumatological-pentecostal connection he makes is further shored up given that the last hundred years have been designated not only the “Pentecostal century” (e.g. Synan 2012) but also the century that has seen for the first time, mediated by both the prior century of missions and then the Pentecostal movement, the emergence of a global or world Christianity (Sunquist 2015). From this perspective, then, the many tongues of the first century Pentecost not only antedate the many languages of the modern Pentecostal movement but also anticipate the many forms of contemporary world Christianities ( Johnson and Ross 2009). Dabney’s pneumatological logic thus is also a Pentecostal logic—a way of thinking informed by and related to the events of the day of Pentecost—that suggests how Christian theology in the twenty-first century can navigate the experience of pluralism that is intensified in our contemporary world. This is a theology of the Third Article that is not only a pneumatology (a theology of the Holy Spirit) but is also a pneumatological theology: a theological imagination shaped at each juncture and locus by the person and work of the Spirit (see Pinnock 1996; Habets 2016). Such a pneumato-logic, however, neither displaces not marginalizes the prior theological paradigms (those of the First and Second Articles) but complements, deepens, and enriches these predecessors so that there is a cumulative spiraling into, or opening out toward, a more fully trinitarian or triune theological vision (see Chapter  17). Arguably, we are still only in quest of a more robustly trinitarian Christian understanding, but this goal cannot be attained apart from pneumatological and pneumato-theological efforts (Yong 2012). Yet, simultaneously, such a Pentecost-logic lifts up the wonders of God through the works of the Spirit of Christ not by ignoring but coordinating through the many voices, tongues, and witnesses. Hence, the pneumatological imagination proceeds not only after the Incarnation, the cross, and Easter (the provenance of most theologies of the Second Article), but also after Pentecost, and it is exactly in this vein that it is both theological and anthropological/creational discourse concurrently.

Contours of the pneumatological imagination So far, we have covered in broad brush strokes the overarching rationale for the pneumatological imagination, at least in terms of how I had originally conceived of the notion and then how it has been developed in support of the search for a more robustly trinitarian theology. In order to substantiate the claim that the pneumatological 154

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imagination is both theological and anthropological/creational at the same time, I wish to secure its scriptural grounds. In the confines of this essay I will do little more than begin such an exegetical task with the Book of Acts, although it would also be appropriate to say that what I am doing in the following is a form of theological—or pneumatological, to be more exact—interpretation of Scripture (see Chapter 6). The rest of this chapter suggests that the pneumatological imagination both flows out from and then allows performative engagement with the truths featured in the Pentecost narrative central to Pentecostal theology. Hence, the pneumatological imagination names the theology (or theo-logic) of Pentecost that can revitalize Christian theological engagement with the pluralisms of the third millennium. I explicate this Pentecost-logic for the church ecumenical and catholic—which is not reducible to and more than the Pentecostal-logic derived from and for those churches which have their roots in the modern revival movement—following the portrait in Acts 2 and thereby proceeding from the experiential to the cultural and the interpersonal dimensions.

Experiencing Pentecost: many senses Luke writes about what transpired on the day of Pentecost as follows: And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. (Acts 2:2–4) I will comment on three aspects depicted in this text in explicating the pneumatological imagination: (1) elements related to the Spirit’s infilling, (2) aspects related to sensory engagement, and (3) features related to the phenomenology of environmental experience. 1

2

If in the wider theological tradition, the Spirit is understood to relate God and the world, we see this clearly also in this text. The divine Spirit comes “suddenly from heaven,” we are told. Moving upon earthly flesh, this group of disciples is “filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” The Spirit thus not only comes upon but envelops and then enters into—“fills” is the Lukan descriptor—human bodies (cf. 1 Cor. 3:16 and 6:19). The infilling of human bodies is what then engenders, from within those bodies, life and witness (cf. John 7:38–39), so that, as Luke records, these persons “began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” Yet, proceeding more carefully into the interstices of this text, the Spirit’s descent upon and entry into human bodies is not generic but specified along multiple kinesthetic registers. It is surely impossible to ignore sound, more precariously denoted as “the rush of a violent wind,” which suggests both a distinct hearing and an intense feeling, a hearing-feeling that overwhelms the senses, not just ringing in one’s ears but tangibly perceived and palpably resounded through bodies from the tops of heads to the bottoms of feet. Bodies do not encounter violent winds in any segmented manner, but are caught up, wholly, in their sweep. And amid this baptism of sounds, and through this saturation of feelings, there is also a concrete visual identification of demarcated “tongues, as of fire,” individually “rest[ing] on each of them.” One imagines that the fullness of this 155

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embodied confrontation does not blur the specificity of single flames touching down on (top of ) heads and bodies. Hearing, feeling, perceiving, seeing—multiple senses are mobilized or activated in the arrival of the Spirit. Human beings “meet” the divine wind variously, and regardless of impairment of any one or other sensory capacity, the Spirit engages multiply and manifoldly, so that other unimpaired senses—or the whole embodied set of them variously attuned—might encounter the divine (see Yong 2011a, 82–116). If so far our understanding of the pneumatological imagination is that it is a site at which deity and humanity converge, then we can also say that such convergence encloses and incases human bodies in their fullness and complexity. This means that there is an embodied, which means also richly affective, dimension of the pneumatological imagination so that theological thinking emerges from out of, not by ignoring, the affections of human life and experience (Coulter and Yong 2016). In other words, the pneumatological imagination is emphatically not disembodied; instead, the Spirit’s infilling involves wholly affective, emotional, and physiological domains (see Chapter 11). Yet the Spirit fills bodies not only as segregated units (individuals) but as environmentally situated and constituted realities (persons in relation). Luke denotes that the disciples “were all together in one place” (Acts 2:1), and the Spirit’s infilling was both of and in bodies, and also of-and-in-bodies-together-in-“the-entire-house” (2:2). Bodies are thereby not singularities, but relational media that are both fillable by the divine breath and also through which the divine wind resonates. The pneumatological imagination thus conceived is no mere individually derived intellectualized scheme but is a sociorelationally charged environment (see Chapter 19). There are biologically animated aspects of the Spirit’s work, yet these operate not in isolation but in a psycho-social manner. The speech prompted by the Spirit’s visitation emphasizes the socio-linguistic and even oral character of the pneumatological imagination: a modality of engaging with and then reflecting on the world that is both interpersonal and intersubjective and can be so surely in and through dynamically embodied relations (Yong 2016a). Pentecost is thereby an oral event triunely mediated: the divine Spirit speaks in and through embodied creatures in relationship.

Let me clarify that this approach to Pentecostal theology is both descriptive and normative. On the one side, we are observing how the day of Pentecost account unfolds the blowing of the divine breath on human persons, but on the other side, we are also drawing out the implied theo-logic (or pneumato-logic, or Pentecost-logic) in this narration. The pneumatological imagination thus construed both emerges from out of the day of Pentecost blustering of the divine wind and invites us to think in, through, and with that breath. The work of the Spirit therefore makes possible our stepping into that experiential reality but yet surely in and through such entry, makes possible our seeing or understanding God and the world, ourselves included, from within that space-time. In short, far from requiring us to take leave of our affective, embodied, and socially constituted experiences, the pneumatological imagination enables knowledge of such realities in theological (pneumatological) register and also then inspires further reflection.

Understanding Pentecost: many tongues The next segment of Acts 2 expands our understanding of the social or cultural-linguistic character of the pneumatological imagination. We explicate here on its multi-cultural, inter-cultural, and trans-cultural dimensions. As we shall see, the pneumatological imagination 156

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is not only an embodied and social mode of engaging with and considering God in relationship to the world, but this engagement unfolds in, through, and with, rather than apart from, the cultural domain (see Chapter 10). Pneumatic or Pentecostal multiculturality is specified by Luke in and through the notice that speaking in the Spirit occurs “in the native language of each” (Acts 2:6b). Not only that, but the Pentecostal miracle is, arguably, both that of speech and of hearing: “each one heard them speaking in the native language of each” (2:6b), which prompts the question: “how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?” (2:8, italics added in both cases). The list of language groups given, involving sixteen distinct regions and provinces, as well as the city of Rome, indicates that “God’s deeds of power” (2:11b) are witnessed through not just one voice but many, these being representative of the known world (e.g. of the list of seventy nations of the Old Testament). The multivocity of the divinely inspired and empowered witness, through the Spirit, therefore includes those that may have been summarily and variously dismissed, perhaps because they represented the oppressive powers that be (Rome); perhaps because they derived from groups estranged from one another ( Jews vis-à-vis Arabs; 2:11a); or perhaps because they related to ethnically or culturally stigmatized people groups (e.g. the African continent, whether including Libyans, Cyreneans, or Egyptians; 2:10b). Recall, for instance, the saying found in one of the pastoral letters about Cretans (2:11a): “It was one of them, their very own prophet, who said, ‘Cretans are always liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons’” (Titus 1:12); aside from the put-down, notice the riddle which itself is part of the “joke”: that an untrustworthy Cretan is the one whose saying about untrustworthiness we are invited to trust—which is surely indicative of cross-cultural stereotyping in the first century Mediterranean world! In short, we might not consider certain cultural groups to be potential sources of the divine speech, yet here, and across the rest of the book of Acts, we see the breath of God blowing through unclean gentiles (10:1 passim), pagan poets (17:28), and even barbaric islanders (28:1 passim; see Yong 2011b: 185–88, 2014b: 141–50). Hence, the pneumatological imagination is multi-lingually enunciated and multi-culturally articulated. And it is certainly in and through such plurivocality that the pneumatological imagination is thereby as dissonant as it is consonant. Yes, there is a clarity of witness about “God’s deeds of power” that comes through; but this does not justify minimization of the bewilderment (2:6), amazement, and perplexity (2:12) of what is happening. Thus, the response brought forth a request for clarification to and from “one another, ‘What does this mean?’” (2:12). The response, about which Luke says: “others sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine’” (2:13), demonstrates that the sequence of events was not self-resolving. I suggest we can grasp the Pentecost event in this sense as being both multicultural in echoing many distinct languages and also intercultural in that the sounding forth of these many tongues catalyzed as much mis- and non-understanding as it did comprehension. Yet such confusion does not have the final word. Instead, what we have is a paradoxically “unbelievable, universal capacity to understand” (Welker 1994, 231). We thereby ought to celebrate the gift of multi-cultural multiplicity amid cross-cultural communicability, but still not underestimate the tremendous challenges swirling within such inter-cultural spaces and dynamics. Greek-speaking and Hebrew-speaking women, and men, later in the Acts story, grapple incapably with such intercultural confusion (6:1). The point is not to erect an unfathomable chasm between cultures and languages but yet also not to minimize their distinctiveness and fluid incommensurabilities at various junctures. Such recognition holds forth both the challenge and the promise of the pneumatological imagination: that it has the capacity to preserve the particularity of unfamiliar voices without dismissing their alienness. Instead, the pneumatological imagination provides a site for remaining with bafflement and puzzlement, 157

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without needing to move too quickly into congruent resolution that eliminates and does so simply by silencing, ignoring, or submerging. In the end, however, creaturely multiculturality (the fact of human plurality) and interculturality (the processes of human intercourse) are, through the pneumatological imagination, mapped onto a pentecostally mediated transculturality. Certainly, since the pneumatological imagination cannot be reduced to the immanent plane, our pentecostally configured scheme not only recognizes but embraces the divine breath’s entry into and residence within the human condition. The day of Pentecost narrates the coming of the divine wind into the creaturely sphere, entering into conventionally constructed abodes, alighting on measly flesh, and stimulating creaturely utterances. The transculturality witnessed to, thus, cannot be merely humanly concocted; nevertheless, it also cannot then be insisted on ­ only as super-natural (miraculous) divine intervention. Instead, the transcultural witness of the Spirit happens, however unexpectedly, in and through the specificities of human languages. The pneumatological imagination thereby enables speech about, and understanding of, not just creaturely actualities but as they relate to the divine realm. My claim is that the pneumatological imagination is shaped by, and arouses aptitude for, such multicultural, intercultural, and transcultural communication. Here I urge that the cultural not be reduced to natural linguistic groups but that they pertain to and encompass the full spectrum of humanly evolved discursivity, from the ethnic to the social and political to the disciplinary. Societal spheres, for instance, breed their own unique speech acts, or discursive practices, that guide engagement in those various domains (e.g. the economic, the aesthetic, the political), so that expert navigation in these arenas involves socialization or the mastery of the pertinent linguistic practices. That is why, for instance, we need political theologies, which can enable adept interface with the realm of the political (see Yong 2010). Similarly, and by extension, the earning of degrees, particularly at the graduate levels, involves acclimation to culturally constructed forms of understanding and inquiry apposite to specific objects or fields of study (see Chapter 10). The human and natural sciences are disciplinary discourses of scholarly, scientific, and methodological practices (see Chapter 42), each forged by cultures of investigation that then nurture environments of exploration, both combining to require years of acculturation (Yong 2011c). Here, the pneumatological imagination harnesses both multiand inter-cultural communication in all of their variegatedness into a sphere of trans-cultural inquiry and probes both deeper and wider in the search for understanding and truth.

Performing Pentecost: many interpenetrating voices Acts 2 has moved us from the phenomenological and experiential (vv. 1–4) through the cultural (vv. 5–12) to the interpersonal dimensions of the pneumatological imagination, prompted by the shift to Peter’s explication, as recorded by Luke (vv. 14–21). In this passage, the explanation is buttressed scripturally (from Joel 2:28–32), indicative also of the pneumatological imagination’s scripturalism, i.e. its motivation to correlate the biblical witness to the presence and activity of the divine wind of breath—ruah in the Hebrew and pneuma in the Greek—with our experience of and interaction with the world. If the Christian hermeneutic revisits the texts of ancient Israel after incarnation and Easter so as to re-read the Old Testament Christologically, then the pneumatological imagination also reconsiders the sacred writings of the Abrahamic, Mosaic, and Davidic covenants after Pentecost so as to retrieve and reappropriate the Hebrew Bible ruahically or ruahologically (see also Yong 2019). Hence, the many voices of the prophets and writings of the Jewish canon reverberate within the pneumatological imagination. 158

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Turning to what is said in the Pentecost narrative, the first part of the Petrine citation identifies the subjects of the pneumatological imagination: In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. (Acts 2:17–18) The important observations concern both the democratic comprehensiveness of the Spirit’s inspirational enablement and their capacity to mobilize what postcolonial perspectives would label as subaltern voices ( Joy 2014). On the former point, the four registers are all-inclusive according to first-century understandings: all are born either sons or daughters—with no middle or alternative descriptor—and are thereby either men or women; further, also, all are either young(er) or (getting) old(er). In other words, the universality of the Spirit’s outpouring— upon all flesh—is consistent with the earlier denotation, “from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5), even as it anticipates the later pronouncement of “the time of universal restoration that God announced long ago through his holy prophets” (3:21b). The pneumatological imagination is aspirationally universal in its horizons and enfolding capacities. This universality, however, privileges those from the so-called underside of history: women, the young, and servants or slaves. These who are the socially marginalized in patriarchal and aristocratic gerontocracies are the receptors of the Spirit’s blowing. The pneumatological imagination, in other words, lifts up those whose voices have been historically and traditionally sidelined, whether because of gender, power, or class/economics (Yong 2019b). Truly, that the Spirit would enable young girls, even female slaves and servants, to prophesy (cf. Acts 21:9) confirms that “God is no respecter of persons” (10:34b; KJV). There is a strong sense, then, that the powers of the present age, the conventions, traditions, and structures of this world, are being undermined by the witness of those filled with the Spirit. The status quo is passing away and the new world of the messiah—the Spirit-anointed redeemer (10:38)—is dawning. What does this pneumatological imagination initiate? Nothing less than the possibility, according to Peter, citing Joel, as recorded by Luke, that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (2:21). There is, therefore, a soteriological trajectory envisioned by the pneumatological imagination, one which promises the gift of the Spirit for all, across space and time: “For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him” (2:39). Yet the Pentecost experience, and message, thereby is soteriological precisely as eschatological (see Chapter 25), meaning that the redemptive salvation of the wind of God is at hand now (2000 years ago) and always, and is available here and everywhere, indeed, “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth [eschatou tes ges]” (1:8b). The apocalyptic character of the Joel prophecy captured in the Petrine-Lukan reappropriation heralds the cosmic expansiveness of the pneumatic in-breaking. Of course, then, there will be “portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist;” what else would be expected than that, “[t]he sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day” (2:19–20). The eschatological hence salvages not just the temporal dimension of time but the geographic and creational-material domain of space, unending even, so that the pneumatological imagination instigates yearning for and reception of cosmic renewal by the divine breath. The pneumatological imagination, consequently, is not merely a speculative conceptual schema that facilitates discernment of deity in relationship to the world but also envisions 159

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performative praxis for participating in and implementing the salvific renewal of the world accomplished by the triune God. So, although Jesus’ response to the disciples’ post-Easter question, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” (1:6), disabused them of their assumption that now was the time for undermining the Pax Romana and kicking the oppressors out of Palestine, in another respect his answer addressed their longing for redemption—albeit not in monergistic terms of Jesus overthrowing Roman rule but in the synergistic collaboration of his followers being filled with his Spirit to form creatively new communities of equals (2:42–47, 4:34–37). The pneumatological imagination authorizes practical activity and behavior that inaugurates the divine reign and rule (detailed in the Book of Acts) according to the form revealed in the life, ministry, and message of Jesus the Spirit-bearing Messiah (see Chapter 20) delineated in the Gospel of Luke.

Conclusion Coming from a modern Pentecostal background, I confess that the pneumatological imagination being proffered here has roots in what may be called the Pentecostal social imaginary (see Smith 2010). Yet I hope to have shown that even if of (contemporary) Pentecostal derivation, the pneumatological imagination is fundamentally of (ancient) Pentecost inspiration, meaning funded by the (first century) day of Pentecost’s outpouring of the Spirit on all flesh. In that respect, the pneumatological imagination is not a disposition for only contemporary believers in the modern Pentecostal movement, but is, or ought to be, a Pentecost sensibility for all followers of messiah Jesus who seek to follow in his steps empowered by the same Spirit. From this perspective, it might be added, all Christian theology is Pentecostal—or Pentecost-based—and charismatic, if only implicitly then in a way that this chapter seeks to render more explicit: we confess Christ only in and through the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:3) and therefore also think, particularly theologically, in the Spirit (1 Cor. 2:10–16; cf. Yong 2016b). As aforementioned, the pneumatological imagination is both Patrological and Christological, albeit in different respects, so that it contributes to the fully trinitarian theological vision that is central to the Christian faith. From this, the pneumatological imagination envisages the creational, incarnational, and Pentecostal interfaces between God and the world so as to enable understanding of and redemptive praxis amid a currently fallen existence. Last but not least, the pneumatological imagination recruits the many voices—of individuals and the fullness of their embodied experiences, of culturally embedded persons-in- communities, and of all persons on the putative underside of history—so that they can harmonize, however dissonantly, in declaring the wondrousness of divine truth and in “speaking about God’s deeds of power” (Acts 2:11b). In the present moment early in the twenty-first century, surely on the front end of the third millennium, I suggest that we need more of what I have here called the pneumatological imagination in order to navigate theologically the many voices in a multi-cultural, multi-religious, and post-secular public square. We need a pneumatological and Pentecost theology, which is at least, if not much more, than the Pentecostal theology that the modern revival movement has helped name and catalyzed.

References Coulter, Dale M., and Amos Yong, eds. 2016. The Spirit, the Affections, and the Christian Tradition. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Dabney, D. Lyle. 1996. “Otherwise Engaged in the Spirit: A First Theology for the Twenty-First Century.” In The Future of Theology: Essays in Honor of Jürgen Moltmann, edited by Miroslav Volf, Carmen Kreig, and Thomas Kucharz, 154–63. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

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The pneumatological imagination Fee, Gordon D. 1994. God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul. Peabody: Hendrickson. Habets, Myk, ed. 2016. Third Article Theology: A Pneumatological Dogmatics. Minneapolis: Fortress. Johnson, Todd M., and Kenneth R. Ross, eds. 2009. Atlas of Global Christianity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Joy, C. I. David. 2014. Mark and its Subalterns: A Hermeneutical Paradigm for a Postcolonial Context. Bible World. New York and London: Routledge. Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. 2002. Pneumatology: The Holy Spirit in Ecumenical, International, and Contextual Perspective. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. Oliverio, L. William Jr. 2009. “An Interpretive Review Essay on Amos Yong’s Spirit-WordCommunity: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 18 (2): 301–11. Pinnock, Clark H. 1996. Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit. Downers Grove: InterVarsity. Robeck, Cecil M. Jr. 2006. The Azusa Street Mission and Revival. Nashville: Thomas Nelson. Shults, F. LeRon, and Andrea Hollingsworth. 2008. The Holy Spirit. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Smith, James K. A. 2010. Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy. Pentecostal Manifestos. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Stephenson, Christopher A. 2013. “Reality, Knowledge, and Life in Community: Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Hermeneutics in the Work of Amos Yong.” In The Theology of Amos Yong and the New Face of Pentecostal Scholarship: Passion for the Spirit, edited by Wolfgang Vondey and Martin W. Mittelstadt, 63–81. Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies 14. Leiden: Brill. Sunquist, Scott W. 2015. The Unexpected Christian Century: The Reversal and Transformation of Global Christianity, 1900–2000. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. Synan, Vinson. 2012. The Century of the Holy Spirit: 100 Years of Pentecostal and Charismatic Renewal, 1901–2001. Nashville: Thomas Nelson. Welker, Michael. 1994. God the Spirit. Translated by John Hoffmeyer. Minneapolis: Fortress. Yong, Amos. 2000. Discerning the Spirit(s): A Pentecostal-Charismatic Contribution to Christian Theology of Religions. JPT Supplement 20. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. ———. 2003. Beyond the Impasse: Toward a Pneumatological Theology of Religions. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. ———. 2005. The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. ———. 2010. In the Days of Caesar: Pentecostalism and Political Theology – The Cadbury Lectures 2009. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2011a. The Bible, Disability, and the Church: A New Vision of the People of God. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2011b. Who Is the Holy Spirit? A Walk with the Apostles. Brewster: Paraclete. ———. 2011c. The Spirit of Creation: Modern Science and Divine Action in the Pentecostal-Charismatic Imagination. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2012. Spirit of Love: A Trinitarian Theology of Grace. Waco: Baylor University Press. ———. 2014a. The Dialogical Spirit: Christian Reason and Theological Method for the Third Millennium. Eugene: Cascade. ———. 2014b. The Missiological Spirit: Christian Mission Theology for the Third Millennium Global Context. Eugene: Cascade. ———. 2015. “Why is the ‘Correlation’ between Pentecostal Theology and Paul Tillich Important, and Who Cares?” In Paul Tillich and Pentecostal Theology: Spiritual Presence and Spiritual Power, edited by Nimi Wariboko and Amos Yong, 1–16. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 2016a. “Proclamation and the Third Article: Toward a Pneumatology of Preaching.” In Third Article Theology: A Pneumatological Dogmatics, edited by Myk Habets, 367–94. Minneapolis: Fortress. ———. 2016b. “Reflecting and Confessing in the Spirit: Called to Transformational Theologizing.” International Review of Mission 105 (2): 169–83. ———. 2017. The Hermeneutical Spirit: Theological Interpretation and the Scriptural Imagination for the 21st Century. Eugene: Cascade. ———. 2018a. “Conclusion – Mission after Colonialism and Whiteness: The Pentecost Witness of the ‘Perpetual Foreigner’ for the Third Millennium.” In Can “White” People Be Saved? Triangulating Race, Theology, and Mission, edited by Love L. Sechrest, Johnny Ramírez-Johnson, and Amos Yong, 301–17. Downers Grove: IVP Academic.

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Amos Yong ———. 2018b. “The Coming Spirit of Theology: Moltmann, Pneumatology, and Trinitarian Eschatology for the Third Millennium.” In Jürgen Moltmann and the Future of Theology, edited by M. Douglas Meeks, 53–76. Minneapolis: Fortress. ———. 2019a. Mission after Pentecost: The Bible, the Spirit, and the  Missio Dei. Mission in Global Community. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. ———. 2019b. “Jubilee, Liberation, and Pentecost: The Preferential Option of the Poor on the Apostolic Way.” In Evangelical Theologies of Liberation, edited by Elise Mae Cannon and Andrea Smith, 306–24. Downers Grove: IVP Academic.

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15 PRACTICAL THEOLOGY Attending to pneumatologically‑driven praxis Mark J. Cartledge

The aim of this chapter is to discuss the basic contours of practical theology from a Pentecostal perspective and to evaluate key approaches in dialogue with the wider academy before identifying challenges and opportunities for future contributions. Therefore, this essay draws on the broader context of academic practical theology while giving an account of how Pentecostals have engaged with it and advance the discipline from their perspective. While many different types of theologians touch on issues that fall within the content domain of practical theology, this chapter focusses on work emerging from a practical-theological “manner and method” to illustrate the types of contributions that are being made while also allowing for some “waifs and strays” to crash in on the conversation in places where their studies illustrate Pentecostal approaches to practical theology. This essay builds on my previous work on practical theology in relation to Pentecostalism, one written with attention to the theories and methods of research for Pentecostal studies (Cartledge 2010b) and the other with focus on the discipline of practical theology from the perspective of Pentecostalism as a theological tradition (Cartledge 2012), and develops them in the light of more recent work in Pentecostal practical theology. Practical theology is often associated with reflections on the tasks of clergy or church leaders and how such persons put their theological commitments into “practice” in particular ways. Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, and on into the present day, there has been a move away from a strict clerical paradigm to one that sees practical theology as an activity that can be pursued by anyone regardless of theological commitments and ecclesial affiliations. Clergy training and ministerial praxis are still important to the discipline, but it is no longer restricted to them. Instead, practical theology is regarded as a rigorous academic approach that analyses and evaluates religious praxis as its focus of enquiry. It is still largely located within Christian theology (although it now has inter-religious dimensions in the academy), but it brings disciplined attentiveness to the contemporary context, which is interrogated via multiple theoretical lenses. These different lenses often bring theology into interdisciplinary discourse and require at least some knowledge of empirical research methods. While the mainstream academy is dominated by what might be classified as liberal and progressive Protestant theological approaches, it is possible to find more traditional Roman Catholic, Evangelical, and Pentecostal scholars at work in these guilds. It is also the case that the disciplinary influence of the mainstream academy is beginning to be established 163

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in Pentecostal academic societies, while also being critiqued at the same time. It is into this wider academic field that Pentecostals bring their characteristic interests in the person and work of the Holy Spirit as mediated via the church and its practices. In other words, Pentecostals are interested in attending to pneumatology as it is mediated through and drives the praxis of Christians in the world, especially leaders and their congregations, mission agencies, and parachurch organizations. To demonstrate this perspective, I begin by detailing the dominant Pentecostal approaches before evaluating some key issues and attending to the challenges and future trajectories of Pentecostal practical theology.

Pentecostal approaches to practical theology Most Pentecostal approaches to practical theology consider it a form of ecclesial, ministerial, or pastoral theology. It is viewed as theology in the service of the church’s ministry and linked to the spiritual formation of its leaders ( Johns 1993). It is often organized around what used to be called pastoralia and focusses on the spiritual life of the pastor, considering how to preach, how to lead worship, how to offer pastoral care, and how to organize church life. Spiritual formation for ministry is central to this approach, but fundamentally it is pastor-centred and congregation-orientated, often circulating around the concept of “spiritual leadership.” In many respects, in the seminary context in particular, Pentecostals have often bought into the standard Evangelical approach to practical theology, which sees it as “applied theology,” that is, the application of “biblical” models and principles to the contemporary life of a pastor and the church today (see Chapter 1). In a sense, it could be suggested that this “homiletic” model of theology has been applied to practical theology, so that biblical narratives, ideas, and proof-texts are applied to the contemporary contexts in a fairly linear manner: from the biblical text to the now of the present. The difference with standard Evangelical approaches to practical theology in this register is that Pentecostal readings of the biblical texts tend to be more pneumatologically orientated. Pentecostals ask questions about how pneumatological texts can be applied to today in light of the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in the church and among the readers of Scripture. It is this pneumatological orientation (see Chapter 14) that marks a key difference between Pentecostals and Evangelicals, because traditional Evangelicals tend not to be so pneumatologically focussed (Samuel 2013). One example of a Pentecostal approach (Ragoonath 2004) uses Luke 4:16–20 as a model for Pentecostal preaching, from which it derives “principles” for application to the practice of preaching today but with an accent on pneumatology. In this approach, there is an emphasis on the work of the Spirit in the delivery of the sermon to be matched by an expectation of signs and wonders to accompany the Spirit-inspired preaching. Here, the praxis of preaching is shaped by the example of Jesus, not just in terms of the words that are used but also by the accompaniment of the signs of the kingdom of God. This emphasis is characteristic of a Pentecostal approach to preaching, which understands it as a dynamic activity. Another example of how Pentecostal preaching can be characterized is given by Lee Roy Martin (2015, 1–16) in an introduction to a set of essays on Pentecostal preaching and captures the Pentecostal tradition as he reflects on his own pastoral praxis. Martin sees the practice of preaching as reflecting “divine-human synergy” (4), which brings together the Holy Spirit, the word of God, the preacher, and the listener. For Pentecostals, an encounter with the Holy Spirit is central to their theology of worship (see Chapter 11) and, therefore, preaching is also framed within this understanding. Therefore, encounters with the Holy Spirit are expected during the preparation, delivery, and response to the sermon. For Martin, this also means that the Holy Spirit empowers preaching, authorizes 164

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preachers through an “anointing,” teaches the believers through sermons, and is linked to signs and wonders, which accompany preachers. The Holy Spirit uses preaching to shape and form preachers and the worshipping community to be able to discern the “voice of the Lord” speaking to them. A second approach for how Pentecostals use practical theology is the interface with liberation theology. In some respects, this liberationist turn reflects the wider field of practical theology, where liberation theology is one of the major paradigms and is embraced by major international figures. One of the main reasons for its embrace is the turn to the contemporary end of the question in hermeneutics. Instead of starting with biblical texts and applying them in a linear manner, liberationist hermeneutics starts with contemporary experiences of oppression and marginalization and reflects on them in the light of key biblical motifs, such as the exodus theme. The turn to the experience of oppression as the starting point has been followed by a few Pentecostal scholars who address Hispanic American Pentecostalism (Villafañe 1993) and Black British Pentecostalism (Beckford 2000). Given the issues surrounding ethnicity and race in American society and elsewhere, it is anticipated that this approach will continue to develop, at least where the concept of “liberation” is given a favourable reception (e.g. Pierce 2013, 33). And while these commentators tend to focus on race and ethnicity, it could be argued that increasingly other approaches within Pentecostalism are gaining traction and filtering into practical theology. Even where these studies do not use the label “liberation theology,” attention is given to certain constituencies with a view to empowering their own voices. For example, Tanya Riches’s (2017) study of Hillsong’s ministry and claim to empower women is investigated as a critical insider to the “Sisterhood.” This study, and others like it, analyses the nature of power relations and the discourse that is produced in order to justify these power relations to both insiders and outsiders. Given that the nature and use of “power” is ubiquitous, it is inevitable that Pentecostal practical theologians are engaged in these types of analysis in relation to specific groups of people and different social and cultural conditions. The distinctive contribution that Pentecostal scholars make, however, is their attention to the analysis of rhetoric associated with the Holy Spirit, which is pervasive in Pentecostalism and requires careful attention because of the risk of conflating divine power with human power (Cartledge 2015, 83). The intersection with liberation theology, and its concerns about power, highlights the importance of intercultural perspectives particularly for Pentecostal theology. The concept of intercultural theology has its roots in European missiology and the study of the contemporary life of the church in the non-Western world and has also influenced Pentecostal scholars (see Chapter 2). In this approach, Pentecostals have used the tools of practical theology to pay attention to the cultural dimensions of theology without necessarily calling their work “practical theology.” Famously, Walter J. Hollenweger (1997), the pioneer of Pentecostal studies, used the designation intercultural theology from the late 1970s to bring into the focus the ways in which Western and non-Western approaches to theology could dialogue for the benefit of the church in the non-Western world. He aimed to pay particular attention to indigenous cultural concepts and how ideas influence the articulation of and practices associated with certain beliefs. This approach would be called “ordinary,” “everyday” or “vernacular” theology and has a place in practical theology today (Cartledge 2010a) as well as in sociological studies that have implications for practical theology (e.g. Kuhlin 2017). Hollenweger’s original interest was shaped by the academic study of world Christianity, especially global expressions of Pentecostalism (Cartledge 2011). In this task, he has been followed by others, such as Allan H. Anderson (2001), who is especially critical of the way Western theological paradigms have influenced theological education 165

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in non-Western contexts. It is here that the intersection of cultural analysis, missiology, education, and practical theology can be noted in Pentecostal studies. The theme of contextualization has also been explored by a number of global case studies of Pentecostal worship, many of which are framed within a practical-theological approach (see Cartledge and Swoboda 2017). Finally, there has been a growth in the use of empirical research methods in practical theology, often referred to as “empirical theology,” although this should never be confused with the American version of this designation associated with process theology (see Miller 1992). It was first categorized as an approach by the practical theology department at Nijmegen University, under the influence of Johannes A. van der Ven (1993). Since the founding of the Journal of Empirical Theology in 1988, it has become a well-established approach within practical theology. Pentecostal scholars have used these established methods to research various aspects of church life, especially those that have been associated with the work of the Holy Spirit, including charismata, ministers’ beliefs and practices, discernment, and worship (Kay 2000; Cartledge 2002, 2003, 2010a, 2017; Parker 2015). The empirical is an approach that has become increasingly popular, and there is a steady stream of doctoral students in various places using it and becoming experts in the use of both qualitative and quantitative research methods. For example, R. Haley French (2017) employs interviews to explore the influence of Pentecostal spirituality on therapists, which is framed at the intersection of theology and psychotherapy. She argues that a posture of openness to the work of the Holy Spirit in creation and the therapeutic process informs their hermeneutics in a clinical setting. From this analysis, French reflects on the implications for Pentecostal counsellors and care-givers. Thus, the praxis of counselling is given a pneumatological framework. This is a distinctive contribution from a Pentecostal perspective, and it is rooted in empirical data gathered from pneumatologically-driven praxis. More generally, what is interesting to observe is that these empirical methods are also becoming popular among non-Western researchers, thus combining aspects of the intercultural approach noted above with empirical theology (e.g.  Abraham 2011; Chike 2016; Muindi 2017). In these studies, African and Indian cultural contexts are considered alongside different theological themes, such as prophecy and Christology, but always with attention given to the pneumatologically-driven praxis of the communities concerned. In summary, it could be suggested that Pentecostals approach practical theology primarily with attention to pneumatology and pneumatic-praxis. They understand that the praxis of the church is intertwined with the praxis of the Holy Spirit, and they seek to research the pneumatologically-driven praxis of leaders and congregations, discerning the work of the Holy Spirit through the ministry of preaching and pastoral work, liberative praxis, intercultural studies, and empirical research. In all of these approaches, in their various ways, Pentecostals are paying disciplined attention to the life and mission of the church.

Evaluation of some key issues There are a number of streams that feed into Pentecostal practical theology. In some cases, they provide resources with which to work and develop Pentecostal approaches. In other cases, they provide tensions and boundaries that need to be navigated and negotiated. The first two streams can be treated together: namely pietism and fundamentalism. Pentecostalism can be seen as emerging from and aligning itself with the pietistic traditions over and against the fundamentalist traditions of Protestantism and Evangelicalism in particular. As part of this alignment, there emerges the emphasis on the experience of 166

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the Holy Spirit and the working of the Spirit in the church today via charismatic signs and wonders. Research that focusses on experience aligns very well with mainline practical theology but can draw criticism from more conservative Evangelical sectors because of a perceived marginalization of doctrine or the role of Scripture. However, this type of criticism in some respects is simply par for the course, and it has characterized Evangelical assessment of Pentecostal preachers as manipulative and emotional (Martin 2015, 3). ­Pentecostals have a high view of Scripture as inspired and as a locus of encounter with the Spirit of God (see Chapter 6); nevertheless, they tend to interpret the Scriptures in a narrative and experiential way rather than a strictly propositional manner (see Chapter 5), although these approaches are not mutually exclusive. Influences from Evangelical sectors can pull Pentecostals into a more “proof-text” approach to the interpretation of Scripture that moves them away from their narrative and experiential intuitions (Martin 2015, 2). This tendency is often found when Pentecostals use an “applied model” of practical theology, applying “principles” (e.g. Ragoonath 2004, which are, in effect, very often “proof-texts”) to contemporary church life, rather than being shaped by the canon of Scripture holistically. Oddly, this “proof-texting” approach to the use of Scripture can also be found in the so-called mainline academy (Cartledge 2015, 36). I have addressed this weakness in the construction of practical-theological accounts (Cartledge 2015) by using pneumatology as a lens through which to address religious experience as part of a response to what I regard as a central weakness in academic practical theology. My approach also models how one might use a deeper engagement with Scripture to shape and approach practical theology. This approach leads to a more positive dialogue with systematic theology and the doctrinal traditions of the church. In the past, one of the main criticisms of Pentecostal practical theology was that it largely ignored mainline scholarship in the field (Cartledge 2012, 594). Very few seminary faculty members in practical theology attend the top scholarly guilds. They do not rub shoulders with the leading exponents internationally, and so they are not really exposed to the debates and discussions that are shaping the discourse globally. Part of the problem is that the mainline academics in practical theology are largely liberal in their theological commitments, and these commitments are reflected in the work produced. It is a challenge for more relatively conservative theological positions to be included in the conversation. One of the key issues for Pentecostal scholars working in the field is not just the task of breaking into a very particular academic club, but also to have the patience to work with people whose theological commitments are so very different from their own. There is the inevitable cost/benefit analysis: is it worth it? In some respects, these more prestigious academic guilds have very particular language games that emerge from and are intertwined within specific life-worlds. Unless one is initiated and has some desire to belong to these realities, it is easy to restrict one’s work to a Pentecostal life-world. Conversely, Pentecostal confessional contexts do not always assist scholars to navigate these alternative academic realities as well as they could. For younger scholars, working to establish themselves in the field, they might consider attending conferences organized by the Society for Pentecostal Studies, which has an openness to dialogue with different theological traditions and has a practical theology track that in recent years has brought mainstream scholarship into critical conversations and thus provided an important location for Pentecostal scholars to test ideas in a hospitable and creative environment. Increasingly, ideological concerns dominate the field of practical theology, and this is understandable when much of practical theology in the academy can appear to be very anthropocentric. Nevertheless, Pentecostal scholars have resources from within their traditions to engage these issues for the sake of the common good. No one can escape matters of power, social status, race, gender, and sexuality. While Pentecostal practical theology 167

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will  wish to engage with other foci, such as worship (see Chapter 11), charismata (see Chapter 28), evangelism (see Chapter 26), and broader social engagement (see Chapter 40), they cannot ignore important anthropological issues. The challenge for Pentecostal practical theologians is to interpret their anthropological concerns in ways which are consonant with their Pentecostal spiritual intuitions and theological presuppositions, especially their orientation towards pneumatologically driven praxis. There are some indications that this is already occurring. For example, Judith Woodall’s (2016) discussion of disability and the role that the Pentecostal church plays as a hospitable community is worth noting as an illustration (see Chapter 32). She discusses the theological and practical issues facing people with disabilities and how Pentecostal churches that preach healing can also minister hospitality to those who are in need by means of “mutual vulnerability” (141). In this example, as well as others, the integration of Pentecostal spirituality in the task of practical theology remains important (Cartledge 2003). Located within this underlying spirituality is also the dimension of ecclesial traditions. Pentecostal scholars are becoming more attentive to the nature of theologizing from particular contexts, and this includes their ecclesial communities and wider ecumenical traditions. Pentecostals use their traditions to resource and (to some extent) constrain their discourse, not because they are necessarily worried about straying outside of a perceived boundary line, but because they take joy in the traditions of which they are a part. In this way, Pentecostals integrate their identities into their scholarship, and their scholarship is intertwined within their Pentecostal identities. Importantly, it is from these theological standpoints that Pentecostals are able to address wider ideological concerns. One of the developments in Pentecostal theology over recent years has been the increased attention given to ecclesiology (see Chapter 27). Elsewhere (Cartledge 2014), I suggest that the field of Pentecostal ecclesiology could be classified in terms of three strands: retrieval, ecumenical, and empirical. In the retrieval strand, scholars seek to quarry the historical sources to be informed by early commitments and intuitions in order to shape the contemporary praxis (e.g. Thomas 2010). This is an ongoing project and one that is bearing fruit in different types of studies. Another approach is the ecumenical, where sources and commitments from Pentecostalism are brought into conversation with different Christian traditions that allow other traditions to interact and shape the thinking of Pentecostal scholars in the construction of their ecclesiology (see Chapter 35). The empirical strand takes seriously the contemporary and concrete expression of the church and allows these current accounts to be used in a constructive fashion for Pentecostal theology. Cory Labanow’s (2009) congregational study of a Vineyard church community and its theological identity, for example, illustrates the importance of empirical research. In many ways, these approaches mirror the intention of the established “Ecclesiology and Ethnography Network” in a Pentecostal context. It would seem that practical theology through its contemporary studies has much to add to the conversation with biblical, historical, and systematic accounts of ecclesiology.

Challenges and future trajectories Pentecostal practical theology faces a number of challenges going forward of which two areas are worth exploring in detail because of their importance for theological scholarship today. The first is the relationship of Pentecostalism to wider society and in particular the discourse of public theology, or alternatively “a theology of public life” (which places an accent on the discourse as “theology”). The second is the role that the internet plays in global society and the responses that Pentecostals have already made, which, in turn, invites disciplined attention to their existing praxis in order to evaluate, renew, and extend it. 168

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There are a number of Pentecostal scholars who have engaged with issues associated with the public of society, including concerns for economics (see Chapter 34), politics, race (Chapter 40), and social justice (Chapter 41). Sometimes these issues have been addressed under the designation social ethics and sometimes under the designation theology (the “waifs and strays” of practical theology). For example, Murray Dempster (1999) addresses contemporary social concern in the light of the kingdom ministry of Jesus in the Gospels; Matthias Wenk (2002) considers the transforming power of the Holy Spirit when applied to political and social relevance in Western Europe, and Ivan Satyavrata (2017) addresses Pentecostals and the poor in the light of pneumatological empowerment. In the past, Pentecostalism has often behaved in a sectarian fashion, which is understandable given the hostility of wider society to its emergence. But, going forward, the movement cannot continue to behave in this way, because society needs its distinctive Christian witness and its pneumatological drivenness to shape a theology of public life. Of course, this is where Pentecostals also need to be careful, because the swing from marginalization to hegemony is also a danger, and we see this dominance already in some contexts around the world (e.g. Brazil). I have suggested that the relationship between the church and wider society could be framed in terms of a critical “walking alongside” (2018), based on the Johannine Paraclete sayings. On this account, the church walks alongside society and speaks truth to power under the inspiration of the Spirit and is itself subject to divine judgement. Practical theologians could play a key role in how this vision is worked out in concrete ways by congregations and parachurch organizations. Highly skilled theologians are required who can connect the spiritual traditions of Pentecostalism with the strategic and concrete aspects of how this vision can be operationalized in different contexts around the world. A part of this vision to walk alongside wider society is the desire to serve the mission of the church in evangelism and social action. For many in Pentecostal churches, evangelism and social action are intertwined and cannot be separated, because the experience of salvation is holistic (Cartledge et al. 2019), whereas for many non-Christians in Western society, evangelization is regarded as fundamentally “proselytization” that should be condemned as coercive and unethical. Pentecostal practical theologians need to wrestle with these issues, finding ways of defending the rights of the individual to change their mind and their religious affiliation, as well as to assess the influence of cultures and institutions in terms of the common good (Cartledge 2016a). This path will mean that Pentecostal practical theologians will need to become more sensitive to issues in society that are or are becoming pressing matters. Such issues are as numerous and diverse as politics, climate change, global capitalism, national and international security, nationalisms and religious identity, inter-religious dialogue, terrorism, crime and punishment, education, the media and its culture, and modern-day slavery. Practical theologians are in a unique position, being able to address the three publics of church, academy, and society identified by David Tracy (1998). But they are only able to do this if they stay connected to all three publics. It is easy to slip away from one of them, and I have already challenged Pentecostal practical theologians in their absence from the guild of practical theology. But I could equally challenge them for their limited engagement with social and contextual issues. Many Pentecostal practical theologians neither engage with social issues nor research the church communities in their engagement with social issues. Instead, they often remain cocooned in particular church cultures without realizing that their churches are inevitably embedded in wider societies that also require attention for the sake of the gospel. However, there are examples of an emerging attentiveness to some of these issues that challenge the field of public theology to engage more substantially with empirical research and in this way to build on the work of practical theology for its benefit (Cartledge 2016b). It remains to be seen whether this particular challenge will be met, not least by Pentecostal practical theologians working in the field of public theology. 169

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A second area that is daunting but equally exciting is the opportunity to take practical theology “online.” Over the past few years, there has been a growth in what has been called “cyber religion.” All the various religious traditions have moved into cyber space and have begun to establish their presence online in order to communicate their beliefs and values. And, of course, Christianity is no different. Many churches and parachurch organizations have websites and offer resources that would have been unheard of only a short time ago. This virtual presence means that many Christians, especially younger generations, are being shaped by online sources just as much as they are by their face-to-face experience of church on a Sunday morning. It is perfectly possible to be part of an online, virtual church community and to worship with that community either synchronously or asynchronously depending on one’s preferences. Indeed, the virtual world is here to stay, and Tracy’s three publics have moved online so that society, church, and academy can all be found with just a few clicks. There are certainly the beginnings of some theological engagement with cyberspace. Pentecostals, especially those from megachurches or other hi-tech churches, have embraced the internet with alacrity. Yet it is sobering to observe that Pentecostal practical theologians have not really engaged this reality, even though one of the main constituencies it serves is fully online. There are examples of this engagement beginning to emerge through analyses of websites as an extension of congregational life. For example, J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu (2007) analyses the official website of The Church of Pentecost from Ghana. He concludes that the website is not just a bulletin board but a medium through which people who visit the site can encounter the person of the Holy Spirit. In this way, Pentecostals believe that the world wide web can be understood as a “point of contact” by means of which God can influence and change lives (Asamoah-Gyadu 2007, 230). The website of the International Central Gospel Church also includes the kinds of imagery that are used to symbolize the message of the church (e.g. the soaring of an eagle to represent the message of “elevation,” whereby members are expected to experience blessing). Just as the internet transcends particular physical locations, so it invites browsers to gaze beyond their own set of circumstances. In a similar way, Cartledge and Davies (2014) analyse the online theological representation of a Pentecostal megachurch in the United Kingdom in a study of theology and culture via online mediation through an analysis of discourse, symbolism, and the functionality of the website. In this study, the particular interest in the self-representation of beliefs and practices online in the context of the overall ecclesial culture adds to and complements off-line empirical research of the same institution (see Cartledge et al. 2019). These studies provide examples of how theologians are beginning to use the tools of practical theology and apply them to study the pneumatologically driven praxis of Pentecostals, even when this praxis is online. One final example is worth noting at this juncture because it links to the important subject of ecclesiology. Andrew Ray Williams (2016) addresses the question of cyber- ecclesiology from a Pentecostal perspective. In particular, he asks whether Pentecostals can affirm the presence of the Holy Spirit in cyberspace, which he answers in the affirmative. While he thinks there are some problems with cyber-mediation, and that not all aspects of Pentecostal church life easily translate into cyberspace, there is a need for further work to understand better the nature as well as the limitations of pneumatological and charismatic praxis online. This is a frontier in theology that once we have crossed, we cannot go back: the internet is here to stay. Pentecostal practical theology has the opportunity to be in the vanguard of such theological exploration because of its way of doing theology, attending to pneumatologically driven praxis, which has now moved online. Hence, practical theology widens the sources and imagination that inform Pentecostal theology. 170

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Conclusion This essay has given a critical overview of the field of practical theology as it is inhabited and engaged by Pentecostal or charismatic scholars. These scholars, to a greater or lesser extent, are associated with an epistemology informed by the spirituality and ecclesial practices of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements, as well as the scholarship of the Pentecostal academy. Certainly, they draw on other academic sources, and they engage in different networks, both academic and ecclesial, but it is this epistemology that gives them a point of departure or standpoint from which they conduct their research and to which they return to address their audiences. Pentecostals may employ different processes of investigation, and they certainly use very different sources and interdisciplinary designs. Invariably, they use different concepts and methods for gathering, analysing, and theorizing data in relation to what has been termed a pneumatologically driven praxis. All of these scholars are making contributions to the field of practical theology informing how churches and individuals espouse their theology and operationalize it as well. This type of theology offers important contributions to Pentecostal and Charismatic churches around the world today because it pays particular attention to pneumatology as it is intertwined with what people say they believe and what people actually do in terms of their religious practices. For Pentecostal practical theologians, pneumatology not only drives the praxis of the churches but also informs the analytic categories they use to describe, evaluate, and address these realities. In this way, the practical theological approach adds a distinctly pneumatologically orientated voice to the range of voices found among practical theologians in the academy more broadly. It is a voice that will become increasingly significant as the twenty-first century unfolds in the task to serve all three publics of academy, church, and society.

References Abraham, Shaibu. 2011. “Ordinary Indian Pentecostal Christology.” PhD dissertation. University of Birmingham, UK. Anderson, Allan H. 2001. “The ‘Fury and Wonder’? Pentecostal-Charismatic Spirituality in Theological Education.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 23 (2): 287–302. Asamoah-Gyadu, J. Kwabena. 2007. “‘Get on the Internet!’ Says the Lord: Religion, Cyberspace and Christianity in Contemporary Africa.” Studies in World Christianity 13 (3): 225–42. Beckford, Robert. 2000. Dread and Pentecostal: A Political Theology for the Black Church in Britain. London: SPCK. Cartledge, Mark J. 2002. Charismatic Glossolalia: An Empirical-Theological Study. Farnham: Ashgate. ———. 2003. Practical Theology: Charismatic and Empirical Perspectives. Carlisle: Paternoster. ———. 2010a. Testimony in the Spirit: Rescripting Ordinary Pentecostal Theology. Farnham: Ashgate. ———. 2010b. “Practical Theology.” In Studying Global Pentecostalism: Theories and Methods, edited by Allan Anderson, Michael Bergunder, André Droogers, and Cornelius van der Laan, 268–85. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 2011. “Pentecostal Theological Method and Intercultural Theology.” In Intercultural Theology: Approaches and Themes, edited by Mark J. Cartledge and David Cheetham, 62–74. London: SCM Press. ———. 2012. “Pentecostalism.” In The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology, edited by Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, 587–95. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. ———. 2014. “Renewal Ecclesiology in Empirical Perspective.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 36 (1): 5–24. ———. 2015. Mediation of the Spirit: Interventions in Practical Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2016a. “Renewal Theology and the Common Good.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 25 (1): 90–106. ———. 2016b. “Public Theology and Empirical Research: Developing an Agenda.” International Journal of Public Theology 10 (2): 147–68.

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Mark J. Cartledge ———. 2017. Narratives and Numbers: Empirical Studies of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2018. “Spirit Empowered ‘Walking Alongside’: Towards a Renewal Theology of Public Life.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 27 (1): 14–36. Cartledge, Mark J., and Davies, Andrew. 2014. “A Megachurch in a Megacity: A Study of Cyberspace Representation.” PentecoStudies 13 (1): 58–79. Cartledge, Mark J., and Swoboda, A.J., eds. 2017. Scripting Pentecost: A Study of Pentecostals, Worship and Liturgy. London: Routledge. Cartledge, Mark J., Dunlop, Sarah, Buckingham, Heather, and Bremner, Sophie. 2019. Megachurches and Social Engagement: Public Theology in Practice. Leiden: Brill. Chike, Chigor. 2016. The Holy Spirit in African Christianity: An Empirical Study. Milton Keynes: Paternoster. Dempster, Murray W. 1999. “Social Concern in the Context of Jesus’ Kingdom, Mission and Ministry.” Transformation 16 (2): 43–53. French, R. Haley. 2017. “Counselling in the Spirit: The Outworking of a Pneumatological Hermeneutic in the Praxis of Pentecostal Therapists.” Practical Theology 10 (3): 263–76. Hollenweger, Walter J. 1997. Pentecostalism: Origins and Development Worldwide. Peabody: Hendrickson. Johns, Cheryl Bridges. 1993. Pentecostal Formation: A Pedagogy among the Oppressed. JPT Supplement 3. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Kay, William K. 2000. Pentecostals in Britain. Carlisle: Paternoster. Kuhlin, Julia. 2017. “‘I Do Not Think I Could be a Christian on My Own’: Lived Religion among Swedish Pentecostal Women.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 39 (4): 482–503. Labanow, Cory E. 2009. Evangelicalism and the Emerging Church. Farnham: Ashgate. Martin, Lee Roy, ed. 2015. Toward a Pentecostal Theology of Preaching. Cleveland: CPT Press. Miller, Randolph C. ed. 1992. Empirical Theology: A Handbook. Birmingham: Religious Education Press. Muindi, Samuel W. 2017. Pentecostal-Charismatic Prophecy: Empirical-Theological Analysis. Oxford: Peter Lang. Parker, Stephen E. 2015 [orig. 1996]. Led by the Spirit: Toward a Practical Theology of Pentecostal Discernment and Decision Making – Expanded Edition. Cleveland: CPT Press. Pierce, Yolanda. 2013. “Womanist Ways and Pentecostalism: The Work of Recovery and Critique.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 35 (1): 24–34. Ragoonath, Aldwin. 2004. Preach the Word: A Pentecostal Approach. Winnipeg: Agape Teaching Ministry of Canada Inc. Riches, Tanya. 2017. “The Sisterhood: Hillsong in a Feminine Key.” In The Hillsong Movement Examined: You Call Me Out Upon the Waters, edited by Tanya Riches and Tom Wagner, 85–106. Christianity and Renewal-Interdisciplinary Studies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Samuel, Josh P.S. 2013. “The Spirit in Pentecostal Preaching: A Constructive Dialogue with Haddon W. Robinson’s and Charles T. Crabtree’s Theology of Preaching.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 35 (2): 199–219. Satyavrata, Ivan. 2017. Pentecostals and the Poor: Reflections from the Indian Context. Baguio City: Asia Pacific Theological Seminary Press. Thomas, John Christopher, ed. 2010. Toward a Pentecostal Ecclesiology: The Church and the Fivefold Gospel. Cleveland: CPT Press. Tracy, David. 1998. The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism. New York: Crossroad. van der Ven, Johannes A. 1993. Practical Theology: An Empirical Approach. Kampen: Kok Pharos. Villafañe, Eldin. 1993. The Liberating Spirit: Towards a Hispanic American Pentecostal Social Ethic. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Wenk, Matthias. 2002. “The Holy Spirit as Transforming Power within Society: Pneumatological Spirituality and its Political/Social Relevance for Western Europe.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 11 (1): 130–42. Williams, Andrew Ray. “The Silicon Valley Meets Azusa Street: Opportunities and Obstacles to a Pentecostal Cyber-Ecclesiology in Pneumatological Perspective.” The Pentecostal Educator 3 (1): 8–17. Woodall, Judith. 2016. “The Pentecostal Church: Hospitality and Disability Inclusion. Becoming an Inclusive Christian Community by Welcoming Mutual Vulnerability.” Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 36 (2): 131–44.

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16 THE FULL GOSPEL A liturgical hermeneutic of Pentecost Wolfgang Vondey

The “full gospel” refers to a theological hermeneutic, a way of reading the world with reference to God, which takes account of Pentecostals’ innate articulations of their own theological story. Narrative, story, and testimony are widely considered the native expressions of Pentecostal spirituality and theology (see Chapter 4). The most consistent methodological framework used for narrating the historically dominant set of Pentecostal spiritual experiences is known as the four- or five-fold gospel. The larger, five-fold pattern proclaims, usually in kerygmatic form, the good news that Jesus Christ brings (1) salvation, (2) sanctification, (3) baptism in the Spirit, (4) divine healing, and (5) the impending arrival of the kingdom of God. This chapter critically examines the functional “logic” of the full gospel as a theological hermeneutic and analyzes its application as an organizing method in Pentecostal theology. The full gospel depends as method on a theological narrative built around participation in foundational biblical experiences originating with the day of Pentecost, which functions as the theological symbol of the full gospel. This symbol arises from a Pentecostal scriptural hermeneutic (see Chapter 6), which seeks to transport the inquiring subject into the biblical story. The place where contemporary Pentecostal theology meets Pentecost can be identified with the metaphor of the altar. The full gospel is essentially a liturgical narrative aiming at participation in Pentecost through a theological (hermeneutical but also experiential) move to and from the altar. In the three sections that follow, I first situate the hermeneutic of the full gospel in the context of the day of Pentecost and show how Pentecost functions as a theological symbol. I then detail how this symbol finds entrance in Pentecostal theology through an altar liturgy grounded in and leading toward concrete practices shaped by the encounter with the Spirit. Finally, I illustrate how this liturgical hermeneutic is narrated through the five dominant themes of the full gospel. I argue that the full gospel functions as a descriptive and organizing mechanism of altar practices shaped by a range of personal and communal experiences originating with the symbol of Pentecost and presenting a participatory liturgical hermeneutic that yields a biblically and theologically organized and embodied theology.

Pentecost as theological symbol The biblical day of Pentecost is the foundational symbol of Pentecostal theology. Pentecost is significant for Pentecostals first and foremost because of the experiences and practices 173

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recorded in the biblical texts of Luke-Acts (Mittelstadt 2010, 18–45). While Pentecostals also acknowledge a Johannine and Pauline Pentecost, its emergence as a theological symbol originates with the Lukan testimony. Nevertheless, this preference is not indicative of the broad hermeneutical interests of Pentecostal theology (see Chapter 13); the focus on Luke-Acts serves not to restrict Pentecostal exegesis but rather to indicate that the day of Pentecost offers the central hermeneutical lens for any broader theological conversations. The experience of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost forms the archetype for practices and convictions of Pentecostal theology, multiplied and reshaped in diverse experiences of “Pentecost” today (see Vondey 2017a). A theology of Pentecost is the thematic hermeneutical locus that elicits an experiential identification with the biblical events of the day. The “plot” of Pentecost, the spiritual experiences and internal “logic” of the practices of the event, forms the foundation for the Pentecostal theological narrative. The full gospel emerges only from the starting point of this original plot of the outpouring of the Spirit applied to contemporary theological concerns and conversations by way of participating in the original Pentecost. The logic of participating in Pentecost proceeds from the realm of spirit (pneuma) to that of word (logos): Pentecostal theology begins with a pneumatological imagination (see Chapter  14), which proceeds from the experience of Pentecost in a foundational pneumatological direction (Yong 2005b, 27–30). At the same time, the theology of Pentecost is expressed clearly in the original setting with a central thematic focus on Jesus Christ: Pentecost is a witness to the crucified Jesus who has been raised from the dead and exalted to the right hand of God from whence he has poured out the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:14–36). The Pentecostal imagination proceeds only by way of this Christological narrative construct: the gospel of Jesus Christ is continued at Pentecost! In turn, the call to Christ is followed again with a pneumatological promise: the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the audience, their children and “all who are far away” (Acts 2:39). The full gospel develops the terms of this Spirit-Christology without a dichotomy between the work of Christ and the Spirit. The gospel of the Spirit of Christ “poured out on all flesh” (Acts 2:17) allows Pentecostal theology to reach deep into Pentecost not just as a historical day but as a theological symbol by engaging the concrete beliefs and practices emerging with Pentecost reflected in an experiential spirituality believed by Pentecostals still to be available as a continuation, repetition, or expansion of that original experience. Pentecostal Spirit-Christology is thus not a generic hermeneutical device; the foundational connection to the day of Pentecost shapes the pneumatological and Christological imagination always from Pentecost to Pentecost, that is, in a contemporary encounter with the Spirit of Christ seen as a participation in the original event. As symbol, the biblical Pentecost is determinative for the entire hermeneutical focus of Pentecostal thought and praxis (Vondey 2017b, 283–88). The goal of this theological hermeneutic is, in the first place, to preserve the availability of Pentecost, the validity of those experiences, and their perpetuation. The concrete theological and experiential realm for this availability is the altar.

Altar liturgy The altar arises from the expectation to participate in the experience of Pentecost despite spatial and temporal (or other) distance from the original event. Since Pentecostal theology seeks participation in the immediacy of the original experiences of the biblical story (Land 1993, 63–88), and because the biblical day of Pentecost contains as symbol already all subsequent experiences of Pentecost, the move back to and forward from Pentecost reverses the biblical 174

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hermeneutic of reading and interpreting the biblical text to being read and interpreted by the biblical story (Moore 1987). This hermeneutical reversal is the product of reenacting the biblical Pentecost through a foundational rite typically labeled the “altar call” (see Albrecht 1999, 165–70). In principle, the call to Pentecost is a call to the altar (and vice versa). The altar functions as a participatory liturgical framework for contemporary Pentecostals, and the goal of this experiential “altar hermeneutics” (Moore 2016) is the immediate encounter with Christ through the Spirit at the altar as the material perpetuation of Pentecost. The altar call and response rite arguably forms the center and summit of Pentecostal worship and theology (Albrecht 1999; Tomberlin 2010; Vondey 2016). Most Pentecostal churches do not have a physical altar, neither in the sacrificial or the sacramental sense (Vondey 2016). Rather, the Pentecostal altar comes into existence, as on the day of Pentecost, through encounter with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the response to the divine activity. The altar can be seen in a walking of the aisle or jumping on pews or, less dramatically, the congregating of people in a “sacred” place of ministry, preaching, or prayer (Vondey 2012). In charismatic churches with historical roots in the established liturgical traditions, the architectural space of the sanctuary often defines the spatial boundaries of the altar (Ryle 2011). In neo-Pentecostal communities, the idea of the “sacred space” with a central focal point is shifting from strong architectural identifiers to the more symbolically and experientially identified center of worship (Gold 2006). In the diverse materiality of Pentecostal churches worldwide, the human-divine encounter is identified primarily by the community’s altar activity. In this foundational theological action, Pentecost is profoundly and deeply changed from a theological symbol to a liturgical actualization of the possibility of an immediate encounter with God. Whether church or academy, the altar call invites a response from all realms and activities of Christian theology. In response to the altar call, Pentecostal theology brings itself, its goals, motivations, methods, and convictions to the encounter with the Spirit where theology is always a first-order discourse with God. Altar theology is doxology, worship, wonder, and praise—and a challenge to any second-order reflection of academic, scientific or theoretical methods. Glossolalia and prophecy, visions and dreams, are ways that manifest this counter- establishment discourse (Yong 2005a, 61–80). Accepting the invitation to the altar usually entails some form of audible or visible response, often accompanied by other physical and charismatic manifestations (Tomberlin 2010). At the altar, the person and the community (and thus their theology) are transformed in the encounter with God and empowered to leave the altar and to take the gospel into the world. This movement to and from the altar forms the liturgical heartbeat of Pentecostalism. The biblical, experiential, and liturgical path of this altar theology is charted by the theological narrative of the full gospel.

The full gospel The full gospel functions as theological narrative expression of a Pentecostal altar liturgy: salvation, sanctification, Spirit baptism, divine healing, and the coming kingdom mark the way to and from the altar of Pentecost. The order and content of the full gospel is not strictly defined and varies historically and geographically, since the narrative functions as an outlet of Pentecostal spirituality shaped by a range of personal and communal experiences and is not the result of systematic theological reflection (see Thomas 1998a; Vondey 2017a). The phrase “full gospel” may not be used directly even though the elements of the narrative are readily visible. And Pentecostals sometimes adjust the theological pattern and combine or include other themes to speak of a “fullness” of the gospel (see Cho 1997). In short, Pentecostal 175

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theology can employ the elements of the full gospel “in a creative and not always in a constant way” (Kärkkäinen 2007). Systematic proposals sometimes depart from the original narrative or emphasize individual elements rather than the entire narrative. The full gospel can therefore not be understood in a strict manner as a definitive narrative of the Pentecostal story (Archer 2010). Rather, the full gospel is an expression of Pentecostal spirituality and praxis because it “is based on a passionate desire to ‘meet’ with Jesus Christ as he is being perceived of as the Bearer of the Full Gospel” (Kärkkäinen 2007, 7). The elements of the full gospel are never logically isolated or adhere to a strict theological sequence, since the altar experiences underlying the narrative have occurred worldwide in diverse fashion since the day of Pentecost. Although the full gospel possesses an inherent narrative plot which proceeds through each of the five motifs, the connections between the different elements are not just linear but perhaps more akin to the stabilizing strands of a web that hold together the story of Pentecostal experiences and practices (Archer 2004). Entrance to the altar, and participation in Pentecost, is possible in principle from any strand of this narrative web. As an altar narrative built on Pentecost, the full gospel tells the story of Christ identified by several primary experiences of the Holy Spirit that together form a heuristic framework for theological articulation (see Yong 2010, 95–98; Vondey 2017b). The full gospel functions as both a biblical hermeneutic, as the themes shape the way Pentecostals read the Bible with the goal of participating in the biblical events, and a narrative of contemporary Pentecostal practices and experiences that reflect the biblical story. A systematic and constructive doctrinal formulation of Pentecostal theology must aim at holding together this kind of dynamic narrative of expression of the biblical and contemporary personal, communal, ecclesial, cultural, and counter-cultural experiences in the diverse contexts of global Pentecostalism (see Chapter 2). The primary theological challenge of this narrative is that it is not based on isolated doctrines but on interconnected foundational Pentecostal experiences. Pentecostal theology unfolds along these experiences, and its primary aspiration to participate in the biblical Pentecost frees the theological task from the order, rules, and regulations of contemporary narrative theology. Instead, the full gospel emerges through a perpetual hermeneutic that takes theology continually to and from the altar in activity that both originates with Pentecost and seeks Pentecost, and which reaches Pentecost by way of an immediate encounter with God. The full gospel therefore originates in the liturgical space between the freedom of Pentecostal experiences and practices, on the one hand, and the demands for a narrative of theological reflection and doctrinal articulation, on the other (Vondey 2001). Therein lies the most immediate challenge of the realization of Pentecostal theology, which exists amidst the  tension between the idealized “pure” experiences of the gospel and their counterpart as the strict dogmatic devotion to propositional doctrines. The full gospel is a liturgical narrative of foundational practices of the Spirit and acts as a unique hermeneutic because experience is viewed as lived affirmation of the revelation of God. Viewed through the lens of Pentecost, the liturgy of the full gospel unfolds on the basis of the altar experiences at the root of the narrative so that Pentecostals speak less about salvation, sanctification, Spirit baptism, divine healing, and eschatology than about being saved, sanctified, baptized in the Spirit, healed, and commissioned for God’s kingdom.

Saved The dominant full gospel narrative begins with a foundational concern for salvation (see Chapter 21). Taking theology to the altar is at the core an embarkment on the path to meet Jesus Christ as savior. More precisely, therefore, salvation is not simply one moment of the 176

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full gospel but its underlying rationale. The entrance to the full gospel as liturgy signals that an encounter with God is always soteriological, always redemptive, transforming, converting, correcting, and delivering. Still, meeting Jesus at the altar marks only the beginning of the soteriological direction identified with Pentecost (Kärkkäinen 2007). Soteriology is the broad liturgical foundation for Pentecostal theology as a whole, and the full gospel narrates its soteriological hospitality. Consequently, Pentecostal practices of salvation extend across all individual, familial, ecclesial, social, material, cosmic, and eschatological dimensions of life (Yong 2005b, 91–98). Salvation is manifested in a move to the altar, the acceptance of the invitation of God and the response of the worshiper in a move forward into the “holy place,” sometimes a gradual reorientation, at other times a jumping and running of the aisle. Responses vary from the assembly of the entire congregation at the altar to some remaining in the pews or falling on their knees in the aisle or stretching out their hands toward the perceived presence of God. The bringing of oneself to the altar may be the actual walk of a person or manifested only by a groaning in the spirit, a singing of the congregation into the presence of God, or the eruption of tongues and prophecies, prayers and songs (Albrecht 1999; Cartledge 2010). Salvation is practiced in a myriad of ways reflecting the soteriological emphasis that penetrates all Pentecostal theological concerns. The wide-ranging practices among Pentecostals suggest that all elements of the full gospel are works of grace and possible steps to the altar and the path of salvation. Theological concerns thus range from the liberation from sin to the participation in the divine life (Coulter 2008), regeneration, sanctification, divine healing, and personal piety (Alexander 2011), supernatural deliverance from the powers of the devil and the world (Covington 1995), spiritual and ideological, economic and political deliverance (Chesnut 1997), empowerment (Ngong 2010), and holistic salvation (Anderson and Tang 2005). The scope of the full gospel extends toward complete salvation, which reaches the soul through a whole range of experiences marking the personal-spiritual, individual-physical, communal, socioeconomic, and ecological aspects of Pentecostal soteriology (Volf 1989). The symbol of Pentecost as the story of the redemptive activity of the Holy Spirit in the cosmos, world, society, the church, and the human person provides an archetype for narrating a broad Pentecostal liturgy (see Vondey 2017b, 153–280) that extends to the transformation and salvation of the whole of life.

Sanctified A second motif in the narrative of the full gospel is sanctification (see Chapter 22), typically seen as a distinct work of grace and arguably the most contested teaching among Pentecostals: sanctification follows salvation in the account of the five-fold gospel but not in the four-fold pattern where it is subsumed under either salvation or Spirit baptism (Dayton 1987, 17–23). Nevertheless, within the soteriological emphasis of the altar call, sanctification recognizes both the call of God and the desire of the believer to holiness (see 1 Pet. 1:15–16). Whereas salvation identifies the move of a person to the altar, the experience of sanctification is a remaining at the altar in anticipation of the coming Pentecost. In light of the foundational Pentecostal concern for the fullness of salvation, sanctification emphasizes the cleansing from sin and the seeking of perfection (see 2 Cor. 7:1). As part of a soteriological liturgy, sanctification is not a forward moving into new territory (as with salvation) but a waiting and presentation of one’s present circumstances, intentions, and convictions as the object of theological interpretation before God. The full gospel leads Pentecostal theology to the altar for the purpose of tarrying for the presence of Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy 177

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Spirit (Wall 2013). Sanctification is a threshold practice for both the subject and the object of theological inquiry. The pursuit of sanctification is a transitional step identified by an initial departure from one’s familiar world and a concluding state of reaching a new form of existence, joined by an intervening phase of tarrying. Theology as a way to the altar here creates a sacred space for tarrying, “a temporary ‘container’ of sorts for the sacred, for the human to engage the sacred” (Albrecht 1999, 133). “Lingering” or “tarrying” and “laying” or “giving yourself ” at the altar are dominant activities that narrate this practice among Pentecostals. Sanctification is a form of active participation in the divine presence, even though the human “activity” implies waiting, travailing, prostrating and submitting oneself to the holiness of God (Castelo 2004). Pentecostal practices range from soaking prayer, falling or “being slain” in the Spirit, to more sacramental practices of footwashing (Vondey 2017a, 105–7, 2017b, 60–67). As a theological method, sanctification is an active waiting for the encounter with Christ and immersion in the sacred presence of the Holy Spirit. The full gospel is comfortable with this “unproductive” waiting for the prolonged presence of God as an expression of spiritual participation in the apostles’ tarrying in the upper room (see Acts 1:13–14). As a theological hermeneutic, sanctification includes the possibilities of dissonance, grieving, and confession in order to be convicted and corrected ( Johns 1995). Pentecostal theology is here at its darkest place; sanctification is not for the joyful explication of theological achievements and the praise of salvation but for humility, selfexamination, and correction. It is through this critical gate that the full gospel can aim at empowerment, transformation, and liberation.

Baptized in the spirit A third, and typically central, element of the full gospel is the baptism in the Holy Spirit (see Chapter 23). A motif drawn from rich Jewish and Christian textual history (Levison 2009), to be baptized in the Spirit, reflects a deep, personal experience in which the regenerated and sanctified believer receives in an extraordinary encounter with the Holy Spirit empowerment for the Christian life. Widely viewed as the most distinctive practice of Pentecostals, Spirit baptism is most intimately tied to the altar as a metaphor for the encounter with God to which the other elements point and from which they receive their meaning (Macchia 2006). Yet this important position does not elevate Spirit baptism above the narrative. Rather, this transformative experience marks a turning point in the altar liturgy: after being baptized in the Spirit those who have come to the altar are transformed to leave the altar. A theology baptized in the Spirit is attentive to this transformation both on the inside and on the outside (subjectively and objectively). Spirit baptism occurs in the subject by means of the affections, abiding dispositions resulting from the encounter with the Holy Spirit and directing a person more fully toward God and neighbor (Land 1993, 136). On the outside, Spirit baptism ignites a passion directed beyond one’s self to the church and to the world that seeks through participation in Pentecost God’s promise of the redemption of all creation (Alexander, Bowers, and Cartledge 2012). The baptism in the Spirit, therefore, is both a personal experience of grace and a communal, universal, and eschatological manifestation of the kingdom of God in the world (Macchia 2006, 85–88). Dominant forms of embodying this experience are praying through, preaching, and the laying on of hands, reflective of the apostles’ practices on the day of Pentecost (Vondey 2017a, 107–9, 2017b, 84–90). Arguably the most distinctive practice manifesting Spirit baptism for Pentecostals is the disciples’ speaking with other tongues (see Acts 2:4). Such tongues are a verbal and oral manifestation that the 178

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prayer for the Spirit has been answered by the reception of the Spirit. Similarly, preaching, the laying on of hands, prophecies, and other spiritual gifts are transformative, sacramental rites (see Chapter 29), manifesting the participation in the baptism with the Holy Spirit. The theological motifs of this endowment are sanctification and charismatic empowerment: through the baptism in the Spirit, “the church is allowed to participate in and bear witness to, the final sanctification of creation” (Macchia 2006, 86). At the same time, the filling with the Spirit also opens up a socio-critical hermeneutic to empower a countercritical church in the world through manifestation of the charismatic gifts of the Spirit while groaning in solidarity with the suffering creation for the fullness of redemption (Macchia 1998, 10–11). With the baptism in the Spirit, Pentecostal theology has arrived at the turning point of its own identity. As a baptismal practice, this transformative experience is manifested in the transformation of the passive-receptive believer into an active agent of the Spirit: Pentecostal theology that has come to the altar is now equipped to leave the altar.

Healed Divine healing (see Chapter 24) signifies an important expansion of the experience of Pentecost and the baptism in the Spirit: healing marks a move from the altar into the world. This move is always tied to explicit practices of faith, evident in both the expectation that healing is a result of the act of faith and participation in the pursuit of divine healing. Central practices among Pentecostals are the vocalization of faith, the laying on of hands, and the anointing with oil (Vondey 2017a, 109–12). Nonetheless, while healing practices are often literal interpretation of biblical narratives, there are few restrictions on receiving and extending healing, and activities often connect with indigenous religious practices to form enculturated rituals departing from strict biblical or apostolic patterns. The materiality of this liturgy extends not just to bodily healing but also to remedies for unemployment, family quarrels, racism, marital conflict, and to the well-being of the nation and the environment (Vondey 2017b, 108–15). The expansion of these practices signals the realization that the experience of the fullness of salvation does not currently extend to all realms of creation. The vast demand for continued healing guards Pentecostal theology from becoming a romanticized or triumphalist exercise. The promise of divine healing challenges Pentecostals to leave the altar and to go into the world in an outward orientation and a liturgical praxis that embraces traditional concerns and methods and is open to improvised practices among all who need healing, restoration, liberation, and deliverance. The gospel of divine healing thus proclaims that wholeness and restoration are the universal will of God for the salvation of all creation. Suffering, sickness, persecution, and dying are the consistent biblical themes that narrate the concerns for encountering the redeeming presence of God (Thomas 1998b, 310–19; Mittelstadt 2004). Pentecostals respond to these contexts with the symbol of Pentecost by proclaiming in broad terms healing through the power of God provided in the atoning work of Christ and the encounter with the Holy Spirit (Alexander 2006). The liturgical contours of this theology remain thoroughly connected to the altar while diversifying rapidly through three intersecting dynamics: (1) those saved, sanctified, and filled with the Spirit come to the altar to find healing; (2) those who experience healing at the altar take the altar into the world; (3) and those in the world who receive healing come to the altar for salvation. On the one hand, healing can be seen as an extension of the gospel of salvation, sanctification, and Spirit baptism, while, on the other hand, healing practices translate this gospel into the present with often unprecedented interpretation and new forms of application. 179

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A therapeutic and realistic proclamation of the full gospel acknowledges also that not all are healed. The existential tension between expectation and experience deeply shapes Pentecostal theology and has persuaded Pentecostals frequently to adjust their teachings (Robinson 2014) in order to maintain the core belief in divine healing amidst the often devastating effects of wars, natural disasters, national epidemics, and personal tragedies. By maintaining the promise of divine healing, Pentecostal theology encounters not only its most material but also its most volatile demands as a liturgy insisting on the availability and extension of the experience of Pentecost “to the ends of the earth.” As a theological emphasis of the full gospel, healing is as much based in the atonement as it is in search of atonement (Holm 2014). The full gospel resolves this theological tension with a pervasive eschatological orientation.

Commissioned Despite its place in the full gospel narrative, eschatology does not mark the “end” of Pentecostal theology. Rather, eschatology returns the full gospel to its central concerns for participation in Pentecost transformed by an apocalyptic urgency (Land 1993). An apocalyptic emphasis on the kingdom of God projects Pentecostal theology back onto itself in critical reflection: eschatology not only draws Pentecostals from the altar to the ends of the earth but also urges them to return to the altar and the encounter with God. Pentecostal eschatology culminates in an apocalyptic mandate to go and seek the lost, to proclaim Christ as king and to bring the world into God’s kingdom. This apocalyptic expectation of the inbreaking of the kingdom already manifested in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (at Pentecost and beyond) permeates the reading and practices of the other gospel motifs (see Chapter 25). The events of Pentecost form an eschatological motivation for the proclamation of the whole of the full gospel, thereby continually expanding the Pentecostal theological narrative until it finds its full realization. Eschatological practices are therefore, in principle, any altar practices acted out by the church for its mission to and transformation of the world (Vondey 2017b, 132–38). The practices of the eschatological gospel are organized along any of the central experiences of Pentecost, albeit now realized as an aspect of the imminent fullness of the kingdom of God. In the altar narrative of the full gospel, to be saved means eschatologically “an entry into the training program of a missionary fellowship” (Land 1993, 82) where Pentecostals see themselves as agents of witness and worship in the world. To be sanctified means an eschatological break and radical transformation from a life of the flesh to a life in the Spirit as a testimony to life in God’s kingdom (Land 1993, 88–90). The eschatological baptism in the Spirit seeks to equip theology for a radical witness to the lost and spiritual battle with the enemies of God (Land 1993, 91–93) as a testimony to the empowered and anointed life resulting from Pentecost. And the eschatological experience of divine healing points to a radical encounter with the coming kingdom already manifested in the physical life of believers as a testimony to the redeeming presence of God. These and other experiences reshape Pentecostal theology into eschatological actions to serve as anticipation, confirmation, and celebration of an eternal Pentecost. Pentecostal theology alerts Christianity to the ongoing significance of eschatology for ecclesiology and mission and the importance of cultivating eschatological practices in light of an apocalyptic vision (Thompson 2010). The eschatological interpretation of the Pentecostal theological mission often includes both the ideas of urgent evangelization and long-term social transformation (Miller and Yamamori 2007). Outside the dominance of dispensational hermeneutics, the Pentecostal apocalyptic vision can be more exactly defined as an affective 180

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transformation conforming the church and the individual to the pathos of God (see Land 1993, 58–121) instilled by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit through experiences of the charismatic gifts creating and shaping an eschatological liturgy.

Conclusion The full gospel of salvation, sanctification, Spirit baptism, divine healing, and the kingdom of God elicits theological actions of the church through which God enables the participation of the world in the outpouring of the Spirit of Christ. The five dominant themes presented in this chapter chart the foundational logic of the Pentecostal theological narrative to which other themes could be added. A drive for the redemptive, transformative, and liberating “fullness” of the kingdom of God sustains the entire liturgy of the full gospel. The importance of this theological hermeneutic lies in its insistence on the full gospel as a liturgy of Pentecost that applies to the whole of the Christian life. Pentecostal theology is in this sense a participation in the day of Pentecost lived out in the charismatic, evangelistic, and socio-critical practices of the church around the altar. The full gospel is a curious, hospitable, and critical theological liturgy that points to an eternal Pentecost already captured by the experiences of Christ as savior, sanctifier, Spirit baptizer, divine healer, and coming king.

References Albrecht, Daniel E. 1999. Rites in the Spirit: A Ritual Approach to Pentecostal/Charismatic Spirituality. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Alexander, Estrelda Y. 2001. Black Fire: One Hundred Years of African American Pentecostalism. Downers Grove: InterVarsity. Alexander, Kimberly E. 2006. Pentecostal Healing: Models in Theology and Practice. Blandford Forum: Deo. Alexander, Kimberly E., James P. Bowers, and Mark J. Cartledge. 2012. “Spirit Baptism, Socialization and Godly Love in the Church of God (Cleveland, TN).” PentecoStudies 11 (1): 27–47. Anderson, Allan, and Edmund Tang, eds. 2005. Asian and Pentecostal: The Charismatic Face of Christianity in Asia. Oxford: Regnum Books International. Archer, Kenneth J. 2004. “Pentecostal Story: The Hermeneutical Filter for the Making of Meaning.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 26 (1): 36–59. ———. 2010. “The Fivefold Gospel and the Mission of the Church: Ecclesiastical Implications and Opportunities.” In Toward a Pentecostal Ecclesiology: The Church and the Fivefold Gospel, edited by John Christopher Thomas, 7–43. Cleveland: CPT Press. Cartledge, Mark J. 2010. Testimony in the Spirit: Rescripting Ordinary Pentecostal Theology. Surrey: Ashgate. Castelo, Daniel. 2004. “Tarrying on the Lord: Affections, Virtues, and Theological Ethics in Pentecostal Perspective.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 13 (1): 50–56. Chesnut, R. Andrew. 1997. Born Again in Brazil: The Pentecostal Boom and the Pathogens of Poverty. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Coulter, Dale 2008. “‘Delivered by the Power of God’: Toward a Pentecostal Understanding of Salvation.” International Journal of Systematic Theology 10 (4): 447–67. Covington, Dennis. 1995. Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia. Reading: Addison-Wesley. Dayton, Donald W. 1987. Theological Roots of Pentecostalism. Peabody: Hendrickson. Gold, Malcolm. 2006. “From the ‘Upper Room’ to the ‘Christian Centre:’ Changes in the Use of Sacred Space and Artefacts in a Pentecostal Assembly.” In Materializing Religion: Expression, Performance and Ritual, edited by E. Arweck and W. Keenan, 74–88. Aldershot: Ashgate. Gunther Brown, Candy, ed. 2011. Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Holm, Randall. 2014. “Healing in Search of Atonement.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 23 (1): 50–67. Johns, Cheryl Bridges. 1995. “The Adolescence of Pentecostalism: In Search of a Legitimate Sectarian Identity.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 17 (1): 3–17.

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Wolfgang Vondey Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. 2007. “‘Encountering Christ in the Full Gospel Way’: An Incarnational Pentecostal Spirituality.” Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 27 (1): 5–19. Land, Steven Jack. 1993. Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Levison, John R. 2009. Filled with the Spirit. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Macchia, Frank D. 1998. “Groans too Deep for Words: Towards a Theology of Tongues as Initial Evidence.” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 1 (2): 149–73. ———. 2006. Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Miller, Donald E., and Tetsunao Yamamori. 2007. Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mittelstadt, Martin W. 2004. The Spirit and Suffering in Luke-Acts: Implications for a Pentecostal Pneumatology. London: T&T Clark International. ———. 2010. Reading Luke-Acts in the Pentecostal Tradition. Cleveland: CPT Press. Moore, Rickie D. 1987. “A Pentecostal Approach to Scripture.” Seminary Viewpoint 8 (1): 4–5, 11. ———. 2016. “Altar Hermeneutics: Reflections on Pentecostal Biblical Interpretation.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 38 (1–2): 148–59. Ngong, David Tonghou. 2010. The Holy Spirit and Salvation in African Christian Theology: Imagining a More Hopeful Future for Africa. New York: Peter Lang. Robinson, James. 2014. Divine Healing: The Years of Expansion, 1906–1930. Theological Variation in the Transatlantic World. Eugene: Pickwick. Ryle, Jacqueline. 2011. “Laying Our Sins and Sorrows on the Altar: Ritualizing Catholic Charismatic Reconciliation and Healing in Fiji.” In Practicing the Faith: The Ritual Life of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christians, edited by Martin Linhardt, 68–97. New York: Berghahn. Thomas, John Christopher. 1998a. “Pentecostal Theology in the Twenty-First Century.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 20 (1): 3–19. ———. 1998b. The Devil. Disease and Deliverance: Origins of Illness in New Testament Thought. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Thompson, Matthew K. 2010. Kingdom Come: Revisioning Pentecostal Eschatology. Blandford Forum: Deo. Tomberlin, Daniel. 2010. Pentecostal Sacraments: Encountering God at the Altar. Cleveland: Center for Pentecostal Leadership and Care. Volf, Miroslav. 1989. “Materiality of Salvation: An Investigation in the Soteriologies of Liberation and Pentecostal Theologies.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 26 (3): 447–67. Vondey, Wolfgang. 2001. “The Symbolic Turn: A Symbolic Conception of the Liturgy of Pentecostalism.” Wesleyan Theological Journal 36 (2): 223–47. ———. 2012. “The Making of a Black Liturgy: Pentecostal Worship and Spirituality from African Slave Narratives to Urban City Scapes.” Black Theology 10 (2): 147–68. ———. 2016. “The Theology of the Altar and Pentecostal Sacramentality.” In Scripting Pentecost: A Study of Pentecostals, Worship and Liturgy, edited by Mark J. Cartledge and A. J. Swoboda, 16–36. Aldershot: Ashgate. ———. 2017a. “Embodied Gospel: The Materiality of Pentecostal Theology at the Altar.” In Pentecostals and the Body, edited by Michael Wilkinson and Peter Althouse, 102–19. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2017b. Pentecostal Theology: Living the Full Gospel. London: Bloomsbury. Wall, Robert W. 2013. “Waiting on the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4): Extending a Metaphor to Biblical Interpretation.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 22 (1): 37–53. Warrington, Keith. 2003. “The Path to Wholeness: Beliefs and Practices Relating to Healing in Pentecostalism.” Evangel 21 (2): 45–49. Yong, Amos. 2000. “On Divine Presence and Divine Agency: Toward a Foundational Pneumatology.” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 3 (2): 167–88. ———. 2005a. “Academic Glossolalia? Pentecostal Scholarship, Multidisciplinarity, and the Science– Religion Conversation.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 14 (1): 61–80. ———. 2005b. The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. ———. 2010. In the Days of Caesar: Pentecostalism and Political Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Yong-gi Cho, D. 1997. The Five-Fold Gospel and the Three-fold Blessing. Seoul: Logos Co.

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PART IV

Doctrines and practices

17 TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY The Spirit and the fellowship of the triune God Steven M. Studebaker

Since the fourth century, the Trinity has been a central Christian doctrine. Among the early Pentecostals, however, the Trinity was a point of contention and division that gave rise to Oneness and trinitarian Pentecostal trajectories (see Chapter 18). The focus of this chapter is on Pentecostal contributions to trinitarian theology. Many Pentecostals are confessional, but not functional trinitarians (Tapper 2017, 1–7). In other words, even among trinitarian Pentecostals, the Trinity, though a point of confession, is often of little further consequence. The problem is not limited to the church but has also characterized formal Pentecostal theologies (see Pearlman 1937, 68–77; McRoberts 1995, 145–77). Until the end of the twentieth century, Pentecostal theologians more or less adopted the primary content of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed (Menzies and Horton 2000, 55). They gave little effort to considering what a Pentecostal perspective might contribute to trinitarian theology, much less to developing a genuinely Pentecostal trinitarian theology (Kärkkäinen 2002, 97, 103; Warrington 2008, 30). That situation began to change only in the early twenty-first century. In this chapter, I argue that Pentecostal trinitarian theology develops from a pneumatological reading of Scripture. I begin by outlining current Pentecostal engagement with the Trinity and then turn to develop a Pentecostal trinitarian theology based on biblical pneumatology to show that the Spirit of Pentecost plays a summative role in the history of redemption, which indicates that the Spirit fulfills the fellowship of the trinitarian God. I conclude with bringing this Pentecostal trinitarian theology into conversation with wider trinitarian traditions.

Pentecostal engagement with the Trinity The emergence of Pentecostal trinitarian theology has taken three directions. First, Pentecostal theologians turned to the Trinity as resource for constructive work in other areas of theology. Simon Chan’s (1998, 40–55) Pentecostal contribution to Christian spirituality is an early work in this genre of theology (see Chapter 3). Frank Macchia’s (2006, 2010) work is an exemplar of this approach. He draws on the Trinity to revise the traditional Pentecostal theology of Spirit baptism (see Chapter 23) and to propose a Pentecostal theology of justification. Athanasius and Augustine are key resources for Macchia. The result is a fruitful

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integration of these figures and a trinitarian vision of Spirit baptism and justification. Developing a Pentecostal account of the Trinity, however, is not (yet) his dominant focus. Second, Pentecostal theologians supplemented traditional trinitarian theologies with Pentecostal insights. Here the works of Amos Yong and Kilian McDonnell are important. Although Yong’s primary subject is theological hermeneutics, a pneumatological t rinitarian theology grounds it. Beginning with biblical pneumatology, Yong (2002) identifies three characteristics of the Spirit—relationality, rationality, and power—on the basis of the Spirit’s work in mediating the grace of Christ, creating the world, and giving life. He brings these pneumatological points into dialogue with Eastern and Western trinitarian theologies. The result is a pneumatological trinitarianism: not a Pentecostal trinitarianism per se, but a re-visioning of traditional trinitarian theologies on the basis of Pentecostal and biblical pneumatology. Catholic charismatic theologian, Kilian McDonnell (2003) maintains that the Trinity shapes both pneumatology and Christology. His goal is to integrate the roles of Christ and the Holy Spirit in the work of redemption in place of the traditional tendencies to separate their missions or to subordinate the Spirit to Christ. Although McDonnell effectively gives Christ and the Spirit distinct roles, he continues Western theology’s Ch ristocentrism, making the Spirit’s role instrumental for accessing Christ’s revelation and redemption. Yong’s is the more significant work for Pentecostals because it operates more consistently from pneumatological insights and, thus, provides more constructive contributions toward a Pentecostal trinitarian theology. Developing a genuine “Pentecostal” theology of the Trinity is the third direction. This work is more preliminary. Although recent years saw Pentecostals engage trinitarian theology more than their predecessors, developing a Pentecostal theology of the Trinity as such remains rare. The challenge for Pentecostal theology is to articulate a theology of the Trinity derived from the Pentecostal tradition and to engage the alternative trinitarian traditions with a distinct Pentecostal voice. My own work (Studebaker 2012), followed by William P. Atkinson (2013), are important steps toward this goal. The following sections provide the basic contours of this agenda by drawing primarily on my own work yet representing emphases found in Atkinson, Macchia, and Yong.

The Spirit’s trinitarian narrative The Christian doctrine of the Trinity emerges from the biblical revelation of God as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Incarnation and Pentecost are its summative events. A Pentecostal orientation focuses on the Holy Spirit’s role in this narrative (Yong 2002, 25 and 61, Atkinson 2013, 14). The economic pneumatology that arises from the Spirit of Christ and the Spirit of Pentecost provides the biblical content for a Pentecostal theology of the immanent Trinity presented in the next section.

The Spirit of Christ First, the Spirit plays a formative role in the Incarnation and the life of Jesus Christ (Atkinson 2013, 53, 70–71). The Incarnation of the Son of God in Jesus Christ emerges from the narrative of the Spirit of God that began with the Spirit’s stirring over the abyss of creation and animating human life in Genesis 1 and 2 (Yong 2002, 28–29; Macchia 2018, 125). The Gospels of Matthew and Luke indicate the pneumatological foundation for understanding Jesus Christ (Yong 2005, 87). Comforting Mary, the angel Gabriel says, “Do not be afraid . . ., the Holy Spirit will come upon you . . ., therefore the child to be born . . . will be called 186

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the Son of God” (Luke 1:30–35). The Holy Spirit descending on Mary echoes the Spirit of God hovering over the primal abyss. The result, in both cases, is the production of life. An angel assuages Joseph’s consternation with the same news—“the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 1:20). The pneumatic conception of Jesus should not be entirely surprising. Isaiah foretold that this messianic figure will be the “shoot . . . from the stump of Jesse” and that “the spirit of the LORD shall rest on him” (Isa. 11:1–2). Matthew’s genealogy identifies Jesus as this Davidic descendant and the conception narrative as the Spirit anointed messiah foretold in Isaiah. Jesus Christ is the unfolding of the redemptive work of God’s Spirit (see Chapter 20). Whatever uniqueness theology attributes to Christ (e.g. he is the Incarnation of the Son of God), it must also situate Christ in the wider narrative of the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God brings about the union of the Son of God in the humanity of Jesus Christ. The Spirit of God operates in the liminal space between the immanent and economic Trinity. The Holy Spirit brings the Son of God across the threshold from being “in the beginning with God” to being in the “flesh” and living “among us” ( John 1:1, 14). Second, the Spirit plays a productive role throughout the life of Jesus Christ. Usually theology portrays the Spirit’s ministry as a derivative of Christ’s work (Yong 2005, 111). The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. This way of understanding the Spirit of Christ relies on Logos theology and the sending-mission pattern of the Gospel of John (Atkinson 2013, 98). The Father sends the Son to fulfill righteousness through his life and death on the cross. The Father and the Son, in turn, send the Holy Spirit to mediate the grace of Christ. Extrapolating from the economic sending relations to the immanent Trinity, Western theology developed the processions of the divine persons: the Son proceeds as the eternal begotten Son of the Father; the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son— this articulation resulted in the controversial filioque doctrine. The consequence is trinitarian theology based almost entirely on the Father-Son narrative played out in the life of Jesus Christ (Atkinson 2013, 9–11). The Holy Spirit is an adjunct to Christ. The Spirit empowers Jesus’ human nature, while the incarnate Son sets aside the prerogatives of deity. The Spirit, however, contributes nothing to the Incarnation as such. The Spirit serves to administer the grace Christ earned on the cross. Pentecostals emphasize, however, that in the New Testament, the identity and work of Christ derives from his identity as the Spirit-anointed messiah (Yong 2002, 29, 74; Atkinson 2013, 74–75; Macchia 2018, 130). The Spirit is the abiding source of Jesus Christ’s life and ministry. Considering Christology from a pneumatological perspective means that Jesus, throughout his life, and not only in his conception, was the messiah in and through the agency of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, in other words, is the ongoing foundation of Christ’s incarnate life and ministry. Matthew and Luke highlight vital elements about Jesus and his Spirit-anointed life and ministry (Yong 2005, 87–88; Atkinson 2013, 62). Jesus recognizes that the presence and power of the Holy Spirit constitutes him the Christ and empowers his ministry (Luke 4:14–19). Jesus heals people, thereby bringing “justice” because the “Spirit [is] upon him” (Matt. 12:18). The presence of the Holy Spirit grounds his messianic identity and ministry. Jesus recognizes that he is of the Spirit. This recognition of his Spirit-anointed identity and work expands the notion of the Spirit of Christ. The Spirit of Christ has several meanings: the Spirit is sent by Christ and the Father to continue God’s redemptive work in the world; but that meaning derives from the Spirit’s more fundamental work in Christ. Why can the Spirit continue the ministry of Christ in the world? Because the Holy Spirit not only initiated the union of the Son of God with Jesus’ humanity but was also the abiding foundation of his incarnate life and ministry. The Spirit of Christ, therefore, means that Christ is of the Spirit. The Incarnation of the Son of God 187

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in Jesus Christ was brought about by the Holy Spirit. Spirit Christology, in other words, complements Logos Christology by correcting its unilateral Christocentrism (Yong 2005, 86; Macchia 2018, 308). Third, Jesus Christ is also an eschatological figure (Heb. 1:1–2; Heb. 9:26; 1 Pet.1:20). Christ is eschatological because he fulfills the Spirit-breathed purpose of human life. The life of Jesus Christ emerges within the wider narrative of the Spirit of God that began with creation. The Spirit narrates the comprehensive history of redemption in Christ’s particular life. The Incarnation displays in vivid clarity God’s vision for human life—life lived in and for this world and in loving fellowship with the triune God and other human beings. The Holy Spirit’s activity in the Incarnation not only parallels the breath of God that animated human life in Genesis 2:7 but brings that life to its most radical expression. The Holy Spirit’s role in the resurrection of Christ also displays the Spirit’s eschatological character (Yong 2005, 102; Atkinson 2013, 69; Macchia 2018, 296). The resurrection of Christ, moreover, is the definitive completion of the Spirit’s broader work in the narrative of redemption. The New Testament describes the Son of God in Christ as “the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being” (Heb. 1:3). The Apostle Paul contrasts Jesus Christ as the “last Adam” with the “first . . . Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45). Where the first Adam was “a man of dust” who “became a living being” (1 Cor. 15:45, 47), the last Adam “became a life-giving spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45). Paul’s point is that the descendants of Adam die; they return to the dust, but “those who are of heaven” shall put on immortality (1 Cor. 15:49, 53). Adam returned to the dust after becoming a “living being” because he forsook his Spirit-breathed life. Jesus Christ became a life-giving spirit because he embraced his Spirit-breathed life as the incarnate Son of God (Macchia 2018, 301–2). Left in the tomb, Jesus’ ministry remains unfulfilled. The presence and life-renewing work of the Holy Spirit raises Christ and enables him to return to the Father and to pour out the Spirit of Pentecost (1 Pet. 3:18; 1 Tim. 3:16). By raising Christ to resurrected life, the Spirit completes the ministry of Christ.

The Spirit of Pentecost The outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost is the critical nexus not only in the New Testament but the entire history of redemption (Macchia 2018, 298 and 307). Pentecost is first a threshold in the history of salvation, and exclusively Christocentric views of salvation miss the Spirit’s role in the narrative of redemption (see Chapter 21). Recognizing the Spirit’s place in God’s redemptive work does not replace Christocentrism with pneumacentrism. On the contrary, it integrates Christ with the Spirit (Atkinson 2013, 74–75). Pentecost reveals that the perennial and universal work of the Holy Spirit that began with creation and comes to its most radical manifestation in the particular history of Jesus Christ is for “all flesh” (Acts 2:17). Pentecost gives the Spirit-anointed life of Christ a universal horizon (Yong 2005, 88–102; Macchia 2018, 130–31). When the disciples asked the resurrected Christ, if now was the time that he would “restore the kingdom to Israel,” he deflected their question on a political kingdom and reiterated the purpose of his life and ministry—“you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit . . . you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1:5, 6, 8). In other words, Jesus recognized that the work of the Spirit in his life was never the telos of redemption. The Spirit catalyzed the incarnate life of Christ so that that life might be shared with all people. The purpose of the particularity of Christ was always the universality of the Spirit of Pentecost. In Christ, the work of the Spirit that began with creation reaches its most radical manifestation in a particular human life. The outpouring of the Spirit of Pentecost is the threshold that makes the Spirit-breathed life achieved in Christ 188

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an opportunity for all people (see Chapter 19). Pentecost, however, is more than a liminal event in the macro-history of redemption. It has perpetual liminality. Receiving the Spirit of Pentecost and participating in the Spirit-breathed life achieved in Christ that it enables is a perennial threshold for human life lived on the verge of God’s kingdom. Thus, Paul’s admonition to “be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18). Second, the Spirit of Pentecost is the substance of redemption (Yong 2005, 101–8). Consider the way all the Gospels define Christ’s redemptive work. John the Baptist announces the coming messiah and declares the nature of his salvation: “I baptize you with water . . . he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16; John 1:33). Jesus also identifies the gift of the Holy Spirit as the goal of his work. In Luke 11:13, he promises that the “the heavenly Father” will “give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.” The Gospel of Luke closes with Jesus assuring the disciples that they will receive the promise of the Father and be “clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). After his resurrection, Jesus urges the disciples to remain in Jerusalem so they can receive “the promise of the Father . . .; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1:4–5). The Acts narrative shows Jesus fulfilling the promise of his ministry to baptize in the Holy Spirit. Jesus comes as the Spirit-anointed messiah (Luke 1:35; 4:17–19; Acts 2:33) so that the life the Spirit made possible in him can be shared with “all flesh” (Acts 2:17). That all four Gospels and Acts define the goal of Jesus’ ministry as baptism in the Holy Spirit is significant. It indicates that the fundamental nature of his ministry and Christian salvation is the reception and participation in the Holy Spirit. Receiving the Spirit of Pentecost is the substance of redemption because it makes Christ’s historical realization of Spirit-breathed life available to all people (Macchia 2018, 308–9). For Pentecostals, the Spirit’s role in establishing Christian identity as children of God highlights the fundamental role of the Spirit in the work of redemption (Atkinson 2013, 60–61, 72). Paul parallels the sonship of Christ with Christian identity as children of God the Father: For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For . . . you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God. (Rom. 8:14–16) That the Spirit is the source of their adoption as God’s children is notable (Macchia 2018, 124). The Spirit makes Christians children of God. Connecting Christian identity as children of God is not limited to Pauline theology, however. The prologue of the Gospel of John defines the gospel as receiving new birth as God’s children: But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. ( John 1:12–13) Further, John 3:1–8 clarifies that the Spirit of God is the source of this new birth that constitutes believers as children of God. Third, Pentecost inaugurates eschatological renewal (Yong 2005, 90). According to Peter’s Pentecost sermon, the eschatological outpouring of God’s Spirit promised in Joel 2:28–32 began on the day of Pentecost. In other words, Pentecost advances the narrative of redemption. 189

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Jesus Christ’s life and ministry indicates this eschatological anticipation. Jesus’ saving work does not reach its climax on the cross or even in the resurrection, but with the outpouring of the Spirit of Pentecost (Macchia 2018, 304–5). The day of Pentecost is decisive for the drama of redemption: it culminates the great movement of redemption that progresses from the Spirit hovering over the waters to bringing about the incarnate life of Jesus Christ. Beginning with the work of the Spirit, Christ’s life and ministry find their telos in the gift of the Spirit of Pentecost. Peter’s Pentecost sermon provides a condensed narrative of Christ’s ministry that concludes with “the promise of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:33). It confirms the pneumatological purpose of Christ. Recognizing the place of the Spirit of Pentecost does not displace Christ but binds Christ and the Spirit in a wider narrative of biblical redemption. The Spirit of Pentecost does not come alone but brings the resurrected life of Christ to the Christian community (Yong 2002, 32). Consequently, the Spirit of Pentecost is eschatological. The Spirit of Pentecost is also eschatological in respect to its scope (Yong 2005, 31, 91–97). What the Spirit achieved in the life of Christ is programmatic for Pentecost. But Pentecost is forward, not backward, looking. Christ came to give the Spirit for the restoration of all people to their God and to the life for which they were created. Through the Spirit of Pentecost, the gospel will go to “the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The emphasis on “devout Jews from every nation under heaven” on the Day of Pentecost corroborates with Joel’s promise that the Spirit is for “all flesh” (Acts 2:5, 17). The restoration of people from their exile from God and each other and renewing their life is a foundational motif in biblical redemption. In the renewal of the Mosaic covenant, God ensures to have compassion by gathering you again from all the peoples among whom the Lord your God has scattered you. Even if you are exiled to the ends of the world, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there he will bring you back. (Deut. 30:3–5) The later Hebrew prophets gave that promise a universal scope (e.g. Isa. 42:6; 65:17). The description of the first Christian community at the conclusion of Acts 2 illustrates the theme of restoring the people of God: “All who believed were together and had all things in common . . . . They broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all people” (Acts 2:44–47). The outpouring of the Spirit of Pentecost fulfills God’s dream to create people that share in the fellowship of the triune God, live in loving relationships with each other, and enjoy the abundance of creation. The Spirit consummates this eschatological promise in the “[liberation] of creation from its bondage to decay” and the resurrection of the saints to new life in the new heaven and the new earth (Rom. 8:18–27; Rev. 21:1).

A Pentecostal Trinity The Catholic theologian Karl Rahner (1970, 22) made the formula the “‘economic’ Trinity is the ‘immanent’ Trinity and the ‘immanent’ Trinity is the ‘economic’ Trinity” a fixture of contemporary trinitarian theology. Pentecostal theologians have readily adopted this principle (e.g. Yong 2002, 72–78; Studebaker 2012, 3–5; Atkinson 2013, 27–28, 95). But should they? Yes, because the work of God in redemption derives from the immanent identities of the triune God, who is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. If God’s work of redemption does not reflect who and what God is from eternity, then theology says nothing about God. 190

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Applying Rahner’s principle to a Pentecostal trinitarian theology means that the identity of the Holy Spirit that emerges in the biblical narrative of redemption reveals the Spirit’s immanent identity and role in the triune God (e.g. Menzies and Horton 2000, 54; Yong 2002, 27–81). What does the economic activity of the Spirit as the Spirit of Christ and of Pentecost in the narrative of redemption mean for trinitarian theology? First, the Trinity is a trinitarian fellowship of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Macchia 2010, 297; Atkinson 2013, 74). Only in the Spirit does God transcend a monad or a binity and become a triune God. Saying the Godhead “becomes” a Trinity in the Holy Spirit does not imply temporal sequence in the relations among the divine persons. Trinitarian discourse invariably connotes temporality because human language cannot describe ontological relations that are eternal. For traditional Western and Eastern trinitarianism, the Father is first in order (taxis) and the one who begets the Son and from whom the Spirit proceeds. The Western tradition has the Son participate in the Spirit’s procession (i.e. the filioque), and some Eastern theology has the Spirit proceed from the Father and through the Son. The Father is, nevertheless, the principal source of the procession of the Holy Spirit in both traditions. Neither the Western nor the Eastern traditions, however, attribute temporal sequence to these processions, but regard them as eternal relations (Atkinson 2013, 99, 121). The Father eternally begot the Son. The Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father (and through/ from the Son). So, a Pentecostal trinitarian theology posits no temporal sequence when it says the Holy Spirit fulfills or completes the fellowship of the triune God (Atkinson 2013, 125). The Spirit’s eschatological role in the narrative of redemption as Spirit of Pentecost reflects the Spirit’s role in the triune life of God. Second, trinitarian fellowship means that the Holy Spirit is a constituent agent of that triune life (Macchia 2010, 301; Atkinson 2013, 73). In traditional trinitarian theology, the Father and the Son’s relationship conditions pneumatology. This theology relies on the sending missions revealed in the Gospel of John. From creation to eschaton, the Holy Spirit plays a vital role in the history of redemption. Jesus recognized that his identity as the incarnate Son was a product of the Spirit’s presence and work in this life (e.g. Luke 4:18, Matt. 12:28). Since the Spirit plays a role in constituting the identity of the incarnate Son in Jesus Christ, then the Spirit has a similar role in the immanent Trinity (Atkinson 2013, 62, 71). Traditional trinitarian theologies that portray the Spirit as a passive procession, therefore, are insufficient. The Spirit is not a passive product of a procession but a productive divine person. The Holy Spirit’s agency plays a formative role not only in the relational identities of the Father and the Son but also in the Spirit’s identity in the triune God. Third, the Holy Spirit fulfills the triune fellowship by being one in whom and with whom the Father and the Son share fellowship. The Spirit’s role in completing the fellowship of the immanent Trinity reflects the Spirit’s eschatological activity in the economic Trinity (Macchia 2010, 305; Atkinson 2013, 101). The implication for the immanent Trinity is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit equally receive and give love. The triune God is a trinitarian fellowship. God is neither a binitarian communion of the Father and the Son—e.g. the Holy Spirit as the mutual love of the Father and the Son—nor unilateral relations from the Father. A pneumatological reading of Scripture therefore coordinates Christology and pneumatology and gives them both constitutional roles in place of traditional trinitarianism’s tendency to treat pneumatology as a derivative doctrine of the theology of the Father and the Son. In other words, the Spirit is not only a product of a unilateral procession from the Father or a bi-lateral procession from the Father and the Son. The Spirit is the divine person who constitutes and consummates the immanent fellowship of the trinitarian God and is one who gives and shares love in the dynamic fellowship of the trinitarian God. 191

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Pentecostal and traditional trinitarian theology Despite differences over the filioque doctrine, Eastern and Western trinitarian theologies are fundamentally the same. The theology of divine processions from the Father gives their theologies structural and substantial similarity. The Father’s identity derives from being the unbegotten and the source of the Son’s and the Holy Spirit’s processions (Macchia 2010, 303–4). He is the one from whom the Son and Spirit proceed. The Son and the Spirit have their identities from their modes of procession (principally) from the Father. The Father begets the Son from eternity. His mode of procession is called generation from the Father. As such, he is the begotten Son. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. In the Eastern tradition, some regard the Spirit proceeding from the Father alone and others say the Spirit proceeds from the Father and through the Son. The Western tradition is not ambiguous on this point. It added the filioque clause to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed to indicate that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. Without minimizing the insult this addition provoked with the Eastern churches, the primary identities of the divine persons in both traditions are nearly identical. The Father’s primary identity resides in being the origin of the Son and the Spirit and not in interpersonal relationship with the Son and the Spirit. The relations are eternal, so the Father is always Father in relation to the Son. But the Father’s defining characteristic as person is generative; he is the source of the Son’s generation and the Spirit’s procession (Atkinson 2013, 123–25). The Son and the Holy Spirit have passive and derivative properties as persons. The Son and the Spirit are processions from the Father. Even with the filioque, the Spirit is primarily a procession from the Father. The Son secondarily contributes to the Spirit’s procession and does so only in a derivative sense. The Son can participate in the procession of the Spirit because he is first the Father’s begotten Son. The Son’s primary identity, like the Spirit’s, derives from his mode of proceeding (begotten) from the Father. The West’s filioque is clearer than the East on the mode of the Spirit’s procession (Atkinson 2013, 128). But it also intensifies the passivity of the Spirit (Yong 2005, 220). According to popular Western trinitarian theology, the Holy Spirit is the mutual love of the Father and the Son (Macchia 2010, 301–2). The Spirit is their mutual act. The key point, however, is that the passivity of the Spirit (and of the Son) is common to both traditions. The Spirit is either the product of the Father’s act alone or the product of the Father and the Son’s mutual act. Consequently, the Spirit has no immanent agency in these trinitarian theologies. What does a Pentecostal trinitarian theology contribute to this traditional trinitarian theology? First, the Holy Spirit’s (and the Father’s and the Son’s) identity in the immanent Trinity should reflect the Spirit’s role in the narrative of redemption (Atkinson 2013, 56, 122, 148). The Spirit operates as a liminal, constituent, and eschatological agent. The Spirit’s identity should bear these characteristics of active agency in the work of redemption. The theology of processions does not account for them. The solution is not necessarily to jettison the processions (Atkinson 2013, 149) but to recognize that even if retained, indeed even the filioque, the processions do not comprehensively define the divine persons’ identities (Macchia 2010, 304–5). They neither correspond with the Spirit’s agency nor the divine persons’ interpersonal relationships with each other in the economy of redemption. A Pentecostal trinitarian theology argues that since the Holy Spirit is an active agent in the economy of redemption, the Spirit has a corresponding agency in the immanent Trinity. The problem is not the filioque per se. It expresses, in immanent trinitarian categories, the sent-from relations in the Gospel of John (Atkinson 2013, 146). But the processions and especially the filioque forget that the Holy Spirit constitutes Jesus as the incarnate Son of 192

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God—e.g. conception, baptism, empowerment in ministry, and raising from the dead. The Father and the Son do not send the Holy Spirit because the Spirit is the last in the line of processions. They send the Spirit to share with the world the fellowship the Spirit generated between them in the immanent Trinity and in Christ in the narrative redemption (Macchia 2010, 305). From this perspective, trinitarian theology based on processions alone is not so much wrong as it is skewed and inadequate. The economy of redemption narrated in Scripture is the primary source of knowledge of God. The activities of the divine persons and their identities that emerge in that narrative are the basis for the Christian understanding of God (Atkinson 2013, 146). The Johannine sent-from relations between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit contribute to that vision of God. But the Spirit’s work in Christ and facilitation of his relationship with the Father do so as well (Atkinson 2013, 149, 157). Biblical pneumatology yields a trinitarian theology in which the identities of the divine persons are tri-conditioned. Second, dynamic and reciprocal relationships define the identities of the divine persons in the narrative of redemption (Macchia 2010, 301, 305; Atkinson 2013, 62). In John 14–17, Jesus promises that he and the Father will come and make their home with the disciples. He also prays that they will share the same love he knows with the Father. This divine sharing of love and indwelling takes place through the Holy Spirit sent by the Father and the risen Christ. Since the Spirit is the constituent agent of the disciples’ participation in the Father and Son’s fellowship, the Spirit also establishes the Father and Son’s fellowship. The Spirit can play this unitive role in the disciples because the Spirit facilitates the Father and the Son’s interpersonal relationships from eternity (Atkinson 2013, 97). The Spirit is not passive. The Holy Spirit draws the disciples into the Father and Son’s fellowship of love. The Spirit operates as the liminal agent in whom the disciples cross into fellowship with the trinitarian God. Since the economic activities reflect immanent identities as persons, the Holy Spirit constitutes not only the disciples’ fellowship with the Father and Son, but the Father and Son’s own fellowship as well. Third, the Spirit’s eschatological role in the economy corresponds with the Spirit’s immanent identity and role in the triune God (Macchia 2010, 305). Since the Spirit is the eschatological fulfillment of the trinitarian God’s work of redemption, the Spirit completes the fellowship of the trinitarian God (see Chapter 25). The Father and the Son do not know trinitarian communion until the Holy Spirit fulfills the triune relations. The identities of the Father and the Son described in John 17 are not realized in the immanent taxis “until” the third stage of the taxis—the subsistence of the Holy Spirit. The last stage of the i mmanent taxis completes the formation of the personal identities of the divine persons. The formation of the personal identities of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is complete only when the Spirit achieves full trinitarian fellowship (Atkinson 2013, 147, 159). Thus, the divine fellowship achieves triune character, not in the processions, but in the agency of the Spirit. Consequently, the Holy Spirit’s activity is co-constitutional of the Father’s and the Son’s personal identities (Atkinson 2013, 56). The Spirit’s activity in relation to the Father and the Son, drawing them into and constituting the eternal fellowship of the trinitarian God, also contributes to the Spirit’s identity. In other words, the Spirit is not passive. The Spirit is neither only the Father’s act (Eastern tradition) nor only the Father and Son’s mutual act (Western tradition). Since the Holy Spirit constitutes the fellowship of the Father and the Son, a fellowship that defines their eternal identities, the Spirit plays an active role in defining the identities of the Father and the Son. The Spirit’s constituent role in shaping the identities of the Father and Son reflects the Spirit’s eschatological role in the economy of redemption. 193

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Conclusion Although the doctrine of the Trinity divided early Pentecostals into trinitarian and Oneness groups, only recently has it become the subject of sustained theological reflection. This chapter presented the current state of the Pentecostal contribution to trinitarian theology in the terms of the Spirit and fellowship of God. We find three dominant types of trinitarian theology pursued by contemporary Pentecostals: (1) the Trinity as a resource for constructive work on other theological topics, (2) supplementing traditional trinitarian theology with Pentecostal insights, and (3) developing a Pentecostal approach to the doctrine of God. Focusing on the third type, we see that the heart of a Pentecostal trinitarian theology is the identity of the Holy Spirit emerging from the biblical narrative. The Spirit of Pentecost is a culminating moment in the narrative of redemption and indicates the Spirit’s identity and role in the triune God—the Spirit constitutes and fulfills the fellowship of the Trinity.

References Atkinson, William P. 2013. Trinity after Pentecost. Eugene: Pickwick. Chan, Simon. 1998. Spiritual Theology: A Systematic Study of the Christian Life. Downers Grove: InterVarsity. Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. 2002. Toward a Pneumatological Theology: Pentecostal and Ecumenical Perspectives on Ecclesiology, Soteriology, and Theology of Mission, edited by Amos Yong. Lanham: University Press of America. Macchia, Frank D. 2006. Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. ———. 2010. Justified in the Spirit: Creation, Redemption, and the Triune God. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2018. Jesus the Spirit Baptizer: Christology in Light of Pentecost. Grand Rapids, Eerdmans. McDonnell, Kilian. 2003. The Other Hand of God: The Holy Spirit as the Universal Touch and Goal. Collegeville: Liturgical Press. McRoberts, Kerry D. 1998. “The Holy Trinity.” In Systematic Theology, rev. ed., edited by Stanley M. Horton, 145–77. Springfield: Logion. Menzies, William W., and Stanley M. Horton. 2000. Bible Doctrines: A Pentecostal Perspective. Springfield: Logion. Pearlman, Myer. 1937. Knowing the Doctrines of the Bible. Reprint 1981. Springfield: Gospel Publishing House. Rahner, Karl. 1970. The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel, intro. Catherine Mowry LaCugna. Reprint 1988. New York: Crossroad. Studebaker, Steven M. 2012. From Pentecost to the Triune God: A Pentecostal Trinitarian Theology. Pentecostal Manifestos 5. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Tapper, Michael A. 2017. Canadian Pentecostals, the Trinity, and Contemporary Worship Music. Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies 23. Leiden: Brill. Warrington, Keith. 2008. Pentecostal Theology: A Theology of Encounter. New York: T&T Clark. Yong, Amos. 2002. Spirit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. ———. 2005. The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.

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18 ONENESS THEOLOGY Restoring the apostolic faith David K. Bernard

Oneness Pentecostalism, also known as the Jesus Name or Apostolic Pentecostal movement, is a significant part of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity with a worldwide constituency of over thirty million (French 2014, 6). The largest Oneness Pentecostal organization is the United Pentecostal Church International (UPCI), which in 2018 had about five million constituents and 42,000 churches in 194 nations and 35 territories. In Canada and the United States, the UPCI has about 5,000 churches and 11,000 credentialed ministers (UPCI 2018, vii and 132). Worldwide the UPCI is mostly nonwhite, while in Canada and the United States about one-third of constituents are nonwhite. Countries with constituencies of 100,000 or more are Brazil, El Salvador, India, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Pakistan, Philippines, Uganda, the United States, and Venezuela. The other major organizations in the United States are the Apostolic Assembly of the Faith in Christ Jesus (predominantly Hispanic), Assemblies of the Lord Jesus Christ (predominantly white), Bible Way Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ World-Wide, Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith, International Bible Way Church of Jesus Christ, Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, and Pentecostal Churches of the Apostolic Faith (the last five predominantly African A merican). Large Oneness Pentecostal churches in other countries are the Apostolic Church of Ethiopia, Apostolic Church of the Faith in Christ Jesus (Mexico), True Jesus Church (China and Taiwan), and United Pentecostal Church of Colombia. Oneness Pentecostals share many key beliefs with conservative Protestants: existence of one true God; creation of the universe by God; inspiration, authority, and infallibility of the Bible; existence of angels, the devil, and demons; fall and sinfulness of humanity; the Incarnation; the atonement; the gospel of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ; water baptism; the Lord’s Supper; the church; priesthood of believers; spiritual disciplines; fruit of the Spirit; pursuit of holiness; rapture of the church; second coming and millennial kingdom of Christ; last judgment; eternal punishment for the unrighteous; and eternal life for the righteous. Like other classical Pentecostals, they affirm the baptism in the Holy Spirit with the initial sign of tongues, the Spirit-filled life, miraculous gifts of the Spirit, divine healing, and joyful, demonstrative worship. There is diversity in ecclesiology with lack of theological development until recently, although both congregationalism and pastoral leadership are generally strong.

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The distinctive teaching of Oneness theology is that there is one God with no distinction of persons in God’s eternal being and that Jesus Christ is the fullness of the one God incarnate. Closely associated with this Oneness doctrine is a second distinctive teaching: water baptism should be administered by invoking the name of Jesus, such as “in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,” rather than the titles Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This formula gave rise to the label “Jesus Only,” but since outsiders have mistakenly used it to describe the Oneness doctrine of God, most Oneness Pentecostals reject it as misleading and even pejorative. A third distinctive teaching takes Acts 2:38 as the paradigm for Christian initiation: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” These three steps constitute the New Testament experience of salvation received by faith in Jesus Christ and mark the beginning of a new life of holiness. For many Oneness Pentecostals, the pursuit of holiness is a fourth distinction from most other Christian groups today, particularly as applied to appearance and dress. In this chapter, I suggest that underlying these four characteristics is an Apostolic hermeneutic based on a thoroughgoing restorationism: Oneness Pentecostals view the first-century apostolic church as the model and seek to restore its teachings and practices. They describe themselves as Apostolic in doctrine and Pentecostal in experience. I begin with an exploration of the origins of modern Oneness Pentecostalism and then detail Oneness theology based on a consensus of contemporary Oneness scholarship.

Origins of modern Oneness Pentecostalism Shortly after the birth of classical Pentecostalism in North America at the turn of the t wentieth century, some early Pentecostals began to baptize in the name of Jesus Christ following the pattern in Acts. Among them were Charles Parham, a missionary in Latin America, some Pentecostals in Los Angeles, California, during the Azusa Street Revival, including William Seymour for a time (French 2014, 58), and Andrew Urshan, an Assyrian Christian immigrant from Persia in Chicago. However, the practice did not yet have strong doctrinal significance. Two notable events in the Los Angeles area led to Oneness Pentecostalism becoming a distinct movement: the Worldwide Camp Meeting in Arroyo Seco beginning April 15, 1913, at which Canadian minister R. E. McAlister first publicly proclaimed Jesus Name baptism, and the mutual rebaptisms of Frank Ewart and Glenn Cook on April 15, 1914, which involved the proclamation of Oneness theology and Acts 2:38 and marked a decisive break with trinitarianism. Ewart was a Baptist bush missionary from Australia who immigrated to Canada and then the United States, where he assisted William Durham and succeeded him as pastor. Cook was a noted evangelist who had been the full-time business manager of the Azusa Street Mission. Another influential leader was G. T. Haywood, African American pastor of a large, interracial church in Indianapolis (Ewart 1992; Bernard 1999). A few days prior to the rebaptisms, the Assemblies of God had formed in Hot Springs, Arkansas. The initiators were Howard Goss, a convert of Parham who was pastor in Hot Springs, and E. N. Bell, an older minister whom Goss approached. Soon the new organization faced the Oneness controversy of the so-called “new issue.” Leading ministers initially opposed the new teaching, but in 1915 many were baptized in Jesus’ name: Bell, first general chairman; D. C. O. Opperman, first assistant chairman; B. F. Lawrence, first assistant secretary; and Goss, an executive presbyter and later first UPCI general superintendent. Most Canadian Pentecostal leaders were rebaptized, including McAlister; George Chambers, first chairman of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada; and Frank Small, founder of the Apostolic Church of Pentecost of Canada. Some other early leaders baptized in Jesus’ name 196

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were Urshan, first evangelist to Russia; Frank Bartleman, chronicler of the Azusa Street Revival; William Booth-Clibborn, grandson of the Salvation Army’s founders; Frank and Elizabeth Gray, missionaries to Japan; Thoro Harris, African American songwriter; Aimee Semple McPherson, founder of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel; George Studd, famous cricket player and missionary; and F. S. Ramsay, missionary to China. C. H. Mason, founder of the Church of God in Christ, was privately baptized in Jesus’ name in 1920 (French 2014, 144). In October 1916, the Assemblies of God adopted a strong trinitarian statement of faith. As a result, 156 of 585 ministers withdrew, although many Oneness ministers were never part of this group. Some of the rebaptized ministers reaffirmed trinitarianism, notably Bell and Chambers. Others continued ministering among trinitarians while retaining Oneness views or otherwise remained independent. Most decided to form a Oneness organization and soon became part of the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, the oldest existing Oneness organization. There were 704 names on the earliest list of Oneness ministers in 1919, of which 29% were female, 25–30% were African American, and three were Hispanic. The ministers adopted this statement: “The new birth (being ‘born again’) includes a genuine repentance, water baptism in Jesus’ name, and the baptism of the Holy Ghost, evidenced by speaking in other tongues as the Spirit gives utterance” (Bernard 1999, 91 and 118). The most significant theological shapers of early Oneness Pentecostalism were Ewart, Haywood, and Urshan (Ewart 1992; Jacobsen 2003; Johnston 2010; French 2014; Segraves 2017).

An apostolic hermeneutic: apostolic authority The key to Oneness theology is an Apostolic hermeneutic. Indeed, one of the preferred labels for early Pentecostals was their identity as a recovery of Apostolic faith, which is also recognized by trinitarian Pentecostals. Ken Archer (2009) argues that it is important to arrive at a Pentecostal hermeneutic distinct from fundamentalism and evangelicalism. He proposes a method based on Spirit, Scripture, and community and focuses on the construction of meaning by contemporary readers. But what is the community, and who gets to create meaning (see Chapter 13)? If the community is constituted by the established Christian traditions, then under this method there would have arisen no Protestant, Pentecostal, or Oneness movements. Oneness scholars find helpful the proposal of Craig Keener (2016) who insists on a balance of Word and Spirit, a continuationist (non-cessationist) reading, and Spirit-led use of the grammatical-historical method. Oneness Pentecostals emphasize that the community must be in solidarity with the original apostolic church, and thus they value authorial intent. L. William Oliverio, Jr. (2012, 165–167) describes this sort of hermeneutic as exemplifying “the contemporary Evangelical-Pentecostal hermeneutic” but does not fully recognize its uniqueness. The distinctive feature of Oneness interpretation is not a general apostolic hermeneutic but apostolic authority: the preaching, teaching, typical experiences, and prevailing practices of the apostolic church are authoritative and normative (Bernard 2005). For most groups, the experience and message of the apostles is only the starting point for theological discussion, but for Oneness Pentecostals it is the ending point. For example, many theologians and historians have acknowledged that the early church baptized by invoking the name of Jesus Christ (Hartman 1997; Bernard 2016, 215–17). Yet, for theological, historical, and ecumenical reasons, most conclude that the church today should instead invoke the titles Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Likewise, many acknowledge that the reception of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament was a definite, miraculous experience with observable phenomena, yet today they do not expect any manifestations. In contrast to other groups, 197

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Oneness Pentecostals emphasize both experiences as normative for Christian conversion. This Apostolic hermeneutic is based on the lordship of Jesus who commissioned apostles to establish the church, proclaim the gospel, and teach his commands (Matt. 28:18–20). He prayed that all who would believe in him through the apostles’ message would be united with them ( John 17:20–21). The early believers fulfilled his plan by continuing steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and accepting their teachings as authoritative (Acts 2:42; Jude 3, 17). Oneness interpreters employ several additional hermeneutical principles closely related to apostolic authority (Bernard 2005): Old Testament foundation and New Testament fulfillment, centrality of the one God in Jesus Christ, importance of spiritual illumination and spiritual experience, interpretation in light of the eschaton, and presumption of relevance and applicability. Instead of reading the Bible through the lenses of philosophy, church tradition, and creeds, Oneness theology reads it with Old Testament foundational concepts in mind—in the way they believe the apostles heard Jesus and the early church heard the apostles. Thus, when the New Testament proclaims Jesus as God in flesh, they understand him to be the one God of the Old Testament—without modifying the definition of God to allow for a plurality of persons. They interpret the whole of Scripture by the revelation of the one God in Jesus Christ and Christ’s atoning sacrifice for humanity (see Chapter 5). For Oneness Pentecostals, spiritual illumination must accompany exegesis, and spiritual experience must be part of the hermeneutical spiral. For example, experience in the Spirit and in the community is a vital part of understanding biblical teachings about spiritual gifts. Moreover, modern culture does not negate biblical teachings for daily life, although they must be applied within a cultural context. As indicated by the diversity of their early leaders, Oneness Pentecostalism owes much to non-Western categories of thought. Early Oneness thinkers applied the restorationist impulse of classical Pentecostalism to theological inquiry, pressing behind creedal language and philosophical categories to the thought world of the biblical texts, particularly its Hebraic background (Norris 2009). One can make a strong case for Oneness theology as an expression or expansion of characteristic Pentecostal spirituality, piety, praxis, and modes of thought. While trinitarian Pentecostals typically see themselves as theological heirs of orthodox Western Christianity (see Chapter 17), the motivating impulses of Pentecostalism led to new ways of thinking and new trajectories that Oneness Pentecostals continued to follow. Comments of trinitarian historians illustrate this point: The doctrinal departure aside, if one admits the strong restorationist component at the heart of the definition of Pentecostalism, Oneness proponents were more zealously restorationist, more doggedly congregational, and more Christocentrically spiritual—in short, in some important ways more essentially Pentecostal than the mainstream. (Blumhofer 1989, 238) [The Oneness doctrine] is more in accordance with religious feeling and practice of Pentecostalism than a doctrine of the Trinity taken over without understanding from the traditional churches. (Hollenweger 1972, 311–12) In a certain sense, the Oneness theologies of Haywood and Urshan were also more distinctively pentecostal than anything that preceded them. ( Jacobsen 2003, 259) Although the New Issue was rejected by the majority of the movement, the fact remains that it was the logical and inevitable development of Pentecostal theology. Pentecostalism 198

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emerged as a restorationist/eschatological movement which saw its task as calling the Church to prepare for its coming Lord. (Faupel 2009, 304) It can be argued that Oneness Pentecostals . . . developed a theology sui generis that was more compatible with their Pentecostal experience of God. . . . Oneness worshippers are more characteristically Pentecostal than most Trinitarian Pentecostal bodies. . . . Oneness doctrine and practice may be more compatible in its core with an Afro-centric worldview than with that of non-Pentecostal white evangelicals. (Reed 2008, 53 and 82)

The Oneness of God and the absolute deity of Jesus Christ We can state the Oneness doctrine succinctly in two propositions: (1) There is one indivisible God with no distinction of persons in God’s eternal essence. (2) Jesus Christ is the manifestation, human personification, incarnation of the one God. All the fullness of God dwells bodily in Jesus Christ, and all names and titles of deity properly apply to him. God’s manifestations as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit reveal God’s work in salvation history but do not represent different centers of consciousness or personalities. The scriptural distinction between Father and Son does not describe two divine persons but the transcendent, eternal deity and the deity’s manifestation in flesh as the man Christ Jesus (Bernard 1994, 2000, Norris 2009). Oneness theology is non-trinitarian rather than anti-trinitarian. It seeks to articulate a positive doctrine of God from Scripture rather than define itself against trinitarianism. Oneness Pentecostals are reluctant to construct fundamental theology beyond the basic positions of the New Testament, asserting that the first-century apostles had greater authority and a greater understanding of Christ’s identity, message, and instructions than the third- and fourthcentury theologians who established trinitarian dogma. Reed (2008) explains Oneness theology as a logical development from nineteenth-century evangelical, Jesus-centric piety and from early Pentecostal impulses, notably the Finished Work theology of William Durham. The Oneness doctrine of God is distinguished from the classical Trinitarian doctrine primarily in its insistence upon permitting no distinctions, especially Trinitarian ones, in the nature of God as God exists apart from revelation. Since Oneness theologians hold to the monarchy and transcendence of God, the basic theological principle is that the Three-In-One is simply a dialectic of transcendence and immanence. (Reed 2008, 256) At the heart of Oneness theology is consequently a consistent Christological articulation: The Christology of Oneness Pentecostalism is a non-historical sectarian expression of Jewish Christian theology. Its distinctive characteristics are a theology of the name of Jesus, a christological model based on “dwelling” and the “Glory of God,” a zealous defense of the monarchy and transcendence of God, and the affirmation of the full humanity of Jesus reminiscent of the Antiochene and particularly Nestorian traditions. (Reed 2008, 306) The core interest of Oneness theology is not to provide a metaphysical description of God’s essence or inner life. Rather, it seeks to uphold three interrelated truths: (1) Jesus Christ is 199

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the supreme revelation of the one true God of the Bible; (2) Christ’s saving acts are thus the very acts of God; and (3) God’s gift of salvation comes to sinful humanity through Jesus Christ. These doctrines oppose two perceived dangers: tritheism and subordinationism. Yong (2005, 206) suggests that the distinctive Oneness emphases served to reject what was perceived at the turn of the [twentieth] century as tritheistic interpretations of the Trinity, on the one hand, and both Arian and modern theological liberal rejections of the deity of Christ, on the other. These issues are still significant, for example, when a popular trinitarian Pentecostal Bible says, “The word God is used either as a singular or a plural word, like sheep,” and each member of the Godhead is a “separate” person with his “own personal spirit body,” soul, and spirit (Dake 1963, 280). Similarly, in a recent survey, 73% of Evangelicals “strongly agree” that “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God” (Lindgren and Lee 2018). Some observers have described Oneness theology as pre-Nicene or economic trinitarianism in contrast to the more Hellenistic philosophical formulation of classical trinitarian teaching as defined by the ecumenical creeds of the fourth through seventh centuries. Instead, William D. Faupel (2009, 286) describes the early Oneness view of God as simultaneously unitarian and trinitarian: It was “Unitarian” in that adherents self-consciously dissociated themselves from traditional Trinitarianism rather than attempting to reinterpret the doctrine from within. However, it was “Trinitarian” in that proponents insisted on the significance of a threefold revelation of God. . . . They preferred to replace the term “person” with the term “manifestation” when designating this three-fold distinction, believing it to be a more “scriptural” term. . . . Their battle was to show the centrality of Jesus as the “express image” of the full Godhead. As Faupel indicates, much of the discussion hinges on the word person, which has been the subject of considerable controversy and misunderstanding in both ancient and modern times. For example, one trinitarian Pentecostal scholar criticized the Oneness refusal to believe “the Godhead exists in three separate personas” (Shaka 2008, 243). This comment indicates the intricacies of the discussion. If he meant “separate persons,” then many mainstream trinitarian theologians would say such a formulation is objectionable as tending toward tritheism. The more accurate trinitarian characterization would be “distinct,” not “separate.” Alternatively, if by “personas” he meant something other than modern “persons” (more like the original meaning of the Latin persona or even the modern meaning of the English persona), his formulation may be unexpectedly close to Oneness theology. In contrast, some observers believe Oneness theology was molded by non-Western thought and consider it a helpful interpretation or appropriation of the Trinity using non-Western categories. Gill (1994) described it as “the Oneness view of the Trinity” and positively assessed its missiological potential in non-Western and non-Christian contexts. He argued that it could be more meaningful in the modern Two-Thirds World than a Western formulation based on fourth-century Hellenistic philosophy (see Chapter 37). Oneness theology starts with this bedrock teaching: there is only one God, known in the Old Testament as Yahweh, and we are to worship, love, and serve Yahweh alone (Deut. 6:4–5; Mark 12:28–31). God is a single personal being who thinks, feels, and acts, not an abstract, impersonal substance in which multiple actors can dwell or in which multiple 200

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personalities can participate. God has revealed God’s self in three significant manifestations: (1) as the Father, the source of all existence and life, God in transcendence and in parental relationship to humanity; (2) in the Son, God coming in human identity; and (3) as the Holy Spirit, God in spiritual presence and action. These three roles are necessary to God’s plan of redemption. To save humanity, God provided a sinless human being who died in our place, the Son of God. To foreordain the plan of salvation and beget the Son, God is the Father. To apply salvation personally, transforming and empowering human lives, God is the Holy Spirit. These titles describe God’s redemptive works but do not indicate eternally distinct persons in God, just as the Incarnation does not indicate that God had eternally preexistent flesh. The title “Father” accentuates God’s transcendence, while the title “Son” focuses on the Incarnation. Together these titles emphasize the true humanity of Jesus. Defining the Son as a second divine person would result in two sons—an eternal, divine son who could not die and a temporal, human son who did die. This view underscores that the Bible never speaks of God as a “trinity” or as “three persons.” Support for the argument that Jesus Christ is the one God, the Father, incarnate, is found in Colossians 2:9 (“For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily”), 2 Corinthians 5:19 (“God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself;” KJV), and the language of Colossians. 1:15 (Christ is “the image of the invisible God”) and Hebrews 1:3 (“the exact imprint of God’s very being” [hypostasis]). Hence, Jesus is described as the Word, meaning God in self-revelation ( John 1:1, 14). Jesus is the Lord and the God of all ( John 20:28). He is not the incarnation of a “portion” of God but of all the identity, character, and personality of the one God. As to his eternal deity, there is no subordination of Jesus to anyone else. The Father dwells in Jesus so that Jesus is the visible manifestation of the invisible Father ( John 14:9–11). This identity is eternal, and in heaven the one God will be revealed in the person of Jesus Christ (Rev. 22:3–4). Oneness theology maintains that Jesus is the Son of God, as this title means he is a true human being who bears God’s full likeness, or God manifested in the flesh. The term “Son” relates to Christ’s human identity (e.g. “the Son died”) and encompasses the union of deity and humanity in Christ (e.g. “the Son has power to forgive sin”) but is not used apart from God’s incarnation. The theological phrases “God the Son” and “eternal Son” are not biblical. The role of the Son began when Jesus was conceived miraculously in a virgin’s womb by God’s Spirit, so that God was his Father (Luke 1:35). When Jesus walked on earth as God incarnate, God’s Spirit continued to be omnipresent. As the glorified Messiah, Jesus is now “on the right hand of God”—in the position of divine glory, exercising the power and authority of the invisible Spirit. Jesus Christ is completely and genuinely human—in body, soul, spirit, and will. Christ’s humanity means that everything we can say of ourselves, we can say of Jesus in his earthly life, except that Jesus had no sin (see Chapter 20). Moreover, in every way that we relate to God, Jesus related to God, except that he did not need salvation. When Jesus prayed, submitted to the Father, and spoke about and to God, he simply acted in accordance with his authentic humanity. Although we recognize both deity and humanity in Christ, these two aspects of his identity were inseparably joined. While there was a distinction between the divine will and his human will, he always submitted the latter to the former. Similarly, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit that was in Jesus Christ (see Chapter 19). The Holy Spirit does not come as another person but comes in another form (in spirit rather than flesh) and another relationship (“in you” rather than “with you”); the Holy Spirit is Jesus coming to dwell in human lives ( John 14:16–18). By his Spirit, Jesus fulfills his promise to meet with those who gather in his name. All (whether Oneness or trinitarian) who experience 201

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a genuine work of God encounter the one Spirit. They do not meet three personalities or receive three spirits but are in relationship with one personal being. Hence, some may be trinitarian in doctrine but Oneness in experience. More importantly, as Yahweh manifested in the flesh, Jesus is the only Savior (Isa. 45:21–23). His name means “Yahweh-Savior,” and Jesus Christ of Nazareth is the only one who literally personifies the meaning of that name. Jesus is the only name given for our salvation (Acts 4:12), encompassing God’s redemptive work as Father, Son, and Spirit. It has become the name above all names (Phil 2:9–11). While Oneness theology bears some affinity to ancient modalism, historically there is no link, and we cannot be certain of theological links as we do not know the modalists’ full views (Bernard 1991; 1993). Both movements speak of one God in threefold manifestation while seeking to protect the numerical Oneness of God and the full deity of Christ. Unlike some descriptions of ancient modalism, however, Oneness theology affirms Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as simultaneous, not sequential, manifestations of God. Some theologians maintain that in modalism God is essentially unknowable because God’s essence is hidden behind three “masks,” for some modalists apparently spoke of divine “persons” in the sense of “roles.” The main thrust of Oneness theology is exactly the opposite; it holds that we can truly know God’s character, holiness, love, and power in Jesus Christ. The one true God is not hidden but manifested, for the glory of God is revealed in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:6).

Christian initiation according to Acts 2:38 Oneness theology teaches that initiation into the New Testament church consists of repentance, water baptism in the name of Jesus Christ, and Spirit baptism with the initial sign of tongues (Acts 2:37–39). These steps constitute the application of grace and the expression of faith at conversion. Most Oneness Pentecostals regard this threefold experience as constituting the new birth, although some identify the new birth primarily with repentance. All acknowledge that people begin a genuine relationship of faith in God at repentance but should continue to walk in obedience as God leads them (Bernard 1984). The following “fundamental doctrine” is the center of the UPCI (2019, 32) articles of faith: The basic and fundamental doctrine of this organization shall be the Bible standard of full salvation, which is repentance, baptism in water by immersion in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and the baptism of the Holy Ghost with the initial sign of speaking with other tongues as the Spirit gives utterance. We shall endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit until we all come into the unity of the faith, at the same time admonishing all brethren that they shall not contend for their different views to the disunity of the body. From the beginning, Oneness Pentecostals acknowledged the genuine spiritual experiences of other Christians. They spoke of a progressive experience of salvation as people walked in the light of the gospel, and they associated the fullness of salvation with the complete Apostolic experience. In this regard, they followed the earliest Pentecostals. The concept of “full salvation” appears in the writings of John Wesley and other Methodist and Holiness authors. Early Pentecostals applied the terms “full salvation” and “full gospel” to the baptism of the Holy Spirit (see Chapter 16). The first sentence of the fundamental doctrine is based on Acts 2:38. Parham wrote in 1902 that God showed him the necessity of obeying Acts 2:38. He taught that to enter the church, bride, body of Christ, and rapture, one must be baptized 202

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with the Holy Spirit. Seymour expressed similar views about the Spirit. Durham identified Acts 2:38 as “God’s plan of salvation.” Various trinitarian Pentecostals today acknowledge Acts 2:38 as the New Testament paradigm for salvation (Yong 2005, 101–2; Macchia 2006, 68–73). The second sentence of the fundamental doctrine is based on Ephesians 4:3 and 13. Many early Pentecostals made a similar appeal to maintain “the unity of the Spirit until all of us come to the unity of the faith,” including Durham, Ewart, Urshan, and D. W. Kerr and the original constitution of the Assemblies of God (Bernard 1999, 112–23). Oneness theology affirms that in every age, salvation is by grace through faith based on the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and that saving faith includes obedience to God’s plan of salvation. Under the new covenant, salvation involves faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ and a new experience of being baptized with God’s Spirit. Saving faith is more than mental assent or verbal profession; it includes response and obedience (see Rom. 1:5; 6:17; 2 Thess. 1:8). The gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus for our salvation (1 Cor. 15:1–4). At Pentecost, the inauguration of the New Testament church, the apostle Peter preached the first gospel sermon, with the endorsement of the other apostles, by proclaiming the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Convicted of their sin, the audience asked the apostles how to be saved, and the apostles gave a precise, complete, and unequivocal answer in Acts 2:38. Hence, believers obey the gospel and identify personally with Christ by repentance (death to sin), water baptism in the name of Jesus Christ (burial), and receiving the Holy Spirit (resurrection life). This threefold experience brings regeneration, justification, and initial sanctification (see John 3:5; 1 Cor. 6:11; Titus 3:5). The three steps are often nearly simultaneous, but temporally and theologically they are distinct, as in the conversions of the Samaritans, Paul, Cornelius, and the Ephesian disciples. Acts 2:38 is thus the comprehensive answer of the twelve apostles to an inquiry about salvation, expressing in a nutshell the proper response to the gospel. Water baptism should be administered by invoking the name of Jesus, as shown by five accounts in Acts (which are especially clear in the Greek text) and at least five references in the Epistles (Bernard 1992). The initial sign of receiving the Holy Spirit is speaking in tongues as shown by three explicit and two implied accounts in Acts. When the Jewish crowd on Pentecost asked the meaning of speaking in tongues, Peter answered that it meant God had poured out the Holy Spirit on the waiting believers. Thus, on apostolic authority, believers should seek the Holy Spirit with the expectation of tongues. Speaking in tongues is vitally connected to the conversion experience but does not have saving efficacy. It is not a condition for humans to fulfill but a work of God in them according to God’s will. Believers should not seek tongues per se but a relationship with Jesus Christ. Those who have faith in him should receive the same experience as on Pentecost, for which the conclusive sign is tongues (Acts 10:44–47; 11:15–17). When people receive the Holy Spirit, they obtain power to live a holy life and bear the fruit of the Spirit as the abiding evidence.

The life of holiness A third significant element of Oneness theology is the importance of a separated Christian lifestyle: holiness should characterize believers both inwardly and outwardly, personally and socially. While there is diversity of application, most Oneness Pentecostals affirm some practical guidelines of righteousness that predominated in the Holiness-Pentecostal movement until the late twentieth century (Bernard 1985). According to Oneness theology, the Bible teaches the necessity of pursuing holiness (Heb. 12:14; 1 Pet. 1:15–16). Holiness does not earn salvation but is a result of salvation. 203

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Grace  teaches and produces holiness (Titus 2:11–12; Eph. 2:8–10), for grace is not only God’s gift to believers but also God’s work in believers. Believers do not manufacture their own holiness; they partake of God’s holiness, which involves personal responsibility (Heb. 12:10–15). Based on an Apostolic hermeneutic, the New Testament’s instructions on sexual morality, gender distinction, and modesty of dress apply to believers today (e.g. 1 Cor. 6:9–11; 11:13–16; 1 Tim. 2:8–10). Holiness does not come by human ability but by faith, love, and the Holy Spirit. The Christian life is one of liberty, not legalism. Holiness is an integral part of salvation from sin, a joyful privilege, a glorious life of spiritual victory and fellowship with God. Holiness fulfills God’s original intention and design for humans. For Spirit-filled believers who love God, holiness is a sign of the normal Christian life.

Conclusion We can identify at least three contributions of Oneness theology to global Christian theology: (1) it is a reminder that Christianity is truly monotheistic; (2) it has a strong incarnational Christology, upholding the deity of the historical Jesus; and (3) it bridges the dialogue with Jews and Muslims (Yong 2005, 227–28). Oneness theology further makes several mediating, soteriological contributions: (4) authority and power of Jesus’ name for salvation, healing, and deliverance; (5) water baptism as part of initiation (like Catholicism) but linked with faith and repentance (like Protestantism); (6) Spirit baptism as part of initiation (like Protestantism) but as a definite, empowering, transforming experience (like trinitarian Pentecostalism); and (7) justification by faith (like Protestantism) with the goal of transformation (like Catholicism) by the power of the Holy Spirit (like trinitarian Pentecostalism). In seeking to restore the apostolic faith, Oneness Pentecostals offer fresh insights for contemporary Christianity.

References Archer, Kenneth. 2009. A Pentecostal Hermeneutic: Spirit, Scripture, and Community. Cleveland: CPT Press. Bernard, David K. 1984. The New Birth. Weldon Spring: Word Aflame. ———. 1985. Practical Holiness: A Second Look. Weldon Spring: Word Aflame. ———. 1991. Oneness and Trinity, AD 100–300: The Doctrine of God in Ancient Christian Writings. Weldon Spring: Word Aflame. ———. 1992. In the Name of Jesus. Weldon Spring: Word Aflame. ———. 1993. The Trinitarian Controversy in the Fourth Century. Weldon Spring: Word Aflame. ———. 1994. The Oneness View of Jesus Christ. Weldon Spring: Word Aflame. ———. 1999. A History of Christian Doctrine, vol. 3. The Twentieth Century. Weldon Spring: Word Aflame. ———. 2000. The Oneness of God. Rev ed. Weldon Spring: Word Aflame. ———. 2005. Understanding God’s Word: An Apostolic Approach to Interpreting the Bible. Weldon Spring: Word Aflame. ———. 2016. The Glory of God in the Face of Jesus Christ: Deification of Jesus in Early Christian Discourse. Journal of Pentecostal Theology Supplement Series 45. Blandford Forum: Deo. Blumhofer, Edith. 1989. The Assemblies of God: A Chapter in the Story of American Pentecostalism. Volume 1. Springfield: Gospel Publishing House. Dake, Finis. 1963. Annotated Reference Bible. Lawrenceville: Dake’s Bible Sales. Ewart, Frank J. 1992. The Phenomenon of Pentecost, rev. ed. Weldon Spring: Word Aflame. Faupel, D. William. 2009. The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought. Journal of Pentecostal Theology Supplement Series 10. Blandford Forum: Deo. French, Talmadge L. 2014. Early Interracial Oneness Pentecostalism: G. T. Haywood, and the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World (1901–1931). Eugene: Pickwick.

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Oneness theology Hartman, Lars. 1997. “Into the Name of the Lord Jesus”: Baptism in the Early Church. Edinburgh: T&T Clark. Hollenweger, Walter J. 1972. The Pentecostals. Peabody: Hendrickson. Gill, Kenneth D. 1994. Toward a Contextualized Theology for the Third World: The Emergence and Development of Jesus’ Name Pentecostalism in Mexico. New York: Peter Lang. Jacobsen, Douglas. 2003. Thinking in the Spirit: Theologies of the Early Pentecostal Movement. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Johnston, Robin. 2010. Howard Goss: A Pentecostal Life. Weldon Spring: WAP Academic. Keener, Craig. 2016. Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in Light of Pentecost. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Lindgren, Caleb, and Morgan Lee. 2018. “Our Favorite Heresies of 2018: Experts Weigh In.” Christianity Today October 26, available at www.christianitytoday.com/news/2018/october/evangelicalsfavorite-heresies-ligonier-theology-survey.html, accessed 1 January 2019. Macchia, Frank D. 2006. Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Norris, David. 2009. I AM: A Oneness Pentecostal Theology. Weldon Spring: WAP Academic. Oliverio, L. William, Jr. 2012. Theological Hermeneutics in the Classical Pentecostal Tradition: A Typological Account. Leiden: Brill. Reed, David. 2008. “In Jesus’ Name”: The History and Beliefs of Oneness Pentecostals. Journal of Pentecostal Theology Supplement Series 31. Blandford Forum: Deo. Segraves, Daniel. 2017. Andrew D. Urshan: A Theological Biography. Lexington: Emeth. Shaka, Richard. 2008. “A Trinitarian Pentecostal Response.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 30 (2): 240–44. United Pentecostal Church International. 2018. UPCI Annual Report. Weldon Spring: UPCI. ———. 2019. UPCI Manual. Weldon Spring: UPCI. Yong, Amos. 2005. The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.

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19 PNEUMATOLOGY Eschatological intensification of the personal presence of God Andrew K. Gabriel

For all their talk about the Holy Spirit, one might think that Pentecostals have a welldeveloped pneumatology. Instead, historically, Pentecostals have tended to focus on interpreting their experiences of the Spirit—such as Spirit baptism or the gifts of the Spirit—rather than on developing a formal and comprehensive pneumatology. I do not mean to suggest that Pentecostals neglect pneumatology altogether. In fact, Pentecostals typically make it clear that the Spirit belongs everywhere in their theology. Pneumatological theology and the pneumatological imagination, which focus on exploring how pneumatology penetrates, affects, or supplements other doctrines, are a predominant paradigm that Pentecostals employ in developing their theology overall (see Chapter 14). In light of this emphasis, one could rightly describe Pentecostal pneumatology primarily with reference to the ways that Pentecostals have made pneumatological contributions to ecclesiology, soteriology, theology of religions, and other theological loci (Althouse 2020). However, at the heart of these contributions stands a pneumatology proper, that is, the important question of how Pentecostals understand the Holy Spirit as person in order to develop a genuine Pentecostal pneumatology. The historical consensus of the church has been that the Holy Spirit is a divine person. That is, the Spirit is fully God and personal being, rather than, for example, a force or attribute of God. Theologians throughout the ages have also debated how the Spirit relates to the Father and the Son within the economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity, with particular focus on the filioque clause (see Chapter 18). While Pentecostals tend not to be creedal in popular expression, and therefore have not been concerned with the historical debates (Goss 2003; Macchia 2014), they do affirm the historic Christian doctrine of the Spirit as divine person—but in their own unique way. To convey this pneumatological distinctiveness, this essay argues that Pentecostals regard and experience the Holy Spirit, poured out at Pentecost, as the divine person who is experienced as the eschatological intensification of the presence of God. In order to demonstrate this argument, this essay begins by explaining how Pentecostals affirm the personhood of the Spirit and then discusses how the Spirit is regarded as divine within Pentecostal experience and theology. These foundational considerations allow for an exploration of how Pentecostals view the Spirit as the intensifying and eschatological presence of God.

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Experiencing the Holy Spirit of Pentecost The distinctiveness of Pentecostal pneumatology comes not so much in its conclusions regarding the divine personhood of the Spirit but in the way in which Pentecostals reach these conclusions—through an emphasis on experiences of the Spirit of Pentecost. Indeed, the theological symbol of Pentecost and the experience of the Spirit are foundational for Pentecostal theology as a whole (Vondey 2017) as well as for Pentecostal pneumatology more specifically. Given the Pentecostal emphasis on experiencing the Spirit, at times, some from outside of the Pentecostal tradition have accused Pentecostals of basing their theology, and their pneumatology in particular, solely on the notion of experience (see Chapter 8). However, as we consider how Pentecostals reach their conclusions regarding pneumatology, it becomes clear that Pentecostals ground their theology primarily on the biblical texts, even while taking their experience of the Spirit seriously. While Pentecostals recognize the work of God’s Spirit in the Old Testament, Pentecostal pneumatology finds its impetus, in the first place, from the day of Pentecost when Jesus poured out the Spirit on all flesh (Yong 2005). Pentecostals also emphasize the work of the Spirit in the life of Jesus Christ, but this is largely with the aim of reminding believers that, after Pentecost, the same Spirit who was upon Christ, empowering him for his ministry, now fills those who have been baptized in the Spirit in order to continue Christ’s ministry today (see Chapter 20). This means Pentecostals regard Pentecost not only as a unique event in redemptive history, but they expect that believers today can participate in the ongoing nature of the Pentecost event as they encounter the Spirit in their own lives. They expect, then, that the event of Pentecost can be repeated, in some ways, as the Spirit continues to be poured out (Acts 2:38). This sentiment is expressed prominently in the headline on the cover of the first newspaper issue (1906) published from the Azusa Street revival: “Pentecost Has Come!” In other words, Pentecostal pneumatology is inseparable from Pentecost. As Jesus continues to pour out the Spirit on the church, Pentecostals expect to ex perience the Spirit. For many, this emphasis is what defines Pentecostalism as a movement (A nderson 2014). One might say that Pentecostals hold to a pneumatological realism (Tyra 2018). That is, they not only acknowledge the existence of the Spirit and presume that the Spirit is hidden and at work in the lives of believers, but they expect to encounter the Spirit in what many would call tangible and material ways (Volf 1989). While it might go without saying, Pentecostals are not cessationists regarding the spiritual gifts, but continuationists (Ruthven 1993). Therefore, they expect to experience not only the quiet g uidance of the Spirit but the charismatic presence and gifts of the Spirit including also more dramatic events like speaking in tongues or miraculous healings (Alexander 2006). While such theological accents are not absent from other theological traditions, Pentecostals uniquely emphasize their encounters with God in the presence of the Spirit through their theological narrative of the full gospel (see Chapter 16) and in their theological articulations of the experience of the Spirit through being baptized in the Spirit (see Chapter 23) and the manifestations of spiritual gifts (see Chapter 28). We can therefore identify at least the outlines of several affirmations regarding the Holy Spirit that form the foundation for developing a comprehensive Pentecostal pneumatology: the personhood of the Spirit, the passion of the Spirit, the power of the Spirit, and the identification of the Spirit with love and divine presence.

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The personhood of the Holy Spirit With the rest of the church, Pentecostals affirm that the Spirit they experience is a divine person. For trinitarian Pentecostals (in distinction from “Oneness” Pentecostals, who deny the doctrine of the eternal immanent Trinity), their understanding of Pentecost leads them to conclude that the Spirit is a divine person distinct from the Father and the Son, for they emphasize that, after his ascension, Jesus “received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:33) in order to pour out the Spirit on the church (Vondey 2017, 269). In other words, the Spirit is not simply the spiritual presence of Christ in the world today, but a divine per son distinct from God the Son. While Oneness theology rejects this distinction of persons, it can affirm the personhood of the Spirit albeit with no distinction from the personhood of the Son. In other words, in Oneness theology the Spirit is Jesus coming to dwell in human beings in another form and relationship (see Chapter 18). Second, and perhaps more importantly, all Pentecostals affirm that the encounter with the Spirit is a personal experience. This emphasis is one of the main reasons that Pentecostals are sometimes cautious of the historical tendency of the Western traditions to speak of the Spirit as the mutual love between the Father and the Son along with the common corollary of the filioque clause. That is, Pentecostals have a deep concern that one should “not depersonalize the Spirit” (Macchia 2010, 302), which speaking of the Spirit as “love” might do. As a divine person, and as the Spirit “determines” (1 Cor. 12:11), Pentecostals emphasize that the Spirit gives spiritual gifts to everyone (Lim 1991). While the way that Pentecostals frequently speak of the Spirit as “filling” people or of the need to be “re-filled” with the Spirit might sound like understanding the Spirit in impersonal ways, Pentecostals speak of the Spirit both in terms of the divine nature and a divine person, although the distinction is not very clear (Vondey 2016). Important for trinitarian Pentecostals is that the Spirit is a person, like the Son, with whom one can (and should) have a personal relationship, that is, a relationship between persons. For Oneness Pentecostals, this relationship is identical with a relationship with Jesus; while for trinitarian Pentecostals the Spirit relates believers to both the Son and the Father as persons. Pentecostals emphasize that “the Spirit is a personal, immediate, dynamic and perfect guide. He speaks and so must be listened to. This demands developing a personal relationship with him, learning to recognize and respond to his guidance” (Warrington 2008, 47). Believers should be “led by the Spirit” (Gal. 5:18; Rom. 8:14) and “keep in step with the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25). And while the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed reminds believers that the Holy Spirit “spoke through the prophets,” Pentecostals remind the church that the Spirit continues to speak through prophets and even directly to individual believers. Although Pentecostals consider the Scriptures authoritative, the Spirit as person “has more to say than Scripture” (Land 1993, 100). The Spirit affirms that one is a “child of God” (Rom. 8:16) or may speak to correct a person (Gabriel 2019a). At times the Spirit also speaks to offer advice and guidance, if not particular direction, although this perception always requires spiritual discernment (Parker 1996). It is the encounter with the Spirit as person that leads Pentecostal pneumatology to affirm the divinity of the Spirit.

The passion of the Spirit as person The way from discussions of personhood to the divinity of the Spirit leads through concerns for God’s presence in creation. Pentecostals affirm the personhood of the Spirit in their recognition of the passion of the Spirit. Indeed, an awareness of the “Spirit’s sigh” may be 208

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one of the key characteristics of Pentecostal spirituality, especially as it relates to the practice of speaking in tongues (Villafañe 1992). Pentecostals speak in tongues for various reasons, sometimes during celebration and praise, sometimes during turmoil. With respect to the latter, Pentecostals find a correlation between their personal groaning and the groaning of the Spirit (Palma 2001). As they pray in tongues, they believe “the Spirit himself intercedes . . . with groans that words cannot express” (Rom. 8:26). In such times of prayer, Pentecostals sense the passion of the Spirit as person in relation to their own personal suffering. Most Pentecostals affirm that the Spirit suffers with creation, even though some show caution and therefore speak of God as suffering impassibly (Castelo 2009, 2012). The Holy Spirit suffers when grieving from human sin. Pentecostals observe that the Israelites “rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit” (Isa. 63:10), and that Paul warned the Ephesians that they should not “grieve the Holy Spirit of God” (Eph. 4:30) by how they treat one another. Pentecostals typically conclude that the Spirit suffers with all of creation (Althouse 2003, 138). Though not incarnate in creation, the Spirit empathetically participates in the travail of creation: the Spirit groans within the groaning of creation (see Rom. 8:22) as the Spirit anticipates and draws creation toward the day when “creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay” (Rom. 8:21) (Gabriel 2011). The passion of the Spirit is therefore an important way that Pentecostals affirm both the personhood of the Spirit and the divine presence.

The divinity of the Spirit Pentecostals affirm that the Spirit they experience as person is fully divine. While the Father is regarded as the transcendent divine person who dwells in heaven, and the Son has ascended to heaven to pour out the Spirit at Pentecost, the Spirit is now “God with us”—the divine person by which the world experiences God most directly (Land 1993, 32; Vondey 2017, 267–71). The immediacy of the Spirit as divine power and love is foundational to both trinitarian and Oneness Pentecostal experience and theology. Pentecostals affirm the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit—an attribute of the divine being. While the historic creeds appropriate divine omnipotence to God “the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth,” Pentecostals remind the tradition that since creation was an act of the triune God, the Son, and the Spirit, too, were involved in the creative act and continue to sustain creation (Yong 2011). And from within biblical scholarship, Pentecostals emphasize that the Spirit of God was not only “sweeping over the face of the waters” at the beginning (see Gen. 1:2) but also continues to “renew the face of the ground” (Psalm 104:30) and to give breath to all of creation (Hildebrandt 1995, 106). Beyond the work of the Spirit in creation, Pentecostals also tend to associate their current experiences of the Spirit with the exercise of divine power (Menzies and Menzies 2000). The most prominent biblical verse in Pentecostal pneumatology is likely Acts 1:8: “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” Pentecostals believe that just as Jesus ministered “filled with the power of the Spirit” (Luke 4:14, cf. Acts 10:38) as he healed people and drove out demons, believers today can continue the ministry of Jesus in the power of the Spirit of Jesus (Shelton 1991; Stronstad 1998). Hence, pneumatology bears significance for extending theological conversations into the domains of mission (see Chapter 26), ecclesiology (see Chapter 27), spiritual warfare (see Chapter 30), and public life and social justice (see Chapter 40). Pentecostal theology underlines that the power of the Spirit is at work not only in Spirit baptism but also in salvation and sanctification. Pentecostals emphasize that “there can be no justification apart from the fullness of life in the Spirit” (Macchia 2010, 4), for it is through 209

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“the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit” that believers are “being justified” by God’s grace (Titus 3:5, 7). By the power of the Spirit, God makes believers more like Christ as God transforms them into the image of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18). Pentecostals regularly preach that “the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living” in every believer (Rom 8:11), and that this resurrection power is at work to set people free from sin and to create virtues in believers (the fruit of the Spirit). The Spirit empowers Jesus’ followers to forgive others; to bring deliverance, healing, and restoration; to show hospitality; and to transform society (Yong 2005; Augustine 2012). Hence, Pentecostals can conclude that the omnipotence of the Spirit is a power that brings freedom (2 Cor. 3:17). Pentecostals affirm the divinity of the Spirit also as they affirm that “God is love” (1 John 4:8) and that the Spirit is the love of God. Consistent with much of pneumatology in the Western tradition, they observe that numerous biblical texts associate the Spirit with divine love. Romans 5:5, for example, reads, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (cf. Col. 1:8, 2 Cor. 6:6, Phil. 2:1). The manner in which 1 John 3–4 describes both love and the Spirit dwelling in believers allows Pentecostals to identify the Spirit with the divine love (Yong 2012; Gabriel 2019b). This emphasis continues to emerge in histories of Pentecostal pneumatology. Early classical Pentecostals described the baptism of the Holy Spirit not only as an experience of glory and power but also as a reception of divine love (Alexander 2010). For example, one testimony in the Apostolic Faith paper published by William J. Seymour, leader of the Azusa Street revival, recounts an experience of baptism in the Holy Spirit saying, “It was a baptism of love. Such abounding love! . . . This baptism fills us with divine love” (“The Old-Time Pentecost” 1906). Similarly, more recent Pentecostal theology regards “the Day of Pentecost outpouring [as] God’s excessive and universal gift of love to the world, in and through the gift of the Spirit of God” (Yong 2012, 98). Pentecostals affirm the divinity of the Spirit because God is love, and the Spirit is the gift of divine love to the world, a manifestation of God’s presence and the transformation of creation.

The divine presence One of the main reasons that Pentecostals affirm the divinity of the Spirit is that they regard their experience of the presence of the Spirit as an experience of the presence of God. This conclusion comes in part as they recognize that the Spirit shares with the Father and the Son the attribute of omnipresence—the Spirit is present everywhere sustaining creation (see Psalm 104:29–30; Job 33:4) with the result that there is nowhere to flee from the presence of God (see Psalm 139:7–8) (Gabriel 2011). This recognition of the Spirit’s presence permeating the natural world is predominant particularly among Pentecostals in the majority world, with the result that the whole world becomes sacred in some sense (Hollenweger 1978). This emphasis also reinforces recent Pentecostal approaches to a pneumatological ecotheology (see Chapter 33). The whole cosmos is filled with the Spirit of God. Aside from connecting the omnipresence of God with the Spirit, Pentecostals also connect God’s presence to the unique ways that the Spirit is present in the world in a particular way. This emphasis is consistent with how the apostle Paul refers to the church as “God’s temple” because “God’s Spirit” is present within it (1 Cor. 3:16). The Spirit’s presence is not always obvious within the church, however, and when Pentecostals speak of the presence of the Spirit, they are usually referring to times when they have a heighted sense of the presence of God, particularly during times of praise and worship. They often refer to this sense as the “manifest presence of God” (Albrecht 2004). For example, they view each gift of the Spirit as 210

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a “manifestation of the Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:7), with the result that when a spiritual gift is practiced in a congregation, a person might exclaim, “God is really among you!” (1 Cor. 14:25). As enabled by the Spirit, prophecy, or speaking in tongues, for example, become “the audible medium for realizing the presence of God” (Macchia 1993, 63). As a result, Pentecostals sometimes refer to tongues as a sacramental sign, in as much as tongues are an audible sign of the empowering presence of God in the person of the Spirit (see Chapter 29). All of the charismatic dimensions of the Christian life affirm the Pentecostal experiences of the presence of the Spirit as experiences of God’s presence. Divine presence, power, and personhood are intimately related (Del Colle 2001).

Intensifying presence The presence of the Spirit is not static. Pentecostals believe, at least implicitly, that the divine presence, manifested by the Spirit, can become more intense. While they affirm the omnipresence of God, and the omnipresence of the divine person of the Holy Spirit specifically, Pentecostals regard the presence of the Spirit as particularly dynamic (Smith 2010, 45–46). The very idea of “Spirit” in the biblical texts indicates movement in the images of the “breath” or “wind” of God that blows wherever it pleases (see John 3:8). At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit is not simply “given” but “poured out” like water on all flesh and became present in a more intense way (Isa. 32:15, 44:3; Ez.39:29; Joel 2:28–29; Acts 2:17–18, 33, 10:45). These dynamic images of the Spirit lead Pentecostals to conclude that the presence of the Spirit can intensify, not always consistently but certainly with moments or instances of intensity (Gabriel 2012). Consequently, Pentecostals expect that the Spirit’s presence sometimes intensifies within the church. They regard the church as a place where the Spirit dwells (see 1 Cor. 3:16). At the same time, Pentecostals continue to pray for the Spirit to come and abide within the church in a more intense manner. In sacramental traditions, this occurs through the epileptic prayers preceding the Eucharist. Similarly, in Pentecostal circles, those leading a worship service might pray for the Spirit to “come” and work in their midst. On the popular level, Pentecostals may speak of the Spirit as being “tangibly” present in a worship service where they sense God in a unique way, perhaps through the manifestation of spiritual gifts during their worship (Archer 2011, 60–63). Moreover, Pentecostals expect that they will experience the intensification of the Spirit’s presence when they respond to altar calls. Indeed, they “flock to the altar in expectation of a divine, often supernatural, interruption of their circumstances and in that sense of an initiation or repetition or revival of Pentecost in their own lives” (Vondey 2017, 42). The primary theological theme suggesting that the Spirit’s presence intensifies is the notion of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. But with respect to each individual, even before Pentecostals have post-conversion experiences of Spirit baptism, they believe the Spirit’s presence becomes more intense within them at the points of conversion and sanctification. Pentecostals affirm that there is a sense in which the Spirit was in all people, even before Pentecost, sustaining their very existence. This is consistent with Job 32:8, which speaks of “the spirit in a mortal, the breath of the Almighty.” Furthermore, it is apparent that if God “should take back his spirit to himself,” then “all flesh would perish together, and all mortals return to dust” ( Job 34:14–15; see Gen. 6:17, Eccl. 12:7). The Spirit is present within every individual giving them life and breath. And yet, Pentecostals would add that a person can further “receive the Spirit . . . by believing” (Gal. 3:2; cf. Rom. 8:15) the gospel. In this reception, the presence of the Spirit intensifies within a person. That is, when Pentecostals affirm that 211

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the Spirit comes to “dwell” within them (Rom. 8:9), this experience is already a moment of the intensification of the Spirit’s presence (Gabriel 2012). Hence, the baptism in the Holy Spirit is an experience that can occur subsequent to the reception of the Spirit at the point of conversion (Menzies and Menzies 2000; Palma 2001). The events of conversion, sanctification, and Spirit baptism represent moments of a further intensification of the Spirit in their lives. And the Spirit may further intensify in Christians as they continue to be “filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18). There is, then, a “repetitive character” to the gift of the Spirit (Stronstad 1984, 81). This character parallels Jesus’ experience of the Spirit (Matthew 3:17). After Jesus had been baptized in water, he was now “full of the Holy Spirit” (Luke 4:1), even “without measure” ( John 3:34). And yet, he had a subsequent experience of receiving “the promise of the Holy Spirit” from the Father (Mark 1:11) so that he could fill his followers with the Spirit (Acts 2:33). This later reception was an intensification of the Spirit’s presence in both the life of Jesus and the life of his followers. When speaking of Spirit baptism, some Pentecostals would say that there is “one baptism” of the Spirit and “many fillings” of the Spirit (Menzies and Menzies 2000, 48; Palma 2001, 174). Others would say that Spirit baptism is not a one-time experience but rather a process identified with the coming of the kingdom of God and encompassing the Spirit’s work in saving, sanctifying, and empowering believers for witness and, eventually, even being raised by the Spirit at the return of Christ (Macchia 2006). But regardless of how each Pentecostal defines Spirit baptism, the different positions imply that believers can continue to experience a greater intensification of the Spirit’s presence. Furthermore, some Pentecostals regard this “intensification of the divine presence” as the “increasing of the giving away of the divine Spirit” (Vondey 2017, 269–70) or as a “kenosis of the Spirit” in the last days (see Althouse 2009). In short, the intensifying presence of the Spirit is always eschatological.

Eschatological presence The anticipation of a greater experience of the Spirit’s presence in the future points to the eschatological dimension of Pentecostal theology (see Chapter 25). In fulfillment of Old Testament eschatological expectations, Jesus “received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:33) in order to pour out the Spirit “in the last days” (Acts 2:17). Pentecost, then, is understood as a key marker of the beginning of the eschaton, and, as a result, Pentecostals regard the experience of the Spirit as an eschatological experience (Althouse 2003). They observe that the presence of charismatic activity among believers, in particular, fulfills eschatological expectations concerning the coming of the Spirit announced in the Old Testament. Joel 2:28–29 anticipated widespread visions, dreams, and prophecy. These expectations began to be fulfilled when the Spirit was poured out at Pentecost (Acts 2:17) and, Pentecostals argue, continue to be fulfilled as subsequent believers have visions (Acts 9:10; 26:19) and dreams (Acts 16:9; 18:9). The increasing presence of prophecy is even more apparent. Pentecostals emphasize that the book of Acts records numerous instances when believers were “filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 4:8, 31; 7:55; 11:24; 13:9, 52) followed by inspired prophetic speech—just as the Spirit inspired the prophets in the Old Testament (Shelton 1991; Stronstad 1998). The outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost fulfilled numerous eschatological expectations of the Spirit, and this eschatological recognition motivated early Pentecostals to engage in mission. They believed that in their own experiences of Pentecost, they had received “power” to be “witnesses” (Acts 1:8) in the “last days” (Acts 2:17), so that the whole world might hear the 212

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gospel before the soon return of Jesus. Eschatology was interpreted soteriologically and missiologically because of the eschatological experience of the Spirit. When Pentecostals recognize that their experience of the Spirit’s presence is eschatological, they are not only recognizing that the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost fulfills previous expectations regarding the coming of the Spirit, they are also recognizing that Pentecost raises anticipations of the further eschatological work of the Spirit. This eschatological anticipation means that as Christians “have shared in the Holy Spirit,” they experience “the powers of the age to come” (Heb. 6:4–5). Pentecostals regard the gifts of the Spirit, then, as “eschatological, proleptic, signs of a kingdom of joy where sorrow, death and sin are put down and banished” (Land 1993, 177). As a result of their experience of Spirit-fullness, at times, Pentecostals can become triumphalistic, expecting complete victory in this life— including lives of wealth and health (Courey 2015). In more moderate views, however, Pentecostals recognize that “the powers of the age to come are already in some measure present in signs and wonders—but only a measure” (Chan 2000, 110). In other words, while affirming that the Spirit has been “poured out” (Titus 3:6; Rom. 5:5), they are also aware that Christians only “have the first fruits of the Spirit” now (Rom. 8:23). These are the first fruits of the beginning of a full harvest (i.e. the Spirit) that is yet to come (see Deut. 18:4), just as the Spirit is the seal and deposit that guarantees what is yet to come (see 2 Cor. 1:22, 5:5; Eph. 1:13–14, 4:30). As a result, while Pentecostals generally recognize that their prayers will not always result in immediate healing, they still anticipate their eventual full healing or “redemption of our bodies” (Rom. 8:23) by means of the Spirit at the resurrection (see Chapter 24). Increasingly, these eschatological anticipations regarding the future also lead Pentecostals to posit that one’s present experience of Spirit baptism always has an anticipatory aspect to it that relates to the fullness of the eschaton: “the Second Coming of Son and Spirit [in resurrection] means a cosmic Pentecost and a full presence of the Triune God in the world in glory” (Thompson 2010, 143) with the result that the whole world is transfigured as God is “all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28; see Rev. 21:3–5).

Conclusion The distinctiveness of Pentecostal pneumatology comes not so much in its conclusions regarding the personhood of the Spirit but in the unique emphases that Pentecostals make to support their convictions: the Holy Spirit is the divine person through whom Christians experience the eschatological and intensifying presence of God. Even though other theological traditions also affirm the historic Christian doctrine that the Spirit is a divine person, this important dimension of Pentecostal pneumatology is emphasized less elsewhere. The Pentecostal understanding of the Spirit as person is closely tied to the intensifying experience of the divine presence and eschatological power in the life of the believer, the church, the world, and creation. Rather than delineating the personhood of the Spirit in relation to the other divine persons, Pentecostals typically emphasize the personhood of the Spirit in relation to humanity and creation—the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Pentecost whom Jesus has poured out on all flesh. Pentecostals regard the Spirit as a divine person in as much as they emphasize that people can have a personal relationship with the Spirit, that the Spirit speaks, that the Spirit is passionate, and that in the Spirit we encounter the divine power and love in a particular way. While some Christians outside of the Pentecostal tradition reject that the Spirit speaks today, that the Spirit suffers, or that the Spirit’s presence intensifies with the coming of the eschaton, Pentecostals regard the Spirit’s presence as the very presence of God—an intensifying 213

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presence that brings both eschatological fulfillment and anticipation. As a result, Pentecostals ascribe more agency to the person of the Spirit than is typical in the Western theological tradition. It is in light of these perspectives that form the foundation of pneumatology proper that we can understand the hospitality of Pentecostal pneumatology and its reach into all other aspects of Pentecostal theology.

References Albrecht, Daniel E. 2004. “An Anatomy of Worship: A Pentecostal Analysis.” In The Spirit and Spirituality: Essays in Honour of Russell P. Spittler, edited by Wonsuk Ma and Robert P. Menzies, 70–82. London: T&T Clark International. Alexander, Kimberly Ervin. 2006. Pentecostal Healing: Models in Theology and Practice. JPT Supplement 29. Blandford Forum: Deo. ———. 2010. “Boundless Love Divine: A Re-evaluation of Early Understandings of the Experiences of Spirit Baptism.” In Passover, Pentecost, and Parousia: Studies in Celebration of the Life and Ministry of R. Hollis Gause, edited by Steven Jack Land, Rickie D. Moore, and John Christopher Thomas. JPT Supplement 35. Bandford Forum: Deo. Althouse, Peter. 2003. Spirit of the Last Days: Pentecostal Eschatology in Conversation with Jürgen Moltmann. JPT Supplement 25. London: T&T Clark International. ———. 2009. “Implications of the Kenosis of the Spirit for a Creational Eschatology: A Pentecostal Engagement with Jürgen Moltmann.” In The Spirit Renews the Face of the Earth: Pentecostal Forays in Science and Theology of Creation, edited by Amos Yong, 155–72. Eugene: Pickwick. ———. 2020. “Pentecostal Perspectives in Pneumatology.” In The T&T Clark Companion to Pneumatology, edited by Daniel Castelo and Ken Loyer, 185–201. London: T&T Clark. Anderson, Allan Heaton. 2014. An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Archer, Kenneth J. 2011. The Gospel Revisited: Towards a Pentecostal Theology of Worship and Witness. Eugene: Pickwick. Augustine, Daniela C. 2012. Pentecost, Hospitality, and Transfiguration: Toward a Spirit-inspired Vision of Social Transformation. Cleveland: CPT Press. Castelo, Daniel. 2009. The Apathetic God: Exploring the Contemporary Relevance of Divine Impassibility. Paternoster Theological Monographs. Milton Keynes: Paternoster. ———. 2012. “Toward Pentecostal Prolegomena II: A Rejoinder to Andrew Gabriel.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 21 (2): 168–80. Chan, Simon. 2000. Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition. JPT Supplement 21. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Courey, David J. 2015. What has Wittenberg to do with Azusa? Luther’s Theology of the Cross and Pentecostal Triumphalism. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. Del Colle, Ralph. 2001. “The Holy Spirit: Presence, Power, Person.” Theological Studies 62 (2): 322–40. Gabriel, Andrew. 2011. The Lord is the Spirit: The Holy Spirit and the Divine Attributes. Eugene: Pickwick. ———. 2012. “The Intensity of the Spirit in a Spirit-Filled World: Spirit Baptism, Subsequence, and the Spirit of Creation.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 34 (3): 365–82. ———. 2016. “The Holy Spirit and Eschatology—with Implications for Ministry and the Doctrine of Spirit Baptism.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 25: 203–21. ———. 2019a. Simply Spirit-Filled: Experiencing God in the Presence and Power of the Holy Spirit. Nashville: Thomas Nelson. ———. 2019b. “The Spirit of Power and Love: Edwards and Pentecostals on Constructive Pneumatology.” In Pentecostal Theology and Jonathan Edwards, edited by Amos Yong and Steven Studebaker. Systematic Charismatic and Pentecostal Theology. London: T&T Clark. Goss, Jeffrey. 2003. “A Pilgrimage in the Spirit: Pentecostal Testimony in the Faith and Order Movement.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 25 (1): 29–53. Hildebrandt, Wilf. 1995. An Old Testament Theology of the Spirit of God. Peabody: Hendrickson. Hollenweger, Walter. 1978. “Creator Spiritus: The Challenge of Pentecostal Experience to Pentecostal Theology.” Theology 81 (1): 32–40. Land, Stephen J. Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom. JPT Supplement 1. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993.

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Pneumatology Lim, David. 1991. Spiritual Gifts: A Fresh Look. Springfield: Gospel Publishing House. Macchia, Frank D. 1993. “Tongues as a Sign: Towards a Sacramental Understanding of Pentecostal Experience.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 15 (1): 61–76. ———. 2006. Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. ———. 2010. Justified in the Spirit: Creation, Redemption, and the Triune God. Pentecostal Manifestos 2. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2014. “Baptized in the Spirit: A Pentecostal Reflection on the Filioque.” In Ecumenical Perspectives on the Filioque for the Twenty-first Century, edited by Myk Habets, 141–56. London: Bloomsbury. ———. 2018. Jesus the Spirit Baptizer: Christology in Light of Pentecost. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Menzies, William W., and Robert P. Menzies. 2000. Spirit and Power: Foundations of Pentecostal Experience. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Palma, Anthony D. 2001. The Holy Spirit: A Pentecostal Perspective. Springfield: Logion. Parker, Stephen Eugene. 1996. Led by the Spirit: Toward a Practical Theology of Pentecostal Discernment and Decision Making. JPT Supplement 7. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. “Pentecost Has Come.” 1906. The Apostolic Faith 1 (1 September 1906): 1. Ruthven, Jon. 1993. On the Cessation of the Charismata: The Protestant Polemic on Postbiblical Miracles. JPT Supplement 3. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Shelton, James B. 1991. Mighty in Word and Deed: The Role of the Holy Spirit in Luke-Acts. Peabody: Hendrickson. Smith, James K. A. 2010. “Is There Room for Surprise in the Natural World? Naturalism, the Supernatural, and Pentecostal Spirituality.” In Science and the Spirit: A Pentecostal Engagement with the Sciences, edited by James K. A. Smith and Amos Yong, 34–49. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Stronstad, Roger. 1984. The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke. Peabody: Hendrickson. ———. 1998. The Prophethood of All Believers: A Study in Luke’s Charismatic Theology. JPT Supplement 16. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Studebaker, Steven M. 2012. From Pentecost to the Triune God: A Pentecostal Trinitarian Theology. Pentecostal Manifestos 4. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. “The Old-Time Pentecost.” 1906. The Apostolic Faith 1 (1 September 1906): 1. Thompson, Matthew. 2010. Kingdom Come: Revisioning Pentecostal Eschatology. JPT Supplement 37. Blandford Forum: Deo. Tyra, Gary. 2018. Getting Real: Pneumatological Realism and the Spiritual, Moral, and Ministry Formation of Contemporary Christians. Eugene: Cascade. Villafañe, Eldin. 1992. The Liberating Spirit: Toward an Hispanic American Pentecostal Social Ethic. Lanham: University Press of America. Volf, Miroslav. 1989. “Materiality of Salvation: An Investigation in the Soteriologies of Liberation and Pentecostal Theologies.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 26 (3): 447–67. Vondey, Wolfgang. 2016. “Pneumatology from the Perspective of the Spirit: A Historical and Theological Assessment.” In Third Article Theology: A Pneumatological Dogmatics, ed. Myk Habets, 77–96. Minneapolis: Fortress. ———. 2017. Pentecostal Theology: Living the Full Gospel. Systematic Pentecostal and Charismatic Theology 1. London: T&T Clark. Warrington, Keith. 2008. Pentecostal Theology: A Theology of Encounter. London: T&T Clark. Yong, Amos. 2005. The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: World Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. ———. 2011. The Spirit of Creation: Modern Science and Divine Action in the Pentecostal-Charismatic Imagination. Pentecostal Manifestos. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2012. Spirit of Love: A Trinitarian Theology of Grace. Waco: Baylor University Press.

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20 CHRISTOLOGY Jesus and others; Jesus and God William P. Atkinson

In terms of Christology’s classic distinction between the person and the work of Christ, Pentecostalism arguably focuses primarily on Christ’s work rather than his person. However, this categorization is limited (Kärkkäinen 2003, 11), and another differentiation of the subject-matter holds more explanatory value for Pentecostal Christology. One category is Christ’s relations with others affected by his work, while a second category is his relations within the divine being. Considering Christ’s relations in these regards creates the overall argument and structure of this chapter: its first section discusses the relations Jesus has with both the beneficiaries of and opponents to his work. In short, Jesus grants his beneficiaries multiple blessings, achieved by means of decisive conquest of his foes. The second section proceeds to set out Jesus’ relations within the Godhead, discussing both Oneness and trinitarian readings of the matter. Exploring trinitarian possibilities at greater length, I conclude with a preliminary sketch of a Pentecostal eschatological Spirit Christology. The major sections are presented in this order because of the significance of ordinary Pentecostal theology (Cartledge 2010), which focuses less on the classical distinctions of Christology and more on the life and message of Jesus (see Chapter 15). Pentecostal thinking about Jesus as savior, healer, sanctifier, baptizer in the Spirit, and coming king starts, as these titles of the full gospel indicate, with consideration of what Jesus has done for “us,” and only further, deeper reflection then questions the nature of Christ’s divinity (see Chapter 16). This ordinary Pentecostal Christology is both biblical and experiential (Clarke 2011, 106–121). The Gospels are taken as trustworthy straightforward accounts of Jesus’ historical life: Jesus was a miracle worker, a healer and exorcist, and a charismatic prophet (Atkinson 2016). In the book of Acts, the ascended and exalted Jesus pours out the Spirit on his followers and empowers them for their God-given missions. Throughout the New Testament, expectant hopes and promises of Jesus’ return are identified, as well as, in some circles, signs of when that time is approaching, and what signs will surround it. Current lived experience plays a key part in confirming this exegetical Christology: Pentecostals read their Bibles and identify an analogical relationship between the biblical experiences and their own lived or longed-for experiences. The Jesus who performs these acts today is the same Jesus as the one in the New Testament. He acts with the same power and love as he did then. He is the same person as then. Nothing has changed. In many ways, Pentecostal Christology, then, is remarkably simple. Some might opine that it is naïve, but it certainly satisfies the vast majority 216

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of Pentecostals around the globe. At the heart of this Christology stands a relational approach to the work and person of Jesus.

Jesus in relation to others Typically, Jesus is characterized by Pentecostals in the terms of the full gospel: a foursquare or fivefold statement of benefits that believers can gain from Jesus (though the last benefit broadens out to encompass Jesus’ future history at least as much as that of believers). These benefits, all ascribed to Jesus, thus form a firm, stable statement in ordinary Pentecostal theology concerning the identity of Jesus, who, in the foursquare tradition, is savior, healer, baptizer in the Holy Spirit, and soon-coming king, and in the fivefold or Wesleyan-Pentecostal tradition is all these, plus sanctifier.

Jesus and his beneficiaries It is immediately evident that these four or five characteristics of Jesus describe him in relation to others: there are people he saves, heals, and so forth. These specific benefits will be considered presently, but first it is necessary to emphasize that the four or five characteristics listed might serve to hide an underlying relational characteristic of Jesus that perhaps even more acutely sums up Pentecostal attitudes to Jesus: he is their friend. Pentecostals find in Jesus far more than, so to speak, a means to physical health or to Spirit-empowerment. Jesus is not merely the heavenly physician (though he is often referred to as such in Pentecostal language) or the heavenly power-source. He is someone who can be related to as the closest of friends (Alfaro 2010), and, as such, as the object of intense personal love. He is the recipient of their devotion and often the addressee of their prayers. Pentecostals love Jesus. This love is as much a part of their Christology, if not far more, than any propositional statements concerning his person and work. Returning to Jesus as, specifically, savior, healer, (sanctifier), baptizer in the Spirit, and coming king, these relations with believers result, first and foremost, from what Jesus went through and thereby achieved on the cross. More specifically, the benefits are seen in traditional Pentecostal parlance to result from “the blood” ( Jacobsen 2003, 70–73). In line with many other Christians, a Pentecostal theology of the cross sees the shed blood of Jesus as necessary for their forgiveness by God, their receiving of eternal life, and their incorporation into Christ’s church. Classically, healing has also been seen as accomplished “in the atonement” (see Chapter 24), although this affirmation is sometimes moderated in more recent discourse (Atkinson 2016, 87–89). Early Pentecostals declared that they were “under the blood,” and still today some plead the blood or “apply” the blood of Jesus, although such practices are not without controversy within Pentecostal circles (Pugh 2016). The valuing of Jesus’ blood is clearly evident in early Pentecostal hymnody and current song-lists. While much Pentecostal attention is given to Jesus’ physical sufferings, some Pentecostal circles also attend to his spiritual sufferings, and even so-called “spiritual death” (Atkinson 2009). Arising from the teaching of E. W. Kenyon, this teaching, sometimes known as JDS (“Jesus Died Spiritually”), entered Pentecostal circles through, primarily, Kenneth Hagin and Kenneth Copeland. In their view, Jesus died spiritually on the cross and remained thus dead while in the grave, only to be reborn spiritually in the resurrection. By this “spiritual death” is meant that Jesus was separated from God, became Satan’s prey, and partook of the satanic nature. Of these three ideas, the first is the least specific to the Word of Faith movement in which the teaching has flourished, and has thus proved the least controversial, while the third departs the most from orthodox Christian teaching. 217

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While Hagin’s and Copeland’s relations with Pentecostalism have been mixed (Atkinson 2009, 19–22), many Pentecostals, broadly understood, have imbibed aspects of their teaching, not least in Africa. Principally, this influence has concerned the movement’s teaching on financial prosperity (see Chapter 38), although other aspects have also been influential. While some Pentecostals have promulgated the teaching that Jesus died spiritually, others have denounced it as heretical (Atkinson 2009, 34–36, 39–42). Thus, a considerable diversity of opinion has been found in recent decades within wider Pentecostalism concerning the nature and extent of Christ’s cruciate suffering and death. Beyond the cross and the grave, recognition that Christ is the sanctifier, baptizer in the Spirit, healer, and soon-coming king also presupposes the resurrection and exaltation of Christ (Kärkkäinen 2007). Pentecostals are committed to both the physical resurrection of the earthly Jesus and his eternal exalted “post-existence” as well as his eternal pre-existence. Thus, as stated, an artificial distinction between the person and the work of Christ does not reflect Pentecostal instincts and beliefs. Rather, their expressed beliefs concerning his benefits to them are based on beliefs—also often expressed—concerning his personal history, authority, and status. Christ is the one who presently reigns—over sin and sickness, for example—and whose reign is yet to come into fullness of expression in a new earth and new heaven, when Jesus comes again—also understood as a physical and visible act.

Jesus and his foes Christ’s relations with others are not limited to his relations with the beneficiaries of his work. Christ also has enemies. Thus, it is necessary to consider the characteristic formulations of the full gospel that Jesus is savior, healer, and so forth in terms not only of his relations with believers, but also in terms of Jesus’ relations with those against which he acts. If Jesus saves, then he saves from something or someone. When Jesus heals, he releases the recipient from bondage to an inimical sickness. While it is not in the classical formulas, Pentecostals would also happily declare that Jesus is the deliverer, or exorcist: he delivers people from evil and the demonic (see Chapter 30). In the fivefold version of the full gospel, Jesus is also the sanctifier: he sets people free from the enemy of personal sinfulness, behind which is, for most Pentecostals, the power of the devil. Jesus as baptizer in the Holy Spirit tackles the weakness and ineffectiveness that recipients might otherwise experience in their Christian lives and mission. And, finally, Jesus the coming king is understood in Pentecostal circles to be the one returning to establish God’s kingdom by destroying any and all remaining enemies. This dimension of spiritual warfare in Christology is especially marked within some Pentecostal strands, including in South America (Westmeier 1999, 94–95, 124) and Africa (Onyinah 2014, 151–52). As Clarke (2014, 60) puts it, with reference to traditional African worldviews, God’s “Christ and first-born warrior Son has wrought a crushing and decisive victory over the myriad of malevolent spirits in the African universe.” Onyinah observes that Pentecostals direct their attention to the devil in their determination to identify and engage with Christ’s enemies. However, the Christian scriptures pay at least as much attention, if not more, to death as an enemy that Christ has overcome. This aspect of Christology deserves more Pentecostal attention. It coheres with the repeated Johannine statement that Jesus is the Life ( John 4:14; 6:48; 11:25; 14:6). It also chimes with Pentecostal eschatological interests, for, according to the apostle Paul, the last enemy to be destroyed will be death (1 Cor. 15:26). 218

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Christ in relation to God Pentecostals are united in their conviction that Jesus is Lord, and by this title is meant that Jesus is God. This statement is true for all Pentecostals, whether they are trinitarian or Oneness, so that both affirm together that Jesus Christ is the living Logos or Word of the Father, who became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth as he was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the virgin Mary (e.g., John 1:1, 14; Luke 1:35). Christ was fully divine and fully human, deity and humanity united indivisibly in one person. (Oneness-Trinitarian Pentecostal Final Report 2008, 214) However, Pentecostal voices are not united when it comes to understanding the statement that Jesus is the Son of God. Early in their history, Pentecostals faced theological division and separated over differences of understanding concerning Jesus and the Trinity, and corresponding Christologies, resulting in trinitarian and Oneness Pentecostal streams (see Chapters 17 and 18).

Oneness Christology Oneness Pentecostals understand Jesus to be the total expression of the one God: Jesus is not the incarnation of one person of a Trinity but the incarnation of all the identity, character, and personality of the one God. As to His eternal deity, there can be no subordination of Jesus to anyone else, whether in essence or position. (Oneness-Trinitarian Pentecostal Final Report 2008, 215) Indeed, the supreme divine name is Jesus: “the name of the Father is Jesus ( John 5:43), the name of the Son is Jesus (Matt. 1:21) and the name of the Holy Spirit is Jesus ( John 14:26)” (Reed 2008, 276). The language of sonship has a place in Oneness thought, but in contrast to trinitarian understandings, it does not refer to a relationship between two divine persons. Instead, while “Father” expresses the divinity of Jesus or transcendence of God (so that Jesus is Father), “Son” expresses the humanity (while yet also the divinity; so that Jesus is also Son, since the Incarnation). Clearly, as Jesus “is . . . the incarnation of all the identity, character, and personality of the one God” (Oneness-Trinitarian Pentecostal Final Report 2008, 215), the language of Father and Son takes on a significance for Oneness Christologies that is not shared by trinitarian Christologies. In similar vein, Oneness understandings of relations between the Father and the incarnate Son differ from trinitarian ones. Materials in the Gospels, which from a trinitarian perspective present the Father and the Son as persons in relation to one another, including the habit of Jesus speaking “of His Father and to His Father,” are interpreted differently by Oneness theology. For example, Oneness believers cannot handle Christ’s prayer in Gethsemane in the way that trinitarians do but see it as Christ’s human nature praying to the divine (see Chapter 18). Oneness Christology sees a distinct weakness in trinitarian conceptions of Christ’s person, which seem to dilute the divinity of Jesus, who is now only the incarnation of one part of God, or to declare that Jesus is a god alongside the Father, thus leading to an incipient ditheism. In turn, trinitarian Pentecostals have offered differing responses to Oneness Christology. While for some, “the Oneness means of articulating the divine unity . . . includes 219

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a robust incarnational christology that defends the divinity of the historical Jesus Christ” (Yong 2005, 227), others view the incarnational Christology offered by Oneness theologians as “underdeveloped” and suggest that “in the life and ministry of Jesus . . . the Oneness view of the dual nature of Christ begins to show its inherent weakness . . . the relationship appears more like a loose affiliation than a union” (Reed 2008, 280, 296). No doubt further constructive dialogue will occur. Vondey (2010, 78–108) senses that resolution may come by way of doxology: all Pentecostals worship a divine savior, and the “full gospel identifies the God who saves clearly with Jesus” (259).

Trinitarian Christology In the ordinary devotional life of trinitarian Pentecostals, Christ’s place in the Trinity gains little attention. While trinitarian denominations express their commitment to the Trinity in their statements of faith, Pentecostal worship largely ignores the Trinity in favor of a Jesus-centered approach. As Mark Cartledge (2010, 47) puts it, “This Christological centre is given a general theistic context and is not placed within an explicitly trinitarian framework.” It is not uncommon to hear prayers that are, from a classical trinitarian perspective, confused (commonly, “Thank you, Father, that you died on the cross for us”; see Parry 2005, 72; Cartledge 2010, 48). Similarly, it is sometimes the case that a trinitarian Pentecostal worship activity can be attended without one hearing much reference to the Father or to the Spirit at all. Despite the lack of finesse and nuance in ordinary trinitarian Pentecostal theology, there are two constant features that indicate Christ’s relatedness to the other divine persons. First, Jesus is the Son; thus, Jesus is related filially to God the Father. This relationship is linked explicitly to the virgin birth: Jesus only had a human mother; God was and is his father. Second, Jesus is the sender or granter of the Holy Spirit, although this notion is not related to the filioque controversy and its identification of the eternal processions. Rather, the relationship of Jesus and the Spirit is understood in primarily Lukan terms with reference to the event of Pentecost (Acts 2:33). Jesus is thus related to the Holy Spirit, though in this case the relationship is arguably more complex, for Jesus was also himself the recipient of the Spirit prior to his death, resurrection, and exaltation (see Chapters 17 and 19). Overall, therefore, although these matters are not ordinarily expressed in developed trinitarian concepts or language, it is nevertheless the case that Jesus is firmly embedded in a cluster of relationships with the other two trinitarian divine persons. But what do these relations indicate about the nature of Christ? It may be argued that what can be said about African Pentecostals is true of Pentecostals more generally: they “subscribe to an evangelical, conservative understanding of Christ” (Clarke 2014, 58). This dependence is understandable in terms of the origins of Pentecostal theology and its relations with its forebears, since “early Pentecostals borrowed statements of faith used by Methodists or other evangelicals and then added in reference to spiritual gifts or the return of Christ” (Kay 2009, 225). Where those Pentecostals did not regard their beliefs as distinctive, they added nothing. When, later, they saw the need to expound more fully on their core doctrines, they paid little attention to Christology. Thus, for example, Pentecostal Doctrine, published in the United Kingdom in 1976, had five chapters on the Holy Spirit, just one on the Trinity, and none on Jesus Christ as such, though there was one titled “The Ministry of Healing in the Life of Christ” (Brewster 1976). The same tendency is evident in more recent works of Pentecostal systematic theology, where attention to Christ is sometimes either scant: for example, in Warrington’s Pentecostal Theology (2008), which has 220

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a 10-page section on Jesus and an 86-page section on the Holy Spirit, or traditionally conservative, such as in Black’s Apostolic Theology (2016). Sometimes, reference to Jesus is notable by its absence. The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements has no article titled either “Jesus” or “Christ,” even though there is a 39-page article on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. In contrast to this lack of attention, the remaining part of this chapter explores current developments and potential avenues that might lead to more constructive trinitarian Pentecostal Christologies.

Toward an eschatological Spirit Christology New contours for a constructive Pentecostal Christology have emerged in recent years along several lines relating to the person of Jesus, the relationship of Christology and pneumatology, and continued interest primarily in the work of Christ. While we may not find a comprehensive Christological program in contemporary Pentecostal theology, the following features outline a potential direction for a constructive framework. First, such Christologies will cohere with Roger Haight’s demand for a “Historically Conscious Christology” (Haight 2005, 130). That is, they will operate “from below,” for the key starting point for Christology is what can be known historically about Jesus of Nazareth. While “this Christology will give specific attention to the historical ministry of Jesus” (2005, 131), history alone is not enough: “The historically conscious person wants to know who Jesus was historically. This does not mean that this knowledge forms a logical basis for Christology, because history as a discipline cannot generate faith in Jesus as the Christ of God” (130). Thus, for Pentecostals, faith must play its part: faith in the goodness of Jesus’ God, and faith in the trustworthiness of the gospel record of Jesus’ history. So, too, must a theologically responsible imagination, about which Haight also writes. Pentecostals hope that their imagination is Spirit-led: a “pneumatological imagination” as Amos Yong has suggested (see Chapter 14). This imagination is fed by Pentecostal experiences of Jesus, as interpreted by them within their communities. Thus, another of Haight’s observations may be applied: namely, that a historically grounded Christology not only “looks beneath the dogmatic portrayals of Jesus for people’s existential experience of him” but also demands that the experience “which underlies all the interpretations and doctrines . . . must be tapped anew in each historical period. Christology in the final analysis always emerges out of the faith encounter of Christians with Jesus as the mediation of God’s salvation in their lives” (131). This is how Pentecostals articulate their own relations with Jesus. Second, it seems likely that fruitful Christological avenues will bring twin Pentecostal interests in Jesus and the Spirit together and thus enter the realm of Spirit-Christology. This is a path which Pentecostals have already begun to tread. However, in his survey of such steps, taken by Sang-Ehil Han and Sammy Alfaro among others, Herschel Bryant (2014, 37; cf. 502–6) can still conclude that contributions by Pentecostal scholars (including in Oneness theology) “do not attempt to construct Spirit Christology.” A Pentecostal Spirit-Christology true to its heritage will start with the Bible, where it can build on a two-stage or two-state Christology that emerges from at least some strands of New Testament thought (cf. Dunn 1989, 33–36; Treat 2013). In this Christological framework, stage one, prior to the cross, finds Jesus led and empowered by the Spirit—the Spirit is “in charge,” so to speak, and Jesus lives at this behest (e.g. Matt 12:28; Mark 1:12; Luke 4:14; John 3:34; Acts 10:38). After Jesus’ death, resurrection, and exaltation, however, as Moltmann (1993, 89) puts it, “the relationship is reversed.” Now, in stage two, the Spirit is at the behest of the exalted Jesus, who sends the Spirit (ultimately from the Father; John 15:26; Acts 2:33). Or, in Pauline terms, 221

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the Spirit is now “shaped” by Christ, such that a near-identity is detectable (Rom. 8:9–10; 1 Cor. 15:45; see Atkinson 2013, 89–90). Thus, in both these ways—Christ sends the Spirit and Christ shapes the Spirit, “the Spirit of God” in the Old Testament “becomes” the “Spirit of Christ” in the New Testament (while yet remaining the Spirit of God). This is vital for any Christian—and particularly Pentecostal—pneumatology. But it is also a statement as much about Christ as it is about the Spirit. Without any further development we encounter here a divine Spirit-Christology: Jesus is the human who was and is utterly Spirit-filled; he is also the God who sends the divine Spirit. He is, in both the words of Dunn (1975, 46; see also Dunn 2010, 125–29) and Turner (1994, 414), despite their differing perspectives, “Lord of the Spirit.” A Pentecostal Spirit-Christology developed in these terms will be wise to listen, as well, to more recent voices than those recorded in the pages of the New Testament. This may help to answer lingering questions regarding any potential incompatibility with Logos Christology, and to flesh out the extent to which the Spirit’s involvement in the Son’s life can be delineated. There are rich resources available. For example, the work of John Owen (1616–1683) aids with the first matter. Alan Spence (2007, 15) well describes the church’s doctrine in Owen’s day: “Her commitment to a doctrine of incarnation required her denial in practice of an inspirational Christology. This meant she was always somewhat embarrassed with the human experiences of Jesus, such as prayer, growth in grace, or dependence on the Holy Spirit.” It was against this background that the Socinianism arose that Owen sharply critiqued. For the Socinian John Biddle, New Testament testimony to the work of God’s Spirit in Jesus challenged an incarnational Christology: if Jesus needed the Spirit, “would not the Divine nature in Christ, at this rate, be in the meantime idle and useless?” (Biddle [1647], quoted in Spence 2007, 16). It was complaints like this that Owen addressed when he wrote that the Spirit is “the immediate operator of all divine acts of the Son himself, even on his own human nature. Whatever the Son wrought in, by, or upon the human nature, he did it by the Holy Ghost” (Owen 1674, 162). Owen’s great contribution, as Spence explains, was to achieve a coherence between what Spence calls incarnational and inspirational Christologies (i.e. Logos and Spirit-Christologies). Owen maintained this integration by arguing that the “Holy Spirit renewed the image of God in the human nature which the eternal Son had assumed into personal union with himself ” (Spence 2007, 144, emphasis removed). However, as Myk Hybets (2010, 211–12) notes, what Owen neglected was to trace the Spirit’s involvement in the life of the Son back into eternal inner-trinitarian relations. Another classical voice to which a trinitarian Pentecostal Spirit-Christology will wisely attend is that of Edward Irving (1792–1834), for his contribution helps to sketch out more fully the extent of the Spirit’s involvement in the Son’s life. This can be identified in two respects. First, those expounding Irving’s work note the manner in which Irving traced the Spirit’s involvement further “back” than Owen had done. Owen had begun his exposition with the “framing, forming, and miraculous conception of the body of Christ in the womb of the blessed Virgin” (Owen 1674, 162). Irving took his exploration back to the eternal relations between the Father and the Son. Graham McFarlane (1996, 161) comments, “There can be little doubt that Irving was influenced by Owen, but it cannot be argued that his Christology is a mere repetition of Owen’s . . . Irving attempts to unite the trinitarian being of God with the incarnation in a manner missing from . . . Owen.” This aspect of Irving’s work cannot be discussed further in this chapter, as it draws focus from Christology to trinitarianism. However, a more controversial aspect of Irving’s work is more relevant (with Bryant 2014, 395 [“the central point in this controversy was really a Spirit Christological 222

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issue”]; against Hybets 2010, 212 [it is “not essential to a Spirit Christology”]). It relates to the sinlessness of Christ, a key central part of any Pentecostal Christology. Irving (1830, 2–3) provoked his antagonists to the point of excommunicating him by, among other “vices,” declaring that Christ brought “His Divine person into death-possessed humanity . . . by the Fall brought into a state of . . . subjection to the devil.” Though Christ thus assumed a fallen, not unfallen, human nature, “we hold that it received a Holy-Ghost life, a regenerate life, in the conception, but in measure greater, because of His perfect faith” (Irving 1830, vii). Irving maintained that “while the human nature was fallen and ‘sinful’, the person of Christ was sinless, being kept from sin by the constant work of the Holy Spirit” (Atkinson 2009, 209, referring to Irving 1830, vii–viii). Here, Irving went beyond the New Testament depiction, but kept in line with it, in regarding Jesus’ whole sinless perfection as Spirit-enabled, by means of Christ’s unalloyed faith. This is but one illustrative element in Irving’s more general project, “with which he joins an inspirational dimension to his thoroughgoing incarnational christology” (McFarlane 1996, 157). The incarnational Christology contained in Irving’s work can serve as a vital resource for Pentecostal SpiritChristology ( Jenkins 2018, 131–80). While Irving traced the Spirit’s involvement in the life of the Son further “back” than Owen had done, neither of these classical renditions offers a depiction of the relations between Jesus and the Spirit that traces it “forward” to Pentecost and beyond, in the way that the New Testament does, with its two-stage Christology presented in a previous paragraph. For this development, one can turn to Pentecostal authors and their views on Pentecost as an eschatological event (Studebaker 2012, 90; Vondey 2017, 131–51; Jenkins 2018, 330). The most complete elaboration to date is Frank Macchia’s (2018) Jesus the Spirit Baptizer: Christology in Light of Pentecost. It is notable not only for its content but also for its title, which relates to the statement, in the traditional foursquare and fivefold depictions of Jesus set out earlier, that Jesus is the baptizer in the Holy Spirit. This traditional credo makes a profound Christological claim, but does so, it would seem, entirely accidentally. It is precisely the baptism in the Spirit (to use that term beloved of Pentecostals) that is the Christian experience assuring recipients of Jesus’ divine exalted status as the one authorized to grant God’s Spirit. Macchia (2018, 29), unsurprisingly, makes this point and credits “Moltmann’s focus on Pentecost as the place where Christ shifts from being the bearer to the imparter of the Spirit (from the Christ of the Spirit to the Spirit of Christ).” Later, Macchia writes, “How high did Jesus rise? He rose to the throne to reign as the Lord of life, to impart the Spirit to all flesh” (309). Macchia succeeds in making several further points in his eschatological focus on Pentecost, maintaining a focus on Christ’s humanity as the “last-Adam” and on its relational significance: “Pentecost is the place where the crucified and risen Christ is revealed as the eschatological man of the Spirit for all creation” (302), so that one can speak of Jesus as “the sacrament of the Spirit and the Father’s love in representation of us so as to transform us into those who can share in this outpouring of his life” (308). From the perspective of Spirit Christology, this representation means that “both Christ and the Spirit are shaped by Christ’s impartation of the Spirit and the resultant birth of the church. A Christology of Pentecost recognizes that a risen Christ without his church is not the Christ of the New Testament” (308). Macchia concludes that “as the last Adam, Christ is representatively baptized in the Holy Spirit and fire so that, as the divine Lord, he could impart the Spirit through the sacrament of his vindicated and exalted humanity” (349). This recognition of the eschatological significance of Pentecost leads me to close the chapter with a concluding section that heightens the potential eschatological element of a Pentecostal Christology. 223

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Conclusion If the traditional Pentecostal statements about Jesus point to Pentecost ( Jesus is the Spirit-baptizer), then so, too, do they point to the second coming ( Jesus is the coming king). Despite its strong eschatological focus, little Pentecostal discussion has concerned the exact Christological implications of this promised return. Even Macchia’s (2018, 345) pioneering work draws back at this point: “Why do we not reflect on Christ from the vantage point of the parousia? When it happens, we will! Until then, we are privileged to have the Christ of Pentecost.” However, others may yet press in and find fertile ground again in the territory of Spirit-Christology. One element that may aid exploration of a Pentecostal eschatological Christology is the Spirit’s role in the eternal generation of the Son (e.g. Weinandy 1995). This can be considered with reference to the Spirit as the Spirit of sonship (Rom. 8:15–16): just as the Spirit draws believers into, and assures them of, their “filial” relations with God, so the Spirit can be imagined as granting the Son, by way of eternal generation, existence as the divine Father’s Son, and as assuring him of this relation (Atkinson 2013, 74). A further imaginative step allows the possibility that the Spirit, involved in creational and Christian groaning “in labor pains” (Rom. 8:22, 23, 26) as all wait for the eschaton, plays a part in the revealing not just of God’s “sons” (Rom. 8:19) but also of God’s Son. The mix of logic and imagination goes like this: it is by the Spirit that believers are God’s children who can cry “Abba” (Rom. 8:15). By extension, it will be by the same Spirit that God’s children will be revealed eschatologically as such (Rom. 8:19). Some slight confirmation of this is offered in the hints that the groaning Spirit aids believers’ longing and groaning for that day (Rom. 8:23, 26; cf. Gal. 5:5; for the probable breadth of the Spirit’s role here, see Fee 1994, 571; Studebaker 2012, 92). If, as seems reasonable, the Spirit of sonship eternally holds in existence the sonship of the divine Son, as well as of created “sons,” or children (Rom. 8:21), then this same Spirit will, at the eschaton, reveal Jesus Christ as the eternal divine Son he has always been. At the eschaton, for example, the Son will be revealed as king. Might one go so far as to say that, more fully than yet expressed in history, the Son, by the Spirit’s agency, will only then “become” king, as his reign comes into its own, and as such is submitted to the Father (1 Cor. 15:24–28)? Is there also truth, then, in the suggestion that at that point, and only fully at that point, the Son will become the bridegroom? Will become the savior? Will become the healer? Will become the sanctifier? Will finally to fullest degree become the Spirit-filled Christ?

References Alfaro, Sammy. 2010. Divino Companero: Toward a Hispanic Pentecostal Christology. Eugene: Pickwick. Atkinson, William P. 2009. The ‘Spiritual Death’ of Jesus: A Pentecostal Investigation. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2013. Trinity after Pentecost. Eugene: Pickwick. ———. 2016. Jesus before Pentecost. Eugene: Cascade. Black, Jonathan. 2016. Apostolic Theology: A Trinitarian Evangelical Pentecostal Introduction to Christian Doctrine. Luton: The Apostolic Church. Brewster, Percy Stanley, ed. 1976. Pentecostal Doctrine. Cheltenham: Grenehurst Press. Bryant, Herschel Odell. 2014. Spirit Christology in the Christian Tradition: From the Patristic Period to the Rise of Pentecostalism in the Twentieth Century. Cleveland: CPT Press. Cartledge, Mark J. 2010. Testimony in the Spirit: Rescripting Ordinary Pentecostal Theology. Farnham: Ashgate. Clarke, Clifton R. ed. 2011. African Christology: Jesus in Post-Missionary African Christianity. Eugene: Pickwick.

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Christology ———. 2014. “Jesus in the Theology and Experience of African Pentecostals.” In Pentecostal Theology in Africa, edited by Clifton R. Clarke, 58–76. Eugene: Pickwick. Dunn, James D. G. 1975. Jesus and the Spirit. London: SCM Press. ———. 1989. Christology in the Making: An Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation. 2nd ed. London: SCM Press. ———. 2010. Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? The New Testament Evidence. London: SPCK. Fee, Gordon D. 1994. God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul. Peabody: Hendrickson. Haight, Roger S. J. 2005. The Future of Christology. New York: Continuum. Hybets, Myk. 2010. The Anointed Son: A Trinitarian Spirit Christology. Eugene: Pickwick. Irving, Edward. 1830. The Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine of Our Lord’s Human Nature. London: Baldwyn & Cradock. Jacobsen, Douglas. 2003. Thinking in the Spirit: Theologies of the Early Pentecostal Movement. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Jenkins, Skip. 2018. A Spirit Christology. Ecumenical Studies 3. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. 2003. Christology: A Global Introduction. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. ———. 2007. “‘Encountering Christ in the Full Gospel Way’: An Incarnational Pentecostal Spirituality.” Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 27 (1): 5–19. Kay, William K. 2009. Pentecostalism. London: SCM Press. Macchia, Frank D. 2018. Jesus the Spirit Baptizer: Christology in Light of Pentecost. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. McFarlane, Graham W. P. 1996. Christ and the Spirit: The Doctrine of the Incarnation according to Edward Irving. Carlisle: Paternoster. Moltmann, Jürgen. 1993. The Trinity and the Kingdom, translated by Margaret Kohl. Minneapolis: Fortress. “Oneness-Trinitarian Pentecostal Final Report, 2002–2007.” 2008. In Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 30 (2): 203–44. Onyinah, Opoku. 2014. “Principalities and Powers.” In Pentecostal Mission and Global Christianity, edited by Wonsuk Ma et al., 139–61. Oxford: Regnum Books. Owen, John. 1674. Pneumatologia. Volume III in The Works of John Owen, edited by William H. Goold. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth. Parry, Robin. 2005. Worshipping Trinity: Coming Back to the Heart of Worship. Carlisle: Paternoster. Pugh, Ben. 2016. The Old Rugged Cross: A History of Atonement in Popular Christian Devotion. Eugene: Cascade. Reed, David A. 2008. “In Jesus’ Name”: The History and Beliefs of Oneness Pentecostals. Blandford Forum: Deo Publishing. Spence, Alan. 2007. Incarnation and Inspiration: John Owen and the Coherence of Christology. London: T&T Clark. Studebaker, Steven M. 2012. From Pentecost to the Triune God: A Pentecostal Trinitarian Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Treat, Jeremy R. 2013. “Exaltation in and through Humiliation: Rethinking the States of Christ.” In Christology Ancient & Modern: Explorations in Constructive Dogmatics, edited by Oliver D. Crisp and Fred Sanders, 96–114. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Turner, Max. 1994. “The Spirit of Christ and ‘Divine’ Christology.” In Jesus of Nazareth: Lord and Christ, edited by Joel B. Green and Max Turner, 413–36. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. Vondey, Wolfgang. 2010. “Oneness and Trinitarian Pentecostalism: Critical Dialogue on the Ecumenical Creeds.” One in Christ 44 (1): 86–102. ———. 2017. Pentecostal Theology: Living the Full Gospel. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. Warrington, Keith. 2008. Pentecostal Theology: A Theology of Encounter. London: T&T Clark. Weinandy, Thomas G. 1995. The Father’s Spirit of Sonship: Reconceiving the Trinity. Edinburgh: T&T Clark. Westmeier, Karl-Wilhelm. 1999. Protestant Pentecostalism in Latin America: A Study in the Dynamics of Missions. Cranbury: Associated University Presses. Yong, Amos. 2005. The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.

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21 SALVATION Participating in the story where earth and heaven meet Grace Milton

Salvation is a theme that runs through the whole of Pentecostal theology. Crucially, it is not only the guarantee of “going to heaven when we die” but has significant implications and practical application for this life. The salvation of the individual, while important and celebrated, is but a microcosm of an anticipated full salvation at the eschaton. In fact, it is the constant balance between this-worldly and other-worldly salvation that is a mark of global Pentecostal soteriology. This chapter proposes that the Pentecostal account of salvation is centred on participation in a story which engages in encounter and cooperation with the divine life and is framed within an ongoing biblical story of redemption. The narrative of Scripture is seen not as a historical text of the past but as a living narrative in which present believers are included through their restored relationship with God and upon which their own testimonies build (see Chapter 6). The chapter therefore looks first at the biblical story of salvation, particularly Luke-Acts, and how it influences Pentecostal theology, as well as how the Pentecostal reading deviates from traditional interpretations of these texts. In turn, I present a narrative structure of the Pentecostal salvation story, its beginning, middle, and end. The beginning discusses Pentecostal anthropology, creation, the Fall, and the sinful state of humanity. The middle looks at God’s work of salvation and the human response to God’s work: to conversion, as well as the Pentecostal beliefs and rituals associated with this human response. The end encompasses the climax of the Pentecostal narrative, including eschatological implications for salvation, again returning to the biblical story. Finally, aspects of this Pentecostal soteriology are critically compared with Evangelical Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox theology.

Salvation in Luke-Acts Pentecostals take their theology primarily from Luke-Acts rather than Pauline or Johannine writings (Reardon 2012; Gabaitse 2017) due to the centrality of the Pentecost narrative, which is part of the Luke-Acts canon. The soteriology evident in Luke-Acts is simultaneously accused of over-spiritualisation and of being holistic and this-worldly, and Pentecostal soteriology has been accused of the same. I posit that this tight-rope walk between salvation in this life and the next is part of Pentecostalism’s defining approach to soteriology. Salvation history, as with individual salvation accounts, is viewed as a narrative which begins and finds 226

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its culmination in the biblical accounts. The lens through which that narrative has been viewed by Pentecostals is primarily through the accounts in Luke-Acts, because Pentecost is viewed as a formative narrative from which the rest of the Bible can be read. The theological model of the full gospel (see Chapter 16) emerges from this narrative of Pentecost with salvation as its underlying motivation. Although it is widely considered that “the message of salvation is central to Luke-Acts” (Gabaitse 2017, 63), the author of Luke’s Gospel has been accused of a weak anthropology, a soteriology that is delayed until the parousia and overly spiritualised, and of making no explicit connection between the cross and atonement in substitutionary terms (Reardon 2012). However, others characterise Luke’s approach to salvation as “total transformation of human life, forgiveness of sin, healing infirmities and release from any kind of bondage” (Bosch 1991, 107) and argue for a Lukan soteriology that is “much more holistic, incorporating social, economic, physical and spiritual elements interchangeably” (Reardon 2012, 89). Despite the centrality of salvation and an acknowledgement of Luke’s holistic soteriology, the narrative of Luke-Acts can indeed be over-spiritualised by Pentecostals, overlooking the social and this-worldly dimension of salvation (Gabaitse 2017). Of course, Pentecostal soteriology is not influenced solely by Luke-Acts. One overt example is North American Pentecostalism’s close relationship with Evangelical Protestantism in its formative years, which has led to a Western adoption at times of an Evangelical historical-grammatical hermeneutic. This hermeneutic is changing, however, and Pentecostal scholars (in particular) are beginning to understand and formulate their own unique approach to hermeneutics which includes a commitment to life application (Davies 2009) and the tripartite involvement of Spirit, Word, and community (Archer 2004). A Pentecostal hermeneutic that starts with experience must then turn to Scripture to affirm and enlighten those experiences (see Chapters 12 and 13). With this approach, the more holistic elements of Lukan soteriology can be seen to emerge at ground level, as they more closely reflect the Pentecostal experiences of God as saviour, liberator, and healer evident throughout the biblical texts. For Pentecostals, the salvation story emerging with Luke-Acts is therefore a thread that runs throughout the biblical narratives from Genesis to Revelation. Luke-Acts places this salvation (hi)story within a unique framework that presents salvation as (1) Spirit-focussed, revolving around the biblical events of Pentecost, (2) holistic, and (3) liberating (Reardon 2012, 90). The Pentecostal approach towards both experiencing God and turning to the Bible allows for both elements to become formative for Pentecostal soteriology. In turn, there is an expectation that the life of a believer should reflect these elements as a continuation of the biblical story: salvation is viewed through the lens of the biblical narrative but as taking place in the here and now (see Chapter 4). It is therefore necessary to start with the beginning of the theological narrative by establishing the beliefs about God’s motivation and achievement in salvation.

Sin and atonement We can arrive at a basic framework for the beginning of the Pentecostal story of salvation from the statements of faith of the Assemblies of God (AoG), the Elim Foursquare Gospel Alliance (Elim), and the Church of God in Christ (CGC). From these statements an elementary narrative emerges: in the beginning, humanity was created in God’s image and given life through God’s ruach (breath). God and the first man and woman had a special and perfect relationship in the garden of Eden. Humans were “created pure and upright” (AoG 2018) and with free will, but through “voluntary transgression” (AoG 2018) succumbed to 227

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the temptation to sin, “rending man subject to God’s wrath and condemnation” (Elim 2018). Pentecostal soteriology is rooted in this basic narrative and interpretation of the Fall, and it is from this story that Pentecostals understand the origins of sin in human beings and in the world more broadly. Crucially, because of the unique place in creation and the special relationship with God prior to the Fall, human beings were given stewardship over creation and, as part of this, human sin has had far reaching implications beyond humanity for all of creation (Routledge 2011). The first sin is seen predominantly as disobedience to God and as causing a break in the relationship between God and the first humans, leading to their expulsion from paradise. This broken relationship and propensity to sin becomes the state of the whole of humanity and the foundational problem at the root of theological concerns regarding salvation: “Pentecostals believe that all people have sinned, sin being defined as breaking God’s law and also as offending or displeasing God” (Warrington 2008, 35). In turn, “universal sinfulness” (Elim) is something that all humans need to be “cleansed from… through repentance and faith in the precious Blood of Jesus Christ” (CGC) in order to re-establish a right relationship with God and to progress towards holiness and restored purpose. Although not explicit in statements of faith, Pentecostals suggest that not only does sin affect humanity’s relationship with God, but it affects people’s relationships with one another; it affects the state of the whole of creation (Thomson 2010), and for many, it is the reason for suffering and physical sickness in the world today. However, the overcoming of sin is not something that humans can accomplish on their own, but rather God was required to step into history and into the lives of individual believers, in order to provide atonement and to restore the broken relationships (Rybarczyk 2018, 80–82). Therefore, Pentecostals believe that the Son of God came in the flesh and eventually gave his life as an atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world (see Chapter 20). The predominant atonement model for Pentecostals is that of penal substitutionary atonement, whereby God required a penalty to be paid for sin, and Jesus Christ, God’s pure and sinless Son, acted as a sacrifice to pay that penalty, thus restoring humanity to a right relationship with God through his blood (CGC). Theological discussion around this basic story tends to centre on debates surrounding the extent or reach of the atonement and the forgiveness of sins, especially as these relates to healing (Hejzlar 2013; Shuttleworth 2015) and prosperity (Mbamalu 2015) of the whole of creation. While some have expanded on understandings of healing to include economic and socio-cultural factors (see Chapters 24, 34 and 38), atonement is often more narrowly defined by many Pentecostals in the traditional forensic terms of justification made possible by Christ’s work on the cross. This perspective tends to neglect to incorporate in the biblical story of atonement also Jesus’ resurrection, ascension, and the narrative of Pentecost to include also Christ’s triumph over death seated at the right hand of God and ruling over all realms (heaven and earth). Although the general contours of this story are very much an Evangelical Protestant narrative, Pentecostals view their participation in this story in a different way in the light of Pentecost. When Pentecostals extend the story of salvation beyond the cross (Vondey 2017a, 52), then the soteriological narrative points to the resurrection and ascension of Christ, which made it possible to pour out the Holy Spirit on all flesh (Acts 2:38) and, when an individual has responded, for humanity to receive the Spirit. Hence, Frank Macchia (2007, 186) argues that “the vocation of the human race was to bear the Spirit of God, and the entire mission of Jesus was to provide the means by which this can occur.” Justification and sanctification consequently belong to the same work of salvation (Macchia 2010), and the human response to the atoning work of Christ is seen as directly in line with the responses of the early 228

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Christians to the outpouring of the Spirit. Pentecostal soteriology is Christocentric only insofar as the work of Christ is interpreted through and extended by the work of the Holy Spirit. Despite the central place of the Spirit in Pentecostal belief and practice, classical Pentecostals adopted a soteriology that has been criticised as being overly Christocentric. When the cross is given an exclusive place in the atonement narrative, Christ takes on the role as the sole achiever of salvation through his death and resurrection. The Spirit, in turn, is treated as the applier of salvation through sanctification and, as such, subordinate to Christ in a soteriology that places greater significance on justification (Del Colle 1993; Studebaker 2003). This perspective is not in keeping with Pentecostal pneumatology, and Spirit-Christology is better placed to explain the Pentecostal approach because it attributes the divine nature in Christ to a pneumatological model that combines the work of Christ and the Spirit so closely as to be almost indistinguishable from one another (Studebaker 2003). Spirit-Christology offers a trinitarian view of salvation which actively seeks to avoid hierarchy among the divine persons, and this emphasis is a significant contribution Pentecostal theology can offer towards a truly trinitarian soteriology. As a consequence, the moments of justification and sanctification can be more closely aligned and treated with similar weight and importance in Pentecostal soteriology.

Human response God’s first and primary act of salvation in Christ invites and makes possible human response (Rybarczyk 2018, 91). This response refers to what is required of, and what takes place in, the individual upon conversion or what Pentecostals typically call the new birth (derived from John 3:2–21). Pentecostal soteriology places a high importance on the response of the individual, and the idea of the new birth has resulted, at times, in a rather individualistic soteriology. However, the individual experience must always be understood in light of the atonement and as a foretaste of complete salvation for the whole of creation.

A Pentecostal ordo salutis Although there is no formal and explicit ordo salutis advanced by classical Pentecostal theology, the closest biblical blueprint is probably Peter’s command to the crowds in Acts 2: 38 following the outpouring of the Spirit: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” While this command alone does not take the individual through the entire process of salvation, it presents the three initial stages that have become an expected part of the “born again” experience (Gause 1980, 15–24). 1

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Repentance is considered to be personal and individual rather than public or confessional. It is closely associated with justification and, where salvation is concerned, it is often considered to be where the “conversion” experience is thought to end. Recognition of sin and repentance is the human response to the work already done by God. Water baptism is a sacramental act (Archer 2004), typically seen as an outward expression of an internal regeneration and considered necessary for salvation in Oneness theology (see Chapter 18). Baptism in water is a human response to the work of God by faith and thus commensurate to an age when the individual is able to commit to God. Spirit baptism is the act of the Holy Spirit entering into the believer whereby they receive empowerment and gifts to participate in the divine life and become like Christ (sanctification). 229

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Pentecostals are divided over whether salvation is a two- or three-stage process, whether justification (resulting from repentance) and sanctification can be combined and are followed by Spirit baptism, or whether justification and sanctification remain two separate crisis stages (see Chapter 22). Pentecostal theology traditionally identifies with a Protestant theology of salvation by “faith alone,” and the human response identifies important markers on the journey of salvation (Archer 2004). The Pentecostal ordo salutis displays a delicate balancing act: salvation is completely the work of God, yet the application of God’s saving work and the reception of the Spirit rely on an active response by the human person who must undergo the “born again” conversion experience as an individual. There can be no application of salvation without human consent and no acceptance of salvation by a third party on behalf of another. My own research of Pentecostal conversion experiences (Milton 2015) concludes that there are three main changes that take place in the individual upon initial conversion: (1) regeneration, (2) restored identity as an adopted child of God, and (3) divinely guided destiny. These changes may not all be recognised or acknowledged at the time, but it can be agreed that they exist in principle within the believer who has accepted Christ, and they are given to the believer by God freely as part of salvation, although they require the human decision and action to be accepted. These “marks” of salvation are catalysts for the internal transformations that take place within the convert and believer. An important Pentecostal mark of salvation is believed to be the baptism in the Holy Spirit with signs following (see Chapter 23). Frank Macchia (2010, 280) refers to Spirit baptism as a “second conversion,” although there are disagreements as to its salvific nature and to the signs that follow. There is a longstanding debate about the relationship of Spirit baptism and Christian initiation (see McDonnell and Montague 1991). Yet Pentecostals are likely connecting the two on the level of charismatic manifestations: most Pentecostals expect speaking with tongues or different gifts to be the “biblical sign” of Spirit baptism (see Chapter 28). These signs are seen as “evidence” of being baptised in the Spirit and, as it is generally not believed that they are manifested before salvation, they frequently function as “evidence” of conversion. Crucially, this is not to say that a lack of Spirit baptism equates to the absence of salvation, though some Pentecostals would argue that salvation cannot be verified fully without evidence of Spirit baptism (see Atkinson 2011). Pentecostal soteriology places a clear emphasis on the wider practices of salvation.

Salvation as praxis When considering the human response, Pentecostals think about outward rituals and experiences that accompany conversion or represent the moments of salvation. Although Pentecostals do not consider rituals or sacraments to be salvific (Archer 2004; Stephenson 2012), Pentecostal soteriology is clearly oriented towards ecclesial practices. Dominant among these is the altar call and response (Vondey 2017a, 51–58, 2017b) as a kind of Pentecostal ritual that is universal, if not recognised formally as such. The altar call reinforces an understanding of “human response” to include the divine invitation to salvation and the communal and individual response in a move to, tarrying and transformation, and ultimate release from the altar. This soteriology is reflected in the emphasis of the full gospel on conversion, sanctification, Spirit baptism, divine healing, and the commissioning on behalf of the kingdom of God as transformative moments at the altar that characterise various experiences of salvation (Vondey 2017a). This framework offers an important move away from more individualistic notions of salvation and allows for a broadening of soteriology to consider other communal rituals within Pentecostalism. 230

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Central to salvation as praxis is the emphasis of Pentecostal soteriology on embodiment (Trementozzi 2018, 157–92). Spiritual and doxological practices form important expressions for the Pentecostal experiences of salvation, particularly evident in the giving of testimonies, often linked closely to adult baptism, and manifested in worship services and personal encounters (Poloma 2009, 48). Pentecostal testimony is often attributed to inspiration by the Holy Spirit, in witness of Christ, so that it may be considered a charismatic speech act, along the lines of prophesy, words of knowledge, and speaking in tongues (Cartledge 2006, 83; Milton 2015, 49). When testimony, closely aligned with giving witness to one’s personal experience of salvation, is considered to be a Spirit-inspired speech, then each personal testimony serves as a building block continuing the biblical salvation story by filling in “the gaps” between the history of the Epistles and the fulfilment of the events indicated in Revelation. Believers are not only invited to participate in the salvation story but to continue to tell it through their own experiences and witness.

Salvation and prosperity Given the Pentecostal emphasis on experience and praxis, we must also consider what is believed to happen in the life of the individual as a result of their response to salvation. Typically, salvation is seen in terms of the forgiveness of sins, deliverance from evil, and healing of the body (Yong 2005, 90–91) manifested through a whole range of experiences including personal-spiritual, individual-physical, communal, socioeconomic, and ecological dimensions of life (Volf 1989): salvation is personal, familial, ecclesial, material, social, cosmic, and eschatological (Yong 2005, 91–98). This broad and holistic understanding of salvation can be seen most acutely in prosperity theology, which expects material and physical prosperity to result from faith. Prosperity Theology is not universally adopted within Pentecostal groups and is more often equated with neo-Pentecostal expressions (see Chapter 38). The influence of holiness traditions and theologies of sanctification may also have contributed to the individualism and human-centrism in this soteriology, whereby the human response of faith is awarded a high place in the proceedings. Nonetheless, prosperity reflects an underlying holistic and materialistic expectation present within Pentecostal soteriology more generally. In Korean Pentecostalism, for example, holistic salvation is composed of blessing, wholeness, and healing (Bae 2005, 537). Prosperity theology, even when viewed critically, manifests the importance of the inherent this-worldliness of Pentecostal soteriology that is lacking in other traditions (Agana 2015). Nevertheless, this emphasis must be integrated in the whole story of salvation that identifies a soteriology as Pentecostal. The beginning (Fall and atonement) and the middle (human response) of the Pentecostal story highlight the delicate balance between salvation as the work of God and the importance of human participation and response to God’s saving work.

Destiny: the climax of salvation The Pentecostal salvation story is building towards a climax. In fact, for the believer there are multiple possible climaxes towards which their salvation propels them. These can be categorised under the concept of “destiny:” (1) a destiny to be fulfilled during the present life on this earth, (2) a destiny of eternal life after death, and (3) a destiny for the whole of creation in the eschaton. Pentecostal destiny is a divinely guided and motivated future gained through salvation, along with regeneration and a renewed identity (Milton 2015). Although 231

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salvation is immediately obtained at initial conversion, its response and realisation are oriented towards both this world and the eschaton as a destiny in this life and an eschatological destiny. This dual focus reaches beyond the individual to the community and to the whole of creation.

Individual destiny The individual’s renewed destiny is made possible by liberation from sin and restored relationship with God. It results from the atoning work of God but is applied as a result of an act of faith: righteousness; holiness; and, ultimately, eternal life. Despite differences as to whether this takes place across two or three stages, Pentecostals agree that there is an ongoing formation which is directly related to the empowerment of the Spirit present for believers at the time of or following initial conversion. For Coulter (2008, 450), the summary of Pentecostal soteriology, and its destiny in particular, is in the acquisition of the divine life and liberation from sin. It is participation in the life of God, a new life in the Spirit (Rybarczyk 2018, 87), and the biblical promises for that life of ultimate victory and empowerment that can lead Pentecostal theology to be accused, at times, of triumphalism. However, within what can be a heavily spiritualised viewpoint of an eschatological destiny obtained after death, there emerges also a strong belief in God’s plan for the individual in the present. Salvation means that God is present and active in practical aspects of the current life including career progression, fertility, or inter-personal relationships. Here again, where soteriology is in danger of becoming overly spiritualised on the one hand, we find within Pentecostal theology a counterpart oriented towards salvation realised in this world. The destiny that is made possible, and in which the believer is invited to participate, has very earthly evidences.

Corporate destiny The personal destiny of individuals is linked closely to the destiny attributed to the believing community. Believers’ personal testimonies are drawn back into line with the biblical narrative especially through a focus on the eschatological dimensions of salvation (see Chapter 25). Early Pentecostal groups held an imminent belief in the end times, and eschatology played a very real role in the formation of salvation beliefs and practices (Thompson 2010). The eschatological dimension highlights that salvation aims not only at individuals but at a saved community, and the ultimate expression of that salvation is the church at the second coming of Christ. Here we find the combining of soteriology oriented towards this world and the next (Yong 2005, 97) by anticipating that the world will be restored to wholeness, and God’s people will experience their restored relationship with God and one another in its fullness. In more recent times, and in line with progressive theologies across denominations, we are seeing expressions of ecological salvation emerging from Pentecostal scholarship (Studebaker 2008; Swoboda 2013; Lamp 2014). This extension of traditional and individualistic accounts to the realm of creation should not come as a surprise given the Pentecostal focus on wholeness in salvation. Thomson (2010) draws a link between human stewardship and the implications of sin, concluding that just as the divine-human relationship will be fully restored, all that was broken by the Fall will ultimately be restored to wholeness at the eschaton. Still, this idea of sin and salvation reaching beyond the human condition and into the rest of the created order has been controversial, and not all Pentecostals consider it to be on the 232

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Pentecostal agenda. The environmental implications of salvation (see Chapter 33) are one of the important considerations for Pentecostal theologians who are interested in exploring the contributions of Pentecostal soteriology to global Christian theology.

Ecumenical debates The fact that Pentecostalism is a deeply soteriological movement “places Pentecostalism firmly within pietist streams of Christianity and gives it continuity with many doctrinal traditions” (Coulter 2008, 448). Pentecostal soteriology has engaged in dialogue with three main ecumenical conversations: Evangelical Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. These conversations have sharpened Pentecostal theology and identify both its differences from and contributions to Christian soteriology. The extent of salvation (universalism), its unrepeatable character, and transformative nature (deification) form the dominant concerns of debates about Pentecostal soteriology today.

Universal salvation The Pentecostal salvation story does not, on the surface, differ much from that of its evangelical Protestant cousins. The narrative of the Fall and redemption, and the requirement of a restored relationship with God through submission to Christ, remains very much the same, and much of Pentecostalism’s individualistic anthropology can perhaps be attributed to its close connection to evangelicalism. Typically, the soteriological difference from Evangelicalism is the Pentecostal hermeneutic of experience and the means of holistic participation in the continuing biblical story as an ongoing story that is modelled and experienced by the believer in line with the biblical narrative. Encounter with God takes precedence (Warrington 2008), and the biblical narrative is accessed to support and shed light on those experiences. Salvation is an invitation to participate in the divine life and to continue the narrative through to its anticipated completion. Similar to Pentecostals, Charismatic-evangelical theologian Clark Pinnock (1996, 149–85) has emphasised that the goal of salvation is union with God and that justification is just one part of this union. Where Pinnock moves beyond, certainly classical Pentecostal theology is in his emphasis on universalism. Pentecostals have historically held an exclusivist view of salvation, moving towards a pneumatological inclusivism more recently (Yong 2005; Richie 2011; Milton 2018), but rarely to a soteriological universalism. The materialistic and participatory soteriology of Pentecostals, based on the idea that the work of Christ demands a genuine response, limits the unrestrained teaching of a universal granting of salvation.

Unrepeatable salvation While Pentecostal theology in the West finds many of its roots in Evangelical Protestantism, the movement also reveals close similarities with Roman Catholic aspects of soteriology. For Roman Catholics, the similarities lie in a shared rationale for salvation (sin and atonement), the realisation of salvation through the atonement ( Jesus Christ), and the extent of human participation (Christian initiation), although Pentecostal soteriology is more subjective and pneumatological (Vondey 2017a, 52). Del Colle (2003, 94) sees commonality in that “the Church exists in the outpouring of the Spirit into which believers are incorporated via the rite of Christian initiation (baptism/confirmation) for Catholics and conversion/Spiritbaptism for Pentecostals.” Both aspects involve a process that is not repeatable as “entrance 233

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into the journey toward Christian fullness” (94). If conversion (like water baptism) is an initial participation aimed eventually at the realisation of the fullness of salvation, then both traditions can agree that conversion (at least from the perspective of God) is not a repeatable practice. Similarly, Pentecostals would emphasise that once baptised in the Spirit, the believer may experience a refilling but not a renewed baptism. While Catholic soteriology relies primarily on sacramental practices, Pentecostals, however, emphasise the importance of continued transformation which relates the practices of salvation not only to the Incarnation and the cross but also to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Salvation as deification Similarities with Eastern Orthodoxy lie in the anticipated consequences of salvation, or sanctification, the process of becoming like Christ, otherwise known as theosis or deification. A comparison of Eastern Orthodox and classical Pentecostal theologies of sanctification can draw close parallels between the ways that each tradition places the transformation of the believer towards a more Christ-like state as central to the Christian life (Rybarczyk 2004). Despite differing context, anthropology, and soteriology, the significance of theosis as the ultimate goal of the believer for both groups is striking. Some have identified that Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity has aided the rise of deification as a dominant theme in the West (Bloor 2015). However, while Eastern Orthodox soteriology depends on sacerdotal and institutional practices, Pentecostal soteriology is more synergistic and personal (Vondey 2017a, 53). Still, drawing on Pentecostal notions of justification beyond traditional forensic models of the West, Pentecostals can view justification and sanctification as “two overlapping and mutually complementary lenses” rather than two “distinct stages or dimensions of one’s salvation” (Macchia 2010, 8). Hence, participation in the divine life can be seen as more than a supplementary stage following salvation (narrowly defined as justification); rather, Pentecostal theology can speak of salvation as deification made possible by God in the human response through the empowerment and sanctification of the Holy Spirit evident throughout the Christian life.

Conclusion Pentecostal theology is thoroughly soteriological, and salvation plays a central part in almost all aspects of Pentecostal beliefs and practices. Despite historical links with a limited soteriology in terms of justification, Pentecostal soteriology is now broadening its vision to allow for a representation of the wider scope of Pentecostal experiences. At the core of Pentecostal soteriology stands participation in the divine life reflecting a biblical narrative of holistic and persistent practices of transformation. Pentecostalism has always held a space in-between, walking a thin line between the earthly and the heavenly realms. In its soteriology, this threshold position is clearly present and at times leads to uncertainty and confusion. The theological reliance on a seemingly linear biblical narrative means that some elements of salvation can be missed from the story. Significantly, the possibility of losing one’s salvation (and the possible return to the faith) or of a non-linear progression of faith does not yet have a place in the soteriological discussion. It can be easy to ignore more complicated testimonies that involve triumph as well as lament, but without these the Pentecostal narrative will remain incomplete. There is a long way to go in presenting Pentecostal soteriology in a systematic way; nonetheless, the approach to salvation from the ground up and based first and foremost on encounter and transformation presents an important challenge. 234

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By  emphasising a holistic approach and commitment to salvation as the uniting of earth and heaven, Pentecostals have much to contribute to the broader understanding of salvation among the Christian traditions.

References Agana, Wilfred Asampambila. 2015. “Succeed Here and in Eternity:” The Prosperity Gospel in Ghana. Bern: Peter Lang. Alexander, Kimberly E. 2008. “Matters of Conscience, Matters of Unity, Matters of Orthodoxy: Trinity and Water Baptism in Early Pentecostal Theology and Practice.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 17 (1): 48–69. Archer, Kenneth J. 2004. “Nourishment for our Journey: The Pentecostal Via Salutis and Sacramental Ordinances.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 13 (1): 79–96. Assemblies of God (Great Britain), ed. 2018. “What we Believe.” Available at www.aog.org.uk/ about-us/what-we-believe, accessed 1 January 2019. Atkinson, William P. 2011. Baptism in the Spirit: Luke-Acts and the Dunn Debate. Eugene: Pickwick. Bae, Hyeon Sung. 2005. “Full Gospel Theology and a Korean Pentecostal Identity.” In Asian and Pentecostal: The Charismatic Face of Christianity in Asia, edited by Allan Anderson and Edmund Tang, 427–46. Oxford: Regnum. Bloor, Joshua D. A. 2015. “New Directions in Western Soteriology.” Theology 118 (3): 179–87. Bosch, David. 1991. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. Maryknoll: Orbis. Cartledge, Mark J. 2006. Encountering the Spirit: The Charismatic Tradition. London: Darton, Longman and Todd. Church of God in Christ. 2018. Statement of Faith. Available at www.cogic.org/about-company/ statement-of-faith, accessed 11 December 2018. Coulter, Dale. 2008. “‘Delivered by the Power of God:’ Toward a Pentecostal Understanding of Salvation.” International Journal of Systematic Theology 10 (4): 447–67. Davies, Andrew. 2009. “What Does It Mean to Read the Bible as a Pentecostal?” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 18: 216–29. Del Colle, Ralph. 2003. “Pentecostal/Catholic Dialogue: Theological Suggestions for Consideration.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 25 (1): 93–96. Elim Foursquare Gospel Alliance. Statement of Beliefs. Available at www.elim.org.uk/Articles/417857/ Our_Beliefs.aspx, accessed 11 December 2018. Gabaitse, Rosinah Mmannana. 2017. “Luke 4:18–19 and Salvation: Marginalization of Women in the Pentecostal Church in Botswana.” In So Great a Salvation: Soteriology in the Majority World, edited by Gene L. Grene, Stephen T. Pardue, and K. K. Yeo, 59–76. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Gause, R. Hollis. 1980. Living in the Spirit: The Way of Salvation. Cleveland: Pathway. Hejzlar, Pavel. 2013. “Two Paradigms for Divine Healing and Beyond.” Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 33 (2): 196–202. Lamp, Jeffrey S. 2014. “New Heavens and New Earth: Early Pentecostal Soteriology as a Foundation for Creation Care in the Present.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 36 (1): 64–80. Macchia, Frank D. 2007 “Finitum Capax Infiniti: A Pentecostal Distinctive?” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 29 (2): 185–87. ———. 2010. Justified in the Spirit: Creation, Redemption, and the Triune God. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Mbamalu, Abiola. 2015. “‘Prosperity a Part of the Atonement’: An Interpretation of 2 Corinthians 8:9.” Verbum et Ecclesia 36 (1): 1–8. McDonnell, Kilian, and George T. Montague. 1991. Christian Initiation and Baptism in the Holy Spirit: Evidence from the First Eight Centuries. Collegeville: Liturgical Press. Milton, Grace. 2015. Shalom, the Spirit and Pentecostal Conversion: A Practical-Theological Study. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2018. “‘All These Little Pushes and Nudges:’ Uncovering Ordinary Beliefs about God’s Activity in the Pre-Christian Life.” Practical Theology 12 (2): 120–32. Poloma, Margaret. 2009. “Pentecostal Prayer within the Assemblies of God: An Empirical Study.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 31 (1): 47–65. Pinnock, Clarke. 1996. Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit. Downers Grove: InterVarsity.

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22 SANCTIFICATION Becoming an icon of the Spirit through holy love Dale M. Coulter

The doctrine of sanctification has a troubled history among Pentecostals. Early in the movement, pioneering thinkers wrestled with a number of perspectives on sanctification that they had inherited from the late nineteenth-century Holiness Movement. Due to convergences between Methodists, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Presbyterians, there were differences in the theology and the moral psychology supporting the idea of sanctification. The differences between these perspectives move beyond the divisions into Keswick-Higher Life and Wesleyan streams. When the doctrine became reinforced by a rigid understanding of sanctified behavior, many Pentecostals began to reconsider the practice. These initial challenges become more difficult in light of the questions surrounding how to understand sanctification within a larger vision of salvation. How should one place sanctification in relationship to justification and regeneration (see Chapter 21), on the one hand, and baptism in the Spirit (see Chapter 23), on the other? What is the interrelationship between pardon, purity, and power, or, between the purifying and the empowering work of the Spirit? Answering these questions remains at the forefront of Pentecostal theological debates. The agenda for addressing sanctification is determined by its checkered past, and a recounting of its history is indispensable for an understanding of the doctrine. Pentecostal theology must reckon with its holiness heritage, especially the moral psychology that undergirded different approaches. In addition, Pentecostals must approach sanctification from the broader vision of salvation. By examining both the history of the doctrine and its locus within Pentecostal soteriology,  this chapter attempts to show that sanctification involves a holistic transformation of the person that enables a deeper participation in the divine nature of holy love. This argument does not mean that sanctification represents the entire way in which believers participate in God’s life, but that holiness serves as the crucial connector between initial union with God in regeneration and final union in glorification. I begin with a selective analysis of the history of the doctrine as it came to early Pentecostals, then focus on the Christological and pneumatological poles of sanctification, and conclude by locating its doctrinal impetus within the wider field of Pentecostal soteriology.

Phoebe Palmer’s shorter way When William J. Seymour (1870–1922) wrote that “we receive sanctification through the blood of Jesus” (Espinosa 2014, 165), he was echoing a holiness position that went back to 237

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Charles Finney (1792–1875), one of the leaders of the Second Great Awakening, and Phoebe Palmer (1807–74), one of the founders of the Holiness Movement. In conversation with Finney’s approach, Palmer developed a “shorter way” to holiness by reducing the pursuit of sanctification to three interrelated elements that formed the basis for her altar theology: consecration, faith, and sacrifice (White 1986, 9–66). Consecration and faith were two sides of the same volitional movement whereby the person trusts in God’s promises and surrenders oneself. A continuous act of surrender places the individual upon the altar, which brought about an entire consecration or sanctification (Palmer 1857, 4). Palmer retained the Wesleyan emphasis on salvation as renewal in the image of God by arguing that the blood of Christ both cleanses of guilt and washes from stain. For Palmer, holiness was a state of entire consecration that emerged from a life of complete devotion to God. Purity of intention resulted from a daily life of devotion through ongoing acts of surrender. The first step was to perceive and act upon the duty to consecrate all of one’s powers to God (Palmer 1843, 7–9). Duty followed from a newly awakened consciousness to the will of God in Scripture. Doing one’s duty was an act of covenant-making; it was to take a vow in one’s heart to be fully surrendered to Christ. As the second step, faith immediately follows the act of consecration. The person must trust the promises of scripture that God had accepted the act of consecration. Palmer followed Finney in claiming that faith is a volitional act rather than a feeling. The will orders the intellect toward God as the ultimate end, which causes the feelings to follow. Palmer also embraced Finney’s notion that feelings were involuntary and thus had no proper moral content. Instead, “true faith will produce feeling” (Palmer 1857, 23) by virtue of its reliance upon God as the final end. Faith is a volitional action leading to a state of mental repose that Palmer (1843, 49–53) and Finney (1839, 153–55) called the “rest of faith.” Palmer’s analysis allowed for purity of intention and virtue to be linked through volition. Unlike Wesley, virtue is not the result of ordered affections but precedes them (Knight 2014, 70–71). As the consent of the will, faith and consecration purify the mind by orienting it continuously to Christ who is the altar of the soul. Involuntary feelings become rightly ordered in the wake of this mental state of purified intention. Like Finney, Palmer connected virtue to intentionality, which is an internal disposition of entire consecration achieved and maintained through continuous acts of faith and surrender. Such a move allowed Palmer to sidestep the formation of affections as a prerequisite to entire sanctification and, instead, find a shorter way that allowed for the right ordering of feelings to flow from one’s volitional disposition toward Christ. There remained, however, the final step of an experiential encounter of assurance that Christ had accepted the sacrifice. Palmer moves into Wesleyan language of assurance and the witness of the Spirit to talk about emotions that correspond to entire consecration. This assurance is the seal of the Spirit beyond the assurance of regeneration. It is a conscious, abiding sense in the soul that God had consecrated the person and accepted the sacrificial gift in Christ. It was through this final step of assurance that the language of Spirit baptism associated with John Fletcher (1729–85) found its way into Palmer’s holiness theology. She came to associate the experience of assurance with the inward flow of the Spirit through a powerful outpouring of a new Pentecost. What Palmer bequeathed to the holiness movement of the late nineteenth century was a view of sanctification involving both a Christological and a pneumatological pole: the Christological pole was found in the sanctifying presence of the blood of Christ as believers laid themselves upon the altar. Seymour reflected this position when he claimed that the soul comes to Jesus on the altar to be sanctified through the atonement (Espinosa 2014, 165–66). 238

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The counterpart to the sanctified gift was the Pentecostal outpouring of the Spirit: the Spirit testifies to divine pardon and purity that come from the blood of Christ and empowers the person to bear witness to this new work of God. Both poles flow from the twin volitional movements of faith and consecration. For Palmer (1858, 43), the state of holiness was “the life of God in the soul of man.” She embraced spiritual experiences and followed Finney’s interpretation of Wesleyanism that the state of holiness was continuous faith and consecration, which, in turn, give rise to ongoing action in the world empowered by the Spirit. Virtue is a devotedness or intentionality purified by faith and consecration, and from this virtuous state feelings are oriented toward God. In this way, entire sanctification could occur in a single moment at an altar where the person consecrated and trusted God who received and poured out first the blood and then the Spirit. The soul also maintained a state of holiness by keeping the self upon the altar and under the blood.

The doctrinal poles of holiness theology While Palmer’s Christological and pneumatological poles help situate Seymour’s claim that sanctification is from Calvary and Spirit baptism from Pentecost, there are additional elements in the Pentecostal doctrine of sanctification that resulted from a fusion of Palmer’s approach with other advocates of Wesleyan holiness. The first is the way in which entire consecration became described as a powerful baptism in the Spirit, an image that became the common ground between Higher Life and Wesleyan advocates of sanctification because it allowed both to see holiness as a deeper immersion into the life of God (Coulter 2004, 65–92). Closely associated with this intersection was the way in which Christian perfection had to be defined over against other forms of perfection, such as “Adamic” (bodily) or eschatological perfection (see Chapter 25). This debate required both Wesleyans and Higher Life teachers to talk about perfect love in terms of mystical ecstasy, affective formation, and union with the divine. The result was that both sides came closer in their views that sanctification was a deeper experience of completion in Christ (see Chapter 20) that opened up new horizons for the believer. Palmer’s use of the imagery of Pentecost to describe the experience of assurance was not unique to her. By the time she had made the complete turn to baptism in the Spirit (1859), both Charles Finney and Thomas Upham (1799–1872) had already applied Fletcher’s use of Pentecost for entire sanctification to their theologies. Finney published a set of lectures in 1839 on the promises of God centered on 2 Peter 1:4 (Smith 1980 133–75). In the lectures he traced out a historical perspective on the Holy Spirit whereby the gospel dispensation fulfilled the promise to produce holiness of heart through the Spirit. To participate in the divine nature was to put on the moral perfections of God for which the Spirit was given as a gift. The “New Covenant is the effectual indwelling of the Spirit” (Smith 1980, 150) both in regeneration and in sanctification, but particularly in the latter, because sanctification produces the holiness of heart, epitomized by the Edwardsian understanding of disinterested benevolence, required to participate in God’s moral perfections. The outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost enabled believers to participate in the divine nature (see Chapter 19). Upham made similar claims, which became the basis for the development of Higher Life thought. He saw holiness as a condition of realizing “the full life of God in the soul” (Upham 1843, 22). The outpouring of divine life occurred through being “thoroughly purified from the stains of voluntary transgression” (23) by pure and perfect love. He placed Palmer’s three steps into a larger framework influenced by mystical streams. Upham saw the assurance of faith as how one entered fully into the state of entire sanctification. Through the complete 239

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surrender of the will to the presence of God, the Spirit’s operations in the soul are perfected as the person enters into a state of tranquility, which Upham saw as “regulated feeling” (230). As the perfection of love in ecstasy, Spirit baptism led to a kind of internal quietude resulting from the harmony and symmetry of emotions. Descending into the sepulcher with Christ, the soul begins to experience deeper visions amidst the vast ocean of divine love. For Upham, Spirit baptism was a step on the way to deeper union with God. Finney, Upham, and Palmer all impacted Higher Life proponents in their use of the language of Spirit baptism to talk about union with God and participation in the divine nature. The language of participation through moral perfection and ecstatic union also merged easily with Wesleyan soteriology. The basic Wesleyan paradigm of salvation had four components: conviction, conversion, completion, and consummation. Conviction occurred through prevenient grace, conversion through regenerating and justifying grace (pardon, regeneration, witness of the Spirit), completion or Christian perfection through sanctifying grace (purity and power), and consummation through glorification. However, Wesley himself had noted that all the works of grace were operations of the Spirit (Cragg 1989, 140). Moreover, in Augustinian fashion, these operations of the Spirit underscore a gradual deepening of love and reordering of human love as the means by which the image of God is restored. This view allowed for Wesleyans to see the journey from conviction to consummation as an operation of the Spirit through which the divine life of love entered, purified, and filled the soul. The Methodist theologian Daniel Steele (1824–1914) and the evangelist George Watson (1845–1924) both illustrate how the entire Christian life was a journey of deepening growth in love and thus a participation in the divine life. Steele (1875, 23–24) argued that regeneration entailed the implanting of divine life by the Spirit who spreads the love of God in the heart. Human love begins to be reordered as the response to the outpouring of divine love and the witness of the Spirit that the person has been adopted into the family of God. Sanctification continues the process of love unfolding in the soul. Dying to sin is a negative and destructive dimension that concludes with entire sanctification; whereas living for God is a positive and constructive process of spiritual adornment. In Steele’s hands, the Christological pole becomes synonymous with the negative work of removing all impurity or cleansing from the disease of sin and the pneumatological pole becomes the positive process of being filled with all of the fullness of God. Together, Christ, and the Spirit beautify the soul, adorning it with the multitude of graces that turned it into a temple. The interior harmony of perfect love replicates the triune harmony and beauty within. After cleansing and infilling, the person must seek to abide continuously in Christ to maintain a perfect love that dispels “every antagonistic affection” (Steele 1875, 62). The sanctified and Spirit baptized believer now possesses the Spirit as a permanent abiding presence of which there is ongoing conscious awareness. Faith is not simply a volitional act. Instead, Steele (1875, 132–33) understood faith to be a habit of mind that gave rise to a mental vision enlarged through love and spiritual intuitions, which resembled Wesley’s approach to faith as the summation of the spiritual senses. Steele also thought that Spirit baptism is not simply sanctifying grace but charismatic grace as well. By this point in the history of the Holiness Movement, most writers had come to the conclusion that the gospel dispensation was the age of the Spirit, and that this age meant the ongoing manifestation of the gifts of the Spirit. Such a conclusion was reached through the impact of the divine healing movement (see Chapter 24). Steele attempted to synthesize sanctifying and charismatic grace in Spirit baptism. The Spirit’s permanent endowment meant that the person could properly order affections and minister under an anointing and charismatic gifting. 240

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Watson (1891) operated in the same basic Wesleyan framework that in regeneration, the Spirit infused the divine affection of agape into the soul. This divine affection enkindled a passion for Christ and a yearning for the divine beyond what natural affection in all of its forms could produce (Watson 1891, 1–2). It begins in regeneration and reaches its crest in the Pentecostal baptism of the Spirit. Watson states, it is poured like a cataract upon the world through the atonement. It is opened up in our hearts in regeneration; and under the Pentecostal baptism of the Holy Ghost it rises to high tide, filling the banks of our being till the heart, the speech, the intellectual faculties, and all the inner senses are deluged with its holy energy. (3) The holy energy of divine love makes possible the volitional activity of human love. Growth in knowledge accompanied the infusion of divine affection. Divine love brings a spiritual cognizance that revitalizes the heart. Watson thought that when God begins to revive the heart, the person will start to receive interior revelations in a manner akin to sensory knowledge. The interior, spiritual senses become conduits of divine knowledge because holy love has attuned the person to the things of God: the more full the love, the more complete the knowledge. Watson (1891, 5) suggests that love comes before knowledge because “love is the alchemy that transmutes revealed truth into experience.” Love sharpens and clarifies vision like putting on a pair of glasses; it is the medium by which we see holiness. Watson (1891) differentiated between three types of knowledge: instinctive, rational, and intuitive knowledge. Instinctive knowledge flows from the sensory impressions that all animals possess. Rational knowledge is through deliberation. Intuitive knowledge is an immediate awareness of a truth like a person’s consciousness of his or her own existence or mortality. When the Holy Spirit opens the spiritual senses, intuitive knowledge emerges from a direct awareness of and revelatory insight into the things of God. Divine love produces an immediate consciousness that the person is a child of God in regeneration. In this sense, the outpouring of divine love clarifies the vision of God in the soul. This is Watson’s understanding of the cultivation of the sensus fidei, which is the personal vision of the faith that emerges from the Spirit’s internal operation. The formation of spiritual senses becomes part of the sanctifying work of the Spirit, which result in revelatory insights into scripture. A relational epistemology grounds this intuitive approach to knowledge: one knows in the context of a relational connection to the self or to God. It is love’s knowledge (Nussbaum 1990, 261–85). This intuitive knowledge forms the basis for the Pentecostal claim, “I know that I know that I know.” By the end of the nineteenth century, the basic approach to sanctification was that holiness involved the reception of divine life through the outpouring of love. After love takes root in conversion, the person enters the way of holiness by faith and consecration. At the same time, there were disagreements in moral psychology that included the role of the will and whether the emotions were cognitive or not. Nevertheless, all agreed that holiness brought a purity and power from which love flowed in the spiritual experience of assurance and enabled the believer to dispel wayward feelings and emotions. The negative dimension of sanctification became associated with the cleansing blood of Christ and the positive with the promise of the Father. As medical knowledge increased, Methodist theologians like Steele noted that the perfect love of Spirit baptism did not deliver from sudden anxiety or feelings of inadequacy. Since dreams were connected to bodily states, the person could also still experience improper dreams as well as wandering thoughts. Even among Wesleyans 241

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who advocated the eradication of inbred sin, such a state did not preclude what had been traditionally understood as forms of vice or aspects of the seven deadly sins by early church theologians. This understanding was possible because Christian perfection was an internal state of the soul that rested in divine love, which, in turn, facilitated the ongoing upward movement in the divine life. It is this theological framework that Pentecostals adopted and developed. Ultimately, the Christological and pneumatological poles of sanctification found expression in the three dominant metaphorical descriptions Pentecostals adopted of the Christian life: (1) The Christian life is a movement from Egypt to the Promised Land through the wilderness facilitated by the Spirit who poured out the love of God. (2) As a gradual progression from the formation of Christ in the soul to Christ being crowned within, the Christian life is also architectonic: ontological change comes through the organic process of soul construction and virtue formation. (3) The transformation of a person into a member of the bride of Christ through the operations of the Spirit in the soul (Taylor 1908) means that the Christian life is an aesthetic (see Chapter 31). In Seymour’s words, holiness is the church’s only ornament (Espinosa 2014, 219). By juxtaposing these three symbols for the Christian life, Pentecostal thought overcame the association of the Christological pole with the negative dimension and the pneumatological pole with the positive dimension of sanctification. It is the effort to hold together the negative and positive dimensions of sanctification that stands behind the so-called Finished Work debate and a theology of sanctification often associated with the Reformed stream of Pentecostalism. A close reading of William Durham (1873–1912) suggests that he took Palmer’s Christological and pneumatological poles to the extreme, associating the former with conversion and the finished work of Calvary and the latter with Spirit baptism. His collapse of the negative dimension into conversion stemmed from his desire to see regeneration as involving full identification with Christ. Christ finished the work of saving us, and the Holy Spirit reveals this work to us, when we are under the conviction for sin. When we accept Christ He saves us from all sin. The blessed Holy Spirit, Who is the third Person of the Godhead, comes to dwell within us in the second great experience which is the baptism of the Holy Spirit. (Durham 1911, 6) Durham bifurcated the negative and positive dimensions of sanctification to the point of claiming that the Spirit was not received until Spirit baptism. This was a move into a more juridical framework, possibly stemming from the finished work position that many Plymouth Brethren had been advancing. Later Assemblies of God (USA) teaching adapted Durham’s approach by connecting the Christological pole to positional sanctification and the pneumatological pole to practical or progressive sanctification (Pearlman 1937, 249–67; Horton 1987, 105–35). The blood of Christ cleansed and set apart the believer at conversion, resulting in positional perfection, whereas the Spirit enabled the believer to progress in holiness to realize experiential perfection. Regardless, Durham’s bifurcation set the stage for the emergence of a Oneness doctrine of baptism in Jesus’ name as full identification with Christ followed by Spirit baptism (see Chapter 18). The Christological and pneumatological poles were held together liturgically while being separated theologically and experientially. Despite his bifurcation of the negative and positive dimensions, Durham (1911, 6–7) retained the idea that regeneration concerned the impartation of divine life. Following complete identification with Christ in conversion, the believer must remain in that state through a continuous yielding of his or her consecrated faculties to God. Conversion and Spirit 242

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baptism constitute the impartation of God’s life and the sealing of the believer in that life. A spark of the Augustinian-Wesleyan stream remained in Durham that located the outpouring of life in the presence of purifying and empowering love. One finds this also in E. N. Bell (1914, 3), first general chairman of the Assemblies of God, who insisted that the love the Spirit birthed bears witness that the believer is a child of God by being born again, by having it increased through the baptism in the Spirit, by putting away all division and strife and walking generally by the rule of love, specifically by loving brethren and walking in special love for them and by keeping God’s word. The emergence of sanctification as a Pentecostal doctrine and its different articulations in the movement today are a consequence of both the similarities and differences of the historical developments that have influenced classical Pentecostalism since the beginning of the twentieth century.

Sanctification as Pentecostal doctrine Classical Pentecostals inherited the tensions in developing a doctrine of sanctification from the Holiness Movement. The negative side of cleansing from the disease of sin had been strongly associated with a Christological pole in tension with the perfection of love interpreted through a pneumatological pole. Under the weight of their own exploration of Scripture, many Pentecostals retained the relationship between negative and positive by separating entire sanctification from Spirit baptism. Pentecostals also had to wrestle with the moral psychology that connected faith with volition and its tension with faith as encompassing the spiritual senses. These concerns also related to whether emotions were involuntary movements of feelings that came to be associated more and more with the body or whether they were affections that formed the very essence of volition. Pentecostal theologians have further developed the view that sanctification is deeper participation in the divine nature through holy love (Green 2013; Yong 2014, 59–74). As an ecstatic state of resting in the beloved, sanctification opens up the spiritual senses and prepares the soul to be a divine habitation of the glory of the Lord. In this sense, sanctification connects the initial outpouring of love in regeneration with the divine habitation of glory in Spirit baptism (Vondey 2017, 65, 99). Unfortunately, some Pentecostals have expanded Spirit baptism in a way that renders sanctification inconsequential (see Macchia 2006, 28– 33; Castelo 2017, 126–57). One cannot understand the Pentecostal approach to sanctification apart from situating it within the broad Wesleyan framework whereby the operations of the Spirit restore fully the image of God and turn the believer into the bride of Christ in anticipation of eschatological union and vision (Taylor 1908, 13–23). In short, holy love beautifies and adorns, turning the believer into an icon of the Spirit who radiates the glory received in Spirit baptism. By situating sanctification within a Wesleyan framework, classical Pentecostals intuitively understand it as requiring ontological change (see Rybarczyk 2004, 213–39; Castelo 2012, 83–105; Vondey 2017, 72–73). What historians of Pentecostalism have called the full gospel (see Chapter 16) is a way early Pentecostals described Wesley’s view that modes of grace are operations of the Spirit (Dayton 1987). There is a clear correlation between the Wesleyan paradigm of conviction, conversion, completion, and consummation and the full gospel of Jesus as savior, sanctifier, Spirit baptizer, healer, and coming king. What is disguised in the five-fold paradigm, however, is the early Pentecostal insistence that ­sanctification and healing are manifestations of the sanctifying grace of God. For Seymour, the 243

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atonement was also “for the sanctification of our bodies from inherited disease” (Espinosa 2014, 165). When one locates healing under sanctification, it becomes clear that this operation of the Spirit involves a holistic transformation that begins in regeneration and prepares the soul for the proleptic realization of glorification in Spirit baptism. The Pentecostal understanding of sanctification entails an ontological change in the whole person. Such a change suggests that Pentecostals operate with an understanding of the affections as the integrating center of the human person. Most early Pentecostals retained the holiness idea that sanctification produces unity: the work of divine love produces internal rest and peace by reordering the affections in such a way as to enable the person to love God and neighbor. On this view, the affections are the various expressions of the will in action. Contemporary thinkers have emphasized that affections are dispositional (Land 1993, 136); that is to say, they are movements that originate in and thus constitute the will. The will and its affective movements impact cognitive and bodily movements. Likewise, thoughts and bodily appetites such as the physiological drive to eat impact the will. As the completion of love in the soul, sanctification concerns the Spirit’s rectification of human desires and affections toward God. The term “perfection” points toward both a mystical state and a moral state. The former trades on the dynamic of encounter at an altar as the person is caught up in the divine embrace (Vondey 2017, 73–81), which instantly focuses the affections toward God. The latter builds on the encounter through a discipleship process in which the affections take on a Christomorphic orientation that enables the person to address disordered desires as they emerge (Green 2013). Virtues result from affections being ordered toward God and neighbor precisely as the person is being formed into Christ through the Spirit (Green 2015, 26–38). The soul’s adornment with the virtues of ordered affectivity crowns Christ within. The Pentecostal understanding of sanctification attempts to maintain the tension between the crisis of ecstatic embrace and union with the process of virtue formation (Land 1993, 117–34; Castelo 2012, 59–82). In both, the affections remain central. The ontological change of sanctification occurs in the heart and works outward through the reason and the body to unify the person so that sanctified believers can become unified with others and with God. Second, sanctification is not simply an internal work. As a distinct movement in the way, it requires cooperation with God (Coulter 2008). The Pentecostal theology of sanctification continues the Wesleyan understanding of synergism as comprising mutual reciprocity between the divine and the human with the initiative of that reciprocity always from the divine side. Synergism entails conscious choices to follow Christ in light of the divine initiative of the Spirit. This is why Pentecostals can conceive of sanctification as an awakening to God that opens up the spiritual senses of the soul. To taste the goodness of Christ in the context of sensing the love of the Spirit creates a spiritual hunger for the Father. The spiritual senses are awakened in the context of encounter with the triune God (Rice 2013, 145–70). The soul that becomes conscious of God’s presence and will is now in a position to cooperate with God. The entire work of sanctification creates the context for deeper cooperation through deeper union. Because sanctification involves works of piety and mercy, there is a sacramental and performative dimension (Yong 2014, 126–30) to the Pentecostal approach. The adjectives point toward what Wesley identified as the means of grace, such as praying, the study of scripture, feeding and clothing the poor, or any number of Christian practices. All practices are sacramental and performative insofar as they have the potential to become a locus of sanctifying grace as the Spirit reorders the affections and illumines the mind through the practice. Yet Pentecostals retain a special place for “covenant-making” practices that renew and reinforce one’s vows to the Lord and to the community (Castelo 2013, 229). Palmer’s emphasis on 244

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faith, consecration, and sacrifice upon the altar remains central to the Pentecostal ethos (Vondey 2017, 60–67). Revivals, camp meetings, services of foot washing, and watch night services, usually accompanied by a time of communal fellowship, were special times set apart for consecration and renewal of the covenant. To come down to the altar in a Pentecostal service means a movement to renew one’s covenant with God, a new level of consecration as the person tarried before the Lord for his work of deliverance and union. The reciprocity between acts of consecration and encounters with grace fuels the sanctified life, prompting the claim of the possibility of internal perfection through post-conversion crisis experiences (Pearlman 1937, 266). The sacramental aspect of sanctification is another way Pentecostals take seriously the idea that sanctification involves holistic transformation. Third, Pentecostals seek to resolve the tension between the negative and positive sides of sanctification by grounding both aspects in the divine bestowal of love. Negatively, salvation concerns the healing of the soul through pardon from guilt and purification from the disease of sin. All Pentecostals see this healing as beginning in conversion through regeneration and initial sanctification, which are grounded in the blood of Christ and work of the Spirit in order to position the believer as a child of God. This healing unfolds through ongoing moments of deliverance made possible by the Spirit’s outpouring of love (the positive side). There is a kind of dialectic between deliverance (the negative) and growth (the positive) that form the basis for the progressive dimension of sanctification. The former entails emptying and dying, curing, cleansing, and liberating the person, whereas the latter involves filling and being made alive, forming, adorning, beautifying, and maturing. The infusion of divine love holds both sides of salvation together in the Pentecostal imagination.

Conclusion Sanctification grounds participation in God’s life in the divine sharing of holiness, which heals the whole person and restores the divine image in anticipation of becoming an icon of the loving harmony central to the triune being. Sanctification concerns the formation of Christ within so that the person becomes a living icon of the Spirit through the outpouring of divine glory in Spirit baptism. Pentecostals can frame Spirit baptism in terms of the descent of the glory of the Lord upon the soul and a proleptic realization of the final state of beatification. Sanctification is necessary both as the preparation for the descent of glory and the power to abide continuously in the presence of the Spirit. The ontological change initiated by the Spirit’s outpouring of love in regeneration begins a process of formation of the affections into the shape of Christ. The sanctified person becomes an icon of the Spirit through renewal into the image of Christ. Cooperation with the Spirit through works of mercy and piety fuels the process. In the midst of this process, the Spirit catches the person up ecstatically and orients the affections to God. For Pentecostals, this encounter usually occurs as they consecrate themselves afresh by laying their lives upon the altar of God. In this way, the sanctified Christian becomes a member of the body of Christ who then participates in the mission of Christ in the fullness of holiness and charismatic grace.

References Castelo, Daniel. 2012. Revisioning Pentecostal Ethics: The Epicletic Community. Cleveland: CPT Press. ———. 2013. “A Holy Reception Can Lead to a Holy Future.” In A Future for Holiness: Pentecostal Explorations, edited by Lee Roy Martin, 225–35. Cleveland: CPT Press. ———. 2017. Pentecostalism as a Christian Mystical Tradition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

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Dale M. Coulter Coulter, Dale M. 2004. Holiness: The Beauty of Perfection. Cleveland: Pathway. ———. 2008. “‘Delivered by the Power of God:” Toward a Pentecostal Understanding of Salvation.” International Journal of Systematic Theology 10 (4): 447–67. Cragg, Gerald R., ed. 1989. The Works of John Wesley. Vol. 2. The Appeals to Men of Reason and Religion and Certain Related Open Letters. Nashville: Abingdon Press. Bell, Eudorus N. 1914. “Believers in Sanctification.” The Christian Evangel 59 (September 19): 3. Dayton, Donald W. 1987. Theological Roots of Pentecostalism. Peabody: Hendrickson. Durham, William H. 1911. “Two Great Experiences or Gifts.” Pentecostal Testimony 1 (8): 6–7. Espinosa, Gastón. 2014. William J. Seymour and the Origins of Global Pentecostalism: A Biography and Documentary History. Durham: Duke University Press. Finney, Charles. 1839. “The Rest of Faith, Part I.” Oberlin Evangelist 1 (20): 153–55. Green, Chris E. 2013. “‘Not I, but Christ.’ Holiness, Conscience, and the (Im)possibility of Community.” In A Future for Holiness: Pentecostal Explorations, edited by Lee Roy Martin, 127–44. Cleveland: CPT Press. ———. 2015. Sanctifying Interpretation: Vocation, Holiness, and Scripture. Cleveland: CPT Press. Horton, Stanley. 1987. “The Pentecostal Perspective.” In Five Views on Sanctification, edited by Stanley N. Gundrey, 105–35. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Knight, Henry H. 2014. Anticipating Heaven Below: Optimism of Grace from Wesley to the Pentecostals. Eugene: Cascade. Land, Steven Jack. 1993. Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom. JPT Supplement 1. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Macchia, Frank D. 2006. Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Nussbaum, Martha. 1990. Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Palmer, Phoebe. 1843. The Way of Holiness. New York: Piercy and Reed. ———. 1857. Entire Devotion to God. Revised edition. London: Heylin. ———. 1858. Incidental Illustrations of the Economy of Salvation, its Doctrines and Duties. London: Alexander Heylin. Pearlman, Myer. 1937. Knowing the Doctrines of the Bible. Springfield: Gospel Publishing House. Rice, Monte Lee. 2013. “The Pentecostal Triple Way: An Ecumenical Model of the Pentecostal Via Salutis and Soteriological Experience.” In A Future for Holiness: Pentecostal Explorations, edited by Lee Roy Martin, 145–70. Cleveland: CPT Press. Rybarczyk, Edmund J. 2004. Beyond Salvation: Eastern Orthodoxy and Classical Pentecostalism on Becoming Like Christ. Milton Keynes: Paternoster. Smith, Timothy L. ed. 1980. Charles G. Finney on Christian Holiness: The Promise of the Spirit. Minneapolis: Bethany Publishers. Steele, Daniel. 1875. Love Enthroned. Boston: Nelson and Phillips. Taylor, George F. 1908. The Spirit and the Bride: A Scripture Presentation of the Operations, Manifestations, Gifts, and Fruit of the Holy Spirit in His Relation to His Bride. Philadelphia: Winston Publishing Co. Watson, George. 1891. Love Abounding. Boston: McDonald, Gill, and Co. White, Charles. 1986. The Beauty of Holiness: Phoebe Palmer as Theologian, Revivalist, Feminist, and Humanitarian. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. Upham, Thomas. 1843. Principles of the Interior or Hidden Life. Boston: King. Vondey, Wolfgang. 2017. Pentecostal Theology: Living the Full Gospel. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. Yong, Amos. 2014. Renewing Christian Theology: Systematics for a Global Christianity. Waco: Baylor University Press.

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23 SPIRIT BAPTISM Initiation in the fullness of God’s promises Frank D. Macchia

The baptism in the Holy Spirit became an issue of ecumenical significance largely through the importance granted to this doctrine by the global Pentecostal movement. Questions can be raised about the meaning of this doctrine in the life and practice of the church. What is the significance of this theme for Christian faith and life? What is its relationship to water baptism? What is its relationship to other practices such as the Lord’s Supper, the charismatic life of the church, and its mission? How does one account for the fact that Spirit baptism in Acts is received as a mighty experience that empowers witness and expands the missionary reach of the church, and yet, today, we witness far too little evidence of this effect? In attempting to answer such questions, this chapter examines this distinctly Pentecostal theme in the light of ecumenical responses so as to arrive at a proposal that is open-ended and eschatological in orientation. I begin by detailing the challenges of Spirit baptism, then discuss some ecumenical responses, and conclude with a constructive engagement of the biblical roots.

The challenges of Spirit baptism in the Pentecostal renewal The baptism in the Holy Spirit is arguably the “crown jewel” of Pentecostal spirituality (Macchia 2006, 20). Classical Pentecostalism has focused on the experiential value of Spirit baptism, which has been the source of its greatest challenge as a movement. This concern had its roots in the Holiness Movement and its larger setting in modern revivalism, which had as its goal the awakening of a sleeping church to a deeper experience of faith (see Chapter 22). Bringing together Wesley’s quest for Christian perfection and the revivalist emphasis on dramatic awakenings, the Holiness movement came to view “entire sanctification” as a baptism in the Holy Spirit (Dayton 1987, Dieter 1996). Following Acts 15:9, the passion was for Christians at some point after regeneration to attain a thorough purification of their wills or desires through a deeper infilling of the Holy Spirit. The Pentecostal movement launched from the conviction that entire sanctification was not Spirit baptism but rather a preparation for it. The common Pentecostal explanation of this conviction maintained that the human heart must be purified from anything that contradicts the love of Christ in order to be filled with the Spirit. Spirit baptism for Pentecostals was positively geared more toward an intense awareness of the Spirit’s presence to empower Christian ministry and witness (following Acts 1:8). Though the sanctified life was cherished by all Pentecostals in the early decades 247

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of the movement, not everyone saw the need for an experience of entire sanctification as a preparation for Spirit baptism. Those who entered the Pentecostal revival from outside of the Holiness Movement understood sanctification as a gradual growth in Christ (see Chapter 22). Hence, anyone who is regenerated by the Spirit may immediately begin to seek the experience of the baptism in the Holy Spirit (Macchia 2006, 28–32). The Pentecostal emphasis on the experience of Spirit baptism was part of a deeply held restorationist impulse: the goal was to recapture the powerful primitive church depicted in the New Testament. There was also a strong eschatological fervency at work. The effort to recapture the powerful witness of the primitive church was motivated by the urgency of the need to missionize the world before Christ’s soon return. The church was thought to need a charismatically rich ministry that includes extraordinary signs and wonders to overcome the dark forces and to prepare for the soon-coming kingdom of God (Faupel 1996). Christians are to be “filled” to overflowing with the Spirit and empowered to serve by experiencing the baptism in the Spirit as the church did in the book of Acts. Pentecostals are known to have focused on speaking with tongues as the characteristic sign of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Classically, the argument was taken from the precedent believed to have been established in the book of Acts. Speaking with tongues was a prominent sign of the Spirit’s reception in Acts 2:4 and provided the physical (observable) link to the experience of the Spirit by the gentiles in Acts 10:46 and 19:6. The desire to focus on tongues rather than water baptism as the physical link among different communities in their reception of the Spirit (e.g. Acts 2:38, 10:47, 19:5) reveals the Pentecostal penchant to look for charismatic signs rather than sacred rites to confirm spiritual experience. The challenge from non-Pentecostals that glossolalia was only described by Paul as one spiritual gift among others (1 Cor. 12:30) was usually met by making a distinction between tongues as a sign of the experience of Spirit baptism (potentially universal) and tongues as a gift to be exercised in church for the edification of others (not exercised by all) (see Macchia 1998). Part of the ambiguity of the Pentecostal accent on tongues had to do with how the practice was understood. Some pointed to Acts 2 in viewing the practice as the miraculous ability to preach the gospel in foreign tongues without first learning the language. Over time, most Pentecostals favored the more Pauline understanding of tongues as an unintelligible form of communication only understandable through a Spirit-inspired interpretation (1 Cor. 14:1–15). Some concluded that even in Acts tongues was not preaching in foreign languages. Their comprehension in Acts 2 may have come from a unique miracle of hearing (Everts 1994). There was also uncertainty among Pentecostals as to how much importance to place on tongues (see Chapter 28). Some Pentecostals emphasized the practice, while others not so much. Some saw the practice as necessary to the experience of Spirit baptism, while others did not. Jack Hayford, for example, viewed Spirit baptism as opening up the capacity for speaking with tongues among believers, but whether or not the capacity is used is not necessary to Spirit baptism (Hayford 1996, 96). Arising from an experience that is deeper than rational thought or expression, tongues for Pentecostals convey a sense of immediacy in one’s experience of God, in a way similar to how we experience God in the sacraments (Kelsey 1964; Macchia 1996). As a revival experience, the baptism in the Holy Spirit among most Pentecostals was typically distinguished from Christian initiation. Harold Hunter (1983) has done the most thorough work explaining this position and applying it to the history of the church’s understanding of the reception of the Spirit. This idea is sometimes called the doctrine of subsequence, supporting the idea that Spirit baptism is an experience that is subsequent to 248

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the reception of the Spirit at Christian initiation. The problem here is that Pentecostals had not shown in their exegesis of any single text explicit evidence of a two-fold reception of the Spirit. Roger Stronstad (1984) and Robert Menzies (1991) conceded that neither Luke nor Paul assumes a two-fold reception of the Spirit, but they find in their exegesis that Luke and Paul mean something different by this reception. Relying on the fact that there is diversity in New Testament pneumatology, they argue that Luke’s understanding of Spirit baptism is uniquely charismatic, tied to prophetic, or (more broadly) charismatic empowerment. Paul’s understanding of Spirit baptism by contrast is salvific, tied to union with Christ by faith. In their views, the distinction between the two receptions of the Spirit is to be legitimized by comparing Luke with Paul. Menzies (2013, 33) even goes so far as to say that there are two separate Spirit baptisms in the New Testament, Paul’s is salvific and initiatory, and Luke’s is charismatic and implicitly subsequent. In a sense, their conclusion is the result of a Pentecostal synthesis of two different canonical voices, the result of systematic theology rather than New Testament exegesis. But are their exegesis and systematic conclusion convincing? There is no question that there are differing pneumatological accents between Luke and Paul, and that Luke’s understanding of Spirit baptism is uniquely charismatic (and missional) in emphasis. But to say that Luke’s understanding of the gift of the Spirit is not salvific in significance cannot be sustained (Acts 11:18; 15:9). Moreover, even if Luke’s understanding of Spirit baptism were exclusively charismatic or missional, one still needs to justify theologically combining it with Paul’s notion in a way that leads to two distinct receptions of the Spirit in the life of the church. Why not simply add Luke’s charismatic understanding of Spirit baptism to Paul’s salvific understanding without bifurcating the two views into separate receptions? After all, Christian initiation also involves the Christian’s ordination to service. Baptism is the ordination ceremony of every Christian. The most significant exception to the Pentecostal doctrine of subsequence is the view of Spirit baptism held by Oneness Pentecostals (see Chapter 18). Oneness theology, from the early decades of the Pentecostal movement, followed the historic position of the churches in viewing Spirit baptism as initiatory or as anchored in the reception of the Spirit through faith and water baptism, except only valid if done in Jesus’ name. Moreover, Oneness Pentecostals still held to the Pentecostal emphasis on Spirit baptism as a powerful experience of the Spirit, involving also the sign as speaking with tongues. The result is a view of Christian conversion that is characterized by a deeply experiential encounter with the Spirit. In fact, Oneness Pentecostals even regard speaking with tongues as a necessary sign of conversion. To avoid limiting global Christianity to tongue speakers, some Oneness Pentecostals have made a distinction between those who receive the Spirit by faith without baptism in Jesus’ name and speaking with tongues and those who receive the Spirit with these signs. The former are said to have experienced “salvation” while the latter the “fullness” of salvation in power (Fudge 2003). Here too, the Pentecostal passion is for the experience of Spirit baptism as a transformative power in life and witness.

Ecumenical responses to Pentecostals on Spirit baptism Pentecostals have accented the experiential and practical challenge of Spirit baptism for the churches, and they have received some recognition for this goal from outside of the movement. Kilian McDonnell, a Catholic theologian who has for decades been a valuable dialogue partner for Pentecostals, showed that in the first eight centuries of the church, Spirit baptism as received in the larger initiatory rite of water baptism was typically thought to include the 249

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spiritual gifting of the initiate (Montague and McDonnell 1991). Though a spiritual gift was not necessarily manifested at that moment, it was still something expected. McDonnell thus sees a spiritually gifted and empowered church as an important consequence of Spirit baptism. At the same time, Spirit baptism in McDonnell’s view is mediated through the sacraments of initiation (especially water baptism, but also confirmation and Eucharist). He bases this conviction on Jesus’ reception of the Spirit at his own baptism. As Jesus received the Spirit at his baptism, so also are Christians initiated to Christ by the Spirit through baptism. Hence, although McDonnell respects Pentecostalism for urging the church to give itself over to the release of the Spirit, the baptism in the Spirit is not for him reducible to such a release. Granted in the rites of initiation, Spirit baptism belongs to all Christians and not only to those who have had some kind of dramatic breakthrough in the spiritual life (as valuable as that is). A helpful qualification of McDonnell’s view is the one offered by the Catholic Charismatic Donald Gelpi (1976, 150–51). He holds that Spirit baptism does not take place within the rites of initiation; it is rather the other way around. The rites of initiation take place within Spirit baptism eschatologically understood, to facilitate its initial onset. There is thus room in Gelpi’s view for a Pentecostal charismatic awakening as a genuine realization of Spirit baptism in the life of believers (Yun 2003, 85–97). Another significant dialogue partner for Pentecostals is evangelical New Testament scholar, James D. G. Dunn. Like McDonnell, he credits Pentecostals with a valuable emphasis on the experiential and practical outcome of Spirit baptism. He recognizes that all too often the church in the West has neglected the life-transforming power of the Spirit in all areas, including the church’s charismatic life. Dunn points out that the life of the Spirit reflected in the New Testament is more richly experiential than what many in the mainline churches have come to expect (Dunn 1970, 224–29). Yet Dunn, like McDonnell, faults Pentecostals for neglecting the initiatory significance of Spirit baptism in the New Testament. In Dunn’s exegesis, Spirit baptism occurs when the Spirit is received at the moment of faith. Focusing on faith as the moment of reception means that Dunn also criticizes the sacramental understanding of Spirit baptism as reflected in McDonnell’s view. Dunn claims that the New Testament does not tie the reception of the Spirit to water baptism as integrally as the sacramental approach to the issue assumes. For example, John’s Gospel does not even mention Jesus’ baptism, focusing entirely on the arrival of the Spirit in its depiction of Jesus’ installation as the Spirit Baptizer. And Acts does not assume that the Spirit is bestowed to culminate a rite of initiation. Spirit baptism for Dunn occurs as the crowning moment of one’s acceptance of the gospel by faith. Water baptism brings repentance and faith to ritual expression (Dunn 1970), but the reception of the Spirit may occur without it. Yet, if the rites of initiation bring faith to ritual expression, do they not in some sense mediate the appropriation of Spirit baptism as a gift from God? Dunn does have difficulty sustaining his “faith alone” argument when exegeting Romans 6:4. This text states that we were buried with Christ “through baptism,” which, on its face, implies that in the baptismal rite the Christian joins himself to Christ by the Spirit in leaving the sinful and condemned life behind. Dunn (1970, 105) concedes that if this text were the only one on the role of water baptism in Spirit baptism, the sacramental approaches to the issue would be fundamentally correct. Perhaps one could say that Spirit baptism is appropriated by faith, which is expected to be ritually expressed in water baptism, but that faith in the gospel is the only indispensable element in this appropriation. The obvious question that arises here overall in response to the Pentecostal understanding of Spirit baptism has to do with the role of experience. Can a church be regarded as lacking Spirit baptism if it does not display the power or extraordinary charismata typical of churches 250

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in the book of Acts? If so, how many Pentecostal churches would be disqualified! In the New Testament, Spirit baptism received by faith involved a powerfully transformative experience. But was it always so obvious? Is it not possible that Luke dots the landscape of his narrative with the most dramatic experiences of the Spirit known to him in order to make a point about how the Spirit at decisive points mightily broke through barriers in order to further the mission of the church? Though Spirit baptism is realized at times as a dramatic charismatic awakening, Spirit baptism cannot be reduced to such an experience. Arguably lacking in the Pentecostal understanding of Spirit baptism is the nature of this gift as given objectively to faith in the context of Christian initiation. McDonnell’s distinction between Spirit baptism as initiatory and as experienced or released in life is helpful for Pentecostal theology. He was fond of saying that Pentecostals were “theologically incorrect” by failing to understand Spirit baptism as objectively given in Christian initiation; but they were “experientially correct” in calling the church to a release of this powerful gift in the charismatic life of the church (Montague and McDonnell 1991, 339–49). Interestingly, a number of Charismatics who belong to the mainline church had adopted something similar to McDonnell’s proposal. Though this is not the only understanding of Spirit baptism shared among charismatics, it has become dominant among them (Lederle 1988, 150–51). Even a number of classical Pentecostals of late have begun to adopt it, though typically within an evangelical framework that emphasizes the act of faith rather than the sacraments of initiation as the moment of Spirit baptism (Macchia 2006, 77). McDonnell and Dunn both have helpfully recognized the value of the Pentecostal emphasis on the experiential and practical outcomes of Spirit baptism. There is indeed such a thing as the experience of the baptism in the Holy Spirit that is worthy of discussion and exploration in the churches. If Spirit baptism involves a conversion to God, does it not also involve a “conversion” to others in fulfillment of God’s cause in the world? Is it not possible for there to be a time of preparation prior to the conscious experience of the latter? Perhaps one could call the Pentecostal urging for Christians to come to the altar to pray for an experience of Spirit baptism a “second conversion” (see Chapter 16) And how can one but affirm this urging for Christians to claim their prophetic anointing as a conscious turn toward blessing others (see Chapter 28). The experience of Spirit baptism as a charismatic awakening brings with it an awareness that all Christians are anointed of the Spirit to be a disciple in the image of Jesus and to exercise a spiritual gift that will allow them to make a unique contribution to the building up of the church in the love of Christ. In a church much too filled with “benchwarmers,” is there not an urgent need for the Pentecostal call for the church to experience the baptism in the Holy Spirit in a consciously intentional way? Should we not open space in the church’s liturgy for this?

A constructive proposal The ecumenical dialogue partners to Pentecostals have helped them arrive at a more biblical and ecumenically relevant understanding of Spirit baptism. What follows is a brief constructive proposal in the light of their insights based on the roots of Spirit baptism in the Old Testament and a reading of the New Testament as the fulfillment of God’s promise of the Spirit.

Old Testament roots The baptism in the Holy Spirit has deep Old Testament roots: God created humanity a living soul by the Spirit of God for communion with God (Gen. 2:7). That same Spirit of life and 251

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communion is the key to redemption and renewal. In Ezekiel 36, the gift of the Spirit is said to one day cause Israel to live according to the Law (which is at its core love for God), thereby replacing their past profaning of God’s name before the nations with a witness before them of righteousness and truth (vv. 22–27). Ezekiel connects this spiritual renewal to a return to the Land of promise (v. 28), making this return more than a physical phenomenon but a spiritual one as well. Ezekiel 37 has God raise Israel up from the dust of hopelessness to new life filled with fresh hope for the future. As N. T. Wright (2017) has maintained, there is thus a sense in which the return from exile in the Israelite mind and soul is still incomplete and open ended at the time of Jesus. It will occur in an end-time experience of restoration in the life of the Spirit. Joel indicates that the last days will involve a significant outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon God’s people, which will create the conditions for a powerful witness of end-time salvation (see Chapter 21). Those who call on the name of the Lord will be saved ( Joel 2:28–32). This latter-day outpouring is in Joel a deluge that will either restore or judge, for there will be deliverance and even “among the survivors shall be those whom the Lord calls” ( Joel 2:32). The Spirit in the Old Testament is indeed not only a source of deliverance and restoration but also of judgment and destruction: His breath is like an overflowing stream that reaches up to the neck. to sift the nations with the sieve of destruction, and to place on the jaws of the peoples a bridle that leads them astray. (Isaiah 30:28)

That Israel possessed of the Spirit is destined to rise up to revere God’s name before the nations, so that the nations too may be saved, is significant for understanding the baptism in the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, especially as depicted in Acts 1–2 (Macchia 2018, 225–30). Israel’s journey with God from the Exodus and beyond reaches for the fulfillment of this Spirit outpouring and global witness. In one sense, the Old Testament is a story of failure on Israel’s part to live up to their calling. God changes Israel from slavery to sonship at the Exodus. But the more God called them as sons and daughters, the further from God they drifted (see Hosea 11:1–2). How will Israel’s calling be fulfilled? How will they be restored? The Old Testament indicates that the breakthrough will come not only through the arrival of the Spirit of restoration but also through the reign of Israel’s messiah. The messiah himself will bear the Spirit that leads to true righteousness (Isaiah 11:1–3). Many kings are said to be anointed but none of them rise to the level of ushering in the messianic era of the Spirit of truth and righteousness to the point that the “ends of the earth” become the possession of God’s anointed (see Psalm 2:1–8). Bearing the Spirit, the messiah will set the captives free (Isaiah 61:1–3) and usher in the end-time restoration. The burning question at the close of the Old Testament is: when will the messiah come?

New Testament fulfillment John the Baptist’s ministry was fueled by the hope for the coming of the messiah and the restoration in the Spirit that this anointed one will bring. John’s baptism in water dramatized Israel’s desire to leave its sins behind in the Jordan through repentance so as to re-enter the land with fresh hope of the coming restoration. But John saw that his rite could not of itself bring the flood of the Spirit promised in the Old Testament. John does not stand within this 252

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fulfillment; he stands before it. Only the messiah can bring the Spirit. Notice the contrast between John’s water baptizing and the messianic Spirit baptizing: I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. (Luke 3:16) John depicts the coming messiah’s reign as life producing and liberating. Living water will proceed forth from him ( John 4:14) that within believers will well up to eternal life (Macchia 2018, 192–200). But this possibility can be rejected. John depicts the messiah as occasioning a river of the Spirit into which all will be submerged unto life or destruction, depending on the response. The messianic baptism in Spirit and fire is thus described for us in John the Baptist’s announcement in a way that includes both a promise and a dire warning: “His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Luke 3:17). The metaphor of the Baptist shifts here from water and fire to wind, for the wind will carry the chaff away so that only the wheat would remain to be stored. But John’s baptismal rite provides the church with its chief metaphor for its reception of the Spirit. The messianic outpouring of the Spirit continues to be viewed as a “Spirit baptism” (Acts 1:8; 1 Cor. 12:13); the Spirit will be the reality into which the messiah will submerge the repentant and the result will be life in the Spirit rather than destruction. Some popular Pentecostal treatments of Spirit baptism have tried to depict the entire metaphor of the baptism in “Spirit and fire” as sanctifying. The fire baptism within this view would be solely restorative or sanctifying, depicting the removal of sin from the repentant’s life (Basham 1969, 44). But this view overly individualizes or personalizes John’s metaphor. It removes from the metaphor the corporate meaning, which is a parting of the ways between the repentant and the unrepentant, an important element of John’s larger message. There is little doubt, of course, that John regarded both the restoration and the destruction as results of the messianic impartation of the Spirit. Yet “Spirit” in John’s metaphor accents restoration while “fire” destruction. In coming to terms with this complexity, Dunn (1972) helpfully refers to the messianic baptism as in “Spirit-and-fire” as a single designation, which implies that the Spirit’s restoration is God’s fundamental intention, but that the Spirit also engulfs the unrepentant in the fire of judgment. The moment of Jesus’ installation as the Spirit Baptizer occurs at his own baptism in the Spirit after his baptism in water by John. The decisive moment of Jesus’ installation is without question the arrival of the Spirit. The result is that the Holy Spirit descended on him “in bodily form like a dove,” and a voice is heard from heaven saying: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:21–22). The heavens opening and the Father’s voice indicate an event of apocalyptic and salvific significance. The Spirit descending like a dove is reminiscent of the Spirit brooding over the deep at creation or the sign of new creation in the story of Noah. The eschatological motif is clearly present as the context of the announcement (Matt. 3:2) concerning the coming of the Spirit Baptizer—“Eschatology begins at the Jordan” (McDonnell 1996, 11)—especially since in the early kerygma the sonship of Jesus is ultimately declared in his resurrection (Rom. 1:4). The faithful Son who comes to bring the final restoration has arrived. Jesus bears the end-time Spirit to pour out the Spirit as John had announced (Macchia 2018, 184–300). 253

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John’s Gospel points out that John the Baptist knew Jesus was to be the Spirit baptizer because the Spirit rested upon him and “remained.” God had promised Israel that the Spirit will not depart from them (Isaiah 59:21). This promise will be fulfilled in Jesus’ bearing of the Spirit to bring the final restoration for which Israel hoped. He will bear the Spirit throughout his entire sojourn to the cross. Not only does the Spirit remain according to John’s Gospel, but the Spirit is also given to Christ “without measure” ( John 3:34), which accounts for his resurrection. He rises as Lord in the fullness of the Spirit to impart the Spirit out of his fullness to all flesh (Macchia 2018, 184–200). Little did John the Baptist know that Christ will bear the baptism in fire ( judgment) in order to open the path to the Spirit of restoration. Though the focus of Christ’s installation as the Spirit Baptizer was on the arrival of the Spirit, Christ’s participation in John’s baptism was still significant. Jesus did not need to be baptized. He was sinless. He had no need to enter the waters of repentance for himself. But he joins the sinners at the Jordan to bind himself to them. He leaves the waters of repentance and hope with them, bearing the Spirit on their behalf. He is tested in the desert by the tempter but does not yield to the lure of evil. He endures the trial of his life all the way to the cross, where he takes the place of sinners so as to suffer rejection on their behalf. Luke, in particular, forges a link between the baptism in fire foretold by John and Jesus’ journey to the cross. Jesus yearns to kindle a fire upon the earth as John had foretold to usher in the kingdom of God in fullness. But he knows that his own fire baptism on behalf of the world (Luke 12:49–50) must come first (Fitzmeyer 1982, 995; Macchia 2018, 229–42). He suffers the baptism in fire on humanity’s behalf so that he could baptize them in the Spirit. In this light, we are not to overlook the fact that there is no baptism in fire mentioned by Luke in Acts 1:5, when Jesus tells his disciples that they will be baptized in the Spirit. There is a sense in which Jesus exhausts the fire of judgment that he endured so that the entry into the new age may now be described as only a baptism in the Spirit unto restoration (Dunn 1970, 43). One may develop this idea according to a new exodus motif whereby Jesus overcomes sin and death on the cross so as to provide passage for sinners from the bondage of sin and death to the promised land of the Spirit and the kingdom of God (Macchia 2018, 247–300). Repentance, faith, and water baptism now become the contexts in which believers join with Christ to pass through the fire of condemnation and death, leaving their sinful and condemned selves behind so that they could now know forgiveness of sins and new life in the Spirit (Acts 2:38; cf. Romans 6:1–5). In addition to its salvific significance, Spirit baptism in Acts has a strong missional goal. The outpouring of the Spirit does not end the age and bring God’s kingdom right away but rather launches a mission in preparation for the coming kingdom. When the disciples ask the question about the eschatological restoration of Israel (Acts 1:6), they are told that the Spirit’s arrival will first cause them to bear witness to the nations, to the very ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). The new Israel can only be restored on the heels of fulfilling this missionary mandate. The eschatological goal of restoration that Spirit baptism was meant to bring can only occur when all flesh comes to the fullness of the life of the Spirit together in conformity to Christ’s image and in the final communion of saints (see Chapter 25). The baptism in the Holy Spirit in Acts reaches for this eschatological fulfillment when all flesh enjoys the fullness of the Spirit together (Acts 2:17–21). As eschatological gift, the baptism in the Spirit in Acts does not come as a gift from heaven detached from the practices of the community of faith, such as proclamation and baptism, and, beyond this, the breaking of bread (see Chapter 29), multiple spiritual gifts, and mission (see Chapter 26). The outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost gives rise to 254

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these practices as willed by Christ (Acts 2:42–47). Though the Spirit poured out from Christ is free, the Spirit comes in faithfulness to the word of God and is received initially by faith as expressed in water baptism (Acts 2:38; 10:47; 19:5–6). The gift of the Spirit thus expands the diversity of the people of God in a way that becomes a permanent part of the church’s life. Hence, the Jerusalem council appropriately concludes, after Cornelius’ household responds to the word of God in faith and baptism, that God had indeed baptized these gentiles in the Spirit, too, granting them cleansing (Acts 15:9). Tongues is a valuable sign, too, but faith as expressed in baptism is the surer sign.

Conclusion Though missional in thrust and pointing toward eschatological fulfillment, Christ’s work of baptizing others in the Spirit is initiatory in significance in Acts, anchored theologically in faith and baptism (Acts 2:38). In Paul also, the baptism in the Spirit unites one to Christ and incorporates one into his body: “For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:13). According to this text, the church is united as one across an expanding diversity through the baptism in the Spirit (cf. Acts 2:17–21). This text states that all were baptized “in” the Spirit “with the purpose of ” forming one body. Being baptized in the Spirit, we are together united to Christ who provides passage for us from condemnation and death to justification and life (see Chapter 20). We thus appropriate Spirit baptism ritually by faith primarily in water baptism. United to Christ in the Spirit, we continue to be nourished by the Spirit granted from him throughout our lives, especially in the communion of saints and around the Lord’s table (1 Cor. 10:3–4). The unity opened up by Spirit baptism is reaffirmed and deepened as all share the one loaf and participate in Christ’s body (1 Cor. 10:16–17). Union and incorporation through Spirit baptism brings believers into a proliferation of spiritual gifts or personally unique contributions to the life and ministry of the church (see Chapter  28). The charismata conform the communion of saints more deeply to Christ, extending the hospitality of this shared life to the world. Spirit baptism, though initiatory, has its eschatological fulfillment when mortal life is “swallowed up” by immortality in the resurrection (2 Cor. 5:4). This is the time when all of the people of God as the new Israel are restored, and all of the saints experience together the deepest riches of communion with and in God. This is the eschatological horizon of Spirit baptism. We groan in the Spirit for this fullness of communion and life yet to come, not only as a consequence of Spirit baptism, but as a yearning for its ultimate fulfillment.

References Basham, Don. 1969. A Handbook on Holy Spirit Baptism. Monroeville: Whitaker Books. Dayton, Donald W. 1987. Theological Roots of Pentecostalism. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic Press. Dieter, Melvin E. 1980. The Holiness Revival of the Nineteenth Century. Metuchen: Scarecrow. Dunn, James D. G. 1970. Baptism in the Holy Spirit: A Re-examination of the New Testament on the Gift of the Spirit. London: SCM Press. ———. 1972. “Spirit-and-Fire Baptism.” Novum Testamentum 14 (2): 81–92. Everts, Jenny. 1994. “Tongues or Languages? Contextual Consistency in the Translation of Acts 2.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 4: 71–80. Faupel, David William. 1996. The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought. Blanford Forum: Deo. Fitzmeyer, Joseph. 1982. A. The Gospel According to Luke, I-IX. Anchor Bible Commentary 28. New York: Doubleday.

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Frank D. Macchia Fudge, Thomas A. 1993. Christianity without the Cross: A History of Salvation in Oneness Pentecostalism. Irvine: Universal Publishers. Gelpi, Donald L. 1976. Charism and Sacrament: A Theology of Christian Conversion. New York: Paulist Press. Hayford, Jack W. 1996. The Beauty of Spiritual Language: Unveiling the Mystery of Speaking in Tongues. Nashville: Thomas Nelson. Hunter, Harold. 2009. Spirit Baptism: A Pentecostal Alternative. Eugene: Wipf & Stock. Kelsey, Morton T. 1964. Tongue Speaking: An Experiment in Spiritual Experience. New York: Doubleday. Lederle, Henry I. 1988. Treasures Old and New: Interpretations of “Spirit-Baptism” in the Charismatic Renewal Movement. Peabody: Hendricksons. Macchia, Frank D. 1996. “Tongues as a Sign: Towards a Sacramental Understanding of Pentecostal Experience.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 15 (1): 61–74. ———. 1998. “Groans Too Deep for Words: Towards a Theology of Tongues as Initial Evidence.” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 1 (2): 149–73. ———. 2006. Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. ———. 2018. Jesus the Spirit Baptizer: Christology in Light of Pentecost. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. McDonnell, Kilian. 1996. The Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan: The Trinitarian and Cosmic Order of Salvation. Collegeville: Michael Glazer Books. Menzies, Robert. 1991. Empowered for Witness. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Montague, George, and Kilian McDonnell. 1991. Christian Initiation and Baptism in the Holy Spirit: Evidence from the First Eight Centuries. Collegeville: Michael Glazer Books. Stronstad, Roger. 1988. The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke. Peabody: Hendrickson. Wright, Nicholas Thomas. 2017. “Yet the Sun Will Rise Again: Reflections on the Exile and Restoration in Second Temple Judaism, Jesus, Paul, and the Church Today.” In Exile: A Conversation with N. T. Wright, edited by James M. Scott, 19–82. Downers Grove: IVP Academic. Yun, Koo Dong. 2003. Baptism in the Holy Spirit: An Ecumenical Theology of Spirit Baptism. Lanham: University Press of America.

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24 DIVINE HEALING Sacramental signs of salvation Kimberly Ervin Alexander

Healing practices are essential to the categorization of a revival movement as Pentecostal. On the one hand, it can be argued that there is no more distinguishing feature of Pentecostalism than the belief in the power of God to miraculously heal the sick. Studies of Pentecostalism have described healing practices as salient in the global movement and as a contributing factor to its growth and global expansion (Alexander 2006; Brown 2011; Robinson 2013; Williams 2013). But on the other hand, healing theology and practices may be seen as a point of connection between Pentecostalism and wider Christianity. Healing and care for the sick are clear distinctives of the early Christian movement and have been embraced by the majority of Christians throughout its history (Porterfield 2005). In this way, Pentecostal healing theology and practices, especially those which may be viewed as sacramental, open a door for ecumenical dialogue. While Pentecostalism in the majority world has maintained much of what made divine healing a distinctive of the early movement, the move of Pentecostalism into mainstream Evangelicalism and the upward mobility of many Pentecostals in North America and Europe may be said to have pushed prayer for the sick to a less prominent place. Accessibility to medical care and acceptance of its reliability have, for some, made prayer for healing more a “back-up plan” than a first response (Brown 2014). Indeed, medical care would now be viewed as a form of healing by many Pentecostals in the West. At the same time, despite its overly ambitious view of healing, the rise of prosperity theology, or the “health and wealth gospel,” among much of contemporary Pentecostalism has roots in the earliest theological divisions of the movement (see Chapter 38). Without doubt, divine healing occupies an important place in the theology and history of Pentecostalism. This chapter explores both the distinctiveness of Pentecostal healing theology and the ecumenical connections to historic Christian sacramental practices. I argue that Pentecostal theology can see divine healing essentially in the terms of sacramental signs of redemption, but the history of Pentecostal views of healing shows differences and extremes that have led to other perspectives. The chapter begins with a look at the origins of Pentecostal healing theology, identifies early Pentecostal healing practices, and demonstrates how divine healing, embedded in the movement’s theology and spirituality, have developed in the contexts of the Pentecostal emphasis on evangelization, mission, the use of medicine, and the globalization of Pentecostalism. 257

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The origins of Pentecostal healing theology Pentecostalism owes its dominant theological statement, “divine healing is provided for all in the atonement,” to Pentecostal antecedents in the nineteenth-century divine healing movements (Dayton 1987; Alexander 2006). Beginning with the Episcopalian homeopathic physician Charles Cullis, who had been influenced by the Wesleyan-Holiness movement, and by accounts of Johann Blumhardt’s and Dorothea Trudel’s European healing homes, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Episcopalians variously appropriated their interpretation of the “prescription” given in James 5:15 that “the prayer of faith will save the sick.” These women and men helped to form and inform what became an international movement, by incorporating prayer for the sick, and especially anointing with oil, into weekly meetings, camp meetings, and conventions, and then by reporting testimonies of healing in periodicals, books, pamphlets, and annual reports. One of the salient features of this transcontinental and transdenominational movement was the appropriation of the promise of healing by establishing healing homes, normally large houses where the sick could find palliative care, instruction in faith, and regular prayer (Alexander 2006, 55). A. B. Simpson, founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, formulated the movement’s theology as one of the tenets of his fourfold teaching (Van De Walle 2009), and divine healing has remained a key component of the full gospel (see Chapter 16). Simpson (as well as A. J. Gordon and Carrie Judd Montgomery) argued that because sin and the fall impacted both the spiritual and material human being, any remedy for sin must include provision for both. Hence, he maintained that “complete redemption” is available as a result of the atoning work of Jesus (Alexander 2006, 19–22). Simpson’s understanding of atonement is comprehensive of Jesus’ work on the cross but also his resurrection and ascension after which he sends the life-giving Spirit. When the Azusa Street mission published its faith statement in September 1906, it included a tenet referencing God as healer and a statement about healing practices. The statement is accompanied by an article, written by William J. Seymour, titled “The Precious Atonement.” Here, Seymour, like Simpson, advocates for a comprehensive atonement, providing forgiveness for sin, sanctification for the soul, and healing for the body (Seymour 1906, 2). Faith statements in most of the Pentecostal denominations emerging in the early twentieth century included similar tenets (Alexander 2006, 2010). However, within the first five years of the movement, a theological schism arose disavowing the Wesleyan soteriology of the earliest adherents of Pentecostalism. William Durham’s introduction of a Baptistic formula reoriented Pentecostal theology to a new “Finished Work” soteriology that looked to the atoning work of Christ as the accomplishment of all aspects of salvation (Alexander 2006, 183). The introduction of this new formulation had major theological implications also for Pentecostal healing theology. Pentecostals subscribing to the Finished Work soteriology began “looking back” to the cross for what had already been accomplished, including healing for the body. This led adherents to make “faith claims” and to “deny symptoms” (Alexander 2006, 213), strategies later identified with the so-called “health and wealth gospel” or prosperity theology. Attributing divine healing to the atonement situates healing firmly in the larger categories of Christology (see Chapter 20) and soteriology (see Chapter 21). While early Pentecostals did little, if any, reflection on so-called “atonement models,” there were resonances within each of the two streams of one model or another (Petts 1993; Menzies 2000, 159–70; A lexander 2006, 201, 211, 235–39). Although both soteriological confessions, Wesleyan Pentecostal and Finished Work Pentecostal, maintained doctrinal statements and practices that, on the 258

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surface, appeared similar if not identical, the viewpoint was quite different. As opposed to the “backward” look to the cross of the Finished Work soteriology, healing in WesleyanPentecostalism is seen as the inbreaking of the kingdom of God, characterized by a “forward” look. Healing miracles, then, are “signs” of the future kingdom breaking into the present. Every miracle or manifestation of the Spirit, including healing, is understood as foretastes of the coming resurrection. Informed by Romans 8, Pentecostals understood the infilling of the Spirit to be a “quickening of the mortal body” and a foretaste, or earnest, of the life in the age to come, an age of cosmic redemption or glory. Just as the Spirit raised Jesus from the dead, so too the Spirit raises our mortal bodies. Wesleyan-Pentecostals understood that they were presently participating in the resurrection, living in the age of the Spirit. The “already-not yet tension” was acknowledged—not everyone is healed in this life—but every healing miracle is a sign of the future resurrection, when all will be healed. Healing of the body that had been subject to the physical effects of the fall, was a visible sign of the cosmic victory of Jesus over the power of sin (Kydd 1995, 19–60; Menzies and Menzies 2000, 159–70; Alexander 2006, 200, 235–329). Rather than seeing healing as “over-realized,” a pitfall of the Finished Work theology, where everything is already accomplished at Calvary, and all that is necessary is to “reckon it done,” in Wesleyan Pentecostalism, those who die in Christ are not viewed as defeated in their faith, but as fully healed (Arrington 1977, 115; Alexander 2006, 242). The death of a saint (a believer, especially one who persevered till the end) was viewed as an ultimate healing. Those who died in the faith were celebrated and revered.

Early Pentecostal healing practices Early Pentecostal periodicals around the world are replete with testimonies of healing, often preceding or accompanying testimonies of conversion, sanctification, and Spirit baptism. An analysis of these testimonies reveals various practices, understood by these communities of faith as being derived from the New Testament church. Because healing is a sign related to embodied spirituality, practices related to the ministry of healing are typically understood as sacramental in that the material and spiritual come together in visible ways, most notably in the practices of laying on of hands and anointing with oil (Alexander 2006; 2010). Other practices, seen as warranted in Scripture, also exhibit this sacramentality. The practice of anointing cloths is another clear example (Alexander 2011; Thomas 2016, 89–112). Yet this sacramentality has not been explored in Pentecostal theology in much depth (see Chapter 29). Important here is a recognition of how Pentecostals have understood their relationship with Scripture. More than just a literal reading, Pentecostals saw themselves living in resonance with the biblical narratives and sharing in the divine drama as it continued to unfold (Alexander 2006, 207). An aspect of this hermeneutic, pertinent to the practice of healing, centers on their reading of the so-called “longer ending” of Mark 16:9–20. Jesus’ commission in this text, more than in Matthew 28:20 and Acts 1:8, emphasizes embodied practices most familiar to Pentecostals: preaching, laying hands on the sick, exorcising demons, and speaking in tongues. Even when aware of the text critical problems associated with this passage, Pentecostal experience validated its reliability (Alexander and Thomas 2003; Alexander 2006, 80–82, 90–93, 104–6, 120–21, 134–37, 171–73, 191). The signs noted in the passage became a sort of “litmus test” for determining the authenticity of Pentecostal revival because they were interpreted in a sacramental way as a kind of participation in the age to come (Alexander and Thomas 2003, 153; Alexander 2006, 92–93). This view resonates in the theology of worship of later Pentecostal theologian R. Hollis Gause who describes 259

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worship and sacramental practices as proleptic: (1) in these acts there is a spiritual return to Jesus’ redemptive acts, to include his healing of the sick; (2) there is already a participation in the age to come which is real, a foretaste of the glory of the kingdom (Alexander 2016). Therefore, for Pentecostals, laying hands on the sick, anointing with oil, and anointing of handkerchiefs are both embodied and spiritual sacramental signs. Within this sacramental context, Pentecostal healing is first and foremost a communal practice. Whereas their foremothers and fathers in the nineteenth-century healing movement developed healing homes to care for and pray for the sick, the Pentecostal movement brought the practices into its churches as a central feature of worship services as well as its outreach to the community (see Chapter 11). If the sick person was unable to come to the praying church, the pastor, evangelist, elders, brothers, and sisters went to the home of the suffering person, praying and worshiping at their bedside. In fact, the Pentecostal church became a place known for healing prayer in the larger community (Alexander 2010, 183–206). While later iterations of Pentecostal healing tended to focus on a “healing evangelist” who drew large crowds to tents, auditoriums, or arenas, in its earliest forms, and in the most common one found in global Pentecostalism today, healing ministry is located in the community of faith. Through the physical practice of laying hands on the sick, the Pentecostal community identifies with the ministry of Jesus and the apostles, understanding that these means were instituted by Jesus. Testimonies indicate, however, that more than just an “ordinance,” these practices convey the grace of healing, often identified as “healing virtue,” a presence that may be sensed, in resonance with the woman touching Jesus’ garment in Mark 5 (Alexander 2006, 110; Alexander 2010). And as in this narrative, it is not unusual for the sensation to be felt by both the sick person and the one ministering. Similarly, anointing the sick with oil is commonly seen in Pentecostal worship services and the ministry of healing in accordance with James 5. While Pentecostals may indicate that the oil is merely a symbol of the Holy Spirit, they demonstrate a sacramental view that “something happens” when the sick person receives an anointing of oil at the hands of a sister or brother. The action dramatizes a spiritual and sacramental reality happening in that moment. Perhaps an even clearer demonstration of this sacramentality may be seen in the practice of anointing of cloths for the healing of the sick. Following the narrative in Acts 19, Pentecostals anoint handkerchiefs, cloths, or even pieces of clothing, and take them to the sick person. These items would be touched and anointed by those gathered for worship, with the same faith and fervor with which a sick person received prayer for healing. In many testimonies, those doing the anointing and praying clearly have a kind of existential identification with Jesus and the apostles performing similar rituals of healing in the New Testament (Alexander 2006, 206; Thomas 2016, 89–112). Sometimes, in early Pentecostalism, at the request of the sick persons, these cloths were mailed to them, blurring the lines of distance, and expanding the Pentecostal community beyond its geographic borders and limits. The anointing of a material item such as a cloth, a step removed from an actual person to person transaction, demonstrates how Pentecostals acknowledge that spiritual presence and dynamic may be conveyed through material means. All of these actions are accompanied by what Pentecostals call the “prayer of faith,” a practice, again, informed by their reading of James 5. This view of prayer is also communal and marks an important distinction between early Wesleyan-Pentecostalism and, especially, later more individualistic views of both prayer and faith. Pentecostal theology and practices of divine healing both require and establish the community of faith (Vondey 2017, 120). 260

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Prayer for the sick is part of the larger fabric of prayer in the Pentecostal community and involves active pursuit of God. The prayer, like all of life in the Spirit, is teleological, in that it is moving forward and “praying through” anything that is seen as preventing the needed transformation (Alexander 2010, 2012). The prayer of faith is anticipatory of the Spirit’s inbreaking and manifestation of healing and involves a specific communal action that looks forward and anticipates transformative grace.

The gift of healing and the healing evangelists Though viewed sometimes as almost a caricature of Pentecostalism, the evangelist specializing in healing miracles was a relative anomaly in the earliest period of the movement’s history. Because the gift of healing was understood to originate from the Holy Spirit, the Pentecostal experience of Spirit baptism became an avenue by which any person, regardless of gender, race, status, or ecclesial position could minister healing. Even age was not necessarily a restriction; there are multiple accounts of young children praying for the sick with accompanying testimonies of healing (Alexander 2006, 108). The gift of healing was said to “reside in the Holy Spirit” and would be distributed by the Spirit as needed to the church. However, there were a few noteworthy evangelists recognized for their success in praying for the sick. This ministry became a sort of safe zone for women with Maria Woodworth-Etter, who had been recognized even before the Pentecostal movement, and Aimee Semple McPherson drawing large crowds to auditoriums and tents in large cities across the US. Both women were prototypes for what would later be a rather common scene on the American landscape: the tent evangelist praying for the sick before huge numbers of people, many from outside of the Pentecostal movement (Alexander 2006, 176–82; McMullen 2015; Payne 2015). After World War II, the Pentecostal movement in the US, especially, embraced the return of men to the work place by elevating masculine forms of ministry. The so-called PostWorld War II Healing Revival saw the rise of prominent male healing evangelists such as William Branham, T. L. Osborn, and Oral Roberts. Utilizing enormous auditoriums and, following McPherson’s example, popular and new mediums like radio and television, these evangelists were innovators in both healing practice and theology. While maintaining, in some ways, classical Pentecostal beliefs about healing in the atonement, they tended to focus on the practice of healing in less communal ways and what emerged was an understanding of individual ministers possessing the “gift of healing.” Exemplary in this regard was Roberts who eventually maintained that his hands were anointed to heal and that his right hand, in particular, became a “point of contact” between the sick person and God (Harrell 1985, 449). At this point, Roberts and others began to move from classical Pentecostal views of healing as residing in the Holy Spirit and available to all toward claims of the special gifting of individuals. This movement may be seen as an accommodation of theology to the practices of Pentecostal ministry; in other words, the focus on these men (primarily) and their ministries led them to adapt Pentecostal healing theology to fit their context. The one method common to all was the mass healing crusade or campaign. Whether in tents, auditoriums or sports arenas, these events were designed to reach the crowds. T. L. Osborn is credited with developing a technique he called “healing en masse” (Harrell 1985, 66), allowing him to pray for thousands at once. Thereby, the venue transformed the praxis. In his booklet, Healing En Masse, Osborn (1958, 35) offers a theological and practical apologetic and defense of the method: “Mass faith and mass healing means that a mass of 261

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people believe the same truths at the same time, that they all accept it and act upon it simultaneously. That is when healing en masse results.” F. F. Bosworth, whose crusades in Africa in the late 1940s drew thousands, mentored Osborn, who recalled Bosworth’s concern that those hearing the “healing promises” were forced to wait in long lines, unable to act on their faith at the time of belief. The practice, developed in the twentieth century, is still seen widely in global healing ministries and has become identifiable with Pentecostal healing. In addition to bringing about modifications in classical Pentecostal theologies of healing, the popularity of healing evangelists also impacted what those in traditions other than Pentecostalism began to believe. As healing ministries began to be seen and heard in the living rooms of both Pentecostals and non-Pentecostals, the interest in healing miracles and the desire for accessibility increased. Through the influence of charismatic Christians in the historic liturgical churches, healing theology once more engaged with a more articulate sacramentalism. Particularly important in Charismatic healing theology and its influence on later Pentecostals was the inclusion of inner healing, incorporating insights from psychology (Sanford 1947; MacNutt 1974). In turn, the Charismatic movement, which utilized many of the same vehicles of communication, especially print, radio, and television, began to influence classical Pentecostals, so that by the late twentieth century the distinctions between Pentecostal and Charismatic views of healing have blurred, especially at the popular level.

Recovering the democratization of healing ministry In the 1980s, John Wimber, founder of the Vineyard Fellowship, a so-called third-wave of Pentecostalism, articulated a theology of healing which embraced a more cosmic understanding of healing he labeled “power healing.” Divine healing manifests a confrontation between evil and the victorious Christ (Wimber 1987). This theology recovered a Christus victor model of the atonement, and, like early Wesleyan Pentecostalism, viewed healing eschatologically as an inbreaking of God’s kingdom. However, Wimber’s theology differs from that of Wesleyan-Pentecostalism in that its cosmic approach is more dualistic. What Pentecostals recognized as a work of the flesh, or sinful activity, Wimber and his adherents are more likely to call demonic. Wimber did, however, make a distinction between being demonized and demon-possessed. Sickness may occur as a result of either situation, and Christians were vulnerable to both. One of the contributions of Wimber’s healing practice is that healing as a result of Christ’s victory is understood to be an ongoing work of the Spirit in the church (see Chapter 27). This emphasis, in turn, puts the ministry of healing back in the hands of the people of God. Therefore, all Christians are encouraged to practice healing ministry, and discernment, in their daily lives. This emphasis was accentuated by the influence of the Toronto Airport Vineyard revival, known as the “Toronto Blessing,” which focused on resting in the presence of the Spirit in which healing could occur (among other blessings) and through which participants could become ministers of healing. Important participants in the revival who went on to be innovators in the ministry of healing were Heidi and Roland Baker, missionaries in Mozambique, and Bill Johnson, a pastor in California, Randy Clark, all then associated with the Assemblies of God. They embraced the importance of the power of the presence of the Spirit for creating an atmosphere in which healing could occur. Importantly, they all embraced a theology in which healing anointing may be imparted from one to another (Cartledge 2014). Shortly after visiting Toronto, Johnson went on to pastor Bethel Church in Redding, California, which became (and remains) a center for this theology of healing. Bethel, along with the Bakers’ organization, Iris Ministries, and Randy  Clark’s  Global  Awakenings  formed  the

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nucleus of an “‘apostolic network of churches and ministries’” whose purpose is to impart an anointing for healing to others. Clark sees his work as ecumenical in that he works across all the boundaries, bringing various “healing streams” into one “healing river of God.” This democratization of the healing ministry remains important to a global Pentecostal theology of healing. A major contribution of this movement is its insistence that because healing miracles are more prevalent in the global South, their anointing for healing ministry needs to be imparted or transferred to the global north. Scores of ministers and laity, women and men, from the North regularly travel to Brazil, Mozambique (where the Bakers’ ministry is headquartered), and India in order to receive rather than to give, reversing traditional colonial missionary approaches of the West (Brown 2011, 351–65). In this way, the twenty-first century has seen a kind of return to a more open Pentecostal view of who is gifted to pray for the sick.

Pentecostal healing and medicine Over the first century of Pentecostal history, there has been a marked shift in attitudes toward the use of medicine and the validity of the medical practice. Most early Pentecostals prohibited their members from using medicine or consulting with doctors—the remedy for sickness had been provided by the Christ, the Great Physician, through the atonement (Williams 2013, 81–97). It is sometimes assumed that this stance toward medicine and doctors was an uncritical one, or that it emerged out of ignorance, fanaticism, or superstition. But early and global Pentecostal adherents and leaders came from all strata of society: the educated, the uneducated, wealthy and poor, urban and rural. The preference for divine healing over medical aid had different reasons. The discussions of the early twentieth century highlighted the dangers of the medical practice at a time when patent and non-prescription medicines were poorly regulated, if at all. Cocaine, heroin, cannabis, alcohol, and morphine were common ingredients, and ministers cited the addictive nature of patent medicines as well as the social evils resulting from addiction (Williams 2013, 30–40). It was estimated that one million Americans were addicted to such drugs when the Federal Narcotics Board was established in 1922. Further, offering a kind of Marxist critique, as the sick became more impoverished, Pentecostal leaders observed the attendant wealth of doctors (Alexander 2006, 228). Other early Pentecostal discussions focused on so-called “natural” remedies such as warm springs or chiropractic treatments and if their use was acceptable. Whether or not their conclusions may be substantiated by medical science today, it cannot be said that the prohibitions were arbitrary; rather, they were carefully considered and deliberated. As Pentecostalism expanded, ministers grappled with the findings of medical science as well as with the emergence of psychology as a respected discipline. The latter had particular import to pastors grappling with counseling those in their parish. Teachings of the Charismatic movement on inner healing, informed by psychology and its understanding of the link between body and mind, began to be found even in the rhetoric and ministry of classical Pentecostals in the West (Williams 2013, 98–107). Lutheran, Anglican, and Roman Catholic ministers, priests, and laity, including medical doctors, embraced the experience of Spirit baptism, and divine healing theology and practices were placed in conversation with medical science, resulting in an often-repeated claim that “all healing comes from God.” The emphasis on holistic healing—healing of the whole person—became common parlance. Important examples of the influence of the Charismatic movement on classical Pentecostalism may be seen in the publishing of position statements, now endorsing the

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use of medicine and medical practitioners. As Pentecostal colleges were moving from the Bible college model to a liberal arts approach, they began implementing pre-med majors. Pentecostal medical doctors were featured in Pentecostal and Charismatic publications. A further revisioning of Pentecostal and Charismatic healing theology is seen in the rise of holistic approaches to health and healing advocated by television evangelists in the early twenty-first century. Nutrition and nutritional supplements, wellness, weight-loss, preventive, and even alternative medicine are endorsed by these ministries, influencing millions (Brown 2013; Williams 2013, 122–56). Outside of the West, Pentecostals have more fully engaged in this kind of holistic healing approach. Medical practices were incorporated into Pentecostal missions, with hospitals and clinics being established in the majority world by Pentecostal denominations and organizations (Miller and Yamamori 2007, 99–128). One example of this is the Panzi Hospital in Bakavu, supported by the Swedish Pentecostal Mission. Here, Pentecostal minister and gynecologist, Denis Mukwege, recent Nobel Peace Prize recipient, treats scores of women who have been sexually brutalized and, in the related Maison Dorcas, assists women into further emotional healing aiding them in transitioning into vocations as well as educating them with regard to human rights (Grenholm 2018).

Healing, missions, and the globalization of Pentecostalism It has long been noted that healing ministry was an important strategy in the early Pentecostal missionary enterprise (Anderson 2010, 215–19; McGee 2010). Healing ministry is strongly correlated with the growth of Pentecostalism, especially in the majority world. Early missionaries, often partnering with Holiness missionaries already on the field and who already practiced healing ministry, found that healing practices met the immediate needs of those to whom they had come to serve. In contrast to the theology of Reformed and Fundamentalist missionaries, many of whom maintained a cessationist view with regard to the miraculous, Pentecostalism presents a spirituality that resonated with the worldview of those in the majority world, including belief in the supernatural and confrontation with evil (see Chapter 30). In the “majority world,” if the most powerful and loving God cannot heal a person, he is not as useful as the ancestor spirits on whom many have been relying for such needs. God is expected to be the savior, not only after this life, but also during this earthly existence. This is where the work of the Holy Spirit comes in with “signs and wonders.” Often the demonstration of God’s power through the Holy Spirit triggers a “people’s movement” or conversion by groups. This partly explains the phenomenal growth of the Pentecostal charismatic churches all over the world. (Ma 2009, 47) But beyond resonance, what must also be acknowledged is that healing practices are contextualized in these cultures; Pentecostals attempt to live faithfully to Scripture but also long to experience the healing power of God in culturally appropriate ways. Although it is not possible here to discuss the multifarious ways that Pentecostal healing has been contextualized in the various cultures, two examples, from two different continents in the global South, may suffice to evidence the importance of contextualization. In Africa, Pentecostal healing practices, though varying over the vast continent, are commonplace, even in what may be identified as mainline traditions of Christianity. This all 264

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but comprehensive expansion of Pentecostal healing may be attributed to the indigenous worldviews, which, though nuanced from place to place, always includes a recognition of the supernatural. Further, views of deities and their usefulness are directly related to their power to transform circumstances. African Pentecostals continue to embrace an African primal cosmology involving spirit beings that is thought to be similar to that portrayed in the Bible. They contend that Jesus believed in the same. Hence, there is a high degree of unanimity in their emphasis on spiritual warfare, deliverance ministry, and the miraculous healing power of Christ. (Omenyo 2014, 147) Emphasizing the communal nature of Pentecostal healing practices, in a way that echoes the early movement, Ogbu Kalu (2008) explains that, especially in African Pentecostalism, Healing is the heartbeat of the liturgy and the entire religious life. It brings the community of suffering together; it ushers supernatural power into the gathered community and enables all to bask together in its warmth. It releases the energy for participatory worship that integrates the body, spirit, and soul. (263) It should be noted that there has been a dynamic relationship, even interdendence, between Pentecostal healing theology and practice and the African cosmic worldview. Stated otherwise, Pentecostalism’s successful expansion on the African continent is a primary result of its resonance with the indigenous cosmic spirituality and because it meets the particular needs in those cultures. As Kalu (2008, 263–66) urges, Pentecostal healing must address all areas of suffering. In all contexts of sickness and suffering, healing practices are never domesticated, but Pentecostals take the healing altar into the world (Vondey 2017, 220). In Latin America, which has seen an exponential expansion of Pentecostalism, another case is illustrative of the pride of place given to divine healing. Brazil, as of 2010, has the highest population of Pentecostals and Charismatics in the world ( Johnson 2011, 64–65). Healing practices have directly contributed to this exponential growth. Andrew Chesnut (2011, 169) has argued that Brazilian Pentecostalism’s growth, predominantly among the poor, is directly tied to the relationship between healing and conversion. Sickness is identified with sin and the world, and with the impoverished socioeconomic standing of the Brazilian poor. Conversion, therefore, is a turning away from the larger society’s negation of these ailments (see Chapter 21). More than an “affiliation” with a religious group, Pentecostal conversion promises transformation from death-inducing lifestyle associated with poverty toward a life that tends toward health and integration of the physical, spiritual, and social dimensions.

Conclusion The history of divine healing in the Pentecostal movement gives us insight into how and why Pentecostal healing theologies and practices are crucial to understanding global Pentecostalism. It seems that this core aspect of Pentecostal spirituality has survived and even flourished in the second century of the movement, and there appears to be no threat of its languishing, at least in the majority world. What will happen in the North American and European churches remains to be seen. While polls and studies indicate that Western 265

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Christians have a positive view of prayer and its relationship to healing or medical cure, the best data seems to indicate that there is a significant disparity between North American Pentecostals who report personal experience with healing and those in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Perhaps the positive move toward acceptance of medical and holistic sources of health has served to diminish the belief in what was originally understood as divine healing. This trend may also be correlated with the upward mobility of Pentecostals and their accompanying political alliances in these regions. Additionally, the widespread critique of the health and wealth gospel in the movement, in some cases, has called into question the core belief in healing in the atonement. Instead of a revisioning of Pentecostal healing theology, there has been a negation of the doctrine altogether by some; by others, there has been an embrace of aspects of the prosperity gospel that are individualistic rather than communal. Perhaps the sacramental dimension of Pentecostal healing identified in this essay and its contextualizing in the global South may renew and bring healing to the Pentecostal movement across the world.

References Alexander, Kimberly Ervin. 2006. Pentecostal Healing: Models of Theology and Practice. JPT Supplement 2. Sheffield: Deo. ———. 2010. “The Pentecostal Healing Community.” In Toward a Pentecostal Ecclesiology: The Church and the Five-fold Gospel, edited by John Christopher Thomas. Cleveland: CPT Press. ———. 2012. “The Pentecostal Church: A Sacramental Healing Community.” Ecumenical Trends 41 (8): 1–3, 14. ———. 2016. “Singing Heavenly Music: R. Hollis Gause’s Theology of Worship and Pentecostal Experience.” In Toward a Pentecostal Theology of Worship, edited by Lee Roy Martin, 201–20. Cleveland: CPT Press. Alexander, Kimberly Ervin, and John Christopher Thomas. 2003. “‘And the Signs Are Following:’ Mark 16.9–20 – A Journey into Pentecostal Hermeneutics.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 11 (2): 147–70. Anderson, Allan. 2007. Spreading Fires: The Missionary Nature of Early Pentecostalism. Maryknoll: Orbis. Arrington, French L. 1977. Paul’s Aeon Theology in 1 Corinthians. Washington: University Press of America. Brown, Candy Gunther. 2011. “Global Awakenings: Divine Healing Networks and Global Community in North America, Brazil, Mozambique, and Beyond.” In Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing, edited by Candy Gunther Brown, 351–69. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2013. The Healing Gods: Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Christian America. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2014. “Pentecostal Healing Prayer in an Age of Evidence-Based Medicine.” Transformation 32 (1): 1–16. Cartledge, Mark J. 2014. “‘Catch the Fire’: Revivalist Spirituality from Toronto to Beyond.” PentecoStudies 13 (2): 217–38. Chesnut, R. Andrew. 2011. “Exorcising the Demons of Deprivation: Divine Healing and Conversion in Brazilian Pentecostalism.” In Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing, edited by Candy Gunther Brown, 169–85. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dayton, Donald W. 1987. Theological Roots of Pentecostalism. Peabody: Hendrickson. Grenholm, Micael. 2018. “Pentecostal Nobel Prize Laureate Denis Mukwege ‘Accepted in All Camps.’” Pentecostals and Charismatics for Peace and Justice, 12 October 2018. Available at https://pcpj. org/2018/12/10/pentecostal-nobel-prize-laureate-denis-mukwege-is-accepted-in-all-camps, accessed 12 February 2019. Harrell, David Edwin, Jr. 1975. All Things Are Possible: The Healing and Charismatic Revivals in Modern America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kalu, Ogbu. 2008. African Pentecostalism: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kydd, Ronald A. N. 1998. Healing through the Centuries: Models for Understanding. Peabody: Hendrickson.

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Divine healing Ma, Wonsuk. 2009. “When the Poor are Fired Up: The Role of Pneumatology in Pentecostal/ Charismatic Mission. In The Spirit in the World: Emerging Pentecostal Theologies, edited by Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, 40–52. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. MacNutt, Francis.1999. Healing. Notre Dame: Ava Maria Press. McGee, Gary B. 2010. Miracles, Missions, and American Pentecostalism. Maryknoll: Orbis. McMullen, Josh. 2015. Under the Big Top: Big Tent Revivalism and American Culture, 1885–1925. New York: Oxford University Press. Menzies, Robert P. 2000. “Healing in the Atonement.” In Spirit and Power: Foundations of Pentecostal Experience, edited by Robert P. and William W. Menzies, 159–70. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Menzies, Robert P., and William W. Menzies. 2000. Spirit and Power: Foundations of Pentecostal Experience. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Omenyo, Cephas N. 2014. “African Pentecostalism.” In The Cambridge Companion to Pentecostalism, edited by Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. and Amos Yong, 132–51. New York: Cambridge University Press. Osborn, Tommy Lee. 1958. Healing en Masse. Tulsa: T. L. Osborne. Payne, Leah. 2015. Gender and Pentecostal Revivalism: Making a Female Ministry in the Early Twentieth Century. Christianity and Renewal-Interdisciplinary Studies. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Petts, David. 1993. “Healing in the Atonement.” EPTA Bulletin 12: 23–37. Porterfield, Amanda. 2005. Healing in the History of Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Robinson, James. 2013. Divine Healing: The Holiness-Pentecostal Transition Years, 1890–1906. Eugene: Pickwick. Sanford, Agnes. 1947. The Healing Light. St. Paul: MacAlester Park Publishing. Seymour, William J. 1906. “The Precious Atonement.” The Apostolic Faith 1 (1): 2. Thomas, John Christopher. 2016. “Toward a Pentecostal Theology of Anointed Cloths.” In Toward a Pentecostal Theology of Worship, edited by Lee Roy Martin, 89–112. Cleveland: CPT Press. Van de Walle, Bernie A. 2009. The Heart of the Gospel: A. B. Simpson, the Fourfold Gospel, and Late Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Theology. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Vondey, Wolfgang. 2017. Pentecostal Theology: Living the Full Gospel. Systematic Pentecostal and Charismatic Theology 1. London: Bloomsbury. Williams, Joseph W. 2013. Spirit Cure: A History of Pentecostal Healing. Oxford University Press. Wimber, John. 1987. Power Healing. New York: HarperCollins. Yamamori, Tetsunao, and Donald E. Miller. 2007. Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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25 ESCHATOLOGY The always present hope Peter Althouse

The emphasis on the “coming of Jesus,” the “second coming,” or the “soon coming king” was the watchword of the early Pentecostal movement. The first article of the Apostolic Faith (1906, 1), the official paper of the Azusa Street mission and revival in Los Angeles, California, titled “Pentecost has Come” reported: “Many are the prophecies spoken in unknown tongues and many the visions that God is giving concerning His soon coming.” Similarly, “Jesus is coming! Jesus is coming!” proclaimed the Bridegroom’s Messenger in 1908, “wherever this Pentecostal revival has reached… the message of His coming is usually given in a ‘new tongue’ in the power of the Spirit” (Faupel 1996, 20). The imminent return of Jesus as the soon-coming king to reign in glory has remained a prominent aspect of Pentecostal beliefs and expresses the heart of what is otherwise known as the theological theme of eschatology. Eschatology in the traditional sense is the study of the last things: death, judgment, the end of the world, the coming of Christ, and the consummation of God’s kingdom. From this perspective, eschatology is one of the major theological motifs of the full gospel (see Chapter 16), which proclaims that Jesus Christ is savior, sanctifier, healer, Spirit baptizer, and soon-coming king (Dayton 1987; Althouse 2010b; Thomas 2010; Vondey 2017). Rather than the “end,” the fervency of expecting the imminent coming of Jesus and the closely connected anticipation of the premillennial inbreaking of the kingdom of God form a major building block throughout Pentecostal theology. More precisely, Pentecostals speak of the kingdom not only in the future but as already present or “realized” as a spiritual reality in history, in the outpouring of the Spirit announcing the kingdom, and functionally exemplified in Pentecostal worship. Current attempts to think about eschatology as a lens through which to view the full gospel are a fruitful approach to articulate Pentecostal eschatology. However, the eschatological fervency of the early days of the movement has waned as contemporary Pentecostals have accommodated to the dominant culture, and the once passionate apocalyptic rhetoric, when employed at all, has shifted from predictions of an imminent future to explanations for current social-political events (Thompson 2005). In this chapter, I argue that Pentecostal eschatology is neither restricted to the future nor to the end in Pentecostal theology but reflects the always present hope in the continuing activity of God through Christ by the Spirit in history. Eschatology permeates the full gospel so that to speak about other theological themes without reference to its eschatological basis is to flatten and impoverish Pentecostal theology. I begin with a discussion of apocalyptic 268

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symbols pertaining to the two dominant streams of dispensationalism and premillennialism in the historical development of eschatology among early Pentecostals. Included in this discussion are suggestions on ways in which prominent apocalyptic themes, such as antichrist, tribulation, rapture, and millennialism, might be understood in present Pentecostal eschatology in a way consistent with early Pentecostal yearnings for the king to come. I then shift to a contemporary discussion of how an eschatological focus on the Pentecostal theological loci of the full gospel enlivens constructive thought that is distinctively Pentecostal.

Dispensational eschatology Pentecostals at the beginning of the twentieth century believed in the imminence of the coming of Jesus Christ and yearned for the day of the Lord to come quickly. While some scholars have placed Pentecostals in the fundamentalist camp of classical premillennial dispensationalism, they note that Pentecostals had to modify the dispensational script significantly to include their own theological distinctives (Prosser 1999; Wacker 2001; McQueen 2010). Other scholars have noted the tensions between classical dispensationalism and Pentecostal theology and the problems this creates for Pentecostals to articulate a distinctive that captures the impulse of the movement, most notably in terms of its ecclesiology, pneumatology, and justification for Spirit baptism (Sheppard 1984; Althouse 2003; McQueen 2012). Three different theological trajectories have emerged from this debate: (1) Pentecostal eschatology as indistinguishable from classical dispensationalism with a strict separation between Israel and the church supported by an ad hoc interpretation of scripture; (2) a middle ground that adopts some aspects of classical dispensationalism but modifies it in order to incorporate distinct Pentecostal beliefs, Old Testament prophecies, and preaching of the gospel; and (3) a trajectory in which the Pentecostal understanding of the church, its mission, interpretation of Scripture, hermeneutical methods, and soteriology takes priority. The more emphasis is placed on the consistency of Pentecostal thought, the less relevant dispensationalism is as a constituent of Pentecostal eschatology (McQueen 2012, 57–59).

Classical dispensationalism Classical dispensationalism developed in the nineteenth century to explain the history of divine interaction and articulate the eschatology as a future supernatural event. Although there have been different dispensational views throughout the history of the church (Sandeen 1970; Weber 1979; Thompson 2012), the hegemonic influence of John Nelson Darby’s version of dispensationalism has dominated. American fundamentalism adopted a trajectory of seven successive dispensations, or periods of time, in which God relates to humanity differently: innocence, conscience, human governance, promise, law, grace, and the kingdom or millennium (Marsden 2006, 65–66). However, Darby’s dispensationalism also makes some unusual innovations: (1) God’s plan of salvation involves an absolute separation between the Jews and gentiles. Prophetic passages from the Old Testament and the Gospels apply only to the Jews, and other prophecies from the Pauline and pastoral epistles apply only to the gentiles (Prosser 1999, 189). The last event of prophetic significance occurred for the Jews when they rejected Christ as their messiah so that God is now working in the non-Jewish believers of the Christian church. (2) The present dispensation is the age of the church and is believed to be a parenthetical interregnum devoid of any prophetic significance. The kingdom age has distinctive end-time destinies separate from the church. Darby denies that contemporary historical events have any bearing 269

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as signs of the end or can be incorporated into a prophetic interpretation. (3) Darby’s most controversial innovation uses a previously unheard-of interpretation of 1 Thess. 4:16–18 to argue that the age of the kingdom will be initiated by a secret “rapture” in which the church saints will mysteriously vanish from the earth and be taken up into the air to meet Christ. The secret rapture saves them from the horrors of a great tribulation and persecutions of an antichrist, and raptured saints will return with Christ in triumph, overthrow the antichrist in a great war, and rule with Christ for the millennium (Weber 1979; Boyer 2003, 523–24). The strict separation of the Jewish and non-Jewish destinies in the divine plan of salvation, the secret rapture (Sandeen 1970) and hermeneutical method of interpretation have proven problematic for the development of Pentecostal theology. Despite its early popularity, classical dispensationalism offers little room for Pentecost, the outpouring of the Spirit, and the exercise of spiritual gifts that form the key themes of Pentecostal eschatology. As a consequence, Pentecostals began to modify dispensational theology in light of their own self-understanding as a movement at the end of history, or in biblical language, the Spirit’s outpouring as the latter rain.

Latter Rain dispensationalism Donald Dayton (1989) argues that the classical Pentecostal understanding of dispensationalism better fits the theology of John William Fletcher and Alexander Campbell than the fundamentalism of Darby. Fletcher divides salvation into three dispensations that correspond to the trinitarian distinctions of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The dispensation of the Father looks forward to the dispensation of the Son, while the dispensation of the Son looks back to the promise of the Father for the effusion of the Son. The dispensation of the Spirit looks forward to the return of the Son and is now fully present. Fletcher’s understanding is better able to integrate pneumatological and eschatological considerations by making Pentecost an eschatological event comparable to the coming of Christ—a view more in line with Pentecostal concerns that explain Spirit baptism and the outpouring of the Spirit as eschatological events. Fletcher’s threefold pattern allowed Pentecostals to appropriate Old Testament promises and prophecies for the church (Dayton 1989, 51–51, 149–53). One significant promise was the outpouring of the latter rain. Early classical Pentecostals adopted a theology of the latter rain based in a reading of Deuteronomy 11:10–15, which endorsed both a literal and a spiritual interpretation of the promise of an outpouring of God’s Spirit prior to the second coming of Christ. The literal interpretation was based in the weather patterns of Palestine, where a season of rain falls early in the year at the time of planting, followed by a time of dryness, and then rain falls later in the year that ripens crops for harvest. The spiritual perspective interprets the outpouring of the Spirit as the event of Pentecost in which glossolalia and other charismatic expressions occurred, followed by a dry season of church apostasy, and then a renewed charismatic outpouring for the harvest of souls just prior to the second coming (Althouse 2003). This perspective was particularly dominant in support of the early Pentecostal missionary impulse (see Chapter 26) that saw the harvest of souls ripe and in need of conversion for inclusion in the soon-coming kingdom. Many Pentecostal pioneers appropriated latter rain imagery and used it to illustrate their pneumatological and eschatological theology. Richard G. Spurling, his father Richard Spurling, and A. J. Tomlinson brought the latter rain theme to the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) ( Jacobsen 2003, 50–51). Aimee Semple McPherson incorporated latter rain theology in her foursquare proclamation of the outpouring of the Spirit in the last 270

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days (Cornwall 1992). David Wesley Myland used a threefold exegetical approach that made use of the literal-historical, typological-spiritual, and prophetical-dispensational senses to argue that the baptism of the Spirit and charismatic gifts are the result of the latter rain outpouring of the Spirit (Faupel 1996; Jacobsen 2003). When the Assemblies of God organized in 1914, the minutes of the first General Council self-identified as “the Latter Rain outpouring of the Holy Ghost” (Anderson 1979, 79). Although the image of the latter rain fell out of use by the mid-twentieth century, for reasons related to the emergence of a controversial movement that used the latter rain doctrine against older Pentecostal denominations and the increased influence of fundamentalist dispensationalism on Pentecostal developments, the image of Pentecost as the eschatological outpouring of the Spirit remains a critical theological metaphor (Althouse 2003). Pentecostal theology has benefited particularly from the pneumatological and ecclesiological directions of latter rain dispensationalism. At the same time, Pentecostals needed to evaluate and reconfigure many of their apocalyptic symbols that have come under the sway of fundamental dispensationalism. Many early Pentecostals were premillennialists, though there were wide variations of this belief (McQueen 2012), and the idea is based on the highly symbolic rhetoric of the book of Revelation (Althouse 2010a). Many Pentecostals are surprised to learn, for instance, that there is no antichrist in Revelation. Reference is made to “antichrists” in the plural in I John and 2 John and to “false Christs” in the Gospel of Mark, suggesting that anyone or anything that acts against the life-giving words and actions of Jesus and his kingdom is an antichrist (Balfour 2011, 37–38). Historically, the symbol of the antichrist has been applied to religious and political figures to explain the times but doing so suggests that the symbol operates at a rhetorical level (Thompson 2005). The antichrist is an apocalyptic symbol that can also be applied to social movements and social structures that oppose God (modernism that has produced the liberal-conservative divide is a good candidate for such an application). In this context, the tribulation is all that obstructs and opposes the fullness of the inbreaking of Christ’s kingdom into creation, now and not yet, as a result of antichristic elements. Death, injustice, and despair are indicators of tribulation as they come against the life-giving justice and hope of God by the Spirit (Thompson 2010). A similar problem emerges for the dispensationalist’s doctrine of a secret rapture prior to the millennium that takes the church out of a great tribulation. Yet the meaning of 1 Thess. 4:17 suggests the welcoming or greeting of an arriving king to a city, not an escape of the church from a time of tribulation (Bertone 2010). Close examination of Matt. 24:36–41 and Luke 17:26–37 reveal that those taken are the unrighteous who will be assigned to death and desolation, and the righteous are left behind (Balfour 2011, 138). Complicating this picture is that some Pentecostals insisted that there would be multiple raptures at different points in time (McQueen 2012). What is being defended in the doctrine of a secret rapture is not a biblical eschatology but a complex construct based on a system of proof-texting that is rife with misinterpretations and errors (Balfour 2011, 138). However, if 1 Thess. 4:17 is understood as transformation or transfiguration into eschatological time simultaneously occurring with the inbreaking of the divine kingdom (Althouse 2003) rather than the church’s escape from the trials and tribulations of the world, then perhaps the idea can maintain its theological importance. This millennial trajectory softens the overall dependence on the whole of classical dispensational theology that produced obstacles for Pentecostal theology. At the same time, the emergence of broader theological structures and themes that define Pentecostalism have demanded an integration of eschatology in the overall structure of thought by avoiding the isolation of apocalyptic themes from central Pentecostal concerns. The historically dominant fivefold form of the full gospel offers significant insights for an 271

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integration and reinterpretation of eschatology in contemporary Pentecostal theology. The themes of the full gospel direct attention to eschatological concerns by distributing them strategically through the central loci of salvation, sanctification, Spirit baptism, and divine healing.

Salvation as an eschatological process The narrative of the full gospel begins with salvation (Vondey 2017, 37–58). Pentecostal theologians today are exploring soteriological metaphors that are more consistent with Pentecostalism’s eschatological and pneumatological dimensions (see Chapter 21). The pneumatological dimension has been explored in particular by Amos Yong (2005) who argues that in the transition from Luke to Acts a concomitant transition can be seen from Spirit Christology to Spirit soteriology. Jesus’ gift of the Spirit to his followers enables them to overcome sin, temptation, and the devil, empowers them to cast out demons and to heal the sick, and sanctions them for ministry to the poor, the captive, and the oppressed (88–89). In this eschatological trajectory, salvation is both personal and cosmic—transforming humans into the image of Christ and transforming creation into the new heavens and new earth (91). Although salvation has generally been articulated by Pentecostals in individualistic terms as one’s future abode in heaven or hell, the eschatological outpouring of the Spirit points to an eschatological soteriology experienced now. By implication, the world is not destined for apocalyptic destruction but continues to the time of eschatological purification when the persecuted and oppressed will be vindicated in their final redemption. Deliverance is a soteriological metaphor that Yong (2010) explores further in order to articulate a global Pentecostal political theology. Jesus as savior and deliverer is consistent with biblical theology and global Pentecostal thought in that Jesus saves from both sin and sickness. Deliverance is a cosmic eschatological metaphor that envisions a spiritual battle between God and the forces of darkness and the believers who place their trust in God and are freed from the influence of evil. Deliverance brings liberation from the disorders and chaos of creation and human interactions that broker death rather than life. The powers and principalities have both a spiritual context expressed in figurative rhetoric and a socialpolitical context that seeks to overcome social-systemic powers that dehumanize and oppress (see Chapter 40). Deification or theosis constitutes another metaphor for salvation explored by Pentecostal theologians (Kärkkäinnen 2002; Rybarczyk 2004; Thompson 2010). Theosis is the root soteriological principle in Eastern Orthodox theology that envisions the human being in a process of being made into the likeness of God through participation in the divine life that brings one into union with God. Unlike Western theology’s dominant emphasis on forensic justification, theosis is a pneumatological concept that aids Pentecostals to work through their own soteriological views of the divine-human synergy (Kärkkäinnen 2002). In deification, union with God is the eschatological goal. Rybarczyk (2004, 271) notes that the most fruitful point of comparison between Eastern Orthodoxy and Pentecostal theology is in the means of sanctification as a mode of self-examination motivated by yearning for the second coming of Christ. Thompson (2010) argues that through theosis, salvation extends from the now to the eschaton in which justification is the beginning but not its totality. Salvation is the working of God in believers so that the faithful may participate in the divine nature. Theosis effects real ontological change through Christ’s redemption and the Spirit’s deification. Hence, salvation is personal and cosmic in that all created reality is transformed and included. Cosmic

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deification is the work of the Spirit in a cosmic Pentecost preparing the universe for perfect union (Macchia 2006; Thompson 2010). More concretely, Vondey (2017, 132–38) has proposed the altar as a unifying metaphor that ties together Pentecostal soteriological and eschatological praxis. Pentecostals routinely practice the altar call, that is, the call to come and encounter God and the gift of salvation. The altar is an eschatological metaphor for the kingdom of God that comes into existence unexpectedly through the outpouring of the Spirit and participation in creation as a response to divine presence (41–43). The altar mediates salvation to the community through ritual action in which Pentecostals are called to worship and prayer or to engage in liturgical rites such as healing or the celebration of the sacraments. Soteriology initiates an apocalyptic vision of Pentecostal theology that “stands in contrast to any purely conceptual eschatology” and “takes seriously the mission of the church” (150). Altar soteriology is eschatological, not as a relational disposition between God and the human being directed toward a postmortem state, but as a present reality experienced and practiced now in anticipation of the eschatological kingdom.

Sanctification and the cosmic Pentecost Eschatological sanctification provides a holistic approach to holiness. Historically, sanctification has been an integral part of Pentecostal life, though Pentecostals differ on how exactly to articulate this theology (see Chapter 22). On the one hand, Holiness Pentecostals who are informed by John Wesley’s doctrine of entire sanctification claim that Jesus sanctifies the Christian in the present in abiding love from the righteous God who makes one holy through the Spirit of Christ. Sanctification as the effect of salvation is a crisis-process in which apocalyptic urgency informs the affections in a spiritual journey (Land 1993). The theological task is to integrate beliefs (orthodoxy), affections (orthopathy), and actions (orthopraxy) in a way that correlates with human cognitive, affective, and behavioral dispositions (4). The affections are not merely emotionalism but the operation of an eschatological way of being guided by an apocalyptic passion for the kingdom. Purity precedes power in a manner that vivifies love to make power more effective in the here and now (128–29). Sanctification is therefore actualized as a work of grace that defines the dynamic reality of partaking and participating in the divine life. On the other hand, Reformed Pentecostals who have been shaped by American revivalism and Keswick notions of sanctification as daily renewal by the Spirit, define holiness as daily consecration. Historically, this position was first advocated by the “finished work” doctrine of William H. Durham (1873–1912), who proclaimed that sanctification was found in one’s identification with Christ and his completed work accomplished in the atonement of the cross (Farkas 1993). Christ’s completed work of the past works its way eschatologically forward, as it were, to the daily renewal of sanctifying grace in the present believer and sees its completion in one’s final glorification in the eschaton (Faupel 1996; Jacobsen 2003). However, the precise eschatological implications of this position have not seen much theological detail. An eschatologically focused theology of sanctification also demands cosmic elements that include both the kingdom of God and the world. For Pentecostals, the second coming of Christ corresponds to a cosmic Pentecost in which the cosmos is baptized in the Spirit and vivified by God’s presence as Son and Spirit (Macchia 2006, 102–3; Thompson 2010, 135–37; Vondey 2017, 163). Pentecostals have engaged Jürgen Moltmann’s (1985) proposal

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that God’s sabbath rest in creation implies God’s eternal sabbath when God will fill the cosmos with divine glory and sanctify it with divine peace (Althouse 2003). The chief implication of cosmic sanctification is that the hope of holiness for the world to come breaks into the present with sanctifying power to fill the believer, the church, and all creation, calling the sanctified to respond responsibly and righteously in the care for creation (Althouse 2014). The cosmic Pentecost accomplishes the transfiguration or deification of the world in that the Son’s parousia reveals his glory from the Father through the Spirit, while the Spirit’s parousia distributes this glory throughout the cosmos (Thompson 2010, 135–36) to allow creation to participate in God’s glory in anticipation of the fullness of salvation.

Spirit baptism and the eschatological cosmos A common belief among Pentecostals is that the purpose of Spirit baptism is empowerment for service, witness, and mission (see Chapter 23). Initially, the belief was that Spirit baptism would give the recipient the supernatural ability to speak in the language of the missionary’s context (xenolalia) without prior training. Although the belief was indefensible, most Pentecostals still assume that receiving the baptism of the Spirit makes the person a more effective missionary and Christian witness. Through this perspective, Spirit baptism has maintained an explicit eschatological flavor (Macchia 2006, 85–88). Today, Pentecostals are known primarily for the distinctive practice of glossolalia or “speaking in tongues.” Framed in terms of the baptism in the Spirit, Pentecostals advocate that speaking in tongues was a normal practice in the apostolic church and should be expected for Christians today. They make a distinction between the reception of the Spirit that occurs at conversion and the subsequent experience of the Spirit when tongues speech provides the “initial physical evidence” or “sign” that a person has indeed been Spirit baptized as a phenomenological indicator of the eschatological event of Pentecost. Contemporary Pentecostals are seeking to place Spirit baptism in a broader theological and ecumenical context. A significant starting point was provided by Frank Macchia (1993) who has set a course that provides a pneumatological understanding of glossolalia analogous to a sacramental act. For Macchia, tongues function in a way similar to sacraments as a free and spontaneous work of the Spirit that is understood in terms of its eschatological sign value. At Pentecost, tongues speech was a theophanic sign of divine self-disclosure in which the Spirit of resurrection renewed the covenant community in anticipation of the final parousia. Correspondingly, the expression of glossolalia today is an eschatological foretaste of both divine judgment and liberation to come as well as a present impulse for social justice and the breakdown of social barriers. Tongues as sign point to the cosmic resurrection of all things made new that already embodies the coming kingdom, but the transformation is still partially signaled by the way in which glossolalia is broken and limited speech (Macchia 1992). Macchia (2006, 86–87) argues that through Spirit baptism, the church already participates in the sanctification of creation anticipating a cosmic baptism in the Spirit at the end of time. An inaugural or proleptic understanding of the eschaton as already present in the resurrection of Christ and in the Spirit’s outpouring at Pentecost but not yet fully realized and anticipating the final and glorious manifestation of God’s presence underlies this Pentecostal eschatology. Reflecting also on glossolalia but interpreted through the eyes of the Christian mystical tradition, Jean-Jacques Suurmond (1994) argues that the mystical journey exemplified by John of the Cross is one that transverses through the stages of conversion, illumination, dark night, and union. The “dark night” is a wilderness experience all believers must go through 274

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on their journey to the kingdom of God. Suurmond (1994, 155) considers Pentecostals as pre-mystical, however, because they remain in the illumination stage but do not experience fully the dark night as a place for transformation of the self. Glossolalia in this context is a mystical way to communicate and a non-utilitarian but playful expression of the self in God that transcends the barriers and limitations of language. Drawing on the mystical tradition of Theresa of Avila, Simon Chan (1997) argues that glossolalia cannot be reduced to empowerment but is a prayerful practice that accompanies the entire Christian life. The dispensational views that abandon history to false millennial utopias betray the richness of Spirit baptism, argues Chan (2000), by relegating glossolalia to privatized and pious abdication. Instead, glossolalia is a lower level passive prayer as well as a transitional signal moving from striving to receptive prayer. The difference is that for the Pentecostal, receptivity is signaled by tongues, while for the mystic receptivity is signaled by silence (Chan 1997, 94–95). Glossolalia therefore has an eschatological orientation in that the unutterable groanings of the Spirit point to a broken and suffering world hoping for its liberation. Glossolalic prayer points to the partial inbreaking of God’s kingdom in the present but cries unutterably amidst the not yet realized fullness of the divine presence. More recently, Daniel Castelo (2017) has linked Spirit baptism with mysticism and apophaticism which highlight the inadequacy of words, silence, and creaturely limitations unable to grasp the divine in the present. The problem, for Castelo, is that the Pentecostal “initial evidence” doctrine uses inappropriate empirical concepts to describe the connection between glossolalia and Spirit baptism. In its place, a mystical framework strengthens the ontological and teleological grounding for Spirit baptism, since the mystical theme of the dark night offers an opportunity to reconfigure the language of empowerment and reconstitutes eschatological expectations (Castelo 2017, 67–71). The dark night reconfigures Pentecostal expectation of the “benefits” of Spirit baptism to include faithfulness in serving God amidst trials and tribulations. An eschatological view of empowerment can therefore account for Christ’s obedience and submission to the Father on the cross despite its appearance as the powerlessness of God and for the apparent failures of the Christian martyrs as legitimate expressions of empowerment. An “overrealized” eschatology among Pentecostals that yearns for divine presence and charismatic manifestations is tempered by the not yet element of eschatology where the Christian learns the virtues of holy patience, lament, and waiting for God.

Healing as eschatological foretaste Divine healing is an integral component of the full gospel and rivals Spirit baptism as the most critical practice within the global movement (see Chapter 24). Bodily healing has a history that spans back to nineteenth-century evangelicalism (Dayton 1989; Kydd 1998; Curtis 2007). The Pentecostal theology of divine healing focuses on emotional, psychological, and spiritual wholeness (MacNutt 1988). Moreover, the theology and practice of healing is particularized in differing cultural contexts (Brown 2011; Williams 2013) and at times includes elements of spiritual warfare and deliverance (see Chapter 30). Early Pentecostals believed that healing was a soteriological benefit of the atonement in that just as the death of Christ overcomes the curse of sin and brings redemption, the cross also overcomes the results of sin, i.e. sickness and death, and brings healing. Divine healing is a benefit of the victorious life in Christ in which healing and wholeness signify victory amidst sickness and death (Alexander 2006.) Pentecostal insights oscillate between two theological poles: one that affirms that healing is a universal benefit of the atonement offered to all believers, and 275

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the other that affirms the sovereign will of God to determine who should receive healing (Kydd 1998). The conundrum of divine healing is the realization that some people are healed while others are not (Clifton 2014). This concern invites an eschatological perspective. The eschatological impulse of divine healing starts from the premise that alongside the atoning work of the cross, both the resurrection and Pentecost are eschatological events that have already occurred and mediate between the present and the advent of the future kingdom. In other words, healing is derived from the atonement as a historical event of the past and in search of the fullness of atonement in the future (Holms 2014). Hence, the inbreaking of the kingdom of God in which those who are in Christ are raised to new life is a foretaste of ultimate healing that is only penultimately realized in the present. The conundrum of why some are healed, and others are not, is overcome when the fullness of healing is located in future glorification. Anticipation may also provide an understanding for why some people were not, or only partially, healed in history and the kind of “condition” that may not require a “cure” in the eschaton (Eiesland 1994). The cosmic healing of creation is the hope for the eschatological new creation (Althouse 2003). One of the continuing difficulties of Pentecostal eschatology historically is that it was so focused on individual redemption that it neglected the cosmic implications of biblical eschatology. The urgency of the imminent dawn foreclosed the goodness of God’s creation and the implications that Christians must act in and for the world God created as stewards to preserve it (Waddell 2014). A robust eschatology of healing includes the healing of the earth (see Chapter 33) and the whole cosmos with implications for how believers must act and how social structures must be developed in light of the eschaton.

Conclusion Pentecostal eschatology has undergone significant transitions. This chapter has offered an eschatological reading of the Pentecostal full gospel and suggested that Pentecostal theology is eschatological in all of its themes. Eschatology is neither protological nor final but an ever-present hope that requires both poles in tension. An excessive focus on history prematurely resolves the anticipation of the radical newness of creation, while an exclusive focus on the future forecloses the continuity of creation with the coming kingdom. In Pentecostal theology and worship, anticipation for the eschatological dawn partially realized now, draws individual, corporate, and cosmic elements into a fully integrated and transformed advent of the kingdom of God.

References Alexander, Kimberly Ervin. 2006. Pentecostal Healing: Models in Theology and Practice. JPT Supplement 29. Blandford Forum: Deo Publishing. Althouse, Peter. 2003. Spirit of the Last Days: Pentecostal Eschatology in Conversation with Jürgen Moltmann. JPT Supplement 25. London: T&T Clark International. ———. 2010a. “The Landscape of Pentecostal and Charismatic Eschatology: An Introduction.” In Perspectives in Pentecostal Eschatologies: World without End, edited by Peter Althouse and Robby Waddell, 1–21. Eugene: Pickwick. ———. 2010b. “Pentecostal Eschatology in Context: The Eschatological Orientation of the Full Gospel.” In Perspectives in Pentecostal Eschatologies: World without End, edited by Peter Althouse and Robby Waddell, 205–31. Eugene: Pickwick. ———. 2014. “Pentecostal Eco-Transformation: Possibilities for a Pentecostal Ecotheology in Light of Moltmann’s Green Theology.”In Blood Cries Out: Pentecostals, Charismatics, and the Groans of Creation, edited by A.J. Swaboda, 116–132. Eugene: Pickwick. Anderson, Robert M. 1979. Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Eschatology Balfour, Glenn. 2011. “Pentecostal Eschatology Revisited.” Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 31 (2): 127–40. Bertone, John. 2010. “Seven Dispensations or Two-Age View of History: A Pauline Perspective.” In Perspectives in Pentecostal Eschatologies: World without End, edited by Peter Althouse and Robby Waddell, 61–94. Eugene: Pickwick. Boyer, Paul. 2003. “The Growth of Fundamentalist Apocalyptic in the United States.” In The Continuum History of Apocalypticism, edited by Bernard J. McGinn, John J. Collins, and Stephen J. Stein, 516–44. New York: Continuum. Brown, Candy Gunther. 2011. “Introduction: Pentecostalism and the Globalization of Illness and Healing.” In Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing, edited by Candy Gunther Brown, 3–26. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Castelo, Daniel. 2017. Pentecostalism as Christian Mystical Tradition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns. Chan, Simon. 1997. “The Language Games of Glossolalia, or Making Sense of the ‘Initial Evidence.’” In Pentecostalism in Context: Essays in Honor of William W. Menzies, edited by Wonsuk Ma and Robert P. Menzies, 80–95. JPT Supplement 11. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. ———. 2000. Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition. JPT Supplement 21. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Clifton, Shane. 2014. “The Dark Side of Prayer for Healing: Toward a Theology of Well-Being.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 36 (2): 204–25. Cornwall, Robert. 1992. “Primitivism and the Redefinition of Dispensationalism in the Theology of Aimee Semple McPherson.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 14 (1): 23–42. Curtis, Heather D. 2007. Faith in the Great Physician: Suffering and Divine Healing in American Culture, 1860–1900. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press. Dayton, Donald W. 1987. Theological Roots in Pentecostalism. Metuchen: Scarecrow Press. Eiesland, Nancy. 1994. The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability. Nashville: Abingdon. Farkas, Thomas George. 1993. “William H. Durham and the Sanctification Controversy in Early American Pentecostalism, 1906– 1916.” PhD diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Faupel, William D. 1996. The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought. JPT Supplement 3. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Holm, Randall. 2014. “Healing in Search of Atonement.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 23: 50–67. Jacobsen, Douglas. 2003. Thinking in the Spirit: Theologies of the Early Pentecostal Movement. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. 2002. Toward a Pneumatological Theology: Pentecostal and Ecumenical Perspectives on Ecclesiology, Soteriology, and Theology of Mission, edited by Amos Yong. Lanham: University Press of America. Kydd, Ronald A. N. 1998. Healing through the Centuries: Models for Understanding. Peabody: Hendrickson. Land, Steven J. 1993. Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom. JPT Supplement 1. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Macchia, Frank D. 1992. “Sighs Too Deep for Words: Toward a Theology of Glossolalia.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 1: 47–73. ———. 1993. “Tongues as a Sign: Towards a Sacramental Understanding of Pentecostal Experience.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 15 (1): 61–76. ———. 2006. Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. MacNutt, Francis. 1988. Healing. Altamonte Springs: Creation House. Marsden, George M. 2006. Fundamentalism and American Culture. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McQueen, Larry R. 2012. Toward a Pentecostal Eschatology: Discerning the Way Forward. JPT Supplement 39. Blandford Forum: Deo Publishing. Moltmann, Jürgen. 1985. God in Creation: An Ecological Doctrine of Creation. Translated by Margaret Kohl. London: SCM Press. Prosser, Peter E. 1999. Dispensationalist Eschatology and Its Influence on American and British Religious Movements. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press. Rybarczyk, Edumnd J. Beyond Salvation: Eastern Orthodoxy and Classical Pentecostalism on Becoming Like Christ. Milton Keyes: Paternoster. Sandeen, Ernest R. 1970. The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism 1800–1930. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Seymour, William. “Pentecost has Come.” 1906. The Apostolic Faith 1 (1): 1.

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Peter Althouse Sheppard, Gerald T. 1984. “Pentecostalism and the Hermeneutics of Dispensationalism: The Anatomy of an Uneasy Relationship.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 2 (2): 5–34. Suurmond, Jean-Jacques. 1994. Word and Spirit at Play: Towards a Charismatic Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns. Thomas, John Christopher, ed. 2010. Toward a Pentecostal Ecclesiology: The Church and the Fivefold Gospel. Cleveland: CPT Press. Thompson, Damien. 2005. Waiting for Antichrist: Charisma and Apocalypse in a Pentecostal Church. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thompson, Matthew. 2010. Kingdom Come: Revisioning Pentecostal Eschatology. JPT Supplement 37. Blandford Forum: Deo Publishing. Vondey, Wolfgang. 2017. Pentecostal Theology: Living the Full Gospel. Systematic Pentecostal and Charismatic Theology 1. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. Wacker, Grant. 2001. Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Waddell, Robby. 2014. “A Green Apocalypse: Comparing Secular and Religious Eschatological Visions of Earth.” In Blood Cries Out: Pentecostals, Ecology, and the Groans of Creation, edited by A. J. Swoboda, 133– 51. Eugene: Pickwick. Weber, Timothy P. 1979. Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism 1875–1925. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Williams, Joseph W. 2013. Spirit Cure: A History of Pentecostal Healing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yong, Amos. 2005. The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. ———. 2010. In the Days of Caesar: Pentecostalism and Political Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

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26 MISSIOLOGY Evangelization, holistic ministry, and social justice Wonsuk Ma and Julie C. Ma

Pentecostal Christianity is known as a mission-focused tradition. Missiology occupies a central place in Pentecostal theology because of its close integration of doctrine and praxis, although mission is often practiced instinctively before it is articulated theologically. In its incredible diversity, the movement has grown exponentially in both geographical expanse and numerical strength, claiming to have reached 693.8 million people by the close of 2019 and expecting to grow to 1.1 billion by 2050, recording the highest growth rate of any religious tradition (Zurlo, Johnson, and Crossing 2019, 96). Alongside, Pentecostal missiology has expanded from a narrow understanding of evangelizing the lost to the complex dynamics of global renewal. This chapter aims at providing a critical overview of the development of global Pentecostal mission thinking and practices. We argue that three dominant trajectories have motivated and shaped Pentecostal mission: evangelism, holistic mission, and social justice may be viewed as the three concentric ripples of Pentecostal missiology. This three-stage scheme implies neither a sequential development or mutual exclusiveness; focus on one of the three waves always carries implications for the others because the foundational constant is the active presence and work of the Holy Spirit at the center. We begin by detailing the characteristics of Pentecostal mission and theology before looking in more detail at each of the three trajectories.

Theological motivation for Pentecostal mission Pentecostal mission may be compared to concentric ripples representing a set of theological forces driving Pentecostalism outward from a primary concern for evangelization to holistic mission and justice. At the center of these ripples stands the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost as the originating event of the mission of the church (Yong 2014, 19–36; W. Ma 2017). The Spirit is the primary agent of mission: birthing the church that is sent out to the world, opening territories for God’s reign, and manifesting God’s love and power for salvation (see Chapter 27). While this dynamic emerges from Pentecost as the shared origin of all churches, Pentecostal mission is historically driven by a particular set of theological characteristics that carry the ripples outwards. The first motivation is a sense of eschatological urgency found among early Pentecostals. The experience of the baptism in the Holy Spirit accentuated a premillennial orientation, 279

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popularly found in the self-designation of Pentecostal revival as the “latter rain” ( Joel 2:23), which signaled that the church was now in the last days before the imminent return of Christ (see Chapter 25). The window for “saving souls” was quickly closing; evangelism became an urgent priority, and many young men and women went immediately into the mission field (Anderson 2007). By 1910, close to 200 Pentecostal missionaries, later dubbed “one-way missionaries,” traveled to many parts of the world, often with no training (McGee 2003, 888) and with no intention to return. Second, the baptism in the Holy Spirit was seen as empowerment to witness– mirroring Acts 1:8, the banner passage for the movement. The theological link between Spirit baptism and mission understood as witness to the lost had decisive implications for mission practices, chief among them the understanding of speaking with tongues: many Pentecostal pioneers believed to have received the gift of known languages (xenolalia) to supernaturally empower them to be a witness to the world. This euphoric anticipation was often disappointed, but the sense of Spirit empowerment carried on, and missionaries did not return even when they had not received the actual spoken languages (Anderson 2007). Third, the conviction that Spirit baptism was for “all believers” (see Acts 2:17–18) reconfigured the understanding of divine calling: the call to mission was no longer seen as exclusively given to the clergy but was expanded to all believers. Blurring the clergy-laity demarkation and mobilizing women and children, Pentecostalism became a grassroots missionary movement (McClung 1986). Mission was a way of life rather than an isolated aspect of church ministry. Fourth, many of the early Pentecostal believers came from lower social strata and found their spiritual experience uplifting, liberating, and empowering. Pentecostalism became a religion of the poor, welcoming the socially marginalized into their midst and expanding mission to all social strata (W. Ma 2007). In turn, Pentecostal mission reached out to the margins of the world by extending throughout all social strata with the explicit intention of holistic transformation. A final motivation is the clear role of spiritual experience in the missional orientation of Pentecostals. Their theology focuses on the encounter with God (Warrington 2008), with claims of “hearing” from God, experiencing his “touch,” and encountering God’s presence. The Pentecostal worldview exhibits a keen consciousness of the spiritual world, expecting the active presence of both the Holy Spirit and evil spirits in the world around them. Following the examples of the early church, spiritual gifts have become part of Pentecostal mission strategy to serve as “signs and wonders” of the authenticity of the Christian message (Ma and Ma 2010, 59–71). Hence, missiology is also a dynamic expression of spiritual warfare (see Chapter 30). The dynamic of these different motivations carry Pentecostal missions along three dominant waves.

Evangelistic mission: saving souls as the mother of mission The primary goal of mission is the proclamation of the gospel, and the innermost ripple of Pentecostal missiology is always a concern for “saving souls.” With its pneumatological center, mission is understood in its most immediate sense as facilitating divine power for witness “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The Pentecostal movement shares this soteriologically driven mission as evangelization of the “lost” with the birth of the ecumenical movement in the twentieth century (Hunter 2010). Until the 1970s, Pentecostal missiology was almost entirely perceived as a form of world evangelism and church planting (Ma and Ma 2010, 117–33). The goals of this soteriological missiology are often pragmatic and present several challenges. 280

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Mission as evangelism Pentecostals who experienced a miraculous encounter with God have been zealous evangelists resulting in the establishment of churches, which, in turn, emphasized the evangelistic power of the Holy Spirit. Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, Korea, is an important example. Established in 1958 in a post-war outskirt of the metropolis among the poor, the church was quickly known for its healing ministry and special emphasis on prayer, healing, miracles, and mission (Cho 2008). As the church grew exponentially, it began to mobilize lay leaders in home cell groups—a system often considered to be a distinct expression of Pentecostal missiology. Based on the theological principle of the “prophethood of all believers” (Stronstad 1999), the church has systematically promoted evangelistic church growth principles based on the principle that witness to the gospel is the calling of every person. Another significant missionary strategy which fueled the evangelistic expansion of Pentecostalism was the training of national workers and leaders. Early on, Pentecostals established Bible institutes and theological schools to train people for evangelism and church planting. Pentecostals focused on training large numbers of spiritual “foot soldiers” that accomplished the spread of the Pentecostal message and who, in time, established national leadership in most mission fields. Complementing the bottom-up strategy of evangelism is the Pentecostal megachurch phenomenon, a growing development now witnessed worldwide (W. Ma 2018, 36–37). Large single congregations in urban centers represent powerful demonstration of faith that function as centers of evangelization in addition to the “saturated presence” of many small Pentecostal congregations (W. Ma 2018, 38). Global Pentecostal evangelism is grounded in the theological emphasis on the Spirit’s empowerment that mobilizes every believer to be a witness to the gospel. Healing is a particularly prominent characteristic of Pentecostal evangelists gathering large crowds. The experiential manifestation of God’s supernatural power has turned many animistic communities to Christ ( J. Ma 2001). Large and small outdoor healing “crusades” have become the hallmark of Pentecostal evangelism. Mission as evangelization proceeds through both the large and the small.

Challenges of evangelistic mission Considering the pragmatic and activist nature of Pentecostal evangelism, most documents available to offer insights into this mission focus are missionary newsletters, denominational magazines, and mission (auto)biographies. Academic and critical studies were produced only rarely (Hodges 1976) until focus on church growth rose to an academic discipline in the 1980s and Pentecostal churches were used as successful models (Wagner 1974). Yet, in spite of the positive contributions to the growth and vitality of global Christianity, the primary focus on evangelism has come with numerous challenges. Above all, mission perceived primarily as evangelization has brought significant challenges to Christian unity (see Chapter 35). Either by intention or by unwitting circumstances, the “growth” of Pentecostalism has been achieved in part through boundless internal divisions and splits. The sensational nature of Pentecostal experiences and spirituality causes uneasiness among many existing churches, including accusations of proselytism (“Evangelization, Proselytism, and Common Witness” 2010). While some denominations have embraced Pentecostalism, others remain divided between existing and new Pentecostal groups, and still others have been organized by those who left their traditions because of their Pentecostal experiences. Pentecostals face important ethical challenges in their primarily evangelistic 281

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campaigns, particularly with the popularist prosperity gospel (see Chapter 38). Claims of healing and miracles have attracted attention as well as scrutiny, and moral failures and extravagant lifestyle of high-profile charismatic evangelists, both in the West and the majority world, raise theological and practical questions about the relationship between and consistency of Spirit-empowered mission and Spirit-led life. Mission perceived exclusively as evangelization risks neglecting the importance of developing a consistent Pentecostal mission spirituality (White 2016) that extends further toward human flourishing and social welfare.

Holistic mission: responding to human suffering Following the primary importance of evangelism, caring for the destitute is an inherent part of Pentecostal mission (Lord 2005). Seen as a second ripple of Pentecostal mission, social engagement and “mercy” ministries range from caring for the sick, disaster relief, emergency services, and medical assistance, to providing education and counseling (Miller and Yamamori 2007, 41–43). The initial theological motivation was and still is to serve the evangelistic goal of Pentecostal mission. However, response to human suffering has significantly broadened the purview of Pentecostal mission from a focus on saving the lost to a mission to the poor and destitute. Important in this context is the self-identity of many Pentecostals, particularly in the majority world, as the “poor” or the socially marginalized. The Azusa Street mission in Los Angeles, often seen as the birthplace of Pentecostalism in North America, was looked down upon by mainstream Christianity for its uneducated Afro-American leader, William Seymour. In the midst of racial segregation, the mainstream media harshly criticized the mission’s interracial worship (see Chapter 39). Classical Pentecostalism quickly became a haven for immigrants, colored groups, and the poor with an emphasis on empowerment of the socially marginalized (W. Ma 2007, 28–29). In Latin America, this phenomenon of upward social mobility and the ongoing cycle of social uplift are particularly evident (Martin 1993). The impact of social uplift fuels evangelistic outreach. In turn, a holistic view of mission has further extended Pentecostal responses to human suffering. Pentecostals have always viewed healing as an expression of God’s goodness and as an expected outcome for all believers (see Chapter 24). The materiality and corporeality of salvation marks a significant component of Pentecostal soteriology (Volf 1989). Historically, however, Pentecostal life and mission turned toward a holistic understanding of human life and the gospel only after the initial preoccupation with eschatological urgency began to wane slowly but steadily with the second and third generations of Pentecostals. With the advent of the Charismatic movement in the 1960s and the rise of independent and indigenous churches embracing Pentecostal beliefs and ethos, the focus shifted from other-worldly to this-worldly matters. Evangelistic mission shifted to holistic mission.

Areas of Pentecostal holistic mission Holistic mission is no longer the domain of foreign missionaries and evangelists. Pentecostal missiology has actively engaged with different expressions of social ministry most notably through the use of indigenous networks and natives of affected regions. An important expression of this holistic mission is the care for the destitute. In addition to immediate relief activities for disaster victims, many Pentecostal missionaries established orphanages and shelters for children and widows. Pandita Ramabai (1858–1922) was born into a Brahmin family and after her conversion to Christianity devoted herself to the affairs of culturally 282

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oppressed Indian widows by promoting the education of women and children. Her Mukti mission eventually housed around 1,500 children and contributed to the Mukti revival in 1904 (Anderson 2006). Similarly, Lillian Trasher (1887–1961), a “one-way” missionary of the early Pentecostal revival in North America, left for Egypt, where she spent most of her life. With a desire to care for destitute children and women, she began an orphanage in 1915, which grew to serve 25,000 children and widows. A feeding program was added to serve 4,500 meals each day by the 1960s. Not evangelization but the spiritual transformation of the children and women were the focus of this mission, which contributed to a Pentecostal revival in 1927. When Trasher passed away in 1961, she was affectionately and respectively called “Mama Lillian” and the “Nile Mother” (McGee 2010, 164–65). Although these compassionate responses were initially more intuitive than reflective, the theological motivation for this broadened mission spirituality stems from an emphasis on human dignity, the image of God in every person, and a holistic view of life. Another area of holistic mission is education, which is often viewed as a viable exit strategy from poverty. Philippe Ouedraogo (2013, 85–86), a Pentecostal minister of Burkina Faso, led a process that identified the root of chronic national poverty in the lack of education. Through the Association Evangélique d’Appui au Développement, involving churches and mission agencies, a nine-month fast-track educational program was designed, and between 2006 and 2012, a total of 3,355 children aged 9–12 completed the program. More than 5,000 children attended Christian elementary schools, and the program was praised by the government particularly for its contribution to female education. A large number of children and their families have become Christian, affirming the Pentecostal motivation of holistic mission remains to support the primary evangelistic goal. A third area is the direct intervention of the church to alleviate suffering. In Korea, David Yonggi Cho, the founder of Yoido Full Gospel Church, began his ministry in a post-war poverty-stricken community with focus on God’s healing and goodness. From the 1990s, the church began intentional social service programs (Lee 2009, 125). In 2007, construction for Cho Yonggi Heart Hospital in Pyongyang was hailed as an example of the church’s role in national reconciliation. Cho has postulated that healing and poverty is part of the curse that humans have to bear as the consequence of sin. Therefore, like many Pentecostals, he considers blessing to be the entitlement of God’s people (Cho 1997). Despite the important role played by leading figures, holistic mission requires the participation of many Christians who volunteer to make the social ministries successful. Such local-level small-sized missionaries abound among “progressive Pentecostals” (Miller and Yamamori 2007, 5–6) who address social issues in their local contexts often without external resources. The mobilization of the Pentecostal masses for mission remains grounded in the belief that every believer is empowered for witness coupled with an ethical mandate to participate in the mission work. The mission field has moved effectively from the ends of the world to the homes and neighborhoods of the people.

Critical responses to holistic mission While care for the suffering has become an integral part of Pentecostal mission practices, particularly among those who share similar experiences of sickness, poverty, and marginalization, institutional policies and academic reflections on holistic mission among Pentecostals are still an after-thought. The appearance of Called and Empowered (Dempster, Klaus, and Petersen 1991) marked a watershed point of Pentecostal mission studies, laying a biblical and theological ground for critically engaging in a Pentecostal holistic missiology. The fourth 283

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quinquennium of the international dialogue between Pentecostals and the Roman Catholic Church (1990–97) focused its critical attention on social justice and mission (“Evangelization, Proselytism, and Common Witness” 2010). At the end of the same decade came the “Brussels Statement on Evangelization and Social Concern” (1999). Centered around the kingdom of God, the statement declares that love of neighbors is not only the fulfillment of God’s Great Commandment but also the sign of the in-breaking of God’s reign (42–43). However, critical voices have raised concerns about exploiting people’s suffering for the purposes of evangelization under the pretense of service and love. In response, formal policy changes were introduced, for example, in 2009 when the Assemblies of God added “showing love” and “serving (the poor and suffering)” to its constitution and bylaws included in the strategies for mission (General Council 2009). Another criticism of holistic mission in response to human suffering has been what has been critically called “prosperity preaching.” Considering that poverty and illness are two principal causes of human suffering, the message of the prosperity gospel serves not only as concrete sign of God’s reign but also meets real-life needs. Promises of health and wealth, however, are not the primary message of the gospel, and Pentecostal mission practitioners and thinkers are called to discern and reflect on the challenges. The prosperity gospel distracts from the evangelistic intentions at the heart of Pentecostal missiology to be in the first place a witness unto salvation.

Justice as mission: rebuilding society The outer ripple of Pentecostal mission extends to social and structural injustice. Although Pentecostal missiology in response to human suffering has dived fully into the second ripple in terms of serving the poor, it has yet to venture far into the third (see Chapter 40). This outer realm of mission in the diverse contexts of social injustice is often compared with the focus of liberation theology and its highly politicized mission practice viewed with hesitation by many Pentecostals. The initial engagement with concerns of social justice is often an outgrowth of the Pentecostal commitment to serve the poor and the suffering. A more explicit missiology in terms of justice is building only gradually in the areas of human flourishing, social equality, public engagement, and racial reconciliation. As these domains comprise the outer ripple of Pentecostal missiology, many of these areas are still uncharted territories of a Pentecostal theology of mission.

Human flourishing Compassion ministries often reach the concerns of justice once the immediate relief work is done. Participants in diakonic mission then move to the long-term strategies necessary to rebuild individual lives, families, and communities. This task is where challenges are identified in the established social structures that hinder the fullness of equality and human dignity caused by deeply ingrained socio-cultural structures. It is in these contexts that liberation theology and its variations take socio-political structures as the main cause of poverty and social marginalization (Gutiérrez and Müller 2015). Advocates of liberation theology present broad biblical bases for active resistance and struggle against the established political powers. In contrast, Pentecostals have approached the same challenges differently. Consistent with its grassroots nature, the Pentecostal faith has created a non-confrontational bottoms-up movement through the advocation of the Spirit’s empowerment and godly living. In Latin America, where liberation theology is prominent, Pentecostals have achieved an upward 284

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social mobility with a focus on transformation through the individual (Martin 1993, 205–32). In Malaysia, many Pentecostal congregations set up homes for children and the elderly, drug rehabilitation centers, and dialysis services for those who cannot afford treatment. In Korea, Pentecostal mission empowers its converts to experience liberation from poverty, addiction, and broken relationships, similar to Minjung theology (Kim 2007). However, the emphasis on transformation is attributed to the unique Pentecostal view of human existence where inner transformation affects a change of life-style that also transforms the social environment. This “one-at-a-time” approach may be criticized as an ineffective individualistic method, especially in comparison to the broad activistic struggle of liberation theology. Nonetheless, the outcomes are indeed transformative and affect long-term alleviation of social injustices. The effectiveness of this mission focus may be attributed to the inside-out direction of social transformation (W. Ma 2007).

Social equality The aim of personal transformation is social equality rather than conversion (McGee 2010, 142). Trasher’s orphanage in Egypt was the very first one in the nation that directly challenged the long-established cultural patterns placing the responsibility of caring for orphans on the extended family system. It practically relieved the government and society of such a responsibility. By introducing a public institution called “orphanage” and demonstrating a Christian virtue of altruistic care for orphans and widows, this mission introduced the transforming work of the Holy Spirit into concerns for social equality. Similarly, Ramabai began her work caring for destitute children and widows in a society where the caste system was strictly maintained. As a Brahmin woman, Ramabai freely engaged with people of different (and lower) castes, and her acts of compassion began to challenge the established social norms. When she initiated a full-blown campaign for women’s education in India, her Pentecostal mission engagement confronted deeply rooted socio-cultural structural prejudices (Anderson 2006), which, in turn, changed the directions of foreign missionaries (McGee 2010, 130–34). Similarly, the widely studied cell group system of Yoido Full Gospel Church has empowered lay women by placing them in leadership roles (Cho 2008). Although the importance of David Yonggi Cho, the founder of the church, is well acknowledged, the role played by Jashil Choi, the mother-in-law of Cho was crucial through her role-modeling, organization, and management. Her significance is particularly evident in the context of heavily male dominant Confucian social norms. In all these examples, the socio-cultural marginality of women (and children) is challenged through a Pentecostal mission to transform society beyond narrow evangelistic concerns.

Public engagement Public engagement is a broad area of mission far beyond traditional evangelistic concerns. Only two spheres of Pentecostal engagement may be elaborated. The first is an influence on policy-making as a result of Pentecostal engagement in holistic mission. One example is the campaign launched by Pentecostal churches in Zambia to counter the HIV/AIDS endemic. Joshua Banda (2013) has started several initiatives since 1992 to provide public ministry to HIV/AIDS patients and their families. With the growing trust of people affected, the church’s clinic tested and provided ongoing medical care for patients. The church houses children orphaned by AIDS, and the church’s education program promotes marital fidelity. 285

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This model was soon adopted by other churches in the country and contributed to the formation of the Health Care Association of Zambia, which became responsible for providing about 50% of the nation’s HIV/AIDS care (Banda 2013, 42). From 2007, Banda served as the chairman of the National AIDS Council, influencing national and regional AIDS policies. He has defended the Christian-based national policy against the human-rights-based measures of the United Nations by suggesting that Christian mission is to transform individual and communal life without neglecting to bring people under the lordship of Christ. Similarly, the continuing evangelistic motivation and the educational work in Burkina Faso provide important cases where Christian witness is now present in the public sphere. On the political front, however, Pentecostals have been mostly ambivalent if not apolitical (Yong 2010, 4–14). Many Pentecostals still take a non-engagement stance, focusing primarily on spiritual matters and, only lately, public service. Pentecostals have not yet developed a robust theology of mission in the terms of public engagement. In South Korea, in the 1970s and 1980s, the entire nation was engulfed in the democratic struggle against the military regime. And progressive Christian churches, particularly the Roman Catholic and some member churches of the National Council of Churches, took this national issue to the streets and public debates braving government crackdown, arrest, and imprisonment. However, most Evangelical and notably Pentecostal churches closed their ears to the injustices perpetrated by the military dictatorship (Suico 2003), and church leaders focused their attention on the spiritual affairs of their congregations. Such a non-engagement stance may have been the result of a secular-religious dichotomy still dominant among Pentecostals. More likely, however, local-church oriented ecclesiology still lacks the public dimension of mission while prioritizing individual and (local) ecclesial dimensions of faith and praxis. Still, Pentecostals are often intentional in addressing the spiritual and personal aspects of socio-cultural issues as the starting point for national transformation. This perspective does not exclude political engagement, and an increasing number of Pentecostals, both lay people and clergy, have tried for public offices and engage in democratic and anti-colonial struggles (Lindhardt 2014). Although taking public issues as a mission agenda is encouraging, the questions of the legitimacy and extent of political involvement by Pentecostals requires a careful theological foundation yet to be developed.

Racial reconciliation Racial divisions are a significant mission concern and cause of civil wars and social tensions which stand directly against the church’s witness to the loving and saving grace of God. In this area, the track record of Pentecostalism is rather mixed (see Chapter 39). As with public and political engagement, a Pentecostal missiology that includes racial identity and reconciliation is yet to be developed. The original inter-racial composition of the Azusa Street mission and revival confronted the norm of racial segregation, aptly expressed by Frank Bartleman (1980, xviii), a white Pentecostal leader, in the exclamation: “The color line was washed away in the blood.” However, this powerful demonstration of the Spirit’s work was soon usurped by the organization of many Pentecostal denominations along racial lines. The majority of Pentecostal denominations in North America are still racially defined, and both evangelism and holistic mission are affected by this divide. Similarly, in South Africa, the painful experience of the apartheid rule divided the Apostolic Faith Mission, the largest Pentecostal denomination in the country, along the color lines. Besides the leadership exercised by the minority white over the majority colored, injustices perpetrated by white Pentecostal believers against fellow colored believers raise serious questions about the precedence of one’s racial identity over one’s 286

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Christian identity. These and other experiences point to the theological and missiological inconsistencies faced by Pentecostal mission and the question how the Spirit’s work in justice and righteousness can be realized amidst contrasting attitudes and stereotypes.

Other uncharted territories These uncharted territories suggest that missiology is never a static endeavor but that the broadening of Pentecostal mission is a key contributor for productive and constructive Pentecostal theology. Pentecostals continue to explore other unfamiliar areas as an integral part of what is now Pentecostal mission (Kärkkäinen 1999; Yong 2010). One area is the growing problem of displacement in a world affected by refugee crises that redefines traditional ideas of the mission “field.” With political, social, economic, and human rights affected, mission as a ministry of social justice tends to work with other Christian and humanitarian agencies, governments, and international institutions. These cooperations have also shown a positive impact on Pentecostal involvement in ecumenical and inter-churches encounters (see Chapter 35) particularly in the global South (Robeck 2014, 201–6). The Global Christian Forum is a newly created “neutral” ecumenical space, and Pentecostals have actively engaged in its leadership, global, and regional encounters. Pentecostal attitudes toward the relationship with other religions (see Chapter 41), however, have been rather cautious (Yong and Clarke 2011) and often under the domain of the primary ripple of evangelistic concerns (see Chapter 41) and traditional Christological perspectives of mission (Yong 2003). Considering the social reality that many Pentecostal believers in the global South interact, live, and work on a daily basis with neighbors of other religions, reflection on the missiological implications of engaging with other religions is an urgent matter for Pentecostal missiology (Yong 2014, 77–140). Similarly, concerns for creation and environmental stewardship have not yet become a Pentecostal mission agenda. A gradual appearance of Pentecostal ecotheology, however, is encouraging (see Chapter 33). Lastly, the topic of human sexuality has found only a limited discussion among Pentecostals (Ma, Reid-Martinez, and Hamilton 2019) and reflects the challenges at the outer ripple to engaging with newly emerging problems distanced from primary evangelistic concerns.

Conclusion The success of mission has made Pentecostalism the second largest tradition of global Christianity. This growth is partly attributed to the strong evangelistic motivation that has turned Pentecostal believers into zealous and committed grass-roots mission players. Yet larger than evangelism alone, the Pentecostal mission ethos is one of pragmatism and activism. At the same time, there are a number of concerns which both Pentecostal mission thinkers and practitioners need to engage to ensure a healthy mission dynamic continues, above all theological consistency. For the model of concentric ripples to be congruent, each wave of Pentecostal mission should draw its motivation from the theological center originating with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Despite its popularity, a pneumatological Pentecostal missiology is still under development. The model employed in this chapter suggests that a theology of holistic mission can be conceived as aiding evangelism, while several areas of justice mission are the consequence of a holistic motivation for mission. When all the ripples draw their motivation and resources from the common theological well of a Spirit-motivated missiology, Pentecostal mission will maintain an organic and dynamic cohesion, where one area of engagement strengthens and complements the others. 287

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Still, a word of caution is in order regarding the primacy of evangelization. Originating with the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, the innermost ripple of Pentecostal mission is to be a witness to the gospel. The second and third stages of mission are carried by this first ripple and should not outgrow the original concern for evangelization. Historical lessons warn Pentecostals that holistic mission and social justice are rooted in the witness of the gospel, and Pentecostals must maintain that only when the inner ripple is strong, can the next one have a sound impact. If it is difficult to maintain all three waves of mission, Pentecostalism would do well to focus on the original concern of evangelism as a theological priority to correct and develop its missiology.

References Anderson, Allan. 2006. “Pandita Ramabai, the Mukti Revival and Global Pentecostalism.” Transformation: An International Journal of Holistic Mission Studies 23 (1): 37–48. ———. 2007. Spreading Fires: The Missionary Nature of Early Pentecostalism. Maryknoll: Orbis. Banda, Joshua. 2013. “Engaging with the Community, the Fight against AIDS.” In Good News from Africa: Community Transformation through the Church, edited by Brian E. Woolnough, 41–54. Oxford: Regnum. Bartleman, Frank. 1980. Azusa Street. South Plainfield: Bridge Publishing. “Brussels Statement on Evangelization and Social Concern.” 1999. Transformation 16 (2): 41–43. Cho, David Yonggi. 1997. The Five-fold Gospel and the Three-fold Blessing. Seoul: Logos. ———. 2008. Dr. David Yonggi Cho: Ministering Hope for 50 Years. Alachua: Bridge-Logos. Dempster, Murray W., Byron D. Klaus, and Douglas Petersen, eds. 1991. Called & Empowered: Global Mission in Pentecostal Perspective. Peabody: Hendrickson. “Evangelization, Proselytism and Common Witness: The Report the Fourth Phase of the International Dialogue 1990–97 between the Roman Catholic Church and Some Classical Pentecostal Churches and Leaders.” 2010. In Pentecostalism and Christian Unity: Ecumenical Documents and Critical Assessments, edited by Wolfgang Vondey, 159–98. Eugene: Pickwick. General Council of the Assemblies of God, ed. 2009. Minutes of the 53rd Session of the General Council of the Assemblies of God. Springfield: General Council of the Assemblies of God. Gutiérrez, Gustavo and Gerhard Müller. 2015. On the Side of the Poor. Maryknoll: Orbis. Hodges, Melvin L. 1976. The Indigenous Church. Springfield: Gospel Publishing House. Hunter, Harold D. 2010. “Global Pentecostalism and Ecumenism: Two Movements of the Holy Spirit?” In Pentecostalism and Christian Unity: Ecumenical Documents and Critical Assessments, edited by Wolfgang Vondey, 20–33. Eugene: Pickwick. Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. 1999. “Pentecostal Missiology in Ecumenical Perspective: Contributions, Challenges, Controversies.” International Review of Mission 88: 207–22. Kim, Sebastian C. H. 2007. “The Problem of Poverty in Post-War Korean Christianity: Kibock Sinang or Minjung Theology?” Transformation 24 (1): 43–50. Lee, Younghoon. 2009. The Holy Spirit Movement in Korea: Its Historical and Theological Development. Regnum Studies in Mission. Oxford: Regnum Books. Lindhardt, Martin. 2014. Pentecostalism in Africa: Presence and Impact of Pneumatic Christianity in Postcolonial Societies. Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies 15. Leiden: Brill. Lord, Andrew. 2005. Spirit-Shaped Mission: A Holistic-Charismatic Missiology. Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies. Waynesboro: Paternoster. Ma, Julie C. 2001. When the Spirit Meets the Spirits: Pentecostal Ministry among the Kankana-Ey Tribe in the Philippines. Studies in the Intercultural History of Christianity 118. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Ma, Julie C., and Wonsuk Ma. 2010. Mission in the Spirit: Towards a Pentecostal/Charismatic Missiology. Regnum Studies in Mission. Oxford: Regnum Books. Ma, Wonsuk. 2007. “‘When the Poor Are Fired Up’: The Role of Pneumatology in PentecostalCharismatic Mission.” Transformation 24 (1): 28–34. ———. 2017. “The Holy Spirit in Pentecostal Mission: The Shaping of Mission Awareness and Practice.” International Bulletin of Mission Research 41 (3): 227–38. ———. 2018. “Pentecostal Gift to Christian Unity: Its Possibility in the New Global Context.” International Review of Mission 107 (1): 33–48.

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Missiology Ma, Wonsuk, Kathaleen Reid-Martinez, and Annamarie Hamilton, eds. 2019. Human Sexuality and the Holy Spirit: Spirit-Empowered Perspectives. Tulsa: ORU Press. Martin, David. 1993. Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America. Oxford: Blackwell. McClung, Jr., L. Grant, ed. 1986. Azusa Street and Beyond: Pentecostal Missions and Church Growth in the Twentieth Century. South Plainfield: Logos. McGee, G. B. 2003. “Missions, Overseas (North American Pentecostal): The Azusa Street Revival (1906–9).” In The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements., rev. and expanded ed., edited by Stanley M. Burgess and Ed M. Van der Maas, 885–901. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. ———. 2010. Miracles, Mission, and American Pentecostalism. Maryknowll: Orbis. Miller, Donald E. and Tetsunao Yamamori. 2007. Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ouedraogo, Philippe. 2013. “Transforming Communities, Through Education.” In Good News from Africa: Community Transformation through the Church, edited by Brian E. Woolnough, 81–90. Oxford: Regnum. Robeck, Jr., Cecil M. 2014. “Christian Unity and Pentecostal Mission: A Contradiction?” In Pentecostal Mission and Global Christianity, edited by Wonsuk Ma, Veli-Matti Karkkainen, and J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, 182–206. Oxford: Regnum. Stronstad, Roger. 1999. The Prophethood of All Believers: A Study in Luke’s Charismatic Theology. JPT Supplement 16. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Suico, Joseph. 2003. “Institutional and Individualistic Dimensions of Transformational Development: The Case of Pentecostal Churches in the Philippines.” PhD dissertation, Oxford Centre for Mission Studies/University of Wales. Volf, Miroslav. 1989. “Materiality of Salvation: An Investigation in the Soteriologies of Liberation and Pentecostal Theologies.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 26 (3): 447–67. Wagner, C. Peter. 1974. Look Out! The Pentecostals Are Coming. London: Coverdale House. Warrington, Keith. 2008. Pentecostal Theology: A Theology of Encounter. London: T&T Clark. White, Peter. 2016. “Pentecostal Mission Spirituality: A Study of the Classical Pentecostal Churches in Ghana.” Missionalia: Southern African Journal of Missiology 44 (3): 251–62. Yong, Amos. 2003. Beyond the Impasse: Toward a Pneumatological Theology of Religions. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. ———. 2010. In the Days of Caesar: Pentecostalism and Political Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2014. The Missiological Spirit: Christian Mission Theology in the Third Millennium Global Context. Eugene: Cascade. Yong, Amos and Clifton Clarke, eds. 2011. Global Renewal, Religious Pluralism, and the Great Commission: Towards a Renewal Theology of Mission and Interreligious Encounter. Lexington: Emeth. Zurlo, Gina A., Todd M. Johnson, and Peter F. Crossing. 2019. “Christianity 2019: What’s Missing? A Call for Further Research.” International Bulletin of Mission Research 43 (1): 92–102.

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27 ECCLESIOLOGY Spirit‑shaped fellowships of gospel mission Andy Lord

For many years it seemed that Pentecostals had no distinctive contribution to make to conversations on ecclesiology. It was thought that they focussed on personal encounter with God and sharing in mission without worrying about the nature of the community that sustained these efforts, other than to assert that Pentecostals were different to churches that quenched the Holy Spirit. Increasingly, it has been realised that this is a simplistic reading of the Pentecostal tradition, and that the nature of the church has been a concern from the start of the movement. This concern and ecclesiological thinking have developed more rapidly in recent years, and Pentecostal ecclesiology has become an important area of contemporary research. Different themes have been the focus of study, although it remains to draw these together into a comprehensive Pentecostal ecclesiology. This chapter aims to introduce the current perspectives on Pentecostal ecclesiology and suggests broad ways forward in critical interaction with a pneumatological approach. Rather than start immediately with a particular ecclesial framework, we may recognise that the theological themes of the Holy Spirit, the gospel, and mission most often recur in Pentecostal discussions. I argue that these themes helpfully enable us to approach a Pentecostal understanding of the church as comprising Spirit-shaped fellowships of gospel mission. This essay therefore presents a general approach that builds on the particular contextual studies of others and provides a standpoint from which we can engage with alternative proposals to gain greater clarity over significant issues and find ways towards articulating a comprehensive Pentecostal ecclesiology.

Holy Spirit fellowship It is evident that Pentecostal ecclesiology builds on the foundations of experiences of the Spirit and of the community of the Spirit. Initial teaching on the church brought together biblical texts to provide a simple overview (Pearlman 1981). This approach developed to engage with widened systematic thinking from within foundational Pentecostal outlooks (Horton 2007). More recently, there has been deeper engagement with ecumenical and systematic scholarship on ecclesiology, attempting to reformulate a Pentecostal view in conversation with these perspectives (Vondey 2010a). A fully pneumatological ecclesiology, however, that takes account of the different Pentecostal approaches, has not yet been developed. 290

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Often Pentecostal approaches to ecclesiology start with the concept of the fellowship of the Spirit: the church is the local fellowship that has experienced the work of the Holy Spirit (Yong 2005, 121–66; Warrington 2008, 131–79). This emphasis on both local and pneumatological identity reflects the narratives of how people typically encountered the experience of Pentecost and entered into a transformed local community. The link between individual experience and communal participation is important and addresses the common critique that Protestants are overly individualistic. Pentecostal ecclesiology may have been influenced by evangelical individualism but has been strongly communal from the start because of its pneumatological orientation. The fellowship of the Spirit into which Pentecostals were integrated was seen as inclusive and crossing the social and racial lines that existed at the time ( Jacobsen 2003, 260–85), although these ideals were not always realised. The communal nature of Spirit baptism in the narrative of Pentecost has been well developed by Frank Macchia (see Chapter 23). The Spirit leads people into communion with one another and God, enabling them to participate in God’s love in the midst of human weakness. This idea is further developed in ecumenical conversations on koinonia initiated with the international Pentecostal-Roman Catholic dialogue (1985–89): through the Spirit, the church embodies the gospel in communities that witness to the kingdom of God in mission (see “Perspectives on Koinonia” 1990). Just as the Holy Spirit anointed Jesus at his baptism in preparation for the proclamation of God’s kingdom, the church is anointed by the Spirit at Pentecost to live and proclaim the kingdom (Pinnock 2006). The centrality of the Spirit to the nature of the church and its mission has been studied from a variety of practical and theological perspectives (see Vondey 2010a, 231–68). There is positive evidence that participation in Pentecostal fellowships results in a greater love for others (Lee, Poloma, and Post 2013) that motivates reaching out to others in need beyond the boundaries of these fellowships. The church in the unity of the Spirit (Eph. 4:1–6) is always in the pursuit of the unity of all believers. Central to the practice of fellowship is a spirituality nurtured through worship (see Chapter 11). It is within the fellowship that Pentecostals experience healing and grow in sanctification and in holiness of life. Often these practices involve a “coming to the altar” to seek and encounter the God who heals and transforms. The altar may be a literal place at the front of the fellowship or may be more metaphorical as inspired by the historical roots of Pentecostalism (Tomberlin 2010; Vondey 2017). This practice has also encouraged some Pentecostals to develop a sacramental understanding of church life in conversation with other traditions (Hocken 2002; Yong 2005; Vondey 2010b; Green 2012). Significant here is the work of Chris Green (2012) on a more integrated Pentecostal theology of the Lord’s Supper. He argues for a Pentecostal sacramental approach in which the liturgy is S/spirited, bringing the symbols to life in those worshipping as they are drawn afresh in faith to Jesus crucified and risen. Increasingly, the liturgical forms of Pentecostal worship are appreciated, and fresh engagements with historic patterns of worship become significant for Pentecostal ecclesiology (Albrecht 1999; Chan 2006). It is also increasingly recognised that Pentecostal worship is not all about music and praise but also embraces contemplation (Holmes 2004) and expectation (Althouse 2010). Yet these perspectives have not yielded a sacramental understanding of the church. Spirit-filled, worshipping fellowships are drawn to participate in the present and coming kingdom of God. There is a strong eschatological orientation to understanding the work of the Holy Spirit in church fellowships, in line with the words of Peter on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2), that directs the fellowship towards others and beyond the churches towards the kingdom of God (Vondey 2010a, 268). Peter Althouse (2009, 2010) emphasises 291

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the eschatological framework of Pentecostal ecclesiology, particularly in relation to the life and mission of the Christian fellowship. Following ecumenical theology, he argues that the fellowship of the church is a foretaste, sign, and instrument of the kingdom. The church should reflect a new world order in which the righteousness of God is embodied as well as proclaimed in the present. In turn, Pentecostal practices in community stimulate action for the kingdom, which represents a holistic vision for the wider society.

Gospel fellowship of Christ The emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit is always coupled with the presence of Jesus Christ in the church. More particularly, Pentecostal ecclesiology is shaped by the gospel— the good news of Jesus Christ and his saving work in the lives of those who respond in faith. It is those who experience salvation as they respond to the gospel who are drawn into the fellowship of the church. The understanding of church, gospel, salvation, and Christ are inter-linked (Yong 2005, 122–34; Vondey 2017, 228–33). Free-church ecclesiologies have often separated soteriology from ecclesiology, as well as the personal from the communal, and this distance is still visible in Pentecostal theology. However, more thorough studies of soteriology have led Pentecostals to see how salvation includes and even presupposes ecclesiology (Yong 2005, 121–66). There is a multidimensionality to salvation that includes the personal, family, ecclesial, material, social, cosmic, and eschatological aspects (97). Thus, the church is a holistic and transformational fellowship of the Spirit in which salvation is being worked out. The proclamation and response to the gospel of Jesus is at the heart of Pentecostal life. Dayton’s (1987) influential study of early classical Pentecostalism has suggested that a fivefold form of the gospel, the so-called “full gospel,” shaped the classical Pentecostal movement and proclaims Jesus as saviour, sanctifier, baptiser with the Holy Spirit, healer, and coming king. These teachings have particular meanings embedded in the Holiness roots of Pentecostalism but have also been utilised more recently to shape contemporary Pentecostal ecclesiology (Thomas 2010). The full gospel has the advantage of being distinctively Pentecostal in orientation and is therefore used by Pentecostals as the grounding for their ecclesiology (Thomas 2010; Kärkkäinen 2014; Vondey 2017, 225–53). Others have begun to use this form to address wider issues in political theology beyond traditional Pentecostal concerns (Yong 2010). Contemporary and non-Western forms of Pentecostalism speak of the gospel in different terms and thus shape a gospel-oriented ecclesiology differently (Lord 2012a). There is room, in particular, within Pentecostalism for different Christologies that shape the understanding of the gospel (see Chapter 20). Miroslav Volf (1998), influenced by his Pentecostal background, suggests that ecclesiology is rooted on a “pluriform faith in Christ.” The pluriform gospel of Jesus is lived out by the churches in varied contexts so that it is also justified to speak of Pentecostal ecclesiologies in the plural. Speaking of the gospel also draws our thinking to the formative power of the scriptures for Pentecostal ecclesiology. It is the scriptures that testify to Jesus and provide the content for the gospel and all that is essential to life in community. For Pentecostals, it is the combination of scripture and experience that are brought together as people encounter the gospel, not just in individual encounter but as the community of the church involved in the interpretation and application of Scripture (see Chapter 6). Local Pentecostal communities are vital to the task of hermeneutics and provide narrative approaches that open up the possibility of transformed lives (Archer 2009). The church is shaped by the scriptures and also shapes the understanding of Scripture as different narratives and cultures come into conversation. 292

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The aim of this scripture and gospel-shaped ecclesiology is a church that changes lives in the direction of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit. Pentecostal ecclesiology brings together pneumatology and Christology such that it is hard to separate them (see Chapters 19 and 20). The Holy Spirit is always the Spirit of Christ, and this identity gives significant importance to the role of the church as both the bearer of Christ and possessor of the Spirit (Macchia 2011). However, this perspective can limit the understanding of the work of God through and beyond the church in the wider world (Kim 2007) and has led to clashes between Pentecostals and others who stress the work of the Spirit in movements of justice in the world that also challenge the church. Some of the differences here can be better understood as we bring into the conversation the essential missionary nature of the church. However, the high authority given to Scripture within the church has often blinded Pentecostals to the importance of tradition. A focus on an unchanging gospel encountered in the immediate present does not leave space for developing traditions of understanding. The weakness of this approach has become apparent over time, and Simon Chan (2006) notes how it has led Pentecostals to lose hold on the biblical texts and personal testimonies that shaped the origins of the movement (see Chapter 9). This neglect leads to a lack of Pentecostal identity and depth of Christian formation that negatively influences ecclesiological concerns. Chan argues that there is a need for “traditioning,” a process in which Pentecostals are immersed in the traditions of the movement in ways that enable them to be faithful to the inheritance and also creative in the present. He suggests an approach to traditioning through a fresh understanding of the church that draws on the broader Christian spiritual traditions, even if the church as a community of the gospel must remain inspired by the ways that gospel has been understood and lived through the Pentecostal tradition.

Missionary fellowship Pentecostalism has a missionary drive to share the gospel to the ends of the earth (Anderson 2007). Pentecostals consider the church to be missionary in its essence, and this ecclesiology flows naturally from an emphasis on the mission of God manifested in Christ and the Spirit (see Chapter 26). Pentecostal mission has often focussed on the active work of planting new churches (Ma and Ma 2010). The church grows as the gospel is preached in new places, people respond to Jesus, and believers gather into new fellowships. This missionary framework follows the biblical patterns seen in the missionary journeys in the Acts of the Apostles. The missionary church is a reproductive fellowship, and this perspective represents a Pentecostal way towards understanding the catholicity of the church (Kärkkäinen 2011). The church is always in the process of becoming catholic in the sense of including and rebuilding the world through its mission. However, there is a tendency to limit mission to evangelism and the church to the community of those who have responded to Jesus and are therefore equipped to share the gospel with others. In contrast, Pentecostals have realised that church fellowships are often made up of the poor and marginalised who find new ways of being community. Church embodies a new way of being that brings improvements to the life of those who are struggling. This social uplift is embodied in an understanding of the church and mission as a community action rather than an individual response to the gospel (Miller and Yamamori 2007). This transformative missionary ecclesiology brings to the fore issues of justice and peace, raises economic questions, and highlights the need for liberative practices (Villafañe 1993; Augustine 2012). The church can no longer be thought of as separate from the wider culture but rather as 293

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embedded in the world. Ecclesiology is situated within the eschatological horizon where Pentecostals long to see signs of the kingdom transforming the world today. The mission of God includes the whole world, and the church is a charismatic creational fellowship devoted to the renewing of creation (Swoboda 2014). It is helpful to distinguish the influence of mission on the context, unity, and structures of the church.

Mission and context Although many Pentecostals understand the church as if it existed over against the world, the contextual nature of the mission is a vital reality in Pentecostal ecclesiology. During the twentieth century, Pentecostals promoted the need for “indigenous churches” and utilised the three-self approach that saw churches as self-propagating, self-supporting, and selfgoverning (Hodges 1976). These themes were developed by Anglican clergyman Henry Venn in the nineteenth century and encouraged by Anglican missionary Roland Allen at the start of the twentieth century. Allen (1917) argued that churches will expand spontaneously because of the gift of the Holy Spirit revealed at Pentecost. Hence, churches should aim to be rooted in their particular missionary context rather than remain dependent on outside resources. Here is an ecclesiology that links the church’s reproductive nature with its rootedness in context. This is a move from ideal visions of the church to descriptions of the church as it exists in the world. Examples of this emphasis are found in studies of Pentecostal churches in Australia. Through a study of worship practices, Morgan (2010) argues that every member of the church is encouraged to see themselves as priests and prophets. Clifton (2009) recognises how churches have developed and changed and the rising importance given to lead pastors that can be in tension with a more egalitarian approach endorsed by earlier Pentecostals. There is a need for dialogue between the ideal and contextual image of the church, and Pentecostal ecclesiology combines both perspectives (Healy 2000; Vondey 2008; Wier 2017), leading to more complex understandings of the church. However, it is still the case that Pentecostal ecclesiology relates primarily to white Western contexts, and there is a need for widening its scope to world Christianity (see Chapter 2). Some initial studies illustrate the way in which different cultural practices are contextualised within Christian worship, and these studies both complement and contrast with the usual Western perspectives (Alexander 2011). A wider engagement with the social order in Eastern Europe has shaped an ecclesiology formed by communal economics in the image of Pentecost (Augustine 2012). A view from the global South suggest that most research still focusses on the northern hemisphere (Clark 2013), however, and further studies of the church in mission in the global South are required to reach a fuller image representative of global Pentecostalism.

Mission and unity Concerns for the unity of the church form an important part of Pentecostal ecclesiology and have been a focus of the ecumenical movement that grew out of the missionary experience over the last century. Despite a shared missionary interest, the Pentecostal focus on the church as local fellowship often established a contrast to existing churches and encouraged hostility towards other Christian traditions. However, the story of Pentecost is about different people brought together by the Holy Spirit, and the ecumenical impulse of Pentecost has not been absent from Pentecostal ecclesiology. From the start, Pentecostals have sought to reach across differences between churches and traditions (see Vondey 2010a, xi–xxv). 294

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Involvement in the ecumenical movement has emphasised concerns for the church, mission, and unity, although the desire to overcome barriers still remains in tension with the Pentecostal desire for mission and evangelisation. The line between multiplication and schism is often blurred, raising questions about the ways in which church unity both helps and hinders Pentecostal mission (Ma and Ma 2010, 117–33). Various themes prominent in ecumenical ecclesiology have been of interest to Pentecostals. Given the importance of fellowship and koinonia, many Pentecostal concerns are rooted in the nature of God as community, and Pentecostals have explored the way in which the experience of the Holy Spirit leads people into a more deeply trinitarian fellowship (Kärkkäinen 2002). This emphasis often exhibits a grassroots form of ecumenism as people are brought together by the Spirit from different churches, often in the cause of mission. The theme of koinonia is typically understood in terms of communion—the communion of the Trinity that is reflected in the communion of the church and between churches. This communion ecclesiology is also linked to the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, and Pentecostals are starting to explore how communion fits within their theology and practice (see Chapter 29). Some have suggested an approach to Pentecostal ecumenical ecclesiology based on the theme of “eucharistic hospitality” (Vondey 2010b). An alternative approach has been to develop the creedal marks of the church as “one, holy, catholic and apostolic” in a pneumatological direction (Yong 2005) or towards the full gospel (Vondey 2017). There is still much to be done in engaging wider ecumenical thinking, although recent Pentecostal engagements with the World Council of Churches point in new ways. It may well be that the Pentecostal approach to unity differs from that often assumed in ecumenical dialogues, with a particularly dynamic approach to the catholicity of the church (Vondey 2010a, 256–68). The church is not united from a static, top-down viewpoint but rather becomes visibly united through mission from the bottom-up. The structures of the church are therefore an important element of Pentecostal ecclesiology.

Mission and structures Pentecostal mission has been undertaken by specific mission agencies, although, like in other traditions, there has been a shift towards emphasising the calling to mission of individuals and local church fellowships. There has always been an open question as to how mission is embodied in the structures of the church. Pentecostals have tended to develop free-church models which focus on the local congregation rather than the wider structures of the church. Yet this emphasis is not the case for all Pentecostals, and there is also an episcopal wing among Pentecostals that emphasises the value of hierarchical structures (Coulter 2007). Here, the importance of a sense of order within the church and clarity in authority structures balance the independence of each fellowship. Leadership has always been important for Pentecostals and their ecclesial understanding (Warrington 2008, 136–45). Different kinds of leaders enable the ministry and mission of the church, reflecting the biblical gifts identified in the New Testament (see Chapter 28). Tensions remain over the role of women, apostles, and prophets, and all are key to developing the structural vision of Pentecostal ecclesiology. In the contemporary late modern (or post-modern) cultural setting, there has been much debate over how the church manifests ways in which people connect with each other. In many countries, there is a shift away from purely geographical outlooks to those based on networks. In the past, people traditionally met with each other in the same physical places, whereas now they often are drawn together because of networks of interest (across communities or countries). Study on these networks for Pentecostal ecclesiology is at a very early 295

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stage, and I have suggested that the network might function as a structure between the local and the universal church (Lord 2012b). The network structure reflects the development of the church in Scripture as it moves out from Pentecost in Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. The network church is an idea that is developed practically in many of the so-called emerging churches, although further ecclesial studies are required (see Yong 2014). Changing cultures and relational aspects continue to raise issues about the nature of ecclesial structures and provoke a rethinking of the links between the institutional and the charismatic church.

Spirit-shaped ecclesiology Pentecostal ecclesiology, I have suggested, starts with a focus on the work and nature of the Holy Spirit particularly in regard to local fellowships. A Christological gospel can then be seen to shape ecclesial character, particularly through the scriptures. The emphasis on Christ and the Spirit carries a missionary urgency that determines the dynamism of the church as it reaches out into different cultures, drawing people together and creating appropriate structures. These are features found in the story of Pentecost, and so it is unsurprising that they empower Pentecostal ecclesiology on a more formal level in its engagement with pneumatology. Such approaches to theology have been grouped together by some Pentecostals within the theme of “Third Article Theology” (Habets 2016). This approach involves reflection on the whole of Christian theology from the perspective of pneumatology, so that looking at issues in ecclesiology through the lens of the Holy Spirit becomes a creative starting point for developing a Pentecostal ecclesiology. Such a pneumatological lens remains shaped by an understanding of Christ and aims at action in the direction of God’s mission in the world. Given the varieties within Pentecostalism, we need to clarify that there is not simply one Pentecostal lens of the Spirit through which to develop an ecclesiology. When Pentecostals see things through the lens of the Spirit, they are seeing with an imagination shaped by experience, narrative, and theology (see Chapter 14). Thus, Pentecostals living different narratives with different contextual experiences understood through different approaches to theology manifest differing lenses of the church. I have already noted the pluriform nature of faith that embraces different understandings of the gospel and indeed the work of the Spirit (Yong 2005), so that the many tongues of Pentecostalism inevitably lead to many ecclesiologies. Yet each articulation will need to take care to articulate the Pentecostal identity that is assumed in relation to particular narratives of life in the Spirit. The form of ecclesiology I have suggested around the themes of Spirit, gospel, and mission must be articulated through different lenses in any pneumatological approach. These themes form a Spirit-shaped approach to ecclesiology that combines the concrete and the ideal, the realities of church life and the biblical and theological articulations that inspired it and towards which it moves. Such Pentecostal ecclesiologies will be able to engage ecumenically with other approaches that may be rooted in different theological frameworks or narratives. It is important to bring this proposal for the church understood in terms of Spirit-shaped fellowships of gospel mission into conversation with other Pentecostal proposals before engaging with the ecumenical imagination.

Full gospel ecclesiology Varied work is being done in articulating a constructive Pentecostal ecclesiology based on the five-fold pattern of the full gospel (Lord 2012a). This approach was pioneered by the so-called Cleveland school (Thomas 2010) and has recently been taken into ecumenical 296

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directions (Kärkkainen 2014) and constructive systematic efforts (Vondey 2017). The starting point is the narrative experience of Jesus articulated through a pneumatological lens to articulate the experiences shared (perhaps with modifications) by Pentecostals globally today (see Chapter 16). If the five-fold pattern forms the heart a Pentecostal theology, then, in terms of ecclesiology, the five themes allow ecclesial thinking of the church as a redeemed, sanctified, empowered, healed (and healing), as well as eschatological community. These themes are broad enough to encompass the wealth of recent ecclesiological scholarship while keeping a distinctive Pentecostal approach. The issue of Pentecostal identity and self-understanding is highlighted in this approach and is clarified prior to the work on ecclesiology. This theological clarity is based on an established theological framework, even if there is room for differing approaches to the motifs of the full gospel. There is a focus on identity and gospel within which concerns for pneumatology and mission are then discussed. Although providing a clear theological approach to ecclesiology, we can ask whether its subsuming of the Spirit and mission under the narrative of Christology is adequate to the Pentecostal experience it assumes. There is also the question as to whether identity can be clarified prior to ecclesial articulation or whether identity is formed (and re-formed) through the process of articulating and living within an ecclesiology. I suggest that Pentecostal identity is always a “work in progress” and requires careful attention to the different contexts in which it is formed, a bottom-up practice rather than a top-down pattern. For some contexts, it may be that the full gospel approach is wellsuited, but for others it raises the ongoing debates between pneumatology, Christology, and mission that deepen ecclesial identity.

Congregational ecclesiology Context is vital in the study of ecclesiology, and it is worth highlighting the significant congregational study of Mark Cartledge (2010). A pioneer in Pentecostal practical theology, he undertook a congregational study of one Assemblies of God church in the United Kingdom with the aim to reflect on the ordinary theology of its members with particular attention given to pneumatology. While recognising the confessional beliefs of the local churches and the pastor, Cartledge sought to explore theology from the bottom-up. Several themes were explored as significant, which overlap with the full gospel emphasis but are not strictly identical: worship, conversion, baptism in the Spirit, healing, life and witness, world mission, and the second coming of Christ. Cartledge concludes by articulating a constructive framework for a Pentecostal ecclesiology that brings together ordinary contextual theology with wider ecclesiological categories: temple of praise, household of healing, members of ministry, community of hospitality, and pilgrims of hope. This practical theological approach to ecclesiology supports the argument to pay attention to contexts in understanding how the church manifests the gospel, rather than prescribing an ideal church beforehand. Congregational ecclesiology engages less with the wider traditions of doctrine and missiology, and work remains to be done in this area to strengthen future proposals. However, congregational studies conclude by raising the need for a trinitarian theology to undergird the ecclesial features identified. Would it be possible to see the themes of pneumatology, Christology, and mission as forming a trinitarian model for Pentecostal ecclesiology? We need to understand better how speaking of the Spirit, Son, and Father enables an integrated Pentecostal theological reflection on the nature and work of the church. A dominant approach to this trinitarian ecclesiology has been the focus on the day of Pentecost. 297

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Pentecost ecclesiology The importance of Pentecost for Pentecostal ecclesiology has been raised by Simon Chan (2011), who suggests that a genuine Pentecostal approach requires working the event through a more ontological understanding of Spirit and church as found in Eastern Orthodox theology. Emphasising the distinctive Pentecostal experience of Spirit baptism, Chan locates a path towards conversation with Orthodox theology, given their shared desire to link the Spirit and the church. He argues that the Holy Spirit is primarily the Spirit of the church, and that creation finds its ultimate meaning in relation to the church. The church is seen as a communion of the Spirit and the people whom the Spirit indwells. In terms of creation, this pneumatological ecclesiology means that at the consummation of creation the church represents the full embodiment of the kingdom of God. Chan’s ecclesiology engages in dialogue with different approaches to pneumatology and ecclesiology and develops a Pentecostal approach in a trinitarian direction. He sees the church as ontologically united to Christ by the Spirit, with its origins in the Father’s working. The result is a more episcopal, liturgical, and sacramental understanding of Pentecostal ecclesiology than in previous proposals. Chan’s (2011) well-argued essay is provocative and raises questions in relation to the trinitarian nature of Pentecostal ecclesiology and its links with creation and the kingdom of God. Whether Pentecostals recognise the liturgical vision as their own or see themselves within the wider scope of Orthodox ecclesiology is open to question. Yet, despite the emphasis on Pentecost, Chan places little emphasis on mission. This neglect is perhaps an inevitable consequence of turning towards a broader creation-centred pneumatology and ecclesiology, but an ecclesiology based on Pentecost cannot neglect the powerful contextual mission dynamic common to Pentecostals worldwide. The challenge to articulate how the Pentecostal praxis of Spirit-inspired gospel mission integrates with a trinitarian ecclesiology linking the church and creation remains open. The image of Pentecost may form the most significant starting point for the continued conversation.

Conclusion This chapter has reviewed the existing work in Pentecostal ecclesiology, which is still fragmentary. I have suggested an emphasis on the church as Spirit-shaped fellowships of gospel mission as a way of integrating the themes that have emerged in the history of Pentecostal thought. These themes have been brought into conversation with other approaches, which both affirm and critique the model. There remains much to be done, particularly in articulating non-Western contextual ecclesiologies that engage with the post-colonial concerns relevant to most Pentecostals. How these concerns engage with the tradition of ecclesial scholarship and help reshape Pentecostal identity and church practice remains to be explored. In the meantime, the Holy Spirit continues to draw people into church fellowships we call “Pentecostal” where they are transformed in the way of Christ and sent out in mission into the world. The challenge is to reflect critically on this transformation to arrive at a more complete understanding of what it means to be church.

References Albrecht, Daniel E. 1999. Rites of the Spirit: A Ritual Approach to Pentecostal/Charismatic Spirituality. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Alexander, Corky. 2011. Native American Pentecost: Praxis, Contextualization Transformation. Cleveland: Cherohala Press.

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Ecclesiology Allen, Roland. 1917. Pentecost and the World: The Revelation of the Holy Spirit in the “Acts of the Apostles.” London: Oxford University Press. Althouse, Peter. 2009. “Towards a Pentecostal Ecclesiology: Participation in the Missional Life of the Triune God.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 18 (2): 230–45. ———. 2010. “Ascension – Pentecost – Eschaton: A Theological Framework for Pentecostal Ecclesiology.” In Towards a Pentecostal Ecclesiology: The Church and the Fivefold Gospel, edited by John Christopher Thomas, 225–47. Cleveland: CPT Press. Anderson, Allan. 2007. Spreading Fires: The Missionary Nature of Early Pentecostalism. London: SCM. Archer, Kenneth J. 2009. A Pentecostal Hermeneutic for the Twenty-First Century: Spirit, Scripture and Community. Cleveland: CPT Press. Augustine, Daniela C. 2012. Pentecost, Hospitality, and Transfiguration: Toward a Spirit-Inspired Vision of Social Transformation. Cleveland: CPT Press. Cartledge, Mark J. 2010. Testimony in the Spirit: Rescripting Ordinary Pentecostal Theology. London: Ashgate. Chan, Simon. 2006. Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshipping Community. Downers Groves: IVP. ———. 2011. Pentecostal Ecclesiology: An Essay in the Development of Doctrine. Blandford Forum: Deo. Clark, Matthew. 2013. “Pentecostal Ecclesiology: A View from the Global South.” Transformation 30 (1): 46–59. Clifton, Shane J. 2009. Pentecostal Churches in Transition: Analysing the Development of the Assemblies of God in Australia. Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies 3. Leiden: Brill. Coulter, Dale M. 2007. “The Development of Ecclesiology in the Church of God (Cleveland, TN): A Forgotten Contribution?” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 29 (1): 59–85. Dayton, Donald W. 1987. Theological Roots of Pentecostalism. Peabody: Hendrickson. Green, Chris. 2012. Toward a Pentecostal Theology of the Lord’s Supper: Foretasting the Kingdom. Cleveland: CPT Press. Habets, Myk, ed. 2016. Third Article Theology: A Pneumatological Dogmatics. Minneapolis: Fortress. Healy, Nicholas M. 2000. Church, World and the Christian Life: Practical-Prophetic Ecclesiology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hocken, P. D. 2002. “Ordinances, Pentecostal.” In The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, edited by Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas, 947–49. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Hodges, Melvin L. 1976. The Indigenous Church, 3rd edition. Springfield: Gospel Publishing House. Holmes, Barbara A. 2004. Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church. Minneapolis: Fortress. Horton, Stanley M., ed. 2007. Systematic Theology, revised edition. Springfield: Logion. Jacobsen, Douglas. 2003. Thinking in the Spirit: Theologies of the Early Pentecostal Movement. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. 2002. Toward a Pneumatological Theology, edited by Amos Yong. Lanham: University Press of America. ———. 2011. “Catholic, Full Gospel, and Fullness of the Spirit: A Pentecostal Perspective on the Third Mark of the Church.” In Pentecostal Issues, Ecclesiology and Ecumenism: Papers Presented in Theological Positions Colloquium, Continental Theological Seminary, 2011, edited by Rikku Tuppurainen, 77–99. Sint-Pieters-Leeuw: Continental Theological Seminary. ———. 2014. “A Full Gospel Ecclesiology of Koinonia: Pentecostal Contributions to the Doctrine of the Church.” In Renewal History and Theology: Essays in Honor of H. Vinson Synan, edited by Christopher Emerick and David Moore, 175–93. Cleveland: CPT Press. Kim, Kirsteen. 2007. The Holy Spirit in the World. London: SPCK. Lee, Matthew T., Margaret M. Poloma, and Stephen G. Post. 2013. The Heart of Religion: Spiritual Empowerment, Benevolence, and the Experience of God’s Love. New York: Oxford University Press. Lord, Andy. 2012a. “Good News for All? Reflections on the Pentecostal Full Gospel.” Transformation 30 (1): 17–30. ———. 2012b. Network Church: A Pentecostal Ecclesiology Shaped by Mission. Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies 11. Leiden: Brill. Macchia, Frank D. 2011. “The Spirit-Baptised Church.” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 11 (4): 256–68. Ma, Julie C., and Wonsuk Ma. 2010. Mission in the Spirit: Towards a Pentecostal/Charismatic Missiology. Oxford: Regnum.

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Andy Lord Miller, Donald E., and Tetsunao Yamamori. 2007. Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement. Berkeley: University of California Press. Morgan, David. 2010. Priesthood, Prophethood and Spirit-Led Community: A Practical-Prophetic Pentecostal Ecclesiology. Saarbrücken: Lambert Academic Publishing. Pearlman, Myer. 1981. Knowing the Doctrines of the Bible, 2nd edition. Springfield, Missouri: Gospel Publishing House. “Perspectives on Koinonia. Final Report of the Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and Some Classical Pentecostal Churches and Leaders, 1985–89.” 1990. Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 12 (2): 117–42. Pinnock, Clark H. 2006. “Church in the Power of the Holy Spirit: The Promise of Pentecostal Ecclesiology.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 14 (2): 147–65. Swoboda, A. J. 2014. Tongues and Trees: Toward a Pentecostal Ecological Theology. JPT Supplement 40. Blandford Forum: Deo. Thomas, John Christopher, ed. 2010. Towards a Pentecostal Ecclesiology: The Church and the Fivefold Gospel. Cleveland: CPT Press. Tomberlin, Daniel. 2010. Pentecostal Sacraments: Encountering God at the Altar. Cleveland: Centre for Pentecostal Leadership and Care. Villafañe, Eldin. 1993. The Liberating Spirit: Toward an Hispanic American Pentecostal Social Ethic. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Volf, Miroslav. 1998. After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Vondey, Wolfgang. 2008. People of Bread: Rediscovering Ecclesiology. New York: Paulist Press. ———, ed. 2010a. Pentecostalism and Christian Unity, vol. 1, Ecumenical Documents and Critical Assessments. Eugene: Pickwick. ———. 2010b. “Pentecostal Ecclesiology and Eucharistic Hospitality: Towards a Systematic and Ecumenical Account of the Church.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 32 (1): 41–55. ———. 2017. Pentecostal Theology: Living the Full Gospel. London: Bloomsbury. Warrington, Keith. 2008. Pentecostal Theology: A Theology of Encounter. London: T&T Clark. Wier, Andy. 2017. “From the Descriptive to the Normative: Towards a Practical Theology of the Charismatic-Evangelical Urban Church.” Ecclesial Practices 4: 112–32. Yong, Amos. 2005. The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. ———. 2010. In the Days of Caesar: Pentecostalism and Political Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2014. Renewing Christian Theology. Waco: Baylor University Press.

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28 SPIRITUAL GIFTS Manifestations of the kingdom of God Matthias Wenk

A theology of spiritual gifts is generally linked with manifestations of the Holy Spirit listed in several texts of the New Testament (e.g. Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12–14, Ephesians 4, and 1 Peter 4). Interpretations of these manifestations and texts have led to a diverse array of teachings typically focussing on the nature of spiritual gifts and the continuation of the charismatic ministry of the church contrasting dominant cessationist claims that such gifts were limited to the apostolic community. A Pentecostal perspective on spiritual gifts is also intimately tied to the baptism in the Holy Spirit (see Chapter 23) manifested on the day of Pentecost with the outpouring of the Spirit given as the original gift and accompanying manifestations imparted as the gifts of the Spirit (Acts 2). Despite this significance, Pentecostals have not produced a comprehensive theology of spiritual gifts. The focus of this chapter is on a critical reading of Pentecostal theology regarding spiritual gifts rather than a discussion of the biblical foundations or the various manifestations of the charismata. The argument guiding this reading is that a Pentecostal theology of spiritual gifts is most fundamentally oriented towards doxology, empowerment, and transformation. I begin with a definition of terms before highlighting the central themes associated with the experience of spiritual gifts in modern-day Pentecostalism. In the second part, I venture towards a theology of spiritual gifts by addressing a number of open questions before accentuating some contributions Pentecostal theology can offer to the understanding and exercise of spiritual gifts.

Definition of terms Various terms are used in contemporary Pentecostal theology for what is referred to as “spiritual gifts” in this chapter: collective terms, such as charisms, charismata, or pneumatika, point to a wide array of manifestations of grace (Greek, charis) and the Spirit (pneuma) in the New Testament, prominently the speaking with tongues, prophecy, healing, and miracles. However, early Pentecostals (much like the biblical writings) do not suggest an urgent need for a specific technical term. Instead, the emphasis is clearly placed on individual gifts rather than on collective manifestations. Hence, the technical terms are less applicable to Pentecostal praxis, which continues today: the majority of Pentecostals focus on one particular gift, most prominently glossolalia, sometimes healing or prophecy. Works engaging the collective terms tend to be concerned with comparisons of spiritual gifts in the New Testament church 301

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and today (Turner 1996; Keener 2001) or the cessationist debate ( Ruthven 1990, 1993) yet still focus primarily on glossolalia or the related issue of initial evidence (Dunn 1993; Macchia 1993; Turner 2001). More comprehensive discussions also favour the terminology of “spiritual gifts” to engage with the various manifestations (Gee 1947; Horton 1976, 197–283) by speaking of spiritual gifts and ministries. In addition, both in Pentecostal theology and in the wider ecumenical context, the debate about spiritual gifts is often influenced by particular ecclesial and theological concerns (cf. Baumert 2004, 151), which make it difficult to arrive at a precise and shared terminology. This chapter aims to identify the unifying element in the discussion on the gifts of the Spirit relating to the life and ministry of the church in ways that manifest the reality of the kingdom of God in this world. At the core of Pentecostal talk about spiritual gifts are neither linguistic definitions nor references to fixed lists of individual gifts but the experience of the in-breaking of the kingdom of God (the this-worldly dimension of salvation) by way of observable manifestations of God’s presence attributed to the work of the Holy Spirit.

Spiritual gifts as manifestations of God’s presence By way of the spiritual gifts, Pentecostals (and others) have generally emphasized the experience of God’s liberating and transforming power in the world. Recent debates surface in a variety of soteriological, liturgical, ecclesiological, and ministerial discussions (Baumert 2000; Powers 2000; Wenk 2000; Thomas 2005). Looking at historical reports from Pentecostals concerning the experience of spiritual gifts is typically taken as support for specific aspects that are made manifest in these experiences. Within the scope of this chapter, I focus primarily on early Pentecostal testimonies regarding spiritual gifts and show consistency of argument with attention to a dominant source of classical Pentecostals, The Apostolic Faith papers of the Azusa Street mission and revival, Los Angeles, as well as the lesser known work of Johann Widmer, reflecting the beginning of Pentecostalism in Switzerland. Three major theological themes surface regarding Pentecostal perceptions of how spiritual gifts manifest the in-breaking of the kingdom of God into this world: the glory of God (or the doxological orientation of spiritual gifts), the power of God (or the ministerial orientation towards empowerment), and the justice of God (or the transformational orientation of spiritual gifts).

Doxology: spiritual gifts and the glory of God Pentecostal worship is sometimes described in ways of people being taken into heavenly realms and encountering the glory of God, typically expressed in exuberant praise. The first issue of The Apostolic Faith (September 1906, 1) describes the event: “It was a baptism of love. Such abounding love! Such compassion almost seemed to kill me with its sweetness.” Although it is not clear whether the love referred to was experienced as the love of God towards this particular person, or whether this person was baptized with love for others, the “sweetness” mentioned indicates an experience of God’s glory and splendour. The encounter with the glory of God is typically reflected in reports of speaking and singing in unknown tongues, without instruments but with “bands of angels [that] have been heard by some in the spirit and . . . a heavenly singing that is inspired by the Holy Ghost” (November 1906, 1). Meetings with manifested spiritual gifts are often referred to as “glorious” (October 1906, 3) and reflecting “the glory and power of a true Pentecost” (November 1906, 2). Manifestations of the Spirit in the believer are described as an experience of heaven, “the heavens . . . opened” and a “heaven of glory” (October 1907, 1). In the experience of spiritual gifts, Pentecostals found themselves 302

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as participants in heavenly choirs (Alexander 2016) in the midst of earthly difficulties and hardship. This foretaste of heavenly glory is perhaps the Pentecostal equivalent of what is otherwise called grace, albeit with focus on a tangible encounter with the glory of God as a way to participate in God’s kingdom (Land 1993, 122–81). In turn, through spiritual gifts, the worshiping community is always referred back into this world with a renewed vision for mission and ministry. Pentecostals experience the glory of God in their world as transformative and in a tangible way as a manifestation of the presence of the glory of God in the midst of a broken world—which, in turn, further inspires the community’s praise and perception of God’s glory.

Ministry: spiritual gifts and the power of God Pentecostals were (and in many parts of the world still are) frequently deprived of economic, political, and educational power. This sense of powerlessness is also experienced as a spiritual powerlessness, either in overcoming one’s own sinful nature, or with regard to accomplishing the great commission. In these contexts, spiritual gifts are often referred to as ministries through which God helps people overcome situations of powerlessness by means of the spiritual power inherent in the gifts. Two of the most prominent gifts related to the experience of the power are divine healing and speaking with tongues.

Healing: God’s power over sickness Divine healing is the experience of God’s saving power breaking into this world and thereby overcoming the adversities of sickness (see Chapter 24). Accounts in both The Apostolic Faith and Widmer’s work display a similar pattern: a person was in despair because she or he could not afford medical treatment or medical science could not cure the illness (Widmer 1941–52, III, 152). In response to the situation, people asked for prayer (Widmer I, 67; III, 98). During or after the prayer, people experienced healing typically explained as God breaking into their lives and thereby overcoming the illness or other adversity. Most reports end with a statement of praise and thankfulness. There are also reports of people who are not healed, yet they nevertheless felt encouraged, because they no longer felt left alone in their anguish (Widmer I, 27–29; III, 76–77). Many of these reports reflect the dominance of power terminology, both in a cosmological and in a more existential sense (Davies 2010, 169–212): people were confronted with a destructive power in their lives over which they had no influence, but God altered the situation through the work of spiritual powers. Hence, they no longer felt powerless and committed to the inability of the doctors or others to help them. The gift of healing is seen in terms of liberation and restoration, including the restoration of the person’s dignity. For Widmer, healing is a gift to people with a low status in society (1941–52, II, 155) in order to overcome the destructive power of evil (I, 31; 62; II, 7, 16; III, 44–51). While praying for people whose existence was threatened by sickness, Widmer laments that the pharmaceutical industry was making profit on the expense of the sick but not actually caring for them (II, 81). In contrast, the church in the fullness of the Spirit functions as “the house of the Lord, a hospital and a psychiatric clinic at the same time; it is a blessing for all people” (Widmer II, 39; my translation). The metaphor of the church as hospital (rather than a doctor’s office) and house of the Lord implies that all members are called and enabled to pray for the sick. Healing is not only a divine gift but also a human responsibility and ministry (Widmer, II, 17). In Pentecostalism, healings are part of the empowerment of the church to spread the good news; they are a visible sign that the kingdom of God is coming (see Chapter 25). 303

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Tongues: God’s power for ministry The speaking with tongues is clearly a hallmark of early Pentecostalism and widely related to its success in evangelization and mission: “When early Pentecostals claimed that they were experiencing glossolalia, they believed they had been given the gift of missionary tongues to facilitate the great end-time revival” (Powers 2000, 40). Although Pentecostals soon realized that the languages spoken were not necessarily foreign languages (xenolalia), “they still saw the gift of tongues as a sign of God’s empowerment for the task of world evangelism” (41). Formally, however, “Pentecostals have never made a theological connection between the nature of glossolalia as a heavenly language and the mission of the church or explained how a heavenly language empowers a believer for mission” (41). After her analysis of the New Testament passages referring to glossolalia, Powers (53) suggests that “when glossolalia is understood as a spiritual language . . . the mission of the church is seen as the creation of a new community which bears witness to Christ both in proclamation and in its character as the new people of God.” Empirical studies suggest, however, that the contemporary Pentecostal practice of glossolalia has become more private in nature and the focus is less on empowering for missions (Cartledge 2002, 2003, 131–55). Instead, the primary role for learning to speak with tongues today is empowerment for personal Bible study or church leadership (Cartledge 2003, 226). In response, Pentecostal theology would do well to point out a reading of Luke-Acts that underlines speaking with tongues as a sign of the reconciling power of the new reality in Christ that supports the missionary power of glossolalia (in addition to any private edification) on behalf of God’s kingdom (see Chapter 26). This reading is firmly anchored in a passion for the kingdom of God: the Gospel of Luke begins with the good news about the kingdom, whereas the book of Acts ends with Paul speaking about the kingdom. In other words, the Kingdom of God serves as book ends of the two-volume work of Luke: the kingdom is brought about by the work of the Spirit-filled Messiah (Luke 4:16–30) and continued by the Spirit-filled church (Acts 2:1–47). Contrary to any political empire, this kingdom is a kingdom of peace (Luke 2:14). Consequently, Luke provides his readers in Acts 2 with a vision of the kingdom that is in contrast to the Roman Empire, which was a kingdom of violence and oppression, and frustrates Jewish nationalistic hopes (Acts 1:6–8). Empires always work with a dominant power language in order to disempower those conquered. However, the kingdom of God as initiated by the ministry of the Spirit-filled Messiah and the Spirit-filled church is different: the disciples were sent into this world (Acts 1:8), and at Pentecost, multiple tongues were released (2:3). The plurality of tongues confirms ethnic particularity in the midst of a universal kingdom, affirming the multilingual reality of this world expressed in many languages (2:6). There is no dominating culture or language, and there is no attempt to overpower particularity, plurality, diversity, or any other form of cultural expressions. Hence, tongues are a sign of the Spirit’s empowerment (missio Spiritu) for the mission of the kingdom of God and the establishment of God’s justice in the world.

Transformation: spiritual gifts and the justice of God Pentecostals have linked their experience of spiritual gifts with the justice of God in two ways: the prophetic confrontation of sin and the restoration of justice so that all people may be used by God’s Spirit to speak and minister to others (Wenk 2000, 2002). Thereby, spiritual gifts are formative for a community in which social, ethnic, and gender barriers are overcome. 304

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Prophetic confrontation and the holiness of God Classical Pentecostals viewed prophecy widely as a form of confrontation and instrument of transformation and evangelization. The prophetic utterance may result from a combination of words, visions, scripture, prayer, physical sensation, and subjective impressions (Cartledge 1995). During the revival in Wales (1904–5) and in the emerging Apostolic Church with its emphasis on the fivefold ministry (see Eph. 4:11–12), it was common that specific sins were publicly exposed by prophetic words, and people were called to repentance (Worsfold 1991, 85–88). Similarly, during the early years of the BewegungPlus, the Apostolic Church in Switzerland, issues such as visiting a diviner, stealing wood from the neighbour, using dubious words, spending too much time reading the newspaper, or doing personal hygiene were pointed out publicly (Rossel et al. 2007, 46–47). During the Second World War, Johann Widmer even sent a word of prophecy (a “divine message”) to the Swiss government, calling them to repentance in order to avoid the war coming to Switzerland (Widmer 1941–52, III, 175–78). Prophecy is seen as a gift of transformative power manifesting the holiness of God. Despite its potential for manipulation and abuse, prophetic confrontation is widely perceived as a sanctifying experience of the liberating and transforming power of God. A broader theology of prophetic confrontation may suggest that this gift is sacramental in nature and paracletic in its function (Muindi 2012). As sacramental act, prophecy manifests a participation of the human spirit in the Holy Spirit in which the human consciousness receives and communicates divine revelation in human narrative form for the purposes of salvation.

Spiritual gifts and the new community The experience of spiritual gifts nurtures the awareness of the prophethood of all believers (Stronstad 2010), so that participating in church no longer is the privilege of the elite but the right of every Christian, young and old, men and women, slave or free (see Acts 2:17). The Apostolic Faith reports frequently that the leaders of the movement teach that all the gifts of the Spirit are for the whole church and that only lack of faith will hinder the Spirit from manifesting the gifts through every life. Every person is a bearer of the Spirit and can therefore contribute to the edification of the community and the fulfilment of God’s mission: Before Pentecost, the woman could only go into the ‘court of the women’ and into the inner court. . . . But when our Lord poured out Pentecost . . . all the women . . . were able to preach the same as the men. ( January 1908, 2) Spiritual gifts were one way by which the inclusive character of God’s people was made manifest: “God makes no difference in nationality, Ethiopians, Chinese, Indians, Mexicans, and other nationalities worship together” (September 1906, 3). Encountering the God who gives his gifts to all people in order to minister to others, regardless of their gender, race, or social status, is a way of experiencing God’s justice: God does not disrespect anyone and restores the justice that society refuses to give to all people. The reality of Pentecostal churches and ministries does not always correspond to the ideal of overcoming social, ethnic, and gender barriers. Pentecostal theology would do well to view all of life as gifted (Yong 2010, 86–93) in order to redefine contemporary expectations of health, abilities, and power through the exercise and manifestation of spiritual gifts. Clearly, the biblical image of the diversity of gifts held together by the one Spirit (1 Cor. 12:4; 305

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Rom. 12:4–5) forms a key to the realization of the prophethood of all believers. Pentecostals can experience the justice and holiness of God in regard to spiritual gifts in both ways: holiness restored by being confronted with sin (see Chapter 22) and justice reinstated (see Chapter 40) by being enabled to speak and act in the church as a new community of the Spirit.

Towards a theology of spiritual gifts The preceding survey suggests that developing a Pentecostal theology of spiritual gifts in the wider ecumenical context is confronted with a number of unanswered questions, especially the fascination with particularly striking gifts, the preoccupation with the realm of the supernatural, and practical questions on how to obtain spiritual gifts.

The fascination with the more striking gifts In both popular and academic literature, the more striking gifts, such as glossolalia, healing, or prophecy, typically receive more attention than others, while spiritual gifts like serving, teaching, encouraging, contributing to the needs of others, words of wisdom and knowledge, or administration are often neglected (cf. Gee 1947 and Horton 1976, 264–83). This focus is perhaps rooted less in the fascination with particular manifestations of the Spirit than in the demand for theological reflection on what is clearly the most widely represented manifestations in modern-day Pentecostalism. The dominant Pentecostal spiritual practices have confronted Christianity with the need to reflect theologically on spiritual gifts and especially the more “eye- and ear-catching” manifestations, which function for many as criteria for an authentic experience of the divine (Schumacher 2018, 61–62). This theological reflection is necessarily accompanied by a hermeneutical discussion, and since none of these gifts occur in a theological vacuum (Ruthven 2008, 32), experiencing spiritual gifts involves, as in the days of the New Testament, a wider ecclesiological discourse (McDonnell and Montague 1991) and soteriological reflection (Thomas 2005; Holm 2014). The focus on the more striking gifts is understandable, and regrettable, at the same time, because it does not always contribute to a broader Pentecostal theology of spiritual gifts. The pioneering work of Max Turner (1996, 2013) on spiritual gifts in the writings of Paul is most helpful in developing a more comprehensive theology. After a careful analysis of the respective texts, he concludes that spiritual gifts are rather broader than often conceived, and, while certainly ‘charismatic,’ are regarded as most appropriately used when in service of what we have defined as spiritual transformation, and the broad vision of corporate and cosmic re-unification summed up in Christ, rather than merely to enhance individual Christian life. (Turner 2013, 205) Thereby, Turner shifts the attention from the fascination with the more dominant practices to the more fundamental transformational orientation offered by all gifts in service of the life of the community.

Spiritual gifts—natural or supernatural? The “use” and “practice” of spiritual gifts raises questions about their human and divine character. Language of the supernatural entered Pentecostal discourse most dominantly after 306

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the Second World War (Gee 1947, 3, 15) and finds its climax in contemporary schools for supernatural ministries (i.e. Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry) as well as in an overwhelming list of popular books on how to live and act “supernaturally.” Even though early language of the supernatural was sometimes used to counter certain theological tendencies of the time (e.g. Bultmann’s demythologization of the New Testament), today’s fascination with the supernatural tends to define the essence of spiritual gifts as above or outside of the realm of nature and over against natural talents or phenomena that can be explained naturally (see Chapter 42). Such a dichotomy does not do justice to the biblical talk of spiritual gifts and fosters a fascination with the more dramatic gifts—or leaves Pentecostals (and others) with the irresolvable task of differentiating between natural and supernatural phenomena. The dichotomy between natural and supernatural may be overcome with the help of the recent attention of Pentecostal theology to the world of science. James K.A. Smith (2010) argues that the work of the Spirit does not contradict but rather engages deeply with the realm of nature. Similarly, Amos Yong (2011, 72–132) claims that miracles are not an interruption of the laws of nature but rather manifest the in-breaking of the new order of the kingdom of God into this world. Thereby, the ultimate criteria for a certain phenomenon to qualify as “spiritual gift” is not its supernatural origin but whether or not the kingdom of God has been made manifest in this world. This view corresponds with the Pentecostal approach to the transformational orientation of spiritual gifts, which are fully in the service of the kingdom of God and make its values and characteristics, even if only in part and proleptically, a present reality.

Desiring spiritual gifts There is also an unresolved discussion on how to obtain spiritual gifts. While countless books (and “tests” or “inventories”) promise their readers to discover their spiritual giftedness, Pentecostals continue to emphasize the significance of the sovereignty of God and the nature of grace as “gifts” bestowed by God in addition to a person’s active striving through prayer, faith, and personal surrender to God (Gee 1947, 76–80). Put differently, at the heart of Paul’s exhortation to eagerly desire spiritual gifts (1 Cor. 12:31) stands the appeal to “‘Pursue love’ (1 Cor. 14:1a) . . . that places the operation of spiritual gifts in perspective with spiritual graces such as faith, hope and love . . . [and] precedes and supersedes the seeking of spiritual gifts” (Gause 2009, 167). This approach also reflects Pentecostal practice: in pursuing love, people pray for those who are suffering or asking for wisdom and are in need of help. In this sense, the recipients of spiritual gifts are not the ones who exercise the gift but the people who through the gifts receive guidance in times of confusion or despair, a prophetic word in times of disorientation, or financial support in times of need. Pentecostal theology would do well to place the focus of desiring spiritual gifts not on the experience of the person through whom a gift is made manifest but on the person that ultimately benefits from the gift. Hence, the soil for spiritual gifts to occur is the love and solidarity with one’s neighbour, and desiring spiritual gifts means sharing in the mission of the Spirit to bring about the this-worldly dimension of salvation in other people’s lives (Wenk 2013, 103–11). Spiritual gifts are demonstrations of the liberating and reconciling reality of God’s kingdom in a suffering world; they are imparted by a loving God (Gause 2009, 181), and they are a tangible manifestation of God’s love and justice in a broken world. Spiritual gifts are transformational expressions of our love for God and other people, since “love is God’s supreme gift, for it transcends all emotion, conceptuality, and action only to inspire all three” (Macchia 2006, 259). Therefore, to eagerly desire spiritual gifts is to pursue love and the well-being of others and to place one’s own body in the service of others. 307

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Empirical observations on the decline of certain gifts (Cartledge 2003, 131–55; Wilkinson 2016, 377–78), including speaking with tongues, point also to a shift in thinking among many Pentecostals towards broader intercultural, ecumenical, and interracial foundations of the more prominent gifts (Dodson 2011), and Pentecostals in various parts of the world perceive different gifts as vital for their particular ministry. Already in The Apostolic Faith ( January 1907, 4) it was suggested that God “will restore all the gifts” but “manifest each as needed.” What can be empirically observed is therefore of theological significance: since spiritual gifts are an expression of God’s love to manifest the kingdom of God in a specific context, any theology of spiritual gifts must always be contextual. A global and general theology of spiritual gifts can rely on biblical interpretation and theological principles but must consider that the Spirit gives the gifts always in varying expressions and depending on the need and challenges of people. Hence, perhaps of greatest significance for the exercise of spiritual gifts is the gift of spiritual discernment: Pentecostals have emphasized its need for defining the source of certain spiritual manifestations, for encountering other religions (see Chapter 41), unmasking the destructive forms of syncretism, or distinguishing between the move of the Holy Spirit and other spirits (Gee 1947, 54; Yong 2000; Keener 2001, 187–204). If neglected, the move of the Holy Spirit might easily be overlooked, either because the Spirit is not manifested in impressive ways (Mark 6:1–6; 1 Cor. 2:1–16) or because the Spirit moves in unfamiliar ways (Wenk 2002, 135–36). Both in unmasking the spirits of the time and in unveiling the work of God, the gift of discernment is nurtured by the critical memory of the community (Wenk 2017) in the service of the kingdom of God.

Contributions of Pentecostal theology A Pentecostal theology of spiritual gifts affirms that life is charismatic: it vividly affirms that life is a gift and presumes that all of life is gifted, regardless of gender, education, social background, or any other culturally shaped definition of human “potential.” This egalitarian emphasis is of both anthropological and ecclesiological significance. Anthropologically, it affirms that to be human is to be in community and to be interdependent. Such an anthropology (all life is a gift and is gifted) provides a different narrative for the exercise of spiritual gifts than the one offered by the homo economicus as a self-interested, self-sufficient profit-seeking being. Perceiving life as a gift and each person as being gifted fosters an attitude of thankfulness, generosity, and mutual appreciation, both towards God as the giver of the gift and towards each other. This perspective affirms that to be a church is to be a community in which everybody is gifted and thereby contributes to mutual edification of the body of Christ. Such a claim is not neutral towards contemporary definitions of leadership and power structures: relationships in the church are determined by mutual responsibility and love. The charismatic church thereby becomes a way to encounter the in-breaking kingdom of God by experiencing the transforming and loving power of God together. A Pentecostal theology of spiritual gifts affirms that the charismatic life is empowered (see Chapter 23). Rather than perceiving power in terms of Nietzsche’s will to power as the basic motivation for human behaviour, a Pentecostal theology of spiritual gifts affirms that each person is empowered to face, in community, the challenges of life in all of its aspects (e.g. economic hardship, sickness, fulfilment of the great commission, call to holy living, helping other people). Thus, the goal of life is not the gaining of power (over other people or situations) but rather the receiving of power in order to minister to others and to face the struggles of life together. The gift of discernment and the prophetic voice of and in the church can help the church in every culture to unmask any claims or definitions of power 308

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that are in opposition to the paradoxical power of God made manifest in self-giving and solidarity with a suffering creation (Wenk 2013, 95–110). Power then becomes an expression of love and, at times, may be expressed in the power to cope with helpless situations if only through living in solidarity with those who are groaning. In this way, spiritual gifts are in the service of the church as a new community in demonstration of God’s active and transforming power in this world.

Conclusion A Pentecostal theology of spiritual gifts affirms that the charismatic life is made perfect by love. What makes a certain phenomenon a spiritual gift is not whether or not it is categorized as supernatural or miraculous but that it manifests the interaction between the working of the Spirit, the person exercising the gift, and the person ultimately receiving the gift so that something of the reality of the kingdom of God is made manifest. Phenomena like prophecies, speaking with tongues, or spontaneous healings must also occur outside of the church if spiritual gifts are in essence a way by which the missio Dei is accomplished: spiritual gifts manifest God’s desire to be reconciled with all people, God’s love to bring healing into a broken world, and God’s mission to bring justice into a world dominated by sin. Thus, love is indeed foundational for and the climax of any theology of spiritual gifts. Because “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 5:5), spiritual gifts are manifestations that allow the world to experience the love of God. Because “love never ends” (1 Cor. 13:8), love is both the foundation for and the fulfilment of spiritual gifts.

References Alexander, Kimberly E. 2016. “Heavenly Choirs in Earthly Spaces: The Significance of Corporate Spiritual Singing in Early Pentecostal Experience.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 25 (2): 254–68. Baumert, Norbert. 2000. Charisma – Taufe – Geistestaufe. Vol. 1, Entflechtung einer semantischen Verwirrung. Würzburg: Echter. ———. 2004. “‘Charism’ and ‘Spirit Baptism’: Presentation of an Analysis.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 12 (2): 147–80. Cartledge, Mark J. 1995. “Charismatic Prophecy.” Journal of Empirical Theology 8 (1): 71–88. ———. 2002. Charismatic Glossolalia: An Empirical-Theological Study. Carlisle: Ashgate. ———. 2003. Practical Theology. Charismatic and Empirical Perspectives. London: Paternoster. Davies, Wilma Wells. 2010. Embattled but Empowered Community: Comparing Understandings of Spiritual Power in Argentine Popular and Pentecostal Cosmologies. Leiden: Brill. Dodson, Jacob D. 2011. “Gifted for Change: The Evolving Vision for Tongues, Prophecy, and Other Charisms in American Pentecostal Churches.” Studies in World Christianity 17 (1): 50–71. Dunn, James D. G. 1993. “Baptism in the Spirit A Response to Pentecostal Scholarship on Luke-Acts.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 3: 3–27. Gause, R. Hollis. 2009. Living in the Spirit. The Way of Salvation. Cleveland: CPT Press. Gee, Donald. 1947. Concerning Spiritual Gifts: A Series of Bible Studies. Springfield: Gospel Publishing House. Holm, Randell. 2014. “Healing in Search of Atonement: With a Little Help from James K.A. Smith.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 23 (1): 50–67. Horton, Stanley M. 1976. What the Bible Says about the Holy Spirit. Springfield: Gospel Publishing House. Keener, Craig S. 2001. Gift and Giver: The Holy Spirit for Today. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. Land, Steven J. 1993. Pentecostal Spirituality. A Passion for the Kingdom. JPT Supplement 1. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Macchia, Frank. 1993. “Tongues as a Sign: Towards a Sacramental Understanding of Pentecostal Experience. Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 15 (1): 61–76.

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Matthias Wenk ———. 2006. Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. McDonnell, Kilian and George Montague. 1991. Christian Initiation and Baptism in the Holy Spirit. Collegeville: Liturgical Press. Muindi, Samuel W. 2012. “The Nature and Significance of Prophecy in Pentecostal-Charismatic Experience: An Empirical-Biblical Study.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Birmingham. Powers, Janet Evert. 2000. “Missionary Tongues?” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 17: 39–55. Rossel, Andreas, et al., eds. 2007. 80 Jahre in Bewegung: Erinnerungen an die Zukunft. Bern: Berchtold Haller. Ruthven, John Mark. 1990. “On the Cessation of the Charismata: The Protestant Polemic of Benjamin B. Warfield.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 12 (1): 14–31. ———. 1993. On the Cessation of the Charismata: The Protestant Polemic on Post-Biblical Miracles. JPT Supplement 3. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. ———. 2008. “‘On Your Children’s Children Forever:’ The Continuing Prophetic Spirit of the New Covenant: Isaiah 59.19–21 as the Programmatic Prophecy of the Acts of the Apostles (Part 1).” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 17 (1): 32–47. Schumacher, Thomas. 2018. “‘Strebt nach den höheren Gnadengaben! (1 Kor 12,31): Zur Hierarchisierung von Charismen und ihrem normativen Stellenwert im frühchristlichen Diskursraum.” In Veni, Sancte Spiritus. Festschrift für Barbara Hallensleben zum 60. Geburtstag, edited by Guido Vergauwen und Andreas Steingruber, 59–76. Münster: Aschendorff. Smith, James K. A. 2010. “Is There Room for Surprise in the Natural World? Naturalism, the Supernatural, and Pentecostal Spirituality.” In Science and the Spirit: Pentecostal Engagement with the Sciences, edited by James K. A. Smith and Amos Yong, 34–49. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Stronstad, Roger. 2010. The Prophethood of All Believers: A Study in Luke’s Charismatic Theology. Cleveland: CPT Press. Thomas, John Christopher. 2005. “Healing in the Atonement: A Johannine Perspective.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 14 (1): 23–39. Turner, Max. 1996. The Holy Spirit and Spiritual Gifts. Carlisle: Paternoster. ———. 2001. “Interpreting the Samaritans of Acts 8: The Waterloo of Pentecostal Soteriology and Pneumatology?” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 23 (2): 265–86. ———. 2013. “Spiritual Gifts and Spiritual Formation in 1 Corinthians and Ephesians.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 22 (2): 187–205. Wenk, Matthias. 2000. Community Forming Power: The Socio-Ethical Role of the Spirit in Luke-Acts. JPT Supplement 19. London: T&T Clark. ———. 2002. “The Holy Spirit as Transforming Power within a Society: Pneumatological Spirituality and its Political/Social Relevance for Western Europe.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 11 (1): 130–42. ———. 2013. “Der Heilige Geist als Solidarität Gottes mit den Bedrängten und Ausgestossenen.” In Das Evangelium den Armen: Die Pfingstbewegung im Spannungsfeld zwischen sozialer Verantwortung und klassischem Missionsverständnis, edited by Marcel Redling, 95–124. Erzhausen: FThG. ———. 2017. “What Is Prophetic about Prophecies: Inspiration or Critical Memory? A Fresh Look at Prophets and Prophecy in the New Testament and Contemporary Pentecostalism.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 26 (2): 178–95. Widmer, Johann. 1941–52. Im Kampf gegen Satans Reich. 3 Volumes. Bern: Johann Widmer. Wilkinson, Michael. 2016. “Pentecostals and the World: Theoretical and Methodological Issues for Studying Global Pentecostalism.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 38 (4): 373–93. Worsfold, James E. 1991. The Origins of the Apostolic Church in Great Britain. With a Breviate of its Early Missionary Endeavours. Wellington: Julian Literature Trust. Yong, Amos. 2000. Discerning the Spirit(s): A Pentecostal-Charismatic Contribution to a Christian Theology of Religions. JPT Supplement 20. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. ———. 2010. “Disability and the Gifts of the Spirit. Pentecost and the Renewal of the Church.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 19 (1): 76–93. ———. 2011. The Spirit of Creation: Modern Science and Divine Action in the Pentecostal-Charismatic Imagination. Pentecostal Manifestos 4. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

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29 SACRAMENTS Rites in the Spirit for the presence of Christ Chris E.W. Green

In popular perception, Pentecostals are widely regarded as non-liturgical and antisacramental. But whatever is true now of the global Pentecostal movement, we can say with confidence that the earliest Pentecostals prominently celebrated the sacraments, and despite the fact that this theological perspective seems to have been blunted, there has been what can be called a “turn” or “return” to the sacraments and to the idea that Pentecostal spirituality is already inherently sacramental, that is, Pentecostals hold to both the visible and the invisible, the physical and the spiritual, so that the visible may manifest the invisible and the spiritual comes to bear on and changes the physical. This inherent sense of sacramentality comes to focus not only in water baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and anointing with oil for healing and ordination but also in footwashing, speaking with tongues, or traditionally non-sacramental practices, like anointed preaching or the use of healing cloths (Thomas 2016). This chapter engages with the sacramental turn in Pentecostal theology and argues that a Pentecostal theology of the sacraments is developing, although not always in clearly and precisely articulated formulations. I address the conversations and challenges facing a Pentecostal theology of the sacraments and show how Pentecostals bring unique perspectives to bear on sacramental thought and experience and how their contributions not only further elucidate the nature of Pentecostal spirituality but also enrich ecumenical and inter-religious conversations. I begin with an overview of the turn to the sacraments among Pentecostals before speaking to the idea of a Pentecostal liturgy and the particulars of the altar and the table. The chapter concludes with a proposal for a Pentecostal liturgy of divine presence.

The sacramental turn The Pentecostal “turn” to the sacraments began with the pathbreaking insights of a few scholars. Chris Thomas (1991) published a monograph on footwashing, arguing that the rite is purposed for the washing away of post-baptismal sins. Later, he suggested that each tenet of the five-fold gospel has a defining sacrament: water baptism is the sign of salvation, footwashing is the sign of sanctification, glossolalia is the sign of Spirit baptism, the laying on of hands is the sign of healing, and the Lord’s Supper is the sign of the eschatological hope (Thomas 1998). In his argument, Thomas was drawing extensively on the work of Frank Macchia (1993, 1997), who had argued that glossolalia may be viewed as experienced in a 311

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way that is analogous to how God is experienced in the sacraments (as a physical sign of an invisible presence that embraces us in the sign). Both scholars seem to agree on the traditional notion that a sacrament is identified by a “sign” through which the divine presence is experienced (see Chapter 8). God is present and active as the sign is enacted by the worshipping community. More recently, Macchia (2010, 282–83) has emphasized the tightest possible relation between water baptism and Spirit baptism and has affirmed that “the church participates as a body in the justice of the Spirit not only through charisma and word but also through rites of the Spirit,” rites which were instituted by Christ and the Spirit, rites which bring the people of God again and again to the remembrance of and participation in God’s saving work in the world. At the same time, Simon Chan has engaged the importance of the sacraments for the Pentecostal tradition to subsequent generations (see Chapter 9). Chan (2011) insists that Pentecostals need to re-vision their ecclesiology, and that this can only be done via a reconsideration of the place of the sacraments in the church’s liturgical and missional life. The driving force of Chan’s project is his concern for “traditioning,” for without this, Pentecostals “cannot ensure that what they have experienced will be faithfully handed down to the next generation” (20). The best way to guarantee the faithful handing-on of the Pentecostal experience and perspective is a sacramental liturgy that finds its center in the Eucharist, because “all the basic elements and dimensions of worship find their proper place” in the celebration of Communion, and thus a eucharistic liturgy “unites both the charismatic and the evangelical dimensions of worship into a coherent whole” (38). The notion of a eucharistic sacramentality presents serious challenges to Pentecostal theology. Pentecostals have generally preferred the designation of the Eucharist as communion or the Lord’s Supper over traditional sacramental language. However, Wolfgang Vondey is sympathetic to a sacramentality analogous to the centrality of the Eucharist. Because the symbolic world of any Christian shapes their perspective on sacramental practices, Vondey (2001) has suggested that the advent of Pentecostalism was accompanied by a “symbolic turn” which has shaped a genuine Pentecostal liturgy closer to a surrealist than realist ontology. Transformation rather than transubstantiation is the operative mode. Subsequently, I have argued with Vondey that sacramental theology and practice go a long way toward articulating Pentecostal spirituality and reality (Vondey and Green 2010). More recently, Vondey (2016a) has put forward a call for “eucharistic hospitality,” which he believes embraces the symbolic turn and provides the basis for Pentecostal ecclesiology. The hospitality of Pentecostal sacramental theology he sees primarily in the link between the notions of sacrament and charism, so that Pentecostals can engage in “charismatic sacraments” (Vondey 2017, 99–102). For Vondey, it is precisely the charismatic dimension of experiencing the Spirit that allows Pentecostals to contribute generously to a theology of the sacraments. Similarly, James K. A. Smith (2003) has called for Pentecostals to take seriously traditional sacramental thought and practice. He stands convinced that the Christological convictions of the Pentecostal movement (see Chapter 20) make a recovery of traditional Christian sacramentality both fitting and necessary. “If undergirding a theology of sacramentality is a fundamental affirmation of the Incarnation (that the Infinite is revealed in and through the finite),” and Smith argues that Pentecostal theology holds to this fundamental affirmation, then Pentecostals “should seek new roles for ‘sacraments’ in Pentecostal worship and spirituality” (113). These new roles are bound not only to specific sacramental practices but to the question whether Pentecostalism inherently reflects a kind of sacramentality. In his attempt to develop and articulate a global Pentecostal theology, Amos Yong (2005) has called for Pentecostals to adopt a view of water baptism and Communion that is more 312

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in keeping with the Scriptures and the early church fathers, as well as more properly fitted to an understanding of the Spirit’s power of presence (see Chapter 19). He believes that in spite of what one might expect, Pentecostals can appropriate a “fully sacramental view” of both water baptism and the Lord’s Supper, “in the sense of enacting the life and grace of God to those who need and receive it by faith” that nevertheless remains “fully consistent with Pentecostal intuitions regarding the Spirit’s presence and activity in the worshipping community” (160). Making this claim, Yong is suggesting that Pentecostals do not need to fear a theology of the sacraments because there already is a unique sacramentality at work in Pentecostal spirituality. Echoing Smith, Yong argues that there is a sacramentality enacted in the performance of Pentecostal spirituality and theology, one that operates with “experiential and incarnational logic that acknowledges the Spirit’s being made present and active through the materiality of personal embodiment and congregational life” (136). This emphasis on the materiality of sacramental practices may have been taken literally by Pentecostals at the cost of rejecting the deeper sacramental realities. A significant concern arising during this discussion has been the tendency among some Pentecostals to avoid explicitly sacramental language and to speak instead of ordinances, which point away from sacraments as a means of grace to the demonstration of faith. Kenneth Archer (2004) defends the language of ordinances, although he laments that some Pentecostals deny any “real grace” mediated through the rites. Archer hopes that Pentecostals will discern the “mystical significance” of the sacraments in the ordinances through which believers participate in the spiritual realities of Christ’s benefits. The sacraments should not be regarded as “mere memorial rites,” he says, as if they facilitate nothing more than “cognitive reflection,” but as mysteries given and received in the Spirit’s presence and power (84). Arguably, however, Archer concedes too much by retaining and defending the language of “ordinance,” which inevitably leaves readers with the impression that Pentecostals should not or perhaps cannot be sacramental (Plüss 2018, 59–75). The language of ordinances remains ill-defined and can only with difficulty be integrated in a consistent sacramental theology. In contrast, Dan Tomberlin (2010, 87) insists that Pentecostals can and should recognize the sacraments as a means of grace because “the waters of the baptismal pool, the bread and cup of the Eucharist, and the anointing oil can indeed be sacraments . . . [that is, ] means through which believers encounter the Spirit of grace.” Regular, faithful participation in the celebration of the sacraments is therefore indispensable to all Christians. For Tomberlin (2015), Pentecost is the paradigmatic metaphor for a Pentecostal sacramentality with the altar as the focal place coupled with Christ’s priestly ministry. Tomberlin (2010, 87) returns repeatedly to the altar and Christ’s priesthood to argue that through Christ the High Priest and the Spirit of grace, sacraments are more than mere reenactments or memorials to God’s redemptive acts; the baptismal water, the towel and basin, the bread and wine, and the anointing oil become mediatory gifts. In the Eucharist, Tomberlin holds that Christ in the Spirit is in fact present to the celebrants. Acknowledging that Pentecostals do accept the Catholic teaching of transubstantiation, he (2010, 72) suggests that they can and should accept the Palamite teaching that the Spirit comes upon—rests upon, “touches”—the body of Christ at the Eucharist, because they already believe that the Spirit “touches” their own bodies. Other discussions have highlighted the importance of particular sacraments for Pentecostal theology. Lisa Stephenson (2016), in conversation with Thomas and Macchia, has recently shown how footwashing is an extension of water baptism and prepares one for the 313

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economic sharing and solidarity that the practice of the eucharist requires. Alex Mayfield (2016) has developed some of Chan’s suggestions about the relationship between the sacrament of confirmation and the Pentecostal experience of Spirit baptism. Johnathan Alvarado calls for a “renewed, Pentecostal, eucharistic vision” in which Pentecostals expect the Spirit “to mysteriously use the bread and wine to convey grace to those who believe” (Alvarado 2016, 190). Daniela Augustine (2010) suggests that in Christ humanity itself becomes a sacrament, created for radical self-offering and communion with others. Pentecostals have clearly begun to reclaim a sacramental spirituality, returning to a wisdom that had for the most part been lost to the tradition during the twentieth century (Spinks 2013). At this time, however, no single sacramental definition or rituals has been agreed upon. It is clear that Pentecostal spirituality is seen as inherently sacramental because it understands the spiritual and the physical, as well as the divine and the human, as fitted for and belonging to each other. Perhaps most Pentecostals would agree with the idea that a sacrament is a sign whose reality happens as its signification is carried out. The emphasis in Pentecostal sacramental practice is on encountering God’s living and active presence. That said, Pentecostals acknowledge that the living God acts in, with, and through rites he has directed the church to practice, even while they would insist, as do other traditions, on articulating in their own terms why God has ordained those practices and how it is the church should practice them.

A liturgical paradigm shift Early Pentecostals were not uniform in their sacramental beliefs and practices. There was, however, widespread agreement that water baptism and communion, as well as anointing with oil (for healing and ordination)—and, to a lesser extent, footwashing—were defining practices for Pentecostals, and that the Spirit acted uniquely in and through these rites. These events were understood as sacred occasions, special opportunities for God to work in the life of the community. Somewhere along the line—arguably through the influence of a lowchurch, conversionist Evangelicalism—many, if not most, Pentecostal liturgies lost touch with this sacramental spirituality. What we can observe in contrast to the aforementioned turn to the sacraments is a concurrent turn away from sacramental liturgy. To illustrate the loss, consider the following example. The 1913 Constitution and General Rules of the Pentecostal Holiness Church contains a discussion on ordinances and demonstrates the significance by placing it immediately following the initial section on union with God. Identifying water baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and footwashing, the manual then provides clear instructions on the first two rituals. The celebration of the Lord’s Supper directs the pastor, “at the close of the sermon or Scripture lesson, or at any time that may be deemed proper,” to call the deacons to “gather round the table and kneel with the whole congregation” in preparation for the rite (The Pentecostal Holiness Church 1913, 21). The rubric then provides an exemplary prayer, which is clearly, at least in places, an adaptation of language from the Book of Common Prayer. Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we praise Thee for Thy great love expressed in the gift of Thy Blessed Son, who suffered death upon the cross for our redemption, and made there a full and sufficient sacrifice and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world, and did, institute this blessed sacrament to be a perpetual memorial of His precious death until He comes again. We pray Thee that Thou wilt grant that we receiving these Thy creatures of bread and wine, emblems of His broken body and shed blood, 314

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in remembrance of His death and passion, may be partakers of His nature by faith in His precious blood who in the same night that He was betrayed took bread, and when He had given thanks, brake it and gave it to His disciples, saying, “Take, eat; this is My body, which is given, for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” Likewise after supper He took the cup, and when He had given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink ye all of this; for this is My blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you, and for many, for the remission of sins. Do this as oft as ye shall drink it, in remembrance of Me.” Amen. (21) Having said the prayer, the pastor, as presiding celebrant, should “partake of the communion in both kinds himself ” (22), and then share it with everyone “around the table.” As they are sharing the bread, the ministers are instructed to say, “The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, to preserve thee unto everlasting life. Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on Him by faith with thanksgiving.” And as they are sharing the wine (usually grape juice): “The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee, preserve thee unto everlasting life. Drink this in remembrance of His shed blood, and be thankful and rejoice in Him.” When everyone has finished, the pastor should kneel with the people, leading them in the Lord’s Prayer. After that, the pastor could dismiss them with a song and/or a prayer of benediction. That rubric remained in the Constitution (although of course that does not mean it actually was used in the churches) until 1981. Then a new rubric appeared, which stipulates the pastor’s responsibility to “schedule a regular time to observe the Lord’s Supper” and suggests either the first Sunday of each month or the first Sunday of each quarter (The Pentecostal Holiness Church 1981, 86). The new form states that after the minister “has completed his worship service” he should “stand by the communion table,” read an “appropriate scripture, such as 1 Corinthians 11.23–27 or Luke 22.14–20” and then offer a prayer. As in the older rubric, an example is provided: Lord Jesus, we observe this sacrament in remembrance of You. This bread reminds us of Your bodily example upon this earth. We believe Your life is to be a constant example for our lives. This juice is symbolic of Your blood shed for our sins. We thank You for dying in our stead. We now bless these elements to the nourishment of our spiritual bodies in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Following the prayer, the minister and deacons are encouraged to serve the “elements” to the congregation with these words: “We eat this bread in remembrance of the Word made flesh dwelling among us. We drink this juice in remembrance of Christ’s blood shed for our sins” (87). Once everyone has received Communion, the congregation sings together, and the pastor dismisses everyone with the benediction. In this drastic re-working of the liturgy, two theological changes stand out: first, the presently active triune God has been replaced by an absent, inactive Jesus. Instead of inviting God to act on the people in the Eucharist-event, the people are pledging to do the blessing on God’s behalf, to keep Christ’s memory alive in the performance of the rite. Second, Pentecostals have moved from expecting efficacious participation in the divine life to the mere imitation of Jesus’ actions on the night of his betrayal. The liturgy is no longer enacted as a collaborative divine-human event but as a merely human and symbolic work that, at best, puts us in mind of divine things but does not anticipate participation in the encounter with God. 315

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This example illustrates a shift in the understanding of sacramental praxis and efficacy that has affected many, if not most, Pentecostal communities. Some might argue that it is merely a benign reworking of liturgical and theological language. But I suspect that it reflects the weakening a Pentecostal liturgy that is open to a strong theology of the sacraments. No doubt the genealogy of this shift is complex, but two factors seem obvious: first, the rise and spread of a conversion-centric “evangelistic” or “church growth” model has made sacramental spirituality seem awkward and unnecessary (see Chapter 26); and, second, a focus on transformative altar-call experiences made sacramental rites seem relatively uneventful and often irrelevant because the sacraments were not integrated in the altar liturgy (see Chapter 16).

The altar and the table As many Pentecostals are turning to the sacraments amidst liturgical structures not always receptive to them, the question is how to develop a sacramental theology and praxis true to Pentecostal sensibilities and concerns. An important way forward has been the integration of sacraments in a Pentecostal liturgy in ways that engage the image of the altar and the table. Tomberlin (2010) uses the altar as the central organizing principle for understanding Pentecostal sacramentality. Similarly, Telford Work (2014) has argued that the altar call and the Eucharist-event can and should be—and in many places, already are—experienced as one. More recently, Vondey (2016b) has contended that the altar call is indeed the heart of the Pentecostal liturgy. For Vondey (2017, 57), the altar liturgy forms the practical framework for the theological motifs of the full gospel. The altar is the holy and anointed habitation of God, the place of Christ’s sacrifice, the presence of the Word of God and of the Holy Spirit, instrument of evangelization and the proclamation of the gospel, the anxious bench of the sinner, [the site of ] public confession of faith, [the source of ] invitation for baptism, [the] gift of sacramental worship, [the home for] the eucharistic table, fellowship and revival of the faithful, [and the] anointing of the church . . . . The Eucharist-event finds its home within the altar-event because the sacramental and the mystical/charismatic are made for each other. The “free, dynamic, and unpredictable move of the Spirit” at the altar both serves and is served by the “ordered and predictable encounter with the Spirit” (Vondey 2010, 135) at the table. In other words, the life of “feeding on Christ” is mystically eucharistic and eucharistically mystical all-at-once. The table is the center of the altar, and the altar is the boundary of the table—a boundary that is promised to extend further and further through our ongoing intercession, encompassing more and more of creation. The calling down of the Spirit upon the bread and wine is inextricably bound up with our calling out to God at the altar and his always previous calling us in to his presence. The altar event unfolds in different movements, and it is fitting that the altar call, the initiating moment, invites worshippers to move to the space where the Spirit’s “moving” is recognized. As Tomberlin (2010, 5) suggests, Pentecostal worship has always been about movement. We pray that the Spirit will move among us. We come to church expecting to be moved by the Spirit. At some point in the service, we are invited to move from our seats to pray at the altar. 316

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In turn, if the altar is about movement, then the table is about stillness. In the altar-event, the worshippers offer up their blessings and their laments, their petitions and their praises. In the table event, they receive what they could never give. Hence, the Eucharist should be celebrated during the time of sanctification, which Vondey (2017, 60–67) describes as the “tarrying” and climax of that moment. Before coming to the table, we may be transformed in our affections, our desires, and intentions drawn into alignment with the divine will. At the table, we are by faith transfigured in anticipation of the fullness of the future promised to us. At the altar, we, by the Spirit, give ourselves to Christ and, in him, to the Father. At the table, Christ, by the Spirit, is given by the Father to us, so that “when we come to the Lord’s Table, we come in response to the prompting of the Spirit; we come in the Spirit, and in coming, we are graced by the Spirit” (Smith 2017, 92). In this moment we encounter Christ and the sacraments become “a means by which we walk in the Spirit; all that we long for of the Spirit is given to us in this meal. And further, the Spirit is the one who makes the sacraments sacramental” (Smith 2017, 92). In this way, we encounter the divine presence in the sacraments.

A liturgy of divine presence The so-called sacramental turn has also opened Pentecostals to a renewed appreciation of the established liturgical tradition. Although older descriptions of Pentecostalism suggest the movement is anti-liturgical, contemporary interpreters of the tradition see that Pentecostal spirituality is deeply embodied and storied, and inherently liturgical (Albrecht 1999; Lindhardt 2011; Cartledge and Swoboda 2016). After all, Pentecostals are known for their bodily expressions in worship, as well as for their insistence on somatic practices like the laying on of hands, kneeling, dancing, clapping, “Jericho marches,” the washing of feet, and others (see Chapter 11). To be sure, they stand against anything and everything believed to “quench the Spirit” or stifle spirited piety, but contrary to popular opinion, Pentecostal spirituality “does not advocate an unmediated encounter with God, nor a subjectivist emotionalism unrelated to an objective means of grace” (Macchia 1993, 76). Pentecostals do not oppose mediation; they oppose ritualism and clericalism (Work 2006). Pentecostals expect to experience the presence of God “within and beyond the sacramental life of the church, through speaking and through ritual touching, in the work of the ordained and in the lives of the laity” (Vickers 2014, 204). In other words, they are open to the possibility that God might work through any means, including the specific means of the liturgy and the sacraments. And insofar as a sacramental liturgy remains faithful to Scripture and the Spirit, thereby leading worshippers into the divine presence, it can be received as one of the Spirit’s gifts to the church. Many Pentecostals are going to worry that a liturgical turn to the sacraments is a turn toward “dead religion.” This worry arises in part from a misapprehension of other liturgical traditions, and in part from the long history of revivalism, which typically has used the fear of “dead religion” to motivate believers to heat-of-the moment decisions. But in the final analysis, this is not a concern that should keep Pentecostals from embracing the sacramental life. The focus should be on practicing the sacraments as Pentecostals, that is, in ways that are spirited, open to spontaneous expressions of worship and praise, synced to what is sensed as the Spirit’s lead, so that Pentecostals can “pray with reckless abandon for the Spirit to function as the Spirit desires on the people and the elements, always maintaining openness and receptivity to the surprises of God” (Alvarado 2016, 186). Still, even with this emphasis on spontaneity and spiritedness, it must not be forgotten that the sacraments are purposefully scandalous. What G. F. Taylor (1919), early Pentecostal 317

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editor of the Pentecostal Holiness Advocate, said of the Lord’s Supper is true of all the sacraments and their liturgical celebration: “The real purpose of the Supper is to humiliate us, to teach us the spirit of Jesus, and to unite us as a church in the spirit of fellowship” (2). Based on testimonies from believers down through time and across the Christian traditions, humility in the face of the sacraments is important for all sacramental moments (footwashing is a particularly prominent Pentecostal example). To acknowledge the truth of one’s experiences—or, one’s lack of experience—is not to suggest that God is absent or that one is unfaithful. It is to suggest, however, that the sacraments are gifts for this time between the two “appearances” of Christ (Vondey and Green, 2010). Sometimes, sacramental celebrations are to be times of joy, at other times, moments of sobriety, even sorrow, because although God truly is present, he is not yet present fully. God is present, but hiddenly, mysteriously. The sacraments are challenging reminders of our eschatological longing for the fullness of the presence of God. For Pentecostals, the divine presence refers both to the presence of Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit. As a rule, early Pentecostal sacramentality focused on the teachings and presence of Jesus. Hence, Walter Hollenweger (1988, 385) described the way Pentecostals celebrate the sacraments as “a combination of the ‘love of Jesus,’ that is love for the faithful friend who is called Jesus, ‘blood and wounds mysticism,’ an absorption in the suffering and death of Jesus, and a looking forward to the coming marriage feast with Jesus.” Contemporary Pentecostals are more likely to talk about the presence of the Spirit. A constructive Pentecostal theology of the sacraments would enable us to talk about both the presence of Jesus, including the call to share in his sufferings and death, and the presence of the Spirit, including the need for spiritual guidance and power. It might be said, then, that Christ’s presence is always the Spirit’s gift (and vice versa). Macchia (2006, 189) puts it this way: “Jesus is present through the Holy Spirit during the eucharistic meal to commune with believers, to transform them toward greater love and holiness, and to heal them in body and mind.” For Pentecostals, this encounter with God’s presence is the critical point of the sacramental moment: the Jesus whom the Spirit makes present is the living Lord. Hence, Pentecostal sacramentality, insofar as it is coherent and intelligible, seeks to draw attention to this mystery, and resists at every turn ritualizing or domesticating the Spirit’s gift (Vondey (2016b, 101). We can trust that Christ by the Spirit is present, but we must not mistake the sacraments as a guarantee of that presence. What is true at the altar and at the table is true in the waters of baptism, as well. In fact, every sacrament—whether baptism or the Eucharist, footwashing or anointing with oil— places believers in the role of Christ, a role the Spirit graces. And if the Christian sacramental tradition is right, then this posturing is not merely an imitation—it is actually a participation in the divine life where we have access through Christ by the Spirit to the Father (Eph. 2:18). It is that participation with God that saves us, a participation that is signified and effected in the sacraments. Salvation is deep communion with the triune God, this communion cannot be limited to the sacraments, or to times of prayer, although it comes to focus in those moments. Because we exist in Christ, because God’s Spirit dwells in us, all of life is a sharing in the divine exchange, every moment a being-caught-up in theotic, perichoretic communion. Whether we are asleep or awake, whether we are at work or at play, whether we are gathered in worship or scattered in witness, we are with and within the event that is God. That is not to say that every practice is a sacrament or sacramental. But it is to say that focus on the sacraments awakens believers to the presence of God beyond the sacramental act itself. Previously, I have argued that the sacraments are miraculous events (Green 2012), but it may be more accurate to say instead that all things, and every moment, are open to participation in God. At the table, this participation is especially focused, intensified in a peculiar way, 318

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and what is true in some sense of every meal is realized, brought to bear, at the Lord’s table. Every kindness we do for our neighbor is a work of the Spirit. But washing a neighbor’s feet enacts the Spirit’s grace more intensely.

Conclusion Pentecostal spirituality is God-focused and world-focused, contemplative and active, charismatic and sacramental. Pentecostal sacramentality entails a movement toward God’s presence, stillness before God, and movement with God out into the world. In trinitarian terms, the Spirit draws us to Christ, who directs our attention to the Father; the Father then affirms our allegiance to Christ, who sends us out as his emissaries in the power of the Spirit. A growing number of Pentecostals are calling for a turn or return to the sacraments, largely based on the contention that Pentecostal spirituality is already inherently sacramental, by which they mean that it assumes that God works mediately, and that therefore the visible and the invisible, the physical and the spiritual, are made for each other. If sacraments are a sign whose reality happens through the sign’s signification, then the emphasis in Pentecostal sacramentality is on encountering God’s presence and the transformation this encounter brings about. The task of Pentecostal theology for the immediate future will be to develop a corresponding Pentecostal liturgy of the divine presence that allows for the integration of sacramental practices sensitive to Pentecostal spirituality.

References Albrecht, Daniel E. 1999. Rites in the Spirit: A Ritual Approach to Pentecostal/Charismatic Spirituality. JPT Supplement 3. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Alvarado, Johnathan. 2016. “Pentecostal Epiclesis: A Model for Teaching and Learning.” In Pentecostal Ecclesiology: A Reader, edited by Chris E.W. Green, 178–95. Leiden: Brill. Archer, Kenneth J. 2004. “Nourishment for Our Journey: The Pentecostal Via Salutis and Sacramental Ordinances.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 13 (1): 79–96. Augustine, Daniela. 2010. “Pentecost Communal Economics and the Household of God.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 19: 219–42. Cartledge, Mark J., and A. J. Swoboda. 2016. Scripting Pentecost: A Study of Pentecostals, Worship and Liturgy. Aldershot: Ashgate. Chan, Simon. 2011. Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. Green, Chris E.W. 2012. Towards a Pentecostal Theology of the Lord’s Supper: Foretasting the Kingdom. Cleveland: CPT Press. Hollenweger, Walter. 1988. The Pentecostals. Peabody: Hendrickson. Lindhardt, Martin. 2011. Practicing the Faith: The Ritual Life of Pentecostal Charismatic Christians. Oxford: Berghahn. Macchia, Frank D. 1993. “Tongues as a Sign: Towards a Sacramental Understanding of Pentecostal Experience.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 15 (1): 61–76. ———. 1997. “Is Footwashing the Neglected Sacrament? A Theological Response to John Ch ristopher Thomas.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 19 (2): 239–49. ———. 2006. Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. ———. 2010. Justified in the Spirit: Creation, Redemption, and the Triune God. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Mayfield, Alex. 2016. “Seal of the Spirit: The Sacrament of Confirmation and Pentecostal Spirit Baptism.” The Journal of Pentecostal Theology 25 (2): 222–41. Plüss, Jean Daniel. 2018. “Sacrament or Ordinance? A Pentecostal Approach to a Contentious Issue.” In Pentecostals in the 21st Century: Identity, Beliefs, Practices, edited by Corneliu Constantineanu and Christopher J. Scobie, 59–75. Eugene: Cascade. Smith, Gordon T. 2017. Evangelical, Sacramental, and Pentecostal: Why the Church Should Be All Three. Grand Rapids: InterVarsity.

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Chris E.W. Green Smith, James K.A. 2003. “What Hath Cambridge To Do with Azusa Street? Radical Orthodoxy and Pentecostal Theology in Conversation.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 25 (1): 97–114. Spinks, Bryan D. 2013. Do This in Remembrance of Me: The Eucharist from the Early Church to the Present Day. London: SCM Press. Stephenson, Lisa. 2016. “Getting Our Feet Wet: The Politics of Footwashing.” In Pentecostal Ecclesiology: A Reader, edited by Chris E.W. Green, 161–77. Leiden: Brill. Taylor, G. F. 1919. “The Lord’s Supper.” The Pentecostal Holiness Advocate 3 (11): 2–3. The Pentecostal Holiness Church, ed. 1913. Constitution and General Rules of the Pentecostal Holiness Church. Falcon: Falcon Publishing Co. ———, ed. 1981. The Pentecostal Holiness Church Manual. Franklin Springs: Advocate Press. Thomas, John Christopher. 1991. Footwashing in John 13 and the Johannine Community. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. ———. 1998. “Pentecostal Theology in the Twenty-First Century.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 20 (1): 3–19. ———. 2016. “Toward a Pentecostal Theology of Anointed Cloths.” In Toward a Pentecostal Theology of Worship, edited by Lee Roy Martin, 89–112. Cleveland: CPT Press. Tomberlin, Dan. 2010. Pentecostal Sacraments: Encountering God at the Altar. Cleveland: Center for Pentecostal Leadership and Care. ———. 2015. “Believer’s Baptism in the Pentecostal Tradition.” The Ecumenical Review 67 (3): 423–35. Vickers, Jason. 2014. “Holiness and Mediation: Pneumatology in Pietist Perspective.” International Journal of Systematic Theology 16 (2): 192–206. Vondey, Wolfgang. 2001. “The Symbolic Turn: A Symbolic Conception of the Liturgy of Pentecostalism.” Wesleyan Theological Journal 36 (2): 223–47. ———. 2010. Beyond Pentecostalism: The Crisis of Global Christianity and the Renewal of the Theological Agenda. Pentecostal Manifestos 3. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2016a. “Pentecostal Ecclesiology and Eucharistic Hospitality: Toward a Systematic and Ecumenical Account of the Church.” In Pentecostal Ecclesiology: A Reader, edited by Chris E. W. Green, 266–80. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2016b. “The Theology of the Altar and Pentecostal Sacramentality.” In Scripting Pentecost: A Study of Pentecostals, Worship and Liturgy, edited by Mark J. Cartledge and A. J. Swoboda, 94–107. Aldershot: Ashgate. ———. 2017. Pentecostal Theology: Living the Full Gospel. Systematic Pentecostal and Charismatic Theology 1. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. Vondey, Wolfgang and Chris E.W. Green. 2010. “Between This and That: Reality and Sacramentality in the Pentecostal Worldview.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 19 (2): 243–64. Work, Telford. 2006. “Pentecostal and Charismatic Worship.” In The Oxford History of Christian Worship, edited by Geoffrey Wainwright and Karen B. Westerfield Tucker, 574–85. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2014. “Communion: A Pentecostal Perspective.” In What Does It Mean to “Do This”? Supper, Mass, Eucharist, edited by Michael Root and James J. Buckley, 121–35. Eugene: Cascade. Yong, Amos. 2005. The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.

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30 SPIRITUAL WARFARE The cosmic conflict between good and evil Opoku Onyinah

The term “spiritual warfare” does not occur in the Bible; however, the idea is found throughout its pages. Right from creation, there appears a being called “Satan” or “the devil” who is opposed to God and allied with lesser spiritual beings referred to as “evil spirits” or “demons.” The Scriptures indicate that human beings are entangled in a cosmic conflict between good and evil by suffering various forms of spiritual and physical attacks, ranging from sickness and misfortune to demonic possession and death. Pentecostals have differed in their understanding of this seeming clash between God and Satan but have begun to develop more detailed accounts of spiritual warfare in recent years. The goal of this chapter is to present the Pentecostal perspective on spiritual warfare to bring some clarity to the subject by critically examining contemporary teachings and practices among Pentecostals and reconstructing a theology of spiritual warfare from a Pentecostal perspective. I suggest that many issues that are considered demonic are issues that fall more properly within the domain of the flesh. After a brief historical background of the modern spiritual warfare movement, I review the contemporary practices of Pentecostals in order to detail and critique the various elements of spiritual warfare theology. I conclude with a positive account of spiritual warfare from the New Testament perspective with the aid of Pentecostal scholarship.

A brief history of spiritual warfare Dealing with the demonic and engaging in deliverance arose to prominence with the Pentecostal revival at the beginning of the twentieth century (Hunt 1998, 216). The primary emphasis in the early years was on speaking in tongues as an initial evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit and as a weapon for evangelism; healing and deliverance were to accompany the baptism (see Chapter 23). Satan was considered an obstacle to divine healing, but the orientation at the time was primarily on evangelization, and spiritual warfare was not a major focus of classical Pentecostal theology. A particular challenge to the emergence of a theology of spiritual warfare was the idea of demon possession. Pentecostals generally do not believe that a Christian can be possessed by demons (Kay 1999, 337; Carter 2000; Warrington 2004). Thus, from early on, Pentecostals opposed those who made demonic deliverance a theological speciality. However, 321

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popular ministries sprang up on the perimeter of the movement, and the more conservative Pentecostal churches were unable to stop them. These ministries brought deliverance to the fore, although it was not yet central to a theology of spiritual warfare. An example is the Latter Rain movement, which was very sympathetic to deliverance. Although its core teaching was on divine healing (see Chapter 24), it encouraged independent deliverance ministries and churches (Riss 1982, 32–45). The movement produced many influential ministers (Hejzlar, 2009), but spiritual warfare was only in its embryonic form, and its rise to prominence came only with the Charismatic movement. The initial rise of the Charismatic renewal in the second half of the twentieth century highlighted the existence of Pentecostal phenomena such as speaking in tongues, healing, and prophesying outside of classical Pentecostal churches. The second part of the renewal during the 1980s and early 1990s added an increasing awareness of the devil, and teachings on spiritual warfare flourished concerning the powers of Satan, demons, generational (or ancestral) curses, and how to overcome these powers through deliverance, the breaking of strongholds, and exorcisms (Koch 1981; Prince 1990; Wimber 1992; Larson 1999). The central theological trajectory deduced from these teachings is that a person could be a Christian, baptized in the Holy Spirit and speak with tongues, yet still have demons and be afflicted by spiritual curses. The power of the Holy Spirit was necessary to reveal the problem and deal with it. Casting out a demon or renouncing a curse could be a lengthy process, and it was only “the violent” who could lay hold of it by force (Prince 1990; Larson 1999). This new teaching often contradicted classical Pentecostal theology.

The contemporary spiritual warfare movement From the 1990s onwards, the focus of demonology intensified to a full-blown theology of spiritual warfare. The new teaching emphasizes that demons not only inhabit people but geographic regions, and that these strongholds can be pulled down through intense battles in prayer. Contemporary spiritual warfare teaching distinguishes between two levels of warfare: ground-level warfare and cosmic-level warfare. A third teaching central to the newly emerging theology is the so-called witchdemonology.

Ground-level warfare Ground-level warfare deals with evil spirits that inhabit people. These spirits are classified into three kinds: (1) family or ancestral spirits, which gain power through successive generations up to the present; (2) occult spirits, which are the demons of non-Christian religions including Freemasonry and the New Age. The advocates claim that these gain their power through invitation; and (3) ordinary demons, which are considered to be attached to vices such as anger, fear, lust, gambling, drunkenness, or pornography. Those who have one or more of those spirits are demonized. Based upon the Greek term daimonizomai, which means “to have a demon,” the term “demonised” is typically preferred to the concept of “demon possession.” Deliverance ministries aim to expose the demon and cast it out in the name and by the power of Jesus (Kraft 1989, 1993).

Strategic-level warfare Strategic-level warfare is considered to consist of, at least, five categories of spirits: (1) territorial spirits over cities, regions, and nations (derived from Daniel 10:13, 20–21). Territorial spirits 322

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are defined as high-ranking members of the hierarchy of evil spirits who are dispatched by Satan to control nations, regions, cities, tribes, people groups, neighbourhoods, and other social networks (Wagner 2012). (2) Institutional spirits, which are assigned to non- Christian religions, governments, churches, and educational institutions (Boyd 2012). (3) Spirits that supervise and promote special functions and vices such as prostitution, homosexuality, music, pornography, media, and war. (4) Spirits assigned to objects, buildings, tools, instruments, as well as non-material entities like rituals that are assigned to such objects during dedications. (5) Ancestral spirits that rule over specific families, and which can assume the identity of the ancestors themselves (Onyinah 2012b). Strategic-level spirits are believed to be in charge of ground-level spirits and assign them to people and supervise their work. In order to break the powers of these spirits, one must engage in strategic-level warfare. At the heart of this warfare is often a threefold strategy developed by Peter Wagner: discerning the territorial spirits, dealing with the corporate sin of a city, and engaging in aggressive warfare against the territorial spirits (Wagner 1991, 1993, 1996). Some suggest that “spiritual mapping” is necessary for discerning the territorial spirits assigned to a city (Otis 1991). This technique is used to discern and identify the spirits over the territory as a step towards developing strategies to combat and defeat them. John Dawson has popularized the expression “identification repentance” to explain the need for repenting and then confessing territorial sins as a means of effecting reconciliation, thus breaking Satan’s grip (Dawson 1989; Wagner 1996, 249–50). In the third part of strategic-level warfare—engaging in an aggressive struggle against the territorial spirits—advocates typically engage in “casting down strongholds,” “binding the strongman,” “evicting the ruler of the city,” “storming the gates of hell,” and “taking dominion in Jesus’ name” ( Jacobs 1994; Onyinah 2012b). This teaching has gained massive popularity among Christians worldwide.

Witchdemonology Global Pentecostal theology encountered particular concerns in West African Christianity with what can appropriately be dubbed “witchdemonology.” Witchcraft in Western t hinking includes the practice of magic, the use of spells, and the invocation of spirits. “Witchcraft” in many African cultures is the belief that some people possess supernatural powers, which may be used for good or evil (Rio, MacCarthy, and Blanes 2018). “Demonology” is the Christian doctrine that there are evil spirits in league with Satan who can also take possession of people and force them to become agents of destruction. Witchdemonology is the synthesis of the practices and beliefs of African witchcraft and Western Christian teachings of demonology and exorcism. Witchdemonology accepts the reality of witchcraft, demons and deities, the belief in territorial spirits and mapping them, the belief in ancestral curses, and the identification of demonic realities and curses. Special prayer sessions called “deliverance meetings” are held, either in groups or in private sessions, to set people free from evil powers that hinder their progress in life (Onyinah 2004). This tendency has opened the door for a high level of prophetic or “super-charismatic” ministry (Anim 2003, 122). Ministers under this umbrella diagnose people’s problem through words of knowledge or prophecy. Ministering to people in this way is the charismatic substitute for the old shrine practices in African traditional religions. Although some people appear to have been helped and encouraged from such ministrations, in most cases, the tendency has created divisions among family members and instilled more fear of witchcraft and demonic activity (Onyinah 2009). 323

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A critique of spiritual warfare teaching The Charismatic theology of modern spiritual warfare has produced some positive results. For example, it has encouraged many Christians to strategize, plan, and pray effectively before evangelism with the result that the gospel is proclaimed in difficult areas (Dawson 1989). In addition, spiritual warfare theology has led to a renewed focus on the unevangelized nations located between 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator. The new spiritual warfare teachings have stirred many to identify various problems in life as spiritual attacks and to pray about them. Thus, intercession has intensified, and vices are considered sins that have demonic attachments, so that some Christians have been more earnest about avoiding such practices. Finally, contemporary spiritual warfare teachings have challenged Christians to reinvigorate their faith and to practise it more vibrantly. However, despite these positive trends, there are some theological concerns to which Pentecostals should pay attention, particularly the overt attention paid to the devil, the sovereignty of God, the cause of misfortunes, and the place of suffering.

Attention on the devil A serious problem with charismatic spiritual warfare teachings is that they give too much attention to Satan and the demonic hierarchy. Pentecostals acknowledge that according to Scripture, Satan rules over a demonic chain of command that tries to control territories on earth (Guelich 1991). This is also the picture which is seen in Daniel 10:13, 20–21. But the Bible does not reveal that believers have the power to dispel these evil spirits from their geographic domains. Many Pentecostals believe that Christians have the authority to cast out evil spirits (Mark 16:17; Luke 10; 17–19; Acts 5:16; 8:7; 16:18) and that they can resist the devil from taking control over their lives ( James 4:7; 1 Pet. 5:8–9). However, Pentecostals do not see an example of God’s people pulling down the evil spirits over cities and nations (Harris 1999). For Pentecostals, demonic powers are reduced to secondary causes in the accomplishment of God’s supreme purpose. There is no detailed description of Satan’s activities; neither are there detailed confessions of demoniacs as seen in modern deliverance services in the Bible. The scriptures do not provide any detailed rituals or techniques for identifying problems or performing exorcisms (Warrington 2015, 15). Some modern expressions and techniques (such as spiritual mapping, ground-level warfare, cosmic-level warfare, and evicting the ruler of the city) and some practices during exorcisms (such as the emphasis on prayer language, the role of repetitive and intensive prayer, the need for fasting, and the demand for confession) seem to reduce spiritual warfare to mere magical techniques rather than placing confidence in God (Onyinah 2012a, 255–62).

Satan’s limitations Pentecostals emphasize the absolute sovereignty of God who reigns supreme over all spiritual powers (e.g. Deut. 6:4; Neh. 9:6; Job 38:7; Ps. 89:5–8; Eph. 4:4–6), and Satan is simply one of those spirits ( Job 1:6–7). All spirits, whether good or evil, operate under God’s sovereignty, and God uses them to carry out his divine plan ( John 13:27) and to become envoys of God (Onyinah 2012b, 18). Pentecostals emphasize that Satan’s objective is to oppose God. This emphasis is based on the understanding that in the Old Testament, Satan and his kingdom

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executed their plans by hindering the work of God and inciting or accusing the people of God of evil as they tried to carry it out (1 Chr. 21:1; Job 1–2; Zech. 3:1–2). Similarly, the main work of Satan and demons in the New Testament is to oppose Christ and his church (Matt. 4:1–12; 1 Thess. 2:18). Nevertheless, God has seriously constrained Satan’s power. Even when the Bible reveals that the devil has attacked righteous people, it is often read that he first sought permission from God ( Job 1:12; Matt. 4:1; Luke 22:31; 2 Cor. 12:7–12), and that he could only operate within God’s limits (Onyinah 2012a, 256). Moreover, the scriptures also indicate that believers are empowered to defend themselves from such forces (Warrington 2008, 294).

The cause of misfortunes Pentecostal theology attributes misfortune to different causes including God, neutral or natural causes, and the devil (Thomas 1998). Misfortunes, which may originate from God, are about issues of discipline or punishment (1 Sam. 2:6). The plagues on the Egyptians (Ex. 7–11), the afflictions on the Philistines (1 Sam. 5:6–12), the striking of the seventy people of Beth-shemesh (1 Sam 6:19–20), the death of Uzzah (1 Sam. 6:7), the sickness and death of David’s child (2 Sam. 12:13–18), the paralysed man who was healed ( John 5:18), the blindnesses of Zechariah, Saul, and Elymas (Luke 1:18–20; Acts 9:8–9; Acts 14:4–12), the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1–11), and the death of Herod (Acts 12:21–23) are examples of misfortune caused by God (Thomas 1998, 244–78). Examples of misfortunes, which are considered to derive from neutral or natural causes, are Isaac’s blindness (Gen. 27:1), Elisha’s sickness and his subsequent death (2 Kings 13:14), the death of the widow’s son (1 Kings 17:17–18), the death of some people in Galilee cited by Jesus (Luke 13:1–5), and the illnesses of Paul’s co-workers including Epaphroditus, Timothy, and Trophimus (Phil. 2:27; 1 Tim. 5:23; 2 Tim. 4:20). Finally, the cataclysms that Job experienced ( Job 1:1–2:10) or Paul’s thorn in the flesh (2 Cor. 12:7) are examples of misfortunes that can originate from Satan (Thomas 1998, 192–78).

The place of suffering in life Original sin and the Fall of humankind occupy a central position in Pentecostal teachings. The biblical teaching of the Fall tells us that suffering and death are now part of life (Gen. 3:1–24; Rom. 5:12–14; 8:18–25). The entire human race fell as a result of Adam’s disobedience, so that the whole creation has been “subjected to futility” (Rom. 8:20). Yet creation has a hope of being “set free from its bondage to decay” (Rom. 8:21) through the death and resurrection of Christ, and believers now “live between the times” of “the a lready” but “not yet” (Eph. 4:30; cf. Rom. 5:9; Gal. 5:5). The outcome of this eschatological tension is that Christians are still exposed to physical afflictions, including sufferings and misfortunes (see Chapter 25). Thus, suffering does not necessarily mean that the devil has attacked; neither does it mean that the person has sinned. They can simply be the result of life in a fallen world (Warrington 2005, 2008, 265–308). When demons are associated with every vice, people are absolved from taking responsibility for their wrongdoings, their sins, and their inadequacies. They blame everything on the devil and ancestral or generational curses (Meyer 2001; Asamoah-Gyadu 2004). The sad reality is that contemporary spiritual warfare teachers admit that there is little biblical evidence for their teachings (Wagner 1992, 19 and 63), yet they brand as sceptics anyone who challenges them.

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A biblical Pentecostal theology of spiritual warfare Although there has not been a systematic Pentecostal theology on spiritual warfare, in recent years, there has been an increased eagerness by some Pentecostals to develop a theology of healing, exorcism, suffering, and spiritual warfare that is derived primarily from biblical teaching and is analytical and critical of excesses. A Pentecostal theology of spiritual warfare, therefore, is derived primarily from biblical teaching with particular attention to the New Testament. It lays emphasis on the New Testament because it is there that Satan and demons are clearly presented over against Christ, his mission, and kingdom. Against this biblical and Christological backdrop, this final section develops a Pentecostal theology of spiritual warfare that responds to the concerns raised above by placing the focus on Christ, his kingdom and his ministry, the victory of the believer, the nature of satanic opposition, and the teachings of the apostles on evil.

Christ and the kingdom Christ and his kingdom (see Chapter 25) have a major place in the Pentecostal understanding of spiritual warfare. Pentecostals generally believe in the existence of the devil and evil spirits whose aim is to oppose Christ and his mission in the church and to resist the work of evangelism (Lea 1998). Jesus’ announcement that the kingdom of God is at hand takes its special significance from the Old Testament prophetic expectation that God’s rule was coming, and his people would be liberated (Mark 1:15; Luke 4:18–19; cf. Isa. 9:6–11, 61:1–3). Pentecostals believe that liberation means freedom from demonic domination because of the reality of the kingdom. In the Beelzebub controversy, for example, Jesus clearly links his expulsion of demons with the kingdom of God that is breaking through the satanic kingdom (Matt. 12:28). The implication of the parable of the strong man is that the binding and plundering of the strong man, Satan, occurs simultaneously with the coming of the Messiah to inaugurate the kingdom of God (Matt. 12:29). Thus, for Pentecostals, the exorcism of demons by Jesus was a visible sign of the kingdom of God overpowering the satanic kingdom (Warrington 2015, 162–63). Pentecostals believe that the devastation of the devil was climaxed in the death and resurrection of Christ. Paul’s letters reveal the conquering of all the principalities and powers in the heavenly realm (e.g. Col. 2:15; Eph. 1:20–22). For Pentecostals, believers have been rescued from the kingdom of darkness, which is dominated by evil forces, and have been transferred into the kingdom of Christ (Col. 1:13). By virtue of the work of Christ on the cross, evil rulers no longer have control over believers (Col. 1:16) and “Satan and his forces are not to be feared” (Petts 2006, 120). Yet Pentecostals are very much aware that the New Testament also teaches that the devil and evil powers are active in the world and will remain so until the final consummation (Fee 1994, 769–70). Jesus shows in the parable of the sower that the devil is the evil one who snatches away the word of God from people’s hearts (Matt. 13:19). In the parable of the weeds, he is portrayed as the enemy who seeks to destroy God’s people by planting evil among them (Matt. 13:25, 38–39). In John’s Gospel, the Pharisees’ desire to kill Jesus is rooted explicitly in the desire of their master, the devil ( John 8:42–45). Satan enters Judas and prompts him to betray Jesus ( John 13:27; Luke 22:3). The entire New Testament reveals that evil powers are in rebellion against Christ; they attack the church and operate most effectively through unredeemed humanity (2 Cor. 4:4; Eph. 6:10–20; 1 Pet. 5:8; Rev. 12:7–12). Therefore, Pentecostals can urge believers to resist the devil ( James 4:7; 1 Pet. 5:9) and to put on the whole armour of Christ (Eph. 6:10–13), so that they can stand up against the devil’s 326

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schemes (Onyinah 2012a, 263–65). This imagery is often misunderstood by people as a call to engage in spiritual warfare. However, Paul speaks of power struggles and not active warfare. The difference becomes clearer if it is taken into consideration that Paul had already told the Ephesians, and often stressed in his writing, that evil powers have already been defeated through the death and resurrection of Christ (Eph. 1:21; 3:10; Col. 1:16; 2:16; Phil. 2:6–11). He had also assured the Ephesians that God had placed them in Christ who is above all powers and authorities (Eph. 1:3–14). Consequently, Paul’s call to Christians to put on the whole armour of God correlates with what Robert Guelich (1991, 60) contends to be “the summons to prayer and supplication for oneself, the saint, and for Paul, would be specifically a prayer that God would protect them from the adversary.” A comparison of this call to prayer with Jesus’ admonition in the Lord’s Prayer, “And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one” (Matt. 6:13) brings the sovereignty of God over the believer’s life into sharper focus. The inference is that the evil one can tempt or attack the believer, but only with the permission of God and within God’s circumscribed limitations. Thus, Pentecostals can affirm that Christians are not to fight with the devil; their armour for protection against the enemy is based on what God has done in Christ. Christians are, therefore, to stand strong by applying the word of God and praying in the Spirit (Fee 1994, 727–32). Therefore, the warfare concept needs to be considered as the primarily mystical conflict between God and satanic powers, in which the human being is both passively and actively involved.

Satan’s method is the mind Pentecostals recognize the role that the human mind plays in this apparent transcendental conflict between God and Satan. It is inferred from some scriptural passages that the human mind is the actual battleground: some biblical examples of people who were involved in this conflict are Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:1–12), Job ( Job 1:6–22), David (1 Chron. 21:1–2), Joshua the High Priest (Zech. 3:1–4), and the incarnate Jesus (Matt. 4:1–11). The battle comes to a climax in Revelation, where the devil exercises all his power against Christ and his kingdom (Rev. 12:7–10; 20:1–10) but will end up defeated. In all this, Satan is always pictured as a defeated foe whose final doom is not yet fully realized and, therefore, seeks to continue to capture the human mind (Onyinah 2012b, 24–25). Based upon this insight, many Pentecostals believe that Satan’s work is to oppose God, and to achieve this end, he seeks to influence Christians to think and live contrary to the word of God ( Job 1–2; 1 Chron. 21:1; Zech. 3:1–2; Luke 22:31–34; see Onyinah 2012a, 267). Believers are therefore to renew their minds with the word of God (Rom. 12:2). The warfare for the mind is presented quite persuasively in 2 Corinthians 10:3–5 in terms of strongholds that the devil builds to oppose the will of God: arguments, proud obstacles, and every thought. In other words, there are false philosophies, beliefs, teachings, and practices, based on prejudices and preconceptions, which plant arrogance and rebellion against the gospel (2 Cor. 10:5; Eph. 2:1–4). Paul terms this as the fight of faith against false doctrine ­ (1 Tim. 1:3–7, 18–19; 6:12). Whereas the devil uses these lies to deceive people about faith in Christ to turn them against God, Paul directs leaders to reject false doctrine, to maintain the simple and true gospel, and to guard what has been entrusted to them (Onyinah 2012a, 239–81). Paul portrays Satan as the “adversary” who tempts, misleads, torments, traps, hinders, and deceives (1 Cor. 7:5; 2 Cor. 11:14; 12:7; 1 Thess. 2:18; 3:5; 1 Tim. 5:15). Other New Testament writers teach that the devil seeks to devour believers and thwart the will of God at every turn ( James 4:7–10; 1 Pet. 5:8–9; 1 John 5:18). The consistent emphasis is that the devil’s main weapon is to enslave people through false teaching (Matt. 7:15; Acts 327

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20:29–31; 2 Cor. 11:1–5; 1 Tim. 4:1–5). In Revelation 12:10, he is labelled as “the accuser of our comrades,” that is, the one who continuously brings charges to God against believers. Pentecostals therefore stress the importance of knowing the word of God individually, so that Christians are not taken unawares by the devil’s devices (Warrington 2008, 188).

Christ is the victory of believers A Pentecostal reading of the New Testament teaching, therefore, lays emphasis on the fact that Christ has won the victory for believers (Petts 2006:115–20). In Colossians, it is specifically by addressing sin that Christ’s atoning work brings about the defeat of Satan and the powers; the disarmament and public spectacle of the “rulers and authorities” (Col. 2:15) follow the cancellation of the written code against sinners (Menzies and Menzies 2000, 163). Believers have risen with Christ in his resurrection (Col. 2:12). This frees the believers from all curses. In Revelation 12:7–12, the believers overcame the accuser of “our comrades” by the “blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimonies.” This does not imply that there are some “magical” powers in the meaning of the blood of Jesus. Rather, it is the victory which is linked with the redemptive work of Jesus (see Chapter 20), which Christians must apply for deliverance from the powers of the evil one (Gal. 1:4; Heb. 2:14–18; 1 John 3:8). Pentecostals often urge Christians to have dominion over sin by not yielding to the cravings of the flesh (Fee 1994, 441–43). Paul especially recognizes that although the compelling influence of the flesh has been broken by the work of Christ, the inner compulsion continually seeks to reassert its claim on believers. He provides several lists of categories of sins, but in all of these he does not contrast “the flesh” with “the demonic” but rather with the “new man” or “the Spirit” (1 Cor. 6:9–10; Eph. 4:17–24; Col. 3: 5–9). For example, in Galatians 5:19–23, he offers one list of “the works of the flesh” and another list of “the fruit of the Spirit” to illustrate this tension. Fee organizes the fifteen items in “the works of the flesh” into four categories (Fee 1994, 441). Significantly, eight of the items, falling within the same class, describe actions that lead to the breakdown of social relations and societal issues, which is manifested in psychological reaction in some people in the West, suicidal tendencies in oriental people, and witchcraft accusation in some African societies. Some believers may consider most of the items on this list as demonic and others as the outcome of generational or ancestral curses. However, the reason Paul fails to pinpoint these behaviours as demonic is very important: Christians are warned against “the works of the flesh” not because they are demonic, but because they are concrete expressions of “works” carried out by people who live in keeping with the human nature and that of the world instead of Christ’s kingdom. Such vices, according to Paul, may become the foothold of Satan and also bring the wrath of God (Rom. 1:18; Eph. 4:20; Col. 3:6). Thus, Paul’s consistent warning to believers not to yield to the flesh means that every Christian faces the recurring choice of either giving in to the compelling influence of the flesh or to live continually in obedience to the Spirit (Onyinah 2012a, 266). The implication of this contrast for Pentecostal theology is that most of the issues which are interpreted as acts of demons, witches, or curses may be considered in the first instance works of the flesh. Consequently, overcoming them may not require deliverance but rather walking in the Spirit and living obediently to Christ. Pentecostals strongly affirm the ministry of the Holy Spirit for victorious living and maintain that the gifts of the Spirit are operative for the full development of the church (Menzies and Menzies 2000, 206–7). For Pentecostals, the baptism in the Holy Spirit and the speaking with tongues enable Christians to pray and be enabled to face all challenges in life (Larbi 2001, 277). Thus, while the existentially felt needs of protection by some Christians are relevant because of the eschatological 328

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tension of the work of Christ pictured in the New Testament, Pentecostals are reminded of their position in Christ, their empowerment by the Holy Spirit, and the assurance that insofar as they are under the sovereign control of God, no power will be able to overcome them. Although Pentecostals are aware that the Holy Spirit is the believers’ comforter and shield (see Chapter 19), they do not deny the possibility of physical attacks by the devil. Clearly, the Bible teaches that the devil instigates persecution, which results in suffering and, in some cases, the death of believers (1 Pet. 5:8–9; Rev. 2:9, 13). It is also apparent from the Bible that the devil’s attacks may result in physical infirmity (Luke 13:11–16; Matt. 12:22–23; Mark 9:17–26). Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” was featured as a torment by “a messenger of Satan” (2 Cor. 12:7), but that Paul prayed to God three times and was not “delivered” means the issue was not between Paul and the devil but rather between Paul and God and thus not a spiritual warfare. The good news here is that Pentecostals embrace the healing that is described in these passages but also affirm that in some cases in which there is no cure (2 Cor 12:9; Onyinah 2006; see Petts 2006, 172–217), God’s grace is sufficient.

Conclusion This chapter has examined contemporary spiritual warfare practices and responded to the challenges raised by placing it within the biblical context. It was shown that although Pentecostals traditionally asserted the reality of evil spirits and prayed to cast out demons, they did not practise this under the label of “spiritual warfare.” In reformulating a Pentecostal theology of spiritual warfare, it was shown that the coming of Jesus Christ on earth has liberated people from demonic oppression. The defeat of the demonic realm was demonstrated in Jesus’ ministry of exorcism and climaxed in his death and resurrection. Believers have been rescued from the kingdom of darkness and have been transferred into the kingdom of Christ. Yet the devil and his cohort are active and work through schemes. Christians are not to be afraid of them but rather to resist them through the application of the word of God and praying in the Spirit. The warfare concept can be understood as the apparent conflict between God and satanic powers, in which the human being is actively involved through the mind. To oppose God, Satan seeks to influence Christians to think and live contrary to the word of God through the infiltration of false philosophies and doctrines. The ground upon which the devil works is sin, yet the believer is equipped through the baptism of the Spirit to live a victorious life. It can be concluded that many issues which are considered demonic are issues that fall within the domain of the flesh. Christians are warned against the works of the flesh not because they are demonic, but because they are the evidence of the compelling influence of the old nature in contrast to the work of God. Despite the victory won by Christ, the final redemption has not yet been fully realized. Therefore, Christians are still exposed to the reality of sin, physical afflictions, and suffering. In each of these, believers can triumph in the victory of Christ as they look forward to the resolution of the conflict at the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

References Anim, Emmanuel Kwesi. 2003. “Who Wants to be a Millionaire? An Analysis of Prosperity Teaching in the Charismatic Ministry (Churches) in Ghana and Its Wider Impact.” PhD dissertation, All Nations Christian College, Hertfordshire. Asamoah-Gyadu, J. Kwabena. 2004. “‘Missions to ‘Set the Captives Free’: Healing, Deliverance and Generational Curses in Ghanaian Pentecostalism.” International Review of Missions 93 (370/371): 389–406.

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Opoku Onyinah Boyd, Gregory. 2012. ‘The Ground-Level Deliverance Model.” In Understanding Spiritual Warfare: Four Views, edited by James K. Beilby and Paul Rhodes Eddy, 129–72. Grand Rapids: Baker. Carter, Steven S. 2000. “Demon Possession and the Christian.” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 3 (1): 19–31. Dawson, John. 1989. Taking Our Cities for God: How to Break Spirit Strongholds. Lake Mary: Creation House. Fee, Gordon. 1994. God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul. Peabody: Paternoster. Guelich, Robert A. 1991. “Spiritual Warfare: Jesus, Paul and Peretti.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 13 (1): 33–64. Harris, Charles. 1999. “Encountering Territorial Spirits.” In Power Encounter: A Pentecostal Perspective, edited by Opal Redin, 240–86, revised edition. Springfield: Central Bible College. Hejzlar, Pavel. 2009. Two Paradigms for Divine Healing: Fred F. Bosworth, Kenneth E. Hagin, Agnes Sanford, and Francis MacNutt in Dialogue. Leiden: Brill. Hunt, C. Stephen. 1998. “Managing the Demonic: Some Aspects of the Neo-Pentecostal Deliverance Ministry.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 13 (2): 215–34. Jacobs, Cindy. 1994. Possessing the Gates of the Enemy: A Training Manual for Militant Intercession. Grand Rapids: Chosen. Kay, William K. 1999. Inside Story: A History of British Assemblies of God. Mattersey: Mattersey Hall Publishing. Koch, Kurt E. 1981. Demonology, Past and Present. Grand Rapids: Kregel. Kraft, Charles H. 1989. Christianity with Power. Ann Arbor: Servant. ———. 1993. Defeating the Dark Angels. Kent: Sovereign World. Larbi, Kingsley E. 2001. Pentecostalism: The Eddies of Ghanaian Christianity. Accra: Centre for Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies. Larson, Bob. 1999. Larson’s Book of Spiritual Warfare. Nashville: Thomas Nelson. Lea, Tommy. 1998. “Spiritual Warfare and the Missionary Task.” In Missiology: An Introduction to the Foundations, History and Strategies in World Missions, edited by John Mark Terry, Ebbie Smith, Justice Anderson, 626–38. Nashville: Broadman and Holman. Menzies, William W. and Menzies Robert P. 2000. Spirit and Power: Foundations of Pentecostal Experience. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Meyer, Birgit. 2001. ‘“You Devil, Go Away from Me!’ Pentecostalist African Christianity and the Powers of Good and Evil.” In Powers of Good and Evil: Moralities, Commodities and Popular Belief, edited by Paul Clough and Jon P. Mitchell, 104–34. New York: Berghahn. Onyinah, Opoku. 2004. “Contemporary ‘Witchdemonology’ in Africa.” International Review of Missions 93 (370/371): 330–45. ———. 2006. “God’s Grace, Healing and Suffering.” International Review of Missions 95 (367/377): 117–27. ———. 2009. “Deliverance as a Way of Confronting Witchcraft in Contemporary Africa: Ghana as a Case Study.” In The Spirit in the World: Emerging Pentecostal Theologies in Global Context, edited by Veli-Matti Karkkainen, 181–201. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2012a. Pentecostal Exorcism: Witchcraft and Demonology in Ghana. Blandford Forum: Deo. ———. 2012b. Spiritual Warfare: Centre for Pentecostal Theology Short Introduction. Cleveland: CPT Press. Otis, Jr., George. 1991. “An Overview of Spiritual Mapping.” In Breaking Strongholds in Your City: How to Use Spiritual Mapping to Make Prayers More Strategic, Effective, and Targeted, edited by C. Peter Wagner, 29–47. Ventura: Regal. Petts, David. 2006. Just a Teste of Heaven: A Biblical and Balanced Approach to God’s Healing Power. Mattersey: Mattersey Hall. Prince, Derek. 1990. Blessings or Cursing. Milton Keynes: Word Publishing. Rio, Knut, Michelle MacCarthy, and Ruy Blanes. 2018. Pentecostalism and Witchcraft: Spiritual Warfare in Africa and Melanesia. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Riss, Richard. 1982. “The Latter Rain Movement of 1948.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 4 (1): 32–45. Thomas, John Christopher. 1998. The Devil, Disease and Deliverance: Origins of Illness in the New Testament Thought. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Wagner, C. Peter. 1991. Warfare Prayer. Ventura: Regal. ———. 1992. Warfare Prayer: How to Seek God’s Power and Protection in the Battle to Build His Kingdom. Ventura: Regal.

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Spiritual warfare ———, ed. 1993. Engaging the Enemy: How to Fight and Defeat Territorial Spirits. Ventura: Regal. ———. 1996. Confronting the Powers: How the New Testament Church Experienced the Power of Strategic Level Spiritual Warfare. Ventura: Regal. ———, ed. 2012. Territorial Spirits: Practical Strategies for How to Crush the Enemy through Spiritual Warfare. Shippensburg: Destiny. Warrington, Keith. 2004. “Reflections on the History and Development of Demonological Beliefs and Praxis among British Pentecostals.” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 7 (1): 281–304. ———. 2005. Healing and Suffering: Biblical and Pastoral Reflections. Carlisle: Paternoster. ———. 2008. Pentecostal Theology: A Theology of Encounter. London: T&T Clark. ———. 2015. The Miracles in the Gospels: What Do They Teach Us about Jesus? London: SPCK. Wimber, John with Springer, Kevin. 1992. Power Evangelism, revised edition. London: Hodder and Stoughton.

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PART V

Conversations and challenges

31 ARTS AND AESTHETICS The pursuit of beauty through the outpour of the Spirit Steven Félix-Jäger

Pentecostals around the world have a paradoxical relationship with the arts and aesthetics. Pentecostal theology has made global contributions, albeit minimal, to the fields of art and aesthetics, especially how they pertain to religious use. Yet, while Pentecostal Christians are among the world’s leaders in incorporating embodied expressions of the arts in their liturgy and worship, they have historically veered away from broader cultural engagements with other forms of art and have neglected to form sophisticated accounts of theological aesthetics. Instead, Pentecostals have developed a pragmatic approach to art that focuses on function rather than intrinsic appreciation or conceptual elucidation. The Pentecostal approach to the arts bears a purposeful religious motive that renders the arts in the service of the religious experience (see Chapter 8). What follows is an account of the main issues surrounding the emergence of aesthetic formations in Pentecostal theology. The goal of this chapter is to highlight the embodied approach Pentecostals have adopted and to identify their contributions to arts and aesthetics. In order to provide a critical assessment of the Pentecostal engagement, I outline first a brief typology of the relationships that Pentecostalism has had with the arts in both public and religious settings. The focus is on the Pentecostal use of music, visual arts, and the embodied arts. The chapter then explores how Pentecostals have developed a distinctive theological aesthetics by emphasizing the practical and theological commitments found within Pentecostal spirituality. Adopting a pneumatological approach to aesthetics has allowed Pentecostals to make sense of their embodied and Spirit-oriented worship practices by drawing on the pneumatological connections within Pentecostal theology.

Pentecostal relationships with the arts Theological aesthetics is the interdisciplinary study of theological issues in light of aesthetic, sensory, and affective formation (Thiessen 2004). The arts have an unrivalled ability to establish holistic formation in people through multisensory practices. While teaching the faith engages the heart of a person by traveling through cognition, the aesthetic realm engages the heart of a person directly through visceral, arational experiences. This formation does not separate neatly into non-aesthetic categories (preaching, Bible reading, prayer, etc.) and aesthetic categories (musical worship, visual art, dance, etc.), as language, both written and homiletic, often cuts through rationalization when it engages the imagination aesthetically 335

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through storytelling or choreosonic practices. Rather, this process focuses on the aesthetic formation of all religious activity within the religious tradition. Theological aesthetics takes seriously the major role embodied practices take in a person’s knowledge about God, the self, others, and the world. Every religious tradition, therefore, has an implicit theological aesthetics, since they all have their own set of religious practices that help form their constituent beliefs. The task of this section is to see what sort of religious practices form a distinctive Pentecostal theological aesthetics. Because Pentecostals emphasize the presence and work of the Holy Spirit and manifestations of the gifts of the Spirit, they tend to express themselves creatively and experientially primarily through worship (see Chapter 11). The strong Protestant influence on Pentecostalism exerted through Pietism, the Holiness Movement, and the Keswick Movement aided and abetted a general disdain that classical Pentecostals often show toward the arts. These Protestant roots see the arts as so visceral and affective that they can lead people away from God and toward worldly affairs. Participation in the arts was typically permitted outside of the church so long as this was moral but only carefully utilized in the church as long as it did not detract from the gospel message. In order to focus on Scripture alone, Protestants adopted a simple aesthetic that spurned the ornate and grandiose visual aesthetic of Roman Catholicism. Most Pentecostals trace their roots theologically to those Protestant traditions that have distanced themselves from the arts. Classical Pentecostalism has born a distrust of secular culture, and the ensuing incredulity toward the arts has come as an unfortunate consequence. Utilizing art in a context of worship is the primary way that Pentecostals have effectively engaged the arts. Elsewhere, however, Pentecostalism has ignored art largely because of the spiritual corruption it might bring (Rybarczyk 2012). This resistance has caused many Pentecostals to be out-of-touch with the surrounding culture’s artistic expressions. Yet Pentecostal theology also shows some epistemic commitments to a worldview that lends itself to artistic engagement: Pentecostals practice an affective, embodied, and pneumatocentric spirituality (Rybarczyk, 259). These epistemic commitments suggest that Pentecostals possess a unique way of engaging art and aesthetics theologically. The primary forms that Pentecostals have utilized are various elements of music, dance, drama, and visual arts.

Pentecostals and music Music is central to Pentecostal worship and belies the general distrust in the arts. It is in music that Pentecostals are most innovative and influential as a religious aesthetic movement (Félix-Jäger 2017, 67–92). From its outset, the Pentecostal focus on experience opened up the possibility of Spirit-filled worship, and early Pentecostals innovated their worship settings and liturgies by applying popular styles to their hymnody, constantly adapting to traditions of popular music. For instance, the earliest Pentecostals sang folk-like hymns such as Lewis Jones’s “Power in the Blood” and Albert Brumley’s “I’ll Fly Away,” instead of older Protestant mainstays from earlier Renaissance, Baroque, or Classical eras. Pentecostal evangelist and founder of the Foursquare Church, Aimee Semple McPherson, wrote over 200 hymns that utilized brass bands and full horn sections. Her well-known hymns, “Preach the Word” and “Forward March, O Foursquare Host,” sound more like sport anthems than the typically somber timbres of traditional Christian hymns (McPherson 1900). As contemporary worship arose in the West through the Jesus Movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, praise choruses, which act as a bridge from Protestant hymnody to contemporary worship, were composed and performed across North America and Europe. Some well-known examples of Pentecostal praise choruses are Jack Hayford’s “Majesty,” Phil Driscoll’s “I Exalt Thee,” and Tommy Walker’s “He Knows My Name.” Chuck Smith’s Calvary Chapel was extremely influential 336

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throughout the Jesus Movement and helped to spur on the rise of contemporary worship music. John Wimber separated from Calvary Chapel in favor of a more charismatic church in the early 1980s, which began the Vineyard Movement. Both Calvary Chapel’s music label Maranatha! and Vineyard’s label Vineyard Records played a pivotal role in the formation of Christian Contemporary Music (CCM), the spread of contemporary music, and the rise of internationally renowned neo-Pentecostal worship groups. While Pentecostal music has generally stayed within the context of worship, many recording artists had Pentecostal upbringings including early rock and roll musicians (e.g. Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis), early R&B artists (e.g. Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Tina Turner), contemporary rock musicians (e.g. Kings of Leon, Needtobreathe, Anberlin), and contemporary pop and R&B musicians (e.g. Katy Perry, CeCe Winans, John Legend). Early rock and roll and R&B artists displayed the same embodied movements and soulful deliveries that were prevalent in Pentecostal worship. Perhaps these stylistic modes resonated well with the general public because they respect the embodied nature of a holistic person. Still, Pentecostals struggle to negotiate between “sacred” and “popular” forms of music (Kalu 2010). A likely cause of this struggle is the unabated ability of music to travel. Pentecostal worship travels well, which accounts for the rapid global spread of Pentecostal worship music. Monique M. Ingalls suggests that migration and mobility ensure that worshipping bodies remain a powerful medium of transport for music and worship practices: likewise, through a ‘secondary orality’ brought about by new electronic media technologies, audiovisual media networks increasingly comprise the main conduits along which Pentecostal music, songs, and worship practices travel. (Ingalls and Yong 2015, 5) While migration has allowed for Pentecostal music to become popular around the world, many countries are taking songs and making new versions of them or adapting the Western Pentecostal aesthetic to their own musical tastes and traditions. Conferences, public distribution, and radio play make contemporary Western worship accessible, but some countries have difficulties with distribution and instead play older songs. In many ways, worship music has been a main conduit for the spreading of popular Pentecostal ideology. Some of the more popular groups that have come up in recent decades are Hillsong United of Sydney, Australia’s Hillsong Church, Jesus Culture, and Bethel Music. Both Jesus Culture and Bethel Music come out of Bethel Church, a non-denominational Pentecostal church in Redding, California. Like Hillsong United, Jesus Culture started as a youth outreach revivalist ministry before developing its own label and producing its own songs. Bethel Music is a label and coalition of worship leaders mostly around Redding and Bethel Church. Many of the most popular songs of the early twenty-first century have come from Hillsong (e.g. “From the Inside Out,” “Lead Me to the Cross,” “Oceans”), Jesus Culture (“Your Love Never Fails,” “Break Every Chain,” “One Thing Remains”), and Bethel Music (“You Make Me Brave,” “Reckless Love,” “No Longer Slaves”). As was the case throughout Pentecostalism’s revivalist beginnings, Pentecostals continue to be at the cutting edge of contemporary worship.

Pentecostals and the visual arts While Pentecostalism has influenced music most widely, Pentecostals have also approached visual art in the broader artworld in at least four distinct ways (Félix-Jäger 2017, 119–50). 337

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Some artists view their Pentecostal upbringing as a formative source for art making. Artists create from their own contexts and convictions, and their art implicitly represents their Pentecostal worldview if they are or have been devoted practitioners. Artists like Nicholas Evans and Guy Kinnear fit in this category, as do de-converted artists, like Trenton Doyle Hancock, who still mine the Pentecostal contexts and upbringings for artistic inspiration. Other artists make explicit reference to their theological commitments, using art as a witnessing tool or vehicle for teaching. Untrained folk artists such as Sister Gertrude Morgan and William Thomas Thompson fit in this category. Their works read like polemical tracts, and they view their art as prophetic signals warning and informing the world of God’s action on earth. Again, other artists reconstruct biblical and traditional symbolism in abstracted or non-representational ways. Pentecostals tend to grasp onto particular biblical images of the Holy Spirit, such as wind, fire, clouds, and the dove, that portray a Pentecostal’s particular theological and pneumatological narrative (see Chapter 4). Kathy Self fits in this category as she paints abstract oil paintings mixed with wax, and often uses biblical images as a starting point. Finally, some artists may not have come up in a Pentecostal tradition but still explore theologically rich biblical stories that are commonly associated with Pentecostalism. Tim Hawkinson’s sculptural piece “Pentecost” is an example of this. Here twelve figures surround a massive tree, and a motion detector senses movement, which causes the figures to strike the tree creating a sound. Paul Benney’s piece “Speaking in Tongues” is another example of a contemporary artist using a biblical image associated with Pentecostalism. “Speaking in Tongues” is a large 8’ × 12’ oil painting, which depicts twelve men posing with fire on their foreheads. About his work, Benney (2016) states, “I feel that the message embedded in the work, of spiritual inclusion across a multitude of cultural and religious practices can be seen as a key issue of our times.” Thus, Benney uses the theological content of a biblical story that is commonly associated with Pentecostalism in order to express the issue of inclusion in a pluralistic world. Art extends the importance of narrative and story for Pentecostal theology. While each of the above examples represents ways in which Pentecostalism is engaged in the broader artworld through visual art, Pentecostals also utilize visual art in the context of worship (Félix-Jäger 2015, 183–205). For instance, Pentecostal churches often illustrate biblical scenes or use pneumatological and soteriological symbols in order to emphasize their implicit theological commitments of Christ’s life and ministry by the power of the Holy Spirit. Others symbolize pertinent theological commitments as expressed in the full gospel. One might find paintings of a dove, fire, or water adorning the church in order to represent the presence of the Holy Spirit in the people’s midst. In less literate communities, these murals or paintings may serve as a form of visual theology where the people can come to a non-linguistic understanding of the faith. Some churches have adopted the practice of spontaneous live painting, which consists of impromptu visual art making during a worship service (Félix-Jäger 2015, 204–5). Here the visual artist typically stands at the side of the stage in the sanctuary and either illustrates sermon points through visual art or paints intuited impressions inspired by musical worship. The artist follows the prompting of the Holy Spirit in the hope of adding a visual element to a holistic worship practice. Other churches host gallery openings designed to create an outreach opportunity and a general dialogue between a given topic, the church, and the broader culture (see Chapter 10). Churches here often create temporary pop-up walls or convert a room in order to host a curated exhibition. 338

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A newer innovative way that Pentecostal churches utilize the visual arts are by commissioning artists to create installations in some area of the church. These are often interactive and create a sense of contemplative and sacred space within the walls of the church building. Church architecture is also aesthetically formative, and some Pentecostal churches have been cognizant about how the church building honors and respects the land that it occupies, and how it emphasizes what God has already done through nature. Architects can grasp onto a theological symbol, such as heat, coolness, breezes, shadows, light, etc., and build forms that accentuate or conceal these themes, according to the commitments of the worshipping community (Bergmann 2005). People are formed aesthetically through visual art and architecture, and many Pentecostal churches are beginning to understand this as an important aspect of their spiritual formation. While it may be better to opt for a Spirit-filled community over a beautifully affective environment, Pentecostals are beginning to aim for both, seeing these aesthetic options as a false dichotomy.

Pentecostals and the embodied arts Protestantism’s historical antipathy of the arts was aimed forcefully at dance and the embodied arts, since these can become overtly sensual practices. Christianity in its multifaceted global expressions does not possess a single traditional expression of ritual dance, often forcing global renewal movements to make a choice between the traditional Christian piety of the West and their own cultural practices that are visceral and embodied (Pype 2006). Following suit, classical Pentecostals have typically condemned secular dance as worldly but have welcomed religious dance and the embodied arts into worship services. The theological openness toward dance is another reason why Pentecostal worship is readily adaptable to cultures around the world (Hovi 2011). Dance, along with other bodily expressions such as hand raising, swaying, and jumping, offer embodied rather than purely cognitive communication with God and others that are decidedly pneumatological (Albrecht 1999, 150–76). Dance renders the body as communicator and has a communal function when observed, becoming a performative mode of communication for the dancer, and a visual mode of cognition for the viewer. Among Pentecostals, these rituals provide a universal and cross-cultural language that can lead to spiritual and physical renewal (Félix-Jäger 2017, 88). Many Pentecostal churches incorporate flag twirling or impromptu spontaneous dance as a means of worshipping God during the service’s musical worship (Kalu 2010). Other Pentecostal ministries enact prophetic dance as a legitimate form of ministry that produces spiritual, emotional, or even physical healing (Félix-Jäger 2017, 62). Many African A merican Pentecostal traditions utilize choreosonic modes of proclamation that marry orality with embodied expressiveness (Crawley 2017, 93). These practices join together movement and sound to homiletic encouragement and include “whooping,” “shouting,” and tonguesspeech as integral aspects of sermonizing (Butler 2008, 83). Again, Pentecostals are most fruitfully adept in utilizing these artforms in the contexts of worship. Still, to be realistic, Christianity as a whole has struggled pressing into the broader artworld in contemporary times. While cultures around the world value artistic expression through the body, Christianity does not have unique perspectives or innovations to offer broader cultures because of its predominant disdain and avoidance of the embodied arts. Still, Pentecostal use of embodied practices suggest that the way forward is to move beyond dualistic understandings of the Spirit and body, spiritual and secular, and to begin valuing embodied expression as a means for human holistic formation. As Christians spend time and resources engaging the embodied arts, they will eventually be able to offer intriguing 339

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new styles and techniques to the broader culture. Because of its emphasis on experience and embodiment, Pentecostals are well-suited to form powerful inroads for expressing its spirituality to the general public through the arts.

Pentecostal contributions to theological aesthetics The brief typology above reveals that Pentecostals are becoming gradually aware and more dialogical with the broader conversations in arts and aesthetics. But because of Pentecostalism’s historical suspicion of the arts, not much has been written about theological aesthetics from the perspective of the Pentecostal tradition, and only few comprehensive studies have been written about Pentecostal theological aesthetics offering constructive systems (Félix-Jäger 2015, 2017; Crawley 2017). Some Pentecostal scholars have approached aesthetics in an introductory manner claiming that Pentecostals should thoughtfully engage the arts and that Pentecostals have epistemic commitments that should make for a fruitful dialogue between Pentecostal theology and aesthetics. These assertions claim that Pentecostals practice a felt, visceral spirituality that opens up to aesthetic matters. They incorporate the arts in their worship environments but do not typically reflect critically on how the aesthetic dimensions of those practices form them spiritually or phenomenologically. Pentecostals intuit their ways through life emotionally rather than intellectually. That is not to say Pentecostals do not think, but rather that they rely on an intuitive sense of the Spirit’s leading along with the biblical witness when discerning both spiritual and pragmatic matters. As such, there is a prevenient openness toward the aesthetic dimension built into Pentecostal spirituality (Smith 2010), but Pentecostal scholarship has only rarely offered theological models for which to understand their theo-praxical commitments. Nevertheless, some in-roads have been laid with a pneumatological approach to theological aesthetics.

A pneumatological aesthetics Pentecostals have a pneumatological imagination, as Amos Yong suggests, that allows them to see their own relatedness to God as a being-in-the-world in a way particularly inspired by their own Pentecostal experience of the Spirit (see Chapter 14). In other words, the Pentecostal experience of the Spirit drives every aspect of their inhabited self-understanding. A Pentecostal approach to aesthetics follows suit by delineating how the Spirit affects the aesthetic experience. Understanding the aesthetic is important insofar as experiences are known through the senses before being cognized or framed into organizing social, linguistic, and cultural constructs. The aesthetic experience is intimately linked to the imagination that situates it. The Pentecostal experience is one such organizing construct that immediately situates an experience into a theological framework (a pneumatological imagination). A Pentecostal aesthetics may therefore be described as the comprehension of sensation through a pneumatological imagination. Because Pentecostals express their Spirit-filled spirituality through embodied gestures in communal contexts, I have argued elsewhere that the universal motif of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit found in Acts 2 frames the social identity of Pentecostals around the world (Félix-Jäger 2017, 22). In Acts 2:16–17 Peter says, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.’ 340

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This assertion was Peter’s proclamation that Joel’s words were being fulfilled at Pentecost with the outpouring of God’s Spirit upon all flesh. The passage implies a global universality where the radiance of the outpour of the Spirit can be known in all places and in all people: the Spirit now beckons us back to God, and anyone can understand these experiences through a pneumatological imagination. The passage further suggests the prominence (not the denigration) of the body in spirituality since the Spirit is poured out on flesh. These implications correlate with Pentecostal spirituality’s emphasis on both communal and embodied practices in their worship (see Chapter 11) and spirituality (see Chapter 3). As such, the universal outpour motif speaks to the manner in which Pentecostal spirituality is already experienced and gives a framework from which to understand sensed experience theologically (see Félix-Jäger 2017, 13–38). The arts as practiced in and around the context of Pentecostal spirituality (both liturgically and in the greater artworld) render evident the elements of embodiment and community through the universal outpour motif. As perceiving bodies, we are beings-in-the-world who perceive the world and are perceived by the world. Furthermore, the body is the location in which we are brought into the world, and from which we perceive also the realm of the Spirit. Dance begins at this point of movement, communicating a spiritual sense of the world through beautiful movement (Sheets-Johnstone 1981, 400; Mount Shoop 2010, 12). Music is tied to dance and is performed as an embodied pursuit of communal intimacy with God (Begbie 2011, 344), and orality, through choreosonic practices found in preaching and worship connect the body to Pentecostal proclamation (Crawley 2017, 93). Hence, Pentecostal experience confirms that we become aware of the things of the Spirit that relate to us, and of our place and presence in context to these things, as vision renders the world visible to us, and us visible to the world (Merleau-Ponty 1993, 147). Visual art can serve as a visionary boundary-breaker, brushing up against what is visible and invisible, enhancing the possibilities of what can be perceived. Visual art can help transcend laterally beyond our own (de)limited perception. This aesthetic formation also penetrates the community, which is evident, as we perceive our relatedness to all that surrounds and shapes us. The communities Pentecostals populate shape the linguistic parameters that mark the extent of understanding and the lenses through which Pentecostals come to understand their experiences of the Spirit. Like visual art, film can help transcend our own experiences to recognize other vantage points of being-in-the-world ( Johnston 2006, 33–34). Architecture shapes our sense of the world by literally structuring our space and movement in and out of communal settings (Bachelard 1994, 4–7). The aesthetics of the built environment profoundly affects us visually and kinetically. The arts in a Pentecostal context powerfully contribute to the Pentecostal pneumatological imaginations and helps determine their sense of being-in-the-world in precognitive ways. Because of Pentecostalism’s visceral experientialist spirituality, the aesthetic dimension is therefore an apt starting point for understanding Pentecostal worship, spirituality, and theology in general.

Aesthetics in conversation with Pentecostal theology While many volumes could be written about the theological aesthetics of any Christian tradition, a brief survey of Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Reformed Protestant theological aesthetics allows us to compare them to the Pentecostal approach indicated above. This comparison chooses only one prevalent theologian from each tradition to stand as exemplar of the tradition’s aesthetic thinking, and although no tradition is monolithic, the chosen theologians have proven influential in and beyond their respective traditions. The aim 341

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of this comparison is to offer a programmatic framework for the further development of Pentecostal aesthetics by highlighting how these prevalent theologies speak to Pentecostal theology, in general, and its pneumatological aesthetics, in particular. One of the best-known theologians of the twentieth century crafted an entire systematic theology beginning with aesthetic considerations. The Swiss Roman Catholic Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–88) revisioned Catholic theology as a response to Western modernity primarily through his multi-volume trilogy The Glory of the Lord, Theo-Drama, and Theo-Logic. As a method, von Balthasar (1982, 44–45) pronounced the oft-ignored aesthetic dimension of glory seen through the eyes of, and as a reversal of the norm, his system begins with aesthetics, moves to ethics, and culminates with epistemology. Von Balthasar’s aesthetics are articulated through a Christological lens as the glory of God is revealed in Christ, which is attested in Scripture. God’s form (Gestalt) of beauty is ultimately manifested through Christ in the Incarnation, and Christ rests as the center of the Christian faith and the standard from which all other forms can be measured (von Balthasar 1982, 451). Von Balthasar is interested in seeing how the revelation of God’s grace is perceived by the world. Aiden Nichols comments (2011, 13): “von Balthasar sets himself the task of trying to perceive the objective form of revelation, in creation and in Jesus Christ, in all its splendid, harmonious and symphonic fullness.” (As the fullness of God’s revelation, the glory of the Lord emanates from Christ, since he is the very object of beauty, and this illumination enlightens the viewer as grace in order to truly see God. In this way Christ—the object of faith—draws the subject to faith by his form of beauty. It is the self-emptying of God’s divine love, perceived as God’s own beauty, which is made evident in God’s direct revelation of God’s self to humanity in Christ through the Incarnation. “Christian contemplation can marvel,” von Balthasar (1989, 113) writes, in the self-emptying of divine love, at the exceeding wisdom, truth and beauty inherent there. But it is only in this self-emptying that they can be contemplated, for it is the source whence the glory contemplated by the angels and the saints radiates into eternal life. God’s self-emptying love is especially evident on the cross as God’s concealed glory shines more brilliantly when it is juxtaposed against his abasement (von Balthasar 1989, 114). God’s beauty is also evident in things deemed beautiful. Beauty, however, is not a mere aesthetic property, but the “radiance from the depths of Being” (von Balthasar 1982, 389). Hence Nichols (2011, 42) concludes, “beauty thus speaks of the meaning of that which transcends and yet inheres in all existents.” Beauty is a transcendental that can be known through the eyes of faith. Beauty is ultimately revealed in Christ, and God’s glory radiates out and can be experienced as a grace. Thus, von Balthasar offers a deeply Christological aesthetics, which focuses on a person’s experience of God’s self-emptying love. Because beauty in its ultimacy is known in Christ, von Balthasar’s approach can help Pentecostals understand the telos of the universal outpour motif. The aspiration is the glory of the beautiful Lord, and the pneumatological imagination is the aesthetic pursuit of beauty. This is an active pursuit as the pneumatological imagination energizes the Christian’s progressive desire of personal and cosmological transformation. The culmination of this transformation is known definitively in Christ, and the pneumatological imagination allows people to be fully cognizant of, and participate in, these transformations. Viewed aesthetically, the pneumatological imagination extends von Balthasar’s ideas by energizing the beautification of the individual and the cosmos in pursuit of the beautiful Christ. The Spirit relates God’s self-emptying aesthetically to the world. 342

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David Bentley Hart is a contemporary Eastern Orthodox theologian whose theological aesthetics takes cue from John Milbank, von Balthasar, and Gregory of Nyssa. Following Milbank, Hart (2003) begins his book, The Beauty of the Infinite, as a response to the postmodern critique of metanarratives. While he agrees that metanarratives are hoisted up as arbiters of power, he does not believe that one should simply do away with all rhetoric. The postmodern critique states that rhetoric triumphs over the dialectic, and Christianity should take solace in the fact that it, too, is a rhetoric with its own logic (3). Hart then follows von Balthasar and Gregory of Nyssa by defining the Christian rhetoric that can and ought to be presented in a postmodern milieu. He follows von Balthasar’s model by beginning with the aesthetic but draws from Gregory when he defines beauty through the notion of perichoresis. Christian rhetoric is one that sees God as infinite, and as such, all differences find their harmony in God’s co-indwelling relationality between the persons of the Trinity (183). Beauty is not a transcendent form apart from God; rather God is infinite beauty because God is triune in divine harmonic relationality. Following von Balthasar, Hart (441) sees God’s infinite beauty as taking definitive form in Christ. And while God’s very nature of triune relationality is infinite beauty, creation is “the radiance of divine glory”—an icon of the triune God (240). So, for Hart, God’s beauty radiates as an excessus of God’s triune nature and finds its ultimate form in Christ. Whereas von Balthasar’s theological aesthetics is predominately teleological focusing on Christ’s glory, Hart’s theological aesthetics is predominately gregiological viewing beauty first as radiating from God’s triune nature. Hart helps Pentecostals nuance their pneumatological approach to aesthetics by situating beauty first in God’s relational co-indwelling. God’s relationality radiates beauty and invites humans into the divine dance through Christ’s sacrifice. The witnesses of God’s beauty as excessus and ultimately in Christ are gracious gifts from God and cannot be disregarded: the pneumatological imagination properly understood is a trinitarian imagination. The focus on the Spirit is paramount, however, because the Spirit is the energizing force who is active in the present as the relational presence of God. Unlike von Balthasar or Hart, the pneumatological imagination does not begin from either a teleological or gregiological position but starts with the present experiences of beauty in the relationships made possible in creation. Jeremy Begbie is a contemporary Anglican theologian who is also a classically trained pianist and conductor. Begbie’s theological aesthetics also takes a trinitarian format and begins with God creating ex nihilo. As such, his approach could be called a creational aesthetics: God’s creation is an act of grace that opens up the possibility of God’s own suffering (made evident in the Incarnation and crucifixion). God then creates a covenant with creation—a promise that God will allow the world the ability to move and be free as its own entity (Begbie 2000, 171). Creation comes into being through spontaneous, unpredictable acts, and Christ is the supreme order-er of the cosmos (175). Christ is also creation’s redeemer as everything is set right ultimately through Christ’s death and resurrection. As Christ redeems the world, he transforms the disorder brought about by sin. Finally, Christ is the telos of humanity who embodies the consequence of a redeemed created reality. In this way, Christ is not only God over creation but also the mediator of creation. Begbie (176) comments: “The one who has put all things under his feet is none other than the one who has borne the full weight of the world’s evil as man.” It is humanity’s task to share in God’s creative purposes of drawing all things back to Christ. A person’s creativity will function within God’s creation as human beings respect, develop, and steward God’s creation, reconciling it with each other and the triune God. So, for Begbie, a theological aesthetics begins with the Creator God who through Christ invites creation to enter into the processes of creation and redemption. 343

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Like von Balthasar and Hart, Begbie makes limited mention of the Spirit, only discussing the Spirit’s work in a trinitarian context. Begbie’s approach is valuable for Pentecostals in that it explicates how human beings enter into the processes of creation and redemption, and what creative roles they can take as stewards. Begbie is helpful, therefore, by focusing on the present role of the person in a theological aesthetics. However, his view is less consistent with a pneumatological aesthetics because it focuses on creativity as it emulates the Creator God and not the Spirit or the pursuit of beauty. A functional approach focusing on the person’s calling neglects the pursuit of beauty as foundational for relating to God and the world through the Spirit. While von Balthasar, Hart, and Begbie offer significant takes on the Christian life through theological aesthetics, indicating what the present pursuit of beauty might practically look like, a pneumatological aesthetics speaks more directly to the traditions from the sensitivities of Christian spirituality, embodiment, and worship. From here, Pentecostals are in a strong position to develop their own pneumatological aesthetics.

Conclusion Conscripting a pneumatological approach to aesthetics has allowed Pentecostals to make sense of their embodied pneumatocentric worship practices by making theological connections to their typically pneumatocentric theology. Just as von Balthasar sees glory radiating from God as a kenotic gesture, Pentecostals see the event of Pentecost as that definitive moment of Spirit outpour, consequently enabling the pneumatological imagination’s pursuit of beauty through which experiences can now be interpreted. Because Pentecostal theology is praxis-oriented, its spirituality, known concretely through Spirit-filled practices, must inform its theological musings. The aesthetic dimension of these practices can reorient how Pentecostalism is understood theologically. While only few Pentecostal scholars have begun utilizing theological methods that begin with the aesthetic, what has been written serves as important inroads for further development. As Pentecostal aesthetic sensibilities continue to develop, so will our understanding of the holistic spirituality that is part and parcel of Pentecostalism.

References Albrecht, Daniel E. 1999. Rites in the Spirit: A Ritual Approach to Pentecostal/Charismatic Spirituality. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Bachelard, Gaston. 1994. The Poetics of Space: The Classic Look at How We Experience Intimate Places. Boston: Beacon Press. Begbie, Jeremy. 2000. Voicing Creations Praise: Towards a Theology of the Arts. London: T&T Clark. ———. 2011. “Faithful Feelings: Music and Emotion in Worship.” In Resonant Witness: Conversations between Music and Theology, edited by Jeremy Begbie and Stephen Guthrie, 323–54. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Benney, Paul. 2016. “‘Speaking in Tongues’ on Display at Cathedral.” Available at www.itv.com/ news/meridian/update/2016-05-15/speaking-in-tongues-on-display-at-cathedral, accessed 03 January 2019. Bergmann, Sigurd, ed. 2005. Architecture, Aesth/Ethics & Religion. Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Butler, Melvin. 2008. “Dancing Around Dancehall: Popular Music and Pentecostal Identity in Transnational Jamaica and Haiti.” In Constructing Vernacular Culture in the Trans-Caribbean, edited by Holger Henke and Karl-Heinz Magister, 63–80. Lanham: Lexington Books. Crawley, Ashon. 2017. Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetic of Possibility. New York: Fordham University Press. Félix-Jäger, Steven. 2014. “Inspiration and Discernment in Pentecostal Aesthetics.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 23 (1): 85–104.

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Arts and aesthetics ———. 2015. Pentecostal Aesthetics: Theological Reflections in a Pentecostal Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics. Leiden: Brill Academic. ———. 2017. Spirit of the Arts: Towards a Pneumatological Aesthetics of Renewal. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hart, David Bentley. 2003. The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Hovi, Tuija. 2011. “Praising as Bodily Practice: The Neocharismatic Culture of Celebration.” Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis 23: 129–40. Ingalls, Monique, and Amos Yong, eds. 2015. The Spirit of Praise: Music and Worship in Global Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity. University Park: Penn State University Press. Johnston, Robert. 2006. Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue, 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. Kalu, Ogbu U. 2010. “Holy Praiseco: Negotiating Sacred and Popular Music and Dance in African Pentecostalism.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 32 (1): 16–40. McPherson, Aimee Semple. 1900. Foursquare Favorites. Los Angeles: Echo Park Evangelistic Association. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1993. “Eye and Mind.” In The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, edited by Galen Johnson, 121–50. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Mount Shoop, Marcia. 2010. Let the Bones Dance: Embodiment and the Body of Christ. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Nichols, Aiden. 2011. A Key to Balthasar: Hans Urs von Balthasar on Beauty, Goodness, and Truth. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. Pype, Katrien. 2006. “Dancing for God or The Devil: Pentecostal Discourse on Popular Dance in Kinshasa.” Journal of Religion in Africa 36 (3/4): 296–318. Rybarczyk, Edmund. 2012. “Pentecostalism, Human Nature, and Aesthetics: Twenty-First Century Engagement.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 21 (2): 240–59. Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine. 1981. “Thinking in Movement.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 39 (4): 399–407. Smith, James K. A. 2010. Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy. Pentecostal Manifestos 1. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Thiessen, Gesa Elsbeth. 2004. Theological Aesthetics: A Reader. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. von Balthasar, Hans Urs. 1982. The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, Vol. 1: Seeing the Form. Translated by Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis. San Francisco: Ignatius Press. ———. 1989. Explorations in Theology. I: The Word Made Flesh. Translated by A. V. Littledale with Alexander Dru. San Francisco: Ignatius Press.

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32 THEOLOGY OF DISABILITY The Spirit and disabled empowerment Shane Clifton and Greta E.C. Wells

Disability plays a significant role in the history of Pentecostalism, even if that role is often implicit as the silent partner to the dominant emphasis on divine healing. This chapter offers a critical and constructive discussion of the intersection between Pentecostal theology and disability studies. As a work of Pentecostal theology, it references the experiences of its two authors: Shane, who has lived with quadriplegia since 2010; and Greta, who was born with Nail-Patella Syndrome. We are conscious, however, that the experience of disability in Australia, where we have a National Disability Insurance Scheme and access to universal healthcare, is very different from the experience elsewhere, especially in the global South. Thus, we intend to outline the parameters of a global Pentecostal theology of disability, which might also be called a disabling of Pentecostal theology. We begin by addressing the problem of healing in the context of disability and then develop a pneumatological theology that considers the implications of pneumatology and disability for our understanding of the Pentecostal full gospel and for theologies of creation, redemption, and eschatology.

Disability: context and meaning Setting the context of disability on a global scale is difficult. As noted by the World Health Organization (WHO), disability is a “complex, dynamic, multidimensional, and contested” concept, and thus difficult to measure (WHO and The World Bank 2011, 3). Disability affects 15–20% of the global population (more than one billion people), the majority of whom live in the poorer countries of the global South (WHO and The World Bank 2011). The relationship between disability and poverty is complex, and while existing literature points toward “a feedback loop existing between poverty and disability and ill health,” inconsistent definitions for disability and poverty mean that these relationships “remain ill-defined and significantly under-researched” (Groce et al. 2011, 18–19). What we do know is that in rich and poor countries alike, people with disabilities are much more likely to be disadvantaged. Against the prevailing assumption that poverty results from a lack in capability (a logic that follows the medical model, see below), the link between poverty and disability is more so a product of the social determinants of health since poverty and conflict create disabling environments (Emerson et al. 2011). Prejudice in the workplace also works against the financial independence of people with disabilities and exacerbates the experience of impairment and 346

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ill health (Toldrá and Santos 2013). The connection between disability and poverty, the overrepresentation of the global South, and the issue of prejudice are all of importance to a Pentecostal theology of disability since Pentecostalism has its roots in marginalized communities and is experiencing its most rapid growth in the global South (see Chapter 2). As we shall see, it can be a movement that either exacerbates the problem of disabling prejudice or facilitates empowerment. Disability is usually defined in terms of its impact upon the structure and functions of the body (including the physical organ of the brain), and to this end, various classifications have been developed that are used by medical professionals, government agencies, and sporting organizations to identify the type and extent of an individual’s impairment (WHO 2013). The line between a so-called normal body and one that is considered disabled is inevitably fuzzy, as illustrated by the distinction between low vision and the legal definition for blindness. When it comes to cognitive disabilities, further complexity ensues. Broader societal expectations of adequate functioning, particularly in knowledge-based economies, often influence the boundaries of what is normative and non-normative. This is certainly true in the case of mental illness but has noteworthy implications with certain neurological conditions, which can afford unique skills sets or perspectives. As one example, many who fit under the broad umbrella of spectrum disorders (e.g. autism, sensory processing disorder, etc.) are highly functioning, and are often able to excel in professional careers when provided with appropriate workplace support—but still often find themselves at the helm of stigmatized attitudes, which hinder their opportunities. Thankfully, there has been a significant move within the STEM context to intentionally seek out neuro-diverse individuals via tailored recruitment programs. It is also the case that human life is framed by infancy and old age that mirror the embodied limits and dependencies that are common to disability, and even at our seemingly independent height we are ever vulnerable to disabling injury. The universal experience of embodied limitation and vulnerability means that disability should not be treated as a topic of marginal interest (affecting only 15% of the population), but one that gets to the heart of what it is to be human. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the disability rights movement came to distinguish between two models of disability, the medical and social. The former sees disability as a problem with an individual’s body, to which medicine is the solution. The latter understands disability as a social creation and locates the problem of disability with society’s failure to create accessible environments. In this case, the response to disability is focused not on fixing the person but transforming the built and sociocultural environment to make it accessible. While it is common to distinguish between impairment and disability and to conceive of the medical and social models in opposition to one another, it is now widely recognized that disability exists in the complex interaction between the body and its social environment (Shakespeare 2014). Disability is an embodied experience framed by physical and psychological factors (some of which are amenable to medical intervention), the accessibility of physical spaces (e.g. access ramps), social habits (e.g. sign language and Braille services), technological support (e.g. wheelchairs and computer technologies), and cultural and political attitudes that too often exclude and disempower people with differently shaped and functioning bodies. Because disability is embodied and sociocultural, disability theory—and theology—is grounded on a critical hermeneutic, which unmasks ideologies and power structures that create and sustain oppression. Paternalism is at the heart of disability disempowerment since it assumes the superiority of the normative person over and against the disabled: “Paternalism is often subtle in that it casts the oppressor as benign, as protector” (Charlton 2000, 53). 347

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As with feminist, race, and queer theory, disability theory is also identity-forming and political (Kafer 2013). “Crip” theorists critique and reclaim pejorative language (crippled), unmask oppressive ideologies, deconstruct stigmatizing and “othering” narratives and characterization, and thereafter seek to recreate sociocultural environments that celebrate and empower the diverse bodies and capabilities that constitute the disabled identity. In crip theory, disability provides a hermeneutical lens to read culturally significant texts. These strategies have obvious implications for disability engagement with religious traditions and theologies, including Pentecostalism. In acknowledging the complexity of definition and the role that culture and context play in the lived experience of disability, as it does in developing Pentecostal identities, we should not assume that we can develop a unifying “Pentecostal theology of disability” in a short chapter. However, we can begin to tease out some of the implications of disability for Pentecostal theology and, as important, intimate some of the ways in which a Pentecostal outlook might contribute to the emerging scholarship. It is noteworthy that very little reflection on disability has been done from a specifically Pentecostal perspective, although Amos Yong (2007, 2010, 2015) provides a notable exception. While his work on disability addresses a broader audience, he inevitably works from the Pentecostal pneumatological imagination in framing his creative contribution to the field (see Chapter 14). By comparison, Shane Clifton’s (2018) constructive theological work on disability has largely steered away from Pentecostal categories, a situation that in part is rectified in this chapter.

Pentecostalism, disability, and healing practices Compared to the brevity of literature exploring Pentecostal theologies of disability, healing has received significant in-depth consideration because Pentecostal frameworks often (directly or indirectly) draw from the classical fivefold or full Gospel of Jesus as savior, sanctifier, Spirit baptizer, divine healer, and the soon-coming king (see Chapter 16). Healing is a central motif that goes back to the origins of the Pentecostal movement, and to dismiss this in relation to disability would be to reject a key element of Pentecostal living (see Chapter 24). Numerous studies suggest that experiences or promises of healing are what have been predominantly attracting people to the Pentecostal movement (Gunther Brown 2014). Even so, numerical growth is not theological justification, and “complaints about Pentecostal-charismatic healing practices are legion in the disability literature” (Yong 2007, 242). Yong maintains that many within the global Pentecostal movement still associate illness and disability with unrepentant sin, a lack of faith, or demonic strongholds, shaping practices that can create confusion and shame, if applied “uncritically” (241). Reflecting upon personal experiences of living with quadriplegia, Clifton finds this can certainly be the case. In particular, he notes that testimony is central to Pentecostal identity—but “if healing has [also] been central to Pentecostal identity, it is the priority given to testimonies about God’s power that has sustained this priority” (Clifton 2014, 206). The outcome is that those who are not healed miraculously and continue to live with their conditions “are [usually] given no opportunity to testify about their experience” (Clifton, 209). This is particularly dire because public testimony is crucial for Pentecostal spirituality. Sitting outside of what is considered theologically normative, people with disabilities can be denied the opportunity to publicly share their ongoing lived experiences and thus weave their hard-won spiritual insights into that of the faith community and the broader Christian story (Yong 2010). 348

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In addressing the issues arising from Pentecostal healing theology, Yong (2007) argues that we might “distinguish between disability on the one hand and illness, sickness, or disease on the other” (Yong 2007). He argues that doing so will shape practices that are more nuanced in their aims of viewing healing as a holistic endeavor rather than just a limited view of “curing (physically)” (245). Yong extrapolates from Catholic theologian Jennie Weiss Block, who argues that in the broader church, theologies of disability are often based on “medical model[s],” not acknowledging that “while some people become disabled as a result of an illness, most people with disabilities are not sick; and illness is a separate and not necessarily related experience” (Block 2002). The distinction between disability and illness is especially important when it comes to people with congenital conditions, who do not necessarily experience ongoing illness, but can be affected in the way they engage with the world around them. Greta E.C. Wells, and members of her family, have a rare genetic condition called Nail-Patella Syndrome (NPS), which affects various bodily systems. There are many presenting features, but people with NPS often have poor upper body muscle tone, restrictions in various limbs, early onset glaucoma, renal issues, and malformed or missing kneecaps (Sweeney et al. 2003). Given the complexity of NPS, the notion of a miraculous cure is highly problematic, as this would require restoring the affected gene in every cell, leading to the severe alteration of multiple bodily systems. While many might see this as an ideal outcome, Greta notes that NPS is not just a “bodily” reality but has contributed to her identity formation. Namely, minor physical restrictions have meant that she was never athletic, but this allowed her to focus on intellectual strengths. Pentecostals need to be aware of the danger of the medical model of disability and its assumption that disability is a problem that needs to be fixed. On the contrary, people with disabilities need to be valued as faithful agents of the Spirit—not just as bodies that need to be normalized through miraculous faith. As such, disability can help shape Pentecostal theologies toward a wholeness that does not merely focus on the “normative” body shaped by societal ideal but looks to a redeeming interaction of that body with its faith community and society.

A pneumatological theology of disability While there is value in distinguishing disability from illness, it does not fully solve the problem of healing for people with disabilities. Part of the issue is that the logic of healing in Pentecostal theology does not stand on its own but is wrapped up in theological constructions. The image of God in the human being comes to be understood by reference to the normative body, sin as the explanation for disability and illness, healing as a mark of the atonement, and the elimination of disabled difference as the eschatological promise. Thus, the full gospel is shaped thoroughly by “normate” thinking—Rosemarie Garland Thomson’s term to designate “the social figure with which people can represent themselves as definitive human beings” (Thomson 1996, 8). Normate theology, then, supports “the constructed identity of those who, by way of the bodily configurations and cultural capital they assume, can step into positions of authority and wield the power it grants them” (8). In Christianity, this social figure is a constructed Christ, inevitably framed by those with ecclesial power. In Pentecostalism, Jesus the healer is constructed as the definitive human, as the one whose charismatic power restores the sin-broken bodies of cripples to a perfect normate whole. Christology and soteriology are further shaped by disabling theologies of creation. Literal readings of the Genesis creation narratives, grounded in a misunderstanding of genre and suspicion of scientific theory, understand disability, death, and suffering as a consequence of the Fall and as a deviation from God’s original intention of an idealized, normate humankind. 349

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By way of contrast, if evolutionary science is taken seriously, disability is understood not as an aberration but part of the natural biological processes of human life, inherent to our species’ limitations, vulnerabilities, and interdependence. Evangelicalism has proved illequipped to theologize from the radical diversity of both evolution and disability, at least in part because of a univocal constructed and idealized Christology (Word) that generates a fixed and narrow reading of the scriptural word (singular), which is afraid of authorial difference and alienates minority interpreters, including the disabled. But Pentecostalism, if it is willing to follow the free flow of the Spirit in the writing, compilation, and reading of the text, has the potential to embrace a theological plurality that makes space for the uncontainable diversity of our evolved world, including humanity’s embodied difference. Yong has led the way in developing “a p(new)matological theology of disability” (Yong 2015, 10). In doing so, he continues his long-term work on Pentecostal theological method and the pneumatological imagination, previously applied to other fields of inquiry. The pneumatological imagination is a Spirit-filled epistemology that grounds other theological foci—including Christology and soteriology—on the Pentecost narrative’s vision of the Spirit being poured out on all flesh (Acts 2:17). It imagines ways of thinking and acting that generate new communities constituted by difference, which celebrate, rather than silence, a multiplicity of “tongues.” This theology empowers those otherwise considered non-persons: foreigners, daughters, youth, slaves, and (unmentioned in Acts 2 but certainly present) people with varieties of disability. Vitally, this empowerment does not eliminate a person’s distinctiveness as a foreigner, woman, or disabled, but it is transformative, making it possible for derided and alienated identities, validated and liberated by the fire of the Spirit, to become labels of potent pride. Yong’s pneumatological imagination is not merely focused on Acts 2 but draws on an understanding of the person and work of the Spirit out of the diverse testimony of the scriptures. Before attending to disability, Yong had undertaken a pneumatological reading of Genesis 1–2 in dialogue with the emergent processes of evolution, noting that a theology of creation that begins with the Spirit—the ruach Elohim that hovers over the waters of the primordial creation—empowers “the process of differentiation, separation, and particularization that constitute the days of creation” (Yong 2006, 202). The emergent creation is declared “good” at each point of differentiation, and humanity “very good,” not because it is otherworldly, but in its creaturely embodiment. The cycle of life and death that frames evolution, in all its wonder and terror, does not follow a perfect, completed, and static divine creation, but constitutes it, and thus disability, sickness, and death are not an evil to be overcome but a part of God’s creative plan for a flourishing world. In the face of inevitable chaos and terror, the Spirit of God is present as “the possibility and promise of creation” (Dabney 2006, 80), as the Spirit of life that brings light to darkness, order to chaos, and meaning and purpose to humanity made in the divine image. The image of God is thus fully realized in every person, including those of us with disabilities. There is substantive discussion among theologians of disability about the nature of the imago Dei and the ways in which the disability lens reshapes traditional conceptions, such as the implication of profound intellectual disability for traditional notions that the image is constituted by reason and will (Reinders 2008). The primary point is that disabled people image the divine as fully as any other person. The affirmation of the full humanity and inherent value of persons with disability has implications for beginning and end of life ethics and generates a confluence between disability advocacy and Christian attitudes to abortion and euthanasia (Giric 2016). Against the prevailing assumption that disabled lives are not 350

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worth living, a pneumatological theology of disability insists on the sacredness of every person and seeks out their contribution as Spirit-filled image-bearers to the flourishing of families, churches, and the wider world. Yet this sacredness does not imply their deification. People with disabilities sin and suffer sin’s consequences, although not in their bodily impairments per se, which however little or much suffering they entail, may have a natural cause or be the product of some evil (Clifton 2015). More importantly, sin is the marginalization, paternalism, and injustice that is identified by the social model of disability. People with disabilities are victims of and perpetrators in the structures of sin and are infantilized if presumed to be saintly. Disablement can be an apt synonym for sin and its effects, as the social model magnifies the entrenched evils of paternalism (Gen 3:16 “and he will rule over you”), exclusion (being driven from the garden), enmity, rejection, and injustice. Beyond Genesis 1–3, the biblical narratives tell of the redemptive work of God, which is trinitarian and so pneumatological throughout. Michael Welker (2013) argues that the Bible offers a multi-perspectival testimony that canonizes the presence of the Spirit in and through diverse contexts and often contrasting testimonies. He notes how church hierarchies have generally emphasized the work of the Spirit in facilitating union and unanimity, but while “in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body” (1 Cor. 12:13), this unity emphasizes the diversity of Jews, Greeks, slave, free, male, female, and so forth. From the earliest biblical narratives of the Spirit, to the prophetic and messianic promises, to the boundary breaking message and life of Jesus, to the outpouring of tongues of fire on the day of Pentecost, the unity of the Spirit is constituted by a plurality that redeems and empowers “the infinite diversity of individual human beings in their respective uniqueness” (Welker, 23). Consequently, a pneumatological theology welcomes and empowers the respective uniqueness of disable bodies (including inimitable minds).

The challenge of Jesus from a disabled perspective A pneumatological theology contributes to a robust Christology. From a disability perspective, it is noteworthy that Jesus fulfills the messianic promise of Isaiah 53:2–4, as savior who is unattractive, despised and rejected, familiar with pain, one whose face causes people to turn away, considered punished by God. It may be that the author of this text did not have disability in mind, but they describe the reality of the day-to-day disabled experience (Schipper 2011). In Eiesland’s (1994) image of the disabled Christ, disability is paradoxically transformed, from being the symbol of ugliness, falsehood and evil, to represent the truth, goodness, and beauty of God. The New Testament exemplifies Jesus as the image of God (Col. 1:15). Yet the image Christ represents is not the singularity of his all-knowing, masculine, authoritarian, divine power, but his submission to God in the fullness of the Spirit, embracing the limits and vulnerabilities of (disabled) human life. It is now well-established that the Spirit-empowered life, death, and resurrection of Jesus means much more than salvation of the soul; a truncated gospel that is still too common in evangelicalism and Pentecostalism alike. Yet, while the good news of the gospel includes empowered justice for people with disabilities, the Gospels and their characterization of Jesus can present a challenge. Belser and Morrison (2011) argue that although people with disabilities litter the pages of the four gospel narratives, their portrayal is ablest throughout, where ableism is the “belief that impairment or disability (irrespective of ‘type’) is inherently negative, and should the opportunity present itself, be ameliorated, cured or eliminated” (Campbell 2009, 5). Although receiving Jesus’ compassion (which disabled scholars may 351

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interpret negatively as pity), disabled people are mostly nameless and voiceless, serving as props to reveal the miraculous power of Jesus and the faith (and faithlessness) of the named disciples. That the gospels present Jesus’ characteristic response to disability as delivering a cure establishes the problem of healing described earlier in this chapter. There are various ways to respond to these difficulties, the most common of which is to argue that the emphasis of the healing narratives in the gospel is not healing per se but social transformation, since the ministry of Jesus results in the blind, deaf, lame, and unclean presenting themselves to the temple and being welcomed back into the center of community life (McKinney Fox 2018). In the story of the hemorrhaging woman, for example (Mark 5:21–43), what is radical is not her healing, but that against the cultural and religious dictates that she is unclean, she has the audacity to touch Jesus, and he does not rebuke her. Even so, the problem of disability in the gospel narratives cannot be avoided in any honest engagement with these authoritative texts, since ableist interpretations persist and shape present-day attitudes, especially in charismatic contexts. Pentecostal hermeneutics (see Chapter 13), with its willingness to move past fixed historical readings of Scripture and recognize subjective spiritual, experiential, and testimonial interpretations may provide a way forward. Yong (2017) provides a noteworthy example of a sensory disability reading of the Lukan narrative. When speaking about the healing of the paralytic, for example, Clifton (2015) can inject himself into the text, and so provide an imaginative reading that names a disabled character and sees the narrative through a disabled lens. He understands the experience of embarrassment and shame that goes with being lowered through a roof (or, in his case, carried upstairs) before a crowd, and feels the aggravation at the implication of Jesus’ “your sins are forgiven,” suggesting that his paralysis is his own fault. However, he also notices that, unlike any other character in the story, Jesus did not respond to the man’s broken body with pity, but instead focused on his inner being, his need for the release of forgiveness. It is paradoxically empowering that the paralytic is not infantilized but treated as Jesus does everyone, a sinner in need of grace.

Spirit-empowerment and the flourishing of people with a disability Pentecostals often focus on the work of the Spirit in the supernatural (such as healing), but first and foremost the Spirit mediates grace—the interior dimension of the love of God at work in the life of the individual, freeing us from the bounds of sin, and opening us to the flourishing that comes through faith, hope, and love. Grace orients us to flourishing, but one of the challenges of developing a theology of disability is that nondisabled people presume that the disabled life is one of relentless hardship and suffering, in which case—as with the medical model—flourishing is impossible unless it can be overcome or fixed. The focus of Clifton’s (2018; Clifton, Llewellyn, and Shakespeare 2018) oeuvre since the occurrence of his injury has been happiness: reclaiming his own happiness following the losses that accompany quadriplegia and examining the happiness of people with a disability. He draws much of his insight from Greek virtue ethics and its take-up in Christian tradition through the theology of Thomas Aquinas. This tradition argues that happiness is not principally to do with short-term pleasure but is earned in the pursuit of meaning, goodness, and beauty over the course of a life. This vision of happiness (Greek, eudaimonia, or flourishing) is not accomplished by avoiding pain and suffering but, rather, is earned in the context of the ups and downs of life. Eudaimonia is achieved by the exercise of virtues, which are habits or dispositions of character that facilitate success. 352

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There is theological advantage in recognizing the potential of the pneumatological imagination to expand the horizons of the virtue tradition. In the letters of the apostle Paul, virtues are labeled as fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22–23), and the problem of the virtue tradition is seen in that the habits of the flesh—the sinful nature or vice—work against the exercise of virtue: “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Rom. 7:15). The solution, Paul says, is liberation from the bondage of the flesh by the work of Christ who sets our minds and the desires of the Spirit (Romans 8). The Spirit of the disabled Christ encourages fresh and creative visions of flourishing unconstrained by normate assumptions, empowers a person with the virtues needed to reach for those visions, and mediates the grace required to persevere through opposition and failure. Because the Spirit stirs the affections, the pneumatological imagination helps to ensure that eudaimonia does not devolve into stoicism but balances the goodness of virtue with the liberty of expressive joy, sadness, laughter, grief, and contentment. As for the implications of disability and flourishing for Pentecostalism, it can be argued that the whole of life’s flourishing encompasses the trajectory of the Pentecostal emphasis on healing and prosperity. At its best, Pentecostal soteriology extends truncated conceptions of the gospel. Rather than focusing just on the soul, Pentecostal theology holds that the full gospel has implications for our bodies (healing) and our social situation (prosperity). Too often, focus on supernatural healing and working up faith for prosperity devolves into the absurdity and manipulations of the so-called health-and-wealth gospel (see Chapter 38). However, reconceiving of health and wealth in terms of flourishing, and placing that flourishing in the context of disability and illness, sets a holistic gospel within the context of our limits and vulnerabilities. Finally, eudaimonia is a teleological construct; a goal toward which we journey. In Christian theology, eschatology has too often been otherworldly, whether envisioning the salvation of a disembodied soul or an idealized resurrected body (even though the risen Christ still has his scars). The Pentecostal full gospel includes the additional otherworldly impetus of the imminent return of Christ (see Chapter 25). Disability invites eschatological reimagining, and to this end, it is again Yong (2007) who leads the way, influenced by his brother, Mark, who has Down syndrome. He wonders what it would mean for Mark to be “healed” in heaven from a genetic condition that is central to his identity and personhood. Yong examines Paul’s arguments in 1 Corinthians 15 to imagine an eschatological future where a person whose identity, formed by disability, remains the same person while being liberated from physical suffering and social evil (259–92). In respect to the imminent return of Christ, we once again raise the question of scientific plausibility, the role of hermeneutics in minimizing harmful literalistic interpretations and recognizing the ethical focus of the eschatological kingdom (“your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”). As we have argued throughout, from creation to salvation to eschatology, a Pentecostal theology of disability needs to understand disability as being within the divine intention.

Conclusion In this volume, the responses of Pentecostal theology to social issues are being explored. As we draw some concluding practical remarks regarding disability, it would be remiss to ignore the intersection of disability with issues in other chapters, especially as they pertain to other marginalizing factors. Within our own Australian context, it is harrowing to note that “70% of women with disabilities have been victims of violent sexual encounters at some time in their lives” (Didi et al. 2016). While it can be paternalistic to view people with disabilities as 353

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“victims,” we cannot ignore that the intersections of gender, ethnicity, and socio-economic standing can make people with disabilities increasingly vulnerable to abuse of various forms. While we have engaged in rigorous critique here, we need to celebrate the empowering nature of the early Pentecostal movement regarding women, the poor, and people from minority ethnic backgrounds, who were readily welcomed as Spirit-filled partners in ministry. As Jeff Hittenberger (2013) argues, “[t]o truly understand and embrace the gifts of those with special needs is to experience a renewal of theology and of church life” (144). In the radical outpourings of the Spirit in the early Pentecostal movement, a democratization took place that decentralized power away from those assumed as the natural leaders of congregations. While inevitable institutionalization may have lessened the impact of this democratization, the ethos of Pentecostalism points to the Spirit-empowerment of those we would otherwise overlook as potential partners in ministry. In the decentralization of power, Pentecostal theologies of disability should center on Spirit-empowerment, regardless of obstacles being faced, or whether persons are being “healed” (or “cured,” considering earlier discussion). After all, the women who were Spirit-empowered at Azusa Street were not healed of their “offensive” gender—but rather, the Spirit utilized their female-ness as they went out and ministered. If anything, disability reminds Pentecostalism to be what it originally was—a movement of empowerment with the Spirit that decentralized and distributed the power of God to the margins. In an age where it is so easy to be paternalistic, the question is not what Pentecostal theology has to offer disabled persons—but what people with disabilities have to say to Pentecostalism. If you will, what is a disabling theology of Pentecostalism? And what does this mean in terms of outworked spirituality? At the least, people with disabilities reject the charitable pity that is too often directed at them (Shapiro 1994), instead insisting that they have a share in the priesthood of all believers; that they have vital contributions to make to the life of the church at every level of leadership and ministry. For that contribution to be realized, there will need to be a new awareness of the variety of needs and gifts of disabled people, so that church communities can become welcoming and hospitable places (Reynolds 2008; Woodall 2016). Building on this, embracing the ministry of Spirit-filled people with disabilities starts with providing space for their testimonies in congregational gatherings, in empowering and acknowledging the unique way in which the Spirit can work through all people, in all situations. We need to provide a platform for Pentecostals with disabilities to “tell their own stories, recover their own histories, and claim their own voice and language” (Block 2002). Doing so will not only provide a stronger sense of connection to community for disabled persons and a more realistic portrayal of how the Holy Spirit works through lifelong impairments, but there is also the potential to develop a rounded Pentecostal embodied spirituality. This nuanced theology deepens the fivefold gospel and a justice-oriented missiology that imagines a future in which all people—especially those presently on the margins—are empowered to flourish.

References Belser, Julia Watts, and Melanie S. Morrison. 2011. “What No Longer Serves Us: Resisting Ableism and Anti-Judaism in New Testament Healing Narratives.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 27 (2): 153–70. Block, Jennie Weiss. 2002. Copious Hosting: A Theology of Access for People with Disabilities. New York: Continuum. Campbell, Fiona Kumari. 2009. “The Project of Ableism.” In Contours of Ableism: The Production of Disability and Abledness, edited by Fiona Kumari Campbell, 3–15. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Theology of disability Charlton, James I. 2000. Nothing about Us Without Us: Disability Oppression and Empowerment. Berkeley: University of California Press. Clifton, Shane. 2014. “The Dark Side of Prayer for Healing: Toward, a Theology of Well-Being.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 36 (2): 204–25. ———. 2015. “Theodicy, Disability, and Fragility: An Attempt to Find Meaning in the Aftermath of Quadriplegia.” Theological Studies 76 (4): 765–84. ———. 2018. Crippled Grace: Disability, Virtue Ethics, and the Good Life. Waco: Baylor University Press. Clifton, Shane, Gwynnyth Llewellyn, and Tom Shakespeare. 2018. “Quadriplegia, Virtue Theory, and Flourishing: A Qualitative Study Drawing on Self-Narratives.” Disability & Society 33 (1): 20–38. Dabney, D. Lyle. 2006. “The Nature of the Spirit: Creation as a Premonition of God.” In The Work of the Spirit: Pneumatology and Pentecostalism, edited by Michael Welker, 71–86. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Didi, Aminath, Karen Soldatic, Carolyn Frohmader, and Leanne Dowse. 2016. “Violence Against Women with Disabilities: Is Australia Meeting Its Human Rights Obligations?” Australian Journal of Human Rights 22 (1): 159–77. Emerson, Eric, Ros Madden, Hilary Graham, Gwynnyth Llewellyn, Chris Hatton, and Janet Robertson. 2011. “The Health of Disabled People and the Social Determinants of Health.” Public Health 125 (3): 145–47. Giric, Stefanija. 2016. “Strange Bedfellows: Anti-Abortion and Disability Rights Advocacy.” Journal of Law and the Biosciences 3 (3): 736–42. Groce, Nora, Gayatri Kembhavi, Sheila Wirz, Raymond Lang, Jean-Francois Trani, and Maria Kett. 2011. Poverty and Disability: A Critical Review of the Literature in Low and Middle Income Countries. London: University College London. Gunther Brown, Candy. 2014. “Pentecostal Power: The Politics of Divine Healing Practices.” PentocoStudies 13 (1): 35–57. Kafer, Alison. 2013. Feminist, Queer, Crip. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. McKinney Fox, Bethany. 2018. Disability and the Way of Jesus: Holistic Healing in the Gospels and the Church. Grand Rapids: InterVarsity Press. Reinders, Hans S. 2008. Receiving the Gift of Friendship: Profound Disability, Theological Anthropology, and Ethics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Reynolds, Thomas E. 2008. Vulnerable Communion: A Theology of Disability and Hospitality. Grand Rapids: Brazos. Schipper, Jeremy. 2011. Disability and Isaiah’s Suffering Servant. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shakespeare, Tom. 2014. Disability Rights and Wrongs Revisited. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Shapiro, Joseph P. 1994. No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement. New York: Broadway Books. Sweeney, Elizabeth, Allan Fryer, Roger Mountford, Andrew Green, and Iain McIntosh. 2003. “Nail Patella Syndrome: A Review of the Phenotype Aided by Developmental Biology.” Journal of Medical Genetics 40 (3): 153–62. Thomson, Rosemarie Garland. 1996. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press. Toldrá, Rosé Colom, and Maria Conceição Santos. 2013. “People with Disabilities in the Labor Market: Facilitators and Barriers.” Work 45 (4): 553–63. Welker, Michael. 2013. God the Spirit. Translated by John Hoffmeyer. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. Woodall, Judith. 2016. “The Pentecostal Church: Hospitality and Disability Inclusion. Becoming an Inclusive Christian Community by Welcoming Mutual Vulnerability.” Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 36 (2): 131–44. World Health Organization. 2013. Towards a Common Language for Functioning, Disability and Health: The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health. Geneva: World Health Organisation. World Health Organisation, and The World Bank. 2011. World Report on Disability. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organisation. Yong, Amos. 2006. “Ruach, the Primordial Chaos, and the Breath of Life: Emergence Theory and the Creation Narratives in Pneumatological Perspective.” In The Work of the Spirit: Pneumatology and Pentecostalism, edited by Michael Welker, 183–204. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2007. Theology and Down Syndrome: Reimagining Disability in Late Modernity. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press.

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Shane Clifton and Greta E.C. Wells ———. 2010. “Disability and the Gifts of the Spirit: Pentecost and the Renewal of the Church.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 19 (1): 76–93. ———. 2015. “Disability, the Human Condition, and the Spirit of the Eschatological Long Run – Toward a Pneumatological Theology of Disability.” St Mark’s Review 232 ( July): 1. ———. 2017. The Hermeneutical Spirit: Theological Interpretation and Scriptural Imagination for the 21st Century. Eugene: Cascade.

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33 ECOTHEOLOGY A people of the Spirit for earth Jeffrey S. Lamp

The word “ecology,” derived from the Greek word for “household” (oikos) and “study” (logos), was first coined by German scientist Ernst Haeckel in 1866. It is a branch of biology that studies the interactions of organisms within and with their environments. Ecology, therefore, has affinities with many other branches of science while maintaining its distinctive focus. Yet, in recent decades, the term “ecology” has been confused with the term “environmentalism.” While ecology is, strictly speaking, a field of scientific study, since the 1960s and the rising consciousness of environmental problems in industrialized societies, the term “ecology” has been appropriated in service of activism on behalf of the natural world. Ecology, then, is seen not so much as a branch of science but as a sphere of social concern that has as much to do with questions of social, political, and economic policy as it does with scientific procedure. For purposes of this essay, “ecology” and “environment” and their cognates will be used interchangeably. Despite long established biblical and theological traditions regarding the place of creation in Christian thought and practice, the actual engagement of Christians with the issues of environmental degradation, and so the concerns of ecology, did not occur until the seminal article by historian Lynn White, Jr. (1967), in the journal Science. In this article, White lays the blame for the current ecological crisis firmly with Christianity, arguing that it is only with an interpretation of Genesis 1:26–28 filtered through the philosophy of Francis Bacon that Western civilization was able to construct an approach to the natural world characterized by the exploitation of the world’s resources for human thriving. White’s solution was for modern Christianity to appropriate the model of St. Francis of Assisi as an antidote for its culpability for the worldview that enabled the current state of ecological crisis. White’s article served as a catalyst for Christian responses aimed at refuting his thesis and offering a wide variety of arguments that showed Christianity, rather than being antagonistic toward the welfare of the created order, was indeed well-positioned to be its unapologetic advocate (Lamp 2017a). Despite this development, by and large, Pentecostals have remained uninvolved in the discussion, at least initially. While Christians of other traditions entered the fray on behalf of creation, Pentecostals at first often abstained from the efforts to defend creation, tacitly supporting those who were often responsible for the degradation of the environment. Yet, in recent years, Pentecostals have frequently become creation’s most ardent defenders. 357

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This  chapter charts the Pentecostal theological response to the contemporary ecological crisis, beginning with its initial reticence to involve itself in the debate, moving to those precursors in the historical development of Pentecostalism that paved the way for its engagement with the issue, leading finally to its participation in discussions advocating for the care of creation and its prospects for becoming a leading voice in defense of creation. I argue that, despite some longstanding ambivalence over environmental engagement, Pentecostalism has the theological infrastructure to articulate a robust ecotheology and to participate in the ecological healing of creation.

Impediments to Pentecostal environmental engagement Several factors conspired to limit Pentecostal engagement in environmental issues (Lamp 2014b). One such factor may be termed the “evangelistic imperative” (Kärkkäinen 2009). Early Pentecostals were motivated to reach the world for Christ before his return, which was expected imminently. This eschatological evangelizing drive frequently manifested as the primary mission of the church in the world, pushing other concerns to the periphery (see Chapter 26). Given that the ecological crisis did not truly become a matter of public attention until approximately six decades into the history of the modern-day Pentecostal movement, it would not have been at the forefront of the fledgling movement’s missional attention at its beginning. Rather, the hallmark doctrinal and experiential character of the movement, including the baptism of the Holy Spirit, was typically framed as an empowerment for mission to reach lost peoples for Christ (see Chapter 23). Evangelism saturated the consciousness of early Pentecostals, as it still does in many branches of the movement. Closely related to this factor is a mistrust among classical Pentecostals of more social expressions of the gospel (Lamp 2014b). The Azusa Street revival (1906–15) in Los Angeles, for example, occurred in the heyday of the so-called social gospel movement. Despite the historical roots of some branches of Pentecostalism originating with Wesleyan groups, who would have shared John Wesley’s concern for social action, many among Pentecostalism’s close relatives in fundamentalist and evangelical churches reacted against this expression of Christian practice as it was deemed antagonistic to the more important evangelistic outreach, although not all Pentecostals shared this sentiment (see Chapter 40). Some Pentecostal researchers argue that this neglect is more a feature of North American Pentecostalism than it is among Pentecostals in the global South (Ma 2009). Social concern, including environmental concern, is more likely to be considered integral to expressions of Christian faith in places where issues of social and environmental justice impinge on daily life to a greater degree than they do in more affluent contexts (Miller and Yamamori 2007). In North America, many Pentecostals have attained a standard of living where they are not directly confronted with the realities of environmental degradation; issues of environmental justice do not concern them as they would Pentecostals of lower socioeconomic status in North America and Pentecostals in the global South (Wilkinson 2010). Given that much of the intellectual center of classical Pentecostalism remains located in North America, ecological matters were not deemed of sufficient urgency to find expression in the missional agenda of the movement. Moreover, particularly in the United States, environmental activism is typically identified as a concern of the political left, whereas many Pentecostals identify with more conservative political factions (Kärkkäinen 2009). Many environmental activists of the 1960s were of the same demographic that protested the war in Vietnam and advocated for civil and women’s rights and so were classified with those seeking to undermine social stability. Additionally, 358

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environmentalism is frequently caricatured as an enemy of economic growth and perceived as a threat to anyone, Pentecostals included, who has gained economic prosperity in American society. Environmental activism is viewed more in terms of political criteria than as a potential expression of Spirit-empowered Christian faith. Arguably the most influential factor limiting Pentecostal engagement with environmental issues is the influence of eschatology (Waddell 2009). Relatively early in its history, many branches of classical Pentecostalism adopted a dispensational eschatology (see Chapter 25), despite the irony that dispensationalists were typically cessationists with respect to the charismata. In some of its more spectacular forms, dispensationalism advanced the idea that in the end, those faithful to Christ would be raptured from the earth to spend eternity in heaven with God, while the earth itself would be annihilated. Couple this notion with the idea that the return of Christ is imminent, and the missional focus of many Pentecostals turned to evangelism rather than such issues as environmental degradation. The protection of the environment of a planet that was soon destined for destruction was of much less urgency. Perhaps the overriding rubric for the Pentecostal lack of environmental engagement is a pair of interrelated ideas especially prominent in Western Christianity: anthropocentric bias and dualism. Norman Habel (2008, 1–8), a pioneer in the area of ecological hermeneutics, has identified anthropocentric bias in the reading of the Bible as a contributing factor to the neglect of environmental action among readers. Human beings are viewed as the primary, if not sole, objects of salvation and as such, dominate the attention of both biblical writers and subsequent generations of interpreters (see Chapter 21). Reading the Bible ecologically involves reading with suspicion of this bias in order to identify with creation and retrieve its voice, leading to engagement in action on behalf of creation. Pentecostals, like many in Christian history, have also adopted a sort of spirit-matter dualism in their worldview. N. T. Wright (2008) argues that such a dualism is integrally connected with the brand of dispensationalism that sees the physical universe as destined for destruction in the eschaton. If matter is denigrated in favor of spiritual reality such that its end is nonexistence, then care for the other-than-human material universe in the present seems superfluous (Snyder and Scandrett 2011). Again, missionally, the focus is on saving eternal souls for a spiritual existence in heaven. As is evident, several of these factors dovetail with each other, strengthening the sense that action on behalf of the environment is of little consequence for Pentecostal theology. However, this state of affairs has been changing in later generations of Pentecostals, both in North America and globally. This is not simply due to the growing sense of ecological urgency but owes in part to precursors in Pentecostalism itself.

Precursors to Pentecostal environmental engagement A wide adherence to dispensational eschatology that envisioned the destruction of the physical cosmos in the eschaton steered many Pentecostals away from engagement with environmental issues. Connected with this was an anthropocentric bias that sees the biblical drama of salvation as directed mainly, if not solely, toward human beings. However, early in Pentecostal history, many key figures in the movement argued that God’s redemptive work in Christ was not restricted to human beings but included the whole scope of the created order (Lamp 2014b). At the end of the age, when the kingdom of God comes in all its fullness, both human beings and the whole of creation will experience liberation from decay and death and share in eternal divine life. This anticipation is significant theologically for two reasons. First, it shows that Pentecostalism need not restrict its views of eschatology to those 359

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of a dispensationalism that entails the destruction of the physical cosmos at the end of the age. Second, it also demonstrates that Pentecostalism is capable of transcending an anthropocentric bias that limits the scope of salvation to human beings. Each of these factors contributes to current interest among Pentecostals in creation care. Of course, it would be anachronistic at best to ascribe an ecological motivation for these sentiments to these early pioneers of Pentecostalism. The significance of these figures lay rather in their affirmation that God’s salvific concern reaches beyond human beings. This emphasis speaks to an attitude that sees creation as valuable in God’s sight, or in the language of Genesis 1:31 as “very good.” Creation is not something that may safely be neglected or ignored outright in the missional thinking of Pentecostal Christians, for all of creation falls within the purview of God’s benevolent activity in the world. While some early Pentecostals share sentiments that accord with an orientation that urges Christian environmental engagement, they were clearly not early environmental activists. Yet, as pioneers in the development of Pentecostal thought and practice, they function as precursors to current Pentecostal environmental engagement. At the very least, they illustrate that current Pentecostals involved in addressing ecological crises are not doing so out of some sense of faddish novelty. Rather, contemporary Pentecostal theologians may point to early pillars of the movement who share some of the belief structure that is currently argued in favor of environmental engagement. Another precursor to current Pentecostal environmental engagement may be found in the twentieth-century Pentecostal figure, John McConnell, Jr. The oldest of six children of evangelist John Saunders ( J. S.) McConnell and his wife, the former Hattie MacLaughlin, John was born into a home with impressive Pentecostal pedigree. John’s grandfather, T. W. McConnell, was a participant in the Azusa Street mission and revival, and J. S. McConnell had worked with the Assemblies of God. John inherited his father’s pacifism (such was the official position of the Assemblies of God into the 1960s), and found himself at odds with the United States military upon being drafted to serve in World War II when he refused to fire his rifle during training (he ended up serving time in solitary confinement for this offense). After his stint in the military, John’s ministry career would be spent pursuing peace and unity in the world (Rogers and Sparks 2014). One of John McConnell’s most noteworthy efforts came in the establishment of Earth Day. Many are surprised to learn that a Pentecostal was the catalyst for what has become a seminal annual observance on behalf of the global environment. In 1968, McConnell coined the term “Earth Day” to promote unity among people of all cultures around the one thing they all share, planet earth (McConnell 2011). This was at about the same time as White’s important article, evidencing that ecological concern had become a significant social issue in the United States, indeed the world. McConnell wished to establish an annual day of observance and, after prayer in 1969, landed on celebrating Earth Day on March 20 or 21, the date of the spring equinox. In October 1969, McConnell approached San Francisco city officials with his idea, got his proposal on the agenda of the city’s Board of Supervisors, and on February 23, 1970, the Board approved the proposal and scheduled an observance of Earth Day for March 21, 1970. Celebrations were held in San Francisco, Berkeley, California, and New York City, as well as many college campuses! Much political energy grew around the proposal, as a California congressman introduced a bill in the United States House of Representatives to establish Earth Day as an annual observance. The idea was even advanced to President Richard M. Nixon, and the United Nations adopted its observance in 1971. From here, the history of Earth Day takes some surprising turns. McConnell appeared at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) conference in San Francisco in November 1969, where he spoke of Earth Day. Representatives 360

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of Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, a noted environmentalist, approached McConnell and suggested McConnell change the date of Earth Day to April 22 to coincide with Nelson’s scheduled Environmental Teach-in Day. McConnell felt the spring equinox was the appropriate day for such an observance and declined. However, according to McConnell, Nelson took the name Earth Day and applied it to his observance, and as a result of his political leverage Earth Day became an annual observance on April 22. McConnell’s place in the establishment of Earth Day has become a little-known footnote in the history of the observance. Despite the drama surrounding the eventual observance of Earth Day, its establishment was heavily indebted to a Pentecostal minister. This in itself is a story worth retelling for Pentecostals pursuing the well-being of the environment. Couple this story with the aforementioned early Pentecostal convictions surrounding soteriology and eschatology, and there is ample attestation that Pentecostal theology is not inherently averse to action on behalf of the earth community. The final section of this essay examines the corresponding theological expressions of Pentecostal environmental engagement in this time of ecological crisis.

Prospects for Pentecostal environmental theology The twenty-first century has seen an increase of contributions to ecological issues from Pentecostal scholars (e.g. Swoboda 2009, 2013). This trend mirrors the interests of a significant segment of the Pentecostal world that has expressed concern over the deteriorating state of the ecosphere—mostly younger people in the global north and the poor in the southern hemisphere. Several areas of scholarly reflection have emerged and will be addressed in this section. They include: the construction of an ecotheology within traditional Pentecostal theological rubrics; an emphasis on pneumatology in the doctrine of creation; the reconfiguration of the classical Pentecostal doctrine of Spirit baptism in cosmic terms; a reformulation of Pentecostal eschatology in terms that include the whole of creation in the scope of soteriology; and practical considerations of ways to implement ecological reflection in concrete actions.

Ecotheology and the full gospel An early Pentecostal theological rubric that continues to exert significant influence in the formulation of Pentecostal theology is the four- or fivefold gospel depiction of the ministry work of Jesus (see Chapter 16). The fourfold model sees Jesus as Savior, Spirit-baptizer, healer, and coming King, with the fivefold model adding Jesus as sanctifier. Foundational to crafting a Pentecostal approach to creation care within this model is the understanding that all of creation falls within the scope of God’s redemptive work in Jesus Christ (see Chapter 20). The soteriological planks of the paradigm, then, are interpreted to reflect all of creation as the object of God’s salvific benevolence in Christ. As noted above, this soteriological emphasis found expression among early Pentecostals. More recently, Matthew Tallman (2009) has articulated an approach to creation care using the fourfold paradigm to express how the ministry of Jesus intersects with the concerns of creation care in terms amenable to Pentecostals. The motif “savior” indicates that the totality of creation, both human and other-than-human, is an object of God’s salvation in its own right. The motif “coming King” directs the focus of the created order’s reception of redemption to the end of the age when Jesus brings transformation to humanity and all of creation alike. Again, these two emphases mirror early Pentecostal reflection on the destiny 361

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of creation. The motif “Spirit-baptizer” brings into focus the role of the Spirit as the one who acts in history to bring this redemption of creation to pass. With the motif of “healer,” the present work of the Spirit in the world intersects with the concerns of creation care. Pentecostals are to extend their belief in divine healing to include all of creation, performing works of ecological healing to creation in anticipation of creation’s eschatological destiny. My own work (2014a) has added the motif of Jesus as “sanctifier” to extend Tallman’s approach to the fivefold paradigm. Here Jesus is seen as the one who hallows all of creation, both human and other-than-human, such that creation may join in unison in the worship of the one who brought all things into being. The appropriation of the full gospel models provides a coherent way for Pentecostals to begin to approach the task of creation care in terms that are familiar and thus provide a conceptual framework for articulating a Pentecostal ecotheology (Vondey 2017, 155–74).

Ecotheology and pneumatology Another emphasis of Pentecostals who seek to provide a theological rationale for creation care is to frame the act of creation in pneumatological terms, resulting in a more fully orbed trinitarian doctrine of creation (Yong 2015a; Lamp 2017b). Here Pentecostal scholars have found an ally in the work of Jürgen Moltmann (1993, 2001), whose robust pneumatological ecotheology provides several points of intersection with Pentecostal thought that offers a fertile conceptual framework for a Pentecostal ecotheology (Althouse 2014). Several Old Testament passages make clear that the Father is the primary actor in the drama of creation (see Gen. 1:1–2:4a; Gen. 2:4b–3:24; Job 38–41; Ps. 104; Prov. 8:22–31; Eccl. 1:2–11; 12:1–7; and Isa. 40–55). In the New Testament, the Son is frequently depicted as directly involved in the creation ( John 1:3, 10; 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:16–17; Heb. 1:2–3a; and Rev. 3:14). Such direct scriptural attestation for the Holy Spirit is more elusive. Peter Althouse (2009) argues that Genesis 1:2 provides such attestation, where the ruach of God that hovers over the primordial waters is the Spirit of God acting kenotically to identify with the chaos of the world to bring order to creation. Amos Yong (2005) suggests that the framing of the Genesis 1 creation account with Spirit-language further strengthens the role of the Spirit in creation. In Genesis 1:2, the Spirit is shown hovering over the primordial chaos; in Gen. 2:7 the Spirit is breathing into the first human being, forming a pneumatologically themed inclusio that frames the acts of creation with references to the Spirit’s abiding presence in the world. Beyond participating in the original creation of the cosmos, the Spirit is also depicted as, in the words of the Nicene Creed, “the Lord, the giver of life.” Psalm 104:27–30 speaks of the Spirit whose presence in the world continually gives life to earth’s creatures. Romans 8:18–27 shows the Spirit acting kenotically by identifying with both human and other-than-human creation in its groaning anticipation of liberation from corruption (Althouse 2009). In both the original acts of creation and the ongoing preservation of creation, the Spirit, the giver of life, is an integral actor in the drama of creation. This pneumatological approach to Pentecostal ecotheology is able to resolve the earlier conflict among Pentecostals between spirit and matter (Vondey 2015). The identification of the Spirit with creation provides further conceptual affinity of Pentecostal theological interests with the care of creation.

Ecotheology and eschatology The connection of the Spirit with creation also provides another opportunity to argue for Pentecostal engagement with environmental concerns. Here, rather than focusing on the Spirit 362

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with respect to the original creation of the cosmos or the ongoing sustenance of creation, the focus shifts to the Spirit’s involvement in bringing about the new creation revealed in the eschaton. Frank Macchia (2006) has undertaken a reformulation of the Pentecostal distinctive of the baptism in the Holy Spirit to encompass not only human beings (in some circles as evidenced by glossolalia) but also the whole of creation. In his reworking of the doctrine, Macchia sees Jesus as the Spirit-baptizer pouring out the Spirit on all creation, so that creation may be saturated with the Spirit who works to “liberate creation from within history toward new possibilities for free, eschatological existence” (97), with the goal of preparing creation for its final transformation into the dwelling place of God. Two emphases are evident here. First, the destiny of creation is described in terms of free, eschatological existence characterized as the dwelling place of God. Second, this transformation is achieved through the work of the Spirit within history. In such a Spirit-saturated creation, Spirit-baptized human beings work in concert with the Spirit to help creation reach its destiny (see Boone 2009). Other Pentecostal scholars preceded (Pinnock 1996) or followed (Swoboda 2011; Lamp 2012; Swoboda 2013) Macchia in affirming the presence of the Spirit in creation leading creation toward its liberation from corruption into divine life, but Macchia is the one who connected this reality with the doctrine of the baptism in the Spirit. Such a move effectively shifts the emphasis away from an individualized, anthropocentrically experienced phenomenon to one that sees the whole of creation as the proper object of divine benevolence. Macchia effectively casts the whole of the created order as the recipients of God’s salvation in Christ, with Spirit baptism functioning in this drama as the vehicle through which this salvation is actualized. More recently, Wolfgang Vondey (2017) has extended Macchia’s idea to emphasize also the motifs of sanctification and divine healing in order to speak explicitly of human agency in caring for creation. As noted earlier, a significant impediment to Pentecostal environmental engagement has been the prevalence of a dispensational eschatology that envisions the ultimate annihilation of the physical cosmos at the end of the age. Yet there is precedent in the early stages of the movement of Pentecostals who did not adhere to such a position, envisioning the whole of the created order as the object of God’s salvation in Jesus Christ. In recent decades, there has been an effort on behalf of Pentecostals to rethink eschatology apart from dispensational categories. Larry McQueen (2012) has surveyed the history of Pentecostal eschatological thinking and argues that it was always more complex than the facile identification of Pentecostal eschatology with dispensationalism. While the Finished Work stream of Pentecostalism aligned more closely with dispensational eschatology, the more Wesleyan branch of the movement frequently articulated eschatology in terms that focus less on the mapping of the future course of events in favor of ascertaining what eschatology implies for action in the present (see Chapter 25). While McQueen’s work was not intentionally directed toward eschatological implications for environmental engagement, the notion that eschatology informs present action in the world has implications for ecotheology and the care of creation. If the whole of the created order, human and other-than-human alike, is destined for salvation, then the present treatment of the whole creation in anticipation of its eschatological destiny should reflect that destiny. Some Pentecostals have reflected on the implications of such an eschatology for present ecological action in the world. Althouse (2009) argues that the Spirit identifies kenotically with the suffering world as the Spirit moves the world ever closer to its eschatological liberation from corruption. Robby Waddell (2010) has provided a Pentecostal reading of 2 Peter 3, a passage often cited by dispensationalists to argue for the eschatological destruction of the cosmos, in ways that bypass dispensational interpretations while also drawing out implications of the passage for a Pentecostal approach to creation care that encourages present environmental engagement. 363

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Practical ecotheology To this point in the discussion of prospects for Pentecostal environmental engagement, the focus has been on the conscious reformulation of certain aspects of the Pentecostal theological infrastructure in terms that intersect with the concerns of environmental engagement. This work is necessary, for unless creation care is shown to be compatible with Pentecostal thought and mission, concrete expressions of creation care may be attributable to conformity to values and activities more at home in various social, political, economic, and even religious contexts. The present survey has merely sampled areas where this effort has proved fruitful in changing thinking and subsequently behavior concerning the care of creation. Yet Pentecostal forays into creation care have also taken more concrete expressions. In addition to John McConnell’s work in founding Earth Day observances, as noted above, others have attempted to give practical expression to ecologically sympathetic theological reflection. Shane Clifton (2009) suggests that once Spirit-empowered Pentecostal Christians accept that the Spirit fills the whole world, the sense of division that human beings experience with the other-than-human order may be overcome, and in its place may arise an ecological ethos deriving from the identity and culture of Pentecostalism and resulting in works of compassion performed on behalf of Earth in anticipation of its eschatological destiny. In a pair of insightful articles, Steven Studebaker (2008, 2010) argues that, in light of the Spirit’s work in bringing creation to eschatological glory, creation care in the present functions as an expression of spiritual formation and sanctification as Christians participate in creation’s anticipation of its destiny. Here, very practical efforts in creation care are framed as an aspect of discipleship as Pentecostals strive to “[keep] in step with the Spirit” (Studebaker 2008, 953–56; Studebaker 2010, 258–61). A particularly innovative example is the formation of the Association of African Earthkeeping Churches, a network of churches formed in Zimbabwe in 1991, which has integrated creation care not just into its mission but also into its liturgical and spiritual identity as Pentecostal Christians (Daneel 2000, 2011; Yong 2005, 61–63). This group of churches addresses such issues as deforestation and desertification by implementing campaigns to plant trees, conserve wildlife, and protect water resources. Moreover, as Pentecostals are reflecting on ways in which to engage in concrete expressions of creation care, some are turning their attention toward addressing how Pentecostals might take part in the larger Christian discussion of framing creation care in missiological terms (Hunter 2000; Yong 2015b). As these efforts show, theological theory on the matters of creation care is not enough; it must also translate into action.

Conclusion This essay has shown that there is activity among some Pentecostals seeking to cast the care of creation in light of present ecological crises in terms that show that such a concern fits well within the theological ethos of Pentecostalism. This development, in turn, allows for an articulation of a Pentecostal ecotheology once the theological infrastructure of Pentecostalism is properly directed toward addressing these concerns. Pentecostals concerned with the care of creation are presented with significant obstacles within their own traditions that impinge on their ability to formulate a coherent approach to creation care and to execute this program in concrete actions on behalf of creation. The approach taken in this essay was to delineate several of these obstacles, followed by some key precursors in the Pentecostal history that lay a foundation for current work in Pentecostal ecotheological reflection. Concluding this essay was the examination of a series of areas in which work is 364

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being done that reformulates important Pentecostal theological emphases with an eye toward how they relate to ecotheological concerns. The net effect of this study is that, despite the obstacles embedded in Pentecostal belief and practice, Pentecostalism is capable of the type of theological reflection necessary to construct an approach to creation care that is both faithful to Pentecostal belief and contributory to attempts that address the ecological crises facing the world today. At present, it is too early to declare that Pentecostalism is a “green” Christian tradition. Important work is being done, but much more remains. However, given its historic concern to be a people of the Spirit in the world, Pentecostalism possesses the theological apparatus necessary to articulate a robust, pneumatologically grounded ecotheology that integrates Spirit-empowered human agency with God’s salvific mission in the world to prepare creation to become the dwelling place of God. Perhaps the unique contribution Pentecostalism may make in discussions surrounding present ecological crises is that God is present in the Holy Spirit to bring creation to the realization of its eschatological destiny to become that place where God shares the divine life and dwells in the midst of all of God’s creation. In response to the Spirit, human beings have the privilege and responsibility to participate in the spread of God’s benevolence to all creation in the journey toward that destiny.

References Althouse, Peter. 2009. “Implications of the Kenosis of the Spirit for a Creational Eschatology.” In The Spirit Renews the Face of the Earth, edited by Amos Yong, 155–72. Eugene: Pickwick. ———. 2014. “Pentecostal Eco-Transformation: Possibilities for a Pentecostal Ecotheology in Light of Moltmann’s Green Theology.” In Blood Cries Out: Pentecostals, Ecology, and the Groans of Creation, edited A. J. Swoboda, 116–32. Eugene: Pickwick. Boone, R. Jerome. 2009. “Created for Shalom: Human Agency and Responsibility in the World.” In The Spirit Renews the Face of the Earth: Pentecostal Forays in Science and Theology of Creation, edited by Amos Yong, 17–29. Eugene: Pickwick. Clifton, Shane. 2009. “Preaching the ‘Full Gospel’ in the Context of Global Environmental Crises.” In The Spirit Renews the Face of the Earth: Pentecostal Forays in Science and Theology of Creation, edited by Amos Yong, 117–34. Eugene: Pickwick. Daneel, Marthinus. 2000. “Earthkeeping Churches at the African Grassroots.” In Christianity and Ecology: Seeking the Well-being of Earth and Healing, edited by Dieter T. Hessel and Rosemary Radford Ruether, 533–48. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2011. “Christian Mission and Earth-Care: An African Case Study.” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 35 (3): 130–36. Habel, Norman. 2008. “Introducing Ecological Hermeneutics.” In Exploring Ecological Hermeneutics, edited by Norman Habel and Peter Trudinger, 1–8. Atlanta: Society for Biblical Literature. Hunter, Harold. 2000. “Pentecostal Healing for God’s Sick Creation?” The Spirit & Church 2: 145–67. Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. 2009. “Pentecostal Pneumatology of Religions: The Contribution of Pentecostals to Our Understanding of the Word of God’s Spirit in the World.” In The Spirit in the World: Emerging Pentecostal Theologies in Global Contexts, edited by Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, 155–80. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Lamp, Jeffrey S. 2012. The Greening of Hebrews? Ecological Readings in the Letter to the Hebrews. Eugene: Pickwick. ———. 2014a. “Jesus as Sanctifier: Creation Care and the Five-Fold Gospel.” In Blood Cries Out: Pentecostals, Ecology and the Groan of Creation, edited by A. J. Swoboda, 152–68. Eugene: Pickwick. ———. 2014b. “New Heavens and New Earth: Early Pentecostal Soteriology as a Foundation for Creation Care in the Present.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 36 (1): 64–80. ———. 2017a. Reading Green: Tactical Considerations for Reading the Bible Ecologically. New York: Peter Lang. ———. 2017b. “Wisdom Pneumatology and the Creative Spirit: The Book of Wisdom and the Trinitarian Act of Creation.” Spiritus: ORU Journal of Theology 2: 39–56.

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Jeffrey S. Lamp Macchia, Frank. 2006. Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. McConnell, John. 2011. Earth Day: Vision for Peace, Justice, and Earth Care. My Life and Thought at Age 96. Edited by John C. Munday Jr. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. McQueen, Larry R. 2012. Toward a Pentecostal Eschatology: Discerning a Way Forward. Blandford Forum: Deo. Miller, Donald E., and Tetsunao Yamamori. 2007. Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement. Berkeley: University of California Press. Moltmann, Jürgen. 1993. God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God. Translated by Margaret Kohl. Minneapolis: Fortress. ———. 2001. The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation. Translated by Margaret Kohl. Minneapolis: Fortress. Pinnock, Clark. 1996. Flame of Love. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press. Rodgers, Darrin J., and Nicole Sparks. 2014. “Pentecostal Pioneer of Earth Day: John McConnell Jr.” In Blood Cries Out: Pentecostals, Ecology and the Groan of Creation, edited by A. J. Swoboda, 3–21. Eugene: Pickwick. Snyder, Howard A., and Joel Scandrett. 2011. Salvation Means Creation Healed: The Ecology of Sin and Grace. Overcoming the Divorce between Earth and Heaven. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. Studebaker, Steven M. 2008. “The Spirit in Creation: A Unified Theology of Grace and Creation Care.” Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 43 (4): 943–60. ———. 2010. “Creation Care as ‘Keeping in Step with the Spirit.’” In The Liberating Spirit: Pentecostals and Social Action in North America, edited by Michael Wilkinson and Steven M. Studebaker, 248–63. Eugene: Pickwick. Swoboda, A. J., ed. 2009. Blood Cries Out: Pentecostals, Ecology and the Groan of Creation. Eugene: Pickwick. ———. 2011. “Eco-Glossolalia: Emerging Twenty-First Century Pentecostal and Charismatic Ecotheology.” Rural Theology 9: 101–16. ———. 2013. Tongues and Trees: Toward a Pentecostal Ecological Theology. JPT Supplement 40. Blandford Forum: Deo. Tallman, Matthew. 2009. “Pentecostal Ecology: A Theological Paradigm.” In The Spirit Renews the Face of the Earth: Pentecostal Forays in Science and Theology of Creation, edited by Amos Yong, 135–54. Eugene: Pickwick. Vondey, Wolfgang. 2015. “Spirit and Nature: Pentecostal Pneumatology in Dialogue with Tillich’s Pneumatological Ontology.” In Spiritual Presence and Spiritual Power: Pentecostal Readings of and Engagement with the Legacy of Paul Tillich, edited by Nimi Wariboko and Amos Yong, 30–44. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 2017. Pentecostal Theology: Living the Full Gospel. Systematic Pentecostal and Charismatic Theology 1. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. Waddell, Robby. 2009. “A Green Apocalypse: Comparing Secular and Religious Eschatological Visions of Earth.” In Blood Cries Out: Pentecostals, Ecology and the Groan of Creation, edited by A. J. Swoboda, 133–51. Eugene: Pickwick. ———. 2010. “Apocalyptic Sustainability: The Future of Pentecostal Ecology.” In Perspectives in Pentecostal Eschatologies: World without End, edited by Peter Althouse and Robby Waddell, 95–110. Eugene: Pickwick. White, Lynn, Jr. 1967. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.” Science 155: 1203–7. Wilkinson, Michael. 2010. “Globalization and the Environment as Social Problem: Assessing a Pentecostal Response.” In A Liberating Spirit: Pentecostals and Social Action in North America, edited by Michael Wilkinson and Steven M. Studebaker, 213–30. Eugene: Pickwick. Wright, Nicholas Thomas. 2008. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. New York: Harper One. Yong, Amos. 2005. The Spirit Poured out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. ———. 2015a. “Creatio Spiritus and the Spirit of Christ: Toward a Trinitarian Theology of Creation.” In Spirit of God: Christian Renewal in the Community of Faith, edited by Jeffrey W. Barbeau and Beth Felker Jones, 168–82. Downers Grove: IVP Academic. ———. 2015b. “The Missio Spiritus: Towards a Pentecostal Pneumatological Missiology of Creation.” In Creation Care in Christian Mission, edited by Kapya J. Kaoma, 121–33. Oxford: Regnum Books International.

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34 THEOLOGY OF ECONOMICS Pentecost and the household of the Spirit Daniela C. Augustine

Contemporary Pentecostalism is a complex global reality, marked by a staggering diversity of contextually nuanced practices, theological perspectives, and corresponding sociopolitical engagement. Therefore, any Pentecostal theology of economics is inevitably contextual. While no Pentecostal theologian has attempted to develop a comprehensive theology of economic life, there are theological engagements of various aspects of economics—particularly, work and human productivity (Volf 2001; Augustine 2015), money and finance (Wariboko 2008, 2014), political economy (Augustine 2012) and consumption in relation to economic and ecological justice (Augustine 2019). In addition, a number of scholars have addressed issues of social justice (see Chapter 40), highlighting characteristics of Pentecostal spirituality relevant to economic concerns. Others have isolated the prosperity theme as a framework for discussion, arguing that Pentecostalism is “the religion of the globalizing free-market economy” (Clifton 2014). However, global Pentecostalism displays not only a diversity of prosperity theologies (see Chapter 38) but also conflicting attitudes toward neoliberal capitalism and the prosperity gospel (Attanasi and Yong 2012). Some have praised the prosperity churches as a panacea for overcoming poverty and securing upper mobility; others have condemned them as offering “little more than an opiate for the masses” (Miller and Yamamori 2007, 215). Yet, even when Pentecostals “embrace capitalism,” their message remains “fairly subversive” (Miller and Yamamori, 5), and its democratizing effect has the potential to induce authentic social transformation. In light of these challenges, the present chapter is primarily constructive and unapologetically contextual. My constructive theological vision is based on the event of Pentecost as the core symbol of Pentecostal theology and spirituality (see Chapter 3). Pentecost serves as the unifying contextual origin, dialogical anchor and continual source of inspiration within Pentecostal theological inquiry. Therefore, a genuinely Pentecostal theology of economics should be, in a way, also a theology of Pentecost. In light of this assertion, I begin with a short overview of key contributions toward the development of Pentecostal theology of economics, followed by a theological reflection on the world’s pneumatic essence of shared life, the charismatic character of human ontology, and the event of Pentecost as marking humanity’s ontological renewal and Christification, as well as inaugurating the economics of the Spirit. I conclude with a brief exploration of the eucharist’s socio-economic implications, inspired by both existing Pentecostal scholarship and the liturgical theologia prima 367

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(Chan 2006, 48–52; 2011, 6) of Eastern-European Pentecostals (located in the regions from the Eastern Balkans to the Ural and Caucasus Mountains), whose spirituality has been deeply impacted by their Eastern Orthodox cultural context and historical roots (Augustine 2011; Zaprometova 2013, 25). Pneumatology “has always been at the very heart” of Orthodoxy (Zaprometova, 34), and its striking similarities with Pentecostalism have been highlighted in recent Pentecostal scholarship (Rybarczyk 2004; Chan 2011, 8). Therefore, the present construct invites some Orthodox insights which harmonize with genuinely Pentecostal theological and economic reflection.

An overview of contributions Pentecostal scholars have insisted that economics are not morally neutral and should be subject to rigorous theologico-ethical reflection (Volf 2001, 15; Wariboko 2008, 2; Augustine 2012b, 75), particularly in relation to work/labor, finance, distribution, and consumption. Miroslav Volf ’s volume Work in the Spirit (2001) represents one the most significant contributions to this effort. Stepping beyond the traditional Protestant understanding of vocation, Volf depicts Christians’ mundane labor as a charismatic process of “work in the Spirit . . . in active anticipation of the eschatological transformation of the world” (123). This assertion stages human work as a cooperation with God (98–102), highlighting the value of the process of work itself (198) as actualization of one’s God-imparted gifts for the flourishing of all (199). Liberated from traditional utilitarian reductionism induced by the pressures of frantic production, work recovers its ontology as joyous “self-forgetfulness” and delightful play in the Spirit (200). Staging the “new creation” as the volume’s “main ethical norm,” Volf outlines three normative principles as criteria for evaluating economic systems: freedom of individuals, satisfaction of everyone’s basic needs, and protection of nature from irreparable damage (15). While recognizing that translating these principles into concrete economic policies is difficult, Volf suggests that they require both market setting and democratic economic planning (the second keeping the first in-check but not functioning as its substitute) (17–21). He concludes that “the only alternative to planned economy is a market economy directed by a vision of ” and commitment to “the common good” (194) and offers a biblical foundation for the upholding of “sustenance rights” for all as “a rule that is even more basic than respect for individual liberty” and serving as “the basic criteria of the humanness of an economic system” (195). Engaging Marx’s critique of capitalism, Volf proposes that a way to overcome its dehumanizing effects is by creating conditions for workers to experience their work as cooperation with others, each taking pride in the final, joint product as their own. Another landmark contribution is Nimi Wariboko’s God and Money (2008) in which he proposes a trinitarian model of the global monetary system, inspired by Paul Tillich’s distinct method of theologico-cultural analysis and “trinitarian principles” (21–24). Drawing on his professional expertise in finance and unique perspective as a social ethicist (interacting with his native Nigerian context), Wariboko develops a creative vision for the global economy’s financial future. Most strikingly, he advocates the establishing of a single currency—“Earth Dollar,” described as “‘communion’ of interdependent national currencies” (210)—through which to overthrow the monarchical triumvirate of the Dollar, Euro, and Yen (2–6, 19) and to overcome the existing disparities between richer and poorer countries toward fostering a just global financial community (229–44). Wariboko presents a sophisticated socioeconomic study of finance and explicates the shortcomings of existing theologies of money, namely, the lack of proper definition of money and the narrow focus on “money as matter” (73–90), 368

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and offers a compelling analysis of money’s social character (97–118), pointing out that it is “not only embedded in” but also “created out of social relations” (116). Many of the volume’s inherent theologico-ethical themes find their further development in Wariboko’s subsequent work Economics in Spirit and Truth (2014), which continues his analysis of finance capitalism by drawing on insights from politico-economic theory, continental philosophy, and the prosperity gospel. Wariboko’s overarching purpose is to engender theology and ethics capable of resisting the negative effects of “finance capital on human flourishing” through building sustainable “resilience and antifragility” (177). The result is a provocative proposal for “political theology of market miracles” (138–58) and a vision of soul-caring as a “transformative socioethical praxis” (177) within the global volatility of late capitalism. The constructive segment of this chapter is also reflective of trajectories within my own theological ethics of economics, shaped by my expertise as an economist and a theological ethicist and by experiencing firsthand the post-communist countries’ turbulent transition from planned to deregulated market economies (Augustine 2011, 189–92, 199–201). From this contextual perspective, I have offered a comparative study of the ideological foundations of Western neoliberal capitalism and Eastern-European communitarianism and their distinct religious roots. Drawing on Nicolas Berdyaev’s critical stand toward both socialism and capitalism, I have constructed a theological vision of social transformation, highlighting the Spirit’s alternative ecological economics (see Chapter 33) enfleshed in the Pentecost community (Augustine 2012, 93–103). This vision is rooted within a theology of shared life in hospitality and mutual safe-keeping, pointing to the Trinity’s proto-communal life as paradigmatic for the management and distribution of resources and cultivation of social capital in pursuit of the common good (Augustine 2012, 43–70, 2019). My work promotes socio-political practices of reverent consumption in the ecological economy of the planetary household, committed to securing the flourishing of all God’s creatures. This vision points also to the teleology of human work, intended to extend Eden’s sanctuary—the proto-holyof-holies—to the uttermost limits of the world until all that exists is brought into communion with God and all of creation becomes the holy of holies (Augustine 2012, 2015). Reflective of the original divine creative act—of God’s self-respacing in crafting within the divine communal self a home for the absolute other—daily human work of world-making is to become itself an act of home-building for the other (Augustine 2012, 53–54). The following sections offer a constructive proposal which furthers my own contextual theology of economics, Volf ’s pneumatology of human work (by asserting that human ontology itself and all human life is a charismatic reality,) and Wariboko’s emphasis on human personhood’s relational character.

Toward a pneumatic cosmology of shared life If Pentecostal theology views Pentecost as the eschatological telos of creation (Augustine 2012, 79; Studebaker 2012, 66–70, 263–67; Vondey 2017, 155–74; Macchia 2018, 302–9), then it can agree with the Orthodox theologian Sergei Bulgakov (1976, 184–85) that this goal must be “anticipated and prepared from the foundations of the world which has always been vivified by the Holy Spirit.” The book of Genesis depicts the life-giving, incubating hovering of the Spirit over the surface of the waters (Gen. 1:2) as a prototypical “first cosmic Pentecost by anticipation,” and the act of the creation of Adam [with God’s breath entering his nostrils (Gen 2:7)] as a second, this time “human Pentecost” (Bulgakov 1976, 184), revealing humanity’s inherently charismatic ontology. This inaugural vision of creation points to all life, all matter as being created in and for the Spirit—as created for Pentecost. 369

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The economic implication of this perspective stages human work and rest, production and consumption, as epicletic events, as charismatic partnership with God within the world’s teleological unfolding (Volf 2001, 113–23; Augustine 2015) until the Spirit gathers everything into eschatological theotic fullness (Macchia 2006, 102; Augustine 2019). This vision also points to the sacramental essence of the cosmos, revealing it as an exquisitely choreographed eucharistic liturgy intended to shape humanity into the likeness of its creator—the proto-community of the Trinity. In the act of creation, God gives the world to humanity in self-sharing as a gift of life, so that humanity may, in turn, learn to share it with the other and the different (Augustine 2019, 93–95). The God-given limitations of the material world become part of this intentional theo-forming pedagogy—they press humanity to share life and to grow spiritually beyond selfishness into communal solidarity, realizing that the only way matter can meet all existential needs is through the Spirit’s generous hospitality (Augustine 2019, 94). Therefore, since its opening chapters, the Bible lays the foundations for building a social ethics of “solidarity among people” (Wenk 2010, 48), and the shared liturgical nature of life is its pedagogical tool, teaching humanity to see the world otherwise—as a sacred space for an encounter with the divine presence, as a cathedral and sanctuary where the Spirit seeds and gardens God’s life within one’s relations to others. This perspective faces the finiteness of the world with the mandate for a new asceticism of solidarity in reverent consumption, giving others access to what is needed for their flourishing (Wariboko 2018; Augustine 2019). It shapes humanity into the form of Christ (the fully human, eucharistic being) who mends the world in and through his own life, offering it back to the Father whole, healed, and renewed. As a eucharistic gift with a pedagogical function—helping humanity to grow in the likeness of God—the world is to be continually received with gratitude and offered back to God in a gesture of self-giving to the other. Since humanity does not have anything of its own to share and give to God, it learns to share and give back to the creator from the creation (the tithe, the Sabbath . . . the image) (Augustine 2019, 94–96). In light of this assertion, Pentecostal theologians will find helpful Dumitru Staniloae’s (2005, 22) notion of the “dialogue of the gift,” proposing that through its continual receiving and offering as a gift, the world becomes something held in common as “means for the fullest communion between persons.” According to this logic, the world cannot be kept for oneself. Reducing the world to means of self-indulgence at the expense of meeting others’ basic needs distorts its eucharistic essence and purpose (Augustine 2019). Part of the gift’s Christoforming pedagogy is that we are to give to others more than what we have received (Matt. 25:14–30) by adding to it our life in the form of creative and productive work. Thus, grain and grapes are transformed into bread and wine before being offered eucharistically to God. This offering “imprints” the world with the cross (Staniloae 2005, 25), sanctifying the cosmos by refusing to make it an end in itself, thus also sanctifying the givers in surrender to the Spirit who makes them partakers of the divine nature—of the world-creating love itself (Augustine 2019, 39–40)—which hosts the cosmos in self-sacrificial nurture and care for all creatures and demands the same of humanity as a faithful stewardship of God’s household.

Humanity’s charismatic ontology From its beginning, humanity is made to be a Spirit-bearer (Macchia 2010, 25, 2018, 301) in the likeness of its prototype and telos: the charismatic Christ (Col. 1:15). As such, the human being is created to move in and with the Spirit in all of its world-making agency, 370

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including its economics. Human ontology embodied in the first Adam before the Fall is that of a community of charismatic royal priests and prophets in the cathedral of the cosmos, bearing the image and growing into the likeness of the communal Trinity (Augustine 2019, 97–98). Considering this assertion, Pentecostal theologians may find compelling Alexander Schmemann’s (1974, 95) pneumatological anthropology, affirming the tri-dimensional human vocation—royal, priestly, and prophetic—as charisms of the Holy Spirit (see Strongstad 1984, 1999; Macchia 2018, 309–38). He articulates these three charismatic dimensions of humanity’s vocation as inseparable from each other, for they can be understood only in light of their Christoforming telos where there is “not kingship alone and not priesthood alone” but “royal priesthood” (Schmemann, 95). In Pentecostal words, the power of humanity over creation is fulfilled as “loving lordship” (Macchia 2010, 24–25) but also “sacrifice”—sanctifying the world by “making” it into “communion with God” (Schmemann, 95–96) and all anthropic and non-anthropic others (Augustine 2019, 98–100). To be human is to be for others, so that they may flourish and live life to the fullest. As charismatic creatures, Adam and Eve enflesh the cosmic communion of matter and Spirit, evoking the world’s pneumatic destiny where God is to be all in all (Eph. 1:21) (Augustine 2019, 24–28, 95–97). Both the material and spiritual components of humanity have their origin in God (98). Indeed, the act of creation epitomizes the essence of divine love as reflexive respacing of the self on behalf of the other’s existence (39–40). It is an act of divine love expressed as both the Trinity’s askesis and kenosis, of which humanity and all human life, including economic activity, is to be the visible icon on earth (37–41). In a gift of unconditional hospitality, God becomes the immediate dwelling place of the other as the very environment in which they live and move and have their being (Acts 17:28). Humanity, enlarged by the Spirit with the hospitable spaciousness of the divine life, is to present itself as a home for God—who is the home of all (63–69). Since humanity is created into the image and for the likeness of the trinitarian life (Macchia 2010, 24–25), from the beginning a Spirit of askesis is to be cultivated in the human being (Gen. 3:2–3) (Martin 2014, 2, 59; Augustine 2019, 39–40) for the sake of communion with God and neighbor (Vondey 2008, 48). Humanity’s priestly vocation involves discerning the world as a divine gift of substance and beauty for the sake of cultivating a community of shared life. Hence, the Fall is humanity’s rejection of its vocation, distorting the world’s eucharistic existence by reducing it from a divine gift to a utility toward one’s own self-indulgence in never-satisfied-consumption to the detriment of all creation (Schmemann 1963, 14; Augustine 2019, 98–115). In response, sanctification as Christlikeness represents an ontological renewal and restoration of authentic human freedom to love and to be loved (see Chapter 20). Love, in accordance with the Trinity’s communal, relational character (Macchia 2010, 146), turns one’s face toward others in responsibility for their flourishing (Augustine 2019, 99–100). The human journey back to God becomes pedagogy of discerning Christ (see Col. 1:15) in the other, even in its most distressful condition (Mat. 25:31–46). Thus, seeing Christ in the other makes one Christlike—a renewed eucharistic being, transforming economics into a loving stewardship of creation as God’s cherished household (Macchia 2010, 25; Augustine 2019, 98–100).

Pentecost and the economics of the Spirit For Pentecostals, the believer’s Christoformation calls for sanctification of personal will and desires (Macchia 2010, 94), for fasting from oneself on behalf of the other in an expression 371

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of an incarnated love toward God and neighbor (Augustine 2019, 19–20). The freedom of human will in the image of God is a prerequisite for attaining the divine likeness (Augustine 2015, 20 and 37). Yet the synergistic collaboration between the divine and human wills is impossible apart from Christ’s incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension (Macchia 2006, 253; Augustine 2012b, 33), for the Spirit applies what is accomplished in Christ to the believers’ communal life (see Chapter 17). Pentecost inaugurates the beginning of the Spirit’s sanctifying work in the redeemed human koinonia (Macchia 2006, 165–66; Augustine 2012b, 21–23; Vondey 2017, 23). Therefore, Pentecost is not merely a continuation of the Incarnation but its telos (Augustine 2012b, 23; Studebaker 2012, 3, 8–9, 66). In Christ, humanity has been enabled to receive the Holy Spirit and to become the dwelling place and en-fleshed reality of the trinitarian communal life in the cosmos (Macchia 2010, 25; Augustine 2012b, 23). Indeed, Pentecost marks the ontological renewal of the image of God within the human community “revealing what all life should look like” (Dempster 1987, 137). On the day of Pentecost, the Spirit conceives Christ in the community of faith transforming it into his own communal body on earth. The church is born as the theophorous (God-bearing) and theophanic (God-manifesting) body of Christ doing the will of the Father in the power of the Spirit (Augustine 2012b, 16). As the Spirit descends upon the Son in his communal embodied form, the priestly, royal, and prophetic dimensions of the messianic anointing are transferred upon his disciples transforming them into a royal priesthood and prophethood of all believers (Strongstad 1999, 65–70; Augustine 2012b, 24). In Christ, the community of faith becomes the restoration of humanity’s charismatic ontology and vocation according to God’s original creative intent. The Spirit manifests the church as the new, cosmic homo adorans, ordained to circumscribe all of creation into union with the creator. Therefore, the Spirit-baptized community enfleshes the trinitarian proto-communal life in all aspects of its collective being, including its oikonomia (Augustine 2019, 91–92). Pentecost restores humanity’s economic stewardship of the world (Studebaker 2012, 263) as the charismatic oikonomia of household (Macchia 2010, 25) based on sharing the family resources for the equal benefit of all its members (Augustine 2012b, 106–10, 2019, 92–101). This economic model follows the pattern of the creator’s self-sharing with creation. The Spirit transfigures the community’s economics from a market-driven competition for survival into a household of shared life (Augustine 2012b, 106). Household relationships are not based on the members’ capital, marketability or capacity for generating profit, but on family bonds. In contrast to the market, the household does not produce and maintain class structure. The social position of its members is based upon family roles, and any privileges that pertain to these are appropriated within the understanding of mutual calling to one another in shared family identity (Yong 2011, 158, 165–66). The family’s wealth is the wealth of all its members, and material possessions are utilized for the common good since personal well-being flows from the household’s shared well-being in mutual safe-keeping. God’s household includes all creation, bonding its anthropic and non-anthropic members into one Spirit-community (Augustine 2019, 101–2). Pentecost reveals that God has opened his future for the other, and the Spirit demands the same from all flesh. The Spirit’s kenotic self-sharing with the other “produces the apocalyptic affection” that binds together the members of God’s household into this eschatological “fellowship of all flesh” (Yong 2010, 342–43) manifested in the Pentecost community’s transfigured economic life. The spontaneous sharing of possessions (Acts 2:47–49) within the communal body of the Spirit-bearer becomes an authenticating expression of the believers’ renewed pneumatic 372

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ontology—of their recovered eucharistic being—as a continuation of Christ’s own life and mission (Dempster 1993, 56–58; Wenk 2000, 242–45). What the believers do is who they are—the resurrected Christ, in his communal form. The community’s Spirit-saturated economic life follows a perichoretic trinitarian logic (Yong 2008, 127; Augustine 2012, 98–103), bearing witness of the world’s true eucharistic ontology. The Spirit invites humanity to partake in the trinitarian communal life, displaying its hospitable openness to the world (Macchia 2006, 125) already proleptically anticipated and manifested in Christ’s feeding of the multitudes. God is the host of this banquet in which all who desire to partake are given access to life (Vondey 2008, 122–30). This is a radical transformation of humanity’s vision of the world and of the other. It is the transformation of the world from a market into a home. In Pentecost’s in-Spirit-ed economics, there is no one needy (Acts 4:34); “no one suffers deprivation” (Dempster 1993, 58). Classism is abolished by the radical equality of the trinitarian perichoretic life, transfiguring the faith community into a tangible embodiment of God’s self-sharing hospitality (Acts 2:43–47) experienced as all-inclusive justice, which reunites economics with their spiritual foundations in the believers’ Christified consciousness and prioritizes not profit but people, not self-interest but the common good, seeking the well-being of all others. These new economic relations set the Pentecost community apart from the economics of the surrounding world pointing to the Spirit’s world-mending presence within redeemed humanity ( Johnson 1981, 21; Volf 1996, 228–29; Augustine 2012b, 95–103). Pentecost reveals that “spiritual power is not only for the self but also for serving others” (Richie 2010, 257); that charismatic gifts (1 Cor. 12) are “for the good of all” — “for the common good” (López 2011, 1–2). In Pentecost’s communal economics, the Spirit teaches not only that right worship results in economic justice, but that acts of economic justice are extensions of right worship (Kärkkäinen 2001, 424). This worship testifies before the world that “the goal” of God’s reign is “the radical transformation of all things” (López, 5) in and through their union with the sanctifying Spirit. Thus, Spirit-baptism is itself a common good (Vondey 2017, 211–16), an empowerment for justice as witness of God’s reign (Dempster 1987, 146) where taking a stand against economic and ecological injustice becomes nothing less than “obeying the Spirit” (Wenk 2002, 142; Studebaker 2012, 240–68). The community’s daily commensality and eucharistic celebration (Vondey 2008, 176–77) become a symbolic centerpiece of living out the just socio-political reality of God’s kingdom within his household (Augustine 2012b, 106–7). Each table becomes the Lord’s table—the Father’s family table where God is the host who provides sustenance to all, and all are forever God’s guests.

The eucharist as a politico-economic practice God’s redemptive eschatological union with ontologically renewed humanity is articulated, anticipated, and experienced within the church’s liturgical anamnesis (see Chapter 29). This communal anamnesis (1 Cor. 11:24–25) is more than a recollection of Christ, it is his enacted likeness (Kärkkäinen 2002, 21) in and through the Spirit. For Pentecostals, the entire liturgy is an epicletic, pneumatically charged event, unfolding within the tension of “the already and not yet,” of anticipation and fulfillment (Chan 2006, 37; Zaprometova 2013, 39). As Pentecostal scholars have noted, in the suspense between the upper room and the second coming, the eucharist becomes a potent “economic and political force” (Green 2012, 218) as the inSpirit-ed economic act through which God transfigures the world into a home (Augustine 2019, 102–4). 373

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The eucharist asserts the innocence of the non-anthropic creation which comes to God’s table prior to humanity and welcomes it as the visible form of divine nourishment in the household of God. Through its inclusion within Christ (via the Incarnation), created matter enters redemptive participation in the life of the Trinity being sanctioned as an instrument of grace in the consecration of the cosmos (Augustine 2012b, 56–59). The eucharist provides a pedagogy of discerning the ontological, soteriological, and eschatological continuity and interdependence between humanity and the rest of creation (Rom. 8:18–25). It instructs the believers toward disciplining their desires in prioritization of the well-being of both the anthropic and non-anthropic others and points to the practice of liturgical asceticism of reverent consumption (see 1 Cor. 11:27–34) (Augustine 2012b, 79, 111–15). The eucharist detoxifies humanity from the dehumanizing addiction of rampant consumerism and helps build immunity toward its seductive lure. It cultivates the community of faith as a dissident force of resistance against the all-commodifying market logic and presents an incarnated critique of creation’s utilitarian objectification (Augustine 2019, 104–7). Ultimately, the eucharistic logic asserts that, by becoming the body of Christ, the redeemed human community must become bread and sustenance for others in continuation with Christ’s self-giving for the life of the world (Green 2010, 220; Vondey 2010). Like the manna in the wilderness, the eucharist invites a Spirit-led reimagining of the world as part of humanity’s journey from anxiety of scarcity to a shared communal life (Vondey 2008, 41–42; Augustine 2019, 106–7). The eucharist reveals that life more abundant is possible only when the world is offered in gratitude to God and shared with others, making sure that there is no one left hungry (1 Cor. 11:21). Therefore, (contrary to neoliberal economics’ logic) depriving others from access to life by taking more for oneself is condemned (even unto death) for not discerning rightly the body of Christ (vv. 27–34). The eucharist teaches believers to take responsibility for the hunger and poverty of others (Chan 2006, 76–77; Vondey 2010; Augustine 2019, 104–7). It insists on learning to “wait for one another” (v. 33), securing access to the table first to the most vulnerable. For many Eastern-European Pentecostals, the eucharist constitutes “the central event” of the community’s “intense spiritual life” (Zaprometova 2013, 25). Consistent with their Orthodox theological roots, they prepare for partaking in the sacred communal meal through a time designated for prayer, and strict fasting, as well as personal and common confessions (Zaprometova 2013, 30–31; Augustine 2019, 110). While fasting has been an important part of Pentecostal spirituality since the beginning of the movement (Martin 2014, 4, 149, 130–31), commitment to a pre-eucharistic fast is not common among today’s Western Pentecostals. In contrast, Eastern-European Pentecostals view it as an important dimension of their spiritual hygiene, learning to differentiate between one’s legitimate needs and self-indulgent desires. Like most Pentecostals, they practice fasting as an ascetic struggle that strengthens resistance to temptation (Martin 2104, 58). The fast is a stand against the demonic forces in the cosmos (Martin 2014, 64, 66), and their manifestations in systemic and structural evils that prompt the dehumanization and commodification of fellow humans (Villafañe 1993, 200–2). Emulating Jesus’ forty days fast in the wilderness (Luke 4:1–2; Mat. 4:1), fasting is surrendering to the sanctifying and Christoforming work of the Spirit, teaching believers to hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matt. 5:6) in anticipation of a transformative encounter with the living God (Zaprometova 2013, 30; Martin 2014, 153–57; Augustine 2019, 108–10). Marked by both divine grace and demand for human responsibility, fasting becomes an act of solidarity with the poor (Martin 2014, 154) that deepens compassion and benevolent giving. The eucharist renews humanity’s vision of the world as “love made food” (Schmemann 1963, 14) to be shared with others (Augustine 2019, 60–62), thus refusing “to accept the 374

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governance of a metaphysical reality of scarcity” (Sebastian 2018, 69). Instead, it transforms both work and consumption, eating and drinking, into an alternative politico-economic communal practice, displaying the transfiguration of economics united to the home-building energies of the divine Spirit. In so doing, the eucharist nurtures renewed hunger and longing for the divine presence which produces the fruit of the Spirit in one’s life for the benefit of all (Augustine 2012b, 96), embodying God’s all-satisfying goodness (Yong 2010, 156, 232). By abstaining from food, the person is reminded that it “lives not by bread alone,” fulfilling in the last Adam the commandment which the first Adam transgressed (Vondey 2008, 47–49, 106–12). In its spiritual depth, fasting becomes an act of love extended to all of creation, uplifting creation care “as a pneumatological and proleptic participation in the eschaton” (Studebaker 2012, 246). The consistent living out of this eucharistic politico-economic practice is the eternal fulfillment of Pentecost.

Conclusion An authentic Pentecostal theology of economics is a theology of Pentecost. This essay has outlined some of the potential building blocks of such a theology from a Pentecostal perspective drawing on a range of contexts: its cosmology depicts the world as created for the Spirit in anticipation of Pentecost and asserts its eucharistic essence; its pneumatic anthropology points to humanity’s inherently charismatic ontology, presenting Adam as the Spirit-bearer who is to reflect the radical hospitality of the divine life, offering himself as a home to the home-building creator. Adam’s own life is to become homebuilding for the other and for all of creation. While the first Adam capitulates his charismatic vocation, Christ as the last Adam recapitulates and fulfills it, bringing about its ontological renewal in the Pentecost community. As creation’s telos, Pentecost reveals the true form of human life (indeed, of all life) as eucharist. In this manner, Pentecost’s communal economics become the tangible manifestation of redeemed, Christoformed life. In the Spirit’s ecological economics, uncompromised commitment to the flourishing of all God’s creatures authenticates one’s participation in the life of the age to come on this side of the eschaton. Representing the heart of Pentecostal spirituality, worship shapes Pentecostals’ sacramental but also socio-political and economic imagination. As a continuing Pentecost, the eucharist both enacts and cultivates within the new human community the economics of the Spirit. The Spirit denounces the market’s all-commodifying grip by recapitulating humanity’s economic life into God’s economy of the household. The shared life around the Lord’s table becomes a vision of all life’s destiny—a foretaste of creation’s Spirit-filled future.

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Daniela C. Augustine ———. 2019. The Spirit and the Common Good: Shared Flourishing in the Image of God. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Bulgakov, Sergius. 1976. “Pentecost and the Descent of the Spirit.” In A Bulgakov Anthology, edited by Nicolas Zernov and James Palin, 182–87. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. Chan, Simon. 2006. Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshiping Community. Downerrs Grove: IVP Academic. Clifton, Shane. 2014. “Pentecostal Approaches to Economics.” In The Oxford Handbook of Christianity and Economics, edited by Paul Oslington, 263–81. New York: Oxford University Press. Dempster, Murray W. 1987. “Pentecostal Social Concern and the Biblical Mandate of Social Justice.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 9 (2): 129–53. ———. 1993. “Christian Social Concern in Pentecostal Perspective: Formulating Pentecostal Eschatology.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 1 (2): 51–64. Green, Chris E.W. 2012. Toward a Pentecostal Theology of the Lord’s Supper: Foretasting the Kingdom. Cleveland: CPT Press. Johnson, Luke Timothy. 1981. Sharing Possessions: Mandate and Symbols of Faith. Philadelphia: Fortress. Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. 2001. “Are Pentecostals Oblivious to Social Justice? Theological and Ecumenical Perspectives.” Missiology: An International Review 24 (4): 417–31. ———. 2002. An Introduction to Ecclesiology: Ecumenical, Historical and Global Perspectives. Grand Rapids: InterVarsity. López, Darío Rodríguez. 2011. “The God of Life and the Spirit of Life: The Social and Political Dimension of Life in the Spirit.” Studies in World Christianity 17 (1): 1–11. Macchia, Frank. 2006. Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. ———. 2018. Jesus the Spirit Baptizer: Christology in Light of Pentecost. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Martin, Lee Roy. 2014. Fasting: A Centre for Pentecostal Theology Short Introduction. Cleveland: CPT Press. Miller, Donald E., and Tetsunao Yamamori. 2007. Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement. Berkeley: University of California Press. Richie, Tony Lee. 2010. “Pragmatism, Power, and Politics: A Pentecostal Conversation with President Obama’s Favorite Theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 32 (2): 241–60. Rybarczyk, Edmund J. 2004. Beyond Salvation: Eastern Orthodoxy and Classical Pentecostalism on Becoming Like Christ. Waynesboro: Paternoster. Sebastian, Danny F. 2019. “The Economy in a Spirit World: Spirit of Scarcity, Spirit of God.” Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 39 (1): 62–78. Schmemann, Alexander. 1963. For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy. Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. ———. 1974. Of Water and Spirit: A Liturgical Study of Baptism. Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. Staniloae, Dumitru. 2005. The Experience of God: Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, vol. 2, The World: Creation and Deification. Brookline: Holy Cross Orthodox Press. Stronstad, Rodger. 1984. The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers. ———. 1999. The Prophethood of All Believers. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Studebaker, Steven M. 2012. From Pentecost to the Triune God: A Pentecostal Trinitarian Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Villafañe, Eldin. 1993. The Liberating Spirit: Toward an Hispanic American Pentecostal Social Ethic. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Volf, Miroslav. 1996. Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation. Nashville: Abingdon. ———. 2001. Work in the Spirit: Toward a Theology of Work. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. Vondey, Wolfgang. 2008. People of Bread: Rediscovering Ecclesiology. Lanham: Paulist Press. ———. 2010. “Pentecostal Ecclesiology and Eucharistic Hospitality: Toward a Systematic and Ecumenical Account of the Church.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 32 (1): 41–55. ———. 2017. Pentecostal Theology: Living the Full Gospel. Systematic Pentecostal and Charismatic Theology 1. London: Bloomsbury. Wariboko, Nimi. 2008. God and Money: A Theology of Money in a Globalizing World. Lanham: L exington Books.

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35 ECUMENICAL THEOLOGY A restorationist embrace of the unity of the Spirit Tony Richie

Pentecostalism is a restorationist movement emphasizing the continuing validity of the charismata or spiritual gifts (including divine healing, glossolalia, and prophecy). The general impetus of Pentecostal restorationism, or apostolic restorationism, is a return to New Testament Christianity in its pristine beliefs and practices. Accordingly, the New Testament portrait of “the unity of the Spirit” (Eph. 4:3) among the earliest Christians captures the imagination of Pentecostals. Pentecostals have not typically adopted the agenda of the “ecumenical movement” although they began around the same time and share some of the same stimuli. Instead, the Pentecostal and ecumenical movements have run on parallel but disconnected tracks because of different foci. Nevertheless, Pentecostal spirituality and theology have an inherent impulse toward Christian unity that are recognizably “ecumenical.” This chapter discusses the distinctive shape and scope of Pentecostal ecumenical theology. I argue that a restorationist embrace of the unity of the Spirit marks the essential character of ecumenical pursuits among Pentecostals. First, this chapter identifies discernible theological dynamics in the history of Pentecostal ecumenism. Second, it articulates features of a contemporary ecumenical theology consistent with the original Pentecostal ethos. Finally, it offers a theological strategy for ecumenical dialogue and cooperation suitable to Pentecostal implementation.

An ecumenical history of Pentecostal theology Early Pentecostals from a variety of denominational backgrounds experienced amazing unity out of shared faith in Jesus Christ and the experience of the Holy Spirit (Robeck 1987b). Yet the populist and proletarian character of the movement ran counter to an explicit ecumenical vision (Hocken 2003b, 545). Nevertheless, a distinctive understanding of sectarian identity has influenced Pentecostals’ perception of interdenominational relations up to present. Quite discernible is a rather permeable ecclesiology (see Chapter 27), allowing a generous diversity to flow through various liturgies, polities, and theologies with hard barriers for solid differences (Hocken 2003b, 546–47; Wilson 2003, 596–97). Within the early Pentecostal movement was a small, oft-missed but persistent anti- or non-sectarian strain arising out of a sense of the inherent unity of original Christianity (Vondey 2013, 1–31). Leading Pentecostal organizations had explicit statements in their 378

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earliest writings decrying denominationalism and self-identifying as a fresh movement of the Spirit rather than the rise of yet another man-made denomination (Hocken 2003b, 545–50). The first congregation of the Church of God (Cleveland, TN) took as its name “The Christian Union” out of commitment to fostering unity among Christians (Phillips 2014, 64–67). Only after several decades did adherents begin describing themselves as a denomination; yet some have never become comfortable with that nomenclature or its implications (Vondey 2011). Large segments of Pentecostalism still self-identify as independent or nondenominational (Blumhofer 1993). Although diverse views of ecclesial polity influence such designations, they are largely driven by residual commitments to non-sectarianism. Groups which eventually conceded to cooperative efforts and accountability processes requiring formation of denominational-type organizations still insist on being identified more as a movement than a denomination. It is not difficult to discern pneumatic and ecclesial dynamism as well as persistent ecumenism behind these counter-intuitive but unrelenting identity claims (Synan 2003). Yet Pentecostals have been notoriously ambivalent regarding the values of ecumenism or visible Christian unity ( Jacobsen 2010, 3). Over time, prevalent suspicion, and on occasion, outright rejection, of Pentecostals by various Christian denominations contributed to a tendency by Pentecostals to question the vitality, and perhaps the validity as well, of many other groups (Vondey 2014). They were often unaware of the spiritual riches in some of these historical traditions. Pentecostals themselves contributed to a sense of insult and outrage by targeting members of non-Pentecostal churches via mission outreach with the express purpose of their conversion (Vondey 2010, 159–98). The clergy of other groups considered this practice shameless proselytism; but Pentecostals justified it on grounds of soteriological skepticism regarding others. Pentecostal insistence on vital piety collided with traditions which assumed that all baptized individuals, sometimes including infants, were regenerate. Abhorrence for the (Calvinist) doctrine of “once saved, always saved,” or unconditional eternal security, compelled (Wesleyan-Arminian) Pentecostals to target “backsliders” from other churches for evangelization. Coupled with Pentecostals’ conviction that all believers are candidates for Spirit baptism, and therefore legitimate recipients of recruiting efforts to that end, impressions that Pentecostals were adversarial proselytizers appeared confirmed. Oddly enough, the more Pentecostals’ self-understanding as a distinct sectarian entity developed, the less they seemed to value that of others. Relations with Evangelicals came with further challenges (Robeck 1987b, 65), and the Evangelical-Pentecostal partnership was both liberating and enslaving for Pentecostals. Set free for substantive relations with these non-Pentecostals, relationships with Catholics or mainline Protestants remained strictly taboo. Counterintuitively, the impressive ecumenical alliance forged by Evangelicals and Pentecostals veiled actual exclusivity. Reciprocity prevented recognizing an urgent need for building bridges with the broader community. For many contemporary Evangelicals and Pentecostals, mutual appreciation and identification still describes the outer limits of their ecumenical passion. Yet, long before the formation of the National Association of Evangelicals in the United States (1942), Pentecostals were having problems keeping unity among themselves (Vondey 2013, 10–14). In the first decade of the twentieth century, the movement encountered its first major controversy and eventual division over the nature of sanctification (see Chapter 22). In the second decade, the eruption of the “New Issue” controversy divided Pentecostals over the nature of the Godhead (see Chapter 18). In subsequent decades proponents of conflicting views refused each other fellowship. Additionally, failure by white Pentecostals to recognize 379

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significant contributions of people of color led to racial segregation within the movement (see Chapter 39), a particularly virulent form of division (Clemmons 1982). In the beginning, Pentecostals aspired to bring about union among other churches but soon realized they were unable to maintain unity within their own ranks. A prime example of Pentecostal myopia occurred in the mid-twentieth century. Christians within “conventional” (as Pentecostals called them) denominations began in large numbers to receive baptism with the Holy Spirit and to experience speaking in tongues, divine healing, and other spiritual gifts. Classical Pentecostals who traced their historical origins back to the Azusa revival in Los Angeles (1906–15) were unsure how to respond to this new phenomenon (Robeck 1987b, 71). Most opted for denunciation. Others were dubious at best. It was difficult to believe that Episcopalians, Lutherans, and even Roman Catholics were receiving the same experience as Pentecostals. This dismissal resulted in missing a significant ecumenical opportunity. After more than a half-century of the Charismatic Renewal, as it came to be called, most Pentecostals have belatedly recognized that “God is in it.” True enough, each tradition tends to interpret Spirit baptism and the Spirit’s charisms or gifts in terms of their own historical and theological hermeneutic (see Chapters 23 and 28). Doubtless, Pentecostals are learning from Charismatics more about the importance of the corporate work of the Holy Spirit in creating koinonia or fellowship in the body of Christ (Robeck 1987b, 67; Hocken 2003a, 516). Nonetheless, a few Pentecostals had refused to allow their vision for Christian unity to be extinguished, however dim it may have become at times (Robeck 1987b, 64). Donald Gee, known as the “Apostle of Balance” because of his widespread and evenhanded teaching, and David Du Plessis, “Mr. Pentecost” as he came to be called as the movement’s representative par excellence, repeatedly, and at great risk to status in their own movement, sought out and established connections with other Christians. Du Plessis worked closely with the World Council of Churches and reached out to Roman Catholics. But Du Plessis paid a heavy price in terms of vilification by fellow Pentecostals, although he eventually came to be widely recognized as a hero of the faith and the face of Pentecostalism to the wider Christian world (Sandidge 1987, 163–65). His own explanation (Du Plessis 1970) for reaching out to others was simple and straightforward: “the Spirit bade me go!” Missiologically and theologically an experiential pneumatological directive sufficed as justification. Eventually, Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., chief ecumenical successor of Du Plessis, participated in deep, enduring dialogue with other Christians. Although he too travelled a long, hard road, Robeck’s commitment to ecumenical dialogue and cooperation, coupled with personal energy and integrity, earned the respect of many naysayers and skeptics. Today, numerous contemporary Pentecostals engage in ecumenical dialogue with Catholics, Orthodox, mainline and Reformed Protestants, and/or peace churches. The ecumenical initiative of the Global Christian Forum (since 2012) draws about half its membership from Evangelical, Pentecostal, Charismatic, and Free Churches. Christian Churches Together (since 2006) emphasizes its inclusion of Pentecostals. Several contemporary Pentecostal theologians are doing constructive work on ecumenical theology (Macchia 2006, 24–25). These Pentecostal ecumenical participants are acting consistently with early, authentic Pentecostal restorationist spirituality and theology. True enough, many Pentecostals still view ecumenism with distrust. Like other Evangelicals, Pentecostal suspicion of the ecumenical movement arises out of concerns over compromise of doctrine and mission; Pentecostals’ primary concern, however, may be with the spiritual vitality of the churches seeking to unite (Williams 1996, 3:43–48). Nevertheless, an 380

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increasing number of Pentecostals are committed to overcoming divisions among Christians. Postmodernism has doubtless contributed to undermining a kind of exclusive brand loyalty that fuels harsh sectarianism. Further, contemporary “culture wars” regarding the place of faith in the public square tend to bring believers of all traditions together. It remains to be seen where these trends will lead. What might be called “default unity” and “desperation cooperation” are not necessarily synonymous with healthy ecumenism. Generic Christianity or bland denominationalism could be as harmful to authentic Christian unity as the scandal of division. Dilution is no better than division. Arguably, future vision of Pentecostal ecumenism must include an unapologetic embrace of sectarian identity in conjunction with respectful appreciation for the valuable contributions of other members of the entire body of Christ (Hollenweger 1996; Vondey 2001). Retrieval of healthy ecumenism represents restoration of biblical unity consistent with the permeable ecclesiology of early Pentecostals with its flexible but still firm boundaries. Significantly, this may be described as a Christ-centered and Spirit-driven theology and ecclesiology (Yong 2005, 156) with the church as the fellowship of the Spirit (see Phil. 2:1).

Toward an ecumenical theology Pentecostal ecumenical theology offers a vision of Christian unity rooted in pneumatic ecumenism. The expansive pneumatology intrinsic to a Pentecostal theology of ecumenism is extensive or wide-reaching in its space and scope, and open, demonstrative, and communicative in its thrust. Nevertheless, it is firmly anchored in the Pentecostal ethos concerning the outpouring of God’s Spirit. In this mode, Pentecostals can make fruitful contributions to ecumenical pneumatology (Macchia 2006, 50–51). An expansive pneumatology is centrifugal in the force of its outward motion but centripetal in the force of its centralizing core. Therefore, a mutual conversation between Pentecostals and non-Pentecostals on shared pneumatology in a context of honest reciprocity holds special promise (Rusch 1987). “Unity” can be defined negatively as the quality of not being divided. Yet Christian unity is more than that—much more. Arising out of the unique existential and ontological redemptive reality in Christ, Christian unity expresses itself primarily in active and positive locution as a multi-lateral ministry of reconciliation (see 2 Cor. 5:18). It does not deny or diminish the diversity of the members of the body of Christ comprising a complex, systematic whole (see 1 Cor. 12:12). In short, Christian unity involves the state of being in which true harmony occurs as a mélange of redeemed humanity one in Christ by the power of his Holy Spirit. Such spiritual accord in the household of God is achieved in the context of Pentecost (Newbigin 1953). And arguably, the marks of Spirit baptism are broadly ecumenical, or unifying, in nature (Macchia 2006, 206). Hence, Pentecostal ecumenical theology hinges on an expansive pneumatology. Pentecostal ecumenists may prefer “expansive” nomenclature to terms such as “inclusive” and certainly to “pluralist.” The latter implies compromising relativism and denies absolute truth and the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and the Christian faith. Even “inclusive” can connote bringing others under the umbrella of a confining ethos. In other words, it says something more like “You belong to us” than “We all belong.” In contrast, “expansive” suggests reaching outward in openness without comprising one’s central frame of reference. The goal of expansive Pentecostal ecumenism is not organizational amalgamation or ideological assimilation. Rather, it is spiritual reconciliation and shared participation in the life of the Spirit with its commensurate benefits and responsibilities (Hocken 2003b, 546). 381

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A pneumatological direction Traditional ecumenists emphasize Christologically oriented texts, such as John 17:21. Pentecostal ecumenists emphasize pneumatologically oriented texts, such as Ephesians 4:3. It goes without saying that John 17:21 and Ephesians 4:3 are complementary. Christological ecumenism and pneumatological ecumenism are coextensive. The pericope of Ephesians 4:3–5 contains both Christological and ecclesiological themes. However, the guiding orientation in verse 3 (repeated in v. 4) is pneumatological. There “the unity of the Spirit” describes an actual condition of oneness already created by the Spirit rather than a human achievement to be pursued. Yet the seamless concinnity of this preexisting reality requires ongoing maintenance and preservation on the part of believers. As such, Christian unity partakes of qualities of both the Spirit’s gifts and fruit (see 1 Cor. 12:8–10; Gal 5:22–23). Christian unity is the Holy Spirit’s gracious endowment constantly cultivated by the churches. This insight links ecumenism with charismology and soteriology (viz., sanctification/transformation). Accordingly, Pentecostalism exists as a call to sharpen and strengthen relations with other Christians (Vondey 2010, xxv). Pneumatologically oriented ecumenism informs how Pentecostals approach ecumenism and what they expect to achieve in ecumenical interaction. Pentecostal engagement on the ecumenical front is not acquiescence to current political correctness or cultural trends. Quite the contrary, it resonates with restorationism as an ardent attempt to reinstate an original condition which is inherently and enduringly Christian and Pentecostal. Arguably, for Pentecostals, the pneumatic vitality of the church hinges on the unity of a church baptized in the Spirit (Macchia 2006, 211–21). Furthermore, pneumatically energized Pentecostal ecumenism avoids bogging down in a morass of endless dogmatic debate all-too-typical of conventional ecumenical encounters. Rather, it affirms an undergirding unity of the Holy Spirit as a focal point for relationship-building with other Christians. Although doctrine is vitally important (Robeck 1987b, 68–69), and churches cannot neglect “sound doctrine” (see 1 Tim 1:10; 4:6; 6:3; 2 Tim 4:3; Titus 1:9; 2:1), complete, precise dogmatic agreement is not the best basis for Christian unity. Neither does polity nor authority provide a solid structure for achieving unity. Again, plainly ecclesial structure is essential (see 1 Tim 3:5, 15; 5:17). Yet grave schisms marring far too much of Christianity’s history originated in politics and power struggles or debates about doctrinal minutia. Similarly, although the church’s sacraments are a means of blessing and grace ( John 13:17), Pentecostals do not view them as definitive bases for soteriological unity (see Chapter 29). Quite the contrary, the Christian narrative is rife with mutual denunciation and exclusion arising out of radically different understandings of water baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and foot washing. Paul’s analogy of Holy Communion as an incentivization for Christian unity (1 Cor. 10:16–17) has not been seriously appropriated by historic Christianity or Pentecostals. Contrariwise, this symbol of unity has become an emblem of division—although daunting challenges may be met together in exploring the evocative and performative agency of the Holy Spirit in observances of these holy ordinances (Yong 2005, 158–60; Macchia 2006, 253–55). Yet the focus of Pentecostal ecumenical theology affirms that a personal relationship with Jesus Christ effected by the Spirit of God and experienced in believing obedience by the redeemed establishes a co-participatory commonality that serves to concretize the fellowship of believers (Robeck 1987b). In other words, Pentecostal ecumenical theology emphasizes unity with God in Christ by the Holy Spirit as the grounds for unity between Christians and the churches (Macchia 2006, 211). While not entirely unique to Pentecostals, this emphasis and its development are distinctive. 382

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The pneumatic fellowship of believers draws directly from Pauline teaching on koinonia (2 Cor. 13:14; Phil. 2:1), a theme of the international Pentecostal-Roman Catholic dialogue 1985–89 (see Vondey 2010, 133–58). Pentecostals accent that Pauline theology repeatedly relates koinonia to the believers’ experience of the Holy Spirit in effecting fellowship, communion, sharing, or participation. The first, and in many ways, paradigmatic, occurrence of koinonia occurs in the Lukan synopsis of the primary activities of the believing community in the shadow of Pentecost (Acts 2:42). In a word, koinonia is not an amorphous concept rooted in either shared doctrinal propositions and ecclesial polity or sentimental longing for unity. The agency of the Holy Spirit accomplishes koinonia in and with believers as they experience the Spirit’s own solidarity within the Trinity extended to the church in trinitarian fellowship. In short, authentic unity flowing out of true Christian fellowship is a pneumatic reality made possible by the conjunction of the Spirit’s place within the Trinity and divine presence within the church. Thus, a firm conviction that the Holy Spirit’s active presence in the churches is a primary consideration for ecumenical and missional identity links Pentecostal ecumenism’s expansive pneumatology to the movement’s pneumatological ecclesiology.

A Pentecostal direction Pentecostals own a distinctive understanding of and emphasis on the paradigmatic significance of the day of Pentecost for churches today. Several hermeneutical models exist for interpreting the abiding meaning of Pentecost for the church. One with direct implications for a Pentecostal theology of ecumenism appropriates the ancient incident at the Tower of Babel in an integration of pneumatology, ecclesiology, and missiology (Richie 2019). Drawing on an evident comparison and contrast, this model interprets Pentecost as the restoration of broken, fallen humanity. Pentecost’s spoken-and-heard glossolalic utterances exemplify the reversal of Babel’s confusion of languages, and the resulting division. The day of Pentecost is the beginning of the undoing of Babel. Pentecost signifies the Holy Spirit’s moving to (re)unite humanity through making its divided tongues one. Hence, not only Pentecost per se, but tongues specifically, have ecumenical significance from a theological perspective expressive of differentiated unity (Macchia 2006, 212–13). Pentecost itself initiates a unity and universality that is only completely realized eschatologically—as is conversely true of the ultimate judgment of its divisive antitype, the rebellion of Babel. Absolute or perfect unity among believers will not be realized in the present age. However, this concession need not be discouraging. Ecumenists can let go of full, visible unity in terms of the complete abolition of all sectarianism as their penultimate goal. Nevertheless, the deposit or earnest of the Spirit is now available (see 2 Cor 1:22; Eph 1:14). Christians can and should experience real spiritual unity in this age. Thus, William Seymour and C. H. Mason envisioned a glossolalia inclusive ecumenism (Clemmons 1982, 55–56). The Pentecost event, including speaking in tongues, has theological fecundity for ecumenism in terms of the Holy Spirit’s unifying mission in and through the ministry of Christ’s church. Admittedly, the Babel-Pentecost dynamic is complex, containing not merely bare curse-reversal currents but promise-fulfillment motifs in which unity and diversity are not mutually exclusive (Macchia 2006, 216–17; Richie 2019). The rich diversity of cultures and tongues gathered in Jerusalem for the celebration of the day of Pentecost did not suddenly disappear with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit—not even in the nascent Christian community itself (Acts 6:1–7; 15:1–35). Clearly, the spiritual unity of Pentecost is not superficial uniformity. It joyfully invites the beauty of variety rather than reluctantly tolerating it. 383

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Yet the Spirit baptizes different members into one body in Jesus Christ (see 1 Cor. 12:12–14). Thus, the theme of unity in a Babel-Pentecost correlation model is congruous at its deepest levels. Theologically speaking, Pentecostal movements have—or should have—at their core an irrepressible ethos of Christian unity. Pentecost is ecumenism. Thus, Pentecostalism bears its share of the burden of the ecclesial mark of catholicity by harking back beyond all sectarianism to encourage itself and all churches to draw from the unifying resources of Pentecost (Macchia 2006, 228–29). There are significant ecclesial and missional factors involved in any consideration of ecumenism in the Pentecostal movement. Tragically, the scandal of division obscures Christian identity and obstructs Christian mission. Jesus taught that the unity of his disciples helps the world to know that the Father sent him into the world out of redemptive love for them ( John 17:20–23). Conversely, the disunity of Christ’s disciples hinders the world from recognizing God’s redemptive love in Jesus Christ. Dimming the light of the Lord Jesus in this dark world is the price Christians pay for overweening loyalties to sectarian rivalries. That price is exorbitant. Pentecostals fervently emphasize the church’s missional identity with focus on evangelistic witness (Acts 1:8). There is a tendency to see ecumenism as a distraction, or even a detour, from their primary mission to save souls through the global proclamation of the gospel (Williams 1996, 3:45). This outlook could hardly be more mistaken. The unity of the Spirit among believers is close to the heart of Christian mission if for no other reason than Christian unity is inexorably linked to the evangelistic mission. Ecumenism enables Pentecostals to effectively reach more, not less, souls for Christ. A watching world will recognize God’s love in Jesus more readily in a united church than in a divided church. Missiologically speaking, it is nonsensical—even disingenuous—to minimize ecumenical efforts based on argumentation prioritizing evangelistic witness (see Chapter 26). Just the opposite is the case. Ecumenism and evangelism go hand in hand. Central to the day of Pentecost and to Pentecostal faith is an ardent eschatology (see Chapter 25). Its inaugurated or “already-not-yet” eschatological model perceives a foretaste of the in-breaking of God’s reign in the present age with the power of God (see Mark 9:1; John 5:25–29; 1 John 3:1–3). The gift of the Holy Spirit makes possible this foretaste of the “powers of the age to come” (Heb. 6:5). Inaugurated eschatology includes anticipatory and significative miracles and wonders as well as other gifts of the Holy Spirit (Heb. 2:4). Thus, the down payment/earnest of the Holy Spirit serves to provide assurance of the coming of the complete and final form of God’s reign (see 2 Cor. 1:22; Eph. 1:14). It includes the unity of the Spirit (Eph. 4:3–4; Phil. 2:1). Not only miracles and wonders or the charismata but spiritual unity among Christ’s disciples is a dramatic sign of God’s reign presently at work in the world pointing to its eventual and ultimate consummation. Pentecostal ecumenical theology does not aspire to full, visible, organizational, doctrinal, liturgical, sacramental, and so on, unity in this present age. Complete, perfect (in an absolute sense) unity will occur only in the eschaton. However, the “earnest” is realizable—and no less real. Spiritual unity is not a “consolation prize” given to lessen disappointment because organizational, doctrinal, liturgical, unity is unrealizable. It is the foretaste, the earnest, of that which is to come. As such, it authentically, and generously, participates in the eschatological reality and verity, which has not yet fully arrived but is most assuredly already at work. Further, the present qualitative reality will usher in the future quantitative reality. The unity of the Spirit provides a substantive basis for Christian fellowship and cooperative efforts, which allows Christ’s light to shine brightly through his church(es). 384

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A theological strategy for ecumenical ministry The dynamic and populist nature of Pentecostalism requires a theological strategy equipped to bridge church and academy. Enlisting people in the pew and their pastors to effectively advance the ecumenical enterprise is true to instincts residing deep in the hearts of Pentecostal believers. An “ordinary theology” (Cartledge 2016)—theology of and for ordinary people; that is, laity and clergy—can constructively energize Pentecostal ecumenism. The crux of the matter involves a holistic theology of ecumenical dialogue suitable for Pentecostal implementation and praxis. Paul’s advocacy for the unity of the Spirit includes a great deal of pastoral concern. For example, Christians should cleave together in peace (Eph. 4:3) and cease from selfish quarrels (Phil. 2:1–4). Contrariwise, ecumenism, for Pentecostals, has found more of a home among academics than among pastors. The former is laudable; the latter lamentable. Additionally, ecumenical endeavors are often not only academic but, as the cliché goes, merely academic. Any significant, authentic spiritual unity involving Pentecostals requires more than assembling think tanks and generating position papers. It requires committed involvement at congregational and pastoral horizons. There is prominent insistence by Pentecostals on special ministerial calling embracing the continuing relevance of the New Testament pattern of “the fivefold ministry” (see Eph. 4:11). Again, Pentecostal restorationism shows (Hocken 2003b, 545). However, Pentecostals resist creating a clergy class, arguing not only for the Protestant principle of the priesthood of all believers but also for (what came to be called) the Pentecostal principle of the prophethood of all believers (Stronstad 1984). Pentecostals believe all Spirit-filled believers are empowered to testify and witness of Jesus Christ (see Acts 1:8; 2:4). Accordingly, Pentecostal clergy and laity stand together on comparatively level ground. Nevertheless, circumstances, including ministerial accountability and legal stipulations, and the normal course of denominationalism, soon required a process for ordination (Hocken 2003b, 546; Wilson 2003, 596–97). Yet, although ecclesial and institutional hierarchies exist, an abiding disposition to consider clerical work a ministry of all people curtails development of an ecclesial aristocracy (see 1 Pet. 5:3). Therefore, effective Pentecostal ecumenical theology must push beyond clergy to engage laity as well. Pentecostals believe in the ongoing illuminative and revelatory work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of individual believers, and any Pentecostal who believes to have received a revelation from the Lord will not simply adopt an ecumenical stance because academics, including Pentecostal scholars, engage in formal dialogue. This suspicion toward academic ecumenism could backfire, creating an environment of guarded suspicion against ecumenical activities. Indeed, dispensationalist prophecy scenarios popular among Pentecostals predict the last days’ rise of a wicked one-world religion, including a “return to Rome” motif (derived from a cryptic interpretation of Revelation 17 and 18) involving visceral animosity toward Catholics (Robeck 1987b, 62; Hocken 2013). Not surprisingly, fundamentalist dispensationalism virtually thrives off speculative paranoia and suspicion regarding ecumenism. In this upside-down worldview, Christian unity is diabolical. Christians from different denominations meeting and cooperating, especially if Catholics or liberals are present, become an ominous sign of the impending appearance of the apostate church. Consequently, professional ecumenists, albeit unintentionally, fuel fear rather than feed hope with their ecumenical endeavors (Robeck 1987b, 69–70). Many pastors and congregants perceive ecumenists more as harbingers of the antichrist than as heralds of Christ. 385

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Obviously, ecumenism is a flashpoint for many Pentecostals who struggle between commitment to unity and resistance to or ignorance of organized ecumenism (Vondey 2013, 5–10). However, and this is significant, Pentecostalism’s populist background prepares it for strategies driven theologically by focus on “ordinary” believers rather than on bishops and professors (Cartledge 2016). Accordingly, the focal point of Pentecostal ecumenism should be the laity and clergy of local congregations. Of course, continuing ecumenical encounters among church administrators and school instructors are essential, but ecumenical activity among the top few percent of the movement will make little headway unless churches participate. The question is, “How to get Pentecostal pastors and congregations involved?” Before addressing that question, it is imperative to concede the limits of ecumenical fellowship. Johannine teaching (see 1 John 1:3, 5–7) insists that true fellowship (koinonia) with God and other believers cannot occur with those who unrepentantly practice sinful lifestyles. Unless this concession is made in honesty and sincerity, any potential progress is undermined from the start. Holiness-minded Pentecostals will not build spiritual rapport with people claiming to be “Christians” but living in sin. To have Christian fellowship with sinners is, firstly, impossible, and secondly, if attempted, would only compromise the genuine Christian (see 2 Cor. 6:14–18) in the absurdly asymmetrical relationship. Pentecostal ecumenical theology suggests a twofold response to the challenge of recruitment for a ministry of Christian unity. First, it is necessary to re-think the praxis of ecumenical dialogue. Second, it is necessary to adapt existing Pentecostal praxis to an ecumenical conversation. Both suggestions involve developing a holistic theology of dialogue suitable for Pentecostal implementation. Academic ecumenists focus on the important work of formal dialogue (Robeck 1987b, 72). Formal dialogue typically entails extended discussions of carefully selected themes with the goal of eventually publishing joint statements expressing solidarity. Formal dialogue is painstaking work requiring specialized expertise and long-term commitment (74–77b). Formal dialogue is essentially the “head” of ecumenism. Without formal dialogue, the ecumenical movement is a ship adrift at sea without either compass or anchor. The challenges of formal dialogue are not for everyone (Robeck 1987a); it rarely makes much of a direct impact on clergy or their congregations—which means it fails to reach major segments of Christians. There is therefore need for dialogue in pastoral-congregational contexts. But ecumenical dialogue in congregations must be done differently than in formal sessions. Pastors and congregations should focus on informal, “lived” dialogue (Richie 2011, 163–200). Lived dialogue describes encounters between individuals, families, or small groups of diverse faith in everyday life by ordinary people (i.e. non-experts); it occurs primarily “in the neighborhood” or local community. Lived dialogue is informal and incidental, occurring over the backyard fence, at a nearby market, or during the kids’ ballgame as people come together in the ordinary activities of common humanity. Yet it contributes to processes of humanization, which can accomplish much for unity. Lived dialogue is the “heart” of ecumenism. Without lived dialogue ecumenism is a ship without any wind in its sail. For lived dialogue to be anything more than incidental and occasional, it must become intentional. Lived dialogue with intentional direction can involve various congregations’ meeting together for fellowship, prayer, and testimonies. Believers thus inspire one another. As congregations from different traditions get to know each other and begin to trust one another, they can cooperate for the common good in shared community space. Cooperative ecumenical efforts display Christian unity for the world to see. They effectively minister to human beings in real life situations. Active, concerted cooperation is the “hands” of ecumenism. Without it, ecumenism is a ship with no cargo to carry, no load to deliver, no merchandise to offer. 386

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One way to integrate lived dialogue and cooperative ecumenical efforts in Pentecostal congregations is through “indirect” ecumenism. In this case, a meeting is not announced or described as an “ecumenical” gathering per se. Its direct, explicit goal is not Christian unity. Rather, its overarching goal offers implicit opportunities for active unity to occur under other auspices entailing community presence. The focus is on an event or incident with shared significance for the community while reaching out to Christians of various denominations as valuable partners. Special events for military, law enforcement, rescue professions, and other civic leaders are meaningful across the spectrum. Helping the needy, recognizing the elderly, strengthening public schools, or combating crime and drug abuse are important for everyone. Community clean-up days or extended refurbishing projects are viably utilizable. Indirect ecumenism is probably best suited for most Pentecostal congregations (Richie 2011, 163–200). It circumspectly invites drawing on a vigorous passion for action with an embedded unifying dynamic. Eventually, it may lead to direct dialogue as relationships develop. Hence, congregations from differing backgrounds may conduct worship services together for seasons such as Advent and Christmas, Easter, or Pentecost. Joint prayer services are particularly effective. Indirect dialogue requires little expertise. Brief instruction and basic experience suffice. Denominational leaders and educational institutions can be supportive by offering encouragement and instruction for ecumenical encounters. However, Pentecostal theology focuses on the people rather than the professionals. Of course, a holistic Pentecostal theology of ecumenical dialogue includes both pastors and scholars, but an ordinary Pentecostal theology of dialogue goes where the people live.

Conclusion Restorationism is deeply engrained in the Pentecostal movement. An authentic, consistent theology of restorationism viable for contemporary Pentecostal development and maturity includes not only Spirit baptism, speaking with tongues, divine healing, prophecy, miracles, and other spiritual gifts but also the unity of the Spirit. Pentecostal theology and ministry praxis oriented along a pneumatological direction and rooted in the day of Pentecost uniquely equip Pentecostals for ecumenism. Pentecostalism can reclaim its original, inherently ecumenical, identity. Arguably, the best way forward for Pentecostal ecumenism is lived dialogue via a restorationist embrace of the unity of the Spirit as presented in the New Testament and as present in Pentecostalism’s heritage.

References Blumhofer, Edith L., ed. 1993. Restoring the Faith: The Assemblies of God, Pentecostalism, and American Culture. Champaign: University of Illinois Press. Cartledge, Mark J. 2016. Testimony in the Spirit: Rescripting Ordinary Pentecostal Theology. New York: Routledge. Clemmons, Ithiel. 1982. “True Koinonia: Pentecostal Hopes and Historical Studies.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 4 (1): 46–56. Du Plessis, David. 1970. The Spirit Bade Me Go: The Astounding Move of God in the Denominational Churches. Bel Air: Logos International. Hocken, Peter D. 2003a. “Charismatic Movement.” In The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal Charismatic Movements, Revised and Expanded Edition, edited by Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard Van Der Maas, 477–519. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. ———. 2003b. “Church, Theology of the.” In The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal Charismatic Movements, Revised and Expanded Edition, edited by Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard Van Der Maas, 544–51. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

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Tony Richie ———. 2013. Pentecost and Parousia: Charismatic Renewal, Christian Unity, and the Coming Glory. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. Hollenweger, Walter J. 1996. “Feedback: Pentecostals in Dialogue: Ripe for Taking Risks?” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 18 (1): 107–12. Jacobsen, Douglas. 2010. “The Ambivalent Ecumenical Impulse in Early Pentecostal Theology in North America.” In Pentecostalism and Christian Unity: Ecumenical Documents and Critical Assessments, edited by Wolfgang Vondey, 3–19. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. Macchia, Frank. D. 2006. Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Newbigin, Lesslie. 1954. The Household of God: Lectures on the Nature of the Church. New York: Friendship Press. Phillips, Wade H. 2014. Quest to Restore God’s House: A Theological History of the Church of God (Cleveland, TN): Volume 1 1886–1923: R. G. Spurling to A. J. Tomlinson: Formation-Transformation-Reformation. Cleveland: CPT Press. Richie, Tony. 2011. Speaking by the Spirit: A Pentecostal Model for Interreligious Dialogue. Asbury Theological Seminary Series in World Christian Revitalization Movements. Lexington: Emeth. ———. 2019. “A Look to the Future.” In Pentecostal Theology and Ecumenical Theology: Interpretations and Intersections, edited by Peter Hocken, Tony L. Richie, and Christopher A. Stephenson, 359–63. Leiden: Brill. Robeck, Jr., Cecil M. 1987a. “David du Plessis and the Challenge of Dialogue.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 9 (1): 1–4. ———. 1987b. “Confessing the Apostolic Faith, Pentecostal Churches and the Ecumenical Movement.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 9 (1): 61–84. Rusch, William G. 1987. “The Theology of the Holy Spirit and the Pentecostal Churches in the Ecumenical Movement.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 9 (1): 17–30. Sandidge, Jerry L. 1987. Roman Catholic/Pentecostal Dialogue (1977–1982): A Study in Developing Ecumenism, volume 1. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Stronstad, Roger. 1984. The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke. Peabody: Hendrickson. Synan, H. Vinson. 2003. “Classical Pentecostalism.” In The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal Charismatic Movements, Revised and Expanded Edition, edited by Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard Van Der Maas, 553–55. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Vondey, Wolfgang. 2001. “Presuppositions for Pentecostal Engagement in Ecumenical Dialogue.” Exchange: Journal for Missiological and Ecumenical Research 30 (4): 344–58. ———, ed. 2010. Pentecostalism and Christian Unity: Ecumenical Documents and Critical Assessments. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. ———. 2011. “The Denomination in Classical and Global Pentecostal Ecclesiology: A Historical and Theological Contribution.” In Denomination: Assessing an Ecclesiological Category, edited by Paul M. Collins and Barry Ensign-George, 100–16. New York: Continuum. ———, ed. 2013. Pentecostalism and Christian Unity. Volume 2. Continuing and Building Relationships. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. ———. 2014. “Pentecostalism and Ecumenism.” In The Cambridge Companion to Pentecostalism, edited by Cecil M. Robeck Jr. and Amos Yong, 273–93. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, J. Rodman. 1996. Renewal Theology: Systematic Theology from a Charismatic Perspective: Three Volumes in One. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Wilson, Dwight J. 2003. “Ecclesiastical Polity.” In The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal Charismatic Movements, Revised and Expanded Edition, edited by Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard Van Der Maas, 596–97. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Yong, Amos. 2005. The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.

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36 FEMINIST THEOLOGIES Deconstructing the patriarchal gender paradigm Lisa P. Stephenson

For the last decade I have regularly taught a course on “feminist theology” at a predominant Pentecostal university in North America. And, every time I teach the course, I have countless students and colleagues question the congruity of these two realities: “Can a Pentecostal be a feminist?”—“Can a feminist be a Pentecostal?” Whatever images “feminist” conjures up, for many, what we understand to be “Pentecostal” does not appear among them. Yet, despite the suspicion others may have about the compatibility of Pentecostal and feminist theology, a handful of Pentecostal scholars have found a way to bring these two seemingly disparate worlds into a fruitful relationship. An overarching characteristic of Pentecostal feminist theologies is their attempt to address the bipolar theology and treatment of women in the tradition. On the one hand, Pentecostals’ belief in the outpouring of the Spirit on all flesh has resulted in the empowerment of women in significant ways, especially in the early days of the movement and in certain international contexts. On the other hand, Pentecostalism has never been a completely egalitarian tradition, and claims to empowerment have been simultaneously juxtaposed with claims to divine (and typically patriarchal) order (see Chapter 10). The result is a frustrating paradox of liberation and limitation for women in the movement noted worldwide (Flora 1975; Gill 1990; Drogus 1998; Mariz and Machado 1998; Slootweg 1998; Fraser 2003; Boadi 2005; Brusco 2009, 2010; Hollingsworth and Browning 2010; Samah 2013; Miller 2016). Given these tensions, much of the work of Pentecostal feminist theologies centers around the issue of women’s empowerment, in both the domestic and the public sphere. As constructive Pentecostal theology is continuing to emerge and develop, the voices of those who write from a Pentecostal feminist perspective need to be heard. The beauty of Pentecost is the polyphonic nature of the gift of the Spirit, and among the persons to be heeded are also those who speak with feminist tongues. This essay, therefore, seeks to highlight the ways in which Pentecostal feminist theologies have taken shape, as well as to suggest ways in which they might continue to develop. I begin by utilizing Anne Carr’s (1988) threefold definition of feminist theology as a rubric around which to situate the various forms of Pentecostal feminist theologies. I then survey the current scholarship in these areas to demonstrate the breadth of the field thus far and conclude with some reflections on the potential direction this discussion can take in the future.

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The shape of Pentecostal feminist theologies Feminist theology is no newcomer to the contemporary theological scene. This field of study has been in full bloom for decades, as women across the globe have devoted their energies to critiquing and re-envisioning the Christian tradition. Though there is not always a consensus among those who bear this label—in either method or content—there is a general conviction that the patriarchal gender paradigm, which associates males as superior and dominant and females as inferior and auxiliary, is false. The task of feminist theology is, thus, one of examining Christianity to see wherein this bias is reflected and reinforced, as well as seeking to bring to light the way in which men’s experience—masquerading as human experience—has shaped Christianity. It is both deconstructive and reconstructive, critical and hopeful (Ruether 2002). In many ways, the plural “theologies” is a more appropriate means to refer to the variety of feminists and their various ideas. Whereas the label “feminist theology” is questionable as a general designation because of its historical association with Caucasian, middle-class, Western women who have been concerned primarily with gender analysis (vis-à-vis race and class), that of “feminist theologies”—even if not ideal—attempts to push past the notion of one, singular form of feminism toward the various lenses of analysis, identity, and experience that are represented in the discipline. In this essay, the plural indicates this multitude of diversity which Pentecostal women bring to the task. The answer to the question, to what extent feminist theology has been embraced by Pentecostals, largely depends on how one defines “feminist theology.” Because some persons shy away from explicitly describing their work as such for various reasons—even though their scholarship is clearly aligned with feminists’ general conviction—looking for this selfdesignated label is not the best way to demarcate the field. To date, the conversation within Pentecostal scholarship is frequently framed in terms of “women and ministry” rather than “Pentecostalism and feminism.” For example, there are three recent edited volumes on women and Pentecostalism (Alexander and Yong 2009; Clifton and Grey 2009; English de Alminana and Olena 2017) that are comprised of multiple essays identifiable with Pentecostal feminist theologies, yet only two chapters in these three books bear the label “ feminist.” More helpful is Anne Carr’s (1988) nuanced definition of a threefold task of feminist theology to delineate the initial contours of Pentecostal feminist theologies in this essay. Although her framework is dated, it provides a net wide enough to retrieve the diverse instantiations of Pentecostal feminist theologies and to understand the various objectives they embody even if they are not explicitly employing the term “feminist.” According to Carr (1988), the first task of feminist theology is to engage in a critique of the past. The objects of this critique are those patriarchal attitudes found in the biblical texts and church traditions that denigrate women. The second task is to recover the lost history of women in the larger Christian tradition. Women who have exercised significant leadership within Christianity are brought to the fore to serve as encouragement and role models for persons today. The third task of feminist theology is to revision Christian categories in ways that give serious attention to the equality and experience of women. Theological loci are reformulated so that implicit biases of men’s perspectives and experiences that have been reified in Christian doctrine are exposed, and the insights of women’s experiences are allowed to shape the central themes of the Christian tradition (7–9). Characteristic of feminist theology is that this label is inclusive of a number of disciplines that are traditionally viewed separately (e.g. biblical, historical, and theological). Therefore, though this essay is primarily concerned with revisioning Pentecostal theology, 390

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it would be shortsighted not to include briefly the ways in which Pentecostal scholars have engaged Scripture and history, all of which constitute the realm of Pentecostal feminist theologies.

Criticism and retrieval of the past: biblical and historical contributions While the field of Pentecostal hermeneutics has experienced an explosion of growth (see Chapters 12 and 13), the intersection of Pentecostal hermeneutics and feminist hermeneutics has only just begun. The problem that feminists find with the biblical texts is that women are largely invisible and portrayed as inferior, as well as the fact that sexism has tainted the process of transmission and interpretation of these texts (Slee 2003, 15–18). In order not to succumb to the patriarchal and androcentric nature of the biblical texts or their interpreters, it becomes necessary to develop ways of reading scripture that are liberating and empowering for women. This is all the more essential within a tradition in which the biblical texts are given a central and authoritative role within the ecclesial community. A successful Pentecostal feminist approach, therefore, must find a way to balance the tradition’s commitment to the biblical texts alongside the feminist’s hermeneutic of suspicion. Currently, there are two clusters of Pentecostal feminist hermeneutics emerging that seek to engage in such a task, though their contexts are vastly different. The first constellation of hermeneutics originates in Africa where scholars attempt to address the ways in which the biblical texts have been used to enforce African patriarchal attitudes and thus justify the oppression and abuse of Pentecostal women in these communities. The hermeneutical approaches of Madipoane Masenya (2004a, 2004b, 2005, 2009), Sarojini Nadar (2003, 2004, 2009), and Rosinah Mmannana Gabaitse (2012, 2015) have several features in common. First, they are all aware of the centrality of the biblical texts in African Pentecostal faith communities and seek to respect this position rather than to undermine it. Second, as women of color, they are as attentive to systems of racism and classism inherent in the texts and interpretations of the texts as they are of sexism, and seek to challenge these false ideologies when found (see Chapter 39). Third, they are concerned with the employment and effects of their hermeneutical methods for women in local African Pentecostal faith communities, such that what they seek to produce is not just a theoretical but an activist hermeneutic. The differences among the three women emerge in their various social contexts from which and to which they read the texts—South Africa for Masenya, the Indian community in South Africa for Nadar, and Botswana for Gabaitse. In addition, though there are similarities in their methodologies, each woman labels her particular hermeneutical approach differently—Masenya calls hers a “bosadi (womanhood)” hermeneutic, Nadar opts for “womanist,” and Gabaitse refers to hers as an “African Pentecostal feminist” hermeneutic. The second constellation of Pentecostal feminist hermeneutics originated in North America. In this context, Cheryl Bridges Johns (1993) was one of the first Pentecostal scholars who pursued a feminist theology. In a more recent work (2014), she acknowledges the benefits of the typical feminist hermeneutics of suspicion and remembrance in moving beyond a patriarchal reading of biblical texts, but also notes that this trajectory is incomplete and still treats the text as an object. Johns, thus, proposes a “Spirit-filled feminist” approach that recognizes the Bible as a living subject whose existence is grounded in the economic life of God. The texts, by virtue of the Spirit’s work through them, serve as a sanctified vessel and become an avenue for sacred space wherein God’s Spirit comes to dwell. Consequently, Johns’s approach calls for the reader to move through the hermeneutics of suspicion and remembrance, and to 391

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continue on through the hermeneutics of grieving, brooding, and transforming. Convinced by the merits of this method, Abigail Greves (2016) deploys Johns’s Spirit-filled feminist hermeneutic in a treatment of Judges 11. Engaging in a different approach, Pamela Holmes (2010) calls for and attempts an integration of feminist insights within Pentecostal hermeneutics. Her hermeneutic utilizes some of the principles from Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and Phyllis Trible as she proposes a “quadrilectical model” of interpretation—community, Bible, experience, and Spirit. This model involves the community having its consciousness raised with respect to domineering interpretations of the Bible, the biblical texts acting as a meta-narrative that promotes abundant life for all, the experience of the Pentecostal community attempting to live out the implications of its Christian commitment, and the Spirit bringing aspects of the biblical texts to life and empowering the living out of it. Some of the same problems that plague the biblical texts with respect to women are also characteristic of the historical accounts of Christianity. That is, despite the significance women have played in the growth and maintenance of the faith, too frequently their contributions have been marginalized or overlooked. This is no less true of women in the history of Pentecostalism than it is of women in the history of Christianity at large. In order to right this wrong, Pentecostal feminist theologies are making significant contributions to filling in the gaps of recognizing women’s roles within the tradition by correcting historical, biblical, and theological perspectives (Alexander and Yong 2009), recovering the lost history of the various women who played a vital role in the Azusa Street revival bringing it to fruition and ensuring its lasting impact (Alexander 2005), identifying female Pentecostal ministers who not only pastored churches but began their own denominations with international constituencies (Alexander 2008), or showing how women have utilized the role of “motherhood” in order to ascertain a measure of spiritual and temporal power within its patriarchal system (Butler 2007). In addition, some Pentecostal feminist scholars have begun to draw a distinction between “women’s history” and “gender history,” preferring the latter for their own historiographical works (Payne 2015; Ambrose 2017). The significance between the two is that whereas with women’s history the main objective is to add women back into the narrative accounts of Pentecostalism, with gender history the mission of “recovery” is further nuanced. Gender history is concerned with the relationships of power between Pentecostal men and women in ministry, how women were able to succeed in roles deemed “inappropriate” for them, and why these same women were sometimes unable or unwilling to transcend traditional gendered functions (Ambrose and Payne 2014).

Revisioning doctrine: theological contributions Turning to what Carr (1988) identifies as the third task of feminist theology, Pentecostal feminist theologies have begun to make contributions to the revisioning of doctrine, though only recently. This developmental delay is reflective of the trajectory of Pentecostal scholarship on the whole, as the fields of biblical and historical scholarship burgeoned before the theological. It should come as no surprise that the current focus of doctrinal work among Pentecostal feminist theologians is on pneumatology (see Chapter 19). Ironically, however, this approach stands in contradistinction to the rest of feminist systematic theology, where reflections on the Spirit are few and far between, with the exception of feminist spirituality (Stephenson 2020). Thus, Pentecostal feminist theologians writing in this area are breaking ground not just among Pentecostals but among feminists in general. As early as 1993, Cheryl Bridges Johns was connecting pneumatology with women’s liberation from oppression. Johns (155–56) claimed that the Spirit is the actualizer of 392

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the liberating presence of God—as attested to in the Bible and in the early Pentecostal communities—and that the Spirit “provides the necessary context for the conscientization of women as to their eschatological-ontological vocation as subjects of history.” While the fall of humankind brought male domination, the redemptive mission of Christ sets women free from this subjugation (see Chapter 20). But, because the kingdom of God is not yet fully manifest, it is only by the power of the Spirit that one can live from the perspective of God’s future now. Consequently, Johns claims that only a charismatic community of the Spirit can provide a place where women can be liberated fully, and Pentecostal communities can constitute such a place. In a later essay, however, Johns (2009) acknowledges that if Pentecostal women are ever fully to experience liberation, pneumatology needs to be coupled with theological anthropology. Subsequently, she proposes reconstructing personhood from the perspective of a trinitarian understanding of the imago Dei, which would ground women’s ontological identity in the triune life (see Chapter 17). Johns notes that in reflecting on the imago Dei in light of the Trinity, the image of God is defined by relationality. Since a traditional characteristic of women is that they define themselves in relation to others, a trinitarian relational understanding of God affirms that women’s own constitution as such is truly an image of God. Moreover, within the Trinity, each one of the divine persons exists in co-inherence and unity with the other two without dissolving the other’s distinctiveness as persons (see Chapter 17). Whereas women have tended to suspend their personhood for the sake of relationships, the trinitarian imago Dei critiques this loss of personhood and suggests the importance of women developing and retaining their own identity. Andrea Hollingsworth (2007) echoes Johns’s connection between the Spirit and liberation but takes a different approach. Hollingsworth brings Pentecostal women’s spirituality— especially as experienced in Latin America—into dialogue with feminist theology and proposes “divine voice” as a metaphor for the Spirit. Here, Hollingsworth’s pneumatology resonates with feminists’ affirmation of body and matter. Positing the Spirit as divine voice means that this voice requires lungs, vocal chords, and lips in order to be heard. It cannot exist as an immaterial entity but requires embodiment. And, as Pentecostal spirituality attests, this embodiment takes form among women as the divine voice enables them to find their own voices. Moreover, conceiving of the Spirit as divine voice affirms feminists’ values of relationality and diversity. With respect to the former, in order for one to speak, others must give ear. The vocal exchange is dependent upon those speaking and those listening. In this sense, the divine voice is not identified with one or the other interlocutor, but is mediated in and through the interlocutory process itself. With respect to the latter, the Spirit as divine voice also affirms diversity, as the sound of the Spirit does not just emerge from one mouth or language, but from many. The Spirit’s voice is polyvocal. Building upon Hollingsworth’s work, Janice Rees (2013) notes that while it is the work of the Spirit that enables the emergence of women’s subjectivity (i.e. her own voice), paradoxically it is also the work of the Spirit that leads women into a transgression of subjectivity as the Spirit incorporates us into the divine life. In my own work, I have opted for utilizing pneumatology as a methodological lens through which to view other theological loci rather than to focus on pneumatology as the subject of study. While this approach still centers on the Spirit—and even connects it to liberation themes—it does so in a way that incorporates other doctrines beyond pneumatology. With this methodology I align myself with other Pentecostals who opt for a third article theology (see Chapters 14 and 19), but specifically bring this lens to bear on feminist concerns. Besides this approach opening up new ways to conceive of familiar topics, it also provides a further way for feminists at large to deconstruct a patriarchal framework within Christian theology. 393

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That is, while feminists have long recognized the problematic nature of the subordination of the Spirit to the Father and Son as a theological topic—especially when the Spirit is referred to as a “she”—they have not yet acknowledged the problematic nature of the subordination of the Spirit to the Father and Son as a methodological approach (Stephenson 2020). Consequently, feminists may unwittingly be perpetuating a patriarchal framework—even as they attempt to undermine it—when they continue to subscribe to the patriarchal agenda of methodological preference for Father and Son in their own theologies. In order for feminists to remove the vestiges of patriarchy completely from pneumatology, they must not only change the subject of the conversation, but the framework as well. Moreover, if, as some have suggested, the neglect of the Spirit and the marginalization of women have a symbolic affinity that goes hand in hand, then what better way to heighten and reaffirm the Spirit’s subjectivity—and, in turn, women’s subjectivity—than to privilege the Spirit as the hermeneutical lens through which to read all other doctrines. Two theological loci that I have also reworked from a feminist-pneumatological approach are theological anthropology (Stephenson 2012, 89–135, 2013) and ecclesiology (Stephenson 2012, 139–90). With respect to theological anthropology, one way feminists deal with ontology is to affirm women’s equal being and worth through the theological symbols of the imago Dei and imago Christi. However, this approach overlooks pneumatology as it is largely absent in terms of both its presence in the two given theological symbols—imago Dei and imago Christi—and its presence as a third symbol in its own right—imago Spiritus. Consequently, I propose a reading of the two traditional theological symbols through a pneumatological lens, as well as a pneumatological approach wherein the Spirit comprises its own theological symbol, imago Spiritus, to complement the first two. Concerning the imago Dei, Genesis 1:26–27 serves as the foundational text in which the narrative declares both male and female are made in the image of God. In order to understand how the Spirit helps to constitute the imago Dei, one must first look at Genesis 1:2. Here, even at the beginning of creation, the ruach Elohim is hovering over the face of the deep like a mother bird hovering over her egg. Thus, presupposed in the act of creation is not just the word of God that brings forth life but the Spirit that readies the chaos for the word. The word is spoken in the Spirit, similar to the way in which breath brings forth words. Creation begins with the Spirit and, accordingly, the imago Dei begins with the Spirit. Concerning the imago Christi, Galatians 3:26–28 serves as the foundational text in which the baptized believers become Christomorphic, and Christ’s identity replaces former divisions and inequalities. This transformation is not to suggest that one exists in sexual similarity to Jesus, but that one lives a life that is consistent with Jesus’ compassionate and liberating life in the world. In order to understand how the Spirit helps to constitute the imago Christi, one must recognize that this Christomorphic identity is not possible without the presence of the Spirit. That is, throughout the New Testament, the Spirit plays an integral role in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. From beginning to end, Christ’s mission is integrally intertwined with the Spirit’s. Therefore, if the Spirit is essential to the life of Christ, the Spirit is also essential to forming persons into the imago Christi. It is only possible to image Christ through the power and presence of the Spirit. Concerning the imago Spiritus, Luke 24:49 and Acts 1:4–5, 2:1–41 serve as foundational texts in which Spirit baptism functions analogously to the way water baptism functions in Galatians. First, both symbols utilize the metaphorical imagery of “putting on” (Greek, enduō). In Galatians (3:27), it is a putting on of Christ, in Luke-Acts it is a putting on of the Spirit (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:8). Second, both symbols herald and effect the emergence of the new creation. In Galatians, this arrival is understood by means of an Adam Christology, and 394

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in Luke-Acts, this is understood by means of the restoration of Israel. Third, both symbols necessitate certain ethical imperatives that require that this new identity be lived out within the community. Former identities are rendered meaningless, and a new form of praxis is expected (Gal. 3:28; Acts 8:4–39, 10, 11). As a result, Luke-Acts offers this third symbol of imago Spiritus, which privileges the Spirit in its anthropological proposals and can thus serve as a further way of asserting women’s equal being and worth that stands alongside that of the imago Dei and the imago Christi. With respect to ecclesiology, feminists have critiqued the hierarchical forms of the church and proposed new ways that challenge the patriarchal structures. More specifically, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and Letty Russell have proposed that we envision the church as a discipleship of equals, an exodus community of liberation from patriarchy, and a household of freedom, respectively. Each ecclesial metaphor posits the church as a place where the vestiges of patriarchy have been excised. However, within these ecclesial models, pneumatology plays a secondary role to the more predominant theme of Christology. I reweave these feminist ecclesiologies so that pneumatology comes to the fore. Concerning Schüssler Fiorenza’s (1984, 1994) metaphor of the church as a discipleship of equals, she offers a renewed vision for the church that it is characterized by the practice of radical democracy. Her claims are grounded in her understanding of the identity and praxis of the Jesus movement and the early Christian missionary movement. Water baptism is the rite of initiation; new creation centers on the believer being “in Christ” (Gal. 3:26–28), and the members of the community are disciples of Christ. In order to complement this ecclesial model with a pneumatological dimension, one need only give more attention to the narratives of Luke-Acts in order to see that Spirit baptism becomes the rite of initiation; new creation centers on the believer being “in the Spirit” (Acts 2:17–21), and the members are disciples of the Spirit inasmuch as they are of Christ. The Christological way of life presented in the Gospels is continued and fulfilled in the book of Acts in a pneumatological way: Christ has ascended and the Spirit has descended. Concerning Ruether’s (1985) metaphor of the church as an exodus community of liberation from patriarchy, she claims the Exodus event as the foundational story of the biblical religion and understands it to provide a primary identity for the people of God. The Exodus event does not sacralize the social status quo, but reveals a God who sides with those who have been oppressed and liberates them. Moreover, it is continually reenacted when Israel and the church resist the bondages of oppression—including that of sexism and patriarchy— and journey toward liberation. In order to make this motif more pneumatological, it becomes necessary to connect the Exodus event with that of the new exodus that emerges in Isaiah 40—55 and is then employed in Luke-Acts (Stephenson 2012, 99–114). Subsequently, this shift recognizes the significant pneumatological component that arises explicitly in the latter wherein the Spirit is essential to the Isaianic new exodus community. It is unfathomable to posit the reality of this community without recognizing that it is the Spirit who constitutes it. Characterizing the church as a new exodus community signifies that the Spirit is the means by which the community journeys from oppression to liberation. Russell (1987, 1993) claims that God desires a world that is free from internal and external oppression. She calls this world a “household of freedom” and maintains that the church should be a sign of this type of household (vis-à-vis a patriarchal household of bondage). As such, the church must become a “church in the round,” thereby employing a leadership and ministry that is characterized by its use of power for the empowering of others toward self-actualization and authority for the authorizing of others as partners. However, whereas Russell points to the Exodus and to Jesus Christ as the paradigm shattering events 395

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that demonstrate what God desires this household of freedom to look like, she fails to note how the outpouring of the Spirit is crucial for realization of this household in that it is the Spirit that enables the perpetuation of the new exodus community that fulfills the mission of Christ. Central to Pentecostal theology, Pentecost is the third paradigm shattering event that both calls and enables the church to be a household of freedom. Developing this paradigm further constitutes the future task of Pentecostal theology.

Conclusion For all that Pentecostal feminist theologies have accomplished, they have only begun to scratch the surface and a lot more work is to be done. At minimum, the future of Pentecostal theology must include the following two areas of growth. First, the experiences of women represented in Pentecostal feminist theologies, mostly constructed by Caucasian, North American scholars, remains very narrow. Pentecostal feminist theologies do not even come close to reflecting the global and diverse scale that feminist theologies at large can boast. And given the worldwide scope of Pentecostalism today, especially as it has developed in the majority world, in order to claim that feminist theologies accurately represent the vast instantiations of Pentecostalism, there must be more women contributing to the conversation. If women’s experience plays a crucial role in the construction of feminist theology, then having Pentecostal feminist theologies constructed by a limited, homogenous group of people is problematic (Pierce 2013). Those in privileged positions must use their power and resources to help other Pentecostal women find their voice, even as we are still trying to find our own. And, while we are in the process of doing that, Pentecostal feminist scholars would do well to heed Holmes’s warning (2013) against universalizing Pentecostal women’s experience and employing “strategic essentialism” when writing. Finally, the breadth of topics concerning Pentecostal feminist theologies is still very narrow. For too long, female scholars have been preoccupied with the issue of women in ministry in Pentecostalism, and these concerns have largely dominated the conversation and set the theological parameters. While it is still a very important topic that should not be abandoned, it is not the only concern. It is time for Pentecostal feminist scholars to turn their attention elsewhere and to consider the ways in which patriarchy has shaped other doctrinal convictions that comprise the Pentecostal tradition and its theology. What might Pentecostal feminist theologies contribute to many of the topics covered in this volume? What does a feminist lens contribute to Pentecostal distinctives like Spirit baptism, the full gospel motif, or sanctification, let alone the traditional doctrines? It is time for Pentecostals to take up the other challenges that feminist theologies have raised with respect to these issues and to engage in the critical and constructive work necessary to broaden the conversations that shape Pentecostal theology.

References Alexander, Estrelda. 2005. The Women of Azusa Street. Cleveland: Pilgrim Press. ———. 2008. Limited Liberty: The Legacy of Four Pentecostal Women Pioneers. Cleveland: Pilgrim Press. Alexander, Estrelda, and Amos Yong. 2009. Philip’s Daughters: Women in Pentecostal-Charismatic Leadership. Eugene: Pickwick. Ambrose, Linda. 2017. “Aimee Semple McPherson: Gender Theory, Worship, and the Arts.” Pneuma 39 (1–2): 105–22. Ambrose, Linda, and Leah Payne. 2014. “Reflections on the Potential of Gender Theory for North American Pentecostal History.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 36 (1): 45–63.

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Feminist theologies Boadi, Adelaide Maame Akua. 2005. “Engaging Patriarchy: Pentecostal Gender Ideology and Practices in Nigeria.” In Religion, History, and Politics in Nigeria, edited by Chima J. Korieh and G. Ugo Nwokeji, 172–86. Lanham: University Press of America. Brusco, Elizabeth E. 2009. “Pentecostalism in Colombia as Fundamentalism and Feminism.” In Global Pentecostalism: Encounters with Other Religious Traditions, edited by David Westerlund, 227–42. New York: I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd. ———. 2010. “Gender and Power.” In Studying Global Pentecostalism: Theories and Methods, edited by Allan Anderson et al., 74–92. Berkeley: University of California Press. Butler, Anthea D. 2007. Women in the Church of God in Christ: Making a Sanctified World. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Carr, Anne E. 1988. Transforming Grace: Christian Tradition and Women’s Experience. San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers. Clifton, Shane, and Jacqueline Grey, eds. 2009. Raising Women Leaders: Perspectives on Liberating Women in Pentecostal and Charismatic Contexts. Sydney: Australasian Pentecostal Studies. Drogus, Carol Ann. 1998. “Private Power or Public Power: Pentecostalism, Base Communities, and Gender.” In Power, Politics, and Pentecostals in Latin America, edited by Edward L. Cleary and Hannah W. Stewart-Gambino, 55–76. Boulder: Westview Press. English de Alminana, Margaret, and Lois E. Olena. 2017. Women in Pentecostal and Charismatic Ministry: Informing a Dialogue on Gender, Church, and Ministry. Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies 21. Leiden: Brill. Flora, Cornella B. 1975. “Pentecostal Women in Colombia.” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 17 (4): 411–25. Fraser, Meredith. 2003. “A Feminist Theoethical Analysis of White Pentecostal Australian Women and Marital Abuse.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 19 (2): 145–67. Gabaitse, Rosinah Mmannana. 2012. “Towards an African Feminist Biblical Hermeneutic of Liberation: Interpreting Acts 2:1–47 in the Context of Botswana.” PhD diss., University of Kwazulu-Natal. ———. 2015. “Pentecostal Hermeneutics and the Marginalisation of Women.” Scriptura 114 (1): 1–12. Gill, Lesley. 1990. “‘Like a Veil to Cover Them’: Women and the Pentecostal Movement in La Paz.” American Ethnologist 17 (4): 708–21. Greves, Abigail M. 2016. “Daughter of Courage: Reading Judges 11 with a Feminist Pentecostal Hermeneutic.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 25 (2): 151–67. Hollingsworth, Andrea. 2007. “Spirit and Voice: Toward a Feminist Pentecostal Pneumatology.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 29 (2): 189–213. Hollingsworth, Andrea, and Melissa D. Browning. 2010. “Your Daughters Shall Prophesy (As Long as They Submit).” In A Liberating Spirit: Pentecostals and Social Action in North America, edited by Michael Wilkinson and Steven M. Studebaker, 161–84. Eugene: Pickwick. Holmes, Pamela M. S. 2010. “Acts 29 and Authority: Towards a Pentecostal Feminist Hermeneutics of Liberation.” In A Liberating Spirit: Pentecostals and Social Action in North America, edited by Michael Wilkinson and Steven M. Studebaker, 185–210. Eugene: Pickwick. ———. 2013. “Toward Useable Categories of ‘Women’s Experiences’ and ‘Power’: A Canadian Feminist Pentecostal Considers the Work of Margaret Kamitsuka and Kwok Pui-lan.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 35 (1): 9–23. Johns, Cheryl Bridges. 1993. “Pentecostal Spirituality and the Conscientization of Women.” In Altogether in One Place: Theological Papers from the Brighton Conference on World Evangelization, edited by Harold D. Hunter and Peter D. Hocken, 153–65. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. ———. 2009. “Spirited Vestments: Or, Why the Anointing Is Not Enough.” In Philip’s Daughters: Women in Pentecostal-Charismatic Leadership, edited by Estrelda Alexander and Amos Yong, 170–84. Eugene: Pickwick. ———. 2014. “Grieving, Brooding, and Transforming: The Spirit, the Bible, and Gender.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 23 (2): 141–53. Masenya, Madipoane. 2004a. How Worthy Is the Woman of Worth? Rereading Proverbs 31:10-31 in African-South Africa. New York: Peter Lang. ———. 2004b. “The Sword That Heals! The Bible and African Women in African-South African Pentecostal Churches.” Journal of Constructive Theology 10 (1): 29–40. ———. 2005. “An African Methodology for South African Biblical Sciences: Revisiting the Bosadi (Womanhood) Approach.” Old Testament Essays 18 (3): 741–51.

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Lisa P. Stephenson ———. 2009. “The Bible and Poverty in African Pentecostal Christianity: The Bosadi (Womanhood) Approach.” In Religion and Poverty: Pan-African Perspectives, edited by Peter J. Paris, 152–65. Durham: Duke University Press. Mariz, Celília Loreto, and María Das Dores Campos Machado. 1998. “Pentecostalism and Women in Brazil.” In Power, Politics, and Pentecostals in Latin America, edited by Edward L. Cleary and Hannah W. Stewart-Gambino, 41–54. Boulder: Westview. Miller, Elizabeth. 2016. “Women in Australian Pentecostalism: Leadership, Submission, and Feminism in Hillsong Church.” Journal for the Academic Study of Religion 29 (1): 52–76. Nadar, Sarojini. 2003. “Power, Ideology and Interpretation/s: Womanist and Literary Perspectives on the Book of Esther as Resources for Gender-Social Transformation.” PhD diss. University of Natal. ———. 2004. “On Being the Pentecostal Church.” The Ecumenical Review 56 (3): 354–67. ———. 2009. “‘The Bible Says!’ Feminism, Hermeneutics and Neo-Pentecostal Challenges.” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 134 (1): 131–46. Payne, Leah. 2015. Gender and Pentecostal Revivalism: Making a Female Ministry in the Early Twentieth Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Pierce, Yolanda. 2013. “Womanist Ways and Pentecostalism: The Work of Recovery and Critique.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 35 (1): 24–34. Rees, Janice. 2013. “Subject to Spirit: The Promise of Pentecostal Feminist Pneumatology and Its Witness to Systematics.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 35 (1): 48–60. Ruether, Rosemary Radford. 1985. Women-Church: Theology and Practice of Feminist Liturgical Communities. San Francisco: Harper & Row. ———. 2002. “The Emergence of Christian Feminist Theology.” In The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Theology, edited by Susan Frank Parsons, 3–22. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Russell, Letty M. 1987. Household of Freedom: Authority in Feminist Theology. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press. ———. 1993. Church in the Round: Feminist Interpretation of the Church. Louisville: Westminster/ John Knox Press. Samah, Albert. 2013. “Women on the Pulpit: Pushing the Frontiers of Feminist Participation in Pentecostal Groups in Cameroon.” In Boundaries and History in Africa: Issues in Conventional Boundaries and Ideological Frontiers, edited by Daiel Abwa et al., 529–46. Mankon: Langaa RPCIG. Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. 1984. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Co. ———. 1994. Discipleship of Equals: A Critical Feminist Ekklesia-logy of Liberation. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Co. Slee, Nicola. 2003. Faith and Feminism: An Introduction to Christian Feminist Theology. London: Darton, Longman, and Todd Ltd. Slootweg, Hanneke. 1998. “Pentecostal Women in Chile: A Case Study in Iquique.” In More Than Opium: An Anthropological Approach to Latin American and Caribbean Pentecostal Praxis, edited by Barbara Boudewijnse, A. F. Drooger, and Frans Kamsteeg, 53–71. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. Stephenson, Lisa. 2012. Dismantling the Dualisms for American Pentecostal Women in Ministry: A Feminist-Pneumatological Approach. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2013. “A Feminist Pentecostal Theological Anthropology: North America and Beyond.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 35 (1): 35–47. ———. 2020. “Where the Wind Blows: Pneumatology in Feminist Perspective.” In T&T Clark Companion to Pneumatology, edited by Daniel Castelo and Kenneth Loyer, 127–45. New York: T&T Clark.

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37 PHILOSOPHY Inspiration for living relationally and thinking rigorously J. Aaron Simmons

In recent years, Pentecostal theologians have begun to engage with philosophy in a much more sustained manner than ever before in the brief history of the Pentecostal movement. Yet, at this early stage, there is little agreement on how to proceed in the delicate relationship. In this chapter, I argue that Pentecostal theology should draw more deeply on philosophy as a resource in order to make sense of Pentecostalism’s own distinctiveness. In other words, philosophy can help define the nature and character of what it means to be Pentecostal. In order to make this case, I offer a philosophical, and specifically phenomenological, reading of Pentecostal spirituality defined in terms of an affective pneumatology. My suggestion is that a distinctive characteristic of Pentecostal spirituality is its stress on the role of affect in Christian life. Rather than simply offering a set of doctrinal commitments expressed as propositional beliefs (orthodoxy), or a set of requirements for right practice relative to ecclesial participation (orthodoxy), Pentecostal theology and philosophy should be productively thought of primarily developing what I term an existentially oriented pneumatological orthopathy. Such a conception, I propose, not only helpfully opens spaces in which philosophy can be a profound resource for Pentecostal theology but also situates Pentecostal philosophy as perhaps best understood as affectively concerned philosophical work attending to the religious dynamics of embodied life. The potential impact of such work is significant. For example, in light of emerging work in affect theory, the philosophy of liturgy, embodied cognition, and a philosophical focus on religious practice, a better appreciation of these philosophical dimensions of Pentecostal spirituality might facilitate not only a better set of arguments for the importance of Pentecostal theology, but also new opportunities for Pentecostal contributions to philosophical debates more broadly. The account I provide here begins with a phenomenological consideration of Pentecostal spirituality as a response to the relational presence of the Holy Spirit. Then, I turn to the epistemology of Pentecostal spirituality and look at the role of experience and personal knowing in contemporary and historical sources. Subsequently, I consider the hermeneutics and ethics of Pentecostal spirituality in order to show how Pentecostal theology and philosophy is always a contemporary task and an invitation to communal identity defined by hospitality. I conclude by suggesting that when Pentecostal spirituality is philosophically understood as an existentially oriented pneumatological orthopathy, Pentecostal philosophy and theology, themselves, can rightly be understood as practices worth undertaking in ways 399

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that resist narrowly circumscribed confessional and disciplinary identities. In this way, I aim to demonstrate that Pentecostal theology and Pentecostal philosophy are both enriched by receiving mutual inspiration from each other.

The affective phenomenology of Pentecostal theology In his systematic analysis of the various methodologies on display in Pentecostal theology, Christopher A. Stephenson (2013, 112) offers an appeal to a shared Pentecostal obligation to future generations as a motivator for engaging in theological reflection: When their children have asked them about the “Whys” and “Whats” of their belief and practices, Pentecostals have always been able to take their children to meetings of corporate worship for them to experience those particulars firsthand. The question still remains, however, concerning the extent to which Pentecostals will be able to give critical and convincing theological rationales for their beliefs and practices . . . . The challenges posed by the question “What are we going to teach our children?” should further motivate Pentecostals to theologize systematically and constructively. When we take Stephenson’s question and encouragement seriously, it is worth asking what makes Pentecostalism different from a general evangelical-like Christianity? Does it matter that we go to a historically Pentecostal denominational church, rather than just any number of non-denominational churches that often look and sound so similar? Does the specifically “Pentecostal” qualifier matter? Elsewhere I have suggested that such qualifiers do matter because we must be able to articulate quite clearly where we stand and why we stand there in order then to admit that we could stand elsewhere (see Simmons 2011; Simmons and Minister 2012). That is, one’s religious commitments, like one’s social, moral, and interpersonal views, are always reflective of a complicated network of contingent and contextual influences. When it comes to our identities, precious little is obvious. Accordingly, if we take Stephenson to be right that Pentecostal obligations to future generations should at least motivate constructive theology (see Chapter 1), then let me add that Pentecostal theologians should draw more deeply on the wellsprings of philosophy in order better to articulate what it is they hold to be true, why it is justified, and how to live in light of it. By engaging philosophy more intentionally, Pentecostal theologians can then more effectively engage in the task of clearly presenting who they are, who they have been, and who they are trying to become. That said, despite what is often recognized as a rather small amount of explicitly systematic Pentecostal theology, and an even smaller amount of explicitly Pentecostal philosophy, Pentecostalism has, in just a little over a hundred years, become one of the largest and fastest-growing religious traditions in the world (especially finding traction in the East and global South). Wolfgang Vondey (2017, 8) summarizes the historical trends of Pentecostal theology in a global context: Pentecostals have been slow to articulate a systematic treatment of their theology. Although the full gospel is an open narrative, which invites other passions, practices, and beliefs, Pentecostal theology for most of the twentieth century remained confined to conversations on individual doctrines and internal matters within a sometimes rather narrowly perceived four- or fivefold gospel pattern. Pentecostals in the East and the southern hemisphere have not been able to contribute significantly their perspectives and voices to a global Pentecostal theology. 400

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Although he laments this historical lack of robust systematic theological reflection, Vondey (2017, 9) is optimistic about the future of Pentecostal theology due to a new generation of thinkers moving in different directions: Attention has shifted among younger generations to a quest for their own contributions to theology, philosophy, and the sciences; the articulation of theological hermeneutics and methodology; the revision of traditional doctrines and theological disciplines from a Pentecostal perspective; and the questions and concerns of the global Pentecostal movement. Vondey’s account of such new scholarship stresses its dynamism. The younger generation of Pentecostal scholars is not simply marching to orders laid out by the previous generation. Instead, these scholars are pushing things in new directions, critically opening discussions up to new interlocutors, and rethinking some of the legacies that have been handed over as Pentecostal distinctives. Suggestively, however, Vondey (2017, 9) qualifies his statement by noting that such emerging scholarship remains “thoroughly indebted to Pentecostal practices, rituals, and liturgies at the altar, which continues to form the seedbed for the hospitality of the full gospel.” The qualifiers are important for understanding how Pentecostalism has grown so quickly without a fully developed systematic theology underwritten by philosophical rigor. Simply put, it is the lived reality of Pentecostal spirituality— the felt engagement with the Spirit of God—that has found traction around the world and serves as the distinctive component of Pentecostalism that is worth passing down to future generations. Hence, rather than Pentecostal theology being the condition for understanding God, theology should emerge as a response to the questions that rightly occur in light of experiential engagement with the divine. Due to this lived priority of personal experience, contemporary phenomenological philosophy, in particular, has much to offer (see Yong 2000, 2015) as a framework for understanding this extremely unlikely and yet increasingly prominent spiritual tradition. Initially, Jean-Louis Chrétien’s (2004) phenomenological notion of the call/response structure offers resources for making sense of the way in which Pentecostal theology is a response to the embodied practices of a historical community. Chrétien suggests that self hood is ultimately a response to a prior call from the Other/God. For Chrétien, the call/response is distinguished from what he terms the “question/answer” structure in that the call is, itself, only heard in the response. Alternatively, an answer can only be given once a question is not only heard, but also understood. We might say that a call only signifies as “call” insofar as one takes up oneself in response to it. The response is, thereby, constitutive of the call but does not condition it. Although operating in a slightly different register, Chrétien’s phenomenological approach is similar in structure to Kierkegaard’s (1985) famous claim that we can only ever understand backwards, but we live forwards. Borrowing this general account from Chrétien and Kierkegaard, we might say that Pentecostal spirituality is a responsive attempt to get clear on what it means to understand ourselves in light of God’s self-revelation in felt, embodied, and relational ways. At this point, Jean-Luc Marion’s (2007, 98–103) notion of counter-intentionality can fill in some of the specifics of how a Pentecostal theology or philosophy might then develop as a result of such relational dynamics. Rather than typical notions of intentionality whereby some object is constituted for or by my consciousness as phenomenally given in particular ways, Marion suggests that self hood is a product not so much of looking-at objects but being looked-at by God and others. 401

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Marion’s notion of embodied existence as coram Deo is very much in line with what we might term the phenomenology of Pentecostal spirituality. Indeed, the hallmark of Pentecostal theology is the role that affect plays within it—as its condition and also its object (see Chapter 3). Although orthodoxy and orthopraxy remain important insofar as belief and action remain constitutive of any Christian identity and communal existence, Pentecostal theology reframes such belief and practice in terms of what I am terming an existentially oriented pneumatological orthopathy. Any Pentecostal theology understood as a response to God’s original, and continuing, activity of relational engagement with existing individuals, should be anchored in these phenomenological conditions of embodied affect (see Chapter 11). Stephenson’s proposal is, thus, incomplete without a robust philosophical framework according to which such systematic and constructive theology can be articulated, justified, and critically considered. In short, philosophy helps to make explicit the assumptions that often form the background conditions of theological work. Accordingly, as we will see, philosophy helps Pentecostal theology to become more faithful to its own identity and, conversely, such a determinately situated theology then facilitates explicitly Pentecostal approaches to philosophical inquiry. That said, one of the dangers of emphasizing determinacy in religious life is the temptation to overstate the uniqueness of one’s theological, or philosophical, claims. So, when I say that the philosophically distinctive mark of Pentecostal spirituality is an existentially oriented pneumatological orthopathy, I do not mean to suggest that other theological perspectives are not also orthopathically substantive. There is no need to be unique in order to be determinately identified as located within one’s embodied history, theological context, or philosophical tradition.

Pentecostal epistemology: affect, experience, and personal knowledge John A. Sims (1995, 18) frames affect as one of two key sites of inspiration for Pentecostal spirituality: Pentecostals are unequivocal in their conviction that spiritual experience must always be critiqued by objective norms of Scripture. Yet they also believe a viable theology cannot be devoid of meaningful experience. Theology that is not confirmed by authentic religious experience is not likely to have much vitality or staying power. Without rejecting the cognitive dimensions of religious belief, Sims stresses that truth is a matter of lived practice, not simply pro-attitudes toward specific doctrines. “The truths of evangelical faith,” Sims (1995, 18–19) writes, may remain true and unshakable but still lack vitality. What we know intellectually may be doing little to shape our lives. Unless truths are authenticated and set aflame by the Holy Spirit, they generate no spiritual power or effective witness. Avoiding the dangerous excesses of evangelical legalism, on the one hand, and pietistic emotivism, on the other hand, Sims (1995, 20) contends that the twin authorities of Word and Spirit work together as two sides of the same hermeneutic coin: “The living witness of the Spirit is a safeguard against the danger of scriptural authoritarianism, while the objective truth of the revealed Word guards against the excesses of subjectivity.” Sims’s proposal is 402

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important for protecting Pentecostal spirituality from a dangerous slide into the reductive tendencies of evangelicalism more broadly. Specifically, by attending to the epistemological stakes of affect, we might say that even if the four- or fivefold gospel is a doctrinal commitment of Pentecostal spirituality, the distinctiveness of an existentially oriented pneumatological orthopathy means that this commitment is never merely a matter of doctrine. The fivefold gospel is not simply a set of truth claims in light of which we are to live our lives but instead a set of claims that become true for us in the process of enacting them as the fabric for embodied faith. The call/response structure of the altar call is a ritual gateway for this affective domain (see Chapter 16). Pentecostal philosopher James K. A. Smith (2010, 12) rightly suggests that “Pentecostal theology is rooted in an affective, narrative epistemology.” Sims and Smith are in harmony here in suggesting that Pentecostal theology has long resisted the reductive tendency of evangelical communities to be defined by strict adherence to a propositional litmus test rather than by the dynamism of the Holy Spirit’s experiential presence. Sims and Smith are not the only ones to present this experiential approach to knowing. For example, Steven Land (1989, 40) suggests that “experience is vital in knowing the truth, for truth is not merely propositional—it is personal.” Similarly, French Arrington (1992, 1:77) claims that “Pentecostals have a distinct view of knowledge. Knowledge is not viewed as merely an intellectual understanding of a set of truths but as a knowing relationship with the One who established the truths by which we live.” A Pentecostal approach to personal knowing is rooted in an existentially oriented pneumatological orthopathy such that the relation to the Spirit is the context in which truth is not only articulated but activated. By locating the very identity of persons in relation to the experience of the Holy Spirit, an existentially oriented pneumatological orthopathy offers a specifically pneumatological context in which affect occurs and then gets expressed. Rather than being evangelically reductive, then, we might suggest that Pentecostal theology, and any Pentecostal philosophy worthy of the name, is expansively relational. As anyone who has ever experienced profound love, deep trust, or shared hope understands quite well, the logic of personal relations is not merely a rationalistic enterprise (see Lewis 1955). And yet this logic is not less than rational but instead so much more than merely a matter of reason. Smith (2010, 59) goes as far as to suggest that “Pentecostal worship constitutes a kind of performative postmodernism,” which he defines as “an enacted refusal of rationalism” and a resistance to “the slimmed-down reductionism of modern cognitivism.” Unlike “the fundamentalist approach [which] is based on rationalism,” Lee Roy Martin (2013, 6–7) is right to contend that “in the Pentecostal approach, religious experience is more valuable than human reason.” Such “religious experience” is a result of a thoroughly affective relationship with the Holy Spirit as engaged with, and even in some ways explaining, our embodied existence as counter-intentionally constituted before God. Kenneth J. Archer (2009) similarly contends that Pentecostal hermeneutics, as such, are defined by a relational, rather than scientifically rationalist, conception of knowing. Pentecostals, we might say, “know” God with their whole body. Douglas Jacobsen’s (2006, 4) definition of Pentecostalism similarly presents an existentially oriented pneumatological orthopathy: In contrast to other groups or churches that emphasize either doctrine or moral practice, Pentecostals stress affectivity. It is the experience of God that matters—the felt power of the Spirit in the world, in the church, and in one’s own life. Pentecostals believe that doctrine and ethics are important, but the bedrock of Pentecostal faith is experiential. It 403

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is living faith in a living God—a God who can miraculously, palpably intervene in the world—that defines the Pentecostal orientation of faith. Following Jacobsen, and working in light of Smith and Archer, Pentecostal faith is perhaps better expressed as trust—even though both terms share a common etymological source (pistis). When we think in terms of trust, we avoid conceiving of Pentecostal spirituality as a matter of “having faith that such and such is true about God” (understood as object), and shift to it being a matter of “trusting in God” (understood as person) as someone worthy of our lived commitment. Recent work in the philosophy of trust is a profound resource for Pentecostals here (see Foley 2001; Faulker 2011; Zagzebski 2012). However, given the stress on experience within Pentecostal spirituality (see Chapter 8), it is tempting to think that affect is simply a matter of feeling. In order to see how affective experience need not slide into anti-intellectualist emotionalism, we don’t need to turn to extra-Pentecostal sources in affect theory but instead can philosophically consider early Pentecostal theology itself, as expressed in the lives of first generation pastors. Even in the earliest days of Pentecostalism, Pentecostal experience is about a lived witness rather than simply about an emotional encounter. For example, the pastor of the Azusa Street revival and mission (1906–22), William J. Seymour, explicitly stresses the affective role of witness while resisting any reduction to mere feeling: “Salvation is not feeling,” he writes, “it is a real knowledge by the Holy Spirit, bearing witness with our spirit…” ( Jacobsen 2006, 51). “Some people to-day,” Seymour continues, “cannot believe they have the Holy Ghost without some outward signs: that is Heathenism. The witness of the Holy Spirit inward is the greatest knowledge of knowing God, for he is invisible” ( Jacobsen 2006, 51). Seymour’s point about the “inward” witness of the Holy Spirit is crucial for understanding the philosophical import of personal knowledge as a characteristic of an existentially oriented pneumatological orthopathy. Affective experience is not primarily about external manifestations but about internal transformation. An existentially oriented pneumatological orthopathy is not defined by staccato moments of divine revelation but instead by the constancy and coherence of one’s lived testimony. Consistent with the notion of “spiritual exercises” developed by Pierre Hadot’s (1995) consideration of ancient philosophy, the Holy Spirit changes one’s life, one’s very embodied existence, through an intimate relationship with the person of God who is self-given beyond all propositional doctrines (see Chan 2000; Castelo 2017; Vondey 2017). In this way, Pentecostal theology and philosophy should prioritize the enactment of lived commitment as belief-activational, rather than the affirmation of belief as determinate of one’s subsequent actions. Accordingly, a nonreductive conception of affect is important in order to capture the fully embodied spiritual dynamics in play in Pentecostal theology and philosophy. For such a non-reductive notion, consider Patricia Ticineto Clough and Jean Halley’s (2007, 2) suggestion that we should “treat affectivity as a substrate of potential bodily responses, often autonomic responses, in excess of consciousness” (see also Ahmed 2014). “Affect,” Clough and Halley continue, “refers generally to bodily capacities to affect and be affected or the augmentation or diminution of a body’s capacity to act, to engage and to connect, such that autoaffection is linked to the self-feeling of being alive—that is, aliveness or vitality” (2). Clough and Halley’s philosophical approach resonates well with Smith’s (2010, 72) notion of the “incipient philosophical anthropology at work in Pentecostal worship.” Smith (72) suggests that “the reason why Pentecostal worship is so affective, tactile, and emotive is because Pentecostal spirituality rejects ‘cognitivist’ pictures of the human person that would construe us as fundamentally ‘thinking things.’” In concert with postmodern epistemology, 404

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contemporary affect theory, and recent developments in embodied cognition, Smith claims that “we feel our way around the world more than we think about it, before we think about it” (72; emphasis original). When it comes to the epistemology of Pentecostal theology, we can summarize: the autoaffective framing for religious experience is intimately connected with the relational dynamics of personal embodied knowing (see Frestadius 2016). Drawing more deeply on philosophy as a lens for making sense of Pentecostalism’s own theological history helps to make such connections more prominent.

Pentecostal hermeneutics: the temporal and moral horizons of affect Archer (2013, 133) suggests that early Pentecostal hermeneutics was not usually aware of the cultural dimensions in which biblical hermeneutics has been historically situated: Pentecostal interpretation placed little or no significance upon the historical context of Scripture nor would it be concerned with the author’s original intent… The Bible is… understood at face value. The horizons of past and present were fused, or from a critical perspective, confused. He further notes that there is an urgency to Pentecostal hermeneutics such that the Holy Spirit is not simply of initial inspirational relevance but remains of continued interpretive significance. Although not a Pentecostal, the postmodern philosopher of religion, Merold Westphal, helpfully demonstrates that philosophical resources upon which Pentecostal theologians ought to draw must not be constrained by confessional identity. Westphal (2016, 18) rightly suggests that the Holy Spirit must be viewed as a contemporary hermeneutic facilitator within Christian communities of discourse and practice: It makes sense to say that there is an epistemic dimension to divine grace, and that in the role of revealer and teacher, the Holy Spirit not only played a role in the production of the various writings that make up the Bible but also plays a role today in our interpretations of them, just to the degree that we are open to hearing a voice other than our own or those of our culture (including our religious culture). Acknowledging the continual action of the Holy Spirit is, for Westphal (1973, 2009), not mere hermeneutical advice but a moral necessity for Christian life. The Spirit challenges all complacency and self-sufficiency within our interpretive gestures. Westphal’s account, thus, entails the idea that the Holy Spirit forces us out of egoism by equipping us for service to others. A Spirited hermeneutic, whether Pentecostal or not, should always motivate moral hospitality. Amos Yong (2002, 2004), who has contributed more to the growing literature in Pentecostal philosophy than anyone other than James K. A. Smith, traces more explicitly a connective chord between the pneumatological interpretive task and contemporary moral life in his view of a “consensual hermeneutic,” which draws on the triadic relationship of Spirit, Word, and community. For Yong (2004, 36), theological hermeneutics is “continuously to discern the spiritual—i.e. purposive, intentional, teleological, dynamic, and creative— moments of interpretation by paying close attention to or discerning the h istorical and social locations of the interpreter and how these factor into the hermeneutical process.” 405

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Notice that Yong stresses the connection of Spirit-Word-Community such that one’s own interpretive situation is always among others. Reminiscent of Martin Heidegger’s notion of being-with as a definitive aspect of being-in-the-world, for Yong, life is always a living-with. Yong’s work is a testament to how philosophy and theology can mutually inform each other. For example, his work in the theology of disability (Yong 2007) offers a specific instance of what living-with might involve when it comes to the affective interpretive decisions we make that affect the embodied existence and self/social-narrative of others (see Chapter 32). Moreover, he advocates a hermeneutic/moral pneumatological imagination that should globalize our conception of God’s interaction with human history: “I have argued that the many tongues of Pentecost signify both the universality of the gospel message and its capacity to be witnessed to by those who derive from the many nations, cultures, ethnicities, and languages of the world” (Yong 2007, 11). We might say that, for Yong (2008), hospitality to the (global and/or disabled) other is the lived outcome of an existentially oriented pneumatological orthopathy. The connection of affective hermeneutics, personal experience, and a life of hospitality is not simply a product of postmodern philosophical commitments; it can be traced to the very origins of Pentecostalism itself. For example, recounting the early history of the Azusa Street revival and mission, Seymour laments the racial divisions that quickly developed and threatened to overcome the unity that was essential to the work of the Holy Spirit (see Chapter 39). He explains that the Spirit of God overcomes all facile divisions that operate within our social workings of power: Very soon division arose through some of our brethren, and the Holy Spirit was grieved. We want all of our white brethren and white sisters to feel free in our churches and missions, in spite of all the trouble we have had with some of our white brethren in causing diversion, and spreading wild fire and fanaticism. Some of our colored brethren caught the disease of this spirit of division also. We find according to God’s word [that we are] to be one in the Holy Spirit, not in the flesh; but in the Holy Spirit, for we are one body… If some of our white brethren have prejudices and discrimination… we can’t do it, because God calls us to follow the Bible…. We must love all men as Christ commands…. Christ is all and for all. He is neither [a] black nor white man, nor Chinaman, nor Hindoo, nor Japanese, but God. ( Jacobsen 2006, 53) It is Seymour’s own lived experience as a black body affectively constituted amidst racist cultural assumptions that forms the context in which his theological understanding develops (see Jacobsen 2006, 45). His theology emerges as a response not only to the encounter with God’s Spirit, but also within a cultural framework in which God sees him as a person in ways his fellow countrymen often do not. In light of Seymour’s example, and the hermeneutic framing of it implicitly provided by Archer, Westphal, and Yong, we should begin to realize that an existentially oriented pneumatological orthopathy is defined by an expression of embodied unity (lived out as moral hospitality) due to the shared human condition as understood in the context of the continued critical presence and work of the Spirit in the world. Given the emphasis on embodied cognition and its moral implications, Pentecostal theology and philosophy would both do well to draw more substantively on philosophical debates in identity theory that concern race, sexuality, and gender as crucial hermeneutic lenses for our moral and epistemic lives. 406

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Historically, movements of the Holy Spirit have usually been accompanied by radical challenges to the hierarchies of social power. In the contemporary world, where far too often Pentecostalism has been overtaken not only by evangelical epistemology but also evangelical social theory, the affective, transformative, and personal dimensions of Pentecostal spirituality are under threat from a social conservativism that fails to appreciate the radicality of a pneumatalogical imagination. The Spirited hospitality originally shown by Seymour and continued by Yong (see Chapter 14), has been far too often replaced by self-protective and insular habits of moral authoritarianism. As such, despite the global reach of Pentecostalism and the expansive moral recommendations of contemporary Pentecostal theologians and philosophers, far too many contemporary American Pentecostals are nationalistically fearful of strangers rather than inviting these strangers to become neighbors. Rather than standing with Holy Spirit boldness against the powers of racism, sexism, and xenophobia, too often contemporary evangelicalized Pentecostals end up confusing their own social identity with Christian identity, as such. Importantly, the existentially oriented pneumatological orthopathy of Pentecostal spirituality was not initially developed by academics but by women and men who were living their testimonies in a world in which their affective faith was often in conflict with the power structures of their broader communities. This lived faith is why the hermeneutical importance of understanding affective spirituality as a contemporary moral invitation should not be missed. Unless philosophers and theologians take up an existentially oriented pneumatological orthopathy as a task in their current contexts, they will fail to appreciate the historical legacy of Pentecostalism as a hermeneutic necessity for present action (see Byrd 1993). It is here that we can begin to appreciate the importance of contemporary political philosophy, social epistemology, and critical theory for the future of Pentecostal thought. Hopefully, by drawing on such philosophical resources, Pentecostal theologians and philosophers will be able to live more effectively into the, perhaps surprisingly progressive, moral vision of early Pentecostalism. The affective dimensions of Pentecostal spirituality eschew any static historicism. In order to remain true to its own identity as a response to the relational work of God’s Spirit occurring in each generation, Pentecostal theology and philosophy must remain living traditions. Arrington (1992, 77–78) goes so far as to suggest that, “Pentecostal believers do not study the Bible in a detached manner. Through the Spirit they have entered into the experience of the first-century Christians.” Arrington’s account suggests that Pentecostal theology should fundamentally appreciate and embrace Kierkegaard’s (1985) contention that there can be no genuine follower of Christ “at second hand.” Following at second hand would mean that being a Christian is simply to relate to the historical narrative of Christ. Instead, all followers must enter not only into an historical narrative but must become contemporaries of Christ himself. An existentially oriented pneumatological orthopathy causes a temporal rupture in that it puts us in an embodied relationship to God as a result of our being constituted by the counter-intentionality of the divine call. In other words, the narrative of God in Christ is always only affectively pressing insofar as it is also our narrative—as exhibited in our testimony. Smith (2010, 67) suggests that “narrative is a fundamental and irreducible mode of understanding—and ‘Pentecostal knowledge’ attested in testimony bears witness not only to the Spirit’s work but also to this epistemic reality.” Here epistemology gets cashed out as a moral imperative in a social world. As we have seen, in light of an existentially oriented pneumatological orthopathy, truth is not a set of doctrinal propositions but rather a hermeneutically complicated and morally oriented life affectively opened by the relation to God and others. 407

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Conclusion We have seen how Pentecostal spirituality can be understood as a distinctively living tradition when read as offering an existentially oriented pneumatological orthopathy. Specifically, I have considered the impact of such spirituality on Pentecostal theology and philosophy when read in relation to a phenomenological methodology of counter-intentional call/response, an epistemology of experience and personal knowledge, a hermeneutics of contemporaneity, and an ethics of hospitality. Importantly, as observed in the case of Westphal, one does not need to identify, confessionally, as a Pentecostal to engage in philosophy oriented toward the affective dimensions of religious existence. It is for this reason that I suggested in the introduction that Pentecostal philosophy is perhaps best defined as affectively concerned philosophical work attending to the religious dynamics of embodied life. When understood this way, perhaps ironically, though not unexpectedly, much of the best “Pentecostal” philosophy has not historically been done by Pentecostals. However, this fact should cause not consternation, but inspiration. The younger generation of Pentecostal scholars still have significant work yet to do in a variety of philosophical and theological directions. Hopefully, this chapter has laid out at least some of the possible ways of moving forward in light of the crucially affective dimensions of Pentecostal thinking and living. In the end, we live only insofar as we continue to breathe. The Holy Spirit offers literal inspiration, that is, breath, for being able to live more abundantly. I have suggested that, within Pentecostal intellectual inquiry, this inspiration should move in two directions: by drawing on the distinctiveness of Pentecostal theology, philosophers (whether Pentecostal or not) should continue to breathe deep, live humbly, and run hard toward the truth that defines our desire and our work. Alternatively, by drawing inspiration from philosophy (whether Pentecostal or not), Pentecostal theologians should continue to inhabit a tradition that, despite its occasional anti-intellectualist tendencies, demonstrates the importance of living relationally while also thinking rigorously.

References Ahmed, Sara. 2014. The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 2nd ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Archer, Kenneth J. 2009. A Pentecostal Hermeneutic: Spirit, Scripture, and Community. Cleveland: CPT Press. ———. 2013. “Pentecostal Hermeneutics: Retrospect and Prospect.” In Pentecostal Hermeneutics: A Reader, edited by Lee Roy Martin, 131–48. Leiden: Brill. Arrington, French L. 1992. Christian Doctrine: A Pentecostal Perspective. Volume 1. Cleveland: Pathway Press. Byrd, Joseph. 1993. “Paul Ricoeur’s Hermeneutical Theory and Pentecostal Proclamation.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 15 (2): 203–14. Castelo, Daniel. 2017. Pentecostalism as a Christian Mystical Tradition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Chan, Simon K. H. 2000. Pentecostal Theology and Christian Spiritual Tradition, JPT Supplement 21. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Chrétien, Jean-Louis. 2004. The Call and the Response. Translated by Anne. A. Davenport. New York: Fordham University Press. Clough, Patricia Ticineto, and Jean Halley, eds. 2007. The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social. Durham: Duke University Press. Faulkner, Paul. 2011. Knowledge on Trust. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Foley, Richard. 2001. Intellectual Trust in Oneself and Others. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frestadius, Simo. 2016. “In Search of a ‘Pentecostal’ Epistemology.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 38: 93–114. Hadot, Pierre. 1995. Philosophy as a Way of Life. Edited by Arnold I. Davidson. Malden: Blackwell.

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Philosophy Jacobsen, Douglas, ed. 2006. A Reader in Pentecostal Theology: Voices from the First Generation. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Kierkegaard, Søren. 1985. Philosophical Fragments/Johannes Climacus. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Land, Steven J. 1989. “Pentecostal Spirituality: Living in the Spirit.” In Christian Spirituality: Post-Reformation and Modern, edited by Louis Dupré and Don E. Saliers, 479–99. New York: Crossroad. Lewis, Clive Staples. 1955. “On Obstinacy in Belief.” The Sewanee Review 63 (4): 525–38. Marion, Jean-Luc. 2007. The Erotic Phenomenon. Translated by Stephen E. Lewis. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Martin, Lee Roy, ed. 2013. Pentecostal Hermeneutics: A Reader. Leiden: Brill. Simmons, J. Aaron. 2011. God and the Other: Ethics and Politics after the Theological Turn. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Simmons, J. Aaron, and Stephen Minister, eds. 2012. Reexamining Deconstruction and Determinate Religion: Toward a Religion with Religion. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Sims, John A. 1995. Our Pentecostal Heritage: Reclaiming the Priority of the Holy Spirit. Cleveland: Pathway Press. Smith, James K. A. 2010. Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy. Pentecostal Manifestos 1. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Stephenson, Christopher A. 2013. Types of Pentecostal Theology: Method, System, Spirit. AAR Academy Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vondey, Wolfgang. 2017. Pentecostal Theology: Living the Full Gospel. Systematic Pentecostal and Charismatic Theology 1. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. Westphal, Merold. 1973. “Prolegomena to Any Future Philosophy of Religion that Will Be Able to Come Forth as Prophecy.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 4 (3): 129–50. ———. 2009. Whose Community? Which Interpretation? Philosophical Hermeneutics for the Church. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. ———. 2016. “Spirit and Prejudice: The Dialectic of Interpretation.” In Constructive Pneumatological Hermeneutics in Pentecostal Christianity, edited by Kenneth J. Archer and L. William Oliverio, Jr., 17–32. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Yong, Amos. 2000. “The Demise of Foundationalism and the Retention of Truth: What Evangelicals Can Learn from C. S. Peirce.” Christian Scholar’s Review 29 (3): 563–88. ———. 2002. Spirit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. ———. 2004. “The Hermeneutical Trialectic: Notes toward a Consensual Hermeneutic and Theological Method.” Heythrop Journal 45 (1): 22–39. ———. 2007. Theology and Down Syndrome: Reimagining Disability in Late Modernity. Waco: Baylor University Press. ———. 2008. Hospitality and the Other: Pentecost, Christian Practices, and the Neighbor. Maryknoll: Orbis. Zagzebski, Linda Trinkaus. 2012. Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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38 PROSPERITY THEOLOGY Material abundance and praxis of transformation Andreas Heuser

Since its breakthrough within a distinct post-Second World War subculture of the North American Pentecostal movement, prosperity theology has become for many almost synonymous with global Pentecostalism. The so-called prosperity gospel seems to represent an ideal-type of “transnational transcendence” or a specific religious economy that “travels well” (Csordas 2009, 5). Transnational surveys from the first decade of the twenty-first century underline both the global spread and the design of an almost canonized corpus of theology (Pew 2006, 2010). The empirical findings suggest a remarkable success story of prosperity theology, both within global Christianity and within a short time span. At the same time, prosperity theology signifies one of the most contentious concepts in contemporary global Christianity and is widely criticized and rejected by other parts of the Pentecostal movement. The concerns relate to the focus the prosperity gospel places on material wealth combined with physical and bodily well-being (see Chapter 24). Commonly also referred to as the gospel of “health and wealth,” prosperity theology crafts this-worldly success and individual well-being as outward signs of divine grace. Synonymous with a peculiar spiritual language of desire, it encodes speech acts surrounding victorious living and triumphant faith, miraculous wealth and fulfilled promises, righteous opportunities, and deserving health. In order to habitualize convictions of legitimate prosperity, it invites ritual practices of gift exchange. Communication about prosperity theology happens within non-hierarchical, horizontal rather than vertical networks of national and global interaction (see Christerson and Flory 2017). Single versions of prosperity theology are often nuanced by specified motifs and contextual modifications or express comparative distinctiveness in a competitive arena of prosperity ministries. Conceptual alterations caution awareness of a plurality of prosperity theologies (Attanasi 2012; Wariboko 2012). Keeping in mind the descriptive diversity of local adaptations, this chapter reconstructs the basic hermeneutical design of prosperity theology. I argue that the evaluation of the prosperity message in Pentecostal theology demands careful attention to the historical genealogy, ecumenical critique, and widening ambitions of the prosperity movement. The bulk of the chapter presents the main theological trajectories with a focus on the genealogy of prosperity theology and the characteristic profile that is being transmitted, adjusted, and modified in local contexts. Thereafter follows a summary of theological critique against prosperity theology from acquainted biblical theological interventions to much less known ecumenical 410

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perceptions. A significant emphasis is then placed on the socioeconomic relevance of prosperity theology. In a concluding remark, prosperity theology is staged in the wider discourse on the legitimacy of material wealth substantially engrained in a holistic concept of life in abundance.

A historical genealogy of prosperity theology Although closely linked to Pentecostal theology, prosperity teaching embraces prior traditions of mind science and positive thinking as well as healing movements, mostly within Protestant milieus. The vanguards of the prosperity movement relate their message to the ministry of Kenneth Hagin (1917–2003), considered the seminal pioneer of the American Word of Faith movement. Hagin had an Assemblies of God background, yet the origins of the Word of Faith movement merged diverse theological strands ranging from Pentecostals, Holiness evangelicals, American Methodists, African-American Baptists, and Dutch Reformed Calvinists (Bowler 2013). Hagin’s theology instructed believers in concrete steps to be taken to obtain the promised divine blessings. Profoundly driven by his autobiographical narrative on healing experiences (including dramatic accounts of near-death moments and hell rides), he presented himself as a systematic, Bible-based healing evangelist who refrained from sensationalist approaches to healing. Any believer, Hagin (1995) suggested, can potentially access the healing promises of Christ with the power and techniques of the mind. In his approach, Hagin was directly informed by the teachings of Essek William Kenyon (1867–1948), a Baptist minister considered a Word of Faith protagonist (McConnell 1988, 6–12). The American genealogy reaching back to Kenyon digs deep into a theological melting pot around the turn of the twentieth century that builds the foundation of contemporary Pentecostal prosperity teaching. The traces of Kenyon’s theology lead back to the Keswick holiness movement and the New Thought or mind sciences movement beginning with the 1880s. Kenyon’s inspiration through the Keswick movement stood much in accordance with late nineteenth-century evangelicalism. The Keswick movement expressed evangelical piety with its emphasis on scriptural evidence, the authority of “new birth” experience, and the ensuing request for sanctification (see Chapter 22). In addition, it epitomized divine healing and so-called Higher Life teachings, which prioritized eradication of personal sin in order to access the inner richness of a God-fearing life. Kenyon fused Higher Life persuasions with the philosophical framework of the American New Thought movement. Originating in the late nineteenth century, the New Thought movement is often overlooked in the historical survey of prosperity theology ( Jones and Woodbridge 2011, 25–49; Bowler 2013, 11–40; Walton 2014). In line with various streams of contemporary mind sciences, the New Thought movement postulates the human potency to reach perfection in life through mind-power and constructive thought. In other words, it expresses the supremacy of thought over material substance. Thoughts enable and shape reality; ideas create or alter the physical world, and the mind ultimately controls bodily existence. One of the main characteristics of the New Thought movement was to present mental methods to transform thoughts into real-life matters. It conceptualized the enactment of ideas by invoking correct speech, or by articulating one’s conviction in an effective way. A key element in New Thought circles was to speak into existence material and physical well-being (Bowler 2013, 12–15). Since words generate reality, the repetition of words helps channel aspirations for life; the redundancies of speech advocate the change of conditions. A twin technique to demonstrate the power of thought was to visualize a higher status of 411

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existence, and to radiate constructively around pursuits of success, accomplishment, and triumph in life. The reality of poverty and illness can be reconceptualized through images of prosperity and health. The recurring concept is that mental desire predates material ownership. The manifestation of success relies on transforming thought concepts of life. Lastly, ideas actualize only when pronounced with an authority of self-assurance. New Thought insisted on resolute faith in oneself to achieve success. By consequence, sceptical belief accounts for destructive life experiences; negative attitudes towards life obstruct alternative visions of one’s existence. In sum, the New Thought movement exemplified the legitimacy of human desire for material success and underscored life-changing values of confidence, self-help, and optimism. Kenyon (1943) contributed to the predominantly philosophical genre of New Thought by transmitting the mind science convictions into biblical language. In his reading, a believer can gain perfection in faith through the power of thinking. Hagin presented Kenyon’s core ideas by paying credit to the linguistic prerogative: the power of thought has to be expressed in words to make it a real power of life. Thought experience is coupled with linguistic expression, or the “power of the tongue” (Prov. 18:21). The concept of a religious speech act that creates reality relates to biblical accounts of divine declarations of the material world (see Genesis 1; John 1). Hagin stressed the importance of God’s spoken “word” to alter positive thinking. This emphasis gave way to innovative faith concepts: by alluding to scriptural references (e.g. Prov. 23:7), New Thought transformed positive thinking into faith language: positive thinking is now combined with the power of confession—if I want to activate desired benefits of faith, I need to bespeak constructive thinking. This belief in the power of the word has also been critically described as the “naming-and claiming” act of positive confession. Prosperity theology developed New Thought teaching along a Christological trajectory. In order to tap the rich resources of faith and positive confession, a believer has to explore the “Christ in you” or develop a “Christ-consciousness.” This Christological variant of the New Thought movement, developed in the Unity School of American Christianity around the beginning of the twentieth century, emphasizes the Christ-principle or the idea of an indwelling God rather than the historical figure of Jesus. In positive confession, a believer acclaims “a Christ potentiality, which professes a capacity for persons to attain unity with the higher self ” (Walton 2014, 459). From this potentiality outwards, confessions of faith generate positive existence evidenced in prosperous living (often citing 3 John 1:2). A prosperous living is seen to be in accordance with divine will, and conversely, a life of misery, poverty, and illness is inconsistent with God’s plan of life and signifies an impoverished faith. Prosperity theology claims well-being as divine promise in the double sense of health and of material wealth in the here and now ( Jones and Woodbridge 2011, 53). Furthermore, positive confession privileges the contractual dimension of faith. Hagin referred to it as the “law of faith” (see Bowler 2013, 44–46). The contracted bond of faith engages a cause-and-effect relationship between a believer and God: faith activates a dynamic of divine promise and fulfilment, and God is bound to obligate the request of faith. Prosperity theology might be defined as a “legal spiritual system” (Bowler 2013, 46). Hagin (1995) excelled in teaching the practical steps to virtually command blessings from God, which he termed the “keys” to receiving acts of grace. The set of “keys” encapsulates all sorts of positive confessions in terms of biblical references to material blessings and instructions on how to keep the sonship of God in obedience to God’s word. However, there is another side to this contractual understanding of faith: the contract can be broken by 412

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human free will. Just like the cause of prosperity is spiritual, the cause of poverty is spiritual. In the final sense, poverty is not defined by the absence of material wealth; it is rather defined by disobedience to God and as consequence of sin. The aim of prosperity theology is to reinstate the contractual relationship with God that opens the way to divine blessings again. In other words, the curse of poverty can be wiped off a personal record with a strong positioning of the “law of faith” (Bowler 2013, 46). Attached to this “law of faith” is the extreme notion often identified as “seed-faith,” which projects manifold concrete blessings of grace as the divine promise of abundant life. It has gained enormous popularity within the prosperity movement. The concept outlines a spiritual economy of investing and gaining in profits, also designed as an imperative of “sowing and reaping.” The origin of the concept lies in a fundraising project conducted in the 1950s by Oral Roberts (Tulsa, Oklahoma), an early adopt of Hagin to start his religious broadcasting enterprise (Walton 2014, 464). Seed-faith expects divine blessing in connection with giving financial means to God (sic!) and the church: the more you sow the more you will reap. In prosperity circles, the multiplying divine grace is expected to return obligations at least tenfold. The seed-faith complex thus calculates the outcome of a successful life “making material reality the measure of the success of immaterial faith” (Bowler 2013, 7). The praxis of sowing and reaping is connected to often elaborate rituals of “gift” exchange. Postures on divine giving and of tithing characterize a new style of Pentecostal prosperity worship.

An ecumenical critique of prosperity theology Prosperity theology has come under stark theological critique, with unambiguous interventions from two disciplines, biblical exegesis and ecumenical studies. Biblical scholars express particular concerns about hermeneutical and methodological aspects of prosperity teaching. Many New Testament scholars see the emphasis on material wealth as a non-negotiable indicator of incoherence with wider biblical teachings. New Testament scholar Werner Kahl (2007, 22) defies the preoccupation with material success as an essential trope and argues that “the idolisation of individual business success as divine blessing undermines Gospel values.” He categorizes prosperity theology with its selective use of Scripture as advertisement of consumerist materialism and “unbiblical ideology” (Kahl 2007, 22; 2015). Such criticism formulated in biblical studies also informed systematic theological assessments of prosperity theology at large. Critics across theological traditions converge on the a-historical composition of prosperity theology. Scholarly discourse unanimously disapproves of the non-contextual and selective usage of biblical passages by prosperity theologians (Amanze 2011; Jones and Woodbridge 2011; Yong 2011; Mtata 2013; Agana 2015; Asamoah-Gyadu 2015). Yet, despite such solid criticism, the magnetism of prosperity theology has remained strong throughout global Christianity. In turn, in contemporary ecumenical discourse, prosperity theology has attracted theological comments from all of the main church bodies, and again, the overall reception of prosperity theology bears a counter-critical tone. A closer look into recent declarations of the Lausanne Movement, the World Council of Churches (WCC), and the Roman Catholic Church discloses the ecumenical perception of the core commitments and impact of prosperity theology.

The Cape Town Commitment Among the three ecumenical bodies, it is only the Lausanne Movement that directly engaged in detail with prosperity theology with the clearest anti-prosperity theology sentiments. 413

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This critical discussion is found in its latest united statement, the so-called Cape Town Commitment titled “A Confession of Faith and a Call to Action,” which crafts the current roadmap of the Lausanne Movement. This joint commitment of evangelicals globally rejects prosperity theology as an aberration of the Christian faith. In contrast, the Cape Town Commitment (2011) puts strong emphasis on values of humility, integrity, and simplicity, summarized as the so-called HIS-strategy as the ultimate guideline for action. In an almost dualistic divide, prosperity theology is classified in the field of adversaries to biblical truth, close to representing cardinal sins of pride, power, and greed. The Cape Town Commitment (no. 91) affirms “that there is a biblical vision of human prospering,” but it categorizes the praxis of “naming-and-claiming” material blessings as false teaching and denies “as unbiblical the teaching that spiritual welfare can be measured in terms of material welfare, or that wealth is always a sign of God’s blessing.” Contrary to the HIS-strategy, the obsession-like aspirations of material wealth can easily promote idolatry, and “wealth can often be obtained by oppression, deceit or corruption.” In the same paragraph, the Cape Town Commitment defies the contractual law-of-faith construction of prosperity theology: “We also deny that poverty, illness or early death are always a sign of God’s curse, or evidence of lack of faith, or the result of human curses, since the Bible rejects such simplistic explanations.” The Cape Town Commitment is clear in its resolute refusal of prosperity theology. The rejection is based primarily on moral grounds. Prosperity theology cultivates the “idolatry of greed” that opposes the integrity of faith as understood in evangelical theology. The fact that the Lausanne Movement covers prosperity theology in long and intense passages shows its widespread impact on evangelical Christianity. Internally, this impact is seen as a critically divisive factor for the cohesion of evangelicalism (Biehl 2015, 137). The devotees to prosperity theology are urged to return to the correct biblical vision of prosperity related to the core moral values that run throughout the Commitment. Yet this mandate allows space for ambiguity: on the one hand, moral reasoning criticises the explanatory capacity of the contractual faith complex; the Cape Town Commitment accuses any marginalization of people as a consequence of weak faith. Implicitly it questions the causality of poor faith and poor fate, i.e. the conviction that the poor and vulnerable are self-responsible for their situation. On the other hand, the strategy disconnects societal anomalies of corruption or oppression from relations of power. Consequently, the transformation of society may happen through cognitive acts of individual repentance. Therefore, the rediscovery of biblical visions of prosperity is followed by moral codes of behaviour, as against a disproportionate emphasis on material orientation.

Together towards life A contrasting view on prosperity theology is offered by declarations of the World Council of Churches (WCC), the ecumenical body of mainly historic Protestant and Orthodox churches. In its latest mission statement, “Together towards Life” (Keum 2013), the WCC reflects about “Life in Abundance.” The theme suggests a direct line to prosperity theology, yet also refers to long-established WCC discourses on the “Economy of Life.” This text is only the second WCC statement on mission and offers an actual mapping of global Christianity, which pays credit, more detailed than in the previous statement, to the rise and faces of Pentecostalism. This attention is amplified by the pneumatological turn in mission theology (see Chapter 26), echoed in the key codes of the statement which bind together “Spirit” and “life.” Together towards Life can indeed be interpreted as a feature of the pentecostalization phase of WCC history. 414

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The mission statement immediately alludes to John 10:10 by claiming that “affirming life in all its fullness is Jesus Christ’s ultimate concern and mission.” Abundant life evolves as core characteristic of the whole document, and the emphasis is placed on the fullness of life in the here and now. At the same time, the first paragraph states that the denial of life to people “is a rejection of the God of life” (no. 1). The statement deliberates about such denial of life in terms of social injustice or political exclusion from participation in public life; by mentioning caste systems, enslavements and racism, and religiously defined denials of life. The criterion for discernment in mission is solidarity with “oppressed people… broken communities and the restoration of the whole creation” (no. 102). The WCC statement avoids mentioning the term prosperity theology; however, the text unmistakably challenges prosperity teachings as an integral ideological part of the neoliberal market economy, which it diagnoses as an idolatrous system (see Chapter 34). The discussion of prosperity appears in the analysis of the “global system of mammon” that protects the wealth of the rich and powerful and stands “in direct opposition” to the reign of God (no. 31). From the perspective of the WCC, the formative elements of prosperity theology, its positive confessions of material blessings, and its “seed” claims of investing and harvesting stand in accordance with the dominant market ideology. In clear rejection of these priorities of prosperity theology, the statement concludes: “Mission, then, is to denounce the economy of greed and to participate in and practice the divine economy of love, sharing and justice” (no. 108). The “empire of mammon” can be dethroned by its victims, dominantly the poor and marginalized people. In response, the concept of “mission from the margins” transforms the prior notion of the “preferential option for the poor” used in WCC documents since the 1980s. “We must turn our direction of mission to the actions that the marginalized are taking. Justice, solidarity, and inclusivity are key expressions of mission from the margins” (no. 107). Together towards Life credits the “voices from the margins” with authority to discern life-affirming from life-destroying processes. In sum, the WCC operates with a justice idiom to designate life in fullness. Abundance of life is defined from the margins in order to allow for full participation in life. The justice idiom embraces solidarity and social inclusiveness; but life in fullness also carries a concern for the integrity of creation. The longing for individual material success expressed by prosperity theology reduces the biblical sense of life in fullness to anthropomorphic, individualistic, and materialistic coinage of life in material wealth. Prosperity theology thus legitimates the empire of mammon rather than expressing divine grace. If the Cape Town Commitment criticizes the contractual nature of belief that marginalizes the poor and vulnerable, these “margins” remain more vaguely connoted in the WCC statement. Together towards Life speaks from a position of privileged observation about the margins: it takes the position of churches “in solidarity with” but not of the “churches of the marginalized themselves” (Biehl 2015, 144).

Gaudium Evangelii The third document to be mentioned here is the papal exhortation Gaudium Evangelii (2013). Right from the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Francis proclaimed a church for the poor as his ecclesiological vision. This vision is manifest in his first official declaration. Prosperity theology figures again as a theological antipode to the church for the poor. “The culture of prosperity deadens us” (no 54). Gaudium Evangelii explicitly deals with prosperity theology as “nothing more than a form of self-centredness” and emphasizes the “growing attraction to various forms of a ‘spirituality of well-being’ divorced from any community life, or to a ‘theology of prosperity’ detached from responsibility for our brothers and sisters” (no. 91). 415

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Pope Francis categorizes global capitalism as an “economy of exclusion” so that “those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the ‘exploited’ but the outcast, the ‘leftovers’” (no. 53). The longing for material wealth replicates “the idolatry of money… lacking a truly human purpose” (no. 55) and without limits signals the reality of a “deified market” (no. 56). From this perspective, prosperity theology can only be interpreted as a theological guise reducing human beings to “one of his needs alone: consumption” (no. 55). In contrast, the church for the poor is authentic when addressing the structural causes of poverty and inequality and when pursuing the common good (nos. 202; 203). Gaudium Evangelii classifies prosperity theology as a fragment in a fetishized economy of exclusion. Acts of positive confession of success drastically delimit human dignity to egocentric consumerism and social blindness. In conclusion, the framing of prosperity theology in all three ecumenical positions highlights similar theological concerns. The Lausanne Movement favours a moral reading with a focus on individual behavioural transformation. The WCC and the papal declaration apply a structural reading aligned with liberation theological and Marxist insights exposing unjust and asymmetrical systems of dependency. These documents attack global capitalism as a deified market economy. All ecumenical positions share a theological concern for the de-eschatologizing texture of prosperity theology; its this-worldly orientation; and the prominence of the here and now as the primary, if not only, concern of life. In addition, the documents strongly criticize the dualistic imagery of prosperity theology, either in the personalized separation of those blessed or cursed, or in the spatial configuration of the kingdom of God and the empire of mammon: prosperity theology is located in an empire of mammon—individual claims for material blessings are in far distance from divine grace.

The socioeconomics of contemporary prosperity theology Prosperity theology has attracted significant interdisciplinary scholarship for representing both “a practical and instrumental form” of Pentecostalism (Harrison 2005, 148, original italics). Pentecostal theologian Amos Yong (2012, 16) identified the practical design of prosperity theology as key to a highly productive “religious economy.” In turn, numerous case-studies have profiled a wide range of the socioeconomic strata of prosperity theology, adapted to diverse scenarios of social change (see Maxwell 1998; Attanasi and Yong 2012; Freeman 2012). However, the socioeconomic script of prosperity theology remains ambiguous and feeds ongoing controversial debate. In line with the widespread ecumenical critique, the strongest theological criticism is raised from a Social Gospel perspective. In this view, the theological emphasis of prosperity teaching on the translation of matters of the “here-and-now” into Christian life only generates a “spiritual platform” for neoliberal ideology (Augustine 2011; cf. Gifford 2015b). Embedded in a “seductive, hypnotic” aura of “materialistic leanings,” prosperity theology offers “a private password to personal affluence” that amalgamates all biblical mandates of social engagement “into a mess of conservative pottage” (Sanders 2011, 144–45). Most poignantly, prosperity theology crafts its own theological message in the form of a “prosperity gospel”—a phrase often used in critical distance to the teachings of the movement, especially by Pentecostals. The social capital of the prosperity gospel comes under scrutiny specifically in view of the culture of Pentecostal megachurches. Critics observe the emergence of business empires led by “prophets for profit” (Ukah 2013). The “monetary turn” of business-minded religious entrepreneurs has been described as a Pentecostal kleptocracy operating in an intransparent mode of a “sacred secrecy” around finances (Ukah 2005, 272). 416

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Yet prosperity theological parameters and ethical values invite for a counter-reading as well. Prosperity theology’s material economy of blessing can have immense effects on processes of social transformation (Heuser 2016). Such constructive ethos of prosperity theology emerges from a “long tradition of self-help and mutual aid” (Harrison 2005, 146). By eliminating the rift between God and “mammon,” the prosperity message energizes capabilities of coping, overcoming, and desire otherwise often suppressed by Pentecostal concerns for a sanctified life. Core themes within prosperity theology are related to selfesteem and self-confidence, to self-discipline and an enchanted kind of Protestant work ethic (see Dickow 2012; Drønen 2015). In this sense, prosperity theology can help reconstruct notions of the self and emphasizes self-reliance and individual agency. Together, these empowering notions have contributed to the success of the prosperity message in tandem with the Pentecostal orientation towards a redeemed and empowered life. In this light, prosperity theology translates into a social technique adaptable to different social contexts and milieus. In entrepreneurial environments, prosperity theology may strategize also a kind of management Christianity, turning business concepts into projects of church reform, whereas urban-based “progressive Pentecostalism” is pooling community resources for investments in social outreach projects (Miller and Yamamori 2007). In contexts of urban marginalization, prosperity theology unfolds its transformative impulses in a (slum-) theology of survival (Heuser 2013); a theology of waiting and trusting helps to overcome disillusionment and unsteadiness in times of international migration and integration (Rey 2015). In education-sensitive contexts, we also find transnational educational cooperation between prosperity gospel ministries (Daniels 2015). More recently, prosperity ministries circulating in global networks seek credibility through the fusion with a dominion-theological frame of social analysis. Prosperity theology expands its visionary resources from individual wealth to national development programmes (Heuser 2019). This range of options illustrates that the gatekeepers of prosperity theology see themselves as promoters of an intentional sociopolitical transformation. It indicates the possibility of a reform of the original vision of prosperity transcending from the erstwhile impetus on personal faith to concerns of poverty alleviation and socioeconomic development in variegated patterns. Prosperity theology detracts from prospects of wealth for an elite faithful to embrace notions of the common good. Importantly, alongside the conceptual extension to a broader, even global arena of social transformation, prosperity theology is expanding its reductionist materialism to an awareness of the more profound ambivalences of life.

Conclusion Prosperity theology claims a perplexing career. Historically, broadly prefigured in American holiness traditions adhering to an ascetic ethos, prosperity theology unfolds an unprecedented impetus on personal material wealth as divine right of believers. The history of religious materialism within African American Christianity in the twentieth century combines passages from survival to concepts of better living and Christian capitalism (Harrison 2005, 130–46). Coined in mixed theological milieus in the post-Second World War era, prosperity theology amends theological formats to be recognized as a potential gatekeeper to social transformation in postcolonial global Christianity. At the start of the twenty-first century, prosperity theology has entered trans-religious discourses on success and wealth (Zakaria 2015; Heuser 2015b). The trans-religious osmosis of conceptual aspects, popular imagery, and ritual practices liaised with a theological message of prosperity designates new and emerging “religio-scapes” of the prosperity gospel (Heuser 2015a). 417

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Despite its popular success, the prosperity message belongs to the “unresolved questions” in the salvific economy of Christianity, and Pentecostalism in particular, with its emphasis on the material provision of success and prosperity as a burning issue for “the church as a whole” (Anderson 2004, 162). Walter Hollenweger (2004), whose definition of early Pentecostalism as prefiguring the emancipatory movements of the twentieth century because of their sensitivity towards people and themes at the margins of society set the tone for understanding global Pentecostalism, interrogates with a bitter note whether contemporary expressions of the Pentecostal movement are forgetting about their past. In a geopolitical era of sustainability, the emphasis on material wealth in the here and now questions traditional biblical as well as philosophical and global socioeconomic perspectives. Political philosophy supports the legitimacy of individual wealth but disputes unrestrained prosperity as a serious social problem (see Chapter 40). In the theory of justice, the question of material wealth is linked to a vision of society that enables and sustains a life in fullness and self-esteem for all, yet unrestricted wealth contradicts the urgent global challenges of poverty alleviation, climate change, and economic crises (Neuhäuser 2018). The narrative of prosperity theology is rightly criticized for its reductionist view on material abundance, thus negating the many broader complexities of life and the moral problem of wealth. Yet recent redefinitions of materialism in prosperity theology begin to approach global experiences of suffering, poverty, alienation, and the denial of access to social resources more intensely than before. Prosperity theology remains convincing for individual believers in times of plenty. At the same time, re-signified from an individualistic image of material betterment into a holistic praxis of transformation, prosperity theology can stabilize wider aspirations of hope and carry expectations of coping with misery. Whether actual criteria of a sustainable life are already involved in the shaping of prosperity theology or not, as a concept it is open to narrow the gap to a more holistic notion of life in fullness.

References “A Confession of Faith and Call to Action.” (The Cape Town Commitment). 2011. Available at www. lausanne.org/content/ctc/ctcommitment, accessed 01 July 2019. Agana, Wilfred A. 2015. Succeed Here and in Eternity: The Prosperity Gospel in Ghana. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Amanze, James. 2011. “Theology of Prosperity and Its Impact on the Development and Expansion of Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches in Africa 1970–2010.” In Religiöse Bindungen – neu reflektiert: Ökumenische Antworten auf Veränderungen der Religiosität in Europa, edited by I. Noble, U. LinkWieczorek and P. De Mey, 154–72. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt. Anderson, Allan. 2004. An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Asamoah-Gyadu, J. Kwabena. 2015. Sighs and Signs of the Spirit: Ghanaian Perspectives on Pentecostalism and Renewal in Africa. Oxford: Regnum. Attanasi, Katherine. 2012. “Introduction: The Plurality of Prosperity Theologies and Pentecostalisms.” In Pentecostalism and Prosperity: The Socio-Economics of the Global Charismatic Movement, edited by Katherine Attanasi and Amos Yong, 1–12. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Attanasi, Katherine, and Amos Yong, eds. 2012. Pentecostalism and Prosperity: The Socio-Economics of the Global Charismatic Movement. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Biehl, Michael. 2015. “To Prosper and to be Blessed: Prosperity, Wealth and ‘Life in Abundance’ in Ecumenical Debate.” In Pastures of Plenty: Tracing Religio-scapes of Prosperity Gospel in Africa and Beyond, edited by Andreas Heuser, 131–45. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Christerson, Brad, and Richard Flory. 2017. The Rise of Network Christianity: How Independent Leaders Are Changing the Religious Landscape. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Csordas, Thomas J. 2009. “Introduction: Modalities of Transnational Transcendence.” In Transnational Transcendence: Essays on Religion and Globalization, edited by Thomas J. Csordas, 1–29. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Prosperity theology Daniels, Daniels D. III. 2015. “Prosperity Gospel of Entrepreneurship in Africa and Black America: A Pragmatist Christian Innovation.” In Pastures of Plenty: Tracing Religio-scapes of Prosperity Gospel in Africa and Beyond, edited by Andreas Heuser, 265–77. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Drønen, Tomas S. 2015. “‘Now I Dress Well. Now I Work Hard’ – Pentecostalism, Prosperity, and Economic Development in Cameroon.” In Pastures of Plenty: Tracing Religio-scapes of Prosperity Gospel in Africa and Beyond, edited by Andreas Heuser, 249–63. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Freeman, Dena, ed. 2012. Pentecostalism and Development: Churches, NGOs and Social Change in Africa. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Gifford, Paul. 2015a. Christianity, Development and Modernity in Africa. London: Hurst. Gifford, Paul. 2015b. “The Prosperity Theology of David Oyedepo, Founder of Winners’ Chapel.” In Pastures of Plenty: Tracing Religio-scapes of Prosperity Gospel in Africa and Beyond, edited by Andreas Heuser, 83–100. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Hagin, Kenneth E. 1995. Keys to Biblical Prosperity. Tulsa: Rhema. Harrison, Milmon F. 2005. Righteous Riches: The Word of Faith Movement in Contemporary African American Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Heuser, Andreas. 2013. “‘Refuse to Die in Poverty!’ Armutsüberwindung und Varianten des Wohlstandsevangeliums in Afrika. Theologische Zeitschrift 69 (1–2): 146–71. Heuser, Andreas, ed. 2015a. Pastures of Plenty: Tracing Religio-scapes of Prosperity Gospel in Africa and Beyond. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Heuser, Andreas. 2015b. “Battling Spirits over Prosperity: The ‘Pentecostalized’ Interreligious Contest over Money Rituals in Ghana.” In Pastures of Plenty: Tracing Religio-scapes of Prosperity Gospel in Africa and Beyond, edited by Andreas Heuser, 149–65. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Heuser, Andreas. 2016. “Charting African Prosperity Gospel Economies.” HTS Theological Studies 72 (4): 1–9. Heuser, Andreas. 2019. “‘Visionäres Branding’: Zur okularen Hermeneutik politischer Theologie in afrikanischen Megakirchen.” Berliner Theologische Zeitschrift 36 (1): 86–109. Hollenweger, Walter J. 2004. “An Introduction to Pentecostalisms.” Journal of Beliefs & Values 25 (2): 125–37. Jones, David W., and Russell S. Woodbridge, eds. 2011. Health, Wealth and Happiness: Has the Prosperity Gospel Overshadowed the Gospel of Christ? Grand Rapids: Kegel. Kahl, Werner. 2007. “Prosperity Preaching in West Africa: An Evaluation of a Contemporary Ideology from a New Testament Perspective.” Ghana Bulletin of Theology 12 (2): 32–42. Kahl, Werner. 2015. “‘Jesus Became Poor so that we Might Become Rich.’ A Critical Review of the Use of Biblical Reference Texts among Prosperity Preachers in Ghana.” In Pastures of Plenty: Tracing Religio-scapes of Prosperity Gospel in Africa and Beyond, edited by Andreas Heuser, 101–15. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Kenyon, Essek William. 1943. The Bible in the Light of Our Redemption. Lynnwood: Kenyon’s Gospel Publishing Society. Keum, Jooseop. 2013. Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes. Geneva: WCC Publications. Maxwell, David. 1998. “‘Delivered from the Spirit of Poverty?’ Pentecostalism, Prosperity and Modernity in Zimbabwe.” Journal of Religion in Africa 28 (3): 350–73. McConnell, Dan R. 1988. A Different Gospel: A Historical and Biblical Analysis of the Modern Faith Movement. Peabody: Hendrickson. Miller, Donald E., and Tetsunao Yamamori. 2007. Global Pentecostalism. The New Face of Christian Social Engagement. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mtata, Kenneth, ed. 2013. Religion: Help or Hindrance to Development? Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt. Neuhäuser, Christian. 2018. Reichtum als moralisches Problem. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, ed. 2006. Spirit and Power: A 10-Country Survey of Pentecostals. Washington: Pew Research Center. Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, ed. 2010. Islam and Christianity in Sub-saharan Africa. Washington: Pew Research Center. Rey, Jeanne. 2015. “Missing Prosperity: Economics of Blessings in Ghana and the Diaspora.” In Pastures of Plenty: Tracing Religio-scapes of Prosperity Gospel in Africa and Beyond, edited by Andreas Heuser, 339–53. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Sanders, Cheryl J. 2011. “Pentecostal Ethics and the Prosperity Gospel: Is There a Prophet in the House?” In Afro-Pentecostalism: Black Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity in History and Culture, edited by Amos Yong and Estrelda Alexander, 141–52. New York: New York University Press.

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Andreas Heuser Ukah, Asonzeh F.K. 2005. “Those Who Trade with God Never Lose: The Economics of Pentecostal Activism in Nigeria.” In Christianity and Social Change in Africa: Essays in Honor of J.D.Y. Peel, edited by Toyin Falola, 253–74. Durham: Carolina Academic Press. Ukah, Asonzeh F.K. 2013. “Prophets for Profit: Pentecostal Authority and Fiscal Accountability Among Nigerian Churches in South Africa.” In Alternative Voices: A Plurality Approach for Religious Studies, edited by Afe Adogame, Magnus Echtler and Otto Freiberger, 134–59. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht. Walton, Jonathan L. 2014. “Prosperity Gospel and African American Theology.” In The Oxford Handbook of African American Theology, edited by Katie G. Cannon and Anthony B. Pinn, 453–67. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wariboko, Nimi. 2012. “Pentecostal Paradigms of National Economic Prosperity in Africa.” In Pentecostalism and Prosperity: The Socioeconomics of the Global Charismatic Movement, edited by Katherine Attanasi and Amos Yong, 35–60. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Yong, Amos. 2012. “A Typology of Prosperity Theology: A Religious Economy of the Global Renewal or a Renewal Economics?” In Pentecostalism and Prosperity: The Socioeconomics of the Global Charismatic Movement, edited by Katherine Attanasi and Amos Yong, 15–33. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Zakaria, Seebaway. 2015. “Rhetoric and Praxis of Ghanaian Salafi and Sufi Muslims: Analogies with Prosperity Gospel.” In Pastures of Plenty: Tracing Religio-scapes of Prosperity Gospel in Africa and Beyond, edited by Andreas Heuser, 167–81. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.

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39 RACE Reordering the world on the principle of grace David D. Daniels III

A Pentecostal theological response to the insight of W. E. B. DuBois that “the problem of the twentieth century is the color-line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea” (DuBois 1903, 13) came from Pentecostal pioneer Frank Bartleman (1871–1936), who later attached this pronouncement to the Azusa Street revival and mission, voicing the contours of a liberative theology of race: “The color-line has been washed away in the blood [of Jesus]” (Bartleman 1970, 55). This radical and bold theological pronouncement voiced the early theological promise of the Pentecostal revival, articulating the egalitarian aspirations of Christians envisioning racially inclusive and post-racist ecclesial realities that gesture beyond the color line, which divided the races. An expansive interpretation of Bartleman’s response to DuBois should engage how the color line framed the ecclesial relationships of white Pentecostals with people of color, ranging from Africans, First Peoples (Native Americans), Latin Americans, Asians, and others (Kalu 2008; Corky 2012; Tarango 2014; Ramirez 2015). Since Pentecostalism emerged during the era of European colonialism in much of the global South and racial segregation in North America, the contexts where Pentecostalism developed are marked by the racial dynamics of the color line. These contexts provide content for Pentecostal theologies of race. Theologies must grapple with the complexity of race and racism. Race is a concept that functions theologically in different ways within global Pentecostalism. On the one hand, race is understood as theologically shaping the Pentecostal movement in ways similar to how it shaped Protestantism in countries marked by racial inequality, such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and South Africa. On the other hand, Pentecostalism also contributes to the theorizing about race especially connected with the ways that interracialism and multiracialism functioned in the Pentecostal movement during the era of legalized racial segregation and apartheid. In this chapter I argue that a Pentecostal theology of race reorders the world and society beyond the color line on the principle of grace. As a Black Pentecostal in the United States, I am particularly interested in the challenges faced by the black and white binary. The essay begins with theoretical considerations before discussing Pentecostal theologies of racial exclusion in contrast to theologies of inclusion. I then present Pentecostal positions on interraciality and multiraciality and conclude by exploring a Pentecostal alternative to racism as a way to structure society in light of a theological vision beyond the color line. 421

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Definitions of racism Theologically, racial division is fueled by a will to power that contradicts God’s created order. Racism, according to major theorists of race, such as William J. Wilson (1973, 3–4, 8–9), is the combination of racial privilege and prejudice plus power. Racism requires that one racial group—white people are the dominant group in the modern era—possesses the power to impose its racial prejudices on another group; it can  subordinate another racial group. Racial privilege exists in two forms: unearned entitlement and conferred dominance. Privilege is exclusionary by allotting certain opportunities—economic, political, social, religious—to one group and denying these opportunities to another. Racial power, prejudice, and privilege operate according to specific racial regimes, which kept whites as a race at the apex of the hierarchy of race. While racism in public discourse is rarely defined beyond the framework of prejudice, there is a need to discuss race within a broader framework such as Wilson’s that includes prejudice as a topic but refuses to let the topic of prejudice exhaust the discussion of race. Prejudice is merely one type of racism, a psychological form of racism. As a social construct that defines peoplehood, racial markers can be restrictive for some people and expansive for others. Racism addresses the restrictions of certain racial markers. Racism, then, can be defined psychologically, sociologically, ideologically, and intersectionally, and a theological approach to race must be able to engage with each dimension. First, there is the well-known concept of racial prejudice as an emotional disdain, fear, and hatred of a particular race. Negative attitudes and feelings toward particular races are cast as prejudice. Prejudice can be expressed interpersonally or toward a group. Second, there is institutional racism (Wilson 1973; Phillips 2011) as a sociological phenomenon with its focus on the social and political structures of racism. Sociologically, racism focuses on how race structures an organization, religion, or nation as well as how it operates as a system. It highlights how religions and societies are organized around race, granting, or limiting rights, privileges, status, authority, and opportunities according to a group’s racial designation. Sociologically, theorizing about race ranges from analyses based on racial formation, racial hierarchies, and the reproduction of racial inequality in outcomes related to income, health, education, governance, and lifespan. Another sociological trajectory is racialization or racial formation. Interpreting race under the rubric of racialization, we would critically employ historicity and specificity of race. The focus is on how race changes overtime. Race-making as a process receives scrutiny. Such a move offers a more dynamic approach to race as well as a theological understanding of race that takes history and context seriously (Omi and Winant 1994, 55–56). Third, ideologically, theorizing about race focuses on racial scales that plot different races along a spectrum from superior to inferior peoples. These racial scales include theories ranging from the eighteenth-century ideas of Carolus Linnaeus to nineteenth-century theories of the Darwinists and the twentieth-century theories of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray. The ideology of white supremacy coupled with its Eurocentric universalism contended that a Eurocentric view of reality is universal, silencing all other “race-particular” perspectives of realities (Copeland 2004, 503). Fourth, intersectionality as a theory argues that race as an axis should be interpreted in conjunction with other axes such as gender, class, or ability, for instance. Without an intersectional analysis, the experiences of black women, for instance, are often rendered invisible because discussions of race often highlight the plight of black men, and discussions of gender analyses privilege the experience of white women. Intersectional analysis aims at 422

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overcoming the limits of classic race and gender methodologies with its dual or multiple axes approach (Casselberry 2013; Hills Collins and Bilge 2016). How is race within a Pentecostal reality best explored theologically? Central to any theological engagement of race along the lines outlined here is revealing when religion replicates or resists the established order. In the words of Courtney Jung (2009, 371), race is identified as the way that “the state itself organizes access to power and membership.” Yet, unlike the state, the church does not determine and control the boundaries of exclusion that religious and other actors operate. In church, religious actors may adopt or violate the state-drawn and -sanctioned boundaries of exclusion that select “access to power and membership.” In response, there are at least four Pentecostal theologies of race active in Pentecostal history, each dealing differently with the principle of grace: (1) theologies of racial exclusion and subordination, (2) separation, (3) inclusion, and (4) conviviality. Since theologies of exclusion and of subordination reproduce the dominant racial order, they basically mirror the role of religion in the society. Theologies of religious separatism challenge the established racial order outright. Yet theologies of inclusion and of conviviality are Pentecostalism’s most significant contribution to theological and public discourse on race because they demonstrate that Pentecostalism possesses the capacity to counter the dominant racial order. The remainder of this essay reflects on the different perspectives.

Theologies of racial exclusion, subordination, and separation Theologies of racial exclusion have produced ecclesiologies of white purity, superiority, and domination. These theologies promote globally all-white ecclesial organizations. Theologies of racial subordination sanction racial segregation within ecclesial structures that are basically under white rule. White superiority assumes the subordination of minoritized races since it is key to the theological anthropology of this theology of race. Theologies of racial exclusion and of subordination both reproduce the racial order of white domination. They privilege white rule and subordinate African Americans, Latina/os, Asian-Americans, First Nation peoples and other minoritized races within ecclesial structures. During the first ten years of the Pentecostal movement in the United States and South Africa, racial division and subordination of minoritized races became particularly visible (MacRoberts 1988, 60–76). Major sectors of Pentecostalism reproduced the racial order with their theologies of racial exclusion and subordination. While theologies of racial exclusion and of subordination reproduce the racial order, theologies of separatism by respective minoritized races function otherwise. These ecclesiologies reject forced racial exclusion, deny racial superiority of whites and the inferiority of the minoritized races, and oppose exclusive white rule and the racial subordination of minoritized races. Separatist ecclesiologies are framed by the equality of the races and the religious self-determination of races. Religious separatism could also be used to interpret denominations in majority white countries constituted and governed by distinct minoritized races such as African-American, Afro-British, Black, Latina/o, Asian American, Asian immigrant, African immigrant, Afro-Caribbean, and First Nations. These minoritized races engage in religious self-determination in their respective religious organizations. Denominations led by minoritized races include the Church of God in Christ and the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, which are currently predominately African American; the Apostolic Assemblies of Faith in Christ Jesus and the Church of God Pentecostal, International Movement are predominately Latina/o; the United Pentecostal Council of the Assemblies of God is majority Afro-Caribbean; the Korean Full Gospel Church and the Filipino Assemblies of the First Born are predominately Asian American; the American Evangelical Church is predominately 423

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Native American; and the Redeemed Christian Church of God and the Church of Pentecost are predominately African immigrant. Theologies of religious separatism by minoritized races have challenged the dominant racial order with its racial hierarchy of races, rejecting white rule and racial subordination of African Americans within ecclesial structures (Daniels 2014, 78–81). The response is a reorientation of grace in terms of racial inclusion.

Theologies of racial inclusion Theologies of racial inclusion explore the ecclesial realities of interracial and multiracial Pentecostal congregations and denominations led by people from minoritized races. They emerged at the genesis of classical Pentecostalism during the Azusa Street revival (1906–15) and engage race beyond the black-white binary. Bartleman described the Azusa Street revival in theological terms in the following way: There can be no divisions in a true Pentecost. To formulate a separate body is but to advertise failure, as a people of God. It proves to the world that we cannot get along together, rather than causing them to believe in salvation…. We are called to bless and serve the whole “body of Christ,” everywhere. Christ is one and His “body” can be but “one.” To divide it is but to destroy it…. (Anderson 2004, 249) Compelling images of the church as “a true Pentecost,” the “people of God,” and the “body of Christ” name the interracial and multiracial unity of the church as a counterpoint to church and society organized around forced racial divisions. Consequently, theologies of racial inclusion engage race across different axes that structure Pentecostalism: black-white-Latina/o-Asian, black-Latina/o-white, and Asian-whiteLatina/o. It should be recognized that the Pentecostal tradition in comparison to other Protestant traditions exceeded by a significant percentage the number of interracial and multiracial ecclesial organizations, and this reality needs to be theologically investigated. It should be noted that Pentecostal theologies of racial inclusion and interracial ecclesial structures emerged during the era of racial segregation, when even civil rights agencies like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People were predominately white-led organizations. This interracial achievement offers a key insight in how Pentecostal interracial ecclesiologies and structures challenged the dominant racial order in ways more radical than the leading civil rights organizations of the early twentieth century. Drawing deeply from the egalitarian theologies of race, such as Henry McNeil Turner or Charles Price Jones, these ecclesiologies created sites of racial resistance, exposing theological and racial reasoning that justified the racial order with racial exclusion and subordination. Christian egalitarianism informs Pentecostal theologies of racial inclusion. An ecclesial statement that gave voice to this theological egalitarianism is the 1917 pronouncement on Christian unity and racial inclusion approved by the Church of God in Christ. The pronouncement articulates a robust vision of Christian unity in these terms: Many denominations have made distinctions between their colored and white members…. The Church of God in Christ recognizes the fact that all believers are one in Christ Jesus and all its members have equal rights. Its Overseers, both colored and white, have equal power and authority in the church. (Daniels 2012, 142) 424

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Racial equality as an ecclesial concept challenges the lodging of the church and its members into a hierarchy of the races. It also rejects setting criteria for full participation in the life of the church framed by race. This theological maneuver deems all believers as having equal rights, all races being “equal in power and authority,” that were given to each member, regardless of their race, by Christ (see Chapter 20). By creating a more racially mixed denomination through these ecclesial practices, they inverted the dominant racial order. The ecclesial innovations of theologies of racial inclusion subvert the racial order of segregation, subordination, and white supremacy. By disengaging from the dominant racial equation of white superiority and the inferiority of minoritized races, theologies of racial inclusion undermine the dominant racial order. These theologies explore interracial ecclesial realities where whites submit to the authority of leaders of minoritized races, practice racial equality, borrow from the cultures of minoritized races, suspend practicing white supremacy, and, together with people across the races, craft new ecclesiologies and ecclesial structures. They anticipate organizationally a post-segregation future by demonstrating that ecclesial racial inclusion is achievable (Crawley 2017, 4–5). At the same time, while theologies of racial inclusion challenge the dominant racial order, many fail to challenge the dominant racial order’s patriarchal underpinnings (see Chapter 36). The ones that do challenge these foundations practice intersectionality. Interracial Pentecostal ecclesial structures erected by minoritized women confront racism and sexism. In these ecclesial structures, the race and gender that society places at the lower rungs of hierarchies of authority exercise the highest authority in these particular women-led ecclesial settings (Alexander 2005, 162–68).

Practicing theological maneuvers of interraciality and multiraciality Theologies of inclusion form a type of theology that reflects the direction of the Azusa Street revival and theological focus of Pentecostal leaders such as Smallwood Williams, Leonard Lovett, Antonio Nava, Emma Cotton, and Roger Cree. By rejecting white supremacy, theologies of racial inclusion craft new ecclesial practices; they could be seen as leveling the hierarchy of credibility and severing the link between credibility and race. The ecclesial practice of leaders from minoritized races are fashioned by the experience of having whites submit to their authority, being treated as equals by whites, having their religious culture recognized as worthy of adoption, and rejecting white supremacy. Together these Pentecostals from minoritized races along with white Pentecostals have fashioned new  ecclesiologies that generate inclusionary ecclesial practices and structures (Becker 1967, 207; Williams 1970; Lovett 2006; Tarango 2014; Ramirez 2015). Theologies of racial inclusion construct  an interracial ethic  that challenges the racial politics of white supremacy, which has shaped the “will to power” exercised by whites as a race. Because these theologies reject whites as the dominant race, these white Pentecostals voluntarily displace themselves from positions of racial superiority. Such racial displacement involves various theological maneuvers. First, these white Pentecostals desist from making the society in the image of their race by forcing other races to fit into their creation. Second, they dispossess themselves of the notion that their race as the “owners of truth and knowledge” has the right to rule others, and that other races represent “ignorance” (Freire 1970, 71). Third, by becoming open to the gifts and contributions of other races, these white Pentecostals acknowledge the limits to their race’s knowledge and join other races in “attempting, together, to learn more than” (Freire 90) each race knows separately. Herein, 425

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the hierarchy of teachability is flattened: whites are willing to be taught by Pentecostals from minoritized races as much as by white Christians. Fourth, they recognize the right of Pentecostals from minoritized races to possess religious authority, including exercising this right over white religious affairs. Pentecostal leaders and congregations from minoritized races who received white leaders and clergy into their respective denomination practice  interracial politics  challenging  the subordination of minoritized races that has shaped the ethic of servility imposed by whites as a race  upon minoritized races. Instead, theologies of racial inclusion  acknowledge that minoritized races possess equally the God-given authority to enter the arena of authority and exercise jurisdiction over white religious affairs. These theologies involve figuring out the degree of authority that Pentecostals from minoritized races are willing to share with their white members and the corresponding amount of authority they are willing to relinquish. Such theologies encourage  power-sharing, and Pentecostals from minoritized races along with white Pentecostals must experiment with how to lead and co-lead across races without any one race possessing total power. Lacking the political and social power  to change the racial order, theologies of racial inclusion have generated enough power to interrupt the racial order within their religious territory and to erect alternative interracial and multiracial sectors. Although  they cannot determine the longevity or social consequences of interracial and multiracial ecclesial realities  nor remake Christianity  within and across societies, still they  can erect ecclesial structures framed by theologies of racial inclusion. Theologies of racial inclusion require a negotiated and equal sharing of power and authority between Christians of different races where each race is recognized as a peer; all forms of racial subordination are to be rejected (Edwards 2008). These theologies structure church and society around the equality of races. Taking the exclusionary racial practices and social reality of their times as an affront against the Christian gospel, these Pentecostals, such as Bishop Smallwood Williams, willingly violate racial segregation laws and customs. Challenging the principle of white supremacy, they subvert the reigning racial categories, invent race-crossing as an ecclesial practice, and engage in authentic power-sharing. Historically, certain forms of racial integration were insufficient: while legal barriers to opportunities were lifted, whites still controlled the levers of power in the white majority sectors. To transition to a post-racist society the racial order needed to be transformed: “A more equal sharing of power… is required as the precondition of authentic human interaction” between the races (Cone and Wilmore 1979, 25). Unchecked power distorted love and marred the conscience of white Christians. Power itself became the “controlling element in power” rather than love controlling power. Within white Christianity allied to a racial order of racial subordination, Christian love was unhitched from justice; white Christianity preferred to moralize love as a topic in reference to minoritized races rather than to understanding love and justice as intertwined; justice was key to controlling power in addition to love (Cone and Wilmore, 26). The gross imbalance of power between the races  resulted in whites garnering more power than they could exercise in a just manner. Entrenched within the existing US power structures, for instance, “white power” encountered limited “meaningful resistance” from minoritized races in tempering and restraining it in the cause of justice (see Chapter 40). Consequently, whites exerted an inordinate amount of control over the lives of minoritized people. Without power being constrained by freedom, love, justice, and truth in the image of God, the “concern for justice” becomes “transmuted into a distorted form of love, which, in the absence of justice, becomes chaotic self-surrender” on the part of minoritized races; 426

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“powerlessness breeds a race of beggars” who possess “conscience-less power” and “powerless conscience” (Cone and Wilmore, 23–24). Practitioners of theologies of racial inclusion choose to embrace Pentecost as a theological event of racial inclusion; they embody a multiracial Pentecost rather than the dominant racial order. They anticipate God’s future rather than accommodating themselves to the dominant racial structure. By resisting and countering exclusionary practices based on race, these Pentecostals, such as Bishops Charles Harrison Mason, Garfield Haywood, and Mattie Thornton Branch, inaugurate new ecclesial realities. Espousing a Christian or Pentecostal theological egalitarianism that affirms racial equality, these Pentecostals live into a church where grace structures ecclesial life rather than racism (Talmadge 2014).

Theologies of a post-racist state: an Azusa Street alternative to race Theologies, where grace rather than racism structures ecclesial life, anticipate or inaugurate a reality in which religious exchanges escape the marks of the racial order; this organizational feat is more than an engagement of imaginaries. It depicts alternative Christian communities where people interact in ways that exceed how their respective races operate according to the dominant racial norms, laws, and expectations. This ecclesiology resists erasing race; it employs race as one of many markers. Race, then, is among the ensemble of religious markers or it might substitute other markers along with doctrine, gender, language, diaspora, and others to constitute peoplehood. Ecclesiologies, where grace structures ecclesial life, disrupt the center-margin equation with whites in power constituting the center (see Chapter 27). These ecclesiologies and related ecclesial spaces reconstitute sectors in the borderlands of the church and society as a thirdspace, to use Edward Soja’s term—havens infused with power independent of the dominant center of racial power (Soja 1996, 57, 61). The practitioners of these ecclesiologies populate this thirdspace in the borderlands, constituting them as emancipatory sites. Subverting the center-margin binary with the “white” center as the locus of authority, they annunciate a church that transcends the dominant racial order. This emancipatory site subverts the racial hierarchies and exceeds the dominant racial structure constituted by white supremacy by circumnavigating ways of organizing religion that reproduces the racial order. The disrupting of key dominant binaries in theologies of a post-racist state could build on the scholarship of bell hooks (Gloria Jean Watkins) and Victor Anderson who argue that “unresolved binary dialectics of slavery and freedom, the Negro and Citizen, insider and outsider, black and white, struggle and survival” (Copeland 2004, 508) inhibit the capacity of communities to transcend oppression and essentialism. By transcending key dominant binaries, Pentecostal sites can become emancipatory. As emancipatory ecclesial sites on the borderlands, they operate outside of key dominant binaries: center-margin, black-white, majority-minority, oppressor-oppressed. Transcending key dominant binaries, ecclesiologies, where grace rather than racism structures ecclesial life, chart post-racist ecclesial trajectories. These post-racist ecclesial trajectories resist post-racial and non-racial theologies. It is not post-racial nor non-racial because race as a social construct like gender still shapes realities. Post-racist ecclesial trajectories do not mirror the white racial order. Instead, post-racist ecclesial trajectories exceed the key dominant binaries by creating a “thirdspace” as one of many possible worlds beyond the dominant racial order. They are polyvalent and polyvocal spaces. Paul Gilroy’s popular concept of conviviality engages with these thirdspaces. 427

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For Gilroy (2005, xv), conviviality registers a “radical openness that brings conviviality alive, makes a nonsense of closed, fixed, and reified identity, and turns attention toward the always-unpredictable mechanism of identification.” He further defines conviviality as not “the absence of racism or the triumph of tolerance.” Instead, what is critical for Gilroy is that conviviality is set in the context of “cosmopolitanism as a ‘network of inter-connectedness and solidarity that could resonate across boundaries, reach across distances, and evade other cultural and economic obstacles.’” The Azusa Street revival, when viewed as conviviality, built a Pentecostal peoplehood around a text in the “Pentecost” book: “And [God] hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26). At the revival, this text was recast in terms of nationalities instead of nations, broadcasting that “all classes and nationalities meet on a common level” (“Beginning of a World Wide Revival,” 1907). The revival leveled the hierarchy, placing all nationalities and classes on equal footing before God and each other. While the concept of race informs the Apostolic Faith papers, the language of race escapes it. Nationalities, a key term of the early twentieth century, functioned as the term of choice (Noble, Corum, and Harper 2001, 17). Building on Courtney Jung, the post-racist ecclesial trajectories produce theologies of the post-racist state by rejecting the racial state’s use of differences to craft practices of racial inclusion, exclusion, allocation, and outcomes. Jung (2009, 367) argues that “differences… have been marked as categories of exclusion and selective inclusion by the state itself.” Significantly, it is a result of politics that skin color often becomes a race, and traditions and practices often become ethnicity, while eye color remains nothing more than eye color. Race, ethnicity, and religion are not exogenous categories of affiliation; they are internal to politics itself. ( Jung 2009, 367) In rejecting the racial state’s use of differences, theologies of the post-racist state can draw upon the Azusa Street revival as a post-racist theological and ecclesial project. The differences in language, food, fragrance, and custom at the revival heightened the differences between immigrants from Europe, Asia, and Latin America, along with African Americans and First Peoples who populated early Pentecostalism more than it emphasized the commonalities across these communities (Gould 1981). Since the construction of the early Pentecostal peoplehood preceded the invention of whiteness as a racial category, the Azusa Street revival embraces the ethnic spectrum of peoplehood. People-making as a project of theological anthropology broadens the process of fashioning identity and communities by investigating the changes, clustering, and alliances of the people-making process. More than a black-white exchange or exchanges between whites and other distinct minorities, race-making engulfs the internal debates in the making of pentecostality or Pentecostal-ness. Within the emerging Pentecostal peoplehood, there were also changes, clustering, and alliances. At the Azusa Street revival, race competed with nationality as the category to organize the society. While the racial category of white and colored is used in the Apostolic Faith paper, its usage is rare and limited; only in a very few instances is white or colored used; surprisingly, Negro is never used. Nationality, though, is regularly used in the Apostolic Faith paper. The various articles re-enforce the perspective of one writer: “God makes no difference in nationality” (“The Same Old Way,” 3). Throughout the Apostolic Faith, the nationalities that were present at the revival are consistently listed to describe the expanse of the Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit: Chinese, Ethiopians, 428

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Germans, North American Indians, Mexicans, and others. This listing is on an equal plane; this is not a hierarchy of nationalities (Noble 2001, 3). In a sense, within the Apostolic Faith paper, the people were organized linguistically. The revival offered an alternative to the trilogy of races (Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid) or the four European races (Alpine, Mediterranean, Nordic, Semitic) and the four others (Ethiopian, Mongolian, Malay, American) or nationalities categorized into forty races. The revival focused on organizing the people of the world around their languages, including the languages of “India, China, Africa, Asia, Europe, and islands of the Sea as well as the learned languages of Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, German, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Zulu… Hindu and Bengali… Chippewa” (Noble 2001, 1). The languages of Africa (Kru, Zulu, or Ugandan) are listed on par with the other languages of the world. This linguistic framework provided a lens to view humanity in terms other than race (Noble 2001, 1, 13, 21, 23). Possibly, the Azusa Street revival through its linguistic organization of peoplehood theologically gestures toward theologies of the post-racialist state. By flexibly deploying race as a marker of identity and stressing language instead, a theology of the post-racist state, then, would avow human commonality and “equality.” It would serve as a new basis for Christian unity that bridges the racial divide and erases the color line. Speaking with tongues has frequently been seen as overcoming the confusion of Babel; as a universal language of the Spirit, glossolalia are a sign of ecclesial life beyond the color line (see Chapter 28). The annunciation of post-racist ecclesiologies by the Azusa Street revival could be interpreted as leveling the hierarchies of the races. The impact of theologies of the post-racist state differed depending upon where the races were “originally” slotted within the racial hierarchy. For “whites,” post-racist theologies deflate the myth of racial superiority, supplant the singularity of “white” identity with the plurality within Pentecostal peoplehood. In a sense, whiteness implodes. For minoritized races, the myth of inferiority is likewise deflated in addition to these minoritized races being recast within the plurality of Pentecostal peoplehood. Thus, theologies of the post-racist state promote cultural, social, and ecclesial exchanges among the diverse constituents of Pentecostal peoplehood.

Beyond the color line The Pentecostal revival in principle rejects the premise of the color line based on a scheme of racial superiority and inferiority and of white purity and racial pollution. At its outset, Azusa Street disallowed the purported need for the color line, which could be understood as the need to protect and preserve the purity of the white race ecclesially and socially. Whether miscegenation should be promoted to advance this new peoplehood is left unanswered, although Bishop Robert Clarence Lawson’s The Anthropology of Jesus Christ Our Kinsman advocated it at least theoretically. The theological anthropology of the post-racist state is pivotal ( Jacobsen 2006, 203). Within the racial context of its era, the Azusa Street revival broke with the dominant racial arrangement. Against the world of the color line or the world fractured by the color line, the Azusa Street revival fashioned a Pentecostal peoplehood. At the revival, Pentecostals took off the dominant racial identity in the society and donned a post-racist identity. Thus, Pentecostals challenged the biblical appropriateness of Christians adhering to the color line and encouraged the people to traverse the spaces emancipated from the barriers of color, to trespass into post-racist zones, even if briefly. The historian Cecil M. Robeck Jr. (2002, 33) concludes: “Clearly, Seymour may be credited with providing the vision of a truly ‘color-blind’ congregation.” While “color-blind” 429

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is a contested term, Seymour and the Azusa Street revival at least initially designed a postsegregated space. What is astonishing about the revival as a post-segregated space are the conversions that occurred in the racial consciousness of whites (such as Gaston B. Cashwell and others). These were individuals who admitted to being prejudiced and experienced a conversion in racial consciousness that led them not only to reject prejudice and to associate willingly with minoritized races, specifically African Americans, but also to educate their networks about interracial and multiracial association. Their change of consciousness was a component in their formation of a new peoplehood. A Christian apologetic espoused by theologies of the post-racist state contended that the Christian God objects to racism in addition to identifying with and standing in solidarity with the victims of racism, with the oppressed; the Christian God is the God of the oppressed. They asserted that the Christian gospel, as opposed to certain white Christian theologies, does not legitimate racism because the gospel supports the emancipation of minoritized “people from white racism, thus providing authentic freedom” (Cone and Wilmore 1979, 53), an emancipatory act signalized by the cross and the resurrection where victory was won so that all can “inhabit the world beyond racial and theological… closure” and “inhabit the world beyond the theological problem of whiteness” (Carter 2008, 379). This space beyond the color line is the heritage and product of Pentecost.

Conclusion The proclamation that the “color line” was washed away at least symbolically and discursively in the blood of Christ is at the heart of a Pentecostal theology of race within sectors of the early Pentecostal movement. Striving to be Christian communities of grace where all people are welcomed, many African American denominations became religious communities that were open to all; they promoted grace over racism. For some of the participants, the Azusa Street revival and mission introduced them to a new peoplehood. The mere existence of innovative theological anthropologies and ecclesiologies were transformative to the self-understanding of the emerging Pentecostal movement. The opportunity to become practitioners of theologies of racial inclusion and theologies of post-racist church was revolutionary. Pentecostal theologies of the post-racist state espouse the doctrines of a common creation of all people, a common image of God in all people, a church for all people, and the equality of all peoples. Post-racist Pentecostal ecclesiologies generate an ecclesial vision of the church and society framed by conviviality that anticipated the post-racist era. Post-racist theologies inaugurate post-racist ecclesial communities. They have created an emancipatory space, where grace outpaces racism in ordering ecclesial and social life for all peoples.

References Alexander, Corky. 2012. Native American Pentecost. Cleveland: Cherahala Press. Alexander, Estrelda. 2005. The Women of Azusa Street. Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press. Anderson, Allan. 2004. An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bartleman, Frank. 1970. Another Wave Rolls In! What Really Happened at Azusa Street, rev. ed. Monroeville: Whitaker House. Becker, Howard S. 1967. “Whose Side Are We On?” Social Problems 14: 239–47. “Beginning of a World Wide Revival.” 1907. The Apostolic Faith 1 (5): 1. Carter, J. Kameron. 2008. Race: A Theological Account. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Race Casselberry, Judith. 2017. The Labor of Faith: Gender and Power in Black Apostolic Pentecostalism. Durham: Duke University Press. Cone, James H., and Gayraud S. Wilmore, eds. 1970. Black Theology: A Documentary History, 1966–1979. Maryknoll: Orbis. Copeland, M. Shawn. 2004. “Race.” In The Blackwell Companion to Modern Theology, edited by Gareth Jones, 499–511. Oxford: Blackwell. Crawley, Ashon T. 2017. Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility. New York: Fordham University Press. Daniels III, David D. 2012. “Transcending the Exclusionary Ecclesial Practices of Racial Hierarchies of Authority: An Early Pentecostal Trajectory.” In Ecclesiology and Exclusion: Boundaries of Being and Belonging in Postmodern Times, edited by Dennis M. Doyle, Timothy J. Furry, and Pascal D. Bazzell, 137–51. Maryknoll: Orbis. ———. 2014. “North American Pentecostalism.” In The Cambridge Companion to Pentecostalism, edited by Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. and Amos Yong, 73–92. New York: Cambridge University Press. DuBois, W. E. B. 1903. The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co. Edwards, Corie L. 2008. The Elusive Dream: The Power of Race in Interracial Churches. New York: Oxford University Press. Freire, Paulo. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum. Gilroy, Paul. 2005. Postcolonial Melancholia. New York: Columbia University Press. Gould, Stephen Jay. 1981. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Jung, Courtney. 2009. “Race, Ethnicity, Religion.” In The Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis, edited by Robert E. Goodin and Charles Tilly, 360–75. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kalu, Ogbu. 2008. African Pentecostalism: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. MacRobert, Iain. 1988. The Black Roots and White Racism of Early Pentecostalism in the USA. London: MacMillan. Noble, E. Myron, Fred T. Corum, and Rachel A. Harper Sizelove, eds. 2001. Like as of Fire: Newspapers from the Azusa Street World Wide Revival. Washington: Middle Atlantic Regional Press. Omi, Michael, and Winant, Howard. 1994. Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1990s. 2nd edition. New York: Routledge. Phillips, Coretta. 2011. “Institutional Racism and Ethnic Inequalities: An Expanded Multilevel Framework.” Journal of Social Policy 40 (1): 173–92. Ramirez, Daniel. 2015. Migrating Faith: Pentecostalism in the United States and Mexico in the Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Robeck, Jr., Cecil M. 2002. “Azusa Street Revival.” In New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, edited by Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas, 344–50. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Seymour, William J. ed. 1906. “The Same Old Way.” The Apostolic Faith 1 (1): 3. Soja, Edward W. 1996. Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places. Oxford: Blackwell. Talmadge, French. 2014. Early Interracial Oneness Pentecostalism. Cambridge: James Clarke and Co. Wilson, William J. 1973. Power, Racism, and Privilege: Race Relations in Theoretical and Sociohistorical Perspectives. New York: MacMillan Press.

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40 SOCIAL JUSTICE Theology as social transformation Cheryl J. Sanders

Social justice is a topic often found under practical and ethical concerns rather than theological and doctrinal discussions. The Pentecostal movement, although involved in social engagement since its inception, has not produced a theology of social justice. Despite innovative social action across much of the global movement, Pentecostal social ethics is still rather ambivalent, if not contradictory. What is unclear is whether a comprehensive theology of social justice can be developed for the whole movement. Pentecostals are still in the process of finding their ethical voice amidst the transitional contexts that characterize much of the socioeconomic and political landscape worldwide. At the same time, the origins of classical Pentecostalism in North America manifest a social vision that was paradigmatic for much of the early history of the movement. This chapter asserts that modern Pentecostals remain challenged to continue the radically inclusive ethics practiced and promoted at the Azusa Street mission and revival in Los Angeles, which brought people together for Spirit-led worship without regard for the rigid social barriers of race, sex, and class that characterized the dominant North American culture and churches. In the interest of constructing a Pentecostal theology of social justice, it may be helpful to underscore a few prominent trends that gesture toward the formulation of a systematic theological discourse across the diverse landscape of Pentecostalism. Because these trends would seem to lend themselves better to being spoken of in the plural than in the singular, a systematic approach to Pentecostal theology and social ethics can be initiated in two steps: first, by sketching a panoramic overview of the theological themes that are prevalent in Pentecostal churches and, second, by tracking the emergent public witness and social vision of Pentecostals whose spiritual and intellectual formation inheres in these systems of theological thought and ethical practice. Thus, the aim of this essay is to outline the evolution of a Pentecostal theology of social ethics that can be used to benchmark the continuing ebb and flow of social justice advocacy in the modern Pentecostal movement.

A typology of Pentecostal theology and social justice Broadly speaking, there are three types of Pentecostal theologies relevant for social ethics: evangelical, liberation, and prosperity theology. Evangelical theology envisions a God who saves people’s souls; liberation theology sees God setting people free, and prosperity theology 432

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emphasizes the God who blesses with health and wealth. These Pentecostal theologies can be mapped directly to corresponding conservative and liberal theologies that occupy the North American Protestant mainstream. Evangelical theology most closely resembles the thought and teaching of white evangelicals in Europe and North America. Pentecostal liberation theologies reflect the teachings of black theologians in North America and liberation theologians in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The prosperity gospel has its strongest articulation by megachurches and global televised networks who promote the personalized pursuit of health and wealth as evidence of the blessing of God. These three categories of theological orientation function as markers for understanding the social ethics of Pentecostals in general. All three types share a Christological center: all lift up the name and person of Jesus, albeit to different social ends. Evangelical Christology emphasizes Jesus as the Son of God who brings salvation and healing to the individual who makes a personal confession of faith (e.g. John 3:16). Liberation Christology underscores the role Jesus plays in bringing liberation and deliverance to victims of oppressive systems and structures (e.g. Luke 4:16–18). Prosperity theology configures a Christology that fosters personal fulfillment, social promotion and financial well-being in the name of Jesus (e.g. John 10:10). The differences become visible in their pneumatological application. Although there is a consensus among all Pentecostals on the importance of pneumatology (see Chapter 19), there are significant differences in how the impact of the Spirit is apprehended in the experience of the believer in reflection of their Christology (see Chapter 20). For the evangelicals, the manifestation of the Spirit engenders social unity and fosters reconciliation across the boundaries of language, nationality, race, gender, and income, especially in the context of worship. For the liberationists, the manifestation of the Spirit empowers social change by mandating a witness against injustice and a holy boldness that compels speaking truth to power in the public square. For prosperity theology, the Spirit manifests supernaturally to empower social mobility, propelling the believer’s ascent from poverty, sickness and low self-esteem into a divinely favored position of financial, physical, and spiritual health, for the most part in the absence of social engagement or political consciousness. As a result, a case can be made for the emergence of multiple Pentecostal soteriologies (see Chapter 21). Evangelical perspectives developed from classical Pentecostal theology shaped by the Christology of the full gospel (see Chapter 16), which views salvation in the terms of conversion, sanctification, Spirit baptism, divine healing, and the coming kingdom of God (Dayton 1987). White evangelical soteriology often neglects the experience of black Pentecostals who signified the experience of race-based victimization of Christians by Christians in the churches and society (see Chapter 39). Salvation meant advocating for the abolition of slavery, the equality of women and the alleviation of urban poverty (Dayton 1975). Another perspective on classical Pentecostal soteriology came to prominence with the emergence of women’s leadership and organizations in Pentecostal denominations and their mission to “sanctify the world” grounded in a soteriology evidenced by the public witness of their distinctive lifestyle, strict morality and modest apparel (Stanley 2002; Alexander 2005; Butler 2007). White evangelical doctrine since the 1940s shifted the ideas of soteriology away from social concerns and primarily toward conversion. A progressive soteriology emerged under the influence of Black and Latin American liberation theologies, which place emphasis on conscientization emerging from the experience of the Spirit (Sepúlveda 1988; Villafañe 1993) and leading to redemptive participation in the struggle among the oppressed ( Johns 1993). Conscientization among Pentecostals is a personal and communal process subject to long-term cultural influences and sociohistorical developments (Vondey 2015). In essence, this progressive soteriology holds that salvation 433

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should not be understood solely in terms of rituals of personal absolution and spiritual transformation experienced by individuals in worship but also as the desired outcome of a divinely anointed and empowered ministry of liberation, undertaken by faith communities whose intention is to critique and contest social structures that foster oppression and marginalization based upon race, sex and poverty. Today, progressivism and its theological demand for active participation in social justice are largely in the hands of Pentecostals in Africa and the African diaspora (Yong 2006). The brand of soteriology that is most closely associated with the prosperity gospel endorses bourgeois democratic American sensibilities (Bowler 2013); in effect, it entails a sanctification of the American dream. Instead of endeavoring to sanctify the world, the aim and measure of prosperity soteriology is to empower individuals to thrive and flourish in the world without necessarily challenging its capacity to sustain the existing disparities of wealth and privilege (Vondey 2013, 96–103). In other words, prosperity soteriology is more inclined to transform the individual to beat the system rather than to change the system to benefit people. The most visible influence of these different soteriologies is found in Pentecostal ecclesiology (see Chapter 27). Through the lens of social ethics, the Pentecostal movement is characterized by at least three predominant ecclesiologies: exilic, fluidic, and aesthetic. Exilic ecclesiology originates with the Holiness movements who were drawn out of the Protestant mainstream because of their attraction to stricter articulations of the doctrine of sanctification and their rejection of aspects of the autonomous, congregational polity (Sanders 1996). The key participants in the Azusa Street revival (1906–15) followed this trajectory out of evangelical Protestantism and toward missions, congregations, and denominations whose adherents were free to conduct their worship and live their lives in a manner consistent with the hermeneutic they applied to the biblical mandate: “Do not love the world or the things in the world” (1 John 2:15). This exilic ecclesiology is most readily associated with evangelical Pentecostalism. Fluidic ecclesiology pursues a perspective based on the notion that the sacred engages and transforms the world through the church. It is inclusive of two categories of Pentecostals: those who are politically progressive and those who are socially conservative. The first group adopts a fluidic view of the church with a high regard for liberation from human suffering as the principal manifestation of Christ and the church in the world. They envision the church operating under a divine mandate to stay fully engaged in the transformation of the systems and structures that have been devised to sustain exploitation and oppression of marginalized populations (Augustine 2012). A second group of Pentecostals at the opposite end of the theological spectrum subscribe to the prosperity gospel rather than a theology of liberation and see themselves not as followers of a counter-cultural Christ but rather as worldly exemplars of godly favor. They experience the world as a hospitable arena that rewards personal achievement and self-advancement; their lives and leadership exhibit a full complement of worldly status, wealth, and recognition; their ministries, facilities, conferences, and conventions showcase (or aspire to emulate) the highest standards of human achievement and worldly affluence (Coleman 2000). The role of the church is to incubate spiritual formation for self-improvement and to equip the saints to move up in the world instead of transforming it. Aesthetic ecclesiology is arguably more a trope than an actual ecclesiological type. It denotes the Pentecostal aesthetic of artists and intellectuals whose work bears the undeniable influences of a church they have left behind but whose songs, sermons, stories, lessons, etc., remain deeply embedded in memory and imagination (see Chapter 31). When these distinctive styles of performance and proclamation appear outside of the church, the result 434

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is that the public witness of Pentecostalism is extended (intentionally or not) to unchurched audiences. Some exceptional individuals have taken their Pentecostal experience out of the church and into the world, making the Pentecostal aesthetic accessible to broader publics in the realm of art and ideas, notwithstanding personal decisions they may have made to abandon religious practices and commitments. The typology of Pentecostal theology sketched here in light of the variances of a Pentecostal social ethics illustrates the difficulty to speak of a single Pentecostal theology of social justice. Some of the expressions of social concern and neglect stand in contrast to the original vision of the Azusa Street revival and mission as it was articulated most prominently by the leading pastor William J. Seymour (1870–1922). The remainder of this essay traces Seymour’s social vision in order to allow it to speak to and correct contemporary Pentecostal theology in light of the original vision of the Pentecostal pioneers.

William Seymour’s social vision: unity, equality, love Beginning in 1906, Seymour presided over a congregation at the Apostolic Faith Mission in Los Angeles, California, whose experience of speaking in tongues and other manifestations of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is often seen as the birth of the global movement known as Pentecostalism (Robeck 2006). Seymour noted that this movement began when “God baptized several sanctified wash women with the Holy Ghost, who have been much used of Him” (MacRobert 1988, 48). Black Holiness women were the core constituents of the Mission. However, the movement that spread throughout the world was multicultural and inclusive of men and women of distinctly different backgrounds, as determined by conventional notions of race, nationality, denomination, education, and social status. The race, sex, and class of the core group should not be regarded as incidental to the social ethical significance of the revival. On the contrary, the fact that the black women who ministered at Azusa Street hailed from a Holiness tradition that fully endorsed the spiritual leadership and authority of women set the stage for the emergence of unity, equality, and love as key spiritual manifestations of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. These three marks signify the core of the original Pentecostal social ethics. Seymour perceived in the Pentecostal movement God’s desire to accomplish unity by breaking down every social barrier (McClymond 2015, 371). The single most dominant experience reflected in the pages of the Apostolic Faith Mission’s newspaper and in the reports of the early Pentecostal believers was the solidarity and inclusivity of people from all nations (Irvin 1995, 50). W. E. B. Du Bois (1903), author of The Souls of Black Folk and arguably the leading black intellectual of the twentieth century, famously announced in 1903 that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line” (13). Soon thereafter, Seymour championed one doctrine above all others, “that there must be no color line or any other division in the Church of Jesus Christ because God is no respecter of persons” (Smith 2015, 10–11). Mexicans were perhaps the most marginalized social group of all at Azusa Street. The impoverished Mexican laborers who worked to prepare the building for worship were the first to speak in tongues, and a Mexican man with a club foot was the first to be healed (Ramirez 2015, 33–60). To credit Mexicans as the first modern-day Pentecostals on this evidence is not the point. Rather it is to acknowledge that during an era when black A mericans were targets of extreme racial injustice and oppression, a congregation of black Americans welcomed all kinds of people to experience the power of the Holy Spirit at the Azusa Street mission, an inclusive community in Christ that remains a challenge and a model for Christians all 435

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around the world (McClymond 2015, 372–73). The Azusa Street mission not only demonstrated racial and cultural inclusivity but also liberation from social prejudice, and the experience of Holy Spirit baptism as a baptism of ethnic, gender, and ecumenical transcendent love (Wilkinson and Studebaker 2010, 10–11). From a classical Pentecostal perspective, the overcoming of social barriers at play in early twentieth century North American culture “coheres” with what was promised in Joel 2:28–32 and proclaimed in Acts 2:16–21. A theological and ethical recovery of the socially transcending nature of the Spirit’s work must remind Pentecostals of the biblical and traditional roots of their social vision in and beyond Azusa Street.

Pentecostal social ethics: Azusa Street and beyond In the early decades following the Azusa Street revival, black Pentecostal leaders enacted a rudimentary Pentecostal social ethics with three key components: multicultural leadership, holiness ethics, and pacifism. Consistent with the diverse cultural setting of the biblical Pentecost, Pentecostal denominations with black leaders always had white members, although the reverse was not often found. The growth of Pentecostalism out of the Holiness movement required a rehearsal of Holiness roots because the early Pentecostal leaders always addressed moral questions, even if some of their solutions were extreme. Advocacy of the pacifist and anti-war stances by Pentecostals during the first half of the twentieth century led to the persecution of Pentecostal leaders. Bishop C. H. Mason posed the question how one can fight a war in the name of the Prince of Peace; Bishop Ida B. Robinson publicly questioned the US involvement in World War II; the United Holy Church counseled conscientious objection for its members who were drafted into military service (Trulear 2004, 23–29). Bishop Mason’s pacifist campaign during World War I was the first major political activity of Pentecostal African Americans in the twentieth century. Mother Lillian Brooks Coffey, Mason’s appointed head of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) International Women’s Department, spearheaded the passing of a racial justice resolution at the denomination’s Women’s Convention in 1953. Also in the 1950s, Bishop Smallwood Williams of the Bible Way Church, Worldwide, led a legal battle against segregated public schools in Washington, D. C. A strong political message advocating racial and social justice was central to Williams’s brand of Pentecostalism, urging his fellow clergy to fulfill their “Christian duty” by becoming advocates for the poor, the racially oppressed, and the downtrodden. During the 1960s, Bishops Arthur Brazier and Louis Henry Ford were active in the civil rights efforts in Chicago; Bishop Ithiel Clemmons was involved in civil rights campaigns in New York; Bishop J. O. Patterson, Sr. participated in the local civil rights campaign in Memphis, Tennessee, and Bishop Charles E. Blake participated in the march from Selma to Montgomery (Millner 1999). Bishop Herbert Daughtry was one of the founders of two black nationalist political groups, the Black United Front and the African Christian People’s Organization. A main fixture of protest politics in New York during the post-civil rights era, he pursued a progressive political agenda with a justice emphasis as a means of empowerment and liberation (Yong and Alexander 2011, 143–44). Another progressive voice emerged among Pentecostals toward the end of the twentieth century. James Forbes, a preacher, scholar, and activist, served for many years as pastor of the bellwether of liberal mainline Protestantism, the historic Riverside Church in New York. Forbes argued for “the theological liberation of the Holy Spirit from the ecclesial arena and the theological acknowledgment of the Holy Spirit within political and economic sectors” (Yong and Alexander 2011, 143). He advocated a progressive approach, which translates 436

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Pentecostalism into social action, advancing from preoccupation with individual experience and internal church affairs to concern for the larger context of society and the world. The progressive Pentecostal response to poverty involves feeding the poor, offering personal charity, and setting up social service agencies but also influencing social, economic, and political structures in opposition to racial, class, and religious injustices (Ware 2016, 108–109). The biblical prophecy associated with the day of Pentecost clearly indicates that the outpouring of the Spirit transcends various categories used to justify social marginalization and exploitation of other human beings, namely, race and ethnicity, gender, and social status ( Joel 2:28; Acts 2:17). Classical Pentecostalism has not as effectively integrated the social message and liberating work of the Holy Spirit in its ecclesial practice, mission, and social work as these examples might indicate. Nevertheless, even the traditional Pentecostal stress on personal spirituality and salvation bears an implicit message of social redemption and emancipation. After all, the liberating ministry of Jesus, as announced in Luke 4, is also the work of the Holy Spirit. In response, a progressive vision of Pentecostal social justice today relies on Christians who are inspired by the Holy Spirit and the life of Jesus as they seek to address the spiritual, physical and social needs of people holistically (Wilkinson and Studebaker 2010, 6). Beyond Azusa Street, this progressive Pentecostal theology has become the new face of social engagement (Miller and Yamamori 2017).

Contemporary modes of social engagement: ethics and ecclesiology in the public square Frederick Ware (2016, 10–20) has cataloged a broader genealogy of Pentecostal social engagement based upon four distinctive perspectives that influence Christian thought: realism, idealism, reconstructionism, and communitarianism. Realism is the dominant view, most readily associated with the classical roots of white Christians in North America. Christian realists believe that because humans are sinners, the moral principles that normally govern Christian life have limited or no application in public life, government, and international affairs. Following the thought of Reformed theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, the role of democratic government is to maintain order, national security, and ownership of property. A key exemplar among these Pentecostals is John Ashcroft, who served as Governor of Missouri, US Senator from Missouri, and US Attorney General under President George W. Bush (Ware 2016, 105). Pentecostal realists pursuing vocations in military or public service roles regard their religious faith as private and separate from public life. Idealism, primarily embraced by black Christians, peaked during the 1960s with the emergence of the civil rights movement where a foundation was laid for increased black participation in electoral politics (Chism 2019). Idealism is the view that moral principles, resting upon God’s eternal law, can be actualized in democracy and government when used for ordering and improving human life. Following the thought and activism of Martin Luther King, Jr., Christian idealists see the necessity of exerting pressure, through nonviolence, on governmental bodies for the formation of policy and laws conforming to the ideals (eternal law) of justice (Ware 2016, 105–6). Pentecostals espousing versions of Christian idealism include Bishop J. O. Patterson, Jr. (COGIC bishop and former councilman and mayor of Memphis), Eugene Rivers (COGIC pastor, political commentator, and community activist), Leonard Lovett (ethicist and ecumenical officer for COGIC), and Bishop Leah Daughtry (House of the Lord pastor and former CEO of the Democratic National Convention Committee). Reconstructionism has governed the interpretation of Christianity and morality in American public life among evangelicals since the 1980s. They view the United States as 437

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a Christian nation whose path to renewal, restoration and charge of enforcing God’s law is disclosed in the Bible (Ware 2016, 106). They advocate a politics of limited government, laissez-faire capitalism, and fiscal conservatism, and emphasize personal responsibility, self-determination, and thrift as essential for social change. Racism can be overcome by black achievement and success, without the assistance of “big government.” Bishop Harry Jackson is a well-known Pentecostal reconstructionist ( Jackson 2008). Communitarianism is the view that the church, not democratic government, is the principal realm where persons can discern and strive for the good. It appeals to Christians seeking to realize the potential of the church as an autonomous institution for social change through reconciliation and community development. Pentecostals who adhere to the exilic ecclesiology of “in the world but not of it” and work for social change principally within their churches and faith-based organizations may be classified as communitarians (Ware 2016, 107). Exemplars include Bishops T. D. Jakes, Charles Blake, and George McKinney. Each of these perspectives on social and political change is informed by a particular view of the role and relevance of the church in public affairs (Yong 2010, 99–108). Politically, the idealists and communitarians trend toward political liberalism, while the realists and reconstructionists are politically conservative. On the spectrum of Pentecostal ecclesiologies, realists and communitarians adhere to an exilic ecclesiology, while the idealists and reconstructionists exhibit a fluidic ecclesiology that envisions the church in active engagement of social issues as an advocate of social change.

A radical social gospel: present and future challenges Whatever happened to Seymour’s social vision of unity, equality, and love? For a moment in history, a new social dynamic was set in motion. Christian formation was disentangled from the prevailing social conventions of North American life in the early 1900s, namely, assimilation based on race, subordination based on gender and marginalization based on economic status. This disruptive decentering of social mores messaged a radical social ethics of inclusion and empowerment and ignited the eruptive emergence of Pentecostal Christianity. In his detailed history of the Azusa Street mission and revival, Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. (2006) has emphasized the importance of this attempt by one congregation to live out a vision of racial and ethnic inclusion with men and women regarded as equals in a ministry and leadership based on the principles of social justice. Robeck also acknowledges that this brilliant story came to a sordid ending marked by Seymour’s institution of a pragmatic solution to the drama, dissension, and doctrinal disputes engendered by whites. In the end, Seymour ruled that while whites were welcome to be part of the Mission, no white person would be allowed to serve in leadership as long as racial prejudice and discrimination undermined the unity and love commanded by Christ (Robeck 2006, 319–320). The era of radically inclusive interracial Pentecostal revival effectively ended with Seymour’s death in 1922. More than a century after the Azusa Street revival, white Pentecostalism in Europe and North America has developed into an evangelical middle-class religion with efficient fund-raising structures, a streamlined ecclesiastical bureaucracy and a Pentecostal conceptual theology accused of taking white evangelicalism and tacking on the doctrine of speaking in tongues as evidence of Spirit baptism (Hollenweger 1987, 531). If modern white Pentecostals trend toward evangelical theology, and if the prosperity gospel is being prioritized by blacks in North America and people of color in other nations, then what possibilities exist for the survival of theologies of liberation and inclusion among contemporary Pentecostal congregations? Does Seymour have any successors remaining to perpetuate his social justice legacy? 438

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Keri Day (2018, 11) has described Azusa as a “holy, insurgent communion” that continues today in the quest for inclusion of all peoples led by Bishop Yvette Flunder’s Fellowship of Affirming Ministries in Oakland, California and in the National Call for Moral Revival led by Reverend William Barber, II. But the predominant traces of this legacy we find today primarily in the global South where Pentecostalism has become the face of social activism (Miller and Yamamori 2007). In Zambia, it was the HIV/AIDS pandemic that propelled the church to work alongside the state in the fight against the disease (M’fundisi-Holloway 2018). Similarly, in Nigeria, Pentecostals moved in response to overwhelming societal problems from ministries within the church to engage poverty alleviation, economic empowerment, and national transformation (McCain 2013, 160–84). Progressive Pentecostal social activism in El Salvador shows similar tendencies alongside the dynamics to separate from, consume, and critically engage social problems (Wadkins 2013). These interrelated and sometimes conflicting tendencies run beneath the Pentecostal vision of social justice. At Azusa Street, there was a global summons to participate in an interracial, egalitarian congregation orchestrated by women and men whose diversity of languages and courageous social ethics manifested the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. Seeds were planted for healing streams of reconciliation and social justice to flow forth from radically reconfigured soteriologies of inclusion and wholeness, in the church, in the world and on the margins. Indeed, the question of whether or not the unity, equality, and love experienced at Azusa Street can be replicated is ultimately a soteriological one. Speaking as someone “of the church but not in it,” the acclaimed American writer James Baldwin once declared that there is no salvation without love, that salvation connects and does not divide, and that it is not the exclusive property of any dogma, creed, or church (Baldwin 2010, 165). If those within the Pentecostal church would dare to take ownership of this soteriological imperative in any meaningful way, that is, by fostering spiritual formation for social justice praxis in their communities of faith (Vondey 2015, 211–14), then Pentecostal theology must be reconfigured in light of the radial social vision that inspired the earliest revivals. Two foundational scripture texts illumine this Pentecostal social vision. The foundational biblical texts of Acts 2:17 and 47 frame the events of the day of Pentecost and therefore also the application of the gospel to the concerns of social justice. From the point of view of Acts 2:17, a Pentecostal theology of social justice begins with the fulfillment on the day of Pentecost of God’s promise to empower all different kinds of people with the Holy Spirit. Pentecostals concern themselves with the supernatural dimension of the experience, the comprehensibility of the languages spoken by the persons upon whom the Spirit was poured, the soteriological significations of the experience, and the theological implications the narrative brings to bear upon the nature and identity of God. At the root of these concerns stands the promise that God has poured out the Spirit “upon all flesh,” and that all kinds of people are included whenever the Spirit of God moves. The intentionally inclusive character of the outpouring at Pentecost upon males and females, young and old, “even upon slaves” (v. 18) was as surely a sign of God’s power as was the diversity of languages miraculously spoken to convey a single message to all members of the global company of observers. Thus, any effort to marginalize, deny, or devalue anyone’s participation in the supernatural praxis of the beloved community on the basis of gender or economic status stands as a witness against the Holy Spirit. The implicit social ethical imperative, then, mandates spiritual formation for liturgical celebration of the diversity of the congregation and the equal status of all participants. Nobody should be excluded or ascribed subordinate roles on the basis of race, gender or economic status, nor relegated to token roles or representation designed to reinforce the dominant culture (see Chapter 10). This pneumatological perspective deeply 439

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informs and influences the modes of social engagement performed outside the church, serving as a template for the church’s advocacy and promotion of political, cultural, and economic means and ideals of inclusion. The Spirit poured out on all people must be honored in all people. The biblical record of the Pentecost event ends with the declaration that “day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47). Perhaps the most glaring contradiction of all in the evolution of Pentecostal social ethics is the reinstitution of barriers of racial separation (see Chapter 39) and the subordination of women (see Chapter 36) within the very same communions that were birthed from the interracial, multicultural, egalitarian throes of the Azusa Street revival. It seems highly unlikely that the salt of social justice and the light of Christian unity will be forthcoming from Pentecostal communions whose exilic ecclesiologies isolate their constituents from engagement with the urgent issues of the times, nor, on the other hand, from Pentecostals whose fluidic ecclesiologies emulate a brand of spirituality that celebrates social privilege and sublimates social responsibility in lockstep with the dominant political sensibilities of the modern age. However, the church has much to gain by acknowledging and engaging the aesthetics of those who have crossed over or come out of Pentecostalism (see Chapter 31). In the terms of the biblical texts, salvation is the gift of God to all those of different age, gender, class, ethnicity, and socio-economic standing upon whom the Spirit is poured out. This promise of the ecclesiology of Acts 2 presents a formidable social ethical challenge to the Pentecostal churches today to affirm the diversity of the outpouring of the Spirit, to build the capacity to receive all whom the Lord adds, and to sanctify the world via active networks of social engagement and public witness.

Conclusion The origins of Pentecostalism at the Azusa Street mission and revival present the foundation for a radical theology of social justice based on love, unity, and equality. However, the diversion of Pentecostal theology into streams of evangelical, liberation, and prosperity theology have redirected and dispersed the attention of Pentecostal churches. In much of the West and the northern hemisphere, the majority of Pentecostals have adopted an evangelical soteriology that emphasizes a personal relationship with Jesus Christ at the cost of any social engagement. The often-sectarian origins of classical Pentecostals in North America have made way for sociopolitical conservatism. Progressive social activism is largely in the hands of Afropentecostalism and Latin American Pentecostals under the dominant influence of liberation theology. A global Pentecostal vision of social justice remains elusive, although a constructive discovery of its theological roots may well depend on the renewal of the radical social vision of the Azusa Street mission and revival.

References Alexander, Estrelda Y. 2005. The Women of Azusa Street. Cleveland: Pilgrim Press. Augustine, Daniela C. 2012. Pentecost, Hospitality, and Transfiguration: Toward a Spirit-inspired Vision of Social Transformation. Cleveland: CPT Press. Baldwin, James. 2010. The Cross of Redemption. Edited by Randall Kenan. New York: Pantheon. Bowler, Kate. 2013. Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Butler, Anthea D. 2007. Women in the Church of God in Christ: Making a Sanctified World. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

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Social justice Chism, Jonathan. 2019. Saints in the Struggle: Church of God in Christ Activists in the Memphis Civil Rights Movement, 1954–1968. Lanham: Lexington Books. Coleman, Simon. 2000. The Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity: Spreading the Gospel of Prosperity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Day, Keri. 2018. “We Need Pentecost: The Miracle and Joy of Community.” The Christian Century 135 (10): 10–11. Dayton, Donald W. 1975. “The Holiness Churches: A Significant Ethical Tradition.” The Christian Century (February 26): 197–201. ———. 1987. The Theological Roots of Pentecostalism. Peabody: Hendrickson. Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt. 1903. The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co. Hollenweger, Walter J. 1987. “Pentecostal Research in Europe: Problems, Promises and People.” International Review of Mission 76 (304): 526–56. Irvin, Dale T. 1995. “‘Drawing All Together in One Bond of Love’: The Ecumenical Vision of William J Seymour and the Azusa Street Revival.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 3 (6): 25–53. Jackson, Harry R. 2008. The Truth in Black and White: A New Look at the Shifting Landscape of Race, Religion, and Politics in America Today. Lake Mary: Frontline. Johns, Cheryl Bridges. 1993. Pentecostal Formation: A Pedagogy among the Oppressed. JPT Supplement 2. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Lloyd, Vincent W. 2018. The Religion of the Field Negro: On Black Secularism and Black Theology. New York: Fordham University Press. MacRobert, Ian. 1988. The Black Roots and White Racism of Early Pentecostalism in the USA. London: Macmillan Press. McCain, Robert. 2013. “The Metamorphosis of Nigerian Pentecostalism: From Signs and Wonders in the Church to Service and Influence in Society.” In Spirit and Power: The Growth and Global Impact of Pentecostalism, edited by Donald E. Miller, Kimon H. Sargeant, and Richard Flory, 160–84. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McClymond, Michael J. 2015. “‘I Will Pour Out of My Spirit Upon All Flesh’: An Historical and Theological Meditation on Pentecostal Origins.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 37 (2015): 356–74. M’fundisi-Holloway, Naar. 2018. Pentecostal and Charismatic Spiritualities and Civic Engagement in Zambia. New York: Palgrave. Millner, Marlon. 1999. “We’ve Come This Far by Faith: Pentecostalism and Political and Social Upward Mobility among African-Americans.” Cyberjournal for Pentecostal and Charismatic Research 9. Available at www.pctii.org/cyberj/cyberj9/millner2.pdf, accessed 20 July 2019. Miller, Donald E., and Tetsunao Yamamori. 2007. Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ramírez, Daniel. 2015. Migrating Faith: Pentecostalism in the United States and Mexico in the Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Robeck, Jr., Cecil M. 2006. The Azusa Street Mission and Revival: The Birth of the Global Pentecostal Movement. Nashville: Thomas Nelson. Sanders, Cheryl J. 1996. Saints in Exile: The Holiness-Pentecostal Experience in African American Religion and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Sepúlveda, Juan. 1988. “Pentecostal Theology in the Context of the Struggle for Life.” In Faith Born in the Struggle for Life: A Rereading of Protestant Faith in Latin America Today, edited by Dow Kirkpatrick, 298–318. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Smith, Raynard D., ed. 2015. With Signs Following: The Life and Ministry of Charles Harrison Mason. St. Louis: Christian Board of Publication. Stanley, Susie C. 2002. Holy Boldness: Women Preachers’ Autobiographies and the Sanctified Self. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press. Trulear, Harold Dean. 1999. “Bishop C. H. Mason and the Roots of the Church of God in Christ.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 21 (2): 350–53. Villafañe, Eldin. 1993. The Liberating Spirit: Toward an Hispanic American Pentecostal Social Ethic. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Vondey, Wolfgang. 2013. Pentecostalism: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Bloomsbury. ———. 2015. “The Impact of Culture and Social Justice on Christian Formation in Pentecostalism.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 24 (2): 201–16.

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Cheryl J. Sanders Wadkins, Timothy H. 2013. “Pentecostalism and the New World Order in El Salvador: Separating, Consuming, and Engaging.” In Spirit and Power: The Growth and Global Impact of Pentecostalism, edited by Donald E. Miller, Kimon H. Sargeant, and Richard Flory, 143–59. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ware, Frederick L. 2016. “African American Pentecostalism and the Public Square.” The Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center 44: 99–114. Wilkinson, Michael, and Steven M. Studebaker, eds. 2010. A Liberating Spirit: Pentecostals and Social Action in North America. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. Yong, Amos. 2006. “Justice Deprived, Justice Demanded: Afropentecostalism and the Task of World Pentecostal Theology Today.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 15 (1): 127–47. ———. 2010. In the Days of Caesar: Pentecostalism and Political Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Yong, Amos, and Estrelda Y. Alexander, eds. 2011. Afro-Pentecostalism: Black Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity in History and Culture. New York: New York University Press.

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41 THEOLOGY OF RELIGIONS Divine hospitality and spiritual discernment Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen

Pentecostal engagement with theology of religions is a relatively recent endeavor that has raised both significant discussion and concerns. For a movement known for aggressive evangelism of people of other faith traditions, it would be of greatest importance to reflect carefully on the nature and role of religions, including the Holy Spirit’s work among adherents of living faiths. The purpose of this chapter is to reflect on the state, promise, and challenges of a distinctively Pentecostal theology of religions particularly in light of the deep and wide influence of religious plurality and forms of religious pluralisms today. Another way to express the intent of the chapter is to raise the question of “What would be a proper Pentecostal way to tackle the urgent interfaith challenge in the complex world of the third millennium?” In this essay, I argue that a proper Pentecostal way of dealing with religions is both hospitable in its attitude toward the religious other and keen on exercising spiritual discernment with regard to the value and role of religions. Continuing mission and evangelism, on the one hand, and delving into the complex interfaith issue should not be seen as antithetical to each other (see Chapter 26). The essay is divided into three main sections. The first looks at the “default” Pentecostal attitude toward, and responses to, religions and religious plurality. This discussion is to set the stage for a consideration of the conditions of and prospects for a Pentecostal theology of religions to be attempted in the rest of the essay. In the second part, I take stock of emerging attempts by some Pentecostal bodies and individual scholars to tackle the challenge of religions from a theological perspective. I first consider the results of a couple of important international ecumenical processes in which Pentecostals have participated and thereafter assess some leading theologians’ work in this area. The last major section is constructive in nature. Rooted in Pentecostal-Charismatic resources but also going beyond, I wish to suggest some directions for the next generation of Pentecostal theology of religions.

Whether Pentecostal theology is sensitive to religions and religious plurality—the challenge For most Pentecostals—at least outside the academy—the issue of religious plurality is not an important issue. They would either ignore it or, if pushed, probably deny its importance. Many others would even consider it dangerous and not a useful topic at all. By and large, 443

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the typical Pentecostal considers other religions as erroneous and mistaken ways of searching for God. The default Pentecostal response in an encounter with the adherents of other faith traditions is to share the gospel and to persuade the other of the necessity of salvation through Christ. A typical conservative-fundamentalist exclusivism is taken for granted. Furthermore, it has been common for Pentecostals to raise grave doubts about any kind of saving role of the Holy Spirit apart from the proclamation of the gospel. They have either tended to limit the Spirit’s saving work to the church (except for the work of the Spirit preparing for receiving the gospel) or have simply ignored the question of the Spirit’s work apart from the preaching of the gospel. Reasons for the hesitance toward interfaith engagement include the danger of a compromised Christology, the fear of going beyond, or against, the Bible, a distorted soteriology, and the neglect of mission and evangelization (Richie 2011). A case in point is the warning from a Pentecostal official in the USA: a religiously pluralistic approach (1) is contrary to Scripture, (2) replaces the obligation for world evangelism, and (3) fails the great commission (Carpenter 1995). Despite this resistance to interfaith issues, the continuing debate testifies to the fact that time has come for Pentecostals to take up seriously this vital issue. It has the potential of helping Pentecostals to live peacefully with the religious other while also continuing what they believe is the God-given mandate of mission.

The importance for Pentecostals to tackle the issue of religions One of the leading figures in beginning to develop a Pentecostal theology of religions is Amos Yong, who lists the following reasons as to why Pentecostals should engage religions: (1) their international roots and global presence; (2) the presence of urgent missiological issues such as syncretism, the difficulty with dealing with questions regarding the gospel and culture (see Chapter 10), and so forth; and (3) the quest for Pentecostal identity and theological truth. According to Yong (2000), Pentecostal identity cannot be determined apart from relation to other churches (ecumenism) and other religions (theology of religions). And the truth question of any religion cannot be answered without the challenge of competing (or complementary) truth claims. A similarly important figure, the late sympathetic observer of Pentecostalism, Clark Pinnock (1996, 274), urges Pentecostals to get involved: One might expect the Pentecostals to develop a Spirit-oriented theology of mission and world religions, because of their openness to religious experience, their sensitivity to the oppressed of the Third World where they have experienced much of their growth, and their awareness of the ways of the Spirit as well as dogma. Pinnock’s appeal to conceive the Spirit’s work in the world in wider and more comprehensive terms is echoed by the South African charismatic theologian Henry I. Lederle (1988, 338): For too long the Spirit and his work has been conceived of in too limited a sense. There was a capitulation at the beginning of the modern era in which faith became restricted to the private devotional life, and the latter was then described as “spiritual.” The Spirit should not be limited to spiritual experiences and charisms—even though it needs to be recognized that this element still awaits acknowledgment in much of Christianity. We need, however, to set our sights much higher. Not only the reality discovered by Pentecostalism needs to be reclaimed but also the cosmic dimensions of the Spirit’s work. The Spirit is at work in the world and should not be degraded to an ornament of piety. 444

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Although a full-scale Pentecostal theology of interfaith engagement is very much in the making, some promising signs are on the horizon pointing to new openings and opportunities.

What Pentecostals have done about theology of religions—the record An important impetus for prompting Pentecostals to begin work on a theology of religions has come from ecumenical exchanges with older Christian traditions, beginning from the international dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church started in 1972. There was a tentative discussion on the possibility of salvation for those not explicitly confessing faith in Christ during the second quinquennium (1978–82) of the dialogue (Kärkkäinen 2000). As expected, the Catholic and Pentecostal perspectives diverged over the existence and meaning of salvific elements found in non-Christian religions (“Evangelization, Proselytism, and Common Witness” 2010, no. 20). Pentecostals insisted that there cannot be salvation outside the church (“Final Report” 2010, no. 14). Most Pentecostals wanted to limit the saving work of the Spirit to the church and its proclamation of the gospel, although they were willing to acknowledge the work of the Holy Spirit in the world convicting people of sin (“Evangelization, Proselytism, and Common Witness” 2010, no. 20). The rationale for this more exclusivist attitude is found in the fallen state of humankind, which for Pentecostals do not give much hope for non-Christians: There was no unanimity whether non-Christians may receive the life of the Holy Spirit . . . . The classical Pentecostal participants do not accept . . . [the Roman Catholic Church’s inclusivistic stance according to which non-Christians may be saved under certain conditions] but retain their interpretation of the Scripture that non-Christians are excluded from the life of the Spirit: “Truly, truly I say unto you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the Kingdom of God” ( John 3:3). (“Final Report” 2010, no.14) Furthermore, Pentecostals, like many of the early Christians, pointed out the demonic elements in other religions (“Evangelization, Proselytism, and Common Witness” 2010, no. 21). However, there were some Pentecostals who would see a convergence toward the Catholic position in that the Holy Spirit is at work in non-Christian religions preparing individual hearts for an eventual exposure to the gospel of Jesus Christ (“Evangelization, Proselytism, and Common Witness” 2010, no. 21). The same stance was expressed by the Pentecostals in the conversations with the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. Pentecostals particularly emphasized the need for spiritual discernment: On the whole, Pentecostals do not acknowledge the presence of salvific elements in non-Christian religions because they view this as contrary to the teaching of the Bible. The church is called to discern the spirits through the charism of the Holy Spirit informed by the Word of God (1 Corinthians 12:10, 14:29; cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:19–21; 1 John 4:2–3). Pentecostals, like many of the early Christians, are sensitive to the elements in other religions that oppose biblical teaching. They are, therefore, encouraged to receive the guidance of the Holy Spirit. (“Word and Spirit, Church and World” 2010, no. 12) 445

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It is yet to be seen what the still continuing important ecumenical discussions will bring about regarding this vital theme. The ecumenical conversations foreshadowed greater interest in interfaith questions among Pentecostals (see Chapter 35). Ecumenical involvement gives them the needed platform to learn from those Christian communities, which have reflected on this complex issue for a much longer period of time.

Emerging Pentecostal explorations into the theology of religions Theologically, the most significant first appeal for a truly pneumatological theology of religions for Pentecostals is the above-mentioned attempt by Pinnock. While not programmatically charismatic, the later career of this Baptist revealed a definite openness to the Spirit’s work in a manner quite similar to Pentecostals. Pinnock (1988) advocated an Evangelical form of inclusivism, which is also at the same time harshly critical of pluralistic approaches. This maverick Evangelical started his move toward inclusivism mainly on a Christological basis but later shifted to a definite pneumatological view (Pinnock 1992). Amos Yong, and other Pentecostal scholars, took a lesson from Pinnock, among others. In his first contribution, Discerning the Spirit(s): A Pentecostal-Charismatic Contribution to Christian Theology of Religions (2000), and its sequel, Beyond the Impasse: Toward a Pneumatological Theology of Religions (2003), Yong argued for a uniquely Pentecostal pneumatology that, while holding on to the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and trinitarian faith, would also be open to acknowledging the ministry of the Spirit outside the Christian church and among the religions. Yong’s first step was to develop criteria for discerning the Spirit of God. For Yong (2000, 24), a Pentecostal theology of religions can be best defined “as the effort to understand both the immensely differentiated experiences of faith and the multifaceted phenomena of religious traditions and systems that are informed by experiences of the Spirit in the light of Scripture, and vice versa.” In his subsequent work (2005, 235–36), he deepens this distinctively pneumatological approach to religions and “spirits” of religions and argues that a pneumatologically driven theology is more conducive to engaging [interfaith issues] . . . in our time than previous approaches. . . . [R]eligions are neither accidents of history nor encroachments on divine providence but are, in various ways, instruments of the Holy Spirit working out the divine purposes in the world and . . . the unevangelized, if saved at all, are saved through the work of Christ by the Spirit (even if mediated through the religious beliefs and practices available to them). Yong’s Hospitality and the Other: Pentecost, Christian Practices, and the Neighbor (2008) taps into the theme of hospitality, enthusiastically embraced by much of contemporary interfaith conversations, as a way to help his movement engage the religious other. Another innovation by Yong has to do with what is now called comparative theology. His recent contributions (2012a, 2012b) are groundbreaking, centering on pneumatological comparative theology in the context of Buddhist-Christian encounters. Another significant contribution to a Pentecostal theology of religions comes from Tony Richie. His monograph, Speaking by the Spirit: A Pentecostal Model for Interreligious Dialogue (2011), builds on the core Pentecostal practice of testimony. Richie (2011, 3) considers it important to pursue this task in the matrix of Pentecostalism’s “strong heritage of evangelism and missions, generally conservative ethical and theological history, and undeniable multicultural variety.” He also takes lessons from some Pentecostal pioneers (Richie 2006) in whose ethos Richie sees seeds of openness to religions while at the same time faithfully representing tradition. 446

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Among a growing number of other Pentecostal engagements of the interfaith challenge (Kärkkäinen 2009; Yong and Clarke 2011), the Hispanic Pentecostal Samuel Solivan (1998) offers several principles for relating to religious plurality: (1) the fact that the Holy Spirit is the one who leads Christians to all truth; (2) the importance of identification with the poor of the world and the need to bring their distinctive voice into the dialogue; (3) the conviction of the prevenient workings of the Holy Spirit in every human being; (4) the empowerment of believers for witness by the Spirit; and (5) the diverse and pluralistic character of the Spirit’s manifestations across racial, class, gender, language, and religious boundaries. On this foundation, Solivan (1998, 43) is led to “examine the diverse ways the Holy Spirit is at work among other people of faith.” Yet he does so critically, since there are always pitfalls—such as relativization of the truth—in an approach to mission in which dialogue is the main vehicle (44). My own work in the field of interfaith studies has focused on developing a trinitarian understanding of the role of the Spirit in the world and among religions in the dialogue with Protestant and Catholic colleagues (Kärkkäinen 2004). In recent years, I have also attempted comparative theology, including in the area of pneumatology. On that project, I have engaged Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu views of the Spirit(s) and spirituality (Kärkkäinen 2016). This extended exposure to the teachings and “theologies” of other faith traditions has not only added to my own learning in religious studies but also helped clarify my deep Christian convictions. Particularly exciting has been the exploration into the “pneumatologies” of Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism—and area in which Pentecostals could make a great contribution, as Yong’s innovative work manifests.

Whither Pentecostal theology of religions—the vision The sketch of a constructive Pentecostal theology of religions requires some terminological clarification. The English speaker typically knows the difference between religious “plurality” and “pluralism.” Whereas the former merely denotes the existence of more than one faith in the same area, the latter is an ideological take on the diversity. From the fact of religious plurality (the existence of many religions) does not necessarily follow pluralism. Furthermore, similarly to other loaded terms such as, say, postmodernism, pluralism is a contested and somewhat ambiguous designation. What most people think of when they hear the term religious pluralism is what I have named the “first-generation” pluralism, an offshoot from the Enlightenment that represents modernity’s aversions to difference and to commitment. The Enlightenment epistemology is based on a mistaken idea of the neutrality of its own position—and the assumption that every other position is not neutral. It considers all religions and ideologies basically the same. Call it the idea of a “rough parity” of religions, it leads to the compromising or denial of any religion’s claim to truth. In other words, no real differences are allowed. Doctrinal differences are superficial; they have to do merely with the surface-structure rather than the deep-structure. Instead of a fixed commitment to a particular truth, the first-generation pluralisms promise tolerance and openness and eschew all kinds of attempts to try to persuade the other. They consider beliefs as a metaphor with little or no cognitive content rather than a propositional statement. A more nuanced form of pluralism, in my terminology the “second-generation” pluralism, is masterfully cartographed by the Catholic Paul F. Knitter (2002) in his Introducing Theologies of Religions. Whereas his “mutuality model” represents the first-generation pluralist project, the “acceptance model” belongs to the second-generation, which not only accepts difference and alterity but makes it a major asset. One can call this a postmodern form of pluralism. 447

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The “turn” to the spirit as the key to Pentecostal theology of religions As mentioned, Pinnock found an opening to a more inclusive way of envisioning Christianity’s place among religions with a turn to pneumatology. In his view, counting against (what he names) a theological “restrictivism” is not only God’s nature as Father and the universality of the atonement of Christ but also the ever-present Spirit “who can foster transforming friendship with God anywhere and everywhere” (Pinnock 1996, 186–87). Indeed, Pinnock (49) contends, there is a “cosmic range to the operations of the Spirit.” He argues that by acknowledging the work of the Spirit in the cosmos (including creation), we are actually allowing a more universal perspective to the Spirit’s ministry in which the work of preparing for the hearing of the gospel is not set in antithesis to the fulfillment of the gospel in Christ: “What one encounters in Jesus is the fulfillment of previous invitations of the Spirit” (63). A truly revolutionary insight of Pinnock’s is that religions, rather than being either futile human attempts to reach God or outright obstacles to a saving knowledge of God, can be Spirit-used pointers to and means of contact with God (Pinnock 1996, 203). Not only that, but everyday human experiences can likewise be means of divine contact, since human beings “as spirit” are created to be open to God (73). This is, of course, not to pit against each other the ministries of the Son and Spirit; rather it is a matter of “both-and.” Pinnock (192) claims that “Christ, the only mediator, sustains particularity, while the Spirit, the presence of God everywhere, safeguards universality.” Yong’s project essentially continues this line of reasoning. This is all good and as it should be. That said, I wish to challenge and kindly re-orient that kind of project by advocating a robustly trinitarian view of the Spirit’s work in the world. I am not saying that either Pinnock or Yong were not trinitarian. What I am saying is that their enthusiastic turn to the Spirit could be liable to assigning some kind of secondary (if not, at times, a missing) role to the Son and particularly to the Father. I argue that whereas a solid pneumatological orientation to Pentecostal theology of religions is a badly needed corrective to one-sided theocentric (God-centered) or Christocentric approaches, in no case should it suffer from an inadequate trinitarian framework. That would result in a disconnection between the Spirit and Christ or the Spirit and the Father. These disconnections, in turn, lead to the separation between the Spirit and the church and the Spirit and the kingdom of God as has happened among “liberals” and pluralists (Wright 1993). Whenever healthy t rinitarian controls are lacking, the Spirit turns out to be a sort of “itinerant preacher” who only occasionally visits the Father’s House; most of the time, the Spirit is doing its own business in the Far Country, as it were. A healthy trinitarian theology is the best safeguard against lacunae such as those. Below I suggest a few simple trinitarian “rules” or guidelines to that effect.

Trinitarian “rules” for a pneumatological theology of religions I will only briefly introduce these trinitarian guidelines as I have developed them more fully elsewhere (Kärkkäinen 2004, 2005, 2006a, 2006b). First, the Trinity is the Christian way of discerning and recognizing the God of the Bible among the deities of religions. Karl Barth (1956, 301) saw this clearly: The doctrine of the Trinity is what basically distinguishes the Christian doctrine of God as Christian, and therefore what already distinguishes the Christian concept of  revelation as Christian, in contrast to all other possible doctrines of God or concepts of revelation. 448

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If this is correct, it means that every Christian approach to religions is ultimately triune in its form. Trinity is not an appendix, so to speak. To speak of the Spirit of God is to speak of God the Father and so forth. Even when, like in the encounter with other Abrahamic faiths, discussions on the Trinity might not serve as an ice-breaker, sooner or later the conversation has to be introduced. The second rule says that, therefore, the mode of the presence of the Spirit in the world is trinitarian (see Chapter 17). There is an ancient rule according to which the inner works of the Trinity are separable and the outward works (ad extra) inseparable. This ancient rule is as acute as it ever was. In order to refer to the presence of the Spirit in the world with regard to any of the Spirit’s many works, we are also referring to the Son and the Father. As the late senior Catholic theologian of religions, Jacques Dupuis, helpfully put it: the Trinity helps us avoid typical interrelated errors (Kärkkäinen 2004, 50–52). The first error puts Christ and God in opposition as if one could choose either a “theocentric” or “Christocentric” option. The other error is to champion that kind of pneumatological approach which tends to diminish the role of Jesus Christ as more limited than that of the Spirit. Even Pinnock quoted above made a careless statement to this effect, which has to be corrected. We cannot speak of the Spirit merely as representative of universality and the Son of particularity. Both of them, albeit distinctively and in their own unique ways, represent both universality and particularity. Think of the Spirit of God. Yes, the Spirit is everywhere, but the Spirit is also the Spirit of the Son and the Spirit of the Father. Not every spirit hovering above in the skies is the Spirit of whom Christians speak. So, there is also particularity to the Spirit. Similarly, we must think with regard to the Son. In his Incarnation, he bespeaks particularity, but as the divine Word, Logos, the creator and sustainer of the world, he stands for universality. Related, according to the third rule, pneumatology (see Chapter 19) and Christology (see Chapter 20) make one divine economy. Just read the Synoptic Gospels: where the Son is, there is the Spirit and vice versa. In the New Testament, the Son and the Spirit presuppose each other. The Son would not be the Son without the Spirit and vice versa. The Gospels clearly show the influence of the Holy Spirit throughout the earthly life of Jesus, from his conception by the Spirit to his ministry through the power of the Spirit to his resurrection at the hands of God by the power of the same Spirit. The Son and the Spirit mutually in-form and regulate each other, so to speak. I have developed a contemporary Spirit Christology from the perspective of Christology (Kärkkäinen 2013, 196–209) and from a pneumatological perspective (Kärkkäinen 2016, 33–38), respectively. Fourth, in this healthy trinitarian grammar, the Spirit invites the church to “relational engagement with religions” as the British Catholic theologian of religions, Gavin D’Costa (2000, 109) helpfully puts it. It helps us further develop a robust pneumatological approach to religions from a solid trinitarian foundation. The reason I am turning to a Roman Catholic rather than a Pentecostal theologian with the hope of guiding Pentecostals into a more robust trinitarian pneumatological approach is simply because, at the moment, as my sympathetic critique of some leading Pentecostal scholars has evinced, a robust trinitarian Spirit-directed theology of religions has not been fully developed within the movement. This lacuna is also a reminder to Pentecostals that continuing ecumenical involvement with other Christian traditions serves well the theological maturation of the movement. The Roman Catholic tradition is particularly apt to assist Pentecostals not only because of their solid trinitarian orientation in all theological matters but also because of a vibrant missionary work and evangelism among people of other faiths—a task left behind to a large extent among mainstream Protestant and Anglican communities. 449

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The Spirit’s invitation to a relational engagement with the other Naming it “the Holy Spirit’s invitation to relational engagement,” D’Costa (2000, 109) rightly argues that we should appreciate other religions as vital and important for the Christian church in that they help the church penetrate more deeply into the divine mystery. This way our own spirituality and commitment to Christ can also be deepened. While testifying to salvation in Christ, trinitarian openness toward other religions fosters the acknowledgment of the gifts of God also outside our own faith by virtue of the presence of the Spirit. At the same time, the Spirit guides us in a critical discernment of both virtues and evils among the religious other: The [religious] other is always interesting in their difference and may be the possible face of God, or the face of violence, greed, and death. Furthermore, the other may teach Christians to know and worship their own trinitarian God more truthfully and richly. (9) Thus, D’Costa (9) believes that trinitarian theology provides the “context for a critical, reverent, and open engagement with otherness, without any predictable outcome.” This emphasis does not mean that other religions are salvific in themselves. But nor do they have to be sinful and corrupted to the core. The Spirit’s constant invitation to a relational dialogue and discernment may also help us Christians become more sensitive to our own failings and sinfulness. Again, citing D’Costa (2000, 115), we can say that if the Spirit is at work in the religions, then the gifts of the Spirit need to be discovered, fostered, and received into the church. If the church fails to be receptive, it may be unwittingly practicing cultural and religious idolatry. The church better be ready for surprises, since there is no knowing a priori what beauty, truth, holiness, and other “gifts” may be waiting for the church (D’Costa 2000, 133). Borrowing from the biblical scholar, Walter Brueggemann, we can make the term “other” a verb to remind us of the importance of seeing the religious other not as a counter-object but rather as a partner in “othering,” which is “the risky, demanding, dynamic process of relating to one that is not us” (Brueggemann 1999, 1). What matters is the capacity to listen to the distinctive testimony of the other, to patiently wait upon the other, and to make a safe space for him or her. This kind of reverent, honest, and passionate Spirit-led engagement of the other also gives us an opportunity to hold in a dynamic balance postures that are often taken as valid alternatives: either witness/evangelization or dialogue, either exclusivism or tolerance, either proclamation or service, and so forth (see Kärkkäinen 2010, 2014). Contrary to what the first-generation pluralisms contend, a true dialogue and relational engagement does not mean giving up one’s truth claims but rather entails patient and painstaking investigation of real differences and similarities. The purpose of the dialogue is not necessarily to soften the differences among religions but rather to clarify similarities and differences as well as issues of potential convergence and impasse. Regretfully, the contemporary secular mindset too often mistakenly confuses tolerance with lack of commitment. That is to misunderstand the meaning of the term “tolerance.” Deriving from the Latin term meaning “to bear a burden,” tolerance is needed when real differences are allowed (Netland 2001). True tolerance is needed when two or more parties 450

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honestly acknowledge their differences, even deeply held differences. Tolerance is of no use if we come to the dialogue table having already decided that no real differences exist or be allowed! Furthermore, I argue that although too often juxtaposed with each other, the proclamation of the Christian gospel by the church and painstaking interfaith dialogue belong together and are not alternatives. This is a wide ecumenical consensus as affirmed by the World Council of Churches (2010, no. 61): “In mission there is place both for the proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ and for dialogue with people of other faiths.”

Conclusion That there are so many religions and ideologies with their own passionate claims for truth and salvation continues to be a major challenge for the church of the third millennium. The situation is particularly acute for an enthusiastic missionary movement such as global Pentecostalism. But what if religious plurality and pluralisms were not necessarily to be deemed as demonic or even enemies? This is what the British philosopher-theologian Keith Ward (1999, 25) believes, arguing that ultimately “for a religious person, to accept disagreement is to see it as within the providence of God” — even disagreement due to diversity of religious beliefs and convictions. Religions are not here without God’s permission and allowance. The continuing challenge, particularly for the staunch monotheist, is how to reconcile the existence of one’s own deeply felt (God-given?) beliefs with different, often opposite, kinds of convictions (Ward 1999). Sure, a theology of religions is a complex and painful task. But it can also be taken as an opportunity. The leading American comparative theologian Francis X. Clooney (2010, 7) speaks to the same issue: If we are attentive to the diversity around us, near us, we must deny ourselves the easy confidences that keep the other at a distance. But, as believers, we must also be able to defend the relevance of the faith of our community, deepening our commitments even alongside other faiths that are flourishing nearby. We need to learn from other religious possibilities, without slipping into relativist generalizations. The tension between open-mindedness and faith, diversity and traditional commitment, is a defining feature of our era, and neither secular society nor religious authorities can make simple choices before us. Tackling the complex and complicated issue of religions and religious plurality, while continuing faithful and enthusiastic work of evangelism and social service, the rapidly growing Pentecostal movement has the promise of taking leadership in this vital mission. The Pentecostal voice in the discussions on the theology of religions matters—and matters a lot!

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Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen “Evangelization, Proselytism, and Common Witness. Final Report of the Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and Some Classical Pentecostal Churches and Leaders: 1990–97.” 2010. In Pentecostalism and Christian Unity: Ecumenical Documents and Critical Assessments, edited by Wolfgang Vondey, 159–98. Eugene: Pickwick. “Final Report of the Dialogue between the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity of the Roman Catholic Church and Some Classical Pentecostals: 1977–82.” 2010. In Pentecostalism and Christian Unity: Ecumenical Documents and Critical Assessments, edited by Wolfgang Vondey, 113–32. Eugene: Pickwick. Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. 2000. “‘An Exercise on the Frontiers of Ecumenism:’ Almost Thirty Years of the Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue.” Exchange: Journal of Missiological and Ecumenical Research 29 (2): 156–71. ———. 2004. The Trinity and Religious Pluralism: The Doctrine of the Trinity in Christian Theology of Religions. Aldershot: Ashgate. ———. 2005. “Trinity and Religions: On the Way to a Trinitarian Theology of Religions for Evangelicals.” Missiology: An International Review 33 (2): 159–74. ———. 2006a. “‘How to Speak of the Spirit Among Religions’: Trinitarian ‘Rules’ for a Pneumatological Theology of Religions.” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 30 (3): 121–27. ———. 2006b. “Trinitarian Rules for a Pneumatological Theology of Religions.” In The Work of the Spirit: Pneumatology and Pentecostalism, edited by Michael Welker, 47–70. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———, ed. 2009. The Spirit in the World: Emerging Pentecostal Theologies in Global Contexts. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2010. “Dialogue, Witness, and Tolerance: The Many Faces of Interfaith Encounters.” Theology, News, & Notes 57 (2): 29–33. ———. 2013. Christ and Reconciliation. Vol. 1. A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2014. “Divine Hospitality and Communion: A Trinitarian Theology of Equality, Justice and Human Flourishing.” In Revisioning, Renewing, and Rediscovering the Triune Center: Essays in Honor of Stanley J. Grenz, edited by Jason Sexton, 135–53. Eugene: Pickwick. ———. 2016. Spirit and Salvation. Vol. 4. A Constructive Theology for the Pluralistic World. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Knitter, Paul F. 2002. Introducing Theologies of Religions. Maryknoll: Orbis. Lederle, Henry I. 1988. Treasures Old and New: Interpretations of Spirit-Baptism in the Charismatic Renewal Movement. Peabody: Hendrickson. Netland, Harold A. 2001. Encountering Religious Pluralism: The Challenge to Christian Faith and Missions. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press. Pinnock, Clark. 1988. “The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions.” In Christian Faith and Practice in the Modern World: Theology from an Evangelical Point of View, edited by M. A. Noll and D. F. Wells, 152–68. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 1992. A Wideness in God’s Mercy: The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. ———. 1996. Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit. Downers Grove: InterVarsity. Richie, Tony. 2006. “Azusa-Era Optimism: Bishop J. H. King’s Pentecostal Theology of Religions as a Possible Paradigm for Today.” Journal of Pentecostal Tradition 14 (2): 247–60. ———. 2011. Speaking by the Spirit: A Pentecostal Model for Interreligious Dialogue. Lexington: Emeth Press. Solivan, Samuel. 1998. “Interreligious Dialogue: An Hispanic American Pentecostal Perspective.” In Grounds for Understanding: Ecumenical Responses to Religious Pluralism, edited by S. Mark Heim, 37–45. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Ward, Keith. 1999. Religion and Community. Oxford: Oxford University Press. “Word and Spirit, Church and World. Final Report of the International Dialogue between Representatives of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and Some Classical Pentecostal Churches and Leaders.” 2010. In Pentecostalism and Christian Unity: Ecumenical Documents and Critical Assessments, edited by Wolfgang Vondey, 199–227. Eugene: Pickwick. World Council of Churches, ed. 2010. “Mission and Evangelism in Unity Today. A Study Document, WCC, 2000.” In “You are the Light of the World” (Matthew 5:14): Statements on Mission by the World Council of Churches, 1980–2005, edited by Jacques Mathey, 59–89. Geneva: WCC.

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42 THEOLOGY AND SCIENCE Disciplines at the limits of Pentecostal discourse Frederick L. Ware

In the engagement with the sciences, Pentecostal theologians are newcomers, just entering the field. Generally speaking, the term science refers to the suppositions, methods, and institutions for acquiring knowledge of the physical world inclusive of humanity’s social environment as well as the bodies of knowledge produced through these means. The central interest of Pentecostal theologians is in the natural sciences, although some works examined in this essay engage social and behavioral sciences and medical science. In this chapter, I  argue that despite the aversion of early Pentecostals to modern science, there is now a warming of Pentecostal theology to scientific discourse, although these pioneering efforts lack an agreed upon hermeneutic for engagement with the sciences in the varied social contexts of Pentecostals worldwide. This chapter examines four pioneering collaborative efforts indicative of general trends in Pentecostal theology and its attitudes toward the sciences. Although there is not sufficient ground to speak of a theology of science or even agreement on the relationship of science and theology among Pentecostals, the work of Amos Yong remains formative at this early stage: (1) the Science and the Spirit initiative directed by James K. A. Smith and Amos Yong (2010) and resulting in the edited volume Science and the Spirit: A Pentecostal Engagement with the Sciences; (2) the collection of essays titled The Spirit Renews the Face of the Earth: Pentecostal Forays in Science and Theology of Creation edited by Amos Yong (2009); (3) the review symposium where five Pentecostal scholars discuss and debate the ideas in Amos Yong’s The Spirit of Creation: Modern Science and Divine Action in the Pentecostal-Charismatic Imagination (Yong 2011b; “A Review Symposium,” 2013; Ware, 2013, 2014); and (4) the Science for Seminaries (2016) curriculum development project funded by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association of Theological Schools. The examination of these four initiatives is preceded by an overview of the status of Pentecostal theology in the religion and science dialogue, inclusive of the history and reasons for lack of engagement and a rationale for why Pentecostal theologians cannot evade engagement with the sciences. Toward the end of the essay, an assessment of the topics most important for Pentecostals is followed by an argument for Pentecostals to tarry (stay and venture further) in the emerging dialogue of theology and science.

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Classical Pentecostalism and the evasion of science Pentecostals have evaded, more so ignored or reacted negatively to, the questions raised by modern science. For some, there are enhancements made possible by science and technology that may appear to “meddle with nature” or be yet another chapter in the long story of human eugenics (Cole-Turner 2011, 1–18), including gene editing to give a healthy baby a much reduced risk of serious diseases and conditions over their lifetime; implanting a computer chip in the brain to give a healthy person a much improved ability to concentrate and process information; and a transfusion with synthetic blood to give healthy people much improved speed, strength, and stamina. These scientific and technological examples bring to light the possibility of altering the personalities and life-experiences of individuals in ways that raise questions of meaning not only for those individuals but also for their families and society. They may also contribute to inequity and injustice in sporting competitions, military action, employment, and health and wellness. Still, Christian theology, whether of liberal or conservative persuasion, cannot afford either to embrace uncritically or to reject outright the innovations in technology driven by science. So, why the evasion by Pentecostals? In the early period of the modern-day movement, Pentecostals were maligned by mainline Christian denominations and excluded from their theological schools. They were not credited with having a genuine “Pentecostal” theology. Born in this hostile social climate, Pentecostal pioneers were preoccupied with apologetics, defending Pentecostal faith and practices against external criticism. For example, William H. Durham claimed that modern science was at the forefront of the satanic attack against Christian faith ( Jacobsen 2003, 142). According to Durham, scientists and the system of higher education were spreading disbelief in God. Similarly, Garfield T. Haywood considered scientists to be adversaries of religious faith and divine truth, although he appropriated aspects of evolution in his history of the Earth and claimed that science could lead persons to experience awe in response to the natural order of the universe ( Jacobsen, 204–28). Esek William Kenyon argued that genuine science is purely factual and not blended with opinion ( Jacobsen 2003, 320–21). According to Kenyon, Charles Darwin and others ceased being “real” scientists when they ventured into speculation on the facts at which they arrived through empirical study. Kenyon contended that after real science reaches facts, there is mystery that is understandable only through divine revelation. The Pentecostal evasion of science may also be attributable to other factors. The language of science—specialized vocabulary, complex theories, advanced mathematics, abstract concepts—would have been difficult to understand not only by Pentecostals but also by many other persons with little or no education in the sciences. Classical Pentecostals at the beginning of the twentieth century were not widely educated, and a persistent anti-intellectual attitude was prevalent (Vondey 2013, 134–40). The authority of science and technology experts could be intimidating. In turn, ignorance of the sciences might have been a form of solace for persons who would otherwise be disturbed by the scientific perspectives challenging their faith. The rejection of science is undergirded by the Pentecostal suspicion of scientific and technological advances which can undermine often long-held and treasured beliefs (Yong 2009, xii, xiv, xvi–xvii). Pentecostals, probably most, have avoided engagement with the sciences through the development of a compartmentalized fundamentalist thinking within strict systems and a biblical literalism (Oord 2011) that leave little space for non-conformative ideas. In short, classical Pentecostal theology was not predisposed to an openness toward the sciences.

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Contemporary Pentecostal ventures and voices in the religion and science interface The evasion of science is not an option for Pentecostal theologians today. As educators, in both church and college and university settings, they are charged with the task of preparing persons for responsible participation in society, inclusive of the training of persons for sufficient and effective Christian ministry. In the college and university settings, Pentecostal theologians live their vocation as educators alongside that of others in a wide range of academic and scientific disciplines. Today there are several Pentecostal-sponsored colleges and universities with degree programs in the sciences and seminaries for Pentecostal ministers. There are now Pentecostals who are scientists! Consequently, Pentecostal attitudes about education and toward the sciences are changing. Little is known about the first sustained initiatives of Pentecostal scholarship at the start of the twenty-first century to explore the possible relationships between religious and scientific concerns. It is therefore worth recounting these efforts in more detail, as they manifest the different contexts and interests supporting theological engagement with the sciences. The resulting publications reveal the breadth of scholarly and interdisciplinary investment, although they speak less to the personal and institutional challenges faced by the participants. Pentecostals’ first academic venture, in a sustained manner, in the contemporary religion and science dialogue was the so-called “Science and the Spirit” initiative directed by James K. A. Smith and Amos Yong. The project, made possible by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, ran from 2005 to 2009 (see Yong 2005a, 2005b, Smith 2008). Smith and Yong assembled a team of ten scholars, Pentecostal and Charismatic by religious experience and church affiliation, to explore a variety of topics at the interface of religion and science. Members of the team were chemist Donald Calbreath, religious historian Heather Curtis, physicist and biblical scholar Paul Elbert, psychologist Robert Moore, sociologist Margaret Poloma, anthropologist Craig Scandrett-Leatherman, biologists Jerry Schloss and Mike Tenneson, chemist Steve Badger, systematic theologians Wolfgang Vondey and Frederick Ware, and biblical theologian Telford Work. During the first year of the project, these scholars worked separately on their research topics. During the second year, the team and directors met in order to discuss and refine the drafts of their research papers, to explore various aspects of science and its implications for Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity, and to collaborate on the design of a textbook for students attending Pentecostal colleges and seminaries. The group had extended conversations about science and faith with Darrell Falk, a biologist, and Philip Clayton, a philosopher of religion. From the project, a volume of essays was published under the title Science and the Spirit: A Pentecostal Engagement with the Sciences (Smith and Yong 2010). The essays vary in methodological approach and cover the topics of scientific method, the relation of science and religion, divine action, theism and scientific cosmology, evolution, biological correlates to human thought and behavior, and the impact of science and technology upon human life. Work proposes an alternative way of relating Pentecostalism and science, in contrast to the ways of conflict, compartmentalization, dualism with valuation of one over the other, and pragmatism emphasizing utility of either without their disciplinary baggage (Smith and Yong 2010, 17–20). Work states that Pentecostalism’s supernaturalism values nature and the natural, usually regarded as the primary domains of science, and emphasizes God’s grace that comes through both (27–30). According to Smith, the real source of conflict is not science but naturalism, a materialist view that claims that nature is all there is (40–43). Yong provides a sketch, in seven theses, of what he calls a pneumatological theology of divine action (63–64). 456

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Though not evident in the sciences, Yong argues that Pentecostal talk of God’s intervention is permissible and underscores the role of theological interpretation beyond the limited analytic framework of science. Vondey examines the concept of spirit in physics considering the scientific paradigm shift from Isaac Newton to Albert Einstein and argues that, through the pneumatological lens, Pentecostals may enter into dialogue with modern physics and study physics from a theological perspective (81–84). Badger and Tenneson’s historical study and contemporary survey of Pentecostal educators and general scientific opinions shows that attitudes about origins of the cosmos (evolution) are divided (95–96, 107–8). Rather than a single theology of origins, Pentecostals are found in the camps of young earth creationists, old earth creationists, and evolutionary creationists. Ware examines work in the area of determining the neural correlates of consciousness and recommends, given the limitations of these types of studies, using first-person narratives as supplements (122, 124, 128–29). Calbreath’s essay focuses on the treatment of depression through the integration of psychiatry and religious (Pentecostal) forms of psychotherapy (143–47). Through participant observation in Afropentecostal worship, Scandrett-Leatherman reports the insight he derived on how the embodiment, which occurs in Pentecostal rituals, is a way of knowing and means of personal transformation (163–68). Poloma tells the story of her becoming a Christian (Spirit-filled believer), and how she subsequently came to integrate her faith and vocation and chose to focus her studies in the sociology of religion on Pentecostal congregations and most recently on the phenomenon and experience of love (178–79, 181–82, 186–88). Cheek discusses the similarities and differences between science, technology, and religion (195–97) and proposes principles for the responsible use of technology (205–6). Together these essays are the first resource for Pentecostals seeking engagement with science across a broad range of topics. They are exploratory in nature and invite further study and clarification. The intention of this initiative is clearly on establishing a footing for dialogue and the possibility that Pentecostals look more closely at science as a resource and conversation partner for Pentecostal theology. Under the auspices of a general pneumatological direction, the focus was not directly on the science and theology interface but on the relationship of the sciences to Pentecostalism. A second initiative was undertaken in 2008, at the joint annual meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies and the Wesleyan Theological Society at Duke University Divinity School. Numerous program sessions and plenaries were devoted to the intersection of science and religion under the theme “Sighs, Signs, and Significance: Pentecostal and Wesleyan Explorations of Science and Creation.” A selection of twelve papers was gathered and published subsequently under the title The Spirit Renews the Face of the Earth: Pentecostal Forays in Science and Theology of Creation (Yong 2009). The contributing authors are Scott A. Ellington (chapter 1), R. Jerome Boone (chapter 2), Robby Waddell (chapter 3), Bernie Van De Walle (chapter 4), David Norris (chapter 5), Gerald King (chapter 6), Shane Clifton (chapter 7), Matthew Tallman (chapter 8), Peter Althouse (chapter 9), J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu (chapter 10), Edward Decker (chapter 11), and Michael Tenneson and Steve Badger (chapter 12). The organization of the chapters in The Spirit Renews the Face of the Earth does not immediately capture the main connections between the essays. More so than any particular view of pneumatology, the thread of connections are their shared interests in the topics of creation (God’s past, ongoing, and future activity), ecology (humanity’s place in nature), religious experience (human encounter with God), and human responsibility in the care of creation. Chapters 1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, and 12 deal with various aspects of the topic of creation. Based on exegesis of Psalm 104 and other texts from the Hebrew Bible, Ellington notes 457

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the association of the presence of God (panim Yahweh) and the spirit of God (ruach Yahweh), where presence is fundamental to God’s life-giving and life-renewing activity (Yong 2000, 2009, 13–16). For Ellington, clarification of these terms is essential to understanding the role of spirit in creation. In Waddell’s study of biblical texts, he shows that the eschatological renewal of creation is a transformation of this world, not God’s making of another world (31–33). This view of creation carries with it moral responsibility. Norris argues that Garfield T. Haywood, in comparison to other early Pentecostals, followed news of scientific discoveries and, using Genesis 1 as a template, appropriated data from paleontology in his theology of creation (76, 86–90, 92). King deals with the history of relationship between Pentecostals and fundamentalists from the beginning when the two were at odds with one another to their present alliance against evolution (112–14). Althouse outlines what he calls a kenotic pneumatology, following Jürgen Moltmann’s theology of kenosis. The distinctly Pentecostal feature of Althouse’s work comes through his emphasis on the kenosis of the Spirit present in the world for life and its renewal (169–71). Asamoah-Gyadu shows that, in an African context, Pentecostalism is not in conflict with science as it is in Western countries. In Africa, Pentecostalism is highly experiential, and the sacred and the secular are blended. Increasing numbers of African pastors and congregational leaders are trained in the sciences or science-based professions (190). And, finally, Tenneson and Badger (210–31) offer a pedagogy for teaching on the origins of creation to students who attend Pentecostal colleges and universities. From an interdisciplinary angle, chapters 2, 7 and 8 deal with the interrelated topics of ecology, environmentalism, and care of creation. Boone argues that the Torah, which set the moral pattern for the rest of the Bible, emphasize human responsibility for care of God’s creation (Yong 2009, 18–21). Clifton examines the Pentecostal fourfold or fivefold gospel, noting how this proclamation has inhibited ecological and environmental concerns and required modifications to the traditional proclamation in order to improve environmental ethics among Pentecostals (122–26, 129–33). Tallman sketches a pneumatological ecology, broadened by a view of salvation of all of creation (145–50, 152–53). On the topic of divine action, De Walle reviews Pentecostal affirmations of divine healing and sometimes contentious relations with medical science and medical doctors. Early Pentecostals distrusted medical science, in part because of challenges to their belief in divine healing and the perceived greed and arrogance of many medical doctors (59–65, 69–71). More recently, however, Pentecostalism and medical science are perceived as compatible in the fight against disease (54–58, 73). The focus of Decker’s essay is on epistemology, showing how cognitive appraisal processes enable Pentecostals to utilize their religious experiences in shaping meanings and their view of themselves and their world (193, 208). These exchanges, most of them still multidisciplinary rather than interdisciplinary, show the particular importance of the pneumatological orientation. The Spirit is rarely the focus of shared content, though, but rather forms a pathway for building epistemological and hermeneutical bridges between the different disciplines. Pentecostal theology depends on these bridges for a broader interface with the sciences, lest we reduce Pentecostal theology to its doctrinal expressions. Throughout the Science and Spirit project and publication of The Spirit Renews the Face of the Earth, Amos Yong began his own investigation of the concept and possibility of divine action toward the aim of developing a Pentecostal perspective for explanation of how God does what God does in the world (Smith and Yong 2010, 50–71). His study resulted in the book The Spirit of Creation: Modern Science and Divine Action in the Pentecostal-Charismatic Imagination (2011b). While clearly a leader in Pentecostal theology in multiple areas of study, Yong’s monograph was written purposefully for dialogue with other scholars. In March 2012, at the 458

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annual meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, a group of five scholars participated in a review symposium on Yong’s book. The group consisted of systematic theologians L. William Oliverio, Christopher Vena, and Frederick Ware and philosophical theologians Douglas F. Olena and Jack Wisemore. Their papers and Yong’s response were published in a special issue of Australasian Pentecostal Studies. Oliverio (2013), symposium moderator and issue editor, observes that Yong turns to the work of the Divine Action Project, cosponsored by the Vatican Observatory and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (1988–2003), and draws from it, affirming one view that emerged from the project called noninterventionist objective (special) divine action (NIOSDA) in which the laws of nature are not suspended or intervened upon yet God’s special actions in the world, as the biblical narratives witness, actually do things in the world which are not just matters of subjective interpretation but objective actions. Other issues raised and discussed include the use of NIOSDA (Wildman 2004) as opposed to alternative philosophical frameworks such as personalism; the ontological status of terms in Pentecostal language, thus questioning the meaning and use of “worldview” in Pentecostal theology; and assessment of emergence and other philosophical and scientific theories utilized by Yong (see Bradnick and McCall 2018; Leidenhag and Leidenhag 2018). The outcome of this critical review is still to be determined. The discussion, if not ended, has turned quiet. A fourth contribution of Pentecostal theologians to the engagement with the sciences has come through involvement in the pilot project of the Science for Seminaries initiative funded by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and administered through its program on Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER). The DoSER program, in consultation with the Association of Theological Schools, designed the project as a means of encouraging seminaries to integrate the sciences into their theological core curricula. Through collaboration with experienced theological educators and experts in the sciences serving as mentors and advisors, project participants received support in their review and revision of their theological curriculum. By focusing on the core curriculum, as opposed to elective courses, all students completing the respective degree programs are exposed to science-related topics. A cohort of ten theological schools was selected for participation in the pilot program, including the renewal oriented Regent University Divinity School with project leaders Wolfgang Vondey (2014–15) and Diane J. Chandler (2015–17). In terms of the faith statement and mission of Regent Divinity School and confession of the project leaders, the Science for Seminaries project, in this setting, is clearly oriented toward Pentecostalism. A national conference was held on “The Holy Spirit, Science, and Theological Education Conference” toward the end of the project. Another school selected for participation in the Science for Seminaries project was Howard University School of Divinity. Though not a Pentecostal school, the project director, Frederick Ware, is an ordained minister in the Church of God in Christ. The Pentecostal influences are evident in the overarching, unifying theme of the project, emphasizing creation and God the creator’s determination of the value, worth, and dignity of the human person. The project theme was titled “Oh So Human, Yet So Divinely Complex: Science and Theology in the Exploration of Human Identity, Community, and Purpose” (Ware 2016, 44–55). My own attempt (Ware 2011, 2018, 2019) to unify and to bring coherence to the various activities of the grant project under this type of theme correlates with Pentecostal 459

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belief in the Holy Spirit as unifier and underscores the existing Pentecostal interest in creation. The Science for Seminaries project is now in its second phase, and it is conceivable that other Pentecostal schools and Pentecostal theologians will participate in the future.

The stakes for a distinctly Pentecostal theology of science The pioneering initiatives have enlarged Pentecostal perspectives on theology and science through dialogue with other scholars aligned with wider evangelical and Protestant views. Yong contends that the variety of intellectual perspectives contribute to the existence of many tongues in the conversation (Smith and Yong 2010, 58–61). As a Pentecostal, he seeks a discernment of tongues, that is, of those theoretical frameworks, which will enable him to bear witness to the truth of God that he has come to know in the Pentecostal life. A Pentecostal theology of science in response to this discernment must be hospitable to a diversity of propositions and methods, even if some of them prove to be untenable. Yong’s work, in particular, engages with the way a Pentecostal theology of science can navigate the theological landscape in response to the issues raised by late (or post-) modernity. The prevalent ideas and themes of modernity in Western culture may be summarized as: (1) the concept of the autonomous individual, whose self is the ground of authority; (2) the notion that only that which is observable and measurable belongs to the real world; (3) the belief that nature (and anything in it) can (or must) be manipulated and controlled; (4) the view that the person is a duality of mind and body and, as a physical entity, is a “machine” or “object” that can be manipulated and controlled; (5) the perception that power is ultimate, something to acquire and to wield in relations between persons or between persons and their physical environments; (6) the view that personal identity is separable from the history and identity of the group, and (7) the belief that social systems are machinelike structures that can be manipulated and controlled, and through which persons can move from role to role (Neville 2002, 145–46). Modernity questions and holds in contempt the authority sources and figures upon which religions seem to depend (Neville 2002, 149). Modernity restricts religions, if they are tolerated at all, to the personal, private sphere of social life (Neville 2002, 160–61). All religions are facing the same situation: thoroughgoing critiques of religion; rival systems of meaning for human life; rival cosmologies; and demands and forces of political economy, electronic communications, and social mobility, which make human life increasingly complex and more chaotic (Neville 2002, xi). It would be an overreach to assert that modernity offers a definite set of issues at the intersection of Pentecostal theology and the sciences. Pentecostals have and continue to be very diverse ethnically, culturally, socio-economically, and doctrinally. While there is much diversity in perspective, the recent forays of Pentecostal theology into the modern sciences may be substantially improved by the addition of the voices of women and persons of color. Presently, the dialogue is mostly between men and nearly all white. Pentecostalism, not only in North America but also worldwide, is marked by a range of differences in ethnicity, language, social class, and historical experience (see Chapter 2). A robust engagement of Pentecostal theology with modern science should parallel the richness of this global diversity. A more diverse engagement faces significant challenges in the marginalized and underprivileged areas of the Pentecostal world. Given the rapid growth of Pentecostalism among the poor, the Pentecostal engagement with the sciences must address both the intellectual problems and moral crises posed by modern science and its distortion (Charles 2017). Pentecostals in poor countries are a vulnerable population susceptible to irresponsible scientific and theological claims resulting from the unqualified exposure to the ideas of modernity. 460

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Groups such as the Genesis II Church of Health and Healing and Global Healing Christian Missions claim that their “healing water,” “sacrament protocols,” and “miracle mineral solution” (MMS) can eradicate nearly every illness, including common colds, the H1N1 flu virus, malaria, Ebola, cancer, diabetes, autism, HIV, hepatitis, and multiple sclerosis (Lynn and Davey 2015). The drink is actually a mixture of water, industrial bleach, and citrus juice, which in large doses can result in serious injury or death. More than 50,000 Ugandans were given this toxic brew. The toll of injury and death is still to be tallied. The lack of scientific literacy is being exploited by persons seeking benefit of some kind or another, be it financial reward or personal satisfaction from supposedly helping the poor. Here and elsewhere, Pentecostals have to make a choice of alignment with dominant theological and scientific paradigms. The old alignment with fundamentalist attitudes seems no longer to be a viable option for a robust engagement with modern science, given the evasion and rejection spawned by this kind of alignment. Recently, Pentecostals have associated more closely with both Evangelical organizations (e.g. the BioLogos Foundation) and mainline Protestant groups (e.g. the Metanexus Institute and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences). These alignments influence their continued investigation of the disciplines and topics among the sciences, with some concerns germane to Pentecostalism but many topics seemingly of greater interest to Evangelical and mainline Protestant entrenchments in the culture war of determining how Christianity is reconciled or juxtaposed to modernity. In contrast, Pentecostal concerns tend to focus more on the concerns of creation (origins), divine action (healings, miracles, work of the Spirit in the world), and eschatology (destiny, the end envisioned, as well as moral and ethical action informed by this end). Though Pentecostal theologians benefit from the multiple intellectual perspectives arising from reflection on the questions that modern science raises for the Christian faith, there are two primary concerns which lie at the center of any distinctively Pentecostal engagement with the sciences. The first issue at stake for Pentecostals is how religious experience is interpreted and articulated theologically. The Pentecostal emphasis on the encounter with God suggests a primary concern, in the religion and science dialogue, on religious experience, in particular the study and interpretation of its nature and role in shaping consciousness (see Chapter 8). This emphasis on experience is embedded in an equally strong concern for the authority of Scripture (see Chapter 6). Yet the impact of this dual emphasis on Pentecostal hermeneutics and its implications for the theology and science interface have not been fully explored (Yong 2011a). The pioneering initiative mapped above suggest that despite a consensus on a hospitable attitude toward the sciences, there exists no agreed theological hermeneutic for a Pentecostal engagement at this time. A second concern, and for many Pentecostals a response to the first, is the importance of “spirit” as a category for study and interpretation of creativity, purpose, and mind. Increasingly, the notion of “spirit” is becoming an area of inquiry in the natural sciences (Vondey 2009). Strict materialism and philosophical naturalism seem not to explain life fully. Yong (2004) has provided a broad typology of the term “spirit” in the science and religion dialogue. Along with the biology of physical organisms and processes, “spirit” is a vital principle which animates life. In addition, spirit is closely related to the concept of mind (i.e. intelligibility, order, directionality, thought, etc.), which is a fundamental aspect of the world because it indicates that (a) there is an underlying intelligibility of the world and (b) the world includes and generates beings like us with consciousness and the capacity of thinking, willing, and value judgment (Nagel 2012, 16, 31). Spirit is also a fundamental concept in religions that enables comparative study (Hodgson 2004, 22–39; Yong 2005a). Spirit is understood not 461

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only in Christianity as Holy Spirit but also, in other religions, as world spirit and natural spirits associated with various forces in nature (see Kärkkainen, Kim, and Yong 2013). Common in the religions is the meaning of spirit as creative energy directed toward an end. Spirit and spirits may not be indicative of an “enchanted world” (Smith 2010, 32–33, 86); Spirit and spirits may be a feature of our very ordinary world. Hence, we must take seriously the effort to construct a Pentecostal theology of science from within a foundational pneumatology (see Chapter 14) in order to navigate the existing value judgments on the identity, authority, and scope of “spirit” (Vondey 2013, 196). In the process of investigating the world, science not only discloses the regularity and order of the world but also raises questions about the world which require, from time to time, a reassessment of initial and traditional beliefs. The complexity of these questions invites responses from multiple fields of human knowledge, especially from those disciplines, like theology, which have been wrestling with these questions much longer than modern science and have developed more robust intellectual and ethical perspectives aimed at resolution of these issues. While taking the sciences and the questions they ask seriously, Pentecostals should be vested in this dialogue on interpreting the world and our experiences within it.

Conclusion While Pentecostalism is the fastest growing branch of Christianity, it has much catching up to do in the theology and science interchange. There is opportunity not only to explore new configurations of Christian faith in response to the sciences, as the pioneering initiatives illustrate, but also to bring previously underrepresented voices into the dialogue. This essay has described the initial discussions of collective Pentecostal initiatives at the possible intersections between theology and science. The recent forays are an impressive start for the Pentecostal newcomers to the debate. Although they have not agreed upon a shared hermeneutic for engaging the sciences, Pentecostals have nevertheless contributed meanings of spirit which allow for a pneumatological imagination of the world beyond the philosophical naturalism and reductive materialism often associated with the sciences. Existing conversations have not included the complexities added by the uneven experience of the sciences across populations in the world, not to mention the broad range of diversity of global Pentecostalism. A robust engagement of Pentecostal theology with the sciences will have to tap into Pentecostalism’s diversity, since among the poor and oppressed, the fundamentalist and evangelical posture taken against science, as well as the liberal accommodation to science, may not be a promising direction for Pentecostal theology. Pentecostals’ engagement with the sciences must address both the intellectual problems and moral crises posed by science and its distortion. In addition to efforts to construct plausible explanations of religious beliefs called into question by science, Pentecostals are confronted with the challenge of explaining faith claims and practices which are not only questionable by scientific standards but also morally reprehensible. The stakes are high for Pentecostal theology in the religion and science dialogue.

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INDEX

aesthetics 3, 36, 37, 129, 140, 158, 242, 335–45, 434–35, 440; see also affections; anthropology; cosmology; culture; doxology; worship affections 9, 10, 33–36, 40, 44, 66, 77, 88–89, 91, 98, 119, 135, 145–46, 148, 156, 178, 180, 207–9, 238–41, 243–45, 247, 249, 273, 304, 315, 317, 335–36, 339, 353, 372, 379, 387, 399, 403–4, 406–8; see also orthopathy; spirituality; worship altar 13, 42, 48, 56–58, 61, 133, 136, 173–81, 211, 230, 238–39, 244–45, 251, 265, 273, 291, 311, 313, 316–18, 401, 403; see also full gospel altar call 29, 43, 56–58, 61, 70, 124, 129, 174, 175, 177, 207, 229–30, 251–52, 260, 262, 273, 280, 298, 308, 312, 314, 316, 318, 327, 382, 401, 403, 407–8, 447; see also altar; full gospel anointing 13, 69, 101, 113, 122, 159, 165, 179, 180, 187–89, 240, 251–52, 258–63, 291, 311, 313–14, 316, 318, 372, 434; see also Spirit baptism; spirituality anthropology 3, 13, 14, 31, 45, 57, 75–76, 108, 142, 156, 167, 187, 195, 198–201, 213, 219, 222–23, 226–28, 233–34, 251, 254, 269, 308, 314, 325–26, 328, 342–43, 349–50, 359–61, 367, 369–75, 381, 383, 386, 393–94, 404, 423, 428–29, 445, 454, 457; see also creation; ecotheology; Fall; sin apologetics 261, 430, 455; see also doctrine; full gospel; systematic theology Apostolic Faith 26, 44, 179, 195–98, 203–4, 263, 274, 295, 301, 378 atonement 3, 180, 195, 217, 227–29, 231, 233, 238, 241, 244, 258, 261–63, 266, 273, 275–76, 349, 448; see also Jesus Christ; Christology; crucifixion; salvation

baptism in the Holy Spirit see Spirit baptism Bible see Scripture blessing 48, 69, 170, 231, 251, 283, 303, 315, 382, 413, 414, 417, 424, 433; see also anointing cessationism 30, 130, 197, 264, 301, 302; see also apologetics; miracles; signs and wonders; spiritual gifts charismata see spiritual gifts Charismatic Movement 1, 2, 17, 20–21, 27–28, 38, 50, 62, 71, 72, 79, 81–83, 93–94, 99, 102, 104–5, 109, 114–16, 125–26, 151–52, 161, 171–72, 181–82, 194–95, 214–15, 221, 233–35, 250–51, 256, 262–67, 276–78, 282, 288–89, 298–300, 309–10, 319–20, 322, 324, 329–30, 344–45, 366, 370, 376, 380, 387–88, 396–97, 409, 418, 420, 430–31, 440–43, 446, 452, 454, 456, 458, 462, 464 Christology 3, 9–14, 17, 18, 25, 31, 33, 39, 42–49, 53, 55–57, 59–61, 65–66, 69–70, 76, 79, 89, 91, 96, 100–2, 104, 106–7, 109, 114, 116–17, 121–22, 125, 130, 132–37, 143, 153–54, 160, 164, 166, 169, 171–72, 173– 82, 185–94, 195–205, 206–10, 212–13, 215, 216–25, 227–36, 237–46, 247–56, 258–60, 262–63, 265, 268–76, 278, 280–81, 286–87, 291–93, 296–98, 304, 306, 308, 312–19, 322–23, 325–31, 336–38, 342–43, 345, 348–53, 355, 358–59, 361–63, 365, 370–76, 378, 380–85, 393–97, 406–7, 411–12, 415, 419, 421, 423–25, 429–30, 433–38, 440–41, 444–46, 448–52, 459; see also atonement; crucifixion; full gospel; Jesus Christ; salvation church see ecclesiology; community; fellowship; unity

465

Index class 26, 45, 109, 138, 159, 285, 328, 372, 385, 390, 422, 432, 435, 437, 438, 440, 447, 460; see also economics; race; justice community 10, 15, 23–25, 33, 40–45, 47–48, 53, 58, 59, 61, 65–67, 70, 75, 80, 85–86, 88–92, 95–96, 98–100, 110, 119, 129–38, 141, 145, 165, 168, 170, 173, 175–77, 190, 197–98, 227, 230–32, 244–45, 254, 260–61, 265–66, 273–74, 283, 286, 290–95, 297, 301, 303–6, 308–9, 312–14, 339–41, 348–49, 352, 354, 361, 368–75, 379, 383, 386–87, 391–93, 395–96, 399, 401–2, 405, 415, 417, 433, 435, 437–39, 451; see also ecclesiology; hermeneutics; fellowship contextual theology 2, 3, 13–15, 18–28, 30, 41, 47, 70, 92, 100, 106–14, 119, 123, 125, 131, 136–37, 140–41, 143–48, 164, 166–69, 176, 179, 200, 254, 257, 265, 275, 283–84, 290, 292, 294, 296–98, 303, 308, 338–40, 351–52, 358, 364, 367, 369, 375, 386, 389, 391, 400, 407, 410, 413, 417, 421, 432, 454, 456; see also culture conversion 26, 87, 110, 198, 202, 203, 211–12, 226, 229–30, 232–34, 240–43, 245, 249, 251, 259, 264, 265, 270, 274, 282, 285, 297, 316, 379, 430, 433; see also salvation cosmology 13, 15, 46, 76, 177, 195, 210, 218, 265, 273–74, 276, 342–43, 359–60, 362–63, 370–72, 374–75, 448, 455–57; see also creation; ecotheology; spirits creation 3, 10–11, 13–14, 34, 42, 48, 67–69, 88, 91, 135, 166, 178–79, 186, 188, 190–91, 195, 208–10, 213, 223, 226, 228–29, 231–32, 253, 271–74, 276, 287, 294, 298, 304, 309, 316, 321, 325, 342–44, 346–47, 349–50, 353, 357–65, 368–72, 374–75, 394–95, 415, 425, 430, 448, 457–61, 463; see also anthropology; cosmology; ecotheology crucifixion 43, 56–57, 67, 106, 113, 133, 154, 157, 174, 187, 190, 193, 217–18, 220–21, 223, 227–29, 234, 254, 258–59, 273, 275, 276, 291, 314, 326, 339, 342–43, 370, 372, 430; see also atonement; Christology; Jesus Christ; salvation culture 3, 12, 14, 16, 18, 22–23, 25, 34, 41, 65, 70, 75, 79, 80, 85–86, 90–92, 97, 102, 106– 16, 118–20, 122–23, 125, 130–31, 140–41, 143, 145–49, 155–58, 160, 165–66, 169–70, 176, 198, 228, 268, 275, 284–86, 293–95, 304, 308, 335–36, 338–40, 347–49, 352, 364, 368, 381–82, 405–6, 415–16, 425, 428–29, 432–34, 436, 439–40, 444, 450, 460–61; see also contextual theology dance 23–25, 40, 48, 110, 117, 120, 124–25, 317, 335–36, 339, 341, 343; see also aesthetics; embodiment; worship death 3, 11, 45, 56–57, 118, 179, 187, 201, 203, 213, 217–18, 220–21, 223, 228–29, 231–32,

245, 254–55, 259, 265, 268, 271–72, 275, 314–15, 318, 321, 325–27, 329, 343, 349–51, 359, 374, 394, 411, 414, 438, 450, 461; see also suffering deification (theosis) 233–34, 272–74, 351; see also sanctification deliverance 14, 20, 21, 24–25, 48, 122, 177, 179, 204, 210, 231, 245, 252, 265, 275, 321–24, 328, 433; see also demons; exorcism; spiritual warfare demons 13, 15, 20, 24, 195, 209, 218, 259, 262, 272, 321–29, 348, 374, 445, 451; see also deliverance; exorcism; pneumatology; spirits devil 24, 57, 113, 177, 195, 217–18, 223, 272, 321–29; see also cosmology; demons; spiritual warfare disability 3, 13, 118, 168, 346–56, 406; see also anthropology; divine healing; suffering discernment 10, 13, 15, 74, 78, 81–82, 98, 136, 137, 142, 145, 159, 166, 262, 308, 415, 450, 460; see also spiritual gifts; spirits dispensationalism 64, 66–68, 74, 76, 131, 180, 239, 240, 269–71, 275, 359–60, 363, 385; see also eschatology divine healing 1, 3, 9, 11, 13–14, 19–21, 23–26, 31, 44–45, 47–48, 57, 69, 77, 79, 87, 89, 91, 117, 119–25, 133, 137, 143, 168, 173, 175–77, 179–81, 195, 204, 209–10, 213, 216–18, 224, 227–28, 230–31, 240, 243–45, 257–68, 272–73, 275–76, 281–83, 291–92, 297, 301, 303, 306, 309, 311, 314, 318, 321–22, 325–26, 329, 339, 346, 348–49, 352–54, 358, 361–63, 370, 378, 380, 387, 411, 433, 435, 439, 458, 461; see also death; disability; full gospel; suffering divinity 69, 86, 153, 156, 159, 187, 199–202, 204, 208, 210, 216, 219–20; see also Christology; Oneness theology; ontology; pneumatology; Trinity doctrine 1, 2, 3, 8–11, 13–14, 18–21, 23–25, 30–31, 37–38, 40, 44–47, 63–64, 66–67, 69, 71, 73–74, 76, 79, 81, 84, 86–87, 89–92, 95, 98–102, 104, 119, 122, 125, 131, 133, 142, 144, 146–47, 167, 176, 185–87, 191–92, 194, 196, 198–200, 202, 203, 206, 208, 213, 220–25, 226–33, 237, 239, 242–43, 247–49, 258, 266, 271, 273, 275, 279, 297, 323, 327, 329, 358, 361–63, 379–80, 382–84, 390, 392–94, 396, 399–404, 407, 427, 430, 432–35, 438, 448, 458; see also individual doctrines; story; narrative; systematic theology doxology 14, 19, 40–41, 43–45, 47, 48, 175, 220, 231, 301–2; see also aesthetics; worship ecclesiology 3, 10–11, 14–16, 19–20, 22, 24–26, 30–31, 37, 42–45, 47–48, 66–67, 71, 74–77, 80, 87, 89, 95–99, 101–3, 113, 119–20, 122, 125, 130, 136–37, 141, 143, 146–47, 152, 155,

466

Index 163–71, 175, 177–81, 185, 195–98, 202–3, 206–11, 213, 217, 222–23, 232, 242, 247–51, 253, 255, 259–62, 269–71, 273–74, 279–81, 283, 285–86, 290–300, 301–6, 308–9, 312–14, 316–18, 325–26, 328, 336–39, 349, 351, 354, 358, 372–73, 378, 381–86, 390, 394–96, 400, 403, 413, 415–18, 423–27, 429–30, 434–35, 437–40, 444–46, 448–51, 456; see also church; community; fellowship; unity economics 3, 108, 112, 124, 158, 177, 186–87, 190–91, 193, 200, 206, 227–28, 287, 293, 303, 308, 314, 354, 357, 359, 364, 367–77, 391, 418, 422, 428, 436–40; see also justice; prosperity theology ecotheology 3, 11, 24, 35, 107, 111, 124, 155–56, 167, 177, 179, 210, 231–33, 285, 287, 339, 341, 347, 357–66, 369, 371, 373, 375, 385, 454, 458; see also anthropology; cosmology; creation ecumenism 1, 3, 11, 15, 19, 26, 58, 90, 138, 143, 145, 146–48, 152, 155, 168, 197, 200, 233, 247, 251, 257, 263, 274, 280, 287, 290–92, 294–96, 302, 306, 308, 311, 378–88, 410, 413–14, 416, 436–37, 443–46, 449, 451; see also ecclesiology; unity embodiment 13–14, 23, 25, 29, 31, 33–34, 45, 68, 70, 77, 81, 91, 96–97, 100–2, 117–26, 136–37, 140, 145, 156–57, 160, 173, 200–2, 222, 231, 243–45, 255, 258–60, 263, 265, 292–93, 295, 298, 307–8, 312–15, 317–18, 335–37, 339–41, 344, 347, 349–54, 371–74, 380–81, 384, 393, 399, 401–8, 414, 424, 457, 460; see also aesthetics; doxology; worship empowerment 11, 18, 21–23, 32, 36, 44–45, 54–57, 59, 64, 69, 70, 87, 100, 106, 109–10, 113–14, 121, 146–47, 153, 157, 159–60, 165, 167, 169, 177–79, 186–89, 193, 201–4, 207, 209–13, 216–18, 229, 232, 234, 237, 240–41, 245, 249–50, 257, 259, 262, 264–65, 268, 273–75, 279–82, 284, 292–93, 301–5, 308–9, 313, 318–19, 322, 324–25, 327, 329, 338, 343, 346–52, 354, 358, 371–73, 381–82, 384, 389, 392–96, 402–3, 406–7, 411–12, 414, 422–27, 433, 435–36, 438–39, 447, 449, 460; see also justice; power; sanctification; Spirit baptism; spiritual gifts encounter 19, 22, 40–42, 47–48, 54–55, 59–61, 63–71, 75, 84–92, 96, 101, 111, 117, 119, 121–22, 132–36, 140, 143, 155–56, 164, 167, 170, 173–80, 202, 207–8, 213, 221–22, 226, 231, 234, 238, 244–45, 249, 273, 280, 281, 287, 290–93, 302–3, 308, 313, 315–19, 323, 353, 370, 374, 379, 382, 386–87, 404, 406, 426, 444, 446, 448–49, 457, 461 epistemology 9, 12, 25, 30, 32–38, 46, 55, 64, 75, 79, 84–86, 88–89, 91–92, 97, 99, 101, 108, 123, 140–42, 144, 146–47, 156, 163, 171,

193, 221, 231, 241, 306, 323, 336, 342, 347, 350, 399, 403–5, 407–8, 425, 447–48, 454, 458, 462; see also hermeneutics equality 25, 97–98, 284–85, 373, 390, 423, 425–27, 429–30, 433, 435, 438–40; see also economics; feminist theology; justice; race eschatology 1, 3, 10–11, 14–15, 19, 26, 34, 45–47, 61, 74, 76–77, 91, 102, 112, 143, 159, 160, 164, 169, 173, 175–78, 180–81, 188–93, 195, 199, 206, 212–14, 216, 218, 223–24, 226, 230–32, 239, 243, 247–48, 253–55, 259–60, 262, 268–78, 279, 282, 284, 291–92, 294, 297–98, 301–4, 307–9, 311, 318, 324–29, 346, 349, 353, 358–59, 361–65, 368–70, 372–74, 384, 393, 416, 433, 448, 458, 461; see also dispensationalism; full gospel; kingdom of God ethics 11–12, 33, 36, 41–42, 77, 87, 111, 138, 140, 148, 169, 204, 237–44, 260, 281–83, 285, 326, 336, 342, 350, 352–53, 368–70, 391, 395, 399–400, 403, 405–8, 414, 416–18, 432–40, 446, 450, 458, 460–62; see also disability; ecotheology; justice; prosperity theology; race; sin Eucharist see Lord’s Supper; sacraments evangelization 45, 80, 91, 168, 169, 180, 257, 279–84, 286–88, 293, 295, 304–5, 316, 321, 324, 326, 359, 379, 384, 443, 444, 446, 449–51; see also missiology evil 21, 25, 69, 113, 121–22, 218, 231, 254, 262, 264, 272, 280, 303, 321–29, 343, 350–51, 353; see also cosmology; demons; devil; spirits; spiritual warfare exorcism 25, 117, 122, 272, 323, 324, 326, 329; see also deliverance; demons; devil; spiritual warfare experience 1, 3, 10, 19–27, 30–31, 35–37, 40–45, 47–48, 53–56, 58–61, 63–68, 70–71, 73–76, 80–81, 84–94, 96–102, 106–13, 117–23, 125, 129–30, 132–38, 140–43, 145, 147–48, 152, 154–56, 158–160, 165–67, 169–70, 173–81, 196–99, 201–4, 206–13, 216, 218, 221–23, 227, 229–34, 238–42, 245, 247–52, 255, 259, 261, 263–64, 266, 274–75, 279–81, 283, 285–87, 290–92, 294–98, 301–7, 309, 311–12, 314, 316–18, 335–36, 340–44, 346–49, 351–52, 354, 359, 364, 368, 378, 380, 383, 387, 390, 392–93, 396, 399–408, 411–12, 418, 422, 425, 433–37, 439, 444, 446, 448, 455–58, 460–62 faith 7, 8, 11, 14–15, 19–21, 24, 29, 31, 35–37, 42–43, 45, 53, 57, 65–71, 73, 76–77, 79, 81, 85–88, 91–92, 98–99, 109–11, 119, 121, 123–24, 129–30, 136, 143, 145, 160, 170–71, 179, 195–98, 200, 202–4, 209, 211, 220–21, 223, 227–32, 234–35, 238–41, 243, 245, 247, 249–51, 254–55, 258–62, 281, 284, 286,

467

Index 291–92, 296, 305, 307, 313–17, 321, 324, 326–27, 335, 338, 34–43, 348–49, 352–53, 358–59, 372–74, 378, 380–81, 384–86, 391–92, 402–4, 407, 410, 412–14, 417, 424, 433–34, 437–39, 443–47, 450–51, 455–57, 459, 461, 462 Fall 145, 150, 223, 226, 228, 231–33, 325, 349, 371; see also anthropology; atonement; evil; sin fellowship (koinonia) 26, 38, 69, 95, 144, 147, 180, 185, 188, 190–91, 193–94, 204, 245, 290–96, 298, 316, 318, 372, 379, 380–84, 386; see also community; ecclesiology feminist theology 3, 84, 96, 137, 348, 389–98 fire 47, 53–61, 78, 79, 137, 155, 159, 223, 253–54, 338, 350–51, 360, 406; see also revelation; Spirit baptism foot washing 9, 44, 101, 155, 178, 311, 313–14, 317–19, 343; see also sacraments forgiveness 121, 123–24, 201, 210, 217, 227, 228, 231, 254, 258, 352; see also atonement; conversion; sin; salvation full gospel 3, 9, 13–14, 16, 31, 40, 43–45, 47–48, 76, 87, 130, 143, 146, 173–82, 202, 207, 216–18, 220, 223, 227, 230, 243, 258, 268–69, 271–72, 275–76, 292, 295–97, 305, 316, 338, 346, 348–49, 353–54, 361–62, 385, 396, 400–1, 403, 433, 458; see also divine healing; eschatology; salvation; sanctification; Spirit baptism

387, 389, 406, 429, 435, 438, 460; see also Spirit baptism; spiritual gifts; xenolalia God, doctrine of 3, 9, 10–14, 16–17, 21, 24–26, 30–40, 42–49, 54–71, 74, 76–77, 79, 81–82, 84–94, 99–104, 110, 114–17, 119–21, 123, 126, 129–31, 133–38, 140, 142, 145–57, 159–61, 164, 167, 170, 173–82, 185–91, 193–204, 206–13, 216–25, 226–36, 237–48, 250–55, 257–59, 261–64, 268–84, 286, 288, 290–309, 312–21, 324–31, 336, 338–45, 348–52, 354–55, 359–63, 365–66, 368–77, 379–82, 384, 386–88, 391, 393–97, 401–4, 406–7, 409, 411–17, 420, 422–24, 426–28, 430, 432–33, 435–41, 444–46, 448–52, 455–61; see also Christology; divinity; Oneness theology; ontology; pneumatology; Trinity grace 68, 123, 177–78, 186–87, 195, 202–4, 210, 222, 240, 243–45, 260–61, 269, 273, 286, 301, 303, 307, 313–14, 317, 319, 329, 342–43, 352–53, 374, 382, 405, 410, 412–13, 415–16, 421, 423–24, 427, 430, 456

gender 16, 24, 26, 109–11, 113, 118, 124–25, 136–37, 159, 167, 204, 261, 287, 304–5, 308, 354, 389–90, 392, 406, 422–23, 425, 427, 433, 436–40, 447; see also equality; feminist theology; justice globalization 1, 2, 4, 12–14, 18, 21–23, 25–27, 37, 40–41, 47, 58, 67, 70–71, 87, 107–110, 112, 123, 137, 138, 140, 143, 145–48, 154, 165, 166, 168–69, 176, 204, 226, 233, 247, 249, 252, 257, 260, 262–66, 272, 275, 279, 281, 287, 294, 308, 311–12, 335, 337, 339, 341, 346–48, 358, 360–61, 367–69, 384, 396, 400–1, 406–7, 410, 413–18, 421, 432–33, 435, 439–40, 444, 451, 460, 462; see also contextual theology glorification 201, 237, 240, 244, 273, 276; see also Christology; doxology; glory; sanctification glory 54, 100, 188, 201–2, 210, 213, 243, 245, 259–60, 268, 274, 302–3, 342–44, 364 glossolalia 3, 10–13, 19–21, 26, 30–31, 38, 40, 44, 47, 53, 55–56, 63–64, 78–80, 87, 90–91, 95, 98–101, 117, 120–21, 124–25, 148, 154– 55, 157, 177–78, 195, 197, 202–3, 207, 209, 211, 230–31, 248–49, 259, 268, 270, 274–75, 280, 296, 301–4, 306, 308–9, 311, 321–22, 328, 339, 344, 350–51, 363, 378, 380, 383,

healing see divine healing heaven 53, 59, 74, 117, 153, 155, 159, 188, 190, 201, 209, 218, 226, 228, 230–32, 235, 253–54, 272, 302, 353, 359, 361–65, 371, 375, 461; see also cosmology; eschatology; kingdom of God hell 230, 231–32, 272, 323, 361–65, 371, 375, 411, 461; see also cosmology; eschatology; evil hermeneutics 3, 8–9, 12, 16, 21, 42–43, 53–55, 58, 66, 74–76, 81, 89, 101, 110–11, 113, 129–39, 136–38, 140–51, 155, 158, 165–67, 173–81, 186, 196–98, 200, 204, 227–28, 233, 239, 248, 258–59, 269–70, 292, 308, 347, 352–53, 357, 359, 380, 385, 391–92, 399, 401–3, 405–8, 421, 434, 437, 445, 454, 457, 459, 461–62; see also epistemology; Scripture; systematic theology holiness 19, 26, 37, 38, 44–46, 48, 58, 73, 125, 129, 142, 159, 177–78, 195–96, 202–4, 228, 231–32, 237–39, 241–45, 273–75, 291, 295, 305–6, 308, 316, 318, 369, 382, 411, 417, 433, 436, 439, 450; see also sanctification Holy Spirit 1, 8–15, 19, 26, 30, 32–33, 36, 40, 43–49, 53, 55–58, 61, 63, 65–66, 70, 75–76, 79–80, 82, 85, 92, 94, 100–1, 103–5, 110, 113, 117, 119, 121–22, 124, 129–30, 132–35, 149–50, 154–55, 160–61, 164–67, 169–70, 172, 174–82, 186–97, 199, 201–4, 206–15, 217–23, 225, 228–31, 234–36, 239, 241–42, 246–48, 251–56, 260–61, 264, 270, 279–81, 285, 287, 288, 290–96, 298–300, 301–2, 305, 308–10, 316, 318, 321–22, 328–30, 336, 338, 340, 354, 358, 362–63, 365, 369, 371–72, 377–78, 380–85, 388, 399, 402–9, 428, 435–37, 439, 443–47, 449–50, 452, 459–60, 462–63; see also God, doctrine of; pneumatology

468

Index hospitality 1, 13–15, 45, 80, 87, 167–68, 177, 181, 210, 214, 255, 295, 297, 312, 354, 369–71, 373, 375, 399, 401, 405–8, 434, 443, 446, 460–61; see also ecclesiology humanity see anthropology imago Dei 75, 222, 238, 240, 243, 245, 283, 349–51, 372, 393–95, 426, 430; see also anthropology; Christology; disability Incarnation 13, 101–2, 154, 158, 186–88, 195, 199, 201, 219, 222, 224–25, 234, 312, 342–43, 372, 374, 449; see also Christology; God, doctrine of; ontology initial evidence 2, 11, 19, 21, 26, 30, 31, 38, 56, 74, 77, 80, 89–91, 98–100, 102, 203, 230, 247, 249, 264, 274–75, 291, 302, 321, 325, 329, 411, 414, 433, 435, 438; see also Spirit baptism; spiritual gifts Jesus Christ 9–14, 17–18, 25, 31, 33, 39, 42–49, 53, 55–57, 59–61, 65–66, 69–70, 76, 79, 89, 91, 96, 100–2, 104, 106–7, 109, 114, 116, 117, 121–22, 125, 130, 132–37, 143, 153–54, 160, 164, 169, 173–82, 186–94, 195–205, 206–10, 212–13, 215–25, 227–36, 237–46, 247–56, 258–60, 262–63, 265, 268–76, 278, 280–81, 286, 291–93, 296–98, 304, 306, 308, 312–19, 322–23, 325–31, 336–38, 342–43, 345, 348–49, 351–53, 355, 358–59, 361–63, 365, 370–76, 378, 380–85, 393–97, 406–7, 411–12, 415, 419, 421, 423–25, 429–30, 433–38, 440–41, 444–46, 448–52, 459; see also atonement; Christology; crucifixion; full gospel; Incarnation; resurrection justice 3, 11, 34, 91, 137, 169, 187, 209, 271, 274, 279, 284, 287–88, 293, 302, 304–7, 309, 312, 351, 354, 358, 367, 373, 415, 418, 426, 432–42 justification 11, 35, 47, 92, 144, 185–86, 203–4, 209, 210, 228–30, 233–34, 237, 255, 269, 272, 292, 348, 379, 380, 400, 402, 424; see also faith; pneumatology kenosis 212, 309, 344, 370–72, 374, 458; see also Christology; crucifixion; pneumatology kingdom of God 1, 9–11, 13–15, 31, 44, 46–47, 89, 91, 160, 164, 169, 173, 175–76, 178, 180–81, 188–89, 195, 212–13, 216–18, 224, 230, 243, 248, 254, 259, 260, 262, 268–71, 273–76, 284, 291–92, 294, 298, 301–4, 307–9, 324, 326–29, 348, 353, 359, 373, 393, 416, 433, 448; see also eschatology; hell; heaven koinonia see fellowship; community; ecclesiology

Latter Rain 76, 270–71, 280; see also Apostolic Faith laying on of hands 87, 91, 101, 120, 178–79, 259–60, 311, 317; see also anointing; blessing; prayer; sacraments liberation 11, 25, 32, 35, 84, 110, 113, 124, 165, 177–79, 190, 232, 272, 274–75, 284–85, 303, 326, 353, 359, 362–63, 389, 392–93, 395, 416, 432–34, 436, 438, 440 liturgy 8–10, 13, 19, 23–26, 43, 84, 98, 112, 122, 173, 175–81, 251, 262, 265, 273, 291, 298, 302, 311–12, 314–19, 335, 364, 367, 370, 373–74, 384, 399, 439; see also rituals; sacramentality Lord’s Supper 295, 312, 314–16, 318, 367, 370–71, 373–75; see also sacraments love 68, 76, 91, 117, 120, 123, 146, 147, 191–93, 200, 202, 204, 207–10, 213, 216, 217, 223, 237, 239–45, 247, 251–52, 273, 279, 284, 291, 302, 307–9, 314, 318, 342, 352, 370–72, 374–75, 384, 403, 406, 415, 426, 434–36, 438–40, 457 Luke-Acts 13, 43, 45, 47, 55–57, 59, 62, 64, 72, 89, 105, 138, 146, 155–60, 164, 174, 182, 186–87, 189, 191, 201, 209, 212, 215, 219, 221, 226–27, 235, 249, 251, 253–56, 271–72, 289, 304, 309–10, 315, 324–27, 329, 374, 376–77, 388, 394–95, 433, 437; see also hermeneutics; Scripture method 3, 7–9, 12, 14–16, 26, 29–30, 32, 33, 36–38, 67–68, 99, 129–34, 138, 153, 158, 163, 173, 178, 197, 261, 270, 285, 342, 350, 368, 390, 392–94, 401, 408, 413, 456; see also epistemology; hermeneutics; systematic theology ministry 25, 45–46, 64, 78, 80, 97, 121, 124, 144, 160, 164–66, 168–69, 175, 187–90, 193, 196, 207, 209, 220–21, 240, 247–48, 252, 255, 259–65, 272, 279–83, 285, 287, 295, 297, 301–5, 308, 313, 315, 323, 326, 328–29, 337–39, 352, 354, 360–61, 381, 383, 385–87, 390, 392, 395–96, 411, 434, 437–38, 446, 448–49, 456, 459; see also ecclesiology; evangelization; feminist theology; justice; liturgy; testimony; witness miracles 44, 46, 54–55, 58, 61, 64, 110, 129, 154, 164–65, 167, 213, 248, 259, 261–64, 280–82, 301, 307, 353, 369, 384, 387, 461; see also signs and wonders missiology 1, 3, 10, 19, 22–24, 31, 34, 40, 43–48, 73, 80, 91–92, 106, 108, 122, 130, 137, 143, 164, 166, 169, 180, 187, 196–97, 200, 209, 212, 218, 228, 245, 247, 251, 254, 257–58, 263–64, 268, 269–70, 273–74, 279–89, 290–98, 302–9, 326, 358, 360, 364–65, 373, 379–80, 383–84, 392–96, 404,

469

Index 406, 414–15, 421, 430, 432–33, 435–38, 440, 443–44, 447, 449, 451, 459; see also ecclesiology; evangelization mission see missiology music 22–25, 27, 40, 42, 47–48, 81, 87, 117, 120, 145, 177, 291, 315, 323, 335–37, 434; see also aesthetics; embodiment; liturgy; worship mysticism 10, 32, 36–38, 45, 87–90, 92, 99, 100–3, 239, 244, 274–75, 313, 316, 318, 327; see also spirituality narrative 2, 3, 10, 13, 16, 23–24, 34–35, 40–48, 53–60, 63–65, 68–71, 76, 89–91, 96, 130, 132–33, 136, 142–43, 146, 152–53, 155, 157, 159, 167, 173–78, 180–81, 186–94, 207, 226, 227–29, 231–34, 251–53, 260, 272, 291–92, 294, 296–97, 305, 308, 338, 348, 350, 352, 361, 382, 392, 394–95, 400, 403, 406–7, 410–11, 418, 438–39, 455, 457; see also full gospel; hermeneutics; story Oneness theology 3, 46, 49, 185, 194, 195–205, 208–9, 216, 219–21, 225, 229, 242, 249, 255, 431; see also Christology; God, doctrine of; Trinity ontology 10, 12, 14, 74, 75, 140–42, 191, 242–45, 272, 275, 298, 312, 367–68, 371–75, 381, 393–94, 459; see also anthropology; divinity; God, doctrine of orality 18, 23–25, 27, 40, 63–64, 66–68, 110, 132, 156, 178, 337, 339, 341; see also embodiment; glossolalia; initial evidence; testimony; witness; worship; xenolalia orthodoxy 9, 33, 35–36, 98, 118–19, 124, 136, 142, 145–46, 198, 217, 273, 399, 402; see also doctrine; systematic theology orthopathy 9, 33, 35, 118, 119, 124, 145, 273, 399, 402–4, 406–8; see also affections; passion orthopraxy 9, 33, 35–36, 118–19, 124, 136, 145, 273, 402 passion 10, 35, 40, 44, 178, 207–9, 241, 247, 249, 273, 304, 315, 379, 387; see also affections; orthopathy Pentecost 11–14, 17, 20–23, 27–28, 43, 45, 47–48, 53–62, 64, 68, 76, 82, 91, 130, 138, 141, 143, 150, 152–62, 170, 173–82, 185–86, 188–91, 194, 196, 203–5, 206–15, 220, 223–25, 226–28, 238–39, 254, 256, 268, 270–71, 273–74, 276–77, 279, 288, 291, 294, 296–99, 301–2, 304–5, 310, 313, 319–20, 338, 341, 344, 350–51, 355, 367, 369, 371–73, 375–77, 380–81, 383–84, 387, 389, 396, 406, 409, 424, 427–28, 430, 436–37, 439–40, 446, 453 philosophy 3, 7, 8, 12, 32, 34–35, 74–76, 84–86, 92, 141–45, 147–48, 198, 200, 357, 369,

399–409, 411–12, 418, 459, 461–62; see also epistemology; hermeneutics pneumatological imagination 3, 12, 14, 26–27, 43, 47–48, 66, 75, 92, 122, 142, 152–62, 170, 174, 206, 221, 224–45, 296, 335, 340–44, 348, 350, 353, 375, 378, 406–7, 434, 462; see also hermeneutics pneumatology 3, 10–13, 15, 26, 27, 30, 32, 37, 38, 40, 55, 75, 92, 106, 122, 142, 152–60, 164, 166–67, 169–71, 174, 185–87, 190–91, 193, 206–15, 221–22, 229, 233, 237, 238–40, 242–43, 249, 269, 270–71, 272, 274, 280, 287, 290–91, 293, 295–98, 335, 338–44, 346, 348, 350–51, 353, 361–62, 369, 371, 375, 380–83, 387, 392–95, 399, 402–8, 414, 433, 439, 446–49, 456–58, 462; see also Holy Spirit; spirits political theology 11, 13–14, 92, 111–12, 124–25, 158, 169, 177, 188, 266, 268, 271–72, 284, 286–87, 292, 303–4, 347–48, 357–61, 364, 367, 369, 373, 375, 382, 407, 415, 422, 425–26, 428, 432–33, 436–38, 440, 460; see also justice power 18, 21, 23, 32, 36, 44–45, 54–57, 59, 64, 69, 70, 87, 100, 106, 109–10, 113–14, 121, 147, 153, 157, 159–60, 165, 167, 169, 179, 186–89, 201–4, 207, 209, 210–13, 216–18, 237, 240–41, 245, 249, 250, 257, 259, 262, 264–65, 268, 273–74, 279–81, 292–93, 302–5, 308–9, 313, 318–19, 322, 324–25, 327, 329, 338, 343, 347–49, 351–52, 354, 371–73, 381–82, 384, 392–96, 402–3, 406–7, 411–12, 414, 422–27, 433, 435, 439, 449, 460; see also empowerment; political theology; Spirit baptism praxis 3, 9–10, 14, 21–22, 25–26, 31, 36, 54–55, 58, 60, 65, 79–80, 87, 90, 95, 101, 119–120, 122–25, 133, 135–36, 144, 148, 160, 163–72, 174, 176–79, 196, 198–99, 209, 211, 222, 229, 231, 234, 237, 244, 247–48, 259–60, 261–65, 273–75, 279, 284, 286, 291, 295, 297–98, 301, 304, 306–7, 312, 314, 316, 318, 323, 324, 336, 338, 340–41, 344, 357–58, 360, 365, 369, 374–75, 379, 385–87, 395, 399, 402–3, 405, 410, 413–15, 418, 425–26, 432, 437, 439, 446; see also embodiment; liturgy; ritual; sacraments prayer 9, 11, 20, 23–25, 32, 36, 37, 42, 48, 87, 91, 99, 110, 119–23, 175, 178–79, 209, 211, 219, 222, 244, 251, 257–58, 260–61, 263, 266, 273, 275, 281, 303, 305, 307, 314–18, 322–24, 327–29, 335, 360, 374, 386–87; see also spirituality; worship preaching 9, 21, 23–24, 42, 48, 64, 77, 164–66, 175, 178–79, 197, 248, 259, 269, 284, 311, 335, 341, 444; see also testimony; witness presence, divine 12, 53, 66, 87–88, 120, 177–80, 206–13, 240, 273, 275, 311–12, 317–19,

470

Index 343, 370, 375, 383, 393, 448, 458; see also encounter; mysticism; pneumatology prophecy 3, 20, 25, 44, 47, 54–55, 57, 59–60, 63, 65–66, 74, 76–79, 81, 97, 133–35, 142–43, 159, 166, 175, 211–12, 249, 251, 269–70, 281, 301, 304–8, 323, 326, 338–39, 351, 371–72, 378, 385, 387, 437; see also spiritual gifts prosperity gospel 3, 21, 63, 67, 69–70, 112, 217–18, 228, 231, 257–58, 266, 282, 284, 353, 359, 367, 369, 410–20, 432–34, 438, 440; see also economics race 3, 26, 76, 108–9, 124, 136–37, 165, 167, 169, 228, 261, 282, 284, 286, 291, 305, 325, 348, 380, 390, 406, 421–31, 432–40, 447; see also anthropology; equality; justice reason 3, 12, 23, 29, 33, 35, 37, 53, 66–67, 69, 73–78, 80–81, 84, 88–89, 92, 97–98, 110, 132, 141, 186, 228, 241, 244, 248, 328, 339, 350, 384, 403–4, 408, 449; see also epistemology; hermeneutics; method redemption 11, 43, 45, 48, 160, 178–79, 185–86, 188–94, 201, 213, 226, 233, 252, 257–59, 272, 275–76, 297, 314, 329, 343–44, 346, 361–62, 372–75, 381–82, 417, 437; see also atonement; salvation relationality 14, 42, 45, 48, 75, 91, 156, 186, 191, 217, 223, 241, 273, 296, 343, 369, 371, 393, 399, 401–3, 405, 407, 449–50; see also anthropology; community; cosmology; ecclesiology; fellowship religions 3, 12–15, 23, 41, 44, 108–9, 117–19, 152–53, 170, 206, 280, 287, 308, 317, 322–23, 367, 385, 395, 405, 422–23, 427–28, 438, 443–53, 454, 456–57, 460–62 religious pluralism 9, 12–16, 18–19, 22–23, 25, 33, 41, 75, 81, 88–89, 107, 110–13, 118–19, 137, 141–42, 147, 153, 160, 163, 167, 169–71, 179, 198, 265, 271, 279, 286, 311, 335–36, 338–39, 348, 352, 364, 369, 399–400, 402–3, 405, 408, 410, 412–13, 416–17, 422–27, 430, 435, 437, 443–53, 455–58, 461, 462 repentance 57, 197, 202–4, 228–30, 250, 252, 254, 305, 323, 414; see also atonement; conversion; salvation resurrection 11, 43, 57, 60, 67, 188–90, 203, 210, 213, 217–18, 220–21, 228–29, 253–55, 258–59, 274, 276, 325–29, 343, 351, 353, 372–73, 394, 430, 449; see also atonement; Christology; eschatology revelation 3, 9, 14, 22, 25, 31, 36, 53–62, 63–68, 70–71, 86, 133, 135, 140–41, 143, 146–47, 176, 186, 198, 199–201, 224, 271, 305, 322, 324, 326, 342, 352, 385, 401, 404, 448, 455, 456; see also epistemology; Scripture revival 1, 18, 19, 23, 109, 121, 144–45, 155, 160, 207, 210, 211, 248, 257–59, 262, 268, 280,

283, 286, 302, 304–5, 316, 321, 358, 360, 380, 392, 404, 406, 421, 424–25, 428–30, 432, 434–36, 438, 440 ritual 12, 15, 23, 42, 87, 101, 113, 117–20, 123, 179, 226, 230, 248, 250, 260, 273, 312–14, 316–17, 323–24, 339, 401, 403, 410, 413, 417, 434, 457; see also liturgy; praxis sacramentality 20, 74, 101–3, 118, 175, 178–79, 211, 229, 234, 244–50, 257, 259–60, 266, 274, 291, 298, 305, 311–20, 370, 375, 384; see also liturgy; rituals; sacraments sacraments 3, 37, 42, 97, 101, 230, 248, 250–51, 273–74, 311–20, 382; see also sacramentality sacrifice 133, 175, 198, 203, 228, 238, 245, 314, 316, 343, 370, 371; see also atonement; Christology; crucifixion salvation 1, 3, 10, 11, 13, 14, 24, 26, 31, 36, 45, 97, 99, 121–22, 124, 149, 159, 169, 173, 175–81, 188–89, 195–96, 199–204, 206, 209, 221, 226–36, 237–38, 240, 245, 249, 252, 257–59, 269–70, 272–75, 279–80, 282, 284, 292, 302, 305–7, 311, 338, 349–51, 353, 359–61, 363, 374, 379, 382, 424, 433–34, 437, 439–40, 444–46, 450–51, 458; see also atonement; Christology; conversion; full gospel; repentance sanctification 1, 3, 10–11, 14, 19, 33, 44–45, 57, 73, 87, 121–22, 129, 142, 173, 175–81, 195–96, 202–4, 209, 211–12, 228–32, 234, 237–46, 247–48, 258–59, 272–74, 291, 297, 305–6, 311, 317–18, 363–64, 371, 379, 382, 391, 396, 411, 417, 433–36, 450; see also holiness; full gospel science 3, 12, 13, 32, 67, 68, 75, 79–80, 92, 118, 129, 141, 158, 175, 263, 303, 307, 349–50, 353, 357, 411–12, 454–63 Scripture 1, 3, 8–9, 17, 21–22, 25–26, 42–43, 45–48, 53–54, 58, 60, 62, 63–72, 74–78, 81, 83, 89–90, 92, 99, 111, 129, 130–36, 138–39, 144–50, 153, 158, 161–62, 164–65, 168, 173–76, 179, 185–86, 190–91, 194–95, 198, 200–4, 207, 209–11, 216, 221, 226–35, 238, 241, 244, 246–47, 251, 255, 259, 264–65, 269–72, 276, 281, 283–84, 290, 292–93, 295–96, 300–301, 304–5, 307–9, 315, 321, 324–27, 329–30, 335, 338, 340, 351, 357, 359, 365, 368, 370, 381, 390–93, 395, 397–98, 405–7, 410–16, 418–19, 429, 434, 436–40, 444–45, 448, 450, 455–59; see also epistemology; hermeneutics; revelation sickness 24, 179, 218, 228, 263, 265, 272, 275, 283, 303, 308, 321, 325, 349–50, 433; see also divine healing; suffering signs and wonders 44, 46–47, 55, 58, 60–61, 76, 79, 101, 159, 164–65, 167, 213, 216, 230, 248–49, 257, 259, 260, 264, 270, 280, 294, 326, 404, 410, 445; see also miracles

471

Index sin 3, 9, 36, 177, 200–1, 203–4, 209–10, 213, 218, 223, 226–29, 232–33, 240, 242–43, 245, 250, 253–54, 258–59, 262, 265, 272, 275, 283, 303–4, 306, 309, 323, 325, 328–29, 343, 348–49, 351–53, 386, 411, 413, 445, 450; see also anthropology; creation; evil; Fall society 3, 11–14, 22, 24–26, 32, 34–36, 41–42, 45, 76, 80–81, 92, 97, 106–14, 117–19, 124–25, 131, 134, 136–38, 146, 149, 156–58, 160, 165, 167–71, 177, 180, 209–10, 227, 231, 263, 265, 268, 271–72, 274, 276, 279–80, 282–88, 291–94, 303–5, 308, 323, 328, 340, 346–47, 349, 351–53, 357–60, 364, 367–70, 372, 391, 395, 400, 405–7, 414–18, 421–30, 432–40, 451, 454–56, 460; see also contextual theology; culture; justice soteriology see salvation soul 56, 81, 177, 200–1, 238–45, 251–52, 258, 265, 351, 353, 369; see also anthropology Spirit baptism 1, 3, 11, 14, 19–21, 26–27, 30, 38, 44, 45, 47, 80, 87, 89–92, 98–100, 114, 122, 133, 148, 173, 175–81, 185–86, 202, 204, 206–7, 209, 211–13, 223, 229–30, 234, 237–45, 247–56, 259, 261, 263, 269–75, 280, 291, 297–98, 311–12, 314, 329, 361, 363, 379–82, 387, 394–96, 433, 438; see also initial evidence; spiritual gifts; subsequence; tongues, speaking with Spirit Christology 13, 45, 49, 66, 69, 89, 151, 153–54, 174, 181, 186–88, 191, 209, 216, 221–25, 272–73, 293, 366, 449; see also Christology; Jesus Christ; Holy Spirit; pneumatology spirits 12, 15, 21, 113, 119, 121–22, 202, 218, 264, 280, 308, 321–24, 326, 329, 445–46, 462; see also cosmology; discernment; demons; exorcism; pneumatology; spiritual warfare; spirituality; supernatural spiritual gifts 3, 9, 11, 20–21, 45–47, 63, 65–66, 68–69, 71, 77, 79–80, 90, 97–98, 100–2, 120, 129, 134, 136, 141, 147–48, 160, 166–68, 170–71, 175, 179, 181, 186, 198, 207–8, 211–12, 216, 220, 230–31, 240, 245, 247–51, 254–55, 262, 264, 270–71, 275, 280, 282, 294, 296, 301–10, 312, 316, 319, 323–24, 337, 348–49, 352, 359, 367–73, 375, 378, 380, 384, 387, 393, 444–46; see also individual gifts; pneumatology; Spirit baptism; spirituality spiritual warfare 3, 14, 21, 156, 209, 218, 262, 264–65, 275, 280, 304, 305, 321–32; see also deliverance; demons; devil; evil; exorcism; spirits; spirituality spirituality 2, 9–10, 15–16, 23, 29–39, 40, 45, 47, 76, 80, 84–85, 87, 89, 90–92, 96, 101, 119, 122, 124, 132, 142–43, 145–46, 153, 166, 168, 171, 173–76, 185, 198, 209, 247, 257,

259, 264–65, 281–83, 291, 311–14, 316–17, 319, 336, 340–41, 344, 348, 354, 367–68, 374–75, 378, 380, 392–93, 399, 401, 403–4, 407–8, 415, 437, 440, 447, 450; see also Holy Spirit; mysticism; pneumatology; spirits story 2, 10, 24, 35, 40–50, 53, 59, 63, 65, 70–71, 76, 90, 96, 130, 136, 142, 157, 173–77, 226–28, 231, 233–34, 252–53, 294, 296, 338, 348, 352, 361, 395, 410, 438, 455, 457; see also epistemology; full gospel; narrative subsequence 2, 20, 25, 53, 74, 99, 143, 174, 212, 248–49, 274, 312, 325, 359, 369, 379, 404, 446; see also Spirit baptism; tongues, speaking with suffering 3, 179, 209, 213, 218, 228, 254, 260, 265, 275, 282–84, 307, 309, 314, 318, 321, 324–26, 329, 343, 349, 351–53, 363, 373, 418, 434, 448; see also divine healing; economics; justice; sickness supernatural 15, 44, 69, 77, 87–88, 90, 101, 130, 177, 211, 264–65, 269, 274, 281, 306–7, 309, 323, 352, 353, 439; see also miracles; signs and wonders; spiritual gifts systematic theology 7–18, 19, 22, 32, 76, 99, 143, 145–48, 167, 175–76, 220, 249, 297, 326, 342, 392, 400–2, 413, 432, 456, 459; see also doctrine; hermeneutics; epistemology; full gospel; method testimony 24, 32, 35, 40, 46–48, 55, 60, 61, 65–66, 70, 85, 88, 96, 132–33, 136, 142, 173, 174, 180, 210, 222, 231, 239, 292, 348, 350–51, 373, 385, 404, 407, 444, 446, 450; see also evangelization; orality; witness; worship tongues, speaking with see glossolalia; orality; xenolalia tradition 1, 2, 3, 4, 7–16, 25, 30, 32, 34, 36–37, 40, 46, 53, 64, 67, 73, 75–77, 79–80, 84–90, 92, 95–105, 110–11, 113–14, 120, 130, 132–33, 141–49, 153–55, 163–64, 179, 185–86, 191–94, 198, 200, 207, 209–10, 213–14, 217–18, 223–24, 226, 228, 232, 234, 263, 268, 274–75, 279, 285, 287, 290, 292–93, 298, 312, 314, 317–18, 323, 336, 338–41, 350, 352–53, 361, 365, 368, 380, 389–94, 396, 401–2, 408, 417–18, 424, 435–37, 446, 449, 451, 458, 462 transcendence 88, 141–42, 199, 201, 209, 219, 343, 410, 436; see also God, doctrine of; presence, divine; ontology transformation 1, 33–34, 45, 47, 55–56, 61, 63, 70, 88–89, 113–14, 117, 122, 133, 135–37, 149, 175, 177–81, 204, 210, 223, 227, 230, 234, 237, 242, 244–45, 261, 265, 271–72, 274–76, 280, 283, 285–86, 291–92, 298, 301, 305, 306, 317–19, 342, 351–52, 361, 363, 367–70, 373, 382, 394, 404, 410–12, 414, 416–18, 426, 432, 434, 439, 457–58

472

Index Trinity 3, 9, 10, 15–16, 19, 31, 46, 61, 75, 97, 142, 146–47, 153–54, 160, 185–94, 197–204, 206, 208–9, 216, 219–22, 224–25, 229, 235, 240, 244–45, 270, 295, 297–98, 300, 315, 318–19, 343–44, 351, 362, 368–74, 383, 393, 446–52; see also Christology; God, doctrine of; Oneness theology; pneumatology unity 97–98, 124, 148, 202–3, 219, 244, 255, 281, 291, 294, 295, 351, 360, 378–88, 393, 406, 412, 424, 429, 433, 435, 438–40; see also ecclesiology; ecumenism visions and dreams 10, 14, 19, 23, 25, 33, 35–38, 65, 75, 81, 87, 117, 120–21, 154, 159–60, 169, 175, 180, 186, 188, 193, 212, 234, 237, 240–41, 243, 268, 273, 292, 294–95, 298, 303–6, 312, 314, 340–41, 347, 350, 352–53, 367–70, 373–75, 378, 380–81, 395, 407, 412, 414–15, 417–18, 421, 424, 429–30, 432, 435–40; see also prophecy; spiritual gifts

water baptism 9, 42, 101, 189, 195–97, 202–4, 210–12, 229, 234, 247–50, 252–55, 311–14, 338, 364, 382, 394, 461; see also sacraments witness 1, 23–25, 33, 36, 45, 47–48, 53–54, 56–61, 66, 68, 87, 91, 152–53, 155, 157–59, 169, 174, 179–80, 189, 212, 231, 238–40, 243, 247–49, 252, 254, 274, 280–81, 283–84, 286, 288, 291, 297, 304, 318, 340, 373, 384–85, 402, 404, 407, 432–33, 435, 439–40, 447, 450, 459–60; see also evangelization; revelation; prophecy; testimony worship 3, 9–10, 13, 15, 22–26, 30, 32, 36, 42, 45, 47, 87–88, 91, 101–2, 113, 117–25, 137, 145, 164, 166, 168, 170, 175, 180, 195, 200, 210–11, 220, 231, 259–60, 265, 268, 273, 276, 282, 291, 294, 297, 302, 305, 312, 315–18, 335–41, 344, 362, 373, 375, 387, 400, 403–4, 413, 432–35, 450, 457; see also dance; doxology; embodiment; music xenolalia 274, 280, 304; see also glossolalia; orality; Spirit baptism; spiritual gifts

473