Pentecostal Theology and Ecumenical Theology (Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies, 34) 9004408363, 9789004408364

Table of contents :
Pentecostal Theology and Ecumenical Theology
Copyright
Contents
List of Contributors
Introduction
Part 1: Pentecostal Interpretations of the Ecumenical Movement
1 Early Pentecostal Visions in the United States of Christian Unity, Retrenchment, and Evangelical Influences
2 Dissenting Voices or Visionary Prophets?: A Reflection on Pioneering Pentecostal Ecumenists
3 The Contribution of the Charismatic Movement to Christian Unity
4 Pentecostal and Charismatic Convergence: A Divine Trajectory?
5 Pentecostal Participation in Ecumenical Dialogues: Bilateral and Multilateral, Local and Global
6 Changing Paradigms in Global Ecumenism: A Pentecostal Reading
7 Remodeling Our Ecumenical House
Part 2: Pentecostal Intersections with Ecumenical Theology
8 The Nature of Theology and Pentecostal Hermeneutics: On the Relationship Among Scripture, Experience of the Spirit, and Life in Spirit-Filled Community
9 Mediation and the Pentecostal Experience of God
10 Fivefold Gospel and Spirit Christology: Pentecostal and Ecumenical Explorations
11 The Kingdom and the Power: Spirit Baptism in Ecumenical Perspective
12 Revisiting the Relationship between the Institutional and Charismatic Dimensions of the Church
13 The Mutual Challenges of Pentecostal-Charismatic and Liturgical Worship
14 Pentecostal Soteriology: Overcoming the Ecumenical Impasses of Classical Pentecostalism and Charismatic Experience
15 Correlating Intra-Christian Relations and Interreligious Realities
16 Church Unity and the Spirit of Ubuntu: Insights from the Global South
17 A Look to the Future
Index

Citation preview

Pentecostal Theology and Ecumenical Theology

Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies Edited by William K. Kay (Glyndŵr University) Mark Cartledge (Regent University) Editorial Board Kimberly E. Alexander (Regent University) Allan Anderson (University of Birmingham) Jacqueline Grey (Alphacrucis College, Sydney) Byron D. Klaus (Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, Springfield, MO) Wonsuk Ma (Oxford Centre for Mission Studies) Jean-Daniel Plüss (European Pentecostal/Charismatic Research Association) Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. (Fuller Theological Seminary) Calvin Smith (King’s Evangelical Divinity School)

volume 34

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/gpcs

Pentecostal Theology and Ecumenical Theology Interpretations and Intersections Edited by Peter Hocken†, Tony L. Richie, and Christopher A. Stephenson

leiden | boston

Cover illustration: Feet and words future and past on an asphalt road. Source: iStock / by Delpixart. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hocken, Peter, editor. | Richie, Tony, editor. | Stephenson, Christopher A., editor. Title: Pentecostal theology and ecumenical theology : interpretations and intersections / edited by Peter Hocken, Tony L. Richie, and Christopher A. Stephenson. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2019. | Series: Global pentecostal and charismatic studies, 1876-2247 ; 34 | Includes index. Identifiers: lccn 2019026374 (print) | lccn 2019026375 (ebook) | isbn 9789004408364 (paperback) | isbn 9789004408371 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Pentecostal churches–Relations. | Pentecostal churches–Doctrines. | Theology. | Theology, Doctrinal. Classification: lcc bx8764 .p46 2019 (print) | LCC BX8764 (ebook) | ddc 280/.042–dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019026374 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019026375

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1876-2247 isbn 978-90-04-40836-4 (paperback) isbn 978-90-04-40837-1 (e-book) Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Dedicated to Fr. Peter Hocken, memory eternal

∵

Contents

List of Contributors  ix Introduction  xii Christopher A. Stephenson

Part 1 Pentecostal Interpretations of the Ecumenical Movement 1

Early Pentecostal Visions in the United States of Christian Unity, Retrenchment, and Evangelical Influences  3 Cecil M. Robeck, Jr.

2

Dissenting Voices or Visionary Prophets?: A Reflection on Pioneering Pentecostal Ecumenists  24 Jean-Daniel Plüss

3

The Contribution of the Charismatic Movement to Christian Unity  43 Peter Hocken

4

Pentecostal and Charismatic Convergence: A Divine Trajectory?  65 William K. Kay

5

Pentecostal Participation in Ecumenical Dialogues: Bilateral and Multilateral, Local and Global  85 Wolfgang Vondey

6

Changing Paradigms in Global Ecumenism: A Pentecostal Reading  111 David Sang-Ehil Han

7

Remodeling Our Ecumenical House  131 Cheryl Bridges Johns

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Contents

Part 2 Pentecostal Intersections with Ecumenical Theology 8

The Nature of Theology and Pentecostal Hermeneutics: On the Relationship Among Scripture, Experience of the Spirit, and Life in Spirit-Filled Community  157 L. William Oliverio, Jr.

9

Mediation and the Pentecostal Experience of God  180 Daniel Castelo

10

Fivefold Gospel and Spirit Christology: Pentecostal and Ecumenical Explorations  200 Christopher A. Stephenson

11

The Kingdom and the Power: Spirit Baptism in Ecumenical Perspective  222 Frank D. Macchia

12

Revisiting the Relationship between the Institutional and Charismatic Dimensions of the Church  241 Andy Lord

13

The Mutual Challenges of Pentecostal-Charismatic and Liturgical Worship  261 Simon Chan

14

Pentecostal Soteriology: Overcoming the Ecumenical Impasses of Classical Pentecostalism and Charismatic Experience  283 Steven M. Studebaker

15

Correlating Intra-Christian Relations and Interreligious Realities  308 Tony L. Richie

16

Church Unity and the Spirit of Ubuntu: Insights from the Global South  333 Clifton Clarke and Marcia Clarke

17

A Look to the Future  359 Tony L. Richie



Index  365

List of Contributors Daniel Castelo Ph.D., is Professor of Dogmatic and Constructive Theology at Seattle Pacific University and Seminary in Seattle, Washington, USA. He is the author or editor of more than ten books, including The Marks of Scripture (Baker Academic, 2019). Simon Chan Ph.D., is editor of Asia Journal of Theology. His publications include books and articles on Pentecostal ecclesiology and liturgical theology. Clifton Clarke Ph.D., is Assistant Provost for the William E. Pannell Center for African American Church Studies and Associate Professor of Black Church Studies and World Christianity at Fuller Theological Seminary. He has published monographs and edited volumes and a number of articles on African Pentecostalism and the Black Church, including Pentecostalism: Insights from Africa and the African Diaspora (Cascade, 2018). Marcia Clarke Ph.D., is Affiliate Assistant Professor of Practical Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary. Her book, Endued with Power: Black Women and the Revisioning of British Realities through Pentecostal Spirituality as Lived Experience, is due to be published in 2019. David Sang-Ehil Han Ph.D., is Professor of Theology and the Dean of the Faculty at Pentecostal Theological Seminary. He has published widely articles and chapters in English and edited monographs in Korean. He has been involved with the Global Christian Forum since 2002. His forthcoming monograph is an edited volume, Christian Hospitality and Neighborliness: A Wesleyan-Pentecostal Perspective (CPT Press, 2019). Peter Hocken Ph.D.,† was an accomplished ecumenist, scholar of pentecostalism, and longtime participant in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. His books include ­Azusa, Rome, and Zion and Pentecost and Parousia.

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List of Contributors

Cheryl Bridges Johns Ph.D., is Robert E. Fisher Chair of Spiritual Renewal & Christian Formation at Pentecostal Theological Seminary. A past president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies she has participated in the international Catholic-Pentecostal dialogue, Evangelicals and Catholics Together, and Commission on Faith and Order for the National Council of Churches. William K. Kay D.D., is Honorary Professor of Pentecostal Studies at Chester University and Emeritus Professor of Theology at Glyndŵr University. He has published widely on Pentecostalism including Pentecostalism: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2011). Andy Lord Ph.D., is Associate Tutor at St. John’s College and Senior Pastor of three churches in Nottingham, UK. He has published books and articles on themes of mission, ecclesiology, and Pentecostal-charismatic theology. Frank D. Macchia D.Theol., is Professor of Christian Theology at Vanguard University of Southern California and Associate Director of the Centre for Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies at Bangor University, Wales. His most recent publication is entitled, Jesus the Spirit Baptizer: Christology in Light of Pentecost (Eerdmans, 2018). L. William Oliverio, Jr. Ph.D., 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. He is the author of Theological Hermeneutics in the Classical Pentecostal Tradition and co-editor (with Kenneth J. Archer) of Constructive Pneumatological Hermeneutics in Pentecostal Christianity. Jean-Daniel Plüss Ph.D., is chair of the European Pentecostal Charismatic Research Association and president of the Swiss foundation of the Global Christian Forum. He has published various articles on Pentecostal theology and a book on Swiss Pentecostalism. He is part of international dialogues between Pentecostals and the World Communion of Reformed Churches as well as with the Lutheran World Federation.

List of Contributors

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Tony L. Richie D.Min., Ph.D., is Lecturer in Theology at Pentecostal Theological Seminary, Lead Pastor at New Harvest Church of God, and author of Speaking by the Spirit: A Pentecostal Model for Interreligious Dialogue. Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. Ph.D., is Senior Professor of Church History and Ecumenics and Special Assistant to the President for Ecumenical Relations at Fuller Theological Seminary. He is a past editor of Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies. He has authored many articles and written or edited six books, including The Azusa Street Mission and Revival (Thomas Nelson, 2006), and with Amos Yong edited The Cambridge Companion to Pentecostalism (Cambridge, 2014). Christopher A. Stephenson Ph.D., is assistant professor of systematic theology at Lee University and author of Types of Pentecostal Theology: Method, System, Spirit (OUP, 2013), as well as articles in Journal of Ecumenical Studies, International Review of Mission, Ecumenical Trends, and Istina. His ecumenical experience includes the international Catholic-Pentecostal dialogue, the World Council of Churches’ Joint Consultative Group, and co-chair of the first institutional dialogue in the history of the Church of God (Cleveland, TN), which was with the Mennonite Church USA. Steven M. Studebaker Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology and Howard and Shirley Bentall Chair in Evangelical Thought at McMaster Divinity College. He is the author of From Pentecost to the Triune God and A Pentecostal Political Theology as well as books on Jonathan Edwards’s trinitarian theology. Wolfgang Vondey Ph.D., is Professor of Christian Theology and Pentecostal Studies at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. He has published various monographs, essays, and articles on Pentecostalism including two volumes of Pentecostalism and Christian Unity (Pickwick, 2010 and 2013).

Introduction It has become all but a truism to observe that two of the most important religious events of the 20th century are the dawning of the modern Ecumenical Movement and the birth of global pentecostalism. Perhaps more interesting is the claim that each in its own way is a work of the Holy Spirit to renew the church. Surely even more intriguing is the question of the relationship between global pentecostalism and the Ecumenical Movement. The history of this relationship is complex, to say the least, and I will not preempt the essays that follow by beginning to delve into the details of that history here. Suffice it to say that the mere existence of this volume assumes that there have been enough significant intersections between the Ecumenical Movement and global pentecostalism to warrant pausing to assess the relationship between them and to attempt to promote further the flourishing of that relationship. At least three themes emerge from the essays collected here. First, although pentecostal responses to the Ecumenical Movement have been and continue to be mixed, there is a strong and definite trend in the direction of respect, support, and participation. In many grassroots locations, pentecostals are more open than they were before not only to acknowledging the Christian identity of those in other church traditions but also to dialoging with them informally and cooperating with them on matters that affect their shared communities. Similarly, pentecostal participants in formal ecumenical dialogues now find it easier than they once did to garner official recognition and financial support from their ecclesial leaders, even as more and more of those ecclesial leaders themselves are beginning to participate. Second, global pentecostalism and the Ecumenical Movement are better when they are together than when they are apart. To take but two examples among many, the Ecumenical Movement offers pentecostalism much-needed humility for its propensity to triumphalism in response to its unprecedented global expansion in recent decades—the very need for ecumenism is testament to heart-wrenching division in the body of Christ that should give pause to unqualified celebration of pentecostalism’s missionary expansion. Pentecostalism, in turn, offers the Ecumenical Movement a reminder that the fresh winds of the Spirit blow from every people and place on the globe, including those who have not been and still are not as widely represented at the ecumenical table as others, even as they increasingly become a majority voice in Christianity. Third, cooperation between global pentecostalism and the Ecumenical Movement should not be uncritical engagement that amounts to nothing more than the one affirming all of the initiatives of the other. They can and should challenge each other,

Introduction

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hold each other accountable, and call each other to repentance. If they do so, the benefits can accrue to the entire body of Christ. The essays in Part 1 are largely descriptive, although not purely historical. They describe some pentecostal interpretations of ecumenism, past and present. Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. chronicles the perspectives of select denominational leaders in the first decades of pentecostalism in North America and concludes that the attitude of resistance that characterized pentecostalism in the middle of the century was not predominant in its earlier history. While those early visions of unity may not accord perfectly with the notion of unity in the modern Ecumenical Movement, they are closer to it than the negative sentiments often associated with pentecostals. Jean-Daniel Plüss profiles the first major pentecostal figures to participate actively in the Ecumenical Movement. Truly a tale of the good, the bad, and the ugly, this history reveals the challenges that early pentecostal ecumenists sometimes faced with their denominations over their ecumenical activity. Yet another intersection between Pentecost and ecumenism came about when the charismatic renewal began to grow in church traditions that were already involved in ecumenism. Peter Hocken traces this development from groups like the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International up to current events with Pope Francis and Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby. According to William K. Kay, the advent of the charismatic renewal prompted further participation of pentecostal denominations in ecumenism. He offers a taxonomy for distinguishing between pentecostal and charismatic church traditions and gives particular attention to trends in the UK in both theological and sociological perspectives. Wolfgang Vondey takes up pentecostal participation in formal ecumenical dialogues and accentuates the distinctive character of their presence in these engagements. He gives an overview of the findings of international dialogues and sketches the contours of several local and informal conversations with pentecostals. The essays by David Sang-Ehil Han and Cheryl Bridges Johns contain both descriptive and prescriptive facets, inasmuch as each in its own way also suggests partial elements for a current interpretation of pentecostals and ecumenism. Han highlights the Global Christian Forum and recent initiatives in receptive ecumenism. He suggests that pentecostals are well-suited to participate in these ecumenical endeavors because of the importance that narrative plays in their spirituality and their belief that transformation comes as one encounters others. Johns uniquely analyzes and interprets key moments in the history of the Ecumenical Movement and in pentecostal ecumenical activity. She claims that pentecostals may be central players in the future of the Ecumenical Movement in part because of their strong presence in both the Global North and the Global South.

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Introduction

The essays in Part 2 are directly related to intersections between ecumenical theology and certain loci in systematic theology in pentecostal perspective, the first two of which explicitly address issues in fundamental theology. L. William Oliverio, Jr. reviews various pentecostal approaches to hermeneutics, which refers to far more than simply biblical interpretation, inasmuch as it encompasses theological and philosophical dimensions of hermeneutical theory. One of the approaches that he identifies is decidedly ecumenical in ways that have potential to challenge both pentecostalism and other church traditions. Religious experience has been both a hallmark of pentecostalism and an occasional obstacle to dialogue with other Christians. However, while raising critical questions about mediated and/or unmediated religious experience, Daniel Castelo explores points of continuity between pentecostal spirituality and Christian mystical traditions. Keeping with the question of theological method to a lesser extent, Christopher A. Stephenson investigates a point of intersection among pneumatology, christology, and the doctrine of the Trinity in connection with the question of an organizing theme for the whole of systematic theology. Drawing on Catholic and pentecostal forays in Spirit christology, he challenges—on both dogmatic and ecumenical grounds—the viability of making the fivefold gospel central to future pentecostal systematic theology. Frank D. Macchia examines baptism in the Holy Spirit in ecumenical perspective by evaluating various accounts of its relationship to Christian initiation. He warns, however, that preoccupation with this relationship risks defining baptism in the Holy Spirit in subservience to ecclesiology, and he calls for an ecumenical pneumatology that does not take its point of departure from deliberations about the nature of the church. Two essays focus explicitly on ecclesiology. Andy Lord gives some fresh reflections on the relationship between the church’s institutional and charismatic dimensions. Highlighting the idea of movement from predominantly charismatic to institutional bearings and vice versa, he suggests ways forward for Catholic, Reformation, and pentecostal traditions in their respective understandings of themselves and each other as the church. Simon Chan concentrates solely on the church’s worship. He brings out aspects of pentecostal and traditional liturgical worship that challenge each other, and he pursues a normative liturgy strengthened by the best in both traditions. Turning to soteriology, Steven M. Studebaker notes the similarities of certain pentecostal theologies with a strand within Protestant scholasticism that bifurcates the work of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit in salvation. While he fears that this bifurcation contributes to an ecumenical impasse for pentecostals because it mutes one of pentecostalism’s primary contributions to ecumenical dialogue,

Introduction

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he believes that there are resources in the thought of some current pentecostal theologians for moving beyond this impasse. Tony L. Richie suggests a correlation between pentecostals’ endeavors in ecumenical dialogue and their endeavors in interreligious dialogue. In keeping with his claim that testimony is an important mode of discourse in these dialogues, he adopts a first-person perspective and rehearses several of the concrete interreligious activities in which he has participated with a view to their theological underpinnings. Clifton Clarke and Marcia Clarke draw on resources largely outside the West to enhance the precise meaning of Christian unity. They examine challenges to some traditional ecumenical processes offered by the African category of Ubuntu—the idea that persons are understood in their relationship to other persons—specifically as embodied by pentecostals in ­Africa and the British Isles. A final reflection wraps up the volume by taking a look ahead at what might be in store for pentecostalism and ecumenism along the lines of Pentecost, unity, and universality. Besides the authors and editors, several people deserve appreciation for bringing this project to its final form. Drenda N. Butler ran down data missing from some footnotes, created the index, and compiled most of the bibliographies. Annelia F. Babin and Elly Chaney assisted with the bibliographies. The editorial staff at E.J. Brill has been more than patient with a couple of unforeseen setbacks that delayed publication, and the anonymous external reviewer made several suggestions whose incorporation has brought greater clarity and precision on a number of fronts. It is with great sadness that this collection of essays comes to print without one of the editors with which it began, Fr. Peter Hocken. Peter was a longtime participant in and historian of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal and the Ecumenical Movement. His name appears as editor because his was a significant part of the original vision for the book, because he was integral to securing the host of authors assembled, and because he provided invaluable feedback to all but three of the essays. His fastidious attention to detail and precision have improved immeasurably the quality of this collection, which we dedicate to his memory. It is our pleasure to include here the completed essay that Peter contributed, which inevitably becomes one of his last publications. May these essays make a small contribution to those things of the Spirit for which Peter long labored. Christopher A. Stephenson Memorial of St. Thomas Aquinas, 2019

Part 1 Pentecostal Interpretations of the Ecumenical Movement

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Chapter 1

Early Pentecostal Visions in the United States of Christian Unity, Retrenchment, and Evangelical Influences Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. Since the mid-20th century, many Pentecostals have been troubled either by angst or animosity over the subject of Christian unity. This is a sad state of affairs because unity among His followers was an overwhelming concern of Jesus.1 It was a concern that the Apostle Paul addressed repeatedly.2 The nervousness that emerges among Pentecostals around the subject of Christian unity today comes when it is described by the word ecumenism a Greek-based term intended to speak to the mutual concerns of the household of God. For nearly half a century, Pentecostals looked at ecumenism as a dangerous venture, a place where doctrinal standards would be lowered, unwarranted compromises would be made, truth would give way to falsehood, and many have been led to believe that any institutional ecumenical activity would set the stage for the entrance of the Antichrist.3 As a result of these fears and misunderstandings of what ecumenism was and is intended to be, those Pentecostals who have engaged in various forms 1 John 17:21. 2 While division between Christians emerged at the very beginning of the Church with a dispute over the disparity of care between the Hebrew and Hellenist widows (Acts 6:1-6) as well as the debate on whether Gentiles could be Christians without first becoming Jews (Acts 15:1-35), it is Paul who addresses the subjects of love, reconciliation, and unity repeatedly (Cf. 1 Corinthians; Gal 3:28; Phil 1:27-28; 2:1-5; 3:15-16; 4:2-3), ultimately commanding his readers to make “every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph 4:5). 3 This was the official position of the Assemblies of God, for instance, from 1961 until 2005. Compare “Bylaws of the General Council of the Assemblies of God, Article IX.B, List of Doctrines and Practices Disapproved, Section 11 The Ecumenical Movement,” Minutes of the 50th Session of The General Council of the Assemblies of God, with revised Constitution and Bylaws 50th General Council, Washington, D.C. July 31–August 3, 2003 (Springfield, MO: General Secretary’s Office, 2003), 131–32 with “Bylaws of the General Council of the Assemblies of God, Article IX.B, List of Doctrines and Practices Disapproved, Section 11 The Ecumenical Movement,” Minutes of the 51st Session of The General Council of the Assemblies of God, with revised Constitution and Bylaws 51st General Council, Denver, Colorado, August 2–5, 2005 (Springfield, MO: General Secretary’s Office, 2005), 125. It was a position argued by G.F. Taylor, The Second Coming of Jesus (Franklin Springs, GA: Pentecostal Holiness Church, 1916, rpt. 1950), 177.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:10.1163/9789004408371_002

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Robeck

of modern ecumenism have been subject to church discipline, sanctions, defamation of character, and more.4 They have been suspected of compromising the Pentecostal Movement, of naively building common cause with the devil, and in some cases, they have been declared enemies of the Church. They have been hounded by unscrupulous leaders, anonymous letters, and threatening telephone calls. They have paid a price for the part that they have played in following Paul’s directive in Ephesians 4:3 to make “every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”5 This is not the way that the Pentecostal Movement began, but it is the path it took, beginning around 1940 and escalating around 1960. At the beginning of the 20th Century, the idea of Christian unity was a hope that was voiced by many Pentecostal leaders. Harold Hunter has argued that “unity” did not have the same meaning for early Pentecostal leaders that it does for those who participate in the modern ecumenical movement; early Pentecostal leaders thought about unity only in triumphalist terms. The rest of the Church, that is, all other Christians would ultimately be swallowed up by a Pentecostal form of Christianity.6 In a sense, Douglas Jacobsen has described the early reality similarly, though in a more nuanced manner.7 Be that as it may, John 17:21 was a common text found in sermons and articles throughout the early days of the Pentecostal Movement. Christian unity was the topic of 4 History offers a number of examples. David du Plessis lost his credentials as an ordained Assemblies of God minister in 1962 because of his ecumenical activities. They were returned to him only in 1980. Dr. Jerry L. Sandidge lost his missionary appointment to Belgium in 1983, when he refused to separate himself from the International Roman Catholic—Pentecostal Dialogue for which he served as secretary. Jerry L. Sandidge, “From Pentecostal Exclusivism to Spiritual Ecumenism: The Personal Journey of a Missionary,” Unpublished Manuscript, 10; See also “‘Unity of the Faith,’…a Faculty Panel Discussion,” in Contending for the Faith: The Theological Journal of Central Bible College (Fall 1995), 3 aimed at stopping others within the Assemblies of God from participating in any ecumenical enterprise. This “journal” was printed as the latter pages of The Bulletin: The Official Magazine of Central Bible College (Fall 1995), a quarterly publication of the cbc President’s Office. 5 All biblical quotations will be from the New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise noted. 6 Harold Hunter, “Two Movements of the Holy Spirit in the 20th Century? A Closer Look at Global Pentecostalism and Ecumenism,” One in Christ 38, no. 1 (January 2003), 31–39. Reprinted in Wolfgang Vondey, ed. Pentecostalism and Christian Unity: Ecumenical Documents and Critical Assessment (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2010), 20–33. 7 Douglas Jacobsen, “The Ambivalent Ecumenical Impulse in Early Pentecostal Theology in North America,” in Wolfgang Vondey, ed. Pentecostalism and Christian Unity: Ecumenical Documents and Critical Assessment (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2010), especially, 16–19, though he does conclude that “the bent of early Pentecostal thinking with regard to ecumenism leans more in the direction of support than opposition.”

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many sermons and articles written and presented by early Pentecostal leaders across a variety of theological lines. In short, regardless of their motive, whether they had such triumphalist aspirations or not, early Pentecostals recognized that in the end there is only one Church and it was their responsibility to do what they could to see that this new Apostolic Faith Movement found its rightful place in the one Church. As Mrs. Anna Hall, one of Charles Parham’s workers who moved to Los Angeles to work with Pastor William J. Seymour at the Azusa Street Mission in the fall of 1906, put it, If this movement stands for anything, it stands for unity of mind. It was raised up to answer the prayer of Jesus: “That they might be one, as thou Father art in me and I in thee.” What is the matter with the world today? Here is a little selfish sect and there a denomination by itself. They do not love one another as God would have them. Let us honor every bit of God there is in one another. Let us honor the Holy Ghost to teach men to get them out of their error.8 1

Richard G. Spurling

Richard G. Spurling, founder of the Christian Union in 1886 that would ultimately become the basis for the Church of God (Cleveland, TN), the Church of God of Prophecy, and several other Churches of God, complained similarly over the disunity that he observed among Christians. “Above all this din of strife and confusion,” he wrote, “I hear Christ praying in John 17:21, that they may all be one.”9 There were those around him who argued that what Jesus had in mind was only spiritual unity, an invisible unity of all believing Christians, not merely church members. They taught that there was no need to pursue any other kind of unity. Jesus’ prayer had already been answered. But Spurling argued otherwise, suggesting that every sect [denomination] had been birthed from an egg hatched by the “mother of harlots.”10 His understanding of the Church was not satisfied with a doctrine of ecclesial invisibility, nor was he willing to accept the status quo of increasing reliance upon an ever-expanding number of new denominations, including Pentecostal ones.

8

Mrs. Anna Hall, “Honor the Holy Ghost,” The Apostolic Faith [Los Angeles, CA] 1, no. 2 (October 1906), 4.4. 9 R.G. Spurling, The Lost Link (Turtletown, TN: no publisher, 1920, rpt. 1971), 20. 10 Spurling, The Lost Link, 27.

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Spurling reasoned that this was not at all what Jesus had prayed for in John 17. “Christ said the world might believe, but there is not a unity that the world can see. No, it is not the unity which Christ wanted by any means, but a confusion that He does not want.”11 So while Spurling did not insist that the quest for Christian unity would end up with everyone entering the Pentecostal fold, he did insist quite strongly that the unity of the Church for which Jesus had prayed had to be something visible, something tangible, something that would spark the interest of those outside the Church to respond to its message of reconciliation. Yet as Wade Phillips has observed, Spurling was not interested in seeing the various denominations return to the Roman Catholic Church. That was the hope that the Catholic Church held at the time. Spurling, like many Protestants of his day, viewed it as a church in apostasy. What Spurling envisioned was an “alternative” form of ecumenism that found its center in a Christian Union, a “concrete union, a ‘fold,’ formed on the basis of a covenant in which God’s sheep could be fed the pure Word of God and be nourished up and disciplined in the faith.”12 2

Charles Fox Parham

Another leader among the earliest advocates of Christian unity was Charles F. Parham, who was troubled even before the Pentecostal movement appeared, by the development of rampant denominationalism as well as by various quests for unity. “Unity is not to be accomplished by organization or non-­ organization,” he wrote. Unity by organization has been tried for 1900 years and failed. Unity by non-organization has been tried for several years and resulted in anarchy, or gathered in small “cliques” with an unwritten creed and regulations which are often fraught with error and fanaticism.13 From his perspective, the unity of the Church was not based upon a shared hermeneutic, a common theological creed, or a single organizational structure. Its foundation was simply the “blood of Jesus Christ.”14 11 Spurling, The Lost Link, 20. 12 Wade H. Phillips, Quest to Restore God’s House: A Theological History of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) (Cleveland, TN: cpt Press, 2014), vol. 1, 65. 13 Charles Fox Parham, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Baxter Springs, KS: Apostolic Faith Bible College, 1902, rpt. 1910), 65. 14 Charles Fox Parham, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, 67.

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On the basis of such an understanding, it would seem that Charles Parham would have advocated only an invisible form of unity between Christians, a spiritual unity guaranteed by each person having been cleansed by the blood of Jesus. But Charles Parham’s understanding of Christian unity did not stop there. Parham claimed that God had anointed him to be “an apostle of unity” sometime between 1898 and 1900.15 As a result, he understood himself to be the true “Elijah” who would lead this redeemed Church into fruitful evangelization in such a way as to result in a single, restored, and visible Pentecostal Church. “We expect to see the time,” he offered, when baptized by the Holy Ghost into one Body, the gloriously redeemed Church without spot or wrinkle, having the same mind, judgment, and speaking the same things, led by the true Elijah, shall go forth with the everlasting gospel to preach to every nation, kindred, tongue and people.16 Unfortunately, it appears that so far as Charles Parham was concerned, this would eventually take place only under his leadership. His most significant personal test came when he visited the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles then being led by his former student, William J. Seymour. Instead of embracing the work that Seymour had undertaken with a view to unity, he rebuked Seymour, condemned Seymour’s multiethnic and multicultural work on racist and cultural grounds, and attempted to establish a congregation just blocks from Seymour’s work. It failed to flourish and soon disappeared.17 As much as he seemed to support Christian unity, he was unable to accept it as anything more than uniformity to his own conception of how it should look. 3

Warren Faye Carothers

Warren Faye Carothers, pastor of the “Christian Witness” Tabernacle, a holiness church in Brunner, Texas, aligned himself closely with the teachings of Charles Parham beginning in July 1905. Carothers was opinionated, disciplined, and articulate, and he quickly rose to a position of leadership alongside Parham. Charles Parham saw himself as the “Projector” of the Apostolic Faith 15

16 17

Charles Fox Parham, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, 61–65; Charles F. Parham, “Unity,” The Apostolic Faith [Baxter Springs, KS] Number 6 (July 1925), 9–14. The 1925 article is an expanded version of Chapter 6 in A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, originally written in 1902. Charles Fox Parham, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, 64–65. “Apostolic Faith Meetings,” Los Angeles Record (November 6, 1906), 1.

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Mission, but he named Carothers the Movement’s Field Director. Towards the end of 1906, Carothers published a pamphlet titled The Baptism with the Holy Ghost and Speaking in Tongues. Three years later, in 1909, he published another small book titled Church Government.18 Like Parham, he was committed to a restorationist view of history, suggesting that the Church in the early 20th Century was being transformed into a body that closely resembled the Church at the beginning of the New Testament period. Just as the New Testament Church was one, argued W.F. Carothers, the Church would once again become one Church as it approached the end of the age. Fully consistent with that restorationist position was the early commitment held by many Pentecostals that viewed the recovery of justification under ­Martin Luther, then sanctification under John Wesley, and finally baptism in the Holy Spirit under Charles Parham as important steps in this restoration process leading to the ultimate unity of the Church. As Carothers noted, Sanctification brings unity of spirit; Christ prayed that they might be sanctified that they might be one [John 17], therefore we know they were sanctified. But it is the baptism [in the Holy Spirit] that places into one body, effectuating unity. For by one Spirit are ye baptized into one body (1 Cor 12:13). Therefore, the restoration of Pentecost means ultimately the restoration of Christian unity, and the two messages have come to us together in this [Apostolic Faith] Movement.19 In February 1906, Carothers would later claim, Charles Parham and he had reluctantly given their blessing to William J. Seymour to travel to Los Angeles in order to take a pastorate of a small holiness church.20 Seymour, however, would faithfully carry with him the message of the baptism in the Holy Spirit 18 19 20

W.F. Carothers, The Baptism with the Holy Ghost and Speaking in Tongues (Zion City, IL: W.F. Carothers, 1906/7); W.F. Carothers, Church Government, Houston, TX: W.F. Carothers, 1909. W.F. Carothers, The Baptism with the Holy Ghost and Speaking in Tongues, 25. W.F. Carothers, “History of Movement,” The Apostolic Faith [Houston, TX] 2, no. 2 (October 1908), 1; Cf. B.F. Lawrence, The Apostolic Faith Restored, 54; H.A. Goss, “Reminiscences of an Eyewitness,” in B.F. Lawrence, The Apostolic Faith Restored (St. Louis, MO: The Gospel Publishing House, 1916), 64. The reasons given for his reluctant blessing was that Seymour had not yet completed Parham’s Bible School but more importantly, Parham and Carothers viewed Seymour as the potential head of the African American wing of the Apostolic Faith Movement in Texas. They did not anticipate his move to California where they had no followers.

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accompanied by the Bible evidence of speaking in tongues, as well as the message of Christian unity. Unfortunately, in late October and early November 1906, Charles Parham visited Seymour’s work at the Apostolic Faith Mission on Azusa Street. Unprepared for the style of worship and ministry he found there, Parham quickly rejected Seymour’s work.21 The split led to significant criticism of Parham’s leadership by many, and on November 28, 1906, Parham telegraphed his followers through Carothers, that he had resigned as “Projector” of the Movement.22 This move only confused Parham’s followers, some of whom tried to talk him into reconsidering his decision. At this point, W.F. Carothers exercised his authority as “Field Director” and he issued a press release explaining that Parham would be more effective simply as a minister in the Apostolic Faith Movement, rather than as its “Projector.” Brother Parham’s voice for the unity of Christendom will be infinitely more potent as an unofficial messenger of God than it could have been as a “projector.” Henceforth he can be accused with less justice than ever of a desire to lord it over God’s heritage.23 The subsequent moral failure of which Charles Parham was accused in July 1907 led to a further disruption in the Movement.24 W.F. Carothers, who had served alongside Parham for two years, stepped in and led the Texas-based Apostolic Faith Movement and oversaw the discipline of Charles Parham. Once he was in place, Carothers established and edited a new series of The Apostolic Faith in 1907, this time from Houston, Texas. He chose the words, “‘I Pray that They all May Be One, as Thou, Father, Art in Me, and I in Thee, that They May 21

22 23 24

Sarah E. Parham, The Life of Charles F. Parham: Founder of the Apostolic Faith Movement (Baxter Springs, KS: Mrs. Charles F. Parham, 1930, rpt. 1969/New York, NY: Garland Publishing, Inc., rpt. 1985), 163–64. The rejection was based largely upon Parham’s increasingly segregationist commitments and his personal biases against African American culture and worship style, especially when adopted by whites. “Voliva’s Rival Quits Job,” The Waukegan Daily Gazette (November 30, 1906), 1. “Parham Still in Apostolic Faith Cult,” The Waukegan Daily Sun (December 3, 1906), 6. “Parham Is Rallying Forces,” The Houston Post (May 22, 1907), 5; “Evangelist Denies Charges But Pleads On Knees for Mercy,” San Antonio Gazette (July 19, 1907), 1; “Evangelist Is Arrested,” San Antonio Light (July 19, 1907), 8; “Justice Ben Fisk’s Court,” The San Antonio Daily Express (July 20, 1907), 12; “Meetings Halt at Majestic,” San Antonio Light (July 20, 1907), 8; “Rev. Parham Still in Jail,” San Antonio Light (July 21, 1907), 8; “Revivalists in Limbo,” The Galveston Daily News (July 21, 2907), 3; “Parham Free Again; Preaches,” San Antonio Gazette (July 23, 1907), 7; “Parham Released,” The San Antonio Daily Express (July 24, 1907), 12; “Police Save Parham from Horsewhipping,” San Antonio Gazette (July 24, 1907), 1.

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Also be One in Us’—John 17:21” to serve as the paper’s subtitle.25 The unity of the entire Apostolic Faith Movement was now at stake. In spite of his strong belief that the Church was in the process of being restored, Carothers found that the restoration process was not an easy one. Even Pentecostal leadership had difficulty agreeing with one another when following this line. The result was division. “Unity is one of the most essential and precious relations in the work of the Lord,” wrote Carothers, and We predict for all those “missions,” Workers and preachers, who have without justification torn themselves asunder from the rest of the brethren, certain failure. It is inevitable.26 4

William Joseph Seymour

William J. Seymour, pastor of the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles beginning in 1906, was another early leader who contended that the unity of the Church was extremely important to Jesus. He stated the case for Christian unity in nearly every edition of his publication, The Apostolic Faith [Los Angeles, CA], with the words, “The Apostolic Faith Movement stands for the restoration of the faith once delivered unto the saints—the old time religion, camp meetings, revivals, missions, street and prison work and Christian Unity everywhere.”27 While it is likely that Charles Parham first penned these words,28 William Seymour clearly embraced the message proclaimed in these words, making it his

25 26 27 28

The Apostolic Faith [Houston, TX] 2, no. 2 (October 1908), 1. W.F. Carothers, “What the Movement Teaches,” The Apostolic Faith [Houston, TX] 2, no. 2 (­October 1908), 7. “The Apostolic Faith Movement,” The Apostolic Faith [Los Angeles, CA] 1, no. 1 (September 1906), 2, no. 1. Italics mine. “Declare Parham Is Gaining,” The Waukegan Daily Gazette (September 28, 1906), 6, quotes these words from a circular that it claims was being distributed in Zion City by “Charles F. Parham, Projector, Elijah Hospice.” I believe that these words originated with Parham. First, Parham claimed that Seymour often used material that Parham had authored. Second, these same words were reported as existing in a circular issued by Parham from Zion before September 28, 1906, and they appear in the first edition of Seymour’s The Apostolic Faith [Los Angeles, CA] also published in September 1906. It is clear that both men have access to a single source. The fact that they appear in Parham’s circular in Illinois before his visit to Los Angeles and probably before he has seen Seymour’s Apostolic Faith, suggests that Parham is the likely author of these words.

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own. He went on to publish this claim repeatedly, thereby p ­ romoting a vision of Christian unity in Los Angeles and wherever his newspaper went.29 As the revival began to grow and other Pentecostal congregations were formed in the greater Los Angeles area, Seymour sought to maintain unity with all of these new missions. Some of these churches had been members of the Holiness Church of Southern California and Arizona, or the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene, or another pre-existing or independent congregation that embraced the Pentecostal message. Others were formed by new immigrants to the city who preferred to worship in their native German, Swedish, Spanish, Italian, or Armenian languages. The Upper Room Mission was formed through a split when it drew the Pentecostal believers out of First New Testament Church. Pastor Seymour took several practical actions to maintain unity with all of these congregations. First, Pastor Seymour advertised each of these new churches in his paper, The Apostolic Faith, informing his readers where they were meeting.30 Second, he contacted Charles Parham and invited him to lead a city-wide revival that would include these other Pentecostal churches.31 Third, he began a regular Monday morning meeting with pastors from these other churches, for purposes of fellowship, mutual encouragement, and strategic planning towards the evangelization of Los Angeles.32 In 1907, Pastor W.J. Seymour of Azusa Street and Elder Elmer K. Fisher of the Upper Room Mission co-signed missionary credentials for people such as Mrs. H.E. Kirby, under the auspices of Seymour’s Apostolic Faith Mission, that can only be understood to demonstrate the unity that existed among Seymour, Fisher, and their ­churches.33 In January 1908, Mrs. Florence Crawford, who had been working 29

30 31 32 33

This version of the statement is printed in the September and November 1906, the S­ eptember 1907, the January and the May 1908 issues. A shortened version appears in October 1906. It is missing completely from the December, 1906 and the January through the June-September, 1907, as well as the October to January 1908 issues. However, in 1915, William Seymour included this statement in W.J. Seymour, The Doctrines and Discipline of the Azusa Street Apostolic Faith Mission of Los Angeles, Cal. (Los Angeles, CA: privately published, 1915), 92. “The Pentecostal Baptism Restored,” The Apostolic Faith [Los Angeles, CA] 1, no. 2 (October 1906), 1.2; “Beginning of World Wide Revival,” The Apostolic Faith [Los Angeles, CA] 1, no. 5 (January 1907), 1, no. 2. Sarah E. Parham, ed. The Life of Charles F. Parham: Founder of the Apostolic Faith Movement (Joplin, MO: Hunter Printing Co., circa 1930 / New York, NY: Garland Publishing, Inc., rpt. 1985), 154. “Beginning of World Wide Revival,” The Apostolic Faith [Los Angeles, CA] 1, no. 5 (January 1907), 1, no. 2. “They Speak in Divers Tongues,” The Pacific Commercial Advertiser (December 18, 1907), 5.

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as “State Director” for the Azusa Street Mission, took several of the Apostolic Faith missions that she had overseen and formed her own denomination, the Apostolic Faith Mission of Portland, Oregon. This was a significant blow to Pastor Seymour, who went so far as visiting Mrs. Crawford in Portland in an attempt to maintain unity with her, and when rebuffed, incorporating the Apostolic Faith Mission in Oregon, arguing that it was a valid extension of the Los Angeles work.34 Finally, as late as 1909, Seymour issued ministerial credentials under the authority of his Apostolic Faith Mission to Abundio Lopez, who was then serving as the pastor of a Spanish language congregation, God’s Detective Mission, nearly two miles from Azusa Street, demonstrating the health of their relationship as well.35 Unity remained important to Pastor Seymour, and he worked hard to maintain it. Charles Parham sought to undermine Seymour’s work in 1906, but failed. In 1911, William H. Durham became the latest person to attempt to subvert Seymour as the pastor of Azusa Street, first by preaching his “Finished Work” theory regarding sanctification, and then by calling for an illegal vote of the congregation to elect him as pastor.36 When those two things failed and the Board of Azusa Street locked the door to his further participation, he founded the Full Gospel Assembly, just blocks away, and drew members from several Pentecostal works, putting an end to the unity that had previously existed among Los Angeles Pentecostals.37 Following the founding of the Assemblies of God in April 1914, William J. Seymour led his congregation to amend the Articles of Incorporation and the Constitution of the Azusa Street Mission, which outlined that all elected leaders would henceforth be limited to “people of Color.”38 Seymour subsequently published an “Apostolic Address” in which he lamented the loss of unity that he attributed to racism. Charles Parham, Florence Crawford, and William Durham were all white leaders. Parham rejected Seymour’s work on the basis of 34

35 36 37 38

“Mission Is Incorporated,” The Oregonian (October 14, 1909), 6; “Apostolic Mission Ready for Business,” The Oregon Daily Journal (October 16, 1909), 2. Both newspapers give the wrong date for these actions. The correct date of filing, October 12, 1908, is given on the State of Oregon, Office of the Secretary of State, Certificate of Filing and Recording ­Articles of Incorporation, File No. 14067. Unfortunately, Seymour’s attempt to demonstrate the trust he had previously placed in Florence Crawford was rejected. Gastón Espinosa, William J. Seymour and the Origins of Global Pentecostalism: A Biography and Documentary History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 118. William H. Durham, “The Great Revival at Azusa Street Mission—How It began and How It Ended,” Pentecostal Testimony [Los Angeles, CA] 1.8 (circa July/August 1911), 4. “The Work of God in Los Angeles,” Pentecostal Testimony [Los Angeles, CA] 1.8 (circa July/ August 1911), 10–11. W.J. Seymour, The Doctrines and Discipline, 49.

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too much African American culture. Durham blamed his inability to take over the Azusa Street Mission on the African Americans who locked him out.39 It was for the sake of “peace” and to keep down “race war” in the Church that Pastor Seymour reluctantly justified this “interim” decision. While he thought this action was “best for now,” he clearly hoped that it would not be a permanent measure.40 5

Frank Bartleman

Without a doubt, the most widely known chronicler of the Azusa Street revival and several other Pentecostal revivals that emerged throughout North America and Europe prior to 1910 was Frank Bartleman. A man of strong opinions, who may have patterned himself after his contemporary, Mark Twain, he showed repeated concern with the continuing development of denominations, and their lack of fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer in John 17. He authored a tract on that subject in 1905, titled “That They All May Be One.” From that point until his death in 1935, Bartleman would come back repeatedly to this theme of Christian unity. Sectarianism, he offered, “enslaves the conscience and the mind.”41 If we are Christ’s body, then “we are ‘one body.’”42 Sadly, he noted, if you were to attempt to join all of the new Pentecostal groups in order to express their oneness in Christ, “this, they will not allow you to do.”43 Echoing the thoughts of Richard Spurling, Bartleman’s invective against denominationalism as a scourge on the Body of Christ continued. The Spirit is laboring for the unity of believers today, for the “one body,” that the prayer of Jesus may be answered, “that they all may be one, that the world may believe.” But the saints are ever too ready rather to serve a system or party, to contend for religious, selfish party interests. God’s people are shut up in denominational coops. Like chicks they must get their food only in these, their own coops.44 39 40 41 42 43 44

William H. Durham, “The Great Revival at Azusa Street Mission—How It Began and How It Ended,” Pentecostal Testimony [Los Angeles, CA] 1.8 (circa July/August 1911), 4. W.J. Seymour, The Doctrines and Discipline, 12–13. Frank Bartleman, “Suggestions,” Word and Work (no date), 342. Frank Bartleman, “The Time of Our Visitation,” Word and Work 29:9 (October 1907), 264. Frank Bartleman, “Pentecost—Or No Pentecost,” 2. This was a six-page tract he authored and published about 1928. Frank Bartleman, How Pentecost Came to Los Angeles: As It Was in the Beginning, 2nd ed. (Los Angeles, CA: F. Bartleman, circa 1925), 166.

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This selection of early Pentecostal leaders provides only a small sample of the many who could be cited with respect to the early Pentecostal concern for Christian unity. They did not always agree on what that unity should look like, but most of them were concerned that whatever form that unity should take, it would in some way become visible to the world. It could be the result of the Pentecostalization of every denomination, ultimately bringing them together into one visible Pentecostal Church, or it might be brought into existence were God to provide a way to link all denominations into a renewed Church that did not allow itself to be hijacked by sectarian interests or personal or denominational quests for power. Of significance was the idea that the Church and its witness to the reconciling nature of the Gospel would make this unity something visible to the world. For the most part, by 1915 the idea that even Pentecostal believers might be able to be reconciled in such a way as to be part of one visible Church had nearly been set aside. The Holiness churches of the late 19th century that became Holiness-Pentecostal churches during the first decade of the 20th century did not agree with one another. They argued over denominational names, over leadership, and over standards of holiness.45 With the coming of William Durham and his “Finished Work” theory on sanctification in 1911, Pentecostal leaders and churches split further from one another, sometimes arguing in unholy ways over how the doctrine of sanctification (holiness) should be understood.46 And one month after the Assemblies of God was formed in April 1914, in large part by whites who chose to leave the oversight of the African American bishop Charles H. Mason and the Church of God in Christ, racial segregation seemed to triumph, further separating Pentecostals from one another. By 1916, yet another split developed when a third of the ministers of the newly founded Assemblies of God bolted in favor of baptizing in Jesus’ Name. It began with debates over the proper baptismal formula to be invoked and ended with debates over the nature of the Godhead. It would become known as, Oneness or Apostolic Pentecostalism.47 By 1923, Italian American Pentecostals within the Finished Work churches had begun to split over the question

45 Phillips, Quest to Restore God’s House, 256. 46 William H. Durham, “The Finished Work of Calvary,” Pentecostal Testimony 2:1 (December 1911), 1. 47 Talmadge L. French, Our God Is One: The Story of the Oneness Pentecostals, (Indianapolis, IN: Voice and Vision Publications), 1999; David A. Reed, “In Jesus’ Name”: The History and Beliefs of Oneness Pentecostals (Blandford Forum, UK: Deo Publishing, 2008).

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of how best to interpret Acts 15:28-29. In essence, it was an argument on the biblical approach to the correct way to slaughter a chicken!48 6

J. Roswell Flower and the Assemblies of God

In Hot Springs, Arkansas on April 6, 1914, nine men were appointed to the first Executive Presbytery of the Assemblies of God. J. Roswell Flower was named to this new body. About that time, W.F. Carothers led a good percentage of Apostolic Faith Mission pastors that he oversaw in Texas, following Charles Parham’s failure, into the Assemblies of God. Like Flower, Carothers served for a short time on the Executive Presbytery. In 1919, J. Roswell Flower was elected to serve as the first Mission Secretary/ Treasurer for the Missionary Department of the Assemblies of God. With Flower, new hope for Pentecostal participation in unity efforts seemed to emerge. He was given charge over an already significant missionary program involving 195 missionaries.49 One of the first actions that Flower took as the new Missions Secretary was to bring the Assemblies of God missionary program into the Foreign Missions Conference of North America (fmcna). He attended his first conference with the fmcna in January 1921 in Garden City, Long Island, New York.50 This began a more than four decade long relationship between the Assemblies of God and the Ecumenical Movement. The following year, Flower was accompanied by E.N. Bell, then serving as the Chairman of the General Council of the Assemblies of God, when he attended the annual conference.51 Significantly, the fmcna voted to become a charter member of the International Missionary Council (imc), bringing the Assemblies of God along in that decision.52 Flower was succeeded in the office by William Faux in 1923, and Faux was followed by Noel Perkin in 1927. 48 49

50 51 52

Louis De Caro, Our Heritage: The Christian Churches of North America (Sharon, PA: General Council, Christian Churches of North America, 1977), 64–65. William W. Menzies, Anointed to Serve: The Story of the Assemblies of God (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1971), 130; Edith L. Blumhofer, The Assemblies of God: A  Chapter in the Story of American Pentecostalism (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1989), 1: 291–92. F.P. Turner, ed. Foreign Missions Conference of North America: 1921 (New York, NY: Foreign Missions Conference, 1921), 312. F.P. Turner and F.K. Sanders, eds. The Foreign Missions Conference of North America: 1922 (New York, NY: Foreign Missions Conference, 1922), 301. F.P. Turner, ed. Foreign Missions Conference of North America: 1921, 42–47.

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Each of these men brought other members from top Assemblies of God leadership positions, to the annual conferences of the fmcna.53 The Assemblies of God maintained its membership in the Foreign Missions Conference of North America from 1920–1961. Meanwhile, Carothers did not continue with the Assemblies of God, possibly because he did not believe that the New Issue or Oneness discussion had been satisfactorily resolved. He decided to pursue Christian unity in another way. While Flower was developing the relationship between the Assemblies of God and the fmcna, W.F. Carothers and Howard A. Goss, a former colleague from Texas who had adopted the Oneness position, determined to sponsor a unity conference. On October 24, 1922, Carothers convened the first of at least three national unity conferences in St. Louis, Missouri. The second unity conference (November 11, 1923) was convened in Chicago, Illinois, and the third took place in Owensboro, Kentucky, July 11–14, 1924. Behind these conferences was Carothers’s idea that denominations and denominational names were not biblical. He argued that even the various new Pentecostal denominations had failed to follow Scripture in this regard. If one followed the Word of God, all churches would soon realize that there is only one Church represented by congregations in various cities.54 He hoped to unite all of them, allowing the Pentecostal organizations to “melt away one by one” and grow into a “UNITED BODY” that would soon cover the earth.55 Carothers would struggle to spread his message of unity for another decade, but in the end, he failed to catch the interest of the majority of Pentecostals who were, by then, going in different directions. What is important to note of Assemblies of God membership in the two mission organizations, one of them being North American, and the other one, the imc, being global, lies in the fact that in 1950 the fmcna would become the missionary arm of the National Council of Churches in the usa (ncc), and in 1961 the imc became the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism 53

54 55

F.P. Turner and F.K. Sanders, eds. The Foreign Missions Conference of North America: 1924 (New York, NY: Foreign Missions Conference, 1924), 362, 365; J.W. Welch, “The Present Great World Crisis,” The Pentecostal Evangel 590 (March 28, 1925), 2–3, 8–9; L.B. Moss, ed. The Foreign Missions Conference of North America: 1928 (New York, NY: Foreign Missions Conference of North America, 1928), 184; L.B. Moss and M.H. Brown, eds. The Foreign Missions Conference of North America: 1938 (New York, NY: Foreign Missions Conference of North America, 1938), 168–69. “Truths Considered at Third General Unity Conference, Owensboro, KY, July 11–14, 1924,” The Herald of the Church 1:3 (June 1925), 2. “Truths Considered at Third General Unity Conference, Owensboro, KY, July 11–14, 1924,” The Herald of the Church 1:3 (June 1925), 2.

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(cwme) of the World Council of Churches (wcc). In spite of these changes, the Assemblies of God Foreign Missions Department continued working with the ncc through its Church World Service, a social service organization that helped many churches around the world with the inexpensive shipment of food and clothing to churches in struggling, post-war Europe as well as with the relocation of post-war refugees.56 The Assemblies of God’s Department of Foreign Missions also worked in similar ways with the wcc from the founding of that organization in 1947, through at least 1961.57 In fact, from January 1960 through August 1962, the ­Department of Foreign Mission had an office in the same New York building that housed the headquarters of the ncc and the U.S. office of the wcc. Thus, the pragmatic approach to foreign missions that the Assemblies of God took was well-served when its New York office was brought into daily commerce with the offices of the ncc and the wcc. It was only political pragmatism that led to the Assemblies of God to close its New York office and break these longestablished relationships.58 J. Roswell Flower served as the Secretary to the General Council between 1914 and 1916, and again from 1935–1959. In the years between these two stints, he served as the Foreign Missions Secretary (1919–1925). He pastored a congregation in Trenton, NJ (1925–1931), and served as Assistant General Superintendent (1931–1937), when he was elected to serve as General Secretary of the Assemblies of God, a position he held until his retirement in 1959. It was during this latter period of service that Flower played a critical role as a prime mover in bringing the Assemblies of God into the National Association of Evangelicals (nae) in 1942. The General Superintendent, Ernest Swing Williams, General Secretary J. Roswell Flower, and Mission Secretary Noel Perkin all attended the nae’s 56

57

58

All correspondence and an eight-page, typed, single-space manuscript of an oral report with this information given by missionary Gustave Kinderman is available from the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center under the title “Europe-Gustav [sic.] Kinderman-11-14-46.” Cf. R.T. McGlasson to Reverend J.C. Burke, 24 January, 1961, 1–2; Thos. F. Zimmerman to Reverend James D. Gast, 3 April 1961; William C. Senn to David Scott, 20 April 1961; David T. Scott to Rev. Thomas F. Zimmerman, 26 April 1961, 1; and R.T. McGlasson to Reverend David T. Scott, 3 May 1961. For a more detailed overview, see Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., “The Assemblies of God and Ecumenical Cooperation: 1920–1965,” in Wonsuk Ma and Robert Menzies, eds. Pentecostalism in Context: Essays in Honor of William W. Menzies (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 107–50. See also, Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., “A Pentecostal Looks at the World Council of Churches,” The Ecumenical Review, 47, no. 1, (1995): 60–69. Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., “The Assemblies of God and Ecumenical Cooperation: 1920–1965,” 121–22.

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­ onstitutional Convention. Even though Assemblies of God leadership saw C their participation as an important move out of isolation, after watching the Fundamentalists led by Carl McIntire attack the nae for including Pentecostals, Flower wrote to nae President, Dr. Harold John Ockenga, more than once with “fingers crossed” and expressed his concern that perhaps the nae should not include Pentecostals among its membership.59 In response, Ockenga encouraged Flower to hold the course.60 Given the significant role that Flower had played first to bring the Assemblies of God into relationship with the fmcna and later to enable entry of the Assemblies of God in the nae , his popularity among fellow ministers, and his knowledge of the Assemblies of God, it is significant to note that in 1954, when Flower was serving both as General Secretary for the Assemblies of God and as Acting Secretary for the 1955 Pentecostal World Conference to be held in Stockholm, Sweden, he was invited to attend the Second Assembly of the wcc in Evanston, Illinois, and he did so officially as an “Observer.”61 Clearly, Flower was not afraid of participating in a range of ecumenical encounters, and perhaps more importantly, Flower saw real potential in the wcc for Christian unity. Flower attended the meeting in Evanston. He expected liberals to dominate; that is what the Evangelical press had predicted.62 When he did not find that to be the case, he was pleasantly surprised and reported that if such people were present, they had hidden their views “very cleverly.”63 Moreover, the battles that had been taking place between the Fundamentalists and liberals in the United States during the first half of the 20th Century were not present among their European counterparts. Thus, Flower found himself drawn to the 59

Letter from J.R. Flower to Dr. Harold J. Ockenga, June 1, 1943, 1; Letter from J.R. Flower to Dr. Harold J. Ockenga, July 5, 1943, 2; and Letter from J.R. Flower to Harold J. Ockenga, May 4, 1944, 2. 60 Letter from Harold John Ockenga to J. Roswell Flower, May 28, 1943; Letter from H.J. Ockenga to J. Roswell Flower, May 22, 1944. The correspondence mentioned in both directions between Flower and Ockenga is available from the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center. 61 The Evanston Report: The Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches (New York, NY: Harper, 1955), 284; David J. du Plessis, “The World Council of Churches,” Pentecost, No. 30 (December 1954), 10; Donald Gee, “Pentecost and Evanston,” Pentecost, No. 30 (December 1954), 17. 62 “The World Council and ‘Christian Hope,’” The Pentecostal Evangel, No. 2101 (August 15, 1954), 9 was published just as Flower left for Evanston. It had earlier run in the nae’s house organ, United Evangelical Action, claiming that the liberals would dominate the Assembly. 63 This comment appears in an untitled, five-page, single-spaced, typed report written by J. Roswell Flower regarding his experience and reflections on the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches, page 2. It is available from the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center.

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­ nglicans and to the Orthodox representatives in particular, as well as to othA ers he described as “Evangelicals.”64 As a result, Flower asked the Assemblies of God executives, “Should Pentecostals and other conservatives abandon the World Council of Churches, thereby allowing the liberal wing of the Church to dominate, or should the conservatives become regular and vocal participants in this relatively new ecumenical venture thereby dominating it ‘for Christ and the Bible’?”65 This was not merely a rhetorical question. Flower was convinced that if they really wanted to do so, Pentecostals and other evangelically-minded Christians could join, participate, and become the dominant voice in the Council. “They can dominate it if they have a mind to,” he reported. “The Liberals are not in the saddle, and the Council is widely representative and democratic. It is far from an autocratically controlled body.”66 Unfortunately, Flower’s question was ignored, and no reference to his attendance and participation in that Assembly ever found its way into print in the Assemblies of God.67 In his article titled “The World Council and ‘Christian Hope,’” Robert C. Cunningham, editor of the Pentecostal Evangel, simply portrayed the wcc as being dominated by “liberals.”68 Clearly, there were two opposing positions that were being championed within the Assemblies of God on whether the World Council of Churches posed an ecumenical opportunity (Flower), or an ecumenical threat (Cunningham). What would soon become clear is that most of the decisions that favored stronger ecumenical relations were made behind the scenes, within the Department of Foreign Missions. Even so, it is difficult to imagine that the Missions leadership made such decisions without the consent of other executive officers of the Fellowship. From the outset, all of those who engaged with the larger Church through the various organizations in which the Assemblies of God held membership, were involved in Foreign Missions work for the Assemblies of God. While it was probably not intentional, this fact seems to have given rise to the two competing, if not opposing, approaches to ecumenism. Assemblies of God missionaries and their executives were working with the ncc and the wcc and found their interdenominational and ecumenical work to be fruitful. Other Assemblies of God executives seem to have followed the lead of the nae. Many of them subscribed to the Fundamentalist paper, The Christian 64 65 66 67 68

Flower Report on the 1954 Assembly of the World Council of Churches, page 5. Flower Report on the 1954 Assembly of the World Council of Churches, page 5. Flower Report on the 1954 Assembly of the World Council of Churches, page 5. Donald Gee, “Pentecost and Evanston,” Pentecost 30 (December 1954), 17 notes that Flower was present at the Assembly. Robert C. Cunningham, “The World Council and ‘Christian Hope,’” 9.

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Beacon, published by Carl McIntyre, who made repeated and intense attacks against the nae and against Pentecostals. At the same time that the Assemblies of God was closing down its ties to the ncc and the wcc, one of its ministers, David du Plessis, was busy engaging with leaders of the newly burgeoning Charismatic Renewal in a number of historic Protestant and Anglican denominations. His public prominence and his sometimes self-serving methods soon brought him into conflict with Assemblies of God leadership. Thomas F. Zimmerman became the Chairman of the Pentecostal World Conference in 1958, was elected General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God in 1959, and elected the President of the nae in 1960. There he came under political pressure to take some action regarding du Plessis.69 He tried, but failed, to silence du Plessis. Ultimately, the Executive Presbytery disciplined du Plessis, withdrawing his ordination with the Assemblies of God.70 It was during this time that the Assemblies of God took an action against ecumenism that ultimately found its way into the denomination’s Bylaws.71 Several steps along the way have moved Pentecostal churches more into the mainstream of Christianity. In their early years, Pentecostals were often viewed as sectarians, or worse. When in 1941, several Pentecostal denominations were invited to join the nae, their future and fortunes began to change. It is not possible to view the nae as properly functioning as an ecumenical body, at least, not in the same terms as one can understand either the ncc or the wcc. The purpose of the nae is “Cooperation without Compromise.”72 The basis for membership in the wcc includes the commitment that its member churches must “confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour according to the scriptures and therefore…seek to fulfill together their common calling to the glory of the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…”73 It is the common calling to full “visible unity in one faith and in one Eucharistic fellowship expressed in 69 70

71 72 73

W.S. Mooneyham, “Pentecostals and the w.c.c.,” United Evangelical Action 20, no. 4 (June, 1961), 28–29. Joshua R. Ziefle, David du Plessis and the Assemblies of God: The Struggle for the Soul of a Movement (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 67–92; Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., “The Assemblies of God and Ecumenical Cooperation: 1920–1965,” in Wonsuk Ma and Robert P. Menzies, eds. Pentecostalism in Context: Essays in Honor of William W. Menzies (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 107–50, especially 132–46. Robeck, “The Assemblies of God and Ecumenical Cooperation: 1920–1965,” 147–48. J.D. Murch, Cooperation without Compromise: A History of the National Association of Evangelicals (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans), 1956. Michael Kinnamon and Brian E. Cope, eds. The Ecumenical Movement: An Anthology of Key Texts and Voices (Geneva: wcc Publications / Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997), 469.

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worship and in common life in Christ”74 that sets the wcc apart from the nae or its global partner, the World Evangelical Alliance. Cooperation can be quite useful, but it may also be viewed as superficial, whereas the common calling to visible unity in both worship and common life runs much more deeply. Nonetheless, the nae brought Pentecostal leaders into fellowship with a variety of Evangelical leaders. It was the closest thing to ecumenism that those Pentecostals who were not missionaries had experienced since their earliest days. Bibliography Bartleman, Frank. How Pentecost Came to Los Angeles: As It Was in the Beginning, 2nd edition. Los Angeles, CA: F. Bartleman, 1925. Bartleman, Frank. “Pentecost—Or No Pentecost.” Los Angeles, CA: F. Bartleman, 1928. Bartleman, Frank. “Suggestions.” Word and Work (n.d.). Bartleman, Frank. “The Time of Our Visitation.” Word and Work 29, no. 9 (October 1907). Blumhofer, Edith L. The Assemblies of God: A Chapter in the Story of American Pentecostalism. Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1989. Cunningham, Robert C. “The World Council and ‘Christian Hope.’” The Pentecostal Evangel 2101 (August 1954). de Caro, Louis. Our Heritage: The Christian Churches of North America. Sharon, PA: General Council, Christian Churches of North America, 1977. du Plessis, David J. “The World Council of Churches.” Pentecost no. 30 (December 1954). Durham, William H. “The Finished Work of Calvary.” Pentecostal Testimony 2, no. 1 (December 1911). Durham, William H. “The Great Revival at Azusa Street Mission—How It Began and How It Ended.” Pentecostal Testimony 1, no. 8 (circa July/August 1911). Espinosa, Gastón. William J. Seymour and the Origins of Global Pentecostalism: A Biography and Documentary History. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Flower, J. Roswell. Untitled report on the 1954 Assembly of the World Council of Churches. Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center. French, Talmadge L. Our God Is One: The Story of the Oneness Pentecostals. Indianapolis, IN: Voice and Vision Publications, 1999. Gee, Donald. “Pentecost and Evanston.” Pentecost, no. 30 (December 1954). Menzies, William W. Anointed to Serve: The Story of the Assemblies of God. Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1971. Mooneyham, W.S. “Pentecostals and the W.C.C.” United Evangelical Action 20, no. 4 (1961): 28–29. 74

Michael Kinnamon and Brian E. Cope, The Ecumenical Movement, 469.

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Murch, J.D. Cooperation without Compromise: A History of the National Association of Evangelicals. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1956. Parham, Charles. “Declare Parham Is Gaining.” The Waukegan Daily Gazette (September 1906). Phillips, Wade H. Quest to Restore God’s House: A Theological History of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee). Cleveland, TN: CPT Press, 2014. Reed, David A. “In Jesus’ Name”: The History and Beliefs of Oneness Pentecostals. Blandford Forum, UK: Deo Publishing, 2008. Robeck, Cecil M. Jr. “The Assemblies of God and Ecumenical Cooperation: 1920–1965.” In Pentecostalism in Context: Essays in Honor of William W. Menzies. Edited by Wonsuk Ma and Robert Menzies. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997, 107–50. Robeck, Cecil M. Jr. “A Pentecostal Looks at the World Council of Churches.” The Ecumenical Review 47, no. 1 (1995): 60–69. Seymour, W.J. The Doctrines and Discipline of the Azusa Street Apostolic Faith Mission of Los Angeles, Cal. Los Angeles, CA: privately published, 1915. Seymour, W.J. “Apostolic Mission Ready for Business.” The Oregon Daily Journal (October 16, 1909). Seymour, W.J. “Mission Is Incorporated.” The Oregonian (October 1909). Seymour, W.J. “Beginning of World Wide Revival.” The Apostolic Faith 1 (January 1907). Seymour, W.J. “The Apostolic Faith Movement.” The Apostolic Faith 1 (September 1906). Seymour, W.J. “The Pentecostal Baptism Restored.” The Apostolic Faith 1, no. 2 (October 1906). Welch, J.W. “The Present Great World Crisis.” The Pentecostal Evangel 590 (March 1925): 2–39. Ziefle, Joshua R. David du Plessis and the Assemblies of God: The Struggle for the Soul of a Movement. Leiden: Brill, 2013. The Ecumenical Movement: An Anthology of Key Texts and Voices. Edited by Michael Kinnamon and Brian E. Cope. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997. The Evanston Report: The Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches. New York, NY: Harper, 1955. The Foreign Missions Conference of North America: 1938. Edited by L.B. Moss and M.H. Brown. New York, NY: Foreign Missions Conference of North America, 1938. The Foreign Missions Conference of North America: 1928. Edited by L.B. Moss. New York, NY: Foreign Missions Conference of North America, 1928. The Foreign Missions Conference of North America: 1924. Edited by F.P. Turner and F.K. Sanders. New York, NY: Foreign Missions Conference, 1924. The Foreign Missions Conference of North America: 1922. Edited by F.P. Turner and F.K. Sanders. New York, NY: Foreign Missions Conference, 1922.

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The Foreign Missions Conference of North America: 1921. Edited by F.P. Turner. New York, NY: Foreign Missions Conference, 1921. Letter from Harold John Ockenga to J. Roswell Flower, May 28, 1943; Letter from H.J. Ockenga to J. Roswell Flower, May 22, 1944. The correspondence mentioned in both directions between Flower and Ockenga is available from the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center. Letter from J.R. Flower to Dr. Harold J. Ockenga, June 1, 1943, 1; Letter from J.R. Flower to Dr. Harold J. Ockenga, July 5, 1943, 2; and Letter from J.R. Flower to Harold J. ­Ockenga, May 4, 1944, 2. The Life of Charles F. Parham: Founder of the Apostolic Faith Movement. Edited by Parham, Sarah E. New York, NY: Garland Publishing, Inc. 1985. “They Speak in Diverse Tongues.” The Pacific Commercial Advertiser (December 1907). “The Work of God in Los Angeles.” Pentecostal Testimony 1, no. 8. (circa July/August 1911).

Chapter 2

Dissenting Voices or Visionary Prophets?: A Reflection on Pioneering Pentecostal Ecumenists Jean-Daniel Plüss Anybody who undertakes a journey must naturally be aware of the direction to be taken. It is just as important, however, to remember the point of origin. The following contribution will look at some of the first Pentecostals who engaged in ecumenical activities. Why did they do it? How did they invest themselves? What developments towards Christian unity have they witnessed? This chapter will, given the stated premise of a journey, reflect on the stakes that Pentecostal ecumenical activities claim by looking at some pioneering Pentecostal ecumenists and their stories. 1

David du Plessis

The story of David du Plessis’s calling to an ecumenical ministry is well known1 and deserves repeating only in so far that Smith Wigglesworth, the popular English evangelist, met David du Plessis in Johannesburg in December 1936 who was to interpret for him into Afrikaans. Wigglesworth spoke to him a prophecy that du Plessis would be used by God to witness about the work of the Holy Spirit to the historic churches.2 It gave him a vision that God would open doors. 1 David du Plessis narrated his encounter with the English evangelist Smith Wigglesworth in his biographical writings A Man Called Mr. Pentecost: David du Plessis as Told to Bob Slosser, 3rd ed. (Alachua, FL: Bridge Logos, 2005); The Spirit Bade Me Go (Plainfield, NJ: Logos International, 1970); and Simple and Profound (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 1986). It has also been researched in Martin Robinson’s doctoral dissertation To the Ends of the Earth: The Pilgrimage of an Ecumenical Pentecostal (Birmingham, England: University of Birmingham, 1987). The complicated tensions between du Plessis and the Assemblies of God are discussed in Joshua R. Ziefle, David du Plessis and the Assemblies of God. The Struggle for the Soul of a Movement (Leiden: Brill, 2013). 2 There are various accounts as to what exactly this prophecy contained. For an oral account by David du Plessis of that event hear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXV4cogx_j8, ­especially minutes 10 to 14, accessed October 27, 2015.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:10.1163/9789004408371_003

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It is worth mentioning that David, 31 years of age, was at that time already General Secretary of the Apostolic Faith Mission (afm) in South Africa. His position facilitated international contacts across various continents. As Russel P. Spittler points out,3 du Plessis was an able administrator with a sense of bringing unity to his denomination and who facilitated the merger of the Apostolic Faith Movement with the Full Gospel Church. He attended the 1937 General Council of the Assemblies of God (usa) and discussed with the British Pentecostal Donald Gee and others the possibility of unifying the Pentecostal movement that was rapidly spreading around the world. In 1939 an international Pentecostal conference was held in Stockholm, and the issue of greater unity among Pentecostals was hotly debated. Some denominational representatives, mostly from the usa and Western Europe took a pragmatic approach and favored greater union, while others, mostly Scandinavians, were convinced that any organization would be manmade and thus in opposition to the Holy Spirit’s work through the local churches. It is noteworthy that David du Plessis was an ecumenist within his own ranks. After the Second World War, travelling became easier and du Plessis made sure to attend what would become the First Pentecostal World Conference in Zurich, Switzerland, in May 1947. There again questions of unity were discussed. Leonhard Steiner, the Swiss Pentecostal who had organized the conference, felt the need to set up a bureau in order to coordinate Pentecostal aid to the needy churches in the war-torn countries, especially in Eastern Europe. He asked David du Plessis to lead the office in Basel. For him this was an occasion, not only to use his administrative gifts, but also to implement a sense of solidarity and unity among Pentecostals. The afm would not let him go, so he resigned his post as General Secretary and called his wife Anna Cornelia to sell everything in South Africa and join him in Switzerland. Although the stay of the du Plessis family in Basel would only last through the winter and spring of 1947/1948, the move set David free for a larger vision. One may wonder why David and Anna called their youngest son, who was born in 1949, “Basel.” The du Plessis family moved to the usa in August 1948, and in no time ­David was instrumental in the formation of the “Pentecostal Fellowship of North America.” His efforts to unite Pentecostals continued into the 1950s. He was elected organizing secretary for the Pentecostal World Conferences in Paris (1949), London (1952), Stockholm (1955), and Toronto (1958). At the same time he was being introduced to the World Council of Churches. He attended the 3 R.P. Spittler, “Du Plessis, David Johannes,” in Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas, eds. The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal Charismatic Movements (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002/2003), 590.

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constituting assembly in Amsterdam in 1948 and the subsequent assemblies up to 1983.4 Russ Spittler argues that David’s contacts with global ecclesiastical representatives, who were curious to learn more about Pentecostalism, eventually earned him the title “Mr. Pentecost.”5 David du Plessis would write reports on his experiences during those meetings. The Swiss magazine Die Verheissung des Vaters published his report from the wcc Delhi Assembly and commented more or less favorably.6 While some trusted that God was leading “Mr. Pentecost” to share the good news for the renewal of the Body of Christ others were suspicious. Thomas Zimmerman who had campaigned vigorously to make the Assemblies of God acceptable to the National Association of Evangelicals had brought about an evangelicalization of mostly white classical Pentecostalism in North America and felt very uncomfortable to see an Assemblies of God minister fraternizing with representatives of the historic churches.7 As a result, David du Plessis was given an ultimatum to give up either his ecumenical activities or his credentials as an ordained minister of the Assemblies of God. After a time of heart searching du Plessis decided to pursue his ecumenical vocation. The point of no return may in the end have facilitated his acceptance of the invitation by Cardinal Bea to attend the third session of the Second Vatican Council. This led to preparatory conversations towards an international Roman Catholic-Pentecostal dialogue that officially began in 1972 and is being continued to the present. The difficulties created in the United States of America and the tensions between Pentecostals and Roman Catholics in Latin America and Italy made it almost impossible for the dialogue to be held on an official level, although David du Plessis asked both the Assemblies of God and

4 The Amsterdam Assembly took place from August 22nd to September 4th, 1948, thus just after the du Plessis family had transitioned to the United States. The other assemblies David attended were in Evanston, IL (1954), New Delhi (1961), Uppsala (1968), Nairobi (1975), and Vancouver (1983). 5 Spittler, “Du Plessis, David Johannes,“ in nidpcm, 591. 6 Verheissung des Vaters, December 1951, 15. 7 In 1961, while Thomas Zimmerman was president of the nae, he was instrumental in having the wording of the Statement of Fundamental Truths of the Assemblies of God revised and expanded to please evangelical theologians. For instance, the statement on the inspiration of Scriptures was extended to contain the words “verbal” and “authoritative.” Relevant to this chapter is the fact that while the 1916 Statement of Fundamental Truths was intended “as a basis of unity for the ministry” the 1961 statement read in the preamble that the statement was intended “as a basis of fellowship among us” thus weakening and limiting the focus of Christian unity.

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the Pentecostal World Fellowship to send official participants.8 Ironically, this made the role of David du Plessis as an ambassador of Pentecostalism even more important.9 The message he conveyed was that what the Charismatic Renewal was experiencing was essentially the same as what the revival at Azusa Street and the Pentecostal movement was all about. Although the Assemblies of God (usa) cut ties with him, he maintained contacts with a number of Pentecostal leaders. As we will see, his influence for the cause of unity in the Body of Christ would be significant to quite a few of his associates. In 1980 the Assemblies of God (usa) reinstated David du Plessis as an ordained minister of their denomination. However, it would take almost 30 more years for them to modify their stance on ecumenical activities. A change that was partly due to David du Plessis bringing new realities into play. 2

Leonhard Steiner

Leonhard Steiner was the son of Heinrich Steiner, one of the key figures in early Swiss Pentecostalism. Leonhard had benefited from university education and influenced his denomination from the 1930s until well into the 1970s as pastor, editor, teacher, and secretary of the Swiss Pentecostal Mission. His colleagues called him an aristocrat, probably because he had a refined way of communicating and because his writings were reflective. He can be considered an early Pentecostal ecumenist for two reasons. First, he saw the necessity for Pentecostals to unite. Secondly, he theologized respecting the main Christian traditions. It was during a prayer meeting in 1946 that Steiner felt that God had commissioned him to organize a conference gathering the Lord’s people. The Swiss Pentecostal Mission issued, under his direction, an invitation to Pentecostal leaders from various parts of the world. From May 4–9, 1947, 260 guests from 23 countries met in Zurich for what would in effect become the First Pentecostal World Conference. The official delegates would represent 70 churches and associations. As a result, the Bureau of International Pentecostal Churches for Aid and Evangelism was created to which David du Plessis brought his skills. Furthermore, it was decided to launch a common magazine called Pentecost. Donald Gee was appointed its editor.10 8 9 10

Jerry L. Sandidge, Roman Catholic / Pentecostal Dialogue (1977–1982): A Study in Developing Ecumenism, Studies in the Intercultural History of Christianity 44, 2 vols. (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1987), vol. 1, 332–35. Rick Howard, “David du Plessis: Pentecost’s Ambassador-at-Large,” in Wonsuk Ma and Robert P. Menzies, eds., The Spirit and Spirituality (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 271–97. Jean-Daniel Plüss, Vom Geist bewegt (Kreuzlingen: Asaph AG, 2015), 98–100.

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On two other occasions Leonhard Steiner worked for Pentecostal unity: at the Stuttgart conference in 1948 bringing the scattered Pentecostal churches of post-war Germany together11 and in the 1960s where he was instrumental in leading conversations towards unity and cooperation among various Swiss Pentecostal denominations.12 Another aspect of Steiner’s ecumenical disposition was evident in his theological writings. In his book on the history and doctrines of Pentecostalism he closes with self-criticism and an open attitude towards other churches.13 More interestingly, he was careful to situate the experience of Spirit-Baptism in a context that was both biblical and in agreement with the Christian tradition. He embraced speaking in tongues and the use of gifts by the power of the Holy Spirit, but he would also argue that all Christians have been baptized in the Holy Spirit as a consequence of their new birth, the gift of God’s grace. Glossolalia was to be understood as a gift of God and not as “initial evidence.”14 Since Leonhard Steiner was friends with David du Plessis and they spent many hours together while working in Basel, it is quite possible that he influenced David to consider speaking in tongues as a consequence rather than an evidence of Spirit Baptism.15 In 1966 there was an ecumenical consultation in Gunten, Switzerland, that was organized by Walter Hollenweger representing the World Council of Churches and Leonhard Steiner on the Pentecostal side. The high level delegation from the wcc included Martin Niemöller and five executive secretaries. On the Pentecostal side there were pastors from Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain, Denmark, and Sweden. The conversations were open, frank, and held in a friendly spirit. However, skepticism prevailed, and there was no continuation of that meeting.16 When he was 83 Leonhard Steiner reflected on unity among Pentecostals and the ecumenical mandate in John 17. He saw the work of the Pentecostal 11 Christian Krust, 50 Jahre Deutsche Pfingstbewegung—Mülheimer Richtung (Altdorf b. Nürnberg: Missionsbuchhandlung und Verlag Altdorf b. Nürnberg, 1958), 187–89. 12 Plüss, Vom Geist bewegt, 132–34. 13 Leonhard Steiner, Mit folgenden Zeichen (Basel: Verlag Mission für das volle Evangelium, 1954), 183–88; the chapter is titled “Die wiedererwachte Pfingstfrage.” 14 Leonhard Steiner repeatedly wrote on Baptism in the Spirit, especially in response to the Pentecostal Conference in Stockholm in 1939 where the topic was hotly debated, and in answer to Harold Horton’s writings. Die Verheissung des Vaters, February 1939, February and March 1940, August, September, November 1944, and especially February 1945, footnote on page 9. 15 Spittler, “Du Plessis, David Johannes” in ndpcm, 592. 16 Leonhard Steiner reported in detail on this meeting in Die Verheissung des Vaters, December 1966, 13–14.

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World Conferences and the Charismatic Renewal as hopeful signs and called Pentecostals to continue to pursue true ecumenism until Christ returns.17 3

Donald Gee

Donald Gee was born in 1891 and grew up in London as a son of a sign painter. Given the social situation at that time, he followed in the professional footsteps of his father. He was basically self-taught and an accomplished musician. He became one of the most influential Pentecostal educators in Great Britain. His books and numerous articles would be printed in many languages and read around the world.18 Donald Gee experienced a conversion to Christ in a Congregational Church through the preaching of Seth Joshua, a Methodist and revivalist of the Welsh Revival.19 He and his mother later began to visit a Baptist congregation and soon after were introduced to a Pentecostal expression of faith. This path of spiritual growth may have contributed to the fact that Donald Gee would also become an important ecumenist, encouraging Pentecostals to be respectful of Christians of other traditions. At the first Pentecostal World Conference in Zurich (1947) he was elected to be the editor of Pentecost, a new magazine that would share information about the global Pentecostal movement, its mission activities, and major developments. He remained its editor until 1966 constantly defending the importance of Spirit Baptism, the use of charismatic gifts but also tackling contentious issues like fundamentalism, prosperity gospel teachings, church leadership issues, and the need for Christian unity.20 In 1948 he wrote in an article entitled

17 18

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Die Verheissung des Vaters, July 1985, 4. Most influential have been his books Concerning Spiritual Gifts (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 2012; previous releases, 1928, 1937, 1972); The Fruit of the Spirit (originally undated, Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, rev. ed. 2010); and his books on the history of Pentecostalism Upon All Flesh (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1935); The Pentecostal Movement: A Short History and Interpretation for British Readers (1941, expanded in 1949 to include the war years. Available online with Read Books Limited, 2013); and Wind and Flame (later expanded to include material about the Charismatic Renewal; Croydon: Assemblies of God, 1967). Biographical information on Donald Gee can be found in D.D. Bundy “Gee, Donald” in ndpcm, 662–63. Many articles appeared in the British magazine Redemption Tidings and were translated and published in other pentecostal publications like the Swiss magazine Die Verheissung des Vaters or the Dutch periodical Kracht van Omhoog.

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“Amsterdam and Pentecost” concerning the need for spiritual unity while at the same time reporting on the first Assembly of the World Council of Churches: There are inestimable benefits from brethren speaking face to face who otherwise might become estranged. In this dark hour there is an urgent need for all Christians to plan together, to work together, and collectively declare their united faith and hope and love. We have no praise for those misguided isolationists, within or without the Pentecostal Movement, who deliberately hold aloof from Councils. Estimable though some of these good brethren may be, they would gain tremendously in spiritual stature and humility of mind if they joined us in our conferences, even at the cost of crucifying their temperamental distaste for that kind of thing. It is all very well to talk about the unity of the Spirit as transcending our denominational and ideological differences, but that fact does not absolve us from efforts at manifesting an outward fellowship also. Indeed the “unity of the Spirit” is not an escape from outward unity; the (sic) rather it is the true reason for its manifestation… A powerful flood-tide of emotional love, joy and peace is liberated when brethren meet together in unity. They cannot but separate with new enthusiasm for their work and witness for Christ. Great Councils of the Church may not usher in new Pentecosts, but they can be truly Pentecostal. The same Holy Spirit Who manifested Himself by giving us utterance in other tongues in our personal Pentecostal baptism should be expected to manifest His presence in our Councils by words of wisdom that direct us to decisions that seem good to Him and to us.21 These words speak for themselves. But not everyone was positively impressed. The developing fundamentalist wing among North American and European Pentecostals saw the World Council of Churches as an influence of the AntiChrist. In 1954 Donald Gee was attending the Evanston Assembly of the World Council of Churches as a journalist. Also attending were David du Plessis and J. Roswell Flower, who was there as an official observer of the Assemblies of God. Gee was deeply saddened about the tediously slow progress towards unity between Council members, but he kept the situation in perspective when he said, “The pathway towards unity is beset with many a thorn for those who genuinely try to walk in it, and at times it can be heartbreaking. Before the

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Pentecost, no. 6, December 1948, 17.

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Pentecostal churches can criticise others they should confess their own often ineffectual struggles to achieve greater unity among themselves.”22 Gee was invited to attend the Third Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Delhi in 1961. But due to the pressure exerted by Thomas Zimmermann and fundamentalists within his own denomination he had to decline. But he would not leave it at that. He retorted with an editorial asking Are we Fundamental Enough?: “We are prone to judge by secondaries. Then we become companions of John and excommunicate those who have not signed on our dotted lines. We want all men to be ‘WITH US’ rather than ‘FOR’ the Son of God. Heresy-hunting is often a mark, for the discerning, of a receding fullness of the Spirit. We persecute, and we are persecuted, for things that are only relatively important. Yet we pride ourselves we are fighting the battle of the Lord.”23 Donald Gee showed respect towards the order of worship of older churches, when he wrote in response to Pentecostal enthusiasm and the beginnings of the Charismatic Renewal: There may be a deep wisdom in this new charismatic revival that is touching so many in the older denominations if they can maintain their liturgies and forms of public worship under a new touch of the Spirit. There is no fundamental reason why time-honoured orders of worship cannot be touched with Pentecostal fire, unless they embody some unscriptural error. Formalism in worship usually consists of a form of words and methods that have become stereotyped through constant use and familiarity. The need is for re-vitalizing, not destruction by an explosion of fanaticism. The last error may be worse than the first. We believe that there is a beauty of holiness that is not human by (sic) divine. But very much depends upon recognizing that in the perspective of a lifetime there is a necessity for all new enthusiasms to become integrated into a regular pattern of things, and that goes for Pentecostal enthusiasm as much as any other. The Comforter has come to abide, and believers to whom He has come should rejoice in walking in the Spirit all the days of their life, instead of seeking some new kind of “baptism” or movement to produce a new touch of religious excitement and novelty.24

22 23 24

“Pentecost and Evanston,” in Pentecost, no. 30 , December 1954, 17. “What Manner of Spirit?,” in Pentecost, no. 57, September 1961, 17. “A Pentecost that Abides,” in Pentecost, no. 63, March 1963, 17.

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Donald Gee has been known as an “Apostle of Balance”, but he was more than that. Unity in Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit for the sake of common witness was a major concern throughout his life. In the fall of 1965 he addressed Pentecostal pastors in Switzerland who had gathered to discuss ways for closer cooperation. He encouraged them to seek unity with words that were understood to have prophetic significance.25 In spring 1966, just a few months before his death, Walter Hollenweger had a conversation with Donald Gee discussing with him the basic features of Pentecostalism. He was surprised to find out that Gee was reading Paul Tillich’s Systematic Theology. At the end of the visit the old man bade Hollenweger farewell by saying, “Never give up hope of winning the Pentecostals over to an ecumenical outlook! It will be a long time, for the Pentecostals are afraid. And fear is hard to overcome.”26 4

Thomas Roberts

Of early Pentecostal ecumenists, Thomas Roberts is possibly least known. Born in 1902 he was the son of a miner and grew up in the context of the great Welsh Revival that took place 1904–1905. When 17 he experienced a conversion to a living faith through the ministry of J.J. Williams, a Pentecostal minister of the Apostolic Church in Morriston near Swansea. In 1925 Roberts was chosen to become a missionary to France. Three years later he became the leader of the Apostolic congregation in Paris. Thomas Roberts began his ecumenical journey when he noticed during a campaign by the British Pentecostal evangelist Douglas Scott that a number of French Protestants were attracted to his preaching. Whereas the members of the Apostolic Church had considered France to be totally un-Christian regardless of the church to which people belonged, Scott had no problems associating with committed Protestants. Soon Thomas Roberts began to meet with believers who gathered around the French Reformed minister Louis Dallière, an intellectual philosopher/pastor who had received a Pentecostal experience a few years earlier.27 Roberts could no longer ignore the spiritual realities in 25

26 27

Report on the conference in Die Verheissung des Vaters, December 1965, 14, and again in response to his death in Die Verheissung des Vaters, September 1966, 8–13. Peter Hocken has also written an important reflection on Donald Gee and his ecumenical convictions in chapter three of his Azusa, Rome, and Zion (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2016). Walter Hollenweger, The Pentecostals (London: scm Press, 1972), 213. A detailed introduction to Louis Dallière, his thoughts, and early activities are given by David Bundy in “Louis Dallière: Apologist for Pentecostalism in France and Belgium,

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France. In 1934 he faced difficult times that led to soul searching. In 1936 he was asked to become pastor of an independent Reformed church in Paris. Soon after he agreed to his new position the church became charismatic.28 The relationship between Roberts and Dallière was significant. Firstly, Roberts who came from the Apostolic Church, which was at that time not interested in theological education, found in Dallière a loyal friend who ably defended Pentecostal positions and challenged him intellectually.29 He was constantly available for theological insight and spiritual encouragement. Secondly, Louis Dallière helped Thomas Roberts to appreciate the wider Christian traditions such as the spirituality of the Catholic and Orthodox churches.30 Dallière would also introduce Roberts to a deeper understanding of the role of the Jewish people in God’s plan of redemption. Dallière’s Union de Prière de Charmes s/Rhône became a spiritual home for Roberts. He adopted their devotional guidelines that focus on prayer: (a) for revival amongst all churches, (b) on behalf of the Jewish people in accordance to Romans Chapter 11, (c) for the visible unity of the universal Church, and (d) prayer for the second coming of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of the dead. As a consequence, Roberts would refrain from polemical speech with regard to Christians from other traditions. At the same time, the missionary impulse given during his Apostolic days remained very much alive. In the 1950s he started evangelistic campaigns alongside his pastoral ministry. In 1958 he acquired a tent seating 1,200, and at a two week campaign in Lausanne, he spoke to a total of 90,000 people.31 Evangelism and an ecumenical attitude were not in contradiction, but his ecumenism had not yet expanded to Roman Catholics. As Thomas Roberts was nearing retirement age he began to set other priorities. One of them was a deeper commitment to pray for and engage with Jews. The mystery of Israel had already been a spiritual concern for him and Louis Dallière since the early 1930s, but now he pursued contacts more purposefully.

28 29

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1932–1939,” Pneuma 10, no. 2 (1988): 85–115. See also Peter Hocken, “The Prophetic Contribution of Pastor Louis Daillère,” in The Spirit and Spirituality, 253–70. It became Charismatic in the sense that it adopted Pentecostal elements although ­remaining part of the Reformed church, thus in socio-religious terms, and not as part of the Charismatic Renewal that started in the 1960s. David Bundy had in 1978 a three hour interview with Thomas Roberts. He remembers, “Dallière’s attitude toward the church (patient but persistent, loving yet reforming) was central for Robert’s ‘new’ attitude. He also stated that the ecumenical approach of Dallière, accepting his own perspective/experience as the foundation for discussing with the other, was also crucial.” E-Mail to J.D. Plüss dated September 6th, 2015. Jean-Daniel Fischer and F. Lovsky, eds. Thomas Roberts, special supplement to Tychique no. 59, Lyon, 1986, 12–15. Fischer and Lovsky, Thomas Roberts, 23.

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This would eventually lead to seminars on the role of Israel in God’s plan of salvation32 and the eventful moment in 1983 where Roberts asked the participants of the Porte Ouverte convention to kneel down and ask the Jewish people for forgiveness in view of past persecution that Christians had initiated against them. Shortly before his death Roberts was enthusiastically entertaining the next step, a rapprochement between Christian and Jews in a conference called “Jerusalem 84.”33 The second priority was given to contacts with Roman Catholic Christians. The Charismatic Renewal brought ever more opportunities to worship and fellowship together, to learn from brothers and sisters who had been blessed with a new Pentecost. It began in 1968 with Louis Dallière’s invitation to attend a retreat with Reformed pastors in Charmes at which David du Plessis was a speaker. When du Plessis spoke about Catholics experiencing a new infilling with the Spirit, Roberts immediately saw it as an answer to the prayers of the Union de Prière.34 The charismatic gatherings of Porte Ouverte in France during the 1970s and 1980s saw a steady growth in Catholic participation also involving, for instance, the ecumenical community Chemin Neuf founded by Laurent Fabre, who as a young Jesuit experienced the Charismatic Renewal. In 1977 Thomas Roberts was invited to participate at the Roman Catholic-­Pentecostal Dialogue in Rome. The interdenominational conference “Pentecost over ­Europe,” held in Strasbourg in 1982, was the brainchild of Thomas Roberts. The meeting attracted twenty thousand participants from all over the continent and provided significant ecumenical inspiration.35 Thomas Roberts did at times face opposition, but he stayed true to his vision towards Christian unity and for reconciliation with the people of Israel. At the same time he always remembered his Pentecostal origins with fondness and respect. A great compliment was paid by James E. Worsfold, a member of the Apostolic Church in Great Britain, who was pleased to meet Thomas Roberts in 1977, saying that he was “challenged by his extraordinary ecumenical stance, more particularly because his spiritual origins were in the AC (Apostolic Church) in Wales.”36 32 33 34 35 36

For instance, during the charismatic gathering of Porte Ouverte at Viviers in 1973. Cf. Olivier Landron, Les communautés nouvelles: nouveaux visages du catholicisme français (Paris: Editions Cerf, 2004), 17. Fischer and Lovsky, Thomas Roberts, 26–27, 80. Fischer and Lovsky, Thomas Roberts, 27. Peter Hocken, Pentecost and Parousia—Charismatic Renewal, Christian Unity and the Coming Glory (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2013), 54. James E. Worsfold, The Origins of the Apostolic Church in Great Britain (Wellington: Julian Literature Trust, 1991), 240.

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Walter Hollenweger

Walter Hollenweger was a gifted preacher, evangelist and teacher at the Swiss Pentecostal Mission in the 1950s. His curiosity and ability to read and learn quickly positioned him for an rapid promotion in that denomination. He was also a brilliant translator of William Branham, Tommy Hicks, and Donald Gee. An incident related to a counseling session with a woman was erroneously interpreted as moral failure, and he was forced to give up his credentials.37 ­Although this was a great loss to Swiss Pentecostals, it released him for an important ecumenical career. Hollenweger continued his theological education and became a minister of the Reformed Church of Switzerland. His Doktorvater, Professor Fritz Blanke, encouraged Walter to write his dissertation on the origins and development of Pentecostalism. His 10 volume Handbuch der Pfingstbewegung is a 2,500 page overview of worldwide Pentecostalism and became a standard work for further research. Soon after, he was asked to become Executive Secretary of the Department on Studies in Evangelism at the World Council of Churches. The 1960s were an important time for the wcc because the perception of mission was changing. Mission was no longer understood as a colonial enterprise but as the fundamental calling of the church. Hollenweger was the right person at the right time to make that transition visible. He travelled extensively, especially to Latin America and Africa, and focused on how to enable people to share the Gospel in their particular social and cultural context. One of the discoveries he made public was that Pentecostalism itself was some sort of an ecumenical movement.38 The ability of Pentecostals to communicate orally, contextually, and cross-culturally brought a whole new understanding of what the universal church is, due to its diversity. To that he would add what he referred to as the “Catholic roots of Pentecostalism” that made Pentecostalism an in-between movement. On one side was their Protestant emphasis on solus Christus and sola scriptura. On the other side was their organic understanding of grace and their appreciation of the miraculous that was more Roman.39 37 38 39

It is a tragedy that this incident led to an estrangement between the denomination and the Hollenwegers that would last more than 60 years. For the context of that painful incident, see Plüss, Vom Geist bewegt, 124–29. Lynne Price, Theology out of Place: A Theological Biography of Walter J. Hollenweger, Journal of Pentecostal Theology Supplement Series 23 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 12–15, 23. Hollenweger, who acquired a thorough knowledge of Protestant theology while studying at the University of Zurich, argued that Pentecostals have adopted the theology of John Wesley, who was well acquainted with Catholic thought, by emphasizing free will, a rela-

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In 1971 the Hollenwegers moved to Birmingham, England, where Walter became Professor of Mission. With his students from all parts of the world he could ground his theology practically. It was there that he deepened his intercultural theology, and his style of communication developed to include narratives, liturgies, and dramas.40 In effect, these communicative characteristics illustrate that Hollenweger remained fundamentally Pentecostal. It is not surprising that many of his 99 post-graduate students who came to the University of Birmingham were Pentecostals from various continents, and the ones from other churches began to appreciate the significance of the Pentecostal movement. The students valued him as a bridge builder, for whom ecumenism is not just a matter of dogma but also of socio-religious acculturation. In Hollenweger’s book Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide he concludes by paying attention to the ecumenical roots of Pentecostalism. He mentions the ecumenical beginnings of the movement and tackles problems associated with organized ecumenism. He focuses on the sad histories of former Pentecostals who were expelled from their churches and did not find a way back. Many found a fruitful place in historic churches. But if this movement be of the Spirit, he argued, then there is also a promise for Pentecostals. As a matter of fact, for Hollenweger there is a promise for all churches. If all churches would dig deep enough into their own histories they would find considerable common ground based on the Holy Spirit’s work in their own traditions. He is convinced that they would discover the interplay of different ­charismata that would make communication and cooperation between different churches possible.41 In a way, one can read this book backwards and discover that it is a pentecostal introduction to ecumenical thought and action. Due to the tragic incident between Walter Hollenweger and his church in 1958 and because of the gossip that followed, he was considered by the large majority of Swiss Pentecostals to be a liberal theologian that had betrayed his spiritual roots. As a fellow countryman and member of the church of his younger years, I was eager to find out where he now stood in terms of his tional understanding of grace, the possibility of a spiritual crisis experience after salvation, the division between natural and supernatural, and more. See Walter J. Hollenweger, Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997), 144–83; see also “Common Witness Between Catholics and Pentecostals,” Pneuma, 18, no. 2 (1996): 185–216; and “Roman Catholics and Pentecostals in Dialogue,” Pneuma, 21, no. 1 (1999): 135–53. 40 Examples of his narrative and liturgical theology are “Saints in Birmingham,” in Hollenweger, Pentecostalism,6–15; Conflict in Corinth and Memoirs of an Old Man (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982); and Requiem für Bonhoeffer (Kindhausen: Metanioa Verlag, nd). 41 Hollenweger, Pentecostalism, 398–400.

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­ entecostal faith. A few years ago, my wife and I invited Walter and Erica to a P weekend at our chalet and we had lively discussions. At one point I asked him what he thought about being baptized in the Spirit. His answer was quick, and with sparkle in his eyes he answered, “My experience of being baptized in the Holy Spirit completely changed my life!” 6

Jerry Sandidge

Whereas Pentecostals like Donald Gee and Leonhard Steiner wrote with a home audience in mind, and David du Plessis and Thomas Roberts spoke to people that were largely sympathetic to their message, Jerry Sandidge wanted to communicate with the “other side.” His ecumenical convictions grew while he was a missionary in Belgium, especially in connection with “University Action,” a Pentecostal outreach to students enrolled at the Catholic University of Leuven. In order to be credible and effective in his ministry Sandidge studied philosophy and theology there. With the help of David Bundy they established a Pentecostal library at the Institute of University Ministries and invited Walter Hollenweger, Clément le Cossec, and others for lectures in 1980. Sandidge also invited David du Plessis to speak in the great auditorium at the Catholic University of Leuven. Du Plessis had previously invited Sandidge to participate in the Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue. In 1980 Sandidge attended as an observer. In 1981 he was asked to present a paper for the dialogue meeting in Vienna entitled “A Pentecostal Perspective of Mary, the Mother of Jesus.”42 Although the paper was a basic introduction to points of agreement and difference between classical Pentecostals and Roman Catholics, the response by Pentecostal and evangelical papers was vitriolic. The Assemblies of God (usa) felt compelled to issue a statement “Regarding Mary as Intercessor and Mediatrix.” In Pentecost there was a denial of the mediatorship of Mary by Pentecostals. The British magazine Pentecostal Times attacked Marian doctrines and the magazine Midnight Call had an article entitled “Pentecostals Embrace Mary.”43 It is clear that the authors had not read Sandidge’s paper. Neither did they understand the nature of a dialogue. In the final document published in 1984 there is no 42 Sandidge, Roman Catholic/Pentecostal Dialogue (1977–1982), vol. 1, 335–41; and Jerry L. Sandidge, “A Pentecostal Response to Roman Catholic Teaching on Mary,” Pneuma 4, no. 1 (1982): 33–42. 43 Jerry L. Sandidge, “Roman Catholic/Pentecostal Dialogue: A Contribution to Christian Unity,” Pneuma 7, no. 1 (1985): 57–58.

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mention of Mary as “Mediatrix.” Furthermore, the Christological position of both churches is clearly stated.44 This paper, Jerry Sandidge’s association with David du Plessis, and his role in the Dialogue led to a meeting with the Foreign Missions Committee, whose Executive Director told him that if he would not change the topic of his dissertation and renounce his ties with du Plessis and the Dialogue he would lose his missionary support.45 On January 4, 1983 Sandidge wrote a ten page response entitled “From Pentecostal Exclusivism to Spiritual Ecumenism: The Personal Journey of a Missionary.”46 On April 6, 1983 the Executive Presbytery put Sandidge on inactive status, and two months later his financial support was discontinued. In March 1987 Sandidge withdrew from further reappointment in order to bring the relationship between him and the Department of Foreign Mission to a conclusion.47 But Jerry Sandidge deeply cared for unity in the Body of Christ and stood courageously against the church hierarchy that opposed him.48 He returned to the usa to teach and pastor. He continued his ecumenical activities with the ­National Council of Churches, with the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches and, of course, in dialogue with Catholics, working also as co-secretary on the Pentecostal side until his untimely death in 1992. Archbishop Mark (Maymon) of Philadelphia and Eastern Pennsylvania of the Orthodox Church in North America was a student at Oral Roberts University in the mid-1980s. He owes his turn to the Orthodox faith in part to the influence of Jerry Sandidge who was teaching Church History at oru at the time.49 Sandidge was not betraying his Pentecostal heritage, but he had come to appreciate that the Holy Spirit is working in the universal Church and had come to see the unfolding of salvation history also in other traditions than his 44

Paragraph 66 of the Final Report of the second quinquennium reads, “Both Pentecostals and Roman Catholics teach that Mary in no way substitutes for, or replaces, the one Savior and Mediator Jesus Christ. Both believe in direct, immediate contact between the believer and God. Both pray to God the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. Catholics believe that intercessory prayers directed to Mary do not end in Mary but in God Himself. Pentecostals would not invoke the intercession of Mary or other saints in heaven because they do not consider it a valid biblical practice.” http://www.prounione.urbe.it/dia-int/ pe-rc/doc/e_pe-rc_pent02.html accessed September 27, 2015. 45 It is somewhat bizarre that Jerry Sandidge, an Assemblies of God minister, was not allowed to associate with another AG minister, as David du Plessis was fully reinstated in 1980. Personal correspondence with Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., dated August 20, 2015. 46 Private copy of a text dated January 4, 1983, that Jerry Sandidge wrote in his defense and subsequently sent to the Executive Presbytery of the Assemblies of God in view of their meeting on January 18, 1983. 47 Sandidge, Roman Catholic/Pentecostal Dialogue (1977–1982), vol. 1, 340. 48 S.M. Burgess, “Sandidge, Jerry L.,” in nidpcm, 1038. 49 https://oca.org/holy-synod/bishops/the-most-reverend-mark, accessed August 28, 2015.

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own. He had a wide horizon. He was also instrumental in encouraging Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. to engage in ecumenical activities. 7 Conclusion The quest for Christian unity within the Pentecostal movement and with other churches continues. At present an impressive number of Pentecostal leaders and scholars are engaged in ecumenical dialogue.50 For the last 30 years, the most prominent figure among them has been Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. Like others, he had to face stiff opposition from his own denomination. The Executive Presbyters of the Assemblies of God had at that time a clear policy that strongly disapproved any form of ecumenical engagement.51 How this resolution affected the lives and ministries of David du Plessis and Jerry Sandidge was obvious to Robeck. It is remarkable that he was able to establish strong relationships with the National Council of Churches of Christ in the usa, with the World Council of Churches, its commissions and consultative groups, the Secretaries of Christian World Communions, and the Global Christian Forum. He has led the Pentecostal delegations in the Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue as well as the official Dialogue of Pentecostals with the World Communion of Reformed Churches and was instrumental in starting a dialogue with the Lutheran World Federation and the Baptist World Alliance. In 2009 the Assemblies of God changed its official attitude with regard to ecumenical relationships.52 In 2013 the Executive Presbytery of General Council of the 50

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There are a number of other Pentecostals who have recently contributed to the ecumenical endeavor and continue to do so. Bernardo Campos and Norberto Saracco in Latin America; Harold D. Hunter, Dale Coulter, and others in the usa; Wonsuk Ma, Paulson Pulikottil, and Prince Guneratnam in Asia; Opoku Onyinah and Japie la Poorta in Africa; William K. Kay, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Wolfgang Vondey, and Cornelis van der Laan in Europe, to mention just a few. A number of women are also involved on the regional as well as international level like Cheryl Bridges Johns (usa), Connie Karsten (NL), Olga Zaprometova (RU), and Teresa Chai (MY). Section 9 of the Doctrines and Practices Disapproved the 1965 statement begins with, “The General Council disapproves of Assemblies of God ministers or churches participating in any of the modern ecumenical organizations on a local, national or international level…” Article xxiii Revisions, Minutes of the Thirty-Third General Council of the Assemblies of God Convened in Dallas, Texas, August 21–26, 1969 (Springfield, MO: Office of the General Secretary, 1969), 318. Constitution and Bylaws, Article ix, Section 11, 131, in Minutes of the 53rd Session of the General Council of the Assemblies of God, Convened in Orlando, Florida August 4–7, 2009, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assemblies_of_God_USA#Position_statements, accessed September 30, 2015.

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­ ssemblies of God recognized Mel Robeck’s achievements in representing and A advocating Pentecostal beliefs and practices. It affirmed his calling and designated him to be the official liaison of the Assemblies of God in relation to other Christian communities in the United States. By way of conclusion what can be said about the pioneering Pentecostals mentioned? Some common elements rise to the surface. First of all, they all had a clear concern for Christian unity.53 They understood that the work of the Holy Spirit would bring people together in the name of Christ. Unity with other Pentecostals was therefore essential. It would naturally go beyond that and become relevant in dealing with Christians from other churches. Furthermore, as evidenced in the ministry of Thomas Roberts, it would extend to the people of Israel. Secondly, the examples of du Plessis, Sandidge, and Robeck show that for some there was a high price to pay. Today, ecumenical relations are considered important by many Pentecostal leaders. Nevertheless, the work towards unity in Christ does not come easily. It is a grace that calls for investment, a fact that is also illustrated in the lives of Walter Hollenweger and Thomas Roberts, who had given up their Pentecostal credentials to pursue their callings. It is an investment that takes courage and time. There is no room for personal interests. What is at stake is the life of the global church. Thirdly, with hindsight one can see that the work for Christian unity by Pentecostals is not only indispensable but also fruitful. What has been possible through the commitment of Mel Robeck and others in our times is inconceivable without the foundations laid by their predecessors. Furthermore, Pentecostalism has gained acceptance as a worldwide Christian movement. Today’s dialogues and expressions of common witness are an important way of appreciating the life of the church universal. They provide incentive for encouragement, correction, and common action that benefit both, Pentecostal and other churches. The pioneers mentioned in this chapter consistently worked towards Christian unity and made it possible that ecumenical contacts could flourish. They may have seemed to be disloyal dissidents to some within their denominations. However, they took the biblical mandate to unity in the Body of Christ seriously. They have lived with a truly pentecostal vocation that calls people “all together into one place,” and at the same time they responded to a ­pneumatic 53

The concern for Christian unity was clearly present at the beginnings of the Pentecostal movement. People as diverse as William Seymour, Charles Parham, Frank Bartleman, and Richard Spurling emphasized unity in the Spirit and the need to overcome denominational boundaries. In Europe Alexander Boddy, Jonathan Paul, and others saw the outpouring of God’s Spirit as a gift to all churches. Early Pentecostal missionaries frequently collaborated with colleagues from other churches.

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impulse, or as we read about Peter in Acts 11:12, “The Spirit told me to go with them.” Bibliography Bundy, David. “Louis Dallière: Apologist for Pentecostalism in France and Belgium, 1932–1939.” Pneuma 10, no. 2 (1988): 85–115. Du Plessis, David. Simple and Profound. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 1986. Du Plessis, David. The Spirit Bade Me Go. Plainfield, NJ: Logos International, 1970. Gee, Donald. Concerning Spiritual Gifts. Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 2012. Gee, Donald. The Fruit of the Spirit. Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 2010. Gee, Donald. Upon All Flesh. Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1935. Gee, Donald. The Pentecostal Movement. A Short History and Interpretation for British Readers. Read Books Limited, 1949. Gee, Donald. Wind and Flame. Croydon: Assemblies of God, 1967. Hocken, Peter. Azusa, Rome, and Zion. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2016. Hocken, Peter. Pentecost and Parousia—Charismatic Renewal, Christian Unity, and the Coming Glory. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2013. Hollenweger, Walter J. “Common Witness Between Catholics and Pentecostals.” Pneuma 18, no. 2 (1996): 185–216. Hollenweger, Walter J. Conflict in Corinth and Memoirs of an Old Man. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982. Hollenweger, Walter J. The Pentecostals. London: SCM Press, 1972. Hollenweger, Walter J. Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997. Hollenweger, Walter J. “Roman Catholics and Pentecostals in Dialogue.” Pneuma 21, no. 1 (1999): 135–53. Hollenweger, Walter J. Requiem für Bonhoeffer. Kindhausen: Metanioa Verlag, n.d. Howard, Rick. “David du Plessis: Pentecost’s Ambassador-at-Large,” in The Spirit and Spirituality. Edited by Wonsuk Ma and Robert P. Menzies. London: T&T Clark, 2004. Krust, Christian. 50 Jahre Deutsche Pfingstbewegung—Mülheimer Richtung. Altdorf B. Nürnberg: Missionsbuchhandlung und Verlag Altdorf B. Nürnberg, 1958. Landron, Olivier. Les Communautés Nouvelles: Nouveaux Visages du Catholicisme Français. Paris: Editions Cerf, 2004. Plüss, Jean-Daniel. Vom Geist Bewegt. Kreuzlingen: Asaph, 2015. Price, Lynne. Theology out of Place: A Theological Biography of Walter J. Hollenweger. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002.

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Robinson, Martin. To the Ends of the Earth: The Pilgrimage of an Ecumenical Pentecostal. Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1987. Sandidge, Jerry L. “A Pentecostal Response to Roman Catholic Teaching on Mary.” Pneuma 4, no. 1 (1982): 33–42. Sandidge, Jerry L. “Roman Catholic/Pentecostal Dialogue: A Contribution to Christian Unity.” Pneuma 7, no. 1 (1985): 57–58. Sandidge, Jerry L. Roman Catholic/Pentecostal Dialogue (1977–1982): A Study in Developing Ecumenism. 2 Vols. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1987. Slosser, Bob. A Man Called Mr. Pentecost: David du Plessis as Told to Bob Slosser, 3rd edition. Alachua, FL: Bridge Logos, 2005. Spittler, R.P. “Du Plessis, David Johannes.” The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal Charismatic Movements. Edited by Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003. Steiner, Leonhard. Mit Folgenden Zeichen. Basel: Verlag Mission für das volle Evangelium, 1954. Worsfold, James E. The Origins of the Apostolic Church in Great Britain. Wellington: Julian Literature Trust, 1991. Ziefle, Joshua R. David du Plessis and the Assemblies of God: The Struggle for the Soul of a Movement. Leiden: Brill, 2013. “Article xxiii Revisions.” Minutes of the Thirty-Third General Council of the Assemblies of God Convened in Dallas, Texas, August 21–26, 1969. Springfield, MO: Office of the General Secretary, 1969. “Constitution and Bylaws, Article ix, Section 11, 131.” Minutes of the 53rd Session of the General Council of the Assemblies of God. Convened in Orlando, FL on August 4–7, 2009. Wikipedia. Accessed 30 September 2015. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Assemblies_of_God_USA#Position_statements. “PE-RC—Ministry (En).” Pro Unione. Accessed September 27, 2015. http://www. prounione.urbe.it/dia-int/pe-rc/doc/e_pe-rc_pent02.html. Thomas Roberts. Edited by Jean-Daniel Fischer and F. Lovsky. Special supplement to Tychique, no. 59 (1986): 12–15.

Chapter 3

The Contribution of the Charismatic Movement to Christian Unity Peter Hocken The ecumenical movement and the Pentecostal-charismatic movement(s) are among the most striking Christian developments of the twentieth century. Many see both as movements of the Holy Spirit. For much of that time the ­ecumenical movement and the Pentecostal movement had little positive interaction. But in the second half of the century through the charismatic movement the Pentecostal blessing entered churches active in the ecumenical movement. Richard Quebedeaux saw the ecumenical movement as one clear factor in the rapid spread of the charismatic movement, due to greater ecumenical emphasis on the Holy Spirit.1 So it might have been anticipated that the charismatic movement would bridge the ecumenical—Pentecostal gap and facilitate the reception of this work of the Holy Spirit by the churches as a whole. But is this what happened? This essay examines the contribution of the charismatic movement to ecumenism up to the end of 2015. 1

Initial Developments and Hopes

The spread of Pentecostal blessing (baptism in the Holy Spirit and the spiritual gifts) in the various Protestant denominations was developing in unremarked ways during the 1950s, with the most visible promotion occurring through the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International (fgbmfi), founded in 1953.2 fgbmfi’s aim was to witness to the baptism in the Spirit beyond the reach of Pentecostal evangelism. Protestant pastors were regularly invited to their prayer breakfasts. Its founder, Demos Shakarian, “was careful

1 Richard Quebedeaux, The New Charismatics (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), 177, repeated in Quebedeaux, The New Charismatics ii (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983), 213. 2 Other circles in the usa, within which the charismatic experience was being spread in the 1950s, included the healing evangelists, the Schools of Pastoral Care run by Agnes Sanford, and Camps Farthest Out.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:10.1163/9789004408371_004

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to ­emphasize that fgbmfi was not a substitute denomination. He consistently counseled them to stay in their churches and ‘bloom where you are planted.’”3 The baptism in the Spirit of Episcopal priest Dennis Bennett from Van Nuys, California, reported in 1960, was soon followed by similar testimonies from other churches. From this time Pentecostal preacher David du Plessis testified throughout the world that this outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon all Christian flesh was the same work of God that had characterized the Azusa Street revival at the birth of the Pentecostal movement. The initial charismatic focus was to spread the baptism in the Holy Spirit to as many Christians as possible. This cannot yet be termed ecumenical, as there was little vision for the reconciliation of divided churches through the baptism in the Spirit. That the Pentecostal outpouring could address the roots of ageold divisions was hardly considered.4 The development of a church renewal vision within the charismatic movement was facilitated by the formation of the Fountain Trust (FT) in England in 1964. Michael Harper, its founder, wrote: “We feel called to serve every section of the Church, without fear or favour. We are seeing the Holy Spirit moving in unlikely places today, and We rejoice in His power to bring men of different traditions together.”5 In Germany, where there was clear differentiation between the Landeskirchen, the confessional churches of the Reformation, and the free churches, the beginnings of charismatic renewal (CR) among Lutherans led to annual conferences on an ecumenical basis at Königstein from 1965 and in 1968 to the formation of a residential community for Christian unity at Schloss Craheim.6 1.1 The Roman Catholic Impact The unexpected spread of the charismatic movement to the Roman Catholic Church in 1967 brought a vision for corporate church renewal rather than Pentecostal revival on a massive scale. The Catholic insistence on church renewal flowing from the Catholic understanding of the church, was strongly 3 Vinson Synan, Under His Banner: History of Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International (Costa Mesa, CA: Gift, 1992), 89. 4 Synan’s chapter, “fgbmfi—An Ecumenical Force,” hardly transcends the impacting of individual believers albeit on a large scale (Ibid., 87–99). 5 Michael Harper Newsletter no. 4, July 1964, 2. 6 The founders of Schloss Craheim were Arnold Bittlinger and R.F. Edel (Lutheran); Wilhard Becker and Siegfried Grossman (Baptist); and Fr. Eugen Mederlet, OFM (Catholic). See Sieg­ fried Grossmann, Craheim Experiment: Erfahrungen aus den Gründerjahren des Lebenszentrums für die Einheit der Christen in Schloss Craheim (Clausthal-Zellerfeld: Papierflieger, 2008).

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r­ einforced by the renewal vision of the Second Vatican Council recently concluded (1965). Catholics baptized in the Holy Spirit saw CR as an answer to the prayer of Pope John xxiii that the Second Vatican Council would precipitate a “new Pentecost.”7 As the Council had opened the doors for Catholic participation in the ecumenical movement, the inter-denominational origins of ccr were interpreted in ecumenical terms. Many lay Catholics had their first ecumenical experience at charismatic meetings. For them this was the ecumenism commended by the Council, and it generated great enthusiasm.8 The international diffusion of ccr highlighted the need for theological ­reflection. Cardinal Suenens of Belgium, a major figure at Vatican Two, sensing the potential of ccr, gathered an international group of Catholic theologians to study this new phenomenon. Their report clearly recognized: “It is evident that the charismatic renewal is a major ecumenical force and is de facto ecumenical in nature.”9 1.2 Ecumenical Expressions within Charismatic Renewal As ccr spread rapidly in the usa, Protestant and Pentecostal preachers were invited to teach at Catholic conferences for the first time with the agreement of the Catholic authorities. There were two main patterns: (i) denominational conferences with invited speakers from other churches; (ii) conferences like Kansas City in 1977 organized by a representative inter-denominational committee. A different pattern developed in some other nations, for example the FT conference held in Guildford, England, in July 1971 on the theme “The Fellowship of the Holy Spirit.” Michael Harper, then an Evangelical Anglican, took the bold step of inviting FT’s first Roman Catholic speaker, a move that provoked strong criticism but also generated ecumenical enthusiasm.10 The Catholic participation strengthened the vision for renewal of the Church, and in 1974 FT redefined its aims, which now included seeing “the worldwide charismatic movement as one of God’s way of renewal for the whole Church.”11 An Irish 7 8 9 10 11

The movement was first designated “Catholic Pentecostalism” but between 1972 and 1975, this was changed to “Catholic charismatic renewal” (ccr). See Raymond V. Roh, The Pentecostal Movement and Church Unity (Pecos, NM: Dove Publications, 1972). Theological and Pastoral Orientations on the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, 49. This extract has been quoted by Pope Francis in an address to ccr, May 31, 2014. A Pentecostal leader, Alfred Missen, walked out in protest, but eleven years later repented for this action at an ecumenical gathering in Paris. Connie Au, Grassroots Unity in the Charismatic Renewal (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2011), 33–34.

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Anglican reported that “The real importance of the charismatic movement is to breathe new life into the dry bones of ecumenism, especially in Ireland.”12 Au has examined the importance for ecumenism of the five international conferences organized by FT, of which Guildford 1971 was the first, seeing how the charismatic renewal was creating a “grassroots unity” much needed in the ecumenical movement.13 Guildford had a parallel in Viviers, France, in 1973 with contributions from David du Plessis (Pentecostal), Michael Harper (Anglican), Arnold Bittlinger (Lutheran), and Fr. Val Gaudet (Catholic). A respected figure in the French ­Reformed Church wrote of the Viviers gathering: “We found ourselves in the presence of a living manifestation of Christian unity, of which we have had few examples, even in the most favorable situations.”14 Catholic participation strengthened awareness of the need for theological articulation, not least for reassurance to Evangelicals anxious about doctrinal confusion. In Britain, FT organized a theological forum in 1974, and for a time published a theological supplement, Theological Renewal, to their bimonthly publication, Renewal.15 The FT report “Gospel and Spirit: A Joint Statement,” drawn up by Evangelicals and charismatics from Evangelical Anglicanism, contributed to a lessening of Evangelical opposition to CR. From the start a vision for covenant communities arose within ccr. The initial momentum came from zealous young Catholics on university campuses, many of them inspired by the Second Vatican Council. Experiencing the Renewal as an ecumenical grace of the Lord, their desire for covenant community frequently took an ecumenical form. A shared life based on baptism in the Holy Spirit could and should be lived ecumenically. As a result, ecumenical communities sprang up in several places.16 In these communities, ecumenism belonged to their identity, even in those with a high percentage of R ­ oman Catholics. In the 1970s, the national leadership of ccr in the usa was largely drawn from and controlled by the communities, especially Word of God in Ann Arbor, Michigan and the People of Praise in South Bend, Indiana. A tension within ccr in the usa between the ecumenical communities and the advocates of parish renewal only died down following the national o­ rganization 12 Anon, “Antidote to Sick Ecumenism,” Renewal 51 (June/July 1974): 6–7. 13 Au, Grassroots Unity, 98–182. 14 Pastor Georges Appia in Réforme. 15 Mark Cartledge, “Theological Renewal (1975–1983): Listening to an Editor’s Agenda for Church and Academy,” Pneuma, 30, no. 1 (2008): 83–107. 16 The Word of God community in Ann Arbor, MI from 1967; the People of Praise in South Bend, IN from 1971; the Alleluia community in Augusta, GA from 1973; and the Work of Christ community in East Lansing, MI from 1974.

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of diocesan liaisons appointed by the bishops and the election of a more representative national service committee.17 From the early 1970s, the organization of ccr to facilitate CR within the Catholic Church led to the formation of renewal agencies in other church bodies, a development which fostered a vision for church renewal.18 During the 1970s, the denominational organization of CR facilitated inter-denominational collaboration.19 It led to the formation of the Charismatic Concerns Committee with representatives from all the denominational renewal organizations, chaired by Kevin Ranaghan, who brought the resources and expertise of ccr to the planning of the Kansas City conference of July 1977 that gathered over 50,000 people from a wide variety of churches. People were astonished to see Cardinal Suenens of Belgium seated alongside Thomas Zimmermann from the U.S. Assemblies of God. Certainly in the usa, Kansas City 1977 was seen as the peak of this early phase of charismatic coming together. It produced great excitement at the time, but evoked little resonance in the churches. 2

Church Responses

Undoubtedly, the charismatic movement was breaking down barriers among its participants. But how much effect was this popular-level commingling having on inter-church relations? In effect the Renewal movement could only impact official ecumenical relations to the extent that church leadership recognized its importance and encouraged its diffusion. Some significant church leaders demonstrated a definite openness. For example, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, chose as his Lent book for 1975 the title Gathered into One: A “Charismatic” Approach to Christian Unity, by Methodist William R. Davies.20 The same year, ccr gathered twenty thousand people in Rome, where they were warmly greeted by Pope Paul vi, who asked how could “this ‘spiritual renewal’ be other than a blessing for the Church and for the world?”21 However, in general, the churches were slow to see ecumenical significance in the charismatic movement.22 The Protestant churches responded c­ autiously 17 18 19 20 21 22

See “Moving to the Heart of the Church” in iii below. See chart relating to the usa in nidpcm, 482. National leaders conferences for the Lutherans were hosted by the Word of God community in Ann Arbor, MI in 1973 and 1974. Leighton Buzzard, UK: Faith, 1975. Oreste Pesare, Then Peter Stood Up (Rome: iccrs, 2012), 22. For gathered church statements on the charismatic movement worldwide, see Kilian ­McDonnell, Presence, Power, Praise, 3 vols. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1980).

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to the charismatic movement with responses ranging from unenthusiastic acceptance through toleration to outright suspicion. In the usa, the Southern Baptists and the United Methodists were equally cool, though for different reasons. For the United Methodists, their renewal fellowship “failed in its efforts to gain acceptance among denominational leaders relatively early in its history. One former leader maintained that participation in the umrsf23 was a career liability in the umc [United Methodist Church].”24 For United Methodists, CR seemed to be raising the holiness banner that had been pushed out in the late nineteenth century. For Southern Baptists, the battle concerned the introduction of elements seen as alien to their tradition. The Lutherans easily saw charismatics as Schwärmerei, those who elevated their experience above Scripture, the reproach of Luther to the Anabaptists. Anglican leaders were among the most responsive in England, Australia, South Africa, and particularly in Singapore. Attempts to bring together the ecumenical and the charismatic did not have much success. Following a series of meetings, the World Council of Churches (wcc) organized a consultation on “charismatic movements,” held in Bossey, Switzerland, in March 1980.25 A questionnaire to member churches enquiring about their experience of CR and its extent in their midst produced an unprecedented response. Accounts of the consultation were published with the papers presented.26 Despite the presence of Arnold Bittlinger as a part-time staff member in Geneva for CR, it cannot be said that this wcc initiative did much to alert the churches to the significance of the overall phenomenon.27 Why were the churches active in the ecumenical movement slow to grasp the ecumenical potential of the charismatic movement? On the ecumenical side, the charismatic movement was easily dismissed as an ephemeral enthusiasm, too emotional, not theologically-grounded, often manifesting

23 24

25

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United Methodist Renewal Services Fellowship. Nancy Eiesland, “Irreconcilable Differences: Conflict, Schism, and Religious Restructuring in a United Methodist Church” in Pentecostal Currents in American Protestantism, ed. E. Blumhofer, R. Spittler, and G. Wacker (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 172. Rex Davis, Locusts and Wild Honey: The Charismatic Renewal and the Ecumenical Movement (Geneva: wcc, 1978); and idem, “Taking Stock: The Present Status of the Relationship between the Ecumenical Movement and the Charismatic Renewal,” Theological Renewal 20 (1982): 12–17. The Church is Charismatic: The World Council of Churches and the Charismatic Renewal, ed. Arnold Bittlinger (Geneva: wcc, 1981). As a participant in the Bossey consultation, my memory is that it never managed to break out beyond the agenda of some major participants to examine the data dispassionately.

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an ­anti-institutional bias.28 On the charismatic side, the style and agenda of ecumenical groups and meetings was off-putting to charismatics who wanted strong worship and intercession, rather than constant discussion, and who emphasized evangelism and the transformation of Christians, rather than the reshaping of society. 3

Two Ambiguous Trends

Two trends developed, especially in the 1980s, concerning charismatic policy toward the churches/denominations to which they belonged. The first, the temptation to domestication, particularly affected ccr. The second, deemphasizing charismatic distinctiveness, marked CR in many Protestant churches. 3.1 Move to the Heart of the Church This slogan became current in ccr around 1980. Immediately, it defined the purpose of moving the international office for ccr from Brussels, Belgium, to Rome, a step taken in 1981.29 In fact the slogan described a greater process, the fuller reception of ccr into the life of the Catholic Church, itself a desirable process as long as the full grace of CR was being received. But the presentation of ccr as a Catholic movement without reference to its ecumenical character contributed to its domestication and to a weakening of its prophetic thrust. This ambiguity helped to ensure for a time a minimal contribution from ccr to ecumenism. From this point, there is steady encouragement of ccr from Rome, but as one Catholic renewal movement among others. The failure to grasp its ecumenical potential is not just to be attributed to hierarchical conservatism: “Catholic Charismatics have often played down the movement’s prophetic thrust out of their deep desire to obtain Church approval.”30 When Cardinal Suenens retired 28

29 30

Geoffrey Wainwright, a Methodist theologian deeply involved in the Faith and Order document Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry, wrote about “charismatics who neglect the institutional Church,” while welcoming “the many signs of pneumatic and Pentecostal renewal in our century.” See Geoffrey Wainwright, The Ecumenical Moment (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983), 4. P. Hocken, “International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services,” in The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, ed. Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003), 792. P. Hocken, “Charismatic Renewal in the Roman Catholic Church: Reception and Challenge” in Pentecost, Mission, and Ecumenism, ed. J. Jongeneel (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1992), 307.

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from his role as unofficial overseer for ccr in the mid-1980s, the church supervision became the responsibility of German Bishop Paul Cordes, then the secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity. In 1989, Msgr Cordes expressed disapproval of a statement by ccr leaders in Europe on “Charismatic Renewal and Christian Unity.”31 For a short while, Catholic participation in inter-­ denominational charismatic congresses was put in doubt, though this danger was avoided through the mediation of some senior ccr leaders. This official ignoring of the ecumenical character of the charismatic movement reached its apogee with the Ecumenical Directory, published by the Vatican in 1992. In this guideline for Catholic participation in ecumenical activities, there is no mention of CR in all the forms of ecumenical association listed. Although CR received no mention in John Paul ii’s encyclical letter on ecumenism, Ut Unum Sint, published in 1995, this document would prove helpful for a charismatic ecumenism. The pope strongly endorsed “spiritual ecumenism” and the importance of common prayer. He broke new ground by insisting that ecumenical dialogue has also to be “an examination of conscience,” and showed a sharp awareness of the role of the Holy Spirit, It is precisely this acknowledgment [that we are men and women who have sinned] which creates in brothers and sisters living in communities not in full communion with one another that interior space where Christ, the source of the Church’s unity, can effectively act, with all the power of his Spirit, the Paraclete.32 3.2 Downplaying Charismatic Distinctiveness In the first flush of charismatic enthusiasm, CR participants witnessed to baptism in the Holy Spirit as a distinctive work of the Holy Spirit. As denominational resistance to CR often took the form of biblical and theological objections to a distinct baptism in the Spirit, there were pressures to be more accommodating and less insistent on charismatic distinctives. The first signs of this tendency appeared when the term “charismatic” was dropped from Renewal terminology. Several denominational renewal agencies that originally had “charismatic” in their titles were renamed, as with the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians in the usa.33 The tension lay in the need to

31 32 33

See P. Hocken, Pentecost and Parousia (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2013), 147–49. John Paul ii, encyclical letter Ut Unum Sint, 1995, para. 35. The Episcopal Charismatic Fellowship was renamed Episcopal Renewal Ministries in 1980. The Presbyterian Charismatic Communion became Presbyterian and Reformed

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communicate the essential work of the Holy Spirit in different church cultures while resisting the accommodationist tendency to make Renewal more acceptable by reducing the challenges of the Spirit. These trends above all characterized the Protestant Churches. While some Catholics dropped the charismatic label, a distinctiveness of ccr has been maintained.34 This tension played out in another way over the question of whether to have a distinctive agency for CR or whether to combine with other denominational groups concerned for evangelization and spiritual renewal. This option was first considered in Britain, where the charismatic leaders in the United Reformed Church, birthed in 1972, did not want to divide the newly-formed body. In 1974 they joined others to form gear (Group for Evangelism and Renewal).35 When the Baptists in Britain were facing serious decline, the charismatics joined other Baptists committed to the Baptist Union and to its reformation and renewal to form Mainstream, described as Baptists for Life and Growth, which held its first conference in 1980.36 Mainstream appears to have succeeded in increasing the charismatic contribution to the life of the Baptist Union. In the usa, the United Methodist Renewal Services Fellowship, formed at Kansas City in 1977, soon used the term Aldersgate in renewal promotion; while the legal name is still umrsf, the working name of the ministry was changed to Aldersgate Renewal Ministries in 1995. The avoidance of distinctive charismatic terms is evident in the Mission statement of Aldersgate Renewal Ministries: “to equip the local church to minister to the world in the power of the Holy Spirit.”37 4

Continuing Ecumenism within the Charismatic Movement

In the usa, the Kansas City conference of 1977 represented the peak of the inter-denominational charismatic movement. In Europe, a few years behind, the corresponding peak was the ecumenically-organized Pentecost over ­Europe

34

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­ enewal Ministries International in 1984, with the word “Renewal” being dropped in the R year 2000. So, for example, while a major expression in Italy is named Rinnovamento nello Spirito Santo [Renewal in the Holy Spirit] and the general French description is simply “Le Renouveau” [The Renewal], the official Vatican office is still called “International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services.” M. Hanson, J. Hall, B. Harley, and C. Vivian, A Refreshing Stream (Oldham, UK: gear Publications, 2014). D. McBain, Fire Over the Waters: Renewal among Baptists and Others from the 1960s to the 1990s (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1997), 80–85. http://aldersgaterenewal.org/about-us/who-we-are.

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congress drawing 20,000 people to Strasbourg, France, in 1982. From this point, the ecumenical character of renewal gatherings became less marked; a pattern of denominational retrenchment accompanied a decline in numbers in North America and much of Western Europe. Although the inter-church fellowship and initiatives within the charismatic movement were not much noticed by the mainline churches or by the ecumenical specialists, they did not die out. The ongoing charismatic ecumenism can now be seen as preparing the way for the present season. Among the major leaders who ensured that ecumenical expressions continued in the Renewal movement were Michael Harper (Anglican), Larry Christenson (Lutheran), Kevin Ranaghan (Catholic), Fr. Tom Forrest (Catholic), and Vinson Synan (Pentecostal).38 The North American Renewal Service Committee (narsc) was formed in 1986, organizing conferences in New Orleans (1987) and Indianapolis (1991). The European Charismatic Consultation (ecc) was formed in 1988 out of a merger between a declining European Charismatic Leaders group and a committee formed by Harper to organize the acts 86 gathering in ­Birmingham, England. ecc organized an ecumenical gathering in Bern, Switzerland, for 1990, the first such gathering to draw leaders and participants from newly-freed Eastern European nations. The International Charismatic Consultation on World Evangelization (iccowe, later reduced to icc) grew out of a meeting among Harper, Christenson, and Forrest in 1983, leading to consultations in Singapore before iccowe was officially launched in 1988. At a prayer gathering in Jerusalem in 1989 it was decided to hold a major international conference in Brighton, England, in 1991. The Brighton conference was a sign of the charismatic movement being taken more seriously. Many church leaders participated, though with more from Africa and Asia than from Europe and North America.39 A theological track attracted significant scholars from around the world, not all of them Pentecostals or charismatics.40 Many hearts were deeply touched and horizons enlarged in Brighton, particularly inter-denominationally and across linguistic and cultural barriers. One highlight was a message of Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa on repentance for our sins against unity.

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Later they would be supported on the Catholic side by Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa (Italy), Charles Whitehead (UK), and Matteo Calisi (Italy). There were about 35 Anglican bishops present and 8 Roman Catholic. The former included Archbishop Bill Burnett from Cape Town, South Africa; and the latter the Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze from Rome. A selection of papers from the Brighton theological track was published in All Together in One Place, ed. H.D. Hunter and P.D. Hocken (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992).

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4.1 Charismatic Leaders Meetings The Glencoe committee that had planned the Kansas City conference of 1977 in the usa continued to meet annually as the Charismatic Concerns Committee and is known today as the Charismatic Leaders Fellowship.41 The pioneer country here was the Netherlands, where the Charismatische Werkgemeenschap Nederland (Dutch charismatic working fellowship) was formed in 1972. In Britain, a leaders’ meeting, launched by Michael Harper, continues today as Charismata.42 Similar meetings happened in France and Ireland but did not last. In most cases, these meetings have increased friendship and respect, but have not led to many joint initiatives. Not untypically, the German-speaking nations were slower off the mark, but then developed more structured patterns, along with a stronger theological concern. In Germany, the Kreis Charismatischer Leiter (Circle of Charismatic Leaders) was formed in 1993, leading to the publication in 1995 of a paper “Was verbindet die Charismatiker?”43 In Austria, charismatic and evangelical leaders formed the Round Table, Weg zur Versöhnung (Way of Reconciliation) with officers and sub-committees. The Round Table has organized March for Jesus and other events. Most notably their committee for church and society liaised with the Austrian government leading to the free churches receiving a solid legal status (in 2014). 4.2 The Toronto Blessing From January 1994, a movement centered on the Airport church in Toronto, Canada, attracted attention for its unusual manifestations, rapidly drawing thousands of charismatic pilgrims to Toronto.44 The senior pastor, John ­Arnott, would form a network known as Partners in Harvest, later appointing an ­ecumenical officer, Bruno Ierullo.45 The major source for the diffusion in the Anglican Church of what became known as the Toronto blessing, or the ­Father’s blessing, was the London parish of Holy Trinity, Brompton, to be treated in the next section. 41 42 43

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This continues under the leadership of Scott Kelso (United Methodist) and Bob Garrett (Vineyard and Alleluia community, Augusta, GA). Current co-chairs are Hugh Osgood (non-denominational) and Charles Whitehead (Catholic). In English, “What binds the Charismatics together?” (R. Hempelmann, Licht und Schatten des Erweckungs-Christentums: Ausprägungen und Herausforderungen PfingstlichCharismatischer Frömmigkeit [Stuttgart: Quell, 1992], 268–77). Those leaders who signed the 1995 statement represented Lutheran, Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal, free charismatic, and para-church groupings. Among the Catholics drawn to and welcomed in Toronto were Matteo Calisi (Italy), Charles Whitehead (England), and the present author. John Arnott had visited Argentina some months before the outbreak in Toronto.

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A Slow Penetration of the Church World

While the churches continued to pay little attention to the charismatic movement in the way they conducted their business and pursued their mission, there was nonetheless a slow percolation of charismatic practices and emphases into the life of the Churches and an increasing attention to the Holy Spirit. Two obvious examples are in patterns of worship, with the use of CR songs, and the ministry of healing. 5.1 Steady Progress in Ecumenical Communities Some Renewal communities had been steadily increasing their influence through serious engagement in the wider church scene. The most notable example is the community of Chemin Neuf (ccn), founded in Lyon, France in 1973 by Fr. Laurent Fabre, but now present in many countries on almost all continents. ccn has always highlighted the ecumenical character of their vision, with a strong desire to connect with the Orthodox Churches and the mainline Protestant Churches. For many years, ccn sought to become established in Britain, with its first foundation in an Anglican parish in rural Somerset. Eventually, their Anglican investment brought results, with some priest members and a close relationship with the then dean of Liverpool, Justin Welby.46 ccn has promoted spiritual and theological formation, founding an institute for ecumenical formation in France at the Abbaye des Dombes in the department of Ain.47 Among the Protestant ecumenists frequently teaching for Chemin Neuf has been Professor Andre Birmelé of the Ecumenical Institute in Strasbourg. Many young men have been ordained priest within ccn, some of whom are now making notable contributions in theological studies and dialogues.48 In March, 2013, ccn hosted a symposium on baptism in the Spirit in Switzerland.49 This event was an ecumenical first, with a wide range of speakers from the Pentecostal and charismatic movements,50 together with reputed 46 47 48 49 50

See below. Originally, the home of the Groupe des Dombes, that has issued many significant ecumenical documents. For example, Père Franςois Lestang, for some years head of the Centre Chrétien pour l’Étude du Judaïsme in Lyon, France, and Père Étienne Vetö, now lecturing at the Gregorian University in Rome. The papers from this symposium have been published in French in Istina 59, nos. (2014). These included Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. and Jean-Daniel Plüss (Pentecostals); Dr Mary Healy and the present author, together with several priests and leaders from Chemin Neuf (all Catholics except Anne-Cathy Graber, Mennonite); André Birmelé (Lutheran); Michel Stavrou (Orthodox from Paris); Joseph Famérée (Catholic from Louvain); Neal Blough (Mennonite); and Larry Miller (Mennonite, secretary of the gcf). Also present were

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theologians from the academic world, and other ecumenical specialists. Here the core event-experience of the Pentecostal and charismatic movements was being taken seriously by representatives from the wider church and theological academy. Whereas ccn has had an international influence, the ecumenical contribution of the Alleluia community in Augusta, Georgia, also founded in 1973, has been local, but on a significant scale. Its ecumenical vision was helped in its first years by the signing of a covenant between the Roman Catholic and the Episcopal bishops. With a membership drawn from several local congregations, relationships of trust have grown up, so that today Alleluia community hosts the ministers fraternal in Augusta. This was facilitated by some pastors becoming community members,51 and by the coordinator of Alleluia, Bob Garrett, coming from Vineyard.52 In consequence, Alleluia community is at the heart of inter-church relations in their city. The People of Praise community centered in South Bend, Indiana, now has 2,900 people in 21 branches across the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean with members drawn from a range of traditions (Methodists, Lutherans, ­Roman Catholics, Pentecostals, Baptists, and Episcopalians). Their engagement in church life has been shown by the nomination of one of their priest-members as auxiliary bishop of Portland, Oregon.53 In East Lansing, Michigan, the Work of Christ community has an ecumenical composition, and unusually has several members from the Orthodox Church, including one of the six community coordinators. In Strasbourg, France, the Puits de Jacob [Jacob’s Well] community has an ecumenical membership and outreach.54 In Sydney, Australia, another CR ecumenical community, the ­Servants of Jesus, was founded in 1981.55 5.2 The Alpha Course Holy Trinity, Brompton (htb), an Evangelical-charismatic Anglican parish in London, had developed an evangelistic course called Alpha before being impacted by the Toronto blessing. The crowds that then flocked to htb inspired Sandy Millar, the rector, and his assistant, Nicky Gumbel, the director of ­Alpha, past and present secretaries of the ecumenical secretariat for the French bishops, Pères ­Michael Mallèvre and Franck Lemaître, together with the archbishop of Chambéry, France, and the bishop of Mauritius. 51 For example, the Lutheran pastor and the leader of the Messianic Jewish congregation. 52 Garrett is also the current convener of the Charismatic Leaders Fellowship of North America. 53 Bishop Peter Smith. 54 Puits de Jacob has a foundation in Sokodé, Togo, since 2004. 55 See www.servantsofjesus.org

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to market the Alpha course for wider use. The Christians from all kinds of backgrounds drawn to htb became the first diffusers of Alpha from 1994.56 Although not explicitly charismatic, the Alpha course emphasizes a conscious reception of the Holy Spirit with the possibility of speaking in tongues. Quite early on, Gumbel sensed the importance of reaching the Catholic world with Alpha, familiarizing himself with the documents of Vatican Two. Later Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, the preacher to the papal household and a well-known charismatic Catholic, became a close friend of htb, being invited to their staff summer camps. In this way the Alpha course has opened up real possibilities for a genuinely ecumenical evangelization. Of significance for the future was the impact of the Alpha course on a young business executive named Justin Welby, leading him to leave for theological college on his way to ordination in the Anglican Church. 5.3 A French Ministry Although the new charismatic churches and networks have often been less suspicious of Catholics than classical Pentecostals, their approach typically being more pragmatic, there have been some instances of non-denominational charismatics developing meaningful relationships with Catholics. Besides the instances involving Matteo Calisi to be mentioned, another notable example concerns Carlos Payan, born in Spain, but ministering in France. After some years in Mâcon, Payan moved to Paris, where in 2002 he founded a ­ministry Paris—Tout est Possible (Paris—Everything is Possible).57 Evangelical—­ Catholic reconciliation is a constant theme in Payan’s preaching, which focuses on three themes: Christian unity, the Word of God, and healing.58 Payan’s book on Mary has a preface by the Catholic archbishop of Malines-Bruxelles, Belgium, Msgr. André-Joseph Léonard.59 5.4 An Italian Contribution One example of charismatic ecumenism had, from an early stage, an outreach into the churches and society that had not characterized the earlier charismatic ecumenism. It began through the friendship between Matteo Calisi, lay leader of the Comunità di Gesù in Bari, a city known in Italy for its ecumenical significance, and Giovanni Traettino, pastor of a Pentecostal church in Caserta. 56

htb is a low-key charismatic parish in the Evangelical Anglican tradition, all characteristics which have left their mark on Alpha. 57 See www.paristoutestpossible.org 58 See C. Payan, Unité Onction Guérison (Paris, Première Partie, 2008), 17. 59 C. Payan, Comme Marie…Humble, servante, obéissante (Paris: Première Partie, 2011).

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In the early 1990s, Calisi and Traettino ministered together, witnessing to their reconciliation and their friendship, sometimes leading foot-washing ceremonies between Catholics and Evangelicals. As baptized-in-the-Spirit Christians, they were able to take up creatively John Paul ii’s call for a repentance for the sins against Christian unity. They shared and ministered together at an ecc conference in Prague, Czech Republic, in 1997, at which there was a notable Orthodox participation.60 For some years, Calisi and Traettino held an annual meeting for Catholics and Evangelicals in different locations in Italy, with one ccr and one Pentecostal teacher. This witness to reconciliation extended their ministry beyond Renewal circles to the wider church and civic community. The wider impact occurred particularly through a series of annual conferences hosted in Bari by Calisi’s community. Kairos conferences addressed hot issues in international relations; there were annual meetings with Messianic Jews, and annual conferences on worship and praise. With a wide range of church leaders taking part, the Bari conferences represented a charismatic contribution to mainline church life and thinking, primarily in Italy.61 Among those invited by Calisi to Bari conferences was Tony Palmer, a South African, who had been drawn to the convergence movement and who features later in this story. Palmer had been a disciple of Kenneth Copeland, well-known for his prosperity teaching. Through Palmer, Copeland and his wife spoke at one of the praise conferences, almost certainly his first experience of a Catholic ecumenical event. 6

A Contribution from Argentina

Through Jorge Himitian, a Pentecostal pastor from Argentina whom he had come to know, Matteo Calisi paid his first visit to Buenos Aires in 2003. Calisi gathered some Argentinian Catholics to form in Buenos Aires a daughter community of the Comunita di Gesù, that in 2004 received the approval of the Catholic archbishop, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, the future Pope Francis. During this 2003 visit, Calisi and Himitian together founded a new group The Communion of Renewed Evangelicals and Catholics in the Holy Spirit (creces), which held its first annual congress in 2004. Cardinal Bergoglio came quietly each time and just sat in the crowd, watching and praying. For their big meeting 60 61

This was a consequence of Michael Harper having joined the Orthodox Church and being ordained a priest of the Antiochene Orthodox Church. This was also happening through the annual gatherings of Rinnovamento nello Spirito Santo at Rimini, that invited ecumenical guests as well as prominent Catholic prelates.

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in 2006, creces invited Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa as main speaker, with the meeting moving to the Luna Park stadium. Giovanni Traettino and Tony Palmer were among the seven thousand people present. In the afternoon, the Cardinal was invited to the platform to speak. He asked them all to pray for him, he knelt down, and a group of Pentecostal pastors placed their hands on his shoulders, with Fr. Raniero alongside. A well-researched biography of Francis records that a Pentecostal pastor ended by praying: “Fill him with your Spirit and power, Lord! In the name of Jesus!”62 He reports that all who knew the Cardinal were amazed at the fervor with which he then spoke to the people. After this meeting, Cardinal Bergoglio met once a month for prayer with these Pentecostal pastors.63 On one occasion, Himitian asked Bergoglio how there could be a New Evangelization in the Catholic Church when many priests have not experienced conversion. Apparently Bergoglio agreed and asked their advice. The pastors proposed a retreat at which they would preach on conversion. They said, “We’ll get the pastors, you get the priests.” So the Pentecostal pastors led a retreat in 2010 for about a hundred priests, an event repeated in 2012 when Fr. Cantalamessa returned to Buenos Aires.64 These Catholic–Pente­ costal contacts represented a break-through in Latin America, where ccr had had very little ecumenical dynamism, and where Catholic charismatics largely shared their bishops’ hostility to “the sects.” 7

Breakthroughs from 2013

The developments in Argentina acquired a wider significance when in March 2013 Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected bishop of Rome in succession to Benedict xvi. For those who had known Bergoglio in Argentina, it soon became clear that as Pope Francis he is continuing what he did as archbishop of Buenos Aires, not only in relations with Evangelicals and Pentecostals, but also in teaching emphases, style of ministry, and focus on the poor. 7.1 A New Embrace of Pentecostals Within weeks of his election, Francis welcomed to his residence in the Vatican the five Pentecostal pastors he had prayed with regularly in Buenos Aires.65 62

A. Ivereigh, The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope (London: Allen & Unwin, 2014), 293. 63 Pastors Carlos Mreida, Angel Negro, Norberto Saracco, Omar Cabrera, and Jorge Himitian. 64 Ivereigh, The Great Reformer, 294. 65 See Ivereigh, The Great Reformer, 253.

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At the end of July 2014, Pope Francis was the first pope to visit a Pentecostal church, visiting the congregation in Caserta, led by Pastor Giovanni Traettino, with whom a friendship had begun in Buenos Aires. Francis asked forgiveness for the persecution suffered by the Italian Pentecostals under Mussolini who was supported in this policy by the Catholic authorities.66 Throughout his message, Francis kept referring to “Brother Giovanni” or just “my brother.” At the end he said: “Some may be shocked: ‘the Pope went to the Evangelicals!’ He went to visit his brothers.”67 7.2 Embrace of Renewal as Ecumenical Importantly too, the teaching and homilies of Francis were filled with insistence on the role of the Holy Spirit, the creativity and the surprises of the Holy Spirit, the need to be open to the Holy Spirit, and not to be afraid of the Spirit. These characteristics were prominent in three addresses given to ccr audiences: to fifty-two thousand Catholic charismatics at the Olympic Stadium in Rome on June 1, 2014,68 to leaders of the Catholic Fraternity of Covenant Communities and Fellowships (cfccf) on October 31, 2014,69 and again to a ccr celebration in St Peter’s Square on July 3, 2015.70 In all these addresses, Francis spoke of the term “baptism in the Holy Spirit” not previously used in papal utterances.71 On each occasion, he said: “Share baptism in the Holy Spirit with everyone in the church.”72 Another papal first was Francis’s insistence at these gatherings on the ecumenical character of the Renewal. In the October 2014 meeting, he said, “do not forget your origins, do not forget that the Charismatic Renewal is, by its very nature, ecumenical.” These statements point to

66 67 68 69 70 71

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Giovanni Traettino had written his doctoral dissertation on the persecution of Pentecostals in Italy under Fascism. http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2014/july/documents/papa -francesco_20140728_caserta-pastore-traettino.html. http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2014/june/documents/papa -francesco_20140601_rinnovamento-spirito-santo.html. http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2014/october/documents/papa -francesco_20141031_catholic-fraternity.html. http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2015/july/documents/papa -francesco_20150703_movimento-rinnovamento-spirito.html. Previously those responsible in the Vatican had been very cautious about Catholics using this terminology, a caution still evident in the planning and administration of a consultation held in March 2011 during the preparation of the iccrs booklet Baptism in the Holy Spirit. In the earlier address on June 1, 2014, the wording was: “I expect you to share with everyone in the church the grace of baptism in the Holy Spirit.”

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a ­reception at the highest level in the Catholic Church of the Pentecostal-­ charismatic contribution to ecumenical relations. 7.3 Relations with World Leaders A clear sign of major change, a story that grabbed the media, was a message sent by Francis in January 2014 via Tony Palmer to a Kenneth Copeland conference in the usa. Showing that there is a strategy behind such a gesture, Francis had a meeting in his Vatican residence on June 24, 2014, organized by Palmer, with Kenneth Copeland; John Arnott of Toronto; James Robison from Texas; Geoff Tunnicliffe of the World Evangelical Alliance; and others. Within a week Tony Palmer was dead, with doctors unable to save his life following a motorcycle accident in England. At the end of November 2014, Francis had a meeting with Loren Cunningham, the founder of Youth With A Mission, and his wife. These meetings were very different from traditional papal audiences. They involved key leaders with greater influence than most denominational heads, they were informal, they were longer, and the discussions were oriented toward action together for the Lord. 7.4 Archbishop Welby Two days after Francis was installed as bishop of Rome, Justin Welby was enthroned as archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the Anglican communion. With a personal connection to htb, there is a charismatic dimension to Welby’s ministry. While dean of Liverpool, he met the Chemin Neuf community in France and developed an ongoing relationship. This contact was maintained when in 2011 Justin Welby was named bishop of Durham, and then eighteen months later archbishop of Canterbury. Soon after Welby’s installation, he invited a team from Chemin Neuf community to live with him at Lambeth Palace, the London residence of the archbishop of Canterbury, to provide a praying base for his ministry. In mid-2014, a team of four moved in, an Anglican couple from England, a Lutheran ordinand from Germany, and a consecrated Catholic woman from Poland, providing both an ecumenical and a charismatic dimension. Archbishop Welby paid visits to Rome to talk with Francis in 2013 and 2014. The two men quickly struck up a deep rapport. Through their first meeting the Global Freedom Network was established in March 2014. One fruit has been the signing in the Vatican on December 2, 2014 by religious leaders from many faith communities of a Joint Declaration against Modern Slavery. On his second visit to Rome in the summer of 2014, Welby went with the Revd. Nicky Gumbel, the director of the Alpha course. With this visit, there was more background than with the Evangelical and Charismatic leaders from the

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usa. Already having many Catholic contacts, Gumbel saw the papal call for a New Evangelization, further developed by Benedict xvi,73 as a great opportunity for wider diffusion of the Alpha course. Welby commented to Pope Francis how important it is that the Alpha course has found its place in the Catholic Church, and very particularly in Latin America.74 All these developments mark a new phase in ecumenical relations for the Catholic Church. A few differences can be quickly noted. Whereas Catholic ecumenism had always privileged relations with the ancient liturgical Churches, and relations with Evangelicals and Pentecostals were low down the list, there is suddenly a new scale of priorities. Dynamic living faith in Jesus and a dependence on the Holy Spirit have become key criteria The Pope likes to meet visionary leaders with whom he can pray. He is meeting with the movers and shakers, with key leaders rather than just with denominational heads. If these meetings issue in a document, it will not just affirm shared convictions but also commit to common action. 8 Conclusion This survey shows that the hopes that this outpouring of the Holy Spirit would prove a powerful force for ecumenical reconciliation were initially disappointed as church leaders did not widely recognize its potential. This failure is not all attributable to one side; while there was a lack of awareness and discernment in much church leadership, CR leadership often lacked boldness and vision. Nonetheless, the sense of CR as inherently ecumenical was never completely lost. Various forms of inter-church sharing were taking place within CR, often without official ecumenical bodies paying much attention. At the same time CR was slowly having an influence on church life, by facilitating greater spontaneity in worship and the wider diffusion of praise songs, by forms of charismatic ministry spreading outside recognized CR, particularly prayer for healing and deliverance, and by charismatic groups engaging in wider church renewal and in ecumenical activities. Christians previously engaged in CR groups often engaged in church ministries, bringing in stronger Gospel and Spirit emphases.

73 Benedict xvi established a Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization (2010) and chose New Evangelization as the agenda for the 2012 Synod of Bishops. 74 Numerous Catholic bishops from Latin America have taken part in Alpha promotion courses in London.

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Since the mid-1990s the official Catholic nervousness about ecumenical expressions of CR has steadily declined, while John Paul ii’s encouragement of spiritual ecumenism in Ut Unum Sint facilitated the growth of a charismatic ecumenism. Already under Cardinal Kasper, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity was recognizing the growing importance for ecumenism of the Pentecostal and charismatic movements, an emphasis further developed by Kasper’s successor, Cardinal Koch. The widespread use of the Alpha course in the Catholic Church is introducing an ecumenical dimension into the New Evangelization. The elections of Pope Francis and Archbishop Welby have brought more strongly Spirit-shaped leadership to the Roman Catholic and Anglican communions, and from Francis an explicit recognition of the ecumenical character of CR. The developments of 2013–14 makes clearer the many ways in which CR emphases have quietly permeated the churches over the last fifty years. The advent of Pope Francis and his clear identification with the charismatic movement have the promise of inaugurating a significant shift in ecumenical priorities and relations. Francis brings a Latin American perspective in which ccr is not one among many new movements, but a key catalyst in the renewal of the church. Some commentators on CR in Latin America speak of a pentecostalization of the Catholic Church.75 Renewal in the power of the Holy Spirit emerges from the margins to become central for the church’s mission. But unlike most Latin American ccr, Francis has a great openness to Pentecostals and Evangelicals, giving a new élan to charismatic ecumenism. Theologically, the emphases of Francis on personal conversion to Jesus and openness to the creativity of the Holy Spirit point to the emergence of a new ecumenical paradigm.76 Instead of the top criteria for closeness of ecumenical relations being doctrinal and liturgical (subscription to the historic creeds, sacraments, and apostolic succession), personal knowledge of Jesus and obedience to the Holy Spirit jump up the scale. No longer are Pentecostals and free church Evangelicals lower down the scale of ecumenical priorities and expectations. In this new Spirit-driven paradigm, Catholic relations with Pentecostals and charismatic Evangelicals have a particular importance, showing that the newest streams also have a significant contribution to make to ecumenical 75

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See Edward L. Cleary, The Rise of Charismatic Catholicism in Latin America (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2011); and J.E. Thorsen, Charismatic Practice and Catholic Parish Life: The Incipient Pentecostalization of the Church in Guatemala and Latin America (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2015). P. Hocken, Azusa, Rome, and Zion (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2016), Ch. 12.

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r­ econciliation. This approach moves beyond charismatic visions for unity limited to mainline church renewal that saw the non-denominational streams in problematic terms.77 As the Catholic Church opens itself more fully to the baptism in the Holy Spirit there is greater potential for radically new initiatives. The importance of sacramental-liturgical closeness remains, but without an ecclesial openness to the Holy Spirit progress will be slow and limited. This emerging ecumenical paradigm can be termed “an ecumenism of the Holy Spirit.”78 Bibliography Au, Connie. Grassroots Unity in the Charismatic Renewal. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2011. Cartlege, Mark. “Theological Renewal (1975–1983): Listening to an Editor’s Agenda for Church and Academy.” Pneuma 30, no. 1 (2008). Cleary, Edward L. The Rise of Charismatic Catholicism in Latin America. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2011. Davis, Rex. Locusts and Wild Honey: The Charismatic Renewal and the Ecumenical Movement. Geneva: WCC, 1978. Davis, Rex. “Taking Stock: The Present Status of the Relationship between the Ecumenical Movement and the Charismatic Renewal.” Theological Renewal 20 (1982): 12–17. Grossmann, Siegfried. Craheim Experiment: Erfahrungen aus den Gründerjahren des Lebenszentrums für die Einheit der Christen in Schloss Craheim. Clausthal-Zellerfeld: Papierflieger, 2008. Hanson, M., J. Hall, B. Harley, and C. Vivian. A Refreshing Stream within the United ­Reformed Church. Oldham, UK: GEAR Publications, 2014. Harper, Michael. Michael Harper Newsletter no. 4 (July 1964). Harper, Michael. That We May be One. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1983. Hempelmann, R. Licht und Schatten des Erweckungs-Christentums: Ausprägungen und Herausforderungen Pfingstlich-Charismatischer Frömmigkeit. Stuttgart: Quell, 1992. Hocken, P. Azusa, Rome, and Zion. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2016. Hocken, P. “Charismatic Renewal in the Roman Catholic Church: Reception and Challenge.” In Pentecost, Mission, and Ecumenism. Edited by J. Jongeneel. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1992.

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This was largely the perspective in Michael Harper, That We May be One (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1983). 78 Hocken, Azusa, Rome, and Zion, Ch. 11.

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Hocken, P. “International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services.” In The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements. Edited by Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003, 72. Hocken, P. Pentecost and Parousia. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2013. Ivereigh, A. The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope. London: Allen & Unwin, 2014. McBain, D. Fire Over the Waters: Renewal among Baptists and Others from the 1960s to the 1990s. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1997. McDonnell, Kilian. Presence, Power, Praise. 3 vols. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1980. Payan, C. Comme Marie…Humble, Servante, Obéissante. Paris: Première Partie, 2011. Payan, C. Unité Onction Guérison. Paris: Première Partie, 2008. Payan, C. Then Peter Stood Up. Rome: ICCRS, 2012. Quebedeaux, Richard. The New Charismatics. Garden City NY: Doubleday, 1976. Quebedeaux, Richard. The New Charismatics ii. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983. Roh, Raymond V. The Pentecostal Movement and Church Unity. Pecos, NM: Dove Publications, 1972. Synan, Vinson. Under His Banner: History of Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International. Costa Mesa, CA: Gift, 1992. Thorsen, J.E. Charismatic Practice and Catholic Parish Life: The Incipient Pentecostalization of the Church in Guatemala and Latin America. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2015. Wainwright, Geoffrey. The Ecumenical Moment. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983. All Together in One Place. Edited by H.D. Hunter and P.D. Hocken. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992. “Antidote to Sick Ecumenism.” Renewal 51 (June/July 1974). The Church is Charismatic: The World Council of Churches and the Charismatic Renewal. Edited by Arnold Bittlinger. Geneva: WCC, 1981. Theological and Pastoral Orientations on the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. Notre Dame, IN: Word of Life, 1974.

Chapter 4

Pentecostal and Charismatic Convergence: A Divine Trajectory? William K. Kay 1 Introduction This chapter is intended to show how the charismatic movement facilitated the Pentecostal movement’s shift in the direction of ecumenicity. It does this by reference to four things: the history of Pentecostalism, the history of the charismatic movement, the nature of fundamentalism and a reflection on ecumenism. However, the chapter reads matters in two ways. It considers selected historical events sociologically and theologically. 2 Taxonomy This chapter takes the view that the simplest method for identifying classical Pentecostal churches is by reference to the foundation documents and doctrines of any particular congregation or denomination.1 Thus, if these documents include reference to spiritual gifts being manifested in the church today, the adopting body should be counted as Pentecostal. So, to take an obvious example, the Assemblies of God in the United States makes reference to speaking with tongues and other spiritual gifts in its founding documents (c. 1914). This way of understanding classical Pentecostalism is usually unaffected by any subsequent changes to church polity and practice. By contrast, charismatic churches, especially those formed within for instance Anglican or Baptist congregations, belong to church groupings with an historical heritage that overlooks spiritual gifts. Charismatic congregations are then defined as those which accepted classical Pentecostal practices and spiritual experiences while remaining within the framework of their denomination. A loose third group is made up both from those who leave the mainline charismatic congregations and from independent Pentecostals. These are neo-Pentecostals, but they are also called Third Wave, Apostolic Networks, and 1 William K. Kay, Pentecostalism: Core Text (London: scm, 2009), 5–7.

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were at one point called House Churches. This large heterogeneous group welcomes spiritual practices like speaking in tongues and healing even if in ecclesiological respects it is to be found in many configurations. The group shuns the denominational machinery of classical Pentecostalism and the safety of long-established mainstream episcopal or quasi-episcopal governance. Yet, the terminology has not been fixed and varies either side of the Atlantic;2 indeed this third group may be terminologically folded into the charismatic movement and undifferentiated from it—its members may simply be seen as a component within a broadly defined charismatic constituency. This, then, would leave two broad groups: Pentecostals and charismatics. 3

Two Readings

3.1 A Theological Reading A theological reading of the events following the outpouring of the Spirit at the start of the 20th century and the appearance of Pentecostal denominations is informed by the coordinating role of the ecumenical movement. This theological reading makes central the prayer of Jesus in John 17 and recognises or interprets the events that unfolded in the 20th century as ultimately having the divine purpose of bringing the church together. This reading sees divine initiative behind human events even though these events are enacted through human free will. It is not possible to prove a theological reading of contemporary historical events in the sense that the events could certainly be read differently by readers coming to the table with other philosophical and theological presuppositions. Nevertheless, the 20th century provides a narrative that is in keeping with a strong theological interpretation; such an interpretation removes the sense of randomness and purposelessness implied by purely political or sociological history. It interprets events by faith and in keeping with wide eschatological

2 Worldwide, charismatics were by far the largest of the three groupings, and the neo-Penteco­ stals did not always come into existence in the same way. In Britain, they were a radical product of the charismatic movement but in other countries, like the usa, where the religious scene was altogether larger and more diverse, neo-Pentecostal congregations were prompted into being by a plethora of factors including Latter Rain theology and stylistic features associated with racial preferences. Estrelda Alexander, in Black Fire: One Hundred Years of African American Pentecostalism (Downers Grove, IL: ivp Academic, 2011), maps and outlines this huge sector.

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purposes but it does not, and cannot, calculate ­causation by reference to statistical correlation or by the normal canons of secular historiography. The prayer of Jesus in John 17 was that his followers should be made “one” in the same way that the Persons of the Trinity are one: “that they may be one as we are one” (v 11). This prayer is focused upon the bringing together of the different parts of the church in ecumenical union such that the distinctiveness of the various parts remains intact in the same way that the unity within the Trinity also allows the distinction of the Persons. Trinitarianism has never spoken of the Son and the Spirit being absorbed into the Father but rather that each Person is understood fully only in relation to the other Persons. We should thus expect the component parts of the ecumenical movement to retain their individuality at the same time as they move towards a divinely willed unity. At its conclusion this chapter will briefly reflect on a theological account of greater openness to ecumenism in Pentecostal circles. 3.2 A Sociological Reading The distinction between the Pentecostal and charismatic movements was made earlier in terms of their founding doctrines, but, within standard sociological theory, religious doctrine is downplayed or avoided; sociological theory is cast in terms of other factors so as to extend across many religions. Even so, it is true that early forms of sociological theory were largely adduced by examination of Christian history. Troeltsch argued that sects were formed by pure, often breakaway, groups that separated themselves from their religious antecedents and from the world around them.3 They were often keen to claim they only were truly saved and that all other groups were destined for perdition. The sect was both worlddenying and church-denying, but, gradually over a period of years, sects would lose their insistence upon separation (also called “holiness”) and move into a theological and social position that allowed them to recognise the equal validity of other religious groups. In this phase of transformation the sect became a denomination. Beyond this development, the denomination might become a church in the sense that it would claim the spiritual loyalty of everyone living within a particular geographical area.4 So the movement from sect to denomination and then the less certain movement from denomination to 3 See for instance: Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Scribner, 2003 [originally written in German in 1904 and 1905]), 144–54; E. Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of Christian Churches (London: Macmillan, 1931). B.R. Wilson, Religion in Secular Society (London: Watts & Co, 1966), 179–98. 4 The word “church” is used in many senses. In sociological theory it is distinct from a denomination or a sect but in common parlance a “church” might refer to a single congregation or

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church produced an evolutionary trajectory that was probably driven by the growing stability and confidence of the sect: it no longer felt threatened by its social context or its religious competitors; it had founded its own institutions, formulated its own doctrines, obtained property, and achieved public acceptability. It is possible to argue that Pentecostalism trod this path. Early Pentecostals, it might be said, were sectarian in outlook and later Pentecostals, having become established, took on the characteristics of denominations, and these changes occurred without any interaction with other religious groupings, charismatic or otherwise. On the other hand, it is possible to argue that the appearance of the charismatic movement from the 1960s onwards accelerated the natural sociological trend among Pentecostal believers since, for the first time, they were able to recognise nearby groups similar to themselves in spiritual experience and style of worship but only different in their attitude towards other religious bodies and society as a whole. These considerations raise wider questions about how scholars should interpret the changing ethos of Pentecostal congregations. As has been intimated above, sociological theory frequently came to define sects by reference to their attitudes to the world around them. The exclusivist attitude was always sectarian; the inclusivist attitude was always non-sectarian.5 Clearly, for any group to maintain exclusivity, it must have sharp boundaries, gatekeepers, and a seat of authority that makes decisions about who should be admitted or when the group can safely change its boundaries without losing cohesion. Yet all these considerations about the characteristics of sects and denominations and their relationships with society are based upon an assumption about the openness and permeability of the society in which religious groups find themselves.6 Most of these sociological theories were formulated in Europe or North America where religious freedoms are rarely at risk. There are circumstances, however, when religious groups are persecuted and the societal climate becomes hostile to religion. Within the Soviet Union in the Stalinist era Baptist and Pentecostals were equally discriminated against and found themselves side-by-side in the same prison cells. In Ethiopia Pentecostals and charismatics found themselves in prison next to Orthodox priests persecuted by Marxist fanatics. The point, then, is that sociological theory only describes situations to an organised set of congregations e.g. the Anglican Church. When the term is used with sociological precision, the context will make this clear. 5 B.R. Wilson “A Typology of Sects in a Dynamic and Comparative Perspective,” Archives de Sociologie de Religion 16 (1963): 49–63 and reprinted in Roland Robertson, ed. Sociology of Religion (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978), 361–83. 6 K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 5th ed., vol. 1 (London: Routledge, 1966).

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that exist within what might be called “the normal range.” During persecution, war, natural disaster, or extreme instability, the time-honoured expectations of liberal society are thrown out of the window. Religious groups of whatever stripe or complexion then tend to bury their differences in the face of a common enemy. Sociological theory about the trajectory of transition from sect to denomination is informative. Equally, sociological theory recognises a transition from an inward-looking religious group to an outward-looking group, one that is willing to contribute to the life of society as a whole. The complication that arises in this instance is that the Pentecostal movement and the charismatic movement have quite separate social provenances. The Pentecostal movement, certainly in the UK, was largely working class in orientation whereas the charismatic movement in older denominations was middle class. Some of the changes that take place in both movements have occurred as a result of the wider social changes in the second half of the 20th century. At its conclusion this chapter briefly reflects upon a sociological account of greater openness to ecumenism in Pentecostal circles.7 4

Historical Phases

The received account of Pentecostal beginnings stresses the importance of a set of early 20th century revivals scattered across the world: the Welsh revival of 1904–5, the Azusa Street revival of 1906–12, the revival in Mukti, India, 1905–7, and the Korean Pyongyang revival of 1903–7.8 Careful historiography has shown how these revivals, which all had strong Pentecostal characteristics, helped to enhance and launch a wave of Pentecostal experience. Although subsequent historiography has discovered links between these revivals, the similarities between them were not humanly arranged—a feature that gave confidence to early Pentecostals that they were participating in a divinely ordained outpouring of the Spirit.9 And yet the transition from disorganised revival to organised denomination is by no means the only narrative. There were leaders within European Pentecostalism who resisted the formation of new Pentecostal denominations. 7 I take openness in society as best described by Popper; see K.R. Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies: The Spell of Plato (London: Routledge, 1966). 8 Kay, Pentecostalism, 60–68. There is some debate about whether the Welsh Revival and the Pyongyang Revival are Pentecostal revivals or simply evangelical revivals with an emphasis on conversion. The debate depends on what one considers to be Pentecostal characteristics. 9 Donald Gee, Wind and Flame (Croydon: Assemblies of God Publishing House, 1967).

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Among these was Alexander Boddy, the Anglican vicar and convener of the ­influential Sunderland conventions (1908–14), who ensured that the conventions discussed the role of the outpouring of the Spirit on the church and who concluded that these events should be read as indicating the near return of Christ. The Spirit was given to galvanise the church for the Second Coming but not to raise up a fresh set of denominations to add to those already in existence.10 Similarly, T.B. Barratt working in Norway at first believed that the outpouring of the Spirit would function to renew Lutheranism and Methodism without there being any need for specific Pentecostal denominational structures. It was the issue of infant baptism that finally led to the break from ­Lutheranism since baptism in water by immersion was seen as incompatible with Lutheran practice.11 Believers had to choose between staying in the ­Lutheran Church without baptism by immersion or leaving to join the Pentecostals. In Germany the Mulheim Association connected with Jonathan Paul functioned ecumenically by accepting both modes of baptism and by refusing to attach any physical demarcation to those who were baptised in the Holy Spirit and those who were not. So while it is true to say that early classical Pentecostals formed their denominations for what appeared to be perfectly good reasons, there were others like those in Germany who refrained from doing so and who could be seen as prototypes of the charismatics who came into existence in the 1960s. Nevertheless, Germany was exceptional. By 1924 there were three stand-alone Pentecostal denominations in Britain, and there were many more elsewhere. 5

Fundamentalism and Ecumenism

At almost exactly the same time that Pentecostalism was beginning, two other movements became visible. The first was the emergence in the United States of Fundamentalism which, though it had a long prehistory, was crystallised by the publication of a series of short books funded by the wealthy Los Angeles laymen Lyman and Milton Stewart. The series, known as The Fundamentals, appeared between 1910 and 1915, and an estimated 3 million copies were soon in circulation. The series helped to defend what were taken to be 10 11

Boddy in March 1911, 60, is explicit and emphatic, “The Editor of Confidence does not feel that the Lord’s leading in these days is to set up a new Church, but to bless individuals where they are.” David Bundy, Visions of Apostolic Mission: Scandinavian Pentecostal Mission to 1935, doctoral dissertation (University of Uppsala, 2009), 148, 184.

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the main ­non-negotiable points of Fundamentalism such as: the inerrancy of the original autograph of Scripture, the Virgin Birth, the satisfaction theory of the Atonement, the physical resurrection, and miracles of Jesus. Fundamentalism came into existence to defend Christianity against the encroachment of liberalism, especially the Darwinian theory of evolution and the rationalistic deconstruction of the text of Scripture that had become a growing preoccupation of (especially) the theology departments of German universities. Fundamentalism interpreted the bible dispensationally and almost invariably confined spiritual gifts to the first generation of Christians. Even so, Pentecostals found in Fundamentalism a defensive stance with which they could identify. George Jeffreys (1889–1962), the British Pentecostal, would declare that his Elim movement stood “foursquare for the Bible” and he was happy to participate in the “culture wars” that Fundamentalism engendered in its attacks on theological modernism or any form of liberalism that denied the reality of biblical miracles today.12 One may say that the counter-cultural stance of Fundamentalism was amenable to Pentecostalism, and it was this that made uninformed commentators confuse the two movements. The second was the 1910 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh which gave rise to an inter-denominational cooperation that eventually, after 1945, resulted in the institutional expression of the World Council of Churches. The notion that a divided church could not bring the gospel to a sceptical world provided theological motivation for early discussions and dialogues intended to remove obstacles to collaboration and ultimate unity.13 So Fundamentalism on one side and incipient ecumenism on the other helped to shape the context of early Pentecostalism. Many Pentecostals, certainly in Britain, would never have found themselves in agreement with early ecumenical theorists whom they would have seen as being too “modernistic,” even if that characterisation is incorrect. There is no evidence in the writings and preaching of George Jeffreys, for instance, that he had any other ecumenical vision apart from one that saw all true Christians as belonging to a single revived church, that is, one which emphasised miracles and the power of the Holy Spirit. More than this, as eschatologically-minded Pentecostal preachers were prone to believe, the eventual unification of the worldwide church was in line with the dark words of the book of Revelation concerning the coming of 12

13

It seems that Jeffreys was inducted into “culture wars” as a result of his meetings with, and respect for, Aimee Semple McPherson, whose ministry helped form the “moral majority” that opposed Darwinism and secularism. See M.A. Sutton, Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2007), 212, 220, 237–38 and passim. A. Hastings, A History of English Christianity (London: Collins, 1987), 98.

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anti-Christ.14 Consequently Pentecostals officially charted a course between a rock and a hard place: they could not accept fundamentalist exegesis or ecumenical premises and so distanced themselves from both. 6

Denominational Consolidation

In the United States, this worked out to their advantage. Menzies, in describing the Assemblies of God in the years 1927–1941, entitles his chapter “the tranquil time.” While “the last strongholds of Fundamentalism were falling to the heavy artillery of Modernism in the great denominations,” the Assemblies of God was unscathed by this conflict and able to grow.15 The Assemblies of God and other evangelical groups, isolated from the main intellectual currents sweeping through ecclesiastical culture, could concentrate their energies on the task in hand and offered a bright and purposeful contrast to the weakened and embattled mainline churches. Isolationism, then, at this period in the development of Pentecostalism, offered a protective benefit. This said, the story of Pentecostalism in the 1920s and 1930s contained a partially hidden sub-text. The Assemblies of God in the United States had become large enough to contain a diversity of opinion within its senior leadership. As Mel Robeck has shown, the Assemblies of God was a member of the Foreign Missions Conference of North America in the years 1920 to about 1962.16 There was value in collaboration both before World War ii and in the period immediately after it when European missionary work was in disarray. Pentecostal mission benefited from the expertise and contacts of the Conference that later became integral to the missionary work of the World Council of Churches.17 Although the cooperation was not secret, it was not blazoned abroad either. What changed all this was the election in 1959 of Thomas Zimmerman to the General Superintendency of Assemblies of God. Zimmerman believed Pentecostals should move closer to evangelicals even if these evangelicals had not long before been virulent critics of Pentecostalism’s d­ istinctive testimony to 14 15 16 17

Cecil M. Robeck, “The Assemblies of God and Ecumenical Cooperation,” in Wonsuk Ma and Robert P. Menzies, eds. Pentecostalism in Context: Essays in Honour of William W. Menzies (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 128. William W. Menzies, Anointed to Serve: The Story of Assemblies of God, vol. 1 (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1971), 145. Robeck, “The Assemblies of God,” 110. The Foreign Missions Council became a charter member of the International Missionary Council in 1921, a group that would become in 1961 the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches. Robeck, “The Assemblies of God,” 116.

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tongues. The evangelicals with whom Zimmerman identified were solidly anti-ecumenical. It followed (admittedly after lengthy discussion and public pressure on Zimmerman) that Pentecostals should disengage from ecumenical collaboration in order to curry strategic favour with their erstwhile critics. Friendships between Pentecostals and their erstwhile colleagues were sundered, and the World Council of Churches was robbed, or largely robbed, of Pentecostal influence for a generation or more. During the period following the end of World War ii, Pentecostals began to be more willing to participate in joint activities with other churches. This was partly because the war itself had increased social solidarity. In the case of the United States, numbers of Pentecostal young men and women had joined the armed forces with the result that Pentecostal military chaplaincy became a pressing need.18 In Britain also there was increasing recognition of the movement. As Gee remarks “the other churches seemed to be forced to recognise that the Pentecostal churches had come to stay, and that some fellowship with them was not only possible, but desirable.” He goes on to note that “this was only rendered possible by the Pentecostal people themselves being willing to cooperate, and to drop their sometimes too ready criticism of the denominational churches.”19 As early as 1945 the Elim London Crusader Choir was broadcast on the bbc on February 11, 1945.20 Although in the usa the broadcasting of Pentecostal music and preaching dated back to the early days of radio, Europe was much more censorious. Broadcasting was controlled by government licence (partly to keep extremist political parties off the air), with the result that religious groups on the social margins struggled to gain a hearing. The bbc’s willingness to broadcast Elim was a mark of public acceptance. Classical Pentecostal attitudes in the early post-war period are complex. The holiness codes were designed to separate Pentecostals from worldliness expressed by cinema, popular music, dance, fashion, hairstyles, clothing, slang, and even the reading of novels. Those who had been conscientious objectors in the wars had felt the force of cultural disapproval and ostracism. They had probably been psychologically damaged by the rejection they had experienced and compensated for this by triumphalism or quietism. Yet the evangelistic activities of the best Pentecostals inevitably drove them outwards to popular 18 19 20

W.W. Menzies, Anointed to Serve (Springfield, MO: gph, 1971), 327. Donald Gee, Wind and Flame (Croydon: Assemblies of God Publishing House), 219. bbc or British Broadcasting Corporation was funded by a licence fee that provided it with a stable income free of advertising while at the same time making it free of government. Its standards of accuracy and impartiality during the 1939–45 war together with its World Service at a time of communist propaganda made it widely respected and trusted, and not only in the UK.

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culture and contemporary idioms. Without some grasp of popular culture, they could not communicate with it. Adding to these difficulties, there was undoubtedly stereotyping on both sides of denominational walls: Pentecostals might be dubbed as cultic, mindless, and emotionally unstable—a caricature that persisted into the 1990s—while Pentecostals might dub other churches as “worldly,” “lukewarm,” or “heretical.” Moreover, when social attitudes change rapidly there are detectable differences between older and young members of the same group. Even in the 1990s, it was possible to measure significant attitudinal variations between younger and older British Pentecostals and therefore to predict a gradual liberalisation would spread across the movement as the older ministers died out.21 In the late 1940s and early 1950s attitudinal variations are evident in support or opposition to the ministry of David du Plessis. 7

Charismatic Movement: Du Plessis as a Forerunner

Du Plessis was a South African raised in the classical Pentecostal Church of the Apostolic Faith Mission. He remained in South Africa until 1947 when, in the wreckage of post-war Europe, Pentecostals began to coordinate their missionary and humanitarian activities first at the Pentecostal World Conference (pwc) in Zurich in May 1947 and later at other similar conferences also in ­Europe (Paris 1949, London 1952). Du Plessis is seen first breaking out from apartheid-bound South Africa, and then from the restrictions of his own denomination and then, working as the secretary for the pwc, widening again into organised ecumenical work through contact first with John McKay, president of Princeton seminary, and later Willem Visser’t Hooft and the World Council Assembly at Evanston, IL, in 1954. These widening circles demonstrate how, even in the life of a committed and successful ecumenical pioneer from a strong Pentecostal background, changes occur progressively. Du Plessis was in step with his friend and colleague Donald Gee who had been appointed at the Zurich meeting as the editor of Pentecost magazine, a publication intended to give a synoptic overview of Pentecostal mission and revival across the world. It was Lewi Pethrus, the Swedish leader, who had nominated Gee, and “the Conference especially stressed that the Editor and Publisher should be answerable to God alone.”22 It was this fortuitous combination between the personable du Plessis, the influential Gee, and the powerful Pethrus that helped unlock Pentecostal reservations about organised 21 22

William K. Kay, Pentecostals in Britain (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2000), 46. Donald Gee, “For Your Information,” Pentecost 1 (Sept 1947): 18.

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ecumenism. Du Plessis attended “all the six assemblies of the wcc from Amsterdam (1948) to Vancouver (1983), that were convened in his lifetime.”23 As du Plessis and Gee moved in an ecumenical direction, there was a backlash. Part of this was, as we have already said, headed up by Thomas Zimmerman who not only put pressure on the Assemblies of God to withdraw from its humanitarian and economic links with the Foreign Missions Conference of North America but also, acting beyond his jurisdiction, by putting pressure on Donald Gee to refuse an invitation to the World Council of Churches in New Delhi in 1961.24 Gee had been invited and was disposed to attend: he was one of the best-known and most widely travelled Pentecostals in the world at that time. Apart from the way the attendance by a high profile Pentecostal might be interpreted by American evangelicals, it was no business of Zimmerman whether Gee, who belonged to British Assemblies of God, attended or not. Du Plessis, now part of American Assemblies of God, decided to attend the New Delhi conference and risk the consequences: he was soon asked to surrender his ministerial credentials.25 In Britain there were criticisms of ecumenism, but these were muted, probably because little was known on the topic and, in any case, the British who had served with Gee for more than 40 years never doubted his steadfastness or integrity. Slightly prior to this, however, another index of narrow-mindedness in Britain was heard when Pentecostals criticised those who collaborated with Billy Graham in 1954. The writer is one, among other Pentecostal leaders, who has been invited to supply workers for the Campaign. He, and some of his colleagues similarly approached, have been happy to accede to this welcome gesture. It is a little surprising that even this limited participation in Dr Graham’s Campaign has met with criticism from a few ardent Pentecostals.26 Gee was willing to ride this current of thought out even if he abhorred the contradiction of the gospel implied by it.

23 24 25 26

R.P. Spittler, “David Johannes du Plessis,” in S.M. Burgess and E.M. van der Maas, eds. New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), 591. W.J. Hollenweger, Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997), 349. Spittler, “David Johannes du Plessis,” 591. Credentials were restored in 1980. See also Joshua R. Ziefle, David du Plessis and the Assemblies of God (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 94, 95. Donald Gee, “Billy Graham in London,” Pentecost 27 (March 1954): 15.

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Early Charismatic Movement

During the 1950s, healing evangelists, especially in the United States, began to attract large crowds to their tents. Revival meetings in huge canvas cathedrals made a stir with the result that the magazine Voice of Healing was launched and an attempt was made to coordinate the travels and activities of these evangelists, most of whom had Pentecostal roots. They were independent of denominational authority and yet believed many of the same things that classical Pentecostals believed. In some cases they harked back to the notion of apostolic leadership, especially if they had connections with the Latter Rain Revival in Canada of 1948–c. 1950. But they were relevant to the ecumenical movement in two ways: first, David du Plessis worked with this group as their organising secretary (1956–59) and would have been aware of the neo-­ Pentecostal sector and its relation to other Christian groupings.27 Second, these tent evangelists attracted many kinds of people to their meetings including those who would never darken the doors of a Pentecostal church. In this way the Pentecostal message was taken out to the wider world in a preparatory fashion. Many of those who heard the Pentecostal message will have attended mainline churches and so received a taste of the charismatic movement before it properly began. Though the healing evangelists mainly operated in North America, the Full Gospel Business Men’s International, an association of Spirit-filled laymen founded in 1953, became known in Britain and in other parts of the westernised world.28 By its constitution it was deliberately non-denominational and, indeed, forbade any ordained minister from holding office in its ranks. It was designed to allow laymen and women to exercise their ministries free of pastoral interference. The fgbmi helped to prepare the way for the charismatic movement (and was part of it when it arrived), but perhaps its most lasting legacy lay in the relaxed testimony-style of its meetings and its capacity to bring people together interdenominationally. 9

Full Flowering of the Charismatic Movement

The story of the charismatic movement has often been told before.29 It essentially concerns the appearance of Pentecostal phenomena in mainline 27 28 29

R.P. Spittler, “David Johannes du Plessis,” 591. http://www.fgbmfi.org/about-q10072-Overview.aspx (accessed 23 June 2015). Michael Harper, As At the Beginning (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1965) is an early and popular example.

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c­ hurches. Prophecy, healings, speaking in tongues, exorcisms, visions, and the like occurred somewhere in nearly all Christian denominations and churches from the 1960s onwards. The progress of the renewal occurred at different speeds depending upon the denominations where it was found, and there were a number of important reports, conferences, decisions, and setbacks as the process unrolled over about ten years. Excellent summaries of the historical steps by which the charismatic movement appeared in one denomination or another or in one country or continent or another show the subtle interconnections between Christians holding various doctrines or within distinct and sometimes opposing ecclesial camps.30 Once one accepts that the charismatic movement had permeated or infiltrated Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Mennonites, Baptists, Methodists, Anglicans, and Roman Catholics, the question arises as to how these groups related to each other, and then the further question arises as to how these groups related to classical Pentecostals.31 What we may say is that the charismatic movement created numerous networks, agencies, and ministries. Or to put this another way, these networks, agencies, and ministries might be seen as human or divine responses to the surprising events that were unfolding. Some agencies, like the Fountain Trust in the UK, sought to foster the charismatic movement by holding conferences where spiritual experiences were well-nigh palpable while, in its publications, providing a biblical basis for an understanding of these experiences. Some networks were designed to share information and thereby advertise charismatic phenomena or centres of spiritual activity. Some ministries, especially those that were acceptable in divergent contexts, were able to bring spiritual experiences from one part of the Christian world to another—David du Plessis being a prime example of this capacity to speak, facing one way, to Pentecostals and, facing another way, to many mainline churches. However the charismatic movement is viewed, it was undoubtedly associated with change. This was change in the churches that was embedded in change rippling through society as a whole. The 1960s shook up Western culture. Partly this was a generational phenomenon as the post-1945 baby boomers found their feet and asserted their preferences. Partly this was an economic phenomenon as Western democracies enjoyed the rich dividends of trade and peace. Partly this was a moral phenomenon as the old imperatives of duty were 30 31

P.D. Hocken, “Charismatic Movement,” in S.M. Burgess and E.M. van der Maas, eds., New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), 477–519, remains the best. Vinson Synan, “Charismatic Renewal Enters the Mainline Churches,” in The Century of the Holy Spirit, ed. V. Synan (Nashville, TN: Nelson, 2001), 149–76 tends to take each denominational group separately in his account.

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replaced by the new predilection for self-expression.32 So, within these wider changes, it is not surprising that the church itself changed and, when one adds to the natural changes brought about by the generational, economic, and moral shifts, the impulse of the charismatic experiences and charismatic phenomena, gave meaning to the whole scene and ensured that the 1970s and thereafter looked very different from the 1930s. It is arguable, then, that the Pentecostal churches would have changed in any case after the 1960s without the added force of the charismatic movement and all the new possibilities for sharing and joint activity it opened up. 10

Ecumenical Stimulants in the UK

It is worth making a distinction between intra-Pentecostal ecumenism and inter-church ecumenism involving Pentecostals. So Pentecostal-to-Pentecostal ecumenism functions either between classical Pentecostal denominations or between such denominations and neo-Pentecostal groups. A broader kind of ecumenism operates between Pentecostals and charismatics in mainline churches and, further along the continuum, between Pentecostals and noncharismatic churches. Obviously, the further away in experience and doctrine one group is from another, the more difficult it is for agreement and harmony to be reached. Yet, paradoxically, since groups close to each other on an ecclesiastical continuum wish to distinguish themselves from each other, it is possible for the bitterest disagreements to occur between the most closely related groups. The consequence of these considerations is that the easiest ecumenical relationships to form are those between moderately related groups or, in the case of classical Pentecostals, between groups that have a long history of semi-cooperation—as there is between the Assemblies of God and the Elim Pentecostal church in Britain. In the 1980s the biggest stimulant to simple ecumenical activity in the UK might be witnessed in the Marches for Jesus that originated within the neoPentecostal churches but were intended to make a statement from the whole church (broadly conceived) to secular society.33 Such a statement resonated within many evangelical hearts with a result that the Marches for Jesus, and the

32 33

David Barker, Loek Halman, and Astrid Vloet, The European Values Study 1981–1990 (London: Gordon Cook Foundation, 1992). Cf. Gerald C. Ediger, “The Proto-Genesis of the March for Jesus Movement, 1970–87,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 12, no. 2 (2004): 247–75.

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music associated with them, brought Pentecostals, charismatics, and others out onto the streets in joint shows of strength. These marches, while they were designed to combat rising secularism in society and particularly increasing abortion rates and threats to the nuclear family, often drew upon a theology of spiritual warfare that was implicit in the songs and prayer meetings preceding the demonstrations. Marching “on the land,” “taking” the land, showing “principalities and powers” the reality of the church was intended to bolster joint humanitarian and evangelistic action. The Anglican Church benefited considerably from the charismatic renewal and was probably able to absorb it better than other Protestant groupings. This may have been as result of the Anglican tradition of placing sympathetic bishops in dioceses where innovation was present. In any event, the charismatic movement within the Anglican Church was, after a period of initial instability,34 able to accommodate Pentecostal phenomena within a loose liturgical framework, and this, in turn, necessitated the writing of introductory materials for new Christians. The Alpha Course provided a series of about 10 basic lessons on Christianity written in a way that made good use of the logical and rational tradition within Evangelical theology while also providing an occasion when new believers might experience the Holy Spirit and (probably) speak in other tongues.35 The Alpha Course was outstandingly successful all over the world and became a church planting tool as well as a church growth tool. Despite its Anglican origins—indeed because of its Anglican origins—it was immediately ­acceptable to a wide spectrum of Christians including those in Pentecostal churches who appreciated its profundity and simplicity as well as its openness to spiritual experience. Once the charismatic movement started to flow through the mainline churches, there were at least two effects. One, as we have said, was to create the conditions for neo-Pentecostalism (or apostolic networks), and the other was to create a large swathe of people who had been introduced to the songs, practices, and styles of Spirit-filled life without removing them from their moorings within their parishes and congregations. In 1979 Spring Harvest in the UK was inaugurated.36 It was a large summer event drawing Christians from all over the spectrum to spend time at a holiday venue where children’s 34 “‘Sex Cult’ Leaves 150 in Need of Counselling,” The Independent (23 Aug, 1995): see http:// www.independent.co.uk/news/sex-cult-leaves-150-in-need-of-counselling-1597498.html (accessed 23 June, 2015). 35 http://www.alpha.org (accessed 23 June, 2015). 36 http://springharvest.org/about/beliefs/ (accessed 31 July, 2015).

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activities were provided, morning seminars were offered, and large evening meetings with good preachers were guaranteed. Spring Harvest quickly took over holiday camps with accommodation for several thousand people and in so doing displaced the Assemblies of God in the UK, which, till then, had held its summer conferences in the same venue.37 The displacement was symbolic as well as practical. Spring Harvest ran for several weeks, took more than one site and catered at its height for about 80,000 people in total. Charismatic or Pentecostal elements were included in its streams: in fact a menu of meetings was offered so that those who wished could attend events where prayer for the sick followed preaching or, for those who shuddered at such practices, more strictly evangelical-style meetings were convened that resembled those held in the pre-charismatic era. The point to notice is that Pentecostals and charismatics rubbed shoulders with conventional Christians in ways that helped break down barriers and prepare the ground for ecumenical fellowship. On a more organisational line, Churches Together in England, encouraged the coming together of fraternal groupings of ministers within small towns or regions.38 Ministers might meet for prayer or in a committee to plan joint events like an open-air Easter Day service or a children’s summer program. These groupings ran alongside and often replaced denominational Pentecostal groupings intended to fulfil the same purpose. Churches Together in England was undoubtedly an example of ecumenism in action, and a proportion of its smooth practical functioning stemmed from the shared experience of songs that had been sung in charismatic settings a few years previously. 11 Conclusion As mentioned earlier, disentangling the causes of change within the Pentecostal movement is problematic: some changes were brought about by the charismatic movement and others by subtle shifts within society itself. Moreover, the disciplines of theology and sociology function differently in their attribution of causation.39 Sociologically, gatherings comprising Pentecostals and charismatics in small groups or interdenominational services were made possible because British society itself became less stratified and more egalitarian than was the case in the 1920s. Once Pentecostals (often working class) and charismatics 37 38 39

Minehead in the south west of England. http://www.cte.org.uk (accessed 29 July 2015). Thomas F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2008), 121, where events happen in answer to prayer and by human effort.

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(often middle class) met, they influenced each other because they found many experiential similarities but, also, key social differences. For instance, in the 1960s charismatics would happily drink a glass of sherry before a house meeting whereas classical Pentecostals were teetotal. Sometimes, in these meetings, Pentecostals might influence charismatics as, for instance, in relation to the judgement of prophecy where charismatics appeared to be naive in contrast to Pentecostals who were more experienced. Charismatics might and did influence Pentecostalism is relation to fear of the future: whereas Pentecostals might fear tribulation, persecution, and the anti-Christ, charismatics expected revival and the outpouring of the Spirit all over the world. Charismatic optimism drew Pentecostals out of their sectarian shells. In any case, the joint meetings and worship enjoyed by Pentecostals and charismatics demonstrated ecumenism in action rather than in theory. Pentecostals and charismatics made friends first and only later discussed their differences; in the classic ecumenical sequence, learned discussion would have preceded later cooperation. Theologically, this whole social process could be seen as being blown by the winds of the Spirit as part of the unfolding of events in response to the prayer of Jesus in John 17. After the initial phase, formal dialogue between representatives of the Pen­ tecostal and other churches did occur.40 Where church groupings are decentralised or made up of numerous entities of different sizes and weights, formal dialogue is not only harder to organise but its significance more difficult to assess. Ideally, dialogue removes the obstacles to joint activity and mutual recog­ nition, but if ordinary church members have already bypassed these obstacles and if various forms of cooperation have already occurred (e.g. the Marches for Jesus), then dialogue has a slightly different purpose. It will deepen relationships rather than to initiate them. But so far as classical Pentecostals and charismatics are concerned, my impression is that many stylistic changes in both movements were driven by neo-Pentecostalism or Third Wavism. For instance, when one sees an Anglican bishop dressed in a T-shirt and wearing running shoes while leading a conference, it appears that the style of neo-­ Pentecostalism has been adopted.41 Equally when bishops insist on being called only by their Christian names and ignoring ecclesiastical titles, it seems that “social distances” have been broken down by brotherly informality. So we have here a kind of “ecumenism by osmosis” rather than the ecumenism of careful scholarly colloquia.

40 See Pneuma 17, no. 2 (Fall 1995), which is largely devoted to “Pentecostals in dialogue.” 41 An observation from personal experience.

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One should not be surprised by stylistic commonalities because the charismatic movement specifically attempted to bring about inner spiritual renewal rather than the reformation of ecclesiastical hierarchies. What is a surprise is the adoption by charismatics and classical Pentecostals of certain aspects of radical neo-Pentecostal or Third Wavism. Where the activity of church planting fits into the scheme is difficult to pinpoint. But in London charismatic Anglican churches like Holy Trinity Brompton began to plant churches or, at any rate, take over old buildings and put new congregations into them, and the same phenomenon started to occur among classical Pentecostals as well. Interestingly church plants, because they are new, fall outside the established ecclesiastical structures so that it may be difficult to decide under which Bishop a particular church plant should be placed. So, while there might be a stylistic convergence between classical Pentecostals, neo-Pentecostals and charismatics in life style, worship, music, and outlook, this is not the same as identifying a common ecumenical vision among the three groups. At this point variant interpretations are possible. It may be that the common ecumenical vision will also presume structural alignment and formal agreements between historically diverse churches (e.g. over the recognition of the validity of episcopacy by non-episcopal churches). This strong vision of an ecumenical purpose subsumes the notion of diversity within the vision of complete unity. Yet, if one takes the view that the prayer of Jesus in John 17 permits and expects the retention of identity even in the closest unity, then the structural differences between churches which are determinative of identity, may be retained. A theological reading of the evidence of the Pentecostal and charismatic movements of the last century might conclude that the outpouring of the Spirit at the beginning of the 20th century and the second outpouring of Spirit in the 1960s at the point when the charismatic movement came into prominence is to be seen as a double divine impetus to achieve goals determined in heaven and not on earth. Yet, there is something else that needs to be brought into this analysis since the prayer of Jesus in John 17 also is “that the world may believe” (v 21) i.e. that its ecumenical unity is intended to bring about evangelistic success. Ecumenical unity seen in this light is not purely an end in itself but part of the greater end of the extension of the kingdom of God through the conversion of the world. In this respect, then, cooperation between different churches, especially evangelistic cooperation, is a vital outcome of an ecumenical endeavour. Thus the conclusion of this chapter is that the charismatic movement and its radical offspring, neo-Pentecostalism or Third Wavism, helped move classical Pentecostalism in ways interpretable by sociological theory in an

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e­ cumenical direction. At the same time, a theological reading subsuming ­sociological ­theory adds a more profound explanation compatible with the self-­understanding of countless Christians whose frame of reference and ultimate source of meaning is taken from God rather than human institutions and sociological theories. For them the events of the 20th century are conducive to an interpretation in line with the wider purposes of the kingdom of God and the spread of the gospel across the world through an increasingly united church. Bibliography Alexander, Estrelda. Black Fire: One Hundred Years of African American Pentecostalism. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2011. Barker, David, Loek Halman, and Astrid Vloet. The European Values Study 1981–1990. London: Gordon Cook Foundation, 1992. Bundy, David. “Visions of Apostolic Mission: Scandinavian Pentecostal Mission to 1935.” PhD diss., University of Uppsala, 2009. Ediger, Gerald C. “The Proto-Genesis of the March for Jesus Movement, 1970–87.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 12, no. 2 (2004): 247–75. Gee, Donald. Wind and Flame. Croydon: Assemblies of God Publishing House, 1967. Gee, Donald. “Billy Graham in London.” Pentecost 27 (March 1954). Gee, Donald. “For Your Information.” Pentecost 1 (Sept 1947). Harper, Michael. As at the Beginning. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1965. Hastings, A. A History of English Christianity. London: Collins, 1987. Hocken, P.D. “Charismatic Movement.” In New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements. Edited by S.M. Burgess and E.M. van der Maas. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002. Hollenweger, W.J. Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997. Kay, William K. Pentecostalism: Core Text. London: SCM, 2009. Kay, William K. Pentecostals in Britain. Carlisle: Paternoster, 2000. Menzies, William W. Anointed to Serve: The Story of the Assemblies of God. 2 Vols. Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1971. Popper, K.R. The Open Society and Its Enemies, 5th edition. 2 Vols. London: Routledge, 1966. Robeck, Cecil M. “The Assemblies of God and Ecumenical Cooperation.” In Pentecostalism in Context: Essays in Honour of William W. Menzies. Edited by Wonsuk Ma and Robert P. Menzies. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997. “‘Sex Cult’ Leaves 150 in Need of Counselling.” The Independent (August 23, 1995).

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Spittler, R.P. “David Johannes du Plessis.” In New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements. Edited by S.M. Burgess and E.M. van der Maas. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002. Sutton, M.A. Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2009. Synan, Vinson. “Charismatic Renewal Enters the Mainline Churches.” In The Century of the Holy Spirit. Nashville, TN: Nelson, 2001. Torrance, Thomas F. Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ. Carlisle: Paternoster, 2008. Troeltsch, E. The Social Teaching of Christian Churches. London: Macmillan, 1931. Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Scribner, 2003. Wilson, B.R. Religion in Secular Society. London: Watts & Co, 1966. Wilson, B.R. “A Typology of Sects in a Dynamic and Comparative Perspective.” Archives de Sociologie de Religion 16 (1963): 49–63. Ziefle, Joshua R. David du Plessis and the Assemblies of God. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Alpha Course. http://www.alpha.org (accessed 23 June, 2015). Churches Together in England. http://www.cte.org.uk (accessed 29 July 2015). Full Gospel Business Men’s International. http://www.fgbmfi.org/about-q10072Overview.aspx (accessed 23 June 2015). Spring Harvest. http://springharvest.org/about/beliefs/ (accessed 31 July, 2015).

Chapter 5

Pentecostal Participation in Ecumenical Dialogues: Bilateral and Multilateral, Local and Global Wolfgang Vondey In the pursuit of Christian unity, the diverse communities typically subsumed under the phrase “Pentecostalism” or “Pentecostal movement” represent a unique element in the contemporary ecumenical landscape.1 Pentecostalism emerged out of an ecumenical necessity to find unity among Wesleyan, Holiness, Reformed, Restorationist, Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, Brethren, congregational, and, eventually, mainline Christian traditions, at the same time as the modern ecumenical movement emerged during the early twentieth century.2 Unlike the many existing churches that originated as a consequence of separations resulting from doctrinal and practical differences, Pentecostals did not organize or institutionalize in deliberate response to particular ecclesiastical patterns.3 Instead, Pentecostals worldwide have emerged in both continuity and discontinuity with various existing doctrines, practices, rituals, disciplines, spiritualities, and institutional forms, and the resulting character of global Pentecostalism does not readily form a homogeneous ecumenical picture. Pentecostal participation in ecumenical activities for almost one hundred years has focused on building and strengthening relationships on the local and global levels.4 Nonetheless, Pentecostal voices are frequently absent 1 See Wolfgang Vondey, Pentecostalism: A Guide for the Perplexed (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2013). 2 See Allan Heaton Anderson, To the Ends of the Earth: Pentecostalism and the Transformation of World Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Shane Clifton, “Ecumenism from the Bottom Up: A Pentecostal Perspective,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 47, no. 4 (2012): 576–92; Steven T. Hoskins, “A Forgotten Ecumenical Mo(ve)ment in Music City usa: J.O. McClurkan, N.J. Holmes, and the Pentecostal Mission Conventions of 1901–1907,” Wesleyan Theological Journal 43, no. 2 (2008): 193–206; Jeffrey Gros, “Pentecostal Engagement in the Wider Christian Community.” Mid-Stream: The Ecumenical Movement Today 38, no. 4 (1999): 26–47. 3 Cf. Wolfgang Vondey, “The Denomination in Classical and Global Pentecostal Ecclesiology: A Historical and Theological Contribution,” in Denominations: Assessing an Ecclesiological Category, ed. Paul M. Collins and Barry Ensign-George (New York: Continuum, 2010), 100–16. 4 See Wolfgang Vondey, Pentecostalism and Christian Unity, vol. 2, Building and Strengthening Relationships (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2014).

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from anthologies of the ecumenical movement and historiographies of early twentieth century ecumenism.5 The reasons for this neglect are rooted in the ecumenical self-understanding of the Pentecostal movement itself: embedded in the Pentecostal experience are the concrete challenges of the ecumenical movement. For many, Pentecostals represent an ecumenical challenge, at best, an ecumenical menace, at worst.6 The ecumenical movement and the Pentecostal movement seem to represent different developments that became two divergent Christian traditions.7 This essay intends to show that contrary to widespread opinion, Pentecostals were active in the ecumenical movement throughout the twentieth century, and their way of ecumenical activity represents a key to understanding the challenges and opportunities of ecumenical dialogues. I argue that the dominant structural and theological challenges faced by Pentecostals are concentrated in the neglect of ecclesiology (the understanding of and contribution to the church by Pentecostals), in general, and of Pentecostal ecclesiality (aspects that identify Pentecostals as belonging to the church), in particular. The chapter begins with an introduction to Pentecostal attitudes toward participation in ecumenical activities since the rise of classical Pentecostalism, followed by a survey mapping current local and global ecumenical activities with Pentecostal participation. The results yielded by this presentation allow for a critical analysis of conciliar forms of ecumenical dialogue. A theological assessment of ecumenical conversations with Pentecostalism concludes the essay. 1

Pentecostal Attitudes toward Ecumenical Activities

The first major study, and still the standard of research, on the global Pentecostal movement surprises with the assessment that Pentecostalism started in most places as an ecumenical renewal movement.8 Pentecostal groups 5 See Thomas E. FitzGerald, The Ecumenical Movement: An Introductory History (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004); Michael Kinnamon and Brian E. Cope (eds.), The Ecumenical Movement: An Anthology of Key Texts and Voices (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997); Ruth Rouse and Stephen Charles Neill (eds.), A History of the Ecumenical Movement, 1517–1948 (London: spck, 1954). 6 See Jürgen Moltmann and Karl-Joseph Kuschel (eds.), Pentecostal Movements as an Ecumenical Challenge, Concilium 1996/3 (London: scm Press, 1996). 7 Harold D. Hunter, “Global Pentecostalism and Ecumenism: Two Movements of the Holy Spirit?” in Pentecostalism and Christian Unity: Ecumenical Documents and Critical Assessments, ed. Wolfgang Vondey (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2010), 20–33. 8 Walter J. Hollenweger, “Handbuch der Pfingstbewegung” (Ph.d. diss., University of Zürich, 1965–1967).

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t­ypically emerged from ecumenical encounters that nourished an initial atmosphere of hope: the outpouring of the Holy Spirit was seen as a sign of the impending unity of Christians. However, the optimism accompanying the birth of modern Pentecostalism and resulting in widespread efforts toward Christian unity was soon followed by scepticism and exclusion.9 The young and volatile Pentecostal fellowships, which had not yet institutionalized and established themselves in the existing ecclesiastical landscape, were denied the opportunity to realize the understanding of their own ecclesiality amidst a mutually inclusive ecumenical setting. The main motivation for the original optimism among Pentecostals came immediately from the shared experience of the Holy Spirit. The outpouring of the Spirit—not the formation of a Pentecostal movement—was seen as the expression of the eschatological realization that God would bring unity to the churches. This persuasion was captured by such labels as “Pentecostal,” “Apostolic Faith,” or “Latter Rain,” titles commonly used by the groups themselves in order to express the continuity of their experiences with Christian history and their eschatological anticipation of a forthcoming universal restoration of all of God’s people.10 The optimism among Pentecostals was undergirded by a surprisingly firm understanding of the place of Pentecostalism among the existing churches: important to the new movement was a Pentecostal ecclesiology insofar as this nurtured and was nurtured by the unity of all churches. This ecumenical self-understanding interpreted the events of the day of Pentecost in optimistic eschatological expectation of the full realization of the kingdom of God already manifested in the present spiritual unity of all believers. The Pentecostal optimism was far from a romanticized idea of abstract spiritual unity. Underlying the Pentecostal endeavors was the formation of a genuine “ecclesiology” (in the sense of a spiritual reality finding expression in worship, ministry, and fellowship) in need of maturation and articulation. Pentecostals hesitated to apply the title “church” or “denomination” to themselves or to the movement as a whole and criticized the “institutionalism,” “formalism,” “ecclesiasticism,” and “denominationalism” among the existing

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Douglas Jacobsen, “The Ambivalent Ecumenical Impulses in Early Pentecostal Theology in North America,” in Vondey, Pentecostalism and Christian Unity, vol. 1, 3–19; Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., “Pentecostals and the Apostolic Faith: Implications for Ecumenism,” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 9, no. 1 (1986): 61–84; Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, “‘Anonymous Ecumenists?’ Pentecostals and the Struggle for Christian Unity,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 37, no. 1 (2000): 13–27. Donald W. Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1987), 23–28.

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churches.11 Their criticism was directed at an existing ecclesiology in which Pentecostals found the churches to be nothing more than “different religious organizations each enclosed by its own particular sectarian fence.”12 The roots of this criticism emerged from an ecumenical reading of history that fueled a deep-seated restorationist mindset and vehement eschatological expectation. The dominant ecclesiastical patterns were criticized because Pentecostals saw the church as fundamentally an eschatological, not doctrinal, community, and the apparent trend toward denominational separation inherent in the different ecclesiastical labels contradicted their eschatological and ecumenical expectations. Pentecostals understood themselves as a movement transforming the many churches into the one church.13 A single church, denomination, or even the Pentecostal movement as a whole, were seen as transitory and expected to be surpassed by the continuing outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the resulting restoration of Christian unity. At the same time, the unprecedented growth and expansion of Pentecostalism worldwide during the first decades of the twentieth century raised concerns about the ecclesiality of the movement, since Pentecostals had (and still have) not formulated a comprehensive ecclesiology of the movement.14 Pentecostalism was shaping itself into a global movement that reached far beyond the ecclesiastical confines, theological ideals, and eschatological expectations of the original revivals. The debates led to an increasing focus on matters of institutional endurance, essential concerns of the organization and structural composition of Pentecostals, which suppressed broader ecclesiological conversations and challenged optimistic ecumenical attitudes. As a result, Pentecostals became hesitant toward ecumenical practices, still embracing the goal of Christian unity but questioning the means by which Pentecostals were to participate in formal ecumenical activities.15 This ecumenical ambivalence resulted from a number of internal and external factors contributing to the 11 12 13 14 15

William F. Carothers, “Position of the Old ‘Movement,’” The Weekly Evangel no. 127 (February 19, 1916): 5. L.M. Conway, “United We Stand, Divided We Fall,” The Weekly Evangel, no. 185 (April 14, 1917): 5. Cf. Wolfgang Vondey, “Pentecostals and Ecumenism: Becoming the Church as a Pursuit of Christian Unity,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 11, no. 4 (2011): 318–30. Cf. Wolfgang Vondey, “The Unity and Diversity of Pentecostal Theology: A Brief Survey for the Ecumenical Community in the West,” Ecclesiology 10, no. 1 (2014): 76–100. Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., “Ecumenism,” in Studying Global Pentecostalism: Theories and Methods, ed. Allan Anderson et al. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010), 286–307; Jacobsen, “The Ambivalent Ecumenical Impulses,” 4–13.

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ecclesiastical formation of the Pentecostal movement, which ultimately led to a general sense of ecumenical skepticism. The change of attitude was partly the result of long-term effects of the primitivist or restorationist impulse among Pentecostals that emphasized the need for a return to the practices of the apostolic community and was rooted in a critical evaluation of contemporary Christian practices.16 Pentecostals criticized the established traditions for showing little evidence of participating in the unity of the Spirit but deemphasizing the work of the Holy Spirit, stifling spiritual growth, and modifying original forms of Christian unity and fellowship.17 On the other hand, an increasingly widespread hostility toward Pentecostals dampened all but the most passionate ecumenical ambitions. Pentecostal practices were subject to ridicule and branded as immoral, childish, deluded, frivolous, insane, and even demonic.18 Persecution and violent attacks by members of the established churches were a daily occurrence, both at the public revivals and the private homes of Pentecostal believers.19 In return, the more Pentecostals felt ostracized by the traditional churches, the more their ecumenical hopes were frustrated. Restorationist tendencies spread, new prejudices emerged, and the young Pentecostal movement soon entered a phase of ecumenical exclusivism. Pentecostals assembled in alternative missionary and ecumenical gatherings of their own.20 The quarrel during the middle of the century unfolded not with the theological vision of the ecumenical movement but with its institutional realization and resistance to Pentecostalism. Accentuating the Pentecostal concerns about the institutionalization of ecumenical efforts were internal debates and divisions. The rapidly expanding movement divided over disagreements on doctrine, personalities, church politics, and praxis. By the 1920s, Pentecostalism had become a composition of several branches of organized ecclesiastical fellowships that looked with suspicion at the inconsistencies, failures, and counterfeits that characterized 16 17 18 19 20

Grant Wacker, “Playing for Keeps: The Primitivist Impulse in Early Pentecostalism,” in The American Quest for the Primitive Church, ed. Richard Τ. Hughes (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 196–219. D. William Faupel, The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought, Journal of Pentecostal Theology Supplement 10 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1996), 44–76. Horace S. Ward, “The Anti-Pentecostal Argument,” in Aspects of Pentecostal-Charismatic Origins, ed. Vinson Synan (Plainfield: Logos International, 1975), 99–122. Cf. Charles W. Conn, Like a Mighty Army: The History of the Church of God. Definitive Edition (Cleveland, TN: Pathway, 1994), 29–41. Cf. Heather D. Curtis, “Pentecostal Missions and the Changing Character of Global Christianity,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 36, no. 3 (2012): 122–28.

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some parts of the movement.21 The ecumenical hesitancy was soon overshadowed by the structural and organizational demands of the rapidly dispersing movement that led Pentecostals to abandon their initial rejection of organized ecclesiastical patterns and to enter the scene of Protestant denominationalism.22 Although the movement did not become antagonistic to ecumenical participation, the accommodation of Pentecostal ecclesiality in order to allow for the existence of multiple “churches” had a dramatic effect on the movement’s ecumenical vision and further consolidated internal divisions and the exclusivist attitude toward many non-Pentecostal communities.23 Closer alignment with denominations and institutions critical of the organized ecumenical movement, such as the National Association of Evangelicals founded in 1942, forced many Pentecostals to abandon the ecumenical activities in which they had participated.24 Echoing the wider problems in the ecumenical movement toward the middle of the twentieth century, the Pentecostal movement withdrew to an idealized form of “spiritual” ecumenism, in which the Spirit remained the source of unity among the churches albeit without the necessity to participate in concrete ecumenical activities. After the Second World War, Pentecostals slowly entered into organized ecumenical relationships. The lingering hesitancy among Pentecostals initially directed the ecumenical attention primarily toward the development of worldwide cooperation among themselves, resulting in the first Pentecostal World Conference in 1947, followed by subsequent conferences typically every three years. The two central figures of these endeavors, the British Pentecostal, Donald Gee (1891–1966), and the South African Pentecostal, David J. du Plessis (1905–87), emerged as the leading forces in efforts to organize the ecumenical commitment among Pentecostals.25 The global presence of Pentecostalism gradually revived interest in ecumenical activities both with and among ­Pentecostals. Du Plessis’s connections with the World Council of Churches, the Roman Catholic Church, and the charismatic movement in the historic 21

Vinson Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Movement in the United States (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971), 141–63. 22 Vondey, “The Denomination in Classical and Global Pentecostalism,” 156–58. 23 Wolfgang Vondey, Beyond Pentecostalism: The Crisis of Global Christianity and the Renewal of the Theological Agenda, Pentecostal Manifestos 3 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 155–59. 24 Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., “The Assemblies of God and Ecumenical Cooperation 1920–1965,” in Pentecostalism in Context: Essays in Honor of William W. Menzies, ed. Wonsuk Ma and Robert P. Menzies (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1997), 107–50. 25 Robeck, “Pentecostals and the Apostolic Faith,” 65–66; Walter Hollenweger, “Two Extraordinary Pentecostal Ecumenists: The Letters of Donald Gee and David Du Plessis,” Ecumenical Review 52, no. 3 (2000): 391–402.

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churches ultimately initiated the first official dialogue between classical Pentecostals and the Roman Catholic Church, a ground-breaking event that became the model for subsequent ecumenical conversations with Pentecostals. Similar to the ecumenical movement, Pentecostals experienced changes in leadership that carried significant ecclesiastical implications. New generations of classical Pentecostals and the so-called neo-Pentecostals and thirdwave Pentecostals consolidated efforts to participate in organized ecumenical activities. The development of Pentecostal scholarship gradually contributed to equipping Pentecostals for participation in ecumenical conversations and to raising a new generation of ecumenical Pentecostal scholars.26 The Society for Pentecostal Studies was established in 1970 as a forum of scholars, teachers, ministers, and lay persons that opened up new occasions for Pentecostals and non-Pentecostal participants to engage in various national and international ecumenical activities.27 The membership of the Society has gradually expanded beyond a purely Pentecostal constituency, the annual meetings host informal dialogue sessions with other traditions, including a long-standing Roman Catholic-Pentecostal conversation, and an interest group in ecumenical studies today serves as an organized ecumenical think tank among Pentecostals.28 Similar societies, research networks, and publications have been established in Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania and have significantly altered the often dominant perception of Pentecostalism as antithetical to theological, intellectual, and ecumenical pursuits. The most significant resemblance between the ecumenical and Pentecostal movements is perhaps the visible expansion and evolution of both movements during the second half of the twentieth century. The rise of the charismatic movements in the historic churches and the emergence of Pentecostalism in the global South has played a significant role in making these churches aware of Pentecostalism and of facilitating new contacts between Pentecostals and these traditions. Nonetheless, official ecumenical relationships emerged only gradually. The integration of the Commissions on Life and Work and Faith and Order into a World Council of Churches (1948) on the side of the ecumenical movement was echoed by the highly visible institutionalization, diversification, upward mobility, and ecumenical significance of the Pentecostal 26 27

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Cf. Wolfgang Vondey and Martin W. Mittelstadt (eds.), The Theology of Amos Yong and the New Face of Pentecostal Scholarship: Passion for the Spirit (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 4–9. Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., “Pentecostals and Christian Unity: Facing the Challenge,” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 26, no. 2 (2004): 307–38; Jerry L. Sandidge, Roman Catholic/Pentecostal Dialogue (1977–1982): A Study in Developing Ecumenism, vol. 1 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1987), 16–18. See Vondey, Pentecostalism and Christian Unity, vol. 1, ix–x.

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­ ovement. Official and semi-official associations with national councils, ecum menical commissions, and fellowships worldwide contribute to reconciliation and organization among Pentecostal churches, which in turn have broadened the foundation and support for ecumenical activities. Interest in Pentecostal spirituality and practices among the established churches, especially in the form of the Charismatic movement in the mainline traditions, has further opened Pentecostalism to worldwide ecumenical recognition.29 A gradual shift in the center of ecumenical attention from dominant Anglo-European concerns to issues worldwide has directed ecumenical attention to the presence of Pentecostals. In turn, Pentecostals have entered into diverse communication and formal conversations on the local and global ecumenical agenda. Global interest in the ecumenical movement has emerged in part because of the ubiquitous ecumenical presence of the Pentecostal movement. The lingering absence of a mature ecclesiology and its articulation since the beginning of the Pentecostal movement remains one of the foremost ecumenical challenges. 2

Local and Global Ecumenical Activities with Pentecostal Participation

Pentecostals today participate in a variety of local and global, bilateral and multilateral conversations. A model for conciliar dialogue, by far the most significant long-term ecumenical commitment among Pentecostals is the international Roman Catholic-Pentecostal dialogue. The conversations have addressed a large and diverse array of topics and are now in their fifth decade.30 Originating in the early 1970s, the first round of conversations (1972–76) explored ­mutual concerns of Pentecostal and Catholic practices, such as ­Christian initiation, Spirit baptism, spiritual gifts, and worship.31 A restructured P ­ entecostal team entered into more concise doctrinal conversations during the second 29

Allan H. Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 249–53. 30 See Jelle Creemers, “Ecumenical Dialogue with a Non-Instituional Movement: A Systematic-­Historical Analysis of Pentecostal Involvement in the International Roman Catholic-Classical Pentecostal Dialogue (1972–2007),” (Ph.d. diss., Evangelische Theologische Faculteit, Leuven, 2014), 113–223; Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Spiritus Ubi Vult Spirat: Pneumatology in Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue (1972–1989) (Helsinki: Luther-­ Agricola-Society, 1998); Sandidge, Roman Catholic/Pentecostal Dialogue. 31 The documents of the dialogues can be found in Vondey, Pentecostalism and Christian Unity, 2 vols.

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phase (1977–82), including discussions on the relationship of Scripture and tradition, faith and reason, speaking in tongues, divine healing, and the role of Mary. The third round (1985–89) produced the widely acclaimed document, Perspectives on Koinonia, focusing on the Word of God, unity and fellowship, the sacraments, and the communion of saints. In its fourth quinquennium (1990–97), the dialogue addressed the challenging concerns of evangelization, proselytism, as well as the opportunities and challenges of common witness.32 The fifth phase (1998–2006) produced the massive document, On Becoming a Christian, focusing on conversion, faith and Christian initiation, Christian formation and discipleship, Spirit baptism, and experience in Christian life and community. During the latest stage of discussion (2007–15), the conversation highlighted particular concerns among Latin American bishops with attention to the spiritual significance, pastoral implications, and discernment of spiritual gifts in the church. The general theme of the sixth phase was “Charisms in the Church: Their Spiritual Significance, Discernment, and Pastoral Implications.” The final report, “‘Do Not Quench the Spirit’: Charisms in the Life and Mission of the Church,” discusses the common ground for the exercise of spiritual gifts, spiritual discernment, healing, and prophecy. The longstanding dialogue has significantly strengthened the ties between Pentecostals and the Roman Catholic Church, although the conversations have also been met with significant criticism and skepticism on both sides.33 On the one hand, the dialogue has helped Pentecostals understand how to perceive and formulate their own identity, strengthening their ecumenical commitment, and leading to dialogue with other mainline Protestant bodies. On the other hand, the virtual absence of support structures for and reception of the dialogue by the Pentecostal movement at large has also shown the boundaries of ecumenical involvement.34 Global ecumenical conversations with Protestant traditions emerged gradually at the end of the twentieth century. Since 1991, Pentecostals have ­participated in the annual conference of Secretaries of Christian World Communions, which brings together representatives from diverse Christian traditions to discuss their work and fellowship.35 From these meetings sprang the 32 33 34 35

See Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Ad Ultimum Terrae: Evangelization, Proselytism, and Common Witness in the Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue (1990–1997) (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1999). See Creemers, “Ecumenical Dialogue,” 68–83. Cf. Wolfgang Vondey, “Presuppositions for Pentecostal Engagement in Ecumenical Dialogue,” Exchange: Journal for Missiological and Ecumenical Research 30, no. 4 (2001): 344–58. See Lukas Vischer, “World Communions, the wcc, and the Ecumenical Movement,” The Ecumenical Review 54 (2002): 142–61.

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initial spark for the international dialogue between Pentecostals and the World Communion of Reformed Churches, which focused in the first round of discussions (1996–2000) immediately on mature theological themes.36 The final report, “Word and Spirit, Church and World,” discusses a shared approach to the theology of the Word and the Spirit in the context of the Trinity, creation, culture and the church, the mission of the Holy Spirit, and the kingdom of God.37 The meetings continued in a decade-long second round (2001–11) and addressed issues related to experience in Christian faith and life with particular focus on worship, discipleship, community, and justice.38 A third round of conversations began in 2014 with focus on mission and salvation and five projected meetings in this round of dialogue. Unofficial deliberations between Pentecostals and the Lutheran World Federation began in 2005 and have explored potential themes for dialogue between the traditions. Conversations are concerned less with explorations of traditional doctrinal themes, which often force Pentecostals to speak a different theological language, than with allowing space for a genuine expression of faith from Pentecostal perspectives. A focus on how we encounter Christ and concerns voiced about the mutuality of shared Christian experience have also made room for genuine explorations of mutual practices of worship, proclamation, sacraments, and spiritual gifts.39 As a result of the conversations, the Lutheran World Federation approved pursuing formal dialogue at the international level with trinitarian Pentecostals, which began in 2016. Other ecumenical activities with Pentecostal participation serve primarily as mutual introductions and explorations of potential conversations. This phase is particularly important in the initial stages of informal conversations. Representatives from the Baptist World Alliance and the Pentecostal World Fellowship held an ecumenical conference in Ecuador in 2012 to explore how 36 37

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Frank D. Macchia, “Spirit, Word, and Kingdom: Theological Reflections on the Pentecostal/Reformed Dialogue,” Ecumenical Trends 30, no. 3 (2001): 33–39; Vondey, Pentecostalism and Christian Unity, 199–227. See “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,” in Vondey, Pentecostalism and Christian Unity, vol. 1, 199–227. See “Experience in Christian Faith and Life: Worship, Discipleship, Discernment, Community, and Justice. The Report of the International Dialogue between Representatives of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and Some Classical Pentecostal Churches and Leaders,” in Vondey, Pentecostalism and Christian Unity, vol. 2, 217–67. Institute for Ecumenical Research, The David du Plessis Center for Christian Spirituality, and The European Pentecostal Charismatic Research Association (eds.), Lutherans and Pentecostals in Dialogue (Strasbourg: Institute for Ecumenical Research, 2010), 7–21.

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Baptists and Pentecostals can engage in conversations. Informal meetings of Pentecostals with the Synodal Committee for Inter-Orthodox and InterChristian Affairs of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople began in 2010. And Pentecostals are exploring possible conversations with the Salvation Army. Local, national, and international forms of dialogue and institutional forms of conversation continue to develop among small groups, churches, congregations, and individuals. Many of these new conversations began under the pioneering work of Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., the most visible representative of an ecumenically deliberate Pentecostalism since Du Plessis, and other dedicated individuals whose persistent initiative has aided efforts to explore official bilateral and multilateral conversations. Much of the ecumenical initiative among Pentecostals today draws attention to personal and informal meetings that are often perceived as less invasive and more genuine to the status quo of the participating traditions. An important example highlighting the significance of developing both institutionalized forms of ecumenism and informal encounters is the growing involvement of Pentecostal groups in the World Council of Churches (wcc). Formal commitments to the organization of the wcc came in the 1960s, when the Pentecostal Church of Chile and the Pentecostal Mission Church of Chile joined the Council.40 Several other Pentecostal churches in Latin America, Africa, and North America followed the example, although the majority of Pentecostals does not seem to favor official membership status.41 Because the Nairobi Assembly in 1975 directed particular attention to the worldwide charismatic renewal, and the Consultation on the Significance of the Charismatic Renewal for the Churches in 1980 helped bring Pentecostal concerns to the center floor, Pentecostals were enabled to participate in the work of the Commission on Faith and Order and in national and international meetings and conversations of the wcc.42 Commitments were further strengthened at the Assembly in Canberra, in 1991, with special attention given to ecumenical relationships with Pentecostal and Charismatic movements.43 The recognizable involvement of Pentecostals has led to the formation of the Joint Consultative Group of the wcc and Pentecostal Churches in 2000, an ecumenical forum that meets annually 40

Carmelo E. Álvarez, “Joining the World Council of Churches: The Ecumenical Story of Pentecostalism in Chile,” in Vondey, Pentecostalism and Christian Unity, vol. 1, 34–45. 41 Sandidge, Roman Catholic/Pentecostal Dialogue, vol. 1, 13–14. 42 Hubert van Beek (ed.), A Handbook of Churches and Councils. Profiles of Ecumenical ­Relationships (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2006); Gros, “Pentecostal Engagement,” 33–35. 43 Walter J. Hollenweger, Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004), 377–84.

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and has opened the doors for Pentecostal contributions in various ecumenical programs and activities, particularly the work on unity, mission, evangelism, and spirituality, and the commissions on Faith and Order and World Mission and Evangelism.44 However, despite the influence these encounters have had on the continuing formation of ecumenical attitudes among Pentecostals, the formal engagement with the wcc remains a reason for controversy and presents a significant ecumenical challenge. Latin America has demonstrated a strong ecumenical commitment among Pentecostals since the middle of the twentieth century. The pioneering of formal membership of Pentecostal churches in the wcc directed attention to the continent and revealed dynamic forms of regional and national ecumenical activities. Pentecostal churches contributed significantly to the formation of the Latin American Council of Churches (clai) in 1982 and the ­all-Latin American Pentecostal Encounters (epla) since 1988 that eventually led to the founding of the Latin American Evangelical Pentecostal Commission (cepla). Many Pentecostals are active in the Evangelical Union of Latin America (unelam), the Evangelical Christian Aid (ace), the Evangelical Service for ­Ecumenical Development (sepade), and other ecumenical organizations across the continent.45 Transnational meetings of several Latin American Pentecostal ­consultations have also been convened by the wcc and in cooperation with clai in Brazil, Venezuela, Peru, and Cuba.46 The experience of ecumenical practices in these organized national and transnational efforts depends largely on support by Pentecostal churches and denominations and on the formal ecumenical commitment in Pentecostal base communities.47 The dominance of Pentecostals in Latin America has created a unique situation of organizational commitment and breadth of ecumenical involvements. In contrast, Africa and Asia, although increasingly the host of international ecumenical dialogues, are still lacking national and transnational fellowships among Pentecostals, and an indigenous Pentecostal identity emerges only slowly among the many Pentecostal mission churches.48 The differences s­ uggest 44 45 46 47 48

Hubert van Beek, “Pentecostals-Ecumenicals Dialogue,” in Fruitful in this Land: Pluralism, Dialogue, and Healing in Migrant Pentecostalism, ed. Andre Droogers, Cornelis van der Laan, and W. van Laar (Geneva: wcc, 2006), 81–92. Cf. Wolfgang Vondey, “Pentecostalism and Ecumenism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Pentecostalism, ed. Amos Yong and Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 273–93. Álvarez, “Joining the World Council of Churches,” 35–43. Roger Cabezas, clai: Experiencia de un ecumenismo latinoamericano de base (Lima: clai, 1982). See John M. Prior, “The Challenge of the Pentecostals in Asia, Part One, Pentecostal Movements in Asia,” Exchange 36, no. 1 (2007): 6–40; Allan H. Anderson, “The Struggle for Unity in Pentecostal Mission Churches,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 82 (1993): 67–77.

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that sociopolitical and economic engagements are formative for ecumenical commitments among Pentecostals and for their ecumenical recognition. The importance of existing networks and formal commitments to Christian unity, on the one hand, and the significance of informal and less invasive initiatives favoured in recent years, on the other, should also not be underestimated. The desire to participate in more open and less institutional ecumenical endeavours has led Pentecostals to new and alternative forms of ecumenical relations, often at the demand to taking on leadership positions.49 A dominant example is the Global Christian Forum established in 2000 and rapidly gathering participants from all Christian traditions under a loose institutional umbrella.50 Unlike conciliar forms of organized dialogue, these conversations begin by sharing the testimonies of each person’s faith journey and focus on establishing relationships. Immediate intentions are directed at contributing to mutual understanding, overcoming existing stereotypes, encouraging communication, and fostering ecumenical fellowship rather than doctrinal agreement or organizational unity. Pentecostal participation in the Global ­Christian Forum and its steering committee has created a new kind of ecumenical environment that responds not only to the limitations of traditional bilateral ­dialogues and the lack of informal opportunities for broader ecumenical gatherings but also speaks to the dramatic shift of the churches worldwide toward the East and the global South. From a Pentecostal perspective, the informal environment and testimonial conversations are more genuine to Pentecostal forms of self-expression and promise to invite greater Pentecostal interest in fostering ecumenical relationships. Pentecostals today are participating in a variety of local and global, bilateral and multilateral conversations spanning from the grass-roots level to regional, national, and international opportunities. While the West and northern hemisphere have grown accustomed to Pentecostal groups, Pentecostalism continues to represent a particular challenge to the older historic churches across the global South and in new Christian environments in the East.51 ­Ecumenical ­activities in these areas depend as much on the concrete engagement of ­pastors and congregations as on participation in existing national forums and

49 Cf. Vondey, “Pentecostalism and Ecumenism,” 274–80. 50 See Hubert van Beek (ed.), Revisioning Christian Unity. The Global Christian Forum (­Oxford: Regnum, 2009); Richard Howell (ed.), Global Christian Forum. Transforming Ecumenism (New Delhi: Evangelical Fellowship of India, 2007). 51 Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., “The Challenge Pentecostalism Poses to the Quest for Ecclesial Unity,” in Kirche in ökumenischer Perspektive: Kardinal Walter Kasper zum 70. Geburtstag, eds. ­Peter Walter, Klaus Krämer, and George Augustin (Freiburg: Herder, 2003), 306–20.

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o­ rganizations and the forging of new opportunities.52 For example, an extensive dialogue between American Oneness and trinitarian Pentecostals was conducted 2000–2007, broaching the unique doctrinal tensions that characterize the ecumenical relations within Pentecostalism, yet without contributions from large Oneness constituencies in China or Ethiopia.53 The ­Mennonite Church usa has been cultivating a relationship with the Church of God, a Pentecostal denomination based in Cleveland, Tennessee, since 2005.54 Yet, more work needs to be done to extend the relationship to Pentecostals and Mennonites at large. More recently, the Consultation on Believers’ Baptism in Jamaica included prominent Pentecostal involvement, although without the ­African Instituted Churches.55 Largely unexplored are also differences between Afro-American and Caucasian Pentecostalism in North America, ecumenical distinctives among Pentecostals on the African continent, and the effects of Scandinavian congregationalism on ecumenical relations with Pentecostals. The dominance of conciliar institutional dialogue, not only in the West, represents undoubtedly the greatest challenges to global Pentecostal participation in ecumenical affairs. The remainder of this essay addresses the structural and theological challenges surrounding the absence of an articulated ecclesiology and evaluates their shared impact on the ecumenical movement. 3

A Critical Analysis of Conciliar Institutional Dialogue with Pentecostal Participation

The dominant form of conciliar institutional dialogue presents the greatest structural challenge to the realization of continued Pentecostal participation in ecumenism. This challenge is composed of three interrelated problems faced by Pentecostals: (1) denominationalism and the lack of a shared ecclesiology, (2) global diversity and the problem of ecumenical representation, (3) the nature of Pentecostal doctrine and the incompatibility of propositional 52 53 54 55

See Richard Shaull and Waldo Cesar, Pentecostalism and the Future of the Christian Churches: Promises, Limitations, Challenges (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000). See Wolfgang Vondey, “Oneness and Trinitarian Pentecostalism: Critical Dialogue on the Ecumenical Creeds,” One in Christ 44, no. 1 (2010): 86–102. Mennonite Church usa, “Mennonites, Church of God continue to build relationship,” available at http://mennoniteusa.org/news/mennonites-church-of-god-continue-to-build -relationship/, accessed August 1, 2015/. “Consultation on Believers’ Baptism, Kingston, Jamaica (January 2015),” available at https://www.mwc-cmm.org/sites/default/files/website_files/believers_baptism_consultation_final_2_en.pdf, accessed August 1, 2015.

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statements, and (4) the reception of ecumenical conversations and the challenges of integration. (1) From its origins, Pentecostalism was designated as a movement rather than a church. While Pentecostal pioneers rejected denominational patterns and saw their own identity in radical opposition to the historical consciousness of the established ecclesiastical traditions, the demands for organization, coherence, and unity as a movement directed Pentecostals eventually to denominational identities.56 The result today is a myriad of Pentecostal denominations, often with diverse doctrines and ­theological practices. An ecclesiology acceptable to the conglomerate mass often ecclesiastically labelled as “Pentecostalisms,” in the plural, is still in development.57 Ecclesiology and ecclesiastical and ecumenical history remain underrepresented topics among Pentecostals.58 This neglect also includes a general lack of knowledge among Pentecostals of the movement at large and the challenges of Pentecostalism as a global Christian tradition.59 For these reasons, official dialogues are carried out strictly speaking only with select representatives of some Pentecostal churches, more often with Pentecostal scholars than church leaders, and restricted to Pentecostal denominations that are open to establishing official ecumenical ties. (2) The global diversity and denominational problematic has left Pentecostals with few organizations that can transcend the denominational divide and represent a kind of world Pentecostalism. However, supra-­ denominational organizations, such as the Pentecostal World Fellowship, possess no doctrinal authority and show little interest in participating in integrative theological dialogue.60 Although most conciliar dialogues claim to conduct conversations with representatives of “classical Pentecostalism,” this demarcation labels what is now a transitional entity in the development of global Pentecostalism.61 The majority of global Pentecostal and charismatic movements does not strictly represent the North 56 57

58 59 60 61

Vondey, “The Denomination,” 100–116. See Andy Lord, Network Church: A Pentecostal Ecclesiology Shaped by Mission, Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies 11 (Leiden: Brill, 2012); Simon Chan, Pentecostal Ecclesiology: An Essay on the Development of Doctrine, jpt Supplement 38 (Blandford Forum: Deo, 2011); John Christopher Thomas (ed.), Toward a Pentecostal Ecclesiology: The Church and the Fivefold Gospel (Cleveland, TN: cpt Press, 2010). Cf. Robeck, “Ecumenism,” 294–96. Ibid., 296–97. Creemers, “Ecumenical Dialogue,” 53–54. Cf. Vondey, Beyond Pentecostalism, 8–13.

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American form of classical Pentecostal teachings and practices. In addition, the importance of Pentecostalism among the s­ ocial, economic, and politically marginalized is hardly represented at conciliar ecumenical meetings, which require dedicated financial, denominational, intellectual, communicative, logistic, and relational resources often ­unavailable to the global South. Other challenges persist in representing a more balanced ethnic and gender presence at the dialogues.62 The ecclesial image of Pentecostalism in the dialogue reports must therefore always endure verification by the majority of Pentecostals worldwide. (3) Pentecostals struggle with doctrine defined in selective, propositional, and prescriptive terms, because Pentecostal theology is always embedded in experiences of the Holy Spirit that reach the person through the affections and create a spirituality that resists strict theological articulation.63 Unlike the structure of conciliar dialogue, Pentecostal spirituality “moves from experience to testimony to doctrine to theology and back again in an ongoing dynamic that is more implicit than explicit, more oral than written, more affective-rational than principled-rational, more narrative than strictly propositional.”64 Practically, Pentecostals have been outweighed in theological scholarship and ecumenical expertise by their dialogue partners.65 Although each dialogue is unique, the conciliar model of conversations with the Roman Catholic, R ­ eformed, and Lutheran traditions has adopted a dialogical method of pursuing “hard questions and answers” that is most suitable to producing propositional assessment of doctrine.66 The theological method required, on the other hand, is almost experimental in nature as the Pentecostal team has to come to terms with its own theological diversity and its articulation to the other team.67 The initial challenge is the transposition of a shared Pentecostal spirituality into a single doctrinal articulation.68 In contrast, new forms of ecumenical relations, such as the Global Christian Forum, not only face initial challenges to establish a support base, to identify 62 See Creemers, “Ecumenical Dialogue,” 96–102, 315–26. 63 Vondey, Beyond Pentecostalism, 16–46. 64 Steven Jack Land, Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom, jpt Supplement 1 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 46. 65 Cf. Sandidge, Roman Catholic/Pentecostal Dialogue, vol. 1, 123. 66 Creemers, “Ecumenical Dialogue,” 115–223. 67 Ibid., 225–93. 68 See Karen Jorgenson Murphy, “On Becoming a Christian: The Fifth Quinquennium of the International Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue in Historical-Theological Perspective” (Ph.D. diss., Fuller Theological Seminary, 2013), 416; Robeck, “Ecumenism,” 298–99.

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i­mportant issues, and to establish a different methodology but also to justify their existence amidst the absence of traditional reports.69 (4) Conciliar dialogue relies on the completion of reports that function as consensus statements for all participants. Most Pentecostals, however, remain unaware of such reports; documents are not received by the churches and find little public acknowledgment (a problem not unique to Pentecostalism). There is no organization in the Pentecostal tradition that allows church leaders, scholars, pastors, and congregations to receive information about ecumenical issues, to discuss the joint conclusions of yearlong debates, and to engage in this discussion without fear or pressure.70 Pentecostal church conferences, minister’s manuals, educational meetings, school programs, seminary courses, Bible studies, and other formal and informal meetings seldom promote ecumenical engagement or present the results of past dialogues.71 Moreover, as pointed out with regard to the Catholic-Pentecostal relationship, “the final reports from each quinquennium make it clear that neither party is bound by the discussions of the dialogue.”72 It remains one of the foremost tasks of conciliar dialogue to provide the growing global Pentecostal community with adequate structures to ensure that the ecumenical labor reaches the everyday concerns of Pentecostal congregations. 4

A Theological Assessment of Ecumenical Conversations with Pentecostalism

Emerging as a central theological concern from the structural demands of conciliar ecumenical dialogue is the absence of an articulated Pentecostal ecclesiology. Contemporary Pentecostalism is undergoing a transformational renewal on a global level that has taken the movement to the boundaries of its own ecclesial identity by shifting focus away from issues relating to the central concerns of classical Pentecostalism and toward a global theological agenda that

69 70

71 72

See “Summary Report of the Europe Consultation on the Global Christian Forum,” in Vondey, Pentecostalism and Christian Unity, vol. 2, 70–89. See Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., “When Being a Martyr Is Not Enough: Catholics and Pentecostals,” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 21, no.1 (1999), 3–10; Ronald Kydd, “Reflections on the Roman Catholic/Classical Pentecostal Dialogue.” The Ecumenist 2.3 (July–September 1995), 49–50. Cf. Vondey, “Presuppositions for Pentecostal Engagement,” 356–58. Kydd, “Reflections,” 49.

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is of broad ecumenical significance.73 Today’s Pentecostal ecclesiality can be described as a manifestation of dominant, global theological forces that shape the worldwide ecumenical movement in general. In contrast to the ecumenical praxis of debating issues of importance primarily within classical Pentecostal circles, often emphasized by the framework of salvation, healing, Spirit baptism, sanctification, and the coming kingdom, the contemporary global Pentecostal ecumenical agenda is characterized by a more complex and multilayered adaptation and diversification of that framework.74 At the heart of this agenda continues to be the question of Pentecostal identity, or ecclesiality, which has taken on a decidedly ecumenical character. The transformation of Pentecostalism demands not only a renewed understanding of what it means to be Pentecostal but also a transformed understanding of how to formulate an ecumenical self-understanding as a movement among the churches today. The history of Pentecostalism shows the importance of ecclesiological concerns for the changing attitudes toward ecumenical participation. Surprisingly, however, no conciliar ecumenical conversation with Pentecostals has been dedicated to the ecclesiology of the movement. The heart of Pentecostal ecclesiology is perhaps closest to the idea of koinonia as it was discussed during the third dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church.75 Theological reflections on the Scriptures and the church fathers by Pentecostals are indeed quite remarkable.76 However, the language that expresses this sentiment among Pentecostals on the ground is diverse in praxis and often uninformed about the detailed theological discussions. Church as koinonia is manifested differently among Pentecostals depending on the negative or positive influences of particular experiences that have shaped the ­individual’s or denomination’s ecclesial self-understanding. Pentecostal ecclesiology allows room for migrations within and among ecclesial communities as part of accepting the reality of several contextual, critical, and pragmatic ecclesial self-understandings manifested in the movement.77 The reports express this diversity only with difficulty and favor ecumenical interpretations 73 Vondey, Beyond Pentecostalism, 1–15. 74 See Amos Yong, The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 167–202. 75 See Vondey, Pentecostalism and Christian Unity, vol. 1, 133–58. 76 Ralph Del Colle, “Ecumentical Dialogues: State of the Question,” Liturgical Ministry 19 (2010): 105–14. 77 Wolfgang Vondey, “Pentecostal Perspectives on The Nature and Mission of the Church: Challenges and Opportunities for Ecumenical Transformation,” in “The Nature and Mission of the Church”: Ecclesial Reality and Ecumenical Horizons for the Twenty-First Century, ed. Paul M. Collins and Michael A. Fahey (New York: Continuum, 2008), 55–68.

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that tend to mask the stark differences between the participants ecclesiology, liturgy, and sacramentality. The result includes lingering misconceptions of Pentecostalism as possessing minimal ecclesial structure or pre-­ecclesiological character.78 The theological problem that becomes visible here is not only the lacking ecclesiology of Pentecostals but the lack of fitting ecclesiological categories applied by non-Pentecostal audiences. While all theological convictions presuppose an ecclesiality within which such persuasions are nurtured, even in an environment that resists strict ecclesiastical structures, the history of conciliar dialogues with Pentecostals seems to propose that such conversations can be held apart from articulating the Pentecostal ecclesiology underlying their theology or that the latter will eventually produce the former. Such expectations contradict the history of ecclesiology.79 The neglect of ecclesiology is visible throughout the formative dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church. The final report of the first quinquennium discusses water baptism, Spirit baptism, spiritual gifts, and worship without establishing first an ecclesiological context for such practices among the markedly different ecclesiastical traditions. The second dialogue speaks of faith, biblical interpretation, and healing in the church, yet without definition of how Pentecostals might understand that community and its contribution to such areas of the Christian life. The third dialogue on koinonia speaks more explicitly to ecclesiological themes yet walks an uneasy path of defining the church in principle as identical with koinonia while continuing to distinguish the two by situating koinonia in the church, more as dialogical structures and a form of church order than as the ecclesiality of the church as such.80 The final part of the document embarks on proposing a shared vision of the church as the communio sanctorum—thoroughly embedded in Roman Catholic ecclesiological interpretations of the Nicene Creed and with little room for constructive ecclesiology from Pentecostals. The fourth dialogue discusses the explicit ecclesiological themes of evangelization, proselytism, and common witness, yet struggles to define the challenges of missiology, social justice, and unity without an underlying articulation of the nature and purpose of the church. The massive document of the fifth dialogue, On Becoming a Christian, focuses more broadly on the Christian life through biblical and patristic resources. Yet, 78 79 80

See Thomas P. Rausch, “Catholics and Pentecostals, Troubled History, New Initiatives,” Theological Studies 71, no. 4 (2010): 926–50 (at 940–41). See Roger Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. 1, Historical Ecclesiology (New York: Continuum, 2004). See Paul D. Lee, Pneumatological Ecclesiology in the Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue: A Catholic Reading of the Third Quinquennium, 1985–1989 (Rome: Pontifical University San Tommaso, 1994).

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the text discusses neither the ecclesiology underlying the church fathers nor the interpretation of patristic sources by two different contemporary ecclesial communities. Pentecostals certainly affirm that there are ecclesiological dimensions to baptism, koinonia, and other theological practices.81 Yet, when Christian initiation, formation and discipleship, and experience in the Christian life are abstractly treated in a shared environment of interpretation that distinguishes Catholic and Pentecostal perspectives without providing the ecclesiological contours that first nurtured these distinctive views and their theological articulations, the result is a reversal of ecclesiological genesis. The dialogue reports are highly significant for providing Pentecostals with theological tools to articulate their ecclesiology. Yet, the reversal of the process of ecclesiological articulation ignores that theological convictions always emerge from a preexisting ecclesiology and implies that a Pentecostal ecclesiology can be the result of a product in reverse order. The history of comparative ecclesiology shows that the problems of such an assumption become evident when the ecclesiology of Pentecostalism is measured almost exclusively in response to existing (non-Pentecostal) ecclesiastical categories.82 The Pentecostal-Reformed dialogue almost immediately engaged difficult ecclesiological questions, and the resulting reports make explicit ecclesiological affirmations. At the same time, the reports also shy away from identifying the results clearly as ecclesiological proposals. The first report offers shared affirmations of the church as the creature of the Word and the Spirit, thus setting the tone for the dominant christological (Reformed) and pneumatological (Pentecostal) convictions directing the ecclesiology on each side. Yet, explicit ecclesiological statements emerge from Pentecostal pneumatology only in terms of their distinction from Reformed ecclesiality than in terms of a genesis of Pentecostal ecclesiology in its own right. The second report speaks to koinoinia and communion as a constitutive reality of experiencing the Christian life, which Pentecostals can affirm, yet surprisingly little from the pneumatology of the first dialogue enters into this conversation. The result is a christological ecclesiology of communion that is certainly embraced by Pentecostals but not a Pentecostal pneumatological ecclesiology that emerges from the experience of Pentecost as the fellowship of the Spirit. These critical observations should not be misunderstood as devaluing the theological discussion of conciliar dialogue, in general, or the contributions of 81 82

Cf. Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., “The Ecclesiology of Koinonia and Baptism: A Pentecostal Perspective,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 27, no. 3 (1990): 504–34. See Roger Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. 2, Comparative Ecclesiology (New York: Continuum, 2005), 452–77.

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any particular dialogue. On the contrary, Pentecostal theology does not have the luxury to develop its own ecclesiology apart from such ecumenical activities. Ecumenical agreement leads to ecclesiological assessment and vice versa. However, this theological assessment raises two important methodological concerns: (1) when the nature of the church is not articulated and seen as the (potential) result of ecumenical activities, this contradicts the historical insight that ecclesiology informs all theological inquiry as its presupposition; (2) when Pentecostals are not able to articulate the ecclesiological foundations for their theological agreements and disagreements, it remains questionable if the theological results are connected with the reality of a globally diverse Pentecostal ecclesiality. At least from the perspective of these methodological ­concerns, the most immediate task of conciliar ecumenical dialogue is the articulation of Pentecostal ecclesiology. The ecumenical consensus statement, The Nature and Mission of the Church, is a step in the right direction, even though it, too, arrives late on the ecumenical scene and confirms the general neglect to make an ecumenical ecclesiology the focus of Christian unity. The differences of Pentecostal ecclesiology to the consensus statement suggest that such a task should be pursued with more urgency.83 5 Conclusion Pentecostalism and ecumenism in the twenty-first century are two mutually interdependent endeavours. The massive transformation of Pentecostalism into a global Christian movement since the beginning of the twentieth century reflects particular challenges faced by the ecumenical movement. Pentecostalism is in many regards a manifestation of broader ecumenical challenges that include the methodology, structures, organization, language, comprehensiveness, and reception of ecumenical conversations. The primary structural challenge emerging from conciliar ecumenical dialogue with Pentecostals is the perpetuation of theological themes without an articulation of the Pentecostal ecclesiology and pneumatology underlying both doctrinal agreements and divergences. Ecumenical participation of the Pentecostal movement points to the development of alternative forms of ecumenical engagement that focus on building relationships, dismantling stereotypes and rivalries, and on reordering the publics, politics, and practices that shape the ecclesial profile of global Christianity. Capturing these transitions has been a focus of the ecumenical 83

See Pentecostal responses to the text in Vondey, Pentecostalism and Christian Unity, vol. 1, part 3.

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movement. However, Pentecostal ecumenical history suggests that the future of both movements will depend on where its participants meet ecclesiastically, whether each can find space to understand their own ecclesiality, and how each can make sense of the other’s ecclesiology as means to interpret the possibility of mutual engagement amidst the myriad of theological agreements and disagreements voiced at the ecumenical table. Bibliography Álvarez, Carmelo E. “Joining the World Council of Churches: The Ecumenical Story of Pentecostalism in Chile.” In Pentecostalism and Christian Unity, vol. 1. Edited by Wolfgang Vondey. Eugene: Pickwick, 2010, 34–45. Anderson, Allan Heaton. To the Ends of the Earth: Pentecostalism and the Transformation of World Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Anderson, Allan Heaton. An Introduction to Pentecostalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Anderson, Allan Heaton. “The Struggle for Unity in Pentecostal Mission Churches.” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 82 (1993): 67–77. A Handbook of Churches and Councils: Profiles of Ecumenical Relationships. Edited by Hubert van Beek. Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2006. A History of the Ecumenical Movement, 1517–1948. Edited by Ruth Rouse and Stephen Charles Neill. London: SPCK, 1954. van Beek, Hubert. “Pentecostals-Ecumenicals Dialogue.” In Fruitful in this Land: Pluralism, Dialogue, and Healing in Migrant Pentecostalism. Edited by Andre Droogers, Cornelis van der Laan, and W. van Laar. Geneva: WCC, 2006, 81–92. van Beek, Hubert. Revisioning Christian Unity: The Global Christian Forum. Oxford: Regnum, 2009. van Beek, Hubert, ed. A Handbook of Churches and Councils: Profiles of Ecumenical Relationships. Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2006. Cabezas, Roger. CLAI: Experiencia de un Ecumenismo Latinoamericano de Base. Lima: CLAI, 1982. Carothers, William F. “Position of the Old ‘Movement.’” The Weekly Evangel (February 19, 1916). Chan, Simon. Pentecostal Ecclesiology: An Essay on the Development of Doctrine. Blandford Forum: DEO, 2011. Clifton, Shane. “Ecumenism from the Bottom Up: A Pentecostal Perspective.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 47 (2012): 576–92. Conn, Charles W. Like a Mighty Army: The History of the Church of God. Definitive ­Edition Cleveland, TN: Pathway, 1994.

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Conway, L.M. “United We Stand, Divided We Fall.” The Weekly Evangel 185 (April 14, 1917). Creemers, Jelle. “Ecumenical Dialogue with a Non-Institutional Movement: A ­Systematic-Historical Analysis of Pentecostal Involvement in the International ­Roman Catholic-Classical Pentecostal Dialogue (1972–2007).” Ph.d. diss., Evangelische ­Theologische Faculteit, Leuven, 2014. Curtis, Heather D. “Pentecostal Missions and the Changing Character of Global Christianity.” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 36, no. 3 (2012): 122–28. Dayton, Donald W. Theological Roots of Pentecostalism. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1987. Del Colle, Ralph. “Ecumenical Dialogues: State of the Question.” Liturgical Ministry 19 (2010): 105–14. Faupel, D. William. The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1996. FitzGerald, Thomas E. The Ecumenical Movement: An Introductory History. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004. Global Christian Forum: Transforming Ecumenism. Edited by Richard Howell. New ­Delhi: Evangelical Fellowship of India, 2007. Gros, Jeffrey. “Pentecostal Engagement in the Wider Christian Community.” MidStream: The Ecumenical Movement Today 38, no. 4 (1999): 26–47. Haight, Roger. Christian Community in History. 2 Vols. New York: Continuum, 2004–2005. Hollenweger, Walter J. “Handbuch der Pfingstbewegung.” Ph.D diss., University of Zürich, 1965–1967. Hollenweger, Walter J. Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004. Hollenweger, Walter J. “Pentecostals and the Apostolic Faith: Implications for Ecumenism.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 9, no. 1 (1986): 61–84. Hollenweger, Walter J. “Pentecostals and Christian Unity: Facing the Challenge.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 26, no. 2. (2004): 307–38. Hollenweger, Walter J. “Two Extraordinary Pentecostal Ecumenists: The Letters of Donald Gee and David Du Plessis.” Ecumenical Review 52, no. 3 (2000): 391–402. Hoskins, Steven T. “A Forgotten Ecumenical Mo(ve)ment in Music City USA: J.O. ­McClurkan, N.J. Holmes, and the Pentecostal Mission Conventions of 1901–1907.” Wesleyan Theological Journal 43, no. 2 (2008): 193–206. Howell, Richard, ed. Global Christian Forum: Transforming Ecumenism. New Dehli: Evangelical Fellowship of India, 2007. Hunter, Harold D. “Global Pentecostalism and Ecumenism: Two Movements of the Holy Spirit?.” In Pentecostalism and Christian Unity: Ecumenical Documents and ­Critical Assessments. Edited by Wolfgang Vondey. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2010, 20–33.

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Jacobsen, Douglas. “The Ambivalent Ecumenical Impulses in Early Pentecostal Theology in North America.” In Pentecostalism and Christian Unity, vol. 1. Edited by Wolfgang Vondey. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2010, 3–19. Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. Ad Ultimum Terrae: Evangelization, Proselytism, and Common Witness in the Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue (1990–1997). Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1999. Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. “‘Anonymous Ecumenists?’ Pentecostals and the Struggle for Christian Unity.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 37, no. 1 (2000): 13–27. Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. Spiritus Ubi Vult Spirat: Pneumatology in Roman Catholic-­ Pentecostal Dialogue (1972–1989). Helsinki: Luther-Agricola-Society, 1998. Kinnamon, Michael and Brian E. Cope, eds. The Ecumenical Movement: An Anthology of Key Texts and Voices. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997. Kydd, Ronald. “Reflections on the Roman Catholic/Classical Pentecostal Dialogue.” The Ecumenist 2, no. 3 (1995): 49–50. Land, Steven Jack. Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993. Lee, Paul D. Pneumatological Ecclesiology in the Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue: A Catholic Reading of the Third Quinquennium, 1985–1989. Rome: Pontifical University San Tommaso, 1994. Lord, Andy. Network Church: A Pentecostal Ecclesiology Shaped by Mission. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Macchia, Frank D. “Spirit, Word, and Kingdom: Theological Reflections on the Pentecostal/Reformed Dialogue.” Ecumenical Trends 30, no. 3 (2001): 33–39. Mennonite Church USA. “Mennonites, Church of God Continue to Build Relationship.” http://mennoniteusa.org/news/mennonites-church-of-god-continue-to-build -relationship/, accessed August 1, 2015. Murphy, Karen Jorgenson. “On Becoming a Christian: The Fifth Quinquennium of the International Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue in Historical-Theological Perspective.” Ph.D. diss., Fuller Theological Seminary, 2013. Pentecostal Movements as an Ecumenical Challenge, Concilium 1996/3. Edited by Jürgen Moltmann and Karl-Joseph Kuschel. London: SCM Press, 1996. Prior, John M. “The Challenge of the Pentecostals in Asia, Part One, Pentecostal Movements in Asia.” Exchange 36, no. 1 (2007): 6–40. Robeck, Cecil M. Jr. “The Assemblies of God and Ecumenical Cooperation 1920–1965.” In Pentecostalism in Context: Essays in Honor of William W. Menzies. Edited by Wonsuk Ma and Robert P. Menzies. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1997, 107–50. Robeck, Cecil M. Jr. “The Challenge Pentecostalism Poses to the Quest for Ecclesial Unity.” In Kirche in ökumenischer Perspektive: Kardinal Walter Kasper zum 70. Geburtstag. Edited by Peter Walter, Klaus Krämer, and George Augustin. Freiburg: Herder, 2003, 306–20.

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Robeck, Cecil M. Jr. “The Ecclesiology of Koinonia and Baptism: A Pentecostal Perspective.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 27, no. 3 (1990): 504–34. Robeck, Cecil M. Jr. “Ecumenism.” In Studying Global Pentecostalism: Theories and Methods. Edited by Allan Anderson, et al. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010, 286–307. Robeck, Cecil M. Jr. “When Being a Martyr is Not Enough: Catholics and Pentecostals.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 21, no. 1 (1999): 3–10. Rouse, Ruth and Stephen Charles Neill, eds. A History of the Ecumenical Movement, 1517–1948. London: SPCK, 1954. Sandidge, Jerry L. Roman Catholic/Pentecostal Dialogue (1977–1982): A Study in Developing Ecumenism, vol. 1 Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1987. Shaull, Richard and Waldo Cesar. Pentecostalism and the Future of the Christian Churches: Promises, Limitations, Challenges. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000. Synan, Vinson. The Holiness-Pentecostal Movement in the United States. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971. The Ecumenical Movement: An Anthology of Key Texts and Voices. Edited by Michael Kinnamon and Brian E. Cope. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997. The Theology of Amos Yong and the New Face of Pentecostal Scholarship: Passion for the Spirit. Edited by Wolfgang Vondey and Martin W. Mittelstadt. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Thomas, John Christopher, ed. Toward a Pentecostal Ecclesiology: The Church and the Fivefold Gospel. Cleveland, TN: CPT Press, 2010. Toward a Pentecostal Ecclesiology: The Church and the Fivefold Gospel. Edited by John Christopher Thomas. Cleveland, TN: CPT Press, 2010. Vischer, Lukas. “World Communions, the WCC, and the Ecumenical Movement.” The Ecumenical Review 54 (2002): 142–61. Vondey, Wolfgang. Beyond Pentecostalism: The Crisis of Global Christianity and the ­Renewal of the Theological Agenda. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010. Vondey, Wolfgang. “The Denomination in Classical and Global Pentecostal Ecclesiology: A Historical and Theological Contribution.” In Denominations: Assessing an Ecclesiological Category. Edited by Paul M. Collins and Barry Ensign-George. New York: Continuum, 2010, 100–16. Vondey, Wolfgang. “Oneness and Trinitarian Pentecostalism: Critical Dialogue on the Ecumenical Creeds.” One in Christ 44, no. 1 (2010): 86–102. Vondey, Wolfgang. Pentecostalism: A Guide for the Perplexed. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. Vondey, Wolfgang, ed. Pentecostalism and Christian Unity. 2 Vols. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2014. Vondey, Wolfgang. “Pentecostalism and Ecumenism.” In The Cambridge Companion to Pentecostalism. Edited by Amos Yong and Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014, 273–93.

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Vondey, Wolfgang. “Pentecostals and Ecumenism: Becoming the Church as a Pursuit of Christian Unity.” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 11, no. 4 (2011): 318–30. Vondey, Wolfgang. “Pentecostal Perspectives on The Nature and Mission of the Church: Challenges and Opportunities for Ecumenical Transformation.” In Receiving “The Nature and Mission of the Church”: Ecclesial Reality and Ecumenical Horizons for the Twenty-First Century. Edited by Paul M. Collins and Michael A. Fahey. New York: Continuum, 2008. Vondey, Wolfgang. “Presuppositions for Pentecostal Engagement in Ecumenical Dialogue.” Exchange: Journal for Missiological and Ecumenical Research 30, no. 4 (2001): 344–58. Vondey, Wolfgang and Martin W. Mittelstadt, eds. The Theology of Amos Yong and the New Face of Pentecostal Scholarship: Passion for the Spirit. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Vondey, Wolfgang. “The Unity and Diversity of Pentecostal Theology: A Brief Survey for the Ecumenical Community in the West.” Ecclesiology 10, no. 1 (2014): 76–100. Wacker, Grant. “Playing for Keeps: The Primitivist Impulse in Early Pentecostalism.” In The American Quest for the Primitive Church. Edited by Richard Hughes. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988, 196–219. Ward, Horace S. “The Anti-Pentecostal Argument.” In Aspects of ­Pentecostal-Charismatic Origins. Edited by Vinson Synan. Plainfield: Logos International, 1975, 99–122. Yong, Amos. The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh. Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005. “Consultation on Believers’ Baptism. Kingston, Jamaica (January 2015).” https://www .mwc-cmm.org/sites/default/files/website_files/believers_baptism_consultation _final_2_en.pdf, (accessed August 1, 2015).

Chapter 6

Changing Paradigms in Global Ecumenism: A Pentecostal Reading David Sang-Ehil Han Can we get along? These words by Rodney King on May 1, 1992 became famous when he pleaded with the violent crowds in the streets of Los Angeles; they were furious about the jury verdict that acquitted the police officers who, about a year or so earlier, participated in an infamous deadly beating. Since its initial utterance, King’s rhetorical question has been used in a myriad of s­ituations—sometimes half-heartedly, or even flippantly—as an attempt to call for a mutual understanding and unity among disparate factions and voices.1 What makes King’s overall plea significant, however, is not the rhetorical question that is often used but his subsequent remark: “Please, we can get along here. We all can get along. I mean, we’re all stuck here for a while. Let’s try to work it out.” Following what appears to be a naïve appeal, the “heart” of King’s plea as embedded in his subsequent remark critically points to a shared sense of rootedness for all involved. Grounding his plea to what they all commonly share, King’s plea encouraged them all to move forward with a hopeful re-visioning of the dreadful present circumstance. Reflecting on, and responding to, the shifting trends of global Christianity in the post-Christendom era,2 the traditional ecumenists and Pentecostals alike should perhaps heed to the essence of King’s plea, paraphrasing it in the context of Christian unity. Whether one identifies her/himself with traditional ecumenism or newer expressions of Christian faith, all Christians have a shared sense of rootedness. To be sure, the biblical mandate for Christian unity in John 17 points to our shared identity as the “disciples” for whom Jesus prayed “that they all may be one…that they also may be one in us” (v. 21). Simply put, seeking a Christian unity “marks” us as the disciples of Jesus, i.e. the “followers” of the Way. Besides marking us in our shared identity, the unity for which Jesus 1 Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Pantheon Books, 2012), xi. 2 See Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 1–2; see also Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, From Times Square to Timbuktu: The Post-Christian West Meets the Non-Western Church (Grand Rapids, MI, & Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2013).

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prayed also points to the sharing of common witness. That is, inasmuch as the Father’s sending of Jesus made tangibly known the love that existed “before the foundation of the world” (v. 24), that all Christians were prayed for to “be perfected in unity” (v. 23) is essentially correlated with their being also sent into the world so that they may also co-extensively bear a common witness to that love. The ground, and the rationale, for seeking a Christian unity—i.e. “getting along” and “working it out”—is then rooted in what we, all Christians, commonly share, i.e. identity (“who they are”) and vocation (“what they are called to do”). Attending to the aspirational plea to “working things out” in Christian ecumenism, this study attempts to provide a constructive Pentecostal reading on new ecumenical ideas and approaches represented by the Global Christian Forum and Receptive Ecumenism. We will first reflect on some of the shifting ecumenical realities and their effect on the development of the Global Christian Forum. We will note the significance of the Global Christian Forum as it represents both a departure from, and a complement to, the traditional ecumenism. Second, a further reflection will be drawn upon the operational grammars unique to, and/or efficacious about, the Global Christian Forum. The process will help us grapple with the ways in which the Global Christian Forum has been significant and, as such, should stand as an alternative ecumenical paradigm for Pentecostal faith communities. Third, as a further attempt to explore other emerging ecumenical grammars, the study will also reflect critically on the merits of Receptive Ecumenism and its distinctive approach for making ecumenical progress. Finally, drawing upon both the constructive and the critical insights gathered on the Global Christian Forum and Receptive Ecumenism, the study will offer some suggestions to re-envision ecumenical grammars to promote Christian unity. 1

Shifting Landscapes and Global Ecumenism

It is now an established fact that the Christian majority has shifted to the global South, and to the East. In his book, From Times Squire to Timbuktu, Wesley Granberg-Michaelson notes this dramatic shift as he compares the demographic changes between 1910 and 2010. In 1910, Granberg-Michaelson notes, “66 percent of all Christians in the world lived in Europe; in 2010, only 26 percent lived there.” Conversely, in 1910, “only 2 percent of all Christians lived in Africa. Today, nearly one out of four Christians in the world is an African.”3 3 Granberg-Michaelson, From Times Squire to Timbuktu, 8.

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When European Christians were combined with those in North America, the total population of the so-called “global North” comprised 80 percent of all Christians in 1910. A century later, however, the population of the global North has dwindled to a half, that is, only 40 percent of all Christians in the world, yielding the “Christian majority” to the global South. Concurrently, global Christianity has also witnessed astonishing proliferation of variegated Pentecostal (and/or Charismatic) movements both within the historic churches and as new movements. The significance of these changing realities has been far-reaching and complex. Observing the demographic “shift” in Latin America in particular, David Bundy points out that the changes represent more than a mere numerical strength and socio-religious influence of newer Pentecostal and/or Charismatic movements. “[M]illions of persons who remain members of the older churches,” Bundy notes, “are either influenced theologically or also attend meetings where Pentecostal liturgy and theology are normative.”4 The shifting realities of contemporary global Christianity have then triggered a call for paradigm shift in ecumenism; that is, there was a clear need to re-envision a “new wineskin” for new realities of global Christianity. Around the turn of the 21st century, many traditionalist ecumenists had increasingly begun to realize how the usual and established “working grammars” in Christian ecumenism alone, represented largely by the work of the World Council of Churches, would not be able to encompass the ecumenical needs for global Christianity as a whole. As significant and effective as the traditional ecumenical approaches might have been, they were neither making ecumenical progress nor procuring substantial connections with now the larger, and the rising, segments of global Christianity, that is, Evangelicals, Pentecostals and Independents.5 On one hand, there is no question about the overarching impact upon global Christianity that the bem document and the Joint Declaration on Justification had generated. This evidences that, whether one belongs to traditional ecumenism or not, all Christians should acknowledge and certainly celebrate the gift represented in the past and ongoing ecumenical work among the historic churches. Nonetheless, what has been troubling was the simple fact that the traditional approaches (for example, methods and practices) to Christian ecumenism with all of the rigor and creativity were devoid 4 David Bundy, “Pentecostalism as an Ecumenical and Missiological Challenge to the Other Churches: A Review Essay Focusing on Latin America and Italy,” Encounter 60, no. 3 (1999): 308. 5 See Nicene Christianity: The Future for a New Ecumenism, ed. Christopher Seitz (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2001); Peter Hocken, “An Emerging Pentecostal Ecumenism?,” One in Christ 46, no. 2 (2012): 266.

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of the ­attraction needed to foster a Christian unity among all of the newer and emerging faces in global Christianity. In her plenary address at the 2007 global gathering of the Global Christian Forum, Cheryl Bridges Johns hence rightly foresaw the critical need for a paradigm shift and called for re-envisioning a Christian unity. She stated, “the current structures are proving to be old wineskins that cannot contain the new wine. The newer forms of churches, like David trying on Saul’s armor, find themselves ill-fitted and uncomfortable with the form, language, and structures of the modern ecumenical movement.”6 For Johns, the “heart” of present struggles in Christian ecumenism did not reside in the mere lack of knowledge and/or unwillingness to learn traditional “ecumenical grammars” on the part of “newcomers,” for example, Pentecostals, Charismatics, and Independents. The newcomers certainly needed to value and learn the “gift” that the years of multifarious traditional ecumenical work represent; speaking of the Pentecostals in particular, Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. rightly exhorts that Pentecostals can, and should, benefit from “an entire ecumenical vocabulary that marks major advancements in inter-church relationship…for the most part, Pentecostals are completely ignorant. These advancements come with over a half-century of relevant history.”7 Learning the ecumenical language will certainly help Pentecostals navigate, and enhance, ecumenical relationships in their own distinctive ways; however, for Johns, the fundamental issue had to do with taking the courage to face the hard truth that Christian ecumenism needed simply to be “rebirthed.”8 Facing the changing ecumenical realities, the present need was not any kind of “fine tuning” or “adjustment” on modern (traditional) ecumenical paradigm. What was (and is) needful was a “rebirth” or “conversion” to a new paradigm. Imagining a re-birth can be negatively construed as a “demise” for the things of the past; however, if it is none other than the self-same Spirit who recreates God’s οἰκουμένη, the “rebirth” or “conversion” that Johns advocates can be construed more as a re-creation to “fulfill” the labors of the past. Instead of nullifying the previous accomplishments of the ongoing ecumenical paradigm by traditional ecumenists, the rhetoric of “rebirth” and “conversion” may be 6 Cheryl Bridges Johns, “When East Meets West and North Meets South: The Reconciling Mission of Global Christianity,” in Revisioning Christian Unity: The Global Christian Forum, ed. Hubert van Beek (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2009), 94. 7 Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., “Pentecostals and Christian Unity: Facing the Challenge,” PNEUMA: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 26, no. 2 (2004): 320–21. 8 Johns, “When East Meets West and North Meets South,” 95. Citing Andrew Walls, Johns notes that the work of re-conception and re-visioning is required if the 21st century ecumenical work is to respond adequately to the shifting axis of global Christianity.

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viewed as accentuating the need for a “holistic” paradigm shift that can readily and inclusively respond to the wide-ranging and rapid changes in global Christianity. Thinking in this direction, “dying” would not mean disappearance or going away but a voluntary giving up of one’s hegemonic claim to the table. Consequently, the ecumenical call for the present would begin with re-setting the table together by all participants so that it would truly be a table “common” to all. As such, it also becomes an “open” and “hospitable” space, especially for those who have been previously estranged from participation. “Working things out” in this way, the space becomes rebirthed for “mutual dwelling” without preconception, prejudice, or discrimination. The shifting axis of global Christianity with all of its ramifications seems to require nothing less than this kind of radical re-creation of God’s οἰκουμένη.9 From its inception in 1998, and its subsequent development to the present, the Global Christian Forum (hereafter, the Forum) has intended to be this kind of “alternative” ecumenical movement that, without seeking to replace any existing ecumenical organizations or endeavors, would respond constructively to the crucial need to re-create a “new wineskin” for God’s οἰκουμένη. Intending to become the “new” and “neutral” space for ecumenical dialogue for all involved, the Forum has given a particular (even privileged) attention to the Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and the Independents, who have been mostly inactive in, or suspicious of, any and all associations with traditional ecumenical organizations and their endeavors.10 Thus, from the start, the possibility of the Forum idea required the intentional “letting go” of hegemony from the traditional ecumenical community such as the World Council of Churches. To a great extent, this was a courageous “dialectical” move on the part of the World Council of Churches; the initiative to help create the Forum was a concurrent action of affirmation and negation about the sufficiency of traditional ecumenical approaches it has practiced. That is, while continuing to labor in their traditional approaches to variegated ecumenical endeavors, they also had to acknowledge in humility that the traditional approaches to ecumenism were neither

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Christine D. Pohl uses the imagery of “making room” for another as she thinks theologically about the biblical practices of hospitality for “strangers” and “aliens” in the land. Some of the insights she provides may prove to be helpful in re-envisioning viable operational grammars in Christian ecumenism. Christine D. Pohl, Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999). See Hocken, “An Emerging Pentecostal Ecumenism?,” 267–68. Hocken asserts that the formation of the Global Christian Forum has been a positive influence in changing the disposition of the Evangelical-Pentecostal worlds over their long-held suspicion of ecumenism. See also Hubert van Beek, “Introduction,” in Revisioning Christian Unity, xiv–xx.

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a­ ttractive nor sufficient among the newer and rising segments of global Christianity, that is, the Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and the Independents. For this reason, as Hubert van Beek notes, the Forum has always been understood to be the space, “where the whole Christian family can gather for the sake of unity and common witness…break new ground, establish new relationships, propose new configurations of encountering one another and develop new methodologies of entering in discussion with one another.”11 2

Ecumenical Grammars: The Global Christian Forum

What is distinctive about the Forum that makes it to be both the “departure” from, and the “complement” to, the traditional ecumenical paradigm? First, the Forum has adopted a flexible and open-ended process in cultivating new relationships wherein each forum gathering begins with its participants introducing her/himself with a personal testimony around the theme of “my journey with Christ.” By retelling, and listening to, their faith testimonies, the participants were naturally drawn into the communal process of “discerning reflection” on what the selfsame Spirit was doing across the denominational divides among all Christian churches.12 Stories that participants share would also readily unveil how each faith journey within a particular faith community is more complex and multi-layered than previously assumed. Some stories may represent traces of migration from one faith community to another 11

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Van Beek, “Introduction,” xvi, my italics. The Forum has given particular attention to fostering new relationships with new configurations in place; hence, the forum meetings held had ensured that half of the participants would be Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Independents. Having participated in the Forum gatherings since 2002, it was not uncommon to hear from the participants how their personal faith journey with Christ was multi-faceted. Whether by migration from, or being influenced by, other Christian faith communities, many expressed how their faith journey represented significant formational experiences and/or encounters with sisters and brothers who belong to other Christian faith com­ munities. This was especially the case among the Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Independents. When placed in the context of “journeying” with Christ, and discerning reflectively on unfathomable workings of the Spirit, it became evident that one’s faith journey cannot be entirely defined by the strict confines of her/his own denominational silo. See Wonsuk Ma, “Discerning What God Is Doing among His People Today: A Personal Journal,” in Revisioning Christian Unity, 80–92. Ma notes that, to a greater or lesser degree, all of us are ecumenically formed or affected. Echoing a similar concern, Robeck particularly observes of the Pentecostals: “We Pentecostals are ecumenical, we just don’t know it!” See Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., “Taking Stock of Pentecostalism: The Personal Reflections of a Retiring Editor,” PNEUMA: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 15, no. 1 (1993): 39.

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whereas others may account for influences from/by multiple communities of faith; some other stories may even impress upon hearers the points of convergence in faith experience, despite denominational divides, that would eventually help cultivate a profound sense of spiritual intimacy among all the participants of the Forum. Building ecumenical relationships in this way has provided “a wonderful way of opening us up to new perspectives, new interpretations, new insights into what God is saying to us and what God is trying to do among us.”13 Notwithstanding the denominational divides that call for mutual respect, as well as learning the differences of theology and spirituality, the sharing of stories has helped to cultivate a heightened sense of the Spirit’s drawing in all of God’s children to follow the way of Jesus Christ and bear together a common witness to it. For Pentecostals, the narrative approach to ecumenism was a welcome change in cultivating ecumenical relationships, given their particular penchant for theologizing in songs and testimonies, while producing theological texts as well.14 Observing the positive influence of this new approach during the 2002 initial global gathering of the Forum, Sarah Rowland Jones reported that “it proved [to be] such a powerful means of introducing participants that later in the meeting several of those who had spoken very briefly on the first day… [wanted] to share their stories at greater length!”15 The narrative approach to ecumenism seemed to be also effective among Christians in the global South. Citing the works of Andrew Walls and Philip Jenkins, Cheryl Bridges Johns notes how many in the global South tend to view the Scriptures as “a living word of the Spirit for the present time.” This being especially true among Pentecostals, Johns further notes, the Bible is not simply a text to analyze or decipher but a living reality to experience as the Spirit-Word. Experiencing the Scriptures as the fusion between the Spirit and the Word is certainly in keeping with the ancient practices of “hearing” the Word. This is also now the practice 13 14

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Cecil M. Robeck, “Pentecostal Ecumenism: Overcoming the Challenges—Reaping the Rewards: Understanding the Nature of Ecumenism,” Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 35, no. 1 (2015): 11. Citing Hollenweger, Hocken notes the “oral” nature of Pentecostal theology; however, with various examples, he also contributes to the “emergence of serious Pentecostal scholarship as a positive change in recent Pentecostals’ engagement with ecumenism.” See Hocken, “An Emerging Pentecostal Ecumenism?,” 24ff; see also Walter J. Hollenweger, “After Twenty Years Research on Pentecostalism,” Theology 87, no. 720 (1984): 413–12; idem, Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997). Sarah Rowland Jones, “The Global Christian Forum—A Narrative History,” in Revisioning Christian Unity, 8.

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among the churches in the global South.16 To be sure, the narrative approach to ecumenism does not replace the traditional approaches in ecumenism that tend to focus on producing texts or documents; however, it would certainly complement the traditional ecumenical practices by re-discovering the power of hearing, that is, hearing the Word tangibly experienced and embodied in the Spirit-empowered journeys of God’s faithful people. Second, the Forum has primarily and consistently worked with the existing denominational structures but also acknowledged the fact that the Evangelicals and Pentecostals in the majority world (the global South) have diversified ecclesiology at work. As such, they are rooted in contextual realities unique to themselves when compared to their counterpart faith communities in the global North. Reflecting on the dialogues that took place at the Forum’s global and regional gatherings, Jones thus observes, “the old historic divisions are often differently experienced” for those in the global South.17 The reference to the “difference” noted here is significant as it echoes Allan Anderson’s observation that “the majority world Pentecostals seem to have far fewer difficulties with ecumenism than do their western counterparts.”18 What further adds to the complexities of the “difference” is the fact that the emerging generation of Evangelical and Pentecostal leaders are visibly active on various issues (for example, poverty, socio-economic and racial justice, gender, and human rights) that have been typically identified as the domains of the traditional ecumenists.19 To the extent that Jones’s observation of the Forum experiences is veracious and accurate, that the Forum process has paid a particular attention to the diversity and difference of contextual realities on the ground had an important bearing to helping deconstruct any and all monolithic, if not stereotypical, perception about one another’s faith communities. The experiential process of deconstruction among the participants in the Forum gatherings has concurrently catalyzed the constructive process of acknowledging, and appreciating, the complexities resident in each faith community. The depth and breadth of diversity and difference represented within each faith community became even more complex, however, when 16

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Cheryl Bridges Johns, “When East Meets West and North Meets South,” 98. Referencing the Global Christian Forum, Hocken notes that the future of ecumenism with the participation of younger churches of Africa, Asia, and Latin America “will undoubtedly bring to the fore pneumatology and its relation to Christology, and a more holistic anthropology” (271). Jones, “The Global Christian Forum—A Narrative History,” 18, my italics. Allan Anderson, “Pentecostals, Healing, and Ecumenism,” International Review of Mission 93, no. 370 (2004): 491. Johns, “When East Meets West and North Meets South,” 18.

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­ ultifarious forms of Independent and Indigenous churches were taken into m consideration. For this reason, the annual regional consultations that the ­Forum held in rotation around the globe have proven to be both positive and effective as each consultation has given a focused attention to the local issues and concerns peculiar to the region. That the global South experiences the old historical divisions differently can be then creatively leveraged in generating and broadening an optimistic spirit in ecumenism. On the other hand, however, it is discouraging to learn that the shift of the Christian majority to the global South has not proportionately impacted the balance of power within each ecclesial structure. The appointment of 22 new cardinals by Pope Benedict is a case in point. As Granberg-Michaelson notes, of the 22 new cardinals appointed, “one new cardinal was chosen from India, Brazil, and Hong Kong. None were from Africa, where the Catholic Church is growing the fastest.”20 Pentecostals are no particular exception to this harsh reality, especially among the so-called “classical Pentecostals.” If we were to take into account all of the relational influence that the classical Pentecostals have on other Independent and Indigenous Charismatic churches, the adverse effects of disproportionate sharing of ecclesial power would be much greater than what the global population of classical Pentecostals represents. Imbalance of power within existing ecclesial structures is discouraging for the churches in the global South; as such, it certainly needs to be addressed. Thinking ecumenically, however, such imbalance of power may help instruct and guide what can be strategized in considering viable approaches to ecumenism. For example, acknowledging that ecclesial authorities are still strongly rooted in the global North, the future of global ecumenism may need to consider a grassroots approach that would accentuate building ecumenical relationships at local and regional levels in the global South. To this end, it is significant to note that the Pentecostals and Independent Charismatics in the global South practice a “grassroots” or “bottom-up” ecclesiology. If the approaches taken and the concerns shared are mutually agreeable and locally relevant to the life and mission of the churches in their concrete situations, possibilities for generating ecumenical collaboration would be great among Pentecostals and Independent Charismatics in the global South. It is true that the fissiparous tendency among Pentecostal churches has been often criticized by the traditional ecumenists. Without dismissing the problematic nature of such tendency, however, it is plausible to conceive that their characteristic versatility and suppleness can be constructively sublimated if a new spirit of 20

Granberb-Michaelson, From Times Square to Timbuktu, 10.

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optimistic ecumenism would be built around concrete local or regional issues that are commonly shared. A new form of ecumenism may need to be then, as Shane Clifton argues, a “multi-centered movement of the Spirit” where a Christian unity would be pursued and practiced in multiple fronts among those who would together ­discern the voice of the Spirit in an ongoing way. The visible unity that ecumenical endeavors advocate needs neither be structural in nature nor structurallydriven. Instead, it would be explicitly spiritual and missional in nature. As such, rather than drawing from the power of ecclesial authorities, the ecumenical aspiration to bring all Christians across denominational divides would be deliberately and strictly lodged in the drawing power of the Spirit.21 To this extent, the bewildering gifts of “many tongues” in Acts 2 can be viewed as symbolic of this new unity that overturns any and all hindrances and barriers that oppose the life-breathing work of the Creator Spirit. Being drawn together by the Spirit of Pentecost, the ecumenical vision for creating and fostering a visible Christian unity would then take on tangible and concrete expressions as the participants become missionally woven with one another. Third, from its inception, the Forum has deliberately sought not to be another ecumenical organization. Constantly questioning whether it should continue to exist and be operational as an ecumenical movement, the Forum’s simple and straightforward agenda was to create an “open space” for new ecumenical dialogue among those who have not yet had tangible opportunities to come together to a common table. The metaphor of “open space” was intentionally used in the Forum’s Guiding Purpose Statement in order to convey that the Forum gatherings were to be both a “safe” and “sacred” space, fostering “mutual respect” for one another and “communal discernment” of the Spirit by all the participants. Aspiring to bridge between the traditional ecumenists and the newer voices of global Christianity (that is, Evangelicals, Pentecostals and Independents), the rationale for the ongoing existence of the Forum has been rooted in the shared understanding that the contemporary challenges of ecumenism have less to do with the dearth of institutionalized resources or structures for ecumenical endeavors. Rather, the crux of current ecumenical c­hallenges, that is, the critical area that needs improvement in global 21

Shane Clifton, “Ecumenism from the Bottom Up: A Pentecostal Perspective,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 47, no. 4 (2012): 576–79. Noting how “the notion of baptism in the Spirit…was a vital symbol of unity and diversity, harmony and change,” Clifton suggests that priority should be given to personal and cultural transformation. He states, “The Spirit transforms people and, thereafter, reframes the cultural values of the church. Only indirectly does this impact ecclesial structures, and it does so in a manner that facilitates diversity and difference” (578).

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e­ cumenism, has to do with the inadequacy and deficiency of “relational” knowledge between the traditional ecumenists and the newer and emerging movements of global Christianity. Hence, the starting point of the Forum was to acknowledge one another in mutual respect and discern together how all those involved may receive one another as a “gift” to/for one another. “Fostering mutual respect,” as noted in the Forum’s Guiding Purpose Statement, was then a prior action needed in order for the Forum’s participants to come together and discern in unity what the Spirit is saying to the churches. Part of the discernment then had to do with exploring together how the Christian churches may move beyond their differences and address together common challenges facing the Christian churches today. Inasmuch as the Forum has been effective in generating new relationships with its non-organizational approach,22 the lingering questions were placed on the Forum’s financial sustainability for its ongoing work and continuing effectiveness. The lack of financial stability has certainly been a serious, ongoing concern for the Forum and, sometimes, delimited the scope of its ecumenical work; however, it also pushed the participants of the Forum to re-envision creatively its operational system without acquiescing into forming another ecumenical organization. With its non-organizational approach to foster, as widely as possible, new and open dialogues, the underlying challenge (or question) for the Forum has been, and will continue to be, whether the deepening of new relationships would or should lead into some other tangible and concrete expressions of Christian unity, e.g. taking up the issues of “common witness” and/or exploring and addressing together “common challenges” for/in the world. As the ­Forum looks into the future of ecumenism in its own distinctive way, the challenge and question remains whether the round ecumenical table that brings together the traditional ecumenists and the newcomers (that is, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Independents) moves beyond being hospitable and open to/ with one another and dwelling together in a “charged space.” That is, can and will the Forum process help its participants enough to “grow into one another’s lives” that the relationships newly cultivated (and continuously deepened) would be able to handle charged conversations over differences and still generate tangible expressions of shared witness as the Christian church? Perhaps 22

The distinctive approach that the Forum has taken was intended to assure the traditional ecumenists that it is neither competing with, nor replacing of, the existing ecumenical systems at work; on the other hand, however, it also had to ensure the newcomers (e.g. Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Independents) that the Forum was not a covert plan or new strategic move on the part of traditional ecumenists to convert them to the ecumenical vision that they do not share.

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the Forum’s most recent initiatives on “discrimination, persecution and martyrdom” and “mission and proselytism” are steps in the right direction.23 At the same time, we may also need to be reminded of the concluding comment that Henry i. Lederle makes about competing ecumenical paradigms. Alluding to the biblical imagery of the Spirit as the Comforter, Lederle suggests that the present and future of ecumenism needs the real presence of a “discomforting” Comforter who indiscriminately calls all of God’s children not to insist upon their own ways but to listen, discern, and labor together as the Spirit leads to a place of reconciling renewal and unity.24 Lederle’s call here is reminiscent of Wolfgang Vondey’s earlier call that compares two distinct ecumenical paradigms. Vondey notes that “many churches are still conducting an ecumenism of Babel rather than an ecumenism of Pentecost…ecumenism by its very nature should challenge all involved to move outside of our comfort zones.”25 We then take seriously hearing from those who are different than we and readily engage in dialogue anticipating and discerning what we might learn from the others and their Christian experiences.26 Indeed, the Spirit may be speaking to us through those who we would expect it the least. 3

Lessons from “Receptive Ecumenism”

Along with the Global Christian Forum, a relatively new ecumenical movement that seems to be also gaining momentum is “Receptive Ecumenism.” Receptive Ecumenism begins with the assumption that those involved in ecumenical encounter with others belong to a particular Christian tradition. Being rooted in a particular tradition, the participants are led to discern how their own particular tradition may learn from other Christian traditions. The 23

See the informational article by Kim Cain, “The Global Christian Forum News,” http:// www.globalchristianforum.org/docs/2015.01%20GCF%20News%20EN.pdf, accessed on March 3, 2017. 24 Henry i. Lederle, “The Spirit of Unity: A Discomforting Comforter: Some Reflections on the Holy Spirit, Ecumenism, and the Pentecostal-Charismatic Movements,” Ecumenical Review 42, no. 3 (2009): 286. 25 My italics. Vondey further notes: “The ecumenical task is still largely understood as the search for a common language. It is this understanding that lies at the heart of the Church’s wresting with God…But what human self-centeredness built was thrown down by God (Mal 1:4)…The ecumenical challenge of Pentecostalism today is not to become the master builder or architect of the Church but to build the church together with others and under the guidance of God” (48). Wolfgang Vondey, “Appeal for a Pentecostal Council for Ecumenical Dialogue,” Mid-Stream 40, no. 3 (2001): 45–56. 26 Robeck, “Pentecostal Ecumenism,” 11.

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focus of learning here is then inwardly directed. Receptive Ecumenism further assumes that the encounter with other Christian traditions should potentially effect a “change” or “modification” within one’s own tradition.27 Thinking in this direction, the proponents of Receptive Ecumenism suggest that cultivating ecumenical relationships with others, as in any other instances of building authentic relationships, does require the readiness of heart to recognize the incompleteness of one’s own tradition on one hand and a willingness to “learn with integrity from other traditions” on the other hand.28 It should be further noted that the process of “learning” envisioned here is not thought of merely human initiative or interaction. It is rather, as Paul Murray articulates it, a “Spirit-driven movement of the heart.”29 As such, the process involves seeking and discerning in prayer wherein unity experienced in encountering others is received as a “gift” with which God graces the participating faith communities effecting a change. For Evangelicals and Pentecostals in particular, the underlying assumption of Receptive Ecumenism is both instructive and suggestive. First, its call for learning from others presupposes an acknowledgment of “incompleteness” in one’s own tradition. This echoes the admonition of Cheryl Bridges Johns that a constructive move forward in future ecumenism would begin with the recognition that both the global South and the global North are in a necessary relationship of complementary gifting for/with one another. For the global South in particular, where the majority of Evangelicals and Pentecostals reside, the call for “new ecumenism” is an invitation to “look deeply into the past for its wisdom” and to acknowledge that “a return to the ancient way is a way forward into the future.”30 For Johns, this is the “gift” embodied among historic Christian churches from the global North (and the traditional ecumenists). To the extent that this idea of complementary gifting is thoroughly shared and honored, no particular Christian tradition would or should remain insulated from others being ghettoized within the walls of their own particular tradition.

27 28 29 30

Paul D. Murray, “Receptive Ecumenism and Catholic Learning—Establishing the Agenda,” in Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning, ed. Paul D. Murray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 12. Andy Lord, “Transforming Renewal through a Charismatic-Catholic Encounter: An Experiment in Receptive Ecumenism,” PentecoStudies 13, no. 2 (2014): 241. Murray, “Receptive Ecumenism and Catholic Learning—Establishing the Agenda,” 16. Johns, “When East Meets West and North Meets South,” 95. The idea of complementary gifting for/with one another seems to align well with the Pentecostal tradition that strongly affirms the prophethood of all believers.

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Insofar as Receptive Ecumenism calls for learning from others with the prospect of looking within one’s own tradition to effect tangible expressions of “change” and “modification,” it provides a constructive challenge for the Pentecostals to take seriously all of their multifarious ecumenical encounters. Even for the encouraging work of the Global Christian Forum, creating an “open space” for ecumenical dialogue would have eventually missed the mark if such endeavor fails to arrive at concrete and tangible “landing” points that evidence constructive change or modification have taken place within/among participating faith communities. Speaking of overcoming challenges in Pentecostal ecumenism, Robeck thus asserts: “The best ecumenists know their tradition, remain faithful to it, but also recognize that at times the tradition must be challenged to change.”31 This is especially the case if the condition for the possibility of change or modification is understood as the work of in-breaking presence of the Creator Spirit. Pentecostals are already familiar with the ecumenism of this kind. Describing the ecumenical activities among Pentecostals as “invisible” or “spiritual” ecumenism, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen notes that unity, for Pentecostals, is already assumed for all Spirit-filled Christians. Hence, for Kärkkäinen, a Christian unity, for Pentecostals, “is not something we do but something that comes from the Spirit.”32 Learning from others, as the proponents of Receptive Ecumenism would suggest, takes the process of one’s own discerning reflection on God’s prior action as one encounters others in variegated ecumenical occasions. The emphasis on priority in discerning God’s action in ecumenical encounters resonates with the intent of Receptive Ecumenism. Reflecting on his experiment of Receptive Ecumenism in the context of a Charismatic-Catholic encounter, Andy Lord thus articulates that such was rooted in a shared theological understanding that “The God who relates is the One who renews.”33 In keeping with this, the participants of Receptive Ecumenism are always called to discern the voice of the Spirit who “searches all things, even the deep things of God” (1 Cor 2:10) as they listen to, and learn from, other Christian faith communities about what God is doing in their midst. Thereafter, they are challenged to take courage to effect a constructive change within their own faith communities. Insofar as Receptive Ecumenism from the outset intends to build upon past ecumenical dialogues and their theoretical outcomes, it is neither concerned about, nor deals with, the matters of faith and order. Consequently, Receptive 31 32 33

Robeck, “Pentecostal Ecumenism,” 8. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, “‘Anonymous Ecumenists’?: Pentecostals and the Struggle for Christian identity,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 37, no. 1 (2000): 19. Lord, “Transforming Renewal through a Charismatic-Catholic Encounter,” 245.

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Ecumenism is concerned with helping the churches that are engaged in ecumenical relationships push forward onto the next step of making those relationships actually work in generating impact in the concreteness of ecclesial life for each participating faith community or movement.34 As noted, effecting a change or modification in ecclesial life is both inwardly driven and directed. Its “receptive” attitude to learn from others, and the proactive anticipation to effect change or modification in ecclesial life, seem to be certainly positive aspects of Receptive Ecumenism. On the other hand, however, its approach to be inwardly driven and directed for effecting a change or modification may engender a potential risk that legitimates a spirit of subjective assessment and appropriation in discerning the “gifts” that other Christian faith communities offer. For example, Sarah Wilson, in her evaluative study of various bilateral dialogues, offers six possible ways to make progress in ecumenical relationships. They include “removing misunderstanding,” “distinguishing between competing internal traditions,” “self-correction,” “expansion,” “reminder,” and “repentance and forgiveness.”35 Reflecting on the past bilateral dialogues among the Lutherans and other historic churches (for example, Catholic and Reformed traditions), Wilson places the weight of ecumenical progress primarily on their theoretical (doctrinal) outcomes. That is, the ecumenical progress that Wilson identifies relates to the first three typologies among six possibilities she proposes. Her otherwise astute assessment, and fair use of typologies, in suggesting possible ways to make ecumenical progress seem to digress, how­ ever, from their usual vigor and substance when she offers her take on making ecumenical progress with Pentecostals. After a perfunctory review and assessment on Pentecostal theology, Wilson states: “it’s not terribly helpful to think about the differences between the Lutherans and Pentecostals as primarily doctrinal…since Pentecostalism so often assumes a basic Reformation Protestant outlook as the foundation for its own particular contributions.”36 Wilson’s reductionist understanding of Pentecostal theology is both pejorative and stereotypical of Pentecostal theology, regurgitating the unfortunate trail blazed 34 35 36

See also Gerard Kelly, “A New Ecumenical Wave,” http://www.ncca.org.au/files/Forum/ 7th/Documents/Ecumenical_Address.pdf, accessed on December 17, 2016. Sarah Hinlicky Wilson, “Six Ways Ecumenical Progress is Possible,” Concordia Journal 39, no. 4 (2013): 1–23. Wilson, “Six Ways Ecumenical Progress is Possible,” 11. Wilson’s statement that Pentecostals assume “a basic Reformation Protestant outlook” is not without some validity; however, such an oversimplified and sweeping generalization dismisses as tertiary, if not irrelevant, the complexities involved in the historical origins and theological developments of variegated Pentecostal movements around the world.

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by some of the prejudiced traditional ecumenists. Limiting the extent of gift that the other faith community may offer on the basis of one’s limited view of the other would certainly not help toward cultivating the ecumenical progress that Wilson envisions. Rejecting the possibility that making ecumenical progress with the Pentecostals can be anything doctrinal, Wilson proposes the typology of “expansion.” Referencing the Ethiopian charismatic revivals within Lutheranism in particular, Wilson argues that Lutheran doctrines and charismatic spirituality can, and do, co-exist in many African contexts. Positively construed, the example that Wilson cites here affirms that the dynamic styles of worship among Pentecostals and charismatics may help “expand the range of possibility and expectation in the life of the baptized, saved Christians.”37 Citing the statement from the ecmy (Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus in Ethiopia) constitution, however, Wilson concludes: “the word of God, not personal experience, is the basis of doctrine, as apparently certain charismatic elements tended to believe…Every new revival will bring with it new demands for change of worship…Ways of worship cannot be considered doctrine.”38 For Wilson, and some traditional ecumenists, worship or any other spiritual experiences only attend to the matters of “heart”; as such, they should have no bearing on, or relation to, doctrinal issues. Grounded in her own faith tradition, Wilson fails to notice that the absence of correlation between worship experience (that is, what heart senses) and theological confession (that is, what one learns to know) in the ecmy constitution is not only troubling for, but also a point of contention (or difference) with, Pentecostals. For Pentecostals, such a view tends to place doctrinal issues exclusively at the hands of human reason, insulated from (instead of correlated with) the affections of the heart. 4

Suggestions for Re-envisioning Christian Unity

The emergence of the Global Christian Forum and Receptive Ecumenism substantiates the present need to re-envision fitting ecumenical grammars that would efficaciously respond to the changing, and challenging, ecumenical 37

38

Wilson, “Six Ways Ecumenical Progress is Possible,” 12, my italics. With nothing doctrinal worthwhile to explore, Wilson’s proposal of “expansion” here tends to support an implicit claim that the theological difference (i.e. doctrinal matters) between charismatics and the Pentecostals is nothing substantial in nature. At the end, there is no particular theological reason for any to consider joining a Pentecostal church or movement. Wilson, “Six Ways Ecumenical Progress is Possible,” 13.

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realities surrounding global Christianity. Experimenting, and exploring, with these new and different approaches to ecumenism should not, however, be viewed as a critique on the work of traditional ecumenical paradigms. They are rather constructive responses to account for growing concerns of global Christianity over the changing ecumenical realities, and, as such, they are in complementary relationships with established ecumenical endeavors. Reflecting on new and different ways that the Global Christian Forum and Receptive Ecumenism help enhance ecumenical engagement, here are a few suggestions to consider for the future work in ecumenism. First, there is a growing need to cultivate “holistic” approaches to promoting Christian unity. In this regard, the Global Christian Forum provides a positive step forward in that the ecumenical paradigm it promotes is strongly rooted in a particular operational grammar, for example, sharing personal testimonies of faith journeys with Christ that are designed to deepen relational knowledge among all participants. Listening to personal testimonies of faith journeys helps shed any stereotypical preconceptions or prejudices about others. Instead of identifying one another through the person’s denominational affiliation that can often be static and restrictive, it encourages us to see the whole person as a disciple of Christ whose faith journey with Christ bears a shared witness to the love that Christ has shown to all of his beloved. Deepening relational knowledge in this way would further help effect the building up of deep sense of trust and confidence in/with one another. As such, ecumenical relationships get deepened and matured. Second, promoting Christian unity can, and should, be tangibly expressed in deepening our shared witness in the concrete situations of life. For the Christian majority in the global South in particular, faith is not merely a matter of mere cognitive response to a series of theoretical statements. Their life circumstances often demand that it becomes a personal and social embodiment of God’s truth evidencing the correlation between one’s heart (that is, the experiences in the Spirit) and her/his life’s actions (that is, missional witness for/in the world).39 In keeping with this, doctrinal matters cannot be severed from, or irrelevant to, the dynamic realities of living faith. New ecumenical approaches represented by both the Global Christian Forum and Receptive Ecumenism provide a helpful direction for future ecumenism in this regard. The regional 39

For a fuller discussion on the correlation between the cognitive (head), the experiential (heart), and the praxeological (hands) in the formation of Christian faith, see Sang-Ehil Han, Paul Louis Metzger, and Terry C. Muck, “Christian Hospitality and Pastoral Practices from an Evangelical Perspective,” Theological Education 47, no. 1 (2012): 23–24.

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consultations of the Global Christian Forum that often take on concrete issues resident in local contexts should be encouraged as it broadens and deepens ecumenical relationships in specific and tangible ways. The aspiration of Receptive Ecumenism should also be nurtured as it steers ecumenical encounters to listen deeply to one another in order to effect a change or modification in one’s own faith tradition. Albeit in a different way, Receptive Ecumenism also advocates the concretization of ecumenical encounters in the life of faith praxis. Third, new ecumenical ideas and initiatives should grapple with the questions of power dynamics in ecumenical engagements. What is expected to be a “common” table often gets set by those who are already familiar with existing ecumenical grammars. Hence, Pentecostals and other non-ecumenists often are invited to a “common” table as guests; as such, the parameters of ecumenical conversations, for example, content and direction, are often set by the hosts, that is, traditional ecumenists. The Global Christian Forum and Receptive Ecumenism offer ecumenical paradigms that attempt to address the pitfalls of structuring ecumenical conversation in power dynamics of “host and guests.” Nonetheless, whether they have succeeded in overcoming the stated pitfalls is still questionable. For the Global Christian Forum, the issue of “whose table” still needs to be addressed. As helpful as Receptive Ecumenism is in advocating the practices of deep listening and tangible actions, its inward orientation to rely on subjective assessment and appropriation makes it difficult to facilitate a “charged” conversation. The question remains as to what extent we will allow others to speak into our own faith practices. At the end, the extent that one is willing to push the boundaries in this regard will determine how deeply and authentically the bond of Christian unity gets deepened and matured. In conclusion, making ecumenical progress is essentially rooted in the drawing power of the Holy Spirit whose witness to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ gets expressed in bringing all of God’s children into unity. Problems and challenges in ecumenical conversation do not reside with what God desires to bring about in the power of the Spirit. They reside in our inability to hear and discern the whispers of the Spirit. As difficult as some of the “charged” conversations can be in ecumenical encounters, the question remains: will we harden our hearts and persist on our own ways, or will we yield in humility to what the Spirit is saying to the churches? Bibliography Anderson, Allan. “Pentecostals, Healing, and Ecumenism.” International Review of Mission 93, no. 370 (2004): 491.

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Bundy, David. “Pentecostalism as an Ecumenical and Missiological Challenge to the Other Churches: A Review Essay Focusing on Latin America and Italy.” Encounter 60, no. 3 (1999): 308. Cain, Kim. The Global Christian Forum News 1 (2015). http://www.globalchristianforum. org/docs/2015.01%20GCF%20News%20EN.pdf, (accessed on March 3, 2017). Clifton, Shane. “Ecumenism from the Bottom Up: A Pentecostal Perspective.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 47, no. 4 (2012): 576–79. Granberg-Michaelson, Wesley. From Times Square to Timbuktu: The Post-Christian West Meets the Non-Western Church. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013. Haidt, Jonathan. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. New York: Pantheon Books, 2012. Han, Sang-Ehil, Paul Louis Metzger, and Terry C. Muck, “Christian Hospitality and Pastoral Practices from an Evangelical Perspective.” Theological Education 47, no. 1 (2012): 23–24. Hocken, Peter. “An Emerging Pentecostal Ecumenism?” One in Christ 46, no. 2 (2012): 264–78. Hollenweger, Walter J. “After Twenty Years Research on Pentecostalism.” Theology 87, no. 720 (1984): 413–12. Hollenweger, Walter J. Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997. Jenkins, Philip. The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. New York: ­Oxford University Press, 2007. Johns, Cheryl Bridges. “When East Meets West and North Meets South: The Reconciling Mission of Global Christianity.” In Revisioning Christian Unity: The Global Christian Forum. Edited by Hubert van Beek. Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2009, 93–101. Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. “‘Anonymous Ecumenists’?: Pentecostals and the Struggle for Christian Identity.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 37, no. 1 (2000): 13–27. Kelly, Gerard. “A New Ecumenical Wave.” http://www.ncca.org.au/files/Forum/7th/ Documents/Ecumenical_Address.pdf, (accessed on December 17, 2016). Lederle, Henry I. “The Spirit of Unity: A Discomforting Comforter: Some Reflections on the Holy Spirit, Ecumenism, and the Pentecostal-Charismatic Movements.” Ecumenical Review 42, no. 3 (2009): 286. Lord, Andy. “Transforming Renewal through a Charismatic-Catholic Encounter: An Experiment in Receptive Ecumenism.” PentecoStudies 13, no. 2 (2014): 241. Ma, Wonsuk. “Discerning What God Is Doing among His People Today: A Personal Journal.” In Revisioning Christian Unity: The Global Christian Forum. Edited by Hubert van Beek. Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2009, 80–92. Murray, Paul D. “Receptive Ecumenism and Catholic Learning—Establishing the Agenda.” In Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning. Edited by Paul D. Murray. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, 5–25.

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Pohl, Christine D. Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999. Robeck, Cecil M., Jr. “Pentecostal Ecumenism: Overcoming the Challenges—Reaping the Rewards: Understanding the Nature of Ecumenism.” Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 35, no. 1 (2015): 5–17. Robeck, Cecil M., Jr. “Pentecostals and Christian Unity: Facing the Challenge.” Pneuma 26, no. 2 (2004): 307–38. Robeck, Cecil M., Jr. “Taking Stock of Pentecostalism: The Personal Reflections of a Retiring Editor.” Pneuma 15, no. 1 (1993): 35–60. Vondey, Wolfgang. “Appeal for a Pentecostal Council for Ecumenical Dialogue.” MidStream 40, no. 3 (2001): 45–56. Wilson, Sarah Hinlicky. “Six Ways Ecumenical Progress is Possible.” Concordia Journal 39, no. 4 (2013): 1–23. Nicene Christianity: The Future for a New Ecumenism. Edited by Christopher Seitz. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2001.

Chapter 7

Remodeling Our Ecumenical House Cheryl Bridges Johns The current landscape of Christianity is vastly different than that of a century ago. Most important, the axis of Christianity, for the first time in over one thousand years, no longer resides in the Northern hemisphere. At the beginning of the twentieth century Pentecostalism was a small and marginal movement. ­Today, one in every twelve people on the planet identifies as Pentecostal. Furthermore, the meaning of being “Christian” in the twenty-first century is radically different than one hundred years ago. Christian identity is more fluid, more personal, and less tied to institutional affiliation. All these changes are so dramatic that it is taking time to adjust to the new realities they present. The emerging Christian ethos is altering the meaning of the phrase “Christian unity.” Ecumenical paradigms created during the 20th century are proving to be no longer viable, giving way to different structures. We are now in a season of “ecumenical transition,” and it is becoming increasing clear that in order to meet current challenges, the houses built to create and sustain the cause of the visible unity of the church are in need of a major transformation. Pentecostals have much to offer in the development of the new forms of Christian unity. But, in order for us to assist in the development of the future, it is necessary to revisit our own “ecumenical house.” This house, built during the 20th century, was patterned on the larger ecumenical models. In order to move forward, we, along with the whole ecumenical movement, are in need of transformation. Unless we do so, we may not be able to assume a leadership role in the broader quest for Christian unity. It is my guess most Pentecostals do not realize how we may be uniquely gifted for leadership in mapping the future of the quest for Christian unity. Perhaps we have not yet recovered from our shame-based roots,1 or perhaps we are continuing to see ourselves as guests at the ecumenical table. Whatever the reason for not stepping into the leadership void, we are missing opportunities to participate more actively in mapping out the ecumenical future. Both Pentecostalism and the ecumenical movement began at the turn of the 20th century. Both were propelled by a vision for Christian unity. However, 1 Cheryl Bridges Johns, “The Adolescence of Pentecostalism: The Legitimacy of a Sectarian Identity,” Pneuma 17, no. 1 (1995): 3–17.

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for the most part, the two groups have existed in isolation from each other. This isolation is due to a history filled with sociological and theological barriers. At the beginning of the 21st century, while efforts were being made toward greater conversation, there continues to be a great deal of work needing to be done. In a paper given at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey, Switzerland, longterm ecumenical leader, Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, made the following observation: “The Pentecostal world lives mostly within its own bubble, and those outside of it—both from other Christian communities and the media— remain largely insulated from a deeper knowledge and understanding of its dynamics.”2 Granberg-Michaelson went on to note how the formal ecumenical world, represented by organizations such as the World Council of Churches, also lives within its own bubble. As a result of both groups existing in isolation from each other, he concluded: Thus, the ecumenical landscape of world Christianity faces divisions not simply of doctrine and historical traditions. Rather, these divisions within the world-wide body of Christ are continually reinforced, on a daily basis, through institutional power at local, national, regional, and global levels that keep the vast majority of Christians, congregations, denominations, and organizations functioning within their separate worlds, isolated from the other major streams of world Christianity.3 The ecumenical movement, and Pentecostals in particular, need help in looking forward with hope for a viable future of Christian unity. Our houses are in need of some repair. In that light, I wish to offer suggestions as to how Pentecostals can best facilitate a future containing a more vibrantly unified Christian faith. Andrew Walls points out that the work of a church historian at the dawn of the 21st century requires the dual tasks of re-conception and re-visioning.4 Using these dual tasks as my guide, in the brief scope of this chapter, I want to do a bit of “scouting out” of the ecumenical horizon and its implications for

2 Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, “Navigating the Changing Landscape of World Christianity,” Keynote Address, Seminar on “Seeking Renewal of the Spirit and Fullness of Life for all Creation as Witnessing Communities,” Reflections on the New wcc Statement on Mission and Evangelism, Ecumenical Institute, Bossey, Switzerland, July 14, 2014, 32. 3 Ibid., 34. 4 Andrew Walls, “Eusebius Tries Again: The Task of Re-Conceiving and Re-Visioning the Study of Christian History,” in William Shenk, ed. Perspectives on Writing World Christian History (Wipf & Stock, 2011), 14.

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Pentecostals.5 In particular, I am asking the following questions: What needs to be reconceived in order to meet the challenges of the 21st century? How might we re-vision the quest for Christian unity?6 Finally, as Walls aptly points out, the tasks of reconceiving and re-visioning cannot be accomplished without conversion. Walls writes, “conversion means turning, not substituting a new element for old or adding a new element to the old, but changing the direction of what is already there.”7 It is my contention that in re-visioning, we must reconceive the past, paying more attention to voices and stories not always told in the dominant narratives. In both the larger ecumenical movement as well as the Pentecostal movement, there are hidden threads that need attention. However, it is often the dominant narratives that shape the way Pentecostal ecumenism is understood by outsiders as well as insiders. By offering an alternative reading of these narratives, it is possible not only to shine more light on our ecumenical past, but also, to revision the future more faithfully. Furthermore, I engage the task of re-visioning by pulling threads from the hidden narratives. I believe these hidden narratives may hold a key for a more viable ecumenical future. 1

Re-Conceiving the Past: The Ecumenical Movement

The ecumenical movement began with the vision of Christian unity for the sake of mission. The World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1910, celebrated the great missionary thrust of the 19th century and heralded the new century as being filled with promise for evangelization of the world. They believed winning the world for Christ would require a unified Christianity. The vision of Christian unity for the sake of mission arose at the time when modernity was at its height. At the dawn of the 20th century there was a large amount of optimism. Science had facilitated a world of inventions, advances in medicine, and higher standards of living. The ideology of “progress” was an intoxicating impetus to get on with things—building, organizing, and moving history forward. The mantra of the day went something like this: 5 In this chapter I will be building upon an earlier paper, “When East Meets West and North Meets South: The Reconciling Mission of Global Christianity,” Global Christian Forum, 2007. Published in The Ecumenical Movement: An Anthology of Key Texts and Voices, ed. Michael Kinnamon (Geneva: World Council of Churches Publications, 2016), 472–76. 6 I offer these questions as someone who has walked the ecumenical path since 1992. In addition, I write as an insider to both the ecumenical movement and Pentecostalism. 7 Andrew Walls, “Eusebius Tries Again,” 21.

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The Fatherhood of God The Brotherhood of Man The Leadership of Jesus Salvation by Character The Progress of Mankind Onward and Upward Forever8 The optimism present one hundred years ago was channeled in institutional imagery, and when the Edinburgh meeting took place, the world was consumed with institution-building. Along these same lines, there was an intense quest for sameness and efficiency. In terms of defining “truth,” it was assumed there could be only one, most efficient and correct answer. During this period, debate over “correctness” consumed Christian apologetics, and the question of “who has the real truth?” was an ever-present reality. Reason and science were pitted against emotions and “superstition.” It was believed that through reasoned dialogue, “truth” would emerge, and there could be consensus on key issues. As Max Weber pointed out, Protestantism helped fuel the rise of this modernity.9 Protestant Christianity mirrored this institutional, scientific worldview. By the mid-twentieth century most Protestant denominations were complex bureaucracies, complete with massive buildings, multi-million dollar budgets, and multiple layers of organization. During this time period, structures built to house the cause of Christian unity, such as the World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States were designed around values of efficiency and corporate management. As a result, the ecumenical movement was clothed in vestments of corporate institutions with “career” ecumenists at the helm. Within the confines of a modern paradigm, with all of the benefits and limitations, the ecumenical movement of the 20th century accomplished a great deal toward the goal of the visible unity of the church. Originating out of a vision of world missionary zeal, it provided Christians with common witness and deep fellowship. The twentieth century will be known as the era when many historic divisions between Christians were confronted and overcome. Walls of fear and suspicion, some having existed for centuries, were broken down. Through the efforts of councilor and bilateral dialogues there emerged

8 Quote from The Christian Register 100, no. 16 (1921): 328. 9 See Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (Abingdon: Routledge, 1992).

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a common understanding of baptism, Eucharist, and ministry.10 Perhaps the crowning achievement of twentieth-century ecumenism was The Lutheran World Federation-Roman Catholic “Joint Declaration on Justification,” of 1999, which should be celebrated as a historic achievement healing some deep wounds of the Reformation. 2

The Ecumenical Winter

As the 20th century drew to a close it became apparent that the edifices of modernity were giving way to deconstruction by postmodernity. Certitude was replaced by suspicion and sameness by otherness. Furthermore, in the West, homogeneity of culture and Christianity was waning. Leslie Newbigin aptly observed that the “wcc was born in the death throes of ‘Christendom.’”11 As Christendom waned, the organizations built to sustain Christian unity entered a period known as “the ecumenical winter.”12 The ecumenical winter manifested itself in institutional decay and financial decline. As mainline Protestant denominations began to decline rapidly in membership and finances, they sharply reduced support to ecumenical organizations. In the 1960’s the National Council of Churches usa employed over 400 people. By the end of the 20th century there were fewer than 20 people employed. The ecumenical winter was more than loss of institutional support. It was also a time of searching for renewed vision. In his book, Ecumenism in Transition: A Paradigm Shift in Ecumenical Movement?, World Council of Churches General Secretary Konrad Raiser lamented, “The contemporary movement is marked by uncertainty, stagnation, and a loss of direction and vision. There is even little shared understanding of what is meant by the word ecumenical.”13 During the last decade of the 1990’s there were several attempts to re-vision the ecumenical movement. A great deal of ecumenical energy, which had previously been channeled outward in expansion, turned inward. There was no small amount of discussion on the issues of “who” and “what” constituted the

10 11 12 13

Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982). Leslie Newbigin, “A Missionary Dream,” The Ecumenical Review 42 (January 1991), 4. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, was the first person to pronounce “the winter of ecumenism.” He used this expression in 1989 during the Heenan Memorial Lecture, Heythrop College. See “The Winter of Ecumenism,” The Tablet January 13th, 1990. Konrad Raiser, Ecumenism in Transition: A Paradigm Shift in the Ecumenical Movement? trans. Tony Coates (Geneva: wcc, 1991), 33.

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“ecumenical table.”14 These were often tense discussions, involving issues of how Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Roman Catholics could be better integrated into the “ecumenical banquet.”15 These issues coalesced around divisions that were arising within mainline Protestantism over human sexuality. One example of the tensions arising during this time would be the effort to form a Foundation for a Second Conference on Faith and Order. In 1999, I was part of a small group of ecumenists who gathered at the Center for Theological Inquiry (cti) in Princeton to reflect on the state of the ecumenical movement. The meeting was initiated by William Rusch, former Director of the U.S. ­National Council of Churches Commission on Faith and Order. The consultation discussed the galvanizing and unifying effects of the first U.S. Conference on Faith and Order held at Oberlin College in 1957. The group issued a document entitled “A Call to the Churches for a Second Conference on Faith and Order in North America,” which was circulated among church leaders for additional signatures. The document was presented to the full Faith and Order Commission at its March 2000 meeting where it was unanimously endorsed.16 It was naïve to think the Foundation for a Second Conference would be able to free itself from the larger, more hostile climate of the ecumenical winter. I remember tense meetings between officers of Faith and Order and officers of the Foundation.17 There were rumors of the Foundation being funded by “right wing” sources. Eventually, Rusch was unable to raise the proposal above 14 15 16

17

See Dale Irvin, “New Directions in Faith and Order for the Twenty-first Century: Building a New Common Table,” in Concord Makes Strength: Essays in Reformed Ecumenism, ed. John W. Coakley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 159–73. Dale Irvin, “The Banquet of Ecumenical Theology,” Ecumenical Review 43, no. 1 (1991): 68–78. In 2001 Rusch formed a nonprofit foundation to guide the process of convening a second conference on Faith and Order. This move by Rusch garnered criticism from leaders of Faith and Order, who saw it as an attempt to steer the work of Faith and Order outside the National Council of Churches. Furthermore, in spite of efforts to the contrary, the Foundation’s work became ensnared in the rifts within mainline churches. In a upi report, Uwe-Siemon Netto asked the question, “Will the fads troubling the mainline churches also infiltrate the new body?” In response, he quoted an anonymous member of the Foundation: “With the likes of Cardinal Keeler and Cheryl Bridges Johns on this board, it’s hard to imagine that it would ever descend to the level of discussing same-sex unions and the ordination of non-celibate homosexuals.” Uwe-Sieman Netto, United Press International (upi) January 29, 2001. I believe one of Rusch’s reasons for the Foundation for Faith and Order was to put a ­firewall around the Commission on Faith and Order in case the National Council of Churches became insolvent. The Commission existed before the formation of the U.S. National Council of Churches. Rusch saw the possibility of the Commission continuing to be viable after the National Council of Churches ceased to exist in a viable form.

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the fray and garner enough financial support for the Foundation to see the project to completion. There was a Second Conference on Faith and Order, held at Oberlin on July 20, 2007. However, it was on a much smaller scale than originally envisioned and operated under the control of the National Council of Churches instead of the Foundation for a Second Conference on Faith and Order as had been envisioned. The old order was not willing to give way to a radically new, more inclusive one. The ecumenical winter, a time of loss as well as searching for new models, created fertile soil for new initiatives to be born. In some ways, the quest for Christian unity is not out of the winter. Mainstream ecumenical organizations continue to struggle for finances and renewed identity. However, the deep angst seems to have given way to cautious optimism. “Renewal” has replaced “death” in the language of the movement. 3

Fresh Vision and New Ecumenical Ventures

The beginning of the 21st century was marked by what has been described as the beginnings of “the ecumenical spring.”18 It has been a period for constructing new ecumenical tables. No one is trying to build one big table or a “one size fits all” form of Christian unity as was thought possible in the height of modernity. It has become clear that while there is one oikonomia, there are many tables in this household. In the United States, Christian Churches Together (cct) was organized as a new table for supporting the cause of Christian unity. Initial exploration for the organization began in 2001, but it was not formally organized until 2006. In­ volving Evangelicals, Orthodox, Mainline Protestants, Pentecostals, and Roman Catholics, cct serves as a fellowship of churches and organizations, and it seeks to bridge the divide between churches associated with National Association of Evangelicals and those associated with the National Council of Churches. Its Committee of Oversight is structured with leaders from the major “families” of U.S. Christianity. For that reason, since its inception Pentecostals have been part of the leadership of cct. On an international level, the Global Christian Forum has emerged as a new and viable form of ecumenism for the 21st century. As with Christian Churches Together, it does not seek to dismantle old structures as much as to offer a “third way” between more formal ecumenical councils and informal, but 18

Adelle M. Banks, “Hopes for an ‘Ecumenical Spring,’” The Christian Century (March 15, 2012).

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loosely organized fellowships. The idea for the Global Christian Forum began with Konrad Raiser, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, who, in the 1990’s, began reflecting on the need for an ecumenical forum that was broader than the scope of the World Council. In 1998 a consultation was held at Bossey, Switzerland to explore the possibility of creating a new ecumenical forum that could hold a “more effective, more sustaining, more inclusive network of relationships.”19 Under the leadership of Hubert van Beek, the Global Christian Forum took on a more formal purpose and structure. Meetings held in Pasadena, California in June 2002, provided clear organizational structure and purposes. It was decided to hold regional meetings around the world culminating in a global meeting of the Forum in 2007. The first worldwide gathering of the Global Christian Forum was held in 2007 in Limuru, Kenya. The global gathering was designed to share the successes of the regional meetings as well as to discover a vision for future of the quest for Christian unity. I was invited to the Limuru gathering to give a plenary paper on the challenges and opportunities for the future of Christian unity. In this address, I attempted to re-conceive the resources of the ecumenical movement and to re-vision the future.20 It was my contention, and still is, that the future of Christian unity rested in reconciling Christianity of the Global North with that of the Global South. To do so, however, would require genuine conversion, a turning from established ways into new directions. In the words of 1968 World Council of Churches Assembly, for genuine Christian unity to be achieved, there would need to be both “death and rebirth.” To that end, I noted that repentance from both the Global North and Global South would be required to go forward. Beyond repentance would be the task of acknowledging the gifts held within the churches of the North as well as the gifts held within the churches of the South.21 The verdict is still out in regards to the shape of the future of the ecumenical movement. New organizations, such as Christian Churches Together and the Global Christian Forum, are still fragile and lack the financial support they 19 20 21

Sarah Rowland Jones, “The Global Christian Forum: A Narrative History,” in Revisioning Christian Unity, ed. Hubert van Beek (Geneva: wcc, 2009), 4–5. Johns, “When East Meets West,” 472–76. It would be an understatement to say that this address was not well received. It was so soundly rejected that I embargoed the paper for a year before sending it to Hubert van Beek for publication. I took comfort in the prophetic word given to me at the Kenya meeting by Kim Catherine Collins, a leader in the Roman Catholic Renewal Movement. She noted, “No one understands or is willing to act on your paper. In ten years this paper will be welcomed and understood. For now, get over it.” I saw Collins’s words coming true when my paper was included in The Ecumenical Movement, published in January 2016.

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need to continue their work. In the meantime, institutions such as the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S. and the World Council of Churches continue to provide oversight for a great deal of the work of Christian unity. Perhaps there will never again be large, well-funded ecumenical organizations. Perhaps the future will rest in local and regional attempts for Christian unity. Perhaps Pentecostals will play a key role in the future of the ecumenical movement. 4

Re-Conceiving the Past: Pentecostalism and the Quest for Christian Unity

In re-conceiving the role of Pentecostals in the quest for Christian unity it is necessary to examine the past briefly. The past sets the stage for the present. It also offers clues as to what might need to change in order to move forward. The primal vision of Pentecostalism, what many of us see best expressed at the Azusa Street revival, contained an eschatological vision of Christian unity. The Apostolic Faith, the official newsletter of the Azusa Revival, had as its initial byline the following statement: “The Apostolic Faith Movement. Stands for the restoration of the faith once delivered unto the saints—the old time religion, camp meetings, revivals, missions, street and prison work and Christian Unity everywhere.”22 The primary impetus behind the Pentecostal vision of unity was restoration of Apostolic Christianity. William Seymour, leader of the Azusa Revival, understood Christian unity as a result of ever deepening consecration to God. Salvation, sanctification, and the baptism of the Holy Ghost moved believers more fully into doctrinal unity (not uniformity), as well as other forms of unity. Racial and gender reconciliation were signs of deeper spiritual transformation. The Pentecostal impulse for unity differed from that of the ecumenical movement in several ways. First, it was born out of an eschatological vision of living in “the last days.” This vision did not buy into the prevailing modernist vision of “the progress of mankind, onward and upward forever.” Instead, it saw God’s pouring out his Spirit on all flesh as a sign of the soon second coming of Jesus. Early Pentecostals believed humanity was unable to bring about

22

“The Apostolic Faith Movement,” The Apostolic Faith 1, no. 1 (1906). David Bundy points out that the forms of ministry mentioned here were traditionally nonsectarian. See his “The Ecumenical Quest of Pentecostalism,” Cyberjournal for Pentecostal-Charismatic Research 5 (1999).

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the “happy brotherhood of Man.” Human initiative had to be deconstructed, purged in the fires of Pentecost. Only then could there be true unity. Second, Pentecostals envisioned a “spiritual unity” more than an organizational one. Indeed, one of the issues plaguing the Pentecostal movement in the early 20th century was the nature of organizational unity as opposed to unity centered on common experiences of the Holy Spirit. This vision of a “spiritual ecumenism” does not suggest that Pentecostals were not concerned about ecclesiology. On the contrary, denominations such as the Church of God (Cleveland, TN) were obsessed with images of the “true church” in dimensions of spirituality and polity.23 Third, Pentecostals understood unity to include a radical reorienting of life. Even though it was short-lived, long before racial and gender unity was an issue in the ecumenical movement, the Azusa Street Mission modeled radical inclusiveness in these areas. The Pentecostal Movement was also a movement calling for a unity that empowered the poor (another short-lived vision). Empowerment of the poor was not part of the ecumenical vision until the late 20th century. The Pentecostal vision for Christian unity was first propagated by Thomas Ball Barratt (1865–1940), key leader of the early Pentecostal movement in Norway and Europe. Barratt, and others of his generation, did not seek for a wider form of Christian unity, intersecting with other Protestant efforts. Early Pentecostals were expelled from established churches. Barratt was dismissed from the Methodist Episcopal Church for accepting the Pentecostal message. He joined with others who had been displaced from the Salvation Army, Baptist churches, the Roman Catholic Church, and Lutheran churches, in what Bundy aptly labels as “Pentecostal exile.”24 Being in exile was not the first choice of many early Pentecostals, but due to rejection from established churches, they were forced to take their vision of unity and work it out among themselves. Pentecostals were not invited to attend The Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910. The young movement was not on the radar of the historic churches.25 In 1942, Pentecostals in the United States, being desirous of wider Christian fellowship and greater acceptance among conservative Christians, were part of the formation of the National Association of Evangelicals (nae). In 1948 the 23 24 25

Dale Coulter, “The Development of Ecclesiology in the Church of God,” Pneuma 29, no. 1 (2007): 59–85. Bundy, “The Ecumenical Quest of Pentecostalism.” Barratt envisioned a “Spiritual Alliance” among Pentecostals that would allow each national Pentecostal Movement to have its own identity and cultural structures while joining with others in areas of common concern and mission. In 1908, in response to Barratt’s call for unity, a group of European leaders met in Hamburg Germany to discuss a number of issues. These “Leaders Conferences” met annually through 1911.

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Pentecostal Fellowship of North America (pfna) was formed. It consisted of predominately white denominations. In 1999, Pentecostal leaders such as B.E. Underwood, recognizing the need for greater racial unity, led in the disbandment of the pfna and the creation of a more inclusive organization, and the Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches of North America (pccna) was formed. In 1947 the first World Pentecostal Conference was held in Zurich, Switzerland. Out of this meeting the World Pentecostal Fellowship was organized. 5

Pentecostal Engagement in the Ecumenical Movement

The history of Pentecostal involvement in the 20th century ecumenical movement began with the pioneering efforts of Donald Gee (1891–1966), a British Pentecostal Pastor, and David du Plessis, (1905–1987), President of the South African Pentecostal Mission who later affiliated with the Assemblies of God in the usa. Gee is known for his efforts to unite Pentecostals. He was one of the first people to note the global and diverse character of the Pentecostal revival. Prolific in several languages, he visited many European countries, and he was instrumental in organizing the first World Pentecostal Conference that took place in 1947. Following the conference, Gee became the founding editor of the international periodical Pentecost. Bundy insightfully observes, “In a period where Pentecostal journalism was descending into denominationally focused irrelevance, Gee provided a daring alternative.”26 Gee’s editorials were on topics such as the World Council of Churches Assembly in Amsterdam, which he attended as an observer.27 Traveling extensively, David du Plessis (1905–1987) was known around the world as “Mr. Pentecost.” Du Plessis was active in Vatican ii and helped to shape the conversations between the Roman Catholic Charismatic Movement and Pentecostals. In 1972, after conversation with the newly formed Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, he helped establish the International Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue. The last fifteen years of his life were ­focused on this dialogue.

26 27

Bundy, “The Ecumenical Quest of Pentecostalism.” In 1954 Gee, along with Assemblies of God leader, J. Roswell Flower, attended the Evanston Assembly of the World Council of Churches. Gee was welcomed as a journalist and Flowers as an observer. Gee wrote about the disunity he saw in the World Council, but noted, “Before the Pentecostal churches can criticize others, they should confess their own often ineffectual struggles to achieve unity among themselves.” Gee lamented that there was no reference to the Pentecostal churches during the Assembly. See Ibid.

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The work of Donald Gee and David du Plessis is significant, not only because of the doors they opened, but also because of the backlash to their work. Resistance to the larger Christian world among Pentecostals during the midtwentieth century hardened and set the stage for later generations of Pentecostal ecumenists. Both Donald Gee and David du Plessis came under attack by “nouveau fundamentalist”28 Pentecostal leaders, especially those in the United States. Leading the attack was T.F. Zimmerman, General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God. Zimmerman pressured European leaders into forbidding Gee to represent the World Pentecostal Conference at the New Delhi Assembly of the World Council of Churches and argued that any contact with other churches involved compromise.29 The Assemblies of God dis-fellowshipped du Plessis for his ongoing involvement with Mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics. The attacks against Pentecostal ecumenists such as Donald Gee and David du Plessis launched a new era in Pentecostal relations with the larger body of Christ. It was an era when the primal Pentecostal vision of unity was consumed by misconceptions, dispensational sensationalism, and deeply held suspicions regarding other Christian traditions. It signaled the beginning of a period of time in which bias against the ecumenical movement dominated the U.S. Pentecostal ethos as well as that of the World Pentecostal Fellowship. Zimmerman’s idea that any form of “organizational unity” constituted compromise revealed the extent of the influence of Fundamentalism on the Pentecostal movement. Fundamentalism’s impact was significant, especially in regards to relationships with the larger body of Christ. Fundamentalists, using the lens of dispensational theology, argued that the ecumenical movement was a diabolical ploy to deceive people into compromising the faith. This ploy would result in a World Super Church, culminating in the Scarlet Woman or Religious Babylon described in Revelation 17 and 18. In this spirit, Zimmerman, addressing the Pentecostal World Conference meeting in Jerusalem in 1961, warned that those who “would join hands with those who do compromise are being unwittingly used as tools against us and not for us.”30 It should be noted that Zimmerman’s resistance to organizational unity was not only a reflection of dispensational eschatology, it was also a reflection of the Assemblies of God preference for congregational polity over against 28

Ibid. Bundy’s use of the terms “nouveau fundamentalist” are important descriptors of the rising influence of American fundamentalism on Pentecostalism. 29 Ibid. 30 Thomas F. Zimmerman, “Twentieth Century Pentecost,” in Addresses Presented at the Sixth Pentecostal World Conference, Jerusalem, Israel, May 19th to 21st, 1961 (Toronto: Testimony Press, 1961), 55.

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Episcopal forms of church government. This preference made it difficult to conceive of people coming together as churches in order to create a unified structure. Any idea of “church” as catholic was resisted among strictly congregational denominations. Zimmerman’s remarks came at the time when people viewed the world in organizational and industrial images. For Pentecostal leaders, the capitalist industrial complex of the 20th century was “good,” especially when building denominational headquarters, publishing houses, and universities. However, it was “bad” in building organizations for Christian unity. Unlike some earlier Pentecostals, such as Frank Bartleman, Pentecostals did not question how the industrial capitalist world itself was compromising the faith or how this world might reflect The Industrial Beast. Instead, they channeled their fears of being subsumed into the belly of The Beast toward those structures seen as consuming their unique Christian identity. Two years after Zimmerman’s address at the World Pentecostal Conference, the Church of God (Cleveland, TN) adopted a resolution at its General Assembly that stated “Most proponents of the present ecumenical movement…have veered from the cardinal principles of true Christianity and have gone so far as to deny the Divinity of Christ and question the authority of His Word.”31 This resolution did not carry the weight of an action item. For that reason, it was not binding on Church of God members. In 1965 the Assemblies of God adopted a policy, which later was added to the denomination’s bylaws, forbidding any minister or church from participation in or promoting the ecumenical movement.32 Other Pentecostal denominations did not make such restrictive moves on their ministers, but the spirit of the policy seemed ubiquitous within the movement. Donald Gee’s attempts to remind Pentecostals that many who are “faithful to the Fundamentals” had been among the “bitterest opponents of the Pentecostal Movement,” fell to deaf ears.33 Pentecostal leaders were too affected by the teachings of dispensational theology and too influenced by mid-twentiethcentury fears surrounding the Cold War. This atmosphere of fear helped to fuel 31 32

33

See “Resolutions,” The Church of God Evangel 53, no. 11 (May 13, 1963), 4. Quoted in Cecil M. Roebeck, Jr., “A Pentecostal Looks at the World Council of Churches,” The Ecumenical Review 47, no. 1 (1995): 60–69. See “Article ix, The Ecumenical Movement,” in Minutes of the 45th Session of the General Council of the Assemblies of God Convened at Minneapolis, Minnesota August 10–15, 1993 with Revised Constitution and Bylaws (Springfield, MO: General Secretary’s Office, 1993), 171. Donald Gee, “Pentecostals at New Delhi,” Pentecost, 57 (Sept–Nov 1962): 17, quoted in Roebeck, “A Pentecostal Looks at the World Council of Churches,” 63.

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sensational end times prophecy claiming one sign of the end times would be the rise of the one world government and the one world super church as harbingers of the soon return of Christ and the beginning of the great tribulation. The persecution of leaders such as Donald Gee and David du Plessis had consequences. First, it created an atmosphere of suspicion of those seeking to follow in their steps, especially among members of the Assemblies of God. Ecumenists within the AG, such as Jerry Sandidge and Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., came under serious criticism for their work. Sandige was an Assemblies of God missionary to Belgium. During his studies at the University of Leuven, Sandidge began to fellowship with Roman Catholics. He later joined the International Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue. Roebeck, who would become Professor at Fuller Theological Seminary and Chair of the Pentecostal team for the International Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue, was openly criticized by leaders within his denomination. Due to strong and formal resistance from their denomination, ecumenists within the Assemblies of God were forced to do their work without official support. They were forced to become individual representatives of Pentecostalism instead of representatives of their churches. Unfortunately, the “individual representative” became the dominant image of Pentecostal ecumenists. In many ways the hostility that Assembly of God ecumenists received set the stage for reading the Pentecostal ecumenical experience. It formed the dominant narrative, effectively wiping out other narratives of more tolerance and inclusion. For instance, in a 2003 interview with The Pneuma Review, ­Robeck states, “Within the Pentecostal and Charismatic tradition lies the fact that virtually any move toward greater ecumenical understanding or cooperation is viewed with extreme suspicion.”34 Such a broad and inclusive statement was not defendable at that time. While there was lingering suspicion of ecumenism among U.S. Pentecostals during the latter part of the 20th century, there were Pentecostal denominations in the U.S. in the process of becoming more open to supporting ecumenical engagement. By 2003, the image of “extreme suspicion” cannot be justified. At this time Pentecostals were openly engaging in ecumenical venues, with full acceptance and financial support of their denominations. Furthermore, by 2003, leaders of Pentecostal denominations were becoming actively involved in ecumenical organizations beyond the nae and pccna. Another inaccurate assumption arising from experiences of Donald Gee, ­David du Plessis, Jerry Sandidge, and Cecil Robeck, is the idea that ­Pentecostal 34

“Pentecostal /Charismatic Churches and Ecumenism: A Conversation with Professor Mel Roebeck,” Pneuma Review 6, no. 1 (2003).

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ecumenism is largely an individual endeavor rather than an ecclesial one. When the International Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue began, with the leadership of David du Plessis, the Roman Catholic participants understood they were engaging with individuals rather than denominations. However, over the years, as more people from outside the Assemblies of God joined the dialogue, this assumption was not modified to reflect more accurately the ecclesial reality of the Pentecostal team. For instance, Don Jenkins joined the dialogue in 1984 and served on it for twelve years. He was appointed and funded by the Church of God. Jenkins, being from an Episcopal form of church government, understood his presence in a more ecclesial form than did Cecil Robeck or Jerry Sandidge or others from a congregational tradition. When a replacement was being chosen for Justus du Plessis, who served as Chair of the Pentecostal team following the resignation of his brother, David, Don Jenkins suggested that the Pentecostal Chair rotate among denominations. He made this suggestion for two reasons: to ensure fair denominational representation and to temper the power of the Chair from resting in the hands of one person.35 It was Jenkins’s conclusion that both David and Justus du Plessis held too much control over the Dialogue. Having another long term Chair would continue this problem. Jenkins was not convinced the formation of a “Steering Committee” for the Pentecostal team would help matters, especially if the work of the committee would be supervised by the Chair. Jenkins’s experience on the Roman CatholicPentecostal Dialogue serves as a case study of competing narratives: ecclesial vs. individual. I joined the Roman Catholic-Pentecostal International Dialogue in the early 1990’s. The Church of God provided financial support for my participation. Sometimes this support came directly from our International Offices. At other times it came from our seminary. During this time, I regularly wrote reports of the meetings and gave summaries, both written and oral, to the Church of God leadership. Only on one occasion, when members of the Dialogue traveled to Rome to present the final document of the fourth phase of our work, “Evangelization, Proselytism, and Common Witness,” to Pope John Paul ii, did I experience reluctance from leadership in the Church of God. Ray Hughes, who was General Overseer of the Church of God at the time, told me the Church of God would not financially support my meeting the Pope. His rationale was that this event would be offensive to Church of God members in Latin America. He told me I could go as an individual, but not as a representative of the Church of God. This conversation (which was quite spirited) between Hughes and me is an example of the ecclesial ties and interest in the 35

Personal letter from Don Jenkins to Cheryl Bridges Johns, November 2, 2016.

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Dialogue. One of the biggest regrets of my life is that I did not find the funds and go to Rome for the meeting with John Paul ii. The International Pentecostal Holiness Church (iphc) offers another case study of ecclesial dynamics as well as a narrative of a Pentecostal denomination’s movement from hostility to acceptance and leadership in ecumenical engagement. The iphc story offers a counter narrative to the dominant image of Pentecostal ecumenism, namely one of individuals engaged without endorsement and support from their denominations. Even though the iphc’s first bishop, J.H. King expressed openness to the larger body of Christ,36 by the mid-twentieth century the iphc was following the standard anti-ecumenical narrative. However, much of that narrative began to change with the ecumenical calling of Vinson Synan, who was one of the early participants in the International Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue. In his memoir, An Eyewitness Remembers The Century of the Holy Spirit,37 Synan chronicles his journey from fearful skeptic to enthusiastic participant. Not only was he skeptical of a movement of the Holy Spirit among people whom Pentecostals considered to be “less than Christian,” he was fearful of the iphc reaction to his involvement in this movement. When asked to report on the Catholic renewal at the 1972 iphc General Conference, Synan feared this testimony would “end my influence and future in the denomination.”38 However, to Synan’s astonishment “the whole multitude stood to their feet as a torrent of praise went up at the news of the Catholic renewal. Many were weeping and applauding.”39 As early as 1972, Synan, an iphc leader, helped the denomination to become more open to the work of the Holy Spirit within both Roman Catholic and mainline traditions. For many years, Synan’s ecumenical work was done, not from the sidelines, but while serving as General Secretary of the iphc. The ecumenical work of Harold Hunter serves as another example of the close connection between Pentecostal ecclesiology and ecumenism. When 36

37 38 39

Douglas Jacobsen, Thinking in the Spirit: Theologies of the Early Pentecostal Movement (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003), argues that King’s experience was by nature more social than some early Pentecostals, and notes his antagonism toward religious prejudice—both against Pentecostals and among Pentecostals, 169–70, 172–73. Tony Richie, Toward a Pentecostal Theology of Religions: Encountering Cornelius Today (Cleveland, TN: cpt, 2013), 61–66, outlines King’s inclusive orientation toward religious others. Vinson Synan, An Eyewitness Remembers the Century of the Holy Spirit (Nashville: Chosen Books, 2010). Ibid., 74. Ibid., 75.

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Harold Hunter joined the ipch in 1995, he already had extensive background in ecumenical work. He was responsible for creating the “Scholars track” at Brighton 1993, a large worldwide Charismatic/Pentecostal Gathering.40 After joining the iphc, Hunter combined his work as Official Historian of the denomination with the ecumenical work he had been doing previously fully endorsed and supported by the Church of God of Prophecy. Hunter’s move to the iphc came at the time when B.E. Underwood served as General ­Superintendent (Presiding Bishop). Underwood was known for his ecumenical openness among Evangelicals and Pentecostals. With Hunter’s encouragement, Underwood expanded his vision of Christian unity. Underwood began working with Hunter in developing an e-journal that included various articles about ecumenism. In 1995 Bishop Underwood approved Hunter’s participation in the World Communion of Reformed Churches (wcrc)-Pentecostal Dialogue. When James Leggett became Bishop of the iphc in 1997, he accompanied Hunter to several International Catholic Charismatic (icc) conferences in Europe. Leggett later became a member of the icc advisory board. Bishop Leggett approved Hunter’s attendance at the 1998 World Council of Churches General Assembly in Zimbabwe. In 2000 Leggett supported Hunter’s move to launch the wcc-­ Pentecostal Joint Consultative Group. Hunter involved Leggett in the early stages of the formation of the Global Christian Forum (gcf). Furthermore, Leggett agreed to serve on the Leadership Committee of the gcf. Leggett’s participation in the gcf Leadership Committee is historic. For the first time, a Pentecostal leader was engaged in the development of a significant worldwide ecumenical organization. When Christian Churches Together (cct) was formed in 2002, Leggett was part of the initial organizing committee. Leggett was one of the cct leaders chosen to greet Pope Benedict xvi at his 2008 visit to the United States. In another historic move, Doug Beacham, the current Bishop of the iphc, traveled with Hunter for a Private Audience with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. Beacham currently serves on the Leadership Committee for cct. In the iphc story we see a partnership emerging between ecumenists and denominational leaders that could not have been envisioned in the middle of the 20th century. I believe this narrative is not merely an anomaly, but a sign and a prototype for the future of Pentecostal engagement in the 21st century. The Church of God offers another counter-narrative to the dominant ones of open hostility and individual vs. ecclesial involvement. Over the last few years 40

The proceedings from Brighton were originally published as All Together in One Place, ed. Harold D. Hunter and Peter Hocken (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993).

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the list of those within the Church of God who are engaged in ecumenical activity, with the support of their denomination, has rapidly grown. Several years ago I began a practice of writing each newly elected Executive Committee of the Church of God a report of the various venues involving Church of God participants. In 2012, upon receiving my report, Bishop Mark Williams invited me to sit with the cog Executive Committee in order to dialogue regarding priorities for the Church of God’s participation in inter-church relationships. I want to point out that these discussions were not about the ecumenical work I as an individual should be engaged in. Rather, they centered on the ecclesial question, “what inter-church relationships should the Church of God develop?” The work of Tony L. Richie in both ecumenical and interfaith activities has been well received by the Church of God. Richie, who serves both as a pastor and adjunct seminary professor, is a model for facilitating reception. He has a unique way of writing about his work in nontechnical language, and he regularly contributes news articles to the Church of God Faith News Network as well as the Church of God Evangel. These articles have helped to educate Church of God ministers and laity to the importance of engaging with other Christians as well as Muslims. Church of God institutions have hosted several ecumenical dialogues. The World Council of Churches-Pentecostal Joint Consultative Group was held on the campus of Lee University. semisud, the Church of God University in Quito, Ecuador, has hosted several international ecumenical meetings. The Pentecostal Theological Seminary has become more intentional in incorporating ecumenical and interfaith issues into its curriculum. For several years, Tony Richie has taught courses on interfaith concerns. In the spring of 2016 I taught a course on ecumenism with Terry L. Cross, Dean of the School of Religion at Lee University and member of Faith and Order of the National Council of Churches usa. This course was crossed listed at Lee University and pts. The above narratives regarding the ipch and Church of God reveal several hopeful signs for the future of Pentecostal engagement with the ecumenical movement. First, the overt antagonism of earlier days against ecumenism is not to be found today. Second, Pentecostal denominations are more willing to endorse and fund ecumenical work. Third, Pentecostal denominational leaders are beginning to assume leadership in the newly emerging ecumenical structures. Fourth, new models of ecumenical reception, such as with the work of Tony Richie, are beginning to emerge. Fifth, there is the formation of international ecumenical centers such as semisud. All of these signs hold possibility for the future of Christian unity. It is my contention that the remodeling of the Pentecostal ecumenical house involves assessing older, incomplete assumptions regarding the r­elationship

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between ecclesiology and the quest for Christian unity. Old assumptions do not die easily. In his musing on the lost opportunities for Pentecostal engagement with the World Council of Churches, Cecil Roebeck observed that part of the problem was due to the World Council of Churches requirement for churches to confess the Lordship of Jesus. He argued, “Pentecostals do not think in terms of churches, they think only in terms of individuals…questions of membership in the Council and membership in Pentecostal churches are viewed from two very different vantage points.”41 However, there is evidence to refute this claim. Dale Coulter points out that while the dominant narrative of Pentecostalism has been that of “Free Church,” or congregational polity, there are many bodies within the worldwide movement, such as the Church of God, who reside in the “Episcopal wing.”42 A recent study of the International Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue by Jelle Creemers, is case in point of misconceptions regarding Pentecostal ecclesiology. It is Creemers’s thesis that the factors of “conversionism” and “ecclesiology” contributed to the lack of Pentecostal engagement within the larger ecumenical movement. In regards to ecclesiology, he notes “Ecclesiology was not a central theme in early Pentecostal thinking.”43 Furthermore, in his analysis of some of the issues centering on reception and representation on the International Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue, Creemers states, “The most obvious characteristic of the (Classical) Pentecostal movement that impedes official participation in ecumenical dialogues and structural receptions of the results in its communal life is intrinsically connected to its largely congregational ecclesiology.”44 Furthermore, “This translates into a problem for ecumenical dialogue that is first described in ecclesiological categories.”45 These statements fail to recognize the existence of Pentecostal denominations with decidedly centralized forms of government. Cremmers assessment that “[e]cclesial existence within the Classical Pentecostal movement starts from below and supra-local hierarchical structures or even cooperation is seen as desirable yet optional rather than essential to full ecclesiality,”46 skews his research on the internal dynamics in the International Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue. What he misses is the fact that there were strong ecclesial dynamics present in the choice of representatives, factors surrounding the tensions in leadership selection, and in matters of reception. 41 42 43

Roebeck, “A Pentecostal Looks at the World Council of Churches,” 60–69. Coulter, “The Development of Ecclesiology in the Church of God,” 59–85. Jelle Creemers, Theological Dialogue with Classical Pentecostals: Challenges and Opportunities (T&T Clark, 2015), 17. 44 Cremmers, Theological Dialogue, 43. 45 Cremmers, Theological Dialogue, 43. 46 Cremmers, Theological Dialogue, 43.

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In many ways, the tensions on the Pentecostal team were grounded in the differences between those from a congregational tradition and those from a more Episcopal form. Those from the latter, including Don Jenkins and me, often felt forced into the congregational mold and that our ecclesial bodies were not being acknowledged in favor of individual voices. 6

Re-Visioning the Future

At the Global Christian Forum meeting in Limuru, Kenya, two Pentecostals, Wonsuk Ma and I, were asked to give plenary addresses.47 We were not asked to talk about “A Pentecostal perspective on Christian unity” or to talk about Pentecostalism at all. We were asked to give direction to the worldwide gathering of Christians for the future of the quest in Christian unity. This was a historic shift. Pentecostals were not even on the ecumenical radar screen at Edinburgh 1910. During the middle and latter part of the twentieth century Pentecostals were invited to the ecumenical table, but were viewed as “other.” If Pentecostals were asked to address ecumenical meetings, we were given the instructions of relating our “otherness” to their “sameness.” In other words, most of our energy was placed in defining who we were and how we fit into the ecumenical journey. We were the “hobbits” on the ecumenical quest, invited, but considered strange and irrelevant. It is my belief that the Pentecostal “hobbits” may hold the key for the future of Christian unity. In particular, I believe we have a unique role as interlockers between the Global South and the Global North. In my address to the Global Christian Forum I noted that the ecumenical task of the future would be to reconcile Christianity in the Global North with Christianity found the Global South. It was my thesis that “a new form of ecumenism is needed in order to embrace the present challenges of world-wide Christianity.”48 Furthermore, I noted that in order to achieve this unity, there would need to be, in the words of World Council of Churches Assembly in New Delhi, a death and re-birth. This death and re-birth calls for repentance from both the Global North and Global South. It also calls for reception of the gifts held in the Global North and the gifts found in the Global South. If these gifts can be offered and received in the context of continual repentance, there would no longer be a 47 48

See Wonsuk Ma, “Discerning What God is Doing Today: A Personal Journey,” in Revisioning Christian Unity, ed. Hubert van Beek (Oxford: Regnum Books, 2009), 80–92. Johns, “When East Meets West and North Meets South,” 473.

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“receiving” mission field (the Global South) and a “sending” church (the Global North) as was envisioned at Edinburgh 1910. Right now I do not believe Pentecostals are up for the task of being interlockers between the Global North and the Global South. We should be, but we are not. We are not ready because we have our own divisions and history of colonialism. Pentecostals in the Global North are very much like their mainline Protestant counterparts, unable truly to receive mission from the Global South. In this sense, we are in need of our own death and re-birth. Finally, if Pentecostals are to assume greater leadership in the quest for Christian unity, it is imperative that the Pentecostal ecumenical story be enlarged to include the narrative of churches with episcopal, centralized forms of ecclesiology. This narrative holds keys to better relationships between church leaders and ecumenists. It also holds keys to the critical issue of reception. Partnership between church leaders and ecumenists is vital for future Pentecostal engagement in the quest for Christian unity. Pentecostal ecumenists of the early- and mid-twentieth century were forced to be prophetic individuals. Today, we are being called to be prophetic partners with our leaders and bishops. Wolfgang Vondey asserts, “Much like the ecumenical movement, contemporary Pentecostalism is experiencing a transformational renewal that has taken the movement to the boundaries of its own identity by shifting focus away from internal issues toward a global ecumenical agenda.”49 Furthermore, Vondey writes, “Pentecostalism still needs to formulate a consistent Pentecostal self-understanding in relation to the ecumenical world.”50 This chapter, with its brief counter-reading of our ecumenical history, is an offering toward more consistent self-understanding. A fuller self-understanding of our calling in the quest for Christian unity would provide a secure standpoint for launching out into the deep of ecumenical engagement. Bibliography Banks, Adelle M. “Hopes for an ‘Ecumenical Spring.’” The Christian Century. March 15, 2012. Coulter, Dale. “The Development of Ecclesiology in the Church of God.” Pneuma, 29, no. 1 (2007): 59–85. 49 50

Wolfgang Vondey, “Introduction,” in Pentecostalism and Christian Unity: Continuing and Building Relationships, ed. Wolfgang Vondey (Eugene: Pickwick, 2013), 21. Ibid., 23.

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Creemers, Jelle. Theological Dialogue with Classical Pentecostals: Challenges and Opportunities. London: T&T Clark, 2015. Gee, Donald. “Pentecostals at New Delhi.” Pentecost 57 (Sept–Nov 1962). Granberg-Michaelson, Wesley. “Navigating the Changing Landscape of World Christianity.” In Reflections on the New WCC Statement on Mission and Evangelism. Bossey, Switzerland: Ecumenical Institute, July 14, 2014. Irvin, Dale. “The Banquet of Ecumenical Theology.” Ecumenical Review 43, no. 1 (1991): 68–78. Irvin, Dale. “New Directions in Faith and Order for the Twenty-First Century: Building a New Common Table.” In Concord Makes Strength: Essays in Reformed Ecumenism. Edited by John W. Coakley. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002, 159–73. Jacobson, Douglas. Thinking in the Spirit: Theologies of the Early Pentecostal Movement. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003. Jenkins, Don. Personal letter to Cheryl Bridges Johns. November 2, 2016. Johns, Cheryl Bridges. “The Adolescence of Pentecostalism: The Legitimacy of a Sectarian Identity.” Pneuma 17, no. 1 (1995): 3–17. Johns, Cheryl Bridges. “When East Meets West and North Meets South: The Reconciling Mission of Global Christianity.” In The Ecumenical Movement: An Anthology of Key Texts and Voices. Edited by Michael Kinnamon. Geneva: World Council of Churches Publications, 2016, 472–76. Johns, Cheryl Bridges. “The Ecumenical Quest of Pentecostalism.” Cyberjournal for Pentecostal-Charismatic Research 5 (1999). Jones, Sarah Rowland. “The Global Christian Forum: A Narrative History.” In Revisioning Christian Unity. Edited by Hubert van Beek. Geneva: WCC, 2009, 3–36. Ma, Wonsuk. “Discerning What God is Doing Today: A Personal Journey.” In Revisioning Christian Unity. Edited by Hubert van Beek. Oxford: Regnum Books, 2009, 80–92. Newbigin, Leslie. “A Missionary Dream.” The Ecumenical Review 42 (January 1991): 4. Raiser, Konrad. Ecumenism in Transition: A Paradigm Shift in the Ecumenical Movement? Translated by Tony Coates. Geneva: WCC, 1991. Richie, Tony. Toward a Pentecostal Theology of Religions: Encountering Cornelius Today. Cleveland, TN: CPT, 2013. Roebeck, Cecil M., Jr. “Pentecostal/Charismatic Churches and Ecumenism: A Conversation with Professor Mel Roebeck.” Pneuma Review 6, no. 1 (2003). Roebeck, Cecil M., Jr. “A Pentecostal Looks at the World Council of Churches.” The ­Ecumenical Review 47, no. 1 (1995): 60–69. Synan, Vinson. An Eyewitness Remembers the Century of the Holy Spirit. Nashville: Chosen Books, 2010. Vondey, Wolfgang. “Introduction.” In Pentecostalism and Christian Unity: Continuing and Building Relationships. Edited by Wolfgang Vondey. Eugene: Pickwick, 2013, 1–31.

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Walls, Andrew. “Eusebius Tries Again: The Task of Re-Conceiving and Re-Visioning the Study of Christian History.” In Enlarging the Story: Perspectives on Writing World Christian History. Edited by William Shenk. Eugene, OR; Wipf & Stock, 2011, 1–21. Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parsons. Abingdon: Routledge, 1992. Zimmerman, Thomas F. “Twentieth Century Pentecost.” In Addresses Presented at the Sixth Pentecostal World Conference, Jerusalem, Israel, May 19th to 21st, 1961. Toronto: Testimony Press, 1961. All Together in One Place. Edited by Harold D. Hunter and Peter Hocken. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993. “Article ix, The Ecumenical Movement.” In Minutes of the 45th Session of the General Council of the Assemblies of God Convened at Minneapolis, Minnesota August 10–15, 1993 with Revised Constitution and Bylaws. Springfield, MO: General Secretary’s ­Office, 1993. Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry. Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982. “Resolutions.” The Church of God Evangel 53, no. 11 (1963): 4.

Part 2 Pentecostal Intersections with Ecumenical Theology

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Chapter 8

The Nature of Theology and Pentecostal Hermeneutics: On the Relationship Among Scripture, Experience of the Spirit, and Life in Spirit-Filled Community L. William Oliverio, Jr. Western theology, as it has come out of the period of the Enlightenment and the age of modern rationalism, has been pressed to deal with the historicity and truth of the Christian faith as a prolegomena to its theological agenda. Wolfhart Pannenberg’s short introduction to his larger three-volume systematic theology exemplifies this. The great modern theologian begins not only with the affirmation that Christian faith is always personal, a matter of genuine confession, but by arguing that it necessarily makes historical truth claims. For “the story of Jesus Christ has to be history.”1 Theology must be about truth claims, and even so first, because if this is surrendered, or even equivocated upon, the clergy will “become doubtful about the truth of the gospel, they will replace it by other ‘causes,’ and the believers will be disturbed, because they no longer get to hear in church what they rightfully expect to be taught there.”2 Claims concerning personal relationship with God must be grounded in historical-theological truth claims about God and God’s self-revelation to humanity. Modern theology has also often begun with questions of truth about God through the pressing questions of human existence. Karl Rahner addressed the truth of God’s existence, not through historical claims so much as through those great questions. In Rahner’s modern Christian existentialism, theology is necessary because “man” would not be “man” without God.3 The question of God makes us human because it places before us the totality of all that exists, and to be human is to consider that totality. For if ever the word “God” is forgotten by humanity, “Man would have forgotten the totality and its ground…What 1 Wolfhart Pannenberg, An Introduction to Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991), 5. 2 Ibid., 6. 3 Rahner, of course, was referring to men and women with a masculine term.

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would it be like? We can only say: he would have ceased being a man. He would have regressed to the level of a clever animal.”4 Theology begins because we find ourselves before the questions of transcendence, totality, and the meaning of our own existence. Pentecostal theology has tended to begin differently. Pentecostal theology does deal with the question of the historical truth of Christian faith—it usually assumes it. And Pentecostal theology does address existential questions—it often implicitly and at times explicitly does so. Rather, Pentecostal theology, especially in its less borrowed forms, begins with the Christian’s experience of God, with a special emphasis on the presence of God’s Spirit. This has also meant that Pentecostal theology has been concerned with the integration of God’s story in Scripture in relation to the manifold stories of human experience with the Spirit. Pentecostal theological hermeneutics have been identified as constituted by a trialectic that has developed within this young Christian t­ radition—the interplay of the Scriptures, experience of the Spirit, and life in Spirit-filled communities. This trialectic is central to contemporary Pentecostal ­theological hermeneutics, and thus central to the theological understanding with which many Pentecostal theologians and communities are operating.5 1

Pentecostal Theological Style

The family of Pentecostal theologies tends to approach theology with a pneumatologically-oriented version of the Anselmian-Augustinian credo ut intelligam, with an approach that generally moves away from rationalized versions of faith seeking understanding towards a rendition that emphasizes the affective and pneumatic in theological understanding. Pentecostal theology has tended towards an integrative hermeneutic of experiential faith working out its understanding in relation to its readings of Scripture, the world, and human life. As James K.A. Smith has argued, Pentecostalism does not offer a set of propositional truths, rather “a latent but distinctive understanding of the world, an affective ‘take’ on the world that constitutes more of a social imaginary than a 4 Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. William V. Dych (New York: Seabury Press, 1978), 48. 5 This trialectic has especially been put forth by Kenneth J. Archer, A Pentecostal Hermeneutic for the Twenty-First Century: Spirit, Scripture, Community; jpt Supplement 28 (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2004); idem, “Pentecostal Story: The Hermeneutical Filter for the Making of Meaning,” Pneuma 26, no. 2 (2004): 26–59.

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cognitive framework.”6 Or, as Steven Land has contended, Pentecostal theology is embedded in its spirituality. Pentecostal theology is about not just orthodoxy and orthopraxis but also orthopathy.7 For much of the century-plus history of Pentecostalism, Pentecostal theology has been primarily embedded in the songs, preaching, oral traditions, testimonies, devotional practices, and lived experiences of Pentecostals, even as the past several decades have seen the growth of formal Pentecostal theological work. The family of Pentecostal theologies has sometimes been judged as deficient by scholarly standards, and while there is some justification for this general criticism, much of the condescension is the result of a failure of understanding among those condescending. This is, in part, because Pentecostal theology has operated with a dissenting formula concerning the mix of the spiritual and the rational in theology, one which attributes a greater role to the spiritual in its constitution. As Douglas Jacobsen puts it, although Pentecostal theology does not exist in a class by itself, it has a “different center of gravity” than other theological traditions.8 While some have emphasized the seeming focus on experience among Pentecostals at the expense of theological reflection, Pentecostals have, in fact, understood the need for theology as a second order reflection on the Christian life, working out and developing that which is embedded in interpretive experiences of spiritual life. It is simply a human need to reflect and understand. So the first and then subsequent generations of Pentecostals redeveloped a formula for theology which emphasized experiential spiritual understanding. They developed a hermeneutic that read the Bible, God’s actions among them, and their life experiences as ways of knowing God. Yet against the misreading of Pentecostalism that it merely represents generalized spiritual experience, Steven Studebaker has argued that this cannot be the essence of Pentecostalism because Pentecostal experience involves a latent theology embedded in such experience of the Spirit—that is, it is experience of the Triune God.9 To dichotomize experience and thought decisively is to misunderstand the ways humans understand and interpret life and reality. Hermeneutics always involves embedded understanding formed by language, tradition, proclivities 6 James K.A. Smith, Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy, Pentecostal Manifestos (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 31. 7 Steven J. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom, jpt Supplement 1 (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993). 8 Douglas Jacobsen, Thinking in the Spirit: Theologies of the Early Pentecostal Movement (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003), 7. 9 Steven M. Studebaker, From Pentecost to the Triune God: A Pentecostal Trinitarian Theology; Pentecostal Manifestos (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012), 11–35, 189–92.

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and habits that, while often taken for granted and left unreflected or minimally reflected upon, nevertheless provide the interpretive structures not only for second order conscious, reflective understanding but also first order intuitive experiences, including spiritual experiences, which embed much prior understanding into human experiences.10 First order interpreted experiences of life give rise to second order reflections and evaluations. This second order thinking interprets and disciplines first order habits, pressing its interpretations back down on them. Yesterday’s interpretations become today’s preunderstanding; today’s interpretations become tomorrow’s preunderstanding. Pentecostal theologies have tended to place greater weight on the first order experiences, as both source of theological understanding as well as one of its ends. To the critics of Pentecostalism who have claimed that there is little in Pentecostal theology to be explicated, Studebaker offers the analog of the Christian understanding of God as Trinity prior to Nicaea in 325. There is much implicit in Pentecostal understanding that, with time and some patience, will provide a more mature theological tradition that is now in the making.11 Pentecostal theologians, perhaps especially ecumenical-Pentecostal theologians, are already doing so. A surge in that maturation process might be understood as having begun in the 1990s when Pentecostals began to develop a theological approach that sought to drink from the wells of the tradition’s own resources while nondefensively drawing upon ecumenical sources for furthering Pentecostal theology. The early 1990s saw a number of calls for Pentecostals to resist the reduction of their spiritual-theological vision to a sub-division of Evangelical theology; rather, they called Pentecostals to drink from their own wells, and to work out their own intuitions and spiritual understanding into a more mature and authentic theology.12 D. Lyle Dabney’s call to develop a “theology of 10

The work of the Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, and his late research partner Amos Tversky, has developed psychological theory based on human understanding consisting of two systems that continually interact with one another: System 1 and System 2. Kahneman has argued that while System 2, our “conscious, reasoning self that has beliefs, makes choices, and decides what to think about and what to do” is often seen as being in charge of human knowledge, it is System 1 that guides most of human understanding as it “continually constructs a coherent interpretation of what is going on in our world at any instant…the complexity and richness of the automatic and often unconscious processes that underlie intuitive thinking…these automatic processes explain the heuristics of judgment.” See Daniel Kahneman, Thinking: Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Grioux, 2011), 13, 21. 11 Studebaker, From Pentecost to the Triune God, 191–92. 12 Murray Dempster, “Paradigm Shifts and Hermeneutics: Confronting Issues Old and New,” Pneuma 15, no. 2 (1993): 129–35; D. William Faupel, “Whither Pentecostalism?: 22nd

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the Third Article” of the Creed, beginning with the Spirit—to throw off “Saul’s armor” and take up “David’s sling” was his metaphor—epitomized the paradigm shift that began in the 1990s and which has become predominant in the contemporary Pentecostal theological community by the second decade of the twenty-first century.13 Subsequently, Kenneth J. Archer’s constructive vision of Pentecostal hermeneutics as narratival and advocating this trialectical interaction between the Spirit, Scripture, and the interpretive community came to the fore.14 Amos Yong published a paradigmatic work on theological hermeneutics early in his writing career in which he articulated a dynamic interrelation of Spirit-Word-Community.15 Further, the pneumatic element in Pentecostal hermeneutics has come to be understood as a point of distinctive emphasis for theology in the Pentecostal tradition. In recent years, this has come to even greater stress in formal Pentecostal theologies. These more recent explicit developments have sought to work out this element as having been deeply embedded in Pentecostal hermeneutical practices in ways that were not yet adequately articulated. Against forms of scholasticism and rationalism, Pentecostal theological hermeneutics have tended towards an affirmation that at the core of one’s interpretive disposition of the things of God are the affections or desires, even as some ­Pentecostal theologies mimicked scholastic and rationalist forms.16 While modern rationalisms have sought to distance themselves from such affections as improper prejudices in the quest for knowledge, Pentecostal theologies have embraced them as proper expressions of the deepest human inclinations. For Pentecostalism, theology and theological interpretation are living and spiritual exercises of the self in Christian community. The early Pentecostal ­ residential Address of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, November 7, 1992,” Pneuma 15, P no. 1 (Spring 1993): 9–27; and Cheryl Bridges Johns, “The Adolescence of Pentecostalism: In Search of a Legitimate Sectarian Identity—sps Presidential Address,” Pneuma 17, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 3–17. 13 D. Lyle Dabney, “Saul’s Armor: The Problem and Promise of Pentecostal Theology Today,” Pneuma 23, no. 1 (2001): 115–46. 14 Archer, A Pentecostal Hermeneutic for the Twenty-First Century; and idem, “Pentecostal Story.” 15 Amos Yong, Spirit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective (Aldershot, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002). I have argued that this work was central to his early theological agenda in “An Interpretive Review Essay on Amos Yong’s Spirit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 18, no. 2 (2009): 301–11. 16 See Jacobsen, “Knowing the Doctrines of Pentecostalism: The Scholastic Theology of the Assemblies of God, 1930–1955,” in Pentecostal Currents in American Protestantism, ed. Edith L. Blumhofer, Russel P. Spittler, and Grant A. Wacker (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 90–107.

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educational and doctrinal pioneer D.W. Kerr expressed this, albeit in his early twentieth century American conceptual frame, as “facts on fire.”17 So also Land considered orthopathy an essential aspect of Pentecostal theology as Pentecostal hermeneutics has, by and large, tacitly affirmed an anthropology in which the spiritual aspect of human understanding makes rationalist approaches to theological matters unfitting and thus unreliable. Pentecostal theology turns the table on the Enlightenment critique that affections distort and need to be overcome. Yong’s philosophically sophisticated Spirit-Word-­Community emphasized that theological hermeneutics ought to be a hermeneutics of life.18 Nevertheless, Pentecostal theologians spent much of the twentieth century attempting to fit Pentecostal intuitions into the theological forms of their Evangelical siblings. 2

Early Pentecostal and Evangelical-Pentecostal Theological Hermeneutics: Originating and Evangelicalizing Pentecostal Theology

Early and mid-twentieth century Pentecostals seem to have turned to Evangelicalism for several reasons.19 First, as Jacobsen stresses in his history of early Pentecostal theologians, many Pentecostal theologians came from Evangelical traditions, and their subsequent theologies as Pentecostal converts included continuities with those previous Evangelical and revivalist theologies and their attendant hermeneutical tendencies.20 Second, it seems that second and third generation Pentecostal theologians sought to do theology through emulation, and they turned to the approaches used by what they considered their most trusted fellow Christians. It did not seem to have occurred to some of them to the degree that it has to contemporary Pentecostal theologians, that Pentecostal understanding and experience is much more than a theological addendum to Evangelical theology. More importantly, it did not occur to many theologians of those generations that Evangelical forms and hermeneutical approaches might be inadequate to the task of developing Pentecostal s­ piritual intuitions into a more thoroughgoing Pentecostal theology. Third, Pentecostals turned 17 Daniel Warren Kerr, “Facts on Fire,” The Pentecostal Evangel (11 April 1925): 5. 18 Yong, Spirit-Word-Community, 1–7. 19 For further evaluation of the relationship between Evangelicalism and Pentecostal hermeneutics, see my Theological Hermeneutics in the Classical Pentecostal Tradition: A Typological Account, Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies 12 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 83–184. 20 This is a recurring theme in Jacobsen, Thinking in the Spirit.

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to Evangelicalism simply because their conclusions concerning doctrine most closely coincided with Evangelical doctrine. There seemed to be a shared affirmation of the status of the Bible and other commonalities on important matters like soteriology and the primacy of evangelism. In the first decades of the twentieth century, early Pentecostal theology made a series of awkward attempts to identify with the fundamentalism that had arisen out of nineteenth century Evangelicalism.21 There were continuities between the two constituencies, especially in their anti-modernism, which itself included a deep if subtle modern influence on Pentecostals and fundamentalists. Early twentieth century Christian anti-modernism, perhaps more unwittingly than conscientiously, assumed much of the rationalism that it sought to oppose.22 While fundamentalists embraced some of this rationalism because they held to its tenets, Pentecostals seemed to have done so much more unwittingly and awkwardly. The distrust between Pentecostals and fundamentalists was based on real differences in ontologies. The Pentecostal affirmations of contemporary activities of the Spirit and openness to revising Christian doctrine not only characterized the first generation of Pentecostal theology but also represented constitutive differences from fundamentalism.23 The immediacy of the Spirit to Pentecostals meant that Pentecostals interpreted Scripture as norming contemporary Christian life. Archer has named what emerged among early Pentecostal biblical hermeneutics as their “Bible Reading Method,” a narratival hermeneutic that focused its effort on the spiritual life of Pentecostal communities. On the one hand, this method took on the scholastic Protestant tendency to proof-text and harmonize biblical texts into doctrinal statements, operating with a pre-critical understanding of the Bible.24 On the other, the Pentecostal “Bible Reading Method” brought an alternative narrative and pathos to biblical interpretation. Pentecostals typically brought a different historical and eschatological story through which they read Scripture, and they found contemporary Christianity at a different point in that story than their Evangelical and fundamentalist ­siblings.25 Though a case can be made that at least a somewhat broader 21

Edith Blumhofer, Restoring the Faith: The Assemblies of God, Pentecostalism, and American Culture (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 5–6; idem, The Assemblies of God: A Chapter in the Story of American Pentecostalism, vol. 2 (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1989), 15–16. 22 Archer, A Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 47–88. 23 Jacobsen, Thinking in the Spirit, 355–58. 24 Archer, A Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 99–102. 25 Gerald T. Sheppard, “Pentecostals and the Hermeneutics of Dispensationalism: The Anatomy of an Uneasy Relationship,” Pneuma 6 (1984): 5–34.

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­ arrative was at hand, Archer well identifies the “Latter Rain” motif among earn ly Pentecostals as governing that historical narrative. Pentecostals considered themselves a community poor and humble enough to allow for God’s “Latter Rain” outpouring to manifest itself, and that understanding filtered right through the paradigm of early Pentecostal hermeneutics.26 This early hermeneutic was also primarily characterized by a continual dynamic between readings of the Bible and life experiences, and it usually involved a naïve version of common sense realism, while it had Pentecostal renditions of the “Full Gospel” funding its content. This original Pentecostal hermeneutic was a hermeneutic of origination, a hermeneutic of openness to doctrinal reformulation and innovation, and a radicalization of the Protestant conviction concerning the perspicuity of Scripture, with the perspicuity only coming to those who were spiritually and morally right with God and open to the work of the Spirit.27 The second and third generations of Pentecostals regulated the openness to revise traditional Christian doctrine found among the first generation. This openness had too easily led to continual theological innovations. And while openness was sought, too much openness created all kinds of problems as the hermeneutic could lead to constant revisions to doctrine. These generations of Pentecostals mainly regulated this openness by returning to Evangelical hermeneutical tendencies that sought to justify Pentecostal doctrines as properly biblical ones.28 Pentecostals who felt God very deeply in their worship even turned towards a “Pentecostal scholasticism” exhibited in the works of several Pentecostal theologians in the 1930s–1950s whose work was widely used in ministerial training, especially Myer Pearlman’s Knowing the Doctrines of the Bible (1937) and Ernest Swing Williams’s three-volume Systematic Theology (1953).29 Christopher A. Stephenson has shown how these works stand in continuity with the late-nineteenth century Princetonian method of Charles Hodge. They 26

Early Pentecostals used the Old Testament motif concerning the two rainy seasons in Palestine as indicative that God had a “Latter Rain” outpouring of the Spirit available beyond the original outpouring on the apostles and the early Church. Archer, Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 136–50. 27 Oliverio, Theological Hermeneutics in the Classical Pentecostal Tradition, 31–82. 28 Ibid., 83–132. 29 See Douglas Jacobsen, “Knowing the Doctrines of Pentecostals The Scholastic Theology of the Assemblies of God, 1930–1955,” in Pentecostal Currents in American Protestantism, ed. Edith L. Blumhofer, Russell P. Spittler, and Grant A. Wacker (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 90–107; Christopher A. Stephenson, Types of Pentecostal Theology: Method, System, Spirit; aar Academy Series (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 11–27; and Oliverio, Theological Hermeneutics in the Classical Pentecostal Tradition, 116–29, 264–71.

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assume that the proper way of doing systematic theology is through an inductive approach that investigates the Bible in order to harmonize and arrange the doctrines that emerge from the texts. This approach thus begins with a theological epistemology that understands God’s revelation to have been faithfully and inerrantly delivered through the inspired biblical authors. Biblical readers need to seek illumination to understand the Bible faithfully, thus enabling the arrangement and harmonization of biblical doctrines. The method remained Hodgean while the content found in the reading of Scripture was Pentecostal.30 The alliance between white Pentecostals in North America and the National Association of Evangelicals in the early-1940s led Evangelical-­ Pentecostal hermeneuts to see what Pentecostals brought to the theological table as addenda to Evangelical theology rather than as more integrally affecting the whole, like many late-twentieth and early-twenty-first century Pentecostal theologians will insist.31 The more explicit turn to evangelical theology in the mid- and late-­twentieth century among Pentecostals led them towards a theological hermeneutics that stood in a line of continuity with the hermeneutics of not only Hodge but also the author-centered hermeneutic theory of the Yale philosopher E.D. Hirsch, Jr.32 This method integrated certain Evangelical-Pentecostal theological affirmations with Hirsch’s author-centered theory, and it allowed this Evangelical-Pentecostal approach to find a philosophical ally that provided them with s­ upportive arguments for its hermeneutics. Key to this approach was the issue of the meaning of “meaning,” which Hirsch reserved for what could be discerned of authorial intention. This integrated well with a theological and epistemological foundationalism that affirmed the inerrant Scriptures as providing biblical principles which, then in turn, are topically organized in systematic theology. Experience was not to be primary for interpretation; rather, experience was to result from obedience to Scripture. Though it was usually recognized that there was a back-and-forth between experience and biblical interpretation, the proper method was for Scripture to guide experience, and not vice versa. Scripture is to norm experience.33 They were also comfortable 30 Stephenson, Types of Pentecostal Theology, 22–24. 31 See Terry Cross, “The Rich Feast of Theology: Can Pentecostals Bring the Main Course or Only the Relish?” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 16 (April 2000): 27–47. 32 Hirsch’s Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967) is the paradigmatic work. 33 Exemplars of this method among Pentecostals include Gordon Anderson, Gordon Fee, Stanley Horton, and Robert Menzies. For analysis of this method, see Stephenson, Types of Pentecostal Theology, 16–21; and Oliverio, Theological Hermeneutics in the Classical Pentecostal Tradition, 133–81.

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with employing historical-critical methods in biblical studies, as long as they employed an affirmation of God’s faithfulness in self-revelation in the Scriptures by employing a “believing criticism.” Still, many of these Evangelical-Pentecostals emphasized the pneumatic aspect of Pentecostal hermeneutics.34 The Spirit is involved in illumination in reading the biblical texts, and guides believers in application. The Spirit illumi­ nates the Scriptural word for the Christian community of interpreters, and the pneumatic emphasis among Pentecostals allows them to understand better the inspired Scriptures. Following Hirsch, though, the Scripture still has a singular ideal meaning, even if certainty about that meaning is never humanly attainable. Nevertheless, doctrines are discovered in the intention of the biblical authors, and their significance is applied to the particular situations of believers in Pentecostal communities. Several Pentecostal theologians, especially Roger Stronstad and Robert Menzies, emphasized that the search for authorial intent included the use of redaction and narrative criticism that could find the intent in the editing and narration of the biblical authors, especially as this pertained to Pentecostal doctrines as developed from Luke-Acts.35 Still, even with the addition of this pneumatic emphasis, Evangelical-Pentecostal hermeneutics remained focused on textual interpretation and the movement from biblical to systematic theology, and then to practical theology and application. 3

Contextual-Pentecostal Hermeneutics: Situating Pentecostal Theology

Beginning in the 1990s, the Evangelical-Pentecostal hermeneutical approach came under criticism from Pentecostal scholars who, in general, rejected several underlying assumptions of that hermeneutical type. A first objection was to the methodological primacy of biblical hermeneutics. Sometimes taken as an objection to the authority of Scripture, most of those Pentecostal ­theologians who voiced dissent to the Evangelical-Pentecostal approach did so while still holding to a high view of Scripture’s authority. They often argued that failing to account for hermeneutics on a broader level, including that of human preunderstanding, undermined rather than preserved biblical a­ uthority. Yong, 34 35

For example, Howard Ervin, “Hermeneutics: A Pentecostal Option,” Pneuma 3, no. 2 (1984): 11–25. Roger Stronstad, The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1984); and Robert P. Menzies, Empowered for Witness: The Spirit in Luke-Acts, jpt Supplement 6 (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1984).

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for example, contended that while biblical hermeneutics is necessary for good theological hermeneutics, a failure to develop a hermeneutics of the extraScriptural world will, in the end, “sabotage the theological task.”36 Biblical interpreters inevitably interpret more than Scripture, on the basis of much more than Scripture, and thus increased self-awareness of what theological and other assumptions Pentecostal interpreters bring to bear upon biblical and theological interpretation is needed for good theology. A second objection has to do with the nature of hermeneutics more generally. Contextual-Pentecostal theological hermeneutics were often influenced by Continental philosophical hermeneutics, and especially the work of HansGeorg Gadamer.37 In this philosophical tradition, hermeneutics is foremost about human understanding and preunderstanding. Thus hermeneutical prejudices, rather than standing as those things which need to be overcome in order to get to an objective understanding of anything, including an author’s intention, are the very conditions through and in which human understanding takes place. Situatedness is how humans understand, not something that can or should necessarily be overcome. Preunderstanding is inevitable and always a part of the meaning interpreters find in texts like the Bible; the question is rather which preunderstandings best account for what is there in texts and bring their truth to bear upon the present, as forms of illumination. Further, it is language, through and in which we understand. And language comes through inherited traditions. Smith, in his earlier and more Pentecostal work, furthered the claim that all human understanding is always mediated by our finitude and situatedness. For Smith, Pentecostal and other Christian hermeneutics were more faithful to the biblical narrative when they recognized that a Christian theological anthropology meant that our knowledge is always limited, partial, and mediated, and that this situation was also the case in humanity’s prelapsarian state, not just after.38 Interpretation is not a result of the Fall but constitutes a description of how finite and situated humanity knows. The Fall added sinfulness to that originally good situation.

36 Yong, Spirit-Word-Community, 2. 37 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd rev. ed., trans. and rev. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York and London: Continuum, 2004). 38 Smith, The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000). This is developed for Pentecostal hermeneutics in Chris E.W. Green, S­ anctifying Interpretation (Cleveland, TN: cpt Press, 2015), 39–60; and Oliverio, Theological Hermeneutics in the Classical Pentecostal Tradition, 315–61.

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Third, contextual-Pentecostal theologians argued that contextual hermeneutics were more authentically Pentecostal, that is, more faithful to the ethos of the tradition and especially its early years. In this way, the critique of E ­vangelical-Pentecostal hermeneutics turned into constructive contextual-Pentecostal hermeneutics. Archer’s A Pentecostal Hermeneutic for the Twenty-First Century picked up on a development that had been manifesting since the early-1990s, namely, that Pentecostals, in order to continue the original witness of their forebears, needed to drink from their own hermeneutical wells. These wells were primarily narratival, and they eschewed modern rationalisms, including the ways in which modern methodologies had influenced ­Evangelical-Pentecostal hermeneutics. The ethos of these contextual-­ Pentecostal h ­ ermeneutics resonated more with postmodern hermeneutics than modern. While some, including Archer, affirmed contextual-Pentecostal hermeneutics as postmodern, a number of Pentecostal theologians affirmed aspects of postmodern hermeneutics while pushing back against other aspects.39 Cheryl Bridges Johns, for instance, analyzed the turn among Pentecostals towards broader cultural influences and the turn to Evangelicalism as the twentieth century progressed as part of the adolescence of Pentecostalism. It was, she contended, an attempt to substitute another’s identity because of one’s own sense of shame in one’s own identity. In order to move beyond this adolescent substitution, she called for Pentecostal theology to speak its own language and urged Pentecostal scholars that they should “not feel obligated to relate to the tyranny of Evangelical rationalism nor…acritically jump on a postmodern bandwagon.”40 Pentecostalism could have and develop a legitimate sectarian identity while learning from others, especially from the larger Christian tradition. 4

Ecumenical-Pentecostal Hermeneutics: Deepening and Broadening Pentecostal Theology

In her 1994 address to Pentecostal scholars, Johns pointed Pentecostals to such a way forward. Rather than substituting another’s identity for their own, as an adolescent in an immature state, she called Pentecostals to the constructive work of integrating the future identity of Pentecostalism with its past and with the good that can be found from other traditions in its manifold surrounding contexts. To be able to do so, Pentecostals need to “know their ontological 39 40

Also see Bradley Truman Noel, Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010). Cheryl Bridges Johns, “The Adolescence of Pentecostalism,” 17.

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vocation.”41 A legitimate identity will result from a vocational calling that both stands against those powers which remain in hostility to the holiness of God and develops the community’s own legitimate sectarian voice. Pentecostal identity ought to be hopeful and future-oriented as it finds existential strength in an ontological Christian understanding of vocation rather than a never ending modern quest to find identity. It is not that identity does not continually become; it is that the identities of persons and communities must become in relation to their vocation.42 To Johns, it has been since the Second World War, that Pentecostals have been tempted to substitute identities found in the broader consumer and political culture, beyond subsuming their own identity under Evangelical rubrics. Rather, maturation as a spiritual and theological tradition requires growth by integration rather than substitution.43 While she took later twentieth century Pentecostalism to task for its adolescence, Johns identified signs of a potentially mature approach to identity within the tradition’s infancy. In the first issue of the Azusa Street Mission’s newspaper, The Apostolic Faith, the mission proclaimed that “Azusa Mission stands for the unity of God’s people everywhere.”44 This was based upon a vision of spiritual unity and equality. Yet early Pentecostals immediately struggled with the negative judgments and disparagements from other Christians. An article in the second issue of The Apostolic Faith saw Pentecostals as welcoming the prodigals returning to the Father at Azusa St, and implied that their Christian critics were the elder brothers in Jesus’ Parable of the Prodigal Son.45 Early Pentecostals read the Scriptures as calling all true Christians to deep spiritual unity. Yet they also interpreted Scripture in light of their marginalization, mocking, and rejection not only by non-Christians but even other Christians. Nevertheless, early Pentecostals generally reported a sense that the Spirit was leading them to humility and unity with other believers. Yet this sense contrasted with another set of impulses that held sway among them. This hermeneutical logic considered that since the Spirit and Word were immediate to them as they testified to the closeness of God’s presence, their interpretations of biblical truth were the very truth of God for all. Among many Pentecostals, this sense of immediacy was taken to require certitude and absolutism in their

41 42 43 44 45

Ibid., 10–11. Green echoes this theme in his Sanctifying Interpretation. Johns, “Adolescence of Pentecostalism,” 10–11. “Beginning of the World Wide Revival,” The Apostolic Faith (Los Angeles) 1, no. 5 (January 1907): 1. “The Elder Brother,” The Apostolic Faith (Los Angeles) 1, no. 2 (1906): 2.

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theological interpretations, which in turn led to some very anti-ecumenical tendencies.46 While it is possible to generalize concerning types or families of hermeneutics, as here with Pentecostal hermeneutics, differences and conflicting approaches nonetheless exist even within the development of these types. Within the broader family of Pentecostal hermeneutics, internal differences concerning ecumenical impulses have been significant. Early ecumenical-Pentecostal desires were met by early divisive and absolutist theological approaches, and many other approaches and temperaments in between. This tension has had a prolonged history in the tradition.47 With what might be characterized as an ontological resilience, an ­ecumenical-Pentecostal hermeneutical stream found its way from Azusa Street, through a century of pioneering work, to the current it represents in Pentecostal theology today. Such a hermeneutic ecumenically broadens the sources for developing Pentecostal theology by consciously drawing on the wider Christian tradition. It has taken Pentecostal ecumenical pioneers like David du Plessis and Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., with many others, to further practical relations with other Christian traditions.48 Yet Pentecostal theologians, from Ernest Swing Williams in the mid-twentieth century to Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen and Frank Macchia today, have developed and employed an ecumenical-­ Pentecostal hermeneutic. They have deepened Pentecostal understanding as they have found resources in other Christian traditions that have enriched Pentecostal theology. A certain stereotype of ecumenism sees it as reducing beliefs to lower common denominators, watering down theology in order to find common ground. There is, of course, some warrant for this stereotype, though it would grossly mischaracterize the ecumenical movement as a general description. By and large, however, ecumenical-Pentecostal hermeneutics have avoided a simplistic lower common denominator strategy. They have sought to deepen Pentecostal theological understanding by broadening it. The particularities of the ecumenical-Pentecostal strategy have been productive for a nexus of reasons. They include a move away from a static

46 47

48

Grant Wacker has accounted for these latter impulses in Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 18–34. For example, consider the tension and conflict concerning ecumenism between David du Plessis and Thomas Zimmerman, two prominent twentieth century Pentecostal leaders. See Joshua R. Ziefle, David du Plessis and the Assemblies of God: The Struggle for the Soul of a Movement, Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies 13 (Leiden: Brill, 2013). Perhaps the crown jewel of this is the Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogues (1972Present).

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­ odern  rationalism towards a more dynamic ontology. Contemporary ecum menical-Pentecostal hermeneutics typically understand theology as testifying to the Triune God whose self-revelation in the economy of creation, salvation, and the coming kingdom is best understood through multiple theological testimonies. Yong’s development of the “many tongues” principle, in which the tongues of Pentecost represent the proper testimony to the one True God in multiple languages and articulations, affirms that multiple theological articulations and disciplines provide for more fruitful and more adequate theological understanding than singular doctrinal principles could. On this model, theological truth is seen, in concert with the divine economy, as better understood in terms of aggregation and difference as well as unity of understanding. The Triune God is not a static entity best spoken about in monolithic statements, even if there is unity and commonality in Christian confession and experience. The multiplicity of the biblical witness is affirmed as modeling the multiple witnesses of Christian traditions.49 On this ecumenical-Pentecostal model, the way forward is through deepening as much as broadening, and turning to the wider Christian oikumene as an authentic theological resource has provided the most significant sources for such deepening. Yong models the approach where space is opened up for an ecumenicalPentecostal theology through a revision of received philosophical categories. While I have previously typified Yong as a contextual-Pentecostal theologian, there is a good case to be made that he can be well understood, perhaps primarily so, as an ecumenical-Pentecostal theologian.50 Yong has opened up philosophical space for ecumenical broadening and deepening, using concepts like the “pnuematological imagination,” “the many tongues” principle, and the trialectic of Spirit-Word-community. These concepts have created space for a wider agenda for Pentecostal theology.51 While ecumenical-Pentecostal hermeneuts have tended to agree with the approaches advocated by contextual-Pentecostal hermeneutics, the

49

See Yong, Renewing Christian Theology: Systematics for a Global Christianity (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2014), 12–23; Oliverio, “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, ed. Wolfgang Vondey and Martin William Mittelstadt, Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies 14 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 45–62; and Stephenson, “Reality, Knowledge, and Life in Community: Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Hermeneutics in the Work of Amos Yong,” in Ibid., 63–82. 50 Oliverio, Theological Hermeneutics in the Classical Pentecostal Tradition, 232–47; Stephenson, Types of Pentecostal Theology, 82–110. 51 Yong, Spirit-Word-Community; and Renewing Christian Theology, 1–27. For interpretation and evaluation. See Oliverio, “An Interpretive Review Essay.”

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d­ istinction between the two is in their agendas, which draw upon different disciplines and sources for Pentecostal theology. While contextual-Pentecostal hermeneutics tend to focus on the conditions of theological understanding, ecumenical-­Pentecostal hermeneutics have tended towards the systematic and constructive theological matters themselves.52 Chris E.W. Green, for example, states that contemporary theology needs to move away from talk about talk about God to “genuine talk about God.”53 Or, to put it in terms of the disciplines involved, thus far the contextual-Pentecostal hermeneutic has primarily employed philosophical theology and the ecumenical-Pentecostal theology constructive or systematic theology, though both have and can employ a variety of disciplines, theological and otherwise. The ecumenical-Pentecostal hermeneutic has focused on first order theological truths, even as it has sought to develop theological understanding from other traditions and integrate it into its theological identity. The hyphenation here implies genuine and primary identity as Pentecostal, with the kind of integration spoken of by Johns. Others voices are heard, and Pentecostal identity grows and is deepened through this interaction. This entails a mature relationality in which Pentecostals interact in genuine friendship, fellowship, and theological conversation, giving and expecting respect—even Christian love—in those relationships. It also entails the ability to make distinctions and disagree. The ethos of the ecumenical-Pentecostal hermeneutic is to move away from the shame-based approach that seeks attention and affirmation, and to believe that Pentecostal theology, as it matures, provides a contributing voice to contemporary Christian theology in general. This broadening and deepening among Pentecostal theologians is exemplified in the theological work of Pentecostal theologians like Johns, Yong, Simon Chan, Frank Macchia, and Studebaker, among others. Each of them considerably utilizes the broader Christian tradition as a resource for developing Pentecostal theology. While Chan’s diagnosis of the need for Pentecostal maturation has much in common with that of Johns, he has added his contention that the lack of attention to the nature and role of tradition in Pentecostal theology has created a problematic situation for it in general and its ecclesiology and practices in particular. He represents the side of ecumenical-Pentecostal theological hermeneutics that tends to see the wider Christian tradition as providing needed 52

These early trajectories in the history of these hermeneutical approaches do not, of course, imply that other trajectories could not develop. For instance, it is not hard to imagine a stream of ecumenically-oriented Pentecostal biblical hermeneutics emerging in the near future, or contextually-oriented Pentecostal constructive theologies either. 53 Green, Sanctifying Interpretation, 3.

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c­ orrectives to Pentecostal identity. With Chan, the wider tradition is like an older sibling that is helping a younger sibling mature in her gifts, even as the younger sibling might avoid taking on her older sibling’s faults. The charismatic nature of the Church has been taken by many Pentecostals as a rejection of the Church’s historicity since God’s presence can be immediate, and thus historicity bypassed. Chan, however, rejects this logic and the sense that the Church’s experience of and freedom in the Spirit can or should sever the present Body of Christ from its historical roots.54 The visible and invisible Churches are joined. It is the subtle influence of modernism that has led Pentecostalism to individualistic rather than communal, and ahistorical rather than historical, interpretive tendencies.55 Chan contends that pitting tradition against the newness of the work of the Spirit has been an important theological mistake made by many Pentecostals.56 Instead, tradition and “traditioning” are central to Chan’s proposal for the way forward for Pentecostal theology. So also is reviving the Church’s historical sense that theology is a unitary discipline concerned with spiritual ­knowledge.57 As Stephenson explains concerning Chan, “the use of the verbal derivative from tradition underscores the active nature of the formation process in which the church must intentionally engage to perpetuate Christian faith to successive generations”; this includes two main aspects—integrating systematic theology and spiritual theology, and situating one’s own tradition within the larger Christian tradition. Both are ways in which Pentecostal theology and its methodology require growth.58 On Chan’s register, experience has been overemphasized in the Pentecostal tradition because Pentecostal theological explanations, in the form of ­doctrines, have been poorly developed. This is in part attributable to the minimal attention paid by Pentecostals to the resources available in the broader and historical Christian spiritual tradition. Case in point: “the central doctrine called ‘baptism in the Spirit’ is far richer in Pentecostal experience than in Pentecostal explanation.”59 It is the greater Christian spiritual tradition that provides the resources for developing theological explanation. 54

Simon Chan, Pentecostal Ecclesiology: An Essay on the Development of Doctrine, jpt Supplement 38 (Blandford Forum, UK: Deo, 2011), 67–70. 55 Ibid., 77–80. 56 Simon Chan, Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition, jpt Supplement 21 (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 22–23. 57 Chan, Pentecostal Theology, 28. 58 Stephenson, Types of Pentecostal Theology, 48–49. 59 Ibid., 10. Chan does acknowledge what he considers helpful theological work on Spirit baptism, citing Peter Hocken, “The Meaning and Purpose of ‘Baptism in the Spirit,’”

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An important reason for this methodological conviction is Chan’s ontological conviction concerning the Church. Chan rejects as inadequate the notion that the Church is the collection of individuals who have placed their faith in Christ. Rather, “The church is the unity and communion of the Holy Spirit”; the Church is caught up in the life of the Triune God. The Church is constituted by the presence of the “ecclesia-shaped Spirit” so that the Church is linked to theological truth historically and charismatically. The Church has its linear history, yet may transcend those historical limitations because of the presence of the Spirit.60 For Chan, then, Pentecostal theology needs to pay attention to the way tradition works so that Pentecostal theology might better take up the task of “traditioning” in Pentecostal churches because that history is much the history of the work of the “ecclesia-shaped Spirit,” not a history to be bypassed or overcome. In the historicity of the Church and in its ontology as the Body of Christ, it is, together with Christ, the totus Christus. Therefore, the greater oikumene is not only a resource for Pentecostal theology, but the Church in its very historicity, is what theology is explicating.61 Frank Macchia represents another leading voice in ecumenical-Pentecostal theological hermeneutics. His development of the doctrine of Spirit baptism is perhaps the most developed exemplar of ecumenical-Pentecostal theological hermeneutics to date. Macchia regards Spirit baptism as the “crown jewel” of Pentecostal theology. Thus, rather than reducing the doctrine so that it might be made more palatable to other Christian traditions, Macchia deepens and broadens a theology of Spirit baptism in order to integrate other Christian theologies of Spirit baptism into a fuller Pentecostal theology, one that incorporates their theological insights into his Pentecostal vision. Finding where to broaden in order to deepen is key to the ecumenical-Pentecostal strategy. The choice of which other Christian voices are best for developing Pentecostal theology has been crucial. Macchia develops Spirit baptism by contending that a sense of koinonia is at the essence of the doctrine, and the philosophical-theological Pneuma 7, no. 2 (1985): 125–34; and Frank D. Macchia, “Sighs too Deep for Words: Toward a Theology of Glossolalia,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 1 (1992): 47–73. Chan develops Spirit baptism within George Lindbeck’s cultural-linguistic framework in Pentecostal Theology, 40–72. For summarization and evaluation of Chan’s ecclesiology in relation to his theological method, see Stephenson, Types of Pentecostal Theology, 48–58. 60 Chan, Pentecostal Theology, 64–65. 61 “If the church as the body of Christ is the extension of Christ the Truth and the embodiment of the true Tradition (which is Christ himself, the first Tradition sent from the Father), the church as the temple of the Spirit explains how this tradition is alive and moving inexorably toward its appointed End.” Simon Chan, Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshipping Community (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 32.

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category of participation in God and the Christian community as another key concept. Both of these add ecumenical emphasis to his theological method. When these elements are brought together with the breadth of theological resources he draws upon in constructing Pentecostal theology, Macchia provides an ecumenical-Pentecostal theological hermeneutic that is an exemplary model for Pentecostal ecumenical theology.62 More specifically, in Baptized in the Spirit, Macchia engages Catholic and Reformed theologies of Spirit baptism while he broadens the canonical sources for further development of a Pentecostal theology of Spirit baptism. As he integrates wider Christian and canonical sources into a constructive proposal, he draws on the core insight of the Pentecostal father William Seymour that Spirit baptism is a baptism into divine love, where we return again to God as our “first love,” a Pentecostal rendition of the doctrine that incorporates Catholic and Reformed theologies.63 Studebaker represents a final constructive exemplar whose work advances key aspects of the ecumenical-Pentecostal approach. His From Pentecost to the Triune God: A Pentecostal Trinitarian Theology is one of the most important contributions to Trinitarian theology by a Pentecostal theologian to date. This text exemplifies the development and fruition of the ecumenical-­Pentecostal theological hermeneutic, and its approach has much hermeneutical continuity with Macchia’s broadening-deepening and use of the canon, and with Yong’s use of revised philosophical concepts to open up conceptual space for ecumenical-Pentecostal theology. This latter task has often meant broadening conceptions and sometimes meant sliding Pentecostal thought away from unhelpful philosophical ideas that inhibit articulation of Pentecostal truths. This can be seen when Studebaker questions received notions of hierarchies and distinctions among experience, practices, tradition, and Scripture, as often assumed by Pentecostals. Rather, he reconceptualizes these theological sources as in a nexus in which these sources exist in a number of dynamic relations. He makes a similar hermeneutical affirmation of a continual ­dynamic

62

63

Another example of Macchia’s ecumenical-Pentecostal approach is Justified in the Spirit: Creation, Redemption, and the Triune God, Pentecostal Manifestos (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010). In it, Macchia develops a theology of justification that results in participation in the Triune God as he engages, at length, Catholic and Protestant traditions on justification, drawing upon and rejecting elements from each, and integrating them with a Pentecostal rendition of the doctrine that, again, draws upon a wide canonical witness. Frank Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006).

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between theological understanding and experience altogether. While he affirms Scripture’s authority and normativity for Christian life, he maintains that “experience can sometimes point to a better understanding and embodiment of biblical truth than can the received interpretation of Scripture.”64 Studebaker takes up the task of revising philosophical categories in order to develop Pentecostal pneumatology. He makes connections between the biblical witness and Christian experience with these revised categories. For “the Spirit’s identity and work is manifested most expressly as the Spirit of Pentecost. The Spirit of Pentecost has three characteristics: liminal, constitutional, and consummative (or eschatological).”65 He uses liminality as a bridge across spirit-matter and other dualisms; constitutionality to overcome the reduction of the Spirit to an instrument; and the Spirit as consummative to move towards an understanding of the Spirit as the agent that brings God’s purposes for creation into their transition to another existential plane that will come to fulfillment in the eschaton. Such an approach provides an integrative hermeneutic that works with biblical hermeneutics and philosophical hermeneutics and weaves them into, in the end, a theological hermeneutic. This can also be seen in how he moves between theological understanding in the Christian tradition and the functions of ruach and pneuma in Scripture, interpreting the biblical terms and their use in the Christian tradition each on their own terms before reintegrating them. While using the biblical text as a source for developing Trinitarian theology, he nevertheless affirms that “The Spirit of God in Genesis 1:2, with respect to the theology of ancient Israel, is not the Holy Spirit of later Christian theology. ‘Spirit of God’ is probably the presence of God in creative action.”66 Studebaker also works to open up conceptual space in a manner similar to Macchia, by moving between biblical and theological hermeneutics, and drawing on theological understanding developed by those from wider Christian traditions, in developing a Pentecostal Trinitarian theology. Like Macchia, he draws on the resources provided by the constructive theologies of leading theologians from other Christian traditions, dialoguing with them and then integrating helpful elements into his Pentecostal theology. Like Macchia, Studebaker exhibits breadth in doing so. He identifies key traditions that are necessary to draw upon for developing Pentecostal Trinitarian theology, in the form of historic Eastern and Western Trinitarian theologies, but also turns to other particular sources he sees as providing insight. Here, it is the Reformed 64 65 66

Ibid., 23. Ibid., 53. Ibid., 66.

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evangelical tradition and the wider charismatic tradition, drawing on sources from Jonathan Edwards to Clark Pinnock.67 In the end, Studebaker’s voice provides us with an example of Pentecostal theological maturity, unashamed of Pentecostal theology, constructively giving and taking in conversation with the wider tradition. Hermeneutics are approaches and habits that allow humans to abstract from the utter complexities of what is. Of all types of hermeneutics, theological hermeneutics abstract from the totality of all that is, and seek to create habits of interpreting what is beyond, in the transcendent God. Since Pentecostal theological hermeneutics are Christian theological hermeneutics, they are finding their place not only in interpreting the Scriptures but an entire vision of Christian understanding, and developing their own voice among Christian traditions. This voice is particularly attuned to speaking of the Spirit, the affective, and the particularities of Christian spiritual experiences, especially as they have been manifested in Pentecostal communities. The ecumenicalPentecostal theological hermeneutic takes Pentecostal readings of Scripture, the guidance of the Spirit, and the acknowledgement of the role of Pentecostal communities in their theological interpretations, and then purposefully draws on wider resources from the Christian tradition. In the end, this hermeneutic becomes a catalyst for a richer Christian unity and helps to correct the pneumatological deficit in the Christian world and within the ecumenical movement. Bibliography Archer, Kenneth J. A Pentecostal Hermeneutic for the Twenty-First Century: Spirit, Scripture, Community. London: T&T Clark, 2004. Archer, Kenneth J. “Pentecostal Story: The Hermeneutical Filter for the Making of Meaning.” Pneuma 26, no. 2 (2004): 26–59. Blumhofer, Edith. Restoring the Faith: The Assemblies of God, Pentecostalism, and American Culture. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1999. Blumhofer, Edith. The Assemblies of God: A Chapter in the Story of American Pentecostalism. 2 Vols. Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1989. Chan, Simon. Pentecostal Ecclesiology: An Essay on the Development of Doctrine. Blandford Forum: Deo, 2011. Chan, Simon. Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000. 67

Ibid., 101–207.

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Chan, Simon. Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshipping Community. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006. Cross, Terry. “The Rich Feast of Theology: Can Pentecostals Bring the Main Course or Only the Relish?” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 16 (April 2000): 27–47. Dabney, D. Lyle. “Saul’s Armor: The Problem and Promise of Pentecostal Theology Today.” Pneuma 23, no. 1 (2001): 115–46. Dempster, Murray. “Paradigm Shifts and Hermeneutics: Confronting Issues Old and New.” Pneuma 15, no. 2 (1993): 129–35. Ervin, Howard. “Hermeneutics: A Pentecostal Option.” Pneuma 3, no. 2 (1984): 11–25. Faupel, D. William. “Whither Pentecostalism?: 22nd Presidential Address of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, November 7, 1992.” Pneuma 15, no. 1 (1993): 9–27. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. Second Revised Edition. Translated and Revised by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. London: Continuum, 2004. Green, Chris E.W. Sanctifying Interpretation. Cleveland, TN: CPT Press, 2015. Hirsch, Jr., E.D. Validity in Interpretation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967. Hocken, Peter. “The Meaning and Purpose of ‘Baptism in the Spirit.’” Pneuma 7, no. 2 (1985): 125–34. Jacobsen, Douglas. Thinking in the Spirit: Theologies of the Early Pentecostal Movement. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003. Jacobsen, Douglas. “Knowing the Doctrines of Pentecostalism: The Scholastic Theology of the Assemblies of God, 1930–1955.” In Pentecostal Currents in American Protestantism. Edited by Edith L. Blumhofer, Russel P. Spittler, and Grant A. Wacker. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1999, 90–107. Johns, Cheryl Bridges. “The Adolescence of Pentecostalism: In Search of a Legitimate Sectarian Identity.” Pneuma 17, no. 1 (1995): 3–17. Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking: Fast and Slow. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Grioux, 2011. Kerr, Daniel Warren. “Facts on Fire.” The Pentecostal Evangel (April 11, 1925). Land, Steven J. Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993. Macchia, Frank D. “Sighs too Deep for Words: Toward a Theology of Glossolalia.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 1 (1992): 47–73. Macchia, Frank D. Justified in the Spirit: Creation, Redemption, and the Triune God. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010. Macchia, Frank D. Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006. Menzies, Robert P. Empowered for Witness: The Spirit in Luke-Acts. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1984. Noel, Bradley Truman. Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010.

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Oliviero, L. William, Jr. “An Interpretive Review Essay on Amos Yong’s Spirit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 18, no. 2 (2009): 301–11. Oliviero, L. William, Jr. Theological Hermeneutics in the Classical Pentecostal Tradition: A Typological Account. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Oliviero, L. William, Jr. “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. Leiden: Brill, 2013, 45–61. Pannenberg, Wolfhart. An Introduction to Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: ­Eerdmans, 1991. Rahner, Karl. Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity. Translated by William V. Dych. New York, NY: Seabury Press, 1978. Sheppard, Gerald T. “Pentecostals and the Hermeneutics of Dispensationalism: The Anatomy of an Uneasy Relationship.” Pneuma 6 (1984): 5–34. Smith, James K.A. Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010. Smith, James K.A. The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000. Stephenson, Christopher A. Types of Pentecostal Theology: Method, System, Spirit. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Stephenson, Christopher A. “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 William Mittelstadt. Leiden: Brill, 2013, 63–81. Stronstad, Roger. The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1984. Studebaker, Steven M. From Pentecost to the Triune God: A Pentecostal Trinitarian Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012. Wacker, Grant. Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. Yong, Amos. Spirit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002. Yong, Amos. Renewing Christian Theology: Systematics for a Global Christianity. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2014. Ziefle, Joshua R. David du Plessis and the Assemblies of God: The Struggle for the Soul of a Movement. Leiden: Brill, 2013. “Beginning of the World Wide Revival.” The Apostolic Faith 1, no. 5 (January 1907). “The Elder Brother.” The Apostolic Faith 1, no. 2 (1906).

Chapter 9

Mediation and the Pentecostal Experience of God Daniel Castelo Given the longevity of the Pentecostal movement and its increased ecumenical visibility, it seems fitting that a critical take on the casting of religious experience in this tradition be pursued. One relevant topic on this score would be mediation and its role in Pentecostal spirituality. This theme happens to be quite controversial within Pentecostal circles and among those who would engage Pentecostalism from the outside. Part of the controversy no doubt extends to the way Pentecostals sometimes claim to experience God “directly”— they often enough confess to “hear God’s voice” and to “see God at work” in their lives, and this language of immediacy is very important to them. They do not want this feature of their spirituality—their experience of God—to be explained away when they are convinced that God has acted in their lives. But in a culture that operates out of a deep suspicion regarding such claims— a suspicion funded by any number of sources, including epistemological, sociological, and psychological ones—these kinds of remarks are often seen to be self-serving and in some sense impossible to sustain. How, after all, can hu­ mans—given their limitations, biases, and prejudices—come away from a worship setting and claim with certainty something about God’s specific activity? For many that tendency is simply naive, and some Christians might say it is even theologically wrongheaded. Therefore, for one to introduce the topic of mediation in such conditions, the risks are pronounced. Pentecostals might see the topic as taking away from their spirituality, and skeptics might use the topic of mediation as a way of suggesting that other factors are primarily at work at such moments. Both reactions, I would argue, are mistaken, for they do not account for the topic of mediation in a thoroughly theological way. Theologically understood, mediation can acknowledge the genuine presence and work of the triune God while maintaining in a rigorous way that these are available in and through the created realm. The possibility of a “mediated immediacy” regarding God’s self-manifestation is viable, and such a construct is available to many different Christian traditions. It can also be said to be at work in Pentecostalism if the effort is sustained to make it so in such a context. For Peter Neumann, that kind of endeavoring would be significant for the movement’s development: “If Pentecostalism is truly maturing and coming of age with regard to constructing

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a unique theological perspective, then it must remain true to its experiential spirituality, while at the same time be able to wrestle with the complexities of the concept of experience of God, including its mediated quality.”1 Therefore when theologically cast, mediation can be a generative topic, both for Pentecostals and others, especially in the midst of ecumenical dialogue. Deep and rich exchanges can take place between Pentecostals and other Christians on this point as they struggle to discern God’s will and purposes on the contemporary scene. For these prospects to come to fruition, however, certain stereotypes perpetuated internally and externally to the Pentecostal movement have to be exposed; alternatives need to be offered to take their place. 1

The Problematic Presentation of Bifurcations

In a book coming out of an event titled “Pneumatology: Exploring the Work of the Spirit from Contemporary Perspectives” held in New York City in November 2004, Yale theologian Kathryn Tanner exposes a polarization she sees regarding the characterization of the Spirit’s work. On one end, Tanner notes that the Spirit is often spoken of as working “immediately—both instantaneously and directly, without any obvious mediating forms—in exceptional events, rather than in the ordinary run of human affairs, upon the interior depths of individual persons, apart from the operation of their own faculties, in ways that ensure moral probity and infallible certainty of religious insight.”2 As for the second end, Tanner sees in this possibility a more incremental and tentative approach in that the Spirit is cast as working “gradually, and without final resolution, in and through the usual fully human and fully fallible, often messy and conflict-ridden public processes of give-and-take in ordinary life.”3 In this second casting, the Spirit emerges “in context,” so to speak, so that the Spirit’s operation and human activity work hand-in-hand in surprising and unpredictable ways. Tanner believes the second model shows great promise in the science-and-religion debate, but she is also aware that the second model is not simply the opposite of the first. The more general problem, as Tanner sees it, is the tendency toward bifurcations in certain thought-forms.

1 Peter D. Neumann, Pentecostal Experience: An Ecumenical Encounter (Eugene: Pickwick, 2012), 10–11 (emphasis original). 2 Kathryn Tanner, “Workings of the Spirit: Simplicity or Complexity?” in Michael Welker, ed., The Work of the Spirit: Pneumatology and Pentecostalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 87. 3 Tanner, “Workings of the Spirit,” 87.

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Tanner is keen to point out that intellectual patterns within modernity have tended to dyadic presentations or categories. A litany of examples exists on this score, including interiority and exteriority, public and private, and faith and reason. As for the bifurcation originally surveyed by Tanner, she finds the first at work in sixteenth and seventeenth century Britain with the rise of “enthusiastic” groups such as the Quakers and the Ranters. Of course, the issue is more generalizable to beyond this time period and geographical locale, but the point is well taken that this tendency was not just a mood but very much a sensibility picked up definitively and controversially by certain communities. The challenge on rational grounds when speaking of the Spirit’s work in such cases is that one must recognize “the fully human character of religious processes, a recognition hard to square with the usual claims to religious authority— claims to be speaking, for example, a divine word or truth.”4 She continues, “Those who speak in God’s name, who predicate their own authority on God’s, are merely human beings, with their own narrow interests, erroneous views, partial perspectives, and moral failings.”5 For these “enthusiasts,” it is not really clear if they are aware of these dynamics. They may have accepted this kind of “experiential certainty” on account of the many intellectual forces of modernity that question the trustworthiness of wider traditioning influences (including state and church authorities). In many ways, this is very much a Protestant issue, and the same kind of “Spirit-immediacy” granted to religious experience has also been extended to how the authority of Scripture is secured: The original authors were immediately impressed by the Spirit to write the Holy Bible in an inspired way, and on the basis of this past happening, Scripture is authoritative today. In Tanner’s casting, those who subscribe to the first option are unable to account for the dynamic of mediation, which is accounted for in the second. Mediation is a sensible, observable dynamic, which the first alternative ignores at its own peril. Rather than securing religious authority, the denial of mediation questions any claim to religious authority in today’s critical climate. Part of the difficulty here is that this option secures its legitimacy by nothing else than bald self-assertion. Tanner temporarily speaks as a hypothetical representative of this persuasion when she says, “God came to me directly, and I had the immediate experience of God working on me to change my views and my life. I have no more reason to question this than I have to question that the light shines when I see it; the experience itself is self-validating in an uncontestable

4 Tanner, “Workings of the Spirit,” 89. 5 Tanner, “Workings of the Spirit,” 89.

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way.”6 This kind of privatization closes off rational inquiry and testing, thereby potentially leading to missing the Spirit’s work rather than properly identifying it. Tanner remarks of this imperviousness: “My vanity, my pride—even my simple credulity—might easily be at work here leading me astray, making me think I have been touched by the Spirit when I have not.”7 Tanner admits that features of her presentation are “inadequate” and that it even remains at the level of “gross generality.”8 Pentecostals, charismatics, and their sympathizers would be strongly inclined to agree, at least on certain crucial points—if in fact they were included in this categorization by implication.9 It goes without saying that Tanner finds the second alternative of her presentation to be exceedingly more viable; she believes it honors some of the commitments of the first without its drawbacks. Jason Vickers is one person who has taken exception to Tanner’s presentation. A Methodist scholar and clergyperson with strong commitments to the contemporary renewal of the church, Vickers contends that Tanner’s account is reductive in the scope of the first option, for her depiction of this alternative simply follows a standard reading held by both critics and (interestingly) advocates of what he terms “Pietism.”10 For Vickers, the term “Pietism” is appropriate not only in reference to a Lutheran branch of renewal but also to Methodist/Wesleyan, Holiness, and Pentecostal branches of the Christian faith in that these promote a kind of heart religion that has to do with the transformation of the affections via a dynamic understanding of the Spirit’s work. For Vickers, Tanner’s critique of her first alternative fits well with the advocacy of some proponents of Pietism, such as Roger Olson: Both oftentimes suggest that mediation is understood as unnecessary in the Pietist tradition. Insiders and outsiders often assume that in these traditions God can be experienced in an inward, direct, and so unmediated way.11

6 7 8 9

10 11

Tanner, “Workings in the Spirit,” 94. Tanner, “Workings of the Spirit,” 95. Tanner, “Workings of the Spirit,” 96. Tanner’s focus is mainly on dynamics of 16th and 17th century Britain. She references Pentecostalism only once, this at the end of her chapter and with the implication that in practice through Wacker’s “primitive and pragmatic” schematization Pentecostalism might near her second pole. One senses a strong affinity between what Tanner promotes and the proposals on offer by Amos Yong in The Spirit of Creation: Modern Science and Divine Action in the Pentecostal-Charismatic Imagination (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011). Jason E. Vickers, “Holiness and Mediation: Pneumatology in Pietist Perspective,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 16, no. 2 (2014): 193. Vickers, “Holiness and Mediation,” 193. The Olson reference is to the latter’s article, ­“Pietism and Pentecostalism: Spiritual Cousins or Competitors?” Pneuma 34 (2012): 335.

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Vickers believes this stereotype is blatantly mistaken, for he sees mediation as widespread in these traditions. One cannot inhabit these traditions for too long, Vickers would say, before being exposed to mediation of varying kinds. If such is the case, then why is this aspect of Pietism so often missed? Vickers offers the following hypothesis: “Contemporary theologians misunderstand ­Pietism for two reasons. First, they fail to attend to Pietism as a lived form of religion, which is to say, to Pietism as expressed in sermons, hymns, letters, diaries, and other forms of witness across space and time. In other words, they promote a caricature of Pietism that is grossly underfunded by the evidence. Second, critics and advocates alike fail to discern the hyper-sacramental character of Pietism because they do not notice what really animates Pietism, namely, a deep desire for God’s holiness.”12 Essentially, Pietists promote not so much an epistemology of religious experience but an embodied spirituality that seeks relentlessly and celebrates joyfully the holiness of God. Vickers’s argument takes a number of turns, but the end-goal is a sobering rereading of these traditions. For instance, Pietists typically attempt to be selfconsciously biblical in the pursuit of God’s holiness, and what this implies from the Old Testament witness is attending to both prophetic and priestly dimensions of holiness. The prophetic side may invite dynamics of inner-­witness and infusion, but the priestly side includes rituals, practices, and people living as communities of faith across time. Pietists have typically understood and sought for God’s holiness via both dynamics. As for the priestly realm in particular, one in which mediation is front and center, the ways Pietists have gone about engaging Word and Sacrament prove to be crucial evidence for Vickers’s case. Vickers cites both Methodist/Wesleyan and Pentecostal sources to show that Christians in these traditions have relied on public events and corporate practices to know and witness the work of the Holy Trinity. Rather than dynamics that lead to a solipsistic experience, the lived spirituality of these Christians suggests engagement, witness, and mission in the midst of the ­“media” God has ordained: texts, words, bread and wine, water, oil, human hands, human feet, music, the clergy, and so on. Yes, it is true that perhaps Pietists are perceived as rejecting mediation because they have “often been fierce critics of forms of Christianity that appear to restrict God’s holiness to the sanctuary and the mediation of God’s holiness to ritual actions undertaken by the ordained.”13 These are typically traditions that seek the renewal of already established forms of Christianity. But this critique of formalism or ritualism need not be taken to imply that mediation 12 13

Vickers, “Holiness and Mediation,” 194. Vickers, “Holiness and Mediation,” 202.

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should be abandoned altogether. When Pietists think of renewal, they do not disavow mediation per se but rather call for its targeted and faithful appropriation. After all, a commitment to seek God’s holiness implies a subjection to God’s will, and such a commitment entails the “fervent belief that God will make God’s holiness manifest whenever and wherever God chooses, which is to say, both within and beyond the sacramental life of the church.”14 Pietists, including Pentecostals, believe every domain can be the theatre of God’s glory. Such may simply be a tacit understanding held by Pietists of varying stripes. Although there are dangers of making certain things explicit that are held tacitly (as Vickers warns),15 at some point such matters have to come to the fore, especially if they have been overshadowed by faulty or erroneous representations. Pentecostals largely find themselves in the latter camp; they need to make explicit their assumptions surrounding mediation. 2

“Mediated or Unmediated?” is Not the Question

One of the resources Vickers repeatedly invokes in making his case is Chris E.W. Green’s Toward a Pentecostal Theology of the Lord’s Supper.16 In this volume, Green painstakingly documents via first-hand accounts and primary sources how the sacrament of the Eucharist was practiced and viewed by early Pentecostals so as to show that mediation and sacramentality were very much part of the spirituality practiced among the pioneers of classical Pentecostalism.17 Given Green’s efforts, I do not find it necessary to cite this body of literature to make the following point: The question of mediation in Pentecostalism is a non-starter. Pentecostals have always practiced their spirituality with the tacit ­understanding that mediation is thoroughly involved in their experience of the Christian faith as Pentecostals. Running narratives to the contrary are problematic in that they do not account for this spirituality as embodied and practiced “on the ground.” As Vickers suggests, it may be that these narratives gain currency because of critiques levelled at a certain take on mediation (that is formalism or ritualism); it may also be the case that a particular feature of Pentecostal testimonies (in which people share their inner dynamics, feelings, or 14 15 16 17

Vickers, “Holiness and Mediation,” 203 (emphasis original). Vickers, “Holiness and Mediation,” 206. I take it that Vickers is worried about over-­ rationalizing an embodied spirituality, which is, of course, a valid concern. The letter can trump the spirit, as history has repeatedly shown. Chris E.W. Green, Toward a Pentecostal Theology of the Lord’s Supper: Foretasting the Kingdom (Cleveland, TN: cpt Press, 2012). See especially Green, Toward a Pentecostal Theology of the Lord’s Supper, Chapters 2 and 3.

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s­ entiments) is highlighted by some to the neglect of the broader circumstances that gave rise to these testimonies. Whatever the cause of this erroneous account, it is simply unjustifiable. As Frank Macchia claims, “Pentecostal spirituality does not advocate an unmediated encounter with God, nor a subjectivistic emotionalism unrelated to an objective means of grace. These stereotypical characterizations have been nourished by certain tendencies in Pentecostal worship. But these characterizations cannot account for the dominant emphasis of Pentecostals on visible/audible signs and wonders that make God’s free, eschatological presence ‘here and now’ to empower, liberate, and heal.”18 For those who are wedded to this understanding, particularly the sympathizer or adherent, a worry may nevertheless persist. “If mediation is thoroughly involved in my experience,” they may ask, “then how can it be true?” The assumption at work in this question is that for something to be true it must go beyond a self’s particularity, which would involve the unreliable features of bias, ignorance, and the like. At one level, this question may be quite sincere and warranted. After all, the typical Pentecostal wishes to associate truth with God and God’s self-disclosure; he or she believes truth to be properly a theological category and not an anthropological one. At the same time, the assumption at work in this question could stem from Gnostic and/or modern understandings of knowledge in which the human body is somehow an impediment to true knowledge and truth has to be understood in a generalizable and unconditioned way, respectively. These tendencies betray an operative assumption that somehow material reality cannot be a conduit of God’s self-revelation; however, on both christological and pneumatological grounds, this assumption must be resisted. Christologically speaking, the point is exceptionally made: God comes to God’s own “in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom 8:3), and on the basis of this act, God bridges the gap between Creator and creation. Because of the Incarnation of the Son of God, creaturely reality can be healed; as such, the dynamics of mediation are crucial here. As Irenaeus—a figure with significant potential for Pentecostal soteriological reflection19—noted centuries ago against the Gnostics: “And unless man had been joined to God he could never have become a partaker of incorruptibility. For it was incumbent upon the Mediator between God and men, by His relationship to both, to bring both to friendship and c­ oncord, 18 19

Frank Macchia, “Tongues as a Sign: Towards a Sacramental Understanding of Pentecostal Experience,” Pneuma 15, no. 1 (1993): 75–76. Note the possible links between Irenaeus and what Dale Coulter has proposed in “‘Delivered by the Power of God’: Toward a Pentecostal Understanding of Salvation,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 10, no. 4 (2008): 447–67.

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and present man to God, while He revealed God to man.”20 For Irenaeus, the great “Mediator” establishes a rapport between God and humanity that has been compromised on account of sin and disobedience. Only through such mediatory work could healing be extended to creation. In a beautiful passage, Irenaeus continues to develop the warrants for the Son’s work of mediation: He who was the Son of God became the Son of man, that man, having been taken into the Word, and receiving the adoption, might become the son of God. For by no other means could we have attained to incorruptibility and immortality, unless we had been united to incorruptibility and immortality. But how could we be joined to incorruptibility and immortality unless, first, incorruptibility and immortality had become that which we also are, so that the corruptible might be swallowed up by incorruptibility, and the mortal by immortality, that we might receive the adoption of sons?21 For Irenaeus, as for so many since, the Incarnation convincingly shows that the creaturely realm can be hospitable to the presence and work of God. This hospitality is first and foremost a result of God’s healing and transformation of this realm by the very act of “dwelling” or “tabernacling” within it. This is a christological framework that Pentecostals implicitly embrace (as, for instance, when they speak of “deliverance” and “healing in the atonement”). In addition to mention of the Son for the merits of mediation, one must also attend to the other “hand of the Father,” the Holy Spirit. James K.A. Smith repeatedly has appealed to a pneumatological vision as he elaborates aspects of what he proposes to be a Pentecostal “worldview.”22 Smith believes that Pentecostals in the practice of their spirituality intuitively and tacitly cast reality as being “charged” with the presence of the Spirit. There are no simple “spiritbody” or “nature-supernature” dualisms in this worldview. He notes, “Pentecostal spirituality…is bound up with an expectation that the Spirit operates within the created order. In other words, pentecostal spirituality is marked by a deep sense of the Spirit’s immanence. While it might not be articulated as such, implicit in the prayers of pentecostals is a richly pneumatological understanding of creation that affirms the Spirit’s continued presence and activity

20 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.18.7 as found in ANF, 1:448. 21 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.19.1 as found in ANF, 1:448–49. 22 See James K.A. Smith, Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), Chapter 2.

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in what we could call the ‘given’ or physical layer of creation.”23 What this view partly suggests is that a synergy can be at work between God’s Spirit and the human spirit so that God’s work is accomplished on earth via this interplay. Again, this sensibility has biblical precedent. Throughout the Old Testament as well as in the New (including within the Pentecostal “canon within the canon,” the witness of Luke), the Spirit emerges from and falls upon the servants of God in powerful ways. Some of these figures had their flaws documented for all readers to see (for example, Moses, Samson, Peter, and others), but these limitations (and in some cases, blatant instances of sinfulness) did not preclude the Spirit from working through these heroes of the faith. Yes, the Spirit can be quenched, resisted, opposed, and blasphemed, but the Spirit can also remain upon, abide in, help, and strengthen the creature-turned-sinner who is saved by grace. When Pentecostals and other Christians look to the Spirit’s work in the economy of God’s manifold operation, they see a presence that shines through the material realm.24 3

The Mystical Side of Christianity

If the above account is true, what continues to make it possible for Pentecostals to perpetuate the rhetoric that their experiences are “unmediated,” that they have a “direct” experience of God? To broach a working answer to this concern, one should recognize that these tendencies are not unique to Pentecostalism. After all, were one to read some of the great mystics from Christian history, similar remarks could be found. For instance, John of the Cross, in his elaboration of the “dark night of the spirit” which follows the “dark night of the senses,” can say the following: “This dark night is an inflow of God into the soul, which purges it of its habitual ignorances and imperfections, natural and spiritual, and which the contemplatives call infused contemplation or mystical theology. Through this contemplation, God teaches the soul secretly and instructs it in the perfection of love without its doing anything or understanding how this happens.”25 This example could very well have its corollaries in the thought of Teresa of Avila, Catherine of Siena, Hildegard of Bingen, Madame Guyon, and others. Those Christian traditions that foster mystical dimensions 23 Smith, Thinking in Tongues, 40. 24 For more on this point, see my survey chapter in Pneumatology: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), Chapter 5. 25 John of the Cross, “The Dark Night,” in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, revised edition, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1991), 401.

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to their Christian practice often demonstrate these characteristics of interiority and privatization; in other words, they tend to facilitate speech that would cast God as immediately experienced. Therefore, Pentecostalism is not alone in resorting to this kind of rhetoric; it keeps company with a wider (and in the esteem of some circles, deeply respected) tradition. Now the mystical tradition of Christianity has often been marginalized and neglected over the centuries. Theologians in particular are often at a loss with what to do with the rhetorical forms and claims of these figures. As a result, Christian mystics are often cast as historical curiosities with little to no consequence for the work of systematic or dogmatic reflection. If Pentecostalism has parallels with Christian mysticism, it too could suffer the same fate—of being deemed exotic, eccentric, and inconsequential to wider discussions re­ garding Christian belief and practice. But on this score, perhaps observers require a “critical turn” of their own. If Pentecostalism is dismissed from serious ecumenical discussion because of properties it happens to share with the great mystics of Christianity, then perhaps a more robust discussion is in order, one that goes on to expose the plausibility structures at work that lead to the marginalization of mystical features of Christianity on the whole. It could be that the controversy or scandal at work here is not so much indicative of these figures as it is of the “lenses” contemporary observers utilize to assess this witness. How did these plausibility structures come to be, and essentially, what are they? Many of these are the result of a fracturing of knowledge, including theological knowledge, which has beset the Western intellectual tradition. One sees its rise with the onset of the scholastic tradition in the West, although the currents owe some of their earliest forms to Boethius. With the rise of Scholasticism, one notices a growing separation between reason and faith, so that with the dawning of modernity, reason took hold as the arbiter of what counts as discursive and available knowledge. This account of reason drew significantly from a rehabilitation of Aristotelianism in Europe as well as the rise of empirical methodologies. For their part, theologians tried to make peace and utilize these developments, but the coherence of their discipline nevertheless suffered as a result. The question repeatedly raised was how to secure legitimate God-knowledge. The significant and devastating outcome from these developments is the divorce between theology and spirituality. The former was deemed suitable for university study, and methodologically it took its vitality from the philosophical currents of the day. Spirituality, on the other hand, was deemed proper to a privatized dynamic. Because phrases such as “the inner witness of the Spirit” (language hinted at by Paul and repeatedly employed by Pietists of varying kinds) or “infused contemplation” (in reference to the quote by John of the

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Cross above) do not fit within the plausibility structures of regnant paradigms for what counts as public, discursive knowledge, their employment is often seen to be idiosyncratic; they are necessarily reflective of a kind of experience that is inaccessible discursively on a broad scale. As a result, spirituality generally and the mystical tendencies within Christianity particularly have been pushed to the periphery in theological conversations. Mystics are recognized as not being systematic theologians, practical theologians, or biblical scholars; they are often deemed by scholars as historical figures who are interesting to know, but typically they do not impact theological discussions in any definitive and tangible way. Within the last couple of decades, however, the language of spirituality has been appropriated more readily within the theological academy, and Pentecostalism has been active in both reflecting and contributing to this upsurge of both interest and—more importantly—relevance. The classic work on this score is, of course, Steven J. Land’s Pentecostal Spirituality.26 There are many running parts to Land’s constructive proposal, but one of the most significant contributions of this work for our present purposes has to do with his chosen methodology. By looking at the testimonies, songs, and practices of Pentecostals in their spirituality, Land argued that these indicated in a more fitting and compelling way the ethos of Pentecostalism than a rigidified, conceptual apparatus as some are prone to value and denominate with the rationalist language of “systematic theology.” Put another way, Land made a case that Pentecostal theology should be understood in the terms and forms at work within Pentecostal spirituality. In this Land was making a call for something akin to the lex orandi, lex credendi tag (“the law of prayer is the law of faith”), thereby reviving once more the intricate relationship between theology and spirituality that marked Christian reflection and practice in bygone eras.27 The division between theology and spirituality is one that has infiltrated and influenced many sectors of Christianity. For their part, Pentecostals have had to contend with it as well. However, given their eccentricity and the way they are often “out of step” with wider arrangements, Pentecostals have managed to recognize in varying settings that the proper object of theology and spirituality is the God of their confession, thereby making both integrally tied as a result. Land and others have tangibly shown that one without the other is 26 27

Steven J. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom (jpts1; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994). For more on this tag from a Pentecostal perspective, see Christopher A. Stephenson, Types of Pentecostal Theology: Method, System, Spirit (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 112ff.

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an impoverishment of the Christian imagination. In this, Pentecostals show an inclination to the vision on offer by Hans Urs von Balthasar when he speaks of the relationship between theology and sanctity: “If we consider the history of theology up to the time of the great Scholastics, we are struck by the fact that the great saints, those who not only achieved an exemplary purity of life, but who also had received from God a definite mission in the Church, were, mostly, great theologians. They were ‘pillars of the Church,’ by vocation channels of her life: their own lives reproduced the fullness of the Church’s teaching, and their teaching the fullness of the Church’s life.”28 Obviously, Pentecostals and Balthasar come from two very different ecclesial worlds; nevertheless, an affinity is available here with how Pentecostal scholars often cast the theological enterprise and how Balthasar speaks of the sanctity of these early “pillars.” This affinity is one that works well with the aims of the present volume, and it is this: Pentecostals in the academy can join with Christians throughout time and space in the claim that their work as academics and their spiritual lives as pilgrims must go hand in hand. If Pentecostalism holds to the integration of spirituality and theology, then a working hypothesis may be in order, one that has been hinted at repeatedly so far but that cannot be fully developed in this chapter:29 Pentecostalism is best understood as a mystical tradition of the church catholic.30 The reason that Pentecostals are sometimes deemed “pre-modern” by observers is that they view the theological task similarly to how the Christian church did prior to the splintering of the theological disciplines. During those periods, the object of theology was routinely and without much reservation claimed to be the God of Christian confession. Words like “contemplation,” “wisdom,” and others aimed at a kind of knowledge that involved both the intellect and the affections, the mind as well as the heart. When Pentecostals read Augustine’s Confessions or the writings of Isaac of Nineveh, they can relate to these works at an intellectual and visceral level, for these authors—like contemporary Pentecostals—need not (and on their terms, could not) resort to the splintering of knowledge that so easily characterizes the modern mood.

28 29 30

Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Theology and Sanctity,” in Explorations in Theology: I. The Word Made Flesh (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 181. What follows includes arguments made in Daniel Castelo, Pentecostalism As a Christian Mystical Tradition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017). Although its ramifications have not been significantly brought to light, this thesis is not altogether original. Both insiders and outsiders to Pentecostalism have made the point. In the former camp would be Simon Tugwell, Harvey Cox, and others; in the latter would be Daniel Albrecht, James K.A. Smith, Margaret Poloma, and many more.

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Part of the controversy with the claim above of Pentecostalism’s identity is how to define the term “mysticism.” Just what does it mean, and is it helpful? Harvey Cox in his Fire from Heaven makes the allusion that Pentecostals are in some sense “modern-day mystics,”31 but he develops mysticism largely in religious studies terms, something that Pentecostals would on the whole struggle to accept given their theological commitments. One suspects that Pentecostals could also find mysticism to be too self-absorbed and self-­directed (even though they have oftentimes had a penchant toward these tendencies in their own spirituality), as may be perceived to be the case with Teresa of Avila’s account in The Interior Castle when she speaks of the many rooms inside one’s soul. Christian mysticism, however, need not be restricted to the methodologies of phenomenological religious studies or to solipsistic privatizations of ­ineffable religious experience. According to the vision of Mark McIntosh, Christian mysticism, when understood properly as mystical theology, has a heritage both in the East and the West of being very much a public and corporate dynamic of Christian embodiment.32 In fact, he would argue that at the core of the Christian life are “mysteries of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 13:11; Luke 8:10)—of which the first and foremost is God, who is a self-revealed mystery whose self-revelation does not exhaust this One’s glorious splendor. Why is Pentecostalism’s identity as a mystical tradition of the church catholic worth mentioning in a context related to the question of mediation? Once more, the issue revolves around locating Pentecostalism in something broader and richer than its immediate context. If one sees in Pentecostalism currents and tendencies that mark ancient Christianity, then the question of mediation need not take away from an experience’s integrity, impact, and veracity. Godknowledge on Pentecostal grounds has to be intimate and transformative; in this, they may be inclined to label an experience as “direct” or “unmediated,” but what may better account for their views is a mystical framing: they are ultimately living into a way of practicing and embodying Christianity that has at its core a mystical approach to this life, one in which God is definitely real and active through the creaturely realm but in a manner that nevertheless preserves God’s holiness and transcendence.

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“It seems ironic that pentecostalism, the religion of the poor and the unlettered, should in this respect be closer to the most sublime forms of mysticism than are the more respectable denominations that sometimes look down on it. But it seems to be the case” [Cox, Fire from Heaven (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995), 92]. Mark A. McIntosh, Mystical Theology: The Integrity of Spirituality and Theology (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998).

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Mysticism and Mediation in Pentecostal Key

What features of Pentecostalism’s mystical character have a direct bearing on the question of mediation? Several are worth pressing, but from the onset, one needs to recognize the call made at the beginning of this chapter. By stressing Pentecostalism’s mystical character, Pentecostals can be critical of their experiences in a God-honoring way. One may tend to think that Pentecostal experience could suffer as a result without the language of “direct” and “unmediated.” This outcome need not be the case when Pentecostals begin with the claim that God is a holy mystery who works in mysterious ways through the creaturely realm. Human contingency, ignorance, and (to some degree) fallibility need not call into question the legitimacy of one’s experience of God. Quite the contrary, God oftentimes uses our weakness to glorify Godself all the more (as Paul would be inclined to say). Humans may not be able to explain all that they understand about God or they may not fully understand what they intuitively grasp at a given moment so as to stammer as a result, but on an account of Christianity that assumes one necessarily trades in holy mysteries, these situations would be deemed part and parcel to the dynamic of the Christian life. The category of mystery allows for (and in some sense mandates) ignorance, silence, and wonder. If Pentecostals are to engage their experiences critically and aim to do so in mystical terms, a few dynamics present themselves, ones that Christians in other traditions could affirm in their own respective ways. 4.1 Worship Pentecostals may think of worship simply in terms of church services, but the way they approach life and reality in general can be said to be doxological to its core.33 That is why when Smith speaks of a “Pentecostal worldview,” the theme of worship is front and center. Pentecostals believe God can and does reveal Godself in the totality of one’s life and that one can honor and recognize God in the vicissitudes of “ordinary time.” As to the first point, Pentecostals believe God can “show up” at any time and at any place. Pentecostals do not simply say this as most Christians will; they make a point to proclaim “God-sightings” with a kind of confidence that God is at work in the world, and they often do so with a joy that proclaims these happenings are worth sharing. Secondly, Pentecostals believe that any moment can be worshipful. Commutes to work, wait33

Daniel Albrecht clarifies the different senses of worship for Pentecostals in Rites in the Spirit: A Ritual Approach to Pentecostal/Charismatic Spirituality (jpts 17; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 225.

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ing in hallways, walks down the street—these can be occasions for praising God and—to use a Pentecostal vernacular—“having church.” This approach has important ecumenical significance. For instance, these examples collectively represent a Pentecostal take on Alexander Schmemann’s claim that the world is sacramental.34 Furthermore, the formulators of the Westminster Catechism may have written that the chief end of man is “to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever,” yet Pentecostals have developed a reputation for masterfully displaying that claim in the “here and now” of quotidian existence for all to see. Pentecostals find their primary identity to be that of worshippers, and they typically relish in it. In this light, Vickers’s claim that Pietists are “hyper-sacramental” in orientation rings especially true for Pentecostals. Whether it be in the laying on of hands, the anointing of oil, the giving of a prophetic word, the speaking in unknown tongues, or any number of other happenings, Pentecostals assume that the creaturely realm can be a conduit for channeling the Creator’s presence and work. At a general level, Pentecostals believe that their very bodies can and ought to be sacramental. Out of this very important theological claim (and most definitely not out of some anachronistic political correctness) Pentecostals have recognized “the anointing” and “the power”—that is, the gifts for ministry – on the part of women, children, and people of different ethnicities, races, and backgrounds. Of course, Pentecostals (as all groups) have plenty of failures to account for in consistently maintaining this perspective of openness to God’s work and acceptance of God’s people, but on occasion, by the grace of God, Pentecostals have taken seriously the claim that the Spirit of God was falling on “all flesh” in their midst. In short, Pentecostals operate out of a doxological modality or an epicletic existence in which all of life can be sacramental in that creation is at day’s end a Spirit-drenched, Spirit-permeated reality.35 4.2 Encounter Keith Warrington has rightly remarked that Pentecostalism espouses a theology of encounter.36 Pentecostals believe they encounter and are encountered by the mystery that is the self-revealed God. Encounter is a crucial part of the way Christians speak of mystical experience, especially in its pre-modern forms. Rather than finding or searching for God in the recesses of the soul, ­Pentecostals 34 35 36

Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1973). I pursue these dynamics more elaborately in Revisioning Pentecostal Ethics: The Epicletic Community (Cleveland, TN: cpt Press, 2012). Keith Warrington, Pentecostal Theology: A Theology of Encounter (London: T&T Clark, 2008).

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are on occasion struck by God’s presence in a public, life-­shattering way. They behold God with the full recognition that a Holy One is in their doxological midst. Because God is holy, both separation (from sin, worldliness, and the like) and attachment (on account of God’s beauty and splendor) dynamics are at play in such mystical encounters. In this, Pentecostals often resort to the testimony of Holy Scripture and the fellowship of the saints to make sense of these features. They look to cases such as Moses’ interactions with yhwh, Isaiah’s call narrative, Peter’s ministry, and others to see biblical precedents of what they can come to expect in their lives. With these expectations, a theophanic sensibility is at work, one that drives Pentecostal searching and longing.37 Now of course, what they go on to experience may be something different than what they expected, but nevertheless the commitments at work in these expectations continually stand for Pentecostals. Again, all Christians will heartily affirm that their God is the same yesterday, today, and forevermore, yet on the basis of such a confession, Pentecostals are willing to take risks. Pentecostals often dare to think of themselves as significant agents in God’s unfolding plans for healing and sanctifying the world. Some have believed social displacement or deprivation to be at work in this self-aggrandized sense of role and place. That certainly could be part of the dynamic, but then again, God can and does use human limitations and brokenness to achieve God’s purposes. The encounter with God recalibrates but does not eviscerate the human condition. 4.3 Transformation The recalibration at work in Pentecostal spirituality bespeaks of nothing short of transformation. Being an active participant in a Spirit-drenched cosmos in which a mysterious, self-revealed God is active and moving suggests that one can be “surprised” in the midst of recognized limits.38 Naturally, humans cannot transgress their limits by sheer acts of self-assertion and dominance. Plenty of instances within modernity suggest failure and brokenness on this front. But at the same time, Christians believe that creatures are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps 139:14) by a Creator who orders these limits, and there may be more to these limits than people see via a particular scientific-­ philosophical paradigm of reality. Pentecostals (and increasingly others39) are willing to grant this possibility. 37 38 39

Pentecostals are largely dependent on Frank Macchia for the language of “theophany” for their self-reflection. In addition to the article above, see also his “Sighs Too Deep for Words: Toward a Theology of Glossolalia,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 1 (1992): 47–73. Again, Smith is very helpful here in Thinking in Tongues. I am thinking here of the research agenda known as “Transformation Theology” stemming out of King’s College, London and directed by Oliver Davies. As a Roman Catholic,

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Pentecostals dare to confess that miracles take place, that people change, that holiness is possible in this life. They do so properly not out of an ideological persuasion so much as a spirituality informed by precedent. When one can recall real-life instances of the power of God at work in human lives, the basic structure of reality for that person changes as a result. Reality is full of possibility when God’s presence is “heard, seen, and touched” (cf. 1 John 1:1) in contemporary settings. As such, Pentecostals can be deemed in some sense spiritual empiricists and pragmatists: They believe they see God at work in and through the world, and when they do, they cannot help but act accordingly. 5

The Need for a “Dark Night” in Pentecostalism

Admittedly, dangers lurk with this kind of approach to the Christian life, and lamentably, Pentecostalism has not always avoided these difficulties. An expectation can lodge itself in which it is assumed that miracles, tongues, and other signs of God’s presence necessarily occur given the rightly prepared conditions and circumstances; the norm is assumed to be that God will act in the way desired. When circumstances are such, it is difficult to account for situations when that expectation is not met and so frustrated. These kinds of cases are real and worth considering, but Pentecostals may try to avoid them simply because their spirituality is not geared to account for these. At day’s end, not everybody is healed, and everyone does not receive a “personal miracle,” but what are Pentecostals to say to that reality? Although the matter has theodical dimensions, it presses deeper into the logic of a spirituality that may be remiss in accounting for certain broader dimensions of mediation, ones associated with limits, loss, and meaninglessness.40 One notable exception to the neglect of this question in Pentecostal discussions is Simon Chan, who notes that Pentecostals would do well to embrace a “dark night” to their understanding and practice of spirituality that would invite humility and a kind of sanctifying purging.41 Chan’s call is crucial in the effort to maintain a critical stance toward Pentecostal religious experience, for

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Davies believes nature is transformable given Christ’s resurrected and ascended body. Pentecostals and Davies have engaged in a scholarly exchange in Journal of Pentecostal Theology 24, no. 2 (2015). I address this question in “What if Miracles Don’t Happen? Empowerment for Longsuffering,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 23, no. 2 (2014): 236–45. See Simon Chan, Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition (jpts 21; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 75–77. Of course, I take it that Chan is here using

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many have suffered in light of this call not being heeded. Many people have gone on to “outgrow” Pentecostalism or maybe even abandon Christianity altogether because they do not see in Pentecostal spirituality an attentiveness to the way life is. The vicissitudes of life are too numerous to be accounted for simply by a narrative of “signs and wonders.” A “dark night” is in order as Chan proposes it so that the movement may be less inclined to rely exceedingly on an over-realized eschatology and in the process exhaust itself to the point of resorting to any number of spiritual maladies. “Dark night” language suggests preparation for a glorious union with God. Its end is not so much blatant denial as it is the purification that is required for believers to be channels of God’s grace. Mediation, therefore, works complementarily with asceticism in this casting. Both active and passive dimensions of human involvement are at work in this “dark night” imagery. God-seekers are made conduits of God’s grace only after an intentional desire is sustained to remove those habits, attitudes, and expectations that potentially stand in the way. The expectation toward a kind of divine realization or theophanic display could count as one of those things requiring purification. Again, this is not to say that the Pentecostal ethos should be abandoned, that the expectation for God “showing up” in the everyday ought to be given up. But what the suggestion does allow for is a more sobering appreciation of the “not yet” features of walking according to the Spirit in the here and now. The flesh must be resisted, the creation inwardly groans, and the lament psalms continue to be relevant. These circumstances constitute the “underside” of God’s mediated presence, of God working through the creation while not violating it. I am convinced that were Pentecostals to be critical with their experience in these ways, they would in turn behold the holy mysteries they have been privileged to witness all the more carefully, attentively, and faithfully so that they can shout “Maranatha!” all the more passionately, earnestly, and anticipatively. Could they engage in such a process, Pentecostals would secure their place at the ecumenical table all the more firmly, for at that point their practice of Christian spirituality would have significant resonances with the great traditions of Christian mysticism, especially those aspects that aid the church to resist despair, anger, and frustration. Christians of all ages have drawn comfort and hope in the confession that God works in the many dimensions of life as we experience it. Were Pentecostals to have a greater balance on this score, their witness may be all the more relevant to a church that needs to hear a

the language of “dark night” more loosely than a strict reading of John of the Cross would allow; for Chan, the theme functions as a broad metaphor relating to a specific need within Pentecostalism.

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word from the LORD in the midst (and with full recognition) of its hardships and trials. Bibliography Albrecht, Daniel. Rites in the Spirit: A Ritual Approach to Pentecostal/Charismatic Spirituality. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999. Castelo, Daniel. Pentecostalism as a Christian Mystical Tradition. Grand Rapids: ­Eerdmans, 2017. Castelo, Daniel. Pneumatology: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015. Castelo, Daniel. Revisioning Pentecostal Ethics: The Epicletic Community. Cleveland, TN: CPT Press, 2012. Castelo, Daniel. “What if Miracles Don’t Happen? Empowerment for Longsuffering.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 23, no. 2 (2014): 236–45. Chan, Simon. Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000. Coulter, Dale. “‘Delivered by the Power of God’: Toward a Pentecostal Understanding of Salvation.” International Journal of Systematic Theology 10, no. 4 (2008): 447–67. Cox, Harvey. Fire from Heaven. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995. Green, Chris E.W. Toward a Pentecostal Theology of the Lord’s Supper: Foretasting the Kingdom. Cleveland, TN: CPT Press, 2012. John of the Cross, “The Dark Night.” In The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross. Revised Edition. Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez. Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1991. Land, Steven J. Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994. Macchia, Frank. “Sighs Too Deep for Words: Toward a Theology of Glossolalia.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 1 (1992): 47–73. Macchia, Frank. “Tongues as a Sign: Towards a Sacramental Understanding of Pentecostal Experience.” Pneuma 15, no. 1 (1993): 75–76. McIntosh, Mark A. Mystical Theology: The Integrity of Spirituality and Theology. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998. Neumann, Peter D. Pentecostal Experience: An Ecumenical Encounter. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012. Smith, James K.A. Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010. Stephenson, Christopher A. Types of Pentecostal Theology: Method, System, Spirit. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

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Schmemann, Alexander. For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy. Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1973. Tanner, Kathryn. “Workings of the Spirit: Simplicity or Complexity?” In The Work of the Spirit: Pneumatology and Pentecostalism. Edited by Michael Welker. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006, 87–108. Vickers, Jason E. “Holiness and Mediation: Pneumatology in Pietist Perspective.” International Journal of Systematic Theology 16, no. 2 (2014): 192–206. von Balthasar, Hans Urs. “Theology and Sanctity.” In Explorations in Theology: The Word Made Flesh, vol. 1. San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1989, 181–210. Warrington, Keith. Pentecostal Theology: A Theology of Encounter. London: T&T Clark, 2008. Yong, Amos. The Spirit of Creation: Modern Science and Divine Action in the PentecostalCharismatic Imagination. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011.

Chapter 10

Fivefold Gospel and Spirit Christology: Pentecostal and Ecumenical Explorations Christopher A. Stephenson From a systematic theological perspective, one of the key elements of any doctrine is its relationship to other doctrines. From an ecumenical perspective, one of the key elements of any doctrine is the extent to which aspects of it unite or distinguish two or more church traditions. Thus, I explore in pentecostal and ecumenical perspective some elements of the relationship between pneumatology and christology by considering the fivefold gospel and Spirit christology. I summarize recent pentecostal articulations of the fivefold gospel as the organizing principle of pentecostal theology, present select orthodox Catholic Spirit christologies, briefly treat recent pentecostal Spirit christologies, suggest a way forward for this facet of the relationship between pneumatology and christology, and address the dogmatic viability and ecumenical potential of the fivefold gospel and Spirit christology.1 1

Fivefold Gospel as the Center of Pentecostal Theology

Donald Dayton’s highly influential argument that the four/fivefold gospel— Jesus as savior, sanctifier, baptizer in the Holy Spirit, healer, and soon coming king—most clearly relays the logic of early pentecostal theology in North America is well known.2 This cluster of beliefs is the wide confessional umbrella under which there was room, according to Dayton, for all of the major wings of early pentecostalism. For example, in spite of their internal differences 1 Some of my evaluation of Wolfgang Vondey’s use of the fivefold gospel with respect to Spirit christology first appeared in Christopher A. Stephenson, “Wolfgang Vondey’s Structure for Systematic Pentecostal Theology: Full Gospel or Gospel Lite?” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 28 (2019): 12–20. 2 Donald W. Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1987). Early uses of the fivefold pattern may be detectible outside North America as well. See Mark J. Cartledge, “The Early Pentecostal Theology of Confidence Magazine (1908–1926): A Version of the Five-Fold Gospel?” The Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 28, no. 2 (2008): 117–30.

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otherwise, both trinitarian and Oneness pentecostals agreed on Jesus’ soteriological significance as articulated in the fivefold gospel. Further, pentecostals affirming two distinct works of grace and those affirming three works preached the same “full gospel”—as the four/fivefold gospel was also called—except for respective disagreements about whether to include “Jesus as sanctifier” (hence, both a fourfold and a fivefold pattern).3 While Dayton uses fivefold gospel descriptively to give an historical account of early pentecostal thought, others have since employed it prescriptively as an organizing principle for present pentecostal theology. These uses of the fivefold gospel for constructive theology largely imply that the relationship between Jesus and the Spirit within the fivefold gospel is one in which Jesus is only active with respect to the Spirit and the Spirit is only passive with respect to Jesus—that is, Jesus baptizes in the Holy Spirit. This active-passive relationship is due in part to a lack in the area of Spirit christology. It is not that the proponents of the fivefold gospel themselves explicitly affirm an active-passive relationship but that the five tenets on their own describe the relationship with no more complexity than this. When proponents of the fivefold gospel refer to elements of Spirit christology, they do not integrate them with the fivefold gospel in a way that shows that the respective paradigms are compatible with each other. Steven J. Land is one of the first to use the fivefold gospel, which he calls “the core of early Pentecostal orthodoxy,”4 for more than descriptive purposes, although not without ambiguity. For example, he states that pneumatology is central to pentecostal theology and impinges on the fivefold gospel tenet that Jesus baptizes in the Holy Spirit. While he admits that the fivefold gospel gives priority to Jesus Christ, Land insists that the focus on Jesus is due to its starting point in the Holy Spirit and that pentecostal spirituality based on the fivefold gospel is “Christocentric precisely because it is pneumatic.”5 Land’s claim that the pneumatological basis of pentecostal spirituality and theology in fact demonstrates its christological basis is unclear and receives no elaboration. Elsewhere, Land states that in Pentecostal Spirituality he attempts to make the Holy Spirit the starting point of theology.6 However, his claims about

3 In what follows, I use “fivefold” gospel exclusively, even when the authors I discuss use “fourfold” or “full” gospel. While there are at times important differences among these terms (especially for Wolfgang Vondey), those differences have no bearing on my purposes here. 4 Steven J. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom (Sheffield: Sheffield, 1993), 183. 5 Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, 23. 6 Steven J. Land, “Response to Professor Harvey Cox,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 5 (1994): 13.

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pentecostal theology having its starting point in the Holy Spirit are tempered by his concession that the fivefold gospel makes the Spirit “merely instrumental.”7 Further, Land explicitly states that pentecostal spirituality should be correlated to the fivefold gospel, but it is unclear how it should relate to the social doctrine of the Trinity, which is more formative of Land’s own constructive proposals than the fivefold gospel itself. He maintains the fivefold gospel in part to keep his emphasis on pneumatology from shifting away from christology, and he stresses the social doctrine of the Trinity in part to avoid what he calls the logical conclusion of the fivefold gospel’s christocentrism, namely, Oneness pentecostalism. Nonetheless, it is clear that the trinitarian framework shapes his proposals, without a precise statement of how the fivefold gospel should function in relation to it.8 Acknowledging the influence of Dayton and Land on him, John Christopher Thomas deems the fivefold gospel the heart of pentecostalism and makes a seminal call for present pentecostal theology to be written around these central tenets of faith and preaching. One advantage that he sees is that the fivefold gospel accentuates pentecostal similarities with the Holiness tradition and dissimilarities with many in the evangelical tradition.9 The context of Thomas’s proposal is an initial contribution to pentecostal ecclesiology. Thomas imagines a systematic theology with five divisions corresponding to the tenets of the fivefold gospel, each of which should include reflection on the nature and mission of the church in light of the particular tenet in question in that division. This broader ecclesiological context for Thomas’s ideas is not always recounted in surveys of his contribution, but it helps explain why he correlates the tenets of the fivefold gospel with five sacraments as opposed to five other theological topics. Thomas’s correlation is as follows: savior, baptism; sanctifier, footwashing; baptizer in the Holy Spirit, glossolalia; healer, anointing with oil; and soon coming king, Lord’s supper.10 Also, Thomas prioritizes the theological criterion of what is most appropriate for the pentecostal tradition over the criterion of its acceptance among other traditions and scholars. As one 7 Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, 96. 8 Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, 182–219. 9 John Christopher Thomas, “Pentecostal Theology in the Twenty-First Century,” Pneuma 20, no. 1 (1998): 17. 10 Thomas, “Pentecostal Theology,” 17–19. Elsewhere, Thomas calls the fivefold gospel a narrative way of life that both provides a particular perspective from which to interpret the biblical texts and transforms Christian affections. See John Christopher Thomas, “‘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, ed. Kevin L. Spawn and Archie T. Wright (London: T&T Clark, 2012), 116–17.

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of the first to call explicitly for a current pentecostal theology built around the fivefold gospel and the first to give a clear example of one facet of such a theology, it would be difficult to overemphasize his influence on subsequent constructive uses of the fivefold gospel.11 Herschel Odel Bryant thoroughly recounts examples of Spirit christology in early North American pentecostal periodical literature written by figures such as William J. Seymour, Elizabeth Sexton, and G.F. Taylor. Bryant categorizes these figures into a “fivefold gospel stream” and a “fourfold gospel stream” according to the alignments of their respective denominations after the controversy over sanctification associated with William H. Durham.12 While Bryant’s presentation of the periodical literature is convincing regarding Spirit christology data per se, his survey with the categorizations of “fivefold” and “fourfold” on its own does not demonstrate that these early figures integrated their claims about Spirit christology with claims about the fivefold gospel. That is, Bryant does not present passages from these figures in which they enumerate and discuss the points of the fivefold gospel; rather, he simply categorizes them according to their denominational affiliation. In all fairness, that kind of demonstration lies outside his scope, but his scope does not prevent him from concluding that although Christ stands at the center of the fivefold gospel, “the Spirit permeates these motifs and functions as the empowering agent.”13 At most, however, he shows that these figures made claims about the fivefold gospel and Spirit christology without extensively considering whether they were compatible with each other or whether one set of claims might need to be reformulated partially in light of the other. Given Bryant’s frequent demonstration that these early figures repeatedly reference the Spirit’s anointing and empowering of Jesus, we might wonder all the more if they considered the possible implications of Spirit christology for a fivefold gospel paradigm in which Jesus is only active and not passive with respect to the Spirit and that speaks of Jesus only as giving the Spirit and not also as receiving the Spirit. Bryant does show, nonetheless, that early pentecostal theology in North America was amiable to elements of a rudimentary Spirit christology. 11

William Kay notes that the overtures of Land and Thomas rightfully contain the sentiments of pentecostal preaching because “academic pentecostal theology begins in church and in the proclamations of the pulpit.” As such, Kay observes that the tenets of the fivefold gospel mark a journey from outside the church to inside the church to being made holy and empowered in order to prepare for Jesus’ second coming. See William K. Kay, Pentecostalism (London: scm, 2009), 261, 263. 12 Herschel Odel Bryant, Spirit Christology in the Christian Tradition: From the Patristic Period to the Rise of Pentecostalism in the Twentieth Century (Cleveland: cpt, 2014), 464–508. 13 Bryant, Spirit Christology in the Christian Tradition, 473.

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One of the most ambitious deployments of the fivefold gospel is Amos Yong’s In the Days of Caesar, in which he uses the schema to organize his investigation of pentecostalism and political theology. Yong adopts the fivefold gospel because he feels that it provides a framework for theological interpretation of the politics of pentecostalism.14 Yong’s use of Jesus as baptizer in the Holy Spirit specifically focuses on Jesus’ active giving of the Spirit to believers to empower them for mission, which he connects with bold political witness and direct political engagement.15 It should be noted, however, that Yong adopts the fivefold pattern purely for heuristic purposes. He does not place the fivefold gospel at the center of a constructive pentecostal theology; instead, he uses it as an outline for a phenomenology of pentecostal political activity.16 Elsewhere, Yong’s expansion of the fivefold gospel is driven more by soteriology in Luke-Acts than by Spirit christology per se, although he certainly relates these two elements. The expansion involves a move from the traditional five aspects to seven dimensions of salvation (personal, familial, ecclesial, material, social, cosmic, and eschatological). Thus, he augments the soteriological elements of the fivefold gospel more than the christological elements.17 Larry McQueen discusses the fivefold gospel at length in the context of eschatology. His comments on Jesus as baptizer in the Holy Spirit and soon coming king are noteworthy. The eschatological dimensions of Jesus as baptizer in the Holy Spirit are as follows: 1) Jesus pours out the Spirit to enable spiritual discernment of the last days; 2) Jesus sends the Spirit to empower the church for faithful witness in the world; 3) amid persecution, the Spirit enables the church to bear witness to Jesus’ victory over death; 4) as paraclete, the Spirit helps the church bear witness through prophecy, direct communication, and advocacy; and 5) the faithfulness of the church’s Spirit-empowered witness depends on the church’s participation in communal holiness. In each of these points, Jesus is active with respect to the Spirit, but the Spirit is active only with respect to the church, not with respect to Jesus.18 McQueen also claims that Jesus as soon coming king has implications for the other tenets of the fivefold 14

Amos Yong, In the Days of Caesar: Pentecostalism and Political Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 96. 15 Yong, In the Days of Caesar, 212. 16 For another example using the fivefold gospel for largely heuristic purposes, See Virginia Trevino Nolivos, “A Pentecostal Paradigm for the Latin American Family: An Instrument for Transformation,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 5, no. 2 (2002): 223–34. 17 Amos Yong, The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), 91–98. 18 Larry R. McQueen, Toward a Pentecostal Eschatology: Discerning the Way Forward (Blandford Forum: Deo, 2012), 248.

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gospel’s relationship to eschatology. As savior, Jesus comes to destroy the kingdom of Satan; as sanctifier, to be the full revelation of truth; as baptizer in the Holy Spirit, to vindicate the martyrdom of Spirit-empowered witnesses; and as healer, to raise the bodies of the dead to eternal life. Again, Jesus is only active in each respect.19 McQueen makes a passing reference to Luke’s and Isaiah’s mention of recovery of sight to the blind as part of Jesus’ messianic anointing by the Spirit.20 Perhaps more consistently than anyone else, Kenneth J. Archer takes up Thomas’s challenge for a complete pentecostal theology built around the fivefold gospel. Part of Archer’s motivation, like Thomas’s, is to establish pentecostal theological identity in its own right, apart from incorporation under the label “evangelical.” As an example of the fivefold gospel’s relationship to other theological topics, Archer, again like Thomas, explores various sacraments, and Archer goes so far as to say that pentecostals should accept as sacraments only those practices ordained by Jesus.21 Following Jürgen Moltmann’s charge that churches with many sacraments should demonstrate the “unified ground” to which the sacraments are related, Archer contends that the fivefold gospel should be the unified ground for sacraments among pentecostals. Archer then follows Thomas by correlating the same five sacraments with the same tenets of the fivefold gospel. Archer’s discussion of Jesus as baptizer in the Holy Spirit, correlated with glossolalia, stresses Jesus as the active giver of the Holy Spirit.22 Further, Archer is clear that sacraments are but one example of doctrinal loci that should be organized around the fivefold gospel. For example, he correlates each of the fivefold ministry gifts in Ephesians 4 with a tenet of the fivefold gospel—savior, apostle; sanctifier, teacher; baptizer in the Holy Spirit, prophet; healer, pastor; and soon coming king, evangelist.23 Archer’s proposals, like Land’s, sometimes accentuate pneumatology and sometimes do not. They also, again like Land’s, sometimes assert a christological center and sometimes a trinitarian one. For example, Archer wants to use the fivefold gospel constructively and “ground it pneumatologically.”24 He also calls the fivefold gospel the pentecostal community’s central narrative convictions 19 McQueen, Toward a Pentecostal Eschatology, 279–80. 20 McQueen, Toward a Pentecostal Eschatology, 249. 21 Archer, The Gospel Revisited, 69. 22 Archer, The Gospel Revisited, 77–78. 23 Kenneth J. Archer, “The Fivefold Gospel and the Mission of the Church: Ecclesiastical Implications and Opportunities,” in Toward a Pentecostal Ecclesiology: The Church and the Fivefold Gospel (Cleveland: cpt, 2010), 38–43. 24 Kenneth J. Archer, The Gospel Revisited: Towards a Pentecostal Theology of Worship and Witness (Eugene: Pickwick, 2011), 1.

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and claims that it places Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit at the center of the story of redemption. Yet, when Archer illustrates his vision with the imagery of a wheel, Jesus alone is the hub, and each tenet of the fivefold gospel is a spoke radiating outwards from the hub.25 Alongside his claim that the fivefold gospel epitomizes the pentecostal story, Archer also maintains that the overarching biblical story is the social Trinity’s relationship with creation, especially humans.26 Sometimes the fivefold gospel is central to pentecostal theology, and sometimes a social doctrine of the Trinity is central. Sometimes the Holy Spirit seems prominent in the fivefold gospel, and sometimes less so. On the one hand, Archer is sensitive to pneumatological matters and suggests that the fivefold gospel needs to be connected to pneumatology. He agrees with D. Lyle Dabney’s insight that the logic of the theology implicit in early North American pentecostalism was pneumatological.27 He even notes that a Spirit christology would accurately reflect pentecostal narrative convictions while resisting the subordination of the Spirit’s mission to Jesus’ and any tendency towards “Christomonistic” theology.28 On the other hand, Archer simultaneously affirms part of Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen’s argument against Dabney’s call for a pneumatological theology when he invokes Kärkkäinen’s belief that the fivefold gospel is “a significant step towards a balanced theology,”29 unlike a pneumatological theology. Nonetheless, Archer advances the cause of a constructive use of the fivefold gospel, understood largely as the central narrative of pentecostalism, in significant ways. Believing that the fivefold gospel has both descriptive and constructive value for delineating pentecostal theology, Wolfgang Vondey creates the most detailed and sophisticated deployment of the fivefold gospel as the organizing principle of pentecostal theology. His primary argument is that the fivefold gospel is pentecostal theology’s theological narrative, which corresponds to Pentecost as pentecostal theology’s core theological symbol.30 He believes that the fivefold gospel is an inviting framework for pentecostal theology because it 25 Archer, The Gospel Revisited, 14–16. 26 Archer, The Gospel Revisited, 48. 27 Archer, “The Fivefold Gospel and the Mission of the Church,” 19. 28 Archer, The Gospel Revisited, 17. 29 Archer, “The Fivefold Gospel and the Mission of the Church,” 36–37. See Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, “David’s Sling: The Promise and the Problem of Pentecostal Theology Today: A Response to D. Lyle Dabney,” Pneuma 23, no. 1 (2001): 147–52; and D. Lyle Dabney, “Saul’s Armor: The Problem and the Promise of Pentecostal Theology Today,” Pneuma 23, no. 1 (2001): 115–46. 30 Wolfgang Vondey, Pentecostal Theology: Living the Full Gospel (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 1, 155.

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provides an agenda derived from Pentecost and related practices for a systematic account of God’s interaction with the world.31 The fivefold gospel is central to pentecostal theology because all pentecostal theology flows to and from Jesus, the center of the gospel.32 Therefore, he investigates creation, humanity, society, the church, and God as each one intersects with each component of the fivefold gospel—for example, “creation baptized in the Spirit” and “divine healing and the egalitarian church.” And yet, Vondey states, the fivefold gospel is not the sole structure for developing pentecostal doctrine. He does not make a “strict programmatic proposal” in the form of an “unyielding fivefold structure” for arranging theology.33 Vondey’s formulations may contain the most carefully developed pneumatological elements among all of the major proponents of the fivefold gospel, especially in connection with soteriology. He posits that although salvation is centered on Jesus, in pentecostal perspective, it is by the Spirit that Jesus does what he does. Since christology is interpreted in pneumatological perspective and pneumatology is interpreted in christological perspective, 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 being anointed by the Holy Spirit.34 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 through Jesus is also determinative for the Spirit. The salvation made possible by incarnation manifests by Jesus’ obedience to the Spirit’s leading.35 Vondey continues, “The historical testimony to Spirit baptism…possesses a strongly trinitarian structure: Pentecost reveals Jesus, the Spirit baptizer, as the Son of God, who anointed with the Spirit pours out this Spirit on all flesh… It is the Father who has baptized the Son with the Spirit…Jesus’s identity as the Spirit-bearing Spirit baptizer does not end with the ascension…but continues beyond his return to the Father to Pentecost and his return as king.”36 The pneumatological intensity of these affirmations is tempered, however, by Vondey’s assertion that baptism in the Holy Spirit is “first and foremost an encounter with Jesus Christ.” He also underscores that in the fivefold gospel, Christ is always the acting subject, who saves, sanctifies, and baptizes in the 31 Vondey, Pentecostal Theology, 8. 32 Vondey, Pentecostal Theology, 15, 256. 33 Vondey, Pentecostal Theology, 21, 293. 34 Vondey, Pentecostal Theology, 48. 35 Vondey, Pentecostal Theology, 54. 36 Vondey, Pentecostal Theology, 268.

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Holy Spirit.37 Among all of the proponents above, Vondey speaks the most of the Holy Spirit and Spirit christology in connection with the fivefold gospel. Also among those who celebrate the fivefold gospel is Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen. He states that while the model requires further clarification, it intertwines the person and work of Christ and demonstrates mutual conditioning between Christ and the Spirit.38 Saying that it is the basis of pentecostal mission, Kärkkäinen calls the fivefold gospel “a Spirit-Christology.”39 Yet, Kärkkäinen’s engagement with the fivefold gospel has not been in terms of constructing a theology around it but in terms of using it to define the core of pentecostal beliefs for ecumenical purposes. In an essay that originated from the context of ecumenical dialogue between Lutherans and pentecostals, he says that pentecostalism is often misunderstood to be primarily a “spirit-movement” that focuses on the Holy Spirit’s charismatic ministry. To the contrary, he argues, Christ is the center of the fivefold gospel, and any tendency pentecostals may have to “trap the Spirit in experiential criteria” is mitigated by their focus on Christology, with no such focus on pneumatology.40 Kärkkäinen compares the fivefold gospel to Luther’s idea of Christ being present in faith, as understood by certain Finnish interpreters of Luther, especially Tuomo Mannermaa.41 These sentiments continue Kärkkäinen’s longtime worry that if pentecostalism were to craft its own theological method, it would add to the divisiveness that already exists among church traditions. The promise of pentecostal theology, he states, is not its potential for accentuating its own distinctives, such as pneumatology, but rather for contributing to a common Christian initiative to reflect on divine revelation. Further, the problem of pentecostal theology is not its uncritical acceptance of the approaches of other church traditions but its ignoring them altogether. Kärkkäinen prefers the fivefold gospel over a pneumatological theology because he deems the former more balanced. For whatever Christ is, he is in the Spirit; and whatever the Spirit accomplishes in humans—the soteriological elements of the fivefold gospel—is the work of Christ. The New Testament, he adds, expresses this reality by presenting Christ as both receiver and giver of the Spirit.42 37 Vondey, Pentecostal Theology, 84–85. 38 Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Christ and Reconciliation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 208. 39 Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, “Pentecostal Mission,” in The Cambridge Companion to Pentecostalism, ed. Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. and Amos Yong (Cambridge: cup, 2014), 299. 40 Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, “‘Encountering Christ in the Full Gospel Way’: An Incarnational Pentecostal Spirituality,” The Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 27, no. 1 (2007): 10. 41 Kärkkäinen, “Encountering Christ in the Full Gospel Way,” 20. 42 Kärkkäinen, “David’s Sling,” 150–52.

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Catholic Spirit Christologies

The following Catholic Spirit christologies offer needed balance to at least one facet of the fivefold gospel. They speak of the relationship between Jesus and the Spirit in the economy of salvation such that Jesus and the Spirit are both active and passive with respect to each other. In short, the Spirit constitutes Jesus as the Christ and Son of God, and Jesus pours out the Holy Spirit. While there are traces of reciprocity between Jesus and the Spirit in some of the pentecostal proponents of the fivefold gospel, along with a few references to Spirit christology, none of them have developed a Spirit christology with the same degree of sophistication as the Catholic thinkers Ralph Del Colle, Walter Kasper, and David Coffey, much less considered how it might need to transform the fivefold gospel as the organizing principle of pentecostal theology. I begin with Del Colle, a longtime participant in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal and a past president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, who establishes some important introductory parameters. He succinctly defines Spirit christology as christology that attributes to the Holy Spirit a constitutive role in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Spirit christology not only affirms that the Spirit bears witness to Jesus and that the Spirit has a role in the work of salvation, but it also affirms that Jesus and the salvation that he provides spring from a fundamentally pneumatological basis. Jesus is not only baptizer in the Holy Spirit, but he is also bearer of the Spirit.43 Indeed, Del Colle claims, Jesus enters the paschal mystery of death as divine Son and bearer of the Spirit to be recognized only through resurrection and exaltation as baptizer in the Spirit.44 Del Colle realizes that not all Spirit christologies conform to orthodox theology of the Trinity. He considers “post-trinitarian” any Spirit christology that reconceives the intra-trinitarian distinctions as referring to the modality of Jesus’ revelation of the divine and the present experience of the God revealed in Jesus. Post-trinitarian Spirit christology sees the Spirit as the presence of God in Jesus that made possible his authentic revelation of God in his life, ministry, and death. Post-trinitarian Spirit christology also states that the post-resurrection experience of God as Spirit has a certain Christ-character to it that simply invokes the memory of Jesus.

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Ralph Del Colle, Christ and the Spirit: Spirit-Christology in Trinitarian Perspective (Oxford: oup, 1994), 3–7; idem, “Spirit-Christology: Dogmatic Foundations for Pentecostal-­ Charismatic Spirituality,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 1, no. 3 (1993): 96. Del Colle, “Spirit-Christology: Dogmatic Foundations for Pentecostal-Charismatic Spirituality,” 93.

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In contrast, trinitarian Spirit christology negotiates the intra-trinitarian relations between the Son and the Spirit. It includes both filiological and pneumatological dimensions. Trinitarian Spirit christology affirms that the Spirit actualizes the Son’s incarnation and enacts the intensification of Jesus’ relationship with the Father during his life, ministry, and death. Trinitarian Spirit christology also states that the risen Jesus is present in the Spirit who is poured out on the church.45 Trinitarian Spirit christology sees Jesus as the incarnation of the eternal Word in filial relation to God. Thus, trinitarian Spirit christology is essentially communicative to humanity, since the incarnation is enacted within the overflow of the triune God’s life, in which the Spirit as ecstatic giftedness and love conducts the Father’s life towards the Son. Through the Spirit, the Son returns that life to the Father in eschatological glory that includes redeemed creation. The Spirit becomes gift to humanity in divinizing and missionizing power.46 As an important aside, Del Colle makes it clear that these kinds of speculative moments in Spirit christology are anything but unimportant hairsplitting. Quite the opposite, he sees speculative christology as related to right doxology and true contemplation; speculative christology is in fact a spiritual exercise that deepens knowledge of Jesus Christ.47 Walter Kasper’s Spirit christology draws on Karl Rahner’s transcendental anthropology and notion of divine self-communication. For Kasper, Jesus is God’s self-communicating love in person. He is both God’s gift to man and man’s response to God, inasmuch as his obedience indicates both his origin from God and the giving of himself to God.48 Jesus receives from God without reservation, such that he is the personification of God’s self-giving. The Logos is the subject of the event of the incarnation. Kasper continues that the unity between the Father and Jesus models the unity that believers should have with each other. Jesus’ unity with the Father is also suggestive of Jesus’ role as mediator between God and man. Jesus’ unreserved obedient response to the Father presupposes the Father’s prior self-communication to Jesus. The Father’s selfcommunication is the person of the Logos himself, and it establishes both the

45 46 47 48

Ralph Del Colle, “Spirit Christology: Dogmatic Issues,” in A Man of the Church: Honoring the Theology, Life, and Witness of Ralph Del Colle (Eugene: Pickwick, 2012), 4–7. Del Colle, Christ and the Spirit, 27–29; idem, “Spirit-Christology: Dogmatic Foundations for Pentecostal-Charismatic Spirituality,” 106. Del Colle, “Spirit Christology: Dogmatic Issues,” 8. I maintain Kasper’s use of “man” and related masculine pronouns when reporting his own ideas because I find “human race” cumbersome and because “humanity” is too easily confused with a universal quality that exists in all humans rather than a collective term for all humans.

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unity and distinction between the Father and the Son.49 According to Kasper, Chalcedon’s teaching on the person of Christ is an accurate and forever binding interpretation of scripture. Adherence to it in contemporary christological formulations is non-negotiable. At the same time, Chalcedon does not say everything that should be said about scripture’s witness to Jesus; to the contrary, it is a “contraction” of that witness. Chalcedon’s claims must be integrated into the total biblical witness to Jesus and interpreted in that light.50 For Kasper, a person’s identity is delineated in relationship to other persons. A person realizes his identity by existing over against others. His openness to that which is outside him, which is part of his very nature as a human, extends not only to other humans but also to God, to whom he is oriented by his nature. To be human is to transcend oneself towards other humans and towards God. Thus, to be a person is to be a kind of mediator. In Kasper’s view, a human being exists on both horizontal and vertical planes. Because he is dynamically drawn out beyond himself, man never comes to rest. He, by his very nature, is a mediator with other humans and with God. And yet, in his unbounded openness to the unbounded mystery that is God, man falls back on himself because of his finitude. He cannot bridge the gap by crossing from his side of the chasm between finite and infinite, which is the chasm between creation and Creator. As a person, he has merely a passive potential (potentia oboedientialis) for mediation. But God has bridged the chasm from God’s side in the incarnation, which is the most complete fulfilment of this aspect of human nature. The incarnation is so because human nature comes to hypostatic union with the God—in the person of the Logos—to whom it is open by nature.51 Kasper’s theological anthropology is the framework for his Spirit christology, and he insists that Jesus Christ as the mediation between God and man can be understood only pneumatologically. For man’s natural openness to God is coupled with the Holy Spirit’s impelling God’s inner essence outwards since the Spirit is the love between Father and Son that overflows to the creature. The Spirit, then, makes possible God’s self-communication in the world. The Spirit is both the mediation between Father and Son and the mediation of God into history. One can speak of the act of incarnation divinizing the human nature of Jesus only if one also insists that the divinizing does not undermine the integrity of his human nature. Rather, the greater proximity to God increases his human nature’s intrinsic reality. As the grace of union, the Holy Spirit fills Jesus’ human nature, thereby making it capable to receive God’s 49 Walter Kasper, Jesus the Christ, new ed. (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 218, 220–21. 50 Kasper, Jesus the Christ, 226. 51 Kasper, Jesus the Christ, 234–35.

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self-communication­ in the person of the Logos. The Spirit’s sanctifying work makes possible Jesus’ unreserved obedience to the Father, by which he is the incarnation of a divine person responding to God’s self-communication. As the grace of union, the Spirit is not only an individual gift of grace to Jesus but also capital grace that overflows from Christ to the church, of which Christ is the head. Kasper calls the Holy Spirit both the medium into which the Father sends the Son out of pure grace and in which the Father finds in Jesus the human partner in whom and through whom the Son obediently answers the Father’s mission in history.52 He summarizes, Pneumatology once more shows the universal horizons on which Christology opens. A double movement is set up. The Father communicates himself in love to the Son, in the Spirit this love is aware of its freedom; hence, in the Spirit, this love has the possibility of communicating itself outside the Trinity. In the Spirit, of course, an inverse movement also occurs. The creature filled with God’s Spirit becomes in freedom an historical figure through which the Son gives himself to the Father. In this allconsuming dedication to the point of death, the Spirit as it were becomes free; he is released from his particular historical figure, and consequently Jesus’ death and resurrection mediate the coming of the Spirit…And thus Jesus Christ, who in the Spirit is in person the mediator between God and man, becomes in the Spirit the universal mediator of salvation.53 Kasper adds that saying Jesus is the Christ amounts to saying how Jesus is salvation: we participate in the fullness of the Holy Spirit that he receives. Jesus is the culmination of the operation of the Holy Spirit and the beginning of the sending of the Holy Spirit. In Jesus, the Spirit reaches the Spirit’s goal of new creation and now continues the mission of incorporating all other things into the new creation of Jesus Christ.54 For David Coffey, not only are Spirit christology and the doctrine of the Trinity related, the former is the best point of access to the latter.55 In fact, Coffey’s Spirit christology leads him to develop a model of the Trinity to supplement the traditional procession models. He calls it the “return model.” One danger of absolutizing a model of the Trinity predicated on the processions of Son and 52 Kasper, Jesus the Christ, 238–41. 53 Kasper, Jesus the Christ, 240. 54 Kasper, Jesus the Christ, 241, 244. 55 David Coffey, “Spirit Christology and the Trinity,” in Advents of the Spirit: An Introduction to the Current Study of Pneumatology, ed. Bradford E. Hinze and D. Lyle Dabney (Milwaukee: mup, 2001), 315.

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the Holy Spirit as the only legitimate model of the Trinity, he feels, is that no place is given to the Holy Spirit in bringing about the incarnation. At best, such models allow activity of the Spirit that is subsequent to the incarnation and derivative from it.56 The challenge is to make the Holy Spirt the explanatory principle of the incarnation without substituting the Holy Spirit for the Logos in the incarnation.57 Coffey argues that in the economy of salvation, there are two taxeis concerning Christ. In addition to the traditional taxis of Father, Son, Holy Spirit, there is the taxis of Father, Holy Spirit, Son. The latter is the taxis more closely associated with the Father’s radical gift of the Holy Spirit to the Son without measure in the incarnation, as illustrated in the New Testament texts that attest to Jesus’ conception by the Holy Spirit.58 Also drawing on Rahner’s theology, Coffey writes that in the economy of salvation, the Father gives the Holy Spirit in such a radical way that the gift brings the human nature of Jesus into existence in hypostatic union with the eternal Son. Throughout his life of perfect obedience and responsive love to the Father, Jesus further appropriates the Father’s unique gift of the Spirit to him. Jesus’ human nature develops in constant dependence on the Holy Spirit, who sustains it. At his death, Jesus returns to the Father the unique gift of love—the Holy Spirit—given to him by the Father. Thus, the Holy Spirit is both the ­Father’s self-communication to the Son and the Son’s self-communication back to the Father. This is the gist of Coffey’s return model of the Trinity in relation to the economy of salvation. Furthermore, during Jesus’ life, as he begins to establish the kingdom of God, Jesus also begins to give the Holy Spirit in limited fashion to people who enter the kingdom by faith, which is itself enabled by the Spirit. At Jesus’ death, again, his human nature reaches full realization, and Jesus is now without any barrier to pour out the Holy Spirit on the church and the world.59 Coffey insists that contemporary Spirit christology must give an account of Logos christology, which is an inheritance from the Christian tradition that must be maintained. While it might be theoretically possible to develop a Spirit christology that simply avoids explicitly contradicting ­Logos christology without directly addressing it, because of Logos ­christology’s standing in the tradition, a Spirit christology that incorporates Logos christology is inherently superior to one that does not.60

56 57 58 59 60

David Coffey, Deus Trinitas: The Doctrine of the Triune God (Oxford: oup, 1999), 43–44. Coffey, “Spirit Christology and the Trinity,” 318–19. Coffey, “Spirit Christology and the Trinity,” 324–25. David Coffey, Deus Trinitas, 41–42. Coffey, “Spirit Christology and the Trinity,” 316–17.

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Pentecostal Spirit Christologies

My attention to the pentecostal Spirit christologies of Sammy Alfaro, Steven M. Studebaker, and Skip Jenkins will be brief since I wish only to note some of their basic claims about Spirit christology and their perspectives on the fivefold gospel.61 Just as proponents of the fivefold gospel would benefit from engaging the Catholic Spirit christologies above,62 the proponents of pentecostal Spirit christology would also benefit from doing so.63 Alfaro takes steps towards an Hispanic pentecostal christology that is informed by both Spirit christology and liberation christology. While he uses the fivefold gospel descriptively to organize his survey of early pentecostal christology, he claims that later developments in pentecostal christology rely too heavily on evangelical traditions outside pentecostalism.64 Although Alfaro deems this development problematic in light of pentecostalism’s pneumatological orientation, his primary objection to evangelical reliance is the preference for Chalcedonian christology. Alfaro prefers instead to begin christological reflection with Jesus’ relationship with the Holy Spirit in his earthly ministry and his continued work through the Spirit. He claims that pentecostalism’s emphasis on experience of the Spirit makes it naturally inclined towards a functional christology predicated on the identity of Jesus for today in light of his earthly ministry, not towards an ontological account of the internal relationship between the human and the divine within Jesus.65 It is interesting that Alfaro suggests that the fivefold gospel may be too limited to accommodate a synthesis of Spirit christology and liberation christology in pentecostal perspective. He wants a “fuller” gospel that accentuates the gospel’s social dimensions, and he expands the fivefold gospel accordingly. Jesus is not only personal savior, but savior of the whole world; he is not only personal sanctifier, but sanctifier of church and society; he is not only personal healer, but desires to heal all social evil; he baptizes in the Spirit not only for the sake of the baptized, but also commissions ministry to the poor and oppressed; he 61 62 63 64 65

See also Andréa Snavely, Life in the Spirit: A Post-Constantinian and Trinitarian Account of the Christian Life (Eugene: Pickwick, 2015); William P. Atkinson, Trinity After Pentecost (Eugene: Pickwick, 2013). Vondey draws on at least one Catholic Spirit christology that I do not present here, that of Heribert Mühlen. That engagement is already taking place. Alfaro incorporates Del Colle, and Studebaker and Jenkins incorporate Coffey most especially. Sammy Alfaro, Divino Compañero: Toward a Hispanic Pentecostal Christology (Eugene: Pickwick, 2010), 29–46. Alfaro, Divino Compañero, 52–55.

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is not only soon coming king, but the herald of God’s reign, characterized by love and justice.66 Studebaker develops Spirit christology within the broader context of a theology of the Trinity. His driving theological principle is that in the Trinity “economic activity arises from immanent identity.”67 This indicates reciprocity between the Spirit’s work and the Spirit’s identity. Studebaker takes the economic Trinity to be the source of knowledge of God and begins his inquiry with the Holy Spirit, in part because he maintains that a proper Spirit christology implies that pneumatology conditions christology. Attempting to bolster the biblical narrative’s witness to the Spirit as a primary resource for the doctrine of the Trinity, he suggests that the Spirit has liminal, constitutional, and eschatological characteristics in relation to Jesus. Liminal relates to the Spirit’s activity at critical moments in Jesus’ life. For example, the Spirit both creates the humanity of Jesus and brings it into union with the eternal Son. The Spirit descends on Jesus at his baptism to begin his public ministry. The Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan and prompts Jesus to identify himself as the Messiah in connection with Isaiah 61. Constitutional relates to the Spirit’s significant role in making Jesus who he is. The Holy Spirit is the “Spirit of Christ” not only in the sense of being from Christ but also in the sense of being the source of Christ. Of course, the Spirit does not create the eternal Son, but the Spirit is the source of the incarnation, which the Spirit also facilitates. In Christ, by the constitutional work of the Spirit, creation reaches its highest degree of union with the Creator. Eschatological, or consummative, relates to bringing Jesus’ work to completion. The Spirit raises Christ from the dead, a work that is eschatological since it brings to consummation Jesus’ life and ministry.68 Finally, Studebaker cautions that the fivefold gospel is “Christocentrism” that may be detrimental to an adequate theology of religions.69 Jenkins shares some of Alfaro’s and Studebaker’s concerns. Among his distinctive contributions, however, are these facets. It is through his constant ­responsiveness to the Holy Spirit that Jesus accomplishes his unfailing obedience to the Father during his life. Jesus does so in exemplary fashion, inasmuch as we, too, should obey the Father by relying on the Spirit’s assistance. Further, Jesus assumes a fallen human nature and sanctifies himself through his

66 67

Alfaro, Divino Compañero, 147–48. Steven M. Studebaker, From Pentecost to the Triune God: A Pentecostal Trinitarian Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 3. 68 Studebaker, From Pentecost to the Triune God, 78–84. 69 Studebaker, From Pentecost to the Triune God, 212–14.

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responsiveness to the Spirit. In a fundamental sense, then, the Spirit enables the relationship between the Father and the incarnate Son. Jenkins speaks more optimistically about the fivefold gospel than do Alfaro and Studebaker. Resisting the notion that pentecostalism is “a mysticism of the Spirit,” Jenkins says that the focus of pentecostal devotion is Jesus. Along with experience of the Spirit, the distinctive of pentecostal theology is the christological theme of the fivefold gospel. Believing that each of these two elements is insufficient on its own, he contends that Spirit christology is able to hold together the fivefold gospel and experience of the Spirit. Jenkins also claims that a pentecostal Spirit christology that holds together these two elements provides material over which positive ecumenical dialogue between pentecostals and other church traditions might occur. And yet, even with a firm affir­ mation of the fivefold gospel, Jenkins implies that it does not provide such ecumenical material on its own.70 4

Moving Forward

In light of what I have presented above, I close with some reflections about the dogmatic viability and ecumenical potential of the fivefold gospel and Spirit christology. Turning to the former, I want to make it clear that I have no major objection to the fivefold gospel per se.71 In addition to its explanatory power for historical interpretation of early North American pentecostalism, it continues to have value, at least, as a homiletic and catechetical tool for instructing pentecostal believers. I am unconvinced, however, about its use as the organizing principle of theology for several reasons, one of which is related to Spirit christology. Further, I am not proposing Spirit christology (or anything else) as the organizing principle of theology (or insisting that systematic theology even requires one). I am not suggesting that the fivefold gospel and Spirit christology are mutually exclusive of each other. I am not claiming that the above articulations of the fivefold gospel are devoid of pneumatology altogether. Instead, I am criticizing the inadequacy of the fivefold gospel on its own and observing that it has not yet been sufficiently integrated with Spirit christology. Proponents of each may benefit from continuing to pursue further integration between the two. Until that integration is achieved, Spirit christology is more viable dogmatically than the fivefold gospel because it better reflects the 70 71

Skip Jenkins, A Spirit Christology (New York: Peter Lang, 2018), 293–341. Notwithstanding the fact that I consider very much open the question of whether sanctification should be associated primarily with Jesus Christ as opposed to the Holy Spirit.

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relationship between the Spirit and Christ that the New Testament witness demands. It does so by acknowledging that in the economy of salvation the Spirit and Christ are both active and passive with respect to each other. The Holy Spirit constitutes Jesus as the Christ, and Jesus Christ pours out the Holy Spirit. The traditional structure of the fivefold gospel focuses almost exclusively on the intersection between the work of Christ and soteriology.72 One might even conclude that the work of Christ and soteriology are conflated, as if there were nothing to say about Christ besides his acts to bring human salvation and as if most of the dimensions of human salvation were christological to the near exclusion of being pneumatological. Therefore, there is reason to doubt whether the fivefold gospel could be an adequate sole organizing principle even for christology alone. The fivefold gospel needs to be expanded not only in the sense of Jesus’ receiving the Spirit before his baptizing in the Spirit, and in order for him to baptize so, but in the sense that it is as the bearer of the Holy Spirit that Jesus also saves, sanctifies, heals, and returns. Each of Christ’s works in the fivefold gospel depends on his passive reception of the Spirit, not just his work of baptizing in the Holy Spirit. Is such an acknowledgment, then, sufficient? Is it enough for proponents of the fivefold gospel to make significant gestures to Spirit christology while continuing to maintain the fivefold gospel as the organizing principle of theology?73 It would be unwise to answer these questions hastily, but I am skeptical about prospects of maintaining both without qualification because of the transformation that Spirit christology seems inevitably to bring to the fivefold gospel when employed as the organizing principle of theology. The more one acknowledges that the Jesus around which the fivefold gospel is built is Jesus Christ, the messiah anointed by the Father with the Holy Spirit without measure, the more the center shifts from the fivefold gospel to the doctrine of the Trinity. That is, I doubt that the fivefold gospel and Spirit christology can remain alongside each other without the fivefold gospel undergoing change. Once that change takes place, it is unclear that the center is still Jesus Christ rather than the Trinity. I underscore that at least some of the fivefold gospel proponents welcome a trinitarian emphasis. Nonetheless, one question 72

Terry L. Cross, “Can There be a Pentecostal Systematic Theology?: An Essay on Theological Method in a Postmodern World” (Tulsa, OK: Proceedings of the 30th Annual Meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, 2001), 163–64; Frank D. Macchia, “Theology, Pentecostal,” in The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, revised and expanded edition, ed. Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 1124. 73 Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, 183. Land writes, “In the Spirit Christ saves, sanctifies, heals, baptizes in the Holy Spirit and is coming soon as king.”

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that arises, then, is why a proponent of the fivefold gospel as the organizing principle of theology would continue to call for Jesus Christ to be the center of theology instead of the Trinity or would oscillate between language that seems at one moment to make Jesus Christ central and language at another moment that seems to make the Trinity central. If one were to answer simply that the fivefold gospel is the historic impulse of pentecostal spirituality, then one would assume too quickly that “is” amounts to “ought,” that a deficiently trinitarian theology should be maintained simply because there is historical precedent for it. Perhaps it is a component of historic pentecostal spirituality that needs to change.74 The descriptive and prescriptive moments of the theological task should not be identical. If one were to answer that Jesus Christ is even more central than the Trinity—the center of the center, as it were—then one would fail to acknowledge the implications of the Father’s gift of the Holy Spirit, in which Jesus Christ lives and moves and has his being. I stress that I speak here of Jesus Christ, not the eternal Word simpliciter. Jesus Christ—the eternal Word in hypostatic union with a fully integral human nature without sin—depends on the Father’s gift of the Spirit so radically that Jesus alone cannot be more central to the organization of theology than the Trinity, inasmuch as Jesus Christ is in a real sense already a work of the Holy Spirit (and the eternal Word), given by the Father. If Jesus Christ is at the center of it all, it seems that the center cannot and should not hold without shifting to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirt, who is blessed forevermore. If those who continue to employ the fivefold gospel as the organizing principle of theology can show instead that Jesus as the center indeed holds, then their contributions will be all the better for it.75 Turning to the potential for pentecostal ecumenical dialogue, I begin with the fivefold gospel. I will not repeat all of my comments about Kärkkäinen’s use of the fivefold gospel but only emphasize that it has already met some success in dialogue with Lutherans and say that it may have potential for comparable success with other older Protestant traditions. The ecumenical potential with evangelicals is also noteworthy. While emphasis on sanctification or baptism in the Holy Spirit might be an obstacle to dialogue with some evangelicals, perhaps the christological focus of the fivefold gospel could be an ecumenical 74

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The point here is not to diminish spirituality’s constitutive role in doctrinal formulation but to insist that better doctrine also have a constitutive role in cultivating spirituality. See Christopher A. Stephenson, Types of Pentecostal Theology: Method, System, Spirit (Oxford: oup, 2013), 111–30. Vondey’s project may most easily accommodate what I suggest here, since he does not want an “unyielding fivefold structure.” See Vondey, Pentecostal Theology, 293.

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bridge between evangelicals and pentecostals. After all, christocentrism is not an offense to conservative evangelicals. Concerning the potential of Spirit christology for pentecostal ecumenical dialogue, I, of course, feel that an obvious point of contact is with Catholics, pentecostals’ longest dialogue partners. All three of the Catholics that I discuss insist on an incarnational Spirit christology understood in light of Chalcedon and within the context of an orthodox theology of the Trinity. They do not assert a choice between conciliar christology and Spirit christology. They hold that Chalcedonian christology can accommodate an emphasis on Jesus’ radical reception of the Spirit and the action of the Spirit to bring about the incarnation. Trinitarian pentecostals continue to evaluate critically their degree of consent to the early ecumenical councils. As they do so, they should proceed without the presupposition that Chalcedonian christology and Spirit christology are mutually exclusive,76 even if the conciliar tradition has not accentuated elements of Spirit christology as much as the New Testament invites us to do. All three of the Catholics also stress the overflow of Jesus’ fullness of the Spirit to believers. Christ receives the Spirit without measure, and no finite human nature—not even one in hypostatic union with the Logos—can receive the Spirit without limit. Thus, Christ’s pouring out the Spirit is the overflow of his reception of the Spirit in unlimited proportions. One of the implications of potential Catholic and pentecostal convergence on Spirit christology is that it raises the issue of the relationship between “grace” and “Spirit” in the respective traditions because of the parallel between the Spirit constituting Christ and overflowing to the church and the grace of union in Jesus Christ also being the capital grace that overflows to the church, of which Christ is the head. Pentecostals should make decisions in systematic theology more so on the basis of dogmatic viability than on the basis of ecumenical potential. Greater continuity with a church tradition should not come at the cost of adopting a less desirable theology. Happy indeed are we when the theological perspective that is more dogmatically viable is also the one with greater ecumenical potential. As one who believes that the international dialogue between Catholics and pentecostals is one of the most important ones taking place, I hope that dogmatic viability and ecumenical potential between Catholics and pentecostals coincide in Spirit christology.77 76 77

So also, Ian A. McFarland, “Spirit and Incarnation: Toward a Pneumatic Chalcedonianism,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 16, no. 2 (2014): 143–58. I thank Kenneth J. Archer, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, John Christopher Thomas, Wolfgang Vondey, and Amos Yong for their responses to an earlier draft of this essay.

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Bibliography Alfaro, Sammy. Divino Compañero: Toward a Hispanic Pentecostal Christology. Eugene: Pickwick, 2010. Archer, Kenneth J. “The Fivefold Gospel and the Mission of the Church: Ecclesiastical Implications and Opportunities.” In Toward a Pentecostal Ecclesiology: The Church and the Fivefold Gospel. Cleveland: CPT, 2010, 7–46. Archer, Kenneth J. The Gospel Revisited: Towards a Pentecostal Theology of Worship and Witness. Eugene: Pickwick, 2011. Atkinson, William P. Trinity After Pentecost. Eugene: Pickwick, 2013. Bryant, Herschel Odel. Spirit Christology in the Christian Tradition: From the Patristic Period to the Rise of Pentecostalism in the Twentieth Century. Cleveland: CPT Press, 2014. Cartledge, Mark J. “The Early Pentecostal Theology of Confidence Magazine (1908– 1926): A Version of the Five-Fold Gospel?” The Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 28, no. 2 (2008): 117–30. Coffey, David. Deus Trinitas: The Doctrine of the Triune God. Oxford: OUP, 1999. Coffey, David. “Spirit Christology and the Trinity.” In Advents of the Spirit: An Introduction to the Current Study of Pneumatology. Edited by Bradford E. Hinze and D. Lyle Dabney. Milwaukee, WI: MUP, 2001, 315–38. Cross, Terry L. “Can There be a Pentecostal Systematic Theology?: An Essay on Theological Method in a Postmodern World.” Tulsa, OK: Proceedings of the 30th Annual Meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, 2001. Dabney, D. Lyle. “Saul’s Armor: The Problem and the Promise of Pentecostal Theology Today.” Pneuma 23, no. 1 (2001): 115–46. Dayton, Donald W. Theological Roots of Pentecostalism. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1987. Del Colle, Ralph. Christ and the Spirit: Spirit-Christology in Trinitarian Perspective. Oxford: OUP, 1994. Del Colle, Ralph. “Spirit-Christology: Dogmatic Foundations for Pentecostal-Charismatic Spirituality.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 1, no. 3 (1993): 91–112. Del Colle, Ralph. “Spirit Christology: Dogmatic Issues.” In A Man of the Church: Honoring the Theology, Life, and Witness of Ralph Del Colle. Eugene: Pickwick, 2012, 3–22. Jenkins, Skip. A Spirit Christology. New York: Peter Lang, 2018. Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. Christ and Reconciliation. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013. Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. “David’s Sling: The Promise and the Problem of Pentecostal Theology Today: A Response to D. Lyle Dabney.” Pneuma 23, no. 1 (2001): 147–52. Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. “‘Encountering Christ in the Full Gospel Way’: An Incarnational Pentecostal Spirituality.” The Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 27, no. 1 (2007): 5–19.

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Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. “Pentecostal Mission and Encounter with Religions.” In The Cambridge Companion to Pentecostalism. Edited by Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. and Amos Yong. Cambridge: CUP, 2014, 294–312. Kasper, Walter. Jesus the Christ. London: T&T Clark, 2011. Kay, William K. Pentecostalism. London: SCM, 2009. Land, Steven J. Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993. Land, Steven J. “Response to Professor Harvey Cox.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 5 (1994): 13–16. Macchia, Frank D. “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. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003, 1120–41. McFarland, Ian A. “Spirit and Incarnation: Toward a Pneumatic Chalcedonianism.” International Journal of Systematic Theology 16, no. 2 (2014): 143–58. McQueen, Larry R. Toward a Pentecostal Eschatology: Discerning the Way Forward. Blandford Forum: Deo, 2012. Nolivos, Virginia Trevino. “A Pentecostal Paradigm for the Latin American Family: An Instrument for Transformation.” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 5, no. 2 (2002): 223–34. Snavely, Andréa. Life in the Spirit: A Post-Constantinian and Trinitarian Account of the Christian Life. Eugene: Pickwick, 2015. Stephenson, Christopher A. Types of Pentecostal Theology: Method, System, Spirit. Oxford: OUP, 2013. Studebaker, Steven M. From Pentecost to the Triune God: A Pentecostal Trinitarian Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012. Thomas, John Christopher. “Pentecostal Theology in the Twenty-First Century.” Pneuma 20, no. 1 (1998): 3–19. Thomas, John Christopher. “‘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. London: T&T Clark, 2012, 115–29. Vondey, Wolfgang. Pentecostal Theology: Living the Full Gospel. London: Bloomsbury, 2017. Yong, Amos. In the Days of Caesar: Pentecostalism and Political Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010. Yong, Amos. The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005.

Chapter 11

The Kingdom and the Power: Spirit Baptism in Ecumenical Perspective Frank D. Macchia 1

The Place of Spirit Baptism in Pentecostal Theology

Ecumenism among early Pentecostals (such as it existed) was largely focused on their favorite topic, the baptism in the Holy Spirit. The reference to baptizing in the Spirit was coined by John the Baptist, who announced that, though he baptized in water unto repentance, the coming Christ will occasion a river of the Holy Spirit into which he will “baptize” people unto restoration and judgment. John and Luke connect the fulfillment of this announcement to Jesus’ impartation of the Holy Spirit (John 20:22; Acts 1:5–8, 2:4–33) at the dawn of the new age, a gift that overflows boundaries and sweeps all peoples from every life context into its renewing power (Acts 2:17–33). Paul developed the metaphor of Spirit baptism in the context of our joint and diverse incorporation into Christ by the Spirit and our being filled with the Spirit as we “drink” from him (1 Cor 12:13). He looks forward to a time when all mortal life will be “swallowed up” or engulfed (“baptized”) in the immortal life of God (2 Cor 5:4). This is the expansive and eschatological dimension of Spirit baptism as a triune act of divine self-impartation and transformation of creation. Despite the vast ecumenical potential of this attention to the imagery of Spirit baptism, it has not generally captured the imaginations of theologians leading up to the modern era. The Holiness Movement highlighted the metaphor in its highly focused emphasis on the surrender of believers’ affections to the purifying work of the Holy Spirit. More expansively, the Pentecostals made this topic central to their vision of the revived, charismatically-enriched and spiritually empowered, church. In doing this, they put the topic on the table of ecumenical conversation. The most important works on the topic written in the latter half of the twentieth century by non-Pentecostal ecumenical partners were penned largely in response to the Pentecostal challenge. In doing so, they engaged us in the doctrine that had the pride of place among our distinctives. I concur with Simon Chan that Pentecostals were not in agreement over all of their distinctive beliefs but that “what comes through over and over again in their discussions and writings is a certain kind of spiritual experience of an

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intense, direct, and overwhelming nature centering on the person of Christ which they schematize as ‘baptism in the Holy Spirit.’”1 Spirit baptism was meant additionally to open the church to spiritual gifts and manifestations such as speaking in tongues, healing through the laying on of hands, prophecy, word of wisdom or knowledge, and empowered evangelism and forms of social witness geared to breaking the power of darkness in the world and transforming lives in Christ. They were nearly universally agreed that this experience will both energize and unite the church as the return of the Lord draws near. One cannot read the literature of the first twenty-five years of the Pentecostal movement without feeling the intensity of their optimism that a new Pentecost had come to accomplish this purpose. Given the importance of this experience, the implicit challenge was to define it theologically more precisely. The tendency, especially within denominational Pentecostalism in the U.S. (the institutions most driven to establish doctrinal boundaries and most able to publicize their agreements internationally), has been to view Spirit baptism as an experience of renewal following (and distinct from) regeneration (and water baptism) as well as one’s total surrender to the sanctifying work of the Spirit (however this was understood). The principle here has been variously described as the doctrine of “subsequence” or “separability” (the experience of Spirit baptism as subsequent to Christian initiation). The doctrine of subsequence sought to grant integrity to the many testimonies of a sudden and life-transforming filling of the Spirit among Christians that brought greater depth of participation in the work of the Spirit in the world. The Pentecostals became convinced that the distinctiveness of this experience as a breakthrough in the life of the church had to be preserved. They instinctively reached for a church practice that would secure the distinctiveness of this experience. Speaking in tongues seemed ready made for it. Not only does Luke focus on tongue speaking as the characteristic charismatic sign of the Spirit’s outpouring on all flesh (Acts 2:4f, 10:44), but the practice of tongue speaking was uniquely and typically present among Pentecostals where the Spirit was experienced with fresh power. Tongue speaking became for many Pentecostals the “initial evidence” of Spirit filling, the “gateway” to the gifts of the Spirit to which Spirit baptism as a renewal experience was opening up the church. Not all Pentecostals followed in this “initial-evidence strategy” to preserve the distinctiveness of the experience of Spirit baptism, but enough did to make it a distinctively Pentecostal doctrine.

1 Simon Chan, Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003), 7.

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There is no question but that the distinctiveness of the experience of Spirit filling and awakening should be preserved. There is also no question but that speaking in tongues is a valued and heretofore neglected sign of the Spirit’s renewal in the spiritual lives of believers that has ecumenical significance. But the sharp line drawn by the “initial evidence” strategy between the experience of Spirit filling and Christian initiation to the life of the Spirit through faith in Christ and water baptism raised a problem that was exegetical, theological, and profoundly ecumenical in nature. Questions were raised both exegetically and theologically as to whether one could even speak of a filling of the Spirit that is disconnected from one’s initiation to the life of the Spirit by faith in Christ and water baptism. After all, the Holy Spirit is one and there is a unity to the Spirit’s work in and through the lives of believers. The ecumenical problem was that an experience of the Spirit’s presence and power among Pentecostals meant to bless and unite the church can actually serve to divide it if the experience is reserved to an elite movement that has the proper credentials (e.g., speaking in tongues). There was indeed a strong minority of Pentecostals (the Oneness Pentecostals) who stated from the beginning that Spirit baptism is indeed rooted in one’s initial reception of the Holy Spirit at Christian initiation and that this gift involves both sanctifying and empowering experiences in the Spirit. But the Oneness insistence that Christian initiation be accompanied by speaking in tongues to be recognized as authentic only exacerbated the ecumenical problem of the initial evidence strategy by possibly limiting not only spiritual renewal but even Christian identity itself to the tongue speakers. The crown jewel of Pentecostal theology and experience was in danger of becoming theologically puzzling and ecumenically irrelevant. By the middle of the 20th century, it seemed to some at least that the deeper awareness of the power and charismatic breadth of the Spirit’s work meant to unite the church was only serving to divide it. Our non-Pentecostal ecumenical partners who responded to Pentecostal Spirit baptism understandably took special aim at the doctrine of subsequence. James Dunn and Kilian McDonnell maintained in agreement with the Pentecostals that Spirit baptism in the New Testament and the early centuries of the Christian era was profoundly experiential and charismatic in significance. They both argued in ecumenical openness that the accents involved in the Pentecostal way of describing the experience of the Spirit belonged to the church catholic. But they also showed that the doctrine had deeper roots theologically than many Pentecostals had recognized. Spirit baptism has to do foundationally with Christian initiation. For Dunn, this initiation was the reception of the Spirit by faith; for McDonnell, it was the event of water baptism as the moment where the Spirit is received. I think there are ways of negotiating

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this difference. One could speak of a reception of the Spirit at the moment of faith while still finding water baptism to be a profoundly spiritual event. At any rate, it would seem that in both works (in different ways) the chief sign of Spirit baptism would be water baptism and not speaking in tongues. Water baptism belongs to the entire church. I sometimes wonder how ecumenically relevant the Oneness Pentecostals would have become within this entire conversation had they followed this line of thinking more exclusively than they did. The Pentecostal responses to these works were mixed. Some wondered whether their approach to Spirit baptism was too Pauline and not attentive enough to the typically Lukan definition of Spirit baptism as a charismatic experience among believers. Others wondered whether Dunn and McDonnell end up dissolving the distinctive significance of Spirit filling and renewal that occur subsequent to Christian initiation. In response to such concerns, McDonnell brilliantly made a distinction between Spirit baptism theologically defined as based in Christian initiation and Spirit baptism as experientially defined as a subsequent experience of Spirit filling and renewal. To refine his distinction more clearly, he referred to the subsequent experience of Spirit baptism as a “release” of the Spirit in the lives of believers and in the spiritually renewed church.2 He was fond of saying that Pentecostals were theologically wrong but experientially right about Spirit baptism! Of course, there is theological significance to the Pentecostal focus on subsequent experiences of Spirit baptism. And in highlighting this significance, Pentecostals joined with a number of Charismatics in defining Spirit baptism as a release of the Spirit, which represented a step forward in recapturing the unity of the work of the Spirit and the expansive ecumenical significance of Spirit baptism as truly belonging in every sense to the church catholic. This coming forth of the Spirit from within (John 7:38) does not preclude a fresh outpouring from above, for the Spirit rests upon us in order to release that which wells up from within. Note what the International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services booklet on the Baptism in the Holy Spirit says: The idea of release expresses one dimension of baptism in the Spirit: the coming forth into consciousness and effective power of that which was already within. But it does not address another aspect: the Spirit of God

2 Kilian McDonnell, “The Holy Spirit and Christian Initiation,” in The Holy Spirit and Power: The Catholic Charismatic Renewal, ed. Kilian McDonnell (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975), 81–82.

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coming in a new way into a person’s life and bestowing new gifts...It involves not only the “already given” but the “new from above.”3 In calling the church to a renewed Pentecost, the Pentecostals would also be calling them to a reality from which they already draw their spiritual life. This fact makes the call so much more compelling ecumenically.4 Interestingly, by the time these seminal works appeared, Pentecostal scholarship was already moving away from the earlier emphasis on Spirit baptism (especially issues of subsequence and initial evidence). Walter Hollenweger’s research revealed a significant amount of doctrinal diversity among Pentecostals worldwide and even within the U.S. both now and from the beginning of the movement. His classic, The Pentecostals, fell like a bombshell in the late sixties and early seventies upon geographically sheltered Pentecostal groups surprised by the doctrinal diversity of the movement globally.5 Hollenweger not only diversified the doctrinal distinctives of Pentecostal theology, but he also shifted what was most distinctive about Pentecostal theology from doctrinal points to how theology itself was conceived. He wrote, “A description of these theologies cannot begin with their concepts. I have rather to choose another way and describe how they are conceived, carried and might finally be born.”6 Hollenweger focused not on doctrinal issues but on the immediate experience of the Spirit, its physical impact in healing and diverse charismatic giftings, and its expression through a medium that lay close to the heartbeat of experience, oral and narrative discourse. This shift in focus made the doctrinal particularities of Spirit baptism seem like an accident of history, a holdover from the Holiness movement and Pentecostalism’s Evangelical roots that is not very significant to what is most distinctive about Pentecostal theology. Hollenweger took Pentecostal theology from a seemingly narrow and ecumenically irrelevant doctrine of subsequence and speaking in tongues to a way of talking about God that was not so burdened with post-Enlightenment standards of rational discourse. For many Pentecostals like myself in graduate school 3 Baptism in the Holy Spirit (Rome: International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services, 2012), 72. I am grateful to Peter Althouse for this reference. 4 Of course, this is not the only Catholic interpretation of Spirit baptism. See Ralph Del Colle, “Spirit Baptism: A Catholic Perspective,” in Perspectives on Spirit Baptism, ed. Chad Owen Brand (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2004), 241–79, which surveys several different interpretations from within the Catholic charismatic renewal. 5 Walter J. Hollenweger’s stated purpose was “to discover with Pentecostals the rich variety of the Pentecostal movement.” “Preface to the First and Second Editions,” The Pentecostals, 2nd ed. (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1988), xxi. 6 Walter J. Hollenweger, “Theology of the New World,” The Expository Times 87 (May 1976): 228.

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throughout the 1970’s and 80’s, he made what is distinctive about Pentecostal theology seem exciting again. While recognizing the value of Hollenweger’s approach to Pentecostal theology, one must also note that doctrinal issues represent the symbolic framework that influences how a movement experiences God and thinks theologically. Exploring these particularities is important to ecumenical conversations. Of course, we cannot deny that there was a doctrinal diversity early on and historically among Pentecostals globally. But this diversity does not mean that there was not some kind of coherent, distinctive theological vision among Pentecostals. Donald Dayton and D. William Faupel7 accepted the fact that Pentecostals were diverse doctrinally and, therefore, not just focused on Spirit baptism and tongues, but they also showed that there was nevertheless a theologically coherent understanding of God’s redemptive work through Christ and the Holy Spirit in early Pentecostal theology that spanned the history and geographical expanse of the Movement. Dayton maintained that early Pentecostal theology advocated a fourfold devotion to Jesus as Savior, Spirit Baptizer, Healer, and Coming King (the fourfold Gospel). D. William Faupel highlighted the final element of this doctrinal “Gestalt” as that which was decisive, namely, the eschatological reach of the Spirit’s work. Pentecostalism was mainly about the “latter rain” of the Spirit to restore the gifts and power of Pentecost to the church in order to empower global mission before Christ’s soon return. Pentecostals viewed the church as a “missionary fellowship,” which was “riding the crest of the wave of history” toward the end of the latter days of the Spirit. Steven Land followed Faupel’s approach to the fourfold Gospel by innovatively advocating an approach to Pentecostal theology in the service of spirituality, a spirituality that highlighted the sanctification and empowerment of a life driven by godly affections that become “passions for the Kingdom of God.” Land’s seminal effort at writing a Pentecostal theology, Pentecostal Spirituality, does not grant Spirit baptism pride of place. He explicitly takes issue with Dale Bruner’s description of Pentecostal theology as “pneumatobaptistocentric” (Spirit baptism centered). Land regards Bruner’s description as “missing the point altogether” concerning what is truly distinctive about Pentecostal theology, which in Land’s view is the sanctification of the affections as part of an eschatological passion for the kingdom of God yet to come.8 His work 7 Donald W. Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1987); D. William Faupel, The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996). 8 Steven J. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 62–63.

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was enormously important to the future of Pentecostal theology. There is little question but that sanctification and eschatology were important to the rise of Pentecostal interest in Spirit baptism as well as the ecumenical significance of the doctrine. The upshot of this entire development, however, is that Spirit baptism lost its place as the chief interest of Pentecostal theology. In his book on Spirit baptism published in 2003, Pentecostal theologian Koo Dong Yun presents the classical Pentecostal treatment of this doctrine as little more than a historical curiosity.9 By this time, issues of subsequence and initial evidence were relatively inconsequential to the ecumenical significance of Pentecostal theology. One of the leading scholars of the classical Pentecostal Movement, Russell P. Spittler, even wrote that the most popular understanding of Spirit baptism as “subsequent” to regeneration or Christian initiation is a “non-issue,” since Pentecostals were more concerned with spiritual renewal than with creating a new ordo salutis.10 Gordon Fee had also drawn a similar conclusion.11 Roger Stronstad and Robert Menzies sought to defend the biblical basis for viewing Spirit baptism as an event subsequent to Christian initiation by arguing that this is Luke’s distinctive contribution to New Testament pneumatology.12 However, they also noted that Paul’s understanding of Spirit baptism was different, tied instead to Christian initiation by faith and water baptism. Rather than defend the exclusive definition of Spirit baptism as subsequent to Christian initiation, they only pointed to the fluidity and expansiveness of this pneumatological metaphor in the New Testament. They implicitly raised the question as to whether or not the Lukan and Pauline accents when it comes to Spirit baptism might be viewed as united under a unified work of the Spirit, a unity implied by overlap between these towering pneumatologies. (I tend to think that Stron­ stad and Menzies draw the lines too sharply between these pneumatologies.) I approached my work on Spirit baptism in 2006 with this question in mind, one which for me was both exegetical and ecumenical in nature. I realized at that time that not since Harold Hunter’s and Howard Ervin’s theologies of

9 10 11 12

Koo Dong Yun, Baptism in the Holy Spirit: An Ecumenical Theology of Spirit Baptism (Lanham: University Press of America, 2003), 23–24. Russell P. Spittler, “Suggested Areas for Further Research in Pentecostal Studies,” Pneuma 5, no. 2 (1983): 51. Gordon Fee, “Baptism in the Holy Spirit: The Issue of Separability and Subsequence,” Pneuma 7, no. 2 (1985): 87–99. Robert Menzies, “The Spirit of Prophecy, Luke-Acts, and Pentecostal Theology: A Response to Max Turner,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 15 (1999): 72; Roger Stronstad, Charismatic Theology of St. Luke (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1984), 10.

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Spirit baptism published nearly three decades earlier13 had there been a similar work written by a Pentecostal theologian. I was convinced that displacing Spirit baptism as the central concern of the Pentecostal understanding of the work of Christ in the world was neither biblical nor Pentecostal, at least in terms of what preoccupied Pentecostals most in the formative decades of the Movement’s history. It also robbed Pentecostal theology of its chief ecumenical relevance. All four Gospels and the Book of Acts, the narrative foundation of the entire New Testament, foretell the coming of Christ as the Baptizer in the Spirit (Matt 3:16; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:22; John 1:8; Acts 1:5). Moreover, I agree with James Dunn that Spirit baptism in the New Testament encapsulates within itself the entire redemptive work of Christ: he bears the Spirit in order to renew all of creation by pouring the Spirit forth upon all flesh. He descends into our baptism of fire on the cross in order to rise again so as to bring us into the renewal of the Spirit. This was the ecumenical significance hidden within the preoccupation of Pentecostals with the reality of Spirit baptism as a triune event. The work of Christ on behalf of the Father is to be understood from beginning to end within the promise of the coming Spirit. I have joined with others over the span of the previous decade to develop the ecumenical significance of this insight as it touches on a number of theological issues. Pentecostals are indeed Christocentric, but their ecumenical significance is in placing the gift of the Spirit at the very heart and eschatological reach of Christian theology in general. It is not eschatological hope alone that lies at the heartbeat of every theological statement, as Jürgen Moltmann once stated, but the eschatological gift of the Spirit. The ecumenical significance of hope is to be focused on God’s presence to perfect the work of Christ in the world. It occurred to me when writing Baptized in the Spirit that what is really being displaced in the marginalization of Spirit baptism as a Pentecostal theological and ecumenical concern is not so much Spirit baptism as biblically presented in its broad eschatological, redemptive, and charismatic dimensions, but rather the narrow concerns over subsequence and initial evidence. I was convinced that Pentecostalism had helped to bring this expansive metaphor back to the center of our understanding of God’s redemptive work in history. Especially in the light of the well-known Geistvergessenheit (forgetting of the Spirit) in the West, Spirit baptism can emerge as a powerful metaphor of the pneumatological substance of God’s redemptive work through Christ (as Dabney

13

Harold D. Hunter, Spirit Baptism: A Pentecostal Alternative (Lanham: University Press of America, 1983); Howard M. Ervin, Conversion-Initiation and the Baptism in the Holy Spirit: A Critique of James D.G. Dunn, Baptism in the Holy Spirit (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1984).

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has pointed out14). Should we give up this possibility? Why not expand the Pentecostal understanding of Spirit baptism so that it can function as an aid to the formation of a uniquely Pentecostal contribution to an ecumenical pneumatology? The Catholic Charismatic Peter Hocken suggested at a Society for Pentecostal Studies meeting in 1992 that it is possible to take the Pentecostal vision of the latter rain of the Spirit to expand the doctrine of Spirit baptism among Pentecostals pneumatologically and eschatologically.15 In the service to this ecumenical conversation, we can discuss briefly major approaches to the doctrine of Spirit baptism. It is important to describe the dialogue partners who will be blessed by and bless the Pentecostals in the process of ecumenical exchange. 2

Models of Spirit Baptism

2.1. Regeneration Spirit baptism among many Reformed and/or Evangelical Christians has been defined as regeneration or new birth through a faith response to the proclamation of the gospel. Typically noted here is the contrast implied by John the Baptist between water and Spirit baptism when speaking of the ministry of ­Jesus (“I baptize in water but he…”). Spirit baptism is thus “repentance unto life” (Acts 11:18) or a figurative “baptism” into Christ by faith (1 Cor 12,13) and not something formalized in a water rite or isolated as a separate stage of spiritual renewal or power. Karl Barth held this view, noting that Spirit baptism is a liberation involving a radical change in a person, a passage from death to life.16 As a Reformed theologian (and under the influence of his son Markus’s book on baptism), Barth defended the freedom and sovereignty of the Spirit in Spirit baptism. Spirit baptism is not formalized in water baptism nor mediated by the church. The church “is neither author, dispenser, nor mediator of grace and its revelation.”17 The church can at best “participate as assistant and minister” in 14

D. Lyle Dabney, “Baptism in the Holy Spirit: Towards a Pneumatological Soteriology,” Society for Pentecostal Studies, March 8–10, 2001, Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, Oklahoma. 15 Peter Hocken, “Baptism in the Holy Spirit as Prophetic Statement,” Society for Pentecostal Studies, Nov. 12–14, 1992, Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, Springfield, Missouri. See also Peter Hocken, The Glory and the Shame (Colorado Springs, CO: Harold Shaw Pub., 1994). 16 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, iv/4, ed. G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1969), 18. 17 Barth, Church Dogmatics, iv/4, 32.

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the “self-attestation or self-impartation of Jesus Christ himself” in the gospel. But Spirit baptism given in one’s acceptance of the gospel by faith does call for water baptism as the church’s fitting response to God’s gracious self-giving.18 According to another classic treatment of Spirit baptism from this perspective by James Dunn, Spirit baptism is the bestowal of the Spirit that functions as God’s decisive act of establishing Christian identity.19 The Holy Spirit is the “nerve center” of the Christian life that marks one essentially as a Christian. The Spirit is given in connection with repentance and faith in the gospel, while water baptism bears an indirect relationship to Spirit baptism in the sense that water baptism functions as the fulfillment of one’s act of repentance and faith.20 Though critical of Pentecostal theology, Dunn gives some credence to Pentecostal theology by regarding Spirit baptism as having experiential and charismatic implications for the Christian life (at least eventually) and criticizes the mainline churches for reducing the experience of the Spirit to sacramental forms or psychological categories.21 There are Pentecostal groups (such as the Oneness Pentecostals) who would gravitate toward this position. 2.2. Sacraments of Initiation Those from sacramental traditions, such as Kilian McDonnell and George Montague, have sought to understand Spirit baptism as universally occurring among Christians through water baptism or the sacramental rites of initiation (baptism/confirmation).22 Jesus’ reception of the Spirit at his baptism thus becomes paradigmatic of the connection between water baptism and the reception of the Spirit among Christians (Acts 2:38, 19:5–6; and 1 Cor 12:13, which is understood literally as water baptism).23 There is but “one baptism” in water and Spirit (Eph 4:5). We are buried with Christ “through baptism,” implying an intimate relationship between water baptism and our identification with Christ (Rom 6:4). But, like Dunn, McDonnell and Montague grant validity to the Pentecostal movement by regarding Spirit baptism as linked in the New Testament and the writings of the church fathers to the charismatic life of the 18 Ibid. 19 James D.G. Dunn, The Baptism in the Holy Spirit: A Re-examination of the New Testament Teaching on the Gift of the Spirit in Relation to Pentecostalism Today (London: scm, 1970). 20 Dunn, The Baptism in the Holy Spirit, 97. 21 Dunn, The Baptism in the Holy Spirit, 225–26, 229. 22 Kilian McDonnell and George T. Montague, Christian Initiation and Baptism in the Holy Spirit: Evidence from the First Eight Centuries (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1991). 23 Viewing Jesus’ baptism as paradigmatic of Christian baptism sacramentally understood has had an influence on certain Reformed and Free Church theologians as well. See Geoffrey Wainwright, Christian Initiation (Richmond: John Knox, 1969), 50ff.

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church. In the view of McDonnell and Montague, sacramental grace given in Christian initiation will eventually (either at the moment of initiation or later) burst forth in experiences of charismatic power. As noted above, though Pentecostals in their view have a faulty theology of Spirit baptism by detaching it wrongly from sacramental initiation, Pentecostals do validly call the church to the experience of Spirit baptism in life.24 There are Pentecostals, such as ­Simon Chan, who have been attracted to this doctrine of Spirit baptism as given sacramentally but released in life experience later, renewed principally in the sharing of the Eucharist.25 2.3. Vocational and Charismatic Empowerment Pentecostals regard the baptism in the Holy Spirit (whether occurring at Christian initiation or subsequently) as an experience of empowerment for witness that finds diverse charismatic manifestation. The experience is in my view akin to a “prophetic call,” which allows believers to participate in various gifts connected with prophetic discernment, such as visions, dreams, various “word gifts,” and other gifts of the Spirit highlighted in the New Testament. Acts 1:8 identifies the baptism in the Holy Spirit as a gift of power for witness. Pentecost is thus a charismatic moment in the life of the church already formed as the Easter community under Christ. For Pentecostals, a case in point in support of this understanding of Pentecost is Acts 8, in which the Samaritans “accepted the Word of God” (v. 14) and were “baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus” (v. 16) without having received the Spirit. Robert Menzies argues that the possibility of accepting the gospel and being baptized into Jesus’ name without receiving the Spirit would have been unimaginable to Paul (Rom 8:9).26 This fact implies for Menzies a fundamental difference between Lukan and Pauline pneumatologies. For Menzies, as well as Roger Stronstad, Luke is indebted to a typically Jewish pneumatology that understands the reception of the Spirit as an empowerment or “charismatic” enrichment. Menzies thus accuses those who see Spirit baptism in Acts as soteriological of reading a Pauline pneumatology into Luke. Menzies then uses this charismatic understanding of Spirit baptism in Luke to justify the Pentecostal doctrine of a “Spirit baptism” as a charismatic experience subsequent to conversion.27 24 Wainwright, Christian Initiation, 376ff. 25 Simon Chan, “Evidential Glossolalia and the Doctrine of Subsequence,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 2, no. 2 (1999): 195–211. 26 Robert Menzies, “Luke and the Spirit: A Reply to James Dunn,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 4 (1994): 127. 27 Cf. Robert Menzies, Empowered for Witness: The Spirit in Luke-Acts (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1985).

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Of course, Menzies is aware of the face that his position does little more than open up the possibility of viewing Spirit baptism as a post-conversion charismatic empowerment. Even if one accepts his understanding of Luke’s use of the verb to “baptize” in the Spirit as exclusively charismatic, one could still integrate Luke’s pneumatology with Paul’s in a way that avoids separating the charismatic and soteriological elements of Spirit baptism. In fact, fracturing the charismatic from the soteriological work of the Spirit has created problems for Pentecostal theology. The result of this fracture is an otherworldly spirituality detached from the concrete guidance available from God’s self-disclosure in Christ. In such a theological vacuum, the attempt to relate spirituality to secular life can easily latch on to pragmatic strategies for success. The consequence is the dark side of Grant Wacker’s insightful treatment of the Pentecostal ethos as a synthesis of otherworldly spirituality and a this-worldly pragmatism.28 As we will see, Pentecostal language was fortunately not consistent in its support of this separation of Spirit baptism from the sanctifying grace inaugurated by Christ. On a positive note, the Pentecostals viewed this Spirit baptism as distinct from initial Christian conversion or the sacraments of initiation in order to present it to the church as an ongoing challenge to its life in the world. They were revivalists, as much concerned with reviving the saints as with converting the sinners. The nineteenth-century Pietist and social activist Christoph Blumhardt once wrote that one must convert twice, first from the world to God but then, again, from God back to the world.29 He wrote this in rejection of a piety that is oriented toward God only. He favored instead a divine love that is directed to God and (from God) to the world. The Pentecostal doctrine of the baptism in the Holy Spirit at its best can be seen as advocating a kind of “second conversion,” an awakening to one’s vocation in the world and giftings to serve as a witness to Christ. As Roger Stronstad noted, Pentecostals advocate a “prophethood of believers,” since everyone is a bearer of the spirit to dream dreams, have visions, and speak under the inspiration of the Spirit in praise to God and in witness to Christ.30 With regard to sanctification, the formal way that most early Pentecostals devoted to the Holiness movement related Spirit baptism to sanctification was to distinguish sharply between them as stages of initiation to the life of 28 29 30

Grant Wacker, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003). Quoted by J. Harder in the introduction to Christoph Blumhardt, Ansprachen, Predigten, Andachten, und Schriften, ed, J. Harder, vol. 1 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1978), 12. Roger Stronstad, The Prophethood of Believers (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999).

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the Spirit, even appropriating them to persons of the Trinity. The Pentecostals following this approach shifted pneumatology from sanctification to Spirit baptism as a charismatic experience. Sanctification was then placed under the work of Christ, whether formally viewed as distinct from regeneration or not. In a brief essay entitled “The Spirit Follows the Blood,” one Pentecostal author even denied that the Spirit sanctifies, “for he is not our Savior.” It is the blood of Christ that cleanses from sin and purifies in preparation for the gift of power by the Spirit.31 Indeed, how Christ can be said to do anything in the life of the believer without the agent of the Spirit is baffling. Furthermore, it did not occur to the early Pentecostals who followed this train of thought that this rigid relegation of sanctification to Christ alone contradicts 1 Peter 1:2 as well as the biblical portrayal of the inseparable workings of Word and Spirit and the overlapping nature of soteriological categories in the New Testament.32 Fortunately, the overriding tendency in Pentecostal theology, as Donald W. Dayton has shown, was to focus on Christ as the one who both saves and Spirit baptizes through the agency of the Spirit. This formal distinction, however, is not the whole story. Seymour implied a more integral connection between sanctification and Spirit baptism by stating that Spirit baptism is the gift of power “upon the sanctified, cleansed life.”33 Implied here is that Spirit baptism empowers, renews, or releases the sanctified life toward outward expression and visible signs of renewal. I have also found numerous references in early Pentecostal literature to Spirit baptism as a baptism in the love of God, usually in reference to Romans 5:5, which refers to the love of God “shed abroad” in our hearts, a “Pentecostal” image that did not escape the attention of a number of early Pentecostal pioneers. The Pentecostal image of a divine outpouring is connected here to Wesley’s understanding of sanctification as a transformation of the person by the love of God. William Seymour wrote in 1908 in answer to a question about what the evidence of Spirit baptism is: “Divine love, which is charity. Charity is the Spirit of Jesus.”34 Seymour’s Apostolic Faith paper would say more than once concerning the baptism in the Holy Spirit: “this baptism fills us with divine 31 32 33 34

“The Spirit Follows the Blood,” The Apostolic Faith (April 1907): 3 (author unknown). 1 Peter 1:2: “who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance.” W.J. Seymour, “The Way into the Holiness,” The Apostolic Faith (October 1906): 4. “Questions Answered,” Apostolic Faith (1907): 2. I am grateful to C.M. Robeck, Jr. for directing me to this quote: “William J. Seymour and the ‘Bible Evidence,’” in Initial Evidence: Historical and Biblical Perspectives on the Pentecostal Doctrine of Spirit Baptism, ed. G.B. McGee (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1991), 81.

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love.”35 This paper also gives testimony from a “Nazarene brother” who called his Spirit baptism a “baptism of love.”36 These were not the only voices among the early Pentecostals to write about Spirit baptism as a filling with divine love. Assemblies of God pioneer E.N. Bell, for example, referred to Romans 5:5 to describe Spirit baptism as a baptism in the love of God “—not a scanty sprinkling but a regular ‘outpour.’”37 In an implicit allusion to Romans 5:5 a brother named Will Trotter wrote an article titled “A Revival of Love Needed,” that says, “I tell you that this entire ‘tongues movement,’ independent of works of grace positions held, needs…to get down and get the thing that loves in their hearts, that divine flame shed abroad by the Holy Ghost.” He concludes, “Get the flame, the Pentecostal flame, if you like the term better—but get it.”38 As yet another example of an identification of Spirit baptism with an “infusion” of divine love, one could find Oneness Pentecostal pioneer Frank Ewart describing Spirit baptism this way: “Calvary unlocked the flow of God’s love, which is God’s very nature, into the hearts of his creatures.”39 Stanley Frodsham made both tongues and love consequences of Pentecost: “Therein we see in their brightest luster the union of gifts and graces in believers.”40 Without question, Spirit baptism has often been interpreted throughout Pentecostalism with a heavy emphasis on the Spirit as the power of God for enhancing worship and service and overcoming the obstacles to the life of faith, especially with the aid of powerful manifestations and gifts of the Spirit. This is true of Pentecostal and charismatic churches in Asia, Africa, the U.S., Europe, and Latin America. “Power encounter” is the byword for global Pentecostal mission.41 Theologically, this emphasis on spiritual power is tied to the military metaphor for the Christian life favored by Pentecostals. As E. Kingsley Larbi notes with regard to African Pentecostalism, Pentecostalism does not recognize any “demilitarized zone” but rather accents the battle for the victory

35 36 37 38 39 40 41

“The Old Time Pentecost,” The Apostolic Faith (September 1906): 1; note also “Tongues as a Sign,” (September 1906): 2 (authors unknown). “The Old Time Pentecost,” The Apostolic Faith (September 1906): 1 (author unknown). E.N. Bell, “Believers in Sanctification,” The Christian Evangel (September, 1914): 3. W. Trotter, “A Revival of Love Needed,” The Weekly Evangel (April, 1915): 1. F. Ewart, “The Revelation of Jesus Christ,” in D.W. Dayton (ed.), Seven Jesus Only Tracts (New York: Garland, 1985), 5. S.H. Frodsham, “Back to Pentecost: The Effects of the Pentecostal Baptism,” The Pentecostal Evangel (October 30, 1920): 2. A representative development of this theme in Pentecostal literature is A. Chia, “A Biblical Theology of Power Manifestation: A Singaporean Quest,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 2, no. 1 (1999): 19–33.

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of the kingdom of God over the forces of sin and darkness.42 I do not wish to denigrate this Pentecostal focus on power. The love of God is not sentimental. It is also not reducible to an ethical principle, as valuable as that is. God’s love is powerfully redemptive and liberating. It is also not confined to the inner transformation of the individual but propels people outward to bear witness to Christ. In my view, the vocational and charismatic elements highlighted by Pentecostals hold potential for expanding our understanding of sanctification so that it involves a “prophetic call,” one that is culturally and contextually diverse. Seymour saw tongues as a sign that God is causing the people of God to cross boundaries: “God makes no difference in nationality; Ethiopians, Chinese, Indians, Mexicans, and other nationalities worship together.”43 Such a connection between Spirit baptism and tongues speech (and other forms of inspired speech) can be theologically significant. Catholic theologian Simon Tugwell, for example, sees scriptural support for the notion that inspired speech is “in some way symptomatic of the whole working of the Holy Spirit in our lives, a typical fruit of the incarnation.”44 Furthermore, Seymour and others referred on occasion to the divine healing of the body, another favored spiritual gift among Pentecostals, as the “sanctification of the body.”45 This language further supports the idea that Pentecostals described Spirit baptism on occasion as an enhancement of sanctification rather than as an additional work beyond it. It is my view that early Pentecostals separated sanctification from Spirit baptism only by defining sanctification narrowly and negatively as a cleansing or a separation from sin. Sanctification, however, is also positively a c­ onsecration unto God in preparation for a holy task as it was for the Old Testament prophets and Jesus of Nazareth. As an aspect of the life of discipleship to which we are consecrated and called, sanctification involves a transformation by the Spirit of God into the very image of Christ “from glory to glory” (2 Cor 3:18). This point raises the legitimate question as to the degree to which the separation of sanctification from Spirit baptism was more semantic than substantial. Pentecostal pastor and theologian David Lim thus calls Spirit baptism for Pentecostals “vocational sanctification.”46 In this light, I will include both Holiness

42 43 44 45 46

E.K. Larbi, Pentecostalism: The Eddies of Ghanaian Christianity (Dansoman, Accra, Ghana: Centre for Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies, 2001), 423. W.J. Seymour, “The Same Old Way,” Apostolic Faith (September 1906): 3. Simon Tugwell, “The Speech-Giving Spirit,” in S. Tugwell et al. (eds.), New Heaven? New Earth? (Springfield: Templegate, 1976), 128. E.g., W.J. Seymour, “The Precious Atonement,” Apostolic Faith (September 1906): 2. In personal conversation with the author.

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and Pentecostal movements as advocating a vocational and at least implicitly charismatic understanding of Spirit baptism. 3

Final Biblical Reflections: Toward an Ecumenical Pneumatology

Spirit baptism has historically been defined largely in service to one’s ecclesiology. “Word” ecclesiologies that highlight the church as those who are faithful to the word of the Gospel would tend to see Spirit baptism as regeneration by faith in Christ through the proclamation of the gospel. Sacramental ecclesiologies that view the church as a sacrament that mediates grace to the world would identify Spirit baptism with water baptism or the sacraments of initiation. Holiness and Pentecostal groups that see the church as the separated and consecrated people called and empowered for gifted service in the world will see Spirit baptism as that which revives or renews the people of God for its prophetic tasks in the world. These ecclesiologies and understandings of Spirit baptism do overlap each other. Interestingly, though ecumenical discussions on ecclesiology have become much more complex, discussions on Spirit baptism have not kept pace. It would be interesting, for example, to relate Spirit baptism to the newer understanding of the church as a koinonia or communion in the life of God as Trinity. As interesting as the connection of ecclesiology and Spirit baptism is, I do not believe an ecumenical pneumatology can begin with the nature of the church. Those who view Spirit baptism as fundamentally an ecclesial dynamic will view John the Baptist’s use of the metaphor as solely predictive of what will occur with the birth of the church. I want to suggest something else, namely, an understanding of the Baptist’s use of the metaphor in its own right first, before we bring the birth of the church into the picture. This move allows us to define Spirit baptism first as related to the kingdom of God before it is applied to the church. John’s preaching was, “repent, for the kingdom of God is near” before he made his announcement of the coming Spirit Baptizer (Matt 3:1–2) and the scene in which Jesus receives the Spirit has apocalyptic elements (the opening of the heavens, the voice from heaven, the Spirit descending), and Jesus taught on the kingdom before his own announcement of the same (Acts 1:1–5) and foretold of its occurring at Jerusalem, the city connected to the coming of the kingdom. Spirit baptism is granted vast eschatological definition in the New Testament. It is to come upon all flesh and will usher in the Day of the Lord (Acts 2:17–33). It occurs within our communion in the Spirit with Christ (1 Cor 12:13), a communion that will lead to all mortal life being “swallowed up” (baptized!) in the immortal life of God (2 Cor 5:4). How Spirit baptism

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relates to what we regard as most important to the life of the church should be developed after Spirit baptism as the ministry of the Messiah to usher in the kingdom of God is acknowledged. Though based in Christian initiation, Spirit baptism as an eschatological reality extends to all dimensions of the life and experience of the church. The ecumenical significance of Spirit baptism arises from the fluidity and eschatological reach of the metaphor in the New Testament. Spirit baptism points to redemption through Christ as substantially pneumatological and eschatological. The ecumenical conversation provoked by Pentecostalism can thus find “breathing room” within this metaphor for a shared appreciation for the presence and work of the Spirit in their understandings of salvation as well as the nature and purpose of the church. The indwelling of the Spirit granted at Christian initiation flows forth and finds release within our emerging and diverse expressions of godly love (John 7:38). It continues to help us transcend the past in the present moment through a participation in the powers of the age to come (Heb 6:5). In relation to God the Creator and the Lordship of Jesus, the Spirit draws creation polyphonically into the eternal life of God. This understanding of the Spirit and Spirit baptism would inspire a church that participates in the koinonia of God in the world and seeks in prophetic empathy with the heart of God and the experiences of others to draw others into this fellowship in a way that cherishes a diversity of contexts and gifts. The acceptance of Christ by faith, water baptism, and charismatic, prophetic empowerment in multi-contextual experiences will all play a vital role in our experiences of this baptism in the Spirit, a metaphor that will continue to shape us as the church in ways unforeseen and unexpected. Bibliography Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics. 4 Vols. Edited by G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1936–68. Bell, E.N. “Believers in Sanctification.” The Christian Evangel (September 1914): 3. Blumhardt, Christoph. Ansprachen, Predigten, Andachten, und Schriften. 4 Vols. Edited by J. Harder. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1978. Chan, Simon. “Evidential Glossolalia and the Doctrine of Subsequence.” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 2, no. 2 (1999): 195–211. Chan, Simon. Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003. Chia, A. “A Biblical Theology of Power Manifestation: A Singaporean Quest.” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 2, no. 1 (1999): 19–33.

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Dabney, D. Lyle. “Baptism in the Holy Spirit: Towards a Pneumatological Soteriology.” Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, OK: Society for Pentecostal Studies, March 8–10, 2001. Dayton, Donald W. Theological Roots of Pentecostalism. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1987. Dunn, James D.G. The Baptism in the Holy Spirit: A Re-examination of the New Testament Teaching on the Gift of the Spirit in Relation to Pentecostalism Today. London: SCM, 1970. Ervin, Howard M. Conversion-Initiation and the Baptism in the Holy Spirit: A Critique of James D.G. Dunn, Baptism in the Holy Spirit. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1984. Ewart, F. “The Revelation of Jesus Christ.” In Seven Jesus Only Tracts. Edited D.W. Dayton. New York: Garland, 1985. Faupel, D. William. The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996. Fee, Gordon. “Baptism in the Holy Spirit: The Issue of Separability and Subsequence.” Pneuma 7, no. 2. (1985): 87–99. Frodsham, S.H. “Back to Pentecost: The Effects of the Pentecostal Baptism.” The Pentecostal Evangel (October 30, 1920): 2. Hocken, Peter. “Baptism in the Holy Spirit as Prophetic Statement.” Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, Springfield, MO: Society for Pentecostal Studies, November 12–14, 1992. Hocken, Peter. The Glory and the Shame. Colorado Springs: Harold Shaw, 1994. Hollenweger, Walter J. The Pentecostals, 2nd ed. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1988. Hollenweger. “Theology of the New World.” The Expository Times 87 (May 1976): 228. Hunter, Harold D. Spirit Baptism: A Pentecostal Alternative. Lanham: University Press of America, 1983. Land, Steven J. Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993. Larbi, E.K. Pentecostalism: The Eddies of Ghanaian Christianity. Dansoman, Accra, Ghana: Centre for Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies, 2001. McDonnel, Kilian and George T. Montague. Christian Initiation and Baptism in the Holy Spirit: Evidence from the First Eight Centuries. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1991. McDonnell, Kilian. “The Holy Spirit and Christian Initiation.” In The Holy Spirit and Power: The Catholic Charismatic Renewal. Edited by Kilian McDonnell. Garden City: Doubleday, 1975, 57–89. Menzies, Robert. Empowered for Witness: The Spirit in Luke-Acts. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1985. Menzies, Robert. “Luke and the Spirit: A Reply to James Dunn.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 4 (1994): 115–38. Menzies, Robert. “The Spirit of Prophecy, Luke-Acts, and Pentecostal Theology: A ­Response to Max Turner.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 15 (1999): 49–74.

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Robeck, Cecil M., Jr. “William J. Seymour and the ‘Bible Evidence.’” In Initial Evidence: Historical and Biblical. Edited by G.B. McGee. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1991, 72–95. Spittler, Russell P. “Suggested Areas for Further Research in Pentecostal Studies.” Pneuma 5, no. 2. (1983): 39–56. Stronstad, Roger. Charismatic Theology of St. Luke. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1984. Stronstad, Roger. The Prophethood of Believers. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999. Seymour, W.J. “The Precious Atonement.” Apostolic Faith (September 1906): 2. Seymour, W.J. “The Same Old Way.” Apostolic Faith. (September 1906): 3. Seymour, W.J. “The Way into the Holiness.” The Apostolic Faith (October 1906): 4. “Tongues as a Sign.” The Apostolic Faith (September 1906): 2. Trotter, W. “A Revival of Love Needed.” The Weekly Evangel (April 1915): 1. Tugwell, Simon. “The Speech-Giving Spirit.” In New Heaven? New Earth? Edited by S. Tugwell et al. Springfield: Templegate, 1976. Wacker, Grant. Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003. Wainwright, Geoffrey. Christian Initiation. Richmond: John Knox Press, 1969. Yun, Koo Dong. Baptism in the Holy Spirit: An Ecumenical Theology of Spirit Baptism. Lanham: University Press of America, 2003. Baptism in the Holy Spirit. Rome: International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Service, 2012. “The Old Time Pentecost.” The Apostolic Faith (September 1906): 1. Perspectives on the Pentecostal Doctrine of Spirit Baptism. Edited by G.B. McGee. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1991.

Chapter 12

Revisiting the Relationship between the Institutional and Charismatic Dimensions of the Church Andy Lord 1 Introduction The relationship between the “institutional” and the “charismatic” in ecclesiology has been open to question throughout the church’s history. It would be much easier to understand if the church were simply one or the other, and yet it is the combination that has helped enable life through the centuries. The church as an institution has sustained a life beyond particularly gifted leaders and set projects, protecting the long-term and Scripture-rooted wisdom of a church that serves across generations and culture. The charismatic prevents the church from settling into routines disconnected from the life of the triune God or the contexts in which it is set. It would be simpler for the church to be just a manageable institution or a high energy campaign group, and yet ecclesial complexity witnesses to its varied life across changing times. Hence the relationship between the institutional and the charismatic is best discussed within the wider concern for the liveliness of the church in particular contexts and across time. It is often the charismatic that starts up such discussions and this has again been the case with pentecostalism.1 This chapter aims to revisit the relationship given the significant experience of pentecostalism over the last century. Given the long time-frame within which discussions have been taking place it is important to start by reviewing something of the relationship between the institutional and the charismatic through history. In particular, we need to recognise the significance of the 16th century Reformation(s) on understanding this relationship to a pentecostal movement shaped largely by a Western Protestant background.2 Looking at this history through the eyes of 1 I use the term “pentecostal” to cover the variety of movements that include classical Pentecostalism, charismatic movements, neo-charismatic, and locally initiated movements. 2 This is not to say that pentecostalism has singular roots in Azusa Street and the Wesleyan Holiness tradition, but rather that these are of particular significance. As we will see, this

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what has happened since then will allow us to get a perspective on the motivations that move individuals and churches towards either the institutional or the charismatic and how these might change over time. To provide a focus in this study we examine two twentieth century writers who have written on this relationship from Roman Catholic and Protestant perspectives: Yves Congar and ­Jaroslav Pelikan. These both wrote widely, taking both historical and theological approaches that illustrate the issues that have arisen in the relationship. This then provides a way into understanding what pentecostalism has brought both practically and theologically to understanding how the institutional and the charismatic relate. I then want to make a constructive proposal as to how discussions might be taken forward in the changing cultures and Christianities, drawing on an understanding of the Holy Spirit as that of empowering movement. 2

Roman Catholic Ecclesiology

In his historical and theological studies of the church Congar considers the foundational relationship between the institutional and the charismatic from different angles. At one point he describes it as a “dialectical tension which is too divine” for us to break and which is seen through the whole history of the church.3 In pre-Reformation times it was seen in monasticism in which charismatic impulses led to the formation of communities that were separate from the wider institutional church and yet always relating to it. At the Reformation the challenge to the institutional and the pressure to separate became sharp.4 Congar considers the church institution of the time having seen itself as almost having power over the Holy Spirit and the interpretation of Scripture to the extent that any tension with the charismatic had to be removed. This was not the best place to receive the challenge to its practices and theology that the Reformation brought and it is not surprising that separation was the result. Along with this came a hardening of the Roman Catholic institution against self-criticism and a limiting of the freedom of people to speak up for reform

study encourages us to see pentecostalism in a much wider way as it naturally works beyond these roots. On understanding the Reformation(s) see Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided, 1490–1700 (London: Penguin, 2004). 3 Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, trans. David Smith, 3 vols. (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1983), 1.68. 4 Ibid., 1.152.

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of this institution.5 The church became understood more as being founded by Christ as “unequal or hierarchical,” speaking always with the authority of the Holy Spirit. It was easier that way to counter the radical critical upsets caused by charismatic leaders of the Reformation. The institution sought to silence the charismatic for the sake of the church’s unity and sustenance. This understandably dominant reaction to sharp critique no doubt brought some benefits but through the twentieth century was increasingly seen as unsustainable.6 The more ecumenical and world-focused trends of this century provided a more gentle critique of an institution increasingly cut off from other voices. As Congar saw it in the 1950s, ecclesiology had focused on the structure of the church rather than its life and what was needed was a true reform that involved a return to the gospel.7 This shift from institution to living organic body gave more space for a consideration of the work of the Holy Spirit. Such reform was nourished by the ressourcement movement with its encouragement to return to the sources of Christian faith. Congar noted how church Councils have always been a tool of reform and it is likely that his writing helped encourage Pope John xxiii to launch the Council of Vatican ii in the 1960s which marked significant changes in outlook on a number of topics. For our purposes it is important to see how Vatican ii brought into focus a move from the institutional to the charismatic, even if in itself it did not address this issue in detail. There had been a move towards the charismatic since the 1930s that was initially focused on the more extraordinary charismatic forms but by Vatican ii charisms had come to be seen as “dynamic principles given to all believers for the building up of the church and the carrying out of the Church’s mission.”8 Holding on to a purely institutional form becomes untenable if the voice of God is to be discerned in the critical voices within and outside the church. Reform or renewal allows such voices to provoke positive change, in dialogue with the sources of faith, for new contexts. Vatican ii made possible a deeper debate on the relationship between the institutional and the charismatic. Discussions over reform cannot be limited to neat categories and it is notable also how one concern was for the link between unity and diversity which came out of ecumenical conversations.9 Philosophically this can be seen to relate to the basic question as to how the “one” and the “many” might relate. 5 Yves Congar, True and False Reform in the Church, trans. Paul Philibert (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2011), 29, 31. 6 Yves Congar, The Word and the Spirit (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1986), 78. 7 Congar, True and False, 5, 9. 8 Congar, Word and the Spirit, 80. He suggests that ideas from Pope Pius xii in 1943 are being echoed at Vatican ii, which represents a wider consensus. 9 Yves Congar, Diversity and Communion (London: scm, 1984).

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Interestingly, the ecumenical movement that has stimulated a diversity of conversations between many kinds of churches has brought into focus the need for visible unity. Charismatic diversity may be celebrated but forces the question as to what unity means in this context and how can it be embodied without an institution. Such questions begin to probe the link between spiritual understanding, theology and practical realities and Congar argues the need to get beyond simple sociological approaches and consider theology.10 Following this, in considering what is unifying for Christians of all backgrounds it is natural to focus on Christ, the Word. Christology should bring people together and provide the basis for understanding the church as an institution. At the same time it is important not to neglect the charismatic but rather see it as rooted in pneumatology, the work of the Holy Spirit. It is the lack of a developed pneumatology that Congar sees as leading to the false dominance of the institutional and its recovery that has helped an appreciation of the charismatic.11 The church exists as shaped by both Word and Spirit and these co-institute the church.12 Pope Francis has spoken of the extraordinary diversity produced by the Holy Spirit and this will no doubt help shape the discussion in the future. The relationship between the institutional and the charismatic is one of rich variety, reflecting the relationship between Word and Spirit. Arguably Congar’s greatest contribution to Catholic thought was to re-­ integrate pneumatology into thinking about the church at a time when the Spirit’s work had been seen primarily in terms of individual human souls.13 This shift towards the Spirit marks many strands of theology over the last century and so to the rise of the charismatic over against the institutional. Yet Congar wants to stress how both the institutional as well as the charismatic are rooted in the Spirit. Here we begin to push against a tension in his writing that seems to want both to stress pneumatology and yet keep it alongside or below Christology. There is a dialectical tension between Word and Spirit, between the institutional and charismatic, which needs to be held and yet when pushed seems to resolve in favour of the Word, the institutional. This comes into focus more when he speaks of the role of the Pope and how the Roman Catholic church may act as the agent to bring churches into communion.14 It is perhaps the 10 Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, 1.35–36. 11 Ibid., 1.167–72. 12 Ibid., 1.80; Congar, Word and the Spirit, 79. 13 So argues Elizabeth Teresa Groppe, Yves Congar’s Theology of the Holy Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 3–8. 14 This is more the case in his earlier work—Yves Congar, Divided Christendom: A Catholic Study of the Problem of Reunion (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1939)—yet lingers on in Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, 1.162–63.

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underlying assumptions, shaped by our lives within particular Christian communities, that determine which side of the tension we tend to move towards. This movement towards the Spirit alongside a counter tendency towards the Word mark more recent developments. Vatican ii marks perhaps a peak in the recovery of the charismatic within a highly institutional church, although without requiring any changes to the institutional form. More recently, in 1998 Pope John Paul ii picked up a number of the themes highlighted by Congar and at Vatican ii as he met with representatives of ecclesial movements and new communities at Pentecost in Rome. He suggests that the Church is the place “where the Spirit flourishes,” intervening and leaving people astonished. It gave rise to the growth of ecclesial movements and new communities. He goes on to say that “The institutional and charismatic aspects are co-essential as it were to the Church’s constitution. They contribute, although differently, to the life, renewal and sanctification of God’s people.”15 The Pope stressed an openness to the charisms of the Spirit that give rise to a friendship in Christ. He goes further to suggest that they should lead to an “ecclesial maturity” and engagement in the sacraments, all “with reference and submission to the Pastors of the Church.”16 There are limits to the charismatic and these are seen to be defined by the institutional. This line of thinking is also affirmed by a recent report by the International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services Doctrinal Commission.17 The institutional and the charismatic are to be held together, the institutional the visible aspect of the church that enables faith to be passed down the generations and the charismatic the more unpredictable work of the Spirit that cannot be codified. The New Testament example of Paul’s ministry being brought to the council of Jerusalem is the model of charismatic submission that protects it from deception and error. A significantly different approach was given by the Catholic charismatic leader Raniero Cantalamessa who went as far as to say, “For us Catholics…the ‘soul of the Church’ is not the Pope but the Holy Spirit!”18 He gives a strong defence of the need to start with the charisms of the Spirit which challenge and reshape the institutional. At the same time he 15

16 17 18

Pope John Paul ii, “Speech of the Holy Father Pope John Paul ii Meeting with Ecclesial Movements and New Communities,” http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/ speeches/1998/may/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19980527_movimenti.html Pentecost (30th May 1998): 4. Ibid., 8. International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services, Baptism in the Holy Spirit (Vatican City: iccrs, 2012), 65–66. Raniero Cantalamessa, “The Unity of the Spirit and the Variety of Charisms: A Response to Jürgen Moltmann,” in All Together in One Place: Theological Papers from the Brighton

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strives for an equal approach in which “charism and institution represent the two arms of the cross.”19 The image of the Cross is very appropriate to what has often been a sharp and unholy dispute between the institutional and the charismatic. Such a dispute is brought into even sharper focus as we consider aspects of the Reformation. 3

Reformation Challenge

The Reformation is now recognised as a plural set of movements that presented varied challenges to the Roman Catholic church of the 16th century and also between the protesting churches. Rather than attempt to review such a wide historical range, the focus here is on the tensions between the institutional and the charismatic as explored by Jaroslav Pelikan. He focuses on the key transition in Luther’s outlook from his ordination as a priest in 1507 to his later conviction, in 1520, that the Pope was the Antichrist to his later life when structural questions came to the fore in a different way.20 Luther’s crisis of faith is seen to come into focus through his personal involvement in the structures of ordained priesthood, monasticism, infant baptism, canon law, and the sacramental system. He increasingly came to see their failings and protested against them, particularly as he brought them into sharp analysis against the teachings of Scripture, the word of God. These were well established structures largely seen as unchangeable elements in the life of the church. Luther’s critique had an important pneumatological element as he recognised the need for the Spirit to be free to challenge structures. He criticised those who effectively equated the Spirit and structures in asserting that the institutional church and its beliefs carried the authority of God because they were guided by the Holy Spirit. It is not sufficient to place the Spirit, the charismatic, under the structures because the structures are not infallible and can err. This pneumatological protest was a contributor to what became a much more widespread crisis in Christian institutions. In the end, the charismatic overturned the institutional without a neat compromise being found: Luther’s polemic was of revolutionary significance.21 The church has not been the same since.

19 20 21

Conference on World Evangelization, ed. Harold D. Hunter and Peter D. Hocken (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 49. Ibid., 50. Jaroslav Pelikan, Spirit Versus Structure: Luther and the Institutions of the Church (London: Collins, 1968), 1. Ibid., 51.

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It is this strong charismatic reaction against the institutional that helps explain the contemporary Roman Catholic reticence to allow too much freedom to the charismatic and defend the Spirit-inspired role for the institutional. Of course, Luther’s argument was more nuanced and often spoke more in terms of the dangerous tendencies inherent when the institutional over controls the charismatic. He notes how although such a desire for control might aim at sustaining the life of the church, in fact it results in taking the life out of the structures.22 Control emphasises the outward aspects of the life of the church and finds it hard to address the inner aspects of spiritual life. This will naturally lead, for example, to the Eucharist being seen more as a liturgical structure rather than a spiritual reality that nurtures and strengthens people as they come in faith. Attendance and outward observance becomes more significant than personal faith. People are left thinking they are spiritual when they are just part of a structure—lacking the “joyous liberty” of faith. It also meant that the Spirit’s calling and gifts given to some, for example, monastic vows, lead to these people being absorbed in a structure or their way of life being held up as the ideal for all. These are dangerous tendencies inherent in stressing the institutional which, if not addressed, can lead away from faith and to revolution. For Luther, it was important to turn first to the Holy Spirit and it was in relation to the Holy Spirit and not the institution that someone became a priest. Early on, Luther assumed that faith in the Spirit’s work in challenging and dispensing with existing structures was accompanied by a hope in the Spirit calling forth “the establishment of new and more authentic structures.”23 Thus in 1520 he gathered together with the University of Wittenberg to burn the Corpus of the Canon Law. Surely the institutional would be naturally reformed as the charismatic Spirit inspired new ways forward. Sadly it was not to be so easy, as the removal of some structures led to gaps that needed filling with new structures.24 The establishment of new structures and laws brought the realisation that life is complex and people have different views on what is best. So in 1530, only ten years later, Luther found himself having to deal with legal issues around marriage for which the previous Canon Law seemed suddenly wiser than he had previously assumed! There was a need for good discipline, structure, and ordinances, but the way of the Spirit was longer and more contested than was imagined. Pelikan suggests that by this time the Reformation had become a movement and Luther an institution!25 For the longer term health of 22 Here, I am interpreting some of Pelikan’s analysis in Pelikan, Spirit Versus Structure, 8–13. 23 Pelikan, Spirit Versus Structure, 75. 24 Ibid., 98–99. 25 Ibid., 99.

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the church the charismatic cannot be separated from the institutional and the way it deeply infuses the institutional needs to be considered. Luther thus matured in his understanding of how the Spirit relates to institutions and began to see how, at its best, “the church itself was a mediating structure of grace.”26 Rather than structures of control, there need to be structures of grace that communicate by the Holy Spirit the unmerited goodness of God. Here the Spirit is still free to challenge any arbitrary structure placed over others yet without becoming reduced to what certain individuals feel is right. In other words, the Spirit works between objectivity and subjectivity and requires both a personal reliance on the Spirit and structures that can mediate grace. This is a balancing view to that reached at the end of the last section, reflecting a movement from the charismatic to the institutional rather than the other way round. Of course, once such a movement is made it does not mean that it never has to happen again. Over the following centuries a wider world was discovered and the Christian character of Western nations challenged and through mission questions were again raised—Were the church structures adequate for the new world situation? Was not the creative energy found outside the structures? Many felt that although in theory the institutions of the church spoke of mission it was the more Spirit-inspired voluntary societies that got on with it practically. Thus one missionary leader argued that voluntary societies should be kept separate from control by central church structures: the charismatic should not submit to the institutional.27 Others argued that this approach left institutions bereft of the charismatic challenge to mission, and this debate has been played out in the history of the World Council of Churches.28 Although there is not space to explore this further here, it should be sufficient to suggest that tensions between the charismatic and the institutional have arisen, and continue to arise, in different contexts even where the church tradition remains similar. In these situations it is the movement between the two that is encouraged and the debate as to how each infuses the other that becomes important. 26 27

28

Ibid., 130. Max Warren, General Secretary of the Church Mission Society, notably in Max Warren, Iona and Rome: Being a Critical Review of Christian History in the Making by McLeod Campbell (London: cms, 1946). See also analysis in Graham Kings, Christianity Connected: Hindus, Muslims, and the World in the Letters of Max Warren and Roger Hooker (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2002), 102–05. Warren was opposed by Lesslie Newbigin, and Newbigin’s understanding is explored in Lesslie Newbigin, Unfinished Agenda: An Updated Autobiography (Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press, 1993).

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Contemporary Pentecostalism

The overview so far suggests that the Roman Catholic tradition has seen a distinct move away from an institutional bias towards an appreciation of the charismatic, although without letting go of the ultimate institutional oversight. On the other hand, Protestant faith is rooted in a movement that started with the charismatic and travelled towards the institutional, although without letting go of a primary need for charismatic challenge. I want to suggest that pentecostalism picks up on the theme of movement that is common to both these traditions and that this can provide a fresh way into revisiting the tension. First it is important to highlight some historical and contemporary aspects of pentecostalism pertinent to the issues here. In many ways the history of pentecostalism is a very Protestant story in which the charismatic work of the Holy Spirit interrupts existing church life with a dramatic challenge. The story of Azusa Street that influences the varied pentecostal traditions is one of prayers longing for God to bring life that resulted in people being freshly baptised in the Holy Spirit. There were many dramatic manifestations of the Holy Spirit at work that upset existing church people—from the noisy worship to the fact that black and white were being drawn together. Yet this was not without a sense of order, drawing on the wider Wesleyan holiness and African American church traditions.29 The impact of this move of the Spirit was for the experience and teachings to spread widely throughout American and far beyond, often along established missionary routes.30 The existing church structures were important for the spread of pentecostalism even though it had a charismatic heart. This spread led inevitably to very Protestant-like conflicts and schisms within existing churches. A recent helpful study of Joseph Smale, a Baptist pastor significant in the events leading up to Azusa Street, has highlighted how conflicts were often framed in terms of “organisation” versus “freedom.”31 Smale himself ran into conflict with his church in Los Angeles because of its desire for order over “innovations of God’s Presence.”32 The result was that he founded another church more, as he saw it, along New Testament lines. Key to the 29 30 31 32

The standard historical text on the whole story is Cecil M. Robeck, The Azusa Street Mission and Revival: The Birth of the Global Pentecostal Movement (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2006), 124–28. Allan Anderson, Spreading Fires: The Missionary Nature of Early Pentecostalism (London: scm, 2007). Tim Welch, Joseph Smale: God’s “Moses” for Pentecostalism, Studies in Evangelical History and Thought (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2013), 8–9. Ibid., 122.

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life of this church was the recognition that the “Administrator of the life and service of the church is the Holy Ghost,” a theme in common with other pentecostal congregations.33 Smale later withdrew from pentecostalism, partly over a conflict over prophecy and partly as he argued for a more moderate line on speaking in tongues that he felt was not essential. Some would argue that such Protestant style schisms have multiplied manifold as a result of the pentecostal focus on the charismatic over the institutional. Yet we need to recognise that a significant number of pentecostals developed solid pyramid style institutional structures. Dale Coulter traces the development of such in the Church of God (Cleveland, TN).34 Here, in a way more reminiscent of Roman Catholic approaches, the gifts of the Spirit are seen within the whole church, and the church offices are of the esse of the church. Thus the essential pentecostal “fellowship of the Spirit,” the koinonia that is formed from the bottom-up, grows to require a visible communion within which believers submit to Christ’s rule as interpreted through the decrees of the church’s officers.35 This is also illustrated in the Assemblies of God in which Margaret Poloma has noted the paradox of the charisma vital to this churches origins quickly departed as pragmatic institutions were developed.36 She challenges this move to suggest the need to “assure the flow of charisma.”37 Here we have a charismatic movement that grows and seems to be transferred into an institutional movement. Schism is a risk whenever the charismatic and institutional are over-separated and little movement between them is possible. In different ways pentecostalism has fed into and struggled with the great cultural changes that have swept the Western world in recent decades—often termed postmodern or late-modern developments. These represent a valuing of a pluralism of narratives, experiences, and structures that in ecclesial terms is linked with the “collapse of Christendom.” Wolfgang Vondey explores this change in terms of the challenge it brings for pentecostalism to “go beyond” its previous understanding and approaches. In terms of ecclesiology he highlights the way in which pentecostalism operates as a “movement” of ecclesial grassroots communities that were “becoming” church.38 When schisms threatened 33 34 35 36 37 38

Ibid., 182. Dale M. Coulter, “The Development of Ecclesiology in the Church of God (Cleveland, TN): A Forgotten Contribution?” PNEUMA 29, no. 1 (2007): 59–85. Ibid., 70. Margaret M. Poloma, The Assemblies of God at the Crossroads: Charismata and Institutional Dilemmas (Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 1989), 232. Ibid., 241. Wolfgang Vondey, Beyond Pentecostalism: The Crisis of Global Christianity and the Renewal of the Theological Agenda, Pentecostal Manifestos (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2011), 150–54.

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pentecostals tended to turn to existing models of church as institution for guidance, but the problem was that these simply pointed back to a Christendom model that was not suitable for the current cultural situation. Vondey suggests the need for ecclesiology in which there is movement between church and culture rather than a simple division between the two. He briefly suggests that this emphasis on movement might also avoid the separation between charism and institution, but without developing this thought.39 At this point it is helpful to bring into the discussion one creative movement between church and culture that fits with Vondey’s overall argument— that seen in the formation of networks of churches. An important study of some more recent pentecostal-type churches in the UK has suggested links between the developing postmodern culture and the establishing of apostolic network churches.40 These are churches that have been started outside of existing denominations looking to particular New Testament texts for their structures although the surrounding culture and prior missionary experience play important roles. The charismatic and missionary roles of “apostles” are key in ­sustaining and expanding these networks. The priority on the charismatic develops into institutional developments to ensure the spread and development of the churches. The structures developed do not easily fit with existing ecclesial or sociological models and so point to a fresh way forward that needs developing within ecclesiology.41 Interestingly, the study shows that for such network structures to be successful in their mission of church planting they need to remain “open and outgoing.”42 Thus in terms of the tension between the charismatic and the institutional we have a developing model in which both the movements between church and culture, and that between the charismatic and the structural are important. 5

Revisiting the Relationship

The survey so far has been largely historical and yet also brought to light key elements in the relationship between the charismatic and the institutional, suggestive of fresh ways forward. This study has suggested that when there is healthy movement from the charismatic towards the institutional and from 39 40

Ibid., 170. William K. Kay, Apostolic Networks in Britain: New Ways of Being Church (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2007). 41 For initial work in this direction see Andy Lord, Network Church: A Pentecostal Ecclesiology Shaped by Mission (Leiden: Brill, 2012). 42 Kay, Apostolic Networks, 253.

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the institutional towards the charismatic then the relationship between them can be productive in enabling the life of the church. When one is emphasised as dominant over the other then the movement is not healthy but forced, leading to conflict and possible schism. Further, healthy movements rely also on positive movements between the charismatic and culture, and the institutional and culture, that allow for creative new ways of framing tensions that are building before they break the unity of the church. All these movements draw naturally on the missionary tradition of the church. Theologically it is important that the charismatic and the institutional are seen in terms of the working of both Word and Spirit, with the theme of movement particularly developed biblically in terms of the Spirit. I now want to develop these insights by way of a constructive pentecostal proposal for the relationship between the charismatic and institutional. Pentecostal approaches are characterised by an emphasis on pneumatology and I am arguing that a healthy relationship between the charismatic and the institutional relies on a pneumatology of movement. Hence I want to develop such an approach to pneumatology before examining the two movements between the charismatic and the institutional against the background of cultural engagement. Central to this approach is the fundamental recognition of the “wind” image to understanding the nature of the Holy Spirit as one of movement. Both the Hebrew and Greek words translated “Spirit/spirit” (ruach, pneuma) can also mean “wind” or “breath.” Thus in Genesis 1:2 we have translations saying that the “Spirit of God” or the “wind of God” hovered over the waters of the yet formless earth. Sometimes pentecostals are hesitant to use this image of the Spirit because its perceived use in some theologies to downplay the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament by rarely translating the term as “Spirit.” Also it might seem to link with natural theology that seemingly undervalues the biblical revelation of the Spirit.43 Yet to neglect this image is to lose something of the dynamic aspect of the Spirit’s work in causing movement. Different aspects of wind are brought to the fore in different biblical passages: the movement of air; its link to life; its invisible nature yet visible results; its power; and its variety. These are simply illustrative and it would not be possible to build a pneumatology on this alone. However, the sense of the Spirit of movement, life, power and variety that is both hidden and seen resonates with more detailed considerations. Turning to John 3:8, a key passage, we see a deliberate wordplay between “Spirit” and “wind” in the context of Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus. Here 43

These seem the hesitations in Mark D. McLean, “The Holy Spirit,” in Systematic Theology, Revised Ed., ed. Stanley M. Horton (Springfield, MO: Logion Press, 2007), 375–95.

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we have Jesus saying that the pneuma blows where it wills, so you do not know its origin or destination, and so it is with those born of the pneuma.44 Given the context and the verb “to blow,” it seems appropriate to translate the first pneuma as “wind” and the second as “Spirit.”45 This word play draws attention to the analogy between wind and Spirit, both being beyond the control and easy understanding of humans yet the effects are unmistakable. The effect here is a personal one: individuals are born from above by the Spirit in a “new birth.” The background to this passage is likely that of Ezekiel 37 where God’s Spirit comes upon the valley of dry bones and they are revived—the people of God come back to life. Important in this is hearing the Spirit: the sound of the wind evokes analogy with the Spirit’s voice, linked with the voice of Jesus later in the Gospel.46 In this passage we see the powerful, personal work of the Spirit that moves people from a place of limited human life and knowledge (in Nicodemus) to a new birth of life with God. It is a move into the kingdom of God, a move of salvation, which is clear in its results yet complex and often hidden in its pathways. The other key passage that resonates with this is from Pentecost, Acts 2:2, where the sound of a violent blowing wind is heard and the Holy Spirit fills the disciples of Jesus. Then they find themselves suddenly outside praising God before the nations in many tongues. Here the wind/Spirit moves the disciples out of their closed room and out into mission among the nations. It is the fulfillment of Jesus’ words in Acts 1:8 and marks the start of the narrative of mission that spreads ever outward through Acts. These Spirit-inspired moves of salvation, mission, and kingdom reflect also the Gospel narratives of Jesus, the one on whom the Spirit rested at his baptism, on the move with the good news of the kingdom. They are also communal movements as the communities of Jesus find themselves scattered and forming new communities across the nations. That this movement can be resisted but not ultimately thwarted is the climatic conclusion to Acts (28:25–31). We could consider other New Testament passages in detail, but our brief consideration is sufficient to provoke recognition of the vital importance of movement to a biblical understanding of pneumatology. The argument I have been developing here is that it is insufficient to consider the charismatic or the institutional in isolation. The temptation has been 44 45 46

In the nrsv it is translated “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” On this see D.A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Leicester: ivp, 1991), 197–98. On this see Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012), 1.555.

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to focus on the institutional, but seen in terms of Christ, or to focus on the charismatic as the work of the Holy Spirit, while possibly acknowledging some work of the Spirit in the institution. However, as soon as we consider either of these in terms of pneumatology there inevitably comes a movement towards the other, even if it is not easily tracked. To focus on the institutional eventually forces a move towards the charismatic and to focus on the charismatic moves us towards the institutional, as we saw in the historical developments outlined earlier. This is a biblical, missionary, and theological movement that forces us to see the relationship between the institutional and the charismatic as always “on the go.” In this way the relationship is kept healthy and the life of the church enabled. The further question then arises as to how pentecostalism might contribute to understanding these two particular movements in terms of pneumatology and to this we now turn. Firstly, we might ask how the Holy Spirit moves (and does not let still) the charismatic towards the institutional. In this I want to focus on the Pentecost narrative in Acts 2 interpreted through a number of pentecostal lenses that help clarify the work of the Spirit in moving individuals in the direction of institutional structures. This narrative is key for classical Pentecostal identity, often interpreted through the lens of individual transformative experiences of the Holy Spirit that result in speaking in tongues and empower mission. Whilst this interpretation is still influential it has been recognised that a broader approach needs to be taken, one that values wider biblical exegesis, theological engagement, and awareness of historical realities within pentecostalism.47 This developing way into the Pentecost narrative represents, I would suggest, a move from the charismatic towards the institutional over time. At its most basic this development comes through the recognition that particular experiences come in communal contexts and result in new Christian communities. The community of disciples were gathered together awaiting the Spirit and the result was 3,000 more disciples that gathered together in Jerusalem. The Spirit is the great connector who does not leave people alone but links them with others around the person of Jesus. This is a move of the Spirit embodying the love of God poured out (Rom 5:5) that draws different people together before God. Such was the multicultural community experience at Azusa Street that enacted the experience of love as well as tongues, a historical narrative being retrieved by contemporary pentecostal scholars.48 47 48

An important Pentecostal contribution in this regard is Frank D. Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006). For example, Amos Yong, Spirit of Love: A Trinitarian Theology of Grace (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2012), 59–91.

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Communities of love are central to the work of the Holy Spirit and yet they are not settled communities—individuals are not moved into a community so they can simply rest there. Communities need to be viewed within the eschatological missionary framework that pentecostalism has helped bring back to the fore. This stresses that Christian community is always “on the way” to the future and the Spirit works in the present to this end. Central to this work is the empowerment for mission and in this Pentecost builds on the promise of Jesus in Acts 1:8 that the gospel will spread to all nations. The world comes into focus and Christian communities are not settled or separate but changing and engaging. To be a community of the Spirit, to be koinonia with all its developed understanding (2 Cor 13:14), is to be sent and guided to transform the world. This has many dimensions and pentecostalism has developed its understanding over the last century whilst still valuing the evangelistic heart of mission.49 The Spirit of love flows ever outward carrying along communities of Jesus. This charismatic flow outward draws together people of many languages and nations. Speaking in tongues remains a prophetic sign of the kind of communities that come into being as the Holy Spirit works in people’s lives. In mission, new communities come into being that are different than those that have existed previously. They often include people of different backgrounds, tribes, and cultures as well as being influenced by different Christian traditions. Church planting is a vital aspect of this outward movement, but again is not about settled communities but those also caught up in the mission of the Spirit and characterised by variety. This variety and mix expressed within particular communities and traditions has come to the fore in the last century through the ecumenical movement. Although pentecostals have been slow to engage with this, it has been recognised that there is an inherent ecumenical heart to pentecostalism that is seen best in its grassroots engagement.50 This organic growth of Christian communities by the Spirit might be seen as the charismatic way into understanding the nature of the church that combines experience, biblical narrative, and pneumatology. Having worked our way towards this ecclesiology founded on movement we can finally ask about the institutional nature of church. This pentecostal movement reflects both the spiritual (move of the Spirit) and the visible (local fellowships) aspects of the church. The visible aspects are not static or isolated but intimately connected with the wider Christian and world communities. 49 50

Pentecostal Mission and Global Christianity, ed. Wonsuk Ma, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, and J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu (Oxford: Regnum Books, 2014). See the helpful overviews in Pentecostalism and Christian Unity: Ecumenical Documents and Critical Assessments, ed. Wolfgang Vondey (Eugene, Or.: Pickwick Publications, 2010).

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So this is not a congregational approach to institutions or a hierarchical one. Rather, I would suggest that it is the more organic, network approach to the church as institution that was noted at the end of Section 2.51 This is a fresh concept in ecclesiology but one that builds on this understanding of the Spirit of movement. Thus, we have seen how the Spirit may be understood and experienced as developing healthy movements rooted in the charismatic but moving towards forms of institution. Secondly, we ask how the Holy Spirit moves the institutional towards the charismatic. In this I want to focus on the gifts of the Spirit that are central to pentecostal praxis and can be seen within an institutional setting. We start here with the recognition of the high value given to leadership within pentecostalism. It is due to “enterprising, entrepreneurial local preachers and leaders” that pentecostalism has grown and these are characterised as people of the Spirit, often prophetically gifted or anointed.52 This gives rise to the tendency for such leaders to be granted significant authority, developing structures that become “episcopized.” It may be surprising to some but charismatic gifting often equates to hierarchical structures that sustain and enable the influence of the particular gifted leader. It is typical for leadership to be given to those whom the Spirit is clearly seen to have chosen and for this to be demonstrated in the planting of churches that are then shaped around these leaders. For many pentecostals there is a journey to be made from the starting position of a (personshaped) institution, even if this term is not used. Such leadership, whose origins are in the discerned gifting of the Spirit, can move in positive or negative directions. Negatively, leaders can seek to protect their role and authority at the expense of others and so move the church in the direction of centralised control. More positively, leaders can use their position to enable the gifting of others. This may focus round enabling the five-fold ministries of Ephesians 4:11 in church life, but is more usually about those gifts given by Jesus through the Spirit that “to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.” The “one Spirit” works to gift the “one body” (4:4) in ways that move people towards Jesus and his ministry through the church community to the world. The church is the setting within which the Spirit’s gifts are manifested for the common good (1 Cor 12:8). This is a communal Spirit movement of holiness that transforms into the image of Christ. Although pentecostalism can exalt its leaders in ways that grant them unhealthy power over others, it also captures the movements of the Spirit that awaken 51 52

For my wider argument on this see Lord, Network Church. Allan Anderson, To the Ends of the Earth: Pentecostalism and the Transformation of World Christianity (Oxford: oup, 2013), 224.

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gifts in individuals as part of communities and set them free to exercise such gifts. It reshapes understanding of the church around the varied giftedness of the Spirit to all, not just those officially recognised as leaders. Pentecostalism is recognised for the way ordinary people have been enabled to exercise a variety of gifts. One danger in such an approach is that anything might been seen as a gift of the Spirit, even when the result damages others. This is, perhaps, part of the right hesitation in the Roman Catholic tradition to such a move. Yet I want to suggest that rather than drawing back to the institution (or words of the controlling leader) this highlights the development of discernment recognised as key to the gifts of the Spirit (1 Cor 12:8–10). The gifts of knowledge, wisdom, prophecy, discernment, and interpretation are vital to guiding healthy movements out of the institution. They are not so much gifts that point people back into church but rather outwardly to discover the charismatic in fresh places. This is especially the case for prophecy that speaks, building on the Old Testament witness, about the mistreatment of individuals and communities throughout the world. The gifting of the Spirit is a risky business that both moves the church outward and yet also draws it together to discern true and healthy directions outward. Developing a pneumatology of discernment is key to this life-giving movement.53 In this institutionally guided approach to leadership, communal gifting and discernment that we can naturally place individual empowerment by the Spirit. The gifts of faith, healings, and the working of miracles (1 Cor 12:9–10) are those that fill the narrative of Acts as individuals are moved by the Spirit ever outward from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. Although there are temptations to hold onto the Spirit and the gifts and authority granted through him, a healthy engagement with the Holy Spirit moves the institution ever outward in risky charismatic adventures in all the world. This is always a personal Spirit movement in which people meet other people, share with them and encourage them in the direction of Jesus. The personal Spirit gifts a personal mission to each in charismatic encounters that reflect something of the narrative of Pentecost. Thus we find ourselves back near the start of the first movement again, from the charismatic to the institutional. The Spirit of movement prevents the charismatic or institutional being considered separately but rather creates an inevitable shift from one to the other and back again. No doubt the moves are more complex and varied than I have described here. Yet this approach, rooted

53

One important move in this direction can be found in Amos Yong, Beyond the Impasse: Toward a Pneumatological Theology of Religion (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2003), 129–62.

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in the pentecostal tradition, points towards a fresh way of understanding the relationship between the institutional and the charismatic. 6 Conclusion The history of the church illustrates the importance of the relationship between the institutional and the charismatic. At its worst, the desire for a simply institutional or charismatic church has led to disagreement, schism, and persecution. Yet at its best, a healthy relationship between the institutional and the charismatic enables churches to be healthy, growing, and transforming the world. Through historical study I have suggested that over time there is a move from either the institutional to the charismatic (Roman Catholic) or from the charismatic to the institutional (Protestant) and that this can be seen in positive terms. I have argued that the key here is movement and suggested a pneumatological approach that might sustain such positive developments. Biblical images of the Holy Spirit are suggestive of the God who does not allow things to stay still but longs to transform life in the direction of Jesus and His kingdom. Such movements can be resisted but Christian faith remains an entry into a life-changing relationship with this God. Further, each generation needs to revisit the relationship within new contexts if it is to remain healthy. To this end I have utilised some of the historical and theological journey of pentecostalism to illustrate how the pneumatology of movement might work out in practice. Pentecostals have found themselves moved individually by the charismatic Spirit of Pentecost in ways that draw them together into new forms of church institution. They have also seen dominant leaders at the centre of tightly defined institutions drawn to enable the gifts of the Spirit given to all, leading to a careful discerning and communal empowerment of individuals in charismatic and personal mission. Such movements have been traced to illustrate the importance of my suggestion to the development of a healthy relationship between the institutional and the charismatic. A healthy form of church institution always has a provisionality about it and a healthy form of charismatic initiative hesitates to absolutize itself. There remains much further historical, biblical, and theological study to be done but the present chapter points one constructive pentecostal way forward. Bibliography Anderson, Allan. To the Ends of the Earth: Pentecostalism and the Transformation of World Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

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Anderson, Allan. Spreading Fires: The Missionary Nature of Early Pentecostalism. London: SCM, 2007. Cantalamessa, Raniero. “The Unity of the Spirit and the Variety of Charisms: A Response to Jürgen Moltmann.” In All Together in One Place: Theological Papers from the Brighton Conference on World Evangelization. Edited by Harold D. Hunter and Peter D Hocken. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993, 48–52. Carson, D.A. The Gospel According to John. Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 1991. Congar, Yves. Diversity and Communion. London: SCM, 1984. Congar, Yves. Divided Christendom: A Catholic Study of the Problem of Reunion. London: Geoffrey Bles, 1939. Congar, Yves. I Believe in the Holy Spirit. Translated by David Smith. 3 Voumes. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1983. Congar, Yves. True and False Reform in the Church. Translated by Paul Philibert. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2011. Congar, Yves. The Word and the Spirit. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1986. Coulter, Dale M. “The Development of Ecclesiology in the Church of God (Cleveland, TN): A Forgotten Contribution?” Pneuma 29, no. 1 (2007): 59–85. Groppe, Elizabeth Teresa. Yves Congar’s Theology of the Holy Spirit. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Kay, William K. Apostolic Networks in Britain: New Ways of Being Church. Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2007. Keener, Craig S. The Gospel of John: A Commentary. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012. Kings, Graham. Christianity Connected: Hindus, Muslims, and the World in the Letters of Max Warren and Roger Hooker. Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2002. Lord, Andy. Network Church: A Pentecostal Ecclesiology Shaped by Mission. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Macchia, Frank D. Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006. MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Reformation: Europe’s House Divided, 1490–1700. London: Penguin, 2004. McLean, Mark D. “The Holy Spirit.” In Systematic Theology, rev. ed. Edited by Stanley M. Horton. Springfield: Logion Press, 1995, 375–95. Newbigin, Lesslie. Unfinished Agenda: An Updated Autobiography. Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press, 1993. Pelikan, Jaroslav. Spirit Versus Structure: Luther and the Institutions of the Church. London: Collins, 1968. Poloma, Margeret M. The Assemblies of God at the Crossroads: Charismata and Institutional Dilemmas. Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 1989. Pope John Paul ii. “Speech of the Holy Father Pope John Paul ii Meeting with Ecclesial Movements and New Communities.” http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/ speeches/1998/may/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19980527_movimenti.html

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Robeck, Cecil M, Jr.. The Azusa Street Mission and Revival: The Birth of the Global Pentecostal Movement. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2006. Vondey, Wolfgang. Beyond Pentecostalism: The Crisis of Global Christianity and the Renewal of the Theological Agenda. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011. Warren, Max. Iona and Rome: Being a Critical Review of Christian History in the Making by McLeod Campbell. London: CMS, 1946. Welch, Tim. Joseph Smale: God’s “Moses” for Pentecostalism. Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2013. Yong, Amos. Beyond the Impasse: Toward a Pneumatological Theology of Religions. Carlisle: Paternoster, 2003. Yong, Amos. Spirit of Love: A Trinitarian Theology of Grace. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2012. Baptism in the Holy Spirit. Vatican City: International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services, 2012. Pentecostalism and Christian Unity: Ecumenical Documents and Critical Assessments. Edited by Wolfgang Vondey. Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2010. Pentecostal Mission and Global Christianity. Edited by Wonsuk Ma, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, and J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu. Oxford: Regnum Books, 2014. The Spirit in Worship—Worship in the Spirit. Edited by Teresa Berger and Bryan Spinks. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009.

Chapter 13

The Mutual Challenges of Pentecostal-Charismatic and Liturgical Worship Simon Chan Any attempt to relate charismatic and liturgical worship must take account of two basic problems: First, determining what constitutes normative charismatic worship is problematic because of its rapid mutation. Second, their fundamentally different underlying theologies make the challenges they pose to each other asymmetrical. The way in which charismatic worship can contribute to the liturgy is by its implicit understanding of the role of the Spirit as the Spirit of joy and the source of personal agency. But the liturgical tradition directly challenges the defective theology of charismatic worship and indirectly forces classical Pentecostals to reexamine their roots. This essay concludes that if charismatic worship in its current form is to be redeemed, it must either incorporate essential components from the liturgy, or die to itself and be reborn as the dynamic element within the liturgical structure so that the liturgy becomes charismatic, i.e., suffused with the life of the Spirit, making the liturgy full of the joy of the Spirit and transforming each member of the worshipping community into fully active participants. 1

Identifying the Problems

In juxtaposing charismatic worship and liturgical worship, there are two problems that require clarification. First, considerable confusion occurs because of a failure to distinguish between a theological and a ritual studies definition of the term liturgy. From the perspective of ritual studies, any worship involving certain regular patterns of actions and words can be called a liturgy.1 Even the traditionally anti-liturgical worship of the Quakers is itself a liturgy.2 In fact, the term could be extended to include secular liturgies, such as the “liturgy”

1 E.g., Daniel E. Albrecht, Rites in the Spirit: A Ritual Approach to Pentecostal/Charismatic Spirituality (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999). 2 E.g. Pink Dandelion, The Liturgies of Quakerism (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005).

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of the smartphone.3 From this perspective, comparison between charismatic and traditional liturgies is quite straight-forward. But theologically, liturgical and charismatic worship represent two very different paradigms of worship. The liturgy is the enactment of the Paschal Mystery.4 It is a kind of dramatic action. The script of the liturgical drama is a given: the gospel of Jesus Christ. The clergy-laity distinction is not that of performer and audience respectively, but of “actors” in the liturgical drama whose central motif is the gospel. Charismatic worship, by contrast, is based on the performance or concert model. Leaders on the platform are essentially performers and motivators; the congregation is the audience. Sometimes the “time of worship” is comparable to the discotheque culture.5 Without taking this basic theological difference into consideration, attempts at “blended worship” are not likely to succeed. Even if ritual blending is achieved, there is an inherent theological dissonance between them. This is why blended worship is easier said than done. In this essay, the term liturgy is used in its strictly theological sense. To understand the liturgy theologically is to go beyond its form to discover its essential content. To elaborate further, in the re-enactment of and participation in the Paschal Mystery, worshippers encounter and respond to the revelation of the triune God: the Father who sends his Son and, through the Son, the Holy Spirit for the world’s redemption. This is why Trinitarian language pervades the liturgy, as the gospel is told and retold in many different ways in the liturgical celebration of word and sacrament and in the liturgical calendar. It is this basic theological content by which the adequacy or inadequacy of any form of worship must ultimately be judged. Second, understanding the charismatic movement is difficult because it is a rapidly mutating phenomenon. While there has always been an admixture of “glory” and “shame” in the Pentecostal renewal since its early days,6 it is also indisputable that a discernible theological shift is occurring with respect to its worship. This is most apparent in charismatic worship and songs of recent vintage. Pete Ward notes how the “culture of selling” has come to influence charismatic

3 James K.A. Smith, Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 142. 4 J.D. Crichton, “A Theology of Worship,” in The Study of Liturgy, revised edition, ed. Cheslyn Jones, Geoffrey Wainwright, Edward Yarnold, and Paul Bradshaw (London: spck, 1997), 9–13. 5 James H.S. Steven, Worship in the Spirit: Charismatic Worship in the Church of England (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2002), 133. 6 See Peter Hocken, The Glory and the Shame: Reflections on the 20th Century Outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Guildford, Surrey: Eagle, 1994).

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songs.7 They come and go as quickly as other popular fads. Charismatic worship has so mutated since the early days of the Pentecostal revivals that it is nearly impossible to identify a typical charismatic worship diachronically. For most people today, what comes to mind as charismatic worship is represented by a two-part structure of “praise and worship” followed by motivational preaching. In light of this mutation, I have used charismatic worship to refer to the newer worship phenomenon, especially since the 1980s, and Pentecostal worship to refer to worship before the rise of the charismatic movement in the late 1960s. To refer to features that are generic to the movement as a whole, I use the phrase “Pentecostal-charismatic.” If we compare charismatic worship songs today with those found in Pentecostal worship of fifty or sixty years ago, the difference is stark. Early Pentecostals emerging from the Wesleyan-Holiness and Keswick movements sang mostly “gospel” songs. Various gospel themes were much more apparent then, as evidenced in Melodies of Praise, a hymnal of the Assemblies of God, usa or Redemption Hymnal used by British Pentecostals including the AG, Elim, and Apostolic churches. Early Pentecostals experienced conversion as a powerful, momentous transformation,8 but it was conversion that came at great expense: the suffering of Christ on the Cross. Thus their songs repeatedly referred to the suffering of Christ, the Cross, and the benefits accruing personally to sinners. A cursory look at Melodies of Praise shows a preponderance of gospel songs from the 19th century: Fanny Crosby (Blessed Assurance, #155; He Hideth My Soul, #6), P.P.  Bliss (My Redeemer, #240; Whosoever Will, #241), Ira Sankey (Hiding In Thee, #231), C. Austin Miles (A New Name in Glory, #90), Daniel B. Towner (At Calvary, #111). Older compositions like Isaac Watts (At the Cross, #273) and John Newton (Amazing Grace #272) are included probably for their strong gospel motif. Early Pentecostal songwriters continued the gospel tradition: G.T. Haywood (Jesus, the Son of God, #50), Ira Stanphill (A Crown of Thorns, #13; Mansion over the Hilltop, #45). Although the early Pentecostals could identify with the Holiness songwriter E.M. Bartlett about “Victory in Jesus” (#294) and with the Nazarene, Haldor Lillenas, on “Pentecostal Blessing” (#242), they also experienced the reality of suffering and the need to carry the cross (Ira Stanphill, “Follow Me,” #301; 7 Pete Ward, Selling Worship: How What We Sing Has Changed the Church (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2005), 4. 8 Walter J. Hollenweger, Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997), 246–48.

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“We’ll Talk It Over,” #118). The world might be hostile, but they also looked forward to the coming of Jesus Christ as the answer to the mystery of suffering. A strong, futurist eschatology was an important motif in Pentecostal singing. As Esther Kerr Rusthoi (1909–1962) a Pentecostal pastor put it, “It will be worth it all, when we see Christ” (#59). If there is one weakness in early Pentecostal worship songs it is in perpetuating the 19th century gospel tradition of individualistic salvation and an intensely personal relationship with God which, in the context of public worship, creates a “community of feelings” not quite approaching worship as a corporate event.9 There are also sharp differences in basic content between traditional Pentecostal and present-day charismatic worship. The former was much more focused on long, “tarrying” prayer-meetings and confession of sin (usually in a separate prayer room); testimonies of God’s grace usually given spontaneously; intercessory prayers include a great many other concerns besides healing and miracles; the sermon was likely to feature the cross and the gospel for the soul’s conversion and transformation. Today, however, even in some of the very same churches, there is no confession of sin and rarely do we find corporate intercessory prayer. These two regular features of older Pentecostal churches are important because they lead worshippers to encounter the Christ of the cross. As Smail reminds us, “genuine intercession always has about it some of the agony of Gethsemane.”10 The spontaneous testimonies that used to form a veritable part of classical Pentecostal worship are all but gone; today, “worship” is narrowly equated with singing of “praise songs.” The “time of worship” or “block worship” has become the most important part of the entire service. Block worship has become “a relatively self-contained liturgical act” taking a life of its own without reference to what comes before and after it.11 The praises of the congregation are anything but spontaneous. They usually come at the end of a rousing song and are sustained by the continuation of rousing music. When the music stops, the praises stop. Overall, electronic music is the main, if not the sole, means of creating the worship “mood.” Even between the charismatic worship of the Second Wave and the Third Wave a clear shift can be discerned. Pete Ward notes that the songs of the ­Second Wave, seen, for example, in Sounds of Living Waters are strong on the gospel 9

The comparison cited by Blumhofer between the songs of Fanny J. Crosby and Charles Wesley is quite revealing. While both share a sense of personal intimacy, Crosby’s songs are invariably set in the first person singular, while Wesley’s songs contain a good mix of individual and corporate expressions. See Edith L. Blumhofer, Her Heart Can See: The Life and Hymns of Fanny J. Crosby (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 258–59, 266, 268–69. 10 Tom Smail, “In Spirit and in Truth: Reflections on Charismatic Worship,” in Charismatic Renewal: The Search for a Theology, ed. Tom Smail (London: spck, 1993), 112. 11 Steven, Worship in the Spirit, 104.

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narrative and on corporate life.12 Further, “the dominant metaphors within Sounds are the body of Christ and the living water of the Spirit.”13 The Second Wavers have been more successful in assimilating charismatic worship into the existing structure of church life since many of their prominent leaders like David Watson, Michael Harper, Tom Smail, Colin Buchanan, and Michael Green became charismatics without abandoning their Anglican heritage.14 But with the rise of the Third Wave, which is dominated by evangelicals-turncharismatics­who have little sense of the historic church or its worship traditions, a radical sea change is apparent. Various studies of charismatic worship since the 1980s (such as Vineyard and Hillsong) have highlighted at least three major theological deficiencies especially in their singing. First, there is little understanding of God as Trinity. The focus is mostly on Jesus.15 But even if their songs convey an “instinctive trinitarianism,” the Trinity is worshipped as three discrete persons, e.g. a single stanza addressed to the Father may be sung three times with “Jesus” and the “Spirit” replacing the “Father” in the next two stanzas. They do not deal specifically with the Trinitarian relationship.16 If the history of the Trinitarian controversy has anything to teach us, the crucial matter is not the naming of Father, Son and Spirit but their nature and relationship.17 Second, while the person of Jesus features prominently, the main focus is on Jesus in his glory rather than in his humanity, unlike earlier Pentecostal worship songs which focused on Jesus and the cross. Charismatic songs and preaching promote largely a theology of glory (theologia gloriae) without a theology of the cross (theologia crucis).18 The “gospel” is largely divorced from the historical events of the life of Jesus and understood as a direct spiritual encounter engendering positive feelings. As Martyn Percy has observed, the language of healing, love, power, and touch of God predominates in the Vineyard songs; it creates a “community of feeling” and direct intimacy.19 They belong mostly to the subjective category, i.e., they

12 13 14 15

Ward, Selling Worship, 130–31. Ibid., 133. Ibid., 202. Lester Ruth, “Lex Amandi, Lex Orandi: The Trinity in the Most-Used Contemporary Christian Worship Songs,” in The Place of Christ in Liturgical Prayer: Trinity, Christology, and Liturgical Theology, ed. Bryan D. Spinks (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2008), 342–59. 16 Steven, Worship in the Spirit, 208. 17 Bryan D. Spinks, “The Place of Christ in Liturgical Prayer: What Jungmann Omitted to Say,” in The Place of Christ in Liturgical Prayer, 16–19. Steven, Worship in the Spirit, 208. 18 Smail, “In Spirit and in Truth,” 111. 19 Martyn Percy, Words, Wonders, and Power: Understanding Contemporary Christian Fundamentalism and Revivalism (London: spck, 1996), 68–69.

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focus on the worshipper’s experience of God rather than on the truth of who God is (objective). Pete Ward concurs: “[T]hey have replaced the content of the Christian gospel with human experience. Instead of worshipping Jesus, they give the impression that we are worshipping worship.”20 Closely related to the emphasis on direct encounter that bypasses history is a third problem: worship as an individual engagement rather than a corporate event. This is perhaps the inevitable outcome of the strong emphasis given to direct encounter with a God vaguely conceived and addressed as “You.” Without a clear understanding of the Trinitarian relationship in the economy of salvation and the church’s participation in the Trinitarian life, it is not surprising that the corporate life of believers hardly features in charismatic worship. My own personal relationship with “the Lord” or, more specifically, how I feel towards him, becomes the whole point of worship. As Lester Ruth observes, “Composers who write songs that express their heart and create a sense of closeness with God do not see a need for the Trinity.”21 If worship is doing primary theology, then the modern “contemporary” charismatic service is theologically in deep trouble. Its deficiency in incarnational theology means that what is purveyed as gospel may be nothing more than the worshipper’s projection of an ahistorical gospel of personal experience. There is a real danger of current forms of charismatic worship of purveying a gnostic gospel divorced from the historical life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The accent of modern charismatic songs falls heavily on spiritual presence and spiritual comings of Christ in the here and now: King of heaven come down King of heaven come now Let Your glory reign Shining like the day King of heaven come King of heaven rise up Who can stand against us You are strong to save In Your mighty name King of heaven come.22 20 21

22

Ward, Selling Worship, 210. Ruth, “Lex Amandi,” 351. Tanya Riches’s attempt to show recent changes of theological emphases in Hillsongs has served mostly to confirm Ruth’s observations; in short, the theological changes are hardly significant. See Tanya Riches, “The Evolving Theological Emphasis of Hillsong Worship (1996–2007),” Australasian Pentecostal Studies 13 (2010): 87–133. Cited by Jonathan Black, http://apostolic-theology.blogspot.sg/2014/11/how-christmasreveals-our-problem-with.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_ca

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The issue is not whether Christ could not have come in this way to us (he does in the Spirit), but whether a spiritualized Christ apart from the historical Incarnation is really the Christ we are worshipping. The person and work of the Spirit cannot be disconnected from the person and work Christ, the Godman, without falling into the error of pneumatomonism. For when the historical Jesus is downplayed in favour of the spiritual presence of a vaguely defined “You,” the result is a serious distortion of trinitarian faith. The Trinity is revealed precisely in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, but in bypassing the Incarnation, or just downplaying it in favour of a more “spiritualized” experience of God, charismatic worship has actually de-historicized divine revelation. Truth is no longer grounded in history but in subjectivity. What we are left with is not the gospel of Jesus Christ but a gnostic gospel. This explains the penchant of some charismatics to pit rhema-word against logos-word. Rhema-word is liberating while the logos-word (which is, in fact, the Word-becoming-flesh) is too constrictive. A “prophetic word” carries more weight than the faithful exposition of Scripture. This spiritualization of the Word has become so deeply entrenched in charismatic worship that the “time of worship” (where the “spiritualized” Jesus is encountered) has become synonymous with worship itself. Steven’s case study of charismatic worship in six Anglican churches in the UK shows that even where there is a liturgical structure, the “block worship” in some churches tends to overwhelm the liturgy. It becomes so central that some churches pick and choose elements from the liturgy so as not to impede the sacrosanct “time of worship.”23 This phenomenon is not only found in UK Anglican churches, but has become quite globalized. In many instances, only the beginning “greetings” is retained followed by a time of “block worship,” the sermon, and (perhaps) a traditional benediction.24 2

Back to Pentecostal Roots

The rapid changes in charismatic worship, especially with regard to its ­theological content make our task of juxtaposing charismatic and liturgical worship much more complicated. One wonders, given the current state of charismatic worship if it has any positive contribution to make to liturgical mpaign=Feed:+ApostolicTheology+%28Apostolic+Theology%29, accessed 21 November 2014. 23 Steven, Worship in the Spirit, 64–69. 24 Most “charismatized” mainline churches in Singapore follow this pattern even in their supposedly traditional service.

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worship. But Pentecostal-charismatic worship has not always existed in this way. To see Pentecostal-charismatic worship at its best, we need to approach it diachronically and recover from within its short 100-year history elements that show unmistakably that it is, despite its shortcomings, a genuine work of the Holy Spirit. This is precisely what a number of Pentecostal scholars have done in recent years. The impoverishment of modern charismatic worship is perhaps one of the main motivations for these Pentecostals to reexamine their own historical roots. What they have uncovered is the sacramental roots of the Pentecostal renewal. The evidences are quite overwhelming.25 Daniel Tomberlin, a Church of God pastor, has shown in his study of four Pentecostal sacraments, namely, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, footwashing, and anointing with oil, that the early Pentecostals had a strong sacramental theology. Even if it was inadequately articulated, it was clearly evident in practice. For example, divine healing was experienced in the Lord’s Supper, footwashing, anointing with oil, and the use of the anointed handkerchief.26 As Tomberlin aptly 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.’”27 Jonathan Black, a pastor and teacher of the Apostolic Church in the UK, has amassed an impressive amount of sacramental materials from his own church, including hymns and written prayers to be used during Holy Communion.28 One of the most interesting was the compilation of seventy hymns to be used at the Lord’s Supper titled Hymns at the Holy Table.29 Ian Macpherson, an Apostolic Church minister and compiler, has included some of his own eucharistic hymns. The following are the last two stanzas of one of them: Come, Bread Divine, our feeble souls sustaining, Give us of Thee to eat this mystic hour; Come, Wine of Heaven, our richest joy maintaining,

25

See Chris E.W. Green, Toward a Pentecostal Theology of the Lord’s Supper: Foretasting the Kingdom (Cleveland, TN: cpt Press, 2012), esp. chapter three. 26 Daniel Tomberlin, Pentecostal Sacraments: Encountering God at the Altar (Cleveland, TN: Center for Pentecostal Leadership and Care, 2010), 75, 168–78; Kimberly Alexander, Pentecostal Healing: Models in Theology and Practice (Blandford Forum: Deo, 2006), 158–60. 27 Ibid., 76–77. 28 See his blogspot: http://apostolic-theology.blogspot.sg/search/label/sacraments, accessed 3 March 2015. 29 Hymns at the Holy Table, selected and edited by Ian Macpherson (London: Evangel Press, 1974).

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Lift to our lips Thy cup of living power. Then when in heaven we sit around Thy table Hunger and thirst for evermore unknown, We shall adore Thee as we’re now unable And find that table an eternal throne.30 Here is another of Macpherson’s hymns: Why should I to a biscuit bow Or call a bit of bread my God? Jesus, my Lord is risen now, No carcase in Israeli sod: How can the living Christ become Inert and finite in a crumb? How can a grape give grace to me, Its purple juice expunge my sin? My true vine hung on Calvary: I feel His purging power within. My Saviour is alive indeed And He is all I’ll ever need. …………………………………………… Yet are the holy bread and wine More than mere symbols to my soul; They are the sacramental sign That by His brokenness I’m whole; And as the emblems are dispensed More than a memory is sensed. My Risen Redeemer near me stands, And takes the elements Divine, And with His own dear wounded hands Passes to me the bread and wine; And thus I know what most is meant By this tremendous sacrament.31 30

31

Hymns at the Holy Table, no. 46. One is reminded of a similar effort undertaken by John and Charles Wesley in the 18th century. Hymns on the Lord’s Supper (1745) consists of 166 hymns composed by the Wesleys. The Charles Wesley Society in Madison, NJ, produced a facsimile reprint in 1995. Hymns at the Holy Table, no. 66.

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Sadly, as the study of Richard Bicknell of the Elim Pentecostal Church has shown, the sacramental practices of the early Pentecostals became gradually marginalized by their collusion with evangelicals.32 A similar process can be seen in the Assemblies of God of the usa.33 The early Pentecostals may not be explicitly sacramental in their theology, but they were instinctively sacramental in their practice. The effect of this Pentecostal retrieval is threefold. First, it shows that early Pentecostal worship is theologically closer to the liturgical traditions than is commonly believed and this provides a better basis for dialogue with liturgical traditions that could potentially result in mutual enrichment. Second, while Pentecostals can learn much from liturgical worship, they can draw much from their own heritage to address the deficiencies in current forms of charismatic worship. But they are able to do so precisely through dialogue with older traditions which surfaces things from their own tradition which otherwise would have remained hidden. Third, the early Pentecostals’ experience of the dynamic working of the Spirit in their lives and in the sacraments show that the two are not incompatible, just as many charismatics who experienced spiritual renewal in their liturgical traditions in the 1960s and 70s, did not feel that their new-found experience was incompatible with the liturgy. Tom Smail, an Anglican charismatic, has noted that some charismatics “are increasingly realizing that the treasures of renewal worship can best be conserved and enhanced, and its deficiencies overcome, by a rediscovery of its positive and creative relationship to the liturgical traditions of the Church.”34 This rediscovery is not surprising considering that the Pentecostal “oral liturgy” at its best contains “most of the elements of historical liturgies: Invocation, Kyrie, Confession of Faith, Gloria, Eucharistic Canon.”35 The difference is that in the Pentecostal “oral liturgy” these traditional elements are configured differently.36

32

Richard Bicknell, “The Ordinances: The Marginalized Aspects of Pentecostalism,” in Pentecostal Perspectives, ed. Keith Warrington (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998), 204–22. 33 For other examples of Pentecostal sacramentology, see my article “The use of Prosper’s Rule in the Development of Pentecostal Ecclesiology,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 11, no. 4 (2011): 305–17. 34 Smail, “In Spirit and in Truth,” 114. The Catholic charismatic Donald Gelpi makes a similar point: “Conversion: The Challenge Of Contemporary Charismatic Piety,” Theological Studies 43, no. 4 (1982): 606–28. 35 Hollenweger, Pentecostalism, 271. 36 Something similar could be said about evangelical worship vis-à-vis the liturgy. See Melanie C. Ross, Evangelical Versus Liturgical? Defying a Dichotomy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014).

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The Pentecostal-Charismatic Contribution to the Traditional Liturgy

3.1 Joy of the Spirit If there is one thing that is quite palpable in Pentecostal-charismatic worship, it is its spontaneous outbursts of joy. This could perhaps be its greatest contribution to the traditional liturgy, which is often marked more by dour solemnity. The concept of joy is in fact quite prominent especially in the Orthodox liturgy. Joy, as the Russian Orthodox Boris Bobrinskoy reminds us, is “a sure and certain sign of the presence of the Spirit.”37 Furthermore, the joy of the Spirit is a shared joy. The Spirit being the “fruit” of the union between the Father and the Son fills worshippers with an “ecstatic” joy that takes us out of our selfenclosed narcissistic enjoyment into communion with others.38 There is no reason why such spontaneous joy could not be incorporated into the liturgy.39 Here are some practical ways in which the charismatic dimension of joyful worship might enliven the liturgy: a. Spontaneous praise and worship could be inserted at appropriate points in the liturgy, including the liturgy of the hours, and especially in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is an appropriate place where joyful thanksgiving could be encouraged at certain points, such as the Great Doxology and the Great Amen at the end of the eucharistic prayer. The Eucharist, after all, should be as the term means: the joyful thanksgiving in response to God’s great redemptive act in Christ (cf. 1 Peter 2:9). b. Other parts where joyful acclamations could be appropriately inserted (depending on the occasion and season of the church year) are – The entrance hymn (assuming that there is a processional). – The singing of the Gloria in excelsis. – The recessional where the congregation goes forth with joyful confidence to “love and serve the Lord.” – The “Hallelujah” preceding and following the gospel reading; some church traditions sing the “gradual” hymn during the gospel processional which should characteristically be a joyful occasion as the congregation stands to welcome the Christ of the gospel. 37 38 39

Boris Bobrinskoy, “The Church and the Holy Spirit in 20th Century Russia,” Ecumenical Review 52, no. 3 (2000): 329. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Explorations in Theology iii: Creator Spirit, trans. Brian McNeil (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 126–27. As suggested by David Steindl-Rast, “Charismatic Renewal : A Challenge to Roman Catholic Worship,” Worship 48, no. 7 (1974): 386–88.

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3.2 Freedom of the Spirit Closely related to the joy of the Spirit is the freedom of the Spirit. The Spirit works sovereignly in the distribution of the charisms (1 Cor 12:11) and in mysterious ways in bringing new birth (John 3:8). The Spirit sometimes surprises us with unexpected visitations, “the surprising works of God,” as Jonathan Edwards observed in the 18th century revival in Northampton. The Pentecostalcharismatic seems to have a special preference for this dimension of the Spirit’s work by focusing, sometimes too obsessively, on the so-called “supernatural” gifts. Notwithstanding this obsession, is there not a place for the freedom and spontaneity of the Spirit finding appropriate expression in the liturgy? If the Spirit cannot be domesticated, then shouldn’t we be more open to the Spirit’s surprising works? In point of fact, the liturgy recognizes such activities of the Spirit but only in their ritualized form. For example, glossolalia, a hallmark of Pentecostal spirituality, is ritualized at certain points in some Eastern Orthodox liturgies where chants in different keys occur simultaneously in a “kalophonic cacophony.”40 In the Western church, glossolalia is ritualized in what Catherine Pickstock calls “the liturgical stammer”: the “repetitive and haphazard structure” (such as the repeated confession of sin) and the “stuttering” multiplicity of voices (narrative, dialogue, antiphon, monologue, etc.).41 Singing in tongues has its counterpart in the prolonged note of the last syllable of the Hallelujah at Easter.42 Perhaps at some point in the liturgy (in conjunction with the Gloria?), some space could be opened for those who wish to, to express a non-ritualized praising and singing in tongues without disrupting the flow of the liturgy. 3.3 Active Participation Pentecostal worship at its best evidences a high level of congregational active participation, which is not the same as the mindless participation often seen in the concert model of contemporary charismatic worship. The theology underlying true active participation is the personal indwelling of the Spirit— an important emphasis in Orthodox theology.43 The indwelling Spirit as the active agent from the Father enables believers to be free to respond to God 40 41 42 43

Peter Galadza, “The Holy Spirit in Eastern Orthodox Worship: Historical Enfleshments and Contemporary Queries,” in The Spirit in Worship—Worship in the Spirit, ed. Teresa Berger and Bryan D. Spinks (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009), 137. Catherine Pickstock, After Writing: On The Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 178, 190, 213. Francis Sullivan, Charisms and Charismatic Renewal: A Biblical and Theological Study (Ann Arbor, MI: Servant Books, 1982), 145–48. For a fuller elaboration of this theme, see Simon Chan, Pentecostal Ecclesiology: An Essay on the Development of Doctrine (Blandford Forum: Deo, 2011), 55–63.

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(Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6) and gives to each person a unique role as a bearer of the Spirit’s charism in the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:7–11).44 At Pentecost, the Spirit’s coming “constitutes” the church as a unity-indiversity. “The ‘con-stitution’ is something that involves us in its very being, something we accept freely, because we take part in its very emergence.”45 In other words, the freedom of the indwelling Spirit ensures the church’s free participation. This is the Orthodox doctrine of synergy. But the Spirit also diversifies. As Lossky notes, the tongues of fire separated and fell on each of them, so that each person began to speak in a different language (Acts 2:3).46 But those speaking in different languages were not speaking to the crowd, although the crowd coming from various regions of the Roman Empire could understand what was being said. It was Peter, the chief apostle and representative of the church, who stood up and spoke to the crowd (v. 14). There is both diversity of tongues and unity of one message: the gospel of Jesus Christ spoken by God’s chosen representative. The Spirit’s personal presence enables us freely to respond to Christ, both individually and corporately. Each person is liberated by the Spirit for a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, but each person is also liberated to enter into communion with other members of the Body of Christ. Only then could we freely respond to the Father in corporate worship and corporately work together to edify the church with the charisms each member is given. Traditionally, Pentecostals have strongly emphasized the personal indwelling often at the expense of the Spirit’s corporate indwelling. Yet, it is in the interplay of personal and corporate indwelling that there is real active participation. Only as free persons can we enter into communion. There is no real communion if one is reduced to being a member of a herd. With full, active participation, the liturgy could be truly enlivened, suffused with spiritual life and vibrancy. Each person stands as a “respons-ible” member of the Body of Christ, that is, capable of responding freely to the Spirit in exercising his/her gift for the common good (1 Cor 12:7; 14:26). Active participation helps overcome the tendency towards mindless repetition by rote in liturgical worship, or mindlessly following the promptings of the worship leader in a charismatic worship. Here are some practical suggestions on how active participation at different points of the liturgy could be enhanced: 44 45 46

Tom Smail, The Giving Gift: The Holy Spirit in Person (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1988), 110. John Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), 140. Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (London: James Clarke, 1957), 168.

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The Peace: There are more palpable ways of expressing our unity in the Body of Christ than just a few handshakes and polite nods often seen in liturgical worship. The peace ought to be an occasion for those who are not on speaking terms to make right with one another. Perhaps it could begin with an intentional encounter with the “enemy.” A little more time could be given for mutual confession and mutual prayer. This is quite different from the practice in some charismatic services where leaders coax the members of the congregation on what to say to the persons standing near them. Intercession: Taking up “prayer requests” was something that early Pentecostals used to do as a regular part of worship. Besides prayers for the general needs and concerns of the church and the world, specific prayers for individuals could be included. Before the intercession, opportunities could be given for members to share their concerns and needs, either their own or those of others, and these could be incorporated into the intercession. The Lord’s Prayer: The kinesthetic and tactile dimensions of Pentecostalcharismatic worship47 could find appropriate expression in the Lord’s Prayer. Congregants raise and hold each other’s hands to affirm the fact that this is the prayer of the whole household of faith.48

3.4 Divine Healing Many early Pentecostals believed that the Lord’s Supper was a “healing ordinance.”49 Along with it and sometimes separately, they also practice anointing the sick with oil. They may not have developed a sacramental theology, but they see a connection between the receiving of the bread and wine and the work of the Spirit to bring healing and wholeness. Notwithstanding its abuse by healing evangelists, healing is increasingly recognized as an important part of the church’s liturgical ministry.50 The anointing of the sick and dying in homes and hospitals is now widely practiced. But rather than being occasional, could not the traditional liturgy incorporate ministry of prayer for healing as part of the regular Sunday celebration? For example, during Communion, the sick who come forward to receive the bread and wine would then 47 Albrecht, Rites in the Spirit, 147–48. 48 Catholic congregations in Southeast Asia used to do just that until the outbreak of sars in 2003 brought on fears of contamination and the practice was discontinued. 49 P.C. Nelson, Bible Doctrines (Springfield, MO: gph, 1948), 73. Bible Doctrines is an exposition of the AG’s Sixteen Fundamentals of Faith. It was widely used in AG Bible institutes in many parts of the world. 50 See Hollenweger, Pentecostalism, 233–37.

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move to one side to be personally prayed for through the laying on of hands. The Communion is the most natural occasion for healing prayer since spiritual and emotional healing takes place when worshippers sense that they are part of a community. The very togetherness brings healing from alienation and isolation.51 If it is a non-eucharistic Sunday (assuming that many Protestant churches do not celebrate the Eucharist weekly) the sick could come forward to be prayed for during the intercessory or pastoral prayer. 4

How the Liturgy Challenges Charismatic Worship

If the most important contribution of charismatic worship to the liturgy is joy and personal encounter through the indwelling Spirit resulting in a more spontaneous form of active participation, the liturgy could offer many important theological correctives to charismatic worship, such as its sense of awe before the holy God; its solid grounding in the Incarnation; its Trinitarian form and content; the centrality of the gospel; the corporate identity it fosters. 4.1 The Holy God Without a sense of awe and reverence, joy becomes frivolous. If Jonathan Edwards is correct—that a sure sign of true religious affections is the “beauty of holiness”—then true worship is evidenced by the “symmetry” of joy and reverence.52 Perhaps the Psalmist’s injunction “rejoice with trembling” (Ps 2:11) is the optimum that we must seek to achieve in all forms of worship. But this is what modern charismatic worship sorely lacks; it needs the corrective of the liturgy. The sense of the holy is encountered not only in liturgical texts but also in the whole setting of the liturgy. The Sanctus in the Western eucharistic liturgy and the repeated Trisagion of the Eastern Church which form part of the “ordinaries” of these liturgical traditions are some of the textual reminders that the God who gives himself to us in Christ is the Holy One. But beyond the texts is the whole atmosphere in which the liturgy is celebrated—the vestments, architecture, icons, gestures, etc.—which communicates a deep ambience of the holy. Many Pentecostals and charismatics frustrated by the carnival atmosphere of their own churches and seeking for some depth in their worship could testify

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Steindl-Rast, “Charismatic Renewal,” 389. Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1984), 293.

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to the palpability of the holy in a Catholic or Orthodox Church.53 What makes them resonate with the celebration of the liturgy is not that they have encountered another novelty; rather, it triggers long-lost memories of their own encounter with God as mysterium et tremendum in the sacramental universe they used to inhabit. Thus the corrective comes by way of a Pentecostal ressourcement.54 In encountering the holy God, worshippers respond with broken spirits and contrite hearts. Here again, modern charismatics need to recover the place for confession of sin in their worship. As noted above, confession formed an important part of early Pentecostals worship, but with the theologia gloriae displacing the theologia crucis, there is no felt need for confession. Some have even veered dangerously close to antinomianism, believing that once a person is saved, grace covers a multitude of sins, past, present, and future, so that no confession is ever needed.55 Against this, the liturgy prods us at different points to recognize our true condition before a holy and gracious God. In the Roman mass, confession comes at the beginning: “I confess to Almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned…” Even in our adoration of God in the Gloria, we continue to plead for mercy before the Lamb, and ask him who is seated at the right hand of the Father to receive our prayer. Before receiving the bread and wine, we pray the Agnus Dei: “Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us…” In response to the invitation to the Supper of the Lamb, communicants respond with: “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.”56 There is no mistaking it: Precisely because of grace, we acknowledge ourselves as wretched sinners. A grace that absolves one from confession is cheap grace.

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The same cannot be said of many mainline Protestant churches. Although many of the newer Protestant liturgies are structurally similar to the Roman mass, their obsession with cultural relevance and political correctness has made their “experimental” liturgies theologically vacuous: “the aroma of an empty bottle.” The phrase, ironically, is Harnack’s description of Protestant theology vis-à-vis Catholic theology. But instead of seeing it as a problem, he saw it as a cause for celebration! See “Erik Peterson’s Correspondence with Adolf von Harnack, with an Epilogue,” Pro Ecclesia 2, no. 3 (1993): 333–44. William L. De Arteaga, Forgotten Power: The Significance of the Lord’s Supper in Revival (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002). The most prominent modern proponent of this is Joseph Prince, pastor of the megachurch New Creation in Singapore. For a critique see Michael L. Brown, Hyper-Grace: Exposing the Dangers of the Modern Grace Message (Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House, 2014). This is the older translation, which is still retained in the Anglican liturgy.

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4.2 The Triune God The liturgy is thoroughly Trinitarian from beginning to end. The Roman missal begins with the Pauline blessing while the Orthodox service begins with the priest proclaiming, “Blessed is the kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, both now and ever, and to the ages of ages. Amen.” In word and sacrament, the Creed, collects, and Eucharistic prayers, worshippers are aware of praying to the Father, through the Son, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. This serves as a corrective for the early Pentecostals’ excessive focus on the name of Jesus57 and the later charismatics’ fixation on power gifts and extraordinary phenomena.58 4.3 The Humanity of Christ The liturgy tells the gospel story from the Incarnation to the Parousia through its weekly cycles of readings and feasts in the Christian calendar. Without the counter-balance of the story of Christ incarnate, the one-sided focus on the glorified Christ leads easily to an over-realized eschatology: whatever God promises can be realized in the here and now. It is not coincidental that the teaching and practice of the prosperity gospel is found mostly in “charismatized” churches. 4.4 The Liturgy as Enactment The liturgy challenges charismatic worship to rethink its concert model of worship. The ever-present danger is the creation of the herd mentality. The worship leader or preacher as motivator can induce a non-reflective mood that is evident in a rock concert. The liturgy helps charismatics to re-imagine the nature of participation. In the liturgy, the leaders are not the performers and the people of God (laity) are not participating as audience, but all are actors in their own rights playing their different parts in the liturgical drama of redemption. This is seen in the prevalence of liturgical dialogues, which enact the revelation-response dynamic. In their enactment, they are “indwelling” the gospel. The effect of indwelling may not be immediate, but over time, the gospel story is deeply imbibed into one’s very being, so that we become the gospel, the light and salt, not just bearer of light and salt. As Irenaeus picturesquely 57 58

The most extreme form is Oneness Pentecostals’ denial of the Trinity and their insistence on baptism in Jesus’ name as the only valid form. E.g. Bill Johnson of Bethel Church in Redding, California, has drawn charismatic church leaders from many parts of the world hoping to replicate its success especially by focusing on extraordinary phenomena of gold dust, angels’ feathers, and glory cloud.

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puts it, the vessel (the church) that contains the gospel is rejuvenated by its content.59 4.5 Corporate Worship Perhaps the greatest challenge the liturgy poses to Pentecostal-charismatics is to rethink worship in corporate terms rather than as merely a matter of “my own personal relationship with God.” A first-timer to a liturgical service is struck by the conspicuous rarity of the first-person singular pronoun.60 The liturgy is a corporate event. It is the whole church as the royal priesthood proclaiming God’s “mighty acts” of calling a people out of darkness into his marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9). Charismatic worship tends to create a church as a collectivity of individual worshippers—what Gordon Fee calls, “a thousand individual experiences of worship.”61 This is, as we have noted above, a problem it inherited from the 19th century gospel tradition. But even here, there are spiritual resources in Pentecostal history from which present-day Pentecostals can draw. Although Pentecostals explicitly stress the need for personal faith, yet when it comes to divine healing, they believe that healing could also be effected by the faith of those praying for the sick. Robeck and Sandidge, who made this point in the context of the Pentecostal-Catholic Dialogues, suggested that it opened the way for Pentecostals to reconsider the place of infant baptism where the faith of the community plays a key role.62 The practice of proxy faith in divine healing implies that faith is connected to a reality bigger than one’s own. My Christian life is not solely dependent on my faith but also the faith of the Church.63 Pentecostals understand this implicitly, but in the liturgical tradition it is made explicit. In the Roman missal, at the ritus pacis (sign of peace) the priest prays: “Look not on our sins but on the faith of your Church…” Thus in engaging the liturgical tradition, Pentecostals may come around to a more explicit appreciation of a corporate concept of faith which is not entirely foreign to them. 59 60 61 62 63

Against Heresies iii. 24.1. This was the first comment I got from someone who attended a liturgical church for the first time. Gordon Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, nicnt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 667. Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. and Jerry L Sandidge, “The Ecclesiology Of Koinōnia And Baptism: A Pentecostal Perspective,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 27, no. 3 (1990): 528. Authors also note that some Pentecostal churches outside of North America practice infant baptism. A similar point is made by two Free Church theologians with regard to the efficacy of baptism: It is not dependent solely on the individual’s personal decision but also on the action of the church. See Matt Jenson and David Wilhite, The Church: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 116–17.

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5 Conclusion To sum up, the major contribution of Pentecostal-charismatic worship is to demonstrate a practical pneumatology that can potentially enliven the traditional liturgy in unexpected and surprising ways. The case studies of Steven have shown that some Anglican charismatic churches have been more successful than others in integrating the charismatic renewal into the liturgy.64 But this is still far from being the norm. A more common practice is to hold a separate charismatic service on a week night and leave the Sunday liturgy untouched.65 But is there any reason why integration should not be done especially when a theology of the Spirit already exists in the major liturgical ­traditions66 that is quite compatible with the pneumatology implicit in Pentecostal worship? Perhaps some are just too afraid to let the Holy Spirit upset the rubrics! In contrast, the liturgy challenges charismatic worship in quite different ways. Its rich theology accentuates the serious theological deficiencies in charismatic worship such that one wonders if the latter is sustainable in the long term. It must either die to itself and be reborn as a vital component of the liturgy or incorporate vital liturgical elements from the traditional liturgy if it is to survive with any theological integrity. Whichever corrective steps it takes, it cannot simply continue in the direction it is going without causing serious malformation in the worshippers. Both its form and content will have to be revamped. For one thing, most of the individualistic, “feel good” songs will have to be jettisoned. The stand-alone “block worship” that has become almost sacrosanct has to be de-constructed and given a more modest role. First, the role of the worship leader and musicians has to be redefined. Instead of the worship leader, musicians, back-up singers, and musical instruments—in short, all the paraphernalia associated with the “music ministry”— taking central stage, they should find an unobtrusive place in the sanctuary, playing a supportive role in helping the entire congregation sing the praises of God. Perhaps something could be learned from the Catholic architectural arrangement where the choir and musicians are usually located at the choir loft behind the church or at the side, not at the center. Second, the music ministry should be set within a larger and more holistic structure that includes confession of sin, intercessory prayers, proclamation of who God is (both his holiness and love), etc.

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Steven,Worship in the Spirit, 76–89. This is the common practice in many Catholic parishes. As seen, e.g., in The Spirit in Worship—Worship in the Spirit.

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Charismatic worship may be an effective means of reaching out to the world. Compared with other traditional forms of worship, it is more thoroughly contextualized in an ever-changing cultural landscape. It functions most effectively as an initial point of entry for the unchurched. But it lacks sustaining power: one cannot live in the “feel good” phase of relationship with God forever. Growth in the love of God, like any serious relationship, requires us to face the harsh realities of life: sickness, suffering, death, cross-bearing, and temptations. These are realities that charismatic worship, at least in its current forms, is not preparing Christians to face. The liturgical contribution to traditional Pentecostal worship is perhaps more symmetrical. Just as the practical pneumatology in Pentecostal worship helps foster a greater level of active participation and creates awareness of pneumatological resources already inherent in the liturgy, liturgical worship makes Pentecostals aware of their own sacramental resources and encourages them to return to a more holistic Pentecostal worship. One hopes that with the recovery of the sacramental dimension of early Pentecostal worship, there will be better integration between liturgical and Pentecostal worship. Almost certainly their respective forms of worship will be affected as they engage each other in continuing dialogue. Theologically, there can only be one liturgy, the celebration of the Paschal Mystery, although it could be expressed in many forms. This liturgy functions best when it is suffused with the palpable presence of the Spirit. Worship “in spirit and in truth” can be nothing else but the ineluctable response of the church to the revelation of the triune God in the mystery of redemption. This Trinitarian revelation includes the coming of the Spirit in his own person to indwell the church, transforming each member of Christ’s body into active and serious yet joyful participants. Pentecostal-charismatic worship at its best has shown that such active participation is realizable, while liturgical worship teaches us that it is best realized in the context of the liturgy. Bibliography Albrecht, Daniel E. Rites in the Spirit: A Ritual Approach to Pentecostal/Charismatic Spirituality. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999. Alexander, Kimberly. Pentecostal Healing: Models in Theology and Practice. Blandford Forum: Deo, 2006. Bicknell, Richard. “The Ordinances: The Marginalized Aspects of Pentecostalism.” In Pentecostal Perspectives. Edited by Keith Warrington. Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998, 204–22.

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Blumhofer, Edith L. Her Heart Can See: The Life and Hymns of Fanny J. Crosby. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005. Bobrinskoy, Boris. “The Church and the Holy Spirit in 20th Century Russia.” Ecumenical Review 52, no. 3 (2000): 326–42. Brown, Michael L. Hyper-Grace: Exposing the Dangers of the Modern Grace Message. Lake Mary: Charisma House, 2014. Chan, Simon. “The Use of Prosper’s Rule in the Development of Pentecostal Ecclesiology.” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 11, no. 4 (2011): 305–17. Chan, Simon. Pentecostal Ecclesiology: An Essay on the Development of Doctrine. Blandford Forum: Deo, 2011. Crichton, J.D. “A Theology of Worship.” In The Study of Liturgy. Revised edition. Edited by Cheslyn Jones, Geoffrey Wainwright, Edward Yarnold, and Paul Bradshaw. London: SPCM, 1997, 9–13. Dandelion, Pink. The Liturgies of Quakerism. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. De Arteaga, William L. Forgotten Power: The Significance of the Lord’s Supper in Revival. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002. Edwards, Jonathan. The Religious Affections. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1984. Fee, Gordon. The First Epistle to the Corinthians. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987. Galadza, Peter. “The Holy Spirit in Eastern Orthodox Worship: Historical Enfleshments and Contemporary Queries.” In The Spirit in Worship—Worship in the Spirit. Edited by Teresa Berger and Bryan D. Spinks. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009. Gelpi, Donald. “Conversion: The Challenge Of Contemporary Charismatic Piety.” Theological Studies 43, no. 4 (1982): 606–28. Green, Chris E.W. Toward a Pentecostal Theology of the Lord’s Supper: Foretasting the Kingdom. Cleveland: CPT Press, 2012. Hocken, Peter. The Glory and the Shame: Reflections on the 20th Century Outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Guildford, Surrey: Eagle, 1994. Hollenweger, Walter J. Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1997. Jenson, Matt and David Wilhite. The Church: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: T&T Clark, 2010. Lossky, Vladimir. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. London: James Clarke, 1957. Nelson, P.C. Bible Doctrines. Springfield: Gospel Publishing House, 1948. Percy, Martyn. Words, Wonders, and Power: Understanding Contemporary Christian Fundamentalism and Revivalism. London: SPCK, 1996. Peterson, Erik. “Erik Peterson’s Correspondence with Adolf von Harnack, with an Epilogue.” Pro Ecclesia 2, no. 3 (1993): 333–44.

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Pickstock, Catherine. After Writing: On The Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy. ­Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. Robeck, Cecil M., Jr. and Jerry L Sandidge. “The Ecclesiology Of Koinōnia And Baptism: A Pentecostal Perspective.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 27, no. 3 (1990): 504–34. Riches, Tanya. “The Evolving Theological Emphasis of Hillsong Worship (1996–2007).” Australasian Pentecostal Studies 13 (2010): 87–133. Ross, Melanie C. Evangelical Versus Liturgical? Defying a Dichotomy. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014. Ruth, Lester. “Lex Amandi, Lex Orandi: The Trinity in the Most-Used Contemporary Christian Worship Songs.” In The Place of Christ in Liturgical Prayer: Trinity, Christology, and Liturgical Theology. Edited by Bryan D. Spinks. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2008, 342–59. Smail, Tom. “In Spirit and in Truth: Reflections on Charismatic Worship.” In Charismatic Renewal: The Search for a Theology. Edited by Tom Smail. London: SPCK, 1993, 109–16. Smail, Tom. The Giving Gift: The Holy Spirit in Person. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1988. Smith, James K.A. Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013. Spinks, Bryan D. “The Place of Christ in Liturgical Prayer: What Jungmann Omitted to Say.” In The Place of Christ in Liturgical Prayer: Trinity, Christology, and Liturgical Theology, ed. Bryan D. Spinks. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2008, 1–19. Steindl-Rast, David. “Charismatic Renewal: A Challenge to Roman Catholic Worship.” Worship 48, no. 7 (1974): 386–88. Steven, James H.S. Worship in the Spirit: Charismatic Worship in the Church of England. Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2002. Sullivan, Francis. Charisms and Charismatic Renewal: A Biblical and Theological Study. Ann Arbor.: Servant Books, 1982. Tomberlin, Daniel. Pentecostal Sacraments: Encountering God at the Altar. Cleveland, TN: Center for Pentecostal Leadership and Care, 2010. von Balthasar, Hans Urs. Explorations in Theology iii: Creator Spirit. Translated by Brian McNeil. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993. Ward, Pete. Selling Worship: How What We Sing Has Changed the Church. Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2005. Zizioulas, John. Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church. Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997. Hymns at the Holy Table. Selected and edited by Ian Macpherson. London: Evangel Press, 1974.

Chapter 14

Pentecostal Soteriology: Overcoming the Ecumenical Impasses of Classical Pentecostalism and Charismatic Experience Steven M. Studebaker Terry Cross asked whether or not Pentecostals can bring the “main course” or only the “relish” to the ecumenical table.1 Answering that question depends on the starting point. Beginning with classical Pentecostal theology means being content bringing the relish of speaking in tongues and charismatic experience.2 My point here is theological. I do not dismiss, but support the commendable ecumenical efforts conducted by Pentecostals, such as Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. on the International Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue.3 Although Pentecostalism has robust charismatic experience and over a century of exponential global growth, its traditional theology of baptism in the Holy Spirit reflects theological capture by traditional Protestant scholastic and evangelical theology. The early Pentecostals articulated their experience of the Holy Spirit in theological categories they inherited from their evangelical predecessors. The result is that the doctrine of Spirit baptism, which many Pentecostals prize as their distinctive doctrine, subordinates pneumatology and a relational and transformational vision of grace to a Christological and legal paradigm of redemption.4 1 Terry L. Cross, “The Rich Feast of Theology: Can Pentecostals Bring the Main Course or Only the Relish?,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 16 (2000): 32–36. 2 “Classical Pentecostal theology” refers here to Pentecostal theologies that divide the experience of grace in to two or three distinct works—salvation in Christ and a subsequent experience of Spirit baptism (Wesleyan-Holiness groups interpose entire sanctification as the second work of grace between salvation in Christ and Spirit baptism.) The consequences are the subordination and marginalization of the Holy Spirit relative to Christ and in the wider work of redemption. Work by contemporary Pentecostals, such as Frank D. Macchia and Amos Yong (discussed below), are efforts to reform and resolve this problematic. My critical and constructive conversation with Pentecostal theology carries on and contributes to these efforts to reform traditional Pentecostal theology. 3 See Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., “The Achievements of the Pentecostal-Catholic International Dialogue,” in Celebrating a Century of Ecumenism: Exploring the Achievements of International Dialogue, ed. John A. Radano (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012), 163–94. 4 For my earlier work on this subject, see “Pentecostal Soteriology and Pneumatology,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 11 (2003): 248–70 and The Trinitarian Vision of Jonathan Edwards

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Looking to more recent efforts by Pentecostal theologians, such as Frank D. Macchia and Amos Yong, however, suggest that Pentecostals can bring a “main course.” The early twenty-first century saw the emergence of constructive efforts among Pentecostal theologians to mine the theological yield of their nascent tradition. Animating their work is the goal of developing a Pentecostal theology of grace that embraces a pneumatological vision of redemption. Not a call to leave behind charismatic empowerment and spiritual gifts, but to lead Pentecostal pneumatology beyond its traditional subordination to Christology and legal categories and compartmentalization in Christian spirituality so that it can develop a more expansive Pentecostal theology of grace. Toward this end, this essay first highlights the irony of Pentecostalism’s accentuated experience of the Holy Spirit, but diminished pneumatology. Second, it describes the Christocentric and forensic paradigms of Protestant scholasticism and Evangelicalism. Third, it argues for the theological capture of Pentecostalism by Protestant scholastic and evangelical theological paradigms, which are the source of the subordination of the Spirit in Pentecostal theology. Fourth, it raises the possibility of an ecumenical impasse for Pentecostals. ­Finally, it highlights the work of Frank D. Macchia and Amos Yong as examples of the way forward for Pentecostal theology and ecumenical dialogue. 1

The Irony of Pentecostal Experience and Theology

Pentecostalism is a renewal movement within Christianity.5 Recovering the experience of the Holy Spirit and the charismatic gifts is one of its most important contributions to the wider life of the Christian churches. The doctrine of Spirit baptism early-on became the popular way to articulate Pentecostal

and David Coffey (Amherst, NY: Cambria, 2011), 167–205. This essay extends this earlier work based on the pneumatology set forth in From Pentecost to the Triune God: A Pentecostal Trinitarian Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012). 5 Pentecostalism is also a revival movement. Revival focuses inward, however. Although Pentecostals often prayed for large scale revival to sweep the land, the practice of revival was an intra-Pentecostal phenomenon and to the extent that people were swept up in the revival, they would become Pentecostals. Renewal emphasizes an outward and ecumenical posture. It assumes a wider Christian community with whom Pentecostals constructively and dialogically engage. For distinctions between Pentecostalism as revival and renewal and their ecumenical significance, see Peter Hocken, “The Pentecostal-Charismatic Movement as Revival and Renewal,” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 3 (1981): 31–47 and “Revival and Renewal,” Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 18 (1998): 49–63.

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experience in theological terms.6 Called the Classical doctrine, it teaches that Baptism in the Holy Spirit is an experience of the Spirit subsequent to salvation for the purpose of empowered ministry and evidenced by speaking in tongues. Although the Charismatic and Third Wave movements augmented the doctrine of Spirit baptism, especially on the necessity of tongues, the Classical view remains the doctrinal distinctive of the largest Pentecostal denominations in North America—Assemblies of the God, Church of God (Cleveland, TN), and the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada.7 The irony of Pentecostalism is that its defining doctrine—Spirit baptism— indicates its theological capture by the Protestant scholastic and evangelical tradition. Pentecostals, however, regard themselves as people of the Spirit.8 ­Indeed, early Pentecostals were anti-creedal and some Pentecostals are still anti-intellectual—for example, when I announced to my Pentecostal church that I was leaving to attend seminary, a well-meaning lady, said to me after church, “So you’re going to cemetery.” Pentecostalism stands for the vibrant, living faith of the Spirit. Scholasticism is a specter of dry, dead intellectualism. Representing this perspective, Del Tarr declares the cessationism of ­Reformed theology a “curse” and “Protestant scholasticism represents the theological roots of the silencing of the Spirit in Western missions.”9 Focusing on this difference, however, misses the fundamental way Protestant scholastic and 6 Early within the Pentecostal movement, Spirit baptism became a preferred biblical metaphor to describe the Pentecostal experience of the Spirit. As a term, it captures the individual experience of the Spirit, but also serves as a communal symbol to express the nature of the spirituality that characterizes Pentecostal and charismatic churches and movements. This chapter uses Spirit baptism as an inclusive term to designate the charismatic nature of Pentecostal spirituality and experience and specifically to indicate the Classical Pentecostal doctrine of Spirit baptism. Also, using Spirit baptism as an inclusive term to capture the collective character of the Pentecostal experience of the Spirit are Simon Chan, Spiritual Theology: A Systematic Study of the Christian Life (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 47; and Frank D. Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 26, 159. 7 A distinction, however, must be maintained between official denominational doctrine and the actual beliefs of pastors and parishioners in Pentecostal churches. Less than half of pastors in the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada retain belief in the doctrine of speaking in tongues as the initial evidence of Spirit baptism, according to the research of Andrew K. Gabriel, Adam Stewart, and Kevin Shanahan in “Changing Conceptions of Speaking in Tongues and Spirit Baptism among Canadian Pentecostal Clergy,” Canadian Journal of PentecostalCharismatic Christianity 7 (2016): 1–24. 8 Gary B. McGee, People of the Spirit: The Assemblies of God, rev. ed. (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 2014). 9 See Del Tarr, “Transcendence, Immanence, and the Emerging Pentecostal Academy,” in Pentecostalism in Context: Essays in Honor of William W. Menzies, ed. Wonsuk Ma and Robert P. Menzies (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 209, 213.

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evangelical theological categories shaped the formation of classical Pentecostal theology. Although Pentecostals accentuate the experience of the Holy Spirit, their doctrine of Spirit baptism exacerbates the subordination of the Spirit found in the Protestant and evangelical (inclusive of Wesleyan-Holiness) tradition. The place of the Spirit in Pentecostal experience obscures the more profound influence of theological categories that are not only foreign to, but prevent the development of, Pentecostal theology in general and pneumatology in particular. However counterintuitive, the classical doctrine of Spirit baptism contributes little to theology. In terms of historical theology, the unique contribution of the classical doctrine of Spirit baptism is speaking in tongues. Spirit baptism, understood as a work of grace subsequent to salvation, was a product of nineteenth century Wesleyan-Holiness and Reformed revivalist theology, and not Pentecostalism. The early Pentecostals, for the most part, emerged from these streams of North American Protestant Evangelicalism and understood their experience in terms of their theological categories. The Classical doctrine of Spirit baptism is, save for the addition of speaking in tongues as its initial evidence, borrowed from the Reformed revival tradition. The result is that the underlying structure of evangelical and Pentecostal soteriology is essentially identical and the Pentecostal doctrine of Spirit baptism acutely demonstrates this similarity. But how can what Pentecostals take as their distinctive doctrine demonstrate their theological capture by the broader evangelical tradition? D. Lyle Dabney argues that Pentecostals are theologically equivalent to David clambering around in Saul’s armor. Pentecostals have endeavored to articulate their experience of the Spirit in the ill-suited categories of Protestant Evangelicalism.10 Like David, Pentecostals need to cast off Saul’s armor—evangelical theology. Doing so will enable Pentecostals to give their experience of the Spirit an authentic theological expression. Dabney’s point is that for Pentecostal theology to engage the ecumenical traditions of Christian theology it must take its experience of the Spirit as source of theological reflection and not read it through an inherited theological paradigm. It must find the theological voice implicit in its experience of the Holy Spirit. Pentecostals, moreover, must conceive the work of the Spirit in a way that transcends their traditional pneumatology that sees the primary work of the Spirit taking place within the narrow confines of a specific dimension of Christian spirituality—i.e., a second work of grace. Before turning to the constructive task, the first step is to identify the inherited theology that prohibits the flowering of Pentecostal theology. 10

D. Lyle Dabney, “Saul’s Armor: The Problem and the Promise of Pentecostal Theology Today,” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 23 (2001): 115–17.

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The Christocentrism of Protestant Scholasticism and Evangelicalism

The Pentecostals emerged from the diverse church and revival movements known as North American Evangelicalism. Evangelical theology in turn was the product of Protestant, and especially Reformed, scholasticism. Protestant scholasticism arose during the post-Reformation era of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. During this period, the Protestant movements developed clear institutional and theological boundaries. Important Protestant scholastic theologians are Theodore Beza, William Ames, Francis Turretin, and Peter van Mastricht. The theology of this period is labeled scholastic because Protestants utilized the intellectual tools of medieval scholasticism to build Protestant theological systems. The utilization of scholastic methodology to systematize and articulate the theological insights of early Protestant reform movements produced Protestant scholasticism.11 Protestant scholastic soteriology shapes the way Evangelicals think about Christ, the Spirit, and grace. It privileges Christological and legal categories over pneumatological, relational, and transformational ones. This Protestant Christocentrism reflects the wider tendency to subordinate pneumatology in western trinitarian theology, exemplified in the doctrine of the filioque.12 Two hierarchical paradigms— objective-subjective and achiever-applier—and their influence on the order of redemption—ordo salutis—shape the Christological and legal nature of Protestant scholastic soteriology and, mediated through evangelical theology, Pentecostal theology. 2.1 The Objective-Subjective Paradigm The evangelical doctrines of justification and sanctification reflect the ­objective-subjective paradigm.13 Justification is the objective and extrinsic 11 12 13

Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1, Prolegomena to Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1987), 13–18. For a fuller discussion of the filioque and western trinitarian theology, see my From Pentecost to the Triune God, 108–27. For examples of this paradigm in the evangelical Protestant tradition, see Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, ed. Hilton C. Oswald, vol. 25, Lectures on Romans Glosses and Scholia, trans. Walter G. Tillmans and Jacob A.O. Preus (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1972), 245, 257, 334, 336, 340, and 370; John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 vols., ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 3.11.2 (1:726–27), 3.11.11 (1:739–41), 3.11.23 (1:753), and 3.14.21 (1:788); Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 3 vols., ed. James T. Dennison, Jr., trans. George M. Giger, (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1992–97), 16.6.1–3 (2:666–67); 15.1.5–7 (2:502–3); 17.1.10 (2:691); and 16.2.9–10 (2,640); John Wesley, “The Lord Our Righteousness,” in The Works

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a­ spect of salvation. It is objective in two senses. It refers to the work of Christ on the cross and the imputed righteousness of Christ. Consequently, justification is not something that occurs in the believer. For example, John Calvin described justification in the following terms: “[J]ustified by faith is he who, excluded from the righteousness of works, grasps the righteousness of Christ through faith and clothed in it, appears in God’s sight not as a sinner but as a righteous man…Covered by the righteousness of Christ…they should be accounted righteous outside themselves.”14 Justification teaches that Christ’s work is for us (pro nobis), but outside of us (extra nos). The governing metaphor of justification is the heavenly courtroom. Sinful humans stand guilty before a holy God and divine law. Unable to make recompense for their transgressions, they are liable to the wrath and judgement of God. Jesus Christ intercedes by fulfilling the demands of divine law and suffers punishment in the place of sinful humans and, thereby, mollifies the wrathful deity. Salvation consists in expressing faith in the surrogacy of Christ and receiving the pardon of sin and the conferral of Christ’s righteousness before the divine tribunal. Due to its penal emphasis, justification is primarily a forensic, Christocentric, and crucicentric doctrine. The Spirit, moreover, is absent from the work that provides justification. The Spirit plays only an instrumental role in the application of justification by drawing the person to faith in conjunction with the written and/or declared Word of God. Sanctification is the subjective or intrinsic transformation of the believer. The Spirit is the primary agent of sanctification. While Protestant theology maintains that justification and sanctification are not separated, nevertheless it affirms that they must be kept distinct. If justification and sanctification are not distinguished, then justification may be identified with or based on the process of sanctification, which is for most Protestants to undermine salvation by grace through faith. The result is that sanctification is subordinate to justification. People do not look to their progress in sanctification for assurance of salvation, but to the righteousness of Christ—justification. Sanctification is neither denied nor intentionally minimized. Since the crux of salvation, however, is forensic justification, sanctification necessarily plays a secondary role. The intention is to preserve the gratuitous nature of salvation. The outcome, nevertheless, is the subordination of sanctification to justification. of John Wesley, vol. 1, Sermons i, 1–33, ed. Albert C. Outler (Nashville: Abingdon, 1984), 1:453–58 and 462; and “The Scripture Way of Salvation,” in The Works of John Wesley, vol. 2, Sermons ii, 37–40, ed. Albert C. Outler (Nashville: Abingdon, 1985), 2:157–58; and Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952), 3:137–41, 145, and 213–16. 14 Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.2 and 3.11.11 (1:726–27 and 1:740–41).

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The subordination of sanctification to justification produces a similar result in the relation between pneumatology and Christology. Since the Spirit’s primary work is sanctification, the Spirit’s work, by default, is functionally subordinate to the work of Christ.15 Salvation ultimately rests on justification, the work of Christ, and not sanctification, the work of the Spirit. To be sure, the Spirit’s work is necessary to prompt the faith that receives justification and the sanctifying work of the Spirit begins at the moment of conversion. These works of the Spirit, nevertheless, are never the ground or constitutive essence of salvation.16 The Protestant goal is correct: affirm the gratuity of redemption. The means of elevating Christology over pneumatology and extrinsic/imputed righteousness over the relational and transformational essence of grace, however, is misguided. 2.2 The Achiever-Applier Paradigm The achiever-applier paradigm is the second way evangelical theology subordinates pneumatology to Christology.17 The achiever-applier paradigm maintains that Christ achieves or accomplishes redemption on the cross and that the Spirit applies the benefits of his redemption. The provision and fundamental nature of salvation falls entirely under the category of Christology. The work that accomplishes salvation is Christ’s life of obedience and suffering on the cross. Christ fulfills the demands of divine law through his life of obedience and pays the judicial price of sin by dying on the cross. The legal and judicial emphasis correlates with Protestantism’s theology of justification by faith. Salvation principally consists in receiving the forgiveness of sins and Christ’s imputed righteousness. 15

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Gary D. Badcock suggests that the Reformation doctrine of justification “results in a certain displacement of the Spirit from the center of the scheme of salvation” in Light of Truth and Fire of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 97. William G. Rusch also remarks that Protestant Orthodoxy tends to objectify soteriology and subordinate pneumatology; see Rusch, “The Theology of the Holy Spirit and the Pentecostal Churches in the Ecumenical Movement,” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 9 (1987): 17–30. Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966), 240–45. Examples of contemporary Evangelicals representing this traditional view are Bruce Demarest, The Cross and Salvation: The Doctrine of Salvation (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1997), 358–78; Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983–85), 3:969; and Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 724, 727. For examples of this paradigm in Protestant and evangelical theology, see Calvin, Institutes 3.1.1 (1:537); Erickson, Christian Theology, 3:945, 968; Demarest, Cross and Salvation, 44–45; and Robert Letham, The Work of Christ (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 81.

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The Spirit applies the benefits of Christ’s work. Sinclair Ferguson summarizes the chief question of the Reformation vis-à-vis medieval sacramentalism as “how does the Spirit apply the blessings of Christ to the individual?”18 Calvin taught that believers receive the benefits of Christ by the activity of the Holy Spirit.19 John Wesley also saw the Spirit’s role in redemption as the instrument for its subjective application.20 The portrayal of the Spirit as the agent that applies the benefits of Christ’s redemption subordinates the Spirit’s work because it is not constitutive of salvation.21 Since Christ achieves salvation through his life, obedience, and vicarious death, the only thing left for the Spirit to do is to distribute the benefits of the redemption earned by Christ. In order to facilitate the application of redemption, the Spirit enlightens the mind, softens the heart, and inspires the faith necessary to receive the benefits of Christ. Secondarily, if albeit inevitably, the Spirit initiates and sustains the person’s sanctification. The primary work of the Spirit is, therefore, portrayed in instrumental and not constitutional terms. Christ accomplishes the work of salvation on the cross. The Holy Spirit functions only to make the gifts of Christ’s redemption available to believers.

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See Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Holy Spirit (England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1996), 96. See Calvin, Institutes, 3.1.1 (1:537). Also, see Turretin, whose work is the pinnacle of seventeenth-century Reformed Scholasticism, Institutes, 14.14.4 (2:465). The achiever-applier paradigm is pervasive in the subsequent Reformed evangelical traditions—e.g., Erickson, Christian Theology, 3:945, 968; Demarest, The Cross and Salvation, 44–45; Letham, The Work of Christ, 81; and R.A. Torrey, Fullness of Power in Christian Life and Service (Wheaton: Sword of the Lord, 1897), 31. Donald Dayton describes Wesley’s view of the work of the Holy Spirit as the instrument and applier of Christ’s redemption. See Dayton, “The Historical Background of Pneumatological Issues in the Holiness Movement,” in The Spirit and the New Age: An Inquiry into the Holy Spirit and Last things from a Biblical Theological Perspective (Anderson, IN: Warner, 1986), 253; and “Pneumatological Issues in the Holiness Movement,” in Spirit of Truth: Ecumenical Perspectives on the Holy Spirit, ed. Theodore Stylianopoulos and S. Mark Heim (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox, 1986), 146. For similar arguments, see William Ragsdale Cannon, The Theology of John Wesley, with Special Reference to the Doctrine of Justification (Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1946), 213; and Lycurgus Starkey, The Work of the Holy Spirit: A Study in Wesleyan Theology (New York: Abingdon, 1962), 26, 34, 37. Randy L. Maddox argues, however, that Wesley assigned a broader role to the Holy Spirit than that of merely subjectively applying the benefits of Christ. See Maddox, Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology (Nashville: Kingswood, 1994), 136–37. Hendrikus Berkhof also argues that the consequence of portraying the Spirit as the one who applies the benefits of redemption is to render his work instrumental and subordinate to the Son. See Berkhof, The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Richmond: John Knox, 1964), 23.

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The argument that sanctification is not of the essence of redemption and that it is subordinate to justification does not mean that Protestants and Evangelicals do not affirm its importance. But rather, that it is not part of the fundamental nature of salvation, which is to be declared righteous before God’s holy presence based on the penal death of Christ. The essence of salvation is faith in Christ’s penal death for human sin and not the sanctified life brought by the Holy Spirit.22 Traditional Protestant and evangelical theology sees this as its chief distinctive vis-à-vis the Catholic theology of grace and insists on this point in order to preserve the notion of justification by grace through faith.23 2.3 The Ordo Salutis, Christ, and the Holy Spirit The subordination of pneumatology to Christology comes to a third expression in the ordo salutis (order of redemption).24 The ordo salutis is a method of explaining the logical, and to some extent the temporal, sequence of the various biblical facets of human redemption. The Reformed, Wesleyan, and Wesleyan-Holiness traditions are similar with respect to their organization of the order of redemption. A common Reformed ordo salutis is election, calling, regeneration, faith and repentance, justification, adoption, sanctification, perseverance, and glorification.25 Wesley preferred the order of prevenient grace, repentance prior to justification, justification, new birth/regeneration, repentance after justification and the gradual process of sanctification, and entire

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Key progenitors of the three traditions that shape contemporary evangelical theology reflect this theology: see Luther, Lectures on Romans, 25:245, 257, 334, 336, 340, 370; Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.2 (1:727), 3.11.11 (1:738–41), 3.11.23 (1:753); and Wesley, Works, 1:455–58 (“The Lord Our Righteousness”) and 2:157–58 (“The Scripture Way of Salvation”). Hodge, Systematic Theology, 3:215–16, perennially popular among traditional evangelicals, gives this theology its classic Protestant scholastic expression. For example, see Formula of Concord, Article 3, in Theodore G. Tappert, The Book of ­Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Philadelphia: Mühlenberg, 1959), 472–75; Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.6 and 11 (1:732 and 738–41); Turretin, Institutes, 16.2.9– 10, 16.2.19–21, and 17.1.9–14 (2:640–41, 644–45, 690–91). For the development of the ordo salutis from the Reformation era through Protestant scholasticism, see Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 219–40. See John Murray, Redemption: Accomplished and Applied (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth and Trust, 1979), 87. For traditional and contemporary examples, see Turretin, Institutes, 2:501–689; William Ames, The Marrow of Theology, trans. John D. Eusden (Boston: Pilgrim, 1968), 153–74; and The Works of John Owen, vol. 5, Two Short Catechisms (London: Richard Baynes, 1826), 28–32; Hodge, Systematic Theology, 2:639–782 and 3:253–58; and Erickson, Christian Theology, 929–1002.

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sanctification.26 The differences between the Reformed and the Wesleyan order of redemption arises from the differing roles their theologies give to prevenient grace and human free will. In the Reformed ordo salutis, regeneration, repentance, and faith precede justification, whereas in the Wesleyan ordo ­salutis regeneration follows repentance, faith, and justification.27 The elements of the ordo salutis, moreover, correspond to the objective-subjective paradigm. The objective aspects that relate to the believer’s status before God are justification and adoption. The subjective aspects are regeneration, perseverance, and glorification, which comprehensively comprise sanctification. The order of redemption also reflects the subordination of the Spirit to Christ. For the Reformed and Wesleyan traditions, the Spirit’s role in the work of redemption is, notwithstanding minor differences, fundamentally the same. Wesleyan-Holiness theologian, Kenneth Grider, identifies the first work of grace as prevenient grace and repentance, justification, regeneration, initial sanctification, reconciliation, and adoption. The second work of grace is the baptism in the Holy Spirit, which initiates entire sanctification.28 The Reformed tradition, while not advocating two works of grace, nevertheless relates the Spirit’s primary work to sanctification.29 Consequently, both traditions primarily locate the role of the Holy Spirit in the subjective elements of sanctifying grace—for example, for the Reformed in regeneration and sanctification, for 26

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See Harald Gustaf Ake Lindström, Wesley and Sanctification: A Study in the Doctrine of Salvation (Stockholm: Nya Bokforlags Aktiebolage, 1946), 113–20. The status of the ordo salutis in Wesley’s theology is disputed. Randy Maddox prefers via salutis rather than ordo salutis. Maddox believes that Reformed scholasticism created the ordo salutis and that it is incompatible with Wesley’s pastoral concern in the soteriological process (see Maddox, Responsible Grace, 157–58). In contrast, Kenneth Collins, while using the via salutis to describe Wesley’s doctrine of salvation, nevertheless maintains that the ordo salutis underscores an essential aspect of Wesley’s soteriology, namely, that the process of salvation contains perceptible stages of growth and advancement. See Collins, The Scripture Way of Salvation: The Heart of John Wesley’s Theology (Nashville: Abingdon, 1997), 185–90. J. Kenneth Grider, a Wesleyan-Holiness theologian, has the following order of redemption: prevenient grace and repentance, justification, regeneration, initial sanctification, reconciliation, adoption, and entire sanctification. See Grider, A Wesleyan-Holiness Theology (Kansas City: Beacon Hill, 1994), 350–420. According to Maddox, the priority of regeneration to faith and justification in the Reformed ordo salutis is a key point that distinguishes it from Wesley’s Way of Salvation (see Maddox, Responsible Grace, 159). Louis Berkhof notes that the Reformed ordo salutis begins with regeneration to make explicit that salvation even in its inception is the work of God. See Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1941), 418. See Grider, A Wesleyan-Holiness Theology, 350–66. See James Murray, An Essay on Redemption by Jesus Christ (Newcastle: T. Slack, 1768), 141, 146–48; and Erickson, Christian Theology, 970.

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the Wesleyan-Holiness in regeneration and initial- and entire-sanctification.30 The essential difference between the two traditions is that Wesleyan-Holiness theology affirms the Holy Spirit can realize a higher degree of sanctification­— that is, entire sanctification. Although the elements of the ordo salutis have a linear relationship (calling, faith, regeneration, justification, and sanctification), a hierarchical one also characterizes them. The hierarchy of the ordo salutis and attribution of certain of its aspects to Christ and the Spirit reflect the assumptions of the objectivesubjective and achiever-applier paradigms. Although perhaps unintended, these paradigms and their consequence for the assignment of different works to Christ and the Spirit in the order of redemption reflect a twofold tendency toward subordination within the evangelical doctrine of salvation. On the one hand, evangelical theology subordinates the inner transformation of the believer or sanctification to the imputed righteousness of Christ or justification. On the other hand, it gives primacy to the work of Christ relative to that of the Spirit. In terms of the ordo salutis, late nineteenth century Reformed and Wesleyan theologians identified Spirit baptism as a post-conversion aspect of the ordo salutis. They separated Spirit baptism from conversion and described it as a second or subsequent work of grace.31 Once dislodged from conversion, three models of Spirit baptism emerged in nineteenth century Holiness and revivalist theologies. Holiness theologians united Wesleyan perfectionism and Pentecostal power under Spirit baptism.32 In contrast to the Wesleyan-Holiness teaching that Spirit baptism is for the eradication of sin, Reformed revivalists 30

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In Grider’s explanation of the first work of grace, the Holy Spirit receives no explicit role (see Grider, A Wesleyan-Holiness Theology, 350–66). To be sure, the Spirit is also the agent of regeneration. Regeneration, however, is the initiatory aspect of the broader doctrine of sanctification and is not properly distinct from it. In dialogue with John Wesley, John Fletcher argued that Spirit baptism is a post-­conversion experience that initiates entire sanctification. See John A. Knight, “John Fletcher’s Influence on the Development of Wesleyan Theology in America,” Wesleyan Theological Journal 13 (1978): 26–27; and Donald W. Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1987), 48–54. Wesley maintained the concurrence of Spirit baptism with conversion. However, in time, Fletcher’s view became dominant in the Wesleyan-Holiness traditions. For discussions on this issue, see Melvin E. Dieter, “The Development of 19th Century Holiness Theology,” Wesleyan Theological Journal 20 (1985): 68; David W. Faupel, The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 79, 90; and Victor Paul Reasoner, “The American Holiness Movement’s Paradigm Shift Concerning Pentecost,” Wesleyan Theological Journal 31 (1996): 133, 143. Phoebe Palmer is an example of including perfection and power under Spirit baptism (see Faupel, Everlasting Gospel, 84–85).

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emphasized empowerment for ministry as the primary purpose of Spirit baptism.33 Finally, “Third Blessing” proponents argued that the believer should receive three works of grace: conversion, entire sanctification, and Spirit baptism for empowered ministry.34 The important point is that Spirit baptism became one discrete aspect of the ordo salutis. The primary work of the Spirit, therefore, became a sub-category of the broader topic of sanctification or subjective application of redemption. 3

The Theological Capture of Pentecostalism

Protestant scholastic and evangelical paradigms provide the framework for traditional Pentecostal theology. Although the theological language of the paradigms—objective-subjective and achiever-applier—may never be heard in Pentecostal preaching, they structure Classical Pentecostal preaching and spiritual experience—for example, the call for people to be saved by Jesus at the cross and baptized in the Spirit at Pentecost. In this sense, the Protestant scholastic and evangelical paradigms function in the manner of George Lindbeck’s cultural-linguistic model of theology; they are the objective doctrines that inform Pentecostal practice and experience.35 A survey of Pentecostal theology shows that the evangelical paradigms provide the framework for the classical Pentecostal way of understanding the work of Christ and the Spirit and even their cherished doctrinal distinctive. 3.1 Pentecostal Theology and the Protestant Paradigms First, Pentecostal theology follows the tendency of evangelicalism to define salvation in terms of the Christocentric objective and the pneumatological 33

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Torrey, “Baptism,” 12–16. For the Reformed evangelical background of Pentecostal theology, see Edith L. Waldvogel, “The ‘Overcoming’ Life: A Study in the Reformed Evangelical Contribution to Pentecostalism,” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 1 (1979): 7–19; Edith L. Blumhofer, “The ‘Overcoming Life’: A Study in the Origins of Pentecostalism,” in Reckoning with the Past: Historical Essays on American Evangelicalism from the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 289–300; and Roland Wessels, “The Spirit Baptism, Nineteenth Century Roots,” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 14 (1992): 127–57. See Donald W. Dayton, “Doctrine of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit: Its Emergence and Significance,” Wesleyan Theological Journal 13 (1978): 114–26; and Faupel, Everlasting Gospel, 87–90. For a contemporary account of this theology, see Raymond M. Pruitt, Fundamentals of the Faith (Cleveland, TN: White Wing: 1981). George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984).

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subjective paradigm. Larry Hart affirms that in the Gospel, “God provides a twofold remedy with both an objective and a subjective pole: (1) the cross of Christ and (2) the Spirit of Christ.” He calls the former justification and describes it as a forensic transaction in which Christ’s death pays the debt of sin and provides the basis for God to acquit guilt and declare Christians righteous. The subjective pole is the Spirit’s transformation of the moral and spiritual condition of believers.36 Pentecostal theology, moreover, understands the objective aspect of redemption christologically and the subjective aspect pneumatologically.37 Early and influential Pentecostal (Assemblies of God) theologian, Myer Pearlman, assumes the objective-subjective paradigm, when he says “the outward aspect of grace is provided by the atoning work of Christ; the inward aspect is the work of the Holy Spirit.”38 R. Hollis Gause, Church of God theologian, also maintains the objective-justification and subjective-sanctification paradigm.39 This view of the relationship between justification and sanctification and Christ and the Holy Spirit squarely places Pentecostal soteriology within the Protestant orthodox tradition. Second, Pentecostal theology casts the work of Christ and the Spirit in terms of the achiever-applier paradigm. Hart states that “we will explore the application of Christ’s redemptive work, portrayed in the Scriptures as the particular domain of the Holy Spirit…[and] the Spirit alone can communicate to us the saving benefits of Christ’s death.”40 On the one hand, this statement contains 36

Larry D. Hart, Truth Aflame: Theology for the Church in Renewal, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 343, 354, 362, 390–91. Larry Hart’s Truth Aflame is cited for illustrative purposes, but additional documentary evidence from other important Pentecostal systematic theologies is referenced in the notes. Although Hart’s text is not a Classical Pentecostal account in all respects, its purpose is to provide a current Pentecostal introduction to systematic theology, and reflects the traditional categories of the paradigms and their consequences for pneumatology. Also see John R. Higgins, Michael L. Dusing, and Frank D. Tallman, An Introduction to Theology: A Classical Pentecostal Perspective (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1994), 119. 37 See Myer Pearlman, Knowing the Doctrines of the Bible, rev. ed. (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1981; originally published 1937), 222, 258. R. Hollis Gause, the Church of God theologian, also maintains the objective-justification and subjective-sanctification paradigm. See Gause, Living in the Spirit: The Way of Salvation (Cleveland, TN: Pathway, 1980), 50. 38 Pearlman, Knowing the Doctrines of the Bible, 222. On the influence of Pearlman in Pentecostal, and especially Assemblies of God, theology, see L. William Oliverio, Jr., Theological Hermeneutics in the Classical Pentecostal Tradition: A Typological Account (Boston: Brill, 2012), 212–30. 39 Gause, Living in the Spirit, 50. 40 Hart, Truth Aflame, 372, 363. For additional examples, see Gause, Living in the Spirit, 12, 20, 49; Higgins, Dusing, and Tallman, Introduction to Theology, 108; Timothy P. Jenney,

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an obvious truth: Christ’s work on the cross provides redemption. Yet at the same time, the language and theory behind it imply that the Spirit does not contribute to the benefits of redemption, but only to their distribution. Thus, the result is the reduction of the Spirit to the instrument or agent of applying the redemptive benefits otherwise earned by Christ. R. Hollis Gause endeavors to overcome the Pentecostal penchant for fragmenting Christian experience by integrating Spirit baptism with the wider theology of grace.41 Gause, however, remains within the paradigm of Protestant scholastic and evangelical soteriology. The Holy Spirit plays the instrumental role of applying the gifts of redemption provided by Christ.42 Assemblies of God theologian Timothy P. Jenney also shows the influence of Protestant scholasticism when he adopts the definition of sanctification and the Spirit’s role in it from evangelical scholar Millard Erickson—“sanctification is the Holy Spirit’s applying to the life of the believer the work done by Jesus Christ.”43 Later Jenney affirms that the work of Christ was finished on the cross and that the Holy Spirit is the active agent of sanctification.44 Emphasizing the cross is not the problem, but downplaying the Spirit is. The cross is central to a Christian theology of grace. Classical Pentecostal theology,

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“The Holy Spirit and Sanctification,” in Systematic Theology, rev. ed., ed. Stanley M. Horton (Springfield, MO: Logion, 1994 and 1998), 397, 400, 417; Pearlman, Knowing the Doctrines of the Bible, 286; Pruitt, Fundamentals, 205; Ernest S. Williams, Systematic Theology (Springfield MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1953), 2:233 and 3:33; and J. Rodman Williams, Renewal Theology: Systematic Theology from a Charismatic Perspective (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 2:4. Although Wesleyan-Holiness Pentecostal, Gause nonetheless fits the classification of “Classical Pentecostal” because he affirms that Spirit baptism is subsequent to salvation and speaking in tongues is the initial evidence of Spirit baptism. Gause also adopts the objective-subjective soteriological paradigm. See Gause, Living in the Spirit, 50 for the objective-subjective paradigm and 76–84 for his affirmation of the doctrine of subsequence and initial evidence. See Gause, Living in the Spirit, 12, 20, 49. Although they are not Classical Pentecostals, nevertheless Raymond M. Pruitt and J. Rodman Williams define the Spirit’s soteriological function in instrumental terms (see Pruitt, Fundamentals of the Faith, 205; and J.R. ­Williams, Renewal Theology, 2:43). See Jenney, “The Holy Spirit and Sanctification,” 400. Also, note that Jenney cites with approval the Protestant orthodox theologians A.H. Strong and Charles Hodge just prior to the Erickson citation. Higgins, Dusing, and Tallman describe the instrumental role of the Spirit as, “in a broad manner, the Holy Spirit is usually depicted in Scripture as transmitting and applying to the believer the work of the Father and the Son” (see Higgins, et al., An Introduction to Theology, 108). For additional instances of Assemblies of God theologians adopting this view, see Pearlman, Knowing the Doctrines of the Bible, 286 and E.S. Williams, Systematic Theology, 2:233 and 3:33. See Jenney, “The Holy Spirit and Sanctification,” 397, 417.

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however, portrays salvation in almost entirely Christological and crucicentric terms. The presence of the achiever-applier paradigm reveals the capture of classical Pentecostal theology by a theological tradition that subordinates the pneumatological, relational, and transformational character of Pentecostal spirituality to Christological, judicial, and penal categories. The place of Spirit baptism in the Pentecostal ordo salutis also demonstrates the influence of the objective-subjective and achiever-applier paradigms. Pentecostal theology generally adopts an Arminian-Wesleyan structure of the ordo salutis, but a Reformed revivalist view on the nature and purpose of Spirit baptism.45 Thus, they linked Spirit baptism with empowerment for ministry in contrast to entire sanctification. Aside from initial evidence, the Pentecostal doctrine of Spirit Baptism is virtually indistinguishable from the Reformed revivalist doctrine of Spirit baptism.46 From the perspective of historical theology, the identification of tongues as the necessary concomitant to Spirit baptism is the unique permutation of Pentecostal theology to the doctrine of Spirit baptism popular in nineteenth century revivalism. The result is that pneumatology features prominently in only one aspect of the Pentecostal order of redemption—Spirit baptism. Thus, Pentecostal theology mirrors the structural relationships between Christ and the Spirit embedded in the evangelical theological tradition. 3.2 Consequences for Spirit Baptism, the Pentecostal Sine Qua Non The objective-subjective and achiever-applier paradigms, as well as their impact on the order of redemption, provide the theological grammar for the Pentecostal doctrine of Spirit baptism. Pentecostals distinguish Spirit baptism from justification and conversion or salvation. One is saved by Christ at the cross and baptized in the Spirit at Pentecost.47 As illustrated by the discussion of the broader evangelical tradition, the distinction between the proper works of Christ and the Spirit is not unique to Pentecostals. Pentecostal theology, 45

46 47

For Pentecostal organizations of the ordo salutis, see French L. Arrington, Christian Doctrine: A Pentecostal Perspective (Cleveland, TN: Pathway, 1993), 2:20–21, 200–52; Higgins, Dusing, and Tallman, Introduction to Theology, 109–20; Pearlman, Knowing the Doctrines, 222–67; Daniel B. Pecota, “The Saving Work of Christ”; and John W. Wyckoff, “The Baptism of the Holy Spirit,” in Systematic Theology, rev. ed., ed. Stanley M. Horton (Springfield, MO: Logion, 1994 and 1998), 431, 446, 449. For example, compare Torrey, “Baptism,” 12; and the Assemblies of God position paper on Spirit baptism, General Council of the Assemblies of God, “Baptism in the Holy Spirit,” 3. For example, see Colin Dye, “Are Pentecostals Pentecostal?: A Revisit to the Doctrine of Pentecost,” The Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 19 (1999): 64–66.

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­ owever, not only locates the Spirit’s primary work in the subjective category of h redemption, but radicalizes the subjective nature of the Spirit’s work by placing the Spirit’s primary work in a post-conversion experience of empowerment for ministry—Spirit baptism. Whereas evangelical theology dislodges the Spirit’s chief role from the objective work of Christ or salvation proper and places the Spirit’s work under the broad subjective category of sanctification and application of redemption, Pentecostalism reduces the Spirit’s primary work to an optional experience within the overall subjective dimension of grace. Spirit baptism becomes just one (optional) benefit within the ordo salutis that the Spirit applies to the believer. The result is that Pentecostal theology intensifies the subordination of the Spirit already present within the evangelical tradition. Here lies the irony of Pentecostal theology. Pentecostals intended to give the Spirit’s work preeminence in the doctrine of Spirit baptism. By using the objective-subjective and achiever-applier paradigms to do so, however, they made the Spirit’s primary work adjunct to salvation.48 A case in point is Robert P. Menzies argument that Spirit baptism is a donum superadditum to the salvation provided by Christ.49 His purpose is to safeguard the integrity of Luke-Acts’ pneumatology vis-à-vis Pauline pneumatology. In other words, he rejects the subordination of Luke-Acts to Paul. In that respect, he is on the mark. The problem, however, is that Menzies reads Luke-Acts and Paul through the Protestant objective-subjective and achiever-applier paradigms. Paul is about justification and salvation. Luke-Acts is about empowerment. William W. Menzies and Robert P. Menzies argue that the “Pentecostal gift…provides for witness not justification before God or personal cleansing.”50 Thus, the defining feature of Pentecostalism has nothing to do with salvation itself or even sanctification for that matter, but relates only to charismatic empowered witness. Although Spirit baptism is the primary work of the Holy Spirit and the doctrinal distinctive of Pentecostalism, it is an optional benefit in the overall order of redemption. The Spirit’s primary work has nothing to do with the substance of salvation. The irony here is that although maintaining the independent and unique theological voice of Luke-Acts r­elative to Paul, 48

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Gordon Anderson, in an attempt to show that the Pentecostal doctrine of Spirit baptism does not lead to spiritual elitism, argues precisely this point: Spirit baptism, while useful to the Christian pilgrimage, is not ultimately necessary. Anderson is dealing with the fact that a multitude of evangelical leaders, who have not had the experience, nevertheless have tremendously successful ministries. See Anderson, “Baptism in the Holy Spirit, Initial Evidence, and a New Model,” Paraclete 27 (1993): 1–10. Robert P. Menzies, The Development of Early Christian Pneumatology, with Special Reference to Luke-Acts (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), 48. William W. Menzies and Robert P. Menzies, Spirit and Power: Foundations of Pentecostal Experience (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 115.

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this Pentecostal pneumatology not only reflects the subordination of the Spirit to Christ, but intensifies it. Menzies is correct that Luke-Acts adds something important to New Testament pneumatology and should not be read through a Pauline paradigm. But neither Luke-Acts nor Paul, for that matter, should be read through a Protestant paradigm that privileges Christological to pneumatological and legal to transformational categories. The primary work of the Holy Spirit—Spirit baptism—is irrelevant for salvation in Classical Pentecostalism. Indeed, the Pentecostal subordination of the Holy Spirit to Christ is even more severe than in Protestant scholastic and evangelical theology. The subordination of the Spirit is paramount in the Pentecostal teaching that the Spirit’s primary work is unnecessary for salvation. Here lies the irony of Pentecostal theology. While Pentecostals have tried to give the Spirit’s work preeminence in the doctrine of Spirit baptism, the articulation of this doctrine through the objective-subjective and achiever-applier paradigms results in defining this work as optional for salvation. Dabney was correct. The inherited Protestant and evangelical paradigms are incapable of articulating the theological yield of the vital, dynamic, and diverse ways Pentecostals experience the Holy Spirit. 4

An Ecumenical Impasse?

During the 1990s Pentecostal scholars began to prefer “charismatic” experience over the doctrine of Spirit baptism for identifying the essence of Pentecostalism.51 Charismatic experience includes and describes both personal experience of the Holy Spirit and the collective character of the Pentecostal spirituality. At least two reasons account for the shift from doctrine to charismatic experience to define the nature of the Pentecostalism. First, even though marginalizing the Holy Spirit in theological terms, the doctrine of Spirit baptism is elitist. It assumes that Christians who receive Spirit baptism and speak in tongues have a deeper experience of the Holy Spirit. Second, the classical doctrine of Spirit baptism cannot accommodate the variety of charismatic experiences within the wider global Pentecostal movements.52 Walter J. Hollenweger has 51

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Allan Anderson, Pentecostalism: An Introduction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 13–14, 187–88; Mark J. Cartledge, Encountering the Spirit: The Charismatic Tradition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2007), 19–32. Steven J. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 23–32; Keith Warrington, Pentecostal Theology: A Theology of Encounter (New York: T&T Clark, 2008), 18–27. See my discussion of the implications of the diverse experiences of the Spirit in global Pentecostalism for the traditional Classical Pentecostal doctrine of Spirit baptism in “Globalization and Spirit Baptism,” in Pentecostalism and Globalization: The Impact of

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demonstrated the variety of global Pentecostal theology, practices, and historical trajectories. His work was a key factor in the search for a more ecumenical and inclusive understanding of Pentecostal identity and the turn to charismatic experience over the doctrine of Spirit baptism.53 Shifting the essence of Pentecostalism to charismatic experience does not deny the value of Pentecostal theology. But, given the diversity of Pentecostal theologies, it decenters the place of theology in the movement.54 Theology is peripheral to Pentecostalism. Pentecostalism is about charismatic experience, not a particular theology or doctrine. The classical doctrinal and contemporary experiential ways of defining Pentecostalism are problematic for Pentecostal ecumenical dialogue. Pentecostals are left bringing Terry Cross’s theological relish to the ecumenical table. Why? The doctrinal approach is derivative from the evangelical tradition and, by amplifying its Christocentrism, makes the Spirit subsidiary to redemption. The experiential approach renders theology an epiphenomenon to Pentecostalism and, therefore, inconsequential to Pentecostalism.55 If Pentecostals bring nothing more than speaking in tongues and charismatic experience to the ecumenical theological table, then they bring the relish, and it is pretty paltry at that. This may seem harsh. But in theological terms it is true. Unless Pentecostals can give theological voice to their experience of the Holy Spirit, they have little to offer the wider traditions of Christian theology. Why? There are two reasons. First, their traditional theology is borrowed and, thus, not Pentecostal. Second, the theological implications of their experience of the Holy Spirit remain unarticulated.

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Globalization­on Pentecostal Theology and Ministry, ed. Steven M. Studebaker (Eugene: Pickwick, 2010), 87–108. Walter J. Hollenweger, The Pentecostals (London: scm, 1972); and idem, Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997). Harvey Cox’s interpretation of Pentecostalism as a manifestation of primal religion was also an early contribution to this trend—Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995), 81–83. E.g., see Douglas Jacobsen’s argument that doctrinal diversity in early Pentecostalism precludes reaching a doctrinal definition of Pentecostalism in Thinking in the Spirit: Theologies of the Early Pentecostal Movement (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 10–12; and Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen’s statement that “the best thing to do is to acknowledge and live with the lack of consensus. Diversity is the hallmark of this Spirit movement” in “Pneumatologies in Systematic Theology,” in Studying Global Pentecostalism: Theories and Methods, ed. Allan Anderson, Michael Begrunder, André Droogers, and Cornelius van der Laan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 232. Simon Chan, “Whither Pentecostalism,” in Asian and Pentecostal: The Charismatic Face of Christianity in Asia, ed. Allan Anderson and Edmond Tang (Baguio City: Regnum, 2005), 579; and Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit, 55.

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The Way Forward for Pentecostal Theology

Fortunately, Pentecostal theologians are finding theological alternatives to the ecumenical impasses presented by the doctrine of Spirit baptism and charismatic experience. The early twenty-first century saw Pentecostal theologians, such as Frank Macchia and Amos Yong, carry out two theological tasks. On the one hand, they argued that the Pentecostal experience of the Spirit bears theological implications and, on the other hand, they worked to develop a more comprehensive Pentecostal pneumatology than found in the Classical Pentecostal doctrine of Spirit baptism.56 Theology and experience cannot be separated. Spirit baptism, so central to Pentecostal experience, has implications for Pentecostal pneumatology and can serve as the foundation for a Pentecostal contribution to the wider traditions of Christian theology. Frank Macchia argues that Spirit baptism is the biblical and theological metaphor that captures the essence of Pentecostalism.57 Although Macchia does not reject the classical Pentecostal account of Spirit baptism, his view of Spirit baptism is more expansive than found in classical Pentecostalism (although he comes from that background). His key works in Pentecostal pneumatology endeavored to recover the central place of the classical doctrine of Spirit baptism for the movement. This project began with his seminal Baptized in the Spirit (2006). Against the popular trend to portray Pentecostalism in terms of charismatic experience and doctrinal diversity, he argues that Spirit baptism is the distinctive doctrine of Pentecostalism. Not content to rehash exhausted conversations over the interpretation of Luke-Acts vis-à-vis Paul and the doctrine of initial evidence, he articulates the doctrine from the perspective of the Trinity, shows its implications for ecclesiology and the entire Christian life, and thereby releases it from its confinement in a narrowly defined second experience of grace and speaking in tongues.58 His 2010 Justified in the Spirit extends and applies the vision of the previous book to the doctrine of justification by faith. He proposes a Pentecostal theology of justification that moves beyond the traditional Catholic view of 56

Frank D. Macchia, Justified in the Spirit: Creation, Redemption, and the Triune God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010); and Amos Yong, Spirit of Love: A Trinitarian Theology of Grace (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2012). I also make the argument that the Pentecostal experience of the Spirit has theological implications for Pentecostal trinitarian theology and political theology. See Studebaker, From Pentecost to the Triune God, 11–52 and A Pentecostal Theology for American Renewal: Spirit of the Kingdoms, Citizens of the Cities (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 57 Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit, 26. Also see Chan, Spiritual Theology, 47. 58 Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit.

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moral transformation and Protestant emphasis on a forensic declaration of righteousness. Macchia’s solution is to articulate the doctrine of Spirit baptism from the perspective of the Trinity. In doing so he releases it from its confinement in a narrowly defined second experience of grace and speaking in tongues. He draws on Athanasian and Augustinian theology. Macchia turns to the Athanasian notion of the “mutual dependence” of the divine persons.59 Mutual dependence means that the Father is Father only in relation to the Son and the Son in relation to the Father. Applied to the Spirit’s work in justification, Macchia argues that the Spirit opens up to the world the love enjoyed and shared between the Father and the Son. He also adopts Augustine’s view of the Spirit as the mutual love of the Father and the Son with an important qualification. He recognizes that portraying the Spirit as a “bond” of love runs the risk of depersonalizing the Spirit. His solution to overcome the tendency to depersonalize the Spirit in the mutual love tradition is to assign the Spirit an active role in the economy of grace. The result is a trinitarian interpretation of justification. The Spirit justifies people through Spirit baptism and includes them in the koinonia of God.60 Justification consists in Spirit baptism that brings a renewal of life and inclusion into the divine koinonia. Yong begins with the Pentecostal tendency to associate the Holy Spirit with spiritual gifts and empowerment for ministry. For Yong, the experience of the Holy Spirit as divine love is at the root of Pentecostal experience and ministry. What Pentecostals often identify as empowerment are the “performative explications of encounters with divine love.”61 Pentecostal experiences, such as Spirit baptism, arise from the presence of God in the Holy Spirit. Spirit baptism is the nurturing and tangible presence of God. A presence that God makes evident in signs and gifts of the Spirit. Pentecostal worship and prayer is the relational and reciprocal expression of gratitude for God’s loving presence. The Spirit of Pentecost, therefore, is fundamentally the presence of God’s love. But that love is active. It gives and renews life. It is not without empowerment, but the enabling of the Spirit arises from the embrace of the Spirit as God’s love. The embrace of divine love in the presence of the Holy Spirit heals, cares, and leads Pentecostals into a renewed life. Being baptized by the Spirit of Pentecost is the gift of gifts. Macchia and Yong affirm that the Spirit is central, and not an adjunct to Christian salvation. They do not displace Christology, but make the Spirit an equal partner in the work of redemption. The Holy Spirit contributes to the substance 59 Macchia, Justified in the Spirit, 303. 60 Macchia, Justified in the Spirit, 302. 61 Yong, Spirit of Love, 51. See esp. the chapters in part two for Yong’s development of a Pentecostal and pneumatological theology of divine love.

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of salvation. For Macchia and Yong, the gift of the Spirit establishes the trinitarian community of divine presence and love, which emphasizes relational and transformational rather than judicial and penal themes that characterize the Protestant scholastic and evangelical paradigms. Pentecostal pneumatology should continue in the direction advocated by Macchia and Yong. Why? Because it better captures the place of the Spirit in the biblical narrative of redemption and in Pentecostal experience. It also promises a richer theological contribution to ecumenical theology than the Classical Pentecostal doctrine of Spirit baptism and more recent emphasis on Charismatic experience. 6 Conclusion Pentecostal ecumenical dialogue has two impasses. On the one hand, although Pentecostals emphasize the experience of the Holy Spirit, their Classical doctrine of Spirit baptism does not. On the other hand, the contemporary trend to define Pentecostalism in terms of charismatic experience leaves Pentecostal theology marginalized. This chapter identifies the theological sources of Pentecostal theology’s capture by evangelical theology’s Christocentrism. It also argues that contemporary work by Pentecostal theologians, such as Frank D. Macchia and Amos Yong, overcome the ecumenical impasses of Classical Pentecostalism and the turn to charismatic experience. They show that the Pentecostal experience of the Holy Spirit inspires a Pentecostal theological contribution to the table of ecumenical dialogue. Bibliography Althaus, Paul. The Theology of Martin Luther. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966. Ames, William. The Marrow of Theology. Translated by John D. Eusden. Boston: Pilgrim, 1968. Anderson, Allan. Pentecostalism: An Introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Anderson, Gordon. “Baptism in the Holy Spirit, Initial Evidence, and a New Model.” Paraclete 27 (1993): 1–10. Arrington, French L. Christian Doctrine: A Pentecostal Perspective. 3 Vols. Cleveland: Pathway, 1993. Badcock, Gary D. Light of Truth and Fire of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997. Berkhof, Hendrikus. The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Richmond: John Knox, 1964. Berkhof, Hendrikus. Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1941.

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Blumhofer, Edith L. “The ‘Overcoming Life’: A Study in the Origins of Pentecostalism.” In Reckoning with the Past: Historical Essays on American Evangelicalism from the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995. Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Edited by John T. McNeill. Translated by Ford Lewis Battles. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960. Cannon, William Ragsdale. The Theology of John Wesley, with Special Reference to the Doctrine of Justification. Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1946. Cartledge, Mark J. Encountering the Spirit: The Charismatic Tradition. Maryknoll: Orbis, 2007. Chan, Simon. Spiritual Theology: A Systematic Study of the Christian Life. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1998. Chan, Simon. “Whither Pentecostalism.” In Asian and Pentecostal: The Charismatic Face of Christianity in Asia. Edited by Allan Anderson and Edmond Tang. Baguio City: Regnum, 2005, 575–86. Collins, Kenneth. The Scripture Way of Salvation: The Heart of John Wesley’s Theology. Nashville: Abingdon, 1997. Cox, Harvey. Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century. Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1995. Cross, Terry L. “The Rich Feast of Theology: Can Pentecostals Bring the Main Course or Only the Relish?” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 16 (2000): 27–47. Dabney, D. Lyle. “Saul’s Armor: The Problem and the Promise of Pentecostal Theology Today.” Pneuma 23 (2001): 115–17. Dayton, Donald. “The Historical Background of Pneumatological Issues in the Holiness Movement.” In The Spirit and the New Age: An Inquiry into the Holy Spirit and Last Things from a Biblical Theological Perspective. Anderson: Warner, 1986. Dayton, Donald. “Pneumatological Issues in the Holiness Movement.” In Spirit of Truth: Ecumenical Perspectives on the Holy Spirit. Edited by Theodore Stylianopoulos and S. Mark Heim. Brookline: Holy Cross Orthodox, 1986. Dayton, Donald. Theological Roots of Pentecostalism. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1987. Dayton, Donald. “Doctrine of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit: Its Emergence and Significance.” Wesleyan Theological Journal 13 (1978): 114–26. Demarest, Bruce. The Cross and Salvation: The Doctrine of Salvation. Wheaton: Crossway, 1997. Dieter, Melvin E. “The Development of 19th Century Holiness Theology.” Wesleyan Theological Journal 20 (1985): 61–77. Dye, Colin. “Are Pentecostals Pentecostal?: A Revisit to the Doctrine of Pentecost.” The Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 19 (1999): 56–80. Erickson, Millard J. Christian Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983–85. Faupel, David W. The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996.

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Ferguson, Sinclair B. The Holy Spirit. England: InterVarsity Press, 1996. Gabriel, Andrew K., Adam Stewart, and Kevin Shanahan. “Changing Conceptions of Speaking in Tongues and Spirit Baptism among Canadian Pentecostal Clergy.” Canadian Journal of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity 7 (2016): 1–24. Gause, R. Hollis. Living in the Spirit: The Way of Salvation. Cleveland: Pathway, 1980. Grider, J. Kenneth. A Wesleyan-Holiness Theology. Kansas City: Beacon Hill, 1994. Grudem, Wayne. Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994. Hart, Larry D. Truth Aflame: Theology for the Church in Renewal, rev. ed. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005. Higgins, John R., Michael L. Dusing, and Frank D. Tallman. An Introduction to Theology: A Classical Pentecostal Perspective. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1994. Hocken, Peter. “The Pentecostal-Charismatic Movement as Revival and Renewal.” Pneuma 3 (1981): 31–47. Hocken, Peter. “Revival and Renewal.” Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 18 (1998): 49–63. Hodge, Charles. Systematic Theology. 3 Vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952. Hollenweger, Walter J. The Pentecostals. London: SCM, 1972. Hollenweger, Walter J. Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1997. Jacobsen, Douglas. Thinking in the Spirit: Theologies of the Early Pentecostal Movement. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. Jenney, Timothy P. “The Holy Spirit and Sanctification.” In Systematic Theology, rev. ed. Edited by Stanley M. Horton. Springfield, MO: Logion, 1998. Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. “Pneumatologies in Systematic Theology.” In Studying Global Pentecostalism: Theories and Methods. Edited by Allan Anderson, Michael Begrunder, André Droogers, and Cornelius van der Laan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010, 223–44. Knight, John A. “John Fletcher’s Influence on the Development of Wesleyan Theology in America.” Wesleyan Theological Journal 13 (1978): 13–33. Land, Steven J. Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993. Letham, Robert. The Work of Christ. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1993. Lindbeck, George A. The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984. Lindström, Harald Gustaf Ake. Wesley and Sanctification: A Study in the Doctrine of Salvation. Stockholm: Nya Bokforlags Aktiebolage, 1946. Luther, Martin. Luther’s Works. Edited by Hilton C. Oswald. Volume 25. Lectures on Romans Glosses and Scholia. Translated by Walter G. Tillmans and Jacob A.O. Preus. Saint Louis: Concordia, 1972.

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Macchia, Frank D. Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006. Macchia, Frank D. Justified in the Spirit: Creation, Redemption, and the Triune God. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010. Maddox, Randy L. Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology. Nashville: Kingswood, 1994. McGee, Gary B. People of the Spirit: The Assemblies of God, rev. ed. Springfield: Gospel Publishing House, 2014. McGrath, Alister E. Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Menzies, Robert P. The Development of Early Christian Pneumatology, with Special Reference to Luke-Acts. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991. Menzies, William M. and Robert P. Menzies. Spirit and Power: Foundations of Pentecostal Experience. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000. Muller, Richard A. Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics. 4 Vols. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1987. Murray, James. An Essay on Redemption by Jesus Christ. Newcastle: T. Slack, 1768. Murray, John. Redemption: Accomplished and Applied. Carlisle: Banner of Truth and Trust, 1979. Oliverio, L. William, Jr. Theological Hermeneutics in the Classical Pentecostal Tradition: A Typological Account. Boston: Brill, 2012. Owen, John. Two Short Catechisms. London: Richard Baynes, 1826. Pearlman, Myer. Knowing the Doctrines of the Bible, rev. ed. Springfield: Gospel Publishing House, 1981. Pecota, Daniel B. “The Saving Work of Christ.” In Systematic Theology, rev. ed. Edited by Stanley M. Horton. Springfield: Logion, 1998. Pruitt, Raymond M. Fundamentals of the Faith. Cleveland: White Wing, 1981. Reasoner, Victor Paul. “The American Holiness Movement’s Paradigm Shift Concerning Pentecost.” Wesleyan Theological Journal 31 (1996): 132–46. Robeck, Cecil M., Jr. “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. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012, 163–94. Rusch, William G. “The Theology of the Holy Spirit and the Pentecostal Churches in the Ecumenical Movement.” Pneuma 9 (1987): 17–30. Starkey, Lycurgus. The Work of the Holy Spirit: A Study in Wesleyan Theology. New York: Abingdon, 1962. Studebaker, Steven. “Pentecostal Soteriology and Pneumatology.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 11 (2003): 248–70. Studebaker, Steven. The Trinitarian Vision of Jonathan Edwards and David Coffey. Amherst: Cambria, 2011.

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Studebaker, Steven. From Pentecost to the Triune God: A Pentecostal Trinitarian Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012. Studebaker, Steven. “Globalization and Spirit Baptism.” In Pentecostalism and Globalization: The Impact of Globalization on Pentecostal Theology and Ministry. Edited by Steven M. Studebaker. Eugene: Pickwick, 2010, 87–108. Studebaker, Steven. A Pentecostal Theology for American Renewal: Spirit of the Kingdoms, Citizens of the Cities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Tappert, Theodore G. The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Philadelphia: Mühlenberg, 1959. Tarr, Del. “Transcendence, Immanence, and the Emerging Pentecostal Academy.” In Pentecostalism in Context: Essays in Honor of William W. Menzies. Edited by Wonsuk Ma and Robert P. Menzies. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997, 195–222. Torrey, R.A. Fullness of Power in Christian Life and Service. Wheaton: Sword of the Lord, 1897. Turretin, Francis. Institutes of Elenctic Theology. Edited by James T. Dennison, Jr. Translated by George M. Giger. Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1992–97. Waldvogel, Edith L. “The ‘Overcoming’ Life: A Study in the Reformed Evangelical Contribution to Pentecostalism.” Pneuma 1 (1979): 7–19. Warrington, Keith. Pentecostal Theology: A Theology of Encounter. New York: T&T Clark, 2008. Wesley, John. “The Lord Our Righteousness.” In The Works of John Wesley, vol. 1. Sermons i, 1–33. Edited by Albert C. Outler. Nashville: Abingdon, 1984, 444–65. Wesley, John. “The Scripture Way of Salvation.” In The Works of John Wesley, vol. 2. Sermons ii, 34–70. Edited by Albert C. Outler. Nashville: Abingdon, 1985, 153–69. Wessels, Ronald. “The Spirit Baptism, Nineteenth Century Roots.” Pneuma 14 (1992): 127–57. Williams, Ernest S. Systematic Theology. 3 Vols. Springfield: Gospel Publishing House, 1953. Williams, J. Rodman. Renewal Theology: Systematic Theology from a Charismatic Perspective. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996. Wyckoff, John W. “The Baptism of the Holy Spirit.” In Systematic Theology, rev ed. Edited by Stanley M. Horton. Springfield: Logion, 1995, 423–55. Yong, Amos. Spirit of Love: A Trinitarian Theology of Grace. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2012.

Chapter 15

Correlating Intra-Christian Relations and Interreligious Realities Tony L. Richie 1 Introduction In recent years three facts of contemporary religious life have become increasingly clear. First, Pentecostal faith and life today not only demand interactive encounters with a wide variety of other Christians but with non-Christian faiths. Second, interacting with adherents of other religions is complex and multidimensional, including a unique set of relational dynamics between Christians themselves as well as counterparts in non-Christian religions. Third, Pentecostals are by no means exempt from the current demands and responsibilities of ecumenical and interfaith realities. This chapter explores representative history and theology where these themes intersect today. It does not purport to speak for all, or even for most, Pentecostals; but, it is deeply rooted in the Pentecostal tradition with an emphasis on that shared trajectory. Before proceeding, a brief word about methodology is in order. I have previously argued that testimony is a valid means of Pentecostal participation in interreligious dialogue.1 In this essay, I utilize testimony to examine the relationship between intra-Christian and interreligious activities. That is, the story I share illustrates, and to an extent, explicates, parts of the relationship between the two in the form of my own involvement. A testimonial approach is by nature narratival, conversational in tone, and a bit autobiographical. My intention herein, in continuity with my earlier work, is an exploitation of testimony’s potential in a didactic recitation of correlating intra-Christian and interreligious realities.

1 Tony Richie, Speaking by the Spirit: A Pentecostal Model for Interreligious Dialogue, Asbury Seminary Series in World Christian Revitalization Movements in Pentecostal/Charismatic Studies 6 (Lexington, KY: Emeth Press, 2011); and idem, Toward a Pentecostal Theology of Religions: Encountering Cornelius Today (Cleveland, TN: cpt, 2013).

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Understanding the Terminology

As a Christian practitioner I have found it necessary to consider the correlation of intra-Christian relations and inter-religious relations. The prefix “intra” signifies relations between Christian groups of differing persuasions. It may involve conversations between Catholics and Protestants or, for another example, between Protestants and Orthodox. There may also enter another ring of “intra,” as it were. Within Protestantism itself this aspect may involve interaction between, say, Baptists and Methodists or Wesleyans and Reformed traditions, and so on. In our context “inter” signifies Christian relations with non-Christian world religions. For example, Christians may enter into various forms of dialogue and/or cooperation with Jews or Muslims. It is important to distinguish intraChristian relations from interreligious relations.2 Intra-Christian relations, or ecumenism,3 do not automatically include or lead into interreligious activities. For example, the work of Cecil Robeck with Catholicism is ecumenical but not interreligious.4 However, there are certain almost inescapable correlations between intraChristian and interreligious activities—although not necessarily bi-­directional. In a dialogue between, say Jews or Muslims, and Christians, the Christian delegation is rarely monolithic. It often includes Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, and a Pentecostal. The Protestants will usually include several denominations. In order to relate and communicate effectively in an interreligious environment one has to relate and communicate simultaneously in an intra-Christian or ecumenical manner as well. 3

Early Stirrings

From the early days of the Classical Pentecostal movement there have been slight stirrings in the direction of Christian theology of religions.5 The man many consider the founder or co-founder (with William Seymour) 2 For me “interfaith” is essentially synonymous with “interreligious.” 3 From Late Latin oecumenicus, belonging to the whole inhabited world, and Greek oikoumenikós, used today of the Christian household of faith. 4 See the essay by Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. in this volume. 5 Names like Elizabeth Brown, Robert Cook, and Margaret Gaines come to mind. Richie, ­Toward a Pentecostal Theology of Religions, 1–6.

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of the contemporary Pentecostal movement, Charles Parham, indulged in ­eschatologically-oriented speculation on the unevangelized and adherents of other religions.6 Parham envisioned the eschaton with space for the “heathen” as Christ’s inheritance (per Psalm 2). Prominent Pentecostal Holiness leader and thinker J.H. King exemplified an optimistic openness but with more theological subtlety than Parham.7 His Christology suggested that some encounter with “the essential Christ” may occur apart from knowledge of “the historical Christ”. In other words, conceivably, limited experience of the eternal Christ may occur without an epistemological awareness of the Incarnation.8 Later, around mid-twentieth century, Church of God (cog) (Cleveland, TN) author George Britt offered some rather startlingly positive ideas about religious others.9 Britt suggested that some devotees in non-Christian religions (e.g. Confucius) be considered “constitutionally Christian.” In other words, essential elements of that which comprises Christianity might be found to a degree in some non-Christians. Admittedly, these instances do not suggest systematic or sustained analysis according to contemporary scholarship standards. But they do set some interesting precedents. Thomas Roberts is an intriguing example from the European context. Roberts was a Pentecostal who hailed from the geo-spiritual environment of the famous Welsh Revival around the turn of the twentieth century. As Jean-Daniel Plüss points out, Roberts not only became an avid ecumenist but also reached out to Jews.10 He wrestled with the reality of Israel and Judaism and their relation to Christians and Christianity in a manner quite beyond the usual nod to a parent religion or bowing the knee to rampant prophetic speculation. Yet ­Roberts’s missionary and evangelistic emphases continued unabated. He is thus indicative of a measure of intersecting interests in early Pentecostalism beyond itself into other Christian groups and into at least one non-Christian religion. 6 7 8 9

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Tony Richie, “Eschatological Inclusivism: Exploring Early Pentecostal Theology of Religions in Charles Fox Parham,” Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 27, no. 2 (2007): 137–52. Tony Richie, “Azusa-era Optimism: Bishop J.H. King’s Pentecostal Theology of Religions as a Possible Paradigm for Today,” in The Spirit in the World: Emerging Pentecostal Theologies in Global Contexts, ed. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 227–44. King is much closer to E. Stanley Jones, The Christ of the Indian Road (Nashville: Abingdon, 1925), than to Raimon Panikkar, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, rev. ed. (London: Darton, Longman, & Todd, 1981). Tony Richie, “Constitutionally Christian: A Classical Pentecostal Appraisal of Founders and Figures in World Faiths with Attentiveness to Inclusivist Implications,” Testimentum Imperium: An International Theological Journal, vol. 2 (2009): http://www.preciousheart. net/ti/2009/28-049_Richie_Constitutionally_Christian.pdf. See the essay by Jean-Daniel Plüss in this volume.

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About halfway through the twentieth century, Swiss historian and analyst Walter Hollenweger made the broader Christian world and Pentecostals mutually aware and informed. His The Pentecostals is a classic resource on the Pentecostal movement’s origins and early development.11 Subsequently, Hollenweger has pushed Pentecostals regarding other religions.12 He draws on the biblical (Acts 10) account of the encounter between the Christian apostle, Peter, and the Roman centurion, Cornelius, for insights on interreligious interaction. Already this narrative holds special significance for Pentecostals due to its emphatic Spirit baptism context. For Hollenweger it demonstrates a form of mutual conversion. Through the gospel both evangelist and evangelized learn of Christ together. Hollenweger implies that this example may be paradigmatic for dialogical and situational encounter between Christians and those of nonChristian religions—particularly for Pentecostals. Ambitious and nuanced, Hollenweger’s proposal suggests that interreligious encounter is an important and perhaps intrinsic element of the Holy Spirit’s activity always so precious to Pentecostals. 4

Recent Developments

Systematic, sustained treatment of theology of religions by Pentecostals is a recent development—as with most other Christians groups, only more so. VeliMatti Kärkkäinen and Amos Yong have been pioneers. A Finnish Pentecostal working primarily out of Fuller Theological Seminary, shortly after the beginning of the twenty-first century Kärkkäinen published major works such as An Introduction to the Theology of Religions and Trinity and Religious Pluralism.13 These studies gave major space to a Pentecostal theology of religions, albeit well within the context of traditional Christian approaches. Kärkkäinen ­emphasized the rich resources of Trinitarian theology for developing a theology of religions. Unity and diversity in the Divine Being provides insights without relativizing Ultimate Reality. 11 12

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Walter J. Hollenweger, The Pentecostals (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1972). Walter J. Hollenweger, “After Twenty Years of Research on Pentecostalism,” International Review of Mission (irm) (1986): 3–12; and “Evangelism: A Non-Colonial Model,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology (jpt) 7 (1995): 107–28. See Tony Richie, “Revamping Pentecostal Evangelism: Appropriating Walter J. Hollenweger’s Radical Proposal,” irm, 96.382/383 (2007): 343–54. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, An Introduction to the Theology of Religions: Biblical, Historical, & Contemporary Perspectives (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003); and idem, Trinity and Religious Pluralism: The Doctrine of the Trinity in Christian Theology of Religions (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004).

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Even earlier, Asian American Amos Yong published groundbreaking works accenting a distinctively pneumatological approach to Pentecostal theology of religions. His Discerning the Spirit(s) and Beyond the Impasse marked the dawning of a bold new day in Pentecostal theology of religions.14 Like Kärkkäinen, Yong emphasized robust Trinitarian theology, but for him that meant more intentional attention to previously neglected implications of pneumatology (“pneumatological imagination”).15 The untapped potential of Pentecostal pneumatology for Christian theology of religions is an intriguing, if occasionally controversial, topic. My own Speaking by the Spirit and Toward a Pentecostal Theology of Religions builds on Yong and Kärkkäinen and extends their work in distinctive directions. Affirming their robust Trinitarian and pneumatological emphases, I emphasize two further ideas: continuity with early strands of Pentecostal theology of religions through exploring the ideas of early Pentecostals, and creativity in utilizing the Pentecostal practice of testimony as a model for interreligious dialogue. This approach provides Pentecostals with a paradigm for contemporary conversations before God with others. Overall, I tend to gravitate more toward a Pentecostal theology of witness in a pluralistic world with less comparative or speculative elucidation than Yong or Kärkkäinen. Before moving on, it would be seriously remiss not to mention the pioneering, provocative work of Clark Pinnock, a Charismatic Baptist. His work paved the way for much of today’s Pentecostal theology of religions.16 Undoubtedly, Pinnock influenced the field constructively. His maintenance of strong Christology and soteriology while mining implications of a broad pneumatology stands out especially. 5

Pivotal Role of the Society for Pentecostal Studies

The Society for Pentecostal Studies (sps) began in 1970 as an organization of Pentecostal scholars dedicated to providing a discussion forum for all a­ cademic 14 15 16

Amos Yong, Discerning the Spirit(s), A Pentecostal-Charismatic Contribution to Christian Theology of Religions (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000); and idem, Beyond the Impasse: Toward a Pneumatological Theology of Religions (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003). E.g. Amos Yong, Pneumatology and the Christian-Buddhist Dialogue: Does the Spirit Blow through the Middle Way? Studies in Systematic Theology 11 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012). Clark H. Pinnock, A Wideness in God’s Mercy: The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992); and idem, Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1994).

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disciplines as a spiritual service to the Kingdom of God.17 An openness to Charismatics from the start set the Society on an ecumenical path.18 Full inclusion of Charismatic scholars, although a small minority, brought an element of ecumenical participation into sps meetings (and later on to executive leadership). The Society has enjoyed an obvious ecumenical flavor, including extended and in depth interactions with the Faith and Order Commission of the National Council of Churches in Christ (ncc) (United States), the Wesleyan Theological Society, and Roman Catholicism. However, in 2004 the sps Executive Committee ventured into uncharted territory. It appointed Amos Yong as liaison to the ncc Interfaith Relations Commission (irc). The next year (2005), upon Yong’s recommendation, I was appointed as co-liaison, and subsequently assumed the role entirely.19 Since 2008 until the present, I have continued as liaison. The sps liaison reports to the sps Annual Business Meeting. The E ­ xecutive Committee renews the position annually. An academic society, sps offers no financial support. Liaisons travel in behalf of sps at their own expense. Occasionally, when irc invites the sps liaison to participate in some additional task ncc helps with attendant expenses. The sps liaison attends the biannual meetings of the irc as a nonmember (i.e. nonvoting special guest) with a voice in discussions. Nonmember status is sps preference, not irc. As the relationship evolves there has been movement toward more formal participation. Meetings include ecumenical interaction with representatives of other Christian bodies. At times meetings involve dialogues or activities with representatives from other religions (Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, etc). In these settings, intra-Christian and interreligious realities do indeed intersect. 6

American Academy of Religion

One of my first responsibilities for irc outside of internal commission work was a panel presentation at the American Academy of Religion (aar) (Philadelphia; 2005). Ironically, I represented irc at aar, not sps. Such multidimensional representation is common in the ecumenical world. In any case, I spoke on “Neither Naïve nor Narrow: A Balanced Approach to Pentecostal Theology 17 See http://www.sps-usa.org/#/home/who-we-are. 18 “Charismatic” here signifies Christians of non-Pentecostal denominations who give testimony to an experience of the Spirit inclusive of spiritual gifts such as glossolalia, healing, prophecy, and others. 19 Amos Yong served as liaison 2004–2007.

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of Religions.”20 It sets parameters for Pentecostal balance on theology of religions that avoid the opposite extremes of relativistic ideologies of religious pluralism and the rigidity of religious fundamentalism. Thus it proposes a valid, vibrant Pentecostal theology of religions that does not compromise biblical, historic Christianity or act condescendingly or contemptuously toward other world religions. Shanta Premawardhana, irc Associate General Secretary (2003–2007), a Baptist, invited me to particpate at aar. It was the first time I worked with prominent pluralist scholar Diana Eck (Harvard Divinity School) who was on the panel too. I recall that this United Methodist seemed oddly surprised at my use of John Wesley. Others appeared more surprised that a Pentecostal was present at all. However, discussion during the audience participation time was energetic and upbeat. I remember an invigorating conversation after the session with Kenneth Cracknell, author of In Good and Generous Faith: Christian Reponses to Religious Pluralism (2005). Cracknell, a Methodist minister and British specialist in interfaith dialogue and Christian theology of religions, and I compared our respective uses of Wesley on these topics. Similarly, Charles Jones (Catholic University of America) and I discussed the Apostle Paul’s approach to other religions in the context of Jones’s The View from Mars Hill: Christianity in the Landscape of World Religions (2005). Post-conference correspondence with both gentlemen exemplifies reciprocating engagements in intra-Christian and interreligious correlation. 7

At Harvard University

After Diana Eck became chair, irc convened at Harvard (May 2008). There I was delighted with Harvey Cox who sat in on our Christian Zionism debate. A Reformed friend, John Huber, was prodding irc to address it. The volatility of Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations in the Middle East and throughout the world demand its inclusion. As I recall, Cox attributed the widespread popularity of Christian Zionism to its unparalleled explanatory power. It demands a viable alternative. I began to realize that Pentecostal eschatology does not need to be de-emphasized so much as revisited and reenvisioned.21

20 21

Tony Richie, “Neither Naïve nor Narrow: A Balanced Approach to Pentecostal Theology of Religions,” Cyberjournal for Pentecostal-Charismatic Research 15 (2006). Cf. Peter Althouse and Robby Waddell, eds., Perspectives on Pentecostal Eschatologies (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010).

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I had briefly met Harvey Cox at sps in Guadalajara (1993) when he was researching Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion (1995). This time we were able to talk. Realizing I was ­Pentecostal, he pulled me aside and shared several testimonies expressing appreciation for the movement. Later, I endured teasing from fellow commissioners for monopolizing the famous theologian. Nonplussed, I pointed out that he monopolized me. In any case, the demographics of an intra-Christian setting addressing an interreligious issue with Pentecostal involvement illustrates and explicates the correlative concept. 8

ncc General Assemblies

At Minneapolis GA (2009) I found plenary roundtable discussions and v­ arious workshops energetic and lively. Animated conversations on both intra-­ Christian and interreligious topics—rarely discussed among Pentecostals— were quite common. I was pleasantly surprised to encounter a young cog brother, Andrew Hudson. We had met previously at Lee University (Cleveland, TN) but he had since gone on to Princeton Theological Seminary. Hudson had been involved with sps but was not at the Assembly in that capacity. ncc sponsored him through the “New Fire” youth endeavor and he served as Assembly steward.22 Neither of us knew in advance that the other would be present. We enjoyed some stimulating conversations as the only Pentecostal participant-observers present. Although a generalization, I find younger Pentecostal scholars more open to ecumenical and interfaith interactions. Perhaps it signals a trend? In New Orleans GA (2010), a centennial celebration of the significance of Edinburgh 1910, I served on a plenary panel, “The Future of Ecumenism.”23 Links between ecumenism and missiology enabled me to connect the dots with interreligious breakthroughs. Two aspects of that panel experience stand out still. First, Reverend Jennifer Leath (African Methodist Episcopal Church) was so anointed while speaking that she preached prophetically. I was not surprised to learn later of some Pentecostal-type leanings. Second, His Grace Bishop Maxim (Vasilijevic) of Hum (Serbian Orthodox Church of North and South America) and I surprised everyone, including ourselves, by the strong similarity of our appeals to a pneumatology of shared Christian experience for ecumenical progress rather than precise dogmatic agreement. 22 See http://www.ncccusa.org/news/091107newfire1.html. 23 ncc met in this city after hurricane Katrina in support of the local economy.

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In retrospect, I think it was when I attempted to speak in a Pentecostal voice to the significance of Edinburgh 1910 that I realized, if not for the first time then at least in a fresh way, an underlying interrelatedness of ecumenism and Pentecostalism. A conversation with my friend and then ncc General Secretary Michael Kinnamon, sitting together on a late night bus ride, really drove it home. Is it not strange that these two movements have been so suspicious of each other when they really have so much in common?24 ncc General Assemblies provide a time for task group reports. As sps liaison, I have served on several ncc/irc theological task groups producing official position statements, church programs, and responses to religion related crises or current events. We produced “Getting to Know Neighbors of Other Faiths: A Theological Raitionale for Interfaith Relations, ” “Interfaith Relations and the Church: Study Guides on Key Issues,” “An Ecumenical Response to ‘A Common Word Between Us and You,’” “Why We Should be Concerned about Christian Zionism,” and others.25 Several of these have interfacing ecumenical and interreligious features. In all such endeavors, my understanding of my assignment has been as a representative Pentecostal voice speaking to intersections of intra-Christian and interreligious realities. 9

irc Representation at sps

On at least two occasions, irc staff has attended sps meetings in an official capacity. Senior Director Tony Kireopoulos (Greek Orthodox) attended as an observer at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina (2008). He attended as a presenter at Eugene Bible College in Eugene, Oregon (2009). Kireopoulos spoke on “Cooperation and Partnership: What We Can Do Together, Let Us Not Do Alone.” The session was hosted by the Ecumenical Studies Interest Group. During my tenure as Interest Group Leader, Ecumenical Studies began occasionally to address issues where intra-Christian and interreligious issues intersect.26 The Kireopoulos session is an example. Kireopoulos highlighted the ­importance and positive significance of mainline Protestantism and Pentecostals working together in interfaith dialogue and cooperation efforts. For him, this particular relationship enhances intra-Christian relationships as

24 25 26

See the essay by Peter Hocken in this volume. These are available at http://www.ncccusa.org/news/091107newfire1.html. The annual Ecumenical Studies business meeting approved incorporating ecumenicalinterreligious intersections. Its primary focus remains ecumenical.

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these ­diverse groups become better acquainted, and increases effective interreligious efforts through sharing resources and insights. For the sake of fairness, I admit that overall sps interest, at least as expressed in attendance, has not always been strong. Numerous demographic factors explain low attendance in any given session. However, it appears that sps members are actually hesitant or reluctant to delve into interreligious topics. Such general reserve exists in spite of the bold leadership of the Executive Committee and strong support from internal sectors. In my opinion, few realize that interreligious concerns are among the most critically important and pressing issues of our time.27 Many apparently view interreligious work as a kind of exotic endeavor unworthy of serious attention. 10

Enabling Role of the World Council of Churches

Kärkkäinen and Yong became directly involved in interreligious consultations sponsored by the World Council of Churches (wcc). Both were involved in “Christian Understanding and Plurality” (2003–2004).28 The updated and expanded statement arising out of this collaboration was “Religious Plurality and Christian Self-Understanding” (rpcsu).29 Interestingly, it particularly points out that the growth of Evangelical and Pentecostal manifestations of Christianity are at the forefront of the topic. It further explains that the rise of Pentecostal and Charismatic churches in all parts of the world has added a new dimension to Christianity today. I add that one of the most notable aspects of rpcsu is the level of advanced, in depth Pentecostal participation. rpcsu does not represent formal wcc doctrinal consensus but shows the simultaneous push-pull angst that many Christians still experience in discussing religious plurality. Affirming that all the earth is the Lord’s (Ps 24:1), that the Lord’s name is over all nations (Mal 1:11), and that God shows no partiality 27

Amos Yong, “Academic Glossolalia? Pentecostal Scholarship, Multi-Disciplinarity, and the Science-Religion Conversation,” jpt 14, no. 1 (2005): 61–80. 28 Yong, Raymond Hodge (cog administrator), and I participated in a follow-up consultation to “Religious Plurality and Christian Self-understanding” on “Towards an Ethical Approach to Conversion and Christian Witness in a Multireligious World,” co-sponsored by the World Council of Churches Inter-Religious Relations and Dialogue Office, and the Vatican Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Institut Catholique de Toulouse, Toulouse, France, 8–12 August 2007. 29 See http://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/assembly/2006-porto-alegre/3preparatory-and-background-documents/religious-plurality-and-christian-self-under standing.

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but accepts all who fear him (Acts 10:34–35), it aims to affirm joyfully faith in Jesus Christ while discerning God’s presence and activity throughout the world. rpcsu admits the challenge of plurality to Christian theology and praxis and describes religious traditions as spiritual journeys. For rpcsu, Christians are continuing an ongoing exploration and moving toward a theology of religions. It issues a call to hospitality as a biblical theme with potential to contribute to enhanced interreligious understandings. rpcsu ultimately declares that salvation belongs to God and to God only. 11 Extended wcc Engagement In 2005 I began participating with wcc on interreligious projects in order to provide a Pentecostal perspective. Eventually I became the Pentecostal consultant to wcc on the development and implementation of the groundbreaking document “Christian Witness in a Multi-Faith World: Recommendations for Conduct” (cwmfw).30 Having Asian Pentecostal Connie Au as a participating partner at the final meeting (Bangkok 2011) was a special pleasure that brought productive contributions.31 Unprecedented in several ways, including the level of Pentecostal involvement, it was the first ever document affirmed by the Vatican, WCC, and World Evangelical Fellowship. Officially representing the vast majority of organized Christian bodies in the world, it is an important aid for interfaith thought and practice. In short, cwmfw addresses ecclesial mission in a religiously plural world. It offers a solidly and emphatically biblical basis for Christian witness that nevertheless admits real responsibilities for appropriately ethical performance of mission in complex contexts involving, among other things, multiple, or majority non-Christian, religious cultures. It highlights twelve “Principles”: acting in God’s love, imitating Jesus Christ, Christian virtues, acts of service and justice, discernment in ministries of healing, rejection of violence, freedom of religion and belief, mutual respect and solidarity, respect for all people, renouncing false witness, ensuring personal discernment, and building interreligious relationships. A shorter list of recommendations calls on individuals, faith communities, and governments to put these principles into practice in 30 See http://www.worldevangelicals.org/pdf/1106Christian_Witness_in_a_Multi-Religious_ World.pdf . I was the only person, Pentecostal or otherwise, directly involved in its entire 5-year formulation process. 31 Connie Ho Yan Au is Director of the Pentecostal Research Center at the Synergy Institute of Leadership in Hong Kong and author of Grassroots Unity in the Charismatic Renewal (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2011).

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concrete and specific ways. An interesting feature of this statement is that it includes a description of the background that led to the initiation and implementation of the project. In a word, increasing interreligious tensions leading to violence and loss of human life are making collaborations among Christians and followers of different religions necessary. Each of the points and principles were exhaustively debated over the process of cwmfw coming into being. However, obviously some were more ­difficult to navigate as a Pentecostal. For instance, I found myself constantly stressing undiminished commitment to evangelistic witness. As can be seen in the document itself, attempts to get any version of the word “evangelize” or “evangelism” into the document finally failed. I was assured that “Christian witness” should cover that idea well enough. Terminology aside, overall the document does drive at carefully integrating twin missional goals of evangelistic outreach and social responsibilities.32 For another instance, Pentecostal emphasis on physical healing and material blessing was a sore spot for some in other religions. They suggested we are “bribing” their adherents to convert by promising that which we cannot deliver. Some other Christians were not far removed from the same opinion. I was able to keep that emphasis intact as authentic Christian ministry. Partly I argued that it is an intrinsic part of Pentecostalism, not some ingenious methodology (read “cheap trick”). Partly I testified about my own divine healing. What eventually came out of it was a stern call for discernment. Should not spiritual ­discernment be a major component of healing ministries and blessing emphases? 12

Kol Ami Encounter

Ecumenical and interfaith relationships can be unexpectedly reciprocating. A case in point arose out of the cwmfw mentioned above. The first meeting was near Rome (Lariano) in May 2006. On “Assessing the Reality” ­representatives of different religions (Christians—Protestant, Catholic, a Pentecostal—Jews, 32

In 2015 wcc conducted a series of webinars on evangelism. Father Darren Dias, Professor of Theology, St. Michael’s College University of Toronto, and I dialogued on “Evangelism in a Multifaith Context”: http://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/ world-council-of-churches-evangelism-webinars. These culminated in a North American Conference on “Reclaiming Evangelism: Celebrating Change and Collaboration in Nashville, TN” (30 Oct–1 Nov): http://www.cvent.com/events/north-amer ican-conference-reclaiming-evangelism-celebrating-change-and-collaboration-/custom18-f76d291f947e4c22887da847ab587c17.aspx.

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Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Yoruba) shared their thoughts on conversion. It affirmed that everyone has a right to invite others to share their faith but out of respect for freedom of religion they should not violate others’ religious rights. At Lariano I soon realized that Pentecostals’ aggressive evangelism style had become problematic in some settings. That being said, it was apparent that Pentecostals had become scapegoats for everyone on everything that goes wrong on the evangelism front (including violence and fatalities). About three days into the meeting I spoke up. Co-chairs Felix Machado (Vatican) and Hans Ucko (wcc) led the way in accepting my comments. The group was surprisingly responsive. Eventually, we were able to wrestle with real issues and reach for real understanding. It was an important moment for me, an opportunity to make a difference in how we all see each other and, therefore, loaded with potential. At Lariano my wife Sue and I first met David Elcott. A Jewish man from New York City, he could not understand why Pentecostals would be at such an ecumenical and interreligious meeting. He introduced himself to us with an announcement to that effect. I suggested perhaps he might get to know us better. He took me up on it, and we have become good friends over the years. In November of that same year (2006), his home synagogue flew Sue and me up from Tennessee to join in what must be an interreligious encounter for the record books. David’s wife, Shira Milgrom, is a rabbi for Kol Ami Synagogue, a Reformed Jewish community in Westchester County—an incredibly open and welcoming group of people. When David told Rabbi Shira of our encounters in Rome, she invited us up to address the entire congregation and to interact in Shabbat School. Our visit with Kol Ami was an incredible experience. We stayed several days in the home of David and Shira, experiencing their Jewish family hospitality “up close and personal” (a blessing we have happily accepted several times since), and interacting with the broader Kol Ami family. What was my assignment? Share about what it means to be a Pentecostal Christian. Talk about Jesus! Talk about the Holy Spirit! Talk about speaking in tongues! That is what I was told. And that is what I did. That is what we did. Rabbi Shira invited Sue during one service to the podium for the sacred reading of Torah. As we watched those huge scrolls being taken from a cabinet and carried solemnly to the reading lectern, even we Gentiles knew it was a special time. As Sue quietly but steadily read the English translation of Isaiah 40:27–31, after Shira’s Hebrew reading, a holy hush filled the room. The divine presence was tangible in our midst. Congregational praying and weeping could be heard. Someone cried out, “It’s a sign!” And I believed it, too.

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Commission of Churches on International Affairs

From 2006 to 2013 I served as the Pentecostal representative on the Commission of Churches on International Affairs (ccia). I am told that I am the only Pentecostal ever to have served in this capacity. We offered consultation on events or issues, often of an interfaith nature, affecting the wellbeing of Christians around the world. Typically, my presence was unofficial—that is, I did not formally represent any group, not even my own denomination, although cog leadership was aware and encouraging and I always accountable. I am grateful to the wcc for funding my participation. Naturally it is impossible to recount even the highlights of the seven year tenure. However, one in particular serves to delineate multiple intra-Christian/interreligious realities correlations. In October 2010 ccia met in Albania, the birthplace of Mother Teresa but a majority Muslim nation. Saint Vlash Theological Academy (Orthodox) in Dürrës hosted. Attention was on changes for religious institutions in postcommunism contexts. Our interreligious working group focused on interreligious realities in emerging geo-political contexts. Three issues stood out for future address: overcoming politicization of religion and religious extremism; strengthening interreligious trust and respect; and, as always, Christian selfunderstanding amid many religions. cog World Missions helped me connect with Hervin Fushekati, cog National Overseer of Albania, local pastor in Tirana, and a leader among Evangelicals in Eastern Europe on ecumenism. Hervin had been raised in a nominally Muslim family environment. At seventeen, he had converted to Christ. While in Albania, I enjoyed fellowship with Hervin and his lovely wife, Sedika, and preached at their church. ccia leadership kindly allowed him to sit in on our sessions as a special guest/observer. As often happens, there was as much or more “action” on the breaks as in the meetings. One commissioner, Audeh Quawas, an Orthodox layperson, medical doctor, and member of the Jordanian parliament, engaged Hervin on Muslim-to-Christian conversion. The conversation became so intense that several gravitated to the courtyard to listen. Here two Christians living in majority Muslim contexts had completely different ideas about Islam and its relation to Christianity. My friend Audeh, a passionate personality, was certain that Hervin could not have so easily transitioned. He would have been punished in some way, perhaps imprisoned or executed. Hervin, a bright young man with his own share of brass, nevertheless insisted it was so. Observers concluded that there is more latitude among Muslims in Eastern Europe than in the Middle East. Hervin made a choice and, although there were changes in his life, it was basically his choice to make. My two friends never did quite agree. I ­cannot

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help but be reminded of fundamentalist Americans adamantly convinced that all Muslims are closet terrorists. Unfortunately, their (mis)understanding of Muslim identity is almost totally determined by Al Qaeda and isis (Islamic State). 14

Surprising Legislative Contribution

Although Albania is a predominately Muslim country, the majority Christian population is Orthodox. I came to realize that the Orthodox community was almost completely unaware of the Evangelical minority (including Pentecostals). As I introduced Hervin Fushekati around to our Saint Vlash hosts, I quite enjoyed that members of these two different Christian traditions, in reality close neighbors in post-communist Albania, were getting acquainted through the efforts of a visiting American Pentecostal. They really did talk to each other, too! The ecumenical elbow rubbing had an unexpected but happy consequence. The next year (2011) Hervin and Sedika Fushekati were in the United States for a national overseers’ meeting in Cleveland, Tennessee. While in the country, they ministered at my church in Knoxville. They informed us of an amazing happening. Apparently, the Evangelicals in Albania were not formally recognized by the government as a legal religion. This privilege belonged to Islam and Orthodox and Catholic Christianity. Although not violently persecuted, lack of legal standing was a serious hindrance. Evangelicals could not purchase or own church property and their ministers could not receive official religious standing. Evangelicals had long had a motion before the government to change this situation; but, it had lain idle for fifteen years. After the Orthodox at Saint Vlash became more aware of Evangelicals, they threw their support behind the motion and it passed immediately with the predominately Muslim legislature. If I am ever tempted to wonder whether people of different beliefs getting together to talk and pray is anything more than a sentimental exercise, I remember this incident. 15

Christianity and Confucianism

In 2012 the ccia conducted a historic international meeting of Christians in China. It was hosted by the China Christian Council (ccc) and the National Committee of the Three Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches in China. Reverend Gao Feng, president of the ccc, was a leading liaison. We met with Chinese government representatives too. Reversing previous persecutory

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policies, Vice Minister for Religious Affairs, Jiang Jianyong, assured us his government now recognizes religion’s importance in developing a harmonious society. Still, religion exists under governmental authority with keen accoutability. Taoism, Buddhism, Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism are recognized as legitimate religions. They consider widespread Confucianism more of a philosophy than a religion, though religious components are clearly evident to objective observers. The main ccia deliberations occurred in Nanjing, focusing on unique situations of Chinese churches and ecumenical relations in the region. I presented papers on “Freedom of Religion and Rights of Religious Minorities” and “The American Tradition of Freedom of Religion and Contemporary ChristianMuslim Relations.” A government seminar on “Understanding China” invoked diverse perspectives on market reforms and development in socialist systems, poverty eradication and environmental sustainability, China’s religions and religious polices, churches in China and other themes. We visited Amity Press, which printed its one hundred millionth Bible that November. Sue and I were pleasantly surprised to see former cog Presiding Bishop, Lamar Vest, in a video presentation referencing American Bible Society (abs) involvement. Vest was then president of abs, and at the next cog General Assembly, I mentioned the incident to him. Vest shared with me behindthe-scenes poltical and religious dynamics necessary to make largescale Bible publishing in China possible. This incredible accomplishment embodies the potential of dilaogue and cooperation for achieving concrete results in complex relationships. Additional meetings in Shanghai included Sunday worship services in local congregations, followed by exposure visits to urban and rural models of life in modern China. A crowded worship service at Shanghai Community Church lasted considerably longer than in the West. Nearly half of Christian ministers in China are women. A female associate pastor preached a passionate sermon on John 2:1–12. The first hour was pure Confucianism, highlighting familial and societal implications of a wedding setting. The second hour, however, was an excellent textual exposition with insightful pastoral applications. We speculated on the sermon’s dual nature. Was it an intentional effort to integrate Confucianism and Christianity? Was it unconscious syncretism? Or, as rumored, was the preacher waiting for a possible government “observer” to grow weary enough to leave?33

33

I had three off-the-record encounters with connections to the Chinese underground (non-documented/illegal) churches (including many Pentecostal-type groups). Their perspective is darker than that of the government or of the government-endorsed churches.

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Helping Children

Several memorable ecumenical/interfaith encounters occurred as part of my duties as a council member (2011-present) of Prayer and Action for Children (pac). pac is sponsored by Arigatou International (Tokyo), and co-chaired by Kul Chandra Gautam, Former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and Former Deputy Executive Director of unicef, and Hans Ucko, Fellow in Interfaith Relations, Hartford Seminary in Connecticut (formerly of wcc’s Interreligious Relations and Dialogue Office). This movement connects people of religion and goodwill to work together toward a world fit for children to flourish free from violence. pac is concrete, practical in nature. pac is a unique interfaith partnership that includes secular and political agencies. All share desire to help the world’s suffering children. pac insists that helping suffering children requires both spiritual resources and practical actions. For instance, in May 2013 we traveled to Coimbatore, India to partner with Shanti Ashram in helping local children. Shanti Ashram was founded by noted truth and nonviolence exponent (Gandhi tradition), Dr. M. Aram, with his wife, Minoti, and is now led by their daughter, Dr. Vinu Aram, as Director. Shanta Ashram operates on the principle of sarvodaya, the necessity of constructive social action. It provides literacy training, health care, and other people-centered programs for those in vulnerable environments. Christians (Catholics, Protestants, Pentecostal), Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists rolled up their sleeves to work side by side for the benefit of children at Shanti Ashram and in surrounding villages. pac council members participated in several programs and ceremonies around the area. In one program i, along with fellow councilman Anant Rambachan, Professor of Religion at St. Olaf College (Minnesota), representing the Hindu faith, and other guests, spoke on prayer before an interfaith audience of several hundred. I testified of what God had done through prayer in overcoming prejudice in my life. We only learned later that members of Parliament were present. A local cog youth pastor was present too. I never imagined another Pentecostal in that extremely eclectic setting. He kindly arranged an impromptu preaching appointment Sunday morning at a local Pentecostal church. Later, at a Hindu dedication ceremony for youth we found the music, colorful clothing, folk dancing, and spicy food fascinating and invigorating. ­Everyone was amazingly hospitable. Indian culture is rich and diverse, inextricably intertwined with its Hindu philosophical and religious background. Yet India challenged and stretched my inhibitions past the breaking point. It is not called the land of a billion gods for nothing. We saw idols ranging from carvings of monkey and snake gods, and goddesses, to a row of pictures

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including Mahatma Gandhi, Moses, Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King, Jr., and several others. One young Hindu man proudly told me, “We worship them all. We don’t want to miss anyone.” A Hindu woman told me, emphatically and repeatedly, I suppose because I did not express agreement, “There is no one way!” Although we are respectful of others’ sacred space, when a village priest took our group inside a shrine for a blessing, Sue and I could not participate. I had attended services in synagogues and mosques. I had observed Hindu ritual ceremonies. But we could not enter that building covered with idol carvings and let that priest blow smoke on us while muttering incantations. The Holy Spirit checked us. It was a bit awkward for a moment (everyone expected us to participate); but, as always, the Holy Spirit helped. Everything went along well enough afterwards. Most everyone in interfaith work for any length of time learns to respect the comfort levels, and limitations, of others. 17

Theological Education

David Sang-Ehil Han, Academic Dean at pts, has begun addressing the reality of religious plurality. In 2012 Han participated in an Association of Theological Schools forum on “Christian Hospitality in a Multi-Faith Society.”34 His role focused on Evangelical perspectives. Afterwards Han brought the topic to pts through a three day “in house” conference on “Christian Hospitality and Neighborliness: A Wesleyan-Pentecostal Ministry Paradigm for the Multi-faith Context.”35 As presenters applied the insights of their respective disciplines on the institution-wide discussion, the topic of Pentecostal interaction with religious others received unprecedented attention. Consequently, Han recommended revising curriculum to address related themes. Initially pts simply incorporated interreligious themes into existing course material and class discussion. Over the next few years I began one-credit-hour courses featuring texts on Pentecostal theology of religions. In the summer of 2013 Richard Pace, Endorser and Coordinator of Church of God ­Chaplains Commission, and I developed and team-taught a three credit hour J term on “Theology of Ministry in the Multi-Faith Context.” It focused 34 35

Sang-Ehil Han, Paul Lewis Metzger, and Terry C. Muck, “Christian Hospitality and Pastoral Practices from an Evangelical Perspective,” Theological Education 47, no. 1 (2012): 11–31. Sang-Ehil Han, project report: http://www.ats.edu/uploads/resources/publications-pre sentations/chapp-reports/pentecostal-theological-seminary.pdf . Cf. project description of Association of Theological Schools at http://www.ats.edu/christian-hospitality-and -pastoral-practices.

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on ­practical preparation of students to minister in multi-faith contexts with a theological foundation from a Wesleyan-Pentecostal perspective. Spring 2015 Han assigned me the task of developing a full-fledged Pentecostal theology of religions course for approval and implementation (by Spring 2016). “Christian Theology of Religions: A Pentecostal Perspective” equips Christian clergy and laity to navigate the reality of multiple world religions and prepare ministers for effective service in diverse environments. Theological issues and underpinnings of Christian identity and ministry in a religiously plural world recieve in depth attention. 18

Knoxville Initiatives

I have dialogued with religious others from Jews and Muslims in New York City, Chicago, and Dearborn to Buddhists and Shinto devotees in Tokyo. But I have been frustrated by failure to be involved at local levels. To add to my embarrassment, my home state of Tennessee has become a bit of a hotbed for tensions with Muslims. For example, a conflict over building a mosque or Islamic Center in Murfreesboro that went all the way to the Supreme Court (which declined to hear the case) received widespread attention.36 Yet making the move toward interfaith involvement on the local level seemed too daunting. With the Chattanooga shooting (July 17, 2015) of military personnel in a “gun free zone” by a “lone wolf” radicalized Islamic terrorist, I knew something had to change.37 The Holy Spirit impressed upon me that I should take the initiative. Connecting with locals of other faiths became a matter of obedience to God. I discovered the Muslim Community of Knoxville (mck) website.38 Its insightful and sensitive response to the Chattanooga shooting incident inspired me. I sent an email query, including a link to a recent interview that a local television news reporter had done with me regarding Chattanooga. I received a prompt and gracious response from mck. It introduced Zaynab Ansari as a contact person.39 It also included a link to a local news interview with her about Chattanooga. Ansari was honest and transparent, and 36 37 38 39

Bob Smietana, “Opponents of Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, Tennessee Have Case Declined by U.S. Supreme Court,” Huffington Post (June 4, 2014): http://www.huffingtonpost. com/2014/06/04/islamic-center-of-murfreesboro_n_5439867.html. See Tony Richie, “Chattanooga Shooting: Challenge to Overcome Evil with Good,” (July 22, 2015): https://www.scupe.org/chattanooga-shooting-as-a-challenge-to-overcome-evil -with-good/. http://www.muslimknoxville.org/. Zaynab Ansari recently joined the Tayseer Foundation as a scholar-in-residence.

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her ­comments were insightful and wise. I immediately sensed that here was a partner whom I had needed for so long. After individual meetings, Ansari, along with Imam Rafiq Mahdi, participated in a meeting in the heart of downtown Knoxville with local Christian pastors and a few national leaders, particularly Rich Cizik.40 This ecumenical group included several cog pastors. It was a phenomenal experience, to say the least, and constructive. Next, Zaynab Ansari and I were co-presenters in the Our Muslim Neighbor Conference in Nashville (September 26, 2015), which provided opportunities to showcase our joint endeavors.41 Still underway are several other interactive events, including visiting each others’ worship services as observers. Subsequently, the Knoxville Women’s Interfaith Peace Initiative invited me to serve on an ecumenical clergy panel on “hot topics” related to interfaith relations. The panel consisted of a Jewish rabbi, a Muslim imam, a Lutheran pastor, two Methodist pastors, a Unitarian Universalist pastor, and me. The extended group included adherents of these traditions, mostly women, including my wife, Sue. One participant, in response to a comment by Sue, expressed surprise that our local Pentecostal congregation had not lost members over our interfaith involvement. We met on Monday, November, 16, 2015, and were pressed to address the horrific terrorist attack by isis on Paris the previous Friday (the 13th). Muslims present soundly denounced the isis attack, labeling its perpetrators as violators of true Islam. There were tendencies by all to identify either economic or ethnic or geo-political or religious factors as the primary contributor behind such atrocious acts. I argued that causes, and solutions, of terrorism are complex and multifaceted. It seemed everyone gained strength as we struggled together to understand and respond to radicalized jihadist ideology and the despicable acts of its adherents. An intriguing dynamic of the Knoxville focus group itself has been intraChristian interactions during interreligious encounters. For example, in the meeting including Imam Rafiq and Ansari, discussion on climate change and the Iran Nuclear Arms Agreement threatened derailment. Tensions were not between Christians and Muslims. In later debriefing, “conservative” cog folks expressed surprised pleasure with their initial encounter with our Muslim guests but were upset by Christian partners for what they perceived as pressing 40

41

Amazingly, Richard Cizik, Founder and President of New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, had previously invited me to partner in initiating Knoxville focus group meetings on Christian-Muslim relations. These began in May 2015, hosted by New Harvest, totaling about a dozen participants. Sponsored by the Faith & Culture Center in Nashville, Daoub Abudiab, Founder and President, in partnership with Religions for Peace usa, Aaron Stauffer, Executive Director. Further, Aaron came on board with Knoxville focus groups.

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a liberal agenda. In turn, the “liberal” Christians felt like they were addressing key issues of mutual concern. In subsequent leadership planning sessions we worked together to establish appropriate boundaries. 19

Congregational Dynamics

Our Jewish friend, David Elcott, Taub Professor of Practice in Public Service and Leadership at New York University, Wagner directed an extended (2013–2015) study, “The Religion and Civics Project.”42 It focused on religious freedom, civil discourse, and democracy, with a high level of interfaith participation, primarily Jewish and Christian. New Harvest Church of God (Knoxville, TN), where I serve as lead pastor, participated, as did several congregations of differing denominations.43 This intense project included surveys and town hall type meetings and developed a teaching aid based on its findings. Pedagogical video and other materials are field tested. Data results indicate that input from a small rural Southern Pentecostal congregation debunk inaccurate presuppositions and break down false ­stereotypes thus contributing to a more optimistic framework for civil engagement by religious groups across a broad spectrum of ideologies. Namely, assumptions that conservative congregations are low on compassion but high on (sexual) purity while liberal congregations are high on compassion but low on (sexual) purity may be correct in some cases but not standard. These values may affect attitudes toward certain political policies, same-sex marriage, for example. More to the point, this process highlights local congregational interreligious involvement with implications for policy and practice.44 20

White House Interfaith Convening

On December 17, 2015 the White House conducted a special convening on “Celebrating and Protecting America’s Tradition of Religious Pluralism.”45 42 See https://wagner.nyu.edu/leadership/religionandcivics. 43 Pastor Dan Tomberlin and the Vidalia, GA Church of God also participated, and with similar results. 44 Multifaith Matters (Evangelical Chapter of the Foundation for Religious Diplomacy), led by John Morehead and including David Han, is conducting case studies on congregational interfaith interaction, including New Harvest. 45 Early working titles included “religious freedom,” “religious inclusion,” and “religious tolerance,” along with the “religious pluralism.” Apparently, it became pragmatically neces-

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­ articipation was by special invitation only. Two Pentecostals, Cheryl Bridges P Johns46 and I, were among those involved. Again, intra-Christian and interreligious interests intersected. Steven Martin, ncc Director of Communications and Development, arranged our invitation.47 Focus was on deep A ­ merican traditions of religious inclusion, freedom, and cooperation among those with different beliefs. Officials discussed steps to promote and protect these traditions. Over one hundred attendees joined discussions on carrying them forward. Speakers and panels representing the Justice Department, ­Department of Education, Equal Employment Commission, and Federal Emergency Management Agency as well as Atheist, Baptist, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, and Sikh traditions, expressed objectives and procedures for respectful coexistence.48 Melissa Rogers, Special Assistant to the President, and Director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, chaired the meeting. As Johns noted, “It was a very rich and rewarding day.” She commented insightfully that, “We work together to make the stranger the neighbor and the neighbor our friend. America is most beautiful in many colors.”49 A great deal of information was distributed amidst high level networking. I sensed that perhaps a main objective of the White House in convening this special session was informing and empowering those working to interpret and apply American traditions of religious freedom and tolerance in today’s increasingly plural society. Just this kind of critical frontline pastoral and theological work is urgently needed for addressing extremism ranging from radical Islamist terrorism to retaliatory Islamaphobic hate crimes—as well as intolerance against other religions.

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sary to shorten the title. While efforts to not exclude earlier themes were to an extent successful, emphasis shifted slightly toward religious pluralism. Yet affirmations of religious freedom was an undergirding element throughout. Johns, widely known for years of extensive ecumenical work with a broad range of Christian traditions, responded to a need for attention to Christian relations with other religious traditions as well. It coincided with their launch of the “Know Your Neighbor” campaign promoting interfaith relationships. Repeatedly noted was that, among Christian bodies, Evangelicals tend to be the least interactive personally with people of other faiths. Various reasons include geographic and ethnic concentrations of non-Christian populations as well as ideological elements. I opined that Evangelicals often feel “under attack” in the public arena from a “culture war.” That may make them understandably more defensive and less cooperative. Perhaps a key may be reassuring Evangelicals in concrete and consistent ways that policies of freedom and inclusiveness toward others need not inevitably entail their own restriction and exclusion. This and the previous Johns remark are quoted with permission.

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In this vein, I suggest that Scripture contains seminal themes of religious tolerance (e.g., 2 Kgs 5:18–19), separation of Church and State, (e.g., 2 Chr 26:16–21), and the role of conscience regarding religion (e.g., Rom 2:14–15), which are conducive to development by Christian theology for today’s context. Arguably, religious freedom has support not only in the United States Constitution but in God’s Word.50 Theologically, “Pentecostals may conscientously affirm the essentials of democracy, including separation of Church and State with its emphasis on freedom of religion.”51 Religious liberty can and should be a valuable tool for overcoming religious extremism on all sides. As Melissa Rogers insisted, “There are no second class faiths in the United States of America.” Unfortunately, she had to admit “We have not always lived up to our ideals.” 21

Moving Forward

The preceding testimony presents a Pentecostal voice speaking at intersections of intra-Christian and interreligious realities. For me, that means s­peaking from the Christological center with a pneumatological basis and ecclesiological locus in a missiological setting through an eschatological lens—all true to biblical structure and intentional theological consistency. Elsewhere I have unpacked implications of this paradigmatic statement.52 Suffice it to say here that the ability, and, indeed, the responsibility, of Pentecostals to engage intentionally with religious others are driven by an engine of authentic Pentecostal identity. Pentecostals traditionally believe right relations with both God and human beings is an essential part of holy living (Heb 12:14). In my judgment, this emphasis provides a basis for pursuing interfaith relations. Arguably, it is more important than ever for Pentecostals to be active in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue. If we are not “at the table”, then we are “on the menu.” Additionally, we have something worthwhile to contribute. Finally, we take away as much or more as we bring. In my experience, serving at the intersections of intra-Christian and interreligious realities is a challenging but immensely rewarding ministry. As with great highways, these intersections are difficult to navigate, but they are necessary to get us where we need to go. 50

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights also recognizes freedom of religion for all. See http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/. 51 Richie, Toward a Pentecostal Theology of Religions, 191. 52 Richie, Toward a Pentecostal Theology of Religions, chap. 1.

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Bibliography Au, Connie Ho Yan. Grassroots Unity in the Charismatic Renewal. Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2011. Han, Sang-Ehil, Paul Lewis Metzger, and Terry C. Muck. “Christian Hospitality and Pastoral Practices from an Evangelical Perspective.” Theological Education 47, no. 1 (2012): 11–31. Hollenweger, Walter J. The Pentecostals. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1972. Hollenweger, Walter J. “After Twenty Years of Research on Pentecostalism.” International Review of Mission (1986): 3–12. Hollenweger, Walter J. “Evangelism: A Non-Colonial Model.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 7 (1995): 107–28. Jones, E. Stanley. The Christ of the Indian Road. Nashville: Abingdon, 1925. Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. An Introduction to the Theology of Religions: Biblical, Historical, and Contemporary Perspectives. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003. Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. Trinity and Religious Pluralism: The Doctrine of the Trinity in Christian Theology of Religions. Burlington: Ashgate, 2004. Panikkar, Raimon. The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, rev. ed. London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1981. Pinnock, Clark H. A Wideness in God’s Mercy: The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992. Pinnock, Clark H. Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1994. Richie, Tony. Speaking by the Spirit: A Pentecostal Model for Interreligious Dialogue. Lexington: Emeth Press, 2011. Richie, Tony. Toward a Pentecostal Theology of Religions: Encountering Cornelius Today. Cleveland, TN: CPT, 2013. Richie, Tony. “Eschatological Inclusivism: Exploring Early Pentecostal Theology of Religions in Charles Fox Parham.” Journal of the European Theological Association 27, no. 2. (2007): 137–52. Richie, Tony. “Azusa-Era Optimism: Bishop J.H. King’s Pentecostal Theology of Religions as a Possible Paradigm for Today.” In The Spirit in the World: Emerging Pentecostal Theologies in Global Contexts. Edited by Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009, 227–44. Richie, Tony. “Constitutionally Christian: A Classical Pentecostal Appraisal of Founders and Figures in World Faiths with Attentiveness to Inclusivist Implications.” Testimentum Imperium: An International Theological Journal 2 (2009): 1–17. Richie, Tony. “Revamping Pentecostal Evangelism: Appropriating Walter J. Hollenweger’s Radical Proposal.” International Review of Mission, 96, no. 382/383 (2007): 343–54.

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Richie, Tony. “Chattanooga Shooting: Challenge to Overcome Evil with Good.” (July 22, 2015): https://www.scupe.org/chattanooga-shooting-as-a-challenge-to-overcomeevil-with-good/. Smietana, Bob. “Opponents of Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, Tennessee Have Case Declined by U.S. Supreme Court.” Huffington Post (June 4, 2014). Yong, Amos. Discerning the Spirit(s): A Pentecostal-Charismatic Contribution to Christian Theology of Religions. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000. Yong, Amos. Beyond the Impasse: Toward a Pneumatological Theology of Religions. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003. Yong, Amos. Pneumatology and the Christian-Buddhist Dialogue: Does the Spirit Blow through the Middle Way? Leiden: Brill, 2012. Yong, Amos. “Neither Naïve nor Narrow: A Balanced Approach to Pentecostal Theology of Religions.” Edited by Harold D. Hunter. Cyberjournal for Pentecostal-Charismatic Research 15 (2006). Yong, Amos. “Academic Glossolalia? Pentecostal Scholarship, Multi-disciplinarity, and the Science-Religion Conversation.” Journal for Pentecostal Theology 14, no. 1 (2005): 61–80. Perspectives on Pentecostal Eschatologies. Edited by Peter Althouse and Robby Waddell. Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010. “Reclaiming Evangelism: Celebrating Change and Collaboration in Nashville, TN.” (October 10 – November 1): http://www.cvent.com/events/north-americanconference-reclaiming-evangelism-celebrating-change-and-collaboration-/ custom-18-f76d291f947e4c22887da847ab587c17.aspx.

Chapter 16

Church Unity and the Spirit of Ubuntu: Insights from the Global South Clifton Clarke and Marcia Clarke Africa, and by extension the African diaspora, has been the vanguard of church unity almost since the inception of the Church.1 Centuries before the august gatherings of ecumenical organizations like the World Council of Churches, African leaders, such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Augustine, and Athanasius, fought doggedly to ward off dangerous heresies that threatened to tear the church apart in a crucial stage in the history. Although the subsequent scholastic voice of African scholarship has been a mere whisper in comparison to those glory days due to the expansive rise of Islam in North Africa in the Middle Ages and the pervasiveness of European colonialism and imperialism between the fourteenth to twentieth centuries, Africa is once again finding its Christian voice. The global shift of Christianity from the northern hemisphere to the southern, with Africa having pride of place, is giving birth to a new boldness in African scholarship in a postcolonial era. The concept of “South,” however, is an enormous generalization that includes a vast range of diversities with distinctions not only between countries as distinct as Nigeria and Indonesia but also regional distinctions between rural and urban dwellers in countries such as China and Brazil. Christianity in the Global North and South has been impacted by the spread of Pentecostalism. It is through this lens that our African contribution to church unity will be examined. We would like to offer some insights for church unity from Africa and the African diaspora. To begin with we present the rhythms of Ubuntu through the experience of African Pentecostal churches and its contribution to church unity. The echoes of Ubuntu are further examined through its transmigration influence on the British Isles in the experience of black Pentecostal women. Through these two distinct yet concomitant expressions of Global Pentecostalism in the South, it is hoped that the reader will hear the ongoing African religious vibrations that continue to give voice to the importance of unity for the body of Christ with its important constituent parts. 1 Thomas Oden, How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind (Downers Grove: ivp Books, 2007), 48–51.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:10.1163/9789004408371_017

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Ubuntu and African Pentecostalism

In this first section, we would like to explore the traditional African foundation upon which unity is understood and upon which ecclesial unity, particularly in the African Pentecostal churches, may be further developed. Unity, or, “agreement and harmony,” goes to the very core of African cosmology and belief system.2 The idea of fellowship or koinonia in the New Testament has strong resonance in an African Christian context. For African peoples, the existence of God is an indisputable reality. For African Pentecostals, who for the most part adhere to a strict biblical literalism, this truth of God’s existence is underscored by the opening sentence of the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”3 This opening declaration from Genesis perhaps best captures the African understanding of the Supreme God. In this ancient Yahwist text, God bursts into time and space, and his existence is apodictic. The Creator God, indispensable in African imagination, is a reality that is beyond dispute; God is and so we are! What was to take Western philosophers centuries to digest, namely, that knowledge of God cannot be deduced from a priori philosophical deductions, was something African peoples instinctively knew all along. This apodictic nature of the existence of God is the starting point for African cosmology.4 The African, therefore, has no knowledge, conception, or unity of self or the world around her outside the reality that “God is.” “For in Him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, we are his offspring,” says the Apostle Paul.5 This proclamation (probably coined by the Greek poet Aratus) causes no strain for the African mind. It is in God, then, that the whole universe and the very existence of life itself are unified and find their genesis.6 This, we could say, is the first principle of our African ontology. The second principle, then, has to do with the basis upon which we relate to God and one another as the human family. It is on this second principle that we would like to focus our attention. To do this we would like to introduce the African philosophy and way of life called Ubuntu (humanness)

2 Kwame Nkrumah wrote extensively on the politics of African states searching always for the unifying principles in African thought. In Consciencism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1964), Nkrumah states a political philosophy for Africa. It is his view that African philosophy contains a moral-political substance that makes the unity of African thought and action concrete. 3 Gen 1:1; niv. 4 Laurenti Magesa, African Religion (New York: Orbis Books, 1997), 40. 5 Acts 17:28; niv. 6 Laurenti Magesa, African Religion, 40.

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as a useful starting point for the development of African ontology out of which notions of unity are a corollary. 2 Ubuntology Ubuntu is an African word for a universal concept. It is a Zulu word that captures the spirit of the philosophical foundation of African societies as a collective whole. It is a unifying vision or worldview enshrined in the Zulu maxim umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, i.e., “a person is a person through other persons.” The essence of this African aphorism is the basic understanding that we are contingent beings. It suggests that our ability to co-exist goes to the very heart of our human ontology. An attempt at a longer definition has been made by Archbishop Desmond Tutu who says, “A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.”7 Drawing upon this Ubuntu philosophy, we would like to provide three dialectical “call and response” patterns with Ubuntu representing the “call” and African Pentecostalism representing the “response” or outworking.8 The first call from Ubuntu affirms a respect and acceptance of others. This notion of mutual respect is premised on the idea that all of us are God’s offspring. Dirk Louw argues that this attests to the spiritual foundation of African societies.9 Louw suggests that the concept of Ubuntu defines individuals in terms of their several relationships with others, and stresses the importance of Ubuntu as a religious concept.10 While the Zulu maxim, umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, may have no ostensible religious connotations in its phraseology, in the cultural context of an African, it idiomatically carries the idea that the person one is to become by behaving humanely towards others is an ancestor worthy of respect or veneration. The African Pentecostal practice of deliverance and spiritual exorcism provides a contextual response to this notion of mutual respect inherent in Ubuntu. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu observes, “Healing and deliverance is employed as a form of pastoral care, because it aims at 7 8

Desmond Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 9. For a full discussion of “call and response” theological method, see Pentecostal Theology in Africa, ed. Clifton R. Clarke (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2014), chap. 1. 9 Dirk Louw, Ubuntu, 390. 10 Ibid.

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r­ estoring disturbed persons to proper functioning order.”11 Deliverance means more than exorcism, and the expulsion of evil spirits. It has to do with freeing people from “bondage” to sin and Satan. According to African Pentecostal soteriology, persons are lost not because they are innately evil but because they are victims of unseen spiritual powers that operate in “high places.”12 It is the ultimate affirmation of a person’s potential to be delivered and healed that lies at the center of the affirmation of their human dignity. As Ubuntu holds up the value of ultimate human good through our inescapable interrelatedness, so too, African Pentecostalism presents a vision of human wholeness available to all by the resurrection of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit to heal and deliver. There is therefore a sense that the healing and deliverance of our neighbor is inherently tied up with our own. In other words, “I am because we are; because we are, I am.” The logical negation of this is, “I am not because we are not;” or, “I am ill because we are ill.” A second call pertains to the extremely important role that agreement or consensus plays within Ubuntu. Consensus is an important value within ­African societies; decisions are traditionally made in consultation with community elders who represent the interest of their local constituents. Traditional African democracy operates in the form of lengthy discussions in the quest for consensus and agreement between parties. It is also important to be in agreement with the unseen (spiritual) members of the community serving as our ancestors. The response to this Ubuntu call for consensus is heard loudly among African Pentecostals. The idea of agreement is not a strange one for African Pentecostals and could be creatively enlarged with regard to the unity of the oikos. One area where agreement and consensus is expressed in African Pentecostalism that provides a possible inroad for deepening church unity in the spirit of Ubuntu consensus is in the area of spiritual and physical healing. Healing is a very prevalent theme within African Pentecostalism.13 An important feature of the healing process is “touching and agreeing.”14 African Pentecostals believe that much can be accomplished when people gather together and agree on a common cause of action. This is evident in prayer meetings 11 12 13 14

J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, African Charismatics (Boston: Brill, 2006), 166. See Eph 6:10. On healing in Africa, see Candy Gunther Brown, Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), part 3; Asamoah-Gyadu, African Charismatics, chapter 6; Clifton Clarke, African Christology (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2011), chapter 7. This is taken from such passages as Matt 18:19, “Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven” (kjv). This is usually practiced by holding hands during prayer time.

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where adherents are often seen holding hands and praying in concert. During the annual 21 days of prayer led by David Oyedepo, the founder of Living Faith Church Worldwide, also known as Winners Chapel, he outlines the areas of prayers before the congregation before drawing them into corporate prayer with great emphasis on agreement on the desired outcome. During the prayer, the faithful grasp hands and bow heads as prayers are uttered with great fervor. Although the emphasis of this agreement is “spiritual” and the focus of consensus is religiously defined, there is a sense in which the focus on “outcomes,” that is, healing, deliverance, reconciliation, victory, and prosperity, could lend itself to cooperation with people within the broader ecumenical family for a common good. It is not without significance that the agreement that is embarked upon is not simply on a human level, but all parties are in agreement with celestial powers beyond the human gaze. There is a strong sense that the desired outcome is theirs because it is decreed in heaven and awaits manifestation into the earthly realm. A visit to the National Day of Prayer put on by the Action Faith Chapel (Accra, Ghana) on July 1st, 2015, was a fitting reminder of this. Thousands of believers gathered together to pray for the prosperity of the nation. The prayer leader directed adherents to Matthew 18:19, “Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven” (esv). He then made reference to the Lord’s Prayer, noting, “Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” Following this, the people were led into a time of ecstatic prayers for the agreement of heaven to be manifested into time and space. In this type of corporate prayers of agreement, African Pentecostals enlarge Ubuntu in three important ways. First, they align with the Bible and not ancestral beliefs and practices. Second, the idea of praying for God’s agenda and will to be manifested on earth challenges the perceptions that African Pentecostals operate purely on a this worldly or “realized eschatology” and individualized focus on success and victory. For them, the victory is theirs first and f­ oremost because it is God’s. Third, the dynamic pneumatological emphasis in the prayers engages with the African universe more meaningfully and forcibly than the mere theoretical approach to Christian spirituality. There are three important questions that are related to this third engagement of Ubuntu. First, could an African Pentecostal reimaging of Ubuntu be extended to the point in which victorious outcome and breakthroughs include cooperating with other church traditions? Second, could the idea of Ubuntu provide African Pentecostals with a fresh perspective on evangelism as strength in weakness and vulnerability? Third, could an African Pentecostal reimaging of Ubuntu open up new avenues for African Pentecostal pneumatology, in which the Spirit is not only engaging in personal deliverance but also national and even cosmic d­ eliverance? In this

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respect, African Pentecostals might have to go beyond their own sensibilities and religious comfort zones based on the scriptural idea that the wind of the Spirit blows where it pleases.15 The third call relates to religious dialogue or what Louw calls “mutual exposure.” Such exposure, according to Louw, epitomizes the conduct prescribed by Ubuntu. In a similar manner Jabu Sidane asserts, “Ubuntu inspires us to expose ourselves to others, to encounter the difference of their humanness, so as to inform and enrich our own.”16 This third call highlights an issue important for both Ubuntu and African Pentecostalism, namely, religious experience. In spite of the degree of difference and sometime tension between the various Christian traditions, such that exist between Pentecostal groups and the older historical churches, one cannot deny the level of mutual exposure they share. This is in part because religion in Africa is not compartmentalized into merely private domains but is played out in the public spaces of ordinary life. A clear response to this mutual exposure is seen in the “Pentecostalization” or Holy Spirit emphasis across the African Christian church kaleidoscope. In spite of deep religious traditions and practices in African church traditions, the mutual exposure to the renewing power of the Holy Spirit has brought about a spiritual renewal that is not just the prerogative of the Pentecostal groups but one that is pervasive across the range of denominations and church traditions.17 The idea here is that although we have different traditions and spiritual practices, we share the exposure of the Holy Spirit who works in and through us all. In addition to this there is an important pneumatological dimension as it relates to church unity in the spirit of Pentecost. In Acts 2, on the Day of Pentecost, it is recorded that people were gathered from different regions of the world. In the midst of this rich diversity of languages, cultures, and religious practices, it was the Holy Spirit that was the mediator of consensus, where such diversity could have easily led to division. The Holy Spirit still plays such an important role today. This pneumatological consensus-forging role of the Holy Spirit is even more urgent today for our collective Christian witness in the context of religious pluralism and tension.

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John 3:8. Jabu Sidane, Ubuntu and Nation Building (Pretoria: Ubuntu School of Philosophy, 1994), 45. For more on the growth of Pentecostalism within African “mainline” churches, see Cephas Omenyo, Pentecost outside Pentecostalism: A Study of the Development of Charismatic Renewal in the Mainline Churches in Ghana (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2002).

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3 Preforming Ubuntu: An African Pentecostal Practical Approach Above, we attempted to show some important “calls” from Ubuntu in response to which African Pentecostals have given some “responses” in order to construct a theology of church unity and cooperation. We now explore how an African Pentecostal reimaging of Ubuntu might work in practice. In examining the practical application, we would like to revisit the three calls and responses mentioned above. The first call was based upon the Ubuntu ethic of respect for others. Here we make mention of the importance of healing and deliverance through prayer within African Pentecostal spirituality as the affirmation and restoration of our full humanity. But how might this work in practice? Let us use for an example the violent attacks on Christians in northern and central Nigeria by Boko Haram. There was a shocking attack perpetrated against Christians on what is known as the Christmas Day bombing of St. Theresa’s Catholic Church in Madalla, Suleja City, Niger State. The response was a kneejerk reprisal attack by Christians, a good proportion of whom were Pentecostals. Let us also revisit the deplorable shooting that took place at an agricultural college in Yobe, where forty students were killed while sleeping. Here, too, there was a similar response. The Ubuntu ethic of respect for others is rendered helpless in the face of the insatiable desire for reprisal and revenge. This human instinct in Africa is most ugly in the face of tribalism and religious conflict. In the face of such attacks, as Paul Gifford points out in his treatment of healing in the theology and practice of David Oyedepo, African Pentecostals, through teaching such as from David Oyedepo, must expect God to heap upon their enemies “unparalleled devastation.”18 There is no doubt that this reprisal and retaliatory expectation is a part and parcel of the African Pentecostal dominion theology. It must be remembered, too, that a literal reading of the Bible and not merely a radical realized eschatology also encourages this retaliatory posture.19 This dominion warlike posture as a response to harrowing attacks must be balanced, however, with the response of groups like the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (pfn). pfn, in the face of escalating unrest both politically and religiously, has called for Christians across Nigeria and around the world to join

18 19

Paul Gifford, “Healing in African Pentecostalism: The ‘Victorious Living’ of David Oyedepo,” in Global Pentecostal, 262. The following are scriptural examples adopted by African Pentecostals in which God visits God’s enemies: Lev 26:18; Isa 13:11; Jer 36:31; Ezek 3:17–18, 18:4, 20; and Zech 9.

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in a ­yearlong 24-7 prayer for the healing and transformation of Nigeria.20 Such a call for prayer recognizes that the powers of evil operate also at a deep and sinister level that can be checked only by a united prayer effort. Through this practical prayer response to ease tension in Muslim and Christian relations, we see Ubuntu at work. Ubuntu, as a means of interreligious cooperation, is expressed in at least three ways. First, it is seen in the “corporate” nature of the call to prayer. Ubuntu is expressed here in the quest for unity and harmony that transcends denominationalism and seeks the wellbeing of the whole community. The focus of prayer is to remove all that is bad from a community and restore what is good. One prayer point listed on the pfn website states, “Ask God to cause peace, unity and love to manifest amongst all people of various church traditions, religious backgrounds, tribes and ethnic groups.”21 Prayer, connecting the visible and the invisible world, enhances the mutual interdependent relationships.22 An important focus of the pfn’s “Year of Prayer for Nigeria” is the Lord’s Prayer. Albert Haase summarizes the important Ubuntu principle behind this pfn emphasis: “The first word of the Lord’s Prayer honors Ubuntu as a critical factor in spiritual formation. It confronts and challenges the belief that the Christian life is a quaint little individualistic affair between me and Jesus.”23 It also reveals one of the great illuminations in spiritual formation: all creatures, both rational and irrational, are brothers and sisters in Christ. Second, the pfn call for national prayers is the ultimate act of Ubuntu, which is the command given by Jesus in Matthew 5:44, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (niv). In this call for prayer we see the enlarging of African Pentecostal understanding of healing and wholeness. Antjie Krog, a well-known South African writer, puts the word “Ubuntu” aside in her essay, “This Thing called Reconciliation,” and replaces it with “interconnectedness-towards-wholeness.” She explains interconnectedness-towards-whole as a “mental and physical awareness that one can only ‘become’ who one is, or could be, through the fullness of that which is around one—physical and metaphysical. Wholeness is thus not a passive state of nirvana, but a process

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Pray for Nigeria, Year of Prayer for Nigeria, 2014. Retrieved March 16, 2015 from: http:// www.pray4nigeria.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=295&Item id=255. 21 Ibid. 22 Laurent Magesa, African Religion: Moral Tradition of Abundant Life (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1997), 197–98; John. S. Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (Harlow: Heinemann, 2008), 61. 23 Albert Haase, Living the Lord’s Prayer (Downers Grove: ivp, 2009), 38.

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of becoming in which everybody and everything is moving towards its fullest, building itself; one can only reach the fullest self though, through and with others, which include ancestors and universe.”24 In many respects the pfn call for national prayer in the face of national crises is recognition of the interconnectedness that exists between various religious traditions, irrespective of dogma and religious affiliation. It is this interconnectedness that bears down on us through the command of Jesus in Matthew 22:19 to love our neighbors as ourselves. Third, this call to love our enemies and our neighbors as ourselves implicitly calls for forgiveness. To forgive is to be healed of emotional, psychological, and physical sickness, which often leads to social, political, and physical ailments. This, of course, was the premise behind Desmond Tutu’s theology of Ubuntu that permeated the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Tutu’s well cited quote is as follows: Forgiving and being reconciled to our enemies or our loved ones are not about pretending that things are other than they are. It is not about patting one another on the back and turning a blind eye to the wrong. True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the hurt, the truth. It could even sometimes make things worse. It is a risky undertaking but in the end it is worthwhile, because in the end only an honest confrontation with reality can bring real healing. Superficial reconciliation can bring only superficial healing.25 The corporate call for prayer for the healing of the nations by pfn and the regular call to prayer by African Pentecostals all over Africa for the same reason provide an important opening for a deeper church unity and mutual cooperation. This call for national prayer for unity and healing is increasingly a popular feature of African Pentecostal churches during national elections. The issue of “Pentecostalism and reconciliation” is an area that is in its infancy and most certainly in need of further exploration.26 The special place that is given to prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit is a valuable building block upon which a theology of church unity can be forged.

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Antjie Krog, “‘This Thing Called Reconciliation…’: Forgiveness as Part of an Interconnectedness-Towards-Wholeness,” South African Journal of Philosophy 27, no. 4 (2008): 353–66. Cited on https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/63047-forgiving-and-being-reconciled-toour-enemies-or-our-loved. Retrieved March 10th, 2015. For a useful contribution to this issue see, Martin Mittelstadt and Geoffrey Sutton (eds.), Forgiveness, Reconciliation, and Restoration: Multidisciplinary Studies from a Pentecostal Perspective (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010).

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Touching and Agreeing: A Call to Unity in Diversity

The second call identified above was the important role that agreement and consensus plays in Ubuntu. Here our response drew upon the African Pentecostal practice of healing, in which agreement and consensus plays an important role. But once again we ask, how might this work in practice? How might a Pentecostal practice of healing contribute to ecumenism in the spirit of Ubuntu? In this second response, we drew reference to the importance of “touching and agreement” as a part of the healing process. During prayers, the African Pentecostal minister often says, “agree with me in prayer” or “let us touch and agree.” The idea here is that healing and deliverance begin with coming together and touching. We would like to suggest three practical ways that African Pentecostals could “touch and agree” to foster deepening ecumenism and tolerance in ways that give integrity to their Christian witness. First, is touching and agreeing as resistance. Speaking to the Diplomatic Corps on January 13th, 1990, John Paul ii said, I cannot remain silent about the disturbing situation experienced by Christians living in certain countries where Islam is the majority religion. Expressions of their spiritual distress constantly reach me: often deprived of places of worship, made the object of suspicion, prevented from organizing religious education or charitable activities in accordance with their faith, they have the painful feeling of being second-class citizens. I am convinced that the great traditions of Islam, such as welcoming strangers, fidelity in friendship, patience in the face of adversity, the importance given to faith in God, are the principles which ought to enable unacceptable sectarian attitudes to be overcome. I express my earnest hope that if Muslim believers nowadays rightly find in countries of Christian tradition the facilities needed for satisfying the demands of their religion, then Christians will similarly be able to benefit from a comparable treatment in all countries of Islamic tradition. Religious freedom cannot be limited to simple tolerance. It is a civil and social reality, matched by specific rights enabling believers and their communities to witness without fear to their faith in God and to live out all the demands of that faith.27

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Message of John Paul ii for the celebration of the World Day of Peace, 1 January 1990: https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/1990/january/documents/hf_jpii_spe_19900113_corpo-diplomatico.html. Accessed 26 March 2017.

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In such situations of oppression African Pentecostals (and African Christians generally) have to be bold and confront the source of the tension that fractures societal well-being. In this regard Christians from different denominational affiliations must touch and agree against what Luarenti Magesa calls “anti-life” forces.28 Self-defense by non-violent means is one of the duties and rights that all movements of justice and peace in our time support. In situations where injustice is perpetrated against individuals, groups, or society in general, touching and agreeing is the language of resistance and a necessary form of dialogue. Indeed, sometimes defending one’s rights can result in unpleasant confrontation. This is the lowest form of Ubuntu practice, but it is sometimes necessary. Touching and agreeing resistance also transcends religious traditions and affiliations, as in the case of the “Women without Walls” movement in Jos, Nigeria. In the face of government inability to quall the murderous rampage of Boko Haram, women gathered together from various religious groupings realizing that women of all denominations and religious traditions were victims of government inactivity and Boko Haram’s brutal murders, mobilized hundreds of thousands of women and formed Women without Walls as a resistance group against Boko Haram and the Nigerian government’s ineptitude in the face of terror.29 Second, there is touching and agreeing in the spirit of cooperation. Churches of different traditions hold in common many mutual interests, particularly in the area of empowering their members economically, socially, and politically. These concern not only government and religious leaders, but also individuals and private associations. In the last point we mentioned Women without Walls, which could also fall into this category. Opportunities to touch and agree in common projects help to foster healing and wholeness in community. In Northern Nigeria from the mid-1990s onwards, religious leaders from across church traditions, including young people and women, came together in an 28 29

Laurenti Magesa, African Religions, 44. Esther Ibanga, a pastor in the town of Jos and a founder of Women Without Walls, had hoped the world would have paid more attention to the Boko Haram assault that took hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Nigerian lives. In response, Ibgana organized 100,000 women, mainly Christians, in a march through Jos. The idea was to let the government know the women on the plateau were not going to keep quiet any more. But in the weeks that followed, Ibanga and others discovered that the extremist violence in Dogo-Nahawa was in fact a reprisal attack in response to an earlier assault in the region by Christian militants. The Muslim women now reacted noting that their own people were killed as well. Thus, Muslim women in Jos held a separate rally. But even after the Christian and the Muslim demonstrations, the violent clashes continued. At that point, Ibanga reached out to a local Muslim religious leader, Khadija Hawaja. After months of collaboration, Ibanga and Hawaja founded the Women Without Walls Initiative. See http://wowwi.org for further information about this organization.

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attempt to work towards peace. Hajiya Yusuf describes and evaluates a number of these initiatives in her article, “Managing Muslim-Christian Conflicts in Northern Nigeria,” with a particular focus on the successful Kaduna Peace Initiative.30 Here she demonstrates how Christians from different denominations have joined forces with other Muslim women in an effort to provide a united front against violent atrocities. On October 18th, 2004, a dialogue series titled “Pentecostalism in Public Life” began in Lagos. The dialogue brought together Pentecostal and human rights leaders for frank and interactive discussions on issues of public accountability and governance—especially the question of how the moral influence of the Pentecostal churches can serve to improve the quality of governance in Nigeria.31 During this dialogue Pentecostals from various churches and human rights leaders held hands to pray before the matters of national importance were discussed. 5

Touching and Agreeing: The Dialogue of Life

Third, we noted in the third call the Ubuntu ideal of dialogue and mutual exposure. Here, we drew upon the response of the inherently dialogical nature of African Pentecostalism seen through mutual exposure to the renewing power of the Holy Spirit. Akinade proposes the idea of the “dialogue of life.” This, he argues, is part and parcel of the daily encounter of African peoples not as defined by religious labels but by what we they share in common in ordinary life. The dialogue of life is an example of ecumenical dialogue that is practical, contextual, and builds upon the African Pentecostal dialogical orientation and preference towards orality and “lived” experience. Charles Amjad Ali provides a useful critique of the epistemological presuppositions undergirding Western theologies of dialogue. One is the glorification of cognitive knowledge, based on Descartes’ dictum, “I think; therefore, I am,” with its emphasis on reason as the primary means of achieving a knowledge that claims to transcend particulars and achieve universality.32 Another is liberal political theory, which celebrates individual freedom and choice over community rights and religious identity.33 All these factors have led to “metalogue,” or, the search for a 30

H.B. Yusuf, “Managing Muslim-Christian Conflicts in Northern Nigeria: A Case-Study of Kaduna State,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 18, no. 2 (2007): 252–55. 31 For further information on events and for a continuous documentation of the Pentecostal-Civil Society Dialogue, see www.boellnigeria.org/pentecostal.html. 32 Charles Amjad-Ali, “Theological and Historical Rationality Behind Christian-Muslim Relations,” in Islam in Asia: Perspectives for Christian-Muslim Encounter, ed. J.P. Rajashekar and H.S. Wilson (Geveva: Lutheran World Federation, 1992), 14. 33 Ibid.

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transcendent­way beyond the particulars of the dialogue partners. Consequently, people’s religious and cultural particularities have been sacrificed, and theology has become divorced from its historical moorings. Such an approach reduces dialogue to “mentally constructed laboratories of objectivity.”34 Unlike Western approaches to dialogue that tend to be highly text-centered, the dialogue of life takes into consideration other issues that are not considered in a more theoretical approach to ecumenical relations. In the dialogue of life, Akinade argues, dialogue is not a contrived idea but the recognition of the religious conversations happening between Christians of all shades and colors on a daily basis. Unity defined above as agreement and harmony has been discussed as central to African cosmology, and the ability to coexist is at the very heart of our humanity. Ubuntu echoes the very same sentiment of unity. The remainder of this chapter examines the Black Pentecostal Church in the United Kingdom as a microcosm of society in which Pentecostal patriarchal authority and Pentecostal females practice unity in the spirit of Ubuntu. In these churches Ubuntu is displayed despite the fact that generally a minority of men have authority over the majority of women. Feminist theory cannot adequately account for and is often alarmed by the disproportionate number of women who are converted to Pentecostalism and are responsible for much of the inner workings of the church and yet appear content with such subordinate roles. Such a gender dynamic is at odds with Western feminism, which seeks to expose the takenfor-granted sexist practices and gender blindness of Western institutions that have ignored the female voice.35 White middle-class and Western feminism is at odds with the notion of unity as displayed in Pentecostalism, which portrays women as subordinate and oppressed, and the consequent gender paradox that the male-female relationship creates. This display of unity and solidarity amidst subservience is explored below in the context of the Black British Pentecostal Church. We will begin by providing some background to the Black Majority Pentecostal Churches in Britain. 6

Black British Pentecostalism

Following World War ii, when Britain was in need of labor to rebuild its wartorn infrastructure, many people from Britain’s former colonies responded to 34 35

Ibid., 7–8. Sotirios Sarantakos, Social Research, 4th ed. (Hampshire: Macmillan Press Ltd, 2013), 66; Celia Kitzinger, “Feminist Approaches,” in Qualitative Research Practice, ed. Clive Seale (London: Sage, 2004), 125.

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the call.36 In 1948, the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury in the United Kingdom with 492 Jamaicans aboard. Within ten years of Windrush’s initial disembarkment, a further 125,000 West Indians entered Britain. During the same period, as a direct result of this migration, what was to become known generically as the Black Majority Church (bmc) began. Far away from their original church, family, friends, and hostilely received by many Britons, Jamaican migrants formed informal house-based social groups. These informal house groups would sometimes have a dual function. Some operated as hair salons, the only place where Black women could get their hair styled, and others centred around the “pardner” system. The “pardner draw” was for many the only means of getting a deposit for a house or payment for air tickets for dependents.37 As well as being spiritual buttresses, these groups were a source of social sustenance and support, providing a form of continuity with the Caribbean. Religious participation was then and continues to be central to the lives of many Caribbean women. Research in African-American women’s spirituality also suggests that spiritual and religious belief influences most spheres of African-American life.38 Spirituality is said to be among those factors that sustain and aid in “the survival and liberation efforts of the black community.”39 In this new “immigrant” context, the Windrush generation had to redefine their existence. They had to determine what it meant to be Black, British, and Jamaican. Who was going to teach this lesson? As a result of the 1948 Nationality Act, many émigrés already thought they were British. The Pentecostal woman as well as being female was additionally Pentecostal: she had been transformed through the Spirit, who had given her a new sense of self. As stated above, for this woman, the development of a community of worship was essential, for 36

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The focus of this chapter is migrants from Jamaica and specifically their role in the formation of the Black majority church. However, during that era, economic migrants came from many countries in the British Commonwealth, including other islands in the Caribbean, India, and Pakistan. Unlike the Commonwealth countries, it is argued that Ghanaians and Nigerians came to Britain primarily for education and not for economic reasons. See Deidre Helen Crumbley, Africa and the Diaspora: Spirit, Structure, and Flesh: Gendered Experiences in African Instituted Churches among the Yoruba of Nigeria (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010), 9. Beverley Bryan, Stella Dadzie, and Suzanne Scafe, The Heart of the Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain (London: Virago Press, 1986), 131. “Pardner” consists of an individual collecting a set amount of money every week from a number of individuals for a set amount of time. Each week one of the contributors takes the total amount of the collection “draw.” Corliss D. Heath, “A Womanist Approach to Understanding and Assessing the Relationship between Spirituality and Mental Health,” Mental Health, Religion & Culture 9, no. 2 (2006): 160. Heath, “A Womanist Approach to Understanding and Assessing,” 160.

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it was part of her “language of resistance,” but more importantly she was to play a role in its redefinition.40 Taylor recognized that the community of worship provided the psychological, social, and community space and resources to mould these new identities and insulate Caribbean Black immigrants from prejudice and racism, while simultaneously assisting in the adaptation to a new culture.41 A further reason for the greater female presence is said to be found in the socialization of women who attend church at an earlier age. As a result they may score higher on religious salience indicators than their male counterparts.42 Jacqueline Mattis’s study of African-American women’s definitions of spirituality and religiosity suggests that for women of color spirituality tends to be Christian spirituality, while for women of other ethnic groups institutionalised religion is a barrier to spirituality.43 Musgrove, Allen, and Allen propose that for women of color spirituality is not abstract but rooted in relationships and in community.44 For the women in Musgrove, Allen, and Allen’s study, spirituality equates to religious practice such as church attendance, Bible study, and prayer. While the reception of the English hosts may have caused some émigrés to lose faith and walk away from the church, others remained committed to the historic Christian denominations of which they had been members in the Caribbean.45 Yet others become part of self-organised fellowships, bmc’s, many of which developed from the informal house-based groups mentioned

40 41 42 43 44 45

Valentina Alexander, “A Mouse in a Jungle: The Black Woman’s Experience in the Church and Society in Britain,” in Reconstructing Womanhood, Reconstructing Feminism: Writings on Black Women, ed. D. Jarrett-Macaulay (London: Routledge, 1996), 86. Robert Taylor et al., “Religious Involvement among Caribbean Blacks Residing in the United States,” Review of Religious Research 52, no. 2 (2010): 129. Catherine Musgrave, Carol Easley Allen, and Gregory Allen, “Spirituality and Health for Women of Color,” American Journal of Public Health 92, no. 4 (2002): 557. Jacqueline Mattis, “African American Women’s Definitions of Spirituality and Religiosity,” Journal of Black Psychology 26, no. 1 (2000): 118. Musgrove, Allen, and Allen, Spirituality and Health, 557. Alexander, “A Mouse in a Jungle,” 86. Ron Ramdin, Reimaging Britain: Five Hundred Years of Black and Asian History (London: Pluto Press, 1999), 276. Ramdin further asserts that it was racism within the native churches that was the impetus for Black people beginning their own churches. Though Lyesight the founder of the ntcg stated that he was well received by the churches he attended but felt the need to begin a church out of concern for the incoming migrants. Oliver Lyesight, Forward March: An Autobiography (Sedgley: selfpublished, 1995); Iain MacRobert, Black Pentecostalism: Its Origins, Functions, and Theology with Special Reference to a Midland Borough (Ph.D. diss., University of Birmingham, 1989), 127. Iain McRobert, The Black Roots and White Racism of Early Pentecostalism in the usa (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1988).

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above. One of these early bmc’s was the New Testament Church of God upon which we expound in the next section. 7

New Testament Church of God

The New Testament Church of God (ntcg) was established in England in 1953. The founder, Oliver Lyesight (1919–2006), was an ordained minister in ntcg in Jamaica. The ntcg is one of the largest Pentecostal denominations on the island. Both the ntcg Jamaica and England (and Wales) are affiliated with the Church of God (Cleveland, TN). Lyesight founded the church out of a concern for the spiritual condition of those who were arriving in England. His wife, Rose, would eventually lead the Women’s Ministries Department of the church. Generally, Pentecostal denominations greatly depend on the commitment of their women to develop the church, particularly during its embryonic stages.46 This was the case for ntcg. Bishop Lyesight stated that in the 1960s the women “were very evangelistic in their outreach and under them many souls were, saved, sanctified and filled.”47 Functioning in this role was not alien to Black women, for from the introduction of Christianity to Jamaica until this point, Black women and their concomitant experiences have played an essential role in the appropriation of the Christian faith. Once the ntcg incorporated, women were responsible for teaching and organising Sunday School (for children and adults), nursery classes, day centres for the elderly, and supplementary schools.48 They did the paperwork, administration, organization, and catering for meetings and conventions. Women were often exhorters and evangelists and in those roles would lead worship. Women “encourag[ed] and prompt[ed] deeper worship and praise in order to experience the manifestation of the Spirit amongst the believers.”49 The women visited the sick and supported those in need including missionaries in Africa and ministers in newly formed churches whose own congregations were not in a position to support them financially.50 46

Robert Beckford, Jesus is Dread: Black Theology and Black Culture in Britain (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1998), 154; Elaine Foster, “Women and the Inverted Pyramid of the Black Churches in Britain,” in Refusing Holy Orders: Women and Fundamentalism in Britain, ed. Gita Sahgal and N. Yuval-Davis (London: Virago Press, 1992), 45. 47 Lyesight, Forward March, 56. 48 Black British Pentecostal Churches, or what Robert Reddie refers to as Black led or Black Majority Pentecostal Denominational Churches, are those whose origins are in the Caribbean. “Pentecostal” is used here to identify the church more specifically. 49 Alexander, “A Mouse in a Jungle,” 49. 50 Lyesight, Forward March, 56.

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The ntcg did not license female pastors during those early years, in line with the regulations of the Church of God (Cleveland, TN). However, not all ntcg male ministers supported this position. Ira Brooks, an ordained Bishop with the Church of God who also served on the Executive Board of the ntcg, designates a chapter in his book, Another Gentleman to the Ministry, to “Questions of the Ministry of Women,” where he states, Like race, the true value and position of women in black-led Pentecostalism has never been faced squarely. If the ruling hierarchy of these churches are guilty of racism in the way they relate to their coloured counterpart, then similarly, black leadership is guilty of sexism by its attitudes to female members collectively, but, especially those ladies who serve in active ministry of pastoring…Since constitutional polices and basic rules of ethics governing popular Pentecostalism are decreed by white councils, blacks are merely carrying out the designated polices of “divide and rule.”51 As is clear from this quotation, women were serving as pastors despite not being licensed to do so. In the British context they were given the authority from Bishop Lyesight to function as a pastor. Why would women agree to this? And further why do they attend in greater proportion. In the early years of the bmc, women and men attended the church in near equal proportion; however, the number of women increased so that they comprised between sixty to ninety percent of the congregation. The explanations offered for this disparity are found in a number of factors. For many Pentecostals, the prohibition of women in formal leadership is a stance supported by men and women on the grounds that Jesus had only male apostles and in light of 2 Tim 2:12.52 However, Pentecostalism is not a homogenous movement and can vary widely in the extent of formal authority and leadership allocated to women. As is demonstrated above within the ntcg, the Overseer of the church placed women in pastoral roles despite the rules of the denomination. Many Oneness Pentecostal denominations strictly prohibit not only the ordination and licensure of women but also the exercise of any female authority over men.53 At the other end of the spectrum are those 51 52 53

Ira Brooks, Another Gentleman to the Ministry, 109. Gaston Espinosa, “Women in the Latino Pentecostal Movement,” in Women and Twentieth Century Protestantism, ed. Mary Lambert Bendroth and Virginia Lieson Brereto (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 31. Espinosa, “Women in the Latino Pentecostal Movement,” 29. Espinosa states, however, that despite the prohibition women do exercise power and influence. He further argues

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denominations, such as the Assemblies of God, who have from the early years of the Pentecostal movement ordained women. In general, however, Pentecostals who support formal female authority do not use a feminist argument to advocate for equality.54 This is because a Euro-American feminist experience of patriarchy is substantially different than those from the global South. Kwok Pui Lan observes that while “white women are oppressed by patriarchy, they are at the same time protected and privileged by the patriarchal institution.”55 For instance, Latina Pentecostals do not seek liberation from patriarchy because the Spirit-filled relationship with Jesus is true liberation. Real power is conveyed through their relationship with and in the Spirit. It is here that we see the subtle retention of the Ubuntu principle at work in a transatlantic context. It is through the power of the Holy Spirit that lives and communities are transformed for the good of the whole.56 8

Inverted Pyramid and Gender Balance

In addressing the former question of the relationship between male and female in the bmc, Elaine Foster depicts gender relationship as two pyramids superimposed over each other. One is inverted and the other upright. In the inverted pyramid lies spirituality—the life-giving and sustaining nature of the church. Its inversion represents the numbers of women actively involved in the spiritual life and upkeep of the church. The upright one represents the patriarchy and hierarchy that exists in the leadership structure of the Pentecostal church. However, the powerbase is maintained due to male-female silent or mutual collusion. This collusion diverts conflict and promotes unity of purpose. Foster uses the word “cunning” to describe the women’s use of power, which can be understood in a pejorative sense. We use the word “creative” because it is more empowering. Creativity is the preferred strategy over overt male-female confrontation to maintain equanimity. Here, too, in the cold heartland of secular Britain, there is an Ubuntu strain in which the survival of the community is more important than who occupies leadership positions. There is, therefore, a selflessness that comes from what bbpw see as a “calling” and as, hence, their God-given responsibility to work with “grace and humility.”

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that taking an imperialistic and reductionist view of agency ignores the millions of women who use creative strategies of empowerment and influence. Espinosa, “Women in the Latino Pentecostal Movement,” 40. Kwok Pui Lan, Post-Colonial Imagination and Feminist Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 54. Espinosa, “Women in the Latino Pentecostal Movement,” 40.

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I agree with Nicole Toulis, who proposes that it is misleading to read women’s religious participation in terms of externally defined dichotomies, because these employ narrow definitions of power, oppression, and advantage.57 To understand the dynamics of gender in the bmc, “the preoccupation with visible office as a sign of power has to be put aside,” as must be preconceived ideas about who is a liberated Black woman. Toulis suggests that the focus instead should be on the “everyday relationships between men and women and the construction of gender in the churches,” which alludes to the dialogue of life mentioned in the first section.58 Other factors that may contribute to the disparity are the centrality of spirituality to the lives of Black women, coupled with the female understanding of self in relation to the work of the Pentecostal church. In Marcia’s research, women used the imagery of the “engine and the oil” and depicted themselves as holding up the hands of the men, a reference to Aaron and Hur, who supported the arms of Moses. By his own volition, Moses was only able to keep his arms up for so long; however, with the support of others, Moses’ uplifted arms ensured the victory of the Israelite army.59 Women recognize that although males exercise authority in the church, the salvation and spiritual welfare of the membership, as well as the ecclesial substructure, cannot be maintained without women. As both engine and the oil, there is a recognition that overt patriarchal authority will not sustain the Pentecostal church; the support women provide in the form of prayer, finances, and encouragement of the leadership is needed. Although Black British Pentecostalism caught the attention of sociologists in the 1960s, the role of Black women in British society and in the bmc church in particular has been either understudied and or highlighted only as deviant.60 Yet the women know they are indispensable to the Black Pentecostal Church, the Black community, and Britain.61 In the bmc women were responsible for much of the inner workings of the church, functioning as both oil and engine. Their active and assertive roles in the Pentecostal church not only impacted the infrastructure but greatly influenced and shaped the spirituality and ethics 57

Nicole Toulis, Believing Identity: Pentecostalism and the Mediation of Jamaican Ethnicity and Gender in England (Oxford: Berg, 1997), 215; Alexander, “A Mouse in a Jungle,” 49; Foster, “Women and the Inverted Pyramid,” 47. 58 Toulis Believing Identity, 215. 59 Exod 17:12. 60 Malcolm Calley, “Pentecostal Sects among West Indian Migrants,” Race and Class 3, no. 2 (1962): 55–64. 61 See Alexander, “A Mouse in a Jungle,” 85–107; Foster, “Women and the Inverted Pyramid,” 45–68; Toulis, Believing Identity.

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of the Pentecostal church in Great Britain. The Pentecostal attributes of God portray Jesus as loving, “courting” humans and the broken hearted when rejected, in effect as part of a “soteriological romance,” the deep relationship for which the women strive.62 To endow Jesus with female qualities is “far more radical and paradoxically more easily assimilable to the existing religious symbol system.”63 Such an understanding is revolutionary when assessed against the patriarchal authority that operates in the Pentecostal church. However, their contribution goes unnoticed, with the focus more likely to be on features of the gender inequality that exists in the Black church, as shown in Foster’s article on the “Women and the Inverted Pyramid.” This is not unique to the Black British Pentecostal Woman. Cheryl Townsend Gilkes observes that the women of the Sanctified Church “contributed to the internal strengthening of the [Black] community and its ability to effect…external transformations.”64 9

Feminism and Disunity

The feminist quest to highlight the oppressive nature of religion and family in the lives of women has rather created a blind spot that has obscured the positive effect of Pentecostalism in the daily lives of women in the global South.65 Describing “the Bible and the Church [as] the biggest stumbling blocks in the way of women’s emancipation” or opining that “a woman asking for equality in the church would be comparable to a black person’s demanding equality in the Ku Klux Klan” is a summation of this perspective.66 In the feminist claim to characterize all women, feminist descriptions have rather highlighted the 62

Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century (London: Cassell, 1996), 201. 63 Cox, Fire from Heaven, 202. 64 C. Gilkes, If It Wasn’t for the Women: Black Women’s Experience and Womanist Culture in Church and Community (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2004); see also Foster, “Women and the Inverted Pyramid of the Black Churches in Britain,”; Alexander, “A Mouse in a Jungle,” 85–107. 65 Bernice Martin, “The Pentecostal Gender Paradox: A Cautionary Tale for the Sociology of Religion,” in The Blackwell Companion to Sociology of Religion, ed. Richard Fenn (Malden: Blackwell, 2003), 63. 66 Elizabeth Brusco, “Gender and Power,” in Studying Global Pentecostalism: Theories and Methods, ed. Allan Anderson, Michael Bergunder, Andre Droogers, and Cornelis Van der Laan (London: University of California, 2010), 78; Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Changing the Subject: Women’s Discourses and Feminist Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 2; Mary Daly, The Church and the Second Sex: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985), 6.

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hegemonic privilege of white, Euro-American, middle-class feminists over and against women of the South.67 In the context of empirical research, Kitzinger observes that data, which “cannot be easily assimilated into feminist critique” is often excluded from the final report by feminist researchers.68 This process occurs in a number of ways; for example, participant’s words might be reinterpreted or excluded altogether or the “voices of powerful groups (such as men, heterosexuals)” are assessed as lacking a full grasp on the situation under investigation. Kitzinger notes, “[B]y implicitly endorsing some voices as offering accurate, truthful or valid ways of understanding experience, while ‘explaining away’ other voices as merely rationalisations or justifications born of ‘false consciousness’ or ‘patriarchal discourses,’ [feminist researchers] are imposing a heavy (and often unacknowledged) interpretative frame on…data.”69 It is in such ways that Euro-American feminism has discounted the faith and practice that is central to the lives of millions of women. Mary McClintock Fulkerson seeks to expose such “hegemonies” along with their accompanying universalising claims.70 Feminism should include the experiences of other women, including those whose practice of faith does not line up with prevailing though covert feminist assumptions. In so doing, there is acknowledgement that women’s problems and interests are not uniform across all cultures or even intra-culture. Fulkerson promotes the study of “the real woman” not “the woman.” In the identification of the real woman, feminist assumptions are challenged, along with the “common methodological assumptions of feminist theological thinking as they function in academics that prevent us from hearing other women.”71 Fulkerson’s objective is not to lose the subject “woman” but to change the subject in the sense that the complex production of multiple identities becomes basic to our thinking.72 Kaplan asserts that movements that emerge from female consciousness value social cohesion (Ubuntu) over individual rights and quality of life over institutional power.73 While Western feminism has remained faithful to its cultural origins with its emphasis on individual freedom, other forms of female consciousness have emerged with an “Ubuntian” emphasis and priority.

67 Fulkerson, Changing the Subject, ix. 68 Kitzinger, “Feminist Approaches,” 127. 69 Ibid. 70 Fulkerson, Changing the Subject, 7. 71 Fulkerson, Changing the Subject, 7. 72 Fulkerson, Changing the Subject, 11. 73 Temma Kaplan, “Female Consciousness and Collective Action: The Case of Barcelona 1910–1918,” Signs 7, no. 3 (1982): 545–66.

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The centrality of “lived experience” and Pentecostal spirituality as integral to that lived experience challenge feminist theory, which overlooks the faith experiences of women because their experience is not in line with feminist assertions posited on Western enlightenment overtones. We observe that the liberated Pentecostal female experience, unlike feminism, does not challenge the existing gender order of male dominance, (see reference to Kalu below) but rather has the capacity to transform gender roles.74 This transformation is perhaps more in line with womanist ideology as it enhances the circumstances and status of women and by so doing presents a challenge but does not conflict with traditional male roles.75 10

African Feminism as a Response to Western Feminism

Ogbu Kalu offers African feminism as response to feminism that emanates from women’s movements in the global North. Kalu identifies two postures among African feminists, loyalists and liberationists. Within these postures it is clear that the objective is not division or disunity. Although academicians espouse a more critical reading of feminist theology, one that re-examines patriarchy, African feminists do not “subscribe to radical feminist theology, nor do they reject the church, yearn for a women’s church, or call for an exit from maledominated churches.”76 Most African feminists are loyalists, a posture that includes survivalists and elevationists. For this group, religious space is a life raft to weather the socioeconomic and psychological seas of life. Elevationists aim to improve the quality of communal life through the charismatic spirituality that empowers them. The liberationists are integral to the system and challenge the system from within; they attack without direct confrontation.77 Kalu presents the former as a backdrop against which to understand a liberationist stance. Liberationists do not challenge biblical authority and would trade in Paul’s troublesome text on female submission for an equally controversial radical complementarianism, in which everyone in the family is mutually submitted to one another. Further, Kalu states, liberationists would not debate the authenticity of Bible passages, preferring to encourage their acceptance and apply them to daily life.78 It is here that we recognize two epistemological 74 Toulis, Believing Identity, 221. 75 Ibid. 76 Ogbu Kalu, African Pentecostalism: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 154. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid.

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d­ ifferences in the Western feminist approach to unity. First, liberation is the primary goal and is sought after at all costs; here, the “chips fall where they may.” The second is the more nuanced, a subtle negotiation of power as described above. In this latter approach, exemplified through the women in the bmc in Great Britain, there is something bigger at stake than the individual freedoms and self-determination of female enlightenment. This something bigger is the Ubuntu principle, which for the women of bmc in Britain is guided by Holy Spirit, who is at work in them bringing about unity in the midst of ecclesiastical male paternalism. Western feminist writers have rightly paid attention to the double and triple jeopardies that confront Black women. British Black Theologians, such as Beckford and Reddie, subsume Black women within the bmc, thereby seeing them as passively colluding with the oppressive, exploitative colonial church patriarchy. The wider Black community often overlooks and ignores their existence and their silent contribution. All seem to “have trouble seeing black [Pentecostal] women as effective agents of culture and community” in this instance in the revisioning of Pentecostal gender relations.79 What we learn from the bbpw is how to maintain the delicate balance between personal freedom without destroying the foundations of community and family solidarity. Bibliography Alexander, Valentina. “A Mouse in a Jungle: The Black Woman’s Experience in the Church and Society in Britain.” In Reconstructing Womanhood, Reconstructing Feminism: Writings on Black Women. Edited by D. Jarrett-Macaulay. London: Routledge, 1996, 87–110. Amjad-Ali, Charles. “Theological and Historical Rationality Behind Christian-Muslim Relations.” In Islam in Asia: Perspectives for Christian-Muslim Encounter. Edited by J.P. Rajashekar and H.S. Wilson. Geveva: Lutheran World Federation, 1992. Asamoah-Gyadu, J. Kwabena. African Charismatics. Boston: Brill, 2006. Beckford, Robert. Jesus is Dread: Black Theology and Black Culture in Britain. London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1998. Brown, Candy Gunther. Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

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Brusco, Elizabeth. “Gender and Power.” In Studying Global Pentecostalism: Theories and Methods. Edited by Allan Anderson, Michael Bergunder, Andre Droogers, and Cornelis Van der Laan. London: University of California, 2010, 74–92. Bryan, Berverley, Stella Dadzie, and Suzanne Scafe. The Heart of the Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain. London: Virago Press, 1986. Calley, Malcolm. “Pentecostal Sects among West Indian Migrants.” Race and Class 3, no. 2 (1962): 55–64. Clarke, Clifton. African Christology. Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2011. Crumbley, Deidre Helen. Africa and the Diaspora: Spirit, Structure, and Flesh: Gendered Experiences in African Instituted Churches among the Yoruba of Nigeria. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010. Cox, Harvey. Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century. London: Cassell, 1996. Daly, Mary. The Church and the Second Sex: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation. Boston: Beacon Press, 1985. Espinosa, Gastón. “‘Your Daughters Shall Prophesy’: A History of Women in Ministry in the Latino Pentecostal Movement in the United States.” In Women and Twentieth Century Protestantism. Edited by Mary Lambert Bendroth and Virginia Lieson Brereto. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002, 25–48. Foster, Elaine. “Women and the Inverted Pyramid of the Black Churches in Britain.” In Refusing Holy Orders: Women and Fundamentalism in Britain. Edited by Gita Sahgal and N. Yuval-Davis. London: Virago Press, 1992, 45–68. Fulkerson, Mary McClintock. Changing the Subject: Women’s Discourses and Feminist Theology. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1994. Gifford, Paul. “Healing in African Pentecostalism: The ‘Victorious Living’ of David Oyedepo.” In Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing. Edited by Candy Gunther Brown. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, 251–66. Gilkes, C. If It Wasn’t for the Women: Black Women’s Experience and Womanist Culture in Church and Community. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2004. Haase, Albert. Living the Lord’s Prayer. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2009. Heath, Corliss D. “A Womanist Approach to Understanding and Assessing the Relationship between Spirituality and Mental Health.” Mental Health, Religion & Culture 9, no. 2 (2006): 155–70. Kalu, Ogbu. African Pentecostalism: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Kaplan, Temma. “Female Consciousness and Collective Action: The Case of Barcelona 1910–1918.” Signs 7, no. 3 (1982): 545–66. Kitzinger, Celia. “Feminist Approaches.” In Qualitative Research Practice. Edited by Clive Seale. London: Sage, 2004, 113–28.

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Krog, Antjie. “‘This Thing Called Reconciliation…’: Forgiveness as Part of an Interconnectedness-Towards-Wholeness.” South African Journal of Philosophy 27, no. 4 (2008): 353–66. Kwok, Pui Lan. Post-Colonial Imagination and Feminist Theology. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005. Lyesight, Oliver. Forward March: An Autobiography. Sedgley: self-published, 1999. MacRobert, Iain. Black Pentecostalism: Its Origins, Functions, and Theology with Special Reference to a Midland Borough. Ph.D. dissertation. University of Birmingham, 1989. MacRobert, Iain. The Black Roots and White Racism of Early Pentecostalism in the USA. Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1988. Magesa, Laurenti. African Religion. New York: Orbis Books, 1997. Martin, Bernice. “The Pentecostal Gender Paradox: A Cautionary Tale for the Sociology of Religion.” In The Blackwell Companion to Sociology of Religion. Edited by Richard Fenn. Malden: Blackwell, 2003, 52–66. Mattis, Jaqueline. “African American Women’s Definitions of Spirituality and Religiosity.” Journal of Black Psychology 26, no. 1 (2000): 101–22. Mbiti, John S. African Religions and Philosophy. Harlow: Heinemann, 2008. Mittelstadt, Martin and Geoffrey Sutton. Forgiveness, Reconciliation, and Restoration: Multidisciplinary Studies from a Pentecostal Perspective. Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010. Musgrave, Catherine, Carol Easley Allen, and Gregory Allen. “Spirituality and Health for Women of Color.” American Journal of Public Health 92, no. 4 (2002): 557–60. Nkrumah, Kwame. Consciencism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1964. Oden, Thomas. How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press Books, 2007. Omenyo, Cephas. Pentecost Outside Pentecostalism: A Study of the Development of Charismatic Renewal in the Mainline Churches in Ghana. Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2002. Ramdin, Ron. Reimaging Britain: Five Hundred Years of Black and Asian History. London: Pluto Press, 1999. Reddie, Anthony. “Christianity Tu’n Mi Fool: Deconstructing Confessional Black Christian Faith in Postcolonial Britain.” Black Theology: An International Journal 10, no. 1 (2012): 49–76. Sarantakos, Sotirios. Social Research, 4th ed. Hampshire: Macmillan Press Ltd, 2013. Sidane, Jabu. Ubuntu and Nation Building. Pretoria: Ubuntu School of Philosophy, 1994. Taylor, Robert et al. “Religious Involvement among Caribbean Blacks Residing in the United States.” Review of Religious Research 52, no. 2 (2010): 125–45. Toulis, Nicole. Believing Identity: Pentecostalism and the Mediation of Jamaican Ethnicity and Gender in England. Oxford: Berg, 1997.

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Tutu, Desmond. No Future without Forgiveness. New York: Doubleday, 1999. Yusuf, H.B. “Managing Muslim-Christian Conflicts in Northern Nigeria: A Case-Study of Kaduna State.” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 18, no. 2 (2007): 237–56. Pentecostal Theology in Africa. Edited by Clifton R. Clarke. Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2014.

Chapter 17

A Look to the Future Tony L. Richie In an exhaustive pneumatological study drawing from ancient and ecumenical sources, and in a truly ecumenical tone, Thomas Oden asserts, There remain broad analogies between what liturgical traditions call Epiphany, Pentecostals call glossolalia, and social liberationists call inclusiveness. However disparate in symbol systems, all coalesce in the core idea of the mission of the Word to the world through the Spirit.1 Recognition of these “broad analogies” invites explorations of Pentecost and tongues as a theological resource replete with ecumenical significance. One possible avenue is the ecumenical significance of a theological correlation of the tower of Babel and the upper room of Pentecost. An ancient and ongoing ecclesial tradition contrasts the theological significance of Pentecost tongues with those of Babel (Gen 11:1–9; Acts 2:1–4). This exegetical and theological tradition includes luminaries such as Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Augustine, Gregory the Great, and John Calvin.2 In this vein, Pentecost becomes the renewal or restoration of broken, fallen humanity as exemplified in the reversal of its confusion of languages at Babel. In a marvelous, mysterious manner the Holy Spirit moves to (re)unite humanity through making its divided tongues one.3 Hence not only Pentecost per se but tongues in particular has ecumenical significance from a theological perspective. Modern exegetical scholarship tends to affirm a Babel-Pentecost connection but adds several concomitant themes.4 For example, Babel itself appears to be a summative description of pre-historic humanity from creation to the tower, rather than an isolated event. As such it takes on expansive significance. Further, the theme of reversal is emphasized both verbally and thematically 1 Thomas C. Oden, Life in the Spirit: Systematic Theology: Volume Three (Peabody, MA: Prince, 1992, 2001), 63. 2 Oden, Life in the Spirit, 64. 3 Oden, Life in the Spirit, 64–65. 4 K.A. Mathews, New American Bible Commentary: Genesis 1–11:26: Vol. 1A (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1996), 466–77.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:10.1163/9789004408371_018

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throughout the Genesis account of Babel. This element sets up Pentecost as its own reversal of Babel. Again, Pentecost itself is the initiation of a unity and universality that is only completely realized eschatologically—as is Babel’s rebellion (cf. Rev 5:9; 7:9; 13:7; 14:6; 17:15). The eschatological element intrigues me.5 It seems that at the close of the age we will all either be blessed in the unity and universality of Pentecost or judged in the rebellion of Babel. However, for our purposes here the key aspect is that the Pentecost event (and the tongues too) have theological fecundity for ecumenism in terms of the Holy Spirit’s unifying mission in and through Christ’s Church. Significantly, Oden continues, the “gift of tongues at Pentecost assumes the baptism with the Spirit.”6 The emphasis is on the Holy Spirit not on speaking in tongues; but, the tongues of the Spirit are not without significance. Neither are tongues limited to the Day of Pentecost.7 However, there is always the possibility of the abuse of tongues, as at Corinth, which must be assiduously avoided.8 I suggest Paul’s opening appeal to unity in 1 Corinthians 1:1–17 likely indicates that he viewed carnal division as a fundamental flaw in their spiritual condition. Is it not ironic that what was meant as a powerful impetus toward unity— Pentecost, the Holy Spirit, tongues—became a destructive basis for division? In one sense at least, this is the abuse of tongues. Interestingly, Paul instructs the Corinthians (literally) “to all speak the same thing” (v. 10) as a necessary step in the process of overcoming division and reestablishing unity.9 A possibility of a subtle allusion to the simultaneous potential of tongues for either division or unity is intriguing. To reiterate, two overlapping themes stand out from a theological correlation of Babel and Pentecost: unity and universality. The miracle of Pentecost manifests God’s purpose in Christ of uniting all humanity by the Holy Spirit. The healing of human division and the initiation of inclusive Christian unity at a profoundly spiritual level lies at the heart of Pentecostal identity! This suggestive interpretative analysis of Babel and Pentecost indicates that authentic ecumenism is essential to Pentecostal ethos—at least, to the extent that contemporary Pentecostalism is true to the precedent of the biblical model.

5 Here, Peter Hocken, Pentecost and Parousia: Charismatic Renewal, Christian Unity, and the Coming Glory (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2013), is especially helpful. 6 Oden, Life in the Spirit, 65. 7 Oden, Life in the Spirit, 65. 8 Oden, Life in the Spirit, 66. 9 Anthony Palma, “1 Corinthians,” in Full Life Bible Commentary to the New Testament: An International Commentary for Spirit-Filled Christians, ed. French L. Arrington and Roger Stronstad (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999): 805.

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Certainly Pentecostals realize that “a striking characteristic” of the disciples on the Day of Pentecost was unity, fellowship, and a “real sense of community” centered in “their personal knowledge of the risen Christ and their devotion to him.”10 Daniela Augustine observes that the pre-infilling Pentecost unity of the disciples “anticipates the outpouring of the Spirit” and “reaffirms their identity in Christ” in an “organic unity” as they are “anointed by the Holy Spirit” to do the Father’s will.11 At the popular level Pentecostals have long explored antithetical themes between Babel and Pentecost—the former representing unity in rebellion against God, resulting in judgment, the latter unity in redemption with God’s empowerment.12 In short, Pentecost unity is “a restoration of what [humanity] had lost at Babel.”13 One wonders, why should it be strange for Pentecostals to think of Pentecost in terms of unity? I suggest that a fruitful way forward for Pentecostals regarding Christian unity lies in confessing that we have not always applied, or even understood, the ecumenical impetus of Pentecost, and in claiming it today as a core value of Pentecostal faith and service. In spite of neglect, and notoriety, ecumenism is not a late addition to Pentecostal belief and practice. Nor is it a capitulation to external pressures to compromise for the sake of sentimentality. The broader ecumenical movement rightly quotes Jesus’ words in John 17:21: “that they may all be one” (nasb) as a paradigmatic statement. Pentecostal ecumenists can just as well quote Acts 2:1: “When the Day of Pentecost had come, they were all together” (nasb) as a paradigmatic event. Pentecost depicts what Christ declares: authentic Christian unity. If Pentecost is ecumenically latent, then Acts 1:8 indicates that it is missiologically laden. Many Pentecostals generally understand Acts 1:8 as an anticipatory missional provision eventuating in fulfillment beginning at Pentecost.14 If Pentecost has an inherent impulse toward unity, and if Acts 1:8 points to its missional parameters, then an essential and central part of Pentecostal ecclesial 10 11

French L. Arrington, “Acts,” 542. Daniela C. Augustine, “The Empowered Church: Ecclesiological Dimensions of the Event of Pentecost,” in Toward a Pentecostal Ecclesiology: The Church and the Fivefold Gospel, ed. John Christopher Thomas (Cleveland, TN: cpt, 2010), 158. 12 E.g. Charles W. Conn, Pillars of Pentecost, 2nd ed. (Cleveland, TN: Pathway, 1979), 40–48, esp. 42–45. 13 Conn, Pillars of Pentecost, 51. 14 Arrington, “Acts,” 537–38. Admittedly there is remarkable absence of allusions to a Babel-to-Pentecost paradigm in Arrington. The absence appears to be due in part to an accent on the giving of the law at Sinai and the feast of harvest as primary precedents for ­Pentecost. Cf. John R. Higgins, Michael L. Dusing, and Frank D. Tallman, An Introduction to Theology: A Classical Pentecostal Perspective (Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt, 1993), 146.

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mission involves Christian unity. Mutual love expressed in unity certainly witnesses of Christ and is a hallmark of true Christian identity (John 13:35). Thus Peter Hocken, issues startling words: “If the work of the Holy Spirit is to prepare the church for the coming of the Lord, and to gather all into unity in and under Jesus Christ, then the situation of division…is almost blasphemous.”15 Furthermore, Hocken calls attention to Pope Francis’s dramatic statement describing the Holy Spirit as “the Apostle of Babel” due to the Spirit’s revisioning of Babel into unity and harmony.16 Admittedly, as Christopher Stephenson, co-editor of the present volume, observes, the Babel-Pentecost relationship is complex, containing not merely bare curse-reversal but promise-fulfillment in which “unity does not dissolve diversity.”17 In any case, the theme of unity in a Babel-Pentecost correlation model is congruous. Arguably, Pentecostal/ Charismatic movements have—or should have—at their core an irrepressible ethos of Christian unity. The present volume recounts a diverse, rich history and theology of ecumenism among Pentecostal/Charismatic Christians. With Ad Gentes, I suggest that this historical and theological journey “calls for a Church which speaks all tongues” and “thus supersedes the divisiveness of Babel.”18 As for Avery Dulles, “Pentecost is a catholic event: it represents Babel in reverse, the restoration of communication among estranged peoples.”19 For Pentecostals, appropriation of the correlation of Pentecost and Babel can inspire and inform ecumenical mission for Christ in the world today that is effectively empowered by the Holy Spirit. The Bible envisions a single people of God without suppressing the national entities that make up that spiritual citizenry. Thus its prophets speak of diverse ethnic personalities when they depict the future universal kingdom of God (for example, Isa 2:1–4). At Pentecost the outpouring of the Spirit upon the representative nations gathered in Jerusalem results in the spiritual union of the new church but does not create a homogeneous language, ethnicity, or 15 Hocken, Pentecost and Parousia, 144. 16 Hocken, Pentecost and Parousia, 102. 17 Christopher A. Stephenson, Types of Pentecostal Theology: Method, System, Spirit (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013), 162. Stephenson is commenting on Frank D. Macchia, “Unity and Otherness: Lessons from Babel and Pentecost,” Living Pulpit 13, no. 4 (2004): 5–7. Similarly Daniela Augustine, “Empowered Church,” connects Babel and Pentecost but interprets the tongues as the “eruption of the language of the other,” emphasizing a vision of redemptive unity no less rich in diversity, 166–70. 18 Ad Gentes, “Decree on the Missional Activity of the Church” (Vatican ii; Dec 7, 1965): 4. 19 Avery Dulles, The Catholicity of the Church (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 173. Note the lowercase “c” in “catholic.”

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statehood. John’s vision of the eschaton includes diverse peoples from “every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb” (Rev 5:9).20 As Dale Coulter says so well, the Christian culture created by Pentecost transcends tribalism to make of believers one new nation in Christ’s kingdom.21 Pentecost preeminently reflects and evokes a divine vision of spiritual unity in diversity. Bibliography Augustine, Daniela C., “The Empowered Church: Ecclesiological Dimensions of the Event of Pentecost.” In Toward a Pentecostal Ecclesiology: The Church and the Fivefold Gospel. Edited by John Christopher Thomas. Cleveland: CPT, 2010, 157–79. Conn, Charles W. Pillars of Pentecost, 2nd ed. Cleveland, TN: Pathway, 1979. Coulter, Dale M. “The Descent of the Dove and the Meaning of Pentecost.” Seedbed. June 2, 2017: http://www.seedbed.com/the-descent-of-the-dove-and-the-meaningof-pentecost/. Dulles, Avery. The Catholicity of the Church. Oxford: Clarendon, 1985. Higgins, John R., Michael L. Dusing, and Frank D. Tallman. An Introduction to Theology: A Classical Pentecostal Perspective. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1993. Hocken, Peter. Pentecost and Parousia: Charismatic Renewal, Christian Unity, and the Coming Glory. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2013. Mathews, K.A. New American Bible Commentary: Genesis 1–11:26. Volume 1A. Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1996. Oden, Thomas C. Systematic Theology. 3 Vols. Peabody: Prince, 1987–1992. Stephenson, Christopher A. Types of Pentecostal Theology: Method, System, Spirit. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Ad Gentes, “Decree on the Missional Activity of the Church.” Vatican ii: Dec 7, 1965. Full Life Bible Commentary to the New Testament: An International Commentary for Spirit-Filled Christians. Edited by French L. Arrington and Roger Stronstad. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999. 20 Mathews, Genesis 1–11:26, 474. 21 Dale M. Coulter, “The Descent of the Dove and the Meaning of Pentecost,” Seedbed (June 2, 2017): http://www.seedbed.com/the-descent-of-the-dove-and-the-meaning-of-pentecost/.

Index Alfaro, Sammy 214–15 Alpha Course 55–56, 60–62, 79 Apostolic Faith Mission 7–12, 15, 25, 74 Archer, Kenneth J. 161–64, 168, 205–06 Assemblies of God 12–20, 25–27, 30, 37–40, 47, 65, 72, 75, 78–80, 141–45, 235, 250, 263, 270, 295–96, 350 Barratt, Thomas Ball 70, 140 Bartleman, Frank 13, 143 Beacham, Doug 147 Benedict xvi/Joseph Ratzinger 58, 61 Bennett, Dennis 44 Black Majority Church 346, 349–51, 355 Boddy, Alexander 70 Brighton Conference 52 Bryant, Herschel Odel 203 Carothers, W.F. 7–10, 15–16 Chan, Simon 172–74, 196–97, 222, 232 Chemin Neuf 34, 54–55, 60 Christian Churches Together 137–38, 147 Church of God (Cleveland, TN) 5, 98, 140, 143–49, 250, 268, 285, 295, 310, 315, 321–327, 348–49 Coffey, David 209, 212–13 Congar, Yves 242–45 Cox, Harvey 192, 314–15 Dabney, D. Lyle 160, 206, 229, 286, 299 Dayton, Donald W. 200–02, 227, 234 Del Colle, Ralph 209–10 du Plessis, David 20, 24–30, 34, 37–40, 44–46, 74–77, 90, 95, 141–45, 170 Dunn, James D.G. 224–25, 229–231 Elim Pentecostal Church 78, 270 Faith and Order 38, 91, 95–96, 136–37, 148, 313 Faupel, D. William 227 Flower, J. Roswell 15–19, 30 Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International xiii, 43–44

Gee, Donald 25–32, 35–36, 73–75, 90, 141–44 Global Christian Forum xiii, 39, 97, 100, 112–116, 122–28, 137–38, 147, 150 Harper, Michael 44–46, 52–53, 265 Hirsch, E.D., Jr. 165–66 Hocken, Peter xiii–xv, 230, 362 Hollenweger, Walter J. 28, 32, 35–37, 40, 226–27, 299, 311 Hunter, Harold 4, 146–47, 228 International Pentecostal Holiness Church 146–47 Jeffreys, George 71 Jenkins, Don 145, 150 Jenkins, Skip 214–16 John of the Cross 188 John Paul ii 50, 57, 62, 145, 245, 342 Joint Consultative Group 95, 147–48 Kalu, Ogbu 354 Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti 124, 170, 206–08, 218, 311–12, 317 Kasper, Walter 62, 209–12 King, J.H. 146, 310 Land, Steven J. 159, 162, 190, 201–02, 227 Leggett, James 147 Luther, Martin 8, 48, 208, 247–48 Macchia, Frank D. 170–76, 186, 284, 301–03 McDonnell, Kilian 224–25, 231–32 McQueen, Larry 204–05 Menzies, Robert 72, 166, 228, 232–33, 298–99 Montague, George 231–32 National Association of Evangelicals 17–21, 26, 90, 137, 140, 144, 165 National Council of Churches 16–20, 38–39, 134–39, 148, 313–16, 329 New Testament Church of God 348

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Oden, Thomas 359–60 Oneness Pentecostal(-s/-ism) 14–16, 98, 201–02, 224–25, 231, 235, 349

Studebaker, Steven M. 159–60, 172, 175–77, 214–16 Synan, Vinson 52, 146

Palmer, Tony 57–60 Parham, Charles F. 5–12, 15, 310 Pearlman, Myer 164, 295 Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches of North America 141, 144 Pethrus, Lewi 74 Pope Francis/Jorge Bergoglio xiii, 57–62, 244, 362

Tanner, Kathryn 181–83 Teresa of Avila 188, 192 Third Wave 65, 264–65, 285 Thomas, John Christopher 202, 205 Traettino, Giovanni 56–59

Richie, Tony L. 148 Robeck, Cecil M., Jr. 39, 72, 95, 114, 124, 144–45, 170, 278, 283, 309 Roberts, Thomas 32–34, 37, 40, 310 Sandidge, Jerry 37–40, 144–45, 278 Second Wave 264–65 Seymour, William J. 5–13, 139, 175, 203, 234–36, 309 Smith, James K.A. 158, 167, 187, 193 Society for Pentecostal Studies 91, 209, 230, 312–17 Spurling, Richard G. 5–6, 13 Steiner, Leonhard 25–28, 37 Stephenson, Christopher A. 164, 173, 362 Stronstad, Roger 166, 228, 232–33

Underwood, B.E. 141, 147 van Beek, Hubert 138 Vickers, Jason 183–85, 194 Vondey, Wolfgang 122, 151, 206–08, 25–51 Welby, Justin xiii, 54–56, 60–62 Williams, Ernest S. 17, 164, 170 World Council of Churches 17–21, 25–31, 35, 38–39, 48, 71–75, 90–91, 95–96, 113–115, 132–35, 138–42, 147–50, 248, 317–21, 324, 333 World Pentecostal Fellowship 141–42 Yong, Amos 161–62, 166, 171–72, 175, 204, 284, 301–03, 311–13, 317, 232 Zimmerman, Thomas 20, 26, 31, 47, 72–75, 142–43