The Globalization of Pentecostalism: A Review Article
Murray W. Dempster, Byron D. Klaus, and Douglas Peterson (eds.), The Globalization of Pentecostalism: A Religion Made to Travel (Irvine, CA: Regnum International, 1999), ISBN 9781870345293.
This guest review essay originally appeared in Trinity Journal and is reprinted here by permission of the author.
This work[1] is the result of a conference in Costa Rica (1996) devoted to a selection of issues emerging from the ongoing globalization of what Presbyterian theologian J. Rodman Williams identifies as the Pentecostal Reformation,[2] a movement which represents more than one third of the world’s practicing Christians, more than all of Protestantism combined. In Williams’ case, for example, his many writings,[3] especially his trilogy, Renewal Theology,[4] have been of some assistance to the global Pentecostal and Charismatic renewal movements as have the biblical contributions, for example, of Arrington, Ervin, Horton, Palma and Rea[5] from within the Pentecostal sector. These movements[6] continue to attempt to reach out to Christians in various denominations through conferences and symposia around the world, as is the case with the current effort of Dempster et al. The estimate that the Pentecostal and Neo-Pentecostal movements now numerically dwarf all Protestantism combined is probably a conservative numerical estimate by Baptist statistician David Barrett’s latest tabulation[7] and accords with the belief of travelling observers that there are over a million Pentecostal churches in villages, towns and cities across the world. Given the contributions of the Reformed/Evangelical and Catholic tradition to the Charismatic Renewal, joining Pentecostalism’s renewed emphasis on Scripture and experience in theological reflection and hermeneutics,[8] and to various former and ongoing dialogues with Pentecostals,[9] perhaps the fruits and outreach of this conference in Costa Rica, along with associated theological ramifications, may be of interest to readers of the Trinity Journal.
Dempster, Klaus, and Peterson have put together a collection of essays built around three pre-selected themes, somewhat similar in style to the earlier Charismatic Christianity as a Global Culture.[10] Here, the editors and conference organizers come from the disciplines of social ethics (Dempster) and missiology (Klaus and Peterson). The immensity and diversity of the Pentecostal movement and its burgeoning offspring, the international charismatic renewal (not considered in this volume), afford a wide possibility for scholarly consideration. Those topics chosen here reflect the concerns and interests of the conveners and are grouped into three categories: Changing Paradigms in Pentecostal Scholarly Reflection, Pentecostalism as a Global Culture, and Issues Facing Pentecostalism in a Postmodern World.
As a brief assessment cannot give due consideration to all the contributions, perhaps it is appropriate to focus on some of the highlights and lowlights, as well as some backgrounds, in an effort to provide an overall perspective of the volume. In the first category, Changing Paradigms, Wonsuk Ma, writes on “Biblical Studies in the Pentecostal Tradition: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow” (52-69). Noting that two thirds of the world’s people in the Third World are more open to the supernatural world enunciated in Scripture than in Western cultures, Ma points out that “The Pentecostal movement has long treasured Scripture. These ‘people of the Book’ have never questioned the authority of the written word” (54), citing some of the scholarly books and journals produced in the tradition. Use of biblical narrative is widespread and Ma seems to side with the critical interpretative methods that emphasize the legitimacy of employing narrative for doctrine and practice, “Though the use of narrative for constructive theological work and doctrinal formulation has been criticized from both within and without, narratives are still viewed by Pentecostals, not only as an effective, but also as an authentic means of communicating traditions and truths” (62).
Pentecostals’ view of narrative and their application of its didactic intentions is entirely consistent with, and essentially the same as, how it was regarded in the Graeco-Roman world at the time Luke-Acts was written, where the narrative-rhetorical tradition was regarded as a means to persuade with clarity and plausibility, to set forth vivid examples and precedents, and to provide the reasons for why such actions occurred.[11] Therefore, one may appropriately mention that the criticism or condemnation of using Luke’s narrative to establish what Luke expects believers to pray for and what Luke expects God to do in answer to prayer – because Lukan characters who bear witness to Jesus also pray and receive the Lukan gift of the Holy Spirit – is, from the perspective of Pentecostal tradition, negative criticism that misunderstands Luke as having only strictly historical motives, not theological motives. It is widely viewed as virtually the same cessationist position that Calvin finally adopted toward the gift of the Holy Spirit in Luke-Acts, amended (recently by some) with the corollary that all the Pauline spiritual gifts are for today. In disagreement with Evangelicalism, it is also reasonably understandable as a neo-cessationist non-Lukan position which has been long protected in the Reformed tradition and by others overly deferent to that tradition,[12] a position broadly perceived from within the sector of Christendom under consideration in this volume as driving a narratively poisonous wedge between the earthly Jesus (His teachings, actions, and examples) and the heavenly Jesus who pours out the Lukan gift of the Holy Spirit.
Another fine study in the Changing Paradigms zone, pastorally useful to all Great Commission Christians, is by Jackie David Johns, “Yielding to the Spirit: The Dynamics of a Pentecostal Model of Praxis” (70-84). Illustrating the humorous influence of different perspectives in dialogue, Johns, a compassionate and bible believing pastor, is misunderstood to be the pastoral Bultmann (!) by a dialogue partner, José Míguez Bonino, the “Dean of Protestant Theology of Latin America” (7), in his “Changing Paradigms: A Response” (120).[15] With respect to such ongoing dialogue, it is highly `doubtful that glossolalic utterance should ever be understood as a “sacrament” (121), rather, it is better understood (the following understanding not being at all exhaustive) as symbolizing “The ‘groans’ too deep for words (Rom 8:26) among the people of God, bringing them into solidarity with suffering humanity – even the entire suffering creation (Rom 8) – in order to struggle toward their redemption and liberation.”[16]
Perhaps the highlight of this volume accentuates what should be an unchanging paradigm, rather than a “changing paradigm.” Echoing William Seymour’s[17] call of trying to get people saved, L. Grant McClung, Jr., calls attention to the christocentric confession of Pentecostal missiology in his “ ‘Try to Get People Saved,’ Revisiting the Paradigm of Urgent Pentecostal Missiology” (30-51). McClung envisions the Lord allowing us to extend His work into the next century so that global Pentecostalism, along with an interdependent partnership with all Great Commission Christians, will be characterized by the vision printed in The Apostolic Faith (September 1906),[18] headlined “Pentecost Has Come,” page one: “The real revival is only started, as God has been working with His children mostly getting them through to Pentecost, and laying the foundation for a mighty wave of salvation among the unconverted.”
In the second category, Pentecostalism as a Global Culture, Edward L. Cleary, in his “Latin American Pentecostalism” (131-150), concludes that “being grounded in experience has important consequences. In a profound sense, neither institution nor any other person mediates in a Pentecostal person’s conversion to God. No formal rite (not even baptism) is required … The testimony and fervour of the person shows the faith of the Pentecostal person. The Pentecostal movement does not require more than this testimony for one to be accepted as a convert and participant in services” (144).
In this global culture arena we are also offered a little-known (in the West) overview, much to be recommended, by Ivan M. Satyavrata, the principal of the Southern Asia Bible College in Bangalore, India, entitled “Contextual Perspectives on Pentecostalism as a Global Culture: A South Asian View” (201-221). Satyavrata thinks that one of the main reasons for the appeal and success of the Pentecostal movement is that in it ordinary people whose participation in discourse is limited and constrained by the formalization of orthodox rites find themselves enfranchised, where they are engaged, heard, and given support (216). South Asian Pentecostalism has been marked by “simplicity with a reliance on spontaneity and the spoken word appropriate to the non-literal mind-set,” by the “perpetuation of an oral tradition through preaching, testimonies and personal ministry” (210). Satyavrata’s study is now complemented by Burgess’ and George’s welcome introductory assessment of developments in India, also little known in the West.[19] Synan points out in his discussion of Western examples of Pentecostal/Charismatic revivals, what is not yet adequately documented by historians, that “There were countless others breaking out in cities and towns all over the world. In fact, in many Third World nations, there were thousands of charismatic revivals that transformed communities and, at times, entire nations.”[20]
By way of background, which may serve to make this study on globalization more understandable, perhaps it might be apropos to sketch some of the opposition faced as this globalization transpired. It is well known that Pentecostals never had a narrowly conceived Sola Scriptura mentality, but vigorously investigated Church history for charismatic precedents and backgrounds for their tradition of Christian experience.[21] They sensed an under emphasis on activities of the Holy Spirit in doctrinal pursuits and practice in Christian tradition prior to themselves, for they saw little Lukan expectation in that regard, while at the same time seeking to unite the work of the Spirit to biblical interpretation.[22] They rejected the traditional formulation of a supposed apostolic age with Lukan characters encapsulated therein. Filtering the examples and precedents Luke-Acts provides with respect to the Lukan gift of the Holy Spirit through a selective dispensational grid lacked realistic and convincing appeal. While they understood Scripture to be trustworthy and reliable, they did not raise the experience of reading texts[23] above participation in the christocentric experiences the texts should apparently be designed or interpreted to convey. Inspiration is better than information, interactivity with God through Christ and fellowship with the Life Eternal as highlighted by John in his first letter (1 Jn 1:2, 3) being the primary goal.[24] When a narrow understanding of Sola Scriptura became doctrinally linked to the expunging of the Lukan gift of the Holy Spirit from Scriptura and was further linked in a frozen paleoreformed paradigm with the additional truncation of Pauline gifts whose supernatural function threatened liturgical control, it became unacceptable. This unacceptability was reciprocated by this sector of Evangelicalism, which denied Pentecostal students access to their seminaries and generated a deluge of popular polemical material against the movement.[25] Within this narrow paradigm, which Pentecostals argued was difficult to find in Scriptura, experience described by narrative and discursive texts appeared minimalized to sustain two primary ends: 1) that grace may supposedly be sacramentally transmitted via the clergy, and/or 2) that experiential examples[26] from Scripture may not be used to teach, even if texts are reasonably suggestive to the contrary (supporting the silencing of the prophetic ministry of the laity via cessationist claims for spiritual gifts as well as via cessationist claims for Lukan examples and precedents).[27] Yet such suggestion by New Testament writers was not enough, proof was demanded, while little substantive analysis rising to the level of proof was required by those protecting the established positions of Lukan cessationism and Pauline truncation.[28] Supernaturalist expectations were made suspect or denigrated as outside the traditionally acceptable paradigm. With regard to Luke’s narrative and its theological intentions, any expectations Luke may have had for his readers were further extinguished by claims that contemporary prayer for the gift of the Holy Spirit according to the teaching of the earthly Jesus was “dispensationally misapplied.”[29] Examples of belief in the earthly Jesus were redescribed as “receiving Jesus as your personal Savior,” whereas examples of “receiving the Spirit” or similar New Testament language was relegated, ecclesiologically, to the status of permanent total eclipse. Language obviously drafted out of experience by New Testament writers and their predecessors was either ignored or made consistent with contemporary non-experience. To Pentecostal scholars in this century, such an approach to New Testament texts appeared to be somewhat more illustrative of reinterpretation in the guise of exegesis, based on philosophical speculation, than exegesis itself; particularly where texts so expunged dictated pastoral administration and where what became known as cessationism was vigorously defended. Protectors of this paleoreformed paradigm appeared, until very recently, to be uninterested in any serious inquiry or dialogue which could bring into focus the question of whether cessationistic exegesis, and the systematic theology wedded thereto, were consistent with the rhetorical tradition of examples and precedents so prevalent in the Graeco-Roman world where the texts so operated upon were produced.[30]
Historically, Pentecostals rejected the ethos of the above thumbnail sketch, which admittedly overlooks the many positive contributions in past centuries made by the Reformed/Evangelical traditions within the confines of a venerated paradigm. Nevertheless, the intellectual world of Christian scholarship, with the exception of a few historians, by and large dismissed the Pentecostals. This is gradually changing due to demographics and academic production, but there remains stout resistance to breaking out of old traditions and envisioning a New Global Reformation, a New Pentecost (Suenens’ Une nouvelle Pentecôte?). And Pentecostals, flattered by a little unaccustomed acceptance, may accommodatingly give up their vision.[31]
Until just recently[32] scholarship took little interest in experience as a factor in interpretation, but Pentecostal scholarship always tried to incorporate the experience portrayed in New Testament texts, both christological and pneumatological, both salvific and empowering, into the framing of narrative and didactic theology.[33] The experience of Pentecostal piety with Word and Spirit does not coordinate with more rationalistic views that sever rationality and experience. Knowledge is no longer viewed by Pentecostals as either rationalistic or experiential, leading to the removal of mystery in the divine so that the human mind is able to entirely see God via written, propositional revelation.[34] McKay, noting that the miraculous and the supernatural in Scripture readily become part of charismatics’ shared experience, recognizes the “prophetic” dimension of interaction between biblical text and reader to the effect that the Spirit makes us witnesses not analysts.[35] This understanding of Scripture allows for a dynamic dimension of the text as well as the powerful intervention or interaction of the Spirit while one is interpreting the text.[36] In this vein, perhaps a reappraisal of Calvin’s testimonium spiritus sancti internum is apropos.[37]
Accordingly, it is not surprising to find in this overview by Dempster et al occasional illustrations of scholarship perhaps reflecting a more biblical approach than the narrow platform of Sola Scriptura from which the Pentecostal/Charismatic renewal differs in so many respects.[38] For example, it is declared that the “Pentecostal emphasis on experience is of great value and must never be compromised” (Satyavrata, 215). This conclusion is similar to that of Julie Ma, “Pentecostal Challenges in East and South-East Asia” (183-202), who encourages the churches to develop leadership skills crucial to the needs of this region while preventing “post-Pentecostalism” from entering into a dictionary (201). Ma notes that “power evangelism is what the Pentecostals are known for as signs and wonders are revealed through the power of the Holy Spirit, and Pentecostals take these phenomena as a biblical pattern (e.g., Acts 3:1f; 16:14f; Rom 1:16; I Cor 2:4, 5). Pentecostals should not be tempted to conform to their established Evangelical neighbors. They must remain faithful to their distinctiveness to be effective to their mission and calling” (199). However, one must equally observe that the powerful pattern established in Luke-Acts (Lk 11:2-13; 24:49; Acts 1:4, 5, 8, 14: 2:4; 9:17, wherein the last citation the Jerusalem/Petrine tradition of the gift of the Holy Spirit was already present in Damascus) is a pattern that precedes and underpins the pattern of power evangelism in the lives of Peter and Paul cited by Ma.[39] And there is no need for authentic Pentecostalism to be compromised or become a fading memory in the next millenium, either in a world that accepts rationalism as a dominant virtue, reflected by the worldview of non-Christian scholars in the humanities both past and present, or in a broader intellectual world that admits the existence of God to be an attractive speculation now that evidence for the origin and fine tuning of the cosmos is so spectacular.
In the third section, Issues Facing Pentecostalism in a Postmodern World, the unsubstantiated assumption that the world in which we evangelize is somehow delineated by “Postmodernism” is uncritically accepted without adequate definition. To make such a claim for the world without clarification of the implications it raises is staggering. It might have been observed, for example, that the postmodern concept can be viewed as a superficial theory, replete with moral arrogance, originating in French word games and taken over willy-nilly by some scholars in English and Religion departments in America. The theory often denies the intentionality of authors, denigrates meaning of texts, applauds relativism, and is definitely detached – both intellectually and methodologically – from the great liberal arts in the natural sciences. A minority of insular scholars, scholars in a tiny minority in academia who identify with these views, often denounce the creation of wealth and the scientific method, while enjoying the benefits thereof, and are currently perceived by many as undermining the undergraduate underpinnings of the disciplines they inhabit (like English and Religion), as well as some of the social sciences. These insular scholars might learn about religion in an age of science (not about religion crafted in a supposed “postmodern” era) or about science apologetics, which is currently demonstrating how experimental findings in modern science are supportive of the non-rational, of the existence of God, and of the possibility for divine interaction with physical reality. And scholars overly enamored by the philosophical ruminations and gratuitous characterizations of postmodernism might do well to peruse the mainstream approaches, for example, set out by Polkinghorne in his Belief in God in an Age of Science and in Faith, Science & Understanding.[40]
Pentecostals and Evangelicals in particular would do better to begin to correctly understand reality in the present world in the logic of premodernity as Dembski does for his agenda.[41] Then, they might go on to incorporate a historical appreciation of science and engineering in a more balanced characterization of the real world. Then, they might go further still and contemplate the theological significance for their traditions of the momentous paradigm shifting discovery in 1965 when the cosmic radiation left over from the beginning of the universe was finally found. In 1965 mankind entered into an intellectual revolution where, for the first time in their existence, human beings were able to know, based on secure experimental findings of modern science, that the universe began. In 1965 mankind entered an era where a Beginner was glimpsed and the world’s media has remained abuzz with the theological implications ever since. The post-1965 era dwarfs any philosophical conceptualization, any self-conceived rational epistemology, any definition of how mankind’s thought processes are supposedly changing to more relativistic or less materialistically accommodating modes. Postmodernism had and has little or nothing to do with this paradigm shift, which is not at all a useless shift to fuzzy relativism; the rigor of the scientific and technological methods that benefit and are integral to human life in so many ways remain vigorous and productive. When the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded in 1978 for the discovery of the relic radiation, it was clear that there was a discernible and mysterious anthropic principle at work in the physical construction of the universe that favored the eventual appearance of modern man. Events of the new epoch, which may rightly be called the Era of the Glimpse of God (the post-1965 era) continue to send reverberations throughout the world’s media. In 1992, when a similar discovery about the details of the beginning of the cosmos was made, it was immediately dubbed by atheists and agnostics as “the greatest discovery in the history of mankind” and like “looking at the face of God.” In this new era of religion in an age of science the impersonal is being replaced by the personal, the interaction with the divine is replacing the sanitization of the supernatural by the secular, and the relational with a God beyond the cosmos is being accepted as an intellectually respectable human activity. In addition, the fine-tuning of the physical variables in the cosmos is lending support to the idea of a personal God, the impersonal god of rational order conceived by Einstein and Spinoza being no longer in fashion. It is then in this current Era of the Glimpse of God, when God is allowing mankind to peal back just a little of the mystery of His invisible presence, that Pentecostals and their experiential piety have an opportunity to influence, as never before, various versions of stiff rationalistic piety and various visions of theological cessationism applied to New Testament characters and to New Testament narrative themes of prophetic fulfillment (as one finds, for example in Luke-Acts). With the existence of God more acceptable than ever because of great discoveries of modern science, the interactivity or relational source of experience with the divine as described in New testament texts – something Pentecostals have always emphasized – is now more appealing than ever before to other Christian traditions.
To assume, carte blanche, that Pentecostal or Evangelical mission occurs in a “postmodern” world is to circumscribe mission with an ill-defined, ill-fitting and astonishingly unperceptive concept, one that is unnecessarily limiting and highly questionable. Given the potentially infectious nature of this pretentious world-characterization (which I believe is a naïve mischaracterization), scholars might do well to jump off the relativistic and insular postmodern bandwagon altogether.[42] For Pentecostals now, of all people, to bog down in the vague notions of modernity and postmodernity invoked by secular humanities scholars in order to bring the experiential dimension of biblical realism to the theological table, when God has allowed them the golden opportunity to be a part of an entirely new intellectual era – an era that has worldwide acceptance and understandability – would be, historically, most tragic and inappropriate.
However, an apparent adherent of such an insular worldview is Gerald T. Sheppard, “Pentecostals, Globalization, and Postmodern Hermeneutics: Implications for the Politics of Scriptural Interpretation’ (289-312). According to Sheppard, Pentecostalism is not a movement which arrives and is sustained from heaven, rather it should find “the real presence of the Holy Spirit” in the history of institutions (290). Sheppard thinks that the “humanities” have adopted postmodern theory since 1960, an overblown claim. He blithely ignores the larger and more influential scientific/engineering academy and suggests, wrongly in my view, that “What is at stake for the Pentecostal is the dense topic of postmodern hermeneutics” (289). I can recall that F. F. Bruce once said on his editorial page of Evangelical Quarterly that he got tired of being called a “fundamentalist.” I think that he would have liked to know exactly what was wrong with him, instead of just being the object of pejorative labeling. Some scholars denigrate with the “fundamentalist” label those who think it reasonable that the Evangelists knew more about the earthly Jesus than creative scholarship seeking a “historical” Jesus, an earthly Jesus different from the one portrayed by the less knowledgeable Evangelists. Others simply equate cessationism and Young Earth Creationism[43] together as a package with “fundamentalist,” hence the need for editorial clarification. In any case, Sheppard slams “fundamentalists,” the method of “historico-grammatical exegesis,” and liberal “higher criticism,” but he never gives a single concrete example of how his postmodern interpretation functions in regard to a specific passage of Scripture or in regard to any other text. Tying “fundamentalists” to the skepticism and anti-supernatural bias of the historical-critical method helps to define what Sheppard thinks a “fundamentalist” is. However, since many Great Commission Christians in the Pentecostal world have fundamentals when it comes to biblical texts, producing differences from Catholic, Orthodox and Reformed/Evangelical traditions, differences of which they do not need to be ashamed, Sheppard might have profited from the Greco-Roman rhetorical tradition of illustrating his point with a practical example. However, he appears rather enthralled by his understanding of reality as “postmodern,” so perhaps any argument from example would be deemed superfluous. One will have to stretch in order to detect any “characteristic breakthrough of Pentecostal piety” (Russell Spittler, “Foreword,” vii) in Sheppard’s supposed implications.
Following Sheppard is a breath of fresh air, a delightful, realistic, and biblically based piece by Janet Everts Powers, “ ‘Your Daughters Shall Prophesy’: Pentecostal Hermeneutics and the Empowerment of Women” (313-337). Powers’ piece might be read profitably and with appreciation, even in the face of disagreement, by eight categories of people: 1) those believing that the Lukan gift of the Holy Spirit was given only to the twelve apostles (colonialist exegesis?); 2) those who wish the Lukan gift of the Holy Spirit had been given only to twelve male apostles; 3) those whose ecclesiastical deportment or pastoral worldview is perfectly consistent with categories one and two above, with the gift of the Holy Spirit appropriately confined to Lukan characters’ salvation experience or modified according to epochal constraints imposed on Luke’s text; 4) those who believe that there is no possibility whatever to understand 1 Tim 2:12 in the context of a Christian home in Timothy’s pastoral care or as correcting a specific problem; 5) those who believe that Paul would have issued 1 Tim 2:12 to women known and appreciated at the center of the Empire, like to the patroness and deaconess Phoebe (Rom 16:1,2) or to Junia (Rom 16:7), probably a prominent apostle; 6) those who believe that Paul addressed 1 Cor 14:1, 12, 39 only to men; 7) those who believe Paul would have issued 1 Tim 2:12 to Philip when he lodged in his house and met his daughters who were prophetesess (Acts 21:8, 9); and lastly, 8) those who believe Paul would have conveyed 1 Tim 2:12 as a dictum to Luke who later wrote for Theophilus that the gift of the Holy Spirit for prophetic empowerment of believer-disciples was gender insensitive (Acts 2:18). Unfortunately, Powers does not interact with Köstenberger et al[44] who offer a thorough treatment of 1 Tim 2:9-15 which is worthy of some interaction or response.[45] However, it may be noted that Powers is approaching the topic exegetically, being open to the potential of harmonization between diverse Scriptural data, while sensing the need for supporting and understanding the ministry of charismatic women using a broad biblical basis, not trying to decide whether they should be in ministry at all based primarily on only one portion of Scripture.[46] In this she is somewhat similar to Thomas who suggests that there may be a distinctive interpretative approach to Scripture contained in the New Testament itself containing three crucial elements: the role of the community, the role of the Holy Spirit, and the role of Scripture.[47] This may allow forward progress when the biblical evidence is (or appears to be) divided, “Just as the Spirit’s activity in the community was able to lead the church to a decision regarding the inclusion of Gentiles, despite the diversity of the biblical statements on this topic, so it would seem that this paradigm could assist the (Pentecostal) church in grappling with significant issues that simply will not disappear.”[48] Examining the role of women in the ministry of the church suggests that this model from Luke-Acts can be tested, given the cooperation and interest of the Holy Spirit. Alice E. Luce, for example, a former Anglican missionary and a pioneer Pentecostal teacher, evangelist and pastor in Mexico and Hispanic missions in America, may be a case in point, based both upon what she did and what she wrote.[49] Thomas concludes that “many Pentecostal churches (and Evangelical churches as well?) have not paid nearly enough attention to the activity of the Holy Spirit in empowering women for a variety of ministries in the church, and as a result, have allowed one or two texts to undermine the balance of the biblical teaching on this topic, as well as the Spirit’s own witness.”[50]
Harvey Cox, like Powers, also responds refreshingly to ideas and issues in this philosophically stodgy third section on Postmodernism. Building on his earlier thesis,[51] he calls for a rebirth of an ethic of simplicity, of being suspicious of the things of this world, warning that we cannot serve both God and mammon (394). Indeed, the Pentecostal tradition has never developed a stiff rationalistic piety; the Pentecostal paradigm being basically non-Enlightenment and biblically based.[52] One of the main roots of the global renewal/revival goes back to Azusa Street[53] where the things of this world were not sought, “The Azusa Street Revival sparked the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement. The movement is an emotional movement, with behavior ranging from moaning and shouting in the Spirit to the more sophisticated, ordinary behavior like reading the Bible, especially Acts 2:4, and praying.”[54]
As this global movement heads out into the next millennium, perhaps Anderson’s glance backward might be good advice for all Great Commission Christians going forward who prayerfully seek the empowerment of the Holy Spirit with Lukan expectations: “Pentecostal missionaries often had a sense of special calling, of ‘divine destiny’ that thrust them out in the face of stiff opposition. But in spite of the inevitable cultural and religious indiscretions, it must be acknowledged that these methods were astonishingly successful. Pentecostals claim that the rapid growth of the movement vindicates the apostle Paul’s statement that God uses the weak and despised to confound the mighty. Pentecostal churches were missionary by nature and the dichotomy between ‘church’ and ‘mission’ that for so long plagued other Christian churches did not exist in Pentecostalism. This ‘central missiological thrust’ was clearly a ‘strong point in Pentecostalism’ and central to its existence.”[55]
The editors are to be commended for their initiative in bringing these sixteen essays on three categories and the three dialogue responses together. However, to travel comfortably with them along the road of world evangelization might mean occasionally jettisoning some excess secular baggage. A characteristic breakthrough of Pentecostal piety does exist but it is sometimes beclouded by the insular relativistic worldview of modern sociology and philosophy departments, wherein the hidden axiomatic presupposition of the non-existence of God is seldom examined. A biblical worldview is there, but often muted by scholarship both subservient to and unengaged in challenging stale humanistic thought and secular characterizations, thought life known to encrust and encumber the vitality of Christian influence. Several of these essayists might do well to be more trusting of their own instinctive Pentecostal reflections and think a little more independently from their recent academic histories and professional traditions. Perhaps the editors might have given more emphasis to the productive biblically based paradigms which are building the movement, as illustrated in the contribution by Grant McClung, and focused a bit less on analyses coupled to naturalistic-leaning presuppositions. Nevertheless the volume is informative, offering a selective glimpse into a thin slice of the academic sector of an evangelistic movement that is heuristic, personal, experiential, and vibrant.
[14] Matthew S. Clark, “Pentecostal Hermeneutics: The Challenge of Relating to [Post]-Modern Literary Theory,” The Spirit & Church 2 (2000), pp. 67-93.
[15] There is certainly a need for a formal Evangelical-Pentecostal Dialogue where differences of perspective can irenically emerge and be discussed forthrightly. It could be hosted by various seminaries in different countries of the two traditions in alternate years. Perhaps the agenda, mutually devised, could be modeled after other fruitful efforts, cf. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Ad ultimun terrae: Evangelization, Proselytism and Common Witness in the Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue, 1990-1997 (Studien zur Interkulturellen Geschichte des Christentums 117; Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1999). Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., “Pentecostals and Ecumenism in a Pluralistic World,” in Dempster, Klaus and Petersen (eds)., Globalization, pp. 338-62 (354), is probably right when he argues that since, “Within the next fifteen years, Pentecostals will begin to emerge as major political and social players in many Latin American countries… the time for talking is now, not then.”
[16] Frank D. Macchia, “The Struggle for Global Witness: Shifting Paradigms in Pentecostal Theology,” Dempster, Klaus, and Peterson (eds.), Globalization, pp. 8-29 (18). Further amplification of this view of glossolalia appears in Macchia’s, “Justification Through New Creation: The Holy Spirit and the Doctrine by Which the Church Stands or Falls,” Theology Today 58 (2001), pp. 202-17 (214, 217), “The Spirit’s involvement as advocate and intercessor for creation is implied in the Spirit’s groaning in and through the suffering creation (Rom 8:26)… Our witness is exclusively to God’s redemptive justice or saving righteousness in Christ through the Spirit… The ‘full gospel’ must certainly point us away from ourselves to the saving activity of Christ in the world through the life-transforming power of the Holy Spirit.”
[17] Re Seymour’s pivotal role in the revival/renewal of this century, cf. Douglas J. Nelson, “The Black Face of Church Renewal: The Meaning of a Charismatic Explosion,” in Paul Elbert (ed.), Faces of Renewal: Studies in honor of Stanley M. Horton (Peabody, MA; Hendrickson, 1988), pp. 172-91; David Daniels III, “African-American Pentecostalism in the 20th Century,” in Synan (ed.), Century, pp. 265-91 (273-76).
[18] The Apostolic Faith was a monthly newspaper published by the Apostolic Faith Mission on Azusa Street under Seymour’s leadership, cf. Daniels, “African-American,” in Synan (ed.), Century, p. 274.
[19] Stanley M. Burgess, “Pentecostalism in India: An Overview,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 4/1 (2000), pp. 85-98.
[20] Vinson Synan, “Streams of Renewal at the End of the Century,” in Synan (ed.), Century, pp. 349-80 (380).
[21] Examples from tradition were never elevated above responsible exegesis of Scripture or set in contradistinction to Scripture. Charismatic tradition remains a serious interest in Pentecostal scholarship, given the awareness of ongoing participation and continuity with this inspiring tradition, a tradition with roots in the teaching on prayer by the earthly Jesus Himself and in the examples and precedents recorded in the narrative theology by an anonymous writer of a two-volume work in the Graeco-Roman narrative-rhetorical tradition. A few historical investigations may illustrate this, e.g., Stanley M. Burgess, The Spirit and the Church: Antiquity (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1984); Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., “Irenaeus and ‘Prophetic Gifts,’” in Paul Elbert (ed.), Essays on Apostolic Themes: Studies in Honor of Howard M. Ervin (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1985), pp. 104-14; Stanley M. Burgess, The Holy Spirit: Eastern Tradition (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1989); The Holy Spirit: Medieval Roman Catholic and Reformed Tradition (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997); Sang-Whan Lee, “The Relevance of St. Basil’s Pneumatology to Modern Pentecostalism,” The Spirit & Church 1/1 (1999), pp. 49-76; Gary S. Shogren, “How Did They Suppose ‘The Perfect’ Would Come? 1 Corinthians 13.8-12 in Patristic Exegesis,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 15 (1999), pp. 99-121; Raniero Cantalamessa, The Mystery of Pentecost (Glen S. Davis, tr.; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001).
[22] Steven J. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom (JPTSup 1; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), pp. 220-23; Paul W. Lewis, “Towards a Pentecostal Epistemology: The Role of Experience in Pentecostal Hermeneutics,” The Spirit & Church 2 (2000), pp. 95-125. Regarding the work of Arrington, Ervin, McKay, R. Menzies, W. Menzies, and Stronstad, for example, with respect to the role of the Holy Spirit in interpretation and experiential understanding, cf. the useful summary by Kenneth J. Archer, “Pentecostal Hermeneutics: Retrospect and Prospect,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 8 (1996), pp. 63-81.
[23] Regarding the experience of reading texts, the experience of thinking and reflection, while valuable in itself, remains different from more concrete interactivity with God in the realms of perception and sensation.
[24] George G. Findlay, Fellowship in the Life Eternal: An Exposition of the Epistles of St. John (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1909), observes that “The mind that is not surprised and sometimes staggered by the claims of Christ and the doctrines of Christianity, that has not felt the shock they give to our ordinary experience and native convictions, has not awakened to their real import… If the life manifested in the Lord Jesus Christ was eternal, then it is living and real to-day,” pp. 87, 90.
[25] The dispensational mind-set, which has Pauline spiritual gifts ceasing outright (much less the Lukan prophetic conception) when the ink dried on the last apostolic scroll or codex, as claimed by E. Schuyler English et al, The New Scofield Reference Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 1245, understandably had honest difficulty in providing assistance to those whose interpretation collided with that mind-set. Talbot Theological Seminary, for example, at one time advised prospective students from the Pentecostal tradition not to apply for matriculation. Without adequate ministerial training and an influential educational system not lodged in place until the mid-century, a few unrepresentative extremes occurred which victimized the faithful, cf. Thomas Smail, Andrew Walker and Nigel Wright, “‘Revelation Knowledge’ and Knowledge of Revelation: The Faith Movement and the Question of Heresy,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 5 (1994), pp. 57-77. As to the hostile print materials directed against the developing movement, they ranged from the extreme implication and accusation that Pentecostals were of the Devil to the insulting mischaracterization that they were a Tongues Movement. Pentecostals faced a struggle with vigorous protection of established positions together with (in the Reformed traditions) the ingrained suspicion of the non-rational, a prominent characteristic of Western anti-supernatural bias.
[26] As to the Pentecostals’ pastoral application of Lukan examples coupled to Pauline discursive description, cf. Clark H. Pinnock, “Divine Relationality: A Pentecostal Contribution to the Doctrine of God,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 16 (2000), pp. 3-26 (25), who urges Pentecostals today to “Resist the pressure from the paleo-Calvinist segment of Evangelicalism and persist in their witness to the relational dynamism of God.” Pinnock is to be commended for exhorting contemporary Great Commission Christians to do what Luke himself does via his own employment of vivid, persuasive, and plausible examples and precedents, providing authentic motivation for prayerful and obedient imitation in the expected style of Graeco-Roman narrative-rhetorical tradition.
[27] Not only did Pentecostals midway through this century face (and continue to face) outright cessationist claims, they faced (and continue to face) claims not based on detailed research, but advanced as responsible scholarship, so as to ostensibly vacate what NT writers actually appear to say, such as one prominent NT scholar’s claim that “the perfect” (1Cor 13:10) is an intermediate temporal period following the death of the apostles, and another very prominent grammarian’s claim that the reflexive middle voice (1 Cor 13:8) indicates that glossolalia will cease of themelves (along with NT prophecy and interior revelatory word-gifts). One world class scholar said that he would like to remove Acts 19:1-6 from the NT if it was possible to do so on textual grounds. NT writers were dubbed as confronting the interpreter “with weighty problems” and with “extraordinary incident(s)” when conflicts arose with established positions. Highly touted claims were made as to the great difficulty that must be involved in understanding such texts. These quick and dogmatic “solutions” are unlikely to be persuasive. Perhaps to the contrary, however, Luke, given his high marks for skillful Greek and remarkable attention to detail, writing in his literary setting in the narrative-rhetorical tradition linked to the Roman educational system, would have designed his narrative to communicate clearly enough for readers to follow sequential events, identify relationships and make expected narrative connections; but a quarter century ago Evangelical scholars could not even begin to detect these connections which seemed clear to the emerging movement. An example of this point is Gordon Fee, “The Genre of New Testament Literature and Biblical Hermeneutics,” in Samuel J. Schultz and Morris A. Inch (eds.), Interpreting the Word of God: Festschrift in Honor of Steven Barabas (Chicago: Moody Press, 1976), pp.105-27 (119), who declared that “Glossolalia three times accompanies the gift of the Spirit in Acts (2:4, 10:44-46, 19:6; perhaps 8:17 as well), where the text says that someone received the Spirit (9:17-18 is the lone exception). However, one is hard-pressed to see in these passages a baptism in the Spirit as a second work of the Spirit.” Fee and other Evangelical scholars were adamant a quarter century ago, before their interpretative methods and distinctive bias against narrative theology were adequately appraised and better understood (cf. Menzies and Menzies, Call), that there is no experience of the heavenly Jesus pouring out a gift of the Holy Spirit upon believer-disciples praying in obedience to the teaching of the earthly Jesus in Luke’s Gospel, no Lukan filling with the Holy Spirit, no baptism in the Holy Spirit as part of prophetic fulfillment, no expectations of any such Christocentric experience based upon examples and precedents provided by Luke, beyond a salvation experience. It may fairly be observed that Moody Press, to this day, continues to republish material by Merrill Unger, which is identical to that of Fee (cited above), making this very same claim. Moody Press, although not a denominational publishing house, continues to make no information to the contrary available to their clientele. These two observations do not imply that Moody Press is required to do anything else but what they are doing. From a temporal perspective, perhaps Moody Press may be genuinely commended for its commitment to the position re Luke adopted by Fee and Unger, if space be made for dialogue and discussion. The minimalist and restrictive position of Fee and Unger toward Luke’s double work is quite unlike that taken by Moody Press’ figurehead a half century before Fee and Unger wrote, cf. Richard K. Curtis, They Called Him Mister Moody (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962), pp. 149-50. In astronomy, as in theology, geocentricity was eventually replaced by heliocentricity, although several centuries, not just one, were required to complete the modification of openness to new possibilities. Interaction with such long-standing theological backgrounds may be found in Paul Elbert, “Spirit, Scripture and Theology through a Lukan Lens,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 13 (1998), pp. 55-75.
[28] The established position of Lukan cessationism is capably illustrated by Richard B. Gaffin, “A Cessationist View,” in Wayne A. Grudem (ed.), Are Miraculous Gifts for Today? Four Views (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), pp. 25-64 (38), in that “The history that interests Luke is finished” (emphasis his). Gaffins treatment of the Lukan gift of the Holy Spirit is essentially equivalent to Calvin’s, with the difference being that Calvin wisely did not attempt to base his arbitrary confinement of the gift to Lukan characters upon exegesis, cf. my “Calvin and the Spiritual Gifts,” in Richard C. Gamble (ed.), Articles on Calvin and Calvinism, VIII: An Elaboration of the Theology of Calvin (New York/London: Garland, 1992), pp. 303-31, taken from Elbert (ed.), Essays on Apostolic Themes, pp. 115-43.
[29] John F. Walvoord, The Holy Spirit (3rd ed.; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1954), pp. 152, 153, wherein Lk 11:13 is dismissed as a “problem passage” and we find the astonishing claim that Acts 1:14; 4:24; 8:15 do not indicate believers praying for the gift of the Holy Spirit (although Luke plainly indicates otherwise), so that at Acts 2:4; 4:31; 8:18 no Lukan character is portrayed in obedient connection with the earthly Jesus’ earlier teaching on prayer. This claim prevents the experience of Lukan characters from escaping the confines of the text, although no evidence is adduced as to the nature of Luke’s literary minded readers’ cessationistic antennae so as to detect what is plainly contrary to what Luke actually writes. Without considerable assistance from a truncational impulse, it is difficult to believe that such antennae would be very perceptive. This same tact has been recently adopted by Max Turner, Power from on High: The Spirit in Israel’s Restoration and Witness in Luke-Acts (JPTSup 9; Sheffield; Sheffield Academic Press, 1996) with the bombastic claim that “No one prayed in accord with Lk 11:13b” (p. 340). Further, Luke believes that his readers would make a “mistake” to apply Acts 1:8 to themselves (p. 399), because Luke does not want to portray the whole church as involved in witness (p. 432). One has to wonder what Walvrood and Turner think Luke understood his characters at Acts 1:14 (following Lk 24:49; Acts 1:4, 5, 8); 4:24; and 8:15 to be praying about in their narrative contexts Luke has so carefully and clearly laid out. Perhaps they were praying about something of which Luke was unaware, something contrary to his own portrayal of these character’s lives and different from their express actions, as well as something contrary to the narrative connectivity Luke provides. The ploy of claiming that scholarly readers know more than the narrator, while hiding the implication that the narrator then appears a dissembler or a dunderhead or a politically motivated misleader, is well worn in the analysis of ancient texts, but it is not convincing here. In this case the various connective contexts, together with vivid narrative examples, all connected to the narrative zenith of the earthly Jesus’ teaching on prayer in Lk 11:13, make Walvrood’s and Turner’s cessationistic and willful claims of narrative extraction and reinterpretation seem very non-Lukan, although they seem highly resonant with position protection and ecclesiastical harmonization. It seems obvious that Walvrood and Turner do not want their readers praying in concert with, or in imitation of, Lukan characters who pray for something that Walvrood and Turner do not want prayed for, something Walvrood and Turner desire to be confined to Lukan character’s lives. Wouldn’t it be better just to say that outright, to clearly declare the venerated presupposition that believer-disciples should not pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit, instead of attempting to make such a desire appear dependent on interpretation? With regard to ecclesiastical harmonization, Walvrood and Turner appear to follow in the train of the dispensational claim that the first Jerusalem Pentecost, while securely encapsulated in a supposed apostolic age, yet somehow applies itself osmotically to all future believers who, nevertheless, cannot receive “an individual” or “new” baptism in the Holy Spirit (so W. J. Erdman, “The Holy Spirit and the Sons of God,” in The Fundamentals (4 vols.; Los Angeles: Bible Institute of Los Angeles, 1917), II, pp. 338-52 (344). This dispensational claim is the result of unexamined and uncritical views pertaining to Lukan cessationism in Reformed/Evangelical tradition, but has little analytical relation to contemporary biblical scholarship.
[30] Here, the “Charismatic Themes in Luke-Acts” Study Group of the Evangelical Theological Society, which has met for the past three years (1998-2000) at consecutive national meetings, may have played some small constructive role.
[31] Pinnock, “Divine Relationality,” p. 22, worries that “What concerns me about Pentecostal theology is that certain evangelicals may infect Pentecostal work with an unrelational virus, hamper Pentecostal theological development and diminish Pentecostal vitality. I fear that Evangelicals may sneeze and Pentecostals catch cold.” Pentecostals have already been chastised by Peter Hocken, “A Charismatic View on the Distinctiveness of Pentecostalism,” in Wonsuk Ma and Robert P. Menzies (eds.), Pentecostalism in Context: Essays in Honor of William W. Menzies (JPTSup 11; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), pp. 96-106 (105), who critiques them in the context of potential submission to the paleoreformed paradigm outlined above: “Where these rationalist patterns are operative in the realm of theology they cannot help but be reductionist in their effects – taking a richer reality and filtering it through a theological grid that eliminates non-rational non-logical elements, even at the same time protesting vigorously against those who utilize the same Zeitgeist in more blatantly unbelieving ways… The Evangelicalism of Pentecostalism, as it has been called, represents at one and the same time contradictory tendencies: on the one hand, the acceptance of fundamental biblical principles that are essential for authentic spiritual growth, and on the other hand, yet another attempt to curb and constrain the divine largesse into restricted theological categories.”
[32] E.g., Luke Timothy Johnson, Religious Experience in Earliest Christianity: A Missing Dimension in New Testament Studies (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), thinks that Christian experience portrayed in texts is a neglected factor in scholarship treating these texts. With apt concern for understanding the uniqueness of Christian experiential origins, Johnson rightly wonders how later developments can be legitimate if they do not go back to the earthly Jesus. In this regard especially, cf. Steve Summers, “‘Out of My Mind for God’: A Social-Scientific Approach to Pauline Pneumatology,” and Mark J. Cartledge, “Interpreting Charismatic Experience: Hypnosis, Altered States of Consciousness and the Holy Spirit?,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 13 (1998), pp. 77-106 and 117-132, respectively. Without a properly balanced emphasis on experience in Christocentric global mission, “a-missionary pneumatologies” may be detected within some previously established missiologies. These missiologies are by and large silent about experience, and are themselves insufficiently grounded in the divine interactivity and supernatural (non-rational) transmission of the gifts (and fruit) of the Holy Spirit, according to missiologist Jan A. B. Jongeneel, “Ecumenical, Evangelical and Pentecostal/Charismatic Views on Mission as a Movement of the Holy Spirit, in Jan A. B. Jongeneel et al (eds.), Pentecost, Mission and Ecumenism: Essays on Intercultural Theology – Festschrift in Honour of Walter J. Hollenweger (Studien zur Interkulturellen Geschichte des Christentums 75; Frankfort: Peter Lang, 1992), pp. 231-46 (233, 237-39).
[33] William W. Menzies, “The Methodology of Pentecostal theology: An Essay on Hermeneutics,” in Elbert (ed.), Essays on Apostolic Themes, pp. 1-14; Lewis, “Towards a Pentecostal Epistemology,” pp. 109-17; Roger Stronstad, The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1984), pp. 82, 83; Prophethood of All Believers, p. 54ff.
[34] On the latter, cf. Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority (3 vols.; Waco, TX: Word Books, 1976, 1979), I, p. 388; II, p. 55; III, pp. 248, 434. Personal encounter and experience beyond written revelation, whether cognitive or noncognitive, is, for Henry, cultic and not part of biblical religion. Henry’s exalted view of the human mind and the experience of reading may recall Calvin’s “mistress reason,” but in any case Pentecostals are not buying this narrow sola Scriptura vision. Neither does Stanley Grenz, Revisioning Evangelical Theology: A Fresh Agenda for the 21st Century (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsityPress, 1993), p. 92, with his Enlightenment-based idea that “experience cannot form a separate source” of knowing, impress Pentecostal theologians as consistent with the experiential portrayal of characters in the New Testament who repent, are forgiven, are directed, or who receive, for example, the Lukan gift of the Holy Spirit. Even some Evangelicals, who may get a little nervous about revelatory activities of the Holy Spirit beyond enscripturation, believe that theological reflection has entered a cul-de-sac on Henry-Grenzstraße with their virtual banishment of experiential emphasis. For example, Richard Shaull and Waldo Cesar, Pentecostalism and the Future of the Christian Churches: Promises, Limitations, Challenges (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 2000), p. 170, lament that “As a result of all this we have practically lost the ability to connect with, enter into, and live out of the realm of the Spirit so central to the biblical witness.”
[35] John McKay, “When the Veil is Taken Away: The Impact of the Prophetic Experience on Biblical Interpretation,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 5 (1994), pp. 17-40; Larry R. McQueen, Joel and the Spirit; The Cry of a Prophetic Hermeneutic (JPTSup 8; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), pp. 107-12; cf. also James D. G. Dunn, “The Authority of Scripture According to Scripture” in his The Living Word (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1987), pp. 89-140 (133), who fairly observes that “It is clear that the traditional evangelical dichotomy between scripture, reason and tradition as the source and measure of revelatory authority has often been too sharply drawn.”
[36] Pentecostal hermeneutics is not inclined to divorce the experience of God from discursive reasoning, from the community of charisms, cf. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, p. 24; Terry Cross, “The Rich Feast of Theology: Can Pentecostals Bring the Main Course or Only The Relish?,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 16 (2000), pp. 27-47 (35).
[37] So too, Willem Balke, “Revelation and Experience in Calvin’s Theology,” in David Willis and Michael Welker (eds.), Toward the Future of Reformed Theology: Tasks, Topics, Traditions (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), pp. 350-52.
[38] The narrow cessationistic conception of sola Scriptura sheds little light upon the experiential portrayals of examples and precedents provided by Luke-Acts which are not reflective of one of Luke’s two main themes. That narrow paradigm accepts the portrayals of forgiveness, repentance, faith, salvation and conversion, but rejects the portrayals of Luke’s other main theme, those treating the gift of the Holy Spirit and delicate expressive variations of description thereof, like receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit, receiving the Holy Spirit, being filled with the Spirit, and the Spirit falling upon believer-disciples. In the cessationistic conception these latter belong, not to a prophetic theme of the “last days” projected by the Lukan narrative, but supposedly to a post-Lukan epoch in which the interactivity and relationality of God with believers is necessarily redefined; cf. discussion of a narrowly conceived sola Scriptura with respect to one of these Lukan portrayals by James B. Shelton, “Epistemology and Authority in the Acts of the Apostles: An Analysis and Test Case Study of Acts 15:1-30,” The Spirit & Church 2/2 (2000), pp. 231-47.
[39] For a fuller perspective on Ma’s missionary experience, cf. Julie C. Ma, When the Spirit Meets the Spirits (Studien zur Interkulturellen Geschichte des Christentums 118; Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2000).
[40] (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998 and 2000 respectively). My citation of Polkinghorne’s reflections within the current age of science – which brought about the intellectual transformation concerning the probability of the existence of God with the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation in 1963 and ushered in a new paradigm shifting era, which I call the Era of the Glimpse of God – does not, of course imply my agreement with him on all points.
[41] William Dembski, Intelligent Design: the Bridge Between Science and Theology (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1999), pp. 44-48.
[42] Cf. Menzies and Menzies, “Hermeneutics: Jumping Off the Postmodern Bandwagon,” Call, pp. 63-68.
[43] For a critique of this movement from the point of view of a science historian, cf. Ronald L. Numbers, The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism (Berkeley, CA; University of California Press, 1993).
[44] Andreas Köstenberger, Thomas R. Schreiner, and H. Scott Baldwin (eds.), Women in the Church: A Fresh Analysis of 1 Timothy 2:9-15 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995).
[45] For an engagement of issues raised by Köstenberger et al, cf. Kevin Giles, “Women in the Church: A Rejoinder to Andreas Köstenberger,” Evangelical Quarterly 73 (2001), pp. 225-45.
[46] In a complementary vein are the descriptive and informative, not necessarily critical historiographic, treatments of Western women in ministry (consistent with Powers’ above empowerment oriented characterization) by Susan C. Hyatt, “Spirit Filled Women,” in Synan (ed.), Century, pp. 231-63; Burgess and van der Maas (eds.), New International Dictionary, passim. Given the tenor of this review article it seems highly apropos to mention non-Western examples, cf. Cornelius van der Laan, “Beyond the Clouds: Elize Scharten (1876-1965), Pentecostal Missionary to China,” in Ma and Menzies (eds.), Pentecostalism in Context, pp. 337-60; and “Elva Vanderbout,” in Ma, When the Spirit, pp. 74-86.
[47] John Christopher Thomas, “Women, Pentecostals and the Bible: An Experiment in Pentecostal Hermeneutics,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 5 (1994), pp. 41-56 (55).
[48] Thomas, “Women,” p. 56 (parenthesis his).
[49] Information on Alice Luce is available at the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center, www.AGHeritage.org.
[50] Thomas, “Women,” p. 56 (parenthesis mine).
[51] Harvey Cox, Fire From Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century (Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 1995).
[52] Lewis, “Towards a Pentecostal Epistemology,” p. 120.
[53] Cf. Nelson, “The Black Face,” in Elbert (ed.), Faces of Renewal, p. 174ff; Robert Owens, “The Azusa Street Revival: The Pentecostal Movement Begins in America,” in Synan (ed.), Century, pp. 39-68.
[54] Sherry Sherrod DuPree, “In the Sanctified Holiness Pentecostal Charismatic Movement,” Pneuma: Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 23/1 (2001), pp. 97-114 (113).
[55] Allan H. Anderson, “Global Pentecostalism in the New Millennium,” in Allan H. Anderson and Walter J. Hollenweger (eds.), Pentecostals After a Century: Global Perspectives on a Movement in Transition (JPTSup 15; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 209-23 (218), with quotes taken from W. A. Saayman, “Some Reflections on the Development of the Pentecostal Mission Model in South Africa,” Missionalia 21 (1993), pp. 40-56 (51).
Originally printed in Trinity Journal 23:1 (Spring 2002). Used by permission of the author. Later included in the Fall 2024 issue of The Pneuma Review.
Internationalization vs. Naturalization in Global Pentecostalism Today http://cupandcross.com/internationalization-or-naturalization/
Internationalization vs. Naturalization in Global Pentecostalism Today http://cupandcross.com/internationalization-or-naturalization/