The Quest for a Pentecostal Theology, by Keith Warrington
Pentecostals also value experience as potentially providing the impetus for mission. Offering an account of the meetings held at Azusa Street in the beginning of the last century, where many encounters with God were experienced with dramatic consequences, Bartleman writes, ‘Missionary enthusiasm ran high … Hundreds definitely met with God … Many received a call to foreign fields . . . The altars were seldom empty of seekers day and night … we determined to fight nothing but sin, and fear nothing but God’.44 Although this is a snapshot of an extraordinary move of God, nevertheless, it represents that which best reflects the Pentecostal ideal which advocates the value of experience as powerfully instrumental in Pentecostal mission.45
Trying to explain every experience with God can never work—it would be a reduction of all God does to that which we can count and categorize.
None of the above underestimates the dangers associated with encountering God via experience (no more than to assume that an intellectual appreciation of God does not also have potential drawbacks); meaningless experiences may be little more than vacuous sensations.46 There is the constant danger for Pentecostals of so desiring authentic experiences with God that the latter may be debased to an expectation and insistence on experience on demand. The dangers of emotionalism, triumphalism and inauthentic, shallow, subjective and unscriptural experiences are to be guarded against by those who seek to encounter God. Dube warns against the danger of attempting to constantly maintain
an involvement in some active form of transcendence, an identifiable event and moment of ecstasy. The only way to sustain an adequate sense of this tension is to string together as many events of ecstasy as closely together as possible. Essentially, like any other sensational lifestyle, it is the life of addiction’.47
When Pentecostals encounter God, they must be careful to ensure their encounters are authentic. They must guard against emotionalism, triumphalism, and unscriptural experiences.
PR
Notes
1 Clark and Lederle (eds), What Is Distinctive, p. 109; T. Cross, ‘Can There Be a Pentecostal Systematic Theology? An Essay on Theological Method in a Post-Modern World’, in Teaching to Make Disciples: Education for Pentecostal-Charismatic Spirituality and Life: The Collected Papers of the 30th Annual Meeting of the SPS (Tulsa: Oral Roberts University, 2001), pp. 145–66; for an interesting but very localized assessment of differences in beliefs by Pentecostals, see R.D. Braswell, ‘Passing Down Pentecost’, Paraclete 28.3 (1994), pp. 1–11.
2 W. Ma, ‘Asian (Classical) Pentecostal Theology in Context’, in Anderson and Tang (eds), Asian and Pentecostal, p. 73.
3 S. Chan, ‘Whither Pentecostalism?’, in Anderson and Tang (eds), Asian and Pentecostal, p. 580; D.L. Dabney, ‘Saul’s Armor: The Problem and the Promise of Pentecostal Theology Today’, Pneuma 23.1 (2001), pp. 115–46; V-M. Kärkkäinen, ‘David’s Sling: The Promise and the Problem of Pentecostal Theology Today: A Response to D. Lyle Dabney’, Pneuma 23.1 (2001), pp. 147–52.
4 W. J. Hollenweger, ‘Pentecostalism, Past, Present and Future’, JEPTA [Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association] 21 (2001), pp. 41–8 (46).
5 Nichol, Pentecostalism, pp. 2–3; R.H. Hughes, What Is Pentecost? (Cleveland: Pathway Press, 1963); R.H. Hughes, Church of God Distinctives (Cleveland: Pathway Press, 1968); Clark and Lederle (eds), What Is Distinctive, p. 17; R. Cotton, ‘What Does it Mean to Be Pentecostal? Three Perspectives. The Dynamic behind the Doctrine’, Paraclete 28.3 (1994), pp. 12–17 (12); N.D. Sauls, Pentecostal Doctrines: A Wesleyan Approach (Dunn: Heritage Press, 1979).
6 Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, pp. 82–98, 117–19, 125–64, 196–205.
Category: In Depth, Pneuma Review, Winter 2013
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