Reflections on a Term at the Gregorian University

One of the highlights was the opportunity for me to give a public lecture at the Gregorian on March 19. The Gregorian advertised the lecture with large posters placed throughout the academic community, at the Lay Centre, in various Vatican offices, among the Jesuit and Dominican communities, and among other communities like the Focolare and Chemin Neuf. About 100 people attended, including some of the Gregorian’s Jesuit community. Some of my students attended, as did others from schools such as the Biblicum, across the street, and the Angelicum. My address was titled, “Can We Imagine an Ecumenical Future Together?” It lasted 75 minutes followed by 45 minutes of Q and A. The discussion was rich. There were many positive comments. Many of those who spoke said that they had been challenged to think differently about Pentecostals and noted that they had learned something new. [Editor’s note: For what may be a limited time, the flyer about this lecture is here. Read the PneumaReview.com announcement about this lecture.]

I began the paper, reading from Matthew 16:1-4 (NRSV), in which the Pharisees and Saducees, wishing to test Jesus, asked Him for a sign. Jesus refused to give one, saying that they had failed to read the signs they already had. I then asked whether such signs exist today and if so, what are they, and are we reading them as we should. I mentioned, for instance, the massive global migration currently in process, new challenges to various cultures as a result of this movement, and the persecution of religious minorities like the Rohingas in Myanmar. I made the point that at the beginning of the Pentecostal Movement, there were those who believed that the very existence of this Movement was a sign of the imminent return of the Lord. I outlined the classic Restorationist reading of history, played so well by Aimee Semple McPherson in her annual sermon, “Lost and Restored”.

The next section had to do with the reality of the divided Church in which all of us participate. We tend to think of it as normal, because that is all we have ever known. But it is not normal. Christ gave one Church with all of its diversity. As a result, the Apostle Paul could use the Body metaphor repeatedly, including its diverse gifts, all of which the Head, Jesus Christ, oversaw. The Church, however, has struggled right from the beginning, with its diversity. I provided examples from history, moving from the one church, to two in 1054 (East and West) and then to six in the 16^th Century with Luther, Calvin, the Anabaptists, and the Anglicans being added, and brought it down to the latest figures of the number of denominations worldwide, over 42,000. We have substituted division for diversity and have justified our divisions. Yet, such divisions deny the power of Christ’s atonement and act as stumbling blocks to those who need to hear the message of reconciliation.

In some ways, Pentecostals are not really Protestants. We did not emerge until 400 years after the Protestant Reformation. The fights of the 16^th Century are not necessarily our fights. Because most churches rejected us, we have often stood against the whole Church, not merely the Catholic Church. I explained that Charles Parham, William J. Seymour, and Warren Carothers suggested that the Pentecostal Movement was a sign not only that the Second Coming was imminent, and that the unity of the Church was now possible, but that Pentecostals believed that they were the key to that unity.[3] The earliest Pentecostals sought to avoid the deadness that they saw in many churches, and the wildfire that they saw in others.[4] They tried to promote a middle way between the two.

I summarized their convictions, noting that these new, Apostolic Faith Christians believed that this outpouring of the Holy Spirit was an eschatological sign that pointed to the imminent return of Jesus Christ. They believed that this unique experience of Baptism in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues was designed to bring about the unity of all Christians that no organization or plan would ever accomplish. As the New Testament scholar, B. F. Streeter noted in 1929, the earliest Christians seem to have experienced the Holy Spirit in ways “as definite and observable as…an attack of influenza.”[5] And the earliest Pentecostals believed that those who now spoke in tongues, those who had received this baptism in the Holy Spirit with the same evidence that the Apostles and others received in Acts, had the symptom of their “illness” and were uniquely empowered to be Christ’s witnesses throughout the world.

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Category: Ministry, Spring 2018