More specifically, I think Lord’s reflection provides some guidance on listening to themes of both redemptive yearnings and redemptive themes sometimes conveyed through cultural media.

After briefly noting how classical dispensationalism oftentimes cripples motive towards holistic mission and social concern, Lord discusses the holistic vision of God’s mission towards the transformation of all creation, of which the signs of His coming kingdom provide a foretaste. Lord thus writes, “Through mission [e.g., God’s mission] we see God at work both building on the good that is seen in the created order, and also challenging and prophetically overcoming the evil” (p. 30).

Lord transitions more specifically to the relation of the church in mission to the mission of God: “This mission of God, missio Dei, is worked out through the church in the wider world and also directly in the world outside the church. Thus there is a two-fold aspect to God’s mission” (p. 30). Lord then insightfully argues, “I have suggested that in mission we can see God at work in two different Spirit movements. Firstly, there is a movement that centres on the church and sees it sent out into the world. This is the common pentecostal and evangelical approach to mission that sees the church carrying the gospel out to all nations before Jesus returns. Yet, as I will later argue in Chapter 7, there is a greater pentecostal recognition of the Spirit at work in the world outside the church. In mission, we can see the Spirit also at work in all creation, moving people in the direction of Christ in holistic ways. This kind of mission is often represented by those seeking God’s liberating work in the world. Both of these movements of the Spirit are important, and both represent ways in which the kingdom over which Christ rules is made present in the church and wider world.” (pp. 30-31).

Lord makes this observation: “The church is called by Christ to enable the kingdom, but often has to catch up with Christ at work bringing in His kingdom ahead of it” (p. 31).

Lord’s reflections resonate with themes that can be often found in contemporary missional church literature, that challenges us towards recognising the broader concerns of God’s mission (missio dei). Such literature commonly challenges us to thus “listen” to our cultural context.” Yet this is very different from the older “seeker service” model that focuses on “contextualising” to our cultural context. In missional thinking, the greater nuance lies rather on listening to whatever redemptive themes or redemptive yearnings might be emerging from within our broader setting (for example, see Aland J. Roxburgh and M. Scott Boren, Introducing the Missional Church [BakerBooks, 2009], pp. 69f, 84-86f).

Is it possible that in our day, one of the great “redemptive yearnings” currently voiced is increasing concern for the global environment; hence, creation care? When we appreciate that the mission of God is directed not only towards humanity but moreover to the saving of of all creation— then we can also appreciate how increasing concern for saving the earth’s environment, may hint towards the Spirit’s yearning from within our broader cultural context, and also the cries of redemption rising from the imago dei that still flickers in broken humanity.

Editor’s Note: Monte Rice invites you to interact with him and the PneumaReview.com community about these reflections in the comment section below.

Originally published on the Pneuma Foundation (parent organization of PneumaReview.com) website. Later included in the Summer 2022 issue.

In this book, Daniel Castelo’s main goal is to show how Pentecostalism “is decisively not a Protestant tradition generally” and “not part of contemporary evangelicalism particularly” (p. xiii). He moreover argues that pentecostal identity, spiritualty, and theological development are diminished when these foci are largely subsumed under Evangelicalism (p. xiv). He thus suggests that Pentecostalism “is best framed as a modern instantiation of the mystical stream of Christianity” (pp. xv-vi). Hence, “Pentecostalism is best understood as a mystical tradition of the church catholic” (p. xvi). Castelo thus argues that rather than immediately looking to contemporary Evangelicalism, Pentecostals can find far more congruent resources for articulating their identity, spirituality, and theology, in the historical Christian mystical tradition. In the Postscript, Castelo well summarises his purpose for this book: “Its aim has been to facilitate a theological exercise of rethinking Pentecostalism in light of mystical categories for the sake of deepening the connections of this movement within wider Christianity and also as a way of differentiating it from forms of reasoning typically associated with American evangelicalism” (p. 177).

Daniel Castelo

Besides the Introduction and Postscript, the book comprises five chapters. By framing the book’s thrust “within the domains of theological method and epistemology” (p. 1), in Chapter One (“The Challenge of Method”) Castelo substantiates his aims by demonstrating their resonance with past and ongoing pentecostal scholarship that has conceived Pentecostalism as a “spirituality” (pp. 1-6). Castelo devotes Chapter Two (“A Mystical Tradition?”) to identifying thematic aspects of the historic Christian mystical tradition which he believes are most congruent to pentecostal experience and spirituality. Here he argues that convergence can be seen between the pentecostal stress on “encountering God” as the aim of their liturgical practices (pp. 80-83) and the historic mystical stress on movement towards “union” with God (pp. 44, 55-57, 80-82). In Chapter 3 (“The Epistemological Form of Evangelical Theology”), Castelo argues the incongruence of contemporary Evangelicalism’s theological methodological approaches as a ready resource for pentecostal theological method, insofar that Evangelicalism continues its epistemological embedding within its fundamentalist-foundationalist heritage (p. 125).

It should be seen that in many ways, Castelo’s functions as a follow-up to themes and aims earlier pursued by Simon Chan in his book, Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition (Sheffield, 2000). Castelo in fact devotes a section to Chan’s earlier work (pp. 154-157). What primarily differentiates Castelo’s book from Chan’s earlier work however, is the greater analytical depth he gives towards explicating incongruence between pentecostal and contemporary evangelical (particularly North American) epistemological and theological-methodologies. Unfortunately, on this topic (chapter 3), his argumentation is quite dense and seemingly over repetitive.

“At Pentecost an alternative to the imperial unity of Babel is created … Whereas the tower seeks to make people ‘not see’ and ‘not speak’ and sucks the energies out of the margins in order to stabilize and aggrandize the center, the Spirit pours energies into the margins, opens the eyes of small people to see what no one has seen before, puts the creative words of prophecy in their mouths, and empowers them to be the agents of God’s reign.”
Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Abingdon Press, 1996), 228.

I have some questions, which I am raising, especially to our Old Testament and Bible scholars, on a unique translation and consequent reading of the Babel story (Genesis 11). This is a translation, which I think may give greater clarity towards the “postcolonial reading” of Pentecost as the fulfilling of God’s aim towards human diversity, which He earlier pronounced at Babel. In a famous essay titled, “Des Tours de Babel,” Jewish philosopher Jacques Derrida, while recognising the meaning of the term “Babel” (Bavel) in the Babel story (Genesis 11), as “confusion” (it was not Derrida who suggested translating Babel as “confusion,” that was another’s translation that he chose to use), famously interpreted its usage within the tower of Babel story-line, as referring to Yahweh. Derrida relies on the following translation:

“Let us confound their lips, man will no longer understand the lip of his neighbour.”
YHWH disperses them from here over the face of the earth.

They cease to build the city.

Over which he proclaims his name Babel, Confusion,

For there, YHWH confounds the lip of all the earth.

Following is a rough sketch of Derrida’s reflection on the text. Like many similar readings, he understands God’s destruction of the tower of Babel as His judgement against human imperialistic and hence, homogenization endeavours. Hence, Derrida suggests that by implementing the “multiplicity of tongues, God imposes limits to translation.”

The uniqueness of Derrida’s reflection is how he uses the term “Babel” as a proper name for God. God thus “imposes His name” on that initial grand human enterprise—“Babel,” meaning “Confusion.” Derrida does not mean that God is confusion. Rather, what he stressed is that God is beyond human comprehension. He is thus correlating the term “Babel” with the divine name, Yahweh, which is untranslatable. However, Derrida infers that there is a mission thereby placed on humanity: “God weeps over His name,” and “He pleads for a translator.”

I want to add to this discussion, the thinking of an earlier Jewish philosopher who shaped Derrida’s thinking: Emmanuel Lévinas. Lévinas and Derrida are both known for their ethics of hospitality. Yet I find Lévinas expressing a more resolute sense of moral imperative. Lévinas also evokes a more pietistic faith. He appreciates as a central theme of the Torah, the belief that we know God’s presence through a right posture to our neighbour. A key phrase to Lévinas’ ethic is our proximity before the “face of the Other.” God is wholly other than us—but we see His “trace” in our neighbour’s “face.” Therefore, what the Torah summons us to, is concern for our neighbour, whom Lévinas regularly parallels to the fourfold descriptive, “the poor, the stranger, the widow, and the orphan.”

Candy Gunther Brown speaking during the plenary session.

Meeting highlights

Pentecostal/charismatic scholars in worship.

This year’s meeting was themed, “Global Spirit: Pentecostals and the World.” Via plenary sessions, symposiums, panel discussions, and paper deliveries through the varied Interest Group sessions, I with more than 350 people from across the USA, Asia, Australia, Africa, Europe, and Canada, were gathered to explore, dialogue, and address relations between globalization, Pentecostalism worldwide, and the missional movements of the Holy Spirit throughout the global Church and world today. In doing so, we thus identified and conceptualized theological frameworks most conducive for both assessing the present transformation of world Christianity through global renewal movements, and envisioning directions of worldwide renewal over the coming decades.

SPS co-founder, Vinson Synan, and Ken Archer.

Founded in 1970, the Society for Pentecostal Studies (SPS) has grown into an international scholarly community comprising 500-plus members, who represent more than 60 theologically diverse church traditions and denominations and 190 institutions. Hence, while centered on Pentecostal and Charismatic studies, SPS has evolved into an effective ecumenical forum, which has enabled Pentecostals to participate in theological dialogues within or with other bodies such as the Faith and Order Commission of the National Council of Churches (USA), the Wesleyan Theological Society, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, as well as with the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions.

The 2015 Latino delegation.

This year’s conference was graced by four plenary speakers whose respective deliveries provided complementary reflection on the themes of global Pentecostalism, globalization, and the transformation of world Christianity through charismatic renewal worldwide. First to note was Dr. Ivan Satyavrata’s opening plenary address titled, “‘The Wind Blows Where It Wills’: Celebrating the Spirit’s Free Movement in a World without Borders.” Dr Satyavrata leads the Assemblies of God church and its ministry networks in Kolkata, India, much of which was founded by the late Mark Buntain. Speaking for the Friday morning plenary session was Dr. Candy Gunther Brown, Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University, USA, whose address was titled, “Healing and the Growth of Global Pentecostalism.”

The 2015 Women’s caucus.

The keynote conference speaker was Dr Allan Anderson, Professor of Mission and Pentecostal Studies at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. His address was titled, The Transformation of World Christianity: Challenges and Opportunities for Pentecostalism.” Anderson argued that the globalizing power of Pentecostalism is fuelled by an inherent tension it comprises, between a global charismatic, media-driven “meta-culture,” and a countervailing localization impulse that coupled with its supernatural worldview, makes Pentecostal spirituality naturally contextual with the common Majority Word holistic worldview, which perceives daily life as thoroughly pervaded with spiritual forces and realities.

I just finished reading L. William Oliverio, Jr., monograph, Theological Hermeneutics in the Classical Pentecostal Tradition: A Typological Account. In the first six chapters, Oliverio maps the historical development of Pentecostal theology through a taxonomy of five types of historical Pentecostal hermeneutics. Along with their illustrative exemplars, these are: 1. the “original classical pentecostal hermeneutic” (Charles F. Parham, William J. Seymour, Charles H. Mason, Garfield T. Haywood); 2. the “early evangelical-pentecostal hermeneutic” (Daniel W. Kerr, P.C. Nelson, Myer Pearlman); 3. the “contemporary evangelical-pentecostal hermeneutic” (Gordon Fee, Roger Stronstad, Robert Menzies); 4. the “contextual-pentecostal hermeneutic” (Amos Yong, James Smith, John Christopher Thomas, Kenneth Archer); and 5. the “ecumenical-pentecostal hermeneutic” (Cecil M. Robeck Jr., Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Frank Macchia, Simon Chan and Koo Dong Yun).

Oliverio concludes by proposing a theological hermeneutic he finds most congruent towards ongoing 21st century challenges to both the worldwide Pentecostal tradition and the broader Christian tradition. One weakness to his taxonomy is that he admittedly works largely from North American Classical Pentecostal historiography. However, the interdependence between globalisation and globally diverse local Pentecostalisms, would suggest that his taxonomy comprises sufficient broadness for assessing emerging and local Pentecostal hermeneutical models worldwide.

Oliverio argues that the “original classical pentecostal hermeneutic” marked the “beginning of a new Christian tradition.” He also contends that even as the early Pentecostal movement understood its apostolic calling as that of calling the whole Church back to the root of New Testament “Pentecostal” experience, it was thereby highly ecumenical in orientation and moreover— comprising a broad range of theological diversity.

The “early evangelical-pentecostal hermeneutic” later emerged through the influences of fundamentalism and modern evangelicalism, which led to a new stress on the inerrancy doctrine and creation of a “pentecostal scholasticism.” The “contemporary evangelical-pentecostal hermeneutic,” emerged in the 1970’s, largely via the Lukan scholarship debates. It signified a new Pentecostal reliance on Evangelical hermeneutical methodologies, for arguing Classical Pentecostal doctrines of Spirit baptism along with the evidential tongues doctrine. Hence, this era marked a newfound appreciation for historical-grammatical methods of exegetical methods, focusing on identifying authorial meanings of scriptural texts.

I find it important to note Oliverio’s observation that the “contemporary evangelical-pentecostal hermeneutic’s stress on authorial meaning was itself philosophically rooted to the Hirschian (E.D. Hirsch) author-centered hermeneutic theory. Meanwhile, the “contextual-pentecostal hermeneutic,” which emerged in the latter part of the 1990’s, followed the Gadamerian school of thought (Hans-George Gadamer; fusion of the reader’s linguistic and conceptual horizon with the horizon of the text). Hence, this Pentecostal hermeneutic has stressed the reader’s contextual situation (especially the cultural-linguistic context) towards readings of Scripture, and the formative role this context plays towards theologizing. Oliverio identifies this phase as demarking the beginning of a truly authentic Pentecostal manner of theologizing. Yet Oliverio laments the historical wedge that has developed between these two hermeneutics, which he seeks to address through themes emerging from the “ecumenical-pentecostal hermeneutic” and his proposed “hermeneutical realism.

John MacArthur, Strange Fire: The Danger of Offending the Holy Spirit with Counterfeit Worship (Nashville, TN: Nelson Books, 2013), 333 pages, ISBN 9781400206414.

Introduction

In this highly polemical book, John MacArthur argues that as an aggressive though “counterfeit” form of Christian spirituality, the global Pentecostal-Charismatic movement is neither founded on nor representative of orthodox Christian doctrine. He claims it has infiltrated and is undermining orthodox Christianity with “counterfeit” theologies, worship beliefs, and practices—all emerging from its heretical doctrine of the Holy Spirit. MacArthur’s stated purpose for writing this book is to therefore galvanize the “evangelical church” in concerted condemnation against its existence, and honour the Holy Spirit by ridding the evangelical church of the movement’s influence, thus leading to the recovery of correct doctrines of the Holy Spirit.

Having read some highly constructive reviews and responses emerging on MacArthur’s book, in this review, I will hopefully avoid covering matters already well addressed, and provide critique on issues perhaps not adequately touched. I will begin first however with a thematic survey on the book’s content.

Survey

In sermonic style, MacArthur begins his treatise by setting forth the Pentateuchal narrative on Nadab and Abihu’s priestly offering of “strange fire” and God’s judgement against them, as his controlling metaphor for exposing the demonically sourced errors of Pentecostal/Charismatic spirituality that have infiltrated Evangelical Christianity. MacArthur then structures his book into three parts. In Part One (“Confronting a Counterfeit Revival”), MacArthur pursues two basic objectives. First (chapter 1) is to establish that the “systemic” reason for the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement’s existence as a false form of Christian spirituality, is its elevation of “religious experience over biblical truth.” (pp. 16-17). He then argues that at the heart of this aberration is the movement’s historical foundation upon a “deficient soteriology,” which conversely fosters this elevation of experience. Here, MacArthur directly blames the soteriological themes of 19th century Holiness Movement teachings (p. 27).

MacArthur moreover charges that this deficient soteriology under girded the preaching of early Pentecostal leaders, particularly that of Charles Parham. While stressing the dubious nature of Parham’s life and ministry, MacArthur argues that we acknowledge him as the originating founder of the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement—in order to jeopardize the theological “legitimacy” of the whole movement (p. 26-28). MacArthur moreover argues that equally responsible for the “theological foundations” of the movement is E.W. Kenyon, whose seminal Word of Faith doctrine MacArthur stresses, is rooted in a synthesis of various early 20th century “New Thought” metaphysical teachings (pp. 28-31). Hence, in MacArthur’s construal of Pentecostal historiography, Parham and Kenyon together “are responsible for the theological foundations upon which the entire charismatic system is built,” and together represent its dubious “historical roots.” Hence, in MacArthur’s construal of Pentecostal historiography, the doctrinal and moral errors of Parham and Kenyon together establish the dubious theological underpinnings of Pentecostalism and the Charismatic Movement (p. 31).

MacArthur’s second pursued objective of Part One (chapters 3 and 4) is to critique Pentecostal-Charismatic spirituality via Jonathan Edwards’ “distinguishing marks” of genuine spiritual renewal (e.g., “The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God”). MacArthur thereby argues that Pentecostal-Charismatic spirituality is neither birthed by nor honouring to the Holy Spirit. To argue this MacArthur alleges that the movement shifts people away from Christ by its false doctrines, worship practices and experiences wrongly attributed to the Holy Spirit (pp. 53), and through its fostering of immorality via its emphasis on miracles and prosperity gospel teaching. (pp. 60, 65-66). Crucial also to this critique, is MacArthur’s allegations that Pentecostal/Charismatic spirituality moreover undermines Scriptural authority by encouraging believers to seek extra biblical revelation (pp. 67-68), thus elevating false experiences of God over Scriptural and doctrinal truth (pp. 71-72). Finally, MacArthur charges that Pentecostal-Charismatic spirituality fails to produce genuine love amongst believers (pp. 74-76), which MacArthur roots to the movement’s narcissistic blending of “mysticism” (via charismatic worship practices) to the “materialism of prosperity theology” (p. 78). MacArthur concluding verdict is that Pentecostals and Charismatics are “playing with strange fire” (p. 81).