The answer may surprise us.

Pentecostal leader Jack Hayford once said, “Genuine spiritual fullness is bridge building.” That insight cuts to the heart of the issue. If spiritual maturity leads us into isolation or superiority, something has gone wrong. True fullness of the Spirit should expand our vision of the church, not shrink it.

Many Baptists, particularly those influenced by cessationism, believe that certain supernatural gifts, such as speaking in tongues, prophecy, and healing, ceased in the early church. Charismatics, on the other hand, believe these gifts remain active and available today, just as described in 1 Corinthians 12. This disagreement is significant, but it is often overstated.

In practice, the lines are far more blurred than many assume. A growing number of Baptists affirm that spiritual gifts continue today, even if they express them more cautiously. Over the past few decades, studies have shown a notable increase in openness among Baptist pastors to the idea that the gifts of the Spirit are still operative. Even within traditionally non-charismatic environments, one can often find evidence of deep spiritual experience, fervent prayer, and moments that defy easy explanation.

History also complicates the narrative. Charles Spurgeon, the famed “Prince of Preachers,” was a staunch Baptist with no formal connection to charismatic theology. Yet accounts from his ministry include moments of remarkable spiritual insight that many today would describe as prophetic. Similarly, Billy Graham, arguably the most recognized Baptist figure of the modern era, spoke openly about divine healing, the laying on of hands, and the possibility of renewed signs and wonders in the last days.

These examples suggest that the divide is not always as clean or as rigid as our labels imply.

On a personal level, my own journey reflects this complexity. As a young believer, I was committed to Christ and grounded in Scripture, yet I sensed that something was missing. My first encounters with Charismatic Christians were, admittedly, uncomfortable. Their expressions of faith seemed unusual, even excessive at times. But I could not deny that many of them possessed a depth of spiritual life that I longed for.

And that is the point. The church was never meant to be a collection of isolated tribes, each guarding its own distinctives. The apostle Paul’s vision in 1 Corinthians 12 is not of uniformity, but of unity, a body with many members, each contributing something essential. The problem arises when we elevate our distinctives above our shared foundation in Christ.

When Charismatics lose sight of that foundation, they risk drifting into excess and confusion. When Baptists do the same, they risk reducing the Christian life to doctrine without experience. Both dangers are real. Both require correction. And both are best addressed not in isolation, but in conversation.

Image: Stephanie Krist

There is much we can learn from one another. Charismatics can benefit from the Baptist commitment to biblical clarity and theological discipline. Baptists can be enriched by the Charismatic emphasis on the active, present work of the Holy Spirit. The broader Christian tradition reminds us that no single group has a monopoly on truth. As the early church father Justin Martyr suggested, whatever is true belongs to all Christians.

In the end, the question is not whether Baptists and Charismatics will agree on every point of doctrine. They will not. The question is whether they can recognize one another as fellow members of the same body, pursuing the same Lord, and working toward the same mission.

If they can, then perhaps the divide is not as wide as we have imagined. And perhaps, in a divided world, that unity will speak louder than any difference ever could.

PR

Introduction

Michael Heiser’s The Unseen Realm represents an ambitious and learned attempt to argue that a coherent “divine council” worldview underlies and organizes the entire biblical narrative, from Genesis to Revelation, and that recovery of this worldview is the key to unlocking a host of exegetical puzzles that have long troubled readers of Scripture. The book has been warmly received in many evangelical circles, praised for its originality, its command of Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) background material, and its willingness to engage texts that more cautious interpreters have left undisturbed.

The present paper does not dispute the genuine value of Heiser’s ANE scholarship, nor does it deny that divine council imagery is present in the Old Testament and that this imagery has been underexplored in much popular biblical theology. What it disputes is the methodological and hermeneutical framework within which Heiser deploys this material—and, most fundamentally, the textual foundation upon which the entire project rests. The argument will proceed across four areas of critique, concluding with a summary assessment of the project’s overall viability as a work of biblical theology.

The Text-Critical Foundation: Deut 32:8 and the Isolation of the Qumran Reading

The entire edifice of Heiser’s argument rests, by his own account, on a single textual judgment: that Deuteronomy 32:8 originally read “sons of God” (bene elohim) rather than the Masoretic Text’s “sons of Israel.” This reading is attested in a Dead Sea Scrolls fragment (4QDeut^j) and has been preferred by a number of critical scholars on the grounds of the standard text-critical principles of lectio difficilior and the general antiquity of some Qumran textual traditions. Heiser treats this preference as effectively settled, and proceeds to erect upon it a comprehensive theology of the divine council, the allotment of the nations, and the cosmic geography of redemptive history.

The first and most fundamental problem with this procedure is one that Heiser consistently minimizes: the Qumran reading is attested in effectively one manuscript, and it left no discernible trace in the broader transmission history of either the Old Testament or the Greek and Aramaic versional traditions as received by the church and synagogue. The manuscript situation deserves to be stated plainly.

The Masoretic Text, representing the mainstream of Jewish scribal tradition across many centuries and geographic locations, reads “sons of Israel.” The Samaritan Pentateuch, an independent textual tradition, likewise reads “sons of Israel.” The Targums (the Aramaic paraphrastic translations used in synagogue worship) follow the Masoretic reading. The Peshitta, the ancient Syriac translation, follows it as well. The Septuagint reads “angels of God” (angelon theou)—which Heiser treats as corroborating his reading, but which in fact represents a distinct interpretive tradition that domesticates the phrase into angelology rather than confirming a divine council framework, and which itself seems to reflect theological interpretation of a Hebrew Vorlage rather than a variant text. Against all of this, the “sons of God” reading is present in one fragmentary manuscript from one sectarian community[1] … and a community that itself preserved manuscripts of the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees. This may thus be more indicative of this community’s readings than of anything wider among Jews of the second Temple period.

This manuscript isolation is not a minor footnote. It is a datum of the first importance that cuts directly against the theological weight Heiser places on the reading. If the bene elohim text were the original reading[2], and if the divine council worldview it encodes were as foundational to Israel’s theological self-understanding as Heiser claims, one would expect at minimum some broader manuscript tradition to have preserved it. The virtual absence of the reading from the broad channels of textual transmission (Jewish, Samaritan, and Christian) demands explanation that Heiser does not provide.

The character of the Qumran community sharpens this concern considerably. The Dead Sea Scrolls community was not a neutral repository of pristine pre-Masoretic texts. It was a sectarian movement with well-documented theological distinctives: a highly developed angelology, a cosmic dualism between the sons of light and the sons of darkness, an elaborate hierarchy of spiritual beings, and an intense interest in precisely the divine council and territorial spirit traditions upon which Heiser’s framework depends. The Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, the War Scroll, and 11QMelchizedek all attest to a community that was deeply invested in elaborating the kind of cosmic hierarchy that the bene elohim reading of Deuteronomy 32:8 supports. The possibility (which Heiser does not adequately entertain) is that the Qumran reading reflects a theologically motivated scribal adjustment congenial to the community’s own cosmological commitments, rather than the preservation of a more original text.

There is, finally, a theological dimension to the manuscript question that goes beyond text criticism proper. The doctrine of providence as applied to the transmission of Scripture (held in varying forms across Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions) carries the implication that the text God preserved and the communities of faith received is the text that bears canonical authority for those communities. A reading preserved in one manuscript of a sectarian movement, unattested in the broad streams of Jewish and Christian canonical transmission, cannot responsibly serve as the fulcrum of a comprehensive biblical theology without extensive argument about why providential guidance apparently suppressed the “true” reading across every other stream of textual tradition. Heiser provides no such argument. He offers a text-critical judgment and then proceeds as though a theological conclusion has been established. It has not.

The Hermeneutical Problem: Poetic, Apocalyptic, and Visionary Texts as Governing Framework

Even granting Heiser’s preferred textual reading of Deuteronomy 32:8, a second and equally serious problem emerges at the level of hermeneutical method. The texts that form the backbone of Heiser’s divine council argument are, almost without exception, drawn from the genres least suited to serve as the governing framework for systematic biblical theology: poetry (Deut 32, Ps 82; 89; 110), prophetic taunt and lament (Isa 14; Ezek 28), apocalyptic vision (Dan 10), and the elevated cosmic poetry of the wisdom tradition. Heiser’s interpretive procedure is to read these texts as straightforward cosmological claims and then to use them as the framework within which plainer narrative and didactic texts are read.

Image: Adrien Olichon

This inverts the most basic principle of classical biblical hermeneutics. From the patristic period through the Reformation and into the modern era, the consistent counsel of interpreters across traditions has been that clear, didactic, and narrative texts govern the interpretation of figurative, poetic, and apocalyptic ones—not the reverse. The rationale is straightforward: poetic and visionary texts are more susceptible to a wide range of interpretation, more embedded in specific literary conventions and rhetorical purposes, and more likely to employ figurative or hyperbolic language that is not intended as literal cosmological description. None of this is to suggest that such texts may not nor should not be allowed to say whatever they say as informing a biblical theology of anything. The question is what they are actually saying … as this cannot be assumed on any proposed straightforward reading given the nature of such texts for interpretation.

Psalm 82 illustrates the problem acutely. The Psalm depicts a scene in which God stands in a divine assembly and judges the “gods” (elohim) for their corrupt exercise of justice, pronouncing their mortality. Heiser reads this as a straightforward account of a divine council of genuinely supernatural personal beings who have been entrusted with the governance of the nations and have failed in that trust. But the genre of the text—what appears to be a judicial Psalm employing the language and imagery of the divine court—does not straightforwardly license this reading. The “gods” of Psalm 82 can plausibly be read as human rulers employing the honorific language of ancient Near Eastern kingship ideology, as the Johannine Jesus himself suggests when citing this very psalm in John 10:34-35. They can be read as a rhetorical device for the Psalmist’s polemic against injustice, using the language of divine council mythology precisely to subvert it. Heiser dismisses these alternatives too quickly and without adequate engagement with the strongest advocates of alternative readings.

Daniel 10, with its references to the “prince of Persia” and the “prince of Greece,” presents perhaps the starkest genre problem. The passage is embedded in a vision narrative—a form that the biblical tradition itself consistently marks as requiring interpretation (“wisdom”) and as not straightforwardly representing literal cosmological states of affairs. To project the imagery of Daniel’s vision into a systematic theology of territorial spirits and their governance of nations is to make a genre error of the first order. It treats as cosmological description what the text presents as visionary symbol. This is not to suggest that our attempts at genre identification rule out his reading, but he does not seem to take such into account as part of his whole approach to what he is claiming is the best reading of these texts.

The Second Temple Problem: Extra-Canonical Literature as Exegetical Authority

The third major structural flaw in Heiser’s project concerns his use of Second Temple Jewish literature. He makes extensive use of 1 Enoch (particularly the Book of the Watchers), Jubilees, the Dead Sea Scrolls (especially the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, the War Scroll, and 11QMelchizedek), and related texts as though their witness clarifies and confirms the meaning of the canonical Old Testament texts. This procedure is never adequately defended at the methodological level, and when examined carefully it proves to be hermeneutically incoherent.

There are two defensible uses of Second Temple literature in biblical interpretation. It may be used as evidence of how canonical texts were received and elaborated in a particular historical period, that is, as reception history. And it may be used as background for illuminating the conceptual world assumed by the New Testament authors, since those authors wrote within a Second Temple context. What it cannot responsibly be used for (without explicit methodological justification) is as an exegetical key that unlocks what the Old Testament texts were always and originally saying. Heiser consistently uses the literature for this third, illegitimate purpose, conflating reception history with authorial intention.

The historical diversity of Second Temple Judaism compounds this problem. Heiser frequently appeals to “Second Temple Judaism” as though it constitutes a coherent tradition that uniformly elaborates the divine council worldview. This is historically untenable. The angelology of 1 Enoch differs markedly from that of the Qumran community (despite the presence of this collection among the Qumran findings), which differs from Philo’s Hellenized tradition, which differs from the Sadducees who rejected the elaborated angel tradition altogether, which differs from the emerging rabbinic tradition’s deep ambivalence about angelological speculation. When Heiser appeals to Second Temple Judaism as confirming his reading, he is selecting the streams of that tradition that confirm his thesis and marginalizing the ones that complicate or contradict it.

The case of 1 Enoch is particularly instructive. Heiser leans heavily on the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1-36) as elaborating and confirming the divine council and fallen elohim framework he finds in Genesis 6 and Deuteronomy 32. But 1 Enoch is not straightforward theological exposition of earlier Scripture. It is a sophisticated rewriting of tradition for specific apocalyptic and sectarian purposes. The Enochic literature functioned, in significant measure, as a rival to the emerging Mosaic Torah-centered Judaism of the Second Temple period, offering an alternative cosmology, an alternative calendar, and alternative priestly claims rooted in the figure of Enoch rather than Moses. To use this literature as a transparent window into what the Mosaic texts originally meant is therefore not merely chronologically problematic, it imports a theologically tendentious document with its own agenda as a neutral explanatory key.

The treatment of 11QMelchizedek illustrates the problem from a different angle. Heiser uses this Qumran pesher to connect Psalm 82, the Melchizedek tradition, and New Testament Christology within a divine council framework, arguing that Jesus’s claims are intelligible only against this background. But a pesher is, by definition, a community-specific interpretation produced for sectarian purposes. Its use of Psalm 82 tells us how the Qumran community read that Psalm in the context of their own eschatological expectations; it tells us nothing about what the Psalm originally meant, and it cannot be assumed to represent the conceptual background of the author of Hebrews or the Johannine Jesus. Heiser slides between these distinct questions with insufficient care.

Theological Difficulties: Divine Council, National Allotment, and the Limits of Sovereignty

Beyond the textual and hermeneutical problems, Heiser’s project generates a cluster of unresolved theological difficulties that his disclaimers cannot fully neutralize.

Heiser is careful throughout to insist that he is not arguing for polytheism: the elohim of the divine council are, on his account, ontologically subordinate to Yahweh, dependent beings rather than independent deities. But this disclaimer does not resolve the theological problem. If the elohim are genuinely supernatural personal beings with delegated authority over the nations, then they are morally responsible agents, and the question of their moral responsibility creates difficulties his framework never adequately addresses. If they sin in the exercise of their delegated authority (as Psalm 82 apparently implies), does their sin operate independently of human sin? Do they stand in need of redemption? Are they objects of Christ’s atoning work? Heiser gestures at some of these questions in connection with his reading of Colossians 1 and Ephesians 6, but the systematic implications remain underdeveloped, and in several places the framework edges uncomfortably close to a soft polytheism that the theological disclaimers cannot fully contain.

The “allotment of the nations” thesis presents the most acute theological difficulty. Heiser argues, on the basis of his reading of Deuteronomy 32:8-9 and Genesis 11, that Yahweh “disinherited the nations” at Babel and handed them over to the governance of subordinate divine beings: that there is a period in redemptive history when entire peoples were, in some meaningful sense, outside Yahweh’s direct providential governance, awaiting reclamation through the mission inaugurated with Abraham.

Heiser’s framework requires a far more limited and intermittent divine sovereignty than the canonical prophets seem to allow. He does not sufficiently reckon with the weight of this counterevidence, tending to treat the texts that fit his framework as primary and those that resist it as requiring explanation within it, rather than the reverse.

The Comparative Method and Its Limits

One of the genuine strengths of Heiser’s work is his command of Ancient Near Eastern textual and iconographic material—the Ugaritic texts, the mythology of El and Baal, the traditions of the bene el, the Rephaim, and the assembly of the gods. This material is genuinely illuminating as background for understanding the conceptual world in which the biblical texts were written and against which they were at least in part composed.

The Absence of Engagement with the Strongest Counter-Readings

A final concern bears mention. For a work of the theological ambition of The Unseen Realm (and Heiser’s many other books, podcasts, blogs, articles, etc), the engagement with counterarguments is surprisingly thin (though to be fair he cites himself extensively for where he deals in far greater detail on given topics). The classic monotheistic and monolatrous readings of the relevant texts are largely bypassed in favor of engagement with popular-level evangelical assumptions in order to reorder this according to his revisioned hermeneutic. Heiser tends to set up the weakest available alternative readings and demonstrate their inadequacy, rather than engaging the most sophisticated defenders of positions contrary to his own.

A more rigorous engagement would include, for example, Meredith Kline’s interpretation of divine council imagery as theophanic and juridical rather than referring to an ontological hierarchy of supernatural beings; the prolonged pointed readings countering many of Heiser’s approach in John Walton and J. Harvey Walton’s Demons and Spirits in Biblical Theology; John Goldingay’s careful and nuanced treatment of the same texts in his Old Testament Theology; and the extensive tradition of interpretation that reads Psalm 82 as addressed to human rulers employing the honorific language of ancient Near Eastern kingship. These are not easily dismissed readings, and their absence from serious engagement in The Unseen Realm represents a significant gap in the project’s scholarly apparatus. Though I must submit that in the end, he did not write this book for scholars, but for lay readers who themselves would feel overwhelmed by the technical comments (that fall short for those who know the primary and secondary literature as incomplete at best).

Conclusion

The case against the hermeneutical and textual foundations of The Unseen Realm can now be stated in summary form. The project rests, at its base, on a single contested text-critical judgment (the preference for the bene elohim reading of Deuteronomy 32:8) whose manuscript support reduces, upon examination, to one fragmentary scroll from one sectarian community whose own theological commitments were directly aligned with the reading’s implications. The broader tradition of textual transmission, Jewish and Christian, Masoretic, Samaritan, and versional, does not attest this reading. The theological weight Heiser places upon it is entirely disproportionate to the manuscript evidence that supports it.

Upon this narrow textual foundation, Heiser erects an interpretive framework drawn primarily from the genres least suited to serve as governing theological authorities for clearest theological articulation: the imagery of poetic, apocalyptic, and visionary texts, read in a maximally literal cosmological key against the controlling testimony of the narrative and didactic witness of Scripture. The hermeneutical procedure inverts the classical principle that the clear governs the obscure. One does not even have to commit to such an idea to still understand that such texts remain unclear and thus demand far more from their readers to hear well.

This framework is then confirmed and elaborated by appeal to Second Temple Jewish literature (primarily from the Enochic tradition and the Qumran community) which is treated as an exegetical authority for the meaning of canonical texts rather than as reception-historical evidence of how those texts were later read in particular sectarian contexts. The canonical text is effectively governed from both directions by extra-canonical literature with its own theological agendas.

The theological results compound these problems. The allotment of the nations thesis requires a limitation of divine sovereignty that sits in severe tension with the prophetic and apostolic witness. The divine council hierarchy raises unresolved questions about the nature, moral responsibility, and ultimate destiny of its members that Heiser’s disclaimers about ontological subordination do not seem to adequately resolve.

None of this is to deny the genuine value of Heiser’s ANE scholarship, the legitimacy of attending to divine council imagery in the Old Testament, or the interest and stimulation his readings generate. The Unseen Realm is a work that rewards serious engagement, and it has helpfully pushed readers toward texts and backgrounds that deserve more attention than they typically receive in popular biblical theology. However, it has also fed the “weird” or “strange” (something which Heiser specifically says are the texts that matter most).

But as a hermeneutical and theological project (as a claimed key to the whole of Scripture) it rests on foundations that will not bear the weight placed upon them. A single isolated Qumran manuscript supplies the preferred text; a body of sectarian Second Temple literature supplies the interpretive framework; a collection of poetic and apocalyptic texts, read against classical hermeneutical priorities, supplies the canonical evidence; and the whole is presented as recovering what the mainstream traditions of both Israel and the church somehow failed to transmit. That pattern, taken as a whole, should give any careful reader serious pause and perhaps even a turn toward the seen realm that is more clearly present in the texts.

PR

Notes

[1] By saying “community” I am not indicating by such that this was only a singular group or even that the nature of the group/s involved in the texts of the Judean Desert are to all be identified only with some narrow vision of such. Yet, in common speaking those who were responsible for the community texts seem likely to have also been those responsible for texts like 4QDeut^j and 1QEnGiants^ab, for example.

[2] The explanation is that bene el or bene elim is the proposed Vorlage that was altered to bene yisrael in the MT, but prolongated to bene elohim in 4QDeut^j.

Select Works Consulted

Collins, John J. The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature. 3rd ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016.

Goldingay, John. Old Testament Theology. 3 vols. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2003–2009.

Heiser, Michael S. The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible. Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2015.

Kline, Meredith G. Images of the Spirit. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980.

Nickelsburg, George W. E. 1 Enoch: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch. 2 vols. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001–2012.

Sanders, James A. Torah and Canon. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972.

Tov, Emanuel. Textual Criticism of the Old Testament. 3rd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012.

VanderKam, Javames C. The Dead Sea Scrolls Today. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010.

Waltke, Bruce K. An Old Testament Theology: An Exegetical, Canonical, and Thematic Approach. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007.

Walton, John H., and J. Harvey Walton. Demons and Spirits in Biblical Theology: Reading the Biblical Text in Its Cultural and Literary Context. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2019.

There is a certain honesty in the title I Believe. Help My Unbelief! that immediately signals both the ambition and the vulnerability of Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen’s book. Borrowed from the anguished prayer of the father in Mark 9:24, the phrase functions not merely as a rhetorical hook but as a hermeneutical key for the entire project. What follows is neither a defensive apologetic nor a diluted catechism. Instead, Kärkkäinen offers a theologically confident yet dialogically open exposition of Christian doctrine for readers who inhabit a world shaped by religious plurality, scientific rationality, and pervasive secular suspicion.

Kärkkäinen is uniquely positioned to undertake such a task. A long-standing professor of systematic theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, he is widely known for his five-volume Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World, a massive academic achievement that few theologians would dare to condense. This book is precisely that condensation, though “simplification” would be the wrong word. What is offered here is rather a careful transposition: the intellectual architecture of a major constructive project rendered in a register accessible to pastors, students, and reflective believers without forfeiting conceptual rigor.

The introduction sets the tone by refusing the false dichotomy between faith and knowledge. Kärkkäinen rejects both naïve fideism and scientistic dismissal, proposing instead a chastened epistemology influenced by Michael Polanyi’s notion of tacit knowledge. Belief, he argues, is neither blind assent nor empirical certainty but a reasoned trust that remains open to testing, critique, and growth. This epistemic humility becomes a recurring virtue throughout the book and helps explain its unusual generosity toward secular interlocutors and other religious traditions alike.

Chapter 1, on revelation, is among the strongest in the volume. Kärkkäinen navigates the post-Enlightenment crisis of authority by articulating revelation as trinitarian, incarnational, and historically mediated. His treatment of Scripture as “God’s Word in human words” avoids both fundamentalist inerrancy and reductionist liberalism, framing inspiration instead as divine–human synergy. Particularly noteworthy is the comparative engagement with Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist accounts of revelation. Revelation here is not domesticated; it remains scandalous, yet intelligible.

Chapter 2 turns to the doctrine of God, where Kärkkäinen’s ecumenical breadth and conceptual discipline are on full display. Rather than beginning with abstract metaphysical attributes, he situates Christian talk of God within the lived realities of religious plurality and philosophical contestation. Classical trinitarian theology is presented not as an inherited formula in need of defense, but as Christianity’s most daring and constructive proposal about ultimate reality: that God’s being is irreducibly relational, communicative, and self-giving.

What gives this chapter its distinctive force is the sustained comparative engagement. Jewish covenantal monotheism, Islamic tawḥīd, and Buddhist non-theism are treated not as foils but as serious theological interlocutors. Kärkkäinen responds to Islamic critiques of the Trinity not defensively but by clarifying how, in Christian theology, relationality does not dilute divine unity but intensifies it. Likewise, his engagement with Buddhist critiques of personal theism exposes how deeply Christian claims about God are bound to incarnation, history, and relational love rather than metaphysical abstraction.

In Chapter 3, creation is explored in sustained conversation with the natural sciences. Kärkkäinen affirms evolutionary accounts without surrendering theological claims about divine purpose, goodness, and providence. Creation is not treated as a closed past event but as an ongoing, Spirit-sustained reality. The chapter’s refusal to pit faith against science gives it particular resonance for readers formed by contemporary cosmology.

Chapter 4 addresses theological anthropology, asking what it means to be human in light of evolutionary biology, cognitive science, and cultural diversity. Kärkkäinen’s insistence on the imago Dei as relational and dynamic allows him to integrate scientific insights while retaining moral and theological depth. His engagement with Buddhist and Hindu views of the self is especially illuminating, clarifying both points of convergence and irreducible difference.

Christology, the focus of Chapter 5, is treated with careful balance. Kärkkäinen affirms classical Chalcedonian orthodoxy while exploring how Christ can be meaningfully confessed in religiously plural contexts. He resists both relativism and triumphalism, presenting Christ as uniquely revelatory and salvific without reducing other religious figures to mere negations. The chapter models a Christology confident enough to listen and humble enough to learn.

Chapter 6 deepens this trajectory by interpreting reconciliation through a plurality of atonement motifs rather than a single controlling theory. This integrative approach reflects both biblical diversity and pastoral sensitivity, particularly in a global context marked by violence, injustice, and historical trauma.

The doctrine of the Holy Spirit, explored in Chapter 7, bears the marks of Kärkkäinen’s Pentecostal formation without becoming sectarian. The Spirit is presented as active not only in the church but in creation, culture, and beyond ecclesial boundaries. This expansive pneumatology reinforces the book’s overarching vision of a God who remains dynamically engaged with the world.

Chapter 8 addresses salvation with notable restraint. Kärkkäinen maps the theological options regarding exclusivity, inclusivity, and hope without forcing premature resolution. Salvation remains decisively grounded in Christ, yet its ultimate scope is entrusted to divine mercy rather than theological anxiety.

Ecclesiology, the subject of Chapter 9, is framed in explicitly public and pneumatological terms and speaks with particular force to ongoing conversations in Pentecostal public theology. The church is not imagined as a protected enclave nor as a moral lobby, but as a Spirit-constituted communion whose very existence is itself a form of public witness. Kärkkäinen resists both withdrawal and domination, articulating instead a vision of the church as porous yet identifiable, hospitable yet disciplined — a communio sanctorum sent into the world without being absorbed by it. Particularly significant is his engagement with secularism and post-secularity, where the church is called neither to nostalgia for Christendom nor to anxious relevance-seeking, but to patient, Spirit-led presence. For Pentecostal readers attentive to the public implications of ecclesiology, this chapter offers a compelling reminder that charismatic vitality and communal formation belong together.

The brief epilogue returns to the book’s governing prayer. Faith, Kärkkäinen reminds us, is always accompanied by questions, and theology at its best does not silence them but teaches believers how to live with them faithfully.

In an age marked by polarized certainties and shallow dismissals, Kärkkäinen offers something quieter and more demanding: a theology that believes deeply, listens carefully, and hopes patiently — refusing to confuse faith with the absence of questions. That may be this book’s most timely gift.

Reviewed by Ciprian Gheorghe-Luca

Publisher’s page: https://wipfandstock.com/9781725276673/i-believe-help-my-unbelief/

While most discussion of Bible translations take place around the traditional “free vs. literal” debate, modern, non-Biblical translation theory has become suspicious of such easy dichotomies (e.g. Pym 1997: 39).  Many translation scholars now tend to examine translations based on the purpose for which they were written.¹ This article will examine skopos theory, one of the most well-known purpose-based translation theories, in more depth and will discuss the potential objections to using it to examine and analyse Bible translations.  This theory has been chosen as it is the only purpose-based translation theory so far to have been applied to Bible translation.  I will argue for this theory to become the prevailing theory for examining entire Bible translations while the use of the more traditional terminology would then be restricted to the description of small-scale translation decisions, if used at all.

Skopos theory explained

In skopos theory, translation is seen as “an intentional, interpersonal, partly verbal intercultural interaction based on a source text” (Nord [1997] 2007: 18). To fully examine this theory, we must first examine the core notion of translation as an ‘intentional’ activity.

Nord admits that viewing translation as “intentional” or “purposeful” seems to be self-evident (ibid p. 1).  After all, the very act of doing anything implies intent or purpose (Sire 1988: 103, 227 [note 21]).  However, to view translation specifically as an “intentional” activity means that the translation itself must be judged according to how well it fulfilled its purpose (Schäffner 1997: 2).  This is the basis that forms the skopos rule, which is as follows:

[To] translate/interpret/speak/write in a way that enables your text/translation to function in the situation in which it is used and with the people who want to use it and precisely the way they want it to function. (Nord [1997] 2007: 29, translating Vermeer 1989: 20)

How this rule operates can be demonstrated from professional practice.  A translator working on a CV that is to be submitted to an employer in a target culture² will deliberately translate in such a way that the CV will function in that culture.  This may involve seeking target culture equivalents for qualifications mentioned, converting job titles into recognisable target language titles or even changing the grammatical class of words.  In my own work, one of the most frequent changes made to such documents is to change nouns into verbs given the preference in English-language CVs for action verbs (as shown in Yate [1993] 2003: 59-61).

Judging the success of a translation on how well it fulfilled the “intention” for which it was written means that its relation to the source text will necessarily become a secondary concern.  The translation strategy chosen and therefore the relation between the two texts will be determined by the intention of the translation (Nord [1997] 2007: 32).  In CVs, this would lead the translator to weigh up strategies for handling the use of target culture equivalents of qualifications – e.g. adding them next to the source culture term, using footnotes or replacing the source term completely.  In Bible translation this might mean weighing up strategies for handling source language terms for which there is no real target culture equivalent (see Fee and Stuart [1993] 2002: 37, 38 for examples).

This view tends to reduce the tendency for any particular translation strategy to be seen as an “ideal.”  While there may be some occasions and intentions that call for the strategy Fee and Strauss (2007: 28) call “formal equivalence;” others will call for “functional equivalence.”  Rather than choosing one of these two, or indeed any other option, for purely theological or linguistic reasons, the translator will make his or her choice based on which is more likely to serve the purpose of the text (Nord 2002: 33; 2003: 34).  This view forms an alternative to the more traditional theories, which have caused so much debate in the past.  In fact, many skopos theorists see it is a real opportunity to solve the debates over “free vs. faithful translation, dynamic vs. formal equivalence, good interpreters vs. slavish translators, and so on” (Nord [1997] 2007: 29).

This challenges the traditional supremacy of the source text as the sole basis on which translations must be assessed.  While, Hans Vermeer, one of the originators of skopos theory, stated that there must be a relationship between the source and target text (Nord [1997] 2007: 32); he also claimed to have “dethroned” the source text as an unchangeable and unchanging basis of comparison (ibid p. 37).  Some theorists feel that this could easily lead to any and all translation purposes being seen as acceptable, even if they are incompatible with the apparent purpose of the source text (ibid p. 124; Pym 1997: 91).  Following this principle, there would be nothing inherently wrong with changing universities mentioned on a CV to UK equivalents (“Oxford” for “Sorbonne,” for example) or changing all references to places in the Bible to equivalents in modern-day USA, as one Bible translator is reported to have done (Fee and Strauss 2007: 33).

In both cases, such changes, while possibly being defensible as “equivalents” on a purely cultural level, are very likely to mislead the reader.  If, for instance, the writer of a CV attended “Sorbonne” but the translator uses “Oxford,” the client could be accused of lying if the prospective employer decides to verify their claim.  Similarly, no matter how familiar US cities are to US Bible readers, the fact is that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, not Boston.  Skopos theory therefore lacked logical and ethical limits to what could be seen as acceptable translation practice (Pym 1997: 91).

Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen is Professor of Systematic Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary.

From the publisher:

Kärkkäinen’s Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World is a five-volume project that aims to develop a new approach to and method of doing Christian theology in our pluralistic world at the beginning of the third millennium. Topics such as diversity, inclusivity, violence, power, cultural hybridity, and justice are part of the constructive theological discussion along with classical topics such as the messianic consciousness, incarnation, atonement, and the person of Christ.

With the metaphor of hospitality serving as the framework for his discussion, Kärkkäinen engages Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism in sympathetic and critical mutual dialogue while remaining robustly Christian in his convictions. Never before has a full-scale doctrinal theology been attempted in such a wide and deep dialogical mode.

From the Winter 2016 issue
Volume 1: Christ and Reconciliation
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Christ and Reconciliation, A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World series, Volume 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2013), 467 pages, ISBN 9780802868534.

From the Winter 2018 issue
Volume 2: Trinity and Revelation
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Trinity and Revelation, A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World, Volume 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014), 486 pages, ISBN 9780802868541.

From the Fall 2018 issue
Volume 3: Creation and Humanity
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Creation and Humanity, A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World, Volume 3 (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2015), pages x+554.

From the Spring 2020 issue
Volume 4: Spirit and Salvation
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Spirit and Salvation, A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World, Volume 4 (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2016), xi+498 pages, ISBN 9780802868565.

From the Summer 2020 issue
Volume 5: Hope and Community
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Hope and Community, A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World, Volume 5 (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Press, 2017), x+574 pages with indices.

Are you a warrior-leader?

Bobby Welch’s book is an impassioned and heartfelt call for Christians, laymen and clergy alike, to adopt a warrior-like approach to Kingdom work and Christian living. One of the later chapters, “Dying Words Of A Warrior Leader,” illustrates the title’s stated desire for a whole-life commitment. In fact, if there were more warrior-leaders in the pulpits and pews, God’s Kingdom today would advance as never before.

The book is organized in four main sections; The Warrior Leader’s Motivation, The Warrior Leader’s Mind, The Warrior Leader’s Mission, and The Warrior Leader’s Maturity. The chapters in these sections provide valuable advice and instruction in Kingdom-building, especially soul-winning. The illustrations and teaching-stories used to support the concepts are all powerful and almost exclusively military in nature.

Motivation

The chapter “You’re a Warrior, Not a CEO,” illustrates Welch’s approach in this work. Welch is quick to state that chief executive officers are a vital part of society, but they are not the model for Christian living or Church management. Christians and the Church are called to loving and careful but assertive, if not aggressive, evangelism and discipleship. Efficiency should take a back seat to effectiveness when it comes to souls. Borrowing from business management practice should be sparing and careful.

Mind

Unconventional Warfare speaks to the common yet unique nature of Christian Kingdom building. Some concepts are universal in strong organizations: “Take care of the people,” or “Achieve the mission.” How do these ideas find practice with Sunday School teachers and youth leaders? God-work is always unique and different, no matter how much it looks like something secular.

Mission

The Twelve Ways To Win is a chapter of valuable insight and good instruction. The twelve principles outlined, used in correct concert, will enable any Church-body to impact its community for Christ. Here Pastor’s Welch unique perspective and experience wins the day. He can speak to leadership “among the troops” that few others can. When he says leaders need to have front-line mentalities, you have to give serious consideration to what he says.

Summary

Despite the many good points and worthy message of You, The Warrior Leader, it is a challenging reading experience. The teaching stories and illustrations tend to be over long in the reviewer’s estimation. There is a jarring effect that calls attention away from from Pastor Welch’s intended message.

As a highly decorated combat veteran, and a high profile Gospel minister, there is much to commend Pastor Welch. This book contains much valuable material and insight. Be prepared to to work hard to draw the God-sent message off the pages and into your life.

Reviewed by Kirk Hunt

The review of this 2004 book was originally published on the Pneuma Foundation (parent organization of PneumaReview.com) website. Later included in the Spring 2026 issue of The Pneuma Review.

I hope your week has been wonderful. This week holds special significance as we delve into the theological meaning of Holy Week, which is central to the Christian faith. Jesus endured suffering, died, and triumphed over death!

I want to share some insights from my devotions this week. Each day, I reflected on the Passion of Christ and composed 25 meditations on Holy Week. My prayer is that they resonate with you.

With the peace of Christ,

Dr. Antipas

Image: Kelly Sikkema

Meditations on Holy Week

1. As we enter the sacred time of Holy Week, let us take a moment to reflect deeply on the profound journey of Jesus. The gravity of the Resurrection is illuminated through the trials and tribulations outlined during this significant week.
2. Today marks Palm Sunday, the ceremonial beginning of Holy Week. This is an opportunity to learn from Jesus, who exemplified the art of repositioning Himself for what lay ahead. He made a remarkable entrance into Jerusalem, riding on a humble colt, an emblem of simplicity and vulnerability. How might you prepare yourself, adjusting your stance for the divine plans God has in store for your next chapter?
3. Riding a young donkey, though seemingly mundane, speaks volumes of Jesus’ readiness to embrace the challenges ahead. This choice symbolizes the discomfort and struggle that would unfold throughout the week, as He traversed a path marked by pain, ultimately leading to a victorious destiny. Repositioning ourselves often demands radical and even uncomfortable changes.
4. The journey of Holy Week is steeped in profound humility, a call to lay aside our egos and acknowledge something greater than ourselves. Lord, forgive us for the moments when we fail to embody humility, and guide us to walk faithfully in the footsteps of Christ’s example!
5. Holy Week serves as a powerful testament of faith played out in the public arena. Jesus showcased unwavering love even amidst brutal and violent opposition. Though love may sometimes be overshadowed or trampled, His steadfast commitment to love remained resolute. Indeed, love is far mightier than hate.
6. Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem was laden with prophetic significance. The crowd recognized His divine essence as they cheered, witnessing the spectacle of His arrival on a colt. Their adoration hinted at the ultimate victory to come, despite the turbulent path ahead, fraught with pain, betrayal, and denial. While we may know the conclusion of the story, it was a profound and challenging faith journey for Him.
7. The journey of faith is not one of flawless perfection but rather one of exploration and growth. As we navigate through life, we encounter moments of learning and reflection. It echoes the sentiment of Bishop Anselm of Canterbury, who spoke of “Fides quaerens intellectum”—faith seeking understanding. May this week serve as a transformative journey filled with fresh insights, nurturing our lived witness to the world.
8. After sharing His last meal with His disciples, Jesus spoke these comforting words: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth… You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.” (John 14:16-17) Come, Holy Spirit!
9. During Holy Week, a poignant and transformative moment unfolded as Jesus knelt before His disciples to wash their feet, symbolically commissioning them for a life of unwavering service. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. profoundly stated, “You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.” Jesus exemplified this truth, His actions a masterclass in humility! What about us?
10. Faithfully pursuing the depth of Christ’s love demands a spirit of humility and a commitment to serve. The Master Teacher and Lord, in a gesture of unparalleled love, lowered Himself to the dusty ground, knowing that among those He served, two would soon betray and deny Him. Christ’s love is boundless and knows no restrictions, reaching even the most unreachable hearts.
11. As we meditate on the Passion Story, our focus is drawn to the profound hope we find in Christ’s enduring promise. This sacred week serves as a reminder that mental stress and emotional turmoil are transient; they do not linger. Sunday’s resurrection is coming, heralding a new dawn!
12. Holy Week unveils a deep and transformative connection between love and hope. God’s love extends to every individual, even to those who seem difficult to embrace. Lord, in Your infinite mercy, guide us to love as You do. Hope, after all, is a relentless force. Our struggles do not dictate our destiny; rather, through them, we find resilience and emerge even stronger!
13. We must not underestimate the profound devastation of feeling crushed; it brings pain, a burden that resonates with many hearts. Jesus intimately understood the depths of this agony. Yet, it’s essential to recognize that these crushing experiences do not define us—our true beauty does.
14. In the midst of suffering, a glimmer of hope emerges as beauty slowly reveals itself. Just as wine is born from the pressing of grapes and oil flows from the pressing of olives, our life’s true purpose often springs forth from the trials we endure. Jesus faced His own moments of crushing anguish in Gethsemane, a testament to the human experience. Soon, we will gather to celebrate the immeasurable lesson uncovered in such trials: while crushing moments are temporary, the victories they yield are everlasting!
15. J.P. Lederach reminds us that theo-moral imagination invites us to envision ourselves within a vast network of relationships—one that even includes our enemies. It encourages us to embrace the complexities of life without reverting to simplistic dualistic thinking, to pursue creativity boldly, and to bravely accept the inherent risks of venturing into the unknown.
16. Let us not rush to the resurrection; there’s a compelling story that unfolds before the glory! Let’s take time to reflect on that narrative. Jesus endured profound suffering, reminding us that if we seek His resurrection power, we must also partake in His suffering (Phil 3:10). Beyond the shadows of despair lies magnificent glory!
17. The term “Maundy” derives from the Latin word for “commandment,” a poignant reference to Jesus’ profound humility on Maundy Thursday when He washed His disciples’ feet and called them to embody that same spirit of service and love. Lord, in Your boundless mercy, guide us toward a deeper understanding of how to love and serve others with true humility.
18. Have you ever felt the sting of loneliness or the weight of abandonment? Consider that even Jesus experienced such heart-wrenching emotions on the cross, crying out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Remember, even in the heaviest of moments, this is not the end for you—in this life and beyond. A brighter dawn is ahead; just wait and see!
19. “Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.’ Having said this, he breathed his last.” Luke 23:46. Like Jesus, entrust everything into God’s capable hands. Let it go. Trust that God can carry your burdens with grace and strength.
20. “On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross; The emblem of suffering and shame, And I love that old cross where the dearest and best; For a world of lost sinners was slain….” (Hymn)
21. Through the boundless love of Jesus, vividly revealed on the cross, we encounter a profound and transformative truth: True love, at its core, endures suffering. The ultimate victory of love emerges only through the crucible of pain and sacrifice. In essence, love bears the weight of suffering; yet it also triumphs in unfathomable ways!
22. Good Friday is a sacred moment of reflection, a time to honor a Savior who willingly gave His life for the sins of the world. St. Augustine reminds us, “The death of the Lord our God should not be a cause of shame for us; rather, it should be our greatest hope, our greatest glory.” In the face of the cross, we witness the profound generosity of our loving Jesus. Yet, paradoxically, this true love exposes its vulnerability, open to the wounds inflicted by those who abandon, betray, deceive, strive to sow discord, and walk away. The depth of this love makes the hurt all the more poignant and real.
23. Good Friday beckons us into a deep theological reflection on the suffering Christ—a Jesus who embraces pain with open arms. Theologian Jurgen Moltmann articulates beautifully that the God who suffers is the God who loves deeply. Our God is not distant; rather, He is profoundly moved by our own struggles and heartaches. In our moments of vulnerability and distress, God draws nearer, embodying the essence of true and abiding love.
24. In the words of scripture, “Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.’” (Matt 26:27-28) Our sins are forgiven, and we can respond with fervent joy: Hallelujah!
25. Revelation 5:9 resounds with triumphant praise, declaring, “They sing a new song: ‘You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slaughtered, and by your blood, you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation.’” In these words, we find the powerful truth that the blood of Jesus Christ has redeemed us, wrapping us in grace and love beyond measure.

PR

Over the years I have collected bits of wisdom from different sources. I share a few of them with you. When known, authors are named.

“There are none so enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“When people regard a portion of the truth as if it were the whole truth it becomes more dangerous than an untruth.” Jack Taylor

“Most preachers would make good martyrs; they are so dry they would burn well.” Charles Spurgeon

“Don’t be afraid that your life will end. Be afraid that it will never begin.” Grace Hansen

“The danger is not that God has set the ‘bar too high’ and that we will miss it–the danger is that we have set the bar too low and will make it.”

“A woman’s heart should be so hidden in Christ that a man would have to seek Him first to find her.” Maya Angelou

“The church must feed people the food–not merely show them the menu.”

“We make a living by what we get; We make a life by what we give.” Sir Winston Churchill

“Patience is the weapon that forces deception to expose itself.”

“Americans will die on their feet before they will live on their knees.” George Washington

“The task ahead of you is never as great as the Power behind you.”

“People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present, and future, is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” Albert Einstein

“Pray that people will meet Christ before they meet the church.”

Bumper Sticker: “I love Jesus–I just don’t like some of His Fan Clubs.”

“Sanctification is an impartation–not an imitation.” Oswald Chambers

“Find out what you are following–compare it to Christ–you will find yours to be inferior.” Perry Comas

“Do not lower God’s word to the level of your experience.” Randy Clark

“The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.”

“We better find out what God is doing today less we be found arranging chairs on the deck of the Titanic tomorrow.”

“The Bible is a verb; not a noun.” Rick Cross

“It takes a steady hand to hold a full cup.”

“The Bible was not given to replace direct revelation or the miraculous but to correct abuses.” Martyn-Lloyd Jones

“Demons are like rats at the garbage dump. Unless you get rid of the garbage they will be back.”

“One who judges others proclaims himself to be God.”

“Burnout is operating outside your anointing; it is a breakdown–not a breakthrough.” Tod Zeiger

“Success is never permanent; failure is never final.”

“When the tide comes in all the ships in the harbor rise with it.”

“Jesus is ‘Lord over the Church'; The Holy Spirit is ‘Lord in the Church’.” Derek Prince

“Follow the cloud–or follow the crowd.” James Robinson

“‘Tradition’ is the living faith of a dead past; ‘Traditionalism’ is the dead faith of a living past.” Jack Taylor

Image: Wesley Tingey

“The one who kneels before God can stand before anyone.”

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” Anais Nin

“Life is too short to be too little.” Benjamin Disraeli

“Truth is in the Scripture; Power is in the truth.” C. Carrin

“Private victories precede public victories.” Stephen Covey

“Appeasement is like feeding the alligators–hoping they will eat you last.” Sir Winston Churchill

PR

From Charles Carrin Ministries monthly newsletter, Gentle Conquest. Used with permission from Charles Carrin Ministries (www.CharlesCarrinMinistsries.com). Later included in the Winter 2026 issue of The Pneuma Review.

Craig S. Keener, “Apostles Today” YouTube (October 18, 2025).

Pastor John Lathrop says: “At the link you can hear Dr. Craig Keener speak about apostles (about 42 minutes long). In part of his teaching he shares the names of people in church history that he thinks qualify as apostles using Paul’s criteria for apostles.”

James F. Linzey, “International Pentecostal Leaders Minister in Coffeyville, Kansas: ORU Scholars Step into a Century-Old Prophetic Stream in Coffeyville” Christian Newswire (November 12, 2025).

Gordon Govier, “10 Striking Biblical Archaeology Stories of 2025: Research and natural disaster uncovered exciting finds from the ancient world” Christianity Today (December 23, 2025).

Craig S. Keener, “Yes, there IS a Christian genocide in Nigeria” Bible Background (December 28, 2025).

Craig Keener introduces this 26 minute video: “I am not interested in defending the partisan right or left, and that’s not what this is about. The suffering in northern Nigeria didn’t start recently—it’s been going on for decades. I have interviewed many friends from northern Nigeria, plus I depend on reports I received already when I taught there in the 1990s. In some places, there is ‘religious cleansing’ taking place, alongside other terrorist activity.”

Image: Filip Bunkens

Craig Keener, “Differing with John MacArthur on 1 Cor 14” Bible Background (January 5, 2026).

Joy Ren, “Influential Chinese House Church Faces New Crackdown” Christianity Today (January 16, 2026).

Updated on January 21, 2026: “Two of the detained face charges of ‘inciting subversion of state power.’”

Frank Viola, “50 Things the Holy Spirit Does” Frank Viola Unfiltered (January 25, 2026).

Bonnie Kristian, “Protesting in Church Is Wrong. So Is Immigration Theater” Christianity Today (January 20, 2026).

The subtitle of this opinion piece by Christianity Today deputy editor Bonnie Kristian reads: “Demonstrators should not disrupt worship services. ICE should be competent, cool-headed, and constrained by the Constitution.”

Craig Keener, “A charismatic view of suffering?: Suffering and baptism in the Spirit in Mark’s introduction” Bible Background (March 2, 2026).

Carey Nieuwhof and James Sells, “Reclaiming the Church’s Role in Mental Health: We have a holy opportunity to return to our roots—a chance to recover the kind of care that once marked every aspect of the early church” Leadership Journal (Fall 2025).

This article is from CT Pastors, Volume 38 of Leadership Journal.

PR

PneumaReview.com invites you to interact with this academic paper by Pastor Adeboye Godwin.

Abstract

Today it is most difficult to teach or write about the Holy Spirit. This is because there are several arguments, different teachings, various thoughts, different beliefs and divisions arising from the teaching on the Holy Spirit. The aspect of doctrine of Holy Spirit which has been the most controversial is the case for Spiritual Gifts. Spiritual Gifts is given to unite Christians, but it has been the major cause of conflict and ecclesiastical disunity.[1] There are two Greek words generally used to describe spiritual gifts. The first is pneumatikos, meaning “Spiritual things or things pertaining to the Spirit.” This word emphasizes the spiritual nature and origin of spiritual gifts. The other words often used to identify spiritual gifts is charisma, meaning “grace gift.” The word charisma (pl. charismata) emphasizes that a spiritual gift is a gift of God’s grace: it is not a naturally developed ability but rather a gift bestowed on a believer for God’s service (1 Cor. 12:1-7). The interpretation and discussion of the charismata have varied from the various extremes.

Pastor Adeboye Godwin

This research is purposeful. It is to remedy the misconceptions on the possession and exercise of spiritual gift in the community of believers. Nowadays, there appears to be much emphasis on the Holy Spirit, and charismata are gaining more prominence than ever before, it is expedient that Christians be taught the purpose and the appropriate use of charismata. The subject of spiritual gifts has aroused unprecedented interest in every religious circles. With almost universal appeal, the tide of charismatic theology has cut across all theological barriers and ecclesiastical institutions. This works reveals that the spiritual gifts are not given to engender pride, hierarchy and disunity in the church but for the purpose of building up the church and also that charismata are not end themselves but a means to an end, and that end is oikodomen (Building up of the body of Christ)

Introduction

The singular issue that has most divided the body of Christ today is the lopsided orientation about the proper usage and purpose of the Spiritual Gifts. The use of spiritual gifts can mar or make the church. Any casual survey of Christian bookstore and libraries will show that the subject of the Spiritual gifts is a “hot item nowadays.”[2] For the fact that 21st century christian ministry is pneumacentric (full of and centered around the manifestation of Holy Spirit) has made the issue of the Holy Spirit to be in the forefront. Over the last decades the volume of the books written on the Holy Spirit have sprang in to a large proportion. Peter Wagner’s prefatorial words affirms this current trends. He says “I need to make a good case for adding another book to the already too-long list of book on spiritual gifts.”[3] This shows that a lot has been said about the concept of Holy Spirit. Also, the Wagner’s assertion reflects that the most pneumatological concepts that has been widely discussed and demonstrated is the “Charismata.”  Some of the questions that have been raised and misunderstood are: “what are the biblical methodology for the usage of charismata? what is the intention of God in giving out the charisma to some individuals? how can these charismata be appropriately utilized in the body of Christ? Should the charismata be theocentric or anthropocentric? How can egocentric notions be removed from the usage of charismata? and which of the charismata should be given the highest preeminence in christian body? Answers to these questions are important to how united the church will be. And how united the church is will affect the extent the church will go on the Great Commission.