Michael L. Brown, Authentic Fire: A Response to John MacArthur’s Strange Fire (Excel Publishers, Dec 12, 2013), 418 pages.

Authentic Fire, by Dr. Michael L. Brown, is a masterful answer to the intemperate and angry attack on Charismatic movement and Pentecostalism by John MacArthur in his work, Strange Fire.^[1] In the public launch to Strange Fire, MacArthur made clear his utter disdain for the Charismatic Movement in particular:

Nothing coming from the Charismatic movement has provided recovery or strengthening of the biblical Gospel. Nothing has preserved truth and sound doctrine. It has only produced distortion, confusion, and error. Yes, there are people in the movement who know and love the truth, have an orthodox Gospel, but are heterodox on the Holy Spirit. Not all of them are heretics. But I say again the contribution of truth from the people in the movement doesn’t come from the movement, but in spite of it …^[2]

Brown is one of the best-qualified persons in Christendom to answer MacArthur’s accusations. He converted from nominal Judaism into Pentecostal Christianity, and then for a season became a cessationist. However, his careful study of the scriptures showed him that cessationism was indefensible. Subsequently, mission trips to Third World areas showed Brown time and again that today God works powerful “signs and wonders”—just as in New Testament times. Well educated, Michael Brown holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures, his dissertation was on the healing character of God in the Old Testament. He has written multiple books on a whole range of issues, from biblical commentaries to works on revival, and Jewish oriented apologetics.

In his pastoral and teaching roles of the Brownsville Revival, and in his numerous teaching positions at various Pentecostal and Evangelical seminaries, Brown has demonstrated his commitment to the Pentecostal/charismatic appreciation of the gifts of the Spirit. But Brown has also been a critic of the excesses within the Charismatic movement, especially the exaggerated prosperity theology so present in Christian TV ministries. One of his many books, The End of the American Gospel Enterprise, took special aim at this issue.^[3] In a recently released book he also criticizes, in his typical respectful but biblically forceful manner, the new “grace message” circulating in some charismatic churches. ^[4]

In fact, Brown may be considered among a special category of Christian theologian and critics—what I term, “prophetic critics.” That is, one who appreciates and affirms the moves of the Holy Spirit in revivals, but is critical of the improper “spillover” of revival, as when ministries and evangelists go beyond the bounds of scripture. In this august group one should first cite Jonathan Edwards, whose numerous writings both defended the First Great Awakening, but also critiqued its exaggerations.

Many past revivals have had such prophetic critics. For instance, Captain Kelso Carter was a leader of the first healing revival of modern Christianity, the Faith Cure Movement (1880s). However, he saw that many of its leaders were taking a wrong turn in advocating the rejection of medication as being contrary to healing prayer, and critiqued them for this.^[5] In the charismatic movement of the 1970s, Charles Farah, Jr., one of the early leaders of that movement, wrote a now classic critical work on the exaggerations of the Word Faith Movement, From the Pinnacle of the Temple.^[6] This work strongly criticized some of Kenneth Hagin’s teachings.

Don Garlington, In Defense of the New Perspective on Paul: Essays and Reviews (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2005), viii + 245 pages.

Garlington earned his MDiv and ThM degrees from Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia), and his PhD in New Testament at the University of Durham under James D. G. Dunn. He taught from 1987-2002 at Toronto Baptist Seminary, and has served since as an adjunct professor at Tyndale Seminary in Toronto. Previous to this volume, he had authored four others on various aspects of Pauline theology, including book length treatments of the epistles of Romans and Galatians. From the beginning of his academic career, he has been defending a version of what has come to be known as the New Perspective on Paul (NPP).

What is the NPP? The NPP was initially articulated in 1977 by E. P. Sanders in his important book, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, although it was not given this title phrase until Dunn did so in his Manson Memorial Lecture in 1982. In brief, the NPP can be summarized as making three sets of interlocking claims. First, rather than holding to an exclusively defined religion of works-based righteousness, Second Temple Judaism embraced a form of what might be called “covenantal nomism” (Sanders) whereby God established a covenant relationship with his people (in this case, Israel) which required, as a proper response, human obedience to the commandments of the law. Second, that when understood against this background, St. Paul neither advocates a superseding of the law nor offers a polemic against the law as a means of gaining merit; rather he should be read as defending a view of the law as a way of living within and according to the covenant. Finally, then, the Pauline dictum of justification by faith alone is one aspect of a wider covenant that includes rather than excludes the transformed life and the works of faith. Within this scheme of things, one does not “get into” the covenant via keeping the law; instead, one “stays in” the covenant according to one’s faithful obedience to the terms of the covenant (reflected in the law), even if God also graciously provides for the atonement of sins that are inevitably committed by those who fall short because of either faithlessness or disobedience.