1 John 2:2 says,

“He [Jesus] is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.”

Bless the Lord for becoming our atonement in Christ!

Moreover, the Day of Atonement in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) was a robustly significant celebration. Atoning for the people’s sins was only part of it’s significance. Historically, the Jews have seen Yom Kippur as a time for a sort of reset.

• They reset their attention on God’s will, recognizing how far they had swayed from God over a single year’s time.
• They reset their submission to God’s kingship, acknowledging their need for obedience to their supreme deliverer.
• They reset their commitment to obedience to God. It is so easy to become haughty and self-centered, falling into a life of disobedience to God.

I want to invite you to reflect with me on the Celebration of Yom Kippur (Atonement) in the Hebrew Bible in light of the current state of affairs in the United States and around the world. Our world is hurting.

We need a reset!

God presents to us a way forward in resetting:

“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14

Lord, may this nation and our world experience a reset in Jesus’ name. We cannot depend on human efforts and big promises. We need You, Lord, Amen!

Grace and peace,

Dr. Antipas

This work provides an analysis of the healing theologies by four major players in the 20th century. F. F. Bosworth and Kenneth Hagin are put forward as leading influences of a type of Pentecostal healing evangelism. Agnes Sanford and Francis MacNutt are examples of pastoral healing in more traditional settings.

There can also be no doubt that today the modern landscape of healing theology has been influenced to a large degree by at least one of these four schools of thought. Multiple familiar ministries today have been birthed as a result of the input from each of these four healing protagonists. Just as these heroes of faith built on foundations that existed in their time, we (perhaps unknowingly) also build on foundations they have laid. Therefore, after much time has passed, it is a good exercise to examine these foundations afresh. Biblical scholarship has increased. Does that allow us to examine their teachings with new light?

The author sets out to see if there are two approaches driven by two different theologies of healing: evangelistic and pastoral. What are some of the tensions produced by these different approaches, and can these tensions be resolved?

To pursue the answer, the author systematically lays out his work in a well organized and methodical approach. In the introduction, the author first sets up the Christian worldview that the four protagonists inherited in their times. A thorough, yet brief, biographical sketch of each of them follows with reasons why he has chosen these four people in particular out of many others that he could have chosen.

It is obvious that the author has taken much time and effort to become thoroughly acquainted with each of the four profiles, drawing from the vast material written by them and of them by some of their contemporaries. Then, with thorough documentation, the author sets forth the respective positions on each of the following questions:

1) How do each of them respond to the doctrine of cessationism, the declaration that events such as healings and miracles have passed away and are no longer relevant or available today?

2) Is healing guaranteed in the atonement? Is it available to everyone?

James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Holiness-Pentecostal Transition Years, 1890-1906: Theological Transposition in the Transatlantic World (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2013), 238 pages, ISBN 9781620324080.

James Robinson’s second volume in his Divine Healing series is a major contribution to the study of Pentecostal origins in the Anglo-American world. An interesting and highly researched work, Divine Healing: The Holiness-Pentecostal Transition Years, includes enough anecdotes and testimonies from primary sources to engage the lay reader and a tempered, even-handed review of the secondary literature and historical critiques others have had concerning the divine healing movement of the late 19^th century and early 20^th.

The author, (PhD Queen’s University, Belfast, 2001), is a relative newcomer to the field, having retired from a lifelong vocation as a grammar school teacher in Northern Ireland prior to his contributions to Pentecostal studies. His volumes include forewords by such noted Pentecostal scholars as Candy Gunther Brown (Indiana University) and William K. Kay (University of Chester). As a Presbyterian elder with Pentecostal roots, Robinson is conservative in regards to his work on divine healing: “A more subliminal, and possibly ethereal, aspiration is that some within the church of our day will find something in the book pertinent to the safeguard and furtherance of the historic ministry of healing” (Robinson 2011: Kindle Location 145). This hopeful conservatism underwrites both volumes and shines brilliantly through Robinson’s careful attention to detail and objectivity.

Transition focuses on the years between 1890-1906. His prior volume covers 1830-1890, and a planned volume will investigate 1906-1930. However, these dates are not tight restrictions, but, rather, a permeable focus on people and highlights of the proto-Pentecostal era building up to Azusa.

Transition begins with a brief overview of the preceding volume and establishes the parameters of the rest of the work. In the introduction, Robinson outlines three distinctive features of the radical healing apologetic that underwrote the flowering of the movement. These features were: 1) Redemption extended to “both the spirit and the body.” 2) “As salvation is through faith, so is healing,” and 3) “Medical intervention was considered the sign of a deficient faith and brought less glory to God” (Kindle locations 214-224). These features resurface time and time again in Robinson’s narrative and analysis. The rest of the Introduction links the Holiness-Pentecostal transition to earlier historical precedents and highlights divine healing teaching and practice in a variety of contexts.

Chapter 1 looks closely at the Holiness-Pentecostal transition in America. This transition occurred in the post-Bellum era and primarily among splinter groups off of the Methodist church. These splinter groups comprised the Wesleyan Holiness counter movement from which and in which radical divine healing advocates flourished. Again, Robinson underscores the connection between Holiness teaching and divine healing rooted in the extent of redemption. Following the trajectory from Methodism, through the Wesleyan Holiness counter movement, the author finishes out the chapter with how the Holiness movement with its divine healing overtones were linked to early Pentecostal movements and leaders such as Frank Sandford, the Shiloh Movement, Daniel Warner, and Alma White. These links, as elsewhere in the volume, are developed through extensive biography and narrative along with contemporaneous accounts from those outside the movement.

Walter Brueggemann, Divine Presence Amid Violence: Contextualizing the Book of Joshua (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade, 2009), xii + 82 pages, ISBN 9781606080894.

To begin this review quite honestly, I chose the text because of the difficult dilemma it was attempting to resolve, namely violence and the Bible and even more specifically violence and war as ordered by God. The second factor that influenced me was the author. If someone can offer a reasonable apologia on the subject, it is Walter Brueggemann. Of value to my choice was also the perfect timing of the book with the war in the Middle East.

Divine Presence Amid Violence argues that aggression in the Bible, and more specifically, aggression that “comes” from God, is not to be against the people, but against the chariots and horses. In the Joshua context, they are the tools used by the evil empire to oppress people and use their labor while holding them in fear. Thus, Yahweh’s command is not to destroy peoples and nations, but to destroy the evil empire that oppresses them through destroying its tools of oppression. Brueggemann believes this is evident on many occasions in the book of Joshua where cities and ethnos are left untouched by the destruction of Israel’s attack.

One, perhaps shocking, aspect in Brueggemann’s apologia comes in the opening chapter, which deals with meaning and interpretation of the Biblical text before approaching a series of narratives from the book of Joshua dealing with violence in the Old Testament as an order from God. This however, does not give enough reason for the statement in the second chapter that, “It is clear that this text, like every biblical text, has no fixed, closed meaning.”

A disagreement with Brueggemann for the fundamental Bible scholar here is a must. For it is quite obvious to the reader, that a narrative has a definite and fixed meaning within its own historical context. And while the interpretation of a given passage through various other historical moments or cultural aspects may vary its essence as a piece of history remains intact.

Brueggemann raises an interesting proposal in the conclusion, suggesting that the modern church is often embedded in the culture of chariots and horses, rather than opposing it; thus counter parting a number of modern interpretations of the Kingdom of God and suggesting that with our theology and actions we as people of God are to be liberators from the tools of oppression and not their enforcers.

Reviewed by Dony K. Donev

Robert E. Webber, The Divine Embrace: Recovering the Passionate Spiritual Life (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2006), 282 pages.

Robert Webber has written an effective teaching manual that has covered the essential factors of spiritual formation. With an eye towards the historical foundation of Christ-centered spirituality, he established the building blocks for the contemporary reader. Webber and his publisher have gratefully retained the pertinent citations and endnotes, which for the reader with little familiarity with the historic names and situations of the characters that he referred to is quite helpful. Webber’s organized style of writing efficiently and end of chapter summaries make the material easy to comprehend and great for group study.

The idea that Christ-centered spirituality is safely rooted in the history of the church is essential to Webber’s content. Step by step, and era by era, he walks the reader through the concepts that demonstrate the spirituality of the church. Spirituality must have an equal voice with the rationality of the church. He candidly expressed his Evangelical Protestant bias (even ignorance) against the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox branches of the Church—and he leads the reader through his journey towards a greater awareness of the treasure that is contained within the history of the whole church. Further, he has made a proficient synthesis of the books from several current and popular authors on the subject of Christian spirituality.