This excerpt from Led by the Spirit: The History of the American Assemblies of God Missionaries in the Philippines is the first chapter. Missionary-scholar Dave Johnson has brought together a chronicle of over 300 Pentecostal missionaries serving in the Philippines from 1926 through the first decade of the new Millennium.

The Early Years in the Philippines

As the Assemblies of God in the United States grew, so did their vision to send missionaries to the far-flung corners of the globe, including the Philippines.

The First Missionaries Arrive

The first United States Assemblies of God (AG) missionaries to the Philippines were Benjamin and Cordelia Caudle, who, with their children, arrived in Manila in September 1926.¹ The Caudles came from Kansas. Like many of the early missionaries, neither had any Bible school education, and it appears that they had little ministry experience. Caudle had only been a Christian for about six years before arriving in the Philippines. Yet they had heard the call of God, and for them and those who supported them, that call was sufficient. At the same time, their application for appointment indicates that they were well aware that sacrifice and privation awaited them.2 To what extent they were actually prepared for life in the tropics can only be conjectured.

They settled in Manila and quickly began to work. Manila, a city of at least three hundred thousand people at the time, was the logical choice because it was both the capital and hub of the nation. By the time the Caudles arrived, the Filipinos had been under American rule for twenty-eight years and many had learned English to the point that the Caudles felt it was becoming the lingua franca of the country.3

The Caudles were thoroughly convinced of the validity of the Pentecostal message and had a deep burden for the lost. In an article for the Pentecostal Evangel, the official voice of the Assemblies of God USA, Caudle’s passion for the lost and commitment to Pentecost is revealed:

Do you know that there are many millions of people here that need the Gospel preached to them with power and in demonstration of the Holy Ghost? The Pentecostal message is yet a stranger to the Philippine Islands, but by God’s grace it will not remain so long. For there shall be established in these Islands a lighthouse of the Pentecostal truth where men and women can be free.4

While the claim to be the first to proclaim the Pentecostal message in the Philippines cannot be verified with certainty, it may have been true since the Pentecostal Movement was young at the time. Caudle’s remarks that the Pentecostal message, with its emphasis on signs and wonders, would spread throughout the country, was prophetic, although it didn’t happen as quickly as he hoped.

This issue, #124, examines the ancient “city movement” together with the modern one of today. Eleven articles and interviews, illustrated by accompanying images of art and architecture, explore how early Christians thought, worked, prayed, served, and talked to their neighbors in cities. During a 350 year period, starting some 2,000 years ago, a small group of Jesus’ disciples grew to be 56 percent of the population of the Roman Empire, transforming the western world.

Among six in-depth articles, the issue features a series of five interviews. Each tells the story of people who are, today, doing the same things as was done by early church city-dwellers.

Christian History has explored the early church in 11 past issues, but issue 124 is about early Christian life lived specifically in urban areas, where Christians had to negotiate how to live with pagan neighbors, mostly in cities that were crowded, noisy and hedonistic. In the midst of the empire’s wide-spread persecutions, Christians established institutions of education, developed professions, created art and built hospitals & churches, often replacing pagan temples.

The following articles can be accessed on-line at: What’s Inside?

Life in the earthly city – Christians advocated for “the Way” in the middle of urban distractions much like our own, by Joel C. Elowsky – professor of historical theology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, a Lutheran pastor, and editor of the Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity, among others.

A bishop’s work is never done – During and after persecution new complexities challenged church leaders, by Helen Rhee – professor of church history at Westmont College and the author of several books on wealth, poverty, and early Christianity.

“An expanding circle of love and justice” – Interview of Katelyn Beaty, editor at large for Christianity Today, on how Christians today interact with their non-Christian neighbors.

Healing the city – How Christians helped the sick and poor in the Roman Empire’s cities, by Gary B. Ferngren is professor of history at Oregon State University and professor of the history of medicine in the I. M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University. He is the author of Medicine and Health Care in Early Christianity, among others.

“The only stumbling block is the cross” – Interview of Doug Banister, the pastor of All Souls Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, about how his church does urban ministry.

The things that are Caesar’s – How Christians behaved as citizens, soldiers, and public servants, by Rex D. Butler is professor of church history and patristics at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and the author of The New Prophecy and “New Visions”: Evidence of Montanism in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas.

This volume is a collection of twenty essays (one previously unpublished) from the pen of David E. Aune, Walter Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at the University of Notre Dame. Aune’s expertise in the areas of early Christian prophecy and in the book of Revelation is well known, thanks to his publication of a major tome in each area. The essays gathered in the present volume, dating from 1980 and later, represent his developing expertise in both those areas, although the selection is heavily weighted toward studies on the book of Revelation. (There are also discussions of the idea of “holy war”, varieties of eschatology, and sociological investigations of apocalyptic.) All of the essays reveal a scholar at home in his subject matter, never lagging but always presenting something new and relevant to the field. In spite of the often-technical nature of the discussion, all the essays are easily readable. The variety of topics suggests that most will not be equally interested in all the essays, but anyone interested in the topics of apocalypticism, prophecy, and early Christian magic will want to own this volume. We can be thankful to Baker Academic for publishing an affordable edition of a volume that elsewhere (under a different imprint) retails for over $200.

David E. Aune

It is always disappointing to read a book and to discover that a lengthy section on one page repeats an earlier section verbatim. In the case of a compilation of previously published essays, it shows that the author does not scruple to recycle previously published wording for an altogether new essay. This is the case here, as we find identical wording on pp. 90 and 169. But this is a minor quibble in comparison to what the volume offers. The book’s principle value rests in its contribution to the study of Revelation. For those interested in Revelation, I highly recommend this book, especially as a companion volume for Aune’s three-volume commentary.

Reviewed by John Poirier

Originally published on the Pneuma Foundation (PneumaReview.com’s parent organization) In Depth Resources index on October 1, 2009.

Chad Tyler Gerber is Assistant Professor of Theology at Walsh University, USA. This book is part of the Ashgate Studies in Philosophy and Theology in Late Antiquity. The series focuses on major theologians from the patristic period as individuals immersed in their own culture. It somewhat uniquely aims to understand the convergence or divergence of pagan and Christian thought on issues addressed by both streams. Accordingly, it hopes to ascertain the true creativity of a particular author and to assess the abiding value of his thought for modern times. This text is serious theology so lay people or even many clergy may not find it easily palatable. However, teachers and advanced students of theology will definitely find it a rewarding and worthwhile read. Augustine is indisputably one of the giants of Christian thought, and Gerber offers a fresh and vigorous look at his pneumatology. That alone is cause for acclaim. Accordingly, those interested in patristic studies in general or in Augustine in particular as well as his pneumatology will benefit from The Spirit of Augustine’s Early Theology. I suspect Pentecostal and Charismatic theologians should be especially interested in the depths of Augustine’s theology of the Holy Spirit.

Gerber explains that “Augustine’s pneumatology remains one of his most distinctive, decisive, and ultimately divisive contributions” to Christian theology. Several questions guide Gerber’s work on this text. How did Augustine’s understanding of the Spirit develop? Why does he identify the Spirit with divine love and cosmic order? What were the sources of his inspiration? Gerber focuses on the early Augustine and his first writings in order to get at the seminal roots of his more mature thought. He is particularly interested in the Platonic influence on Augustine’s pneumatology and in the possibility of his continuing commitment to the divinity of the human soul. (In a brief appendix, Gerber sums up his argument that Augustine rejected the divinity of the soul; but, he suggests Augustine appropriated certain functions of the Plotinian Soul regarding the particularity of the Holy Spirit, especially his idea of the Spirit as the “ordinator” of the world.)

Following the contours of Augustine’s early writings and the locale of their construction, Gerber presents his material in four chapters. After a brief introduction, Chapter One on “Nicea and Neoplatonism” (386-87 AD) examines the influence of Nicea and Neoplatonism on the budding theologian’s early Trinitarian theology as he writes from Milan. Gerber concludes that “at bottom” Augustine’s early Trinitarian theology was “pro-Nicene” and also made use of “Plotinian triadology”. He suggests the early Augustine still had much to learn about both Neoplatonism and pro-Nicene theology; but, he had sufficiently grasped the central tenets of both in such as way as to understand and express his theology in terms that would remain essentially the same throughout his subsequent writings.

In Chapter Two, “The Soul of Plotinus and the Spirit of Nicea,” studying the Cassiciacum Dialogues (386-87 AD), Gerber gets to a more specific pneumatology and also to the delicate relation in Augustine between Plotinus’ philosophy and Nicene theology. Gerber suggests that Augustine’s more or less random invocations on pneumatology at this point nevertheless adhere to a consistent “redemptive-historical perspective in which God the Spirit leads fallen souls to God the Son.” Augustine is apparently influenced here by the New Testament and by patristic writings. The theme of “return” is also evident, and Plotinus appears to have provided “a psychological model of ascent” in which the soul’s salvation involves a vision of “archetypal Truth and a ‘return'” to God as “the ultimate source of all things” (although Romans 11:36 is key). Gerber, however, judges the material too scarce at this point to make sweeping conclusions about specific ideas concerning pneumatology and cosmic order.

Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik, eds., Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2007), 930 pages, ISBN 9781565637634.

This volume is an imposing compendium of scholarly research into the Jewish Christianity of the first several centuries. The book features essays on nearly every major representative and aspect of this important stream within early Christianity.

The volume opens by exploring the definition of “Jewish Christianity” and then gives an overview of the literary evidence for this stream within the early church, discussing, in turn, the Jewish aspects of Paul’s mission and beliefs, the gospel of Matthew as a reflection of Jewish Christianity, the Fourth Gospel, the book of Revelation, the (non-canonical) Jewish gospel tradition, Jewish Christianity’s use and preservation of the OT pseudepigrapha, Jewish-Christian aspects within the Pseudo-Clementine writings, and the remains of Jewish-Christian witnesses as preserved in Greek and Latin patristic writers. After this is a series of essays on the various Jewish-Christian “schools”, such as the Ebionites, Nazoreans, etc., and various alleged Jewish-Christian leaders, like Cerinthus, Elxai (Elchesai), etc. Philip Alexander discusses the rabbinic evidence for Jewish Christianity, while James Strange discusses the archaeological record. Skarsaune (who wrote many of the articles) closes the volume with an overview, after which there is a bibliography running more than 100 pages. There is really very little that the book does not include, and anything to be gainsaid about the volume will likely focus on a particular issue as treated by one or another contributor, rather than on issues touching the volume as a whole. For example, Donald Hagner’s essay on “Paul as a Jewish Believer—According to his Letters” is rather reactionary, and not, I think, of the same quality as the other essays.

For most students of the New Testament, this volume is both a starting point and a likely ending point for the study of Jewish Christianity. It deserves a place in any personal library.

Reviewed by John Poirier

New publisher’s page: http://www.bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/jewish-believers-in-jesus/333750

As of October 30, 2014, the full text of the book appears here: http://khazarzar.skeptik.net/books/jewbelje.pdf

Laurie Guy, Introducing Early Christianity: A Topical Survey of Its Life, Beliefs & Practices (Downer’s Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 310 pages, ISBN 9780830826988.

In Introducing Early Christianity, Laurie Guy, a lecturer in church history at Carey Bible College in Auckland, New Zealand, and a lecturer with the School of Theology at the University of Auckland, has written a balanced but provocative, simple but scholarly account of the earliest centuries of Christianity and their nascent implications for its most developmentally formative period. It lucidly lays out the major landmarks and will serve well as an introduction to the era for those embarking on or renewing their journey into Christian history. Well-placed hints at deeper directions and their internal dynamics in the events it covers should intrigue readers enough to invite further reflective research.

Guy’s effort ambitiously aims at analyzing early Christians’ life as well as well as their beliefs and practices during the first five centuries of Christian history. Thus it is characterized more by breadth than depth. Yet it relies heavily on primary sources and does not sacrifice substance for simplicity. It is also topical rather than chronological, though in turn investigating each of its chosen themes in a generally chronological manner. It is limited primarily to Christianity’s early development within the environs of the Roman Empire, although readily admitting its reach even early on beyond those borders. Numerous charts, graphs, and tables, suggestions for further reading, as well as a Glossary, maps, and author and subject indexes are helpful aids.

With experience as a lawyer, minister and missionary, Laurie Guy teaches church history and New Testament at Carey Baptist College, Auckland, New Zealand.

Introducing Early Christianity has an orderly and easily discernible development of its contents. After a very brief Preface, Chapter One, “If Paul Could See Us Now” looks at what Guy calls “Four Centuries of Dramatic Change,” and sets the tone for the rest of the book by comparing and contrasting the Christianity of Paul’s time with that of the next four centuries. Guy’s creative freshness shows as he invites readers to imagine Paul having something like a Rip Van Winkle experience in which he awakes after four centuries to see what had become of Christianity by then. Guy suggests that the core affirmation of Christ’s lordship remained constant while enormous shifts in day-to-day existence occurred as well. The next ten chapters examine selected topics that arise out that comparison-contrast. Chapter Two, “Second Generation Christianity,” looks at “The Churches of the Apostolic Fathers” and Chapter Three, “Suffering and Dying for God,” at “Persecution and Martyrdom.” Chapters Four and Five, “Getting Organized: Ministry and Structure” and “Getting Recognized: Emperor Constantine’s Revolution,” address the political and practical landscape of early Christianity’s development. Here one not only sees seeds of current ideas on relations of Church and State, but also how they eventually affected, for good or for ill, the shape and substance of the Early Church.

History teaches that the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit did not cease with the first apostles—the early church demonstrated signs and wonders of God’s work in the world.

Cessationism teaches that the types of signs and wonders evidenced in the New Testament are not for today. The reasons given by cessationists are varied, and the internet is full of websites dedicated to this doctrine. However, many scholars have written in favor of signs and wonders being for today, and they have shown that the arguments against signs and wonders today are weak and biased. Some of the most impressive examples of polemical writings in favor of signs and wonders today include The Kingdom and the Power, edited by Dr. Gary Greig and Kevin Springer; Surprised by the Power of the Spirit, by Dr. Jack Deere; Confronting Powerless Christianity, by Dr. Charles Kraft; On the Cessation of the Charismata: The Protestant Polemic on Post-Biblical Miracles, by Dr. Jon Ruthven; just to name a few.

In this article, I want to take you back in history and present to you an argument for signs and wonders revealing that the miraculous works done by Jesus and the apostles were also done by the early church—thus showing that the main thesis of cessationists, signs and wonders passed away with the last of the apostles, is false. I will limit my discussion to exorcism and healing, and I will quote writers from the 1st-3rd centuries who have written about continuing signs and wonders. I will also add commentary where I feel it may be helpful and relevant for today’s church.

All of the quotes are from the 10 volume The Ante-Nicene Fathers, edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson between 1885-1887.¹ They are cited in A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs, edited by David W. Bercot.² The citations use the convention of “volume number. page number”; thus 1.200 indicates a quote is from volume 1, page 200. I will use the notation of ANF 1.200 to designate a quote’s location.

Exorcism

One of the main themes I found in the early church writings I examined was exorcism. In the New Testament, exorcism is a sign, wonder, or miracle, bringing deliverance to an individual who is demonically oppressed or possessed. Let’s first examine some of the evidence that exorcism continued on, past the apostolic age.

Justin Martyr
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Justin Martyr, c.155 (or shortly thereafter)

“For numberless demoniacs throughout the whole world, and in your city, many of our Christian men exorcising them in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, have healed and do heal, rendering helpless and driving the possessing devils out of the men, though they could not be cured by all the other exorcists, and those who used incantations and drugs.” ANF 1.190

“We call Him Helper and Redeemer. Even the demons fear the power of His name at this day, when they are exorcised in the name of Jesus Christ, … they are defeated.” ANF 1.209

“He said, ‘I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions.’ … And now we have all the demons and evil spirits subjected to us, when we exorcise them.” ANF 1.236

Magnus Zetterholm, ed., The Messiah in Early Judaism and Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), xxvii + 163 pages, ISBN 9780800621087.

The Messiah in Early Judaism and Christianity presents the papers read at a meeting at Lund University in 2006. Three of the essayists are from Sweden, while the other two flew in from Yale University. In spite of the specialist nature of this type of meeting, most readers should find the papers broadly accessible. The essays in this book should speak directly to anyone who has wondered about the meaning of the term “messiah”. Although the subject is one that requires a thorough knowledge of biblical and postbiblical apocalyptic writings, the essays are written in such a way that the beginning student of NT backgrounds will understand everything and learn much. Although there is a time and place for making arcane points, many readers will be relieved to learn that one does not find that type of deliberation here. Beginners will especially get a lot out of the first essay, written by one of the world’s foremost experts on the subject of messianism (John J. Collins). Collins shows that the idea of the messiah was not eschatological in the Old Testament, but that it became so within second-temple Judaism.

Other contributions are by Adela Yarbro Collins (on “The Messiah as Son of God in the Synoptic Gospels”), Magnus Zetterholm (on “Paul and the Missing Messiah”), Karin Hedner-Zetterholm (on “Elijah and the Messiah as Spokesmen of Rabbinic Ideology”), and Jan-Eric Steppa (on “The Reception of Messianism and the Worship of Christ in the Post-Apostolic Church”). All of the essays are clear and written with a firm grasp of the facts surrounding the issue. As the reader can see, three of the five essays deal directly with the Christian aspect of messianism. There are many books that give a fuller treatment of messianism, but at only 163 pages, this book deserves pride of place for what it packs into a somewhat slim paperback.

Reviewed by John Poirier

The Power of the Cross: The Biblical Place of Healing and Gift-Based Ministry in Proclaiming the Gospel

Many stories in Christian history are filled with accounts of charismatic gifts, miracles, signs and wonders.

The emergence of the Pentecostal, the neoPentecostal or charismatic, and third wave movements in our century has raised a variety of vital questions that demand answers. Among these is the issue of whether the spiritual gifts enumerated by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 remained active in the Church after the first century. Equally crucial is the question of whether these gifts, if still active, were vitally related to the proclamation of the gospel in the Church during the formative centuries.

Protestant Cessationism

From the Reformation era onwards, leading Protestant theologians have popularized the view that the work of the Holy Spirit in evangelism after the apostolic age was limited to dynamic proclamation of the Word of God, rather than the exercise of spiritual gifts. This was the position of Martin Luther, who openly rejected the schwärmer or enthusiasts of his day—who claimed gifts of prophecy and gave higher credence to the “inner voice” of the Spirit than to the “external word” or Scriptures.¹

Voices of cessationism still are with us, and presently are aimed at the healing and gift-based ministries of Pentecostals, charismatics, and third wave churches. Cessationists argue that miracles had little to do with the gospel or were incidental to the proclamation of the gospel in the New Testament. Further, they insist that gifts of healing as well as the other charismata ceased at or near the end of the first century A.D. For example, the claim has been made that “the Church Fathers, who came almost entirely from the East, believed that the apostolic gifts had ceased.”² Such a claim is simply not true, as the evidence presented below shows.

Martin Erdmann, The Millennial Controversy in the Early Church (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2005), 228 pages.

Martin Erdmann’s text is a worthy contribution to the study of biblical and patristic eschatology (doctrine of the Last Things). With an educational background in both church history and New Testament, Erdmann utilizes all of his academic skills in investigating the reasons for and consequences of the shift from premillennialism to amillennialism in the patristic era of the church. His thesis is that this shift, however understandable, had negative consequences and flew in the face of apostolic tradition and proper exegesis of Scripture.

Erdmann begins by assessing the primary source of Christian millenarianism, namely Jewish apocalyptic. He discusses various works and condenses their purpose and message, and their collective bearing and influence upon the biblical book of Revelation. This introduces the second chapter, which begins with a survey of millennial options: postmillennialism, which sees the earthly millennium as preceding the return of Christ; amillennialism, which spiritualizes the millennium and usually designates it as the current time of the church; and premillennialism, which sees the earthly millennium as commencing immediately after the return of Christ to earth. Premillennialism is further sub-divided into historic premillennialism, reflective of the traditional premillennial perspective, and dispensational premillennialism, the more recent (1830’s AD) addition to premillennial thought containing the distinctive doctrine of the secret pretribulational rapture of the church as the first of a two-part second advent of Christ and the sharp exegetical division between national Israel and the church. The second part of this chapter is an exegesis of Revelation 20:1-10, the flagship text of millennialism of any kind. Erdmann argues fairly persuasively for a premillennial position, without designating either the historical or dispensational variety.

Chapter three offers an overview of the hermeneutical principles employed by the early church fathers, those Christian leaders immediately following the apostles. The fathers read the Scriptures through a Christological lens, seeing all of Scripture as pointing to Christ and therefore interpreted rightly only through him. They held to the necessity of the work of the Holy Spirit in interpretation, and they recognized both the literal interpretation and deeper spiritual meanings of the sacred texts, with the latter being reined in from speculation by the former.

Erdmann spends the next several chapters contrasting two different hermeneutical schools in the early church, those of Antioch and Alexandria. The Antiochene school preferred a literal interpretation of Scripture wherever possible while the Alexandrian school opted for the allegorical approach. Erdmann argues for the superiority of the literal approach and shows how the Antiochene school was rigorously premillennial. He cites Justin Martyr and the author of the Epistle of Barnabas, among others, as demonstrating this “Asiatic” premillennial tradition, and defends the view that this is the school of thought which stems from the Apostle John, the traditional author of Revelation. It was the Alexandrians, Erdmann argues, under the leadership of Clement and especially Origen, which allegorized Scripture and thus advocated an amillennial perspective over against the premillennialism of the early church. It was Augustine, Erdmann rightly contends, that solidified this amillennial perspective in the church and, respected teacher that he was, sounded the death knell for premillennial thought in the church for over a thousand years.