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/

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.

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.

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Presence Is a Verb—a State of Being and an Action

The woman abruptly arose from the Sunday dinner table and accusingly spoke to her husband, “You wouldn’t care if I drowned in the waterhole.” She then turned and walked out the door.

It had been a typical Sunday for the sixteen-year-old girl. The Pentecostal family had dressed in their Sunday best, driven to church, and come home to eat a pot roast that had been cooking in the oven. But the tenor of the day had abruptly changed, and silence now ensued in her mother’s absence. The daughter stared in panic and disbelief while her father paused only momentarily before continuing with his meal. He outwardly appeared unphased by his wife’s startling behavior. Bewildered by his stoic demeanor, her mind whirled, “Why didn’t he say anything? Why didn’t he chase after her?” She learned later that he had not understood his wife’s words. He, too, had been lost amidst the chaos.

The family was aware of the risks of the nearby waterhole. The sudden drop-offs or deep holes underneath the murky water caused it to be potentially perilous. Added to this watery death trap was the reality that her mother could not swim. A brain operation at age twenty had saved the mother’s life but had left her with an inability to walk a straight line on flat terrain, and being in water only exacerbated the unsteadiness. The daughter worried that she had just seen her mother alive for the last time. Like Ebenezer Scrooge facing the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, the teenager envisioned a life of darkness and separation brought on by death—her mother’s. At that moment, she desperately longed for her father to protect their family, to keep them safe from the terrors of death.

Concepts of this article are taken from Engelbert’s first book, Who is Present in Absence?: A Pentecostal Theological Praxis of Suffering and Healing (Pickwick Publications, 2019). The book is based on interviews with eight Classical Pentecostals, and their experiences are combined with psychology, culture, and Scripture/theology. In this article, Engelbert builds from some of the book’s principles to demonstrate how Pentecostals are uniquely qualified through our emphasis on the Spirit to be empowered to be present when God is apparently absent.

Amidst this chaos, the phone rang. The daughter answered. On the other end, she heard the voice of another 16-year-old girl who lived 180 miles away. The familiar voice said, “God told me to call you. What’s up?” Through this voice, God ministered to the panicked teen in her darkness. God revealed Godself as a minister to a 16-year-old teen through another 16-year-old in a void without safety and protection. God saw the daughter’s distress and invited her friend to participate in God’s ministry to be with the scared teen before her mother returned later that day.

God is revealed as a minister to a teenager, bringing healing presence to an impossible situation. God invites a long-distance friend to unite with God in another friend’s despair through listening and prayer. It conveys that God is a minister who invites humans to participate with God in God’s healing ministry of presence in the world. In what follows, I seek to demonstrate how presence is an act of healing ministry in which Pentecostals are uniquely equipped to participate in the power and the presence of the Spirit. To accomplish this, I draw from Pentecostal experiences, the field of psychology, and Scripture/theology.

Experiencing God’s Presence

The above supernatural incident and others like it are familiar to Pentecostals. We are a people who seek God’s presence. We call on God for revival, an encounter with God in which the Spirit convicts, heals, and renews God’s people. Our worship creates space in a service, which nurtures an expectation of experiencing God’s presence. We emphasize coming forward to the front (the altar) to a place where people may encounter God, be it for salvation, the baptism of the Spirit, healing, or sanctification. We stress the importance of prayer, which includes requests that God would supernaturally intervene. We highlight testimonies that give reports of our experiences of God, such as divine healing. In short, Pentecostals seek, hope, and/or expect to experience God’s presence.

I draw from our emphasis on God’s presence when I teach a course on Pentecostal pastoral care, in which I stress the importance of being present. At first, students push back on this idea. They desire action, such as learning how to use Scripture to solve people’s problems. For them, learning how to be present to others via empathy is not action. Presence does not fix it, so it is equated in their minds with doing nothing. It is devoid of the action necessary to generate transformation (similar to state of being verbs). As one who was born and raised Pentecostal, I relate. We are a pragmatic people who want a theology that works—an action that culminates in a definitive solution. I learned from my junior high English teacher, Mrs. Folkestad, that a noun is a person, place, or thing, and a verb expresses action or state of being; therefore, presence is a thing, not an action. But later in life (my apologies to Mrs. Folkestad), I came to see how presence is also a verb—it is both an action and a state of being.

Consider this question: What transpires when you experience the presence of God? Pentecostals typically respond with phrases like, “I felt love”; “I experienced a tremendous peace”; “I was no longer alone.” Many admit that although their circumstances did not change, they were strengthened through God’s presence. In that moment, they knew God was with them. This gave them courage to walk through their difficult valley, their impossibility. God’s presence transformed them, and it is this transformation that validates their experience as being a genuine act of ministry. When a sixteen-year-old friend participates in God’s ministry in the Spirit’s power by being present to an overwhelmed teenager through a phone call, God’s healing presence is encountered. This presence is an act of ministry. But Pentecostals are not alone in experiencing presence as being powerful for transformation. Psychology also supports that presence changes a person.

Humans Psychologically Need Healing Presence

At the time John Bowlby introduced attachment theory to the discipline of psychology, Western psychological theories tended to mirror our individualistic culture. Psychoanalysis was the dominating theory, focusing on the internal world of the person (think Freud’s ego, id, and superego). But Bowlby’s observations of children with their parents caused him to focus on relationships, not the inner parts of an individual. As such, he developed his theory of attachment. For Bowlby, humans (from infant to senior) instinctively long for the other’s presence to soothe them.

Image: Samuell Morgenstern

Bowlby believed we have an innate attachment behavioral system. When we are threatened, we seek to be close to someone who is stronger and wiser (an attachment figure) for support. Many of us may recall as children being awakened by a loud clap of thunder, and our fears being heightened by the bright, blinding bursts of lightning during a summer storm. As a two- or three-year-old, I was terrified, which meant my attachment behavioral system was activated. I was alone in the dark, feeling unsafe. Like any small child, I voiced my distress by crying loudly, and my mother responded by coming to be with me. Although my parents were unable to make the thunder and lightning cease, I received their support through their presence. As I curled up between them in the comfort of their bed, I felt safe and secure in their presence. Being with them enabled me to relax, and my attachment behavioral system was deactivated, allowing me to sleep. Their presence changed me without transforming the situation. The thunder was still loud and frightening. The lightning was still bright and scary. But their state of being present to me was an act of ministry—it brought healing comfort to my terrified being.

Scripturally/Theologically God Ministers through Presence

Thus far, we have seen how experiencing God’s presence in our worship services changes us. We have also recognized that psychologically we are created to be near others amidst our distress. The presence of those who are wiser and stronger brings about a sense of safety and security. Scripture and theology, too, reveal that God ministers through God’s being to humanity. Throughout human history, God enters into human chaos, or impossibilities, by joining humans in their powerlessness. For instance, when God enters the impossibility of an elderly couple’s childlessness, Abraham and Sarah have a son. God unites with Hagar and Ismael in their despair in the wilderness, delivering them from death (Gen 21). God joins the Hebrew slaves in their impossible situation by calling Moses, an elderly sheep herder, to participate in God’s ministry of deliverance (Ex 3). God repeatedly enters situations in which people experience separation, helplessness, and hopelessness—places of death. I am not speaking only of a physical death, but I am following Andrew Root by expanding death to include impossibilities, limitations, or a deep need that is beyond our reach. Each time that God comes into human impossibilities, God is revealed as minister through God’s being. God ministers by entering into a couple’s childlessness, a mother and son’s abandonment, a people’s oppression, and a sixteen-year-old’s fear of death.

Image: Vitaly Gariev

Such ministry through God’s being is most clearly seen in the person of Jesus Christ. Humanity is in an impossible situation. We are destined for death. As Paul informs us, the wages of our sin are certain death. All our attempts to escape death fall miserably short. Neither our good works, our praying and fasting, nor our offerings enable us to avoid death’s grip and ultimate separation. It is an impossible situation. And it is in this impossibility where God joins humanity.

John 3 reminds us that God’s love for the world initiates God’s act of sending the Son into the world to be with humanity in death. The Son, who is the very being of God, embodies God’s act of ministry to the world by joining with humanity. We may immediately call to mind that Jesus was present to humanity while he walked on this earth. However, I am referring to a ministry that is deeper than this. It is inward, taking place within the being of Jesus Christ. This ministry is seen more clearly through the theological concept called the hypostatic union. The hypostatic union states that Jesus is both fully divine and fully human. Two distinct natures. One divine. One human. Both are in one person without any blending or altering. Since they are in one person, the two natures are united, or in relationship, while remaining distinct in Jesus Christ. The divine is eternally connected with humanity within Jesus. That is, the divine is forever present to humanity in Jesus’s being. Because of the hypostatic union, God is revealed, and humanity is healed (reconciled). Both of these movements are transpiring in the person of Jesus Christ, who is God’s act of ministry.

This ministry that is taking place in Jesus, as seen in the hypostatic union, is both a healing ministry of presence and a healing action. In Jesus, presence becomes a ministry that is both a state of being and an act. The divine nature is present to and in relationship with the human nature in Jesus while healing humanity. In this light, Jesus is the embodiment of God’s ministerial act of healing presence (state of being and action). This is an ongoing healing ministry of the divine ministering healing presence to humanity. Through the power and the presence of the Spirit, we are now caught up in that healing act of presence. We are joined with Jesus’s humanity through the Spirit.

Moreover, we are invited to participate in this ministry of healing presence through the power of the Spirit. When we unite with other persons in the power of the Spirit in their impossibilities through presence, we are joining with God in God’s healing presence to them, which is occurring in the being of Jesus Christ. Therefore, God invites us, such as long-distance friends, to join others, like an overwhelmed sixteen-year-old, in their deaths. Transformation occurs because through the power of the Spirit, we are uniting with God in the ministerial act of God’s presence. This healing presence communicates, “You are not alone. I see you. I am here.” It ministers peace amidst chaos. It brings healing transformation.

A Pentecostal Response

Joining others in their deaths, limitations, or impossibilities calls for us to see God as a minister and to be dependent on the Spirit’s power. Too often we rely on our understanding in response to a hurting individual. We focus on ways to fix the issue or to find reasons why the impossibility exists. These types of responses to hurting people frequently include a form of avoidance, self-agency, or positivity. Avoidance fails to respond to the person who is hurting. Self-agency informs sufferers that their own action or inaction is causing the pain, e.g., You must pray more. Positivity places the onus on the distressed to be optimistic, believing this will change the circumstances, e.g., Trust that God has something for you just around the corner.

Image: Taiki Ishikawa

The emphasis on God being a minister is essential if we are to abstain from unhelpful responses. It expands our perception of God beyond the narrow view of problem solving. When God is perceived as a minister, our perception moves beyond the image of a genie who grants my wishes. It surpasses the restricted depiction of a mechanic who fixes my car or a lifeguard who rescues me from drowning. While the concept of God being a minister may include those aspects in a limited way, it is more. God is a minister who comes close to those experiencing any kind of death. And now God invites us to join God in this healing place.

But more than a change in perception, we need the power of the Spirit to be present to hurting persons and to refrain from avoidance, self-agency, and positivity. We require the Spirit’s power to have courage and strength to sit amidst uncertainty and ambiguity with those in despair rather than fleeing from or fixing them. We need to be empowered by the Spirit so that we are exhibiting the Spirit’s fruit, not blame and shame. We must have the power and presence of the Spirit to be present to those in pain in a similar way that God is present to them. Through our act of ministry of presence, the hurting then may see that God’s healing presence is with them, strengthening and upholding them. And that is ministry, which is both being and action.

Further Reading

Pentecostal Encounters with Suffering: an interview with Pamela F. Engelbert

How long did God expect prophecy to function in the church?

The Duration of Prophecy: How Long Will Prophecy Be Used in the Church?  (Part 1) from the Spring 2001 issue.

The Duration of Prophecy: How Long Will Prophecy Be Used in the Church?  (Part 2) from the Summer 2001 issue.

The Duration of Prophecy: How Long Will Prophecy Be Used in the Church?  (Part 3) from the Fall 2001 issue.

“The Duration of Prophecy” is Chapter 12 from the 2000 revised edition of The Gift of Prophecy in the New Testament and Today by Wayne A. Grudem.

Later included in the Fall 2025 issue.

Craig S. Keener, Suffering: Its Meaning for the Spirit-Filled Life (Baker Academic, November 11, 2025).

Craig Keener: Seeing what dominates our culture’s interests reinforced my feeling that the church in the U.S. is largely unprepared for suffering. Although the Bible talks a lot about suffering, sometimes when it strikes people who have heard only messages about blessing, they can feel that God has not treated them as he promised. While we have foretastes of the kingdom today, such as healings, the kingdom isn’t consummated yet. There’s still sickness and suffering and death in this world. Jesus, prophets and apostles also modeled for us how to face suffering.

PneumaReview.com: Suffering can take many forms. What kinds of suffering do you address in your book?

Craig Keener: As you say, suffering comes in many forms; I could therefore illustrate the principles with only some of them. Because persecution features dominantly in the New Testament, and it remains a living reality (even to the point of martyrdom) among Christians in many parts of the world today, that naturally features heavily in the book. But we also suffer from other sources. Some accounts from refugees fleeing other sorts of violence or suffering are heartrending. Most of us have encountered, or know others who have encountered, health or financial challenges for which our theology of healing and blessing do not, sometimes, satisfactorily address. Broken families are among the many other struggles that Christians may face.

PneumaReview.com: All people are susceptible to some forms of suffering. Should Christians expect the possibility of more suffering in their lives because of their faith?

PneumaReview.com: How would you respond to a person who says that suffering is a sign that one has failed God or is out of His will?

Craig Keener: That makes nonsense out of Paul’s lists of sufferings and defies the message of the cross. Granted, some kinds of sufferings are biblically normal for Christians (opposition to our faith) and some are biblically abnormal (punishment for non-Christian behaviors, 1 Pet 4:15). But we have plenty of biblical examples of God-followers who suffered from things from which God often delivers; for example, Elisha died from sickness and Paul left Trophimus sick at Miletus.

PneumaReview.com: What teachings or trends in the church today downplay the biblical teaching about suffering?

Craig Keener: I’ve not run into many people who actually teach that Christians will never suffer; but in circles that teach almost exclusively about blessings, some Christians seem to get that idea. I’ve heard some versions of “prosperity teaching” that simply mean that we should trust God to supply our needs for our lives and callings, and I certainly agree with that. But there are also the many versions (what Michael Brown calls “carnal prosperity teaching”) that claim material prosperity as a selfish promise. There are some who insist that everyone with faith will always get healed—although it’s evident that, given enough time, everybody in history, no matter how much faith, without exception, eventually dies.

PneumaReview.com: Do you think ministerial training in the West should place more of an emphasis on the possibility of one suffering for their Christian ministry?

Craig Keener: So many seminary and Bible college graduates go out ready to change the world and are out of ministry after a few years. It would help them to graduate with open eyes. Church people can be mean. We walk with many other church people through their heart-wrenching hardships. We may face opposition from various sources. A church with financial challenges (or even without them) may not pay as much as ministers can get elsewhere (I worked in a restaurant and pastored for free). We also can face discouragement when exaltation does not come as fast as social media sensations might lead us to expect. But faith means not just following God’s call or a heart for ministry when things are going well; it means trusting the God who is trustworthy no matter what.

PneumaReview.com: Please share some things that believers in the persecuted church can teach the church in America.

PneumaReview.com: How can we practically help others when they are suffering?

Craig Keener: It helps us to remember that the sufferings of the present are not worthy to be compared with the glory that awaits us; the struggles of this world are birth pangs (Rom 8:22) from which God will bring forth the perfect world to come. It helps to know that in God’s plan, all things work for good, for us ultimately sharing Christ’s glory and image (8:28-29). But these are things we need to learn before we suffer, because not everybody is in a good place to hear them during their suffering. In all cases, though, we can weep with those who weep (Rom 12:15). Loving people means sharing with them as fellow members of the same body, walking with them, as best as possible, in their pain. In that setting, we can also join them in seeking healing and restoration, and reminding them of the hope that we too find in the face of our brokenness.

PR 

Publisher’s page: https://bakerpublishinggroup.com/products/9781540969439_suffering

Further Reading

Craig Keener, “How to Succeed at Suffering: Lessons from the Gospel of Mark” Influence (February 14, 2024)

“Why Do Christians Suffer?” WTC Theology (TheoDisc/YouTube, October 1, 2025)

Raul Mock of The Pneuma Review recently interviewed bestselling author Frank Viola about his new book The Untold Story of the New Testament Church (2025) with Foreword by Craig Keener.

Raul Mock: For PneumaReview.com readers that have not yet encountered you, please tell us about your spiritual journey and your ministry.

Frank Viola: I’m someone who writes books and speaks in conferences for hungry and thirsty Christians who love Jesus, but who know in their bones that “there must be more” to the Christian faith, to Jesus Christ, to the Bible, and to church.

I’ve been part of every denomination and every movement you can name. From the Pentecostals to the Charismatics, all their flavors, as well as most evangelical denominations and camps.

And while I learned valuable things from all of them, they all left me saying, “there’s got to be more than this.” That’s what my books, my articles, and my podcasts are all about.

I’ve written over 20 books to date, and they can be divided up into Light and Shade.

“Light” are books containing the element of the sublime.

“Shade” are books containing a prophetic edge that challenges the status quo.

Your readers can check out my entire book catalog at frankviola.org.

All the books take God’s people into the deeper Christian life.

I also have two podcasts – Christ is All and The Insurgence Podcast. Combined, the two podcasts have almost 3 million downloads.

These two podcasts are designed for Christians who know there must be more.

(Details for each podcast can be found on my website, linked above. We also have a YouTube channel.)

Raul: How do you describe your new book, The Untold Story?

However, we live in an era where Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians regularly face criticism for apparent gaps between experiential faith and biblical understanding.

And that criticism is often valid.

My book, The Untold Story of the New Testament Church: Revised and Expanded, resolves this problem. The book transforms how all Bible-believing Christians engage Scripture, including those in the Charismatic world

The book does this by providing a key that unlocks the New Testament, addressing a long-standing need within the Charismatic community for deeper and clearer biblical understanding.

Dr. Craig Keener, the world’s leading scholar in New Testament background and a Charismatic himself, wrote the Foreword to the book. This is how he describes it:

“In The Untold Story of the New Testament Church: Revised and Expanded, Frank Viola brings context and background together, inviting us on a captivating journey through the birth and growth of the first-century church. With a reputation for captivating prose and heartfelt storytelling, Viola brings his unique perspective to reconstruct the events from Matthew to Revelation. The Untold Story offers a plausible chronological narrative that reveals the grand tapestry of God’s kingdom plan and brings the characters of the story to life.”

Respected New Testament scholar Clinton Arnold, who is known for his work on spiritual warfare, powers and principalities, also endorsed the book saying,

“This volume is a creative and fascinating portrayal of the rise of Christianity and the establishment of churches throughout the Mediterranean world. Viola weaves the evidence of the New Testament into a single unfolding and compelling story. Yet he does so not with unbridled imagination, but with a profound reliance on the best scholarship available. The end result is an accurate, engaging and compelling account of this movement that has had a monumental impact on history and continues to do so today.”

The uniqueness of my book is that it blends together the narrative found in the book of Acts with the epistles, all in chronological order, telling one unified story with all the historical details filled in from different parts of the New Testament and from first-century history.

This approach puts you in the dramatic story. You watch it unfold before your eyes sequentially. The result is that you understand the New Testament like never before – accurately, powerfully, and in an electrifying way. The book is a cinematic experience that unlocks the letters of the New Testament.

Raul: The 2025 edition of The Untold Story is “revised and expanded.” What are some of the differences in this edition from the very old edition from decades ago?

Frank: Unfortunately, there is a very old edition from 20 years ago with an ugly orange cover on it. That book is similar to an experimental high school paper. I wrote it in my youth. It was written in a hurry, it wasn’t peer reviewed, and no scholars read it beforehand to ensure its accuracy.

In addition, the scholarship is outdated and most of the best books written on the New Testament didn’t even exist back then.

So it was a “rough draft experiment” from my youth. In this regard, the new book is not exactly a “new edition.” It’s a brand new work. We just kept the same title because it appears in my other books, which represents over 600,000 copies to date.

The Untold Story of the New Testament Church: Revised and Expanded – with the white cover and brushstrokes on the borders – came out this year (2025).

It’s been endorsed by 20 first-rate New Testament scholars. However, the main narrative is highly accessible and “reads like a motion picture on paper” as some readers have described it.

The Christians – including pastors and teachers – who are reading it have reported that they are experiencing a “revolution” in their understanding of the Bible.

Raul: In one of the early footnotes, you say that you set out to write a book that tells “the entire story of the primitive church from Pentecost to Patmos.” But this isn’t merely a study Bible or a textbook on Christian history. Who is your intended audience and what gap do you want this book to fill?

Frank: Correct, the book is not a textbook or study Bible or even a history book. It’s been described as “the New Testament guides of all New Testament guides.”

The intended audience is any Christian who wants to understand the New Testament in a powerful new way. The book also brings the people and places to life.

It’s also for any Christian who wants to understand the early church, what really happened and didn’t happen.

Therefore, the book was written for pastors, preachers, teachers, Bible study leaders, and all Christians who read their Bibles regularly.

(While there have been a few titles from the past that tried to reconstruct the New Testament story in chronological order, none of them were comprehensive, none were documented with up-to-date scholarship, nor have any of them been reviewed by scholars to ensure accuracy.)

A number of the twenty scholars who endorsed my book have confirmed it’s uniqueness by saying, “There is no book like this.”

I’ve described the book as a contribution to New Testament 3.0 in contrast with New Testament 1.0 and 2.0 (See New Testament 3.0 – A Breakthrough for details on what I mean by that).

The sad truth is that most Christians today, including preachers and teachers, have built their theology on a crossword puzzle of verses.

They don’t know The Story. They know chapters and verses. And some of them are experts at a particular book of the Bible, but this all misses the forest for the trees.

The Story – the narrative of what happened from Pentecost to Patmos chronologically and where the 21 letters in the New Testament fit into that grand drama – is largely unknown. Even among scholars.

That’s precisely why I decided to take the time and effort to write the book, which was no small endeavor. It was a super heavy lift.

Raul: In the Foreword, Dr. Craig S. Keener said that Untold Story is an invitation to see ourselves as part of the ongoing story God has been telling. What are some of the places that did this most meaningfully for you?

Frank: There are so many. One can never fully understand Paul’s letters unless they learn The Story. So it’s meaningful how the Story told in the book opens up the New Testament epistles, including those of Paul who wrote the majority of them.

Another is the way that Christian workers (ministers) were trained in the first century. It’s drastically different from the way ministers are trained today.

Also, the way churches were planted is completely different from how they are founded today.

Without knowing the Story, we are left to interpreting the New Testament we want through cutting and pasting verses together. The result is that we arrive at conclusions that are unbiblical, even though the conclusions are based on certain portions of the Bible. The problem is that context is missing.

Jeremiah 8:8 in the NET Bible says,

How can you say, “We are wise! We have the law of the Lord”? The truth is, those who teach it have used their writings to make it say what it does not really mean.

This text was delivered during a period of spiritual and moral crisis in ancient Judah, when the people and their religious leaders (especially the scribes) claimed wisdom and faithfulness to God’s word. But they were in fact corrupting it through false interpretation and misleading teaching.

The verse addresses the scribes and religious leaders who boasted, “We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us,” yet Jeremiah exposes their reliance on the pen of the scribes (the Bible experts) who “have twisted it by writing lies” suggesting they distorted or misrepresented the Torah, misleading the people.

This same thing is done today unwittingly and unknowingly when Christian leaders and teachers don’t know The Story. Yet they still teach the New Testament. So they inevitably misinterpret the text.

Knowing the Story prevents this problem. So far, it’s been a tremendous help to Charismatics and Pentecostals who honor the word of God and want to fully understand it. It’s done the same for other denominations and movements in the Christian world.

I explain this in more detail in the many of the interviews I’ve done on the book which your readers can check out here. The interviews delve deeper than this interview. (More interviews will be added to that page in the coming days, so check back.)

Also, we recently launched a visual podcast that goes along with the book. Your readers can check it out at TheUntoldStory.me.

PR

Holly Beers and Craig Keener: We love the Bible, and at heart we want to understand it well and help others understand it also. That’s how we see our scholarship – as a way to serve the church. We both have our specific areas of interest and specialty, including how Craig works with ancient Greek and Latin texts which help us better understand the New Testament, and Holly studies the way that the Old Testament is incorporated into the New Testament, but we both simply love to study and teach more generally. We are both very involved in our local churches: teaching, preaching, and offering our gifts in a variety of ways.

PneumaReview.com: If they asked, what would tell this leader about your experience with the contemporary ministry of the Holy Spirit?

Beers & Keener: Both of us are Pentecostal and desire to deeply know and be led by the Spirit. We regularly practice the gifts of the Spirit both individually and in (church) community. Craig especially has traveled extensively and observed and participated in the Spirit’s work around the world. Holly teaches at a college where most students come from non-charismatic/Pentecostal backgrounds, and she regularly exposes interested students to the Spirit’s contemporary work and trains them to engage in it.

PneumaReview.com: Where did the idea for the Word & Spirit Commentary on the New Testament series originate?

Word and Spirit Commentary on the New Testament Series from Baker Academic (as of July 2025)

Beers & Keener: We noticed that there have not been very many biblical resources authored by scholars from Pentecostal/charismatic traditions. When researching for projects or preparing for classes, we had difficulty finding those voices. The need for a series like this was even more apparent because of the documented growth of Spirit-filled movements around the world. In conversations with an editor at Baker Academic we suggested this series, and Baker was happy to support us as editors and publish it.

PneumaReview.com: How were the various contributors selected?

Beers & Keener: We wanted to be intentional about including scholars from across the global Pentecostal and charismatic spectrum, so we recruited accordingly. The range of voices includes denominational Pentecostals, Reformed charismatics, charismatic Methodists, and others. They also reflect a range of cultures, including Spirit-filled voices from multiple continents.

PneumaReview.com: In what ways is the importance of the Word emphasized in these commentaries?

Beers & Keener: They are, at their core, biblical commentaries; in that sense the Word is central. They explain the best of what biblical scholars know about the original context of the books as they work through the entirety of each. They also highlight the Spirit’s inspiration of the biblical texts.

PneumaReview.com: How is the work of the Holy Spirit highlighted in these volumes?

Beers & Keener: This series focuses on how the same Spirit who inspired the text speaks and works today. Our authors “preach” their way through the texts, emphasizing how we listen alongside the ancient audiences for the Spirit’s voice in our time and contexts.

PneumaReview.com: What is the most unique aspect of this commentary series?

Beers & Keener: The authors engage the biblical text in both its ancient setting and its message for Spirit-filled Christians today. The commentaries do not separate the exegetical and application sections, as readers in Spirit-filled traditions tend to integrate and move naturally between these categories. In other words, Spirit-filled readers traditionally blend the ancient and modern horizons so as to read themselves within the continuing narrative of salvation history—that is, as part of the ongoing biblical story (not culturally but theologically/spiritually/eschatologically). Particularly distinctive of this approach, then, will be observing how God works in the biblical texts and how Christians can expect God to be working today, even if in new and/or culturally surprising ways. The commentaries are written with distinctives of the tradition(s), including testimony, a conversational style (“preaching”), and sidebars that feature connections to Spirit-filled history and interest, such as healing, exorcism, spiritual gifts, etc.

PneumaReview.com: In your opinion, is the divide in the church regarding the Word and the Spirit declining?

Beers & Keener: Yes, we see a growing interest in and commitment to keeping the Word and Spirit together. We find this to be very encouraging, and are convinced that the Spirit’s own prompting is the main reason.

PneumaReview.com: What factors are contributing to this?

Beers & Keener: Beyond the Spirit’s own initiation, it seems due to our increased global awareness and connectedness. More and more Christians have contact and even relationships with Christians from different traditions in our neighborhoods, our workplaces, and online. We hear about what the Spirit is doing around the world.

PneumaReview.com: Can you tell us about some of the forthcoming volumes and who is writing them?

Beers & Keener: This summer Craig’s co-authored volume with Robert P. Menzies on Acts will be published, and this fall Craig’s volume on 1-2 Peter and Jude will also be released. In the next couple of years you will see commentaries on 1-3 John by Jamal-Dominique Hopkins, 1-2 Timothy and Titus by Amy Anderson and Gordon Fee (revising Fee’s earlier contribution), Matthew by David Instone-Brewer, and Galatians by Roji George.

PneumaReview.com: What do you hope the lasting legacy of this commentary series will be?

Beers & Keener: Although the series naturally welcomes all readers, we especially hope to serve those who identify as Spirit-filled (broadly defined) leaders: pastors, seminarians, theology and ministry students, youth leaders, and Bible study leaders. We pray that the series testifies to the creative work and restorative goodness of the triune God.

PneumaReview.com: When will the series be complete?

Beers & Keener: The goal is 2030; at this point the date appears realistic, as authors are very excited about and committed to the series.

Craig S. Keener (PhD, Duke University) is F. M. and Ada Thompson Professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary. He is author of thirty-seven books, with some 1.4 million copies in circulation. The books have won fifteen national or international awards, including six in Christianity Today; together the books take up 19,000 pages. He has also authored roughly one hundred academic articles; seven booklets; and roughly two hundred popular-level articles. In 2020 Craig was president of the Evangelical Theological Society. He is ordained with the Assemblies of God. His YouTube channel is: www.youtube.com/c/CraigKeenerPhD; his blog site is www.craigkeener.com/.

Learn more about this series and series co-editor, Holly Beers:

This article disputes the idea that it is ok for Christians to be rude. Bad manners are not trivial. Rudeness is hurtful to believers and a poor witness to the world. I am not talking about ordinary believers who are having a bad day. I am talking about emotionally abusive churchgoers who enjoy operating that way. I am addressing the careless, cruel, deliberate rudeness of many Christians, including some members of the clergy, who are humiliating and offending other believers as a form of self-amusement, bullying or self-glorification. Deliberately causing emotional distress to others is wrong.

There is absolutely no place for rudeness in the life of the Christian disciple. We are not Old Testament prophets or Jesus rebuking the Pharisees. We have no absolute spiritual authority. We have no right to take a whip to the Temple courts. We need to move in gentleness and meekness.

1 Corinthians 13:4-6 (ESV) Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant (5) or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; (6) it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.

The word “rude” in 1 Corinthians 13:5 is asxemoneo (ἀσχημονέω)– or “lacking good form, inappropriate, unseemly, to act unbecomingly, to be rude”. The rude person expresses themselves with utter disregard for others, for the culture, or for good manners.

Jesus described Himself as “meek and lowly of heart” (Matthew 11:29), and the most frequently mentioned emotion of Jesus is considerate compassion (Matthew 9:36, 14:14, 15:32).

A truly spiritual Christian will display the nine fruit of the Spirit which are: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22,23). And the heavenly wisdom of God is pure, gentle and peaceable:

James 3:17-18 But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. (18) And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

James condemns the way rich church members and the clergy were rudely treating the less fortunate:

James 2:1-4 My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. (2) For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, (3) and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” (4) have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

Many rich, glamorous and famous people are rude to the poor and needy, and even to each other. But, is it “cool” to imitate that which is evil? It is “cool” to imitate bullies, to be sarcastic, to shun others and to put people down? Do not imitate evil, but rather imitate that which is good!

3 John 1:11 Beloved, do not imitate evil but imitate good. Whoever does good is from God; whoever does evil has not seen God. Since rudeness is the precise opposite of agape love, then deliberately rude and unloving pastors, deacons or elders are outside of God’s will! Christian leaders should be holy, considerate servants of God’s people.

1 Peter 5:3 not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.

Being loving kind and considerate is a hallmark of the true Christian: 1 John 4:8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love (see also 1 John 3:16-18).

If someone is inconsiderate, if they don’t care about how other people feel, if they only care about their own self-expression, then they are completely outside of Christianity with its central commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself”.

Romans 13:9-10 For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (10) Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

And we all know the Golden Rule from the Sermon on the Mount:

Matthew 7:12 “So whatever (in all things) you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. If we want others to be kind and polite to us, then, in all things, we should be kind and polite to them!

None of these rude “Christians” want other people to be rude back to them. They want to be rude to others for the fun of it, but if someone was deliberately rude to them they would burst out in rage!

Putting off the Old Nature

The old nature and its lifestyle need to be put off!

Ephesians 4:20-24 But that is not the way you learned Christ!— (21) assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, (22) to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, (23) and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, (24) and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

We are to put away rudeness, uncouthness, cussing, coarse jesting, humiliating others, dominating others, and being emotionally cruel. We are to put on kindness, gentleness, meekness, graciousness, fitting speech, tactfulness, love and wisdom.

Ephesians 4:29-32 Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. (30) And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. (31) Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. (32) Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

We don’t just put off the old self we must put off its practices as well, its culture, it habits, and its entire mode of being!

Colossians 3:8-10 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. (9) Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices (10) and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

The Christian is a new person who is continually being renewed into the image of God, and our lifestyle and manners should demonstrate this! There needs to be repentance for rudeness. A “metanoia”, a complete change of mind and manners! New Christians should be discipled into the new graciousness of the Holy Spirit.

Being Like Jesus

Our mode of being should imitate that of Christ. In the Bible this is referred to as “walking”, it is the habitual tone of one’s existence.

1 John 2:4-6 Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, (5) but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: (6) whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

Galatians 5:16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

The only way we can get out of the snare of our ego and into a Christ-like lifestyle is by the power of the Holy Spirit! Prayer, worship, reading the Bible, getting into some good, faithful Bible teaching, fellowship with good Christians, and daily asking to be filled with the Spirit will assist you in your spiritual growth. My brief book The Spiritual Continuum outlines the Spirit-Filled life.

Learning Graciousness

The best way to learn graciousness is by observing very well-mannered Christians in your culture and age group. Admire those who are admirable, watch how they handle social situations, observe how they manage stress and conflict, note how they make everyone feel comfortable and at ease. Then do as they do!

Hebrews 13:7 Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.

Philippians 4:8-9 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. (9) What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

Even if you grew up in a rude and abusive family, it is up to you to break the cycle! I am not referring to crystal bowls and fish forks and fine etiquette. I am talking about your attitude toward other people.

Some tips:

1. Don’t just blurt things out, pause your response, then filter your words
2. Pray before you speak, pray for a long time before important meetings
3. Let Scripture guide your words
4. Most of the time there is absolutely no need to win the argument
5. Assertively interrupting other people in order to assert dominance is wrong
6. Try not to be dismissive of those you vehemently disagree with, see them as persons
7. Put some time and effort into figuring out the nicest way to say things
8. You are not God’s Sheriff, don’t go around unnecessarily correcting people!
9. Be considerate, put yourself in their shoes
10. Be courteous, do the small things that make people feel noticed
11. Be kind and don’t be mean
12. Don’t attack the self-worth of someone else
13. Correct the problem without destroying the person
14. Rage solves nothing
15. Don’t go on power trips, don’t deliberately ignore people, don’t belittle people
16. Don’t put people down for the sheer fun of it
17. Don’t make people squirm, don’t victimize them, don’t be cruel
18. Choose to make people comfortable, not uncomfortable, meet their small needs
19. Don’t needle others or provoke them, or deliberately get under their skin
20. Be hospitable, relaxed and easy-going, “hail fellow, well met”. Greet people cheerfully.
21. Give people second, third and fourth chances
22. Uproot all resentments and bitterness from you heart, forgive and forget, be Christlike

Conclusion

We are to be polite, not rude. We are to love our enemies, be kind to the ungrateful, be patient with the weak, and to associate with the humble and lowly. We are to put the character of Jesus on display!

Romans 12:16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight.

Image: Jason Leung

Christians are a new people, a new creation of God, with a new spiritual nature. We are called to a higher calling of agape love and love is not rude! Let us put on love, not haughtiness!

Colossians 3:12-14 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, (13) bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. (14) And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

PR