It is easy to agree that human beings are created in the image of God. More debate may arise if we widen the idea to say that humankind as a whole—humanity if you will—reflects the divine image. The difference between the two may be described as the primary focus of the kind of public theology that forms the subject of Daniela Augustine’s book. As the title suggests, she offers a vision of shared flourishing in the image of God that focuses on how God’s Spirit leads humanity to the common good. In her own terms, she pursues the question how a market-shaped world can be mended by the common good in the Spirit’s activity. This task leads through the question how we can get from the common image to the common good (Chapter 1) and how we turn from a world of violence that destroys God’s image to a life that reflects the new creation (Chapter 2). The way to answer these questions leads trough rather unusual terrain for Pentecostals: the recovery of the Eucharist as a sacrament of the divine presence in the realm of economics (Chapter 3) and the experience of forgiveness and reconciliation in the agency of the Spirit (Chapter 4). The book concludes with reflections on how Christians make this agency visible and what moral imperatives are gained for a concrete living community.

Daniela C. Augustine is Associate Professor of Theological Ethics at Lee University.

Augustine’s unusual repertoire for this volume comes from field work with the Pentecostal community in Eastern Slavonia and religion’s role in the transformation of postwar civil society. Augustine argues that “due to their historical neutrality in the conflict, the Pentecostals were uniquely positioned to provide safe space for social healing and facilitate reconciliation among the warring (Orthodox, Catholic, and Muslim) factions” (p. 5). This research provides the backdrop for writing a narrative of the human agency that contributes to the healing and flourishing of life, a hagiography, in the terms of the Christian traditions, or in Augustine’s contemporary terms, a narrative of “the socio-transformative capacity of the saints’ lives as pneumatic embodiment of the world’s eschatological future” (p. 7). That this imagery and vocabulary is not usual for Pentecostal discourse, especially in the West, and the application of this “ancient” Christian tradition, particularly with resources from Eastern Orthodoxy, to contemporary concerns for peace, justice, and forgiveness, on the one hand, and to economics and human flourishing, on the other, make this book both a constructive and creative as well as a challenging read.

Reviewed by Wolfgang Vondey

Publisher’s page: https://www.eerdmans.com/Products/4385/the-spirit-and-the-common-good.aspx

De Arteaga suggests there are several dangers in the present demonstrations to produce some collateral damage, especially damage that would result if extremists got control of the demonstrations. He encourages Christians to pray specifically for good fruit to result from the demonstrations.

Quotations from the article:

Historically, the assertion that frustration leads necessarily to violence is nonsense. Such statements give the TV commentators or politicians who say that a feeling that he or she are making a worthy moral observation. In fact, in regimes where injustice and tyranny are highest but the police apparatus brutal and merciless, the public swallows its anger and suffers its injustices without comment.

It would have been spiritually beneficial for prominent clergy to say the simple, biblical thing, “Sin should not be met with counter-sin. Police brutality is a sin, but looting is evil and a sin also.”

The famous Russian dissident and prophet, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, in his Harvard commencement address of 1978 noted that the abrupt end to the Vietnam War, forced by the anti-war movement, cost millions of lives. I and many of us who were in Vietnam agree. Had we stayed a bit longer, and continued to give the South Vietnamese Army our air support, we would have today in South Vietnam a democratic, economically vibrant and spiritually healthy county similar to South Korea.

Politics normally breeds exaggeration, and protest movements exaggerate the exaggerations. The TV reporters and pundits often use the phrase “endemic racism” about Americans. This is an exaggeration that is convenient to the protest organizers and politically Left groups, but this can be a sin of false or exaggerated judgment. … Also note how many Whites participate in the demonstrations. This alone should be cause to temper the accusations of “endemic racism.” Let us begin using the phrase “vestigial racism” to signify those who have not yet overcome their prejudices.

Protests on May 31, 2020 in Washington, D.C.
Image: Koshu Kunii

“A Charismatic Historian’s Response to the George Floyd Demonstrations”
Link to the blog: http://www.pentecostaltheology.com/a-charismatic-historians-response-to-the-george-floyd-demonstrations/

Missionary David Joannes speaks with Pneuma Review about his book, The Mind of a Missionary, and about sharing the story of Jesus no matter the cost.

PneumaReview.com: You are involved in cross-cultural missions. Please tell our readers how long you have served overseas and where.

David Joannes: I got started in missions in 1994 at the age of fifteen. I went to Russia with Teen Mania Ministries and have never been able to shake the missionary call. At age eighteen, I bought a one-way ticket to Kunming, China, and have been living overseas for the last twenty-two years. Southwest China is home to hundreds of ethnic tribes and was the perfect place to launch out into ministry among unreached people groups. After years of evangelism, discipleship, and church-planting, my wife and I founded a ministry called Within Reach Global. Working alongside the underground Church, we have seen God move in the lives of countless unreached communities.

PneumaReview.com: What kinds of resistance or persecution have you experienced while serving in ministry overseas?

Author of The Third Force in Missions, Missionary-scholar Paul Pomerville speaks with PneumaReview.com about theologies and attitudes he believes have hindered the effectiveness of the church, particularly the church in the West. He urges Pentecostals to throw off the poisonous ideas of colonialism and the Enlightenment and instead be filled with the Holy Spirit of justice and peace.

PneumaReview.com: Please tell us about your experience in missions.

Paul Pomerville: After study in the national language of Indonesia, I started my service as an Assemblies of God missionary educating Indonesian ministers on the Island of Sumatra. I established a “theological education by extension” program that provided theological education for candidates for the ministry and active pastors in ten different areas of the island by way of independent study materials, a traveling faculty and weekly seminar-type training sessions. It was the first program of its kind in Southeast Asia; it was modeled after a similar program by missionary Dr. Ralph Winter in South America. When I was on furlough in the United States I started graduate education in missions. The next missionary service was in Brussels Belgium at the International Correspondence Institute, an arm of the Foreign Missions Division of the Assemblies of God. The Institute was preparing ministerial training materials and printing them on site for pastors and Christian educators via correspondence both in Western countries and also in the countries of the Southern Hemisphere. I wrote several courses and prepared an audience profile model of the developing countries for course writers for that part of the world, and also gave writers an orientation to that very different cultural audience. I also served as managing editor. On the next furlough in the United States I finished a Ph.D. in Intercultural Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of World Mission. I then served as professor and Department Chairman of the Missions and Cross-cultural Communications Department at the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary in Springfield Missouri.

PneumaReview.com: In your book you state that there are certain theologies that hinder the cause of missions. Please tell us what those theologies are and how they impede the missionary cause.

Paul A. Pomerville, The Third Force in Missions: A Pentecostal Contribution to Contemporary Mission Theology (Hendrickson Publishers, 2016).
Read the review by Anna M. Droll.

Paul Pomerville: The central thesis of The Third Force in Missions concerned the Pentecostal contribution to mission theology. At the time the first edition was written (1983) there were doubts as to whether there even was a Pentecostal contribution to mission theology. My contention at that time was that Pentecostal-charismatic Christians made up one-third of the world’s evangelical Christians and their growth was evidence of a potential Pentecostal contribution. However, the unprecedented Pentecostal-charismatic movement in the Southern Hemisphere today, the “third wave” of Pentecostal-charismatic renewal has proven the question of a Pentecostal contribution to be a “moot point.” Today, 800 million-plus Pentecostal-charismatic Christians are now a “first force” in Christian missions. It is clear that this unprecedented rapidly growing movement south of the equator was not due to “theology,” but rather the Pentecostal-charismatic experience with the Holy Spirit. Obviously, there is a “Pentecostal theology” undergirding the Pentecostal-charismatic movement that emphasizes the role of the Holy Spirit that two of the most influential theologies in the Northern hemisphere have not emphasized, but rather have neglected and outright denied—1) Western rationalistic scholastic theology of the post-Reformation period and 2) dispensational theology.

Lisa Sharon Harper is a follower of Jesus calling all followers of Jesus to love every person the same and seek their flourishing. PneumaReview.com speaks with her about her story and how God is inviting each of us to participate with him in making his Gospel of Peace real in our communities today.

PneumaReview.com: Please share with us some of your story. Where are you from? What Christian traditions do you most identify with? What have you been involved with for which you are most grateful to God?

Lisa Sharon Harper: To know me you must know my ancestors. God laid the foundations of who I am through them.

As a teenager, my mother was a member of the Philadelphia chapter of S.N.C.C. (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) in the mid-1960s. Her job was to connect Stokely Carmichael and others, such as James Farmer, with churches to speak in when they came through town. Her branch of our family tree reaches through the great northern migration, to enslaved and indentured family members in Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina as far back as 1650. Great grandfathers and uncles fought in every war this nation has ever seen; from the Revolutionary War through the Civil War to World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam. And one branch of the family, the Fortens of Philadelphia, served as primary financial backers of the abolitionist movement and helped build and lead the very first women’s equality gathering in Philadelphia in

My father was a member of C.O.R.E. (Congress of Racial Equality) in New York City. He attended the meeting where Freedom Summer participants were introduced: They were about to head to Mississippi to help register black Mississippians to vote. My father was considering joining Freedom Summer, but realized he needed to stay back and work for the summer. He met Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner at that meeting. My father’s father emigrated to the U.S. as a child joining his family in the South Bronx in New York City. They had arrived in waves over a period of years, directly following the United States’ annexation of the island. The earlier generation hailed from St. Kitts/Nevis where they were likely enslaved in extremely poor and brutal conditions. My great grandfather and his brother island-hopped looking for work throughout the turn of the century. His brother found work in Panama, building the canal.

My father’s mother was the daughter of an itinerate preacher who preached in all fifty states, according to family lore. She told me her father was college educated in British Guyana at the turn of the 20^th century. Most of her family, in fact, were college educated business people, she said. While the question of how black men were college educated businessmen in British Guyana at the turn of the century remains unclear. The Census revealed one clue: that my great grandfather was born in Holland and lived in a Dutch quarter of a French section of British Guiana.

The PneumaReview.com editorial committee is always looking for good writers that speak to our audience of Pentecostal and charismatic church leaders. Our vision is to build a bridge between the seminary and the local church and to create an online forum where Christians of all traditions can discuss the gifts of the Spirit for today.

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Further reading: Insights: feedback and the editorial process

Walter Brueggemann, Journey to the Common Good (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 125 pages, ISBN 9780664235161.

This excellent little book presents three addresses given by the author. This, together with the narrative theology represented, makes this work eminently readable and engaging. Brueggemann, a pre-eminent Old Testament scholar, is deliberately provocative whilst thoroughly rooted in contemporary Old Testament perspectives, bringing to the reader an insight of how the world of Biblical Studies can effectively and usefully address issues facing the church and our witness today.

In three chapters, Brueggemann looks at Scriptural narratives which engage the liberation from captivity in Egypt through to the Sinai visitation and instructions of God; the conflict between the revelation of God and the choices made by Israel in the succeeding years; then the challenges of engaging with God’s vision for reconstruction in the post-exilic period. Brueggemann takes each of these and, having identified the main narrative themes present, applies them to present issues and challenges affecting the North American context.

Two features of this book were of especial interest to the present reviewer. Firstly, Brueggemann expertly brings the narrative themes together and shows how his observations find expression in and through the ministry and teachings of Jesus Christ. In this way, he properly shows how the Old Testament narratives lead to their realisation in and through the ministry of our Lord. His skill in doing this is exemplary, and whilst the reader may not agree with all his final observations, the method which he employs in bringing the whole scope of Biblical testimony into play is, in itself, something for all to learn from.

Secondly, Brueggemann holds to an understanding of righteousness which, in the present debates between advocates of imputed righteousness and other forms, brings an important contribution. As Brueggemann puts it, ‘Righteousness concerns active intervention in social affairs, taking an initiative to intervene in order to rehabilitate society, to respond to social grievance, and to correct every humanity-diminishing activity’ (page 63).

This is a manageable piece of scholarship for the working pastor to digest, an informative as well as a challenging resource both for personal study and sermon preparation.

Reviewed by Jim Purves

Preview Journey to the Common Good: books.google.com/books?id=aN0JVqSMIHAC

The shocking parable of the Good Samaritan provides an example of how the church can be an agent of transformation. In this story from Luke 10, a despised minority person demonstrates God’s love and shows today’s Christians the essence of authentic social transformation.

Image: Romary / Wikimedia Commons.

The story of the Good Samaritan is one of the best-known and best-loved of Jesus’ parables. For many it has become the story of the archetypal good guy who unselfishly helps a stricken stranger. What is more, he does so at great personal expense and inconvenience and without the prospect of getting anything in return. To be sure the above portrayal is there, but the story is much more than that. In fact, beneath the story is a paradigm of how God wants those in His kingdom to affect their world.

A Lawyer’s Bold Question

The Lawyer’s Astute Answer, But Hidden Motive vv. 27-29

Without hesitation (I imagine), the lawyer quotes two verses that summarize the heart of the Decalogue, or Ten Commandments: “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your strength, and with all your mind’ [Deut. 6:5]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” [Lev. 19:17]. His answer actually distills Israel’s covenantal responsibility to two all-encompassing principles of the Torah, i.e., to love God supremely and to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus can hardly find fault with this answer. After all, on another occasion, the Pharisees asked Jesus to identify the greatest commandment in the Law, and he answered with the same two scriptures adding, “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (See Matt. 22: 37-40). Consequently, Jesus affirms the correctness of his answer and says, “Do this and you will live.”⁴ Nevertheless, the answer raises the fundamental dilemma for a Jew. Under the Law, the covenant responsibility of loving God is inseparable from loving ones neighbor as oneself. Jewish teachers tended to identify “neighbor” with “fellow countryman” (i.e., Israelite).⁵ However, the broader context of Moses’ instruction was given to all the congregation of Israel (Lev. 19:2) and dealt with how they were to conduct themselves as a “holy” people. This included how they were to treat the “stranger” (v. 10) in the land. The lawyer’s question, “Who is my neighbor?” is really asking, “To whom do I owe that covenantal love Moses spoke about?”